As a near 10 year TCG comp player, the best way to save money is look for a cheap deck you love, and only buy singles. The only time you buy boosters is when the next set is going to have an extremely good deck that will be in high demand. Then sell all the cards and start picking up staple cards every deck needs/wants that can be put into any deck you want. That way any if you want to get a stronger deck down the road, you have the staple cards you need already to make that deck really good. Most of these staple cards have been good for 5 years and still can be really good
Honestly I only bought booster packs for Toon support and I bought most of my cards individually from the secondary market. For my main playable deck I just bought two dark world structure decks and added some Golden alt art DANGER! BIGFEET! For an 18 dollar deck (8+8+2) it is very good and only needs some minor adjustments to be a real threat. It’s nothing to underestimate already but it can still get screwed by a Magicians support deck that costs $400 but for the price difference it’s good.
Gotta love how no matter how much videos expose Konamis shenanigans, they ultimately don't have any effect on the situation whatsoever and Konami keeps ripping us off
i mean, if we say the people who watched this video were to not buy cards from konami that's 2000 people, assuming they'd have bought just 10 packs for 4$ each, that's 80000$ konami hasn't earned and that's just with 2000 peeps, imagine if repeated attempts inspired dozens of thousands and yes, i know it doesn't hurt them in the grand scheme of things, but god damn that's still a lot of money man
Dude, this video came out in the perfect time. Literally yesterday I went and got some of the latest yugioh packs just for fun to "test my luck" and of course I opened dogshit. That alone was enough for me to feel like a dumbass cause I spent money on essentialy useless shit and could've spent the same amount to buy better cards online. This is what has been happening to konamis gams. The secondary market has taken over where it's no longer enjoyable to buy their products. It' ridiculous but that's how it is nowadays. Because there are some chase cards out there, unless you get some of those you feel like you got nothing. It's trully sad how it can take the fun out of opening a product.
@@pabloac.8100 Agreed! A couple more things over in the TCG should be more like the OCG and that side of Yugioh is doing things a lot better by the looks of it. Though I'm pretty sure when people talk negatively about Konami they're almost always talking about it's North American division.
just gonna add another 2 cents to the squid game money pile that is reasons konami sucks the ocg's card text is a lot better because of the VERY simple addition of numbers to indicate when a new effect starts not only does it lower confusion (like me thinking stromberg's last effect is once per turn) but it also makes the card text a lot less daunting to read, cause instead of looking a whole ass whopper, you're looking at a whopper cut into bite sized chunks
@@fortnitesexman lol..completely unrelated, but your name reminded me another reason why OCG>TCG: art's censorship..I will never forget what those bastards at TCG did to my swordsoul Iris...Pd: Regarding card text..I only play MD, so I really don't have to worry about it (nobody reads at MD)...But yeah, I can imagine how awful must be having to read the full card for a single effect..
@@pabloac.8100 what did they do to iris? i looked her up and i'm not really seeing a difference and yeah, i remember i had an x-saber anu piranha, which, when i looked through my old cards and saw her, i instantly went "there's no way this isn't a censored card" and low and behold she was busty af in the original i also have the cards where the bare chested king was given a white tank top oh, and oddly enough, master duel uses the censored art for the cards, which was only brought to my attention cause i drew an amazoness card
Imagine people paying $1000 of meta deck with all their life savings just to see new banlist in 1 week banning half their deck. They rage but they decide to pay for another 4fun deck that will not be hit by the banlist: $150 for 3 Secret Rare cards only to hear Konami announcing new structure deck having that card as common, worth 0.37cents. *"You need to adapt to the game"* my ass
This happened to me 2 times b4 and I ended up quitting Yugioh for a few years bcuz of it. Now I’m mostly a casual player and have been really enjoying the game with some of my favorite decks
This is why I will never understand and never buy booster boxes filled to the brim with meta cards bait. Why risk spending an arm and a leg for a deck that will get KILLED in a matter of MONTHS??? I will always buy decks/cores that are cheap to get and/or probably in the middle tier of decks. Also, 2 words as old as time for the people reading this BUY SINGLES😂😂😂
One billion percent; imo unless you plan on going to a YCS or multiple regionals it’s not worth it. “Oh, but my locals are super sweaty” I get it it sucks, but I’ve had infinitely more fun playing on YGO Omega ranked and Master Duel and putting that money into either other hobbies or collecting OTS ULTIS that unlike the meta cards will in many cases stay or go up in value.
Fr, that's why I've stopped going for the top tier decks, or the best archetypes at that specific time, because no matter how much money you mill into that deck, and it's going to be over HUNDREDS of dollars, after several months, Konami will release something new, and your 600$ deck will get stomped by whatever will be the new meta at that time. Not only that, but the deck that you paid 600$ for will now be 200$. Last year, end of 2021, beginning of 2022, Evil Twin seemed so op with handtraps and Trouble Sunny's quick effect for high damage OTK, nowadays they are like Tier 2 pure, and can barely play without some high engine like Spright or Runick. It's just not worth throwing money into this game. Not only is it not fun, but it's super expensive which you can't earn money back anymore because of how quick the card's value go down. That's why I still play my Sky Strikers, no matter how weak or slow they are, I enjoy the playstyle, I love the waifu design, and even if I will get destroyed at locals, at least I built them to try and compete with other decks at some levels. Having fun, while saving money, and not giving to greedy Konami. Konami would go bankrupt if it wasn't for sweats at YCS willing to pay every penny for the top tier deck. Come on, deck that blocks my zones? Tf outta here.
@@tijankusacic8079 thank you for articulating this; with rare exceptions to the rule the vast majority of decks considered meta or top tier 1 year regardless of popularity will be power crept and nerfed out of existence and that sucks. The thing is imo sometimes power creep isn’t even that bad and if the game was as cheap as for example the Pokémon TCG it wouldn’t be that bad. For example, I freaking loved Danger “Casino” Tearlament and I love Spright but I hate how the decks on release were super expensive. They pushed the skill limit of the game way higher and forced people to play at all times. Now we have Snore mimimimi Ka$htira that is also price gouging people.
@@joshcruzat3112 don't forget the worst thing of all. Take Spright for example, you spend hundreds of dollars to build that deck and you pay 80 bucks for Spright Elf, only for it to get banned after few months, so your 80 dollar cards are useless now, which completely kills the deck strength because one of it's key cards got hit on the banlist, and you can't even sell it for much cuz who's gonna buy a banned card
As an OCG player, I was so shocked how expensive the TCG was…the most expensive cards in OCG were usually hand traps like maxx c and ash, and they cost like 10 dollars before the RC04 reprints. The most expensive cards that I’ve seen with lowest rarity is probably nyan when virtual world was meta…even then it cost at most 30ish dollars, and it’s because nyan is a promo card in Vjump. You could probably build a purely deck for about 20-30 dollars now in the OCG(yes a fully functional meta deck), TCG really is too expensive.
I'd honestly say that's just how Konami has been working for the past 20 years. They had their big run during the 8-bit and 16-bit console era, and since then, have been desperately trying to replicate these successes. They branched out into several directions, and struck gold almost nowhere - except TCG. With how popular Yu-Gi-Oh! has become over time, it's their biggest juggernaut left in their business lineup. Their pachinko parlors are collapsing, their soaplands are falling out of favor, their gaming endeavors are pathetic. Only the OCG and TCG is still thriving. Here's the thing: they have to deal with so much more direct competition in JP and Asia than in the US. The US currently has only two serious competitors on the TCG market: Pokémon and Magic The Gathering, and all other card games had their quick burst in popularity with little long-term growth. But Pokémon is on a constant up and down, while Wizards of the Coast is mutilating Magic and enraging the fanbase with their insistence on tremendously overpriced collector sets and swamping of the card pool. In the east, Yu-Gi-Oh! cannot afford to mess with their playerbase, since there are at least ten similarly popular competitors waiting around the corner - so they remain "humble", offer a reasonable balance in rarities to make every archtype playable on multiple levels of monetary investment, and rely on collectors hunting after the highest rarity versions for the big bucks. But in the west, they have little to lose, and can exploit the not yet completely fried desire sensors of the playerbase to own rare and expensive cards, partially because they don't have much of a choice.
To say they didn't struck gold is a lie, they're huuuuge in the rhythm game market for instance (IIDX and SDVX), and videogames in general as well. Of course not as big as Bandai (who are also entering the CG Market heavily) but still, everything else is ehh okay
@@StellaEFZ That may very well be true for the rhythm game community, but it doesn't translate to high profit. The main reason they continue it is because it's easy money, but even then, mobile platforms are continuously eating away at their share. Other than that, it's a struggle to name even one game from Konami's line up since Metal Gear Solid 5 that wasn't either a complete flop or a forgettable attempt, if not both even. Just look at what they did to Castlevania, Metal Gear, Contra, and Silent Hill in the past years: pachislot machines for all of them, terrible mobile games that shut down in less than a year for most. Their biggest succes as of late was the recent Castlevania crossover in Dead Cells, a.k.a. not even their own game. And of course Bombergirls, which is also getting rebooted soon, because blowing the clothes off of fanservice-driven reimaginings of legacy characters doesn't magically print money for them, ergo they regard it as a failure.
Thier pachinko only stared to fall because of the covid lockdowns. before it was doing massive numbers. I dunno how its doing now since the lockdown eneded.
@@KazeMemaryu damn I’m returning to card games after a while (specifically Yu-Gi-Oh) and seeing what has happened after not playing since a little before the lockdown it just makes me sad like I don’t remember any of this bull crap happening in the time that I played but at the same time I was pretty much not that self aware or aware of things happening around me but looking at everything it doesn’t make me feel anger it just makes me sad
TCG cards also aren't allowed in official OCG tournaments. Unless it's a very lax local weekly and you have actual OCG copies of the TCG cards you're using maybe
@@TeaRektum different rulings Indonesia for example We play officially un in ocg format but people can't be bothered to learn how to memorize card effects in Japanese. So what we do? tcg for local fun weekly Ocg for national cup.
As much as I love the game, I just can't justify spending several hundred dollars to even stand a chance at tournaments. I'll stick with digital formats.
I really have to aplaud you, most ygo fans knows these things are happening but the yugitubers never talk about it, so as to not upset daddy konami and potentialy burn some bridges in the process, gotta get that dough. I'm brazilian and I really wish I could play the physical card game, but as you said, the cards are WAYYYY too expensive and their quality is questionable at best and also because of economy, let's just say that everything here is 5 times the cost it should be, and I can't use my whole paycheck to buy some staples LMAO At least I can play the game now thanks to master duel.
Imagine being a kid in 2006. You buy random assortments packs from the store. You open every pack and literally get only rares and no holos. Konami even when they had great quality would make you buy cases for playsets back in the day
@@Tyler-Wiley in truth it was better. As a kid unable to spend money i was frustrated but i just had bad luck and would only be able to get a pack or two at a time if i was lucky. Taking a step back is when it gets wild and realize its a game marketed for kids and yet the cost of entry to the hobby has historically been very high. Only recently did structure decks make the game more accessible because good staples rarely got printed in the decks. I would just like to see print quality increase as konami clearly gets excellent QC from the OCG prints
What actually drives me crazy is precisely the poor card quality. I'm just a collector of cards I want because I liked the art, and I'm looking for those in almost perfect condition, but even buying sealed product, the cards come with slightly factory lines or scratches, sometimes are just visible with more light but other times is like someone used a big knife on the front of the card.
i got a ghost rare red eyes and ghost rare blue eyes the red eyes is really nice, and i love him, he's my boy but the blue eyes has fucking bullet holes in it for some reason, the card art has a bunch of black dots, and it's *really* not unique to my copy it seems to be what it's supposed to look like
Somebody else just made a video like this about American pokemom cards too. They list the same issues you are describing. Poor control quality when compared to japan
@@MonkeyFightTCG yeah and different style on ink when printing the cards. I don’t understand why the EU has dark tones and cold verse North America cards.
Youve talked about it on the channel before but NO card, let alone a card ESSENTIAL for a deck to function, should be locked above super rare. The OCG, as youve mentioned, will have 2 rarities for cards in sets, which lets collectors chase the high rarity ones but lets NORMAL PLAYERS simply OWN cheaper copies. Its so predatory to release intentionally overpowered decks that require short printed/expensive/high rarity only cards.
