Simplicity is something that Yu-Gi-Oh actually had going for it back when it was first coming out. I remember my buddy trying to teach me MtG and me telling him "it's too complicated, ill stick with YGO." Now it's the opposite, and worse, now it's oppressive.
I’m a long time mtg player and gave Yugioh a chance because a friend loved the game. I had zero idea what i was doing and pretty much had to study the deck I built. Even after that, I got stomped when I went online and played against other people. There’s another video where someone described a new player coming to Yugioh is like a new player coming to a fighting game versus a veteran. The only difference is that with the fighting game, the new player knows why they lost and what they can do to improve. With Yugioh, you lose but will have no idea exactly why you lost or what you can do to improve. So for anyone struggling with Yugioh, try MtG. The cards are much more straight forward and if you lose, you’ll know why and how to improve.
This is genuinely good advice. Magic has its problems as well, but having a decent amount of experience in both games, I would consider MTG both more new player friendly and just a better game experience overall.
I got around the card text wording to the point that I feel like a lawyer when reading cards, which honestly this power-feeling ceased to be fun rather fast. After that I distanced myself because, out of all card games out there, Yu-Gi-Oh is so centered around denying the opponent plays instead of reacting to them and, for a fast game (lasting few game turns), it is a long and methodical management of the game that it feels like lab work procedures. Yu-Gi-Oh lacks the balance of give and take that many other card games have. Sometimes I used to quit playing and go study college homework instead because that was the mood some matches gave me.
the jump in skill level is so high that almost nobody wants to jump into it. Me myself playing card games for 10+ years now, i do t want to play yugioh anymore
@@Rambrus0 Yes, it's true that the new rules and power creep of all the new cards that are very intimidating to new players even true for someone, who hasn't played the game over 15 years , when they were a kid.
I think one of the biggest problems that Yu-Gi-Oh! suffers is the lack of a universal format. If you were a Master Duel player, your entire format is different from both the TCG and OCG. You have a completely different ban and restricted list. The TCG and OCG have different tournament formats. Cards are not released simultaneously. You have Japan exclusive cards. You have North America exclusive cards. Etc... This creates the Maxx "C" dynamic, where the card is banned in one format but not the other, just as an example. If your game isn't consistent then you don't have players learning the same game.
I've been playing since 2016, and I gotta tell you, probably both the best and worst decisions I made in my life. The amount of money I spent on cards isn't that crazy, I would say my most expansive deck ever was around 50$, but the social aspect is the big oof. I made a lot of friends playing tbe game, but these friends quit, and now I'm stuck with a bunch of know-it-alls. This is also not the game's fault, but the fact that I live very far from the nearest store caused me to not be in a tournament since early 2023, and because of that I'm not really up todaye on the game. I could make the effort and travel but with our community it's not really worth it
The frustrating part is how long some people’s turn will take. Like oh my god, I swear it’ll be 5 minutes and it’s like, all that time and 10 cards in the graveyard, 3 cards banished and 3 monsters summoned and most of all I’m asleep. Also think what would help is different rule sets and modes, having the modern yugioh here, older and simpler yugioh there.
Yugioh was mainly intended for a teenage demographic in Japan. Allow me to explain… Yugioh is a Shonen series. Shonen is a demographic term for both manga and anime that mainly targets early to late teen boys between 12 and 18. And every Yugioh OCG pack from 1999 and now all say on the back; “対象年齢12才以上” (Translation: “Target age 12 years and older”) Which implies it’s for early to late teen players. The reason behind Yugioh’s complexity in rules is due to that reason. Konami wouldn’t have given the OCG that age range if it wasn’t as hard. The game was deemed hard even back then. And today it’s 10 times harder. Most of us Americans refer to the TCG and English (Censored) version of Yugioh. Thanks to 4Kids censoring the anime for kids and Upper Deck censoring the card game and watered the ruling for kids then. Before Konami took over the TCG and made us now play under their OCG ruling. The only version of Yugioh that is intended for kids is Yugioh Rush Duels as Konami stated it was so kids can play without having issue. The OCG wasn’t made for players under 12 which is still teen in Japan. Understand that in most countries including Japan, “12 and up” is a standard teen rating. “15 and up” is treated as a soft-mature rating. So don’t get those mixed up. The reason why I bring this up, is because a lot of people don’t research this franchise thoroughly. And learning more about the OCG gives you a much deeper understanding of the series as a whole.
@@YugiZO i recently played against 10 year old that had full snake eye idk how he could afford it but i can only say that he was really good and He knew the Main combo
@@little_fire_guy That’s probably because his father was a veteran player. There are rare occasions of kids being capable of playing. But you have to understand that going by the average percentage they aren’t as many
I worked at collectors cache in kansas and we had a huge selection of yu gi oh. Realistically there is a decent amount of children still playing and begging for yu gi oh cards. Best thing i heard was a kid saying he needed an exodia card specifically to beat his rival at school, gave him the exodia card for free. Brought back good memories. Not as much as magic and pokemon for aure but we always had a healthy turn out for yu gi oh events
You've hit the nail right on the head. I've been a fan of yugioh for about a decade now, but I've never really felt comfortable approaching the TCG. I played duel links for a moment, and got real comfortable playing against CPUs with my goofball subterror deck, but I was never confident enough to play against real people, either through DL or IRL. The TCG itself just seems difficult to parse at the BEST of times.
I learned the game from a deck box manual. I had only a teeny couple of questions questions, thankfully answered by the mobile games. It's not exactly that complex. It's just oddly specific depending on interaction.
I'm a new player, somewhat. I used to be intimidated and took the opportunity to get into it when Master Duel released. Now that I moved and only have to travel about an hour to weeky locals, I started going there two weeks ago. I was very scared of my opponents being mad I would forget to announce phases, or not know the cards that aren't in MD, but most of my opponents have been incredibly nice and helpful, and even those more neutral were anything but mean. And to my surprise, a lot of them had also only started with MD, or even later.
I remember going to a local card shop and tried to play, and it was probably one of the worst experiences I ever had, I played a paleo-frog deck and won 1 set and overheard “you lost to this guy??” And never really wanted to play again after that
I'm surprised that Yugioh doesn't do what Pokemon does; which is putting in a code where you can redeem the physical deck in game, like the structure decks at least. Like Pokemon they put codes in their league battle decks. So it's cool you can buy decks that are designed around competitive play, and then redeem the code to play online when you're not at locals.
Each yugioh cards has a 8 digit number. Earlier days, these eight digit number were used to unlock the digital version of the cards in the yugioh video games konami develop upload until yugioh 5ds. It is unknown if such feature is discontinue as yugioh duel links and master duel lack the password unlock feature.
Great video & great editing/presentation as well. As someone thats been playing on and off since like '03 and has been trying to get my best friend into it for 13 years, a lot of your points are true in my experience. I've never played competitively so I'm not dropping 1K on a deck but it is still a big investment into a hobby that is incredibly complex. It is similar to Warhammer 40K, but a lot of people enjoy that hobby just by building/painting the minis, reading the novels, playing the video games, but with YuGiOh in order to enjoy it you have to learn 20 years worth of mechanics and complex rulings to even begin to play it. Back when I first got into it you only had to remember the very basics of the game and try to build a strategy. Now I have to try and get my friend to understand a 25+ step combo without fucking it up while remembering the spell speeds of cards to chain block important starters to avoid getting handtrapped turn 0 😅
Super cool video. It’s so great to see there are communities and discords out there dedicated to helping people play. I remember being about 10 or so when it was popular for me and walking into my local card shops feeling intimidated by the older kids, but I always dueled with my brother . I wish I had this kinda access to tourneys and people to duel against back in the day, but it’s alright. It’s pretty crazy tho to see how the game has changed over the years since duelist kingdom era, maybe one day it’ll be less complicated haha
I started playing Yugioh a week ago and it was scary, the first days in Ranked everyone broke my face in one move and I didn’t understand anything, now I don’t always get my face broken (low rating lol), but I began to understand what the game is like at the current time. - 80% of the cards in Yugioh are garbage (there are about 13,000 of them in total); - New cards and especially meta cards generate a lot of resources and are too strong (many special conditions that are activated from the hand, from the cemetery, when sent to the cemetery, when interacting with the deck, etc.); - Fusion/Synchro/XUZ/Link (understanding how they work is not too much of a problem) their endless uncontrolled synergies generate a ton of resources; - If you do not have cancel cards in your starting hand, then you most likely lost, since your opponent will disperse the table and any of your movements on your first turn will be blocked. In the game, it is not enough to have individual strong cards or have strong synergies; you need to have several strong synergies in your deck and for them to synergize with each other. PS The Yugioh Masters' Duel is truly like an 18th century duel, where everything is decided in two moves.
Honestly im 20 and as a long time yugioh player i cant enjoy this new stuff. I still don’t know how pendulum summoning works. I think it’s complicated for no reason
@@DrakeMeatRider lmao You got your scales, those red and blue diamonds, depending on the number you can pen summon monsters between those levels. For example, I have a scale 1 and a scale 8 I can pen summon monsters between the levels of 2 to 7. When a pendulum monster is in the pen zone you can use their spell effects, when they are on a monster zone you can use the monster effect if they have one. When they are destroyed they go face up on top of the extra deck, and on your next turn you can pen summon them back to the field if you choose to do so. If detached from an XYZ as material they would go to grave since they are in that xyz material "limbo". That's a general QRD, there are videos that would better explain it than I did, but it's a fun mechanic and allowed for those classic bad cards to be played. I built a DM otk deck back in 2016 using the PEPE engine and that deck was able to outpace most other decks at that time. Was fun dropping an otk with Dark Magician on people.
