Absolutely agree with YGO. It's such a blessing that we have the retention we do, but almost every supplemental product released over the last half-decade has been specifically designed to resolve the "new player problem" (to varying degrees of success).
@MBTYuGiOh I mean, Rush Duels were specifically designed with this in mind and in my opinion is a much more fun format, but unless Konami finally decides to bring it over with the English debut of the newest anime, I can't see any time in which they would let us have it
@@Bigparr43 rush was replaced with speeds in the tcg, which has an explicit design goal of teaching people a simpler ygo to ease the transition to advanced
Android Netrunner is still alive! There's a large non-profit organization (Null Signal Games) run by fans that is printing new sets, even commissioning original Netrunner artists to do the card art. There's in-person tournaments around the world (including systematic organized play with prize support) - I played in the world championships last year and it was awesome. The coolest part is that since they aren't incentivized to make money, there's no predatory pricing (proxies are fully legal in tournament, and print-and-play files are made available for free), and the game is also relatively protected from the power creep caused by wanting to increase sales for the new set. It's kept alive because fans love the game too much :)
@@neveralive8550 Seriously devastated about LoR’s decline. The game was so fun and not pay to play. The wild card system was wonderful putting a maximum price on a deck if you for some reason didn’t have all the cards.
To your point that you focus on mtg, hearthstone, ygo, and Pokemon due to their longevity, I’d love a video from you on how the current “challenger” games like Lorcana, one piece, SWU, and FaB, etc. are different from the 4 you already cover. Alternately, I like a similar video on a batch of “dead” TCGs like netrunner, L5R, etc. I’m sure it is harder to cover games you don’t play or have existing deep knowledge of, but videos like that, that deep dive alternative TCGs, would be fantastic.
@ I think the only one that won’t be around in 2 years is possibly SWU. Lorcana and Onepiece are doing more sales than FaB on TCGPlayer based on their 2024 summary data.
Agree with you on the Pokemon shoutout. Game is in a great spot: healthy metagame (any tournament could be won by 15 different given decks and people wouldn’t be too shocked), decks are cheaper than ever since most run less than $80, and personally the player base is way more inviting than more hardcore fanbases like tournament MTG players. I feel like the game gets dismissed as a “baby game” just because of Pokémon’s all ages appeal and the fact that you can’t do actions on your opponents turn. In reality, each turn has so many individual actions that the game’s depth doesn’t come from playing around your opponent on your turn, but rather navigating the huge decision trees you need to make each game. Also the TCG Live client is really F2P friendly and gives you meta decks to start with, so it’s easier than ever to play without spending a dime.
As someone who has played every TCG you showed in this video except Chaotic, I think you've generally hit the nail on the head with all of them. I've seen games I loved (most notably L5R) die for reasons unrelated to the quality of the game: Expired licenses, like NetRunner & every Star Wars game, companies blundering other parts of the business (L5R), edgelord marketing driving away new players, etc. Pokemon's only threat is a massive change in tastes.
i am so sad that fire emblem cipher died because the devs decided that only one “supplemental material” product in between main releases was required for the franchise, and that fire emblem heroes filled it better than cipher did. to be fair, feh obviously makes more money than cipher ever could, but cipher barely had a chance, being JP only… the art was so good and the game was so fun, rest in peace my goat, it’s been 3 years and i’m still not over it
I would drop Yugioh for FE Cipher. I got to play some games online and that game was so frickin fun. Too bad FE Heroes cannibalized it as I lost interest in Heroes years ago.
Ironically in hearthstone , the recent set (The Great Dark Beyond) which was supposed to be a weaker set gave support to The Demon Seed decks which were terrorizing the wild ladder for a while now in the form of Healthstone which basically negates any damage dealt to your hero during your turn , costs 0 and is also tradeable
Its disheartening to see a bunch of people online not see the problem with wizards and mtg at this point. Yes. All of these products will sell but I think its a bubble. They've shed off the original playerbase for a new one.
@SpitefulAZ I've been one of those people but some responding on reddit even on other subs besides the main are defending mtg and UB. The takes they have are crazy.
I think what youre saying is gonna happen, and the game will be better off because of it. Some long time players will stop playing and get replaced by people who will try the game but not stick around for the most part. So after a year of two, i think wotc will start to see the issue and will start to feel the consequences financially too. And when that happens, when their wallet is hit that's when they will start to make more decisions that will help the game (and it's players) in the long run. That could mean more magic sets that feel like they're in a magic world (less things like thunder junction), maybe lower prices to a certain extent and generally things to make their core audience happier with the game. Also, a big financial hit is the only way i could see them doing something interesting with the reserved list, but thats more of a dream than something realistic. Maybe im completely wrong though and the new players stick around and wotc goes into this direction even more, which will be interesting
@@psveryfan As a former mtg player, I doubt it will become better if wizard loses most of the core player base. One of the problem with losing the core demographic is they lose the players that meet up in local game store and do small tournaments. Game stores that focus on mtg close will down or switch game once they can't support themselves on mtg players anymore. Those kind of events are great for actually keeping new players. They meet new friends and people that actively keep them in when releases are slow or not interesting.
imo yugioh's biggest threat is power creep, they are driving themselves into a corner and in 10 years power creep could be so hard that they will print a card that says you win in your next turn and people will say is too slow to play in the meta.
Yes, but actually no. Powercreep doesn't kill a game. It makes it only harder for new players to get into the game. But no new players could kill the game
Thank you so much for switching to a slightly gray background rather than the eye-bleeding bright white you used to have. It really makes the videos easier to watch, especially later at night.
I like this new gray but i think that create a weird contrast with red color. White instead can't allow you to use yellow, hard to say which one it's better
As an ex regional champion for Yugioh. Yugiohs problem is straight up power creep and as you stated saturated mechanics. Additionally the game went from more of a chess style back and forth to more fast paced games focused on hand traps and disruption. Archetype and engines make these problems even worse. Yugioh straight up needs a purge/format reset.
