Evolving EX's

[kingcharlesthe6]

Hey guys! I wanted to get your opinion on an idea I had for something that could be re-introduced into the game. For anyone who wasn't playing back then, when the old EX cards were printed in the Ruby and Sapphire era, they weren't all these "big basics" that we have now. They were just stronger evolution cards, so you still had to evolve into them. What if this mechanic were reintroduced into the game and the basic EX's were slowly phased out via rotation?
I can see one issue with this in that it might butcher the mega evolution concept. Mega's would essentially become just break evolutions since you would have to play them down on top of an already evolved Pokemon. But I wonder whether this downside might be outweighed by the benefits of such a change. For one, the mechanic would make evolution cards playable again and would scale back the pacing of the game a bit more to something similar to what we had back in that era (If you couldn't tell, I got into the TCG competitively back in RS, so I'm a bit biased towards liking that pace of gameplay). The other obvious consequence of doing this is that the format will be dominated by the big basics until they are completely phased out, so it would be kinda a poopy format for a while. But what do you guys think of this idea? Are there any other issues I'm missing that might be a good point to bring up? I doubt this will end up happening because it seems like Pokemon really likes these fast paced, basic heavy formats, but who knows!

 

[Otaku]

Here is a radical idea; we don't do things that didn't work in the past and expect them to work now.

If we do what you said, there are two probable outcomes:

1) These new non-Basic, non-Mega Evolution Pokémon-EX aren't strong/fast/etc. enough to justify the massive card investment on top of all the drawbacks of being a Pokémon-EX, and just become another dead end mechanic.

2) These new non-Basic, non-Mega Evolution Pokémon-EX are strong/fast/etc. enough to justify the massive card investment on top of all the drawbacks of being a Pokémon-EX... in which case they take over the format.

Right now, there are Evolutions worth playing. You are correct that there is a problem with the game pacing. We need the-powers-that-be to STOP making cards that are so fast and powerful. The goal shouldn't be "Make ______ more powerful." The goal should be balance. Between the Types. Between the Stages. Possibly even between major win conditions, but I'll settle for the first two.

Imagine if fully Evolved Pokémon were on mostly even footing in terms of attributes (HP, Type, etc.) and effects (Abilities, attacks, etc.). How do we then balance out the natural advantages of being a Basic versus being a Stage 1 or Stage 2? The designers adjust how they make cards; nothing that can be in play during a player's first two turns should be able to attack for damage. The goal is to prevent KOs or setting up for rapid KOs, so for now at least it is easiest if they just shift the design so that nothing that can hit the field this early can attack for damage. What the attacks should do is aid in setup. Possibly once the current card pool rotates out, we get back first turn attacks.

At the same time we make sure there is a proper division of labor in the decks. We need the designers to stop making Pokémon that are good for... well... just about everything, at least among the Basic Pokémon. So those Basic Pokémon with useful setup attacks? They aren't going to be all that great at attacking even once they have been in play long enough to get fully powered up. The big, Basic Pokémon that are meant to be a main attacker should have no or poor low Energy (early game) attacks. This is still only half of this setp: Evolving Pokémon need to be better. Not for scoring KOs, but at setting up. If we make an Evolving Basic good at setting up, then they can help build advantage instead of it all resting on the final Stage of Evolution. The same goes for Evolving Stage 1 forms, though it might be best if most get Abilities that are a bit like a second Supporter (or really good Item) for the turn.

Lastly there are going to be certain effects reserved for Evolutions, simply because they need to more slowly enter play to remain balanced.

I'm writing this a bit late and I apologize if it is messy and/or incomplete.

 

[kingcharlesthe6]

I do agree with you that it really is the pacing of the game that is the problem. And like I said in my post, I am probably just looking at this through a pair of rose colored glasses. But I don't necessarily agree with the point that the mechanic didn't work well in the past. What we had back then with both basic EX's and evolving ones was a format where both were playable. Neither the basics nor the evolution EX's overtook the format like you are saying are the two possible outcomes of reintroducing the mechanic. The closest thing to either "dominating" the format was maybe when the Jirachi-Swoop Teleporter engine was a thing and in that case, the stage one EX's really became dominant. And obviously, that wasn't at all healthy for the game considering everybody was running those decks. But without an engine like this, you had both kinds of decks. Basic based ones like Magma and evolution based ones like Gardevoir and Swampert. But as you have mentioned, the format was also much slower to account for this style of play. Magma was slow to set up regardless of being mainly based around basics and some stage 1 techs giving the stage 1 and stage 2 EX's a chance to compete. So I'll go back and rephrase my original question. If the format were to slow down, what would your opinion be on reintroducing the evolution mechanic to EX's?