I had not played the game since I graduated from elementary and decided to download duel links in last year of university and I feel it was a great way to come back since it allowed me to learn all the new summonings at my own pace, its been years and im still playing on the app
This is definitely a topic that can use a longer video, but this one is still great and would love to see you touch on the subject more. I’m somebody who tried getting back into Yu-Gi-Oh when the game came out on Switch. Did the story mode and was so excited that they had cards from all generations. Made my deck and was ready to go online, so I did and proceeded to watch my opponent play Solitaire. “Okay no big deal let’s try again” and once again I’m watching somebody play Solitaire. Once again I tried and I just couldn’t get anything done at all. I already knew stuff like Pendulum Monsters and other new mechanics existed but I didn’t know it was that bad in terms of one turn kills. Decided to drop the game and tried again when that Duel Links came out and again same deal. It was boring as hell and was way to fast to lose. Now after all of that I decided to see online what some of the cards that were being used against me were worth irl for curiosity sake cause I assumed the best stuff would be expensive and I was right. At that point I was baffled as to why anybody would willingly play this game. Just got into Magic the Gathering a few months ago and have been loving it and playing with friends and even going to local shops to try a hand. I’ve had some back and forth and just some outright blow me up, but it was fun and I was learning and wanting to learn more. Decently simple to understand, great art and even had some crossovers that made me really interested. More of my friends themselves have been talking about MtG and even people at my job started playing recently on their own accord. When asked about why they got into it most all have the same answer “I wanted to try to get back into Yu-Gi-Oh, but it sucks now”.
You know it's funny, that one person mentioned being able to use a QR code or something to get your physical cards into MD is something that would help them enjoy it. Oldschool Yugioh video games actually used to do that all the time. Every card has a passcode on the bottom right corner of it that you could enter in older games like Sacred Cards or Duel Academy to get a copy of that card in-game. It'd actually be sick if Konami brought that back for MD and would honestly be a great way to bridge the gap between MD and the TCG
Quality content, my friend. Keep it up. I literally feel just like you described in the video. I tried to pick up Yu-Gi-Oh recently, and it felt impossible... Maybe the VR thing is the future, who knows.
Honestly, Yu-Gi-Oh was always kinda a bad game from the beginning. One thing I see a lot of people online not realize is that the manga and anime came before the actual card game. Meaning the card game was made to facilitate a story, not to be a good game in its own right. This puts me in an odd position in that I actually love Kazuki Takahashi's original manga and the anime based on it, but not any of the actual real-life games based on it. I remember having a cousin who was into Yu-Gi-Oh (the TCG) and tried to get me into it, but even back then I didn't like it--I really only played it because he did and it was either play it or do nothing, and even with that, I started being like "let's just hook up my SNES and play Super Bomberman." Like... back in the day, there were so many cards and mechanics that were just superfluous. Nobody used rituals, any level 5 or higher monster had to be broken to be even worth summoning, and most decks were just beatdown decks. If you want to recreate this, go play Eternal Duelist's Soul. It gets very boring, very quickly. Obstensibly the modern game sounds like it could be better by having more actual thought and strategy, but instead all I hear is that everyone needs to play these combo decks that essentially are all about whoever gets off the FTK. To recuse myself real quick though, Trading Card Games are kinda stupid anyway. Good games are learnable and have some kind of coherency to them. When I play Doom I can learn the value of the Plasma Rifle versus the BFG versus the Chainsaw. When I play a TCG though there's too many moving parts and a whole lot of mechanics I might never interact with. The same brain space I might use to learning the entire NES library has instead to be dedicated to memorizing thousands of cards, and not just the info on the cards but also what rulings Konami has made about them and every possible interaction. You'll excuse me if that sounds like a bridge too far. And no, Magic the Gathering is NOT better about this. Not by much, anyway. In fact I think the only card game I ever liked is Ani-Mayhem, and that one played more like a tabletop RPG than a card game.
I only follow the game nowadays, but my actual involvement in the game ended a long time ago, in the XYZ era. That was the last time I played the game and was also really good at it.
I've been trying a "Progression Series"-esque type of teaching style for my friends who want to get into ygo, and it's been working alright so far, though it requires a lot of patience. Where like the first deck has just a bunch of old school staples (e.g. Breaker, Exiled Force, D.D. Lady, Mobius, Mirror Force, MST, etc.) to play around, and do simple combos (Creature Swap + Sangan/WotBF, Marauding Lock, etc.). Then it transition up into the different summoning mechanics, in order (so, Fusion, Synchro, Xyz, Pendulum, Links), with decks designed (and mostly nerfed) to move at specific speeds, simulating the ramp-up in speed over the years but in fast-forward over the course 1-3 weeks.
This is kinda how i got into it too. Started with Duelist of the Rose, then moved on to championship 2008, then downloaded master duel And now I have a crippling addiction :)
I'm just a guy commenting to support the video or something, idk. Just wanna say I've been watching since your youtube shorts, since the way you edited your shorts was actually rather interesting especially on the monster card lores like the fallen of albaz and the live twins. The way those edits were eye catching carried on to your videos. Keep it up, do what you wanna do, hope to see you big
While I'm sure there are new players who do make the leap, the streamer montage you showed of new players playing Master Duel is the problem. The game is too hard, and not because rules interactions are complicated (everyone can learn how those work if they played other TCGs) or that mechanics are simply too complicated to understand, but the issue is the fact that the game's tutorial basically asks you to learn 50-different mechanics, and so new players simply get overwhelmed and quit due to brain overload. If you are an existing player, you don't see this problem because you learned less mechanics at the start and learned all the new mechanics as they came out, but a new player has to learn everything you did at the start plus the years of new card designs/mechanics on top of all of that.
I think annother problem YuGiOh runs into is that it has two completely different bases. I was talking to the owner of the card shop close to me yesterday, he said they stopped doing YuGiOh a few months ago. Not because they werent popular -far from it. But because there was such a devide between the hyper competitive players, and those who were more casual. The owner said he kept giving warnings to overly competitive players that there decks were too strong and it was turning off newer people from the store. - and of course it just removes the fun of playing a game. A card game where only one side is having fun isn't good. This annoys me cause he is seriously the only card shop that isn't >45 minutes away.
Playing in person is so much harder. Especially if the other person has been keeping up to date. I'm a bit of a Yugi-boomer. So my friend just started throwing down cards and telling me there effects and I just have to take his word for it. Other wise I'm reading 3 paragraphs for a single card effect lol
See I don’t really like opponents who don’t check in. If i’m playing against a person who’s never seen my deck I think it’s important to explain the deck and its weaknesses as I play instead of just overloading them with info or having them figure it out.
the background music (for anyone interested) is most likely a lofi remix of Kaikai Kitan by Eve. great video btw. been playing for almost 19 years and i've only been able to keep up with the meta for a couple of seasons out of that whole time. i feel like a lot of the fun of the game gets sucked out by the insane rulings and that everyone at a locals thinks they need to play at 500mph or they'll die. playing casually with friends is a much better experience, at least for me. speed duels are also a good option for beginners. it slows the game down and even seasoned players can enjoy using old cards knowing that they actually have some use in the format. i hope to see more from this channel. it's nice to see a yugituber with a more relaxed attitude to the game and some very honest opinions.
Man... Yugioh is such a weird game. I'm a Yugi-boomer, who originally stopped playing around 2005ish, and only came back with the launch of Master Duel. I'll be real, my first deck in Master Duel was a Harpie deck. And I actually managed to make it to Plat V with it, because most of the people playing those first few weeks were people like me, older players coming back for the nostalgia. HOWEVER, I would come across quite a few of the players who actually knew how to play, and watching a combo deck just go full gas for 10 minutes really was intimidating. After reaching Platinum, I went from a 55-60% win rate, to literally 10%. I wanted to quit, and I would have if I didn't have a RL friend who was getting into the paper format whom I didn't want to just stop playing with. I can't even imagine a boomer trying to join in today, with 90% of the players playing modern stuff. It took me months of playing and looking up ways to upgrade my Harpie deck, and using all of the new summon mechanics with that deck (Because surprisingly, Harpies have at least one of every summon type. It's kinda nutty.) before I finally started to realize no matter what I did with Harpies, even if they had a really good card in Feather Storm, it just couldn't stack up and I would need to learn newer decks to even stand a chance. And even still, I still wouldn't consider myself "Good" at Yugioh. I still avoid massively long combo decks that build 2-4 negates. I prefer to stay as in archetype as possible. I like decks that at least interact in unique and cool ways. I seem to really like terrible decks. (After Harpies, my next deck was Suships. Since then, I've learned Ghoti and Vaylantz.) I've only just recently started trying a deck that even comes close to being strong in Vanquish Soul, but by now that deck is trash compared to the meta stuff. I just learn really slowly, and by the time I work up the nerve (and earn the gems) to learn a new deck, it's already outclassed by the new stuff. I know this is rambling and what not, but I feel like I need to say this. As much as I think the game is too complicated these days, after having played new Yugioh, even as a boomer, I couldn't go back to say, goat or eddison format. While the simplicity of the game back then was nice, after getting used to the way the game is played now, I understand why people like it. Nothing feels better than worming your way out of an enemy board that looked unbreakable, or pulling off a really cool interaction with bounces to dodge an effect or something. I genuinely believe that the game is more fun now than it ever has, but the new decks are also more oppressive than ever too. In a game where there are so many archetypes, and so many different ways to play, there are only a select few that even stand a chance in competitive. THAT is what bothers me about Yugioh.
