The Dear Days Controversy
Today we talk about videogames' cost models, and how good they can be in 2025. I'd like to open this discussion talking about Cardfight!! Vanguard Dear Days 1 and 2.
We're talking about TCGs, with Bushiroad as publisher: not as common in the west, but a pretty popular franchise in Japan, with the anime carrying it pretty solidly, even if not as much as Yu-Gi-Oh. Dear Days is to Vanguard what Master Duel is to Yu-Gi-Oh: their main simulator, which stays a few set behind the standard competitive format.
Let's break down its cost.
Dear Days 2 base game costs around 70$: it unlocks all D format card sets that came out since the format launch, includes the packs that were in the previous simulator, and a few vintage packs from the very first format. Vintage has a format of its own, and, supposedly, will feature new sets too - which comes from the same expansion series.
This choice allows enough flexibility and two formats to have fun with the game. It doesn't have other format cards, like part of the vintage cards, all the G format, and all the V format, and it's something old player may feel lacking.
The game will also feature future D packs, which come in two possible forms:
A season pass, with 4 sets, that makes each singular set cost around 15$, or
Singular sets, that should come out price at around 6$ each
Card unlocks, which cost around 7$ per set each, and offer a 4 copies of each card in the set. These are not really necessary, as you unlock a lot of packs for each (repeatable) combat you can do in the game.
The "Deluxe Edition", which includes the base game, some sleeves, and the first 4-set wide pass, is on sale in my country at around 125€, as you can see.
Dear Days is to Vanguard what Master Duel is to Yu-Gi-Oh: their main simulator, which stays a few set behind the standard competitive format.
This is what keeps players - even core fans of the card game - away from buying the product. The question is: is it really a steep price to pay?
Are Upfront Steep Costs This Bad?
Even without the pass, the base game is still incredibly costly, and comes at a premium price, that is comparable to AAA games major releases.
After all, we're talking about a Trading Card Game, which, by itself, is the first form of gacha ever created. But... is it really this bad?
Dear Days and Dear Days 2 don't have forms of highly addictive practices: yes, you get cards from packs, but you get many packs for each fight - in the order of 10 units, which of course is quite a bit! You can repeat the combats at any time, and there is no daily reward. Unlocking this amount of packs per each fight gives the sense of progression without being overwhelmingly low and making you want to spend money - as in gacha games, or in the actual TCG, where you need to buy a lot of packs to be happy, if you don't go for singles. You also unlock decks from the characters you fight against, which means more cards and ways to play the game.
The games are fun even without the new sets, even though it becomes harder and harder to win fights on the ladder if you only play with cards from previous sets - as much as in the real-life format.
In the end, we're talking about a game + DLCs cost model, which is arguably better than any gacha-based card simulator that tries to look "free-to-play", like Master Duel, Pokémon TCG Pocket or MTG Arena.
A Comparison of TCG Simulators' Cost Models
Let's make a comparison among the most popular ones!
Free base game
Packs can be bought with premium in-game currency, which is sparce
Some structure decks available at an affordable in-game currency price
There is a crafting system, but it's very high in resource cost for some key cards
Free base game
Packs can be bought with premium in-game currency, which is sparce
Two packs per day, or 4 with the subscription (10$)
There is a crafting system, but it's extremely high in resource cost for key cards
Free base game
Packs can be either obtained with in-game resources, found in real-life packs, or bought on the secondary market for around 10 cent each.
Some good meta decks available for free
There is a crafting system, that can be easily tuned with secondary market resources
Free base game
Packs can be bought with premium in-game currency, which is sparce
Some structure decks available at an affordable in-game currency price
There is a crafting system, but it's very high in resource cost for some key cards
Costly base game
Packs can be obtained in high number by just playing the game, or by spending some money (unadvised, but it's an option).
Some structure decks available by just playing the game.
There is a crafting system, that uses in-game resources, which are plenty. It's costly only for fancy aesthetics alt cards.
DLCs for future sets, 15$ each with the season pass
If you look at card game simulators in this perspective, there's much to complain about any of them. This doesn't mean Dear Days can't be improved - we're very far from that! But it does make me think we value free access more than it's worth. After all, really few official products are really for free.
My Personal TCG Simulators' Cost Model Ranking
Pokémon TCG Live: thanks to the existence of the secondary market, this game becomes viable without spending much money, because packs are very cheap, even if they cost real money. Some packs give you more crafting credits - which are universal, than other sets, so there's a lot of optimization to do that. All things considered, a few bucks can make this game easy to play competitively for a long period of time. The app is still full of bugs and problems, and it's not brilliant in design, but this doesn't make the cost model worse.
Cardfight!! Vanguard Dear Days 2: yes, you have a lot of upfront cost, but, after that, each set is exactly 15€. It's not cheap, but it's not a gacha.
Pokémon TCG Pocket: you need to log in every day and open your packs to slowly fill in the gaps. Trade doesn't help filling the gaps of the new packs, but you can get old GX Pokémon, that are relevant in the gameplay scene. The game itself is simplified and has its own format, though, so it may not be for everyone (it's not for me, for example).
Master Duel / MTG Arena: getting new packs becomes costly pretty fast. It requires you to either be very slow in getting in-game resources, or to spend money, as in many other gacha games.
Funny enough, Pokémon TCG Live model and interface is enough for me to not feeling like playing it. I guess I'm a little too much into design and look & feel, or, at least, more than I would expect!
Let me know, down in the comments, what's your experience with Trading Card Game Simulator!