Kohdok is underselling the "top deck" bit. It's currently a tier zero format, meaning a single deck is taking 65%+ of all competitive representation. So it's not just "any Pyro deck" that needs Bonfire, it's everyone that needs Bonfine. Snake Eyes and Fire King Snake Eyes are basically the only viable choices currently in the competitive metagame and of course both archetypes are Pyro. But it doesn't even stop there. SP Little Knight is a new staple Extra Deck monster even needed for rogue decks that aren't Pyro. SP Little Knight currently also goes for $100+.
YuGiOh has a nasty habit of making their tier 0 formats pricy as hell, and that is thanks to the problem highlighted in this video, OCG being a testing table for Konami to rarity bump the cards that they know they will sell. And this is true because when Unchained became meta, the only UR you had to worry about was Yama, which was like 15 per card when it first appeared, and Unchained flopped in the OCG so they didn't had a presedent to Rariry bump the rest of the support that came in Duelist Nexus.
This is why, no matter how many times I try to get back into Yu-Gi-Oh, I'm back out of the game in no time flat. Since the Goat Control days of the mid-2000s, they have ALWAYS striven to make a Tier Zero meta, and it shows. Any time something old gets dusted off that might beat their newest hotness, they ban it, while leaving the new OP thing untouched until it goes out of print. They don't make a balanced game - they sell shitty investments for top dollar. Literally EVERY other TCG is, to some degree, better than Yu-Gi-Oh at giving players choices and a fun meta.
yugioh always had it's Tier 0 Format and the funny part: thanks to set rotation aka power creep and bannings, players will now pay 100 dollar and more for single card and then that card will either be reprinted or even get banned so a new deck can be milked :D and ygo players happily jump on this EVERY time
Another day, another video of Kohdok shitting on the GA premium decks because he doesn't want to acknowledge that you can have different products for different players.
There's a little more context to explain why "Bonfire" is so expensive. And yes, it does make things worse. If it were just that it was printed at Ultra Rare, it'd be (maybe) a $40 card. Still way too expensive, but manageable. Oh no no no no no no. This bad boy was printed at Ultra Rare... in a set that was in between main sets, meaning not as many boxes were produced. On top of that, the set was terrible, with "Bonfire" and like one other card being the only ones worth getting, which meant that less boxes were opened, and less "Bonfire" cards were out in the wild. The cherry on top? Even if the set were produced to oblivion, the card itself was SHORT-PRINTED. WHY
The Grand Archive part is misleading. Yes they’re bringing out a couple of decks which are higher priced, but those are more like those treasure trove items you mentioned which have some nice bells and whistles and aren’t their starter decks. They still have starter decks which are much cheaper and allow you to jump into the game for roughly $15
This is strange, since this is the second video he pulled this "mistake". You can tell when he doesn't care about a game. Less to say he is manipulative and spiteful, more to say he doesn't care about correcting a record for a mistake for a game he doesn't care for.
THIS! as far as I can tell the Re: Collection decks are meant for dedicated fans of those characters, not new players! It's very strange that he somehow can't see that.
The grand archive silvie starter deck is about 14€, don't know about other currencies, while what you showed is a different product, that happens to include a silvie deck, which has new cards, sleeves, card storage and more on top of a deck. It is a product, possibly new product line, that exists in parallel to and not instead of their usual starter decks as a product for more advanced players who like a champion and want all of the other fancy stuff instead of just a plain new precon deck.
Not exactly, it will be mostly new cards - they gave her a colorless Spirit that ist all basic elements for casting slimes and additionally a Brunch of new slimes cards. But you can get a starter Deck, even for that charackter, for a lower Price. I don't know if that new Version will be netter or worse, but I would compare it less to a starter deck and more as an equivalent to the Pokémon Elite Trainer Box which gives you only cards for your choose charackter and Happens to give you enough to Play ootb. It even Comes with an extra package that completes the playset of all cards include in lower quantities in the precon and Dragon shield sleeves of the Champion etc.
One thing that annoys me is when people want more expensive products just because they'll be competitive. Hey genius, it costs the company th same to print a competitive deck as it costs to print a trash deck. We shouldn't be considering the secondary market when looking at what the manufacturer charges. Konami could print the newest championship deck for $10 and make money. They choose not to.
The other advantage of the Pokemon approach is that the more common versions are several times more common than the fancy ones - collectors will generally accumulate many copies of the basic version while pulling for the fancy one. Not only is the card directly easier to get for one person, it's also within a market flooded with offloaded basic copies to begin with - further pulling down the price of singles without a new player needing to buy a single pack, even for pokemon-ex. It also makes the market more resilient to spikes in demand, as supply is widely available for anything competitively useful.
And for even more bonus points, Pokemon these days has a reasonably consistent and high quality art style, with even the common versions of things like ex looking reasonably cool, so if you don't own the fancy versions, you're not missing out too much. MTG's comparable activities typically end up with a huge difference in art style and/or quality between different artworks, and in some cases the common version of a card looks hideous. They know this, and really hike the prices on their art style variations to milk all the players desperate for a taste of anything other than soulless fantasy realism.
Kohdok out here sharing dangerous and fringe views like... [checks notes] "people should be able to play games" and "poor people should be able to afford games"
This is an incredibly necessary video in today's world. Accessibility has been the #1 barrier to entry that stopped me from getting into a lot of games; and that barrier to entry being lower on other games is what got me into those in my childhood--most of which I still love today.
Admittedly, the digimon tcg is sorta having this same issue with meta relevant and mandatory promos. Most of them, mind you, are archetype specific, however there is a set of cards right now that's giving everyone a headache and that's the training card. Its a two cost option (one for each color in the game) that reveals the top two cards of your deck and allows to add one card of the matching color to your hand while sending the other to the bottom of the deck. It then has a delay effect that let's you reduce evolution cost of a digimon matching its color by 2 at a moment of your choosing on any turn after the one it was played. Solid, very good for any deck. There's just one problem, they released them as booster box toppers. T_T
10:40 this segment made me think of nexus of fate in mtg being a standard powerhouse despite it being the buy a box promo and not available anywhere else
Grand Archive's ACTUAL starter decks cost between $15 and $25. The ones you're talking about are not starter decks. I know it seems like I'm this huge Grand Archive fan that defends the game on every video's comment section but the truth is I've barely played it (even though I like it). It's just factually incorrect to call something a 'starter deck' when it's not.
I never heard of the game before this video but even I knew he was wrong, at 5:03 the "silvie starter deck" has a prominent $15 tag. Idk how anyone could edit the video and not notice, it comes across as disingenuous
Price is a factor that will keep people away from a game but a low price won't attract players either. It makes it easier for people to pull the trigger on giving it a try, but you still need to find a way to attract people and an exciting enough experience for people to move on to the next step.
Because Living Card Games are just kinda dull. For several reasons, but most simply, people actually like the gamble and the cost, a little bit. They don't like a ton of it, but a small amount of it creates excitement and exclusivity, it makes your cards feel like *your* cards. It's very fun to own a rare and expensive card, it's quite fun to roll the die on whether or not you get one in a random pack, and it's even a little bit fun to pay a little extra for a card on the secondary market than for other cards, makes the card feel more premium. In comparison, Living Card Games feel much more like board games from the perspective of how you purchase them and organise play for them. You pay a high upfront price for something that comes in a board game box. It typically has a very specific theme, sometimes even a licensed IP, that makes it feel like a contained experience rather than an ever-expanding and diverse universe with an archetype for everyone. They're often cooperative vs 'AI' or have some other form of non-player "environment" such as a campaign structure, and require game pieces to track these elements beyond the cards in a deck which means you may be getting out the full board game box when you play it. In most meaningful ways, LCGs tend to work like board games, but they don't work like board games in any of the areas that board games usually use to achieve solid profitability, including mechanical simplicity, broad aesthetic appeal, and "something for the parents". Incidentally, they also seem to be very American, you don't often see a Japanese LCG for some reason, and when it comes to card games, traditionally, if Japan isn't doing it, it probably won't work.
This came up at a great time; Magic is becoming more and more guilty of making more and more pushed general utility cards at mythic like The One Ring, Sheoldred the Apocalypse, and Ragavan Nimble Pilferer. It's important to keep emphasizing that utility is not something that should be restricted to higher rarities, but available to everyone.
Star Wars Unlimited just hit the market, and all the most important cards are common and uncommon. The arguably best leader in the game right now isn't even a rare - no, it's Boba Fett, a common. Very easy to get. And the most powerful card in the entire game - Overwhelming Barrage - is a 25-cent uncommon that comes in the starter set. THAT is how you hook people into a TCG!
This topic goes so much deeper into classism itself with society. I also want to point out that the less accessible your game is, the less meaning you can derive from being good at it. The fewer people participating, the fewer people you can even claim to be better than. This is poking at the concept of validity for the spikes out there.
It's weird with Pokemon, I see more people collecting than playing which is why I think most essential cards for gameplay are dirty cheap, where as YGO has more players than collectors so Konami really go hard on their greed to buy basic cards at a high price.
Pokemon also releases cards in multiple prints within the same set. Common, reverse, full art, full art rainbow/art/whatever else. Yugioh has the issue of cards only being a single rarity within the same set outside of starlights (and now quarter century). If you need a Diabellstar, have fun spending $90+ on a playset (which is cheaper than it was on release). Whereas pokemon's most recent set has 4 different printings of Iron Crown ex. The lowest right now is $6, then $10, $16, and then $75. Having four different printings of a card in the same set makes it so budget players can have the card, while people who collect or want to bling out their deck have options.