Very good points on all these games. It definitely feels like MTG is in the fastest accelerating downward spiral out of all of these games right now to me, considering that they basically keep doubling the number of crossovers.
I'm a new MTG player from the past year. The game takes a bit of effort to get into, but isn't that bad for someone very familiar with video games. YGO seems entirely unapproachable to me, even as someone that grew up with the show, which is why I think it's in a much worse spot: How do new players get into that game? That's the key question imo
IMO, Pokemon's set rotation system plays the biggest role in it having more staying power over the other TCG's, by introducing new archetypes while avoiding meta stagnation and relatively low powercreep, and the relatively low deck cost prevents it from feeling greedy. IMO the collectors/investors/hoarders don't really do much overall besides effecting the economy and buying product. Also a side tangent but maybe YGO would be nicer on new players if they only had a few summoning mechanics legal at a time.
I am fairly certain many are missing the point about YGO's "new player experience". It's not that the game is complex hence why it doesn't get new players; but it is how the game is played and how overwhelming effects and anti-gameplay they are and time consuming a single round can be. Oldheads are used and tbqh consumed by it that they don't notice it anymore. And there is really no place or consensus for casual yugioh. Imo the new player problem in ygo is unsolvable unless the game got rebooted (rush/speed duel for example) or another design philosophy were to be adapted in the master game (less synergy between cards, less special summoning, less negates, etcetera) Which of course one can already expect to be told to go fu- play older formats no one in their area actually plays. With MTG i see the same but with 2 card instant win combos or like every deck is more or less (red) aggro with summoning creatures and winning by t4 or less. UBs will only bring in money and more money and more money. And if that somehow won't work, wotc will just reprint older sets and make more money. Mtg is mostly held alive by the casuals and speculator i.e. commander players and scalpers. Pokemon; you're on point.
I think what kills Yu-Gi-Oh for new players is the situation of the metagame itself. Unlike all other games Yu-Gi-Oh is way more focused in denying than actually dealing with your opponents play. It is quite frustrating new player experience, you put quite the effort into not playing the game.
I'd say Pokemon is the safest major game, but if there was one thing that might kill the TCG, it's no Banlist. Never played it, but anyone I've talked to that doesn't just collect the cards dislike the lack of a proper banlist
Rush Duels are the best answer to the yugioh issue but they still haven't brought it to the west outside of one anime-based game that is stuck on the Switch
imho the threat to Pokémon is its depth in gameplay, collectors will likely always be around but the gameplay of the card game is far simpler than most others. Some may say this isn’t a bad thing but once you’ve played a DEEP, close, battle of wits, back and forth game of a deeper TCG like Magic or Flesh and Blood, it’s really hard to ever compare Pokémon’s dull gameplay to an experience like that
Don't really see this as a problem because at any time, they could heavily increase the depth to what it used to be back in, let's say, the DPP days or even beyond that. The design decision to simplify could always just be rolled back if it ever became a problem. Don't see it becoming an issue anytime soon because the game keeps growing faster and faster every year lately
@@Lanceolson4586I correlate its yearly growth to its cheap financial investment and accessibility, not its gameplay. They could make the game deeper but it would also push out a fraction of their younger playerbase, which they wouldn’t do. I think the game is locked into staying more basic than the others because the Pokemon IP is generally for children. Even if they decide to introduce a new little mechanic on their new sets, the gameplay depth cannot be compared to deeper TCGs without a complete overhaul; which again, they would never do.
@@drkshdwthizzno disrespect to the absolute behemoth that Pokémon TCG is, I have thousands of dollars of Pokemon cards sitting in storage and a lot of them are from when I played Standard years ago. The game is fun and surely my kids and I will play hundreds of games once they’re older, but I can’t compare any game of Pokemon I’ve ever played to playing 4c BTL vs Affinity in MTG, 45 minute game where my opponent constantly tried to burn and dwindle down my last point of health but I kept drawing answer after answer and played every turn with great patience and excellence until I drew my single copy of Snapcaster off the top, allowing me to flashback my BTL and find a Siege Rhino from my deck to slowly tiptoe back into safety and eventually securing a win against him. Pokémon is great, but deep gameplay is king.
@Bronzii never is a strong word in this case because they already did an overhaul in the BW era. I do agree that it's unlikely But if growth ever stopped BECAUSE of a lack of depth, pokemon already knows how to bring such depth into the game because they already took it out. And while they did do the original overhaul to get more kids into the game I don't really see that being a factor anymore because 1. It never really worked as the ratio between kids and adults stayed pretty similar 2. They definitely underestimated what kids were willing to put up with 3. I don't imagine them caring about kids as much as they did because of how pokemons' demographic has changed over the years.
Of all the games listed I feel Yu-gi-oh has the weirdest relationship with their playerbase and fanbase. There's a TON of people who played yugioh in the early days between it's release and GX era who, trying to return to the game nowadays, are completely turned off by the complexity that it is today. Imagine coming from an era where tribute summoning for stronger cards was common and fusion summoning was the only time you pulled from the extra deck; game was easy to learn and complex enough to dive into if you wanted to be competitive! If that's what you came from and tried playing today you'd need to understand Synchro summons, XYZ summons, pendulums, Link summoning, hand traps (vaguely existed back then), traps are too slow nowadays, turns can last 10 minutes as players set up their field, card timing is more complex (example the wording "if" vs "then"), etc etc etc. It's overwhelming to learn the mechanics, nevermind the cards! This makes old players intimidated and/or have no nostalgia for effectively a new game while also scaring away newer players who don't want to learn a bunch of rules and how they all interact. This has also been my greatest hardship when trying to convince people to try the game.
