Modern Yu-Gi-Oh is boring

[Amogus]

I went to play my first ranked match and spent 6 minutes sitting around waiting for my opponent to play their 50-card combo before my turn. Once my turn began, I placed 1 card and then sat around for another 2 minutes while my opponent was setting up chains, special summoning monsters, and setting/activating spell cards. After that, I just surrendered because I don't care enough about this game to spend more time waiting than actually playing the game

I understand the actual fun gameplay from the old days is gone, but it's ridiculously boring to spend 8 out of 9 minutes in my FIRST EVER DUEL watching my opponent play solitaire. However, I don't understand how there is any level of enjoyment to be had when one single card effect can set up a 5-minute chain that makes you wish you were doing literally anything else with your time

[President Jyrgunkarrd]

Originally posted by Amogus:

I went to play my first ranked match and spent 6 minutes sitting around waiting for my opponent to play their 50-card combo before my turn. Once my turn began, I placed 1 card and then sat around for another 2 minutes while my opponent was setting up chains, special summoning monsters, and setting/activating spell cards. After that, I just surrendered because I don't care enough about this game to spend more time waiting than actually playing the game

I understand the actual fun gameplay from the old days is gone, but it's ridiculously boring to spend 8 out of 9 minutes in my FIRST EVER DUEL watching my opponent play solitaire. However, I don't understand how there is any level of enjoyment to be had when one single card effect can set up a 5-minute chain that makes you wish you were doing literally anything else with your time

they key to enjoying modern Yu-Gi-Oh! is just appreciate that it is no longer a game that can support fun and competitive play. There is so much depth and nuance to the game, but you won't see any of it playing against people that only care about winning and just run an Ash/Maxx/Imperm shell on top of a consistent OTK combo pile.

This happens with every mature game. People tease out the exploits and share them and suddenly the game is no fun to just play anymore. The joy has all been squeezed-out in favor of win/loss ratios and match-up statistics.

Data tools have just made this happen much faster and made the problem more widespread. A game like Yu-Gi-Oh! has no prayer of ever being fun when played competitively in a modern information environment. I shudder to think of what version 1 of X-Wing would've become if people still played it today. Certainly 'Fly Casual' would not have survived as the mantra.

Play against the AI (there's a single player mod for the game that is trivial to get working) or just play against friends that aren't going to run meta OTK stacks. Playing the OCG online against human opponents is, paradoxically, objectively the worst way to play.

[President Jyrgunkarrd]

Originally posted by Astrallight:

Morden YGH is just a product of ever rising powercreep. Cause powercreep sells cards and trash cards dont. In my opinion we are already soon reaching crititcal mass what this game goes for. More and more cards will soon have the ''uneffected'' word in it or cant be responded to when used. Combine all this with BO1 format and its just becomes a coinflip game. Which its already is now.

I really don't think this is a Yu-Gi-Oh! problem at all. Which isn't to say there aren't problem cards, because there are, but just to say that if we were to turn the clock back to all the way before Stardust Accelerator introduced synchro summons and we took that classic version of Yu-Gi-Oh! and introduced it to the modern information age, it would still have all of the same problems.

It would be datamined until people had the optimal lists that allowed for as little opponent interaction as possible and would still be a coinflip game. And the designers would try to fix the problems and this would just lead to more problems because the issue isn't the design, the issue is people wanting to ruin the game design to gain a competitive advantage.

If anything I think the old game would likely be worse just because you'd have fewer options. Kind of like how people thought WoW Classic would fix everything but actually it just enhanced all of the existing problems, because the game was never the issue.


The only way to fix the game would be to somehow stop all of the datmining and net decking, which isn't remotely possible.

[President Jyrgunkarrd]

Originally posted by Raven:

Originally posted by Liquid:

They should make a game that revolves around the old school play style from the first Yu-Gi-Oh show--No links, xyz, syncro bs.

They have a lot of them, you just have to go play WC 2006 or so. Its not like you can't play those games, you just have to accept them as solved at that point because you're cutting off all cards thereafter.

...Yu-Gi-Oh! old formats, for all their flaws, are not solved. Solved has a specific meaning, and a game like Yu-Gi-Oh! can't be solved because there is too much variance in it.

Even something as symmetrical as chess isn't actually solved, even with the best computers in the world trying to do just that. It's too complex. Even checkers isn't solved.

