Ever since BW came out, we've had a huge power creep. It's really existed throughout the entire game. I mean, look at this thing. That thing used to be one of the most popular attackers in the game. It got reprinted in Platinum and got completely ignored, which only proves that the cards are in fact getting stronger with time. For a more comparable example, let's take a look at good old Metagross.
This card used to be amazing! It was a Stage 2 with 100HP that would do an average of 70-90 damage a turn for ML if you set up even more Stage 2 support on the bench (Dragonite), and it had built-in draw. Then, years later, we got Magnezone.
He got an extra 40HP over Metagross, although he admittedly couldn't abuse Special Metal. He also got an updated Dragonite - Eelektrik. Eelektrik was a Stage 1, yet it only had 10HP less than Dragonite. That's a pretty darn good Stage 1. The draw is notably more powerful, allowing you to get far more than one card and refresh your hand every turn, sometimes multiple times in the same turn. The attack is where things get crazy. Losing one energy does the same amount of damage, but after that Magnezone does 30 more damage per energy! It's worthy of note that he sends them to the Lost Zone instead of the Discard Pile, but this didn't prove to be a huge issue since it could use other attackers early-game. Magnezone was good for awhile, but in the current format he's Tier 2 or so. A card far more powerful than Metagross, and it's not even that playable. But pretty soon, we're going to be getting Rayquaza-EX.
Now, Rayquaza is notably more limited than either of the other cards when it comes to discarding. You can only discard the energy attached to Rayquaza, and only one type of energy attached to him, and all of that type. Still, the extra damage and HP makes up for it easily.
I don't know how many of you played when Metanite was a good deck. But for those of you did, imagine how you would react if they printed Rayquaza-EX instead of Rayquaza ex. The card would have broken the game. It would have been unbeatable. Therefore, there has to be a power creep.
Many people argue that the power creep isn't bad for the game because all of the cards get better. However, this isn't true. In the current format, you're basically playing the big basic Pokémon or you're losing. The card creators aren't giving Stage 1's and Stage 2's their fair share of the power creep. This limits deckbuilding creativity terribly. Furthermore, it makes the game less exciting.
We now have 180HP basics hitting for 150 damage and 170HP basics hitting for practically unlimited damage. Take a minute and try to imagine an Ability-less Pokémon the card creators could make that would blow you out of the water without breaking the 200HP cap. There's really nothing they can make that isn't broken. Each set generally brings a group of exiting Trainers, maybe one or two cool Special Energy, a couple cool Abilities, and then the "boring old" basic attackers with barely sub-200HP capable of OHKOing 95% of the format.
I remember when an original ex set would come out. Peoples' eyes bulged when they saw Lugia ex for the first time. I would go to league after a new group of cards was revealed and everybody would be terribly excited about all of the crazy new attackers, even though they were actually just about as balanced as the attackers already in the format. They just had different ways of attacking.
Those formats also had much more of a "play what you want" feel. The gap between a Tier 1 and Tier 2-3 deck was much smaller than it is now. A great player could often pilot a sub-par deck to a win. Heck, Golem even won Canadian Nationals. This created much more hype when a new set came out because half of the cards were very playable. I did wellin Juniors with a Kingdra ex Delta/Nidoqueen Delta deck. It wasn't great, but it could still beat all the best decks if my opponents weren't piloting them well.
Nowadays, the card creators seem to be focused entirely on pleasing the new and casual player. Casual players just want to collect and play with broken cards. They enjoy attacking for 120-150 damage with their favorite legendary Pokémon. They don't care that the cards they're using are on the brink of destroying everything that used to make the game so great. New players want to get in to the game as easily as possible. At States a couple weeks ago, my friend Grant brought a friend of his to the tournament and taught him how to play Durant during registration. He proceeded to go 4-4. To me, that's way too good of a record for a player who has an hour of experience in the game. They're all about marketing now. It doesn't seem like they care about creating a healthy, enjoyable game that can be played competitively.
Just making a list of all the things they've done to simplify the game:
-Removed the rules to balance the first turn, giving one player an incredibly unfair advantage every game.
-Combined Poke-Powers and Poke-Bodies, making it harder to create decks that lock these components of the game.
-Focused the game almost entirely on Basic Pokémon with simple attacks.
/rant
Now, the best solution to this is to just ban all of the cards in the game right now and make a new "Base Set" with much weaker cards that favor evolutions more than basics (to create a slower game). Or, to please players who don't want their collection to lose all its value, they could just make a bunch of sets with much weaker cards and rotate the current sets normally. However, the "bad" sets wouldn't sell as well, so this option isn't plausible to Pokémon as a business. Hopefully they come up with a solution eventually though.
For now, I had a different idea. I thought I could put together a team of elite players who have a good idea of what a healthy meta is, and have a good idea of what good card design is to create sets of fake cards that allow for a healthy "play what you want" metagame with mostly even matchups across the board. People could bring these cards/decks to tournaments, and play with them between rounds there. If it got popular enough, actual tournaments with the cards could be held at larger events such as Nationals and Worlds. Maybe we could even have prize support. Should all of this happen, it would show the card creators, Nintendo, TPCi, P!P, and whoever else is involved in the format that a large amount of the player base wants better-designed cards and more fair game rules. If they see that, they might actually change the game. Plus playing in a better format would be much more fun. Before doing this, however, I want to know if players are actually interested in playing in a format I (and probably others) create. Please let me know in your reply, and obviously give any suggestions you have as well.
This card used to be amazing! It was a Stage 2 with 100HP that would do an average of 70-90 damage a turn for ML if you set up even more Stage 2 support on the bench (Dragonite), and it had built-in draw. Then, years later, we got Magnezone.
