Although there are definitely other barriers like seperate hobbies and not having time, every time i consider picking up a physical deck and trying paper play the only thing that stops me is pricing. When basically rogue budget meta decks cost 100+ dollars just to be able to actually be capable of playing a competitive game I just think the investment would never return. Imagine paying 100 dollars for a live service game just to be at a disadvantage and have to pay for paid dlc every update just to keep playing on top of that.
Crazy how people love master duel for the most part. But people insist on resale value, and the ability to profit off playing when it comes to the paper version. Every step master duel took away from those things only improved it
Yeah i would just rather play master duel where i can build my decks by simply playing the game and doing missions/solo duels. Why pay $100+ to play a game (plus costs of admission fees and travel not to mention taking up my free time) when i can just sit down on my console in front of the TV and boot up a free to play, easy to access version of the same game. The only benefit really is the TCG having a more up-to-date card pool. Other than that you need tons of money and free time to be able to play TCG, both of which are things I'm lacking. Also im not the person to get into buying and reselling cards for a profit, it takes too much time and isnt worth the money it brings in. I just want to play the game, not go on a side quest to ensure i get value out of my investments. If i buy a deck its because i wanna play it consistently, not just once or twice per format then resell it. If I buy these things its so that i am able to play with others, not to spend time listing them online for resale at a mark-up. Im not gonna buy a mathmech deck for one format then sell it so i can get into unchained the next. If i buy a deck, its to own it permenantly. Not just for one format. Even if that deck is no longer viable even by rogue standards.
@@chaosjoey123 The big difference is there's no secondary market and cards don't have any actual value. In MD you either buy packs from Konami to try and pull a card or you pay them directly with virtual currency that's not worth anything to get the card. Now imagine that all the staple handtraps cost 120 UR a copy and cards for the current meta decks cost 180 UR a copy and, on top of that, during each new patch the cards have a chance to shoot up in price or crash down to 10 UR. All of a sudden making decks in MD seems a lot less fun. Turn that virtual currency that's not worth anything into actual real life money and you have the TCG.
@kotzenderkeks61 RA2 is 55% more expensive in the UK vs RA1 with the same cards per pack/same number of packs per case. They upped the price for prints with less packs/more cards per pack to justify the price hike, but in the EU is just price hiked with no additional cards per pack/case. £9 per booster is nuts
I mentioned the Nintendo Switch bit today and people were saying "that's insane, why would Konami spend 60 grand a year on Nintendo Switches for those who make it to top 8" not understanding that they're already doing that. This game is so fucked, and none of us can agree on what to do to fix this.
Well actually yah there are things to agree on to fix it. One don't over complicate the game, stop putting so many words in one text box. And three stop making combos too long. And cards that flat out prevent people from playing the game. Cause I don't know about you but I'm tired of dragging a box of cards and a mat to sit there and watch somebody else play the game only to get to my turn and either scoop or either pass and let them end me on the following turn. Then play round two where I'm met with interruption and scoop and game over. So tell me how is that braindead type of playing is healthy for any game.
@@AaronHeininger The problem is that you won't be able to get everyone to agree on what 100+ cards need to be banned to facilitate games with more turns on average and more back and forth. If I say "ban Spright Blue", you'll get a bunch of defenders telling me i'm just bad at the game lmao.
You say "none of us" as if players had any say on this, as if it was the players' responsability. It's not up to the players to decide how things go; it's up to the people who actually work in the important positions. Truth is, over 99% of the players take the game less seriously than the incompetent idiots who run it. None of you can agree, because none of you know everything, and you don't need to know anything to be the consumer of this product. You cannot do anything about the game, but you can do everything about your own experience.
@kinoalove5817 it's about the manipulation, if Rudy had been dealing in stocks instead of trading cards he'd probably have caught some criminal charges for it.
They are lest every set be a Legacy of Destruction. If you don’t entice people to buy and open a set in bulk for a few chase cards to serve as a return on investment, no one buys any product and it’s left to rot on store shelves. Everything in that product inflates as a result. LEDE didn’t have anything you could invest in. No one buys it as a result and now Tenpai Dragon Paidra is a $20 card despite being only a super rare.
@@thedigitaldummy3098 its why pokemon has managed to keep game pieces not too expensive. putting seperate collectors cards in gets more poeple to open the set.
I always find the "super agressive reprint policy" to be a really funny joke because at best its getting reprinted a year later at which point most stuff released becomes ass
@rickmel09 infimp and ash famously were still very expensive years after their first print and several reprints. Both were reprinted in structure decks and both were more expensive as singles (!!) than the msrp of the deck.
Honestly, when you think about it a little more, the reprint policy is just bad for everyone. Expensive cards getting reprinted is great for the players, but you're looking at probably close to an entire YEAR after release for that reprint to come and, by then, the cards are powercrept and/or new staples have been released and now you have to start the wait all over again for those cards. It's just an endless cycle of waiting for reprints and it sucks. I would have loved to play Spright during POTE format. It's really great that I can finally pick up the deck for a reasonable price 2 YEARS later and at a time where the deck is mostly irrelevant as well. Sometimes it doesn't even matter if a card gets reprinted if Konami decides to put it in a garbage set, short print it, etc. Prosperity didn't become an affordable card until 3 entire years after it's initial release. The reprint policy is bad for vendors/sellers because if they aren't able to move their stock within that timeframe before the reprint, then they have to start selling those cards at a loss. This makes investing in Yugioh to begin with really risky and, for a lot of people, not even worth it. This sorta thing has only gotten worse over the last couple years especially for local card shops when it comes to getting rid of product. It's been mentioned a billion times at this point, but going with the OCG printing style would benefit EVERYONE. The players can get their hands on the cheaper versions of cards immediately because they are actually affordable. Vendors/sellers are fine because they can sell the chase rarity of cards to those who want to bling out their deck and don't have to worry about those cards losing a ton of value within a year due to reprints being less common. Collectors similarly don't have to worry about their shiny cardboard becoming worthless for the same reason. Knowing that you are guaranteed to pull some cards you want from a box would entice players to actually buy boxes so local card shops don't have tons of product just wasting away on their shelves. Everything about the current reprint policy is just so bad for everyone involved.
Konami would never go with OCG printing style in the TCG, they enjoy how much money they reap from a continually shrinking playerbase too much to care about the future of the game
100% took the words out of my mouth, especially the Spright issue. Great, can build it for super cheap and have another casual deck I can play but 2 years after the deck was released is actually ridiculous. The deck came and went and hasn't really been an actual contender since mid 2023
the lack of seperation really does not help. the collectors cards can't be too rare since they have to be game pieces but they can't be accessible to not lose the collectors value. just seperating ultra rare + into collectors cards and common to super into collectors cards solves the issue.
@@DoorMatt-Live I think they just enjoy milking it right now and don't worry much about it getting smaller in the long run in the west, as long as OCG stays strong. Happens all the time with stuff like asian mmo's ad things like that.
actually no, the ocg printing of sets wouldnt help, it would just make vendors stay away from the game. why would i invest in a box thats flat neg everytime, always, you cant make profit with it? even the chase raritys are to lil to less to make it worth and they even reprint the collectors stuff every now in then in the same rarity. its flat out worse. it would be better for the playerbase but if u cant get your singles anymore decently its getting even worse than now
Its also really frustrating that prizing for YCS' and such are so abysmal BECAUSE of unique situation that the side events have going on. Giant cards and uncut sheets are so unique and cool so WHY ARE THEY PRIZING FOR SIDE EVENTS. I can guarantee that people would love to receive a Giant card or uncut sheet of secrets/starlights instead of 7 year old console and a rubber mat.
TCG Konami has trudged on with their practices for core sets, ignorant that people are slowly realizing how terrible core set design for the wider community. We wouldn't need the degree of reprints if we were to follow OCG core sets which have multiple rarities for the super and ultra rare cards (Secret rare is one of those alternate rarities, OCG uses rares instead of super rares). Prizing for big events could be special alt prints for desirable cards in the metagame. This would drive the price of the market towards giving value to these exclusive cards, cards reserved for the top players and players who attend big events. This would push down the price of core set prints, making them more accessible. Of course TCG Konami wouldn't change this, since they don't really see an obligation to improve the game with so many current players at this point. They'll probably take some action against Snake-Eye in a couple months to maybe bring back some players, but by then Fiendsmith will be there to fill the void and the Snake-Eye problem with persist.
which means completely follow ocg, quess what tcg players hate to play in ocg format and cards, we players outside japan have to learn japanese before asian english release, you all tcg players complain too much, its irritiating,
@@r3zaful Konami fixing their print policy outside Japan doesn't mean everyone has to play ocg format, what are you on about? And even if it was the same format you don't need to learn Japanese, MTG and Pokémon have world tournaments where everyone can have different language cards and it isn't an issue
Everyone brings up the rarity thing and that's true and all but OCG packs are also like $1.50. That's dramatically going to change how accessible the game is and the fact is TCG players get so fleeced on sealed product lol.
@@r3zaful OCG has English sets, much like TCG has German, Spanish, and French translated prints. I also find OCG sets to be far more appealing to purchase as they are far more pro customer with rarities and distribution.
@@lamiaprincess6371Even with the brief period of adjustment, it'd ultimately be a net positive for the playerbase. There'd be less need for reprint sets as the necessary prints would be in abundance in the release sets.
I had a moment where my brain kinda broke on ygo recently where someone told me I could choose between building a deck to be competitive for no prizing OR i could just buy a ps5 and several games for a couple $100 less 💀 i love playing the game man but the math on that equation just doesn't add up
problem is, you have to grind with these decks, you either win or top every display tournament/giant ots stuff/and so on or you just flat out lose money and even when you do that, its not for sure you can make + with it.
The LODT reprint being rear-ended by Substitoad's reprint in the new BOL set makes me think there's like three different teams at KOA and they don't communicate.
It's the same odditie that gave us OTS 25 Ulti Diviner and then a week and some change later it's in the Battle of Legends set. Never seen so many head scratchers happen in such a short time
Hey guys we need Lightsworn reprints. Employee 1: "Sure boss, BLC1 is a perfect place to put them. We can throw a few into RC02 as well! While we're at it we can put Substitoad in Battles of Legend to tick off another Edison reprint." Employee 2: "Sure boss, LODT reprint on the way! We can get Substitoads out too, after all it's still on the banlist right? Right? Anyway LODT coming up!" Employee 3: "Where's the structure deck for this quarter? KoJ hasn't talked to me in months. Ah yeah sure boss I'll get the 2014 Lightsworn structure deck rewaved."
Sadly, it also likely saved the game. Players *revolted* after _Chronicles_ was printed, and creating the Reserved List was the only way to keep established players from leaving en masse. I hate it too, since it keeps me from experimenting with some Legacy brews that I wanted to try.
@@willooo09 in all honesty 30th anniversary wasent really anything lmao. like sure, bad PR and a shitty product, but thats all it was. reserved list continues to plague prices for legacy/vintage/cEDH and will do so unless the reserve list is abolished. there are 0 long term problems caused directly by 30th anni, its apples to oranges.
I never got back into Yugioh because of the cost. I know I don't *need* the $1000 deck to have fun so many of the key cards can be 50-100 a copy and just don't retain any value. Sometimes that happens by bans, sometimes by powercreep, sometimes by reprints. It just really feels like if I did buy into a competitively viable deck, i'm stuck playing that one deck until I'm eventually forced into another deck and that when I do, my deck has zero resale value to put towards my new deck. For frame of reference with another card game, I've built 2 decks in Pokémon and got a full suite of nice accessories for my sister to play the Pokémon TCG for like 150 so far. Both of the decks (Gardevior and Meowscarada) have legs. They aren't the best, but both are definitely tiered, but we aren't really limited in deck building. Outside of TCGs, $1000 is a down payment on a used car. You can get an entry level motorcycle. You can buy a really fucking sweet guitar. It's just that where i'm at now it's not the best way for me to spend the money I have, especially in this economy.
My theory that Konami is running the numbers, isn’t liking what they’re seeing in regards to the health of Yugioh, and are just trying to milk people for everything they can before the game collapses under its own weight feels less and less crazy with every decision Konami makes. My local doesn’t even stock Yugioh anymore, all the local Walmarts had for weeks now is “Legendary Decks 2” and some of those packs of 30 cards that were likely found on a warehouse floor - it’s a Bad Time for Yugioh. I’m just happy the people I play with mostly play various Pet Decks that they’ve built over the years…
It's not Yugioh, retailers are killing their TCGs because they are one of if not the easiest thing to steal in the entire store. I was going around Walmarts looking for TrapTrix structures and only one had any, and all their cards were behind a manned register like cigarettes. One didn't have any trading card section whatsoever.
I think I was higher in the past. Dad, prophecy, mermils, cyber stein. I seem to recall those way more expensive. Like people say snake eyes is expensive, but just the witch and wanted are “expensive “ ash/oak/pop are less then 5. Dragon like 10-15? Princess was 15 but I think it’s 20 now. Bonfire was high at presale and abit after but it’s 40.
