Why make unplayable cards?

Deck-wise, my experience with leagues is that there's a mix between pro decks and not-so-pro decks. Nonetheless for someone new to the TCG or for someone who wants to improve its a nice venue to see what works and what doesnt work as well as an opportunity to trade cards so you can improve your deck.

In the league I go to, the people are generally friendly. It is also a mix of young kids to adults. I personally do not discriminate on whoever I play it whether it be a 7-year-old kid or a geezer. If I see someone new just standing around or sitting without an opponent I do not hesitate to ask them if they want to battle. As a result I get a lot of players asking me to play them next all throughout the session (actually I would already have a queue of players waiting to battle me). So in my league there is really no intimidation factor to talk about.

Perhaps the morale of the story is be an asset in your local league by being friendly to new players so that your league will grow.

we are off-topic already perhaps someone who wants to further this discussion should create a separate thread.
 
catutie said:
^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."
Click to expand...

That is what this game is about. You build a deck, play it, and have fun.

The people who go to any league, nationals, regionals, etc. don't know the other people and have probably never been to San Diego or wherever the event is being held. There isn't going to be a finals held in your basement any time soon so get out there and play strangers. Or don't if you really don't want to. It's your call.

As far as the "buy ten packs, get a competitive deck" idea goes, the rare and uncommon cards would obviously still be better just not totally useless for the most part. If you can buy 10 packs of cards and get a playset of several badass rare/uncommon pokemon and useful/applicable trainers and supporters then you are my hero.

I bought a box of HGSS and still didn't get all of the cards from that set that I had hoped for, and I was mostly just hoping for uncommons.

I don't want to sound harsh, and after reading my post it sounds pretty negative. The written word seldom conveys the pure intention. I don't intend to be mean.
 
I'm not sure why they make such pointlessly unplayable cards myself. The whole "to make money" point is not that valid in my opinion. No player says, oh sweet I have exactly the cards I need to make this one deck, which will be the only one I play the whole season with no changes. Good players know that a deck must go countless revisions to get a good build, and even the once a new set is released it must adapt to new threats or incorporate new advantages. As far as super boosters (where all 10 cards are "good") go it is still highly unlikely that one will open 1, 5, or even 36 boosters of one set and have a fully functional competitive deck. For example lets just say that Triumphant was reworked to make every card playable in some way not changing what pokemon are in the set just making all the current ones a little better in some way, and lets say that I really like the nidoqueen/king lines. You only get 10 cards in a booster, and you need at least a 3-2-3 and a 2-1-2 line to make the deck work with just your pokemon. This does not include any support pokemon you may want to include, nor does it include your S/S/T which now you must turn to other sets for since Triumphant only had 5 of these. So really you are just pulling really good things that are not what you need to make your deck work.

But then again you could just get those cards off the secondary market (ebay, troll and toad, etc..) which still gets Pokemon International their money. All of the cards on the secondary market had to come from booster packs at some point. Plus it puts you at a disadvantage to other players who have been buying boosters and maybe found a different combo by seeing all the different cards, or they just quiet simply have more options for decks since they have all of those excess cards.

Pokemon has proven at least a few times that they do not have a expansive development and testing team, for if they did the past few years of the game may have been a tad bit more stable. As far as the diversity goes as someone else mentioned Magic enjoys 90% of its cards being playable in some way, even if its not in their current modified/limited format. But even then Magic still has deck archetypes that emerge dominant over most, and I feel the same would be true for pokemon. For example look at our format before rotation MD-CoL even with 13 sets only 3 decks remained ever present at the top of the tier list (gengar, luxchomp, and gyrados). Out of that massive card pool 3 decks had a strangle hold on the top tables that was ridiculous. Personally I would rather see 10 different decks at the tops instead of 3. Diversity is not bad and sometimes decks just have an autoloss but that does not make a super diverse metagame bad. If there were a ton of different good cards that all worked special in their own way the game would honestly be more fun overall instead of decks that constantly had to look out for the one super good one as competition.

But now I guess I have typed/ranted too much and will get skipped over, but I thank those of you who did take the time to read it (because be assured I have been reading yours). Feel free to debate this topic with me further as I think it is one worthy of such attention.
 
^^ Sir, I for one salute you. That is pretty much how I feel about the subject.

I award you an internet award of awesomeness and cookies. I could go on but I won't, I thnk you've said it all.
 
novadragon07 said:
But then again you could just get those cards off the secondary market (ebay, troll and toad, etc..) which still gets Pokemon International their money. All of the cards on the secondary market had to come from booster packs at some point. Plus it puts you at a disadvantage to other players who have been buying boosters and maybe found a different combo by seeing all the different cards, or they just quiet simply have more options for decks since they have all of those excess cards.
Click to expand...

