Is Pokémon No Longer Respected as a Card Game?

signofzeta said:
If TPCi could make the game more cool, like, add multiplayer support, such as team battle, or perhaps a different way to play the game, 2vs2, 3vs3, without removing the thing that attracts the female playerbase, then that would be awesome.
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Honestly, I'm pretty sure the "thing that attracts the female playerbase" is just the franchise itself. Pokémon as a whole is generally more appealing to women than YGO or male-oriented/marketed generic fantasy.

(Gender percentages were definitely reversed in the old Sailor Moon card game I used to play, I wonder why....)
 
I would agree, females generally prefer Pokémon. It's less violent and monster like. I hope it doesn't offend anyone, but in general most girls prefer less violent male oriented things.
 
The reason has more female fans than other TCGs and male-dominated series' in general, is because Pokemon wasn't created with just males in mind, it's meant for everyone.


Familiar said:
signofzeta said:
Saying that MTG would die out before Pokemon TCG is nonsense.

If WOTC made one boneheaded decision, MTG would still survive. They made a lot of risky moves in a lot of years, double face cards being one of them, and it turned out well for them. They know that they have an established fanbase that they can make these risky moves.

If TPCi made one boneheaded decision, Pokemon TCG would still survive, but will be hanging on a thread of life. If TPCi did a risky move, there might be a chance that the game would die outright. With all these changes going on, I don't know if people are overreacting, or if TPCi did really make boneheaded decisions to kill the game.
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I don't agree. TPCi has made many "boneheaded decision"s and survived.

- drop of card quality
- lack of guarantee pull rate from a box
- not selling 3 booster blister in North America
- releasing crummy promos with old booster packs

There are probably more that I'm forgetting. At times it is like they are trying to go out of business.
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1. That's an opinion.
2. There has never been a guaranteed amount of pulls from a box.
3. They're still where I live, so I know they still exist in North America.
4. Have the promos on the front of blisters ever been very good?
 
Actually, the drop in card quality is not an opinion. It's a fact. Just saying lol.

Also back then, there was at least a small guaranteed range of how many EX/LvX you pull in each booster set.
 
Packaging problems with BW-cards (seriously, BW1 and BW6+ have had production quirks galore), holofoils tend to warp much more easily, random scratches markings on the backs and fronts even though they were freshly pulled from a pack...

Yeah, if you don't think the quality of cards over here hasn't dropped since BW started, you haven't been paying attention.
 
Frost Mage said:
Riskbreakers said:
Actually, the drop in card quality is not an opinion. It's a fact. Just saying lol.
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How is it a fact?
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They probably have this special ability to detect the card quality just by looking and touching the card, just like those gamers who have this ability to see the difference between a game running at 60 frames per second, and 100 frames per second, and those who don't have this ability has this ability called not caring about the difference.

To me, I think the card quality has gone up. The HGSS cards I have were more flimsier than the Plasma Blast cards I have, although I think the strongest quality would be the early black and white series. It isn't to say that the card quality has gone down, more like the quality is inconsistent.

Saying that TPCi screwed up royally because of a drop in card quality is nonsense, because MTG has similar quality, and YGO has even worse card quality. I basically had to sleeve YGO cards all the time, and refuse to play the cards naked, while for Pokemon and MTG, I sometimes will play the cards unsleeved.

Cardfight Vanguard has the best card quality. It almost looks and feels like the cards were made of plastic, but they're not.
 
DNA said:
Packaging problems with BW-cards (seriously, BW1 and BW6+ have had production quirks galore), holofoils tend to warp much more easily, random scratches markings on the backs and fronts even though they were freshly pulled from a pack...

Yeah, if you don't think the quality of cards over here hasn't dropped since BW started, you haven't been paying attention.
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I understand that, but has that ever *not* been a problem, really?
 
I had never even heard of that happening before BW1, not even once. Granted, there have been miscut holos in packs I've seen before, but scratches or marks on freshly pulled cards? I'd never heard of this once until I heard about the Reshiram/Zekrom full-art dilemma. (I was a 'victim' of that as well; my Zekrom FA has some very small white dots on the back of it. All 4 of the Reshiram FA I pulled had no such flaws, though.)
 
Well it saves them money, doesn't it. They make just as much, probably more money now from Pokémon cards. From a business sense of view, it's a great idea, more profit. I would say the quality has changed over time, but you want lack of quality, get a Korean card haha.
 
It seems like production is a lot more rushed. There are much higher numbers of miscuts, ink spots and other production errors in BW than previous sets, not to mention wrapping issues with extra or missing cards (which I'd never heard of before) and minor to severe holo scratching (I'm a victim of that myself). Sure, all of these things did happen in previous sets, but they're happening much more now. I remember when I posted about all my Plasma URs being diagonally miscut, and people told me that was common these days. It's one of the reasons I've stopped bothering with English cards in general.
 
