TCG powercreep

>1998
the yugioh TCG was released in NA in 2003, and even then summoned skull beatdown wasn't a thing.
pic related, 2003's world championship deck.

>1 Pot of Greed
Thanks for proving my point, you may want to re-read my comment, you might notice how I never said that "summoned skull beatdown" was a thing.

maybe reread my post too.

and the original post.

pot of greed was at 3 in 1998 in japan when the game was released.

It helps but its not a complete solution. Rotating formats give players a reason to buy cards that may not be as good as cards they already own. This allows developers to not worry about whether new cards are better or worse than older ones but power creep can still show up. Even MTG had shit like Urzas and Mirroden, where the power level was so out of wack they nearly killed the game.

Ultimately MTG avoided it by having enough experience with their own game to form a good idea of how much a certain effect "should" cost and how changes in that cost affect the meta. They can then manipulate the meta in certain directions by changing how easy or hard it is to access certain effects. It's nowhere near an exact science and the power level of standard still fluctuates, but the developers are able to keep that power level withing a certain range. Provided of course that said developers are competent and capable of actually doing their job correctly.

Probably not, but it's a solid foundation.
Yugioh sets constantly have to top themselves, a single secret rare if nothing else, or else nobody buys the new cards. They can just ride out the most powerful ones that already exist. Compared to rotation like MTG has, they can interchange the powerlevels between sets because there is a fixed pool that leaves after a set amount of time. Look at the power level difference between Khans of Tarkir block and the Battle For Zendikar block. Nobody would use almost anything from BFZ if KTK was still legal. There was a short amount of time where the two were in the same standard, and the only thing people used from BFZ was the fetchable dual lands, manlands, and Gideon. So the more powerful cards leave and we're now forced to use the other ones.

The other way Yugioh regulate this is the banlist. It's close to accepted that Konami shits out absurdly strong decks in the latest sets so that people buy the sets, and then ban it somewhere down the line when it gets too dominant.

Yes, the eternal formats of MTG are a couple orders of magnitude more powerful than standard.
Of course the downside is that when you open a new pack of MTG, it's 99% cards meant for drafting. Hence people are strongly discouraged from buying packs except for drafting.

There's nothing wrong with Yugioh. Not every deck has to be viable at a competitive level. You can play any deck you want, just don't expect Vennominaga Turbo to win you a YCS.

>No Chaos emperor dragon or chaos solider.
what kind of bullshit deck is this crap???

Invasion of Chaos wasn't even out yet

*looks at the string of bannings Standard has had over the past year*

...it hasn't.

Invasion was out before yata was, wasn;t it?

You should have played Yu Yu Hakusho.
The later sets near the end of the game's life got so bad that Turn 1 wins were almost expected.

That isn't power creep, that was just imbalance.

Powercreep did happen, it was just an inverse. Spells got weaker while creatures got stronger, and it isn't happening too quickly, but it is noticeable if one just observes.
Also YGO is an easy cash project for Konami they don't really care about the quality of the game.

ask here
discord.gg/NmuFqA

They didn't, they just often backpedal it afterwards, which is why old magic cards are sometimes way stronger than modern counterparts.

Pokemon rotates too but still has powercreep.

If it were power creep, you'd be seeing those cards all over Modern and the eternal formats.
Instead, they're basically useless. Reflector Mage is I think the only card that sees any play? And that was banned not because of itself but to make sure that a different deck didn't just fill the void left by other bannings and had a lot of people scratching their heads in confusion.
The dev team decided to more strictly control stuff, and fucked things by LOWBALLING, not powercreeping. Thus, the things they missed and the things they DID push stood out more than usual, because they always make mistakes. It's just easier to adapt to the mistakes when the other cards aren't carefully moderated for Draft (and their current philosophy about what's good for Draft is SHIT REMOVAL among other things), a lack of Common/Uncommon answers to problems due to the above AND everything needing to fit the world they're currently in, and ONCE AGAIN putting off even rare answers due to wanting 'the themes to have some space' despite that burning them literally every time they've done it.

