the design of rush Duel cards exemplifies a different method of making the game easier to understand, the very clearly labeled [Requirement] and [Effect] sections of the text, making it crystal clear what's part of the cost and what's part of the effect, while physically separating them on different lines to make it easier to read each part.
I would love Rush Duel formatting for Card effects in Advanced. My eyes still bleed reading Cyberse Clock Dragon. All that bloat for not very good effects.
The cost and Effect are not difficult to differentiate using PSCT. However knowing that druiswurm does not meet its activation requirement of “being sent from the field to the GY” when it is destroyed by battle, but right next to it on the field Garura when destroyed by battle, triggers its effect which reads “when this card is sent to the GY”. That is some insane level nonsense card rulings. Druiswurm should say “sent by card effect” or Garura should not activate when destroyed by battle, not both.
I've seen a lot of instances in these topics where people recommend the Rush Duel approach. I'd honestly see that as a negative tbh. Rush Duel cards make it work because they have been keeping the effect count per card very small. Their imported effects from regular Yugioh tend to be in my opinion more wordy versions of texts that PSCT had already fixed. It could probably work if Yugioh is willing to bring down the level of complexity across the board for the Rush Duel method to become feasible, but I think that'd be hard to do.
Union, Spirit and Gemini are effectively keywords but the mechanic is explained on every card. Piercing could be shortened to "Deals piercing battle damage". Shortening the most common variation of an effect with a keyword, for example using "rank-up" only if the summon is treated as an Xyz summon and if the materials are transfered, is a pretty good idea.
I still find it funny that evrey union has to have the same essay, explaining why they're bad, on them. But Pendulums just expect you to know that they go face up on the Extradeck.
The first step should be replacing the now ubiquitous HOPT clauses with symbols or even an abbreviation like the aforementioned "HOPT". I would keep the OCG's enclosed alphanumerics to list effects but use letters and different colors to indicate if an effect is HOPT and of what kind. ● Empty circles with numbers (①, ②, ③...) for regular effects. ● Black circles with numbers (❶, ❷, ❸...) for basic HOPT effects. They replace the sentence "You can only use this/each effect of [insert card name] once per turn". ● Black circles with letters (🅐, 🅑, 🅒...) for HOPT clauses that restrict you to only 1 effect among multiple (e.g. Thunder Dragondark, Shaddoll Falco, etc). They replace the sentence "You can only use 1 [insert card name] effect per turn, and only once that turn".
The above conventions would save each card at least 1 line of text which is valuable real state for TCGs in general, but specially for those with small-sized cards like Yugioh. The next step should be rephrasing effects (not necessarily with keywords) to avoid redundancy. For example, the way the piercing effect is worded has a completely redundant sentence at the beginning: ● "If this card attacks a Defense Position monster, inflict piercing battle damage" This can be trimmed down to: ● "This card inflicts piercing battle damage" After all, the word Piercing already implies that the attacked monster should be in Defense Position. Other examples of redundant effects include: 1) Effects that conduct Extra Deck Summons. For example: ● "Immediately after this effect resolves, Synchro Summon 1 Synchro Monster from your Extra Deck, using monsters you control as material" Becomes: ● "Immediately after resolution, conduct a Synchro Summon. Synchro Summons can only be done for Synchro Monsters in the Extra Deck. That's literally how you're supposed to bring them out according to the rulebook and there is no ambiguity in this regard. Nobody in their right mind is ever going to attempt a Synchro Summon of an Xyz Monster from the GY. Only the cards that conduct summons from unusual locations and/or materials should include that information. The rest can assume players did their due diligence and learned the basics of each summoning method. 2) Effects that mention the location of a banished card. These effects would now mention a new card zone called the Banished Zone (abbreviated as BZ). For example: ● "Target 1 of your monsters that is banished or in your GY" Becomes: ● "Target 1 monster in your GY or BZ" 3) Ritual Monsters' summoning conditions: ● "You can Ritual Summon this card with any [insert archetype] Ritual Spell" Becomes: ● "Can be Ritual Summoned with a [insert archetype] Ritual Spell" 4) Monster categories like Spirit, Gemini, Toon (Unions are already abbreviated enough). 4.1) Current Gemini reminder text: ● "This card is treated as a Normal Monster while face-up on the field or in the GY. While this card is a Normal Monster on the field, you can Normal Summon it to have it become an Effect Monster with these effects." Becomes: ● "This is a Normal Monster while face-up on the field or in the GY. You can Normal Summon this Normal Monster to make it an Effect Monster with these effects." 4.2) Current Spirit reminder text: ● "Once per turn, during the End Phase, if this card was Normal Summoned or flipped face-up this turn: Return this card to the hand." Becomes: ● "Once per End Phase, if this card was Normal Summoned or flipped up this turn: Return it to the hand." 4.3) Current Toon reminder text: ● "While you control "Toon World" and your opponent controls no Toon monsters, this card can attack directly". Becomes: ● "Can attack directly while you control "Toon World" and your opponent controls no Toon monsters." Another option is to remove the reminder text for all of these mechanics, but I'm not sure how feasible that is. From my own experience as someone who played Geminis back in 2010, these effects are very easy to remember. It is no different from what you already have to do with Extra Deck mechanics like Synchro, Xyz or Link. For example, nowhere in a Link-3 monster's text does it say that you can use a Link-2 monster and 1 other monster as material. Those Link climbing rules are written in the rule book and nobody complains. The same goes for Pendulums going back to the Extra Deck face-up and Xyz materials being overlayed instead of going to the GY.
@@luchotenks2310 there are a lot of problems that will come out in the solution you mentioned, like spirit. I will expect Konami will make a spirit archetype or support monster that completely ignore spirit mechanic and play in their own game like shinobird ritual summon from deck and they can ignore their summoning sickness. Also "immediately" synchro summon as an effect and send those card to gy to perform a synchro summon are different.
an issue with this is there are two different type of hard once per turns "you can only activate each effect of [card name] once per turn" and "you can only use each effect of [card name] once per turn"
@@r3zaful There are effects that make you conduct a Synchro Summon after resolution (e.g. Formula Synchron, Yang Zing, etc). This is a normal Synchro Summon, so the Synchro Monster in question can have its summon negated provided the effect resolved last in the chain (see: Chain Link 1). The wording I proposed is for this particular kind of effect. Cards that special summon a Synchro monster during the resolution of their effects and not after (e.g. Superheavy Samurai Battleball, Stardust Warrior, etc), but treat the summoned monster as Synchro Summoned nonetheless, would not use this wording as they do not conduct proper Synchro Summons. I already mentioned that exceptional cases such as these are the ones that need clarification. Basically, explain the exceptions, not the norm. The former is written directly on the card; the latter is in the rule book.
They can, but it'll need to take account to Yu-Gi-Oh!'s long history. And Yu-Gi-Oh!'s wordings tend to make keywording real hard, especially with how effects are worded in ways that function completely different from each other.
Like mill in yugioh can literally means a lot Send to gy by card effect? Send as a cost? Send as an condition to activate an effect? It's beyond Saving and make the game more convoluted, all tcg had to do is follow ocg bullet points, because I don't think keywords are possibility at this point.
@@r3zaful agree, keywords means nothing when ygo has so many identical but not 1 to 1 effs. even as far back as something janky like LV / level monster. one monster needs to destroy a mon by battle to level up, the other needs to wait for your standby phase, and the newest one (armed dragon thunder) needs to discard to level up
You could absolutely keyword some part of the card effects while keep the complexity. However I think they should first make the cards like the OCG and then colour code or clearly seperate each different part of the effect, you should not have squint to see if something is a : or a ; Or just give the cards Rush Duel formatting.
If I had to guess, the reason why Master Duel doesn't support old formats is simply because the game is made so both TCG and OCG players can play, but old formats between those 2 are a lot different from each other. Like, in the TCG we never had a moment when you can discard Sangan with Graceful Charity to search an Exodia piece for example On the topic of formating, an option could be giving card text different color for Condition, Cost, Effect, Continuous Effect, etc. It would make it both easier to read and would give new players a more organic and visual way to start to learn the principles of PSCT. Of course, the colors themselves should not make reading harder, and it would need to be made in a way it doesn't looks silly
color coding would be bad for people with color-blindness. IMO, cost should be written in italics. And about card font size, simply making the card text effect bigger would help a lot with that, the set code shifting to the bottom would enable the text box to be expanded upwards, then you also make it go all the way to the border of the card and you already have much larger space and there is other optimizations that can be made.
We dont need keywords or weird symbols in card text. I think shortening some of the common effects that are wordy would be just fine. Plus, i dont think people dont exactly look at other card games' complexity enough. Cause a side note, i often hear people call it "too difficult" or "not basic" just because the effect box of a card is wordy. Yu-Gi-Oh's game structure and effect mechanics work like math. Both gives you the extra variables on an already known basic function. In math, you piece parts of a function to solve a problem. You already know what the common rules of the math do (addition, lines, squareroots, integrals etc). And with those base elements, the problem gives you numbers to work with to make connection eachother, and the card game is no different: You already know what basic rules of the game (Monster cards, chaining, summons, link arrows, levels etc.) And gives you cards with additional variables (in this case, effects) to work with, and you piece the cards together to make a functioning deck. Both math and Yu-Gi-Oh is similar in terms of using their base foundations and linking those foundations with extra variables that can indeed work eachother. People are just lazy to read some text in my oppinion :/
Great point on card and text formatting. There is already so much wasted space on the limited real estate of the cards. Let alone the fact the cards are JP size! While I would prefer changing the card format be in line with Rush Duel, adopting bullet points and rush duel style text, is a good start.
They can use more shortcuts like ATK on cards like GY, DP, SBP, M1, BP, M2, EP, NS, SS and instead of (quick efect) use The symbol of a lightning before text like on quick efect cards
keywords will only make the game more complex and alienate the old players. All they gotta do is listing certain effects in order and add ocg's bullet points
a comment i came across about this topic on another recent yugioh video about keywords brough up a good point; keywords in other tcg are design to be able to interact with other keywords or allow mechanics to interact with them which is something yugioh doesnt do in general because the closest yugioh has to such things is cards simply negating another card’s activation/effects or make certain mechanics inaccessible e.g droll and lock bird, d.barrier, fossil dyna, barrier statue etc yugioh doesnt create interactions between card effects like it doesnt care if a card has an effect to utilize a certain mechanic or not, just if said action were to happen e.g stardust dragon, imperial iron wall, aegirine gymir etc these cards prevent certain mechanics from being utilized or said action from going through, even something like ash blossom that is seemingly all-encompassing in stopping searching effects only list the most common ways of reaching into the deck but doesnt cover everything which allow certain effects to avoid it by process of literally not doing what ash list even if its barely any different basically what keyword means and what it brings with it to yugioh is effectively an alien design ethos that being siad i do agree that the formatting of yugioh cards can certainly be improved, i believe using ":" and ";" is enough to separate cost and conditions though some people just don't recognize it but i think another method on top of using ocg's numbered circles is to use another marker to allow players to know if an effect is affecting the owner, opponent or both like maybe a circled circle (red/blue/purple) before an effect (but after the numbered circle) for indication as this would allow players to more easily hone into an effect when reading the card as they would know which effect is being used depending on context
It lengthens the text, so several cards would have to use a smaller font size if that happened. It's fine in OCG because Japanese can convey more information with less text.
