Pokemon Trading Card Game Live Officially Revealed!

I legitimately wrote 4 long paragraphs about my disgust and dissatisfaction with Pokemon and how they've gone from a beloved franchise to a corporate shill flirting with predatory practices with their microtransactions toward children and the ever increasing low quality games. But I ultimately hit a massive burnout depression and I'm just in a sense of "Why am I even bothering, it'll do well because kids will want it, and their parents are adults with fond memories of ye old pokemon days so they'll wanna share their pokemon experience".

I really just wanna be done with this franchise, but I have a wife who enjoys Pokemon, I have friends who still enjoy Pokemon. I'm sorry I'm a bitter old man but this franchise is just... it just sucks. And I don't know if I'll come back this time.

I probably will, but i'm just so disappointed.
 
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.
There's no indication as of yet that it'll be possible to buy credits with real money directly.
 
Ok, earlier today I was late for work so I didn't have time to write a longer comment here, so here we go now.

So, after reading most of the comments here, I have to say, some of y'all are absolutely oblivious, completely out of your damned minds. You're talking smack about the trade system? Really? The trade system is what single-handedly made PTCGO, despite its flaws, the BEST card game client of all. You heard that right. Who gives a f*** about cosmetics. Ultimately the single most important thing you have to be able to do is to play the damn game, and PTCGO, unlike any other, allowed you to do that in the most affordable, fair, and relaxed way possible. Some of you are saying the trade system is bad because Shadow Rider costs 20 packs a pop and your random garbage and ugly rainbow Vmax is worth 1? You're completely and utterly nuts. Of course a super highly in-demand card is gonna cost more, and your rainbow Galarian Slowking Vmax that nobody wants will cost less, it's just basic common and economic sense. But you didn't have to play Shadow Rider. With the same amount of packs it would cost you to buy playsets of both SR V and SR Vmax, you could build upwards of 10 lower tier decks or 2~3 other high tier decks. For example, back when Chilling Reign came out, with the amount of packs that a single Shadow Rider Vmax was going for, you could buy like 3 Ice Riders and have another tier 1 deck for like less than a third of the price.

And don't get me started on Trainers. The trade system allowed you to get sometimes as much as like 10 cards between commons/uncommons for a single pack. A single freaking pack. You start playing day one and have nothing? No problem, spend like 10~20 packs and that would net you playsets of literally EVERY SINGLE STAPLE IN STANDARD, Trainers and special energies-wise. Plus, with time, even the biggest staples became affordable because there was an ever increasing supply of it being put into the game, for instance, Rapid Strike Urshi also used to cost like 30 packs, but when Chilling Reign Came out I saw it hit as low as 5 market price on the trades. Now with the the new "improved system", where you can't just trade into what you need, you'll have to just spend insane amounts of money to HOPEFULLY build ONE single deck of your choice. Oh, but you want to build Rapid Strike now that it's been out for a while? Well to bad, since it doesn't exist in a spontaneous market place, it essentially costs just as much to build now as it did day one when it was first released. Oh you wanna have fun and build that soon-to-rotate deck? Sorry, it costs as much to build as it costs to build the newer "hot stuff" deck of the moment...will you spend money to build that and let it go to waste?

Have you people even ever freaking played PTCGO or tried acquiring any single card, be it digitally or in real life by cracking random packs? I cracked probably more than 200 CR locked packs on PTCGO. How many Shadow Rider Vmax do I have? ZERO. I sure do have a lot of jank, but zero Shadow Riders. Do you think with the new system, the amount of packs you'll be able to buy with in-game "free currency" will be anywhere near as the amount you were able to get on PTCGO? You wish. They wanna milk you to the fullest and sell you gems and whatnot, they want you to buy stuff, they ain't giving anything substantial for free anymore. So if you wanna try to get that SR Vmax that you claim was "abusive" or whatever at 25 packs, your only option will be to crack packs bought with real money and hope you get it. Before, it cost 25 packs (today that would be what, like 15 bucks tops?) to directly get one. How many packs do you think you'll have to crack to get one, let alone a full playset? And how much money do you figure it will cost you to crack that many packs? Again, it boggles my mind how absolutely off you people are about all this.

