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Id say most powercreep is not a problem in yugioh The game has been on the "instant otk" level for some time now Which isnt that bad of a problem if there are enough defensive cards in the game The problem is is the hand trap/negate board interaction, where negate board cards constantly get stronger to survive the handtraps, and handtraps get stronger to destroy the negate boards And both have now reached a level so far out of the league of everything else that they are the only way to play since anything else which wasnt involved in that armsrace, is completely unplayable This is as easy fixable as banning all handtraps and all broken generic endboard cards... however since these cards are required to play these days they have a extreme cost, so banning them would set players back by 1000s

"Weve always avoided making cards sound too technical" Are you kidding me? They have the worst rules lawyering possible, where you need to read extremely close between the lines, and have a full grasp of unwritten/never written concepts to be able to play The difference between "if this card is send to the gy by a card effect" and "if this card is send to the gy to activate a card effect" is so incredibly minor, and sounds content wise the same to anyone who doesnt know its different, that it just invites to be missunderstood. Or the difference between "discard" and "send to the GY from the hand" Yugioh is painfully technical with everything, so them using that as an excuse to not make cards more readable is just annoying If they instead used something like "Cost: send a card from the hand to the GY" or "Cost: none; Send a card from the hand to the GY" then it would at least be easyer to understand... even though it would still be annoying that many card effects differentiate between these two actions

Pros: Please remove all rng Devs: Ok Aaaand suddenly every outcome is predetermined, and the games (outside of deckbuilding) are only ritualistic, since its already known what happens

Define fast and slow Is it the actualy time it takes to play? Is it the amount of stuff somebody does in a turn? Is it the time it takes to end the game? Is it how fast one reaches their stategys goal? Is it how fast ones optimal strategy wins the game? Yugioh ends a duell prettymuch as soon as its possible (if no ftk is performed, the player who could set up better wins the first turn they can attack), but on the other side each players first turn can take 20-30 minutes Meanwhile magic takes a few turns before anything really happens, but during all of these turns only very few actions are performed, but on the other hand, there are a ton of 2 card combos which can pretty much end the game instantly (either directly, or due to a loop) if you go for time as in measured time though, magic can be much slower since many strategys (especially in comander) can create a giant field of cards which all have effects which can be triggered each turn, especially when some kinds of loop is present So id say, yugioh is slower time and action wise, but faster turn wise when it comes to short games, and faster time and action wise, but slower turn wise when it comes to longer games and magic is slow turn wise but faster time and action wise when it comes to short games, and faster turn wise but slower time and action wise when it comes to longer games

Hope you come back man

its so funny how the joke to not ad any new content will stop powercreep isnt even true. look at speedruns for example. there are many cases of new glitches being found and powercreeping games completion time to be faster. another way is that as players get smarter the tutorials can powercreep for the game too and getting good would be more like following a guide than learning yourself. the worst thing in games is to always go online and get told that you are playing the game wrong because of powercreeped new strategies that were optimized in a game

Lil bro quit

another game i can think of that does something interesting with the turn mechanic is pvzheroes. there is basically a predefined turn order, with the first player also going second for spells and stuff, but the actual combat goes last, so there is legitimate benefit in going second.

i think the biggest thing holding konami back from finally adding a keyword system is simply that the game is too far gone at this point. they made their stance back in edison format and have stuck to it for too long. if keywords were to be added, pretty much the entire library of as you said around 10,000 cards would need to be rewritten AND reprinted with the new psct. perhaps komoney simply sees no financial incentive to do this when the cards are still printing money regardless. considering rush duel tho, perhaps someone at the company really does just has a vendetta at the concept of keywords. since rush is essentially its own product, it would have been the perfect opportunity to finally introduce keywords into the game... but they didn't. the card text is formatted better for sure, but still has a lack of keywords. i can only imagine the reason why konami thinks this way.