I would say demand is high for Pokémon cards, when TPCi took over production back in 2003 sales dropped, they didn't have nearly as much demand for Pokémon cards as WOTC had. I never did think that demand was as high as it was when Pokémon cards first released, perhaps they can't deal with demand. I'd say hire more staff and equipment, but we don't know the whole story.
 
TheTPCProductionz said:
I would say demand is high for Pokémon cards,
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Tell that to all those packs of Emerging Powers that TPCi is still shoveling out of their warehouses. *cough*

That said, rushing supply to meet a demand is certainly one possible explanation for the drop in quality, but I don't think it's the most likely answer.
 
TheTPCProductionz said:
I would say demand is high for Pokémon cards, when TPCi took over production back in 2003 sales dropped, they didn't have nearly as much demand for Pokémon cards as WOTC had.
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That's because WOTC were actively killing the TCG before Nintendo took it back. Sales were already crashing long before the changeover actually happened.
 
Ironic thing is, Pokemon is charging the most for a booster pack and has poorer card quality compared to Vanguard which is way cheaper.

It is a fact because I've played Pokemon for a long time. Take a WOTC Pokemon card and a current card now and fold them. That alone speaks volumes. It also matters because some of us tend to shuffle roughly and it is annoying to see most of the cards get really bent right away even when I'm not shuffling too hard. Also, it is true that MTG now has flimsy cards and YGO cards have such bad quality they even look/feel like bootlegs. CFV still has the best card quality ever.

Anyway, my argument there is more on the card quality itself rather than if it really is boneheaded or not. But you got to admit, bad card quality stinks, less margin of error when you make a mistake when handling it especially for younger players.

signofzeta, try getting a Japanese CF Vanguard card. It's probably the best card quality I have ever felt in my life it's even better than EN CFV cards.

Artemis, it's the "Law of Crappy Sets". Release a crappy set and no one is going to buy it. It's not like Vanguard where almost every card has a use and older sets are still revisited because some clans' staples are only located in that specific set.
 
Frost said:
TheTPCProductionz said:
I would say demand is high for Pokémon cards, when TPCi took over production back in 2003 sales dropped, they didn't have nearly as much demand for Pokémon cards as WOTC had.
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That's because WOTC were actively killing the TCG before Nintendo took it back. Sales were already crashing long before the changeover actually happened.
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Actually sales dropped when EX Dragon came out until about EX Deoxys, WOTC weren't doing anything wrong.
 
The nadir may have come during Nintendo's run with the TCG, but it had already been initiated. From the Gym sets on, Pokemon kept declining all the way into TPCi's run and only started selling better after they had gotten the brand re-established. There really WASN'T a huge demand for the Neo and e-Reader sets at the time, especially not compared to Base through Team Rocket. I think even the value of those boxes now is a testament to that; the Gym, Neo and e-Sets all are considered far more valuable than Jungle, Fossil and Rocket, partially because they were printed less than those three.

I know there's some sales chart for a decade ago floating around somewhere on Pokegym but I couldn't dig it up. What I remember from it is that Pokemon was outselling Magic in 1999-2000 and changes that Wizards made caused the profitability of the Pokemon TCG to plummet far below Magic and to become only a fraction of what it had been two years earlier. One of the decisions that really irritated fans was making official tournaments for ages under 15 only.

TPCi is far from perfect, but at least they view the Pokemon TCG with more respect than it just being a gateway to get kids interested in Magic the Gathering, which was how WOTC acted at the end of their run.
 
Yeah, that is a stupid move. I would love to see an up to date sales chart, all the way from base set to now. It would be so interesting.
 
Pokemon cards are still big sellers. I highly doubt they compare to late 90s/early 2000s sales, but everytime a new booster comes out and I go to my local Taget or Wal-Mart to pick up some, they're nearly sold out each time. I also tend to get really crappy cards until they're restocked and my pulls improve greatly, so I believe people are possibly weighing them and leaving the likely bad packs for me (^__^) the same day they hit shelves.
 
Wailady said:
Pokemon cards are still big sellers. I highly doubt they compare to late 90s/early 2000s sales, but everytime a new booster comes out and I go to my local Taget or Wal-Mart to pick up some, they're nearly sold out each time. I also tend to get really crappy cards until they're restocked and my pulls improve greatly, so I believe people are possibly weighing them and leaving the likely bad packs for me (^__^) the same day they hit shelves.
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Pokemon usually sell better at big box retailers because there aren't a lot of game and hobby stores that sell pokemon cards as much as Magic and Yugioh. At least in Canada, big box retailers jack up the prices of all trading card boosters beyond the $3.99 MSRP, so we have to pay $5+ for each pack, which is kind of dumb.

Magic and Yugioh doesn't sell a lot at Walmarts or Targets because players know that they are getting ripped off when they buy from there.

I don't know how it is in the US, considering I went there for a while, and the packs at big box retailers are $3.99.
 
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