A Discussion of Designing: ARC-V vs VRAINS

[Flash Flyer - Sakura]

We've been in the VRAINS era for 2 years now and that's certainly enough time to see how the game has unfolded and adapted to the new rules.

That in mind, it is a known fact that not everyone wants to play Link format (and there've been a handful of people who took it quite hard and outright refused). Please realize that I am not calling out anyone in particular as this is certainly not limited to just you guys in AGM or within Custom Cards, as similar mentalities have been shown elsewhere.

I know I did say this a few times in the club thread, but eventually it will be much more difficult to continue designing in Master Rule 3. By this, some cards will not be permissible for admission in here simply if they mention anything to do with Links or the Extra Monster Zone. (i.e. We banned Raiten because it mentions Link Summoning, hence the inclusion of Shidenka which is effectively ours [and does future proofing].)

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Because these can get quite long, I'll spoiler tag them.

Show ContentYou want to say "adapt MR4 or get lost"?:

Of course not.


Again, while I did say that not everyone agrees with MR4, you cannot just shove it under the rug and pretend it doesn't exist.

It's been a little over 2 years since Links came around. By this time, we should have a good number of Links that can be feasibly splashed into Decks to make (our) stuff work.

It is also hoped that you know how stuff works by now (good/bad parts of it notwithstanding).

You all should remember that both of the card areas have a MR3 and MR4 tag; latter especially for the AGM thing. I mentioned this in the Announcements section, but think of it as an experimental thing that is only existent here.

(If Draco decides / decided to implement it on the club thread, then okay.)

The key thing here is "just be aware about what's going on game-wise" and adapt to it. You won't improve as a card maker if you only design for ARC-V and ridicule is near certain (think of the analogy people use for the Yugioh equivalent of genwunners).

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I'll be frank; I didn't really warm up to Links at first, but I've accepted them and even made some archetypes around them. (You can see a few of them in the General Design area.)

Show ContentMaster Rule 3 lets us Extra Deck spam! AGM was also designed under these premises.:

This is true, considering none of us knew Konami was going to do this a few years later.

But that in mind, it is still possible to spam the Extra Deck with multiple monsters. You just need to add a few more steps in.

Convoluted? Depending on the combos, yes.

Still playable? Yeah.

Show ContentMaster Rule 4 screwed up the game; I want no part of it!:

(By this logic, anything past GX basically does the same thing, albeit less intrusively. Don't be a Yugioh genwunner, please.)

Yes, MR4 shit on the existing mechanics and FORCES you to use Link Monsters to enable Extra Deck plays. With stuff like Fusion, Synchro, Xyz, Pendulum, it's true you weren't forced to use them if you didn't want to.

Here, you have some choices:

• Tech a few Link Monsters to open up Extra Monster Zones.
  
• Run/design cards that can "move" stuff out of the EMZ to free up space.
  
• Make your Deck functional without needing to make something higher than Link 2.
  

Then again, it's not like the new changes have stopped people from playing; in some cases, you literally have a Extra Link shutdown and some cases, Decks become more dangerous than they were in ARC-V.

(Go look at some replays of the Link 2 Hieratic in Guardragons, Knightmare Gouki or the like on Youtube/DuelingBook/YGOPro and see what kind of boards are brought up. Ring any bells?)

Show ContentAGM wasn't designed for MR4; the hell you want us to do?:

Just tech a few Links that feasibly work for your Deck to open up everything. You guys already know Electrumite made Pendulums good again for what it does.

I suppose we can just import a few outside ones that aren't "busted" by existing standards. Granted, a lot of them are Cyberse specific for hell knows why, but other than that, there's still a few that may work. Issue is all of you coming to some consensus on whether their addition will break our game.

(Not every archetype/series/Type/Attribute has gotten a Link to make them work though and generics are somewhat rare b/c of potential abuse. Please keep this in mind.)

Of course, you can also design legacy Links for your own archs to make them work. Konami has done that for a few Decks; some help and some don't. It's really on you as a designer to make them work.

Also recall that unlike Konami, you can revamp your archetypes/series as much as you like. Might screw up our format a bit if some cards were / weren't implicitly supported by the older designs, but that fault lies in us having a very large pool of cards.

Show ContentThen revamp the AGM:

I've been told as a suggestion that we should probably put the brakes on design until we sort out everything, but consider the following factors:

1. Our pool is several times larger than the existing Konami pool.

As of now, we have just over 10,000 official cards (including all of the old pack fillers and stuff) existing in the actual game. We have a lot of archetypes that are user made, so them + generics would eclipse 10,000 a few times.