Its not purely a money making thing on konami's part. The tcg rarity system for konami seems to be designed to keep secondary market prices high, which they cash in on with reprint products, but there could also be legitimate reasons for wanting secondary market prices to be on the higher end for a game. Its a pretty complicated business model because not only does it have to balance the interest of consumers and its own corporate mandates, but there's also local game stores which have to make a profit from the game somehow as well. Which without a strong culture of collecting like pokemom or drafting like MtG there are strong incentives to have cards have high resale values. I've seen plenty of bad boxes finally sell because there's a single card in the set list that's creeped up in price and would be worth more than the box that it is in. At the very least it feels like they aren't directly benefiting from the secondary market like a company like hasbro is trying to.
@@stardustspark5682 OK this response would be correct however the OCG itself literally does what you are describing and even they decided to make bonfire expensive without a cheaper printing
Keyforge was fun. I have not tryed the new stuff but the starter box was fun to buy and I enjoyed how every booster is a whole deck you can start using.
@Sanguivore I think they were still kind of expensive like 10 dollars but it was nice that you and a buddy could each buy a booster than play each other. You can probably use anything as a token as long you both agree what there purpose is. I think like for the first set you just need something for damage and in the game you collect amber it was like 10 amber is 1 key and first person to make 3 keys win the game.
@@Sanguivore ya I think he work on it than like a different company work on it so you like have to buy the new set online I think. It's a fun card game I like.
Thing about Fire Cards in Yugioh is they rarely get support even more so for pyro monsters. Then they made a Pack of just Fire Type cards but made most too weak so it sold poorly set after comes all the Snake Eyes and this Bonfire card which are not fire focused sets. Even the pack bonfire comes in is odd since they boosted most of Ultras to Flame Swordsman cards which for no reason at do not work with the last card that theme got. But the set Before the Major Theme was Gate Guardian and all its cards was never Above Super even the Boss Monster.
This is right on the money. You can't compete against the big 3 if you're monetization strategy is equally as aggresive. Ideally, every booster pack or product you sell should give something of value or good feeling to your players, they should want to buy more. That means design your cards to be more purposeful and generally usable across the board. Making good entry level utility cards is a big part of that, and it helps you as a dev that those cards tend to be simpler to design overall. Good point on capstones. In general you should be mindful of the positive feedback loop that happens when people start trusting, enjoying and even loving your game, it leads to players much more readily be open to even seek out alternate arts and pieces that are moreso rare as collectible than game pieces.
The really fun part about Bonfire is that between Konami's unpredictable banlist hits and frequent reprints a year or two after release is that the value is going to tank to almost nothing, so even if you do have the cash to afford a playset, you're going to lose most your money. This creates a worst of both worlds situation in that cards are inaccessible at release, and don't become available until they are irrelevant and something else has become meta in its place, and at the same time, don't maintain their initial value due to the reprints/banlist hits later down the line. This means nobody is happy; causals get priced out of the game, competitive players have to pay out the nose for a deck that will be useless in a few months, and collectors lose money on their collections. Everyone loses, except Konami.
I got this vid recommended a while ago but since I'd been on a SDSTCG binge the past couple days I thought it was an old video resurfacing. Thanks, youtube. Edit: Hell yeah, The Glimmer was a trip and a half. I still have my foil Wind Dancer and she's as pringle as can be.
Thank you for another insightful video, kohdok. As an aspiring TCG dev, you're one of my go-to sources of info for game design. Something I'd like to inquire about is when a TCG should reprint cards. 🤔
Bushiroad makes some strange decisions when it comes to product design. On their azur lane release they could’ve made the starter deck cases a mix of all the available decks instead of awkwardly splitting them into specific decks so that ones would sell out and never be restocked.
What’s crazy about Yugioh’s bonfire situation is that their playerbase is already dwindling. They have already alienated newcomers with how complex the game is now, but now they’re constantly alienating their diehard players by pricing them out of meta decks. Konami won’t stop until yugioh players take a stand and stop buying. And when they do, it may mean the death of yugioh (at least in the US).
Signs are pointing towards that going down in the UK apparently after the public outcry over cancelled products in that region + stuff like the Bonfire situation, to the point where YGOEU even had to bring it up in a public post.
Y'know it's funny, I recently got into some Warhammer games because their cost of entry is similar to other games (the kill team starter box, which comes with 2 full kill teams and everything you need to play but heavy terrain, which most people suggest you just use cardboard at home or otherwise not bother buying the terrain because other people at your hobby store will have it, is 120$CAD, and since it comes with 2 full kill teams, it means it can be split with someone for only 60$ each) but has higher quality minis that arent just used to play, but the collection, construction, and painting of them is as much a part of the hobby as playing actual Warhammer. And speaking of kill team, its affordable competitively as well; teams like Kommandos are one box (meaning you get all their options in one box) at a price point typically ranging from 50-80$, and are very strong competitively. Compare this to Magic where building a competitive commander deck costs wrll over a thousand, and even standard requires inordinate investment.
It's surprising to me that Pkmn TCG is as accessible and well structured as any TCG should be.. considering they are part of the PKMN franchise. Some really smart people are at the top.
Pokemon knows exactly who its audience is: Parents - people who are pretty good at gauging material product cost and quality, but who have no understanding of digital product quality. Parents won't buy physical goods that are obviously overpriced or low quality, so pokemon merch is still pretty consumer-friendly and the pokemon card game can never charge more for a piece of paper than about a pound. Parents will buy any video game, however, as long as it's in line with other video game prices, and have no way of knowing that SV is unfinished.
Reinforcements of the Arm might be one of the most widely reprimanded cards now, but it was a SUPER RARE during its first international release... although I think it might have been common in its original Japanese debut. Which just goes to show how long Konami has ban gouging the international market.
The Bonfire situation did hit the Yu-Gi-Oh Competitive scene on my OCG locals HARD. It doesn't help that Pyro and Snake-eyes more specifically is at least Tier 1. It caused many to either go into competitive Hiatus, or flat-out Quit. You wouldn't believe how many players sold their cards, cores, staples and all, after the last Limited and Forbidden list and we learn none of the problem decks got hit, wich silver lining, restores some faith I have in the community as it shown many of us still have some speckle of self respect. I for one gone to Hiatus and considered converting to rush format until September.
I understand talking about Bonfire as its an easier to understand card for non-yugioh players, but I would argue S:P little knight is a better example of this in Yugioh. Its a mandatory card in almost EVERY DECK IN THE GAME and will be for YEARS to come. Released at Secret Rare, the next above Ultra. I also think its important to mention that the OCG prints most cards in multiple rarities in the same set, allowing you to obtain it in high rarity without pricing people out of the low rarity option.
I know this probably doesn't fully slot into the neat comment sections below, but I'd be interested in hearing your thoughts to one extent or another on 'experimental' game design vs. 'iterative', as I think it cuts to the core of why we see so many games that are just MTG or Duel Masters with the serial numbers filed off and a few different concepts tacked on. As much as I see people here deriding 'Yet Another Duel Masters Copy' or 'Ugh, It's Just Magic Again' (which I can totally understand), part of the draw of aping such systems to one extent or another is, well... there's a solid core in there that's worked for the better part of 3, almost 3 and a half decades. Yes, they both as systems have their shortfalls and are showing their age to some extent or another, but it's a design space where designers can flesh out individual mechanics or flavor or ideas that they can be sure will be the main selling points to a system that people are already at least somewhat familiar with, as it allows you to say 'well, it's X, but here's what's Different about it' and get the point across fairly easily. Creating a new, experimental system and mechanics is ideal, yes, but... there's only so much you can do with cards and a few dice before things start to get silly. One need only look at Hecatomb and Redakai to see where reach really starts exceeding grasp. That's not to say that experimental design is a pipe dream or anything. I think good experimental design is part of what drives game designs forward, and to some extent, you don't have to worry about threading the fine line between 'iterative' and 'derivative' when you're in the middle of designing. But iterative game designs, all too often I think, fall on the derivative side and stumble into one of the Seven Deadly Sins, when with a little more thought and care put into it, good iterative designs can stand on shoulders of their well-creafted differences instead of the core that they're attached to.
I have low visib(enough to read print & see color in my right eye). Be it paper or digital, TCGs should have ways to let people with disabilities enter to play(Large print, screen reader integration/ audio cue options in-app, tactile symbols, etc.).
Competitive meta "price out" will always exist. If the chase cards for a deck are too cheap, the meta will oversaturate and burn out. Folk will lose interest. Also making those card easy to get just makes the game less appealing. If they make important cards too hard to get, folk will stop opening packs which has a ripple effect... Leading to death. A huge part of the community (whether they even know it) is the chase. We LOVE the chase Accessibility is the finest balance. A loss leader that generates no profit tends to damage games. FaB is a great example of breaking the accessibility requirements. 1) product on launch was super scarce. 2) no starter/ intro into the game (blitz became the intro style because of the players) 3) no physical rules 4) premade decks were two-thirds of a complete deck for the standard format. Yet it lives. It's insanely popular and a part of that appeal is clearly the challenge Also, YGO clearly doesn't suffer from its cost. Its thriving.
So happy you released a video, i love watching them. I dream of making my own card game and i watch your videos to educate myself ❤. Although i constantly debate with myself if my ideas are good, so i back track a lot. Ex: should i have my game use a play mat as a “terrain” which displays stats and etc? Con: it will be expensive to produce and will probably be a hassle for the consumer having to purchase multiple play mats and will cost them more money to play. Pro: a nice play mat, organized layout for player, displayed information
Right now the weird problem with pokemon is prime catcher, but its not nearly as egregious bonfire. But then again as an ACE you can only play one of them, but everyone wants that one!
Yeah he's kind of glossed over stuff like accessibility for physically-disabled people (including his like for skill challenges) and somewhat mentioned about colorblindness, but I don't necessarily think it's malicious intent on his part?
