What is POWER CREEP? (And How to AVOID IT!) | Game Design

[@Draw5Move5]

Hey everyone! 2 updates: First, the projects I worked on in April outside the channel bled over into May, and it's been a busy past month. My plan was to have a video up on June 7th, but it's looking like it will be late June or the first Monday of July (July 5th) at this point. I appreciate all the video suggestions and I've put a few of them in the bank for later. My energy is back and I have a topic I really want to discuss - KEYWORDS! - so I'm diving into scriptwriting now! Second, WE ARE SO DANG CLOSE TO 1,000 SUBSCRIBERS! 924 when I'm typing this, and although we didn't make it in time for the anniversary, I'm still beyond thrilled at how much the channel has grown in the past year. Seeing all the CIVIL, PASSIONATE DISCUSSION about game design is everything I've ever hoped for this channel to do, it warms my heart 💗. Let's keep growing this nerdy collective and make a place to be proud of. 1k HERE WE COME :D! Thanks for your patience and kindness, and I'll see you all at the table again soon ^-^. ~ Gabe

[@Denetros]

To have your cake and eat it too, you make it worth playing weaker cards. Introduce strategies that require weaker cards

[@yamiaguilar1553]

Also, for power creep to occur, the card being "crept" must already have been on/above power curve prior to the release of the newer version. One example of this is the card Ice Rager from Hearthstone. Magma Rager is a 3 mana, 5/1 minion, considered fine/bad by most players. Later on, Ice Rager, a 3 mana, 5/2 minion, was released, which was also considered fine/bad by most players. The older Magma Rager, which was below the game's power curve, was then surpassed in power by the almost identical Ice Rager, which, while objectively better, was still below the game's power curve. Therefore, since the game's overall power curve was unaffected, the game has not experienced power creep as a result. My point for bringing this up is that game developers should not be discouraged from creating objectively stronger versions of older bad cards, weapons, items, etc. over concerns of power creeping their games, since power creep only occurs if the game's overall power curve is unaffected. Love the channel. Keep up the good work!

[@guilhermeribeirobraga4089]

Valid for physical games but digital ones can have balance patches.

[@ildathet]

Meh Ice rager is factually useless for the player base. For the company it's a filler card among other fillers to validate the rarity based model, while being a nod to the old card. It is "creative" but meaningless. Basically hearthstone created a vaccuum space of design where you can put many years of new filler card with how the game was powercrept from it's beginning, and was balanced even at first. It happened to magic, but over 30 years. At least it's not wasted irl cardboard space but it's still a "problem" of CCG's as a whole.

[@macinnes800ad]

I recently bought the re-releases of the original packs (LOB, MRD, SRL, PSV and IOC) and its so quaint seeing all the goofy normal monsters and the awful fusions and comparing it to the walls of text you see now. I kinda wish normal monsters weren't so shafted because flavour text adds so much fun to the game (like MTG)

[@matejlieskovsky9625]

Cool video! If you are looking for more topics, you could try the all-too-common alternative to power creep - complexity creep - and the wonderful example of how cards can turn into walls of text that is YGO. Wait a second... :-D

[@j.w.213]

complexity creep?! hahahahaha

[@s2korpionic]

@@j.w.213 Let me guess, card games have broken you.

[@VestedUTuber]

The crazy thing is that the huge walls of text aren't always the strongest cards. Endymion the Mighty Master of Magic has the record for longest card text in Yu-Gi-Oh, but he's actually kinda wimpy. His effects are also surprisingly easy to explain: He special summons himself from the pendulum zone at the cost of six spell counters from anywhere on the field. When he does so, he pops as many of your opponent's cards as possible but no more than the number of cards you have that have spell counters on them, and then puts spell counters on himself equal to the number of cards he pops. While he's on the field as a monster, he gets a once-per-turn quick-effect spell/trap negate at the expense of returning one card with spell counters on it to your hand, transferring that card's spell counters to himself in the process. He gets protection from the opponent's effects as long as he has a spell counter on him, and finally when he's destroyed while he has a spell counter you can search your deck for a spell card. The protection is nice but doesn't prevent him from getting Kaiju'd/Ra Sphere'd/Nibiru'd, the negate is costly and specific to spells and traps, and the search is too slow to really be useful. Endymion ends up really just being a big beatstick that's somewhat easy to summon, but even then most of the time you're going to be bringing him out with Servant of Endymion, not Endymion's own effect. You could get rid of his status as a pendulum monster and everything but his protection effect and he'll be just as mediocre as ever.