The problem with yugioh is that you ether play to win by playing the same meta as everybody else or you play your favorite archtype and accept you will never win with it
Subscribed!! I think it's the "Choice of Decks" for Newbie actually plays more of an important role introducing for old Yugioh players!! (XYZ is the best way to go since people can easily understand two-level-4 making into 1 boss with negates such as Utopia Leo Ray (created from Utopia Double) + some others like Swordsoul, DMs' era deck like Blue-eyes, DM, Toon cause it's designed to be simple for our old Yugi fanbase- not strong but simple)
I’ve been in love with Yu-Gi-Oh since it came out back in the day. Had hundreds of physical cards, a GameBoy game and watched the anime. I really enjoy Master Duels and I haven‘t spent any money on it. But yeah, it‘s gotten complicated. I‘ve lost to crazy OTK decks where one turn takes ages. Not a bit fan of link monsters too. But nonetheless I really enjoy it.
Ever consider proxying? 87 pages of cards with 6 cards per page is 40 dollars, and cheap sleeves is 15$ for 100; so 15x5x1.13=84.75. So under 200 for a cube. This from a guy who proxied his own Yu-Gi-Oh cube.
I got into master duel about a year ago, and had a full competitive phase that lasted two months. I hit a point in ranked where certain decks became meta, turns lasted 3 minutes, and the game turned into a pack opening simulator. I’m glad I didn’t spend too much money on the game :/ but at the same time it feels like there was a ceiling I never reached
Ive gotten back into master duel, and before i used to be terrified of playing against actual people, so the fact they have a solo mode really helps people who arent yet confident in their decks. Not to mention the bots can be pretty challenging sometimes on their final stage. It gives players both the ability to test their decks, while maybe interesting them in a new one
I loved Yu-Gi-Oh as a kid, and did play it properly for a while beyond just "caveman Yu-Gi-Oh" as well. I dropped off around Cyberdark Impact, as I just couldn't afford it anymore and my life was ramping up with further studies, so I also couldn't dedicate time to it anymore either. Flash forward to now and the problem with Yu-Gi-Oh is you pretty much can't return to it. It is not inaccessible to returning players, left alone first-timers. Coming back many years later with games like Magic the Gathering or Pokemon is fine, because yes, while powercreep and the evolution of those games is still definitely a thing too, it's not like it is with Yu-Gi-Oh. This game by comparison to those is a whole other beast; it was easy for me to jump back on board with Magic and Pokemon as the core gameplay remains essentially the same in both. With Yu-Gi-Oh, it's an entirely different card game nowadays. Because it has no mana-based system like Magic or Pokemon to rein it in, it has been powercrept into the stratosphere. So much so that people can pull off the ludicrous FTKs you see nowadays with combos that entirely negate your opponent from even responding. Yu-Gi-Oh has turned itself from a fun interactive 2-player experience into solitaire.
Played the game for many of my teenage years. Konami over did it after synchro/xyz. They shouldn't have changed the field area, for instance. For a TCG to survive it has to maintain certain things sacred. FTKs, for instance, cannot become a norm, they should be the exception. Game was fun when it was unpredictable and everyone had a chance to win. I remember defeating many of the top decks at the time with fun combos that were, in principle, weaker and less consistent. These were also cheaper, smartly crafted decks. Now you wait for people to play the game alone. You're a spectator, not an opponent.
I'm a bit of an odd ball because I used master duel to find a deck I like and then started buying the cards for it. Thankfully Galaxy-Eyes isn't super expensive to build for but my actual biggest issue is that there's no card shops in my city at all so I'd have to take a bus to the next city over to actually play with anyone. Finding out that there's a group to play with over discord is great.
When come to the "physical cards" Konami see us from the WEST as "money tree" and they f us over by short printing, turn meta or staple cards into hard to get cards. They make more money by doing this. This name of staple card in the OCG might only cost...$5 or $20 in USD at the most but the TCG legal West card is super hard to get so therefore the secondary market is in high demand. An meta deck shouldn't cost $1000 to $2000 and I'm not saying that a meta should cost $50 either. As a Yugi boomer in my view Yugioh went downhill when Synchro entered the game.
I would say it is the major 3. 1) lack of an anime. It sounds odd, but it is true. The anime gives you a basis to learn, introduce new people, and draw in a new audience. Even then there are character archtype decks that some people are drawn to more due to their love for the protag or seeing a neat combo or idea they saw in the anime and decided to build their own version of it. 2) Cost of physical game. Just look at the top decks and tell me how many of them have common or uncommon cards. Most of them tend to be the SR or UR spots and usually the ones that did well in japan get bumped up into the UR slots to ensure you have to buy more packs and hope you get lucky to pull it. Without an Anime to tie it to there is less of a need to make good or useful archtype lower ranking rarity cards and simply focus on the SR and UR cards as the commons and uncommon are left as space fillers in packs not worth much. 3) Lack of a plan. A bit of an odd point to make, but let's look at the formats. OCG, TCG, Master Duel, and Duel Links... those are the big four. OCG and TCG are physical products which are rather expensive today. Master Duel and Duel Links are the cheaper version... but also their own mess as Duel Links is it's own format so no physical play. Master Duel is considered it's own format even if it can help you learn how to play it is far different than the physical format. Also to draw back to the first point... there is a lack of a plan or need to make decks balanced. With anime decks being sold off the protagonist you needed cards to face one another to look interesting for a duel. The MC needs good cards, but the MC must also face opponents with good cards to battle against to make the duel interesting. Without the anime... we get a lot more Tier 0 decks lasting a lot longer. There is no need to make them balanced as the 'balance method' is based upon people's wallets... and the only way those decks get knocked off the Tier 0 format is by banning cards for the broken combos... or making an even more broken deck appear. There is no rival deck, no rival plan, and thus the decks only get faced off whatever the current idea of 'player vs player' which tends to devolve into... budget vs budget. Master Duel has this problem also bleed into it. Take a look at how many people like to play the game, but only prefer to play at 'gold ranking' which is the wild west allowing you to face against multiple types of decks, deck ideas, and combos... and then how people groan when they run into the latest meta deck. 4) bonus round - Turn times. Depending on the player some get annoyed that the game seems 'to fast' or more precisely 'too long'. We get decks like Black Wing or some of the other major long infinite combo decks. Not the 'synchro deck' or 'zombie deck' that plays a lot of cards, but the decks that can take ten to fifteen minutes for them to finish their first turn as you have only your hand to stop the infinity combo they plan to play and also continue to play even if you break up a piece of their combo. Some decks being the 'OTK' where if they go first they win before you played your first card. Some being the 'Board wall' where they sent up the board to the point you can't break it. Then some being the 'F@@! You' decks which prevent you from doing anything as they win regardless if you went second or first. It is why people default to some of the other games or older formats preferring to 'trade blows' rather than watch someone else play solitaire in the modern format leaving you stuck waiting until letting you know they won or not. As while the 'trading blows' can still result in your loss... it at least felt like you had a chance at winning rather than feeling as if you wasted your time and should have gave up after now having the perfect hand/needed hand.
On the flip side, Magic the Gathering is doing awesome. Commander is a super fun format and really easy for new players to get into. I would encourage any Yugioh player to consider getting into Magic
What I think would help the game seriously, however would be difficult in the grand scheme of things, is organizing tournaments that only do master rule 1. (The set of rules you see in duel monsters.) if we can have get-togethers and games that only focus on the base level of yugioh without complex mechanics like link or XYZ summoning, that’d help greatly. We need to get back to the roots of yugioh
I haven't played competitively YGO in almost 3 years. I decided to visit my locals to see what's new and 90% of the people playing were still the same people from when I quit but just older and balder.
Gave Master Duel a try when it came out. I think I made a Monarch deck and played some games. Most games weren't fun, I had no idea what my opponent was doing. Every card had endless text resulting in endless combos. I tried studying some decks but after a while I just couldn't and got bored. Such a shame because I loved the music and sound effects of this game. Might give it another try if one day I could play some older simpler formats.
Feels like a part time job to keep up with everything, so you know when to play one of your 12 hand traps. Which is why I quit around 2021. And it feels more like my opponent is playing solitär to setup their boss monster while I just wait 10min.
Old-school yugioh player here, the game speeding up and lack of rotation is why I personally quit playing, when u play frog/monarchs and the new set where DaD comes out and pub stomps EVERY deck in the format, that's when I was done
I’ve been on a break with the TCG yugioh for a little while now. I sorta still try to keep up with the new archetypes and ban lists and stuff but I’m definitely not an active player. I tried Master Duel when it came out but quickly lost interest cuz it required a lot of money to get the same decks that I physically already had. Doesn’t help that I’m and old school player in the way that I will always prefer having the physical cards over virtual cards. There’s something that feels so great about having your favorite decks at hand. Like my Mekk-Knights. Absolutely love that deck. There will always be a deck (or decks) that you just identify that just can’t be replicated with virtual cards
Yu-Gi-Oh used to have a system to add the card to the video games. They should have kept it in the games. I remember buying booster packs just to try to get more cards in forbidden memories.
Been getting into Duel Links recently. I am managing to so fairly ok without spending much, or any, real money, and I'm enjoying the experience. I'm not much of an "in-person TCG meeting place" kind of person, so this is a better experience for me. I'm not engaging with Ranked since I don't enjoy the "bullshit decks" that causes a 1-or-2 turn loss. Duel Links is missing the social aspect entirely, so I suppose that's quite unlike most of (local) TCG, but hey.. I'm having a good time regardless.
The issue I had...I started to play in person, and then the store I was playing at became ots certified, which brought in all the high skill players. Which left me getting stomped and I'm not spending $100's on cards.