That's a more challenging problem, because not everyone is colourblind and limiting the colour combinations you can use can impact non-colourblind players' interest in cards. Especially considering there are a number of different kinds of colourblindness, and if you want to make sure all of them get the full experience, you're basically just doing everything in black and white.
the funny part: Magic get's it bad rep currentyl thanks to Hasbro and wizards and how they handle the game. Konami and Yugioh can do basically everything and the players are so blind to follow. You don't get much for winning a YCS compared to the price you have to pay to actually get a competitive deck (compared to magic or Pokemon) and thanks to the set rotation (Banned list and power creep) most of your cards will be for the trash as soon as a new better deck emerges which WILL be way better than your current meta deck.
Konami's behavior is pretty stable honestly. That's all priced in for the player base, you just kinda accept card depreciation and having to build 3 to 4 decks a year. I doubt konami could really get away with anything though.
MTG players are just as blind as yugioh players lmao, LOTR is their most profitable set ever, which was released a long time after it became popular knowledge that WOTC sucks and is greedy - hell, universes beyond was itself a colossal controversy, still probably the second worst rep thing WOTC has ever done after Magic 30.
@@yurisei6732 well with LOTR i (kinda hope) that some buyers were new players coming into MTG and didn't really see the Hasbro/Wizard controversy. I think it's the same with the Warhammer Sets. I bet several buyers were Warhammer fans which maybe wanted to play a warhammer card game after the LCG game was killed by FFG
@@Zanji1234 Doesn't matter, money is money. If that is the case, I'd argue it's even worse, because it just incentivises WOTC even harder to sell to people who aren't MTG players.
You should take your own advice for this series. An example is in the video you call bushiroad by a different name before then saying their actual name. Newer viewers arent going to know your issue with the company and how you refuse to say the companies name
the sailor moon card game had fantastic starter decks, but the high end cards were really super mega uber rare. Plus it came out way to late in the popularity of sailor moon to really hit. I really wish there had been a third or forth set to cover all the series, it feels like they were limited on what was allowed, the second set wasnt big, and included first set cards - an odd choice to make.
Bonfire isn't actually a generic card, at least currently ,its pretty much exclusively used in a somewhat splahsable engine, that's the best deck by far right now. Sp little knight would have been a better example of this because its practically a mandatory one of in every deck but was printed as the highest rarity in a recent set.
As a person that knows game store employees, Hasbro allows for so little profit margin for the shops, It's ricidulous. Selling singles and hosting events makes them infinitely more money than mtg otherwise does.
Honestly kind of surprised this series hasn't yet involved a rant about how meaningless the points system is in Heroclix is because instead of rarity dictating complexity and nicheness, it's dictating power levels (despite that being what points are supposed to be for)
Generalist cards should be common or uncommon but never rare. Specialist cards should be rare or uncommon but never common. Yu-Gi-Oh has some particularly egregious bad design in its history regarding this. Mechanical Chaser, when first printed, was exceedingly rare, and was the highest attack monster you could normal summon or set without no tribute, having 1850 attack instead of 1800 that Ma Jinn had (which means it wins outright against it). This meant it needed to be at 3 in virtually every competitive deck at that time, but was a tournament pack ultra-rare and so that was physically impossible with the count of the card and players.
From the perspective of someone who has been playing YGO for a long time. It's kind of hilarious to see a Pyro search card going for a ton, when a year or two ago, it would have been trash filler in a set, going for 30 cents(a dollar if it released as an Ultra), just because of how unplayable, and unsupported Pyro was.
Yeah especially when you can buy card sleeves at a variety of different locations and I personally think personalizing your own car sleeves is a great way of making sure that they are your card sleeves that you don't mix up people's decks at venues and tournaments! It's like giving a character a personalized skin or giving capes to hell divers saurab and hearing a lot about discourse about that! Or personalizing someone's pokey balls you know what I mean by that! But seriously Pokémon uh when you release your next game I would love the idea of customizing your pokeball designs sure you might get some out there ones but umm could be interesting
Have you played gen 4 or 5? Pokeball customisation was already a thing, it was cool, they cut it. Just like they cut pretty much every other cool idea their predecessors had.
@@yurisei6732 Actually yeah I haven't played those but I'm saying more than just stickers and will after effects although asking that from today's Pokémon team is a bit of a challenge I've just seen there Eldridge horror of coding for the last three games and let's just say I've already looked into the eyes of cathulu and it made more sense! Although adding a color patch skin that mods have probably done like 40 times shouldn't be too hard to ask then again scarlet and Violet does have an Eldridge demon summoning the moment you look at the code
Magic's history with accessibility is... strange to put it simply. For the most part, foils are there only to help bling out your deck and not be how you build it unless it only got a single printing twenty years ago. Screw the damned reserved list and the butt hurt collectors from the mid 90s. Yes, competitive decks of certain formats are expensive, depending on both the format and card pool, but they really shouldn't. For comparison, minus basics, a standard format deck usually goes between 125 and 200 for the full deck depending how much the secondary is being shoved by demand for full playsets of 4. Meanwhile in Commander you usually can get away with waiting for the same cards to rotate out of standard to get it slightly cheaper, before the frenzy kicks in there. and then there's sets like Modern Horizons and Eternal Masters that throw caution to the wind on pricing for a "normal" booster... for the greediest cuts on that front, look to the backlash that Magic 30 got for being officially made proxies that were for collectors only and the only format where they could be used officially was Canadian Highlander. There is enough on TH-cam to last a month explaining why that was a bad idea.
One thing I kinda feel should be included here. Is how fair and understandable the game is to an average casual player. Pokemon and magic are fair in difficulty and easy to understand. Then Yugioh sniffs a gallon of glue and makes the game broken and has so many gimmicks that even the armada transformers toys are jealous.
I feel like companies have stopped doing that thing where they sell an intro set at a razor thin margin or a loss with hopes of converting people into repeat customers, perhaps because the current approach to capitalism is too fast-paced to tolerate slow and stable business models, and would much rather make products that have a big buy in due to hype then immediately die off. Just today I was at a card store looking at Pokemon TCG products - there are so many different Pokemon sets I could buy... but because they all contain a bunch of booster packs, they all cost the price of a bunch of booster packs in addition to the price of the promos and merch, and to prevent existing players from buying up those sets, they can't ever cost less than the booster packs included do. Pokemon's intro decks are fantastic, but their "next logical step" products are still too inaccessible imo because they're all packed with booster packs not everyone needs or wants.
It's interesting because just a few years ago, Pokemon was doing the bonfire thing except for generic staples that every deck needs. I'm glad that the days of Shaymin EX and Tapu Lele GX are over. I'm actually shocked at how cheap compeititve pokemon has gotten, it almost makes the $10 starter decks look like a ripoff when competitive tournament ready decks can be built for
New generation of players, have to be caught all over again. Remember, the target demographic for pokemon today is too young to commonly have played SM, a 2016 release on a console already past its prime, they're mostly new age pokemon fans who started with SwSh or Pokemon Go and the huge marketing boosts these games received, with little existing connection to the TCG before then.
@@yurisei6732 I understand that new players have to be marketed towards but $10 for one standard art ex and a pile of largely unusable bulk seems quite unappealing when $20-30 could get you one of the nicer preconstructed decks or even your own consistent playable deck I honestly think the $10 pokemon starters should come with either more ultra rares or a sealed booster to be more in line with the price of the gane as a whole
I think the Dive Ball/Bonfire comparison makes Konami look even worse if you know the games. Pokemon is drowning in card draw and filtering so Dive Ball is a super useful piece but it won't kill your deck if you don't have it because there are other ways to increase the chances of drawing the card you need (and because of the prize card system, players are actively discouraged from building decks that rely too heavily on one or two specific cards, meaning the decks tend to have less rigid game plans). Whereas, because Yugioh is extremely stingy with card draw (meaning there are less ways to ensure you get the cards you need in hand) AND games tend to be fast AND most archetypes being very combo-heavy, Bonfire is essentially a required staple for anyone with an important Pyro card in their deck who wants to play competitively. Yugioh's design flaws (don't get me wrong, Pokemon is also flawed but not in ways that are relevant here) make the situation ten times worse.
10:40 Pretty disingenuous imo to bring up yugioh in this and not magic, becasue at least yugioh will reprint those cards to be cheaper, magic instead prefers to pander to the secondary market parasites. Like sure, bonfire is the current hot topic, but magic has been holding away the fetches and shocks, mandatory in any format they're legal in, and it is way more guilty of this in way more ways.
I think you're overselling the importance of "it's usable in every pyro deck" for bonfire. Its price is being near exclusively driven by Snake-Eyes. If you wanted a generic example you probably should have gone with Little Knight. And in most circumstances, TCG product is finalized before it's actually released in the OCG. They know whats going to be good.
Now that polyhedral dice sets, not just six sided ones, are available by retailers. These same places may have poker chips. These additional game pieces work in conjunction with playing cards. If pre-constructed decks can be sold to be more accessible, then paying for a bundle that includes them. This was implemented in my project design. Its essential to maintain quality of game pieces, while simultaneously keeping prices down.
Me getting into MTG Commander quickly realising I will never be able to compete in events cause I am not spending £500 on a Mox Diamond just because wotc arbitrarily decided they arent going to reprint it anymore
You learning more about MTG Commander and gradually realising that you probably don't want to compete in events anyway because competitive EDH, while interesting, is an entirely different format that doesn't play at all like casual EDH.
I'm reminded of how video game consoles usually sell at a loss, profiting off of game sales. A starter set should be priced as if you're expecting them to buy more stuff, not as a stand-alone. (Also, as if I needed MORE reasons to hate Yugioh, after already having no interest in it beyond anime memes.)