The BIG reason keywords are great is things like Deathrattle; where you can tap/click on the keywords and a pop-up will explain it for you if you forget after taking a break from a game or new keywords are intruced to the game. Having access to keyword tools like this are important to physical card games. One tool could be where you have common cards only existing to explain keywords. Having a mobile app to help deck build and explain keywords like Hearthstone or Legends of Runterra or just shipping a book marker with starter decks with keywords and rules printed on. All these examples have flaws but these are some solutions. If you don't have the new cards or know new keywords have been introduced to a physical card game you may not know they exist. If you don't want a mobile app taking space on your phone you also will not know they exist. If you sit down at a table you would have to rely on your opponent to pass on the information to you, and the more keywords you have alongside the more convoluted they get leaves the more cause for error or complicated it is for player to player interpretations and problems because so. I think shipping with basic keywords and sticking to it is the best answer. Don't over do it, stay consistent and don't make keywords convoluted and have keywords do all the speaking for the game.

@13:20 I haven't finished watching the video so pardon my immediate reaction; I'm also working while listening so my attention is in and out at times; but I'd like to also have a piece of dialogue on this point that, with card games in mind, having lore does also expand in some ways in deck building. That is that some principals and meta advantages are thrown out the window for the sake of lore just for fun. I remember in yu gi oh trying to make a Cat deck work with cards like rescue cat, Lockat-funny play on the word: locket, a cat with a locket for a collar, and other cat monsters alongside an extra deck based around beast type monsters where all the cats were obviously beasts and help recruit themselves from the deck. Themes, lore, background story within itself can help inspire players to do intriguing and interesting dumb fun stuff and craft unique strategies! Another example is Legends of Runterra, an entire card game based on lore. Crafting decks themed on combining regions of the world to build army like decks with themes of that region based on the lore. It can inspire off meta decks entirely for fun that even go rogue at some points. One such deck is Pirate Monkeys that utilized phantom like haunted gun powder manifested monkeys that would ignite themselves at the end of the round to deal damage to the enemy. Trying to build around it for fun the deck actually went from meme to tier 1!

(I'm aware this is an older video) As a Magic player, I've never thought that YGO was ruined. I've always thought it was a complicated mess. There doesn't seem to be any logic or central theory tying it all together. If I'm wrong, I'm wrong, but as an outsider looking in, it just looks chaotic.

Hope you're still up! Enjoying your videos and learning from them to make our TCG better in the process!

I dont think the extra deck itself is as much of problem as the fact that people were so terrified of rng and consistency issues that almost all powercreep pretty much revolves around cards that nullify all probability and just let you search out or play whatever you want. Nowadays your entire deck and probably also graveyard may as well be in your hand, and the extra deck issues are just a cherry on top of the rest. Since theres very little randomness, naturally that discourages variation, and now everyone is stuck playing solitaire with all the same cards.

no 2 games play the same except in yugioh where almost every game can be decided by a comparing of the hands because every card does everything and has to win the game by itself

I’m really curious as to what your thoughts on Yugioh’s game design - or lack thereof - are given your commentary in the intro of the video. My own issues with the game, power creep aside, have to do with accelerating game mechanics, lack of power ceiling, the frequent and plentiful Omni negate (although the game seems to be moving away from this on bodies after recent ban lists in 2024), the bottle-necking of the meta game, and the widespread erasure of the Trap Card mechanic short of about ~ 20 generic cards.

Imo Link & Pendulum are the worst offenders. If there is an extra deck, the deck needs to be built so it can even use it. Link basically is a seperate hand, a toolbox. Every deck can use it, even if it wouldn't usually use an extra deck. And that's unhealthy. Its the same reason Companions have been an issue in MTG, or why Eminence is a hated mechanic.

14:32 Have you considered the Lottery?

Mechanics like "If your opponent controls a [...] and you don't" can help with this. There are Yu-Gi-Oh decks that want to go second because of effects like these too.

I think a lot of effects could be in subtypes, but they actively tried that, then stopped with a few exceptions. Spirit, Union, Gemini, Tuner, Fusion, Link, Syncro, XYZ, Pendulum and Ritual are the ones I speak of. Each of these have their set rules tied to them. With exception of cards with different colors, Tuner is the only one they use without printing the meaning on the card. Very early on, they could have done this and made these part of the rule system, but actively didn't. The other thing is spell/trap types, which they did very well. If they took this idea for other cards like trap monsters, this could have simplified a lot. I think Rush duels are their way of rebooting the cardgame, and hopefully they use some of these tips when they do.

