Yu-Gi-Oh Players DON'T UNDERSTAND New Players

When I was knew, I needed to be put to the table, forced to play the highest level possible. then taught the very basic rules, and that was all I had. I didn't even learn the game till I was 16.

I am almost 30 and saying a new player does not care is actually a lie. I have taught over 100 people in my local area how to play in the past 8 years. and 70 of them Play actively on games like Master Duel and about 30 of them have made it to Master Rank and do it consistently.

Because what helps new players is not Codling them and holding their hand. It is giving them realistic situations and teach them those situations. teach basic fundamentals and gradually progress the era of play.

doing anything to push their current limitations and make them get out of that shell is the priority, not what you mentioned.

Exactly that's why, I, as a new player, took me 1 year to really learn the game alone, watching videos and playing by myself duel links against the bots because i didn't understand why everyone just obliterated my noob as. Now I really like the game and discovered locals. At the moment every time a new player comes up, I star playing with them only with vainillas, and really basic effect monsters like breaker, equip spells (they are awesome to teach the concept of the advantage that magic cards bring), ultra basic trap cards like negate attack and so on.

I quit over a decade ago, around the introduction of Pendulums. My thought process was “I don’t understand these (pendulums), it sounds broken and too complex for new players to get into ygo.” External circumstances just happened to line up to make quitting easier.
I still follow duel logs, but more for the retro content where he talks about how good/bad old decks or mechanics were. I also still have my old Lightsworn/Lightray, Ghostrick, Gishki, and Madolche decks (none of which are competitive-viable, even at the time), and get them out just to admire the artwork on the odd occasion.
I went to visit an old friend a few months ago, and he tried to get me into MD by showing me his gameplay, but I wasn’t really that interested; the gameplay has simply advanced too much into a style I don’t find fun (win by turn 3). I feel bad for him, as it was actually me who got him into ygo in the first place.

I tried getting into the game recently but gave up and built 2008 era decks to play with my friends. The game is just unapproachable, I still don't understand how XYZ link and pendulum summons work after a month of watching videos on the game

This also leads into my issues with the modern meta. It’s discouraging to a new player.

In the first minute you're showing guys who make mostly content focused around a competitive angle of the game for people already in it.
They're obviously going to talk about issues they have from playing the game thru a competitive lens.
Especially when they're audience is people who already know the game

FINALLY SOMEONE MAKES A VIDEO ABOUT THIS!!!!! GODDAMMIT SERIOUSLY NO ONE UNDERSTANDS THIS! I was someone that really really wanted to get into yugioh, I spent so much time learning the summon mechanics and I thought "okay this is a lot but its not too bad" when I went to try out an actual deck I had no idea what the fuck the card was even saying, I had no idea how to fuck this game was played. its not just the rules its literally this on every card: when this card is played and IF ONLY this Card is played in a main phase, you may draw 2 cards that ARENT ______ and but them on the battlefield if and ONLY if you player has ____ on the battle field, and IF and ONLY if this effect RESOLVES you can but a card into your graveyard, you also may someone (and only once per turn can place a XYZ monster from you extra deck onto the battlefield" on and on and on and on again, wtf is that. but then also whats shit is the community is very very shitty online and dont help at all, and then awkward in real life. I went to a locals just to ask about what I should play or what deck I should play, they turned red and got really nervous because my girlfriend was with me, and they chuckled and choked for 2 minutes and said "HEhaHEhaa just play mYsTiC mInE..... BAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHA!" good one weirdo...

I am a new player, started playing about three months ago, and I understand the more complicated stuff because I put more effort into learning stuff like pendulums, so when I started to play a different deck I made basic mistakes like the one turn set rule for traps or that a tribute summon is a normal summon

I recently had a friend who I introduced to magic. He learned via Arena, but he didn't like lands. He knew I dabbled in yugioh and said that he was planning on trying to see if he liked the game via master duel, after all its magic with no lands right?? I had to talk him down. I had convinced him to let me teach him the game and not to try to jump into master duel. That felt terrible to do. This was a new player ready to learn the game and I had to pump the brakes on his gameplay.

