I think this is an issue that can be alleviated by card shops or game venues too; back when I was still playing the TCG, my local game shop would host a more casual tournament in between serious/all-out ones. The casual one would be it's own "have fun, goof around" event which have it's own custom ban list which would cripple any meta decks by removing particular combo pieces and/or boss monsters. More kids and newbies would often show up to these and winners would still be rewarded with a few boosters, it was great.
This right here. If I had a shop nearby that did exactly this I would get back into the game. Also this format but with old cards(pre synchro era) would bring alot of the old players who left back
The place where we play allows "class A" cards or fake cards because we all know how expensive tcg/ocg is. As long as the card isn't hand drawn or printed in your computer, pasted in a piece of carton board, you're good to go. Yugioh is fun. It's just less fun if you're planning to compete but if you're just playing on your own community, it's heck of fun. I even saw someone playing Amazon otk last 2015 (?) Been a long time since I played irl.
Creating our own format is how my friend got me into the game, and how we've continued to have fun. We just use card/ban lists from old Gameboy games (Stairway to the Destined Duel and Duel Academy GX so far). It's been great for deck building because the lists don't fit a specific, legit format so we have to do a lot of our own research and can't just copy metas of the time. It's led to a lot of fun deck ideas (Using the effect of Fire Princess to try and gain enough life points to win the duel, or using a Kuriboh centered deck to try and tribute a bunch of copies from Multiply to deal damage, or buff OK monsters to obscene levels with mage power/united we stand) and just overall good times. There is obviously a struggle with the "formats" we use not being legitimate and thus not having resources to pull from, but that's just turned into me creating programs for us (one for viewing all card images/descriptions for any card/ban list we give it, one for randomly generating decks for some true horrible jank, and one for making deck building a turn by turn process we do together with randomly drawn cards and abilities to reroll cards or influence cards you/your opponent will draw). I wish there were more formats available in general, with tools and resources, even if they weren't "official". It would be a lot easier for new/returning players to dip their toes in and get a feel for the game without throwing them into the bottomless trap hole of text/power creep that modern Yu-Gi-Oh is.
A completely unique format that no one knows about probably would solve a lot of these problems yeah. When you get millions of people playing the same format what works and what doesn’t is shown pretty dang fast.
This is evidence that it isn't the format that matters, it's the players. The best deck in Duel Academy is almost certainly Stein OTK, to the point where the developers even encourage building it for quick and easy wins. But playing Stein isn't fun, it's just going through the motions. It's entirely on the player to create their own fun with the options available. Advanced format is the same. Having fun comes down to a mutual understanding between two duelists. You don't need Konami to tell you how to have fun. You can make your own.
The problem with making your own format is it can be tough to find people to play with, unless you have a group of people who already play often. There are no online options that allow you to play with more than 60 cards in a deck, or relegating ritual monsters to the extra deck. I dropped off after XYZ cards were introduced, and wish we could go back to that time.
not a YGO player here but i clicked to see how other games are doing on this front. I'm a long time commander player and my group really has been feeling the strain of WotC's current release model and design philosophy. I just want to say, even though it helps, there still isnt really a truly casual format in magic. People play the best decks they can find and will be leagues above the "fun" decks. We also have the same issue with disagreements on what counts as fun.
I think most people don’t seem to realize that all tcg (technically almost every game in existence) with a competitive scene will have players using the most unfair tactic, strategy and elements to their advantage as much as possible so it’s not really a yugioh/mtg thing as it is just a thing for anything with a meta even bicycling competition/races bans certain riding maneuvers or position because of the advantage it gives too as ridiculous as that may sound I believe the hard part is actually trying to separate the competitive/meta aspect of something from the casual/fun aspect instead because for example, not too long ago a card called halqifabrax was finally banned after people been calling for its banned for a few years already, prior there were numerous argument about whether this card should even be banned or not because it allows weaker or more casual decks some unique card combos and plays including the ability to compete with the meta since the way it worked opened up a lot of ‘ahem…degenerate’ combos but at the same time meta decks were also abusing the very same card to facilitate their own degenerate stuff or create naught unbreakable boards and some people felt that these were acceptable terms to allow halqi to evade the ban hammer
And it also comes down to the individuals, most of the time people play to win even if its just "casual" instead of wanting to just play decks to just play them. People need to actually play the game for what its for and to enjoy the game itself and not just the mindset of OP winning. But thats never gonna happen
The truly tragic thing about Commander is that it began as Elder Dragon Highlander; a fan-made format designed specifically to give players a way to use their piles of one-of/junk rares in a novel way without degenerating into Yet-Another-Sealed-Format territory. And then Wizards did the rare, devious thing and supported the format, necessitating the name change into an official brand....which ultimately defeated the whole point of EDH in the first place.
You can see this issue just watching Ludwig’s tournament he did with a lot of other big creators. They were given pre made decks and 6 out of the 8 players didn’t fully understand how the game works. The entire time chat was flaming the players for having certain cards in the deck or for misplaying (sometimes atrociously). It seems like a lot of players miss the fact that this has an astronomical learning curve to even play properly let alone make the best plays.
Well i mean, its not like they "Wanted to learn the game", most of the players just activated stuff with out reading the cards at all and then wonder why it didnt worked, its the meme of "Yugioh players doesnt know how to read" but in real life no jokes. Also saykkuno had a busted Hero deck, that deck was the only one usable, it has darklaw
I agree. YUGI needs popular fun format for casual players & to help grow the community. So honestly it’s not the game but the community’s mindset itself.
No, it's the game. The difference between starter deck yugi (OG starter deck) and modern decks is sickening. The game has wildly changed to the point it's an entirely different game now.
@@JoeBob189 I agree, it's something as an outsider I don't see discussed much but really puts me off, the power creep that's resulted from the commitment to the eternal format being the only real format.
This is another one of the problems I have been trying to speak about when it comes to YGO. Constantly I keep hearing from other channels and other people from the community is "No the game keeps evolving!!" In my honest opinion it has not evolved as due to the fact there are no other formats. There does need to be a Casual format just to have fun officially. But in reality there needs to be a push for alternate formats besides the "Advanced" format only. Also It really is not new player friendly and this part of the problem where the game has been stale and has not evolved. The final problem is the most of the community, Sure there are a lot that are awesome and supportive and respectful and polite. However the majority are terrible people. I could keep going but I feel this is adequate.
Coming to master duel to relive childhood from quitting around the start of synchro summon and the turn0-turn1 meta of the game is just ridiculous and made me not want to come back, why bother coding in the 1st gen cards when theres the meta decks. Its the only card game i know of that has this type of crazy power creep and I dont know how the game can keep evolving with power creep when its already turn0-turn1
You don't even need a whole format. You can just have a rule like "no searching you deck." It slows things down and shortens turns by a lot in most games. You can also just start spelling words with Destiny Board and Spirit Message letters.
I get what your saying, but your point has faults. Firstly the game did evolve. Mainly it evolved with introductions of new mechanics and extra deck monsters, then ways to cheat around the restrictions. Saying that the game hasn't evolved because we only have advanced format is wrong. Advanced format has evolved. Plus we don't only have advanced format anyway. It is just perceived that way since Advanced is the only largely supported format by Konami. There is also a huge problem with saying we need a tournament for fun decks. There is no consensus on what is 'fun' in yugioh. Some players have fun playing with their friends. Some players have fun playing certain decks. Some players have fun pulling off some inconsistent wombo combo that only works once every 10 or 20 duels. And others have fun winning.
@@matthewdodd1262 We can start the change by not writing an essay about disagreements. No solution is perfect, but we can do better than what we have now.
I would love a pseudo-draft format with dedicated low power sets similar to what the LOD set was trying to do with the Dragon, Warrior and Fiend tribal themes
We used to have this and it was called Battle Packs! It was awesome. It was mostly for sealed but also worked for draft. There's actually a site too that functions as a draft sim or a prerelease/sealed sim for Yu-Gi-Oh but I forgot the name. I think it even lets you copy your pulls into a deck file for online clients, to boot.
@@Aigis31 I remember Battle Pack. I played the first one (got two Tour Guides and two Forbidden Lance when they were not cheap) but looking back I think Battle Pack was a flawed format in that it was still using cards which were designed withing the archetype system so it was hard for them to curate cards from the main card pool that would work. The last Battle Pack tried to solve it by making all monsters all types to artificially increase the synergy of the cards but what I'm talking about is something different to that format. I was suggesting an alternate run of booster sets just like the normal release sets but featuring 100% new cards at a much lower power level only for this format. Ideally there would be no archetypes but some new additional game rule that limits the amount of different monster types and attributes you can play in the same deck so synergies are built around types/attributes and not archetypes. The inspiration is LOD where, at the time, they were coming up with ideas to solve the problem of "good stuff" decks and tried this tribal synergy idea but ultimately decided to print archetypes instead. Grave Keepers came out soon after and the rest is history
Here's an easy parameter for how to evaluate what makes the game fun. The common characteristic every game has is CHALLENGE. Games present you with a challenge to overcome. Whether it be learning it, playing around the obstacles it puts in your path, in the case of card games deckbuilding, etc. And that's just it. Yugioh doesn't provide that when the optimal Turn 1 is to set up layers upon layers of things that stop you from playing the game. You either have an out, in which case you win, or you don't and you lose. There is no challenge there for either player, so nobody has any fun. Decks like Plunder and Sky Strikers and Tri-Brigade (in my personal experience) don't STOP your opponents from doing anything, and I think that's the key. No matter what they do, you can usually deal with most of it and mount a proper counter-offense. From that back-and-forth comes the challenge, and thus the fun.
Cube format is the answer, it's fun for pros and first timers alike because it puts players on an even playing field. I hope you and the other gentlemen at Team APS finally get around to making a cube. It'd be toadally awesome!
@@Fraudkuna9 Cube is a unofficial draft format. The CUBE is a collection of cards with generally 45 cards per player. Each player is given 15 of those cards and picks one to keep and passes the rest to the next player. Then they pick a card to keep from 14 which they are passed. This repeats until all the cards are claimed, once that happens players take another 15 cards from the box and repeat this process until all the cards in the box are claimed. Players then build a deck using the cards they claimed and play in a mini tournement. I am a magic player so the numbers might be different to yugioh and in general the cube curator can do whatever they want when it comes to numbers. Some cubes might also have special rules, for instance I once made a yugioh cube and one of its rules is that if you pick a ritual monster you automatically get a copy of the matching ritual spell to put in your deck.
Very good topic here, as a 30 year magic the gathering veteran and a retuning yugioh player looking from the outside in, I can tell you for a quite a few years MTG had these same problems, however why yugioh needs I think in my opinion is the community to come together or rally together with strong leaders in the community such as Team APS, cimoo, ruxin34 etc to band together with the community if this is something that everyone wants then the community can affect and create great change, I guess what I’m saying is if everyone bothers Konami to create a casual format outside of advanced then there’s a good chance that Konami will cave and possibly cater to the community. Commander format didn’t become popular overnight, it took quite a few years for it to get off the ground, it started out as EDH format then slowly became what is known as commander today in MTG. Also being a leader like the professor from TCC in the yugioh community would help and I think greatly benefit everyone. Who knows maybe a good casual format would be for someone to create a 100 card commander like format for yugioh maybe Konami will take notice of how popular something like that would become.
I am not sure if something like Commander would work in YuGiOh. It would make the decks a lot less consistant but would not stop the decks from building insane bords if they open right. So I think it would create a lot of none games where one player opens with combo while the other dosn't. However I agree with everything else you said, I just think YuGIOh would need it's owne approach to a casual format and due to the power level of the game could not just copy the approach Magic took with Commander.
@@Lyricaon I don’t know I think it could work for Yugioh, for example magic’s commander allows for 100 cards and only 1 of any card you would like put in your deck, you could do a ratio of maybe about 37-38 monsters and the rest spell and trap cards to use, and start with a higher life point total of about 16,000 instead of 8000, because in mtg for normal casual games we have only 20 life points and for commander is 40 so double the amount, the idea of commander format is to have the games dragged out and more epic and fun after all. I would suggest giving it a try with Yugioh maybe add the ratio of cards I mentioned above, sleeve up a deck and have a friend do the same, sit down at a table and play with 16,000 life points instead of the normal 8000, you might be surprised at how well and fun a formal like that could be 😄
@@ericcornish1983 This could be me but I wouldn't want just a yugioh copy of commander because at that point I would just play commander if that makes since. I like mtg and I like yugioh but I think they should be separate. Not saying yugioh couldn't evolve something from mtg. Also that just sounds like alot of T setting.
This is why I still don't dare to go to locals yet after getting back. One of the good LGS I went to has a lot of meta, and it's tough to get in when I just want to be interactive when playing. Now I'm just building decks for collecting purpose and playing with my friends when I can, I'm sure I won't be able to withstand the toxicity of competitiveness.
In Pokemon we recently added Gym Leader Challenge a format created by Andrew Mahone of Tricky Gym on youtube. Its basically monotype, highlander and no rule box pokemon (Commander basically) with its own banlist. The format is now run at Pokémon regionals as side events similar to time wizard format. Its really fun to play casually as the power level is lower and for a game that is only really playable in standard it allows you to make use of unused cards and cards from older formats that you loved. Maybe a highlander/commander like format supported by some of the bigger youtubers would work in Yu-Gi-Oh if enough people play it konami would eventually support it like they are doing now with reprints for Edison and goat.
I honestly wish for different formats, I'm a returning player from like 2010 and I can barely handle it. I just decided I wanted to play casually and play cards and archetypes that I think are cool like dark magician and aliens. I've gotten into master duel and tried playing casual games but people are still playing meta decks sweating there and the odd chance that someone isn't, I'm having a lot of fun with it. I wish for different game formats like duel links or generational game modes because I've been watching your rare hunter series and it's like the best thing I've seen. Like for instance the lava golem play was so awesome to see, it was down to the wire of 600 lp and any false move could mean defeat and you came out in the end, I'm sorry but I love long games like those, you get to see all the cards and it opens up the chance for seriously hype moments instead of what I experienced of getting 2 turned killed and not being able to play even if it's my turn. At the end of the day, if it isn't fun, why bother. That's my off the cuff fling on why I would love different and casual formats. Love the vids man
I just got back into the game after 16 years and almost uninstalled Master Duel after my opponent took more than a minute to end his turn. Come to find out, players taking that long is the norm.
As someone who once played YGO and Pokemon TCG and just got back into both half a year ago (after a good decade and some change out of it), here's my thoughts: Coming back to Pokemon TCG, the first thing I immediately thought was great was that I could go out and buy a physical prebuilt deck that was somewhat competitive in the current format, go onto the official online sim, input the included code, and get that exact deck I bought on the online sim. The entire cost of both the physical and online deck? 20 bucks. No extra effort needed to grind, nothing. I just have the deck because I bought it. It makes so much sense because the online is the main way to get the majority of practice/play with the deck and this feature promotes people buying the packs which in turns funds the online servers. Granted, PTCGO is a dated online service that hits the bare minimum of usable because it is nearing the age of being able to drive, and the Pokemon Company themselves do not care to invest time/money into making it anywhere near as nice as Master Duel, but that's a topic for PTCG players to complain about. For the life of me I could not figure out why in the world Master Duel did not have this with the Albaz structure decks I bought (I mean, we all know why, but let's ignore that part). It just makes so much sense that it's a shame I have to spend 30 bucks to get the Albaz structure on top of dedicating either a decent chunk of time or money to get that same deck in Master Duel, and I refuse to drop the money because I'd rather get scalped by specific physical cards than the awful pricing of Master Duel's in-game currency. Also, small complaint about the structure decks: Why do I need 3 of them? I buy the Pokemon sets, they give me the 3x copies of Calyrex-Ice I need for the deck. I don't have to buy 3 separate Pokemon structure decks to get the 3x I need, I just get the 3x I need. YGO structure decks give you 1x of each and half the stuff is filler junk that you try to offload for a buck to your local card shop. Another thing I really like about Pokemon Online is that there is a Theme format. This is less the case for a returning player like me, but was a godsend for my friend who recently started learning TCGs in general. Theme is a format where you can only use the prebuilt decks (about 100 of them) that you can purchase using the in-game currency (which is not purchasable, so you can only earn it). The three decks that they give to you are theme decks and if you were unable to buy physical cards to play other formats, the general idea is that you play theme to learn the game and earn the in-game currency to either buy a better theme deck and climb there or try and get something running in the more standard formats. There is obviously a meta to theme and the best theme decks are objectively better than most, but they don't cost anymore than any other theme deck so you can just buy one of those the moment you have the resources for it and start playing theme with a top meta theme deck if you want to. Theme is relatively slow compared to more modern and expanded formats and has a controlled meta because the only eligible decks in it are prebuilt only. I'm very surprised Master Duel did not have something similar. In part because all of the solo situations they throw you in give you old, dated structure decks that are non-functional in modern YGO if used stock and also because I would have 100% expected some kind of themed legacy format where you can use classic nostalgia bait decks inspired by characters from the anime. They even have the legacy pack ticket or whatever which could have easily just been used to purchase those dated structure decks instead of that crappy legacy pack. This basically gives them the ability to just create a slower, more casual format that they can control the meta of while also giving people options to play stuff that they realistically have some kind of nostalgic connection to. One thing I DO like about YGO is that the "standard" format is basically most other TCG's "unlimited" format. In other words, I can take my doodoo Cyber Dragon deck from over a decade ago out of my closet and bring it to a locals and it's probably legal (now I'm not saying it'd fair well, but that's another topic). If nothing changes outside of bans, I can basically do that 50 years from now. There is basically no other card game I can say that because adding the concept of stuff like a standard, modern/expanded, or legacy will change the time frames of those over increasing periods of times. I don't really want to go and check what things are legal in whatever format outside of a ban list and then go out and buy new cards every year or two because everything in it is invalid for the main format. At most all I really had to do was go and check what I needed to update my old deck, get those, and I can fare okay-ish at a local. Sure, there are definitely certain issues that arise from this, but it's not something I want YGO to get rid of because that's kind of its identity. I get that to an extent that is what has lead to the crazy power creep over the years, but I'm personally willing to accept that under the condition Konami can keep it relatively under control. Also, having to buy newer cards to keep up with power creep doesn't feel any less bad than having to basically go and buy a new deck because my old deck is no longer legal in the standard format due to rotation, and it's not like there aren't insane combos that come up in other TCG's "unlimited" formats either (there are literally unstoppable FTKs in Pokemon's unlimited format). If anything YuGiOh is surprisingly balanced for a game that basically makes its standard play the rough equivalent of other game's "unlimited" because balancing generally has to keep 2 decades and counting worth of interactions in mind when creating new cards. As for community options: The Pokemon video game has Smogon. Community created tier lists based on usage rates. While we realistically can't do this with Master Duel, we can realistically pull the data for community run sites like DuelingBook or EDOPro if we could get the cooperation of the people running those. I'm actually surprised this doesn't exist considering the top meta is basically defined by usage rates already.
found the new best take in the comments here. Not that my opinion matters much but thank you for sharing this and i hope more people thumb this up cause its both true to the issues and gives credit where its due to konami. I hope more players like you come back to yugioh and i believe a better future is possible
the main problem why YGO is not beginner friendly is because there is no "resource" to play the cards. for example, Digimon has Memory as its "resource" in order to play the cards, player cannot build strong board and destroy the opponent in one turn since it required a lot of memory to do that in one turn. But in YGO, there is no resource, there is nothing to hinder you to play all your entire deck in one turn if you can. There should be a format where you can only special summon once per turn or Special summoned monster cannot attack or activate their effect the same turn they are being played. YGO already kinda did it back in Battle City format, fusion summoned monster cannot attack at the same turn they are being summoned.
i really like kuchen format, its a community that has made their own banlists similar to what smogon is for pokemon to try to allow any deck to be strong within its own power level
Perpetual casual here. One of the cool things that Master Duel was doing was making those challenge banlists. The "no spell cards" event was a cool challenge, and there have been other rules like that they did that were fun. It would be cool to see things like that pop up in different spots. Not sure what "formats" means, but if that is a format that would be cool to try.
