And we all know just how brutal Honest can be in a game of Yu-Gi-Oh Am I right?
This is due in part to finally getting one of the DS games. Which is rather unfortunate as it rather derailed the post I was planning on what an awful, gimmicky system the DS actually is because I was to busy actually playing the damn thing to do anything else. Still, having finally completed the story mode I've been left thinking about Yu-Gi-Oh games in general. Their strengths, weaknesses and how they could be improved. And so it is that I find myself writing this article, in an attempt to design the Perfect Yu-Gi-Oh game.
SPOILER ALERT: It isn't this. Not even slightly.
Now, the obvious thing here is that the central mechanics of the game are all already there. It's a digital version of the card game. They can already do that. Hell, they've been doing it for years. All the complex interactions are by and large already dealt with. The actual Dueling part is about as solid as you can make it at this stage, and the only thing you need to worry about is updating with new sets as when they're made available. What's great about this is that it frees us to look at everything surrounding that core gameplay and see how we can make improvements to all the subtle little niggly parts. You know when people are gibbering about delivering EXPERIENCES in games? That's what we're interested in here. In optimising the whole experience to be as good as it possibly can be.
So, where to begin? Obviously we'll have both single and multi player aspects to deal with. The platform is, in all honesty, irrelevant. With the obvious proviso that the more places you can play the game the better. And that is there REALLY any excuse in this day and age to not have cross platform multiplayer? Especially in a TURN BASED game? Sure the handheld version will be a lot more stripped down with less fancy graphics than the desktop version, but the core gameplay is essentially the same. Unlike the platform, the actual format of the game is extremely important.
Let's be honest here: Good games cost money. They cost money to develop and maintain. The perfect game is not free, and never can be. Remember that "Free To Play" actually translates from marketing-speak into english as "We want you to spend way more on this piece of shit than you actually would on brand new game, and we're hoping you won't notice until it's to late". Not that DLC and Microtransactions CAN'T be used in a reasonable and effective way. They just commonly AREN'T.
Ever notice the way Neverwinter won't even tell you how much their shit costs until you've given them your credit card? Can't think why I stopped playing that.
Now, the way I see it a Yu-Gi-Oh game will need an ongoing revenue stream. Because it will need to support online play with ongoing updates. But how can we achieve this without the whole ghastly pay to win bullshit of buying cards? Or at the very least minimising it.
Well, the way I see it is that the game should be sold in a series of modules. The underlying architecture and mechanics are the shared throughout. What you get however is an Era of the Franchise in a bundle. So there would be one for Classic Yu-Gi-Oh, one for GX, one for 5D's and so on. And you get single player storyline content set against that era with access to that eras card packs. You could expand it even further by having packs for each major story arc of that era. So for the original era you could have a Duelist Kingdom version with cards & opponents from that storyline. And then once you've completed that you can get the Battle City version adding in new cards, locations, characters and options. And if you're really doing it right there should be synergy between all the packs. So as you add new card sets the NPC decks get updated as well.
Likewise with character customisation, which is something that should absolutely exist in the game. Each Era pack will have it's own items to be used. So in Duelist Kingdom you get a Duel Glove, Battle City unlocks a KC Duel Disc. GX has the Academy Uniforms and so on.
It should be noted that there should be an underlying set of basic cards and customisation options underlying the whole thing, drawn from across the full spectrum of the game. Just to make sure everyone has access to some basic reasonable cards. Nothing particularly OP of course, but enough to cover the basics.
This covers another rather odd problem I've encountered on the DS game I was playing as well. I was playing a 5D's game. And the big gimmick for 5D's is of course....
...Synchro monsters. Only I didn't actually get access to a booster pack that actually had anything to with Synchro monster in it until AFTER I'd completed the story mode. This seemed a little odd to me. Surely we should be starting with at least some of the stuff from the era in question? You know, so we can play like they do in the stories? Or at least expand on the 3 Synchro monsters given in the starter deck. But no, apparently not. That's just silly, and should be avoided. If we're playing in an era we should actually be getting the feel of that eras play.
And needless to say the single player campaigns should actually be large enough that you actually have a shot being able to get halfway towards getting the cards you actually want before it's over. I don't know about you but I'm a lot more motivated when I'm trying to improve my deck to beat a boss or whatever.
For actually acquiring the cards and items in game the standard Duel Point system is pretty good, but does need a couple of tweaks. In pretty much every version of Yu-Gi-Oh I've played you earn points during Duels for doing stuff. Which is cool. However you only ever earn those points if you win. If you lose you only get points for the number of turns and nothing else. Even though winning gives you a winning bonus anyway. I have always found this utterly BAFFLING. It only encourages terrible behaviour from the player. Playing well isn't rewarded, only winning. As soon as it looks like you might not win you may as well quit and restart, because anything else is probably a waste of your time. This is the literal opposite of the entire ethos of the show. Something like 80% of the plot is characters refusing to give up even though it looks like they might not win. Not to mention the fact that it actively discourages experimentation as you'll have to stick strictly with what you know works if you ever want to get any new cards.
The solution here is of course ludicrously simple. You just reward points for in game actions whether or not the player wins or loses. Players are then free to try out crazy new decks or go up against overleveled opponents just to see how well they can do without losing out. Indeed, then you're actually getting a built in rating for how well you're playing in those circumstances. There is literally no reason for this not to be done. All it would do is improve the games.
