After 150 in-game hours, some personal feelings and suggestions
I've been playing A LOT pokemon live recently, because i love the pokemon TCG, even though i can't afford to play in real or even PTCGO. The game is still in beta, so there aren't many things to do (just laddering or informal matches to complete daily missions), but the game is improving a lot after every uptade, the are way less matchmaking problems, bugs, the animations are faster and, in general, it's becoming a good game. I'd like to make some suggestions to the developers, I hope these considerations will be heard:
1) More options: I think you should reintroduce little tournaments like in PTCGO or something similar, they are nice and help people play something different sometimes, also i suggest you to introduce a new ladder for the expanded format. I love expanded format, and thanks to the crafting system it can really shines: playing Expanded format online or in real it's really difficult because the cards are hard to find for new players and usually very expensive, but with live there aren't any problems.
2) A better battle pass: The introduction of the battle pass like in the other TCG was really good. But it's pretty underwelming: after 3 or so weeks i completed the pass and i literally had no ways to really get crystal or packs besides the daily missions. I love the fact that you don't have to spend hundred of euros in packs to play, but the game has to give you the opportunity to get the cards you want by grinding, or people will just buy packs from third party shops like as they do with PTCGO (where they have at least the opportunity to trade packs for cards, so they don't have to open hundreds of packs hoping to be lucky). Also, the premium pass gives you to few gams, crystals and packs, so it must give you better rewards if you want people keep playing to grind.
3) Let people chat with one another when they are playing with friends. I think this is pretty obvious why
4) Keep the Celebrations exploit: I'm pretty sure you know what i'm talking abut. Competitive players don't have time to grind, they have to have a way to obtain a lot of gems pretty fast, eventually paying the right amount of money to have this privilege. If you remove it, they are gonna HATE this game and they will want to good old PTCGO back, where they didn't have to grind for hours. Pls, don't do this mistake, it would completely ruined all the potential of this game for competitive
That's all for today, i hope someone will read this
Comments
-
I mostly agree with everything in this post
Here's some of my personal opinions to complement it.
1)I completely agree with having an expanded ladder, probably not yet since expanded isn't fully implemented in the game, but once it is we should have it. I also think we should get a different battle pass for expanded matches. Having a second battle pass would help the economy a lot. There's barely enough rewards from the current one to play one format, almost impossible to keep building decks for both. Having an individual battle pass for each format would either give you enough cards and credits to support both formats, or if you want to focus in one specific format, you could just build one deck good enough to grind daily rewards for the format you don't want to play, and have double the rewards to build decks in the format you like.
I'm not sure if tournament mode needs to come back, i always saw it as a really slow way to play ladder, but with better rewards, i never played tournaments because i found them fun.
2) I honestly don't understand why the credit rewards are always 25-50 credits, in a game where a rare cost 400, and a Vstar over a 1000, i don't see why the individual credit rewards can't be 10 times higher, it wouldn't even improve the economy that much to be honest.
Also, i think an "extra level" at the end of the battle pass could be great, similar to pokemon unite. If you finish the battle pass, extra experience would go to an "extra level" instead, this level, which doesn't neccessarily needs to be every 1000 points, it could be 1200 or 1500, whatever the devs think its balance; could give a player an extra random reward, this reward could be a random number of credits, a random number of gems, or maybe even a random standard pack (or expanded pack in case of the hyphotetical expanded battle pass mentioned above). This change gives players a reason to grind, since the extra battle pass points will always give you more resources to build decks.
3) Nothing to discuss here, this is pretty self explanatory
4) Having an economy tied to an exploit is really bad for a game, it usually becomes a big problem for new players and players who are not aware of the exploit. See Yugioh master duel for example, the first months after that game released the economy was completely based around how well you understood the gem exploit, and the devs found a way to fix the problem by improving the economy instead of killing the exploit, you can still do it but playing normally gives you the same amount of gems now. I'm not gonna comment a lot in this point, since i don't have an idea for a solution. But there's probably a way improve what you get from other packs instead of destroying the only reliable way to get credits.
2 -
I thought I’d add my thoughts since why not :)
- I agree with what you said about tournaments and the expanded format, though the already existing tournaments in Pokémon TCG online are nifty, just having a tournament version of a format is pretty lackluster, it would be nice if there was something more creative and interesting when it comes to that. In fact, I personally think Pokémon could use some more niche formats. All we have is standard and expanded, and I guess legacy and theme decks if you even count those two as formats, but this is leading into my next suggestion.
- I think it’s about time something like pauper was added to Pokémon, or just some new rule set that spices things up. I personally really like the idea of a pauper format for Pokémon, since most decks you see are just big stompy V-max Pokémon. There’s not much variation and you hardly ever see a new deck or even a deck that doesn’t use a Pokémon with a rule box. Allowing only common and uncommon cards (AKA pauper) would allow for more creative deck building and more chill gameplay.
- The last suggestion I have which is a tad unrelated but I guess I’ll add it, is it’s disappointing to hear the heartgold and soul silver blocks are getting removed. I really like the old Pokémon sets and I was super excited for celebrations because old cards like umbreon gold star got reprinted. And something I never saw coming but loved even more was seeing new Pokémon in old styles, like the delta mimikyu. I was hoping older sets and mechanics would be integrated into the new Pokémon TCG, but I guess that may not be the plan since they’re removing one of those old sets.
- I know it makes sense to remove the heartgold and soul silver blocks, I mean they are old. But many players have an affinity for old Pokémon sets and mechanics, and I think a business case could be made where it makes sense to reprint or reuse old cards/mechanics. Many players are interested in cards like that, and plus, you don’t even have to make new cards if you’re reprinting them. It’s wouldn’t take as much effort as something new. I’d even argue new players would have an interest in old stuff, heck, I grew up in the black and white era and my favorite set is delta species.
Anyways, if anyone else feels the same way (or doesn’t) I’d really like to hear what you think :) plus, if enough people show interest in new tournaments, new formats, old stuff coming back, etc. It may actually happen, your thoughts could make a difference :D
0 -
@Edurandomnumber The only way to "fix" the "exploit" (which isn't really an exploit in the first place) is to reset everything and reduce the rarities of most cards in the set to common, which isn't really fair. It doesn't really matter as much though, since really the truth is that any small set is gonna give more credits than any large set. That's just because of how they set the system up. It's not really a problem, since even without CEL you get a lot of credits if you know what you're doing.
Really though, this wouldn't be a problem in the first place if packs still had 10 cards and we could turn cards into credits at will. Doing both of those would turn CEL from an "exploit" to simply being the best set for credit farming. the smaller special sets are all good for it though. PGO, for example, will get you quite a few credits easily.
0
