When players deliberately switch to lower win-rate decks simply because those faster decks let them play more total matches, the idea that this is a skill testing format goes right out the window.
it still does it since the amount of games will average it out where skilled players will place higher hence why you can get Tasuku to win a DC with PUNK
@@cryomancer2768 sure it tests skill, so would forcing a fighting game players to do every match as a best of 50. Its an unnecessary test of endurance and patience that does nothing but stifle skill and instead make it a contest of "who can sacrifice the most of their wellbeing for a card game."
@@SissypheanCatboy , there definitely is a balance to be struck between the randomness of too few games so just anyone gets in and the endurance of too many so that it goes past testing any reasonable consistant skill and dedication. I feel like a balance to that bell curve is definitely possible. like, something taking 6 or even 8 or 10 hours straight of thier own volition I think is fine for someone trying to do something at a high professional level to show dedication. or maybe 60 hours over a month, but 60 hours straight is crazy.
Then you got people who take around 8-10 minutes PER TURN and you know that the system is just broken. The meta is just worked. No game should take that long
It's a real intense, torturous grind, but when you finally hold that sweet Nintendo Switch in your hands, you realize that shaving years of your life was all worth it in the end!
If someone dies during this event, we can't automatically assume they died of exhaustion, Konami might've just implemented the Shadow Realm update to make the grind that much more immersive, really give you that true King of Games experience.
gbf guild war have more torturing grind and participant than this and no one has died since 2015, in fact there is more deaths in fighting game players than gbf, despite what people said here.
Yeah this is why I never try on these events in any of these games because of how unhealthy it is to no life the rank to the top. No thanks I would rather play for fun.
bro why are you lying so much with a 60% winrate you would easily win the duelist cup it is absolutely impossible not being in the top 10 with that winrate and if you had that winrate after 20h you wouldve continued. probably meant "about 50%", at best and only for the first 10k DP the most delusional thing is believing that you need to play 24/7. you can easily sleep for 8h/day and win it all. sleeping for 4h doesnt allow your brain to rest, you would misplay so many games that it would bring you hours worth of winning down in the ladder.
@@Nothing2Say Now that you mentioned it I'm pretty sure that I did the math of my winrate based off the past 20 games that master duel allows you to see, because I did not write down every win and loss so the math would be different yeah. I want to say I had close to 30k points but this duelist cup was like a year ago so I could be off.
That's pretty rough, but that's honestly nothing new for online games. Oldschool runescape hold tournament that are 45 days long and people play 12-18 hours sometimes even more almost the entire time. I know it's not healthy, but I think this is normal for a competition.
HELLO GUYS THE DB GRINDER HERE, AND TODAY WE'RE BACK AT IT AGAIN WITH ANOTHER 365 DAY OF STRAIGHT GOONING. NOW I KNOW MY LAST EDGING STREAK DIDN'T LAST PAST THE 600 DAY MARK, BUT I HAVE CONFIDENCE I CAN MAKE IT PAST THIS TIME. I'VE BEEN DOING A LOT OF PRACTICE IN THE BEDROOM, AND HONESTLY, I THINK I MIGHT MAKE IT TO NEXT YEARS CHAMPIONSHIP TOURNEY.
We should have the 72 hours divided over a week, so the timer only goes down when you are logged in. Not only would be healthy but more fair in the timing side.
I played for a day and a half straight and made to top 20 in my region. My win ratio was insane great and i thought i deserved a nice break and went on a date with my wife. Came back to grind a little more and saw myself at 300 and something. I realized i will never make to top 10 without going insane. Doesnt matter how good i was.
Yeah its odd that they dont have a mandatory 7hrs lock out period for the duelist cup like other games with similar grind events have. Make it regionbased so nobody is locked out of their primetime as well. But the real solution is to not pretend like a grind event is competitive and actually put work towards implementing ingame tournaments, a meaningfully rated ladder and other features that would help MD be more than a simple simulator.
That would mean actual work. We all know Konami not doing that every game the have released themselves have been half cooked while they make PlayStation pay to creat it to one keep it exclusive but also not put in work at all.
@@lildevin16 that is dumb, creating another xbox nation case where eu players only meet with eu players under region lock break time, like sure joshua have to compete with 1000 eu players while im playing in asia dealing with 100k players, no that is not fair, go work your ass off if you want to win, no easy path.
Destroying your life and health for a konami's goody bag that is worth like 300$. Konami created a sweatshop but players happily jumped into it, it's a perfect one way abusive relationship.
As a mathematician who works with the math underpinning Elo regularly, I can't overstate how bonkers the 1000 point cutoff for a win is. Heck, DP doesn't actually count as an Elo system as a result. There is no justification for this. I mean that literally: whatever the organizers' goals are, there's a better way to accomplish that. Even if the goal is to hurt players and force them to grind constantly they could do something far simpler that would actually encourage that more. That needs to be the first thing changed, and then assess how the dynamics evolve. Anything else is a bad bandage over this issue. It's not actually true that in an Elo system point win and loss are always symmetric. When players are close in rating and have played many games that'll look like it's true, but it's very often false. The key concept is that the difference in win rates tell you the odds of one player winning, and the score adjustments come downstream from getting better estimates of the true skill level of the players.
Out of curiosity how does the cap on losing DP affect things? I understand the +1000 minimum is *the* big issue but is the -1200 cap also contribiting to the problem?
I remember grinding like 3 days with no sleep for KC Cup (i think it was called?) in Duel Links, only to get #11 in the end :( i think a lot of players in the top positions ended up getting banned for account sharing aswell because they basically did shifts with multiple people for the cup. actual insanity
I fell asleep on the stairs of my house during the last like twenty minutes of the first Kaiba cup and almost dropped out of top 100. Bandit Keith Relinquished for life.
A few things that are worth mentioning about Pokémon showdown laddering to this discussion: In these ladders there is a mechanism that actively tries to avoid pairing players of vastly different elos against each other, even if there aren't that many players available (as is with the case in Gen2ou). Essentially there is a timer which, if it progresses, it widens the differential of elo a player can have to pair up with you, until eventually after a very long time you can pair up the 1000 elo player with the 2200 elo player.
I played in the first two KC Cups of Duel Links back in the day, I absolutely hated this grind and stopped playing Duel Links and YuGiOh as a whole for years. I started playing Master Duel last month and watching the Duelist Cup stuff gave me a vietnam flash back.
I'm pretty sure whoever made the 1K point minimum is a game designer who doesn't know how Elo works that wanted players to feel good through winning with high returns and low risk. This makes sense when it comes to ranked or casual modes so that a player feels like they are making progress and engadges with the game more. However, with high stakes as a world tournney on the line instead of empty bragging rights, then you get the sleepless nights and findings in this video. If you are a game designer, use this as an example of why your job holds more weight than you think.
Was gonna say the 1000 per win was super high in general. Which is probaly is when every starts at 0. Also it barely lower than the 1200 lose cap. A cap which seems to rarely be reached anyway. Which implies that 1000 is quick close to the effective cap on points obtainable from a win. It's not an ego system it's an activeness tracker that very minerly benefits beating stronger players.
Its intentional. There is no shot this is goging on multiple times and Konami never looked into it. Its just melious Design to keep people playing. They even have a normal elo System but actively choosing to use this instead.
@@tjaremertens1464 Sounds about right. For all I know we could be in the age where the clients actually know how to design games and are able to do stupid stuff like this. Or they could have cut most of the game designers and have no one to say how unhealthy this is.
