Rebuild YGO from scratch, how would you do it?

[Shinobi Phoenix]

People like to complain about the current state of the game, but usually they have no answers to how they would do it better or their suggestions aren't better, just bias.  Maybe the game should be started over from absolute scratch to fix the true problems from the very beginning that lead to the problems of now.

 

If you had the opportunity to rebuild YGO from scratch (except you have to keep the broader card mechanics that exist now, so no getting rid of Synchros and Xyz's out of bias, but you can change out they work to fit your new mechanics).

 

How would you do it?  Do you really think it would be accepted? 

 

Would you make it resource based like most all other games (Magic, Vs. etc.) or would you figure out a way to keep it similar to current (no direct resource managing)?

 

 

How would you actually fix the game without breaking the spirit of the game?  Would you actually try to ditch Fusions, Rituals, Synchros and Xyz's or would you apply your fixes to them as well?

 

 

Would you borrow from other games to fix it (no matter how successful the other game is)?

[.Rai]

What the game needs isn't a total reboot, it's a refining. The game system itself is fine. If it wasn't, it would have been dead within no time. Such is the fickleness of the market. Rulings change, naturally, as a game evolves, so YGO does no wrong there either. Should YGO borrow from other TCGs regarding game system? Absolutely not. Why should it?

The real fault of YGO lies in the design of the cards themselves. Simple. The fact that there is a significantly long banlist is proof of it. By the very nature of it, anything on the banlist is likely to have been designed badly. What the game could do with is a general culling of a lot of cards. Badly designed cards shouldn't really exist. They should hire a dedicated design team (if they have one already, they do a mediocre job at best), and figure out how design on YGO works to the maximum. It's what's behind every creative company: card-game based or not. Design is the core, and get that core wrong, and it all goes topsy-turvy.

[Expelsword]

I would hire Superdoopertrooper as my lead card designer with Kingdom Neos as my playtester and Darkplant as my marketing advisor.

[Just Crouton]

Off the top of my head.

 

I would start by firing the entire R&D staff and blacklisting them so they never work on another card game again...then gather the townsfolk with torchs and pitchforks to force out of town with every card on the banlist tied to them like they're scapegoats.

 

I would focus less "Archetype [x]" and focus more on Types and Attributes, and try to make new cards interact with old cards better.

 

Make less junk cards.

 

The problem with Konami is that the banlist is not a tool to get rid of overpowered cards, but as a tool to kill popular decks so players have to buy the new cards Konami wants people to buy. Don't believe me? Last March, Konami hit Agents and Plants because people insisted on playing those decks over the new stuff, while this March, they hit Zenmaighty to make sure no one plays Wind-Ups over the decks they want people to play. Konami continues to make ridiculous broken cards such as Dragon Rulers, despite last March featuring combos like the Wind-Up Hand Loop and the Inzektor Combo.

 

I assure you, by March '14, Dragon Rulers, Spellbooks, and Fire Fists will all be dead and replaced with even more broken decks.

 

All that said, the banlist would exist to get rid of problem cards like a banlist should rather than kill last format's decks to sell the new ones.

 

Making the game slower so getting a Fusion, Synchro, or Xyz on the field actually means something.

 

Release Exodia and similar cards as collector cards that can't be used in a duel like the Match Winners.

 

Starter/Structure Decks will be made with the intent to win rather than be a mish-mash of random cards with a couple new ones.

[Shinobi Phoenix]

What the game needs isn't a total reboot, it's a refining. The game system itself is fine. If it wasn't, it would have been dead within no time. Such is the fickleness of the market. Rulings change, naturally, as a game evolves, so YGO does no wrong there either. Should YGO borrow from other TCGs regarding game system? Absolutely not. Why should it?

The real fault of YGO lies in the design of the cards themselves. Simple. The fact that there is a significantly long banlist is proof of it. By the very nature of it, anything on the banlist is likely to have been designed badly. What the game could do with is a general culling of a lot of cards. Badly designed cards shouldn't really exist. They should hire a dedicated design team (if they have one already, they do a mediocre job at best), and figure out how design on YGO works to the maximum. It's what's behind every creative company: card-game based or not. Design is the core, and get that core wrong, and it all goes topsy-turvy.