I think that the best format for Yu-gi-oh! right now is what me and my friends call "Full Speed Duel". We only use speed duel cards, but we play the full game with the current rules, respecting the speed duel ban list and removing the skill cards completely. It's surprisinly well balanced and you can build lots of cool and different decks. It's like Goat with steroids.
A problem that exists within YGO that further separates what people see as “fun” from what is considered “optimal” is the ubiquity of negation. Where other games offer means of intra-turn interaction primarily via damage dealt to creatures, destruction effects, bouncing, spinning, flash stat changes, and other such things, YGO has found itself at a point where negation is common enough to make up most of what is used/built towards. Even in games that feature similar negation effects, they are typically restricted to specific archetypes or tribes. The goal being “prevent other person from playing game” exists in these other games, but isn’t achieved so easily and certainly not by similar means as those associated with contemporary YGO gameplay. Interacting with one another via active effects as opposed to primarily building towards lockouts/shutdowns would be considered “fun” by a majority of people, and therefore desirable - but YGO has found itself with common universally accessible negation as something core to its identity. I’ve no clue how to solve such an issue without nearly starting from scratch, to be honest.
Your point about moving down a few tiers and it's still very powerful, I made a G Golem Codetalker deck to test with my friend and it still pops off heavily, even with out Codec! And I played it relatively pure, no hand traps or anything like that, pure pure cyberse support and it puts out a lot of links in it's end board, with or without Codec
I would recommend looking into the pauper format in MTG. Basically, you can only use common, meaning non-rare, cards. I've also played in commander tournaments where there is either a $100 cap for the deck, or no cards (besides the commander) over $5, which is more friendly for the organizers. Maybe trying to fit in a commander type format into YuGiOh would be fun, like trying multiplayer 4 ffa or 2vs2. I really feel like you guys have a great opportunity, with your recent videos with the professor over at Tolarian CC, to start trying some other formats in your videos, and maybe have them catch on.
i really dislike a $ cap for any given format. its just to much struggel to stay up date as card prices are shifting. The better way would be to control the cards played by rarity. basicly like pauper. Or a limit on 5 rares per deck (and so on).
Some of the most fun I had playing Yugioh was playing casually with my cousin and friends back in the original DM days. I built a yugioh cube for drafting a few years back catered heavy towards our favorite cards and strategies from our childhoold. The nostalgia from getting together again and playing our old cards that we have all those memories attached to was just awesome and it really brought that feeling back that old yugioh did.
@@lifequality unfortunately no. We all have different lives that keep us busy. I tried to make it at least an annual event, but after Covid forced my hand to cancel the 2020 get together, it has been too difficult to get people back together. I still physically have the cube though.
I would say we have a newcomer issue, not really a casual issue. Other formats have to deal with meta's and people are just upset they can't win with their old decks anymore in the current format. If you are going to your locals and participating in the local, you are at the will of everyone who paid to enter that local. If you want to do character duels or some sort, maybe the "casual" needs to make friends with people at the locals and try to do something (but that is a whole different conversation). The cardshops I've been to do not have a GOAT or Edison tourny and I do not think it is economically responsible to try and host a consistant one since it's usually only 3-4 guys at the shop who are interested in the old format. I think these are the issues of people who are heavily invested in the game and are not willing to look into something new. I love your content and vids, keep it up!
Well I mean if we got to the source of this recent conversation, Dzeef had a clip talking about how no matter how he played his "for fun" series people complained. If he went into a worse pack or switched to a worse deck for variety/fun he was flamed. Yet when he did nothing but play his best deck he also got flamed. Inherently even if you set out to just be playing for fun the yu gi oh community will comment on your misplays or how you should just be playing better cards. This has happened for literally any for fun series. Because the yu gi oh community just can't seem to wrap around what making content means and how at it's core everyone is playing for fun. Yu-Gi-Oh fun is just competitive fun(the want to win) and the game itself inherently promotes this with how irrelevant decks can get not even a year later and how hard it is to play out of meta. You look at a lot of other card games with stuff like rotating formats or just better balance because of core mechanics, and it's not an issue.
The problem with Yugioh to newcomers were many things. Aside from the complicated mechanics (i.e Summoning Conditions, PSCT, Rulings, etc.) Yu Gi Oh has a massive amount of cards yet most of them are pretty limited to a certain playstyle and archetype. In comparison to other TCGs, Yu Gi Oh allows for freedom and creativity to their deckbuilding. First Yugioh Card releases contains many generic cards that play with almost 90% of cards (i.e Monster Reborn, Trap Hole, Dark Hole, Sogen) now they release cards that are too specific to an archetype (i.e Gem Knight Fusion, Pendulum Cards, Trickstar Light Stage, etc.) This type of card making puts casual pack buyers to not play their decks nor try to experiment with it because certain cards don't matter. And the concept of Trading Cards pretty much undermined by players need and not creativity. Try to compare Starter Decks before to Casual/Fun Decks today. This card making problem is the unseen cause of why formats are hard to make.
We did some stuff here in our LGS that was Archetype war. We made our decks literally with 30 cards of one archetype +10 one ofs. If the archetype has less than 30, you can build one ofs until you get 40.
I really like that idea! Maybe together with a custom ban list that aims to take away cards that keep you from playing (so floodgates) since I feel like a lot of non meta decks can't deal with them 🤔 Also how did you handle decks that don't consist of one but multiple archtypes? Or stuff like water xyz that is kind of an archtype but without a name that ties them togeather?
@@nikolaitheundying As I said I referd to floodgates, cards that prevent you from playing at all. Interupts are fine and needed. And also something like skill drain, summon limit or a barrier statue will not prevent you from performing an ftk in the first place, since you can't use them turn 0 anyways.
@@nikolaitheundying Yea but that is a different popint/discusion. My point was the floodgates are a problem in a more casual/fun format and therefor should not be allowed. If handtraps are a problem and what kind of decks would become a problem without htem is a whole different discusion. (I think at least most handtraps are fine and good for the game, but I can see peope disagree with me there)
An important thing to note is that Magic got its most popular and most causal format, Commander, from its community. Maybe the Yu-Gi-Oh community needs to come together and build a casual focused format.
My fav vids on this channel are the structure deck duels or opening packs and making decks. I think this hits the more fun casual aspect of yugioh. It seems more balanced and competitive at the same time 🙏
I've played Yu-Gi-Oh ever since I was a kid. And I've quit and gotten back into it maybe around five times in total. And I started playing Pokemon a couple of years ago and Magic The Gathering about one year ago. Now I play all three of them quite actively every week with different groups of people. And I have to say the communities are WORLDS apart. Every single person I know who plays Pokemon and/or Magic that have tried getting into Yu-Gi-Oh aswell. Have told me pretty much the exact same thing. That they haven't felt very welcomed when coming to their locals. Everyone pretty much keeps to themselves without much small talk or trading. And winning is the key focus over having actual "fun" casual games with one another. Nobody seems very eager to help or even talk to the new lost "scrub" at their locals who wants to learn the rules. People there get frustrated and angry when the new guy makes mistakes and accidentally plays with banned or limited cards in their deck (not knowing any better or even what a ban list is). And some veteran players there just see the opportunity to rip of the new guy's rare cards in exchange for garbage. Because they see the opportunity to make a quick buck when the new guy doesn't realize the value of the cards he just pulled. And my experience of getting back into Yu-Gi-Oh as a returning player in different cities over the years have pretty much been exactly the same. So I can definitely see where they are coming from even though it's sad to hear these stories. Take this in contrast to when I got into Pokemon and Magic The Gathering. People actually said hi to me. They shook my hand and invited me over and gave me free cards so I would have an easier time getting into the game. They took the time to sit patiently with me for a whole day just to teach me the game and all of the different mechanics. They didn't get frustrated with me or angry when I made mistakes. They gave me generous deals on trades just because I was new there and they wanted to help me upgrade my decks as cheap and easily as possible. So I would have as much fun as possible playing and get a bit of a headstart at the game when it can be quite overwhelming at first. I made friends for life. When we play Pokemon or Magic almost no one ever gets salty or upset over losing. And we don't make up poor excuses when we lose. We're just there to have fun and share this hobby and passion of ours. People have fun even if they lose a couple of games because winning isn't all that matters. In contrast to Yu-Gi-Oh where winning seems to be the biggest priority and if you don't get results, it doesn't matter. Of course I don't just want to sound all negative about Yu-Gi-Oh. Because I have a lot of nostalgia for it and it's very dear to me and close to my heart. And I love my cards and playing the game. But I would be lying if I said I had as much fun playing Yu-Gi-Oh as I do playing Pokemon or Magic. Not because of the game mechanics. But because of the community. I know my experiences in a few different cities, conventions and tournaments doesn't make up the entire Yu-Gi-Oh community. There are lots of great kind Yu-Gi-Oh players aswell. And there is always going to be bad apples in every game and community. Pokemon and Magic aswell of course. But in my experience (and my friends) the bad toxic players in Yu-Gi-Oh seems to be much more frequent then in the others. I love all three games. And nostalgia wise my top three card games is Yu-Gi-Oh, Pokemon, and Magic. But fun wise to play, it's the reverse for me. Magic, Pokemon and lastly Yu-Gi-Oh. That's just my personal preference though.
The card shop owners at my LGS are rude and impatient. It sucks trying to play a game there. Playing yugioh with others is usually not fun either, it's either my deck stomps their deck or their deck stomps my deck. I think Yugioh doesn't allow for as much creativity as Magic. However I found I learned so much about card games just from playing Yugioh that learning Magic was easy.
I'm not a Yu-Gi-Oh anymore (quit after the 4th or 5th set) but I've been doing a lot of research on card games lately, the main one I'm actually playing being Pokemon (mostly because my kids love it). Just letting you know, the Online Card Game (Live) has identical problems. Most people don't even play it past the 2nd turn and often before an attack because as soon as the perfect setup is attained the game is over. It's extremely frustrating to try to make a deck around a Pokemon you just like rather than building to compete against all the meta decks in the "Casual" format. This is not a Yu-Gi-Oh problem: I think it's common to all TCGs.
As far as it being a Trading Card game thing, I think this is because TCGs are by nature a battle to dominate your oponnent and establish your rule as superior to theirs. This is because each card is a short list of rules meant to modify the format to your favor while your opponent tries to do the same. Whoever's rules are more powerful and binding wins. It appeals to our baseline desire to battle and conquer: that along with cool pictures is what makes them so marketable. I don't think this a problem that can be fixed in a type of game where selling new, more powerful cards is the point of the format.
Always a great conversation. Yu-Gi-Oh! Is definitely suffering from zero entry point for new players. I hate to say it but all TCG’s reboot their games except Yu-Gi-Oh!. I would hate it but you know it might help.
got my first yugioh online game on the nintendo switch. played my first game online with starter cards at the lowest rank. i played 1 turn. my opponent then played half his deck and retained 4 cards in his hand and 1 shot me. i never touched online mode again and then just stopped playing. now im hearing there is actually 8-20 minute combo turns. there should be a timer per turn. this game seems very offputting
Yugioh is a card game that's legitimately broken and Konami will never fix it because constantly releasing busted cards forces competetive players to have to buy the newest sets which breeds toxicity. You can't even play casual with a lot of the newer cards as they're designed specifically to be competetive. On top of the fact that a lot of Yugioh's plays aren't fun. It's not fun to watch your opponent literally combo off for 15 minutes and then when it's your turn you just get told No and you can't play. That all combined drives casual players away from the game.
My friend plays casually and wants to compete against the local tournament players with a casual deck. The problem that I see is that these tournament players don't play at a locals level. These players play at a high YCS level all the times. He can't really match me and I'm the weakest of the group. I did try to help, but he insists in doing a Yugi/Yusei deck. I remember when I started was when Blue-eyes was meta. So quite possibly the worst format to start in. The only players I could play against were playing what I think was recently meta. I later fought in tournaments due to lack of Yugioh friends and so started my 6 year losing streak. I had not won a single game in 6 years with the exception of the occasional duelist who played a really bad casual deck. Things changed when Branded became a thing. Though recently a new kid came. Wanting to play weak decks because that's the most of the cores he has, but is receptive to advice for making them powerful. As the only other Melffy player, I got the guys to help the kid gather Spright cards to enhance his own Melffy deck. Seriously that's a decent combination for generating Link and Rank 2 material. Already clashing with the group but not quite winning, he still needs experience. However he is insanely good considering he's like 12. I did ask him about any friends who play at school. He apparently wants to get people into the game, but not a lot of people have much interest. Plus if he's teaching people to learn how to play, then he's going to be the top player of his circle. I find that, at least in my area, You can't find a good group to have fun duels, not even in game stores. It's either stick to online sims or go above and beyond and somehow compete against some of the best players in the province.
A great example of this is when a newbie wants to get into the game, most people instead of advising to "buy a starter deck", they go right into "buy three structure decks". There's a dissonance with the newbie or casual player. They assume that you want to be competitive. It's very unfortunate. Same goes with the auto dismissal of more simple or retro formats like Speed Duel, which are actually fun (specially for old-school players) and have a much more balanced competitive scene.
there's a video about this, I forget what channel... talks about starting them with speed duels to get the basic mechanics down (as well as staples to use later), then starter deck to get a feel for the full scope; THEN 3x structures... OR buying singles to build something. if you give a beginner martial artist the Green Destiny sword, sure it's the strongest sword, but they don't know how to use it.
With regard to Speed Duel, I think the limited card selection alone is interesting because it brings the game back to a form that I'm used to from the old days, but not in the exact shape I knew it in. You could play "full Yu-Gi-Oh" but limited to Speed Duel-legal cards and I think that could be a fun time. (I know having to re-buy the same cards just to have a Speed Duel watermark is a sore spot, though, and unfortunately if we're talking about an officially supported format that would probably still be required.)
I think the best way to make Yu-Gi-Oh fun is everyone has to treat a duel like the anime. One duelist plays the antagonist and every card they play must have a 30 second speech on how the opponent is no match for them. On the reverse, the duelists playing the protagonist must mention the heart of the cards or believing in their friends every turn.
Casual is a hard thing to define for this game. What cards can be considered casual friendly and even that question is hard to answer depending on who you ask? When master duel released there were tons of people who haven't played since childhood that thought ash blossom is one of the most broken cards ever. Whenever I asked what really casual people want out of yugioh, they want something similar to what they had when they were kids in like the mid to late 2000s where they just played the cards they thought were good and didn't really know there were banlists and all that other stuff. Where they made up playground rules and acted like they were playing something out of the anime. I don't know how you capture that magic they felt almost 15+ years ago because what they like about the game just varies between each person. One person might say "oh the last time yugioh was good was GX", another will say "the last time it was good was synchro stuff like 5Ds", and another completely different person will say "I like everything up to and including XYZs and hate everything after". Trying to get a mutual conensus between so many people is going to be difficult
I think the biggest thing is making the game way more simple. I came back into Yugioh almost 2 years ago and I still have no clue what a pendulum, link, xyz is. And I have no drive to learn modern Yugioh.
Imo the complexity and interactivity of yugioh is what sets it apart from the other popular card games, and if you don’t understand those card types, that’s on you. Pendulums are weird, but if you can grasp the mechanics of a synchro summon, you should be able to understand Xyz or Link summons. If you want “simple” yugioh, speed duel fits that niche. But saying you have no drive to learn modern yugioh is a you problem, not a game problem.
Idk if this is the solution, but I know one reason why I play card games in general is for the immersion of the cards. Sorta like the show where the decks are often seen as a reflection of the duelists personality or current situation. I like to build decks that contain cards that tell a story, or follow a particular theme in monster types/attribute/art. Noble Arms is probably one of my fave archetypes that really does a good job with this inherently.
I recently became a community manager at my local store for Yugioh, and to try and combat the issue, instead of having tournaments, we have a community league, where people are rewarded for participation and being a part of the community. The main idea is to support any format players want, and reward players for showing up and playing them. We are currently running: -Main (Master) Format -Speed Format -40 Card Speed Format -Goat Format This way, players can play the Yugioh they want, and even if they do not win, they get points for being there and having a good time. The only issue we still run into is because of it being a card shop, every casual player comes in expecting a toxic environment, and the only ones that actually take the time to listen are the ones that see me playing with the store clerk behind the counter, and they're like "Wait, these are Anime cards!". Anyway, this is just here for anyone who wants to try something similar with their friends at a card shop, I'm also open to suggestions and feedbacks for improving this idea, as it has been the most successful version we have had so far.
Me and my friends play self made format for fun (it did need some tuning), but for now it look like this 40-60 main size deck, maximum 15 cards extra deck, you can have up to 3 copies of one card in the whole deck including the extra deck (or 2 by 2 cards) all spell and trap cards that search, revive, destroy or limit some aspect of the game can't be more than 1. There is limit on summoning as a whole (we still working on it- 6 summons per round on each player is one of the variants). It's not perfect we try not to limit it to much and to be fun to play. If you have ideas i will be happy to read them.
