Why do we not have the same format as Japan?

[TheDarkTwins]

I think the biggest reason is that it cost a lot less money to have a smaller format. POP wants to grow in numbers, lets say right now our format was FRLG-ON. That would be horrible right now. Most of the sets are long out of print, and have skyrocketed in price. I think that if POP was to even start considering this, they would have to make more of each sets, and release them in waves, so players who come in 2-3years down the road, actually have access to the cards and would still be interested in playing. If your a new player and I say to compete, you need to buy a box of FRLG which is now 200+ on ebay, your going most likely going to say forget this and just choose another card game. I personally would like to see formats that are a bit bigger, or if they are not going to do that, atleast increase the set size by 30-50 per set, including making 12-16 Lv. X per set rather than 4. I would be okay if you up the sets to 160 cards with 12-16 Lv. X.

Drew

 

[GaMe FrEaK]

what are the spirit Xs? I do have to say that it is quite unfair that we have to rotate sets out, while they can use the cards that I used last year. I wish that POP would come up with something that even the playing field for all of us, not giving one us of an advantage. It also kinda sucks that they have to switch over to our HP-on in order to play at worlds...kinda makes thing unfair for them as well...

 

[Regis_Neo]

I personally do not buy their "new players can't buy older card sets from X place" argument. I look around and I still see extremely old sets being sold at Walmart and places, they'd probably love nothing more than to sell off what is probably obsolete inventory to them.

Other than that, I've always been a big supporter of having one same format.

 

[ZeroWF]

At target you can get a ton of older sets. they sell special pack things that come with a FRLG deck and random EX set packs. I dont think the availability is the reason, and if it is, it isn't a good one IMO.

I personaly dont think we should have the same format as japan, because as Nopoke stated, people would end up copying the japanese decks from 3 months ago. We SHOULD however, get larger sets to increase our card pool.

 

[Rai]

what are the spirit Xs?

Mespirit, Azelf, Uxie. All from Diamond and Pearl 5, of course.

Anyways, until we can get cards released globally at the same time, a global format would not work. It's kinda like cities, I guess. The first few days after something new is added to the format, a bunch of different ideas are tried out. The ones that work win, and the ones that don't get phased out. If we use a global format, but an unglobal launch, people outside of Japan miss out on the testing period in tournaments, because it's already been proven which decks will win and which ones won't.

Sure, it's frustrating when we get cards like Absol that seemed overpowered in our limited cardpool but really were nowhere near as devastating as people thought. You know, problems such as Blissey domination and the like really have more to do with unbalanced power creep issues then limited format.

If you were only allowed four sets, but within those four sets, you had all the materials to craft five completely unique decks that were all competetive and none had a clear advantage over the other, would anyone complain about a stale format?
If you had twelve possible sets, but none of the possible combos in those sets could trump a single trick like Blissey MT, would anyone complain about a stale format?

Seriously...

 

[Hikari_Netto]

I dont think there is a single person who posts here that wouldnt like to have the same format as Japan does.

As much as I love the way Japan does many things, I must say, I would much rather play by the the way POP handles formats. I personally prefur smaller card pools, 16 sets for me would simply be overwhelming, there's far to much to keep track of for me. @_@

 

[logan1975]

well, here there are a few answers that i came up with...

who decides what shall we play?
Pusa, because they run the bussiness...

why do the japanese play with our format at worlds?
Pusa, because they are in charge of the tournament and the bussiness
and worldwide distribution

why don't we have a larger card pool and extended modified legal editions?
older sets would reign before newer sets...(pidgeot, magcargo,
holon transceiver, mr.briney's... every single broken card from
the past 3 years, TRR, come on!!!) and not because, six years old kids wouldn't
have the chance to collect them (again)

 

[vanderbilt_grad]

I totally fail to buy the "it's too expensive" argument. Japan gets new players too ... all the time I bet. It can't be "too expensive" there or the game would have folded by now. Similarly it would not be "too expensive" for us either.

And it's not expensive to build a really good deck now? Gardevoir level X, 4x Patchi or whatever Sentret/Furret, solid trainer lines, and more are all fairly costly and have to go into G&G for instance. All having older sets would do is change what cards we spend money on. Instead of buying Castaway for $8 a pop we would still be buying Transceivers or maybe VS Seekers. As mentioned above the old packs are still everywhere in the big box stores and even a few card shops if you don't want to buy singles too.

