Why does Yu-Gi-Oh struggle to draw in new players? Featuring

[@duyknguyen]

As a Casual Yugioh lover, I think it's best to BOLD Text for "Negates/Destroy/Banish/Return/Shuffle/Target (Quick Effect)" so New Players don't have to read full 10 Paragraphs of effects to understand other decks' Combo lines, instead just focus on their Boss Monster to interact!! I hope it works like the changes for Imperm Column and Tick for used OPT effects...

[@SilverNightbane]

I feel like a part of the problem is that so many meta decks literally shut the other player's side so hard they might as well be playing a solo game at that point XD

[@four-en-tee]

You're not wrong, but its a bit more complicated than that. Its more so that going first is just super oppressive period, especially if your opponent fails to open any sort of interruption like hand traps or board breakers on top of any starters.

[@ShiPerion]

It's funny that they got rid of the opening draw for the player going first & that still isn't enough

[@RazielTheUnborn]

@@ShiPerion primarily because they keep adding more broken cards

[@johnathonrouse7581]

There are a number of powerful outs to going first boards. Going second blow outs like DRNM, Lightning storm, and even raigeki depending on the situation are all pretty vital in this game, Even if they don't resolve, they eat up negates and interruptions.

[@renaldyhaen]

​@@johnathonrouse7581 Too bad they don't have enough skill to randomly draw the card they need when they need it. . It still better to have a condition where you don't need very specific card just to have opportunity to play a game.

[@CasHanover]

As a veteran player who's been around semi consistently since the 5ds era man this game can feel like it's burning me out. I just wanna play my blackwings, throw some birds at people but I have to be able to almost kill turn 1, and guaranteed kill turn 2 just to keep up. I just, I want to play a casual game again. I haven't in years

[@jordangroblewsky2087]

Edison format is the best suggestion I have if you wanna play blackwings specifically. Only problem is that it can be hard to find a group of players in paper without going to a YCS.

[@BluMNBafnGaming]

@@CasHanover man I feel the same I got into the game just before the xyz era back in 2010 and after high school I kinda stopped finding people to play with. Picked up master duel in 2020 after I hear dragunity got some new toys and was awsome for a bit but within less than a year power creap made them obsolete. I’d love to just go back to the basics with my dragunity deck. Be able to have a laugh with good old mirror force and maybe guardian eatos to. Just miss the old days. Still love the game but I miss the old days

[@GoldenNovaYugioh]

I'm so glad I know cool people like Claw and Doom to have a good conversation about this with!

[@ilodino2000]

The idea about commissioning explanation videos to content creators is INCREDIBLE. We need to get this to Konami somehow… ugghh Not sure it’ll happen… box openings obviously hype up sealed products way more but I really think this could help.

[@treyenma5206]

No game where you can win on the very first turn reliably unless your opponent is lucky with their opening hand is inviting to new players. Lack of resources and meaningful cost in the game just adds to the OTK reputation the game has developed.

[@nagatouzumaki4047]

the million summons and negates don't help either

[@BluMNBafnGaming]

@@nagatouzumaki4047 a million summons wouldn’t be to bad if you could go back and forth but the negates with the million summons to shut people from playing can get tiresome

[@lucarioknightb7685]

My biggest issue of the modern game is the gap between the top decks and everything else. It very much feels like if you're not in Teir 1-2, you're effectively just fodder for the rest of the event. Rogue decks being able to shoot for a 3-3 record or whatever doesn't feel as achievable as it used to be, unless your deck can run a floodgate that really messes up the top dogs. And it's a shame, because a ton of modern design and legacy support is REALLY cool.

[@luminous3558]

Thats not the fault of deck design its the fault of side decking and absurdly expensive non engine. Lots of rogue decks could compete once you pay the prosperities, thrusts and so on but at that point you could just buy a meta deck.

[@lucarioknightb7685]

@@luminous3558 eeeh. Yes and no? I feel like even decked-out ghoti is still worst than purely by a long mile, as an example. It closes the gap a lot, but if the meta deck is playing those same answers, it just means you're still competing engine-v-engine.

[@brucegray2614]

Also have the problem of soft rotation

[@BluMNBafnGaming]

@@lucarioknightb7685 a ton of the modern meta decks can also just play through most flood gates or have traps or recover from them after a single turn

[@yu-gi-ohcasual6294]

I think it mostly comes down to two things: 1. An unfun meta - while the meta decks of Yu-Gi-Oh! have always some control element(s) to them, the current meta of Yu-Gi-Oh! has long since moved away simple combos of big beaters that featured lots of interaction and fun games for players. 2. A metagame that moves a glacier's pace - since Yu-Gi-Oh! doesn't have a set rotation (nor should it, IMO), its metagame is heavily dependent on the ban list, which is notorious for changing little between releases. Seriously, the same decks that've been played since 2020 are still being played in 2023. For new players, they look at Yu-Gi-Oh! and see an uninteractive metagame that just boils down to solitaire that stops your opponent from having their turn. The same decks that a lot of players deride as "caoncerous" or "broken" will still be there one to three years even after multiple ban lists. It's clear the Konami doesn't care about the health of its game and only wants more money, so new players will naturally gravitate towards card games with (comparatively) healthier states and more balanced metas.

[@nagatouzumaki4047]

Yu-Gi-Oh has a major power creep problem it's hard to stay invested when you constantly have to change decks on top of the already very bad game design with the very long first turns it's hard to convince people to play something when you gonna make them watch you summon for 5 minutes straight then negate any action they do

[@zexalplays]

This is why edison format exists and is still a recognized format atleast at my local card shop

[@casoclashomega]

One of my gripes with playing Yu-Gi-Oh (Mainly online formats) is when people over extend their plays even when they already have game that turn. Like, I’m at 1000 LP left with no hand, no field, and no chance of making a comeback (I hate surrendering cause everyone does it and I think it’s cowardish not to see that game through regardless of result) and they continue to drop a 10 card combo for over kill. I had one game against Sky striker with a memey normal monster deck. I know well that I won’t get a win with this deck, I accept that, what I don’t accept is if someone, who could easily send a Kagari at my tune Warrior for game decides to summon back multiple of their SS links, Widow anchor my lone normal monster, then link all of them into Access Code Talker that then activates to boosts its ATK to THEN swing for game. That was disrespectful in so many ways

[@casoclashomega]

Here’s a fun experiment to do on MD one weekend. Play Relay Soul with a bunch of weak normal monsters and see how many people will either 1: Shotgun a maxx c. 2) continue their plays as if a shortcut to winning wasn’t just handed to them, and/or 3) actually stop their combo and swing for game.

[@dave_the_slick8584]

It ain't cowardly at all. I have other things I could be doing, if they want to play just for the sake of flexing or I have no way of possibly winning, I'll gladly scoop.

[@Sigmaairav]

Over extended unessicary plays demand you "surrender". It doesn't matter if you would be able to beat over that overextended play or not; the act of playing a combo that long and wasting your time by subjecting you to a spectator-lock as they solitire for minutes on end deserves an appropriate response of ending the game via scooping before they finish masterbating with their cards. This is the only acceptable reaction to overextended plays because aint nobody with sense and self-respect got time to waste on combo happy pricks flexing on you when you could be dueling someone else with more respect for their opponent's precious time alive on earth and ACTUALLY play this 2-player game as a 2-player game instead of making it a 1-player game + unwilling spectator. I got zero respect for duelists who only wanna play with themselves via solitare effects. Those long combos don't impress me. They BORE me, they waste my time, they make me irritated. They stop fun from happening as they monopolize time spent playing cards per turn and for me, makes the game pace feel like a slogging slow crawl even if its all happening in under 2 or 3 turns. Long combos turn it into one person spending more time waiting to get to play even 1 card (outside handtraps which dont improve the feeling of fun or make it actually feel interactive) and the other person playing cards in a singular turn for almost the entirety of total playtime per duel. This imbalance of how player time is used and distributed between players per turn is what makes this game so hit or miss for me. It's why I hate this game, yet other aspects of the game keep me playing off and on, aspects I love but find hard to articulate. A true love-hate relationship

[@BluMNBafnGaming]

@@casoclashomega I don’t even run max C in master duel or most hand traps except in a snake eyes deck I use purely for gem farming on ranked bc my favorite archetypes that used to be able to push to gold 1 a year or two ago now struggle to even hit silver 2. Against friends I’d never use a meta deck. But to get gems consistently outside of events on there I’m kinda forced to just to scrap up even 1000 gems to pull a garenteed ultra rare to break down for a card I actually want

[@BluMNBafnGaming]

@@dave_the_slick8584 against friends I’d see it as disrespectful but when your farming for gems and have to face randoms in ranked there’s no shame in pulling the plug and moving on to the next match when you know your gonna lose. Its not keeping the other player from there reward for winning anyway

[@JanizMakudomaru]

If there was a teacher system in these games then maybe it would get better for newbies. It's one of the reasons to why I play games like Link Evolution; it's has the Vrains era cards in it (not all of them), it can do modern yugioh tactics, or it can do classic, and you can learn just by playing against the CPU.

