eyal282 wrote:Christen57 wrote:Futuregamer wrote:God damn that is a lot of text. See, that's why we put half-naked anime girls at the top and bottom, keeps the audience engaged.
I'm working on the whole quality over quantity less-is-more thing. I've always had the habit of making some of my points unnecessarily long when writing these kinds of long posts. Sorry for that. When I was researching so many of these archetypes I was surprised at how many of these bad common mechanics there turned out to be and how many archetype's I'd be covering.
Anyway, taking them in order:
1)I don't see anything particularly incriminating with this. Sure, most of the ones we have right now haven't implemented their counter-play that well, but I am hopeful that this kind of design can work, as long as you can, to an extend, trigger off their effects on your own, without relying on the opponent. Personally for example I like artifacts, even if they are flawed.
That's the thing. Most of those archetypes
can't reliably trigger off their respective common mechanics on their own. Artifacts, Reptilianne, and Meklords and whatnot need to either go -1 most of the time or depend heavily on the opponent to trigger their respective common mechanics.
5)Kaijus have a good reason for their limitations, namely so you can't tribute the opponent's entire field in one go by spamming kaijus, nor perform OTKs "too" easily. Agreed for the rest, it's pretty pointless.
The archetype can
already OTK anyway with the help of Crusadias, so Kaiju's common mechanic could've been something less restrictive like "
You can only Special Summon 1 "Gameciel, the Sea Turtle Kaiju(s)" per turn," "
You can only Special Summon 1 "Radian, the Multidimensional Kaiju(s)" per turn," and so on, like with the Sky Striker link monsters.
7)The examples you list all work in different ways, so I'll just say I disagree with the vast majority of them. I will add another one to the list though, and that's Scholfas and their field spell, which does WAY too much and is basically required for the archetype to function at all. I don't think there's anything wrong with having a really good card that boosts an archetype as a whole, as long as the archetype can also stand on its own two feet without it.
Yeah. I already included Solfachords in this topic. They should've had a stronger common mechanic overall so they wouldn't need to rely so heavily on 1 card to begin with — a card that they can't even search. At least other pendulum archetypes can reliably pendulum summon with just 2 scales (a low scale and a high scale), but this archetype needs a total of 3 cards (2 scales along with it's field spell to change the pendulum scales) to reliably pendulum summon.
You can only Special Summon 1 "named kaiju" per turn has these implications:
1. You cannot summon Gameciel to opponent, and then summon it to your field.
2. You can tribute your opponent's field provided you drew different named Kaijus.
3. You can OTK by summoning different named kaijus.
4. Kaiju Slumber stuff.
You can only control 1 Kaiju has these implications:
1. You cannot tribute your opponent's field.
2. If you have a Kaiju, you're immune to Kaijus until your kaiju is removed.
After reading your response, and Futuregamer's response, to my fifth point, I've decided that I no longer consider the "
You can only control 1" thing to be "
a common mechanic that should be avoided if possible," although I still consider the other similar restriction "
There can be only 1" to be something that should be avoided for a common mechanic, as I still see no reason why that type of restriction needed to exist on archetypes such as Malefic and Earthbound Immortal.
I think Bujin's main problem wasn't the "
can only control 1" restrictions but rather powercreep, as Bujin was meta
back in 2014.
Duston was made obsolete due to link monsters (as their restrictions don't prevent them from being used as link material thus giving opponents free link materials when you put them on their field) and due to them never giving a big enough reward for being destroyed, with the Red, Blue, Green, and Yellow dustons offering only 500 burn damage, temporarily removing a random card from hand, bouncing a single spell/trap, and recycling a single monster in the graveyard, respectively.
Generaider, from what I heard, relied way too heavily on their field spell, and too heavily on their normal summon, to do stuff. It didn't really have to do with their "
can only control 1" restriction.
Laundsallyn, like Bujin, also fell due to powercreep, and not really due to their "
can only control 1" restriction. Plus, I'm not sure why I included "
Laundsallyn" in this list to begin with since it doesn't feel like an actual archetype with it currently consisting of just 2 cards.
Mayakashi, from what I've heard, flopped mainly because the archetype is too... fair, and in the current meta, any archetype that's too fair and doesn't do anything unfair in order to give itself some kind of edge over other decks is... bad. Yes, the archetype revolves around spamming synchro monsters with
Dakki, the Graceful Mayakashi, but those synchro monsters are all mediocre at best, and this archetype locks you into just those synchros, so it's not like you can instead summon other better synchros like
Baronne De Fleur.
To trigger this archetype's synchros' effects, they have to be first properly synchro summoned, then put into the graveyard, then summoned back again, and how do they reward you for going through all that trouble? The level 3 just gives you some minor battle protection, the level 5 just mills 3 cards from the players' decks, the level 7 destroys a single spell/trap, the level 9 destroys a single monster, and the level 11 just gives minor effect protection. Those rewards are simply too small for the amount of effort it takes to summon those synchros from the graveyard, and this is now why I think the archetype flopped, not because they had "
can only control 1" restrictions.
"ZW -" flopped because their only good card is
ZW - Pegasus Twin Saber.
ZW - Tornado Bringer is also okay, but all the other "ZW -" cards besides those 2 suck. ZW - Pegasus Twin Saber can't equip itself from the hand like the other "ZW -" cards, and
Ultimate Leo Utopia Ray, the main monster that "ZW -" players equip their "ZW -" cards to, can't equip from the hand either — only the deck and extra deck — meaning the archetype's best main deck card, ZW - Pegasus Twin Saber, is a card you don't even want to draw, otherwise it'll be a dead card in your hand for the most part since having to be at least 2000 life points less than the opponent (to special summon this so it can equip itself from the field since it's level 5 instead of level 4 and thus can't just be normal summoned for free) is too specific and makes this card almost impossible to use on turn 1 or 2.
The "ZW -" archetype's best card's crazy strict activation requirements, along with all its cards except 2 of them being garbage, ruined this archetype far more than their "
can only control 1" restriction did.