The main, driving force that generated this problem is a lack of competition. There's a noticeable, severe lack of competition in the western TCG market except between the big 3 (Pokemon, Magic, and Yugioh). Whereas, in Japan (and other Eastern countries, I assume), there are plenty of other TCGs besides those 3 that are either exclusive to us or more popular over here than in the west, that provide competition in the market. These include Battle Spirits, CARDFIGHT! Vanguard, Shadowverse Evolve, One Piece TCG, Digimon TCG, Duel Masters, Build Divide, and more; all of which provide more competition for the TCG market, where various companies are all vying for the financial support of consumers. When there's little to no competition for a company in any market, they stop caring about consumers because that consumer has nowhere else to go for a similar experience; however, when there's plenty of competition, they have to be more lenient with consumers and provide a better experience. Because when a consumer becomes dissatisfied with a company's product; guess what? There are plenty of other companies on the same street, that offer a similar, but better, service than that company. To summarize, more competition leads to more chances for losing consumers to said competition, chances of losing consumers lead to various precautions against losing consumers, precautions of losing consumers lead to better treatment of consumers, and better consumer treatment generally leads to a more favorable company-consumer relationship. (To anyone who saw my last comment of basically the same thing, I accidentally deleted my comment and had to rewrite it all.)
I guess it also helps that Japan has better public transport infrastructure too. Makes it easier(And perhaps "cheaper?" to experience all those different games.
that's just a sign of players not looking to their left and right. There are so many other tcgs out there in the west but since ygo players are so invested and fixated on that game... the other games are going to fail. - Arcana - Final Fantasy TCG - One PIece - Flesh and blood (ok this seems to doing good in US) - Digimon... also most games are "too slow" for ygo players since they don't want to deal with a resource system.
@@Zanji1234 Yeah, the "too slow" factor really doesn't help much in this situation, but also, if we're talking about not looking to the left or right, I've noticed a few things associated with players not moving to other games outside of the big 3. 1. To start, every TCG is a two-player game minimum, right? So it figures that even if someone is interested in playing a TCG, if the TCG isn't well known, then you would obviously be discouraged from playing, because even if you're interested, if you don't have anyone who can play with you, then you have no reason to try and get into it. 1a. (Labeled 1a. because this is effectively an extension of the last statement) Small competitive communities. When you don't have as many players, then the people who want to play games more seriously and competitively, automatically find getting into a game to be a less attractive proposition, then just investing in the game that they've always enjoyed, or another one of the big 3 (especially since 2 of the big 3 have cash prizes in their tournaments). B. If you ask anyone what card games that they're into, they tend to say 1 or maybe 2 card game(s), not many people want to invest in more cards that they can't use for the games that they already like. Also, they don't want to have to learn the rules and their intricacies, or the meta for other card games when they already have to for the games they currently own. TL;DR: People don't like coming out of their comfort zones, especially when its a bit more of a risky move in the first place, requiring money, time invested, and the hope that the game that they're investing in will eventually have more players.
I tried getting into the TCG a couple of years back. I had a ton of fun learning the game and met some really cool people, but once I realized I had to spend 500+ dollars on a decent deck I had to stop. The point of buy in for a hobby should never be that high.
You don't have to spend a lot to have fun. You can just buy structured or starter decks and Duke it like that. The only problem is, like you said, it will cost more to build a decent deck. Personally, I stopped playing yugioh because of all the texts in a textbox, blatant power creep and 10 minute turns
Exactly this. One thing the YGO community needs to be better in is just being more cognizant of “how” expensive the game is in comparison to other hobbies and in greater context of peoples income. Asking someone to spend 700-900 dollars to buy A DECK is absurd. You could buy a PS5, a 44 inch TV, and a video game for the same price. Or for some folks, especially in LATAM or EU East that could be a month or more of rent.
@@joshcruzat3112 I actually just got into pokemon and was floored that my deck costed $34. A full deck. Heck i felt bad and paid for a super high rarity art for one just cause it was so cheap and i'm used to yugi prices.
I really wish Konami knew they're just losing more players in the long run... I've been playing Yugioh since I was a kid, but the prices of keeping up on the metas was just absurd. Once Nekroz happened and I saw the prices, I was done. I've been playing on YGOPro since then and haven't looked back. As you said, new people get pushed from the prices too. Any friends I have who get interested I just tell to play EDOPro because even official Konami games have terrible pack pricing.
Same here! I left cause I saw a 200 dollar Brionac as a HS kid and was like “I’d rather buy a used laptop and play Steam Games instead”. And I did lol. Although I play the game in paper and have the privilege to play meta (granted I live in the first world with a middle class job) i find way more enjoyment playing on YGO Omega with my friends. We can put the money we’d have put into decks into hanging out IRL and get to mess around with an unlimited card pool.
The rarity flattening in the tcg is the single biggest thing holding this game back from a wider audience IMO. Explaining to people that your booster box is 90% garbage except for the one or two secrets you pull is very disheartening to people, it makes buying sealed product feel terrible and like a waste of money considering even if you do pull let's say the Kash field spell it's a 3 of in the deck, you still need 2 more of that card the even play the deck at a competitive level! It would be much better for the game if we just let everyone have the decks they want to play cheap and let collectors and investors pay for the higher rarity of the cards. I used to buy at least one box of every set that came out to support my game store and see what I pull but it's getting harder and harder to justify that when any deck worth playing has every 3 of card at ultra or higher. I think the last competitive deck that had decent rarities in the tcg was virtual world, with Lulu being the only 3 of high rarity card at ultra.
Yes it’s simply unnaceptable. I was trying to build Tearlament and after opening hundreds of packs I still only had 2 Perlerino and no reinoharts I was going to purchase the cards I needed from TCGplayer in order to attend my first ever real live Yugioh event at the YCS here in Las Vegas. Then they banned Kitkallos. So I had nothing to play and my cards became worthless. Learned my lesson. Never buying a single Yugioh card ever again. Fuckkkkk konami.
This is the main reason I quit going to tournaments. The game got harder to keep up with because of shit like this. I went to yugioh tournaments pretty consistently throughout highschool where my budget was 70-100 dollars, and the only times I really ever won over opponents with more expensive decks were when my opponent didn't know what my cards did, had an insanely good matchup, or I knew their deck better than them. Even then, I still wasn't guaranteed the win. In the last few years, that chance of winning over someone with an expensive deck went down exponentially, with my last tournament outing being a local where I went 0-4, getting utterly destroyed by runick and sprite. It's a shame seeing the game being treated the way it is by konami, because I do love this game, despite how much I bitch about it. I just wish the game had more easily affordable decks that are somewhat viable.
Plus they don't give you shit for winning so why commit the time to being the best. No reward it's literally a waste of time no matter how you slice it. Even with genuine interest in the challenge. It's objectively a waste of time, every time.
The first and probably the biggest price-gauging from Konami was in 2008, when they released Dark Armed Dragon, a three-of, as a short-print secret rare that jumped from $150 each, to $300 EACH at the peak of the format. The same card was originally printed in Japan as a common regular rare. Didn't help that the card broke both the game and many wallets. Great video.
More expensive AND of lesser quality. Nice. When I was a wee lad I remember comparing TCG and OCG cards in person and being mesmarized at how even OCG commons felt soooo much nicer in hand. Had a friend who lived in East Asia for a while and had a number of cards. It’s mental.
For me the most egregious quality control issue is one you didn't mention, card edges already scuffed before opening the pack. It's been a while since i've seen a mint ots ulti, they come out the pack with edgewear or ugly bleeding of the ulti texture on the artwork border.
I need to post some of the cards I opened in the box of mavens I pre-ordered on release. Several of the cards came out of the packs with massive print issues and a few had these really strange line indentations. Fortunately none of the cards that were worth anything had this issue, but it was still really amusing.
The 1 issue yugioh has, is that if you stopped playing after a certain point and try to get back in some people will either shun you or just tell you off from playing the game again. the community is very anti new player or returning player.
get them on master duel MD has it's fair share of problems in the exact same category, but you can make atleast a single good deck filled with staples n such at the start
“It’s the only modern rhetoric that companies listen to” This is very accurate along aside, “Nothing is wrong with the product if it sells well”. I love this game, but it has almost created an abusive love scenario between players and how they spend their money to play specific cards. It’s embarrassing to state that I’ve spent $70~ for a single copy of thrust when it’s OCG counter part is but a fraction of the cost. Thank you for the time that you spent producing this video. I enjoyed it highly
As long as the consumers consume I don't think wide spread change will happen. I remember people having complaints like this 10 years ago and it's jaring to come back and see that not only do the problems persist but it gradually got worse. It's also always been weird to me how the decks are more expensive than the prize support. I know YGO can't have cash prizes but at least give the winner of YCS or worlds a case of consoles to sell off for good money and not just 1 console, a prize card, a mat and merch.
Worst prizing structures I've ever seen. Singlehandedly makes it not worth it to play competitive even if you have interest in doing so. It's such a waste of time
Thank you for making such an amazing video. Also, to just drive it home further, the Kashtira prices you used were DOUBLE on release and have only been trending downward because of guess what people are afraid Konami will gut the deck to sell more product. It’s why, after YCS Los Angeles, taking a long break from Yugioh and moving over to Pokemon.
Yeah same, I am going to watch the YCS this weekend and possibly due to work commitments I am unironically going over to play 40k as 10th is coming out and to be honest playing games is far more flexible with people and not constrained. Also honestly it's less toxic and you can learn new skills whilst it feels to be a more positive experience. Pokemon is nice and casual and a far less toxic audience, I just dislike the set structure but it is far more consumor friendly.
I've felt gated by the pricing to play the game at a "competitive" level, but that's also not the kind of fan I've been from the beginning. I'll always enjoy cheaper and fun decks as well as playing on simulators. Not only are these options often easier to understand and acquire, it lets me be invested in Yugioh at my own pace without being put in a position to fiend for W's. Upshifting affects the most dedicated; card quality is a universal issue.
It’s actually quite simple. Its respect. Konami respects the product in Japan, it’s always up to date and maintained because it has to be in the OCG. The rest of the world that essentially adapts THAT game into a TCG format and tries to build a different game with healthy balance is almost impossible because the banlists are so different. Konami sees TCG as spare cash. Instead of treating it kindly like its their main source of business they just progressively squeeze the rag for a few more drops. The response: wow we make more money, they still buy these cards! So they squeeze harder and harder. I still enjoy the idea of playing yugioh with my friends, where we are far from up to date on cards and can simply have a good time. I actually dont hate modern yugioh because im not trying to be competitive and win any tournaments. I have no incentive to spend my money so i just play a bit of master duel from time to time and allow that to suffice. If you are casual, stop letting konami squeeze you, let the competitive community eat itself and konami will be forced to adjust from there.
Whats insane is that people will look at this video and tell you that you're wrong and the prices are fine only because it's better than it used to be.
Incredibly accurate video, sometimes I feel some people hide behind the take of “what hobby is cheap”, without really taking a look at how truly ludicrous the difference is not just from game to game. But from region to region. Keep up the great work man🙌🏾
Solution is simple: Quit buying their products. It sucks, but where I live, Yugioh is dead and it's all MTG. Know why? This is a major part of it. The cards are near-impossible to find anymore, and the sets that CAN be found are either trash that nobody wants or buys or decent or good sets that get bought out by scalpers. Then, any time you CAN get a hold of some packs, the pull rates are always atrocious, and they do that intentionally. At this point, the only sets worth buying are either the Structure Decks due to no randomness being in it, or special sets with fun cards you want, like the Legendary Duelist sets. Beyond that, you either spend $1,000 on the latest meta deck that will be banned in a few months for the next $1,000 deck or you can spend an unknown amount on boosters and hope to get lucky, but with pull rates, you probably won't. It's honestly depressing what the game has become, and for anyone who plays Duel Links, that philosophy infected and ruined that game too, with each new set being Tier 1 and demanding you buy or lose in PvP.
the "TCG as investment product" thing annoys me so much because whenever there's a new or interesting looking card game out there I have to double check if the people designing/marketing it actually want people to play it or if they want to pitch it as something to "hold value"
The most atrocious example of upshifting a rarity over the course of my Yu-Gi-Oh experience will always be Dark Armed Dragon going from Rare to Secret Rare and there only being 1-3 DAD per case of 12 boxes 🥴
Konami TCG should really bring the prices down to clear the barrier to entry. Everyone can benefit from it. Collectors and people who want to "invest" because they still need the Chase cards. But is it really the case that the OCG gets more reprints? Because i read on Reddit that they have been waiting for an accesscode reprint for 2 years and there is still no reprint from TTT. And that many cards are released as a "Jump" promo or something similar and that will probably take a while until the reprints come. Actually sad that they somehow do not manage to find a reasonable middle ground
Yeah the ocg does miss a few random cards and the jump promo situation is not good. However cards do just get reprinted more of there and at lower rarities so it's much much less of a problem.
@@MonkeyFightTCG nope. ocg gets way fewer reprint products than we do. Stuff like mega tins, legendary collections, speed duel, etc simply does not exist in the OCG. So cards in the OCG often get one printingEspecially now since they created rush duel and have to work towards that. E.g. Malicious Bane, Photon Orbital, Adusted gold has 3 printings in the TCG and just 1 in the OCG
OCG reprint is weird, they either reprint cards within in a year like TCG or they just make you wait for god know how long. Did you know that Harpie Lady 1 hasn't got any reprint in the OCG since 2008? I suppose that's the trade off for being able to pull cards at multiple rarities.