Great analysis video! I have a lot to say after watching it, and I hope I can keep this brief: 1. About "Skillful format" : I’m not trying to underestimate Pro, but based on your analysis, it’s clear the Duelist Cup (DC) isn’t as skill-focused as it seems. From my perspective, the reason the same names appear at the top is because the grind-heavy system favors those who dedicate their lives to Yu-Gi-Oh!. Players like Joshua or Jesse are full-time content creators, so they have the time to grind. Plus, the "+1000 points" theory makes the system even more unbalanced. 2. Alternative for World Tickets: I’d actually prefer something like a Challenger Cup across different regions, where only players with 1700+ Rated Points or higher can enter. This would feel more like a proper competitive event. 3. Solo to Team Transition: Grinding solo to earn a spot in Worlds, only to compete there as a team, is peak comedy. Add to that the way the World Tournament is managed-it’s practically a circus. 4. Did I spell “ELO” wrong? 5. Point Distribution Flaws: Speaking of the +1000 point system, Konami should have seen the flaws in their system from the very first DC. Remember the "XBOX Country" drama? Somehow, a player from there racked up insane points farming against low-skill opponents or bots. This wouldn’t happen with a proper ELO system. But maybe “learning” is a forbidden skill in Konami’s office. 6. Why the System Won’t Change: From a business perspective, the Duelist Cup is too good for Konami. It’s a low-effort “big” event that doesn’t require much budget for prizes or manpower. Plus, it massively increases the game’s playtime stats, which looks great to investors and sponsors. 7. Conclusion: Honestly, I don’t care what others think (I’ve yet to hear a strong argument defending the DC). For me, the Duelist Cup is garbage.
lol, hiya Renaldy 👋 The reason for the GERA xbox situation was because konami left the option to turn off crossplay on xbox. The player-base on said platform was and I would assume still is a lot more casual and likely overall smaller as well, thus making the concern of more balanced matchmaking a real issue. Idk if this example require a point distribution change as much as the implemented "cross play off" feature being disabled for DC/RRQ. As for the 1st bullet-point - I think it's unneeded to doubt the skill aspect of this format. It's 100% there. The skill required to navigate the matches in any given cup depends on the skill in that format itself. I do agree though that a big part for why there are so many repeated top 100 names over the different cups is fully tied with the other requirements for DC - having some amount of time to grind + having the mental fortitude to play a massive number of games + having the mental strength to not get tilted from streaks of bad luck. (if the goal is top 1 time might be more dire, but it also depends as I know of a couple cases of KC cups being won with good rest + time to spare on day 3) I also fully agree that overall it's unfortunate that the only way to qualify for worlds in MD/DL is through this specific format, which is for various reasons (time, mental, skillset) not everyone's cup of tea. Abolishing it seems unneeded since there is an active audience for it and again, I think it does show a decent amount of skill filtering, but having other options such as structured tournaments would be neat.
@@Nifroth 1. About GERA, yeah, I’m aware. If Konami used a proper Elo system, he wouldn’t have made it to the top ranks. In a balanced system, as his points got higher, he’d earn less and less from playing low-ranked opponents in "XBOX Country." To rack up enough points for the top rank, he’d have to compete against high-ranked players from outside his region. 2. Skill matters, sure, but Duelist Cup’s grindy, battle-royale format allows too many non-skill factors to dominate. First, it favors people who dedicate their lives to Yu-Gi-Oh!, like streamers or content creators. Second, as shown in the video, the point system isn’t fair-you can still gain a lot of points from beating weaker players. Third, it’s clear that luck can play too big a role. For example, Most of Joshua Schmidt lost because of a brick. Yu-Gi-Oh! is supposed to be a strategy game, not an endurance test. The focus should be on strategy since that’s what ultimately wins tournaments, not how long you can grind. 3. Region-based qualifiers are pretty standard in sports and other competitive games. But to pull it off properly, Konami would need to make a much bigger investment. 4. As for whether there’s really an "active audience" for this system, it’s hard to say. Right now, Duelist Cup is the only option we’ve got, so naturally, people participate. To really judge its popularity, we’d need to see an alternative system to compare it with. 5. That said, I doubt Konami will ever ditch the Duelist Cup. It’s easy to run and hugely profitable for them.
@@renaldyhaen Reply to #2 The whole point is though - outside of a scenario like isolated matchmaking being limited to xbox only, your opponents will be within your point range. There is a noticeable difference in opponent quality between 5k points and 50k points. I think a decent way of observing this is doing a small climb attempt on day 3, where your opponents at the bottom will usually be approaching the game super casually hence why they are at the bottom (just doing dailies, etc). Then you start entering the range of people who haven not managed to climb to serious points (usually either off-meta deck picks or struggling to pilot their deck), and then at around 30/40k your opponents will probably start playing well fairly consistently. I also don't really see how the last bit really applies here "Most of Joshua Schmidt lost because of a brick. Yu-Gi-Oh! is supposed to be a strategy game, not an endurance test. The focus should be on strategy since that’s what ultimately wins tournaments, not how long you can grind." Tournament results are very much influenced by bricking and various rng aspects as well? If anything the argument that a lot of people will quote holds true to offset this. The argument being - more games will help you balance out the rng. The strategic aspect is also not lost since for a tournament you make your deck decisions ahead of time, in the KC format you have to adjust in real time as the ladder shifts, so I don't think I agree with this take. For the record, I am also not really a fan of this format, lol. Just wanted to yap about it a bit T_T I think the Duelist cup is very deceptive for a lot of people. It seems like just playing a lot will let them do well, but honestly (from what I've seen) having a good amount of prep before the event is hugely important if your goal is top 10. It certainly pushes people towards unhealthy decisions
Actually I know GERA. He is a very decent player but he abused the crossplay off system so badly. He still does in ranked btw. And in Master Rank are so few XBOX players that he even sometimes wintrades with a 2nd acc bcs he has more than one XBOX.
This why the game shouldn’t be played seriously at all anymore…you have to literally sacrifice yourself for the Komoney overlords for basically nothing for their entertainment. Do yourself a favor just have fun there is nothing in this game as a “reward” that is worth this amount of grind or suffering
It's really just bragging rights at this point. Which, I mean... that does matter a lot to some people. Paper yugioh also seems to be the most expensive out of the big three tcg franchises. All that investment for no real prizing. Would it be legal for grassroots tourneys to just popup and offer greater incentives? I guess you couldn't stream it on twitch, because of Konami?
Those chinese players join dc and topped expecting nothing in return except online clout, like can you all just enjoy the game? Lets not forget eu and na barely fund the game as konami major revenue stream is cn and jp, cn isnt even able to join world championship. complain to max, yet spend less have a little shame and awareness that chinese players probably using jp or english client because md int official in china. You all will start bitching from the start if the cliant was locked in japanese guaranteed, so weak.
they should have made a limit on how many games you are allowed to play in duelist cup, an 80% wr player will still be ranked much much lower than a 52% wr player that plays a lot more
Great video! The work you put into it really shows. I came from Farfa's react vid but didn't want to have the view be leeched so I'm liking, commenting, and subscribing. Keep up the good work!!
Another much smaller factor that I don't think was really touched on was the possibility of having to adapt to slight changes in the decks being played for a given DC (I'm going to use a KC Cup as reference since that's my much preferred format, but I don't imagine it impacts much). There was a semi-recent KC Cup where the most played deck for the event was changing by the day which mattered quite a bit since certain techs/decks that were good against the best day 1 deck wouldn't be as good for the day 2 best deck. This meant that in addition to the various issues of fatigue and grinding the players aiming for the top had to adapt on the spot to developments occurring in that small window of time, less they risk running into more bad match-ups or wish they were running the better techs after losing a good bit of progress. Also, great video and your channel seems right up my alley. Looking forward to future content.
I haven’t played duel links in quite a while, but weren’t the cases where one deck was good day one and another day two caused by new cards suddenly being dropped midway through the cup?
@AshleyoftheSwiftspear-pb8cs Some of them I'm sure, wouldn't surprise me quite frankly, but that's not what I was referring to. Rather I was referring to the KC Cup shortly after Lyrilusc release. Lyri was expected to be the best deck day of the event and what had a good match-up into Lyri? Star Seraph. Eventually Star Seraph became the most played deck by day 2 and what had a good match-up into Star Seraph? Sky Striker.
