Rarran Reacts to  

Near the end of the video, I was def tilted from chat and I misunderstood farfas point about "The Illusion". Im sorry for making a bigger deal than it is

MBT coming up with a new name for Rarran each time he mentions him by name is absolutely hilarious.

Rarran Made a tactical error by not jangling keys while discussing Farfa's video, chat would not have been combative at all.

I love rarran finding out in real time that MBT is one of the naturally funniest people on the internet but nobody knows cause he only ever plays yugioh

The biggest failing of MBT’s video is that he forgot his usual disclaimer about the Average Farfa Viewer. That would have helped Rarran SO much 😂😂😂

12:10 Clarifying the difference between "he did not have fun" and "he didn't get a chance to have fun" is like the difference between "negating the effect" and "negating the ACTIVATION of effect"

First half of the vid: take a shot every time Rarran gets called something else. Second half: take a shot every time a graph is drawn

I got back into yugimons after watching Cimo's entire progression series, it was like watching the game evolve from cavemen to acid trip in real time.

I just want to say, your most recent attempt to get into YGO was PERFECTLY timed. Recently, Konami's shareholders brought forth concerns that the game wasn't attracting new players. The fact that your attempt came so soon afterward and actually showed what it was like for an average potential new player feels like a big deal to me, because the waves in the community seem like an understanding that there actually might be problems that can be fixed.

For some of your reactions you said they were treating it as a good thing, but what they were actually trying to imply was "Oh no, its much worse than that hun"

Face value what Farfa said was even if you horribly lose in magic, hearthstone, or most other TCGs you at least get a few turns to play since you're usually just summoning one card due to mana and passing. In YuGiOh you summon everything turn one so you have no chance to play anything, leaving the feeling that you literally didn't get to play.

rarran was like "I understand the damage step" oh my sweet summer child.

Rarran losing his shit over MBT's purposefully bad pronunciations is the thing I live for XD

Here from the MBT community. Regarding MBT's last point about resource systems in YGO, I think he brings up the cards themselves as an example due to how few-and-far-between playable draw cards are in YGO. It's why Maxx C is so centralising of a card; seeing 3-4 cards into your deck with pretty much no drawback is incredibly impactful on how a game will turn out, simply due to how much more the typical YGO card does in comparison to other card games.

I think the fundamental problem of approaching Yugioh as a new player is that everyone approaches it based off what they know from other card games when it's literally impossible to correlate anything from any card game with Yugioh. No mana, no colors, no keywords, the only correlation is basically just there's a battle phase and even with that, Yugioh does it so differently than any other game with a damage step, damage calculation, etc. It's really more like a fighting game where you kind of can mess around and learn on your own, doing combos but it's not until you watch someone else play it and the combos just click and you're like "ohhhh i kinda get now!" it's very difficult to jump in and learn on your own.

I think the biggest problem with keywords in Yugioh is that there are many effects in the game where it could be almost exactly the same effect, but changing a single word in that sentence could change how that effect interacts with other cards. For example, if a card requires you to discard 2 cards (not cost) to be able to do an extra effect, there is a difference between whether you discarded "those cards" or discarded "them." The exact word choice matters too much that if they wanted to make a keyword for certain types of effects, they'd have to make variants on that keyword to represent the different types of interactions.

I said it before in Rarran's original video and I will say it here as well. The main difficulty in YGO is that all (essentially) the decks are synergistic combo piles designed to ladder various effects into each other, which provides pretty much no good entry point for new players because you have to understand the way the cards synergize and can't just take them as you see them. Like, I've played a lot of TCGs (and tabletop games in general) and YGO is the only one where I have so regularly and aggressively hamstring myself by triggering effects in slightly wrong orders. And yes, some of this is just me being dumb at times. And also this is not say that you cannot play other TCGs badly or anything or that like playing handing a new play an Ironworks deck in Magic is gonna result in a better experience for them. It is just that the -way- you end up playing YGO wrong as a new player can be exceedingly frustrating because it is all combo play and there is no real "Red Deck Wins, go face aggro" equivalent to help keep new players low to the ground (but effectively actually playing the game) when they're learning. And to be clear. I am not good at YGO by any stretch of the imagination. But I -have- had fun and I -have- gotten those matches with real solid back and forth where I can see why people really fall in love with the game. I just think the core problem for onboarding new players is incredibly obvious and also very difficult to solve and want to reiterate that as somebody who has played a LOT of games over a LOT of years.

