Episode 23: JRB Yu-Gi-Oh! Podcast - The Costs of YGO Pt. 2, What Makes or Breaks a set?

The team continues the discussion of the costs and barriers to entry associated with both Yu-Gi-Oh! and other card games, as well as examining the 2023 product release schedule and evaluating the quality of releases and what could be done to improve them.

[@gumbytrongaming7947]

Ryan's point about card quality is key here. It really doesn't matter how many Secrets vs Ultras vs Supers there are in a set (or even if we use TCG or OCG rarity systems) - the only thing that matters is how playable those cards are. We've seen awful Secret Rares be $1 and we've seen fantastic Super Rares be $20. But if the design of the set is such that 3-4 cards are ONLY things playable in that set, then inevitably those cards are going to be expensive (and, in fact, more expensive than most players can afford). The biggest problem with the OCG rarity system isn't that it's cheaper and we should just implement it here, it's that sets are designed around that rarity system. Yugioh cards are not designed to be Secret Rares that are 2 per box, they are designed with the OCG rarity system in mind, but when they get imported to the TCG Konami has to pick and choose which ones get upgraded to a high rarity. Sometimes they pick "well" in the sense that obvious staples like Pot of Prosperity are Secret Rare and sometimes they don't (T.G Rocket Salamander). But the core of the issue is that they MUST pick 10 Secret Rares and they MUST pick 15 Ultra Rares - even if the set only has 3-4 playable cards. It's fine if you live in OCG-land and you open a Super Rare of an unplayable card because the value difference between that and something like a Super Rare Little Knight is only a few dollars. But pulling a Rocket Salamander instead of a Little Knight in the TCG basically determines if your box is worth it or not, which creates this toxic secondary market environment in the TCG.

[@geek593]

Very well said. The leap I take from this position is that mechanically unique cards don't have to be the value chases and that people have proven many times to be willing to spend decent money on attainable alternate versions of cards they like which shows in the OCG and staple starlights.

[@kiranearitachi]

Came from megas video and i think its crazy how much people are going after you but these will be good for me to listen to at work i think you all work well at talking together

[@milanotheduelist]

great listen 💯

[@elijahbarfoth1832]

Hell yeah, love these

[@duckfire9329]

Honestly I think something that would help is talking about budget decks and helping those players out. Cimo used to do that but now it feels like no one wants to help players on a budget except for Pak

[@duelme1234]

Hearing these 3 talk about cutting down secret rares reminded me of when jon moore first warned about the new eternity code ratios. Oh how right he was.

[@Gingerillaz]

They’re really missing the chase that the old system had. 1 secret per box, 1 MAYBE 2 ultis per box, a few ultras, 5-6 supers (so they actually have value). Less higher rarities, less variance on boxes.

[@A11sopp]

One related issue to there being too many bad high rarity cards is from initial design before the rarities are selected. Too many of the cards are blatantly bad in a way that they couldn't even inspire any real experimentation or debate. It's one thing if a card is bad, but playable still at least at a level where people will try it out. Or if it's borderline playable but worth experimenting with. But we just don't get enough cards like that. It's one thing that being the case in games like Magic where every card in a set has a purpose in a format, you have cards for draft, for standard, for commander, sometimes even Modern/Legacy. But there isn't really a purpose behind a good chunk of sets, they're full of cards not even remotely playable in the one format we have and they largely don't even have much of a target audience to make them worthwhile beyond that. So many cards are just designed with not a lot of purpose, so in terms of card quality everything in the set is a bit polarized. Obviously not every card needs to approach being good, but Konami needs to ask themselves more often when designing sets "who does this actually serve?" It wouldn't even be a big deal if this was just commons or even the occasional super, but as you say there are so many bad ultras and secret rares that aren't providing anything to anyone. Are T.G players even going to be happy their deck got a lot of new support only to be completely unplayable still? If Konami approached these slots more from the perspective of making sure high rarity stuff had at least more of a target audience that would be happy to pull the cards in question things would be so much better than they are now.

[@keegee1214]

Only @ 2 hrs atm, but i think you guys arrived to the big point. Less product and better rarity distro within core sets so that stores and avg consumer open packs due to its estimated value. Maybe also bring back special editions and unlimited runs for sets as they used to do, the promos in those usually got people to spend. Looking at the stretch of sets from like Tachy to Primal Origin seem like a dream compared to the sets recently

[@helixier6629]

that thing you said makes you literally the devil (so true!)

[@aragoncorp_tcg]

I feel like I fall into the category of I can offered any card but unable to get pass the next step to get that invite.

