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Fixing the game


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Personally, I'm not sure the the banlist needs to go full-casual. I really like what the OCG has done and what the TCG is working towards in making a controlled meta where there's a good selection of decks to choose from that can win. It keeps players from being restricted to one playstyle and also helps players who may not be able to afford the $100 Brionacs.

 

But, I don't think things need to go full-casual. It's still worth pointing out that ban lists are designed for the competitive players, and casual players don't have to play on those lists or even with the tournament players. The Ban List should be designed for players who are both already in the competitive scene and for players looking to enter it, not for the players just looking to dick around (not that there's anything wrong with that). So I like that they're working towards a more balanced and controlled meta game that lets competitive players easily expect what they'll be going against and be able to side accordingly while also offering a good variety for new players to easily enter in. It may be only 3-5 decks or so that they choose from, but it's a good balance compared to just 1 or having too many. Having an all-rogue meta would be absolutely horrible for the tournaments.

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  • 2 weeks later...
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I'm not going to read these walls of text, so I'll just say this: I don't think Stratos is the (main) culprit behind HERO's success in the OCG.

 

As for the OP's question, you'd have to first question whether or not the game needs "fixing" to begin with; some people believe the game is peachy as-is, and even if the game did need "fixing", those people are likely to be strongly resistant to real change.

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Yes that is partly due to resistance to change, but also there is no such thing as a perfect format, or a perfect anything.

It depends on the level of play you feel like doing at the time.

 

My brother and I own the Yugi and Kaiba starter Decks in Japanese (came in a set with a VHS of how to play back when we got them) and sometimes like messing around with them.

Then any power level of any anime series on any of its seasons/arcs is valid, and so is any past meta (mostly HAT or Goat Format).

All this is from the point of view of all players is a recipe for disagreements all over the place.

 

 

Who remembers when Call of the Haunted and MST were too good to be at anything above 1?

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Yes that is partly due to resistance to change, but also there is no such thing as a perfect format, or a perfect anything.

It depends on the level of play you feel like doing at the time.

 

My brother and I own the Yugi and Kaiba starter Decks in Japanese (came in a set with a VHS of how to play back when we got them) and sometimes like messing around with them.

Then any power level of any anime series on any of its seasons/arcs is valid, and so is any past meta (mostly HAT or Goat Format).

All this is from the point of view of all players is a recipe for disagreements all over the place.

 

 

Who remembers when Call of the Haunted and MST were too good to be at anything above 1?

Me. Goat Con brah :)

 

The only way the game can fix itself IMO is to do what OCG did to Shaddolls and Nekroz. Hammer. Knee. Bash.

 

Repeat for Qlis, BA, and everything meta in the last two-ish years? DinoRabbit-WU format was the best format we've had in ages, lets go back to that level

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  • 4 weeks later...

After reading the first two pages of posts, I am going to assume that pages 3 and 4 talk about how Pendulums should be taken out of the game, the meta and how not everyone likes it, and the tier list about what cards/decks/archtypes make it and what number tier they are currently ranked at. Focusing mainly on the advance format for tournament play, I am confused about the context in which the statement "Fixing the game" refers to. With traditional format, advance format, and just casually playing, it appears that many people instinctively refer to the advance format, as numerous posts contain topics about deck viabilities and the meta. Very few talk about the rules or individual cards/card types.

 

For anyone who has ever done game design (video game, board game, or psychical game), every game has a creative team that differs in design philosophies. Making the process of the game's creation unique to that of another game (like comparing Call of Duty to Battlefield; each game is a first person shooter, but the play styles is vastly different). However, there is one fact that true about any game;they follows a series of mechanics and are governed by the rules that were created for that game. Yugioh in fact, follows this concept of having game mechanics and being governed by the rules that was created for it.

 

For all ya'll hipsters who saids that "can't fix what isn't broken" are actually correct! However, everyone also seemed to forget that you can't fix what you don't understand. So could anybody correctly define and explain what game mechanics Ygo uses and how it's applied?

