It seems like Yugioh exists off of a core niche of dedicated players, while brand new players (and older players who are considering returning) are deterred.
There are some factors across the past 10 years which has contributed to this:
1) High prices. Having to spend $500+ on a meta deck every 6 months. In classic yugioh, the staples and cards which were splashable into many decks were good investments for a few years, but in modern Yugioh. Reprints tend to happen on cards which are already 1-2 years old and been fading out of the meta with power creep. The avg deck price will go down for a few months only to go up again when necessarily holo cards are $50-100+ a piece.
2) Text bloat. Cards in Yugioh are known to have really long card descriptions (like a Terms and Conditions agreement). Not just this but with the many archetypes out there and new archetypes coming out every year, memorizing with thousands of cards with long effects do can be intimidating. Memorizing what cards do is what I’d consider “artificial difficulty” is has nothing to do with logical reasoning; it’s just rote memorization.
3) Power creep. Yugioh has had constant power creep for 15+ years. This seems like a separate point, but it is a contributing factor to the above points. Games that have a rotation system can keep cards at the same power level, but just rotate out some of the older cards to incentivize playing new ones. But without rotation, the only way to do this is by making the older cards obsolete.
4) Sealed products. In most eras, there haven’t been good products for beginners to buy to get into the game. Booster sets don’t really help because if your goal is to build a specific deck or two + get the staples.
Most starter decks for are mostly full of bad cards; with few to no competitively viable cards. The decks don’t flow well, or have synergy. They have situational cards. And they have some of those cards with text bloat.
Ideally, there should be a clear path of being able to buy 3 copies of a structure deck + a few singles, and make a deck that’s at least tier 3 and somewhat competitive in locals.
Maybe, every year, they could release a “beginner bundle” with a structure deck + a promo pack of 20 essential staples and side deck cards.
5) Lack of official support for retro formats. There’s a growing scene for classic formats like Goats, Edison and HAT. For players who want simpler card effects or nostalgic returning players. But these haven’t gotten much support from Konami. The cards have been sporadically reprinted in reprint sets. But it would be interesting if Konami made a 2-deck starter bundle (with 2 playable decks) for a format. There are some locals that do retro formats, but many of them don’t.
That being said, it’s ultimately up to Konami whether they want to cast a wide net or have a smaller volume of ultra-dedicated customers.
If they’re making enough sales out of a niche of dedicated players, then my argument probably isn’t relevant. But if not, some of these ideas might help may help.
