New official duel yugioh duel simulator duel!

Konami finally decided to get back into the whole online duel simulator business, seemingly prompted by the rise in popularity of online TCGs. It's name is Duel Arena and can be found here https://game06.duelarena.konami.com/
So, what's the verdict on it?
Absolute and utter garbage! Considering it's a video game about a card game, you'd think that konami would know something on either subject, but apparently no, same worthless money grabbing philosophy and designer reeking of their usual absence of any proper game design philosophy (on the free online duel simulator field at least, they have some decent ones for other platforms).

First of all, the first sign of instant condemnation for the game:
Checking on the right side if you sign in you will notice a stamina meter. In case you couldn't guess, that means the games you can play per day are limited unless you refresh it with actual money. That shitty mechanic found commonly in greedy cow-clickers of course would not be missing from such a game. To be honest I could stop here, after this you could find the best TCG ever made by man, and it would still be terrible for using this mechanic. But of course this is konami we are talking about, how could it possibly end there?

Despite any money grabbing strategy, despite it being the konami we know, at the very least when we are talking about an official simulator by them, when it comes from an actual video game developer and publisher (konami still counts as that, right?), you should demand proper interface, graphics and functionality. Instead, graphics seem to be ported from the DS games, which are functional on a screen the size of my palm, but not on my 21.5" pc monitor (don't ask about the .5). Cards are usually represented by thumbnails about 1/3 the size of our chat avis, to give you an idea, even in gameplay and even in the deckbuilder, so to actually see which card you are trying to use you have to do the usual single card inspection. And because you wouldn't want such epic thumbnail design stolen, every card comes complete with a stamp of Yu-Gi-Oh Duel Arena on the bottom right of its artwork, taking up a good 10% of said artwork. That's not the end of the issues as aside from the usual cloggy interfaces that belong in a portable console, this game has some pretty annoying lag to it, often forcing you to wait for some reason. To put it into perspective, the technical aspects of this game are far behind even the Power of Chaos games, the ygo pc game trilogy released in 2004, that is 10 years ago. I am mostly certain that the technical aspects of the game were not actually worked on but pulled up entirely from the backlog of portable console games to cut development time for this, that's the only way to explain why it looks like that. Yes, it's a browser game, but when DN is right across the street looking a lot better, that is no excuse.

Of course that is not the worst part, the worst part is what everyone is worried about but are not willing to get into an argument for. That is the way to acquire cards. Before saying how it could be working, let's see how it actually works. You are provided with 2 sets of currencies, Duel Points (DP for short) and Coins. DP is the in game currency, Coins is the soon-to-be microtransactions currency (at least they had the decency to not have microtransactions in beta because beta progress will not carry over, but it just means that the game is broken now since microtransactions are vital the way it is built).
Most online card games start you off with some ok basic cards to play with, and give ways to unlock certain other useful cards specifically with some effort, next to the buy packs->get cards system of course. So, how many cards does Duel Arena start you off with? 0. Exactly 0 cards. Wait, but if you have 0 cards, how do you play? You rent decks of course! Through certain quests (which is basically duels vs AI) you will be given duel partners, which is basically crappy pre-made decks to let you play the game. Another way to get such decks is the once per day free duel partner recruiting. After the free one you can get another one for 1000 DP OR you can pay 1000 coins to get a super special Premium partner.
To put into perspective the difference between regular and premium partners, my regular partner turned out Rare, so I guess I was lucky. Said partner was ancient gears. I could give a decklist, but ancient gears are ancient gears, even if they tried it would be shit, not that they did. The premium deck I got (you get 10000 coins to test the system while in beta) was Hieratics. And not splash lv8s and try to get 20 hieropolis out hieratics, no, this one was full with the lv6 engine and a friggin gaia, you know, the card we use to cheese around the rules of konami which stop atum from attacking for free, that's in there. So believe me that it is no lie, premium is PREMIUM. If you pay, you get quality.
Let's go through some details for these rental decks now. First of, obviously you do not get those cards, you cannot use them in deck edit, they are not yours, they are the "partner's". You can't add your own cards to their decks either. What you get, that's what you are playing with. Secondly, note how I keep referring to them as "rental". That is not just because it is the official term, but it is also very descriptive. The rental decks have a limited number of uses. The crappy magnet warrior deck you start with has 4 uses, the decks you get through quests have 2 uses each, but one use from them will go to the next quest because magnet warriors are suffering. The DP rented decks have 5 uses, the premium decks, being premium, have 6. So, what happens when those uses are over? Worry not, you can recharge them, by paying the full price you paid to acquire them in the first place, 1k DP (this includes the quest decks etc, filled to their max of 2 uses).
But don't knock the practice too much, because if you play the game, you will play it with premium rental decks, it is the only viable way. Wait, but then what about real decks?