 

Here is a complete list of game mechanics that every game uses:

 

Turns

Action points

Auction or bidding

 

Cards

Capture/eliminate

Catch-up

 

Dice

Movement

Resource management

 

Risk and reward

Role-playing

Tile-laying

 

Worker placement

Game modes

Goals

 

Loss avoidance

Piece elimination

Puzzle guessing

 

Races

Structure building

Territory control

 

Victory points

Combination conditions

======================================================

 

If anyone is actually serious about the topic of "Fixing the game", then would consider this as important to the topic.

 

Hint: the overall game design of Ygo doesn't use all of the aforementioned mechanics. However, every deck that has ever been made, used multiple game mechanics that is listed here.

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When I am finished with my explaination, you guys will be amazed by the solution needed to fix the game. After enough time has passed, I will fully explain how each mechanic works and whether or not Ygo uses them. Untill then, let's actually discuss these mechanics first and how they affect the game and the decks we use.

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Yeah I'm also very curious about what the solution he envisions ends up being.

 

I mean, there are actually a handful of ways of changing the game, from tweaking mechanics or rules to a complete resetting of the card pool; the latter being one of the most popular paths used by stand-alone planners, but which realistically would just piss off so much of the player-base from how many cards circling around after so many years would become unplayable from the get go.

 

I suppose it is true that a good format is not necessarily a good game, but card games don't work in the same manner as other kinds of games that can be balanced out and stay that way (like videogames). Even if you achieve the best format ever, you'll eventually rotate into something else, if not by the list, then by the injection of new cards to the pool on a regular basis. That is yet another factor that makes "fixing the game" complicated, on top of my previous post about how people see different power levels as their ideal.

 

The work being done above by Frydead002 is probably analyzing key mechanics in the game one by one and seeing how efficient the game is at making them factors for balance and variety of choices. By "key mechanics" I'm not talking about Synchros, Pendulums, Fusions, etc. but about "Draw Phase, Main Phase 2, Normal Summon, Normal Set, etc.... which will also be brought up, of course.

 

[spoiler=Let's see.... hmmm....]

As a basis to talk about games, I remember some article about MTG saying their intention for game-play was to start small and over time keep building up in a way that every passing turn each player was allowed to do more things. MTG uses an energy resource system (lands/mana) to limit said plays and eventually reach the point of "it doesn't matter anymore, I have all the mana I need every turn", which intentionally comes when the hand is more wasted so even then the cards to be played are more powerful, but not all that many more.

On top of what that article said, there's how in MTG, the field size doesn't have a limit like in Yugioh, and monsters inherently attack players and the other battling monster (if the player wants to defend) is chosen by the player being attacked, giving it a slight edge on defense that makes monsters grow in numbers without having to necessarily get depleted every turn to get to the players.

 

In Yugioh's action limiters are so different though. There's the Normal Summon/Set, which for a while the card pool was rendering pointless, but it is becoming relevant through monsters whose effects activate on Normal Summon, like the Stratos clones for a few archetypes. Due to the lack of actual resource limiters, this game relies on effects interacting with the rules in ways like this one to work. This makes it hard for me to really analyze because I can't bring up its core design without bringing up certain already-existing cards. Such is the situation of the "player 1 doesn't draw on turn 1", which was influenced by heavy backrow, and what is heavy backrow? already existing Trap Staples for the most part.... Even the "Set" mechanics (monsters or non-monsters alike) are heavily influenced by what effects can be gained by doing them... I guess rather than a progressively growing resource system, we just get different perks like this. "Achievement unlocked, you have the requirements to do it so you can Tribute/Flip/Ritual/Fusion/Synchro/Xyz/Pendulum Summon X monster(s) now".... from a core standpoint, this sounds pretty hard to balance out because many advanced Summon mechanics use Levels, and there are many intersections for things to get out of hand in unforeseeable combinations.

