Lets keep it civil guys lol. Might want to take the ideas in this video with a pinch of salt and watch on 2x Speed. ;] Community Discord Link: discord.gg/BFWGAPA9A
As a card game design junkie and a one piece newbie, this stood out to me immediately. i 100% agree with you. I do believe that bandai took the same route as they did with DBS, where it started as a cash grab and they had to keep up with demand. Perhaps with some banned lists and power creep, they can take the game in the direction you described.
I think you have a solid argument and ideas for change that could work. I would personally tweak them a bit but I can see your ideas being an overall improvement. I also think you are right that the identity for some colors are weak or non existent and they missed a few times on colors like with blue starter deck croc. They could be a few reasons why these misses happen, like not wanting to introduce dual colors right at the start or something like that. But they definitely could have planned better. Something else I think you miss because you haven’t experienced the source material is the abilities of the actual characters and how they play into the building of the leaders and the game. Law for example has the ability to exchange the positions of items. He can swap a person and a rock that are x amount of feet apart. Enel can automatically restart his heart when he dies. Whitebeard although he is the strongest person in the series, he is old and dying hence he is a 6k 6 life leader but loses a life every turn. Creating characters based on the source material makes the game more enjoyable for me, but I can see it leading to balance issues. And while you are correct that law’s ability is kind of a blue thing, it would kind of suck if every single law was blue. At the end of the day it’s a give and take as they are also balancing the cards around the source material abilities, and if you look at it from that point of view…. It makes balancing much harder, and without the source material I can guarantee you that this game wouldn’t nearly be as big as it is. Anyways, great video for getting the brain juices flowing. Keep up the good work.
I hear what you're saying, and I want to stress that while I don't sit down and read/watch One Piece, I know about all those things in the Anime that you mentioned, Laws "shamble"s and Whitebeards health condition (my son is completely caught up and he has told me most of it and I have binge watched Highlights of most the rest). The only thing that I didn't know is about Enel being able to jump start his own heart on death, which is kind of cool I guess but I feel was very well balanced when implemented into the game. I knew they were basing much of the Characters and Leaders etc designs off of the source. I'm just suggesting that you can do that and balance the game simultaneously. However, you can't if you don't first establish boundaries and core design and balance principals baked into the game. Especially in regards to color identity.
@@Vvulfrik yup that’s exactly why I agree with you in the beginning of my comment. The game does have flaws that seemed very avoidable… like they gave red way to much in the beginning, so much so that Otama and Makino are still in almost every red deck. And then other colors suffered. I’m new to TCGs though so this is my very first dive into playing one hardcore. Although for the past few months I’ve learnt about a lot of them just because I’m into one piece. Kind of why I like your stuff and your opinions. Again. I fully agree with you that it does have. A flawed core, what I’m unsure about is if they can course correct, but I guess power creep can help with that.
This is 100% my biggest fear and why I made the video. However, the good news is it looks like they are starting to show some signs of progression, especially with establishing Blacks color identity and toning back some colors. Edit: because I really enjoy playing this game and want to see it continue to grow.
18:18 one of the reasons why duel masters probably forever had been my fav since 2005 is bcuz i feel they nailed this pretty darn well, fire was all about aggro and rushing through power water was all about control, manipulation, scrying, crazy bouncing and draws darkness was all about trashing your own weaker cards to trash opponents cards that were stronger and vice versa( the theme also very strong dispite its weird alternative abstract art) light or yellow was all about blocking and defending through triggers, healing cards, finally forest was all about increased momentum or acceleration over time to overwhelm u like like a flood or a jungle to surround u by being patient and slowly walking towards the endgame like a tank moving forward
my thoughts...one piece is about freedom, every color has potential to play with any other archetype it is closer to chaos then order in a good way hehehe...would be great to know how the game is balanced. great video ty.
i think that's one of the causes of this problem. it's like they had an idea for the game and during the thought process they said "hey wouldn't it be cool if the abilities of our cards actually match the powers of the characters in the manga?"
@MuchoVarvato as someone who came from yugioh i honestly dont care about the color thing...matching the abilities from the manga seemed cool to me....but thats just me
@@beams098 now that you said it... I never looked at the colours that way before... to me it's just if they have them, they should use them. and if they use them, they should mean sth. for the game or why are they even putting them in to begin with. i get why the colours aren't important for you but i think the difference between one piece and yugioh is that while yugioh has a whole anime and manga evolving around the game ( even though the rules differed greatly between the show and the real game at least in the beginning) the one piece card game has no other link to the series other then the characters and places itself, so the designers are more free in the way they want the game to be. And sure, they could just ignore the colours and only focus on what the characters do in the manga but for me personally that would just take sth. away from the game. But that's my opinion.
@MuchoVarvato i understand what you mean....especially in the beginning when black was shown to KO things...but then red can do the same..like bruh why use the colors then...that was annoying i get it...but again as a fan of one piece 1st and then a fan of tcg games 2nd...the concept of matching characters with their abilities is very cool imo.. but yes it does make the game less fluid
I really enjoyed the video and I believe you are correct in a lot of aspects. Coming from MTG, I didn't think I'd miss color pie consistency as much as I do. However, there is one of your suggestions that I believe should be moved elsewhere: Banish in Yellow. Lately, with the temporary ban-list, I've been thinking "What beats yellow now that red is gutted?". My only real answer is "bad red decks" or Nami (but, that's an outlier and a whole other problem). Coming from other Life-centric games (like Digimon, Wixoss, and DBS), triggers are getting quite annoying and I believe this promotes very swingy gameplay for no reason. It's an aggro deck's worse nightmare. I believe Banish is a good counter to Yellow, but it really shouldn't counter itself. So, if we take your advice and make purple more aggro, I believe Banish would fit perfectly into that slice of the pie (but don't push it too much).
Ya that would make sense. I was just giving some potential ideas. Also I wouldn't want only one color to have Banish, but for all colors to have a few Banish Characters but one color to be really pushing it. Great comment.
So I'm also a Dragon Ball Super Card Game player and there are striking similarities between both games, One Piece is basically a spiritual sequel to Dragon Ball Super. Preface: -Dragon Ball Super, all start with eight life cards after mulligans (partial), there are few leaders that act as an exception to this and have a line of text to specify this change. One Piece changes this by having leaders with variable starting life. -Leaders have two sides in Dragon Ball Super. The front side acts as a base form and the back side acts as a transformation, picture Luffy going from his base state and then going Gear Fourth. It's meant to give this nice power up as you receive benefits when you do this alongside having additional effects on the back side. Typically, leaders are allowed to flip to the back side at four life, but years of game design shifted leaders to be able to have other means of flipping to the back. The equivalent of Counter in Dragon Ball Super is called Comboing and you can use this offensively and defensively. Later sets developed some depth with this core mechanic to produce Arrival and Z-Energy/Z-Deck. Character Cards are called Battle Cards, characters in Dragon Ball are a category with which effects can affect both leaders and battle cards. Events and Stages are called Extra Cards with Field text being a skill that allows the Extra card to be on the field. Energy is the equivalent of DON!!, however, at the start of your turn, you take a card from your hand and place it in the energy area, this card can be tapped to pay for energy costs of the same color or fill in unspecified costs. Dragon Ball Super also has cards that can be used in response to the opponent playing or attacking, these are called Counters, generally Counter:Attack or Counter:Play and these generally stop the specified action from taking place, they can also apply a debuff on the opponent to hamper their actions for the turn. Lastly, Leaders do not determine what colors can be in the deck, you can have Blue cards in a deck that has a Red leader. Now colors: Dragon Ball Super has five colors; Red, Blue, Green, Yellow and Black (which was introduced in set 3). Red is about power manipulation, increasing, decreasing, removing based on power level, and occasionally gaining effects if the card meets a power threshold. This allows for some aggressive play styles by amping card power easily or for more control by weakening cards and prolonging the game. Red also has burn effects which forces the opponent to take life outside of combat. Blue is Energy (equivalent of DON!!) ramp/untapping, bouncing cards to hand or deck (introduced later). Blue has had some of the most resilient cards in the game due to the importance of having Energy up for defense. Green is primarily hand control and board removal, this is one of the weaker colors but they'll occasionally pop up with some crazy value synergy. Yellow is focused on untapping battle cards, tapping opponents cards (battle, leader, energy, anything) they also have removal for rested battle cards. Black wasn't introduced until set 3 and they acted more like a support color, having effects to benefit/harm other specific colors. One key feature that did stand out for Black was the Warp, a second discard pile, much like MtG's Exile pile. Generally, Black would be used as either a finisher or a silver bullet, depending on the card. Multicolored cards came in set 7 and all are printed with an effect called Energy-Exhaust which has the card charged in tapped position, to hamper the value of having Energy that is versatile to tap for one of two colors. Multi-Color was focused on color combinations that weren't black (Black Multi-Colors became its own thing with SS4 Bardock: Xeno). Alternate win conditions also tend to be used by Blue leaders. Blue Beerus, Zamasu of set 7, Mill Janemba, Red Cooler has mill as a win condition but it's secondary to beating the opponent through conventional means. With this in mind, Red is very similar between DBS and OP, both are interested in power manipulation and power based removal. Funny that you mention allowing Red to attack active mode cards, there are several DBS red cards with this feature, it rarely amounts to anything of value as it's not reliable with Counter cards available to stop attacks. Green in OP acts remarkably similar to DBS's Blue/Yellow cards in that they rest cards or untap their own cards removal is also typically for rested characters like DBS's Yellow. OP Blue acts somewhat similarly to DBS's Blue with bounce/top deck removal. Purple is somewhat unique for OP in comparison to Dragon Ball, though if I had to say, it'd be the hand control and straight removal of DBS Green, which is somewhat funny as DBS Green is often considered bad (there are exceptional green meta decks, but they're often degenerate and swatted out). OP Black is also somewhat unique using energy cost reduction into KO'ing low energy cost cards is rather interesting, though that's it's one big thing for now. OP Yellow is life manipulation which was kind of a mechanic shared between DBS colors though 99% of them are to take your own life for the purpose of reaching a certain amount for big rewards, the 1% was either burn/burn-like effects or Rejuvenation, a gimmicky and unrewarding way of gaining life. I don't have too much of an issue with One Piece's color wheel, they're typically there to give a guideline to what each color does for actions and strategies like aggro/midrange/control shouldn't be defined by the color, this restricts what each color can do. Designing Blue to be primarily control denies it the opportunity to have aggressive or mid range strategies that use bouncing removal or take advantage of the scry effects. Red Ace is a control deck that uses power manipulation as its means of out valuing the opponent.
