Wednesday, December 10, 2014

The attack of FINALS WEEK: Dec. 2014 (plus a random rant)

Hey there guys! As some of you may know, many college students across the world are currently in the midst of the dreaded winter 2014 edition of FINALS WEEK, and sadly I am amongst them. I'm here to apologize for failing to put out my November news summary earlier, as well as missing the coverage of YCS Milan (and YCS London, which also happened to take place at a time when I was being crushed by schoolwork). Although I still haven't figured out what to do for the two YCS events I missed, I am still working on the summary and I'll probably have it out sometime in the next week. Apparently there's also a new banlist coming out before the end of the month, so I'll be keeping an eye out for that and I'll share my (borderline crazy) thoughts on it when it comes out. Hopefully it'll make the game a bit better and not a ton worse, but hey, who knows.


I know this is random, but sometimes I really wish I could play again. But that's like wishing that Yugioh could dramatically become a better game overnight, which is very unlikely.

Actually, that HAS happened a few times throughout the history of this game in my opinion. The most notable memory for me was the release of the September 2013 banlist (I think). You guys who used to read this blog regularly probably remember that I'm extremely conservative when it comes to the banlist - the more cards on it, the better. (Obviously it's about a billion times more complicated than that, but hopefully you get what I mean without me having to get in-depth.) So when I saw that list, with so many cards added to it that I really thought deserved to be there, I damn near came in my pants. It was legitimately one of the best days of my life regarding this game.

But part of the experience of quitting was me realizing that not only does Konami really NOT agree with me on how the list should be handled (they aren't stupid... they know what a balanced Yugioh could look like, and they purposely avoid making it like that for money), but that the list could be as amazing as humanely possible and that still wouldn't change the fact that I was only slightly above average in terms of skill, which, in this game, is basically analogous to sucking as hard as possible.

It wouldn't change the fact that the experience of trading is a load of absolute crap. It wouldn't change the fact that ever having to spend any more than $5 on a single card or $100 for a single deck is a load of absolute crap. It wouldn't change the fact that needing to learn rulings and memorize how some of the thousands of cards in this game interact, and the fact that you can (and will) lose games if you don't, is a load of absolute crap. It wouldn't change the fact that cheating is way, way too easy to do. And it wouldn't change the fact that there's too much LUCK in this game and that you drop games for no good reason all. the. damn. time.

Of course, many of these things are simply symptoms of real-life card games in general. But I've always had this sneaking feeling that Yugioh probably has it worse than other games. And at some point I just looked in the mirror and realized that all of this isn't worth it anymore.


I hate writing sometimes. Actually, fuck that - I hate communicating with other human beings entirely sometimes. It's too easy for people to misinterpret things, and as such, it's prudent to add caveats to your work in an attempt to preemptively stop people from taking things the wrong way. So, the obvious caveat to add here is that I'm obviously not 100% sure that I've quit for good. I can't see the future, but I totally can see myself attending a tournament sometime in the future if I were to make friends who like to play or something, for example.

But aside from that, I could also always go back to playing against myself with the help of my old laptop and the modern miracle that is Dueling Network. (Pokemon Showdown is largely better, but it's still a fucking amazing site. Imagine where we would be if it weren't for shit like Dueling Network?) But it doesn't give me the same sense of accomplishment as defeating a real opponent would (obviously). It just helps me avoid like 99% of the awkward crap that goes on when you play actual people, and I appreciate that immensely as a socially awkward and hearing-deficient person. Anyways, it seems like Konami is finally giving Wind monsters more support (I think they randomly got two new archetypes recently), so maybe I'll give those a whirl sometime when I'm not busy watching fake animals and living objects fighting each other on Showdown. (And yes, that pun was intended.)


God. This was just supposed to be an apology for getting the November news summary up late. Nobody even cares about the damn thing. Well alright, enough of my incoherent ramblings. Later!

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