The blowback to Pokemon TCG Pocket's bizarrely limiting trading system has officially reached the folks on the development team, who recently promised changes to some restrictions, as well as more abundant trade tokens.
In a post to the Pokemon website, the Pokemon TCG Pocket team acknowledges the "large number of comments" it received after releasing "the first iteration of the trading feature a few days ago." I've been doing this job long enough to know that this is a very nice way of saying that people had a hip-hoppin' fit, and this line seals the deal: "Thank you all for sharing your feedback." Godspeed, unnamed community manager who probably wrote this.
The problem, hardcore players argued, is that the trading system helps almost nobody by making a huge collection with a stockpile of dupes a requirement to trade for the good stuff. Rather than a core or social feature, the system can end up feeling like a last-ditch solution to bad luck that's only relevant to a small subset of players, and which feels bad to use anyway. It boils down to selling piles of cards for peanuts.
The devs explain that trading came with item requirements and other restrictions in order to "prevent abuse from bots and other prohibited actions using multiple accounts," which is understandable on some level. The plan was to "balance the game while maintaining a fair environment for all players and preserving the fun of collecting cards," but the devs have come to understand that "some of the restrictions put in place are preventing players from being able to casually enjoy the feature as intended."
"We are actively investigating ways to improve the feature to address these concerns," the post adds. No specifics were given here, but it was announced that "going forward, we also plan to offer multiple ways to obtain trade tokens including through event distributions."
Additional sources of trade tokens – which are mandatory for high-value trades, and will seemingly continue to be despite these impending changes – should go a long way toward solving community frustrations. That said, adjustments to the current method, namely the exchange rate of converting duplicate cards to tokens, wouldn't go amiss either.
In much greater detail: Trading in Pokemon TCG Pocket explained.
