Hey guys,

A guy told me that FFG decided to rotate sets out after two years, is that true?

I really love the game but I don't wanna spend thousands of bucks just to realize that older sets aren't playable anymore after a specific time.

Do you have any informations for me about that?

I really hope they are going to balance things with a banned list if necessary.

What do you guys think?

Most card games (well almost all of them) rotate sets after a period of time. It is to prevent some crazy combos that can pop after that time and not to limit the developers when creating new sets. While SWD has no plans for that now, i would say its pretty safe to assume that somewhere after 3 next expansions , Awakenings gonna be rotated. Is it that bad? No. You gonna have more cards to play even after rotation (considering that 4 sets is reasonable minimum to be legal at any time) than you have now anyway...

FFG already did that mistake in X-wing. Old stuff is now next to unplayable sometimes due to power creep, and devs themselves admit they often cannot create what they would like to due to some crazy interactions with older stuff.

As for Destiny we just don't know what the rotation period will be.

Eventually we will reach the point where long term players start playing other games and the player base slowly declines. At that point you need a mechanism that will encourage new players to take their places. Without set rotation I fear my cards will quite quickly be worth a substantial amount less than I paid for them.

we already have two cards with errata.

As for banned cards, maybe, but from what I have experienced in Armada FFG will either develop cards in subsequent sets that move the meta away from those cards and only if that doesn't take they'll errata the specific cards. Again, like the set rotation we know little with certainty and as such my comment have to be read with a good dose of salt.

Thinking about it, if they allow us to keep the Characters and just rotate the Battlefields, Upgrades, Support and Events then 2-3 years wouldn't be too bad. That would be 6 sets or around 800-1200 cards, which would give a crazy amount of variety for building decks.

Another thing that is likely to occur when they introduce rotation is the creation of a second format. A legacy format where all the old cards are still legal. Most major tournaments will still be using the standard format (which excludes the rotated cards), but side events of legacy are likely if it is popular enough. FFG may even provide official support for such a format in the form of banned lists and or prize support.

Like Android: Netrunner, FFG has stated they may set up a rotation. Netrunner was first published in 2012 and all the cards are still playable (at least they still were last I played). That's 5 years worth of cards!

There may never be a rotation (and I would bet my bottom dollar there will never be a FFG banned list) for Destiny, but if there is it will be way down the road.

Ok, I understand all your opinions.

What bothers me is that I spend 450 $ per Set, and after a year or two the set rotates out, what means you can't play it and you can't sell it, because you are not allowed to play it.

So it is worthless. So I technically throw 450 $ out of the window.

Yeah maybe there will be a legacy format. I would like the idea.

I know that magic has a lot of different formats. Including one with rotation, modern which is without rotation and a few more.

Yu-Gi for example has no rotation just a banned list.

Maybe it is necessary but it doesn't feel good to me.

2 hours ago, TK4334 said:

Ok, I understand all your opinions.

What bothers me is that I spend 450 $ per Set, and after a year or two the set rotates out, what means you can't play it and you can't sell it, because you are not allowed to play it.

So it is worthless. So I technically throw 450 $ out of the window.

Yeah maybe there will be a legacy format. I would like the idea.

I know that magic has a lot of different formats. Including one with rotation, modern which is without rotation and a few more.

Yu-Gi for example has no rotation just a banned list.

Maybe it is necessary but it doesn't feel good to me.

Throw it out the window? You would get two years out of that investment and you would still have you collection if you collect. If you don't you could always sell to collectors.

For the overall health of the game, I think there will be a rotation or banned list, but ultimately this only affects tournaments. For casual play, as long as your opponent agrees, you can play with whichever sets you want (assuming there is no Legacy format).

As you note Yugioh has no rotation just an ever growing ban list. Yugioh is also consistently considered the worst balanced of the big 3 CCGs and also the most expensive as far as a standard format is concerned. And that would be in no small part due to lack of rotation.

24 minutes ago, JediGeekGirl said:

Throw it out the window? You would get two years out of that invest and you would still have you collection if you collect. If you don't you could sell to collectors.

Most people don't realize that they aren't getting much more than a few years out of their tv's but have no problem spending thousands on them. Picking your entertainment is always difficult

Someone please list a FFG game with a ban list. Also, Android:Netrunner has gone over 4 years without phasing out sets. This worry is all for not.

13 minutes ago, Stone37 said:

Someone please list a FFG game with a ban list. Also, Android:Netrunner has gone over 4 years without phasing out sets. This worry is all for not.

A Game of Thrones first edition had a ban list. Think it was just one card and they eventually printed a replacement that corrected some of the issue. I'm sure they try to fix issues with new releases and then errata if necessary. But, they will ban a card.

I'm all for rotation as long as they support an unlimited format as well. Since the game is collectible, they should consider a card's value when making those decisions. No one wants their $50 Palpatine to be unplayable in any sanctioned format.

