Why would they do better? In the end, a competitive scene is nothing more than a marketing tool. At this point, they probably think that they get all the marketing they need from youtube and twitch. As this video proves...
@@Volkbrecht when their competition is made up of a bunch of second rate duelists, they'll start caring. When people buy less sealed products and more singles they'll start caring. A change will eventually come when the interest in the game breaks even with their profit margin.
@@VolkbrechtThere's a delicate balance tho. Having something to strive for, an incentive to continue playing, is itself a marketing tactic. If, say, the world's winner won 10k, not a lot of money in the grand scheme of things but still something substantial, it might create more hype around the game.
@@f5673-t1hPricing doesn't mean money being handed to you, just make the cards being rewarded more appealing like a special edition Ash blossom, or a alt art Blue Eyes that can be sold in the secondary market and that's it, that is what Lorcana is doing in a way, in a sense yes pricing is a very personal issue because mostly those that complain about it is because they want to be rewarded but Takahashi never meant the game for it, but you can't deny the other reasons are just true, the game is being pushed to a place where NO player wants it to go
I don’t care if Kazuki Takahashi said he doesn’t want to see people playing this game for money, i bet he also didn’t want to see people being charged £2000 for 1 single deck
I agree Kazuki Takahashi wanted us duelists to have fun playing the game and not be too focused on always winning and to keep it from getting too competitive. However just like the manga and anime there are a lot of aggressively competitive people who only care about victory and care nothing for the fun factor.
@fkjfkrmrk Yes he was a business man too but so are every other Japanese person, he definitely wanted to make money but he also wanted to create a series people loved
State of the game right now 1) Win the die roll or suffer the disadvantage of going 2nd 2) Clog your main deck with at least 18 hand traps and hope to draw 2-3 in your opening hand otherwise lose 3) Play an overpowered and expensive deck otherwise lose i hope i did not miss anything
@@unbeatable750 nah, it's pretty valid. Good balanced card games have like 5-10 decks of completely different archetypes that can top in a format. In Yugioh a large % of the top cut pie chart is always some variation of Snake Eyes.
Honestly I knew things was getting bad when I seen decks plays 18 ht. The fact that have your deck is ht is genuinely mind boggling, unless your sky strikers.
Curious...Would you be interested if there was a 100+ person Tournament ($5 example fee but there isn't a limit, it's all percentage based where top 32 always doubles the fee in winnings, Top 50 break even and the lottery is there to reward people who stick around to the end) 1st - x10 ($50) 2nd - x5 ($25) 3rd-32 - x2 ($10) 33th-50 - x1 ($5) Lucky Lottery($35) only available for 33-100 3 Drawings($10/$10/$5) and a Mystery Duelist Riddle pot($10 rollover)
It's wild. When POTE came out I thought Konami had finally figured out how to handle skill expression in a high-powered environment, but since the end of unchained format it's felt like lingerings and floodgates have never been more prevalent. I hope this August list really rips into them. Anyway, it's sad to see so many beloved players like you, who have been shining examples for the community, bowing out. I hope it goes well for you, and I hope Konami does what's necessary for you to return.
They haven't been printing Lingerings and Floodgates either for the most part. It's more so that this power level just makes those cards -EVEN BETTER-, or at the least the only stuff from before PotE that keeps up with the new power level. I always visualized handtraps as speedbumps, where going faster over them hurts you more. Floodgates are kind of like that, even the bad ones can be backbreaking when the number of actions goes up.
I felt like POTE was also the huge indicator that newer decks would power creep older decks so much more and these newer decks would also be expensive. Remember how much planets were?
@@scizor285 I'm pretty sure that the average price of decks were the same as tier 1 decks throughout the covid era (remember Baronne being like $120). Still too high but not that different from the norm, things only got Really Bad with Sinful Spoils which also happens to be the most pushed series of archetypes in the history of the game. (Ignore Goblins)
I stopped yugioh and swapped to Lorcana a year ago and I haven't been happier playing a game. The player base is lovely, the prize support is really good even at smaller events and it's a nice change of pace. I loved yugioh but when it turned to unbreakable boards, handtraps and 1 card combos, they lost me.
Very sad to hear, but you're spot on. Many things could be improved, and it's frustrating to see that they're not. Good luck with the rest of your journey ! Excited for the new content ! You will always be a Yu-Gi-Oh legend !🙏🙏
I might make some people mad, but upon Kazuki Takahashi's death I was expecting Konami to change the way prizing works. I understand the man did not want anything to do with cash prizing, but considering everything else just gets sold for cash anyway, there was no getting around it and it needed to change, ESPECIALLY with how esports continues to grow and become more mainstream. However, now I understand that it is purely a scapegoat for Konami to use to never offer cash prizing and continue to stifle their player base with nonsense. Put simply, this is not a game to be in for compensation. If you want that, Pokemon TCG offers $10,000 for winning a regionals (pretty much guaranteed since they always hit the cap nowadays). Or better yet, simply focus on content creation. People will consume Yugioh casually as they do with all kinds of other franchises. Taking the time you would for deckbuilding and instead using it on strategizing, meeting with experts, brainstorming unique video ideas, learning to edit, all of that stuff would 100% be worth more of your time than this game. Lastly, I just wanna remind people that just play this game and don't touch other Konami franchises: THEY TREAT EVERYONE THIS WAY! Castlevania, Contra, Metal Gear, Suikoden, all of the dead Hudson Soft franchises after they acquired them (and the subsequent decline of Mario Party because of it), so many lackluster things have come from Konami since the advent of HD development and microtransactions. They got into pachinko in 2015, a year AFTER Japan's government cracked down on the industry for essentially being gambling, to the point where companies like SNK were pulling out and essentially just leaving Konami and Sega Sammy (yes, THAT Sega) to be the main ones left. If you value your time and money, don't touch stuff Konami-related.
Game is as Kazuki Takahashi intended in OCG regions. There are way more active locals and local events, the cards are significantly cheaper, the game is much more accessable to average person. That's not the case for TCG, In TCG locals are few and between compared OCG regions. So there is much more emphasis on actual competative events that place all over the continents. It is not easy for someone to not only buy hunderds of dollars cost decks in TCG but also get up, pay for flight, hotels etc to be able to attend those events. Is that what Takahashi envisioned? I highly doubt that. He simply was an observant of his own environment and wished it to be money free competion. It is not really possible without top players experiencing burnout in TCG. I don't think top players should make a living by competing in YGO. But at least they should be compensated for their expenses if they top so that they would not be completely minus financial wise.
The prizing issue has to go with the licensing agreement between KDE and the IP holders (Now Studio DICE/Kaz's Estate, TVTokyo, Shueisha) and because of this, there could be no cash prizing. Pokemon TCG is owned and run by TPCI so no license issue. MTG is owned and run by Hasbro, so no license issue. Ravensberger and Disney have a licensing agreement similar to Konami's with Yugioh, so that's why the prizing in that game is also in the form of stuff you have to sell.
@@aknkerse As a former shonen jump champion as well as someone who made a living by playing the game i agree with on the state of the game i may however in differ on opinion on top players making a living by competing in yugioh but tbh that depends entirely on the player itself and what they want to make of it i mean in the anime some of the top players made a living but not all until in later years but if yugioh offered cash prizing it could potentially be the number one card game in tcg and inspire others to want to buy and compete more but with current prizing u can still make profit as a yugioh player but its tough and hopefully they will make he changes in order to survive if i was there company my goal would be trying to be the best tcg on the planet but thats just me
Its upsetting to see someone with your talent leave the competetive scene. Though i completely understand. And, for the sake of konami, i hope they get their crap together soon.
As someone who quit Yugioh after Indy 2024, the game is trending a direction that I personally didn't see as something I would enjoy. Then the fiendsmiths came out. So glad I quit when I did.
POTE was peak yugioh for me. It’s been slowly going down hill once the Diabellstar lore came along. Couple the frustrations and cost of the game with the abysmal rewards, it does not seem worth while anymore
I wholeheartedly agree with this entire take, and I sincerely hope that something changes. Even though I love the game dearly and don't think I could ever find a replacement for it, it does suck that even though I'm constantly improving as a player, I can always get sacked by an overpowered card or deck and just lose, even if I felt like the better player in the match. I do hope prizing improves too; there are so many easy and cheap things Konami could do, such as alternative arts, full arts, alternative rarities, etc. for prizing, yet we're all fighting our hardest for a last-gen Nintendo Switch. There's just no hype, and no real motivation.
I'm curious about this mindset. You take no responsibility for losing and dismiss your competitor's effort and foresight to use the right card at the right time, and simply chalk it up to "I'm better, but they had the out." This is an entitlement mentality bordering on psychosis.
@@WretchedPlebe ah yes, dropping Purulia/Shifter/Dogwood at the start of the turn is exemplary of my "competitor's effort and foresight to use the right card at the right time". I'm curious about your mindset in jumping to conclusions; at no point did I state that I am better, rather that there are instances where I felt I played better than my opponent (i.e. misplayed less) but they won due to the difference in power level between my cards and theirs. Of course, the majority of my losses are to my own liability, however I take these losses with humility. Your projection of entitlement onto me seems strange and baseless.
Ironically, several people saying that in the comments of this video are also intentionally misgendering Jess and/or saying that if you give up on the game you're poor. This community has allowed assholes to fester for far too long, eventually they are all that's going to be left once everybody with even a halfway decent head on their shoulders leaves the game.
I quit competitive yugioh over a decade ago for a lot of the same reasons you mentioned. I switched over to Magic the Gathering and still play that game today. However I eventually did back into yugioh through Goat and Edison Formats. I went to a large Goat format this past weekend and enjoyed myself more than I have at previous events like NAWCQ,Regionals,YCS,etc. Simply because I wasn't competing for anything serious and just loved playing my favorite format. Anyway I hope your relationship with yugioh doesnt completely fizzle and that you find joy in whatever you decide to do next. I wish you luck Jessica.
This is unfortunately one of the problems of yugioh being so OCG centric. In Japan the pro player scene doesn't exist and players never have to travel to other regions much less other countries to play so the prizing really seems adecuate. I wish konami acknowledged the international community and best practices from other games.
Pachinkomoney: "Death to all gaijin scum, Yu-Gi-Oh! should only be allowed to be enjoyed by the beautiful Japanese Master Race!" It feels like SEGA of Japan vs. SEGA of America some days.
And the travel they do between regions is beyond cheap. I lived in Japan for years and Japanese friends could easily fly back and forth so cheap that it was common to live the equivalent of in Cali for the weekend but fly to Texas during the week to work and just stay at a hotel, which are also extremely cheap. In the US, a regular trip for days for a YCS is thousands of dollars. In Japan, you can make an entire weekend trip to Tokyo for a few hundred, if that. The cards are also significantly cheaper than what it costs TCG players to make.
This is exactly why I don’t play competitively. There is zero incentive to actually try to win when the reward is so minimal. I play MD with the decks I like and spend $0-$30 at most and still have fun just playing
I just enjoy the collections aspects. I'm currently trying to get the cards for white wood (to be honest i like the lore behind diabellestar this time i like the look of her, i like flamberge and the other snake eyes and the white wood asthetics). but i probably won't really play it irl much.