ngl as someone who played ygo for 20+ years (since the first starter decks released in the tcg^^) I can't wait for the game to die. and by die I mean no more cards get printed and no more banlists are released. no official tournaments -> smaller playerbase -> cheaper cards ex-players and resellers wanna get rid of everything -> even cheaper cards no more new sets/banlists -> finally being able to have a complete cardpool to work with -> not needing to be worried that your deck might get hit -> being able to build a deck and perfecting it without having to go back to the drawing board every time new support or new staples come out
tried yugioh the other day and lord it was one of the most infuriating confusing and unfun gaming experiences I have ever had. The game interests me but it feels actively anti new-player in that regard
Duel Link's is a good starter if you haven't tried, otherwise it absolutely puts you on the deep end right away due to the amount of game mechanics. I don't know how good it is for a new player nowadays but the progression system should also guide you through the different systems of the game chronologically, but i played them as they were released. I wonder what the new player experience is like...
Try a single player Yugioh game like Legacy of the Duelist that will introduce the cards in order of release, Master Duel has 25 years worth of cards and apparently no interest in adding a new player mode...
@@SeaHorseOfTH-cam To be fair, it *does* have something like a campaign mode, which it kinda nudges you toward because it gives you cards for completing it. That said, even there, it starts at around a 1 or 2 and quickly shifts to a 7+ in terms of complexity, nearly on par with the game as it is normally. You're right though, the video games are legitimately the best way to build an understanding of the game from basic or zero knowledge.
That would be super interesting, haha. “Each Card Game’s Biggest Disaster.” My picks would be: Magic: either Affinity standard during Mirrodin, Caw-Blade standard during Zendikar block, or $1000 standard during Battle for Zendikar YuGiOh: ??? (Never really played except for as kids on the playground) Pokemon: ADP Hearthstone: Undertaker
For me the greatest disaster for each are: MtG: The Chronicles+reserve list fiasco or Combo Winter YGO: Yata Lock format or Tele-DAD format (in game)/ The Konami vs UpperDeck drama (out of game) Hearthstone: The demon seed. Pokemon: Seismitoad EX (don't know a lot about pokemon TCG)
The previous mtg players have a very limited understanding of what could have killed magic. They talk about tournament metas but those don't actually matter to mtg surviving and they matter even less now. It's when casuals who couldn't name a single pro player stop buying cards, that's when you are close to death. The closest mtg got to death in this century was in the time spiral - lorwyn blocks. Absolutely beloved by magic afficionados, pros and vorthoses. Sold like shit because the hard-to-see part of magic, the uber casuals didn't like them. The closest mtg got to death Ever was in 1994-1995 with the Ice age "block" as cards in those sets sucked ass,. They were either uninspired, uniteresting, overcomplicated or underpowered or some combination of those four. Magic could have legitemately been the first big victim of two year tcg curse at that point.
It’s not the old mind on its own, a lot of players *could* keep up with the modern meta while being old minded, the problem is you can’t have the price spikes alongside the old mind. That combination will and is killing the game.
The problem with ygo is the cost return from the game, it is not profitable to play competitive, staples are overproced. Riot is making a new physical tcg right now
I would argue that price is important to talk about when killing off a game because at least for me, yugioh became too expensive even to play casually and is why I dropped the game
I tried returning to Yugioh last year, it was a disaster, I then got put onto magic and fell absolutely in love. I found magic to be a more interesting game which felt more "back and forth" than yugioh. I also think Yugioh suffers from a lack of format diversity such that it has constant power creep and much less accessible casual formats. I don't *love* commander but it is at least easy to go play magic in a place I visit at a not top of the meta-game power level.
I think it's pretty generalizing to say that Universes Beyond disillusions enfranchises players and that players that come for them won't stay. There's a lot of overlap of people that already like Magic and people who like a particular UB set. There's also a lot, and I mean A LOT, of players who simply don't care. Either they're completely flavor-agnostic (especially competitively) or they don't draw a hard line around it and just accept that they might not like some stuff. As for the new players, have you never come for something and stayed for something else? Magic is a great game that managed to attract players without popular IPs. Now it's just exposed to most people. Imagining these players as only caring about literally that IP and nothing else is very dismissing. All the enfranchised players that ended up loving the game or the story came from somewhere. Tldr: we don't have any data to support player behaviors around UB, so we might as well not take arguments from reddit.
I think UB section could have used another slide because I was a fan when it was first introduced. It's taken over more and more of the mainstream formats as the years have gone on and it's more the loss of the MTGness of the game that I wanted to point at. I think the idea worked great for Fortnite because of the lack of anything substantial at the start of the game(no story, or need to keep mechanics like guns or locations, etc). Magic has more identity then that if you ask me so removing that history for crossovers feels like more of a cost. Your right tho it's just a feeling/opinion of mine don't have any hard evidence so take it with a grain of salt.
When Yu-Gi-Oh was not doing well in beginning of 2024, I switched to MTG Arena. Had a lot of fun, and then Nadu came out. Switched to Pokemon Live. Enjoyed it and then set rotation destroyed my deck. TLDR : Solitaire forever!!
i don't think all the foreign IP will kill magic because the at it's core, the game play is still the same, and the gameplay is what keeps players playing msgic. depth, strategy, maximize win rate, win with obscure strategies or deck archetypes.
I generally agree with this just as I play for the gameplay more than setting/lore/collection but I know many players in these camps with stronger feelings about UB
Idk man I’m a “new player” in yugioh and it took me a bit but it really isn’t that difficult to understand the game like yeah ofc you’re gonna go up against stuff you don’t know but that shouldn’t signal to yourself that you’re a bad player. The reason ppl quit is because their ego is too big for them to learn anything new
Even if it isn't actually as hard as it seems to get into, the fact that it SEEMS impossible to get into will scare off potential new players. That and the fact that the gameplay isn't really anything like the show, which is the main hook for new players surely?