Of course, once you've got the points you'll want to spend them on some cards. Buying packs in the store is all well and good, but there is another issue here that I feel needs addressing: Extra copies. The maximum amount of a card you're allowed to include in your deck is 3, although some cards are further limited to 1 or 2 copies or even banned outright. In the real world there is some advantage to having 6 copies of a card, as you can then build multiple decks with it in. In a digital game there is no point whatsoever in having extras, since there's no physical limitations to how many decks you can put a card in. And let me tell you, one of the single most aggravating things in a digital card game is getting all those multiple copies of a card that will never be any possible use to you. Even if you like it. What I'm basically getting at here is that quantities need to either be limited in some way (once you have a playset the card stops appearing in packs) or some way to trade those cards in for something useful. Even if you have some sort of advanced multiplayer trading system there is still a limit to how many copies of Charubin The Fire Knight anyone should be subjected to.
I don't care how rare it is. No one has EVER willingly played this card, nor will they.
There just needs to be something in place to take the edge of all those hours of futilely grinding away hoping to get a Relinquished. Maybe you can sell the cards back to the store for a small amount of points. Maybe you can trade in a certain amount of unwanted cards for a specific one or special item. Just something so that you don't have to feel like you're wasting anything.
So far so good, but next I think we need to discuss a couple of issues that have an impact more on the multiplayer rather than single player. Obviously I personally tend to focus more on single player issues, because, well you know....
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But we do need to take these things into account. So let's talk about Ranking and Metagame.
Now, I've had some experience with Yu-Gi-Oh Online in mine time. Believe it or not (and I barely do myself) I was even in on the Beta for that. And let me tell you, if I learnt one thing from that experience it's that the metagame FUCKING SUCKS. This was sadly to some degree down to the way the game was set up during the time I was playing it. Since they actually charged you for every game you played, and you'd earn a card for a win and nothing for a loss it meant the game basically ended up revolving around one particular deck and whether or not you could hold out against it long enough for the other guy to ragequit. Seriously, even to this day I can't actually bring myself to play Vampire Lord.
I don't mind losing so much. But ALWAYS losing, to the SAME DAMN DECK? That get's old real fast. It was practically impossible to ever find a game that was actually on my level. It put me off Yu-Gi-Oh entirely for a long time. So you can see that I mean it when I say that we need some way of keeping the Metagame fresh and also ensuring that players are matched up as equally as possible.
Normally in these sort of things ranking is based on win/loss ratio. And that's fine a start, but lacks the sort of nuance required for our aims here. There are a few other factors that need to be taken into consideration. The ranking should be an aggregate of several factors, and count for both the player AND the deck. Firstly of course it should take into account the players overall card collection percentage. The more cards you have to choose from the better deck you'll be able to assemble. It should also look at card variety within the deck itself. If someone has full playsets of everything then they're deck will generally be more consistent and reliable than someone using 1 each of everything. Lower variety of cards used in a deck ranks higher.
Another factor to be taken into consideration is of course the frequency of cards used. The beauty of running a digital game is that you can track what the most popular cards are and rank them accordingly. This let's you do 2 important things. Firstly decks that trend towards the most heavily used cards can be ranked accordingly and all the bastards running Vampire Lord or whatever can bugger off and fight each other in the big leagues whilst the rest of us try and work out how to make Magnet Warriors work. Secondly it allows you to actively reward players who avoid the dominating metagame and try their own thing.
Now, I'm not saying that there's no place for high level play and super scary decks of doom. There absolutely should be. But not everyone can, or indeed even wants, to be playing at that level. So you can create leagues where the most heavily played cards are restricted. You can hand out bonus points based on using the least played cards. And perhaps most importantly, you can stop douchenozzles from preying on newbies with high level decks and spoiling it for everyone else. With a bit of incentive the metagame will open out on it's own. I mean, just think if every couple of weeks the top 10 most played cards got restricted. You'd have to start relying on player skill more over anything else. And that can only be a good thing.
Oh, and the game should ABSOLUTELY track disconnects. Give players a filter to automatically block anyone with a disconnect percentage over whatever amount and make sure that player who doesn't disconnect get's their full amount of points. Seriously, ragequitters are vermin and should be treated as such.
There is one final aspect to constructing this theoretical game that I think needs covering, and that is the history of Yu-Gi-Oh games in general. After all, they've been going for quite a few years now. And I'd like to see as much of that history included as possible. Using an era based modular approach does of course mean that you can re-use decks & NPCs from past games relatively easily. The A.I. logic presumably exists somewhere, and so can be translated into the new game. But they've done more than just straight up adaptations of the card game. There have been several that use the characters and monsters to create new games entirely. Stuff like Dungeon Dice Monsters, Capsule Monster Coliseum or Duelists Of The Roses.
"My name is Henry Tudor, but you can call me Yugi." NO, REALLY.
How cool would it be to have these games available as well? And your card collection should of course be consistent across ALL the various spinoffs and subgames. Unlock it one thing, unlock it everywhere. Maybe mark the cards in some way as to their original source. Perhaps with a symbol in the corner of the artwork, but preferably with variant artwork altogether, even if it's just the model from the game in question. I mean, it's not like there's any particular shortage of artwork of the Blue Eyes White Dragon or Dark Magician is there?
Being able to draw on all that went before gives us enormous potential for content. Even if we don't get actual versions of the games themselves we can have classic packs based on them. Combine this with entries based on the Manga & TV show and there will be more than enough to keep even the most hardcore fans going for a long, long time. During which of course yet more content will have been released, ripe for integration.
At least, that's how I'd do it.
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