Watch This if You Quit Yu-Gi-Oh! Because of Pendulums 

I quit when people were able to summon their whole deck in one turn.

Yugioh died when people forgot about the Heart of the Cards

Yu-gi-oh died for me when It became a game of one player watching the other playing solitaire for 5-10 minutes straight.

I think the issue was the game accelerating to a degree that I was no longer comfortable with. A good chunk of the meta kept on getting faster and faster and I just didn't want to deal with that noise. For whatever reason, I still enjoy hearing about the game.

IMO, Yugioh died when they introduced normal summoning

Haven't seen anyone quit because of Pendulums, but I know some people who refuse to play with Link format.

Remember when you got to summon a monster in attack position and end your turn

The True Reason why Yu-Gi-Oh died is because of Crazy Card effects (mostly monsters) that summons shit from here and there and from deck and then all that leads to boards with a lot of negations so the game is over even before Turn 2 starts.

yugioh 2009: "oh crap I drew a bad hand. maybe I can play myself out of this. ill stall for a few turns and start setting up a strategy." yugioh 2020: "oh crap I drew a bad hand. scoop."

Yugioh was much more fun when it was less complicated, just about everyone could understand the game.

Yugioh died when players forgot about the power of friendship

I quit the game after they introduced fusion summoning, two monsters fusing together that aint right

I disagree with the statement that pendulums could have killed Yugioh, its more of a symptom of how Konami failed to control power creep, and just rolled with it to evolve the game. Similar to hand trap dominance.

My opinion on the big changes: Synchro: Interesting way to make complementing levels matter, but it basically made Fusion obsolete instantly. Pendulums: Interesting idea, but made both the cards and the game board really unpleasant looking. Also, I thought it was stupid that you could pendulum summon out of your extra deck. If it was just your hand, I would have been alright with it. XYZ: Hard to explain, but I actually think this was the best of the Extra deck summoning mechanics since it rewards good deck building. I just don't like how many cards were made that chained XYZ monsters into more XYZ monsters. Link: Smart idea on paper that rewards smart play, but the cards were made too strong from the start. It feels like it's supposed to be the cards that bridge to expand your choices, not become the ultimate Boss monsters itself.

The pendulum summoning was crazy but link summoning was the final nail on the coffin.

I liked synchro and xyz summoning. They were cool new ways to play, and the cards didn’t have two paragraphs of text on them. I quit after pendulums, not because of the pendulums, but that’s when the gameplay changed completely. You used to have small combos and duels would last for multiple turns. Now, you spend upwards of ten minutes watching your opponent search their deck and play solitaire with themselves. All with cards that have waaaay too much text. Duels feel like a single player experience today. Yugioh did die with pendulums. Look at the population of players from the xyz era to today.

All of these newfangled cards are changing up the game. Why can’t we go back to the simpler time of pot of greed?

In my opinion, Link summoning ruined it. All the free space to play extra deck monsters...then link summoning says, "Nope, gotta summon me if you want more." This is why duel links and playing in real life is preferred to me because I have the ruleset and format I like. Link summoning killed off fusion, synchro, and xyz summoning.

I quit yugioh when I was told that I couldn't use pot of greed to add 2 additional cards to my hand

Power Creep killed Yugioh

I Quit because of Links, i played during the pendulum era and quite liked them, they offereed a whole new way of playing without "killing" other ways. Will you make a video about players who quit because of links?

Commenters doesn't undestand pendulums

I quit when people started to take 5 minutes in one turn then when I did the same they started complaining that I take to much time.

Idk man when fusion came out it made sense to me. When synchro summoning came out it was pretty simple. And xyz was pretty straight forward. But the link and pendulum stuff was just.....wierd.

I don't have a problem with a mechanic being maybe stronger than others. At least pendulums don't make every other mechanic worse just by existing like a certain other group of cards

I'm more on the first train of thought (and still kinda am) in that Pendulum summoning is just a lot more difficult to learn than others. It doesn't help that I get back into Yugioh and have to learn about both Pendulum and Link summoning (and other newer rules with it) I've more or less figured it out... primarily by avoiding Pendulum summoning at all costs XD

I feel like more people leave the game for monetary and life reasons, a new mechanic will just be the catalyst.

Yugioh then : (Turn 5) My pride and my soul, my Blue-Eyes White Dragon! Yugioh now : (Turn 1) I negate you from playing !

If anything, link really just hurt the game for me the most.