 

 

 

 

Anyways, I'm not gonna make an in-depth analysis myself. Not only am I not the best person for the job, but I need to take a nap right now and risk derping and saying something incredibly stupid in my current state... I also think it isn't the original intention of the thread xD

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I'm going to take some pages from MtG's book (real shocker, I know). Here are things I'd do:

• Create a rotation format and hold tournaments for it more than all other formats - This, naturally, works under the assumption that a good design team keeps the power of the format low while creating one card per set specifically to appeal to the Advanced players. Players of the format will have to buy all new cards every so often, anyway, so there would be no reason to force the rotation through power creep.

 

• Reverse all power errata - Read http://www.starcitygames.com/magic/vintage/11926_On_PowerLevel_Errata.html to learn why power errata is a bad idea. It's for magic the gathering, but the general idea can be applied to any card game. If you want the tl:dr;
- There are three 'good' kinds of errata: restore-functionality errata, in which a rules change caused the card as written to no longer function or not function how its printed form was intended, and so the card needed an errata to work that way again; Day 1 errata, where the card already left the doors but was printed wrong and so, before the product arrives and before anyone plays with it, the company releases a notice saying what the card should say if it were printed correctly;  clarity errata, where a card is unclear. the bad kind of errata is 'power level errata', which is errata intended to change the card's power.

- Power errata just causes a lot more problems than it solves when there already exists a banlist to deal with overpowered cards. Without power errata, while the wording may not be perfect, you can at least try to figure out what the card does based on how the rules operated when it was printed. With power errata, some cards may as well have no text box and you have to look up the card to find what it does. 

Some of you may be thinking: "But Mysty, in yugioh, we already have to go through many pages of rulings to figure out what our cards do, why not have to look up one more " My response is: Isn't that a problem? Additionally, this puts an additional load on the bosses. Imagine if Pot of Greed got limited and first went through an errata of "Each player draws 2 cards" and then got changed to "You draw two cards. Your opponent draws 1." A judge gets called over and one guy has the oldest copy of Pot of Greed and the other's Pot of Greed (already in the graveyard, maybe milled) is the 'each player draws 2 cards' variant. the judge has to remember the new new errata all throughout the day and explain it each time something like this happens.
Maybe an even worse situation happens: both players have old pot of Greed and are unaware of erratas. They just both do the original effect. That's an even bigger, and invisible, travesty.
We have a banlist for a reason. Let's keep it that way.

 

• Greatly simplify the rules and compile EVERY RULE OF THE GAME into one document - I feel like I'm conservative-guessing when I say that about 95% of the rules of the game aren't in the rulebook. I'm not even sure one being on this planet knows all the rules to yugioh, and if there is, I'm not sure that being is at Konami. When I played this game more seriously, it felt like many of the rules were player-made and Konami just kind of did a 'sure, why not.' There are several things I would change in the rules, and I'm sure I would change many more if I knew them all. I don't care about how broken these rules changes would make cards; if they needed these rules to be balanced, they probably weren't a good idea anyway.

 

- All conditions should be explicitly stated - I can't tell you how many times on DN I saw somebody first turn a Lumina, try to discard a Lightsworn and target it to revive it. I then go to the wikia and copy down the rulings that says they need a Lightsworn in grave to do that, they copy the 'UDE ruling, hasn't been verified by Konami'-type section, I copy down the 'it should be followed unless Konami contradicts' part, and they either ignore that or ragequit. How to fix that: explicitly state that ruling as part of the activation condition.
           - Alternatively, have all targeting before all other costs.

 

- No 'Missing the Timing' - It's unintuitive, easy to miss, and an ugly way to try to balance some cards.

 

- No 'hidden cheat' - I hate how Yugioh has a lot of ways that an opponent can cheat you and you'd never know it. Let's say your opponent knows you have an effect veiler in hand, not much on board, and maybe 1300 LP. They summon Marauding Captain and 'activate' its effect. You're probably going to pitch Veiler to it, even though you can't actually confirm whether or not he actually has that other monster in hand. A similar thing happens when the opponent sets 'cards' - who knows if they aren't spells/traps, especially when playing against infernities!

Solution: Require revealing face-down cards on the board at end of game, penalty of game loss if you don't and/or if one of those cards wasn't in the right spot.
The other part of this I'll answer with my next point.