@@AshleyoftheSwiftspear-pb8cs Probably did happen, but I meant the KC Cup shortly after Lyrilusc release. Lyri was expected to be best deck day 1 of the event and Star Seraph had a good match-up into Lyrilusc allowing it to overtake as the popular deck by day 2. Due to this people would shift to Sky Striker as while it had a bad match-up into Lyrilusc it had a really good match-up into Star Seraph allowing it to take more presence during the final day.
A tournament allowing for an infinite number of round robin games to infinitely accrew more qualifying points is very unusual. They could just use Elo which is largely agnostic to number of games played. Or they could just have a fixed number round robin leading into a proper single elimination bracket the bext day.
This reminds me of how MTG implemented player rating. They had(have?) a bug in Elo system, where you basically always played against your own rating, no matter what rating the opponent had. Just some formula error. I dont remember the exact details, but I think it meant that you had no upper cap on rating, you can always climb as if you play against strong opponents, so climbing a ladder was all about how many games you play. I dont think you needed crazy grind to get into tournaments (even if they simply sell tickets for tryouts) but if someone wanted to get #1, it was practically impossible unless you spend a lot of time and win a lot. Crokeys, mtg streamer, had like 90% winrate over 50 games in a row, and still had no changes to his position, around top 20 position, but a single win could push him a few positions up. And while playing near top 3, he could win a few games in a row and still lose position, because someone else was also grinding and it pushed him down.
What I hate about this is that Josh is most of the time still being the strong-minded individual that says: “Everything is fine, Konami is doing a great job, the metagame is great, the systems are great.” If highly respect Josh. But sometimes I wish he would call out Konami for some of their BS they are doing and have been doing. Because he has the potential influence to get Konami employees at a table discussions possible improvements.
I Played the first master duel duelist cup for hours straight since i have nothing to do anyway.... Having good win rate ratio, i quickly climbed the rank and iirc i reach 20+. Went to sleep, like a normal person i am, only to realized i suddenly ended in bottom rank, bruh
They are using some quiet odd scoring system then, because playing more games shouldnt significantly increase your Elo number. You take points from your opponent based on the existing gap between your numbers, so beating people below you should do nothing, and beating those above you consistently should fairly quickly equilibrate.
Good job inducing subtitled for the video. Also, maybe done put those little notes you make (like the one about essays for bricked hands) at the bottom of the screen as the subtitles tend to cover them up.
As a yugioh player i love this as a yugioh video but frankly i think you have so much talent and so much reach. You have a pretty good ediing style and this was such a good witty premise i feel you could really branch out.
I remember choosing to play a special variant of Vaylantz (with a lot of board breakers) on day 1s because if I went first and they couldn't stop me, they would not even play their turn, and if I went second and used a lava golem or sphere mode they would also sometimes surrender instead of seeing if I can follow through. It made for incredibly fast games and I maintained a modest 54% winrate, but since I had such a large volume of games I steadily grinded my way up. But then I got tired of playing so much so I ended up quitting the competition and yugioh altogether, so I guess it doesn't count.
I was kind of nodding along with the early parts of the video, but wow, its shocking that smogon has this figured out so much better, and how weird and imbalanced the elo in dc cup really is. It may have taken a lot of time,but at least the work you put into the video really ahows, great stuff man.
I think the best thing they could do is have it be set in stages where you have a set number of games and you need to win a certain number of those games to advance to the next stage. This is how MTGA handled it so we know it works well. For example, let's say you are on week 1. You are given 7 games to play and are told you need to win 5 out of those 7 games to advance to the next week. And once you have your 5 wins or 3 losses (in any combination of games) you're done for that stage, which could be over 3 days. You can continue playing to try and knock out potential competitors because it's in your best interest that they lose and fail the stage. You then go to the next stage where it asks you to do the same thing. Win 5 or you're out. Let's assume you win again and move onto a theoretical stage 3. By this point a VAST MAJORITY of the playerbase is out of the tournament, statistically speaking. The stages from here should be 4 out of 7 wins (still greater than 50%) because you're already playing against the best of the best and pulling anything above a 50% win rate is really good. I'm not running the numbers as I write this or anything, but I think only 1 or 2 more stages are needed at this point until you have a top 16 or so players.
The first Elo system I saw was in DOTA 2. Early on, seeing the top streamers carry their teams on their back just to earn a +0 was one of the funniest moments in time for that game. I think the system was changed at some point, but that was after I already quit
I think its cool to have people attend by invitation. Its up to the qualifer to decide if they want friends or good duelists, and there are lots of good duelists that dont qualify, so we get to see good matches from skilled players we might not otherwise see. I am also assuming the logistics of having only the qualifiers team up is a knightmare, and that deciding the teams for the players would lead to disactisfaction of the players.
Amazing video, I remember grinding the wcq and it really incentivizes you to not take care of yourself or have a life for the weekend. I would grind at night, be lets say top 2k, sleep and im back to top 8k and have to play catchup because i decided sleep was a good choice. I do hope i could make it to top 100 someday tho
They've been using this disgusting format since they started running the Duel Links events into Worlds. It's honestly disgusting that its still being run in this format.
I regret to inform everyone bearing the same curse as me that I have been jumpscared by the video's creator using a strangely familiar style of a sprite for talking, a talksprite of sorts, if you will.
There's no cap on number of games per day? That's crazy. I know pokemon (the main video games, not the card game) has some online ladder tournaments, but those have limits on the number of games you can play per day. Something in the range of 15-25. It being a qualifier is even crazier. Having the time to no life just gives a massive advantage. Edit: hadn't gotten to the smogon part yet 😂. I was talking about official tournaments.
I don't know a fuckin' thing about Yu Gi Oh aside from watching it as a kid but this was a really interesting dip to take. Thanks for the effort! Well explained.
This is fascinating. I used to play a bit of competitive Magic the Gathering around 2015. There, almost everything is done with swiss tournament brackets followed by a cut to single-elimination top-8/16. Qualifiers have a fixed number of rounds. The biggest downside was that with only a small sample size of matches, it was hard to definitively rank players by wins and losses alone. Cutoffs often relied on tiebreakers, which were calculated based on the relative strength of each players' opponents. If you beat someone in round 1 who went 12-1, you'd have much better tiebreakers than a player who won round one against an opponent who'd go on to 0-13. This led to its own brand of brutal anxiety, because only *some* 9-3 players would make the cut, depending on factors outside their control. This also made tournament byes (rewarded for placing well in previous events) incredibly powerful; not only did you count as winning that first round or two, they couldn't count against you for tiebreakers. With two round byes, you were always matched up with strong players with 2-0 records. You'd have much better odds of having good tiebreakers over the event (and dodge a lot of rogue decks besides).
What if, while entering the DC, you are required to enter a timezone. Between midnight and 8am in that timezone you cannot gain points. I imagine people that will place near the top will likely all choose the same time zone even if they don't reside there.
It's not just the cups, the ladder too is too time consuming. In order to make progress month after month at climbing to the top, you are forced to win 40 duels a month, and that's only if they're in a row, because in case of losses the number gets higher and higher. That's playing every day for a month at least 2 duels, and if you lose one (probable since all it takes is to lose the coin toss nowadays) it becomes having to play 4, and so on and so on. If you're lucky, you'll get to finish the duel in a few turns, but what if the duel lasts 20 minutes with back and forth from the players, and that with no guarantee of a win? Who has time to play 4-8 duels every day? And what if you skip a day, because you're too busy or don't feel like playing Yu-Gi-Oh! that day? Then the number for the next day compounds and it becomes double. They have created a crazy system. Why couldn't it be 2 wins in a row to go up a tier? In that case you'd only need 20 duels a month to make progress, which is a reasonable amount of duels a month to play. Who cares enough to play Yu-Gi-Oh! every day for at least an hour on average, other than completely obsessed people?