"orcust with the new support is poised to come back to the metagame" oof

oof, showing prosp as a balanced card aged really poorly

What song is this? Its beautiful

Yuguioh was a pretty normal game until 2015-2018 and recently that they just idk what happens they just started to print crazy cards that don't have once per turn effects or that combo the hole engine in 1 play i mean back in the day you have cards like stratos that search a card for no cost making a plus 1 and if you had ways to loop it you could get more that 1 card but that never happened lol but suddenly since DR/spellboocks they started to print cards that do the whole combo in 1 turn with no cost like zoodiacs and now a days since they realeased token they just said fuck it let's see where this shit can get beacause modern cards don't even have restrictions anymore lol is such a crazy thing

Yu Gi Oh is using keywords, wherever they can, but due to how nuanced every single effect can be, the cases in which that can be done are very limited. Sometimes keywords even lead to even longer cardtext. Like (Quick Effect) now instead of "During either players turn" seems shorter, except when you actually AREN'T supposed to activate it during either players turn. Then you get "During your opponent's turn (Quick Effect)", which is actually longer. See Flamberge for example. It is not actually easy to point at multiple cards having the exact same effect without at least as many other monsters having a very similar but not exactly same effect, each having a tiny different spin on it. You wouldn't actually gain much from keywording something like this, because the text you save on some of the cards actually ends up on another card, which needs explained that it actually doesn't work exactly as the keyword says, all for the cost of having a keyword that doesn't explain itself and people need to know. The problem with YGO cards isn't actually the text or keywords. They're mostly very clear if you're familiar with their syntax like ; : , "if" "when" "and if you do" "then". The bigger issue is the formatting of the cardtext. If each effect would simply be split up into it's own section, it would be so much less cluttered and easy to understand. Example: Add 1 "Diabellstar" monster from your Deck or GY to your hand. During your Main Phase: You can banish this card from your GY, then target 1 of your "Sinful Spoils" Spells/Traps that is banished or in your GY, except "WANTED: Seeker of Sinful Spoils"; place it on the bottom of the Deck, then draw 1 card. You can only use each effect of "WANTED: Seeker of Sinful Spoils" once per turn. This sucks to read. Add 1 "Diabellstar" monster from your Deck or GY to your hand. During your Main Phase: You can banish this card from your GY, then target 1 of your "Sinful Spoils" Spells/Traps that is banished or in your GY, except "WANTED: Seeker of Sinful Spoils"; place it on the bottom of the Deck, then draw 1 card. You can only use each effect of "WANTED: Seeker of Sinful Spoils" once per turn. Easy to read. Immediately clear. If only cards wouldn't be so tiny. Thank god Master Duel exists.

I've been watching a lot of TCG design videos lately, and , as a yugioh player, its so funny how its at the butt of all of these videos.

I applaud you for not mentioning "once per turn" at all in this, as it's BY FAR the most common phrase printed on Yugioh cards. The OCG has a method of formatting cards to convey the frequency of ability usage that the TCG didn't adopt. Konami could drastically reduce card text if they would just define "You can only use this ability of <insert card name> once per turn." using a keyword, abbreviation, or symbol. Given how many abilities are once per turn, I'd argue that it might be better to change the rules to state that an ability is once per turn by default and can be used more if specified.

I wasted a lot of my childhood playing yugioh before moving on to MTG and man mtg is the clearly superior game. Seeing what yugioh has turned into nowadays is depressing.

It's hard to take someone's opinion on TCGs seriously if their favorite TCG is yugioh.

Really appreciate this video. It made me think about how I'd incorporate an extra deck mechanic into my own game while avoiding these kinds of issues into the card game I'm working on right now. I can't say that I'm absolutely going to add the idea I came up with while considering the pitfalls listed in your video, but if you end up playing my game one day and there's an extra deck you can tell people that your analysis of the concept made me think about how I'd do it. I plan to kickstart my game one day, so it's not impossible, but I realize the odds aren't super great that that will even happen given the way the market is established. Just wanted to say. Also cool that this video is 100% still relevant 3 years later. Great job on it, and I'm subscribing now! 😆

The chilean TCG Mitos y Leyendas works exactly like the bakugan game. Your castle (deck) is also your health, and each time you receive damage, you discard cards. You lose if you run out of cards, of course.