It's simple. Yugioh doesn't have a proper resource management system to playing cards where as MTG does so powerful cards are naturally kept back in by costs and feasability of being resolved against aggressive decks. So naturally in Yugioh you just slam down whatever best dudes you have that have effects and don't require tributes or rituals or whatnot and then you bring the ones that do later.

Honestly I liked Yugioh when it first came about and you would have so many viable awesome decks. Whether it be equipping an Axe of Despair to a Gemini Elf and attacking for 2900 or playing Gravity Bind and attacking with dudes for 200. Now it's all extremely super degenerate 1-2TKO, not even Vintage level MTG is constantly 1-2TKO

That's not power creep, that's just poor answer cards that were standard legal while WotC pushed for the threats to be better. Then they realised "oh yeah, turns out we need good removal spells to answer these ridiculous threats"

You clearly have no idea what you're talking about.

Dumb wojak poster.

Actually I do and your picture only proves my point.

How does my post prove your point? Yugioh is more varied now that it was in whatever era people used Axe of Despair on a Gemini Elf.

Two single decks alone take up an almost combined total of 50% of the metagame. That is NOT varied compared to early era Yugioh.

yugioh.wikia.com/wiki/Yu-Gi-Oh!_World_Championship_2003
Nice diverse meta

Seems fine, none of those decks are 1-2TKO decks and you're quoting a wiki page that doesn't even have the complete list of decks that showed presence in the tournament. Go try looking up a 2000 era tournament report if you can. Early Yugioh had so much viability and diversity among decks you could play.

I believe the real power creep happening in yugioh is in its speed. The number of turns has more or less remained the same (let's not pretend ftk's and otk's didn't happen back then) but the number of plays done in a single turn has increased exponentially.

While back in the day, setting a monster and setting two cards was not just a viable opening turn but the optimal play, nowadays monsters have to search for more cards that can search other cards in order to justify their slot in the main deck alongside handtraps. Try comparing early decks like hand control to 2011's HEROS and you'll see the change of game's rhythm and pacing.

Now with master rule 4 and it's emphasis on link summoning, the need for monsters that can special summon themselves or other monsters is much critical just to circumvent the restriction of only one extra deck monster zone. Some decks need to go through +10 plays in order to have a link monster with 2 bottom arrows and summon the 2 monsters they actually wanted to summon in the first place and could've summoned back in master rule 3 without much hassle.

It's not a bad thing in my personal opinion. Deck that are consistent and have a big number of plays available to them are more fun to play than set 1 card pass but I understand the line between a combo and masturbation can be very thin, specially for older players who haven't kept up with the game newest mechanics and meta.

>TL;DR: The real powercreep in yugioh is that cards have to do much more stuff nowadays in order to play the good cards you actually want to play.

I'm not going to look for obscure Japanese tournaments with only the first 5 booster packs.

What even is a handtrap?

Honestly? Yes. And it's not just the advantage in not having to constantly one-up yourself that other anons have mentioned. It's also a really efficient allocation of resources: in magic, most developers work on making sure cards work with other cards in the same 1-2 sets (for draft), followed by making sure they work in the same 4-6 sets (standard). Yugioh designers have to design every card to work within the context of literally every card printed before it, which means it's a lot more difficult to find a card that ended up more powerful than intended, just because there's so much shit they have to compare it to. Coupled with the natural need for chase rares to sell packs, the balance of the game is a mess on a constant upward trend in terms of power. Magic doesn't need to make cards that are competitive with every set in the history of the game while making sure they aren't overpowered, yugioh does.

Wait, YGO literally only has a format which includes all sets ever, minus the banned/restricted cards?

Seriously?

