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If they work a year ahead, they're probably also working with unreleased lore/info as well.
If they work a year ahead, they're probably also working with unreleased lore/info as well.
Yup. Often more than 1 year ahead for that, but it varies substantially based on when it's known by others.
So in other words you play jungle on the LOR team.
We actually have a very similar official role called Jungler at work for individual contributors that go where they're needed. :)
If I may ask, how did you pick which landmark cards to rotate? I mean I can’t complain, this is somehow the best landmarks have ever been, but it was pretty shocking at first to see all our staple cards getting cycled out.
I wasn’t involved in most specific rotation meetings, I’m a design lead on features and don’t get as much time as I’d like to focus on cards most of the time. It’s only when I have an unusually light week or am far ahead of my own work (and no fires pop up in the meanwhile) that I get to join the cards playtests, card crafting meetings, and discussions.
I actually was hired originally as a card designer but there’s almost always been some other design challenge, and since I have a background in system and feature design too I ended up volunteering for a lot of less fun but important work. :)
There’s also a lot of various factors at play, and they often do conflict in natural ways. For example, every region is going to want some reasonable cards of various costs, and a certain number of cards in standard. There’s no guarantee that the number of color pie bleeds or overly restrictive cards is equally distributed across regions or mana curve. Often a decision must weigh the importance of one factor against the importance of another. That’s game design.
Also, we work about a year ahead of release (sometimes more) for new cards and make some decisions with future cards in mind.
Omg I love it.
I’m going to share this with folks on the team.
Hell yea brother
IMO non-MTG CGs are criminally understudied from a design perspective. It's crazy that YGO and Pokemon never got the same kind of analysis MTG has despite being almost as old. I guess MTG has uniquely academic roots but it feels like there's just so much untapped potential
Love how diverse this new wave of card games being released is as well, a lot to look forward to
IMO non-MTG CGs are criminally understudied from a design perspective.
Absolutely! It shocks me how even many dedicates turn-based strategy designers or cardgame designers have played only a very narrow selection of MTG-inspired games. I've got a big pile of on my desk of 2-3 beginner-friendly decks from various cardgames (if collectible) I introduce people to when I get time.
Currently on the desk (only 2-4 decks for each, and changes regularly):
- Poke'mon TCG (league battle decks for context, it's always funny to watch people react to professor's research or Marnie for the first time).
- Flesh and Blood
- Lord of the Rings, the LCG
- Radlands
- Netrunner the LCG
- Solforge Fusion
- Innovation
- Dragonball Z TCG
- Star Wars: Destiny
- Transformers TCG (technically it's in a drawer, but optimus prime battlefield legend is on top)
There's so much design...
Read moreI think the main point of contention here is the "not sure how anyone could argue otherwise" bit
It's a fairly common pattern in conversations about YGO that you run into this kind of dismissiveness(?, not sure how to properly phrase this) when people want to discuss the game in more depth. Too often the perspective of someone deep in the dueling trenches gets negated by someone's passing vibe check. It gets frustrating after a while, and it's especially frustrating coming from someone who's more than just some random Reddit commenter
That’s fair. With just the text minus any tone it probably comes off as very dismissive. What I meant is that I genuinely don’t know, not that it’s impossible to have a different opinion. This makes me curious, because it seems obvious to me that the 2008 meta in yugioh is far stronger than the 2002 tcg meta. I don’t know enough about the ocg meta to have an informed opinion on it separately, which is why I’m not commenting on it.
It might help to know one reason yugioh is top of mind for me is because I’ve been playing it a lot lately and encouraging various game designers on various teams to study the metas throughout time, since I think the game does some extremely creative things. I think the way they’ve evolved their meta and play patterns over time so the various eras play incredibly differently from each other is cool. It’s also very impressive how they’ve managed to keep finding new design space despite huge challenges - they don’t have regions or mana costs to rel...
Read moreMost players are well aware of the OCG/TCG split, this does not come off well
Exactly, which is why I didn’t think I needed to specify it originally. :)
I compared the TCG release date and TCG meta 9 years later. I didn’t think it needed to be specified that I was talking about the TCG. It was only after he used the OCG date to claim I was wrong about the launch date that I explained it.
