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Despite being a free-to-play mobile game, Pokemon TCG Pocket is a pay-to-win game where collecting more cards is advantageous for you.
Pokemon TCG Pocket has seen a successful launch and has seen tens of millions of downloads within two weeks of its global release. The mobile game is free-to-play and is available both on Android and Apple devices. Your primary objective in this game is to collect cards, irrespective of whether you are a collector or a competitive player.
You can choose to not spend a single penny on this game and still have a decent collection. Yes, Pokemon TCG Pocket is pay-to-win and favors anyone who spends money on the game. In this article, we will take an objective look at how Pokemon TCG Pocket is pay-to-win.
Exploring Pokemon TCG Pocket’s Pay-To-Win System
Pokemon TCG Pocket is still a Trading Card Game at its core, and some cards will be valued higher than the rest. These can depend on the rarity of these cards or can simply be based on their popularity. Unfortunately, these values have nothing to do with how the game is meant to function.
The Woes of F2P (free-to-play) Users
Currently, you can only open two Booster Packs a day in Pokemon TCG Pocket. Each pack contains five cards, which means you can get 10 cards per day to increase your collection. If you have the TCG Pocket Premium Pass, then you get an additional pack and hence five more cards. From a collection perspective, these are extremely poor numbers. This is amplified by the fact that Pokemon TCG Pocket’s main idea is to collect as many cards as possible.
Technically, you can get all the cards in the game for free. But it will also take an exceedingly long time. One Reddit user u/Protogon420 made some extensive calculations using actual data and probability to determine that it would take a whopping 655 days of continuous playing to collect all 286 cards from the Genetic Apex Expansion only for completely f2p (free-to-play) players. With the premium pass, this would instead be 437 days.
This number crunching also included the Wonder Trades. At the same time, the user has also clarified that the calculations do not take special events and rewards into account, which can potentially give out more hourglass. Although this will speed up the time, it is unlikely to take a massive chunk away.
Spending almost two years to complete just the first expansion seems preposterous, if not anything else. By that time, more expansion packs will also make their way to the game, making it impossible for F2P players to “catch ’em all.” This is where the Pay-To-Win feature comes in, and how frustrated players might be compelled to spend money and get the cards.
Pay-To-Win Solves The Problem in Pokemon TCG Pocket
If you do not wish to wait two years to collect all the cards, your only option is to pay and get more Pack Hourglass, eventually opening more packs. And this is where Pokemon TCG Pocket embraces the p2w (pay-to-win) structure. With just a $9.99 Premium Pass, the card completion days are reduced by 218 days (from 655 to 437 days). If you spend more money to get Pack Hourglasses, this time will drastically reduce further.
This also impacts competitive PvP players. In a card game, the meta is always shifting and evolving. Having more cards, or more accurately, meta cards, will allow you to make more broken decks that will let you defeat your opponents easily.
In short, if you spend money and purchase packs in Pokemon TCG Pocket, you get the following:
- Possibly collect all the cards from the Genetic Apex Expansion Packs easily.
- More cards for your collection.
- More cards mean more decks. You will have lots of decks to easily dominate the PvP scenario.
As such, at the end of the day, Pokemon TCG Pocket is a pay-to-win game, despite featuring a f2p (free-to-play) system.
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