YuGiOh Master Duel’s Ranked Mode rewards are terrible

It's been no secret if you've been browsing Twitter or Steam the past few days - YuGiOh Master Duel is a hit. And as such, many players are already trying to climb the ladder, this author included. However, much to my dismay, there's a bit of an issue with the game's rewards for hitting new milestones. Namely, the ranked rewards are completely lackluster.

Climbing the ladder should be an achievement in its own right. It shows mastery over the game's systems and a feeling that you're getting better. And the game should reward you for that. Other card games, like Blizzard's Hearthstone, have always done a great job of this. While that game doesn't give you an instant gratification of rewards, it does reward you with a significant amount of dust, packs, and gold at the end of a season, even if you didn't get very far into ranked.

Sadly YuGiOh Master Duel's ranked rewards do not follow in this rich tradition. Just take a look at this chart below.

All of that adds up to a paltry sum of 2600 gems over the course of an entire season for playing ranked. That's enough to buy you a grand total of 4 structure decks, or 26 packs. Keep in mind, this is a game that has about 6000 cards in it, and you won't always get to the maximum rank in the game.

At present, Konami does not have any additional rewards listed for the end of the season. If that continues to be the case, players on the lower end of the skill ceiling probably won't be earning a whole lot of gems. While the economy is fairly generous in other regards (for the time being), this is not one of them. You also don't get the rewards every time you hit the rank, only the first time in the season. So if you go on a losing streak, you could go quite some time without seeing any more gems.

It is worth noting that you will earn Legacy Pack tickets as you win matches, but you'd be doing that based on your performance in duels regardless of it being ranked or not. Additionally, you also earn experience and levels to level up your duel pass.

Getting rewards for ranking up, especially in a card game like this, helps to get keep the gameplay loop exciting for players as they learn the game. Konami should take a hard look at how they reward players for their victories, and consider perhaps awarding some more unique cosmetics beyond a border that's unlocked once. It would be nice, for example, to maybe earn buddies or special fields at the end of a season to show off how far you've come.

As it stands right now, the YuGiOh Master Duel ranked system doesn't offer much incentive to climb to the top. There's also no legendary leaderboard to show you're the best in the world, either. This is another page they could take from Hearthstone.

Ultimately, the game should try to keep things fresh for players as much as possible and give them as much incentive as it can. Otherwise, it may have a hard time keeping its explosive popularity going.

Be sure to check out some of our YuGiOh Master Duel guides while you're here, and for everything else, keep it locked here to Esports.gg.