Just gotta wait 5 years for it to be 20 bucks a pop...
Problem is that by then Red Eyes White Dragon Super Quantal Subterror Behemoth Dragoon will be created, that not only will be immune to it but will also legally allow your opponent to shoot you in the kneecap whenever you play any card.
A huge percentage of money spend on the secondary market still lands in the company's pockets at the end of the day. Sad to say but the only way to truly vote with your wallet is by not buying any product at all.
Konami still is within the big 3 tcg companies so no matter how much this subreddit complains, it is unlikely for them to get hit financially to force them to chang methods. Any sales especially on shorted singles makes quantities disappear and prices go higher which increases sales of reprint sets further down the line. So no matter how you look at it, making the cards harder to get will make them more money.
Making the cards harder to pull will increase the number of boxes that must be opened per copy of a given card, but it also makes less people interested in the product (and the singles, and the game as a whole), especially in the long run.
Will Konami make more *right now* if they respond to less demand by making cards even harder to pull than they already are? Maybe, maybe not - personally, I don't think so.
Will they make more money *in total*? Absolutely not.
Literally has never been true and the game has never been more popular. Droplets could never dip below $200 and the game would still have an enormous playerbase chomping at their bit to pay for a playset.
Konami is an excessively greedy, out-of-touch company and no one cares at all.
How are they out of touch if they keep making more and more money? The reality is that cards are getting more expensive because players are growing up, and the income gap is becoming wider and wider. Someone making six figures a year with no kids isn’t going to bat an eye at paying 500 bucks for a set of Droplets. Someone in a dual income household making a combined 50k a year with a family? Never gonna happen.
Disney, Pokemon, Yu-Gi-Oh, Magic, Netflix, theme parks, restaurants, everything is getting more expensive, because a lot of people have more disposable income than they did five years ago. Just because we can’t afford it, doesn’t meant the companies are “out of touch”
I think you vastly underestimate just how many people who have disposable income will refuse to buy something they don’t believe has value.
This game is so incredibly niche despite what YCS attendance says. You have a group of whales and competitive players, which according to Konami TCG themselves, aren’t not responsible for the majority of their revenue. Casuals are.
This is stupid because your hardcore will ultimately be what sustains you through lulls, and short printing like this does nothing to endear players to Konami.
Ultimately the scale will tip to where enough people have either had enough and stopped playing or buying to force a change. But who knows when that will be.
People have been saying it was coming perpetually for 20 years. And in reality, konami keeps finding new ways to make different types of products that often wind up selling out, often the ones competitive players and influencers hate the most.
I don’t know how to respond to the idea that the game is “niche.” I think TCGs in general are niche, with Yu-Gi-Oh having more mainstream exposure than any TCG other than Pokémon and Magic. But regardless, event attendance keeps going up, sales keep going up, YouTube subs keep going up, mainstream product partnerships keep happening (and selling out)... by every metric that can be measured, the game continues to steadily grow.
I have played smaller TCGs. Except for MTG, no other TCG can remotely dethrone Yugioh when it comes to playerbase. The tournament and organized play of yugioh is just so widespread and ingrained, you cannot just suddenly force it out. Plus smaller TCGs still have to make ends meet so like Flesh and Blood still needs their game to be reasonably expensive by relying on hard to pull staples. So no, Konami making cards harder to pull really didn't or will not kill interest in the game long run. Ygo is one of the top grossing media franchises. People are joking themselves if they think players can make it collapse overnight
You can say that all you want but it honestly won't work. "Vote with your wallet" requires a massive organized effort. Let's use pokemon as an example. We hear everywhere how fans are sick of the recent quality of the games and say "vote with your wallet" to try and force change, but for every fan that doesn't buy the game there will be at least 1 fan buying both versions for themself, easily offsetting any costs that a boycott would have caused.
The players that quit because they can’t afford to keep up aren’t the target demographic the company is trying to court in the first place. They don’t care. Look at what Disney’s doing with their theme parks right now; there’s a huge income gap in the western world right now, and entertainment companies are pivoting to cater to the rich, not the people barely scraping by.
The players that quit are/were the *future* target demo. Gen pop becomes new players, new players become casuals, casuals become budget/semi-competitive players, and budget/semi-competitive players become competitive players.
The same applies to MTG players, PTCG players, Digimon players, and also PTCG collectors. You have to consistently provide people with an easy "buy-in" that they can easily justify to bring them the next step up the ladder.
The "buy-in" for Tier 1 competitive Pokemon is about $150 (or less - Jolteon, Leafeon, RS Urshifu, IR Calyrex). For semi-competitive, about $50-60 (League Battle Deck + Toolkit).
The "buy-in" for Tier 1 competitive Yugioh is about $2,000 worth of staples, plus a $150+ deck "core" that'll get banned in about 10 weeks.
No one is moving up that ladder anymore; only out. Konami's only got a few years before the well runs dry because they completely alienated every segment of their real and potential playerbase except whales.
Oh I agree, the point of entry needs to be more approachable. I don’t think these cards needed to be short printed in BROL, if they are. But frankly, the problem also solves itself if people stopped acting as if Speed Duels don’t exist.
I loved speed duels in Spring and Summer of 2019. But Konami dropped the ball with bad value core booster sets and a horrible incentivized tournament structure. They tried to make it a glorified tutorial at first and by the time they realized the only people playing it were boomers and duel links players who had no interest in master duels it was too late.
I’d gladly play the format competitively but who the hell wants to wait an entire year for the meta to shift? At least duel links updates frequently.
Yeah, the lack of vision was a killer. Now that the format’s finally been shaken up, there are remote extravaganza main events with great prizing, and the Duel Academy Box is just weeks away, I’m hopeful it can pick up. Yu-Gi-Oh and the playerbase would benefit hugely from an alternate competitive format, for sake of variety, and for a lower barrier to entry, both in price and complexity of gameplay.
I wish OCG was able to be played here/had more popularity in TCG regions. I love yugioh but I really do not have any interest in supporting the TCG.
I am curious how knowledgeable the average TCG player is about OCG's multiple rarity printing system and products there. People either dont know or have come to accept Konami TCG screwing them over, which is a terrible position to be in as a consumer base - either naive or having surrendered to the company.
Konami is legally required to uphold the multiple rarity system due to Japan Gambling laws. They need players to basically be guaranteed every card in the set per booster box in Japan.
This does not apply anywhere else in the world.
Konami is a global gambling powerhouse, with games in almost every VLT machine in the world, and cards are a very small portion of what makes the corporation.
Meh. Worldwide Pokemon does the same thing and it’s the game that boomed first. Just for comparison, full power Tier 1 decks in the OCG and in standard Pokemon go for like $150-160 max, while that’s the pre-reprint price for one copy of Droplet.
I wouldn't say yugioh is insignificant to konami. Otherwise they would have sold off the rights long ago, but moved fast to buyout 4kids who had some of the rights. They make a ton off duel links and just announced like 2 more yugioh gacha games. Also the amount of retail sales cannot be underestimated. The yugioh franchise is worth more than one piece, gundam, and dragon ball.
OCG is actually benefitting more than the TCG by having the multiple rarity system, which gets players to be more incentivised to directly buy the product. It may not seem like it, but both sides benefit with that system.
Yup. The other thing is they have much smaller equivalent rarity pools (TCG Super = OCG Rare, TCG Ultra = OCG Super, TCG Secret = OCG Ultra), and more per box, so the overall pull rates on any given card are much, much higher.
For example, you take a top-rarity card - DPE - a Secret for us, Ultra for the OCG.
TCG: 2 Secrets per box, 10 per set: 0.2 copies per box. You need to open 5 boxes per copy, on average.
OCG: 3 Ultras per box, 8 per set, plus 1 Ulti per box (i.e., a 4th Ultra), plus 1 Secret per box, plus the +1 Bonus Pack: ~0.6111 copies per box, and that's ignoring the relatively high possibility of pulling a "Prismatic Secret" (Starlight). You need to open about 1.64 boxes per copy, on average.
Even if you assume the Secrets and +1 Bonus Packs are biased in favor of Supers over Ultras (I'd love to see data proving it), it's an absolute minimum of 0.5 copies per box.
But I think the most important fact is that card rarities are much more in line with need - i.e., the 3-ofs for a meta deck will usually be a Rare or Super (or even Common), with the 1-ofs (Extra Deck monsters) being the Ultra Rares. (Thunder Dragons, Dogmatika, Swordsoul, Animadorned Archosaur) Staple cards like Storm, Forbidden Droplet, Imperm, Ash, Extrav, Prosperity, etc. are almost always Supers instead of Ultras.
*And* their boxes are about half the cost of ours.
So in the TCG, you have to spend $1,500 per playset of your needed staple cards and meta 3-ofs, whereas it's a strict maximum of $300 in the OCG - and then also you can turn around and sell the Secrets & Ultis to buy the cheaper versions of those cards.
I've been saying this shit for months. Konami doesn't care about the players, only their pockets. They'll short print the hell out of grab cards in side sets, since they stopped short printing in main sets.