[@dudono1744]

Complexity creep should theorically be logarithmic.

[@scragar]

Not evem the card text. Old Yugioh didn't really need an explanation of spell speed, it was added. Old Yugioh didn't really make a distinction on destroying vs negating and destroying when chaining, after all chains are evaluated in reverse order so destroying the card before it has it's effect would negate it, right? Nope, they added rules to explain the edge case(which comes up too commonly IMO to be considered an edge case). Old Yugioh didn't need to worry about missed timing, "when" was basically treated as "after", adding this concept broke some card combos and made the game harder to follow for newer players. All the different summoning mechanics(normal, special, ritual, fusion, synchro, xyz, link, pendulum) with their own rules. Pendulum monsters have an effect not printed(they don't go to the GY and instead go face up in the extra deck). For a new player there's so much they have to learn that's just really not obvious at first glance(and then Konami complain they struggle to attract new players).

[@justinmadrid8712]

The thing is, they do power creep on purpose, because power creep sells more product. It forces players to buy new cards, or be destroyed.

[@matthewkuscienko4616]

That's true, but as was stated in this video, it's something that is unavoidable. This I feel is because players are going to want to have answers to whatever is currently the best in the format, as that tends to be what will get played most often due to being easier to win games more consistently with, thus necessitating some way to keep it in check, and sometimes the best way to accomplish this is to make something better that can beat the best meta strategies. Because of this, power creep will begin to take place with enough time, but how fast it happens depends on how much more powerful the new content is when compared to what was previously already available

[@freshtheend4903]

I'm so glad I found this channel I've recently been designing a game for fun for the first and I'm worried about falling into the pit falls of other game but every game design you have really pushing me in the right direction thanks man!

[@Draw5Move5]

No problem, glad you're enjoying the content!

[@MechanizedMinionMTG]

Thanks for addressing my comment with an entire video! Related to the topic of Power Creep, you could go into more details about balancing individual cards to fit the curve. This felt like a good forest view of the topic, but I think I as well as a lot of your viewers could benefit from zooming in and taking a look at some of the individual trees.

[@goncaloferreira6429]

this aplies to all videos. we need deeper and more concrete exploration of the topics at hand. Also, bring guest to the mix to offer different opinions and ideas, as well as people more experienced with games other than yugioh.

[@felixc.4294]

I personally think a fantastic video is how to deal with extra zones, like the graveyard, exile, banished, and even the deck itself. Yugioh in particular has seen tremendous overuse of these zones (relative to their original conception), while in MTG the graveyard is both powerful and exploitable, and exile almost entirely untouchable outside of a handful of game pieces. How each game manages its "graveyards" is super important to the overall feel of the game, and is one of the most tempting avenues of powercreep. Recursion is fun, but too much of it and you get the immortal and endlessly adaptable monsters of Yugioh's most consistent meta decks, or MTG's vintage Dredge, which is essentially playing a different game.

[@TheSandwhichman108]

I once thought of an idea for a card game based off Subnautica. The idea is both players have to buildup a base while trying to destroy there opponents. You use resource and prey cards to create components for your base and summon creatures respectively. The bigger the creature the more prey you need and the more complex the building the more resources you need.

[@joshuaturner4602]

One of the things that can be done to mitagate powercreep is to have the power curve more explicitly set in stone, If you have a book or manual that has a rough guide for how powerful a creature can be vs how much it can cost then that can help. For example, at least up until recently 2/2s for 1 mana always had a downside, be it jackal pup dealing 1 damage to its controller whenever it takes damage, goblin guide potentially giving your opponent extra lands, or isamaru being legendary so you can only control one of him. so while there has been some powercreep (I think the addition of haste on goblin guide + knowledge of what your opponent will draw makes the guide better than pup) at least the size of the body 1 mana can buy you has remained fairly consistent.