I think the only problem with your take on pokemon is that the two "player" bases dont really interact with each other. So the audience actually playing the game is probably smaller than you believe.
Mentioning Fortnite 30 seconds before saying the danger is that Magic becomes a hodgepodge of crossovers without any real examination of that is silly to me. Fortnite IS a crazy hodgepodge of crossovers and people love it and it continues to be massive. I'm not saying there isn't danger there, but it's considerably more complicated than "core players won't like crossover craziness". I think the challenges are more around the approach to crossovers that Magic is taking, and how it can easily draw in a new player only to abandon them after that wave of content. And how the audience that loves Fortnite skews younger and those players may find the complication of the game intimidating, while the older players find less draw in the crossovers.
Another big problem is the current core audience actually driving away new players coming in through UB. Hearing that the product that they enjoy and through which they found amazing game is bad, including from some of the biggest voices in the community, is not a good onboarding strategy.
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we have just taken up mtg last year and are already disheartened by all the universed beyond stuff. i love final fantasy but don't want to see my serra angel fighting sephiroth... also there is a final fantasy tcg so no point in forcing it into mtg when there is a dedicated space for it.
I think WotC's & Konami's grimy practices are more threatening than anything mentioned here. The existing players are tired of being milked for fetchlands and competitive auto-Solitaire YGO cards. New players can't handle the wall-o'-text in YGO. I also can't stand all the bullshit extra win con cards in MTG and how poorly designed the mana system is to play (it's good for deckbuilding but not for gameplay) and the combat system is bad. I just don't want to play the game much of the time. Pokemon is my favorite but the Rulebox card power creep nonsense ruins the game for me. Currently designing my own TCG that will actually be fun to play and won't power creep off of a cliff.
As someone else probably already did, "Magic: the Gathering" has 2 other major problems, which are ironically fuelling each other: powercreep and torrent of releases. In short, " __why buy a pricy card when it will be weak within 6 WEEKS__? " In depth, The amount of abilities and benefits crammed in a card are ever rising. 10 years ago or so, a "rare" could have been a "at the beginning of your turn, gain 25% of your max life total". Now ... A rare card has to flip the table, otherwise it's trash. This process is non stop, release after release ... ... Which got quickened from "every 3 MONTHS" to the most recent "every 6-7 WEEKS". IT'S HALF THE TIME! So, you don't have TIME to digest and deeply know both the cards and the Lore because you'll have to trash them out to make room for the soon-imminent already-spoiled full-revolutionizing brand-new Set. Ah yes, 3-rd reason: Adjacent to the ever-invading "Universes Beyond", the actual original Lore is getting paper thinner and thinner so most of cards get forgotten rather quickly. That's ... Depressing... " *Why caring for card X and synergy A&B when next month the newly spoiled cards will outpace them?* "
At least on the torrent of releases Wizards has promised to slow down. Remains to be seen if and ti what extent they will follow though and even then we won't see much change for close to 2 years due to logistics of manufacturing.
For all their faults each of these respective companies know what they're doing. I don't see any of these games dying anytime soon. The only thing that could stop these games is people moving on from playing trading card games all together.
6:30 this isn't something unique to YuGiOh. A card like Ash Blossom is effectively the same card as a removal spell or counter spell in Hearthstone or Magic. If you use your removal on their thing and then they play a bigger thing, it's the same YuGiOh scenario you described.
@SmashCentralOfficial true friend, I'm pretty casual yugioh player and don't think I would've made that connection. That being said from a new player perspective yugioh is filled with knowledge checks and while all games have this at least in magic if you're opponent tries to cast a goblin rabblemaster the card explains how it is going to beat you over the head while in yugioh playing a searcher with ash just means they're going to grab a card. The new player is given nothing to determine if they need to ash now or save it, in this situation the versatility of these cards comes at the expense of a new player.
Yeah, but close to no card seems SO entangled with the other parts of the deck that no new player can, at least, grasp the utility of some cards. In Yu-Gi-Oh, almost each card is synergistic with those SPECIFIC A, B and C cards that perform the specific sequence of actions X, Y and Z that ... That a new player can't possibly know. In magic this thing can happen ONLY in the most powerful formats, where each deck costs N-thousands of dollars
currently TCGs is an open market since all of them completely blow. It's ton of low power cards and shortprinted powerspike cards. Moslty only losers play these card games since normal people do not want to invest 500 eur in deck just to brick because of bad game mechanics. Pokemon is good though
Absolutely agree with YGO. It's such a blessing that we have the retention we do, but almost every supplemental product released over the last half-decade has been specifically designed to resolve the "new player problem" (to varying degrees of success).
@MBTYuGiOh I mean, Rush Duels were specifically designed with this in mind and in my opinion is a much more fun format, but unless Konami finally decides to bring it over with the English debut of the newest anime, I can't see any time in which they would let us have it
@@Bigparr43 rush was replaced with speeds in the tcg, which has an explicit design goal of teaching people a simpler ygo to ease the transition to advanced
Yo! MBT big fan of your videos!
Android Netrunner is still alive! There's a large non-profit organization (Null Signal Games) run by fans that is printing new sets, even commissioning original Netrunner artists to do the card art. There's in-person tournaments around the world (including systematic organized play with prize support) - I played in the world championships last year and it was awesome.
The coolest part is that since they aren't incentivized to make money, there's no predatory pricing (proxies are fully legal in tournament, and print-and-play files are made available for free), and the game is also relatively protected from the power creep caused by wanting to increase sales for the new set.
It's kept alive because fans love the game too much :)
None beats LoR. Game died because was too generous.
@@neveralive8550 ruina was too fun to last… at least the modding scenes still going strong :)
@@neveralive8550 Seriously devastated about LoR’s decline. The game was so fun and not pay to play. The wild card system was wonderful putting a maximum price on a deck if you for some reason didn’t have all the cards.