It's not about being good, it's about letting them have fun

In general, the new player experience is not good cuz the game is so complex and hard. The learning process involves constantly getting bodied left and right. For someone learning, even an effect like "add Z card from deck to hand when this card is summoned" or "when X goes to the graveyard, summon this card" is challenging. A simplified game state w/easier decks is always gonna help them.

I took many years off Yugioh and came back a few months ago. I left right when link summoning started getting big. When I came back, it wasn't that hard for me but it did take me some time. A friend of mine suggested I learn one meta deck and get really good with that deck. He recommended Branded for me (which's a hard deck to play, but was fine for me). I think that's the best way. I picked it up pretty quickly and started playing with a variety of decks and it's fine. I have a fire deck that I climbed into mid-Diamond level in MD pretty quickly and can prolly get it to Master eventually. But most ppl don't have the background I do. I used to play a lot of really hard games and got very good at them in my past (like chess) and I was good at Yugioh before I took a break. If it was hard for me, imagine what it's like teaching a teenager or someone who has very little background in it. Taking it slow and making it easy for ppl learning is very important

Yugitoobers to be precise because new players is not theyr market so the complaint is moot

im sorry but if a 'new player' doesn't care about anything about a card game they wanna play...they don't wanna play that game.
Your problem is you're bad at teaching. I taught a literal 10 year old how to play during a local with his mom sitting right there and the following week he actually managed to win a game in a local. It's literally a skill issue.

The game absolutely has an issue with how polluted it's text boxes are when it could absolutely benefit from keywording, but the complexity comes from your reading comprehension, which most people are dog shit at. Its about understanding how chain links work. not about...fking keeping track of...fking numbers...pokemon has infinitely more numbers to keep track of and yet new players don't have ANY issues getting into that game. if you can't do basic arithmetic, you have bigger problems than your inability to get into yugioh.

As someone who returned yo Yu-Gi-Oh from masrer duel i can relate to this

Play speed duels.

Why would you think the videos you cited were aimed at new players? Theres specific content for new players, its fucking stupid to say "hey guy making content for experienced players, you gotta change your content for these other people", its like going to a advanced physics class and complain that the lesson isnt appropriate for people who just started learning, well the class for people who just started learning is in a different room, dude. Furthermore, new players seem to want everything handed to them, I got into this game only like 2 years ago, it only takes a little bit of effort and understanding that you wont be good immediatly it will take trial and error and experience, but you cant just whine because you cant learn modern yugioh in one afternoon.

I was recently watching an APS video, where they let 2 new players play with the new 2 player set. Thinking about it more objectively this game is stupidly complicated. Idk how we learned this as kids.
I recently got into modern Yu-Gi-Oh after a few failed attempts, and I still don't care for Yu-Gi-Oh competitively I just wanna have fun. It is a poorly designed game for competitive play imo.

A big recommendation to teaching new players archetypes is to play speed-speed duel format, with a 10ish deck, 3 card hand, 2k life and whatever the archetype has in extra. The goal is to spam click cards in a simulator to build a relation to what happens to the card before getting into the card text. Continue by adding more copies of the cards your new player wants to see more of in their opening hand.

The basics of yugioh isn't hard. It's when it comes to deckbuilding and card effects. Stuff like special summoning, phases, and the such aren't hard. The text and lack of streamlined info is the issue

yugioh is NOT a game for new players and it also doesn't CARE about new players and Konami also really doesn't care since so many players already throw money at them. The Solo Missions in MD are not well done, the Starter Decks are kinda bad (don't get me started on the 2 player starter deck) and the community also really doesn't help. The game itself doesn't help and want's you as a new player
For a new player a game like Lorcana or heck even Magic is easier to get into since the "Get started" Decks do use cards from the normal sets but due to the way the effects in Magic are written they are WAY easier to grasp than the text walls of ygo

I think the strategy you took is the best, as the easiest way to learn/get into yugioh is to learn one single deck well. I actually got into yugioh through master duel (I understood how synchros, xyz, fusions, and half how links work beforehand which certainly helped) when the labrynth secret pack had just come out (missed tear meta rip) and just blindly spent all my beginner gems on the lab secret pack since it had the most points overall back when md still had those. I slapped together all the random labrynth cards and whatever else I could shove in and started playing.