Thanks you for this response, I read the whole thing, but I'm going to mainly respond to your last paragraph because it is targeted at the OP:TCG in your interpretation. One thing that I thought most people would misunderstand and I tried to make abundantly clear @30:35 was that balancing colors around a certain archetype would allow archetype variance at a Leader level. This is a very important concept to understand. Because while Blue colored cards might be geared at Control as to balance the overall game, a Blue Leader might interact and change that out for something that is more in line with Aggro or Midrange, depending while keeping the base or core of the game balanced. Leaders are a big part of the OP:TCG game and they determine most of how a Deck can be played in conjunction to what a color offers them with their Effect.
@@Vvulfrik with regards to DBS Green and Purple being weak, I think it's more of a matter of difficulty in finding a reasonable balance in removal/hand control. Like I said, Green has been meta from time to time, arguably its best (and when I say best, I mean most reasonable) was with King Cold during what I'd call King format (meta was King Piccolo, King Vegeta, Blue Baby, Dark Broly, and to a lesser extent King Cold, Blue Boujack, and Agents of Destruction) and Set 6 Starter Broly (especially after Super Shenron's errata). Starting with Broly, he's this glass cannon archetype where the Broly Battle Cards have effects for when they're removed to play their next stage, they also have ever increasing removal effects to accompany the stronger power cards. The leader acts as an anchor for all of this, refilling hand size and a built in KO one card on both sides effect. Excellent design to make a solid green deck. It unfortunately gets phased out, thankfully it never received any hits on the banlist. King Cold was a midrange deck that used a wide array of Field cards to act as a sort of toolbox for removal, power boosting, and board generation. Point being, it's just more difficult to create reasonable cards for Purple when its core mechanics have been DON!! ramp, straight removal, and hand control. Starter Kaido probably would have been a better meta deck for his time had he received a 1 or 2 cost searcher to help the deck with consistency. Alas, players panicked that this would make him too good, even whilst Red is running the format. Outrageous, his only means of draw power was Queen, albeit, he is a fantastic card, the only draw power locked behind a 5 cost. To sum up, Bandai makes DBS Green and OP Purple to be the simple removal and hand control colors, rather difficult effects to balance for competitive. What's the appropriate values to just destroy a card, how much energy/DON!! can be reasonably spent to force the opponent to discard a card or two. To add to that Bandai gave Purple the ability to ramp to compensate for the DON!!-x effects, but they initially didn't want the color to have a 1 cost searcher. Things have improved slightly since Kaido and I'd read the ST10 leaders as more Purple aligned leaders with their emphasis on DON!! ramp and DON!!-x effects. This is supported by most of the new cards in the deck are purple with effects that play into that gimmick, the 10 cost Luffy being a stand out exception.
@@VvulfrikI just don't think the whole "control, midrange, aggro" necessarily fits, Red certainly started with aggro strategies, however later sets have slowed them down as there isn't as much rush being implemented.
makes a lot of sense. kind of weird when im always impressed how the flavour and mechanics of each card works so well with the actual character on the card
It's probably not your traditional color theory video, but it does highlight what most colors do, but it has a flavor of, "here is what I wish they did and where I think they should go with them" based on a balance perspective.
@@Vvulfrik no it makes sense it felt like the colors were always merging somehow and like you said in the video they didn't have their singular identity
This is an AMAZING analysis, and I enjoy it both as an OPCG enthusiast and as someone who's looking to explore more card game design theory. You've also helped me find more specificity in a question that's been on my mind about helping players figure out how to cater to their playstyle - any chance I could use that filled in diagram as a basis for a video/post specifically on that subject?
Absolutely, and if you ever want to do a podcast style video and have me as a guest on it, just hit me up. I love TCG's and I take Game Balance and Design theory very seriously, its something that interests me at a deeper level than the game itself. One day I have aspirations of making my own game or at the very least work with someone else in creating/developing a game.
As someone who has just started looking into the OP TCG, the best I can figure is that the right-half of the hexagon are the 'simple' colors the first set started with and the left-half are the 'complicated/tricky' colors that were introduced later (they all alternative resources; black your trash, purple discarding your Don, and yellow burning your life). Remember that Japanese is read right to left. Now, I'm not saying this is a _good_ or intuitive design. Especially when many 'tribes' cross over into many colors. I think there's a Luffy (counting 2 color leaders) for every color for example!
10 months later and you're still correct lol, purple Big Mom adding life with no leader lock...Black is super broken with both trash and cost reduction/removal. I think bottom decking is the only thing that saves blue, since every other color has searchers and characters that play extra characters. I also think every color should have some sort of Moria card.
Admittedly I disagree with trying to categorize or restrict colors by gameplay styles such as aggro, control, or midrange. Even in magic while every color is distinct in how they do things, they broadly share many mechanics in some form and no color is restricted to one gameplay style. Blue in mtg can be an evasive flying aggro that gets past your opponents blockers, mid range value nonsense, or the more typical control. As for one piece I feel most colors are very well defined in their roles, red messes with power, increasing, decreasing, the main rush color, and their removal relies on power. Blue can't ko but can bouce for temporary value, or bottom deck as their alternative to ko which is usually overcosted but far more effective along with top deck manipulation and easier draws. Green cares about resting and activating and their removal relies upon resting the target character first. Purple plays the most loose sort of like black, but rather than paying life to gain access to a larger pool of effects, you pay don in order to push the boundaries. Black started off too simplistic with just cost reduction, but looking back now I think they had the idea to use trash as a resource and in op4 and op5 we're finally seeing it paid off. Yellow was the most nail on the head, they're the life color, simply put. Each has a distinct identity but no one color is locked into a playstyle, and unlike magic they are working with pre-existing characters so they are pressured into making cards that both work within the norm of the game, and fit with the flavor. For the rg law being just green example I think it would make him weaker, but not necessarily more balanced. Rg Law both fits his character well, and poses an interesting play challenge and deck building requirement of using both your colors evenly lest you not having something to swap, whereas as a mono green leader he'd simply be reusing on play effects over and over. I feel zoro and sanji do this better and more accurately to their colors. I think the only color I'd say needs to be narrowed in scope is purple which only has the don identity, but I largely find the color pie of one piece very well thought out aside from the delayed release of 2 core colors
I know people don't have time to listen to the entire video, and I get that, it's a 30 min video, but I specifically express towards the end of the video that I'm not talking about limiting Colors to one playstyle (in my Blue Doffy example). The Leader is what should determine the Archetype utilizing the cards from the color pool. I'm just saying that Colors should have specific design elements in mind along with accompanying archetypes. Which is why Blue Doffy ends up being such a strong Midrange deck as opposed to Control like the color would imply. If you don't have these preset parameters in place you get what happened with Red. Zoro, Whitebeard, and RG Law were decks that were best offensively and defensively simultaneously, hence all the Bans/Restrictions.