@@moldheadoldbrains They meant legends of runeterra
@ lol egg on my face
Tru dat partner
To your point that you focus on mtg, hearthstone, ygo, and Pokemon due to their longevity, I’d love a video from you on how the current “challenger” games like Lorcana, one piece, SWU, and FaB, etc. are different from the 4 you already cover. Alternately, I like a similar video on a batch of “dead” TCGs like netrunner, L5R, etc. I’m sure it is harder to cover games you don’t play or have existing deep knowledge of, but videos like that, that deep dive alternative TCGs, would be fantastic.
Only FaB is gonna survie two more years from all those """"challengers"""""
@ I think the only one that won’t be around in 2 years is possibly SWU. Lorcana and Onepiece are doing more sales than FaB on TCGPlayer based on their 2024 summary data.
What about cardfight vanguard?
Agree with you on the Pokemon shoutout. Game is in a great spot: healthy metagame (any tournament could be won by 15 different given decks and people wouldn’t be too shocked), decks are cheaper than ever since most run less than $80, and personally the player base is way more inviting than more hardcore fanbases like tournament MTG players. I feel like the game gets dismissed as a “baby game” just because of Pokémon’s all ages appeal and the fact that you can’t do actions on your opponents turn. In reality, each turn has so many individual actions that the game’s depth doesn’t come from playing around your opponent on your turn, but rather navigating the huge decision trees you need to make each game.
Also the TCG Live client is really F2P friendly and gives you meta decks to start with, so it’s easier than ever to play without spending a dime.
As someone who has played every TCG you showed in this video except Chaotic, I think you've generally hit the nail on the head with all of them. I've seen games I loved (most notably L5R) die for reasons unrelated to the quality of the game: Expired licenses, like NetRunner & every Star Wars game, companies blundering other parts of the business (L5R), edgelord marketing driving away new players, etc.
Pokemon's only threat is a massive change in tastes.
i am so sad that fire emblem cipher died because the devs decided that only one “supplemental material” product in between main releases was required for the franchise, and that fire emblem heroes filled it better than cipher did.
to be fair, feh obviously makes more money than cipher ever could, but cipher barely had a chance, being JP only… the art was so good and the game was so fun, rest in peace my goat, it’s been 3 years and i’m still not over it
I would drop Yugioh for FE Cipher. I got to play some games online and that game was so frickin fun. Too bad FE Heroes cannibalized it as I lost interest in Heroes years ago.
Ironically in hearthstone , the recent set (The Great Dark Beyond) which was supposed to be a weaker set gave support to The Demon Seed decks which were terrorizing the wild ladder for a while now in the form of Healthstone which basically negates any damage dealt to your hero during your turn , costs 0 and is also tradeable
Its disheartening to see a bunch of people online not see the problem with wizards and mtg at this point. Yes. All of these products will sell but I think its a bubble. They've shed off the original playerbase for a new one.
Yep, and the new one isn't going to stick for very long if no one is willing to keep playing
literally all I see people say online is complaining about universes Beyond.
@SpitefulAZ I've been one of those people but some responding on reddit even on other subs besides the main are defending mtg and UB. The takes they have are crazy.
I think what youre saying is gonna happen, and the game will be better off because of it. Some long time players will stop playing and get replaced by people who will try the game but not stick around for the most part. So after a year of two, i think wotc will start to see the issue and will start to feel the consequences financially too. And when that happens, when their wallet is hit that's when they will start to make more decisions that will help the game (and it's players) in the long run. That could mean more magic sets that feel like they're in a magic world (less things like thunder junction), maybe lower prices to a certain extent and generally things to make their core audience happier with the game. Also, a big financial hit is the only way i could see them doing something interesting with the reserved list, but thats more of a dream than something realistic. Maybe im completely wrong though and the new players stick around and wotc goes into this direction even more, which will be interesting
@@psveryfan As a former mtg player, I doubt it will become better if wizard loses most of the core player base. One of the problem with losing the core demographic is they lose the players that meet up in local game store and do small tournaments. Game stores that focus on mtg close will down or switch game once they can't support themselves on mtg players anymore. Those kind of events are great for actually keeping new players. They meet new friends and people that actively keep them in when releases are slow or not interesting.
imo yugioh's biggest threat is power creep, they are driving themselves into a corner and in 10 years power creep could be so hard that they will print a card that says you win in your next turn and people will say is too slow to play in the meta.
@@danteortega4578 All Yugioh problems would be solved if they implemented rotation cycles like both Magic and Pokemon have.
@@danteortega4578 They have said this about the game since the XYZ era, LMAO
Yes, but actually no. Powercreep doesn't kill a game. It makes it only harder for new players to get into the game. But no new players could kill the game
Thank you so much for switching to a slightly gray background rather than the eye-bleeding bright white you used to have. It really makes the videos easier to watch, especially later at night.
I like this new gray but i think that create a weird contrast with red color. White instead can't allow you to use yellow, hard to say which one it's better
As an ex regional champion for Yugioh. Yugiohs problem is straight up power creep and as you stated saturated mechanics. Additionally the game went from more of a chess style back and forth to more fast paced games focused on hand traps and disruption. Archetype and engines make these problems even worse. Yugioh straight up needs a purge/format reset.
Very good points on all these games. It definitely feels like MTG is in the fastest accelerating downward spiral out of all of these games right now to me, considering that they basically keep doubling the number of crossovers.
I'm a new MTG player from the past year. The game takes a bit of effort to get into, but isn't that bad for someone very familiar with video games.
