Yu-Gi-Oh! Is Faltering, However Followers Really feel Konami’s Ignoring Them

Throughout a current Konami shareholder assembly, the sport firm’s president addressed issues that its newest free-to-play Yu-Gi-Oh! recreation, Yu-Gi-Oh! Grasp Duel, has negatively affected the franchise’s progress. A shareholder famous that Grasp Duel’s play model poorly interprets to the favored buying and selling card recreation’s tabletop and official card recreation match guidelines, echoing what followers have been saying. However Konami President Hideki Hayakawa solely doubled down.

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Yu-Gi-Oh! Grasp Duel is a cross-platform buying and selling card recreation the place gamers can buy booster packs, construct personalised decks, and compete in opposition to each other in on-line matches that was launched in January for PlayStation, Xbox, Change, and PC.

The difficulty is that its gacha recreation guidelines and streamlined play are vastly totally different from Yu-Gi-Oh! desk card and on-line card video games. Yu-Gi-Oh! is infamous for having a revolving door of rule and regulation modifications associated to banned playing cards and strikes, which might make hopping from Grasp Duel’s streamlined strategy to an internet or tabletop model tough to regulate to.

“New customers who began with Yu-Gi-Oh! Grasp Duel might hand over when attempting to begin Yu-Gi-Oh!. This was the case with a participant I really met at a Yu-Gi-Oh! OCG [official card game] Duel Monsters match. Isn’t it essential to think about the way to get rid of such instances?” the shareholder mentioned throughout the June 28 assembly.

“I discovered it extraordinarily regrettable that gamers who had began enjoying [the] Yu-Gi-Oh! card recreation weren’t in a position to take action for lengthy,” Hayakawa responded throughout the assembly, in line with a browser translation posted to Twitter by professional duelist and Yu-Gi-Oh! champion Jeff Jones.

“Grasp Duel actually doesn’t permit anybody to get used to the precise TCG,” Jones wrote in settlement on Twitter. “In addition to being automated and never explaining why issues work the way in which they do, the fully totally different forbidden listing and card pool makes it even tougher for brand spanking new gamers to transition.”

The identical shareholder famous the poor reception to Grasp Duel’s official live-streamed match matches, which he blamed on the dearth of capability to give up a recreation the place defeat was a foregone conclusion.

“As somebody who tried to get into Yu-Gi-Oh! lately, the cardboard recreation principally being simply ‘You win in a couple of turns’ kinda put me off from eager to play,” ResetEra consumer Jawmuncher wrote, echoing the shareholder’s critique. “Like I purchased a deck that had all these cool concepts however good luck seeing any of that shit really play out.”

The unnamed shareholder prompt Konami change the Grasp Duel rule stopping gamers from pre-emptively quitting, saying it might permit gamers to “have the ability to make a strategic alternative to begin over with the subsequent recreation, which might additionally enhance the attraction of dwell streaming.”

Not solely [do] we wish Yu-Gi-Oh! to be extra gratifying to play, however there may be additionally that worthwhile perspective that ‘gratifying to observe’ is a vital topic that has been related for a number of years,” Hayakawa answered. “I believe your opinion is completely appropriate and I’ll convey it to our firm to make the correct concerns for the subsequent livestream.”

Hayakawa concluded his response by plugging the upcoming Yu-Gi-Oh! World Championship which will probably be held in Japan and livestreamed internationally.