Standard: Why this format is terrible (OT included)

Alright, lets get the beginning statement out of the way first, do I believe what the headline says even though it contradicts my previous post from well over a year ago? Yes. 100%. The current standard format is not only the most unfun of the three current formats by a wide margin, but, its also absolutely a mess of a format with a myriad of problems that I will attempt to explain below. And before anybody shoddily mentions, I have been playing (Before I outright quit) standard for well over a year and have been playing Vanguard since 2014, so I have many comparisons I can easily draw from.

(Future edit: -My- opinions have changed from what you're about to read a decent amount, but a good amount of points still stand)

The quotes and links to other individuals are -solely- for there views on the Overtrigger, they may not share my own personal sentiments on whatever you read in this post

Lets begin by listing each issue out in the form of a pseudo table of contents from my personal own tier of least worrying issue to most (For your reading pleasure). OT talk is #5 for anyone skipping to that specifically.

1.    The Persona Ride Issue

2.    The Heavy Trigger Sway

3.    The Ride Line Support Issue

4.    The Impact Issue

5.    The -Problem- Child

The Persona Ride Issue

I fully believe that persona ride's are a worst mechanic than gifts (Not that gifts are particularly great mind you, but that's for another time) for two specific reasons. 

 The Homogenization of G3's

By homogenization, I mean specifically the fact that Persona Ride only activates when riding on the same G3 during the ride phase, and specifically the ride phase (Thankfully). There are outliers like Thegrea L and Thegrea D of course, but for the majority of decks, you'll just be riding the same G3 for the entirety of the game. That saying, you do have some decks with G4's which have slightly altered skills from there G3 counterparts, which kept things a bit more involved, however, it seems that was solely a blip by Bushi and they've been relegated to the back burner at this point. 

 The reason this is a problem is that, in clear terms, it is incredibly monotonous. Even breakride era was more involved as you were giving your boss unit a completely new skill on top of the skill they originally had. For clans that had multiple break rides or strong bosses, it made things interesting gameplay and theory-crafting wise. This was 2013-2014. In 2022, forcing you to run solely the same G3 is incredibly boring and offers no real shake-up, something that V-Premium doesn't necessarily have to endure, although, some decks can feel that way depending on what you play. 

The Overwhelming Power Disparity

Markers were an issue because of how easily Bushi allowed you to spam them in some decks. That is a problem that is fixable by changing the rules of how many markers you can attain in a turn, or similarly to the Heal Guardians, heavily increasing the defensive capabilities of decks. In relation to Persona Ride's, the latter is also a possible solution, however, the results so far have been incredibly mixed. The first two have been okay, but the latter is heavily criticized for being a shoddy Heal Guardian, and frankly, that's giving it too much credit. 

That saying, the power of a persona ride is equivalent to three force markers spread out over your front row, in a format with an -extreme- lack of shield (More on that later). The issue is, there really is only two solutions, deleting persona rides or heavily increasing the defensive options. It also doesn't help that persona rides feel much more luck based than markers as you can quite easily win games with just riding your sole G3 in V/P, but in standard? Not luck drawing into them only gives your opponent a severe advantage.

For me, the latter is an issue for sure, but the former is what really nips the idea of Persona Rides being superior for me.

The Heavy Trigger Sway

Vanguard has never shied away from reveling in the trigger aspect of the game, regardless of the format discussed. OG Vanguard, triggers had sway, G had a bit of sway but games were not nearly as dependant on them as prior era's, the start of V had immense trigger sway that dispersed as the format got more complicated, and obviously Premium's sway with triggers, outside of something like Ripples (please ban), has been extremely mute. 

Overdress though? I can confidently say that triggers play such paramount role compared to almost any format. Why? Because of the incessant lack of shield the format has thanks in no small part due to the removal of 10K shield G1's while still keeping the base 10K trigger power from V. This one small decision mixed with the above mentioned Persona Ride issue, makes it feel like you -never- have enough shield in hand outside of random occurrences. Take this as a baseline example:

G0's - 15K/20K/25K
G1's - 5K
G2's - 5K
G3's - 0K

A standard column could be 23K (With the incessant amount of +5K effects this format has), which, without any trigger power/persona ride power/defensive triggers would mean either guarding with 1 G0 or 3 G1/G2's. If you add persona ride to that, you would need 2 G0's or 1 G0 + 2 G1/G2's or 5 G1/G2's. 

So not only do you heavily require the need to have triggers in hand for guarding purposes more than any other format, but defensive triggers hold a lot more sway in a format where persona ride and 5K shield's are the norm, resulting in luck based interactions more-so than something like V or P. This is just a baseline example and if I wrote out all the examples I had on this matter, you'd be reading for hours. The rideline also means that main-deck cards are 4 cards less, which means triggers show up even more, further emphasising the trigger sway games have.