[@DeathlordMiopic]

Love the video, I think you hit the nail in a lot of places. I think that something that isn't really touched on is intentional power creep, power creep moves product, and adjusting the power curve between sets is often done very intentionally (albeit hopefully slowly, creeping)

[@jacobbissey9311]

One thing that I feel often gets ignored in discussions on how to handle power creep is the fact that, as a game designer, you can *plan* the ways in which you *want* the power to creep in advance, essentially controlling power creep so that it's effects aren't felt as strongly. My favorite example is Legend of the Five Rings, specifically the Fantasy Flight Games version that came out a couple years after they bought the IP from AEG. This is specifically a *bad* example of the sort of intentionality I feel card game designers *should* implement, and it's particularly egregious because between the fact they were adapting an existing game with 20+ years of data on what worked and what didn't, and they were using the LCG distribution model, they were perfectly primed to pull this off, and then dropped the ball entirely. In this new version of L5R (nu5r), there were four basic was to interact with the primary means of advancing a win condition, conflicts, you could destroy an enemy character, bow an enemy character, send an enemy character home from the conflict, or you could apply point modifiers to affect the total number affecting the conflict result without changing the cards on the board. I ordered those in descending order of power, destruction was incredibly powerful, and therefore rare and expensive, and so the most powerful means of affecting the board that was relatively common, was bowing a character, which essentially made them unusable for the rest of the turn, and given the fact that cards would only stay on the board so long anyway, was often the equivalent of a delayed destruction effect. In the core set release, bow actions were fairly rare, only a couple factions actually had reliable access to bow actions, which naturally meant that those factions were *significantly* more powerful right out of the box. Ways to unbow cards or negate bow actions existed pretty early on, but they were even more rare than bows themselves. Then, despite supposedly planning the first couple rounds of expansions well in advance of even the core set's release, it was fairly clear that they hadn't put any real thought into making sure bow actions and/or bow negations/unbows got evenly distributed, with certain factions quickly getting LOTS of bow actions, some of those factions also having most of the unbows, while some factions didn't have reliable access to bows for like 2 years of regular expansion releases. Also, the designers seemed to really hate the idea of "staple cards", and so instead of intentionally designing some basic staple cards early on to control the game balance and power creep, they went out of their way to NOT do that, which naturally resulted in staple cards existing anyway, but not things that would be healthy for the game's longevity, like say a playable neutral unbow in the core set to help mitigate the power of bow actions. One card in particular became a staple because it was the ONLY way to destroy attachments, a type of support card, but because it was faction locked it meant you either ran that faction as a primary or secondary faction, or you accepted you could do nothing about attachments, that card was *obviously* going to be a staple, so they should have made it faction neutral for the sake of game balance. The cards that DID become staples out of the core set, were a cheap, neutral stat bump, two fairly vanilla attachments (also neutral), and that faction locked attachment destruction card I mentioned. IMO, that was a good start that never should have made it past playtest and into the final print. The attachment destruction card should have been neutral, as mentioned, then there should have been a neutral unbow and a neutral send home as well. Additionally, every faction should have gotten a reliable faction exclusive bow action. As it was, some bow actions rarely saw play because they were too expensive or too conditional to be used reliably, they should have just kept it as simple as possible, providing some variations that would make them equally playable, but with subtle differences that would have been flavored to fit the various themes of the factions. Then, with a fairly balanced core set they could have PLANNED a specific means of advancing power creep that would be applied equally across factions over the course of a set of expansions. First round of expansions, give a neutral bow action, give each faction a send home action, and give each faction an unbow or bow negation. Second round of expansions, give a neutral move in action (the opposite of a send home), and give each faction another bow action. Third round of expansions, give another neutral bow action, and give each faction a kill action (card destruction). By the time the third expansion has gone out, they will have had ample opportunity to plan out the power creep for the next three rounds of expansions, using the data from the core set and the first two expansions. Instead, they released a wildly unbalanced core set, and because the first set of expansions was tested and locked in before the core set release, that first round of expansions only exacerbated the unbalance, widening the gap between the strongest factions and the weakest factions. Then, they tried to course correct with the second and third sets of expansions, where one of the top initial factions got some nerfs in the form of erratas and card restrictions, and then ALSO didn't receive much of anything useful in the new expansions, going from the top of the metagame to the bottom, another two top factions continued to get support for some reason because I guess they were overshadowed by the other one previously, and only one of the "weak" factions really managed to move to the top tier. By this point the game had had a reputation for favoring one faction too heavily (an overblown reputation, IMO, but not wholly unearned), then shot that faction in the foot and didn't allow it to recover, alienating fans of that faction, fans of the weaker factions were thoroughly alienated by being weak out of the gate and staying weak for years, and ultimately there were basically three viable decks, and two of them were absurdly annoying to play against creating a strong negative play experience (which is odd considering how often the designers would harp on other things for being an NPE, but in these cases they thought it was good?), naturally those were the two factions with the most bow actions by a wide margin, and one of them had a couple of the only reliably playable kill actions. This caused the player base to dwindle significantly until they ultimately stopped making the game, I understand some die hard fans have made a fan made version that I've heard good things about, but haven't really looked into enough to form my own conclusions. The design team was fairly open about their processes and design philosophies the entire time, and frankly I felt they came off as incredibly hubristic in their mentality. They didn't have an outline of a plan to handle power creep, in fact they seemed to be under the impression they could avoid it entirely somehow or another, they tried to pretend staple cards weren't an inevitability, therefore they didn't try to control what staples would be released, which lead to an unbalanced game that they were constantly overcorrecting in a comically bad attempt to find equilibrium that only served to destabilize things further, until everything ultimately collapsed like a house of cards. Don't be like FFG, plan for power creep by trying to identify the strongest mechanics in your game, and planning to roll things out in a fairly balanced way over time. Perfect balance is impossible, but you can keep the margins narrow enough for the imbalances to not be an especially big deal.