@@Xana17my bro áll of those cards are expensive for me cental Europe plays structures or stapeless plant link or you have money or budget exteremly budget decks
As others have pointed out these prices aren’t completely unheard of in yugioh but they used to be an exception. There’s been many points in yugiohs history where just 3 structure decks slapped together was a tier 1 deck, like dark world. All that to say the price of ygo formats would fluctuate alot more from format to format, where as now we seem to be in a perpetual cycle of expensive deck after expensive deck
I'm a casual player. I don't even go to locals. I've been trying to put together an Edison deck in paper just to play with friends the few times a year I see them. But a combination of the above plus the fact that living in Canada gatekeeps me from all the reasonably priced vendors on TCGplayer, means that my part time job-having ass can't even do that much without feeling like I'm wasting a lot of money on a small return of nostalgic whimsy. I love Yugioh, fuck this game.
Watched Mr Paleo himself on MD, looked for the cards on every online canadian store and only found some pieces locally (havent checked the 1 local store that doesnt have an online store) but it's still insane how piss poor the stock of YGO cards are in canada.
The biggest wall in terms of me getting into paper play, is the cost. If I want to be able to play decks, the speculative nature of the card costs makes it extremely difficult to not nuke my bank account.
Its this endless cycle of buying new overpriced cards that they put us since god knows when. Everyone is complaining about snake eyes right now it being either the price or how broken they are, but here's exactly whats going to happen: Konami drops new list hitting snake eyes cards harshly -> Player base & content creators reaction: "OH MY GOD THEY ACTUALLY DID IT, THEY FINALLY HIT SNAKE EYES LETS GOOOO THANK YOU KONAMI" -> Format stays ok for 1~2 weeks -> New best splashable engine is released, in this case fiendsmith which will surely also be very overpriced, you're naive if you think it will be affordable -> New engine warps the format -> "Wow, this format sucks ass, just ban fiendsmith requiem it will surely fix the game this time" -> Cycle repeats. Tbh I would mind it much less if cards were printed the way OCG does it so the good cards are easier to access, but they'll never do it, cuz players always crawl back to buying the overpriced cardboard.
It's not the community's fault that Konami willingly powercreeps the game to force players into buying new shit. It's also not the community's fault that Konami short prints cards and ups their rarity to force players into buying more packs. Little Knight is Super Rare in OCG but in TCG it's either Secret or Quarter Century; for instance.
Literally Just a cycle Complain about broken tier zero deck Buy it till it's jacked in price Complain about said jacked prices New broken deck releases which power creeps old one Then repeat Complain about broken tier zero.
@@dhanyl2725 I hate how midwits think "social construct" means something doesn't exist. First of all, the community at large doesn't choose which cards are broken and which aren't. Konami designs cards and combos. Second of all, Konami deliberately short prints and racks up rarity and they would do so regardless of what's considered meta. Hell, even packs are cheaper in OCG than TCG.
@@Pocket-Calculator The community could always just, not support this shit and migrate to other games. People willingly participating and enabling this bs is why it keeps happening. Same for loot boxes in video games a while back now battle passes.
In regards to prize money: they really should start making prize cards with unique one of a kind card art so the winner can at least sell them for a profit if they wanted to.
Lorcana and Flesh & Blood's prize support is pretty staggering, especially where Yugioh has to give rewards around a cash amount rather than just giving money. I think Flesh & Blood handles it's competitive circuit so much better than Yugioh does, and has excellent coverage. It also gives a lot of information and opportunities for players getting into the higher tier events as well.
@@ziltoid984 Its doing very well in my local area, and interest seems at an all-time high from what I've noticed. I don't have any numbers from any of the tier 2+ events to support this though. I also really like how they handle their Pro Tour invites, it makes it so people will want to keep attending events even if they get an invite.
@@ziltoid984 I was really excited for FaB and bought multiple blitz decks (warrior, shadow brute, runeblade, mechanologist, and ranger), but the gameplay just felt bland once i finally got to play. I never felt like I was doing anything interesting.
@@RedGalbothonestly the biggest issue FaB has is the new player experience. Blitz decks are very low power and not even in the premier format. The current format is probably the most yugioh it's ever been with the top deck having huge 15 card combo OTKs available to it. Not every class does that but there are definitely ones in there for the Yugioh players like me.
2:38 I used to work at a card vendor, and the worst people around were the MTG "investors". They were like, "what if a human had all joy surgically removed from their body".
I feel like a lot of the responses to stuff generalized as "yugioh is dying" has been "what do you mean, it's not dead". A lot of people don't seem to get that long before something as huge as yugioh dies there are going to be problems with it, and that leaving problems unfixed will hurt the game. I think part of what's changing is that more new card games are actually popular. It used to be you played magic or yugioh, or Pokémon if you were 8,but now I see a lot of competitive Pokémon, as well as new comer tcgs like one piece and lorcana doing a lot to entice people that are unhappy with the current state of yugioh. And the numbers are clear, event attendance is way down, and with no ycses in Europe for what we essentially know will be an entire year, there is little incentive for players to keep up with the game on that entire continent. It's not dead, and it's not too late to do anything, and it's not even wrong or bad if you're having fun, but there are a ton of potentially existential problems to the game right now.
Making a bold claim with attendance is down when recently they broke a Guinness record for most attendes. I agree there are problems that need fixing and more support for alt formats from Konami and the playerbase so that cards have more worth, but if you make a claim with attendance numbers being low, have a source to back it up. No EU YCS can be a reason different from no players. Remember that events aren't profitable, they're really a big advert for competetive play.
@@MrYouSerious>broke a Guinness world record for attendance. Yeah IN JAPAN. But in the west??? NO euro YCS’S but yet BREAKING ATTENDANCE RECORDS, almost like less YCS= MORE PEOPLE
@@johnathanlemus5584 Or maaaybe there have been some other factors to include in the organisation for a large scale tournament? And nowhere did they mention specifically the west market? And even now Nationals in Europe have a large number of players. For example, Italy had 1307 players (while MTG standard had 808 players in May 25th) and apparently German Nats has 2000 players registered. I understand that stores are losing on YGO as a product, but to say there are no eu YCS's simply due to "low attendance numbers" would be a lie in my opinion. To organize an event, you need to secure a whole lot more than just people that will attend.
I can spent $90 on Pokemon VGC and compete competitively for 2-3 years. And the prizes from competitive Pokemon (all forms) are much higher than anything Konami offers. Likewise, I can put in about the same amount of time building my team as I would building a YGO deck. Konami also has shit communication and community support. I've moved away because of many factors with YGO, not just prizing. It's been a month and I've genuinely found myself a bit happier after doing so. See you the next Dark Magician support announced 👋🏾😂
As someone that lives in Morocco where the small community that was once massive keeps trying to keep the game alive is struggling because of pricing the top decks are almost already known by the few Moroccans that already tops eu regionals some even NA regionals with super top tier strategies while everyone still has 2013 decks and simply cant afford to drop more than 100$ on a deck imo a playable strategy should cost 20-30$ and this is also why tactical try outs decks need to come to the TCG
the card printing policy konami uses for TCG makes no sense and the 0 investment in making an engaging and exciting tournament experience is a huge nail in the coffin, its almost like they want you to NOT care about the competitive scene.
Yugioh for a long time has been stagnant in terms of the general size of its player base. It can bring back old players pretty consistently, but very, VERY rarely does someone completely new enter into the game and stick with it. There’s always been a constant leaking of players quitting the game for whatever reason, but the core base of dedicated long term fans and the nostalgia fueled stubbornness of returnees have kept it afloat. But as things are going, the leaking is getting worse, and even the dedication is fading away. If this game dies, and I surely hope it doesn’t, if will be a slow and painful decline
As far as I'm aware that issue is primarily present in the TCG, where Konami of America are being very greedy assholes. The OCG looks comparatively better as Konami of Japan seems way less greedy than KoA, allowing the sought after cards to be printed in different rarities, and thus making them far more accessible to get (as well as not putting too much filler in the sets) So if anything, the game would only die in the TCG if KoA doesn't get their heads out of their asses and make the game far more accessible for us, while the OCG continues to stick around no problem
It's called a negative growth curve very common event (more people leave than are coming in)in MMOs before what's called a cascade event that causes the sudden collapse of a game
Being honest, as long as Duelingbook exists and has Goat ladder, I don't care. I've not had any interest in modern YGO! since the mid to late 2010s, just for how out of control the gameplay and power creep are, and how expensive it is. So as long as DB and Goat exist... no skin off my back.
@@DragonBallsolosyourverse it doesn't help there is a rather bad case of blending like when was the last time you saw decks at the top where they all played on very different axis and weren't just different flavors of swarm and extra deck spam
Somethings gotta change at Konami. Basically bullied my fav card shop into dropping yugioh all together and it was the only day of the week I could find the time to play.
I think Yu-Gi-Oh has two problems when it comes to card pricing. One, there just aren't very many collectible cards. In any given set there aren't very many cards that are clearly for collectors outside of maybe the chase rarity (starlight/ultimate rare) which are often just meta cards in a higher rarity. Two, the important meta cards are often secret rares and hard to pull. The combination of these two means the meta cards often end up being sought after by everyone. You look at Pokémon and there is a clear divide between cards for collectors (alternate arts, illustration rares) and cards for players. Yu-Gi-Oh lacks that clear divide, so the meta cards are effectively the chase cards.
As a vendor I would say the lottery style chase cards are actually the thing that is ruining the profitability of the game. They have resulted in all of the value in sets being heavily weighted towards a few rare pulls and the base sets being largely worthless, so the expected value of an average box is abysmal, far lower even than the distribution price of a box. Cracking cases even at an industrial scale now feels like a horrendous gamble rather than something that will provide a reliable return, so I find myself skipping more and more sets completely. It's no wonder so many stores are dropping Yu-Gi-Oh entirely when customers don't want to risk opening the product themselves and stores are basically being asked to take massive losses on 90% of sets to provide customers with the singles that they need.
Komoney should do it like pokemon or their own OCG, keep the extremely rare chase cards for those who want it but throw in a common/uncommon print for those who just want to play the card game and not treat the cards as their own stock market.
This creates also a big problem in terms of freedom given to the players. Yu gi oh got 10000 cards and a key part of the game is choosing what you want to play among all of those cards and decks. But now, because prices are so high, if you actually want to compete you basically have no choice. You either play Purrely/Floo or you have to dip your entire earnings into a single deck that will become obsolete in a few months. And even if you actually manage to win using a budget deck you still won't be able to buy the more expensive cards because prizes for tournaments are embarassing.
Hey I've a question since I'm early and you might read this: Would you rather have a Tier 0 format where the top tier deck is extremely cheap (~50$) or a varied, highly varied metagame where the barrier to entry is at least 500 USD? Because with a Tier 0 format with highly expensive cards and staples feel like it's the worst of both worlds...
@@N12015 Nah the perception of Tear 0 has been shifting from "it sucked" to "it wasn't that bad even if i really didn't enjoy it" like i undertand why people disliked it at the begginig it was just the best deck ever and you needed to play it, but also it was not like the full power Kashtira format that had 0 interaction, or like Super Heavy format, or teh current Snake Eye format which relays so heavely of drawing the out that is almost a coin flip.
@@Ms666slayer People have softened on it because it's no longer fresh, they've had this dumb gaslighting meme that it was actually great forced down their throats, and they're separated from the consequences of how terrible it was for the game by a year and a half. Two shops in my region who were all-in on Yugioh shuttered because of Tear format. 2022 was already not doing so hot, Tear format dried up attendance and card sales, and what should have been a recovery in 2023 finally strung them up. There was a decline in post-COVID but an abrupt freefall during Tear Zero and players and sales simply didn't return for the garbage Konami was slinging out of distribution.
@@Ms666slayer i maintain that tear format blew and the "lol it doesn't end on negates tho" quip that it spawned has done lasting damage to how people talk about these cards. if an unbreakable omni-negate board is a nuke, then ishizu tear was sugar ray robinson. like ok you got me dude, i admit i will be able to get into the ring and blink a few times against sugar ray cause he doesn't negate my city block before the match starts and so i guess it's infinitely more interactive, but there is no universe where i win in a fight against fucking sugar ray.
The other problem is normal players can look to another region playing yugioh - japan specificity, other ocg regions generally - and see cards we're paying 50-100 dollars for going for 5. And we know the reason is purely out of greed. So a lot of us are just... done. We can't afford it and don't want to waste money just for a card to get banned a few months later. Or conversely, it finally becomes available and cheap and then immediately gets banned (ie baronne style)
Dude I bought a deck that I completely understand isn't going to be "competitive" just an archetype I really like so that me and a friend can duel irl, and it cost like $100ish, there's like maybe 5-10 cards that would make its way into a real deck
It also doesn't help that comparative to OCG structures, ours are very hit or miss. So even official "buy this and play" products aren't a very good entry to yugioh.
