parhelia_0000 wrote:I'm sure so many people are starting to get sick and tired of people who are making it impossible for us to create balanced custom cards without getting wrecked by random opponents who bring in overpowered decks. Unless you're always playing against a specific group of people, it's never gonna be possible for custom cards to be balanced.
Just because it isn't possible for the custom format to be perfectly balanced doesn't mean we can't and shouldn't still try to make our custom cards
closer and closer to being balanced.
The way you get an idea of how balanced custom cards are is to start by looking at the current advanced format meta, the latest banlist, and what kinds of staples are being played at the moment, which is what Konami actually often does when deciding how to ban current cards and design new ones. If a card like
Pot of Greed is banned because it's a free +1 and forces almost every deck out there to run it with little to no downside, then it should be clear that making a custom spell that says "
Draw 3 cards" or "
Draw 4 cards" is going to be a problem. If the current best deck in the meta (Swordsoul) is so good because it can consistently end on 2-3 negates/disruptions every turn, then it shouldn't be that hard to see why making a custom archetype that can, just as consistently, if not more consistently, end on 2 or 3 times that many negates/disruptions every turn would be a problem.
After getting that idea, you make appropriate changes, whether those changes are buffs, nerfs, or some combination of the two. Buffs can include, but aren't limited to, making cards/effects faster, stronger, less restrictive, able to do more powerful impactful things, and so on. Nerfs can include, but aren't limited to, making cards/effects slower, weaker, more restrictive, able to do less impactful things, and so on.
Also, some articles and even youtube videos explain why and how some cards and combos are "broken" if you want a better idea of what broken cards/combos look like.
https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Brokenhttps://yugipedia.com/wiki/Forum:Reasons_why_cards_are_Forbidden/Limitedhttps://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLpAqSYsFkgvvQTxYhPUkmXQCD5I_sFRZRThat is, unless the DB staff team implements a system to put a stop to these stupid custom cards, once and for all.
Yes, I know I do tend to make meta-based archetypes; however, it's not without reason. You guys have to understand that I build custom decks while taking into account the possibility that I may have to deal with that random custom card player who brings in a deck that just cannot be negated in any ways possible. You can only block those people so many times to the point where it becomes difficult to find people to play custom cards against, and there's only so many times that one can ask the opponent to bring balanced custom cards, only to get scammed with an OP board.
The main reason it may be starting to get difficult for you to find people to play customs against is because, just like how so many people have grown tired of the users CrystalMusic and Chaosprince with broken cards, and have made it a habit to specifically avoid those users when possible, more and more people are making it a habit to avoid you in the custom card pool due to your intentionally broken cards. You're not entirely at fault, as you've had to block people who had broken customs of their own and used them to mess things up for you, but you're also contributing to that very problem by making your own customs broken and causing others to want to block you as well. You keep saying the reason you feel the need to make your cards broken is because you keep running into others who make their customs broken, but if you've already been avoiding those people anyways by default, there's really no need for you to power up your customs in the hopes of beating them, since you aren't going to be dueling them anyway, since you're going to be naturally avoiding them to begin with. It's like how when someone brings banned cards, or cards that are in every way better than some of the banned cards, into customs. There's no need to go powering up your customs in the hopes of beating that person.
Futuregamer explained this in his guide, saying, and I quote:
"Accepting that there will be idiots, loads of idiots. There is no point in arguing with them, simply quit the duel on the spot, let them think about what they did wrong after the misery starts settling in. If your opponent plays “Pot of Greed” or something similarly unreasonable, there is no takeaway from the duel, it simply doesn’t count, DON’T start powering up your Deck in the hopes that you will be beating “that” idiot, that’s how you will become an idiot yourself."While his specific use of the word "idiot" may have been uncalled for, there is truth to what he's saying. If you have a problem with any certain opponent who played cards that are banned, upgrades of banned cards, or something crazy like that, you shouldn't rely on that kind of duel to determine how to adjust your own cards or else you'll only end up contributing to the problem. You shouldn't, and don't need to, contribute to the toxicity by making things even more toxic yourself by making your cards intentionally overpowered just because you ran into someone that made theirs overpowered, or else you're only spreading the toxicity further.
