The best episode yet! I always love getting a peak behind the curtain, and Matt Bell is such a great representative for that process. Loved hearing everything he's had to say both here and in the MBT video
Could listen to Matt talk about card design and YuGiOh for hours and hours, and I'm definitely gonna be picking up his game. Perfect video for me while I'm grinding skills in OSRS lol
This really was a cool podcast to listen to. Always enjoy/appreciate seeing developers/designers (even former) talking about a game they work(ed) on, even if they can't say/answer everything that we want to hear, just having that communication and a little bit of insight is super refreshing.
A great “prize support” idea is that whoever wins worlds gets to help design a card either new or for support to any archetype they choose. That would be such a great experience
This could have been a 4h video and i would see it all the way through. I hope you can brong Matt back to the stream someday. This has been super insightful.
This dude is great. I get that he can’t voice 100% of what he’d like to say/what we want to hear but he answered everything much more than I expected honestly. If he were to come back at some point I’d be interested to know what he/other employees were thinking in some of the formats where people really thought yugioh was dying like teledad or the consecutive ftk formats we had around gouki format
On the subject of 90 step linear combos, I would like to say that I personally think more dynamic and open ended combos are a lot more fun. I played Mermail for 8 years. Actually just switched when Tenpai came out. Mermail affords you the ability to do both long linear combos with predetermined end boards, as well as dynamic combos that make you think on your feet and react to what your opponent is doing. The deck so incredibly consistent that you can more or less choose which direction you're going almost irrespective of what's actually in your hand. I personally think that is how Yu-Gi-Oh is intended to be played. It's almost like a puzzle game. Your opponent creates the puzzle on there turn, and you have to solve it on your turn. Whether that can be brute forced during the length of a linear combo, or you have to figure it out as you go along an ever changing combo line is entirely up to circumstance and your ability as a player.
I’m pretty sure they are unenforceable in most places as well but I could be wrong. Edit: I’m not saying that this dude should test it or whatever, I wouldn’t want konamis legal team down my throat nor does it look good for future employers, just saying permanent NDAs are not only dystopian morally speaking I’m pretty sure most legal bodies also recognize that.
Big respect to Mr. Bell for his answers here, I really appreciate hearing all of this. I imagine it's not easy to handle some of the questions while also dodging the NDAs and whatnot, so I appreciate that he tried his best and was willing to be as open as he could be. His game looks quite interesting!
This is what he was not able to say about banlists: They are 100% a marketing tool, a way to sell new cards. If it happens that it balances the game, that's a plus.
He was very intentional in saying this is what he likes or views it to be, not what actually it is used for. And when asked about rarity bumps he explicitly said you’re going to have to read in between the lines of what I’m saying.
I mean if we want tournaments and the card game to be supported we need a big company behind it. Imagine them being smaller. Whats with the printing and designing of cards? Imo the banlist is okay partially as a marketing tool in case of not hitting new decks from the get go. It should obviously mainly be about balance. What i am almost more concerned is the rate at which new products release. If it were more reprints it would be fine but most of the time its new cards which can feel overwhelming.
Loved this and his spot with MBT too. I understand he would not be able to do this consistently but if this can be expanded in any way I would recommend more focused segments. For example go through the history of tearlaments and get his thoughts. Start from showing the cards to their immediate impact, new cards that changed the playstyle, becoming tier 0, to their hits and fallout. Ending with a where are they now summation. May be a bit much detail but this can allow more in depth thoughts on specific points in yugiohs history from a new perspective.
Yugioh has ALWAYS had staples that "every" deck play even when it was just "good stuff piles" many decks had a base of at least 10-15 cards it's has just gotten worse
This is an amazing podcast about the TCG, i'm not a new player really but for the current version of Yugioh i feel like learning how to play is much harder than when i first met the game back in like 2002 when it was arriving to Latin America. Even then it was tough to learn how to play at first but now a Starter Deck has so much rules to learn, so many monster types to summon, so much strategies to learn i feel like the Synchro strategies i barely learned in like 2018 are totally outdated and it's really overwhelming to try and play it again. In all honesty i used to like the game but i feel card effects are very specific nowadays and i feel like i need to learn how 30 or so archetypes work in order to play the current version of the game. Duel Links in my opinion doesn't help since i see duels where guys summon like 20 monsters in one turn and i just wonder how is that even possible? That was unthinkable back in the day. Anyways, i know there's people even friends of mine that still play to this day and i respect that but if i play i prefer the old version of the game, thank you.
2:07:32 if you reading this matt, the entire kshatrira gimmick is they are invaders that operate like japanese giant hornets hunting for resources to feed into the nest shangri la then use the resources to power up their king riseheart to become ariseheart, you hit their first "scout" before they locate the your deck or extra deck by either flipping the scout to face down defense position or negate the first effect of their scout that can be a literal turn skip for kshatrira, or they can still play but will have to spend 3 cards to summon arisehart, which i mind you just spend 3 cards to summon macro cosmos that dies to a single dark hole, did you know that you can just flip macro instead? they play exactly like how they play in the story, a big guy suddenly come out of nowhere to took your resources(your cards and your zone) call for reinforcement and summon a swarm of themselves, the banish face down card they do is basically stockpiling your cards as their resources, remember they can attach your face down card into ariseheart as mats, reflect how kshatrira use other planet resources to feed their king, in terms of gameplay fantasy the archetype really nail the coffin, so there is that.
