I've actually been ruminating a bit about Eternal Formats. Recently, Magic the Gathering has shown the sinister harm that Eternal Formats can inadvertently cause. When magic puts out a new set, there will be a not insignificant number of players who only care about what cards in the new set are viable in the already radioactive Eternal environment, so a number of cards in each set are sharply above curve to appeal specifically to those players. Cards which turn out to be so OP they get banned in Standard, so Standard suffers as a result. Eternal Formats need the same sort of temperance, it seems...
This would be an awesome topic to talk about in a future video! Thank you for making this series btw, it's so enjoyable and I learned a lot about TCG Design!
That is what happens in yugioh. The power level of chase cards in New sets has to be absurdly high in order to be enticing to the competitive player base, which creates an issue where the game either creeps too fast in power or stagnates as power cards aren't printed.
There are definitely pros and cons to both sides of the argument. As a Yu-Gi-Oh! player, I love that cards from 2002 are still playable, and the fact that sometimes an obscure gem becomes a key piece of a devastating new meta strategy. However, one could also argue that if old cards suddenly become playable, due to their lack of reprints, they are easily susceptible to buyouts and become exorbitantly overpriced and out of reach for a lot of players. One area this video didn't cover was the forbidden & limited list that Yu-Gi-Oh! abides by in place of set rotation. One of the benefits of set rotation is that you know exactly when certain cards will be rotated out, and what those cards are. With the forbidden & limited list, we not only receive an ambiguous timeframe of when we should expect to see the list (i.e. "no sooner than June 1st"), but there is also a large degree of uncertainty as to what cards will be banned, limited, or unlimited. This typically creates mass hysteria around the time a list is expected to drop, and people lose faith in their investment and don't want to lose money, so they panic sell their valuable cards (usually for a steal to most buyers). There are a myriad of instances where new cards have resulted in Tier 1 strategies costing $500+, and then an update to the list making those decks unplayable only a few weeks later (due to power creep). TL;DR: Ultimately, there isn't a "best" solution; different models work for different games with different sets of pros and cons. Those models make their respective games unique and part of the reason that game appeals to a certain type of player.
@@nolchannel4950 true they would need to set up mock torements with well known players in the community all using a different popular archetype to play test the game if there is to be a perfect banist
@@nolchannel4950 That was more an issue with how Link mechanics worked during MR4 than anything, where Link Monsters were basically required and thus cards that could spam them out were much more valuable. If they functioned like how they do now in MR5 from the start it probably wouldn't have been such an issue.
@@nolchannel4950 You bring up valid points, but it's far too late for Konami to implement set rotation. One of the main reasons people like ygo so much is because there is no set rotation. It'd completely massacre the playerbase and Konami know this.
And then you had Chaotic who died because it was too successful so 4Kids tried to sue for complete ownership, the creator counter sued, and thus all sales were banned until the case was settled... And the case took about 3-5 years to settle...
I think a big part of people accepting standard rotation in MTG is that people who don't want it can just play the many popular non-rotating formats such as legacy and commander.
Legacy decks cost at least $3000 and the player base is stagnant. Commander is cool, but not a competitive format. Competitive commander decks cost thousands of dollars.
Yeah and most people don't care about whether Commander is a competitive format, because they're playing for fun. But pauper, modern, and pioneer also all exist as non-rotating formats beyond that. @@pepperypeppers2755
@@pepperypeppers2755let’s just be real here, you’re probably not winning tournaments as any average player. A less “competitive“ format is not even close to a bad thing.
@@TheLVJ that was the point, like Time Thief Redoer and Perpetua have Generic requirements. You know they're an archetype from sight Remember SPYGAL Misty?
@@Ramsey276one Except Judgment doesn't support what Lightsworns WANT to do, as the effect only lets you summon dragons after use, requires you have at least four TUNERS in your GY, and the end of turn banish 4 is moreso Twilightsworn support... Who are all Dark and lack a Tuner of their own, with all the Lightsworn Tuners being Light, preventing it from being made in the side of Lightsworns which it actually supports. If anything, Judgment (Who, again, makes no reference to Lightsworns at al,l beyond being based on JD who required them) is supposed to support the implication that Chaos Dragon Rulers will be a thing at some point, alongside fellow retrains of banlist dragons such as Trishula (Whose limitations give Ice Barriers a big middle finger and isn't a member of the archetype to begin with), Chaos Emperor, Dark Armed and Darkness Metal (Who is no longer even a Red-Eyes card, either); At least Misty does support both what SPYRAL want to do, both mechanically by looking at the top of the opponent's deck, and by actively naming Super Agent himself.
@@bimaakhmadi9466 lol no. The first massive powercreep was around 2003 when they introduced all those broken staple cards that used to be or still are banned. Think of the handlooping trio (Confiscation, Forceful Sentry, Delinquent Duo) or Chaos Emperor Dragon, who was the main reason for the introduction of the banlist in the first place. Then the GX era had decks like Glad Beasts, Diamond Dude turbo and Air Blade turbo, which barely saw the light of day because the cards involved got hit on the banlist that fast. Then the early Synchro era had TeleDAD, one of the most dominant decks of all time thanks to (at the time) broken cards like Dark Armed Dragon, E-Tele and pre-errata Dark Strike Fighter. Compared to that, the introduction of XYZ made a negligible impact at first. Sure, every deck now had access to the extra deck, but most of the early XYZ monsters were just beatsticks with minor effect. It's the cards that make the powercreep, not the mechanics. People also thought that pendulum would break the game, but then almost every pendulum monster until Qliphorts was complete garbage.
@@ayngrand3212 yeah. People always complained about the wrong aspect of pendulum too. They were like, "I can special summon a bunch of monsters in 1 turn! How ludicrous!" as if the current decks werent already summoning every monster in their hand turn 1, or that solemn strike didnt negate all of their summons. The only issue with Pendulum is that everything went to the extra deck and could be resummoned. That meant they always had a monster to play which was problematic. That has pretty much been fixed now.
I think it refers to the anime version of disaster leo. cannot be destroyed in battle except by a number, unaffected by monster effects, destach 1 material to deal 4000lp burn to your opponent and if dont have materials during your end phase you win the duel
"a lot of card games try to be just like magic" *shows duel masters, the game made by wizards of the coast to be a simpler, more kid friendly version of magic that they could plaster to an anime* I w o n d e r w h y .
Aren't you happy with your evolving wilds?! You can buy the ultimate vip fancy shmancy secret lair edition, if you have the money! ;) ... It would be funny, if it weren't so sad...
@@flaetsbnort yes. Wizards has recently been ramping up standard's power level so they can sell standard while also offering more powerful formats (although we are reaching an indistinguishable Grand Convergence in power level) singles to appeal to their power level. In addition wizards has made the Secret Lair product line to capitalize on the Secondary Market prices (i.e $35 single copy Bitterblossom reprint or $500 five card fetch land reprint). This is risky because they've had legal trouble in the past with their packs. With the current witch hunt against "loot box mechanics," arguably random products like booster packs could put WotC in legal hell. They also do not have a single source of information release to the public, which leads to conflicting information. They also tend to go back on their word. They also refuse to acknowledge any mistakes made in card design if standard goes sideways because of a untested card combo or pushed power level card. They also don't ban anything when rotation is close to happening, because "just wait 3 weeks." A standard rotation lasts 1.5 - 2 years... They don't ban anything during that period either, unless a single deck dominates the meta (Copy Cat Combo was their most recent transgression). They are perfectly okay with only 2 decks (or deck strategies; right now, Green/Blue decks are dominating but WOTC wont ban the one card holding these 5 separate but equal decks together.) dominating the format. Last rotation had 2 decks: win turn 4 before you could play anything OR win turn 40 after I have countered or removed everything you've played. Oh and WOTC is becoming woke, which we all know is a death knell for any company. Making a good product should prioritize virtue signaling.
@@solusaldrain At first I thought your comment was complete bullshit, but I stopped thinking that when I read your last paragraph At that point I became certain your comment was complete bullshit (OK, not complete because you got two things right. One, Wizards is a bad company and Magic is a shit game, but for reasons nearly orthogonal to what you state. Two, Secret Lair is an unexcusable cash grab, but I have very shallow reservoirs of pity for the kind of folks it targets.)
7:25 This is hilarious given how in actual YGO anime lore there’s only three legit copies of the card in existence (there WAS a fourth, but Kaiba straight pulls a Heero Yuy and rips it in half without batting an eye)
@@-AirKat- It feels like every action he takes is to prove what a big man he is, but when put next to the king of games he starts coming off as an insecure show-off because that's the one person he can't beat. What a funny dynamic they had.
11:00 Birds of Paradise (one of the best mana dorks in mtg) has been printed in 15 sets without counting supplementary sets and promos and can be picked up for about $6-$7. Original Alpha Birds of Paradise are selling for thousands on dollars right now.
Long story short, as long as the game is alive, there will be money in the old cards as long as you don't print the numbers into the ground. Which is kinda hilarious, since it's the opposite of what you'd expect to happen. Truth is stranger than fiction.
@@clayxros576 I think alot of that has to do with how old the game is as well. When your hitting 20+ years on a game people will usually want the old cards to show off or collect just because even if they have been reprinted into usable amounts in the case of birds. I like what pokemon does especially in the recent sets. I think pokemon is the most collectable out of the bigger card games just because of how they make their sets. You'll have the basic version of a card and if its playable will be a couple dollars no matter what because its playable but then usually theres a secret rare version and hyper rare version of the same card. Does the same thing withing the game but is usually full art or rainbow or gold or something that's what collectors go for and players go for the basic version to play with and if your a collector also get a fancy version. I think magic and wizards shits the bed on that quite a bit honestly they dont understand the need to print basic needed cards to play the game to reasonable availability i.e. fetchlands and so you have the bare bones basic versions of cards still he close to a hundred dollars for a single copy and then they will release something like the secret lair and sell people a "premium" version for hundreds of dollars which to be honest pale in comparison to the effort put into making pokemon cards look amazing. And that just leads to a pissed player base. Not to mention wizards "chase cards" honestly are extremely basic the foil has been essentially the same boring foil for years and the quality of the is trash looking like pringles sadly.
6-7 Dollars is still a ridiculous pricetag for such a staple card In yugioh for exanole, some versions of Pot of Desires go for under $1 and it is arguably the best legal generic card draw
One thing that often seems to be ignored when discussing set rotation is that there can be a non-rotating format in addition to the rotating format - like Legacy in Magic or Wild in Hearthstone - where you can play all your old cards (except maybe a few banned ones).
Or that a combination of both (like with magic) is also perfectly acceptable. Its ok to have a ban list and have rotating cards. Especially if you care about the health of your competitive scene and secondary market.
I agree, but we also have to keep in mind that again can't actually get to the point where they maintain both a rotating and non-rotating format until the game is popular enough to have a large and consistent enough player base for both formats to be successful without just splintering the player base and creating a scenario where there aren't really enough people to get sufficiently fire off events in either format.
yup! as long as you make sure to appease those legacy format players, its a really good idea. a lot of the cards in the new scholomance academy expansion for hearthstone seem to be specifically made to appease wild players, with combo tools, ways to order your deck, etc
Or something like what Vanguard is doing now, there’s an eternal format (called premium) a format for the era after the rework (called V premium) and then the format for the current set (currently called Standard or D standard) Another thing that could work is the block number system that Bandai Namco does, where a few sets each have a block number and then tournaments can choose which blocks are or aren’t useable for that particular event (barring of course limited or banned cards)
The way you do it is you kepp the first 2-4 years as a single format, and start introducing rotation incrementally. You wont need to maintain your eternal format much because it will be nearly identical to your rotating one for the next year, at which point you will have been running for upwards of 5 years, and are either succesful enough to maintain both, or you have already failed.