[@sawderf741]

You could also do a video on "feature creep" in yugioh that would be going from fusion to synchro to xyz to pendulum to link.

[@HurricaneAlpha1]

Finally another lovely video! The power creep discussion is an old one, but I'd love to hear a discussion about the kinds of conflicts or main ways of interaction that are in a card game, and why we don't see many games that don't boil down to: lower his life before he lowers yours to 0. Another thing I would love to see is a follow up to the "life vs resource" on ideas on how to tie them more directly, making every advantage FEEL like one, even if it's not game ending.

[@Rambrus0]

i mean if you want to play a game against someone then it could only come down to that game plan. you need to do something better or faster or more efficient than the other player. Whenever it’s a card game, fighting game, car racing game, rpg it is always the competition. if the game doesn’t follow the reduce life to zero mechanic, then your game becomes a coop game or managing game.

[@Denetros]

4:46 or create an incentive in using those weaker cards, perhaps a unique strategy of ladder effect where you sacrifice weaker cards for a game reward

[@Silver_Chivalry]

I heard that was the idea behind Synchro Monsters in Yu-Gi-Oh!. Kazuki Takahashi developed them to make use of lower level monsters.

[@mageslime]

I think the original concern about power creep discussed by Richard Garfield was that making new cards would add more synergy or combos, even if they weren't technically more powerful in isolation. Rotation might be the main solution for that. Sticking to one set at a time or a limited number of sets could also be solutions. The discussion here is really about blatant power creep. Another issue with incomparables is it's likely to keep making the game more complex and text heavy.

[@HarryHelsing]

Power creep and synergies is something I think is worth talking about! Because X and Y can be on curve then Z could be released which combos with X and Y creating a synergistic power creep, Z could be a fairly average card all things considered but the synergy can effect the curve.

[@marvelsandals4228]

Some of the most effective ways to restrict blatant power creep is ironically restrictions, like restricting certain cards/effects to specific archetypes. A lot of the power creep cards you mentioned at the beginning (early Yugioh cards) are "staples," cards that can easily be splashed into the vast majority of decks with zero downside. Its perfectly fine for 1 (or a handful) of strategies to have 1 completely busted card, because the player is forced to make hard decisions. Should I build an entire deck that purely plays that archetype, just to have access to that card? What about other decks with cool cards that I would be giving up? Should I try to mix 2+ different archetypes together, to have access to more broken cards, or is the blow to consistency too great to justify it? You can also release your archetypes lopsided. For example, let's say deck A has amazing search power, but they lack robust removal (which puts them at a big disadvantage vs. deck B, etc). This also makes competitive events more diverse & interesting in terms of the vastly different decks that may pull in and out of the meta when circumstances shift ever so slightly in their favor.

[@VestedUTuber]

Except that doesn't actually work to prevent power creep. All that does is shift the focus of power creep from individual cards to whole archetypes.

[@VestedUTuber]

One common thing I've seen is _monetizing_ power creep. That's when the game's creators intentionally induce power creep to push product and boost sales. It's terrible game design but it's good for business... at least until your customer base catches on to what you're doing and starts leaving.

[@dudono1744]

Or until you reach the limits of power creep

[@mageslime]

Assuming they care. One question is what effect it has on the game's enjoyability.

[@VestedUTuber]

@@mageslime They have to care enough to keep the money coming in. Can't make money without customers.

[@mageslime]

@@VestedUTuber right my point is customers might be okay with it depending on how it effects things

[@TheMonsterClubCorporation]

Hope you're still up! Enjoying your videos and learning from them to make our TCG better in the process!

