Feedback as of 1/15/23

I want to preface by saying I'm a long time player of a lot of trading card games. I've been heavily invested into Pokémon since it hit the US 25 years ago. I've been on PTCGO for only about five years, but I had hundreds, if not thousands of dollars invested into that collection. It was something I took pride in because I would do my due diligence of trading to get the nice things for my collection. It felt good to build my collection as I found deals and made deals for others with my excess. The trading system isn't perfect. But this crafting system leaves something to be desired. The rewards structure overall leaves a lot to be desired.

Gameplay and unintelligible menus aside, I want to discuss stark differences between PTCGO and PTCGL as it is today. It is my hope that the feedback will be heard and maybe some small semblance of progress is made in regards to it. The beta we're experiencing now is flawed in many ways. Graphically, it's a mess. Cards and games go through motions that are flashy and feel jarring and unnatural. There are navigations that don't make sense such as the "exit game" button being nearly the same color as the background. I miscrafted two or three cards when I first began because the crafting system is unintuitive. I quickly found myself disinterested in playing when my capacity to craft and earn cards was slowed to a crawl by the rewards system which barely even drip feeds you rewards beyond dailies. The most I play now is a game or two a day to get the battle pass (yawn) rewards. And then I find myself thinking about how great X deck would be to try and I remember: it takes about 5 days of grinding battle pass rewards just to get enough credits to craft a couple Full Art cards. There's a huge imbalance between what cards cost to craft, what they reward you with for credits for your excess is piecemeal in comparison to their crafting costs. And I can't even dust the cards in my collection that I don't want. I have never once cared about a rainbow rare. Why shouldn't I be able to get rid of it to make something I actually want to play with? If you're going to take away trading and introduce a dust-like economy, do it right. Look around at the other online TCGs and see what makes their dusting systems work and feel good for the players. I feel like I have zero control over my collection and the game's only goal is to get me to spend money on packs outside the game to bring in to the game because the rewards beyond doing your dailies are so small they're almost nonexistent. The game as it stands literally gives you 0 motivation to play beyond doing daily tasks to grind the rather unimpressive rewards from the battle pass. (I'm on tier 36. Almost done with this rotation. Could probably have been motivated to play more if each win was worth more than 10 points on the battle pass.)

The obfuscation of resources is ridiculous and entirely unnecessary. Coins? Why? What're they for? Buying cosmetics? So 1/4th of my rewards is simply cosmetics related and when I've got all those...? Another 1/4th my rewards are those 10 battle pass points. Woo. The premium battle pass doesn't even have enough crystals in the rewards to pay for itself! It literally only has enough crystals to buy 3 packs in total! Cool that's half my rewards for nothing at all. And oh, wait, what are the other rewards? Ladder points which grant me cheesey avatar cosmetics that again, I don't care about and PROFILE LEVEL POINTS, WHICH DO EXACTLY WHAT?! I'm profile level 10 and still haven't a single clue what profile level is supposed to mean or what it's good for? There's no rewards track for leveling up your profile. It's just a seemingly endless points grind that grants you what? "Bragging rights?" You have GOT to be KIDDING me right now! 100% of the meager rewards system set in place is garbage tier resources and meant to keep non-invested minnows from playing the game while the whales feast and everyone in between scrambles to get out of the whales' way so they can eat the minnows. The resource/rewards system as it stands is entirely unacceptable. It's not even worth the crystals I spent on the battle pass to grind it to the end (which is impossible given it ends in less than a week and there's no way to buy in game currency so I can buy those tiers that are offered to be unlocked for 200 crystals a tier.) You don't even give out crystals for wins. The credits per win are a spit in the face. A drop in the bucket. You want someone to win 50 games to craft A good card. It needs restructure.

Remove the facepaint. Quit clowning around with these avatars. Right now it feels like PTCGL is an actual circus in comparison to PTCGO. A shadow of what PTCGO offers. Expanded? Forget about it. I can't even find my N's and Computer Searches in my collection. The game isn't even close to ready for Expanded. As someone who spent 5 years cultivating a collection on PTCGO and enjoyed the experience of playing, deck building, community chat and trading cards, PTCGL is a far cry from where it needs to be in order to succeed PTCGO. I can only say "you got me" and shrug my shoulders in disappointment as The Pokémon Company did indeed get me. I ported my account thinking we we're taking steps forward and trusting in the brand. And now I'm just flabbergasted by how many steps back this abomination of an "upgrade" you've offered me is. If I could reverse the port and go back to PTCGO, I would. In a heartbeat. So shout me out when that option becomes available. Otherwise, you've got a lot of work ahead of you if you want to regain my faith in brand, Pokémon Company.