And for some reason some of you seem to be under the impression that you'll be able to directly get the "singles" you need, I even read the head of the news again to see if I had missed something, but other than duplicate protection, there is nothing that suggests that you'll be able to directly acquire cards you actually want/need. There's still a lot of information missing, but I'd be EXTREMELY surprised if the whole system isn't just pratically a clone of Arena's model. Have any of you, babbling about how bad the trade system is, played Arena? Back when Throne of Eldraine came out I wanted to play standard, and I hate building just a single deck, it's utterly nonsense to think anyone can build a single deck and run with it a whole season without being overwhelmed by both the meta evolving week to week and by you simply getting bored to death from playing the same deck over and over, so I put a lot of money into the game so I could have playsets of a lot of stuff and play many different decks. I poured hundreds and hundreds of dollars into the game (good to note that my country's currency is worth like less than 1/5 of a dollar as of today), I had pretty much playsets of every rare in the set, but even then, I had almost none of the mythic rares. Which is something like saying I had playsets of every V but almost none of the Vmaxes or something to that effect. For a while it was fun, but then came another set and guess what? You'll have to pour another shit-ton of money to keep up, either that or content yourself with outdated decks and/or playing just a new deck and being bored after less than a week. So I saw that it was utterly impossible to keep up with it. Plus you start getting really tired, really fast of all the money grab FOMO-related stuff like those cursed "battle passes" or whatever, it's just made to make you feel like you're missing out on stuff or missing a "great deal" money-wise to keep you playing and on the grind EVEN when you're already spending money a lot. It's ridiculous.

You people have no ideia what you're wishing for, and you're unbelievably naive if you think there's any chance "feedback" from the community will be able to change any of the crucial stuff in the business model. Arena has been out for a while now and it just gets worse and worse, because at the end of the day, no matter how many players just quit playing the game, they will be making a load of money from content creators and other "whales" alone. Content creators will be all over this, they'll be static about how they have finally done what they've been asking for years. Of course, they have sponsors, fully unlocked accounts, etc, they don't have to worry about not getting bored to death because even after spending a couple hundred dollars you only have like a deck and a half. But here's the thing, I only consume content from those creators because right now I'm able to actually play the game, the second I stop being able to play it, is the second I have no more reason to consume their content. Oh well, let's see how it shapes up to be, but right now I'm just devasted by the prospects.
 
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I have been playing since Day 1 of PTCGO (including the old program that got wiped, the pilot period where they removed your collection after the pilot, etc. etc.).

I have slowly amassed a large number of COL energies (b/c they are cool looking and fun to put in decks) and hoarded my HGSS era packs for occasional trades since they were so valuable they would get me things I wanted/needed. I love many of the HGSS cards, put them in current decks (the Pokemon Communication with Pikachu is a cool looking card), and play legacy occasionally.

While many of the changes are welcomed, the impending loss of part of my collection is very disheartening. It's like your mom throwing away all of your old cards while you were away only to come back home and she told you, "they were just silly kids things that you outgrew, right?".

Change is fine. Throwing away stuff I (and others) have painstakingly collected for years is just wrong.
 
Hopefully they don't waste resources supporting an outdated OS that doesn't get security patches anymore.

Let it go, dude lmao
Yeah your probably right, I should update my system but don't really feel time buying windows 10 or 11. Would rather invest on a new machine powered by Tux the penguin. Now that I think about, would be surprised if the new app supported win 7. It's interesting that win 10 is not listed as supported in the official system requirements page. Maybe something similar will happen with the new app.
 
I have been playing since Day 1 of PTCGO (including the old program that got wiped, the pilot period where they removed your collection after the pilot, etc. etc.).

I have slowly amassed a large number of COL energies (b/c they are cool looking and fun to put in decks) and hoarded my HGSS era packs for occasional trades since they were so valuable they would get me things I wanted/needed. I love many of the HGSS cards, put them in current decks (the Pokemon Communication with Pikachu is a cool looking card), and play legacy occasionally.

While many of the changes are welcomed, the impending loss of part of my collection is very disheartening. It's like your mom throwing away all of your old cards while you were away only to come back home and she told you, "they were just silly kids things that you outgrew, right?".