[@pab_loq]

I would love to see something about how to evaluate cards, taking into consideration deck building and game design

[@sea9205]

Great vid! I would personally love to see something like a gaming origins video; whether its a look into some of the games of antiquity and how their roots can be seen in the games of today, or a talk on the most memorable games you've played and how you came to be the gamer you are today.

[@pierfrancescodambrosio2957]

Indeed I think yu gi oh should have thought more about the stats. Also if you compare with magic, a 2000 no tribute monster it's 25% of LP it's like a 5 power in magic, it's a lot. Also giving powerfull abilities on extra decks moster might be fine, but not on a 2500 to 2800 body. I think attack power of creatures in general should have been much lower and more balanced with the effects. In this way maybe games could last more. I think a lv 4 monster with effect should be max 1000 atk, but of course now it's too late.

[@ReissTube]

I’m really curious as to what your thoughts on Yugioh’s game design - or lack thereof - are given your commentary in the intro of the video. My own issues with the game, power creep aside, have to do with accelerating game mechanics, lack of power ceiling, the frequent and plentiful Omni negate (although the game seems to be moving away from this on bodies after recent ban lists in 2024), the bottle-necking of the meta game, and the widespread erasure of the Trap Card mechanic short of about ~ 20 generic cards.

[@Google_Censored_Commenter]

The best way to avoid power creep is as follows: 1. Plan 2 expansions ahead. Make every single card in each expansion (or key cards if it's too much work) conditional. This is mandatory. The condition can be some new mechanic introduced in the expansion, or use the same mechanics in an innovative unexplored way. 2. Make sure the expansion or the base game has enough support for the conditional to be worthwhile, but the condition must be interactable. This is also mandatory. It is likely not avoidable to introduce powercreep at this stage. 3. In the second expansion, you introduce a mechanic that interacts with the condition of the first expansion's cards in some way, effectively rendering them useless. It is important that they interact only with the condition set up in the first expansion, so that they remain weak against the base cards. This will cause the base cards to resurge in popularity to counter the hot new expansion cards. After the dust settles, you will have a holy trinity of base cards > 2nd expansion > 1st expansion > base cards. 4. When you plan out your 3rd and 4th expansion, you must now treat all previously released cards as the "base set" for balance intents and purposes described above, lest you tangle yourself into needless convoluted complexity.

[@VestedUTuber]

Ok, apart from a handful of really out-of-control things, Yu-Gi-Oh's banlist _isn't_ actually used to balance the game. It's used to hit the current field of meta decks when new archetypes come out in order to force the sales of those new archetypes.

[@jmurray1110]

Kind of depends it definitely turned into that “cough tengu plant” but originally it was created because they couldn’t justify not banning bullshit like CED

[@skurai]

This dude is good at making videos, he’ll be a star if he ever keeps at it steady

[@wilagaton9627]

WARNING: LONG POST I dont think a designer should be afraid of power creep. They should just be smart about it. When Magic introduced Planeswalkers in Lorwyn (2007), it was an injection of incredible amount of power, but they had a plan for it. The curve didnt really move any significant amount until (I would guess) Magic Origins(2015), when they introduced double faced planeswalkers. Yes, there would be a steady amount of power creep during the intervining time, but none like a monumental shift like it did for Origins. I think we, as designers, should just accept the fact that there is always gonna be power creep in a card game. Thats because every new set would introduce new components. Think of it like a board game, but every now and then, a new kind of meeple would be introduced. No matter how careful or meticulous we are, something would always slip through. Its the human component. But if you are adamant of avoiding power creep, I would suggest some other stuff (aside from what is said in the video): 1) Have a plan. Know where the game is heading whether that is narratively or mechanically, or both. 2)Have a way to future proof your game, like a game design bible. Note components that might become a problem in the future. 3)Always be within context of the game. So that even if there is power creep in the game, the designer can justify the decision, that it wasn't added in 'just because.' Anyway. Great video👏👏👏 I do have qualms about using chess but I get why you did 😂

[@matejlieskovsky9625]

I think the amount of powercreep in MtG is quite tiny compared to YGO. Sure, a vanilla bear is no longer the monster it used to be, but the creep was slow and even now the games do last multiple turns. YGO has a more restricted space for designing incomparables and there is no set rotation, so the creep was faster and many games are now over in a single turn.

[@wilagaton9627]

@@matejlieskovsky9625 Dont get offended friend, but do you still play MtG? I really want to reply, but I want to first gauge you first 😅

[@matejlieskovsky9625]

@@wilagaton9627 No, I don't. Did it get that much worse? Maybe I should not have spoken given my position... Sorry!