The solution that comes out to me from the interview is tearlaments. As said, you can't just drastically reduce the powercreep of the game or peaole would get bored. There should be a lot of decks light tearlaments or lightsworn where you do not have a fixed combo and the game depends a lot on how it goes and which cards you see, avoiding the "manual" aspect of the game and making it more fun. All this on top of the fact that the deck should not end on 2/3/4 negates otherwise it still would not be playiable at all. Also you can not add limitations on turns because as they said, yigioh is based on that, we do not want to have to get resources over time like in magic, op etc... A great new master rule (es 6 cards going second in hand) to allow the going second player to scoop if hand is bad --> fix time issues. Drastically remove end board pieces of negates and make decks and their combos less "standards" as for tearlaments.
"I cant talk about how the Forbidden Limited list is made"- The answer in the modern day of Yugioh is 100% money unfortunately. They've made it too clear over the years
Yeah. I think it's because it's a very sensitive topic, especially since any information given could impact the secondary market or consumer trust in Konami. We all know that secret rares don't typically get banned too early, but if he verbalizes that, it becomes more complicated, especially if the opposite happens and people say, 'Hey, he said secrets don't get banned too early, so why did it happen this time?' It's definitely a complicated topic.
Speed Duel Battle city Box got me back into the game, although I was disappointed at first by the different rules, currently it's still my favorite format, and I'm playing the current competitive format as well
Matt kinda hinted at both being possible with examples. 1) They knew Zoodiacs ahead of time being released so they didnt do major hits to the previous meta decks 2) They underestimated the utility of the Danger monsters as being able to sift thru player's decks consistently. They mostly focused on the design of the cards being unqiue in this case.
I mean, I’m sure they know what cards are going to be real strong, and some combo lines, but they physically don’t have the time to find everything. From there, it’s more about being able to assess how much is too much rather than trying to judge every edge case
@@traplover6357 agreeing with this as other example for intended strong deck example above that Matt not part of was kashtira. And my fav example of accidental is the lyrilusc fusion and tyrant neptune
@@comettcg8830 another example was the reaction to Zealantis, being a really cool card outside of the small issue of only requiring 1+ effect monsters to make it, until he learnt about the water lock interaction to effectively non-target banish an entire board with it.
1:55:56 I would just like to say that Towers definitely had outs in Europe at the time. It's just that crab king wasn't one of them. You could out it with both Share the Pain and Ectoplasmer. Both of them forced your opponent to tribute the towers for you.
my problem with transaction rollback is more so that it can just ignore the whole OPT part of some traps. like if there was a card that was like 'use branded fusion again after it gets ashed' i would hate it
@@unaffectedbycardeffects9152 for branded it matters a lot less that its a trap since resolving BF on your opponents turn is just as good as doing it on yours, you still make your sanctifier/mirrorjade/puppet lock whatever
Now what you guys need to do is interview the guy who does (or have done) probleming solving card text, and ask him what the updated text for air neos is lol.
About that 2018 paradox Farfa said, I think it also had to do with something way beyond Yugioh card design. Age of the player base! In 2018 a lot of people who grew up with the game or, that were playing with a minimal budget were just getting out of college, therefore they began to have much more disposable income, and, guess what? They probably used it in their hobbies, yugioh included. At least that's not only what happened to me, but to started to happen to most people I know that played back then.
Happened to me as well 2017. Im born 91 and grew up with 90 and 2000s pop culture. Of course i had a big interest in YGO but back then just getting 3 structure decks was unthinkable to me. With 26 i suddenly had a nice income and could effort things i couldnt before and i ended up getting quite a bit of decks.
The problem with the Imperial Iron Wall example is that it only gets played if it DOES completely shut down a particular strategy. Edit: Based Joshua said exactly what I said oops.
i would love to know how he thinks about stats in yugioh being just way to big and how stats in card games in general should be. in yugioh you effectively have 3 life compared to the biggest thing mtg having a fifth of the opponents life and you can only summon those guys on turn 4+ and in pokemon you by design can at best beat the opponent in 2 turn but most likely 3 to 4 not counting all the set up turns.
18:01 RnD: the idea of danger is hide&seek theme, hide in your hand, then they (assume it is an opponent) try to discover in reality, some people prefer throwing dice instead let opponent pull a card at random can someone please help me which one is the correct play for danger theme?
Just started watching but I was wondering what goes into choosing a game name, like Robot Raiders? Because my first impression hearing the name was that it would probably gatekeep ppl who don't care about robots to even want to know more about it, no? Maybe Im giving this more importance than it actually have, but the thought was there. So I felt it would be interesting to know how the process go and work.
I mean you have to pick a theme of some kind and that’s always going to alienate someone who doesn’t like your theme. You can’t make a game for everyone.
The story about Dangers made me wonder if they thought the same thing with Kaijus, where the idea is to use 2 and set up a big Kaiju battle but they ended up just being side deck outs to problematic monsters.
I wonder why the tcg doesn't use tcg exclusives cards to help push legacy support that has fallen flat in the ocg, a few more cards could make the difference and would hype up a set if everything they knew went out the window
An educated guess would be that they are contractually obligated to avoid those archetypes specifically, since that would mean giving up on their control over the "classic" archetypes.
@@r3zaful I understand that but doubling down on support that they are already trying to sell in the tcg would only result in more profits for konami, I can understand not making tcg exclusives for a new archetype because the ocg probably has plans for future support, just seems a waste to make pack filler that no one wants when you could help sell your set.