Cristian Urena, Andres Torres, and Raphael Nevans, are some well known pro players who have appeared to have left yugioh. Urena recently tweeted how Ygo is so far behind other TCG's in prizing. He's since played Lorcana like 2 weeks ago. Andres Torres only came back to play the UDS championship because Konami asked all previous UDS winners to do a tourney. His deck profile afterwards, he stated he's not even playing ygo atm. Nevans is playing One Piece now I believe. Pak recently was selling his ygo collection for 50k, and said Lorcana & OP is where it's at (he may have been joking but who knows).
WotC comp MTG scene died when they first stopped caring years ago and using FIRE printing philosophy and then changing the scene to almost kill it. Then Hasbro being found out that WotC makes most of the money of a product in the company and then shoving commander down every pack released after that which basically seems to have murdered the pro scene completely except those with sunk cost fallacy and content creators that are stuck playing it.
The main issue i think is that even konamy has no clue of ehat the fuck they are doing and where they are going, except "i really hope players buy this product"
The people who sunk money into the old Retro Pack cards aren’t scalpers. Same goes for people who had large sums of money in old sets that got randomly reprinted. The closest thing to scalpers that Yugioh has are people who buy out staples, but even that hasn’t been seen much on release anymore. A lot of the stock issues seen with stuff like the Fiendsmith engine had more to do with high demand and less to do with buyouts. Most modern buyouts you see now are from speculators, like how Grass got bought out over the course of a month and some change before it got put to 1, or people buying out specific old cards in anticipation of a new deck (Verte before Dragun came out, all of the tuners that paired with Halq, etc.).
Slow down the power creep. Lessen the number of sets. Move around the rarities of cards that would be 50 - 100 dollars form ultra/secret to super. No more short prints. Do these three things and i feel you'll start to see a recovery but thats only a good start. Konami will need to do much much more.
@@denman2991it's pretty sad really. The idea of maximizing profit is creating the illusion that scarce yet super powerful cards will always sell a set. While I get the idea in practice I don't think it is the best or even most profitable way. I genuinely believe that if the packs had better odds for high value cards, Konami would see more sales and are in the long run only making their situation worse.
I will always remember talking to someone around the time castator the synchro was in a Tin, apparently Konami at the time didn't follow the secondary market.
A card game for a franchise marketed towards kids has cheaper to play meta decks (the most expensive to top cut NAIC was $107 compared to the cheapest deck to top cut YCS Indy being $209), gives out significantly better payouts, and treats the top players in the game like they're the top players in the game. (Players in stream matches have their previous tournament placings listed on stream, in between rounds will have recorded segments of players talking about themselves, their careers, and goals for the current world championship circuit) on occasion. Meanwhile the more mature game gives you a switch if you win and a mat that is slightly more unique than the one being sold by a vendor outside for $60
Tbh, one of the best things that could happen would be the game going under and a fan community making a free digital version of the game that self-regulates.
Thanks for putting this into perspective, MBT. I recently got into the One Piece card game after showing a friend the anime and while it's difficult to get booster packs and boxes, building an actual deck together is significantly cheaper and much more sustainable for me. I have a Yubel deck, been a fan of that card for years but I cannot afford to shill out 180 for 60 per copy of Phantom of Yubel, nor can I afford for anything else that might make that deck stronger. I was building Horus because I loved the original black flame deck but I'm having to wait for tins and other reprints so I can afford anymore of the cards after playing since the beginning.
Yeah.. I got priced out. I spent a ton of money getting my deck up to date. I hadnt played in a few years and decided to come back and go to my first locals… and it just happened to be during the height of tearlament format. So I played online for a little while and then stopped altogether shortly after Kashtira started getting hit.
Konami's just being Konami. Wring as mich profit out of an IP as possible until it no longer is making enough to be worth producing at high amounts, shelve it, then bring it back when people are nostalgic for it. However, that doesn't work for a card game, but you can tell that's the approach they're trying for when comparing to their other franchises. Silent Hill and Metal Gear Solid have both been dead for years, only for SH2 and MGS3 to get remakes, all while Castlevanis has gotten 3 retro game collections in the past 5 years and we just got a new Contra game that hearkens back to the old titles for the NES/SNES. If someone really wants to do an analysis as to why it seems like Yu-Gi-Oh is going down the drain right now, they just need to look at Konami's previous business practices and treatment of fans of other IPs that they own.
Yeah, I feel you. I got back into YGO in 2020 and played a lot of Dueling Book ever since. Recently I enjoyed Centur-Ion a lot and as I have a job now, I thought I could take that deck to locals. But my dreams were shattered when the cost was like 400 €. Now I don't own any staples so, I guess it make some sense, but even just buying the core for 150 - 200 € for a deck that many don't even consider META is baffling to me.
My first and last foray into paper play was the traptrix structure deck. I had a ton of fun when the deck could reasonably appear to compete, but when the time came for me to be like "hey I should probably be playing something stronger for the format," I couldn't justify the price. Now i'm a filthy Master Duel player exclusively, but at least there i can experiment with deckbuilding and strategies and it costs me maybe like 40 bucks to hard buy an entire new deck instead of a $100+ for a playset of a single card
As someone who took a break from paper play a few years back, I struggle to find a deck to get back in that I can afford. If it weren't for master duel I'd probably stop play altogether
It's crazy to see that nothing has changed. I quit the competitive scene near the Geargia otk/Fire Fist/hat meta and the problem started around the end of this area. It's almost been a decade and I've been following Yu-Gi-Oh! from the shadows for years. Nothing has changed, it's only got worse and worse. People will complain until they quit.
I got sort of interested into Yu-Gi-Oh! again after finding you and Cimo on The History of Yu-Gi-Oh! series back in 2020 but I mean, it was COVID. My interest in playing was renewed when Master Duel was released. The reason I haven't actually bought any cardboard yet however is basically this: Yu-Gi-Oh! is an expensive hobby, and I don't want to put that kind of money into a manufactured product where the viability shifts with the feelings of its producer which has to balance both tournament policy and what is effectively *monetary* policy. I just don't get the sense they're particularly good at responding to either demand, like a central bank with a dual mandate. Blegh.
My cousin used to play magic seriously and would make upwards of 20k a year playing part time. After however long he saved up he now opened and owns his own game shop!
There are two LGS in my area. Up until 2019 I had a local on both saturdays and sundays. 2020 saw the first stop holding locals (obviously) which in turn meant it had trouble moving products, so it stopped holding YuGiOh products altogether. The second LGS, a few months ago, decided it would no longer be opening boxes as everytime they did so, they were losing out on profits. No amount of singles they could sell from it would outweigh the price of the box itself, and the unsold cards were taking up too much space. They still hold locals... for now.
Having been unemployed for the last year and counting, I couldn't afford to play paper even if it were in a healthy state economically. Meanwhile on Master Duel I have over 30 fully built decks and just recently crafted a Little Knight because I didn't happen to pull it out of the packs. Videos like these really feel like they're talking about a game from another universe as a MD-only player.
I clicked off the video when he said "High end speculators and vendors are a nessassity". THis must literally be the biggest L take in the history of MBT takes.
Frankly, it seems like the game needs to die more before Konami will ever make any big changes. If the sets weren't so predatory and you could actually build decks from buying a box, then maybe people would have more incentive to buy products from stores. Instead they are so bad that the culture of just buy singles came to exist. We still don't have any real support for alternate formats, even with the rise of Edison. The prizes for tournament play will certainly never change when the numbers of players attending just keeps going up. What about the seeming phenomenon of tournament play going up while yugioh locals are dying? I'm not even sure if that is statistically true but a lot of people seem to say it's happening in their areas. I would be curious if you could do a Twitter/UA-cam poll type thing to get an idea. The death of the casual locals certainly happened where I live. It has no casual players now and there is a core set of less than probably 8 players who treat it as prep for their tournaments. If the game is over $100 to play a casual deck, there's no casual format, and there's less locals that are actually for casuals... then the game really is dying, at least for casuals.
I'm almost positive the tournament numbers are either being inflated by Konami or they are paying people to play. No other game has such a discrepancy between lack of casual players and this so called increase of competitive.
It's a shame that TCGs exclusively have to have this speculator/investor horse shit and can't just work as an actual proper product for sale like literally every other toy or traditional game.
Nothing works as an "actual proper product". If them share holders arent seeing higher profits than last year then that's a failure and the rich fucks will get pissed off. Every publicly traded company has to answer to the shareholders and only them. You make x amount this year and its barely higher than last year then you gotta answer them on why your company aint growing or some shit.
It would be so awesome if maybe EU could just crack down on booster packs all together, just fuck it all make sets structure decks or don’t sell your product, imagine how great that would be, they could totally do it too, out of any 100 card core set you can just throw away 60 of those cards it’s all pack filler chafe anyway, costs the same to print an engraver as it does to print a vanilla. If they can make structures cost like $13 and they fly off the shelf I’d genuinely be surprised if someone could come up with a reason this couldn’t exist
Something not really mentioned specifically here is that MTG does things to keep cards at specific price points, not just super expensive or dirt cheap like we get in yugioh. Its pretty common to look at a card before release and be like "that will probably settle at $40 after release and remain their for 10 years"(or at least a few years if its price is based on standard play) and do the same with 20 and even 10 dollar cards and if you know the game you'll often be right. They also do things for collectors, its not just you can either have the worst version or the best version like in ygo, you will often get different versions with different value and value retention or growth. Foil vs non-foil, borderless vs standard, showcase and collectors versions. Even if sometimes it can be overboard in recent years it still allows for a lot of cards in the game to have a wide range of prices. Super cheap prints for people on a budget, super expensive prints for collectors and speculators, and the ones in the middle for people who have a little spending money and just wanna make their deck a little nicer. And sense there have a much larger impact on the cards appeal compared to super vs ultra or ultra vs secret, i mean I can barely tell the different between my CRs or starlights and my ultras and secrets on the table in some lighting. Its the same art and same frame at the end of the day in 99% of the cases.
It's in Konami's best financial interests to force everyone on to MD. Cutting out the middle man means they reap full profit. Konami, just like WOTC, never gave a shit about your LGS or how you can buy cards for pennies to play your tier 10 decks against your friend's tier 6 deck.
Then Master Duel needs to implement the best-of-3 format style like in the regular TCG. Maybe even code in the option to include a side deck. Oh, and did I mention their banlist needs work?
@@cameraredeye3115 The banlist and it's frequency is easily the biggest issue presently. Meaningful hits are necessary but boyyyyy oh boy, do the Konami upper management pachinko executives LOVEEEE their sunken loss addicts.
Sickness can quickly turn to death if left unchecked. Switched to OP back in November after noticing I don't really matter anymore (in terms of gameplay mostly, as every deck did the same thing and skill expression was minimal for anyone remotely advanced/competitive in this game) and the diceroll decides 90% of games, never been happier. Seeing how things got even worse since then and every competitive deck has devolved to one-card combos and 20 non-engine, I don't see things getting better. Will probably never come back to YGO unless major changes happen and I have 0 regrets or complains about that.
@@exalted8571 Depends on what you'll like to play, but most decks are very affordable and there are high-rarity versions that can go astronomical, but in general, a competitive deck (with which you'd be able to consistently win events) will run you ~200$ and depending on you go for, most of the cards will be reusable for other decks, as long as it's the same color. Let me put it this way - My first deck back then I spent ~200$ and played it for 4 months. That same deck is now soon viable again (it wasn't for a format due to some cards being a direct counter, no need to go into details) and I can play it again with no investment and could upgrade it with ~60$ to make it even better, but I don't have to. My second deck is ~200$ (with 3x the same card being 130$ and a staple that you can play in every yellow deck) so basically you could run that deck for 50$ as well if you don't wanna spend 130$ for 3 cards. One of my friends did that and was topping events with a 60$ deck, basically. My third deck is ~150$, you can buy the entire deck for less than that now and is going to be 1 of the 3-4 Tier 1 decks for the next ~6 months. There are other Tier 1 decks, depending on what you like, that run on a similar budget but in general, a decent deck runs you 100, competitive decks run you ~150-250$ and depending on your choice will last you a long time. And obviously, if you wanna play fun/less competitive decks, those are naturally cheaper. Similar to YGO, once you get your "staples" and "handtrap sets", most of those will be reusable in other decks with appropriate colors. Generally, I'd say the game is much more affordable and most importantly, it has great prize support and is actually fun, interactive and skill expression matters in almost every decision you have to make, despite the game being "simpler". In my ~8 months of playing, I've paid for like 70-80% of my total collection with tournament prizes without even topping any big events (a regional top64 is ~700$, top 32 ~1500$, top 16 ~3k, top 8 is easy 10k$ and even participaing in such events is a win even if you go 0-10).
@@exalted8571 Much more affordable than YGO, you'd have to, like in most card games, get some of the "staples" etc, but once you get going it's fine. The best part is that prizing is actually amazing. I spent ~200$ on my first deck, ~220 on my second one and 150 on the third (which is 1 of the upcoming 3-4 Tier 1 decks for the next 6 months, at least). All 3 of those decks are currently perfectly playable and competitive and I could upgrade them a bit as well if I wanted to. In my short time playing, I've made back like 80-85% of everything I've spent so far in tournament prizes, which were almost entirely locals. For example, a Regional top64 is ~800, 32 is ~1500, 16 is ~3k and top8 is easy 10k+ - let's not even talk about winning those events or worlds. That's basically impossible in YGO, regardless how and where you compete.
