Why make unplayable cards?

catutie said:
I'll just respond to the OP because I don't want to read everything lol.

If the whole set was amazing...they would loss money. Think if you get 2 Reshi in a pack and an Emboar and no things like Lilligant then you would have everything you need for a semi good deck in like...4 packs lol. They can't put a prime in every pack because that would ruin buying packs...badly lol
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What he's getting at isn't "Why can't they just give us all of the pimp cards" but rather why are the vast majority compleatly useless in the first place. When every successful deck revolves around the same ten or twenty cards it seems to me that they just aren't putting any effort into the other 300+ in the format.

I've never played MTG but after reading Zero's post it would be nice if Pokemon had the same types of things going for it.
 
Cuthbert said:
What he's getting at isn't "Why can't they just give us all of the pimp cards" but rather why are the vast majority compleatly useless in the first place. When every successful deck revolves around the same ten or twenty cards it seems to me that they just aren't putting any effort into the other 300+ in the format.

I've never played MTG but after reading Zero's post it would be nice if Pokemon had the same types of things going for it.
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Same thing...if they didn't make the useless ones then you could just get 10 packs and have your deck right there...no need to trade...no need to really do anything. Isn't it a TRADING card game? And it makes it all the better when you pull that FA/holo/prime/SR Pikachu/...EX what ever.
 
catutie said:
I'll just respond to the OP because I don't want to read everything lol.

If the whole set was amazing...they would loss money. Think if you get 2 Reshi in a pack and an Emboar and no things like Lilligant then you would have everything you need for a semi good deck in like...4 packs lol. They can't put a prime in every pack because that would ruin buying packs...badly lol
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I think that is an over-simplification, though. If there were more 'good' cards, then you wouldn't need 2 reshirams and an Emboar for it to be a good pack. it still might take a bunch of packs to get a reshiram and Emboar or whatever. But they you would be getting other things that might at least have some niche value. People would still buy plenty of packs, or do plenty of trading to get what they need. There just wouldn't be ten cards dominating the format. More decks and more types would be playable.

Also, no-one ever responded to the question about the X2 weakness that replaced +10, +20, and +30 weaknesses. that DRASTICALLY changes the game, doesnt it?
 
Minty88 said:
I think that is an over-simplification, though. If there were more 'good' cards, then you wouldn't need 2 reshirams and an Emboar for it to be a good pack. it still might take a bunch of packs to get a reshiram and Emboar or whatever. But they you would be getting other things that might at least have some niche value. People would still buy plenty of packs, or do plenty of trading to get what they need. There just wouldn't be ten cards dominating the format. More decks and more types would be playable.

Also, no-one ever responded to the question about the X2 weakness that replaced +10, +20, and +30 weaknesses. that DRASTICALLY changes the game, doesnt it?
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That's not actually fully true, where there are cards that have niche value then the problem would be resolved within a few sets. They put garbage in because it makes good cards rarer and more valuable, so then someone can go "I need to pull something good" and to increase their chances that person will buy multiple packs to increase their chances of getting something good.

To answer the first question there are actually a few ways to answer it, first a lot of the cards released in the HGSS era were underpowered, so when something good comes along it garners a lot of attention. Another answer is that BW didn't have an advertised 'super rare' card to become the incredibly powerful cards, so they bumped down rarity, and also what's a better way to sell the set than with new legendary pokemon.

As for the weakness thing it was just a way to mix things up so the game didn't get to stale.
 
Well, personally I think there are 2 main reasons:

1. The really obvious one is that they need to make some money, so they print some useless cards for you to get so that you will rarely get the cards you need which are useful and that'll make you buy more packs.

2. There are a lot of collectors who are Pokemon fans who will want to collect the cards regardless of whether they are playable or not. For example someone may like Blissey and would want the card even though it is not playable in any competitive environment.
 
I guess its a different topic entirely, but why collect the cards if your not going to play the game?

I mean I understand collecting. I use to collect Transformers (selling them all on Ebay eventually if any one is interested). But at least with TFs you can mess around with them. Do modeling and modification work. Cards... they are just cards until you play the game.
 
I don't get this "they make garbage cards to make more money" line of reason.

They'd be making money anyway. Obviously a lot of commons and uncommon Pokemon aren't that playable. But the opening post pointed out a rare Pokemon that wasn't good either. In fact the vast majority of rare cards probably aren't that good, considering the common complaint that the metagame is dominated by only a few cards. You only get one rare, occasionally two, per pack, so even something as simple as making every rare more playable would be nice, and you'd still have to buy plenty of packs to get enough rare cards to make a deck.

Not to mention, collectors will always exist to buy packs to complete their sets, too.
 
Minty88 said:
There just wouldn't be ten cards dominating the format. More decks and more types would be playable.

Also, no-one ever responded to the question about the X2 weakness that replaced +10, +20, and +30 weaknesses. that DRASTICALLY changes the game, doesnt it?
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Uh *inserts the statement "that is where rogue comes in"*. Seriously. You got the overplayed, cut and dry, same as everyone else decks...then you have rogue. You can make use out of a "useless" card and actually make a successful deck. The reason that we have like 10 cards that dominate is that

1 The deck has been proven to work

2 They don't want to think of there own working combo

And...it used to be x2 for a LONG time...the change to +10, +20, +30 was a dumb idea...
 