Incidentally, game console pricing is already kind of absurd. Even when selling at a loss, a basic digital-only PS4 sets you back about £400. If you then buy 10 games to play on it, you've effectively still paid £40 extra for each of them, on top of whatever markup is being put on those games to act as the extra profit margin that makes selling the console at a loss worthwhile - could be another £10 or £20. Of course, consoles have to cost this much because the hardware inside them and the workers who assemble them cost this much and there's only so much loss you can accept - and evidently, it works well enough. Card games though have negligible production costs and arbitrary profit margins based on artificial scarcity, so where Sony might expect the average customer to spend about what they spent on their console again on their games (so like, £400 upfront and £400 in games), a card game publisher expects the average customer to spend vastly more in future products than on their intro sets (£10 intro, maybe £500 lifetime purchases), so there's really very little need for the intro pack to be inaccessible... and yet they often are anyway.
The theory in the Yu-Gi-Oh community is that Konami is deliberately doing an atrocious rarity hike and pushing the current teir 0 format to push casual players out of the game with the hope that Yu-Gi-Oh rush duel gets more western players. Konami executives see the original game as a lame horse and have been dying to send it to glue factory for forever at this point.
Entirely depends on your archetype of choice. That's the double edged sword with yugioh. Yes, it's wonderfully diverse in a way that no other card game is, but if the archetype you find yourself drawn to happens to be the rarity bumped archetype in a deck build pack (Weathery, Sky Striker, Dragonmaid etc), you may need to buy multiple playsets of £10 or £20 cards. Konami always make sure to grift the casual players a little bit too, they always like to at minimum give an archetype one £10 playset, so they put Witchcraft Creation at secret.
Tbh there's a lot more than Bonfire going on in YGO. Years ago Dark Armed Dragon came out in Japan as a rare and became a Secret Rare global, Crush Card Virus and Gold Sarcophagus debutted as tournament prizes, and at the very past when the game was all about high ATK Mechanicalchaser was only available in tournament packs. Luckily nowadays they'll stick a staple card in prebuilt decks now and then, and a chunk of the current meta deck is in a structure deck (Fire Kings). But I bet you that even if you want to make a deck for the funsies while still be viable for locals, there will be minimum 5-10 cards you'll need to drop 50$ for each one.
I always think back to Pot of Duality and Solemn Warning, both cards that were very important for a majority of decks at the time, both being printed in the same set, Duelist Revolution. In japan, SW was a rare, and PoD was a Super Rare. In America? Ultra and Secret. They both went up 2 tiers of rarity, and were very expensive until their reprints as tin promos a year later.
Yeah, YuGiOh's card pricing is part of what keeps me out of the game. I love the MASK Heroes. Most MASK Hero cards are pretty cheap. But a good MASK Hero deck needs VISION Heroes... and some of the more vital VISION Hero cards went for $60+. No way in heck I'd ever spend more on a deck of cards than a video game console.
Card games in general are just money sinks. Tons of hobbies are though. You're really not going to beat the price point of video games in terms of money spent to entertainment achieved. Its mostly just a source of social interaction for people.
bonfire at super is more than doable come on, it's 1 out of every 6 packs , in 3 weeks you find it everywhere, and depending on the meta you can buy it for less than dollar if it's not secret/ultimate/g66ost. BUT , i get the general point, it's only that particular example i find a bit meh. Something way worse was done in like 2014(?) with he elemental dragons, they were all ultra and you needed the playset of all of them, the little ones tho i think they were common(?) getting old
Bonfire is ultra, not super, and its a shortprint ultra from a terrible, low print run set, that no one was buying except people who wanted bonfire. That's why it's £100 - there are relatively few copies in circulation.
Konami's inaccessible design is exactly why I had to give up on playing the physical game entirely. But this video barely touches the top of it's problems in that area. Not only do they constantly pull the rarity bumps highlighted in the video, but they are also constantly making competitive play an extremely narrow space that actively prioritizes more expensive cards. See: the limiting of "Called by the Grave", a common card that was basically the only solid counter to the Secret Rare "Hand Traps" that single-handedly completely warped the entire way the game functions at the time (which has continued to this day more or less). They also release new meta defining decks like once every 2-3 months, resulting in a cycling of relevant cards somehow worse than games with set rotation. To put that in simpler terms, they aren't just rarity bumping meta cards, they're rarity bumping the entire meta as a concept by banning or limiting lower rarity or higher print cards that have the potential to counter the new high rarity single printing cards they've decided the meta revolves around.
Also, printing Called by the Grave in the first place, after these handtraps already existed, which I remember at time of first printing was also "I'm not paying that" price and necessary for competitive play.
@@yurisei6732 Actually it was quite the contrary: Called by the Grave was one of the firt major cases of a meta card being made *easier* to obtain thatn ever before: it debuted as a Super Rare Promo card that came in Booster Pack Bundles and was later released in a main set as a Common. Prices at the time were between $2-$8 due to that. ....Which in hindsight makes it's current Limited status even worse.
Honestly, I wanted to get back into Yugioh... But Bonfire being part of what is (afaik) basically a Tier-1 or Tier-0 deck... It at least helps to teach me what not to do when developing a card game.
The real shame is that Yugioh is still a great and reasonably priced game once you scrape off the top layer or two of pushed competitive crap. Casual gameplay is surprisingly well balanced, I daresay even self balancing in some ways thanks to casual decks increasingly gaining access to recursion, recovery and consistency, and so many games have that delightful back and forth where you have no idea who's going to win. I still have a solid 40-60% winrate with some ten year old archetypes because powercreep in archetypes not pushed to be competitive isn't very fast. No one sees that side of Yugioh though, because the stuff going on at competitive levels is blinding, especially to people who only play online and at events.
Every single episode I've seen fro Kohdok just continues to proof why YGO is such a trash game... basically living off its Anime asthetics and nostalgia
Nobody said the only products that should be made are high price competitive items regarding Grand Archive. People said that particular box you keep whining about is ONE PREMIUM ITEM that supports underpowered strategies and previews cards from the upcoming set, but Grand Archive also already has an accessible starter deck THAT YOU OWN. This is no longer a honest mistake. You're being purposely disingenuous, not just about the quality of a game but about your audience's feedback too.
Gatekeeping is generally good, but starter products are the exception. You always need to offer a path into the game, and it should be an affordable one relative to the rest of the game, especially when the game was just made.
I would prefer to say that money is just simply the wrong tool for gatekeeping a hobby. After all it's not like the kind of people you would like to gatekeep will happen to always have little money to spend and the rest will have all the disposable income they could want. The starter products should still very much gatekeep, by giving an affordable and accurate look into the kind of gameplay and mechanics the game will have. That way everyone interested in that gameplay can join right in, and everyone else can do themselves and the existing players a favor by not getting into it.
I'm curious why you feel gatekeeping is generally good, and what exactly you consider to be gatekeeping when you say that. My guess is you feel it's important for collectible cards to have a certain level of value that remains stable so your collection isn't at risk of being devalued when cards are reprinted in cheaper forms?
@@yurisei6732 There's a great image that sums it up but it's pretty hard to find. Basically tourists create cyclical declines in hobbies: Tourists join Tourists complain about parts of the game Game makers in an attempt to increase their audience cater to those complaints; new content (or community post talking about the complaints) Tourists leave; fans complain about the changes Game makers respond negatively to fan complaints (optional) Fans leave New content (that still has the previous changes if not moreso) Some fans that left return (And repeat) When you let people that don't care about a hobby into the hobby, they often seek to change the hobby to cater to their non-fan views, and the game often does change for them which pushes existing fans that liked the game as it was, out-- and tourists, being what they are, often leave the hobby out of either disinterest or a feeling of accomplishment in having changed it.
The Bonfire Rarity flip is Kaiba levels of evil.
They've done worse. Like turning Commons into Secret Rares.
@@SakuraAvalon"you called?"
-Purrely
you mean Konami levels of evil
Kohdok is underselling the "top deck" bit. It's currently a tier zero format, meaning a single deck is taking 65%+ of all competitive representation. So it's not just "any Pyro deck" that needs Bonfire, it's everyone that needs Bonfine. Snake Eyes and Fire King Snake Eyes are basically the only viable choices currently in the competitive metagame and of course both archetypes are Pyro. But it doesn't even stop there. SP Little Knight is a new staple Extra Deck monster even needed for rogue decks that aren't Pyro. SP Little Knight currently also goes for $100+.
YuGiOh has a nasty habit of making their tier 0 formats pricy as hell, and that is thanks to the problem highlighted in this video, OCG being a testing table for Konami to rarity bump the cards that they know they will sell.
And this is true because when Unchained became meta, the only UR you had to worry about was Yama, which was like 15 per card when it first appeared, and Unchained flopped in the OCG so they didn't had a presedent to Rariry bump the rest of the support that came in Duelist Nexus.
This is why, no matter how many times I try to get back into Yu-Gi-Oh, I'm back out of the game in no time flat. Since the Goat Control days of the mid-2000s, they have ALWAYS striven to make a Tier Zero meta, and it shows. Any time something old gets dusted off that might beat their newest hotness, they ban it, while leaving the new OP thing untouched until it goes out of print. They don't make a balanced game - they sell shitty investments for top dollar. Literally EVERY other TCG is, to some degree, better than Yu-Gi-Oh at giving players choices and a fun meta.
yugioh always had it's Tier 0 Format and the funny part: thanks to set rotation aka power creep and bannings, players will now pay 100 dollar and more for single card and then that card will either be reprinted or even get banned so a new deck can be milked :D and ygo players happily jump on this EVERY time
yeah, i don't think it's an exaggeration to say that this is the least accessible format since teledad.
@@tubegerm6732 or Dragon Rulers... or.....
I think Errata Text should have its own playlist...