@@rafflesiaandfriends did you listen to the pod? Matt's team designed danger/land unknown and dream mirror, his team design philosophy focus on "roleplay" and uniqueness than competitiveness, because he knew that tcg casual scenes are pretty dogshit compared to ocg that needs to be fix. The problem right with his philosophy, is now the archetype he creates are very likely to be underpowered as hell compared to the more competitive focused ocg designers. Even if he given the chance to create legacy support to old archetypes, it will be very likely to be not as strong as ocg designers. He literally hates masterpeace, which means he and most tcg devision employees are the type of designers that think the player who play the card and the player who have to deal with it when designing a card or archetype, which is noble idea, but in execution? Im so sorry playing dream mirror the Way he designed during the first wave will guaranteed you 20+loses at locals and that will not make anyone feel good, even your opponent will probably lend you their deck because they feel bad. Thankfully ocg side fix the deck to be at least playable enough to win one or two duel, by competely ignoring their field mechanic and just put both field on each side of the field. Just like i said above, Matt is a great designer for casual card game, unfortunately yugioh is a semi competitive game where his philosophy doesn't aligned with the ocg designers.
My problem with trap cards in modern yugioh is, that they have to be massively powerful, to compensate for beeing extremely slow and beeing at high risk of your entire backrow getting whiped with 1 single spell
1:11:00 Let me completely counter his Argument. Rollback is 0% special in that sense. ROTA will always be a card that is just as good as the best level4 or lower warrior in the game. Same with any other caard that searches something relatively generic or broad.
The Kashtira example felt like lying without actually lying. It's very important to know how Kashtira banishes, & that it is banishing on a different chain most of the time. Minus Diablosis & Shifter the deck would be looked at way differently. There were so many board breakers, hand traps, & power spells to deal with it. It's why it's been so meh in Master Duel meta wise. Kashtira gets over hated for sure. It's must be so hard to design new decks when Tear, Kash, & Snake-Eyes get so much hate but are some of the strongest most fun decks to play imo.
@@ducky36F i do rather play against kshatrira 10 times than facing other rogue deck in the game like vaalmonica or flunder in md, the boss cant protect himself by vaal and flunder PROTECT ENTIRE FIELD
@@ducky36Fimo the only actually problem with kash (cards with kashtira in the name, this is not including shifter) is arise heart. A macro is just not designed with good back and forth interaction in mind. Especially when it comes with a targetted shadow realm removal on it.
@@robertbauerle5592the same can be said to all deck designed after 2019 that came from ocg, Lets say vaalmonica if you think that having indestructable bagooska+2 mathmech superfactorial+snatch steak is "fun back and forth duel" you must be smoking, and this is basically one card combo because how easy you get it. not to mention vaal can protect floodgates as well. Kshatrira is overhated in tcg, no need to deny it.
@@ducky36F That's why I call it lying. It was never a problem in MD but people like you pretend it was. One board breaker solos the entire deck. Mathmech? Branded trying to play solitaire? We've had more annoying decks that nobody complains about like they do Kashtira.
When you put it in the perspective that Halq was broken day 1 on release but that Rollback has been good at best, he isn't wrong. You know now that Rollback is a card and currently doesn't do anything degenerate competitively, and if it does, it is thanks to Beatrice which is a card that has been know to be a problematic card. If you don't want it to be degenerate just don't make a deck that turns it into a degenerate card.
Comparing a main deck normal trap like rollback that NEEDS to be sent to grave to get any value versus halq that will always be available via the extra deck and is infinitely easier to access and leads a LOT more nonsense is freaking stupid. Normal Traps and generic extra deck monsters are NOT in the same stratosphere of power and some silly people REALLY need to understand that 😂
Some of the dissonance I experience is with Konami printing more Maxx C adjacent cards in the TCG, and how much people dislike that card design. I dont play Master Duel because of Maxx C.
Well Matt, you can be mad at the whole overload fusion banlist, but I remember getting mad at a similar instance when BOSH came out in 2016 making the PEPE deck fundamentally broken. I am still mad about that one as well.
Man I wish they had gone into tearlament more because I feel like that deck deserves more from a design perspective than just “the strongest deck of all time”. IMO it’s also one of the best, if not the best, designed deck of all time. Power-level aside. At least in terms of what modern yugioh wants interactions to be like.
Still almost always defined by what you mill which is putting too much gambling/luck into the occasion for it to be called the best designed deck ever in my opinion. Also no locks into anything like what where they thinking
@@TheCroatia7 it’s not gambling, it’s just not linear. With the way the deck plays, at least not when all of its cards are at 1, you can consistently get something off of a mill. You don’t know what it will be, and what it is will change your line of play. Also each card in the hand of a tearlament player represents around the same amount of board presence, unlike something like snake eyes, yubel,centurion, etc. Most modern decks have a specific line of linear play they try to go for, and any interruption stops that line of play. Then they either need an extender to resume that line of play, or stop. Tear does not work like that. Additionally, a lot of in-engine pieces require you to have an opponent that is playing the game in order to get full value: All of the traps, scream triggering on the opp’s turn, and most noteably, havnis. The deck can’t just play hyper proactively for 10 minutes like other meta decks or even rogue combo decks, because the deck isn’t designed to get full value that way. You can set up, but what you’re usually doing is getting ready to play the game on the opponent’s turn. Non-linearity is important if you want a game to feel different when the same style/archetype/deck is played, and I think a lot of yugioh players feel this subconsciously when they play these combo decks with a dedicated linear combo for the 50th time in a row. It might be fun for the first few times or deck building to find lines, but the interaction with the opponent is where a true “good game” comes from and no deck in a long time has done that as well as tearlament.
@@robertbauerle5592 i wouldn’t even argue on most of your points. The one thing I do see differently is the perception; to me thats not good card design. Thats broken card design. Giving every single in-engine piece the same broken effect when sent is not good card design to me. Being able to play a full turn, ending on a good (not insane) board and then at the latest in the main 1 of the opponent doing it all again? How is that good. Its interactive yes, you can do a lot of different shi- yes, it entices you to think about plays yes. But its also a deck that wasn’t even properly killed when everything went to limited. A deck with 20 one off in engine pieces that still wins tournaments is not a representation of good card design. Maybe too good card design.