[@BluMNBafnGaming]

@@JanizMakudomaru master duel does have a teacher system being the solo mode but unfortunately it does not gradually build up in difficulty to allow players to become prepared for what the meta has became and platues at what feels like 2016 power levels at best which to put into comparison modern meta beating on decks like that is the equivalent of ultra instinct goku beating up pre buu saga vegeta. Like you can just grab a salamandra or dragon maid structure deck off the store in master duel for 500 gems and beat over just about every deck in solo mode as is.

[@josephcourtright8071]

I've decided that the rivalry of warlords prebuilt decks are the best introduction to yugioh. The decks are real archetypes, with a real engine. But it has one engine, where the cards all work in similar ways. It also doesn't have the broken top end of generic negates like de fleur or appolusa, etc.

[@THEGRUMPTRUCK]

1. Starter deck gimmicks are generally unreliable, because they try to follow the show too closely and either add a buttload of cards that are bad even in their most optimal situation, or cater to a strategy that just takes too much investment for too little payoff. 2. People grab a starter deck and immediately jump into the pool expecting to find thematically appropriate challenges for what they picked to allow them to practice combos, but instead they get bombarded by people playing stuff like Kashtira, Tearlament, and try-hard instant win decks that belittle them for playing not up to the meta. 3. There aren't any real easy ways to find people who play at lower or introductory tiers or formats, which means the game is absolutely thrusting new players into a lawless wasteland of pain, and invalidates their entry choice entirely.

[@johnathonrouse7581]

Structure decks are extremely good, But it depends on what you're wanting to do with it., There are structures that give you common printings of powerful staples like ash blossom, Ghost Ogre, imperm and so forth, But these usually have a casual if fairly workable strat around them Then there are structures like Rokket Revolt, The Crimson king, And albaz strike that give you powerful strats that may be a bit much for new players to really get behind. , I've found the best structure for brand new players is traptrix, Due to the fact it's a Mid range deck that does a good amount of stuff but not too much on both turns, Letting new players decide whether they wanna go into combo oriented strats or control play.

[@Varindran]

I came back to the game thanks to master duel after quitting when synchros dropped. My biggest learning curve was knowing how important going 2nd cards were with how strong end boards are now. Things like Dark ruler, Evenly, Droplet and Book of Eclipse can really turn a game around where normally they person going first would have enough interruptions to stop you from playing. As well as learning what each hand trap does and when to use it vs each deck. ( not counting Maxx C which you just shotgun in the draw phase with 0 thought.)

[@amiablereaper]

I honestly hate the proliferation of staples. This endless conga line of ur or rarer neutral cards every single deck needs in case they face the horrifying prospect of going second

[@LChaos2]

You shot gun Maxx C at Draw Phase because cards like Triple Tactics Talents and Kashtira Unicorn are now common, which are enabled when the opposing player activate monster effects during the Main Phase. Triple Tactics Thrust being put into the mix also makes this a more thoughtful choice now, since it's enabled when the opposing player activate monster effects during any phase at all. Beforehand, you generally waited until your opponent summons something to use Maxx C in order to guarantee at least one draw back to replace the Maxx C you just discarded.

[@bvc5320]

If you think this is bad look at the older formats, where in the worst case all decks were the same 30-40 staples with only a few tech cards making them different. That said while we have had worse cases of this we've also had better.

[@johnathonrouse7581]

@@amiablereaper Cheapest copy of ash blossom is $3.25 cents right now Cheapest copy of Imperm is $7.50 Cheapest Nibiru is $3~even. Buy a playset of each "But that's like 35$" It's thirty-five bucks to get you a playset of three very powerful hand traps that you can use for every deck you ever play.

[@Efgand0894]

Modern staples seem too one-sided compared to older ones

[@RedMage4evah]

For what it's worth I've been making Duel Puzzles on various interactions that might actually happen in a game of Yugioh (using EDOPro) and I'd love an outlet to share them!

[@superboomn]

I feel like the jack atlas starter deck was both trying to get people started with a more understandable extra deck mechanic while also being a high enough power level to not go 0-5 at your local scene

[@THEGRUMPTRUCK]

It's very fun. I nabbed 3 of them and cherry-picked to make a very consistent powerhouse rogue deck that can occasionally clap it to the meta without adding non-archetypal stuff. It's not the greatest, but a solid B+ tier, and it's got extremely good recursion. It's mega fun.

[@kungfuchief]

the new structure was ass.

[@FrancisYorkMorganFBI]

It's definitivly one of the best ones they released. It has enough tools to build a nice board and even go into Supernova on turn 1. The only downsides are of course that you should like always buy at least 2 decks (Just to get more copies of Key cards) and that it lacks certain staples like ash blossom.

[@luminous3558]

How are people still coping that Synchro is an understandable mechanic compared to the other ED mechanics. XYZ and Link are both a lot simpler if you remove the nostalgia aspect. Synchro decks like RDA repeatedly perform synchro summons with their synchro monsters as material which leads to decks where you just have to "know the combo line" which is the peak of unintuitive design. Decks that toolbox with their extra and have a short but robust main gameplan that doesnt change much are way better starting points. Sky Striker, Eldlich, Guru, Traptrix, Lab and Zoo all do a much better job at being comprehendable as most cards have a direct effect on the gamestate instead of doing something after 4 other summons.

[@kungfuchief]

@@luminous3558 a lot of people still think of the game as the anime. People need to get past “but mah dark magician or blue eyes”

[@GrandMasterNutBusterYoda]

The game severely lacks additional formats. Being able to have something like Rogue tier, Casual tier, Meta tier, etc formats will help players get into the game at a much easier pace because they get to choose their difficulty of play. Though for them to each have their own banlists is the challenging part.

[@456jm]

Yu-Gi-Oh! doesn't even have it's own answer to EDH / Commander in Magic: The Gathering to open the game for more than 2 players which is still surprising to me.

[@schwarzerritter5724]

Does Yu-Gi-Oh! have booster drafts?

[@emperorjustice]

The anime is built around summoning beat sticks and the game is built around stopping your opponent from playing.

[@fogblades6811]

I remember playing at my locals. There was a kid there, couldn't have been older than say 9 or 10 years of age. He was playing some mish-mash of TV-show/Anime Yugi cards with Slifer, (Which he had the collectors version, which is illegal to play in structured events, but I didn't care.) and I was playing Lunalight. I know that Lunalight wasn't a great deck, but I enjoyed it and wanted to just have fun with a deck I thought was kickass. This kid, god bless his soul, couldn't endure the unmatched power of beefy catgirls. That shit ruined his appetite for wanting to play more. It made me wonder, "If this match was that bad enough for him with my shit-tier deck, how the hell is he going to fare against the people who play meta in locals"? Point being, Konami doesn't do shit for casual/new players. They could give two fucks less.

[@nagatouzumaki4047]

it's not even returning player friendly why it would it appeal to new players when it cant even appeal to people who like the game

[@fogblades6811]

@@nagatouzumaki4047 exactly

[@berkiangamesandacts6270]

The comment about the lack of teaching new players really hit me. I know it’s mostly circunstancial but that’s been the biggest thing where I am. The best way to put this is with a comparison my experience with magic the gathering. When I first started playing I had a lot of help with finding a good first deck and what packs to buy to get what I was looking for. As I’ve played more I’ve seen people let new players borrow a simplified deck to learn the game and help them find a good deck themselves or gift then the deck they’re using. On top of that every group I’ve come across, power level matching is a big thing. Everyone tried to match power level so that even the weakest player could have fun (even if they won’t win). And if people are playing high powered decks there’s either a low powered game nearby or the low powered player is warned that it’s going be a high powered game and after a game or two they’ll go back to decks that the low powered player can compete with. The multiplayer format of mtg also really helps as stronger players can focus each other while low powered player can just focus on getting there deck running and hitting each other, with the chance of killing a high powered player when others couldn’t quite do it or supply a key card. Yugioh on the other hand was a mixed bag. I got into Yugioh with my brothers but we stopped after links where added. The new rules heavily restricted my brothers deck (and on the odd chance we play we bounce between current master rule and pendulum era master rule) and the cards we pulled the the first packs killed our mood to get more. It was mainly links that required cyberse monsters and cyberse monsters that didn’t jell with our current decks (neither were in the mood to buy enough cards to make a cyberse link deck). Skip a couple years and a new friend reintroduced to Yugioh. He got me to mess around with YGOPRO and I started having fun messing with various decks and he upgraded my Monarch deck (which has been far from my favorite deck, but is a fall back I’ve needed multiple times to deal with new decks). The bad falls in with trying to onboard people now that I’m a different location. At our college game club there’s only two players who play Yugioh (me and one other person). It’s hard to onboard people when one of the two people who play insist on playing his Salamangreat deck with 3 Pot of Greeds against the decks that he offers new players where Call of the Haunted is their best card besides some difficult to summon extra deck monsters (along with the fuckary of teaching someone Yugioh in the first place). I know I don’t have a lot of experience with larger Yugioh community’s but my mtg experience has been consistent and my Yugioh experience not so.