Hi! Competitive mons player here. Typically ladder tours require new alts, as ladder typically isn't played by many of the top players as they value other tournaments more. I don't know how true this is of YuGiOh, but generally speaking I think that giving people an advantage in ladder tours based on how much they care about ladder rather than how good they are at laddering should not be encouraged. To clarify what I mean here, I would say about ~3/5 OLT qualifying players don't seriously play ladder outside of OLT, but have great pokemon fundamentals that it doesn't matter. If we use pre-existing accounts, we are giving an advantage to the people who bothered to climb ahead of time in what is supposed to be an event that takes place in an alotted time. This is also why different ladder alts are needed for each new cycle, as everyone starting at the bottom. If anything, this would make the game grindier
This sounds scarily like absolute virtue from the first ff online game that people fought that thing for litterally 18 hours plus had people waiting from just doing something for long at your health's expense
I find it incredibly frustrating and tiring just to make the top 10,000. I did it once and then never again. I can't even imagine putting myself through this.
How much effort did you have to put into it to get in the top 10,000 and get the bronze title? I’m considering doing it for this upcoming duelist cup but I’m not sure if it is worth it.
Genuinely super cool content for yugioh, very interesting to both players and people that don't play. Very well structured and a very poignant comparison with pokemon (both in their tournaments and in gameplay).
What really is a violation of human rights is the Master Duel Coin System, where we're in a 1:1 format and it's unfair lose the coin most of the time, such as 5 or more times in a row >:u
This is so well researched. And while I struggled to understand some parts and had to replay them, this isn't on you. This is a complicated topic to cover from the get go.
I don't know shit about Yugioh but I love listening to you talk, so I've been listening to snippets of this video while I work sometimes. I love you and I'm super proud of you ❤
I think the most time i spent grinding in a single player game was Melee, but since multiplayer games have basically become live service machines, it's insane how much time you have to put it, that you're basically on par with a LoL player, which is already soul destroying. I'm also surprised people haven't managed to abuse this format, by running statistics of drawing certain cards etc. or running simulations of FTK's.
I don't have up front experience with this but the way this is being framed reminds me of the grinding you have to do in some rhythm gacha games. Specifically the one I have experience on is Project Sekai, where people would go on and play for 7 days in order to rank high in an event. There's no physical reward for it, it is the pure sacrifice people do for the characters in the game. Where people do math, spend money to get the best teams, and play with 4 other people in shifts that goes upward to 22 hours a day. Watching this made me realize that grinds like that isn't as common outside of these games, It is bad, like so bad people gotten hospitalized bad. But the community always choke it up to the fact people are willing to go through it even tho you don't get anything in return physically and financially
They should use a token system. Use a token that gives you access for 2 hours but then you have a cool down afterwards for 30 minutes before you can spend another token to gain access again. Then you set a max amount of say 5 tokens that can be spent in a 24 hour period or on a per day basis. If the duelist cup is a 3 day event (friday, saturday and sunday) then you only have access to the ladder for 30 hours that event and have sufficient time for taking care of yourself. This is all just an example of how a token system could work and adjust the given values as you see fit.
It’s always nice to see videos this well put together from smaller channels. It’s hard out there for the little guy, and making any kind of video takes a lot of work. Keep it up!
when you import existing ratings into limited format, you can simply use a log function to even out the ratings of top players. This helps keep the higher rated people matched against each other without the existing ratings affecting the final results in the very top level of play, where final standings hold more weight. the formula for each player's score would be something like 60,000 * log(c * s/t)/log(c) where s is the player's ladder rating, t is the ladder rating of the #1 player on the ladder, and c is a constant chosen to produced a specific curve of initial ratings. A c value of 100 would give #1 a starting tournament rating of 60,000, someone at 75% of their ladder rating a starting tournament rating of about 56,000, someone at 50% a starting tournament rating of about 51,000. A c value of 10 would produce the following ratings: #1 - 60,000, 75% - 52,500, 50% - 42,000. this brings all players who have a POSSIBILITY of winning into a comfortable range of first place at the start of the tournament, while giving the tournament organizers the ability to tweak how high the average player's rating is.
Instead of Smogon's OLT, while we're comparing to Pokemon, better comparison to Duelist Cup would be the system of Players Cup implemented by The Pokemon Company International during pandemic. Players received 50 keys to be used to play BO1, 8 Player Single Elimination In-game tournament to collect points throughout couple of weeks, and then Top 128 (for NA/EU/LA) or Top64 (for OC) will play Qualifier Final to determine who qualifies to the Players Cup Global Finals. This way, this stopped players to grind excessively, but the sample size is still large enough so that luck doesn't matter too much.
Nah, if there's any amount of taking advantage of other players sleeping, it's not a "skilled format" as much as it is a speedrun to the "play now" button.
When players deliberately switch to lower win-rate decks simply because those faster decks let them play more total matches, the idea that this is a skill testing format goes right out the window.
it still does it since the amount of games will average it out where skilled players will place higher hence why you can get Tasuku to win a DC with PUNK
@@cryomancer2768 sure it tests skill, so would forcing a fighting game players to do every match as a best of 50. Its an unnecessary test of endurance and patience that does nothing but stifle skill and instead make it a contest of "who can sacrifice the most of their wellbeing for a card game."
Yea
@@SissypheanCatboy , there definitely is a balance to be struck between the randomness of too few games so just anyone gets in and the endurance of too many so that it goes past testing any reasonable consistant skill and dedication.
I feel like a balance to that bell curve is definitely possible. like, something taking 6 or even 8 or 10 hours straight of thier own volition I think is fine for someone trying to do something at a high professional level to show dedication. or maybe 60 hours over a month, but 60 hours straight is crazy.
Then you got people who take around 8-10 minutes PER TURN and you know that the system is just broken. The meta is just worked. No game should take that long
I didn't need math to tell me this
That is right, we already knew it for experience, and to tell others with evidence is much better with the maths way
But now you have it
It's a real intense, torturous grind, but when you finally hold that sweet Nintendo Switch in your hands, you realize that shaving years of your life was all worth it in the end!
🤣😂
Imagine doing the grind on the Nintendo Switch just to win the same console that allowed you to compete
what's funny is working a job for this amount of time could buy you a Switch, possibly multiple
TO REALIZE IT CANT PLAY MONSTER HUNTER WILDS
USELESS
@@Miwles Josh played 62 Hours for a $300 item. $4.80 per hour. Sorry, I got that wrong, he played that long for a CHANCE to win the Switch.
not the SCHMIDTJACK
Noway the white man is here
Cursed image
It works it got me to click
No way the Yu-Gi-Oh streamer watches Yu-Gi-Oh content? @@SomeBritishGuy1
Not to mention the homestuck talksprite rofl
If someone dies during this event, we can't automatically assume they died of exhaustion, Konami might've just implemented the Shadow Realm update to make the grind that much more immersive, really give you that true King of Games experience.
gbf guild war have more torturing grind and participant than this and no one has died since 2015, in fact there is more deaths in fighting game players than gbf, despite what people said here.
@@r3zaful you are everywhere defending this crap. f right off. 😊
@@r3zaful that's due to thuggery
I played for 16 hours, went to sleep for 4 hours, woke up and played until i passed out. Only made it to top 1000, its just too much man.
Yeah this is why I never try on these events in any of these games because of how unhealthy it is to no life the rank to the top. No thanks I would rather play for fun.
bro why are you lying so much
with a 60% winrate you would easily win the duelist cup
it is absolutely impossible not being in the top 10 with that winrate
and if you had that winrate after 20h you wouldve continued.
probably meant "about 50%", at best and only for the first 10k DP
the most delusional thing is believing that you need to play 24/7.
you can easily sleep for 8h/day and win it all.
sleeping for 4h doesnt allow your brain to rest, you would misplay so many games that it would bring you hours worth of winning down in the ladder.
@@Nothing2Say Now that you mentioned it I'm pretty sure that I did the math of my winrate based off the past 20 games that master duel allows you to see, because I did not write down every win and loss so the math would be different yeah. I want to say I had close to 30k points but this duelist cup was like a year ago so I could be off.
That's pretty rough, but that's honestly nothing new for online games. Oldschool runescape hold tournament that are 45 days long and people play 12-18 hours sometimes even more almost the entire time. I know it's not healthy, but I think this is normal for a competition.
