A long while back, I had decided to start up writing about the evolving metas that have existed throughout the game’s history. The point of the series was to provide a point of reference for players to view, recognize, and see how the game had evolved over time. Instead of selecting every generalized meta for each couple of months, I intended to focus on specific periods that really marked changes in the game from both a technical and perspective-based lens.
However, there was a key problem as I continued further into the series. It became harder for me to nail down specific points where I wanted to drop a history pin into. The reason for this was because metas became increasingly shortened in length. Bushiroad decided to constantly release large bursts of series in multiple short periods of time, making it very difficult to gauge how the meta would be considered. Furthermore, it became rather bland and clear as the direction to how the game was moving forward would be like.
In simple terms, power-creep became heavily focused on finishing abilities that were increasingly aberrational. In the old days of the game, if you’ve read my earlier articles, you can tell that there was a different style of gameplay. The focus on finishers was always there, but the method to reach that point was far different from now. While finishers have increasingly grown better, mainly due to resource efficiency and finishing abilities, in the past few years, Bushiroad has seemingly left their hands off the safety rails, letting things just break loose. The damage output of cards nowadays just become increasingly more powerful and with several just carrying egregious multi-instance attacks, making the late game even more of a coinflip state than the game was just a few years back.
Now this short article isn’t really here to criticize Bushiroad or really converse about the meta. But it is important to make a note here as bans have increasingly ramped up, showing some sign of instability in card balancing. I’m not here to make much of a comment on that, so take it as you will. This does create some more practical concerns. Given the raw speed of which series are released and the rapid amount of time that Bushiroad quickly “fixes” the meta, it becomes far too increasingly difficult to continue writing about and trying to make articles to play “catch up.” As such, regrettably, I am announcing an end to this series. For fans who have enjoyed the short series, the rest of the articles will continue to exist in the archive to be viewed at your own pleasure.