Owner Pokemon Returning to the TCG and Team Rocket Set Teased at Worlds!

[Yaginku]

It seems you don't quite understand why I say that power creep is inevitable, so let me explain.

I like that the my quote in your own post says:

One of the reasons the concept of "Standard" was invented was to prevent gradual and even incidental powercreep.

And then you explain the same concept, but obviously making a ton of assumptions that are completely wrong. Such as:

designers often intentionally make most cards less powerful and a small number of cards quite strong to better control the game and meta

No, that's to sell packs. Which is why usually Pokemon had a much better distribution of power than Magic - they didn't really need power to sell packs.

However, in a TCG, cards can combo with each other. They can create new interactions. So when a new card is released, it changes the power of the cards

That is still an incorrect definition of how a power of a card is defined. If we defined the power of the card by the card its surrounded by, it would mean absolutely nothing.

Well, there's just one more question to ask: when designers create a new set, do you think they’ll aim for 100 as initially planned, or 120 so the new cards can be played competitively?

They don't do any of that, because they are Game Designers, not competitive players. Game Designers have multiple goals when designing a game, or the content for a game (such as new cards). They have a vast amount of players to appeal to, and even when separated into somewhat informal groups, these players want often contradictory things. I do not "think" that, I know that.
Competitive players are, in some ways, the easiest group to appeal to. A competitive player's main goal is to win at all cost. They will use the tools at their disposal to do so. If that means sticking with the same content that was used last year, or the year before that, they will do so. They are legendarily stubborn.
Powercreep is rarely used to appeal to competitive players specifically, as even bazaar bootleg decks of TCGs are fond of printing "10.000 HP" on the cards. It is used to sell packs. Higher numbers, stronger abilities, these appeal to all kinds of players who can easily grasp that "bigger number = better card".
Hilariously enough, this massive powercreep jump happened in the exact timeframe it would take for PokeLabs to react to Pokemon GO suddenly being a massive success, and the interest in Pokemon TCG suddenly spiking. They have literally became the bazaar bootleggers, printing "240 HP" on a Pikachu card.

What Pokémon does is smart because they mostly increase the numbers, which means the gameplay isn’t really affected.

One word - Poison. Game rules exist for a reason. If you keep printing cards that allow you to circumvent entire mechanics, you will soon find yourself playing a game where the rules don't really matter, and the worth of a card is defined by how many rules it can circumvent. In Pokemon the first card you draw per turn doesn't really matter, the Retreat Costs barely matter, the Special Conditions are a joke, Resistances are a joke, healing/damage prevention/spread and multitude of other mechanics are barely existent, and, of course, "attach one Energy per turn" is also completely meaningless.
There's this magical phrase "design space". Design space is created by the rules of the game. The better the rules, the wider the space, allowing other rules and, ultimately, game pieces to exist, be varied and interesting. There are also bad rules and bad game pieces, which shrink that design space. They make other rules and other game pieces meaningless, they make the game less interesting, more simplistic and stale.
You seem to have played Magic, so you might be familiar with the phrase "dies to removal". It is/was used to make fun of Creatures that seemed great on the surface, but had a basic flaw - they could've been removed with cards that costed 1/2 mana. The existence of removal meant that any card above 3 or 4 CMC had to have an immediate impact on the board, or it was just worthless. 99% of released Creatures were competitively terrible, because they traded unfavorably with some extremely common removal cards. That is a classic example of terribly managed design space that wasn't "a bit too good", it made up a completely new rule that wasn't in the rulebook. When Wizards later made Duel Masters, they've printed unconditional removal at the cost of 6. Now when ex-Wizards made Lorcana, they haven't printed any direct removal yet.
All of that to say - the cards that aren't "competitively viable" in Pokemon TCG right now aren't "a bit bad" or "90", their existence is simply pointless because they don't adhere to rules made up by other cards.

As we saw with Mew VMAX, sometimes the errors are so significant that only rotation can correct them. But when that happens, it’s still problematic because having the same deck dominate the meta for two years is far from ideal. Rotation diversifies the meta, yes, but it still takes two to three years, so it's far from a complete solution.

Reacting to accidentally printing a broken card with "oh gosh, we now need to print an even more broken card!" is not really the pinnacle of any design. If that's the only way you think they can do it, perhaps they should've just banned ADP and never go on this ride.