[@wilagaton9627]

@@matejlieskovsky9625 Haha. Not at all. But it does get worse. Around 2018-2019 with Dominaria, Return to Return to Ravnica, and especially with War of the Spark, the power creep is very palpable! You can taste it 😂

[@cluelesswanderer]

I don’t think designers have to “just accept” any popular game design elements, anything you don’t want can be redesigned to better fit your vision. You absolutely don’t have to have power creep in a game, and in fact the great majority of games don’t because most games don’t continuously add more content infinitely. Actually, I think the concept is a bit unhealthy for game designers, because it means that the game will never be finished and you can simply add more content when the game gets stale instead of carefully designing and balancing a game with mechanical depth. Not to mention, having an ever-changing meta means that you are constantly losing players who liked the old meta or players who are new who don’t understand the meta. Which brings me to my last point which is that by having something which is constantly changing, the vision of the game can be heavily warped into something you never wanted it to be. All the original cards will slowly be cycled out and as you add more and more mechanics to the game to balance it or make it new and fresh, it will become more complex and less coherent. The alternative, as I suggested, is investing your time creating more mechanical depth to your game. For instance with chess, there’s only 6 pieces you need to learn how to use, but there are so many possible strategies between them that you’ll never play the same exact game twice, so players continue to play because the full mechanical depth of the game can take a lifetime to explore and master. That is, in my eyes, what game designers should be striving for.

[@HarryHelsing]

Maybe you could do a video which could be a crash course on avoiding power creep in a card game. Going point by point at each of the elements that may factor into it. Off the top of my head here are some of the things that come to mind. 1 Chart your numbers but remember that numeric value doesn't equal gameplay value. For example in my game a unit with 2 health is more than twice as good as a unit with 1. This is because when attacking the unit with 2 will always die to the opponents damage where as a unit with 2 health can attack any unit with 1 attack, then when their health is reset attack again, multiple times. So essentially 2 health is worth many times what 1 health is, even though numerically it is twice as much. 2 Where is your synergy potential? Watch out for those infinite loops, or big mega combos. Cards that say if X then Y remember to watch that you can't build a deck to spam X when the card was built for a card pool where X was somewhat limited. 3 Decide your limitations early I decided in my game I am going to have graveyard card playing and no search your deck for X card. This is because I feel these mechanics can make combos far too consistent. I've played card games where the card search mechanics have made overpowered combo strategies far too consistent making generic good decks essentially useless.

[@trevorzwijac6824]

One of the best videos I’ve seen on game mechanics. Job well done!!!

[@nickgennady]

I think “incomparables” is the best solution. Ontop of that I think “archetypes” are great solution as well. In magic I use werewolf deck and it has unique mechanics through it’s night and day bound effects. In theory you could make many “archetype” decks that play a certain way or just even have a certain theme. People like themes like ghosts, dragons, warriors and so on. There could be cards that do same or similar thing(s) but fit a certain theme. That be new content but keep power creeping in control

[@o_enamuel]

Power creep is just power inflation.

[@gmeaki02]

Card printer goes BRRRR

[@vonnegutfrey8714]

The problem with counters is that if what they are countering is prevalent enough (like max c) the counters become must includes in every deck along with the cards there made to counter limity deck diversity evan further.

[@captianbacon]

Another way to avoid powercreep is synergy strength say you have a celtic guardian and a winged guardian of the fortress but this new creatures gets a boost equal to the a type or attribute of creature u have that makes it better most of the time but at baseline on a empty board there the same strength this lets you still makes new interesting strong things but only if they synergize while if your deck doesn't have that specific synergy a celtic guard is gonna fit the same slot.

[@qin2500]

I've been watching a lot of TCG design videos lately, and , as a yugioh player, its so funny how its at the butt of all of these videos.

[@badegg1262]

handtraps are fuckin broken. the new decks can traverse them but older decks cant. so no balance at all

[@prycenewberg3976]

(I'm aware this is an older video) As a Magic player, I've never thought that YGO was ruined. I've always thought it was a complicated mess. There doesn't seem to be any logic or central theory tying it all together. If I'm wrong, I'm wrong, but as an outsider looking in, it just looks chaotic.

[@webyankee6558]

To many online games have horrendous power creep, adding new stuff for real money which the pay to play crowd eats up as fast as it is made leaving the new or standard player in a dismal state in any battle. It is so bad I have quit playing games like Perfect World, WOWS and WOT, Forge of Empires, No Man's Sky and several other games. The solution to Power Creep is to never make stuff stronger than what is already in place, you can make it less strong with a twist.