[@THEGRUMPTRUCK]

Though I've played Yugioh far longer I definitely tend to agree. I dabble between both Yugioh and MTG and the latter has so much variety in how to make good decks, how to make jank decks that function consistently, and to an extent being able to build a deck to do anything yoh really want. Though I've definitely encountered toxicity in the MTG community it's at a much lower scale than Yugioh, and it's rare even in massive groups that people only play "Just the meta and nothing else" in Magic. The number of times people say "I have this really fun deck I want to try" just makes MtG feel much more inviting.

[@liviousgameplay1755]

Good read. Also, I understand almost never being able to find another player. I’m usually the disappointment bc I refuse to invest in real cardboard, but the fact that its a common experience that you CAN FIND another player but CANT play, DONT WANT to play, or the power level is off . Bonus for ppl asking me (who have cursory knowledge) and ask about Blue Eyes or the God cards and I have to tell them “sry not good f”

[@Lil0toto]

I often feel like the odd one out as a newer player to the game. For me, the last time I had played YGO was way back in what? the early 2000s when I was in elementary school and my brother and I each got a starter deck that we played against each other with, likely incorrectly. Jump ahead nearly 20 years and I'm now playing the game on Master Duel. I had been watching some YGO content on YT occasionally in the year or 2 leading up to Master Duel's release, so I had kinda learned what all the new summoning mechanics were and how they worked, learned what hand traps were, etc. But despite knowing how all that stuff works mechanically, it's a bit overwhelming trying to figure out where to start. So I did what I usually do in a game when I don't know where to start with a 'build:' looked them up online for an archetype I was interested in. And for me, that's usually a good stepping stone. I'm amazed people can figure out how to play a deck on their own for some of these archetypes... But even to this day, the biggest struggle I have with the game is just the sheer number of cards that have come out up to this point. I don't have the luxury of having played this game through each of the eras, I didn't get to slowly and steadily learn each and every staple card that came out to this point. Sometimes shorthands people use for certain effects is lost on me, I didn't immediately know what people meant by a garnet, armades, rota, stratos -esque effect; I had to look those up. I stuck to it and have learned a lot from just watching content creators and making mistakes I learn from, but these are things people need to keep in mind about new players. It's a lot to learn and the game does not make it easy.

[@Samurrot07]

Bad card designing, less creative deck building, and the FACT that casual and competitive play are slowly but surely becoming one and the same

[@michaelkeha]

casual play is kitchen table and nothing else anymore my dude locals are competitive because the competitive side has won and taken over the game it's why most games treat competitive players as the enemy they destroy games

[@bigpablo673]

I feel like the intial learning curve is the hardest. It feels overwhelming for people reading text walls. Once you realize you're mostly reading for jey words it becomes a bit easier to digest. Also the game reminds me a lot of getting into fighting games. You can spend hours perfecting your combos just to get smashed because you don't understand the opponents weapons. Just takes time. I came back to MD when it came out, 2012 being the last time i played. Im constantly in masters but theres still times where im like "oh that's how that works"

[@bigpablo673]

Also as unfortunate as it is pricing is huge I don't play tcg but I know a playset of thrust is somewhere around 300 dollars. I'm fortunate enough to have expendable income to spend on MD and I've spent a decent chunk but the major difference is 800 dollars over two years in MD can get you 26 decks. 800 dollars in tcg was the kashtira deck

[@Sin_Alder]

Even knowing that, when I was learning the game about a year or two ago, it was still incredibly difficult to digest. Most cards seem to have such convoluted and unclear wording that you'd think they were written by someone with a severe concussion, and tend to have synergy through other specified cards rather than general mechanics, making it nearly impossible to get any sort of grasp of what was strong and what wasn't without a near encyclopedic knowledge of what cards exist. I was transferring over from MTG, where nearly everything is, by design, very straight forward, and all cards have grammar that's consistent across all cards in the game, and cards actively avoid being too wordy whenever possible. Going from that to walls of text that are nearly incomprehensible that are only useful when paired with incredibly specific cards, all while their usefulness is super difficult to parse makes it a hard game to get into. If a game is easy to learn but hard to master, then people are more likely to dabble in it until they can grasp the game better. When a game is incredibly difficult to understand at the most fundamental level, then it just makes me think, "why should I bother sinking a bunch of time into learning to play this thing I may not enjoy, when I could just go play something that I could learn and start enjoying within an hour instead?"

[@Ryan84995]

I'll never forget the one and so far only time I won a match in master duel because a guy went mad with summoning for so long that when it was my turn he lost due to running out of time and wanting to negate everything I tried to use

[@akira8393]

i won some games with people that failed the combo and just rage quits, it feels great

[@TheWorldPart6]

I’m a returning player who is currently having trouble building decks. Most of the stores in my area don’t sell Yugioh cards. I can’t find any gaming shops in my area where people play the game. The closest card shop were the game is being played is in the next county. I go to comic book shops and ask about local meet ups for yugioh the people in these shops only play magic. The sad part is I’m in Houston one of the largest cities in the US.

[@daigu2509]

This is like best video I seen on this topic. And you guys are funny too so subscribed!

[@remrad4315]

The biggest reason is probably how overly expensive it is now, one deck at the top now will be unplayable later. There are also just more enjoyable card games now that are less complicated and comparably inexpensive. I miss when we'd just got synchros.

[@johnathonrouse7581]

You could always play good ol reliable dragon link. IT's been hipchecked by Konami multiple times and just keeps trucking

[@remrad4315]

@johnathonrouse7581 I kinda quit the game years ago. A lot of fond memories though. I'll keep it in mind if I consider trying again though.

[@voidlockdragon1406]

It usually depends on if you are playing the decks/cards that top the big events or if you are playing something that is not played much. If you are the former, a lot of the cards are less than a dollar. However, if you start trying to get the stronger cards that most players run in their decks, they will be more expensive. It really depends on how competitive you want your deck to be in the end of the day. Do you want to run the staple hand traps/powerful out of engine spell cards you see in top tournaments? Then it's going to cost you some money and will be expensive. If you want to play certain rogue decks like marincess, then the deck is like less than 30 dollars without staple hand traps and you could win at locals if you are skilled, but don't expect it to win a regional/YCS/World championship due to how competitive and varied the decks are in those settings that will play the best cards available.

[@nagatouzumaki4047]

it's hard to convince people to play something when you gonna make them watch you summon for 5 minutes straight then negate any action they do

[@remrad4315]

@@nagatouzumaki4047 true and real

[@Yunglex313]

On the topic of the sealed boxes, Konami releasing the first set in the TCG that has cards coming in multiple rarities in the 25th Anniversary set, and aside from there being all kinds of staples and popular boss monsters, it also has multiple prints of every card in the set in every one of its possible rarities. This is similar to OCG where you can pull multi cards in the set at high or low rarity, and I really hope Konami decides to keep this going because it would make their boosters sell much better, instead of what we do normally and isolate every card to one rarity, then make the best cards for certain archetypes hard as hell to get.

[@LemonYGO]

Yooo! There I am in the description! This redclaws guy sounds like he'd love to play n/r format, lots of back and forth there.

[@NagaYamiyo]

XYZ was the last summoning method I learned and where I dropped the game more or less. I wasn't a fan of Zexal but the summoning method felt easy where it's just matching Levels. Then next series came out, it lost my interest in just the first episode. I had a friend who did competitive and I asked him to teach me Pendulum. I didn't understand a thing! So while I still love Yu-Gi-Oh, and will play with friends, I'm not bothering to try and learn any other new summoning they add...

[@THEGRUMPTRUCK]

Honestly, I feel you. I play mostly rogue tier decks, and dabble in much lower tier stuff. I feel the Synchro era was the peak of the game, where decks could pop off but turns still weren't absurdly long. Heck even when I went to YCS's back then the longest turns I ever saw only took about a minute. When a deck doesn't do 20 bazillion different things to pop off, turns don't last long.

[@WolfKnight-it1hc]

I think my biggest problems are definitely how toxic the community at large can be to new players, and how unfriendly the game can be at a casual level. I have many experiences during mr4 when i was coming back into ygo where people just refused to help me learn about the new mechanics because no one liked the format but also would degrade me for attempting to play very casual decks, it wasn't until years later when i was playing with a friend casually that fully understood what all the changes actually meant because i had someone who actually cared enough to teach me.

[@akira8393]

i mean the game is just difficult with every new power creep. toxic players is one thing but having a game that is so difficult to understand. yeah i rather spend it on pokemon.

[@michaelkeha]

I mean your first mistake was to assume locals are a casual environment they are just more competitive because the competitive scene has consumed the game that much

[@WolfKnight-it1hc]

@@michaelkeha that's the thing though, i'm not talking about locals. I haven't even been to a locals cause I don't have any in my area, this is my experience with the online community.