You are right that the very large number of similar-but-not-the-same effects, similar-but-not-the-same ways to word an effect, makes it much more difficult to retroactively add keywords. Should have done it 20 years ago! But, I think that keywords are largely a red herring. You COULD make some archetypal keywords, or even really "ability words" in Magic parlance, to denote "this is that same text you've seen before on the others", but... I have (since I started learning Yu-Gi-Oh! in 2022) had exactly two consistent demands for card-formatting, and neither is keywords. Demand 1 is: Line-breaks between different effects. Dumping a bunch of different effects into one paragraph, each as a mere sentence, is card-layout terrorism. It's unforgivable. Each effect needs a line break. The OCG number-circles for different effects are good too. Why that technology isn't used in the TCG is beyond me. It's like the TCG's editing department is using card layout software from 1999, or a nanDECK script that someone made in 20 minutes. Demand 2 is: The text for each effect, or I guess at least its bullet point/number-circle... Should be color-coded, by the zone from which it happens! So imagine you're looking at Eldlich. His "(1)" would be in one color, because it happens from the hand. Then "(2)" would be in another color, because that effect happens from the GY. Each zone would have one standard color. An effect that can happen from multiple zones would have split colors for its number-circle. This is essential so that you can glance at a card (especially in the GY) and see immediately whether it has text that can happen from that zone. If you did these two things, of line-breaks+number-circles, and color-coding for zones, then I would easily forgive all the other janky aspects of Yu-Gi-Oh!'s templating, formatting, etc.
the problem with keywords is not "can these work on most cards", it's if they can work on EVERY card. And they can't. For every drytron or swordsoul reimagined with keywords I can think of another card that would be just as long with keywords. The only way to really fix the reading problem in yugioh is not to have shorter cards, but shorter turns. I really like for example the recent design on rescue ace, vanquish soul and centurea. These decks perform 5 to 6 actions per turn usually and even if every card can have 2 or 3 effects they are slow enough to not overwhelm. Rikka or dragon link are super fun decks that I really enjoy but I know how hard it can be to keep track of the gameplay if you don't know any of their cards
Konami hates us, I know because we don't have Rush Duels. Hopefully SEVENS world in Duel Links will show them how much people want these cards out here
I thinking adopting the OCG formatting for cards would help a lot for making the game less intimidating for newer players. That's what made reading cards so hard for me at the start. Since a card's text is just one big paragraph, it was hard at times to tell when one effect ends, and a new one starts. I'm currently learning Japanese, and I play Master Duel in Japanese to practice reading. And I feel like I can only do this without slowplaying because of the OCG card format. It makes quickly skimming over cards super easy. Also, I do we think could add some keywords. But only for super common wordings like "When normal summoned." I think making a short hand for these would help a lot with lowering the character count on cards, while not really affecting card interactions. Even if they just do stuff like "When NS/SS"(When normal summon/special summon), or maybe even something like "when STGY"(sent to GY)
I think everyone universally agrees with this but Konami will never do it because in their eyes they probably see it as nuking the game or some shit when in reality it would bring in new players, something they've consistently struggled with over the past 5 to 10 years and it'll actually help the current playerbase and win the community over, its literally a win-win situation, hell they could even announce it as a new Master Rule or something like that
I dont think keywords are new player friendly and im a magic player. I love keywords but new players simply dont know what they do. They will however free up A LOT of yugioh text box real estate.
I must say that I never considered how bad Konami treats the TCG before watching your video. Worse Card designe, worse card quality and worse set rarities. Keep up the good work!
Also, some card types could be implemented, such as Nomi or Semi-Nomi (but please do not use these names, they are terrible), which could be described in kursive, so you can refresh what they mean, but you can skip them if you don't need them.
I agree with all the points raised. I feel that adopting player speach patterns would be an easy way to at least shortan the word coulds of cards, with wording that when used once, are very each to understand: "If/When this monster is Normal or Special Summned..." = "If/When Summoned..." "Add 1 card with "[x]" in its name other than "~" from your deck or GY to your hand." = "Search Deck or GY for a differently named "[x]" Card." Together, Green Gadget could read: "When Summoned; Search Deck for 'Red Gadget'". Elegant, Simple, Easy to grasp/remember. This is harder to apply to all kinds of rules text, however; making the most common trigger/effect in the game far easier to read is a good start.
While you're doing these mockups, look at how absurdly good a quality of life fix simply bolding condition text is without changing the entire PSCT format. It makes it really easy to see where one effect starts and another ends just with a quick cursory scan. Even something small like this would go a huge way to improving card readability without necessarily requiring much effort on KoA's part over what they're already doing.
Keywords would be a disaster in yugioh. There’s sooooo many effects that are 99% similar but ever so slightly different. You’d need a new keyword for each and every one. We colloquially call a search on summon a “stratos”, but now let’s factor every nuance. Is it normal OR special? Is it once per turn? Can it miss timing? Each and every possible combination of those would need to be something unique, and that’s just the tip of the iceberg.
I agree for the most part, but I think the issue of HOPT and OPT effects being once per turn differently can be resolved by using something like "HOPT (use)" or "HOPT (activate)" where HOPT/OPT basically means the "You can only use each of the following effects of [this cards name/this card for HOPT and OPT respectively] once per turn." text, but the word in the brackets replaces the "use" in the example, and cards with multiple effects which are on different restrictions would be handled with sequencing, when you introduce one, the other goes away. I will use Baronne as an example of how I'd format this because its text is pretty convulted because it's formatted as [Limit]: [Cost]; [Effect]. [Limit], [Condition]: [Effect]. [Limit on previous effect]. [Limit], [Condition]: [Cost]; [Effect] ^ this should push most of these alternative card text suggestions to their limit. At least if we use the sample size of one card. Obviously I could go through 300 cards, but I don't have the time for that. Onto the examples. HOPT (use): 1) When a card or effect is activated (Quick Effect): You can negate the activation, and if you do, destroy that card. You can only use this effect once while this card is face-up on the field. OPT: 2) You can target 1 card on the field; destroy it. 3) During the Standby Phase: You can target 1 Level 9 or lower monster in your GY; return this card to the Extra Deck, and if you do, Special Summon that monster. There is also an alternative to go for something more OCG-like, and, I don't know if this is their text, but I cooked it up, and it's better than what we have now. 1) You can target 1 card on the field; destroy it. 2) When a card or effect is activated (Quick Effect): You can negate the activation, and if you do, destroy that card. 3) During the Standby Phase: You can target 1 Level 9 or lower monster in your GY; return this card to the Extra Deck, and if you do, Special Summon that monster. You can only use the 1) and 3) effects of this card once per turn. You can only use the 2) effect of this card once while it is face-up on the field, and you can only use the 2) effect of "Baronne de Fleur" once per turn.
For cards that do something in the Graveyard. I would include a symbol of a Grave on the Top Left counter before the name. This would make searching the graveyard easier for both players and inform the players a graveyard effect has been activated.
It's not exactly keywording, but abbreviations and simple re-structuring of certain phrases could really cut down on text: Draw Phase, Standby Phase, Main Phase 1, Battle Phase, Main Phase 2, End Phase, Special Summon, Normal Summon, Main Deck, Banish Zone, Extra Deck, Pendulum Zone can all be abbreviated, as they did with Graveyard. "During the standby phase of the next turn" is a lot longer than "In SP next turn". Even not using abbreviations and just saying "In Standby next turn" is 20 characters shorter and conveys all the same information. Another big annoyance is that they often jumble around the 'Once per turn' restrictions on cards. Sometimes it's immediately after the effect, sometimes it's part of activation condition, sometimes it's at the very start of the text, sometimes it's at the very end of the text. Sometimes its even listed twice, such as "Once per turn: [effect]". "You can only use this effect of "tedious mumbo jumbotron of the 7th heaven" once per turn". This could have just be "Strict Once Per Turn:" or even "Strict OPT:". All of this ignoring non-English translations of course. The reason they may phrase things the way they do is because it's shorter to do so in German or something. I wouldn't know. Personally, I found it way easier to get into Magic BECAUSE of keywords, than I did with yugioh's paragraphs of indescipherable text. Once I learned what Trample, Flying, Ward etc... means, It's not easy to forget. It's something you learn once and never have to worry about again. I see one word on a card and know the entire paragraph of what it represents. Whereas with yugioh, I have to read that paragraph every time and make sure there's no slight distinction that I need to worry about, such as a "when" or an "if" or an "and if you do", or "then" etc... People whom I've taught Magic and Yugioh to have always had the same experience. Just having one word explained to you once or twice, is much easier to learn and makes the game more fun, than having to read paragraphs every time your opponent plays a card and pay very careful attention to punctuation, conjunctions and highly specific phrasing. But like you said, that's kinda what makes yugioh, yugioh.
Except what makes yugioh, yugioh is disastrous card design and the game being owned by a company almost as scummy as WotC, Konami does not listen to the community, they know card formatting is an issue cause its been complained about for what over 5 years now, the execs just hate the playerbase and refuse to fix the game so they get to do literally nothing and get paid for it
I think you didnt need any keywords, only remodel the text with markers like this: * it cannot be destroyed by your opponent's card effects. *your opponent cannot target it with card effects *Etc etc
Talk about rotation next. My true goal is to talk about how I don’t want rotation. The evergreen format is what I like. I enjoy cards that I got when I was 8 still being legal, with the possibility that it could be good. Although this might be a me thing Generally though, I’m kinda tired of some people thinking that the best thing for yugioh is to just make it Japanese magic the gathering. Part of it feels like a psyop because it’s coming from alot of magic the gathering players. Yugioh problems are gonna require yugioh solutions if it’s going to stay yugioh. I do not want magic the gathering lite.
The thing about opposing rotation though is that a lot of the problems with rotation are *still* problems without rotation. A lot of the benefits of having no rotation are still present even if you have rotation. All TCGs with rotation also have a vintage/eternal/wild format, where all cards can be played. "Some terrible card from 20 years ago is technicallu legal" is true of every extended format in every TCG. Ironically however, because of rotation, the power level of new releases doesn't spiral upward as quickly as in yugioh, which means that older cards stay viable longer. Cards from 10-20 years ago are actually *more* playable in games with rotation, not less. Players do have to constantly acquire new product to play at a competitive level in the standard format, but this is true of yugioh too anyway. Decks or archetypes that are only a year or two old become pathetically uncompetitive from powercreep and targeted new releases made to counter them, or get pieces limited or banned. If you want to be competitive in yugioh you need to be constantly acquiring new cards which are eventually soft rotated either by powercreep or by being banned. Despite the fact that cards rotate, cards actually have *more* longevity in games with rotation because again, powercreep is less egregious in rotation based games and rotated cards more easily find homes in extended environments. Every single game with rotation has an extended format which is directly analogous to yugioh's only format, where almost every card is legal and you can play stupid jank. Only those formats are more diverse and older cards are more viable than yugioh's format. There are dramatically fewer bans in rotating games, and most of those bans are format specific. Yugioh has way more bans, and because there's only one format those bans render the cards entirely unplayable anywhere not just one specific format. Rotation means that more cards are playable and at a more competitive level, not less.
One thing I think Konami should at least be doing is putting Ignition, Trigger, and On Summon in the card text like they do with Quick Effects. It'd make the game a lot easier to explain to newer/retuning players.
Like you said, bullet points are a minimum. I would also like to see something for targeting. Something like a circle with a number in it. The circle denotes targeting and the number how many cards. Conditions would follow. For example "Target one face up monster your opponent controls; destroy it" Becomes "O opponent face up monster; destroy it" [imagine "O" has a "1" in it] Also there has to be a more elegant way to denote HOPT than the current format. HOPT is clunky and misses nuance in "use" VS "activate" but something must be better. For example: Activate/use once - condition: cost; effect VS Once - condition: cost; effect The first would be a hard opt and the second be a soft opt.
1. Please use OCG numbering as standard. This is very helpful when someone ask "what effect?", we can just say "effect 1 or 2" and they can find it immediately. In TCG card, if someone ask you the effect of a certain long effect. You need to point specific place in your cards, they read it, and still find difficulties because they don't know where to start and the line of effect end. . 2. For main deck mechanic like Gemini, Spirit, and Union. Maybe we can give them keywords to make it simpler and give more space for more useful effect. - For Gemini we can use (Gemini effect) for standard Gemini effect, I have read most Gemini standard effect and all of them the same effect, but with slightly different words. - Spirit is a little developed now and we can't give 1 keywords to them, because some Spirit have effect when they special summoned. Specifically, they're Shino-ritual and Konohanasakuya only. And they only mention 'if this card special summoned this turn' without any specific additional condition etc. in that case: (Normal Spirit) for traditional spirit that can return to hand if they're normal or flip summoned. (Special Spirit) for spirit that can return to hand if they're special summoned. Or we don't need to add this to text box. Because we can put those on "Type text line" (line where they put Warrior/Ritual/Effect etc. I don't know how to call them) and remove the unnecessary text in text box.
the only way i can think of to get keywords into yugioh is for konami to make a new summon mechanic that has keywords instead of normal effects or a combination of normal effects and keywords by the way excellent video I agree with you in everything you said
Effect rulings like if, when, and if you do, etc. wouldn't translate very well into keywords. But there are some static effects that would definitely benefit in shortening the length of words on cards. Like protection effects and summon locks.