YGO seems entirely unapproachable to me, even as someone that grew up with the show, which is why I think it's in a much worse spot: How do new players get into that game? That's the key question imo
I don't think anything short of an actual apocalyptic event could end Pokemon as a franchise, and even then i have my doubts
IMO, Pokemon's set rotation system plays the biggest role in it having more staying power over the other TCG's, by introducing new archetypes while avoiding meta stagnation and relatively low powercreep, and the relatively low deck cost prevents it from feeling greedy. IMO the collectors/investors/hoarders don't really do much overall besides effecting the economy and buying product.
Also a side tangent but maybe YGO would be nicer on new players if they only had a few summoning mechanics legal at a time.
I am fairly certain many are missing the point about YGO's "new player experience". It's not that the game is complex hence why it doesn't get new players; but it is how the game is played and how overwhelming effects and anti-gameplay they are and time consuming a single round can be. Oldheads are used and tbqh consumed by it that they don't notice it anymore. And there is really no place or consensus for casual yugioh.
Imo the new player problem in ygo is unsolvable unless the game got rebooted (rush/speed duel for example) or another design philosophy were to be adapted in the master game (less synergy between cards, less special summoning, less negates, etcetera) Which of course one can already expect to be told to go fu- play older formats no one in their area actually plays.
With MTG i see the same but with 2 card instant win combos or like every deck is more or less (red) aggro with summoning creatures and winning by t4 or less. UBs will only bring in money and more money and more money. And if that somehow won't work, wotc will just reprint older sets and make more money. Mtg is mostly held alive by the casuals and speculator i.e. commander players and scalpers.
Pokemon; you're on point.
I think what kills Yu-Gi-Oh for new players is the situation of the metagame itself. Unlike all other games Yu-Gi-Oh is way more focused in denying than actually dealing with your opponents play. It is quite frustrating new player experience, you put quite the effort into not playing the game.
great content as always, but please get a new mic
I'd say Pokemon is the safest major game, but if there was one thing that might kill the TCG, it's no Banlist. Never played it, but anyone I've talked to that doesn't just collect the cards dislike the lack of a proper banlist
As a Yugioh and hearthstone player, thank you
Rush Duels are the best answer to the yugioh issue but they still haven't brought it to the west outside of one anime-based game that is stuck on the Switch
imho the threat to Pokémon is its depth in gameplay, collectors will likely always be around but the gameplay of the card game is far simpler than most others. Some may say this isn’t a bad thing but once you’ve played a DEEP, close, battle of wits, back and forth game of a deeper TCG like Magic or Flesh and Blood, it’s really hard to ever compare Pokémon’s dull gameplay to an experience like that
Don't really see this as a problem because at any time, they could heavily increase the depth to what it used to be back in, let's say, the DPP days or even beyond that.
The design decision to simplify could always just be rolled back if it ever became a problem.
Don't see it becoming an issue anytime soon because the game keeps growing faster and faster every year lately
Pokemon is simple and easy to get into but it is also deep. Give it another try. It's the cheapest game as well.
@@Lanceolson4586I correlate its yearly growth to its cheap financial investment and accessibility, not its gameplay. They could make the game deeper but it would also push out a fraction of their younger playerbase, which they wouldn’t do. I think the game is locked into staying more basic than the others because the Pokemon IP is generally for children. Even if they decide to introduce a new little mechanic on their new sets, the gameplay depth cannot be compared to deeper TCGs without a complete overhaul; which again, they would never do.
@@drkshdwthizzno disrespect to the absolute behemoth that Pokémon TCG is, I have thousands of dollars of Pokemon cards sitting in storage and a lot of them are from when I played Standard years ago. The game is fun and surely my kids and I will play hundreds of games once they’re older, but I can’t compare any game of Pokemon I’ve ever played to playing 4c BTL vs Affinity in MTG, 45 minute game where my opponent constantly tried to burn and dwindle down my last point of health but I kept drawing answer after answer and played every turn with great patience and excellence until I drew my single copy of Snapcaster off the top, allowing me to flashback my BTL and find a Siege Rhino from my deck to slowly tiptoe back into safety and eventually securing a win against him. Pokémon is great, but deep gameplay is king.
@Bronzii never is a strong word in this case because they already did an overhaul in the BW era.
I do agree that it's unlikely
But if growth ever stopped BECAUSE of a lack of depth,
pokemon already knows how to bring such depth into the game because they already took it out.
And while they did do the original overhaul to get more kids into the game
I don't really see that being a factor anymore because
1. It never really worked as the ratio between kids and adults stayed pretty similar
2. They definitely underestimated what kids were willing to put up with
3. I don't imagine them caring about kids as much as they did because of how pokemons' demographic has changed over the years.
Of all the games listed I feel Yu-gi-oh has the weirdest relationship with their playerbase and fanbase. There's a TON of people who played yugioh in the early days between it's release and GX era who, trying to return to the game nowadays, are completely turned off by the complexity that it is today. Imagine coming from an era where tribute summoning for stronger cards was common and fusion summoning was the only time you pulled from the extra deck; game was easy to learn and complex enough to dive into if you wanted to be competitive! If that's what you came from and tried playing today you'd need to understand Synchro summons, XYZ summons, pendulums, Link summoning, hand traps (vaguely existed back then), traps are too slow nowadays, turns can last 10 minutes as players set up their field, card timing is more complex (example the wording "if" vs "then"), etc etc etc.
It's overwhelming to learn the mechanics, nevermind the cards! This makes old players intimidated and/or have no nostalgia for effectively a new game while also scaring away newer players who don't want to learn a bunch of rules and how they all interact. This has also been my greatest hardship when trying to convince people to try the game.
ngl as someone who played ygo for 20+ years (since the first starter decks released in the tcg^^) I can't wait for the game to die. and by die I mean no more cards get printed and no more banlists are released.
no official tournaments -> smaller playerbase -> cheaper cards
ex-players and resellers wanna get rid of everything -> even cheaper cards
no more new sets/banlists -> finally being able to have a complete cardpool to work with -> not needing to be worried that your deck might get hit -> being able to build a deck and perfecting it without having to go back to the drawing board every time new support or new staples come out
tried yugioh the other day and lord it was one of the most infuriating confusing and unfun gaming experiences I have ever had. The game interests me but it feels actively anti new-player in that regard
Duel Link's is a good starter if you haven't tried, otherwise it absolutely puts you on the deep end right away due to the amount of game mechanics. I don't know how good it is for a new player nowadays but the progression system should also guide you through the different systems of the game chronologically, but i played them as they were released. I wonder what the new player experience is like...