@@TheCroatia7 you’re arguing power level - that’s not directly related to the design of a deck. If there were other decks that could compete at the same level as tear, this would be a lot more apparent. You can actually experience this (though not easily) on dueling book with custom cards
@@robertbauerle5592 thats fair. I probably have more of a problem with the power of the deck, but that IS kinda related to the design. If there is no lock on any of these effects and they use milling as their main strategy thats just too easy to substitute good cards with trash that came out over the last 20 years but they do the same stuff. The deck is fun (as long as you dont play spright against it lol) but the effects just lack conditions or requirements. Ion’t know. I like tear players, they’re smart. But we’ll never get anything like that again, I think. I don’t think snake eye fiendsmith can do anything against full power tear
To his point about people leaving the game if yugioh started rotation; what about all the people who quit long ago because of the power creep who’d be interested in playing again?
They sure handle power creep a hell of a lot better than eternal formats do. There’s no way you can compare MTG Standard and Legacy and tell me there isn’t a significant difference.
@@connermorgan9223 if you compare Power Creep, you gotta do that in the same format, otherwise, you're Just pretending to manipulate data to ignore reality. If you compare today's standard with a standard from 6 years ago, the current one is WAAAAAAAAY faster, with an insanely better card quality.
@@francescolofaro8258honestly, mtg did a great job reducing powercreep, I think it was at least 8/9 years until thinks got fucked over because they started focusing on commander
1:36:00 THIS IS ONE ( of many) OF MY BIGGEST PROBLEMS WITH MODERN, the fact that a whole 3rd of the card pool ( traps, one of ya know, foundations of the game lol) is irrelevant by modern standards, shit makes no sense.
Make sure you guys check out Matt's studio website at www.robotraiders.com/ !
His game actually sounds pretty cool I might pick it up
The best episode yet! I always love getting a peak behind the curtain, and Matt Bell is such a great representative for that process. Loved hearing everything he's had to say both here and in the MBT video
I agree, this was great
Ee😮
Agreed, was awesome and insightful and always grateful to people like Matt who take the time to do this stuff.
"you don't need a PhD to understand dueling" Crowler would disagree
I think YuGiOh has gotten so complicated and complex with rulings that you could definitely have at least a bachelor's in it lol
The Battle City Speed Duel box got my entire friend group back into Yugioh. Very well designed product 👌
Did they talk about it?
@electricspirit3600 at the very end yes
Yugioh as Takahashi intended
Could listen to Matt talk about card design and YuGiOh for hours and hours, and I'm definitely gonna be picking up his game. Perfect video for me while I'm grinding skills in OSRS lol
This really was a cool podcast to listen to.
Always enjoy/appreciate seeing developers/designers (even former) talking about a game they work(ed) on, even if they can't say/answer everything that we want to hear, just having that communication and a little bit of insight is super refreshing.
what did we learn. if you wanna change something, stop buying the product.
Yup, and also there are plenty of alternative hobbies available.
Lol you don't but any product stfu lmao. Most people that say this spend no fucking money and borrow 80 precent of your cards lmao.
I miss playing the game, until I actually pick it up again
Good luck getting the entire community to not buy products
@@cplgsleight1661a 1~3% change in income is still gonna be observed by corporations
Holy shit 2 and a half hours of yapping? Gonna get cozy and enjoy
A great “prize support” idea is that whoever wins worlds gets to help design a card either new or for support to any archetype they choose. That would be such a great experience
This could have been a 4h video and i would see it all the way through. I hope you can brong Matt back to the stream someday. This has been super insightful.
This dude is great. I get that he can’t voice 100% of what he’d like to say/what we want to hear but he answered everything much more than I expected honestly. If he were to come back at some point I’d be interested to know what he/other employees were thinking in some of the formats where people really thought yugioh was dying like teledad or the consecutive ftk formats we had around gouki format
Phenomenal episode guys. Thanks to Matt, Farfa & Josh for organizing this. Learned loads.
Would be keen to watch everyone demoing Robot Raiders, sounds cool
Agreed I want to see robot raiders in action not just hear what it is.
Matt we love you!
nice podcast, i would like to see him again in this format :)
Was really hoping to see matt collab with more of the community after the mbt vid and this is perfect!
Amazing episode, loved the discussions that took place. Glad we got a bigger peak behind the curtain
Zealantis was an excellent card to go over with its many interactions!
Can't wait to see them play Robot Raiders!
could listen to this guys thoughts on card design forever, def pickin up his game
On the subject of 90 step linear combos, I would like to say that I personally think more dynamic and open ended combos are a lot more fun.
I played Mermail for 8 years. Actually just switched when Tenpai came out.
Mermail affords you the ability to do both long linear combos with predetermined end boards, as well as dynamic combos that make you think on your feet and react to what your opponent is doing. The deck so incredibly consistent that you can more or less choose which direction you're going almost irrespective of what's actually in your hand.
I personally think that is how Yu-Gi-Oh is intended to be played. It's almost like a puzzle game. Your opponent creates the puzzle on there turn, and you have to solve it on your turn. Whether that can be brute forced during the length of a linear combo, or you have to figure it out as you go along an ever changing combo line is entirely up to circumstance and your ability as a player.
I do love my transaction rollback in grave targeting evenly matched, very fun board wipe
What an awesome guest! Loved his video seeing runick and rollback for the first time 😂
Permanent NDA's are so dystopian
I’m pretty sure they are unenforceable in most places as well but I could be wrong.