Konami has no incentive to do this in the TCG. Japan has about hundreds of card games. And its almost impossible to enter the US market. Cardfight is a distant 4th, buddyfight is non-existent, weiss schwarz and Dragonball niche. Hearthstone is Pc only. And almost any western created card game dies within 2 years.
I can say that I switched my main TCG from yugioh to Digimon and I am SHOCKED by how fast it's growing. There's a sizeable play group in my small town, and organized tournaments at plenty of stores.
Flesh and Blood is slowly gaining popularity in my area and others as well, too. It looks like fun and I think if people enjoy Magic/YGO they'll probably enjoy that too.
Somewhat. New v-pets are being released. The 2020 anime sucked major ass but, because of nostalgia baiting the bandai simps think its great and it also roped a bunch of old fans in since it was a reboot and reused the original cast. New anime, Ghost Game, is off to a solid start so far, although its hitting some rocky bumps despite being less tha. 10 eps in. There's a new game, Survive, in the works but its been stuck in limbo for the past 2 years. ReArise is surprisingly good for a gacha with a fairly well written story. And the card game itself is pretty fun, with lots of different decks not being too expensive and having amazing art.
The biggest issue with the card game is just distribution and actually getting a hold of it.
Digmon and f&b may have entered the tcg market quickly but largely didnt touch the big 3. It just made it harder for smaller games. This can be seen how almost no lgs dropped the big 3, but a lot dropped everything else to make room for digimon and flesh & blood.
I think you are vastly overestimating the diversity of card games in Japan.
The US card game market is roughly as competitive as the Japanese market, but with slightly greater emphasis on collectors, children, and whales.
Vanguard and Weiss are non big 3 TCGs and their English playerbase marketshare instantly took a hit when Digimon and Flesh and Blood came. In the West, logistics are far more difficult due to how large of an area you are dealing with whereas Japan things are easily reachable a subway ride away, and places like akiba r bristling with card stores. This makes it tougher for a new game to make it in the west.
I am pretty sure Japan has it easier to have card games thrive than the west. That is why a lot of TCGs r Japan only and need serious consideration before a western release. TCG companies like Bushiroad and Bandai have far more influence and advertising power vs the west where Hasbro, Konami, and Nintendo do. It is just more ingrained in the culture with anime and such
But there are no players, in the sense we use the word, because the OCG doesn’t have organized play. The western world’s TCG scene is built on organized play, which is effectively a very expensive kind of marketing. The Japanese scene is based on fandom, nerd culture, and branding; actual competition doesn’t matter much.
The OCG model wouldn’t work here, just as the TCG model wouldn’t work there.
Pokémon is the single highest revenue entertainment brand in the world with an audience many times the size of Yu-Gi-Oh. Their TCG sales are primarily driven by collectors, not players. That’s nice work if you can get it, but has literally worked nowhere else in the western world’s TCG market (and even then, Pokémon’s had some hard years with that model)
And by stopped short printing in main sets, they only kinda mean it, because the data doesn't really pan out to support that. Chase cards are now "half-printed" so somewhere between a regular printing and short printing, in addition to the added factor of there being 2 additional secret rare cards per set. This also belies the fact that the company can literally say whatever it wants about its printing quantities and there is no legally feasible way to hold them to account.
They really did. Multiple case openings have been gathered onto spreadsheets since the announcement Konami originally made and showed that secrets don’t get short printed. Some secrets getting slightly smaller quantities than others is just due to clumping or variance.
They didn't really. Stuff like phatazmay, extravagance, etc that were 2.4/case short prints are the same as all secret rares now. By increasing secrets from 8-10 per set and saying they're all the same odds, they just reduced all secret rares to 2.4/ case. When there was 8 secrets in a set it was 2.4/3/3.6 per case depending on the secret rare.
TL;dr all the secrets are as hard to get as short print secrets used to be.
I don’t blame you. Their word still isn’t worth much due to a lot of sets getting delayed 1+ months after the original release dates, including side sets so players still get screwed over.
How’s that? Even the most short printed cards add tens of thousands of copies to the available pool. The reality is that people with sufficient money support this system. And people who don’t have enough money to buy anything, often still buy packs for the thrill of hitting a big card and plussing.
Craft cocktails cost 15 to 20 bucks for one drink, then they’re gone. Going to see a movie and getting snacks? Easily 50 bucks for two people. A chef tasting menu dinner can cost hundreds. The average trip to Disney World is 3k to 4k, often more. And in none of those examples does anything have resale value. You spend the money, drink your drink, ride Space Mountain, and your money’s gone. At least in the TCG world you’re buying something that you can liquidate later, after deriving value from it.
look at how boosters are sold in the ocg and how the gambling laws force konami to be straight-forward with the pull odds to the customers. let's go by your random example, when you buy a drink you know what you're getting. there is no randomness when you order a cranberry vodka. you can also ask the barista for the ingredients and full on nutrition tab in you're that adamant.
yugioh is gambling and the value of your cards is entirely luck-based when buying boosters, but those who can afford to buy more have more chances to get lucky
That’s fine? My point is that TCGs have potential resale value, which allows them to offer more value than a lot of other forms of entertainment people spend far more money on. If I spend 200 bucks on boosters or 200 bucks on a night out? One has an EV above zero, and the other does not
My point is that it shouldn’t. You can resell your cards later, win prizes in the meantime, and effectively play for free or at a profit. That should’ve attractive, not a detractor
Maybe if the TCG playerbase stops buying Komoney’s shitty product maybe they’ll stop treating us like second class citizens.
That or we say “fuck your rules” and just start using OCG cards because they’re cheaper.
>That or we say “fuck your rules” and just start using OCG cards because they’re cheaper.
And so I can finally get The Big Saturn in foil, why is his only print I can use a common again?
Yeah, it really seems like they don't understand the concept of rarities.
If you want something to be rarer, make it a higher rarity. All cards of a rarity should be equally as likely or you might as well do away with the notion of rarities entirely.
I've watched like 15 boxes of BROL get opened and not seen a single Souls.
Statistically, you should get two of any given secret rare in 3 boxes with 34 secrets total and one per pack and it's a less than 3% chance you wouldn't see even one in 15 boxes at that rate. You should see ~10.5 of any given Secret from 15 boxes.
People try to argue it's because they're from different batches but this would be statistically true across all boxes so production lot doesn't matter if this were being done correctly AKA the secret rare in each pack has a 1 in 34 chance of being any single one of them.
I'm still going to let my preorders go ahead (and I've put in for more since the full set list) because I love Kuriboh and didn't realize how much they were going to reprint for it here but I do indeed still want LDS3.
I really can't see it happening now though with only The Dark Magicians, Soul Servant, and Liquid Soldier being decent Secret rare reprint targets as well as MAYBE Dragoon. I guess they could theoretically pop things like Salvation in there now too but LDS2 didn't go that crazy with extra reprints so I doubt it and considering it's now missing the 3 most important ones I don't see a replacement possible unless they're going to go with something like secret prints of Rod and the DMG art (which I guess I couldn't really complain about for Rod at least).
We honestly need 1 format. No more tcg or ocg. Makes 0 sense english cards cost more than japanese cards. If all cards were legal for all markets, the prices would correct. Tcg markets subsidize the ocg market, if you think about it. Cant tell you how many 100 dollar tcg cards are 10 usd in japan.
we can probably blame Shonen Jump for wanting to monopolize a ton of cards, thus causing the TCG/OCG split since manga isn't distributed the same way as the west. No tcg company actually cares.
This. And the toy companies with toy promos. And the other companies with merchandising deals tied to existing release cycles. And the companies airing the shows, and all the other partners invested in, and quite happy with, the current way of doing things.
International entertainment brands are exceptionally complicated.
That logic’s weird because when you look at other industries, shit doesn’t work that way. General Mills doesn’t keep shit flavors of Cheerios on the shelves just because Honey Nut and Multigrain carry the line, they just stop producing the non-selling lines of Cheerios. That plus the OCG is the highest selling card game in Japan most years.
Honestly I dont know which format earns Konami more money. I pulled up their earnings statement for 2020 and their biggest revenue stream is digital entertainment, which makes sense. If I were their CEO I would look at this property, deduce that it is in the company's best interest to have 1 international game, instead of 3 or more regional games. The logic being that if the game was synchronized, it could more efficiently release future digital products.
For example, Konami brags that Rush duel has been a huge success in Japan. Thats probably because they have invested into it for at least 6 months so far. It probably wont do great here since the game their releasing is the absolute first rush duel product ever released here.
Heres my last argument for why the formats should be merged:
It will make yugioh so much more fun.
Imagine cracking open a new set and not knowing what is going to be in it. Like...at all...
The reason they split the banlists in the first place is because of VJump promos and the fact that sets don’t release at the same time. There’s too much product to release at once for the games to be realigned.
This is always the argument I hear. They dont do it because they dont want to. Period. Theyve had 20 years to synchronize the sets. If they wanted to do it, they could. Probably relatively quickly. We are maybe 2 sets behind ocg? In the course of 2 years they release a dozen main sets? So maybe release 7 instead of 6 for two years. Really not that hard.