The change from 10K shield G1's to 5K shield G1's along with keeping the base power of triggers from V was single handedly the worst mistake Bushi could've made in regards to trigger sway. The band-aid solutions linked above are also not close to being enough either. 

The Ride Line Support Issue

When the second reboot happened and we found out about the switch to a nation base support system, I remember seeing many people be ecstatic about the switch, me included.
"There were far too many clans"
"Support was few and far between for the less popular clans"
"I have to wait so long for new cards"

Were some of the statements made at the time, and they weren't incorrect. In the time that I updated my Granblue deck with the Cocytus stuff, quit shortly afterwards, then returned in 2020 thanks to Covid keeping everybody locked in, my deck didn't change at all because Granblue never received any new support. I also used to play Bermuda a lot in G, and the wait times for new non-fighters collection support was a literal year on average.

That all was very annoying, however, the nation system, thus far, has showed that while yes, your "nation" will receive support at a quicker pace, that doesn't factor in the quantitative amounts of actual ride lines in the format, ride lines that are mainly xenophobic and therefore harder to support all at once. Thus, you get the issue of consistent ride line support as seen below in the obscene amount of decks already out (Or about to release as of before set 8) a bit over a year and a half in the format.

Dragon Empire (6) - Eugene, Overlord, Bavsagara, Nirvana, Nirvana Jheva, Tamayura
Keter Sanctuary (6) - Bastion, MLB, Hexaorb, Thegrea, Youthberg, PBO
Stoichea (6) - Zorga, Magnolia, Lianhorn, Rorowa, Iron Anchor, Flagberg
Brandt Gate (6) - Seraph, Welstra, Orfist, Eva, Gravidia, Dyanos
Dark States (7) - Kheios, Greedon, Jet, Drajeweled, Baphormedes, Bruce, Baromagnes
Lyrical Monastario (14) - Kairi, Loronerol, Herminia, Clarissa, Michu, Mediell, Luticia, Lilfa, Haseritt, Fortia, Wilista, Petrarca, Feltyrosa, Kyouka, Alestial
Total (46)

While I understand that the clan system also made it so that there were multiple decks in each clan with semi to little space needed to truly support them all at a sufficiently high-quality level, you could always use generic support, whether it was in G with generic strides or V with generic support cards in your deck. In overdress, decks are so constantly xenophobic that transferring cards has become harder and harder and that trend will only exacerbate as more ride lines are introduced as the months, and years, go bye while adding the unfortunate circumstance of inflating the prices of the few generic foils the entire nation will want in there decks unless reprints happen.

One more point before we end this section. I want to speak about collab boosters. I'll be blunt, I don't care about them, nor do many people I've spoken too and seen around the community. Now, I'm not saying they shouldn't be in the game, there is definitely a time and place for them, G with Touken Ranbu for example, or Hello Happy World in V were perfectly fine.

No, the issue comes with the constant barrage of them. 1 per year is perfectly acceptable in my view, 3-4 in a year? That's just nonsensical.

+ It takes away support from the actual nations people care about
+ Slows down the release schedule to a crawl for said nations and,
+ Creates a lull in excitement for card reveals 

The nation support system was supposed amalgamate everything, but with numerous collab boosters each year it seems, Lyrical being there own thing when they should be in the main booster (With a very high excess in ride lines I may add), the actual main non-lyrical nations suffering consistent support droughts for multiple decks, new and old one's as well as the heavy excess in xenophobic card design, and was the switch away from clans really worth it? As we continuously get more and more ride lines, I feel the answer becomes much clearer than it was last year.

The Impact Issue

 This point will be the most challenging to portray in word form as the definition of impact I'm attempting to portray may not come across as seamlessly as the other points, but damn if I won't conjure something up anyway. Its also the most subjective point out of the five I've listed in this post, so I can understand if people don't understand, but this point means a lot to me personally. 

Firstly, when I say impact, I mean how impactful cards are in the format they're in, or how important they feel when being used. The difference between low and high impact can make or break someone's enjoyment in a game, especially if they feel there cards aren't doing enough and Standard is just that. A flood of low-impact cards that barely do anything, that are even more low-impact than cards released well over half a decade ago. 

Worse yet, as someone who's been playing this game, on and off since 2014, I've come to expect a game to grow as it gets older, not revert to a more simplistic stage. My same criticisms have also been levied to V, except V has seen growth in complexity in not only card design, but card interactions. Certainly not to the level that I wish it was, but far and away more complex than it was in the beginning and more impactful at the core card design and gameplay level than Standard has been, even in the same timeframe (1.5 or so years since release of D and V). 