That does not give Pokemon their money. If you buy 6 packs and get 60 primes or something you will be able to trade whatever cards you don't need to someone who does, and for something better for you. In otherwords, nobody competitive would need to buy more than 6-8 packs in any given format. Do you have any idea how much money Pokemon would lose if they did that?
 
thats not completely true. Actually that will make pokemon more money. Look at it like this. What if you knew when you bought a booster box/packs you will get every card that you need or wanted. There would be no need to go to third party sellers. You may say well you could just trade cards to get what you want but why trade cards if you knew if you bought 5 packs from the store you would pull a mega/zone prime. I know personally I usually buy 1 booster box. It really depends on the set. After that I usually buy the cards that I want from troll and toad or ebay. I can see the idea because most people that buy individual packs are little kids. But I would like to see Pokemon make more playable cards. They will be able to get there money without worrying about the middle man
 
Tiftonhotchild said:
You may say well you could just trade cards to get what you want but why trade cards if you knew if you bought 5 packs from the store you would pull a mega/zone prime.
Click to expand...

That proves my point more than yours. If you are getting a yanmega/magnezone prime every 5 packs that means you can buy 5 packs and trade the stuff off for everything else you need. That makes Nintendo lose money since you only need to buy the 5 packs instead of a box or two.
 
Dark Void said:
That proves my point more than yours. If you are getting a yanmega/magnezone prime every 5 packs that means you can buy 5 packs and trade the stuff off for everything else you need. That makes Nintendo lose money since you only need to buy the 5 packs instead of a box or two.
Click to expand...

But you're still assuming there are only like ten desirable cards in the set. If all the cards were significantly more playable you would still have to buy alot of packs to get specific cards in a set with 100+ cards. And you are right that trading would be easier.... but wouldn't that be a good thing? It might even encourage you to buy random packs just for trading fodder.
 
No, that would not make Nintendo any money. If you get 10 cards that are excellent trading fodder in every pack you only need to buy 6-8 packs for each format. That does not make Nintendo money, nor does it encourage people to buy boxes.
 
Hmm I just thought about something. I think Nintendo is moving in the direction of making Ultra rares more obtainable. For example before BW prerealse the FA Zekrom and Reshiram was going for like 30 bucks. But when every one found out that you can get them really easy the secondary market had to drop their prices. This wasn't the case with LV X and definitely not the case with Exs. I will admit they only print good cards for the money but I think that Nintendo realize that if people believe that they can get those super rare cards then they will buy more packs. IMO
 
@ Dark Void
Why would Pokemon put 10 primes in a booster pack? I never said that. In my example I made the Nido lines a lot better in some way saying that was what I wanted from my packs. What is in the Boosters never changed though 1 Rare, 1 Rev, 3 Uncommons, 5 commons. The point of my example was to point out that it would still be difficult to obtain all the cards needed to make a working deck. I never said to up the ratio of primes to 1:5 Packs. But if they did Triumphant had 8 primes, 4 Legend cards, and 1 Lithograph, so if they did up the ratio then you still only have a 1 in 13 shot of getting the prime you wanted in your 5 packs.

Besides that Pokemon is a business and I do know how a business works, if they did packs of 10 primes (keeping in mind that it would have to include primes across all the sets still not guaranteeing you your Mega/zone) they would be charging somewhere in the neighborhood of $30.
 
What I mean is, for a card to be competitve, it would have to be on par with the primes, not necessary a prime itself. It doesn't matter if you are still getting mostly commons and uncommons in a pack if they are all as good as the rares. And if they charge 30$ for the packs, they wouldn't get any little kids, only the super competitive people. Either way, making the majority of cards playable would result in Nintendo losing money.
 
Dark Void said:
What I mean is, for a card to be competitve, it would have to be on par with the primes, not necessary a prime itself. It doesn't matter if you are still getting mostly commons and uncommons in a pack if they are all as good as the rares. And if they charge 30$ for the packs, they wouldn't get any little kids, only the super competitive people. Either way, making the majority of cards playable would result in Nintendo losing money.
Click to expand...

/me thinks about quoting himself...but doesn't

Seriously. Because they don't put a good playable card in each pack is the reason that you HAVE to buy a blister/multiple packs/box and even then you don't get what you need (NO ABILITY BOAR >_> Whole BW box and no ability boar) and then you just say "Oh the next pack will have something in it...NOTHING...ARG the next one will for sure." It inspires the natural reaction to buy another thinking that you will get what you want...
 