It’s pretty clear there’s going to be no end to that discussion though. I didn’t set out to discuss the yugioh meta over the decades in detail, much less pivot to hearthstone. If he wants to then try and claim that only the OCG launch date counts and people should be comparing 2008 Gladiator Beasts, lightsworn, dark armed dragon, and more to summoned skull beat down - that’s fine too. I’d say the power increase in the top decks in yugioh is still way higher than hearthstone’s current decks vs their launch decks. I’m genuinely not sure how anyone could argue otherwise.
I also don’t think that’s a bad thing, I had a lot more fun with gladiator beasts, l...
Read moreRead moreYes, and were comparing things to 9 years ago. With magic and YGO you didnr compare from the launch to a certain point, but now to a certain point back, its a bit odd to have two separate standards for how to compare. Hence why here were comparing from now to 9 years ago for both. Its a better comparison in general, since we want current powercreep. And because ygo had early installment weirdness.
Actually your timeline here is wrong, ygo launched in 1999. And Hearthstone launched in 2014. So it'd be actually ygo from 1999 compared to 2006, which is actually closer than HS in that timeframe too.
Quite bluntly, by not being blind. A good way to measure powercreep is to look at a decks lifespan. How long can a deck find success? In YGO, thats a respectable 5 years. In hearthstone its 1. Sometimes, rarely, 2. Never more than that. In hearthstone power grows much faster, so decks become irrelevant much faster. Honestly its a tiny bit worrying that a dev isn't aware that...
Actually your timeline here is wrong, ygo launched in 1999. And Hearthstone launched in 2014.
I'll just respond to this: Yugioh, the Legend of Blue-Eyes, the first yugioh set - launched on March 8, 2002, in North America. I'm comparing North America releases of the 2002 north american meta to the north america meta 9 years later. 2002 + 9 = 2011. This is because the TCG (international version of the game) and OCG (original cardgame) are different games with different timeframes for release.
The OCG launched in 1999 in japan. The OCG and TCG in yugioh are different metas, and cannot be directly compared. Cards in the OCG are not simultaneously legal in the TCG. Here's an article explaining the differences....
Read moreRead moreGood post, but I think you are being a little unfair in the way you are arguing against some of these points.
Argument 1:
Firstly, the reason why new sets need to be impactful is that card games are not like other game genres, like MOBAs, for example. You can play a dozen league games with the same 10 champions, and they can turn out to be wildly different experiences. Card games do not have that much variance. Games you play against the same deck will start to feel samey much quicker. In other words, card games get stale much faster than other games, and thus need new content. This new content needs to shake up the decks that people are playing, or else players will get bored, and quit. Most players want to play decks that are powerful (which is why we see meta reports where 10 powerful decks make up almost half the play rate) , so if the new cards fail to produce powerful decks, most players will go back to playing established, powerful decks, and the game will ...
You are right in pointing out that, as long as an Eternal style mode exists, the problem of an ever increasing card pool with more and more complex is unavoidable.
One bonus factor here: eternal formats tend to be more stable when new cards aren't actively trying to disrupt them.
One reason rotation can help reduce power creep is because you can print cards that can impact the standard metagame without having to be much more powerful than the eternal decks. The modern and legacy formats of MTG used to change very slowly for this reason, with people feeling confident that their decks would be viable for a very long time with minimal changes needed.
When WOTC decided they wanted to print cards for these formats they did it largely by bypassing Standard entirely with Modern Horizons and similar. Modern Horizons 2 massively disrupted many formats. It's still kind of wild to me that Tarmogoyf often struggles to find a deck slot these d...
Read moreBut you do acknowledge that if you compare Hearthstones and YGOs powercreep, that Hearthstones is much more severe, right? Since using the same test youre using here on YGO and Hearthstone would result in beta Zoo vs Implock, and Burning Abyss vs, lets say, Swordsoul or Branded. One of these matches would be a 100-0 stomp if you ran it 100 times, the other would be closer to 80-20.
Just seems a bit weird that when you compare to a card game with rotation, you always choose magic, even though Riot already confirmed that unlike magic, you cant run both standard and eternal all the time with equal (or more for eternal, sometimes) support. When Hearthstone is much closer in that regard since it also doesnt have equal support for wild.
But you do acknowledge that if you compare Hearthstones and YGOs powercreep, that Hearthstones is much more severe, right?