Great video as always. Love your shambling and allocation of affects. More or less in line with where I'd like to see it all at. This is really my big worry for OPTCG in the future, the slapdash nature of their "Color Pie". Colors are unbalanced and barring a reboot of design they'll likely stay that way. OP05/06 seem to be doing a good job of narrowing color focus, but also increasing power creep. Which, if the trade off is power creep rotation for color focus, I'd rather have less focused colors than ygo style power creep. Anyway, I'm interested to see how OPTCG looks in year two. This is the make or break year to see if Bandai really wants to put in to make it work, or if it's going to wither on the vine.
the game STILL is pretty young, we have no idea how many combinations and added features the game will get for every color and how many rules and specific texts will come. Magic in the beginning was a mess, heartstone needed alot of fixes and still is kinda unbalanced, so there are alot of examples with past games that needed much time to get to the points they wanted to be. Right now the game is actually pretty simple, gonna get complex, variegated and with much more personality in the future. I hope they keep going in the right direction, I came back into card games after a long time and I'm having big fun even without actual competition right now, I have best hopes :)
25:20 hmm, the best way to get around this to "fix " it is just to ignore the colors on the leaders and maybe even also the text to some extent and only use them maybe for their life and their attacks (for those that have) and their affiliated groups in this way u can attach any deck to any leader without worrying about colors or combo colors, and in this way u can easily make houserules to combo three colors instead of two...
Ngl it always felt to me that Bandai is just kinda slapping on the colors randomly for the Dragon Ball Super card game and, well, now the One Piece one. Just kinda doing colors for the sake of it, cuz MtG did it and since it's basically a staple of card games at this point, with all kinds of new entries doing it too like Lorcana or Star Wars Unlimited, admittedly with all of them being very lax when it comes to deck-building and splashing. It's interesting to look at Keyforge as Garfield's recent notable design and how it does or doesn't play with colors. Anyway, props, this was definitely a very complex video but ultimately I think your ideas would work very well for improving the game's design.
I havent played the game but its always interested me. I have issues getting into a tcg based on a single IP. Always worried they will focus on making main characters too good to sell items. I bet thats why red is so crazy with everything you need. That likely was their focus
While I don’t necessarily agree with all the changes suggested in the video I do 100% agree that Bandai only thought of the colors as an afterthought rather than a means of balancing against each other
I love a lot of what you have to say, and I could honestly basically write a small essay in response (I almost did LOL, I tend to be long winded). But to spare everybody, I'll boil my main thing I wanna say to the most basic I can. That is, while I don't fully know what all Bandai had or has in mind with the colors, I do believe they were and honestly, probably always will be a secondary consideration. Not to say I don't love some of the ideas you presented as I think from a gameplay aspect, it would not only work greatly but be super cool as well IMO. But the problem comes from the fact that as far as powers/abilities/mechanics go, they have thus far always prioritized cards being as faithful to the source material as possible. Sometimes to astonishingly impressive levels IMO. Like, I know there are already some balance issues (although I don't believe any game breaking balance issues, just minor stuff they've been fixing), to be able to mostly balance this game and create some semblance of a set of "archetypes" at the same time as make sure each character stays as true as possible to their canonical powers, it truly blows me away sometimes LOL. The colors, IMO, were probably implemented solely to limit the card pool for any 1 leader rather than to pigeonhole a character intro certain archetypes or to narrow the scope of what that character's abilities "should" be. It's easy easier to implement this color wheel thing in games like MTG, because in those games, cards can be completely imagined and created out of nowhere with this system already in place FIRST. Like, the creatures get designed FOR the colors. Whereas in OPTCG, Bandai is trying their hardest (and doing a pretty good job all things considered IMHO) to fit an already imagined/created world and cast of characters into a color coding system that's being applied on top of THAT... So you see, it's like the complete opposite in all honesty. That's why, no matter what, I don't believe this game will ever have a color system or archetype structure anywhere near the level of something like MTG for that one simple fact... Just as a real quick example, red/green Law... The reason he splashes red, I'm completely sure, is because in the story, he has an alliance with the Strawhats. So since they only had so many cards to work with when they first launched the game, they decided the Strawhats would start off in the red color first, then in order to allow somebody to play a team of characters that would be in-line with the lore of OP, they needed to make sure the leader could include red cards, even though his ability is mostly a completely "green-esque" type of ability. I mean, that's one example and I could go do much deeper into what I'm talking about and with other leaders but I'm gonna try to cut it off there. I think you get what I'm saying. I know that this approach is sub-optimal if you're looking at it at a strictly game balancing/game design aspect. But it does seem to be that one of their big goals when they designed this TCG was to try and stay as true as possible to the source material while simultaneously trying to create a system and keep things as ordered and balance as they could within those limitations.
So you are agreeing that they sacrificed game balance for fan service and didn't spend enough time balancing the core colors of the game? I hear what you are saying and while I understand where you are coming from, my argument is that if they spent longer in developing color archetype basepoints they could have stuck true to the source material while simultaneously balancing the game as perfectly as someone can balance a game while keeping it interesting and full of variance.
It's nice to see a deep color analysis on how they should interact in the future, but I think forcing magic organizations just would make a lawsuit from wizards of the coast xd. The origin of the game is Bandai wanting some exclusive ip use of one piece instead of Weiss or magic universe beyond. The meaning of the wheel is just the order of appearance in starter decks :)
A lot of people have misunderstood me on this specific idea. Mtg isn't the first game based around a balanced infrastructure. It is necessary in any and every game or obviously imbalance happens, and you get situations like what happened in optcg where one color is dominating the game. To be completely clear, im not saying to steal anything from magic that is specific to magic.
It seems like early on they wanted to keep colors with their identity but then they just handed red everything the other colors did and then added 2 more colors that can do multiple things.
I was just thinking about purple k.o. ing opponents don last night. I think they shouldve added that to the secret gear 5 luffy in op5 rather than returning all your don just to get another turn, cuz then you are at a massive don disadvantage. I think people would actually use that card if it made your opponent return 5 or 6 don cards
I don't know when was the last time you check mtg but it is not the case anymore, the colors lost their unique caracteristics and each color can do anything now (except white which is lifegain lol). For one piece, I don't think that the colors position in the quadrant has the same importance as for mtg (in my opinion). Concerning the principal colors, I understand your point but I don't see the yellow as a midrange deck (tough to compare it to "magic type" but I would say a combo control deck). For the agro/midrange/control, in my opinion, you have the 3 colors in your slide at 8:30 (on the left): red, green (midrange), blue. The don system is totally different than the lands for magic so what is a midrange deck for you ? For me, it's a deck that starts putting pressure between turn 4 and 6 (because turn 6+, I consider it late game) and the color that suits more in this pattern, is green for me. Yellow relies on triggers effect and big bodies with 8-10 cost. Concerning blue and black, I understand your reasoning for putting blue in control but I think black is more control than blue due to the fact that in late game, I feel black stronger than blue For the mill thing, I think they did it perfectly with nami and I hope they won't put the mill style of mtg. Concerning the red points, I understand your willigness for a unique feature (by adding attack to active characters). They could have put cards with "-x power" instead of ko characters (which fits for the black color). But if you look at it differently, kill a character with 5000 power or less, it's like in magic "deal 5 damage to a creature" (it's the same as "kill any creature with 5 or less life") I agree with the banish point, I want to see more of this. Concerning the leader suggestion, I agree to some extent but don't forget that there is the tribe facter too. For katakuri, if you put red and yellow, you wouldn't have enough red big mom family card (unless the op3 big mom card would have been red, then I agree). So in that sense, leader should have been in other colors but the card in the set too. In the end, I think they did a good job with the colors uniqueness at the moment. Yes, some cards could have be not as broken if they would have other colors or they would fit more in another color but, in general, the cards match their colors. We are so far from the situation of mtg, in my opinion it's fine...for now (it's only a year so they could mess up in the future). Great discussion video (sorry for the long post :D ) ps: I totally agree with how they make the wheel. Firs red aggro, then green midrange and blue control. "ok, now let's add the other colors one by one"
Thanks for commenting, and a great comment at that. I think we agree on many things, but I do just want to address a few things you talked about: MTG is still built around the same color wheel, it hasn't changed. Yes over time through sets on sets they will splash something that doesn't "belong" in a color and I'm fine with that. But at the time of us talking about this the most recent set The Lost Caverns of Ixalan still has cards like Chart a Course (traditional Blue draw) and Counters (Out of Air and Hurl), Black still has Destroy (Bitter Triumph), and I could go on. It doesn't change though when a set randomly features something like a Guttural Response (Red/Green Counter) or Beast Within (Green Destroy). It also doesn't mean that MTG has had the greatest set balance each set (broken cards still exist), some blocks are obviously more balanced than others. And yes I know MTG is doing some weird stuff right now, but that isn't the fault of the system of balance they put into the game, that reasoning is much more political. From my experience in TCG's and in reference to OP:TCG in particular, this is how I see the Archetypes currently: Aggro is a deck that features a bulk of its Characters as being 5 Don and under that also has strong Rush and Tempo elements. (Zoro/Law) Midrange is a deck that has a straight line Play curve from 1-9 or 2-10. Which is roughly the same as MTG, taking 1-6 Mana turns to establish momentum. (Katakuri) Control is the hardest to classify because of the way Leaders and Life work in OP:TCG. But Queen, Nami and BYLinlin are the only real control decks we have seen in this game. These are Decks that are built on a late game engine that typically revolves around Life Cycle and/or heavy card draw/cycle. Other decks that resemble control would be Rebecca and P/G Doffy. Speaking of which, Blockers is a big feature of a Control deck in this game. You can come up with a different system if you want to and I'd be fine with it, as long as it's balanced. I'm sure we could split hairs over it all day, but this is how the metagame has worked itself out. I also mentioned in the video that if you wanted to make Green the Midrange color then by all means, do that. My question then becomes, if R/U/G are the 3 primary archetypes, then what is P/B/Y? That is where the real issue comes in, especially if you played back in OP-02 when ST-06 came out and Black's direction was Navy and had nothing to do with Trash recursion. But again, as time and sets move on, I feel like there is definitely an effort in fixing and balancing the game (which is a good thing). There is no burn in One Piece yet outside of the idea of Rush and a few Effects like 10Lin, 7Lin, Tropical Torment, and a new card coming out in OP-06 called Impact. Burn isn't a thing in One Piece, I'm sure you are aware of how drastically different OP:TCG and MTG are in regards to combat. That is why I have a problem with giving Red "KO" in a traditional sense. Attacking Characters don't get KO'd in Battle even when their Power matches the Defender. You also can attack Characters in OP:TCG instead of always having to go "face" where your opponent gets to determine what stays vs what goes. My last point is on the Leader idea behind Katakuri and if he was Y/R. If he was, he would still use the exact same deck he is running right now, but then have access to other Red cards like Zoro, Luffy, Whitebeard, etc if he determined those were worth the slots, depending on the direction they want to take the deck. More support would then be offered in the future. I would not be surprised if the Tribes in this game eventually come full circle and are offered across all colors. In the ST-12 deck coming out next year in the West, there is a Big Mom Pirates Pudding card that is Blue. EDIT: Sorry I think I misunderstood your comment on Katakuri after re-reading it. If he was strictly Red then it would be much different of course, but could have been something they introduced in later sets. Red/Yellow is what I'm suggesting he'd be based off of how his Leader Effect works.