Edit: I’m not saying that this dude should test it or whatever, I wouldn’t want konamis legal team down my throat nor does it look good for future employers, just saying permanent NDAs are not only dystopian morally speaking I’m pretty sure most legal bodies also recognize that.
That’s corporations for you.
@@SDREHXC Depending on the state you're in NDAs are not enforceable at all
So you want him to start leaking trade secrets that the competition can use for their own benefit?
@@xkxk7539 Yes
All I got from the whole game design talk is that marincess is one of the best designed decks ever made.
Big respect to Mr. Bell for his answers here, I really appreciate hearing all of this. I imagine it's not easy to handle some of the questions while also dodging the NDAs and whatnot, so I appreciate that he tried his best and was willing to be as open as he could be. His game looks quite interesting!
You guys playing his game against Matt sounds great! I really hope to see more of this constellation! Very insightful discussion.
Honestly this was everything and I can only ask you two to bring him back for a second episode later on because there is soooo much to talk about
This is what he was not able to say about banlists: They are 100% a marketing tool, a way to sell new cards. If it happens that it balances the game, that's a plus.
He was very intentional in saying this is what he likes or views it to be, not what actually it is used for. And when asked about rarity bumps he explicitly said you’re going to have to read in between the lines of what I’m saying.
A well balanced list is also a part of its marketing. If a list is good, more people will play and therefore buy product.
I mean if we want tournaments and the card game to be supported we need a big company behind it. Imagine them being smaller. Whats with the printing and designing of cards?
Imo the banlist is okay partially as a marketing tool in case of not hitting new decks from the get go. It should obviously mainly be about balance.
What i am almost more concerned is the rate at which new products release. If it were more reprints it would be fine but most of the time its new cards which can feel overwhelming.
@@Corey91666I imagine it would be like flesh and blood were they care about players and still profiting and not juicing every cent out of them
@@masterflamewing234
Felsh and blood is insignificant, yugioh is the#2 tcg around the world. There is a world of difference
1:01:37 I can’t believe he said “Troop, Dupe & SCOOP!!!” This is a blessed podcast!
First time listening to this big yugioh fan and listen alot of podcasts a week satisfied to say the least good job guys gained a listener
Loved this and his spot with MBT too.
I understand he would not be able to do this consistently but if this can be expanded in any way I would recommend more focused segments. For example go through the history of tearlaments and get his thoughts. Start from showing the cards to their immediate impact, new cards that changed the playstyle, becoming tier 0, to their hits and fallout. Ending with a where are they now summation. May be a bit much detail but this can allow more in depth thoughts on specific points in yugiohs history from a new perspective.
1:05:07 I still remember being a pauper and telling myself Mystic Tomato was an acceptable replacement for Tour Guide in my Chaos Dragon deck 😂
Lmao thats hilarious
They HAVE to have spoken about Tearlaments, looking forward to watching this whole vid.
Yugioh has ALWAYS had staples that "every" deck play even when it was just "good stuff piles" many decks had a base of at least 10-15 cards it's has just gotten worse
Oh this is awesome! Matt is a lovely fella
S Tier content!!! I loved the video Matt did with MBT and this podcast is just as enjoyable to me, keep up the great work guys!!
long ep, i love it!
This is an amazing podcast about the TCG, i'm not a new player really but for the current version of Yugioh i feel like learning how to play is much harder than when i first met the game back in like 2002 when it was arriving to Latin America.
Even then it was tough to learn how to play at first but now a Starter Deck has so much rules to learn, so many monster types to summon, so much strategies to learn i feel like the Synchro strategies i barely learned in like 2018 are totally outdated and it's really overwhelming to try and play it again.
In all honesty i used to like the game but i feel card effects are very specific nowadays and i feel like i need to learn how 30 or so archetypes work in order to play the current version of the game.
Duel Links in my opinion doesn't help since i see duels where guys summon like 20 monsters in one turn and i just wonder how is that even possible? That was unthinkable back in the day.
Anyways, i know there's people even friends of mine that still play to this day and i respect that but if i play i prefer the old version of the game, thank you.
great episode
2:07:32 if you reading this matt, the entire kshatrira gimmick is they are invaders that operate like japanese giant hornets hunting for resources to feed into the nest shangri la then use the resources to power up their king riseheart to become ariseheart, you hit their first "scout" before they locate the your deck or extra deck by either flipping the scout to face down defense position or negate the first effect of their scout that can be a literal turn skip for kshatrira, or they can still play but will have to spend 3 cards to summon arisehart, which i mind you just spend 3 cards to summon macro cosmos that dies to a single dark hole, did you know that you can just flip macro instead?
they play exactly like how they play in the story, a big guy suddenly come out of nowhere to took your resources(your cards and your zone) call for reinforcement and summon a swarm of themselves, the banish face down card they do is basically stockpiling your cards as their resources, remember they can attach your face down card into ariseheart as mats, reflect how kshatrira use other planet resources to feed their king, in terms of gameplay fantasy the archetype really nail the coffin, so there is that.
There should have been reciprocal banishing. Because colonialism has costs
@@yardshipscorched earth operation isnt colonialism, its loot and burn.
Omniman deck
The solution that comes out to me from the interview is tearlaments. As said, you can't just drastically reduce the powercreep of the game or peaole would get bored. There should be a lot of decks light tearlaments or lightsworn where you do not have a fixed combo and the game depends a lot on how it goes and which cards you see, avoiding the "manual" aspect of the game and making it more fun. All this on top of the fact that the deck should not end on 2/3/4 negates otherwise it still would not be playiable at all. Also you can not add limitations on turns because as they said, yigioh is based on that, we do not want to have to get resources over time like in magic, op etc... A great new master rule (es 6 cards going second in hand) to allow the going second player to scoop if hand is bad --> fix time issues. Drastically remove end board pieces of negates and make decks and their combos less "standards" as for tearlaments.
