Why Some Yu-Gi-Oh! Players Really Do Want Casual Formats

This started as a direct transcript of the video I made, but I've done an editing pass or two to remove various quirks and clarify points at times.

I watched MBT's reaction to Paul from Team APS's video regarding how Yu-Gi-Oh! players seem to act as though they want casual formats but simultaneously want those formats to be run like competitive ones with officially sanctioned tournaments and whatnot. These are obviously conflicting ideas, if you hold tournaments with prizes or whatever, people are going to optimize to win, and if they optimize, it's no longer gonna be casual, right. I thought it was a pretty decent video that made a lot of sense, but I was really surprised by the bad faith takes I was seeing in MBT's chat. They were essentially implying that anybody who says something like this is a scrub who just wants every deck better than theirs banned, or merely a foolish Yugiboomer pining for how things were when they played on the playground and there wasn't as much information out there. I actually think that both of these takes miss out on why people really ask for this. Like, it really sounds like these people have never played in a casual format, or are still bringing a competitive perspective into it. So I want to talk about what exactly I think are the unique issues that Yu-Gi-Oh! faces in this regard.

First of all, MtG players will immediately say "oh it's because the game doesn't rotate and it just gets stronger and stronger every day." And I do think power creep is part of it, but I think that beyond that creep it's also how the rules change every few years in Master Rule changes. And this one's actually really interesting, because even very competitive players have to accept that Yu-Gi-Oh! becomes a very different style of game every few years. If you really liked GOAT format style Yu-Gi-Oh! then the game was totally changed when they added Synchros. When something like this happens, if you liked the old style, your options are to either keep playing the old version of the game that will never update with your few other friends who also play it, or accept that you're going to have to play a game that might feel totally different if you want to keep up with and care about new cards coming out. Regardless of whether that's a good or bad thing, the fact that you have to choose between the gameplay style you fell in love with and getting to be excited about current card releases is rather sad. Especially when new cards come out that feel like they could be perfect in a lower power format or an older ruleset paradigm that will simply never have that card. I think that's an issue people are always frustrated by, "Man, I wish this new card had somewhere to exist, but it's just not powerful enough to be played in Advanced."

Speaking of Power Creep, I want to talk about it in a way that I believe is a little more constructive than how we normally do. In MtG there's a very popular casual format called Commander, but I've always had a pretty bad time with it, because as a casual format you have to balance everything yourself. You have to meet up with people and say like "Oh, my deck is bracket 3" or something similar, and these terms are fairly arbitrary classifications that can lead to you to having really unfun three hour games where your deck cannot keep up and you just get owned but you can't concede early because it's frowned upon and also, I dunno, maybe you have a chance. The big thing about Power Creep in a format like Commander is that because the power level spread is so wide, the weaker decks almost feel like they're just spinning their wheels doing nothing when a more powerful deck is at the table. And if you're just picking random cards from a booster because you think they're cool or just starting out with what looks like a normal strategy and then it turns out that the real way to play the game is multiple waves of power creep above you, you can really just sit there having a terrible time at length. And you paid to have this experience. It's like when you're playing Yu-Gi-Oh! on Master Duel and your opponent went first with a combo deck and you're like, "Well, there's like a 20% chance they're bad enough they don't make a good board...", and then, well, nope, 37 minutes later I guess I just, uh, couldn't do anything that game. These "feel bads" get worse the more a game requires you to be playing at a very high level and to actually know what the high level strategies are to even meaningfully affect a match at all. I think that Yu-Gi-Oh! makes it really hard for people to do so without studying the game intensely because it has one of the largest gaps between what good cards used to do and what good cards do now. Without devoting an enormous amount of time to practice it can be extremely difficult to feel like you have any control over these non-games. Especially since one's likely to get mocked and made fun of for not simply playing the best thing. I dunno, I mean, Magic obviously has non-games in not drawing lands, but I think Yu-Gi-Oh!'s situation can be just as frustrating.

Finally, I want to talk about what I think is actually the biggest issue, the real reason why they're saying "Man, I wish Konami officially hosted casual events!" Simply put, getting to a game store is kinda tricky in Western territories, especially in the US in particular. I watched a video by an OCG Youtuber called Sunny (Who's in China, I think) talking about how the culture is totally different as there are people who can easily get to the store after work or something through public transport and they just hang around all day looking for casual games, like pick-up games to play with the others who show up. In the West, you really don't have that. Like, you have formal events you probably do on your day off, and you go there for exactly that event, you play in it, and then you go back home. You probably don't have an experience of bringing a deck and bumming around in the store going "Oh boy, I hope someone else has a casual 2019 deck they could play with me!" It's just not gonna happen, you know? You're not going to meet a Yu-Gi-Oh! player, and even if you do, they're almost certainly going to have a meta deck and nothing that really lines up with an outdated list.

This is, I think, the reason people go "I wish people could hold events for these other things..." because what they really want is to meet new people and have a social experience without necessarily having to be invested enough to actually play the modern game. Because, realtalk, you have to be VERY invested to play Yu-Gi-Oh! in any real sense. Like, we love to make fun of people who don't really know how to play. It's a very competitive game where you can say pretty much whatever you want about somebody just 'cuz they're bad and they're expected to deal with it. But that's clearly not a particularly welcoming experience, right? It's the same reason people hate competitive online games... yeah, maybe if you were better people wouldn't be as mean to you, but if you want to have a low-stakes experience while playing a game you're obsessed with it's kinda hard to do that when the only way to meet people through it is a competitive form where you have to be constantly studying your deck, doing reps all the time, all this other stuff... Yu-Gi-Oh! really is one of the hardest games to learn and get into, which is so funny because it has a huge casual fanbase that might be interested in the game but there's no real way to go to the store and play it to meet other casuals, as the only thing that gets people out of their house and at the store is going to formal events.

That's what I see as the root of all of this. It's really hard for the people who aren't obsessively interested in the competitive side of the game to meet other people unless they do it through Discords. Which are, honestly, just as likely to be full of crazy toxic people and awkward places to really meet anybody, full of spam and who knows what else while you're muting every channel. (I moderated the Last Card Standing channel for a while and lost my mind in doing so.) I think this is what people really mean, they wish they could have an experience with the game akin to what some people have with Commander, where they can go to the store on specific nights and groups of people hang out with casual decks. While you do have to spend a bit of effort to balance your matches, there's nevertheless official support for such play in the form of precons made to define a power level you can expect to start with and events with participation rewards... ways to make trying it more welcoming. I doubt Konami would ever do this; The existing Western fanbase plays the game in a very specific way and I honestly don't know how they could set things up to get a major influx of people willing to arrive on the designated days aside from the current competitive base. But it's truly intriguing to me how so many of the newly printed cards only seem to matter for casual players who are only going to meet up in the OCG or in side formats played in Discords by the most obsessive people you've ever met (guilty as charged, by the way.) That's why I think that just saying that anybody expressing this take is insane or that they should play GeneSys or something is kind of missing the point of what people are actually looking for. I think it's important to earnestly consider where these feelings are actually coming from, y'know? Anyway, thanks for listening.