Well, you'd better like the rental deck system, because you are not playing with anything else, that system is their excuse for their crappy booster system.
Some details on it to start.
Cards are only acquired through boosters.
Boosters cost 2000 DP or 2000 coins to acquire.
Each booster contains 5 cards.
Boosters are copies of their real world counterparts, about 100 cards can be found in each. About 6000 cards are in the system as a result.
Rarities are Common, Rare, Super and Ultra, following the standard TCG policy of "If you need it, it's max rarity".
Of course there is no such thing as structure decks, that would be too easy.

But what does 2000DP mean? Simple, any game you win, against AI, in a quest or even PvP is 200 DP. Winning a match gives you 400DP instead, which is just the value of the 2 single duels you won. The stamina system allows for 5 duels max when full. You can expect it to fully refill once during the day, so let's say 10 duels a day can be made (more if you stare at Duel Arena all day, but no one deserves that fate). That means 1 pack a day. When you put it like that, it sounds kinda fair for an online TCG, 1 pack, that's not as much as HS but at least it's close to the standards of some other decent online TCG. Here is the difference between them though, those other TCG do not have 6000 cards, 80% of which are unplayable in the current metagame or were made to never be playable. Irl it will work because it is a real collection, people will spend enough to buy boxes of many packs of cards, which in turn have some real monetary value to be exchanged at, so the tactic of putting garbage in a pack is not as counterproductive. However this is an online TCG, pack structure between this and real TCGs are not the same, a more viable way to make a deck is required, which does not exist.
However this doesn't seem too tangible, so let's put that too into perspective. In response to this topic http://www.worldduelingacademy.com/t5797-the-state-of-the-game-why-i-m-quitting-ygo I had explained how a playset of Abyssmegalo, a vital card to make a mermail deck, required 24 boxes of 24 packs each to be bought. Secret rares thankfully do not exist in Duel Arena, but on the other hand each pack has 5, not 9 cards, so we'll use a number close to that for this one. 24 times 24 is 576, 576 packs, a pack is a day of gameplay, so 576 days of gamplay just to get 1 vital playset of cards for 1 deck. That is more than 1 and a half year just for 3 cards.

Let's make an assumption though, let's say that the effort of several years is justified to have a decent deck. After 1 and a half year 6 formats will have shifted, 6 main packs, 6 new banlists, there is a good chance the deck is no longer viable. So, what happens to non-viable decks? Don't worry, you can burn cards for DP on Duel Arena! The conversion rates are as follows: 1 card = 50 DP. Note that I did not mention rarity. Rarity is irrelevant, any card, of any rarity, is converted for 50 DP. Even if you use those Ultra Rares you spent a year to get, they will only go for 50DP each. That means 20 cards of any rarity must be burned to buy 1 pack of 5. This could possibly be ok if it was possible to get single cards, but of course it isn't, don't be absurd.

Usually in TCGs it is possible to get decent decks, heck I haven't played too much Hearthstone and I already have the ability to make decent decks, barring legendary heavy ones. Hearthstone also happens to be giving 5 cards per pack as well. The main difference between the two here is that (a) Arena lets you get enough packs if you are good enough, (b) you can get single cards, (c) most important, Hearthstone has less than 400 cards, over 50% of which can be useful in some way, while Duel Arena has 6000, over 80% of which are useless in every way.

So, what could have been done to sell cards in a proper way, ignoring game breaking flaws like Stamina of course and proper ways of DP acquisition which I couldn't dream of expecting from them. (A) More specific packs instead of just slapping the irl ones and expecting them to work, (B) way more cards in packs. If you are going to give a bunch of trash cards as if this was irl or cards from other decks, at least give 25 cards or something. We are talking about a card pool of 6000 (should be over 8k, but anyways, let's say 6k), that's perfectly reasonable.
People should at least have the ability to make decks without spending a ridiculous sum of money for digital duplicates of existing cards, if they wanted to buy cards for huge prices, they'd buy them irl.

Do they have to sell the cards though? It's not like I expect konami of america to execute logical thinking, so let's just put the thought here. Online TCGs have to sell cards because that is their only business, there it's obvious, but must it be the same way for physical card games that use simulators? Let's check back at the topic I linked above. Just in case, I will quote myself from that topic, referring to how Konami connects financially to DN

I wrote:

To begin with, the main reason we know konami will not put up any copyright claims for DN anytime soon, is the secondary market, and I'll explain what I mean.
Go to DN and check what the most common advertisements are. They are from the secondary market. At the same time, you are getting secondary market prices even in deckbuilding, which of course again is advertising (and very heavy and successful at that). Even in the case BLS is profiting from this (which he is, he is successfully advertising to thousands of relevant users every day, either he is profiting or he is being ripped off), konami can only be ecstatic about it.
If the secondary market is advertising, that means the secondary market is profiting from it further, since it costs money to advertise and you wouldn't do it if it was not increasing your profits by an acceptable amount.
If the secondary market is profiting further, considering that they are not further altering the prices of the cards and therefore their profit per card is the same, that means they are profiting more by selling more cards.
If they are selling more cards, that means more cards have been bought. The secondary market is not generating cards, them having those cards is a direct result of more konami product being bought.
Therefore, if they are advertising, that means more packs are being bought from konami.