We already have an Accescode reprint in Secret Utility Box. And TTT has been reprinted in the latest Rarity Collection 25th anniversary as a $3 Ultra that could also come in Secret/Collectors/Ultimate R/25th Secret Rare in the same box
One of the biggest proofs of Konamis inability to treat their players well is the existence of TCG and OCG banlists. Sure they are one set ahead of us, but the main reason is how much Konami racks up the prices on cards in the TCG. Kashtira Fenrir was a rare in the OCG,but was a short printed 1/20 rare in the TCG. This lead to an ultra rare being 70+ dollars a copy. Kashtira had to be hit on the banlist in the OCG because it was so powerful,but the hits won't be the same here as not everyone can afford 500+ dollars for one deck in the TCG. Thus,less ppl can play kashtira. However this means the high level events like YCS and regionals tend to be dominated by people who pay more. There are still budget players in these events of course, but letting meta dominate because it's making you money isn't a sound business strategy
It's nice to see yugitubers finally standing up to Konami, I left the modern game months ago because frankly, the powercreep and high prices were just too much for me to handle anymore.
my only problem with this game, new cards that are worth 70+. its one thing if its a very old card but new release? no peice of cardboard should be worth more then $15 max
Great video on a pretty important topic! I've pretty much fully transitioned to buying the occasional set of structure decks and buying singles. When I'm playing with friends, we play with Korean copies of cards that are prohibitively expensive in the TCG. Better card quality while being cheaper to buy.
I think the altering of rarities trend really got rolling in the Tachyon Galaxy set, considering that Spellbooks came out and would have been an undisputed tier-1 deck with most of their cards being Secrets and Ultras, but Dragon Rulers were also in the same set printed as commons and rares, which put up a significant fight for the top spot. I think Konami noticed this and decided to cash in by not making that "mistake" again by letting lower rarity cards contend anymore. I remember way back then, you could either spend $400 for a Spellbook deck core, or spend like $40 for a set of all the Dragon Rulers and some older generic Dragon support cards like Darkness Metal Dragon, Rejuvenation, and that 7 stars spell card, I forget the name. The money cards for Dragon Rulers were the extra deck cards, which a lot of people already had access to thanks to the Mermail Atlantean deck having a ton of rank 7 cards anyways. Dracosack was obviously a huge buff to the deck's power ceiling as well, and rightfully so considering it reached a $130 price tag at one point, but I think Konami took notice and shifted their printing design philosophy in the west because of how cost-efficient the deck was compared to Spellbooks. I had no idea exactly how many great cards from TCG structure decks had been cut over the years, that's honestly pretty upsetting. But in a way it makes sense considering everything we've come to expect from Konami now. Why would they put a Maxx "C" in the Blue Eyes structure deck when they can put it as a promo card in a collector's tin for twice the price? If a person wants a playset they'll have to buy 3 $20 tins instead of 3 $10 decks. Super underhanded. I was honestly blown away when I looked at the Traptrix deck in Walmart and saw that it came with a Raigeki, Harpie's Feather Duster, Ash Blossom, and an Evenly Matched. Seems like an incredible value for $10 which really surprised me, especially considering that not long ago a single Ash Blossom was $8 for a single common.
Awesome video, I can absolutely feel your love for the game in how earnest you are about the horrible practices being done in Yugioh and other card games alike. Really appreciate your videos, when you don't see this being discussed anywhere in any meaningful capacity, it's so nice to find someone who actually takes these aspects by the horns and reveal them for what they are.
I just stopped playing YGO altogether recently, power creep/game depth, bandaid fixes, banlist issues, and prices have made the game incredibly difficult to get into and stay with. The aesthetic is incredible, but the game is just not enjoyable sadly, especially with negation and floodgates
i find the most fun i've had in master duel for example has been with my gamble deck getting that dice jar off and rolling a six gives me a feeling that just can't be topped by anything else honestly tho most of the fun i have with yugioh is actually talking about it instead of playing it, designing custom cards especially is fun, you should try it sometime, make a retrain of some goofy ahh old card or add some support for an archetype noone plays
After playing the game again for almost 6 years, seeing this video makes me wanna sell all my cards and boycott this game. It boggles the mind how scummy their tactics are.
This makes me glad I only play what I want and NOT what the meta tells me I should play. I'd rather scour the earth for other Casual Players who don't subscribe to the Toxic Buisiness practices for the sake of a YCS placing. Konami has been absolutely negletful about this issue; to put it lightly. Generally cheaper to play casual and the decks happen to be more fun.
The thing is, there are even more problems with yugioh then just with Konami. The game being so competitive that there isn’t really a proper space nowadays for casuals to ease into the game, especially those who don’t want to start on the competitive side of things. Yugioh’s extreme powercreep and balancing issues. Some people not really bothered to talk about any of these sorts of problems or really criticizing the game because then they lose Konami’s good side. The community mostly not giving completely different ways to experience Yugioh a chance. Seriously,more people should just not buy these products and even try to support Konami with the terrible things they have done over the years. But it’s never gonna happen because a good amount of people don’t want to bother even trying to change things.
I see what you're saying but honestly if you play on any online simulator there's always casual lobbies. I see it all the time, so there is that going. I'm seeing a lot more older formats being played as well these days so you might have fun that way
@@luxray4911 Here is the thing,yes,there are places you can play casually but the places,where you can play casually versus competitively is much lower in comparison. You have to fucking play meta decks in locals,a place that’s supposed to be more for fun then actual serious competitive play. Same thing with the formats,those formats are for people who want to play competitively but don’t want to start at modern yugioh. Where ,it’s all about optimization and using the best decks at the time,not exactly for just having fun. That’s what I meant with my first point in that comment.
@@vipersniperpiper6093 I think this is just a tcg thing in general. It's not an exclusive ygo issue, MTG has this (I play it) Digimon etc etc, people play to win for the most part there ain't much you can do about that except try and start something yourself.
Honestly, konami's bs doesnt just stop at yugioh. It also affects the players mentallity, and how they treat every cardgame as a whole. I remember when the DBS card game first came out, and some people who played yugioh were all hyped about it. Some liked how slow it was (Its not like that anymore though), and how staples in the game were treated. You didn't need the staples to win. Any deck, at the time, could technically win, or steal a victory, the staples were just there to help you get an edge. But then there were the other people who played yugioh who saw the game as an investment, despite also playing it. They would basically hoard staple cards and refuse to trade with anyone until after the prices from the new set settled and they could make a profit. Only to be disappointed when they weren't worth that much, either due to reprints, or the cards scarcity being exaggerated. Do you know how yugioh has yugioh day at OTSs? DBS does something similar, where instead of having a tournament where you can only use 3 structures, they give you a cardboard deckbox with several pre-release packs and promos of the new set, and you're supposed to make a deck with the cards you pull. You're also supposed to trade with people to get the cards you need. Just like in yugioh YOU'RE NOT ALLOWED to buy boxes of the pre-release set from the store owner and build basically complete meta decks from what you pull, and not trade with anyone/hoarde your pulls, despite people willing to trade with/ buy them off of you, just because you want to see where the market lands on the new set. Dominating the prerelease tournament because you're running the most competent strategy out of ANYONE ELSE there. Winning with barely any effort at all. The reason DBS died at my local cardshop was because bandai really screwed the pooch on the distribution of rarities in a set. Making must have staple rares feel like short print secrets/SCRs in modern yugioh to get. Basically making it impossible for anyone who bought a case to make a profit/break even because they'd pull only enough chase cards for their decks, and not enough to sell to other players. They didn't give DBS's next couple of sets a chance to rectify this issue, and just moved to Pokemon.
So many cards just look like a vomit of tie die colors and textures. Even with a magnifying lens you can’t make out what the hell’s going on in the tiny little picture because the print quality is so bad.
After I started getting back into yugioh I convinced another friend to get a box with me. He got a starlight miradora with extremely deep grooves in the back that were so bad they protruded on the other side and fucked up the art. It's absurd.
i'd say a better approach is to have all the cards be available in any of the qualities the pack would have you could still unbox crazy expensive cards n shit, but the good cards aren't locked behind being said crazy expensive cards (and i also just want to have a ghost rare dice jar or something equally goofy)
6:10 some of these shouldn't count. First off, some cards were cut because they were banned in the TCG at the time of the deck's release. Maxx "C" in Forest of the Traptrix, Solemn Judgment in both Wave of Light and Synchron Extreme, Heavy Storm in Cyber Dragon Revolution, and Harpie's Feather Duster in Shaddoll Showdown. Maxx "C" wasn't cut from Machine Reactor. And Crossout Designator didn't exist in the TCG yet at the time of Freezing Chains's release. The biggest offenders when it comes to Structure Deck imports are Cyber Dragon Revolution cutting Lightning Storm, Saga of Blue-Eyes cutting Maxx "C", and of course, Pendulum Evolution being turned into a set.
I considered these beacuse they were significant cards of value in the ocg and should have got an equivalent card in the tcg. Which never happened. At the end of the day it still leaves those sturture decks to be much lower value than their ocg counterparts.
Bro that thing at the end had me dying. Imagine bringing up someone up for an interview so you can do some moral signaling like motivational thing, only for them to basically say "oh yeah by the way you can always pirate the game" man those konami execs must have gotten wild
I say we just start a Yugioh player owned trading card game. And violate Konami’s intellectual property claim. Japan is a thoroughly cucked aging country. They won’t fight for it.
Keep up with these videos, nothing against the TH-camr that promote the TCG of Yu-Gi-Oh, but we need those that can call out publisher for their anti consumer practices and lack of quality control. Those OCG foil cards were mind blowing and something I myself could go for if companies like Wizard actually made the foils good here in the west, like imagine having a Swarmlord foil in the same style as the one OCG card demonstrated from your box opening. Unless I'm buying a card for collecting purposes, I never go past my $20 budget, especially if it requires multiple copies. The only exception would be if it can have multiple uses in other decks like Commander and can be splashed in all the decks I use, like if I were to buy Ancient Tombs as it's a much better Temple of the False God, for example, -And only if one copy is required (This bit applies to other card games).
I also believe its not just greed and fault on Konami, but also fault on players. Don't forget, many players just buy product with intentions to make money and also players dictate prices without any background logic or solid values to support that price. Its more like, "Its because I can" kinda reason, no logic involved. Explain me how, 1 secret ( cardboard with art and foil) is more expansive compared to a console game? There are even cards that are at the value of a console itself, which has more resources needed like metal and other components that are scarce or are missing due to excavation or extraction problems. And cardboard? you have that resourse everywhere. I don't just agree with the statement that konami is at fault, but also is the player to apply the same as Konami is doing "GREED".
Oh and some youtubers who open a structure the tcg gets 3 to 5 months after the ocg, misses a critical reprint because it had to become the chase card for a garbage set, and we know the other cards didnt do jack in the ocg, but we can be so grateful, that konami decided to at least leave the other reprint in the structure... I think the competition here in the ocg with other card games has an impact as well.
I was seething when i pre-ordered charmer structure (I like the deck a lot) and found out later that TCG cut evenly matched from it only to put it back in years later in traptrix.
Great video. The ending killed me lol. I’m a collector rather than a player at this point in time, but more players will mean bigger fan base which is good for everyone. The overall theme is that Konami gouges the rest of the world while the OCG actually seems affordable to the player base😢
what drives me mad is that westerrn players never compare sets to the ocg ones other than MAYBE the content of the cards. Never about quality or rarity.
This is one of many reasons why I stopped playing yugioh. Yes, I understand that any tcg is a luxury hobby. If you want to play, you need to pay. However there are lines where we need to set our foot down. I play MTG now, EHD(commander). What makes MTG work and YGO not, in my opinion, is ways to play. MTG has. Whole format made for budget. Decks, good ones that actually win, can be built for under $50. YGO lacks formats. Speed Duels are the only thing that comes to mind, and even that is getting up there and meant to be a gateway to the main game rather than a stand alone format. YGO needs formats that are creative and different like how MTG has. That way people of all walks can play it.
Pendulum Evolution being turned into a set would've been horrible if not for the secondary market crashing the price of the booster box down to $40 dollars new. At that price point it was actively better than 3x Pendulum Evolution as you'd basically get every card you'd want or need from the new pendulum decks and any additional pendulum engines like yang zing for the omni negate, or qliphort for cyber dragon infinity access. On principle though it's probably the worst case of a change in product.
Bruh... Konami doesn't want poor people playing the game. Just like Disney not wanting poor people at their theme parks. That's why all these issues you pointed out exist. They only care about getting as much money possible from the TCG community and that's not gonna change until people wake up and put their foots down. Sadly it won't as you still see all these Yugioh TCG channels spending hundreds of dollars on boxes of the new card packs to open on stream or in videos. Not to mention that there are a lot of issues with the game franchise other than just these scummy business practices. Right now in Master Duel we are in a very toxic meta of decking people out or making boards with 6+ negate effects that prevent others from being able to play the game. As someone who has collected/played Yugioh since the early 2000s it sucks to see how far things have fallen between the points made in this video, the current state of the game in terms of balancing, and the toxic mentality/environment the community has developed.
