Yu-Gi-Oh Has a BIG Problem Right Now.

The game just isn't fun for anyone returning or joining new. Complicated cards with book chapters of tiny text alongside basically watching your opponent play solitaire with himself makes yugioh one of the least enjoyable card games to watch or revisit. Your Rare Hunters series had me hooked for a while not just because it was nostalgic but also because it was grounded in a fair and level exchange. You would work up to summon your boss monster then boom your opponent would summon a similar monster and a fair bout was displayed. Modern Yugioh, even when I was playing at locals 10 years ago has become "Im gonna play everything my first turn and just hope my opponent's starting hand doesn't have something to stop me." And when the opponent can stop them they might aswell just quit. This card game has become so stupidly unengaging it might aswell just be a singleplayer card game.

Let's not forget how expensive it is to be competitive or have fun.

I feel like the problem mostly for returning players and new players is that they want to feel like they are part of the game. I want to actually interact with my opponent. I don’t mind losing if I actually got to participate in the game.

My problem is Yu-Gi-Oh at the moment is that the power creep has become so drastic, compared to the last time I played in like...2010, that I don't know where to start, don't know how to ever collect enough cards or have enough money to build a worthwhile deck, and, from what I can tell, it just keeps getting worse rather than better. So finding a way to stop adding mechanics, and stop the power creep is the #1 thing Konami can do to win me back as a player.

Man, i feel like this ignores the biggest problem. It just isn't fun anymore. In essence, every duel is one or two turns, or your opponent has a card that breaks your whole strategy. I had a friend start master duel, and in a week, he gave up. He realized if he didn't have enough of his strategy up in his first turn, he had no reason to play. With so much stuff that just protects everything else and stuff that negates everything you can do, there's no point in playing, and just letting your opponent style. It's legit just boring.

I think that slowing down the game a bit could help tremendously with attracting new users

When a game exists long enough, players optimize the fun right out of it. I think the fantasy when you get into a card game is that you can put together a deck of cards you like and that are kind of representative of your personality. then you play against someone who is mildly optimized on a budget and get crushed with no hope of ever winning. So, because losing every game isn't fun, you have to abandon the deck that has character and personality in favor of something that "works" now I'm not playing the game I wanted to play in the first place.

One thing I think they should begin to experiment with is creating divisions for each specific summoning mechanics. I think the biggest problem is that the game has became nearly 5 individual card games at once with a lot of contradictory rules and forcing a lot of fan favorite cards into obsolescence

I think someone commented this earlier, but official support for formats that are not the competitive format in Yu-Gi-Oh! would help. I would love to at least have a format where I feel like I can play at a slower pace until I get confident enough in the game to challenge the "big fish" so to speak. I think the alternate formats would help foster that mindset, so that players will at least enjoy the game and not feel stuck.

My biggest complaint is that the timing on effects and reactions and stuff is impossibly hard to understand. That's why people prefer the automated stuff in a video game, it handles all of that for you.

There's a documentary that talks about the 2002-2005 formats. Honestly, that was a golden age for the game. I was just a casual player in middle school like other players that time, but man, it was a blast. And it wasn't ridiculously complicated.

As a new/returning player from MTG, alternative formats is the way to go, especially within Master Duel. The idea would be create a format that players can then "graduate" to the more complex Advanced. Rush Duels seems like Speed Duels but more aligned with Advanced (40-60 cards, possibly larger card text, 8000 LPs, Maximum Monsters = Boss Monsters) and I'd love to see it or a product/format like that come in to the West.

I always thought the biggest barrier to new players is the prevalence of one card combos and negation spam/disruption spam. The game is a lot less satisying when the game is decided on a coin flip/dice roll.

I think its because most matches are over after 2 to 3 turns. 1 turn taking as long as 2 to 3 mins and ending with a board state that's going to be hard to break if you didn't interrupt the play or have the out in hand. Yeah a newer player can play other new players but they will start to leave once they get high in play and find themselves in having to wait long turns and needing many of the outs to even play most of which aren't cheap.

The games that i enjoy the most are the ones with more than 3 rounds, even if i lose i still feel like i had a lot of fun and can think back in the duel and go over what i could have done differently. I think slowing the game down would do wonders for the enjoyment of the game. The only way i can think of doing this a whole new rule change. Maybe something like only being able to do one extra deck summon a turn.

I think a good idea would be to put a limit on special summoning per turn or have a limit to how many cards your aloud to play on your turn

Bro there's always something wrong with Yu-Gi-Oh

I think a good idea to help with the accessibility issue is to have different formats/banlists for tournaments, and not to have players buy totally separate cards. This was brought up in the video, but I wanna elaborate a bit more on it. Part of the reason why Duel Links got a huge push at the beginning was because it had cut a lot of the extra elements that made the game complicated, and reminded a lot of old school yugioh players of classic strategies without the need with additional negates and counters. And this would be easy to do since all that would need to be done is have separate banlists for different formats, and offer specialized tourneys for said formats. I see a lot of new cards that would be fantastic in the older formats like GOAT or such, but won't see a lot of play and be seen as nothing but pack fodder and thrown in the discount bin. Not only do you open up a lot more potential decks to be open, but it would actually give reason for people to keep the less than rare cards from them.

I am a casual player and I stop playing and come back a few times a year. I believe a huge part of this is truly is the game is getting more competitive with the decks that’s turning away new players. I play at locals and a-lot of the players are just insufferable to the new players that want to try and learn. A lot of people forget that going from master duel to actually dueling is not the same. Master duel helps you activate effects, but in real life you may forget and that can be frustrating to remember a billion plays. Also, the game is more expensive and having to buy the new over powered cars to benefit your deck to stay competitive is stressful.

A decade ago me and friends had so much fun when the dark world, zombie, dragons, dragunitys, cybers structure decks and cards were out. Peak Yu-Gi-Oh with Synchro and some mild but not OP XYZ monsters. Then the Six Samurai structure deck got released and ruined all the fun. "When this guys summoned, this guy can come out. And when this guys here, you can't do this. When this guys here you're forced to attack to yourself." And BOOM, a generation of 2000s Yu-Gi-Oh fans were lost in an instant. Downhill since then. Imo,