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The good thing about being in bronze is that I get to play decks I built but haven't practiced yet. And, don't have to worry about misplays. Bronze players won't punish them anyways.
Well, admiteddly, Konami still wants to make money. I guess from a certain point of view the rank up rewards are there to help new players, not for the regular players to become even more wealthy (not sure why I am now considered a regular player after only having played for a few weeks or that anyone is getting wealthy over here with the pultry rewards but anyway). I think the current system is mostly fine if its only really meant to serve new players, but conversely that means that the game needs a system for the rest of the players to earn gems.
Right now I find the gem distribution to be extremely predatory. I have been trying to craft just one more deck that I could play with but there's no reasonable way to earn gems. If you buy them with real money the cost is absolutely absurd, I could not believe the kinds of prices they are charging for what is effectively a chance to pull the cards you want. The lifetime and daily rewards are peanuts, maybe its about 4000 gems for one month of play, and that is not even enough to make half a deck unless you are making a budget deck like memento (even then, I question whether you would be able to pull exactly the UR's you need and obviously I am assuming you already have staple URs). So what is there left? Do I duel 100 times with a deck I am sick and tired of to get gems from my wins? Well you usually get about 5-10 gems on a win so for a winrate of 50% thats maybe 350 gems, yeah, that's not helping at all. Do I diligently log in every day to do the dailies until after 3 months have passed I can finally afford to make 1 new deck? What is this a dayjob? This is not reasonable in any way shape or form, the dailies should be incentive to keep playing, not something you need to grind to start playing.
I feel like there is only one light at the end of the tunnel right now and that is the rank up rewards. Just log in every month, climb the ladder, get a bunch of gems, and save up for a new deck. It still probably takes you a couple of months to get enough but at least I don't feel like I'm working in a sweatshop grinding the dailies. Unfortunately, I checked the policy and it doesn't even work like that. You cannot derank between tiers, only the subranks, so there is actually no way to get back to bronze without waiting several months, that means there is no good system for earning gems in the game.
So anyway, with all that said, there should be some reasonable system to earn gems. For example, one thing they could do is give gem rewards for playing against people in the lower ladder ranks, however, the catch is that you have to play with a loaner deck which is constructed to be of appropriate power level for that tier. This makes it so you could play with cards you don't own, it provides a challenge for experienced players and it populates the full ladder with players, so its not just a race to master 1 and then you stop playing. Of course 80% of the fun in yugioh is building your own combos so I won't say this is a perfec t solution but its something. Another thing they could do is allow you to set a wishlist and maybe give you ways to help get those cards by plalying. E.g. Win 10 duels and you will have a 50% chance to pull your wished UR from the next pack you open that contains that UR. This might seem kind of crazy that they would help you like this but honestly it only sounds crazy because of how stingy the game is currently. I believe its relatively well documented that something like 5-10% of the playerbase in a f2p game provide a majority of the revenue, so you want to design the game in a way where they can sink as much money as they want, but equally you need the rest of the playerbase too to keep those big spenders around, its not like they are going to invest in a game nobody plays, and so it is important to have a path for the f2p players to play as well, maybe a more grinndy frustrating path, but a path that makes them want to keep playing the game nevertheless. MD is sorely lacking in this department, even though I really enjoy Yugioh I don't know how much longer I will be engagingn with MD.
But while I think this side is perfectly fair, it's still FEELS wrong that people get punished for advancing. Though more silly bits add up later too, since later you reach a point when you run into deck amount limit, even if you're willing to throw money at them. They probably have to add way more things to spend gems on before giving out even more free gems.
That said, a wishlist sounds like a very neat idea. Stuff to increase chance for royals could be integrated in that too.
Anyway, taking these things into consideration its not quite as bad as I made it sound but still relatively brutal. Lets keep in mind, this is the stuff you get for a month of play, and its still not enough to even make one new deck.
