Topic: Should Pokemon add roster rotations a la card games?

Pokemon is rather unique among competitive video games in the sense that it contains a regularly expanding metagame.

This aspect is a lot closer to card games like Magic and Hearthstone, and in the wake of the introduction of "Standard" format in Hearthstone, I've been thinking about whether Pokemon should do a similar type of "Set Rotation"

For those unfamiliar, "Set rotation" is the practice of removing cards from a game as new cards are added. This is done for multiple reasons.

1. It keeps the game fresh, as new combinations and strategies arise as others are removed or altered.
2. It means that more cards can be competitive
3. It makes a lot of sense from a design perspective, as the developer no longer has to create cards while taking into account how it will affect other aspects of the game. This makes Power creep less likely to accidentally arise for a long period of time.

The Pokemon metagame is falling into a need to resolve these issues too. Many cool Gen 6 pokemon like Pangoro and Tyrantrum didn't really make an impact in OU, because of their inability to compete with hyper-powerful OU pokemon. Old strategies like Baton Pass, become borderline broken with new pokemon coming in. Moves like Stealth Rock and combos like Volt-Turn have a defining presence in the game.

Smogon gets around this sort of problem with Tiers, but that doesn't impact the official meta, and it requires a ton of constant management by a third party.

I tend to play Underused so it's not a big issue for me, but I see where you're coming from here. The majority of people playing and buying pokemon simply don't care about competitive play, that's why sites like Smogon try to establish a more rigid rule set that those wanting to play at a higher level can use.

I'm not against a roster rotation format, but I don't see why Gamefreak would bother doing it when the current system seems to work for them.

The thing is that the tier system only fixes some problems. Yes, they make more pokemon usable, but the metagame still develops static factors, such as the Skarmory Tyranitar core or Volt-Turn combos. Certain pokemon like Landorus-I completely dominate, and that doesn't change by much.

I'm not necessarily saying this needs to happen within the game either. I totally get allowing players to use whatever Pokemon they want for casual play, but adding more rules for competitive play would be cool.

Maybe they can do what Smash Bros did, and have a "Casual", and "Pro" mode for setting up battles.