Now let's look at who profits from this. The secondary market always gets a small marginal profit. That is because you buy the card at a set price and sell it at a small, higher percentage. Konami on the other hand who is selling the packs, is selling painted cardboard. The profit konami makes from this and the profit the secondary market makes from this, as you can imagine, is incomparable.

Basically, what this means is that a mostly free, or at least much more accessible online simulator for a physical card game is viable if utilized as an advertising venue for the physical game, if Konami gives people the ability to buy physical cards, in any way, that are relative to the cards they are playing, it is not much different from microtransactions and it is certainly profitable if used the right way. I am certainly not looking for the ways which konami can use to exploit more money out of people, but I am pointing out that they can make a simulator that actually works, because every attempt they made on the f2p online simulator model was something that would never be fun unless you paid money comparable to the physical game.

At the state their game is today, their competition isn't even YgoPro and DN, simulators that are both better in a technical aspect (I'd take arguing with kids about rulings on DN any day over the painful lag and ugly interface of Duel Arena) and are completely free. Even if those simulators didn't exist, I wouldn't touch Duel Arena before games like Hearthstone, Duels of the Champions, Infinity Wars and many other better online TCGs, despite the fact that I like ygo a lot more than those games and I suck at half of them.

In the end, even they probably didn't want to make a real video game. This was probably the work of Konami of america seeing as it is TCG only and blocked on other territories, which is the only move I agree with btw, I wouldn't have the balls to show this to Japan either, and they have kind of accepted that DN is enough as far as their interests are concerned, advertising they don't even pay for (since the secondary market pays for it instead) boosts sales, all is good, what they wanted was probably a mini game to get money from kids that stole their parents' credit cards and didn't know any better.

You may say "hey, Al, aren't you a bit too aggressive at konami, don't you want them to get better" and actually the answer is, I don't, this isn't tough love or anything, they don't deserve to get better anymore, they have screwed up too badly already, other people have been actually putting effort in making functional online collectible card games, they deserve to get better, not Konami, they've already dropped the ball into a bottomless trap hole, they only deserve to continue making failures like Duel Arena so that we can point at them and laugh and say that all is right with the world. Incompetent scammers the lot of them...

But hey, there is a silver lining in there. It seems that Stamina isn't something new, even ygo online had some restriction on playing I think, and later games like ygo BAM on facebook had the usual restrictions, so stopping you from playing their games is a running trend. That's probably a conscious decision, they have fully realized they suck and don't want you to play their games, they want you to just test them, realize they suck and then do something better with your life, which is just about anything but playing their f2p duel simulators.

Konami so stupid

Al-Bhed wrote:

Instead, graphics seem to be ported from the DS games, which are functional on a screen the size of my palm, but not on my 21.5" pc monitor (don't ask about the .5).

But what about the .5?

On the otherside of the professional world, you have Activision and Ubisoft dealing with framerate and resolution issues which are just finishing touches in the end. Here in Konami world, we have this...

No shit, Konami are geared towards profits, they've been trained that way. Let's face it, other than the small community of people over the age of 16 who regularly play and follow Yugioh, who actually cares about how good their games are?

What they want are for all the 10 - 12 year olds to google "online yugioh" and to click on the official konami yu gi oh site and to say "oh look i need a rented deck HOW COOL WOULD IT BE TO HAVE A HIERATIC PARTNER"

DAAAAAAD, BUY ME THISSSSS

And so the dutiful father sighs and resignedly enters his PayPal information and Konami makes a dollar.

Meanwhile that child plays his hieratic deck, gets bored of Yugioh and leaves, grows up, and this shitty game becomes a guilt-tinged memory of his own naivety and money-wasting, and later, when he realises how much money he'd spent on it, he will wince and carry on playing Call of Duty. Thus, the 300 server slots Konami bought will continue to be ready for the next mistake of a human being to stumble into the trap.

gg capitalizing on targeted age groups, gg.

It's the same thing as Hasbro bringing out re-coloured versions of the same shitty pony dolls, really.

Fish wrote:

What they want are for all the 10 - 12 year olds to google "online yugioh" and to click on the official konami yu gi oh site and to say "oh look i need a rented deck HOW COOL WOULD IT BE TO HAVE A HIERATIC PARTNER"

Spoiler:

:D

Duel Arena went out of beta and live! Using the feedback they strived to make it an enjoyable experience. So here is how things changed, ofc for the best.