Me and my friends had NO CLUE about a problem like this even existing. What we did was stick to Arc V Tag Force Special on the PSP (since 2016) and printed proxies of our in game decks to play IRL. We haven't moved on since. And boy was this fun. We still play regularly and ill have a blast showing this video to them.
Very good video. I switched to Digimon a few months back and I haven't wanted to buy or play Yu-Gi-Oh since! Not that Bandai is any better. They recently dropped the rate of their secret rares.
Don't forget ditching 1 guranteed rare for a random common-uncommon foil in BT-11 EDIT: I should add that as of BT12, it seems they changed back to 1 guranteed rare + rare or better for now. Thankfullly.
I'm wondering if the quality control has to do with the actual company printing the cards because it feels like every card game I've played in the past couple months has just had awful misprint issues. I don't know much about that side of things but I also view TCG's as games over collectibles so it never really bothered me. Out of all of your points the prize card one and the rarity bumping are the ones that piss me off the most. I used to play a lot of competitive magic so I'm personally used to shelling out a couple hundred every few sets to keep up with the meta, but for a fresh player that has to buy everything from scratch it sounds miserable if not just straight up impossible to catch up to the meta. Regarding the last point I'm pretty sure it has to do with the competition from other card games in OCG regions. At this point they're top 3 arguably 2 with every other card game trailing distantly behind them so they don't see a reason to really try in the west. Quite frankly I think the game is growing over here in spite of them, not because of them. It kind of makes me sad because the only card game I've had fun with recently has been Yu-Gi-Oh! and Pokémon with Yu-Gi-Oh! being way more fun, I just wish Konami wasn't so fucking awful at handling their game over here.
Ok, here's a Konami W. Gozen wasn't replaced with Skill Drain (Skill Drain was in the DW structure deck) in the Traptrix SD. They cut a super cheap floodgate for one if not the best boardbreaker of this format: Evenly Matched. Which wasn't cheap at all tbh. Komoney also changed Ice Dragon's Prison (one of the best trap cards ever printed) in Albaz Strike for Warning Point which is a dogwater trap card that doesn't see any play except maybe in Duel Links. Spirit Charmers SD didn't have Evenly. It did however have Harpie's Feather Duster and Dark Ruler No More.
Imagine marketing gambling to kids and getting away with it. Ironically people are willing to spend 1200 on a deck thats messed up. The card is probably a few dollars to print.
I basically switched over to one piece. I got sick and tired of the tcg just rolling over and being exploited year after year with the diminishing treatment and card quality. I hate Konami but I think because of the US's hustle culture, the players themselves do greedy things like buyouts. The one piece playerbase is way worse since the packs are so scarce but I know for a fact that there is a ton of overlap in the players so if given the opportunity the same thing would happen in yugioh, without a doubt. The tcg also has a brain-dead outlook on players who complain about the game and especially the prices calling them "poors" which is mind-boggling since IT'S LITERALLY JUST A CARD GAME. Being an adult really put things into perspective for me: if I spent the same on yugioh as I do just for the babysitting of my daughter I could buy an ulti cyber dragon every month. Now think about how fast your card collection would disappear if you tried to make enough money to cover basic necessities every week. The monetary value of cards is so insignificant outside of the hobby it's stupid.
I actually just opened three traptrix structures and one was missing an Arachnocampa and a sacred beast structure deck i bought when it came out was missing a hyper blaze. Anybody else run into these issues?
The real reason is that tcg players tend to want the highest rarity cards, the more expensive the better. It feels like as a hobby, besides videogames, most people dont mind spending a lot of money if you can trade and set the value of the items at any time. In Japan, with how there are plenty of options for other card games or other similar hobbies to spend on, they have to compete in the market. Unlike with other countries, there are a lot less options in card games and gravitate to the top 3 card games that they know have a big community. Essentially, Konami knows that they have to only really compete with just pokemon or magic in the international market. With over 2 decades in the market, they know their audience and how to maximize profits for their products overseas.
A very good video in the matter, about the qc part i will never forget how in a maximum gold el dorado pack there was no gold rares, making that pack worthless
These channel has become my favourite in terms of content related to Yugioh. I love to play the game but I am amazed at how stubborn or blind people are in regards to Konami and his scumbag practices.
6:12 I personally disagree with the trap tick deck because max c is band here so it’s really an argument between skill drain gozen also it one of the best deck we have gotten in a while
Massive food for thought, and I’m seeing this more and more. The last I spent money on a deck was Lybrynth, other than that a lot of the archetypes I like are low-tier. Overall this gradually making me pull out of this game
I have a hypothesis that Konami is also doing this and trying to keep everything ultra competitive. I got out for a solid ten years and recently came back to it. I could not find people who wanted to play casually, or try to build random and fun playing decks. It was all meta, everyone had the same 4 or 5 deck sets, and I just didnt have fun. And this was a casual event. Not even a tournament, where I can expect people to try their best with the best cards around. I still only have a handful of people that I play the game with, and because we constantly build decks and play each other, we have to take breaks. It sucks. And the market is making it far worse.
@@easyygo3008 No one really plays speed duels in my area, I never see any specific events for them. I just want the casual events to be genuinely casual instead of a bunch of the same decks that are stupid powerful, aka metas. Leave that for actual tournaments where theres something to win. They are Casual, and Tournaments for a reason.
@@3v068 Casual and tournament don't go hand in hand. And expecting ygo to be a place where you always face different decks is delusional. If casual decks like swordsoul or drytron are causing you issues, the problem is you refusing to play the game properly. You expect a subpar deck to hold up against casual decks and you claim the game is bad because it doesn't cater to your esoteric needs. Just end your misery and quit it already if you are not going to adapt
@@easyygo3008 that's the problem. They aren't using regular decks. It's meta decks. The same decks in competition are used in casual, not even a difference. If i wanted to play at a tournament, I'd go to a tournament. I go to casual to get away from the meta and play with different strategies. The decks i use aren't a problem. I can get wins. I'm tired of playing the same decks everywhere i go, and against the same overly competitive, sore loser people. All you are doing is proving my point even harder.
@@3v068 Dude, swordsoul isn't a tournament deck anymore, is casual trash. If you want to play junk decks vs casual decks, the problem is your definition of casual. You want to play junk, people wants to play functional decks
If Konami ran the TCG like they do the OCG, I have no doubt I would play the game even now, I play on Master Duel mostly and actually dont hate the state of the game, besides the occasional bad formats. The OCG makes reprints readily available and having lower rarities making the game accessible to players while having higher rarities for collectors. Its also why the OCG probably has a more lenient ban list, outside of well, $$$. Is a card like Maxx "C" really as super broken when everyone has access to it as well as multiple outs with retaliative ease?
So I just opened some boxes of the GX Speed Duel Duelists of Shadow Set. Was disappointed to say that the quality of the speed duel commons now seem to be lower as well (you can see uneven pulpy textures when holding a card's glossy finish up to a light). Daaaaamn, I thought speed duel stuff was the exception to the bad QC as of late. Guess I was wrong
Crazy how the government is more concerned about loot boxes in video games to protect children from developing gambling addictions but turn a blind eye to card games like yugioh and Pokémon. Worse still the loot box system was mostly on games for adults and Yugioh is targeted for children
Yes. Exactly. Legislation, regulation of the free market is the ONLY way to reassert dominance over this small Dick energy company. If you want access to American markets. You play by our rules. Take it or leave it fuckers.
Unlike pokemon has up to 3 different versions of the same card in a set, so you can play the $10 art, $40 art or the $200 art. Though they do pull cards from sets to put them in tins in other countries
I appreciate the back peddle on the Force of Will situation. Most of what that company went through were funding related and it was then acquired by the print company that printed their cards. The R&D department wasn’t turned over to my understanding but the company is stable and celebrating its 10 year anniversary for the Force of Will TCG.
I used to run a simulator. I think its a form of petty/unconscious racism. Japan is extremely closed off and culturally different from America. And Konami is notoriously one of the "code black" companies that does cruelty to its employees on a level that's incomprehensible even by megacorps here. You can ask Konami for stuff. Literally try to show them completed and ready products and they will ignore you. It could be clothing, tv shows, video games, anything, if its made in America they don't want it. The communication between Konami departments is minimal and their internal policies barely keep the company running.
You wanna know expensive? Try to play Duel Links, despite the amount of UR vouchers they give to players, most of the staples or core cards of deck are at highest rarity and can only be obtained thru a TERRIBLE, straight up costly gacha system.
I played duel links for a bit back in the day and it was hell for a free to play player. even with budget decks I felt like I just had to skip out on formats because the pull system was so bad.
@@MonkeyFightTCG Ikr? and you can't even craft new cards, i played DL for about 2 months in 2020 and can't even find all 3 copies of White Stone of Ancient.
9:30 Yeah, that's right. However, the main issue was that the company who was in charge of printing the cards, was selling fakes cards or selling copies in the name of Konami. So, they have to change everything. Other example of this is the quality of Spanish card, they are better than the English one Peace
THIS. Thank you. It sucks but the game needs changes baddly and that wont happen if people dont just stop engaging with Konami's bullshit en-masse. Talking about it openly helps a ton tho.
Another thing that's killing the game (in Europe): The new anime series (everything past Arc V) is not translated into German, French and Spanish anymore. Which means the kids in any of these countries will not grow up with the YuGiOh anime anymore. That plus the insane prices will turn (or has already) turned YuGiOh into a game that is completly alienated from the audience they tried to target 10-15 years ago. (Yes kids learn English in school, but usually they are not fluent enough until their late teens to be able to watch series in English online)
The Yugioh anime stopped being part of the pop culture since GX ended, and it was exactly then, in 2008 when the game became really expensive for the 1st time
As a near 10 year TCG comp player, the best way to save money is look for a cheap deck you love, and only buy singles. The only time you buy boosters is when the next set is going to have an extremely good deck that will be in high demand. Then sell all the cards and start picking up staple cards every deck needs/wants that can be put into any deck you want. That way any if you want to get a stronger deck down the road, you have the staple cards you need already to make that deck really good. Most of these staple cards have been good for 5 years and still can be really good
Facts
Honestly I only bought booster packs for Toon support and I bought most of my cards individually from the secondary market.
For my main playable deck I just bought two dark world structure decks and added some Golden alt art DANGER! BIGFEET!
For an 18 dollar deck (8+8+2) it is very good and only needs some minor adjustments to be a real threat. It’s nothing to underestimate already but it can still get screwed by a Magicians support deck that costs $400 but for the price difference it’s good.
As a 20 year try hard casual, this is true for all players
I highly agree and I'm just a filthy casual😄
That is what I have been doing for years.
Gotta love how no matter how much videos expose Konamis shenanigans, they ultimately don't have any effect on the situation whatsoever and Konami keeps ripping us off
i mean, if we say the people who watched this video were to not buy cards from konami
that's 2000 people, assuming they'd have bought just 10 packs for 4$ each, that's 80000$ konami hasn't earned
and that's just with 2000 peeps, imagine if repeated attempts inspired dozens of thousands
and yes, i know it doesn't hurt them in the grand scheme of things, but god damn that's still a lot of money man
Remember to vote lol
Konami is a Eren Yeager, just not justifiable.
@@Infernoswac Too soon
Dude, this video came out in the perfect time. Literally yesterday I went and got some of the latest yugioh packs just for fun to "test my luck" and of course I opened dogshit. That alone was enough for me to feel like a dumbass cause I spent money on essentialy useless shit and could've spent the same amount to buy better cards online.
This is what has been happening to konamis gams. The secondary market has taken over where it's no longer enjoyable to buy their products. It' ridiculous but that's how it is nowadays. Because there are some chase cards out there, unless you get some of those you feel like you got nothing. It's trully sad how it can take the fun out of opening a product.
I will never get tired of videos exposing Konami's blatant, unacceptable greedy standards. Fantastic watch as always!
to be fair....its the TCG who takes it to the extreme..It actually looks relatively cheap to play OCG....
@@pabloac.8100 Agreed! A couple more things over in the TCG should be more like the OCG and that side of Yugioh is doing things a lot better by the looks of it. Though I'm pretty sure when people talk negatively about Konami they're almost always talking about it's North American division.
just gonna add another 2 cents to the squid game money pile that is reasons konami sucks
the ocg's card text is a lot better because of the VERY simple addition of numbers to indicate when a new effect starts
not only does it lower confusion (like me thinking stromberg's last effect is once per turn) but it also makes the card text a lot less daunting to read, cause instead of looking a whole ass whopper, you're looking at a whopper cut into bite sized chunks
@@fortnitesexman lol..completely unrelated, but your name reminded me another reason why OCG>TCG: art's censorship..I will never forget what those bastards at TCG did to my swordsoul Iris...Pd: Regarding card text..I only play MD, so I really don't have to worry about it (nobody reads at MD)...But yeah, I can imagine how awful must be having to read the full card for a single effect..