I actually think md now has a decent system for new players with the introduction of the swordsoul starter newbies can get and play until they learn how yugioh works, but there is obviously still the issue of the 'tutorial' being unrepresentative of what yugioh actually is.

You hitting it on the nail. These sweats don't understand how unwelcoming they made the game just because they wanted to justify bad game design

I’m getting back into yugioh and I was thinking this exact thing

Honestly after Links i knew this issue will happen.

New player? Go play the first story of legacy of duelist.
Then give them an exodia ftk deck to practice.

Then build a stun anti-special summon deck

Honestly since characters do it so much in the anime... Just... Straight up F it and just make face up defense position a thing.

It's not going to hurt anything or anybody... If anything it might just make defense position worse.

I think there is a huge difference between a new player being someone that knows the basics and wants to give the game a real try, and a new player that doesn't know anything about the game

Had a friend try yugioh on MD and he was patient enough to give it a whole month an when he had questions I answered them an when he finally felt he could understand what was happening an how to play, his take away from it all was that the knowledge portion of what you need to know is too damn high an complex just for majority of your duels to be over in a turn or two and i cant blame him at the rate ygo is going if existing players dont rope new players in then how else is someone supposed to learn this complex ass game an stick with it?

That's why i as player that played 18 years go to edison where it is easier to teach ppl yugioh and easier to have actualy fun. Thank u for that video ❤

I started playing master duel a week ago, all i could think of was, i should just play marvel snap

i like egg yolk. Therefore I like video.

What's even more sad is Yu-Gi-Oh will be stuck as a cardgame. Video game -> Cardgame. Anime -> Cardgame.

While other franchise like One Piece, Pokemon, Digimon, Dragon Ball, etc. has expand their franchise to more than singular purpose.

it's backwards. I love that. 😅

Something I haven’t seen mentioned yet is that new players have to learn the game at its most complex ever: long, complicated card texts, unintuitive deck building, long combos, and oppressive end boards. A new player who’s just read the rule book has no context for what a game of modern Yugioh will look like, or how many cards they will have to memorize in very short order to keep up with what their opponents are doing. There’s nothing to tell them that 90% of the cards released are so far from competitively playable that reading them is all but a waste of time. Say a new player got gifted an old gadget deck from a friend - they have no way of playing those cards in the modern game because they’re balanced for an older version of the game that no longer exists. Often, the prospect of spending hundreds of dollars on a deck you might not even like to play a game that plays and feels much different than it did 10 or 15 years ago isn’t fun. As a returning player myself, the gameplay loop I remember from 2010-2014 is hardly reflected in the modern game. We need more official resources for legacy formats that can guide new and returning players through the increasingly complex elements of the game, and a place for people to play older formats with a very different feel and gameplay loop. This exists informally at some card shops, but you sure won’t find it on Master Duel.

Growing up alongside the anime and games (Once they started following the rules) was a huge boon.

I don't disagree with this, but I also think that having a low barrier of entry in price makes people more willing to try the game out, having easy to dicern products that seems more aimed at beginners to (structure deck or the old starter deck as bad as they were), but they also need to bridge the introduction to actual play. That product that marketed itself as an introduction to the game failed on this last aspect, it can't bridge the players to actual play after teaching them how to play, while structure decks are much better at that.

I hope the new blue-eyes structure deck comes to the tcg as a structure deck, because it's the perfect gateway (as much as old players like to complain about new people and returning people using dm/be decks) it has the most recognizable yugioh card, in a easy to understand deck grab and play deck, that can act as a bridge so the player can upgrade it and start playing for real, that's how I got back to the game back when the pend magician deck released, that's how a lot of people I know got into the game. That's how people I know got into other card games as well, a product, that a beginner can buy and start playing right out of the box, bonus points if it is an actual good deck like what pokemon is doing. Extra bonus points if the meta cards are not expensive and the expensive cards are actually just alternate more rare versions of cards.

This is so true. Also it should be about being enjoying Yu-Gi-Oh not getting people good at Yu-Gi-Oh. At the end of the day Yu-Gi-Oh is just a game that should be enjoyed.

genuinely asking was there a point to this?

