How Do We Slow The Game Down?

[Premier Alexander Romanov]

So, something I've noticed with the game is that the meta is so fixated on fast plays that spam out a bunch of monsters that make sure your opponent can't do anything, or simply negating their attempts to do so, that the Counter Trap is becoming something of an endangered species. Even Solemn Strike, one of the most versatile Counter Traps, and the only Solemn member at 3, is disregarded by most high-level Decks.

 

One thing that Pokemon did recently for Generation 7 was to fix some of the competitive scene by making it so that faster Pokemon now had to contend with bulkier, slower Pokemon, and while it didn't do much, it helped a little bit, so I want to ask you guys how the meta could be reined in and for the playing field to potentially be reset in some manner to make things more fun for everyone.

[Snatch Steal]

I don't think there's much that Yugioh can do this late in the game to prevent explosive first turns.

 

MtG, PTCG and HS each have a resource system that dictates how many and what kind of cards you can play each turn. Yugioh is more of an exception than a rule in these terms. Limiting Special Summons seems like the only way to prevent insane turns, but AoE is also extremely common, whereas in other games it is not. 

 

Let's pretend you can only Normal Summon once per turn, and you can only Special Summon 1 main deck and 1 extra deck monster per turn. Essentially, you can use Brilliant Fusion to summon Seraphinite, Special Summon a Trick Clown sent by the spell's effect, then you'll have your Normal Summon and the Normal Summon given by Seraphinite. However, after this, you can no longer summon monsters from the Extra Deck, Main Deck, or Graveyard, because you have already Special Summoned 1 Main Deck and 1 Extra Deck monster.

 

It's cool because it incentivizes using monsters that require tributes, but as I said earlier, Spells/Traps with AoE become stupidly strong. You would pretty much need to ban every Trap Hole and mass removal like Raigeki and Torrential. Monster removal in general just seems way more powerful if you can only get a max of 3 monsters each turn just because of how much easy-peasy "destroy your monster" cards there are.

 

It would be easy enough to ban these kinds of cards, but that list would be purely massive. It could be fun to have really grindy games instead of games that last five 5-minute turns, but I dunno that I would feel that engaged when I can't play all the cards I want to play.

 

The BEST best way to slow down Yugioh is probably to have a draft.

[Mr. Best Male 2008]

"Even Solemn Strike, one of the most versatile Counter Traps, and the only Solemn member at 3, is disregarded by most high-level Decks."

 

Its actually being played quite often in high level right now to sheet on Sky Strikers.

 

The game isnt even that fast currently compared to other formats. Nothing needs to be done because the game always changes from slow formats to fast formats. I'd say with Sky Strikers being the main deck right now it's quite slow really. It's not a fast deck at all.

[(GigaDrillBreaker)]

Not to mention that being fast is in no way objectively bad.

[Darj]

FTKs (e.g. Danger! Dark World, Gandora X in OCG AFAIK) and pseudo-FTKs (e.g. Gouki's Extra Link + Gumblar's discard 4 cards) are becoming a bit of an issue though, as those inherently stand against player interaction.

What I would do is first ban or hard-OPT errata Firewall Dragon for good  implement a cool idea I read somewhere: by game rules, make the opponent be unable to take any effect damage when you go first. That would outright deny burn FTKs without having to errata or ban any cards involved in the loops.

 

Also I like the idea of limiting the number of Special Summons per turn. I wouldn't make it too tight, and I'm thinking somewhere around 5 and 7. That way, cards like Summon Limit, Summon Breaker and Winda would retain a purpose.

[Mr. Best Male 2008]

If they limit special summons everybody quits the game cause that's just goofy

[Darj]

IDK,if players adapted to Links, I bet they can adapt to a ruling of 7~10 Special Summon limit.

[Mr. Best Male 2008]

There's no reason for it. Why does the game need to be slower? A large reason this game went through a a small revival of players is due to the speed it became. There should be no rule in the game that limits my ability to make plays. That's silly. Cards and interactions with my opponent should be the only thing that limits me to play the game, not the game itself.

[Darj]

And yet they implemented the Extra Link.