All of these points are really valid. It might be a hot take, but I think Speed Duel was a great answer to these issues. It's unfortunate that it had so much things going against it, from entitled players hating the simple pacing, content creators saying it's a scam and even a good portion of people within Konami seemingly disliking it to the point where it was not advertised as the gem it is.
Speed duel had a rough start. The first wave of cards were not very fun…we started with what, Champion’s Vigilance Blue Eyes? You’re not playing many meaningful games with or against that. It took a couple years for them to realize that making it more like a board game starting with the Battle City box was a better route for it to go. And by that point it’s off everyone’s radar and interest for Time Wizard formats were resurfacing. Time Wizard formats are the past and future for YGO. They should just accept that and make more products so people can easily access decks at their local store.
@@connermorgan9223take this reality with a grain of salt, speed duel and time wizard isn't a format that Konami JP and ocg players supports, and we have absolute control towards the game direction not Konami global, 99% of yugioh cards available are made and designed by Konami jp, and they didn't support old format or time wizard or whatever you call it there. There's a severe difference between casual tcg and ocg playerbase In terms of the direction of the game we don't want to be shackled the all gas no brake is the main selling of yugioh and you want to slow it down? No way 😂, and Konami will always prioritize local market, considering they made 500m last year purely on yugioh ocg (2nd highest selling In Japan 10 times bigger than mtg at number 5 with profit around 40-50m no1 is Pokémon 1.6 billion) with extra 500 from master duel. Tcg players should follow ocg direction otherwise the game will be broken as f because you ends up playing cards that designed for ocg players who wants speed but majority of tcg players don't want that.
@@r3zaful makes me wonder if yugioh sells because of collectibility v playability over there. In other words, do people buy ocg to collect or play? Pokémon is still the best selling card game by far there and it’s not even close. And Pokémon hasn’t changed its fundamental identity for the entire time. Mtg doesn’t do as well, it’s an American game and they like their IP there just like how we like ours here.
I remember starting master duel this last week and spending all my currency on a starter deck so I could play and use the new cards for the archetypes I liked “i played duel links and link evolution a lot” and in my first match a guy summoned 3 boss monsters on his first turn and made me discard 2 cards before I even played anything. The issue with the game imo is that traps need to have some inherent protection in order for them to be used again and cards should have specific effects the synergies with specific cards rather than paragraphs of effects that just link them to an archetype and allow massive chains of effects off of any card
My friend had a good suggestion for fixing these ftk or massive first turns people constantly make. Make it so you can only summon monsters up to the turn you are on. For example, on turn one you can summon one monster, turn two two, turn three three and so on. It is so frustrating seeing someone get their boss monster out on turn one bc they can special summon 9 things off of one level one monster
If you’re jumping in from after a little time; may I recommend getting the blue eyes Max structure deck; not only do you get to use blue eyes, but you’ll have the cards you need to catch up to the meta with it! It’s also not as much of a convoluted mess to play! (It’s still convoluted however)
It needs more than one format. Magic the gathering’s longevity comes from its multiple ways to play, from sealed to standard to legacy and commander etc. new players have no entry level format, they must know everything the games ever produced
My main problem with the game as a person thats been playing since xyz cards came out is that trying to get my friends to play it is extremely difficult due to how fast the game is that one of my friends said something that kinda stuck with me "how am I supposed learn the game if I loose turn one with no chance of actually playing the game and learning from my mistakes" Another one of my friends mentioned that the power creep of the game is so big that it forces new players to just look up online for the best decks available and at that point you loose that sense of building your own deck with your own cards and it makes the game extremely stale when every duel is the same cookie cutter deck from a website. AND EVEN THEN, when using those top tier decks you found, a new player will have no idea as to how to use it or what combos are good since that would require you to have either multiple years of experience with the card game to know when to use what or simply have to do intense research on each indivudually card and how its used and its too much work and too many hoops to jump to justify playing as a new player
I played as a kid up to 5ds and loved it but it’s just unapproachable to relearn. I’ll always love the IP and concept of yugioh but I’ll never play it aside from the occasional master duel, and duel links or speed duel.
I am actually new to Yu-Gi-Oh and tbh at the moment I really don't have any interest in playing master duels, both because of the commitment but mostly because I just really love having the physical cards! Though I realized it's probably harder to make the deck I want this way... Who knows maybe in a few months I'll manage to gather all the cards I want🤷♀️
I tried picking up Yu-Gi-Oh, through the mobile version, and there was too much happening and too many blocks of text on cards and interactions where you had NO idea what was going on, since everyone was pjaying combo decks. The basic rules are fine, but the mirror-flat learning cliff of each individual cards and players makes ita impossible to really get into.
Ive been playing yugioh on and off for the better part of a decade (ocg) i couldnt imagine playing it in person. Imagine playing against someone in person and they are running some ultra complicated zombie deck for example. A million effects going on back to back to back. Man I wouldnt know wtf is going on 😂 and asking who im playing to explain the whole process man Id probably just get cussed out and they'd quit. Master Duel really made things so much simpler for everyone. And yeah buying tcg packs should give at least a pack in master duel of that pack. Pokemon online tcg does that. Inside every card pack is a QR code you can use to claim a pack. I dont know how they havent thought of this yet whether it be greed or what
I’m a weird one. I was a 90s kid, but I didn’t watch the anime for whatever reason. I got into Yu-Gi-Oh MD close to two years ago and the rest is history. I wonder how many weird late bloomers there are out there like me? It’s funny too because back then I was intimidated by Yu-Gi-Oh, and here I’ve gotten into it when it’s all crazy complicated 🤷♂️
agreed, XYZ's spiced it up a bit but when they eventually took over, it kinda got a little dull. I would always try incorporate tuners into the main deck for a few synchro plays.
You're right. People ARE interested in Yugioh. But they're not interested in learning an extremely dense and esoteric game. It's ironic that a children's card game with huge casual appeal is actually a very difficult game to play. It takes a lot of time to get into when... why don't I just play or do literally any other hobby? People bitch about Konami being bad at bringing in new players but they already have an answer: Rush Duel. Rush Duel takes the 25 years of broken Yugioh design and lessons and makes it not only very accessible but emphasizes what people love about it. People love bukkake-ing 20 special summons in normal Yugioh so let's allow players to summon as much as they want in Rush Duel. Yugioh was designed by a writer who wanted to write cool stories. Rush Duel was designed by game designers that want to make you feel cool. Nobody wants to watch someone play solitaire. No one wants to read a novel in tiny text with 4 different floating effects to remember. IMO, Yugioh was never designed to be played this long, hence, why it's become the mutant Frankenstein of a game it is today.
Learning how to play yugioh; The summoning methods, Types/Attributes, Archetypes, Memorizing Strategies lines & counters, Turn1/Turn2 endboards..... ect. Very complicated to learn if your learning on your own. Found it easier to play games like Duel Links to learn on a smaller format. What i found was most annoying, How difficult it was to obtain an optimal deck in a reasonable time. I can understand why new players are not joining.
No one hates the game more than the people who plays it. And yet we continue on.
a symptom of both true love and stockholm syndrome
With how many good TCGs are available nowadays the only reason to stick with it is the sunk cost fallacy.
That isn't bringing in new blood, especially when there's other games that don't antagonistic their base
@@YugiZO it's just sunk cost fallacy
that is the hypocrisy of the yugioh playerbase.
Simplicity is something that Yu-Gi-Oh actually had going for it back when it was first coming out. I remember my buddy trying to teach me MtG and me telling him "it's too complicated, ill stick with YGO." Now it's the opposite, and worse, now it's oppressive.
What? Even two decades ago yugioh already had more types of cards, a more complex board and more types of summons than Magic.
but the "effects" of MtG at the time were much more refined, allowing all kinds of loops to be done legally@@sasir2013
Yu-Gi-Oh is not simple. Yu-Gi-Oh is more like consistent
Old yugioh is a different game IMO. And you can't really play it anymore except through old video games.
@@StillAponyhuh?
Goat format, edison, the two most populat time wizard formats. Speed duels is in GX
I think the lack of an anime in recent years really hurts people
True 100%
Lack of a good one*
Vrains did a good job. All the decks used in it showed multiple summons in one turn, and they were also all playable in real life. Gouki
@@vanesslifeygo Sadly vrains brought a lot of cards that ended up being banned as well
@@vanesslifeygoVRAINS was good
Him: "you can play Yu Gi Oh in vr"
Me: "you never saw this coming
_I SUMMON POT OF GREED!!"_
Witch allows me to draw 3 cards from my deck
I’m a long time mtg player and gave Yugioh a chance because a friend loved the game. I had zero idea what i was doing and pretty much had to study the deck I built. Even after that, I got stomped when I went online and played against other people. There’s another video where someone described a new player coming to Yugioh is like a new player coming to a fighting game versus a veteran. The only difference is that with the fighting game, the new player knows why they lost and what they can do to improve. With Yugioh, you lose but will have no idea exactly why you lost or what you can do to improve. So for anyone struggling with Yugioh, try MtG. The cards are much more straight forward and if you lose, you’ll know why and how to improve.
This is genuinely good advice. Magic has its problems as well, but having a decent amount of experience in both games, I would consider MTG both more new player friendly and just a better game experience overall.
Edison Format becoming more popular is a sure sign that we have people who want to keep playing the physical game, but the game is simply too hard.
-chill
-to the point
-helpful
yep, that earned my subscription :p
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I got around the card text wording to the point that I feel like a lawyer when reading cards, which honestly this power-feeling ceased to be fun rather fast. After that I distanced myself because, out of all card games out there, Yu-Gi-Oh is so centered around denying the opponent plays instead of reacting to them and, for a fast game (lasting few game turns), it is a long and methodical management of the game that it feels like lab work procedures. Yu-Gi-Oh lacks the balance of give and take that many other card games have. Sometimes I used to quit playing and go study college homework instead because that was the mood some matches gave me.
