Sadly, controversies in the gaming space aren’t uncommon. In fact, they can happen frequently, and it makes you wonder if developers and publishers ever truly learn their lessons or if they’re just trying to get away with it without causing too much of a stir. With its rollout, the Pokemon TCG Pocket title was doing legendary, pun intended, for nearly three straight months. It had tight gameplay, it was fun to battle other players, it was addictive to try and build a perfect deck with the cards that were available, and expansions were coming at a decent clip. What could go wrong?
Well, as we reported last week, the game’s dev team implemented a long-awaited feature into the title: trading. This was something that fans had been waiting on, and yet, when it arrived, they were horrified at what they found. Long story short, the trading feature was very predatory and caused players to shell out lots of cash if they wanted to do a bunch of trades instead of just a few a day. Fans called it out on multiple platforms, and as such, Creatures Inc. released a statement on Twitter where it thanked fans for the feedback while also promising to make some key changes:
“The item requirements and restrictions implemented for the trading feature were designed to prevent abuse from bots and other prohibited actions using multiple accounts. Our goal was to balance the game while preserving the fun of collecting cards that are core to the Pokemon TCG pocket experience.
However, thanks to your feedback, we understand 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. Going forward, we also plan to offer multiple ways to obtain trade tokens including through event distributions.”
On the one hand, it’s good to hear that the team has heard the fans and is making changes. These kinds of fan complaints need to be taken seriously every time, as they are vital for keeping the game going. However, you do have to wonder if some of what the team was saying was “accurate.” After all, the methods they used to limit trade tokens and trading as a whole were so broken that they should’ve been called out immediately by testers and such. Yet, it got approved anyway.
Only time will tell if gamers will accept upcoming changes to the trading system.