flood gates should not have even been made

[doofus0510]

in my opinion they only make the game less enjoyable a good example of this is beatdown eldlich that abuses skill drain which is a card with too low of a cost.

[doofus0510]

the only ones that are kind of ok in my opinion is rivalry and there can only be one.

[¿¡Kloey!?²]

The problem with stun strategies is that, especially in a best of 1 format the deck is often tailor made to not even care about the floodgate their using so it essentially just becomes a restriction for the opponent. Honestly I don't mind most floodgates with how annoying they are but the only ones I feel have no place are the incredibly sacky ones like dimensional barrier and the barrier statues.

I don't mind restrictions, I just don't believe stopping your opponent completely is fun. And before I know who interjects, yes on the opposite end when people make a board with 4-5 negates + hand traps, that's just as bad if not arguably worse.

[Papa Shekels]

It's a form of interaction, even if that interaction is cutting off the potential for future interaction. It's basic game theory, the way you win is by some combination of achieving your end goal while stopping your opponent from doing theirs. Decks that are too slow to beat others with pure speed instead focus more on slowing others down. Hell, skill drain beatdown was one of the first "real" strategies in yugioh, long before standardized archetypes became a thing.

Whether it's fun or not is rather irrelevant, as the point here is to climb a ranked ladder by beating your opponents. Aside from that one objective goal, everybody else has fun differently in subjective ways that you can not speak on. Some people see a superheavy 4-negate board and get frustrated with the game, others see that as the fun part of the game where they are playing a puzzle trying to figure out how to break that board with the resources they drew.

The only real argument against them is that especially in a best of 1 format, they are extremely sacky and boil down to "did you draw the out". While that sucks, it's not that different from the rest of the game here. If your opponent scales wakaushi and you don't have a droll or maxx c or board breakers in hand, you can just save yourself time and surrender on the spot there. That's just the nature of this game while it remains as only a best of 1 format, and they've done a fair job addressing it by limiting most of the biggest offender floodgates. At that point, if they get lucky and draw the 1-of, they should be rewarded with at least a chance for it to win the game, in the same way a branded player gets rewarded for opening aluber to bait out interruptions while already having the fusion in hand

[Merilirem]

I want to like floodgates as a concept but I agree. The ones that are ok aren't worth the problems created by the ones that aren't.

I have also wondered if negates should exist. Really just anything that stops plays is questionable. Its far better to have plays happen and just interrupt them then to not have them happen at all. Like popping monsters they need or even stopping them by removing targets which effectively negates but is actually a lot more interesting when put into practice.

I think there is a line for both floodgate effects and negates but we have certainly passed it when stun does nothing but flip and pray and people make 6 negate boards with more negates in hand.

[Merilirem]

Originally posted by Papa Shekels:

It's a form of interaction, even if that interaction is cutting off the potential for future interaction. It's basic game theory, the way you win is by some combination of achieving your end goal while stopping your opponent from doing theirs. Decks that are too slow to beat others with pure speed instead focus more on slowing others down. Hell, skill drain beatdown was one of the first "real" strategies in yugioh, long before standardized archetypes became a thing.

Whether it's fun or not is rather irrelevant, as the point here is to climb a ranked ladder by beating your opponents. Aside from that one objective goal, everybody else has fun differently in subjective ways that you can not speak on. Some people see a superheavy 4-negate board and get frustrated with the game, others see that as the fun part of the game where they are playing a puzzle trying to figure out how to break that board with the resources they drew.

The only real argument against them is that especially in a best of 1 format, they are extremely sacky and boil down to "did you draw the out". While that sucks, it's not that different from the rest of the game here. If your opponent scales wakaushi and you don't have a droll or maxx c or board breakers in hand, you can just save yourself time and surrender on the spot there. That's just the nature of this game while it remains as only a best of 1 format, and they've done a fair job addressing it by limiting most of the biggest offender floodgates. At that point, if they get lucky and draw the 1-of, they should be rewarded with at least a chance for it to win the game, in the same way a branded player gets rewarded for opening aluber to bait out interruptions while already having the fusion in hand

That depends on if we are talking ranked with banlists and such or from a design aspect of a card game. I took this thread as more of the latter given OP's wording. When speaking of design fun is the key factor.

[Papa Shekels]

Originally posted by Merilirem:

That depends on if we are talking ranked with banlists and such or from a design aspect of a card game. I took this thread as more of the latter given OP's wording. When speaking of design fun is the key factor.

Imo it's the same either way. I've been playing for the past year in a tournament that keeps banning more and more cards after each one, and seeing the power level shrink down in real time back to 2008 yugioh, it's really just the same thing with a different paint job. I see people talking all the time about how they wouldn't mind losing to something if it was at least fun or interactive, but then they only ever complain about what they lost to. Getting every card in your hand negated is technically interactive, but that's just as frustrating as being shut out of the game by skill drain tcboo gozen.

The real issue is when games are one-sided, and on the flip side they tend to be fun when it swings both ways and neither player feels out of it until the end. This is something that can and does still happen at all levels of play, through floodgates and through negates. Yugioh in general has a very hard time making that happen consistently because of just how varied the card pool is, and MD having a best of one format exacerbates that issue, but most individual cards or types of cards are just the scapegoats people point to because that's what they lost to. You wouldn't be nearly as frustrated with the baronne or the skill drain if you didn't lose to it, and that's what it usually comes down to, and something people really need to learn to deal with in a zero-sum game with so much luck involved

[Merilirem]

Originally posted by Papa Shekels:

Originally posted by Merilirem:

That depends on if we are talking ranked with banlists and such or from a design aspect of a card game. I took this thread as more of the latter given OP's wording. When speaking of design fun is the key factor.