Why make Unplayable cards? Because Pokemon wasn't "made" for the competitive metagame. They don't even think much about our metagame. The purpose of the TCG? To sell. To sell and sell and sell. Especially to little kids. If cards are all good, they're gonna ruin the price of many cards, and would make the metagame way too diverse in my opinion. I wouldn't mind a bit more diversity, but this would make it much more diverse. Some cards are good, but haven't been found out yet. For example, last year, Gyarados was a rouge, but it won french nationals, and bam, it became meta.
 
hipoke said:
Why make Unplayable cards? Because Pokemon wasn't "made" for the competitive metagame. They don't even think much about our metagame. The purpose of the TCG? To sell. To sell and sell and sell. Especially to little kids. If cards are all good, they're gonna ruin the price of many cards, and would make the metagame way too diverse in my opinion. I wouldn't mind a bit more diversity, but this would make it much more diverse. Some cards are good, but haven't been found out yet. For example, last year, Gyarados was a rouge, but it won french nationals, and bam, it became meta.
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Ummm gyarados was far from rogue. It was considered rogue when that french player took to to I believe it was top 16 in 09 worlds. 2010 it was the meta, and french nats top 8 last year were all luxchomp decks also. So you got a lil confusion in your years there.
 
Why are there so many bad cards? Well there's no such thing as a good card or bad card. It's what's good and bad IN COMPARISON to the rest of the metagame. With all of these cards, there has to be some that are better than others. Also, another thing, Blissey HS would be broken in Base-Team Rocket. You'd be having it up T2, doing 80 damage a turn, with 130 HP, at a Stage 1.
 
I don't think 'bad things' get printed on purpose for the sake of 'being bad', they just don't get used in a way that they anticipated. I've wondered before if they sit in their bunker labs underground and come up with these decks before anyone ever discovers their usefulness.
 
Project696 said:
Ummm gyarados was far from rogue. It was considered rogue when that french player took to to I believe it was top 16 in 09 worlds. 2010 it was the meta, and french nats top 8 last year were all luxchomp decks also. So you got a lil confusion in your years there.
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All decks start out rogue :p. It's just coming up with that winning idea or just copying what some top player is playing >_>
 
Keep in mind that perhaps the majority who buy pokemon cards buy it for the sake of collecting as opposed to playing. In fact I wont be surprised if the majority of the buyers of pokemon cards do not know how to play the TCG game properly. Not all cities have a pokemon league and eventhough a city has a league not everyone knows that a league exists in their city. For example in my city where I live we have a population of nearly a million but the number of kids and adults who i see regularly showing up in our league (this league is the oldest in the city ) is hovering around 20-40. However when you make rounds in the local target stores and Toys R Us in my city you will notice that the cards are selling. There is another league existing in my city but this one is newly formed and I cant imagine this one having more players than the league I am in.
 
^There are plenty of TCG players that don't go to leagues because...well they just don't. I live in Vegas and I have yet to go to a league...HECK I live a mile from one and I have yet to go. And even if you collect you would most likely at least try out competitive or learn how to do it. And how frustrating it is to pull Liligant as your rare and a Patrat as your RH but they have to do that to

1 Sell, you would have the tendency to go "Arg....THE NEXT PACK WILL BE BETTER"

2 Be able to trade, if you could make a competitive deck by just buying 10 packs then there would be no point in trading and bringing other people to play and buy packs too
 
^Agreed, you kinda summed all that up, but I have had several tournaments blocks from my house, but I don't go, it happens with a lot of TCG players.
 
^That's why I hold my own mini tournaments of like 6 people :3

I think also that alot of people are just afraid to go to leagues. They think that maybe they aren't good enough or there deck sucks and that they wouldn't fit in. Or maybe they just don't know anyone there...like me :p
 
Project696 said:
Ummm gyarados was far from rogue. It was considered rogue when that french player took to to I believe it was top 16 in 09 worlds. 2010 it was the meta, and french nats top 8 last year were all luxchomp decks also. So you got a lil confusion in your years there.
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Yeah I meant, the year before. And then it was the meta.
 
catutie said:
^That's why I hold my own mini tournaments of like 6 people :3

I think also that alot of people are just afraid to go to leagues. They think that maybe they aren't good enough or there deck sucks and that they wouldn't fit in. Or maybe they just don't know anyone there...like me :p
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Aren't leagues kinda advertised to be newb-friendly? I dunno, I never felt like the newb in leagues. Even when I had a very budget deck, there were always people who were just Mr. Misplay all day every day.

1 Sell, you would have the tendency to go "Arg....THE NEXT PACK WILL BE BETTER"
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Heh. A true gambler's reasoning.
 
^Ya but going to a place you have never gone with people you have never met can be intimidating. And you may automatically assume "I'm not good enough to go."
 
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