Change is fine. Throwing away stuff I (and others) have painstakingly collected for years is just wrong.

Oh yeah, there's that. That's just outrageous. Legacy was so fun, I had so many deck built for it. But hey, did you guys really think they would have in their new money-milking model, a format where people can eventually build many decks for it and never have to spend a dime on it again because it never changes? hahahaha, not under their watch! Despicable.
 
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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?
MTGA fails in that aspect because their wildcard systems only allows you to craft cards with rarity of wildcards you own. Your deck needs a playset of a certain Rare, but all you have are Uncommon (and somehow) Mythic wildcards. You cant convert these into Rare wildcards, nor transform some of the rares you dont use into wildcards themselves. Other games with similar systems usually allows you to make any card of any rarity as long as you have the resources, and some allow you to 'dust' the bulk filler extras into usable resources.

We have yet to see which way PTCGL will go in terms of conversion rates but at least its clear that we're going with the Hearthstone/Runeterra system. All it needs is to have the ability to manually let you burn cards you will probably never use into credits.

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.
This is assuming you have 50+ EVS packs. Logically with 50 packs already opened you should have gotten enough dupes converted to dust/credits to go craft those 4 stadiums you missed.

I have no arguments for the Tapu Koko VMax example, I agree its one of the advantages of the trading system for decks/cards that physically has the same rarity as the stronger cards but weaker power level in the meta. However, if you want to build a meta deck - and dont go starting 'jUsT buILd a BUdgET dECk' here, this case I SPECIFICALLY want to build a meta deck - you'd need to shell hundreds of packs just to get the staple cards. Remember how much an Eternatus deck costs initially with the 4-4 Eternatus Line plus a playset of Crobat V. Obviously now an Eternatus deck is dirt cheap, but who still plays Eternatus on the competitive level? Now replace Eternatus with every single meta defining cards that they have released and will release. RS Urshifu. SR Calyrex. Umbreon VMax. So on and so forth.
 
It honestly kind of blows my mind that TPCi is still not giving players the option to use the artwork of a Pokémon card from their collection as their portrait instead of these moderately unsettling human ones.

Not only would it be vastly more appealing, but it could even make bad cards fun to collect, since you get a whole new profile picture. The card artwork will also age very well, while these 3D models will definitely NOT. Probably takes less effort and resources to program, too.
 
I'll just add that people keep defending the new app saying that decks like Shadow Rider are "super expensive". Oooh, 100 packs, how outrageous! Excuse me? I got more than 100 EVS codes in eBay for around 40 € or less, and that was before I learned that you can find private sellers that sell you codes for even less. Do you think that is too much money? Because that's much less than this deck would cost you irl.

I'm just afraid to lose this. With PTCGO I've been able to build many top tier and not-so-top-tier decks spending not that much money. I also try to foresee market tendencies, so for example, when Shadow Rider VMAX was revealed, I got myself enough Alcremie V and VMax. 2 VMax for just 1 pack, lol. That's not always possible, of course (who would have though Jolteon would becomse so popular, for example?), but it won't EVER be possible with the new client.
 
It honestly kind of blows my mind that TPCi is still not giving players the option to use the artwork of a Pokémon card from their collection as their portrait instead of these moderately unsettling human ones.

Not only would it be vastly more appealing, but it could even make bad cards fun to collect, since you get a whole new profile picture. The card artwork will also age very well, while these 3D models will definitely NOT. Probably takes less effort and resources to program, too.


Right? Jesus, just make some of the hundreds of artists that already work with them draw cool artworks of Trainers from the Pokémon world to be our avatars. Cynthia avatar, Oak avatar, Misty avatar, etc, etc, just make sick hand drawn artwork for these types of characters to be your avatar.
 
I'll just add that people keep defending the new app saying that decks like Shadow Rider are "super expensive". Oooh, 100 packs, how outrageous! Excuse me? I got more than 100 EVS codes in eBay for around 40 € or less, and that was before I learned that you can find private sellers that sell you codes for even less. Do you think that is too much money? Because that's much less than this deck would cost you irl.