[@Zachpi]

Hey y'all I'm back! Wanna just say I really do appreciate actually reading my comment on the last one, I know it was insane in length, but I think this one should be a lot more reasonable, by I am gonna trey to break stuff down by point again a bit, though I will probably skip over more and kinda just assume if I did, it was in my comment on the other vid and I don't have much to add to it or that I just agree and had nothing to add. I would also like to say that I think knowing Jeff has been part of making a TCG before was a really important piece of info, I feel like it moves a lot of things from being "It's this way because I say it is" to "I know it's this way because I've done it" which really changes the credibility Little Knight vs Wanted!: I was really curious about this point, so I did a quick count of the top vut lists from Indy and Santa Cruz de la Sierra to see, and actually little knight was more played than Wanted! with a total of 42 Wanted to 50 little knight(based on the currently posted list on ygoprodeck). I think the big missed thing is that many lists, especially R-Ace, actually does play 2 S:P/ My understanding for R-Ace is that one want one to insulate Turb from imperm/veiler then you link it into isolde for ricardetto to make Barrone andyou want to end on a second S:P, but I haven't really played with the deck, just into it. Product value: Certainly I am not an expert on this but I think that I have to 1000% agree that there are simply too many terrible cards and too many products, they really need to consider doing like half as many releases with just less chaff. There was also a bit with droplet that I am gonna put here, but I think that the habit of Konami short printing one secret 4 times really sucks as a way to add value to sets, and it also didn't really bring the price of droplet that much, it went from about 40 to 25 dollars, but in a series of formats where it was basically unplayable. Price of Staples: You mention how many decks have a huge price tag but when you look at it, so much of that cost is in like ash, evenly, imperm, etc that aren't specific cards to the deck as a way of down playing the insane looking price tag, but the issue, and you target it for new players in particular, though I feel like it still applies for returning players is that even if they're very common, the cards that are really pump the price generally haven't been cheap at some point. Thrust is like 90 bucks each, it's about 40% of the average cost of a lot of decks, and sure if you got very lucky and bought it at the right time, you could buy it for... still 200 bucks for the playset, or about 30% of the average deck cost. Largely the same applies for prosp(Pre-RC anyways) where it was 120 bucks for a playset, but if you got it at the trough of the price, it was still like 100 dollars. Rarity Collection: Thank you for mentioning that the game changing nature of RC, there are some nice reprints and upgrades, but from a really budget mindset it only really affects(I would say 3) cards in Prosp, Baronne, and droplet since it is the first non-shorted reprint. I also think that the Lava Golem reprint is good, as mentioned, because while it looks cheap and has been printed many times, but it was like 7-10 dollars to get one that hadn't been chewed up by a dog last time I had looked. Imperm was still expensive because it was the only valuable card in a structure as it's cheapest version, so about 10 bucks makes sense. I absolutely agree that the set is super lazy in terms of actually catering to the TCG format, because about an 8th of this set really needed reprinting and honestly a ton of it didn't even need the rarity bumps. For just a bit of closing one thing I'd like to say, on my biggest issue with the price personally. Every cheap deck that tops is stun garbage, and it really sucks to think that if I want to compete on a budget, the way to have the best shot at pulling it off is to play just the least fun, least interactive deck in the format, every time.

[@TJParker96]

My petition to bring back DA live streams continues.

[@geek593]

42 minutes in: It's a very bad habit to attribute losses to not having spent more money and spending more money doesn't give you instant wins. The problem people have is that the barrier for spending to get the good cards that a clearly designed to elevate strategies or make them playable at all (the Stratos of every playable archetype being secret lol) is too high right now and that's an issue with Konami's set design. There would be a lot less friction if the guy beating you senseless due to insane player skill was using the high end lottery full art starlight texture foil signed by the artist premium legendary copy of the best card in the format while you still had access to the peasant rare. Having your opponent do something you simply aren't capable of because they spent $100 more than you feels bad in any card game. Triple Tactics Talent was the worst recent offender of this back in 2021 and I'm sure Jeff can empathize given how bad he feels the card is designed. If you played correctly and hand trapped the correct target sometimes your opponent would slap $130 on the table to get out of jail free. I don't know how players are supposed to not feel cheated by something like that. Good conversation so far.