They are all in the seven deadly sins playlist.
Seconded
What if I told you…..
Grand Archive starter decks are 15 us dollars.
The premium collections are 50 and include a preconstructed deck.
Those are 2 separate things.
Another day, another video of Kohdok shitting on the GA premium decks because he doesn't want to acknowledge that you can have different products for different players.
Yeah, not sure why he keeps picking on that specific product
Hell, he even shows regular GA starter deck in this very video. Smells like bad faith and misinformation to me.
There's a little more context to explain why "Bonfire" is so expensive. And yes, it does make things worse.
If it were just that it was printed at Ultra Rare, it'd be (maybe) a $40 card. Still way too expensive, but manageable.
Oh no no no no no no. This bad boy was printed at Ultra Rare... in a set that was in between main sets, meaning not as many boxes were produced. On top of that, the set was terrible, with "Bonfire" and like one other card being the only ones worth getting, which meant that less boxes were opened, and less "Bonfire" cards were out in the wild.
The cherry on top? Even if the set were produced to oblivion, the card itself was SHORT-PRINTED.
WHY
Because money.
The Grand Archive part is misleading. Yes they’re bringing out a couple of decks which are higher priced, but those are more like those treasure trove items you mentioned which have some nice bells and whistles and aren’t their starter decks. They still have starter decks which are much cheaper and allow you to jump into the game for roughly $15
This is strange, since this is the second video he pulled this "mistake".
You can tell when he doesn't care about a game. Less to say he is manipulative and spiteful, more to say he doesn't care about correcting a record for a mistake for a game he doesn't care for.
So it's JUST like the Poke' Starter Trainer Collections but with decks instead?
THIS! as far as I can tell the Re: Collection decks are meant for dedicated fans of those characters, not new players! It's very strange that he somehow can't see that.
Kohdok has a real distaste for Grand Archive and will not hear out any correction on his assessment, it seems. :/
The grand archive silvie starter deck is about 14€, don't know about other currencies, while what you showed is a different product, that happens to include a silvie deck, which has new cards, sleeves, card storage and more on top of a deck. It is a product, possibly new product line, that exists in parallel to and not instead of their usual starter decks as a product for more advanced players who like a champion and want all of the other fancy stuff instead of just a plain new precon deck.
It's essentially a reprint set at a higher "level" over the base and with the extra stuff.
Not exactly, it will be mostly new cards - they gave her a colorless Spirit that ist all basic elements for casting slimes and additionally a Brunch of new slimes cards.
But you can get a starter Deck, even for that charackter, for a lower Price.
I don't know if that new Version will be netter or worse, but I would compare it less to a starter deck and more as an equivalent to the Pokémon Elite Trainer Box which gives you only cards for your choose charackter and Happens to give you enough to Play ootb. It even Comes with an extra package that completes the playset of all cards include in lower quantities in the precon and Dragon shield sleeves of the Champion etc.
Love your talk about keeping utility cards at low rarity.
One thing that annoys me is when people want more expensive products just because they'll be competitive.
Hey genius, it costs the company th same to print a competitive deck as it costs to print a trash deck. We shouldn't be considering the secondary market when looking at what the manufacturer charges.
Konami could print the newest championship deck for $10 and make money. They choose not to.
The other advantage of the Pokemon approach is that the more common versions are several times more common than the fancy ones - collectors will generally accumulate many copies of the basic version while pulling for the fancy one.
Not only is the card directly easier to get for one person, it's also within a market flooded with offloaded basic copies to begin with - further pulling down the price of singles without a new player needing to buy a single pack, even for pokemon-ex. It also makes the market more resilient to spikes in demand, as supply is widely available for anything competitively useful.
And for even more bonus points, Pokemon these days has a reasonably consistent and high quality art style, with even the common versions of things like ex looking reasonably cool, so if you don't own the fancy versions, you're not missing out too much. MTG's comparable activities typically end up with a huge difference in art style and/or quality between different artworks, and in some cases the common version of a card looks hideous. They know this, and really hike the prices on their art style variations to milk all the players desperate for a taste of anything other than soulless fantasy realism.
Kohdok out here sharing dangerous and fringe views like... [checks notes] "people should be able to play games" and "poor people should be able to afford games"
This is an incredibly necessary video in today's world. Accessibility has been the #1 barrier to entry that stopped me from getting into a lot of games; and that barrier to entry being lower on other games is what got me into those in my childhood--most of which I still love today.
Admittedly, the digimon tcg is sorta having this same issue with meta relevant and mandatory promos. Most of them, mind you, are archetype specific, however there is a set of cards right now that's giving everyone a headache and that's the training card. Its a two cost option (one for each color in the game) that reveals the top two cards of your deck and allows to add one card of the matching color to your hand while sending the other to the bottom of the deck. It then has a delay effect that let's you reduce evolution cost of a digimon matching its color by 2 at a moment of your choosing on any turn after the one it was played. Solid, very good for any deck.
There's just one problem, they released them as booster box toppers. T_T
10:40 this segment made me think of nexus of fate in mtg being a standard powerhouse despite it being the buy a box promo and not available anywhere else
about bonfire, don't forget to mention the rest of the "pyro top deck" is about $800, so more than a grand for the total
Grand Archive's ACTUAL starter decks cost between $15 and $25.
The ones you're talking about are not starter decks.
I know it seems like I'm this huge Grand Archive fan that defends the game on every video's comment section but the truth is I've barely played it (even though I like it). It's just factually incorrect to call something a 'starter deck' when it's not.
I never heard of the game before this video but even I knew he was wrong, at 5:03 the "silvie starter deck" has a prominent $15 tag. Idk how anyone could edit the video and not notice, it comes across as disingenuous
Living card games are paradoxically beloved for not holding anything away in rarity, but somehow never make enough money to become financially viable.
Price is a factor that will keep people away from a game but a low price won't attract players either. It makes it easier for people to pull the trigger on giving it a try, but you still need to find a way to attract people and an exciting enough experience for people to move on to the next step.
Because Living Card Games are just kinda dull. For several reasons, but most simply, people actually like the gamble and the cost, a little bit. They don't like a ton of it, but a small amount of it creates excitement and exclusivity, it makes your cards feel like *your* cards. It's very fun to own a rare and expensive card, it's quite fun to roll the die on whether or not you get one in a random pack, and it's even a little bit fun to pay a little extra for a card on the secondary market than for other cards, makes the card feel more premium.
In comparison, Living Card Games feel much more like board games from the perspective of how you purchase them and organise play for them. You pay a high upfront price for something that comes in a board game box. It typically has a very specific theme, sometimes even a licensed IP, that makes it feel like a contained experience rather than an ever-expanding and diverse universe with an archetype for everyone. They're often cooperative vs 'AI' or have some other form of non-player "environment" such as a campaign structure, and require game pieces to track these elements beyond the cards in a deck which means you may be getting out the full board game box when you play it. In most meaningful ways, LCGs tend to work like board games, but they don't work like board games in any of the areas that board games usually use to achieve solid profitability, including mechanical simplicity, broad aesthetic appeal, and "something for the parents". Incidentally, they also seem to be very American, you don't often see a Japanese LCG for some reason, and when it comes to card games, traditionally, if Japan isn't doing it, it probably won't work.
Look at legends of runeterra for a revecent card game with this isue.
This came up at a great time; Magic is becoming more and more guilty of making more and more pushed general utility cards at mythic like The One Ring, Sheoldred the Apocalypse, and Ragavan Nimble Pilferer. It's important to keep emphasizing that utility is not something that should be restricted to higher rarities, but available to everyone.
Star Wars Unlimited just hit the market, and all the most important cards are common and uncommon. The arguably best leader in the game right now isn't even a rare - no, it's Boba Fett, a common. Very easy to get. And the most powerful card in the entire game - Overwhelming Barrage - is a 25-cent uncommon that comes in the starter set. THAT is how you hook people into a TCG!
Magic has always had a problem with putting the most important utilities of all - dual lands - in high rarity slots.
This topic goes so much deeper into classism itself with society. I also want to point out that the less accessible your game is, the less meaning you can derive from being good at it. The fewer people participating, the fewer people you can even claim to be better than. This is poking at the concept of validity for the spikes out there.
It's weird with Pokemon, I see more people collecting than playing which is why I think most essential cards for gameplay are dirty cheap, where as YGO has more players than collectors so Konami really go hard on their greed to buy basic cards at a high price.
Pokemon also releases cards in multiple prints within the same set. Common, reverse, full art, full art rainbow/art/whatever else.
Yugioh has the issue of cards only being a single rarity within the same set outside of starlights (and now quarter century). If you need a Diabellstar, have fun spending $90+ on a playset (which is cheaper than it was on release).
Whereas pokemon's most recent set has 4 different printings of Iron Crown ex. The lowest right now is $6, then $10, $16, and then $75. Having four different printings of a card in the same set makes it so budget players can have the card, while people who collect or want to bling out their deck have options.
Its not purely a money making thing on konami's part. The tcg rarity system for konami seems to be designed to keep secondary market prices high, which they cash in on with reprint products, but there could also be legitimate reasons for wanting secondary market prices to be on the higher end for a game.
Its a pretty complicated business model because not only does it have to balance the interest of consumers and its own corporate mandates, but there's also local game stores which have to make a profit from the game somehow as well.
Which without a strong culture of collecting like pokemom or drafting like MtG there are strong incentives to have cards have high resale values. I've seen plenty of bad boxes finally sell because there's a single card in the set list that's creeped up in price and would be worth more than the box that it is in.
At the very least it feels like they aren't directly benefiting from the secondary market like a company like hasbro is trying to.
@@stardustspark5682 OK this response would be correct however the OCG itself literally does what you are describing and even they decided to make bonfire expensive without a cheaper printing
7 months later and Konami is doing the same thing with fuwalos
I 100%. It's a game and should be about the game and not my opponent's wallet.