[@nkosanaroy4993]

You could make a video on some of the top 10 best mechanics in tcg game design and 10 worst ones.

[@MagikTricks]

Yes please

[@smellthel]

Incredible video man

[@wtfox8206]

What is your intro music called?

[@Youmu_Konpaku_]

Very underrated channel

[@TastySnackies]

You simply can't avoid power creep. You either continue to iterate and improve upon old designs, to retain attention, or you plateau in design and you bore your players away to the other games that aren't afraid to power creep. Magic didn't survive by laterally designing Serra Angel and Shivan Dragon for thirty years.

[@gabecampanelli6154]

Hello, fellow Gabe In my opinion, the only way to truly avoid power creep is to make the game digital. Physical cards can't be altered once you have them (future releases can, but not your copy specificly). In a digital card game, you could take every Celtic Guardian and make them Obnoxious Celtic Guardians

[@_c40]

Is there a tcg with the cards having no costs

[@dudono1744]

Yugioh cards (specifically spells/traps) have no cost unless they say they do.

[@Zencho639]

The way to avoid them on yugioh is don't buy but ppl Wan to win and can sell his soul to do that.

[@Rambrus0]

Nice video. 1 thing to mention however: 1 lazy method to manage power creep is rarity system. A common 1 mana card is 2/2 but a rare one could be 2/3 and so on. This was the case of early yugioh. Gemini Elf was a secret rare i believe w 1900 ATK, but other lower rarity cards were only 1800 or so. i think it’s bad and lazy for a card game. That Rarity system would be cool for a video! Keep up the quality content!

[@dudono1744]

That is a balance thing for draft formats

[@Cynidecia]

"expanded & wild" dont you mean vintage and legacy?

[@Steele47]

Wooo new vid

[@Rockpablosky]

Dragon's Rage Channeler

[@macarifire]

there is only one good way to avoid power creep, go full throttle from the start

[@emersongrtcg]

6:37 that's why you don't need to care about power creep while playing Chaotic haha

[@СашаВолков-ф5н]

Same with TF2 :)

[@renatoramos8834]

How to avoid it: Do the opposite of what Konami does.

[@Aykasoyo]

Wth is konami and what it did

[@renatoramos8834]

@Aykasoyo Konami is the company in charge of Yugioh

[@anindecentreader.6469]

Valorant agent design is awesome

[@justanotheremptychannel2472]

Please do a review of YuGiOh about the commentary you made in the beginning of the video

[@goncaloferreira6429]

power creep more in depth? historical view on the big 3. what does power creep means to each game? when was the creep more felt and why? new games like runeterra, mythgard or digimon. can we analyse and their design them and take a guess on how sucessfull they will avoid powercreep?

[@goncaloferreira6429]

Again, i am not a big fan of focusing the discussion (mostly) on yugioh but here are some thoughts to further explore. How does a curve aplly to yugioh when unlike pretty most other game cards dont have a mana cost? in different, better world, how could yugioh have better balanced their curse without mana costs? what is the weight of not having set rotations in the history of yugioh´s power creep? A single format means there is only 1 way to evaluate cards. there is not nuance like mtg can offer thanks to their limited formats. In that game, even bad cards have a place to shine( sugestion, watch spice8rack most recent video).

[@jaernihiltheus7817]