When comes to the Yu-Gi-Oh community in general we just need to be more inviting to new players ,who want to learn and play the game
When I played my Yu-Gi-Oh community was really nice. In fact one person would let me borrow one of their decks because mine was not very good.
@@aaronrodriguez9376 Sounds like you had good first experience as a new player.
If the only thing a business can do is hope the community is nicer then it is a failed business 🤷
the jump in skill level is so high that almost nobody wants to jump into it. Me myself playing card games for 10+ years now, i do t want to play yugioh anymore
@@Rambrus0 Yes, it's true that the new rules and power creep of all the new cards that are very intimidating to new players even true for someone, who hasn't played the game over 15 years , when they were a kid.
I think one of the biggest problems that Yu-Gi-Oh! suffers is the lack of a universal format. If you were a Master Duel player, your entire format is different from both the TCG and OCG. You have a completely different ban and restricted list. The TCG and OCG have different tournament formats. Cards are not released simultaneously. You have Japan exclusive cards. You have North America exclusive cards. Etc... This creates the Maxx "C" dynamic, where the card is banned in one format but not the other, just as an example. If your game isn't consistent then you don't have players learning the same game.
I've been playing since 2016, and I gotta tell you, probably both the best and worst decisions I made in my life. The amount of money I spent on cards isn't that crazy, I would say my most expansive deck ever was around 50$, but the social aspect is the big oof. I made a lot of friends playing tbe game, but these friends quit, and now I'm stuck with a bunch of know-it-alls. This is also not the game's fault, but the fact that I live very far from the nearest store caused me to not be in a tournament since early 2023, and because of that I'm not really up todaye on the game. I could make the effort and travel but with our community it's not really worth it
I got introduced to yugioh from the anime on Saturday morning cartoons but I started playing yugioh on duel links which imo is pretty underrated
The frustrating part is how long some people’s turn will take. Like oh my god, I swear it’ll be 5 minutes and it’s like, all that time and 10 cards in the graveyard, 3 cards banished and 3 monsters summoned and most of all I’m asleep.
Also think what would help is different rule sets and modes, having the modern yugioh here, older and simpler yugioh there.
Real interesting advertisement for Duel Cafe
Yugioh was mainly intended for a teenage demographic in Japan. Allow me to explain…
Yugioh is a Shonen series.
Shonen is a demographic term for both manga and anime that mainly targets early to late teen boys between 12 and 18.
And every Yugioh OCG pack from 1999 and now all say on the back;
“対象年齢12才以上”
(Translation: “Target age 12 years and older”)
Which implies it’s for early to late teen players.
The reason behind Yugioh’s complexity in rules is due to that reason. Konami wouldn’t have given the OCG that age range if it wasn’t as hard. The game was deemed hard even back then. And today it’s 10 times harder.
Most of us Americans refer to the TCG and English (Censored) version of Yugioh. Thanks to 4Kids censoring the anime for kids and Upper Deck censoring the card game and watered the ruling for kids then. Before Konami took over the TCG and made us now play under their OCG ruling.
The only version of Yugioh that is intended for kids is Yugioh Rush Duels as Konami stated it was so kids can play without having issue. The OCG wasn’t made for players under 12 which is still teen in Japan. Understand that in most countries including Japan, “12 and up” is a standard teen rating. “15 and up” is treated as a soft-mature rating. So don’t get those mixed up.
The reason why I bring this up, is because a lot of people don’t research this franchise thoroughly. And learning more about the OCG gives you a much deeper understanding of the series as a whole.
Imagine playing against an 8 year old running full power tearlaments at locals
@@YugiZO 😂
Lol.
This implies kids (especially now adays) can read longer then a sentence before calling it quits. (this applies to Yugi boomers as well)
@@YugiZO i recently played against 10 year old that had full snake eye idk how he could afford it but i can only say that he was really good and He knew the Main combo
@@little_fire_guy That’s probably because his father was a veteran player. There are rare occasions of kids being capable of playing. But you have to understand that going by the average percentage they aren’t as many
"Power creep can go over forever" they said..... LOL I KNEW THIS WOULD FUCKING HAPPEN
I worked at collectors cache in kansas and we had a huge selection of yu gi oh. Realistically there is a decent amount of children still playing and begging for yu gi oh cards. Best thing i heard was a kid saying he needed an exodia card specifically to beat his rival at school, gave him the exodia card for free. Brought back good memories. Not as much as magic and pokemon for aure but we always had a healthy turn out for yu gi oh events
You've hit the nail right on the head. I've been a fan of yugioh for about a decade now, but I've never really felt comfortable approaching the TCG. I played duel links for a moment, and got real comfortable playing against CPUs with my goofball subterror deck, but I was never confident enough to play against real people, either through DL or IRL. The TCG itself just seems difficult to parse at the BEST of times.
I learned the game from a deck box manual. I had only a teeny couple of questions questions, thankfully answered by the mobile games.
It's not exactly that complex.
It's just oddly specific depending on interaction.
Problem is that you have to know everything just to have a base understanding. Then you also need to know what your deck does.
I'm a new player, somewhat. I used to be intimidated and took the opportunity to get into it when Master Duel released. Now that I moved and only have to travel about an hour to weeky locals, I started going there two weeks ago. I was very scared of my opponents being mad I would forget to announce phases, or not know the cards that aren't in MD, but most of my opponents have been incredibly nice and helpful, and even those more neutral were anything but mean. And to my surprise, a lot of them had also only started with MD, or even later.
Your fit is the best part of this video, and that’s not to say the rest is bad, quite the opposite lol. Good job 👍
Remember in The Eternal Duelist's Soul you could enter a card's ID to add it to the game? It was a great way to get your physical deck into the game.
Yes but today if they allow that people will just look up card ID's online.
amazing vid and presentation! i don't see people talking about the duel cafe vrc world often! eager to see more from you!
I remember going to a local card shop and tried to play, and it was probably one of the worst experiences I ever had, I played a paleo-frog deck and won 1 set and overheard “you lost to this guy??” And never really wanted to play again after that
OMG i didnt know that existed! 8:47 watching Sucrose chatting with Yami is so epic! XD
Quite a bit of depth into making and presenting this. Great vid!
This was such a good video! Subbed and eagerly awaiting the next! :)
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I'm surprised that Yugioh doesn't do what Pokemon does; which is putting in a code where you can redeem the physical deck in game, like the structure decks at least. Like Pokemon they put codes in their league battle decks. So it's cool you can buy decks that are designed around competitive play, and then redeem the code to play online when you're not at locals.
Each yugioh cards has a 8 digit number. Earlier days, these eight digit number were used to unlock the digital version of the cards in the yugioh video games konami develop upload until yugioh 5ds. It is unknown if such feature is discontinue as yugioh duel links and master duel lack the password unlock feature.
Subscribed because this was well put together, and now I’m interested in more of your videos
Subbing! Great chill video and super excited to see the Duel Cafe vid! Didnt know something like that existed!
Honestly I only started playing yugioh coz of how complex it was
bro is the ultimate chad
Never knew the supreme god emperor Kim "gigachad" Jong Un is so based
Phenomenal video, my friend. I played back in the OG days and would love to play again…it’s just way too complex for me at this point. SUBSCRIBED!
Great video & great editing/presentation as well. As someone thats been playing on and off since like '03 and has been trying to get my best friend into it for 13 years, a lot of your points are true in my experience. I've never played competitively so I'm not dropping 1K on a deck but it is still a big investment into a hobby that is incredibly complex. It is similar to Warhammer 40K, but a lot of people enjoy that hobby just by building/painting the minis, reading the novels, playing the video games, but with YuGiOh in order to enjoy it you have to learn 20 years worth of mechanics and complex rulings to even begin to play it.
Back when I first got into it you only had to remember the very basics of the game and try to build a strategy. Now I have to try and get my friend to understand a 25+ step combo without fucking it up while remembering the spell speeds of cards to chain block important starters to avoid getting handtrapped turn 0 😅
Super cool video. It’s so great to see there are communities and discords out there dedicated to helping people play. I remember being about 10 or so when it was popular for me and walking into my local card shops feeling intimidated by the older kids, but I always dueled with my brother . I wish I had this kinda access to tourneys and people to duel against back in the day, but it’s alright.
It’s pretty crazy tho to see how the game has changed over the years since duelist kingdom era, maybe one day it’ll be less complicated haha
I started playing Yugioh a week ago and it was scary, the first days in Ranked everyone broke my face in one move and I didn’t understand anything, now I don’t always get my face broken (low rating lol), but I began to understand what the game is like at the current time.
- 80% of the cards in Yugioh are garbage (there are about 13,000 of them in total);
- New cards and especially meta cards generate a lot of resources and are too strong (many special conditions that are activated from the hand, from the cemetery, when sent to the cemetery, when interacting with the deck, etc.);
- Fusion/Synchro/XUZ/Link (understanding how they work is not too much of a problem) their endless uncontrolled synergies generate a ton of resources;
- If you do not have cancel cards in your starting hand, then you most likely lost, since your opponent will disperse the table and any of your movements on your first turn will be blocked.
In the game, it is not enough to have individual strong cards or have strong synergies; you need to have several strong synergies in your deck and for them to synergize with each other.
PS The Yugioh Masters' Duel is truly like an 18th century duel, where everything is decided in two moves.
Honestly im 20 and as a long time yugioh player i cant enjoy this new stuff. I still don’t know how pendulum summoning works. I think it’s complicated for no reason
I don't get why people just don't understand pendulums. they're a pretty simple mechanic and a blast to play with.