Allow cards to be able to resolve with no or 'less than all' effect - If the person can choose all the targets and pay all the costs, what's the problem? If the move isn't going to do anything, that's the player's idiocy. One ruling I especially hate with this is the (apparently) TCG ruling of 'You can't effect veiler something negated with skill drain.' That's bull, Effect Veiler's negation is better than Skill Drain's.
Additionally, this makes effects that rely on private zones have "up to" and can choose zero. Example: Rota saying "Add up to 1 Warrior-Type monster from your Deck to your hand. (You may choose 0.)" Let's say I either just got handed the deck or forgot that I don't have any Level 4 or lower warriors in deck. If it resolves, I look, and if I don't find anything or don't want to add any of the applicable choices to my hand right now, just shuffle and that's that. No handing over to the opponent to verify, no sloppy 'that was an illegal activation, return it to the hand and reverse what that activation did', just 'You screwed up, live with it.' [This game could use a lot more 'be able to choose 0', if you ask me. In fact, if a card says up to 'something', it should include 0 as a choice.]
One of the consequences, however, would be being able to activate Goblindbergh with no applicable cards in hand (or not wanting to summon one of them), and, if it resolves, dropping nothing and switching it to Defense. I see nothing wrong with that.  

 

- Ridding the world of "cards that are negated can't be negated again" - Ok, really? That Numeron Force-Fiendish Chain thing is a load of crap; both of their effects should be negated by a Numeron Force layer.

 

Remove Flip 'Summon' - Note: I like the idea of being to flip a face-down monster face-up, but it being a 'summon' creates a large number of 'negate summon' shenanigans that I don't think are worth it, especially since attacked Set monsters aren't summoned. 

I'm sure I've missed some rules fixes or other fixes. I'll edit this post if I think of them.

EDIT: Additional rule I'd remove plus two more things I'd do to fix the game.
 

Remove the 'it's an ability to have certain counters but not others' rule - Here's a sample conversation.
"If Effect Veiler negates a Royal Magical Library with a spell counter on it, does it keep the counter?"
"No."
"What about if Veiler negates a Cloudian monster?"
"It gets to keep its Fog counter."
"What makes that different?"
"Because we made a support card that gives Fog Counters to all creatures so that Altus could be much better."
"So, if Cloudian Squall was never printed, Fog Counters would require an unwritten effect to have?"
"Probably."
"Doesn't that create problems with locals that don't know about Cloudian Squall?"
"SHUT UP, YOU'RE SUPPOSED TO KNOW EVERYTHING ABOUT THIS GAME, INCLUDING THE RULES WE DON'T EVEN KNOW!"

 

So either we'd go back to the 'explicit' conditions rule to write on the cards 'can hold Spell Counters', or we do the much similar rule change and just make any counters able to be on anything. Except for Magical Plant Mandragola making Arcanite Magician and Tempest magician a little better, I'm not sure I see much of a change created by this rule, and again, I'm disregarding card power changes with these rules changes anyway; we have a banlist for a reason.

 

• De-regionalize the game - The differences of OCG and TCG used to be that OCG got their cards 3 months sooner and they'd occasionally get promos we wouldn't get. Then Konami decided 'you know, that's not insane enough, let's crank it up.' Now we have TCG Exclusives, Shonen Jump Promos sent to North America but not Europe, Korean exclusives (KCG), and I think OCG is getting some of its own exclusives in packs (I'm not positive on this, though). This makes Worlds a complete crapshoot because no country can play the same game they played at Nationals.
Solution: No 'exclusives': any card that gets released in one country is released in all countries AT THE SAME TIME (no using OCG as a guinea pig to determine TCG rarity bumps). Allow any rarity cards in any tournaments so long as a translation is provided.

 

• Prizes for tournaments should not be playable promos - Sample conversation:
"Man, I could really use Number 106 for my Number collection. how much is it?"
"£468.48 ($736.46) because it was a Yu-Gi-Oh! Championship Series 2013 Prize Card."
"is that even legal to play?"
"Apparently."
"How many other TCG printings are there for it?"
"Zero."