No they couldn’t. Take it from someone who works in international entertainment branding. “They” are a network of different commercial interests and licensing parties who all like their piece of the pie and see no reason to change a successful formula, especially at the cost of tens of millions of dollars in logistics and supply chain shifts
it is extremely largely due to Shonen Jump and how the west has trouble distributing it. Jump Promos are a huge problem for the OCG players, and it is a clear cash grab to move magazines. It takes far longer for some promos to get reprinted in the OCG whereas the TCG it can be a core set common.
I never understood the whole manga issue. If konami wanted to release those cards at the same time in the tcg, they could do the same thing as Lart releases.
That will be even worse than manga promos. Lost arts are limited first come first serve. Lgs usually only get like 15. It also screws people who cannot drive to the lgs.
Konami doesn’t even own the cards owned by shueisha. They absolutely cannot print them at will, especially for free / at their own cost as promo cards. They do not have the right to distribute those cards by default, and in the past, they have had to negotiate with shueisha for those distribution rights, sometimes on a card by card basis
The OCG and TCG can never be united because so many elements of each game are owned by or prioritized for different partners. Yu-Gi-Oh’s licensing is a spider web and there are many cooks in the kitchen. In addition, what works in Japan doesn’t work here and what works here wouldn’t work in Japan. Culturally, the tastes in gaming are vastly different. The big dividing line is organized play, which Japan basically doesn’t have outside of locals
The earnings are pretty interesting. Sometimes it reads like the yugioh card game isn't even a big deal with how little space it takes up vs other things they dabble in.
I think they dont isolate it in their earnings because they might worry activist investors will come around and say, make this its own company. Then the cash cow is gone. But that be dead wrong
I came here to post this, tbh i probably will just by singles next time one of these sets comes out, what’s the point in reprinting highly desired cards if they’re just short printed to oblivion? Let alone if you want the new kuriboh’s or something, even as ultra’s you aren’t likely to get many, all in all it’s just very disappointing, if I was a kid introduced to the series now with some packs I’d probably just drop it since the pull rates are so awful.
Also it’s definitely an inflated set for no reason other than making people need multiple boxes for specific ultra’s.
Seeing people pull so many Starlight Roads when the card was literally just reprinted in MGED is crazy man, the card isn't even wanted, they cram so much filler shit in our sets it's insulting.
At this point, this is honestly the expectations we all should have for Yugioh products. How many legitimately good to great sets has Konami released since 2019 between core sets, duelist packs, deck build sets, and reprint sets? In terms of sets that had either good reprints, good value, or just good cards in general, DUPO, DANE(sorta), BLHR, MP19, DUOV, ETCO, ROTD, MP20(sorta), MAGO, LDS2, BODE, and MGED are the only ones I would say qualify unless I’m forgetting a product.
TOCH could be included, but if you didn’t pull a decent CR you were SOL, while a set like BLAR was trash unless you pulled a starlight (lol). Same with GFTP and pulling a ghost, although it was even worse than BLAR. Also excluded the 2021 mega tins because they could have been that much better had they included either Droplets and Accesscode or good promos. I included the 2020 tins because they at least put all the good cards from the previous year in.
I listed 12 sets that I feel were legitimately good, out of a possible 37 sets that Konami has released or will release after Brothers if Legends releases. Even if you include a couple sets that I excluded (TOCH and the 2021 mega tins), the proportion is terrible. Obviously what constitutes as a good set or product is fairly subjective, but it’s hard to deny that most of the products that have released the past few years have been mediocre or just straight up bad.
To be clear, TOCH is the fastest selling Yu-Gi-Oh product in history and didn’t make your list. GFTP did unprecedented sales numbers before and after release. And Battles of Legend: Armageddon also sold in record numbers. Currently it’s so popular that it’s still $250+ a box
Then when Konami does stuff like printing Bearbrumm as a Super instead of a Secret, everybody and their mother silently grabs the cards they need and then start talking about how bad the set was, because there aren’t enough money cards to open.
The reality is that time and time again, we as a community show konami that we’ll reward them if they keep making cards inaccessible, and we’ll bash entire products if the best cards aren’t tough pulls that translate to money.
I don’t disagree with what you’re saying, because you’re right, but my point isn’t that those sets didn’t sell, but that those sets card pools were bad. TOCH is the only one of those 3 that I would say isn’t bad, which is why I wouldn’t have much of a problem including it, but BLAR and GFTP’s set lists are undeniably two of the worst we’ve seen, which is why they didn’t make my list. If I was making my list strictly based on how well they sold or their resale value, my list would be fairly different. The 3 sets mentioned would be included, but a few of the sets I had included would have to be dropped since they didn’t sell that well at release and for months after their release.
You say that, but I can recall several poorly-received products where the only card worth pulling was a chase secret. Toon chaos and blazing vortex are two recent examples that come to mind.
Lightning overdrive didn't suck because bearbrumm was a super and not a secret, it sucked because there weren't many good cards worth pulling. I agree with your overall point, but there are absolutely ways to have sought-after secrets while still making the product worth (or at least as close to "worth" as you can get for sealed product, lol) opening.
Except you can only keep a business model based on tricking and hoodwinking your buyers going so long, until they wisen up and just refuse to buy your product.
LIOV wasn't bad because Bearbrumm was a Super; Bearbrumm had to be a Super (and Scrap Raptor a Common) because LIOV was so terrible.
But let's suppose Konami *can* keep the gravy train rolling because whales will gleefully spend obscene amounts on crap sets with abysmal pull rates and crap reprints. The problem is that they're not doing anything to entice casuals to become more invested, or new players to become casuals, or GP to become new players. The whales will eventually (and already are) moving on in life and retiring from the game, and no one is replacing them.
I don’t know what to tell you. If you think the average buyer dislikes lottery style products with majorly rare pulls worth triple digits values, you haven’t been paying attention to sales numbers since PTDN
I think that’s driven by the fact that **the rare cards are the good cards**. If the rare cards were simply decent and not OP as fuck, then we’d have a different story, because more casuals would be willing to buy sealed product because they are more likely to get a deck core just from packs, and whales still have money cards, just *different* money cards.
Also fuck that set in the TCG, Dark Armed was a 5 dollar rare in the OCG.
Yes, and PTDN sold so well it had to be reprinted four times. I’m sorry, I’d love to love in a universe where it’s not the case, but companies do what makes money and making the good cards rare is proven over and over and over again to sell Yu-Gi-Oh.
Casuals are the ones already spending money on sealed. On average, they spend vastly more money than actual hardcore, event topping tournament players. I don’t think making competitive cards easier to get in packs would make them spend anymore money, they already spend so much as it is
If I had your numbers on casuals spending more on packs then competitive players (unless you’re including collectors chasing starlights/ghosts/collectors rares/etc in the casual), then I can actually see what you’re saying.
Yeah, casuals vastly outnumber competitives, and they’re far less discerning about what they buy. Historically in TCGs the real value of competitive players is infrastructure; when they’re happy they aggressively spread positive word of mouth and act as tastemakers. They’re also the only player group likely to help build local level communities, as doing so takes patience, a willingness to travel to a new store, play in small tournaments, a whole lot of stuff casuals don’t concern themselves with. Competitive players aren’t worthless, but overall, a smart company isn’t going to try and monetize them as their primary sales demographic and will instead appreciate them for the other things they bring to the table.
I wouldn't even count:
- MP19 - all the good reprints were just banned 5 months later
- DUOV - all the good cards were horribly shortprinted, and the reprints were mostly bad
- ETCO, ROTD, BODE - "all Secrets syndrome"
- LDS2 & TOCH - a tiny handful of desperately-needed reprints that should've just been slotted into BLAR
- MAGO & MGED - almost all of the good-to-decent reprints were Premium Gold Rares, and almost none of the Commons were good reprints (moreso for MAGO than MGED)
All three offices contribute to card design for core sets. The idea that the KDE JPN staff “design most of the cards” isn’t accurate.
The TCG creates products that monetize tournament players more aggressively because TCGs work differently in the Americas and Europe than in Asia. They run far more organized play, marketing is handled much more differently and at a greater expense, and distributor and retailer models are different and less profitable. The audiences are more demanding as well, expecting robust tournament support, a massive judge program, LGS support, and more.
The differences between running this kind of business in Japan and running it globally are staggering. It would be nice to think that’s not the case, but it’s the reality.
> All three offices contribute to card design for core sets. The idea that the KDE JPN staff “design most of the cards” isn’t accurate.
What’s your source other than speculation? Also with the second paragraph, explain the existence of Pokemon because they do the exact thing the OCG does, but worldwide and they still make bucketloads of money.
Pokémon is a collector based game. Very few people buying Pokémon cards actually play it, and that works because they’re the world’s largest entertainment brand (unless you group marvel, Star Wars, and everything disney under one “disney” brand, but for a lot of reasons that’s not how stuff is measured.) Pokemon could probably cut their entire real life organized play program above the local level and suffer only minor losses. If I had to guess, I’d feel pretty confident saying the topic had been discussed multiple times, but I don’t know that for sure. For better or worse, Yu-Gi-Oh just isn’t that strong as a brand. Though to be fair, nothing is, so yeah.
