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Lack of Theme or prebuilt vs prebuit decks makes the game very inaccessible to beginners
The lack of theme decks, tournaments and no prebuilt or theme decks makes this game very difficult to beginner accounts. Once PTCGO is shut down I will no longer be playing PTC.
Comments
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Alright, how many free decks do you want the game to give you before you say that it's accessible to beginners? On the pass that's about to expire you're literally getting a free Lugia VSTAR deck and a free Regidrago VSTAR deck (which isn't quite as strong but it's still pretty good). And the next pass will have FOUR free decks that range between pretty good and amazing (Mew VMAX, Eternatus VMAX, Palkia VSTAR and Arceus VSTAR). In what world is getting one of these decks worse than getting a poorly made Theme Deck? There's a reason that they discontinued them after all. If you want to leave the game then feel free, but saying that Live is worse for new players than Online is ludicrous.
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I think the crafting system is very good for new players, but they should give out more crafting materials because for example it takes 9k credits to make a competitive mew VMAX deck without trainer cards, and the game barely gives you any even with premium battle pass. Otherwise I disagree that the game is inaccessible for beginners.
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Beyond just new players, I think that a lack of game modes is an issue for all of us.
This current Lugia meta shows how quickly it can get boring playing standard, especially considering we have another three months of this, so having the option to play other modes is vital.
If the developers want to encourage user engagement during these lulls, having other game modes, events and different ways to interact with the client (collection viewing/management) is vital.
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theme decks have been discontinued, the last one released was several years ago now, November 2020. it is obvious that it is not a format they want to continue with. I don't think this is a choice from the developers of this game, but rather the Pokemon Company themselves.
Personally, whilst theme decks were ok for new players to play with, I don't necessarily think they do a good job of preparing players for the standard format, the steep difference in power between theme and standard I think diminished a lot of potential value as a learning tool, which is why I think they introduced V Battle decks instead, as new players can learn more about the standard game with those than with theme decks
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I miss the mode because it was essentially game enforced casual. When casual mode is a 50/50 shot between actual casual decks and meta decks that don't want to play ranked, you don't get much in the way of options.
I want Gym Leader challenge and structure deck formats.
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