Speed is good, I don't advocate against it. But you got to admit there is an issue when the most dominant playstyles are FTKs and pseudo-FTKs to the point that YGO becomes a solitaire or 1-player card game. I can get behind Sky Strikers, Altergeist and even Thunder Dragons, but Wirewall and Extra-Link FTKs? not so much. Granted, that's an issue of the current formats, but these FTKs have always been around. The ideas I dropped are mostly anti-FTK. Besides, if you are Special Summoning more then 10 times in a turn, most likely you are going for a FTK already.

[Mr. Best Male 2008]

There is only one relevant ftk right now and that issue is not Firewall or extralinking. There are so many ways to break an extralink (which is a fine mechanic because it's no different than previous "break my board" formats) and only one deck is doing it. There is 1 ftk deck and 1 extralink deck currently. There are many more decks in this format than those two so I don't see how either are an issue. FTKs are annoying to lose to yes, but there are so many answers you can put into your main and side deck (these cards happen to also be generic as funk and good vs any deck) that do they really need to address the issue if it isnt truly an issue?

[Darj]

To be fair and honest, it's too soon to tell if they truly are an issue or not after just... 2 YCSs AFAIK, and I don't deeply know what's going on in OCG, but from what I have read and watched so far about the trends, the FTKs are taking a lead, and these are decks that practically disregard player interaction and duels boil down to "hard draw the right hand traps when going second or lose". I believe that to be an issue because then it is not a 2-player game anymore.

 

I don't mean this seriously, but if this is the direction the game is going, then Konami may as well unban the cards that enabled FTKs before (e.g. Wind-Up handkill loop?) and just clash them to each other. Of course I doubt they would do that because selling new product is also of their interest, but that's a different matter. I could argue they allow FTKs because then players need to buy the new cards, and that's understandable from a business standpoint.

[VCR_CAT]

I think we need to understand that when we talk about "General Gamestate", we're more or less referring to physical tournaments and more competitive events. Anything, smaller local events and casually playing with friends, are places that pretty much anything can played under any rules desired with any banlist. People can do what they want, more or less, in most of those more casual contexts and the "general gamestate" doesn't really matter so much.

 

If you're more or less referring to "playing 'gainst rando's in da sims", then... that's not really a place to be complained about. That's not a context where you can really just play whatever you want and expect good results all the time-- that's something you do with people you know or more friendly scenarios. It's not really a setting where you're allowed to complain about what you go against when what you go against is just random strangers online.

 

 

That said, if we're focusing on competitive settings then you really should have an understanding of the competitive side of the game if you want to talk about what's healthy and what's not. This is where you play to win, not really to bring your special pet-deck into the world unless your expectations are appropriately placed.

 

And this is where I have to ask why the people here who think the game is too fast think that's a bad thing. Is it because you're actively involved in the competitive scene and have a better understanding of what is going to be healthy for pitting skills vs. skills, or is it, maybe, coming from a place where people aren't happy because they can't just win with whatever they want?

 

I disagree with special summon limiting, and I disagree with the mentality that you should be able to just compete with whatever random sheet you cobble together. For a competitive environment, that is not a reality.

 

There are so many factors that go into a gamestate, and speed is only one that doesn't decide it (fast is not necessarily bad, slow is not necessarily good) and then so many others come down to personal taste. I've seen people say they've loved the slow, sloggy wars of attrition that come from True Draco and Sky Striker games, and I've seen others (myself included) who absolutely despise when the game is like that. It's a matter of subjective taste.

 

 

 

The game itself is not "too fast". Considering that an average round takes roughly 5-ish minutes and a match coming in closer to 15, that if both players are worth their salt and playing well then a game isn't decided within the first ~2 turns, then I would say that's a healthy place for the game to be. So long as the game isn't being decided in the RPS, then interaction is important, and if interaction is important then the game is in a pretty decent place without getting into subjectives.

[Ryusei the Morning Star]

Banning/Errata'ing firewall seems like it would help

 

It is always possible to step down from the brink

 

 

 

This format was a good example of that. Immediately after banning Monkeyboard, they passed around a ton of limits to help weaken a lot of faster decks

[ABC Gun]

You wanna slow the game down, take some Valium and let the world go by.

I'm kidding of course, but the only real way to slow the game down is if Konami does so by changing gameplay rules, like adding a new mechanic, higher starting LP, smaller Extra Deck limit, or just not allowing players to attack on each of their first turns of the Duel.