The developers of Pokémon TCG Pocket ultimately provided specific details about the massive improvements that led to the game’s much more grumpy trading capabilities. This has been an absolute confusion since its release. And while the improvements sound really great, they’ll take forever for them to be implemented.
In a post to the Pokemon Community Forum, the developer explained the future changes. I list them as written here:
The biggest change here is that TCG Pocket will remove the trade token, the currency currently being used for trading. Trade tokens are added to the game, especially for use in trading, and frankly, they suck. They are absolutely necessary to trade at all, but the only way to get them is to effectively evaporate the cards you already own.
As explained in detail here, TL;DR means that if you want to exchange your current Pokemon for one Pokemon, you must first throw five other ex cards to get enough trading tokens to trade the required tokens. And your friends must do the same thing. Since then, there have been several other ways to get bonus trade tokens, but the whole system has been extremely discouraged for those who actually want to use it.
The new system on paper is much better. Shinedust is already a currency that exists in the game and is now used to purchase the “Flair” card. This is a small animation for animations that shine in a certain way when used in matches. Every time you get a copy of a card you already have, you will automatically collect Shinedusts and get more Shinedus from events and other methods. Unless you’re big on flare, you probably have a lot of it just sitting already, and the TCG pocket developers say they’re looking for a way to give you more to ensure they’re trading.
And it’s important that TCG Pocket imposes for its value Some Transaction costs. Otherwise, players can play the system by creating a large number of new accounts and opening a large number of packs dealt to players early in the game, simply swapping all new rares for their main accounts. Then rinse and repeat. By imposing costs, people are guaranteed to trade thoughtfully – the trade token system was just a way, method It’s too expensive for the average player to care about.
Here is another big change that makes a big difference. This is a feature that allows players to share cards that they are interested in trading. It now exists so you can place your cards for trading, but there is no way to tell anyone what cards they need, unless you call out a friend outside the game and tell them. Everyone else needs to guess. As a result, most players don’t even try to trade with strangers. But if you can provide clues as to what an acceptable transaction is, players can create reasonable offers and actually use the system.
Overall, the community appears to be rather pleased with these changes, with early responses being positive. There is one major drawback. This means that players are already discarding rare cards just to collect existing trading currencies. There really is no way to get it back. Existing trade tokens will be converted to Syndest, but the cards are still gone.
There’s also one more problem. You will have to wait several months for this to take effect. A blog post suggests that these changes will not be implemented until this fall. In the meantime, the current system is terrible, so if a better solution is ongoing, then the deal could be stopped completely, as no one tries to take the core to do it. You could experience some more expansions before the “trading” in “Pokemon Trading Card Game Pocket” actually begins.
Let it shine, I guess!
Rebekah Valentine is a senior reporter at Passthecontroller. You can find her posts at Bluesky @Duckvalentine.bsky.social. Do you have any tips for the story? Send to [email protected].
