To be sure, this is a great topic.
Some solutions have been suggested, but how do we get there?
Simultaneous translation - what financial case can be made to convince Nintendo+PCL and PUI to allocate resources to that?
Matching card pool - what is your counter to the apparent financial case for more frequent rotations outside Japan?
Better choices on what to put in or out - how would you propose to help PUI determine what's a better choice?
I don't know if it's a case of them wanting us to be behind at this point. I know they have been trying since Sandstorm to bring us up to parity, it just hasn't worked out.
There are a couple of things affecting this.
For the US, PUI seems to be targeting sets at around 100+ cards per set. A few have reached the 120s, but that was more of an abberation.
I've stated elsewhere, I feel the current set size is a good target. Bigger sets (that would allow us to catch up) tend to frustrate the collectors and even the players. Buying packs and even boxes become very random in what you'll get, and with a large set, one would have to buy quite a few packs and boxes before getting everything you want. Currently, you're going to get most, if not all, of the holos, rares, uncommons, and commons in one box, and it takes about three boxes to get the super rare cards. This is manageable. Smaller sets, like Jungle and Fossil, get boring very quickly. WotC would have done well to mix in vending cards into those sets to fill them out a bit more, but they didn't. Missed opportunity.
So, that's one constraint.
Another is the US set release schedule. 4 sets per year. That has been a constant since PUI took over and I think it's a good constant to have. More sets than that per year, and you over saturate your market. People get tired of trying to "catch them all" and drop out.
Less sets than that, and people forget about them, and you also fall too far behind Japan.
So, add those two together, and you get about 450 new cards released per year, not counting promos.
480 if you add POP sets in.
The problem comes with how Japan releases sets and cards. It doesn't seem that they keep to quite the same schedule. Plus, they also tend to release some cards one way (booster packs), some another way (PCDs), and some yet another way (lots of promos), with quite a bit of overlap.
Put them all together, and generally we wind up with the amount of cards released not quite matching up with what PUI needs for their schedule. Plus, the timing is off.
Then toss in factors like game and movie releases that PUI mandates the TCG must line up with (look at the sets released for Emerald, Deoxys, and now Great Encounters). Japan is releasing cards to go along with the Japanese release of those games and movies, but of course the US/rest of the world release is going to happen later. And so, a wrench is thrown into the works for trying to get a simultaneous release. Suddenly, cards must be shifted around to fit the release schedule of OTHER parts of the brand. The TCG takes a back seat.
That would be the main reason that DP3, DP4, and DP5 got scrambled. All to match up certain cards with the release of the Darkrai movie. Once you move certain cards to this set, you have to take some out, and with those out, the balance of types in the set is off, and so other cards have to be moved, and so on and so on.
I'm sure PUI tried to balance the recreated sets as best as possible. And of course that means not putting all the A-list cards into one set.
If they were all in GE, then how much would people complain about how crappy they made the next set? It's something of a lose-lose for them. I'm sure they'd rather just release the sets to match them as they come out in Japan, but other factors take precedence.
Now, regarding card pool.
There are advantages and disadvantages to how we do it now. Keeping cards in the pool longer would give players a larger choice of cards to play. More combos to consider.
But it would also keep overpowered cards in the format longer. Wasn't everyone glad to see Holon's Transceiver go? Well, maybe not. But a lot of people were. The metagame got turned on it's head with that card gone.
Back when the Modified rotation started, there was a very good reason to rotate out the old cards: They were overpowered. Many of the Trainers were, anyway. If they had not been rotated out, the format would have stagnated for a very long time with the power Base Set Trainers dominating the game for a very long time, making Basics the only viable option. So, rotations at that time really saved competitive play.
Do we still need such strict rotations? I don't think so. I think we could keep another year's worth of cards in the format without much problem. But that's because the current cards are stronger than they have been for a while.
There are other reasons for rotations: Keeping cards available for new players. This is a big thing. As a PTO I find new players have two classes of cards available to them: Old Base set- Fossil cards that they inherited from an older sibling, and cards from the past two to three sets that they got themselves.
So, for those new players, I can see that keeping a small card pool is helpful. On the other hand, just because they can't make a deck from last years cards, the deck they can make from this year's is competitive against that deck, so they're not really disadvantaged. I think adding another years worth of cards to the format might be OK for these guys.
Finally, the last reason to rotate must be condidered: Sales of cards. POP is in the business of promoting card sales. They are not there for any other reason.
So, allowing older cards has the potential to cut into new card sales.
Back in the day, players kept their Haymaker deck for set after set. Sets would come and go, and their old deck made up of mostly Base Set cards could still win and win dependably.
What reason was there for these players to get new cards? Very little.
But, I don't think we're in that situation now. PCL and PUI are putting out set after set with cards that have major impacts on the Metagame. Those that keep their deck unchanged will find that they are not winning games anymore. The new sets have to be bought because the cards being release are worth getting, even compared to the ones that won last year.
Now, would POP want to open up a full format like Japan's, going all the way back to FRLG?
Maybe not. But again, expanding that set window by another year probably won't have a bad effect.
And it might make for some interesting combos.