PSA for struggling players There's a mod for master duel in Nexus mods that reformats the text to make it more legible and there's another one that puts key symbols on the cards although that one is manually done so that means the card pool of moded cards is the ones that are currently relevant
You're the only person I've heard being up the fact that a big part of yugiohs power creep is slightly changing wording to dodge effects, which could not be done with keywords. Like cards setting from deck to dodge ash.
The problem is that every archetype does completely different unique things to the detriment of wanting to learn the game. Maybe if Konami supported or created a simplified format like GOATs, or something similar that could get new cards printed just for that format, the game could grow. Unfortunately, because they don't want to simply the card text, much less new players can even enter the space, leaving only experienced players. Another thing is that keywords would open up far more design space that yugioh has. All the best archetypes right now can basically be summarized to "When enter, search card. When die, play a card from a zone" or other similar effects. Because there are only combo decks in Yugioh, there isnt really any design space for different play styles, just better versions of previous play styles. I think the best bet to simplify would be a huge Master Rule update. It would almost have to be its own game, but I think like how magic resets years of card text, Yugioh would have to do the same. Otherwise, outside of Rush Duel which is also a very different game, I think Yugiohs decline will simply continue, especially when they are trying to ban game mats and accessories from the community. Konami just doesn't know what to do with its card game.
some abbreviation to common words would be helpful. (Special summon and normal summon) to (S.summon and N.summon) (Synchro monsters, Fusion monsters, Etc) to (Syncro Card, Fusion Card, Etc.) ("The complete name of the card" ) to "this card" or "this name car".
The bit about keywords compressing the game is a bit of a red herring as all the functional keywords should only encompass the typical formatting of effects, as in the case of hard or soft once per turn, could be shown similar to Wixoss formatting: as hard1 or soft1 and if the restriction is different it can simply be in plain text to indicate that it deviates from the expected norm. The problem is that if this complexity is what you seek to keep, design would be incentivised to nix hard once per turns in lieu of more intuitive notation of like: turn1 Keywords at best in this example wouldn't really make the game easier for new players as you are replacing teaching them from jargon hunting to keyword memorization; the intended outcome is that the card would be easier to skim towards the information desired: want to read what it does look for the plain text, and if you are looking for what mechanics they keyworded you scan for bolded and possibly stylized text.
I feel the best way to implement keywords without getting rid of complexity or homogenizing the cards is to use it for archetypes that already have shared effects throughout the archetype. Have one keyword for the Madolche shuffle, the Superheavy Samurai spell/trap restriction, the Labrynth "when a monster leaves the field by the effect of a normal trap", or all of the shared effects of the Qli monsters. If an archetype doesn't have shared effects, it doesn't need them, but it could work for some archetypes.
This is a neat idea, but it would be very confusing for new players. A bigger issue is how many archtypes don't share keywordable mechanics like kashtira, rescue ace, and purrely to name a few. Basically it's to confusing with a limited payoff.
Every archetype would need new keywords 💀 But honestly, it would be better if we got shorthand for common universal phrases like once per turn/duel, hard once per turn, locked to summon type/monster type/ attribute, etc. Also change the formatting to that of rush duels where you get cost and effect clearly delineated.
Some cards can receive key words and others cannot as they have greater complexity and uniqueness. Many cards have 2 or 3 Biblical-sized effects, not that all of these could be summarized in keywords, but at least 1 would alleviate the amount of tiny text on the card. Another way to reduce the flood of text on cards I thought of is unfortunately not viable, but it's interesting to think about. Instead of the effect being written directly on the monster card, it would only have a spell/trap card name, this card would be assigned to the monster and attached to it when summoned, just like an xyz. In other words, the effects would be transferred to spell/trap cards and these would be assigned to monsters. Obviously I would have to redesign the entire game but I liked that idea.
8:25 pretty sure one this is due to Konami wanting to keep the population of players in ranked the playlist higher and of course, get them to open certain packs more.
Keywords along with other changes are gonna have to be implemented at some point. Players can talk all they want of how the games complexity is part of it's uniqueness, but that doesn't mean much if it actively scares away new players and continues the stagnation the game has. The game needs to become new player friendly otherwise the only thing left will be the old players and that's an ever shrinking group.
I mean i agree that quality of life changes should be made, but the bigger issue is how there's no jumping on point for yugioh. MTG players don't have to jump headfirst into vintage or legacy magic.
I haven't finished the video and I generally agree, but I do have an issue with a point you made regarding the Detach keyword that someone suggested. You can absolutely have a default behavior for a keyword and then add a caveat for the cards that need it. The vast majority of XYZ detach their own materials. Why couldn't you just have a keyword detach and if it can use other XYZ monster's materials, make that clarification. Sure, those cards won't see as much of a reduction in card text, but that seems folly to hinder the majority of cards for their sake instead of adding it when needed.
Printing symbols in the card boxes literally fixes everything, I’m Konami can expect a player base to adopt freaking pendulum monsters, I think we can understand symbols for once per turn, hard once, soft once etc
Acronyms will never ever work, but the more generic effects like piercing, pop, float, protection can easily be contextualized by playing the game. Optionally if you added icons, say, next to the card type where a huge lot of nothing is, you could even know at a glance what kind of effects the card has.
"The complexity is what makes Yugioh" is a bad argument. It is true, that this is something that distinguishes Yugioh from other card games ... but in a bad way. This is a discussion about making the game more accessible, and not about what bought in players enjoy. It is fine if you, and many other long time players, don't mind the long texts or weirdly worded interactions, but potential new players will. And if you want to grow the player base, this matters. If you don't, well then that is not a problem, but then you cant complain about a lack of new players. Regarding the keywords: It is hard to introduce keywords after the fact, because normally keywords will influence heavily which cards are created. If something can't neatly be expressed with keywords and a bit of extra text, maybe it should not be a card. This seems like a hard pill to swallow for YGO people, as it is fundamentally different from how YGO cards are made. Attaching keywords after the fact makes it seem like you need 1000 keywords to handle all the special cases, when in actuality, you should not have these special cases in the first place. While they look better than the original, the examples at 2:18 are terrible and I would assume those were made by a long time YGO player. * Drytron: The 'must be special summoned by ...' should be a keyword or a parameter to the bound keyword. But instead the author focused on removing "monster" from the cardtext for no real reason. * Swordsoul: Again, cutting the string "monsters" over reducing the obvious "You can only use 1of the following effects...". Why is it not clear by layout that only one of the effects can trigger? Use a different bullet point style, "Choose one", or something like that. Multiple effects and chose-one effects happen all the time, in monsters, spells and traps. This has to be easily accessible during card design. * Eldlich: "Each of these ..." blah blah blah, make it a keyword, make it clear by the layout that this is the case. The discarding from had could be "[Discard: This + 1 Spell/Trap]", again, happens all the time, this pays off. * Zeus: Here you mention exactly the problem: "not all xyz effects are created equally", but they should be. This inconsistency makes it hard to follow. Instead they should be based on a common keyword-associated mechanic, with exceptions as parameters or mentioned in short card texts. All in all, it is not just cutting words and cramping in some keywords that would make the cards more readable. It is also the layout that needs to be used, for example to distinguish once-per-turn, constant or chose-one effects. Those are common building blocks, that need to be defined. Yes, this does limit card design possibilities, because you can't do whatever on the card text. But, for consistency and structure, most cards should be able to be dissected like this anyway. Furthermore, you can still have archtype specific mechanics, just like hearthstone or MTG have expansion specific mechanics. This is absolutely no problem even without rotation. You create an archtype specific keyword, like DANGER and include the weird "random discard" stuff in there. If someone does not know the keyword you can simply explain it once, instead of having to figure out which cards do this and if there are slight differences in wording.
What would fix yugiho is an option in master duel to darken the summoning condition text of the opponents monsters so it is easier to see where the effects start. It is a virtual sim of the game. if its on the board they had to of done it legally I do not care about the summoning condition what does it do!
I don't play this game, but I've always wondered why this game doesn't have a format for the last two years' cards only like Pokemon and magic do. They're new player friendly as the cards are easily accessible as well as is a format that can stay interesting as older cards rotate out. You don't see the same decks over and over forever since the cards won't last forever. These formats are usually easy to make official too since it actually makes people buy new cards to keep up with the format which is something the card creator would like. I can honestly see why Konami doesn't want to support those time wizard formats too. No one is going to buy cards for that and they're not easy cards to get for everyone. The more videos I watch about this game, the more I have a hard time understanding how this game is even alive in general. The text formating they're printed in is straight awful.
"When normal or special summoned" is there another type of summon? Why not just say "when summoned"? They could also colour code effects like vanguard does, when reading cards i do not need to look at the cards copy pasted summoning conditons in drytron. Yeah i get it tribute a blue or drytron card, wheres the search effect specifically.
Flip summoning. Everybody always forgets flip summoning. As well as normal set, although this has never yet (to my knowledge) activated that set cards effect. So not really relevant.
Yeah this is an extremely hard game to simply because every common kind of effect pattern always has outliers that don't exactly follow said pattern. That said though, I didn't quite get the bit around the mid part of the video. Keywords would for sure aim to not change the way effects and interactions work. That's a different subject altogether. If it ever would change anything, then it'd mean that particular instance is not eligible. Also, if you have a similar effect but with 2 or more variations, you could still pick the most common variation or the variation planned to be used most going forward (like how "missing the timing" effects are being designed less and less over time) and make a keyword for that specific variation. The fact the one most common way has a keyword would help the other variations not using the keyword telegraph more easily that there IS a variation to them because of the lack of keyword. If this ends up with anywhere between 4 and 20 keywords, they could do what other TCGs do and print the list of keywords with their definitions in the rulebook's glossary or some empty spot on the paper gamemat that comes with starter/structure decks, and/or have the promo code cards in booster packs that only promote the online platforms actually dub as tip cards like the old days, but instead of a random tip give them a random keyword relevant for that set's cardpool. I think there are ways that won't take any extra ink or paper for konami to implement ways to reference. The keywords would aim to be intuitive as to not need to do that AS MUCH to begin with but like.... there are ways. Also, Konami should do what other TCGs and print the year of the card's release on every card instead of a single copyright that doesn't help you make out the newest erratas on cards without going to some database.
YGO already has certain Keywords, like "Special Summon", 'Excavate", "Tribute", etc. There's also a lot of common things like "This card is unaffected by card effects", "Can't be normal summoned", "Can't be Destroyed by battle" cluld be shortened to "Ward", "Unsummonable (Normal)", "Indestructible (Battle)". Taking community phrases and making those keywords could also work. The goal with keywords is more to open up card text so it can use an actually legible font size, and would seperate the generic effects with unique ones.
How about adding a dictionary or glossary on Neuron for every keyword? Some Yu-Gi-Oh! mechanics are repeated so often that it makes no sense not to turn them into a keyword. Why are not soft once per turn and hard once per turn not both keywords already? Why Detach is not a keyword when all XYZ monsters have basically the same line about detaching? If something is repeated a million times, is verbose, and represents a simple concept, then just turn it into a keyword already.
There's a pretty easy solution to this that allows us to preserve the complex wordings. Instead of using awful wordings like "when this card is activated" just use "when activated". A similar thing could be done to the "you can only use each effect once per turn" by changing it to "the use of each effect is HOPT". Combine this with proper bulletpoints and it should be more than sufficient. There's also the option to add a small icon for when the effect can be used. E.g. graveyard effects could have a unique icon before the effect and floating effects could have another. The reason yugioh has such awful wording is because the translation is way too literal. Japanese has some nuances english doesn't have and to properly convey that, the translation simply became too rigid and they stuck with it.