In conclusion, to give a specific and recent example, when they moved to the Scarlet and Violet block, they had to create new decks to compete against Pokémon V, which had two years of support behind them.

No, they did not. That's just a completely random assumption you've made up on the spot.

umm yes ? if you want to play with decks that look like each other or don't break the game rules. go play build and battle format or play with starter ex decks

And here's the "competitive player's" biggest fault - when faced with the possibility that other players might enjoy the game in a different way than they do, they assume that's because they are, in some way, better. That the environment they play in is "just right", because they understand how it works (but not why it works), and that makes them better than those who don't. In short, gatekeeping.

 

[Scoitol]

And here's the "competitive player's" biggest fault - when faced with the possibility that other players might enjoy the game in a different way than they do, they assume that's because they are, in some way, better. That the environment they play in is "just right", because they understand how it works (but not why it works), and that makes them better than those who don't. In short, gatekeeping.

You're making a big assumption here—I actually love playing the Pokémon TCG in all possible ways. I'd even say I have way more fun in prereleases, especially in the Build and Battle format, than in regular matches. But that's not because of the power level of the Pokémon; it's because I get to try all sorts of card combos and deckbuild in a fun, not ultra-serious way. I'm the first to defend all kinds of gameplay. I even think there should be more formats like in Magic (though maybe not as many as Magic has, because that splits the community too much). At least make the Build and Battle format more common, create a competitive format without Pokémon ex, or even officially recognize the Gym Leader Challenge (as long as Andrew Mahone is on board). But when we're talking about Standard, we're talking about the format where we push all the combos we can make with the latest cards to the limit.

No, they did not. That's just a completely random assumption you've made up on the spot.

No, it's not an assumption. We still see V and Vstar Pokémon in the meta today. Imagine what it would have been like if they hadn't made a slight power creep between Sword & Shield and Scarlet & Violet.

This slight power creep is very telling, as it's not big enough to be noticeable, so you can't even say it's a way to make players go "wow" and buy more cards. They made Stage 2 ex Pokémon so powerful because without that, they simply wouldn't be played. It costs 3 cards from your deck and several turns to get a Pokémon on the field, so it has to be worth it—and as we see, being totally overpowered still isn't enough most of the time. Even the basic ex Pokémon are slightly better than basic V Pokémon. However, Stage 1 ex Pokémon aren't better than Vstar, and so far, no Stage 1 ex Pokémon has really been played competitively, except maybe Gholdengo, and even then, it's still better to play Vstar Pokémon right now.

Reacting to accidentally printing a broken card with "oh gosh, we now need to print an even more broken card!" is not really the pinnacle of any design. If that's the only way you think they can do it, perhaps they should've just banned ADP and never go on this ride.

The Pokémon Company doesn't seem to want to ban cards, either because they think it's unfair to players who paid for them or because it's simpler for players to not have to worry about banned cards and just be able to go to a tournament with what they have.

But in my opinion, they should have issued errata for certain Pokémon cards, like ADP, Mewtwo EX, or more recently, Genesect V. That would have been a good way to prevent power creep, but they seem opposed to using this method for reasons that are more or less understandable.

One word - Poison. Game rules exist for a reason. If you keep printing cards that allow you to circumvent entire mechanics, you will soon find yourself playing a game where the rules don't really matter, and the worth of a card is defined by how many rules it can circumvent. In Pokemon the first card you draw per turn doesn't really matter, the Retreat Costs barely matter, the Special Conditions are a joke, Resistances are a joke, healing/damage prevention/spread and multitude of other mechanics are barely existent, and, of course, "attach one Energy per turn" is also completely meaningless.
There's this magical phrase "design space". Design space is created by the rules of the game. The better the rules, the wider the space, allowing other rules and, ultimately, game pieces to exist, be varied and interesting. There are also bad rules and bad game pieces, which shrink that design space. They make other rules and other game pieces meaningless, they make the game less interesting, more simplistic and stale.
You seem to have played Magic, so you might be familiar with the phrase "dies to removal". It is/was used to make fun of Creatures that seemed great on the surface, but had a basic flaw - they could've been removed with cards that costed 1/2 mana. The existence of removal meant that any card above 3 or 4 CMC had to have an immediate impact on the board, or it was just worthless. 99% of released Creatures were competitively terrible, because they traded unfavorably with some extremely common removal cards. That is a classic example of terribly managed design space that wasn't "a bit too good", it made up a completely new rule that wasn't in the rulebook. When Wizards later made Duel Masters, they've printed unconditional removal at the cost of 6. Now when ex-Wizards made Lorcana, they haven't printed any direct removal yet.
All of that to say - the cards that aren't "competitively viable" in Pokemon TCG right now aren't "a bit bad" or "90", their existence is simply pointless because they don't adhere to rules made up by other cards.