Then you're missing the point that this is ABOUT starting from scratch.  The systems in places are what lead to it, not fixing the system that is in place or we'll just have the exact discussion that is being had and nothing is solved.

 

Good games have gone away just like bad ones.  YGO at the core isn't actually a very good game (it's just "ok" if you take account all the problems), just popular because of the marketing and ease of

 

So, fix it at the core, the cards are a product of the rules and mechanics in place they must fit around.  For example:  if a card causes an FTK and they are (considered) bad because players will continue to play them that way regardless, then the problem will always come up and will continue to come up in the future.  The only noticable difference is that FTK are almost never caused by a card that ask for a resource.  So logically, the answer is resource management, except the game was never a resource management game because it was meant to be simple and yet, simple always gets to abuse when people decide for themselves what something is good for.

 

A long banlist is NOT proof of anything you suggest, nor is it the point of this thread.  Magic has a banlist too, but because of the other systems in place, almost no one ever notices or cares and no one feels restricted from building what they want beyond that.  Vs. System (which was controlled by Upper Deck as well), had a long ban list too and you can't say the cards were badly designed.  All you can say is no matter what you do, players will abuse an "exploit" (which is any part of card really, not just some loophole) in any card, fair or not.  In fact, a card that you design to be loophole proof, it wouldn't be worth printing and no one will use it, so you get right back to the original problem not being solved.

 

Another example is this whole Rescue Cat debate, we all know for a fact that no one gave a crap about it when it was first made and for years no one even gave it a look.  No one cares about ANYTHING in this card until something comes along that, both, changes how we look at things -and- someone gets noticed doing it.  It's not bad design, it's selective hindsight.  No one tries to look at far ahead or goes "I can't do this because of this thing I will make YEARS later or "this thing I made years ago" or you will be doing it constantly and never getting anything productive done.  Magic doesn't stop making powerful cards with high cost just because Fist of the Suns and Mycosynth Lattice exist. There are systems in place that help curb it that card design must wrap around.

 

The fact that people keep acting like it's ONLY the cards and blaming it on the game itself is tantamount to how much people don't really want it to change, only complain about it it but still use the cards and say it's the card's fault for existing but I've seen it usually come from the same people who are bad designers in the first place.

 

 

I really suggest checking out the "Drive to Work" Podcast, I promise, it's quite enlightening, especially if you listen to the 3-parter on Future Sight (which was the closest I've seen to attempting to test the waters on new mechanics on people while weathering the storm of its potential consequences AND being public about it).  Also, the topic on "Bad Cards" and "Psychographics".

 

Card design is a PART of the problem, but it's certainly not the only and people hate to look at the real problems (because one of them involves a mirror).  Is refining something that could help if it was to be done?  Yes, but it's not the only thing or all you will be doing it refining, there's no permanent answer that we'll ever say we're happy with (because the only ones who will say they are happy are the ones winning).  I just know that when I go on campus to play with friends, they aren't playing YGO, they're playing Magic and other games.  The one that do play YGO take the good with that bad and stopped caring to complain.

 

 

---------------------------------------------------------------------

Still, not on topic, which is doing a whole new game.  This not "fix the game" or "blame Konami" again, this is do a whole new game.  Not what is here, but actually change it at the core, then card design would wrap around that.  If this is your game and YGO didn't exist yet:  what rules and mechanics would you do instead?

 

 

 

I think all the time about how different YGO would have been if there has been a resource restriction or about what particular YGO card would have been like if made in Magic instead (and vice versa).

 

Would Magic's version of Chaos Emperor Dragon be as broken YGO's?  You'd likely have to pay a certain amount of Black and White Mana (and however many colorless) just to summon it.  It would have Summoning Sickness but the effect would likely be Tap activated with additional cost (which prevents it from going off as soon as it hits the field).  Even with other cards existing to speed it up (giving it Haste or such), they still all cost something to make it happen.  All the core systems in place prevent the same card from being nearly as dangerous as the counterpart (which has YGO's core systems in place).