@@pabloac.8100 what did they do to iris? i looked her up and i'm not really seeing a difference
and yeah, i remember i had an x-saber anu piranha, which, when i looked through my old cards and saw her, i instantly went "there's no way this isn't a censored card" and low and behold she was busty af in the original
i also have the cards where the bare chested king was given a white tank top
oh, and oddly enough, master duel uses the censored art for the cards, which was only brought to my attention cause i drew an amazoness card
Imagine people paying $1000 of meta deck with all their life savings just to see new banlist in 1 week banning half their deck. They rage but they decide to pay for another 4fun deck that will not be hit by the banlist: $150 for 3 Secret Rare cards only to hear Konami announcing new structure deck having that card as common, worth 0.37cents.
*"You need to adapt to the game"* my ass
blame the game, not the players
@@olivernguyen1709 I indeed was blaming the game and company, not the players.
This happened to me 2 times b4 and I ended up quitting Yugioh for a few years bcuz of it. Now I’m mostly a casual player and have been really enjoying the game with some of my favorite decks
@@BillythaJit that's the spirit, a game purpose should be to bring fun, not stress
this is what happened to adamancipator players lmao
This is why I will never understand and never buy booster boxes filled to the brim with meta cards bait. Why risk spending an arm and a leg for a deck that will get KILLED in a matter of MONTHS??? I will always buy decks/cores that are cheap to get and/or probably in the middle tier of decks. Also, 2 words as old as time for the people reading this BUY SINGLES😂😂😂
One billion percent; imo unless you plan on going to a YCS or multiple regionals it’s not worth it. “Oh, but my locals are super sweaty” I get it it sucks, but I’ve had infinitely more fun playing on YGO Omega ranked and Master Duel and putting that money into either other hobbies or collecting OTS ULTIS that unlike the meta cards will in many cases stay or go up in value.
You can clearly see whats about to get banned or hit
Fr, that's why I've stopped going for the top tier decks, or the best archetypes at that specific time, because no matter how much money you mill into that deck, and it's going to be over HUNDREDS of dollars, after several months, Konami will release something new, and your 600$ deck will get stomped by whatever will be the new meta at that time. Not only that, but the deck that you paid 600$ for will now be 200$. Last year, end of 2021, beginning of 2022, Evil Twin seemed so op with handtraps and Trouble Sunny's quick effect for high damage OTK, nowadays they are like Tier 2 pure, and can barely play without some high engine like Spright or Runick. It's just not worth throwing money into this game. Not only is it not fun, but it's super expensive which you can't earn money back anymore because of how quick the card's value go down. That's why I still play my Sky Strikers, no matter how weak or slow they are, I enjoy the playstyle, I love the waifu design, and even if I will get destroyed at locals, at least I built them to try and compete with other decks at some levels. Having fun, while saving money, and not giving to greedy Konami. Konami would go bankrupt if it wasn't for sweats at YCS willing to pay every penny for the top tier deck. Come on, deck that blocks my zones? Tf outta here.
@@tijankusacic8079 thank you for articulating this; with rare exceptions to the rule the vast majority of decks considered meta or top tier 1 year regardless of popularity will be power crept and nerfed out of existence and that sucks. The thing is imo sometimes power creep isn’t even that bad and if the game was as cheap as for example the Pokémon TCG it wouldn’t be that bad. For example, I freaking loved Danger “Casino” Tearlament and I love Spright but I hate how the decks on release were super expensive. They pushed the skill limit of the game way higher and forced people to play at all times. Now we have Snore mimimimi Ka$htira that is also price gouging people.
@@joshcruzat3112 don't forget the worst thing of all. Take Spright for example, you spend hundreds of dollars to build that deck and you pay 80 bucks for Spright Elf, only for it to get banned after few months, so your 80 dollar cards are useless now, which completely kills the deck strength because one of it's key cards got hit on the banlist, and you can't even sell it for much cuz who's gonna buy a banned card
fun fact: cost me less to *import* 3 ultimate rare copies of The Bystial Lubellion from Japan than it would to buy a regular copy here
As an OCG player, I was so shocked how expensive the TCG was…the most expensive cards in OCG were usually hand traps like maxx c and ash, and they cost like 10 dollars before the RC04 reprints. The most expensive cards that I’ve seen with lowest rarity is probably nyan when virtual world was meta…even then it cost at most 30ish dollars, and it’s because nyan is a promo card in Vjump. You could probably build a purely deck for about 20-30 dollars now in the OCG(yes a fully functional meta deck), TCG really is too expensive.
Tcg is quality ocg is cheap stuff Boy
@@Ehrle6969 LMAO...TCG cards are so much thinner than OCG cards, and the color is also much lighter in the TCG
@@tachyon3678 OCG nothing worth tcg best digga
Dieser Deutsche Einfallspinsel 😂
@@Ehrle6969 where in the world r u?? U didn't know ocg has better quality than tcg 😂😂😂
I'd honestly say that's just how Konami has been working for the past 20 years. They had their big run during the 8-bit and 16-bit console era, and since then, have been desperately trying to replicate these successes. They branched out into several directions, and struck gold almost nowhere - except TCG. With how popular Yu-Gi-Oh! has become over time, it's their biggest juggernaut left in their business lineup. Their pachinko parlors are collapsing, their soaplands are falling out of favor, their gaming endeavors are pathetic. Only the OCG and TCG is still thriving.
Here's the thing: they have to deal with so much more direct competition in JP and Asia than in the US. The US currently has only two serious competitors on the TCG market: Pokémon and Magic The Gathering, and all other card games had their quick burst in popularity with little long-term growth. But Pokémon is on a constant up and down, while Wizards of the Coast is mutilating Magic and enraging the fanbase with their insistence on tremendously overpriced collector sets and swamping of the card pool. In the east, Yu-Gi-Oh! cannot afford to mess with their playerbase, since there are at least ten similarly popular competitors waiting around the corner - so they remain "humble", offer a reasonable balance in rarities to make every archtype playable on multiple levels of monetary investment, and rely on collectors hunting after the highest rarity versions for the big bucks. But in the west, they have little to lose, and can exploit the not yet completely fried desire sensors of the playerbase to own rare and expensive cards, partially because they don't have much of a choice.
To say they didn't struck gold is a lie, they're huuuuge in the rhythm game market for instance (IIDX and SDVX), and videogames in general as well. Of course not as big as Bandai (who are also entering the CG Market heavily) but still, everything else is ehh okay
@@StellaEFZ That may very well be true for the rhythm game community, but it doesn't translate to high profit. The main reason they continue it is because it's easy money, but even then, mobile platforms are continuously eating away at their share.
Other than that, it's a struggle to name even one game from Konami's line up since Metal Gear Solid 5 that wasn't either a complete flop or a forgettable attempt, if not both even. Just look at what they did to Castlevania, Metal Gear, Contra, and Silent Hill in the past years: pachislot machines for all of them, terrible mobile games that shut down in less than a year for most. Their biggest succes as of late was the recent Castlevania crossover in Dead Cells, a.k.a. not even their own game.
And of course Bombergirls, which is also getting rebooted soon, because blowing the clothes off of fanservice-driven reimaginings of legacy characters doesn't magically print money for them, ergo they regard it as a failure.
Thier pachinko only stared to fall because of the covid lockdowns. before it was doing massive numbers. I dunno how its doing now since the lockdown eneded.
@@KazeMemaryu damn I’m returning to card games after a while (specifically Yu-Gi-Oh) and seeing what has happened after not playing since a little before the lockdown it just makes me sad like I don’t remember any of this bull crap happening in the time that I played but at the same time I was pretty much not that self aware or aware of things happening around me but looking at everything it doesn’t make me feel anger it just makes me sad
@@WeirdSkeleton this has always been a problem
Isn't it also funny how Konami doesn't allow the cheaper ocg cards to be playable on TCG tournaments?
do they have a reason?
cause i'd really love to see them try to justify that
@@fortnitesexman they "justify it" by having different backs, which doesn't really matter when every card is in sleeves.
TCG cards also aren't allowed in official OCG tournaments. Unless it's a very lax local weekly and you have actual OCG copies of the TCG cards you're using maybe
@@Momosexual but why? I can use Italian , french Portuguese and german cards in my locals but not japanese? Such dumb rules
@@TeaRektum different rulings
Indonesia for example
We play officially un in ocg format but people can't be bothered to learn how to memorize card effects in Japanese.
So what we do? tcg for local fun weekly Ocg for national cup.
As much as I love the game, I just can't justify spending several hundred dollars to even stand a chance at tournaments. I'll stick with digital formats.
True winner is me who ever beat tearlaments/kashtiras using a Bujin deck ;)
I really have to aplaud you, most ygo fans knows these things are happening but the yugitubers never talk about it, so as to not upset daddy konami and potentialy burn some bridges in the process, gotta get that dough.
I'm brazilian and I really wish I could play the physical card game, but as you said, the cards are WAYYYY too expensive and their quality is questionable at best and also because of economy, let's just say that everything here is 5 times the cost it should be, and I can't use my whole paycheck to buy some staples LMAO
At least I can play the game now thanks to master duel.
Lol. The final moment was amazing. Konami will suffer with Dueling book for the rest of their life as they were so greedy with the game
Suffer😂
People like beating strawman😂
Imagine being a kid in 2006. You buy random assortments packs from the store. You open every pack and literally get only rares and no holos. Konami even when they had great quality would make you buy cases for playsets back in the day
I would prefer that old system compared to what we have now with a super in each pack.
@@Tyler-Wiley in truth it was better. As a kid unable to spend money i was frustrated but i just had bad luck and would only be able to get a pack or two at a time if i was lucky. Taking a step back is when it gets wild and realize its a game marketed for kids and yet the cost of entry to the hobby has historically been very high. Only recently did structure decks make the game more accessible because good staples rarely got printed in the decks. I would just like to see print quality increase as konami clearly gets excellent QC from the OCG prints
What actually drives me crazy is precisely the poor card quality. I'm just a collector of cards I want because I liked the art, and I'm looking for those in almost perfect condition, but even buying sealed product, the cards come with slightly factory lines or scratches, sometimes are just visible with more light but other times is like someone used a big knife on the front of the card.
i got a ghost rare red eyes and ghost rare blue eyes
the red eyes is really nice, and i love him, he's my boy
but the blue eyes has fucking bullet holes in it for some reason, the card art has a bunch of black dots, and it's *really* not unique to my copy
it seems to be what it's supposed to look like
@@fortnitesexman Yu-Gi-Oh Merica edition
Somebody else just made a video like this about American pokemom cards too.
They list the same issues you are describing. Poor control quality when compared to japan
Interesting. Although I do know that in America the big 3 use different printers.
@@MonkeyFightTCG yeah and different style on ink when printing the cards. I don’t understand why the EU has dark tones and cold verse North America cards.
Youve talked about it on the channel before but NO card, let alone a card ESSENTIAL for a deck to function, should be locked above super rare.
The OCG, as youve mentioned, will have 2 rarities for cards in sets, which lets collectors chase the high rarity ones but lets NORMAL PLAYERS simply OWN cheaper copies.
Its so predatory to release intentionally overpowered decks that require short printed/expensive/high rarity only cards.
The main, driving force that generated this problem is a lack of competition.
There's a noticeable, severe lack of competition in the western TCG market except between the big 3 (Pokemon, Magic, and Yugioh). Whereas, in Japan (and other Eastern countries, I assume), there are plenty of other TCGs besides those 3 that are either exclusive to us or more popular over here than in the west, that provide competition in the market. These include Battle Spirits, CARDFIGHT! Vanguard, Shadowverse Evolve, One Piece TCG, Digimon TCG, Duel Masters, Build Divide, and more; all of which provide more competition for the TCG market, where various companies are all vying for the financial support of consumers.
When there's little to no competition for a company in any market, they stop caring about consumers because that consumer has nowhere else to go for a similar experience; however, when there's plenty of competition, they have to be more lenient with consumers and provide a better experience. Because when a consumer becomes dissatisfied with a company's product; guess what? There are plenty of other companies on the same street, that offer a similar, but better, service than that company.
To summarize, more competition leads to more chances for losing consumers to said competition, chances of losing consumers lead to various precautions against losing consumers, precautions of losing consumers lead to better treatment of consumers, and better consumer treatment generally leads to a more favorable company-consumer relationship.
(To anyone who saw my last comment of basically the same thing, I accidentally deleted my comment and had to rewrite it all.)
I guess it also helps that Japan has better public transport infrastructure too. Makes it easier(And perhaps "cheaper?" to experience all those different games.
that's just a sign of players not looking to their left and right. There are so many other tcgs out there in the west but since ygo players are so invested and fixated on that game... the other games are going to fail.