No. Hearthstone's 9 years old. I'd say 2011 yugioh's top decks are much stronger compared to 2002 yugioh's top decks, than 2023 hearthstone decks to 2012 hearthstone decks (which is when hearthstone launched).
Implock is scarier than warlock aggro was at launch, but in that time frame yugioh went from tribute summoning for Summoned Skull beatdown to Plant Synchro, Six Samurai, Tengu Synchro, Blackwings, etc.
I have no idea how you could consider the increase in power to be bigger in hearthstone than in yugioh. I'm also not sure why it matters, not every game has the same goals and not every designer makes the same choices or avoids the same mistakes
You seem determined to find a 'gotcha' somewhere. I'm not sure why. I'm going to have to stop responding to this discussion, it's gone on for a very long t...
Read moreRead morebattle traps became irrelevant not because of powercreep. they became irrelevant because we have actual backrow removal now. mirror force was bad even back then, torrential was the actually good one, and that one is still good.
premature burial is not banned because its a spell, its banned because its an equip spell. those can be searched and loopd. causes stupid combos. restricts design. better comparison is monster reborn, which is unbanned and no one plays it because it sucks. could go to 3, completely irrelevant just like call, except call is better.
nah. the traps that still see play have been replicated by better spells long ago. torrential is worse raigeki, raigeki is at 3, but people play torrential. compulse is also kinda worse raigeki (not really but close enough), sees play. traps are worth playing because theyre interaction thats hard to stop, no one plays backrow removal. them being traps isnt a drawback, most trap decks sucking is just the problem. but...
Good point on equip spells having different synergies, that's relevant for the comparison. Still, Call of the Haunted used to be very powerful and now you're suggesting even Monster Reborn (which is still limited) is too weak. Sounds like substantial power creep to me.
The improved power of backrow removal is another factor yes, those effects also got stronger.
I really didn't set out to get into a deep dive on the state of all traps across all decks in all yugioh though, I gave the first example off the top of my head to a person that said they stopped playing yugioh a long time ago; since most people of that era remember traps like mirror force being extremely powerful and now they aren't. I'm not trying to defend any more specific point than "yugioh has changed a lot and the decks are far more powerful now than they were, to the point that the play patterns of modern decks are substantially different than what people may remember yugioh playing like from a while ...
Read moreRead moreAh, my bad, I shouldn't have picked just the first Labrynth list I saw. See ... this is actually a non-standard list. Pretty much every card you are referring to is usually not played.
This is a standard Labrynth list. Cooclock, Stovie, and Chandraglier is not played. Its exclusively Arianna, Lady Labrynth and Lovely Labrynth. There is no activating traps from hand, or on the same turn they're set. There is searching it from the deck, but thats because YGO is all about tutoring, its kinda a signature thing (and has been since about 2014).
Im afraid its not, and I do apologise for misleading you by showing you a non-standard, suboptimal deck. What YGO actually needs to do to make people play a lot of trap cards ... is to make a good trap-based archetype. Thats it. Traps are still very good, its just that we havent had a good trap-based archetype since Paleozoic in 2016.
This whole "trap cards are unpl...
Yes, yugioh has to make a powerful trap-based archetype to make people play a lot of traps. It doesn't have to do that to make people play a lot of spell cards. This is my point.
If you look at all other decks on that list of decks you just provided, how many traps and how many spells does each include? By comparison, how many traps are in those main decks? Of those traps, how many only have an effect when set and then activated; rather than a way to play from hand, an effect they can get by banishing from the grave, or similar?
This list just reinforces the point I made. Heck, Mirror Force used to be too good to allow 3 copies of, and it's been unlimited for almost a decade now.
I don't know why you keep trying to nitpick every point like this. It doesn't feel productive.
Have you seen Hearthstone? Or MTG? Like…powercreep is a staple. I’ve praised LoR for sometimes evading this. But pretending powercreep is some kind of thing that only Yugioh does this egregiously is just straight up bad faith. Like 1000% I do not believe for one second that a card game developer genuinely thinks this.
But pretending powercreep is some kind of thing that only Yugioh does this egregiously is just straight up bad faith. Like 1000% I do not believe for one second that a card game developer genuinely thinks this.
Good. I don't think that and didn't say that.