I will hope konami realizes this and addresses this. From what I understand yugioh is the worst with prizes in all tcg to the point where its comical if it wasn't so pathetic
I more than understand. There is a reason I stopped playing competitive and instead just play casually and for fun with others. I feel like a lot of people don't seem to understsnd you don't need to be competitive to have fun. Im just glad to have fun
That's fine and all but Jesse and others' case is like paying Messi less than the travel expenses to get to a stadium and him quitting professional football to play it with friends or at a local rent a field to play. Scale that down for the gradually less known competitive players and you get no incentives from them to aim for the top and for casuals to even start being a competitive player and that's where the bulk of the hype,coverage,publicity and top of the experience you get,but you can't aim for it unless you're ok with spending a lot of time on it while still losing money and that's such a miniscule percentage of players
@@blackbird7781 I think what he's trying to say is that "you really cant take the competitiveness out of these people." They want to be the best (its like a fucking animal instinct), but being the best basically nets you nothing, so they're left in this really weird position. Either they put aside that competitive drive and find some other reason to waste money on this game, or they play a game that'll reward them. All the more reason this game needs a grassroots competitive scene. As for casual, we need more homebrew formats.
@@four-en-tee i mean, you can still be competitive but you need to have a good balance. Kinda like work life balance. If you never have fun unless you always win, then you may need to reexamine yourself
Gimmick puppet ftk, Fiendsmith, Snake-eye, Shifter, seemingly infinite resource-loops, Puppet Lock, Droll, Pater-Omega Handloops, field spells that grant "Unaffected", Superpoly, Mulchammy, Dogwood-Time rules,... There are so many problems in the game atm and it feels like they don't care, the banlists are getting better but still feel like they are to slow. And the new releases just seem to continue to promote those kind of unhealthy things so yeah, I left comp ygo a while ago and don't regret it at all. Just hurts to see the game you love go down that path.
@@Chimeratech_O.D. Here in japan we have a problem. Some big companies have ancient manegement, we know konami has that same way of thinking. Something like if ain't broke don't change it mentality that cripples our country.
My issue with the game is it feels like a 'who will run out of handtraps' and Lingering effects like Shifter. I remember at UK Nats I shiftered someone and they conceeded saying well done and I was like 'sorry mate' I felt shifter won instead of my skill. I would rather win by skill and think how to pass their board than just drop shifter or gimmick lock. It's why I enjoyed TOSS, Trinity (qli, shaddoll format) hell I am on edison and goat now. I get what you mean and I hope one day konami really looks at the game and fixes it.
Modern ygo is just Bad. The fact that every Single card ever released is in the cardpool at all times is just terrible Design. Rotations would improve the game a lot but would not solve the non interactive nature of modern ygo. Edison and other legacy Formats is where its at. A Format with a closed cardpool is just the perfect Form of yugioh.
@@IkIk-rq4pk But Konami could just ban or limit cards that which make it easier for decks to abuse 1 card combos and long combo strings. Handtraps are basically just patchwork for horrible game design.
I was thinking, while we as players can see those issues, why we don't do something about it? Compaining might educate the community but its not enough. I remember locals in Japan straight up banning Mystic Mine, without the permission of OCG Konami for the better of their player base. Why we don't rebel against some of Konami's dump decisions like that?
This game is unplayable even on a casual level sometimes, I can't imagine how it was on a competitive level. Everything is basically the same formula except the basis of archetypes. Hope you manage to have fun and rest, you deserve it
So a friend and I got into Magic after seeing where Yu-Gi-Oh was headed, mostly playing Commander. There's a local level cEDH tournament that has an $800 1st place prize coming up in a few weeks. It's insane to me that Yu-Gi-Oh literally lets the top cut in a major tourney, ESPECIALLY worlds, walk away empty handed. It's sad really
I mean $800 for 1st is crumbs compared to the cost of the average cEDH deck. Proportionally, getting a switch for the average Yugioh deck is the same if not better.
CEDH players are almost always fine with proxies though. And while it’s not universal, tournaments often do as well, since Wizards of the Coast doesn’t really do official EDH tournaments anyways, they’re usually community-run. Of course, that does diminish the original comment’s point a bit anyways, since that’s very likely a community tournament as well, and if it doesn’t allow proxies then it’s just a tournament of wallets considering that non-proxy CEDH would indeed be insanely expensive.
Compared to other card games , YGO has absolutely the worst prizes and Konami dgaf. As long as that continues , people will leave and join OP or Lorcana.
I only started YuGiOh in January this year and it is crazy to see how, not only has there been been a massive rise in price, but the game has become unbalanced. I'm hoping that it will improve, but I am so sad to see Jess leave the competetive scene. You have inspired me a lot to get better and I'm always on the edge of my seat to see how you develop strategies (particularly with plants). If I'm feeling this way as a new player, I can't imagine how veterans of the game are feeling. Wake up Konami and start caring about your player base :/
I‘m very sad that you quit. I can understand the reasons why do that. I enjoyed watching you play big events and your content. I love plants and you and Marcus are the reason why I brought a Rikka Deck. I enjoy the Deck so much especially with the new Support (Aroma and Raika). I hope that you will come back to competitive YuGiOh.
It’s very upsetting seeing what everything has come to. The game we love and have invested not only our time but hard earned money into has no light at the end of the tunnel. If the Aug ban list doesn’t fix this I don’t think we can recover
Hey Jess, so this is my first comment on TH-cam that I want to designate to you :) Like many other I'm kind of shocked. However I fully understand and respect your decision. So I'm a late bloomer regarding YuGiOh TCG and started 2 years ago from scratch. About 90% of my decks are based on plants. I started with pure Rikka with you as source of my inspiration. With your help I update my Rikka deck to the current version (your last combo vid) and I loved all of your combos, tips and tricks. It was a pleasure to me to see all your TH-cam videos as well as the YCS games with (for me) sometimes unexpected and brilliant plays. I hope you will get back anytime, altthough incredible things have to happen. I wish you all the best. Greetings from Germany.
And the game is now so expensive too, and the prizing is not worthing half of it. In my country, the Fiendsmith Snake-Eyes deck costs literally 4 to 5 full salaries to build it, it is insane! I also lost interested in compete in Yu-Gi-Oh, I prefer to just playing Forfun and collect my Yuya's cards nowadays and that's it. Thanks for sharing your opinion with us, you have my support 🙋🏻♂️
It’s kinda funny, so many people were talking about this very issue for years. They were dismissed, told they were just bad, called yugiboomers and the like. We told you, we warned you, and now here are.
Card designs trends come and go sometimes for the better and sometimes for the worse so I am planning just to wait this out till better card design rolls around, best of luck in your future endeavours
More power to you. I think my only gripe with one of your reasonings is that “previous top players not topping as consistently” is really discrediting to the new up and comers aka “the nobodies” who probably put in just as much time, money, and energy as you did. You are right though in that prize support is bad.
Yeah that logic is "Me and my friends aren't topping every event, and they're the best players I know" and it's incorrect and corny. Her complaining about not time cheesing at Euros this year when she did it last year is laughable
I am sad that you are leaving the competitive field because you are by far my favorite and most inspirational player, but I totally understand your reasons (I agree with everything you say). Playing needs to be fun and rewarding. If it is not, you are taking the right decision for yourself. Thanks for taking the time to express yourself and take a good break to take care of yourself. Do better Konami.
also god, the notes on the community, i go to tournaments and get weird jeers because people know who i am and know im trans, i interact with people online and am flogged with parasocial, weird people who refuse to respect boundaries. Its just, exhausting, and ive basically been made to erase just about all my online presence. Any game can be made off the back of a strong community, i actively play a fighting game called lethal league with
I'm selling everything i have that is yugioh related to get bunch of max rarity Lorcana cards, oh boy is it satisfying to defeat that Stockholm's Syndrome i had back then lol
the people who abuse tier 0 formats going away is great. Also these people who are quitting is not hurting konami at all infact they will just be replaced.
I understand you and support your opinion that the player can have fun and get the reward due in a local instead of a bigger tournament, I'm completing my 10 years as a casual player and I still enjoy the game, the biggest event I've ever participated in was regional level, where I really enjoyed the experience and variety of decks and duelists to face and get to know ^^
This is understandable, I don’t know how I feel about this format either. I really appreciate everything you do and I’ll keep supporting you, Jess❤ you will always be my favorite Yugioh player!
@@Duelist07985 they cant ban fiendsmith cuz it just came out and is nowhere near oppressive enough to be emergency banned unless we get a spyral situation
The end for me was pure Snake-Eye actually. I really enjoyed the Snake-Eye Fire King deck, super fun to play and play against imo, but once everyone switched to pure, it just didn't feel very fun anymore. I love this game, I have been playing competitively since around Tengu Plant format, received multiple invites and even topped through out the many years of playing, but I decided to step back from the competitive scene as well for the same reasons, so I relate to how you feel. You are an inspiration and have achieved incredible feats I could only dream of, so it is sad to see such an amazing player go. But I look forward to seeing what's to come in the future and wish you nothing but the best Jess!
Jess, thank you so much for what you have done for women in competitive yugioh. No matter what you do, nobody can take that away from you. You've put up with so much awful hate but I just wanted to remind you that for so many of us, the things you have done have meant the world and we will support you forever, regardless of what content you decide to make next. I'm so glad you've felt able to take this step and choose what's right for you and your happiness right now. Hold your head high girlie, excited to see where you go next x
I'm not even kidding, I was *just* talking to my best friend 30 minutes ago about your tweet of you saying you're not having fun with the game anymore, and now *this* happens. We actually met through Yu-Gi-Oh back in high school, but he dropped the game in 2021 for Digimon and convinced me to drop it and join him in December last year. With everything in YGO that's happened this year, switching TCGs was single best decision I've ever made for any of my hobbies.
I agree with you. I quit Yu-Gi-Oh! around the Spright format and now mostly watch content rather than play. I've found Lorcana gameplay to be more enjoyable, and the community is much more welcoming. Additionally, the prize support in Lorcana is fantastic. Konami seems to take their player base for granted, barely communicating about important things like banlists and winners of big events. I don’t blame you for quitting competitve Yu-Gi-Oh!. Playing with friends around the kitchen counter is still fun tough.
Well said. But even still I will still support the game as it has helped me throughout a lot of tough times. I started at around the same time as you. But during that time I was hospitalized and was on the verge of death. But Yu-Gi-Oh helped me get through my recovery. I lost the ability to do what I loved to do back then and it was then that a friend introduced me to the game. I got really good at the game even though I didn’t go to tournaments. I created my own variant of Phantom Knights and got to meet a lot of new people who play the game with me. A lot of them gave up on the game because it became to difficult to keep up with me. Now I am left alone and it hurts. But I still like the game and will keep on playing for now. I hope that there is a change someday. Maybe the community quitting the game for a while might actually spark a change. For a business cannot operate without customers. Konami seems to have forgotten that. As somebody who wants to open up their own Gaming Parlor, I feel as if the most important thing isn’t profit anymore. But rather the consistency of having customers. That is achieved not through producing more products and making them cost more. That is a gate keeper that prevents newer customers from entering. That is why I have been trying to figure out ways of mitigating these problems. When the card shop half of my store is opened I will have already found my solution to this. Probably in the form of store credit and deck building help. That way new players can enter the game easier and will even get a discount when they join the store at first. And then as time goes on and they have been around longer they get a few more benefits and become apart of a small community. My whole goal in my life is to create a place like that where people can relax and forget about the stress that life brings even for just a fleeting moment. I know it will not be easy but I am working on achieving my goals. That is why I am here typing this comment. I watched this video because it gives me more insight into how others feel about this whole disaster that Yu-Gi-Oh has been through. And for that I thank you. Thank you for helping me achieve my goals. Thank you for your time and efforts throughout the time you have been playing Yu-Gi-Oh. It means a lot to me. And with that I shall take my leave. Farewell
I been playing this game for 22 years.. . I have not competitive player by any means but I am someone that plays casual level but on a Morden term while still making different ideas work and keeping up with the many archtypes and different summoning types over the years. I have no intention of stopping either but a video like this.. really making me think twice of actually competing in competitive yugioh. I sincerely hope the company does learn what they been doing to amazing players like this one... cuz just damn.