- Arcana
- Final Fantasy TCG
- One PIece
- Flesh and blood (ok this seems to doing good in US)
- Digimon...
also most games are "too slow" for ygo players since they don't want to deal with a resource system.
_waiting for Weiss Schwartz to come in like a wrecking ball and give the big 3 a rude awakening in 3... 2..._
@@Zanji1234 Yeah, the "too slow" factor really doesn't help much in this situation, but also, if we're talking about not looking to the left or right, I've noticed a few things associated with players not moving to other games outside of the big 3.
1. To start, every TCG is a two-player game minimum, right? So it figures that even if someone is interested in playing a TCG, if the TCG isn't well known, then you would obviously be discouraged from playing, because even if you're interested, if you don't have anyone who can play with you, then you have no reason to try and get into it.
1a. (Labeled 1a. because this is effectively an extension of the last statement) Small competitive communities. When you don't have as many players, then the people who want to play games more seriously and competitively, automatically find getting into a game to be a less attractive proposition, then just investing in the game that they've always enjoyed, or another one of the big 3 (especially since 2 of the big 3 have cash prizes in their tournaments).
B. If you ask anyone what card games that they're into, they tend to say 1 or maybe 2 card game(s), not many people want to invest in more cards that they can't use for the games that they already like. Also, they don't want to have to learn the rules and their intricacies, or the meta for other card games when they already have to for the games they currently own.
TL;DR: People don't like coming out of their comfort zones, especially when its a bit more of a risky move in the first place, requiring money, time invested, and the hope that the game that they're investing in will eventually have more players.
@@asakayosapro Wow, just found the game thanks to your comment, seems pretty cool, I hope it takes off.
I tried getting into the TCG a couple of years back. I had a ton of fun learning the game and met some really cool people, but once I realized I had to spend 500+ dollars on a decent deck I had to stop. The point of buy in for a hobby should never be that high.
You don't have to spend a lot to have fun. You can just buy structured or starter decks and Duke it like that. The only problem is, like you said, it will cost more to build a decent deck.
Personally, I stopped playing yugioh because of all the texts in a textbox, blatant power creep and 10 minute turns
Exactly this. One thing the YGO community needs to be better in is just being more cognizant of “how” expensive the game is in comparison to other hobbies and in greater context of peoples income. Asking someone to spend 700-900 dollars to buy A DECK is absurd. You could buy a PS5, a 44 inch TV, and a video game for the same price. Or for some folks, especially in LATAM or EU East that could be a month or more of rent.
@@itsmesteve1081 you mean 20 or 30 minutes turns
@@joshcruzat3112 I actually just got into pokemon and was floored that my deck costed $34. A full deck. Heck i felt bad and paid for a super high rarity art for one just cause it was so cheap and i'm used to yugi prices.
It's not even true. Get 3 Traptrix Structue decks and 5 staples and you can do decent at locals.
I really wish Konami knew they're just losing more players in the long run...
I've been playing Yugioh since I was a kid, but the prices of keeping up on the metas was just absurd. Once Nekroz happened and I saw the prices, I was done. I've been playing on YGOPro since then and haven't looked back.
As you said, new people get pushed from the prices too. Any friends I have who get interested I just tell to play EDOPro because even official Konami games have terrible pack pricing.
Same here! I left cause I saw a 200 dollar Brionac as a HS kid and was like “I’d rather buy a used laptop and play Steam Games instead”. And I did lol.
Although I play the game in paper and have the privilege to play meta (granted I live in the first world with a middle class job) i find way more enjoyment playing on YGO Omega with my friends. We can put the money we’d have put into decks into hanging out IRL and get to mess around with an unlimited card pool.
@@joshcruzat3112 Brionac was like $40 when it came out
The rarity flattening in the tcg is the single biggest thing holding this game back from a wider audience IMO. Explaining to people that your booster box is 90% garbage except for the one or two secrets you pull is very disheartening to people, it makes buying sealed product feel terrible and like a waste of money considering even if you do pull let's say the Kash field spell it's a 3 of in the deck, you still need 2 more of that card the even play the deck at a competitive level!
It would be much better for the game if we just let everyone have the decks they want to play cheap and let collectors and investors pay for the higher rarity of the cards. I used to buy at least one box of every set that came out to support my game store and see what I pull but it's getting harder and harder to justify that when any deck worth playing has every 3 of card at ultra or higher. I think the last competitive deck that had decent rarities in the tcg was virtual world, with Lulu being the only 3 of high rarity card at ultra.
Yes it’s simply unnaceptable.
I was trying to build Tearlament and after opening hundreds of packs I still only had 2 Perlerino and no reinoharts I was going to purchase the cards I needed from TCGplayer in order to attend my first ever real live Yugioh event at the YCS here in Las Vegas. Then they banned Kitkallos.
So I had nothing to play and my cards became worthless.
Learned my lesson.
Never buying a single Yugioh card ever again.
Fuckkkkk konami.
This is the main reason I quit going to tournaments. The game got harder to keep up with because of shit like this. I went to yugioh tournaments pretty consistently throughout highschool where my budget was 70-100 dollars, and the only times I really ever won over opponents with more expensive decks were when my opponent didn't know what my cards did, had an insanely good matchup, or I knew their deck better than them. Even then, I still wasn't guaranteed the win. In the last few years, that chance of winning over someone with an expensive deck went down exponentially, with my last tournament outing being a local where I went 0-4, getting utterly destroyed by runick and sprite. It's a shame seeing the game being treated the way it is by konami, because I do love this game, despite how much I bitch about it. I just wish the game had more easily affordable decks that are somewhat viable.
Plus they don't give you shit for winning so why commit the time to being the best. No reward it's literally a waste of time no matter how you slice it. Even with genuine interest in the challenge. It's objectively a waste of time, every time.
The first and probably the biggest price-gauging from Konami was in 2008, when they released Dark Armed Dragon, a three-of, as a short-print secret rare that jumped from $150 each, to $300 EACH at the peak of the format. The same card was originally printed in Japan as a common regular rare. Didn't help that the card broke both the game and many wallets.
Great video.
More expensive AND of lesser quality.
Nice.
When I was a wee lad I remember comparing TCG and OCG cards in person and being mesmarized at how even OCG commons felt soooo much nicer in hand. Had a friend who lived in East Asia for a while and had a number of cards.
It’s mental.
Thicker cardboard and the card fronts have some sort of waxy sheen to them
@@Momosexual precisely!
For me the most egregious quality control issue is one you didn't mention, card edges already scuffed before opening the pack. It's been a while since i've seen a mint ots ulti, they come out the pack with edgewear or ugly bleeding of the ulti texture on the artwork border.
I need to post some of the cards I opened in the box of mavens I pre-ordered on release. Several of the cards came out of the packs with massive print issues and a few had these really strange line indentations. Fortunately none of the cards that were worth anything had this issue, but it was still really amusing.
Oh yeah all the time but this happens in the OCG too, there's a lot of chipping along the edges especially the top edge
That's been an issue in every card game for years now
The 1 issue yugioh has, is that if you stopped playing after a certain point and try to get back in some people will either shun you or just tell you off from playing the game again. the community is very anti new player or returning player.
Coming back into the game is like returning back to an abusive spouse.
@@Tyler-Wiley😂😂😂 That is one heck of a comparison.
yeah, you make a good point, the price is the biggest hurdle in trying to get my friends to even spare a glance at the game.
Ye me too i remember asking a friend how play duel links at the time to come but he was concern at the price honestly cant blame him.
get them on master duel
MD has it's fair share of problems in the exact same category, but you can make atleast a single good deck filled with staples n such at the start
“It’s the only modern rhetoric that companies listen to”
This is very accurate along aside, “Nothing is wrong with the product if it sells well”.
I love this game, but it has almost created an abusive love scenario between players and how they spend their money to play specific cards. It’s embarrassing to state that I’ve spent $70~ for a single copy of thrust when it’s OCG counter part is but a fraction of the cost.
Thank you for the time that you spent producing this video. I enjoyed it highly
As long as the consumers consume I don't think wide spread change will happen. I remember people having complaints like this 10 years ago and it's jaring to come back and see that not only do the problems persist but it gradually got worse. It's also always been weird to me how the decks are more expensive than the prize support. I know YGO can't have cash prizes but at least give the winner of YCS or worlds a case of consoles to sell off for good money and not just 1 console, a prize card, a mat and merch.
Worst prizing structures I've ever seen. Singlehandedly makes it not worth it to play competitive even if you have interest in doing so. It's such a waste of time
Thank you for making such an amazing video. Also, to just drive it home further, the Kashtira prices you used were DOUBLE on release and have only been trending downward because of guess what people are afraid Konami will gut the deck to sell more product.
It’s why, after YCS Los Angeles, taking a long break from Yugioh and moving over to Pokemon.
Yeah same, I am going to watch the YCS this weekend and possibly due to work commitments I am unironically going over to play 40k as 10th is coming out and to be honest playing games is far more flexible with people and not constrained. Also honestly it's less toxic and you can learn new skills whilst it feels to be a more positive experience. Pokemon is nice and casual and a far less toxic audience, I just dislike the set structure but it is far more consumor friendly.
Meanwhile MBT loves it
It's also trending downward because the deck has been seen as less powerful than originally labeled.
Pokemon is bad too. The meta is very much solved
Have fun dealing with set rotation
I've felt gated by the pricing to play the game at a "competitive" level, but that's also not the kind of fan I've been from the beginning. I'll always enjoy cheaper and fun decks as well as playing on simulators.
Not only are these options often easier to understand and acquire, it lets me be invested in Yugioh at my own pace without being put in a position to fiend for W's. Upshifting affects the most dedicated; card quality is a universal issue.
I really appreciate you transitioning the cards from rare to secret rare and show the difference in foiling -- it's a great visual aid
It’s actually quite simple. Its respect. Konami respects the product in Japan, it’s always up to date and maintained because it has to be in the OCG. The rest of the world that essentially adapts THAT game into a TCG format and tries to build a different game with healthy balance is almost impossible because the banlists are so different. Konami sees TCG as spare cash. Instead of treating it kindly like its their main source of business they just progressively squeeze the rag for a few more drops. The response: wow we make more money, they still buy these cards! So they squeeze harder and harder. I still enjoy the idea of playing yugioh with my friends, where we are far from up to date on cards and can simply have a good time. I actually dont hate modern yugioh because im not trying to be competitive and win any tournaments. I have no incentive to spend my money so i just play a bit of master duel from time to time and allow that to suffice. If you are casual, stop letting konami squeeze you, let the competitive community eat itself and konami will be forced to adjust from there.
not really that imo, it's just that in the west trading cards are more popular that trading card games and konami is rightfully riding on this
Whats insane is that people will look at this video and tell you that you're wrong and the prices are fine only because it's better than it used to be.
Incredibly accurate video, sometimes I feel some people hide behind the take of “what hobby is cheap”, without really taking a look at how truly ludicrous the difference is not just from game to game. But from region to region. Keep up the great work man🙌🏾
Solution is simple: Quit buying their products.
It sucks, but where I live, Yugioh is dead and it's all MTG. Know why? This is a major part of it. The cards are near-impossible to find anymore, and the sets that CAN be found are either trash that nobody wants or buys or decent or good sets that get bought out by scalpers. Then, any time you CAN get a hold of some packs, the pull rates are always atrocious, and they do that intentionally. At this point, the only sets worth buying are either the Structure Decks due to no randomness being in it, or special sets with fun cards you want, like the Legendary Duelist sets. Beyond that, you either spend $1,000 on the latest meta deck that will be banned in a few months for the next $1,000 deck or you can spend an unknown amount on boosters and hope to get lucky, but with pull rates, you probably won't. It's honestly depressing what the game has become, and for anyone who plays Duel Links, that philosophy infected and ruined that game too, with each new set being Tier 1 and demanding you buy or lose in PvP.
the "TCG as investment product" thing annoys me so much because whenever there's a new or interesting looking card game out there I have to double check if the people designing/marketing it actually want people to play it or if they want to pitch it as something to "hold value"
The most atrocious example of upshifting a rarity over the course of my Yu-Gi-Oh experience will always be Dark Armed Dragon going from Rare to Secret Rare and there only being 1-3 DAD per case of 12 boxes 🥴
Konami TCG should really bring the prices down to clear the barrier to entry.
Everyone can benefit from it. Collectors and people who want to "invest" because they still need the Chase cards.
But is it really the case that the OCG gets more reprints? Because i read on Reddit that they have been waiting for an accesscode reprint for 2 years and there is still no reprint from TTT. And that many cards are released as a "Jump" promo or something similar and that will probably take a while until the reprints come.
Actually sad that they somehow do not manage to find a reasonable middle ground
Yeah the ocg does miss a few random cards and the jump promo situation is not good. However cards do just get reprinted more of there and at lower rarities so it's much much less of a problem.