 

Fixing the same card at card design level didn't fix the problem yet.  We had plenty of replacements and we didn't care about them because they were too slow compared to the rest of the game.  So Card Design Fixing isn't the whole solution.

[.Rai]

I listen to all of the Drive to Work podcasts, as well as plenty on pretty much most of MaRo's articles on card design. I can safely say that the reason why I consider Magic to be a better game in general is because that the cards are better designed. Easily. The game system is there from the beginning. That is what defines the game. To change it would be to make a new game altogether. I genuinely doubt people would play YGO if it had a resource system. Resource systems change gameplay completely, because they act as a slowing mechanism for a game; one of the big things about YGO is its relative speed to Magic. On the other hand, the introduction of things like the differentiations between a Normal Summon and a Special Summon in the first place are there to slow it down, but less so. That's what differentiates it from an even faster game like the Pokémon TCG. Trust me: the system is not the problem. If it was, it would have been dead long ago. There could be minor changes, but they certainly wouldn't need a reboot. Magic didn't reboot after mana burn's removal or through any other large changes.

Why do I suggest banlist changes? Because the way the game treats it is careless. Good design cares about the future. Simply because design in business needs to have longevity for the sake of having a business that lasts longer. Principle. To make cards that don't care about the future (i.e. could be abused) is amateur design. Instead, Konami just sticks things on a banlist to compensate. Why do think Magic's banlist is far smaller, and changes far less each season? One of MaRo's principles is exactly this: design should care about the future. Even in Magic, a largely rotational format-style game, it cares directly about the future. This has been made explicit many times in the words of the designers themselves.

In fact, a card that you design to be loophole proof, it wouldn't be worth printing and no one will use it, so you get right back to the original problem not being solved.

Of course nothing is loophole-proof, but you try to make things as watertight as possible. Elemental Dragons? If you look at the way they're designed, they cycle their effects into themselves. It's an engine on a card. Clearly, that's been made to be abusable. Rescue Cat. When it was designed, I could have argued it was bad design anyway. Nothing in a game like YGO should be able to do that.

Besides, what would you suggest to change the system?

Edit: Frankly, design like Chaos Emperor Dragon shouldn't exist in YGO or Magic anyway. And to compare power level between TCGs is futile.

Edit 2: To change the system of a game is to make a new game itself. Why exactly is this in the YGO TCG section then? HEX and Magic certainly do not share the same topics; despite their similarities, they have mechanical differences. Also, Chaos Emperor Dragon is broken in YGO largely due to a ridiculously easy-to-fulfill summoning condition. The equivalent of the card in Magic would literally be:

Chaos Emperor Dragon - Envoy of the End
{/} Creature - Dragon {R}
(Nonexistent mana costs can't be paid.)
You may exile a white creature card and a black creature card from your graveyard rather than pay Chaos Emperor Dragon - Envoy of the End's mana cost.
Pay 2 life, sacrifice Chaos Emperor Dragon - Envoy of the End: Destroy all creatures on the battlefield, then each player discards his or her hand. Each opponent loses 1 life for each card destroyed or discarded this way. Activate this ability only any time you could cast a sorcery.
[8/6]

That's still broken. You can balance it in Magic (via methods you suggested): still bad card design. To be honest, you can balance it in YGO. Literally just scaling the summoning conditions up more to an extent that only the most dedicated decks could play it would balance it, would it not? Still bad design.

[Sleepy]

Yugioh has never had balanced enough design. That's a problem I'd attempt to fix if it did restart from scratch.

Bandai had very vague rules, and Konami's version started off as 15 video game cards without a set of rules at all.

After that, it was the golden age of REAL casual players, where you could buy a pack and use virtually anything you pulled in a deck. Packs that had vanilla fillers that no one minded in such an early stage.

 

First banned cards, up to Invasion of Chaos, I actually understand, because as the casual game it was, the mentality of "rare and powerful" to thrill fans of the show kind of made sense for a company that's still experimenting with the whole idea.

 

Though, we all know how badly design kept turning out afterwards, at times when they can no longer put that excuse. The fact that a new list is needed on a regular basis says how careless they are. No, careless is not the word, this is deliverate, because cards are mostly enclosed into small archetypes, there is no excuse to not seeing the few potential abusable combos there, especially assuming there's a team of employees dedicated to playtest and design the cards entirely. Well, the way the game is now, they can't just make stronger cards that easily, they have to constantly downgrade the power of older decks beforehand. It's like a ceiling glass limit.