P.s. ban instant fusion and bring kit back❤
@@andreafiorucci8142justice for tear
This is such a fascinating video.
Do you plan to have Hardleg Joe on here in the foreseeable future? I feel like that has to be a great episode when it happens.
iirc, they mentioned he'll be on soon for an episode on Rogue decks
Hope not, the guy is loud and unbearable
god he’s so annoying no thanks
I could listen for hours its so interesting
A great into the business and game design of Yu-Gi-Oh!
58:47 Gladiator Beast shout out!!!
Time stamps would be cool!
We're making it to the capital of Yappistan with this one! 🗣🔥🔥
Great Episode!
"I cant talk about how the Forbidden Limited list is made"- The answer in the modern day of Yugioh is 100% money unfortunately. They've made it too clear over the years
Tbh we learnt that in like 2012 when they wanted everyone to stop playing synchros and start playing xyzs so they banned every good tuner.
Yeah. I think it's because it's a very sensitive topic, especially since any information given could impact the secondary market or consumer trust in Konami. We all know that secret rares don't typically get banned too early, but if he verbalizes that, it becomes more complicated, especially if the opposite happens and people say, 'Hey, he said secrets don't get banned too early, so why did it happen this time?' It's definitely a complicated topic.
@dollz8712 Yea for sure, I'm just saying it's no secret. Obviously he doesn't wanna get sued for breaking an NDA
That guy has a pretty great name.
Speed Duel Battle city Box got me back into the game, although I was disappointed at first by the different rules, currently it's still my favorite format, and I'm playing the current competitive format as well
44:01 Being validated never felt so good 😌going 2nd is KING!!!
This is awesome
is this the confirmation that actual humans work at komami?
I really wish they'd talked about the lore and flavor of Kashtira because the mechanics of the deck make way more design sense in that context.
Best episode
I love how when he says "Infernity" bolt smile and bonce their heads. 😂
Hoping they ask him if Konami is aware of how broken new archetypes are or if players find combos they don’t in their limited testing.
Matt kinda hinted at both being possible with examples.
1) They knew Zoodiacs ahead of time being released so they didnt do major hits to the previous meta decks
2) They underestimated the utility of the Danger monsters as being able to sift thru player's decks consistently. They mostly focused on the design of the cards being unqiue in this case.
I mean, I’m sure they know what cards are going to be real strong, and some combo lines, but they physically don’t have the time to find everything. From there, it’s more about being able to assess how much is too much rather than trying to judge every edge case
@@traplover6357 agreeing with this as other example for intended strong deck example above that Matt not part of was kashtira. And my fav example of accidental is the lyrilusc fusion and tyrant neptune
@@comettcg8830 another example was the reaction to Zealantis, being a really cool card outside of the small issue of only requiring 1+ effect monsters to make it, until he learnt about the water lock interaction to effectively non-target banish an entire board with it.
1:55:56 I would just like to say that Towers definitely had outs in Europe at the time. It's just that crab king wasn't one of them.
You could out it with both Share the Pain and Ectoplasmer. Both of them forced your opponent to tribute the towers for you.
Fanboy3 is my locals, this was kinda crazy to hear it be referenced
28:30 every control player gansta until you can play basically 2017 yugioh ftks in 2014 thru 3 soul charges
shared ride in nekroz format is maybe an example for a floodgate that matt was talking about:
Just making the action more painful.
I just learned why my monsters kept not coming back when my opponent was using Zealantis in master duel
my problem with transaction rollback is more so that it can just ignore the whole OPT part of some traps. like if there was a card that was like 'use branded fusion again after it gets ashed' i would hate it
Give me that card
that card does exist, its called fusion duplication and it is extremely annoying playing against branded decks that main 3x thrust to get to that.
@@frig7014 it's a trap, I don't want it /jk
@@unaffectedbycardeffects9152 for branded it matters a lot less that its a trap since resolving BF on your opponents turn is just as good as doing it on yours, you still make your sanctifier/mirrorjade/puppet lock whatever
@@frig7014 the /jk was there for a reason, but thanks for providing an explanation anyway, those who aren't familiar with the deck probably needed one
Now what you guys need to do is interview the guy who does (or have done) probleming solving card text, and ask him what the updated text for air neos is lol.
About that 2018 paradox Farfa said, I think it also had to do with something way beyond Yugioh card design. Age of the player base! In 2018 a lot of people who grew up with the game or, that were playing with a minimal budget were just getting out of college, therefore they began to have much more disposable income, and, guess what? They probably used it in their hobbies, yugioh included. At least that's not only what happened to me, but to started to happen to most people I know that played back then.
Happened to me as well 2017. Im born 91 and grew up with 90 and 2000s pop culture. Of course i had a big interest in YGO but back then just getting 3 structure decks was unthinkable to me. With 26 i suddenly had a nice income and could effort things i couldnt before and i ended up getting quite a bit of decks.
The problem with the Imperial Iron Wall example is that it only gets played if it DOES completely shut down a particular strategy.
Edit: Based Joshua said exactly what I said oops.
I’d love for mat to try and learn a newer deck and play a casual match w like josh or farfa or someone
I clicked for the armor set.
i would love to know how he thinks about stats in yugioh being just way to big and how stats in card games in general should be. in yugioh you effectively have 3 life compared to the biggest thing mtg having a fifth of the opponents life and you can only summon those guys on turn 4+ and in pokemon you by design can at best beat the opponent in 2 turn but most likely 3 to 4 not counting all the set up turns.
