Pokemon TCG Live’s First Year of Stats Released, Less Than 3% Usage Compared to Yu-Gi-Oh Master Duel

I remember grinding for hours for the frankly pitiful rewards you got in Online. Live is far more generous with what it gives you, yet I’ve never actually finished a battle pass and can barely be bothered to play outside of online tournaments. If it wasn’t for locals, I would be playing very little TCG at all
 
Honestly the main issue of why the playerbase is so low is just the sheer lack of marketing, though I understand if they don't actually want to market this steaming pile of garbage to the masses. Compared to Master Duel on the weeks into their launch, PTCGL is just pathetic.

PTCGL is mostly known to former PTCGO players and competitive players who needs an online simulator client to practice, and this playerbase compared to the entire card purchasing base is absolutely minuscule. I've seen people in locals and game stores that bought multiple boxes, open them on the spot, and puzzlingly look at me when I ask if I can get their code cards from boosters, because they didn't realize it's a thing. They just thought the codes was just for redeeming a digital collection (which it is) that you can only look at, they didn't know PTCGL is a playable client

Also, it's the stupid region lock thing! Why are you still doing this? Trick question, because PTCGL is handled by TPC International and they can only distribute the game to regions within that circle, but this means HALF of the world playerbase is locked out of the game! Including Japan! The COUNTRY WHERE THE PHYSICAL CARD GAME IS DESIGNED AND PRINTED! What kind of IDIOT thinks this is a good idea? Sure enough if you know how to spoof your IP with a VPN you can still play it, but that introduces another hoop in the steps of playing PTCGL and that's just DUMB.
 
MagnaDrake said:
Honestly the main issue of why the playerbase is so low is just the sheer lack of marketing, though I understand if they don't actually want to market this steaming pile of garbage to the masses. Compared to Master Duel on the weeks into their launch, PTCGL is just pathetic.

PTCGL is mostly known to former PTCGO players and competitive players who needs an online simulator client to practice, and this playerbase compared to the entire card purchasing base is absolutely minuscule. I've seen people in locals and game stores that bought multiple boxes, open them on the spot, and puzzlingly look at me when I ask if I can get their code cards from boosters, because they didn't realize it's a thing. They just thought the codes was just for redeeming a digital collection (which it is) that you can only look at, they didn't know PTCGL is a playable client

Also, it's the stupid region lock thing! Why are you still doing this? Trick question, because PTCGL is handled by TPC International and they can only distribute the game to regions within that circle, but this means HALF of the world playerbase is locked out of the game! Including Japan! The COUNTRY WHERE THE PHYSICAL CARD GAME IS DESIGNED AND PRINTED! What kind of IDIOT thinks this is a good idea? Sure enough if you know how to spoof your IP with a VPN you can still play it, but that introduces another hoop in the steps of playing PTCGL and that's just DUMB.
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They could easily prompte new seasons during Pokemon presents and even by just making actual ads. Imagine how many people would try the game if they were watching a Pokemon presents and then a video showcased how you can get like 7 secret rares, 25+ something packs, two meta decks and character clothing for free. That's more than enough for most people- imagine if you installed Pokemon go and they just gave you a free shiny starter of your choice, 150 ultra balls and 200 rare candies for doing nothing but playing. That's literally what Live does except nobody but actual players know that.

Do the people making this game know that marketing exists?????
 
koala cub said:
i honestly think one of the main issues with PTCGL that doesn't get talked about enough is how front-heavy the content is. in other words, once you complete the season's battle pass, what left is there to do besides wait for the next one?

the daily rewards are good when you're filling out the battle pass and getting big rewards, but once you complete it, what other aspects of the game are you consistently coming back to? in PTCGO, you had trading, different battle modes, a socialization feature, and more.

that's why for me, and for a lot of people, there's a significant dropoff in play time on PTCGL after the first week or two of a new format. while this is an inevitable cycle, it's made a lot worse by the lack of substance provided by this game
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Bold of you to assume I'm playing through my battle pass
 
theres no reason to play more than 2 games a day. limited to 2 challenges, customization is bleh. its a boring app. it could be so much better but theyre not doing anything with it. They've added NO new features since launch.