 

Excess of archetypes is a problem, it restricts options that a random beginner would like to have when buying a pack. Yugioh seriously has gradually killed it's casual fanbase. I don't consider anyone "casual" anymore. If you have to know about the banlist + limited list + semi-limited list + tiers of the moment + the contents of new packs specifically, and regular prices, you are not casual, and very few (if any) people are actually ignorant towards these factors while actively playing. Not to mention the huge gap between casual and competitive. I agree that losing decks will always be a possibility regarless, but having them lose in a couple of turns without being able to as much as complete a single combo is more than upsetting, and definitely discouraging for someone that wanted to try the game out.

 

Though, it's not even about right now's top tiers. Take out Spellbooks and Dragons, Mermails and Fire Fists become more of a problem, take them out, Dinno Rabbit, Dark Worlds, Six Sams and Karakuris become the problem, and so on. I'm not even going against the "relativity" of the game's tiers, but the ones I got to mention still have rather consistent OTKs. While OTKs(well, haven't seen one in Fire Fists, actually) cannot be erased, when they can take 2 or 3 cards to make and/or are very consistent, it's not good. My point is, there are several layers of decks that contain cards that could have been handled better, that would have caused to, at least indirectly, make the pase of powercreep go much slower. 

(note that I said "layers of decks that contain cards", and did not adress all those layers as "broken decks").

 

 

Lastly, even though I agree that the game does not need to borrow rules and mechanics from the other TCGs, I'd agree with the game having them as alternate options for alternate formats. It would add different ways of playing the game, help the developers see what styles are more popular, and might give a purpose to a broather number of cards, I say this because I see the so called "Pegasus Challenge" and can't help but think that some emloyee just thought out the ideas in 5 minnutes and left saying "my work is done".

"Make a deck with only rares"

"Play with half the banlist unbanned" *gives new banlist*

"Make a 100-card deck"

"Run a deck with at least 4 of each EARTH, WIND, FIRE, WATER"

 

Not all are too bad, but things like the "rares" one are far from what I had in mind when making alternate and more casual formats.

 

I'm sure I wanted to say more, or explain things better, but it's almost 1am, and I'm under the sleepifying effect of some medicine I took so, Good Night~

 

EDIT:

I feel better, and am more rested now, so I just finished editing the above a bit because some of it almost looked like a drunk person had typed it (I must have been more tired than I thought without knowing). Moving on.

 

 

To conclude, early days was obviously an experimenting stage where they were building up from scratch, now KNOWING how things work, I would have personally tried a few different designs on cards, but that's more or less it. After that, it's just a slow chain reaction I would have slowed down with better design in certain cards. For Example: Cyber Dragon should have been a Normal Summon or have less than 1000 ATK or be unable to attack that turn (I mean, for it's time it was game-defining), Most Cyber Dragon clones are actually better designed Cyber Dragons that should have been made back then instead. How do you miss that a 2100 ATK Special Summon is not fair in a game where people Tribute Summon Vampire Lords?

 

and I'd attempt a few casual variations of the game (alternate ways of playing) just for fun's sake. At least 1.

[vla1ne]

The very first thing I would change is the minimum deck size requirements. Think about it, why are the faster meta decks so fast? it's because they have very small 40-45 card decks that pretty much hold nothing but cards with multiple copies for a grand total of around 15-17 actual cards if you took out all the doubles and triples.

 

If you want to slow the game a bit you should increase the Minimum Deck Requirement to 50-60 cards minimum, that might water down decks enough to make a game a bit longer. there are far more issues than deck size, but if you're looking for a place to start, that would probably be a good place. longer matches usually allow both players to use their decks to the fullest, and that (in my experience) makes the game more fun whether you win or lose because you get to show off your decks full capabilities.

 

The second thing would be the Life Points. Most top decks nowadays can do 8000 damage in one turn really easy. increase that to 10000-12000 and you also can extend matches and allow for more chances for players to not get killed in the first few turns just because they draw a bad hand.