Yes. Those cards you had when you were younger can still be played (assuming no individual bannings)
But most of them will be shit and you'll be curbstomped for even trying, and the few that aren't shit are the things that got banned or, if you're lucky, restricted. So good luck.

>MTG manage to prevent powercreep

What drugs are you on? I would like to partake in such an experience as well.

Compared to every other TCG out there?
Yes, yes it did.

This, honestly. Especially
>the line between a combo and masturbation can be very thin, specially for older players who haven't kept up with the game newest mechanics and meta.
And I'll add to that, as an older player who hasn't kept up with the game's newest mechanics and meta, that since each card needs to do so much to be viable, the amount of text on each card has reached mind-boggling levels, making the game basically impenetrable to those not currently playing it. It feels like this is yugioh's biggest problem now; compare "xyz summon something cool and sit on it" to the convoluted bullshit a typical turn in VRAINS consists of, and I can't see how kids can possibly be interested in trying to figure out this game. Ultimately, it's growth potential is dead.

Tolerate or despise it, mtg's very careful consideration of complexity and wordiness has done wonders for keeping the game accessible to new players.

Effects that happen from the hand. Think Kuriboh discarding itself to prevent damage, Honest to boost atk, D.D. Crow to exile, or Gorz special summoning itself. IIRC Gorz, Honest, and Effect Veiler were really the only good ones for quite a while with Crow being in the sideboard now and then, now we have this shit and a series of them.

Creatures got better, spells got worse. No more fast mana. No more overpowered card draw.

That's super interesting, but as a former YGO player and current MTG player, confusing as heck.

What do tier 1 YGO decks cost, currently?

I'd say a major part is design space, in YGO there are not that many ways of costing a card, this is especially noticeable when it comes to Spells, pretty much every Spell Card must be compared to every other Spell that does something similar, as such many basic effects like damage opponent, heal self, card draw, etc. don't have much room to play with (why use Mooyan Curry, or Blue Medicine when you can use Red Medicine), and although you can create costs (like pay LP or self mill) MTG can do that and more.

Play literally any other tcg. Why are magic players such hermits in the terms of trying other games?

"Others experienced it more" doesn't mean Magic didn't experience it heavily.

Essentially konami realized no one played traps anymore so they made a group of loli monster cards that you can discard from your hand at any time to disrupt your opponents moves.

Many decks run 3-9 of these handtraps. They're fairly difficult to stop, I think only a few cards can keep a player from using handtraps.

Because MTG is the best, by far.

I say this as a dude that played Magi Nation, the Gundam TCG, YGO, and a half dozen other ones that amounted to nothing. None of them came close to MTG; MTG just has the formula right. Mana prevents crazy resourceless abuse of power.

I'm sure there are or were good or even great TCGs, but when you can play anywhere, including online, and have tons of free and readily accessible MTG resources, it's hard to justify playing anything else "just because."

A handtrap is basically a card that can activate in your hand in response to an opponent's action. Acting similarly to a trap.
See: Effect Veiler, Maxx "C", Ash Blossom, etc.

A deck can cost up to +$600 with staples. The real big cost entry in the game are these staples, the good thing is that Konami's reprint policy is very good and staples are reprinted as commons.

>What do tier 1 YGO decks cost, currently?
Depends. Most T1 decks are around 600, some get as high as a grand. Comp yugioh is perhaps the most risky thing to ever buy into. You both run the risk of Konami banning your tier 1 deck, rendering it dead, and not having cash money cards either outcreeped or reprinted plummeting your value.
Granted, this is nothing new. Pic broke the 300 dollar barrier back in 2008.

>costs as much as modern in MTG
Holy shite, my dudes. This thread is blowing my mind

None of the LGSs I go to even have YGO events. I don't even think most of them sell YGO cards at all

Continuing the idea of design space, MTG focused on Keywords, which allows cards of the same cost to be more different, instead of YGO's stance of changing what spell card was stapled to the body.