@@Vvulfrik You're right, we agree on lot of things and even if I disagree, I understand your point :) For mtg, you're right indeed, it's based on the color wheel. However, if you take into account all the sets (and this point concerns more the recent years), the color identity is not so present. For example, green can draw cards, red can reanimate, black can gain life,... My point was to say that mtg used to respect the wheel color which is not the case anymore (or at least, they make a lot of exceptions to that in each set). Concerning control decks, then it would be more faire to say that they are not present (except the 3 that you mentionned, and I agree with those). And it comes back to your point with the leader where they should have put them in certain colors to fit the decktype. I didn't played a lot against control decks (only a couple of time in OPTGsim) but I felt everytime I play katakuri or black decks (like lucci or smoker), if I don't control the board quickly, I'm dead. That's why I didn't classify any of them (hence, their colors) to the midrange type. If R/G/U are aggro/midrange/control, P/Y/B are ramp/combo (with the trigger effect)/tempo or midrange-control as you said. I only started recently so I didn't felt the issues from the beginning like you did ^^ I think that the wording bothers you but, when I understood the mechanics of OPTCG, it felt to me that "ko a character with 5000 power or less" matched the "do 5 damage to a creature" and the effect " ko a character with cost 5 or less" would match the "destroy a creature with a cost of 5 or less". Since you can't kill a character by giving him 0 or less power (unlike mtg), the effect "ko a character with 5000 power or less " is the only way to match the burn effet. Again, I understand your point but it doesn't bother me that much. Nevertheless, I totally agree with your option to give attack active instead of card with ko characters. Concerning katakuri, I totally understand your point. If the op3 cards would have been red and the leader would have been R/Y, then it would be better to match the color specificities. After re-reading your points, what bothers me the cost are the leaders which doesn't seem to always fit their color type (if they a broken, that's something else and it needs to be adressed by balancing their counter color). With 6 color, OPTCG has the possibility to have always a bad matchup for every color if they build the leader and respective colors right. Unlike mtg, at least for now, there are a lot of played deck in my opinion (even if red deck are always a bit better but it's in every tcg unfortunately. I hope they take into account some of your points (or at least adress some points to give a better understand of each color role).
Coming from mtg colors had a main identity with sub identiees to give enemy colors some kind of synergy. Looking at a leader like garg red and black had no synergy at the time and still don't
I thought colors will limit where factions will be, but now I know you will have a luffy in every color and color combination... Only weiss schwardz has a similar and useless color pie, but at least the game is far less restrictive at deckbuilding.
Katakuri feels like it is playing towards those big drops. How is that midrange? Other than that I agree but I also don't see the problem. Remember that Magic is a card game that writes its own lore created in the 90s. The lore and feel behind colors was a focus for the game design. One Piece is a card game that is designed around an existing lore. It's not like the colors represent something in the manga or show. Them representing design philosophies makes sense, and there being an internal logic to them also makes sense, but it doesn't have to be there to be good or fun.
Well, they really do need to be balanced lol, that's why Red did what it did for months. But I think I understand what you mean. As far as Katakuri and the midrange idea goes, in OPTCG, I consider aggro decks the decks that swing wide and low to the ground, midrange as decks that generate tempo and build tall, and control decks as decks that are built for attrition. It's hard to know perfectly in this game because, unfortunately, it's not designed around balance, as you already mentioned it's designed around the manga and a hybridization of existing systems in both DBS and Digimon (and potentially more i dont know about). But it does seem like they are figuring it out more and more as the game ages.
The colour placement seems random, but I completely disagree about the rest. They chose one theme for each colour and stuck to that. Red=power manipulation/matters, purple=don matters/manipulation, blue=deck manipulation/matters, black=trash manipulation/matters, yellow=life manipulation/matters, green=state manipulation/matters. They don't have to make a colour only Aggro or only late game or only one colour is allowed to draw cards/have removal/have rush/have triggers etc as long as they mostly stick to the mentioned themes.
I'm not advocating for a single color having access to card draw, removal, and all the other things you said. I think you misunderstood me, im saying that certain colors should specialize in them. I dont want red to only be aggro and blue control etc (which i mention around 30:35 in the video). I'm saying that when you balance the base colors around certain types, the true variance in style can come from leaders and even tribal affinity later, all while maintaining core balance.
@@Vvulfrik it was under the aggro red deck. I havent played one piece but i find tcg theory crafting so interesting. Ive rewatch this 3 times. I love seeing balance between colors explained or picked apart even for tcg i dont play. Thanks
I’m fine with onepiece not being in the same box as magic and other games. It does follow a lot of the manga and the story lines. The fact that you gotta reach to put it in the same box and follow the same format as magic makes the game less unique.
It's not about making optcg the same format as Magic, I used MTG as an example of good design because they designed everything, even the colors from the ground up with balance principles in mind
The Hearthstone comparison to Magic colors is way off. For example, Warrior can be similar to a red aggro deck, but it may also be similar to a white control defensive deck.
I agree with the majority of what you're saying here, but I think you're really underestimating "Don KO". Magellan is fine and cool because he's balanced by being dead late game, and by being the only card that does it. But the effect gets way more live late game the more cards do it. The game is balanced around being able to hit 10 don, and it's way too important of a resource to make sabotaging it a whole color identity
I'm not saying every card should slow you down, im just saying that it should be more prevalent in Purple, perhaps in a more passive way, like with a Blocker that has on KO player loses a Don.
I think you're attaching far too much importance to the colour wheel coming from an MtG background. Bandai simply doesn't care much about each colour having a unique identity. They're using colours in a most simplified way of restricting what cards people can use in a single deck. This is evidenced by the fact that core archetypes (Straw Hats, Navy etc) are now spread across at least 3 colours, and core mechanics (Rush, Life Manip etc) are also beginning to scatter across multiple colours. Your argument is flawed from the start by assuming there was (or should have been) some sort of deep thought process put into the colour identity, when there simply wasn't.
Well my argument was that the game failed in balancing the colors and ultimately lack direction in that regard. You agree with this based on your comment. However, your issue is with the logic behind the colors needing to be balanced. The colors do need to be balanced or you have a restriction list like what you see over here in the West.
Lets keep it civil guys lol. Might want to take the ideas in this video with a pinch of salt and watch on 2x Speed. ;]
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As a card game design junkie and a one piece newbie, this stood out to me immediately. i 100% agree with you. I do believe that bandai took the same route as they did with DBS, where it started as a cash grab and they had to keep up with demand. Perhaps with some banned lists and power creep, they can take the game in the direction you described.
I think you have a solid argument and ideas for change that could work. I would personally tweak them a bit but I can see your ideas being an overall improvement.
I also think you are right that the identity for some colors are weak or non existent and they missed a few times on colors like with blue starter deck croc. They could be a few reasons why these misses happen, like not wanting to introduce dual colors right at the start or something like that. But they definitely could have planned better.
