Aggressive Attitudes Among TCG Players

I am not talking about criticism of the game or the application. There are plenty of issues with it. They really need to stop dragging their feet and provide better functionality.

I constantly criticise media and the companies that produce them. I am constantly exasperated by dismissive phrases like "no one hates X like X fans" or "just let people have fun" or "it's just a game" or "you're just a hater/toxic/a troll/etc." whenever I highlight or discuss these matters for this and other franchises.

Every product or artistic work is worthy of criticism. Praise gets a free pass but negative comments, however polite and reasonable, are often unfairly labelled "toxic, hateful, etc.".

That is not to say that we should have a free license to abuse and harass developers and company employees, but criticism of the product itself: go nuts, as far as I am concerned.

No, what I am highlighting is interactions between players. Situations where people get upset with certain types of decks, card interactions or other individual players.

As I said, people are very emotionally invested in games, particularly card games it seems, and I would like to see if we can lower the temperature and take a slightly more empathetic and accommodating approach when discussing these things on the forum.

I made this thread partly to solicit suggestions on how to encourage that, and partly to make an appeal for posters to make a conscious effort to be a bit more courteous and considerate in their posts.

It's a game. We play for fun. It is supposed to be a leisure activity. We all get tilted from time to time. We all make mistakes. We aren't perfect. We were all new players once, making slow or stupid plays.

And we all have our pet peeves, be they individual cards, decks or archetypes, or types of players. Unfortunately other players may love those things, but we still need to get along.

I don't think getting angry or snarky at each other on an internet forum will improve much of anything.

But i see you on the forums an you get way to deep into things. You answer your own questions in your comments.

I do not necessarily have the definitive answers to everything. But I will suggest potential answers in my posts as possible explanations or solutions to promote further discussion or see if people agree with my assessments.

I want to encourage people to think about topics and provide their own ideas, and I offer my own thoughts to promote that.

It is a common thing across multiple games that some strategies and mechanics are considered acceptable while others are considered cheap and not in the spirit of things.

In card games, this can be as extreme as viewing anything other than winning "the proper way" (knocking out each Pokémon to take all prize cards in Pokémon TCG, and things like reducing life points to zero or destroying all shield cards in other TCGs) as a kind of cheating. Mill and stall strategies are are among those commonly subjected to this attitude.

Individual cards can even be viewed this way, even if they accomplish the same thing as "fair" cards. An example from Magic would be using a counterspell to counter a creature being viewed as cheap where killspell is considered fair game.

Now again, we are only human. Everyone gets tilted sometimes. A defeat can rub you the wrong way or a play can frustrate you. It happens. You are allowed to dislike certain strategies. I am not trying to take that away from you, nor do I have the capacity.

But these mechanics are all legal in the game. If a player chooses to use them in a competitive setting, whether they think it gives them the best chance of winning or because they simply fnd it fun, what right have we to deny them? They are not breaking any rules.

I think the ire should be directed at the game designers rather than the players using legal strategies.

If you think it is unfair or unfun, plead your case to the developers and petition them to remove the problem cards and avoid such strategies in future.

But be careful. Sometimes things exist for a reason, even if you do not understand or appreciate them.

Are you familiar with Chesterton's fence? If not, to be brief, the concept is not to tear down a fence if you cannot explain why it might have been erected in the first place. Only once you understand the reason for its existence can you be considered informed enough to make a wise decision in removing it.

In the same way, certain cards or deck archetypes often exist for a reason.

Part of the problem with Pokémon TCG specifically is that the cards are designed for the Japanese version of the game, which is best-of-one 25 minute rounds. A draw counts as a loss, so stall or slow strategies make little sense and are discouraged by the tournament rules.

That format does need still need stall cards to prevent aggro strategies running roughshod over everything else.

The problem is that in the western game, the rounds are longer and best of 3 in paper. In that environment, jamming all the stall cards together to make a slower deck is more viable. And if something is viable in paper, it ends up on digital clients, too.

And again, you may think you will be happy if the strategies that annoy you now were all banned from the game, but it may have been holding back some other broken strategy that may be even more frustrating. Do we ban that, too? And the next one? How do we know when the game is the correct speed and fairness?

So these matters are more nuanced and the balance more delicate than can be fixed by a bunch of bans. But don't hate the players for using legal strategies. Critique the game. Bash the deck, not the pilot. I think it will actually accomplish more than the people who come on the internet to whine about the "brainless meta-sheep" who play "no effort, free win decks".