As long as an automated system is not put in place, we'll always have to put up with players like CrystalMusic and Chaosprince who ruin the custom card format for the rest of us, forcing people like me to build decks with tier 0 meta in mind just to have a chance at beating them.
The issue with this mindset of yours, though, is that this is a self-fulfilling prophecy. If the custom format has, say, 50 people in it, 48 of which try to balance their customs, and the remaining 2 people are CrystalMusic, Chaosprince, or whatever other user(s) that comes to mind who doesn't at all care about any kind of balance, and those 2 go in and each duel 4 people, and then all 8 of those people power up their customs to now be broken hoping to now stand a chance against those 2 users who originally started with broken customs, you now have 10 users in total, with broken customs (the first 2 being the original 2 users with the broken customs, and the remaining 8 being the users who have now adopted this mindset you have of "
I need to make my customs tier 0-like so I can stand a chance if I run into those CrystalMusic/Chaosprince users again").
Afterwards, if all 10 of these people each duel 4 more people and win with the broken custom cards, you now have 40 people who, with that same mindset you have, feel like they too have to now make their custom cards broken as well just so
they'll stand a chance against those 8 people, who made broken customs just to stand a chance against the original 2 people that had broken customs, meaning you now have all 50 of these people ruining the format with broken customs simply because 2 people originally came with broken customs.
That's the self-fulfilling prophecy. Player 1 (whether it's CrystalMusic, Chaosprince, or whoever) starts this whole chain of events by bringing broken customs, duels Player 2 who initially had balanced customs, Player 2 now feels the need to make his customs broken as well so he can stand a chance against Player 1, Player 2 makes his customs broken as a result, Players 1 and 2 go and duel Players 3 through 10 and easily beat them because of such broken customs, now Players 3 through 10 feel the need to make their previously-balanced customs broken as well so they can stand a chance against Players 1 and 2, then all 8 of these Players (Players 3 through 10) go and user their now-broken customs against Players 11 through 50, and now Players 11 through 50 make their customs broken as well, now hoping they'll stand a chance against Players 1 through 10.
See what happened there? Those 50 players went from just 1 or 2 of them having broken customs to all 50 of them now having broken customs because of that self-fulfilling prophecy, and this is what you might be experiencing and promoting in customs now. Maybe you didn't start the problem, but you're contributing to it by first making broken customs, then dueling people, who put more effort into balancing theirs, while refusing to try balancing your own, possibly causing those people you dueled to now feel like they need to make their customs as broken as yours now, if not more broken. Then they duel more people who then go on to make their customs broken as well hoping to beat the people who make their customs broken because they were hoping to beat you who made yours broken, and the cycle continues. That's the problem with that current mindset of yours and how it's a self-fulfilling prophecy.
In order to put a stop to this, here's my suggestion as follows. I will only agree to balance my cards and re-release them as tamed tier 1 decks, only if the following conditions are met:
See, this right here, what you're saying, tells me a lot. It tells me that you know, deep down, that while you like making your archetypes able to "rival" the current tier 1 meta decks such as Swordsoul, you've went overboard with some of these custom archetypes of yours and made them far surpass those aforementioned meta decks instead of simply "rivaling" them like you originally wanted. I can see that there's still some part of you that
wants to reduce the strength of some of those archetypes of yours so they're tier 1 or 1.5 or so, instead of tier 0, but you feel like you
can't because it's (somehow) entirely the fault of those other users out there who broke their customs.
However, what if those other users feel the same way about you? Have you thought about that? If you won't agree to balance your customs because person A refuses to balance his, but person A is refusing to balance his, only because person B is refusing to balance hers, but person B is refusing to balance hers, only because you're refusing to balance yours, you should take the initiative and start by balancing yours, instead of waiting on persons A or B to balance theirs, so that way, you'll inspire those others to finally follow in your footsteps trying to balance theirs.
The current mindset of yours, that your customs have to be broken because some other people made theirs broken, can be shifted towards the opposite. Yes, 1 person with broken customs can, as I've just explained earlier, start a chain of events that lead to many other people deciding that they need to break their customs too just to "survive," whatever that even means, and you've gotten yourself caught in this chain of events.
