Upgrade Summoning

[SkaterTheDJWolf]

Please don't judge this too harshly, Summoning mechanics are hard to make.

 

So, this is my new mechanic, Upgrade Summoning. Upgrade Summoning uses an "Upgrade Magic" Spell Card and one face-up monster on the field. Upgrade Monsters start in the ED and can be Upgrade Summoned to the field anytime. Usual ED monster rules apply. The difference between Upgrade Summoning and Fusion Summoning is that the Upgrade Material needs to be face-up on the field and the "Upgrade Magic" Spell card becomes an Equip Card on the Upgrade Summoned monster, where it can have special effects. The Upgrade Material is Overlayed similarly to Xyz Materials. Upgrade Monsters have no Levels, Ranks, Link Numbers, Pendulum Scales, or anything of the sort. Their power is proportional to the listed Upgrade Material and how hard it is to Summon.

 

Here's an example: Say Evil Ash has "TypEvolution Vanilluxe" on the field and "Lavender Large Casteliacone" in the ED. The latter lists the former as its Upgrade Material. Evil Ash also has "Upgrade Magic: Lavender Tone" in his hand, which is capable of Upgrade Summoning DARK monsters like Large Casteliacone. When Lavender Tone is activated, Large Casteliacone is Upgrade Summoned to the EMZ and Vanilluxe is Overlayed as Upgrade Material. Lavender Tone becomes an Equip Card on Large Casteliacone and can use its effect: When the equipped monster is sent to the Graveyard, Special Summon it during the End Phase.

[Eshai]

I mean, you could just make a Spell with a similar mechanic, but it just be treated as Fusion. This has already been done by Masked HEROes without the Equip thing. Sure they have a level, but mechanically speaking it does the same thing.

 

You could just make this into an archetype, where the Fusion card is also an Equip card that uses the original target as the Fusion Material, and then re-equips to the Fusion Summoned monster.

[SkaterTheDJWolf]

Edit: Overlayed Upgrade Material.

 

How does Konami come up with new mechanics?

[SkaterTheDJWolf]

Necrobump just in case.

[Sleepy]

Edit: Overlayed Upgrade Material.

 

How does Konami come up with new mechanics?

 

Konami looks at a number of things for new mechanics. What the game needs, and if the currently supported mechanic already reached most of its current potential. I'll go in chronological order of mechanics created to explain the possible reasoning behind them.

[spoiler=Here]

We start with the base game: Rituals were a prototype mechanic almost more focused on the flavor of "cool special monster" than gameplay. It asked for more than what players wanted to give to bring them out outside of specialized decks. Tribute Summon is a second thing that makes Levels mean anything, but at this current time the game does not support this mechanic but instead gives players incentive to find ways to not have to use that mechanic to bring those bigger monsters out, if they even decide to run them.

 

Fusions are the first soild idea (which is actually older than Rituals) but the first members are weak and even when they get stronger, the materials are bad on their own. Then even when the materials start getting decent, the whole formula being that specific is overall an issue. So the first thing the game did was explore Fusion Summoning to its fullest.

Here comes Elemental HERO: An archetype where a bunch of monsters can fuse in different combinations so even if you didn't have Monster A to fuse with your Monster B in hand, you still had Monster C which could also fuse with B to form a different boss.

 

But even that was not enough, so they stepped it up with the omni HERO monsters, which can fuse any HERO + any [insert Attribute] monster to form a boss. This and Super Poly are about the cap for Fusion Summon.

 

Afterwards, what does the game need? HERO was great to push Fusions but it is dependent on an archetype and effect support to sustain. How can things be made more generic? Introducing Synchro Summon. Now you don't need effects or bulky bricky high level monsters to make a decent boss, and all decks can use this mechanic, breathing in new life to Levels as a factor that matters. Now it makes a difference if you are running a Level 4 beater or a Level 3 one because instead of one being objectively stronger, now they are different pieces for your mix.

 

Synchro also established the first big toolbox.... well... tool, in the game. If you need to survive destruction? Make a Stardust. Need to survive battle? Make Colossal Fighter. Need LP? Make Thought Ruler. No need to draw into things to have access to them, but investment still needs to be made, although not as expensive as with the other mechanics where Poly was an extra -1 to the formula, and Ritual Summon was even worse. Over time the game kept on loosening up the range and getting up to the potential. From the first time players could make a Level 8+ Synchro with less than 3 materials, to the ability of a deck to finally be able to make any combination from 2 to 12. Once this happened, there was little room for growth once again outside of predictably making just better Synchros for each Level....

 

The solution was Xyzs. This solved a number of problems.

-First, the game during the Synchro era was so good at dumping monster to the GY that using Pot of Avarice before and after Synchros changed from "This card is slow but you could tech one" to "I can use 3 copies turn 1 and still have monsters in the GY to use a 4th one if I had it". Now Xyzs didn't let go of their materials and didn't fill up the GY.

-Second, Synchro decks specialized in bringing out low Level chumps in mass to go into anything, leaving higher Level monsters even more obsolete. Now they had to use Level 5+ monsters for Ranks 5 and above respectively, and Synchro Decks could mold themselves in tiny ways to make a single good Synchro of choice, but the investment they had to put up to access high Ranks was out of the question. This means there was room to grow in a different direction now.

-Third, cards based on Levels that were previously game-breaking now had a natural form of balancing out (Gravity Bind, Level Limit Area B, etc).