If anyone is still confused about what Farfa meant by the "Illusion" of gameplay It's that in resource-based card games even though you have no conceivable way of winning the game you don't just lose on the spot. The resource system slows down the pace of the game so that you can take game actions. But since you have no way of actually winning the game you're just playing to lose. In Yugioh a lot of the time you just know on the spot how you're gonna do against your opponent just by looking at your opening hand and seeing what they play. You just figure out if you're gonna lose or not faster.

"I understood the damage step" - I lol'd Damage step has some of the most needlessly complex rulings in the game, that don't come up like ever, but if they do, they ruin your day. In short, you have 5 different substeps, and different restrictions on what cards can and cannot be activated during each substep. Also @1:02:42 - I dont think the 6 months is accurate. I've started the game (admittedly again, after playing a bit on the playground, and the DS games) in June last year, with Dragonmaid in the TCG, and the amount of understanding most yugioh players have (what does this do, are there relevant restrictions) is like...5 times + a basic guide. Like, half of the card is basically fluff during a turn, which you can ignore. "This [card names] effect can only be activated once per turn" - no line would try to use it more often, because of exactly that. any type of lock - if you are aware of it, it's relevant. If not, it is basically a deckbuilding restriction, so you dont have to care anymore once you hit play. The big issue here is that cardtext is formatted worse than your average 4th grade essay, and thus impossible to get the relevant info at a glance while playing against it.

I would love to see some videos with MBT. He's not only entertaining, but he also has pretty good insight into the field of card games, so he might be pretty interesting for an advanced version of rating cards or something like that.

I responded on your comment for MBT's video, but I'll also put it here with timestamps relevant to this video. That is, every nickname MBT calls you: 1:27 Ra-Ran 1:57 Rar-Ran 2:46 Ray-Ran 3:07 Old Rarry 4:23 Mr. Ran 5:17 Ran-Ranch 7:42 Hidden Valley Ra-Ranch 9:03 RarXD 11:56 Rarrinago 12:40 Ruh-Ran 16:00 Rastafarian 17:35 Rat Race

I think Yugiohs complexity and Nuance can be extremely fun, the problem is that you can only enjoy this after already hqving lots of experience

Even as someone who has casually played YuGiOh throughout the years deck building is one of the most daunting things.

There are a few older cards that have 'keywords' in their text but then the keyword is immediately followed by an explanation of what it means. I'm pretty sure that every single 'Gemini', 'Spirit' and 'Union' monster has a large portion of their text explaining what those keywords mean.

Now mbt and farfa has to react to his reaction of their reactions

I'm glad he enjoyed MBT's response. And I was even happier to hear you would be open to the idea of collabing with him. I think whether it's just a casual one off collab or a series(maybe where he can teach you yugioh at a digestible pace) it would be hilarious and help cross more players a viewers between communities.

I've been watching you and MBT for a while now, really cool to see you both interact.

Watching Rarran slowly lose his mind during the Farfa section was amazing.

The change-up from the first reaction to the second is crazy lmao

An issue with yugioh implementing keywords is that card effects differ in small but important ways, such as whether they target, how they resolve when parts of the effect fail, and what the restrictions are, there's more than 5 different "once per turn" conditions that all behave differently for instance. Theoretically, if we were to try to add "indestructable" as a keyword, it would only replace the effectively identical "cannot be destroyed" and would still have to specify what it can't be destroyed by, as it may be only monster effects, only opponent's card effects, only attacks, etc. Essentially, the issue is that there aren't many consistent effects to make into keywords ("search", "bounce", and probably a couple others would work), and if you try to make keywords for small parts of effects, you find that they usually already exist as 2-3 consistent words that describe that action (even if you haven't encountered it before) without having to memorize another keyword. ("What does excavate mean?" is itself a barrier to entry)

as a yugioh player rarran is absolutely right about 95% of things he says, its insane what some ppl say in chat

chat should’ve gave him a full power swoso deck. Salad to a new player is wild

There is something fascinating about how fast people get mad.

The reaction to the MBT video ends at like 18:00. Farfa made him go crazy wth

They should really make it to where they give you Three Decks for completing a full session of a respective mechanic. Like maybe Traptrix after learning Traps, Xyz and Link. Swordsoul for learning Synchro summon. Shaddoll for learning fusion summon. And I don't mean these would be half complete either I mean they are maxed out with the full version of each.

