Just found out that the Online TCG will reach end of life as of March 31, 2023. The pokemon company wants to " devote all resources to Pokémon Trading Card Game Live," which is the new incarnation of the game online.
Any thoughts?
Does anyone play standard there?
Personally, I don’t play the current rotation, and just play some decks that I used years ago for nostalgia, but otherwise, I’m not heartbroken in the least. I don’t even know if there’s much to discuss over this, but I figured I’d post, as I didn’t find it anywhere on the fourum.
I play Online for GLC and always thought it was a fine tool. Sad to see it go, but we all saw it coming with them working on the new app. Heard quite a few negative things about Live and I’m hoping they really pull it together to organically move players off PTCGO instead of forcing their hand.
I personally think the app is great and I’m glad they are gonna put all their resources towards that to make it better. I think the app is great for promoting the growth of the game and the hobby. More new players are likely to play on their phones vs their computers IMO.
I used to be active in playing Standard casually, but haven’t really kept up with meta decks since Brilliant Stars (the only two meta decks that I have that are playable right now are Mew VMAX and the Regi deck). Sad to see PTCGO go given the state PTCGL is in, but I guess I’ll make small preparations for the migration in case I ever decide to pick up PTCGL. It’s a bummer for GLC and Expanded players, as PTCGL is still Standard only, and who knows how long it will take for them to import all the older stuff.
My favorite deck to play was probably Archie’s Blastoise variants (with Mew Tag Team and without) in Expanded.
I will miss my Gengar Eroding Energy deck, but Oh Well. Such is life.
@lyleberr@kamon
Generally, things are always buggy in the beginning, and while I probably won’t play much, I hope they end up with a good product.
@tyranitardaddy I agree. For this sort of thing, I think mobile / smart/touch devices is a better platform, however, PC still hold a lot of market share, and for some they don’t game on their phones. (probly a smart thing as a general rule.)
You’re right I completely agree. Are they completely getting rid of the PC platform and just strictly doing mobile? Does end of life mean completely getting rid of it or just stopping their updates?
True. I didn’t understand anything they said to mean “We’re nuking the PTCGO platform completely.” It’s possible it’ll live on without updates. So we might still be able to play our old decks.
Agree with @redsticktcg! I don’t play that often, but my son competes in the TCG.
Basically, PTCG Live is completely, and utterly, unplayable. They are scratching the current PTCGO software where players trade cards with other players to get what they need to build competitive decks, and moving to an in-game currency where players can buy cards with the currency. My understanding is the main way to acquire currency is through gameplay (LOTS of gameplay) or trading in code cards to get currency. My son did the math and he’s calculating he would need approximately 300-600 code cards to get enough in-game currency to purchase the cards needed to build one 60 card deck. So basically 2-3 booster CASES worth, which is way too cost prohibitive.
On top of that, the graphics, gameplay, UI are seriously lacking and about 5 steps backwards from the current platform. And… to make it even better, there are so many bugs, that game is pretty much not playable. Some cards and trainers don’t even work…
The entire competitive community is completely up in arms. A few quick twitter searches will find all the Meme’s and backlash. The last time TPCi rolled out Beta testing (around Fusion Strike), there was so much backlash that they delayed it for over 1 year and completely scrapped the software and rebuilt it… But now it’s not really any better.
This is where and how the entire TCG community practices, builds decks, plays in online tournaments… etc. so it’s basically sending the message that - hey - we don’t care about the community!
I’d be really shocked if they moved forward in the current state and forced the transition with the launch of Scarlet & Violet…
The announcement seems like they’re dead set on transitioning players with the release of Scarlet and Violet Base.
If your son plays competitively, it might be worth preparing for the transition to Live (for when it does eventually become playable) by maxing out the Celebrations set (Classic Collection too, for maximum efficiency) and by redeeming Celebrations code cards for credits or whatever in PTCGL. Doing this should net you a ton of credits that should last a good amount of time (if you aren’t building max rarity decks). It’s a well-known tactic for starting off PTCGL on the best foot possible. Just wanted to pass it along if you weren’t aware!
@fazool But if you’re ever planning on playing Live (if it eventually becomes playable), it’s probably worth preparing for the transition, as starting with a completely blank slate seems really awful, given what I’ve seen about acquiring credits (without earlier preparation).
@xileets@tyranitardaddy I think PTCGL still has a PC platform. I interpreted their announcement to mean that after March 1st, PTCGO will not be getting any updates (PTCGL becomes the official platform) but it won’t shut down immediately. But it will eventually be shut down completely/sunsetted at a later point (to be determined), as it wouldn’t make sense to keep this “legacy” version running.
Just to be a bit more specific, to maximize the credits from Celebrations, you should have 4x copies of each card from the main set and the Classic Collection set in PTCGO (no need for the promos, as you can’t get them from the packs), migrate, then have Celebrations codes to redeem (up to a max of 400) for acquiring just credits for all the packs opened. Celebrations just happens to be in a unique position for credits because all the cards are Rare or above, meaning you get a ton of credits per pack opened.
Quite amazing that with presumably record profits, they cheap out on competent devs and that after dev time of more than a year, they still have a broken product.
I get the complaints regarding Live, but in my experience it’s been much more playable as of late. As someone who plays mostly just when I have a spare minute, the ability to play on my phone is a massive upgrade. As @bbobrob said, if you set yourself up for the migration or even just understand the economy with the Celebrations (or Pokemon Go after that) codes you can dust enough cards to get in a pretty good place. They also give you 1-2 solid decks for each battle pass, which of anything gives you something to build on for cheaper then buying everything. All in all, I’m definitely hoping they make improvements, but I think it will be okay.
The old code cards will be redeemable in both PTCGO or PTCGL, but there’s a big difference in the number of cards you get per code. I haven’t migrated yet, so I may be a bit off on the numbers, but claiming the code in PTCGO yields a normal booster pack (same as if you’ve opened an actual physical pack) while in PTCGL, last I remember, each code only yields around 5 cards per pack? The number of common cards you receive have been cut down, but there’s also a small chance of receving a Rare or above for every slot in the pack, so you could theoretically open packs with double VMAXes or things like that. Someone can correct me here if I’m wrong or if things have changed.
Such is life.