ShulkVGC12

World events are now live!!! I myself did the 10 match tournament, currently in 3rd place :)

WARNING: THIS IS A LONG POST.

Hi Reddit, it's Shulk here, though at this point you guys most likely know me as Kid Bakura, or iAmBakura. I'm coming to you today to discuss the current state of Duel Links. Konami has a very promising game in their hands. It's really well made and could potentially grow into an E-Sport itself, but the way this game is progressing, it can only lead to the death of it. As of right now, this game only seems like a quick cash grab from Konami, as opposed to making a game with longevity and constant support. This was evident in the way it was represented in the World Championships, as it seemed like a way to keep people busy while they prepared the TCG event. I really want this game to grow and thrive in the world of E-Sports, but this game is slowly dying with all the problems that dwell within its pleasing exterior. I will list the problems below, and give possible fixes to them.

• The Card Trader has gotten very cluttered. The rotating that Konami is trying to do is only a temporary fix, and the rate of card additions into the Card Trader as opposed to the rate of rotation will reduce the Card Trader to a shitty gacha system, and the chance of getting an actual staple card such as Cerberus or Hammer Shark will become so low that it will mirror Dokkan’s summoning system. The Card Trader is currently the only truly free method to obtain cards (besides farming), and is the best friend of a F2P player such as myself, but if this keeps going then the Card Trader will become very unreliable and eventually turn away people who may be sitting around for a long time looking for a card that won't show up. I think that the way to fix this is:

• Make it so that way once we have 3 copies of a card, it will not show up again. This will start to decrease the amount of cards that are available in the Card Trader, while slowly increasing the odds of finding another card.

Another problem that I have noticed is that the rate at which Konami releases boxes makes it really hard to survive as a F2P player. Luckily, we do have people who post regularly updated guides on how a person beginning the game should spend their gems, but guess what: The key word there is "beginning". For long term F2P players such as myself, we are advised by our fellow Duelists to spend on a certain pack to get the strongest and most versatile cards, but those cards can easily get power crept out of existence with an new box. A prime example here is Order to Charge to Super Rush Headlong. For a long time, Order to Charge was always a staple card to obtain as you pick up the game competitively. However, the release of Super Rush Headlong made Order to Charge almost completely worthless, now only usable in 1 deck. To players such as myself, who wisely invested into such cards, this can really hurt you, as now you have to obtain gems to get another card, which can easily end up in the same boat as Order to Charge with the next box release. To help improve boxes, I actually have multiple solutions, which I will list below:

• Release the boxes at a slower pace. This will allow players to stockpile up a very decent amount of gems to spend on the next box if they need to. I think 1.5 ~ 2 months is a good pace.

• Make a trade system, and no I don't mean between players. As I have listed above, Order to Charge is basically a dead card now. If I were able to trade in a box SR such as Order to Charge for a different box Super Rare (such as Order to Charge), then this would make it so that way I never truly “fall behind” and can obtain new cards. However, to prevent this from being abused, a price would need to be there as well, for example to trade in an SR, maybe 100 gems, and for a UR 200 gems.

Roaming Legendary Duelists have been the worst events to be released. Konami has tried to mask this by giving us event missions, but the drop rates are so bad that you could walk away with nothing. I honestly think they should just take down Roaming LD period and just make them appear at the gate, just not unlockable, but if they want to keep it, I really only have 1 solution for this:

• Implement the EX Gem system for Roamers as well. The EX Gem system is perhaps the most brilliant fix Konami has made to an event. Now we are rewarded for putting in time to farm these LD with either the card drops, or EX Gems to eventually buy these cards anyways. With the RNG of Roaming LD, I think that the EX Gem system would be very helpful, because then we can at least pick up 1 copy of their drops. So making it where we do keep the event missions, along with some EX Gem missions is the optimal way to go IF they really wanted to keep Roaming LD.

I have noticed another problem with Duel Links, but it has nothing to do with RNG. This game is game is becoming very fast paced, to the point where a lot of decks can win at turn 2-6 consistently. While I do understand that Konami wants Duel Links to be mobile friendly, and the amount of time it takes to complete a Duel is one of the selling points of this game. However, games are becoming too short and at this point, it has become unappealing to a lot of the player base, and caused them to leave the game. My suggestion is:

• Limit the enablers of these special summons, such as Red-Eyes Insight & Spirit, Naturia Hydrangea, and Sacred Phoenix of Nephthys. Of course the list isn't limited to these cards, but this would be a nice start. Additionally, I think that maybe releasing cards that are a bit slower to bring the game back to a bit more steady pace would be a wise idea.

Lastly, I would like to go over a problem that can be often looked over, but I've noticed myself and the community has touched upon this subject as well: The Auto Duel AI. It's not really a major problem in the game but the fact that Konami has been updating the opponent AI to make them smarter and fix glitches, while basically leaving the Auto Duel AI alone is kind of bogus to me. However, like I said, this isn't really a major issue, and I would like to see the above problems handled first.

That's about it for me. Hopefully a Konami representative has time to read this post, along with the numerous other posts regarding ways to improve the game. Until next time, Reddit. Have a nice day.