I really love this video as I have been feeling some type of way too. this was the first nawcq where I felt like testing didn't matter. my friend played like 2 matches all week in testing and was like, I'm just gonna draw shifter or calamity lock my opponent or just lose. then my tenpai friend just said I'll draw shifter and breakers or lose. I tested fiend Smith yubel picked it all up with the hype around it over 400$ to get the engine, to literally get hit with a game 1 evenly matched into full ragnaraika trap trix combo and then round two, I make full board to lose to normal summon imanto wato into full runick stun deck out. you can spend months testing the decks and just lose to random crack effects that linger it turn your entire strategy off. it gets you frustrated when you know you are better than how you perform but simply lose the rng game. tenpai friend has not been competitive in years and just wins half his games with shifter and breakers because it's just that simple with that deck. I hope things change, I love this game, I judge for it, teach it, and enjoy playing it, but the gameplay is awful of late. like the 20th best deck in the game right now, is still just a crazy deck that if the other 19 didn't exist it would just be unbeatable. everything is so powerful right now. the prizing is a whole other issue to vent about but I digress for now. thank you for speaking your mind and I hope we both can find love for the game again.
I only play in MD and I completely understand that feeling. Cards like Maxx "C" make the game very hard to take seriously. Is still fun to play on the events and with friends, but the ladder (and the duelist cups) in general feel more like a chore.
A hug from Brazil, I'm your fan, I admire you a lot, I love you as a fan, I understand your frustration, I've always played Sky Striker, and this format simply isn't enough to win with go in second control, Snake-eye Fiendsmith is crazy, I started playing Tenpai to fight against this new format's rubbish, but I love Sky Striker, and I miss a format where Shifter doesn't win games, I miss a format where we need strategy, and not expensive cards winning games, I feel It's frustration that the tournaments don't have good prizes, like other games that are gaining momentum, but I also love Yugioh, I'm rooting for the game to go back to how it was before, and I hope this upcoming banlist helps something. strength, a hug and a loving kiss from a fan.
The prizing issue really is insane.. Like for example just getting top 32 in one piece you'll get like a $500-1000 (value) card. This is honestly not something that's hard to fix on konami's end but, as you've said it seems like they just don't care.. all the effort to get to that point, and all the money spent to get a deck that can compete at that level, its frankly disgusting lol
I quit in April, after feeling sour towards the game since January, and it's been mentally freeing for me. I've accepted that i can't change Konami's practices, only how i response to them. So i stopped spending my money, have been selling off my collection and dove into Elestrals and Pokemon VGC. And since Konami communicates very little with the YGO Community, I believe the only way they'll hear anything is when the bar stops trending up. Talk with your money and, more importantly, time. I imagine Konami would rather see the game die before they begin catering to their audience, though 🤷🏾♂️
Jess, i recently came back to playing YGO... and what keeps me interest in Plants/Rept/Insects archetype are pretty much your videos/tutorials. I've learned so much from you. It's sad seeing you quit, dear mentor but also wish you best of success on your next journey! ^_^
Is that all this is about? The lad with the tentative grip on reality lost a card game and now he's throwing all his toys out of the pram..? Oh the joys of an unstable mind. . .
Great video. The state of yugioh is definitely worrisome for people who are very invested in the game. I often wonder about the potential longevity of my channel because it really feels like Yugioh is digging itself into a hole in many ways.
I came back a year ago, last moments of the tier 0 tear format. I've done well in OTS playing my pet deck and I managed to finally win a local last week but using Fiendsmith. It feels like that victory is stained now that everyone is saying that there is no merit in winning with Fiendsmith. That makes me think of quitting too even though I have fun playing with my friends. Sorry, I needed to share it somewhere. Thank you for reading this far.
The game has become who ever goes first spends 20 mins playing half there deck to negate everything the person going second does. Its not fun to play, or to watch. It started with 5D's and the intro of synchro, then xyz's, then pendulum, then link's. What yugioh DESPERATELY NEEDS is a return to original form, pre new summon mechanics, else it will continue to walk the plank its already on. Have a great day folks.
First off, Jess, you're my YGO GOAT. I got back into the game by using your Rikka/Sunavalon deck and it helped a ton when relearning the game, so I'm sad to see you go. That said, I get it. I think it's pretty clear, from the tournament prizing, to the prices and super low drop rates of gems in Master Duel, to the 20 years of power creep, it seems abundantly clear that Konami doesn't care about the YGO player base or the direction of the game at all, as long as they're making boatloads of money off of it. Super unfortunate. I really want to enjoy the game like I used to back in the day, but it's like the game revolves less around plays and counter-plays now and more around trying to negate everything your opponent does and just not letting them play. When it happens to me, it feels bad. When I do it to other people it feels good, but I feel like I'm winning less because of my skills and more because I got lucky enough to draw Ash Blossom, Maxx C, and Ghost Mourner on turn 1, ya know?
Watching you play was always a spectacle. Learned so much about plant decks and how to build them from you. Honestly I share pretty much all your frustrations with the game and I wish you the best.
You will forever be one of the greats in this game and I hope the issues get fixed. As for prizing, I went to a locals yesterday and got $55 store credit for going 2nd out of 18 players. I spent $10 for travel and entry total when rounding up. The prizing does need to be fixed if I can recoup my losses and then some at a locals but a pro can’t at a YCS for doing equally as good if not better.
This does particularly suck because Jess was such a success story in competitive Yugioh. Frankly, I don't see the lack of tangible prizing as being the problem as Yugioh has historically done well in terms of sales and event attendances in spite of that. The more significant rewards are influence, exposure, and people to bounce ideas off of. Someone like Joshua Schmidt is the ultimate example in terms of being seen, being able to collaborate and be taken seriously by anyone and everyone in competitive Yugioh, and is someone who continues to enjoy Yugioh and do well in part because of that. I would've thought Jess, who saw much more success than the average YCS or WCQ attendee could ever dream of, would be able to leverage that into more momentum and continued success. That not being the case for Jess is more troubling than the lack of prize support, and her failure is shared by the competitive Yugioh community. We need to do more to celebrate our legends, in terms of attention, respect, and donations go just as far as cash prize support to someone who helps get you into the game or helps you get better.
Ideas for you : - Yugioh tutorials - Yugioh videos for new players - Locals tournament , both vlog and duel content - Archetype Analysis - Combo Guides - Selling and Buying Guides (For good money management) Hope you read this!! Love u Jess! Good luck and GREAT decision on quitting this ugly ass complex game.
its terrible, but hilarious i mean the best way to describe this format is "Custom card format." The format where you're better off playing custom cards. Or casually. Konami must've hired a custom card creator, Flamberge, Fiendsmith cards not having any restrictions, Snake-Eyes is probably the most Custom Card-like designed archetype i've ever seen. I'm enjoying the Custom Card of Fire format though, I can sit back and terrorize my opponent with HT's with SE and watching them be forced to scoop when i summon SE Ash, I love going second and undoing my entire opponents board with Tenpai without even having to care what it is, their deck even does. It doesn't matter LOL FIRE IS MY FAVORITE Although i gotta say wtf, those players are getting robbed but they're robbing themselves because they continue to participate.
Thank you for everything you did for the game, I really learned a lot by watching your videos, I am very excited to want to play plants the same way you play it, I hope that in the future the game is fixed, we will always be supporting you no matter what decision you make or If you only played locally, we will be here.
I left yugioh awhile back, because it was getting way too expensive and not fun. I really enjoy MTG now, commander is a lot of fun. I've never played standard format competitively besides on the mobile app. But WOTC gives good prizes in their tournaments with $250,000 in cash prizes, $50,000 of which goes to the winner. Good luck to you on your future endeavors I'm rooting for you.
Jess have you considered engaging in time wizard more? I had a blast at Ygo Uk nationals playing Edison. It's also a different type of gameplay which could be fresh. Idk about the prizing but you can win giant cards at the UTW events which are worth more than you're getting at the moment. Frazier smith sold his giant Judgment Dragon for $6000. Not all of them will be worth that much but still it's better than what you currently get. There was a giant black rose dragon which also sold for hella money a while back too
Hi Jess ! I don't know you and you don't know me, but... I just wanted to say I'm so happy to have followed your yugioh adventures over the past years. What you did (which is incredible and took my breath away seeing you play) and represented and all I know you may definitely have to deal with (which is if that's the case, know there is empathy with it, it's a shared struggle), by my own experience in card games communities and life in general, was... a highly needed breath of fresh air. You made me watch yugioh championships. You made me root for you. But not only for what you meant, also for the way you played, the deep love of the game could be felt by your own deckbuilding. Almost every sunavalon / rikka deck in every championship was I think really thanks to you. People looked up to your love of the game and your undeniable skill acquired with thousands of hours of practice, and... having a specific interest on card games myself, I really get it, and it made me love the impact you had on the yugioh community. I don't know if enough people expressed it to you, but I just want you to know that we're many in my circles that rooted for you and were so happy to see you play and made us play the game in ways we love ! But almost none wrote messages that you could read. So... yeah, know you have way more support and a positive impact on so many wholesome levels that have been expressed, and that's why I write this : so you may know about this, because when things are hard it's easy to forget about it, and not even consider it. Fun fact, I love plant decks, back when DaD was a thing and Infernal Garden just came out, I was like : "I'm going to deckbuild so much about it because it's so wonderful and i love it". And when I saw sunavalon / rikka, I HAD to build the decks. Sadly I could never fulfill this completely and one still lies "almost complete" on yugioh master duel. But then, I saw you played it, and it was a rogue deck, but you built and played it so perfect that you single-handedly raised it to close to very close to meta. That's how much of an impact you had on this game, tournaments, casual and pro play, all by yourself. People couldn't ignore it completely, else they would just be unable to play against you, who is one of the very best player in the world. My message is a bit confused maybe, I hope not too much. But to sum up : you're really cool, you did so much good, to yugioh, the community, and people wanting to love this game. And we do share the same pain, even at very casual levels, at how konami is pushing intense power-creep which... is so bad it breaks part of the ability to love the game (rng and things like shifter / mulcharmy becoming.... overwhelmingly oppressive and frustrating, not even talking about prizes). But also, we do understand how worse it is at a competititve level, which made all of me and my many friends loving yugioh, run away from competitive scene, sadly. So yeah : Thanks, so much. Just happy you keep your desire to... enjoy things and be yourself. You make many people like me and those around me feel welcome, at least in part, in this game we want to love and did love, and still love quite a lot. I'll be happy to watch everything you want to share, less competitive and more your thoughts and love for the game. And that's something we're all looking forward to. But as someone who burnt out a lot, I hope you'll do it at your own rhythm, because you want to share it. And as a side note, pink hair rocks and we're happy to just see you playing or talking, for all the wonderful reasons there can be. I hope you'll be fine, more than fine, and... Yeah. Thanks. You're super cool. You did so much good. More that will ever expressed. I'm glad I could listen to you and see you play. We'll never meet, I might not even write another message here, but I hope that this message if you read it will help knowing that you've done so much good and also helped many express their love of the game even more. I wish you a good life, sincerely, whatever happens, and lots of wonderful times with yugioh but also every other game you might want to play, and also... in every aspect of your life, because I do have a feeling it matters a lot too.