Keyforge was fun. I have not tryed the new stuff but the starter box was fun to buy and I enjoyed how every booster is a whole deck you can start using.
That's a fantastic idea for how to handle boosters.
@Sanguivore I think they were still kind of expensive like 10 dollars but it was nice that you and a buddy could each buy a booster than play each other. You can probably use anything as a token as long you both agree what there purpose is. I think like for the first set you just need something for damage and in the game you collect amber it was like 10 amber is 1 key and first person to make 3 keys win the game.
@@zerokura Is that the game that was made by Mark Rosewater after he left WotC? It sounds really familiar.
@@Sanguivore ya I think he work on it than like a different company work on it so you like have to buy the new set online I think. It's a fun card game I like.
@@zerokura I’ll have to look more into it! Thank you! ☺️
Thing about Fire Cards in Yugioh is they rarely get support even more so for pyro monsters. Then they made a Pack of just Fire Type cards but made most too weak so it sold poorly set after comes all the Snake Eyes and this Bonfire card which are not fire focused sets. Even the pack bonfire comes in is odd since they boosted most of Ultras to Flame Swordsman cards which for no reason at do not work with the last card that theme got. But the set Before the Major Theme was Gate Guardian and all its cards was never Above Super even the Boss Monster.
2:51 what the name of the mech minis?
Yeah but Pokemon can afford to print those deck boxes for $10, Indie TCGs cant afford to sell that at the same price.
This is right on the money. You can't compete against the big 3 if you're monetization strategy is equally as aggresive. Ideally, every booster pack or product you sell should give something of value or good feeling to your players, they should want to buy more. That means design your cards to be more purposeful and generally usable across the board. Making good entry level utility cards is a big part of that, and it helps you as a dev that those cards tend to be simpler to design overall. Good point on capstones. In general you should be mindful of the positive feedback loop that happens when people start trusting, enjoying and even loving your game, it leads to players much more readily be open to even seek out alternate arts and pieces that are moreso rare as collectible than game pieces.
The really fun part about Bonfire is that between Konami's unpredictable banlist hits and frequent reprints a year or two after release is that the value is going to tank to almost nothing, so even if you do have the cash to afford a playset, you're going to lose most your money. This creates a worst of both worlds situation in that cards are inaccessible at release, and don't become available until they are irrelevant and something else has become meta in its place, and at the same time, don't maintain their initial value due to the reprints/banlist hits later down the line. This means nobody is happy; causals get priced out of the game, competitive players have to pay out the nose for a deck that will be useless in a few months, and collectors lose money on their collections. Everyone loses, except Konami.
I got this vid recommended a while ago but since I'd been on a SDSTCG binge the past couple days I thought it was an old video resurfacing. Thanks, youtube.
Edit: Hell yeah, The Glimmer was a trip and a half. I still have my foil Wind Dancer and she's as pringle as can be.
Damn those tokens are super nice honestly.
Thank you for another insightful video, kohdok. As an aspiring TCG dev, you're one of my go-to sources of info for game design. Something I'd like to inquire about is when a TCG should reprint cards. 🤔
Bushiroad makes some strange decisions when it comes to product design. On their azur lane release they could’ve made the starter deck cases a mix of all the available decks instead of awkwardly splitting them into specific decks so that ones would sell out and never be restocked.
I was at that Skaletones show--good times.
What’s crazy about Yugioh’s bonfire situation is that their playerbase is already dwindling. They have already alienated newcomers with how complex the game is now, but now they’re constantly alienating their diehard players by pricing them out of meta decks. Konami won’t stop until yugioh players take a stand and stop buying. And when they do, it may mean the death of yugioh (at least in the US).
Signs are pointing towards that going down in the UK apparently after the public outcry over cancelled products in that region + stuff like the Bonfire situation, to the point where YGOEU even had to bring it up in a public post.
Y'know it's funny, I recently got into some Warhammer games because their cost of entry is similar to other games (the kill team starter box, which comes with 2 full kill teams and everything you need to play but heavy terrain, which most people suggest you just use cardboard at home or otherwise not bother buying the terrain because other people at your hobby store will have it, is 120$CAD, and since it comes with 2 full kill teams, it means it can be split with someone for only 60$ each) but has higher quality minis that arent just used to play, but the collection, construction, and painting of them is as much a part of the hobby as playing actual Warhammer.
And speaking of kill team, its affordable competitively as well; teams like Kommandos are one box (meaning you get all their options in one box) at a price point typically ranging from 50-80$, and are very strong competitively. Compare this to Magic where building a competitive commander deck costs wrll over a thousand, and even standard requires inordinate investment.
It's surprising to me that Pkmn TCG is as accessible and well structured as any TCG should be.. considering they are part of the PKMN franchise.
Some really smart people are at the top.
Pokemon knows exactly who its audience is: Parents - people who are pretty good at gauging material product cost and quality, but who have no understanding of digital product quality. Parents won't buy physical goods that are obviously overpriced or low quality, so pokemon merch is still pretty consumer-friendly and the pokemon card game can never charge more for a piece of paper than about a pound. Parents will buy any video game, however, as long as it's in line with other video game prices, and have no way of knowing that SV is unfinished.
Quite knowledgeable... -Respect.
Reinforcements of the Arm might be one of the most widely reprimanded cards now, but it was a SUPER RARE during its first international release... although I think it might have been common in its original Japanese debut. Which just goes to show how long Konami has ban gouging the international market.
The Bonfire situation did hit the Yu-Gi-Oh Competitive scene on my OCG locals HARD. It doesn't help that Pyro and Snake-eyes more specifically is at least Tier 1. It caused many to either go into competitive Hiatus, or flat-out Quit. You wouldn't believe how many players sold their cards, cores, staples and all, after the last Limited and Forbidden list and we learn none of the problem decks got hit, wich silver lining, restores some faith I have in the community as it shown many of us still have some speckle of self respect. I for one gone to Hiatus and considered converting to rush format until September.
I understand talking about Bonfire as its an easier to understand card for non-yugioh players, but I would argue S:P little knight is a better example of this in Yugioh. Its a mandatory card in almost EVERY DECK IN THE GAME and will be for YEARS to come. Released at Secret Rare, the next above Ultra.
I also think its important to mention that the OCG prints most cards in multiple rarities in the same set, allowing you to obtain it in high rarity without pricing people out of the low rarity option.
I know this probably doesn't fully slot into the neat comment sections below, but I'd be interested in hearing your thoughts to one extent or another on 'experimental' game design vs. 'iterative', as I think it cuts to the core of why we see so many games that are just MTG or Duel Masters with the serial numbers filed off and a few different concepts tacked on. As much as I see people here deriding 'Yet Another Duel Masters Copy' or 'Ugh, It's Just Magic Again' (which I can totally understand), part of the draw of aping such systems to one extent or another is, well... there's a solid core in there that's worked for the better part of 3, almost 3 and a half decades.
Yes, they both as systems have their shortfalls and are showing their age to some extent or another, but it's a design space where designers can flesh out individual mechanics or flavor or ideas that they can be sure will be the main selling points to a system that people are already at least somewhat familiar with, as it allows you to say 'well, it's X, but here's what's Different about it' and get the point across fairly easily. Creating a new, experimental system and mechanics is ideal, yes, but... there's only so much you can do with cards and a few dice before things start to get silly. One need only look at Hecatomb and Redakai to see where reach really starts exceeding grasp.
That's not to say that experimental design is a pipe dream or anything. I think good experimental design is part of what drives game designs forward, and to some extent, you don't have to worry about threading the fine line between 'iterative' and 'derivative' when you're in the middle of designing. But iterative game designs, all too often I think, fall on the derivative side and stumble into one of the Seven Deadly Sins, when with a little more thought and care put into it, good iterative designs can stand on shoulders of their well-creafted differences instead of the core that they're attached to.
Yoo, Kohdok cracking out the Skylanders footage!
I have low visib(enough to read print & see color in my right eye). Be it paper or digital, TCGs should have ways to let people with disabilities enter to play(Large print, screen reader integration/ audio cue options in-app, tactile symbols, etc.).
A+ video. You still got it. 👍
the starter deck video was nice
Competitive meta "price out" will always exist.
If the chase cards for a deck are too cheap, the meta will oversaturate and burn out. Folk will lose interest. Also making those card easy to get just makes the game less appealing.
If they make important cards too hard to get, folk will stop opening packs which has a ripple effect... Leading to death.
A huge part of the community (whether they even know it) is the chase. We LOVE the chase
Accessibility is the finest balance. A loss leader that generates no profit tends to damage games.
FaB is a great example of breaking the accessibility requirements.
1) product on launch was super scarce.
2) no starter/ intro into the game (blitz became the intro style because of the players)
3) no physical rules
4) premade decks were two-thirds of a complete deck for the standard format.
Yet it lives. It's insanely popular and a part of that appeal is clearly the challenge
Also, YGO clearly doesn't suffer from its cost. Its thriving.
Splooshy toad is a good one! right up there with Lizards Wearing Coats.
So happy you released a video, i love watching them. I dream of making my own card game and i watch your videos to educate myself ❤. Although i constantly debate with myself if my ideas are good, so i back track a lot.
Ex: should i have my game use a play mat as a “terrain” which displays stats and etc? Con: it will be expensive to produce and will probably be a hassle for the consumer having to purchase multiple play mats and will cost them more money to play. Pro: a nice play mat, organized layout for player, displayed information
The best starter packs are the ones that include two starter decks.
Right now the weird problem with pokemon is prime catcher, but its not nearly as egregious bonfire. But then again as an ACE you can only play one of them, but everyone wants that one!