Yugioh died when they didnt limit special summoning. Most games dont need this limitation but yugioh took special summoning and ran that into the ground

I quit yugioh when Bakugan came out

pendulums i think are fine, link summoning is just such a fat no

Pendulums didn't kill Yugioh.. But imo WHEN Pendulum started to exist, the game started a power creep ramp comparable to a runaway train flying down a track towards a brickwall at increasing speed that continues to this day.

I quit because it got too complicated. Even when i was aware of the competitive scene, i just wanted to have fun but the complexity of the mechanics are more ridiculous with every expansion. You needed to read a ridiculously long card effect to know what does it had to do with a 10 card combo, now multiply that scenario for every archetype.

Looking at the tournament-level might not be the best when talking about casual players leaving. With at least with pre link pendulums a casual deck might be able to a few times break a pendulums board but the fact at they were basically able to infinitely bring back those monsters for free feels terrible for those playing against them

Yu-Gi-Oh died when they stopped playing in the shadow realm

People at my locals sides against pendulum even tho no one plays them here.

how do people find any summoning mechanic difficult? it took me like 1 hour at most to learn synchro, pendelum, xyz, and link when i got back into the game, its designed for children/teens!

been around since 2001 to synchro era retired xyz era my brother made me love yugioh again came back in the end of pendulums link era made me retire for good i only play old formats online

hate on links now not pendulum LOL

I run a Odd-Eyes deck (pendulum deck), so this video doesn't apply to me. I like to stay updated. I have a Cyberse Link deck and I still dislike Links.

I didn't like the idea of pendulums but eventually accepted them. However, I don't like the link format at all and it completely killed my passion to ever play the game.

Konami: "What's wrong with the game? It works like a charm in the anime 🤔"

Me: stayed for Duel Monsters Stayed for Synchro Stayed for Xyz Stayed for Pendulums Quit at Links

Exactly in the beginning it was fine. I didn't quit till quilphorts cause in Mexico utopia lighting and diamond crab king weren't legal.

I just play casually with no pendulums, and links. I liked summoning methods all the way to synchros. Xyz's are ok, theyre pretty interesting.

Great job on this video, probably your best one IMO. Not because I quiy with pendulums, but this just sounds like a well thought out discussion where you objectively look at both sides of the argument and then give your opinion with back up. Once again, great job

Very good insightful video. Would love to see you tackle the link mechanic. Personally the introduction of the link mechanic took me out of the game for about a year and the biggest problem about the mechanic is, like you said you are forced to play links. Thankfully most decks but not all have their own link monster and has brought me back into the game recently

I’m actually on the reverse I started to like Yugioh MORE because of Pendulums but I also came into the game at the tail end of Zexal Era and a new thing coming out got me really interested.

Appreciate you trying to make a point to those who quit when Pendulums came out, but it was a very poor one you made. I quit playing Yugioh when Legacy of the Duelist came out on consoles and it was in part because of Pendulums. The games cut tag mode so the game lost my interest, but the card game overall lost my interest because the Pendulum monsters and mechanics. I personally wouldn't pick Yugioh back up again because 'Pendulums didn't dominate', I would pick the card game/video games back up if I was free to play the decks I wanted. When Pendulums first came out, it made the slow decks that kind of worked obsolete. Play a deck that wasn't meta and end up blown up by these new monsters that went on top of the extra deck and could be summoned en mass again next turn. Just having them in the game hurt decks that weren't super fast to begin with. Telling me Pendulums were not great outside of Qli's doesn't matter, because Qli's were still a thing. I stopped playing due to Pendulums and the way the game itself was evolving. Look at the game now, all I see when I'm browsing content like this is talks of FTKs and OTKs, the game has changed into a race to win at the first or second turn now. Synchros, XYZs, Fusions to an extent already did this, but the implementation of Pendulums was Konami saying "we're going faster now". I can't see how you can honestly (and this video is old and I haven't seen your latest video, yet maybe) recommend to players that dropped off when Pendulums were introduced, to pick the game up now after Link summons are now a thing. I don't understand Link summons as I don't follow the game anymore(just watching random Yugioh videos), but from the tiny bit I've seen from it, it's more limiting to play in today's game for people who don't just follow the meta than it was back in the day. This(or January when you made this video) isn't the time for people who quit years ago to come back, players like me who didn't like Pendulums and the assortment of rule changes that would still need to be learned and fully understood, are not going to have a good ol' time learning Link summons and the restrictions that come with them. Besides, Link monsters are forced on players that want to special summon like crazy, so if someone used to do that with a deck back in the day, they can't now without using Link monsters. If players want to quit playing a game, they should and just move on. I don't understand you @2:30. I'm pretty sure there are tons of people still playing the game, but as someone who quit and watched this video, I'll stick to watching from afar from time to time and stick to other hobbies.