On this point, I agree. Some of the basic rules of the Pokémon TCG have completely lost their relevance. This is particularly true for special conditions, which are now almost useless and mostly serve as arbitrary conditions for certain attacks.

While Burn is poorly handled, Poison is somewhat managed better by assigning a set damage amount to most Pokémon for Poison.

That said, there's nothing stopping them from buffing Poison and Burn. But these mechanics aren't crucial to the game. Removing them wouldn't drastically change the gameplay.

As for drawing a card per turn and attaching one energy per turn? Since when is that useless? First of all, it gives decks an initial momentum before they have their support cards. Plus, it helps you get out of tough situations when you don't have support. Finally, it allows decks that don't necessarily rely on support to still function... And honestly, both attaching energy and drawing cards are things you naturally want to do multiple times per turn. Because you're playing several cards per turn, you need to compensate for the lack of card advantage by drawing more cards per turn to avoid just topdecking. And it's also important to power up your Pokémon quickly, or you'll get swept without being able to attack (just look at Haymakers).

In the end, the fact that each deck breaks the rules in its own way is what creates the different gameplay experiences. Gardevoir changes the game by making it a resource management game. Chien-Pao changes the game by combining the challenges of drawing and attaching energy into one. Miraidon is more vanilla in that it has to attach energy more gradually and isn't unlimited, but on the flip side, searching for Pokémon is no longer an issue. The fact that each deck breaks the game rules in its own way adds to the game's charm, and each deck plays differently. Honestly, I have a hard time understanding how you envision the game.

Your example from Magic is particularly relevant because there's really nothing like that in Pokémon. You could argue that Pokémon like Iron Hands prevent all one-prize decks from being played, but that's not true since we've seen that Lost Box or Gardevoir, which rely heavily on non-Rule Box Pokémon, still perform well even after Iron Hands appeared. You might also say that Sableye prevents 60 HP Pokémon from existing, but that's not the case either. We still see them even after Sableye came out. Sure, some cards might not be good because they have bad matchups against certain meta cards, but that has nothing to do with breaking the game rules.

However, there are equivalents to "dies to removal" in Pokémon, and three examples come to mind: attacks that deal no damage, which are completely useless since you need to attack every turn; attacks that put effects on the "defending Pokémon"; and I really think Game Freak should do something about this—either change the rules or create items to make these effects useful again, or simply stop designing cards like this; and Stage 2 non-Rule Box attackers, which are just too weak to justify setting up. They get KO'd in one turn, and you already need to set up a new one.

And the only solution to make these Pokémon good again? Well, power creep. Improve Stage 2 non-Rule Box Pokémon. Make the effects of attacks without damage powerful enough to justify losing a turn. And as for status effects... they're just inherently bad.

 

[Yaginku]

But when we're talking about Standard, we're talking about the format where we push all the combos we can make with the latest cards to the limit.

Not really, because that is simply a perspective of a competitively-oriented player. Standard is for everyone. Developers of different TCGs push all players towards Standard, because it helps sell new packs. For casual players, it helps to keep the game simple with a limited number of pieces. For creative players, it constantly gives them new interesting pieces to play with, while forcing them to abandon old ones. A lot of players - in fact, a majority of players - mainly play socially and aren't interested in just playing the best possible deck.
A ton of these socially-oriented players have turned away from Standard, because it is stale and currently appeals to only a single type of player. Not everyone likes these extremely min-maxed decks that spend tons of times shuffling and setting up extremely overpowered engines. There's a reason these inventions like GLC popped out and gained some popularity in the recent timeframe.

This slight power creep is very telling, as it's not big enough to be noticeable, so you can't even say it's a way to make players go "wow" and buy more cards.

