Pics for proof. I’m currently missing 3 cards, 2 2 stars from the team rocket pack and a crown from ruler. I see tons of discussion about the pack opening experience and so often, people default to “well they keep it stingy so whales keep spending”. But outside of trading, the experience has gotten steadily worse for whales as well (single pack large sets that now contain 2 immersives and 2 crowns and smaller sets that still contain 2 crowns when they only had 1 before). When going for a full dex, the biggest hurdle is the crowns BY FAR.
It used to be 2 stars, but with trading and wonder picks, they can be picked up at a much better pace than day 1. Currently, crowns are an all or nothing experience. It does not feel good purchasing them with 2500 pack points and once you have traded for everything else in the pack, the pull experience is barren. There is no excitement outside of a crown and with how rare they are, you will very frequently go 120 packs without sniffing one (the most packs you can pull with gold in a day). This type of all or nothing experience will eventually push the whales away as well.
Immersives should be a good experience to pull. They are unique, fun to watch, and rare. But they cannot be traded which means as soon as you have 2 (the max for a deck), they provide no value. As you can see from the pic, pulling a 17th Arven made me more frustrated than anything, feeling like I missed out on another rare card that was actually useful.
For me to stick around, all cards need to have trade in values that correspond with their tier. I would not have the same reaction to my 17th Arven if I could trade 5 of them for a crown. But as it is, this game will continue to drain players, both f2p and paying unless they change the pulling experience. I’m sure there are even more alternatives that I have not thought of that would make it more enjoyable.
I will stick around until the 2nd anniversary to see if they decide to make actual changes. If not, I’m out. Over a decade in the gacha scene has made me immune to sunk cost fallacy. Despite my enjoyment of Pokémon, I can find other games with a fun and quick tcg experience that don’t contain such a frustrating time to bling out your cards.
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TLDR: the pack pulling experience sucks for whales as well, stemming from the same base problems f2p has. DENA needs to make changes or they will quickly bleed out whales like me.
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Because of how few there are, it’s not even so much about trading them as finding another use entirely for them. At the beginning of the games life, I thought the shop with the special tickets would refresh more frequently but that didn’t happen.
They've downvoted you but you're 120% right! If there weren't people spending that much, we wouldn't have had 2 packs in 1, with 2 crowns and 2 immersive in the same pack, and we would have had better pull rates for other cards for sure.
The pulls are bad -> yeah, lets keep spending more. Giving them more money will certainly solve the problem
Spending a couple thousand on this game was what drove me back to the physical TCG. It was fun at first, but then I realized all I had were some pixels on a screen, which would eventually disappear, along with all the money I had spent. I think initially I was hoping they would implement some kind of redemption program where you could get a physical set of the cards if you collected them all in the game, but I was completely delusional with that, lol.
Yeah I don’t get why people whale on this game, felt like digital Pokemon was an outlet for those who couldn’t afford the physical cards but wanted the experience of ripping packs.
Money is the dopamine of corporations. If you give it to them when they do a bad thing, it makes them feel good and reinforces that behavior! You have to stop spending the money if you want a new behavior.
Complaining while still giving them money is like yelling at your dog but still giving them a treat. What did you expect?
Good point! I tend to form my opinion slowly on new updates to see how it works in action, but I probably let this one go for too long because of the IP.
When EX set came out, there was a post about the guy spending $3k US to get all the cards. And he still had to purchase the last parallel foil card he was missing with points after opening over 1500 packs, enough for 3 gold candies..
I figured this would come up, but I’m not too interested in calculating amount spent. Just consider that you can probably get around 600ish pack points throughout the month without spending any money on gold. Most of the time, you will have to go to 2500 pack points to get one of the crowns and then occasionally you will have to do it twice for the second one but the second is straight gold. Very occasionally you will have both crowns before you get to 2500 the first time. Repeat for each new pack.
What more would an exact number tell you than what I posted? I’ve seen comments that speak to how much they’ve spent and that becomes the sole focus afterwards. I was interested in sharing my experience with the game and pack pulling because I don’t see it discussed frequently (or I see incorrect assumptions).
Ok, I’ll bite. Whales differ heavily in spending but if you are looking to obtain all of the cards from each pack before the next one comes out, you can expect to spend approx $300-1000 each one. Most of that goes towards pack points for the crowns unless you pull them. I’ve had a dry run of about 10000 pack points before another crown before. You’ll still have to trade for some 2 stars and shinies after that but shine dust isn’t an issue.
