>>42691180>powerAs a really casual collector over the years, why has the powercreep gotten so bad, though?
From Base – late ADV/(R&S) era, there was no real powercreep. The only way you exceeded the 120 HP cap was by becoming a Pokemon-ex and giving up two prizes. I noticed damage output was slowly increasing for the same amount of Energy, but the cards that did that would be intrinsically hindered in some way or another (greater retreat costs, no less expensive attacks, stuff like that)
DP base was a very obvious 'jump' in HP, and was about when I took a break from buying sets. By the time I came back to Platinum, the sets seemed like a shitshow.
DP also started printing Trainer cards with the same effects as old cards but giving them new names, retconning old cards.. a lot of autism-setting bullshit. BW turned it up to 11, and I completely sat that block out.
XY only brought me back because of the Kanto-pandering Base Set 'update', and the only SM set I've bought was the Japanese subset of Lost Thunder that did 'updates' of select Neo–EX cards.
It's become hypothetically possible for a lot of older Pokemon to lose HP on evolution because the creep has become so bad. e.g. newer sets have 60 HP Eevee, which if evolved into Dark Jolteon, loses HP. This first became a problem during the DP era (MAYBE late ADV), but only in the case of deliberately lower-HP Dark Pokemon.
Now a lot of Stage 1 cards could lose HP evolving into non-Dark Stage 2s, and the whole thing sets of my autism something fierce.