Couple notes: at a kitchen table level of yugioh, there werent a whole lot of easily available decks that were as good as the magician structure deck. I think at one point all of my friends had a pendulum deck at the same time. Another note, the era itself might be the best era for yugioh in this way: the whole era celebrated all of the mechanics that came before it in the top tier. Xyz, synchro, fusion, main deck special summoning, tribute summoning, and rituals of all things were represented at one or more points throughout that era. It was fantastic.

Hey dzeeff when are we getting the link version of this? Just curious lol

I quit before Synchro and came back to Yugioh when Links was freshly introduced, so you can imagine my surprise there were SEVERAL new ways to summon. I didn't find Pendulums confusing, but I didn't like them regardless. Pendulum cards are just seriously ugly. Normal YGO cards already have a lot of text these days, but with Pendulums they split it into two separate paragraphs with even smaller font. Just fucking wonderful. I'm half-and-half on Links. I like the summoning conditions and some of the effects, but having a lot of extra-deck-centric decks (dont know the term) basically now require Links is pretty lame. Also, I just think the extra monster zones are excessive.

you know i actually miss pre master rule 4 pendulums, yeah some decks were annoying but using all card types in tandem actually made it really cool. pendulums now from my experience are too slow and frankly there tends to always be a better way of doing what they accomplish. the only pendulum card i run right now is odd eyes raging in my side deck with phantom knights because i sometimes feel like playing something different and even then i never use it for being a pendulum.

I haven't quit yet. I just really enjoy your videos. They are very informative and it helped me get caught up with the game. Thanks

Im an old school duelist but I’m excited to learn how to pendulum summon looks like a lot of fun! Can’t wait to give it a try.

I don't like the idea of Pendulums, I don't like the ideas of Links, and I absolutely hate that Field Spells stopped affecting, y'know, _the field!_ The one thing that set them apart from permanent spells.

I don’t like how games can end in 2-4 turns its aids

Something that bugged me was that the link monster cards was Blue and not red, cause there was a blue monster card already, but not a red one, so why to use a repeated color?

From a strictly casual player’s perspective, after pendulum summoning was introduced Yugioh, for me, went from being a game where nearly any crazy deck idea you had and wanted to play was viable and would likely not “rotate out” to being “My opponent moved a bunch of cards around and at some point I was informed I had lost.” It was a confusing and unintuitive mechanic that had little in the way of good explanation in its early stages and it essentially warped the game around it. It completely alienated me as a player and made the game stop being fun. Synchro and XYZ both felt like fairly natural branches of the game and leaned heavily on a system very similar to fusion summoning. Pendulums were their own thing, functioned wildly differently, and added new zones to board. Link summoning, which was supposed to “fix” some of these issue then just ended up doing a very similar thing by adding zones and creating further confusing mechanics. Since I didn’t want to try to learn a second new radically different mechanic on top of go back to trying to understand pendulums, I just never got back into the game despite always having been casual. Complexity killed the game for me, not power. Sure new mechanics are confusing, but at the very least when a new card type or mechanic in MTG or Pokémon is introduced, they have the decency to explain the core rules surrounding it on the card (the only exception I can think of being the introduction of planeswalkers in MTG years ago which in all fairness caused similar reactions to what pendulums did in yugioh). Yugioh has the Problem Solving Card Text system, but it could really benefit from a system of keywords or at least reminder text as to how mechanics like fusion, synchro, XYZ, and link work. In most games, reading the card explains the card. I can’t really say that for a lot of yugioh mechanics.

Then: Don't like pendulums? play BA Now: Don't link Links? well too bad, you still can play BA though

I quit Yu-Gi-Oh not long after XYZ monsters came out. I’m fine with the idea of adding new monster types and such, but when you start to change the flow of the game itself, you’re alienating the players that fell in love with the feel of classic formula. The game is just way too fast past and chaotic nowadays for my tastes. If they wanted to introduce changes this drastic, they should have just made a new TCG altogether and left Yu-Gi-Oh as is. When your changes cause people to start abandoning an entire card type (i.e. Traps) because they’re now perceived as “too slow”, that should be a sign that you’ve royally screwed something up.

