Power Creep in YGO and the F/L List.

[LigerNoir]

I'm a huge fan of Extra Credits on Penny Arcade-TV and this weeks episode was on Power Creep in Video Games (although they do touch on Trading Cards). In it they talk about how Blizzard and Wizards of the Coast are in a constant struggle to keep their games balanced throughout the years. This got me thinking about Yu-Gi-Oh! and the F/L list on Pojo and how we are always bickering of when we (as playes of YGO) think would be best.

I started playing YGO again 2 years ago not playing since PSV and I 100% think that since IOC, we have been getting cards that have to 1UP the next pack every time (excluding many of the GX packs). DAD is no exception. IOC cards like BLS and CED and newer archtypes like Inzektors prove this point.

We here in the F/L section are always talking about cards that are too powerful or broken or necessary in the meta, even if we don't always agree on what should be done with them (DAD, Veiler, Metamorphosis, Gorz, Tribe-Infecting Virus, Solemn Warning, etc). Although many of the older cards are just plain broken (Sixth Sense, Painful Choice, CED, etc) the newer cards are not fairing much better (Hornet, TGU, Rescue Rabbit, cont.).

What I'm getting at is, is YGO driving along Power Creep Highway? What does it mean for the game and what could it mean the next F/L List? Does Konami even care?

If you watch the episode http://penny-arcade.com/patv/episode/power-creep I think we can have a better discussion on this.

[nukm4]

This game has experienced massive power creep, especially last format [plants went from taking 20 tops at one YCS to taking 0 at another in just two sets]. What it means realistically is that Konami likes to sell product, and that's unlikely to change. Power creep does not affect the ban list at all, except when Konami feels there isn't ENOUGH of it.

[HochDeutsch]

Like Magic: The Gathering and the Pokemon TCG, Yu-Gi-Oh! has been experiencing power creep ever since its inception, except that - as in Magic, some of the best cards happened to come out earliest (Raigeki, Pot of Greed, etc.). So the power level of cards has been sloping downward from those misfires but creeping upward as a whole. However, the game experienced a huge explosion of power creep with the rise of Synchros, and has been rocketing upwards ever since then.

And no, Konami does not seem to care. As long as people keep playing, it boosts profits to induce power creep - makes new sets sell more. As long as we keep buying despite their poor card designs, they'll keep forcing power creep.

[darkcrab]

Originally Posted by HochDeutsch

Like Magic: The Gathering and the Pokemon TCG, Yu-Gi-Oh! has been experiencing power creep ever since its inception, except that - as in Magic, some of the best cards happened to come out earliest (Raigeki, Pot of Greed, etc.). So the power level of cards has been sloping downward from those misfires but creeping upward as a whole. However, the game experienced a huge explosion of power creep with the rise of Synchros, and has been rocketing upwards ever since then.

And no, Konami does not seem to care. As long as people keep playing, it boosts profits to induce power creep - makes new sets sell more. As long as we keep buying despite their poor card designs, they'll keep forcing power creep.

this, and people will keep buying because theyve found a game were as long as you have money/a smidge of luck you can win.

or just stack

[Chaos3600]

I don't mind "power creep" in small doses nor do I mind new ideas outclassing the old. Yugioh lacks set-rotation, so it only makes sense that meta-shifts have to happen with new things looking more appealing than the old, yet there still isn't a reason for older things to still be cool outside of that they just simply can't do it anymore.

In all honesty, it comes to a point where certain cards are going to be outclassed(Cyber Dragon is the prime example) and other cards are never going to really be on the right side of the fence(such as things like Raigeki). Power creep is something that exists and will continue to exist; the rate of growth is far more important, as is making sure that extra power is only of use to the good players and not the bad.

[rovenhack]

While power creep is unavoidable and Yu-Gi-Oh does not have rotation of any kind, the game is going to be designed in such a way that the new cards have to be better than the older ones in order to sell. And since Yu-Gi-Oh! has source material (the anime and manga), the power of cards originating from the source material cannot be effectively scaled or tested. Cost of playing the game.

