What is a balanced card?

[Frois]

Hello, my question is rather simple: what is a balanced card? how do I make sure that the card I make is realistic and balanced? I know things like "When this spell card is activated your opponent loses all their remaining life points" is rather unbalanced... unless of course some crazy condition would be applied. but I mean more attack and deffence wise for monsters. how do I know if my cards are balanced?

[~/Coolio Prime\~]

Be warned that some people here don't keep up with the meta and as such claim that awful cards are overpowered. Keeping up with the meta is a very good way to gauge what's an overpowered card(ones that see play in every deck and dominate upon being summoned) and ones that are underpowered). As Evangelion said, Tier 2 Decks are good to use as tools for design, along with the occasional lower Tier 1 and higher Tier 3.

[Sotos]

Well, a balanced card doesn't give you a huge advantage (which may not seem so huge at first, but cards like Pot of Greed are really unbalanced). Just make sure you don't involve a lot of drawing, negating, destroying etc. without the proper cost, which could either be a simple cost (e.g. "Tribute a monster to...") or a decrease in a monster's stats (e.g. A Lv. 4 monster with 300 ATK, check Gladiator Beast Secutor). Now, if you can use that cost to your favor, that is a whole other story...

[Frois]

Yes. when it comes to card effect it's rather simple what is balanced or not. My question really is about the attack and deffence points. I really have no clue how to chose that.

As I said a card saying "when this card is activated your opponent loses all their remaining life points" is obviously unbalanced. while one like "When this card is activated you can tribute 1000 life points to allow one of your monsters to attack your opponent's life points directly" seems more balanced (no clue if it really is. sounds logical to me) maybe adding another condition like only monsters with 2000 or less att can be chosen.

In short I want to know how to set balanced attack and deffence points please. Thank you for your help I appreciate:)

[DARKPLANT RISING]

I personally think that making cards with about the same power as existing Tier-3 to 2 decks makes them all right.

[Frois]

Okay thanks alot I really appreciate

[Sotos]

Well, for a monster to be balanced, its ATK, depending on its level and effect, should be:
Effect: No / Simple, not that helpful / Very helpful in an archetype / Generally very helpful[hr]

Lv.:[hr]
1-3 0-1500 / 0-1300 / 0-500 / 0-200[hr]
4 1000-2000 /1000-1500 / 500-1000 / 0-1000[hr]
5-6 2000-2500 /2000-2300 / 2000-2100 / 1500-2300[hr]
7-8 2400-3000 / 2400-3000 / 2400-3000 / 2400-2700
*The DEF should be about there too*
Of course, these are general estimatings I made in a couple of minutes and won't be always right. Plus, how you rate the effect is all that counts, and there isn't a guide for this...