People seriously need to just stop using the word "Fun." Fun is different for everyone, everywhere, for everything because it is purely based on themselves and nothing else. The word that needs to be used is "Casual" because the definition for casual is 'Relaxing and unconcerned.' Relaxing because you don't have to auto lose thanks to no handtraps and losing a coin flip, and unconcerned (with winning/losing) because there is nothing special on the line for the games. You came to play YGO and that's it. I started playing Master Duel a month ago because I saw there was a casual mode but even there people will play adamancipator and get out crazy negate boards turn 1 because that's what they want to do. Konami not having an official casual ruleset/ban list, and their lack of support for the less competitive archetypes are a big problem. No official rules/ban list means there isn't one thing people can look at to understand their limitations, and nothing to go off of for online duels too. Their lack of support for archetypes means some decks rely on powerful extra deck monsters for their win-con, which for casual play may seem cheap (Relying on Zeus or Accesscode Talker for example) Locals could try and set something up for casual days, but they'll have to find a way to make sure everyone knows the limitations put in place before hand. I don't know how people got so obsessed with winning, even when it's just two friends playing a sealed format with no reward (Basically most youtube series) but there isn't really a way to prevent that mindset in people without something official to more easily separate out the ones who only care about being competitive. You can condemn them all you want, but they'll just call you bad at the game and no progress will be made.
The problem is, by design, in order to win a game of modern Yu-gi-oh is a race to the bottom to establish the most "toxic" board state that doesn't allow your opponent to play at all. From the meta decks of right now to even peoples pet decks that's what you hope to do, regardless of format history or price point its just a matter of who's deck can do it better. This didn't need an 11 minute video. The big problem is a) the fact Konami doesn't sufficiently support the prizes scene so people are farming packs to make money off of this expensive deck b) no good onboarding products c) this game is prohibitively expensive compared to most hobbies to get into; lets keep it real ya'll if you spent 500+ bucks on a deck you're gonna do what you want to get the best out of your investment. If Paul keeps complaining about the power level of Yu-Gi-Oh you'd basically have to erase all cards, decks, and progress, post Edison/~post Dragon Rulers. Do ya'll want that?
I feel like some kind of "point buy" system could be fun. Make anything that has ever touched the ban list be worth a number of points based off how powerful it is. And pick an arbitrary amount of points you can spend on some of the more powerful cards and everything else is free in terms of points. Some kind of rendition of that could make for a solid "fun" format
this could actually be the answer, would be alot of work but ive been genuinely combing everyones thoughts in the comments and this could be the best thing said. People keep suggesting different formats and not addressing the issue of cards themselves being too powerful forcing the person to make a decision as to what powerful cards they want to play at the cost of the rest of their deck actually might see positive impact
It has arrived to a point where a player wants to be the next Yugi-Oh champion either at the local level or the global stage. There's not that much of variety because almost everyone is playing the most popular deck that has the highest consistency rate in an effort to prevent the other player from playing. Of course, the state of the game now which used be a battle of wits in a drawn out war has now become "a quick draw showdown at high noon". If you are not fast enough to take your opponent down in 5 turns, you're done for.
See here is the thing i've noticed When someone comes up to me asks if tearlament splight branded is a "good deck",of course i can't say yes without feeling that there is a better varient of tearlament that does MUCH better than this,so i say no it's not and they get upset While what should have happened is that they would ask do you think that deck "works out" or "is it a fun deck" or sth like that Then the conversation shifts from asking about a deck being competetively viable to what is a fun varient of a meta deck and how can you improve it and such
In addition to all the problems listed there is also the fact that there is no concept of sportsmanship. If you also want to grant the benevolence of not ending the duel in turn 1, you can be sure that if you do it will backfire. So even in the "game for fun" you still play in a bastard way. Yugioh is a game that must be played in this way unfortunately. And that's why those who play do it only for the competitive, the rest is limited to collecting. Or it is limited to online gaming, which for other reasons is perhaps even worse...
a 60 card commander deck format would be a lot of fun if konami wanted to implement it. max 1 copy of each card. 60 cards limits "strategies". Removal or reduction to extra deck to 5 cards would force you to use different strategies depending on cards you have. Food for thought but magic 100 card commander format is actually so refreshing to play compared to yugioh
Sorry to be that guy but it doesnt work. Plenty of groups and even youtubers have tried this. It turns into 2k monster beats because most decks are engines at their heart that require a critical mass. The other option is just 12 different 2-3 card engines that brick if you draw the single wrong one. As cool of an idea as it sounds on paper, only Magic can really pull it off with a maybe for pokemon but yugioh functionally cannot run on a highlander style.
@@arrowsmith000 the reason it doesn't work in yugioh is because Konami doesn't support such a gamemode. There was VERY limiting options in original EDH. Once WOTC started supporting the gamemode however there were suddenly dozens of new commander deck options. I also don't agree with the OP's idea of reducing ED size to 5 as that would neuter dozens of archetypes that probably wouldn't even actually be that good.
@@arrowsmith000 highlander yugioh works , do you not play master duel "limit one" event? Its pretty fun seeing different player using various engine in their highlander deck
@@thaariqbinaziz2821 and while it was a novelty thats all it was. The limit one had a clear best 1-2 decks and they all used the exact same engines outside of main deck plan with 90% of the decks being "pendulum good stuff." CAN you play it, yes. Does it work as a format, not in the slightest. Again, its been tested into the ground and it just doesnt work
Honestly I don't think a "casual format" can exist in yugioh from what I've seen no matter how you slice it decks are not made with equal power levels so no matter how far down the ladder you go there's always a power imbalance and when you get to a certain point noone wants to play anymore because their deck isn't allowed despite not being "good" the only way to make yugioh casual friendly is via a reboot which people seem to actively not like overall some even offended at the suggestion.
i have played a good deal of TCGs (MTG, YGO, Mitos y Leyendas, Pokemon, etc) and even applies to stuff like videogame Pokemon making a "casual" format where everybody agrees on it, its never going to happen people have different ideas, different personalities, different strategies, and as you mentioned, different definitions of "fun" no matter how casual you want to make a format, there will always be that one person who min-maxes their deck for the best plays, for the best winrate, for the best, because that's what's fun for them and there will always be that one person that just wants to play with suboptimal cards, suboptimal strategies, etc, because that's what's fun for them i believe that its in one's mentality to accept this and choose your playgroup, analyze what you want from the game, and try to always be a good sport about it you like playing the top win rate decks? be polite and tell your opponent that you are playing a tournament deck, so that a more goofy player doesn't has a bad experience playing against a top deck you like playing goofy decks? be polite and tell your opponent that you are playing a goofy deck, etc you could even have multiple decks depending on the situation, have a goofy deck for friends, a mid-range to test waters in a new place, and a top tier one if you want to compete
That was always kind of my problem since the Pendulum Era. Xyz might have been more the start I think but I was dipping at that point. Coming back through Master Duel I was just crushed because everything I faced was meta build meta build meta build. And it just wasn't fun to get the advice of "Well build to the meta". When I build a deck of 40 cards at minimum the advice of "Well you need these 10 cards in the deck or it won't be viable" is kind of disheartening because it feels like some freedom or wiggle room is gone because 1/4 of my deck isn't dedicated to the meta. Of course there needs to be structure to building decks as throwing anything together can be interesting for a goofy challenge or something but to play some form of match I get it. But like I said having to slot in cards the community deems as "required" isn't that fun. I have one other theory as to why Yugioh isn't as fun as some other TCGs but it's pure speculation and would require an actual discussion.
We play our own format at my house. Pre-constructed decks that all have an edge over one another but don't get into the heavy shenanigans of the meta game.
An interesting note: combo decks are considered try hard and no fun in every tcg. It doesn't really matter what your mindset is. You're gonna look like a try hard if you start going down a "A let's me do B. B let's me do C, etc." Turn. I'm not sure yugioh can not be like that outside of draft stuff. Combos in a draft format are seen as cool and silly goose approved.
I feel like Master Duel exacerbated the issue. As there are no rewards for playing anything other than ranked. Solo mode is okay to learn, but even there the rewards are small. Of course they want you to spend money on the game, and that’s fair. Still, if the daily missions were completable in casual mode for 10 less gems than ranked, that would be better. FTP players are forced to play ranked to do those missions and they are often facing much stronger and expert duelists. Even at lower ranks these days. In regards to the physical official game, yeah Konami probably thinks it’s too much work to create new formats. When it actually isn’t. My friends and I have been playing games with only the cards present in the older videogames. Such as Sacred cards, Forbidden Memories, or the 5Ds NDS games. And that has been a lot of fun. It’s an older format, slower, but still just as exciting. Konami would literally just have to say “the card pool is as in this game.” And make a banlist for that pool. There are already card lists for those games online, they wouldn’t even have to do the work of putting that together. Maybe someday we’ll get official fun formats. And Master duel has made that potentially super accessible! But for now we can only hope.
I was thinking of something like, "pure format" as in, you can only okay one archetype and only card from that archetype, if there are not enough cards in you archetype of choice, you can use either type or attribute support (not both), but no generics, I think it would be very similar to the anime (obviously not 1-1).
Yo Paul great video and topic! I have spent a lot of time thinking about this as well, as someone who wants to like playing yugioh and I have played in the past. EDH or as it's known as commander now started as a community format then became so popular it became official. I think yugioh needs this as well. I don't think Konami will be the one to step up here. I think you and all of APS have a pretty good chance to do something here. Or at least attempt to get the ball rolling on that. You guys are all somewhat different players, but you guys also all know how to enjoy yugioh at different levels. So as a collective I think you guys could get together and try to brainstorm something and try it out. If it is fun maybe it catches on, and if not maybe it's a good starting point to evolve into something else. As for what makes card games fun in general there are a lot of factors, but a key one is consistency. All card games are inherently RNG right? You draw random cards. Whenever you design a deck to win or to be "optimized" it needs to be as consistent or as little RNG as possible. So then you go into probability. A deck needs to have a certain number of things that you will see enough times to make it run correctly as much as possible. There will still be times you brick, but you want it to happen as little as possible. This is what I've noticed as someone who has played cards game basically for as long as I remember, you need a balance of RNG and also "guarantees" from a fun deck. I'm saying guarantees here as a way of saying things you can be sure of will happen or whatever the opposite of RNG is. So basically 2 things help stop RNG. Card draw and tutors or searching for an exact card. Yugioh has a lot of tutors built into many archetypes to make for consistent strategies. You also run 3 ofs in 40 card decks. So what commander in MTG does that i think makes it fun and enjoyable is it makes the game very customizable. You up the card pool from 60 to 100 and then instead of 4 ofs (for mtg) you play only 1 ofs. This adds a lot of variance and RNG, but it also opens up a ton of options to deckbuilding. Do you want to play 100 cards that are of the same theme? All Elves? All Goblins? Maybe a minotaur deck? You can do that. Do you want to try to take a crazy game winning combo and try to optimize the deck where it wins as quickly as possible? You can also do that. So the rules for commander make for fun and customized deckbuilding. Now what happens when the Minotaur deck plays against the competitively optimized deck? Well you add in 2 other players to automatically balance the game. If one person has a crazy deck, but is playing against 3 lower powered decks they are still not guaranteed to win. It is a very social format and allows for a lot of self expression. Now comes to what if these strategies were implemented in yugioh? I've heard multiplayer would not be possible in yugioh, but why not? Could we change some rules to make it work? Also what about a singleton card yugioh format? I guess the problem here would be some archetypes wouldn't have enough support for probably 100 card singleton, but maybe 40 card? I'm not familiar enough with the game to know, but maybe you guys are. Anyway it would be a fun things to consider. Maybe seeing which 2 archetypes best combine for the most synergy. I don't know I'm just spitballing here, but I think you guys are in a good position as a group of smart, but different players that enjoy yugioh and understand when it is "fun". Also as a playgroup it would be easy to play multiplayer. Idk, but I encourage you guys to experiment with it. I'm sure I wouldn't be the only one willing to try a new Yugioh format. Lots of people WANT to enjoy the game just don't know how.
MTG also has a horde format, it is a PVE game mode where a group of players fight together against a horde deck that plays itself. Commander was not even invented or acknowledged by Wotc at first, they were created and pushed by the players and WOTC only started acknowledging commander which is now the most popular format in 2011. Why do Yugioh players not try to come up with some alternate kitchen table variants like these or perhaps some other custom game modes like Dungeon dice monsters or something like that.
I think a big barrier to casual formats is the heavy reliance on archetypes. Archetypes are a double-edged sword: one of the coolest and most unique parts of Yugioh that injects personality and interesting mechanics into the game...but the vast majority of players just have no idea what 90% of archetypes do outside of what's been meta over the years and whatever they have a personal interest in. And casual formats are going to be chock full of that 90% that are unfamiliar. I'm sure everyone has a story about getting wrecked by a deck that you've never played against before and having to read every card (as much as not reading has become a meme), having no clue what to anticipate or what cards in the combos to stop. It's hard to evaluate Yugioh cards in a vacuum, so when you don't know the context of how the cards are played, it can often make for a frustrating experience until you can learn that context.
The handling of archetypes is basically what killed Yugioh for me. I feel there is a version of archetypes that could work, but the inevitable power creep and increasingly high knowledge barrier (as you detailed) chokes so much creativity out of the game.
I remember the most fun deuel I ever had was Hero's (minus dark law) vs Blue eyes on DN 5 years ago. It was a solid back and forth for about an hour, and thiigh I managed to barely win heroes it felt earned and we both went away having enjoyed the experience. I wish we cod get more of that in yuigioh, where the format is like 'only certain cards from recent sets can played' or something to get the format to smooth out
Its just yugioh in general in my experience. Currently I play at “competitive” ots store guy of the guys there have played ycs as well as are connected to ycs winners. I say that to say if your not playing meta there and making all the right plays you get treated differently, “top” with watch and borderline critic gameplay at tables, and walk away from games saying “nothing interesting is happening there”. The game breads elitist, it was the say way back in 02-07 when i play in a non competitive scene. “Worst” players but the same behavior patterns, its not format dependent in my perspective its the people around.
@@thebelmont1995 Yeah lets be real here most duels in the modern era are decided in the first turn. Dont fool anyone we know you re caping. Doesnt matter if you set your ash to tank a turn, just surrender. If you do your pendulumn combo and the oponent didnt draw a handtrap and he has plenty in his deck. Is he just bad? Stop the cap
@@Pkey995 Pendelum has not been meta at all for years. And there are over a dozen cards that counter it. Pendulum loses to almost any hand trap in the modern era. No one is capping. If you lose that's on you. Most times the game lasts at least 4 turns. If you are setting an ash blossom to live you are bad or playing a bad deck. Either or most games between 2 competent players will last at bare minimum several turns.
@@thebelmont1995 Really? Ycs london 2023 Final. Game one ends turn 3 is decided turn one by the kash player2 activating nib. Game two ends on turn 1 even playing through gamma player1 makes a board player2 cant deal with. Game three Player2 makes his kash board turn 1 and spoiler allert player1 drew the out and finishes the game with 2 Kurikaras. So now where are the 4turns?
"Fun" competitions of master rule 5 can only really be agreed upon in small groups of friends. For locals and other tournament settings, we really do need a brand new format akin to something like Commander or what have you if you want this game to be more casual friendly. The reason commander works is because its a multi-man setting where people engage in what the magic community dubs as "politics" (where you're having to form temporary alliances and figure out what should be done). The social aspect is what makes a game like Commander work as well as it does, and at least in a casual setting, and if you wanted to make something like that for Yugioh, you'd need to have an agreed upon list of what monsters would or wouldn't be allowed as "commanders" or what have you (since all your commander guarantees you is that you don't have to search/summon it from the deck or hand). Frankly, if you were to translate over Commander to Yugioh, the commander should be a main deck monster and the summon cost should be to discard the amount of cards it'd require to summon it (in other words: its tribute cost), plus +1 additional card for each time you've summoned it before that point. Say for example this is the second time you're summoning Evil Twins Ki-Sikil & Lil-La, you'd discard 3 cards [since its a level 8]. Now, that card can't normally be tribute summoned, but we'd be overriding its normal summon requirements if its the commander, which would open the door for ritual monsters to be commanders and be summoned this way. You'd also need an adjusted banlist to account for OP cards in this format if you're wanting to scale back powercreep (y'know, ban stuff like Accesscode, Borrelsword & Savage Dragon, Apollousa, Scythe, Knightmare Phoenix and Cerberus, Gozen and TCBOO, Dimension Shifter, Havnis, etc.), as well as you'd have to make any card that would normally say "do X to your opponent" or "your opponent must Y" force the caster to target which opponent to apply the effect to (whereas cards that just affect all players apply to all participating players). As far as figuring out the banlist goes, you could probably use the Trinity format's banlist as a jumping off point for constructing it. Other than that, i figure trap cards would just activate the same way they would in 2v2 games, and we'd designate which player we're targeting when using cards on the field like Mekk Knights or Imperm's column negate (which we could probably designate by placing token pieces on a zone in that opponent's column or something)
Personaly, I found that as a general rule of thumb, people find usualy singleton decks to be considered "casual" & often "fun" Or to put it in other words, just generaly more variety & less consistent strategies where you have to adapt & improvise far more
As a YGO player, my gym friends and I have a time threshold rule using random decks. Two ways to win by time threshold (at least around my gym friends) 1. Have more LP (Life Points) in Game 1 or Game 3. 2. Win Game 1. Then Game 2, defend your LP until the time threshold hits zero.
From a former Comp YuGiOH player who later grinded MTG PTQ's. YuGiOh's major problem was always bringing in new players from casual to Comp because of the complexity of cards. You could have boiled down several arch-types and abilities into common keywords. Keywords would have done so much for the game from standardizing gameplay actions to the skill curve of bringing in new players. The other Glaring Problem that other games have solved is Format Diversity but that's a deeper conversation that I couldn't fit here. Keep up the good content, You guys keep it really level in the community.
As a YGO and Magic Player I can say that I was surprised with the lack of many alternative formats. There is Goat, Edison and Speed duel. But we created an other format: YGO Commander: Every Deck has to run 60 Maindeck Cards and 20 Extradeck Cards. Every Card is limited to 1 and there is no banlist. It is really fun to play with friends and some lesser power cards can shine in this format
Saw this post on my yugi group on FB as well. Casual in ygo is a myth bcz unless you make a new format ( like mtg does) you will always have top tier decks and even in formatted splits ygo decks are so broken youd have to go back to synchro or even fusion era for a fun casual format Biggest issue with ygo is the player base as a whole it goes from polite to toxic and it leans towards toxic way to often Jmo
You can't really bring up MTG's Commander format and then hope for Konami to be the ones to do something like it. Commander is a player created format and the problem lies in Konami, unlike Wizards at the time, not really caring about what the players want out of the game in terms of variety. They dropped all these "new formats" and then basically said, "Do something with it or don't, we don't really care." So at the end of the day we're just stuck in a loop where some people want variety in formats but many people have conflicting opinions about "what is fun?" when it comes to Yugioh. I think too many people that want a casual format spend too much time overthinking the problem. Commander has a solution to this in the Rule Zero conversation had prior to each game. People will either be willing to change up their deck if it's unanimously agreed that a card they have is too oppressive or unfair in some manner. In Yugioh, I feel as though too many people see this kind of thing as a problem cos it, "makes or breaks" a deck if one card gets taken out cos there's no viable replacement. I guess what I'm ultimately trying to say is that not enough Yugioh players are willing to be on the same page as to what is and what isn't fair. I know my fair share of hypercompetitive players in other games and we simply don't play with each other instead of trying to force games on each other but at the end of the day we're still friends who like the same games.