In YGO each archetype is basically its own minigame/resource. That's the appeal for veteran players but impossible to teach to an isolated casual player.

As a yugioh player Rarrans Chat this video inflicted me with so much pain

As a viewer i would be so hyped to see you do a collab with MBT, even if its not yugioh related.

54:45 How can you even try to copy a deck if you refuse to watch a 5-10 minute guide of a deck on internet. This game has 20+ years of cards, you can’t expect to figure out the right cards to play on your own on day 1. Also the creative process is so important in yugioh and i’m not saying you should be netdecking, but you should at least be aware of the main gimmicks of the deck before personalizing it

Last part was so painful to watch, dude was way too on the defensive

Yu-gi-oh is basically the Marvel vs. Capcom 3 of card games and that is why I love playing the game. Both games are very overwhelming for new players though.

Our boy Rar-Ran not understanding a single iota of Farfa's sarcasm and going absolutely balistic was hilarious to watch.

There is a resource system in Yu-Gi-Oh: it's called Life Points. You only need 1, the rest are disposable. ;)

One thing that people tend to misunderstand about the resources being managed in yugioh is the importance of managing hard once per turn effects. For an example, tearlament is an archetype based around triggering the effect to fusion summon on the 3 main monsters every turn. Essentially the deck gets 3 attempts to fusion summon per turn provided you can get the monsters into the grave. Those effects are the resource being managed. Most yugioh decks have something similar to this, but how exactly this manifests varies from deck to deck. This is where the complexity and steep learning curve comes from. This was MBTs point from the end of his video.

I agree with literally every point you've made but the one thing that is real annoying is that you think when someone says it's more complex, you think they're saying it's better. They make think it's better but at 1:09:00 when farfa is explaining the difference with HS and YGO you get mad triggered and say "that doesn't mean it's better" when everyone including your chat is telling you that he didn't say that. You've assumed that's what they mean. I watch you, mbt and farfas content and pretty much agree with all of you but that was a bad take.

Lmao Rarran, Farfa is chill. MBT and Farfa agreed with you

A problem with trying to simplify YGO cards is that a lot of the text is just different clauses and limitations and the whole thing is like a legal document. I'd love to see keywords, but have fun finding 4 different keywords for: "Can only activate the effect of this card once per turn" "Can only activate the effect of *insert card name here* once per turn" "Can only activate each effect of this card once per turn" "Can only activate each effect of *instert card name here* once per turn." So much of YGO text is just limitations and conditions and everything else since they can't leave any room for interpretation (unlike something like HS which is exclusively digital and thus can have the text be more ambiguous since the game can decide the interpretation)

I’m of the opinion that the best way to learn yugioh without outside help is to look up a doomking balerdroch turbo decklist and learn from there. It’s the basic starting point for every zombie deck, is decently simple in concept (as the deck’s whole gimmick is sending the titular card to the graveyard and reviving him, like a zombie resurrecting), and once you learn it, you can throw in any archetype of zombie monsters to learn that archetype’s summoning mechanic while still having a recognizable list of cards that mesh well with your new cards. Shiranui for synchro, vampires for XYZ, vendread for rituals, mayakashi for links, eldlich for fusion and trap monsters.

In my experience as a noob in yugioh, the gameplay feels great once you get confortable with your deck and some key cards in the meta. I like that each hand gives me a puzzle to solve. The only thing I really dislike is that I have to study a lot before playing a new deck. I think it is a good game if you have time and pacience to read a lot.

I taught myself how to play when master duel came out. It was not fun. Only *now* do I find the game so fun. Half of my fun is building decks because I like to find stuff that works together and expresses my personality better

yeah, you do get that thing of "this card does this" by the art but it takes immersing yourself in the game for a few months, since there are so many different archetypes and things you can do. Also effects are just more wild in ygo, understanding the difference between monster effects in ygo vs how creatures have effects in other games is really important. Also, if you ever get btfo by a deck in yugioh, ask the guy playing the deck to explain it to you and youll get it in no time. Game looks a lot harder than it actually is, my biggest issue with ygo is that its a bit auto-piloty since you're always assembling so much stuff it just seems like a complete waste of time. We used to have plenty of fun with ygo back when it had more intuitive monster effects and I think in trying to create an identity ygo has lost what made people love it in the first place.

