This Space
For Rent

Bushiroad Don’t Know Their Game

It’s almost as though Bushiroad have been trying to turn us off buying their shit.

Vanguard, and the company behind it, and I have a complex relationship. I wouldn’t stop playing (yet), but I’m not going to bat for them ever regarding Vanguard or any of their stuff anymore. It’s honestly not worth it.

For a long time I sort of hoped that the evolution of the game was simply down to Bushiroad taking the standard route of path of least financial resistance, as a company is want to do, but now I know that the game is what it is because it’s staffed by idiots. Nowhere is this more apparent than last weeks’ notice that our game is only going to get more expensive from G Booster 4 onwards. In fact, it was this notice that finally confirmed for me that the people who were doing their damned-est to defend Bushi from Day 1 were foolishly naïve.

Bushiroad are first and foremost a business. I accept that much. What is unfortunate is that they don’t appear to give two shits about their own customer base. To anyone who tried to think of Bushiroad as their friend: they aren’t your friend. They haven’t got a decent record of customer service to show for it and they aren’t that transparent in their practices, and even the ones ticking both boxes are still in active competition with you, in a tug-of-war involving your money.

First and foremost: they have waited an awfully fucking long time to start re-printing staples, in lower rarities. So far the best they’ve done is reprint stuff people may not need anymore due to sheer power creep, but might not have even liked them since the start anyway. Until Vanguard vs Deletor we haven’t even got a fucking Perfect Guard lower than RR, unless you count G Trial Decks, and to be honest, if you wanted better and more comfortable access to beginners PGs as standard in Trial Decks was something you should have done from the start, Bushiroad. At least a company like Konami release those Star Pack things for Yu-Gi-Oh!, containing nothing new as such, but introducing staples at low rarity so newbies can make something halfway decent. Regularly, I should note.

This makes people resort to buying online for the stuff they need, and stupidly, for the new support that came out supporting something really old, hem hem, new Metatron without the old Metatron for convenience. The problem is Bushiroad doesn’t make a dime from people buying second hand. In fact, the only people I know who buy packs from the source are rich douchebags and casuals looking for trade bait. That’s understandable since they are the ones who don’t really look for the best stuff and so don’t care too much about what comes out the pack they buy. But for the people like me, we simply wait for the rich douchebags to open their packs and strip them for every last RRR like a nerdy vulture, or find dudes online who did the same. And even in my case, justify all the other support as crap and steadfastly refuse to participate in any buying at all.

Even for the stuff that are good, they’ve basically continued their run of idiocy by making the stuff that people need at higher rarities than RRR, as their LOWEST BASE rarity, starting with those fucking GR cards and only getting worse come G Booster 4. And because of that they are more scarce, which only drives people to buy online instead because tearing through that many boxes unless you have that much money to burn is not something they will do. The carrot motivates better than the stick. The card is the carrot and the method of acquisition is the stick. Everyone prefers a shorter stick or preferably no stick at all. How about I just eat someone else’s carrot at the cost of my own? It’s still ending with me getting a fucking carrot either way.

Sorry, now I’m getting peckish. One moment please.

…back. Moving on.

The list of sins they completely ignored only goes on, I’m afraid. I can go on to mention that not many of their box toppers are actually good over their history, which means that getting a playset for collection purposes means again, they buy online since it’s cheaper, and just get the select stuff they want, fucking with the set order several times which just fucked with people’s plans for spending, releasing so many sets back-to-back in weeks, leaving not much breathing room for the people with too much interest in the toys and nothing to spend on them thanks to the fund-draining on last fortnight’s purchases, and having so many of your cards require errata that it negatively affects gameplay until someone changes it. Gee, I can’t imagine why we foreigners are fucking pissed off at you, Bushiroad. Perhaps it is because you’ve shot yourselves in the foot so many times in the past, I’m not even sure you even HAVE a fucking foot anymore. I’ve checked, and it doesn’t even look like an extension of the leg. It resembles more a bloodied stump at this point.

I mean, yes, it could be that the decision to increase the price may be for unrelated reasons, since they took the time to mention Cardfight Online and presumably may need more dough to keep their servers afloat, but what I’m trying to say is that they seriously need to start reprinting combo pieces when they release new cards and for fuck’s sake, enough with the rarity creep already. It is not doing you any favours in the long run.

So why the hell am I still going to keep playing this shit, in that case? Well, because my friends can’t read the moon-runes necessary to play Japanese format. Also, we can’t take them to tournaments. Pricks.

Submit cure-alls for limbs requiring amputation (real-life experiences preferable) at saikyocardfighter@outlook.com