18:01
RnD: the idea of danger is hide&seek theme, hide in your hand, then they (assume it is an opponent) try to discover
in reality, some people prefer throwing dice instead let opponent pull a card at random
can someone please help me which one is the correct play for danger theme?
Rolling a dice or just picking a card at random are both correct.
Just started watching but I was wondering what goes into choosing a game name, like Robot Raiders? Because my first impression hearing the name was that it would probably gatekeep ppl who don't care about robots to even want to know more about it, no?
Maybe Im giving this more importance than it actually have, but the thought was there. So I felt it would be interesting to know how the process go and work.
I have never heard of some that doesn't care about robots. They either think they are cool, or that they are going to take their job.
I mean you have to pick a theme of some kind and that’s always going to alienate someone who doesn’t like your theme. You can’t make a game for everyone.
The story about Dangers made me wonder if they thought the same thing with Kaijus, where the idea is to use 2 and set up a big Kaiju battle but they ended up just being side deck outs to problematic monsters.
I wonder why the tcg doesn't use tcg exclusives cards to help push legacy support that has fallen flat in the ocg, a few more cards could make the difference and would hype up a set if everything they knew went out the window
An educated guess would be that they are contractually obligated to avoid those archetypes specifically, since that would mean giving up on their control over the "classic" archetypes.
tcg team isnt independent, unless konami jp said okay and given the resources like artwork etc they cant make shit out of nowhere.
@@r3zaful I understand that but doubling down on support that they are already trying to sell in the tcg would only result in more profits for konami, I can understand not making tcg exclusives for a new archetype because the ocg probably has plans for future support, just seems a waste to make pack filler that no one wants when you could help sell your set.
@@rafflesiaandfriends did you listen to the pod? Matt's team designed danger/land unknown and dream mirror, his team design philosophy focus on "roleplay" and uniqueness than competitiveness, because he knew that tcg casual scenes are pretty dogshit compared to ocg that needs to be fix.
The problem right with his philosophy, is now the archetype he creates are very likely to be underpowered as hell compared to the more competitive focused ocg designers.
Even if he given the chance to create legacy support to old archetypes, it will be very likely to be not as strong as ocg designers. He literally hates masterpeace, which means he and most tcg devision employees are the type of designers that think the player who play the card and the player who have to deal with it when designing a card or archetype, which is noble idea, but in execution?
Im so sorry playing dream mirror the Way he designed during the first wave will guaranteed you 20+loses at locals and that will not make anyone feel good, even your opponent will probably lend you their deck because they feel bad. Thankfully ocg side fix the deck to be at least playable enough to win one or two duel, by competely ignoring their field mechanic and just put both field on each side of the field.
Just like i said above, Matt is a great designer for casual card game, unfortunately yugioh is a semi competitive game where his philosophy doesn't aligned with the ocg designers.
"permanent NDA" i love that it's just regular practice for companies to use the government to threaten their employees
My problem with trap cards in modern yugioh is, that they have to be massively powerful, to compensate for beeing extremely slow and beeing at high risk of your entire backrow getting whiped with 1 single spell
I wonder if they talk about Edison, etc. formats in this video.
Been working on my own card game for a few weeks now, so I was very excited to see this title to see what sort of thoughts an *actual* designer has.
1:11:00 Let me completely counter his Argument. Rollback is 0% special in that sense. ROTA will always be a card that is just as good as the best level4 or lower warrior in the game. Same with any other caard that searches something relatively generic or broad.
The Kashtira example felt like lying without actually lying. It's very important to know how Kashtira banishes, & that it is banishing on a different chain most of the time.
Minus Diablosis & Shifter the deck would be looked at way differently. There were so many board breakers, hand traps, & power spells to deal with it. It's why it's been so meh in Master Duel meta wise.
Kashtira gets over hated for sure. It's must be so hard to design new decks when Tear, Kash, & Snake-Eyes get so much hate but are some of the strongest most fun decks to play imo.
Don’t know if it’s fun to play or not, but I hate to break it to you it is miserable to play against even without Diablosis and Shifter.
@@ducky36F i do rather play against kshatrira 10 times than facing other rogue deck in the game like vaalmonica or flunder in md, the boss cant protect himself by vaal and flunder PROTECT ENTIRE FIELD
@@ducky36Fimo the only actually problem with kash (cards with kashtira in the name, this is not including shifter) is arise heart. A macro is just not designed with good back and forth interaction in mind. Especially when it comes with a targetted shadow realm removal on it.
@@robertbauerle5592the same can be said to all deck designed after 2019 that came from ocg,
Lets say vaalmonica
if you think that having indestructable bagooska+2 mathmech superfactorial+snatch steak is "fun back and forth duel" you must be smoking, and this is basically one card combo because how easy you get it.
not to mention vaal can protect floodgates as well.
Kshatrira is overhated in tcg, no need to deny it.
@@ducky36F That's why I call it lying. It was never a problem in MD but people like you pretend it was. One board breaker solos the entire deck.
Mathmech? Branded trying to play solitaire? We've had more annoying decks that nobody complains about like they do Kashtira.
1:14:08 omg joshua I really love youuuuuuu
in context: I also think that Rollback is a very bad designed card, but your arguments ooooffff 🥵 sublime
Josh saying "rollback is fine, don't print problematic traps" has the same vibe as "ban all the tuners"
When you put it in the perspective that Halq was broken day 1 on release but that Rollback has been good at best, he isn't wrong. You know now that Rollback is a card and currently doesn't do anything degenerate competitively, and if it does, it is thanks to Beatrice which is a card that has been know to be a problematic card. If you don't want it to be degenerate just don't make a deck that turns it into a degenerate card.