He got an extra 40HP over Metagross, although he admittedly couldn't abuse Special Metal. He also got an updated Dragonite - Eelektrik. Eelektrik was a Stage 1, yet it only had 10HP less than Dragonite. That's a pretty darn good Stage 1. The draw is notably more powerful, allowing you to get far more than one card and refresh your hand every turn, sometimes multiple times in the same turn. The attack is where things get crazy. Losing one energy does the same amount of damage, but after that Magnezone does 30 more damage per energy! It's worthy of note that he sends them to the Lost Zone instead of the Discard Pile, but this didn't prove to be a huge issue since it could use other attackers early-game. Magnezone was good for awhile, but in the current format he's Tier 2 or so. A card far more powerful than Metagross, and it's not even that playable. But pretty soon, we're going to be getting Rayquaza-EX.
Wow. So Rayquaza loses the draw power offered to Metagross and Magnezone, but he makes up for it quite easily by being a basic instead of a Stage 2. He gives up two prizes after being Knocked Out, but he also has almost double the HP of Metagross and an arguably non-exploitable weakness. Plus his retreat is far less and he gets a first attack. Looking at his version of the attack shared by these three Pokémon, we see it's far more powerful than either Magnezone's or Metagross's. Discarding one energy will allow you do do 10 more damage than either Magnezone or Metagross could do for that energy, and discarding more will allow an extra 40 per energy compared to Metagross and 10 extra compared to Magnezone. That's crazy. Discarding two energy would Knock Out any non-EX card in Metagross's time. Metagross would have to discard five energy to accomplish the same feat. And again, Metagross is a Stage 2 while Rayquaza is a basic.
Now, Rayquaza is notably more limited than either of the other cards when it comes to discarding. You can only discard the energy attached to Rayquaza, and only one type of energy attached to him, and all of that type. Still, the extra damage and HP makes up for it easily.
I don't know how many of you played when Metanite was a good deck. But for those of you did, imagine how you would react if they printed Rayquaza-EX instead of Rayquaza ex. The card would have broken the game. It would have been unbeatable. Therefore, there has to be a power creep.
Many people argue that the power creep isn't bad for the game because all of the cards get better. However, this isn't true. In the current format, you're basically playing the big basic Pokémon or you're losing. The card creators aren't giving Stage 1's and Stage 2's their fair share of the power creep. This limits deckbuilding creativity terribly. Furthermore, it makes the game less exciting.
We now have 180HP basics hitting for 150 damage and 170HP basics hitting for practically unlimited damage. Take a minute and try to imagine an Ability-less Pokémon the card creators could make that would blow you out of the water without breaking the 200HP cap. There's really nothing they can make that isn't broken. Each set generally brings a group of exiting Trainers, maybe one or two cool Special Energy, a couple cool Abilities, and then the "boring old" basic attackers with barely sub-200HP capable of OHKOing 95% of the format.
I remember when an original ex set would come out. Peoples' eyes bulged when they saw Lugia ex for the first time. I would go to league after a new group of cards was revealed and everybody would be terribly excited about all of the crazy new attackers, even though they were actually just about as balanced as the attackers already in the format. They just had different ways of attacking.
Those formats also had much more of a "play what you want" feel. The gap between a Tier 1 and Tier 2-3 deck was much smaller than it is now. A great player could often pilot a sub-par deck to a win. Heck, Golem even won Canadian Nationals. This created much more hype when a new set came out because half of the cards were very playable. I did well
Nowadays, the card creators seem to be focused entirely on pleasing the new and casual player. Casual players just want to collect and play with broken cards. They enjoy attacking for 120-150 damage with their favorite legendary Pokémon. They don't care that the cards they're using are on the brink of destroying everything that used to make the game so great. New players want to get in to the game as easily as possible. At States a couple weeks ago, my friend Grant brought a friend of his to the tournament and taught him how to play Durant during registration. He proceeded to go 4-4. To me, that's way too good of a record for a player who has an hour of experience in the game. They're all about marketing now. It doesn't seem like they care about creating a healthy, enjoyable game that can be played competitively.
Just making a list of all the things they've done to simplify the game:
-Removed the rules to balance the first turn, giving one player an incredibly unfair advantage every game.
-Combined Poke-Powers and Poke-Bodies, making it harder to create decks that lock these components of the game.
-Focused the game almost entirely on Basic Pokémon with simple attacks.
/rant
Now, the best solution to this is to just ban all of the cards in the game right now and make a new "Base Set" with much weaker cards that favor evolutions more than basics (to create a slower game). Or, to please players who don't want their collection to lose all its value, they could just make a bunch of sets with much weaker cards and rotate the current sets normally. However, the "bad" sets wouldn't sell as well, so this option isn't plausible to Pokémon as a business. Hopefully they come up with a solution eventually though.
For now, I had a different idea. I thought I could put together a team of elite players who have a good idea of what a healthy meta is, and have a good idea of what good card design is to create sets of fake cards that allow for a healthy "play what you want" metagame with mostly even matchups across the board. People could bring these cards/decks to tournaments, and play with them between rounds there. If it got popular enough, actual tournaments with the cards could be held at larger events such as Nationals and Worlds. Maybe we could even have prize support. Should all of this happen, it would show the card creators, Nintendo, TPCi, P!P, and whoever else is involved in the format that a large amount of the player base wants better-designed cards and more fair game rules. If they see that, they might actually change the game. Plus playing in a better format would be much more fun. Before doing this, however, I want to know if players are actually interested in playing in a format I (and probably others) create. Please let me know in your reply, and obviously give any suggestions you have as well.
Would you play a version of the game designed solely to create a healthy and diverse metagame with fair matchups?