Interesting video. Have you done one on How to summon and use the Pendulum cards?

Hey Dzeef, i know you read all of the comments so i just want to say that even though i quit yugioh a couple of months ago i still watch basically all of your videos and i think you do a great job. Keep up the good work!

Links are what ruined the game

I think if the game died it isn't because of a single mechanic but more an accumulation of things which turned the game into watching your opponent cycling through his entire deck during a 20 minutes turn, bruh at this point the deck and the graveyard are just secondary hands.

I'm one of those weird types that have been playing on and off for years and despite not necessarily liking each mechanic right out of the gate, have at least grown to appreciate every extra deck mechanic to date including links. I am curious to see what's next.

The amount of times i had some one quit because “they don’t want to read all that text” is ridiculous, like why are you even playing if you don’t actually want play.

I quit cuz of the ruling that came with link monsters basically forcing us to toss a good chunk of our extra out in favor of links so we can actually use the extra deck. Making a lot of decks that can’t spam enough to link summon enough to use what they really want to use in the extra deck. Making a lot of things I like to play irrelevant. Sure they mite print some generic links to use in such decks but it adds an extra step that wasn’t planned in the design for some decks effectively neutering there effectiveness.

As a returnig player (stopped after GX), I agree with your points on all the other summoning mechanics, me and my friends play casually with the house rules of no pendulums and links. The only reason pretty much being that they are too confusing and matches with them lasted too long because of all the rulling questions. Maybe a helpful future video could be going over these mechanics, or if anyone knows an already existing similar video, please do share it!

I stopped playing a little after Synchro was introduced, but got back thanks to Duel Links, so it's nice to know the mechanics of the new type of cards introduced after I left.

I wish I could have a special "GY" exempt from card effects for my monsters to go. Then just SS 5 monster on the field with effects, then be able to attack the same turn. Not only that but you also synchro or xyz with and do more shit than any other deck. All I have to do I put two "spell/monster cards" in special zones. If that is not OP you honestly need professional help.

Pendulums arent good? Trif be like hold my beer :D

It didn't die. It was just annoying. I've been playing again for two years now. It's worse but I love it.

I really like pendulums and links and my sister hates them. How do I show her the light?

I like watching your videos even though I don't play Yu-Gi-Oh anymore. That last time I played Yu-Gi-Oh was back in college when I believe Light Sworn was meta. The only reason I knew that was the case was I had a friend that loved going to tournaments and would never shut up about the meta and what he played and why and all that. I remember back in that time my favorite deck to use where the glad beast, I just loved the way they worked and everything. Most of my friends would play with the latest ban list, even though we never played tournaments, I think out of the group of like five of us that played, two played in tournaments consistently. Either way, I got out of it shortly after college because nobody to play with and honestly I just have better things to spend my money on. From time to time I pull out the old Yu-gi-oh video games and give them ago, but yeah seeing how much this game has actually evolved is pretty wild and I just don't think I could get back into it at this point if I wanted to. All that said, I still like watching your videos, especially when you talk about the old school stuff I can understand and mostly agree with.

Pendulums were never op lol there's been like what 5 top pendulum decks since their introduction

you say it isnt woth to quit for that but you are looking it at a big scheme, like heavy tournaments, mut in locals dependending on the country they where pretty heavy

I'll say I'd be interested in hearing your analysis on Synchro, XYZ, and Link summoning in how they developed 'out the gate' as well. In their initial release.

I didn't fully quit Yu-Gi-Oh I simply won't play the link format. I don't enjoy the idea that the new mechanic implements by making ALL extra deck monster variations obsolete. I personally don't mind Ritual, Fusion, Synchro, XYZ, Hell I hated pendulums until I got my first pendulum based deck "Which where the D/D/D Deck." However I still played when pendulums came out because it didn't prevent me from playing and build decks that used formats I understood and could actually have fun with. Links make duels long, tedious, and most of all boring. It feels WAY to much like magic the gathering. Which is eh at best or worst. I wouldn't mind if they changed it, so you could still summon extra deck monsters without needing pointless and slow link cards to play. I still play the old format with a couple locals and we still buy the cards just not the pointless link cards. Hell we even have local tournaments using the old format and even have prizes. We also still use the official ban list to prevent unbalanced decks from being used. Other than that links just don't do it for me. But if you like links that's fine just don't expect me to play the format. "To Each His Own."-Unkown

Pendulum summoning got me back into the game

I quit when Yugioh became competitive Solitaire.