We have literally went from 250 being the max on some Stage 2 GXes, to 340 right now. That is a massive change.
But that is not even the biggest powercreep. The largest powercreep happened in game speed and Abilities, that have gone from "helpful engines" to "win conditions". Just compare the Abilities for Gardevoir GX and Gardevoir ex.
And yes, your assumption is wrong. Powercreep is not the only way to keep cards relevant, it's just the simplest and the most destructive, short-sighted way of doing so.

As for drawing a card per turn and attaching one energy per turn? Since when is that useless?

Since there are cards that draw you seven times the amount of cards, and attach infinitely more Energy than one. You are not going to make a deck based on attaching a single Energy per turn, unless the Pokemon you're trying to use has some kind of extremely cheap and/or gimmicky attack. That is how design space works - if you make it so using these cards is defacto mandatory, then any deck that doesn't use them has no reason to exist.
So yes, you can have games where you topdeck the card you need, or that single energy attachment will win you the game, but you will never rely on it to carry you through the game.

In the end, the fact that each deck breaks the rules in its own way is what creates the different gameplay experiences.

No, it means that every deck that doesn't break the rules is useless.
Back in SM-LOT, you could have had a kid approach you with their favorite Pokemon and ask "can I make a deck on this?". And you could, absolutely, make a deck on that card. It wouldn't be "top-tier", it wouldn't win any serious games, but they could have a bit of fun and maybe have a few close games with competitive players at your local League.
Today if they do the same thing, they will watch the other player play solitaire for 15 minutes, pick zero prizes in every game, go home and play another game. Their deck isn't "weak", their deck has no right to exist. This is terrible for the ecosystem of the game.

 

[Scoitol]

Back in SM-LOT, you could have had a kid approach you with their favorite Pokemon and ask "can I make a deck on this?". And you could, absolutely, make a deck on that card. It wouldn't be "top-tier", it wouldn't win any serious games, but they could have a bit of fun and maybe have a few close games with competitive players at your local League.
Today if they do the same thing, they will watch the other player play solitaire for 15 minutes, pick zero prizes in every game, go home and play another game. Their deck isn't "weak", their deck has no right to exist. This is terrible for the ecosystem of the game.

You're right, but it's not due to power creep; it's due to the overall balance of the game. They could easily make the cards more balanced, but in reality, that's not the case—Gardevoir ex and Charizard ex are just much better than Lucario ex or Magnezone ex. But again, this isn't due to power creep.

Your problem seems to be that nowadays, any card that doesn't charge itself with energy or doesn't have a dedicated partner to do so isn't playable. Your solution? But what's your solution? Print weaker cards and wait for Charizard and Baxcalibur (whose ability, by the way, has existed since the Base Set) to rotate out? I'm not saying the game is perfect right now. What I'm saying is that it's actually good when they print Pokémon that can accelerate energy because it increases the number of cards of its type that can be played.

In my opinion, they should print many more Pokémon that accelerate energy, and there should be several in each set, rather than one every three sets.

Or they should increase the HP up to 400 for some Pokémon so that they have time to charge up energy manually.

I'll concede one thing: it's not right that some cards are simply unplayable because they don't have a way to chain attacks each turn—that's true. But for me, the problem isn't power creep; it's the fact that the power creep has been very uneven. We're still printing cards today that would have been bad 15 years ago, and that's not normal.

I just want to go back to your comparison between Gardevoir ex and Gardevoir GX. Gardevoir-GX, in addition to having a good ability, also has a good attack. Gardevoir ex's attack needs 3 energies, which reduces its damage by 60 and turns it into a 250 HP Pokémon, so it can get knocked out by a Giratina VSTAR or a Charizard earlier. So it's better not to use it to attack unless you're finishing the game and keeping it as a support where it's much better. And having a Stage 2 that only serves as a support, even if it's really strong, is a big investment. So it's only natural that it should be a win condition.

 

[Yaginku]

You're right, but it's not due to power creep; it's due to the overall balance of the game.