To answer the question of what people mean when they say cards are a resource in yu-gi-oh, discarding and sacrificing cards as a cost to summon others or just use their effects is more core to the design than in other card games. That limits the amount of things you can do more directly based on the raw number of cards you have access to, irrespective of what the individual card is.

There is no way Rarran just said "He did not say hypothetically"

35:00 Rush Duels is a japanese exclusive variant (idk why) of yugioh that solves every problem rarran has with yugioh. Simpler effects, easier to read, same fast pace and tribute summoning actually matters. Also the card legibility is waay better. TLDR: it's like the Hearthstone version of Yugioh.

This has all been very interesting. I think the important thing with Yugioh is guiding people to easier decks to begin with and having a tutorial based around a selection of competent, but simple decks that can gradually introduce new players. Salads and dragonmaids were terrible first decks. To be fair to Konami, they do release one deck every meta shift which is clearly designed for newer players. Good example being Labrynth. You can make this into a casual stun deck, and slowly add cards to make it more powerful and complex. That said, I think Duel links does a good job simplifying the game enough to make it accessible... but unfortunately duel links is a scam :,D

I feel Farfa's view of other card games complexity not being as high as Yugioh is more a sign of him not understanding how deep some games go. Hell MTG has a layer system that I can say about 90% of the player base have no idea is a thing. Hell I only really know about it is due to a ruling that came up in a commander game with two cards interacting that wore never thought of being ran together. ( Humility + Opalescence) I feel most people have never seen what yugioh would be best compared to when it come to MTG, with legacy/vintage games being the closet thing to Yugioh's speed, and even then both players often play.

Farfa : A noob can't win against a pro and the end of the game is already decided when they start Yogg-Saron : Hold up ! Wait a minute !

To Rarran's defense: He's mostly right about Yu-Gi-Oh. To Rarran's offense: He eats PlayDough for living

I think a good start for Yu-Gi-Oh! is the Edison format. It has a competitive side (konami held events), a great community (there's an online page constantly uploading events, decks, and the like), a "paused" format (since it's a past format, no more cards will be added to the pool), and, most importantly, it's fun. I wish you luck in this endeavour!

I think it is super interesting that Rarran through the entirety ofbthis video, and his previous video, never called Yu-Gi-Oh a terrible game. Just a game not for him. Which I think is really good to do.

I think it is not a hot take, that card games can work without a mana system. There are difrent ways to introduce recources and it is something that is underexplored.

As a yugi boomer i actually got back into yugioh when master duel released. It actually took me a month to pick up modern yugioh but that was with looking at md tier lists. Building a tier 1 deck looking up how to play the deck, combo guides, etc For memorizing cards by just seeing their images it takes an additional few months since there are so many archetypes. After that though you kind of have learned how to speed read cards and what parts of the text are relevant or not. You understand oh this card works like this other card. It is not an easy game to get into. It is super fucking complicated where even people who have played for a while still misunderstand interactions. The "yugioh players can't read" meme is us making fun of ourselves at misunderstanding somwthing in one of the most complex card games to ever exist. I agree with everything you said in the vid.

38:48 I love this moment so much. If you know Farfa you know he's 100% joking, and Rarran reacting like it's genuine is so fucking funny to me

As someone who watches you and farfa about equally. it sounds like you are both saying the same thing with different words. So when you were disagreeing at the end i felt so confused.

i dont get why Rarran was raging so damn hard when Farfa mention the "illusion of gameplay. He is saying (at least this is HOW I TAKE IT) most if not all card games have their games determined from the get go whether it be from choice of deck, skill of players, or just hand outcome, things are already set. However, most cardgames realize this isn't good that a player realizes this so they decide that there should be a way for them to interact even if it really means nothing. Mana systems allow this to happen(this isn't the only reason for their to be a mana system or even the main one at that) because you get to play cards ever so steadily you get to play the game. Yugioh dosen't even have this illusion which its why you just sit there with your dick in your hand doing fuk all for 15 min until your opponents turn ends and see if you have the outs. He was simply pointing out that most games give you an illusion of being able to put a fight even if not really true while yugioh doesn't even do that which is horrible for new players Edit: just saw the pinned comment, he was tilted lol. The yugioh community is really up its own ass although i really feel that most CCG/TCG communities are up their own ass.

28:56 yea it does there a huge difference between a card that says “ Target one card on the field and banish it “ and “ Banish one card one the field “ stuff like that barley scratches the surface lol

I love watching MBT. You reacting to it makes this that much better.