Imo it's the same either way. I've been playing for the past year in a tournament that keeps banning more and more cards after each one, and seeing the power level shrink down in real time back to 2008 yugioh, it's really just the same thing with a different paint job. I see people talking all the time about how they wouldn't mind losing to something if it was at least fun or interactive, but then they only ever complain about what they lost to. Getting every card in your hand negated is technically interactive, but that's just as frustrating as being shut out of the game by skill drain tcboo gozen.

The real issue is when games are one-sided, and on the flip side they tend to be fun when it swings both ways and neither player feels out of it until the end. This is something that can and does still happen at all levels of play, through floodgates and through negates. Yugioh in general has a very hard time making that happen consistently because of just how varied the card pool is, and MD having a best of one format exacerbates that issue, but most individual cards or types of cards are just the scapegoats people point to because that's what they lost to. You wouldn't be nearly as frustrated with the baronne or the skill drain if you didn't lose to it, and that's what it usually comes down to, and something people really need to learn to deal with in a zero-sum game with so much luck involved

Its not the same at all. Whether a game is one sided or not floodgates aren't as much fun. Floodgates allow for a style of gameplay that just isn't conducive to interaction as it shuts down more than it adds by a large margin. They also lend themselves to one sided games because if they work the opponent can't do anything and if they don't the floodgate player will generally just get pounded.

You need to separate the whiners from the actual players. This includes the ones whining about losing who just want to whine and actually had fun. The whining itself needs to be ignored because it doesn't matter. Even the best game will have people whining about something.

From a design standpoint is has been proven time and time again that doing stuff is more fun than being told you can't do stuff. Its just a matter of figuring out where the lines are. Floodgates I think as a whole have gone over that line.

I understand that people can strip away everything that's fun in a game because they are salty. Which is why such people make poor banlists. However that doesn't mean everything is ok. Some things are just not as much fun. You can still enable the same style of play without floodgates and it generally results in more interaction.



Ok it just occurred to me that maybe we should speak about the different types of action. That being Interaction between players and actions taken by said players. Because floodgates and negates might be interaction but they shut down actions. That's the key point of this. Its about players playing enough to be fun without going into the extreme territory of a 20 minute combo deck that might not even be good. Floodgates sit on one end and stuff like Shiranui sits on the other end. What you want is both players doing something while trying to interact with what the opponent is doing in somewhat equal measure.

You don't want one player unable to take actions.
You don't want one playing being required to take too many actions.
You don't want one player having to stop 20+ actions with 1-2 action. ( AKA the required hand trap issue. To be clear this is only a problem when its a must. Nothing wrong with disrupting a combo, you just shouldn't need to do so turn 1 or get locked out entirely.)

What you do want is both players taking similar numbers of actions and no single action being the one that ends the game. By that I mean something that on its own demands an answer or it decides the game right then and there. It wasn't the players playing together, it was just one card asking if you can win or not. Not the end goal of a combo, but something that tips the scales so far one side may as well surrender.

Do you understand what I have said so far? If there is anything you disagree with or I made a mistake on you can say it now before this conversation can decide to continue or not.

[.]

Know what's infinitely worse than the floodgates?

The flood.

[Merilirem]

Originally posted by Garbage:

Know what's infinitely worse than the floodgates?

The flood.

You say that as if floodgates do anything to stop the flood for anyone not playing them. Fact is you can easily end up bouncing between flood decks and floodgate decks. Which clearly sucks for anyone not running a floodgate deck or an anti floodgate deck.

Basically the same reason Maxx C doesn't really stop combo decks.

[K-nowdq]

lol ppl here be actually typing essays defending floodgates, xDDD

[Merilirem]

Originally posted by K-nowdq:

lol ppl here be actually typing essays defending floodgates, xDDD

You, didn't read the essays at all did you?

[K-nowdq]

Originally posted by Merilirem:

Originally posted by K-nowdq:

lol ppl here be actually typing essays defending floodgates, xDDD

You, didn't read the essays at all did you?

not my fault your runick got obliterated by a bewd

[Merilirem]

Originally posted by K-nowdq:

Originally posted by Merilirem:

You, didn't read the essays at all did you?

not my fault your runick got obliterated by a bewd

A no then. Well just so you know the Essays were not defending floodgates. Mine were against and the others were neutral at most as they focused on different things.

The only one defending floodgates made a very short comment. Also Runick isn't even a floodgate archetype. It just gets paired with them because it meshes well. Runick itself only floodgates itself.

[Papa Shekels]

Originally posted by Merilirem:

Do you understand what I have said so far? If there is anything you disagree with or I made a mistake on you can say it now before this conversation can decide to continue or not.

I do get your point, it's more just a disagreement of values then. Under the right circumstances, a trap hole or fenrir acts the same way as a floodgate or negate in preventing an opponent from doing anything. Any form of interaction can be heavy-handed enough to make the game one-sided, and again it just depends on the relative power level of the two decks. Even without a single negate or floodgate, this game allows plenty of options where a player can be frustrated in a situation where they can not do anything that matters or advances the game state in their favor. Whether that's because they didn't draw a hand that deals with the opponent, or the decks' power levels are mismatched, it all comes down to a relative issue that can not be easily resolved with just removing some play styles

[Aux|johng7 [-KoS-]]

this card is simply wonderful