Fixing the broken balance of Modern Yugioh

[Lasaro Ginjou]

As someone that came back to Yugioh thanks to Master Duel after many years, I find it feels broken with the overpowered combos that take an eternity. I watched some videos on Youtube were people discuss how it can be fixed. However, it is all about how to change the costs of finding cards, drawing cards etc. which would require changing the text of cards that a lot of people already have and would not be able to use anymore. I was trying to find solutions that would not affect the actual cards.

So I thought of the following 3 general rules that I believe can fix it without changing card texts and potentially even eliminating the need for ban lists:

1. You can only summon 1 new monster on every monster zone slot each turn. I believe this will massively reduce the length of combos as you will only be able to summon up to 6 effect/extra deck/token monsters per turn. Maybe we could say that normal monsters are exempt which could potentially breath new life to vanilla normal monster cards who are immune to this rule.
2. A lot of people mentioned adding Summoning sickness when a monster enables the Special Summoning of monsters. Maybe a general rule that Special Summoned monsters from deck or graveyard have their ATK and/or DEF reduced. So, you get your favourite monster on the board with a cool combo or in the case of monsters that always come back, but they come back weakened. Again I would suggest that  normal monsters are exempt. This could further encourage players to turn to vanilla normal monsters as they would be unaffected by this rule.
3. Can have only one copy per card in each deck except when you use monsters or cards that specifically require more copies of cards. Like blue eyes ultimate dragon, thunder dragon, nimble momonga etc. This should eliminate having a deck made up of just 12-14 different cards and their copies. More variety and creativity. This rule would potentially eliminate the need for ban lists. Also it would be more faithful to the anime that made this game in the first place.

So, here it is. 3 rules that can completely change the game, stop the crazy long combos, help make at least some normal monsters relevant again, encourage more variety in deck building with less copies of all cards in decks and nerf the Special Summoning mechanic so other play styles can shine again.

Looking forward to reading everyone's thoughts.

I know those of you that like spending hours in combos would be unhappy with these but this is all hypothetical so please take it easy on me.

After all, I cannot change the game so you are safe! :P

Edited April 14 by Lasaro Ginjou
typos

[Rongaulius]

On 4/14/2024 at 5:35 PM, Lasaro Ginjou said:

As someone that came back to Yugioh thanks to Master Duel after many years, I find it feels broken with the overpowered combos that take an eternity. I watched some videos on Youtube were people discuss how it can be fixed. However, it is all about how to change the costs of finding cards, drawing cards etc. which would require changing the text of cards that a lot of people already have and would not be able to use anymore. I was trying to find solutions that would not affect the actual cards.

So I thought of the following 3 general rules that I believe can fix it without changing card texts and potentially even eliminating the need for ban lists:

1. You can only summon 1 new monster on every monster zone slot each turn. I believe this will massively reduce the length of combos as you will only be able to summon up to 6 effect/extra deck/token monsters per turn. Maybe we could say that normal monsters are exempt which could potentially breath new life to vanilla normal monster cards who are immune to this rule.
2. A lot of people mentioned adding Summoning sickness when a monster enables the Special Summoning of monsters. Maybe a general rule that Special Summoned monsters from deck or graveyard have their ATK and/or DEF reduced. So, you get your favourite monster on the board with a cool combo or in the case of monsters that always come back, but they come back weakened. Again I would suggest that  normal monsters are exempt. This could further encourage players to turn to vanilla normal monsters as they would be unaffected by this rule.
3. Can have only one copy per card in each deck except when you use monsters or cards that specifically require more copies of cards. Like blue eyes ultimate dragon, thunder dragon, nimble momonga etc. This should eliminate having a deck made up of just 12-14 different cards and their copies. More variety and creativity. This rule would potentially eliminate the need for ban lists. Also it would be more faithful to the anime that made this game in the first place.

So, here it is. 3 rules that can completely change the game, stop the crazy long combos, help make at least some normal monsters relevant again, encourage more variety in deck building with less copies of all cards in decks and nerf the Special Summoning mechanic so other play styles can shine again.

Looking forward to reading everyone's thoughts.

I know those of you that like spending hours in combos would be unhappy with these but this is all hypothetical so please take it easy on me.

After all, I cannot change the game so you are safe! :P

Master Duel really isn't a great choice if you like old-school yugioh.  Sometimes you'll come up against other casual players, but the game does have a meta and that meta resembles old-school yugioh in name only.