@@friezusworld9119 well why don't you explain it then mr.smart guy?
@@DrakeMeatRider lmao
You got your scales, those red and blue diamonds, depending on the number you can pen summon monsters between those levels. For example, I have a scale 1 and a scale 8 I can pen summon monsters between the levels of 2 to 7.
When a pendulum monster is in the pen zone you can use their spell effects, when they are on a monster zone you can use the monster effect if they have one.
When they are destroyed they go face up on top of the extra deck, and on your next turn you can pen summon them back to the field if you choose to do so. If detached from an XYZ as material they would go to grave since they are in that xyz material "limbo".
That's a general QRD, there are videos that would better explain it than I did, but it's a fun mechanic and allowed for those classic bad cards to be played. I built a DM otk deck back in 2016 using the PEPE engine and that deck was able to outpace most other decks at that time. Was fun dropping an otk with Dark Magician on people.
@@friezusworld9119i just wanna summon dark magician man.
I had not played the game since I graduated from elementary and decided to download duel links in last year of university and I feel it was a great way to come back since it allowed me to learn all the new summonings at my own pace, its been years and im still playing on the app
This is definitely a topic that can use a longer video, but this one is still great and would love to see you touch on the subject more. I’m somebody who tried getting back into Yu-Gi-Oh when the game came out on Switch. Did the story mode and was so excited that they had cards from all generations. Made my deck and was ready to go online, so I did and proceeded to watch my opponent play Solitaire. “Okay no big deal let’s try again” and once again I’m watching somebody play Solitaire. Once again I tried and I just couldn’t get anything done at all.
I already knew stuff like Pendulum Monsters and other new mechanics existed but I didn’t know it was that bad in terms of one turn kills. Decided to drop the game and tried again when that Duel Links came out and again same deal. It was boring as hell and was way to fast to lose. Now after all of that I decided to see online what some of the cards that were being used against me were worth irl for curiosity sake cause I assumed the best stuff would be expensive and I was right. At that point I was baffled as to why anybody would willingly play this game.
Just got into Magic the Gathering a few months ago and have been loving it and playing with friends and even going to local shops to try a hand. I’ve had some back and forth and just some outright blow me up, but it was fun and I was learning and wanting to learn more. Decently simple to understand, great art and even had some crossovers that made me really interested. More of my friends themselves have been talking about MtG and even people at my job started playing recently on their own accord. When asked about why they got into it most all have the same answer “I wanted to try to get back into Yu-Gi-Oh, but it sucks now”.
You know it's funny, that one person mentioned being able to use a QR code or something to get your physical cards into MD is something that would help them enjoy it. Oldschool Yugioh video games actually used to do that all the time. Every card has a passcode on the bottom right corner of it that you could enter in older games like Sacred Cards or Duel Academy to get a copy of that card in-game. It'd actually be sick if Konami brought that back for MD and would honestly be a great way to bridge the gap between MD and the TCG
dude amazing video, and great production, i thought this video was from some kind of big channel. Definitely gained a sub bro
Quality content, my friend. Keep it up. I literally feel just like you described in the video. I tried to pick up Yu-Gi-Oh recently, and it felt impossible... Maybe the VR thing is the future, who knows.
Honestly, Yu-Gi-Oh was always kinda a bad game from the beginning.
One thing I see a lot of people online not realize is that the manga and anime came before the actual card game. Meaning the card game was made to facilitate a story, not to be a good game in its own right. This puts me in an odd position in that I actually love Kazuki Takahashi's original manga and the anime based on it, but not any of the actual real-life games based on it.
I remember having a cousin who was into Yu-Gi-Oh (the TCG) and tried to get me into it, but even back then I didn't like it--I really only played it because he did and it was either play it or do nothing, and even with that, I started being like "let's just hook up my SNES and play Super Bomberman."
Like... back in the day, there were so many cards and mechanics that were just superfluous. Nobody used rituals, any level 5 or higher monster had to be broken to be even worth summoning, and most decks were just beatdown decks. If you want to recreate this, go play Eternal Duelist's Soul. It gets very boring, very quickly.
Obstensibly the modern game sounds like it could be better by having more actual thought and strategy, but instead all I hear is that everyone needs to play these combo decks that essentially are all about whoever gets off the FTK.
To recuse myself real quick though, Trading Card Games are kinda stupid anyway. Good games are learnable and have some kind of coherency to them. When I play Doom I can learn the value of the Plasma Rifle versus the BFG versus the Chainsaw. When I play a TCG though there's too many moving parts and a whole lot of mechanics I might never interact with. The same brain space I might use to learning the entire NES library has instead to be dedicated to memorizing thousands of cards, and not just the info on the cards but also what rulings Konami has made about them and every possible interaction. You'll excuse me if that sounds like a bridge too far.
And no, Magic the Gathering is NOT better about this. Not by much, anyway. In fact I think the only card game I ever liked is Ani-Mayhem, and that one played more like a tabletop RPG than a card game.
I only follow the game nowadays, but my actual involvement in the game ended a long time ago, in the XYZ era. That was the last time I played the game and was also really good at it.
This is so well put together that im subbing to a Yu-Gi-Oh channel and i dont play any version. Im also sending this to a friend who does play. 😂
I've been trying a "Progression Series"-esque type of teaching style for my friends who want to get into ygo, and it's been working alright so far, though it requires a lot of patience. Where like the first deck has just a bunch of old school staples (e.g. Breaker, Exiled Force, D.D. Lady, Mobius, Mirror Force, MST, etc.) to play around, and do simple combos (Creature Swap + Sangan/WotBF, Marauding Lock, etc.). Then it transition up into the different summoning mechanics, in order (so, Fusion, Synchro, Xyz, Pendulum, Links), with decks designed (and mostly nerfed) to move at specific speeds, simulating the ramp-up in speed over the years but in fast-forward over the course 1-3 weeks.
This is kinda how i got into it too.
Started with Duelist of the Rose, then moved on to championship 2008, then downloaded master duel
And now I have a crippling addiction :)
good luck with your progression series homie
Link evolution is good for this as a video game but it's much better to have friends that play already and learning as a group
I'm just a guy commenting to support the video or something, idk. Just wanna say I've been watching since your youtube shorts, since the way you edited your shorts was actually rather interesting especially on the monster card lores like the fallen of albaz and the live twins. The way those edits were eye catching carried on to your videos. Keep it up, do what you wanna do, hope to see you big
appreciate it! will def be making more lore vids
While I'm sure there are new players who do make the leap, the streamer montage you showed of new players playing Master Duel is the problem. The game is too hard, and not because rules interactions are complicated (everyone can learn how those work if they played other TCGs) or that mechanics are simply too complicated to understand, but the issue is the fact that the game's tutorial basically asks you to learn 50-different mechanics, and so new players simply get overwhelmed and quit due to brain overload. If you are an existing player, you don't see this problem because you learned less mechanics at the start and learned all the new mechanics as they came out, but a new player has to learn everything you did at the start plus the years of new card designs/mechanics on top of all of that.
I think annother problem YuGiOh runs into is that it has two completely different bases.
I was talking to the owner of the card shop close to me yesterday, he said they stopped doing YuGiOh a few months ago.
Not because they werent popular -far from it. But because there was such a devide between the hyper competitive players, and those who were more casual.
The owner said he kept giving warnings to overly competitive players that there decks were too strong and it was turning off newer people from the store. - and of course it just removes the fun of playing a game.
A card game where only one side is having fun isn't good.
This annoys me cause he is seriously the only card shop that isn't >45 minutes away.
Facts
Playing in person is so much harder. Especially if the other person has been keeping up to date. I'm a bit of a Yugi-boomer. So my friend just started throwing down cards and telling me there effects and I just have to take his word for it. Other wise I'm reading 3 paragraphs for a single card effect lol
See I don’t really like opponents who don’t check in. If i’m playing against a person who’s never seen my deck I think it’s important to explain the deck and its weaknesses as I play instead of just overloading them with info or having them figure it out.
the background music (for anyone interested) is most likely a lofi remix of Kaikai Kitan by Eve.
great video btw. been playing for almost 19 years and i've only been able to keep up with the meta for a couple of seasons out of that whole time. i feel like a lot of the fun of the game gets sucked out by the insane rulings and that everyone at a locals thinks they need to play at 500mph or they'll die. playing casually with friends is a much better experience, at least for me.
speed duels are also a good option for beginners. it slows the game down and even seasoned players can enjoy using old cards knowing that they actually have some use in the format.
i hope to see more from this channel. it's nice to see a yugituber with a more relaxed attitude to the game and some very honest opinions.
First time I saw Yugioh cards IRL as a kid, I thought those were some kind of knock-offs cards you could buy on bazzar or get from pack of chips
Man... Yugioh is such a weird game.
I'm a Yugi-boomer, who originally stopped playing around 2005ish, and only came back with the launch of Master Duel. I'll be real, my first deck in Master Duel was a Harpie deck. And I actually managed to make it to Plat V with it, because most of the people playing those first few weeks were people like me, older players coming back for the nostalgia. HOWEVER, I would come across quite a few of the players who actually knew how to play, and watching a combo deck just go full gas for 10 minutes really was intimidating. After reaching Platinum, I went from a 55-60% win rate, to literally 10%. I wanted to quit, and I would have if I didn't have a RL friend who was getting into the paper format whom I didn't want to just stop playing with. I can't even imagine a boomer trying to join in today, with 90% of the players playing modern stuff.