Try a single player Yugioh game like Legacy of the Duelist that will introduce the cards in order of release, Master Duel has 25 years worth of cards and apparently no interest in adding a new player mode...
@@SeaHorseOfTH-cam To be fair, it *does* have something like a campaign mode, which it kinda nudges you toward because it gives you cards for completing it.
That said, even there, it starts at around a 1 or 2 and quickly shifts to a 7+ in terms of complexity, nearly on par with the game as it is normally.
You're right though, the video games are legitimately the best way to build an understanding of the game from basic or zero knowledge.
Chaotic seems like it would be great for a video game not so much a real life card game. I loved the shows concept when I was a kid
hey, can you talk about the disasters that have happened to these card games, i think it might be a interesting video idea.
That would be super interesting, haha. “Each Card Game’s Biggest Disaster.” My picks would be:
Magic: either Affinity standard during Mirrodin, Caw-Blade standard during Zendikar block, or $1000 standard during Battle for Zendikar
YuGiOh: ??? (Never really played except for as kids on the playground)
Pokemon: ADP
Hearthstone: Undertaker
For me the greatest disaster for each are:
MtG: The Chronicles+reserve list fiasco or Combo Winter
YGO: Yata Lock format or Tele-DAD format (in game)/ The Konami vs UpperDeck drama (out of game)
Hearthstone: The demon seed.
Pokemon: Seismitoad EX (don't know a lot about pokemon TCG)
@@jennaknudsen7951 imo I think for Hearthstone, it would be Shudderwock or Caverns Below
The previous mtg players have a very limited understanding of what could have killed magic. They talk about tournament metas but those don't actually matter to mtg surviving and they matter even less now. It's when casuals who couldn't name a single pro player stop buying cards, that's when you are close to death.
The closest mtg got to death in this century was in the time spiral - lorwyn blocks. Absolutely beloved by magic afficionados, pros and vorthoses. Sold like shit because the hard-to-see part of magic, the uber casuals didn't like them.
The closest mtg got to death Ever was in 1994-1995 with the Ice age "block" as cards in those sets sucked ass,. They were either uninspired, uniteresting, overcomplicated or underpowered or some combination of those four. Magic could have legitemately been the first big victim of two year tcg curse at that point.
Great idea!
Thanks for darkening the background. Didn't notice until you pointed it out, but I appreciate it nevertheless.
Background much better, white blinds me
The problem you described with YGO i felt when i started to play sanctioned Legacy MTG tournaments, hahahahah
Taking notes for my Fruit themed TCG
It’s not the old mind on its own, a lot of players *could* keep up with the modern meta while being old minded, the problem is you can’t have the price spikes alongside the old mind. That combination will and is killing the game.
Power creep is what will kill YGO. Konami has no understanding of the concept of critical mass.
The problem with ygo is the cost return from the game, it is not profitable to play competitive, staples are overproced.
Riot is making a new physical tcg right now
I would argue that price is important to talk about when killing off a game because at least for me, yugioh became too expensive even to play casually and is why I dropped the game
I tried returning to Yugioh last year, it was a disaster, I then got put onto magic and fell absolutely in love. I found magic to be a more interesting game which felt more "back and forth" than yugioh. I also think Yugioh suffers from a lack of format diversity such that it has constant power creep and much less accessible casual formats. I don't *love* commander but it is at least easy to go play magic in a place I visit at a not top of the meta-game power level.
I think it's pretty generalizing to say that Universes Beyond disillusions enfranchises players and that players that come for them won't stay.
There's a lot of overlap of people that already like Magic and people who like a particular UB set. There's also a lot, and I mean A LOT, of players who simply don't care. Either they're completely flavor-agnostic (especially competitively) or they don't draw a hard line around it and just accept that they might not like some stuff.
As for the new players, have you never come for something and stayed for something else? Magic is a great game that managed to attract players without popular IPs. Now it's just exposed to most people. Imagining these players as only caring about literally that IP and nothing else is very dismissing. All the enfranchised players that ended up loving the game or the story came from somewhere.
Tldr: we don't have any data to support player behaviors around UB, so we might as well not take arguments from reddit.
I think UB section could have used another slide because I was a fan when it was first introduced. It's taken over more and more of the mainstream formats as the years have gone on and it's more the loss of the MTGness of the game that I wanted to point at. I think the idea worked great for Fortnite because of the lack of anything substantial at the start of the game(no story, or need to keep mechanics like guns or locations, etc). Magic has more identity then that if you ask me so removing that history for crossovers feels like more of a cost. Your right tho it's just a feeling/opinion of mine don't have any hard evidence so take it with a grain of salt.
Vs. System didn't the even make the video as a dead card game that lasted less than a year but had at least one pro tour.
When Yu-Gi-Oh was not doing well in beginning of 2024, I switched to MTG Arena. Had a lot of fun, and then Nadu came out. Switched to Pokemon Live. Enjoyed it and then set rotation destroyed my deck.
TLDR : Solitaire forever!!
So sad that the only one of these games who is way too big to fall is the absolute worst one
You could do some card game history video it could be cool
Have you ever discussed the Final Fantasy TCG? That seems to be alive and has become relatively old.
dude please bring cardfight vanguard too
Video 3 of asking SodaTCG to make a card game concept video
What about power creep for the others tho?
i don't think all the foreign IP will kill magic because the at it's core, the game play is still the same, and the gameplay is what keeps players playing msgic. depth, strategy, maximize win rate, win with obscure strategies or deck archetypes.