"Yes, worse than Jace, the Mind Sculptor". I can't decide if that was a clever attempt to keep this video relevant in the future by back-dating your references, or just a missed opportunity for an Oko joke. And I will never know, as my sense of humor is now a 3/3 elk.
@@sagecolvard9644Oof, I only ever play Draft, and haven't even played it since 2018, so while I've heard of Oko in passing I barely knew anything other than it being a problem.
As a big fan and long time player of MTG, I was really speculative going into this video based on the title. I’ve always really appreciated the natural shake-up and feeling of “moving on” that comes with the yearly rotation, and I have heard too many bad faith arguments from both Magic players and other TCG players as to why rotation is just a scheme to get players to spend more money (not saying that isn’t part of it, but that is also not the only reason obviously) After watching your video though I was relieved to see you had a very honest and well researched case got set rotation, and while it can be executed poorly and ruin a new game, it also can be an important tool in helping a game stay fresh and experiment with wild new designs. Good stuff man and I’m excited to watch more of your more recent content
I've ran a Destiny Hero deck in Yu-Gi-Oh since the first set of D-Heroes first came out. I've always found myself returning to tournaments whenever D-Heroes or Heroes in general got new support.
Samsara Lotus didn't actually do anything bad for the meta, it just happened to summon itself from grave. Lotus was never the problem cannon soldier was the problem, its always been the problem but Konami won't ever ban it
Leave it to Konami to make card like Samsara Lotus (not really) and fucking Grinder Golem broken. Any memories of bouncing him back with Security Dragon to get 4 tokens for free?
The reason I appreciate set rotation is because it allows me to enter a new game and get cards to make an alright deck without spending way more than i need for a deck i want to play because a card i need is no longer in print and has skyrocketed in price...
A little maxim from the world of software: If you do what other companies do, you can expect to do about as well as the average company similar to yours. Big software companies tend to grow by 10% per year. If you are a big software company and you do what your competitors are doing, you can expect 10% annual growth. 90% of software startups fail. If you do what other software startups do, you will, on average, fail. Applying that to TCGs: if you do what MTG does, and you are NOT a 20+ year long-running trend-making TCG, then you cannot reasonably expect to do as well as MTG does.
For Bakugan, it actually makes sense to reprint the card with a different name cause if it's a good card, and you can only have a playset of it but run more of that card, then you're still staying within the rules of TCG. It's not a playset of the action but a playset with the same name. Same thing with the different Hero cards.
RotatingMagnetGuy but not all mana dorks are made equal. The colors they tap for and their tribe make a huge difference. Some go in elemental decks some go in elfball. A few can’t tap for green but will tap for another color so they can’t be run in your decks.
@@RotatingMagnetGuy No, never. I need all the ramp I can have. Literally all my decks are basically Ramp Matters. Don't take my ramp away from me Timmy! (sorry that got out of hand lol)
Functional reprints almost never happen for rare+ cards in MTG, they are usually only for 25 cent commons and uncommons, so I don't think this is an issue there. I can't speak for other card games though.
I quit yugioh due to the greed of my local playerbase. There was a card that was a fine side deck to run two of(was unlimited). However as it was a staple side deck card and unlikely to get touched, it remained grossly overvalued and I was one that couldn't pull it for the life of me. Was only a super rare mind you. Then another new summon form came out and ruined two of my decks that revolved around levels(now rank, wowee!). THEN one of my key cards got banned while it had no serious effect on the meta. At that point I didn't have my heart in the game anymore. From launch until Xyzs(ik-seeds, I'm not kidding) I played, spent and poured so much into the game. But many things that include "Konami said so" rulings just kept pestering me and the above pushed me over the edge. Even to me the game became unrecognizable to the point I wonder aside from aesthetics, what variation is there between decks. I see them swarm, draw power, toolbox and so on while back then. Most had their strengths and weaknesses for focusing on each playstyle. Ah well, another 10k hour hobby gone I'll remember fondly despite leaving with a sour taste.
Magic has the best solution: why not both. The game is so old that having all cards available means the game would not be for everyone. The Vintage format is the epitome of "you can play all cards available" and while it is a deep and fun format, the brokenness of some of the cards is just not for everyone. The game is so big that there will always be a game for you that is rotating or not. But if you ever want to make a new game... don't start out with set rotation. Why the hell would you do that. You are not Magic. You can't achieve the same with a 20th of the card pool.
Yeah, pretty much. Magic pretty much segments its player base to the point that, unless you are playing competitively, you can always find a format in which your favourite cards (or the cards you happen to have) are relevant. Of course, if only reached that point after decades of attempts and false starts, not to mention millions in player research and marketing. The core point, though, is valid: don't start doing set rotations until you know what the game demands.
EDH solved the problem for WOTC pretty handily, and they HAAAAAAAAAATE that... They just barely begrudgingly decided to acknowledge the EDH crowd to sell product meant specifically for Commander aside from the half assed once a year commander deck set.
Thats what i hate about magic, it segments the player base, and people who play more obscure formats cant find anyone. And also lack of events or tournaments for anything other than the standard most popular formats
@@NeostormXLMAX standard, modern, legacy, pauper, casual 2 or more and commander are all incredibly easy to find players for. More obscure, sure, hard to find. The point here is more that games like Yu Gi Oh are incredibly restrictive in what is allowed as formats, while games with smaller player bases shouldn't worry about rotation or multiple formats at all. If I don't want to play Vintage in Magic or Yu Gi Oh in Yu Gi Oh (the two formats are reasonably similar), there are in Magic enough people and a large enough card pool to play other things while in Yu Gi Oh, you're doomed. The fact that it's tough in Magic to find events for Standard peasant emperor is a problem of luxury because they have so diverse an array of popular options to begin with.
@@NeostormXLMAX I disagree that it's bad. Lgs tend to develop their own local scenes, and more dedicated scenes can even have non-sanctioned formats. Almost every store ive ever been to with play space had its weekly format is never played before with 16+ player turnouts. Not every format will have player support at every store, but that's also fine
To be honest: Who cares about rotation, outisde of tournaments?! I never met anyone in any card game saying: "You can't play that card, its rotated", because IF I would use a broken combo, the just play with someone else.
Set Rotation doesnt protect from mechanics going wrong either. Either they still ruin the format until they rotate out, which is still horrible, or they have to change the mechanic anyway, like MTG did with the companion mechanic.
Power creep is an increase of power of the best cards, items, etc in a game. It can be done intentionally to sell more product but, it also just naturally happens as you add more stuff to a game. Synergies get more support and occasionally designers slip up and let a card through that turns out to be more powerful than expected.
Difference between accidental power creep and intentional power creep is that accidental power creep doesn't happen on a constant basis and can generally be corrected. A good example of this is Neo Genesis Slowking from Pokemon. Slowking forced your opponent to flip a coin whenever they played a trainer card, and on tails, the card does nothing and gets topdecked. This was modern Yu-Gi-Oh tier bullshit in a relatively early Pokemon card (Neo Genesis was the 8th set ever released and meant to be the base set for gen 2), and the game got centralized around it until it was banned in 2002. It was the last Pokemon TCG card to be banned from an event, excluding exclusive tournament prize cards and other weird cards, up until Wormadam Sandy Cloak in 2008 from the Professor Cup, and then Lysandre all the way in 2015.
I'd love to hear your thoughts on Magic the Gathering bumping their rotation from 2 years to 3 years and because of that, we'll have a uniquely bigger Standard card pool until next year's rotation.
I like when new cards makes old obscure cards suddenly relevant like when qliphort came out the really old card summoner's art became an instant search for qliphort scout which is the card that gets the deck going
5:24 Someone playing Dark Magician in their 2020 deck with the new support cards is better than nothing... but the problem is the power creep makes it feel less like Captain America breaking out of the ice and kicking butt again than it just feels like Weekend At Bernies- just dragging a dead body of a card around pretending he's ok. He's literally dead weight in your deck they use to justify making the new cards EVEN MORE POWERFUL
The point about reprints is magnified when you look at yue MTG card Doubling Season. It gets printed every 2 years, and the older printings seem to either never drop in value after the reprint or bounce bacelt even to higher prices after the market settles.
6:20 Hearthstone "fixed" this problem by allowing players to buy rotated Packs in the in-game store using in-game currency. This made Wild (game mode where you can play cards irregardless of what year they're from) more accessible to players. You couldn't do it before and had to spend exorbitant amounts of real life money and/or resources to get rotated cards. However the fix was too late and by the time it was implemented (which was recently), most of the players already got rid half of their collection from previous sets. So thanks Blizzard for this fix right after making me disenchant an entire year of collection.
Oh wow, I asked for that when they first started rotating cards. Cost of rotated cards went up by ~400-500% (gold price compared to dust price) Value of those cards dropped significantly. This was a quite necessary change, years ago.
@@NeostormXLMAX He's talking about when Wild wasn't a thing in Hearthstone yet. Dusting cards gives you, well, dust, so you can craft specific cards you want/need. Since Wild wasn't a thing back then, cards from old expansions were basically useless, so might as well dust them.
I love yugioh for the lack of set rotation. Because a card like 15 to 18 years ago can be meta because someone realized that card doesn’t have a hard once per turn on its effect
Yeah i can still use my old Chaos Emperror Dragon and kill my op- oh wait its unplayable..... why didnt Konami Just make its requirements Harder or Just send the field to the GY or Something other than "yOu CaNt AcTiVaTe CarDs Or EfFeCtS tHiS tUrN"
@@GaminSnake Its better than Set Rotation dont get me and im all for errata-ing cards, in *a reasonable capacity* . Im only complaining about Chaos Emperrors Errata Like Bitch the Card isnt "fixed" its unplayable
I don't know why I stumbled across this video 4 years after it being made, but I'll still put in my 2 cents. Set rotation is actually the entire reason I enjoy standard in magic. Lack of set rotation is the entire reason I refuse to play yugioh. Well, that and the poor card design.
Maybe a “semi set rotation” might be the best model. Have a list of cards that will always be playable and constantly rotate a new set in. Then if a card of theme ends up being popular or fair, you can promote it to the permanent list. Like this you can get rid of bad ideas and control power creep in a way that stays comfortable. Might be a big difficult for new players to know, what is legal or not, but it’s an idea
Ah, that pain. After AGES of learning and suffering and getting my butt whooped in UFS, I made a deck effective enough to take THIRD in a regional out of nowhere. Next week...half said deck was rotated out. I never performed so well again.
Not sure why this channel came up on my recommended videos list, but awesome. Subscribed. As someone who is making a physical boxed card game attempting to deviate from the TCG sales model, your perspective on it is invaluable and addresses things I've thought about.