[@michaelkeha]

@@WolfKnight-it1hc yeah the online community is made up mostly of the worst of the competitive players who can't fathom the concept of casual play or not playing meta

[@nagatouzumaki4047]

it's not exactly just the community it's the game as a whole who wants to have every card nagated or watch a guy summoning for 20 minutes

[@patchworkgolem]

Also, they are making the "2-Player Starter Set" which will have two decks to introduce people to the game so that is something I guess

[@johnathonrouse7581]

ITs too expensive. If i were Konami i would make sets of two 'rival' starter decks with like, Three ten card engines, A full extra deck and ten generic staples in common. that way if you get three copies of one, you can make three separate decks. For instance: Lets say the first sets of rival decks is Dragons vs Warriors. Dragons could have Blue-eyes, Rokkets, and Red-eyes: Three iconic anime archetypes that have synergy just by virtue of being dragons. While being able to set up each other's lines. For warriors, i'd do Goukis,Noble knight, and Synchro warrior.: This one is a little harder to justify due to how Xenophobic the Gouki extra deck is i'll admit, But Gouki's are a very simple deck to learn, Noble knights are in there to justify the presence of Isolde in the deck which will allow it to actually go off. And synchro warriors (Yusei's deck) can produce some pretty interesting end boards with Junk Speeder.

[@patchworkgolem]

@@johnathonrouse7581 It's literally the cost of two structure decks. Either get a friend to go in on it with you or buy it yourself and use it to teach friends while you own the decks? Like, $20 is not a lot for two structure decks, and if you think it is, then you won't be able to play paper YuGiOh and need to stick to Masterduel... Also, while those are decks that sort of match in power, I guess, It in no way prepares you for the actual game. At least this product looks like it is going to be using modern cards based on the cover art.

[@akira8393]

i mean was any yu gi oh cards ever cheap? unless you buy the fake ones i dont think much@@johnathonrouse7581

[@luminous3558]

@@johnathonrouse7581 No new player would do this unprompted.

[@johnathonrouse7581]

@@luminous3558There would an instruction manual to tell the new player how each engine works. and ideas on how to use them together.

[@dragonstwilight6389]

Locals really is a coin toss. At the 2 locals I go to in michigan, it can be anything from "I just think my deck is neat" to the top of the line meta deck. It literally depends on who shows up.

[@KINGAARON201]

I want to preface this saying that I'm a new player, but I have stopped playing for a bit. Like plenty of people, I got into the TCG by watching the anime. When I got into Master Duel, I played Dragonmaids, and it was really fun. But, once meta decks started to pop up and 90% of my games were just meta, it started to lose its shine. Even casual wasn't casual. Also, they're are too many archetypes that just don't get played and it's sad. It kinda sucks to see the same 4-5 decks top events or MD. And I get it, old decks can't compete. They're slow and they don't have enough negates or floodgates. What I wish Konami would do is put out the other formats more, like Edison or even structure deck only. To give old and new players a way to enjoy and learn the game. Also I don't know how they would do this, but do like a tier list format. We all know that not all decks are created with the same power. So why not just put all decks with similar power and have a format just for that. And restrict floodgates and hand traps to only if they are in the archetypes specifically. This can probably work in MD because it's easier to get the cards, but who know

[@BluMNBafnGaming]

While one turn kills are common in the competitive circuit its still not as common as it’s made out to be there’s a ton of ranked matches in yugioh master duel in the gold tier and up that still last 3 to 4 turns

[@captianfail1406]

I left Yu-Gi-Oh as a kid back in 2007ish. Then saw moistcritikal playing and talking about how goofy the game is now. So i went back and saw how true it was, which I did enjoy. They really need to make it more beginner friendly though. If not key words, they should at least add bullet points to make cards more readable.

[@spearsage]

The OCG version has that bullet points you mention. And it does make it a lot easier to read the card. Konami just don't want to adopt that for whatever unknown reason it seems

[@ValkyrieOfRagnarok]

i got back at the start of covid to tcg did play a bit of duel links though, so learning the game wasn't that hard took a lot of time, but as a player even at local level you have to keep yourself up to date on the most played decks, there isn't time to read every card cause a player go through 10 to 30 cards during a combo, so the game is really time consuming to keep up with, so honestly i kind off wished for a proper reset of the game new format like vanguard did could be nice, since the powercreep has put yugioh so crazy ahead of all other card games in terms of complexity.

[@gwinnondavis9284]

Fell out of the game for awhile, around XYZ introduction, and started back up when Master Duel started. Played for awhile, but fell out completely because I just hated running into the same decks over and over. Also it really feels like how the game itself is designed isn't meant for how cards today are designed. No limiter on players so they can keep playing cards in long ass combos. One of the reasons I started up in the Digimon TCG is because of built in limiters, with the Memory Gauge, that keeps that from happening.

[@MDagonic]

The best mentality a new player should try to archieve is literally "don't care about losing or winning and just having fun playing and learning a game". I know that is extremely hard to get to this point and be able to use this as an approach for a game. But I live with this approach now for around 2 years as I decided to learn more about fighting games and you know what....the moment I was able to do not care and just have fun learning, I instantly without thinking used the same approach at ygo and I love this game even more. This game is so complex and has it's special interactions so this "have fun learning" is HUUUUUUUGE.

[@mixsys4045]

I think it would also help that LGs held more casual get togethers rather than running a tournament every yugioh day, I find having to play in a tournament in order to even get some games in is a mood killer.

[@akira8393]

better just bring kids in. it's a lot better than casuals

[@jonny-not-so-bravo617]

On the whole "Is it getting harder to pull certain stronger cards" part: Yes. I bought like 25 of Legendary Defenders and didn't get a single copy of Hydrant like God damnit Konami if I was gonna play Rescue-ACEs pure I'd be screwed!

[@ghostface_d3607]

Tldr people buy into games to actually play the game. Competitive Yu-Gi-Oh is about telling your opponent they can't play the game. That just isn't fun to me, and I'm sure it isn't fun to a lot of others. I can understand the game and have built competitive decks, and I'll still usually prefer playing other games where the best deck is half the price of a playset of the new staple and the game physically can't end in one turn because of the mechanics

[@Gawny7789]

I used to play yugioh when it came out and played a few tournaments with my friends decks so I know the basic mechanics. But I struggle to understand a lot of it now & just feel I’ve outgrown it a little maybe? It’s still fun to watch games though I think I’m happy sticking to that now.

[@heyarnold2006]

I was very lucky that I had friends who already knew how to play the game, and since this was my first TCG they were patient with me. One of them got me the Salamangreat structure deck and coached me on how to use it. It took a couple of months of practicing with my friend group to get competent at the game, but I eventually got the hang of it. Sure, there are online guides that can help new players, but with the current state the game is in new players will be overwhelmed without someone to guide them. I'd just tell new players to play Duel Links, because it uses the simpler Speed Duel Format, and the NPCs are fairly easy to beat.

[@Monsters_Rule]

🤔 Its a good question really as a casual player im just not competitive I still play MD, But I do wish Konami would make a game or games thats for new players and casual players like they uses too. Like the Millennium Game from ps1 was a good way to introduce people to the game and have a good story to boot!

[@r3zaful]

yugioh live and die by archetypal exclusivity, this is what yugioh are great at, as a new player you have to understand how your archetype playstyle work at basic level though playing the game in trial by error and fire.

[@FrancisYorkMorganFBI]

Check out Legacy of the Duelist

[@Sigmaairav]

Short combo: Take any, literally any 0 attack monster and normal summon it in attack mode. In the scenario the opponent has a beatstick with a ton of attack on their board in attack mode too. Declare an attack on the beatstick (assuming it can be attacked and is able to be destroyed by battle) and before damage calculation play the quick play spell "T A.I. Strike" The resulting interaction will be both monsters get destroyed and the opponent gets burned for the original attack of the beatstick you attacked. This is a fast and easy surprise burn to use to exploit any openings to deal damage. Bonus if your 0 attack monster has a gy effect you can use after this play. if you attacked with a monster with attack points higher than 0 with T A.I Strike, you will suffer burn damage from its destruction equal to its original attack since the spell is double edged and rather fair in its trade imo. It's why its use is favored with 0 attack monsters because it can be unexpected and almost uncreactable and you won't suffer the burn

[@poisonedcheeseproductions]

I am glad our game is as difficult as it is. In 2024 where gamers have been around for decades optimizing it ALL, a game as complex as YGO that gives such a raw and almost hopeless challenge at times, is a godsend for competitive gamers. The challenge is what keeps us in it..