Recently my youngest son showed interest in the Yu-Gi-Oh! and I decided to get a few Structure Decks ( Dark World, Saga of Blue Eyes White Dragon, Spirit Charmers, Legends of the Crystal Beast with a few booster packs). Thank you for your insight. If I/we decide to get competitive, I'll keep this information in mind. As of now, I think we're gonna play casually.
I was tired about yugioh kinda for some time already and i quitted the game last year. the game was not the one I fell in love with anymore. I thought that I would regret this decision at some point, then I learned one piece card game.. better decision of my life 😂 and I started to watch the anime after I started playing the tcg, the game is just good…
Kazuki Takahashi is turning over in his grave right now. R.I.P. sensei. I switched over to flesh and blood. Jess, you're more than welcome to sit across the table from me anytime, I would enjoy a game with you.
This is truely sad to hear, I did see you at nationals in Birmingham and just seeing a top player there add to the excitement for me it was like seeing a celeb! to know you wont be going anymore differently takes away from the events and that's a huge loss. I'm looking forward to your videos when you come back from your break though! the Yugioh community loves you!
There are just so many problems with this game right now. But still I think the competitive scene has the most problems. This company makes cards that shoot the power level through the roof, then refusing to acknowledge them or providing any sort of a meaningful banlist until months later, and even then they're incentivised to not hit the problem cards or only hit cheaper cards so people will continue to consume their products. The competitive scene is at their greed's mercy. Furthermore I heard the lack of prizing was apparently because of Takahashi's wish for Yugioh to never become smth people would play for the money, which is ironic considering how Joey's motivation for winning the Duelist Kingdom tournament is to bring home money to treat his sister's blindness, but I digress. I believe this is just a bullshit excuse they pull up whenever we accuse them of being stingy because let's be real. It's always been the effing biggest TCG in the entire world. They were already selling very well, even when the competitive scene couldn't pop off, so why do you think they need to change anything about their business strategy? They can always leech off the competitive players and collectors who will consume their products *no matter what* and continue to be the biggest most profitable TCG in the world. I hope this trend of the community having people who complain but unable to do anything and people who ignore the problems and buy into their anti-consumerist practices can stop soon. If competitive players and even players of the TCG in general can go hand in hand for an ACTUAL BOYCOTT (stop buying their products no matter how attractive the cards can be, stop showing at events, making statements publicly addressing these issues, etc.) then I believe they will be forced to change their practices to make this game at least a bit healthier.
you hit the nail on the head as to why Im on the way out of this game and Ive never gone to a ycs, regional or any major event nowadays I only at most play 2 rounds of yugioh a week and Im still falling out of love with it
Everybody’s quitting it’s hard to even make yugioh content and remain happy these days with all the toxicity in the comments and fan base.. happiest I’ve been in a while and all that’s changed is the content I create. Plus we’re all being priced out of our fav decks. I had to drop 200$ to make my lighsworns “good” and still never went all out for the extra deck
So I wish u the best of luck with leaving the competitive side of the game but there sum problems in this video. This is the second video I’m hearing that line “top players are not topping recently and that’s shows bad performance from the game” no that sounds entirely like a skill issue. Yes things are definitely out of ur control in any game but if ur a good player u will win, u will top. Sometimes it’s not ur day or format that doesn’t mean the game is bad there are always gonna be someone better not coming in top cut shows u either have to get better or this isn’t ur time to shine yet
Ur all literally playing the same deck when u sit at that table it eliminates so many negative cause u know what u gonna play against. Yes the hand trap situation is dumb but u pro players make the format. u can’t blame entirely the company it’s goes to blame both. y’all make the deck and they pushed it so y’all see this is the best option to play, so it comes down either can I hand trap him or break his board? And at the end the better player won
But the no hype thing confused me idk if we had different views on wha hyped means but there was so much of it leading up to and after the event infinite forbidden is literally the set to look at and we all expected it to help the already beat deck SE but when it didn’t win EU Nats that open so many eyes but ig cause I’m not a pro I don’t see it like that
I've always been a casual yugioh player, the problem with that is that where I live even the casual player play tryhard decks so I lost interest a year and a half ago. Last November I switched to One Piece and I've been enjoying it a lot more than ygo, it's bittersweet because I stopped playing the game that I loved but I also got into a new game that gives me the same feeling as when I first got into ygo back in like 2009 playing Blackwings
Since you finally agree, can you unban me now in your twitch lol 😂 I got banned in 2023 cause I said the same thing about YCS. Low budget prizes and you got mad about it and ban me yourself LOL. NOW your here
Sorry to hear you made this decision. It's not easy to walk away from something you love. I'm in a similar place, I'll be on indefinite hiatus for a while, the game is just getting exhausting. Plenty of other TCGs to play. Best of luck
sad to see you go. but hearing your perspective feels good. Lots of players just shout "GIVE US MORE PRIZING OR WE QUIT". but never give a solid explanation except for that they want more :P Myself i don't play for the prizing, but tbf i'm not a Top Player. but hearing it this way: i get it :'( Good luck with what ever your future goals are
10 years into the game, finally worked your butt off to improve and showcase your skills at world championship level making top 8, and walking away with nothing. Wake up Konami.
I’ve brought up horrendous prizing and been ripped apart by the community on every forum. I’m 30 and can only dedicate so much time to yugioh, motivating myself to waste hundreds of hours testing to have a chance at the embarrassment that is the current prize structure isnt happening. Casual master duel is where I’ll be until I see legitimate changes.
Very sad news, but you could see it coming. Pros have been complaining about the state of the game for a while now. I'm not a top player by any means, like most people. But something I've noticed is the massive variance in my results-ranging from exceptionally good to absolutely horrible. Every major event feels like a coin flip now, and the top meta decks seem to reward you less and less. I can totally see players who are actually good at the game fuming over this situation. I really hope that by you doing this video, things will start to change. With you being an ambassador for competitive play, it should signal something to Konami that they can't ignore.
1.agreed that blanket effects should not exist, 1 for 1 interactions is fine but droll, shifter and purulia or watever it’s called should not exist. 2. Agreed that the “hype” is gone because the decks at the top have been out for some time and naturally it gets stale. Even to the pilots. 3. People needs to give the prizing thing a rest. This is a hobby and you should not expect to get compensated. We do it cuz we enjoy the grind, and the gameplay. The ycs vs locals point is nuts…idk why she even said that. 4. The hate will always exist. 5. Just cuz top players play other games doesn’t mean not mean they are stopping yugioh…attendance is still up at events . It feels like she is projecting things to others
I played from 2003 to 2024. I played competitively from 2007 to 2019. I finally quit, I've fallen in love with lorcana and genuinely prefer it. I loved yugioh so much that I changed my legal last name to Madolche, my favorite deck. The name of my business is Madolche's Local Delivery. My avatar on here is a custom photo I had made of myself and my Ace monsters, Madolche Puddingcess Chocolat-A-La-Mode. I never thought I'd quit for good, but I finally have.
No prizes for top 8 at worlds is straight up insanity.
I agree with everything you said. Do better Konami
Also f*ck lingering effects, especially the wind Mulchurmy. We did not need to see maxx c in any other shape or form.
@@fanix92Yea they’ll finally ban Max C! Then roll out Max C #2, just a more convoluted version of it.
Why would they do better? In the end, a competitive scene is nothing more than a marketing tool. At this point, they probably think that they get all the marketing they need from youtube and twitch. As this video proves...
@@Volkbrecht when their competition is made up of a bunch of second rate duelists, they'll start caring. When people buy less sealed products and more singles they'll start caring. A change will eventually come when the interest in the game breaks even with their profit margin.
@@VolkbrechtThere's a delicate balance tho. Having something to strive for, an incentive to continue playing, is itself a marketing tactic. If, say, the world's winner won 10k, not a lot of money in the grand scheme of things but still something substantial, it might create more hype around the game.
It was nice to see a pro player talk in depth about the prizing issue. Topping world's not getting you anything is craaaazy.
It was Takahashi 's wish.
lol prize andy
@@f5673-t1h Everyone parrots that and nobody ever has a source
Gigachad wish but life dont work like this
@@f5673-t1hPricing doesn't mean money being handed to you, just make the cards being rewarded more appealing like a special edition Ash blossom, or a alt art Blue Eyes that can be sold in the secondary market and that's it, that is what Lorcana is doing in a way, in a sense yes pricing is a very personal issue because mostly those that complain about it is because they want to be rewarded but Takahashi never meant the game for it, but you can't deny the other reasons are just true, the game is being pushed to a place where NO player wants it to go
I don’t care if Kazuki Takahashi said he doesn’t want to see people playing this game for money, i bet he also didn’t want to see people being charged £2000 for 1 single deck
Author isn't the boards
I agree Kazuki Takahashi wanted us duelists to have fun playing the game and not be too focused on always winning and to keep it from getting too competitive. However just like the manga and anime there are a lot of aggressively competitive people who only care about victory and care nothing for the fun factor.
Takahashi wanted to make money off the game, he didn't want anybody else too.
@fkjfkrmrk Yes he was a business man too but so are every other Japanese person, he definitely wanted to make money but he also wanted to create a series people loved
thanks god voiceless voice is cheap
State of the game right now
1) Win the die roll or suffer the disadvantage of going 2nd
2) Clog your main deck with at least 18 hand traps and hope to draw 2-3 in your opening hand otherwise lose
3) Play an overpowered and expensive deck otherwise lose
i hope i did not miss anything
4) hope your opponent does not draw 3 handtraps, otherwise, also draw 3 handtraps and have the better top deck later on
Your 3rd point is pretty nonsensical ngl
@@unbeatable750 nah, it's pretty valid. Good balanced card games have like 5-10 decks of completely different archetypes that can top in a format. In Yugioh a large % of the top cut pie chart is always some variation of Snake Eyes.
Honestly I knew things was getting bad when I seen decks plays 18 ht. The fact that have your deck is ht is genuinely mind boggling, unless your sky strikers.
Im playing 2th with horus engine and 80% of the time i always win unless im facing snake eyes or kashtira
Another reason why playing this game casually is the way to go for me.
Curious...Would you be interested if there was a 100+ person Tournament ($5 example fee but there isn't a limit, it's all percentage based where top 32 always doubles the fee in winnings, Top 50 break even and the lottery is there to reward people who stick around to the end)
1st - x10 ($50)
2nd - x5 ($25)
3rd-32 - x2 ($10)
33th-50 - x1 ($5)
Lucky Lottery($35) only available for 33-100
3 Drawings($10/$10/$5) and a Mystery Duelist Riddle pot($10 rollover)
and being less afraid of a potential banlist
Thing is, there is no real place for Casual players in standard yugioh
@@trevvion3whats this about?