When I first saw pendulums I thought they'd make ones with different scales depending on which colour you placed it on. If you place it on the blue it's a 1 if you place it on the red it's a 8. When they didn't do that I was confused as to why they had the red and the blue with the same numbers on either side of the card, feel like it was ment to be like that at first but play testing showed it to be broken but the design was already put through?

I don’t recall ever mentioning it on a Google service, yet here it is, my top recommended video. How and why?

This doesnt change the fact that the egyptian gods are the best cards in the game....why else cant they be used in a duel Dont @ me

Not a pendulum channel

personally when back cause of arc v news about the anime and I thought might as well learn anim pendulums I only got to questions like is there a limit on how many monsters in your extra deck and also when you use discard effects do they go to the ED or Grave

I actually caught on to pendulum summoning pretty quickly. Not only that, but I managed to pull a secret OEPD and an ultimate Dark Rebellion on my 2nd pulls of their respective packs! I was super excited to see how pendulums could help with other summons, and once I saw the Master of Pendulum structure deck, the Odd Eyes deck became my favorite. Even today, it’s still among my favorites.

No I quite when people could mass summon 2400+ attack monsters in the first turn

Master rule 5 was just announced. It is PROOF that Pendulum summoning was a mistake, and now Link monsters are not only played how they're usually played, but now Links are now specifically designed to nerf ONLY Pendulum Summoning. Anyone who argues that Pendulums weren't broken, what say you now?

So I live in Northern Michigan where places to place Yu-Gi-Oh are very few and far between (it took me about 2.5 hours to get to the nearest locals), so I mainly played on DN aside from maybe once or twice in the summer when I could take these long trips. My last competitive format was July 2015, which was a lot of fun. I was playing Volcanics at the time. The two decks that seemed by far the most confusing to me were Qli and Spirit Beasts. After that format, I stayed for the new Red-Eyes stuff but once Pe/Pe became the new deck that everyone ran I just stopped playing because it seemed like all the new cards had a wall of text, at least four effects, and/or prevented your opponent from taking some very common action (like how Denko Sekka basically killed all control decks) and it just seemed like the game way more effort than what it was worth. The only time after that I even played on DN ranked was the summer of 2016 with Monarchs and PK Fire. Again, after that, the decks became too confusing and too powerful and it no longer resembled the game I loved as a kid. Which is why I now stick to older formats like GOAT Control, HAT, and Nekroz formats.

I agree with dzeef. Even though that the pendulum cards may look confusing to other players, you are not forced to understand them to play against it. With links, the only thing that is forcing you is that if you want to summon more than 1 extra deck monster. You need a link monster to expand your space if you want to summon multiple numbers of extra deck monsters.

Links and master rule 4 killed it for me and how overpowered links are granted its a link format so links have to be good right i mean its a business they need money

what really killed yu-gi-oh (at least for me) is powercreep, every new expansion, basically outclass the older one. i stopped following competitive yu-gi-oh, after synchro came out and i don't know if anything changed, but since they didn't add a standard format (like literally every other card game did), i doubt that. I can see that this formula appeal to some people, because they always want new and fresh things. But it's definetly not for me, and also, i think it make the game super expensive.

Can MR4 become MR5 where the extra monster zone is just for links and the points are where you summon other link monsters to and the whole extra deck is free? And where you can only pendulum 2 from the extra deck regardless as a set rule? like a +5 for existing is stupid

I'm used to magic where when they introduce a new keyword there is usually reminder text on the common cards with that keyword so you know how to apply that to all other cards with that word. Yugioh s the only card game I know that has updated the core rulebook this way.

i quit because of link summoning and the rise of hand traps

I gave up after Links, not Pendulums

Thats the thing I love the most about Yugioh: if you dont like a mechanic, you dont have to play it (except links which is kinda lame I agree). Theres so much variety. Like synchros, build that deck. Like xyz, you can do that. Sure you still gotta play it but unless youre competitive you dont gotta worry that much and if youre already competitive theres a ton of extra rulings you had to learn anyways (not many ppl realize the missed timings stuff casually for example).

tbh my friend is confused about if you tribute a pend monster as to if it goes to the extra deck or not