 

I can't think of any really good ways to Slow Down Special Summoning without killing it completely, maybe add a new mechanic that works like Mana or something?

 

For instance, you get a certain amount of new Special Summon points per turn (just gonna use SP for short) you cap out at 10, and like the hand limit if you go above 10 you simply drop down to 10 at the end of your turn, and you can keep track of them using something like Tokens, Dice, or Coins.

 

lets say you start with 5 SP at the start of the game and get 2-3 more during each turn (if you didn't use any points last turn you get 2 if you did you get 3, or vice versa?),

 

If you want to Special Summon a monster, you lose a set amount of SP in order to do so (sort of like tributes I'd say) and when you run out of SP you can't Special Summon any more monsters that turn. it allows for building up of points, so later on you could save them and have more points or less depending on how you spent them. I'd say:

 

[spoiler='SP rules/Costs']

Fusion monsters are placed In the same bracket as the Regular monsters in the beginning because they always have a 3 card cost at a minimum. And while the Poly-cards cards are a lot easier to abuse nowadays, its still a 3 card minimum requirement every time (except instant fusion, but that still takes 1000 and it's usually only meant to lead to bigger summons anyways), so charging more for it doesn't feel that fair to me.

 

 

 

LV4 or lower Fusion/Regular monsters: 1SP

The most simple monsters to summon, they often are only meant to lead to larger combos, so the cost is pretty much as low as it can be

LV/Rank4 Synchro/XYZ: 2SP

A lot of rank1-4 XYZ monsters are really easy to abuse/ have very high ATK, so the slightly higher cost means It won't be as easy to spam them I'm not too sure there are any real Synchros to abuse in this category besides formula, so that one's iffy right now

LV5-6 Fusion/Regular monsters: 2SP

The same cost as the LV/Rank4 Synchro/XYZ's, but seeing as they have to come from the Normal deck instead of the Extra deck, they hold a bit more risk to clogging you when using them, the Fusions still have the same reasoning as before, they always cost 3 at minimum and they're a lot more specific (usually), so they get the minor pass on cost in relation the Synchro/XYZs 

LV/Rank5-6 Synchro/XYZ: 3SP

Once more, Synchro/XYZs usually have more abuseable effects, and since their summoning is always a choice, and usually hold quite general requirements, they hold far less risk than Fusion/Regular monsters.

LV7-8 Fusion/Regular monsters: 3SP

This is the last time fusions get grouped away from XYZ/Synchro monsters, everything above this bracket in relation to fusion monsters always has an effect that makes it a horribly powerful monster once it hits the field. that means that the cost no longer outweighs the benefits of use by any means (see; Cyber End, Ultimate Axon, Chimeratech, Gear Golem)

As for the regulars, they have the same reasoning as always, the risk of clogging is always present, so therefore they still cost less than the monsters who get to live in the extra deck.

LV/Rank7-9 Synchro/XYZ: 4SP

These guys are all pretty powerful, and if you're running one you more than likely have it there to abuse the effects powers, that says all it needs to really

 

LV10+ XYZ/Regular monsters: 4SP

XYZs are only here because they require the same level of Monster to summon them, yes there are ways around that, but a cost of 4 is still heavy as hell, so it should be ok.

These are almost always the heaviest hitting regular monsters in the game, and to cost any less would be an insult to the power that most of them have (Darkness Metal and DaD level monsters... I missed Judgment and BLS by 1 level, should I make the 3 cost only be for the normal 7-8 monsters instead of effect?)

 

LV10+ Fusion/Synchro monsters:5SP

Once more, these are very powerful monsters, that for their cost, can do damage beyond practically any other card in the game (Shooting star/quasar, Red Nova, and the previous fusion examples) a cost of 5 is extremely expensive, so using them would mean you're willing to put at least half your points on the line just for one monster, making either the best play of the game if it goes off, or the worst play if it fails, it makes the player put serious thought into throwing down a heavy monster by way of actually costing you heavily for a badly thought out play instead of just making you say "Oh well, onto the next one!" The same thing went for the last two brackets, but In this one, the cost is so large that screwing it up means you waste 50-100% of your SP that turn, which is guaranteed to hurt you on later turns.