To illustrate this point, this is where I believe the formats stand in comparison to one another in different timeframes: 

This isn't saying Standard will not become more complicated in the future, however, when and by what extent, I have no clue and I can only judge the past and present and can only assume for the future based on past trends.Those trends being that 1.5+ years since the start of Overdress and from my viewpoint, and many others, the format has not increased in complexity to almost any imaginable level.

If anything, the stagnation of impactful cards, a plethora amount of useless filler cards hell bent on keeping the format as +5K as possible and Bushi's inability or frightfulness of chasing any sort of power creep (Remember, some level of power creep is a good thing) is keeping the format locked in a perpetual state of stagnation. It also doesn't help that while Overdress does get some unique concepts not done before in this game, they're more or less shallow, uninteresting and downright simplistic to a fault, with no real wiggle room for complexity. 

This is a major issue for this format and an issue I truly think Bushi won't ever fix, not in the foreseeable future. That saying, I've gone over many issues so far, the PR issue, the heavy trigger sway, the ride-line issue and of course, the impact issue. There is though, one -MAJOR- issue that is not only the single most problematic issue in this format by a wide margin, but one that spurred me to create this blog. 

Yes, that's right. Lets talk about the problem child, the Overtrigger. 

The -Problem- Child

Right off the bat, the Overtrigger is indefensible. Any form of concrete defense over this mechanic in a competitive setting does not exist and quite frankly, does actual harm to this game and franchise as a whole in my eyes. I'll preface this by saying I've quit standard already and until the OT is eradicated from this format, I will be extremely hesitant on returning save for probably my favorite unit returning to this format (Which is beyond slim). Now, lets go through the two reasons the Overtrigger is a garbage and indefensible mechanic.

Offensive OT

Imagine, you're an astral being on the planet cray and stand up your Lyrical Vanguard, you go first, you ditch for the G1, your opponent does the same, deals you a damage, you ditch for the G2 and swing and out of the 37-38 cards left in your deck, you hit the Lyrical OT. Congratulations, you basically won the game right there and then. Shake your opponents hand because he lost to the passage of fate. You didn't win, your opponent didn't win, your deck won. You did nothing, you accomplished nothing and you wasted your time without even really getting a chance to pilot.

Imagine, you're an astral being on the planet cray and stand up your Brandt Gate Vanguard, you go first, your opponent goes, you go, your opponent goes, you ride up to Gravidia, you 3 meteor, drive check, crit, OT. Unless your opponent PG'd right there and then, they're taking 6 damage. Congratulations, you win! What an intense game full of skill by both players! You can also replace the crit with nothing and your opponent is still taking 4 and probably died there regardless. Don't even get me started on the 5 meteor combo where you can just deal 12 damage casually, that's perfectly fair and balanced!

Imagine, you're an astral being on the planet cray and stand up your Dragon Empire Vanguard, you proceed to go through the beginning process and ride G3 first, Bavsargra, you swing with a crit and hit the OT, congratulations, you restand as a giant beatstick, go +2, and your opponent is facing down a 2 crit behemoth twice. No PG's? Guess you just die or are set back so much that you can't muster a comeback. The same can be said about something like Tamayura, you just go +2 and get an additional 1-2 rear guard swings. What about Nirvana? Awesome, you go +3 now with an additional Vanguard swing. What fun, compelling and in-depth gameplay! What skill you have! 

Even from the examples above, I did not even mention the sheer stupidity of the power buff being 100 million. Even yugioh players who have never played Vanguard thought the OT was a joke card. Think about that for a moment. Now lets go on to, non-arguably, the stupider portion of the Overtrigger, the defensive OT

Defensive OT

This. This is the quintessential worst aspect of the OT and the one that ruins even more games than even the offensive OT, somehow. 

Imagine, playing your deck optimally to the point of knowing what exactly your deck does, knowing the matchup, playing through the matchup and being on top of your game throughout. You then go for the kill on your final turn, and instead of your opponent taking the final damage, they hit the defensive OT. Now the opponents Vanguard is 100 Million+, they drew a card, healed a card and saved numerous cards in hand by not needing to guard the remainder of your attacks. You then die next turn because you over committed and couldn't end the game. Are you at fault? Did you do something wrong? Did you misplay? Absolutely not. 

An example I'll never forget is my first matchup against Flagberg while I'm piloting Kairi. I'm having a horrible game with missing pieces, I messed up an attack pattern and I wasn't too aware of some of the skills of the Flagberg's rear guards, this was my game to lose. My opponent persona ride's, calls down most of his hand and attacks with his 1st of 5 attacks this turn. I decide to take it, and to everybody's surprise, its the OT. I end up winning the game next turn. 