At least the old app had special tournament formats, structure deck battles, etc... Duel Links and Master Duel and Magic Arena have soooooooooooooooooooo much more to offer than Pokemon can
 
I went from an online only player to a physical only player because of PTCGL. In a way, it's a silver lining that I got the motivation to go to IRL events. I'm rather lucky in that I have a game store just 5 minutes from my house that plays multiple times a week, and other stores that aren't that far away that also play regularly. But it would be very nice to be able to casually play games on my computer since I don't always feel like spending several hours playing. And some people don't have a local store that plays, leaving their options to play very limited.

The frequency, quantity and severity of glitches in PTCGL is simply disgraceful. Not a set release goes by that multiple glitches are introduced, frequently ones that affect some of the best meta decks, such as how recently, for some Arceus-forsaken reason, retreating with Munkidori can cause the game to glitch out and not process the retreat until you time out. In a sane world, these glitches would get hotfixes or something, but that never happens. Instead, we have to wait for updates that solve a bunch of glitches at once, but not all of them.

Even when you don't encounter glitches, the game just feels sluggish with long action-preventing animations and many interactions feeling clunky. The fact that Gardevoir ex's ability takes soooo long to do, and they have never bothered to fix this, this despite the card being meta for its entire existence and being more than a year old now, is beyond embarrassing.

The game is also very lacking in features and isn't great to look at, but I could forgive that if playing it felt OK. I might even be able to forgive the clunkiness by itself, but the clunkiness + glitches is too much for me to accept. As a result, I have barely played PTCGL and I have no desire to change that.

I remember playing PTCGL back in the early days of Scarlet & Violet and losing a game playing Gardevoir because of a stupid Miriam glitch that existed at the time. I was formerly excited because I had just thought of the play and realized I had a chance (as things were looking bleak), but then it just didn't work. I closed the game and I think I may have uninstalled it then and there, lol. I reinstalled it a while ago to get some practice before a Regional, but haven't really played it since. The practice I got from its ladder wasn't even very good because I was low on the ladder due to not playing the game, but I played a few games against people on Discord server. So at least I got something out of it, I guess.

Overall, PTCGL is bad and TPCi should feel bad. I can only assume they are using cheap inexperienced developers to save costs, and I feel bad for them having to make a product that isn't good and not having the resources or ability to change that.
 
I highly doubt Yu-Gi-Oh had released their product as completely unprepared for actual launch like Pokemon did with Live. I documented dozens of bugs and helped them find and repair issues with the game since its release.

It still has a problematic algorithm, specifically with shuffling the decks in a true randomized fashion.

It also still has a problematic algorithm that assigns differing probabilities to the cards depending on quality and art.

But when you point it out to Pokemon, they still refuse to acknowledge the issues, even when given specific evidence that shows the Live game does not properly randomize the decks.

Or else I am just special and can play dozens of games in a day that just crush the probabilities of getting that one specific card, the only one in my deck, showing in my starting hand a dozen games in a row.

It is a fine way to test a deck concept, but then you have to take it to actual real life cards to determine if it is an ACTUAL viable deck. No amount of testing with Live can equate to real life cards, and the methods we use to truly randomize our decks with every shuffle, thus giving yourself a random draw and play that is just SOOO MUCH BETTER than any single game of Live.
 
The "matches played" statistic for Master Duel is useless. I played that game for a while after it released, and I can attest that their ranked ladder was infested with an absurd number of bot scripts for months and months on end. The bots would queue up to ladder, attempt to execute a linear FTK, and surrender immediately if they bricked or their combo got interrupted. It was all 100% automated. The point of it all was to farm game currency and then sell the accounts irl for money. I cannot stress enough that these bots were *everywhere* on ranked. Absolutely infuriating.