Ok I had loads of respect for rarran through the first part but there’s a moment where he just becomes unnecessarily aggressive towards farfa and the chat. I get it towards the start of farfa’s video he doesn’t understand the sarcasm and that’s fine but there’s a point where he clearly misinterprets what farfa is saying and chat tells him and he just goes completely off on them for no reason, it was great up until this point but now he just sounds like a pissbaby randomly insulting the chat for no reason

Fun fact, master duel DOES have a way to import decks... only issue is you need to know how to use the console on your PC AND you need a konami official account AND to upload a list onto their website 😂 ITS STUPID

On the key words issue: Konami already implemented some key words over the years. "Excavate x" used to be worded "Pick up the top x cards of your deck", "banish" used to be "remove from play", "this card deals piercing damage" used to be "when this card attacks a defense position monster, it inflicts battle damage".

Honestly, for a new player to enjoy the game, I would recommend a going second gren maju build. It functions in such a way that you look at your opponents board as a puzzle to solve, and you try to punch them for game on your turn or you lose.

God, the whiplash of going from MBT'a scripted, well-articulated response to Farfa probably in his second hour on stream, fried, is funny.

Its really not that hard to understand what farfa is saying at 1:23:21, he said that if you put a pro yugioh player against a noob yugioh player the game is just over in the first turn and you wont be able to do anything, but if you put a pro hearthstone player against a noob even the noob will get to play a few turns off the game before he loses, thats the illusion that he was mentioning, in yugioh there is no illusion if you are worse then you just dont get to do anything

Farfa’s sarcasm is unmatched I promise. If farfa is serious he will announce it 9/10 times or his tone will shift 😂

In hearthstone you can draw 10 cards but, be at 0 manna so you cant do anything. In yugioh if you draw 10 in a real deck you will play allmost all of them. Thats what cards as a resource means......

I think a really interesting resource system used to be in Duel Masters (anyone remembers that?), essentially any card could be either played as their respective card type (monster, spell, etc.), or it could be used as mana. Each card had a value of 1-3 as mana. I didn't play it but I had a couple of friends who did.

As someone coming to this from the Yugioh! side of the equation, I have to admit. When someone tells me they don't like the game or think it's too much, it's easy for me to feel some type of way about it. I think a lot of us do. It's easy to mix up criticism of something you love with attack. But rationally, I recognize just about everything Rarran says is true, and I'm upset more than anything that the game I love has lost a potential player, probably forever, because their first experience is so incomprehensible. It's like I feel the need to apologize for the fact that the company that runs this game I adore, adamantly refuses to make the player onboarding process any better. I do genuinely think once you get over the massive hurdle that is getting started, you can start to intuit what cards are doing, even if you're only seeing them for the first time. I think the longer card text while daunting may be a result of the anime, as characters are often describing what a card does in any given scenario in a very similar format to the text on the card, but that does feel like a moot point, and now that Rush Duel exists and supporting anime as well, the bullet point style formatting would be leagues better and yet Konami likely just doesn't want to reprint 10,000+ cards. It sucks to be in this position, genuinely. It sucks to see someone try a game you love and not enjoy it. It sucks that there isn't much that I, personally, can do to change it. I'd love to see Rarran give Yugioh another chance some day but realistically, I know that's likely not a possibility, and while that upsets me I do respect it. It's always a funny joke having people outside the Yugioh ecosystem look at our cards and go "Wow! Pot of Greed is banned?! That's so funny!" until the rubber hits the road and they have to try and play the game itself.

I’m sorry about Farfa. Please understand he is 7 years old and his fanbase is all 5 years old

the problem with yugioh vs other card games is the game is very different than the other. other card games player going into yugioh expecting it to be the same is delusional.

Rarran getting super angry is never fun to watch. Your best moments are when you're giggling, having fun. You get tilted sometimes and thats okay, but then you start misunderstanding what people are trying to say and chat isn't super helpful because they use short answers and it just propagates itself and then you tell them to fuck off when they're trying to untilt you which is like ahhhh dude come on. Seen it happen a few times in vods and it isn't fun to watch so i imagine it must REALLY suck for you personally. Just don't really want to see you burn out cause I love your content 99% of the time.