Those little complexities also make the game exhausting to play because often something will happen and I just won't understand why it just happened even after reading all the cards on the field. I think what would be cool would be having these types of keywords along with a new less complex format that's easier to play while still being competitive. Previous Yugioh cards would be unaffected by this new format but cards within this format would adhere to the less creative but easier to understand keywords.
I will give you example of Keywords Gemini -- in the rulebook will be written that you need to summon in second time to get his effect., INSTEAD OF EVERY GOD DAMN CARD Same for the toons and in the future if konami thinks the mehanic is too outdated, they will just change it in the official rules
Soooo kinda hot take. I don't think the cards or anything with the game is the issue. I think the issue that keeps people from getting into the game and staying is the toxic community and the need to always play the meta.
Duel links not successful? In your bubble maybe it way more bigger then Tcg and ocg combined. Masterduel Halfed the playerbase and before that they scummy money hungry practices + genuine poor management + limiting cards behind paywall and selection boxes + POOR handling of level up rewards + dragging the story tooo much which was barebones anyway. Still bigger then Tcg lmao.
I don't think there's anyone advocating for keywords that legitimately wants every action keyworded. That would be absurd. Simplifying certain things like 1PT or OPT for Once per turn and HOPT for Hard Once Per Turn, etc might just make it so that I don't have to interpret whether or not they can play all three of their copies this turn or if I can negate this one and then they can't play it again. It's not simplifying the interaction, it's just making it so that I don't have to read the miles long text to see "You may only play one X per turn" in the middle of two effects or all the way at the end of the card. It's not hard to make the cards more readable instead of saying "text wall good because hard to read so fun". That's just a really reductionist view of it. I think it's not a tall task to AT MINIMUM separate each effect, display the effect more clearly, and separate each effect so that I can just point to which effect I'm using so that my opponent can know. Complexity for the sake of complexity does not make the game more fun.
I agree that shortening every action wouldn't work and that just small reductions and rewordings here and there would be great, but please tell that to everyone who keeps making shortened cards with everything shortened to absurdity. Second it's not complexity for complexity sake, I was very clear that it's about the meaningful interactions and mechanics that come from the game's current complexity.
I appreciate the arguments here, it’s interesting to her another perspective. I think keywords are still important for Yu-Gi-Oh though. Your argument about it missing the complexity, doesn’t really have to work that way. Don’t just keyword once per turn, keyword all of the usage limits. Keyword it as ‘limited’ or something and put a number with next to it for timing. “Limited 1: meaning for soft, limited 2: for hard, and even limited 3/4: if you want a soft/hard once per game. I agree as well just abbreviating cards and reformatting them can go a long way, but we will end up here again. A bunch of Konami games uses OPM with a colored box around it. Coloring it and putting the numbers I mentioned earlier would be really good. Spell speeds being printed on cards would be amazing for beginners getting in. Make text bigger. I think my main worry is key wording something badly means you ruin the flavor of an archetype. Magic does this a lot, but for a YuGiOh example, they keyworded excavate, so now when Chaos Ruler is summoned, it’s not him peering into the future or anything, it’s just him digging I guess.
The problem with that is you end with having too many keywords that make the game obsurdly difficult for new players to get into just the same. Lole.have you ever tried to play a game of commander magic with a new player. It's obsurdly hard for them the get a drift of what's going on, never mind understanding their options. It's not that keywords can't work l, but it's that with a game like yugioh their benefits don't really apply and it would risk destroying a lot of yugiohs key identity
I disagree that reducing the amount of text (keyword or otherwise) would necessarily remove the nuances. Developing a wording system to account for these nuances may take longer, but it's certainly possible.
I have to disagree with everything stated after 5:12 the over complexity of yugioh that creates the interactions you are talking about IS the issue. If (for example) all negates, negated activations and were made into a keyword, would yugioh suddenly become a worse game? Would the core gameplay change at all? Or would people still most likely play the same cards and build the same boards and use the same handtraps? Having to know, understand, and memorize 1 billion different circumstances for negating cards and negated cards vs activation or used or gain is actually a driving force against new players playing paper. (I say this as a player who switch over from MTG during covid). Key words are not necessarily new player friendly because they also have to be memorized, but simplifying the game would not “ruin” yugioh. The interactions you talked about would just become different interactions, whos to say if they would be “better” or “worse”? Its completely subjective. And is having 1 million different niche minuscule “interactions” worth the overall health and understandability of the game? Is it worth making the game wholly unapproachable by new and returning players? Would removing “missing timing” really change the game so integrally that to you it would be unplayable?
Yes yugioh would be a worse game with every negate type effect shortened to negate. Or with every removal effect homogenized into a bounce, shuffle back, or banish, etc... Missing timing too is an important part of the game too. Same with chain blocking. Same with hand traps. Yugioh is about figuring out the puzzle of an opponent's board and deconstructing it. Sometimes the answer is to stop it preemptively with handtraps, sometimes the answer is to blow it out, and sometimes it's an incredibly specific combination of your decks unique effects. All of these can be fun and certainly are fun for me and many other players. It's from this specific complexity that enables a players skill, rewards good deckbuilding and encourages game knowledge. There's a reason people do still like yugioh over magic the gathering and pokemon, all these years later. It's certainly not a replaceable game for yugioh's experienced players. The problem is the lack of a new player pipeline. MTG has a standard / Arena -> modern -> other formats. Pokemon is always in standard. Yugioh just has nothing, outside of mediocre projects like duel links and speed duel.
@@MonkeyFightTCG this straight up makes no sense. Everything you described in paragraph 2 can STILL be done with a more in line, understandable set of effects. Literally nothing there, or any other major nonsharking piece of gameplay is removed by getting rid of niche differences in what are effectively the same effects. Homogenizing “if” and “when” or “activate” and “use” wouldn’t change the gameplay loop of yugioh whatsoever. The problem I promise you is not the “pipeline” its the impossibility of understanding 1 million nuances in vague rulings not even backed by an official comprehensive rules document. The “pipeline” exists in masterduel and duel links. I personally started on duel links and transitioned to paper then to masterduel. The yugioh shareholder meeting which began this conversation in the community showed that the complexity of the game stops new masterduel players from ever going to play the physical game. Worst of all, you would rather have the game be unapproachably complicated than have new players able to join the game? Have you seen the MBT Raran videos?
@@MonkeyFightTCG I literally responded to every single point you made, in the same paragraph format you used so you knew which paragraph corresponds to which points you made. Its extremely bad faith and wormy to say i ignored everything you said. And i “went straight to MBT”? My brother, that was the very last thing i said.
@@cooldes4593well you see that would actually be worse for the game cuz then you'd get rid of the try hards that loves those interactions and they just so happen to be what keeps the game alive so no risking your already loyal base for another that alredy has a bad interpretation of you isnt ideal but hey thats ygo for ya its a game gate kept to the core but you might really enjoy it after that leaning curve and that what keeps the game going
I've seen the game, it looks kinda weak and not what I'm intrested in. It does solve a lot of issues, but it isn't yugioh imo and I don't think it bridges new players that well. It also isn't something konami has a track record with handling well. Speed duels and duel links come to mind. I think that it has to be an old format or an online simulator or bust.
@@MonkeyFightTCGRush Duel still has a place though. It's shouldn't be really viewed as a bridge to Master format. Rush is really a separate TCG with it's own identity that beeing an approachble, but quite different way to play Yugioh for children and total newcomers. As a player that doesn't appreciate the complexity of modern Yugioh. And in Japan, it's doing well. It's year 4 of it consistently receiving constant support, and the game is evolving through card pool that creates a different kind of complexity (especially in Go Rush era). With design philosophy of Rush, it's definitely going for "easy to play hard to master" direction in contrast to modern Master's "you can't really play unless you master"
A metric ton of effects from normal YGO are absent in Rush Duel. Jinzo is pretty much if not THE only card in Rush Duel to have an effect negation effect. Activated effects in Rush Duel are also all innately once per turn. Point is, using Rush Duel as a base is pretty silly.
@catmanthree5683 Technically not, because Darkness Galactica Olivion is coming up, and it negates Continuous monster effect, but yes. Treating Rush Duels as a bridge to Master is not right and it kind of disregards what Rush really made is for
keywords change how cards are worded. Yugioh interactions a based on how cards are worded. You would need either a thousand keywords to keep the nuance or just not keyword a lot of cards. Defeating the point of keywords either way.
To this point I start to think YGO community simply don't want to lose this self validation they have as "capable of playing a complex card game" by wanting to make the game easier and more accessible Such a shitty snobby take tbh This "lose of identity" crisis everyone seem to experience every time someone tries to add something from MTG it's absurd, just deal with the fact that Yu-Gi-Oh is by no means perfect nor the best card game since we're at a point where we have to look at other card games to figure out something to "fix" our game
I mean yeah you can change yugioh to be mtg lite, but then is it really yugioh? That's like trying to play legacy mtg with only modern cards and designs. I love mtg and I love yugioh. But they're different games that do completely different things and are loved for different reasons. That's not to say you can't improve yugioh, there are ways to shorten wording and format cards to be more accessible. But you shouldnt just go full sail into keywords, beacuse they create way to many problems with how yugioh is. Yugioh also needs a better new player format with a lower skill ceiling and more accessible decks and power level. Which is something litterally every other game has. Lastly you don't need to dismiss my take as snobby, just beacuse you disagree with me. I find it rude and pointlessly aggressive.
@@MonkeyFightTCG I don't mean it by as a personal attack or in regards to the video, it's just something I've seen everywhere since the debate started. I completely agreed that making Yu-Gi-Oh essentially a straight copy of magic isn't gonna fix anything, but a change is necessary. And even so magic doesn't have to be the point of reference, personally I find Digimon to be the one that has managed this balance between keyword usage, intricate card interactions and the overall pace of a duel almost perfectly, and yet it suffers from powercreep similar to YGO. I don't think much would be lost just by giving order and cohesion to a game that lacks attribute/type identity, a progressive resource management (even though it has a resource system in the form of the cards) and uniformed card effect's structure. Creativity isn't something tied to the base system as proved by pendulums and links.
the design of rush Duel cards exemplifies a different method of making the game easier to understand, the very clearly labeled [Requirement] and [Effect] sections of the text, making it crystal clear what's part of the cost and what's part of the effect, while physically separating them on different lines to make it easier to read each part.
I would love Rush Duel formatting for Card effects in Advanced.
My eyes still bleed reading Cyberse Clock Dragon. All that bloat for not very good effects.
That is good if a card only have one effect. But in advanced format, most cards have 2+ effect now.
The cost and Effect are not difficult to differentiate using PSCT. However knowing that druiswurm does not meet its activation requirement of “being sent from the field to the GY” when it is destroyed by battle, but right next to it on the field Garura when destroyed by battle, triggers its effect which reads “when this card is sent to the GY”.
That is some insane level nonsense card rulings.
Druiswurm should say “sent by card effect” or Garura should not activate when destroyed by battle, not both.
I've seen a lot of instances in these topics where people recommend the Rush Duel approach. I'd honestly see that as a negative tbh. Rush Duel cards make it work because they have been keeping the effect count per card very small. Their imported effects from regular Yugioh tend to be in my opinion more wordy versions of texts that PSCT had already fixed.
It could probably work if Yugioh is willing to bring down the level of complexity across the board for the Rush Duel method to become feasible, but I think that'd be hard to do.
@@renaldyhaenbullet points
Union, Spirit and Gemini are effectively keywords but the mechanic is explained on every card. Piercing could be shortened to "Deals piercing battle damage". Shortening the most common variation of an effect with a keyword, for example using "rank-up" only if the summon is treated as an Xyz summon and if the materials are transfered, is a pretty good idea.
I still find it funny that evrey union has to have the same essay, explaining why they're bad, on them.
But Pendulums just expect you to know that they go face up on the Extradeck.
@@teddi6909 even toon effect monsters. But then there are like two or three of them that have slightly different effects
Doesn't quite apply to Spirits anymore, there are several now that can be Special Summoned
@@TheCardTrooperonly Spirit Rituals break the trend to my knowledge and that can be circumvented.
