Pokémon TCG Pocket’s trading feature sounded like gold on paper. To have your digital binder of rare Pokémon cards available in your pocket and the ability to haggle with friends for cards which you haven’t pulled yet is a recipe for success. Well, in a world without predatory corporates, maybe.
Now that trading is available on the app, alongside the latest Space-Time expansion set, it goes to show that you really can’t have anything nice when it comes to mobile gaming. No matter what, mobile app and game makers will always try to milk as much money out of you, even if it means ignoring what makes the PTCG fun in the first place.
Pokémon Trading Card Game Pocket is littered with in-game restrictions which have been implemented in a sad attempt to get users to spend real money on the app. If anything, the entire system is sad and complicated.
Trading works with two new currencies called Trade Stamina and Trade Tokens (a mobile game with stamina – shocker). No matter what trade you initiate, you’ll need to use both of these currencies. So technically, just like Wonder Pick and booster pack opening, both of which use their own stamina, trading now has its own system. So three ways to limit game access behind a paywall or wait times.
Then we have the Trade Tokens, which are their own devilish problem. A different set of tokens is needed for different card rarities. For example
- Three Diamond – 120 Trade Tokens
- One Star – 400 Trade Tokens
- Four Diamonds – 500 Tokens.
Trade Tokens are consumed when a trade is successful, but you’ll also need to put them down as a deposit when you request your trade. However, the problem now is that these tokens aren’t just earned all willy-nilly. In fact, you need to throw away cards in your collection to convert them into Trade Tokens. That or earn the currency in limited quests and rewards.
You can also only convert Three Diamond, One Star, and Four Diamond cards into Trade Tokens. So you can’t even go ahead and trash the common cards you have accumulated over time. Cards convert into Trade Tokens at this rate:
- Three Diamonds – 25 Trade Tokens
- One Star – 100 Trade Tokens
- Four Diamonds – 125 Trade Tokens
To put this into perspective, if you have a Four Diamond card and no Trade Tokens, you’ll need to trash three “additional” Four Diamond cards in your collection to earn 500 Trade Tokens in order to trade someone for their single Four Diamond card.
The entire process puts these cards’ value into question. You’re paying 500 tokens for a single card, but the payment is equal to the amount of 4 cards of that same value. Don’t forget, you also can’t initiate more than one trade at a time, and this Four Diamond card trade will also deplete your Trade Stamina.
I get the stamina mechanic here. It prevents players from spamming their trades in one day and completing their collection. Just like in real life, spending money on Pokémon Cards means getting a job and working for that money. Money needs to be earned – poor analogy, I know.
But this Trade Token nonsense is exactly what it is – nonsense. The limited cards you can “burn” or “trash” for Trade Tokens means you can’t toss away your “bulk” for something cool. Getting rid of “bulk” in the real PTCG is a chore, but you’re never forced to sit with all those extra Professor’s Research cards (or in my case, Thundurus (Holo) #70, God, I hate this damn card).
This trading feature goes against everything that makes Pokémon Trading Card Game fun. I suspect this mechanic has been so poorly implemented in order to get players to forget about it and instead, spend money on opening booster packs instead. Because if you can’t trade it, pull it, right?
Either that or because players need so many “rarer” cards to convert into Trade Tokens, The Pokemon Company thought “Hey, they will spend even more on opening booster packs to get these cards – cha-ching!”
Anyway, I hate this system. It is a big mistep for the series, and I can’t fathom why it is so restricted. If The Pokémon Company would just ease up on the Trade Token a bit, maybe it would be more appealing.
Header Image Credit – Babbledoodle