For someone who started collecting yugioh cards and “playing” back when the game first came out, I know I’ve struggled to get a feel for the game. Mind you that I’ve started and stopped at the beginning stages of learning so many times that I became overwhelmed. Each time that I retried to learn the game there was a new mechanic or format. Trying to learn how to play and be involved at locals sucked horribly.
Alluding to what you said, the point of this is that yes, the problem with competitive vs casual formats is that the first is clearly defined, the second is not. There are lists of current top competitive decks on many websites. If we're going with the definition of "if it isn't top X then it's casual" then what is X? 8? 16? 32? People have to agree on what the definition of "casual" is. If I play one of my two favorite decks, D/D/D or Pendulum Magician, I can say that it's "casual" because it's not a top tournament winning deck at this point in time. I'm still going to smash faces, but it's still "casual" right? This mentality creates sub tiers, below the current tiers. In other words, there would simply be a series of top decks below the tournament winning groups, the best decks in the game that aren't winning said events. "The best archetypes that aren't presenting themselves in tournaments are casual". The decks could still be something like, say, Blackwings, Junk Quasar, or any other archetype based off of the anime, and those turn 1 boards are absolutely toxic. "Still casual, right?"
I just think people are too entitled to their own opinion or their way of playing the game. For me, I just enjoy both and love when people have fun with the game, whether it's casual or competitive.
Played Yugioh my whole childhood. After some bad experiences I left it an found a more welcoming enviroment to casual players in Magic. What I've learned from my experience is the following: - Yugioh focuses all of its gameplay around the "Banlist". Either you play with it or you don't have anywhere else to go/play. - Magic identifoed & gave name to the type of players long time ago. And designs cardswith those parameters in mind. "Timmy" is the one who want to use the "cool/strong" cards he opened in a booster, maybe just wants to play the cards he saw in the anime and make some splashy plays. "Johnny" is the player who wants to prove himself by putting together the most convoluted combo possible, achieving it would be as valuable as a win, if not ecen more important than winning. "Spike" is the player who want to win at all costs, hence you will find him around tournaments, looking foe the best plays available. And each of these players is as important as the other. - Magic community takes responsability for the alternative/"casual" formats. They are not waiting for the Company to give them the solution... they are the solution! Commander didn't happened overnight. Players created it and embraced it outside the competitive enviroment until Wizards had no choice but to start printing product for the format. - Constructed (previously building your own deck) is but one way to play. Sealed events are promoted as often as constructed. No deck, no problem, take this booster packs a build a deck to participate in the tournament (everyone does the same) and it is given the aame amount of importance as a Constructed event. - The easiest way to bring more players is to have entry products for newer players. Commander is a format where you can buy a Preconstructed deck, shuffle it up and play... I wonder what would it take to have a product like that in yugioh, or why not designing Structure decks to be able to be played against each other without any changes, just a product that allows everyone to sit at the same power level foe fun. Even puting pot of greed in those decks to play in that enviroment...
As causal & competitive player I can clarified I never have fun playing yugioh unless you playing with your friend. But I'll never quit the game because I deeply love yugioh.
Honestly commander has a lot of issues too in terms of being a casual format. For one, though it wasn't explicitly stated it sounds like in addition to games being less serious and less optimized you view casual to mean "accessible to new and returning players" by referencing complexity of board states (and that it's not much better with lower tier decks) and how large the cardpool is. Commander is a casual format but it's a casual format for experienced players with large collections. It asks you to pick a legendary creature and then 99 cards that share that creature's colors and synergize well with it from all of magic's history. It's also designed to be played with 4 players and has double the normal starting life so not only is the board state more complex due to having 2 extra players, the boards also tend to get much bigger than normal games per player. There are a ton of commander precons now so a new player could start there pretty easily but once they start running into people not using precons the number of different mechanics across the history of the game that they might see in just one deck can get staggering and overwhelming. There's also a lot of debate about how competitive commander is getting. cEDH is the competitive version of commander but it can be very hard to draw that line. People started rating the power level of their deck on a scale of 1-10 and as a result "my deck is about a 7" became a meme because everyone's 7 means vastly different things. There's also tons of powerful staples. Everyone has sol ring because WotC gives it away like candy but rhystic study, smothering tide, the fetchlands, the shocklands... there's loads that people run in their normal commander decks without batting an eye.
The "problem" I see in YGO is: that a deck is not only encouraged to not let your opponent play, but is expected to do so. Yeah, in MTG there are some decks and cards that do not let others play (Stax, winter orb, land destruction....) but they are the exception, not the rule, and that distinction is what discourages me to play locals/against strangers
You can argue what is/isn't fun all day but you have to just admit that you're opponent not being able to play the game and you winning on turn 1 or 2 as a result isn't exactly interactive even if it is fun, you aren't playing a game at that point, your opponents skill and your skill are irrelevant.
New to yugioh but been in magic a long time, I think what a lot of people from other games miss about commander is that it can but just as cuthroat as any other format, but playgroups are generally set up for an agreed power level from 10 (lots of fast mana, turn 2-3 wins) to level 5 (play on mana curve and summon consistently, but no major combos or synergies) There is nothing stopping yugioh being and doing the same thing. What I think is missing from yugioh is a clear language of those power levels, an equivalent power level 10 would be setting up multiple negates going first and ftk'ing through multiple negates going second. Power level 5 might have no negates or the inability to perform multiple special summons from deck leaving you with end boards of one maybe 2 big dudes without stupid protection etc
As a primarily casual player, I've definitely faced this problem a lot recently. I hadn't played for several years, and went to the Yugioh101 subreddit to get some tips for a returning player. I thought I was very reasonable and clear that my deck was casual and that I wasn't interested in playing the meta version, but the only replies I got were just "this deck is worthless, why even bother". It took going to the Master Duel sub to actually get real advice. Speaking of Master Duel, I think another issue related to this is how unfriendly MD is to casual F2P. The only way to get gems and build decks is by playing ranked, so you're facing meta even as low as bronze tier. As a returning player, climbing enough just to build my first deck was an impossibly difficult and unfun task, which is a bad look for their premier Yugioh video game. Something definitely needs to change
So I deal with this situation on the regular. I play a good bit of Casual Yugioh, be that every week at DnD Night with friends, Master Duel(I avoid Meta like I would a Beast of Nurgle), and even Roblox where they have some cool Simulators. One in particular on Roblox is DDX Dimensions Duels X. It has a ton of formats from Speed Duels, Tag, even Turbo Duels on Motorcycles. One of the big things on that game is Roleplay Dueling Events where players get together and play RP Decks. And every time we get a group going, we have to reiterate multiple times "No Floodgates, No Meta/Meta-Like Decks, No 14 Minute Combo Decks, and no Indestructible Unaffected Decks". Then someone will ask "Is this Meta?" While whipping out a Tri-Brigade/Lyrilusc Deck. Then we have to sit there and explain "If you play for 10 minutes and then Interupt your opponent from playing the game at all, it's not a Fun Deck." Simplest way I have found to explain things is "You play Unga Boonga Boss, other player gets to bring out Oonga Boonga Boss. Bosses fight, die, and you work to summon another Oonga Boonga Boss." Not 3 Bosses and 2 Negates, not Floodgates. Not Bosses that can't be touched by other cards and are neigh impossible to remove. Think classic Blue Eyes vs Red Eyes vs Dark Magician. Think Heroes that don't splash in Vision/Destiny Heroes in an Elemental Hero Deck. Think Classic Fusion Cyberdragons.
I guess Heart of the Underdog format could be considered casual format. Basically no meta or highly competitive decks allowed. The problem is like you said even lower tier decks can make insane boards now because of power creep. A Hero deck can make Dark Law with multiple negates turn 1 with ease. Would that still be considered fun? In the end it comes down to the community's mindset/mentality. Which is universally not let the opponent play or try to win as fast as possible no matter the format. This is why I play GOAT format when I want to play for fun. Even though it is competitive there is still a lot of back and fourth interaction and space for comebacks to happen.
I think Rush Duels kind of fit exactly what the playerbase needs right now, and I really hope they go international with it soon and it succeeds. Rush Duels are fairly fast-paced and don't have a crazy amount of disruptions. A lot of Yugiboomers keep asking for a hard reset and that's sort of what Rush Duels are. I think Rush Duels, given their simplicity, are perfect as the more casual card game. Meanwhile, the Advanced format could serve more as a Super Smash Bros. Melee where it's mostly played competitively. I do disagree on this being exclusive to Yu-Gi-Oh however. I feel like I see this in a lot of gaming communities where you're expected to play optimally or you get ragged on by others, but that could just be a difference in personal experience.
I am a returning player (stopped at around 2009-2010 during the heydays of blackwings, six samurai, x sabers and lightlords) and currently using a ''non-meta'' deck suggested to me by my friends...the deck is eldlich...yes it's a boring set traps and go gameplay, but for returning people like me it's just the right kind of deck to jump back to ygo without all the crazy stuff that's prevalent today...I'm still leering with what those pendulum summons do and decks that fusion summon god monsters as early as turn 1... But I'm gonna accept the fact that I can only play this deck with my friends and not bring it in any local game because I'm not willing to sell my body parts to be ''competitive''...The thing is, even in card games, players will find ways to optimize the fun out of the game...doesn't matter if it's a Toon World deck or a Joey Wheeler TIme Wizard deck...to have ''fun'' or their very definition of it, people will find ways to optimize it...and there we go into these bottomless trap hole of upgrading, finetuning etc. until one day you are already playing Tearlaments or Floowandereze... So yeah...there's not really a Casual format per se in YGO as far as I can see...
An interesting format that im not sure if it would work or not is a "pure format" basically with the exception of some spells and traps " things like monster reborn and raigeki that aren't tied to archetypes" you would have to make a deck using only cards from one archetype. I have no clue if this would even work and it would absolutely have a clear meta with most decks of the same archetype being very similar and it would probably get boring fast but it just sounds fun to mess with a few times
I understand where you are coming from and I agree 100%. This community is too driven on trying to win vs having fun with a playstyle/deck that isn't consistent/oppressive no matter the win/loss record. Not everything is about winning, trying to play perfectly, or building the perfect meta relevant deck. What good is winning, when no one wants to play against you? What good is winning, when your opponent isn't using cards at the same power level as you? I don't see skill in using things that have too much of an advantage of your opponent. I know that most players don't share these ideals and that's fine but here's something to consider. Is it better to invest in meta relevant cards for wins or invest in rarity boosts/building a collection of your favorite cards? I'd rather spend my money on the rarity boost/building a collection of my favorite cards, and compete with those cards vs invest in meta relevant decks. I don't need to win that badly. And if I did, I would play against a cpu in all honesty.
I mean...the fault sits with the entire community but its almost like a pie! Elitist that took the competitiveness further than what it needed to be are a huge chunk, but Konami is an even bigger chunk! I think the desire to push the game to new levels, made unplayable at times. Showing up at locals to get 1TK'd is NOT fun. You can lose a good duel and still have a great time, but when someone goes on a 23 card combo, mining for 30 mins, etc...even someone who is trying to shift from casual to competitive is going to lose interest FAST! Master Duel is 100% evident of that, and now I think it's too far gone, Konami would have to do something epic to bring players back or even retain players the way that MTG or Pokemon does! However, all that said...ultimately its on us, the community to dictate certain spaces and formats, that are more welcoming, and maybe Konami would get the hint.
fun is diffrent for diffrent people, so when you attend an offcial event you have to be prepared to play vs people who want to win with the best decks. mtg has commander, it was created as a fun format. But in offical events a great amount of players still try to build the most competitive decks under the set rules. For me basicly the kicker is when there is an entrance fee, or prices are on the line, expect people to win at all cost. I definetly would do so. For everything else, play with your friends at the kitchen table.
With a determined enough team of lads. Assign a "power grade" on each card. 1-10 (Trash cards could be 0 or negatives. OP, overtuned cards 10+) and build decks based on a point limit....kinda like Warhammer. Lotta content/discussion on the grading but think home brew rulesets and experimenting is gonna be needed to sort this out.
Honestly I enjoy playing casually and competitive. When I lose I take it as a learning experience. Every loss. It also introduces you to decks you can use yourself. Remember if you can't beat em you can join em. lol First time I played Numerons I got OTKd. I sat there like..... wtf just happened? But it intrigued me. I got so cocky with my deck. Losing bad humbles you. Of course there is the floodgate issue. But it's all that counters some top tier decks. Soul Drain, Dimension Shifer. Dimension Fissure, Macro Cosmos all counter Tearlaments. I agree at the end of the day it's best just to play what you want to win or lose. Losing is a learning experience. You can do what you want in this game.
Heart of the Underdog is a thing in my city. There are at least 3 locals I go to that play under a strict “no meta” ban list. You can’t even play something like Sky Striker. It’s not agreed on by the players. The stores individually decide what the ban lists are. I would like to see a universal ban list but it’s good to see something like heart of the underdog becoming more popular around here.
The way i play for fun is creating a format me and my friends called the "lockdown" format where are only allowed to play a anime protag's are archtype decks without any other arctypes allowed or any cards that dont fix their theme or playstyle. It has been fun playing it for the past 9 years and all the "power creep" dont really affect neither. I believe people should adopt or create their own formats like how you would create your own card games with normal playing cards. I believe there are so many cards in the game now we are more than able to create any format we wont to spice up the gameplay and casually/play for fun scene.
Here's something interesting: MonkeyFightTCG literally went out of his way to rank every single Yu-Gi-Oh! deck and place it in a tier. This gives players a good sense of which decks have even matchups against other decks. What if Konami did this? They have way more resources than any individual player. They could also update the tier list with each product released. Sure, that would take a lot of work, but it can be done.
That is where the Yugioh Video Games come in. I love playing Legacy of the Duelist or some of the World Championship Games from time to time because you can just play Solo against an AI that uses a ton of variety decks. I like modern yugioh pvp but i also enjoy playing these older Games and have more back and forth games. Also currently playing on a Master Duel Singleplayer Mod where i can build all the Decks i want and play against my own Decks that are played by an AI.
I am a former member of the Yugioh Roleplay community (ie. Discord servers set up for people to make characters and duel). All of the servers that were popular (and rightfully so, they were typically quite good) ran custom formats that pretty much bandaid fixed the meta. It was... hit or miss. Most negates were straight up banned (I kid you not, Solemn Judgement was a banned card more than once.), and anything from the release of Runick onwards was hard banned with few exceptions. If anything became a problem in major events (mini-tourneys) the deck could receive anywhere from 1 limit or semi, to getting multiple cards banned. It was always extremely solveable, because people want to come in to the 'casual' format and play the best deck possible then build a character around it. There isn't a set line where cards are and aren't casual, I don't think. Certain cards that are and/or were meta relevant were extremely enjoyable to play against, and then sometimes an archetype I had never heard of would come out of left field and stomp four people before we had to hit the deck. This is all a very long way to say: Casual is an attitude, not a banlist. A banlist certainly helps when power creep is out of control, but most people I befriended agreed that the more fun people to duel and roleplay with, were always the ones who made janky silly decks to tell a story. When you come into casual formats with "I'm going to build the strongest permutation of this deck" mindsets, then you're going to make a problem somewhere down the line where it's just not fun to play vs you. Competitive or serious play makes sense to hold that mindset in of course and I enjoyed Yugioh at a competitive level for a great deal of time... but if you want casual play, play casually. Don't ask for a banlist of the format to solve all of your problems then try and solve the meta of a casual format. This was a ramble. I'd apologise for that if I was sorry, but I'm not. Maybe the meaning is clearer than I think or at least somebody might get it.
Domain Format! Not official (yet, maybe Konami will one day have a look at it). But certainly awesome for having a good time with friends. Find it on UA-cam, there’s a discord also. Really recommend it!!
I think there's two ways to make a fun and more casual friendly Yu-Gi-Oh that's also easier for people to get into the game: First is to create a ban list like duel links, so you limit all the best boss monsters but make it so only 1 limited card per deck, 2 semi limits etc. That way people can really be more accepting of what's fun and causal cuz if you wanted to play a busted card, it's your only copy. Obviously the list wouldn't just be the same list from the tcg with the duel links rules, but similar with a few tweaks. Like limiting all the hand traps and semi limiting some . Limiting cards like dark law, so if you want to use dakr law you can't use any other limited card. The second would be, to just bring rush Duels to the US. Nuff said with that.
I think this is an issue that can be alleviated by card shops or game venues too; back when I was still playing the TCG, my local game shop would host a more casual tournament in between serious/all-out ones. The casual one would be it's own "have fun, goof around" event which have it's own custom ban list which would cripple any meta decks by removing particular combo pieces and/or boss monsters. More kids and newbies would often show up to these and winners would still be rewarded with a few boosters, it was great.
This right here. If I had a shop nearby that did exactly this I would get back into the game. Also this format but with old cards(pre synchro era) would bring alot of the old players who left back
The place where we play allows "class A" cards or fake cards because we all know how expensive tcg/ocg is. As long as the card isn't hand drawn or printed in your computer, pasted in a piece of carton board, you're good to go.
Yugioh is fun. It's just less fun if you're planning to compete but if you're just playing on your own community, it's heck of fun. I even saw someone playing Amazon otk last 2015 (?) Been a long time since I played irl.
Creating our own format is how my friend got me into the game, and how we've continued to have fun. We just use card/ban lists from old Gameboy games (Stairway to the Destined Duel and Duel Academy GX so far). It's been great for deck building because the lists don't fit a specific, legit format so we have to do a lot of our own research and can't just copy metas of the time. It's led to a lot of fun deck ideas (Using the effect of Fire Princess to try and gain enough life points to win the duel, or using a Kuriboh centered deck to try and tribute a bunch of copies from Multiply to deal damage, or buff OK monsters to obscene levels with mage power/united we stand) and just overall good times. There is obviously a struggle with the "formats" we use not being legitimate and thus not having resources to pull from, but that's just turned into me creating programs for us (one for viewing all card images/descriptions for any card/ban list we give it, one for randomly generating decks for some true horrible jank, and one for making deck building a turn by turn process we do together with randomly drawn cards and abilities to reroll cards or influence cards you/your opponent will draw).