I thought this was going to be about, like, making sure everything is readable for the colorblind.
Yeah he's kind of glossed over stuff like accessibility for physically-disabled people (including his like for skill challenges) and somewhat mentioned about colorblindness, but I don't necessarily think it's malicious intent on his part?
As a colorblind person, that's actually a good point. That's also a barrier to entry for some of us.
That's a more challenging problem, because not everyone is colourblind and limiting the colour combinations you can use can impact non-colourblind players' interest in cards. Especially considering there are a number of different kinds of colourblindness, and if you want to make sure all of them get the full experience, you're basically just doing everything in black and white.
Instructions unclear, have made king of ultimate destruction a common.
What do you think of Buddyfight getting revived
the funny part: Magic get's it bad rep currentyl thanks to Hasbro and wizards and how they handle the game.
Konami and Yugioh can do basically everything and the players are so blind to follow. You don't get much for winning a YCS compared to the price you have to pay to actually get a competitive deck (compared to magic or Pokemon) and thanks to the set rotation (Banned list and power creep) most of your cards will be for the trash as soon as a new better deck emerges which WILL be way better than your current meta deck.
Konami's behavior is pretty stable honestly. That's all priced in for the player base, you just kinda accept card depreciation and having to build 3 to 4 decks a year. I doubt konami could really get away with anything though.
@@shawnjavery
- card rarity bumps (regulary) players accept that
- (way back) locking legal cards as tournament prices (crush card virus)
MTG players are just as blind as yugioh players lmao, LOTR is their most profitable set ever, which was released a long time after it became popular knowledge that WOTC sucks and is greedy - hell, universes beyond was itself a colossal controversy, still probably the second worst rep thing WOTC has ever done after Magic 30.
@@yurisei6732 well with LOTR i (kinda hope) that some buyers were new players coming into MTG and didn't really see the Hasbro/Wizard controversy. I think it's the same with the Warhammer Sets. I bet several buyers were Warhammer fans which maybe wanted to play a warhammer card game after the LCG game was killed by FFG
@@Zanji1234 Doesn't matter, money is money. If that is the case, I'd argue it's even worse, because it just incentivises WOTC even harder to sell to people who aren't MTG players.
You should take your own advice for this series.
An example is in the video you call bushiroad by a different name before then saying their actual name.
Newer viewers arent going to know your issue with the company and how you refuse to say the companies name
the sailor moon card game had fantastic starter decks, but the high end cards were really super mega uber rare. Plus it came out way to late in the popularity of sailor moon to really hit. I really wish there had been a third or forth set to cover all the series, it feels like they were limited on what was allowed, the second set wasnt big, and included first set cards - an odd choice to make.
Bonfire isn't actually a generic card, at least currently ,its pretty much exclusively used in a somewhat splahsable engine, that's the best deck by far right now. Sp little knight would have been a better example of this because its practically a mandatory one of in every deck but was printed as the highest rarity in a recent set.
TIL counterfeiting Yu-Gi-Oh staples would be an amazing business model.
As a person that knows game store employees, Hasbro allows for so little profit margin for the shops, It's ricidulous. Selling singles and hosting events makes them infinitely more money than mtg otherwise does.
Honestly kind of surprised this series hasn't yet involved a rant about how meaningless the points system is in Heroclix is because instead of rarity dictating complexity and nicheness, it's dictating power levels (despite that being what points are supposed to be for)
Ayyyyy. This is a topic I'm pretty invested in so I'm excited to see what you have to contribute in card game space
Nevermind. Looks like this isn't about handicap accessibility.
Generalist cards should be common or uncommon but never rare. Specialist cards should be rare or uncommon but never common. Yu-Gi-Oh has some particularly egregious bad design in its history regarding this. Mechanical Chaser, when first printed, was exceedingly rare, and was the highest attack monster you could normal summon or set without no tribute, having 1850 attack instead of 1800 that Ma Jinn had (which means it wins outright against it). This meant it needed to be at 3 in virtually every competitive deck at that time, but was a tournament pack ultra-rare and so that was physically impossible with the count of the card and players.
From the perspective of someone who has been playing YGO for a long time. It's kind of hilarious to see a Pyro search card going for a ton, when a year or two ago, it would have been trash filler in a set, going for 30 cents(a dollar if it released as an Ultra), just because of how unplayable, and unsupported Pyro was.
The minis you're showing there aren't even new. I have those goblins from a different set.
Yeah especially when you can buy card sleeves at a variety of different locations and I personally think personalizing your own car sleeves is a great way of making sure that they are your card sleeves that you don't mix up people's decks at venues and tournaments! It's like giving a character a personalized skin or giving capes to hell divers saurab and hearing a lot about discourse about that! Or personalizing someone's pokey balls you know what I mean by that! But seriously Pokémon uh when you release your next game I would love the idea of customizing your pokeball designs sure you might get some out there ones but umm could be interesting
Have you played gen 4 or 5? Pokeball customisation was already a thing, it was cool, they cut it. Just like they cut pretty much every other cool idea their predecessors had.
@@yurisei6732 Actually yeah I haven't played those but I'm saying more than just stickers and will after effects although asking that from today's Pokémon team is a bit of a challenge I've just seen there Eldridge horror of coding for the last three games and let's just say I've already looked into the eyes of cathulu and it made more sense! Although adding a color patch skin that mods have probably done like 40 times shouldn't be too hard to ask then again scarlet and Violet does have an Eldridge demon summoning the moment you look at the code
ultra rare, in a set where ultra was the highest rarity in the set.
Double side tokens....noted
Lol this is your new unit of measure.
Magic's history with accessibility is... strange to put it simply. For the most part, foils are there only to help bling out your deck and not be how you build it unless it only got a single printing twenty years ago. Screw the damned reserved list and the butt hurt collectors from the mid 90s. Yes, competitive decks of certain formats are expensive, depending on both the format and card pool, but they really shouldn't. For comparison, minus basics, a standard format deck usually goes between 125 and 200 for the full deck depending how much the secondary is being shoved by demand for full playsets of 4. Meanwhile in Commander you usually can get away with waiting for the same cards to rotate out of standard to get it slightly cheaper, before the frenzy kicks in there. and then there's sets like Modern Horizons and Eternal Masters that throw caution to the wind on pricing for a "normal" booster... for the greediest cuts on that front, look to the backlash that Magic 30 got for being officially made proxies that were for collectors only and the only format where they could be used officially was Canadian Highlander. There is enough on TH-cam to last a month explaining why that was a bad idea.
Generally good utility cards printed at higher rarities? See also, any multi-color mtg land card.
:D
One thing I kinda feel should be included here. Is how fair and understandable the game is to an average casual player. Pokemon and magic are fair in difficulty and easy to understand. Then Yugioh sniffs a gallon of glue and makes the game broken and has so many gimmicks that even the armada transformers toys are jealous.
I feel like companies have stopped doing that thing where they sell an intro set at a razor thin margin or a loss with hopes of converting people into repeat customers, perhaps because the current approach to capitalism is too fast-paced to tolerate slow and stable business models, and would much rather make products that have a big buy in due to hype then immediately die off. Just today I was at a card store looking at Pokemon TCG products - there are so many different Pokemon sets I could buy... but because they all contain a bunch of booster packs, they all cost the price of a bunch of booster packs in addition to the price of the promos and merch, and to prevent existing players from buying up those sets, they can't ever cost less than the booster packs included do. Pokemon's intro decks are fantastic, but their "next logical step" products are still too inaccessible imo because they're all packed with booster packs not everyone needs or wants.
It's interesting because just a few years ago, Pokemon was doing the bonfire thing except for generic staples that every deck needs. I'm glad that the days of Shaymin EX and Tapu Lele GX are over. I'm actually shocked at how cheap compeititve pokemon has gotten, it almost makes the $10 starter decks look like a ripoff when competitive tournament ready decks can be built for
New generation of players, have to be caught all over again. Remember, the target demographic for pokemon today is too young to commonly have played SM, a 2016 release on a console already past its prime, they're mostly new age pokemon fans who started with SwSh or Pokemon Go and the huge marketing boosts these games received, with little existing connection to the TCG before then.
@@yurisei6732 I understand that new players have to be marketed towards but $10 for one standard art ex and a pile of largely unusable bulk seems quite unappealing when $20-30 could get you one of the nicer preconstructed decks or even your own consistent playable deck
I honestly think the $10 pokemon starters should come with either more ultra rares or a sealed booster to be more in line with the price of the gane as a whole
It's a shame that BTST doesn't do MTG tokens.
I think the Dive Ball/Bonfire comparison makes Konami look even worse if you know the games. Pokemon is drowning in card draw and filtering so Dive Ball is a super useful piece but it won't kill your deck if you don't have it because there are other ways to increase the chances of drawing the card you need (and because of the prize card system, players are actively discouraged from building decks that rely too heavily on one or two specific cards, meaning the decks tend to have less rigid game plans). Whereas, because Yugioh is extremely stingy with card draw (meaning there are less ways to ensure you get the cards you need in hand) AND games tend to be fast AND most archetypes being very combo-heavy, Bonfire is essentially a required staple for anyone with an important Pyro card in their deck who wants to play competitively. Yugioh's design flaws (don't get me wrong, Pokemon is also flawed but not in ways that are relevant here) make the situation ten times worse.
10:40
Pretty disingenuous imo to bring up yugioh in this and not magic, becasue at least yugioh will reprint those cards to be cheaper, magic instead prefers to pander to the secondary market parasites.
Like sure, bonfire is the current hot topic, but magic has been holding away the fetches and shocks, mandatory in any format they're legal in, and it is way more guilty of this in way more ways.
Not really. Please finish the video.