It is literally powercreep. Powercreep is the increase of power along a segment of time. It doesn't even need to be linear - games can deliberately lower power either through time or some form of big reset, and then keep creeping up again. Printing Abilities that are objectively stronger than older Abilities is also powercreep. A good example, for instance, is:

Baxcalibur (whose ability, by the way, has existed since the Base Set)

Rain Dance has existed in Base Set, it was also printed a few times later on, but there were also large gaps of time where nothing of that type existed. Base Set had some absolutely broken cards in it, and players at the time hated it - according to you, the only solution here would be to power upwards, make the game even faster and more broken. This did not happen - they tried Prop 15/3, they introduced Supporters, they tried to not print these mistakes again. Magic went though a very similar beginning. Both games "took a hit" of depowering and came out better at the other end. This is because powercreep always has a limit, where players just win games on Turn 1. You cannot keep increasing power forever.

In my opinion, they should print many more Pokémon that accelerate energy, and there should be several in each set, rather than one every three sets.

So basically every deck would revolve around some kind of acceleration Pokemon. Which is what happens now, but there'd just be more of these decks.
It might be a shocker, but there are people who don't enjoy decks with huge acceleration, they don't enjoy solitaire drawing of 15 cards a turn and games being decided on Turn 2, because one person got to swing for 200+ first. An actual variety comes from having many decks that appeal to many types of players.

But for me, the problem isn't power creep; it's the fact that the power creep has been very uneven. We're still printing cards today that would have been bad 15 years ago, and that's not normal.

That is true, multiprize Pokemon and singleprize Pokemon have been powercreeped unevenly, but that's because multiprize Pokemon are inherently imbalanced. When ex cards were first introduced, they were kind of bad - I assume this is because the designers took the objective approach and balanced them correctly, taking into account that these Pokemon don't just differ on prizes taken, but the amount of resources they require. Over time, these multiprize cards got comparatively stronger and stronger to the point that, when I joined the game, it was the singleprize decks that were considered "outliers". Of course Tag Teams and VMAXes completely exposed how terrible this mechanic is when taken to its extreme end.
Multiprize vs singleprize is a separate discussion. There is definitely much improvement to be done in that area, but the current problem in the game is centering the whole game around engines.

Gardevoir-GX, in addition to having a good ability, also has a good attack.

This used to matter when Gardevoir-GX was good, but that isn't what separates those cards. These is a huge gap between "you can attach 1 more Energy (and perhaps ever 2 or 3)" and "the concept of Energy attachment doesn't exist anymore". Both cards are a win condition in their respective decks, you will not win without playing one or the other.

 

[crystal_pidgeot]

Out of curiosity, since your profile describes you as a "bird trainer," are there any other birds you would be happy seeing if Pokémon decided making Pidgeot one of the best engines around was enough attention to give it? I always enjoy seeing Skarmory get attention, for example, and Swellow and Toucannon have also gone largely overlooked. (An Ash's Pidgeot would be a fun way to recognize Ash finally being reunited with Pidgeot over 20 years after he promised he'd come right back for him after dropping off the GS Ball, though.)

I will say I have been enjoying the attention pidgeot is getting but we are not getting different arts. They dropped the ball on the art on the sir card so a promo with it and charizard on the same card like the promo charmander and pudgey would be cool. I'd also like to see a united wings pidgey but I look forward to all the cool arts with birds on them but I do have my favorites. I'd also love to see pom pom oricorio ex playing with zapdos.

 

[Cyndaquil987]

I will say I have been enjoying the attention pidgeot is getting but we are not getting different arts. They dropped the ball on the art on the sir card so a promo with it and charizard on the same card like the promo charmander and pudgey would be cool. I'd also like to see a united wings pidgey but I look forward to all the cool arts with birds on them but I do have my favorites. I'd also love to see pom pom oricorio ex playing with zapdos.

I would love a united wings ducklett

 

[crystal_pidgeot]

I would love a united wings ducklett

They should keep the archetype around. When I get Pidgey with united Wings, Im going to switch to the deck full time since I only play bird decks. Currently playing charizard because of the charmander and pidgey promo.

 

[Cyndaquil987]

They should keep the archetype around. When I get Pidgey with united Wings, Im going to switch to the deck full time since I only play bird decks. Currently playing charizard because of the charmander and pidgey promo.

I can't wait for palkia cause the noctowl is super cute! I'm really happy Fezandipiti is good too for the exact same reason

 

[crystal_pidgeot]

I can't wait for palkia cause the noctowl is super cute! I'm really happy Fezandipiti is good too for the exact same reason

Yep, us bird fans are eating good! I'm so glad they are making other mons good now instead of the few that are always.