We’ve already looked very carefully at the grim, insidious nature of Pokémon Trading Card Game Bagis the unpleasant free-to-play modelBut one aspect of this quirky and hugely successful mobile spin-off of the long-established card game is how many in-game currencies you have to juggle with it. So far there are such twelveand it is absolutely confusing.
Free-to-play multi-currency games are, again, nothing new, and it’s all intentional, all part of the psychological system that makes you desperate to keep things going and if you can Only Get three more of these and a whole different thing will unlock! And here too the big problem is that this is the case Pokémon to do it in front of an audience with a large proportion of children and actually deliver it in the most Byzantine way imaginable.
To find out how crazy this all is, there is a button with three lines in the bottom right corner of the game’s main page. Tap on it and there will be an option called “Items” under “Shop”. Click on that harmless little word and the madness is revealed.
Let’s lay it all out:
- Pokégold (not paid)
- Pokégold (paid)
- Bright dust
- Shop ticket
- Special shop ticket
- Premium ticket
- Pack hourglass
- Miracle hourglass
- Event hourglass
- Advance ticket
- Event Shop Ticket (Meow)
- Emblem Ticket (Genetic Apex)
- Rewind clock
Now we’re going to be generous here and combine the two types of gold together to get the total to 12. And if your list doesn’t contain that many, it’s because you don’t currently own any of them. The list is constantly expanding, and given the specifics of the Event Shop Ticket and the Emblem Ticket, we have to assume that there will be more types of them.
You might be expecting me to explain what each guy does here, but guess what? Not even The Pokémon Company seems willing to share this. The entry on this advance ticket reads: “This ticket cannot yet be used. Wait and see what it’s for!”
Um, no? Just tell me? It’s annoying enough as it is.
Most of this currency is used to purchase items on specific pages of the game’s shop, which itself is set up as if it’s fallen into one of those Doctor Strange spells where all the buildings and train tracks start rotating and colliding with each other to weave. To spend the Event Shop Ticket (Meowth), you need to go to the Limited Time/Events section of the shop and then go to the Events page there, as opposed to the Premium page, the Poké Gold page, and the Mysterious page and always empty “Other”. There is another miscellaneous item in the “main” area of the shop which is also empty! Is it empty of the same things? Nobody knows!
Special shop tickets are obtained by sacrificing multiple versions of complete or better cards, which is never explained in the game and requires that you have somehow collected three or more of the same incredibly rare art. We’re talking about cards with a 0.3 percent chance (or worse, up to 0.013 percent) of coming out of a pack. You get one of them per card (I know, because annoyingly I somehow pulled three of the beautiful Snorlax full art cards), and the cheapest item in this shop costs Seven Special shop tickets. That’s for the presentation backdrops and not the fancy black and silver cases, play mats or coins you might want – they’re 12 tickets each!
Oh wait! Wait! It Is thirteen currencies because I completely forgot to include Pack Points! Yes, there is another system that you don’t even remember when you list what you own. These are the points that you can exchange for cards that you want in your deck. They are obtained by opening packs and only appear – not when you create packs or on any of the map screens – but when you are on the page to select a new sealed pack to open…
Who let all this happen?!
I have to stop writing now in case I discover a fourteenth currency I haven’t seen before and have an aneurysm.
And why is that so? To intentionally confuse you. So that you are never sure which currency you should keep and which has no purpose other than to be spent there and then. And constantly showing you numbers that could get even higher if you bought just a tiny piece of gold. Some direct, like hourglasses, where shortages can be made up by exchanging gold you own; others indirectly, by only arriving if you buy the (disastrous) premium pass, or by winning by continuing to play the event you just ran out of hourglasses…
Next time that eight different sides of missions!
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