I'm firmly convinced that translation costs and other factors lead to a business call where they change the format, split sets and whatnot, to make more money of each new set than Japan does.

 

[ShadowCard]

I dont think there is a single person who posts here that wouldnt like to have the same format as Japan does.
They have so many more card options and deck choices open to them than we do.
They could still play things like LudiCargo or Flariados if they wanted to, and personaly I would LOVE to have those same options.
Personaly, I never thought I would miss playing against LBS or Mew EX.

Honestly, I wouldn't care less. After the cards you mentioned though, I'm glad we DON'T have the same format that Japan does. No tear was shed by me when Ariados, Blastoise ex, Mew ex, and Pidgeot left the format.

All of this thread is making us sound hard done by, but think about it. How would you like having to change decks for events?

We do. It's called the Professor Cup :tongue:

I personally do not buy their "new players can't buy older card sets from X place" argument. I look around and I still see extremely old sets being sold at Walmart and places, they'd probably love nothing more than to sell off what is probably obsolete inventory to them.

Most of those are second hand, bought by a different company and repackaged. It would be considered "new" inventory because it was repackaged in a different way. Eventhough they are old cards being made available again, those cards are not from PUI and the production of those cards had long before ceased.

I totally fail to buy the "it's too expensive" argument. Japan gets new players too ... all the time I bet. It can't be "too expensive" there or the game would have folded by now. Similarly it would not be "too expensive" for us either.

Clearly their selling patterns are different. There's that one thing about "hobby" shops being coined as such and not being taken more seriously. Japan only has to worry about selling patterns in Japan. PUI has to look everywhere.

I'm firmly convinced that translation costs and other factors lead to a business call where they change the format, split sets and whatnot, to make more money of each new set than Japan does.

I doubt that since MtG also uses a Modified-esque format. WotC was the one who adopted it to Pokemon after several failed attempts of other types of formats. WotC doesn't need to translate MtG cards into English from Japanese .

 

[Prime]

Walmart might have some of the older packs, but how many hobby shops have Dragon packs? Hobby Shops can't afford to keeps sets that are that old on their shelves because of how much space it takes up and how little income that would come in from them. Imagine if our format was RS-on right now. Imagine how many boxes of cards hobby shops would have to carry to even be able to supply their players with all the cards. If any card stores are like the one I visit, they stock the latest 2 sets and try to throw the earlier stuff away at whatever price they can get it for...just to get it off their shelves. They wouldn't start stocking a game where their players want them to order boxes from 10+ sets.

Even if others say it would be easy to get the cards, it really wouldn't be that easy for new players that didn't have big money to drop right off the bat. Imagine having to go back to Hidden Legends to get ATM: Rock, then buying Delta Species packs to get Holon Transceivers (which would be over $20 a piece after 5 years of it being the sole engine for every single competitive deck), then having to buy FRLG packs to get Pidgeot, then SW packs to get Gardevior, then LM packs to get Mew EX, then DX packs to get Jirachi, then...you get my point? It would be INSANEly hard for new players to build a competitive deck because competitive decks would be insanely tech'd out with all the broken cards in the HUGE card pool.

Let's not even mention how hard it would be to compete at tournaments. If you didn't have Pidgeot, Jirachi, Gardevior, Holon Engine, Rare Candies, Celio, DREs, Time-Space Distortions, and Lati@s*, you just didn't get past the first round. What game is this starting to sound like?

I only see two reasons why people might want a format like Japan's. They don't have enough money to buy the new cards and stay competitive, or they miss their old cards. If your reason (general you) is #1, then you will never be competitive, JP's format or ours. If your reason is #2, then you need to realize that the format is ever changing. Even JP's format changes (or will change) and you won't always be able to play your favorite Pokemon. Usually they will make a new card around the Pokemon anyways, so that excuse doesn't hold either.

Sure, our format wouldn't have been as stale with LM in it, but we can't say that a deck made with the new DP cards and LM cards wouldn't have dominated in the same fashion as GG/Mag did either. For all we know, the format could have been more stale.