But I think what you are forgetting is that often times the only point of certain basics and stage 1s is simply to get to your stage 2. If truly all cards were on the same level as primes then what you say may be true. But that would mean a Nidoran would have like 80 HP and a Nidorino would have 110 HP. What I and what the OP wants is simply to have rares (as that is what the main complaint is) to at least be functional. There is no reason why the Nidos shouldn't be at least useable. Nidoking's got his body and thats it, Nidoqueen has a useable first attack and a terrible second attack, why is that? But for arguments sake I'll use Ursaring from Unleashed, why is that card totally and utterly useless? One energy for 20, and three for 50 flip for +30. I know it has a prime in the set but some cards that have primes and a rare are actually quiet good, an example would be Umbreon. It has a decent prime and a great rare that actually more use than the prime. Or even Kingdra who has a great prime and a halfway decent rare that could be used as its fire counter since it is weak to fire. Lastly I will use a card that has no prime alternative like Tropius from Undaunted. One grass to heal 6 damage from a benched, and 3 colorless for 40, ewwww.

I don't recall anyone asking for all cards to be as good as primes. What we do want is all rares to at least have some glimmer of hope/playability so that are not doomed to sitting in our binders for all of eternity. Because if you got a tropius the only way to get rid of it is to throw it away. Plus some of us would like to have more options when looking for a new deck than, if i cant beat yanmega bin it.
 
novadragon07 said:
I don't recall anyone asking for all cards to be as good as primes. What we do want is all rares to at least have some glimmer of hope/playability so that are not doomed to sitting in our binders for all of eternity. Because if you got a tropius the only way to get rid of it is to throw it away. Plus some of us would like to have more options when looking for a new deck than, if i cant beat yanmega bin it.
Click to expand...

In order to be usable, the card has to be on par with the top decks-a.k.a. Reshiram, Zekrom, and Primes. If a card is weaker than those it will not get much play, and if every card is as good as that-must I explain myself again?
 
Then I guess we have two different opinions of "useable". What I mean is for the rares to at least have some glimmer of playability, not necessarily on a competitive scale. Now does that mean all rares should be as powerful as primes, no because it takes away from having primes in the first place (which I am an advocate for nixing). What I mean is to at least let the card hold its own in tier 4. So, for example I'll use a card that I really liked but stood no chance in any competitive tournament, Garchomp SV. Garchomp is my favorite pokemon and I was very excited we got one that was at least playable in a deck at league, and I had a ton of fun of playing it that way too. But, would I have entered a tournament with it? I didn't, though I wanted to.

All I'm asking is for is that all of our rares don't suck on some grand epic scale as the majority of them do. Also it is kind of depressing to get your favorite pokemon in a pack and read it to realize that it has no chance even in a league environment, and I primes sure as heck should never be unplayable and in some cases weaker than a rare (Meganium and Houndoom).
 
In pokemon, because reshiram and zekrom are so stupidly powerful, there are two kinds of decks: Those that can beat them, and those that cant.


It's not because those cards are bad, it's because there are stupidly powerful cards in the format.


At league, I watched this 8-year-old's deck (Houndoom, sharpedo, general 'noob' deck, but she didn't mind) vs another 8-10 year old's deck (Reshiram/Emboar (albeit a bad build)) and whenever he got reshiram out, he basically won. There was no way that her cards could tear down that insurmountable wall of outrage.

Outrage is the problem. If you can't one shot reshiram or zekrom, they one shot you back. Outrage should have been something like, [c][c]: 20+ If this pokemon has any damage counters on it, this attack does 20 damage plus 30 more damage.


If reshiram had 100hp, it would still be played. If reshiram's blue flare only did 100, it would probably still be played (but not nearly as much.) Etc.
 
The problem is obviously the money. Nintendo wants to make money, and if all the cardss in the set are good, you're not struggling to buy as many packs to get some decent cards. I agree with Dark Void on that. However, me and my friends have this discussion every week at league when we pull a pack, get nothing (not even the Reverse Foil is worth holding onto because the card is so unwanted and useless) and just give it away to one of the little kids. The is no point to create a card that has NO playability in the game. Take Smeargle for example, it's not good, but it does have SOME playability. yes, there are better choices, but just having that card have some playability makes it be an option for many decks. If every card had SOME playability opposed to NO playability, then there would be a lot more decks imo. And I don't see how having every card have some playability makes Nintendo lose money.
I'm not gonna go buy a pack, pull a bunch of decent cards that still aren't great and go "Well, these are enough for me." I'm still going to want the better cards.
I would be happy with more bench sitters really, just some stuff that can be useful.

(Btw, I only made it all capitalized at points to stress that im not asking for Prime strength cards)
 
Minty88 said:
How much stuff did Reshiram and Zekrom make unplayable?
Click to expand...

It's not that those cards made it unplayable. It's more like you get a pack and pull this and it's totally useless.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top