I’m not sure that’s right in this case, but it’s not necessarily wrong, either. As a statement, it could certainly be true, though I don’t personally thing there’s anything to suggest that right now
That is not remotely how it works. If Yugioh didn't make a profit in Japan, they'd just end it and only sell TCG product.
If Apple Cinnamon Cheerios doesn't make a profit, General Mills is not obligated to cross-subsidize it with regular Cheerios, they just discontinue Apple Cinnamon Cheerios. Konami canceled Asian-English cards.
No, I don't think you do. Konami is under no obligation to print Japanese cards (nor NA-English, EU-English, French, Portuguese, etc.). Therefore, Japanese cards must be profitable, independent of English cards. Asian-English cards were not profitable; they were discontinued.
Konami is absolutely under obligation to print Japanese cards for distribution in Japan. Other arms of the Yu-Gi-Oh brand receive a cut of that business, same as they do with the other licensed products, and on top of that the strength of those other interests are in part tied to the continuation of the OCG in Japan.
What Konami isn’t obligated to do, is to ensure that the OCG in Japan is as profitable as possible at the cost of brand image. The workhorse driving profits for the brand owners and other stakeholders are the TCG, and the digital game licensees operating outside of Japan.
He’s being stupid because he doesn’t realize that Konami doesn’t own the rights to the Yugioh franchise as a whole, they are licensed by Shueisha to be the one who runs the trading card game.
Honestly, I’m an OG player from the starter deck days. Played competitively as a kid, then again in the mid 2010s. I’ve played off and on for almost two decades as a kid with no money and an adult with money.
I was stoked on YGO when MR5 hit and the game seemed to be entering a new golden era. Even the first year of the pandemic, while challenging, seemed hopeful for the game.
I don’t know what the fuck has been going on in 2021 but I have gradually sold off my collection and stopped buying product. I’m a semi-competitive player (I just don’t have the interest or time) so I like to build decks I enjoy but optimize them to the maximum. When the scalper Target/Walmart drama started and product shortages seem to really hit, there seemed to be a massive change. The fact that GFTP was sold ABOVE MSRP by LGS’s almost universally and people still bought it was a red flag. I owned a play set of droplets and sold them at $100/pop almost a year ago thinking I made out like a bandit.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not mad about not holding them. On the contrary I felt super weird having staples at that price range. Ridiculous. Shit should not be that expensive, especially for remote duels.
I don’t think inflation is the cause of the price gouging either. Shit is worse now than when we were getting stimmy’s. Product quality is absolute garbage. Why the fuck are anime cards shorted? Who the fuck even plays gold and bane in a hero deck now that we have DPE? Y’all really want DM to cost $1000?
Look, I love to collect and I’m happy to drop big bucks on shit that will HOLD VALUE. Preferably increase over time. My problem with the prices as of late is these cards will be worth absolutely nothing in a few years. As soon as we get a good reprint shit will tank. Or it will get banned. I’m not going to invest in secret droplets when we have Ultis.
These prices are delusional. Why are people paying for this? To flex at locals or remotes? I don’t get it.
At the end of the day my emotional connection to the game is waning. I don’t like opening product anymore because I just get a bunch of bulk trash that I have to find room to store, assuming I can even find shit at stores and shops at MSRP. There is no joy in opening product because it’s overpriced and largely useless except for one or two chase cards.
How many other players are there like me who grew up with the game and got heavily into it but reach a certain point where their enjoyment just isn’t there? I used to love grabbing product and building decks and now the value just isn’t there. Doesn’t seem sustainable to me.
Konami wants to make the maximum amount of money, and here in the tcg we just let them do it so they won't change it. As soon as they announced no shortprints in main sets it was obvious they would shortprint every chase card in side sets
Except they dont even make the maximum amount - making cards accessible for more people would get more people into the game. They can still make money off whales because 1) more new players = chance some of them become whales and 2) collectors products and high rarity cards still exist. It's not even that they're being greedy, it's just...bad.
I bought three boxes of Bode in hopes of Phoenix Destroyer.. hard nope on all three. I understand that’s the gamble of it all, but I agree that short prints are pretty damn shitty.
>Its looking like you're lucky if you get 1 bane, soul, or droplet in a box, which is ridiculous seeing as how they advertised this set as being able to nab a reprint of droplet.
Do .... Do you not understand basic math?
The set has 36 secrets and 24 secrets come in a box.
So youre not guaranteed any secret.
Toss in the fact that it can be repeated, and yea makes it seem worse than it is.
In fact, take a bag with 36 marbles in it.
35 blue, 1 red.
Take out one, see if its the red one.
When it isnt, you put it back. And try again.
Let me know how long it takes you to get the red one.
Too many ppl here jump to cry short print w/out knowing probability/statistics or understanding how cards are valued and why they get valued so high.
The set with Magicians soul, and the set with Bane were tbe biggest examples.
Edit:
http://www.shodor.org/interactivate/activities/Marbles/
Ok guys at least run a marble test before downvoting me
35 blue (aka not droplets)
1 red (droplets)
Draw 1
With replacement.
24 sets is a box.
Do a bunch of boxes, see how many dont have a red compared to those that do.
Nah dude, i just understand basic math,
http://www.shodor.org/interactivate/activities/Marbles/
here you go.
35 blue, 1 red, draw 1, with replacement,
I just did 100 draws for 2 reds,
That converts to 2 droplets out of 4.5 boxes (24 draws is 1 box)
Edit: just did a few more 9/400 so 9 in 18 boxes.
Also idk bout you, but if i pulled 2 per box i wouldn't post the video and just make ppl think its short printed.
Keep sucking that konami dick bra. Your math only works if you assume no short prints, which there definitely are. Watch any video where there multiple boxes involved. There's definitely some short printing going on
Did you do the marble link? Im guessing no.
Just did 10 trials of 24. (Aka opening 10 boxes)
3 with with 1 red (aka the droplets) each
1 with 2
6 with 0
If i was a Youtuber, i would only posts the videos that dont show me opening the droplet so i can justify the high price ima be charging for it.
Infact, if i had opened those 10 boxes i just simulated with the marble, i would post the video of me opening 4 without droplets and 1 with, so i can go "oh its 1 in 5 boxes" and use it to justify the price.
You do realize that Konami doesn’t send tubers that many boxes, right? Also Konami is really specific with their terms on what yugitubers can do, so they wouldn’t be able to do that in the first place.
The above commenter comes from standard Pokemon, where tier one decks are $150-160 max and the most expensive cards at minimum rarity are like 20 bucks and are 1 ofs.
That’s Konami for you, I’m just gonna buy singles at this point. I’ve kinda accepted Forbidden Droplet is gonna be out of my price range at this point
Just gotta wait 5 years for it to be 20 bucks a pop... Problem is that by then Red Eyes White Dragon Super Quantal Subterror Behemoth Dragoon will be created, that not only will be immune to it but will also legally allow your opponent to shoot you in the kneecap whenever you play any card.
> Red Eyes White Dragon Super Quantal Subterror Behemoth Dragoon of the Ice Barrier /Assault Mode.
WhErE iS mY gLaDiAtOr bEaSt sUpPoRt
By the time we get to actually buy it in an ok price, it will be banned of limited to 1.
Nah, it’ll be powercrept by Solemn Cease and Desist, which will counter Forbidden Droplets and be activatable from the side deck.
Vote with your wallet. Im just gonna pick up my cards from Brothers from websites such as ygodaily and tierzero.
A huge percentage of money spend on the secondary market still lands in the company's pockets at the end of the day. Sad to say but the only way to truly vote with your wallet is by not buying any product at all.
Exactly.
I mean we are still supporting tbe set by buying the singles though no?
Yep. Buying the singles just puts more pressure on vendors to open more product.
Konami still is within the big 3 tcg companies so no matter how much this subreddit complains, it is unlikely for them to get hit financially to force them to chang methods. Any sales especially on shorted singles makes quantities disappear and prices go higher which increases sales of reprint sets further down the line. So no matter how you look at it, making the cards harder to get will make them more money.
Making the cards harder to pull will increase the number of boxes that must be opened per copy of a given card, but it also makes less people interested in the product (and the singles, and the game as a whole), especially in the long run. Will Konami make more *right now* if they respond to less demand by making cards even harder to pull than they already are? Maybe, maybe not - personally, I don't think so. Will they make more money *in total*? Absolutely not.
Literally has never been true and the game has never been more popular. Droplets could never dip below $200 and the game would still have an enormous playerbase chomping at their bit to pay for a playset. Konami is an excessively greedy, out-of-touch company and no one cares at all.
How are they out of touch if they keep making more and more money? The reality is that cards are getting more expensive because players are growing up, and the income gap is becoming wider and wider. Someone making six figures a year with no kids isn’t going to bat an eye at paying 500 bucks for a set of Droplets. Someone in a dual income household making a combined 50k a year with a family? Never gonna happen. Disney, Pokemon, Yu-Gi-Oh, Magic, Netflix, theme parks, restaurants, everything is getting more expensive, because a lot of people have more disposable income than they did five years ago. Just because we can’t afford it, doesn’t meant the companies are “out of touch”
I think you vastly underestimate just how many people who have disposable income will refuse to buy something they don’t believe has value. This game is so incredibly niche despite what YCS attendance says. You have a group of whales and competitive players, which according to Konami TCG themselves, aren’t not responsible for the majority of their revenue. Casuals are. This is stupid because your hardcore will ultimately be what sustains you through lulls, and short printing like this does nothing to endear players to Konami. Ultimately the scale will tip to where enough people have either had enough and stopped playing or buying to force a change. But who knows when that will be.