You forgot how messing with the usual two-ish year lifespan based on a single annual rotation makes the profit aspect even more egregious and transparent. I'm a little dissapointed that the infamous singular attempt of a bi annual standard rotation for mtg back in the spring of 2016 has been forgotten already even though its one of the most greedy moves modern wotc has tried pulling even when compared to the bullcrap in 2017 and this past year of standard. I still laugh at some of those sponsored youtube channels and websites that desperately tried to convince people that it was even remotely a good idea even after it was scrapped
To be fair, the twice a year rotation was a thing that many players (or at the very least a vocal minority of players) were asking for. It was a response to the two set blocks, people wanted each block to have the same amount of time in standard. it turned out to be an idea that sounded better than it worked in practice tho, in theory it was more "fair" to the blocks (humans will pack bond with anything), but players got tired of constant rotation.
Was getting "Yu Gi Oh good, Magic bad" vibes when you started off with the rotation vs banlist bit. Glad I stuck it out to find out I was wrong. Insightful video, thanks!
I don't hate set rotation (not necessarily saying I like it, just that I'd take it over alternatives as a necessary evil) because I've seen what the alternative is. It's called monetized power creep and it's completely fucked over a certain "Children's Card Game". That being said, like you said there needs to be a balance - rotate too quickly and you end up alienating people. Rotate too slowly and you might as well not do it at all. Besides, if you want to bring old stuff back into relevance, nothing of actual value is stopping you from reprinting the old cards to go along with their new support. So go ahead, print some new copies and drink those sweet, sweet tears of the speculative investors. Or, if you're feeling a bit more creative, you can make new art for said reprints, at the cost of no longer being able to drink said tears.
I did not expect a video of this quality. This is great! I love the insightful perspective on what straight up kills new tcgs. Hopefully up and coming tcg designers see this video.
The mention of Jace is extremely hilarious because he was unbanned 2 years before this video premiered, and he proceeded to do very little other than be a decent advantage piece in modern.
First time here, as a yugioh player i like these videos so much. Man, you really put effort making this, good commentary and nice editing. Quality content!
I'm actually a huge fan of set rotation, means that I as a filthy casual can play with my friends and not care about it but still benefit from minimal power creep. Like I played for years and never went to a tournament or knew this was a thing. Just knew that the game never got out of control like yugioh where you need the newest cards to not get destroyed.
People seem to forget that quite a number of sets were made for Magic the Gathering before Standard and rset rotation were even introduced, and there was still a format where you can play with all cards printed even before Standard or Type 2 as it was known then.
OK, I'd argue Duel Masters trying to be just like magic is a product of Wizards essentially making a TCG that is more appealing to the Japanese audience while retaining the charm of Magic. Heck, I'm pretty sure the original DM manga revolved around Magic at first rather than DM.
Actually duel masters is magic but better since you don't encounter situations like, I got an op hand but no mana and stuff like that that's why it's so popular in Asia and keeps on going, it's such a shame that it didn't continue in tcg too, I know a lot of magic players that play magic bc they "don't like other card games and duel masters doesn't exist anymore" but all of them agreed that if duel masters comes back, the og one not kaijudo, they'll change to dm without any regret
@jvalex18 I'd say it's just different. Their minor differences (lack of mana screw in dm/times when you can cast some spells, as well as general mana management in mtg) end up with two very fun games that are able to differentiate themselves from one another.
@jvalex18 Duel Masters failed in the west because it was handled terribly. I can't remember what the story was but I seem to recall them being actively against banning cards or something and there was some OP card or deck that just ruined the game.
@@aurafox1 Not to mention promoting what's essentially an tweaked, localized MTG to a region that already enjoyed MTG is kinda pointless. It'd be like taking a popular movie, making another cut with all the pandering they use for Chinese audiences, then re-releasing the Chinese cut in the west hoping it'd draw people in.
Just found your channel and I love your reasoning and perspective. As a lover of the connection and friendships that TCGs forge, I want the games to be the best they can be. Thanks for the lovely discourse.
Set rotation is why I can't enjoy pkmn tcg even tho I love the game. Cuz the moment when my deck has to contend with older decks/combos that get boosted by the rotated stuff it becomes almost impossible to play said deck unless uve stuck with something like the dark deck.
Basically, if you reading this are thinking about set rotation for your game, don't. Try to make it so your cards can be evergreen from the beginning. If you don't, you'll end up with problems that'll likely sink your ship before you can turn your head, much less have a rotation.
eternal formats are for veterans and people with old cards. pokemon is popular with kids but they often migrate to other games or simply lose interest. yet expanded is good id they ever want to come back
Set rotation does help, but it shouldn't even be considered until you have enough sets to start encountering the problems rotation can mitigate. It's true that having 15000 cards makes it hard to break into the game, and rotating a good number of those out helps keep the game easy to get in to. You should not, however, think about this problem at all while you still only have 300 cards across 2 sets
I saw a magic ad that had a reprinted JACE THE MINDSCULPTER the other day. I’m currently sending this while tucking in my deck into a bunker to keep it safe from his sculpting
Besides the idea of a problematic card not being usable in tournaments, the only other plus I can think of (as a magic player anyways) is that it's another reason to try the new cards with new mechanic (even Core sets can offer some cool stuff). Who knows, 10 years later when you're not playing competitively and just want to play with a friend, this one deck with a special mechanic that was restricted could make the game a ton more fun, right?
There was something rather interesting you neglected in this video; Magic's extended format players don't buy cards. Modern players buy decks, they don't buy boosters or cards like a Standard player does. For them, it's a one and done deal, unless a banning happens. This isn't doesn't generate revenue for Wizards. The only time Modern makes money is when Wizards makes a set with the intention of getting people into Modern, leveraging the value of the singles on the open market. If Modern, Extended, Pioneer, Legacy, ect, was Magic, the game would necessitate Power Creep as the developers would need to compete with their older designs. The game would be YGO. Even if they were capable of making interesting new designs, year after year, you would still hit a point where the fanbase is like 'Nah, I'm good.'. Magic does have that problem even with rotation however, as it's said the average life span of a Standard Magic player is about 18 months, hence Wizards' focus on new players. We don't know why they quit or what they've moved onto afterwards however. You're right about it needing cushioning, Naruto's Death to Rotation is fairly infamous, but it's far more nuanced than Sell More Cards. It's closer to keep the game alive and retain the spirit of the game.
@@mpawn a lot if not most packs opened are drafted, a player thats only interested in drafting is gonna sell a fetch because that one card alone would be worth at least one draft by itself
Just do what magic does. Magic does both, theres the standard rotation and then in addition to that theres several different eternal formats allowing for all cards printed from present back to a different point. Legacy is everything, Modern is present to 2003, pioneer is present to 2012. These formats cohexist with standard and give players options. Magic also has the alternative format commander, an casual format where nearly ever card is legal utilizing different rules which remain vastly the most popular way to play the game. However while it very much promotes the use of cards from your collection you wouldnt use otherwise, it isnt something a card game could really replicate without already having a firm ground to stand on, flexible rules allowing for such a format, and a community that is open to a open casual alternative to normal play.
the use of Magic: the gathering in conversations about set rotation is a bit of a misnomer in this day and age, where there are 11, non-limited, game formats acknowledged by WoTC and only 2 of them rotate (and almost no one plays Brawl anyway). this becomes problematic when you incorporate the argument that "they get to try weird stuff because it will just go away and never be talked about again" because that means 81% of your format base has access to the "weird stuff" so no, doing something that is inherently broken doesn't just go away. and although core sets to drop the general power rating down a tad, it would be absurd to say that as a whole the game does not suffer from power creep. i know that standard makes up a large and vocal part of the player base, but more an more formats like commander are getting as much attention and product.
I actually think a huge part of implementing set rotation properly is having an "eternal format" (or in the case of Magic, several of them) that cards don't rotate out of. That way you can have all the benefits of a rotating format while not making players feel like their collection becomes worthless every 2 years. Plus, it's just cool to see the crazy decks and combos people can come up with when they have access to every cards from across a game's history.
I agree completely that rotation and eternal need to exist together in order for either of them to be effective. but i do not agree with the video stating that rotation will sweep "mistakes" under the rug when they are no longer standard. especially when there are so many eternal formats. i instead feel like that should make designers more cautious about what they release, as to not disrupt both rotation and eternal too much at the same time.
Yeah, but commander is sillier vintage, modern players overstate their importance and legacy players have a decade long record of being sure WotC aims to kill them this time for sure, so I wouldn't care all that much about it. Besides, the escalating nature of the non-rotating formats makes them pretty much pre-rotated formats.
there is absolutely 0 way i would play MTG without an eternal format, and i know i am not the only one who feels that way. Booster packs are built for the Draft environment, which isnt for everyone, which then leaves buying singles as the primary way for deck construction, and without eternal, that is a recipe for wasted money as those cards would loose functionality and thus value. and it is kind of a moot point anyway, because as long as players feel that way, they will create their own formats, which financially makes sense for WoTC to show support for.
I think standard is 100% necessary. There are something like 40-50 different MTG formats, but only about 5 of them any significant amount of the player base still actually play. I just don't like the idea of turn 0, 1 or 2 format.
So essentially Set Rotation can be a powerful tool to allow for creativity in a card game when it’s handled well but it can also be a death sentence for a game if it’s handled poorly.
That’s what I love about Cardfight Vanguard. With their premium tournament format, any and all cards in the game, both current and past, are allowed. There are a few cards with restrictions on when they can be used but they can still be used. There are cards from older sets that greatly support newer sets and vice versa.
To further add on is that Cardfight Vanguard actually have a yearly set of new cards that are created just for the Premium format. Yes new cards, which injected new life to the format in a huge way. Look at Premium Collection 2020, maybe except for Zazan, and ever since Zazan’s limitation to 1, it is widely regarded as one of the most fun metas for a Long while.
This was me when it came to Star Wars Destiny. Around the time the fourth or fifth set came out within a year and a half, and I actually finally found a store to play at, the majority of my cards the first TWO sets, were rotated out before I even had a chance to play them. I like collecting cards so I have what I bought, but I also have an unopened Third starter set cause it was just about to die in less than six months.
1:25 "To hear what they have is basically worthless doesn't make them happy." Bruh, literally 99% of all my Magic cards (and I have a lot of magic cards) are barely worth the cardboard they are printed on.
Yeah, a lot of his arguments don't hold much water. He even goes on to say not a minute later that if a card it too powerful you can just ban it which is even worse than a set rotation.
@@feritperliare2890 You generally know set rotation is coming in advance, as opposed to bans which are either sudden, or telegraphed SO HARD by the cards getting banned that the format is shit for the intervening interval. One of these is much better from a consumer perspective. That being said, either one is arguably better than how FFG handles things with their LCGs, they use power level errata. Because I love it when cards don't do what they say they do... Yeah, Magic also erratas things, but that is almost entirely to make the cards continue to work as intended with game-wide rules changes.
While getting rotated out does usually decrease a card's monetary value, I think he primarily meant that it makes the card unplayable, and therefore worthless from a gameplay perspective. If you've just spent $100 on cards for a new tcg, and then they rotate out, your whole collection becomes literally illegal to play with.
This video is so well made and thought out ! I just found this scrolling UA-cam, and it gave me a second persons perspective on my idea of making my own card game ! Thank you for this ! This video deserves so many more likes and views, I'm going to watch the whole series now !
I think Magic's system for handling set rotation is the best, because there are so many formats without set rotation. Basically, unless you're a standard player, set rotation doesn't exist. So, you get to reap all the benefits of set rotation (flatter power curve, etc) without any of its negatives. So yeah. I don't hate set rotation, because it has never affected my play. Hell, it's actually better for me, because when standard playables get close to their "use by" date, I can snap them up for cheap for non standard play.