Honestly the only truly solved game i can think of, where the ideal moves are 100% known and lead to a pre-determined outcome, is tic tac toe.

[DontMisunderstand]

Originally posted by President Jyrgunkarrd:

...Yu-Gi-Oh! old formats, for all their flaws, are not solved. Solved has a specific meaning, and a game like Yu-Gi-Oh! can't be solved because there is too much variance in it.

Even something as symmetrical as chess isn't actually solved, even with the best computers in the world trying to do just that. It's too complex. Even checkers isn't solved.

Honestly the only truly solved game i can think of, where the ideal moves are 100% known and lead to a pre-determined outcome, is tic tac toe.

Complexity does not prevent a game from becoming solved. That has less than nothing to do with it. Chess is very complex, but it is a solveable game, though we as humans haven't solved it yet. Yugioh can never be solved, because it involves randomness and hidden information as part of the game's mechanics. Both of those individually make it an unsolveable game.

[G3]

Originally posted by Liquid:

They should make a game that revolves around the old school play style from the first Yu-Gi-Oh show--No links, xyz, syncro bs.

Play Dark Duel Stories in the upcoming Early Days Collection. That game let's you fuse by overlaying monsters and monsters have Pokémon style typing. Your 100 atk monster can destroy a Blue-Eyes with type advantage.

[e-dood]

Originally posted by G3:

Originally posted by Liquid:

They should make a game that revolves around the old school play style from the first Yu-Gi-Oh show--No links, xyz, syncro bs.

Play Dark Duel Stories in the upcoming Early Days Collection. That game let's you fuse by overlaying monsters and monsters have Pokémon style typing. Your 100 atk monster can destroy a Blue-Eyes with type advantage.

Ah, the eclectic days of early YGO games.

[Astrallight]

Originally posted by President Jyrgunkarrd:

Originally posted by Amogus:

I went to play my first ranked match and spent 6 minutes sitting around waiting for my opponent to play their 50-card combo before my turn. Once my turn began, I placed 1 card and then sat around for another 2 minutes while my opponent was setting up chains, special summoning monsters, and setting/activating spell cards. After that, I just surrendered because I don't care enough about this game to spend more time waiting than actually playing the game

I understand the actual fun gameplay from the old days is gone, but it's ridiculously boring to spend 8 out of 9 minutes in my FIRST EVER DUEL watching my opponent play solitaire. However, I don't understand how there is any level of enjoyment to be had when one single card effect can set up a 5-minute chain that makes you wish you were doing literally anything else with your time

they key to enjoying modern Yu-Gi-Oh! is just appreciate that it is no longer a game that can support fun and competitive play. There is so much depth and nuance to the game, but you won't see any of it playing against people that only care about winning and just run an Ash/Maxx/Imperm shell on top of a consistent OTK combo pile.

This happens with every mature game. People tease out the exploits and share them and suddenly the game is no fun to just play anymore. The joy has all been squeezed-out in favor of win/loss ratios and match-up statistics.

Data tools have just made this happen much faster and made the problem more widespread. A game like Yu-Gi-Oh! has no prayer of ever being fun when played competitively in a modern information environment. I shudder to think of what version 1 of X-Wing would've become if people still played it today. Certainly 'Fly Casual' would not have survived as the mantra.

Play against the AI (there's a single player mod for the game that is trivial to get working) or just play against friends that aren't going to run meta OTK stacks. Playing the OCG online against human opponents is, paradoxically, objectively the worst way to play.

The online YGH i played 25 years ago had no way to check what people were playing so net decking were out of the window. That forced people to think for themself and find thier own strat. Were they any better then now ? I cant really remember cause its too long ago. But one thing i do know is people never played the same.

[Raven]

Originally posted by Astrallight:

The online YGH i played 25 years ago had no way to check what people were playing so net decking were out of the window. That forced people to think for themself and find thier own strat. Were they any better then now ? I cant really remember cause its too long ago. But one thing i do know is people never played the same.

Horse dookie. Becket Magazine existed, and while not nearly as a fast, it was there and was the main way to get info about tournament decks and meta. It made net decking less rampant, but it still spread the news and decks and people followed the trends just as much.

[President Jyrgunkarrd]

It's like that with so many games.

In what feels like a completely different era, there wasn't any frame data or even high definition recorded play for fighting games - so people did the unthinkable and just picked characters they wanted to play with. Crazy! Madness!