Something else I think you miss because you haven’t experienced the source material is the abilities of the actual characters and how they play into the building of the leaders and the game.
Law for example has the ability to exchange the positions of items. He can swap a person and a rock that are x amount of feet apart.
Enel can automatically restart his heart when he dies.
Whitebeard although he is the strongest person in the series, he is old and dying hence he is a 6k 6 life leader but loses a life every turn.
Creating characters based on the source material makes the game more enjoyable for me, but I can see it leading to balance issues.
And while you are correct that law’s ability is kind of a blue thing, it would kind of suck if every single law was blue.
At the end of the day it’s a give and take as they are also balancing the cards around the source material abilities, and if you look at it from that point of view…. It makes balancing much harder, and without the source material I can guarantee you that this game wouldn’t nearly be as big as it is.
Anyways, great video for getting the brain juices flowing. Keep up the good work.
I hear what you're saying, and I want to stress that while I don't sit down and read/watch One Piece, I know about all those things in the Anime that you mentioned, Laws "shamble"s and Whitebeards health condition (my son is completely caught up and he has told me most of it and I have binge watched Highlights of most the rest).
The only thing that I didn't know is about Enel being able to jump start his own heart on death, which is kind of cool I guess but I feel was very well balanced when implemented into the game.
I knew they were basing much of the Characters and Leaders etc designs off of the source. I'm just suggesting that you can do that and balance the game simultaneously. However, you can't if you don't first establish boundaries and core design and balance principals baked into the game. Especially in regards to color identity.
@@Vvulfrik yup that’s exactly why I agree with you in the beginning of my comment.
The game does have flaws that seemed very avoidable… like they gave red way to much in the beginning, so much so that Otama and Makino are still in almost every red deck. And then other colors suffered.
I’m new to TCGs though so this is my very first dive into playing one hardcore. Although for the past few months I’ve learnt about a lot of them just because I’m into one piece.
Kind of why I like your stuff and your opinions.
Again. I fully agree with you that it does have. A flawed core, what I’m unsure about is if they can course correct, but I guess power creep can help with that.
I guess the biggest thing that gets me nervous is that because of the foundation of the color wheel isn’t great that this game will fail eventually
This is 100% my biggest fear and why I made the video. However, the good news is it looks like they are starting to show some signs of progression, especially with establishing Blacks color identity and toning back some colors.
Edit: because I really enjoy playing this game and want to see it continue to grow.
18:18
one of the reasons why duel masters probably forever had been my fav since 2005 is bcuz i feel they nailed this pretty darn well,
fire was all about aggro and rushing through power
water was all about control, manipulation, scrying, crazy bouncing and draws
darkness was all about trashing your own weaker cards to trash opponents cards that were stronger and vice versa( the theme also very strong dispite its weird alternative abstract art)
light or yellow was all about blocking and defending through triggers, healing cards,
finally forest was all about increased momentum or acceleration over time to overwhelm u like like a flood or a jungle to surround u by being patient and slowly walking towards the endgame like a tank moving forward
I love your videos and analysis. Something lacking on UA-cam are videos like this on tcg archetypes
my thoughts...one piece is about freedom, every color has potential to play with any other archetype it is closer to chaos then order in a good way hehehe...would be great to know how the game is balanced. great video ty.
One piece has always felt random with the color thing imo.....but also alot of the characters have abilities that match their powers from the manga
i think that's one of the causes of this problem. it's like they had an idea for the game and during the thought process they said "hey wouldn't it be cool if the abilities of our cards actually match the powers of the characters in the manga?"
@MuchoVarvato as someone who came from yugioh i honestly dont care about the color thing...matching the abilities from the manga seemed cool to me....but thats just me
@@beams098 now that you said it... I never looked at the colours that way before... to me it's just if they have them, they should use them. and if they use them, they should mean sth. for the game or why are they even putting them in to begin with.
i get why the colours aren't important for you but i think the difference between one piece and yugioh is that while yugioh has a whole anime and manga evolving around the game ( even though the rules differed greatly between the show and the real game at least in the beginning) the one piece card game has no other link to the series other then the characters and places itself, so the designers are more free in the way they want the game to be. And sure, they could just ignore the colours and only focus on what the characters do in the manga but for me personally that would just take sth. away from the game. But that's my opinion.
@MuchoVarvato i understand what you mean....especially in the beginning when black was shown to KO things...but then red can do the same..like bruh why use the colors then...that was annoying i get it...but again as a fan of one piece 1st and then a fan of tcg games 2nd...the concept of matching characters with their abilities is very cool imo.. but yes it does make the game less fluid
I really enjoyed the video and I believe you are correct in a lot of aspects. Coming from MTG, I didn't think I'd miss color pie consistency as much as I do.
However, there is one of your suggestions that I believe should be moved elsewhere: Banish in Yellow. Lately, with the temporary ban-list, I've been thinking "What beats yellow now that red is gutted?". My only real answer is "bad red decks" or Nami (but, that's an outlier and a whole other problem).
Coming from other Life-centric games (like Digimon, Wixoss, and DBS), triggers are getting quite annoying and I believe this promotes very swingy gameplay for no reason. It's an aggro deck's worse nightmare. I believe Banish is a good counter to Yellow, but it really shouldn't counter itself. So, if we take your advice and make purple more aggro, I believe Banish would fit perfectly into that slice of the pie (but don't push it too much).
Ya that would make sense. I was just giving some potential ideas. Also I wouldn't want only one color to have Banish, but for all colors to have a few Banish Characters but one color to be really pushing it. Great comment.
So I'm also a Dragon Ball Super Card Game player and there are striking similarities between both games, One Piece is basically a spiritual sequel to Dragon Ball Super.
Preface: -Dragon Ball Super, all start with eight life cards after mulligans (partial), there are few leaders that act as an exception to this and have a line of text to specify this change. One Piece changes this by having leaders with variable starting life.
-Leaders have two sides in Dragon Ball Super. The front side acts as a base form and the back side acts as a transformation, picture Luffy going from his base state and then going Gear Fourth. It's meant to give this nice power up as you receive benefits when you do this alongside having additional effects on the back side. Typically, leaders are allowed to flip to the back side at four life, but years of game design shifted leaders to be able to have other means of flipping to the back.
The equivalent of Counter in Dragon Ball Super is called Comboing and you can use this offensively and defensively. Later sets developed some depth with this core mechanic to produce Arrival and Z-Energy/Z-Deck.
Character Cards are called Battle Cards, characters in Dragon Ball are a category with which effects can affect both leaders and battle cards. Events and Stages are called Extra Cards with Field text being a skill that allows the Extra card to be on the field.
Energy is the equivalent of DON!!, however, at the start of your turn, you take a card from your hand and place it in the energy area, this card can be tapped to pay for energy costs of the same color or fill in unspecified costs.
Dragon Ball Super also has cards that can be used in response to the opponent playing or attacking, these are called Counters, generally Counter:Attack or Counter:Play and these generally stop the specified action from taking place, they can also apply a debuff on the opponent to hamper their actions for the turn.
Lastly, Leaders do not determine what colors can be in the deck, you can have Blue cards in a deck that has a Red leader.
Now colors: Dragon Ball Super has five colors; Red, Blue, Green, Yellow and Black (which was introduced in set 3). Red is about power manipulation, increasing, decreasing, removing based on power level, and occasionally gaining effects if the card meets a power threshold. This allows for some aggressive play styles by amping card power easily or for more control by weakening cards and prolonging the game. Red also has burn effects which forces the opponent to take life outside of combat. Blue is Energy (equivalent of DON!!) ramp/untapping, bouncing cards to hand or deck (introduced later). Blue has had some of the most resilient cards in the game due to the importance of having Energy up for defense. Green is primarily hand control and board removal, this is one of the weaker colors but they'll occasionally pop up with some crazy value synergy. Yellow is focused on untapping battle cards, tapping opponents cards (battle, leader, energy, anything) they also have removal for rested battle cards. Black wasn't introduced until set 3 and they acted more like a support color, having effects to benefit/harm other specific colors. One key feature that did stand out for Black was the Warp, a second discard pile, much like MtG's Exile pile. Generally, Black would be used as either a finisher or a silver bullet, depending on the card. Multicolored cards came in set 7 and all are printed with an effect called Energy-Exhaust which has the card charged in tapped position, to hamper the value of having Energy that is versatile to tap for one of two colors. Multi-Color was focused on color combinations that weren't black (Black Multi-Colors became its own thing with SS4 Bardock: Xeno). Alternate win conditions also tend to be used by Blue leaders. Blue Beerus, Zamasu of set 7, Mill Janemba, Red Cooler has mill as a win condition but it's secondary to beating the opponent through conventional means.
