Some context:
There’s a lot of Pokemon games out there; it’s always been a mobile kind of game. It was inevitable that, once they moved Pikachu and friends into the collectible trading card world, that a mobile version would follow. And it did, in 1998, in a version for the Gameboy Color that collected the game and its first three expansions into a cart you could play anywhere.
(I haven’t seen this at any of the retro game stores I visit, or I’d have bought it).
Fast forward to modern times. I played Pokemon Go, the mobile ARPG, right up until they sold it to the people who funded the 9/11 attacks on the US. I played Pokemon Duel until they shuttered that, and there was that match 3 Pokemon game – Pokemon Shuffle – that I played for far too long. I 100%’d Pokemon Legends: Arceus and almost matched that on Sword/Shield and Scarlet/Violet.
I have my mobile Pokemon bona fides.
I was pretty excited by Pokemon TCG Pocket, another mobile game based off the card game. The TCG has gotten nothing but more popular in the ~30 years since originally released (and OMG, thirty years? Really? That… must be wrong…). Everyone in my family played it, but I wanted to play it more and subscribed to the Premium plan, which gave The Pokemon Company ten bucks a month for an extra booster pack per day and some custom cosmetics (icons, play mats, card sleeves, etc.)
When my family played, I’d duel them, but I’m the last who still plays and so I’m only in it to collect the cards and do the solo battles now.
And there’s the issue. I want to collect the entirety of each new set; the new trading screen has really helped to collect some of the older cards. So for me, the game just kept leaning into the stuff that I wanted most, because, you know…
When you open your two (or three, if premium) daily packs, you’re allowed to open a pack from any released expansion. I’ve been opening packs from the very first expansion, Genetic Apex, in order to complete that collection. Just two cards left, now! (And with just a few dozen more packs opened, I’ll be able to buy the one card I really need with bonus points). The special Snorlax I need costs 400 bonus points, and at five points per booster pack opened, that’s a mere 80 packs. I’m currently at 235 points, so just 33 more packs… I love the grind.
Anyway. I don’t mind the grind, it’s a long term goal to work toward.
So let’s talk about Deluxe Pack ex.
This expansion, released a couple days ago, adds *357 *cards to the Pokedex. The vast majority are “reprints” of cards from the previous expansions. Each pack is guaranteed to include a 4 diamond card, the highest normal rarity (star cards, the variant art cards, are more rare). Because of the rare card guarantee, each pack contains only four cards rather than the normal five.
If you’ve been playing since the game launch, you’re going to have the majority of these cards. You’ll need to collect all of them again, however, if you want to fill the new Pokedex.
This is a limited time expansion – October only – so… Eight cards per day, times 31 days, and assuming no dupes, the best you will be able to manage is 248 cards of the set. If you’re incredibly lucky with the packs, then you’ll only be 109 cards short when the expansion disappears. Now, if you’re a premium subscriber, that’s 12 x 31 = 372. Premium subscribers will have the chance to catch ’em all.
But they won’t; just a couple of days in, and I’m already getting dupes. Even as a premium subscriber, there’s no way to win.
Admittedly, all the theme deck missions for the new expansion would take cards you already collected into account, so I was able to clear a bunch of those the moment I logged in for the first time. But the collection missions – especially the one that requires me to find 350 unique cards in this month in order to get the monthly currency to buy the cosmetics for the expansion – are just not going to get done. (Right now I am at 106/350, having spent the daily reward currency that I’d been saving on three 10-pack opens).
The only way to complete the missions is to grind. And the only way to grind is to spend money – even being a premium subscriber won’t help you. And since this is a gacha game, there’s no guarantee that, even if you were to spend a thousand dollars, that you would collect ’em all.
So, the money they will be getting from me from this point on, is zero. There’s no benefit to it anymore. When this pack expires, I’ll have to go back to the previous expansions where these cards first appeared and grind them out again. I am a dedicated player; I was just a few cards from collecting them all, and now the Pokemon Company has decided I need to start from zero again.
So, thanks for that.