The way Yugioh balances power creep depends on the card, time period, and archetype. Something to keep in mind: Yugioh is primarily designed to allow you to summon your big boss monsters and feel really really cool while utterly destroying your opponent like you're in the anime. So power creep is baked into the game more so than any other simply because, well... That's the point. Or part of it, anyways. Generally, the way it balances cards typically falls under the following categories: A. Restrictive deck building - Cards that say things like "You cannot summon monsters from your Extra Deck for the rest of the turn, except Aqua-type monsters.", for example, forces the player to either do all the non-Aqua based stuff in the combo first, or limit all or most of their Extra Deck to Aqua-type monsters. This limits the deck's overall power level as the most powerful end boards are typically made up of multiple types, attributes, archetypes, and summoning types. If you choose to go into the non-Aqua stuff first, this means that your combo is easier to disrupt. Also, adding a bunch of non-Aqua Extra Deck cards in a deck that doesn't like non-Aqua monsters can mean running out of stuff to go into much quicker, hindering your follow ups. B. Harsh restrictions - Cards that include restrictions like "You can not add cards from your deck to your hand the turn this card is activated" means the only way you can get your combo pieces is by hard-drawing them, it also prevents combo extenders from being able to, well, extend your play. A famous example is Red-Eyes Fusion: A card that fusion summons a Red-Eyes from your Extra Deck by sending its materials from your deck to the grave... And if the card text stopped right there then it would be insanely busted and be banned. Instead, Red-Eyes Fusion prevents you from summoning anything else the turn you use it, either before or after. This also applies to if the fusion summon is negated. Because of that card's restriction, it goes from being Tier 0 to really bad; and only good atm because another card can cheat its effect without applying its restriction. Some cards even have a "Once Per Duel" restriction attached to them. C. High Cost - Pot of Desires draws 2 cards, but banishes the top 10 cards of your hand face down, which is basically exiling them but to an even harsher degree. Pot of Desires is good because that draw 2 is just *that* powerful in Yugioh - but considering you're getting rid of over 1/4th of your deck, chances are high that you'll accidentally lose a key combo piece your deck needs to do its thing. As for no set rotations, there's an interesting layer of nuance other games lack because of it. You see, lack of set rotations means that any random-ass card from 20 years ago can become meta. Sometimes it's because old cards didn't account for power creep so "once per turn" clauses are rare there, meaning it's fairly easy to loop them under some conditions. Others, it's because their level, stats, type, attribute, or name just happens to fill a niche to allow some newer card to exploit them. You never kno when being traditionally garbage (even back in the day) means you're good now because your stats happen to be 2400/1000, or because you happen to be a level 3 Dark/Fiend that also has some highly situational effect that counters something new.

[@goncaloferreira6429]

@@jaernihiltheus7817 you seem to be deep into yugioh and so your answers are very textbook like. "The way Yugioh balances power creep depends on the card, time period, and archetype." a very limiting view that does not include the game as a whole. A+B+C and the game still is what it is and has all the known problems for years. i wont even get started on your last paragraph.

[@justinmadrid8712]

I think Yugioh needs a hard reset from scratch. Imagine if they re-released the original old sets again, only this time with better card balance. Maybe add some cards. I know this will never happen but oh well.

[@goncaloferreira6429]

ideas for videos and the channel: we need deeper and more concrete exploration of the topics at hand. Also, bring guest to the mix to offer different opinions and ideas, as well as people more experienced with games other than yugioh. Most videos offer a generic presentation/explanation of the topic of the moment but dont go deep enough. we need better context and better examples of what what you talk about. Example 6:04 what things? in what context were those thing tryed? did they work or made any change?

[@sawderf741]

Staples vs archetypes.

[@omenmarin7903]

I was shocked when I play duel master after 3 moths of not playing and look the BS op cards, compare to my prior deck that has a lot of hoops, conditions and needs a specific set of cards to work properly, the newer cards are...... titanic and too powerfull, they do too much, they have too much power in a single card with barely any drack back, is absurd

[@jasic1970]

You really have one problem wkth counters. They are no fun. Yugioh handtraps are just annoying to play against. You make a combo, u feel save. BAM Handtrap, Combo is over. Yugioh's Main problem is that it does not have a mana system imo.

[@damienthonk1506]

There needs to be _some_ form of combo negation. Even games that have mana systems like Magic have it. Messes like Hearthstone are what happens when you don't have any form of decent negation

[@jasic1970]

@@damienthonk1506 Play modern competetive yugioh and you know the other extreme xD

[@jodohmu8974]

YuGIOh is fall to power creep.

[@ICEMAN-Z8]

When i first started yugioh it was 2004-2005 and no matter how many words i put to describe that yugioh it wont be enough, the amount of fun to play that game mechanics was just incomparable to any other card game. Now when i see wt ygo become it feels so sad, the game now is so op that its literally no fun at all.

[@smellthel]

wee

[@KateHikes1933]

The first minute of your video is a white screen...

[@thekittenfreakify]

You can't avoid it since you are ignoring the main concern of the company it being profit.

[@haruhisuzumiya6650]

Yugioh banlist is used in aspiring TCGs How *NOT* to balance a TCG.

[@haruhisuzumiya6650]

There is absolutely no banlist big enough to save yugioh

[@jmurray1110]

And yet that’s exactly what people think will fix it Because what is set rotation than an automatic banlist that is ageist

[@manamaster6]

How can an utterly unbalanced game be made fun?

[@OlgaZuccati]

oof, showing prosp as a balanced card aged really poorly

[@crookie7656]

omg i was the 1,000th like