I do think if you compare standard tournament decks in MTG now to standard decks from 20 years ago, then do the same with yugioh's competitive decks now to 20 years ago, the difference in power level is much, much bigger in yugioh than in MTG.
I think people might be assuming that I'm saying that's a bad thing for yugioh. I don't think it necessarily is, it depends if you prefer the original form of yugioh with limited special summoning and few relevant extra deck monsters or the more modern versions with a lot more avenues of interaction and explosive plays.
Read moreSure. And YGO went from pot of greed to Pot of Extravagance. Graceful charity to Allure of darkness. Royal Order to Vanity's Emptiness to still a few stupid floodgates. First few sets in any of those old card game were broken.
Not really. Non-creatures got weaker for a while. But in the last, oooh, where was the breakpoint, I wanna say 11 years, non-creatures got stronger. Youre right, looking at Legacy is a good idea to see this. The first sorcery to be banned since treasure cruise was Expressive Iteration this year. A standard card. Its why indomitable creativity is one of the best modern decks right now and only plays 2 non-creature spells not printed in the last 5 years.
That depends on what timeframe you use. If you took a YGO deck from today and played it vs Zoodiac, it would be much closer than Grixis midrange now vs Grixis midrange from Aether Revolt. Choosing a tier 0 deck does have this effect. Anyway, while youre right that YGO now is very differ...
It seems like you're determined to hunt for the exceptions I already said exist, rather than look at the trends. Delve as a mechanic is easier to exploit in older formats and so, like Mental Misstep, was unusually powerful in those formats. It's not an example of overall power creep, the enablers for graveyard strategies in legacy are more powerful and thus synergize better with cards that use the graveyard as a cost.
Things will occassionally synergize with cards in larger formats in ways they don't in smaller ones. That's one of the key reasons why the power levels of larger formats get higher over time due to more combinatorial options.
As for pot of greed, this is why I didn't compare to MTG's power 9 - pot of greed is in a similar space. I instead compared to cards that weren't early mistakes of the game but rather existed as staple cards for many years after. Counterspell was still being printed in 7th edition, in 2001. Lightning Bolt was reprinted in 2011 int...
Read moreWhat classic traps or types of traps have been powercrept out? when i hear classic trap i think compulse, torrential, solemn judgment and bottomless, and all of those cards have had tournament success this month. mirror force ig, but mirror force became irrelevant much faster than any of those
Mirror Force is one of the great examples. It used to be one of the most powerful cards around, and now it's unlimited and barely used; along with most defensive "protect you from attack" traps - which used to be a significant staple of the game. Magic Cylinder, Sakaretsu Armor, etc.
Another example is Call of the Haunted - also unlimited these days when its close spell equivalent Premature Burial is Forbidden (banned, to those reading this unfamiliar with yugioh terminology). Call of the Haunted requiring a turn to set up is such a drawback now it's shrug-worthy but the same base effect with a lifepoint cost on a spell is bannable. The game's speed has increased that much over time. Premature Burial was always better than Call of the Haunted, but Call of the Haunted used to be a very playable card.
Some trap effects are so powerful and unique they've never been replicated by better spells (at least nothing that's stayed unbanned) or hand-traps, and thus are still w...
Read moreBecause the time matters to how "extreme" the powercreep is. Yes, YGO has powercreep. Every card game has powercreep. Some powercreep is inevitable. In Magic we went from red having 1 mana 2/1s with downside as premium creatures to red getting 1 mana 2/1s with upside as pack filler.
In MTG we also went from Counterspell to Cancel, and from Lightning Bolt to Searing Spear (both examples of cheaper spells getting rotated out and replaced with weaker versions that cost more mana). We went from Necropotence and Yawgmoth's Bargin to Phyrexian Arena. There are countless other examples.
Magic's creatures started as like 2/10 in power and many of its non-creatues started as like 11/10 in power. Creatures have gotten stronger over time, non-creatures have gotten weaker over time. If you look at the decklists in legacy and vintage formats, this is very easy to see; as most of the creatures in these decks are newer and most of the non-creatures are older. There are exceptions to both of course, espescially with some older tribe-oriented decks that don't see quite as much modern support, but the trend is pretty consistent.
If you take the strongest standard-legal decks from today and play it against the strongest standard-legal decks from older eras of MTG...
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