@@shien-ryu4395 That's why Yugioh has meta games (competitive) and casual games for different types of players
It's wild. When POTE came out I thought Konami had finally figured out how to handle skill expression in a high-powered environment, but since the end of unchained format it's felt like lingerings and floodgates have never been more prevalent. I hope this August list really rips into them.
Anyway, it's sad to see so many beloved players like you, who have been shining examples for the community, bowing out. I hope it goes well for you, and I hope Konami does what's necessary for you to return.
They haven't been printing Lingerings and Floodgates either for the most part. It's more so that this power level just makes those cards -EVEN BETTER-, or at the least the only stuff from before PotE that keeps up with the new power level.
I always visualized handtraps as speedbumps, where going faster over them hurts you more. Floodgates are kind of like that, even the bad ones can be backbreaking when the number of actions goes up.
I felt like POTE was also the huge indicator that newer decks would power creep older decks so much more and these newer decks would also be expensive. Remember how much planets were?
POTE was the beginning of the end for Yugioh. NO ONE needs those insanly broken cards, they dont make the game better
@@scizor285 I'm pretty sure that the average price of decks were the same as tier 1 decks throughout the covid era (remember Baronne being like $120). Still too high but not that different from the norm, things only got Really Bad with Sinful Spoils which also happens to be the most pushed series of archetypes in the history of the game. (Ignore Goblins)
@@Alex-Omegayou're so tragically wrong
It's crazy how my small town's locals payout is significantly larger than a literal worldwide / National event
I stopped yugioh and swapped to Lorcana a year ago and I haven't been happier playing a game. The player base is lovely, the prize support is really good even at smaller events and it's a nice change of pace. I loved yugioh but when it turned to unbreakable boards, handtraps and 1 card combos, they lost me.
Who's signing my copies of Loci now 😪
Same....
Maybe Joshua Schmidt for the memes
got mine signed at Nats, glad I did 💀
just ask Josh, he will be delighted :D
@@chitahitsu4743 dont forget to ask him to sign circular too!
Very sad to hear, but you're spot on. Many things could be improved, and it's frustrating to see that they're not. Good luck with the rest of your journey ! Excited for the new content ! You will always be a Yu-Gi-Oh legend !🙏🙏
Merci pour la video que tu nous a faite sur elle
Salut tero :)
uwu
I might make some people mad, but upon Kazuki Takahashi's death I was expecting Konami to change the way prizing works. I understand the man did not want anything to do with cash prizing, but considering everything else just gets sold for cash anyway, there was no getting around it and it needed to change, ESPECIALLY with how esports continues to grow and become more mainstream. However, now I understand that it is purely a scapegoat for Konami to use to never offer cash prizing and continue to stifle their player base with nonsense.
Put simply, this is not a game to be in for compensation. If you want that, Pokemon TCG offers $10,000 for winning a regionals (pretty much guaranteed since they always hit the cap nowadays). Or better yet, simply focus on content creation. People will consume Yugioh casually as they do with all kinds of other franchises. Taking the time you would for deckbuilding and instead using it on strategizing, meeting with experts, brainstorming unique video ideas, learning to edit, all of that stuff would 100% be worth more of your time than this game.
Lastly, I just wanna remind people that just play this game and don't touch other Konami franchises: THEY TREAT EVERYONE THIS WAY! Castlevania, Contra, Metal Gear, Suikoden, all of the dead Hudson Soft franchises after they acquired them (and the subsequent decline of Mario Party because of it), so many lackluster things have come from Konami since the advent of HD development and microtransactions. They got into pachinko in 2015, a year AFTER Japan's government cracked down on the industry for essentially being gambling, to the point where companies like SNK were pulling out and essentially just leaving Konami and Sega Sammy (yes, THAT Sega) to be the main ones left. If you value your time and money, don't touch stuff Konami-related.
Game is as Kazuki Takahashi intended in OCG regions. There are way more active locals and local events, the cards are significantly cheaper, the game is much more accessable to average person.
That's not the case for TCG, In TCG locals are few and between compared OCG regions. So there is much more emphasis on actual competative events that place all over the continents. It is not easy for someone to not only buy hunderds of dollars cost decks in TCG but also get up, pay for flight, hotels etc to be able to attend those events.
Is that what Takahashi envisioned? I highly doubt that. He simply was an observant of his own environment and wished it to be money free competion.
It is not really possible without top players experiencing burnout in TCG.
I don't think top players should make a living by competing in YGO. But at least they should be compensated for their expenses if they top so that they would not be completely minus financial wise.
The prizing issue has to go with the licensing agreement between KDE and the IP holders (Now Studio DICE/Kaz's Estate, TVTokyo, Shueisha) and because of this, there could be no cash prizing.
Pokemon TCG is owned and run by TPCI so no license issue. MTG is owned and run by Hasbro, so no license issue. Ravensberger and Disney have a licensing agreement similar to Konami's with Yugioh, so that's why the prizing in that game is also in the form of stuff you have to sell.
Konami don’t own HAL, they own Hudson Soft.
@@gpmradirgy8953 Thank you, don't know why I mixed those up, corrected the comment there.
@@aknkerse As a former shonen jump champion as well as someone who made a living by playing the game i agree with on the state of the game i may however in differ on opinion on top players making a living by competing in yugioh but tbh that depends entirely on the player itself and what they want to make of it i mean in the anime some of the top players made a living but not all until in later years but if yugioh offered cash prizing it could potentially be the number one card game in tcg and inspire others to want to buy and compete more but with current prizing u can still make profit as a yugioh player but its tough and hopefully they will make he changes in order to survive if i was there company my goal would be trying to be the best tcg on the planet but thats just me
I get better prizing for store championships in Lorcana than you do for top 8 in a YCS and thats WILD
Its upsetting to see someone with your talent leave the competetive scene. Though i completely understand. And, for the sake of konami, i hope they get their crap together soon.
They are going to ever give people prizing that people ever think is worth it.
Considering japanese culture they'll likely do the opposite
"Talent" yes... Its totally a talent.
It's konami they are gonna need new management before that happens. Which will never happen
As someone who quit Yugioh after Indy 2024, the game is trending a direction that I personally didn't see as something I would enjoy. Then the fiendsmiths came out. So glad I quit when I did.
POTE was peak yugioh for me. It’s been slowly going down hill once the Diabellstar lore came along. Couple the frustrations and cost of the game with the abysmal rewards, it does not seem worth while anymore
Not surprised. A lot of valid points and I do hope Konami actually listen, but it feels like there's so much to fix.
I wholeheartedly agree with this entire take, and I sincerely hope that something changes. Even though I love the game dearly and don't think I could ever find a replacement for it, it does suck that even though I'm constantly improving as a player, I can always get sacked by an overpowered card or deck and just lose, even if I felt like the better player in the match.
I do hope prizing improves too; there are so many easy and cheap things Konami could do, such as alternative arts, full arts, alternative rarities, etc. for prizing, yet we're all fighting our hardest for a last-gen Nintendo Switch. There's just no hype, and no real motivation.
I'm curious about this mindset. You take no responsibility for losing and dismiss your competitor's effort and foresight to use the right card at the right time, and simply chalk it up to "I'm better, but they had the out." This is an entitlement mentality bordering on psychosis.
@@WretchedPlebe cringe
@@WretchedPlebe ah yes, dropping Purulia/Shifter/Dogwood at the start of the turn is exemplary of my "competitor's effort and foresight to use the right card at the right time".
I'm curious about your mindset in jumping to conclusions; at no point did I state that I am better, rather that there are instances where I felt I played better than my opponent (i.e. misplayed less) but they won due to the difference in power level between my cards and theirs.
Of course, the majority of my losses are to my own liability, however I take these losses with humility.
Your projection of entitlement onto me seems strange and baseless.
@@WretchedPlebe horrible take.
@@waqasmusharaf6611 pRoJeCtiOn lol. grow up, child
The people saying "draw the out" is becoming more apparent then it is now. Changes has to be made but I feel like the damage is done
Ironically, several people saying that in the comments of this video are also intentionally misgendering Jess and/or saying that if you give up on the game you're poor. This community has allowed assholes to fester for far too long, eventually they are all that's going to be left once everybody with even a halfway decent head on their shoulders leaves the game.
i feel likes it more like draw the outs and the outs to the outs and still have your 1 or 2 card combo starter.
@@waiyon1951 that a better way to put it
The worst feeling is when you play your dark ruler no more and it gets hit with Solemn Judgement 😢
I quit competitive yugioh over a decade ago for a lot of the same reasons you mentioned. I switched over to Magic the Gathering and still play that game today. However I eventually did back into yugioh through Goat and Edison Formats. I went to a large Goat format this past weekend and enjoyed myself more than I have at previous events like NAWCQ,Regionals,YCS,etc. Simply because I wasn't competing for anything serious and just loved playing my favorite format. Anyway I hope your relationship with yugioh doesnt completely fizzle and that you find joy in whatever you decide to do next. I wish you luck Jessica.
Commander player spotted.
This is unfortunately one of the problems of yugioh being so OCG centric. In Japan the pro player scene doesn't exist and players never have to travel to other regions much less other countries to play so the prizing really seems adecuate. I wish konami acknowledged the international community and best practices from other games.
Pachinkomoney: "Death to all gaijin scum, Yu-Gi-Oh! should only be allowed to be enjoyed by the beautiful Japanese Master Race!"
It feels like SEGA of Japan vs. SEGA of America some days.
@@autobotstarscream765 I'm japanese I can say that it is like that somewhat
we have local tournaments though...
And the travel they do between regions is beyond cheap. I lived in Japan for years and Japanese friends could easily fly back and forth so cheap that it was common to live the equivalent of in Cali for the weekend but fly to Texas during the week to work and just stay at a hotel, which are also extremely cheap. In the US, a regular trip for days for a YCS is thousands of dollars. In Japan, you can make an entire weekend trip to Tokyo for a few hundred, if that. The cards are also significantly cheaper than what it costs TCG players to make.
I'm glad it's OCG centric. It's one of the few games out there that isn't Multicultie..
This is exactly why I don’t play competitively. There is zero incentive to actually try to win when the reward is so minimal. I play MD with the decks I like and spend $0-$30 at most and still have fun just playing
I just enjoy the collections aspects.
I'm currently trying to get the cards for white wood (to be honest i like the lore behind diabellestar this time i like the look of her, i like flamberge and the other snake eyes and the white wood asthetics). but i probably won't really play it irl much.
I will hope konami realizes this and addresses this. From what I understand yugioh is the worst with prizes in all tcg to the point where its comical if it wasn't so pathetic
I more than understand. There is a reason I stopped playing competitive and instead just play casually and for fun with others.
I feel like a lot of people don't seem to understsnd you don't need to be competitive to have fun. Im just glad to have fun
That's fine and all but Jesse and others' case is like paying Messi less than the travel expenses to get to a stadium and him quitting professional football to play it with friends or at a local rent a field to play.