I agree with all your statements, except the one about yugi being the best TCG in the world. I've had much more fun playing Pokemon and now MTG than all those years having to endure YGO's excruciating state.
I find yugioh comes and goes in cycles and we never really got the latest cycle because of Covid and rush duels. You will always have the die hard players but also the casual players who quit at the end of a cycle because of new mechanics and older players get a breathe of fresh air. What I think they need is a new anime and series to reboot the series and get more newer blood into the game and refresh the cycle
Covid was a huge outlier. Everyone under the sun was looking for good old nostalgia trips to try and help them get through that hellacious period so every jumped to retro games and card games they knew from back in their childhoods, that period is now over and everyone is too poor to afford hobbies. A new anime wont stop the game from being a degenerate 1 card combo and hand trap game unless they flat out reset the game itself and not reboot an anime.
The reprint policy also has devalued almost all my rogue-ish decks in recent years. Not to mention every rogue deck has been released with at least a single 15-20€ card you need 3 of, if not two of those. The average rogue deck price excluding insane priced staples is still 100-120€ish for this reason and even a lower end player with a few 15-20€ cards is bleeding money in the long run because you just never know. Do I buy this Soul of Rage for 27€? Oh next day it's 3€ Should I get diviners? They were 17€, only getting an ultimate reprint in an OTS so 14-15€ is a decent deal, LMAO next day announced as an ultra or whatever in a battles of legends set. I didn't buy these now, I bought them quite a while ago, but it still demonstrates how your supposed investment bleeds quite heavily and if you do this for long enough it starts to hurt. Why does it hurt? A lack of real trade capital... it means you end up with a lot of stuff you are tired of but they just aren't worth selling. Why should I sell off my Adventure Package with all cards at 3 or a runick engine or whatever, when the money you get for it is not worth the time it takes to ship? Not to mention nobody sells these cheap cards anymore locally because they (same as me) rather keep it in case it ever comes up again, as they know they will have a hard time gathering it again since nobody bothers selling junk at junk prices even on CM.
This is what exhausted me. Rarity Collection bled out all of the small value my collection of playables had and made me feel like an idiot for engaging with previous products enough to have a nice mid rarity staples binder.
say it with me. "Konami is not at fault for the third party market's pricing and everyone would be pissed off if they tried to regulate it. Konami is at fault for other bad things and blaming them for other things makes the actual things they're doing wrong seem less bad."
It's worst in third world countries that are not affiliated with Konami like where I'm from (Morocco) The prices are really high for us since you can only get cards hy having them shipped and sellers rarely ever seel cards with a lower value when they get reprintee plus our average salary is 500 USD.
The whole discussion about the secondary market, how catering to investors is "necessary", and the ideas on how to stabilize the secondary market are just bleh. TCGs just need to kill the garbage physical gacha model that they're currently built on. If vendors are struggling to keep up by gatekeeping crucial cards, then having a bunch of optional, expensive purchases won't be enough either. Especially tying purchases to competitive prizing. If someone wants to be competitive and generate revenue from it in a volatile meta, then if dirt cheap alternatives to expensive cards exist; a kinder secondary market doesn't correlate to selling those expensive products that investors want to move. If anything, better competitive prizing just feeds into the current, terrible secondary market. Since all the best cards are at fuck off rarities and the prices are jacked up, then that improves the situation for investors who overcharge on cards because it makes it easier to scalp.
I'm primarily a fighting game player, but my girlfriend has been teaching me Yu-Gi-Oh. It's been very fun, but good lord I thought fighting game monetization of kinda wack. Wanting to play a deck like Vanquish Soul and learning that in order to build solid lists I need to spend more money than it takes to buy an entire fighting game and its DLC passes is really disheartening and does not wanna make me play Yu-Gi-Oh. I'm stuck putting together scrimblo decks for pennies that interest me like Libromancer, or bumming a Spright list off of one of my friends. I wanna be able to play in person and experiment with different decks and archetypes, but the price point is just too insane to justify it.
the secondary market for older formats is ridiculous too. 6 years ago when I got into goat I was able to buy delinquent duos lightly played for like $3. Last night when throwing a random fun deck together I noticed I didn't own a 6th copy of duo and the cheapest one I was able to get on TCG player was $18 moderately played from some < 20 sale seller :(
My old lgs tried to get into yugioh cause 10 players asked, he bought product, they never showed up to the lgs ever and he felt so burnt due to how hard it is to move sealed product he won't buy yugioh anymore
@@AverageInternetCitizen maxx c is no worse than not having enough outs to a snake eye combo, both of them lose you the game. Called by to 2 maybe 3 and some cross outs and maxx c ain’t that much of a problem
@@JamieFlett-b6n the problem is that maxx c dominates deck building. as soon as it is legal you have to play all the outs. Also Crossout is limited in formats where maxx c is legal, otherwise you would run three. in the end a single card determines 1/4 (or more) of your whole deck.
@@JamieFlett-b6nthe issue with Maxx C is the only answer to it is to “draw the out” as well as it’s power going first and second. Going first? Do your combo, end on your negates. Your opponent goes, you drop Maxx C, they attempt to stop you with called by or ash, just negate, lol. And going second, your opponent does literally anything on their first turn, drop Maxx C, they have to either set and pass or let you draw a shit ton of cards.
I feel like they watched Kaiba rip up Blue-Eyes and wanted to keep doing that. They wanna keep vendors in the play, but when they do that with super powerful cards, the pricing goes crazy and players stop buying.
Speaking about Konami giving players reasons to invest in decks, why I as a european tcg player should even consider getting a competitive deck with little to no ycses in the near future? Like I'm super happy about the quality of our ycses but I'd actually like to have one to attend
I thought that the Light of Destruction rerelease was for the older Lightsworn cards to go with the support in Legacy of Destruction, but those were already reprinted in Battles of Legends Chapter 1.
I will always say an easy solution to many problems would be changing the way cards are printed to have high and low rarities. Makes the game cheaper and more accessible, while also increasing the value of getting boxes because you could finish multiple decks with a couple boxes. I’m not buying 4 boxes if it’s nearly impossible to build my deck that I could spend 80$ on building the core from singles online.
I do think something barely mentioned here is that Yugioh is suffering from the COVID era speculation drive. The speculation drive on anything that people could have fun with from TCGs to retro games has resulted in a dramatic inflation of pricing across the board. I've been playing for 11 years and the pricing of decks from COVID onward has been high but not uncharacteristic. I know MBT you probably started playing around 2016 which was more of a low point, but for example New Challengers Qliphort was $1000. There were several really pricy Secret rares in that deck. Dragon Ruler variants consistently topped out at $800 or so in part because of Dracossack. But what doesn't make sense is that Dracossack, a Secret Rare from one set that was a mandatory 3 of for over a year's worth of time, from a set that was harder to pull specific secret rares out of than modern sets, is still like $20 less than a one-of that you might run two on occassion that also has a speculative rarity printing. The only good reason for that is that the playerbase is bigger in 2024 than it was in 2013 or 2014, but like look at the comments, clearly nobody believes that. We certainly don't have data. It's not even like the pricing of core sets has really gone up either. There's just a ton of speculation going on because that's what COVID did, and with Yugioh's aggressive reprint policy, which is a good thing 95% of the time, it turns cards into S:P Little Knight into a stock market. How high can you get away with selling it before it gets reprinted? The entire landscape is just very weird to me now. It's weird to think that one ofs are going to just be more expensive than incredibly relevant meta staples like Infinite Impermenance or Ash Blossom EVER were.
idunno, the magic pro scene looks kinda lame too, feel like you're moreso referencing the 00s-10s scene. PTs come across as an afterthought even to wizards since they usually focus more on announcing sets than actual tourney coverage during the event. And the game sure as heck isn't any more affordable, especially its older formats because of the RL.
MTG is actually having it way worse than yugioh Cards are way more expensive, and due to rotation you cant buy staples and build a new deck for way cheaper like yugioh
@@SaragossiDeer Even the former "eternal formats" have turned into rotational formats with how much Hasbro wants to milk the shit out of the game now. And even then it's the same as YGO, print broken ass mythic rares in which people need to buy them to stay competitive then ban the shit out of them in 6 months when they've realized how insane the cards were and rinse and repeat.
Given yugioh all started with an anime/Manga where the grand prize for a tournament was 3million or 30k depending on which translation its insane that tournaments irl don't have grand prizes worth anything
This is probably said on another post but I use any non essential (read-hobby) like a formulae. X (the product cost) divided byY (Times I will use said product) = Z. For example- I bought a pre con commander deck for £20 from Amazon. If I use said deck on 4 different occasions, that means I’ve essentially paid £5 per time to use that deck. There are of course other variables but this is why I can’t invest in a 700/800 dollar deck which will be powercrept. It financially doesn’t make sense.
"700 dollars" tells far from the full story. Playing yugioh in Latin America, Africa, the Middle East, hell even the Balkans is reserved to higher class. You want to buy an S:P Little Knight in Brazil? 900 reais. Trident Dragon? 500. Ash Blossom? 100 for a playset. A full Snake-Eyes deck? You're looking at 3k-5k. Note: Minimum salary is currently 1400 reais.
It still seems that Yu-Gi-Oh is in a weird spot market wise. Crazy expensive to play meta because they insist in rarity bumping all the staples in top tier archetypes followed by collections depreciating massively due to reprints. The only thing they have going for them is the high end chase cards(collector rare etc) but if collectors loose faith in those because of reprints......damn. Pokémon do it best, all the value is in alt art chase variants of other cards in the set. People chase those and sell the game pieces for cheap(yes people do play 😂) the result is a strong collectables market and a really cheap to play game. Wouldn't hurt for konami to take note maybe
Just because we aren’t dead- doesn’t mean you’re not killing us.
very true
catchy, albeit exaggerative.
oh boo hoo 😂
Although there are definitely other barriers like seperate hobbies and not having time, every time i consider picking up a physical deck and trying paper play the only thing that stops me is pricing. When basically rogue budget meta decks cost 100+ dollars just to be able to actually be capable of playing a competitive game I just think the investment would never return. Imagine paying 100 dollars for a live service game just to be at a disadvantage and have to pay for paid dlc every update just to keep playing on top of that.
last part described Destiny 2 pretty well sadly, and quite a few games.
Crazy how people love master duel for the most part. But people insist on resale value, and the ability to profit off playing when it comes to the paper version.
Every step master duel took away from those things only improved it
@@LilyApus I was just about to say "This sounds like why I quit Destiny 2"
Yeah i would just rather play master duel where i can build my decks by simply playing the game and doing missions/solo duels. Why pay $100+ to play a game (plus costs of admission fees and travel not to mention taking up my free time) when i can just sit down on my console in front of the TV and boot up a free to play, easy to access version of the same game. The only benefit really is the TCG having a more up-to-date card pool. Other than that you need tons of money and free time to be able to play TCG, both of which are things I'm lacking.
Also im not the person to get into buying and reselling cards for a profit, it takes too much time and isnt worth the money it brings in. I just want to play the game, not go on a side quest to ensure i get value out of my investments. If i buy a deck its because i wanna play it consistently, not just once or twice per format then resell it. If I buy these things its so that i am able to play with others, not to spend time listing them online for resale at a mark-up. Im not gonna buy a mathmech deck for one format then sell it so i can get into unchained the next. If i buy a deck, its to own it permenantly. Not just for one format. Even if that deck is no longer viable even by rogue standards.
@@chaosjoey123 The big difference is there's no secondary market and cards don't have any actual value. In MD you either buy packs from Konami to try and pull a card or you pay them directly with virtual currency that's not worth anything to get the card. Now imagine that all the staple handtraps cost 120 UR a copy and cards for the current meta decks cost 180 UR a copy and, on top of that, during each new patch the cards have a chance to shoot up in price or crash down to 10 UR. All of a sudden making decks in MD seems a lot less fun. Turn that virtual currency that's not worth anything into actual real life money and you have the TCG.
The newest Rarity collection was $430 a box in Australia. For context, a Brand new Playstation 5 is $800. that is why yugioh is dying
thats a au problem
@@kotzenderkeks61 no its a pricing problem, rarity collection 1 was well under HALF that price.
How is PS5 still this expensive
@kotzenderkeks61 RA2 is 55% more expensive in the UK vs RA1 with the same cards per pack/same number of packs per case.
They upped the price for prints with less packs/more cards per pack to justify the price hike, but in the EU is just price hiked with no additional cards per pack/case. £9 per booster is nuts
The rarity collection 2 at my local wants to charge $180 per box
Konami: "If you're a broke boy just say sooo." *Bites overpriced card*
Team APS showed it the best 😂😂
I mentioned the Nintendo Switch bit today and people were saying "that's insane, why would Konami spend 60 grand a year on Nintendo Switches for those who make it to top 8" not understanding that they're already doing that.