 

The general idea is an escalating scale of risk-reward for this mechanic, so that while smaller wasted moves get very little penalties the bigger moves can get punished hard in the SP area, and while the successful small moves have decent rewards, the bigger move, once executed, would actually give you a feeling of serious accomplishment, unlike nowadays, when you can just swarm and go for an OTK any time you want with relative ease.

[/spoiler]

 

The effects of a lot of monsters have to be either rebalanced or have to be a check & balance mechanic added to make effects that are truly broken (like the yata lock) be less broken...

...Or just keep them banned, because individual effects don't really feel like something that should be messed with.

 

I'll try to post more when I wake up later, but I think that's a good start. and please remember that this thread is called Rebuild YGO from scratch, I know some of my ideas are borderline absurd and hold little basis in the current game, but I did try to keep it balanced. If you object to them, Just tell me why, and make a better one.

[Blake]

ITT: Overcomplicate the game worse than Chance Format currently does.

It doesn't need to be rebuilt and all the rebuild ideas are absolutely awful. All it needs is for Konami to actually take care of the game properly. The game is perfectly fine, as the speed is the appeal of it in proportion to Pokemon/Vanguard (Faster) or MtG (Slower).

Making people build 50-60 card decks is particularly horrible. The former because it doesn't make them "slower", it just makes them less consistent, which makes the game more luck based.

[Sora1499]

Double the banlist with all the shitty-designed cards and stop releasing more shitty designed cards.  Then, expand more on older archetypes/cards, implement a few engines, and suddenly deck-building becomes a bit more skillful.

[Sleepy]

Double the banlist with all the shitty-designed cards and stop releasing more shitty designed cards.  Then, expand more on older archetypes/cards, implement a few engines, and suddenly deck-building becomes a bit more skillful.

In a nutshell.

[Proto]

I_'s imp_ssible...

 

Th_ dam_ge h_s be_n d_ne

 

Bes_des, _t's _k _s _s

[vla1ne]

ITT: Overcomplicate the game worse than Chance Format currently does.

It doesn't need to be rebuilt and all the rebuild ideas are absolutely awful. All it needs is for Konami to actually take care of the game properly. The game is perfectly fine, as the speed is the appeal of it in proportion to Pokemon/Vanguard (Faster) or MtG (Slower).

Making people build 50-60 card decks is particularly horrible. The former because it doesn't make them "slower", it just makes them less consistent, which makes the game more luck based.

I don't mind speed, I really don't, but when I started the game, it required more skill than it does now. almost all the meta decks are nothing more than no thought, cookie cutter copies of other meta decks, and almost all of them focus on 2nd-3rd turn OTK tactics, games are rarely based on who can put time into a set up for a successful win anymore, and are just about who can draw their 2-3 card OTK combo engines the fastest.

 

I might have been a bit unfair on the deck size, but really, luck based matches now just means lucky enough to not face one of the meta decks that Konami decided to favor with the ban list, It's hard to enjoy a short match, and while I like a certain amount of speed in games, losing/winning in 2-3 turns just feels cheap to me, at the very least, the life points need to be raised.

 

Increased Complexity is not always a bad thing, it can lead to more wisely spent resources, meaning a smarter play will be able to go towards bigger/better combos, and people who use nothing but CC decks with no skill of their own would finally have to think before they move. I might have been doing it wrong, but the game itself is starting to go down the spiral of mindless one-card engines and easy(in the bad way) non thought out combos(E-dragons, some Mermail builds, Spellbooks). if overcomplicating the game wakes people up a bit, then why not do it?

[Sunshine Jesse]

The only thing I'd really do is make the starting LP higher, like 20k or some shit. I love the crazy, fast-paced shit you can do in this game, I just wish some of the duels were longer.

 

I wouldn't entertain the idea of raising the deck limit without raising the card limit.

[sbdnate]

I would have to agree with .Rai, I believe it is. The game mechanics themselves are fine, the game is supposed to be more fast paced. The issue comes in when the cards themselves are designed to abuse and break the mechanics, and don't even begin to try to balance them.