-Naturally, no free coins for playing anymore, instead you get 1000DP for your first win of the day. (for the first week of the game, you get 2000 instead)

-Coins are replaced with Mini-Clip credits to make the microtransactions more obvious.

-They also decided that you really shouldn't be playing that game, so stamina no longer recovers by itself, instead it refreshes once a day, so 5 games per day flat (unless you pay of course).

-Partner Recruiting cost went up to 2000 DP or mini-clip credits, from the previous 1000.

-Boosters are still 2000 mini-clip credits, so the microtransaction currency is the same, but they went up to 4000DP, that being the in game currency, for less ygo playing. The special editions of packs are also available, that being the 3 packs and a foil, but those are not available for DP, only for 6000 credits each.

-DP rented deck uses went down to 4 from the previous 5, matching the crappy magnet deck uses.

Now, I know that all this may seem kinda grim, if you actually ever cared about the subject you may be thinking that making a deck will be impossible. Worry not, because here comes the biggest change since the beta. Now you get a 46+4 card deck to start the game, with cards you get to keep! What cards are those you are asking? Let me walk you through them. Now, some of those may be just too cool to know for those of you that haven't been playing the game for as long as some of us, but don't worry, if a card is too obscure I will put some basic details for you next to its name. Here is your amazing first deck:

Monsters: 26
2xGoblin Caligrapher (Vanilla, 400 ATK/DEF)
2xWater Spirit (Vanilla, 400ATK/1200DEF)
2xArmed Ninja(300ATK/DEF, FLIP: target backrow, destroy if spell, do nothing if trap)
2xKagemusha of the Blue Flame(Vanilla,800ATK/400DEF)
2xMukaMuka(600ATK/300DEF, gains 300 for each card in your hand)
2xSilver Fang(Vanilla, 1200ATK/800DEF)
2xCrane Crane(only ok card among them)
2xQuick-Span Knight(1000ATK/800DEF,lv3 tuner, when you sync with it, target opp monster loses 500 ATK)
2xTrap Master (500ATK/1100DEF, armed ninja for traps)
2xAligator's Sword(Vanilla,1500ATK/1200DEF)
2xAmazoness Archer
1xMonster Tamer(Vanilla, lv5, 1800ATK/1600DEF)
1xEnraged Muka Muka(lv5, 1200ATK/600DEF, gains 400 for each card in hand)
1xShadow Ghoul(lv5, 1600ATK/1300DEF, gains 100 for each monster in grave)
1xRyu-Ran(Vanilla,lv7,2200ATK/2600DEF)

Spells(all normal spells): 10
2xDark Factory of Mass Production
2xDe-Spell(basically armed ninja)
2xGoblin's Secret Remedy(+600 LP)
2xHinotama(500 burn damage)
2xRemove Trap(destroy face-up trap)

Traps: 10
2xCastle Walls(normal, +500DEF to target until end turn)
2xReinforcement(normal, +500ATK to target until end turn)
2xEnchanted Javelin(normal, increase LP by ATK of attacking monster)
2xReady for Intercepting(normal, change warrior or spellcaster target to face-down)
2xSkull Invitation(continuous, when a card goes to grave, 300 burn damage to owner)

Extra: 4
X-Saber Wayne
Flamvell Uruquizas
Mira, The Star Bearer
Grenosaurus

As you can clearly tell, this deck is ready to kick the asses of those nasty premium decks!
...
...
...
I guess I should be thankful there is no random Toon World or Second Sarcophagus or 2 Spirit Messages in there, because it seems they really went out of their way to make it as crappy as possible...

At least in ygo there are structure decks that can give you access to staple cards without having to buy a bunch of ancient packs for one card you need in all decks. Nope, not here, since buying a pack, even if you play all 5 games of the day, will take you 2 days now, that means making any decent deck without paying will literally take years, after which point the metagame will have shifted of course.

Final verdict: Utterly unplayable pay to win mess. Avoid at all costs.

It's mostly due to the old gba and ds games I guess, as well as the yugi and kaiba evolution starter decks. I remember most of the games having classics like armed ninja, trap master, de-spell and remove trap, because what even is an MST or Dust Tornado. The stupid ol' vanillas also got iconic over time, like kagemusha of the blue flame. Although if I was asked at a random time, chances are I wouldn't be able to remember what a Water Spirit is, less memorable for me.

Nice waste of time Miniclip/KONAMI.
Not sure how many people are going to play this when we have superior clients (Who are by the way made by unprofessional coders) that are free and have more options than this.

To pay or not to pay. Fuck this shit, go dn.