This game is so fucked, and none of us can agree on what to do to fix this.
Well actually yah there are things to agree on to fix it. One don't over complicate the game, stop putting so many words in one text box. And three stop making combos too long. And cards that flat out prevent people from playing the game. Cause I don't know about you but I'm tired of dragging a box of cards and a mat to sit there and watch somebody else play the game only to get to my turn and either scoop or either pass and let them end me on the following turn. Then play round two where I'm met with interruption and scoop and game over. So tell me how is that braindead type of playing is healthy for any game.
@@AaronHeininger The problem is that you won't be able to get everyone to agree on what 100+ cards need to be banned to facilitate games with more turns on average and more back and forth.
If I say "ban Spright Blue", you'll get a bunch of defenders telling me i'm just bad at the game lmao.
@@AaronHeininger Exactly stranger, exactly!
You say "none of us" as if players had any say on this, as if it was the players' responsability.
It's not up to the players to decide how things go; it's up to the people who actually work in the important positions.
Truth is, over 99% of the players take the game less seriously than the incompetent idiots who run it.
None of you can agree, because none of you know everything, and you don't need to know anything to be the consumer of this product.
You cannot do anything about the game, but you can do everything about your own experience.
The game is fucked in the tcg, the ocg just has way better products and in turn its way cheaper to play.
After watching what speculators did to TCGs, especially Pokemon, around 2020, I have a tough time believing that they are a net positive.
Heck, the Alpha Investments scandal surrounding MetaZoo should prove speculators are a hard negative in any game.
tbf Metazoo wasn't made to last, who the fuck looks at metazoo and says "yeah, this one of the next big 3"
@kinoalove5817 it's about the manipulation, if Rudy had been dealing in stocks instead of trading cards he'd probably have caught some criminal charges for it.
They are lest every set be a Legacy of Destruction. If you don’t entice people to buy and open a set in bulk for a few chase cards to serve as a return on investment, no one buys any product and it’s left to rot on store shelves. Everything in that product inflates as a result.
LEDE didn’t have anything you could invest in. No one buys it as a result and now Tenpai Dragon Paidra is a $20 card despite being only a super rare.
@@thedigitaldummy3098 its why pokemon has managed to keep game pieces not too expensive. putting seperate collectors cards in gets more poeple to open the set.
I always find the "super agressive reprint policy" to be a really funny joke because at best its getting reprinted a year later at which point most stuff released becomes ass
@rickmel09 "most"
@rickmel09 infimp and ash famously were still very expensive years after their first print and several reprints. Both were reprinted in structure decks and both were more expensive as singles (!!) than the msrp of the deck.
Honestly, when you think about it a little more, the reprint policy is just bad for everyone. Expensive cards getting reprinted is great for the players, but you're looking at probably close to an entire YEAR after release for that reprint to come and, by then, the cards are powercrept and/or new staples have been released and now you have to start the wait all over again for those cards. It's just an endless cycle of waiting for reprints and it sucks. I would have loved to play Spright during POTE format. It's really great that I can finally pick up the deck for a reasonable price 2 YEARS later and at a time where the deck is mostly irrelevant as well. Sometimes it doesn't even matter if a card gets reprinted if Konami decides to put it in a garbage set, short print it, etc. Prosperity didn't become an affordable card until 3 entire years after it's initial release.
The reprint policy is bad for vendors/sellers because if they aren't able to move their stock within that timeframe before the reprint, then they have to start selling those cards at a loss. This makes investing in Yugioh to begin with really risky and, for a lot of people, not even worth it. This sorta thing has only gotten worse over the last couple years especially for local card shops when it comes to getting rid of product.
It's been mentioned a billion times at this point, but going with the OCG printing style would benefit EVERYONE. The players can get their hands on the cheaper versions of cards immediately because they are actually affordable. Vendors/sellers are fine because they can sell the chase rarity of cards to those who want to bling out their deck and don't have to worry about those cards losing a ton of value within a year due to reprints being less common. Collectors similarly don't have to worry about their shiny cardboard becoming worthless for the same reason. Knowing that you are guaranteed to pull some cards you want from a box would entice players to actually buy boxes so local card shops don't have tons of product just wasting away on their shelves. Everything about the current reprint policy is just so bad for everyone involved.
Konami would never go with OCG printing style in the TCG, they enjoy how much money they reap from a continually shrinking playerbase too much to care about the future of the game
100% took the words out of my mouth, especially the Spright issue. Great, can build it for super cheap and have another casual deck I can play but 2 years after the deck was released is actually ridiculous. The deck came and went and hasn't really been an actual contender since mid 2023
the lack of seperation really does not help. the collectors cards can't be too rare since they have to be game pieces but they can't be accessible to not lose the collectors value. just seperating ultra rare + into collectors cards and common to super into collectors cards solves the issue.
@@DoorMatt-Live I think they just enjoy milking it right now and don't worry much about it getting smaller in the long run in the west, as long as OCG stays strong. Happens all the time with stuff like asian mmo's ad things like that.
actually no, the ocg printing of sets wouldnt help, it would just make vendors stay away from the game. why would i invest in a box thats flat neg everytime, always, you cant make profit with it? even the chase raritys are to lil to less to make it worth and they even reprint the collectors stuff every now in then in the same rarity. its flat out worse.
it would be better for the playerbase but if u cant get your singles anymore decently its getting even worse than now
Its also really frustrating that prizing for YCS' and such are so abysmal BECAUSE of unique situation that the side events have going on. Giant cards and uncut sheets are so unique and cool so WHY ARE THEY PRIZING FOR SIDE EVENTS. I can guarantee that people would love to receive a Giant card or uncut sheet of secrets/starlights instead of 7 year old console and a rubber mat.
TCG Konami has trudged on with their practices for core sets, ignorant that people are slowly realizing how terrible core set design for the wider community. We wouldn't need the degree of reprints if we were to follow OCG core sets which have multiple rarities for the super and ultra rare cards (Secret rare is one of those alternate rarities, OCG uses rares instead of super rares).
Prizing for big events could be special alt prints for desirable cards in the metagame. This would drive the price of the market towards giving value to these exclusive cards, cards reserved for the top players and players who attend big events. This would push down the price of core set prints, making them more accessible.
Of course TCG Konami wouldn't change this, since they don't really see an obligation to improve the game with so many current players at this point. They'll probably take some action against Snake-Eye in a couple months to maybe bring back some players, but by then Fiendsmith will be there to fill the void and the Snake-Eye problem with persist.
which means completely follow ocg, quess what tcg players hate to play in ocg format and cards, we players outside japan have to learn japanese before asian english release, you all tcg players complain too much, its irritiating,
@@r3zaful Konami fixing their print policy outside Japan doesn't mean everyone has to play ocg format, what are you on about? And even if it was the same format you don't need to learn Japanese, MTG and Pokémon have world tournaments where everyone can have different language cards and it isn't an issue
Everyone brings up the rarity thing and that's true and all but OCG packs are also like $1.50. That's dramatically going to change how accessible the game is and the fact is TCG players get so fleeced on sealed product lol.
@@r3zaful OCG has English sets, much like TCG has German, Spanish, and French translated prints.
I also find OCG sets to be far more appealing to purchase as they are far more pro customer with rarities and distribution.
@@lamiaprincess6371Even with the brief period of adjustment, it'd ultimately be a net positive for the playerbase. There'd be less need for reprint sets as the necessary prints would be in abundance in the release sets.
I had a moment where my brain kinda broke on ygo recently where someone told me I could choose between building a deck to be competitive for no prizing OR i could just buy a ps5 and several games for a couple $100 less 💀
i love playing the game man but the math on that equation just doesn't add up
problem is, you have to grind with these decks, you either win or top every display tournament/giant ots stuff/and so on or you just flat out lose money and even when you do that, its not for sure you can make + with it.
The cards still work and have value without internet, the playstation becomes a worthless brick that doesn't even perform basic functions without it
@@vanshires what?
The LODT reprint being rear-ended by Substitoad's reprint in the new BOL set makes me think there's like three different teams at KOA and they don't communicate.
It's the same odditie that gave us OTS 25 Ulti Diviner and then a week and some change later it's in the Battle of Legends set. Never seen so many head scratchers happen in such a short time
Hey guys we need Lightsworn reprints.
Employee 1: "Sure boss, BLC1 is a perfect place to put them. We can throw a few into RC02 as well! While we're at it we can put Substitoad in Battles of Legend to tick off another Edison reprint."
Employee 2: "Sure boss, LODT reprint on the way! We can get Substitoads out too, after all it's still on the banlist right? Right? Anyway LODT coming up!"
Employee 3: "Where's the structure deck for this quarter? KoJ hasn't talked to me in months. Ah yeah sure boss I'll get the 2014 Lightsworn structure deck rewaved."
And it all started with that damn Platinum/Silver Masterpiece Dark Magician for $1400…
that's collector shit who cares don't but it fool
If you take into account the prize support problem, it actually began with the Exodia Riot in Japan almost 25 years ago.
Wizards greatest mistake was the reserve list
Sadly, it also likely saved the game. Players *revolted* after _Chronicles_ was printed, and creating the Reserved List was the only way to keep established players from leaving en masse.
I hate it too, since it keeps me from experimenting with some Legacy brews that I wanted to try.
This gets harder and harder to say is true as time goes on tbh
*laughs in 30th anniversary *
@@willooo09 in all honesty 30th anniversary wasent really anything lmao. like sure, bad PR and a shitty product, but thats all it was. reserved list continues to plague prices for legacy/vintage/cEDH and will do so unless the reserve list is abolished. there are 0 long term problems caused directly by 30th anni, its apples to oranges.
@@willooo0930th anniversary is something that only could have happened because of the reserved list.
I never got back into Yugioh because of the cost. I know I don't *need* the $1000 deck to have fun so many of the key cards can be 50-100 a copy and just don't retain any value. Sometimes that happens by bans, sometimes by powercreep, sometimes by reprints. It just really feels like if I did buy into a competitively viable deck, i'm stuck playing that one deck until I'm eventually forced into another deck and that when I do, my deck has zero resale value to put towards my new deck.
For frame of reference with another card game, I've built 2 decks in Pokémon and got a full suite of nice accessories for my sister to play the Pokémon TCG for like 150 so far. Both of the decks (Gardevior and Meowscarada) have legs. They aren't the best, but both are definitely tiered, but we aren't really limited in deck building.
Outside of TCGs, $1000 is a down payment on a used car. You can get an entry level motorcycle. You can buy a really fucking sweet guitar. It's just that where i'm at now it's not the best way for me to spend the money I have, especially in this economy.
My theory that Konami is running the numbers, isn’t liking what they’re seeing in regards to the health of Yugioh, and are just trying to milk people for everything they can before the game collapses under its own weight feels less and less crazy with every decision Konami makes.
My local doesn’t even stock Yugioh anymore, all the local Walmarts had for weeks now is “Legendary Decks 2” and some of those packs of 30 cards that were likely found on a warehouse floor - it’s a Bad Time for Yugioh. I’m just happy the people I play with mostly play various Pet Decks that they’ve built over the years…
It's not Yugioh, retailers are killing their TCGs because they are one of if not the easiest thing to steal in the entire store. I was going around Walmarts looking for TrapTrix structures and only one had any, and all their cards were behind a manned register like cigarettes. One didn't have any trading card section whatsoever.
As someone who got into the game in the 2020s I just assumed current deck pricing was always the norm...
I think I was higher in the past. Dad, prophecy, mermils, cyber stein. I seem to recall those way more expensive. Like people say snake eyes is expensive, but just the witch and wanted are “expensive “ ash/oak/pop are less then 5. Dragon like 10-15? Princess was 15 but I think it’s 20 now. Bonfire was high at presale and abit after but it’s 40.
you never experienced lower prices, it IS the norm. As said prices would never return to pre-covid era
@@Xana17my bro áll of those cards are expensive for me cental Europe plays structures or stapeless plant link or you have money or budget exteremly budget decks
Just ask the veterans how much was TeleDAD and/or Lightsworn worth back in the day, perhaps Nekroz as well which had the worst short-printing ever.
As others have pointed out these prices aren’t completely unheard of in yugioh but they used to be an exception. There’s been many points in yugiohs history where just 3 structure decks slapped together was a tier 1 deck, like dark world. All that to say the price of ygo formats would fluctuate alot more from format to format, where as now we seem to be in a perpetual cycle of expensive deck after expensive deck
thats what happens when a cassino company owns a trading card game i guess
Omg it is a casino company ! I had to google this
YEP literally stopped making actual MGS games to make MGS pachinco machines instead
I'm a casual player. I don't even go to locals. I've been trying to put together an Edison deck in paper just to play with friends the few times a year I see them. But a combination of the above plus the fact that living in Canada gatekeeps me from all the reasonably priced vendors on TCGplayer, means that my part time job-having ass can't even do that much without feeling like I'm wasting a lot of money on a small return of nostalgic whimsy. I love Yugioh, fuck this game.