 

The prize cards should be either unplayable and/or just be alternate arts of previous cards; they shouldn't be actually playable cards. (Before your smart alec comments, I mean 'playable' as 'able to be put into the Deck or Extra Deck', I do not mean to comment on its power level.)

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- All conditions should be explicitly stated - I can't tell you how many times on DN I saw somebody first turn a Lumina, try to discard a Lightsworn and target it to revive it. I then go to the wikia and copy down the rulings that says they need a Lightsworn in grave to do that, they copy the 'UDE ruling, hasn't been verified by Konami'-type section, I copy down the 'it should be followed unless Konami contradicts' part, and they either ignore that or ragequit. How to fix that: explicitly state that ruling as part of the activation condition.

           - Alternatively, have all targeting before all other costs.

 

What, really? I honestly didn't know this. I totally agree with you on this, the game is too complicated for its own good.

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I am surprise by the amount of interest that people are showing towards my idea. Its quite humbing to be honest.

 

 

The work being done above by Frydead002 is probably analyzing key mechanics in the game one by one and seeing how efficient the game is at making them factors for balance and variety of choices. By "key mechanics" I'm not talking about Synchros, Pendulums, Fusions, etc. but about "Draw Phase, Main Phase 2, Normal Summon, Normal Set, etc.... which will also be brought up, of course.

 

 

To my amazement as well, Sleepy is practically right; I will be analyzing the aspect of the game to the list of mechanics that I posted and see how they reflect the game.

 

====================================

 

When you visit various forums across the internet that discuss how to "fix the game", you usually come across different solutions that are unrelated to the previous solution before it. While they may argue strong points and have reasonable ideas that would actually benefit the game. Almost all of them become terrible towards the end, when the poster posts IMO - or In my opinion. The problem with opinions, is that they are just that, an observation that reflects the person's individual point of view. While there is nothing wrong with opinions, its only until someone disagrees with them - strongly. Arguements happen, bashing occurs, and the original intent of the topic becomes lost.

 

I personally believe that you can't fix what isn't broken. However, you also can't fix what you don't understand.

 

My proposal is to take all of the suggested ideas that make this game apparently broken and test them. By using the list of mechanics that I posted earlier, I'll compare the data in a trial and error fashion to get closer to the reason why YGO is apparently broken. With such an monstrous undertaking, this will be time consuming on my part and with me being such a singlular person, I ask the YCM community to help me with this task.

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So after going against Burning Abyss, Fire Fist, Qlhips, and Galaxy/Photon decks, I am completely inclined to agree with the many people on this forum that a lot of decks are over powered. You have multiple summons in a single turn, effect monsters that have monstrous attacks for being a level 1-4 monster and tool boxing effects to counter just about all of these decks/archtypes! It reallys says something about the game these days when you compare them to older decks.

 

Fortunately, this gives us our first hypothesis to work with: Are these new archtypes really breaking the game? We'll find out as soon as I explain the mechanics that I posted on the previous page.

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So after going against Burning Abyss, Fire Fist, Qlhips, and Galaxy/Photon decks, I am completely inclined to agree with the many people on this forum that a lot of decks are over powered. You have multiple summons in a single turn, effect monsters that have monstrous attacks for being a level 1-4 monster and tool boxing effects to counter just about all of these decks/archtypes! It reallys says something about the game these days when you compare them to older decks.

Have you ever heard the term "power creep", which exists in every single game that releases new content?

 

It's honestly very idiotic to compare a modern-day deck to one from 8 years back. The game evolves along the way, and that's a very good thing. YGO isn't broken and doesn't need fixing. This game is just like this. Trying to "fix" YGO is trying to change its rules, its charm and its specific traits. You're not fixing anything, you're rebuilding everything assuming you're right. Plot twist: you're not.

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Have you ever heard the term "power creep", which exists in every single game that releases new content?

