The Problems I See and How I Think They Could Be Fixed

TheRealSpecder

i want to start this by saying im a new player to the Pokemon TCG but 100% not new to online card games like this one. i dabbled a bit in the ptcgo platform (played for like a few weeks) never really got anywhere on it tho. when i saw this game launch i figured i would give it a try. these are my thoughts on the game after about 24hrs of playtime.

1) Purple crystals (or the lack of)

• currently the only way i see to obtain them is by either leveling up your profile, or completing the battle pass mission that resets daily. this makes it nearly impossible for a newer player to obtain new card packs/ decks
• some ways to fix this problem are to implement a daily log in reward, reward players after each victory in ranked, adding them as ranked level up rewards, add them to the basic version of the battle pass, reduce the cost of packs/decks by 25%
• make them purchasable for real money? Im not a huge fan of this method but it would increase revenue from the game and people would have the choice on if they wanted to be free to play or not. Although this could cause backlash from peopleas it could make some think the game is pay-2-win even tho there is still skill required to play the decks/cards. people already get an advantage if they buy packs IRL as it is, might as well just make it so u can buy the pack in game and cut having to go to the store to buy a pack or purchasing pack codes online out of the picture and in doing so this would reduce the risk of people being scammed when buying pack codes and could possibly eliminate 3rd party sellers of packs codes (which imo is a good thing)

2) Ranked

• the ranked level up system needs work. currently you only get rewarded for every 5 ranks u climb and the rewards are laughable at best. this could be easily fixed by just adjusting the rewards mostly.
• for every 5 ranks you should get a big reward like 3 card packs or crystals/credits, not cosmetics that you only see at the very beginning/end of a battle.
• for the ranks that aren't milestone ranks you could give coins (i dont think this is a good idea tho) or credits (this is what i feel most people playing would rather have)
• every rank you go up should give a reward.

3) Battle Pass

• we need more battle pass missions. currently there are only 2 and you can complete them in a single battle extremely easily. in my opinion you should add more missions and maybe make them a little more difficult.
• increase the rewards from completing battle pass mission if you do not add more missions
• reduce the amount of xp needed to advance battle pass ranks or increase the battle pass xp earned from winning battles
• remove the ability to use crystals to advance tiers in the battle pass.
• ive noticed a few minor visual bugs and glitches in the battle pass when trying to look at rewards in tiers you have not yet unlocked.

5) Deck creator

• i feel like this was done pretty well but i also feel like it needs some minor tweaks
• make the cards in the library a little smaller
• make is more clear on which cards are banned from standard and which are banned from expanded. currently its kinda hard to tell at a quick glance if the card is banned or not in a certain format unless you change your filter settings
• when you select favorites it should make all the decks you dont have a star on vanish. currently the deck screen isnt very easy on the eyes when you dont have any cosmetics to make the decks look different.
• make the letters under the decks BOLD
• remove the duplicate options. currently the test deck, duplicate, export and delete option are duplicated. to fix i would remove the set of option under the active deck/ edit deck option and leave them under the menu with the 3 dots (will include pictures) the top pictures menu is accessed by clicking the 3 dots in the top right of the bottom picture

6) Coins

• in my opinion these are useless, just remove this currency entirely from the game
• make whatever gave coins as a reward give credits
• convert peoples existing coins into credits
• make everything that was available for coins available for credits.

7) 7- 30 day Login and or Daily rewards

• im not sure why this game doesnt have it considering like 99% of games like this that are currently out do but you should 100% add one.
• adding 7-30 day log-in rewards will entice players to log in daily (each day could give credits/crystals and then on the last day of each week of the reward tracker it could give a card pack from the newest set. in order to get all the rewards you would need to at least log in to the game and collect them by proxy increasing the traffic in the game and tempt players to stay logged in to check out all the cool rewards they obtained
• daily rewards could be based on completing challenges kind of like the battle pass challenges but more for amped for the entire day (examples: win 3-5 battles, deal 2000 total damage, play 10 support cards.. this of that nature that will take more than one battle to complete)

8) Lifetime Achievements

• a certain other card game i play online has this really cool lifetime achievement system that tracks and rewards players for their feats in battle and i feel like this would be a really nice thing to add to the game and give players something other than mindlessly grinding the new best meta deck untill they cant play anymore
• the system could track things such as how many pokemon youve put into play, how much total damage you have delt, or it could track how many times youve done a single attack that did over x amount of damage and then it could reward you for certain milestones such as when youve delt 10000, 100000, or 1000000 total damage you would get rewards or after you done an attack that did 400 damage in a single hit 10, 50, 100 times you would get rewards.
• this kind of system makes it so players have something other to do than just grind the newest meta deck and in doing so makes the players be a bit more creative when building decks if they plan on completing the lifetime achievements

9) Tournaments and other gamemodes

• im sure this is already planned but adding some sort of tournaments like ptcgo had would be nice
• could add some fun formats to play such as an original 151, a fire-type only, a no trainers or something along the lines of those
• move the "deck test" option to the Home page and rename it to "Vs AI" (i didnt notice the deck test option for like 3 days and had no idea how to play my deck as a new player which forced me to learn them in casual battles untill a buddy pointed it out to me)

10) DARK MODE

• i dont know about everyone else but staring at the blinding white that is the background of this game gives me a headache after a few hours, even faster if im playing at night
• could make it an option you can toggle on or off

all in all im really enjoying this game but it feels like im making absolutely zero progress. I been playing constantly every day since i picked it up and i still feel like im at square one. will it make me stop playing? for the time being no, but if a few more weeks go by and i still feel like im not making any progress maybe.. hopefully someone with some pull reads this and at least a few of these changes make it into live, if not oh well i tried :P i feel like i have rambled enough, please let me know if you have any feedback :D

skaerkrow

This is a well written and solidly detailed post that addresses many of my thoughts on the game too. I do think that the actual gameplay experience of Live is really solid and feels very similar to playing the game on paper, regardless of a bunch of bugs which I'd absolutely expect during the beta phase of a game's release.

With the way battle pass quests are set up at the moment it seems to incentivise logging in once per day and playing 1-2 games to complete the quests, then leaving. Battle Pass rewards also start off strong then fall off very quickly. Out of the 4500 credits available in the premium battle pass, 2750 of the are literally in the first rank. On a related note, the /entire/ battle pass being worth roughly 4.4 VMax/VStar pokemon (or 6 V) seriously affects deck diversity especially at lower ranks. The game's very generous with giving players access to specific decks (I'm looking at you, Lugia) but the reverse edge of that point is that most players will only ever have access to those specific decks.

With rank-up rewards as the avatar aesthetics too (which seem quite unpopular at best) there doesn't seem to be a reason to play much ranked either.

Perhaps a system like Coins being used to upgrade cards you own to different versions (like the rainbow rare ones or full art supporters etc) instead of for the avatar aesthetics would be cool and would give players a reason to actually hunt for coins.

A pretty serious concern of mine though is that codes from booster packs that would give 10 cards in TCGO and only give 5 now in Live. Since it's impossible to return to TCGO it's massively disincentivised me purchasing paper booster packs because I just don't get as much out of it. I'd understand a bit more if there was a system in place to dismantle unwanted cards in exchange for credits, as players would likely end up with a /lot/ of extra "chaff" to dismantle and it'd affect the more long term purchase rates etc (while boosting the short term still).

Live is /so close/ to being an amazing experience in my opinion, it just needs a couple of pushes to incentivise players investing time into it.

ProfessorIDGAF

Lots of good suggestions in here. I hope more players chime in and show support. More voices shows demand. Demand results to real change 🤓