In this format it's not so broken. Yes it's very good but mostly only good attacker for it is Chien-pao ex which discards energies. That gives opponent chance to get you out of Baxcaliburs what hurts it a lot. There is no very strong Water pokemon which keeps all energy when attacks
In what format has Rain Dance been unbalanced in? Like genuine question, I can't think of a single time it has been, other than maybe XY purely because of Archie's Ace in the Hole.
That's not really an issue that should be addressed by making Stage 2s stronger. Giving them passive, uninteractive Abilities that just let you ignore one of the rules of the game doesn't really play on what should make Stage 2s exciting. What really holds back Stage 2s is every Basic ex / Stage 1 ex being a good enough beatstick.
Balance is almost always evaluated in reference to rules, not to format or context. Otherwise you can endlessly justify adding more and more broken cards (powercreep), because other broken cards already exist.
i feel like this perspective defeats the purpose of conversations around game balance to begin with?
Basics and stage 1s need to be good attackers otherwise every deck devolves into a stage 2 deck. Unlike digimon, evolution isn't the entire personality of the franchise, some pokemon evolve, some don't. It's entirely fair to want to make Basics and stage 1s viable decks to build around.
That's because players usually evaluate "balance" in context of what is a "good deck" or a "bad deck". That's fine - they are not supposed to think in design terms and health of the overall game. But thinking that a deck/card is broken because of a format it is in creates a few paradoxes - first, you can have a card that's absolutely bonkers broken in one format (ADP) and then it's just kind of okay after a few sets releases (also ADP). This makes it impossible to define what a "broken" card is beyond "it has a lot of meta% and I don't like it" and makes it so a card, despite having the exact same text printed on it, can shift from broken to unbroken depending on context. Second, you can have a deck that's made out of absolutely completely fair cards, in a fair format, and be an absolutely dominant Tier 0 force (very rarely happens, but it can) just because it flows extremely well. To define this as "broken" makes it, again, completely subjective.
In the sea of shallow and uninformed takes on trading card game design I read every day on different sites, this is a great post. I don't agree 100% with everything you said in this thread, but either way thanks for laying out your points in a competent and convincing way.
Yea we usually call those fully evolved. NFE is anything with extra non-mega evolutions to come
Ok that makes sense, it just feels weird (to me) to call something that’s never evolved “fully evolved.” But from an analytical perspective it does make sense to do so.
"broken" game elements does not necessarily close up design spaces. Most, if not all "broken" mechanic is type specific so if you want to make a card that might be abusable by say baxcalibur, you just don't design that card as a water type.
You've literally just described what a closed design space is. If there are cards or mechanics that would normally be fine, but the existence of Rain Dance/Baxcalibur makes them potentially abusable, that is a textbook example of a closed design space.
You're saying this as though it's the fault of the Special Energy, not this card combination. I'll give you a simpler and even clearer example - ADP has basically punished every single-prize Pokemon in the format. That is not the fault of single-prize Pokemon that they didn't adapt to ADP, it's the fault of ADP for having an attack with an effect that never should have been printed.
More than one thing can be broken at the same time and at different levels, I don't think that's such a hard idea to understand.
It's not necessarily closed design space because you can still design that same pokemon, just of a different type. Remember, pokemon is about the POKEMON. Baxcalibur can accelerate unlimited energy yet they still design pokemon that does increased damage the more energy it has (for example armarouge ex). That's because those pokemon are not water type.