I wish there were more formats available in general, with tools and resources, even if they weren't "official". It would be a lot easier for new/returning players to dip their toes in and get a feel for the game without throwing them into the bottomless trap hole of text/power creep that modern Yu-Gi-Oh is.
Great idea. I want to be able to create my own format as well.
A completely unique format that no one knows about probably would solve a lot of these problems yeah. When you get millions of people playing the same format what works and what doesn’t is shown pretty dang fast.
This is evidence that it isn't the format that matters, it's the players. The best deck in Duel Academy is almost certainly Stein OTK, to the point where the developers even encourage building it for quick and easy wins. But playing Stein isn't fun, it's just going through the motions.
It's entirely on the player to create their own fun with the options available.
Advanced format is the same. Having fun comes down to a mutual understanding between two duelists. You don't need Konami to tell you how to have fun. You can make your own.
i'm curious about this fire princess deck
The problem with making your own format is it can be tough to find people to play with, unless you have a group of people who already play often. There are no online options that allow you to play with more than 60 cards in a deck, or relegating ritual monsters to the extra deck. I dropped off after XYZ cards were introduced, and wish we could go back to that time.
not a YGO player here but i clicked to see how other games are doing on this front. I'm a long time commander player and my group really has been feeling the strain of WotC's current release model and design philosophy. I just want to say, even though it helps, there still isnt really a truly casual format in magic. People play the best decks they can find and will be leagues above the "fun" decks. We also have the same issue with disagreements on what counts as fun.
I feel YGO is approaching the excess release of sets Magic has.
I think most people don’t seem to realize that all tcg (technically almost every game in existence) with a competitive scene will have players using the most unfair tactic, strategy and elements to their advantage as much as possible so it’s not really a yugioh/mtg thing as it is just a thing for anything with a meta
even bicycling competition/races bans certain riding maneuvers or position because of the advantage it gives too as ridiculous as that may sound
I believe the hard part is actually trying to separate the competitive/meta aspect of something from the casual/fun aspect instead because for example, not too long ago a card called halqifabrax was finally banned after people been calling for its banned for a few years already, prior there were numerous argument about whether this card should even be banned or not because it allows weaker or more casual decks some unique card combos and plays including the ability to compete with the meta since the way it worked opened up a lot of ‘ahem…degenerate’ combos but at the same time meta decks were also abusing the very same card to facilitate their own degenerate stuff or create naught unbreakable boards and some people felt that these were acceptable terms to allow halqi to evade the ban hammer
You want casual? Its called jump start lmao
And it also comes down to the individuals, most of the time people play to win even if its just "casual" instead of wanting to just play decks to just play them. People need to actually play the game for what its for and to enjoy the game itself and not just the mindset of OP winning. But thats never gonna happen
The truly tragic thing about Commander is that it began as Elder Dragon Highlander; a fan-made format designed specifically to give players a way to use their piles of one-of/junk rares in a novel way without degenerating into Yet-Another-Sealed-Format territory.
And then Wizards did the rare, devious thing and supported the format, necessitating the name change into an official brand....which ultimately defeated the whole point of EDH in the first place.
You can see this issue just watching Ludwig’s tournament he did with a lot of other big creators. They were given pre made decks and 6 out of the 8 players didn’t fully understand how the game works. The entire time chat was flaming the players for having certain cards in the deck or for misplaying (sometimes atrociously).
It seems like a lot of players miss the fact that this has an astronomical learning curve to even play properly let alone make the best plays.
Well i mean, its not like they "Wanted to learn the game", most of the players just activated stuff with out reading the cards at all and then wonder why it didnt worked, its the meme of "Yugioh players doesnt know how to read" but in real life no jokes.
Also saykkuno had a busted Hero deck, that deck was the only one usable, it has darklaw
@@GrEEnF1Re1they didn't read that cards because a paragraph of 12 oint font isn't conducive to a willingness to learn for a game they aren't into.
I agree. YUGI needs popular fun format for casual players & to help grow the community. So honestly it’s not the game but the community’s mindset itself.
No, it's the game. The difference between starter deck yugi (OG starter deck) and modern decks is sickening. The game has wildly changed to the point it's an entirely different game now.
I mean the community has made a fun version right the EDISON format. But the game doesn't allow u to play it in a ranked format
@@JoeBob189 I agree, it's something as an outsider I don't see discussed much but really puts me off, the power creep that's resulted from the commitment to the eternal format being the only real format.
This is another one of the problems I have been trying to speak about when it comes to YGO. Constantly I keep hearing from other channels and other people from the community is "No the game keeps evolving!!" In my honest opinion it has not evolved as due to the fact there are no other formats.
There does need to be a Casual format just to have fun officially. But in reality there needs to be a push for alternate formats besides the "Advanced" format only. Also It really is not new player friendly and this part of the problem where the game has been stale and has not evolved. The final problem is the most of the community, Sure there are a lot that are awesome and supportive and respectful and polite. However the majority are terrible people.
I could keep going but I feel this is adequate.
Coming to master duel to relive childhood from quitting around the start of synchro summon and the turn0-turn1 meta of the game is just ridiculous and made me not want to come back, why bother coding in the 1st gen cards when theres the meta decks. Its the only card game i know of that has this type of crazy power creep and I dont know how the game can keep evolving with power creep when its already turn0-turn1
@@saviorofs0ng That's pretty much what modern day YGO almost is.
You don't even need a whole format. You can just have a rule like "no searching you deck." It slows things down and shortens turns by a lot in most games.
You can also just start spelling words with Destiny Board and Spirit Message letters.
I get what your saying, but your point has faults.
Firstly the game did evolve. Mainly it evolved with introductions of new mechanics and extra deck monsters, then ways to cheat around the restrictions. Saying that the game hasn't evolved because we only have advanced format is wrong. Advanced format has evolved.
Plus we don't only have advanced format anyway. It is just perceived that way since Advanced is the only largely supported format by Konami.
There is also a huge problem with saying we need a tournament for fun decks. There is no consensus on what is 'fun' in yugioh. Some players have fun playing with their friends. Some players have fun playing certain decks. Some players have fun pulling off some inconsistent wombo combo that only works once every 10 or 20 duels. And others have fun winning.
@@matthewdodd1262 We can start the change by not writing an essay about disagreements. No solution is perfect, but we can do better than what we have now.
I would love a pseudo-draft format with dedicated low power sets similar to what the LOD set was trying to do with the Dragon, Warrior and Fiend tribal themes
We used to have this and it was called Battle Packs! It was awesome. It was mostly for sealed but also worked for draft.
There's actually a site too that functions as a draft sim or a prerelease/sealed sim for Yu-Gi-Oh but I forgot the name. I think it even lets you copy your pulls into a deck file for online clients, to boot.
I remember battle packs but now you can’t because of archetypes
@@Aigis31 I remember Battle Pack. I played the first one (got two Tour Guides and two Forbidden Lance when they were not cheap) but looking back I think Battle Pack was a flawed format in that it was still using cards which were designed withing the archetype system so it was hard for them to curate cards from the main card pool that would work. The last Battle Pack tried to solve it by making all monsters all types to artificially increase the synergy of the cards but what I'm talking about is something different to that format.
I was suggesting an alternate run of booster sets just like the normal release sets but featuring 100% new cards at a much lower power level only for this format. Ideally there would be no archetypes but some new additional game rule that limits the amount of different monster types and attributes you can play in the same deck so synergies are built around types/attributes and not archetypes. The inspiration is LOD where, at the time, they were coming up with ideas to solve the problem of "good stuff" decks and tried this tribal synergy idea but ultimately decided to print archetypes instead. Grave Keepers came out soon after and the rest is history
Here's an easy parameter for how to evaluate what makes the game fun. The common characteristic every game has is CHALLENGE. Games present you with a challenge to overcome. Whether it be learning it, playing around the obstacles it puts in your path, in the case of card games deckbuilding, etc.
And that's just it. Yugioh doesn't provide that when the optimal Turn 1 is to set up layers upon layers of things that stop you from playing the game. You either have an out, in which case you win, or you don't and you lose. There is no challenge there for either player, so nobody has any fun. Decks like Plunder and Sky Strikers and Tri-Brigade (in my personal experience) don't STOP your opponents from doing anything, and I think that's the key. No matter what they do, you can usually deal with most of it and mount a proper counter-offense. From that back-and-forth comes the challenge, and thus the fun.
Cube format is the answer, it's fun for pros and first timers alike because it puts players on an even playing field. I hope you and the other gentlemen at Team APS finally get around to making a cube. It'd be toadally awesome!
What’s cube formula if I don’t mind me asking?
@@Fraudkuna9 Cube is a unofficial draft format. The CUBE is a collection of cards with generally 45 cards per player. Each player is given 15 of those cards and picks one to keep and passes the rest to the next player. Then they pick a card to keep from 14 which they are passed. This repeats until all the cards are claimed, once that happens players take another 15 cards from the box and repeat this process until all the cards in the box are claimed. Players then build a deck using the cards they claimed and play in a mini tournement.
I am a magic player so the numbers might be different to yugioh and in general the cube curator can do whatever they want when it comes to numbers. Some cubes might also have special rules, for instance I once made a yugioh cube and one of its rules is that if you pick a ritual monster you automatically get a copy of the matching ritual spell to put in your deck.
Very good topic here, as a 30 year magic the gathering veteran and a retuning yugioh player looking from the outside in, I can tell you for a quite a few years MTG had these same problems, however why yugioh needs I think in my opinion is the community to come together or rally together with strong leaders in the community such as Team APS, cimoo, ruxin34 etc to band together with the community if this is something that everyone wants then the community can affect and create great change, I guess what I’m saying is if everyone bothers Konami to create a casual format outside of advanced then there’s a good chance that Konami will cave and possibly cater to the community. Commander format didn’t become popular overnight, it took quite a few years for it to get off the ground, it started out as EDH format then slowly became what is known as commander today in MTG. Also being a leader like the professor from TCC in the yugioh community would help and I think greatly benefit everyone. Who knows maybe a good casual format would be for someone to create a 100 card commander like format for yugioh maybe Konami will take notice of how popular something like that would become.
I am not sure if something like Commander would work in YuGiOh. It would make the decks a lot less consistant but would not stop the decks from building insane bords if they open right. So I think it would create a lot of none games where one player opens with combo while the other dosn't. However I agree with everything else you said, I just think YuGIOh would need it's owne approach to a casual format and due to the power level of the game could not just copy the approach Magic took with Commander.
@@Lyricaon I don’t know I think it could work for Yugioh, for example magic’s commander allows for 100 cards and only 1 of any card you would like put in your deck, you could do a ratio of maybe about 37-38 monsters and the rest spell and trap cards to use, and start with a higher life point total of about 16,000 instead of 8000, because in mtg for normal casual games we have only 20 life points and for commander is 40 so double the amount, the idea of commander format is to have the games dragged out and more epic and fun after all. I would suggest giving it a try with Yugioh maybe add the ratio of cards I mentioned above, sleeve up a deck and have a friend do the same, sit down at a table and play with 16,000 life points instead of the normal 8000, you might be surprised at how well and fun a formal like that could be 😄
unfortunately konami doesnt communicate with the players AT ALL. the company is so disconnected from the game community its insane
@@ericcornish1983 This could be me but I wouldn't want just a yugioh copy of commander because at that point I would just play commander if that makes since. I like mtg and I like yugioh but I think they should be separate. Not saying yugioh couldn't evolve something from mtg. Also that just sounds like alot of T setting.
This is why I still don't dare to go to locals yet after getting back. One of the good LGS I went to has a lot of meta, and it's tough to get in when I just want to be interactive when playing. Now I'm just building decks for collecting purpose and playing with my friends when I can, I'm sure I won't be able to withstand the toxicity of competitiveness.
My locals has a lot of meta decks as well. But you can still win out with a rouge deck.
In Pokemon we recently added Gym Leader Challenge a format created by Andrew Mahone of Tricky Gym on youtube. Its basically monotype, highlander and no rule box pokemon (Commander basically) with its own banlist. The format is now run at Pokémon regionals as side events similar to time wizard format. Its really fun to play casually as the power level is lower and for a game that is only really playable in standard it allows you to make use of unused cards and cards from older formats that you loved. Maybe a highlander/commander like format supported by some of the bigger youtubers would work in Yu-Gi-Oh if enough people play it konami would eventually support it like they are doing now with reprints for Edison and goat.
I honestly wish for different formats, I'm a returning player from like 2010 and I can barely handle it. I just decided I wanted to play casually and play cards and archetypes that I think are cool like dark magician and aliens. I've gotten into master duel and tried playing casual games but people are still playing meta decks sweating there and the odd chance that someone isn't, I'm having a lot of fun with it. I wish for different game formats like duel links or generational game modes because I've been watching your rare hunter series and it's like the best thing I've seen. Like for instance the lava golem play was so awesome to see, it was down to the wire of 600 lp and any false move could mean defeat and you came out in the end, I'm sorry but I love long games like those, you get to see all the cards and it opens up the chance for seriously hype moments instead of what I experienced of getting 2 turned killed and not being able to play even if it's my turn. At the end of the day, if it isn't fun, why bother. That's my off the cuff fling on why I would love different and casual formats. Love the vids man
I just got back into the game after 16 years and almost uninstalled Master Duel after my opponent took more than a minute to end his turn. Come to find out, players taking that long is the norm.
As someone who once played YGO and Pokemon TCG and just got back into both half a year ago (after a good decade and some change out of it), here's my thoughts:
Coming back to Pokemon TCG, the first thing I immediately thought was great was that I could go out and buy a physical prebuilt deck that was somewhat competitive in the current format, go onto the official online sim, input the included code, and get that exact deck I bought on the online sim. The entire cost of both the physical and online deck? 20 bucks. No extra effort needed to grind, nothing. I just have the deck because I bought it. It makes so much sense because the online is the main way to get the majority of practice/play with the deck and this feature promotes people buying the packs which in turns funds the online servers. Granted, PTCGO is a dated online service that hits the bare minimum of usable because it is nearing the age of being able to drive, and the Pokemon Company themselves do not care to invest time/money into making it anywhere near as nice as Master Duel, but that's a topic for PTCG players to complain about.
For the life of me I could not figure out why in the world Master Duel did not have this with the Albaz structure decks I bought (I mean, we all know why, but let's ignore that part). It just makes so much sense that it's a shame I have to spend 30 bucks to get the Albaz structure on top of dedicating either a decent chunk of time or money to get that same deck in Master Duel, and I refuse to drop the money because I'd rather get scalped by specific physical cards than the awful pricing of Master Duel's in-game currency. Also, small complaint about the structure decks: Why do I need 3 of them? I buy the Pokemon sets, they give me the 3x copies of Calyrex-Ice I need for the deck. I don't have to buy 3 separate Pokemon structure decks to get the 3x I need, I just get the 3x I need. YGO structure decks give you 1x of each and half the stuff is filler junk that you try to offload for a buck to your local card shop.
Another thing I really like about Pokemon Online is that there is a Theme format. This is less the case for a returning player like me, but was a godsend for my friend who recently started learning TCGs in general. Theme is a format where you can only use the prebuilt decks (about 100 of them) that you can purchase using the in-game currency (which is not purchasable, so you can only earn it). The three decks that they give to you are theme decks and if you were unable to buy physical cards to play other formats, the general idea is that you play theme to learn the game and earn the in-game currency to either buy a better theme deck and climb there or try and get something running in the more standard formats. There is obviously a meta to theme and the best theme decks are objectively better than most, but they don't cost anymore than any other theme deck so you can just buy one of those the moment you have the resources for it and start playing theme with a top meta theme deck if you want to. Theme is relatively slow compared to more modern and expanded formats and has a controlled meta because the only eligible decks in it are prebuilt only.
I'm very surprised Master Duel did not have something similar. In part because all of the solo situations they throw you in give you old, dated structure decks that are non-functional in modern YGO if used stock and also because I would have 100% expected some kind of themed legacy format where you can use classic nostalgia bait decks inspired by characters from the anime. They even have the legacy pack ticket or whatever which could have easily just been used to purchase those dated structure decks instead of that crappy legacy pack. This basically gives them the ability to just create a slower, more casual format that they can control the meta of while also giving people options to play stuff that they realistically have some kind of nostalgic connection to.
One thing I DO like about YGO is that the "standard" format is basically most other TCG's "unlimited" format. In other words, I can take my doodoo Cyber Dragon deck from over a decade ago out of my closet and bring it to a locals and it's probably legal (now I'm not saying it'd fair well, but that's another topic). If nothing changes outside of bans, I can basically do that 50 years from now. There is basically no other card game I can say that because adding the concept of stuff like a standard, modern/expanded, or legacy will change the time frames of those over increasing periods of times. I don't really want to go and check what things are legal in whatever format outside of a ban list and then go out and buy new cards every year or two because everything in it is invalid for the main format. At most all I really had to do was go and check what I needed to update my old deck, get those, and I can fare okay-ish at a local.
Sure, there are definitely certain issues that arise from this, but it's not something I want YGO to get rid of because that's kind of its identity. I get that to an extent that is what has lead to the crazy power creep over the years, but I'm personally willing to accept that under the condition Konami can keep it relatively under control. Also, having to buy newer cards to keep up with power creep doesn't feel any less bad than having to basically go and buy a new deck because my old deck is no longer legal in the standard format due to rotation, and it's not like there aren't insane combos that come up in other TCG's "unlimited" formats either (there are literally unstoppable FTKs in Pokemon's unlimited format). If anything YuGiOh is surprisingly balanced for a game that basically makes its standard play the rough equivalent of other game's "unlimited" because balancing generally has to keep 2 decades and counting worth of interactions in mind when creating new cards.
As for community options: The Pokemon video game has Smogon. Community created tier lists based on usage rates. While we realistically can't do this with Master Duel, we can realistically pull the data for community run sites like DuelingBook or EDOPro if we could get the cooperation of the people running those. I'm actually surprised this doesn't exist considering the top meta is basically defined by usage rates already.
found the new best take in the comments here. Not that my opinion matters much but thank you for sharing this and i hope more people thumb this up cause its both true to the issues and gives credit where its due to konami. I hope more players like you come back to yugioh and i believe a better future is possible
the main problem why YGO is not beginner friendly is because there is no "resource" to play the cards. for example, Digimon has Memory as its "resource" in order to play the cards, player cannot build strong board and destroy the opponent in one turn since it required a lot of memory to do that in one turn. But in YGO, there is no resource, there is nothing to hinder you to play all your entire deck in one turn if you can. There should be a format where you can only special summon once per turn or Special summoned monster cannot attack or activate their effect the same turn they are being played. YGO already kinda did it back in Battle City format, fusion summoned monster cannot attack at the same turn they are being summoned.
i really like kuchen format, its a community that has made their own banlists similar to what smogon is for pokemon to try to allow any deck to be strong within its own power level
Any links?