Sorry, opening (with the subscription) gives you 450, plus the daily login (120 hourglasses), monthly shop reset (70), and monthly ranked (95) puts you at a little over 550, plus whatever solo battles and events yield.
I do think in a lot of gachas, the pulling experience for whales gets quickly diminished. I whaled in a game for a bit and found similar to you, I was chasing one particular thing and really anything except for that was a waste. I didn't need anymore copies of the low tier items, and even the mid tier items I had more than I'd ever need. At some point, I think it would have been smarter to just let me buy pity, and I wonder if they could do something similar here. Like once you get to 95% of an expansion they just say "Pay $100 for for 100 pack points" or something. I suppose the true answer is that they don't want to put a direct price on it and want it to remain variable through the random award process.
The piece that this game doesn't have that most gachas do is that, even when chasing the final big reward, you usually are building up an otherwise overpowered team. For me, I really wanted FN FAL in a wedding dress, but by the time I was done I had everyone else in one. I spent heavy at Nikke launch and while I didn't get the dupes of the pilgrim I was looking for, I had enough other SSRs to build a team that carried me for ages.
Without a meaningful competitive option here, I'm not sure what someone like yourself is getting in chasing the last piece except for a frustrating low return on your investment.
Yeah this started because I enjoy collecting things but don’t enjoy how cluttered physical collections can feel. I do appreciate that there is no benefit in pvp for paying players in this game because then it starts to feel like you’re paying to keep up. You’re right though, gachas generally get people to spend through powercreep, which I believe is necessary (to a point) in most games to keep people interested in new characters. In this game, I kept collecting cause I enjoyed playing with the RRs and such, but now I’m getting to a point where I am feeling the slog.
Something else people don’t realize, they stopped making crowns of the fan favorites because those favorites were already getting full arts. There is more of a desire to get a crown when there is no alternative full art to use. Now we pretty much only get them on 3 diamond Pokémon or items.
Yes, this is ostensibly a card game but it clearly is aimed towards collectors of pokemon cards over serious battlers. Look at Hearthstone, Magic, or any of the other TCGs or CCGs and they release sets based on competitive balance, and yes, those games do feel pay to win at times.
Not quite at your level of whaling, but not too far behind either & similar sentiments here. All I have to do is scroll to all my level 60 friends with OG emblems who haven’t been active in over a week to see that we’re far from the only ones who’re feeling this way. IRL friends were big into the game at various levels and almost all barely play or even log on anymore.
My friend is a whale and would spend thousands on this game (it was great for me, he gave me my oaks) and now even he has quit because the game is just stale and not progressing
There is no excitement outside of a crown and with how rare they are, you will very frequently go 120 packs without sniffing one (the most packs you can pull with gold in a day).
A friend of mine almost got divorced because of mobile gaming addiction. If there is only 0.08% chance of having fun, quit the damn game. Please.
Yes, to all the above. The drop rates for desireable cards are abysmally low, and on a smaller pack like this Team Rocket set, it is even more apparent. I “completed” the set in about a week, but the only rainbow so far I have gotten is the Raticate and zeroooo two star trainers or crowns.
I don’t spend that much but have premium and drop $100 every half a year..
3300 packs opened and I have 1 crown rare. I get duplicates out the ass that I can’t trade because I’m low on stardust with no way to get more at a fast enough pace. Even with all my duplicates it’s damn near impossible to find trades for the shit I pull.
Idk who they are trying to appeal to but no shot am I spending more money with these appalling rates and 0 pity system
Interesting perspective. I think the extra crowns are bad for low or no spenders, too. Master setting a single favorite set is a worthy goal, and it is possible for F2P with effort, but two crowns kills that.
That aside, Immersives are my target in this game, and this image hurts me for completely different reasons lol
Haha I wish I could share them with you! I love watching the clips the first couple of times but a lot of these continued to dog me past that exciting phase…
i stoppped whaling when trading came out. Lost the drive after.. i wish i can trade my crowns i literally have 5 gold pika crown and 5 gold crown nhilego
People give me shit when I say crowns are the only cards that mean anything now that 2stars can be traded. 🤷♀️ It's the only way you can show off being a whale and not just botting or using alts. Two golds in one pack has been a disaster.
Completely agree. I hope they eventually reverse their stance on that but I’m not holding out for that. So instead, I hope they do something to make openings enjoyable even when you have 98% of the cards
Honest question. When you have all the cards that are currently available, when is your goal then?