False. Drastic Drop Off wasn't released until 2008ish. Your story is fake and you should feel bad.

I think mana does more than just add a costing mechanism, it also helps segregate powerful cards, in YGO if there is a new monster removal spell that is better than average, most decks, regardless of what they play, are going to add it, while in MTG it would only be added to decks which run that colour (or colour combination), and that colour could be one that is currently under-powered.

Mtg is far from perfect, and a lot of recent japanese tcgs come very close to it. Tcg creation is a lot more refined than it was in the days of Magi Nation, and the japanese tcg scene is much deeper than the big 3 in the US. Magic survives due to general competence, and more importantly, sunk-cost and community. People are invested in magic, and you can generally find a scene in any city with an LGS, while most other tcgs are relegated to pockets of activity (like Weiss or FoW).

But in terms of the design of the base rules, running from resources to combat, I'd say games like Wixoss (or Duel Masters) have magic beat.

Link to Wixoss resources for a newbie?

While colour is probably one of the most important bedrocks of tcg design, I actually dislike mana as a system, and prefer a system of leveling and stock, like Weiss, L&L, or Wixoss. Mana system push the playable spectrum into the low drops (look at modern, and idea that anything that costs more than 4 needs to win you the game to be playable). The most important cards in magic are the cheapest, while using stock and levels keep the aspects of resource management that yugioh largely lacks while ensuring that the most impactful cards are the high level cards.

Online, rules-automated, client:
webxoss.com/
Basic rules:
pic related
Some neat reading about more advanced game decisions, and some help for deck construction. A bit outdated, but still very relevant:
selector-wixoss.wikia.com/wiki/User_blog:BlitzerRyuusei/Game_Flow_As_It_Relates_to_Deck_Construction

Also, the next time a weeb tcg thread pops up, ask there. I've run people through sample games on webxoss before, and it's much easier to see how the individual rules fit together while actually playing.

Wixoss is honestly my favourite tcg, and it pains me to no end that it will never get a physical english release.

>no English
Yeah, I'm not sure if I devote the mental effort... does the client auto-translate?

One of the largest complaints about new sets (and this has been true for a long while, not a recent thing) is 'these aren't as good as the cards from before, nobody will play anything except maybe one or two in anything but Standard and Draft'
If it were experiencing heavy powercreep, Legacy, Vintage, and Modern would consist mostly of newer cards, rather than rarely changing each new release.

Yep, the client has full translations. It's actually really damn good. Actually Wixoss in general is really damn well covered in english for being a jap-only game. The wiki is really well run and is always up to date, the fan-made online client handles all the rules and is translated for dozens of languages, and also shares a player base, which means that even with few people in NA to play with, you can play against randoms from japan. It's now several sets behind the current release, but it's still really good for how obscure the game is. Most japanese tcgs are lucky to get a half-assed lackey plugin.

Yeah, when I first got on to Webxoss I was a bit disappointed there were no Carnival cards to build with. Always enjoy circus themes and the star motifs for her SIGNI were also appealing.

MTG has rotation, but the reason it works is that they make power down sets (like ixalan).

>You can summon this card by having 3 dark monsters in your graveyard
>No sacrifices, no banishments, just have this card in your hand at the right time, or have cards to bring cards back into your deck when you need it
This shit needs to stop
Format without these retarded special summons when

the problem you are speaking of is only because of the pseudo-meta of ygo. decklists are popular, get played more often. dew-stun is broken as shit, has won tournies, so is kozmo, so is morphtronics, these can all kick tricks or spyrals ass or whatever is popular rn, but they are uncommon becuase people dont care about them. im not saying 'there is no actual problem' because there is; konami needs to encourage people to use the entire pool of like 8000 fucking cards but they wont. tell me that out of 8000 cards [tcg only, not counting the overall count of like 18000 cards in the game] there isnt something just as strong or stronger than a current tournament topping archetype! creativity, or lack thereof, is killing ygo, not konami, but konami isnt exactly helping the game either. to be fair, links was a monumental mistake imo but it doesnt seem as bad as i thought it would be. there are still ppl winning args that have trouble with the format..