Watched Mr Paleo himself on MD, looked for the cards on every online canadian store and only found some pieces locally (havent checked the 1 local store that doesnt have an online store) but it's still insane how piss poor the stock of YGO cards are in canada.
The biggest wall in terms of me getting into paper play, is the cost. If I want to be able to play decks, the speculative nature of the card costs makes it extremely difficult to not nuke my bank account.
Its this endless cycle of buying new overpriced cards that they put us since god knows when. Everyone is complaining about snake eyes right now it being either the price or how broken they are, but here's exactly whats going to happen: Konami drops new list hitting snake eyes cards harshly -> Player base & content creators reaction: "OH MY GOD THEY ACTUALLY DID IT, THEY FINALLY HIT SNAKE EYES LETS GOOOO THANK YOU KONAMI" -> Format stays ok for 1~2 weeks -> New best splashable engine is released, in this case fiendsmith which will surely also be very overpriced, you're naive if you think it will be affordable -> New engine warps the format -> "Wow, this format sucks ass, just ban fiendsmith requiem it will surely fix the game this time" -> Cycle repeats. Tbh I would mind it much less if cards were printed the way OCG does it so the good cards are easier to access, but they'll never do it, cuz players always crawl back to buying the overpriced cardboard.
It's not the community's fault that Konami willingly powercreeps the game to force players into buying new shit. It's also not the community's fault that Konami short prints cards and ups their rarity to force players into buying more packs.
Little Knight is Super Rare in OCG but in TCG it's either Secret or Quarter Century; for instance.
Literally
Just a cycle
Complain about broken tier zero deck
Buy it till it's jacked in price
Complain about said jacked prices
New broken deck releases which power creeps old one
Then repeat
Complain about broken tier zero.
@@Pocket-Calculator It's kinda the community's fault imo. As MasterBaiTron himself has said, meta is a social construct
@@dhanyl2725 I hate how midwits think "social construct" means something doesn't exist.
First of all, the community at large doesn't choose which cards are broken and which aren't. Konami designs cards and combos. Second of all, Konami deliberately short prints and racks up rarity and they would do so regardless of what's considered meta. Hell, even packs are cheaper in OCG than TCG.
@@Pocket-Calculator The community could always just, not support this shit and migrate to other games. People willingly participating and enabling this bs is why it keeps happening. Same for loot boxes in video games a while back now battle passes.
In regards to prize money: they really should start making prize cards with unique one of a kind card art so the winner can at least sell them for a profit if they wanted to.
Charge of the light brigade is from The Duelist Genesis not LOD
Lorcana and Flesh & Blood's prize support is pretty staggering, especially where Yugioh has to give rewards around a cash amount rather than just giving money. I think Flesh & Blood handles it's competitive circuit so much better than Yugioh does, and has excellent coverage. It also gives a lot of information and opportunities for players getting into the higher tier events as well.
I believe in FaB supremacy I just wish others did too
@@ziltoid984 Its doing very well in my local area, and interest seems at an all-time high from what I've noticed. I don't have any numbers from any of the tier 2+ events to support this though.
I also really like how they handle their Pro Tour invites, it makes it so people will want to keep attending events even if they get an invite.
@@ziltoid984 I was really excited for FaB and bought multiple blitz decks (warrior, shadow brute, runeblade, mechanologist, and ranger), but the gameplay just felt bland once i finally got to play. I never felt like I was doing anything interesting.
@@RedGalbothonestly the biggest issue FaB has is the new player experience. Blitz decks are very low power and not even in the premier format. The current format is probably the most yugioh it's ever been with the top deck having huge 15 card combo OTKs available to it. Not every class does that but there are definitely ones in there for the Yugioh players like me.
"we are not dying. We are gonna live forever!" "I didn't say that. I just said we weren't filled with tumours"
In OCG, winning once or twice in locals and selling the mats and sleeves you win will recoup the price for your deck
2:38 I used to work at a card vendor, and the worst people around were the MTG "investors". They were like, "what if a human had all joy surgically removed from their body".
I feel like a lot of the responses to stuff generalized as "yugioh is dying" has been "what do you mean, it's not dead". A lot of people don't seem to get that long before something as huge as yugioh dies there are going to be problems with it, and that leaving problems unfixed will hurt the game. I think part of what's changing is that more new card games are actually popular. It used to be you played magic or yugioh, or Pokémon if you were 8,but now I see a lot of competitive Pokémon, as well as new comer tcgs like one piece and lorcana doing a lot to entice people that are unhappy with the current state of yugioh. And the numbers are clear, event attendance is way down, and with no ycses in Europe for what we essentially know will be an entire year, there is little incentive for players to keep up with the game on that entire continent. It's not dead, and it's not too late to do anything, and it's not even wrong or bad if you're having fun, but there are a ton of potentially existential problems to the game right now.
Making a bold claim with attendance is down when recently they broke a Guinness record for most attendes.
I agree there are problems that need fixing and more support for alt formats from Konami and the playerbase so that cards have more worth, but if you make a claim with attendance numbers being low, have a source to back it up.
No EU YCS can be a reason different from no players. Remember that events aren't profitable, they're really a big advert for competetive play.
@@MrYouSerious>broke a Guinness world record for attendance.
Yeah IN JAPAN. But in the west??? NO euro YCS’S but yet BREAKING ATTENDANCE RECORDS, almost like less YCS= MORE PEOPLE
@@johnathanlemus5584 Or maaaybe there have been some other factors to include in the organisation for a large scale tournament?
And nowhere did they mention specifically the west market? And even now Nationals in Europe have a large number of players. For example, Italy had 1307 players (while MTG standard had 808 players in May 25th) and apparently German Nats has 2000 players registered.
I understand that stores are losing on YGO as a product, but to say there are no eu YCS's simply due to "low attendance numbers" would be a lie in my opinion. To organize an event, you need to secure a whole lot more than just people that will attend.
@@MrYouSerious a guiness record? their mom must be very proud
@@joplin4434 idk, ask them, it is a fun fact.
I can spent $90 on Pokemon VGC and compete competitively for 2-3 years.
And the prizes from competitive Pokemon (all forms) are much higher than anything Konami offers.
Likewise, I can put in about the same amount of time building my team as I would building a YGO deck.
Konami also has shit communication and community support.
I've moved away because of many factors with YGO, not just prizing. It's been a month and I've genuinely found myself a bit happier after doing so.
See you the next Dark Magician support announced 👋🏾😂
As someone that lives in Morocco where the small community that was once massive keeps trying to keep the game alive is struggling because of pricing the top decks are almost already known by the few Moroccans that already tops eu regionals some even NA regionals with super top tier strategies while everyone still has 2013 decks and simply cant afford to drop more than 100$ on a deck imo a playable strategy should cost 20-30$ and this is also why tactical try outs decks need to come to the TCG
the card printing policy konami uses for TCG makes no sense and the 0 investment in making an engaging and exciting tournament experience is a huge nail in the coffin, its almost like they want you to NOT care about the competitive scene.
Yugioh for a long time has been stagnant in terms of the general size of its player base. It can bring back old players pretty consistently, but very, VERY rarely does someone completely new enter into the game and stick with it.
There’s always been a constant leaking of players quitting the game for whatever reason, but the core base of dedicated long term fans and the nostalgia fueled stubbornness of returnees have kept it afloat.
But as things are going, the leaking is getting worse, and even the dedication is fading away. If this game dies, and I surely hope it doesn’t, if will be a slow and painful decline
As far as I'm aware that issue is primarily present in the TCG, where Konami of America are being very greedy assholes.
The OCG looks comparatively better as Konami of Japan seems way less greedy than KoA, allowing the sought after cards to be printed in different rarities, and thus making them far more accessible to get (as well as not putting too much filler in the sets)
So if anything, the game would only die in the TCG if KoA doesn't get their heads out of their asses and make the game far more accessible for us, while the OCG continues to stick around no problem
It's called a negative growth curve very common event (more people leave than are coming in)in MMOs before what's called a cascade event that causes the sudden collapse of a game
The game is unappealing at a wide market
Ether cause long special summon turns
Cost of cards
Extreme power creep
And so on
Being honest, as long as Duelingbook exists and has Goat ladder, I don't care. I've not had any interest in modern YGO! since the mid to late 2010s, just for how out of control the gameplay and power creep are, and how expensive it is. So as long as DB and Goat exist... no skin off my back.
@@DragonBallsolosyourverse it doesn't help there is a rather bad case of blending like when was the last time you saw decks at the top where they all played on very different axis and weren't just different flavors of swarm and extra deck spam
Somethings gotta change at Konami. Basically bullied my fav card shop into dropping yugioh all together and it was the only day of the week I could find the time to play.
I think Yu-Gi-Oh has two problems when it comes to card pricing. One, there just aren't very many collectible cards. In any given set there aren't very many cards that are clearly for collectors outside of maybe the chase rarity (starlight/ultimate rare) which are often just meta cards in a higher rarity. Two, the important meta cards are often secret rares and hard to pull. The combination of these two means the meta cards often end up being sought after by everyone. You look at Pokémon and there is a clear divide between cards for collectors (alternate arts, illustration rares) and cards for players. Yu-Gi-Oh lacks that clear divide, so the meta cards are effectively the chase cards.
As a vendor I would say the lottery style chase cards are actually the thing that is ruining the profitability of the game. They have resulted in all of the value in sets being heavily weighted towards a few rare pulls and the base sets being largely worthless, so the expected value of an average box is abysmal, far lower even than the distribution price of a box. Cracking cases even at an industrial scale now feels like a horrendous gamble rather than something that will provide a reliable return, so I find myself skipping more and more sets completely. It's no wonder so many stores are dropping Yu-Gi-Oh entirely when customers don't want to risk opening the product themselves and stores are basically being asked to take massive losses on 90% of sets to provide customers with the singles that they need.
Komoney should do it like pokemon or their own OCG, keep the extremely rare chase cards for those who want it but throw in a common/uncommon print for those who just want to play the card game and not treat the cards as their own stock market.
Its kinda crazy how expensive yugioh is like unironically just unplayable if your not stupidly rich
This creates also a big problem in terms of freedom given to the players. Yu gi oh got 10000 cards and a key part of the game is choosing what you want to play among all of those cards and decks. But now, because prices are so high, if you actually want to compete you basically have no choice. You either play Purrely/Floo or you have to dip your entire earnings into a single deck that will become obsolete in a few months. And even if you actually manage to win using a budget deck you still won't be able to buy the more expensive cards because prizes for tournaments are embarassing.
*Kazuki Takahashi dies*
Konami: How can we betray everything this dude stood for?
Hey I've a question since I'm early and you might read this:
Would you rather have a Tier 0 format where the top tier deck is extremely cheap (~50$) or a varied, highly varied metagame where the barrier to entry is at least 500 USD?
Because with a Tier 0 format with highly expensive cards and staples feel like it's the worst of both worlds...
Ironically, this is pretty much exactly how Tearlament went. Ishizu Tearlament was a ~$400 deck in a sea of metagames dominated by >$1000 ones.
@@MBTYuGiOh And everyone seemed to hate it bar you. So I guess the answer is that tier 0 is even worse of an experience.
@@N12015 Nah the perception of Tear 0 has been shifting from "it sucked" to "it wasn't that bad even if i really didn't enjoy it" like i undertand why people disliked it at the begginig it was just the best deck ever and you needed to play it, but also it was not like the full power Kashtira format that had 0 interaction, or like Super Heavy format, or teh current Snake Eye format which relays so heavely of drawing the out that is almost a coin flip.
@@Ms666slayer People have softened on it because it's no longer fresh, they've had this dumb gaslighting meme that it was actually great forced down their throats, and they're separated from the consequences of how terrible it was for the game by a year and a half. Two shops in my region who were all-in on Yugioh shuttered because of Tear format. 2022 was already not doing so hot, Tear format dried up attendance and card sales, and what should have been a recovery in 2023 finally strung them up. There was a decline in post-COVID but an abrupt freefall during Tear Zero and players and sales simply didn't return for the garbage Konami was slinging out of distribution.
@@Ms666slayer i maintain that tear format blew and the "lol it doesn't end on negates tho" quip that it spawned has done lasting damage to how people talk about these cards. if an unbreakable omni-negate board is a nuke, then ishizu tear was sugar ray robinson. like ok you got me dude, i admit i will be able to get into the ring and blink a few times against sugar ray cause he doesn't negate my city block before the match starts and so i guess it's infinitely more interactive, but there is no universe where i win in a fight against fucking sugar ray.
The other problem is normal players can look to another region playing yugioh - japan specificity, other ocg regions generally - and see cards we're paying 50-100 dollars for going for 5. And we know the reason is purely out of greed. So a lot of us are just... done. We can't afford it and don't want to waste money just for a card to get banned a few months later. Or conversely, it finally becomes available and cheap and then immediately gets banned (ie baronne style)
Dude I bought a deck that I completely understand isn't going to be "competitive" just an archetype I really like so that me and a friend can duel irl, and it cost like $100ish, there's like maybe 5-10 cards that would make its way into a real deck
Bro i can build you 10 decks with an old shoelace and a stick of gum. 💀 did you put like 3x triple tactics in there?
