I play ptcgo off and on, but the thing keeping me away is honestly how outdated the app is. Now that the new app has been sort of discovered to be in development (pokebeach link), I’m honestly really excited. This may be an unpopular opinion, but I think the Pokemon TCG meta is actually healthier than other TCGs I play like Hearthstone so I’m excited to see what the new app will bring. I’m hoping it’s not mobile only and the pc app gets updated too.
Here’s what I’d like to see:
Promotions that tie back to the real Pokemon TCG, like maybe if you win enough games you can ‘buy’ ptcgo-exclusive promo cards. Maybe make some promo cards require you to climb the ladder. Fun things like that.
A ladder
A better way to represent the cards - maybe have the card but a pokemon hologram floating above the card, think yugioh. Or maybe for alt-art cards they could do like an inverse hologram where it looks like you can see ‘into’ the card.
Nice animations like hearthstone.
actual good 1080p support that doesn’t cut off the sides
get rid of those terrible avatars, make the avatars actually match the Pokemon art style
I don’t mind the trading system but sometimes I wish there was a way to buy individual cards.
Maybe a rematch request option so you could have a best of 3 if your opponent agrees.
Being an app hopefully it will be fully smart phone compatible.
But In a weird way I like how dated the game is (kinda like playing retro games) so I’m not the best person to ask.
Ranking / recognition system to earn IRL play points based on virtual games
Ability to filter match ups (for example, if I want to test against Urshifu, option to select “match me against a deck that contains this card: Urshifu V MAX”)
Update the trading backend as it crashes my computer searching… The game runs very hot in general and I wonder how much of this is due to old inefficient code
more support for Legacy / older formats (I know there’s a 0% chance of happening)
wish the game didn’t make my computer heat up so much
better mechanics to block/penalize: scammers on trade board, time wasters in games, etc.
better trade searching
able to buy individual cards with in game coins, because lately some top tier card prices are crazy high on public trades
-drop trade locked packs from 200 to 100? coins (also a longshot, i know)
The only problem I see with this is people being dicks and only matching with decks that they hard counter so that they win every time. Like obviously it would be fantastic for testing, but you can’t count on benevolence online
Looks like there are some positive changes, like the ability to buy individual cards.
The lack of support for Expanded for some period of time, and the complete removal of earlier sets & collections is really disappointing. I get it from TPC’s perspective, HGSS isn’t making them any money… but these are cards/decks that people spent a lot of time and effort on building.
Announcement of a “Battle Pass” also makes me worried this is just going to become another money grab by TPC. One of the great things about PTCGO is that it was never a money grab, always a fun game to play for free.
“Players will be able to transfer up to four copies of a unique Pokémon TCG card, one copy of ACE SPEC and Prism Star cards, and 59 copies of a basic Energy card.”
Lol @ all those ‘collectors’ on PTCGO… i know of people who hoarded +100 ace spec computerSearches, or +100 golden ultra balls or etc.etc. all so they have more trade power or whatever
This is gonna be an enormous blow to the ‘trading’ platform- glad i only used the program for free (avid player for about 6years now) and only have 4 of everything to do exactly what the program was made for; playtesting your decks.
I don’t play PTCGO anymore, but I’m just glad to hear that TPC is creating a more functional trading and deck building environment… Unlike some other virtual card games which seem to be mothballing either the paper or digital Arena every other year.
Pokebeach is reporting there will be “official support for mobile phones”, complete with a mobile soft launch in Canada, and includes snaps of what appears to be a mobile phone UI (ie portrait orientation). Finally, TPCi are developing this new app internally, not via Dire Wolf.
Does all of that mean the app will be playable on phones after all?
Looks like they will do minimal viable product for the release (not all cards transfer, only standard support), this also makes me think they’ll use this for standard tournaments in place of irl competition for worlds
I can’t say I’m not a little disappointed. I think overall the pros outweigh the cons though. We finally get a ladder! I only play expanded, but it looks like I can use 90% of my deck still so I’m not too bummed about that. Also mobile support woo!
The ability to craft cards is great, I hope they don’t get stingy on the “dust” they give you when your extra cards are converted. I’m hoping trading comes back in a future update, but I have a feeling it won’t. Seems like Pokemon Company probably doesn’t want an ebay grey market. I feel bad for the digital sellers on ebay. I bought from them multiple times.
Why did they go with these weird vaguely unsettling avatars?? Why not just make Pokemon style anime avatars? I just wanted the avatars style to look consistent with the cards.
The overall design doesn’t feel very Pokemon to me. It feels kind of generic and lifeless, but it’s better than what we currently have.
I had this same thought yesterday. TPC has totally neglected PTCGO for many years, so I was wondering why they decided to update the app all of a sudden. My assumption is:
Before, PTCGO was not a profit-driver, it was purely a marketing tool, a way to attract new players to the modern TCG, or retain existing players (make it easier to play with friends online, play test with the latest sets at your convenience, and when you buy physical products you get a digital equivalent for free in PTCGO).
But times have changed. For nearly 2 years, TPC can’t keep up with the demand for physical cards. There’s absolutely no need to do additional marketing when nearly every single physical products sells out within minutes. TPC must be at a point where it either is very costly, takes a lot of time, and/or has a very difficult bottleneck to remove to significantly ramp up physical cards production, essentially putting a cap on their profits. Add on top of this, with the Covid situation ebbing and flowing differently in each country around the world, it’s near impossible to plan any sort of tournaments or events in advance now or for the foreseeable future.
So, they decided to revamp PTCGO to become a profit center, just like other digital cards games, like Hearthstone, etc. Battle passes, microtransactions, cater to the whales. The sky is the limit for digital profits. The marginal cost of selling another digital pack (or crystals or coins or whatever they call the in game currency) is miniscule compared to beefing up the supply chain for physical TCG products. TPC saw that some people were able to sell in-demand PTCGO cards on ebay for $20, $50, $100. TPC wants those profits, and now they’ll get them. I see no reason why they wouldn’t extrapolate this one step further and eliminate the need to compensate LGS’s with free promo materials, when tournaments and events can all be run from TCG Live.
My predictions (and I hope I’m wrong) on how the TCG Live release is going to go:
-lots of the long-term, loyal PTCGO playerbase is going to be unhappy. Losing significant parts of their collection, no trading, no HGSS, no Legacy mode, no Expanded for an unspecified amount of time
-similar to the launch of other Pokemon “F2P” mobile games, TPC will be very greedy in terms of in game currency, rewards, pull rates, etc. at launch (see also: Pokemon Masters)
-it won’t matter, because it’s Pokemon, they have a massive marketing budget, and for every 100 old players that aren’t happy, there will be 1,000 new players downloading the app, with a few of those spending $$$$$ on TCG Live
It sounds like you may already be aware of this, but you can download the .apk file for the most updated verson of PTCGO and play on android. I usually just google it, email it to myself, and open the .apk on my phone.
Removal of trading was somewhat expected… Being able to trade cards was a rarity among TCG online games. I predict seafoamarticuno’s predictions are mostly right.