How to fix Set Rotation problems: Make 2 formats: "Standard" and "Expanded" Standard uses Set Rotation, Expanded allows to use every card of the game and has a banlist and the both formats should be officially supported.
There is another reason why set rotation is necessary. The reason why we're planning one is because of design space and ensuring we can appropriately test the game. The larger the card pool the harder it is for testing. Ideally, we'd avoid set rotation so that the players don't feel like their cards have lost value. But it isn't feasible. That being said, we are prolonging set rotation for as long as possible, and we have a plan for making each rotation really special.
While I'm not expert and you know much more than me I think that's a super smart idea. Personally I wouldn't start out with any set idea with when a rotation would be and go untill you feel you need one, then after that the 2 year roation idea can set in. I just feel as you set having to early of a set roation can hurt the company
MTG is the most guilty, and they set release is on crack now. Thankfully they abandoned everything but commander. The price, amount of essentially chaff cards and sea of releases every year really put me off MTG. The fans are also weird and can be asses
There's a difference between artificially high because of scarcity and being valuable because of merit. Recruiter was valuable because of the former but if you look at lightning bolt, the alpha one is now close to 400 and it gets printed enough. There's just certain cards that will forever be valuable because they're good and scarce.
@@Darkersneasel What about staples that plummet in value and stay in that range despite being a staple? For example Tarmogoyf, that was historically the most expensive Modern staple in MTG, that after aggressive repeated reprinting is now at $40 across versions. I absolutely love reprints, but just pointing out that 'Speculative buyer complaints' definitely aren't bogus.
@@lollummars4229 to attribute that all to aggressive reprint is dishonest at best. The game has definitely experienced power creep and to attribute all the value drop to printing is ridiculous. Though to say that an original printing of tarmogoyf is going to retain the same value 10 years from now is to be seen. Again the card is still worth 35 bucks after being printed into abscurity. The point I'm making is that cards that are meta defining and in low supply (relatively speaking) retain value. So your alpha bolt will be valuable because it's good and rare. But an investor shouldn't be rewarded for something that is relatively important for a game but only valuable because it's scarce. If the price is driven primarily through scarcity then you absolutely should be burned. That's not good investment and you should absolutely get hosed when a reprint is announced.
The biggest problem MTG has suffered recently is making certain printings feel special. In pokemon you have full arts. In yugioh you have ultimate rares. In magic every printing feels the same. They've recently started adopting the showcase frame which I think is good for the game as it allows certain versions of a card to retain value while other versions have lesser value.
@@Darkersneasel I agree with you that certain cards like birds of paradise and alpha bolt will retain value, usually due to prestige and scarcity of such an old card, but price should be assessed on the change of it's worth over time not on whether it is worth something or not. For example with the original printing of Tarmogoyf, it was worth $150-200 for a long time, until the reprint hit a critical mass despite being a prime staple of the format. Yes, it's still worthy $70 now, but the issue that people have is that if you buy into it at $150-200, you suffer a $75-100 loss from when you bought it. MTG is a game that prides itself on being able to sell cards you no longer want to use after a particular amount of time with minimal loss. That's why you see buyer confidence being a key emphasis on MTG, and not on other card games like YGO or digitals like Hearthstone.
Depends on the quality. Sometimes you can catch just the perfect frame, in the highest quality possible, and the card just looks amazing, perfectly showcasing why the moment depicted was so iconic. IF you cheap out, though, your card can look like the in-between frames from a Naruto action scene.
I don't think card and archetype retrains make those old vanilla cards viable as much as they're considered a requirement for a deck. Part of it being that cards like Blue Eyes White Dragon or Dark Magician are required Normal monster cards in their respective decks to either pay a cost or conditions for supporting Spell and Trap cards (Magicians' Navigation) or to meet the summoning requirements for an effect version of themselves (like Blue Eyes Alternative White Dragon) without being a dead draw in their hand (aka a garnet).
This is why I quit YuGiOh. I spent $150 over the course of 6 months to make a busted deck. Then they introduced link summoning (which already neutered the deck) and then banned 90% of the deck outright. It broke my spirit so bad I just quit. Walked away and never even considered coming back.
I actually didn't know they reprinted Lightning Bolt. A long time ago I realized the power of the "Get 3 damage for one mana" scheme and literally blew out my young group's Lightning Bolts. Still got like, 60 of the damn things that I'm just gonna keep. If I get rid of everything else I'll keep the fact that I cleared out my group's LBs, haha!
5:20 letting old archetypes "surf" sounds a *lot* like too many unmixable attributes. Sure, the archetypes still (technically) exist when they drop to tier 3 or fringe play, but the only thing new sets that don't add to their archetype do is provide new meta opponents (and preferred hate cards), or powercreep the staples. If you don't eventually have a format that rotates, and you want to keep selling new sets, you have to make soft rotations happen somehow. Either you power creep the old stuff into irrelevance, provide powerful hate for the old stuff to knock it down to tier 2, you ban the core out from under the old stuff (which is rotating only the good stuff), or do something really difficult and work out a creative solution to not need to do any of that (for a while). On the other hand, it's generally not a great idea to rotate out your base set unless you're sure you know what you're doing, or at least are keeping most of people's favorite cards & staples legal in the "main" format. The second set could be safe, as long as it didn't outsell the first one and became everyone's "home" set.
Be me, excited for the new Digimon TCG. Then I see this video and I instantly grow concerned about the future of the game, but then realize that they were made by Bandai, same guys behind the DBS tcg. ... “made by Bandai”.
Set Rotation is an absolute necessity with any competitive game it allows developers to keep power cheap down because cards arent having to constantly become more and more powerful to push sales, it allows developers the ability to make cards that would otherwise be broken due to problem cards no longer being in the current competitive format, it makes getting key cards for new players accessible as the shelf life of current sets is usually a key variable in how hard to get an older card is.
Speculator complaints are bogus TODAY. However, at the time they were appropriate. While I agree companies shouldn't be pandering to a minority of their customer base, it wasn't until around 2014 that reprinted cards began retaining their value. Prior to that, when a card was reprinted it did gut the value. But again, what ought to be more important to a publisher? Some else's profits from the publisher's product, or a healthy game environment?
Yugioh's is nothing close to a set rotation honestly There are over 10,000 yugioh cards to date And of that number only about 90 of them are on the banlist
There was something so magical about watching my old UA deck get new cards after four years, dusting off the old list, beefing it up, and Dunking on any Dante in def mode who dare opposes me like it’s 2014 all over again.
Ironically, I've been playing yugioh since maybe a year or so before nekroz format... I always tend to try some of the newer archetypes everyonce in awhile.. mostly cute trolly decks. But I always go back to melodious no matter whatever deck i tinker with. Lol
This dude is the kinda guy to go to locals and won't even ask what tournament is on because he can play all of them and has a good deck for each card game
In my opinion, the games that do set rotation well are the ones that have eternal formats. Each new card has potential in several competitive environments and gas to be evaluated differently in each, and set rotation hurts less because, if you don't play standard, then it means that prices for cards you've been eyeing up could crater as the Standard players dump their old stuff on rotation.
I've actually been ruminating a bit about Eternal Formats. Recently, Magic the Gathering has shown the sinister harm that Eternal Formats can inadvertently cause. When magic puts out a new set, there will be a not insignificant number of players who only care about what cards in the new set are viable in the already radioactive Eternal environment, so a number of cards in each set are sharply above curve to appeal specifically to those players. Cards which turn out to be so OP they get banned in Standard, so Standard suffers as a result.
Eternal Formats need the same sort of temperance, it seems...
Follow up video???
This would be an awesome topic to talk about in a future video! Thank you for making this series btw, it's so enjoyable and I learned a lot about TCG Design!
That is what happens in yugioh. The power level of chase cards in New sets has to be absurdly high in order to be enticing to the competitive player base, which creates an issue where the game either creeps too fast in power or stagnates as power cards aren't printed.
Yea the logic behind rotation IS NOT “That’s just what card games do.” It’s an element that any HEALTHY game uses. And yugioh is not healthy.
Errata Text video soon-ish?
There are definitely pros and cons to both sides of the argument. As a Yu-Gi-Oh! player, I love that cards from 2002 are still playable, and the fact that sometimes an obscure gem becomes a key piece of a devastating new meta strategy. However, one could also argue that if old cards suddenly become playable, due to their lack of reprints, they are easily susceptible to buyouts and become exorbitantly overpriced and out of reach for a lot of players.
One area this video didn't cover was the forbidden & limited list that Yu-Gi-Oh! abides by in place of set rotation. One of the benefits of set rotation is that you know exactly when certain cards will be rotated out, and what those cards are. With the forbidden & limited list, we not only receive an ambiguous timeframe of when we should expect to see the list (i.e. "no sooner than June 1st"), but there is also a large degree of uncertainty as to what cards will be banned, limited, or unlimited. This typically creates mass hysteria around the time a list is expected to drop, and people lose faith in their investment and don't want to lose money, so they panic sell their valuable cards (usually for a steal to most buyers). There are a myriad of instances where new cards have resulted in Tier 1 strategies costing $500+, and then an update to the list making those decks unplayable only a few weeks later (due to power creep).
TL;DR: Ultimately, there isn't a "best" solution; different models work for different games with different sets of pros and cons. Those models make their respective games unique and part of the reason that game appeals to a certain type of player.
@@nolchannel4950 a ban list is much better then set rotation as it lets you use your face strats while stoping harmful cards that ruin the fun
@@nolchannel4950 true they would need to set up mock torements with well known players in the community all using a different popular archetype to play test the game if there is to be a perfect banist
@@nolchannel4950 That was more an issue with how Link mechanics worked during MR4 than anything, where Link Monsters were basically required and thus cards that could spam them out were much more valuable. If they functioned like how they do now in MR5 from the start it probably wouldn't have been such an issue.
i love the fact i randomly saw your comment cimo. a pure gem.
@@nolchannel4950 You bring up valid points, but it's far too late for Konami to implement set rotation. One of the main reasons people like ygo so much is because there is no set rotation. It'd completely massacre the playerbase and Konami know this.
Set rotation is not a problem in Yugioh because it's limited to 1.
Ayyyyy
Aaaayyyyy xD
But remember when it wasn’t!
Okay, that was a good joke
Ayyyyyyyyyyyyyyy
And then you had Chaotic who died because it was too successful so 4Kids tried to sue for complete ownership, the creator counter sued, and thus all sales were banned until the case was settled... And the case took about 3-5 years to settle...
It still exists
@@platinumorange1034
Not still exists as much as died and is slow returning from dead.
@@ShadowEclipex do we get a new show
@@platinumorange1034 their plan is to continue the show from where they left off.
@@ShadowEclipex that's interesting
I think a big part of people accepting standard rotation in MTG is that people who don't want it can just play the many popular non-rotating formats such as legacy and commander.
Legacy decks cost at least $3000 and the player base is stagnant.
Commander is cool, but not a competitive format. Competitive commander decks cost thousands of dollars.
Yeah and most people don't care about whether Commander is a competitive format, because they're playing for fun. But pauper, modern, and pioneer also all exist as non-rotating formats beyond that. @@pepperypeppers2755
@@pepperypeppers2755let’s just be real here, you’re probably not winning tournaments as any average player. A less “competitive“ format is not even close to a bad thing.
Using "Judgement, the Dragon of Heaven" to represent Lightsworns was an insult.
Well, it IS the final evolution of Judgement Dragon...