Now it's purely about frame data and match-up data and honestly the whole concept of play is just gone. May as well just be filling out tax returns.

Literally any online game is the same, and increasingly that truth is bleeding over into the physical game space too as data analysis tools become more powerful and widely available and people decide they'd rather spend their time data mining instead of, y'know, playing.

[President Jyrgunkarrd]

Originally posted by Raven:

Originally posted by Astrallight:

The online YGH i played 25 years ago had no way to check what people were playing so net decking were out of the window. That forced people to think for themself and find thier own strat. Were they any better then now ? I cant really remember cause its too long ago. But one thing i do know is people never played the same.

Horse dookie. Becket Magazine existed, and while not nearly as a fast, it was there and was the main way to get info about tournament decks and meta. It made net decking less rampant, but it still spread the news and decks and people followed the trends just as much.

This is so incorrect.

Yes, there were mags before the Internet and there were online communities before the modern analytics tools.

But these are completely different universes. It's a matter of both the quality of the available data and the people that accessed it: a relatively small number of people went out and grabbed mags, and those that did so had access to information of dubious quality because the mags offered basically one author's opinion.

Online communities provided a better set of data but were still not widely accessed because it was the early web and things were janky people didn't know the best way to publish information.

Now? Everyone has access to mountains and mountains of data, neatly formatted into lists where you can trivially see W/L ratios, match-up data, even drill down with a click of a button and see how individual cards perform and/or are represented in the meta.

It's a night and day difference, and the triviality of access and depth of data has made it more or less mandatory for everyone to just build meta lists and pilot those instead of actually playing the game.

'Well technically data existed back in the OG days too!' is like saying, 'Well technically cars existed before the Model T!'

[Raven]

Originally posted by President Jyrgunkarrd:

Originally posted by Raven:

Horse dookie. Becket Magazine existed, and while not nearly as a fast, it was there and was the main way to get info about tournament decks and meta. It made net decking less rampant, but it still spread the news and decks and people followed the trends just as much.

This is so incorrect.

Yes, there were mags before the Internet and there were online communities before the modern analytics tools.

But these are completely different universes. It's a matter of both the quality of the available data and the people that accessed it: a relatively small number of people went out and grabbed mags, and those that did so had access to information of dubious quality because the mags offered basically one author's opinion.

Online communities provided a better set of data but were still not widely accessed because it was the early web and things were janky people didn't know the best way to publish information.

Now? Everyone has access to mountains and mountains of data, neatly formatted into lists where you can trivially see W/L ratios, match-up data, even drill down with a click of a button and see how individual cards perform and/or are represented in the meta.

It's a night and day difference, and the triviality of access and depth of data has made it more or less mandatory for everyone to just build meta lists and pilot those instead of actually playing the game.

'Well technically data existed back in the OG days too!' is like saying, 'Well technically cars existed before the Model T!'

Saying a musket doesn't compare to an m16 isn't the same as saying "guns didn't exist".

And your point is still silly because the difference at what it spread was definitely slower, but it absolutely did.

edit: besides, we're talking literally 2000-2005, after that gamefaqs and pojo already started the "online" netdecking era.

edit 2: actually does anyone know how old toywiz was?

[PandaExtract]

Originally posted by Raven:

edit 2: actually does anyone know how old toywiz was?

"IF" we are thinking of the same store toy wiz was established in 1987 and still has stores

[Raven]

Originally posted by PandaExtract:

Originally posted by Raven:

edit 2: actually does anyone know how old toywiz was?

"IF" we are thinking of the same store toy wiz was established in 1987 and still has stores

Toywiz is in business, but way back in the day they had forums specifically for yugioh which kept up with the meta decks and tournaments, I don't remember when the website was active though since its currently gone

edit: this is referring specifically to its site strictly to yugioh

[PandaExtract]

Originally posted by Raven:

Originally posted by PandaExtract:

"IF" we are thinking of the same store toy wiz was established in 1987 and still has stores

Toywiz is in business, but way back in the day they had forums specifically for yugioh which kept up with the meta decks and tournaments, I don't remember when the website was active though since its currently gone

edit: this is referring specifically to its site strictly to yugioh

you should wayback machine it aye?

[PandaExtract]

I would but we didn't have the site in aus