 

Enter Pendulums: What did Pendulums accomplish? Well first, it had been more than 6 years that the game had been focusing on the Extra Deck, so much so that the Main Deck had become mindless minions whose sole purpose was to help their boss. Pendulums helped the Main Deck recover from this a lot. Though unlike the previous mechanics, Pendulums don't have a possible way to really "evolve" without resorting to nomi bosses, that is, until they started bridging into other mechanics. This means this is the perfect time to update all previous mechanics in a uniform manner and give them support from Pendulums to tie things in.

The Scales also provided the first generic inherent Special Summon of multiple monsters, and the dual nature provided versatility.

 

Fusions came back, extending their formula beyond HERO this time. Xyzs came back, now being able to pull out high Levels that did something on their own, as opposed to the general pattern of their era where they used small chumps that just bumped up their own Level via effects. Rituals came back with ways to cut down on the advantage lost, and able to function as hand traps to try to turn their weakness of being part of the main deck into a strength, and even Tribute Summons were updated in a way that flows more easily now. Pendulums have the potential to bridge over all of these, and they did experiment in most of these, all while using the Extra Deck as their personalized GY, trying to take the legacy of Xyz further at diverting attention away from massive GY dumping for turbo plays (because the game at some point used the GY as pretty much a second hand).

 

What's the next step? Links now. What were the issues?

Well, Pendulums supported all mechanics up to date, and this means the game more or less reached potential caps here once again. If you played during some of the most horrific formats of the Pendulum era, you'll often notice a pattern of unbreakable first turn boards with general advantage-maintaining disruptors like Toadally Awesome, Cyber Dragon Infinity, etc. Really where can you take the game once you can bring out 2 or 3 monsters with Quasar-like negation capabilities? Well, I can't speak for all people, but at this point the game got too fast and optimized. People constantly talk about complete game overhauls after each new mechanic, but this was the one that would have been more justified to do so, and it kind of did.

 

Links come with the change in rules where each player can only have 1 Extra Deck Monster on the field at a time (as in, monsters Summoned FROM the ED, advanced mechanics from there that are actually coming from elsewhere like being revived for example, function like they used to). This means the now perfected boss monsters from the previous era need to be more carefully selected. Treatoad or Dark Law? Rank 7 Mermail or Abyss Dweller? etc.

 

That is, except for the inclusion of Link Monsters, which meant to provide more limitations than advantages to players.

First: They inherently require more materials than ever before, with the standard being Links 2 and 3, meaning your old combos now need to commit 3 monsters to making a Link before they can bring out 2 of their older Extra Deck plays.

Second: It further stresses up the ever tighter Extra Deck space, so it bothers your toolbox potential overall.

 

However, Links are merely a new space to explore and will stop being a hindrance soon enough. Meanwhile, the task for the other mechanics is to come back up to speed in ways that can circumvent the limitations of the new rules. Another positive aspect is that Links don't care about Levels, Ranks or Scales, and can function with cards that could previously not work due to troublesome stats from these. Plus, it adds a fun dimension to the game with their arrows, much like how Xyzs added in (in theory) limited ammo as a concept.

 

Oh, almost forgot, Links also lacking in DEF provide an inherent balancing factor to the more powerful position changing effects such as Book of Moon, ensuring more previously highly revered cards take off the tag of "limit worthy". It is like a patch.

 

 

 

So now ask yourself: What does the game need right now and how can your method provide a generic enough experience to be used by many themes, but still have room for new support to explore in ways current IRL support lacks? What things would you like to have inherent outs for (much like how Xyzs outed Level-based restrictors and Links outed Position-based restrictors).

 

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

 

 

Now on to your mechanic: I think you need to provide some samples in this thread. I don't know if you've posted those elsewhere, but it'd really help if you posted those here to have something else to discuss on.

 

So far from what I understand, you are basing these on concepts like Mask Change or Rank-up Magic Spells, where the method is entirely up to the effect of a specific card rather than an inherent one like Synchro/Xyz/Pendulum Summoning. This makes me think you plan on making different Spells for this.

 

Then I see the monsters don't have any sort of differentiating range such as Levels/Ranks/Scales/Links. Gauging balance by upping Summon difficulty is fine, but some effects in the future might want to try and catch only a specific range of members of this mechanic, and might be unable to get something to work with. 

 

Finally, I can't really think on a reason why you'd want the catalyst equipped and only the material attached, instead of both equipped or both attached. Like, what kind of balancing factor does it work for and what kind of combinations for expanding gameplay in Yugioh does it provide?

At this very moment it kind of looks like an archetype idea more than a mechanic. Especially if they are essentially 1-material Fusions in execution but with Xyz attach capabilities.

 

I have an idea:

What if you like..... instead of using special Spells with an effect that allows you to Summon them, you use an already existing kind? I'm thinking your mechanic would work very well with Equip Spell Cards. As for the inherent condition behind the Summon, here's my suggestion:

 

Have the basic requirements of the mechanic be 1 single material monster whose current ATK matches the ATK of the monster you are going to Upgrade Summon, then change the Equip to the Upgrade Monster and also Equip the material. This helps in the sense that not all Equips change stats but you don't need them to, and inherently helps the underwhelming mechanic of Equip Spells. Not to mention you could still later on make Equip Spells whose effects provide something supporting your mechanic specifically?

 

Later on you can up the difficulty of your mechanic's bosses by having monsters of specific DEF, Attribute, Type, etc.... and not just ATK matching (but still including the basic ATK match requirement.

 

What do you think of it?

[SkaterTheDJWolf]

Good Idea. i need to re-create this thread.