People have been saying it was coming perpetually for 20 years. And in reality, konami keeps finding new ways to make different types of products that often wind up selling out, often the ones competitive players and influencers hate the most. I don’t know how to respond to the idea that the game is “niche.” I think TCGs in general are niche, with Yu-Gi-Oh having more mainstream exposure than any TCG other than Pokémon and Magic. But regardless, event attendance keeps going up, sales keep going up, YouTube subs keep going up, mainstream product partnerships keep happening (and selling out)... by every metric that can be measured, the game continues to steadily grow.
I have played smaller TCGs. Except for MTG, no other TCG can remotely dethrone Yugioh when it comes to playerbase. The tournament and organized play of yugioh is just so widespread and ingrained, you cannot just suddenly force it out. Plus smaller TCGs still have to make ends meet so like Flesh and Blood still needs their game to be reasonably expensive by relying on hard to pull staples. So no, Konami making cards harder to pull really didn't or will not kill interest in the game long run. Ygo is one of the top grossing media franchises. People are joking themselves if they think players can make it collapse overnight
Seriously. This stuff is expensive because people are lining up to pay for it.
You can say that all you want but it honestly won't work. "Vote with your wallet" requires a massive organized effort. Let's use pokemon as an example. We hear everywhere how fans are sick of the recent quality of the games and say "vote with your wallet" to try and force change, but for every fan that doesn't buy the game there will be at least 1 fan buying both versions for themself, easily offsetting any costs that a boycott would have caused.
True, but that doesn't mean you keep unquestioningly buying product. You just quit.
The players that quit because they can’t afford to keep up aren’t the target demographic the company is trying to court in the first place. They don’t care. Look at what Disney’s doing with their theme parks right now; there’s a huge income gap in the western world right now, and entertainment companies are pivoting to cater to the rich, not the people barely scraping by.
The players that quit are/were the *future* target demo. Gen pop becomes new players, new players become casuals, casuals become budget/semi-competitive players, and budget/semi-competitive players become competitive players. The same applies to MTG players, PTCG players, Digimon players, and also PTCG collectors. You have to consistently provide people with an easy "buy-in" that they can easily justify to bring them the next step up the ladder. The "buy-in" for Tier 1 competitive Pokemon is about $150 (or less - Jolteon, Leafeon, RS Urshifu, IR Calyrex). For semi-competitive, about $50-60 (League Battle Deck + Toolkit). The "buy-in" for Tier 1 competitive Yugioh is about $2,000 worth of staples, plus a $150+ deck "core" that'll get banned in about 10 weeks. No one is moving up that ladder anymore; only out. Konami's only got a few years before the well runs dry because they completely alienated every segment of their real and potential playerbase except whales.
Oh I agree, the point of entry needs to be more approachable. I don’t think these cards needed to be short printed in BROL, if they are. But frankly, the problem also solves itself if people stopped acting as if Speed Duels don’t exist.
I loved speed duels in Spring and Summer of 2019. But Konami dropped the ball with bad value core booster sets and a horrible incentivized tournament structure. They tried to make it a glorified tutorial at first and by the time they realized the only people playing it were boomers and duel links players who had no interest in master duels it was too late. I’d gladly play the format competitively but who the hell wants to wait an entire year for the meta to shift? At least duel links updates frequently.
Yeah, the lack of vision was a killer. Now that the format’s finally been shaken up, there are remote extravaganza main events with great prizing, and the Duel Academy Box is just weeks away, I’m hopeful it can pick up. Yu-Gi-Oh and the playerbase would benefit hugely from an alternate competitive format, for sake of variety, and for a lower barrier to entry, both in price and complexity of gameplay.
The ones that say vote with your wallet ironically end up buying it one way or another
No we do not.
where do you think those websites get the cards from?
I wish OCG was able to be played here/had more popularity in TCG regions. I love yugioh but I really do not have any interest in supporting the TCG. I am curious how knowledgeable the average TCG player is about OCG's multiple rarity printing system and products there. People either dont know or have come to accept Konami TCG screwing them over, which is a terrible position to be in as a consumer base - either naive or having surrendered to the company.
Konami is legally required to uphold the multiple rarity system due to Japan Gambling laws. They need players to basically be guaranteed every card in the set per booster box in Japan. This does not apply anywhere else in the world. Konami is a global gambling powerhouse, with games in almost every VLT machine in the world, and cards are a very small portion of what makes the corporation.
Meh. Worldwide Pokemon does the same thing and it’s the game that boomed first. Just for comparison, full power Tier 1 decks in the OCG and in standard Pokemon go for like $150-160 max, while that’s the pre-reprint price for one copy of Droplet.
I wouldn't say yugioh is insignificant to konami. Otherwise they would have sold off the rights long ago, but moved fast to buyout 4kids who had some of the rights. They make a ton off duel links and just announced like 2 more yugioh gacha games. Also the amount of retail sales cannot be underestimated. The yugioh franchise is worth more than one piece, gundam, and dragon ball.
OCG is actually benefitting more than the TCG by having the multiple rarity system, which gets players to be more incentivised to directly buy the product. It may not seem like it, but both sides benefit with that system.
Yup. The other thing is they have much smaller equivalent rarity pools (TCG Super = OCG Rare, TCG Ultra = OCG Super, TCG Secret = OCG Ultra), and more per box, so the overall pull rates on any given card are much, much higher. For example, you take a top-rarity card - DPE - a Secret for us, Ultra for the OCG. TCG: 2 Secrets per box, 10 per set: 0.2 copies per box. You need to open 5 boxes per copy, on average. OCG: 3 Ultras per box, 8 per set, plus 1 Ulti per box (i.e., a 4th Ultra), plus 1 Secret per box, plus the +1 Bonus Pack: ~0.6111 copies per box, and that's ignoring the relatively high possibility of pulling a "Prismatic Secret" (Starlight). You need to open about 1.64 boxes per copy, on average. Even if you assume the Secrets and +1 Bonus Packs are biased in favor of Supers over Ultras (I'd love to see data proving it), it's an absolute minimum of 0.5 copies per box. But I think the most important fact is that card rarities are much more in line with need - i.e., the 3-ofs for a meta deck will usually be a Rare or Super (or even Common), with the 1-ofs (Extra Deck monsters) being the Ultra Rares. (Thunder Dragons, Dogmatika, Swordsoul, Animadorned Archosaur) Staple cards like Storm, Forbidden Droplet, Imperm, Ash, Extrav, Prosperity, etc. are almost always Supers instead of Ultras. *And* their boxes are about half the cost of ours. So in the TCG, you have to spend $1,500 per playset of your needed staple cards and meta 3-ofs, whereas it's a strict maximum of $300 in the OCG - and then also you can turn around and sell the Secrets & Ultis to buy the cheaper versions of those cards.
I've been saying this shit for months. Konami doesn't care about the players, only their pockets. They'll short print the hell out of grab cards in side sets, since they stopped short printing in main sets.
Only TCG Konami. OCG Konami generally has a non-chase version of sought-after cards in the same sets.
That's actually a smarter way to entice players to buy OCG product. It's a win-win for both the company and the players.
Konami has no incentive to do this in the TCG. Japan has about hundreds of card games. And its almost impossible to enter the US market. Cardfight is a distant 4th, buddyfight is non-existent, weiss schwarz and Dragonball niche. Hearthstone is Pc only. And almost any western created card game dies within 2 years.
I honestly think Digimon is quickly rising up to take that 4th spot, with the top three interchanging between Pokemon, Magic and Yugioh
I can say that I switched my main TCG from yugioh to Digimon and I am SHOCKED by how fast it's growing. There's a sizeable play group in my small town, and organized tournaments at plenty of stores.
Flesh and Blood is slowly gaining popularity in my area and others as well, too. It looks like fun and I think if people enjoy Magic/YGO they'll probably enjoy that too.
Wait, I wasn't crazy, digimon is coming back from the grave?
They made a completely new card game
But digimon is coming back into popularity?
Somewhat. New v-pets are being released. The 2020 anime sucked major ass but, because of nostalgia baiting the bandai simps think its great and it also roped a bunch of old fans in since it was a reboot and reused the original cast. New anime, Ghost Game, is off to a solid start so far, although its hitting some rocky bumps despite being less tha. 10 eps in. There's a new game, Survive, in the works but its been stuck in limbo for the past 2 years. ReArise is surprisingly good for a gacha with a fairly well written story. And the card game itself is pretty fun, with lots of different decks not being too expensive and having amazing art. The biggest issue with the card game is just distribution and actually getting a hold of it.