[@chrismiller3548]

I am lucky enough to have a locals that hosts edison. But even that was a struggle and took basically all of the edison players in the area to convince the shop to fire the tournaments. I love old formats and character decks and have found a community where i can share those decks and have fun

[@seanflannery8587]

As a magic player, it's kinda sad to see the state of a game like this. Where I live, Yugioh is essentially the game of outcasts, only one store locally really plays it seriously, and it's where mostly the dregs from the other stores gather and they have a pretty negative reputation. If there's one thing I think needs to be fixed about the whole situation, it's accessibility to both cards and a healthy playerbase, because the sole reason people buy singles online is because there isn't really an option to go for them, whereas Magic has a dime a dozen stores with plenty of supply. Most Yugioh players I knew simply don't have a passion for the game anymore, they just play it because it's all they really got, and honestly, I wish Konami would support the fan formats more like Goat and Edison to get these players engaged in different ways of playing the game. Of course, a problem like this isn't all that simple to solve, as it would require attitude adjustments from the playerbase to have more confidence in their game, and the Yugioh crowd seems pretty set on the meta as the end-all be-all instead of branching out. I wish yugioh got as much love as magic, because it's honestly a pretty fun game, even if I am playing it in a much simpler way.

[@seanflannery8587]

Thinking more on this: Why doesn't konami make more formats or support fan formats? Realistically, if they support more formats, such as goat and edison, they have a reasonable excuse to reprint older cards to support those individual metas and sell more cardboard. To my knowledge, the product offerings for yugioh is your run of the mill booster boxes, some deckbuilder booster boxes, structure decks for learning a new archetype and some premium reprint sets like ghost of the past and maximum gold. It seems konami does similar set releases like magic does, but where are the formats to play with these cards, especially for all the reprints we do get?

[@jackbennett6902]

As a Magic Commander player, and a filthy blue one at that, who tried Master Duel, my problem was twofold. One was that the game just went way too fast. It felt like by the time I could realize how exactly the other guy got their endboard and won the game, it was already three games ladder during that opponent’s turn. The other was it just felt like there was no room for creativity. One of my favorite aspects of Commander is that you can take any legendary any number of ways. For example, Kess Dissident Mage can be built as a self-mill deck, a self-discard deck, a spellslinger deck, or a storm deck to name a few. The YGO archetype I tried, P.U.N.K., felt like there was exactly one way to play it and if I didn’t draw the pieces, GG GLNM.

[@PyckledNyk]

I think it says a lot that one of the pro players with 4 YCS wins, Joshua Schmidt, won most of his matches by his opponents scooping when they saw he’s playing a mill deck. How is that fun? That’s just psychological warfare.

[@456jm]

Magic: The Gathering struggles with this as well and it really all boils down to complexity creep where the very rules and game mechanics over a long period of time create more of a barrier of entry to new players as opposed to a pay wall where decks are too expensive to build as well as not finding the right balance between luck and skill where decks have become more luck based especially when Yu-Gi-Oh! was never originally designed with a resource system in mind.

[@randomprotag9329]

magic does a better job though format planning. the long history is more relevant for the high power formats and standard is better controlled for new players while yugiohs standard is the new player unfriendly high power format

[@J.A.R.S.]

To me the cards that ruin the game are cards or archetypes designed to not let other players play, the fact that negates are so abundant is ridiculous, people complain about maxx c, i complain that my opponents draw 2 ash every game.

[@Sigmaairav]

I hate "engines" as a concept. I hate long combos. I build rogue decks that emphasize shorter length turns that are quick and to the point without all those "searchers" "engines" and without capitulating to meta pressures. It's more fun if I'm playing with my opponent and turns go back and forth with a few actions per player per turn. It's less fun when I'm playing solitaire for minutes on end with a disgruntled spectator awaiting their first turn and vice versa. Waiting is boring, less waiting means more stuff happens means more fun. Long combos are boring and time consuming to play and sit through. Short combos are satisfying and fun and don't monopolize game time and allow for better balance between actions taken per turn, time taken per turn, and number of total turns per player per duel Mutual fun is the goal. Maximize FUN is the peak of the mountain above winning, above losing, above championship titles and accolades....fun is all that matters and I shall not compromise it for myself and I strive to not compromise it for my opponent should they share the goal of mutual fun.

[@darkmyro]

okay I dont think the game is that complicate on the simplest terms, yugioh is get to big monster and go brrr. That being said there are a ton of things to learn. we have 7 summoning mechanics to learn (tribute, ritual, fusion, synchro, xyz, pendulum, link) each with their own minutia and lore. That in and of itself, can sound daunting. There is a lot of card text, and there's a lot of card text that in there, that just gives you text you dont really need to play the card. there are a ton of staples, and there are also staples from old formats that people don't even use any more, but were used for a while. like mystical space typhoon, rigeki, black hole, and the solemn brigade have all been kind of power crept. You could still use them, but they all have sorta been phased out for stronger cards. You also have hand traps that to me all feel sorta unfair. I play one card, and you can barely interact with it, and it stops you from playing the game, or like maxx C you could play the game, but it would be a bad idea. same thing with niberu. There are so many archetypes. like every new show, every so often, and every format they have like 10 or so archetypes getting support every time new product gets support. The support doesnt always elevate the deck.Thats especially true of decks based on the anime, like blue eyes had its time in the sun being meta relavant, and stuff like the pepe deck did too. Dark magician and girl are also decent rogue decks, but they're the exception. one thing i didn't know about was short printing and once i figured out about it i never wanted to buy sealed again, cause once the point if I'm never gonna see a card in a set. I'm not sure if it still exists, but if it doesn't, I'd rather just by the singles cause it most cases its more cost effective and I get what i want. even if its not a thing, the way you described rarities makes me feel like it would be more cost effective to buy the singles.

[@FTW1230]

I don’t think there’s really any tcg where the state of the meta is so bad that games are often conceded by the end of the 2nd players draw phase. That’s not fun, it’s not fun watching your opponent either flood gate you out of existence with set 4 pass, with some combination of silly shit that says you can’t use spell, can’t summon x or y attribute/type, monster effect or ed summoning or combo off into a board with more interactions then useable cards in hand, there’s a reason why we make so many jokes about yugioh basically being solitaire

[@wessel4111]

I just wish we had effect numbers and bullets like OCG. My brain just shuts down after seeing the textual mess modern cards are.

[@th3redcomet374]

There are two major problems with ygo that will probably never be fixed, the card knowledge barrier and competition. The card knowledge necessary for ygo spans 2 decades, there are just so many type/attribute/extra deck staples tht you need to learn at some point. Other games minimize this problem by having different formats therefore having less or more cards you don't even need to know exist. As far as competition, other tcgs are just easier and more importantly slower which makes it a lot easier for new players to actually learn by applying something new every round/match. It also doesn't help that ygo is such a drastically different game from Pokemon/mtg/dbs (literally every other tcgs). I've been playing mtg (commander and modern format), Pokemon (standard), flesh and blood, and Weiss for a little over five years (not FaB) as well as ygo for my resume btw so I do know what I'm talking about

[@EnigmaticLich]

After an almost 10 year break, I started playing again. I 100% agree do not expect to win if you're new, I had a knowledge base and still got my ass kicked. I will say that the players were for the most part pretty non-toxic and even helpful at times, only had one bad encounter with someone after I drew the out for his brand new 100 dollar card...

[@driedguide4236]

The whole "Yugioh is about making sure your opponent can't play" is why I have more fun playing legacy of the dualist then any amount of time spent in master dual. The bot's aren't people so it's not like I'm ruining someone else's fun by trying out otk or ftk, plus you can pick the level you want to play at thanks to the split of the anime era's and the bonus dualist challenges. Would love a new game like that to come out sometime but I doubt it will now master dual is the go to.

[@TheEmperorGulcasa]

I feel like the problem is that a new player doesn’t have much ability to independently understand what their deck or their opponent’s deck is doing. Then most decks are not very interactive, so against a competent player you just blankly watch them do some stuff then instantly lose with no chance to put up a fight. Meanwhile if the new player gets a turn, even if they read each card, they have non chance at sussing out a nearly optimal combo route so they won’t win when they get a chance to go.

[@Sanguimaru]

As someone who played the game a lot in the past, and has played a number of other games, I find that the thing I'm dissatisfied with is that the pace and style of the game has sort of narrowed how decks try to win. That isn't to say that decks aren't distinct from one another in any fashions, but they tend to attempt to pull off everything quickly and bury their opponent and hoping that it works out. It's like both players are playing a one-sided game, with just enough fast counters from the hand to try to stop the other player from finishing theirs first. In Magic: the Gathering, there's a deck type called Storm, where the goal is to combo out all at once and OTK the other player(s). This appeals to certain types of competitive players, but not most of players overall. Every deck in YGO's meta feels like it's Storm now. That shuts out a lot of types of gamers who want a game that is more engaging and paces out more evenly. Then the pool is full of decks like this, it's difficult to sell them on what would be fun about playing the game, which ends up being a bunch of knowing what staples should be run, memorizing combos and paths that a deck can take, etc. Even to play ""casual"" games with people who actively play the game in the current times, not knowing all of these things will typically get you very unsatisfying results.