@@Runenschuppe look up “kuchen format yugioh” and you can find it
Perpetual casual here. One of the cool things that Master Duel was doing was making those challenge banlists. The "no spell cards" event was a cool challenge, and there have been other rules like that they did that were fun. It would be cool to see things like that pop up in different spots. Not sure what "formats" means, but if that is a format that would be cool to try.
I think that the best format for Yu-gi-oh! right now is what me and my friends call "Full Speed Duel". We only use speed duel cards, but we play the full game with the current rules, respecting the speed duel ban list and removing the skill cards completely. It's surprisinly well balanced and you can build lots of cool and different decks. It's like Goat with steroids.
I'm 100% trying this, is there somewhere I can check the entire speed duel card pool? Or how do you guys know which cards are allowed?
@@NobleManager ygoprodeck if I remember correctly. If you Google it you should find it easily
@@KSprites thank you 🙌
Cool to see I'm not the only playing this format
A problem that exists within YGO that further separates what people see as “fun” from what is considered “optimal” is the ubiquity of negation. Where other games offer means of intra-turn interaction primarily via damage dealt to creatures, destruction effects, bouncing, spinning, flash stat changes, and other such things, YGO has found itself at a point where negation is common enough to make up most of what is used/built towards. Even in games that feature similar negation effects, they are typically restricted to specific archetypes or tribes. The goal being “prevent other person from playing game” exists in these other games, but isn’t achieved so easily and certainly not by similar means as those associated with contemporary YGO gameplay. Interacting with one another via active effects as opposed to primarily building towards lockouts/shutdowns would be considered “fun” by a majority of people, and therefore desirable - but YGO has found itself with common universally accessible negation as something core to its identity. I’ve no clue how to solve such an issue without nearly starting from scratch, to be honest.
Your point about moving down a few tiers and it's still very powerful, I made a G Golem Codetalker deck to test with my friend and it still pops off heavily, even with out Codec! And I played it relatively pure, no hand traps or anything like that, pure pure cyberse support and it puts out a lot of links in it's end board, with or without Codec
I would recommend looking into the pauper format in MTG. Basically, you can only use common, meaning non-rare, cards. I've also played in commander tournaments where there is either a $100 cap for the deck, or no cards (besides the commander) over $5, which is more friendly for the organizers. Maybe trying to fit in a commander type format into YuGiOh would be fun, like trying multiplayer 4 ffa or 2vs2. I really feel like you guys have a great opportunity, with your recent videos with the professor over at Tolarian CC, to start trying some other formats in your videos, and maybe have them catch on.
i really dislike a $ cap for any given format. its just to much struggel to stay up date as card prices are shifting. The better way would be to control the cards played by rarity. basicly like pauper. Or a limit on 5 rares per deck (and so on).
I would agree with other than the simple fact that commons are getting slightly pricier these days too
Some of the most fun I had playing Yugioh was playing casually with my cousin and friends back in the original DM days. I built a yugioh cube for drafting a few years back catered heavy towards our favorite cards and strategies from our childhoold. The nostalgia from getting together again and playing our old cards that we have all those memories attached to was just awesome and it really brought that feeling back that old yugioh did.
That is awesome. So do you still play the cube together nowadays?
@@lifequality unfortunately no. We all have different lives that keep us busy. I tried to make it at least an annual event, but after Covid forced my hand to cancel the 2020 get together, it has been too difficult to get people back together. I still physically have the cube though.
I would say we have a newcomer issue, not really a casual issue. Other formats have to deal with meta's and people are just upset they can't win with their old decks anymore in the current format. If you are going to your locals and participating in the local, you are at the will of everyone who paid to enter that local. If you want to do character duels or some sort, maybe the "casual" needs to make friends with people at the locals and try to do something (but that is a whole different conversation). The cardshops I've been to do not have a GOAT or Edison tourny and I do not think it is economically responsible to try and host a consistant one since it's usually only 3-4 guys at the shop who are interested in the old format. I think these are the issues of people who are heavily invested in the game and are not willing to look into something new.
I love your content and vids, keep it up!
Well I mean if we got to the source of this recent conversation, Dzeef had a clip talking about how no matter how he played his "for fun" series people complained. If he went into a worse pack or switched to a worse deck for variety/fun he was flamed. Yet when he did nothing but play his best deck he also got flamed. Inherently even if you set out to just be playing for fun the yu gi oh community will comment on your misplays or how you should just be playing better cards. This has happened for literally any for fun series. Because the yu gi oh community just can't seem to wrap around what making content means and how at it's core everyone is playing for fun. Yu-Gi-Oh fun is just competitive fun(the want to win) and the game itself inherently promotes this with how irrelevant decks can get not even a year later and how hard it is to play out of meta. You look at a lot of other card games with stuff like rotating formats or just better balance because of core mechanics, and it's not an issue.
The problem with Yugioh to newcomers were many things.
Aside from the complicated mechanics (i.e Summoning Conditions, PSCT, Rulings, etc.) Yu Gi Oh has a massive amount of cards yet most of them are pretty limited to a certain playstyle and archetype.
In comparison to other TCGs, Yu Gi Oh allows for freedom and creativity to their deckbuilding. First Yugioh Card releases contains many generic cards that play with almost 90% of cards (i.e Monster Reborn, Trap Hole, Dark Hole, Sogen) now they release cards that are too specific to an archetype (i.e Gem Knight Fusion, Pendulum Cards, Trickstar Light Stage, etc.)
This type of card making puts casual pack buyers to not play their decks nor try to experiment with it because certain cards don't matter. And the concept of Trading Cards pretty much undermined by players need and not creativity.
Try to compare Starter Decks before to Casual/Fun Decks today.
This card making problem is the unseen cause of why formats are hard to make.
We did some stuff here in our LGS that was Archetype war.
We made our decks literally with 30 cards of one archetype +10 one ofs. If the archetype has less than 30, you can build one ofs until you get 40.
I really like that idea! Maybe together with a custom ban list that aims to take away cards that keep you from playing (so floodgates) since I feel like a lot of non meta decks can't deal with them 🤔 Also how did you handle decks that don't consist of one but multiple archtypes? Or stuff like water xyz that is kind of an archtype but without a name that ties them togeather?
@Ghost Ogre & Snow Rabbit dude I'd love to play uninterruptable ftks!
@@nikolaitheundying As I said I referd to floodgates, cards that prevent you from playing at all. Interupts are fine and needed. And also something like skill drain, summon limit or a barrier statue will not prevent you from performing an ftk in the first place, since you can't use them turn 0 anyways.
@@Lyricaon for most casual decks are stopped if the opponent drops ash/imperm/veiler.
@@nikolaitheundying Yea but that is a different popint/discusion. My point was the floodgates are a problem in a more casual/fun format and therefor should not be allowed. If handtraps are a problem and what kind of decks would become a problem without htem is a whole different discusion. (I think at least most handtraps are fine and good for the game, but I can see peope disagree with me there)
An important thing to note is that Magic got its most popular and most causal format, Commander, from its community. Maybe the Yu-Gi-Oh community needs to come together and build a casual focused format.
The community hates the idea of casual players, and they often get "just quit" or "get good" responses when voicing their issues.
My fav vids on this channel are the structure deck duels or opening packs and making decks. I think this hits the more fun casual aspect of yugioh. It seems more balanced and competitive at the same time 🙏
I've played Yu-Gi-Oh ever since I was a kid. And I've quit and gotten back into it maybe around five times in total. And I started playing Pokemon a couple of years ago and Magic The Gathering about one year ago. Now I play all three of them quite actively every week with different groups of people. And I have to say the communities are WORLDS apart. Every single person I know who plays Pokemon and/or Magic that have tried getting into Yu-Gi-Oh aswell. Have told me pretty much the exact same thing. That they haven't felt very welcomed when coming to their locals. Everyone pretty much keeps to themselves without much small talk or trading. And winning is the key focus over having actual "fun" casual games with one another.
Nobody seems very eager to help or even talk to the new lost "scrub" at their locals who wants to learn the rules. People there get frustrated and angry when the new guy makes mistakes and accidentally plays with banned or limited cards in their deck (not knowing any better or even what a ban list is). And some veteran players there just see the opportunity to rip of the new guy's rare cards in exchange for garbage. Because they see the opportunity to make a quick buck when the new guy doesn't realize the value of the cards he just pulled.
And my experience of getting back into Yu-Gi-Oh as a returning player in different cities over the years have pretty much been exactly the same. So I can definitely see where they are coming from even though it's sad to hear these stories. Take this in contrast to when I got into Pokemon and Magic The Gathering. People actually said hi to me. They shook my hand and invited me over and gave me free cards so I would have an easier time getting into the game. They took the time to sit patiently with me for a whole day just to teach me the game and all of the different mechanics. They didn't get frustrated with me or angry when I made mistakes. They gave me generous deals on trades just because I was new there and they wanted to help me upgrade my decks as cheap and easily as possible. So I would have as much fun as possible playing and get a bit of a headstart at the game when it can be quite overwhelming at first.
I made friends for life. When we play Pokemon or Magic almost no one ever gets salty or upset over losing. And we don't make up poor excuses when we lose. We're just there to have fun and share this hobby and passion of ours. People have fun even if they lose a couple of games because winning isn't all that matters. In contrast to Yu-Gi-Oh where winning seems to be the biggest priority and if you don't get results, it doesn't matter. Of course I don't just want to sound all negative about Yu-Gi-Oh. Because I have a lot of nostalgia for it and it's very dear to me and close to my heart. And I love my cards and playing the game. But I would be lying if I said I had as much fun playing Yu-Gi-Oh as I do playing Pokemon or Magic. Not because of the game mechanics. But because of the community.
I know my experiences in a few different cities, conventions and tournaments doesn't make up the entire Yu-Gi-Oh community. There are lots of great kind Yu-Gi-Oh players aswell. And there is always going to be bad apples in every game and community. Pokemon and Magic aswell of course. But in my experience (and my friends) the bad toxic players in Yu-Gi-Oh seems to be much more frequent then in the others. I love all three games. And nostalgia wise my top three card games is Yu-Gi-Oh, Pokemon, and Magic. But fun wise to play, it's the reverse for me. Magic, Pokemon and lastly Yu-Gi-Oh. That's just my personal preference though.
The card shop owners at my LGS are rude and impatient. It sucks trying to play a game there. Playing yugioh with others is usually not fun either, it's either my deck stomps their deck or their deck stomps my deck. I think Yugioh doesn't allow for as much creativity as Magic.
However I found I learned so much about card games just from playing Yugioh that learning Magic was easy.
I'm not a Yu-Gi-Oh anymore (quit after the 4th or 5th set) but I've been doing a lot of research on card games lately, the main one I'm actually playing being Pokemon (mostly because my kids love it). Just letting you know, the Online Card Game (Live) has identical problems. Most people don't even play it past the 2nd turn and often before an attack because as soon as the perfect setup is attained the game is over. It's extremely frustrating to try to make a deck around a Pokemon you just like rather than building to compete against all the meta decks in the "Casual" format.
This is not a Yu-Gi-Oh problem: I think it's common to all TCGs.
As far as it being a Trading Card game thing, I think this is because TCGs are by nature a battle to dominate your oponnent and establish your rule as superior to theirs. This is because each card is a short list of rules meant to modify the format to your favor while your opponent tries to do the same. Whoever's rules are more powerful and binding wins. It appeals to our baseline desire to battle and conquer: that along with cool pictures is what makes them so marketable.
I don't think this a problem that can be fixed in a type of game where selling new, more powerful cards is the point of the format.
Always a great conversation. Yu-Gi-Oh! Is definitely suffering from zero entry point for new players. I hate to say it but all TCG’s reboot their games except Yu-Gi-Oh!. I would hate it but you know it might help.
got my first yugioh online game on the nintendo switch. played my first game online with starter cards at the lowest rank. i played 1 turn. my opponent then played half his deck and retained 4 cards in his hand and 1 shot me. i never touched online mode again and then just stopped playing. now im hearing there is actually 8-20 minute combo turns. there should be a timer per turn. this game seems very offputting
Yugioh is a card game that's legitimately broken and Konami will never fix it because constantly releasing busted cards forces competetive players to have to buy the newest sets which breeds toxicity. You can't even play casual with a lot of the newer cards as they're designed specifically to be competetive.
On top of the fact that a lot of Yugioh's plays aren't fun. It's not fun to watch your opponent literally combo off for 15 minutes and then when it's your turn you just get told No and you can't play.
That all combined drives casual players away from the game.
My friend plays casually and wants to compete against the local tournament players with a casual deck. The problem that I see is that these tournament players don't play at a locals level. These players play at a high YCS level all the times. He can't really match me and I'm the weakest of the group. I did try to help, but he insists in doing a Yugi/Yusei deck.
I remember when I started was when Blue-eyes was meta. So quite possibly the worst format to start in. The only players I could play against were playing what I think was recently meta. I later fought in tournaments due to lack of Yugioh friends and so started my 6 year losing streak. I had not won a single game in 6 years with the exception of the occasional duelist who played a really bad casual deck. Things changed when Branded became a thing.
Though recently a new kid came. Wanting to play weak decks because that's the most of the cores he has, but is receptive to advice for making them powerful. As the only other Melffy player, I got the guys to help the kid gather Spright cards to enhance his own Melffy deck. Seriously that's a decent combination for generating Link and Rank 2 material. Already clashing with the group but not quite winning, he still needs experience. However he is insanely good considering he's like 12. I did ask him about any friends who play at school. He apparently wants to get people into the game, but not a lot of people have much interest. Plus if he's teaching people to learn how to play, then he's going to be the top player of his circle.
I find that, at least in my area, You can't find a good group to have fun duels, not even in game stores. It's either stick to online sims or go above and beyond and somehow compete against some of the best players in the province.
A great example of this is when a newbie wants to get into the game, most people instead of advising to "buy a starter deck", they go right into "buy three structure decks". There's a dissonance with the newbie or casual player. They assume that you want to be competitive. It's very unfortunate. Same goes with the auto dismissal of more simple or retro formats like Speed Duel, which are actually fun (specially for old-school players) and have a much more balanced competitive scene.
there's a video about this, I forget what channel... talks about starting them with speed duels to get the basic mechanics down (as well as staples to use later), then starter deck to get a feel for the full scope; THEN 3x structures... OR buying singles to build something. if you give a beginner martial artist the Green Destiny sword, sure it's the strongest sword, but they don't know how to use it.
With regard to Speed Duel, I think the limited card selection alone is interesting because it brings the game back to a form that I'm used to from the old days, but not in the exact shape I knew it in. You could play "full Yu-Gi-Oh" but limited to Speed Duel-legal cards and I think that could be a fun time. (I know having to re-buy the same cards just to have a Speed Duel watermark is a sore spot, though, and unfortunately if we're talking about an officially supported format that would probably still be required.)
I think the best way to make Yu-Gi-Oh fun is everyone has to treat a duel like the anime. One duelist plays the antagonist and every card they play must have a 30 second speech on how the opponent is no match for them. On the reverse, the duelists playing the protagonist must mention the heart of the cards or believing in their friends every turn.
Casual is a hard thing to define for this game. What cards can be considered casual friendly and even that question is hard to answer depending on who you ask? When master duel released there were tons of people who haven't played since childhood that thought ash blossom is one of the most broken cards ever.
Whenever I asked what really casual people want out of yugioh, they want something similar to what they had when they were kids in like the mid to late 2000s where they just played the cards they thought were good and didn't really know there were banlists and all that other stuff. Where they made up playground rules and acted like they were playing something out of the anime. I don't know how you capture that magic they felt almost 15+ years ago because what they like about the game just varies between each person. One person might say "oh the last time yugioh was good was GX", another will say "the last time it was good was synchro stuff like 5Ds", and another completely different person will say "I like everything up to and including XYZs and hate everything after". Trying to get a mutual conensus between so many people is going to be difficult
I think the biggest thing is making the game way more simple. I came back into Yugioh almost 2 years ago and I still have no clue what a pendulum, link, xyz is. And I have no drive to learn modern Yugioh.
Imo the complexity and interactivity of yugioh is what sets it apart from the other popular card games, and if you don’t understand those card types, that’s on you. Pendulums are weird, but if you can grasp the mechanics of a synchro summon, you should be able to understand Xyz or Link summons. If you want “simple” yugioh, speed duel fits that niche. But saying you have no drive to learn modern yugioh is a you problem, not a game problem.
Idk if this is the solution, but I know one reason why I play card games in general is for the immersion of the cards. Sorta like the show where the decks are often seen as a reflection of the duelists personality or current situation. I like to build decks that contain cards that tell a story, or follow a particular theme in monster types/attribute/art. Noble Arms is probably one of my fave archetypes that really does a good job with this inherently.
I recently became a community manager at my local store for Yugioh, and to try and combat the issue, instead of having tournaments, we have a community league, where people are rewarded for participation and being a part of the community.
The main idea is to support any format players want, and reward players for showing up and playing them.
We are currently running:
-Main (Master) Format
-Speed Format
-40 Card Speed Format
-Goat Format
This way, players can play the Yugioh they want, and even if they do not win, they get points for being there and having a good time.
The only issue we still run into is because of it being a card shop, every casual player comes in expecting a toxic environment, and the only ones that actually take the time to listen are the ones that see me playing with the store clerk behind the counter, and they're like "Wait, these are Anime cards!".
Anyway, this is just here for anyone who wants to try something similar with their friends at a card shop, I'm also open to suggestions and feedbacks for improving this idea, as it has been the most successful version we have had so far.
Yu Gi Oh! need something like Commander format in MTG, where you can enjoy and play the game.
100 cards one extra deck monster
Me and my friends play self made format for fun (it did need some tuning), but for now it look like this 40-60 main size deck, maximum 15 cards extra deck, you can have up to 3 copies of one card in the whole deck including the extra deck (or 2 by 2 cards) all spell and trap cards that search, revive, destroy or limit some aspect of the game can't be more than 1. There is limit on summoning as a whole (we still working on it- 6 summons per round on each player is one of the variants). It's not perfect we try not to limit it to much and to be fun to play.
If you have ideas i will be happy to read them.