Rollback isn’t as strong as Halq.
Comparing a main deck normal trap like rollback that NEEDS to be sent to grave to get any value versus halq that will always be available via the extra deck and is infinitely easier to access and leads a LOT more nonsense is freaking stupid.
Normal Traps and generic extra deck monsters are NOT in the same stratosphere of power and some silly people REALLY need to understand that 😂
What product does Matt recommend for new players to start with?
Honestly I’m really surprised banlist ideology would be that important for an NDA
Some of the dissonance I experience is with Konami printing more Maxx C adjacent cards in the TCG, and how much people dislike that card design. I dont play Master Duel because of Maxx C.
Well Matt, you can be mad at the whole overload fusion banlist, but I remember getting mad at a similar instance when BOSH came out in 2016 making the PEPE deck fundamentally broken. I am still mad about that one as well.
Man I wish they had gone into tearlament more because I feel like that deck deserves more from a design perspective than just “the strongest deck of all time”. IMO it’s also one of the best, if not the best, designed deck of all time. Power-level aside. At least in terms of what modern yugioh wants interactions to be like.
Still almost always defined by what you mill which is putting too much gambling/luck into the occasion for it to be called the best designed deck ever in my opinion. Also no locks into anything like what where they thinking
@@TheCroatia7 it’s not gambling, it’s just not linear. With the way the deck plays, at least not when all of its cards are at 1, you can consistently get something off of a mill. You don’t know what it will be, and what it is will change your line of play.
Also each card in the hand of a tearlament player represents around the same amount of board presence, unlike something like snake eyes, yubel,centurion, etc. Most modern decks have a specific line of linear play they try to go for, and any interruption stops that line of play. Then they either need an extender to resume that line of play, or stop. Tear does not work like that.
Additionally, a lot of in-engine pieces require you to have an opponent that is playing the game in order to get full value: All of the traps, scream triggering on the opp’s turn, and most noteably, havnis. The deck can’t just play hyper proactively for 10 minutes like other meta decks or even rogue combo decks, because the deck isn’t designed to get full value that way. You can set up, but what you’re usually doing is getting ready to play the game on the opponent’s turn.
Non-linearity is important if you want a game to feel different when the same style/archetype/deck is played, and I think a lot of yugioh players feel this subconsciously when they play these combo decks with a dedicated linear combo for the 50th time in a row. It might be fun for the first few times or deck building to find lines, but the interaction with the opponent is where a true “good game” comes from and no deck in a long time has done that as well as tearlament.
@@robertbauerle5592 i wouldn’t even argue on most of your points. The one thing I do see differently is the perception; to me thats not good card design. Thats broken card design. Giving every single in-engine piece the same broken effect when sent is not good card design to me. Being able to play a full turn, ending on a good (not insane) board and then at the latest in the main 1 of the opponent doing it all again? How is that good. Its interactive yes, you can do a lot of different shi- yes, it entices you to think about plays yes. But its also a deck that wasn’t even properly killed when everything went to limited. A deck with 20 one off in engine pieces that still wins tournaments is not a representation of good card design. Maybe too good card design.
@@TheCroatia7 you’re arguing power level - that’s not directly related to the design of a deck. If there were other decks that could compete at the same level as tear, this would be a lot more apparent. You can actually experience this (though not easily) on dueling book with custom cards
@@robertbauerle5592 thats fair. I probably have more of a problem with the power of the deck, but that IS kinda related to the design. If there is no lock on any of these effects and they use milling as their main strategy thats just too easy to substitute good cards with trash that came out over the last 20 years but they do the same stuff. The deck is fun (as long as you dont play spright against it lol) but the effects just lack conditions or requirements. Ion’t know. I like tear players, they’re smart. But we’ll never get anything like that again, I think. I don’t think snake eye fiendsmith can do anything against full power tear
Plasma best floodgate
Yes upperdeck used the forbidden and limited list way to much lol
Does Joshua mention how rollback is a cool card.
To his point about people leaving the game if yugioh started rotation; what about all the people who quit long ago because of the power creep who’d be interested in playing again?
Rotations do not stop Power Creep. Just look at Any game with rotations; all of them experienced massive Power Creep.
They sure handle power creep a hell of a lot better than eternal formats do. There’s no way you can compare MTG Standard and Legacy and tell me there isn’t a significant difference.
@@connermorgan9223 if you compare Power Creep, you gotta do that in the same format, otherwise, you're Just pretending to manipulate data to ignore reality.
If you compare today's standard with a standard from 6 years ago, the current one is WAAAAAAAAY faster, with an insanely better card quality.
@@francescolofaro8258honestly, mtg did a great job reducing powercreep, I think it was at least 8/9 years until thinks got fucked over because they started focusing on commander
"I hear people arent fans of shifter" lmao jesus bruh
yea... when you put it to the business lvl .. yea... everything makes sanse
Wonder how he feels about the Lacrima ban
1:36:00 THIS IS ONE ( of many) OF MY BIGGEST PROBLEMS WITH MODERN, the fact that a whole 3rd of the card pool ( traps, one of ya know, foundations of the game lol) is irrelevant by modern standards, shit makes no sense.
I'm sorry far for that question about if you design for the player.Do you designed for the opponent?Is one of the stupidest statements I ever heard.
yeah rollback became problem when there is arctype that can send trap to GY (not set it like lab or just send 1 like paleo)
beatrice gotta go
Should have asked him about the 4 your developement cycle.
and ignored monster types.