 

It's honestly very idiotic to compare a modern-day deck to one from 8 years back. The game evolves along the way, and that's a very good thing. YGO isn't broken and doesn't need fixing. This game is just like this. Trying to "fix" YGO is trying to change its rules, its charm and its specific traits. You're not fixing anything, you're rebuilding everything assuming you're right. Plot twist: you're not.

 

 

You mentioned evolve; could you elaborate for me? If you could, you would save me the time of research just to get to the same point you're already at.

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You mentioned evolve; could you elaborate for me? If you could, you would save me the time of research just to get to the same point you're already at.

 

I think what it means is that when we are talking about a continuously growing game like trading card games, there are aspects you have to take into consideration that in other kinds of games might not even exist. That is, the fact the game aims to change every so often to not get stale. That combined with the economic side of the game make power creep a natural factor that cannot really disappear. At least not with the format structure of Yugioh (it'd need to be Rotation and have Standard non-existent whatsoever to only care about the card design of the small current relevant pockets of legal cards).

 

That is to say: The balance is not accounted for with a universal and timeless standard, it is accounted for strictly when put inside an ecosystem. 

Qliphs are completely broken and downright unthinkable if you compare them with say, Goat Control Format's decks at their time. Yet it has pros and cons when compared to the bubble of relevant decks nowadays like Nekroz, Shadolls, etc. You hear people say "it has a good matchup against X deck(s) but Y deck(s) don't care much about its archetype perks so I need to side against with", rather than "Konami what are you waiting for to ban them? nothing else can stand against them and the game is boring because of it".

 

Then there's cards like Beelze, which balance-wise are not ideally good as an easy to make 3k beater that is immune to the only natural form of removal in the game and can always get stronger if the opponent can somehow top it off. Yet, it is barely worth it nowadays and as much as "counterability is not an argument" has been a common phrase for a long time, it still is the reason Beelze is not broken nowadays compared to other cards. We have several cards that can flip it down so it can destroyed by effects, negate its effects making him killable, return cards to the hand/Deck/Extra Deck, banish them, equip them, "send" them to the Graveyard, Tribute them, negate the Summon, switch control of them, or downright make them attachments. Then there's how even destruction effects can work against it if you use them on the Materials instead. There are several variables to live through it.

 

The change of formats also comes with the fact the whole card pool is segmented into layers and layers of differing power levels. To balance out the game with the banlist usually means balancing out the current game's competitive environment, and lately to tell the truth it isn't doing too badly (as I said in my first post of the thread).

 

 

 

That said, I personally still find the ideas people can come up with to change it interesting to hear.

During other periods of the game I would have said "yes fix it, right now it is pretty much unplayable", but right now I it has been interesting to see Spiritual Beasts, Burning Abyss and most of the things we currently have. So what you could come up with could potentially be "good but different" in my humble opinion, but wouldn't necessarily disqualify the current IRL format's good traits. In other words, yes it doesn't truly need "fixing" per say.

 

On the other hand, I'm getting a little stale about things here so I hope TCG doesn't pull the same OCG did and does deliver a list that shakes things up a bit.

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I think what it means is that when we are talking about a continuously growing game like trading card games, there are aspects you have to take into consideration that in other kinds of games might not even exist. That is, the fact the game aims to change every so often to not get stale. That combined with the economic side of the game make power creep a natural factor that cannot really disappear. At least not with the format structure of Yugioh (it'd need to be Rotation and have Standard non-existent whatsoever to only care about the card design of the small current relevant pockets of legal cards).

 

That is to say: The balance is not accounted for with a universal and timeless standard, it is accounted for strictly when put inside an ecosystem. 

Qliphs are completely broken and downright unthinkable if you compare them with say, Goat Control Format's decks at their time. Yet it has pros and cons when compared to the bubble of relevant decks nowadays like Nekroz, Shadolls, etc. You hear people say "it has a good matchup against X deck(s) but Y deck(s) don't care much about its archetype perks so I need to side against with", rather than "Konami what are you waiting for to ban them? nothing else can stand against them and the game is boring because of it".