@@Ramsey276one
It's neither a "Lightsworn" or "Judgement Dragon" card. Its effects do not promote the deck's mechanics; it's generic dragon support.
@@TheLVJ that was the point, like Time Thief Redoer and Perpetua have Generic requirements. You know they're an archetype from sight
Remember SPYGAL Misty?
@@Ramsey276one Except Judgment doesn't support what Lightsworns WANT to do, as the effect only lets you summon dragons after use, requires you have at least four TUNERS in your GY, and the end of turn banish 4 is moreso Twilightsworn support... Who are all Dark and lack a Tuner of their own, with all the Lightsworn Tuners being Light, preventing it from being made in the side of Lightsworns which it actually supports.
If anything, Judgment (Who, again, makes no reference to Lightsworns at al,l beyond being based on JD who required them) is supposed to support the implication that Chaos Dragon Rulers will be a thing at some point, alongside fellow retrains of banlist dragons such as Trishula (Whose limitations give Ice Barriers a big middle finger and isn't a member of the archetype to begin with), Chaos Emperor, Dark Armed and Darkness Metal (Who is no longer even a Red-Eyes card, either); At least Misty does support both what SPYRAL want to do, both mechanically by looking at the top of the opponent's deck, and by actively naming Super Agent himself.
@@alexryu2632 YIKES
also the Misty thing STILL PISSES ME OFF ...
>mentions powercreep
>shows one of the most pointless Yugioh Xyz monsters
As a Gimmick Puppet player, I can confirm.
XYZ era is the first massive powercreep for YGO tho...
Idk, synchro era feels more "alive" than XYZ imo
@@bimaakhmadi9466 lol no. The first massive powercreep was around 2003 when they introduced all those broken staple cards that used to be or still are banned. Think of the handlooping trio (Confiscation, Forceful Sentry, Delinquent Duo) or Chaos Emperor Dragon, who was the main reason for the introduction of the banlist in the first place. Then the GX era had decks like Glad Beasts, Diamond Dude turbo and Air Blade turbo, which barely saw the light of day because the cards involved got hit on the banlist that fast. Then the early Synchro era had TeleDAD, one of the most dominant decks of all time thanks to (at the time) broken cards like Dark Armed Dragon, E-Tele and pre-errata Dark Strike Fighter.
Compared to that, the introduction of XYZ made a negligible impact at first. Sure, every deck now had access to the extra deck, but most of the early XYZ monsters were just beatsticks with minor effect. It's the cards that make the powercreep, not the mechanics. People also thought that pendulum would break the game, but then almost every pendulum monster until Qliphorts was complete garbage.
@@ayngrand3212 yeah. People always complained about the wrong aspect of pendulum too. They were like, "I can special summon a bunch of monsters in 1 turn! How ludicrous!" as if the current decks werent already summoning every monster in their hand turn 1, or that solemn strike didnt negate all of their summons. The only issue with Pendulum is that everything went to the extra deck and could be resummoned. That meant they always had a monster to play which was problematic. That has pretty much been fixed now.
Not 4chan. > Doesnt work here
we dont speak of the “viability” of dark magician
My dark magician deck had a 100% win rate against full power spyral.
And nows the part where I dont mention it has a 0% win rate against trickstar
@@williamehrhardt918 How tf? SPYRAL-Format Trickstar can't out an Attack Position Mechanical Chaser
He's the ultimate wizard in terms of attack and defense, nothing to discuss really.
4:25
"More powerful and effective cards."
*Shows Disaster Leo*
Bruh
Give the puppets more support
Could've shown Shock Master (very cancer card, banned for good reason), but noooooo
@@kwayke9 Could have also shown any of the Kaijus.
@@kwayke9 I want Cock Master back, damnit, that was my homie
I think it refers to the anime version of disaster leo. cannot be destroyed in battle except by a number, unaffected by monster effects, destach 1 material to deal 4000lp burn to your opponent and if dont have materials during your end phase you win the duel
"a lot of card games try to be just like magic"
*shows duel masters, the game made by wizards of the coast to be a simpler, more kid friendly version of magic that they could plaster to an anime*
I w o n d e r w h y .
Anime came first
And Kaijudo, which is just a rebooted duel masters.
Magic for kids is just magic. I don't understand wizards tbh.
Duel masters is japanese version of magic now... Duel master is the most complex card game ever and is the no.1, SO.
@@rawknrole67 actually it’s a western version of Dm wow the original Dm continue in Japan!
"Important, iconic, and staple cards"
Huh, that sounds like fetch lands.
Wouldn't it be nice to see fetch lands in a core set.
Aren't you happy with your evolving wilds?! You can buy the ultimate vip fancy shmancy secret lair edition, if you have the money! ;)
... It would be funny, if it weren't so sad...
@@Robert-vk7je it's sad to hear this guy praise wizards while wizards steers their game into the dirt in (the current year).
@@solusaldrain to hear Magic fans, Magic has been steered into the dirt for so long that it's come up on the other side on 2002
@@flaetsbnort yes. Wizards has recently been ramping up standard's power level so they can sell standard while also offering more powerful formats (although we are reaching an indistinguishable Grand Convergence in power level) singles to appeal to their power level.
In addition wizards has made the Secret Lair product line to capitalize on the Secondary Market prices (i.e $35 single copy Bitterblossom reprint or $500 five card fetch land reprint). This is risky because they've had legal trouble in the past with their packs. With the current witch hunt against "loot box mechanics," arguably random products like booster packs could put WotC in legal hell.
They also do not have a single source of information release to the public, which leads to conflicting information.
They also tend to go back on their word.
They also refuse to acknowledge any mistakes made in card design if standard goes sideways because of a untested card combo or pushed power level card.
They also don't ban anything when rotation is close to happening, because "just wait 3 weeks." A standard rotation lasts 1.5 - 2 years... They don't ban anything during that period either, unless a single deck dominates the meta (Copy Cat Combo was their most recent transgression).
They are perfectly okay with only 2 decks (or deck strategies; right now, Green/Blue decks are dominating but WOTC wont ban the one card holding these 5 separate but equal decks together.) dominating the format. Last rotation had 2 decks: win turn 4 before you could play anything OR win turn 40 after I have countered or removed everything you've played.
Oh and WOTC is becoming woke, which we all know is a death knell for any company.
Making a good product should prioritize virtue signaling.
@@solusaldrain At first I thought your comment was complete bullshit, but I stopped thinking that when I read your last paragraph
At that point I became certain your comment was complete bullshit
(OK, not complete because you got two things right. One, Wizards is a bad company and Magic is a shit game, but for reasons nearly orthogonal to what you state. Two, Secret Lair is an unexcusable cash grab, but I have very shallow reservoirs of pity for the kind of folks it targets.)
7:25 This is hilarious given how in actual YGO anime lore there’s only three legit copies of the card in existence (there WAS a fourth, but Kaiba straight pulls a Heero Yuy and rips it in half without batting an eye)
they never stated that every car dhas only 3 copis. They stated that the blue eyes only has 3 copies. Big dofference
@@Rambrus0 Context, the comment was on something in the video
In Duel Links Kaiba allowed (digital) reprints just to prove that he’s the best wielder of Blue-Eyes
@@-AirKat- It feels like every action he takes is to prove what a big man he is, but when put next to the king of games he starts coming off as an insecure show-off because that's the one person he can't beat. What a funny dynamic they had.
11:00 Birds of Paradise (one of the best mana dorks in mtg) has been printed in 15 sets without counting supplementary sets and promos and can be picked up for about $6-$7. Original Alpha Birds of Paradise are selling for thousands on dollars right now.
Long story short, as long as the game is alive, there will be money in the old cards as long as you don't print the numbers into the ground. Which is kinda hilarious, since it's the opposite of what you'd expect to happen. Truth is stranger than fiction.
@@clayxros576 I think alot of that has to do with how old the game is as well. When your hitting 20+ years on a game people will usually want the old cards to show off or collect just because even if they have been reprinted into usable amounts in the case of birds.
I like what pokemon does especially in the recent sets. I think pokemon is the most collectable out of the bigger card games just because of how they make their sets. You'll have the basic version of a card and if its playable will be a couple dollars no matter what because its playable but then usually theres a secret rare version and hyper rare version of the same card. Does the same thing withing the game but is usually full art or rainbow or gold or something that's what collectors go for and players go for the basic version to play with and if your a collector also get a fancy version.
I think magic and wizards shits the bed on that quite a bit honestly they dont understand the need to print basic needed cards to play the game to reasonable availability i.e. fetchlands and so you have the bare bones basic versions of cards still he close to a hundred dollars for a single copy and then they will release something like the secret lair and sell people a "premium" version for hundreds of dollars which to be honest pale in comparison to the effort put into making pokemon cards look amazing. And that just leads to a pissed player base. Not to mention wizards "chase cards" honestly are extremely basic the foil has been essentially the same boring foil for years and the quality of the is trash looking like pringles sadly.
6-7 Dollars is still a ridiculous pricetag for such a staple card
In yugioh for exanole, some versions of Pot of Desires go for under $1 and it is arguably the best legal generic card draw
@@xolotltolox yea but then you have to play yugioh instead of another game. It's not worth the savings.
One thing that often seems to be ignored when discussing set rotation is that there can be a non-rotating format in addition to the rotating format - like Legacy in Magic or Wild in Hearthstone - where you can play all your old cards (except maybe a few banned ones).
Or that a combination of both (like with magic) is also perfectly acceptable. Its ok to have a ban list and have rotating cards. Especially if you care about the health of your competitive scene and secondary market.
I agree, but we also have to keep in mind that again can't actually get to the point where they maintain both a rotating and non-rotating format until the game is popular enough to have a large and consistent enough player base for both formats to be successful without just splintering the player base and creating a scenario where there aren't really enough people to get sufficiently fire off events in either format.
yup! as long as you make sure to appease those legacy format players, its a really good idea. a lot of the cards in the new scholomance academy expansion for hearthstone seem to be specifically made to appease wild players, with combo tools, ways to order your deck, etc
Or something like what Vanguard is doing now, there’s an eternal format (called premium) a format for the era after the rework (called V premium) and then the format for the current set (currently called Standard or D standard)
Another thing that could work is the block number system that Bandai Namco does, where a few sets each have a block number and then tournaments can choose which blocks are or aren’t useable for that particular event (barring of course limited or banned cards)
The way you do it is you kepp the first 2-4 years as a single format, and start introducing rotation incrementally. You wont need to maintain your eternal format much because it will be nearly identical to your rotating one for the next year, at which point you will have been running for upwards of 5 years, and are either succesful enough to maintain both, or you have already failed.
"Yes, worse than Jace, the Mind Sculptor".
I can't decide if that was a clever attempt to keep this video relevant in the future by back-dating your references, or just a missed opportunity for an Oko joke.
And I will never know, as my sense of humor is now a 3/3 elk.
Wait was Oko out when this video was made?
@@starmangalaxy2001 This video came out in 2020, Oko happened in 2019.
@@sagecolvard9644Oof, I only ever play Draft, and haven't even played it since 2018, so while I've heard of Oko in passing I barely knew anything other than it being a problem.
@@starmangalaxy2001 It just got banned in Legacy. Turns out 3-cost recurring creature/artifact removal that gets around indestructible is really good.