With this in mind, Red is very similar between DBS and OP, both are interested in power manipulation and power based removal. Funny that you mention allowing Red to attack active mode cards, there are several DBS red cards with this feature, it rarely amounts to anything of value as it's not reliable with Counter cards available to stop attacks. Green in OP acts remarkably similar to DBS's Blue/Yellow cards in that they rest cards or untap their own cards removal is also typically for rested characters like DBS's Yellow. OP Blue acts somewhat similarly to DBS's Blue with bounce/top deck removal. Purple is somewhat unique for OP in comparison to Dragon Ball, though if I had to say, it'd be the hand control and straight removal of DBS Green, which is somewhat funny as DBS Green is often considered bad (there are exceptional green meta decks, but they're often degenerate and swatted out). OP Black is also somewhat unique using energy cost reduction into KO'ing low energy cost cards is rather interesting, though that's it's one big thing for now. OP Yellow is life manipulation which was kind of a mechanic shared between DBS colors though 99% of them are to take your own life for the purpose of reaching a certain amount for big rewards, the 1% was either burn/burn-like effects or Rejuvenation, a gimmicky and unrewarding way of gaining life.
I don't have too much of an issue with One Piece's color wheel, they're typically there to give a guideline to what each color does for actions and strategies like aggro/midrange/control shouldn't be defined by the color, this restricts what each color can do. Designing Blue to be primarily control denies it the opportunity to have aggressive or mid range strategies that use bouncing removal or take advantage of the scry effects. Red Ace is a control deck that uses power manipulation as its means of out valuing the opponent.
Thanks you for this response, I read the whole thing, but I'm going to mainly respond to your last paragraph because it is targeted at the OP:TCG in your interpretation. One thing that I thought most people would misunderstand and I tried to make abundantly clear @30:35 was that balancing colors around a certain archetype would allow archetype variance at a Leader level. This is a very important concept to understand. Because while Blue colored cards might be geared at Control as to balance the overall game, a Blue Leader might interact and change that out for something that is more in line with Aggro or Midrange, depending while keeping the base or core of the game balanced. Leaders are a big part of the OP:TCG game and they determine most of how a Deck can be played in conjunction to what a color offers them with their Effect.
Also, correct me if I'm wrong, but you are admitting that OP:TCG has permitted a core imbalance as to satisfy source material/expectations?
@@Vvulfrik with regards to DBS Green and Purple being weak, I think it's more of a matter of difficulty in finding a reasonable balance in removal/hand control. Like I said, Green has been meta from time to time, arguably its best (and when I say best, I mean most reasonable) was with King Cold during what I'd call King format (meta was King Piccolo, King Vegeta, Blue Baby, Dark Broly, and to a lesser extent King Cold, Blue Boujack, and Agents of Destruction) and Set 6 Starter Broly (especially after Super Shenron's errata). Starting with Broly, he's this glass cannon archetype where the Broly Battle Cards have effects for when they're removed to play their next stage, they also have ever increasing removal effects to accompany the stronger power cards. The leader acts as an anchor for all of this, refilling hand size and a built in KO one card on both sides effect. Excellent design to make a solid green deck. It unfortunately gets phased out, thankfully it never received any hits on the banlist. King Cold was a midrange deck that used a wide array of Field cards to act as a sort of toolbox for removal, power boosting, and board generation.
Point being, it's just more difficult to create reasonable cards for Purple when its core mechanics have been DON!! ramp, straight removal, and hand control. Starter Kaido probably would have been a better meta deck for his time had he received a 1 or 2 cost searcher to help the deck with consistency. Alas, players panicked that this would make him too good, even whilst Red is running the format. Outrageous, his only means of draw power was Queen, albeit, he is a fantastic card, the only draw power locked behind a 5 cost.
To sum up, Bandai makes DBS Green and OP Purple to be the simple removal and hand control colors, rather difficult effects to balance for competitive. What's the appropriate values to just destroy a card, how much energy/DON!! can be reasonably spent to force the opponent to discard a card or two. To add to that Bandai gave Purple the ability to ramp to compensate for the DON!!-x effects, but they initially didn't want the color to have a 1 cost searcher. Things have improved slightly since Kaido and I'd read the ST10 leaders as more Purple aligned leaders with their emphasis on DON!! ramp and DON!!-x effects. This is supported by most of the new cards in the deck are purple with effects that play into that gimmick, the 10 cost Luffy being a stand out exception.
@@VvulfrikI just don't think the whole "control, midrange, aggro" necessarily fits, Red certainly started with aggro strategies, however later sets have slowed them down as there isn't as much rush being implemented.
really good video, love this type of content
makes a lot of sense. kind of weird when im always impressed how the flavour and mechanics of each card works so well with the actual character on the card
I was waiting on a color theory video, noice.
It's probably not your traditional color theory video, but it does highlight what most colors do, but it has a flavor of, "here is what I wish they did and where I think they should go with them" based on a balance perspective.
@@Vvulfrik no it makes sense it felt like the colors were always merging somehow and like you said in the video they didn't have their singular identity
This is an AMAZING analysis, and I enjoy it both as an OPCG enthusiast and as someone who's looking to explore more card game design theory.
You've also helped me find more specificity in a question that's been on my mind about helping players figure out how to cater to their playstyle - any chance I could use that filled in diagram as a basis for a video/post specifically on that subject?
Absolutely, and if you ever want to do a podcast style video and have me as a guest on it, just hit me up. I love TCG's and I take Game Balance and Design theory very seriously, its something that interests me at a deeper level than the game itself. One day I have aspirations of making my own game or at the very least work with someone else in creating/developing a game.
As someone who has just started looking into the OP TCG, the best I can figure is that the right-half of the hexagon are the 'simple' colors the first set started with and the left-half are the 'complicated/tricky' colors that were introduced later (they all alternative resources; black your trash, purple discarding your Don, and yellow burning your life). Remember that Japanese is read right to left.
Now, I'm not saying this is a _good_ or intuitive design. Especially when many 'tribes' cross over into many colors. I think there's a Luffy (counting 2 color leaders) for every color for example!
10 months later and you're still correct lol, purple Big Mom adding life with no leader lock...Black is super broken with both trash and cost reduction/removal. I think bottom decking is the only thing that saves blue, since every other color has searchers and characters that play extra characters. I also think every color should have some sort of Moria card.
Admittedly I disagree with trying to categorize or restrict colors by gameplay styles such as aggro, control, or midrange. Even in magic while every color is distinct in how they do things, they broadly share many mechanics in some form and no color is restricted to one gameplay style. Blue in mtg can be an evasive flying aggro that gets past your opponents blockers, mid range value nonsense, or the more typical control. As for one piece I feel most colors are very well defined in their roles, red messes with power, increasing, decreasing, the main rush color, and their removal relies on power. Blue can't ko but can bouce for temporary value, or bottom deck as their alternative to ko which is usually overcosted but far more effective along with top deck manipulation and easier draws. Green cares about resting and activating and their removal relies upon resting the target character first. Purple plays the most loose sort of like black, but rather than paying life to gain access to a larger pool of effects, you pay don in order to push the boundaries. Black started off too simplistic with just cost reduction, but looking back now I think they had the idea to use trash as a resource and in op4 and op5 we're finally seeing it paid off. Yellow was the most nail on the head, they're the life color, simply put. Each has a distinct identity but no one color is locked into a playstyle, and unlike magic they are working with pre-existing characters so they are pressured into making cards that both work within the norm of the game, and fit with the flavor. For the rg law being just green example I think it would make him weaker, but not necessarily more balanced. Rg Law both fits his character well, and poses an interesting play challenge and deck building requirement of using both your colors evenly lest you not having something to swap, whereas as a mono green leader he'd simply be reusing on play effects over and over. I feel zoro and sanji do this better and more accurately to their colors. I think the only color I'd say needs to be narrowed in scope is purple which only has the don identity, but I largely find the color pie of one piece very well thought out aside from the delayed release of 2 core colors
I know people don't have time to listen to the entire video, and I get that, it's a 30 min video, but I specifically express towards the end of the video that I'm not talking about limiting Colors to one playstyle (in my Blue Doffy example). The Leader is what should determine the Archetype utilizing the cards from the color pool. I'm just saying that Colors should have specific design elements in mind along with accompanying archetypes. Which is why Blue Doffy ends up being such a strong Midrange deck as opposed to Control like the color would imply. If you don't have these preset parameters in place you get what happened with Red. Zoro, Whitebeard, and RG Law were decks that were best offensively and defensively simultaneously, hence all the Bans/Restrictions.
Great video as always.
Love your shambling and allocation of affects. More or less in line with where I'd like to see it all at.
This is really my big worry for OPTCG in the future, the slapdash nature of their "Color Pie". Colors are unbalanced and barring a reboot of design they'll likely stay that way. OP05/06 seem to be doing a good job of narrowing color focus, but also increasing power creep. Which, if the trade off is power creep rotation for color focus, I'd rather have less focused colors than ygo style power creep.
Anyway, I'm interested to see how OPTCG looks in year two. This is the make or break year to see if Bandai really wants to put in to make it work, or if it's going to wither on the vine.