[@jacobwoodard818]

I would say that Kashtira is a good way to learn the game. In the TCG we have all of Kashtira cards at 3 which Arise-Heart is banned. Its still really good but my reasoning why is because the learning curve is smaller than with Swordsoul Tenyi because you can touch upon all of the basics just adding Revolution Synchron and aside from making Shangri-Ira you barely ever touch the extra deck. A lot of times you make Shangri-Ira ,special summon Fenrir, pass unless you have to special summon Fenrir with Shangri-Ira with that level of simplicity even a noob should be able to master it quickly.

[@lunerblade13]

I think my problem with yugioh (master duel in particular) is that all I want is some damn variety. I get very tired wasting my time having to fight the same asshole with five different names if not more that do nothing that have the same gameplan whose sole goal is to not let me play. And as a caveman duelist with a mentality for battling it’s extra infuriating whenever I get the smallest amount of momentum against those kinds of duelists and then “they” decide to quit the moment THEY get inconvenienced, invalidating my fun as a go second battling deck that doesn’t get to battle with my deck.

[@vaulthunterfromterra4053]

As far as buying sealed products go, I bought my first random box ($11.97 USD) in like, 10+ years and pulled a $260 C.E.D. & a bunch of Gen 1 cards (1996 prints).

[@michaelbillingham5580]

Honestly, call me whenever but Duel Links is a great entry point to the series imo. I started there so maybe inherent bias but the speed format being less overwhelming, automated interactions and telling you what you can do. But most importantly, it has lots and lots of AI bot enemies to fight. If you just want to roleplay as yugi, kaiba anyone from the anime, just do that without facing a wall of: You want to play? Too bad didn't draw effect veiler or ash blossom so have fun sitting there for 5 minutes. It gets people into Yugioh, but theres no way to go from fuel links casual vs AI into real life or Master Duel, because theres no safe, low intensity, calm environment to improve

[@yusheitslv100]

23:47 - 23:51 Oh. My. Fucking. G-D. This. This right here. "In order to fully enjoy the game, you have to go in expecting not to win." For context: I was someone who first learned of Yugioh in 2011 through the anime and a friend, and played playground from 2014-2019. Come late 2020, I decide to learn competitive because I was always losing. So I play online learning decks that catch my eye, regardless of meta standing, but as optically as possible. August 2023: I go to my first locals with a rogue budget deck. My expectation: everyone here has way more experience with the game than me, and I'm going to get 2-0'd every game and finish the night 0-X-0. I only got 2-0'd once that night, (it was by Swordsoul, and by the only person who 2-0's me there), and I went 1-2. I had the time of my life. I still go there for locals. I went in expecting to get absolutely owned. I only won 1 game on my first night, but I still held my own in the games I lost, and enjoyed myself because I did better than I thought I would. When I went back in subsequent weeks, I still expect to lose, but I'm more confident in my abilities as a player and still manage to have fun, even when getting my ass handed to me. (Mostly because, for me, the fun comes from sitting across from a someone irl.)

[@leaflizard8485]

I've been playing Swordsoul. good for learning synchro summoning.

[@lukeatkissphotography530]

I just dislike the game because when I play with my old goat deck against a modern deck it was completely distroyed. For reference the deck I used was fairly strong and the person let me use it properly witch had a few forbidden and limited cards. It had no chance despite me used to playing locals fairly well so I know the game. The really sad part was we swapped decks and despite seeing the deck play once and light advice (what the ace is, how to get it and the decks win conditions) I won. It felt like there was no skill, like I was playing a script and because of that all the things I learned from lossely following yugioh and playing goat and before was completely useless. So I quit and have never even want to play this game anymore.

[@angelhammer2017]

I think Konami needs to make more support for the weaker decks so that way all decks have the potential to be a meta deck. I run a pendulum deck my main archetype being odd eyes with a small performer pall engine and a magician support engine. But the problem I have with most meta decks is that when I do pull off a good combo I get tributes or evenly matched. And I'm literally left with nothing or, worst case, get zone locked, and I don't have any support or staples specific to the archetype to help comeback from that.

[@angelhammer2017]

Imagine an odd eyes link cards

[@johnathonrouse7581]

That's not how the metagame works. There will always be a handful of decks that are better than the others. Even as far back as LOB where the meta was summoned skull beat down

[@angelhammer2017]

@johnathonrouse7581 I agree there will be decks that won't work against others the point im making is that decks should have the support to have the potential to be in the meta that way people aren't "forced" to play the same decks example would u rather see blue eyes vs exodia (or an archetype u love/prefer) or kashitira vz kashitira -_-

[@johnathonrouse7581]

@@angelhammer2017 Kashtira isn't all that good on its own anymore since its maor boss monsters got hit. And, how entertaining a mirror match is depends more upon how skillful it is. Tear 0 is my second favorite format after T.O.S.S. due to the fact it was so interractive. You really had to know the deck in order to play it, and Bystials kept them off their fusion monsters because the materials would either be banished before the fusion happened, or they had to shuffle them back with the ishizu retrains.

[@ScarletSilverIron]

@@angelhammer2017 there is a Odd eyes link card.

[@angelhammer2017]

I feel as if there aren't enough supports for some archetypes in the game. I run an odd eyes deck and as much as I love it there aren't enough support cards to protect them on the field or recover from your opponents board when they destroy your cards on the field.

[@h1_hru]

Zarc and magican a a bit better

[@thahirshibu5042]

odd-eye has a secondary archetype called dual irises? right?

[@thahirshibu5042]

how was your introduction to xyz, links, and pendulum summoning?

[@angelhammer2017]

@@thahirshibu5042 I was actually making a card game of my own (after watching inscryption) and was watching yugioh GX for some card ideas and decided to check out the actual game

[@angelhammer2017]

@h1_hru supreme king zarc is actually my boss monster the deck I built allows me to summon fusion synchro and xyz and pendulum dragon monsters as quick as possible

[@matiaspereyra9392]

Skip to the next paragraph to skip the lore. I remember that I left (not by choice, the scene just kinda died here) around the start of the synchro era, then thanks to the miracle of the internet I came back during 2014ish? For hat format stuck all the way until the end of the pendulum era when I left again bc I didn't like mr4's rules on extra deck monster and (like many) was fearing the release of links monsters that like would point at certain opponent zones and do something but beyond what we have, I essentially didn't want the way you slammed your cardboard on the board to decide if you won or not all the time, now I'm not talking about playing around the geonator column or the mekknight column, I'm talking about something more complex where you had to be aware all the time of what effects are applying in which column and which co-likings you have, all that, after I heard they fixed mr4 I decided to come back eventually (I didn't have much time back then) and MD was the final push so I have had to catch up first to 3 summoning mechanics (even though technically I came back and then shortly after they announced the pends) then I had to learn linking that while even easier in terms of materials they came with a lot of terminology link, co-link, extra linking and u-linking (which are the same but when you don't know it seems like you have to learn more than you really have), I wouldn't say it was particularly difficult bc at least everyone was new to pendulums and you barely use co-linking and I've gotten u-linked like thrice, but having to learn all the mechanics while having to read 6 billion cards they are seeing for the first time does seem kinda intimidating, especially if you are lost and don't have a guide

[@ooberallen]

i'm 42, after all these years I can finally afford to play last years meta decks

[@aliastheabnormal]

Where's my Schezwan sauce! I've been a Yu-Gi-Oh since the beginning and i still haven't gotten my goddamn sauce!

[@blankmu8397]

I know nothing about paper play, but it be nice if master duel had feature, maybe up until gold, where the game just tells you good plays to make. Like mid match some new player watches marincess or @ignister combo for five minutes to end on a towers. It'd be nice if during or right after, a pop shows you that x% percent of games against these cards are won when you tribute it away with a kaiju. Or like instead of win perctages/number in decks of cards in replays, they could show a 'used against' percentage. Like if some uses branded fusion 90% of the time the opponent ashes if they have it so a newcomer watching the replay could see what you want to do against commonly used cards. Just makes it easier to stomach losses by giving them something explicit to learn while they're losing, instead of hoping they'll make the effort themselves to learn why they lost or how they could have won.

[@prussia1557]

I went into locals with my older Gravekeeper deck. One dude offered to sell me his Infernoble core for 25 bucks and took the time to teach me how to use it. I'm lucky to have a locals that is mainly rogue and fun decks. I think there is too much of a culture of "I must stomp the noob and not teach him anything, I'll take the win, good luck idiot" going on. TLDR, don't larp as Kiaba or Chazz ffs.

[@nagatouzumaki4047]

kaiba was the bad guy yet these people act like him, it's kinda funny how yugi the fun loving meeky nerd who just wants to have a fun game is the exact opposite of how modern players act

[@dahakaguardianofthetimelin4780]

I was playing a game with my mate, teaching him how to play 'cause he hasn't played since like... Late GX era and what frustrated him the most, which is something I haven't noticed, is that playing Yugioh can feel incredibly meaningless. What I mean by that is that nothing's really a "resource" per see in the sense that you can disrupt it for an impactful interaction. So many cards and entire archetypes recycle everything that playing stuff that wipes an entire board doesn't even feel gratifying. Why should it, when your opponent will just gain more advantage than the "resources" they lost? We lost a potential mate because his cards were either negated and he didn't get to play his deck, or whenever he played an allegedly "high impact" card, his opponent would actually plus out of it, despite the initial and false joy of seeing opponent's cards pop. I don't think there's a game where you get to play as little of it as possible where playing it feels as unimpactful as YGO does. It doesn't matter if your cards are milled, negated or if they're so disadvantageous to play that you may as well throw them into the garbage bin, retire, and become a family man...