People seriously need to just stop using the word "Fun." Fun is different for everyone, everywhere, for everything because it is purely based on themselves and nothing else. The word that needs to be used is "Casual" because the definition for casual is 'Relaxing and unconcerned.' Relaxing because you don't have to auto lose thanks to no handtraps and losing a coin flip, and unconcerned (with winning/losing) because there is nothing special on the line for the games. You came to play YGO and that's it.
I started playing Master Duel a month ago because I saw there was a casual mode but even there people will play adamancipator and get out crazy negate boards turn 1 because that's what they want to do. Konami not having an official casual ruleset/ban list, and their lack of support for the less competitive archetypes are a big problem. No official rules/ban list means there isn't one thing people can look at to understand their limitations, and nothing to go off of for online duels too. Their lack of support for archetypes means some decks rely on powerful extra deck monsters for their win-con, which for casual play may seem cheap (Relying on Zeus or Accesscode Talker for example) Locals could try and set something up for casual days, but they'll have to find a way to make sure everyone knows the limitations put in place before hand.
I don't know how people got so obsessed with winning, even when it's just two friends playing a sealed format with no reward (Basically most youtube series) but there isn't really a way to prevent that mindset in people without something official to more easily separate out the ones who only care about being competitive. You can condemn them all you want, but they'll just call you bad at the game and no progress will be made.
The problem is, by design, in order to win a game of modern Yu-gi-oh is a race to the bottom to establish the most "toxic" board state that doesn't allow your opponent to play at all. From the meta decks of right now to even peoples pet decks that's what you hope to do, regardless of format history or price point its just a matter of who's deck can do it better.
This didn't need an 11 minute video. The big problem is a) the fact Konami doesn't sufficiently support the prizes scene so people are farming packs to make money off of this expensive deck b) no good onboarding products c) this game is prohibitively expensive compared to most hobbies to get into; lets keep it real ya'll if you spent 500+ bucks on a deck you're gonna do what you want to get the best out of your investment.
If Paul keeps complaining about the power level of Yu-Gi-Oh you'd basically have to erase all cards, decks, and progress, post Edison/~post Dragon Rulers. Do ya'll want that?
I feel like some kind of "point buy" system could be fun. Make anything that has ever touched the ban list be worth a number of points based off how powerful it is. And pick an arbitrary amount of points you can spend on some of the more powerful cards and everything else is free in terms of points. Some kind of rendition of that could make for a solid "fun" format
this could actually be the answer, would be alot of work but ive been genuinely combing everyones thoughts in the comments and this could be the best thing said. People keep suggesting different formats and not addressing the issue of cards themselves being too powerful forcing the person to make a decision as to what powerful cards they want to play at the cost of the rest of their deck actually might see positive impact
It has arrived to a point where a player wants to be the next Yugi-Oh champion either at the local level or the global stage. There's not that much of variety because almost everyone is playing the most popular deck that has the highest consistency rate in an effort to prevent the other player from playing. Of course, the state of the game now which used be a battle of wits in a drawn out war has now become "a quick draw showdown at high noon". If you are not fast enough to take your opponent down in 5 turns, you're done for.
See here is the thing i've noticed
When someone comes up to me asks if tearlament splight branded is a "good deck",of course i can't say yes without feeling that there is a better varient of tearlament that does MUCH better than this,so i say no it's not and they get upset
While what should have happened is that they would ask do you think that deck "works out" or "is it a fun deck" or sth like that
Then the conversation shifts from asking about a deck being competetively viable to what is a fun varient of a meta deck and how can you improve it and such
In addition to all the problems listed there is also the fact that there is no concept of sportsmanship. If you also want to grant the benevolence of not ending the duel in turn 1, you can be sure that if you do it will backfire. So even in the "game for fun" you still play in a bastard way. Yugioh is a game that must be played in this way unfortunately. And that's why those who play do it only for the competitive, the rest is limited to collecting. Or it is limited to online gaming, which for other reasons is perhaps even worse...
a 60 card commander deck format would be a lot of fun if konami wanted to implement it. max 1 copy of each card. 60 cards limits "strategies". Removal or reduction to extra deck to 5 cards would force you to use different strategies depending on cards you have. Food for thought but magic 100 card commander format is actually so refreshing to play compared to yugioh
Sorry to be that guy but it doesnt work. Plenty of groups and even youtubers have tried this. It turns into 2k monster beats because most decks are engines at their heart that require a critical mass. The other option is just 12 different 2-3 card engines that brick if you draw the single wrong one. As cool of an idea as it sounds on paper, only Magic can really pull it off with a maybe for pokemon but yugioh functionally cannot run on a highlander style.
@@arrowsmith000 the reason it doesn't work in yugioh is because Konami doesn't support such a gamemode. There was VERY limiting options in original EDH. Once WOTC started supporting the gamemode however there were suddenly dozens of new commander deck options. I also don't agree with the OP's idea of reducing ED size to 5 as that would neuter dozens of archetypes that probably wouldn't even actually be that good.
Master duel already have that
Check out master duel "limit one" event
@@arrowsmith000 highlander yugioh works , do you not play master duel "limit one" event?
Its pretty fun seeing different player using various engine in their highlander deck
@@thaariqbinaziz2821 and while it was a novelty thats all it was. The limit one had a clear best 1-2 decks and they all used the exact same engines outside of main deck plan with 90% of the decks being "pendulum good stuff." CAN you play it, yes. Does it work as a format, not in the slightest. Again, its been tested into the ground and it just doesnt work
Honestly I don't think a "casual format" can exist in yugioh from what I've seen no matter how you slice it decks are not made with equal power levels so no matter how far down the ladder you go there's always a power imbalance and when you get to a certain point noone wants to play anymore because their deck isn't allowed despite not being "good" the only way to make yugioh casual friendly is via a reboot which people seem to actively not like overall some even offended at the suggestion.
i have played a good deal of TCGs (MTG, YGO, Mitos y Leyendas, Pokemon, etc) and even applies to stuff like videogame Pokemon
making a "casual" format where everybody agrees on it, its never going to happen
people have different ideas, different personalities, different strategies, and as you mentioned, different definitions of "fun"
no matter how casual you want to make a format, there will always be that one person who min-maxes their deck for the best plays, for the best winrate, for the best, because that's what's fun for them
and there will always be that one person that just wants to play with suboptimal cards, suboptimal strategies, etc, because that's what's fun for them
i believe that its in one's mentality to accept this and choose your playgroup, analyze what you want from the game, and try to always be a good sport about it
you like playing the top win rate decks? be polite and tell your opponent that you are playing a tournament deck, so that a more goofy player doesn't has a bad experience playing against a top deck
you like playing goofy decks? be polite and tell your opponent that you are playing a goofy deck, etc
you could even have multiple decks depending on the situation, have a goofy deck for friends, a mid-range to test waters in a new place, and a top tier one if you want to compete
That was always kind of my problem since the Pendulum Era. Xyz might have been more the start I think but I was dipping at that point. Coming back through Master Duel I was just crushed because everything I faced was meta build meta build meta build. And it just wasn't fun to get the advice of "Well build to the meta". When I build a deck of 40 cards at minimum the advice of "Well you need these 10 cards in the deck or it won't be viable" is kind of disheartening because it feels like some freedom or wiggle room is gone because 1/4 of my deck isn't dedicated to the meta. Of course there needs to be structure to building decks as throwing anything together can be interesting for a goofy challenge or something but to play some form of match I get it. But like I said having to slot in cards the community deems as "required" isn't that fun. I have one other theory as to why Yugioh isn't as fun as some other TCGs but it's pure speculation and would require an actual discussion.
We play our own format at my house. Pre-constructed decks that all have an edge over one another but don't get into the heavy shenanigans of the meta game.
An interesting note: combo decks are considered try hard and no fun in every tcg.
It doesn't really matter what your mindset is. You're gonna look like a try hard if you start going down a "A let's me do B. B let's me do C, etc." Turn. I'm not sure yugioh can not be like that outside of draft stuff. Combos in a draft format are seen as cool and silly goose approved.
I feel like Master Duel exacerbated the issue. As there are no rewards for playing anything other than ranked. Solo mode is okay to learn, but even there the rewards are small. Of course they want you to spend money on the game, and that’s fair. Still, if the daily missions were completable in casual mode for 10 less gems than ranked, that would be better. FTP players are forced to play ranked to do those missions and they are often facing much stronger and expert duelists. Even at lower ranks these days.
In regards to the physical official game, yeah Konami probably thinks it’s too much work to create new formats. When it actually isn’t. My friends and I have been playing games with only the cards present in the older videogames. Such as Sacred cards, Forbidden Memories, or the 5Ds NDS games. And that has been a lot of fun. It’s an older format, slower, but still just as exciting. Konami would literally just have to say “the card pool is as in this game.” And make a banlist for that pool. There are already card lists for those games online, they wouldn’t even have to do the work of putting that together.
Maybe someday we’ll get official fun formats. And Master duel has made that potentially super accessible! But for now we can only hope.
I was thinking of something like, "pure format" as in, you can only okay one archetype and only card from that archetype, if there are not enough cards in you archetype of choice, you can use either type or attribute support (not both), but no generics, I think it would be very similar to the anime (obviously not 1-1).
Yo Paul great video and topic! I have spent a lot of time thinking about this as well, as someone who wants to like playing yugioh and I have played in the past. EDH or as it's known as commander now started as a community format then became so popular it became official.
I think yugioh needs this as well. I don't think Konami will be the one to step up here. I think you and all of APS have a pretty good chance to do something here. Or at least attempt to get the ball rolling on that.
You guys are all somewhat different players, but you guys also all know how to enjoy yugioh at different levels. So as a collective I think you guys could get together and try to brainstorm something and try it out. If it is fun maybe it catches on, and if not maybe it's a good starting point to evolve into something else.
As for what makes card games fun in general there are a lot of factors, but a key one is consistency. All card games are inherently RNG right? You draw random cards. Whenever you design a deck to win or to be "optimized" it needs to be as consistent or as little RNG as possible.
So then you go into probability. A deck needs to have a certain number of things that you will see enough times to make it run correctly as much as possible. There will still be times you brick, but you want it to happen as little as possible.
This is what I've noticed as someone who has played cards game basically for as long as I remember, you need a balance of RNG and also "guarantees" from a fun deck. I'm saying guarantees here as a way of saying things you can be sure of will happen or whatever the opposite of RNG is.
So basically 2 things help stop RNG. Card draw and tutors or searching for an exact card. Yugioh has a lot of tutors built into many archetypes to make for consistent strategies. You also run 3 ofs in 40 card decks.
So what commander in MTG does that i think makes it fun and enjoyable is it makes the game very customizable. You up the card pool from 60 to 100 and then instead of 4 ofs (for mtg) you play only 1 ofs.
This adds a lot of variance and RNG, but it also opens up a ton of options to deckbuilding.
Do you want to play 100 cards that are of the same theme? All Elves? All Goblins? Maybe a minotaur deck? You can do that.
Do you want to try to take a crazy game winning combo and try to optimize the deck where it wins as quickly as possible? You can also do that.
So the rules for commander make for fun and customized deckbuilding.
Now what happens when the Minotaur deck plays against the competitively optimized deck? Well you add in 2 other players to automatically balance the game. If one person has a crazy deck, but is playing against 3 lower powered decks they are still not guaranteed to win.
It is a very social format and allows for a lot of self expression.
Now comes to what if these strategies were implemented in yugioh? I've heard multiplayer would not be possible in yugioh, but why not? Could we change some rules to make it work?
Also what about a singleton card yugioh format? I guess the problem here would be some archetypes wouldn't have enough support for probably 100 card singleton, but maybe 40 card? I'm not familiar enough with the game to know, but maybe you guys are.
Anyway it would be a fun things to consider. Maybe seeing which 2 archetypes best combine for the most synergy.
I don't know I'm just spitballing here, but I think you guys are in a good position as a group of smart, but different players that enjoy yugioh and understand when it is "fun". Also as a playgroup it would be easy to play multiplayer.
Idk, but I encourage you guys to experiment with it. I'm sure I wouldn't be the only one willing to try a new Yugioh format. Lots of people WANT to enjoy the game just don't know how.
MTG also has a horde format, it is a PVE game mode where a group of players fight together against a horde deck that plays itself. Commander was not even invented or acknowledged by Wotc at first, they were created and pushed by the players and WOTC only started acknowledging commander which is now the most popular format in 2011.
Why do Yugioh players not try to come up with some alternate kitchen table variants like these or perhaps some other custom game modes like Dungeon dice monsters or something like that.
I think a big barrier to casual formats is the heavy reliance on archetypes. Archetypes are a double-edged sword: one of the coolest and most unique parts of Yugioh that injects personality and interesting mechanics into the game...but the vast majority of players just have no idea what 90% of archetypes do outside of what's been meta over the years and whatever they have a personal interest in. And casual formats are going to be chock full of that 90% that are unfamiliar. I'm sure everyone has a story about getting wrecked by a deck that you've never played against before and having to read every card (as much as not reading has become a meme), having no clue what to anticipate or what cards in the combos to stop. It's hard to evaluate Yugioh cards in a vacuum, so when you don't know the context of how the cards are played, it can often make for a frustrating experience until you can learn that context.
The handling of archetypes is basically what killed Yugioh for me. I feel there is a version of archetypes that could work, but the inevitable power creep and increasingly high knowledge barrier (as you detailed) chokes so much creativity out of the game.
I remember the most fun deuel I ever had was Hero's (minus dark law) vs Blue eyes on DN 5 years ago. It was a solid back and forth for about an hour, and thiigh I managed to barely win heroes it felt earned and we both went away having enjoyed the experience. I wish we cod get more of that in yuigioh, where the format is like 'only certain cards from recent sets can played' or something to get the format to smooth out
Its just yugioh in general in my experience. Currently I play at “competitive” ots store guy of the guys there have played ycs as well as are connected to ycs winners. I say that to say if your not playing meta there and making all the right plays you get treated differently, “top” with watch and borderline critic gameplay at tables, and walk away from games saying “nothing interesting is happening there”. The game breads elitist, it was the say way back in 02-07 when i play in a non competitive scene. “Worst” players but the same behavior patterns, its not format dependent in my perspective its the people around.
I think your Rare Hunters series really show cases "fun" games where things go back and forth and the game isn't decided by a combo on turn 1.
It usually isn't decided by a combo turn 1 unless your bad. Most decks can still play back and forth for 4 to 5 turns.
@@thebelmont1995 Yeah lets be real here most duels in the modern era are decided in the first turn. Dont fool anyone we know you re caping. Doesnt matter if you set your ash to tank a turn, just surrender. If you do your pendulumn combo and the oponent didnt draw a handtrap and he has plenty in his deck. Is he just bad? Stop the cap
@@Pkey995 Pendelum has not been meta at all for years. And there are over a dozen cards that counter it. Pendulum loses to almost any hand trap in the modern era. No one is capping. If you lose that's on you. Most times the game lasts at least 4 turns. If you are setting an ash blossom to live you are bad or playing a bad deck. Either or most games between 2 competent players will last at bare minimum several turns.
@@thebelmont1995 Really? Ycs london 2023 Final. Game one ends turn 3 is decided turn one by the kash player2 activating nib. Game two ends on turn 1 even playing through gamma player1 makes a board player2 cant deal with. Game three Player2 makes his kash board turn 1 and spoiler allert player1 drew the out and finishes the game with 2 Kurikaras. So now where are the 4turns?
@@thebelmont1995 "It usually isn't decided by a combo turn 1 unless your bad" soo are these pros bad at the game?
"Fun" competitions of master rule 5 can only really be agreed upon in small groups of friends.
For locals and other tournament settings, we really do need a brand new format akin to something like Commander or what have you if you want this game to be more casual friendly. The reason commander works is because its a multi-man setting where people engage in what the magic community dubs as "politics" (where you're having to form temporary alliances and figure out what should be done). The social aspect is what makes a game like Commander work as well as it does, and at least in a casual setting, and if you wanted to make something like that for Yugioh, you'd need to have an agreed upon list of what monsters would or wouldn't be allowed as "commanders" or what have you (since all your commander guarantees you is that you don't have to search/summon it from the deck or hand).
Frankly, if you were to translate over Commander to Yugioh, the commander should be a main deck monster and the summon cost should be to discard the amount of cards it'd require to summon it (in other words: its tribute cost), plus +1 additional card for each time you've summoned it before that point. Say for example this is the second time you're summoning Evil Twins Ki-Sikil & Lil-La, you'd discard 3 cards [since its a level 8]. Now, that card can't normally be tribute summoned, but we'd be overriding its normal summon requirements if its the commander, which would open the door for ritual monsters to be commanders and be summoned this way.
You'd also need an adjusted banlist to account for OP cards in this format if you're wanting to scale back powercreep (y'know, ban stuff like Accesscode, Borrelsword & Savage Dragon, Apollousa, Scythe, Knightmare Phoenix and Cerberus, Gozen and TCBOO, Dimension Shifter, Havnis, etc.), as well as you'd have to make any card that would normally say "do X to your opponent" or "your opponent must Y" force the caster to target which opponent to apply the effect to (whereas cards that just affect all players apply to all participating players). As far as figuring out the banlist goes, you could probably use the Trinity format's banlist as a jumping off point for constructing it. Other than that, i figure trap cards would just activate the same way they would in 2v2 games, and we'd designate which player we're targeting when using cards on the field like Mekk Knights or Imperm's column negate (which we could probably designate by placing token pieces on a zone in that opponent's column or something)
Personaly, I found that as a general rule of thumb, people find usualy singleton decks to be considered "casual" & often "fun"
Or to put it in other words, just generaly more variety & less consistent strategies where you have to adapt & improvise far more
As a YGO player, my gym friends and I have a time threshold rule using random decks. Two ways to win by time threshold (at least around my gym friends)
1. Have more LP (Life Points) in Game 1 or Game 3.
2. Win Game 1. Then Game 2, defend your LP until the time threshold hits zero.
From a former Comp YuGiOH player who later grinded MTG PTQ's.
YuGiOh's major problem was always bringing in new players from casual to Comp because of the complexity of cards. You could have boiled down several arch-types and abilities into common keywords. Keywords would have done so much for the game from standardizing gameplay actions to the skill curve of bringing in new players.
The other Glaring Problem that other games have solved is Format Diversity but that's a deeper conversation that I couldn't fit here.
Keep up the good content, You guys keep it really level in the community.
As a YGO and Magic Player I can say that I was surprised with the lack of many alternative formats. There is Goat, Edison and Speed duel. But we created an other format: YGO Commander: Every Deck has to run 60 Maindeck Cards and 20 Extradeck Cards. Every Card is limited to 1 and there is no banlist. It is really fun to play with friends and some lesser power cards can shine in this format
Saw this post on my yugi group on FB as well.