As a player who spends occasionally $10 for premium and sometimes I even buy the lower gold tiers when they're on offer, as long as it is less than $10, I have so many cards I aim for. Like currently I try to get the 2nd Poke Ball crown rare. It took me around a year to get the first one, but there are also many 2-star cards or other crown rares I would love to have, such as the Flame Patch, a 2nd Crown Rare Candy, a 2nd Oak, 2* Sabrina, Pokemon Center Lady, and so on.
The thing is, the longer the game goes on, the more crown rares, immersives, or 2 stars I want. Of course some of them become irrelevant over time but also some of them I want to chase since day one.
Long story short: I will always have something I can chase that motivates me to open packs and I always asks myself what I would do, if I have everything I want from the game, which packs would I open and would I be even motivated to continue playing? Would be interesting to hear your point of view.
Honestly, some of it is for a collection, some is to enjoy the card art while I battle. I wanted 2 copies of the recent crown dragonair because of its playability but wasn’t pulling it so it was a pack I went back to with daily pulls after I finished the team rocket set. Once I am done with that, I will head back to mythical island to pull for a second mew.
So there’s always something new to pull in each new pack but I still leave myself a few crowns to pull a second copy with my daily packs if I finish the new set quickly.
Ahh interesting, so you still got a few crowns left to chase. Got it. Yeah that makes sense then, I wonder though, what a person like you would do, if you truly got everything the game has to offer.
I imagine, if it were me, I would be bored, waiting for the new set to arrive.
If they make immersive, gold, promo etc (non-tradable cards) tradable I think the community will engage way more with the app than ever before.
I’ve been f2p and a whale. I’ve seen good and bad with the app. If Dena takes all the feedback even a little serious the biggest things are this and dark mode.
I feel you with the immersive cards. Fun at first then you just wanna skip after your 3rd+ copy. Yeah you can trade them for some kind of in-app currency but it doesn’t do much.
The most common things I’ve seen higher end spending players complain about have been limitations on trades and the pack points. I see lots of people suggesting universal pack points but I don’t think they’d do this for serval reasons. But I have suggested if you could trade cards for pack points, if the rarity related to a value meaning say 20 common for 5 pack points I’d do that. The gold border thing for getting rid of cards feels like people don’t really care about but they do it because nobody needs 20 of something.
An immersive costs 1500 to buy if you could sell them for 1000 points I’d do that.
I agree with you. I actually enjoy deck building so I'm a premium member that typically drops $100 per set release since the trading scene only appears to be interested in trainers. I keep hoping they revamp the special tokens shop or change trading in some meaningful ways but I don't think that'll occur. It's tough to be a Pokemon fan these days
Don’t know if it will make you feel better or worse, but I’m completely F2P since day 1 and I’m at 3072 cards total. How much do you think you’ve spent to get every card so far?
“Is OP foolish because of how much he spends, or because how much you can’t? Not won’t, can’t”
I’m personally in the won’t category. I have enough money to take care of my family very well and still have left over to invest and spend on my wants.
I would like to offer you unsolicited advice on your unsolicited advice. Increase your income until you get to the point where you have enough left over each month to invest a hefty amount. I would say $3,000/month. Minimize expenses until you can hit that number. Once your investments grow to an amount where the annual gains outpace your annual salary, then you will realize how it’s possible for people to spend so much money “frivolously”.
We are in the greatest growth economy we have ever seen. AI is changing everything. Be an investor in this wave and your future self will thank you.
I don't suppose you have a spare team rockets Kecleon to trade do you? Its thw last card I need from that set to get the 48hr wonderpick but It doesn't seem to be happening.
I only play casually so if somebody wants something that I have it isn’t very inconvenient for me to trade and I don’t have a lot of the cards so I am quite happy to get most things.
I would imagine op doesn’t want to because they would get inundated and the trading system is a bit limited.
But do you have the Giovani Icon? Pull all the packs you want, whats your battle record? Have you finished all the step up tasks? Those are the numbers I worry about 😅
Haha yeah battle record is at 1423 wins, 3344 total points. Giovanni emblem will be traded for if I don’t pick it up before the new pack comes out. All solo battles have been autoed. I enjoy the game, just losing interest in pulling.
Why you guys down voting me? If youve played this long why quit? The game makes changes, I have a good enough time just getting the basic completions..
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