Not only does this make the Flagberg player feel like shit, it makes me so apathetic towards this format, and the game as a whole, that I sincerely apologized, over a card game. That wasn't the first time either. winning with the OT doesn't feel good at all and losing against it feels beyond dreadful. 

Now, Imagine how it feels if you paid hundreds to attend a BCS or spend numerous hours preparing for BRO only to go up in smoke because someone on the table pulls the casino lever and hits a flaming 777. Even in winning, you think to yourself "Why did I bother testing and getting better when the OT decided the game" and in losing, you may not even want to bother with the game anymore. I am far and away not alone in this line of thinking in regards to the OT, lets hear there perspective:

Outside perspective

Franz Borden: Accomplishments (BSF2022 Duluth top 8 D, BSF2022 Newark top 4 V, BRO2022 4th D, BCS2022 Duluth top 8 P)

OT being not only legal, but what often feels as celebrated feels like a slap in the face to someone wishing to take the game as seriously as possible. It ruins hours of testing, makes me feel like there’s no reason to actually prepare for an event. And when an event comes I know I could be spending hundreds of dollars to travel just to be out of the event halfway through because I lost to someone just flipping a trigger at the correct time.

I’ve seen many players such as myself begin to not care about regional level events because they don’t find them worth it, I am becoming that way too. Until I can go to an event and know OT won’t make everything I do feel useless, I will be finished playing this game/going to events. 

 MichaelTheTitless: Accomplishments (BRO2022 NA 3rd place V, BCS2022 Houston 4th place P)

Earlier this year, I met someone who was interested in Cardfight!! Vanguard but had only ever had the opportunity to play ZERO. I had some start decks on me, so I offered him Bastion - he was a Royal Paladin player in ZERO - and I took out Magnolia for myself. However, before we started playing, I took the overtrigger out of the Bastion deck to show to him. I established that he was familiar with how triggers worked, and then started to explain the overtrigger. I got as far as "It gives 100 million power" before he said "That's stupid. Can we not play with that?" I smiled, readily agreed, and pulled out some spare Keter bulk to give him a critical trigger to replace the OT with. Even someone relatively new to the game could immediately see how random, unreasonable, and unfun the OT was.

It's not hype, it's not beginner-friendly, it doesn't help keep the game from being competitive, it just turns people off to joining and continuing the game we love and share. Overtrigger needs to be banned.

Outer Orange: Accomplishments (Content Creator + BCS2022 NA top 8 V)

Twitlonger

Saaya: Accomplishments (Content Creator + BSF2022 Anaheim top 4 P, BRO2022 AO top 8 V)

Overtriggers make most players have to take extra steps to Counteract the possibility of an Overtrigger. And personally, it's much harder to predict and plan for an overtrigger than to know when one is coming. If you are not prepared, you die which is why overtriggers should not be a thing

Sabriye: Accomplishments (BRO2021 AO Top 4, BRO2022 NA Top 4 V)

OT honestly just leads to cheesy wins and extremely painful losses, even at a casual level its not super fun and at a competitive level its a nightmare in both testing and actual games.

Ty Smith: Accomplishments (BCS2022 Rosemont Top 2 P) 

Yusha[MT]: Accomplishments (BRO2022 NA Top 4 D)

tbh I kinda hate the very idea of OT, despite it carrying me to top 4 of BRO NA standard. I felt bad for my last swiss opponent cuz a perfectly timed defensive OT took away his chance to get in top cut, it was a very fun game tho, and he was and is a great bro tho, very chill, love the guy. Back to the OT, just the presence of it made Standard and Premium a lot sackier than they should be.

Zenahreon: Accomplishments (Content Creator) 

Thoughts on the OT

In conclusion, the OT is 100% indefensible in any competitive setting argument and I've yet to hear one positive argument in that regard. I can barely think of any defense for it outside the competitive sphere, but that's either here nor there. I could have asked many more people who all share similar views as the wonderful people above, however, I didn't want to make this blog too long. 

I think I got my point across as even people who have any semblance of meaning in this community, who are good enough to top and/or create content that further drives the visibility of this game believe the OT is a major issue, and its dumbfounding how some don't. Its surreal to be honest. That saying, I've made my point, no need to dwell on it. OT's are garbage and are the #1 reason Standard is the worst format personally. Ban them.

Before I go, thank you to the people who gave me quotes and thank you to the people who actually took time to read this post, even if you disagree on some points. I very much appreciate it, and remember, this comes from someone who wants this game to be the best it can be, and maybe one day, Standard will be a format that I can enjoy wholly.