Bruh
Konami already makes actual gambling machines, so we shouldn't be surprised they tweaked the DC to keep people glued to the screen.
HELLO GUYS THE DB GRINDER HERE, AND TODAY WE'RE BACK AT IT AGAIN WITH ANOTHER 365 DAY OF STRAIGHT GOONING. NOW I KNOW MY LAST EDGING STREAK DIDN'T LAST PAST THE 600 DAY MARK, BUT I HAVE CONFIDENCE I CAN MAKE IT PAST THIS TIME. I'VE BEEN DOING A LOT OF PRACTICE IN THE BEDROOM, AND HONESTLY, I THINK I MIGHT MAKE IT TO NEXT YEARS CHAMPIONSHIP TOURNEY.
I'm sorry for not including all of it, I didn't think the people could handle it to be honest
@@OutOfCharacters One day, when humanity needs it most, the full message will be revealed and deliver us to salvation.
Gotta love to see it
Ayoooo lmaoooooo
Was not expecting to hear your voice when I queued this video up
We should have the 72 hours divided over a week, so the timer only goes down when you are logged in. Not only would be healthy but more fair in the timing side.
Hey, this was a really great video ! You said the hours of combing and research wasn’t worth it, but i think it made an awesome watch! :)
hey man, thanks so much for checking it out! it definitely feels that way now that it's done and people have been so supportive.
I agree this is very very well done. Do not discredit your hours of research, and hard work. You earned my sub. ❤
I played for a day and a half straight and made to top 20 in my region. My win ratio was insane great and i thought i deserved a nice break and went on a date with my wife.
Came back to grind a little more and saw myself at 300 and something. I realized i will never make to top 10 without going insane. Doesnt matter how good i was.
“How dare you go on a date with your wife!” - Konami
Not master duelist material.
You have a wife? Not master duelist material.
Konami devs don't have loved ones so they didn't account for this
Yeah its odd that they dont have a mandatory 7hrs lock out period for the duelist cup like other games with similar grind events have. Make it regionbased so nobody is locked out of their primetime as well.
But the real solution is to not pretend like a grind event is competitive and actually put work towards implementing ingame tournaments, a meaningfully rated ladder and other features that would help MD be more than a simple simulator.
That would mean actual work. We all know Konami not doing that every game the have released themselves have been half cooked while they make PlayStation pay to creat it to one keep it exclusive but also not put in work at all.
@@lildevin16 that is dumb, creating another xbox nation case where eu players only meet with eu players under region lock break time, like sure joshua have to compete with 1000 eu players while im playing in asia dealing with 100k players, no that is not fair, go work your ass off if you want to win, no easy path.
Destroying your life and health for a konami's goody bag that is worth like 300$. Konami created a sweatshop but players happily jumped into it, it's a perfect one way abusive relationship.
Emphasis on abusive
15:31 Never forget the day that blunder got 6-0'd by lead Darm-G
May it remain in our minds forever
Blunder my dawg on the mic i can't blunder
AGENCY
Yugioh and agency in one vod? Day 1 like butterfree, pidgey, rattata
Me covered in millions of cockroaches:
"Sorry, I don't see the problem here."
- Asmogold probably
As a mathematician who works with the math underpinning Elo regularly, I can't overstate how bonkers the 1000 point cutoff for a win is. Heck, DP doesn't actually count as an Elo system as a result.
There is no justification for this. I mean that literally: whatever the organizers' goals are, there's a better way to accomplish that. Even if the goal is to hurt players and force them to grind constantly they could do something far simpler that would actually encourage that more. That needs to be the first thing changed, and then assess how the dynamics evolve. Anything else is a bad bandage over this issue.
It's not actually true that in an Elo system point win and loss are always symmetric. When players are close in rating and have played many games that'll look like it's true, but it's very often false. The key concept is that the difference in win rates tell you the odds of one player winning, and the score adjustments come downstream from getting better estimates of the true skill level of the players.
Out of curiosity how does the cap on losing DP affect things?
I understand the +1000 minimum is *the* big issue but is the -1200 cap also contribiting to the problem?
I remember grinding like 3 days with no sleep for KC Cup (i think it was called?) in Duel Links, only to get #11 in the end :( i think a lot of players in the top positions ended up getting banned for account sharing aswell because they basically did shifts with multiple people for the cup. actual insanity
I fell asleep on the stairs of my house during the last like twenty minutes of the first Kaiba cup and almost dropped out of top 100. Bandit Keith Relinquished for life.
@@vovinia i think for me it was destiny draw koaki meiru, loved that deck
A few things that are worth mentioning about Pokémon showdown laddering to this discussion:
In these ladders there is a mechanism that actively tries to avoid pairing players of vastly different elos against each other, even if there aren't that many players available (as is with the case in Gen2ou). Essentially there is a timer which, if it progresses, it widens the differential of elo a player can have to pair up with you, until eventually after a very long time you can pair up the 1000 elo player with the 2200 elo player.
Konami choosing the actual worst method imaginable is so funny
I played in the first two KC Cups of Duel Links back in the day, I absolutely hated this grind and stopped playing Duel Links and YuGiOh as a whole for years. I started playing Master Duel last month and watching the Duelist Cup stuff gave me a vietnam flash back.
I was so utterly speechless when I saw that Master Duel would be keeping the same system as Duel Links...
Pls don't do that to yourself again
I'm pretty sure whoever made the 1K point minimum is a game designer who doesn't know how Elo works that wanted players to feel good through winning with high returns and low risk.
This makes sense when it comes to ranked or casual modes so that a player feels like they are making progress and engadges with the game more. However, with high stakes as a world tournney on the line instead of empty bragging rights, then you get the sleepless nights and findings in this video.
If you are a game designer, use this as an example of why your job holds more weight than you think.
Was gonna say the 1000 per win was super high in general. Which is probaly is when every starts at 0. Also it barely lower than the 1200 lose cap. A cap which seems to rarely be reached anyway. Which implies that 1000 is quick close to the effective cap on points obtainable from a win.
It's not an ego system it's an activeness tracker that very minerly benefits beating stronger players.
Its intentional. There is no shot this is goging on multiple times and Konami never looked into it. Its just melious Design to keep people playing. They even have a normal elo System but actively choosing to use this instead.
@@tjaremertens1464 Sounds about right. For all I know we could be in the age where the clients actually know how to design games and are able to do stupid stuff like this. Or they could have cut most of the game designers and have no one to say how unhealthy this is.
Insane voice choice for DBGrinder
Great analysis video! I have a lot to say after watching it, and I hope I can keep this brief:
1. About "Skillful format" : I’m not trying to underestimate Pro, but based on your analysis, it’s clear the Duelist Cup (DC) isn’t as skill-focused as it seems. From my perspective, the reason the same names appear at the top is because the grind-heavy system favors those who dedicate their lives to Yu-Gi-Oh!. Players like Joshua or Jesse are full-time content creators, so they have the time to grind. Plus, the "+1000 points" theory makes the system even more unbalanced.
2. Alternative for World Tickets: I’d actually prefer something like a Challenger Cup across different regions, where only players with 1700+ Rated Points or higher can enter. This would feel more like a proper competitive event.
3. Solo to Team Transition: Grinding solo to earn a spot in Worlds, only to compete there as a team, is peak comedy. Add to that the way the World Tournament is managed-it’s practically a circus.
4. Did I spell “ELO” wrong?
5. Point Distribution Flaws: Speaking of the +1000 point system, Konami should have seen the flaws in their system from the very first DC. Remember the "XBOX Country" drama? Somehow, a player from there racked up insane points farming against low-skill opponents or bots. This wouldn’t happen with a proper ELO system. But maybe “learning” is a forbidden skill in Konami’s office.
6. Why the System Won’t Change: From a business perspective, the Duelist Cup is too good for Konami. It’s a low-effort “big” event that doesn’t require much budget for prizes or manpower. Plus, it massively increases the game’s playtime stats, which looks great to investors and sponsors.