I'm just afraid to lose this. With PTCGO I've been able to build many top tier and not-so-top-tier decks spending not that much money. I also try to foresee market tendencies, so for example, when Shadow Rider VMAX was revealed, I got myself enough Alcremie V and VMax. 2 VMax for just 1 pack, lol. That's not always possible, of course (who would have though Jolteon would becomse so popular, for example?), but it won't EVER be possible with the new client.

Exactly. People are out of their minds. PTCGO is hands down the BEST card game client in the economy department, you can build whatever you want for dirt cheap (again, this coming from someone who lives in a country where my currency is worth less than 1/5 of a us dollar). Plus, unless you're hellbent on playing the most expensive deck in the format (and there are always other tier 1 options for much less), you could always build random stuff for super cheap just so you had different decks to play and not get bored of playing the same single deck for 3 months. Let's say you wanted to build a random Inteleon Vmax deck, you could build that for like less than 5 bucks (because the rest of the deck you most definitely already have since staple Trainers can be obtained for like 0,25 packs), whereas now if you want to build Inteleon, it costs just as much as the Shadow Rider deck, which brings another problem, with that scenario, very few people will be willing to waste precious money on expensive in-game packs to build random decks, they will just build whatever is tier one, like 99% of the time, which will make even the casual ladder probably a mirror match fest of tier 1 decks.
 
Here’s my question: if I’m 3 Vmaxes from finishing my Shadow Rider Calyrex deck do I put in the $/effort to trade for those last 3 cards or just wait till the update?… thoughts?

Edit: Hadn’t realized the comment above touched on this exact topic. So feeling is it’s better now to buy/earn codes vs whatever economy we’ll probably have in PTG Live? TL:dr buy/earn codes now?
I like the thought of turning x into cards but also love the culture of trading in PTGO
 
Also, imagine Expanded down the line. For us old timers, it's ok, we already have our Dark Patches, our VS Seekers, our Max Elixirs, etc, but imagine being a new player, and having to acquire those cards. Imagine the amount of money someone will have to spend just to get these expanded staples sprinkled throughout all of the the game's sets. Imagine having to spend god knows how much money to open a load of packs from a random set that will have almost nothing of use instead of a couple of staple cards you need for expanded. That will be brutal.
 
Here’s my question: if I’m 3 Vmaxes from finishing my Shadow Rider Calyrex deck do I put in the $/effort to trade for those last 3 cards or just wait till the update?… thoughts?

Definitely get whatever you can now, later you won't be able to get what you need, you'll have to pour money into the game and spin the wheel cracking packs and hoping to get what you need. There's a reason old time players in real life always tell new players "don't crack packs, buy singles".

Think of it like this. Right now, considering market price for SR Vmax you will spend 36 bucks for the 3 cards. Now Imagine you're in the new client and you have the same 36 bucks to spend. Packs will probably be a buck, like it is on Arena, do you think cracking 36 packs is enough to get you 3 specific Vmaxes from a set with almost 100 ultra rares? Yeah...
 
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Definitely get whatever you can now, later you won't be able to get what you need, you'll have to pour money into the game and spin the wheel cracking packs and hoping to get what you need. There's a reason old time players in real life always tell new players "don't crack packs, buy singles".
Yeah I’m sad at how much rotation hit all my decks so I only have 1 that’s standard viable rn. I hate buying codes but you’ve got a point that once pack trading is gone for better or for worse the card economy is in their hands.
I can only hope that by some miracle they let us unlock GOOD cards using duplicates, etc
 
One thing I should know. Are code cards for PTCGO are still viable for PTCGL like if I open a Battle Styles pack (I luv RS Urshifu), will the code card readable on PTCGL, since it can only read to PTCGO.
 
One thing I should know. Are code cards for PTCGO are still viable for PTCGL like if I open a Battle Styles pack (I luv RS Urshifu), will the code card readable on PTCGL, since it can only read to PTCGO.
"Pokémon TCG Online code cards in Pokémon TCG products will be compatible with Pokémon TCG Live, although code cards from some products may unlock different items in Pokémon TCG Live than they do in the Pokémon TCG Online."

So...I'm guessing...yeah? I don't think they would kill the codes from past sets by making them not readable in the new client.
 
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