Scale that down for the gradually less known competitive players and you get no incentives from them to aim for the top and for casuals to even start being a competitive player and that's where the bulk of the hype,coverage,publicity and top of the experience you get,but you can't aim for it unless you're ok with spending a lot of time on it while still losing money and that's such a miniscule percentage of players
@@franyard8783 what you said has not countered anything I said and seems to fundamentally misunderstand all that I said
@@blackbird7781 I think what he's trying to say is that "you really cant take the competitiveness out of these people." They want to be the best (its like a fucking animal instinct), but being the best basically nets you nothing, so they're left in this really weird position. Either they put aside that competitive drive and find some other reason to waste money on this game, or they play a game that'll reward them.
All the more reason this game needs a grassroots competitive scene. As for casual, we need more homebrew formats.
@@four-en-tee i mean, you can still be competitive but you need to have a good balance. Kinda like work life balance. If you never have fun unless you always win, then you may need to reexamine yourself
exactly being competitive not always equal fun and sometimes when your being too competitive its not fun anymore.
Gimmick puppet ftk, Fiendsmith, Snake-eye, Shifter, seemingly infinite resource-loops, Puppet Lock, Droll, Pater-Omega Handloops, field spells that grant "Unaffected", Superpoly, Mulchammy, Dogwood-Time rules,...
There are so many problems in the game atm and it feels like they don't care, the banlists are getting better but still feel like they are to slow. And the new releases just seem to continue to promote those kind of unhealthy things so yeah, I left comp ygo a while ago and don't regret it at all. Just hurts to see the game you love go down that path.
Thing is, Konami doesn't need to care; So long as people continue to buy the unbalanced cards, they make money. They make money, nothing else matters.
@@Chimeratech_O.D. Here in japan we have a problem.
Some big companies have ancient manegement, we know konami has that same way of thinking. Something like if ain't broke don't change it mentality that cripples our country.
My issue with the game is it feels like a 'who will run out of handtraps' and Lingering effects like Shifter. I remember at UK Nats I shiftered someone and they conceeded saying well done and I was like 'sorry mate' I felt shifter won instead of my skill.
I would rather win by skill and think how to pass their board than just drop shifter or gimmick lock. It's why I enjoyed TOSS, Trinity (qli, shaddoll format) hell I am on edison and goat now. I get what you mean and I hope one day konami really looks at the game and fixes it.
Modern ygo is just Bad. The fact that every Single card ever released is in the cardpool at all times is just terrible Design. Rotations would improve the game a lot but would not solve the non interactive nature of modern ygo.
Edison and other legacy Formats is where its at. A Format with a closed cardpool is just the perfect Form of yugioh.
well, it is what it is, without handtraps, people just go for the most over the top 100214820413 gajilion card combo 1st turn kill,
@@IkIk-rq4pk But Konami could just ban or limit cards that which make it easier for decks to abuse 1 card combos and long combo strings. Handtraps are basically just patchwork for horrible game design.
I do agree. UK nationals finals were sad. Winning with just a lock was a peak of unskill.
I was thinking, while we as players can see those issues, why we don't do something about it? Compaining might educate the community but its not enough. I remember locals in Japan straight up banning Mystic Mine, without the permission of OCG Konami for the better of their player base. Why we don't rebel against some of Konami's dump decisions like that?
This game is unplayable even on a casual level sometimes, I can't imagine how it was on a competitive level. Everything is basically the same formula except the basis of archetypes.
Hope you manage to have fun and rest, you deserve it
So a friend and I got into Magic after seeing where Yu-Gi-Oh was headed, mostly playing Commander. There's a local level cEDH tournament that has an $800 1st place prize coming up in a few weeks. It's insane to me that Yu-Gi-Oh literally lets the top cut in a major tourney, ESPECIALLY worlds, walk away empty handed. It's sad really
I mean $800 for 1st is crumbs compared to the cost of the average cEDH deck. Proportionally, getting a switch for the average Yugioh deck is the same if not better.
CEDH players are almost always fine with proxies though. And while it’s not universal, tournaments often do as well, since Wizards of the Coast doesn’t really do official EDH tournaments anyways, they’re usually community-run.
Of course, that does diminish the original comment’s point a bit anyways, since that’s very likely a community tournament as well, and if it doesn’t allow proxies then it’s just a tournament of wallets considering that non-proxy CEDH would indeed be insanely expensive.
@@notveryimmortal7350 Proxies are allowed in the tourney. 👍
Compared to other card games , YGO has absolutely the worst prizes and Konami dgaf.
As long as that continues , people will leave and join OP or Lorcana.
I kid you not all the people is usually see play lorcana at my locals looks bored af lol
One piece prize reward is super crazy
I only started YuGiOh in January this year and it is crazy to see how, not only has there been been a massive rise in price, but the game has become unbalanced. I'm hoping that it will improve, but I am so sad to see Jess leave the competetive scene. You have inspired me a lot to get better and I'm always on the edge of my seat to see how you develop strategies (particularly with plants). If I'm feeling this way as a new player, I can't imagine how veterans of the game are feeling. Wake up Konami and start caring about your player base :/
Get out while you still have a chance.
I‘m very sad that you quit. I can understand the reasons why do that. I enjoyed watching you play big events and your content. I love plants and you and Marcus are the reason why I brought a Rikka Deck. I enjoy the Deck so much especially with the new Support (Aroma and Raika).
I hope that you will come back to competitive YuGiOh.
It’s very upsetting seeing what everything has come to.
The game we love and have invested not only our time but hard earned money into has no light at the end of the tunnel. If the Aug ban list doesn’t fix this I don’t think we can recover
@@ICEMAN-Z8 nobody knows lol
Thanks for making your frustrations known. I hope you feel a little better having this out in the open; hopefully, you return with renewed interest!
Lots of respect for u for making this vid, Jess. It needed to be said. Konami is out of touch.
Hey Jess, so this is my first comment on TH-cam that I want to designate to you :) Like many other I'm kind of shocked. However I fully understand and respect your decision. So I'm a late bloomer regarding YuGiOh TCG and started 2 years ago from scratch. About 90% of my decks are based on plants. I started with pure Rikka with you as source of my inspiration. With your help I update my Rikka deck to the current version (your last combo vid) and I loved all of your combos, tips and tricks. It was a pleasure to me to see all your TH-cam videos as well as the YCS games with (for me) sometimes unexpected and brilliant plays. I hope you will get back anytime, altthough incredible things have to happen. I wish you all the best. Greetings from Germany.
And the game is now so expensive too, and the prizing is not worthing half of it. In my country, the Fiendsmith Snake-Eyes deck costs literally 4 to 5 full salaries to build it, it is insane! I also lost interested in compete in Yu-Gi-Oh, I prefer to just playing Forfun and collect my Yuya's cards nowadays and that's it. Thanks for sharing your opinion with us, you have my support 🙋🏻♂️
I agree there’s high cost and low reward. Playing for fun is the best way to enjoy Yugioh imo. Competitive just dosent seem worth it.
@@CHRONOTHEMANGAKA totally!
It’s kinda funny, so many people were talking about this very issue for years.
They were dismissed, told they were just bad, called yugiboomers and the like.
We told you, we warned you, and now here are.
Card designs trends come and go sometimes for the better and sometimes for the worse so I am planning just to wait this out till better card design rolls around, best of luck in your future endeavours
More power to you. I think my only gripe with one of your reasonings is that “previous top players not topping as consistently” is really discrediting to the new up and comers aka “the nobodies” who probably put in just as much time, money, and energy as you did. You are right though in that prize support is bad.
Yeah that logic is "Me and my friends aren't topping every event, and they're the best players I know" and it's incorrect and corny. Her complaining about not time cheesing at Euros this year when she did it last year is laughable
I am sad that you are leaving the competitive field because you are by far my favorite and most inspirational player, but I totally understand your reasons (I agree with everything you say). Playing needs to be fun and rewarding. If it is not, you are taking the right decision for yourself. Thanks for taking the time to express yourself and take a good break to take care of yourself.
Do better Konami.
i very much get it, so tempted to just sell off everything
also god, the notes on the community, i go to tournaments and get weird jeers because people know who i am and know im trans, i interact with people online and am flogged with parasocial, weird people who refuse to respect boundaries. Its just, exhausting, and ive basically been made to erase just about all my online presence.
Any game can be made off the back of a strong community, i actively play a fighting game called lethal league with
I'm selling everything i have that is yugioh related to get bunch of max rarity Lorcana cards, oh boy is it satisfying to defeat that Stockholm's Syndrome i had back then lol
At least Side Formats are fun and not that expensive.
@@DanteAlighieriIlBulloDiFirenze "to get bunch of max rarity Lorcana cards" lil bro thinks he defeated the Stockholm Syndrome 💀
@@Dylligraphy true, gambling is still strong (those cards will be very expensive and I will bank on them trust me bro)
Man you have a nice distinct style, really liking it. Keep doing what you love :) even if its the more "casual" route.
the people who abuse tier 0 formats going away is great. Also these people who are quitting is not hurting konami at all infact they will just be replaced.
I understand you and support your opinion that the player can have fun and get the reward due in a local instead of a bigger tournament, I'm completing my 10 years as a casual player and I still enjoy the game, the biggest event I've ever participated in was regional level, where I really enjoyed the experience and variety of decks and duelists to face and get to know ^^
This is understandable, I don’t know how I feel about this format either. I really appreciate everything you do and I’ll keep supporting you, Jess❤ you will always be my favorite Yugioh player!
I am predicting the next banlists are gonna slaughter a lot of the stuff around fiendsmith.
@@blackbird7781key word around so fiendsmith just gonna jump to break another deck 😔
@@Duelist07985 they cant ban fiendsmith cuz it just came out and is nowhere near oppressive enough to be emergency banned unless we get a spyral situation
@@blackbird7781 yea it’s just unlikely asf
@@Duelist07985 yeah. Fiendsmith is broken as hell but it isn't oppressive yet.
The end for me was pure Snake-Eye actually. I really enjoyed the Snake-Eye Fire King deck, super fun to play and play against imo, but once everyone switched to pure, it just didn't feel very fun anymore.
I love this game, I have been playing competitively since around Tengu Plant format, received multiple invites and even topped through out the many years of playing, but I decided to step back from the competitive scene as well for the same reasons, so I relate to how you feel.
You are an inspiration and have achieved incredible feats I could only dream of, so it is sad to see such an amazing player go. But I look forward to seeing what's to come in the future and wish you nothing but the best Jess!
Jess, thank you so much for what you have done for women in competitive yugioh. No matter what you do, nobody can take that away from you.
You've put up with so much awful hate but I just wanted to remind you that for so many of us, the things you have done have meant the world and we will support you forever, regardless of what content you decide to make next.
I'm so glad you've felt able to take this step and choose what's right for you and your happiness right now.
Hold your head high girlie, excited to see where you go next x
I'm not even kidding, I was *just* talking to my best friend 30 minutes ago about your tweet of you saying you're not having fun with the game anymore, and now *this* happens. We actually met through Yu-Gi-Oh back in high school, but he dropped the game in 2021 for Digimon and convinced me to drop it and join him in December last year. With everything in YGO that's happened this year, switching TCGs was single best decision I've ever made for any of my hobbies.