Casual in ygo is a myth bcz unless you make a new format ( like mtg does) you will always have top tier decks and even in formatted splits ygo decks are so broken youd have to go back to synchro or even fusion era for a fun casual format
Biggest issue with ygo is the player base as a whole it goes from polite to toxic and it leans towards toxic way to often
Jmo
You can't really bring up MTG's Commander format and then hope for Konami to be the ones to do something like it. Commander is a player created format and the problem lies in Konami, unlike Wizards at the time, not really caring about what the players want out of the game in terms of variety. They dropped all these "new formats" and then basically said, "Do something with it or don't, we don't really care." So at the end of the day we're just stuck in a loop where some people want variety in formats but many people have conflicting opinions about "what is fun?" when it comes to Yugioh.
I think too many people that want a casual format spend too much time overthinking the problem. Commander has a solution to this in the Rule Zero conversation had prior to each game. People will either be willing to change up their deck if it's unanimously agreed that a card they have is too oppressive or unfair in some manner. In Yugioh, I feel as though too many people see this kind of thing as a problem cos it, "makes or breaks" a deck if one card gets taken out cos there's no viable replacement.
I guess what I'm ultimately trying to say is that not enough Yugioh players are willing to be on the same page as to what is and what isn't fair. I know my fair share of hypercompetitive players in other games and we simply don't play with each other instead of trying to force games on each other but at the end of the day we're still friends who like the same games.
For someone who started collecting yugioh cards and “playing” back when the game first came out, I know I’ve struggled to get a feel for the game. Mind you that I’ve started and stopped at the beginning stages of learning so many times that I became overwhelmed. Each time that I retried to learn the game there was a new mechanic or format. Trying to learn how to play and be involved at locals sucked horribly.
Same. I stopped interacting with YuGiOh in 04 came back in 2020 and quit shortly after. It’s overwhelming
I’ve been at it since the jump, and when I got back in it in 2019 I just played the video games from each era.
Alluding to what you said, the point of this is that yes, the problem with competitive vs casual formats is that the first is clearly defined, the second is not. There are lists of current top competitive decks on many websites. If we're going with the definition of "if it isn't top X then it's casual" then what is X? 8? 16? 32? People have to agree on what the definition of "casual" is. If I play one of my two favorite decks, D/D/D or Pendulum Magician, I can say that it's "casual" because it's not a top tournament winning deck at this point in time. I'm still going to smash faces, but it's still "casual" right? This mentality creates sub tiers, below the current tiers. In other words, there would simply be a series of top decks below the tournament winning groups, the best decks in the game that aren't winning said events. "The best archetypes that aren't presenting themselves in tournaments are casual". The decks could still be something like, say, Blackwings, Junk Quasar, or any other archetype based off of the anime, and those turn 1 boards are absolutely toxic. "Still casual, right?"
I just think people are too entitled to their own opinion or their way of playing the game. For me, I just enjoy both and love when people have fun with the game, whether it's casual or competitive.
Played Yugioh my whole childhood. After some bad experiences I left it an found a more welcoming enviroment to casual players in Magic.
What I've learned from my experience is the following:
- Yugioh focuses all of its gameplay around the "Banlist". Either you play with it or you don't have anywhere else to go/play.
- Magic identifoed & gave name to the type of players long time ago. And designs cardswith those parameters in mind. "Timmy" is the one who want to use the "cool/strong" cards he opened in a booster, maybe just wants to play the cards he saw in the anime and make some splashy plays. "Johnny" is the player who wants to prove himself by putting together the most convoluted combo possible, achieving it would be as valuable as a win, if not ecen more important than winning. "Spike" is the player who want to win at all costs, hence you will find him around tournaments, looking foe the best plays available. And each of these players is as important as the other.
- Magic community takes responsability for the alternative/"casual" formats. They are not waiting for the Company to give them the solution... they are the solution! Commander didn't happened overnight. Players created it and embraced it outside the competitive enviroment until Wizards had no choice but to start printing product for the format.
- Constructed (previously building your own deck) is but one way to play. Sealed events are promoted as often as constructed. No deck, no problem, take this booster packs a build a deck to participate in the tournament (everyone does the same) and it is given the aame amount of importance as a Constructed event.
- The easiest way to bring more players is to have entry products for newer players. Commander is a format where you can buy a Preconstructed deck, shuffle it up and play...
I wonder what would it take to have a product like that in yugioh, or why not designing Structure decks to be able to be played against each other without any changes, just a product that allows everyone to sit at the same power level foe fun. Even puting pot of greed in those decks to play in that enviroment...
Its sad but when I play master duel and they've already went through 6 Special Summons I just leave.
As causal & competitive player I can clarified I never have fun playing yugioh unless you playing with your friend. But I'll never quit the game because I deeply love yugioh.
Honestly commander has a lot of issues too in terms of being a casual format. For one, though it wasn't explicitly stated it sounds like in addition to games being less serious and less optimized you view casual to mean "accessible to new and returning players" by referencing complexity of board states (and that it's not much better with lower tier decks) and how large the cardpool is.
Commander is a casual format but it's a casual format for experienced players with large collections. It asks you to pick a legendary creature and then 99 cards that share that creature's colors and synergize well with it from all of magic's history. It's also designed to be played with 4 players and has double the normal starting life so not only is the board state more complex due to having 2 extra players, the boards also tend to get much bigger than normal games per player.
There are a ton of commander precons now so a new player could start there pretty easily but once they start running into people not using precons the number of different mechanics across the history of the game that they might see in just one deck can get staggering and overwhelming.
There's also a lot of debate about how competitive commander is getting. cEDH is the competitive version of commander but it can be very hard to draw that line. People started rating the power level of their deck on a scale of 1-10 and as a result "my deck is about a 7" became a meme because everyone's 7 means vastly different things. There's also tons of powerful staples. Everyone has sol ring because WotC gives it away like candy but rhystic study, smothering tide, the fetchlands, the shocklands... there's loads that people run in their normal commander decks without batting an eye.
The "problem" I see in YGO is: that a deck is not only encouraged to not let your opponent play, but is expected to do so.
Yeah, in MTG there are some decks and cards that do not let others play (Stax, winter orb, land destruction....) but they are the exception, not the rule, and that distinction is what discourages me to play locals/against strangers
You can argue what is/isn't fun all day but you have to just admit that you're opponent not being able to play the game and you winning on turn 1 or 2 as a result isn't exactly interactive even if it is fun, you aren't playing a game at that point, your opponents skill and your skill are irrelevant.
Is building a board not a skill?
Then play yourself, why you wasting other people time? They can do anything else rather than watch you play yourself
@@RNE1993it isn't. Most decks are autopilot.
New to yugioh but been in magic a long time, I think what a lot of people from other games miss about commander is that it can but just as cuthroat as any other format, but playgroups are generally set up for an agreed power level from 10 (lots of fast mana, turn 2-3 wins) to level 5 (play on mana curve and summon consistently, but no major combos or synergies)
There is nothing stopping yugioh being and doing the same thing. What I think is missing from yugioh is a clear language of those power levels, an equivalent power level 10 would be setting up multiple negates going first and ftk'ing through multiple negates going second. Power level 5 might have no negates or the inability to perform multiple special summons from deck leaving you with end boards of one maybe 2 big dudes without stupid protection etc
As a primarily casual player, I've definitely faced this problem a lot recently. I hadn't played for several years, and went to the Yugioh101 subreddit to get some tips for a returning player. I thought I was very reasonable and clear that my deck was casual and that I wasn't interested in playing the meta version, but the only replies I got were just "this deck is worthless, why even bother". It took going to the Master Duel sub to actually get real advice.
Speaking of Master Duel, I think another issue related to this is how unfriendly MD is to casual F2P. The only way to get gems and build decks is by playing ranked, so you're facing meta even as low as bronze tier. As a returning player, climbing enough just to build my first deck was an impossibly difficult and unfun task, which is a bad look for their premier Yugioh video game. Something definitely needs to change
So I deal with this situation on the regular. I play a good bit of Casual Yugioh, be that every week at DnD Night with friends, Master Duel(I avoid Meta like I would a Beast of Nurgle), and even Roblox where they have some cool Simulators.
One in particular on Roblox is DDX Dimensions Duels X. It has a ton of formats from Speed Duels, Tag, even Turbo Duels on Motorcycles. One of the big things on that game is Roleplay Dueling Events where players get together and play RP Decks. And every time we get a group going, we have to reiterate multiple times "No Floodgates, No Meta/Meta-Like Decks, No 14 Minute Combo Decks, and no Indestructible Unaffected Decks". Then someone will ask "Is this Meta?" While whipping out a Tri-Brigade/Lyrilusc Deck. Then we have to sit there and explain "If you play for 10 minutes and then Interupt your opponent from playing the game at all, it's not a Fun Deck."
Simplest way I have found to explain things is "You play Unga Boonga Boss, other player gets to bring out Oonga Boonga Boss. Bosses fight, die, and you work to summon another Oonga Boonga Boss." Not 3 Bosses and 2 Negates, not Floodgates. Not Bosses that can't be touched by other cards and are neigh impossible to remove. Think classic Blue Eyes vs Red Eyes vs Dark Magician. Think Heroes that don't splash in Vision/Destiny Heroes in an Elemental Hero Deck. Think Classic Fusion Cyberdragons.
I guess Heart of the Underdog format could be considered casual format. Basically no meta or highly competitive decks allowed. The problem is like you said even lower tier decks can make insane boards now because of power creep. A Hero deck can make Dark Law with multiple negates turn 1 with ease. Would that still be considered fun? In the end it comes down to the community's mindset/mentality. Which is universally not let the opponent play or try to win as fast as possible no matter the format. This is why I play GOAT format when I want to play for fun. Even though it is competitive there is still a lot of back and fourth interaction and space for comebacks to happen.
I think Rush Duels kind of fit exactly what the playerbase needs right now, and I really hope they go international with it soon and it succeeds. Rush Duels are fairly fast-paced and don't have a crazy amount of disruptions. A lot of Yugiboomers keep asking for a hard reset and that's sort of what Rush Duels are. I think Rush Duels, given their simplicity, are perfect as the more casual card game. Meanwhile, the Advanced format could serve more as a Super Smash Bros. Melee where it's mostly played competitively.
I do disagree on this being exclusive to Yu-Gi-Oh however. I feel like I see this in a lot of gaming communities where you're expected to play optimally or you get ragged on by others, but that could just be a difference in personal experience.
When a game starts to become unwelcoming towards fun then it's just stressful and there's no point to relive your childhood
I am a returning player (stopped at around 2009-2010 during the heydays of blackwings, six samurai, x sabers and lightlords) and currently using a ''non-meta'' deck suggested to me by my friends...the deck is eldlich...yes it's a boring set traps and go gameplay, but for returning people like me it's just the right kind of deck to jump back to ygo without all the crazy stuff that's prevalent today...I'm still leering with what those pendulum summons do and decks that fusion summon god monsters as early as turn 1...
But I'm gonna accept the fact that I can only play this deck with my friends and not bring it in any local game because I'm not willing to sell my body parts to be ''competitive''...The thing is, even in card games, players will find ways to optimize the fun out of the game...doesn't matter if it's a Toon World deck or a Joey Wheeler TIme Wizard deck...to have ''fun'' or their very definition of it, people will find ways to optimize it...and there we go into these bottomless trap hole of upgrading, finetuning etc. until one day you are already playing Tearlaments or Floowandereze...
So yeah...there's not really a Casual format per se in YGO as far as I can see...
An interesting format that im not sure if it would work or not is a "pure format" basically with the exception of some spells and traps " things like monster reborn and raigeki that aren't tied to archetypes" you would have to make a deck using only cards from one archetype. I have no clue if this would even work and it would absolutely have a clear meta with most decks of the same archetype being very similar and it would probably get boring fast but it just sounds fun to mess with a few times
I understand where you are coming from and I agree 100%. This community is too driven on trying to win vs having fun with a playstyle/deck that isn't consistent/oppressive no matter the win/loss record. Not everything is about winning, trying to play perfectly, or building the perfect meta relevant deck.
What good is winning, when no one wants to play against you? What good is winning, when your opponent isn't using cards at the same power level as you? I don't see skill in using things that have too much of an advantage of your opponent.
I know that most players don't share these ideals and that's fine but here's something to consider. Is it better to invest in meta relevant cards for wins or invest in rarity boosts/building a collection of your favorite cards?
I'd rather spend my money on the rarity boost/building a collection of my favorite cards, and compete with those cards vs invest in meta relevant decks. I don't need to win that badly. And if I did, I would play against a cpu in all honesty.
I mean...the fault sits with the entire community but its almost like a pie! Elitist that took the competitiveness further than what it needed to be are a huge chunk, but Konami is an even bigger chunk! I think the desire to push the game to new levels, made unplayable at times. Showing up at locals to get 1TK'd is NOT fun. You can lose a good duel and still have a great time, but when someone goes on a 23 card combo, mining for 30 mins, etc...even someone who is trying to shift from casual to competitive is going to lose interest FAST! Master Duel is 100% evident of that, and now I think it's too far gone, Konami would have to do something epic to bring players back or even retain players the way that MTG or Pokemon does! However, all that said...ultimately its on us, the community to dictate certain spaces and formats, that are more welcoming, and maybe Konami would get the hint.
fun is diffrent for diffrent people, so when you attend an offcial event you have to be prepared to play vs people who want to win with the best decks. mtg has commander, it was created as a fun format. But in offical events a great amount of players still try to build the most competitive decks under the set rules. For me basicly the kicker is when there is an entrance fee, or prices are on the line, expect people to win at all cost. I definetly would do so. For everything else, play with your friends at the kitchen table.
With a determined enough team of lads. Assign a "power grade" on each card. 1-10 (Trash cards could be 0 or negatives. OP, overtuned cards 10+) and build decks based on a point limit....kinda like Warhammer. Lotta content/discussion on the grading but think home brew rulesets and experimenting is gonna be needed to sort this out.
Honestly I enjoy playing casually and competitive. When I lose I take it as a learning experience. Every loss. It also introduces you to decks you can use yourself. Remember if you can't beat em you can join em. lol First time I played Numerons I got OTKd. I sat there like..... wtf just happened? But it intrigued me. I got so cocky with my deck. Losing bad humbles you. Of course there is the floodgate issue. But it's all that counters some top tier decks. Soul Drain, Dimension Shifer. Dimension Fissure, Macro Cosmos all counter Tearlaments. I agree at the end of the day it's best just to play what you want to win or lose. Losing is a learning experience. You can do what you want in this game.
I’d love to see some kind of pure arch type format. One where your locked into an arch type and not allowed to use staples or generic support
Heart of the Underdog is a thing in my city. There are at least 3 locals I go to that play under a strict “no meta” ban list. You can’t even play something like Sky Striker. It’s not agreed on by the players. The stores individually decide what the ban lists are. I would like to see a universal ban list but it’s good to see something like heart of the underdog becoming more popular around here.
The way i play for fun is creating a format me and my friends called the "lockdown" format where are only allowed to play a anime protag's are archtype decks without any other arctypes allowed or any cards that dont fix their theme or playstyle. It has been fun playing it for the past 9 years and all the "power creep" dont really affect neither. I believe people should adopt or create their own formats like how you would create your own card games with normal playing cards. I believe there are so many cards in the game now we are more than able to create any format we wont to spice up the gameplay and casually/play for fun scene.
Here's something interesting: MonkeyFightTCG literally went out of his way to rank every single Yu-Gi-Oh! deck and place it in a tier. This gives players a good sense of which decks have even matchups against other decks. What if Konami did this? They have way more resources than any individual player. They could also update the tier list with each product released. Sure, that would take a lot of work, but it can be done.
That is where the Yugioh Video Games come in. I love playing Legacy of the Duelist or some of the World Championship Games from time to time because you can just play Solo against an AI that uses a ton of variety decks. I like modern yugioh pvp but i also enjoy playing these older Games and have more back and forth games. Also currently playing on a Master Duel Singleplayer Mod where i can build all the Decks i want and play against my own Decks that are played by an AI.
A long time ago we'd had a fun deck tournament at my locals and the general rule was if it topped 16 within the last year you couldn't play it
I am a former member of the Yugioh Roleplay community (ie. Discord servers set up for people to make characters and duel). All of the servers that were popular (and rightfully so, they were typically quite good) ran custom formats that pretty much bandaid fixed the meta. It was... hit or miss. Most negates were straight up banned (I kid you not, Solemn Judgement was a banned card more than once.), and anything from the release of Runick onwards was hard banned with few exceptions. If anything became a problem in major events (mini-tourneys) the deck could receive anywhere from 1 limit or semi, to getting multiple cards banned. It was always extremely solveable, because people want to come in to the 'casual' format and play the best deck possible then build a character around it. There isn't a set line where cards are and aren't casual, I don't think. Certain cards that are and/or were meta relevant were extremely enjoyable to play against, and then sometimes an archetype I had never heard of would come out of left field and stomp four people before we had to hit the deck.
This is all a very long way to say: Casual is an attitude, not a banlist. A banlist certainly helps when power creep is out of control, but most people I befriended agreed that the more fun people to duel and roleplay with, were always the ones who made janky silly decks to tell a story. When you come into casual formats with "I'm going to build the strongest permutation of this deck" mindsets, then you're going to make a problem somewhere down the line where it's just not fun to play vs you. Competitive or serious play makes sense to hold that mindset in of course and I enjoyed Yugioh at a competitive level for a great deal of time... but if you want casual play, play casually. Don't ask for a banlist of the format to solve all of your problems then try and solve the meta of a casual format.
This was a ramble. I'd apologise for that if I was sorry, but I'm not. Maybe the meaning is clearer than I think or at least somebody might get it.
Domain Format!
Not official (yet, maybe Konami will one day have a look at it). But certainly awesome for having a good time with friends.
Find it on UA-cam, there’s a discord also.
Really recommend it!!
I think there's two ways to make a fun and more casual friendly Yu-Gi-Oh that's also easier for people to get into the game:
First is to create a ban list like duel links, so you limit all the best boss monsters but make it so only 1 limited card per deck, 2 semi limits etc. That way people can really be more accepting of what's fun and causal cuz if you wanted to play a busted card, it's your only copy. Obviously the list wouldn't just be the same list from the tcg with the duel links rules, but similar with a few tweaks. Like limiting all the hand traps and semi limiting some . Limiting cards like dark law, so if you want to use dakr law you can't use any other limited card.
The second would be, to just bring rush Duels to the US. Nuff said with that.