The monster ramp-up occurred before the cards and from my experience with 4E was necessary. Monsters, overall, were too weak.
The increased difficulty of the next Encounters season could be higher level opponents, more opponents, or toughers creatures. I don't think you can count any of these as a foregone conclusion.
And the ramped difficulty of the next Encounters season illustrates exactly what I was referring to. The DM (WotC organized play) is adjusting the difficulty for a mandatory element of the Encounters program.
Definitive evidence would have to come from more than a single campaign to convince me that more-than-normal power escalation is occuring because of the "mandatory" nature of the cards outside of Encounters.
But this is a failure on
the DM's part then. When the DM raises the level of the mosnters in such a way that they then have to grant more to the PCs, then they grant more power to the monster,s then more to the PCs, then more to the monsters, wash-rinse-repeat.
This is what is occurring.
When the DM raised the level of the monsters to high, rather than the constant shifting power struggle, the fix is to dial them back down a bit; not to raise everything back and forth.
Bad DM: I made the monsters a bit too powerful, so I will give you more to make it better in the future.
Good DM: I made the monsters a bit too powerful, so I will fix my mistake by not making them as powerful in the future.
The problem with your conjecture is that, from what I've read, the cards really aren't that powerful. I mean, the Rare is pretty dang good, I'll grant you! But for the most part? This doesn't blow the power curve off anything.
Maybe not a problem if "sealed deck" is the format, but you get a 10 card deck, that means 2 packs must be bought and 6 card sideboard. So maybe not so bad, and keeps the constant throwing money away gimmick in place, so WotC can nickle-and-dime players to death.
When you take into account that "rare" in a pack can be all 10 cards, so long as 3 of each "type" of card is in your deck, yeah it generates a big power curve when you get a new one to use EACH TURN.
You could force people to use cards with drawbacks like saying X number of commons must be in the deck, but then your product flops, because people don't want to be told what to build in decks, they are les angered by being told, what you can't use.
IF you make commons without drawbacks such that they are as good as the rares, then people won't use the rares so much, but why would they because commons are just as good, and people again stop buying cards. Secondary market for collectible cards, yes there will be one, will snatch up packs and not be able to make money form everyone wanting the commons and stuck with many of the rares. They wont be able to have high prices for the rares as people CAN turn to commons.
So just with CCGs, it will become a competition where he with the most money wins. Some people will do better because of having better cards, and so many people play the game competitively today is why many of the recent changes "evolved" like standard level limits for all, powers for all, etc....
If the DM builds the deck and the group uses that deck rather than their own, the again, product fails, because so few people would be buying them, unless the DM charges you to play in their game a pack of fortune cards.
Lets look at another CCG element at work since people are just not seeing the constant power shift.
Someone goes to a CCG (constructed) tournament and forgets their deck. They don't play in that tournament, or have to buy cards there to play with.
Someone goes to a D&D event in a store to play D&D and doesn't have a deck...they have to buy a CCG to play D&D now? You turn away a play from your store because they don't have a deck? Do you supply them with a "store deck" for use? If the store has to keep decks on hand, then why would players buy them for store events?
Some stores may be in areas of high enough concentration to make paying for events not too bad jsut for the space taken up. I still see it as funny, but so be it for them. Not everyone is in areas of high enough concentration to have people playing and paying to play D&D in a store.
The idea from giving people space to play when CCGs took over was to get people in to enjoy the games enough to want to spend money on them, and since they are at a store anyway why not buy form the one they are at?
The areas of low concentration of RPG players that start charging to play are the ones that quickly stop selling D&D brand products as customers will go to another source for their products (Amazon, etc).
CCGs work well for two parties, the company that makes them if they sell, and the secondary market.
While the CMG worked with D&D, for a while, because people like minis to use with D&D, mixing two types of games isnt always smart.
Since the CMG failed, they are just trying to add the CCG to it. The same thing will happen with the CCG element, but sooner, because stores are getting fed up and so are players. All the extra shelf space required to carry the CCG/CMG type products, space to carry the singles.
While trying to "help" stores by giving them something else to sell, if you want to say that is the reason for the CCG in D&D, they are actually killing stores by taking away shelf space they could be using for other things.
Overhead for this new element is NOT going to be cheap for a store, and the cost of ANY new CCG added is a big one.
You have to front a display box, meaning another product cannot hold that place, so that people can see you have it on hand to buy/impulse buy. You have to make storage space for stock of this new product. You have to start figuring up singles prices and how to store and display them, will it be a notebook with card sheets in it? No more SCRYE, so the store has to do research of online prices to be able to compete with singles prices.
Another funny thing about them, while WotC doesn't want more than one D&D on the market so refuses to support older editions, WotC is competing directly with Magic The Gathering.
WotC can make these choices lightly, but the stores and players have a lot to deal with because of it.
I could come up with tons of cons, but the only pros seem to be for WotC with these Fortune Cards.
(Well, there are some games in which rares/foils are just alternate versions of already existing cards, but I played Yugioh for 8 years and MTG for 2.)