I don't think it's because they're unable to find that middle ground. It's because they know they can get away with not being on the middle ground.
@@MonkeyFightTCG nope. ocg gets way fewer reprint products than we do. Stuff like mega tins, legendary collections, speed duel, etc simply does not exist in the OCG. So cards in the OCG often get one printingEspecially now since they created rush duel and have to work towards that. E.g. Malicious Bane, Photon Orbital, Adusted gold has 3 printings in the TCG and just 1 in the OCG
OCG reprint is weird, they either reprint cards within in a year like TCG or they just make you wait for god know how long. Did you know that Harpie Lady 1 hasn't got any reprint in the OCG since 2008?
I suppose that's the trade off for being able to pull cards at multiple rarities.
We already have an Accescode reprint in Secret Utility Box. And TTT has been reprinted in the latest Rarity Collection 25th anniversary as a $3 Ultra that could also come in Secret/Collectors/Ultimate R/25th Secret Rare in the same box
One of the biggest proofs of Konamis inability to treat their players well is the existence of TCG and OCG banlists. Sure they are one set ahead of us, but the main reason is how much Konami racks up the prices on cards in the TCG. Kashtira Fenrir was a rare in the OCG,but was a short printed 1/20 rare in the TCG. This lead to an ultra rare being 70+ dollars a copy. Kashtira had to be hit on the banlist in the OCG because it was so powerful,but the hits won't be the same here as not everyone can afford 500+ dollars for one deck in the TCG. Thus,less ppl can play kashtira. However this means the high level events like YCS and regionals tend to be dominated by people who pay more. There are still budget players in these events of course, but letting meta dominate because it's making you money isn't a sound business strategy
It's nice to see yugitubers finally standing up to Konami, I left the modern game months ago because frankly, the powercreep and high prices were just too much for me to handle anymore.
same here man... I only play DL now tbh it's getting so annoying and depressing how much the irl card game is going downhill hill :'
my only problem with this game, new cards that are worth 70+. its one thing if its a very old card but new release? no peice of cardboard should be worth more then $15 max
Great video on a pretty important topic! I've pretty much fully transitioned to buying the occasional set of structure decks and buying singles. When I'm playing with friends, we play with Korean copies of cards that are prohibitively expensive in the TCG. Better card quality while being cheaper to buy.
I think the altering of rarities trend really got rolling in the Tachyon Galaxy set, considering that Spellbooks came out and would have been an undisputed tier-1 deck with most of their cards being Secrets and Ultras, but Dragon Rulers were also in the same set printed as commons and rares, which put up a significant fight for the top spot. I think Konami noticed this and decided to cash in by not making that "mistake" again by letting lower rarity cards contend anymore. I remember way back then, you could either spend $400 for a Spellbook deck core, or spend like $40 for a set of all the Dragon Rulers and some older generic Dragon support cards like Darkness Metal Dragon, Rejuvenation, and that 7 stars spell card, I forget the name. The money cards for Dragon Rulers were the extra deck cards, which a lot of people already had access to thanks to the Mermail Atlantean deck having a ton of rank 7 cards anyways. Dracosack was obviously a huge buff to the deck's power ceiling as well, and rightfully so considering it reached a $130 price tag at one point, but I think Konami took notice and shifted their printing design philosophy in the west because of how cost-efficient the deck was compared to Spellbooks.
I had no idea exactly how many great cards from TCG structure decks had been cut over the years, that's honestly pretty upsetting. But in a way it makes sense considering everything we've come to expect from Konami now. Why would they put a Maxx "C" in the Blue Eyes structure deck when they can put it as a promo card in a collector's tin for twice the price? If a person wants a playset they'll have to buy 3 $20 tins instead of 3 $10 decks. Super underhanded. I was honestly blown away when I looked at the Traptrix deck in Walmart and saw that it came with a Raigeki, Harpie's Feather Duster, Ash Blossom, and an Evenly Matched. Seems like an incredible value for $10 which really surprised me, especially considering that not long ago a single Ash Blossom was $8 for a single common.
Awesome video, I can absolutely feel your love for the game in how earnest you are about the horrible practices being done in Yugioh and other card games alike. Really appreciate your videos, when you don't see this being discussed anywhere in any meaningful capacity, it's so nice to find someone who actually takes these aspects by the horns and reveal them for what they are.
I just stopped playing YGO altogether recently, power creep/game depth, bandaid fixes, banlist issues, and prices have made the game incredibly difficult to get into and stay with. The aesthetic is incredible, but the game is just not enjoyable sadly, especially with negation and floodgates
i find the most fun i've had in master duel for example has been with my gamble deck
getting that dice jar off and rolling a six gives me a feeling that just can't be topped by anything else honestly
tho most of the fun i have with yugioh is actually talking about it instead of playing it, designing custom cards especially is fun, you should try it sometime, make a retrain of some goofy ahh old card or add some support for an archetype noone plays
After playing the game again for almost 6 years, seeing this video makes me wanna sell all my cards and boycott this game. It boggles the mind how scummy their tactics are.
This makes me glad I only play what I want and NOT what the meta tells me I should play. I'd rather scour the earth for other Casual Players who don't subscribe to the Toxic Buisiness practices for the sake of a YCS placing. Konami has been absolutely negletful about this issue; to put it lightly. Generally cheaper to play casual and the decks happen to be more fun.
The thing is, there are even more problems with yugioh then just with Konami. The game being so competitive that there isn’t really a proper space nowadays for casuals to ease into the game, especially those who don’t want to start on the competitive side of things. Yugioh’s extreme powercreep and balancing issues. Some people not really bothered to talk about any of these sorts of problems or really criticizing the game because then they lose Konami’s good side. The community mostly not giving completely different ways to experience Yugioh a chance. Seriously,more people should just not buy these products and even try to support Konami with the terrible things they have done over the years. But it’s never gonna happen because a good amount of people don’t want to bother even trying to change things.
I see what you're saying but honestly if you play on any online simulator there's always casual lobbies. I see it all the time, so there is that going. I'm seeing a lot more older formats being played as well these days so you might have fun that way
@@luxray4911 Here is the thing,yes,there are places you can play casually but the places,where you can play casually versus competitively is much lower in comparison. You have to fucking play meta decks in locals,a place that’s supposed to be more for fun then actual serious competitive play. Same thing with the formats,those formats are for people who want to play competitively but don’t want to start at modern yugioh. Where ,it’s all about optimization and using the best decks at the time,not exactly for just having fun. That’s what I meant with my first point in that comment.
@@vipersniperpiper6093 I think this is just a tcg thing in general. It's not an exclusive ygo issue, MTG has this (I play it) Digimon etc etc, people play to win for the most part there ain't much you can do about that except try and start something yourself.
Honestly, konami's bs doesnt just stop at yugioh. It also affects the players mentallity, and how they treat every cardgame as a whole. I remember when the DBS card game first came out, and some people who played yugioh were all hyped about it.
Some liked how slow it was (Its not like that anymore though), and how staples in the game were treated. You didn't need the staples to win. Any deck, at the time, could technically win, or steal a victory, the staples were just there to help you get an edge.
But then there were the other people who played yugioh who saw the game as an investment, despite also playing it. They would basically hoard staple cards and refuse to trade with anyone until after the prices from the new set settled and they could make a profit. Only to be disappointed when they weren't worth that much, either due to reprints, or the cards scarcity being exaggerated.
Do you know how yugioh has yugioh day at OTSs? DBS does something similar, where instead of having a tournament where you can only use 3 structures, they give you a cardboard deckbox with several pre-release packs and promos of the new set, and you're supposed to make a deck with the cards you pull. You're also supposed to trade with people to get the cards you need.
Just like in yugioh YOU'RE NOT ALLOWED to buy boxes of the pre-release set from the store owner and build basically complete meta decks from what you pull, and not trade with anyone/hoarde your pulls, despite people willing to trade with/ buy them off of you, just because you want to see where the market lands on the new set. Dominating the prerelease tournament because you're running the most competent strategy out of ANYONE ELSE there. Winning with barely any effort at all.
The reason DBS died at my local cardshop was because bandai really screwed the pooch on the distribution of rarities in a set. Making must have staple rares feel like short print secrets/SCRs in modern yugioh to get. Basically making it impossible for anyone who bought a case to make a profit/break even because they'd pull only enough chase cards for their decks, and not enough to sell to other players.
They didn't give DBS's next couple of sets a chance to rectify this issue, and just moved to Pokemon.
the art sucks on yugioh cards these days, im so sick of the waifu cards
thats not what yugioh was about
So many cards just look like a vomit of tie die colors and textures.
Even with a magnifying lens you can’t make out what the hell’s going on in the tiny little picture because the print quality is so bad.
"Lootboxes are bad"
What about tcg card packs?
"Those are just cards they're fine"
After I started getting back into yugioh I convinced another friend to get a box with me. He got a starlight miradora with extremely deep grooves in the back that were so bad they protruded on the other side and fucked up the art. It's absurd.
I wish they went to the japanese model of printing chase cards in low rarities
i'd say a better approach is to have all the cards be available in any of the qualities the pack would have
you could still unbox crazy expensive cards n shit, but the good cards aren't locked behind being said crazy expensive cards
(and i also just want to have a ghost rare dice jar or something equally goofy)
6:10 some of these shouldn't count. First off, some cards were cut because they were banned in the TCG at the time of the deck's release. Maxx "C" in Forest of the Traptrix, Solemn Judgment in both Wave of Light and Synchron Extreme, Heavy Storm in Cyber Dragon Revolution, and Harpie's Feather Duster in Shaddoll Showdown. Maxx "C" wasn't cut from Machine Reactor. And Crossout Designator didn't exist in the TCG yet at the time of Freezing Chains's release.
The biggest offenders when it comes to Structure Deck imports are Cyber Dragon Revolution cutting Lightning Storm, Saga of Blue-Eyes cutting Maxx "C", and of course, Pendulum Evolution being turned into a set.
I considered these beacuse they were significant cards of value in the ocg and should have got an equivalent card in the tcg. Which never happened. At the end of the day it still leaves those sturture decks to be much lower value than their ocg counterparts.
How does the boot taste.
How many factories do you own temporarily embarrassed millionaire?
@@MonkeyFightTCG Okay, but there are still factual mistakes in the video.
@@MonkeyFightTCG What do you mean never happened? The Traptrix structure deck had Maxx C replaced with Ash Blossom and Evenly Matched.
Rarity upshifts have been happening since at least the GX era that I can recall (pretty sure about PTDN Dark Armed Dragon for example)
Bro that thing at the end had me dying. Imagine bringing up someone up for an interview so you can do some moral signaling like motivational thing, only for them to basically say "oh yeah by the way you can always pirate the game" man those konami execs must have gotten wild
I'm pretty sure there is enough evidence to launch a class action lawsuit at this point at Konami
I’m down.
I say we just start a Yugioh player owned trading card game. And violate Konami’s intellectual property claim. Japan is a thoroughly cucked aging country. They won’t fight for it.
Keep up with these videos, nothing against the TH-camr that promote the TCG of Yu-Gi-Oh, but we need those that can call out publisher for their anti consumer practices and lack of quality control. Those OCG foil cards were mind blowing and something I myself could go for if companies like Wizard actually made the foils good here in the west, like imagine having a Swarmlord foil in the same style as the one OCG card demonstrated from your box opening.
Unless I'm buying a card for collecting purposes, I never go past my $20 budget, especially if it requires multiple copies. The only exception would be if it can have multiple uses in other decks like Commander and can be splashed in all the decks I use, like if I were to buy Ancient Tombs as it's a much better Temple of the False God, for example, -And only if one copy is required (This bit applies to other card games).
Hopefully Konami is watching.
let's be real here, they would be jack horner and monkey would be their conscious
They're more likely are and wouldn't give any product as a result. The company is so dense. 😂
I think the quality of Yu-Gi-Oh and MtG EU (printed in Belgium) cards are better than the US ones, would love to see them compared.
"Red-Eyes Baby Dragon" is $27 Ultra Rare to $33 Secret Rare and I got 2 copies in Japanese in Rare just for $7!!
I also believe its not just greed and fault on Konami, but also fault on players. Don't forget, many players just buy product with intentions to make money and also players dictate prices without any background logic or solid values to support that price. Its more like, "Its because I can" kinda reason, no logic involved.
Explain me how, 1 secret ( cardboard with art and foil) is more expansive compared to a console game? There are even cards that are at the value of a console itself, which has more resources needed like metal and other components that are scarce or are missing due to excavation or extraction problems. And cardboard? you have that resourse everywhere.
I don't just agree with the statement that konami is at fault, but also is the player to apply the same as Konami is doing "GREED".
Oh and some youtubers who open a structure the tcg gets 3 to 5 months after the ocg, misses a critical reprint because it had to become the chase card for a garbage set, and we know the other cards didnt do jack in the ocg, but we can be so grateful, that konami decided to at least leave the other reprint in the structure...