As far as your suggestions for core changes, before going into any of them I'll say that modern Yugioh is a completely different animal from the original game.  Konami didn't really know what the game was going to look like at first, and as the game has evolved over time, it's changed so drastically that it's basically a completely different game from when it was released.  In order to make most of your suggestions a reality, you'd have to eliminate hundreds or thousands of cards from the game pool.  Not saying I think that's a good or bad thing, just that it's a thing.

Limiting the number of Special summons to six probably wouldn't work too well.  It would make a vast majority of modern strategies completely unplayable.  Multiple summons are only a problem if they lead to an oppressive end board.  I.e., a board that's all but unbreakable and has multiple interruptions.  Which comes mostly from overly generic boss monsters that can be splashed into almost any deck. Yes, combos can take forever. There are some strategies that do Summon a crap-ton of times per turn, but at the end of the day the only real problem with those massive combos is when they end on an oppressive board that you've no hope of breaking.

Edit: misread a bit of the OP, will rewrite when I have time.

The third concept of limiting cards to 1 copy each is going to make for almost impossible deck building, and would be a ruling nightmare.  It's much simpler to ban or limit problematic cards than it is to universally limit cards that don't need to be limited.  You'd be trading the banlist for a multiple-copies list that would be much longer and more confusing than the current banlist.

Put simply, the ideas you're presenting here offer solutions to minor or not-really-existent problems with Yugioh.  There are certainly a lot of things wrong with modern Yugioh, but most of those come down to bad card design rather than game mechanics.  Which stems from Konami's apparrent viewpoint that the best way to make money is to print busted new generic cards so people buy packs looking for them, and then those cards show up everywhere because they're just better than the ones before them.  It's Power Creep.

Edited April 19 by Rongaulius

[Rongaulius]

Okay.  Suggestion #2 doesn't do much if it only affects monsters Special Summoned from the Deck or GY.  Most of those monsters are combo pieces anyway and won't remain on the board for the Battle Phase.  Special Summoning from the Deck is one of the rarest Special Summons and usually comes with a heavy restriction on the summoned monster, such as its effects being negated and/or being unable to attack that turn. There again, if you SS from the Deck, it's usually a combo piece that has a good GY effect or has some other necessary utility. 

And honestly, even in decks that like to SS a lot from the Deck or GY, this wouldn't really change much. If a monster has a good enough effect, it'll be used and then either linked away or left on the field to use its effect again next turn.  It might change whether or not you SS a monster during Main Phase 1 or 2, but it really wouldn't do too much.

This is a guess, but if you've been playing Master Duel lately I'm guessing you've come up against a fair amount of Fire Kings.  Fire Kings is a decent deck in its own right, but the truly terrifying variants of the deck are the Snake-Eyes and/or Diabellestar builds. The newest Fire Kings structure deck was released in the TCG several months before Snake-Eyes and Diabellestar, and it did precisely nothing to the meta until those two generic engines came along and just so happened to mesh absolutely perfectly with Fire Kings.  Again: generic cards turning decent strategies into Tier 0 powerhouses.  That's where we get most of our problems with this game.

To the OP, I'm going to guess you enjoy playing Blue-Eyes.  Blue-Eyes, love it or hate it, just isn't a very good deck right now.  Except in Duel Links, but even there it's past its prime and was only ever good because of character skills.  In the TCG and Master Duel, it's slow and weak.  The biggest problem is that it requires you to play bricks.  A lot of them.  All of the Blue-Eyes monsters are Level 8 and most don't have a built-in Special Summon condition.  Open five Blue-Eyes and nothing else, and you'll be fortunate to end on one Alternative White Dragon.  Topping that off, the boss monsters are mostly rather dated.  They either have slow effects (Alternative Ultimate) or have effects that don't do much against other modern decks (Spirit Dragon).  The deck needs a LOT to be good again, namely some low-level support in the main deck.

I do think one rule change that could be made to the game would be to allow the Normal Summon of Level 6+ Normal monsters without a Tribute.  It'd make decks that rely on high-level vanillas much more playable, as in the worst case you'd just Normal Summon your Blue-Eyes and have a 3k beater with no effect.  Most decks should be able to get rid of that, and if they can't, they aren't winning anyway.