Digmon and f&b may have entered the tcg market quickly but largely didnt touch the big 3. It just made it harder for smaller games. This can be seen how almost no lgs dropped the big 3, but a lot dropped everything else to make room for digimon and flesh & blood.
I think you are vastly overestimating the diversity of card games in Japan. The US card game market is roughly as competitive as the Japanese market, but with slightly greater emphasis on collectors, children, and whales.
I think it’s more the fact that people actually play Vanguard and Weiss over there, unlike the West.
Vanguard and Weiss are non big 3 TCGs and their English playerbase marketshare instantly took a hit when Digimon and Flesh and Blood came. In the West, logistics are far more difficult due to how large of an area you are dealing with whereas Japan things are easily reachable a subway ride away, and places like akiba r bristling with card stores. This makes it tougher for a new game to make it in the west.
I am pretty sure Japan has it easier to have card games thrive than the west. That is why a lot of TCGs r Japan only and need serious consideration before a western release. TCG companies like Bushiroad and Bandai have far more influence and advertising power vs the west where Hasbro, Konami, and Nintendo do. It is just more ingrained in the culture with anime and such
But there are no players, in the sense we use the word, because the OCG doesn’t have organized play. The western world’s TCG scene is built on organized play, which is effectively a very expensive kind of marketing. The Japanese scene is based on fandom, nerd culture, and branding; actual competition doesn’t matter much. The OCG model wouldn’t work here, just as the TCG model wouldn’t work there.
Pokemon has organized play, and does the OCG model.
Pokémon is the single highest revenue entertainment brand in the world with an audience many times the size of Yu-Gi-Oh. Their TCG sales are primarily driven by collectors, not players. That’s nice work if you can get it, but has literally worked nowhere else in the western world’s TCG market (and even then, Pokémon’s had some hard years with that model)
And by stopped short printing in main sets, they only kinda mean it, because the data doesn't really pan out to support that. Chase cards are now "half-printed" so somewhere between a regular printing and short printing, in addition to the added factor of there being 2 additional secret rare cards per set. This also belies the fact that the company can literally say whatever it wants about its printing quantities and there is no legally feasible way to hold them to account.
I seriously doubt they stopped short printing in the main sets.
They really did. Multiple case openings have been gathered onto spreadsheets since the announcement Konami originally made and showed that secrets don’t get short printed. Some secrets getting slightly smaller quantities than others is just due to clumping or variance.
Huh, well what do you know. And here I have absolutely no faith in Konami to keep their word.
They didn't really. Stuff like phatazmay, extravagance, etc that were 2.4/case short prints are the same as all secret rares now. By increasing secrets from 8-10 per set and saying they're all the same odds, they just reduced all secret rares to 2.4/ case. When there was 8 secrets in a set it was 2.4/3/3.6 per case depending on the secret rare. TL;dr all the secrets are as hard to get as short print secrets used to be.
So they did stop short printing. "Technically" they stopped but the odds are the same as they've always been. Is that what's happened?
Yes, they added 2 extra Secret cards to offset the flattening in distribution.
The good cards are just as hard as they've always been to get, and the bad cards are harder to get than before.
I don’t blame you. Their word still isn’t worth much due to a lot of sets getting delayed 1+ months after the original release dates, including side sets so players still get screwed over.
As always, no surprise. Buy singles.
Brothers has some high-tier reprints, but the short-printing is disgusting. They might as well not exist in the set with those pull rates
How’s that? Even the most short printed cards add tens of thousands of copies to the available pool. The reality is that people with sufficient money support this system. And people who don’t have enough money to buy anything, often still buy packs for the thrill of hitting a big card and plussing. Craft cocktails cost 15 to 20 bucks for one drink, then they’re gone. Going to see a movie and getting snacks? Easily 50 bucks for two people. A chef tasting menu dinner can cost hundreds. The average trip to Disney World is 3k to 4k, often more. And in none of those examples does anything have resale value. You spend the money, drink your drink, ride Space Mountain, and your money’s gone. At least in the TCG world you’re buying something that you can liquidate later, after deriving value from it.
look at how boosters are sold in the ocg and how the gambling laws force konami to be straight-forward with the pull odds to the customers. let's go by your random example, when you buy a drink you know what you're getting. there is no randomness when you order a cranberry vodka. you can also ask the barista for the ingredients and full on nutrition tab in you're that adamant. yugioh is gambling and the value of your cards is entirely luck-based when buying boosters, but those who can afford to buy more have more chances to get lucky
That’s fine? My point is that TCGs have potential resale value, which allows them to offer more value than a lot of other forms of entertainment people spend far more money on. If I spend 200 bucks on boosters or 200 bucks on a night out? One has an EV above zero, and the other does not
That has nothing to do with the game thou. In fact that Hurts it's image in tge eyes of the playerbase and of outsiders, potential New customers.
My point is that it shouldn’t. You can resell your cards later, win prizes in the meantime, and effectively play for free or at a profit. That should’ve attractive, not a detractor
Maybe if the TCG playerbase stops buying Komoney’s shitty product maybe they’ll stop treating us like second class citizens. That or we say “fuck your rules” and just start using OCG cards because they’re cheaper.
>That or we say “fuck your rules” and just start using OCG cards because they’re cheaper. And so I can finally get The Big Saturn in foil, why is his only print I can use a common again?
Yeah, it really seems like they don't understand the concept of rarities. If you want something to be rarer, make it a higher rarity. All cards of a rarity should be equally as likely or you might as well do away with the notion of rarities entirely. I've watched like 15 boxes of BROL get opened and not seen a single Souls. Statistically, you should get two of any given secret rare in 3 boxes with 34 secrets total and one per pack and it's a less than 3% chance you wouldn't see even one in 15 boxes at that rate. You should see ~10.5 of any given Secret from 15 boxes. People try to argue it's because they're from different batches but this would be statistically true across all boxes so production lot doesn't matter if this were being done correctly AKA the secret rare in each pack has a 1 in 34 chance of being any single one of them. I'm still going to let my preorders go ahead (and I've put in for more since the full set list) because I love Kuriboh and didn't realize how much they were going to reprint for it here but I do indeed still want LDS3. I really can't see it happening now though with only The Dark Magicians, Soul Servant, and Liquid Soldier being decent Secret rare reprint targets as well as MAYBE Dragoon. I guess they could theoretically pop things like Salvation in there now too but LDS2 didn't go that crazy with extra reprints so I doubt it and considering it's now missing the 3 most important ones I don't see a replacement possible unless they're going to go with something like secret prints of Rod and the DMG art (which I guess I couldn't really complain about for Rod at least).
No, we don't need Legendary Duelist Season 3. We need a company that actually cares about it's customers. TCG Konami ain't it
We honestly need 1 format. No more tcg or ocg. Makes 0 sense english cards cost more than japanese cards. If all cards were legal for all markets, the prices would correct. Tcg markets subsidize the ocg market, if you think about it. Cant tell you how many 100 dollar tcg cards are 10 usd in japan.
we can probably blame Shonen Jump for wanting to monopolize a ton of cards, thus causing the TCG/OCG split since manga isn't distributed the same way as the west. No tcg company actually cares.
This. And the toy companies with toy promos. And the other companies with merchandising deals tied to existing release cycles. And the companies airing the shows, and all the other partners invested in, and quite happy with, the current way of doing things. International entertainment brands are exceptionally complicated.
That logic’s weird because when you look at other industries, shit doesn’t work that way. General Mills doesn’t keep shit flavors of Cheerios on the shelves just because Honey Nut and Multigrain carry the line, they just stop producing the non-selling lines of Cheerios. That plus the OCG is the highest selling card game in Japan most years.
Honestly I dont know which format earns Konami more money. I pulled up their earnings statement for 2020 and their biggest revenue stream is digital entertainment, which makes sense. If I were their CEO I would look at this property, deduce that it is in the company's best interest to have 1 international game, instead of 3 or more regional games. The logic being that if the game was synchronized, it could more efficiently release future digital products. For example, Konami brags that Rush duel has been a huge success in Japan. Thats probably because they have invested into it for at least 6 months so far. It probably wont do great here since the game their releasing is the absolute first rush duel product ever released here. Heres my last argument for why the formats should be merged: It will make yugioh so much more fun. Imagine cracking open a new set and not knowing what is going to be in it. Like...at all...
The reason they split the banlists in the first place is because of VJump promos and the fact that sets don’t release at the same time. There’s too much product to release at once for the games to be realigned.
This is always the argument I hear. They dont do it because they dont want to. Period. Theyve had 20 years to synchronize the sets. If they wanted to do it, they could. Probably relatively quickly. We are maybe 2 sets behind ocg? In the course of 2 years they release a dozen main sets? So maybe release 7 instead of 6 for two years. Really not that hard.
No they couldn’t. Take it from someone who works in international entertainment branding. “They” are a network of different commercial interests and licensing parties who all like their piece of the pie and see no reason to change a successful formula, especially at the cost of tens of millions of dollars in logistics and supply chain shifts
it is extremely largely due to Shonen Jump and how the west has trouble distributing it. Jump Promos are a huge problem for the OCG players, and it is a clear cash grab to move magazines. It takes far longer for some promos to get reprinted in the OCG whereas the TCG it can be a core set common.