I am realizing after the fact one reason why we're disagreeing on this. When I said this would make evolution cards more playable, I was looking at the introduction of this mechanic as a nerf to big basic EX's rather than a buff to evolution cards. I think you are seeing it the other way around, and I guess its all up to who you ask as to whether its considered a nerf to basics or a buff to evolutions. I personally saw it as a nerf to EX's because take something like Seismetoad-EX. Imagine keeping the card the same, but forcing it to evolve up to that. On the other hand, I can see why you see it the way you do, as it would be buffing evolution cards by introducing powerful ones that have an easier time competing which would contribute to power creep. And obviously there are still some basics that are far too strong and would easily outspeed and wreck evolution EX's regardless unless they were rotated out like Yvetal.

 

[poke4trade]

If they allowed evolutions on first turn of the game, I think evolution ex might have viability, or if they discontinued the loose a turn mentality. Honestly with mega catcher I really think it should be fair now to evolve ex without loosing a turn. Mega catcher is a perfect tech card for those item lock decks that want something stuck in the active, I think that sorely hurts trainers in wanting to run any Megas at all. I believe we will see a couple of years of non mega play at the top levels because of the current decisions. Even groudon and Ray Ray has a strong counter with glacéon now. It is a bit of a shame but Pokemon have really weak end the mega play to uselessness. U can see it at the top tier levels.

 

[Otaku]

I do agree with you that it really is the pacing of the game that is the problem. And like I said in my post, I am probably just looking at this through a pair of rose colored glasses. But I don't necessarily agree with the point that the mechanic didn't work well in the past. What we had back then with both basic EX's and evolving ones was a format where both were playable.

The best of both were considered competitively viable at the time, but that isn't the same as proper balance; over the last six months you should find examples of each and every currently released Stage apart from Restored Pokémon that have seen successful competitive play. If information about the current format were to be as poorly preserved as what we have for those first few years after WotC lost the license, it would be easy to depict this as a well balanced, diverse format. Some insist it is right now, ignoring that it isn't so much what works as what does not; we have a large card pool with respect to competitive play because we have a massive card pool from which it was culled. Having a few dozen decks duking it out sounds incredibly diverse until you start looking at details. The numbers shrink as you start recognizing that a lot of the decks should be seen as variants of each other, because the key cards in each are the same. Then you realize that even without the key cards for strategy, the cards used for setup are also quite similar. Finally you realize that in terms of strategy, a good deal of the format falls into one of three approaches

1) Lock decks - decks that basically turn things into a game of glorified solitaire as the player facing the lock finds at least one major aspect of their deck either stuck in hand or able to be played but for greatly diminished effect. Sometimes it will be multiple soft (can be broken with some effort) or lesser (applies to something less important) stacked together, sometimes it will be a hard lock (difficult to break) or critical (key card for most decks, like Items). Usually its a combination of these, like how Seismitoad-EX can block Items with Quaking Punch while using cards like Crushing Hammer, Team Flare Grunt, and Head Ringer to make it difficult for anything to land a solid enough blow on the 'Toad to outpace even its low damage output.

2) Steamroller decks - decks that effectively turn things into a game of glorified solitaire by mounting an incredible offense. Sometimes it is simple so fast it is overwhelming, other times it is slow but resilient. The end result is that while you can use most of your resources (unlike when facing a lock deck) they aren't going to do you much good as you just can't overcome the force of the steamroller. Both classic and contemporary Deluge decks fall into this category; if they get setup and you don't happen to be running a deck that can exploit the chinks in their proverbial armor, after seven or less turns you've probably lost as your opponent takes his or her last Prize. "Steamroller" is already a pet term so don't worry if you know them as something else; when this kind of deck relies on glass cannons like in Night March, I think of them as "chainsaws", maybe because my experience with chainsaws are that they bear down and get the job done but are high maintenance. Then again I've never owned one myself; thinking of my Dad's and he was hard on his tools.

3) Both - Some decks can do both. A good Trevenant BREAK deck can lock down your Items, probably mess with your Energy quite a bit and while it does this, it can dead a steady amount of spread damage.

None of these are invincible. They don't have to be; unless they are particularly vulnerable they still have a huge influence on the format. I don't expect much disagreement with how things are now, and I am going somewhere with this... but I've spent a lot more time than I intended making this post. So I'm going to just point out that even digging up information from last year at this time takes some work. Each year you go back, less and less was preserved, and seemingly less and less was openly recorded. I actually had a good reason apart from this discussion to go back and dig through basically the entire competitive history of the TCG from its North American release until right before the game shifted to BW-On. There is a lot of stuff that I think we missed in hindsight.

Way too long of a comment anyway, so let me wrap this up, instead of with my original goal in mind, a reminder to really look at how things were back then versus now. I think you're going to find more similarities than you would care to admit, especially if you remember that a lot of places struggled to stay well informed of what was competitive. Back then there were a lot of game balance issues that were essentially "patched" by releasing cards to treat the symptoms, and not the real problems. Well, what we have now is because we didn't treat those problems, and those problems were mistaken as solid fundamentals for the game. @_@