It took me months of playing and looking up ways to upgrade my Harpie deck, and using all of the new summon mechanics with that deck (Because surprisingly, Harpies have at least one of every summon type. It's kinda nutty.) before I finally started to realize no matter what I did with Harpies, even if they had a really good card in Feather Storm, it just couldn't stack up and I would need to learn newer decks to even stand a chance.
And even still, I still wouldn't consider myself "Good" at Yugioh. I still avoid massively long combo decks that build 2-4 negates. I prefer to stay as in archetype as possible. I like decks that at least interact in unique and cool ways. I seem to really like terrible decks. (After Harpies, my next deck was Suships. Since then, I've learned Ghoti and Vaylantz.) I've only just recently started trying a deck that even comes close to being strong in Vanquish Soul, but by now that deck is trash compared to the meta stuff. I just learn really slowly, and by the time I work up the nerve (and earn the gems) to learn a new deck, it's already outclassed by the new stuff.
I know this is rambling and what not, but I feel like I need to say this. As much as I think the game is too complicated these days, after having played new Yugioh, even as a boomer, I couldn't go back to say, goat or eddison format. While the simplicity of the game back then was nice, after getting used to the way the game is played now, I understand why people like it. Nothing feels better than worming your way out of an enemy board that looked unbreakable, or pulling off a really cool interaction with bounces to dodge an effect or something. I genuinely believe that the game is more fun now than it ever has, but the new decks are also more oppressive than ever too. In a game where there are so many archetypes, and so many different ways to play, there are only a select few that even stand a chance in competitive. THAT is what bothers me about Yugioh.
Amazing video, thanks for sharing
The problem with yugioh is that you ether play to win by playing the same meta as everybody else or you play your favorite archtype and accept you will never win with it
Awesome video, great job!
Subscribed!! I think it's the "Choice of Decks" for Newbie actually plays more of an important role introducing for old Yugioh players!! (XYZ is the best way to go since people can easily understand two-level-4 making into 1 boss with negates such as Utopia Leo Ray (created from Utopia Double) + some others like Swordsoul, DMs' era deck like Blue-eyes, DM, Toon cause it's designed to be simple for our old Yugi fanbase- not strong but simple)
I’ve been in love with Yu-Gi-Oh since it came out back in the day. Had hundreds of physical cards, a GameBoy game and watched the anime. I really enjoy Master Duels and I haven‘t spent any money on it. But yeah, it‘s gotten complicated. I‘ve lost to crazy OTK decks where one turn takes ages. Not a bit fan of link monsters too. But nonetheless I really enjoy it.
Ever consider proxying? 87 pages of cards with 6 cards per page is 40 dollars, and cheap sleeves is 15$ for 100; so 15x5x1.13=84.75.
So under 200 for a cube.
This from a guy who proxied his own Yu-Gi-Oh cube.
i truly wonder if proxying will ever become as accepted in ygo as it is in mtg
I got into master duel about a year ago, and had a full competitive phase that lasted two months. I hit a point in ranked where certain decks became meta, turns lasted 3 minutes, and the game turned into a pack opening simulator. I’m glad I didn’t spend too much money on the game :/ but at the same time it feels like there was a ceiling I never reached
Ive gotten back into master duel, and before i used to be terrified of playing against actual people, so the fact they have a solo mode really helps people who arent yet confident in their decks. Not to mention the bots can be pretty challenging sometimes on their final stage. It gives players both the ability to test their decks, while maybe interesting them in a new one
I loved Yu-Gi-Oh as a kid, and did play it properly for a while beyond just "caveman Yu-Gi-Oh" as well. I dropped off around Cyberdark Impact, as I just couldn't afford it anymore and my life was ramping up with further studies, so I also couldn't dedicate time to it anymore either.
Flash forward to now and the problem with Yu-Gi-Oh is you pretty much can't return to it. It is not inaccessible to returning players, left alone first-timers.
Coming back many years later with games like Magic the Gathering or Pokemon is fine, because yes, while powercreep and the evolution of those games is still definitely a thing too, it's not like it is with Yu-Gi-Oh. This game by comparison to those is a whole other beast; it was easy for me to jump back on board with Magic and Pokemon as the core gameplay remains essentially the same in both. With Yu-Gi-Oh, it's an entirely different card game nowadays. Because it has no mana-based system like Magic or Pokemon to rein it in, it has been powercrept into the stratosphere. So much so that people can pull off the ludicrous FTKs you see nowadays with combos that entirely negate your opponent from even responding.
Yu-Gi-Oh has turned itself from a fun interactive 2-player experience into solitaire.
Played the game for many of my teenage years. Konami over did it after synchro/xyz. They shouldn't have changed the field area, for instance. For a TCG to survive it has to maintain certain things sacred. FTKs, for instance, cannot become a norm, they should be the exception.
Game was fun when it was unpredictable and everyone had a chance to win.
I remember defeating many of the top decks at the time with fun combos that were, in principle, weaker and less consistent. These were also cheaper, smartly crafted decks. Now you wait for people to play the game alone. You're a spectator, not an opponent.
This video is awesome, sick shoutout to remote dueling and the brotherhood discord I'm on it all the time 👍
ty homie!
I'm a bit of an odd ball because I used master duel to find a deck I like and then started buying the cards for it. Thankfully Galaxy-Eyes isn't super expensive to build for but my actual biggest issue is that there's no card shops in my city at all so I'd have to take a bus to the next city over to actually play with anyone. Finding out that there's a group to play with over discord is great.
Regarding the code thing, Chaotic cards actually have a code that used to be used to bring your cards into online play
When come to the "physical cards" Konami see us from the WEST as "money tree" and they f us over by short printing, turn meta or staple cards into hard to get cards. They make more money by doing this. This name of staple card in the OCG might only cost...$5 or $20 in USD at the most but the TCG legal West card is super hard to get so therefore the secondary market is in high demand. An meta deck shouldn't cost $1000 to $2000 and I'm not saying that a meta should cost $50 either.
As a Yugi boomer in my view Yugioh went downhill when Synchro entered the game.
Video took a weird 180 with the VR stuff, up until that tho I loved the video dude straight fax
Can't wait for part 2!
beautiful minidoc, always keep going i was so interested and even entertained!! rlly good work! ^_^ mrowwww ;3c
Bro you convinced me to try to get into VR just for that server.
I would say it is the major 3.
1) lack of an anime.
It sounds odd, but it is true. The anime gives you a basis to learn, introduce new people, and draw in a new audience. Even then there are character archtype decks that some people are drawn to more due to their love for the protag or seeing a neat combo or idea they saw in the anime and decided to build their own version of it.
2) Cost of physical game.
Just look at the top decks and tell me how many of them have common or uncommon cards. Most of them tend to be the SR or UR spots and usually the ones that did well in japan get bumped up into the UR slots to ensure you have to buy more packs and hope you get lucky to pull it.
Without an Anime to tie it to there is less of a need to make good or useful archtype lower ranking rarity cards and simply focus on the SR and UR cards as the commons and uncommon are left as space fillers in packs not worth much.
3) Lack of a plan.
A bit of an odd point to make, but let's look at the formats. OCG, TCG, Master Duel, and Duel Links... those are the big four. OCG and TCG are physical products which are rather expensive today.
Master Duel and Duel Links are the cheaper version... but also their own mess as Duel Links is it's own format so no physical play. Master Duel is considered it's own format even if it can help you learn how to play it is far different than the physical format.
Also to draw back to the first point... there is a lack of a plan or need to make decks balanced.
With anime decks being sold off the protagonist you needed cards to face one another to look interesting for a duel. The MC needs good cards, but the MC must also face opponents with good cards to battle against to make the duel interesting.
Without the anime... we get a lot more Tier 0 decks lasting a lot longer. There is no need to make them balanced as the 'balance method' is based upon people's wallets... and the only way those decks get knocked off the Tier 0 format is by banning cards for the broken combos... or making an even more broken deck appear.
There is no rival deck, no rival plan, and thus the decks only get faced off whatever the current idea of 'player vs player' which tends to devolve into... budget vs budget.
Master Duel has this problem also bleed into it. Take a look at how many people like to play the game, but only prefer to play at 'gold ranking' which is the wild west allowing you to face against multiple types of decks, deck ideas, and combos... and then how people groan when they run into the latest meta deck.
4) bonus round - Turn times.
Depending on the player some get annoyed that the game seems 'to fast' or more precisely 'too long'.
We get decks like Black Wing or some of the other major long infinite combo decks. Not the 'synchro deck' or 'zombie deck' that plays a lot of cards, but the decks that can take ten to fifteen minutes for them to finish their first turn as you have only your hand to stop the infinity combo they plan to play and also continue to play even if you break up a piece of their combo.
Some decks being the 'OTK' where if they go first they win before you played your first card. Some being the 'Board wall' where they sent up the board to the point you can't break it. Then some being the 'F@@! You' decks which prevent you from doing anything as they win regardless if you went second or first.
It is why people default to some of the other games or older formats preferring to 'trade blows' rather than watch someone else play solitaire in the modern format leaving you stuck waiting until letting you know they won or not.
As while the 'trading blows' can still result in your loss... it at least felt like you had a chance at winning rather than feeling as if you wasted your time and should have gave up after now having the perfect hand/needed hand.
I used to compete in tournaments locally and state during the Goat era. I just hopped on master duel and the catch up is just crazy.
On the flip side, Magic the Gathering is doing awesome. Commander is a super fun format and really easy for new players to get into. I would encourage any Yugioh player to consider getting into Magic
What I think would help the game seriously, however would be difficult in the grand scheme of things, is organizing tournaments that only do master rule 1. (The set of rules you see in duel monsters.) if we can have get-togethers and games that only focus on the base level of yugioh without complex mechanics like link or XYZ summoning, that’d help greatly. We need to get back to the roots of yugioh
I haven't played competitively YGO in almost 3 years. I decided to visit my locals to see what's new and 90% of the people playing were still the same people from when I quit but just older and balder.