 

Then there's cards like Beelze, which balance-wise are not ideally good as an easy to make 3k beater that is immune to the only natural form of removal in the game and can always get stronger if the opponent can somehow top it off. Yet, it is barely worth it nowadays and as much as "counterability is not an argument" has been a common phrase for a long time, it still is the reason Beelze is not broken nowadays compared to other cards. We have several cards that can flip it down so it can destroyed by effects, negate its effects making him killable, return cards to the hand/Deck/Extra Deck, banish them, equip them, "send" them to the Graveyard, Tribute them, negate the Summon, switch control of them, or downright make them attachments. Then there's how even destruction effects can work against it if you use them on the Materials instead. There are several variables to live through it.

 

The change of formats also comes with the fact the whole card pool is segmented into layers and layers of differing power levels. To balance out the game with the banlist usually means balancing out the current game's competitive environment, and lately to tell the truth it isn't doing too badly (as I said in my first post of the thread).

 

 

 

That said, I personally still find the ideas people can come up with to change it interesting to hear.

During other periods of the game I would have said "yes fix it, right now it is pretty much unplayable", but right now I it has been interesting to see Spiritual Beasts, Burning Abyss and most of the things we currently have. So what you could come up with could potentially be "good but different" in my humble opinion, but wouldn't necessarily disqualify the current IRL format's good traits. In other words, yes it doesn't truly need "fixing" per say.

 

On the other hand, I'm getting a little stale about things here so I hope TCG doesn't pull the same OCG did and does deliver a list that shakes things up a bit.

 I see, I see. Very interesting indeed...

 

Another hypotesis to be tested.

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There are lots of different versions of the game. There's the OCG and the TCG, which have quite different card pools, but there are other ways in which the game can be different depending on how you play:

 

If you play with real cards, there is the fact that good cards cost a lot of money. The less variety there is in top-tier decks, the more those top-tier cards will sell for on eBay. If you are poor in real life, it is difficult to play at a top-tier level with real cards, because even if you get lucky with packs, you might well feel pressured to sell the good cards because you need the money. However, on games like Dueling Network, you can play with any cards you like. This means you get a lot of unskilled netdeckers, who use powerful decks but are relatively easy to beat with original/gimmick-y decks, which is my personal favourite way of playing the game outside of Duel Portal.

 

Then within these version of the game, you can find yet more sub-versions.

 

Playing with real cards: There are tournaments where you actually want to win and therefore you will face many powerful decks and skilled players, and you need to also have a powerful deck and be skilled to get far. But then there are casual games between friends, where people are generally limited in what they can use. For example, I play my Kasha + Zombie World deck with a Sacred Crane draw engine of sorts where the only Extra Deck monsters I can actually summon are Gem-Knight Pearl and Night Papilloperative.

 

Then there's Advanced, Traditional and Unlimited formats.

 

My point is this: There are lots of different perspectives depending on how you like and are able to play. The game may certainly have a balanced metagame with just enough variety to be fun but not so much you can't side against it and which is much better than previous metagames and is the inevitable result of power creep, and still feel like the game is getting 'broken', depending on how you like and are able to play. IMO, the question should be more along the lines of: "Why are some players dissatisfied with the game, and what can be done to change that?", because people will disagree about whether the game is 'broken' or not, but it is a fact that some players are dissatisfied with the game, and it would be nice to take everyone's interests into account.

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There are lots of different versions of the game. There's the OCG and the TCG, which have quite different card pools, but there are other ways in which the game can be different depending on how you play:

 

If you play with real cards, there is the fact that good cards cost a lot of money. The less variety there is in top-tier decks, the more those top-tier cards will sell for on eBay. If you are poor in real life, it is difficult to play at a top-tier level with real cards, because even if you get lucky with packs, you might well feel pressured to sell the good cards because you need the money. However, on games like Dueling Network, you can play with any cards you like. This means you get a lot of unskilled netdeckers, who use powerful decks but are relatively easy to beat with original/gimmick-y decks, which is my personal favourite way of playing the game outside of Duel Portal.

 

Then within these version of the game, you can find yet more sub-versions.