If we had a bigger format, the format would be more stale IMHO since the second people realize the most broken combo, everyone who wants to win a tournament would be playing it. And I honestly feel that if we had all the cards from FRLG-on, there would be some combo's that wouldn't be able to be beaten. We saw how much GG/Mag dominated with our card pool. Imagine a card pool 3 times that size. Imagine the monster decks that would come out of that.

In the end, this is just how America does it. It makes more sense western business-wise to do it this way too. Things are different in Japan. Japan has different views on things than we do, and thus the same thing can totally react differently and be treated differently between the two countries.

 

[vanderbilt_grad]

Even if others say it would be easy to get the cards, it really wouldn't be that easy for new players that didn't have big money to drop right off the bat. Imagine having to go back to Hidden Legends to get ATM: Rock, then buying Delta Species packs to get Holon Transceivers (which would be over $20 a piece after 5 years of it being the sole engine for every single competitive deck), then having to buy FRLG packs to get Pidgeot, then SW packs to get Gardevior, then LM packs to get Mew EX, then DX packs to get Jirachi, then...you get my point? It would be INSANEly hard for new players to build a competitive deck because competitive decks would be insanely tech'd out with all the broken cards in the HUGE card pool.

Simple don't buy packs. Buy individual cards on Ebay. Note this solves the card shop space thing too.

I only see two reasons why people might want a format like Japan's. They don't have enough money to buy the new cards and stay competitive, or they miss their old cards.

False. I have only been playing a year and a half. I have very few DX cards and only a handfull from sets before that. However I have enough current format cards to fill multiple large binders. We have to build decks for 4 folks in my famaily and we usually have anywhere from 8-11 decks actually built at one time ... usually without proxies too. Yet I still want a format like Japan's.

If we had a bigger format, the format would be more stale IMHO since the second people realize the most broken combo, everyone who wants to win a tournament would be playing it. And I honestly feel that if we had all the cards from FRLG-on, there would be some combo's that wouldn't be able to be beaten. We saw how much GG/Mag dominated with our card pool. Imagine a card pool 3 times that size. Imagine the monster decks that would come out of that.

Japan's format is anything but stale based on the reports here and elsewhere. I honestly don't see how this could even be argued based the "ground level" reports by Tego and others.

In the end, this is just how America does it. It makes more sense western business-wise to do it this way too. Things are different in Japan. Japan has different views on things than we do, and thus the same thing can totally react differently and be treated differently between the two countries.

No doubt ... but it's not just America and Japan. Its the WORLD and Japan. They do things differently in Italy than they do here in America too. Bazil is different from Germany. Every country has their quirks. IMHO saying that America and Japan are different is true, but has no real bearing on this discussion.

 

[Prime]

Simple don't buy packs. Buy individual cards on Ebay. Note this solves the card shop space thing too.

You and me can buy cards online, but can we say that every new player can do the same thing? I am about the only person at my league of 10-15 players that actually buys their cards online.

How well do you think the new sets will sell if everyone keeps buying the old cards online?

Do you think Nintendo would want people not buying their cards in the store because they have to buy rare old cards online? That would lose them money.

False. I have only been playing a year and a half. I have very few DX cards and only a handfull from sets before that. However I have enough current format cards to fill multiple large binders. We have to build decks for 4 folks in my famaily and we usually have anywhere from 8-11 decks actually built at one time ... usually without proxies too. Yet I still want a format like Japan's.

I guess I shouldn't have said the "only" reasons, but it's two popular reasons. Explain why you feel the format should be Japan's and how it would work in our environment (USA).

Japan's format is anything but stale based on the reports here and elsewhere. I honestly don't see how this could even be argued based the "ground level" reports by Tego and others.

I don't think we can make a definite point that because JP's format isn't all the heck that our format wouldn't be the same way. Japan and the USA are two totally different worlds and the players are quite different too imho. I feel USA players are more concerned about the prizes, and thus will adopt the easy win if they need to, something that might not occur as often in Japan.

No doubt ... but it's not just America and Japan. Its the WORLD and Japan. They do things differently in Italy than they do here in America too. Bazil is different from Germany. Every country has their quirks. IMHO saying that America and Japan are different is true, but has no real bearing on this discussion.