@@otterfire4712 Way before those, there was Yamato-no-Kami
The first step should be replacing the now ubiquitous HOPT clauses with symbols or even an abbreviation like the aforementioned "HOPT". I would keep the OCG's enclosed alphanumerics to list effects but use letters and different colors to indicate if an effect is HOPT and of what kind.
● Empty circles with numbers (①, ②, ③...) for regular effects.
● Black circles with numbers (❶, ❷, ❸...) for basic HOPT effects. They replace the sentence "You can only use this/each effect of [insert card name] once per turn".
● Black circles with letters (🅐, 🅑, 🅒...) for HOPT clauses that restrict you to only 1 effect among multiple (e.g. Thunder Dragondark, Shaddoll Falco, etc). They replace the sentence "You can only use 1 [insert card name] effect per turn, and only once that turn".
That's actually genius, Konami need to do that asap
The above conventions would save each card at least 1 line of text which is valuable real state for TCGs in general, but specially for those with small-sized cards like Yugioh.
The next step should be rephrasing effects (not necessarily with keywords) to avoid redundancy. For example, the way the piercing effect is worded has a completely redundant sentence at the beginning:
● "If this card attacks a Defense Position monster, inflict piercing battle damage"
This can be trimmed down to:
● "This card inflicts piercing battle damage"
After all, the word Piercing already implies that the attacked monster should be in Defense Position.
Other examples of redundant effects include:
1) Effects that conduct Extra Deck Summons. For example:
● "Immediately after this effect resolves, Synchro Summon 1 Synchro Monster from your Extra Deck, using monsters you control as material"
Becomes:
● "Immediately after resolution, conduct a Synchro Summon.
Synchro Summons can only be done for Synchro Monsters in the Extra Deck. That's literally how you're supposed to bring them out according to the rulebook and there is no ambiguity in this regard. Nobody in their right mind is ever going to attempt a Synchro Summon of an Xyz Monster from the GY. Only the cards that conduct summons from unusual locations and/or materials should include that information. The rest can assume players did their due diligence and learned the basics of each summoning method.
2) Effects that mention the location of a banished card. These effects would now mention a new card zone called the Banished Zone (abbreviated as BZ). For example:
● "Target 1 of your monsters that is banished or in your GY"
Becomes:
● "Target 1 monster in your GY or BZ"
3) Ritual Monsters' summoning conditions:
● "You can Ritual Summon this card with any [insert archetype] Ritual Spell"
Becomes:
● "Can be Ritual Summoned with a [insert archetype] Ritual Spell"
4) Monster categories like Spirit, Gemini, Toon (Unions are already abbreviated enough).
4.1) Current Gemini reminder text:
● "This card is treated as a Normal Monster while face-up on the field or in the GY. While this card is a Normal Monster on the field, you can Normal Summon it to have it become an Effect Monster with these effects."
Becomes:
● "This is a Normal Monster while face-up on the field or in the GY. You can Normal Summon this Normal Monster to make it an Effect Monster with these effects."
4.2) Current Spirit reminder text:
● "Once per turn, during the End Phase, if this card was Normal Summoned or flipped face-up this turn: Return this card to the hand."
Becomes:
● "Once per End Phase, if this card was Normal Summoned or flipped up this turn: Return it to the hand."
4.3) Current Toon reminder text:
● "While you control "Toon World" and your opponent controls no Toon monsters, this card can attack directly".
Becomes:
● "Can attack directly while you control "Toon World" and your opponent controls no Toon monsters."
Another option is to remove the reminder text for all of these mechanics, but I'm not sure how feasible that is. From my own experience as someone who played Geminis back in 2010, these effects are very easy to remember. It is no different from what you already have to do with Extra Deck mechanics like Synchro, Xyz or Link. For example, nowhere in a Link-3 monster's text does it say that you can use a Link-2 monster and 1 other monster as material. Those Link climbing rules are written in the rule book and nobody complains. The same goes for Pendulums going back to the Extra Deck face-up and Xyz materials being overlayed instead of going to the GY.
@@luchotenks2310 there are a lot of problems that will come out in the solution you mentioned, like spirit.
I will expect Konami will make a spirit archetype or support monster that completely ignore spirit mechanic and play in their own game like shinobird ritual summon from deck and they can ignore their summoning sickness.
Also "immediately" synchro summon as an effect and send those card to gy to perform a synchro summon are different.
an issue with this is there are two different type of hard once per turns "you can only activate each effect of [card name] once per turn" and "you can only use each effect of [card name] once per turn"
@@r3zaful There are effects that make you conduct a Synchro Summon after resolution (e.g. Formula Synchron, Yang Zing, etc). This is a normal Synchro Summon, so the Synchro Monster in question can have its summon negated provided the effect resolved last in the chain (see: Chain Link 1). The wording I proposed is for this particular kind of effect.
Cards that special summon a Synchro monster during the resolution of their effects and not after (e.g. Superheavy Samurai Battleball, Stardust Warrior, etc), but treat the summoned monster as Synchro Summoned nonetheless, would not use this wording as they do not conduct proper Synchro Summons. I already mentioned that exceptional cases such as these are the ones that need clarification. Basically, explain the exceptions, not the norm. The former is written directly on the card; the latter is in the rule book.
They can, but it'll need to take account to Yu-Gi-Oh!'s long history. And Yu-Gi-Oh!'s wordings tend to make keywording real hard, especially with how effects are worded in ways that function completely different from each other.
Like mill in yugioh can literally means a lot
Send to gy by card effect?
Send as a cost?
Send as an condition to activate an effect?
It's beyond Saving and make the game more convoluted, all tcg had to do is follow ocg bullet points, because I don't think keywords are possibility at this point.
@@r3zaful agree, keywords means nothing when ygo has so many identical but not 1 to 1 effs. even as far back as something janky like LV / level monster. one monster needs to destroy a mon by battle to level up, the other needs to wait for your standby phase, and the newest one (armed dragon thunder) needs to discard to level up
Hmm
You could absolutely keyword some part of the card effects while keep the complexity. However I think they should first make the cards like the OCG and then colour code or clearly seperate each different part of the effect, you should not have squint to see if something is a : or a ;
Or just give the cards Rush Duel formatting.
If I had to guess, the reason why Master Duel doesn't support old formats is simply because the game is made so both TCG and OCG players can play, but old formats between those 2 are a lot different from each other. Like, in the TCG we never had a moment when you can discard Sangan with Graceful Charity to search an Exodia piece for example
On the topic of formating, an option could be giving card text different color for Condition, Cost, Effect, Continuous Effect, etc. It would make it both easier to read and would give new players a more organic and visual way to start to learn the principles of PSCT.
Of course, the colors themselves should not make reading harder, and it would need to be made in a way it doesn't looks silly
Good thing we've already HAD free sims...
color coding would be bad for people with color-blindness. IMO, cost should be written in italics. And about card font size, simply making the card text effect bigger would help a lot with that, the set code shifting to the bottom would enable the text box to be expanded upwards, then you also make it go all the way to the border of the card and you already have much larger space and there is other optimizations that can be made.
I like that the Digimon TCG uses a mixture of keywords and effect texts. Each card be complex, while also containing easy understandable keywords
Bandai has been very good about handling card complexity and formatting.
Balance on the other hand....
We dont need keywords or weird symbols in card text. I think shortening some of the common effects that are wordy would be just fine. Plus, i dont think people dont exactly look at other card games' complexity enough. Cause a side note, i often hear people call it "too difficult" or "not basic" just because the effect box of a card is wordy. Yu-Gi-Oh's game structure and effect mechanics work like math. Both gives you the extra variables on an already known basic function. In math, you piece parts of a function to solve a problem. You already know what the common rules of the math do (addition, lines, squareroots, integrals etc). And with those base elements, the problem gives you numbers to work with to make connection eachother, and the card game is no different: You already know what basic rules of the game (Monster cards, chaining, summons, link arrows, levels etc.) And gives you cards with additional variables (in this case, effects) to work with, and you piece the cards together to make a functioning deck. Both math and Yu-Gi-Oh is similar in terms of using their base foundations and linking those foundations with extra variables that can indeed work eachother. People are just lazy to read some text in my oppinion :/
Great point on card and text formatting. There is already so much wasted space on the limited real estate of the cards. Let alone the fact the cards are JP size!
While I would prefer changing the card format be in line with Rush Duel, adopting bullet points and rush duel style text, is a good start.
They can use more shortcuts like ATK on cards like GY, DP, SBP, M1, BP, M2, EP, NS, SS and instead of (quick efect) use The symbol of a lightning before text like on quick efect cards
keywords will only make the game more complex and alienate the old players. All they gotta do is listing certain effects in order and add ocg's bullet points
a comment i came across about this topic on another recent yugioh video about keywords brough up a good point; keywords in other tcg are design to be able to interact with other keywords or allow mechanics to interact with them which is something yugioh doesnt do in general because the closest yugioh has to such things is cards simply negating another card’s activation/effects or make certain mechanics inaccessible e.g droll and lock bird, d.barrier, fossil dyna, barrier statue etc
yugioh doesnt create interactions between card effects like it doesnt care if a card has an effect to utilize a certain mechanic or not, just if said action were to happen e.g stardust dragon, imperial iron wall, aegirine gymir etc these cards prevent certain mechanics from being utilized or said action from going through, even something like ash blossom that is seemingly all-encompassing in stopping searching effects only list the most common ways of reaching into the deck but doesnt cover everything which allow certain effects to avoid it by process of literally not doing what ash list even if its barely any different
basically what keyword means and what it brings with it to yugioh is effectively an alien design ethos
that being siad i do agree that the formatting of yugioh cards can certainly be improved, i believe using ":" and ";" is enough to separate cost and conditions though some people just don't recognize it but i think another method on top of using ocg's numbered circles is to use another marker to allow players to know if an effect is affecting the owner, opponent or both like maybe a circled circle (red/blue/purple) before an effect (but after the numbered circle) for indication as this would allow players to more easily hone into an effect when reading the card as they would know which effect is being used depending on context
I really dont understand why the tcg's psct didnt organize effects by bullets and numbers like the OCG does.
Because unironically Konami hate the TCG and its playerbase :)
easy kanami are a bunch of assholes that hates his player base
It lengthens the text, so several cards would have to use a smaller font size if that happened. It's fine in OCG because Japanese can convey more information with less text.
You are right that the very large number of similar-but-not-the-same effects, similar-but-not-the-same ways to word an effect, makes it much more difficult to retroactively add keywords. Should have done it 20 years ago! But, I think that keywords are largely a red herring. You COULD make some archetypal keywords, or even really "ability words" in Magic parlance, to denote "this is that same text you've seen before on the others", but... I have (since I started learning Yu-Gi-Oh! in 2022) had exactly two consistent demands for card-formatting, and neither is keywords. Demand 1 is: Line-breaks between different effects. Dumping a bunch of different effects into one paragraph, each as a mere sentence, is card-layout terrorism. It's unforgivable. Each effect needs a line break. The OCG number-circles for different effects are good too. Why that technology isn't used in the TCG is beyond me. It's like the TCG's editing department is using card layout software from 1999, or a nanDECK script that someone made in 20 minutes. Demand 2 is: The text for each effect, or I guess at least its bullet point/number-circle... Should be color-coded, by the zone from which it happens! So imagine you're looking at Eldlich. His "(1)" would be in one color, because it happens from the hand. Then "(2)" would be in another color, because that effect happens from the GY. Each zone would have one standard color. An effect that can happen from multiple zones would have split colors for its number-circle. This is essential so that you can glance at a card (especially in the GY) and see immediately whether it has text that can happen from that zone. If you did these two things, of line-breaks+number-circles, and color-coding for zones, then I would easily forgive all the other janky aspects of Yu-Gi-Oh!'s templating, formatting, etc.
agree with everything but color coding. people with colorblindness would sufferfrom this.
the problem with keywords is not "can these work on most cards", it's if they can work on EVERY card. And they can't. For every drytron or swordsoul reimagined with keywords I can think of another card that would be just as long with keywords. The only way to really fix the reading problem in yugioh is not to have shorter cards, but shorter turns. I really like for example the recent design on rescue ace, vanquish soul and centurea. These decks perform 5 to 6 actions per turn usually and even if every card can have 2 or 3 effects they are slow enough to not overwhelm. Rikka or dragon link are super fun decks that I really enjoy but I know how hard it can be to keep track of the gameplay if you don't know any of their cards
You can just fully explain the cases where a keyword falls short.