(Recall that the generics alone contribute 1.03 MB in text, assuming default fonts and all. Now think of how much that amounts to, assuming all cards have reasonably moderate effects for most part.)

2. Sorting through all of the cards would be a legitimate nightmare.

We have 357 pages worth of generics, which alone is a ton of cards. Show of hands, who's actually looked through all of them?


Let's look into ANALYZING our format and accounting for Deckbuilding; pure builds and then the inevitable hybrids (such as those 4-5 arch engines ones you see nowadays). The former presents challenges, but they can be looked at easier. Now look into hybrids; how many do we have in our meta that are possible (moreso, archetypes that can be run as side engines or teched for other things). Hybrids are a double-edged sword; they can either be okay and do what they're intended to, OR, they can cause some stupid loops down the road.

If we were to take that suggestion into consideration, we'd have to do this and it would be a disaster.

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Problem here is TIME and having to sort through every single loop that may occur. Konami cannot catch every single one in their designs, so it is near impractical to think of ours as being simpler.

Then again, a lot of the archetypes we have aren't really talked about much nowadays...

3. Availability of members.

Let's face it; all of us are either in high school / college and/or work to make some ends meet (and we have lives). We're all not going to be here to try arranging a format considering this is really just a hobby and won't pay our bills.


Additionally, there are timezone differences, though at the moment, the extremes would be me at GMT -10 and Dova is +8 iirc, but it's not really an issue.

Rest of you live in the Americas (and Europe for Nyx iirc) so barring a couple hours difference, we can still work out something. Hell, I'm on often so even with the time disadvantage, I can still speak. It's not like we're videoconferencing or something.

Though, not everyone is here...
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The earlier attempt at a Duel Portal format by other members floundered b/c of this case, though they only had 3 judges and one of the contributing members has a very high timezone compared to everyone else in the Americas / part of Europe.

We're in a bind here.

Either we push the reset button and start from scratch (erasing almost 4 years of progress from everyone) or just make do with whatever we have now and address problems down the road.

It's practical to do the latter and just adapt.

So...what's the point of this?

Sooner or later, we're going to have to come to a consensus on where the AGM should go.

Over here, we have both formats (MR4 being experimental to see how things work out). Elsewhere, probably still the same since I left.

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Then again, also use this discussion to figure out how to handle post-VRAINS. We may get ANOTHER summoning mechanic that changes the rules once the series ends.

Let's say this new mechanic results in a Master Rule 5 with new changes and we're still playing Master Rule 3. How far back in design are you going to be?

This is obviously conjecture because it isn't here yet, but think about what will happen.

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I say this not because I want to force you guys to change, but moreso so you're not falling behind in design and getting ridiculed for not knowing by other people.

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So yeah, I guess use this thread to discuss the pros/cons of ARC-V design and VRAINS design and whether/not AGM is truly ready to step into the new age.

[Flash Flyer - Sakura]

Also remember that you all can still recommend cards / rest of us approve them, though again, it relies on all of you to come to a consensus on what will be okay for us to add.

So...if we do add Links, let's avoid Knightmares and some other problematic cards from the VRAINS era. Or we let them in, but make sure rest of our stuff does not lead towards promoting Extra Links or other obscene plays.

[Draconus297]

So, I feel the need to comment on a few things that make me feel that the Link mechanic, and MR4 in general, was poorly thought through:

Master Rule 4 made a card printed exactly 1 core set prior to its implementation completely impossible to utilize properly. Five-Rainbow Magician specifically requires that it be in the Scale with 4+ Set cards in your backrow to escape its lockdown effect, meaning that you cannot simultaneously Pendulum Summon and have monster effects on. This is on top of requiring the errata of a completely irrelevant card, killing several archetypes, making Counter Fairies unplayable, and implementing a Domain lock as an inbuilt game mechanic.

