FairyLandAlice

Aspiring Trainer
Member
This is simply not an accurate take. You can still buy codes from ebay or private sellers, so the first market you describe will see minor inflation at worst, which is already happening because of popularity. Pack prices IRL will not be affected by this market, and codes in bulk are still going to sell as an undercut as much as they can to get rid of them to get some return on their initial investment of cases of cards. Code prices might be higher initially when the new-thing-popularity is high when the app releases, but they'll go back down after the honeymoon phase. It also sets a ceiling -- if packs are $1 online, that's the highest they could ever possibly be, period.

In this new system, all that's given are additional options to acquire digital product.
What are you talking about? There won't be a trade system in the new app, so what point will there be in buying codes anymore? When I was talking about market I was referring to the in-game card market. Codes won't be currency anymore. The only valid currencies from now on will be in-game currencies. The price of that currency and the price for individual cards will now be decided unanimously by TPCi. And I'm pretty sure it won't be as "cheap" as it is now.
 

FairyLandAlice

Aspiring Trainer
Member
Hold on, trading won’t be available? Does this mean that we will be able to use these credits to buy EXACTLY the card that we want? If so I think I’m down for this!
Yep, but good luck with that. I foresee those individual cards to be pretty expensive, forcing you to either grind a lot, and I mean, A LOT, or to pay real life money.

Now that I think about it though, from now on, if you buy codes it won't be to use tradeable packs as currency... But to open them, since from now on when you get more than 4 copies of the same card in a pack you will get in-game currency to get the cards you want. So the code market could become a cheaper alternative to the prices decided by TPCi for the game itself. That, and only that, could be the saving grace for TCG Live.
 

Mesiia

Aspiring Trainer
Member
What are you talking about? There won't be a trade system in the new app, so what point will there be in buying codes anymore? When I was talking about market I was referring to the in-game card market. Codes won't be currency anymore. The only valid currencies from now on will be in-game currencies. The price of that currency and the price for individual cards will now be decided unanimously by TPCi. And I'm pretty sure it won't be as "cheap" as it is now.
You buy codes. Redeem codes. Open packs. Packs you open with excess cards get you credits. You use credits to get specific cards you want. Seems pretty self-explanatory. If anything, it'll be easier to get what you want than our current pack market, wherein if you want to build a 'new' tier 1 deck from scratch (EG Shadow Rider), you're looking at 100+ packs of the current set. If you open 100 packs of the next set, you'll not only have many of the pieces you already need, but more than enough credits to fill in the rest. Market unaffected. The big question, I guess, is if you'll be able to 'buy' credits, which is a fair question in hindsight. In Pokemon Unite (not same type of game but same company at least), you can only buy one currency, which I feel pretty confident in saying will be the situation here, as crystals. Could be wrong I guess, but it'd be a lot harder for them to do that than just have crystals as the main source.

The other big question is obviously the price they set in game for crystals. If it's as ludicrously atrociously awful as gem prices were, then they'll be laughed out of the building. Crystal purchases equivalent to $1/pack or like 6packs/$5 sounds reasonable to me, maybe even a little higher than that. I think if it's any higher, they'll be leaving a lot of revenue on the table to people who will just buy the codes for less than half of that price and never think about microtransactions.
 

MagnaDrake

Aspiring Trainer
Member
Which is better, a free market where people decide the prices, and where currency can be bought at reasonable prices in eBay or from private sellers? Or a private market where a private company just willing to milk as much money as possible decides the prices?
Oh yeah, sure, let me just swipe my card to buy $50 dollars worth of packs just to get 4 copies of Shadow Rider Calyrex VMax. What a transparent, reasonable price for 4 digital cards with no physical value that is 100% perishable on the whims of the server owners!