[@geek593]

1 hour 30 minutes in: Japan liking gachapon isn't a reason to make the rest of the world work on a scratch off lottery system. Jeff says people will just buy singles and boxes will rot on shelves but that's exactly what's happening now. Even sets with single high dollar cards rot on shelves because the chance of cracking a box and getting nothing vastly outweighs the chance of getting the chase card. Genesis Impact at one point was a $45 box with multiple $30 cards and a suite of decent CRs and customers still didn't buy them because if you weren't working on large scale triage you were still going to more than likely lose $45. The reason people only buy singles is because offloading the risk to a vendor with a huge stack of scratch off tickets is better than risking losing by scratching them all off on your own. If the box opening experience sucks (it does) people won't buy boxes. If the box opening experience is better people will actually buy them. Edit: One minute later, yes people would buy boxes if they weren't garbage. Every other card game in the West has a healthy box break culture. It's literally just Yugioh that doesn't and it's because they've designed their products like lottery tickets. I don't even see how this is something you'd assert. Like sure, err on the side of pessimism but don't pretend that's the only possible outcome.

[@geek593]

Jeff hit the nail on the head with Shadowverse but I'd like to add a little bit of context. The game itself is excellent but there was an issue early on in Japan where they couldn't meet demand with set 1 so they capped the tournaments and tried to scale up later after set 2 released to avoid the FOMO rush that something like Lorcana has had. The western tournament structure seems to be similar where they're applying the same limited tournament structure that Japan hated to a much larger region and it's hurting the game's adoption in the West. They're moving to open Regionals but the core focus of all competitive play being the Worlds grind is missing out on the local and regional growth which is one of the healthiest places games like Yugioh have to keep player engagement high. To Bohdan's questions on it: >Is it proof the OCG model can't work in the West? Absolutely not. It's proof that the OCG model can actually make worthwhile products anywhere since playable cards start cheaper than Yugioh and scale up based on meta desirability and collectable rarity. We have our own example of a Kashtira Fenrir or Bystial Magnamhut in Bellringer Angel which is a mid-rarity card that fetches a $15 premium since everyone wants a playset as a generic answer to aggro decks. But the legendaries (OCG ultra equivalent) range from $4-10 for playables, $15-20 for really good ones, and there's one that's at $40 due to hype kind of like Bellringer. Since you get 5-6 of them per box it's very likely you get something worthwhile from that slot but then you have shatterfoil upgrades for the legendaries which usually double the price, shatterfoil insert upgrades for common/uncommon/rares which go for a few dollars, chase rares like Bellringer, super chase ultimate rares which are alternate full art textured versions of popular cards in the set which work like starlights, and two-three per case leader cards which are entirely cosmetic and give you a different hero card to represent your class with on the board and in the life tracker app. There are dud boxes and god boxes but the commons and uncommons are so universally playable that cracking two boxes of every set for master sets of those rarities before filling in the rest of your legendaries in singles is a common thing people do. >Would it be dead if it didn't have the IP? It probably wouldn't have gotten off the ground but that goes without saying. The game itself is excellent and I've gotten people into it who didn't play the digital game. I myself barely played the digital version until after playing SVE but the gameplay is so good, the art and themes are appealing enough, and the market is healthy enough that I'm more than willing to play it as a secondary game. If they can fix the tournament structure and work at the distribution level to entice more stores to host and carry it I'd play it as a main game during bad Yugioh formats.

[@solarifle]

I feel like Duel Links and Master Duel completely dispels the whole "TCG should just be like the OCG" when the digital games' rarity structures function similarly to TCG (consistency cards and staples at high rarity). If Konami of Japan could get away with TCG rarities in the OCG regions they 100% would.

[@geek593]

The digital games work on a system of random chance visual upgrades where the OCG has the reality of card packing to force more predictable rarity bumps. These make a difference.

[@dpacula63]

I think you guys truly don’t understand why people are mad. Just shows how out of touch you are.

[@GrievelornTCG]

Vids only been up for an hour, it's two hours long. Did you event listen to it lol?

[@duelme1234]

Wow, the 2 times speed gang is everywhere 😂

[@zacharybanter155]

hi im out of the loop on this situation, why are people mad?

[@BigManWithNoRide]

CapG made a response video to this basically shutting down a lot of these guys arguments. Give it a listen @@GrievelornTCG

[@MannyB29]

​​@@zacharybanter155well it's clearly a price issue, for comparison you can look at other new successful TCGs like One Piece and Digimon and see their average decks costs about $150. The OCG is so much cheaper, basically most staple expensive cards in the tcg around $50-100 meanwhile in the OCG it's printed as a $5-10 Rare or Super. It's also the fact that Yugioh is basically just a very expensive hobby at this point. The price alone makes it a big turn off for people, which blocks new people coming in. They can say "well you guys just want all commons" but basically other games are this way. Most often than not other games have all cheap cards and have 1-2 cards that are expensive which turn a $70 deck into $180. To put into perspective how expensive this game is..... When I got back into the game I wanted to play Heroes. This is a pretty bad deck years ago and today. Yet it was more expensive than some meta decks. $400+ for a Rogue deck is insane.