Dwindling player base?

The last time I played YOMI was 2015, I believe. It seems the player base has dwindled quite a lot since then. I’m not really sure what my point is. I guess this is more a “cry for help” post, because I have no one to play frequently enough…

Are you already on the Sirlin Games Tabletop Discord? There are a few people that hop on that at intervals looking for games.

That said, my experience in the last year or so is that you basically have to sign up for tournaments to find games.

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Damnit! Is that how it is now? Back in the 013s you could find 20 or so people everyday! I’m not sure if I can get used to this.

The player base has been in decline. When you were last here, qm was pretty active. Almost all those players are gone. Even the tournament scene has reduced by at least half. The game still lives and has dedicated fans, but we definitely could use a mix of old players coming back plus new recruits. This has been the story for awhile. Maybe one day, the Yomi growth phase will be re-ignited.

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A new expansion or even just a few quality of life patches is all it would take for me to get back into it. Unfortunately who knows if that will ever happen.

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What QoL changes are you thinking about in particular? Balance type changes? Or just UI/app changes?

Yeah I was talking about QoL balance changes. The app works fine.

Well, except for the no-rules mode, I suppose, which we found out when we tried to test balance changes.

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I play on and off for short periods about once a year. I’ve been playing it since it came out.

I love this game, but it’s hard to get excited when it’s basically in it’s final form. Nothing new to discover, every matchup has been completely explored, and there’s no news on a third set ever happening.

If the tag mode rules were added to the online version, there would be a whole new world to explore with way more possibilities, but right now the game is to the point where playing it for me is like playing Solitaire on Windows. I’m on auto-pilot.

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Yes, but even when I reached that same state that you’re talking about, there’s still a lot you can improve on as a player, depending on who you play. There are still some very gifted players here.

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I want to tackle the idea that since the game doesn’t have gameplay changes coming in the future that it isn’t worth playing. I am willing to concede that if you think the finished game isn’t good enough, then by all means find something else.

As I have become older, I look less to the new and shiny and more to quality. I believe that this game is good, and I will continue playing it. I still play Yoshi’s Island for similar reasons. That game came out in 1995. It doesn’t even have multiplayer to add that human element of surprise. If a game is good and worth playing, to me it will always be good and worth playing.

Edit:

To further add to my point about the search for quality, I remember trading in my whole SNES collection to get a Sony Playstation. I was after the new hotness. About a decade later, I looked back at this decision and thought, “Why in the hell did I trade in all those classics for a PS1, Toshinden, and Ridge Racer?” I even had to pay out quite a bit of cash on top of it. Yoshi’s Island, Actraiser 2, Super Metroid, Street Fighter II and many of my other games deserved better than that.

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I agree with you in theory, but I have played this game more than anyone possibly ever, and I just don’t feel the same excitement I once did. In a game as tight as this, even just a slight paradigm shift can make it feel completely fresh, and that’s what I feel I need to bring me back in. Even if there were a bunch of new faces to smash that would be something, because the person matchup in this game is just as important as the character matchup, but that isn’t really happening either. I could play yet another tournament game against Fluffiness or Caralad, but I don’t really feel that pull. Even the thrill of trying to win Summer Smash was sucked out of me when it went from a 64 person bracket to barely pulling 32.

And if you got Playstation and didn’t play Final Fantasy Tactics one billion times, you deserve to feel bad.

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Spice things up, huh? Come to think of it, the YOMI rule book has plenty of info on 2v2 play. I don’t think the developers want implement it what with Fantasy Strike trying to gain more ground… but ya know, the resources are technically there.

I am not much of a strategy fan. Outside of Yomi, I am a fan of pure action. For the Playstation, the game that I put 100s of hour into was Strider 2. I kept going for that high score.

More on topic, I do agree with you that the lower entrants into tournaments does deflate me, as well. I think that 32 player tournaments are enough to get me excited. If we drop any lower, then we will be at the level where single day events used to be. These smaller events never motivated me near as much as the big events did. Oh well, we play with what we have.

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I want to tackle the idea that since the game doesn’t have gameplay changes coming in the future that it isn’t worth playing. I am willing to concede that if you think the finished game isn’t good enough, then by all means find something else.

It’s not that I don’t think the game is good enough. I just think the 1vs1 mode has gone flat.

1vs1 Yomi is cool, but it’s limited. We can try to pretend that it’s got the same depth as the fighting games it’s based off of, but the truth is that without timing or spacing being elements, there’s not too many options. It boils down to luck of the draw and reads (which is the point of the game. I know). After a while, things get stale. Fighting games are cool not just for being able to predict someone, but also because you can express yourself with your character. To me that’s the key element that keeps me from being as excited as I was in the early days when I was still discovering things.

With tag mode, lots more depth gets added. You have more strategies to develop, more cards to play with, and more assets to manage. It would give us more options to build something unique or play something in a unique way. It’s already part of the game, but it’s just not easily accessible. Even in local settings it’s hard for me to get someone to play 1vs1, much less something more complicated.

I just wish it was in the online version is all. I love this game and it’s sad to know that the potential to for my interest to be revived is dangling just out of reach.

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I once called out a player by name that was using a guest account. I knew no other player that played the character with that style. His response was, “How did you know it was me?”

I agree there is limited self expression, but you can still put your own stamp on a character. That is part of the appeal that keeps me playing. I like trying to figure out how my opponent will utilize their character.

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Yeah, I totally agree. It’s true that some depth does get lost in translation when positioning is abstracted away, but I think the degree to which the Yomi design captures all the core elements of fighting games, including personal expression, while stripping away cruft and execution barriers, is nothing short of amazing.

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I would not call the game stale. While new developments have slowed down, the meta is still changing. The matchups still have unexplored territory. I actually find Yomi more exciting than when I started, not less. I would still like a third edition, I don’t think it is outright necessary.

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How? The top tier hasnt shifted since i joined neither has the low tier.

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