This is why Konami should make a GOAT or EDISON structure deck. Start very new player or player that haven't play or hear yugioh to start with low-medium level GOAT format then move to EDISON is they like combo and archetype then introduced them to current meta if they want more complex stuff

how in the hell is this vague egg shape with a smiley face supposed to make me want to watch this video bro?

I just started a week ago or so, never watched the anime, never played before.

I kept getting confused on trap cards, cause I kept setting magicians navigation, but it would never activate. I didn't get summoning dark magician from your hand was not optional.

Also the fact that sometimes I thought I would be able to chain something, and then it never gave the prompt. Or like if I can choose not to activate now, but activate it later on, but then it just wouldn't chain later.

Just putting videos of people talking about random cards in the background. Listened to several hours of Cimooo's Hearthstone/Magic player rates Yugioh cards. Seems to help somewhat understand things.

One thing I still dont understand is like when dark magical circle says you return cards to the top of the deck in any order you choose... does the card labeled 1 go to the top of the deck or is it put on the deck first and thus is the bottom most of the ordered cards.


I also still have no clue when to use ash blossom and the other "staple" cards I see people say are needed for decks...

I dont know what exactly is meta or whatever but Dark Magician, Toon, and Evil Twins seems cool. But also no clue how to get decks.

Like for dark magician I did the structure deck 3 times, then pulled the secret pack with like 8k gems cause I couldn't get one of the UR cards. (Thought that you needed to own at least one copy in order to craft it, cause I didn't see unobtained cards in the deck list)

Still have no clue on how much are you supposed to pull on secret packs... like do you need every UR in the pack? Should I only be pulling for the lower rarity cards and craft the high rarity cards.

Also there's guides for new players... and they recommend bundles and structure decks, but there are way more bundles and structure decks than they show in the video. Like they say get every bundle, but at the time of the video there are only 3 bundles.

One said get structure decks they are important... so I bought 3 copies of 6 different structure decks (before eventually resetting my account because I didnt play anything other than dark magician). Thought that the decks would be able to be mixed together, didnt realize archetypes don't seem to often synergize with cards outside the archetype.

Whenever I search forum the number 1 comment I hate to read as a new player back then was “don’t read between the lines, just do what the card says” oh boy it got me infuriated.

Why’d you think I come to forum to ask 😂

Yaaa, modern yugioh sucks..

I got back into YGO about a year ago after not playing it since childhood. If it wasn't for nostalgia I never would have withstood the learning curve.

saying new players don't care about maxx c and want to know what a phase is doesn't really matter, you can learn what a phase is in 1 minute, learning about staples every deck will be using will come up pretty soon, the biggest hurdle is knowing what cards to focus on learning first instead of trying to learn 1000 cards at the same time, not the mainline mechancis (granted the more esoteric mechanics like damage step or whatever will be part of learning the subtilties but even that is a much smaller hurdle that can be tackledc whenever, compared to just knowing what cards to focus on)

This game and it's community is unbearable nowadays, surprised anybody really does truly get into it, must either be REALLY good at it or just plain masoquists because their money and soul will be sucked dry before they can experience a third of the fun most of us "horrible yugiboomers" experienced with a simple 5 euro booster pack and a friend

We need different formats available to ease in new players.

Throwing people who don’t know what an XYZ summon even IS into a MD game is unfair.

Starting off in a slower game (like goat) and going from there is the way imo.

Yu-Gi-Oh used to be fun it used to be about monsters fighting other monsters now it’s all about whoever can make their opponent not play the game wins

I used to play school ground Yugioh during the mid 2000s when the game was it it's peak popularity but I would later drop it when I moved and got to my new Highschool in the late 2000s. During the Covid years, I ended up feeling bored and nostalgic and I figured I would finally check what ever happened to my favourite childhood card game but it just felt very different and broken by that point and i just couldn't get into it anymore. In order to get my my TCG card game itch I ended up trying MTG, the pioneer format in particular and I had a blast, it still had much of the charm of old school yugioh that I fell in love with it while still being very complex gameplay and deck building wise.

I think that 90% of "yugitubers" are on copium that players who don't understand are dumb/bad, just because they are privately invested in yugioh, they litelry get paid to promote this game and not to manchen them selling ygo merch on there channels so they will in majority of cases be biased 100% game is dog s**t and boriiiiing.