I think it does. Japan seems to put a lot more attention into their games than the USA does (if you can believe that) and because of the smaller size of the convenient, the community seems to favor group hobbies more than the USA does. I think this is why most cards games have originated in Japan and not the USA. Because of the difference in community and goals, Japan can pull off certain things the USA couldn't just like the USA could pull off stuff like bigger tournaments because of it's larger size.

Japan's format works for Japan. I don't feel it would work for the USA for the reasons I've listed. The USA doesn't put as much emphasis on group activities. Western politics tend to focus on money more than eastern politics, and this would not be practical industry-wise.

 

[logan1975]

Japan's format works for Japan.

not totally true, but still a proper answer

Western politics tend to focus on money more than eastern politics, and this would not be practical industry-wise.

bingo...my friend...there you've said it all...filthy, stinky, and not to mention, sexy money

 

[vanderbilt_grad]

Prime I’ve posted about this a few times before, but in essence my position is that the cards we have were designed to be played in the Japanese format. They WORK in our more limited modified format but not always as intended.

Absol was huge in Japan from what we’ve heard ... but it had an even bigger impact here. In Japan you still have Holon Transceiver, VS Seeker, and other stuff that lets you work with discarded cards in a way that our format simply can’t. If Absol discards a Professor Oak’s Visit in our format one of our few draw cards is GONE for the game here. In Japan if a Holon Adventurer is discarded Transceiver can still use it if you need draw. Yes the Absol player might get lucky in Japan and get rid of all your Transceivers or something but in the game of odds he has less of a shot of having that kind of impact there than he would here.

Then there are cards like Arcanine. This thing looks like it might actually be playable if we had something like Sitrus Berry still in format.

Imagine what Hurricane could have done with Holon Farmer and Power Tree.

I could go on. It’s not that cards like Gardevoir and Gallade wouldn’t be played here with a wider format. They were huge both in Japan and here for a reason ... they are amazingly good. It’s that the larger format would offer more options to play other things in spite of those particular cards being good.

Pidgeot has been in format for ages in Japan and apparently many decks quite sensibly included it ... but there were sets and sets worth of counters with things ranging from stuff we still have like Battle Frontier to things we don’t like Luna-Sol LM. These days apparently Claydol is the rage there ... and sensibly so since there are far fewer counters.

My vision of what would happen if we had Japan’s format is that things would actually stay largely the same. There would be a slightly larger pool of “old” decks at most events but the decks like G&G would still be tearing it up. Our decks by and large would be more stable due to more powerful standardized trainer engines.

POP would still release new sets and make money, though perhaps a bit less since folks would still be trying to get some of the older cards too.

And regarding buying individual cards. I was rushed when I posted before. I meant to mention trading as well as buying. That’s a very common avenue that most players use to get stuff they want even if only a minority actually buy singles in places like card shops and on eBay.

 

[bulbasnore]

Pidgeot $20, H. Transceiver $25, LM Mew Ex $50, plane ticket to Japan, priceless

Organized Play exists as marketing for the sales of game cards.
PUI is not selling FRLG, DS, LM now.
Therefore, OP does not focus on these sets.

 

[ShadowCard]

Organized Play exists as marketing for the sales of game cards.
PUI is not selling FRLG, DS, LM now.
Therefore, OP does not focus on these sets.

Sounds like a good enough reason.

For having a larger card pool, it should be obvious that while it works in Japan, we outside Japan simply play differently. The cards do say "flip a coin" yet we roll dice--do we have reading problems? <--j/k people :smile:. I remember a thread a while back that someone asked the Japanese for a ruling about playing cards for null effect and the response was simple confusion about why a player would do such a thing. That shows our mentalities are different. If we had the same format as Japan, I don't think we'd play the same stuff. It'd just be the same people who moan about the modified change wanting to play their old cards. They'd just lose their "but Japan still plays it" argument when Japan rotates its legal sets.

 

[master of puppets]

Would it really that hard for PUI to print old sets?
I mean, if they were to widen our format to be the same as Japan's and start reprinting older sets like DS, FL, and LM then I am sure people would still buy those just as much as these newer sets, if not more.
So in the long run, I believe if they were to do that they would end up making more money.

 

[Rai]

Would it really that hard for PUI to print old sets?
I mean, if they were to widen our format to be the same as Japan's and start reprinting older sets like DS, FL, and LM then I am sure people would still buy those just as much as these newer sets, if not more.
So in the long run, I believe if they were to do that they would end up making more money.