>needs to stop
Nigga DAD was 10 years ago. You might as well be complaining about the Chaos cards from 04.

yata was good because of the combo with CED

to make a correction, the card used was drop off, not drastic drop off.

>complaining about DAD
do you have any idea how old that card is? You going to complain about BLS and CED next?

It's because Magic has multiple official formats and was intended from the start to be competitive, while Yugioh was intended to be sold on the novelty of collecting the cards, and to a large degree still is. Plus, shit, it was hard to NOT have power creep at least at first, given how just completely terrible most of the early cards were. Did you know that skull servant was printed years before king of the skull servant?

No, I'm going to complain about Dark Necrofear, one of the cards that started this basically free summon meme. Mill your deck out a little bit (which is itself a good thing) and boom, it's out, and they have to destroy it without using a monster unless they can afford to lose a monster strong enough to beat it.

You guys know that Veeky Forums is terrible at card games, right?

>Needs to have 3 Fiends in the GY to banish
Its not free.

>pot of greed, graceful charity, raigeki, reborn the monster, jars, cyber-stein and other old cards are still around half of the ban list

Three fiends that have served their purpose on the battlefield or being the tributes for other monsters, being the target of destructive card effects, both your sand your opponent's, and more? That's not a free summon, you're right. You're basically paid to summon it.

Do I tell him to stop talking about shit he has clearly no knowledge about, or do I let him just let him keep mouthing off like a retard?

How does YGO rules syntax fail so miserably that there's literally 4 point font on all the effect monsters? Seriously. Write your rules better and use keywords

no? i might misunderstand but they are not?

yugioh-card.com/en/limited/

u try tiptoeing around thousands of cards keeping them organized

Pic related was four years ago. This doesn't count reprints or Un-cards.

I said most, not all. Yes, there were some early spells that were too powerful to continue to go unlimited as more archetypes were added with more strategic implementation. But for every pot of greed there were 5 worthless dogshit cards that were completely obsolete right from the start.

Same holds true for current releases though. A lot of newer cards would be worse than old monsters.

Find me a card released in the last 5 years that's even a tenth as bad as this.

They powercreep an aspect of the game while de-escalating (or hard resetting) other parts that are too powercreeped.

So everything stays within a certain range of power, while at the same time the audience feels excited, as though the power level is constantly increasing.

Occaisionally they reset something that's a core focus of a set and people complain that the set is underpowered.

Fusionist and a bunch of other janky fusions were made retroactively "decent" through instant fusion for a free rank 3.

Raigeki's been severely power crept for years. It's been unbanned for 4 years and deemed to be not a problem. It's considered to be a strong card, but not impossibly backbreaking to comeback from. It helps that a lot of cards float on destruction or being sent to the grave. HFD can come back too, but Heavy Storm and Giant Trunade would need some errata.

>Fusionist
>bad
Useful as rank 3/synchro fodder with Instant Fusion, and Earth-based link requirements. Any fusion level 5 and below is good simply because Instant Fusion.

Actually with the XYZ monsters you can summon that with Instant Fusion for an easy Rank 3 summon so Fusionist is actually playable on a certain level

Good look finding a use for this.

The card was released years before synchro existed.

ok but does that really matter if we're discussing how the game IS instead of WAS

So? New cards make old cards playable, happens all the time in every game with extended formats

No, the conversation started about how fucking awful most of the first cards were, and thus why powercreep was at first inevitable. That powercreep retroactively made some previously dogshit cards decent doesn't change this, in fact it supports it.

...

How do link monsters work in defence mode? It doesn't seem to have a Def stat.

>d-doesn't count
Stop moving the goals, you fuck. You got btfo and now you have to hold that L.