[@fatalismus2023]

I recently returned via Master Duel, before that another friend tried to get me back into it but it turned into him just OTKing me with not even Meta, but strong decks while still had no fucking clue what a Link Mosnter is. The other friend got me into it more by actually explaining things and Master Duels Solo mode did help me a ton. It's decent, not good, but decent. If you would ask me if I enjoy the game my answer would be: "I think so, I am not sure actually". Now I am only a Master Duel player, I don't have the money for anything close to Meta for the TCG and atleast you can play Master Duel F2P somehow. Though that is one issue too, as after the Solo mode and the odd Event your ONLY way to make gems is Ladder. Since that's the only vialble gamemode, you will inevitably reach a point were you HAVE to play a Meta deck AND also have to have certain generic Monsters/Traps/Spells or else you are just screwed unless you get really lucky. While I think there are several samll problems with the game, most mentione din the Videos, one big problem I think is that the game is just very tiring. Alot of duels are inherrently demotivating. Even winning, atleast in Master Duel can be demotivating. There is not really any fun, especially after it happend several times, in knowing you have already lost/won when the game starts simply on having drawn certain cards or what your opponent does.I recently managed to make a DragonLink deck, I went and learned the combos and all, it took me some time to get all the gems and dust to finally make those cool URs, yet it all felt kinda for nothing since I bearly get to use those cool cards. Either I 1.brick/loose the toin coss get no Handtraps etc. and basically loose on the spot. 2.Get all my shit negated to high hell because my opponent just so happend to draw every out 3. I get to do my full combo only to see all those cool Monsters immeditaly get Kaiju/Evenly etc. 4. Even when Winning most of my DLink wins were people surrendering once they realized I have full combo and they have no out (and I can't blame them). I decided to choose DLink after loosing to one and looking it up seeing people say how great it is and all and also liking the Monsters in it. Only to then play it, bearly seeing those cool cards and when I see them, they just get thrown away by some generic zero/to bearly any investement cards. It:s just depressing. But I also can't blame those cards for existing, because how else do you expect people to go 2nd. I think alot of new people run into these domotivating experiences like me recently and while a bunch of those experiences can be just bad luck and skill issues, they are still demotivating, which will get people to stop, especially since alot of solutions to those expereinces are just "spend more money on better Cards/Decks" or "should've drawn the out" and the when you go and complain about this experience some small but loud people just say "Skill Issue" or "It's a competitive/complex game, it's not ment to be fun". It's all so tiring, it's a fun game but man...

[@Knaveofclubs44]

See this is why I keep decks around so I can introduce a newbie by explaining -everything- I'm doing and then telling them normally You'd be negated here by this card, but we're learning your deck so just know for the future about interacting and stuff while letting them play and explaining my cards then helping them play theirs its so easy even with a meta deck to explain your freaking deck why you would stop them, but then just not do it and let them learn their deck so even just playing a meta deck is no excuse not to -explain- to a newbie and help them onboard into the game.

[@Dizaster1995]

One thing i feel lead to the downfall to introducing yugioh to newer players or recurring players is the loss of STARTER decks. Which sets it apart from like yugioh magic what have you Magix has the precon commander decks, the precon standard decks, and even the duel decks where it comes with two ready to go decks to play against eachother Pokemon has the starter decks thay give you everytbing you need right in a convenient box and everytbing else is supplementary and straight forward Yugioh has a product where you need to buy 3 of a structure deck to even have a barebones decent core, so thats like 30-50 right there, they never tell you you need 3, so i feel of konami made the structure decks back into starter decks, even if they put it at 30 dollar msrp, it would still be more inviting than needing to buy 3 of a product just to get the ball rolling to making any deck remotely playable 😮

[@onryu]

Ive played YGO for a long time, and in last couple of years moved over to MTG (only play commander), but MTG I think is more complex game overall, but YGO is still more complex than most other tcgs, especially for new or old returning players of the game from OG YGO (learn new extra deck mechanics, chains/timing etc). I think YGO needs a new format like MTG commander/Highlander for 4 players

[@NCemloen]

I will live and breath for tag duels. I was so upset when Master Duel release team duels and it wasn't tag duels.

[@therobloxmonkey6704]

the prices of TCG............just to have a staple..........oh my god................ Edit: I'd really liked to play the upcoming Sangen/Tenpai dragon archetype but because a few of the cards needed are going to be in a higher rarity, and Konami likes to screw with Westerners by printing those rarities in scare rates, I just feel excluded.....especially because I'm just a casual player and I'd like the archetype because of the cool design, synchro summoning, and the fact it's FIRE and a dragon but if the most important cards in the archetype are locked because of high rarity (and mind you, FIRE dragons are hard to find in YGO), this will be sad.

[@juwantyler4719]

While I agree with that idea that as a new player you should expect to lose, they also should expect to have fun even when they lose. I think that's what a lot of people are missing when talking about Yu-gi-oh's new player problem. How do you make losing fun because they are going to be losing a lot in order to get good? It's not fun to be locked out from playing any cards. It's not fun to lose turn 2 or 3 because you just didn't draw your out. It's not fun to lose just because you didn't have some staple card in your deck that no one told you about. This is the biggest thing to me that Yu-gi-oh has to solve. Why would invest hundreds of dollars in cards or even tens of hours learning this game if the best way to understand how the game works and something that you will have to deal with some point while playing this game, losing, is the most unfun thing to do?

[@traigongames]

Honestly I don't play Master Duel a lot maybe every six months I play but what I do play more often is Dueling Nexus since they do start the meta decks before Master Duel and they aren't as toxic but what I do when I play on Dueling Nexus Is study the Meta decks on Dueling Nexus first then I create a what if that aren't meta decks run them there and then create similar decks in master duel

[@Merceralex77]

A game being complex is actually a good thing. Yu-Gi-Oh is not only complex, it's complicated. A lot. And that's a problem. Also it's extremely expensive

[@LuniNightwind]

Honestly why Master Duels is such a GREAT way to get new players in. You can point them at this direction and tell them their solo mode can help people ease in

[@akira8393]

and only playing solo mode because besides that, nah

[@Thunder103093]

master duel sucks

[@GuardianArk15]

I've specifically bought a bunch of starter decks for the exact purpose of playing them with friends that say they wanna give it a shot.

[@AvariaDemon]

i think it would be great for locals or especially master duel to have like teaching areas, where someone who, maybe isn't like a pro but knows how the game works, plays with someone who's new to get them into it more. for me personally often times i'll play in a locals tournament and even though i'm not playing the best deck (i love me my jank) i'll sometimes play against people who OBVIOUSLY do not know the game well enough and like... wtf am i supposed to do? you feel like a shit bag for kicking their shit in but you're still playing in a tournament and you want to do the best you can. if i sat down with someone with the GOAL to teach them the game even if i was playing a "better deck" i could modify my approach accordingly to help them learn better. it's also important to be able to bridge the gap, a lot of players get into the game based on the anime. though yes pretty much none of the anime decks are meta relevant, ALL of them have cohesive strategies and playable decks. you got someone who loves DMG? well you're in luck here's magicians circle, and eternal soul and so on. blue eyes? no problem, you have alternative abysal, dictator of D, plenty of fun ways to play these decks. sure they arnt going to be playing the EXACT deck their favorite character plays but nothing makes someone more happy to play a game then giving them a deck they're excited to play.

[@AvariaDemon]

on the other side of the coin, as someone who wants to get back into paper i'm honestly super nervous about it, i really wish i could find open minded card playing circles, maybe not all lgbtqia+ but at least super cool with it you know? that'd be nice

[@bchaozgamer4282]

I played Master Duel when it first came out for about 2 months used an Ancient Gears deck, If I could survive my opponents 1st turn I "could" pull off a 2tk. I eventually got bored with it because there was too much 1tk solitaire decks and became unfun/time consuming/lame. I liked the back n forth of magic the gathering more than playing Yu-Gi-Oh. I keep Legacy of the Duelist on Steam because it's the only YGO experience I enjoy so far.