What are you talking about? There won't be a trade system in the new app, so what point will there be in buying codes anymore? When I was talking about market I was referring to the in-game card market. Codes won't be currency anymore. The only valid currencies from now on will be in-game currencies. The price of that currency and the price for individual cards will now be decided unanimously by TPCi. And I'm pretty sure it won't be as "cheap" as it is now.
Codes are still redeemable on the new client. The only difference currently is they said it 'may give you different rewards from PTCGO', of which I'm inferring as 'you get packs to open, but if you already have a playset of a card, further dupes are turned to credits'. Or it could be something else, Iunno.
 

signofzeta

Aspiring Trainer
Member
Nice, not MTG Arena or Yugioh Master Duels nice, but nice nonetheless.

Goodbye Mick, Goodbye Dan, Goodbye, uh, goodbye, whoever the single player campaign opponents are.
 

shaman

Uncommon
Member
Something I haven't seen anyone talk about as far as trading goes is the fact that if it moves to a MTGA or Hearthstone model (which it does sound like), there's no such thing as "budget" any more. While yes, some of the most exorbitantly-priced cards in the meta recently like SR and Urshifu will be much cheaper and more easily obtainable, the less-played and older cards will be made to cost the same amount as fresh new meta cards. Gone will be the days of having a booster box's amount of packs and getting a few fun, weird little decks out of it. Budget decks are my bread and butter, and this makes me very sad.

With that, who's going to play much of anything other than the meta now? Why spend the crafting material to make an off-meta V when you can just craft the strongest decks for the same price? Your money just isn't going to go as far anymore. For the amount I spend each set that comes out, I would be astonished if I can make more than 3 decks.

People who are against the trading system have good complaints. But all of them can be fixed without doing away with the system entirely. I've always been happy to buy codes on my own because I get to determine the price. I get to negotiate with another human being and settle on something that works for both of us. It was my biggest reason for starting to play Pokemon at all, coming from Magic and how they've treated their playerbase on MTGA. People hate the system we have now, but you'll very much miss it if things go the way of MTGA.
 

Serperior

~
Advanced Member
Member
"Players will be given eight free preconstructed decks to begin their experience in PTCGL." Basically theme decks I suppose, not the already existed one but new ones
Looking forward to competing with the Throh/Machoke/Drilbur concoction against my opponent's Alolomola/Seaking/Jellicent dogpile
 

The Binder Guy

Aspiring Trainer
Member
There’s really only one, at least for me, way to describe this shift: YECCH!

I watched the trailer and it honestly feels like TPCi wants a piece of the same pie that MTG Arena, YGO Duel Links, and Hearthstone already have the lion’s share of (not that the untogglable attack graphics used in the current TCGO app aren’t an indication of that). The new avatars, while better than the Flash-styled ones we’ve had since the TCGO’s inception, look like they’re rip-offs of those animated emojis that are plaguing mobile networks today. And I really, really, REALLY don‘t like the emotes, I actually prefer the current TCGO’s canned chat over ‘em. My only hope is that those Zog-awful emotes can be turned off, if they can’t then I hope they suffer the same tragic fate as The TCGO’s old in-game chat.

The way the three in-game currencies were explained in the news reel is extremely lackluster and raises a LOT of alarm bells for me. Credits aren’t explained in-depth: What do individual cards cost in Credits? How many credits do you get from a card when you go over four and what’s the exchange rate in regards to rarity? What cards CAN’T you get with credits (if you even believe for a second you’ll be able to get Tropical Beach at ALL then I have a bridge in the Mojave I’d like to sell to you)? How many Crystals does it cost to buy a pack/promo/bundle? And most importantly, will there be micro-transactions?

The lack of trading is something I‘m not happy with but the new spare-cards-to-credits machine renders the thing kind of a moot point, IIRC MTG Arena did something similar to this and it wasn’t that well received. Why can’t both systems exist?

The lack of HGSS-CoL cards is definitely sad but I can see whey they‘re leaving the game. Legacy, while somewhat fun, was a compromise between keeping Unlimited and getting rid of it completely and it REALLY showed. If TPCi gave Dire Wolf Digital the means to bring Japan’s Palace/Hall of Fame format to international audiences then I could’ve seen it surviving. I’m definitely going to miss using my HS-era PokeGear 3.0s instead of the ones from SWSH.