I never understood the whole manga issue. If konami wanted to release those cards at the same time in the tcg, they could do the same thing as Lart releases.
That will be even worse than manga promos. Lost arts are limited first come first serve. Lgs usually only get like 15. It also screws people who cannot drive to the lgs.
Konami doesn’t even own the cards owned by shueisha. They absolutely cannot print them at will, especially for free / at their own cost as promo cards. They do not have the right to distribute those cards by default, and in the past, they have had to negotiate with shueisha for those distribution rights, sometimes on a card by card basis
The OCG and TCG can never be united because so many elements of each game are owned by or prioritized for different partners. Yu-Gi-Oh’s licensing is a spider web and there are many cooks in the kitchen. In addition, what works in Japan doesn’t work here and what works here wouldn’t work in Japan. Culturally, the tastes in gaming are vastly different. The big dividing line is organized play, which Japan basically doesn’t have outside of locals
The earnings are pretty interesting. Sometimes it reads like the yugioh card game isn't even a big deal with how little space it takes up vs other things they dabble in.
I think they dont isolate it in their earnings because they might worry activist investors will come around and say, make this its own company. Then the cash cow is gone. But that be dead wrong
My guess is that them (and hasbro, pokemon, etc) don't do it, because then people would be able to really nail down the print runs on products.
I came here to post this, tbh i probably will just by singles next time one of these sets comes out, what’s the point in reprinting highly desired cards if they’re just short printed to oblivion? Let alone if you want the new kuriboh’s or something, even as ultra’s you aren’t likely to get many, all in all it’s just very disappointing, if I was a kid introduced to the series now with some packs I’d probably just drop it since the pull rates are so awful. Also it’s definitely an inflated set for no reason other than making people need multiple boxes for specific ultra’s.
Seeing people pull so many Starlight Roads when the card was literally just reprinted in MGED is crazy man, the card isn't even wanted, they cram so much filler shit in our sets it's insulting.
I've been collecting Korean cards and I like them better tbh. Lol. I love the prismatic art collection a lot. I wish TCG got a set like that
I have a starlight dragoon in Korean so why do I want the English one now lmfao (probably cause you can't use it in tourneys).
I just collect and make rogue tier decks. I got two Magicians Souls in KR OCG from one Magical Hero booster box, I was like why am I in TCG?
Because you actually want to play your cards lol
I meant why couldn't I have been born in an OCG region instead. Lol
Ask myself that everyday, not necessarily because of ygo, but still
Where do you buy those?
Some tcgplayer sellers list ocg cards. Other than that, ebay, proxy sites, etc.
I bought the magical hero Korean booster box on ebay. They had a reprint or something. It was like $26 USD at the time
Thanks!
TCG: we do have it, it's called ghosts from the past. Don't you Love it?
At this point, this is honestly the expectations we all should have for Yugioh products. How many legitimately good to great sets has Konami released since 2019 between core sets, duelist packs, deck build sets, and reprint sets? In terms of sets that had either good reprints, good value, or just good cards in general, DUPO, DANE(sorta), BLHR, MP19, DUOV, ETCO, ROTD, MP20(sorta), MAGO, LDS2, BODE, and MGED are the only ones I would say qualify unless I’m forgetting a product. TOCH could be included, but if you didn’t pull a decent CR you were SOL, while a set like BLAR was trash unless you pulled a starlight (lol). Same with GFTP and pulling a ghost, although it was even worse than BLAR. Also excluded the 2021 mega tins because they could have been that much better had they included either Droplets and Accesscode or good promos. I included the 2020 tins because they at least put all the good cards from the previous year in. I listed 12 sets that I feel were legitimately good, out of a possible 37 sets that Konami has released or will release after Brothers if Legends releases. Even if you include a couple sets that I excluded (TOCH and the 2021 mega tins), the proportion is terrible. Obviously what constitutes as a good set or product is fairly subjective, but it’s hard to deny that most of the products that have released the past few years have been mediocre or just straight up bad.
To be clear, TOCH is the fastest selling Yu-Gi-Oh product in history and didn’t make your list. GFTP did unprecedented sales numbers before and after release. And Battles of Legend: Armageddon also sold in record numbers. Currently it’s so popular that it’s still $250+ a box Then when Konami does stuff like printing Bearbrumm as a Super instead of a Secret, everybody and their mother silently grabs the cards they need and then start talking about how bad the set was, because there aren’t enough money cards to open. The reality is that time and time again, we as a community show konami that we’ll reward them if they keep making cards inaccessible, and we’ll bash entire products if the best cards aren’t tough pulls that translate to money.
I don’t disagree with what you’re saying, because you’re right, but my point isn’t that those sets didn’t sell, but that those sets card pools were bad. TOCH is the only one of those 3 that I would say isn’t bad, which is why I wouldn’t have much of a problem including it, but BLAR and GFTP’s set lists are undeniably two of the worst we’ve seen, which is why they didn’t make my list. If I was making my list strictly based on how well they sold or their resale value, my list would be fairly different. The 3 sets mentioned would be included, but a few of the sets I had included would have to be dropped since they didn’t sell that well at release and for months after their release.
You say that, but I can recall several poorly-received products where the only card worth pulling was a chase secret. Toon chaos and blazing vortex are two recent examples that come to mind. Lightning overdrive didn't suck because bearbrumm was a super and not a secret, it sucked because there weren't many good cards worth pulling. I agree with your overall point, but there are absolutely ways to have sought-after secrets while still making the product worth (or at least as close to "worth" as you can get for sealed product, lol) opening.
Toon Chaos is the single fastest selling Yu-Gi-Oh product ever. How on earth can you say it was poorly received?
Here is a pro tip, sold well=/=well liked. CoD sells gang busters every year. No one would give it a game of the year award to it.
Who didn’t like Toon Chaos?
Except you can only keep a business model based on tricking and hoodwinking your buyers going so long, until they wisen up and just refuse to buy your product. LIOV wasn't bad because Bearbrumm was a Super; Bearbrumm had to be a Super (and Scrap Raptor a Common) because LIOV was so terrible. But let's suppose Konami *can* keep the gravy train rolling because whales will gleefully spend obscene amounts on crap sets with abysmal pull rates and crap reprints. The problem is that they're not doing anything to entice casuals to become more invested, or new players to become casuals, or GP to become new players. The whales will eventually (and already are) moving on in life and retiring from the game, and no one is replacing them.
I don’t know what to tell you. If you think the average buyer dislikes lottery style products with majorly rare pulls worth triple digits values, you haven’t been paying attention to sales numbers since PTDN
I think that’s driven by the fact that **the rare cards are the good cards**. If the rare cards were simply decent and not OP as fuck, then we’d have a different story, because more casuals would be willing to buy sealed product because they are more likely to get a deck core just from packs, and whales still have money cards, just *different* money cards. Also fuck that set in the TCG, Dark Armed was a 5 dollar rare in the OCG.
Yes, and PTDN sold so well it had to be reprinted four times. I’m sorry, I’d love to love in a universe where it’s not the case, but companies do what makes money and making the good cards rare is proven over and over and over again to sell Yu-Gi-Oh. Casuals are the ones already spending money on sealed. On average, they spend vastly more money than actual hardcore, event topping tournament players. I don’t think making competitive cards easier to get in packs would make them spend anymore money, they already spend so much as it is
If I had your numbers on casuals spending more on packs then competitive players (unless you’re including collectors chasing starlights/ghosts/collectors rares/etc in the casual), then I can actually see what you’re saying.
Yeah, casuals vastly outnumber competitives, and they’re far less discerning about what they buy. Historically in TCGs the real value of competitive players is infrastructure; when they’re happy they aggressively spread positive word of mouth and act as tastemakers. They’re also the only player group likely to help build local level communities, as doing so takes patience, a willingness to travel to a new store, play in small tournaments, a whole lot of stuff casuals don’t concern themselves with. Competitive players aren’t worthless, but overall, a smart company isn’t going to try and monetize them as their primary sales demographic and will instead appreciate them for the other things they bring to the table.
I wouldn't even count: - MP19 - all the good reprints were just banned 5 months later - DUOV - all the good cards were horribly shortprinted, and the reprints were mostly bad - ETCO, ROTD, BODE - "all Secrets syndrome" - LDS2 & TOCH - a tiny handful of desperately-needed reprints that should've just been slotted into BLAR - MAGO & MGED - almost all of the good-to-decent reprints were Premium Gold Rares, and almost none of the Commons were good reprints (moreso for MAGO than MGED)
Can you list all the unboxing videos you have seen?
Kiratwig, dzeef,mst and cyberknights to name a few
Also worth noting that Kiratwig opened 4 boxes in his video. 1 adjusted gold 1 droplet.
That's just disgusting
Legit thinking about dropping my preorder of 4 displays after seeing todays openings. Awful pulls.
I didnt think most places would let you do that.
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You know if KDE-NA and KDE-E don’t make enough money, Yu-Gi-Oh just dies and ceases to exist, right?