I agree with you. I quit Yu-Gi-Oh! around the Spright format and now mostly watch content rather than play. I've found Lorcana gameplay to be more enjoyable, and the community is much more welcoming. Additionally, the prize support in Lorcana is fantastic.
Konami seems to take their player base for granted, barely communicating about important things like banlists and winners of big events. I don’t blame you for quitting competitve Yu-Gi-Oh!. Playing with friends around the kitchen counter is still fun tough.
Well said.
But even still I will still support the game as it has helped me throughout a lot of tough times. I started at around the same time as you. But during that time I was hospitalized and was on the verge of death. But Yu-Gi-Oh helped me get through my recovery. I lost the ability to do what I loved to do back then and it was then that a friend introduced me to the game. I got really good at the game even though I didn’t go to tournaments. I created my own variant of Phantom Knights and got to meet a lot of new people who play the game with me. A lot of them gave up on the game because it became to difficult to keep up with me. Now I am left alone and it hurts. But I still like the game and will keep on playing for now. I hope that there is a change someday. Maybe the community quitting the game for a while might actually spark a change. For a business cannot operate without customers. Konami seems to have forgotten that. As somebody who wants to open up their own Gaming Parlor, I feel as if the most important thing isn’t profit anymore. But rather the consistency of having customers. That is achieved not through producing more products and making them cost more. That is a gate keeper that prevents newer customers from entering. That is why I have been trying to figure out ways of mitigating these problems. When the card shop half of my store is opened I will have already found my solution to this. Probably in the form of store credit and deck building help. That way new players can enter the game easier and will even get a discount when they join the store at first. And then as time goes on and they have been around longer they get a few more benefits and become apart of a small community. My whole goal in my life is to create a place like that where people can relax and forget about the stress that life brings even for just a fleeting moment. I know it will not be easy but I am working on achieving my goals. That is why I am here typing this comment. I watched this video because it gives me more insight into how others feel about this whole disaster that Yu-Gi-Oh has been through. And for that I thank you. Thank you for helping me achieve my goals. Thank you for your time and efforts throughout the time you have been playing Yu-Gi-Oh. It means a lot to me. And with that I shall take my leave. Farewell
Thanks Jess for speaking up!
I been playing this game for 22 years.. . I have not competitive player by any means but I am someone that plays casual level but on a Morden term while still making different ideas work and keeping up with the many archtypes and different summoning types over the years. I have no intention of stopping either but a video like this.. really making me think twice of actually competing in competitive yugioh. I sincerely hope the company does learn what they been doing to amazing players like this one... cuz just damn.
I really love this video as I have been feeling some type of way too. this was the first nawcq where I felt like testing didn't matter. my friend played like 2 matches all week in testing and was like, I'm just gonna draw shifter or calamity lock my opponent or just lose. then my tenpai friend just said I'll draw shifter and breakers or lose. I tested fiend Smith yubel picked it all up with the hype around it over 400$ to get the engine, to literally get hit with a game 1 evenly matched into full ragnaraika trap trix combo and then round two, I make full board to lose to normal summon imanto wato into full runick stun deck out. you can spend months testing the decks and just lose to random crack effects that linger it turn your entire strategy off. it gets you frustrated when you know you are better than how you perform but simply lose the rng game. tenpai friend has not been competitive in years and just wins half his games with shifter and breakers because it's just that simple with that deck. I hope things change, I love this game, I judge for it, teach it, and enjoy playing it, but the gameplay is awful of late. like the 20th best deck in the game right now, is still just a crazy deck that if the other 19 didn't exist it would just be unbeatable. everything is so powerful right now. the prizing is a whole other issue to vent about but I digress for now. thank you for speaking your mind and I hope we both can find love for the game again.
I only play in MD and I completely understand that feeling. Cards like Maxx "C" make the game very hard to take seriously. Is still fun to play on the events and with friends, but the ladder (and the duelist cups) in general feel more like a chore.
A hug from Brazil, I'm your fan, I admire you a lot, I love you as a fan, I understand your frustration, I've always played Sky Striker, and this format simply isn't enough to win with go in second control, Snake-eye Fiendsmith is crazy, I started playing Tenpai to fight against this new format's rubbish, but I love Sky Striker, and I miss a format where Shifter doesn't win games, I miss a format where we need strategy, and not expensive cards winning games, I feel It's frustration that the tournaments don't have good prizes, like other games that are gaining momentum, but I also love Yugioh, I'm rooting for the game to go back to how it was before, and I hope this upcoming banlist helps something. strength, a hug and a loving kiss from a fan.
The prizing issue really is insane.. Like for example just getting top 32 in one piece you'll get like a $500-1000 (value) card. This is honestly not something that's hard to fix on konami's end but, as you've said it seems like they just don't care.. all the effort to get to that point, and all the money spent to get a deck that can compete at that level, its frankly disgusting lol
I quit in April, after feeling sour towards the game since January, and it's been mentally freeing for me.
I've accepted that i can't change Konami's practices, only how i response to them. So i stopped spending my money, have been selling off my collection and dove into Elestrals and Pokemon VGC.
And since Konami communicates very little with the YGO Community, I believe the only way they'll hear anything is when the bar stops trending up. Talk with your money and, more importantly, time.
I imagine Konami would rather see the game die before they begin catering to their audience, though 🤷🏾♂️
Yugioh has been a slot machine battle for a few years now. "Gameplay" reduced down to counter one, two, or all actions your opponent takes.
Jess, i recently came back to playing YGO... and what keeps me interest in Plants/Rept/Insects archetype are pretty much your videos/tutorials. I've learned so much from you. It's sad seeing you quit, dear mentor but also wish you best of success on your next journey! ^_^
If I lost to a die roll in the finals after I went undefeated, I would quit as well. Unbelieveable what Konami is allowing to happen in those games.
Is that all this is about? The lad with the tentative grip on reality lost a card game and now he's throwing all his toys out of the pram..?
Oh the joys of an unstable mind. . .
Cry baby LOL😂😂😂😂😂😂
The crazy thing for me is that events keep growing while acknowledging the level of prizing.
Thank you for talking about this!!! Hope things get better in the future for everyone
Great video. The state of yugioh is definitely worrisome for people who are very invested in the game. I often wonder about the potential longevity of my channel because it really feels like Yugioh is digging itself into a hole in many ways.
I also quit after witnessing the landslide of Tier 0s. The current card design direction is awful.
I came back a year ago, last moments of the tier 0 tear format. I've done well in OTS playing my pet deck and I managed to finally win a local last week but using Fiendsmith. It feels like that victory is stained now that everyone is saying that there is no merit in winning with Fiendsmith. That makes me think of quitting too even though I have fun playing with my friends.
Sorry, I needed to share it somewhere. Thank you for reading this far.
"Konami doesnt care" 100% facts
@The_Lovey_Informer the game is still ass though
komoney
@hexolomgaming9498 Every company makes video games for money and the people who play them are different than the company’s expectations.
@@OmegaVideoGameGod yes but if you rely on nostalgia, it's pretty weak don't you think
@hexolomgaming9498 Yes and no everything changes over over the years but there’s always something to look forward too :)
The game has become who ever goes first spends 20 mins playing half there deck to negate everything the person going second does. Its not fun to play, or to watch. It started with 5D's and the intro of synchro, then xyz's, then pendulum, then link's. What yugioh DESPERATELY NEEDS is a return to original form, pre new summon mechanics, else it will continue to walk the plank its already on. Have a great day folks.
First off, Jess, you're my YGO GOAT. I got back into the game by using your Rikka/Sunavalon deck and it helped a ton when relearning the game, so I'm sad to see you go. That said, I get it. I think it's pretty clear, from the tournament prizing, to the prices and super low drop rates of gems in Master Duel, to the 20 years of power creep, it seems abundantly clear that Konami doesn't care about the YGO player base or the direction of the game at all, as long as they're making boatloads of money off of it. Super unfortunate.
I really want to enjoy the game like I used to back in the day, but it's like the game revolves less around plays and counter-plays now and more around trying to negate everything your opponent does and just not letting them play. When it happens to me, it feels bad. When I do it to other people it feels good, but I feel like I'm winning less because of my skills and more because I got lucky enough to draw Ash Blossom, Maxx C, and Ghost Mourner on turn 1, ya know?
Watching you play was always a spectacle. Learned so much about plant decks and how to build them from you. Honestly I share pretty much all your frustrations with the game and I wish you the best.
You will forever be one of the greats in this game and I hope the issues get fixed.
As for prizing, I went to a locals yesterday and got $55 store credit for going 2nd out of 18 players. I spent $10 for travel and entry total when rounding up. The prizing does need to be fixed if I can recoup my losses and then some at a locals but a pro can’t at a YCS for doing equally as good if not better.
Your store giving you store credit was in violation of Konami OTS procedure, and they can have their status revoked for that. Which also needs fixing.
This does particularly suck because Jess was such a success story in competitive Yugioh. Frankly, I don't see the lack of tangible prizing as being the problem as Yugioh has historically done well in terms of sales and event attendances in spite of that. The more significant rewards are influence, exposure, and people to bounce ideas off of. Someone like Joshua Schmidt is the ultimate example in terms of being seen, being able to collaborate and be taken seriously by anyone and everyone in competitive Yugioh, and is someone who continues to enjoy Yugioh and do well in part because of that. I would've thought Jess, who saw much more success than the average YCS or WCQ attendee could ever dream of, would be able to leverage that into more momentum and continued success. That not being the case for Jess is more troubling than the lack of prize support, and her failure is shared by the competitive Yugioh community. We need to do more to celebrate our legends, in terms of attention, respect, and donations go just as far as cash prize support to someone who helps get you into the game or helps you get better.
It's no Yugioh, but a smaller games called Mythik TCG plays similar to Yugioh. And honestly, it's more fun.
Ideas for you :
- Yugioh tutorials
- Yugioh videos for new players
- Locals tournament , both vlog and duel content
- Archetype Analysis
- Combo Guides
- Selling and Buying Guides (For good money management)
Hope you read this!! Love u Jess! Good luck and GREAT decision on quitting this ugly ass complex game.
its terrible, but hilarious i mean the best way to describe this format is "Custom card format." The format where you're better off playing custom cards. Or casually. Konami must've hired a custom card creator, Flamberge, Fiendsmith cards not having any restrictions, Snake-Eyes is probably the most Custom Card-like designed archetype i've ever seen. I'm enjoying the Custom Card of Fire format though, I can sit back and terrorize my opponent with HT's with SE and watching them be forced to scoop when i summon SE Ash, I love going second and undoing my entire opponents board with Tenpai without even having to care what it is, their deck even does. It doesn't matter LOL FIRE IS MY FAVORITE Although i gotta say wtf, those players are getting robbed but they're robbing themselves because they continue to participate.
Thank you for everything you did for the game, I really learned a lot by watching your videos, I am very excited to want to play plants the same way you play it, I hope that in the future the game is fixed, we will always be supporting you no matter what decision you make or If you only played locally, we will be here.
It's ridiculous. After I get some white woods plays in I'll probably be right behind you
I left yugioh awhile back, because it was getting way too expensive and not fun. I really enjoy MTG now, commander is a lot of fun. I've never played standard format competitively besides on the mobile app. But WOTC gives good prizes in their tournaments with $250,000 in cash prizes, $50,000 of which goes to the winner. Good luck to you on your future endeavors I'm rooting for you.