Konami hates us, I know because we don't have Rush Duels. Hopefully SEVENS world in Duel Links will show them how much people want these cards out here
Shorting the effects. Putting a dot before each effect. Little things they could fix
I thinking adopting the OCG formatting for cards would help a lot for making the game less intimidating for newer players. That's what made reading cards so hard for me at the start. Since a card's text is just one big paragraph, it was hard at times to tell when one effect ends, and a new one starts. I'm currently learning Japanese, and I play Master Duel in Japanese to practice reading. And I feel like I can only do this without slowplaying because of the OCG card format. It makes quickly skimming over cards super easy.
Also, I do we think could add some keywords. But only for super common wordings like "When normal summoned." I think making a short hand for these would help a lot with lowering the character count on cards, while not really affecting card interactions. Even if they just do stuff like "When NS/SS"(When normal summon/special summon), or maybe even something like "when STGY"(sent to GY)
I think an alternative format like Edison will eventually come to MD.
Can take a while, but it will imo.
Or I'm coping.
Is there any retro format like Edison in ocg?
I think that Yugioh should start with breaks between different abilities first, like Magic always does
Agreed
I think everyone universally agrees with this but Konami will never do it because in their eyes they probably see it as nuking the game or some shit when in reality it would bring in new players, something they've consistently struggled with over the past 5 to 10 years and it'll actually help the current playerbase and win the community over, its literally a win-win situation, hell they could even announce it as a new Master Rule or something like that
I dont think keywords are new player friendly and im a magic player.
I love keywords but new players simply dont know what they do.
They will however free up A LOT of yugioh text box real estate.
Yeah, but once you know what a keyword does, you understand most new cards much faster than reading them all over again.
I must say that I never considered how bad Konami treats the TCG before watching your video. Worse Card designe, worse card quality and worse set rarities. Keep up the good work!
Also, some card types could be implemented, such as Nomi or Semi-Nomi (but please do not use these names, they are terrible), which could be described in kursive, so you can refresh what they mean, but you can skip them if you don't need them.
I agree with all the points raised. I feel that adopting player speach patterns would be an easy way to at least shortan the word coulds of cards, with wording that when used once, are very each to understand:
"If/When this monster is Normal or Special Summned..." =
"If/When Summoned..."
"Add 1 card with "[x]" in its name other than "~" from your deck or GY to your hand." =
"Search Deck or GY for a differently named "[x]" Card."
Together, Green Gadget could read:
"When Summoned; Search Deck for 'Red Gadget'".
Elegant, Simple, Easy to grasp/remember.
This is harder to apply to all kinds of rules text, however; making the most common trigger/effect in the game far easier to read is a good start.
While you're doing these mockups, look at how absurdly good a quality of life fix simply bolding condition text is without changing the entire PSCT format. It makes it really easy to see where one effect starts and another ends just with a quick cursory scan. Even something small like this would go a huge way to improving card readability without necessarily requiring much effort on KoA's part over what they're already doing.
Keywords would be a disaster in yugioh. There’s sooooo many effects that are 99% similar but ever so slightly different. You’d need a new keyword for each and every one. We colloquially call a search on summon a “stratos”, but now let’s factor every nuance. Is it normal OR special? Is it once per turn? Can it miss timing? Each and every possible combination of those would need to be something unique, and that’s just the tip of the iceberg.
I agree for the most part, but I think the issue of HOPT and OPT effects being once per turn differently can be resolved by using something like "HOPT (use)" or "HOPT (activate)" where HOPT/OPT basically means the "You can only use each of the following effects of [this cards name/this card for HOPT and OPT respectively] once per turn." text, but the word in the brackets replaces the "use" in the example, and cards with multiple effects which are on different restrictions would be handled with sequencing, when you introduce one, the other goes away.
I will use Baronne as an example of how I'd format this because its text is pretty convulted because it's formatted as
[Limit]: [Cost]; [Effect]. [Limit], [Condition]: [Effect]. [Limit on previous effect]. [Limit], [Condition]: [Cost]; [Effect]
^ this should push most of these alternative card text suggestions to their limit. At least if we use the sample size of one card. Obviously I could go through 300 cards, but I don't have the time for that. Onto the examples.
HOPT (use):
1) When a card or effect is activated (Quick Effect): You can negate the activation, and if you do, destroy that card. You can only use this effect once while this card is face-up on the field.
OPT:
2) You can target 1 card on the field; destroy it.
3) During the Standby Phase: You can target 1 Level 9 or lower monster in your GY; return this card to the Extra Deck, and if you do, Special Summon that monster.
There is also an alternative to go for something more OCG-like, and, I don't know if this is their text, but I cooked it up, and it's better than what we have now.
1) You can target 1 card on the field; destroy it.
2) When a card or effect is activated (Quick Effect): You can negate the activation, and if you do, destroy that card.
3) During the Standby Phase: You can target 1 Level 9 or lower monster in your GY; return this card to the Extra Deck, and if you do, Special Summon that monster.
You can only use the 1) and 3) effects of this card once per turn. You can only use the 2) effect of this card once while it is face-up on the field, and you can only use the 2) effect of "Baronne de Fleur" once per turn.
For cards that do something in the Graveyard. I would include a symbol of a Grave on the Top Left counter before the name.
This would make searching the graveyard easier for both players and inform the players a graveyard effect has been activated.
It's not exactly keywording, but abbreviations and simple re-structuring of certain phrases could really cut down on text:
Draw Phase, Standby Phase, Main Phase 1, Battle Phase, Main Phase 2, End Phase, Special Summon, Normal Summon, Main Deck, Banish Zone, Extra Deck, Pendulum Zone can all be abbreviated, as they did with Graveyard. "During the standby phase of the next turn" is a lot longer than "In SP next turn". Even not using abbreviations and just saying "In Standby next turn" is 20 characters shorter and conveys all the same information.
Another big annoyance is that they often jumble around the 'Once per turn' restrictions on cards. Sometimes it's immediately after the effect, sometimes it's part of activation condition, sometimes it's at the very start of the text, sometimes it's at the very end of the text. Sometimes its even listed twice, such as "Once per turn: [effect]". "You can only use this effect of "tedious mumbo jumbotron of the 7th heaven" once per turn". This could have just be "Strict Once Per Turn:" or even "Strict OPT:". All of this ignoring non-English translations of course. The reason they may phrase things the way they do is because it's shorter to do so in German or something. I wouldn't know.
Personally, I found it way easier to get into Magic BECAUSE of keywords, than I did with yugioh's paragraphs of indescipherable text. Once I learned what Trample, Flying, Ward etc... means, It's not easy to forget. It's something you learn once and never have to worry about again. I see one word on a card and know the entire paragraph of what it represents. Whereas with yugioh, I have to read that paragraph every time and make sure there's no slight distinction that I need to worry about, such as a "when" or an "if" or an "and if you do", or "then" etc... People whom I've taught Magic and Yugioh to have always had the same experience. Just having one word explained to you once or twice, is much easier to learn and makes the game more fun, than having to read paragraphs every time your opponent plays a card and pay very careful attention to punctuation, conjunctions and highly specific phrasing. But like you said, that's kinda what makes yugioh, yugioh.
Except what makes yugioh, yugioh is disastrous card design and the game being owned by a company almost as scummy as WotC, Konami does not listen to the community, they know card formatting is an issue cause its been complained about for what over 5 years now, the execs just hate the playerbase and refuse to fix the game so they get to do literally nothing and get paid for it
This video is gold for Modern Yugioh Updates 😢
I think you didnt need any keywords, only remodel the text with markers like this:
* it cannot be destroyed by your opponent's card effects.
*your opponent cannot target it with card effects
*Etc etc
Talk about rotation next.
My true goal is to talk about how I don’t want rotation. The evergreen format is what I like. I enjoy cards that I got when I was 8 still being legal, with the possibility that it could be good. Although this might be a me thing
Generally though, I’m kinda tired of some people thinking that the best thing for yugioh is to just make it Japanese magic the gathering. Part of it feels like a psyop because it’s coming from alot of magic the gathering players. Yugioh problems are gonna require yugioh solutions if it’s going to stay yugioh. I do not want magic the gathering lite.
The thing about opposing rotation though is that a lot of the problems with rotation are *still* problems without rotation. A lot of the benefits of having no rotation are still present even if you have rotation.
All TCGs with rotation also have a vintage/eternal/wild format, where all cards can be played. "Some terrible card from 20 years ago is technicallu legal" is true of every extended format in every TCG. Ironically however, because of rotation, the power level of new releases doesn't spiral upward as quickly as in yugioh, which means that older cards stay viable longer. Cards from 10-20 years ago are actually *more* playable in games with rotation, not less.
Players do have to constantly acquire new product to play at a competitive level in the standard format, but this is true of yugioh too anyway. Decks or archetypes that are only a year or two old become pathetically uncompetitive from powercreep and targeted new releases made to counter them, or get pieces limited or banned. If you want to be competitive in yugioh you need to be constantly acquiring new cards which are eventually soft rotated either by powercreep or by being banned. Despite the fact that cards rotate, cards actually have *more* longevity in games with rotation because again, powercreep is less egregious in rotation based games and rotated cards more easily find homes in extended environments.
Every single game with rotation has an extended format which is directly analogous to yugioh's only format, where almost every card is legal and you can play stupid jank. Only those formats are more diverse and older cards are more viable than yugioh's format. There are dramatically fewer bans in rotating games, and most of those bans are format specific. Yugioh has way more bans, and because there's only one format those bans render the cards entirely unplayable anywhere not just one specific format. Rotation means that more cards are playable and at a more competitive level, not less.
One thing I think Konami should at least be doing is putting Ignition, Trigger, and On Summon in the card text like they do with Quick Effects. It'd make the game a lot easier to explain to newer/retuning players.
it helps with rush duel in the ocg
Like you said, bullet points are a minimum. I would also like to see something for targeting. Something like a circle with a number in it. The circle denotes targeting and the number how many cards. Conditions would follow.
For example
"Target one face up monster your opponent controls; destroy it"
Becomes
"O opponent face up monster; destroy it" [imagine "O" has a "1" in it]
Also there has to be a more elegant way to denote HOPT than the current format. HOPT is clunky and misses nuance in "use" VS "activate" but something must be better.
For example:
Activate/use once - condition: cost; effect
VS
Once - condition: cost; effect
The first would be a hard opt and the second be a soft opt.
1. Please use OCG numbering as standard. This is very helpful when someone ask "what effect?", we can just say "effect 1 or 2" and they can find it immediately. In TCG card, if someone ask you the effect of a certain long effect. You need to point specific place in your cards, they read it, and still find difficulties because they don't know where to start and the line of effect end.
.
2. For main deck mechanic like Gemini, Spirit, and Union. Maybe we can give them keywords to make it simpler and give more space for more useful effect.
- For Gemini we can use (Gemini effect) for standard Gemini effect, I have read most Gemini standard effect and all of them the same effect, but with slightly different words.
- Spirit is a little developed now and we can't give 1 keywords to them, because some Spirit have effect when they special summoned. Specifically, they're Shino-ritual and Konohanasakuya only. And they only mention 'if this card special summoned this turn' without any specific additional condition etc. in that case:
(Normal Spirit) for traditional spirit that can return to hand if they're normal or flip summoned.
(Special Spirit) for spirit that can return to hand if they're special summoned.
Or we don't need to add this to text box. Because we can put those on "Type text line" (line where they put Warrior/Ritual/Effect etc. I don't know how to call them) and remove the unnecessary text in text box.
the only way i can think of to get keywords into yugioh is for konami to make a new summon mechanic that has keywords instead of normal effects or a combination of normal effects and keywords by the way excellent video I agree with you in everything you said
Effect rulings like if, when, and if you do, etc. wouldn't translate very well into keywords. But there are some static effects that would definitely benefit in shortening the length of words on cards. Like protection effects and summon locks.
