The Question of the Day is a way to facilitate community discussion to help members ponder the unanswered questions of the world that are somehow relating to the hobby. Questionsj are many times open ended and up to interpretation. Feel free to post your thoughts in as much or as little detail as you’d like.
Helpful Considerations may or may not help some people focus their answer, these are blurred to not bother those who have their own ideas.
People complaining about packs being too expensive. Let me put it this way;
When my parents bought me three packs back in 2000, it would cost them about 9 bucks. Today a pack is about 7,50. Three packs would then cost these parents about 22 bucks. After inflation, that really isn´t too weird.
Not answering anything directly tcg related as i no nothing about it besides power creep, my indirect answer is just pull rates as it’s still something that feels bad
The cards look like shit and can’t be pulled without spending thousands or even tens of thousands of dollars on sealed product that also looks like shit. Other than that everything’s fine.
I can´t speak about the Japanese market, as I don´t know it. But when it comes to English, I think a lot of the complaints have to do with unrealistic expectations. If people really can´t afford packs then of course I´m with them, but if it´s purely the packs are so expensive, it´s not that different from how it was in 2000. Back then, the most popular set was usually sold out too and getting 2 or 3 packs, pulling no holo´s, wasn´t uncommon. I was still satisfied.
Agreed on price. I’ve been thinking about the availability and cost of cards, and for the chase cards, I really feel like I’m trying to buy base zard again. Like I felt in elementary school. lol.
I DO think that the simple rares are too freakin’ expensive in some cases. Some of them are more than a pack. Wut. But TO that point, I’d say not to change the price, of packs, or the amount printed, but Dammit nintendo! Make those sets smaller! Jungle was what, 60 cards?! The newest sets are bigger than expanded MtG sets, that’s like 250-300 cards after everything. In-freakin-sane.
Otherwise, Love. I do, and it’s a small nitpick, but for the textures, I wish they fit the 3D contours of the artwork better. Not a big deal, but those BW and XY era full art textures are still the high bar.
I’m not a fan of the best-of-3 in 50 minute current swiss structure. When I first started playing, swiss was best-of-1 and top cut was best-of-3. Best of 1 wasn’t perfect especially with so much donking back in the day, but there were no issues of slow play. It’s basically accepted logic now that strategic slow play is not against the rules, but IMO it is against the spirit of the game. I would love to see chess clocks introduced, more time given, or change to best-of-2 or even back to best-of-1. The environment feels a lot more toxic with people looking you dead in the eyes as they pretend to take a minute for every search and you can’t do anything about it.
Not really an issue since it makes sense for regulation to follow the newest sets, but would be amazing if they ever brought back the old Base-Fossil/Neo/e-reader/ex era formats for competitive play. The HP & Damage numbers are just too beeg for my ancient brain now
Not just reprinting booster boxes to pump raw volume of packs onto the market and instead wasting time and printing facilities on random supplementary products.
The Florida taco man is correct when he says they have no interest in solving the supply shortage and are doing this on purpose. There’s no way they would “accidentally” print battle decks and blister packs that do nothing to get more product out there and just forget about booster boxes.
I don’t know what it’s like in other countries but all the usual stores that would sell cards around here have had empty shelves and “stock coming soon” notices for well over a year now. I think I bought a single blister about 6 months ago now? Haven’t even seen anything else to even consider other than some unwanted decks that just say there for ages. A colleague did find some Destined Rivals for normal RRP in the Game section of a Sports Direct and went full scalper mode, buying the lot to open half and then sell the other half for £15 a booster on ebay I guess this just happens whenever any stock appears and that’s it - all gone.
I KNOW that demand in itself and the rip and ship era we are in is just the way it is, and that people will say that the Pokemon printers are at full capacity but I still don’t think Pokemon has any interest in trying to fully satiate demand for stock.
That rant aside, my other moan is that the card quality is garbage vs Japanese and they should sort it out. Especially versus the infinitely higher card stock quality from the past when WOTC were printing the cards. The reduction in quality over the years is awful. Onepiece cards embarass Pokemon…I was shocked at how thick the cards felt in comparison when I first held a Onepiece card. I also don’t understand how they can’t produce the same texture definition as the Japanese cards.
Tl;dr - man yells at clouds and nothing will change.
Inflation isn’t the only thing to take into account. Back then, Pokemon was dependent on WOTC to publishing and distribution of their merch if I’m not mistaken till 2003. Things become easier to both develop and produce as time goes on so the price tends to reflect where there is less risk, plus production capacity has gone through the roof compared to back then. So while you do want to consider the value of the dollar back then, there are more things to it that determine a product’s worth in a market. Trading cards simply aren’t meant to be that expensive due to the whole purpose of accessibility for a trading card game. You’re not wrong with how difficult it was back then to get some sets, but it was also a lot more difficult to produce and distribute them to begin with. Relating to the printing facilities, I have to agree with UKLugia, they are purposefully and artificially reducing the product that is distributed to the market.
As for the tcg itself, I would have to agree with qwachansey on this. The round formatting for competitive has always been an issue at least since HGSS/B/W. The distribution of time simply isn’t enough to complete the match. I always thought that the best of 2 chess clock scenario would fix this. 15-20 min afforded to each player at the start of each match so that the opposing player isn’t punished through stall. Donking is to much of a risk to the game for best of 1, A best of 2 scenario at least quells some of the bad luck that can occur during any round so that there’s little risk of the losing player feeling like he lost purely from the luck of the draw, not even getting to play. As for the prize factor, both players have equal chance of coming up short there. I don’t think it’s a bad mechanic. To note, I also enjoyed Duel Master’s life/shield mechanic as well.
Allowing cards like Boss Orders. Bench should be a safe spot unless an opponent has to perform a difficult action. Not only showing a card, pull up a bench pokemon and most time KO. That’s no skill.
Gust of Wind/Pokemon Catcher has been a thing since the very beginning of the game. They made the effect more difficult to access as time went on, but it’s actually a good thing to prevent your bench from being entirely untouchable. It punishes plays like Tapu Lele/Meowth ex that would otherwise go without response. Making the bench untouchable would have drastically harmed the game state. Taking advantage of misplays on the bench I would argue does take skill. Targeting weak points is natural occurance in a competition. Imagine the hell of having to deal with a Wailord in the active… Heal stall would overrun the entire meta. Mime/alakazam was bad enough.
I didn’t say a bench should be untouchable, I said it should not be so easy.
Use stage 2 abilities to swap something out, that way you need to dedicate space in you deck to do it. Deckbuilding would be more important.
Playing heavy hitting basics/stage 1’s spoiled the game for me years ago. No skill in playing only basics.
I keep on hoping they will do 1 boss orders per game, that should be the limit. If it’s really “needed” to have those in the format.
The reason why it’s not a pokemon specific ability is because it would break it. It would be a rush to get that stage 2 on the field instead of other meta staple pokemon cards where both players have full capacity to activate their abilites whenever, The first player with the stage 2 would have an overwhelming advantage. The other player would not be able to counter with their own. The best workaround was to make it a restricted once per turn supporter, that still does take space in your deck. They want it to have restrictions but be equally accessible to both players at any point so it’s not entirely broken and favoring any one player. Though the restriction of a one per game may be viable.
I guess this just happens whenever any stock appears and that’s it - all gone.