Also, while MTG is constantly introducing new and weirder gimmicks, generally they're newer ways of taking advantage of stuff that's expected anyway (like "this effect causes X to happen when Y types of cards are in the graveyard," or "pay X extra mana when Y happens to do Z extra effect"), so they're made to fit into the variety that already exists.
IIRC it didn't used to be like that, though. I think Magic went through a "everything new has to be bigger and badder!" phase too a while ago. It was one of the things that kept me from getting into it when I was younger.
edited 14th Apr '17 11:05:25 PM by KnownUnknown
Magic's mana costs also help with staunching off power creep, because they give you a good idea on how much value a certain card should have.
But Yu Gi Oh, just... doesn't care. It is incredibly shameless about flaunting the power creep. I don't even think that a rotation format like MTG would fix it, as Hearthstone also uses a rotation format but is experiencing power creep anyway due to the way cards are designed. I don't think the card design philosophy of Yu Gi Oh will ever change drastically enough to avoid power creep.
edited 14th Apr '17 11:16:39 PM by Saiga
Yu-gi-oh is kind of interesting, in that its way of compensating for the Power Creep is by creating a bunch of new cards that retroactively make older cards better, either by boosting those cards in particular, or by using those cards to boost itself.
I haven't played Yugioh in years; game got too expensive for 17 year old me and I didn't care enough to learn Pendulum summoning. I did like playing it though even if I had to literally run a drug game to get the cards I needed for the format.
Might try the new format depending on how I feel about it. I read up and good god...
A lazy millennial who's good at what he does.I'm never touching CCGs ever again. I might try Legend of the Five Rings once Fantasy Flight Games properly revives it, but only because they're reviving it as an LCG system with set card decks and expansions with no random draw boosters.
That, and because tournament play used to influence how the tabletop game developed and if FFG decides to keep doing that it may be worth it to go and intentionally bomb just to see what happens. Imagine doing so badly, and potentially recruiting other people to do badly, that you effectively dare the host company to kill off the faction your cards represent.
edited 15th Apr '17 9:14:17 AM by Zeromaeus
I had a brilliant idea to stop collecting the cards, and just buy unaltered structure decks to make a varied pool of balance decks my friends could play against each other.
Then I found out that any of the older decks would be over a hundred dollarydoos to buy
there is no good way to play this damn game
Let's see if I understand it:
- First and foremost, the game has severely restricted the ability to use the Extra deck (where Fusion monsters and the like reside). There are now only two monster zones on the entire field (separate from and existing just above a player's 5 normal monster zones. One is above the slot second from the left, and one second from the right) that can be used to summon a monster out of the Extra deck. In addition to that, each player can only control one of those zones at a time. Meaning that, unless you do stuff like kill off your own fusion monsters and revive them from the grave, you can only control one such monster at a time. No more summoning 3 Blue Eyes Ultimate Dragons on turn 1.
- Link monsters are Extra deck monsters that can only be summoned from the Extra deck by sacrificing monsters from your side of the field that fulfill the monster's requirements. So it's a bit like XYZ summoning.
- Link monsters are not allowed to exist in defense mode, because of the arrows on the borders of the card, which can be one eight directions. The number of arrows that are active on a Link monster depends on the monster itself (thus far, we have only seen Link monsters with up to four of the arrows filled in). They can't be in defense mode, because rotating the card would change the way the arrows point.
- The red arrows will point to different zones, and any cards existing in those zones are considered to be linked to the Link monster. What this means depends on the card itself. For example, "Decode Talker" gains power for each monster linked to it, and can sacrifice linked monsters to negate card activations.
- This one is important: If an unoccupied Monster Zone is linked to a Link monster, it is now considered an Extra Monster Zone. Meaning you can now summon monsters out of your extra deck to it.
It seems as though the way Link monsters are meant to work is that you start by summoning one to your extra slot, and then use it to open more Extra slots, so you then can call up super dangerous cards from your Extra deck, including more Link monsters.
edited 15th Apr '17 6:46:49 PM by Enlong
I have a message from another time...Yu Gi Oh is a garbled mess, is that the point of this discussion? 'Cause that seems kind of like a "water is wet" deal.
edited 15th Apr '17 7:49:58 PM by LSBK

It could really do with a clearing of the board wrt power creep. MTG handles that by basically having a whitelist for tournament play, consisting of the last few releases.
I have a message from another time...