I knew i wasnt the only who felt the color system in one piece was kinda just added, black just now getting a identity, after a year
the game STILL is pretty young, we have no idea how many combinations and added features the game will get for every color and how many rules and specific texts will come. Magic in the beginning was a mess, heartstone needed alot of fixes and still is kinda unbalanced, so there are alot of examples with past games that needed much time to get to the points they wanted to be. Right now the game is actually pretty simple, gonna get complex, variegated and with much more personality in the future. I hope they keep going in the right direction, I came back into card games after a long time and I'm having big fun even without actual competition right now, I have best hopes :)
25:20
hmm, the best way to get around this to "fix " it is just to ignore the colors on the leaders and maybe even also the text to some extent and only use them maybe for their life and their attacks (for those that have) and their affiliated groups in this way u can attach any deck to any leader without worrying about colors or combo colors, and in this way u can easily make houserules to combo three colors instead of two...
Ngl it always felt to me that Bandai is just kinda slapping on the colors randomly for the Dragon Ball Super card game and, well, now the One Piece one. Just kinda doing colors for the sake of it, cuz MtG did it and since it's basically a staple of card games at this point, with all kinds of new entries doing it too like Lorcana or Star Wars Unlimited, admittedly with all of them being very lax when it comes to deck-building and splashing.
It's interesting to look at Keyforge as Garfield's recent notable design and how it does or doesn't play with colors.
Anyway, props, this was definitely a very complex video but ultimately I think your ideas would work very well for improving the game's design.
Ya Bandai... is very confusing to me sometimes. Appreciate ya!
I havent played the game but its always interested me. I have issues getting into a tcg based on a single IP. Always worried they will focus on making main characters too good to sell items. I bet thats why red is so crazy with everything you need. That likely was their focus
While I don’t necessarily agree with all the changes suggested in the video
I do 100% agree that Bandai only thought of the colors as an afterthought rather than a means of balancing against each other
That rainbow luffy card should give your opponent something before the game starts. Maybe 5 more life cards?
I love a lot of what you have to say, and I could honestly basically write a small essay in response (I almost did LOL, I tend to be long winded). But to spare everybody, I'll boil my main thing I wanna say to the most basic I can. That is, while I don't fully know what all Bandai had or has in mind with the colors, I do believe they were and honestly, probably always will be a secondary consideration. Not to say I don't love some of the ideas you presented as I think from a gameplay aspect, it would not only work greatly but be super cool as well IMO. But the problem comes from the fact that as far as powers/abilities/mechanics go, they have thus far always prioritized cards being as faithful to the source material as possible. Sometimes to astonishingly impressive levels IMO. Like, I know there are already some balance issues (although I don't believe any game breaking balance issues, just minor stuff they've been fixing), to be able to mostly balance this game and create some semblance of a set of "archetypes" at the same time as make sure each character stays as true as possible to their canonical powers, it truly blows me away sometimes LOL. The colors, IMO, were probably implemented solely to limit the card pool for any 1 leader rather than to pigeonhole a character intro certain archetypes or to narrow the scope of what that character's abilities "should" be. It's easy easier to implement this color wheel thing in games like MTG, because in those games, cards can be completely imagined and created out of nowhere with this system already in place FIRST. Like, the creatures get designed FOR the colors. Whereas in OPTCG, Bandai is trying their hardest (and doing a pretty good job all things considered IMHO) to fit an already imagined/created world and cast of characters into a color coding system that's being applied on top of THAT... So you see, it's like the complete opposite in all honesty. That's why, no matter what, I don't believe this game will ever have a color system or archetype structure anywhere near the level of something like MTG for that one simple fact...
Just as a real quick example, red/green Law... The reason he splashes red, I'm completely sure, is because in the story, he has an alliance with the Strawhats. So since they only had so many cards to work with when they first launched the game, they decided the Strawhats would start off in the red color first, then in order to allow somebody to play a team of characters that would be in-line with the lore of OP, they needed to make sure the leader could include red cards, even though his ability is mostly a completely "green-esque" type of ability. I mean, that's one example and I could go do much deeper into what I'm talking about and with other leaders but I'm gonna try to cut it off there. I think you get what I'm saying.
I know that this approach is sub-optimal if you're looking at it at a strictly game balancing/game design aspect. But it does seem to be that one of their big goals when they designed this TCG was to try and stay as true as possible to the source material while simultaneously trying to create a system and keep things as ordered and balance as they could within those limitations.
So you are agreeing that they sacrificed game balance for fan service and didn't spend enough time balancing the core colors of the game? I hear what you are saying and while I understand where you are coming from, my argument is that if they spent longer in developing color archetype basepoints they could have stuck true to the source material while simultaneously balancing the game as perfectly as someone can balance a game while keeping it interesting and full of variance.
It's nice to see a deep color analysis on how they should interact in the future, but I think forcing magic organizations just would make a lawsuit from wizards of the coast xd.
The origin of the game is Bandai wanting some exclusive ip use of one piece instead of Weiss or magic universe beyond. The meaning of the wheel is just the order of appearance in starter decks :)
A lot of people have misunderstood me on this specific idea. Mtg isn't the first game based around a balanced infrastructure. It is necessary in any and every game or obviously imbalance happens, and you get situations like what happened in optcg where one color is dominating the game. To be completely clear, im not saying to steal anything from magic that is specific to magic.
It seems like early on they wanted to keep colors with their identity but then they just handed red everything the other colors did and then added 2 more colors that can do multiple things.
I was just thinking about purple k.o. ing opponents don last night. I think they shouldve added that to the secret gear 5 luffy in op5 rather than returning all your don just to get another turn, cuz then you are at a massive don disadvantage. I think people would actually use that card if it made your opponent return 5 or 6 don cards
I don't know when was the last time you check mtg but it is not the case anymore, the colors lost their unique caracteristics and each color can do anything now (except white which is lifegain lol).
For one piece, I don't think that the colors position in the quadrant has the same importance as for mtg (in my opinion).
Concerning the principal colors, I understand your point but I don't see the yellow as a midrange deck (tough to compare it to "magic type" but I would say a combo control deck).
For the agro/midrange/control, in my opinion, you have the 3 colors in your slide at 8:30 (on the left): red, green (midrange), blue.
The don system is totally different than the lands for magic so what is a midrange deck for you ?
For me, it's a deck that starts putting pressure between turn 4 and 6 (because turn 6+, I consider it late game) and the color that suits more in this pattern, is green for me.
Yellow relies on triggers effect and big bodies with 8-10 cost.
Concerning blue and black, I understand your reasoning for putting blue in control but I think black is more control than blue due to the fact that in late game, I feel black stronger than blue
For the mill thing, I think they did it perfectly with nami and I hope they won't put the mill style of mtg.
Concerning the red points, I understand your willigness for a unique feature (by adding attack to active characters). They could have put cards with "-x power" instead of ko characters (which fits for the black color).
But if you look at it differently, kill a character with 5000 power or less, it's like in magic "deal 5 damage to a creature" (it's the same as "kill any creature with 5 or less life")
I agree with the banish point, I want to see more of this.
Concerning the leader suggestion, I agree to some extent but don't forget that there is the tribe facter too.
For katakuri, if you put red and yellow, you wouldn't have enough red big mom family card (unless the op3 big mom card would have been red, then I agree).
So in that sense, leader should have been in other colors but the card in the set too.
In the end, I think they did a good job with the colors uniqueness at the moment.
Yes, some cards could have be not as broken if they would have other colors or they would fit more in another color but, in general, the cards match their colors.
We are so far from the situation of mtg, in my opinion it's fine...for now (it's only a year so they could mess up in the future).
Great discussion video (sorry for the long post :D )
ps: I totally agree with how they make the wheel. Firs red aggro, then green midrange and blue control.
"ok, now let's add the other colors one by one"
Thanks for commenting, and a great comment at that. I think we agree on many things, but I do just want to address a few things you talked about:
MTG is still built around the same color wheel, it hasn't changed. Yes over time through sets on sets they will splash something that doesn't "belong" in a color and I'm fine with that. But at the time of us talking about this the most recent set The Lost Caverns of Ixalan still has cards like Chart a Course (traditional Blue draw) and Counters (Out of Air and Hurl), Black still has Destroy (Bitter Triumph), and I could go on. It doesn't change though when a set randomly features something like a Guttural Response (Red/Green Counter) or Beast Within (Green Destroy). It also doesn't mean that MTG has had the greatest set balance each set (broken cards still exist), some blocks are obviously more balanced than others. And yes I know MTG is doing some weird stuff right now, but that isn't the fault of the system of balance they put into the game, that reasoning is much more political.