[@michaelkeha]

One of the things that people don't tend to bring up is the fact that every modern archtype is basically the same thing of by some mechanism you throw bodies onto the board to make generic extra deck monsters with maybe a in engine boss monster if they are good enough and maybe some in engine spells and traps incidentally if you can outside of things like say the punk field spell or the continuous spell from metaphys we don't really get any pay offs for us doing what the deck is designed to do other than just more bodies to make extra deck plays with compared to other games where their gimmicks do have more pay offs than just more bodies

[@nagatouzumaki4047]

I agree but it's what sells Yu-Gi-Oh players these days only like the faster paced decks so komani market the new decks as being faster then before and most fans who play the game eat it up you can dislike that but they aren't designing the game around non players, their designing it around the small yet very loyal and loud audience I don't like the yusei deck but just faster and faster either but it's logical to make it that way with the audience they fostered

[@michaelkeha]

@@nagatouzumaki4047 except it isn't if you haven't noticed decks are becoming more resilient to the point that a full grip of handtraps that aren't a droll and lock style effect for each action won't be able to even come close to stopping them hitting full combo and we are approaching a point where the only thing faster we can do is start making FTKs the norm

[@nagatouzumaki4047]

people like the ftks at least the players who are buying sets like it

[@lambtoken2708]

@@nagatouzumaki4047 well, looks like said players aren't as numerous as they seem considering the overall player base keeps diminishing more and more. Curious

[@atomiccandyboy5756]

It's easy really, most new players enter for nostalgia for some Yu-Gi-Oh season, build a deck like in the anime or similar and hit the meta wall: tearlament, Spright, blackwing, purely, bestyal, Katshira, Runik, labrynt, Branded. And right there you lose a casual player, when they can't use a simple deck 2 or 3 tries and quit, I've seen it live with a friend

[@nagatouzumaki4047]

no matter what you grew attached too modern Yu-Gi-Oh has nothing for you if your a dude who quit cause of links or pendulums which was many people btw your gonna join and still dislike the game. Yu-Gi-Oh don't reward long term investment if you love zoodiac or utopia cause you like xyz era guess what those suck now it's not a classic yugioh problem, it's a this game does not reward you caring about anything if you like how the game works well komani just changed so you have to now use link arrows to fusion summon it's that type of stuff, you cant stay invested if komani can just suddenly change anything on a dime you like gx era with a slow back and forth well you don't matter, it's now a fast paced competitive game in 5ds era you might agree with the former or latter don't matter, the idea here would be the major play changes that happen ain't fun for anybody just cause you liked the 5ds change or the vrains change does not mean it's a good thing for player investment

[@LunaticKD1991]

I've played Yugioh since the beginning and stopped playing Yu-Gi-Oh when they introduced link summoning alongside the master rule that forced you to use link summoning in order to use your other extra deck summons. Konami eventually removed that master rule but it was still a scummy move to try and sell product. The biggest issue with Yugioh today is that the game is focused on locking your opponent out of the game rather than playing the game yourself. The only way you can beat these boards is if you have the card in your hand already or draw the card that can out them assuming they don't have an omni negate in that board which most of the time they will. It's just not fun to play with or against a deck that combos off forever just to lock someone out of the game and then when it's their opponent's turn they're still playing on their turn and then when they shut them down and their opponent can't do anything they can pretend they're skilled. There's no skill there. Everyone runs the same decks and the same combos because the game discourages you from playing anything else unless you want to lose. You have to be a meta sheep as there aren't official alternative formats aside from speed duels. That's really the problem with Yugioh today and what drives away new players and Konami refuses to do anything to actually balance their card game to actually address the problem. Ban lists are just used to sell more product which is the only thing Konami cares about when it comes to Yugioh. They don't care how toxic the card game becomes as long as they're making money off the people who keep buying boxes and cases to chase shortprinted cards that will be obsolete in the next 6 months or so when the next more power crept cards are released. It's an endless cycle where everyone involved loses. The only one who wins is Konami. It's a shame to see how far Yugioh has fallen from where it's been.

[@zhaoyun255]

I love Mystic Mine budget burn deck before it got banned. I got back to Yugioh to look at those rule sharks suffering faces to my amusement.

[@vo1ce147]

the product part wise konami actually promise to make one with 2 player pre-build deck and some steple i forget when they release .

[@ShinKyuubi]

Okay...my happy ass stopped playing when LINK came in with the original rule of you HAD to have a LINK monster to special summon more than one Extra Deck monster at a time and my favorite deck of the time was E-HERO...a deck I busted my ass to build and be good with to the minor degree I was. OG LINK rules pretty much KILLED that and I said "I'm out".....after I found out about the change in rules later I decided to try and come back but now? Walls of tiny text, any deck or archtype I'm interested in is pretty much USELESS for anything but among friends, and the whole issue of "I'm gonna take my turn.....you don't get to play at all now".....I'm pretty much of the opinion that house rules need to be in place for that kinda shit. I'm an old head when it comes to this...I was literally playing with ANIME rules among my friends because I had cards from before the first structure deck hit the US shores and enough we could each build a deck...or try to anyway. I've seen this game grow from it's very simple origins to the bloated monster it is now and as someone who wants to get back in? I know I'm NEVER going to a tournament or playing with anyone but my friends. If I go to even a simple casuals night at the local store I'm gonna get my ass handed to me in a way that makes me just want to sell every card I own and say "F**k it".

[@shelbybayer200]

Because the Balance is GONE They literally can't even duel nowadays If they want a Balanced game Ban every god damn Card in the Kashtira archetype

[@JudojugsVtuber]

The issue with yugioh and getting new players is that: 1. game too complicated. You have to have a PhD in yugioh and every single interaction is a knowledge check on if you've played against the deck before, read every line on every card in that deck, and know exactly what that deck COULD do with cards they MIGHT have in hand. It's exponentially more information to keep track of and exponentially more knowledge checks than you will find in any other TCG on the market. 2. Game too fast. Most games are like 4 turns nowadays tops. Opening turn, assuming nobody bricks, turn 1 player sets up board, turn 2 Player B goes and they try to break it, turn 3 player A wins if they didn't. Turn 4 player B wins if they did. People like to argue "b-but you get more gameplay in those 4 turns than most card games get over 20!" which is just laughably false. 90% of the gameplay is waiting for your opponent to finish playing if you go second. Going first is hoping your opponent has nothing to stop you from comboing them into the sun. The entire game is focused around "I hope my opponent can't do anything" which is the antithesis of everything a card game is and stands for. 3. Game too expensive. I haven't played paper in years because after spending like 150+ on a deck just for it to get demolished on a ban list the following week I decided "eh I like having food in my house more than having shiny cardboard" 4. The playerbase actively pushes new players away and laughs at their criticisms of the game. The yugioh community has no fucking idea how to talk to people like functional adult human beings. They belittle and mock any casual player who's ever had so much as a minor gripe with the game or its mechanics REGARDLESS of if the yugioh community themselves has the EXACT same criticisms. Because when a noob says it they're stupid and wrong but if MBT or Farfa say it it's gospel. I've spent years distancing myself more and more from the yugioh community. The game peaked in Duelist Alliance and has done nothing but fall off since. Having interacted with other communities of other games, even other card games, i've found that Yugioh has one of the most toxic and elitist playerbases in the world by a country mile. I'd rather interact with the Dead By Daylight community by this point and THAT is saying something.

[@nagatouzumaki4047]

it's sunken cost fallacy kinda hard to accept a game may have flaws when your group spends thousands of dollars on it the same people who defend yugioh are those who have extreme financial investment not saying them being elitist is okay but when you understand wider context of a how much money they spent and b how much likeness you need to invest that much it kinda follows they are a defense squad ofc for me or you, we don't care about that but we didn't blow a billion dollars

[@sagethevvitch]

The one thing that could and will draw in new players, Rush Duels, is about 2 years late in America :/

[@CantusTropus]

I don't exactly LIKE the state of Modern YGO, but I've accepted that it simply is the way that it is and that it's too far gone to be "saved" by a simple change. I've tried instead to simply lean into the power creep and enjoy the modern game for what it is rather than trying to hope for it to become something it never will. That said, so many modern decks seem to boil down to either locking the opponent out of the game with floodgates or building an unbreakable board on turn 1, with what little actual gameplay exists mostly coming in the form of knowing which card to hand-trap or disrupt. Kind of like both players are building an elaborate Jenga tower and the interaction comes from trying to knock their tower over before it can be fully built. This isn't the worst thing in the world, but still isn't great because it makes the game more luck-based - if you go second, you have to hope that you drew a relevant hand trap or one of your dedicated Going Second cards like Evenly Matched/Dark Ruler/Lightning Storm, or else you probably lost. You don't have time to draw out of a bad opening hand, which makes your starting hand more relevant. Unless your chosen archetype has the luxury of being able to both build big boards AND break enemy boards consistently, you have to either choose to play a bunch of handtraps or a bunch of Going Second Cards, which makes everything feel kind of binary. For instance, I like Ghoti, but one of the Ghoti guide videos I watched just straight up said "Ghoti cannot break a board going second, so you have to play 12+ Hand Traps" or something similar.

[@amiablereaper]

I got into master duel a while ago but I just can't stay with it. The experience of getting new cards is genuinely awful

[@DarkAvaricious]

hey ma my post is on tv! Abit sad I missed it live, but good video. 👏