Actually, it very well might be. They'd have to spend a bit less time printing the cards they are currently producing (the DP series) to make room for the older cards for one thing.

And what makes you say that people would buy the older sets over the newer sets? Did people buy more cards of Delta Species last season then Dragon Frontiers? What about Diamond and Pearl?
Heck, we have cards from Holon Phantoms still legal in this format, that we KNOW work well; they dominated tournaments last year. Why is no one playing them? How come no one plays Raichu d and Exeggutor d anymore? How come no one plays the still viable Flygon d + Tech deck? Because of loss of Holon Engine? We got Claydol as a possible solution, and we have better starters right now then we did last year. Other decks have to live without the Holon Engine too. Decks had to exist before the Holon Engine as well.

Why is it that the only cards that I see on a regular basis from the old sets happen to be Double Rainbow Energy, Scramble Energy, Celio's Network, TV Reporter (which is declining greatly), Steven's Advice, and Copycat (also greatly declining)? A list of six cards from four whole sets of cards. Even Delcatty, the last of EX series pokemon to stay in decks, has begun to see less play due to Claydol's superior useage in most decks. None of the amazing attackers with huge HP, good damage output, and no weaknesses from last format which everyone regarded as broken remain as threats in the game. Why?
Because the new cards outclass the old ones. ALL of the old ones. Adding more (frankly) useless cards to the format does not solve any problems. Lowering the number of useless cards while increasing the number of useful cards is the solution. If a card has a problem that shifts the balance of the game, then print something that rebalances the game. Remember Absol? Where did the claims of it's brokenness go?
Sure, cards like Swoop!Teleporter might make some decks work more efficiently. Do the decks NEED Swoop in order to work in the first place? I doubt it. All Swoop does is ensure what pokemon you start with/what that pokemon becomes later in the game. Can't inventive people find a way to make decks work with unproven tricks?

As for people wanting to play older cards... I've always wondered why EVERY tournament that is publicly advertised happens to be modified. Why aren't we seeing people play unlimited? If adding more sets to the format would solve all of its problems, why are there so few unlimited tournaments being held, as those would best prove that a great amount of available cards solves certain card's unbalanced issues. If the reason people don't take unlimited seriously is because of mistakes that have yet to be fixed, such as Slowking's Mind Games being translated wrong, push for those mistakes to be fixed. If the problem is lack of prize support, find a way to get prize support somehow for those tournaments. Make them happen more often.

Prove that more cards = better game, rather then sit and complain.

 

[ShadowCard]

Would it really that hard for PUI to print old sets?
I mean, if they were to widen our format to be the same as Japan's and start reprinting older sets like DS, FL, and LM then I am sure people would still buy those just as much as these newer sets, if not more.
So in the long run, I believe if they were to do that they would end up making more money.

The PTOs can't get dark and metal basic energy cards until the old order of all basic energy cards is significantly depleted to warrent a cost-effective reorder. We are still currently NOT at that point.

The way things work is that if you order less, you pay more. Compare cost per pack if you buy 5 packs vs cost per pack if you buy a box online (even some hobby places will give you a discount for buying a box instead of single boosters). Since emphasis on older sets becomes less and demand drops, for reasons Rai discussed, less HAS to be printed or else the values of the cards/boxes falls greatly. I'd rather have non-legal cards that still have trading value than old, legal cards that are highly depreciated. And while printing less and paying more for it, the price for the cards remains the same so the profit is less.

The hobby store where my league is cannot move anything before Diamond and Pearl. Dragon Frontiers was an awesome set with great cards that are still competitive, as Rai pointed out. But they sell insignificantly compared to post-D/P sets. The store even has trouble trying to sell Diamond and Pearl. Most people are buying Mysterious Treasures and Great Encounters. There's no reason for a hobby shop to regularly stock older--legal--sets because they really don't sell.

 

[NoPoke]

The sales and marketing arguements are tricky..

set rotation encourages new sales. vs. set rotation leaves shops with dead stock.

set rotation helps new entrants. vs. set rotation discourages long term investment.

I don't think print run size arguements hold up. When it is gone it is gone. If sales were very strong then you calculate if a second print run will be profitable. The question being if we do xyz will it result in profit for all involved?