‘Pokémon Pocket’ players aren’t happy with long-awaited trade feature: “It’s rubbish”
Pokémon TCG Pocket has finally launched the long-awaited trade feature – but fans aren’t happy with the complicated new system.
Pokémon Pocket launched late last year and while players could open packs of cards and build decks to battle fellow players of the free-to-play mobile game, the trade function was missing.
Trading finally went live today (January 29) after being announced last week but fans aren’t impressed. Not only is trading restricted by Trade Stamina, a slowly-replenishing currency that mirrors the existing Wonder Pick mechanic, but swapping cards of three-diamond rarity and higher also requires Trade Tokens. These can be earned by destroying your duplicate cards or from in-game events.
Trading is also limited to friends, though there’s still no chat feature, and two-star cards can’t be swapped at all meaning it’s still tough to complete your card collection.
Pokémon TCG Pocket Trading. Ngl, at this point, kind of not worth it since you have to dismantle a shit ton of cards just to trade. Unless you put hella money into this game aka a whale then sure. But F2P players (LIKE ME) then epic No. pic.twitter.com/Rvy7a6Wx60
— Space-Time Smackdown waiting room (@oddishu) January 29, 2025
“Let’s face it, the game does NOT want you to trade cards,” reads a viral post on the Pokémon Pocket subreddit.
“I was fine with not being able to trade 2 stars and up. If you want to keep those cards rare, fine. But this? This is fucking insanity,” replied one player. “I can already see myself losing interest in the next month after I get bored of the new set and seeing the end already is not a good sign.”
Wait to get trade currency i have to dust the cards im trying to trade?
pic.twitter.com/KvYuX1l5uE
— Jeudy
Pokemon Pocket (@SoulSurVGC) January 29, 2025
“It’s weird that they made trading this hard when it’s a Pokémon TRADING Card Game,” wrote one fan. “Trading is utter garbage. What a mess,” said another.
“It’s such a greedy money grab. Trading only benefits the people who have like five duplicates of ex cards and star rarity cards. On top of that, they want us to kill our own duplicates so that we run out of cards and need more packs. Those duplicates should be used for trading, not trashing! Worst trade system I’ve ever seen,” said another fan.
Tomorrow (January 30) will see the first major expansion of cards come to Pokémon Pocket. Space-Time Smackdown will feature over 200 new cards and will be led by legendary ‘mon Dialga and Palkia, who were the mascots of the 2006 Diamond & Pearl video games.
In other news, Destiny 2 has confirmed a wave of new Star Wars-inspired cosmetics are heading to the game as part of the Heresy update.
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Ali Shutler
NME