In terms of the AGM, here are a few cards, off the top of my head, that are made useless or broken by adding MR4:
Vigilizards are made nearly irrelevant, except for a Continuous Spell that instagibs Links because I wanted them to have a counter to Unions.
Mellaxis/Spellbound goes from a fun swarm/aggro archetype to an unstoppable Extra Link machine that also draws 10 in a normal combo if I have my math right, because the restriction on their Continuous Spell cannot be set off by a Link monster, ergo they get any archetypal monster back every time they make a Link, and then Studious revives himself for a basically free Borrel.
Victorian can no longer trigger their wincon (can't simultaneously have both a card in Scale and no backrow- If you control a "Victorian" card in your Pendulum Zone, no cards in your Spell/Trap Zone, fewer monsters than your opponent, less LP than your opponent, fewer cards in your hand than your opponent, less cards in your Deck, and all 3 of their Ritual Spells are banished, you win during the End Phase).
There's a monster with a mandatory Summon effect if it kills a monster in battle, which (if I have my rulings right) either causes an unplayable gamestate, allows you to create an infinite loop, or lets you trade any Link monster for any other Link monster.
Voltage Tunic is an infinite Link machine with All-Out Attacks, or any other card that forces Defense Position monsters into Attack Position as a Continuous effect, active.
Summoning a Link monster against an Aura player running their best Equip burns the person Summoning that Link monster to death in an infinite loop, because no Defense Position.
Most AGM Decks would need an archetypal Link just to function, and none of us have time for that.
Brilliant Mount starts a changeless infinite with literally any Link, making it a searchable, self-reviving floodgate due to rulings (if any action would start a changeless infinite, the player is not allowed to take the action that would start the infinite).

And that's off the top of my head.

[Flash Flyer - Sakura]

Some of my AGM archetypes already got their Link support (well, the ones I care about anyway). There are a handful for which I didn't add for yet, but either because I said "screw it" or the existing shit is sufficient enough. Probably the former...

(I know there's an Electric Field one, Psychic Dragons got 2 Links which can produce and I'm not sure about the rest. Skateboards are Ritual oriented so they don't exactly care about multiple ED monsters.)

I know I didn't make a ZPD Link, though I am mulling over it right now. I already got a semi-generic Link 1 and 2 that enables all of the spam and more (those are also customs).

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As for the other stuff, note that the Extra Link thing does suck to hell, hence why all of the monsters that have those Top Left / Right arrows have the restriction that you cannot summon to the EMZs they point to; preventing the V-Link. As for the traditional way, I am not too sure if they got culled with Goblin getting the axe, but Knightmares still exist in some capacity (albeit as engines). Also Iblee.

Pendulums no longer having their own space instead of taking up your outermost S/T zones also shits on some of those things. To be fair about the point regarding Five-Rainbow, I don't think anyone used it even in ARC-V era.

I liked it better when Pendulums had their own zones outside the S/T, but suppose a few players complaining about full power Dracopals or whatever did that in.

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Like you say, might be a lot more Decks that either get shit on or made busted. If AGM were to go Link format, we'd have to nuke the whole thing and start from scratch; I don't think anyone wishes to do that.

Or we can keep the MR3 format that already exists and not screw over things, and then just make a separate MR4 thing with its own generic pool and archetypes. Though, handling two different formats with their pools is not comparable to TCG/OCG (well, mostly because the cards in each will be significantly different and quantity thereof will be as such too.) Also will be a legitimate pain in the ass.

If you go that option, I think a chunk of the generics could probably stick around (maybe all, but it's a lot to read through), but the archetypes will certainly change because of the shift in playstyle.

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Then again, if we get a new summon mechanic in 2020 or whenever VRAINS ends, who knows what that'll do to the current setup?

For now, the MR4 thing will just be experimental here (well, since the rest of the archs haven't been moved here, I suppose it gives some leeway to try it in a limited capacity).

/shrug

We're probably in MR3 way too far to change gears or adapt (hence the option of making a separate AGM format for MR4, which will likely be a pain to deal with in conjunction with running the existing ARC-V one). Though, let's hope you guys still don't get sassed for ARC-V design in mid/late-VRAINS era.

(I guess the addition of Cyberse should be enough for now; it's a VRAINS product, but it's just a Type and not explicitly linked to MR4 rules. I know ChampionZero despised this [not to trash talk him or anything], but you can make them into anything in MR3. Hell, Cynet Mining / Debug can be imported if you all wanted them; they just search.)

Though in this sense, we can have some control over the format and regulate things before they get out of hand and require banlist attention (or severe alterations). It'd be a clean slate to work with...

In the end though, it's really up to everyone if they want to embrace dual formats. I suspect it'll be a no, which is understandable, since it does force you to remember things in one format and stuff in another while differentiating between the two. But only way to tell is if people speak up.