However, what you seem to have not yet realized is:
The opposite is also true, meaning that, just like how a single person with
broken customs can create a
negative chain of events that lead to many other people breaking their customs as well, a single person with more
balanced customs can create a
positive chain of events that lead to many other people trying balancing their customs.
In other words, if you have 50 people, and Player 1 is the only one among them with well-designed and balanced customs, while Players 2 through 50 have broken customs, Player 1 can duel Player 2 and explain to them how to better balance their customs, Player 2 can apply some of those suggested changes, then the 2 of them can duel Players 3 through 10 and explain to those players how to better balance their customs so those Players (3 through 10) get encouraged to balance their customs as well, and then, after Players 3 through 10 apply the suggested changes, all 10 of those players (Players 1 through 10) can duel Players 11 through 50, further spreading that awareness on how to better balance customs, leading to potentially even more people better balancing their customs. In other words, the
cure to the toxicity (people trying to balance their own customs and encouraging each other to do the same) can be spread, just like how the toxicity itself (people making broken customs and dueling with them causing others to end up feeling the need to make to break their customs overpowered as well just so they could stand a chance in the format) can be spread, so the best way to fight the spread of that toxicity it to counteract it by spreading that cure to said toxicity, not by ignoring the cure and instead just contributing further to that toxicity itself. Yes, you'll still have some of those people like CrystalMusic and Chaosprince who'll ignore the cure, but if so, that's on them. There are far more people out there (including myself) in my opinion that
are willing to learn at least a little, and accept at least some criticism, than there are people unwilling to learn any problem-solving card text or accept any criticism, even if it may not seem that way to you.
1. Implement a way to either enforce proper PSCT (by using automated pre-fill responses to force people to follow the proper PSCT and having a word count limit per card), or hand-pick mods who are qualified to check the PSCT of such cards. My hope is that by doing so, we won't have to teach people how to write PSCT as the automated system will force people to do it the right way, and beginners can't make mistakes.
2. Auto-delete/purge custom cards that resemble any of the following (Initiate a full purge of custom cards if you must. I'm willing to remake my custom cards from scratch if it means ensuring that these cards never come back into the custom card pool ever again.):
-Remakes of TCG/OCG cards, and/or anime cards (either by artwork, name, effect description, etc.) - These types of cards are what ruin character duels for me in custom duels.
-Insta-win/"unaffected by all other card effects" cards that are way too cheap to use. If it becomes obvious that you don't have to work so hard for an insta-win card, then those cards have no business being in the custom card pool
-Troll/meme cards that contain effects that do not relate to the duel whatsoever. I've dealt with this at one point where someone made a card that turns the opposing player into a femboy. Seriously, WTF? Need proof? Watch this replay:
https://www.duelingbook.com/replay?id=37528-35955870-"At the start of the Duel" cards. Nobody wants to read effects that apply at the start of the duel. (Yes, CrystalMusic, I'm talking about you!) Same applies to the "Annoying Dog" cards - once the stupid cards are purged from the system, there will no longer be a need (hopefully) for anyone to compromise on extra deck space JUST to use these cards.
Others have already explained in this thread why these suggestions aren't practical and wouldn't work, but I want to add that we already have character "
count limits". It was 1000 characters at first, but eventually went up to 2000 characters, letting you have more room for text on your customs' effects, as 1000 characters was proving to be too limiting.
Multiple guides, both
official and
fan made, also already covered the basics on how to apply problem-solving card text to custom cards.
3. Expand enforcement of banning inappropriate custom cards to private custom cards as well. There used to be a player in the custom card pool who used a bunch of custom cards containing pictures that showed men who held real-life firearms. I'm not sure if this person continues to play custom cards, but if yes, then this is a major cause for concern because it means that players have a way to circumvent the rules in order to continue creating inappropriate custom cards while retaining their ability to create custom cards. By expanding this rule to private cards as well, we're effectively closing off any and all potential loopholes for people to utilize in order to make inappropriate custom cards.
While I disagree that an image of someone wielding specifically a gun is "inappropriate" (as plenty of official
TCG monsters such as
Quickdraw Synchron show pistols and whatnot in their artworks), I agree that the ability to make custom cards private so others can't search for them is completely unnecessary and allows rule-breakers on this site to have an easier time concealing their actual inappropriate customs.