We are so damn lucky he saw the MBT vid first

And it's SO SAD that this is the case, because Master Duel has THE BEST monetization out of all the card games. I've literally spent nothing on the game and I got to play my favorite decks almost right away. And then I go play Magic, and I can't even finish my fucking one izzet deck, because all the dual lands are rare

When you click build deck, there's a button at the bottom that says (public decks) in which you can see what people are playing and copy the deck

Prior to covid, I last played yugioh in 2016. Felt like I had a good grasp of the game and understood what cards were dangerous and how to counter them. During covid, got masterduel, rushed a meta deck (virtual world) which I eventually learned and did well with, BUT, I basically had to go first if I wanted to win. Otherwise, I would have to know the combos of all the modern decks, know which very specific steps of the combo I would have to negate with my handtraps if I wanted to win, and keep up with that momentum as new sets come out. My knowledge of a few years ago was basically useless. I can take a break from magic and catch up fairly quickly. With yugioh, that sounds impossible.

About the illusion of choice: Say you are playing against mage OTK but you are playing pirate rougue, you already lost and there is nothing you can do to win this game but you still get to play cards and attack but you never actually could play the game because the result would be the same doesn't matter what you did.

Okay... Just going to point this out. YuGiOh did not aim to be like any other card game. Cause the game was not made to be a game first. It was cobbled together post-introduction in a manga. It is unapologetic in this regard. You need to take only the most basic understanding of card games and toss out the rest. It is fine if it was too much, not fun, etc. If he started in the synchro era, he probably would have been fine. But as Xyz, pendulums, and links were added, the game also had power and effect creep. Starting fresh requires at least a few months of careful study for the most basic decks. Those that can compete anyway.

Ok, the first guys nicknames for Rarran are FREAKING HILARIOUS

As a concatenate person who has left and came back to yugioh. The biggest grip I had was the player base because some new material came out, and they weren't helpful. After learning from judges the right plays, the community is toxic and is too prideful to admit we need change for new players. Love the video, and agree this game needs improvement.

If you gave people an option to play like 2010 yugioh on master duel, people would get instantly hooked.

Streamer loses his mind after reacting to creators who agree with him because of “guy in chat”.

would really like to see an mbt rarran collab i think that would be hilouriusly fun

I don’t play yugioh because it’s complex. I play it because I like how archetypes turn deckbuilding into an art, much like how the anime portrays it as an expression of each character. But it is a terribly complicated and and hard to get in to unless you do something like a progression series or know a guy who played far back enough to understand the game.

At this point you have to collab with MBT. Not to necessarily learn Yugioh, but to see what other names he can come up with for you

Will say, 4:49 the solo mode is kinda fun as it shows the story of the cards you are playing with and the cpu isn't complete dogshit half the time.

The MBT vid brought you to my attention. He can be HIGHlarious! There is something truly special to hear a ROTHSCHIELD bag on Raytheon and the Military Industrial Complex while applying it to YGO!

yo my guy! creator-meta question: Any particular reason why this is on the second channel, I almost missed this upload and it's extremely interesting to see your thoughts on this - I'm generally way more into long form content, were you worried it wouldn't fit the more edited approach on the main channel? Excited to watch it, have a great weekend man!

So there was an interview with Richard Garfield the creator of MTG. He had mentioned that there is a scale from low complexity to high complexity if I remember right and he was comparing checkers to chess among other games. The higher the complexity the more of a barrier there is to your game to bring new players in. You inject into your game a chance of randomness as it gives that .1% chance for the new player to win even against the best. In a card game sense that can be the number of cards hand size, deck size, resources, how many cards drawn... It can even be something as simple as adding a coin flip or a die roll. When you strip that away you get a game that yes is a good game to play, but the curve is just too much for someone fresh to experience to some people the same pleasure you get when you play your favorite game.