7. Conclusion: Honestly, I don’t care what others think (I’ve yet to hear a strong argument defending the DC). For me, the Duelist Cup is garbage.
@@renaldyhaen you are spelling Elo wrong but I'll let you off the hook this time because the rest of this comment is so good. Thanks for watching!
lol, hiya Renaldy 👋
The reason for the GERA xbox situation was because konami left the option to turn off crossplay on xbox.
The player-base on said platform was and I would assume still is a lot more casual and likely overall smaller as well, thus making the concern of more balanced matchmaking a real issue. Idk if this example require a point distribution change as much as the implemented "cross play off" feature being disabled for DC/RRQ.
As for the 1st bullet-point - I think it's unneeded to doubt the skill aspect of this format. It's 100% there. The skill required to navigate the matches in any given cup depends on the skill in that format itself.
I do agree though that a big part for why there are so many repeated top 100 names over the different cups is fully tied with the other requirements for DC - having some amount of time to grind + having the mental fortitude to play a massive number of games + having the mental strength to not get tilted from streaks of bad luck.
(if the goal is top 1 time might be more dire, but it also depends as I know of a couple cases of KC cups being won with good rest + time to spare on day 3)
I also fully agree that overall it's unfortunate that the only way to qualify for worlds in MD/DL is through this specific format, which is for various reasons (time, mental, skillset) not everyone's cup of tea.
Abolishing it seems unneeded since there is an active audience for it and again, I think it does show a decent amount of skill filtering, but having other options such as structured tournaments would be neat.
@@Nifroth 1. About GERA, yeah, I’m aware. If Konami used a proper Elo system, he wouldn’t have made it to the top ranks. In a balanced system, as his points got higher, he’d earn less and less from playing low-ranked opponents in "XBOX Country." To rack up enough points for the top rank, he’d have to compete against high-ranked players from outside his region.
2. Skill matters, sure, but Duelist Cup’s grindy, battle-royale format allows too many non-skill factors to dominate. First, it favors people who dedicate their lives to Yu-Gi-Oh!, like streamers or content creators. Second, as shown in the video, the point system isn’t fair-you can still gain a lot of points from beating weaker players. Third, it’s clear that luck can play too big a role. For example, Most of Joshua Schmidt lost because of a brick. Yu-Gi-Oh! is supposed to be a strategy game, not an endurance test. The focus should be on strategy since that’s what ultimately wins tournaments, not how long you can grind.
3. Region-based qualifiers are pretty standard in sports and other competitive games. But to pull it off properly, Konami would need to make a much bigger investment.
4. As for whether there’s really an "active audience" for this system, it’s hard to say. Right now, Duelist Cup is the only option we’ve got, so naturally, people participate. To really judge its popularity, we’d need to see an alternative system to compare it with.
5. That said, I doubt Konami will ever ditch the Duelist Cup. It’s easy to run and hugely profitable for them.
@@renaldyhaen Reply to #2 The whole point is though - outside of a scenario like isolated matchmaking being limited to xbox only, your opponents will be within your point range. There is a noticeable difference in opponent quality between 5k points and 50k points. I think a decent way of observing this is doing a small climb attempt on day 3, where your opponents at the bottom will usually be approaching the game super casually hence why they are at the bottom (just doing dailies, etc). Then you start entering the range of people who haven not managed to climb to serious points (usually either off-meta deck picks or struggling to pilot their deck), and then at around 30/40k your opponents will probably start playing well fairly consistently.
I also don't really see how the last bit really applies here
"Most of Joshua Schmidt lost because of a brick. Yu-Gi-Oh! is supposed to be a strategy game, not an endurance test. The focus should be on strategy since that’s what ultimately wins tournaments, not how long you can grind."
Tournament results are very much influenced by bricking and various rng aspects as well? If anything the argument that a lot of people will quote holds true to offset this. The argument being - more games will help you balance out the rng.
The strategic aspect is also not lost since for a tournament you make your deck decisions ahead of time, in the KC format you have to adjust in real time as the ladder shifts, so I don't think I agree with this take.
For the record, I am also not really a fan of this format, lol. Just wanted to yap about it a bit T_T
I think the Duelist cup is very deceptive for a lot of people. It seems like just playing a lot will let them do well, but honestly (from what I've seen) having a good amount of prep before the event is hugely important if your goal is top 10.
It certainly pushes people towards unhealthy decisions
Actually I know GERA. He is a very decent player but he abused the crossplay off system so badly. He still does in ranked btw. And in Master Rank are so few XBOX players that he even sometimes wintrades with a 2nd acc bcs he has more than one XBOX.
This was an amazing video! Thank you for the work you have put into it.
Thanks so much, I really appreciate it!
This why the game shouldn’t be played seriously at all anymore…you have to literally sacrifice yourself for the Komoney overlords for basically nothing for their entertainment. Do yourself a favor just have fun there is nothing in this game as a “reward” that is worth this amount of grind or suffering
Amen
Real life inscryption 😂
It's really just bragging rights at this point. Which, I mean... that does matter a lot to some people. Paper yugioh also seems to be the most expensive out of the big three tcg franchises. All that investment for no real prizing. Would it be legal for grassroots tourneys to just popup and offer greater incentives? I guess you couldn't stream it on twitch, because of Konami?
Those chinese players join dc and topped expecting nothing in return except online clout, like can you all just enjoy the game? Lets not forget eu and na barely fund the game as konami major revenue stream is cn and jp, cn isnt even able to join world championship.
complain to max, yet spend less have a little shame and awareness that chinese players probably using jp or english client because md int official in china.
You all will start bitching from the start if the cliant was locked in japanese guaranteed, so weak.
23:50 I know you're saying "Elo rules" but it sounds like you're saying "evil rules" which is very fitting.
great video! god looking at josh getting more and more visibly tired in the clips from the last days is really unsettling
Playing YGO competitively in any format is Human Rights Violation when you consider the prizing.
Love the Smogon comparison and obvious personal experience
Amazing Josh Wojack
they should have made a limit on how many games you are allowed to play in duelist cup, an 80% wr player will still be ranked much much lower than a 52% wr player that plays a lot more
The dedication to actually comb through his full stream just to record the points is wild, bravo
Great video! The work you put into it really shows. I came from Farfa's react vid but didn't want to have the view be leeched so I'm liking, commenting, and subscribing. Keep up the good work!!
Another much smaller factor that I don't think was really touched on was the possibility of having to adapt to slight changes in the decks being played for a given DC (I'm going to use a KC Cup as reference since that's my much preferred format, but I don't imagine it impacts much). There was a semi-recent KC Cup where the most played deck for the event was changing by the day which mattered quite a bit since certain techs/decks that were good against the best day 1 deck wouldn't be as good for the day 2 best deck. This meant that in addition to the various issues of fatigue and grinding the players aiming for the top had to adapt on the spot to developments occurring in that small window of time, less they risk running into more bad match-ups or wish they were running the better techs after losing a good bit of progress.
Also, great video and your channel seems right up my alley. Looking forward to future content.
I haven’t played duel links in quite a while, but weren’t the cases where one deck was good day one and another day two caused by new cards suddenly being dropped midway through the cup?
@AshleyoftheSwiftspear-pb8cs Some of them I'm sure, wouldn't surprise me quite frankly, but that's not what I was referring to. Rather I was referring to the KC Cup shortly after Lyrilusc release.
Lyri was expected to be the best deck day of the event and what had a good match-up into Lyri? Star Seraph. Eventually Star Seraph became the most played deck by day 2 and what had a good match-up into Star Seraph? Sky Striker.
@@AshleyoftheSwiftspear-pb8cs Probably did happen, but I meant the KC Cup shortly after Lyrilusc release. Lyri was expected to be best deck day 1 of the event and Star Seraph had a good match-up into Lyrilusc allowing it to overtake as the popular deck by day 2. Due to this people would shift to Sky Striker as while it had a bad match-up into Lyrilusc it had a really good match-up into Star Seraph allowing it to take more presence during the final day.
@ genuinely insane wtf
This was an AWESOME video. I love seeing the analytic side of games like this, so this was incredibly interesting.