Jess have you considered engaging in time wizard more? I had a blast at Ygo Uk nationals playing Edison. It's also a different type of gameplay which could be fresh. Idk about the prizing but you can win giant cards at the UTW events which are worth more than you're getting at the moment. Frazier smith sold his giant Judgment Dragon for $6000. Not all of them will be worth that much but still it's better than what you currently get. There was a giant black rose dragon which also sold for hella money a while back too
Hi Jess ! I don't know you and you don't know me, but... I just wanted to say I'm so happy to have followed your yugioh adventures over the past years. What you did (which is incredible and took my breath away seeing you play) and represented and all I know you may definitely have to deal with (which is if that's the case, know there is empathy with it, it's a shared struggle), by my own experience in card games communities and life in general, was... a highly needed breath of fresh air. You made me watch yugioh championships. You made me root for you. But not only for what you meant, also for the way you played, the deep love of the game could be felt by your own deckbuilding. Almost every sunavalon / rikka deck in every championship was I think really thanks to you. People looked up to your love of the game and your undeniable skill acquired with thousands of hours of practice, and... having a specific interest on card games myself, I really get it, and it made me love the impact you had on the yugioh community. I don't know if enough people expressed it to you, but I just want you to know that we're many in my circles that rooted for you and were so happy to see you play and made us play the game in ways we love ! But almost none wrote messages that you could read. So... yeah, know you have way more support and a positive impact on so many wholesome levels that have been expressed, and that's why I write this : so you may know about this, because when things are hard it's easy to forget about it, and not even consider it.
Fun fact, I love plant decks, back when DaD was a thing and Infernal Garden just came out, I was like : "I'm going to deckbuild so much about it because it's so wonderful and i love it". And when I saw sunavalon / rikka, I HAD to build the decks. Sadly I could never fulfill this completely and one still lies "almost complete" on yugioh master duel. But then, I saw you played it, and it was a rogue deck, but you built and played it so perfect that you single-handedly raised it to close to very close to meta. That's how much of an impact you had on this game, tournaments, casual and pro play, all by yourself. People couldn't ignore it completely, else they would just be unable to play against you, who is one of the very best player in the world.
My message is a bit confused maybe, I hope not too much. But to sum up : you're really cool, you did so much good, to yugioh, the community, and people wanting to love this game. And we do share the same pain, even at very casual levels, at how konami is pushing intense power-creep which... is so bad it breaks part of the ability to love the game (rng and things like shifter / mulcharmy becoming.... overwhelmingly oppressive and frustrating, not even talking about prizes). But also, we do understand how worse it is at a competititve level, which made all of me and my many friends loving yugioh, run away from competitive scene, sadly.
So yeah :
Thanks, so much.
Just happy you keep your desire to... enjoy things and be yourself.
You make many people like me and those around me feel welcome, at least in part, in this game we want to love and did love, and still love quite a lot.
I'll be happy to watch everything you want to share, less competitive and more your thoughts and love for the game.
And that's something we're all looking forward to.
But as someone who burnt out a lot, I hope you'll do it at your own rhythm, because you want to share it.
And as a side note, pink hair rocks and we're happy to just see you playing or talking, for all the wonderful reasons there can be.
I hope you'll be fine, more than fine, and...
Yeah. Thanks. You're super cool. You did so much good. More that will ever expressed.
I'm glad I could listen to you and see you play.
We'll never meet, I might not even write another message here, but I hope that this message if you read it will help knowing that you've done so much good and also helped many express their love of the game even more.
I wish you a good life, sincerely, whatever happens, and lots of wonderful times with yugioh but also every other game you might want to play, and also... in every aspect of your life, because I do have a feeling it matters a lot too.
You're the best Jess, and I support you forever ❤
Recently my youngest son showed interest in the Yu-Gi-Oh! and I decided to get a few Structure Decks ( Dark World, Saga of Blue Eyes White Dragon, Spirit Charmers, Legends of the Crystal Beast with a few booster packs). Thank you for your insight. If I/we decide to get competitive, I'll keep this information in mind. As of now, I think we're gonna play casually.
I was tired about yugioh kinda for some time already and i quitted the game last year. the game was not the one I fell in love with anymore. I thought that I would regret this decision at some point, then I learned one piece card game.. better decision of my life 😂 and I started to watch the anime after I started playing the tcg, the game is just good…
Kazuki Takahashi is turning over in his grave right now. R.I.P. sensei. I switched over to flesh and blood. Jess, you're more than welcome to sit across the table from me anytime, I would enjoy a game with you.
This is truely sad to hear, I did see you at nationals in Birmingham and just seeing a top player there add to the excitement for me it was like seeing a celeb! to know you wont be going anymore differently takes away from the events and that's a huge loss. I'm looking forward to your videos when you come back from your break though! the Yugioh community loves you!
There are just so many problems with this game right now. But still I think the competitive scene has the most problems. This company makes cards that shoot the power level through the roof, then refusing to acknowledge them or providing any sort of a meaningful banlist until months later, and even then they're incentivised to not hit the problem cards or only hit cheaper cards so people will continue to consume their products. The competitive scene is at their greed's mercy.
Furthermore I heard the lack of prizing was apparently because of Takahashi's wish for Yugioh to never become smth people would play for the money, which is ironic considering how Joey's motivation for winning the Duelist Kingdom tournament is to bring home money to treat his sister's blindness, but I digress. I believe this is just a bullshit excuse they pull up whenever we accuse them of being stingy because let's be real. It's always been the effing biggest TCG in the entire world. They were already selling very well, even when the competitive scene couldn't pop off, so why do you think they need to change anything about their business strategy? They can always leech off the competitive players and collectors who will consume their products *no matter what* and continue to be the biggest most profitable TCG in the world. I hope this trend of the community having people who complain but unable to do anything and people who ignore the problems and buy into their anti-consumerist practices can stop soon. If competitive players and even players of the TCG in general can go hand in hand for an ACTUAL BOYCOTT (stop buying their products no matter how attractive the cards can be, stop showing at events, making statements publicly addressing these issues, etc.) then I believe they will be forced to change their practices to make this game at least a bit healthier.
Biggest TCG in the world? That's gotta be Pokémon or Magic. Don't get me wrong, YuGiOh is up there, but biggest? Debatable
you hit the nail on the head as to why Im on the way out of this game and Ive never gone to a ycs, regional or any major event nowadays I only at most play 2 rounds of yugioh a week and Im still falling out of love with it
Konami failed yugioh, and it should get punished.
Yeah! Absolutely!
Everybody’s quitting it’s hard to even make yugioh content and remain happy these days with all the toxicity in the comments and fan base.. happiest I’ve been in a while and all that’s changed is the content I create. Plus we’re all being priced out of our fav decks. I had to drop 200$ to make my lighsworns “good” and still never went all out for the extra deck
So I wish u the best of luck with leaving the competitive side of the game but there sum problems in this video. This is the second video I’m hearing that line “top players are not topping recently and that’s shows bad performance from the game” no that sounds entirely like a skill issue. Yes things are definitely out of ur control in any game but if ur a good player u will win, u will top. Sometimes it’s not ur day or format that doesn’t mean the game is bad there are always gonna be someone better not coming in top cut shows u either have to get better or this isn’t ur time to shine yet
Ur all literally playing the same deck when u sit at that table it eliminates so many negative cause u know what u gonna play against. Yes the hand trap situation is dumb but u pro players make the format. u can’t blame entirely the company it’s goes to blame both. y’all make the deck and they pushed it so y’all see this is the best option to play, so it comes down either can I hand trap him or break his board? And at the end the better player won
The prizing thing I can’t comment on I’m not a top player so I can’t tell u
But the no hype thing confused me idk if we had different views on wha hyped means but there was so much of it leading up to and after the event infinite forbidden is literally the set to look at and we all expected it to help the already beat deck SE but when it didn’t win EU Nats that open so many eyes but ig cause I’m not a pro I don’t see it like that
I've always been a casual yugioh player, the problem with that is that where I live even the casual player play tryhard decks so I lost interest a year and a half ago.
Last November I switched to One Piece and I've been enjoying it a lot more than ygo, it's bittersweet because I stopped playing the game that I loved but I also got into a new game that gives me the same feeling as when I first got into ygo back in like 2009 playing Blackwings
Since you finally agree, can you unban me now in your twitch lol 😂 I got banned in 2023 cause I said the same thing about YCS. Low budget prizes and you got mad about it and ban me yourself LOL. NOW your here
Sorry to hear you made this decision. It's not easy to walk away from something you love. I'm in a similar place, I'll be on indefinite hiatus for a while, the game is just getting exhausting. Plenty of other TCGs to play. Best of luck
Come play One Piece. The game rewards skill! Yugioh is fun but the card design has been booty. Can't wait to see what you do in the future ❤🙌
sad to see you go.
but hearing your perspective feels good.
Lots of players just shout "GIVE US MORE PRIZING OR WE QUIT". but never give a solid explanation except for that they want more :P
Myself i don't play for the prizing, but tbf i'm not a Top Player. but hearing it this way: i get it :'(
Good luck with what ever your future goals are
Love you Jess ❤ keep shining ✨️
10 years into the game, finally worked your butt off to improve and showcase your skills at world championship level making top 8, and walking away with nothing.
Wake up Konami.
It's the community's fault for putting up with scumbag Konami ...
this takes lots of bravery. you're like the yugioh Rosa Parks
I’ve brought up horrendous prizing and been ripped apart by the community on every forum. I’m 30 and can only dedicate so much time to yugioh, motivating myself to waste hundreds of hours testing to have a chance at the embarrassment that is the current prize structure isnt happening. Casual master duel is where I’ll be until I see legitimate changes.
Very sad news, but you could see it coming. Pros have been complaining about the state of the game for a while now.
I'm not a top player by any means, like most people. But something I've noticed is the massive variance in my results-ranging from exceptionally good to absolutely horrible. Every major event feels like a coin flip now, and the top meta decks seem to reward you less and less. I can totally see players who are actually good at the game fuming over this situation.
I really hope that by you doing this video, things will start to change. With you being an ambassador for competitive play, it should signal something to Konami that they can't ignore.
Flesh and Blood prizing 👀
1.agreed that blanket effects should not exist, 1 for 1 interactions is fine but droll, shifter and purulia or watever it’s called should not exist.
2. Agreed that the “hype” is gone because the decks at the top have been out for some time and naturally it gets stale. Even to the pilots.
3. People needs to give the prizing thing a rest. This is a hobby and you should not expect to get compensated. We do it cuz we enjoy the grind, and the gameplay. The ycs vs locals point is nuts…idk why she even said that.
4. The hate will always exist.
5. Just cuz top players play other games doesn’t mean not mean they are stopping yugioh…attendance is still up at events . It feels like she is projecting things to others
I played from 2003 to 2024. I played competitively from 2007 to 2019. I finally quit, I've fallen in love with lorcana and genuinely prefer it. I loved yugioh so much that I changed my legal last name to Madolche, my favorite deck. The name of my business is Madolche's Local Delivery. My avatar on here is a custom photo I had made of myself and my Ace monsters, Madolche Puddingcess Chocolat-A-La-Mode. I never thought I'd quit for good, but I finally have.
I could feel the aura through this message. Feel for u bro