Pokemon TCG Pocket’s New Trading Feature Is a Major L

Trading has always been a staple of the Pokemon series. So when it was announced that we would eventually get trading in Pokemon TCG Pocket, fans were excited. Unfortunately, now that it’s finally here, the trade feature is officially the first major L for Pokemon TCG Pocket.

Let me go over how it works.

First, you need an item called a Trade Hourglass in order to even trade in the first place. You can stack up to five of these at a time, and they also regenerate over time. Alright, fine. A little bit restrictive, and I would’ve liked to be able to trade cards whenever I want, but I can live with that.

Next, you also need a new currency called Trade Tokens in order to trade cards of a certain rarity. The amount needed is different depending on the rarity, as listed below:

• 3-diamond: 120 Trade Tokens
• 1-star: 400 Trade Tokens
• 4-diamond: 500 Trade Tokens

And how do you get these Trade Tokens? At the time of writing, the only way to get them is by destroying dupes of your cards. And again, the amount of Trade Tokens you get for each card also depends on their rarity. Destroying a 3-diamond card, 1-star card, and 4-diamond card gets you 25, 100, and 125 Trade Tokens, respectively. This means that if you want to trade a 4-diamond card (and these are usually the coveted Ex cards), you’ll need to destroy at least four Ex dupe cards.

The problem with this system is that it completely goes against the point of trading in Pokemon TCG Pocket in the first place. With how the probabilities work for each booster pack opening, chances are very good that you could spend months on end without ever seeing a specific 3-diamond card while hoarding multiple copies of another one. The point of the trading feature was to help players complete their collections and get rid of their dupes in exchange for a card they’ve been missing for ages.

By forcing players to actively destroy dupes to get Trade Tokens, the trading function feels significantly less valuable than it should’ve been. Needless to say, the Pokemon TCG Pocket player base isn’t pleased in the slightest. It definitely doesn’t help that pack points don’t carry over between card sets either, which means that as more sets get released over time, it’s just going to get increasingly harder for players to complete a single set, especially if you’re free-to-play.

Up to this point, developing studio DeNA has been completely on-point with how they’ve handled Pokemon TCG Pocket. New cards have been released in a nice cadence — with Promo Pack events and the Mythical Island mini set releasing between major expansions — and the meta-game has been populated with a good variety of decks. Gameplay-wise, Pokemon TCG Pocket is in a healthy state.

But what about folks who just care about the collection aspect? Trading was supposed to help alleviate the game’s economic issues, but as it stands, it’s only doing more harm than good. It’s worth noting that there are things DeNA could do to help players get more Trade Tokens. For instance, we could start being able to get them as mission or event rewards, or even purchase them with Shop Tickets. It’d still make trading a total drag, but it’d be better than nothing.

For now, though, things aren’t looking too great for the F2P players, and something needs to give.