Transferring over your TCGO collection to TCGL is something that I’m happy to see, but I‘m disappointed in them not clarifying if the transfer allows locked cards to be transferred.

All in all, I need more convincing and assurances for TCGL to win me over and it’s already stumbling out of the door in that regard.
 

GM DracLord

Shadow of Death
Member
I understand why they want to axe HGSS-CoL since the cards itself are standalone formot that they wanted to streamlined,

Imagin people who opened soo many packs and risked getting those multiple copies of common, unco, rares/holo/ex more than 4 copies and not being able to transfer the extra, meaning all the money spent would turn to dust, this would make people reconsider redeeming any more codes in the old client and wait for the new 1 just to open all the codes they have left.
 

Flygonite

Meta/budget player
Member
LOL at people unironically thinking that this will somehow be more budget-friendly than the system we currently have.

Let's look at a simple comparison: I want to build a Zacian Inteleon deck. I was missing 4 Crystal Cave, despite opening 50 EVS packs already.
I simply got 4 of these (and 4 of Shopping Center) by putting an EVS pack up to trade. Cheap and I didn't spend time either grinding for extra resources to craft them or God forbid, enough tokens to buy 100 packs and PRAY I got my playset.

Another comparison: I want to build Tapu Koko VMAX. I can either trade 10 packs at the moment and get the entire playset of both the base form AND the VMAX, alongside 4 Voltorb and 4 Electrode. How much time do you think this will take me to setup with the craft and pack opening system compared to simply putting up the trade and in less than 8 hours (of which I don't even have to play) get them????

What people miss out on gacha-based systems like these is that getting a single deck will be easier. Building extra decks? You're screwed. You need to shell out massive amounts of money to get multiple decks and the stuff that now won't be priced by the playerbase, but by TPCi, which has no other purpose other than to get you to SPEND MONEY.

If you think TPCi has your interests at heart, then think about what I wrote and RECONSIDER.
 

The Binder Guy

Aspiring Trainer
Member
I was so annoyed that the TCGO was on IPad but not phone, this is a improvement
I kind of get why TCG players wanted the TCGO be on smartphones but I don’t really see it as a necessity, the only times I can’t play the TCGO on my tablet is when I’m away from a Wi-Fi hotspot (my phone has mobile hotspot functions, but it sadly refuses to let the TCGO connect at all).
This whole app can just go straight into the Nope-folder
Agreed. It feels like thease changes are largely being done to cater to the streaming crowd and I’ve learned to REALY hate those guys.
LOL at people unironically thinking that this will somehow be more budget-friendly than the system we currently have.

Let's look at a simple comparison: I want to build a Zacian Inteleon deck. I was missing 4 Crystal Cave, despite opening 50 EVS packs already.
I simply got 4 of these (and 4 of Shopping Center) by putting an EVS pack up to trade. Cheap and I didn't spend time either grinding for extra resources to craft them or God forbid, enough tokens to buy 100 packs and PRAY I got my playset.

Another comparison: I want to build Tapu Koko VMAX. I can either trade 10 packs at the moment and get the entire playset of both the base form AND the VMAX, alongside 4 Voltorb and 4 Electrode. How much time do you think this will take me to setup with the craft and pack opening system compared to simply putting up the trade and in less than 8 hours (of which I don't even have to play) get them????

What people miss out on gacha-based systems like these is that getting a single deck will be easier. Building extra decks? You're screwed. You need to shell out massive amounts of money to get multiple decks and the stuff that now won't be priced by the playerbase, but by TPCi, which has no other purpose other than to get you to SPEND MONEY.

If you think TPCi has your interests at heart, then think about what I wrote and RECONSIDER.
Seconded, it‘s worth noting that TPCi tried to do this with the now-discontinued Gem currency and the pricing structure around that basically mimicked IRL prices. If TPCi thinks they can do it a second time then I wouldn‘t be surprised if a mob showed up in Bellevue, WA one cold rainy day…
 
Top