Another thing that happens in CCGs is cards can be reprinted in future sets. So Palpatine for example might get rotated out for 3-6 months, but then be reprinted in a new set and become playable in the current format again. This accomplishes two things, it give long time players a chance to use the collections they have. And it makes it easier for new players to get into the game without having to track down out of print cards.

Even still, many people hold tournaments for outdated sets. For example, when I played Heroclix, nearly every event was golden age, or silver age which is any piece ever made. Two years is a good time in my opinion.

While I can sympathize with those that feel rotation will devalue their cards, you know what will also devalue your cards? No one starting to play the game once the last pack of awakenings is opened and the game eventually dying off.

This will happen if they insist on Awakenings cards being "standard" legal for tournaments beyond the end of 2018. can you imagine the price of Darth Vader, Phasma, Poe, Jabba or Luke if in 18 months time if they are the main characters in the tier 1 lists? Those cards will be hitting 3 figure prices soon enough if they remain relevant in the coming months. When high cost, hard to get & OOP cards become staples in a format that will doom the game because who wants to get into the game where you have to drop a few hundred dollars just for your starting characters.

The alternative is that they power-creep the whole format so that all awakenings cards become irrelevant and worthless anyway, which would have the same effect.

Rotation is the only way a CCG with a rapid release schedule can stay fresh and exciting, while maintaining balance and reigning in power creep. As Lukas said himself in the interview posted up the other day with team covenant, there's only so many cards you can put in your deck and every new set presents diminishing returns on making your deck better.

Anyone that plays X-wing right now will know the feeling, so many redundant old models from older waves being obsoleted by new waves, because if the new stuff isnt as good or better than the last wave no one will buy it, the same will happen with Destiny without rotation.

Also not sure about anyone else but I sure don’t want to be playing against Poe/Maz for the next 5 years haha.

TL;DR Rotation is the only way a CCG will continue to be made over a long period of time, Which we all want right

FFG never bans things. They just magically change the text on cards and you are some how suppose to remember all the new text on all the cards.

Yeah, there will be a rotation. It will affect the value of your cards. This happens in magic all the time. Generally you need to sell them off 6 months prior to the set rotating out save the few cards you will play with. There isn't a lot of cards in circulation just yet from these sets and once they start the rotation the hoarders will unload their boxes before they drop in value since FFG has no supported legacy formats. So it may not hold true you can get maximum value 6 months out.

I think rotation makes sense, but it'll probably be a while. This game gets way fewer cards per year than some other CCGs, and FFG is pretty slow to act on stuff. They're also not used to the CCG model.

By the way, comparisons to X-Wing might not make the most sense. Yes, my T-65 X-Wings might not be as powerful anymore, but I wouldn't feel any happier if they suddenly became illegal to play and worthless.

how can they make a rotation when they can't even supply enough product

47 minutes ago, Kieransi said:

By the way, comparisons to X-Wing might not make the most sense. Yes, my T-65 X-Wings might not be as powerful anymore, but I wouldn't feel any happier if they suddenly became illegal to play and worthless.

I think it’s a fair comparison, with rotation there's nothing stopping you from playing your cards/x-wings casually just not in tournaments, the relative value stays the same if its worthless for tournament play anyway.

Would you really be disappointed if you could no longer play Red Squadron Pilot in a tournament?

And to really focus on the problem here, if x-wing were printed like destiny, and the original core set went out of print permanently after a few short months but it was still able to be played now, can you imagine what Biggs would be worth??? Secondary market Biggs would be worth a fortune for Rebel players to acquire.

10 hours ago, Stone37 said:

Someone please list a FFG game with a ban list. Also, Android:Netrunner has gone over 4 years without phasing out sets. This worry is all for not.

And many people are saying the rotation schedule for LCG's us too long to be effective.

1 hour ago, Darth evil said:

how can they make a rotation when they can't even supply enough product

Is this an actual question you want answered?

As people have said, a frequent set rotation is vital to the health of the game. FFG has already said that they're doing only ONE print run of each non-core set--and so far, it seems like that one print run is already going to be way too **** small. You already need to pay out the nose to get the cards you need from Rebellion and Awakenings--imagine what those prices will be like once Empire and Core 2018 hit, and those sets stop being printed? As the game rolls forward, new players will be screwed over, because they'll need cards from barely-printed earlier sets in order to be competitive. Several competitive cards already cost upwards of $30 or $40 now--once the sets rotate out, those prices could easily shoot into the hundreds. That's bad for all but the very small percentage of players who collect with the intent to sell later. For the game to stay healthy, accessible, and able to find new players, the old cards need to get lost from standard.

Besides, no one's going to stop you from showing up to the shop every week and playing with your old decks. I've had fun playing Magic for years, and yet I've only very rarely bothered to build a standard-legal deck. If you're only playing casual, like many players do, then set rotation won't even affect you. It WILL affect you if you want to play competitively--but if you want to play just about any game competitively, you're going to have to make a few more sacrifices than a casual player will.