I agree with several different people here for different reasons, but this is my view.
Back in the day, cards were weaker. Less HP, more energies needed for attacks and weaker attacks. Very simple powers, evolution rules and trainers. Then, as the game progressed, the game became more complicated, with new Special Conditions, complicated powers, variations on evolutions and trainers. As the game became more complicated, the game changed. Now it wasn't all about the strategy - it was about understanding the format and the decks being used as well as the powerful cards. There were several staples in decks and a lot of cards more powerful than the others, but the format was balanced and the game was stable, although it was quite a bit different.
Problems were always there, but they magnified with HP-on. The game took a bad turn as Plox took the game by storm. The funny thing was, the people who made the cards (I always forget which ones they are) probably had no idea of what they had created. And like Nintendo's home-grown Frankenstein, Plox steadily drained the format dry, and for a while it was play Plox and be like everyone else and win, play another deck and lose, or come up with a rogue that was specifically designed to murder Plox and hope you would come up against it more than any other deck, which normally happened. Maybe that's a slight exageration, but I don't think it's a big one. And then, after Plox had finished it's reign and we moved to DP-on, we breathed a sigh of relief, safe in the knowledge that the people who make the cards (really getting annoying having to keep repeating that) would never put us through that torture again.
Wrong.
In DP-on, everything was fine until the release of Stormfront. Kingdra was a powerful deck, but it could be beaten if you played well against it. Then came the horror that was Stormfront. Machamp was introduced to counter the G pokemon that would come in the next set, Gengar was meant to be a decent counter to Powers and Dusknoir was just meant to be a good pokemon. Then we saw the arrival of donks. Donks before LA were just random chance, a game where, by pure luck, your opponent showed you a hand of Ralts, Gallade, DRE, Rare Candy, gg. You may not've liked it, but you got on with it and had a laugh with your opponent. No more. Machamp, Rare Candy, Machop, Energy - gg, donk. Kingdra, Rare Candy, Horsea, Energy - gg, donk. Sableye, Energy, PlusPower - gg, donk. You get the idea. Broken Time-Space didn't help matters. It looked like the game was going down a sharp decline. But then Gabriel Rising Rivals came from heaven and started to level out the format. Flygon, the new Beedrill and new G pokemon started to iron out the format and moved it away from donks. The good thing now is the versatility of the format. There are about eight powerful decks at the moment which all have almost equal matchups towards each other, thus starting to eradicate donks.
I don't think the game is going downhill. I think it's starting to curve in a new direction, with the focus not entirely on the strategy but more on the deckbuilding, consistency and understanding the format. And it's a direction I quite like.
And when afstandopleren says
It's going downhill for die-hard fans, and Up for the rich noobs who are obsessed with the anime and uber legendaries.
Well, it's always been this way. :thumb:
