Balancing cards, multi-energy decks and game aesthetics

Sbraftaulio

After playing many games on Pocket, there some issues/suggestions I would like to point out:

1. As already discussed by other users, multi-energy decks have a huge disadvantage due to the random sampling of energies. In the physical game, the player can choose how many copies of a given energy use. According to the pokemon pocket gameplay, this would correspond to choose different probabilities for sampling energies, different from the 50-50 imposed by default. For the moment, experimenting the use of multiple energies has big drowbacks due to this issue.
2. Available missions are completed relatively fast, and the only thing that remains is battling against other players, which however only gives experience. It would be nice that battling other players would have additional rewards, or that a ranking mechanics would be introduced.
3. There are two-cards combos that are extremely strong, which is perfectly fine. Yet, having the possibility to employ multiple copies of a same card, even between the most powerful, in a deck consisting of only 20 cards, make many players end up using copies of a few same decks mostly made of 2 pokemons, which makes the game boring and tedious. I have lost the count of the players I have encountered with a deck consisting of 2xGardevoir and 2xMewtwo Ex, or 2xMoltres Ex and Arcanine+Charizard. This makes players less prone to experiment with different decks, especially adding issue 1. Would be nice seeing some extra level of complexity that allows a more strategical game that moves beyond combos involving solely 2 cards.
4. Some types of decks seems to be less effective, such as grass decks. I have seen few players using them, trying to build a Butterfree + Venusaur combo, which since involves two level 3 pokemons, is not as effective as a Moltres Ex + Charizard or a Gardevoir + MewtwoEx. Another example of less effective grass card is Exeggutor Ex, mainly due to the high retreat cost, that makes him not as good as other level 2 pokemons such as for example Starmie Ex. This should be balanced, but at the same time I would avoid adding another powerful 2 cards combo and rather balance a bit the others.
5. Some supporter cards are not as good as the others. For example, Brock only allows to add a single fight energy to only two specific pokemons, which reduces the effectiveness of fight-type decks.
6. The gift mechanics should be improved. After the first few times a player thank you, there is no reward, and you have to collect empty gifts. A possibility would be to introduce a "likes" mechanics, with additional missions/rewards dependently on the amount of likes a player have.
7. The aesthetics of the game should be improved. Binders and Displays are hidden. Would be nice having a virtual customizable room, where decks, binders, displays can be placed.

Thanks for reading this feedback, I hope it can help or start a conversation,

NL

GRussek

https://community.pokemon.com/en-us/discussion/14637/balancing-cards-multi-energy-decks-and-game-aesthetics

Great post! i agree with your points and it seems many others do as well. it seems the only players who would vote against nerfing the mewdevoir setup are the ones who play it as their only deck lol im not sure how that is fun but to each their own. the problem i see with ranking system is just that- gives people more insentive to just use the META decks to gain rank rather then expand the enjoyment for the entire community in the game. its hard because im also quite bored. the solo battles were fun and a couple took multiple tries of using different strageties (which was awesome) i hope they add more solo battle tiers or events as well as a non-ex battle arena

Casual_casval

Hey there, totally agree on lots of these points

For #2: It would be nice it there was a pve mode that would randomize between premade decks (maybe randomly generated using all the cards sort of how auto build will make a deck for you).

As for rewards in pvp, I just wish you didn't get so little. I wish experience was based off of points taken (maybe like 5xp per point) so even if you lost but it was 3-2, you would get 10xp. 15xp for winning, and 20xp for wining with 4 points. Maybe a ranked mode based on player levels that offered more xp/ hourglasses would be nice, since its disheartening getting to higher levels and it takes an eternity to level up even once because you only get xp for winning in a game thats very much based on rng

As for #3 and a bit of #4: I've found this issue lies mostly with the way battles start. The reason these decks dominate (Mewtwo ex/ Gardevoir, Moltres ex/Charizard ex, Pikachu ex) and what they all have in common is they all rely on basic EX Pokemon. An unfair advantage when looking at the opening turn structure. If they go first they can't do anything but put down cards or play a support but at least they can put out their EX which will have massive health with no real threat of being taken off the board for a few rounds. If they go second they can put down their EX and play a support AND start building up energy. My solution is that, just like EX pokemon are worth 2 points, EX pokemon can't be put out until each players second turn (turn 3 and 4).

This would mean basic ex's like Pikachu EX couldnt stack energy right away, or Moltres Ex couldnt start fueling the bench as quickly, or Mewtwo wouldnt already have 2 energy by the time they evolve Gardevoir.

This would increase the usefulness of stage 1 EX pokemon like exeggutor because at least they were able to stack energy in turn 1 despite being a little weaker, and it would give stage 2 EX's a chance to build up to their evolutions more frequently without getting taken out by basic EX's right away

Overall agree with everything else you mentioned, just wanted to give my 2 cents

EmperorIkiru

I don't have too much of problem dealing with some of the mentioned deck builds. And I don't use these 'meta' deck builds either. Overall a lot of current issues will probably be fixed as more card collections get added. Heres hoping x defend appears! I'm not worried about visual aspects as long as the game continues to function smoothly. Too many things added to the game could be detrimental to the optimization and cause other bugs and errors to appear. The tcg LIVE suffers a lot from such things.