Yes, I know custom cards are not considered official TCG or OCG formats; however, that doesn't mean that these cards should be allowed to just rampage the entire format and make custom card creators like myself look bad.
Ultimately, however, the choice is yours. We could spend the rest of our custom card hobby making tier 0 decks just to be able to survive the toxic format that'll never be balanced, OR we could go the "push comes to shove" route and start cracking down on this to put an end to these ridiculous custom cards.
Well, looks like I won't be balancing my cards anytime soon...unfortunate that people have to make broken cards just to survive custom format, really.
I don't know what "survive" is supposed to mean here or why you keep using that word, and as Wek pointed out, there is no "surviving that silliness". Customs are meant to be fun, not a means of survival. This isn't the wilderness. This isn't the apocalypse. This is the custom section of a yugioh simulator. The only format where you
do think about "survival" of any kind is advanced format, because in that format, rating and exp are on the line.
I figured as much that things would be going this way. I was right all along, custom card formats can never be balanced because of how everyone's making broken cards nowadays with different views of balance.
If making your cards more balanced is too hard for you to figure out how to do at the moment, then try focusing on
interactivity instead for now. Start by trying to make your archetype more interactive, allowing more back and forth interaction with the opponent.
What do I mean by this? Well, let's take your "Yautja" archetype for instance.
https://forum.duelingbook.com/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=20090So the first card listed is a monster that can easily bring out a Rank 8 but then also gives that Rank 8 an effect similar to that of
Archnemeses Protos, but permanent, where if you call the correct attribute you get a one-sided effect similar to
Skill Drain or
True King of All Calamities but lasts until the Rank 8 in question is dealt with instead of just for a turn or so, but your archetype's Rank 8s already have high atk/def and tons of protection for no good reason — cannot be targeted, cannot be destroyed by battle or effects, cannot be tributed, cannot be used as fusion/link material except for beast-warriors, etc — making them able to easily lock the opponent out of using monster effects while being impossible for the opponent to deal with, and on top of that, Eternity of the Yautja protects that Rank 8 from all the opponent's effects, so a monster is locking the opponent out of using their monsters effects while at the same time having so many protections that it's impossible to get rid of, but then you even gave them additional quick effects of their own where you can detach a material for an omni-negate, send all non-beast-warrior monsters to the graveyard and prevent their effects from activating in the graveyard for the rest of the turn, change all the opponent's face-up monsters to face-down defense position at once, etc. That's stronger than all of the current meta decks (like Swordsoul) by too much.
Then you have a generic continuous trap (Despair of the Yautja) that negates a monster's effects, prevents it's effects from activating, prevents it from being tributed or used as material for anything, prevents it from attacking, lowers it's atk,
and prevents any other copies of it from being summoned or activating their effects. On top of that, it can reset itself from the graveyard,
and give itself protection from both targeting
and destruction just for you controlling a beast-warrior. It has pretty much the benefits of
Fiendish Chain,
Called by the Grave,
Crossout Designator,
Gnomaterial, and
Spellbinding Circle combined, with hardly any of the downsides.
Finally, you once again make an effect (Arrival of the Yautja) that reveals cards but makes the opponent pick 1 at
random instead of just letting them pick
normally.
To make your archetype more interactive, start by removing the attribute lock from that aforementioned monster's effect. Having so many protections and powerful quick effects on those easy to summon Rank 8s is already overdoing it. The least you could do is let the opponent have a chance to use some of their own monster effects.
That continuous trap could just be deleted since other continuous traps do similar things but aren't as broken, like Fiendish Chain,
Phantom Knights' Fog Blade, and
Crackdown.
Arrival of the Yautja should let the opponent see what they're picking instead of making it random.
These changes will promote more healthy interaction while still keeping your archetype strong and able to go toe to toe with Swordsoul and the other current meta decks like you want it to.
I saw this replay you shared in the replay thread:
https://www.duelingbook.com/replay?id=37528-35975659In the replay, the first thing said was "
gl hf" which means "
good luck, have fun," and you responded with "
u2" meaning "
You too". Yet, after this, you proceed to make such an unfun board turn 1 that disallows so much interaction as it consists of a 3200 atk monster with protection from basically everything thanks to it's effects and your trap, as well as a quick effect board wipe and an effect that locks your opponent into 1 monster effect per turn,
and the ability to revive monsters on top of all that, generate more free advantage should the opponent manage to somehow out it.