As a big fan and long time player of MTG, I was really speculative going into this video based on the title. I’ve always really appreciated the natural shake-up and feeling of “moving on” that comes with the yearly rotation, and I have heard too many bad faith arguments from both Magic players and other TCG players as to why rotation is just a scheme to get players to spend more money (not saying that isn’t part of it, but that is also not the only reason obviously)
After watching your video though I was relieved to see you had a very honest and well researched case got set rotation, and while it can be executed poorly and ruin a new game, it also can be an important tool in helping a game stay fresh and experiment with wild new designs. Good stuff man and I’m excited to watch more of your more recent content
I feel the problem with set rotations is that you need to be established before a rotation can be implemented, Hearthstone is a good example of this.
I've ran a Destiny Hero deck in Yu-Gi-Oh since the first set of D-Heroes first came out. I've always found myself returning to tournaments whenever D-Heroes or Heroes in general got new support.
Jace the mind sculpture is legal in all the sets he's legal in.
@@nonyabidness8676 I meant he's legal in the sets he can be ie modern, pioneer, vintage, legacy, commander.
Yeah but he was banned in modern until very recently
@@darkdave1998 If two years ago is "very recently", I guess
@@monomanamaniac WTF IS THE MIND SCULPTOR UNBANNED??!!
Richard Surraco Because Hero of Dominaria is better.
bad idea: reprinting an old card with a new name
commander players: am i joke to you?
Let's face it those whole video doesn't care about commander because we dont have rotation
On the plus side is we don't have to worry about rotations. Only the occasional ban.
No, excellent idea, you get more consistency in your deck while obeying the singleton rule.
@@tudoroltean3183 "Excellent idea, subvert the entire purpose of the singleton rule while still technically abiding by it."
Yeah, kinda.
Samsara Lotus didn't actually do anything bad for the meta, it just happened to summon itself from grave. Lotus was never the problem cannon soldier was the problem, its always been the problem but Konami won't ever ban it
It was a preemptive hit due to a FTK with Topologic Bomber Dragon, Trickstar Black Catbat and Knightmare Cerberus.
Leave it to Konami to make card like Samsara Lotus (not really) and fucking Grinder Golem broken. Any memories of bouncing him back with Security Dragon to get 4 tokens for free?
The reason I appreciate set rotation is because it allows me to enter a new game and get cards to make an alright deck without spending way more than i need for a deck i want to play because a card i need is no longer in print and has skyrocketed in price...
A little maxim from the world of software:
If you do what other companies do, you can expect to do about as well as the average company similar to yours. Big software companies tend to grow by 10% per year. If you are a big software company and you do what your competitors are doing, you can expect 10% annual growth. 90% of software startups fail. If you do what other software startups do, you will, on average, fail.
Applying that to TCGs: if you do what MTG does, and you are NOT a 20+ year long-running trend-making TCG, then you cannot reasonably expect to do as well as MTG does.
4:56 The example of a mechanic that worked too well being Phyrexian mana costs was absolutely hilarious, and I missed it the first watch through.
For Bakugan, it actually makes sense to reprint the card with a different name cause if it's a good card, and you can only have a playset of it but run more of that card, then you're still staying within the rules of TCG. It's not a playset of the action but a playset with the same name. Same thing with the different Hero cards.
The only thing I disagree with is "Reprinting a card with a different name" - This is an ESSENTIAL part of my favorite Magic Variant - Commander
How many versions of Llanowar Elves do you want in one deck? Isn't twelve mana dorks for one green enough?
Function reprints are the best.
RotatingMagnetGuy but not all mana dorks are made equal. The colors they tap for and their tribe make a huge difference. Some go in elemental decks some go in elfball. A few can’t tap for green but will tap for another color so they can’t be run in your decks.
@@RotatingMagnetGuy No, never. I need all the ramp I can have. Literally all my decks are basically Ramp Matters. Don't take my ramp away from me Timmy! (sorry that got out of hand lol)
Functional reprints almost never happen for rare+ cards in MTG, they are usually only for 25 cent commons and uncommons, so I don't think this is an issue there. I can't speak for other card games though.
I quit yugioh due to the greed of my local playerbase. There was a card that was a fine side deck to run two of(was unlimited). However as it was a staple side deck card and unlikely to get touched, it remained grossly overvalued and I was one that couldn't pull it for the life of me. Was only a super rare mind you. Then another new summon form came out and ruined two of my decks that revolved around levels(now rank, wowee!). THEN one of my key cards got banned while it had no serious effect on the meta. At that point I didn't have my heart in the game anymore. From launch until Xyzs(ik-seeds, I'm not kidding) I played, spent and poured so much into the game. But many things that include "Konami said so" rulings just kept pestering me and the above pushed me over the edge. Even to me the game became unrecognizable to the point I wonder aside from aesthetics, what variation is there between decks. I see them swarm, draw power, toolbox and so on while back then. Most had their strengths and weaknesses for focusing on each playstyle. Ah well, another 10k hour hobby gone I'll remember fondly despite leaving with a sour taste.
Magic has the best solution: why not both. The game is so old that having all cards available means the game would not be for everyone. The Vintage format is the epitome of "you can play all cards available" and while it is a deep and fun format, the brokenness of some of the cards is just not for everyone. The game is so big that there will always be a game for you that is rotating or not.
But if you ever want to make a new game... don't start out with set rotation. Why the hell would you do that. You are not Magic. You can't achieve the same with a 20th of the card pool.
Yeah, pretty much. Magic pretty much segments its player base to the point that, unless you are playing competitively, you can always find a format in which your favourite cards (or the cards you happen to have) are relevant.
Of course, if only reached that point after decades of attempts and false starts, not to mention millions in player research and marketing.
The core point, though, is valid: don't start doing set rotations until you know what the game demands.
EDH solved the problem for WOTC pretty handily, and they HAAAAAAAAAATE that...
They just barely begrudgingly decided to acknowledge the EDH crowd to sell product meant specifically for Commander aside from the half assed once a year commander deck set.
Thats what i hate about magic, it segments the player base, and people who play more obscure formats cant find anyone. And also lack of events or tournaments for anything other than the standard most popular formats
@@NeostormXLMAX standard, modern, legacy, pauper, casual 2 or more and commander are all incredibly easy to find players for. More obscure, sure, hard to find. The point here is more that games like Yu Gi Oh are incredibly restrictive in what is allowed as formats, while games with smaller player bases shouldn't worry about rotation or multiple formats at all. If I don't want to play Vintage in Magic or Yu Gi Oh in Yu Gi Oh (the two formats are reasonably similar), there are in Magic enough people and a large enough card pool to play other things while in Yu Gi Oh, you're doomed. The fact that it's tough in Magic to find events for Standard peasant emperor is a problem of luxury because they have so diverse an array of popular options to begin with.
@@NeostormXLMAX I disagree that it's bad. Lgs tend to develop their own local scenes, and more dedicated scenes can even have non-sanctioned formats. Almost every store ive ever been to with play space had its weekly format is never played before with 16+ player turnouts. Not every format will have player support at every store, but that's also fine
How are you not more popular? This is incredibly well-made and well-said!
There’s so much effort and quality in these videos, that I’m genuinely surprised that you aren’t more popular!
To be honest: Who cares about rotation, outisde of tournaments?!
I never met anyone in any card game saying: "You can't play that card, its rotated", because IF I would use a broken combo, the just play with someone else.
Set Rotation doesnt protect from mechanics going wrong either. Either they still ruin the format until they rotate out, which is still horrible, or they have to change the mechanic anyway, like MTG did with the companion mechanic.
Power creep is an increase of power of the best cards, items, etc in a game. It can be done intentionally to sell more product but, it also just naturally happens as you add more stuff to a game. Synergies get more support and occasionally designers slip up and let a card through that turns out to be more powerful than expected.
Difference between accidental power creep and intentional power creep is that accidental power creep doesn't happen on a constant basis and can generally be corrected. A good example of this is Neo Genesis Slowking from Pokemon. Slowking forced your opponent to flip a coin whenever they played a trainer card, and on tails, the card does nothing and gets topdecked. This was modern Yu-Gi-Oh tier bullshit in a relatively early Pokemon card (Neo Genesis was the 8th set ever released and meant to be the base set for gen 2), and the game got centralized around it until it was banned in 2002. It was the last Pokemon TCG card to be banned from an event, excluding exclusive tournament prize cards and other weird cards, up until Wormadam Sandy Cloak in 2008 from the Professor Cup, and then Lysandre all the way in 2015.
This was a really good encapsulation of the love/hate relationship between TCGs and set rotation.
The Virgin Set Rotatation vs the Chad Rigging Worlds For Your Nostalgia Bait
I'd love to hear your thoughts on Magic the Gathering bumping their rotation from 2 years to 3 years and because of that, we'll have a uniquely bigger Standard card pool until next year's rotation.
I like when new cards makes old obscure cards suddenly relevant like when qliphort came out the really old card summoner's art became an instant search for qliphort scout which is the card that gets the deck going
5:24 Someone playing Dark Magician in their 2020 deck with the new support cards is better than nothing... but the problem is the power creep makes it feel less like Captain America breaking out of the ice and kicking butt again than it just feels like Weekend At Bernies- just dragging a dead body of a card around pretending he's ok. He's literally dead weight in your deck they use to justify making the new cards EVEN MORE POWERFUL
The point about reprints is magnified when you look at yue MTG card Doubling Season. It gets printed every 2 years, and the older printings seem to either never drop in value after the reprint or bounce bacelt even to higher prices after the market settles.
I still find it funny the Yugioh doesn't have set rotation, but it does have a card called "Set Rotation"
6:20
Hearthstone "fixed" this problem by allowing players to buy rotated Packs in the in-game store using in-game currency. This made Wild (game mode where you can play cards irregardless of what year they're from) more accessible to players. You couldn't do it before and had to spend exorbitant amounts of real life money and/or resources to get rotated cards.
However the fix was too late and by the time it was implemented (which was recently), most of the players already got rid half of their collection from previous sets.
So thanks Blizzard for this fix right after making me disenchant an entire year of collection.
Oh wow, I asked for that when they first started rotating cards.
Cost of rotated cards went up by ~400-500% (gold price compared to dust price)
Value of those cards dropped significantly.
This was a quite necessary change, years ago.
Why the fuck would you dust all your collection for dumbass.
@@NeostormXLMAX He's talking about when Wild wasn't a thing in Hearthstone yet. Dusting cards gives you, well, dust, so you can craft specific cards you want/need. Since Wild wasn't a thing back then, cards from old expansions were basically useless, so might as well dust them.
@@NeostormXLMAX why would i keep a rotated dr boom when im on a budget and theres fun new cards in a new set?
I love yugioh for the lack of set rotation. Because a card like 15 to 18 years ago can be meta because someone realized that card doesn’t have a hard once per turn on its effect
@jocaguz18 but it’s usually fixed 9 times out of 10 by slapping a hard “once per turn” in the text
Yeah i can still use my old Chaos Emperror Dragon and kill my op- oh wait its unplayable.....
why didnt Konami Just make its requirements Harder or Just send the field to the GY or Something other than "yOu CaNt AcTiVaTe CarDs Or EfFeCtS tHiS tUrN"
@@kotkafer2292 look I’ll take erratas over being told I can’t play the card period due to a set rotation
@@GaminSnake Its better than Set Rotation dont get me and im all for errata-ing cards, in *a reasonable capacity* . Im only complaining about Chaos Emperrors Errata Like Bitch the Card isnt "fixed" its unplayable
I don't know why I stumbled across this video 4 years after it being made, but I'll still put in my 2 cents. Set rotation is actually the entire reason I enjoy standard in magic. Lack of set rotation is the entire reason I refuse to play yugioh. Well, that and the poor card design.
