Expanded w/ friends, card rarities, etc.
Recently came back to the game after playing it around launch, the primary reason I stopped playing was because at the time there were only a couple SWSH expansions in the game and that was all. I was pleased to see the progress made since then, now that they've added Sun & Moon cards to the game and fixed a lot of bugs. There's a few things still bugging (heh) me, though.
Mobile port internet issues:
First, the android and versions of the game have some serious connection issues, at least on my Pixel 7 and my friend's iPhone. Often, when my phone switches between Wi-Fi and mobile data, or between cell towers, the game does not behave nicely in response to even the split-second disconnection, throwing up a message saying that either it needs to reconnect, or, strangely, that I've logged in on another device and it needs to return to the title screen (I definitely didn't, and in these cases it makes me log in again) If it's my opponent's turn, they can actually continue playing until I hit the retry button, at which point I can only assume it forfeits the game. In fact, this continued even if I allowed my turn to be skipped for taking too long, so I can be certain it isn't just going off data that's already been sent to my phone. It seems that the issue here is not an actual connection problem, but rather, the game assumes there is and behaves accordingly. The game also 'loses connection' upon switching apps for more than a few seconds, indicating that its code is not set up to continue running when not the active window. This behaviour is not present on my Windows 10 laptop, although the mobile data portion is not applicable, because rapidly switching between networks is not a functionality that needs to be available on a computer, so any game is going to misbehave if a user briefly disconnects. This is not, however acceptable on a cell phone. With my limited understanding, it seems apparent that the issue is a product of less of a bug and more that the mobile port of the game is using pretty much the same code as the other versions for internet. My suggestion would be to have the mobile version just not have the forced resetting of the game upon disconnection, and instead leave it to the inactivity timer (which should maybe be a little shorter, but maybe it's just me), since if the player is really disconnected, they won't be doing much anyway.
Search functionality:
This one's pretty self-explanatory, filtering for cards with a specific effect is easy thanks to the fact that the search function includes the text on the cards, but unfortunately not all cards are created equal. I was trying to build a deck around discarding cards using Mewto V-Union, Lost Thunder Giratina, Mew & Mewtwo GX, and a few others, so I searched for several potential attack or ability texts that included 'Discard.' unfortunately, there are many discard based cards that just... Aren't that good, and I didn't have a ton of room for lots of different mons and needed a few highly effective ones. Since a card's power level can often be tied to its rarity, it would be really useful for deck building to include this feature, especially because different rarities cost different amounts to exchange for them.
Expanded Format:
Myself and the previously mentioned friend I like to play the game with both grew up collecting cards from XY and Sun & Moon, so we naturally both enjoy, and prefer, the Expanded format and are both focusing most of our resources toward building decks for the format. Unfortunately, there are two major issues: first, in order to build decks, we need trainer points and credits, which are far more readily accessible from ranked, meaning that we have to split our resources between making competitive Standard decks to get more of those resources and building the decks we actually want. The second issue is that we can't even play together in our preferred format! We've only battled each other once in Expanded, and it required me physically taking my friend's phone from him so I could hit the buttons simultaneously, and that only worked once, when nobody else was looking for a battle at the same time. Wouldn't it be easier to just have the default format for battling friends be Expanded, since standard decks are legal in Expanded, but not vice versa? Or, better yet, have it be toggleable? I'm no expert developer, but I can't imagine that would be exceedingly difficult to implement, since you can already switch between the two in Casual. For the first issue, I think an option for a ranked expanded mode would be great, and would let players play the way they want to. This could include a second, smaller battle pass that rotates through previous series' expansions, or allows you to choose an expansion to focus on. This is probably just wishful thinking as this would take a lot of effort to implement, but I'd like to believe it would bring more players to the game.
Old expansion products:
I've noticed that the Bundles section of the shop includes many digital counterparts of Elite Trainer Boxes and Premium Collections, which feature card sleeves and deck boxes resembling those included with the physical products. If I'm not mistaken, scanning an ETB code card unlocks these accessories, including those from Sun & Moon. However, these products are not purchasable in the shop (except theme decks for some reason?), as bundles have been added as expansions release, meaning only Sword & Shield and Scarlet & Violet collections are available, locking Sun & Moon accessories behind purchasing physical products the Pokémon Company hasn't offered in years. I would love to see these made available permanently, as the more modern ones have been.
Bots:
I frequently find myself, particularly in Ranked, battling against opponents whose names are always a random pokemon with a strong of 5 or so random numbers at the end, using the exact same tera Charizard ex deck with dark type accessories. They are very obviously bots, indicated not only by the previously mentioned characteristics, but also by extremely odd behaviors while playing. They always play any trainer cards they can, even if they are directly detrimental in that situation, attach more energy to specific pokemon than they could possibly have a use for, retreat unnecessarily, and even choose not to use attacks when there is no reason not to. Additionally, they seem to have artificial 'thinking' times where they take an absurd amount of time to make a decision, such as whether they want to go first, what cards they want to play during setup, or which cards they want to discard when playing Ultra Ball (strangely, they take no more than 5 seconds to search their deck) or Earthen Vessel. I don't know if they are made by a player or are intentionally in the game, but if it's the former, it's against the TOS, and if it's the latter, come on, you can do better. I'd rather spend several minutes waiting for a game than play against a AI. If you're going to have AI opponents, make a singleplayer mode, or at least let players know you're doing that. At the very least give them some variation for the decks they use, like when using the Test Deck feature.
Alright, that's all. At the end of the day, I enjoy this game a lot, and I'm just happy I can play it at all, but it's far from perfect, and I thought I may as well try, because none of these things would be likely to be resolved if I didn't say anything about them.
(Wow. I need to shut up. I just wrote over 1K words without realizing)