I think the competition here in the ocg with other card games has an impact as well.
I was seething when i pre-ordered charmer structure (I like the deck a lot) and found out later that TCG cut evenly matched from it
only to put it back in years later in traptrix.
Great video. The ending killed me lol. I’m a collector rather than a player at this point in time, but more players will mean bigger fan base which is good for everyone. The overall theme is that Konami gouges the rest of the world while the OCG actually seems affordable to the player base😢
what drives me mad is that westerrn players never compare sets to the ocg ones other than MAYBE the content of the cards. Never about quality or rarity.
in the forest of the traptrix structure deck maxx "c" was replaced with evenly matched not skill drain.
This is one of many reasons why I stopped playing yugioh. Yes, I understand that any tcg is a luxury hobby. If you want to play, you need to pay. However there are lines where we need to set our foot down. I play MTG now, EHD(commander). What makes MTG work and YGO not, in my opinion, is ways to play. MTG has. Whole format made for budget. Decks, good ones that actually win, can be built for under $50. YGO lacks formats. Speed Duels are the only thing that comes to mind, and even that is getting up there and meant to be a gateway to the main game rather than a stand alone format.
YGO needs formats that are creative and different like how MTG has. That way people of all walks can play it.
Pendulum Evolution being turned into a set would've been horrible if not for the secondary market crashing the price of the booster box down to $40 dollars new. At that price point it was actively better than 3x Pendulum Evolution as you'd basically get every card you'd want or need from the new pendulum decks and any additional pendulum engines like yang zing for the omni negate, or qliphort for cyber dragon infinity access. On principle though it's probably the worst case of a change in product.
Bruh... Konami doesn't want poor people playing the game. Just like Disney not wanting poor people at their theme parks. That's why all these issues you pointed out exist. They only care about getting as much money possible from the TCG community and that's not gonna change until people wake up and put their foots down. Sadly it won't as you still see all these Yugioh TCG channels spending hundreds of dollars on boxes of the new card packs to open on stream or in videos.
Not to mention that there are a lot of issues with the game franchise other than just these scummy business practices. Right now in Master Duel we are in a very toxic meta of decking people out or making boards with 6+ negate effects that prevent others from being able to play the game.
As someone who has collected/played Yugioh since the early 2000s it sucks to see how far things have fallen between the points made in this video, the current state of the game in terms of balancing, and the toxic mentality/environment the community has developed.
Thank you for acknowledging this issue! I love this game but hate the company and the way they handle this game.
Me and my friends had NO CLUE about a problem like this even existing.
What we did was stick to Arc V Tag Force Special on the PSP (since 2016) and printed proxies of our in game decks to play IRL. We haven't moved on since.
And boy was this fun. We still play regularly and ill have a blast showing this video to them.
Very good video. I switched to Digimon a few months back and I haven't wanted to buy or play Yu-Gi-Oh since! Not that Bandai is any better. They recently dropped the rate of their secret rares.
Don't forget ditching 1 guranteed rare for a random common-uncommon foil in BT-11
EDIT: I should add that as of BT12, it seems they changed back to 1 guranteed rare + rare or better for now. Thankfullly.
I'm wondering if the quality control has to do with the actual company printing the cards because it feels like every card game I've played in the past couple months has just had awful misprint issues. I don't know much about that side of things but I also view TCG's as games over collectibles so it never really bothered me.
Out of all of your points the prize card one and the rarity bumping are the ones that piss me off the most. I used to play a lot of competitive magic so I'm personally used to shelling out a couple hundred every few sets to keep up with the meta, but for a fresh player that has to buy everything from scratch it sounds miserable if not just straight up impossible to catch up to the meta.
Regarding the last point I'm pretty sure it has to do with the competition from other card games in OCG regions. At this point they're top 3 arguably 2 with every other card game trailing distantly behind them so they don't see a reason to really try in the west. Quite frankly I think the game is growing over here in spite of them, not because of them.
It kind of makes me sad because the only card game I've had fun with recently has been Yu-Gi-Oh! and Pokémon with Yu-Gi-Oh! being way more fun, I just wish Konami wasn't so fucking awful at handling their game over here.
Ok, here's a Konami W. Gozen wasn't replaced with Skill Drain (Skill Drain was in the DW structure deck) in the Traptrix SD. They cut a super cheap floodgate for one if not the best boardbreaker of this format: Evenly Matched. Which wasn't cheap at all tbh. Komoney also changed Ice Dragon's Prison (one of the best trap cards ever printed) in Albaz Strike for Warning Point which is a dogwater trap card that doesn't see any play except maybe in Duel Links. Spirit Charmers SD didn't have Evenly. It did however have Harpie's Feather Duster and Dark Ruler No More.
Imagine marketing gambling to kids and getting away with it. Ironically people are willing to spend 1200 on a deck thats messed up. The card is probably a few dollars to print.
I basically switched over to one piece. I got sick and tired of the tcg just rolling over and being exploited year after year with the diminishing treatment and card quality. I hate Konami but I think because of the US's hustle culture, the players themselves do greedy things like buyouts. The one piece playerbase is way worse since the packs are so scarce but I know for a fact that there is a ton of overlap in the players so if given the opportunity the same thing would happen in yugioh, without a doubt.
The tcg also has a brain-dead outlook on players who complain about the game and especially the prices calling them "poors" which is mind-boggling since IT'S LITERALLY JUST A CARD GAME. Being an adult really put things into perspective for me: if I spent the same on yugioh as I do just for the babysitting of my daughter I could buy an ulti cyber dragon every month. Now think about how fast your card collection would disappear if you tried to make enough money to cover basic necessities every week. The monetary value of cards is so insignificant outside of the hobby it's stupid.
Honestly this video needs more attention
Thanks for an awesome an entertaining video
I actually just opened three traptrix structures and one was missing an Arachnocampa and a sacred beast structure deck i bought when it came out was missing a hyper blaze. Anybody else run into these issues?
Yeah I had some friends have very bad misprints on the dark world structure deck.
The real reason is that tcg players tend to want the highest rarity cards, the more expensive the better. It feels like as a hobby, besides videogames, most people dont mind spending a lot of money if you can trade and set the value of the items at any time.
In Japan, with how there are plenty of options for other card games or other similar hobbies to spend on, they have to compete in the market. Unlike with other countries, there are a lot less options in card games and gravitate to the top 3 card games that they know have a big community. Essentially, Konami knows that they have to only really compete with just pokemon or magic in the international market. With over 2 decades in the market, they know their audience and how to maximize profits for their products overseas.
A very good video in the matter, about the qc part i will never forget how in a maximum gold el dorado pack there was no gold rares, making that pack worthless
These channel has become my favourite in terms of content related to Yugioh. I love to play the game but I am amazed at how stubborn or blind people are in regards to Konami and his scumbag practices.
6:12 I personally disagree with the trap tick deck because max c is band here so it’s really an argument between skill drain gozen also it
one of the best deck we have gotten in a while
Massive food for thought, and I’m seeing this more and more.
The last I spent money on a deck was Lybrynth, other than that a lot of the archetypes I like are low-tier.
Overall this gradually making me pull out of this game
I have a hypothesis that Konami is also doing this and trying to keep everything ultra competitive. I got out for a solid ten years and recently came back to it. I could not find people who wanted to play casually, or try to build random and fun playing decks. It was all meta, everyone had the same 4 or 5 deck sets, and I just didnt have fun. And this was a casual event. Not even a tournament, where I can expect people to try their best with the best cards around. I still only have a handful of people that I play the game with, and because we constantly build decks and play each other, we have to take breaks. It sucks. And the market is making it far worse.
There is a full alternate format for you: speed duels.
Is super cheap aswell.
@@easyygo3008 No one really plays speed duels in my area, I never see any specific events for them. I just want the casual events to be genuinely casual instead of a bunch of the same decks that are stupid powerful, aka metas. Leave that for actual tournaments where theres something to win. They are Casual, and Tournaments for a reason.
@@3v068
Casual and tournament don't go hand in hand. And expecting ygo to be a place where you always face different decks is delusional.
If casual decks like swordsoul or drytron are causing you issues, the problem is you refusing to play the game properly. You expect a subpar deck to hold up against casual decks and you claim the game is bad because it doesn't cater to your esoteric needs.
Just end your misery and quit it already if you are not going to adapt
@@easyygo3008 that's the problem. They aren't using regular decks. It's meta decks. The same decks in competition are used in casual, not even a difference.
If i wanted to play at a tournament, I'd go to a tournament. I go to casual to get away from the meta and play with different strategies. The decks i use aren't a problem. I can get wins.
I'm tired of playing the same decks everywhere i go, and against the same overly competitive, sore loser people. All you are doing is proving my point even harder.
@@3v068
Dude, swordsoul isn't a tournament deck anymore, is casual trash.
If you want to play junk decks vs casual decks, the problem is your definition of casual. You want to play junk, people wants to play functional decks
If Konami ran the TCG like they do the OCG, I have no doubt I would play the game even now, I play on Master Duel mostly and actually dont hate the state of the game, besides the occasional bad formats. The OCG makes reprints readily available and having lower rarities making the game accessible to players while having higher rarities for collectors. Its also why the OCG probably has a more lenient ban list, outside of well, $$$. Is a card like Maxx "C" really as super broken when everyone has access to it as well as multiple outs with retaliative ease?
So I just opened some boxes of the GX Speed Duel Duelists of Shadow Set. Was disappointed to say that the quality of the speed duel commons now seem to be lower as well (you can see uneven pulpy textures when holding a card's glossy finish up to a light). Daaaaamn, I thought speed duel stuff was the exception to the bad QC as of late. Guess I was wrong
That last clip was gold, thank you
I actually had someone who runs a card shop told me that they were supposed to sell it for 4$ but sold it 12 $
Crazy how the government is more concerned about loot boxes in video games to protect children from developing gambling addictions but turn a blind eye to card games like yugioh and Pokémon. Worse still the loot box system was mostly on games for adults and Yugioh is targeted for children
Yes. Exactly. Legislation, regulation of the free market is the ONLY way to reassert dominance over this small Dick energy company. If you want access to American markets. You play by our rules. Take it or leave it fuckers.
Me being enlightened has always hated them both.
lol i remember back in the day on dueling network people would contest about how everyone had copies of giant hand in their extra deck
Unlike pokemon has up to 3 different versions of the same card in a set, so you can play the $10 art, $40 art or the $200 art. Though they do pull cards from sets to put them in tins in other countries
Though quality control is bad in pokemon too
I appreciate the back peddle on the Force of Will situation. Most of what that company went through were funding related and it was then acquired by the print company that printed their cards. The R&D department wasn’t turned over to my understanding but the company is stable and celebrating its 10 year anniversary for the Force of Will TCG.
This man spittin' nothing but facts.
I quit the physical card game in the late 2000s, seems I dodged a very expensive bullet.
I used to run a simulator. I think its a form of petty/unconscious racism. Japan is extremely closed off and culturally different from America. And Konami is notoriously one of the "code black" companies that does cruelty to its employees on a level that's incomprehensible even by megacorps here. You can ask Konami for stuff. Literally try to show them completed and ready products and they will ignore you. It could be clothing, tv shows, video games, anything, if its made in America they don't want it. The communication between Konami departments is minimal and their internal policies barely keep the company running.
You wanna know expensive? Try to play Duel Links, despite the amount of UR vouchers they give to players, most of the staples or core cards of deck are at highest rarity and can only be obtained thru a TERRIBLE, straight up costly gacha system.
I played duel links for a bit back in the day and it was hell for a free to play player. even with budget decks I felt like I just had to skip out on formats because the pull system was so bad.
@@MonkeyFightTCG Ikr? and you can't even craft new cards, i played DL for about 2 months in 2020 and can't even find all 3 copies of White Stone of Ancient.
9:30 Yeah, that's right. However, the main issue was that the company who was in charge of printing the cards, was selling fakes cards or selling copies in the name of Konami. So, they have to change everything. Other example of this is the quality of Spanish card, they are better than the English one
Peace
THIS. Thank you. It sucks but the game needs changes baddly and that wont happen if people dont just stop engaging with Konami's bullshit en-masse. Talking about it openly helps a ton tho.
Another thing that's killing the game (in Europe): The new anime series (everything past Arc V) is not translated into German, French and Spanish anymore. Which means the kids in any of these countries will not grow up with the YuGiOh anime anymore. That plus the insane prices will turn (or has already) turned YuGiOh into a game that is completly alienated from the audience they tried to target 10-15 years ago. (Yes kids learn English in school, but usually they are not fluent enough until their late teens to be able to watch series in English online)
The Yugioh anime stopped being part of the pop culture since GX ended, and it was exactly then, in 2008 when the game became really expensive for the 1st time
This is exactly why I exclusively buy OCG and just don't play sanctioned tournaments. I won't spend more for a lesser product.