A tournament allowing for an infinite number of round robin games to infinitely accrew more qualifying points is very unusual. They could just use Elo which is largely agnostic to number of games played. Or they could just have a fixed number round robin leading into a proper single elimination bracket the bext day.
The thumbnail is actually the photo on Schmidt after losing to Yubel in the top cut of YCS Anaheim.
One of the greatest titles ever for a UA-cam video
This reminds me of how MTG implemented player rating. They had(have?) a bug in Elo system, where you basically always played against your own rating, no matter what rating the opponent had. Just some formula error. I dont remember the exact details, but I think it meant that you had no upper cap on rating, you can always climb as if you play against strong opponents, so climbing a ladder was all about how many games you play. I dont think you needed crazy grind to get into tournaments (even if they simply sell tickets for tryouts) but if someone wanted to get #1, it was practically impossible unless you spend a lot of time and win a lot. Crokeys, mtg streamer, had like 90% winrate over 50 games in a row, and still had no changes to his position, around top 20 position, but a single win could push him a few positions up. And while playing near top 3, he could win a few games in a row and still lose position, because someone else was also grinding and it pushed him down.
joshua schmidt wojak
What I hate about this is that Josh is most of the time still being the strong-minded individual that says:
“Everything is fine, Konami is doing a great job, the metagame is great, the systems are great.”
If highly respect Josh.
But sometimes I wish he would call out Konami for some of their BS they are doing and have been doing.
Because he has the potential influence to get Konami employees at a table discussions possible improvements.
Konami usually absorbs their players and not the other way around. It’s very rare when they listen to others.
I Played the first master duel duelist cup for hours straight since i have nothing to do anyway.... Having good win rate ratio, i quickly climbed the rank and iirc i reach 20+. Went to sleep, like a normal person i am, only to realized i suddenly ended in bottom rank, bruh
Seems crazy!
They are using some quiet odd scoring system then, because playing more games shouldnt significantly increase your Elo number. You take points from your opponent based on the existing gap between your numbers, so beating people below you should do nothing, and beating those above you consistently should fairly quickly equilibrate.
@@egoalter1276As the video says, the problem is the +1000 point minimum for winning.
Good job inducing subtitled for the video. Also, maybe done put those little notes you make (like the one about essays for bricked hands) at the bottom of the screen as the subtitles tend to cover them up.
@@artrix5092 ahhhh, you're so right. I'll have to figure out a different layout for that kind of stuff. thanks for watching!
As a yugioh player i love this as a yugioh video but frankly i think you have so much talent and so much reach. You have a pretty good ediing style and this was such a good witty premise i feel you could really branch out.
Bro grinded even more than the people he talked about💀
I subbed
Ngl didn't expected the Blunder 0-6 from lead g-darm on a DC cup video, but i'm down for it shiest
I remember choosing to play a special variant of Vaylantz (with a lot of board breakers) on day 1s because if I went first and they couldn't stop me, they would not even play their turn, and if I went second and used a lava golem or sphere mode they would also sometimes surrender instead of seeing if I can follow through. It made for incredibly fast games and I maintained a modest 54% winrate, but since I had such a large volume of games I steadily grinded my way up.
But then I got tired of playing so much so I ended up quitting the competition and yugioh altogether, so I guess it doesn't count.
Excellent video, I personally would assume that the KC cup and Master Duel work that way, just to inflate more the usage graph of both MD and DL.
I was kind of nodding along with the early parts of the video, but wow, its shocking that smogon has this figured out so much better, and how weird and imbalanced the elo in dc cup really is. It may have taken a lot of time,but at least the work you put into the video really ahows, great stuff man.
I think the best thing they could do is have it be set in stages where you have a set number of games and you need to win a certain number of those games to advance to the next stage. This is how MTGA handled it so we know it works well.
For example, let's say you are on week 1. You are given 7 games to play and are told you need to win 5 out of those 7 games to advance to the next week. And once you have your 5 wins or 3 losses (in any combination of games) you're done for that stage, which could be over 3 days. You can continue playing to try and knock out potential competitors because it's in your best interest that they lose and fail the stage. You then go to the next stage where it asks you to do the same thing. Win 5 or you're out. Let's assume you win again and move onto a theoretical stage 3.
By this point a VAST MAJORITY of the playerbase is out of the tournament, statistically speaking. The stages from here should be 4 out of 7 wins (still greater than 50%) because you're already playing against the best of the best and pulling anything above a 50% win rate is really good. I'm not running the numbers as I write this or anything, but I think only 1 or 2 more stages are needed at this point until you have a top 16 or so players.
Rhythm Game Tiering: TCG Edition.
(Thanks for the video, awareness about this kind of stuff is useful!)
wonderful video that shows how crazy the grind was. Also is that a homestuck talk sprite
Banger thumbnail. Nice work
Ain't no way you can do so much research and still be at 2k subs. I don't even play ygo anymore (I actively hate it) but you deserve the sub.
Gee, maybe konami isnt the best at making decisions regarding the health of its players and franchises for that matter, or something.
The first Elo system I saw was in DOTA 2. Early on, seeing the top streamers carry their teams on their back just to earn a +0 was one of the funniest moments in time for that game. I think the system was changed at some point, but that was after I already quit
I think its cool to have people attend by invitation. Its up to the qualifer to decide if they want friends or good duelists, and there are lots of good duelists that dont qualify, so we get to see good matches from skilled players we might not otherwise see. I am also assuming the logistics of having only the qualifiers team up is a knightmare, and that deciding the teams for the players would lead to disactisfaction of the players.
Why would there be teams for a game that does not support team play?
@ I don’t understand what you mean. Master duel worlds is a team tournament
I don't know anything about Yu-Gi-Oh but I saw the pesterquest avatar and had to give this a watch. Great presentation :)
Thanks so much! Happy you enjoyed my little guy yap about his little game.
I like that so many channels use Sonic Music.
Rouge she’s sexy and smooth
Amazing video, I remember grinding the wcq and it really incentivizes you to not take care of yourself or have a life for the weekend. I would grind at night, be lets say top 2k, sleep and im back to top 8k and have to play catchup because i decided sleep was a good choice. I do hope i could make it to top 100 someday tho
They've been using this disgusting format since they started running the Duel Links events into Worlds. It's honestly disgusting that its still being run in this format.
Is Konami being malicious, incompetent, or both? Place your bets!
@@nachohangover5104 Its konami, so I dont think they're aware they're doing both. But still is.
don't know or care about yugioh but im gonna watch the whole vid bc it's so well done! fantastic pacing and editing with a well written script to boot
I regret to inform everyone bearing the same curse as me that I have been jumpscared by the video's creator using a strangely familiar style of a sprite for talking, a talksprite of sorts, if you will.
There's no cap on number of games per day? That's crazy. I know pokemon (the main video games, not the card game) has some online ladder tournaments, but those have limits on the number of games you can play per day. Something in the range of 15-25.
It being a qualifier is even crazier. Having the time to no life just gives a massive advantage.
Edit: hadn't gotten to the smogon part yet 😂. I was talking about official tournaments.
Well, I for one am glad you took the time to meticulously track the Duelist Cup points.
I'm tired just watching this. That's insane how this works
There should be resting periods at least on these types of tournaments
It's not much but it shouldn't be hard to implement
@@iriswav7379 what's the basis of the resting period? NA, Asia, Europe primetime
@@cryomancer2768 not sure bro
@@cryomancer2768Could just force a rest period after X hours of playtime. Plenty of games do that.
@@cryomancer2768you could also just do a lockout system, where playing a certain number of hours then locks you out for 8 hours.
Konami is trying to silence this video by announcing the release of the banlist
Amazing video. A great one to be the way i found the channel. Keep up the good work
Thanks for coming to check it out! I really appreciate it.
I don't know a fuckin' thing about Yu Gi Oh aside from watching it as a kid but this was a really interesting dip to take. Thanks for the effort! Well explained.
