Not much of a TRADING card game…
I’ll start by saying that I am a completely free-to-play player. When I started playing this game, I was impressed by the way collecting was handled. It didn’t require players to spend money in order to get the majority of the cards, like you might see in some other tcg games/apps. In fact, if I remember correctly, when you start playing the game, a message from the developer pops up to specifically say that players don’t need to spend money to collect the cards. As I played the game, I realized that message was right. And until yesterday I sat, one card away from completing the Mythical Island Dex and six cards from completing Genetic Apex, still thinking that once trading comes out, a free-to-play player like me could actually reasonably collect the entire dex if I played often enough. Then trading came out, and I see that that original developer message was a lie. The design of trading is a deliberate cash-grab, and that’s obvious. I have no issues with the trade stamina, as similar systems are used for pack opening, event missions, and wonder picking. But where you lost me was with Trade Tokens. In order to trade for an Ex card, I would need 7 spare Ex cards just to complete the trade: 4 to consume for enough trade tokens, 2 more because I can’t consume a card unless I have two duplicates, and another one to trade to my friend. I’m lucky if I even have 3 copies of the same card of that rarity, much less 7! But I suppose the intended solution is just to buy more packs with real money, isn’t it? And just like that, this game became just like the others. Now money-grubbing, aside, the rest of trading is poorly designed as a whole. I can only trade with my friends. That’s restrictive, but understandable. I have no way of telling my friend what card I need, so it ends up working much like Wonder Trading in the video games. This encourages the use of third party platforms like Discord, etc to establish trades. Why is there not a service included on the app in order to establish this sort of trade? If you want to offer and gets something random, fine. But include a way to trade that lets us ask as well. I never have, and never will spend a dime on this game, but something has to change here. You’re a multibillion dollar company. Do better.