I think you're overselling the importance of "it's usable in every pyro deck" for bonfire. Its price is being near exclusively driven by Snake-Eyes. If you wanted a generic example you probably should have gone with Little Knight.
And in most circumstances, TCG product is finalized before it's actually released in the OCG. They know whats going to be good.
And thats why they're called Ko-money
Now that polyhedral dice sets, not just six sided ones, are available by retailers. These same places may have poker chips. These additional game pieces work in conjunction with playing cards. If pre-constructed decks can be sold to be more accessible, then paying for a bundle that includes them. This was implemented in my project design. Its essential to maintain quality of game pieces, while simultaneously keeping prices down.
Cough cough, fetchlands and force elementals, Cough cough.
Me getting into MTG Commander quickly realising I will never be able to compete in events cause I am not spending £500 on a Mox Diamond just because wotc arbitrarily decided they arent going to reprint it anymore
You learning more about MTG Commander and gradually realising that you probably don't want to compete in events anyway because competitive EDH, while interesting, is an entirely different format that doesn't play at all like casual EDH.
I'm reminded of how video game consoles usually sell at a loss, profiting off of game sales. A starter set should be priced as if you're expecting them to buy more stuff, not as a stand-alone.
(Also, as if I needed MORE reasons to hate Yugioh, after already having no interest in it beyond anime memes.)
Incidentally, game console pricing is already kind of absurd. Even when selling at a loss, a basic digital-only PS4 sets you back about £400. If you then buy 10 games to play on it, you've effectively still paid £40 extra for each of them, on top of whatever markup is being put on those games to act as the extra profit margin that makes selling the console at a loss worthwhile - could be another £10 or £20.
Of course, consoles have to cost this much because the hardware inside them and the workers who assemble them cost this much and there's only so much loss you can accept - and evidently, it works well enough. Card games though have negligible production costs and arbitrary profit margins based on artificial scarcity, so where Sony might expect the average customer to spend about what they spent on their console again on their games (so like, £400 upfront and £400 in games), a card game publisher expects the average customer to spend vastly more in future products than on their intro sets (£10 intro, maybe £500 lifetime purchases), so there's really very little need for the intro pack to be inaccessible... and yet they often are anyway.
The theory in the Yu-Gi-Oh community is that Konami is deliberately doing an atrocious rarity hike and pushing the current teir 0 format to push casual players out of the game with the hope that Yu-Gi-Oh rush duel gets more western players. Konami executives see the original game as a lame horse and have been dying to send it to glue factory for forever at this point.
Yugioh is so affordable casually but unbelievably expensive competitively. I could have bought a car with the money I’ve spent on this game.
Entirely depends on your archetype of choice. That's the double edged sword with yugioh. Yes, it's wonderfully diverse in a way that no other card game is, but if the archetype you find yourself drawn to happens to be the rarity bumped archetype in a deck build pack (Weathery, Sky Striker, Dragonmaid etc), you may need to buy multiple playsets of £10 or £20 cards. Konami always make sure to grift the casual players a little bit too, they always like to at minimum give an archetype one £10 playset, so they put Witchcraft Creation at secret.
Do you think 5$ is too much of a loss leader?
I T D E P E N D S . . .
Gee thanks
MITOS Y LEYENDAS TCG MENTIONED BTW
Tbh there's a lot more than Bonfire going on in YGO. Years ago Dark Armed Dragon came out in Japan as a rare and became a Secret Rare global, Crush Card Virus and Gold Sarcophagus debutted as tournament prizes, and at the very past when the game was all about high ATK Mechanicalchaser was only available in tournament packs. Luckily nowadays they'll stick a staple card in prebuilt decks now and then, and a chunk of the current meta deck is in a structure deck (Fire Kings). But I bet you that even if you want to make a deck for the funsies while still be viable for locals, there will be minimum 5-10 cards you'll need to drop 50$ for each one.
I always think back to Pot of Duality and Solemn Warning, both cards that were very important for a majority of decks at the time, both being printed in the same set, Duelist Revolution. In japan, SW was a rare, and PoD was a Super Rare. In America? Ultra and Secret. They both went up 2 tiers of rarity, and were very expensive until their reprints as tin promos a year later.
Yeah, YuGiOh's card pricing is part of what keeps me out of the game. I love the MASK Heroes. Most MASK Hero cards are pretty cheap. But a good MASK Hero deck needs VISION Heroes... and some of the more vital VISION Hero cards went for $60+.
No way in heck I'd ever spend more on a deck of cards than a video game console.
Card games in general are just money sinks. Tons of hobbies are though. You're really not going to beat the price point of video games in terms of money spent to entertainment achieved. Its mostly just a source of social interaction for people.
Shadowverse's decks are likely not entry-level
bonfire at super is more than doable come on, it's 1 out of every 6 packs , in 3 weeks you find it everywhere, and depending on the meta you can buy it for less than dollar if it's not secret/ultimate/g66ost. BUT , i get the general point, it's only that particular example i find a bit meh. Something way worse was done in like 2014(?) with he elemental dragons, they were all ultra and you needed the playset of all of them, the little ones tho i think they were common(?) getting old
Bonfire is ultra, not super, and its a shortprint ultra from a terrible, low print run set, that no one was buying except people who wanted bonfire. That's why it's £100 - there are relatively few copies in circulation.
@@yurisei6732 i see
Set havent been playing Yugi in a looong while, i miss those nuances
Konami's inaccessible design is exactly why I had to give up on playing the physical game entirely. But this video barely touches the top of it's problems in that area. Not only do they constantly pull the rarity bumps highlighted in the video, but they are also constantly making competitive play an extremely narrow space that actively prioritizes more expensive cards. See: the limiting of "Called by the Grave", a common card that was basically the only solid counter to the Secret Rare "Hand Traps" that single-handedly completely warped the entire way the game functions at the time (which has continued to this day more or less). They also release new meta defining decks like once every 2-3 months, resulting in a cycling of relevant cards somehow worse than games with set rotation.
To put that in simpler terms, they aren't just rarity bumping meta cards, they're rarity bumping the entire meta as a concept by banning or limiting lower rarity or higher print cards that have the potential to counter the new high rarity single printing cards they've decided the meta revolves around.
Also, printing Called by the Grave in the first place, after these handtraps already existed, which I remember at time of first printing was also "I'm not paying that" price and necessary for competitive play.
@@yurisei6732 Actually it was quite the contrary: Called by the Grave was one of the firt major cases of a meta card being made *easier* to obtain thatn ever before: it debuted as a Super Rare Promo card that came in Booster Pack Bundles and was later released in a main set as a Common. Prices at the time were between $2-$8 due to that.
....Which in hindsight makes it's current Limited status even worse.
Honestly, I wanted to get back into Yugioh... But Bonfire being part of what is (afaik) basically a Tier-1 or Tier-0 deck... It at least helps to teach me what not to do when developing a card game.
The real shame is that Yugioh is still a great and reasonably priced game once you scrape off the top layer or two of pushed competitive crap. Casual gameplay is surprisingly well balanced, I daresay even self balancing in some ways thanks to casual decks increasingly gaining access to recursion, recovery and consistency, and so many games have that delightful back and forth where you have no idea who's going to win. I still have a solid 40-60% winrate with some ten year old archetypes because powercreep in archetypes not pushed to be competitive isn't very fast. No one sees that side of Yugioh though, because the stuff going on at competitive levels is blinding, especially to people who only play online and at events.
Kohdok: an actual influencer who doesn't feel the need to call himself one
Every single episode I've seen fro Kohdok just continues to proof why YGO is such a trash game... basically living off its Anime asthetics and nostalgia
why does he like to be so miss leading about Grand Archive?
bonfire...
Nobody said the only products that should be made are high price competitive items regarding Grand Archive.
People said that particular box you keep whining about is ONE PREMIUM ITEM that supports underpowered strategies and previews cards from the upcoming set, but Grand Archive also already has an accessible starter deck THAT YOU OWN.
This is no longer a honest mistake. You're being purposely disingenuous, not just about the quality of a game but about your audience's feedback too.
Ahahahahhaah, Usa and theyr ridicule prices cards => bonfire is 40 euros on MKM
Gatekeeping is generally good, but starter products are the exception. You always need to offer a path into the game, and it should be an affordable one relative to the rest of the game, especially when the game was just made.
I would prefer to say that money is just simply the wrong tool for gatekeeping a hobby.
After all it's not like the kind of people you would like to gatekeep will happen to always have little money to spend and the rest will have all the disposable income they could want.
The starter products should still very much gatekeep, by giving an affordable and accurate look into the kind of gameplay and mechanics the game will have. That way everyone interested in that gameplay can join right in, and everyone else can do themselves and the existing players a favor by not getting into it.
I'm curious why you feel gatekeeping is generally good, and what exactly you consider to be gatekeeping when you say that. My guess is you feel it's important for collectible cards to have a certain level of value that remains stable so your collection isn't at risk of being devalued when cards are reprinted in cheaper forms?
@@yurisei6732 Naw, tourists just ruin hobbies.
@@TheMorbidHobo How?
@@yurisei6732 There's a great image that sums it up but it's pretty hard to find.
Basically tourists create cyclical declines in hobbies:
Tourists join
Tourists complain about parts of the game
Game makers in an attempt to increase their audience cater to those complaints; new content (or community post talking about the complaints)
Tourists leave; fans complain about the changes
Game makers respond negatively to fan complaints (optional)
Fans leave
New content (that still has the previous changes if not moreso)
Some fans that left return
(And repeat)
When you let people that don't care about a hobby into the hobby, they often seek to change the hobby to cater to their non-fan views, and the game often does change for them which pushes existing fans that liked the game as it was, out-- and tourists, being what they are, often leave the hobby out of either disinterest or a feeling of accomplishment in having changed it.