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It's the only way to limit powercreep in cardgames
Just speaking as a fan and player of a whole lot of card games - it may not be the only way but it definitely helps. It feels weird when I pick up a new set of cards and realize I’d be better off continuing to play the same decks I was already playing. Rotation isn’t the only way to shake things up, but it does help.
More importantly, it also frees up design space! Many cool cards can’t be printed because they’d break the game with one specific other card. Look at vampire hexmage from mtg, which instantly turned the obscure “dark depths” into an eternal powerhouse overnight. The more cards in a format, the more design space gets eaten up because each one has exponentially increased chance of creating broken combos with something else. Rotation is one way to expand the cool stuff a game can explore, without being as worried about printing open-ended cards.
Again, this is just my observation as a player playing lots of different games - and from my time working on a few different ones. Not speaking for anyone but myself. :)
Dan, a lot of us have a huge concern about the implications of rotations. Please just be aware that every card you rotate out loses you players and disgruntles fans. Nobody likes their favorite cards being unplayable anymore, even less than getting nerfed. This is a bad direction, I am playing this game because of hearthstone and how wild format sucks and all the cards I like are stuck to one stupid format with unbalanced combo crap. And the developers don’t give a single shit about that game mode.
Understood. Rotation is always a spicy topic, for the reasons you mentioned and more. Games that don’t use rotation tend to be more aggressive with bans or nerfs/reworks, which other players strongly dislike - because they’d rather play their favorite cards in some format than see a ban or redesign remove the chance entirely. No easy answers for sure. At least, not that I’ve seen. It’s a topic we’ll be paying very close attention to.