What's worse is, you make it not just unfun for your opponents, but unfun for your
teamate as well, as your effects also lock them out of playing their monsters. You're essentially treating the tag duel like a 1v1, with your teamate being more of a spectator or something instead of an actual teamate, meaning, instead of trying to combine the power of your cards with the power of your teamate's to beat the team of opponent's who are also trying to combine their cards to beat yours, like how tag duels should go, you cling to the mindset of "
I had to make this effect specifically to deal with partners to force them to play my way or the highway" and whatnot, with the excuse being "
I've dealt with partners who fucked me up so badly," and you still somehow couldn't grasp why that's overpowered, still convinced
[10:22] "YOU CAN EASILY BREAK THIS BOARD!"??Teamates want to be able to play their cards too, not just yours, and if you got paired up with a teamate who you feel would screw you over, you ask them not to, or communicate with them on how they can make the most optimal play with your cards or something so they're less likely to screw things up for you.
Sure, just winning alone without any kind of interaction might be exciting at first for a while, but who says fun can only come at the cost of disallowing as much interaction as possible from both opponents and teamates, especially when there aren't any ratings or exp on the line like in advanced format? It's more fun to win through healthy interaction with the opponent than through disallowing as much interaction as possible. By seeking fun in winning only through the latter, that "fun" you get from winning that way won't last. It'll get old quickly and you'll get bored of it, building up tolerance to it so it no longer feels as exciting, stimulating, or rewarding, just like how CrystalMusic doesn't seem to appear on this platform anymore due to him getting too bored from all the easy free wins he got thanks to his broken customs, and just like how taking the same addictive drug over and over causes it to feel less exciting, and less stimulating, each time.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drug_toleranceOn the other hand, by seeking fun in winning by allowing more interaction from the opponent, that kind of fun will last without you getting bored as quickly. Your teamate in that duel wasn't having fun, because they felt like they were being given a free win without any effort, and the opponents weren't having any fun, because they were instead frustrated at how much interaction your cards were disallowing. Those 3 players (that teamate of yours, and those 2 opponents) are proof that winning is just as fun, if not more fun, when you win while players got to play their cards and interact, as opposed to when 1 player makes an unbreakable turn 1 board that locks all the other 3 players out of playing.
Your mindset, that fun is only possible by disallowing all interaction from both opponents and teamates so that you always win due to uninteractive and broken cards, is unsustainable. You won't get that many more chances to "win" at anything, or have any more "fun," if too many people realize that you have no intention of ever balancing your cards and have decided to block you and make it a habit to instinctively avoid you the way they instinctively avoid Chaosprince, or if the "high" you get from the super easy effortless wins (from disallowing interaction so much) is no longer felt as you build tolerance to it (whichever comes first), nor will you get any more chances to have any more fun in tag duels if teamates are also getting too frustrated with you, just like how CrystalMusic
hasn't bothered coming on this site in over a month now, most likely due to him not being able to find any more games since so many players have naturally begun avoiding/blocking him due to his broken customs and ridiculous made-up "rules".
This is why it makes little sense to keep trying to "plan" for these specific kinds of users as opposed to just helping them learn by spreading that "cure" I talked about. Those players will either learn and improve and start balancing their customs, or lose interest and possibly end up leaving the custom format as people keep quitting, and if they don't do either of these, you can continue avoiding them (which you said you would already do) instead of stooping to their level and joining them in making broken uninteractive stuff. I also wouldn't assume right away that we're
always going to have to keep dealing with people like CrystalMusic because I've never seen any other user like him. I see users with broken cards like his, yes, but not anyone with the ridiculous rules like his, or a complete unwillingness to even learn any problem-solving card text or anything. Maybe in a few months from now, that might change, and we may really see some sort of CrystalMusic 2.0 show up, but until then, I wouldn't let myself get too paranoid about that, and I would instead just keep trying to balance my customs, encourage those who are willing to listen to keep trying to balance theirs, and encourage them to encourage even more other people to do the same so we have more and more people trying to balance their customs overall instead of making customs broken hoping beat that 1 CrystalMusic-like player or something who they're unlikely to run into anyways to begin with.
