10 changes Pokémon TCG Pocket desperately needs
It’s been almost a year since the digital card game, Pokémon TCG Pocket, was released on mobile.
The game has proven ot be extremely popular, it made over $900 million (£674m) in profits in its first six months.
However, recent reports have shown interest in the game is dwindling quickly, with a 50% drop in revenue last month.
And that was before the community reacted negatively to the new Pokémon Pocket Deluxe Pack update.
With that in mind, here are 10 updates and new features Pokémon Pocket needs, a year since its release.
Increase the number of deck slots
One constant frustration a lot of the playerbase has had is the number of decks you can own at one time.
Earlier this year, DeNa finally increased the limit from 15 decks to 20, but that wasn’t enough.
Players still regularly have to delete old decks, and there is still no way to save decks as a shareable code; you would manually have to rebuild them.
A small increase in deck with the release of each new expansion would go a long way.
Add a claim all button for rental decks
A lot of improvements that could be made in Pokémon Pocket come down to the addition of more ‘claim all’ buttons.
DeNa thankfully listened and finally added the long-overdue option to bulk-buy hourglasses in the ticket shop.
But the same needs to happen for rental decks, which are given for free after completing challenges.
This issue was especially prevalent with the new Deluxe Pack update, featuring an excessive number of rental decks that most players will never use.
Add a dark mode
This has to be one of the most-requested features in Pokémon Pocket.
Every single menu in the game is white, making the game almost unusable at night.
It’s very common to get a notification at the end of the day that your pack stamina has refreshed, only to be blinded by the opening screen.
This is an option that surely wouldn’t be too difficult to implement, and would dramatically improve the user experience for a lot of players.
Speed up the game’s animations
Another quality-of-life update that the game sorely needs.
Currently, everything in Pokémon Pocket is slow with a lot of unnecessary animations.
While the slower reveal of cards in Wonderpicks isn’t ideal, it’s during online battles where this issue becomes infuriating.
Because everything in the game requires an animation, it is very easy to accidentally run out of time on your turn.
It’s reasonable to spend some time thinking before, for example, deciding which Pokémon to move energy onto with Vaporeon.
But because the activation of this Vaporeon ability and the ability itself both have slow animations, it’s easy to timeout.
Both between the menus and during battles, the game really needs to be streamlined.
Allow us to open multiple Promo Packs at once
Yet another request for a claim all button.
Every season, there is an event which requires offline battles to earn single-card promo packs.
It’s easy to earn 10 or more in a quick playthrough, but each pack has to be tediously opened one at a time.
There’s already a claim all button on the screen for ‘Thanks,’ another button to ‘open all’ Promo Packs would be greatly appreciated.
Release different events
After a year of the exact same events every season, DeNa needs to add variety if they want Pokémon Pocket players to stay.
Offline promo battles, sneak-peek wonderpicks, then promo cards that appear in special wonderpicks.
We’re not saying that the game needs to be jam-packed with events and have more going on, just give us something new.
Remove the level cap
Again, this is all about adding incentives to play.
A lot of regular players hit the max level of 50 in Pokémon Pocket a while ago and now have nothing to play for.
But what is especially annoying about this is that levelling up is the only way to get rewind watches.
Rewind watches are the resource that allow you to bring back expired wonderpicks which you might have missed.
Many players have already used all of theirs, not realising they were limited, and are now stuck with fewer options.
The fact that there’s even a cap on levelling up in the first place is rather unnecessary.
Add more daily challenges
Pool together Pack Points
This is another highly-requested update, though it’s unlikely to be implemented.
For every pack you open, Pokémon Pocket gives you five Pack Points towards a card from that specific pack.
However, most of the time you get close to the card you want but don’t have enough, then a new expansion releases.
While DeNa may feel it would dent their profits, it would seem fair for Pack Points to pool together for old expansions.
Or, with the leaked Pokémon Pocket Mega Evolution expansion release date coming up, having Pack Points count for all Set A cards would be nice.
Let us choose packs on the home screen
Lastly, on this list is another quality-of-life improvement for the Pokémon Pocket menus.
Currently, the app automatically opens to the most recently released pack the first time you open it each day.
It’s awkward to navigate and scroll through to older packs if there are still cards you’re chasing.
This suggestion of a rotating carousel on the pack menu is a much more elegant way to navigate the different packs.
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