Believe it or not, that rib cage was actually THE guy from Austria in WW2, yes, HIM

You should watch Markiplier play this game, he excels at bones, found a way to make infinite of them.

You there? It's been awhile since we last met, on an Inscryption stream. My TCG is doing great, and wish to show you how far It has arrived, wish to discuss it with you, it's been years, but wish we could cross paths again, and see the journey that is my game has been through, the lore is rich and in depth, I think you'll like it, ARG card game, Inscryption made it possible, I'll walk extra miles with mine, or even run, the meta narrative would be fun to discuss, hope you're doing good soldier.

the idea of the madness deck is pretty unique and cool

going first isnt broken, the games are broken

Cuz YGO everything is archetype… the concept of keyword is to duplicate the same effects across cards. YGO do not design card that works individually, they design the entire archetype, and each card is just a small part of an archetype. And since each archetype has different ways of running, no duplicate effects are used across different archetypes. They can technically have keyword among one archetype, but that isn’t going to be better. For example, all shadoll cards can refer when X, do something. Where X is just when a card is sent to graveyard. But this isn’t gonna help that much

I mean I would like to see more keywords in yugioh. Also just please turn all when efects to if. It makes no sense in this powercrept state of the game. It just makes confusion for new players and makes older decks even worse. It wouldn't make any impact on the game only saves time and turns off frustration caused by missreading when or if.

The only honestly, as someone that plays the game pretty often, the only keyword I would want added would be ‘indestructible’ for cards that can’t be destroyed by battle or card effects. Keywords do have a downside to legibility on cards, since the keyword has to be self referential to be immediately understood by new players if you don’t want them to have to open Google every new keyword that shows up. Having the effect spelled out directly on the card does make the effect text bloated, but I prefer that to having to go on Google when I’m reading a magic card that has a keyword I’ve never seen. One benefit of keywords in magic though is that I was looking through cards on TCG player and found one that says “when you commit a crime” instantly bought it, really funny stuff

It’s funny you bring up piercing battle damage, because the text before they decided to use that keyword was way longer

Search is nice keyword tho. But how do you explain "add 1 "(Archetype)" card from your Deck or GY to your hand".

You simply can't avoid power creep. You either continue to iterate and improve upon old designs, to retain attention, or you plateau in design and you bore your players away to the other games that aren't afraid to power creep. Magic didn't survive by laterally designing Serra Angel and Shivan Dragon for thirty years.

The fact that Rush Duels exists shows that Konami *could* use keyed text since RD cards are literally formatted as: [Requirement] "what you need to do to play the card" and [Effect] "what happens after the requirement is met." This shows Konami sees the TCG as nothing more than a little cash crop to stuff their wallets with.

In yugioh when they summon a kitten with 5 cards in hand and you have a rando sitting in attack position

Yugioh player that defends it quite regularly and I have a lot of fun playing it Yugioh is fast in terms of “turns played” but that 2 turn game was 40 minutes long lol Imagine like tearlaments all gas vs snake eyes all gas, that game can go for a bit and both sides playing around hand traps

currently working on a card game and you have a starting card basically 1 card you always have in your starting hand

Another way to shorten the text is to abbreviate some of the stuff like how Graveyard > GY Main Phase - MP and MP1/MP2 Battle Phase - BP And it's not like that unusual for them to do because a lot of the older yugioh game have done that

we have Piercing, and a dozen ways to say "unaffected by effects"

Yu-Gi-Oh! even has some keywords: Flip and Tribute! That said, the one is needs more than any is Nomi: this monster cannot be normal summoned or set.

Hello, fellow Gabe In my opinion, the only way to truly avoid power creep is to make the game digital. Physical cards can't be altered once you have them (future releases can, but not your copy specificly). In a digital card game, you could take every Celtic Guardian and make them Obnoxious Celtic Guardians