From my experience in TCG's and in reference to OP:TCG in particular, this is how I see the Archetypes currently:
Aggro is a deck that features a bulk of its Characters as being 5 Don and under that also has strong Rush and Tempo elements. (Zoro/Law)
Midrange is a deck that has a straight line Play curve from 1-9 or 2-10. Which is roughly the same as MTG, taking 1-6 Mana turns to establish momentum. (Katakuri)
Control is the hardest to classify because of the way Leaders and Life work in OP:TCG. But Queen, Nami and BYLinlin are the only real control decks we have seen in this game. These are Decks that are built on a late game engine that typically revolves around Life Cycle and/or heavy card draw/cycle. Other decks that resemble control would be Rebecca and P/G Doffy. Speaking of which, Blockers is a big feature of a Control deck in this game.
You can come up with a different system if you want to and I'd be fine with it, as long as it's balanced. I'm sure we could split hairs over it all day, but this is how the metagame has worked itself out. I also mentioned in the video that if you wanted to make Green the Midrange color then by all means, do that. My question then becomes, if R/U/G are the 3 primary archetypes, then what is P/B/Y? That is where the real issue comes in, especially if you played back in OP-02 when ST-06 came out and Black's direction was Navy and had nothing to do with Trash recursion. But again, as time and sets move on, I feel like there is definitely an effort in fixing and balancing the game (which is a good thing).
There is no burn in One Piece yet outside of the idea of Rush and a few Effects like 10Lin, 7Lin, Tropical Torment, and a new card coming out in OP-06 called Impact. Burn isn't a thing in One Piece, I'm sure you are aware of how drastically different OP:TCG and MTG are in regards to combat. That is why I have a problem with giving Red "KO" in a traditional sense. Attacking Characters don't get KO'd in Battle even when their Power matches the Defender. You also can attack Characters in OP:TCG instead of always having to go "face" where your opponent gets to determine what stays vs what goes.
My last point is on the Leader idea behind Katakuri and if he was Y/R. If he was, he would still use the exact same deck he is running right now, but then have access to other Red cards like Zoro, Luffy, Whitebeard, etc if he determined those were worth the slots, depending on the direction they want to take the deck. More support would then be offered in the future. I would not be surprised if the Tribes in this game eventually come full circle and are offered across all colors. In the ST-12 deck coming out next year in the West, there is a Big Mom Pirates Pudding card that is Blue.
EDIT: Sorry I think I misunderstood your comment on Katakuri after re-reading it. If he was strictly Red then it would be much different of course, but could have been something they introduced in later sets. Red/Yellow is what I'm suggesting he'd be based off of how his Leader Effect works.
@@Vvulfrik You're right, we agree on lot of things and even if I disagree, I understand your point :)
For mtg, you're right indeed, it's based on the color wheel. However, if you take into account all the sets (and this point concerns more the recent years), the color identity is not so present. For example, green can draw cards, red can reanimate, black can gain life,...
My point was to say that mtg used to respect the wheel color which is not the case anymore (or at least, they make a lot of exceptions to that in each set).
Concerning control decks, then it would be more faire to say that they are not present (except the 3 that you mentionned, and I agree with those).
And it comes back to your point with the leader where they should have put them in certain colors to fit the decktype.
I didn't played a lot against control decks (only a couple of time in OPTGsim) but I felt everytime I play katakuri or black decks (like lucci or smoker), if I don't control the board quickly, I'm dead.
That's why I didn't classify any of them (hence, their colors) to the midrange type.
If R/G/U are aggro/midrange/control, P/Y/B are ramp/combo (with the trigger effect)/tempo or midrange-control as you said.
I only started recently so I didn't felt the issues from the beginning like you did ^^
I think that the wording bothers you but, when I understood the mechanics of OPTCG, it felt to me that "ko a character with 5000 power or less" matched the "do 5 damage to a creature" and the effect " ko a character with cost 5 or less" would match the "destroy a creature with a cost of 5 or less".
Since you can't kill a character by giving him 0 or less power (unlike mtg), the effect "ko a character with 5000 power or less " is the only way to match the burn effet.
Again, I understand your point but it doesn't bother me that much.
Nevertheless, I totally agree with your option to give attack active instead of card with ko characters.
Concerning katakuri, I totally understand your point. If the op3 cards would have been red and the leader would have been R/Y, then it would be better to match the color specificities.
After re-reading your points, what bothers me the cost are the leaders which doesn't seem to always fit their color type (if they a broken, that's something else and it needs to be adressed by balancing their counter color).
With 6 color, OPTCG has the possibility to have always a bad matchup for every color if they build the leader and respective colors right.
Unlike mtg, at least for now, there are a lot of played deck in my opinion (even if red deck are always a bit better but it's in every tcg unfortunately.
I hope they take into account some of your points (or at least adress some points to give a better understand of each color role).
Coming from mtg colors had a main identity with sub identiees to give enemy colors some kind of synergy. Looking at a leader like garg red and black had no synergy at the time and still don't
And some colors have too much synergy aka black n yellow
Agreed!
I thought colors will limit where factions will be, but now I know you will have a luffy in every color and color combination...
Only weiss schwardz has a similar and useless color pie, but at least the game is far less restrictive at deckbuilding.
Katakuri feels like it is playing towards those big drops. How is that midrange? Other than that I agree but I also don't see the problem. Remember that Magic is a card game that writes its own lore created in the 90s. The lore and feel behind colors was a focus for the game design. One Piece is a card game that is designed around an existing lore. It's not like the colors represent something in the manga or show. Them representing design philosophies makes sense, and there being an internal logic to them also makes sense, but it doesn't have to be there to be good or fun.
Well, they really do need to be balanced lol, that's why Red did what it did for months. But I think I understand what you mean. As far as Katakuri and the midrange idea goes, in OPTCG, I consider aggro decks the decks that swing wide and low to the ground, midrange as decks that generate tempo and build tall, and control decks as decks that are built for attrition. It's hard to know perfectly in this game because, unfortunately, it's not designed around balance, as you already mentioned it's designed around the manga and a hybridization of existing systems in both DBS and Digimon (and potentially more i dont know about). But it does seem like they are figuring it out more and more as the game ages.
The colour placement seems random, but I completely disagree about the rest. They chose one theme for each colour and stuck to that. Red=power manipulation/matters, purple=don matters/manipulation, blue=deck manipulation/matters, black=trash manipulation/matters, yellow=life manipulation/matters, green=state manipulation/matters. They don't have to make a colour only Aggro or only late game or only one colour is allowed to draw cards/have removal/have rush/have triggers etc as long as they mostly stick to the mentioned themes.
I'm not advocating for a single color having access to card draw, removal, and all the other things you said. I think you misunderstood me, im saying that certain colors should specialize in them. I dont want red to only be aggro and blue control etc (which i mention around 30:35 in the video). I'm saying that when you balance the base colors around certain types, the true variance in style can come from leaders and even tribal affinity later, all while maintaining core balance.
What did you mean by Don Shift?
I can't remember exactly which part I used it at, but I was probably talking about moving attached or Rested Don to others.
@@Vvulfrik it was under the aggro red deck. I havent played one piece but i find tcg theory crafting so interesting. Ive rewatch this 3 times. I love seeing balance between colors explained or picked apart even for tcg i dont play.
Thanks
Starter deck Croc really should have been Blurple, instead of the Blurple Croc we got.
3:05:
wait arent those symbols a complete ripoff from the old world of warcraft tcg..?
Those are the symbols for the Wow classes
I’m fine with onepiece not being in the same box as magic and other games. It does follow a lot of the manga and the story lines.
The fact that you gotta reach to put it in the same box and follow the same format as magic makes the game less unique.
It's not about making optcg the same format as Magic, I used MTG as an example of good design because they designed everything, even the colors from the ground up with balance principles in mind
This video makes me want to play mtg instead lol
The Hearthstone comparison to Magic colors is way off. For example, Warrior can be similar to a red aggro deck, but it may also be similar to a white control defensive deck.
I agree with the majority of what you're saying here, but I think you're really underestimating "Don KO". Magellan is fine and cool because he's balanced by being dead late game, and by being the only card that does it. But the effect gets way more live late game the more cards do it. The game is balanced around being able to hit 10 don, and it's way too important of a resource to make sabotaging it a whole color identity
I'm not saying every card should slow you down, im just saying that it should be more prevalent in Purple, perhaps in a more passive way, like with a Blocker that has on KO player loses a Don.
@@Vvulfrik 😨
Woah woah...white classes...excuse me 😂
I think you're attaching far too much importance to the colour wheel coming from an MtG background. Bandai simply doesn't care much about each colour having a unique identity. They're using colours in a most simplified way of restricting what cards people can use in a single deck. This is evidenced by the fact that core archetypes (Straw Hats, Navy etc) are now spread across at least 3 colours, and core mechanics (Rush, Life Manip etc) are also beginning to scatter across multiple colours. Your argument is flawed from the start by assuming there was (or should have been) some sort of deep thought process put into the colour identity, when there simply wasn't.
Well my argument was that the game failed in balancing the colors and ultimately lack direction in that regard. You agree with this based on your comment. However, your issue is with the logic behind the colors needing to be balanced. The colors do need to be balanced or you have a restriction list like what you see over here in the West.