It also doesn't help that comparative to OCG structures, ours are very hit or miss. So even official "buy this and play" products aren't a very good entry to yugioh.
Cristian Urena, Andres Torres, and Raphael Nevans, are some well known pro players who have appeared to have left yugioh. Urena recently tweeted how Ygo is so far behind other TCG's in prizing. He's since played Lorcana like 2 weeks ago. Andres Torres only came back to play the UDS championship because Konami asked all previous UDS winners to do a tourney. His deck profile afterwards, he stated he's not even playing ygo atm. Nevans is playing One Piece now I believe. Pak recently was selling his ygo collection for 50k, and said Lorcana & OP is where it's at (he may have been joking but who knows).
Think you're overestimating a bit how much WotC actually cares about pro players or a pro scene in general anymore.
It has been on more of an upswing, but yeah, hasn't really recovered since the pre-COVID times tbh.
It's still more than YGO
WotC comp MTG scene died when they first stopped caring years ago and using FIRE printing philosophy and then changing the scene to almost kill it. Then Hasbro being found out that WotC makes most of the money of a product in the company and then shoving commander down every pack released after that which basically seems to have murdered the pro scene completely except those with sunk cost fallacy and content creators that are stuck playing it.
The main issue i think is that even konamy has no clue of ehat the fuck they are doing and where they are going, except "i really hope players buy this product"
Not trying to be rude, but you say "investors" and all I hear is scalpers.
The people who sunk money into the old Retro Pack cards aren’t scalpers. Same goes for people who had large sums of money in old sets that got randomly reprinted. The closest thing to scalpers that Yugioh has are people who buy out staples, but even that hasn’t been seen much on release anymore. A lot of the stock issues seen with stuff like the Fiendsmith engine had more to do with high demand and less to do with buyouts. Most modern buyouts you see now are from speculators, like how Grass got bought out over the course of a month and some change before it got put to 1, or people buying out specific old cards in anticipation of a new deck (Verte before Dragun came out, all of the tuners that paired with Halq, etc.).
Slow down the power creep.
Lessen the number of sets.
Move around the rarities of cards that would be 50 - 100 dollars form ultra/secret to super. No more short prints.
Do these three things and i feel you'll start to see a recovery but thats only a good start. Konami will need to do much much more.
the first 2 may happen one day but the 3rd never will unless Konami somehow loses the rights to the game
@@denman2991it's pretty sad really. The idea of maximizing profit is creating the illusion that scarce yet super powerful cards will always sell a set. While I get the idea in practice I don't think it is the best or even most profitable way.
I genuinely believe that if the packs had better odds for high value cards, Konami would see more sales and are in the long run only making their situation worse.
Can we get a collab with House of Champs talking about these issues in detail?
I will always remember talking to someone around the time castator the synchro was in a Tin, apparently Konami at the time didn't follow the secondary market.
A card game for a franchise marketed towards kids has cheaper to play meta decks (the most expensive to top cut NAIC was $107 compared to the cheapest deck to top cut YCS Indy being $209), gives out significantly better payouts, and treats the top players in the game like they're the top players in the game. (Players in stream matches have their previous tournament placings listed on stream, in between rounds will have recorded segments of players talking about themselves, their careers, and goals for the current world championship circuit) on occasion. Meanwhile the more mature game gives you a switch if you win and a mat that is slightly more unique than the one being sold by a vendor outside for $60
Tbh, one of the best things that could happen would be the game going under and a fan community making a free digital version of the game that self-regulates.
Thanks for putting this into perspective, MBT. I recently got into the One Piece card game after showing a friend the anime and while it's difficult to get booster packs and boxes, building an actual deck together is significantly cheaper and much more sustainable for me. I have a Yubel deck, been a fan of that card for years but I cannot afford to shill out 180 for 60 per copy of Phantom of Yubel, nor can I afford for anything else that might make that deck stronger. I was building Horus because I loved the original black flame deck but I'm having to wait for tins and other reprints so I can afford anymore of the cards after playing since the beginning.
Yeah.. I got priced out. I spent a ton of money getting my deck up to date. I hadnt played in a few years and decided to come back and go to my first locals… and it just happened to be during the height of tearlament format. So I played online for a little while and then stopped altogether shortly after Kashtira started getting hit.
Konami's just being Konami. Wring as mich profit out of an IP as possible until it no longer is making enough to be worth producing at high amounts, shelve it, then bring it back when people are nostalgic for it. However, that doesn't work for a card game, but you can tell that's the approach they're trying for when comparing to their other franchises. Silent Hill and Metal Gear Solid have both been dead for years, only for SH2 and MGS3 to get remakes, all while Castlevanis has gotten 3 retro game collections in the past 5 years and we just got a new Contra game that hearkens back to the old titles for the NES/SNES. If someone really wants to do an analysis as to why it seems like Yu-Gi-Oh is going down the drain right now, they just need to look at Konami's previous business practices and treatment of fans of other IPs that they own.
underrated comment. Great point
Yeah, I feel you.
I got back into YGO in 2020 and played a lot of Dueling Book ever since. Recently I enjoyed Centur-Ion a lot and as I have a job now, I thought I could take that deck to locals.
But my dreams were shattered when the cost was like 400 €. Now I don't own any staples so, I guess it make some sense, but even just buying the core for 150 - 200 € for a deck that many don't even consider META is baffling to me.
That deck WRECKS me at locals lmao
So what do we do about it?
MBT: First, there is no we. Second, Do About it?!! I just gave you a black pill. Swallow...
There's nothing WE can do about it outside of bitching on twitter loud enough until Konami of America stops being stupid.
@@mateusrp1994 WE can stop giving konami money until it fixes these issues.
My first and last foray into paper play was the traptrix structure deck. I had a ton of fun when the deck could reasonably appear to compete, but when the time came for me to be like "hey I should probably be playing something stronger for the format," I couldn't justify the price. Now i'm a filthy Master Duel player exclusively, but at least there i can experiment with deckbuilding and strategies and it costs me maybe like 40 bucks to hard buy an entire new deck instead of a $100+ for a playset of a single card
As someone who took a break from paper play a few years back, I struggle to find a deck to get back in that I can afford. If it weren't for master duel I'd probably stop play altogether
It's crazy to see that nothing has changed. I quit the competitive scene near the Geargia otk/Fire Fist/hat meta and the problem started around the end of this area. It's almost been a decade and I've been following Yu-Gi-Oh! from the shadows for years. Nothing has changed, it's only got worse and worse. People will complain until they quit.
I got sort of interested into Yu-Gi-Oh! again after finding you and Cimo on The History of Yu-Gi-Oh! series back in 2020 but I mean, it was COVID. My interest in playing was renewed when Master Duel was released. The reason I haven't actually bought any cardboard yet however is basically this: Yu-Gi-Oh! is an expensive hobby, and I don't want to put that kind of money into a manufactured product where the viability shifts with the feelings of its producer which has to balance both tournament policy and what is effectively *monetary* policy. I just don't get the sense they're particularly good at responding to either demand, like a central bank with a dual mandate. Blegh.
You need to read the Yin to Das Kapital's Yang: Atlas Shrugged to claim to be an expert in yuginomics
My cousin used to play magic seriously and would make upwards of 20k a year playing part time. After however long he saved up he now opened and owns his own game shop!
There are two LGS in my area. Up until 2019 I had a local on both saturdays and sundays.
2020 saw the first stop holding locals (obviously) which in turn meant it had trouble moving products, so it stopped holding YuGiOh products altogether.
The second LGS, a few months ago, decided it would no longer be opening boxes as everytime they did so, they were losing out on profits. No amount of singles they could sell from it would outweigh the price of the box itself, and the unsold cards were taking up too much space.
They still hold locals... for now.
Having been unemployed for the last year and counting, I couldn't afford to play paper even if it were in a healthy state economically. Meanwhile on Master Duel I have over 30 fully built decks and just recently crafted a Little Knight because I didn't happen to pull it out of the packs.
Videos like these really feel like they're talking about a game from another universe as a MD-only player.
I have only played MD F2P and is insane to hear how many thousands of dollars would cost to have all the decks IRL that I have in the game virtually.
Personally....I play both. If I like a deck... I buy it in near full rarity. 😅 take them to locals on Saturdays and have way more losing in person 😂
I clicked off the video when he said "High end speculators and vendors are a nessassity". THis must literally be the biggest L take in the history of MBT takes.
Frankly, it seems like the game needs to die more before Konami will ever make any big changes. If the sets weren't so predatory and you could actually build decks from buying a box, then maybe people would have more incentive to buy products from stores. Instead they are so bad that the culture of just buy singles came to exist. We still don't have any real support for alternate formats, even with the rise of Edison. The prizes for tournament play will certainly never change when the numbers of players attending just keeps going up.
What about the seeming phenomenon of tournament play going up while yugioh locals are dying? I'm not even sure if that is statistically true but a lot of people seem to say it's happening in their areas. I would be curious if you could do a Twitter/UA-cam poll type thing to get an idea. The death of the casual locals certainly happened where I live. It has no casual players now and there is a core set of less than probably 8 players who treat it as prep for their tournaments.
If the game is over $100 to play a casual deck, there's no casual format, and there's less locals that are actually for casuals... then the game really is dying, at least for casuals.
I'm almost positive the tournament numbers are either being inflated by Konami or they are paying people to play.
No other game has such a discrepancy between lack of casual players and this so called increase of competitive.
It's a shame that TCGs exclusively have to have this speculator/investor horse shit and can't just work as an actual proper product for sale like literally every other toy or traditional game.
Nothing works as an "actual proper product". If them share holders arent seeing higher profits than last year then that's a failure and the rich fucks will get pissed off. Every publicly traded company has to answer to the shareholders and only them. You make x amount this year and its barely higher than last year then you gotta answer them on why your company aint growing or some shit.
It would be so awesome if maybe EU could just crack down on booster packs all together, just fuck it all make sets structure decks or don’t sell your product, imagine how great that would be, they could totally do it too, out of any 100 card core set you can just throw away 60 of those cards it’s all pack filler chafe anyway, costs the same to print an engraver as it does to print a vanilla. If they can make structures cost like $13 and they fly off the shelf I’d genuinely be surprised if someone could come up with a reason this couldn’t exist
Something not really mentioned specifically here is that MTG does things to keep cards at specific price points, not just super expensive or dirt cheap like we get in yugioh. Its pretty common to look at a card before release and be like "that will probably settle at $40 after release and remain their for 10 years"(or at least a few years if its price is based on standard play) and do the same with 20 and even 10 dollar cards and if you know the game you'll often be right. They also do things for collectors, its not just you can either have the worst version or the best version like in ygo, you will often get different versions with different value and value retention or growth. Foil vs non-foil, borderless vs standard, showcase and collectors versions. Even if sometimes it can be overboard in recent years it still allows for a lot of cards in the game to have a wide range of prices. Super cheap prints for people on a budget, super expensive prints for collectors and speculators, and the ones in the middle for people who have a little spending money and just wanna make their deck a little nicer. And sense there have a much larger impact on the cards appeal compared to super vs ultra or ultra vs secret, i mean I can barely tell the different between my CRs or starlights and my ultras and secrets on the table in some lighting. Its the same art and same frame at the end of the day in 99% of the cases.
It's in Konami's best financial interests to force everyone on to MD. Cutting out the middle man means they reap full profit. Konami, just like WOTC, never gave a shit about your LGS or how you can buy cards for pennies to play your tier 10 decks against your friend's tier 6 deck.
Then Master Duel needs to implement the best-of-3 format style like in the regular TCG. Maybe even code in the option to include a side deck.
Oh, and did I mention their banlist needs work?
@@cameraredeye3115 The banlist and it's frequency is easily the biggest issue presently. Meaningful hits are necessary but boyyyyy oh boy, do the Konami upper management pachinko executives LOVEEEE their sunken loss addicts.
I don't get how people even spend money on MD. You can build any deck for free every month if people are just more picky on what to build.
@@cameraredeye3115 *cries in Maxx "C"*
Sickness can quickly turn to death if left unchecked.
Switched to OP back in November after noticing I don't really matter anymore (in terms of gameplay mostly, as every deck did the same thing and skill expression was minimal for anyone remotely advanced/competitive in this game) and the diceroll decides 90% of games, never been happier. Seeing how things got even worse since then and every competitive deck has devolved to one-card combos and 20 non-engine, I don't see things getting better. Will probably never come back to YGO unless major changes happen and I have 0 regrets or complains about that.
how affordable is One Piece?
@@exalted8571 Depends on what you'll like to play, but most decks are very affordable and there are high-rarity versions that can go astronomical, but in general, a competitive deck (with which you'd be able to consistently win events) will run you ~200$ and depending on you go for, most of the cards will be reusable for other decks, as long as it's the same color.
