Pokémon Trading Card Game Pocket is currently in the midst of one of its Drop Events, limited-time activities where players can earn a few new promo cards. This week’s is headlined by a Mega Medicham ex card. It’s a routine event for the card-collecting game, but the event also resurfaces a nitpick that players have had with the game for quite some time: Why do we still have to open all these promo packs one by one!?
In Drop Events, players are given a set of battles against a computer-controlled opponent that uses a deck built around new promo cards. As a reward for clearing those battles, players earn single-card booster packs that each contain a card from the event’s set. This time, players can get five special cards: Mudkip, Plusle, Ralts, Tornadus, and Mega Medicham ex. You’ll want to rack up as many packs as you can to make sure you get all five cards before the event ends.
So, what’s the problem? It’s the smallest of annoyances. When you get a promo pack, it goes straight to your gifts screen. You open it from there to get your card. And if you’ve racked up five or six packs? You’ll need to open them one by one, as there’s no way to just rip them all in one go.
Believe it or not, this has been a pain point for the TCG Pocket community for some time. A Reddit post from January titled “This is the worst part of every solo event for me” pointed out the annoyance with an American Psycho meme. It racked up 4.7k upvotes, earning comments like, “It’s a feature coming in 2033, you need to be patient since they’re a small indie company.”
It may sound like a tiny gripe, but it speaks to a larger complaint within the mobile game’s community. Despite the fact that TCG Pocket has gotten frequent updates and tons of new cards in its first year and change, basic quality-of-life improvements have come very slowly. Players have been practically begging for features like dark mode, universal pack points, skip animations and more since the game’s launch. There are some low-hanging requests hanging around that you’d think wouldn’t be too hard for the game’s developers to implement, and yet, maintenance feels infrequent compared to the cadence of new packs and events.
And so, here we are at another Drop Event with fans left ripping their list of packs one at a time. Will TCG Pocket ever add a Claim All option? Will it at least make the pack opening animation skippable? Or, better yet, will it just give players the dang card without making them open a pack to get it? I’m sure we’ll find out six Drop Events from now. Stay tuned!