It's true that the format can't be perfectly balanced,
but, instead of just giving up completely on balance right away because of that, you can still make your cards as close to being balanced as you can, just like how we can't be perfect human beings but can still be as close to perfect as we can. If balance and perfection aren't possible to achieve, then seek out the next best thing which is being as
close to these things as you can. In this case, this would be doing what you said earlier which is "re-releasing your archetypes as tamed tier 1 decks". Sure, it still won't be perfectly balanced, and still would do well against those current TCG meta decks like Swordsoul, but it will still be so much better than just completely giving up on trying to balance anything at all, especially if you do what I specifically suggested and make those changes I mentioned so your archetype will at least be more interactive.
You know what I'd love to see as well? A pop-up screen that shows a warning if one tries to make insta-win cards or "unaffected by all other card effects" bullshit, which warns the custom card creator that their card can be seen as ridiculous by the rest of the DB community.
That's what duel notes are for. That's what guides like this are for:
https://futuregamer-yugioh.blogspot.com/2020/09/the-pros-guide-to-custom-cards-create.htmlYou don't have to continue being a part of the chain of events I talked about earlier — the one that only leads to more and more people making broken and uninteractive customs, and you shouldn't. Instead, you can, and should, be what I've been being — a part of the
positive chain of events that leads to more and more people trying to better balance their customs.
Alright, so fuck balance, let's just make insta-win cards that just basically say "Fuck you" to the opponent whenever we play customs.
This is a joke. I'm done.
No, I don't think you're completely "done" with trying to balance your cards, at least not yet. I think that, while you and I can't perfectly balance cards, you still, deep down, want to do the next best thing which is making your cards closer to being balanced. If you truly were "done" here, you wouldn't have even mentioned the possibility of you "
balancing your cards and re-releasing them as tamed tier 1 decks" and you most likely wouldn't have even bothered sharing that Yautja archetype on this forum asking for feedback and whatnot. People like Rocket2 may have hurt your faith in the custom card community, but they haven't yet destroyed it, otherwise you wouldn't be back here on this forum trying to come up with these suggestions and continuing to share these archetypes, as it would be a waste of time for you to do so if you truly have lost all faith in us and in the custom format.
People can end up with different and standards of balance. That much is true, but what's also true is that these different standards can sometimes overlap, meaning that I may consider card A to be broken that you consider to be fine, you consider card B to be broken that I consider to be fine, but then we both agree that card C is broken while card D is fine, and so on. That's what I mean by how standards can sometimes overlap, so what you can do is start with your
own current standard of balance, start with examining the current advanced format meta like the Swordsouls and whatnot to get an idea of what's currently balanced, start with the latest banlist to get an idea of what isn't balanced, and go from there. You're aware by this point that you made your archetypes to be tier 0-ish and far superior than the those meta decks like Swordsoul, so if "balancing" those archetypes of yours would mean bringing things down a bit by making them more like "
tamed tier 1 decks" as you mentioned earlier, and even cutting down on the "
unaffecteds/un-targetables/un-tributables" and so on, while also removing some of the randomness in those "
reveal 3 X cards from your deck" effects, and the amount of "
Your opponent cannot do X and that targeted monster cannot be used for Y and Z" lockouts in your traps, to promote more healthy interaction, then do just that, so other people who also have broken customs will hopefully be encouraged to follow in your footsteps, instead of waiting for someone else to balance their customs so you can follow in their footsteps. Take the initiative by trying to balance your customs regardless of whether not the so-called "conditions" you listed at the start of this thread get met, and start that positive chain of events that will lead to more and more people trying to balance their customs, instead of remaining trapped in the negative chain of events that lead to even more and more broken and uninteractive customs messing up the format.
Genexwrecker wrote:No
Genexwrecker, parhelia_0000 mentioned earlier how the ability to make custom cards private should be removed so users can no longer make inappropriate/nude custom cards and hide them from being reported to the admins, and I agree with this kind of change, as right now, I don't see what's stopped illegal images like child pornography from being uploaded to this site and being set to private so they're hidden from being seen and reported.