Let me put it this way - My first deck back then I spent ~200$ and played it for 4 months. That same deck is now soon viable again (it wasn't for a format due to some cards being a direct counter, no need to go into details) and I can play it again with no investment and could upgrade it with ~60$ to make it even better, but I don't have to.
My second deck is ~200$ (with 3x the same card being 130$ and a staple that you can play in every yellow deck) so basically you could run that deck for 50$ as well if you don't wanna spend 130$ for 3 cards. One of my friends did that and was topping events with a 60$ deck, basically.
My third deck is ~150$, you can buy the entire deck for less than that now and is going to be 1 of the 3-4 Tier 1 decks for the next ~6 months.
There are other Tier 1 decks, depending on what you like, that run on a similar budget but in general, a decent deck runs you 100, competitive decks run you ~150-250$ and depending on your choice will last you a long time. And obviously, if you wanna play fun/less competitive decks, those are naturally cheaper.
Similar to YGO, once you get your "staples" and "handtrap sets", most of those will be reusable in other decks with appropriate colors.
Generally, I'd say the game is much more affordable and most importantly, it has great prize support and is actually fun, interactive and skill expression matters in almost every decision you have to make, despite the game being "simpler". In my ~8 months of playing, I've paid for like 70-80% of my total collection with tournament prizes without even topping any big events (a regional top64 is ~700$, top 32 ~1500$, top 16 ~3k, top 8 is easy 10k$ and even participaing in such events is a win even if you go 0-10).
@@exalted8571 Much more affordable than YGO, you'd have to, like in most card games, get some of the "staples" etc, but once you get going it's fine.
The best part is that prizing is actually amazing.
I spent ~200$ on my first deck, ~220 on my second one and 150 on the third (which is 1 of the upcoming 3-4 Tier 1 decks for the next 6 months, at least). All 3 of those decks are currently perfectly playable and competitive and I could upgrade them a bit as well if I wanted to. In my short time playing, I've made back like 80-85% of everything I've spent so far in tournament prizes, which were almost entirely locals. For example, a Regional top64 is ~800, 32 is ~1500, 16 is ~3k and top8 is easy 10k+ - let's not even talk about winning those events or worlds. That's basically impossible in YGO, regardless how and where you compete.
Need a longer form video of this.
I agree with all your statements, except the one about yugi being the best TCG in the world. I've had much more fun playing Pokemon and now MTG than all those years having to endure YGO's excruciating state.
We're gonna keep having the same conversation for the next half decade before Konami considers doing anything.
The game is so expensive I can't compete
and it's so complicated I can't constantly keep up with new cards
It's incredibly time and money consuming
i will rewatch this video, very important points were said.
I find yugioh comes and goes in cycles and we never really got the latest cycle because of Covid and rush duels. You will always have the die hard players but also the casual players who quit at the end of a cycle because of new mechanics and older players get a breathe of fresh air. What I think they need is a new anime and series to reboot the series and get more newer blood into the game and refresh the cycle
Covid was a huge outlier. Everyone under the sun was looking for good old nostalgia trips to try and help them get through that hellacious period so every jumped to retro games and card games they knew from back in their childhoods, that period is now over and everyone is too poor to afford hobbies.
A new anime wont stop the game from being a degenerate 1 card combo and hand trap game unless they flat out reset the game itself and not reboot an anime.
The reprint policy also has devalued almost all my rogue-ish decks in recent years. Not to mention every rogue deck has been released with at least a single 15-20€ card you need 3 of, if not two of those.
The average rogue deck price excluding insane priced staples is still 100-120€ish for this reason and even a lower end player with a few 15-20€ cards is bleeding money in the long run because you just never know. Do I buy this Soul of Rage for 27€? Oh next day it's 3€ Should I get diviners? They were 17€, only getting an ultimate reprint in an OTS so 14-15€ is a decent deal, LMAO next day announced as an ultra or whatever in a battles of legends set.
I didn't buy these now, I bought them quite a while ago, but it still demonstrates how your supposed investment bleeds quite heavily and if you do this for long enough it starts to hurt.
Why does it hurt? A lack of real trade capital... it means you end up with a lot of stuff you are tired of but they just aren't worth selling.
Why should I sell off my Adventure Package with all cards at 3 or a runick engine or whatever, when the money you get for it is not worth the time it takes to ship? Not to mention nobody sells these cheap cards anymore locally because they (same as me) rather keep it in case it ever comes up again, as they know they will have a hard time gathering it again since nobody bothers selling junk at junk prices even on CM.
This is what exhausted me. Rarity Collection bled out all of the small value my collection of playables had and made me feel like an idiot for engaging with previous products enough to have a nice mid rarity staples binder.
say it with me.
"Konami is not at fault for the third party market's pricing and everyone would be pissed off if they tried to regulate it. Konami is at fault for other bad things and blaming them for other things makes the actual things they're doing wrong seem less bad."
Never thought I’d see a Blazing Saddles reference in a Yugioh video.
Unless they’re referencing Sheriff Bart…
It's worst in third world countries that are not affiliated with Konami like where I'm from (Morocco)
The prices are really high for us since you can only get cards hy having them shipped and sellers rarely ever seel cards with a lower value when they get reprintee plus our average salary is 500 USD.
The whole discussion about the secondary market, how catering to investors is "necessary", and the ideas on how to stabilize the secondary market are just bleh. TCGs just need to kill the garbage physical gacha model that they're currently built on. If vendors are struggling to keep up by gatekeeping crucial cards, then having a bunch of optional, expensive purchases won't be enough either. Especially tying purchases to competitive prizing. If someone wants to be competitive and generate revenue from it in a volatile meta, then if dirt cheap alternatives to expensive cards exist; a kinder secondary market doesn't correlate to selling those expensive products that investors want to move.
If anything, better competitive prizing just feeds into the current, terrible secondary market. Since all the best cards are at fuck off rarities and the prices are jacked up, then that improves the situation for investors who overcharge on cards because it makes it easier to scalp.
I'm primarily a fighting game player, but my girlfriend has been teaching me Yu-Gi-Oh. It's been very fun, but good lord I thought fighting game monetization of kinda wack. Wanting to play a deck like Vanquish Soul and learning that in order to build solid lists I need to spend more money than it takes to buy an entire fighting game and its DLC passes is really disheartening and does not wanna make me play Yu-Gi-Oh. I'm stuck putting together scrimblo decks for pennies that interest me like Libromancer, or bumming a Spright list off of one of my friends. I wanna be able to play in person and experiment with different decks and archetypes, but the price point is just too insane to justify it.
There changes on sleeves and game mats also aren't helping there case either...
the secondary market for older formats is ridiculous too. 6 years ago when I got into goat I was able to buy delinquent duos lightly played for like $3. Last night when throwing a random fun deck together I noticed I didn't own a 6th copy of duo and the cheapest one I was able to get on TCG player was $18 moderately played from some < 20 sale seller :(
My old lgs tried to get into yugioh cause 10 players asked, he bought product, they never showed up to the lgs ever and he felt so burnt due to how hard it is to move sealed product he won't buy yugioh anymore
I havent been able to afford any playable deck in years and i doubt i ever will again. Which is kinda sad.
The worst is that nearly all of these problems can be solved by simply copying the OCG but no, we need to be “different” for some reason.
Yeah, that reason is called Maxx C. Nobody wants to play a format with that card in it.
@@AverageInternetCitizen Master Duel.
@@AverageInternetCitizen maxx c is no worse than not having enough outs to a snake eye combo, both of them lose you the game. Called by to 2 maybe 3 and some cross outs and maxx c ain’t that much of a problem
@@JamieFlett-b6n the problem is that maxx c dominates deck building. as soon as it is legal you have to play all the outs. Also Crossout is limited in formats where maxx c is legal, otherwise you would run three. in the end a single card determines 1/4 (or more) of your whole deck.
@@JamieFlett-b6nthe issue with Maxx C is the only answer to it is to “draw the out” as well as it’s power going first and second. Going first? Do your combo, end on your negates. Your opponent goes, you drop Maxx C, they attempt to stop you with called by or ash, just negate, lol. And going second, your opponent does literally anything on their first turn, drop Maxx C, they have to either set and pass or let you draw a shit ton of cards.
oh man the blazing saddles clip got me.
I feel like they watched Kaiba rip up Blue-Eyes and wanted to keep doing that. They wanna keep vendors in the play, but when they do that with super powerful cards, the pricing goes crazy and players stop buying.
Speaking about Konami giving players reasons to invest in decks, why I as a european tcg player should even consider getting a competitive deck with little to no ycses in the near future? Like I'm super happy about the quality of our ycses but I'd actually like to have one to attend
I thought that the Light of Destruction rerelease was for the older Lightsworn cards to go with the support in Legacy of Destruction, but those were already reprinted in Battles of Legends Chapter 1.
Off topic, but Dire, I see you with that gravity rush music
I will always say an easy solution to many problems would be changing the way cards are printed to have high and low rarities. Makes the game cheaper and more accessible, while also increasing the value of getting boxes because you could finish multiple decks with a couple boxes. I’m not buying 4 boxes if it’s nearly impossible to build my deck that I could spend 80$ on building the core from singles online.
I do think something barely mentioned here is that Yugioh is suffering from the COVID era speculation drive. The speculation drive on anything that people could have fun with from TCGs to retro games has resulted in a dramatic inflation of pricing across the board. I've been playing for 11 years and the pricing of decks from COVID onward has been high but not uncharacteristic. I know MBT you probably started playing around 2016 which was more of a low point, but for example
New Challengers Qliphort was $1000. There were several really pricy Secret rares in that deck. Dragon Ruler variants consistently topped out at $800 or so in part because of Dracossack.
But what doesn't make sense is that Dracossack, a Secret Rare from one set that was a mandatory 3 of for over a year's worth of time, from a set that was harder to pull specific secret rares out of than modern sets, is still like $20 less than a one-of that you might run two on occassion that also has a speculative rarity printing. The only good reason for that is that the playerbase is bigger in 2024 than it was in 2013 or 2014, but like
look at the comments, clearly nobody believes that. We certainly don't have data. It's not even like the pricing of core sets has really gone up either. There's just a ton of speculation going on because that's what COVID did, and with Yugioh's aggressive reprint policy, which is a good thing 95% of the time, it turns cards into S:P Little Knight into a stock market. How high can you get away with selling it before it gets reprinted?
The entire landscape is just very weird to me now. It's weird to think that one ofs are going to just be more expensive than incredibly relevant meta staples like Infinite Impermenance or Ash Blossom EVER were.
idunno, the magic pro scene looks kinda lame too, feel like you're moreso referencing the 00s-10s scene. PTs come across as an afterthought even to wizards since they usually focus more on announcing sets than actual tourney coverage during the event. And the game sure as heck isn't any more affordable, especially its older formats because of the RL.
MTG is actually having it way worse than yugioh
Cards are way more expensive, and due to rotation you cant buy staples and build a new deck for way cheaper like yugioh
@@SaragossiDeer Even the former "eternal formats" have turned into rotational formats with how much Hasbro wants to milk the shit out of the game now. And even then it's the same as YGO, print broken ass mythic rares in which people need to buy them to stay competitive then ban the shit out of them in 6 months when they've realized how insane the cards were and rinse and repeat.
Currently selling all my expensive cards before the game dies. Even if it stayed good, the community is ehhh
Given yugioh all started with an anime/Manga where the grand prize for a tournament was 3million or 30k depending on which translation its insane that tournaments irl don't have grand prizes worth anything
This is probably said on another post but I use any non essential (read-hobby) like a formulae.
X (the product cost) divided byY (Times I will use said product) = Z.
For example- I bought a pre con commander deck for £20 from Amazon. If I use said deck on 4 different occasions, that means I’ve essentially paid £5 per time to use that deck.
There are of course other variables but this is why I can’t invest in a 700/800 dollar deck which will be powercrept. It financially doesn’t make sense.
"700 dollars" tells far from the full story. Playing yugioh in Latin America, Africa, the Middle East, hell even the Balkans is reserved to higher class. You want to buy an S:P Little Knight in Brazil? 900 reais. Trident Dragon? 500. Ash Blossom? 100 for a playset. A full Snake-Eyes deck? You're looking at 3k-5k.
Note: Minimum salary is currently 1400 reais.
I have lots of thoughts on how broadcast can improve for Yugioh shows. Really hope I can apply them by WCS, we can do so much better
It still seems that Yu-Gi-Oh is in a weird spot market wise. Crazy expensive to play meta because they insist in rarity bumping all the staples in top tier archetypes followed by collections depreciating massively due to reprints. The only thing they have going for them is the high end chase cards(collector rare etc) but if collectors loose faith in those because of reprints......damn.
Pokémon do it best, all the value is in alt art chase variants of other cards in the set. People chase those and sell the game pieces for cheap(yes people do play 😂) the result is a strong collectables market and a really cheap to play game. Wouldn't hurt for konami to take note maybe