Maybe a “semi set rotation” might be the best model.
Have a list of cards that will always be playable and constantly rotate a new set in. Then if a card of theme ends up being popular or fair, you can promote it to the permanent list.
Like this you can get rid of bad ideas and control power creep in a way that stays comfortable.
Might be a big difficult for new players to know, what is legal or not, but it’s an idea
Works better in digital games imo
That is discussed in the video.
These videos are a gem
Ah, that pain. After AGES of learning and suffering and getting my butt whooped in UFS, I made a deck effective enough to take THIRD in a regional out of nowhere.
Next week...half said deck was rotated out. I never performed so well again.
Not sure why this channel came up on my recommended videos list, but awesome. Subscribed. As someone who is making a physical boxed card game attempting to deviate from the TCG sales model, your perspective on it is invaluable and addresses things I've thought about.
You forgot how messing with the usual two-ish year lifespan based on a single annual rotation makes the profit aspect even more egregious and transparent.
I'm a little dissapointed that the infamous singular attempt of a bi annual standard rotation for mtg back in the spring of 2016 has been forgotten already even though its one of the most greedy moves modern wotc has tried pulling even when compared to the bullcrap in 2017 and this past year of standard.
I still laugh at some of those sponsored youtube channels and websites that desperately tried to convince people that it was even remotely a good idea even after it was scrapped
To be fair, the twice a year rotation was a thing that many players (or at the very least a vocal minority of players) were asking for. It was a response to the two set blocks, people wanted each block to have the same amount of time in standard. it turned out to be an idea that sounded better than it worked in practice tho, in theory it was more "fair" to the blocks (humans will pack bond with anything), but players got tired of constant rotation.
Was getting "Yu Gi Oh good, Magic bad" vibes when you started off with the rotation vs banlist bit.
Glad I stuck it out to find out I was wrong. Insightful video, thanks!
@@polocatfan Yes.
@@Ninjamanhammer half correct. Yugioh good, but so is magic.
I just prefer yugioh, but magic is also fun
"Reprinting an old card under a new name"
I'm looking at you, Towering Indrik! Get out of here, you're no Giant Spider!
Phyrexian charizard, what a marvelous thing
Wait !!!!! Was that a 1st edition ultimate effect veiler? “Nice”.
Saw one for $10 once. Didn't pick it up.
I will die with this regret
I don't hate set rotation (not necessarily saying I like it, just that I'd take it over alternatives as a necessary evil) because I've seen what the alternative is. It's called monetized power creep and it's completely fucked over a certain "Children's Card Game". That being said, like you said there needs to be a balance - rotate too quickly and you end up alienating people. Rotate too slowly and you might as well not do it at all.
Besides, if you want to bring old stuff back into relevance, nothing of actual value is stopping you from reprinting the old cards to go along with their new support. So go ahead, print some new copies and drink those sweet, sweet tears of the speculative investors. Or, if you're feeling a bit more creative, you can make new art for said reprints, at the cost of no longer being able to drink said tears.
I did not expect a video of this quality. This is great! I love the insightful perspective on what straight up kills new tcgs. Hopefully up and coming tcg designers see this video.
The mention of Jace is extremely hilarious because he was unbanned 2 years before this video premiered, and he proceeded to do very little other than be a decent advantage piece in modern.
First time here, as a yugioh player i like these videos so much. Man, you really put effort making this, good commentary and nice editing. Quality content!
I'm actually a huge fan of set rotation, means that I as a filthy casual can play with my friends and not care about it but still benefit from minimal power creep. Like I played for years and never went to a tournament or knew this was a thing. Just knew that the game never got out of control like yugioh where you need the newest cards to not get destroyed.
People seem to forget that quite a number of sets were made for Magic the Gathering before Standard and rset rotation were even introduced, and there was still a format where you can play with all cards printed even before Standard or Type 2 as it was known then.
OK, I'd argue Duel Masters trying to be just like magic is a product of Wizards essentially making a TCG that is more appealing to the Japanese audience while retaining the charm of Magic. Heck, I'm pretty sure the original DM manga revolved around Magic at first rather than DM.
Duel Masters is literally just a spinoff of Magic: The Gathering
Actually duel masters is magic but better since you don't encounter situations like, I got an op hand but no mana and stuff like that that's why it's so popular in Asia and keeps on going, it's such a shame that it didn't continue in tcg too, I know a lot of magic players that play magic bc they "don't like other card games and duel masters doesn't exist anymore" but all of them agreed that if duel masters comes back, the og one not kaijudo, they'll change to dm without any regret
@jvalex18 I'd say it's just different. Their minor differences (lack of mana screw in dm/times when you can cast some spells, as well as general mana management in mtg) end up with two very fun games that are able to differentiate themselves from one another.
@jvalex18 Duel Masters failed in the west because it was handled terribly. I can't remember what the story was but I seem to recall them being actively against banning cards or something and there was some OP card or deck that just ruined the game.
@@aurafox1 Not to mention promoting what's essentially an tweaked, localized MTG to a region that already enjoyed MTG is kinda pointless. It'd be like taking a popular movie, making another cut with all the pandering they use for Chinese audiences, then re-releasing the Chinese cut in the west hoping it'd draw people in.
Just found your channel and I love your reasoning and perspective. As a lover of the connection and friendships that TCGs forge, I want the games to be the best they can be. Thanks for the lovely discourse.
Set rotation is why I can't enjoy pkmn tcg even tho I love the game. Cuz the moment when my deck has to contend with older decks/combos that get boosted by the rotated stuff it becomes almost impossible to play said deck unless uve stuck with something like the dark deck.
Basically, if you reading this are thinking about set rotation for your game, don't. Try to make it so your cards can be evergreen from the beginning. If you don't, you'll end up with problems that'll likely sink your ship before you can turn your head, much less have a rotation.
Pokemon players actually hate Expanded. most competitive players have been playing at any given time under a year. So it just intimidates them.
eternal formats are for veterans and people with old cards. pokemon is popular with kids but they often migrate to other games or simply lose interest. yet expanded is good id they ever want to come back
Set rotation does help, but it shouldn't even be considered until you have enough sets to start encountering the problems rotation can mitigate.
It's true that having 15000 cards makes it hard to break into the game, and rotating a good number of those out helps keep the game easy to get in to. You should not, however, think about this problem at all while you still only have 300 cards across 2 sets
I like set rotation as a concept.
Specifically because it lets one avoid powercreep while still letting the producers make some money.
I saw a magic ad that had a reprinted JACE THE MINDSCULPTER the other day.
I’m currently sending this while tucking in my deck into a bunker to keep it safe from his sculpting
"Most card games only last about 2 years"
Is this a video about Fire Emblem Cipher?
Didn't Fire Emblem Cipher last 5 years as of...this month, the month of its final Main Series release
Besides the idea of a problematic card not being usable in tournaments, the only other plus I can think of (as a magic player anyways) is that it's another reason to try the new cards with new mechanic (even Core sets can offer some cool stuff). Who knows, 10 years later when you're not playing competitively and just want to play with a friend, this one deck with a special mechanic that was restricted could make the game a ton more fun, right?
"Powerful cards" "Number c88" Pick one
"To prevent some antediluvian combo made with cards printed 20 years apart." I chuckled and immediately thought of YuGiOh
There was something rather interesting you neglected in this video; Magic's extended format players don't buy cards. Modern players buy decks, they don't buy boosters or cards like a Standard player does. For them, it's a one and done deal, unless a banning happens. This isn't doesn't generate revenue for Wizards. The only time Modern makes money is when Wizards makes a set with the intention of getting people into Modern, leveraging the value of the singles on the open market. If Modern, Extended, Pioneer, Legacy, ect, was Magic, the game would necessitate Power Creep as the developers would need to compete with their older designs. The game would be YGO. Even if they were capable of making interesting new designs, year after year, you would still hit a point where the fanbase is like 'Nah, I'm good.'. Magic does have that problem even with rotation however, as it's said the average life span of a Standard Magic player is about 18 months, hence Wizards' focus on new players. We don't know why they quit or what they've moved onto afterwards however.
You're right about it needing cushioning, Naruto's Death to Rotation is fairly infamous, but it's far more nuanced than Sell More Cards. It's closer to keep the game alive and retain the spirit of the game.
Ya know Modern players would buy tons of Standard draft packs if they reprinted fetch lands...
@@Kohdok No, they would just buy singles.
@@reeksofchees3856 somebody has to buy those packs to open the fetches
@@mpawn ya limit player and standard buy more new pack then modern.
@@mpawn a lot if not most packs opened are drafted, a player thats only interested in drafting is gonna sell a fetch because that one card alone would be worth at least one draft by itself
Just do what magic does. Magic does both, theres the standard rotation and then in addition to that theres several different eternal formats allowing for all cards printed from present back to a different point. Legacy is everything, Modern is present to 2003, pioneer is present to 2012. These formats cohexist with standard and give players options.
Magic also has the alternative format commander, an casual format where nearly ever card is legal utilizing different rules which remain vastly the most popular way to play the game. However while it very much promotes the use of cards from your collection you wouldnt use otherwise, it isnt something a card game could really replicate without already having a firm ground to stand on, flexible rules allowing for such a format, and a community that is open to a open casual alternative to normal play.
the use of Magic: the gathering in conversations about set rotation is a bit of a misnomer in this day and age, where there are 11, non-limited, game formats acknowledged by WoTC and only 2 of them rotate (and almost no one plays Brawl anyway). this becomes problematic when you incorporate the argument that "they get to try weird stuff because it will just go away and never be talked about again" because that means 81% of your format base has access to the "weird stuff" so no, doing something that is inherently broken doesn't just go away. and although core sets to drop the general power rating down a tad, it would be absurd to say that as a whole the game does not suffer from power creep. i know that standard makes up a large and vocal part of the player base, but more an more formats like commander are getting as much attention and product.
I actually think a huge part of implementing set rotation properly is having an "eternal format" (or in the case of Magic, several of them) that cards don't rotate out of. That way you can have all the benefits of a rotating format while not making players feel like their collection becomes worthless every 2 years. Plus, it's just cool to see the crazy decks and combos people can come up with when they have access to every cards from across a game's history.
I agree completely that rotation and eternal need to exist together in order for either of them to be effective. but i do not agree with the video stating that rotation will sweep "mistakes" under the rug when they are no longer standard. especially when there are so many eternal formats. i instead feel like that should make designers more cautious about what they release, as to not disrupt both rotation and eternal too much at the same time.
Yeah, but commander is sillier vintage, modern players overstate their importance and legacy players have a decade long record of being sure WotC aims to kill them this time for sure, so I wouldn't care all that much about it.
Besides, the escalating nature of the non-rotating formats makes them pretty much pre-rotated formats.
there is absolutely 0 way i would play MTG without an eternal format, and i know i am not the only one who feels that way. Booster packs are built for the Draft environment, which isnt for everyone, which then leaves buying singles as the primary way for deck construction, and without eternal, that is a recipe for wasted money as those cards would loose functionality and thus value. and it is kind of a moot point anyway, because as long as players feel that way, they will create their own formats, which financially makes sense for WoTC to show support for.
