I’ve become obsessed with Pokemon TCG Pocket over the past month. I’m just three cards away from completing the Genetic Apex collection (not including alternate arts, of course), I’ve got Mew, and I’ve completed every event so far. I spent a little cash and a lot of time on this game, but recently I’ve been succumbing to conspiracy theories.
You see, progress has slowed. My packs are far worse than they used to be, I don’t find ex cards as often, and my Wonder Picks are always terrible. Genetic Apex is wearing thin, and I’ve come up with a theory as to why.
Before I don the old tinfoil beanie, I want to clarify that I understand the logical explanation. At the start of the game, every card was a new card. Every pack held five magical mysteries for me to unlock. Now, I need just three cards to complete my collection, so the chances of them appearing are slim to none. That’s why I’m not getting new cards. But it seems like nobody else is either.
The Pack Weight Conspiracy
However, it’s not just new cards that I’m missing out on, it’s rare cards, too. In the first week or two of the game I opened a ton of packs and got a bunch of them. All four of the immersive rare cards I have (barring Mew) were pulled in that first fortnight. I got so many alt art Diglett that I transferred a bunch of them into currency. Now, I’m lucky if I see one ex a week.
First, the logical explanation: I’m spending less time and money on the game, so I’m opening fewer packs. In the first two weeks I spent around £40 on gold, the only money I’ve spent on the game so far. This went directly to opening packs. The initial challenges, which I burned through far too quickly, also rewarded currency to spend on packs. I was opening, opening, opening, so surely it’s no surprise that I was pulling rare cards?
The conspiracy starts when I think about the cards I get these days, though. As a free-to-play player, I can open around 16 packs a week. However, I’m saving up my hourglasses for the next expansion, so let’s curtail that to just 14. Out of those 14 packs last week, how many ex cards did I get? One. Any alt arts? Nope. I vividly remember opening a ten pack bundle on the first day I downloaded the game and being greeted by eight rare cards, be they exes or alternate artworks. What’s going on?
My conspiracy theory is thus: DeNA and Creatures Inc., the developers behind Pokemon TCG Pocket, increase the pack weight when you’re new to the game. The first hit’s free, as they say. Once you’re hooked on alt art Snorlax and Eevee, the chance of pulling a rare card tails off.
This can easily be disproved by the laws that require Pocket to disclose its pack weights as you open each loot box. However, I don’t check them every time. I don’t remember what the chances of getting a two-star monster were when I first started playing, and if they’re any different now. But surely someone would have? People have tracked Misty coin flips to work out she has an 80 percent win rate when getting at least one heads, they will definitely have been tracking pack weights.
But there’s one more part to this theory: Wonder Picks.
Wonder Pick Proof
As well as my pack luck falling off a cliff, I rarely see any decent Wonder Picks these days. In the early stages of the game, I was constantly buying more Wonder Hourglasses to try my hand at getting cool cards, recovering my stamina to pull again and again.
Nowadays, I rarely find anything to use my stamina on. I never used Wonder Pick to complete my collection, so it’s not that I’ve simply got more cards now. It’s always been a chance for me to find a card with cool art. And now, I get nothing. The majority of my Wonder Picks are one-cost packs with no rares, to the extent that I have to spend my hourglasses on trash just so they keep refreshing.
This has a wider meaning, though. Does this mean that, like my own, my friends’ packs are getting worse, too? Is it getting harder to pull rare cards for everybody? It certainly seems that way from my experience.
My tinfoil hat has been firmly rammed down onto my bonce at this point, but the fact I’ve turned to such flagrant conspiracies shows my descent into madness. Pokemon TCG Pocket needs more things to do than just open packs. The battle system isn’t robust enough to make for enjoyable events, the Wonder Pick event has been downright abysmal, and the daily challenges offer nothing. If there was more to do in this game than open packs, I doubt I’d be so deep down this rabbit hole. But when all I do is log in twice a day to rip a booster, and those boosters seem to be getting worse, who knows where my mind will wander?
Next
Pokemon TCG Pocket Players Have Now Created Multiple Alternate Format Battle Modes
Fancy battling without ex cards, or maybe with three different energy types? The Pokemon TCG Pocket community has you covered.