 

Playing with real cards: There are tournaments where you actually want to win and therefore you will face many powerful decks and skilled players, and you need to also have a powerful deck and be skilled to get far. But then there are casual games between friends, where people are generally limited in what they can use. For example, I play my Kasha + Zombie World deck with a Sacred Crane draw engine of sorts where the only Extra Deck monsters I can actually summon are Gem-Knight Pearl and Night Papilloperative.

 

Then there's Advanced, Traditional and Unlimited formats.

 

My point is this: There are lots of different perspectives depending on how you like and are able to play. The game may certainly have a balanced metagame with just enough variety to be fun but not so much you can't side against it and which is much better than previous metagames and is the inevitable result of power creep, and still feel like the game is getting 'broken', depending on how you like and are able to play. IMO, the question should be more along the lines of: "Why are some players dissatisfied with the game, and what can be done to change that?", because people will disagree about whether the game is 'broken' or not, but it is a fact that some players are dissatisfied with the game, and it would be nice to take everyone's interests into account.

 

That means more variables must be taken into account...

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As I have posted on the previous page (page 4), I introduced a list of game mechanics that every game interacts with. With debates happening on just about every YGO dedicated forum about the game being broken, I am going to take a scientific approach to it and test every suggestion. I plan on using the list of game mechanics as a base to test every theory I can and formulate new hypotheses. So let’s formally begin with a analytical view of how YGO works, starting with the game mechanics.

 

Game Mechanics vs. Gameplay

Game mechanics are the back-bone of how the game works, while gameplay is the interaction of the player’s choice made in that game. For example, the mechanics of a first-person shooter and a fighter, is to hit the other player/opponent and not be hit yourself. The gameplay is the freedom of how a player goes about hitting their opponent.

 

Game Mechanics vs. Theme

With many kinds of different games, there are titles that are abstract and not meant to represent anything; Go (also known as Othello), Checkers, and Tag fit this description. Popular titles such as Call of Duty, Gran Turismo, Dynasty Warriors and Mirror’s Edge have themes and intend to be simulators, immersions, or emulators of real-life activities.

 

Game Mechanics vs. Game Design

 

When compared to game design, the game mechanics can be lost in the definition of game design. It is as follows - game design is the overall design that encompasses gameplay, mechanics, theme, and aesthetics of the game. While game mechanics, just focuses as being the back bone of the game.

 

Turns

 

A game turn has many sub-branches that dictate structure of movement among players. In plain English, a turn is a segment of the game where actions can be taken; for abstract games, they help control gameplay and in non-abstract games, they simply represent a passage of time. Depending on the other game mechanics involved, this a quick list of how turns would normally work in different classifications of games.

 

-Most table-top and board games use Turns to give players necessary time to go about their move.

 

-Video games vary…by a lot; strictly speaking, these kind of games are governed by real-time and a lot difficult to analyses. Unfortunately, I will not be doing video games in this part of the list, as an entire page could be dedicated to just to list all of the different types of turns used in video games. This problem comes from the different game mechanics that a game could to ultimately ignore this mechanic, so in short, it just depends on the game.

 

 

-Physical games share a similar turn structure of that of board games. Games like tag or backgammon both share a turn structure that allocates players time to exercise their next move. Hide n Seek, I spy, and others like it share this similarity. When you get into more competitive physical games such as football, basketball, soccer, and lacrosse, then physical games start show as much diversity that video games show.

 

 

Action points

This allocates a budget of certain actions that player may take during their turn. Depending on other game mechanics used and the game designer’s design style, Action Points will/can be given greater depth, complexity or simplistically.

 

Auction or Bidding

Also known as Risk and Reward, Auction or Bidding gives players the chance to risk, offer, or purchase a better advantage over their opponent, and reduce the risk of losing/failing.

 

Alright guys, I done posting for today. It took me 3 hours to research, simplifying everything and writing just to post this amount of information. So when I am less worn by out, I finish this list. Until then...just gonna test Medivh's theory of evolution...Cya...ungh....

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