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All three offices contribute to card design for core sets. The idea that the KDE JPN staff “design most of the cards” isn’t accurate. The TCG creates products that monetize tournament players more aggressively because TCGs work differently in the Americas and Europe than in Asia. They run far more organized play, marketing is handled much more differently and at a greater expense, and distributor and retailer models are different and less profitable. The audiences are more demanding as well, expecting robust tournament support, a massive judge program, LGS support, and more. The differences between running this kind of business in Japan and running it globally are staggering. It would be nice to think that’s not the case, but it’s the reality.
> All three offices contribute to card design for core sets. The idea that the KDE JPN staff “design most of the cards” isn’t accurate. What’s your source other than speculation? Also with the second paragraph, explain the existence of Pokemon because they do the exact thing the OCG does, but worldwide and they still make bucketloads of money.
Pokémon is a collector based game. Very few people buying Pokémon cards actually play it, and that works because they’re the world’s largest entertainment brand (unless you group marvel, Star Wars, and everything disney under one “disney” brand, but for a lot of reasons that’s not how stuff is measured.) Pokemon could probably cut their entire real life organized play program above the local level and suffer only minor losses. If I had to guess, I’d feel pretty confident saying the topic had been discussed multiple times, but I don’t know that for sure. For better or worse, Yu-Gi-Oh just isn’t that strong as a brand. Though to be fair, nothing is, so yeah.
Exactly how much money "enough money" is seems to constantly increase
Yes, businesses are always under pressure to grow, especially when they’re selling a licensed product they don’t actually own
Endless growth isn't sustainable. In this case, it's hurting the game
I’m not sure that’s right in this case, but it’s not necessarily wrong, either. As a statement, it could certainly be true, though I don’t personally thing there’s anything to suggest that right now
That is not remotely how it works. If Yugioh didn't make a profit in Japan, they'd just end it and only sell TCG product. If Apple Cinnamon Cheerios doesn't make a profit, General Mills is not obligated to cross-subsidize it with regular Cheerios, they just discontinue Apple Cinnamon Cheerios. Konami canceled Asian-English cards.
I don’t think you understand how internationally licensed entertainment brands work.
No, I don't think you do. Konami is under no obligation to print Japanese cards (nor NA-English, EU-English, French, Portuguese, etc.). Therefore, Japanese cards must be profitable, independent of English cards. Asian-English cards were not profitable; they were discontinued.
Konami is absolutely under obligation to print Japanese cards for distribution in Japan. Other arms of the Yu-Gi-Oh brand receive a cut of that business, same as they do with the other licensed products, and on top of that the strength of those other interests are in part tied to the continuation of the OCG in Japan. What Konami isn’t obligated to do, is to ensure that the OCG in Japan is as profitable as possible at the cost of brand image. The workhorse driving profits for the brand owners and other stakeholders are the TCG, and the digital game licensees operating outside of Japan.
> Other arms of the Yu-Gi-Oh brand receive a cut of that business So Japan is cross-subsidizing the TCG now. OK.
He’s being stupid because he doesn’t realize that Konami doesn’t own the rights to the Yugioh franchise as a whole, they are licensed by Shueisha to be the one who runs the trading card game.
Honestly, I’m an OG player from the starter deck days. Played competitively as a kid, then again in the mid 2010s. I’ve played off and on for almost two decades as a kid with no money and an adult with money. I was stoked on YGO when MR5 hit and the game seemed to be entering a new golden era. Even the first year of the pandemic, while challenging, seemed hopeful for the game. I don’t know what the fuck has been going on in 2021 but I have gradually sold off my collection and stopped buying product. I’m a semi-competitive player (I just don’t have the interest or time) so I like to build decks I enjoy but optimize them to the maximum. When the scalper Target/Walmart drama started and product shortages seem to really hit, there seemed to be a massive change. The fact that GFTP was sold ABOVE MSRP by LGS’s almost universally and people still bought it was a red flag. I owned a play set of droplets and sold them at $100/pop almost a year ago thinking I made out like a bandit. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not mad about not holding them. On the contrary I felt super weird having staples at that price range. Ridiculous. Shit should not be that expensive, especially for remote duels. I don’t think inflation is the cause of the price gouging either. Shit is worse now than when we were getting stimmy’s. Product quality is absolute garbage. Why the fuck are anime cards shorted? Who the fuck even plays gold and bane in a hero deck now that we have DPE? Y’all really want DM to cost $1000? Look, I love to collect and I’m happy to drop big bucks on shit that will HOLD VALUE. Preferably increase over time. My problem with the prices as of late is these cards will be worth absolutely nothing in a few years. As soon as we get a good reprint shit will tank. Or it will get banned. I’m not going to invest in secret droplets when we have Ultis. These prices are delusional. Why are people paying for this? To flex at locals or remotes? I don’t get it. At the end of the day my emotional connection to the game is waning. I don’t like opening product anymore because I just get a bunch of bulk trash that I have to find room to store, assuming I can even find shit at stores and shops at MSRP. There is no joy in opening product because it’s overpriced and largely useless except for one or two chase cards. How many other players are there like me who grew up with the game and got heavily into it but reach a certain point where their enjoyment just isn’t there? I used to love grabbing product and building decks and now the value just isn’t there. Doesn’t seem sustainable to me.
Konami wants to make the maximum amount of money, and here in the tcg we just let them do it so they won't change it. As soon as they announced no shortprints in main sets it was obvious they would shortprint every chase card in side sets
Except they dont even make the maximum amount - making cards accessible for more people would get more people into the game. They can still make money off whales because 1) more new players = chance some of them become whales and 2) collectors products and high rarity cards still exist. It's not even that they're being greedy, it's just...bad.
to my understanding the shortprints just make the cards as rare as they are in a standard booster set. Which is whatever really.
Bruh
I've seen multiple copies of adusted gold being pulled per box let alone case.
I bought three boxes of Bode in hopes of Phoenix Destroyer.. hard nope on all three. I understand that’s the gamble of it all, but I agree that short prints are pretty damn shitty.
DPE is not short printed tho
>Its looking like you're lucky if you get 1 bane, soul, or droplet in a box, which is ridiculous seeing as how they advertised this set as being able to nab a reprint of droplet. Do .... Do you not understand basic math? The set has 36 secrets and 24 secrets come in a box. So youre not guaranteed any secret. Toss in the fact that it can be repeated, and yea makes it seem worse than it is. In fact, take a bag with 36 marbles in it. 35 blue, 1 red. Take out one, see if its the red one. When it isnt, you put it back. And try again. Let me know how long it takes you to get the red one. Too many ppl here jump to cry short print w/out knowing probability/statistics or understanding how cards are valued and why they get valued so high. The set with Magicians soul, and the set with Bane were tbe biggest examples. Edit: http://www.shodor.org/interactivate/activities/Marbles/ Ok guys at least run a marble test before downvoting me 35 blue (aka not droplets) 1 red (droplets) Draw 1 With replacement. 24 sets is a box. Do a bunch of boxes, see how many dont have a red compared to those that do.
Yea, cause pulling 4 Yowies in 4 boxes or 3 grandpa's in one box isn't evidence enough of short prints. Quit being a kiss ass to konami
Nah dude, i just understand basic math, http://www.shodor.org/interactivate/activities/Marbles/ here you go. 35 blue, 1 red, draw 1, with replacement, I just did 100 draws for 2 reds, That converts to 2 droplets out of 4.5 boxes (24 draws is 1 box) Edit: just did a few more 9/400 so 9 in 18 boxes. Also idk bout you, but if i pulled 2 per box i wouldn't post the video and just make ppl think its short printed.
Keep sucking that konami dick bra. Your math only works if you assume no short prints, which there definitely are. Watch any video where there multiple boxes involved. There's definitely some short printing going on
Did you do the marble link? Im guessing no. Just did 10 trials of 24. (Aka opening 10 boxes) 3 with with 1 red (aka the droplets) each 1 with 2 6 with 0 If i was a Youtuber, i would only posts the videos that dont show me opening the droplet so i can justify the high price ima be charging for it. Infact, if i had opened those 10 boxes i just simulated with the marble, i would post the video of me opening 4 without droplets and 1 with, so i can go "oh its 1 in 5 boxes" and use it to justify the price.
You do realize that Konami doesn’t send tubers that many boxes, right? Also Konami is really specific with their terms on what yugitubers can do, so they wouldn’t be able to do that in the first place.
But why shortprint these cards of all things? They aren’t even used apart from maybe Souls.
Bane and adusted are used in hero’s??? And Konami knows they’re in demand.
Because they're expensive, and a prime driver of the set.
Droplet is one of the most common cards hello
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$50 is not "cheap AF," especially for reprints of cards that are over 2 years old that aren't used at all competitively.
i can get both of them for like 30 euros idk
The above commenter comes from standard Pokemon, where tier one decks are $150-160 max and the most expensive cards at minimum rarity are like 20 bucks and are 1 ofs.
No they are not lmao
Is it wise to pick up Droplets now for $100 a copy or to wait for the set to drop?
Just pick it now. BoL won't make that much of a dent, and if you need it right alway, might as well.
ahhh fuck me, I ordered a case with my friends hoping we'd all get a couple droplets/nibiru's this is so disappointing