local hearthstone player discovers MBT colorized

Here's a fun fact: did you know that as someone who started as a Yugioh player I had many of the issues that you're having with yugioh... but with hearthstone... I didn't have these issues with any other cardgame because they are actually physical cardgames and have to take time to ensure players don't enter the game with a confusion but with Hearthstone the game was so simplified that they never actually explained how cards interact and that can genuinely cause issues for both players... For example: Flight of the Bronze is a combo card with Raidboss Onyxia The reason why? whenever you use it with 7 mana it summons a 5/5 taunt Bronze Defender... Which is counted as a whelp. Onyxia cannot take damage while Whelps are on the field. I never saw anyone else using this combo so I can't imagine it was very widely known but the reason for that is that Hearthstone didn't explain jack. Can you imagine being defeated by an immune Onyxia without understanding why it's immune? That's complete and utter BS, that's the definition of bad game design. What's more the descriptions of cards are not always accurate, for example Immune states that the card can't take damage, taunt states that the card has to be attacked before they attack face. However nowhere is it explained that if you give immune to a taunt minion that it removes the taunt. I literally lost the first game I did that in because it wasn't explained. Hearthstone may be simpler but that's not always a good thing, it leaves room for confusion and doesn't explain interactions. For example what happens if you use Amalgam of the deep on Amalgam of the deep? For people who don't know: Amalgam of the deep has all types, and has Battlecry: Choose a friendly minion. Discover a minion of the same minion type. Now how Hearthstone handles the situation is contradictory to how the card says it handles the situation. How Hearthstone handles it is that it gives three totally random choices. How it should handle the situation is it should allow you discover from three minions who have all the types, because that IS their type. But even the fact that this sort of question is just there shows that Hearthstone doesn't really explain jack. Were we to look at Yugioh we'd have a firm understand of what each, and every card does by reading the card. The confusing part comes in whenever you start looking at how that interacts with other cards. However you want to know how long it takes to internalize a deck in yugioh? Most people do it in their first game, you said that you learn what a card does the first time you use it in hearthstone, yea same in yugioh. If you're confused about how this works even with the longer effects it's because you'll spend time reading every card in your deck, doing test hands, balancing re-balancing the number of cards in your deck in literally any real life card game. you don't do this in Hearthstone because hearthstone is so simplified. If a card is particularly complicated it may take more games but the reality of the situation is that won't usually take more than a single day, in reality that's not really that long a time. However to a hearthstone player I imagine spending a single day doing anything with a single card must feel like an eternity. Because Hearthstone really focuses on that simplified gameplay aspect and it can honestly be fun, but it can also be a pain as stated above. But simple reality of the situation is that if you had a horizontal scale of card games Hearthstone, and Yugioh would be on opposite sides which is why there's so much discourse from people crossing over between the communities. Is yugioh bad? well if you exclusively look at what it currently is... yeah, pretty much but that's the thing, the majority of yugioh players see the potential in the game and want to be there for whenever it's realized, but they don't understand that... it was realized... years ago, what we have now are the broken remnants of what used to be one of the best card games around. If you want to experience Yugioh in its true glory then you have to play older formats. This is a sore spot for a lot of players because a lot of them also understand that they genuinely missed out, and others are fuelled by nostalgia for those times, and the sunk cost fallacy. Also a huge difference between Hearthstone and Yugioh is Synergy. It's a requirement in Yugioh but it's a suggestion in Hearthstone. yes your deck will work better with it, will you lose every game without it? no. Whereas in yugioh if your deck doesn't synergise properly you lose every game.

One thing people keep asking for in Master Duel is alternate formats so new players, or people who don't like the massive combos of modern YGO could play that. Would be a better learning curve, and less word spam to go through to figure out what is happening, but they don't seem to care enough to give it to us. Although some IRL tournaments seem to be doing alternate format events. The people complaining you didn't finish the tutorial are coping hard and not understanding that no amount of tutorial is going to let you keep up with what is going on during your opponents turn in modern YGO. Farfa has a series where it's a tournament that bans the winning decks, and despite how many cards getting banned, there's still massive combo decks and First Turn Kills happening. Master Duel gave you a starter deck. The tutorial should have been how to play that deck at a basic level, then you duel other players with similar low complexity decks. Instead you went to PVP against people who seem to already know what they were doing with decent decks and had to sit through reading hundreds of words in a single turn, then try to figure how what to do against it. Keep in mind, IRL people would complain about Slow Play if you take too long trying to figure out what cards did and what to do. Master Duel makes things easier with button prompts and highlighted cards/text (sometimes) and it still feels like you spend most of your first few days playing reading dozens of cards a minute trying to remember what they all do. Side note: I think the only reason YGO doesn't use Keywords despite the desperate need for them is that they don't want to reprint cards with updating wording, or reformat the text on thousands of cards currently in Master Duel/Duel Links. Your opinion based on the first few hours of playing is what's going to happen to the vast majority of players who aren't just casually playing with friends. Maybe if more people tried YGO and came to a similar conclusion and made videos/streams about their new player experience, Konami might actually try to make a change. But probably not.