PSA for struggling players There's a mod for master duel in Nexus mods that reformats the text to make it more legible and there's another one that puts key symbols on the cards although that one is manually done so that means the card pool of moded cards is the ones that are currently relevant
You're the only person I've heard being up the fact that a big part of yugiohs power creep is slightly changing wording to dodge effects, which could not be done with keywords. Like cards setting from deck to dodge ash.
The problem is that every archetype does completely different unique things to the detriment of wanting to learn the game. Maybe if Konami supported or created a simplified format like GOATs, or something similar that could get new cards printed just for that format, the game could grow. Unfortunately, because they don't want to simply the card text, much less new players can even enter the space, leaving only experienced players.
Another thing is that keywords would open up far more design space that yugioh has. All the best archetypes right now can basically be summarized to "When enter, search card. When die, play a card from a zone" or other similar effects. Because there are only combo decks in Yugioh, there isnt really any design space for different play styles, just better versions of previous play styles.
I think the best bet to simplify would be a huge Master Rule update. It would almost have to be its own game, but I think like how magic resets years of card text, Yugioh would have to do the same. Otherwise, outside of Rush Duel which is also a very different game, I think Yugiohs decline will simply continue, especially when they are trying to ban game mats and accessories from the community. Konami just doesn't know what to do with its card game.
Give Neuron the ability to select effect 1/2/3 and it highlights that part of the card in the app to make it easier to read.
some abbreviation to common words would be helpful.
(Special summon and normal summon) to (S.summon and N.summon)
(Synchro monsters, Fusion monsters, Etc) to (Syncro Card, Fusion Card, Etc.)
("The complete name of the card" ) to "this card" or "this name car".
The bit about keywords compressing the game is a bit of a red herring as all the functional keywords should only encompass the typical formatting of effects, as in the case of hard or soft once per turn, could be shown similar to Wixoss formatting: as hard1 or soft1 and if the restriction is different it can simply be in plain text to indicate that it deviates from the expected norm. The problem is that if this complexity is what you seek to keep, design would be incentivised to nix hard once per turns in lieu of more intuitive notation of like: turn1
Keywords at best in this example wouldn't really make the game easier for new players as you are replacing teaching them from jargon hunting to keyword memorization; the intended outcome is that the card would be easier to skim towards the information desired: want to read what it does look for the plain text, and if you are looking for what mechanics they keyworded you scan for bolded and possibly stylized text.
I feel the best way to implement keywords without getting rid of complexity or homogenizing the cards is to use it for archetypes that already have shared effects throughout the archetype. Have one keyword for the Madolche shuffle, the Superheavy Samurai spell/trap restriction, the Labrynth "when a monster leaves the field by the effect of a normal trap", or all of the shared effects of the Qli monsters. If an archetype doesn't have shared effects, it doesn't need them, but it could work for some archetypes.
This is a neat idea, but it would be very confusing for new players. A bigger issue is how many archtypes don't share keywordable mechanics like kashtira, rescue ace, and purrely to name a few.
Basically it's to confusing with a limited payoff.
I really want them to just give us the OCG Bullet Points
Every archetype would need new keywords 💀
But honestly, it would be better if we got shorthand for common universal phrases like once per turn/duel, hard once per turn, locked to summon type/monster type/ attribute, etc.
Also change the formatting to that of rush duels where you get cost and effect clearly delineated.
clicked on video as a fowcel not expecting fow getting mentioned...it gets mentioned ❤
Where Force Of Will part2?
Some cards can receive key words and others cannot as they have greater complexity and uniqueness. Many cards have 2 or 3 Biblical-sized effects, not that all of these could be summarized in keywords, but at least 1 would alleviate the amount of tiny text on the card.
Another way to reduce the flood of text on cards I thought of is unfortunately not viable, but it's interesting to think about. Instead of the effect being written directly on the monster card, it would only have a spell/trap card name, this card would be assigned to the monster and attached to it when summoned, just like an xyz. In other words, the effects would be transferred to spell/trap cards and these would be assigned to monsters. Obviously I would have to redesign the entire game but I liked that idea.
8:25 pretty sure one this is due to Konami wanting to keep the population of players in ranked the playlist higher and of course, get them to open certain packs more.
Yugioh text really needs to be streamlined.
re: bullet points in TCG. That already exist! on a couple of cards like Parallel Exceed. but only a few. Why not more, Konami???
Keywords along with other changes are gonna have to be implemented at some point. Players can talk all they want of how the games complexity is part of it's uniqueness, but that doesn't mean much if it actively scares away new players and continues the stagnation the game has. The game needs to become new player friendly otherwise the only thing left will be the old players and that's an ever shrinking group.
I mean i agree that quality of life changes should be made, but the bigger issue is how there's no jumping on point for yugioh. MTG players don't have to jump headfirst into vintage or legacy magic.
It may not fix it but it sure as shit would make it a hell of a lot better.
I haven't finished the video and I generally agree, but I do have an issue with a point you made regarding the Detach keyword that someone suggested. You can absolutely have a default behavior for a keyword and then add a caveat for the cards that need it. The vast majority of XYZ detach their own materials. Why couldn't you just have a keyword detach and if it can use other XYZ monster's materials, make that clarification. Sure, those cards won't see as much of a reduction in card text, but that seems folly to hinder the majority of cards for their sake instead of adding it when needed.
Printing symbols in the card boxes literally fixes everything, I’m Konami can expect a player base to adopt freaking pendulum monsters, I think we can understand symbols for once per turn, hard once, soft once etc
My group still enjoys speed duel 😂
yeah, speed duel deserved way more. I just wish it was more popular and better handled everywhere.
Acronyms will never ever work, but the more generic effects like piercing, pop, float, protection can easily be contextualized by playing the game. Optionally if you added icons, say, next to the card type where a huge lot of nothing is, you could even know at a glance what kind of effects the card has.
"The complexity is what makes Yugioh" is a bad argument. It is true, that this is something that distinguishes Yugioh from other card games ... but in a bad way. This is a discussion about making the game more accessible, and not about what bought in players enjoy. It is fine if you, and many other long time players, don't mind the long texts or weirdly worded interactions, but potential new players will. And if you want to grow the player base, this matters. If you don't, well then that is not a problem, but then you cant complain about a lack of new players.
Regarding the keywords: It is hard to introduce keywords after the fact, because normally keywords will influence heavily which cards are created. If something can't neatly be expressed with keywords and a bit of extra text, maybe it should not be a card. This seems like a hard pill to swallow for YGO people, as it is fundamentally different from how YGO cards are made. Attaching keywords after the fact makes it seem like you need 1000 keywords to handle all the special cases, when in actuality, you should not have these special cases in the first place.
While they look better than the original, the examples at 2:18 are terrible and I would assume those were made by a long time YGO player.
* Drytron: The 'must be special summoned by ...' should be a keyword or a parameter to the bound keyword. But instead the author focused on removing "monster" from the cardtext for no real reason.
* Swordsoul: Again, cutting the string "monsters" over reducing the obvious "You can only use 1of the following effects...". Why is it not clear by layout that only one of the effects can trigger? Use a different bullet point style, "Choose one", or something like that. Multiple effects and chose-one effects happen all the time, in monsters, spells and traps. This has to be easily accessible during card design.
* Eldlich: "Each of these ..." blah blah blah, make it a keyword, make it clear by the layout that this is the case. The discarding from had could be "[Discard: This + 1 Spell/Trap]", again, happens all the time, this pays off.
* Zeus: Here you mention exactly the problem: "not all xyz effects are created equally", but they should be. This inconsistency makes it hard to follow. Instead they should be based on a common keyword-associated mechanic, with exceptions as parameters or mentioned in short card texts.
All in all, it is not just cutting words and cramping in some keywords that would make the cards more readable. It is also the layout that needs to be used, for example to distinguish once-per-turn, constant or chose-one effects. Those are common building blocks, that need to be defined.
Yes, this does limit card design possibilities, because you can't do whatever on the card text. But, for consistency and structure, most cards should be able to be dissected like this anyway. Furthermore, you can still have archtype specific mechanics, just like hearthstone or MTG have expansion specific mechanics. This is absolutely no problem even without rotation. You create an archtype specific keyword, like DANGER and include the weird "random discard" stuff in there. If someone does not know the keyword you can simply explain it once, instead of having to figure out which cards do this and if there are slight differences in wording.
What would fix yugiho is an option in master duel to darken the summoning condition text of the opponents monsters so it is easier to see where the effects start. It is a virtual sim of the game. if its on the board they had to of done it legally I do not care about the summoning condition what does it do!
You're right IMO, there's really not an excuse to format the cards better on an online simulator like master duel where the GUI can make room.
YGO Omega does this and its great.
I don't play this game, but I've always wondered why this game doesn't have a format for the last two years' cards only like Pokemon and magic do. They're new player friendly as the cards are easily accessible as well as is a format that can stay interesting as older cards rotate out. You don't see the same decks over and over forever since the cards won't last forever. These formats are usually easy to make official too since it actually makes people buy new cards to keep up with the format which is something the card creator would like. I can honestly see why Konami doesn't want to support those time wizard formats too. No one is going to buy cards for that and they're not easy cards to get for everyone. The more videos I watch about this game, the more I have a hard time understanding how this game is even alive in general. The text formating they're printed in is straight awful.
Yeah at best you can reformat card text to make it easier
Remove names for HOPT or shorten words to make it easier
"When normal or special summoned" is there another type of summon? Why not just say "when summoned"? They could also colour code effects like vanguard does, when reading cards i do not need to look at the cards copy pasted summoning conditons in drytron. Yeah i get it tribute a blue or drytron card, wheres the search effect specifically.
Flip summoning. Everybody always forgets flip summoning. As well as normal set, although this has never yet (to my knowledge) activated that set cards effect. So not really relevant.
Just as long as the key words aren't complete gibberish like Vigilance or Scry.
Yeah this is an extremely hard game to simply because every common kind of effect pattern always has outliers that don't exactly follow said pattern. That said though, I didn't quite get the bit around the mid part of the video. Keywords would for sure aim to not change the way effects and interactions work. That's a different subject altogether. If it ever would change anything, then it'd mean that particular instance is not eligible.
Also, if you have a similar effect but with 2 or more variations, you could still pick the most common variation or the variation planned to be used most going forward (like how "missing the timing" effects are being designed less and less over time) and make a keyword for that specific variation. The fact the one most common way has a keyword would help the other variations not using the keyword telegraph more easily that there IS a variation to them because of the lack of keyword.
If this ends up with anywhere between 4 and 20 keywords, they could do what other TCGs do and print the list of keywords with their definitions in the rulebook's glossary or some empty spot on the paper gamemat that comes with starter/structure decks, and/or have the promo code cards in booster packs that only promote the online platforms actually dub as tip cards like the old days, but instead of a random tip give them a random keyword relevant for that set's cardpool. I think there are ways that won't take any extra ink or paper for konami to implement ways to reference. The keywords would aim to be intuitive as to not need to do that AS MUCH to begin with but like.... there are ways.
Also, Konami should do what other TCGs and print the year of the card's release on every card instead of a single copyright that doesn't help you make out the newest erratas on cards without going to some database.
YGO already has certain Keywords, like "Special Summon", 'Excavate", "Tribute", etc. There's also a lot of common things like "This card is unaffected by card effects", "Can't be normal summoned", "Can't be Destroyed by battle" cluld be shortened to "Ward", "Unsummonable (Normal)", "Indestructible (Battle)". Taking community phrases and making those keywords could also work. The goal with keywords is more to open up card text so it can use an actually legible font size, and would seperate the generic effects with unique ones.
I think key word system not fit in yugioh. Because there is a lot of card and mechanic that's broke the rules of game.