I think standard is 100% necessary. There are something like 40-50 different MTG formats, but only about 5 of them any significant amount of the player base still actually play. I just don't like the idea of turn 0, 1 or 2 format.
So essentially Set Rotation can be a powerful tool to allow for creativity in a card game when it’s handled well but it can also be a death sentence for a game if it’s handled poorly.
That's the tl;dr of it.
That’s what I love about Cardfight Vanguard. With their premium tournament format, any and all cards in the game, both current and past, are allowed. There are a few cards with restrictions on when they can be used but they can still be used. There are cards from older sets that greatly support newer sets and vice versa.
To further add on is that Cardfight Vanguard actually have a yearly set of new cards that are created just for the Premium format. Yes new cards, which injected new life to the format in a huge way. Look at Premium Collection 2020, maybe except for Zazan, and ever since Zazan’s limitation to 1, it is widely regarded as one of the most fun metas for a Long while.
This was me when it came to Star Wars Destiny. Around the time the fourth or fifth set came out within a year and a half, and I actually finally found a store to play at, the majority of my cards the first TWO sets, were rotated out before I even had a chance to play them. I like collecting cards so I have what I bought, but I also have an unopened Third starter set cause it was just about to die in less than six months.
1:25 "To hear what they have is basically worthless doesn't make them happy."
Bruh, literally 99% of all my Magic cards (and I have a lot of magic cards) are barely worth the cardboard they are printed on.
Yeah, a lot of his arguments don't hold much water. He even goes on to say not a minute later that if a card it too powerful you can just ban it which is even worse than a set rotation.
Grizzly Bears isn't worth money?
@@midivilplanet ban is just different not worst or better
@@feritperliare2890 You generally know set rotation is coming in advance, as opposed to bans which are either sudden, or telegraphed SO HARD by the cards getting banned that the format is shit for the intervening interval. One of these is much better from a consumer perspective.
That being said, either one is arguably better than how FFG handles things with their LCGs, they use power level errata. Because I love it when cards don't do what they say they do... Yeah, Magic also erratas things, but that is almost entirely to make the cards continue to work as intended with game-wide rules changes.
While getting rotated out does usually decrease a card's monetary value, I think he primarily meant that it makes the card unplayable, and therefore worthless from a gameplay perspective. If you've just spent $100 on cards for a new tcg, and then they rotate out, your whole collection becomes literally illegal to play with.
This video is so well made and thought out ! I just found this scrolling UA-cam, and it gave me a second persons perspective on my idea of making my own card game ! Thank you for this ! This video deserves so many more likes and views, I'm going to watch the whole series now !
I love how he uses the Yugioh card set rotation to represent set rotation
As a man working on his on tcg I have thank you for this series. It's really making me thinking the longevity of my game and rethink some mechanics.
I think Magic's system for handling set rotation is the best, because there are so many formats without set rotation.
Basically, unless you're a standard player, set rotation doesn't exist. So, you get to reap all the benefits of set rotation (flatter power curve, etc) without any of its negatives.
So yeah. I don't hate set rotation, because it has never affected my play. Hell, it's actually better for me, because when standard playables get close to their "use by" date, I can snap them up for cheap for non standard play.
How to fix Set Rotation problems:
Make 2 formats: "Standard" and "Expanded" Standard uses Set Rotation, Expanded allows to use every card of the game and has a banlist and the both formats should be officially supported.
Magic the Gathering does exactly that, and has been doing so for a very long time.
Since 1997 to be precise.
There is another reason why set rotation is necessary. The reason why we're planning one is because of design space and ensuring we can appropriately test the game. The larger the card pool the harder it is for testing.
Ideally, we'd avoid set rotation so that the players don't feel like their cards have lost value. But it isn't feasible.
That being said, we are prolonging set rotation for as long as possible, and we have a plan for making each rotation really special.
While I'm not expert and you know much more than me I think that's a super smart idea. Personally I wouldn't start out with any set idea with when a rotation would be and go untill you feel you need one, then after that the 2 year roation idea can set in. I just feel as you set having to early of a set roation can hurt the company
Wrong it also makes for lazy design, since you can literally reprint old cards with new names for cash grabs. Set rotation is a cash grab
MTG is the most guilty, and they set release is on crack now. Thankfully they abandoned everything but commander. The price, amount of essentially chaff cards and sea of releases every year really put me off MTG. The fans are also weird and can be asses
I played Force of Will at some point and yes, set rotation is a huge problem there
"Speculative buyer complaints about reprints are bogus"
*Imperial Recruiter wants to know your location*
There's a difference between artificially high because of scarcity and being valuable because of merit. Recruiter was valuable because of the former but if you look at lightning bolt, the alpha one is now close to 400 and it gets printed enough. There's just certain cards that will forever be valuable because they're good and scarce.
@@Darkersneasel What about staples that plummet in value and stay in that range despite being a staple? For example Tarmogoyf, that was historically the most expensive Modern staple in MTG, that after aggressive repeated reprinting is now at $40 across versions. I absolutely love reprints, but just pointing out that 'Speculative buyer complaints' definitely aren't bogus.
@@lollummars4229 to attribute that all to aggressive reprint is dishonest at best. The game has definitely experienced power creep and to attribute all the value drop to printing is ridiculous. Though to say that an original printing of tarmogoyf is going to retain the same value 10 years from now is to be seen. Again the card is still worth 35 bucks after being printed into abscurity.
The point I'm making is that cards that are meta defining and in low supply (relatively speaking) retain value. So your alpha bolt will be valuable because it's good and rare. But an investor shouldn't be rewarded for something that is relatively important for a game but only valuable because it's scarce. If the price is driven primarily through scarcity then you absolutely should be burned. That's not good investment and you should absolutely get hosed when a reprint is announced.
The biggest problem MTG has suffered recently is making certain printings feel special. In pokemon you have full arts. In yugioh you have ultimate rares. In magic every printing feels the same. They've recently started adopting the showcase frame which I think is good for the game as it allows certain versions of a card to retain value while other versions have lesser value.
@@Darkersneasel I agree with you that certain cards like birds of paradise and alpha bolt will retain value, usually due to prestige and scarcity of such an old card, but price should be assessed on the change of it's worth over time not on whether it is worth something or not. For example with the original printing of Tarmogoyf, it was worth $150-200 for a long time, until the reprint hit a critical mass despite being a prime staple of the format. Yes, it's still worthy $70 now, but the issue that people have is that if you buy into it at $150-200, you suffer a $75-100 loss from when you bought it. MTG is a game that prides itself on being able to sell cards you no longer want to use after a particular amount of time with minimal loss. That's why you see buyer confidence being a key emphasis on MTG, and not on other card games like YGO or digitals like Hearthstone.
Let me guess one of the next Trading cards games sins: just using screenshots of the series it is based, rather than original art
Nope. Naruto, Panini DBZ, and loads of other games did just fine despite using screenshots and stock assets.
It's the worst sin. Fuck games that do this
That's not a sign that will make your game fail.
I sure don't like it much tho.
Depends on the quality. Sometimes you can catch just the perfect frame, in the highest quality possible, and the card just looks amazing, perfectly showcasing why the moment depicted was so iconic. IF you cheap out, though, your card can look like the in-between frames from a Naruto action scene.
It’s been a year since I’ve touched the Final Fantasy TCG and I seriously hope that they still don’t do this
I don't think card and archetype retrains make those old vanilla cards viable as much as they're considered a requirement for a deck. Part of it being that cards like Blue Eyes White Dragon or Dark Magician are required Normal monster cards in their respective decks to either pay a cost or conditions for supporting Spell and Trap cards (Magicians' Navigation) or to meet the summoning requirements for an effect version of themselves (like Blue Eyes Alternative White Dragon) without being a dead draw in their hand (aka a garnet).
This is why I quit YuGiOh. I spent $150 over the course of 6 months to make a busted deck.
Then they introduced link summoning (which already neutered the deck) and then banned 90% of the deck outright.
It broke my spirit so bad I just quit.
Walked away and never even considered coming back.
What deck was it?
Which deck was is doe?
Lemme guess, Zoodiac? If so that deck deserved it. Otherwise Idk (maybe Dark Synchro)
I play duel links. Cards are messy in a pandemic
spike Shepard Pendulum Magicians
I actually didn't know they reprinted Lightning Bolt. A long time ago I realized the power of the "Get 3 damage for one mana" scheme and literally blew out my young group's Lightning Bolts. Still got like, 60 of the damn things that I'm just gonna keep. If I get rid of everything else I'll keep the fact that I cleared out my group's LBs, haha!
5:20 letting old archetypes "surf" sounds a *lot* like too many unmixable attributes. Sure, the archetypes still (technically) exist when they drop to tier 3 or fringe play, but the only thing new sets that don't add to their archetype do is provide new meta opponents (and preferred hate cards), or powercreep the staples.
If you don't eventually have a format that rotates, and you want to keep selling new sets, you have to make soft rotations happen somehow. Either you power creep the old stuff into irrelevance, provide powerful hate for the old stuff to knock it down to tier 2, you ban the core out from under the old stuff (which is rotating only the good stuff), or do something really difficult and work out a creative solution to not need to do any of that (for a while).
On the other hand, it's generally not a great idea to rotate out your base set unless you're sure you know what you're doing, or at least are keeping most of people's favorite cards & staples legal in the "main" format. The second set could be safe, as long as it didn't outsell the first one and became everyone's "home" set.
Be me, excited for the new Digimon TCG. Then I see this video and I instantly grow concerned about the future of the game, but then realize that they were made by Bandai, same guys behind the DBS tcg.
... “made by Bandai”.
Set Rotation is an absolute necessity with any competitive game it allows developers to keep power cheap down because cards arent having to constantly become more and more powerful to push sales, it allows developers the ability to make cards that would otherwise be broken due to problem cards no longer being in the current competitive format, it makes getting key cards for new players accessible as the shelf life of current sets is usually a key variable in how hard to get an older card is.
Speculator complaints are bogus TODAY. However, at the time they were appropriate. While I agree companies shouldn't be pandering to a minority of their customer base, it wasn't until around 2014 that reprinted cards began retaining their value. Prior to that, when a card was reprinted it did gut the value. But again, what ought to be more important to a publisher? Some else's profits from the publisher's product, or a healthy game environment?
Yu-Gi-Oh!'s banlist can be considered pseudo-set rotation.
Yugioh's is nothing close to a set rotation honestly
There are over 10,000 yugioh cards to date
And of that number only about 90 of them are on the banlist
@@yurieshicatay6309 I say pseudo-set rotation because the banlist defines the metagame.
Otherwise, you're right.
There was something so magical about watching my old UA deck get new cards after four years, dusting off the old list, beefing it up, and Dunking on any Dante in def mode who dare opposes me like it’s 2014 all over again.
Ironically, I've been playing yugioh since maybe a year or so before nekroz format... I always tend to try some of the newer archetypes everyonce in awhile.. mostly cute trolly decks. But I always go back to melodious no matter whatever deck i tinker with. Lol
This dude is the kinda guy to go to locals and won't even ask what tournament is on because he can play all of them and has a good deck for each card game
u met one to?
One and a half "Shocks." That's a 'like,' sir.
In my opinion, the games that do set rotation well are the ones that have eternal formats.
Each new card has potential in several competitive environments and gas to be evaluated differently in each, and set rotation hurts less because, if you don't play standard, then it means that prices for cards you've been eyeing up could crater as the Standard players dump their old stuff on rotation.