But statistics aside, yeah Master Duel was way more popular than PTCGL, lol.
 
Bradachin said:
I highly doubt Yu-Gi-Oh had released their product as completely unprepared for actual launch like Pokemon did with Live. I documented dozens of bugs and helped them find and repair issues with the game since its release.
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master duel is like their third or fourth go at this sort of thing and even it still leaves a lot to be desired. ptcgl has the potential to be better, but potential isn't everything. it is probably worth saying that it's a far more player-friendly platform for playing the tcg on than master duel will ever be due to dramatic differences in card crafting availability, they just need to get their act together (and more importantly get some more hands on deck) when it comes to the glitches. and as others have mentioned, though i am not personally interested in things like GLC, they should absolutely recognize that this fan created format has a large amount of interest and should be catered to and capitalized on. there's a lot of easy wins on the table, they just need to grab them. where it gets dicey, however, is what the devs of ptcgl are allowed to do under whatever terms they develop for tpci.

it should also probably be mentioned that ptcgl is also not trying to make a sale out of their simulator, but is instead a simulator you can convert your real life product purchases into pulls in (while also being pretty low effort to amass a decent collection without buying any paper product).

Raigetsu said:
theres no reason to play more than 2 games a day.
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call me crazy but maybe one reason could be that you enjoy playing pokemon cards and would like to be able to press a button to have another person put in front of you to play pokemon cards with.
 
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Warlord said:
Yeah I literally stopped playing months ago because I'd encounter a game-breaking bug roughly every other match. Which also tanked my interest in playing (and therefore buying) the TCG in general, because with PTCGL being unusable I have no way to practice.
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I just got kicked one day and had to redownload and lose all my progress. Man, i really hope that twinleaf gets (semi-)finished soon
 
Kinda get it, so far the game has been working for me, only issue is that I have to turn off Avast, since it completely blocks the game, have been in touch with both Avast and the Pokemon Support, yet nothing changed, not really willing to turn off my anti-virus to play the game. (Pls no comments on Avast, i had no problems with it, except with PTCGL)
 
As someone who started playing after live took over as the main online client, I’m really confused as to why we can’t have something like PTCGO, as everything I see or hear about it makes it look so much better then the barely-functioning pile of errors we have today. Sure, the battle pass gets us free decks and we get a bunch of credits to make a few cards with at the beginning of every season, but if you want to make a deck that wasn’t handed to you on TPCI’s silver platter, especially one that requires Pokémon VSTAR or VMAX, good luck saving up the credits for it unless you want to spend a fortune on codes, since a 4-3 line of one of VSTARS will set you back about 6,000 credits before you even make anything else, which is normally more than the beginning-of-season free credits. And, wait, you just pulled a full art Simisear VSTAR that you have no intentions of ever playing? It’s too bad that you can’t trade away cards that you don’t want anymore, guess it’ll sit and wait forever in your virtual bulk box.
Not to mention the lack of other formats. I know a lot of people want GLC and Legacy added to Live, and while I personally am not interested in those formats, I don’t see any reason why those formats should be excluded if they were part of the game before, especially with their popularity. Not to mention their expanded format is a lie. as they couldn’t be bothered to add cards from before the Sun and Moon era. And you can’t even play this fake expanded format with friends, only standard.
Honestly I just can’t wait for TwinLeaf to release so I can finally abandon this platform.
 
Regardless of the problems with PTCGL itself, the marketing of PTCG as a digital card game is so bad it’s almost impressive. I know numerous people who try pretty much every online CCG and most functionally forget PTCG even has one unless someone else doesn’t bring it up. The lack of proper marketing also makes many prospective players misunderstand code cards and assume the barrier to entry is much higher than other CCG’s for people who don’t collect physical cards.
 
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