Gave Master Duel a try when it came out. I think I made a Monarch deck and played some games. Most games weren't fun, I had no idea what my opponent was doing. Every card had endless text resulting in endless combos. I tried studying some decks but after a while I just couldn't and got bored. Such a shame because I loved the music and sound effects of this game. Might give it another try if one day I could play some older simpler formats.
Feels like a part time job to keep up with everything, so you know when to play one of your 12 hand traps. Which is why I quit around 2021. And it feels more like my opponent is playing solitär to setup their boss monster while I just wait 10min.
Old-school yugioh player here, the game speeding up and lack of rotation is why I personally quit playing, when u play frog/monarchs and the new set where DaD comes out and pub stomps EVERY deck in the format, that's when I was done
I’ve been on a break with the TCG yugioh for a little while now. I sorta still try to keep up with the new archetypes and ban lists and stuff but I’m definitely not an active player.
I tried Master Duel when it came out but quickly lost interest cuz it required a lot of money to get the same decks that I physically already had.
Doesn’t help that I’m and old school player in the way that I will always prefer having the physical cards over virtual cards. There’s something that feels so great about having your favorite decks at hand. Like my Mekk-Knights. Absolutely love that deck.
There will always be a deck (or decks) that you just identify that just can’t be replicated with virtual cards
Yu-Gi-Oh used to have a system to add the card to the video games. They should have kept it in the games. I remember buying booster packs just to try to get more cards in forbidden memories.
Been getting into Duel Links recently. I am managing to so fairly ok without spending much, or any, real money, and I'm enjoying the experience. I'm not much of an "in-person TCG meeting place" kind of person, so this is a better experience for me. I'm not engaging with Ranked since I don't enjoy the "bullshit decks" that causes a 1-or-2 turn loss. Duel Links is missing the social aspect entirely, so I suppose that's quite unlike most of (local) TCG, but hey.. I'm having a good time regardless.
I just found duel cafe last night and had a couple games in it! Was great!
This is an awesome video!
8:31
What are the other green 2 slots next to the link zones?
Field spells
The issue I had...I started to play in person, and then the store I was playing at became ots certified, which brought in all the high skill players. Which left me getting stomped and I'm not spending $100's on cards.
All of these points are really valid. It might be a hot take, but I think Speed Duel was a great answer to these issues. It's unfortunate that it had so much things going against it, from entitled players hating the simple pacing, content creators saying it's a scam and even a good portion of people within Konami seemingly disliking it to the point where it was not advertised as the gem it is.
Speed duel had a rough start. The first wave of cards were not very fun…we started with what, Champion’s Vigilance Blue Eyes? You’re not playing many meaningful games with or against that. It took a couple years for them to realize that making it more like a board game starting with the Battle City box was a better route for it to go. And by that point it’s off everyone’s radar and interest for Time Wizard formats were resurfacing.
Time Wizard formats are the past and future for YGO. They should just accept that and make more products so people can easily access decks at their local store.
@@connermorgan9223take this reality with a grain of salt, speed duel and time wizard isn't a format that Konami JP and ocg players supports, and we have absolute control towards the game direction not Konami global, 99% of yugioh cards available are made and designed by Konami jp, and they didn't support old format or time wizard or whatever you call it there.
There's a severe difference between casual tcg and ocg playerbase In terms of the direction of the game we don't want to be shackled the all gas no brake is the main selling of yugioh and you want to slow it down? No way 😂, and Konami will always prioritize local market, considering they made 500m last year purely on yugioh ocg (2nd highest selling In Japan 10 times bigger than mtg at number 5 with profit around 40-50m no1 is Pokémon 1.6 billion) with extra 500 from master duel.
Tcg players should follow ocg direction otherwise the game will be broken as f because you ends up playing cards that designed for ocg players who wants speed but majority of tcg players don't want that.
@@r3zaful makes me wonder if yugioh sells because of collectibility v playability over there. In other words, do people buy ocg to collect or play? Pokémon is still the best selling card game by far there and it’s not even close. And Pokémon hasn’t changed its fundamental identity for the entire time. Mtg doesn’t do as well, it’s an American game and they like their IP there just like how we like ours here.
crazy high quality vid was expecting 80k subs no 80 lmao
I remember starting master duel this last week and spending all my currency on a starter deck so I could play and use the new cards for the archetypes I liked “i played duel links and link evolution a lot” and in my first match a guy summoned 3 boss monsters on his first turn and made me discard 2 cards before I even played anything. The issue with the game imo is that traps need to have some inherent protection in order for them to be used again and cards should have specific effects the synergies with specific cards rather than paragraphs of effects that just link them to an archetype and allow massive chains of effects off of any card
My friend had a good suggestion for fixing these ftk or massive first turns people constantly make. Make it so you can only summon monsters up to the turn you are on. For example, on turn one you can summon one monster, turn two two, turn three three and so on. It is so frustrating seeing someone get their boss monster out on turn one bc they can special summon 9 things off of one level one monster
If you’re jumping in from after a little time; may I recommend getting the blue eyes Max structure deck; not only do you get to
use blue eyes, but you’ll have the cards you need to catch up to the meta with it! It’s also not as much of a convoluted mess to play! (It’s still convoluted however)
It needs more than one format. Magic the gathering’s longevity comes from its multiple ways to play, from sealed to standard to legacy and commander etc. new players have no entry level format, they must know everything the games ever produced
My main problem with the game as a person thats been playing since xyz cards came out is that trying to get my friends to play it is extremely difficult due to how fast the game is that one of my friends said something that kinda stuck with me "how am I supposed learn the game if I loose turn one with no chance of actually playing the game and learning from my mistakes"
Another one of my friends mentioned that the power creep of the game is so big that it forces new players to just look up online for the best decks available and at that point you loose that sense of building your own deck with your own cards and it makes the game extremely stale when every duel is the same cookie cutter deck from a website.
AND EVEN THEN, when using those top tier decks you found, a new player will have no idea as to how to use it or what combos are good since that would require you to have either multiple years of experience with the card game to know when to use what or simply have to do intense research on each indivudually card and how its used and its too much work and too many hoops to jump to justify playing as a new player
Nothing but facts here
I played as a kid up to 5ds and loved it but it’s just unapproachable to relearn. I’ll always love the IP and concept of yugioh but I’ll never play it aside from the occasional master duel, and duel links or speed duel.
I can play the old formats with the DS games but that’s it
I am actually new to Yu-Gi-Oh and tbh at the moment I really don't have any interest in playing master duels, both because of the commitment but mostly because I just really love having the physical cards!
Though I realized it's probably harder to make the deck I want this way... Who knows maybe in a few months I'll manage to gather all the cards I want🤷♀️
I tried picking up Yu-Gi-Oh, through the mobile version, and there was too much happening and too many blocks of text on cards and interactions where you had NO idea what was going on, since everyone was pjaying combo decks.
The basic rules are fine, but the mirror-flat learning cliff of each individual cards and players makes ita impossible to really get into.
traded my yugioh collection for a single vanguard deck, and even though vanguard died. best decision ever.
Ive been playing yugioh on and off for the better part of a decade (ocg) i couldnt imagine playing it in person. Imagine playing against someone in person and they are running some ultra complicated zombie deck for example. A million effects going on back to back to back. Man I wouldnt know wtf is going on 😂 and asking who im playing to explain the whole process man Id probably just get cussed out and they'd quit. Master Duel really made things so much simpler for everyone.
And yeah buying tcg packs should give at least a pack in master duel of that pack. Pokemon online tcg does that. Inside every card pack is a QR code you can use to claim a pack. I dont know how they havent thought of this yet whether it be greed or what
I’m a weird one. I was a 90s kid, but I didn’t watch the anime for whatever reason.
I got into Yu-Gi-Oh MD close to two years ago and the rest is history. I wonder how many weird late bloomers there are out there like me? It’s funny too because back then I was intimidated by Yu-Gi-Oh, and here I’ve gotten into it when it’s all crazy complicated 🤷♂️
IMO yugioh back in 2010-2012 was the peak.. Synchros added a cool strategy without making it too complicated
agreed, XYZ's spiced it up a bit but when they eventually took over, it kinda got a little dull. I would always try incorporate tuners into the main deck for a few synchro plays.
You're right. People ARE interested in Yugioh. But they're not interested in learning an extremely dense and esoteric game. It's ironic that a children's card game with huge casual appeal is actually a very difficult game to play. It takes a lot of time to get into when... why don't I just play or do literally any other hobby? People bitch about Konami being bad at bringing in new players but they already have an answer: Rush Duel. Rush Duel takes the 25 years of broken Yugioh design and lessons and makes it not only very accessible but emphasizes what people love about it. People love bukkake-ing 20 special summons in normal Yugioh so let's allow players to summon as much as they want in Rush Duel. Yugioh was designed by a writer who wanted to write cool stories. Rush Duel was designed by game designers that want to make you feel cool. Nobody wants to watch someone play solitaire. No one wants to read a novel in tiny text with 4 different floating effects to remember. IMO, Yugioh was never designed to be played this long, hence, why it's become the mutant Frankenstein of a game it is today.
Learning how to play yugioh; The summoning methods, Types/Attributes, Archetypes, Memorizing Strategies lines & counters, Turn1/Turn2 endboards..... ect.
Very complicated to learn if your learning on your own. Found it easier to play games like Duel Links to learn on a smaller format. What i found was most annoying, How difficult it was to obtain an optimal deck in a reasonable time. I can understand why new players are not joining.