This is fascinating. I used to play a bit of competitive Magic the Gathering around 2015. There, almost everything is done with swiss tournament brackets followed by a cut to single-elimination top-8/16. Qualifiers have a fixed number of rounds. The biggest downside was that with only a small sample size of matches, it was hard to definitively rank players by wins and losses alone. Cutoffs often relied on tiebreakers, which were calculated based on the relative strength of each players' opponents. If you beat someone in round 1 who went 12-1, you'd have much better tiebreakers than a player who won round one against an opponent who'd go on to 0-13. This led to its own brand of brutal anxiety, because only *some* 9-3 players would make the cut, depending on factors outside their control.
This also made tournament byes (rewarded for placing well in previous events) incredibly powerful; not only did you count as winning that first round or two, they couldn't count against you for tiebreakers. With two round byes, you were always matched up with strong players with 2-0 records. You'd have much better odds of having good tiebreakers over the event (and dodge a lot of rogue decks besides).
Sleeping 9h in 3 days? Welp, time to get back into polyphasic sleep, I used to do 2.5-3h per day on a 1 core +3 nap schedule lol
Schmidtjack is crazy work
It's fascinating to see such an immense degree of incompetency for an event this big
What if, while entering the DC, you are required to enter a timezone. Between midnight and 8am in that timezone you cannot gain points. I imagine people that will place near the top will likely all choose the same time zone even if they don't reside there.
It's not just the cups, the ladder too is too time consuming. In order to make progress month after month at climbing to the top, you are forced to win 40 duels a month, and that's only if they're in a row, because in case of losses the number gets higher and higher. That's playing every day for a month at least 2 duels, and if you lose one (probable since all it takes is to lose the coin toss nowadays) it becomes having to play 4, and so on and so on. If you're lucky, you'll get to finish the duel in a few turns, but what if the duel lasts 20 minutes with back and forth from the players, and that with no guarantee of a win? Who has time to play 4-8 duels every day? And what if you skip a day, because you're too busy or don't feel like playing Yu-Gi-Oh! that day? Then the number for the next day compounds and it becomes double. They have created a crazy system. Why couldn't it be 2 wins in a row to go up a tier? In that case you'd only need 20 duels a month to make progress, which is a reasonable amount of duels a month to play. Who cares enough to play Yu-Gi-Oh! every day for at least an hour on average, other than completely obsessed people?
Hi! Competitive mons player here. Typically ladder tours require new alts, as ladder typically isn't played by many of the top players as they value other tournaments more. I don't know how true this is of YuGiOh, but generally speaking I think that giving people an advantage in ladder tours based on how much they care about ladder rather than how good they are at laddering should not be encouraged.
To clarify what I mean here, I would say about ~3/5 OLT qualifying players don't seriously play ladder outside of OLT, but have great pokemon fundamentals that it doesn't matter. If we use pre-existing accounts, we are giving an advantage to the people who bothered to climb ahead of time in what is supposed to be an event that takes place in an alotted time. This is also why different ladder alts are needed for each new cycle, as everyone starting at the bottom. If anything, this would make the game grindier
This sounds scarily like absolute virtue from the first ff online game that people fought that thing for litterally 18 hours plus had people waiting from just doing something for long at your health's expense
I find it incredibly frustrating and tiring just to make the top 10,000. I did it once and then never again. I can't even imagine putting myself through this.
How much effort did you have to put into it to get in the top 10,000 and get the bronze title? I’m considering doing it for this upcoming duelist cup but I’m not sure if it is worth it.
@bobbybero7452 not a crazy amount but more than I wanted to that's for sure
@@RedMage8BT Thanks for the info! I’ll keep that in mind 😃👍🏻
Great video! Very interesting to see the stats behind Josh’s games
58% win rate is very very interesting. That's not even particularly impressive for as much as Yugitubers talk about "consistency".
Genuinely super cool content for yugioh, very interesting to both players and people that don't play. Very well structured and a very poignant comparison with pokemon (both in their tournaments and in gameplay).
thanks a lot, happy you enjoyed!
So you’re telling me if I wanna be a DC Champ I just need to grind for 3days straight risk my health and safety and not just play the game casually
I think there should be downtime between those 3 days so that players can rest
Great video, thanks for all your effort!
This is a good ass video. Super well done. Impressed by the work and the polish of it. Earned my sub ❤
What really is a violation of human rights is the Master Duel Coin System, where we're in a 1:1 format and it's unfair lose the coin most of the time, such as 5 or more times in a row >:u
This is so well researched. And while I struggled to understand some parts and had to replay them, this isn't on you.
This is a complicated topic to cover from the get go.
Bro you didn't have to do a DB Grinder impression, but I'm glad you did lol
I don't know shit about Yugioh but I love listening to you talk, so I've been listening to snippets of this video while I work sometimes. I love you and I'm super proud of you ❤
thanks so much my dear, I love you!
I think the most time i spent grinding in a single player game was Melee, but since multiplayer games have basically become live service machines, it's insane how much time you have to put it, that you're basically on par with a LoL player, which is already soul destroying. I'm also surprised people haven't managed to abuse this format, by running statistics of drawing certain cards etc. or running simulations of FTK's.
I don't have up front experience with this but the way this is being framed reminds me of the grinding you have to do in some rhythm gacha games. Specifically the one I have experience on is Project Sekai, where people would go on and play for 7 days in order to rank high in an event. There's no physical reward for it, it is the pure sacrifice people do for the characters in the game. Where people do math, spend money to get the best teams, and play with 4 other people in shifts that goes upward to 22 hours a day.
Watching this made me realize that grinds like that isn't as common outside of these games, It is bad, like so bad people gotten hospitalized bad. But the community always choke it up to the fact people are willing to go through it even tho you don't get anything in return physically and financially
They should use a token system. Use a token that gives you access for 2 hours but then you have a cool down afterwards for 30 minutes before you can spend another token to gain access again. Then you set a max amount of say 5 tokens that can be spent in a 24 hour period or on a per day basis. If the duelist cup is a 3 day event (friday, saturday and sunday) then you only have access to the ladder for 30 hours that event and have sufficient time for taking care of yourself. This is all just an example of how a token system could work and adjust the given values as you see fit.
It’s always nice to see videos this well put together from smaller channels. It’s hard out there for the little guy, and making any kind of video takes a lot of work. Keep it up!
when you import existing ratings into limited format, you can simply use a log function to even out the ratings of top players. This helps keep the higher rated people matched against each other without the existing ratings affecting the final results in the very top level of play, where final standings hold more weight.
the formula for each player's score would be something like 60,000 * log(c * s/t)/log(c) where s is the player's ladder rating, t is the ladder rating of the #1 player on the ladder, and c is a constant chosen to produced a specific curve of initial ratings. A c value of 100 would give #1 a starting tournament rating of 60,000, someone at 75% of their ladder rating a starting tournament rating of about 56,000, someone at 50% a starting tournament rating of about 51,000. A c value of 10 would produce the following ratings: #1 - 60,000, 75% - 52,500, 50% - 42,000.
this brings all players who have a POSSIBILITY of winning into a comfortable range of first place at the start of the tournament, while giving the tournament organizers the ability to tweak how high the average player's rating is.
Instead of Smogon's OLT, while we're comparing to Pokemon, better comparison to Duelist Cup would be the system of Players Cup implemented by The Pokemon Company International during pandemic.
Players received 50 keys to be used to play BO1, 8 Player Single Elimination In-game tournament to collect points throughout couple of weeks, and then Top 128 (for NA/EU/LA) or Top64 (for OC) will play Qualifier Final to determine who qualifies to the Players Cup Global Finals. This way, this stopped players to grind excessively, but the sample size is still large enough so that luck doesn't matter too much.
Really good video! We all know this event sucks ass thanks for putting all the facts in one well put place
That earthquake crit soundbyte is one of the funniest things I have ever heard 😂
Genuinely fantastic video!
Nah, if there's any amount of taking advantage of other players sleeping, it's not a "skilled format" as much as it is a speedrun to the "play now" button.