Fix no make it far easier to read fuck yes
Try to use AI to fix yugioh problems😊
A terrible idea that would be fun anyway
@@MonkeyFightTCG 🤣😂
should change to 95% symbols instead of words
How about adding a dictionary or glossary on Neuron for every keyword? Some Yu-Gi-Oh! mechanics are repeated so often that it makes no sense not to turn them into a keyword.
Why are not soft once per turn and hard once per turn not both keywords already? Why Detach is not a keyword when all XYZ monsters have basically the same line about detaching? If something is repeated a million times, is verbose, and represents a simple concept, then just turn it into a keyword already.
There's a pretty easy solution to this that allows us to preserve the complex wordings. Instead of using awful wordings like "when this card is activated" just use "when activated". A similar thing could be done to the "you can only use each effect once per turn" by changing it to "the use of each effect is HOPT". Combine this with proper bulletpoints and it should be more than sufficient.
There's also the option to add a small icon for when the effect can be used. E.g. graveyard effects could have a unique icon before the effect and floating effects could have another.
The reason yugioh has such awful wording is because the translation is way too literal. Japanese has some nuances english doesn't have and to properly convey that, the translation simply became too rigid and they stuck with it.
When this card is activated and when activated are already different effects. I know its stupid
So essentially Konami is stuck with the "well ayckshually this is the literal translation" problem.
Great.
@@thatlonewolfguy2878 i mean it is since the GOAT format. Have you read waboku? The old text doesn't specify monster cannot be destroyed.
Those little complexities also make the game exhausting to play because often something will happen and I just won't understand why it just happened even after reading all the cards on the field.
I think what would be cool would be having these types of keywords along with a new less complex format that's easier to play while still being competitive. Previous Yugioh cards would be unaffected by this new format but cards within this format would adhere to the less creative but easier to understand keywords.
Ygo needs a hard reset
I will give you example of Keywords
Gemini -- in the rulebook will be written that you need to summon in second time to get his effect.,
INSTEAD OF EVERY GOD DAMN CARD
Same for the toons
and in the future if konami thinks the mehanic is too outdated, they will just change it in the official rules
Soooo kinda hot take. I don't think the cards or anything with the game is the issue. I think the issue that keeps people from getting into the game and staying is the toxic community and the need to always play the meta.
Duel links not successful? In your bubble maybe it way more bigger then Tcg and ocg combined. Masterduel Halfed the playerbase and before that they scummy money hungry practices + genuine poor management + limiting cards behind paywall and selection boxes + POOR handling of level up rewards + dragging the story tooo much which was barebones anyway.
Still bigger then Tcg lmao.
I don't think there's anyone advocating for keywords that legitimately wants every action keyworded. That would be absurd. Simplifying certain things like 1PT or OPT for Once per turn and HOPT for Hard Once Per Turn, etc might just make it so that I don't have to interpret whether or not they can play all three of their copies this turn or if I can negate this one and then they can't play it again. It's not simplifying the interaction, it's just making it so that I don't have to read the miles long text to see "You may only play one X per turn" in the middle of two effects or all the way at the end of the card. It's not hard to make the cards more readable instead of saying "text wall good because hard to read so fun". That's just a really reductionist view of it. I think it's not a tall task to AT MINIMUM separate each effect, display the effect more clearly, and separate each effect so that I can just point to which effect I'm using so that my opponent can know. Complexity for the sake of complexity does not make the game more fun.
I agree that shortening every action wouldn't work and that just small reductions and rewordings here and there would be great, but please tell that to everyone who keeps making shortened cards with everything shortened to absurdity.
Second it's not complexity for complexity sake, I was very clear that it's about the meaningful interactions and mechanics that come from the game's current complexity.
I appreciate the arguments here, it’s interesting to her another perspective. I think keywords are still important for Yu-Gi-Oh though.
Your argument about it missing the complexity, doesn’t really have to work that way. Don’t just keyword once per turn, keyword all of the usage limits. Keyword it as ‘limited’ or something and put a number with next to it for timing. “Limited 1: meaning for soft, limited 2: for hard, and even limited 3/4: if you want a soft/hard once per game.
I agree as well just abbreviating cards and reformatting them can go a long way, but we will end up here again. A bunch of Konami games uses OPM with a colored box around it. Coloring it and putting the numbers I mentioned earlier would be really good. Spell speeds being printed on cards would be amazing for beginners getting in. Make text bigger.
I think my main worry is key wording something badly means you ruin the flavor of an archetype. Magic does this a lot, but for a YuGiOh example, they keyworded excavate, so now when Chaos Ruler is summoned, it’s not him peering into the future or anything, it’s just him digging I guess.
The problem with that is you end with having too many keywords that make the game obsurdly difficult for new players to get into just the same.
Lole.have you ever tried to play a game of commander magic with a new player. It's obsurdly hard for them the get a drift of what's going on, never mind understanding their options.
It's not that keywords can't work l, but it's that with a game like yugioh their benefits don't really apply and it would risk destroying a lot of yugiohs key identity
I disagree that reducing the amount of text (keyword or otherwise) would necessarily remove the nuances. Developing a wording system to account for these nuances may take longer, but it's certainly possible.
epic funny yugioh
I mean lets not lie the names and descriptions can get a little dense these days ... XD
I have to disagree with everything stated after 5:12
the over complexity of yugioh that creates the interactions you are talking about IS the issue.
If (for example) all negates, negated activations and were made into a keyword, would yugioh suddenly become a worse game? Would the core gameplay change at all? Or would people still most likely play the same cards and build the same boards and use the same handtraps?
Having to know, understand, and memorize 1 billion different circumstances for negating cards and negated cards vs activation or used or gain is actually a driving force against new players playing paper. (I say this as a player who switch over from MTG during covid).
Key words are not necessarily new player friendly because they also have to be memorized, but simplifying the game would not “ruin” yugioh. The interactions you talked about would just become different interactions, whos to say if they would be “better” or “worse”? Its completely subjective.
And is having 1 million different niche minuscule “interactions” worth the overall health and understandability of the game? Is it worth making the game wholly unapproachable by new and returning players?
Would removing “missing timing” really change the game so integrally that to you it would be unplayable?
Yes yugioh would be a worse game with every negate type effect shortened to negate. Or with every removal effect homogenized into a bounce, shuffle back, or banish, etc... Missing timing too is an important part of the game too. Same with chain blocking. Same with hand traps.
Yugioh is about figuring out the puzzle of an opponent's board and deconstructing it. Sometimes the answer is to stop it preemptively with handtraps, sometimes the answer is to blow it out, and sometimes it's an incredibly specific combination of your decks unique effects. All of these can be fun and certainly are fun for me and many other players. It's from this specific complexity that enables a players skill, rewards good deckbuilding and encourages game knowledge.
There's a reason people do still like yugioh over magic the gathering and pokemon, all these years later. It's certainly not a replaceable game for yugioh's experienced players. The problem is the lack of a new player pipeline. MTG has a standard / Arena -> modern -> other formats. Pokemon is always in standard. Yugioh just has nothing, outside of mediocre projects like duel links and speed duel.
@@MonkeyFightTCG this straight up makes no sense.
Everything you described in paragraph 2 can STILL be done with a more in line, understandable set of effects. Literally nothing there, or any other major nonsharking piece of gameplay is removed by getting rid of niche differences in what are effectively the same effects. Homogenizing “if” and “when” or “activate” and “use” wouldn’t change the gameplay loop of yugioh whatsoever.
The problem I promise you is not the “pipeline” its the impossibility of understanding 1 million nuances in vague rulings not even backed by an official comprehensive rules document.
The “pipeline” exists in masterduel and duel links. I personally started on duel links and transitioned to paper then to masterduel.
The yugioh shareholder meeting which began this conversation in the community showed that the complexity of the game stops new masterduel players from ever going to play the physical game.
Worst of all, you would rather have the game be unapproachably complicated than have new players able to join the game?
Have you seen the MBT Raran videos?
Dang you really just ignored everything I said and went straight to MBT.
Classic
@@MonkeyFightTCG I literally responded to every single point you made, in the same paragraph format you used so you knew which paragraph corresponds to which points you made. Its extremely bad faith and wormy to say i ignored everything you said.
And i “went straight to MBT”? My brother, that was the very last thing i said.
@@cooldes4593well you see that would actually be worse for the game cuz then you'd get rid of the try hards that loves those interactions and they just so happen to be what keeps the game alive so no risking your already loyal base for another that alredy has a bad interpretation of you isnt ideal but hey thats ygo for ya its a game gate kept to the core but you might really enjoy it after that leaning curve and that what keeps the game going
Technically almost all of these issues was solved by Rush Duel. The fact that you didn't recommend they bring Rush Duels to the TCG confuses me.
I've seen the game, it looks kinda weak and not what I'm intrested in. It does solve a lot of issues, but it isn't yugioh imo and I don't think it bridges new players that well.
It also isn't something konami has a track record with handling well. Speed duels and duel links come to mind. I think that it has to be an old format or an online simulator or bust.
@@MonkeyFightTCGRush Duel still has a place though. It's shouldn't be really viewed as a bridge to Master format. Rush is really a separate TCG with it's own identity that beeing an approachble, but quite different way to play Yugioh for children and total newcomers. As a player that doesn't appreciate the complexity of modern Yugioh. And in Japan, it's doing well. It's year 4 of it consistently receiving constant support, and the game is evolving through card pool that creates a different kind of complexity (especially in Go Rush era). With design philosophy of Rush, it's definitely going for "easy to play hard to master" direction in contrast to modern Master's "you can't really play unless you master"
A metric ton of effects from normal YGO are absent in Rush Duel. Jinzo is pretty much if not THE only card in Rush Duel to have an effect negation effect. Activated effects in Rush Duel are also all innately once per turn.
Point is, using Rush Duel as a base is pretty silly.
@catmanthree5683 Technically not, because Darkness Galactica Olivion is coming up, and it negates Continuous monster effect, but yes. Treating Rush Duels as a bridge to Master is not right and it kind of disregards what Rush really made is for
Literally just port Rush Duel to Master Duel, it is literally the easiest answer to this entire issue.
I dont see how keywords would stop already existing interactions though. It is not like they are going to change the rules. 🤔
keywords change how cards are worded. Yugioh interactions a based on how cards are worded.
You would need either a thousand keywords to keep the nuance or just not keyword a lot of cards. Defeating the point of keywords either way.
They really need to just change the card template and stop giving cards a bajillion text
Is the Tier List dead?
To this point I start to think YGO community simply don't want to lose this self validation they have as "capable of playing a complex card game" by wanting to make the game easier and more accessible
Such a shitty snobby take tbh
This "lose of identity" crisis everyone seem to experience every time someone tries to add something from MTG it's absurd, just deal with the fact that Yu-Gi-Oh is by no means perfect nor the best card game since we're at a point where we have to look at other card games to figure out something to "fix" our game
I mean yeah you can change yugioh to be mtg lite, but then is it really yugioh? That's like trying to play legacy mtg with only modern cards and designs. I love mtg and I love yugioh. But they're different games that do completely different things and are loved for different reasons.
That's not to say you can't improve yugioh, there are ways to shorten wording and format cards to be more accessible. But you shouldnt just go full sail into keywords, beacuse they create way to many problems with how yugioh is. Yugioh also needs a better new player format with a lower skill ceiling and more accessible decks and power level. Which is something litterally every other game has.
Lastly you don't need to dismiss my take as snobby, just beacuse you disagree with me. I find it rude and pointlessly aggressive.
@@MonkeyFightTCG I don't mean it by as a personal attack or in regards to the video, it's just something I've seen everywhere since the debate started.
I completely agreed that making Yu-Gi-Oh essentially a straight copy of magic isn't gonna fix anything, but a change is necessary.
And even so magic doesn't have to be the point of reference, personally I find Digimon to be the one that has managed this balance between keyword usage, intricate card interactions and the overall pace of a duel almost perfectly, and yet it suffers from powercreep similar to YGO.
I don't think much would be lost just by giving order and cohesion to a game that lacks attribute/type identity, a progressive resource management (even though it has a resource system in the form of the cards) and uniformed card effect's structure.
Creativity isn't something tied to the base system as proved by pendulums and links.