Yes, you do get quite a few gems as a new player, I remember quite quickly I hit the 9999 cap and I didn't know what to do with them. But the thing is, new players have nothing so its not as good as it sounds, you need like 10 UR staples to start playing (That is a lowball), thankfully you can get one copy of some of them as a special deal for gems, so by spending about 5000 gems you get some random cards + some staple UR's to get you started. But now you have a problem, you can either spend 1500 gems to get a structure deck and maybe spend a couple more thousand trying to get the UR's or you have to go gambling opening packs trying to assemble a good deck from scratch, and 5000 gems is not going to cut it. I went the structure deck route, chose salamangreat which seemed pretty strong and spent about 5000 more gems on the pack. I didn't get a single of the link-4 UR's (actually I think I got one raging phoenix but no pyro), 4 code of soul but no salamangreat of fire. I had to begrudgingly craft the rest to have at least a playable deck. The point I am trying to make is even 5000 gems is not really that much, its about 10 UR's and if you are lucky, maybe 4-5 you care about. I made a different thread about strong budget decks and the top answers where memento (4-5 UR's + staples) and purelly (9 UR minimum + staples). So if you wanted to play Purelly as a new player most likely you need to spend all the gems you have left after getting staples on Purrely, and it still might not be enough. I think I probably wasted around 5000 more gems buying structure decks I didn't need and a couple more thousand on time thief which was the first deck I tried but failed to build so ultimately I think if I could go back and redo it I could by this point have a second playable deck but making mistakes like this as a new player is inevitable.
So yeah, Idk, I think no matter what the game is very stingy. and you are right, its really dumb you get less rewards for being good at the game, there is not even a prize or anything for reaching M1, just 100 gems and a f-u note signed by john konami. It actually baffled me how there wasnt really a reward for the wcs either, the first stage had 3500 gems which was nice, but the second stage had like some pulls from a special pack, even for super high placings. Yeah, thats not exactly fine is it? XD
? what's that even mean, Diamond 5 to Master 1 is 1700gems, Silver 5 to Gold 1 is 1000 gems, every month those who grind make 700 more gems IF they can make it back to M1.
Maybe you get more gems for the end reward each duel? with the tickets/gems, I personally have never cared as 1000 gems each month is fine I believe personally, more so since I don't have to grind like a mad person.
Most peeps don't claim the Solo Mode mission as it takes the most time to do daily
Duel Pass is purchased with gems. Upon completion, it pays for itself.
Daily 155X364=(56,420)Gems
3500x12=(42,000)Event Gems
Ranked, 1000x12 or 1700x12 12K/20.4k
+End of Rank Rewards too? 2-5K Gems.
Free Stuff(Login Bonus+URs)2-3K Gems?
& New Solo Gates Added, 200 Gems Per.
Then the 4 Gold Passes add up to I think.
Basically a bit over 10k gems a month :)
There's no reason anyone collecting the
free gems to be complaining about this.
Nah, normal gems can buy it and if you finish it to 100, which shouldn't be too hard even with casual play, you get as many back as you spent, so it's gem neutral + craft points. Though it seems like a great example of things being off. Inside the game, you can't tell that it is gem neutral and them marketing it as a premium feature is just confusing. Plus there is the whole weirdness of it lasting way longer than a season, so if someone plays somewhat actively, they probably finished it in a week and have to wait 1,5 months without nothing to look forward to.
I suppose the idea is that players dedicated enough to go for M1 and finish duel pass fast are also dedicated enough to spend money but making the experience less rewarding for these people still seems silly. And there are the crappy secondary rewards like the ones in WCS of course ... like hey, it's extra free stuff but making the final reward underwhelming is certainly an interesting decision.
Well, there is the method of crafting specific SRs that unlock multiple free packs and hopefully getting some more UR dust in the process.
I haven't quite looked into how much almost instant free gems ones gets exactly and there was an event when I started my alt accounts so that made things smoother but it was trivial to craft 4-5 pretty UR heavy decks like Sky Strikers or Branded, and buying all the bundles, and wasting gems on DM/BE limited time stuff after around 50h played. Which seems alright.
IMO your biggest mistake was throwing so many gems into Salamanders packs (aside of going all in on structure decks ofc) instead of just crafting the few URs left - could've gone easier on some of the staples first if URs dust was that problematic - though as you said, these mistakes are kinda given for a new player (lol, my first URs were spent on ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ Ruin) and I bet they very intentionally want to trick the players into being careless with gems first since the amount at start makes you think it'd be a non-issue. So it's a bit messy to judge ... technically they give a very decent amount but people who start normally without reading guides, etc are going to mess up and be needy for gems for a while.
And the most messy part is that we don't know the full data about player retention/cost of running the game/profits, to be able to tell whether their model actually works but feels bad or whether it costs them players and money.
I usually have about 10k gems at the end of each month if I don't spend them during, which is plenty for most selection packs. The events really help, usually you can make 3-4k gems within a few days of playing, and then you'll make the other ~6k from dailies and ranking up.
Since you just finished your deck & first month, you'll probably be pretty tight on gems, but give it another month of playing and you'll begin to understand how the in game economy works and how/where you want to spend your gems.