[Innocent]

i wonder how konami is going to outclass tourguide in the future, i dont want to find out.

[L2theZ]

Interestingly enough Wizards has an article (from 2002) where they discuss this very problem and why they rotate sets in and out.

This first point is the most important. Card power is relative. Ancestral Recall, as an example, is only a good card until we create a card that allows you to draw four cards for Blue Mana. The thing that defines the power level of any one card is the other cards that exist with it in the same environment.

One way to look at this phenomenon is to look at Volcanic Hammer. When Volcanic Hammer was reprinted in Seventh Edition (it first appeared in Portal), many players complained. Why did Wizards put such a “bad card” in the basic set? In the current Standard environment though, Volcanic Hammer is seeing play. How can a “bad card” be good enough to play? The answer rests in the card Lightning Bolt. Lightning Bolt is strictly better than Volcanic Hammer. It has the same effect but its one mana cheaper and is an instant rather than a sorcery. When players first saw Volcanic Hammer, they compared it to Lightning Bolt and, in comparison, Volcanic Hammer seemed pretty damn sucky. But, when Lightning Bolt is removed from the picture, such as in the current Standard environment, Volcanic Hammer looks a lot better.

As an experiment, let's say we got together a collection of the top three hundred pro players and had them select the 1500 most powerful cards in Magic’s history. I chose 1500 as that is roughly the size of a full Standard environment. We then ran a Pro Tour for these three hundred players where the format was decks built using only those 1500 cards and basic land. After the tournament, we count how many of each card was used. Any card used in any deck or sideboard (even if there’s only one in the entire tournament) is counted.

Experience (as in: years of looking at outcomes of premier events like Pro Tours, Grand Prix and Nationals) tells us that only 300-400 unique cards would see play. Why? Because even among the best cards, some cards are just better than others. Mahamoti Djinn is a solid creature, but it's no Morphling. Regrowth is an excellent spell but it's not Yawgmoth's Will. In this environment, some of the “good cards” become “bad cards." The phenomenon always holds true. No matter what 1500 cards you pick, the cards will rank in a power order. When a player goes to build a deck (assuming his goal is to build the most competitive deck), he will choose cards at the top of the list before cards at the bottom.

If we can have 300-400 good cards, doesn’t that mean we can make a large expansion where all the cards see play? Yes, in theory, we could design a 330 card set where every card sees play. But what about the next set? Would anyone buy the next small expansion if none of the cards were tournament worthy? Of course not. The only way to then make the next set have tournament-worthy cards is to increase the power level. The new more powerful cards would then displace some of the cards from the first set. Unfortunately, this solution would ultimately destroy the game as the power level would keep increasing until it spun madly out of control.

Granted the whole standard environment and the Forbidden List are nothing but tools in the ripoff scheme that is buying packs in that they rotate out cards and force people to buy new ones, but Konami suffers from that last paragraph (the game is already past the spinning madly out of control part) because they don't do set rotation and thus have to keep increasing the power level to make sure people buy newer sets.

Honestly how many cards printed in the first 5 years of Yu-Gi-Oh's see any play anymore? It's not a lot.

[Suibon]

Originally Posted by Innocent

i wonder how konami is going to outclass tourguide in the future, i dont want to find out.

They did it with Treeborn Frog (knock knock, Tengu); surely they can do the chutzpah with Tour Guide and have people defend them as they get away with everything else.

[DarthRevan]

Honestly as previously pointed out some of the originals were the most powerful and are still used (Sangan, Dark Hole, Heavy Storm, ect) But really what is driving up the power is an absence of cost. Before costs (tributing) had to be balanced with rewards now cost have their own rewards (example: tributing a hieritech will give you not only the other monsters effect but the tributed monster's one as well)