I generally agree with this just as I play for the gameplay more than setting/lore/collection but I know many players in these camps with stronger feelings about UB
There's also PokemonGoToThePolls!
The thing that could actually kill hearthstone is Microsoft downsizing studios.
In the literal sense that will what finally ends the game, but only is something that will only happen once the game is struggling
Idk man I’m a “new player” in yugioh and it took me a bit but it really isn’t that difficult to understand the game like yeah ofc you’re gonna go up against stuff you don’t know but that shouldn’t signal to yourself that you’re a bad player. The reason ppl quit is because their ego is too big for them to learn anything new
Even if it isn't actually as hard as it seems to get into, the fact that it SEEMS impossible to get into will scare off potential new players.
That and the fact that the gameplay isn't really anything like the show, which is the main hook for new players surely?
I think the only problem with your take on pokemon is that the two "player" bases dont really interact with each other. So the audience actually playing the game is probably smaller than you believe.
Mentioning Fortnite 30 seconds before saying the danger is that Magic becomes a hodgepodge of crossovers without any real examination of that is silly to me. Fortnite IS a crazy hodgepodge of crossovers and people love it and it continues to be massive. I'm not saying there isn't danger there, but it's considerably more complicated than "core players won't like crossover craziness". I think the challenges are more around the approach to crossovers that Magic is taking, and how it can easily draw in a new player only to abandon them after that wave of content. And how the audience that loves Fortnite skews younger and those players may find the complication of the game intimidating, while the older players find less draw in the crossovers.
Another big problem is the current core audience actually driving away new players coming in through UB. Hearing that the product that they enjoy and through which they found amazing game is bad, including from some of the biggest voices in the community, is not a good onboarding strategy.
we have just taken up mtg last year and are already disheartened by all the universed beyond stuff.
i love final fantasy but don't want to see my serra angel fighting sephiroth...
also there is a final fantasy tcg so no point in forcing it into mtg when there is a dedicated space for it.
Microsoft purchased Activision Blizzard, hopefully they fix the issues with the company, but I'm not holding my breath.
I think WotC's & Konami's grimy practices are more threatening than anything mentioned here. The existing players are tired of being milked for fetchlands and competitive auto-Solitaire YGO cards. New players can't handle the wall-o'-text in YGO. I also can't stand all the bullshit extra win con cards in MTG and how poorly designed the mana system is to play (it's good for deckbuilding but not for gameplay) and the combat system is bad. I just don't want to play the game much of the time. Pokemon is my favorite but the Rulebox card power creep nonsense ruins the game for me. Currently designing my own TCG that will actually be fun to play and won't power creep off of a cliff.
As someone else probably already did, "Magic: the Gathering" has 2 other major problems, which are ironically fuelling each other: powercreep and torrent of releases.
In short, " __why buy a pricy card when it will be weak within 6 WEEKS__? "
In depth,
The amount of abilities and benefits crammed in a card are ever rising.
10 years ago or so, a "rare" could have been a "at the beginning of your turn, gain 25% of your max life total".
Now ... A rare card has to flip the table, otherwise it's trash.
This process is non stop, release after release ...
... Which got quickened from "every 3 MONTHS" to the most recent "every 6-7 WEEKS".
IT'S HALF THE TIME!
So, you don't have TIME to digest and deeply know both the cards and the Lore because you'll have to trash them out to make room for the soon-imminent already-spoiled full-revolutionizing brand-new Set.
Ah yes, 3-rd reason:
Adjacent to the ever-invading "Universes Beyond", the actual original Lore is getting paper thinner and thinner so most of cards get forgotten rather quickly.
That's ... Depressing...
" *Why caring for card X and synergy A&B when next month the newly spoiled cards will outpace them?* "
At least on the torrent of releases Wizards has promised to slow down. Remains to be seen if and ti what extent they will follow though and even then we won't see much change for close to 2 years due to logistics of manufacturing.
Maxx C to 3!!!
hell no!
For all their faults each of these respective companies know what they're doing. I don't see any of these games dying anytime soon. The only thing that could stop these games is people moving on from playing trading card games all together.
6:30 this isn't something unique to YuGiOh. A card like Ash Blossom is effectively the same card as a removal spell or counter spell in Hearthstone or Magic. If you use your removal on their thing and then they play a bigger thing, it's the same YuGiOh scenario you described.
@SmashCentralOfficial true friend, I'm pretty casual yugioh player and don't think I would've made that connection. That being said from a new player perspective yugioh is filled with knowledge checks and while all games have this at least in magic if you're opponent tries to cast a goblin rabblemaster the card explains how it is going to beat you over the head while in yugioh playing a searcher with ash just means they're going to grab a card. The new player is given nothing to determine if they need to ash now or save it, in this situation the versatility of these cards comes at the expense of a new player.
Yeah, but close to no card seems SO entangled with the other parts of the deck that no new player can, at least, grasp the utility of some cards.
In Yu-Gi-Oh, almost each card is synergistic with those SPECIFIC A, B and C cards that perform the specific sequence of actions X, Y and Z that ... That a new player can't possibly know.
In magic this thing can happen ONLY in the most powerful formats, where each deck costs N-thousands of dollars
❤❤
stormwind didnt kill hs, it was one of the most fun metas to play, and the game started really going downhill after castle nathria
currently TCGs is an open market since all of them completely blow. It's ton of low power cards and shortprinted powerspike cards. Moslty only losers play these card games since normal people do not want to invest 500 eur in deck just to brick because of bad game mechanics. Pokemon is good though
Totally, physical TCGs have no place in this economy the way they are.