![]() In my very first game I ever played on PTCGL, I immediately ran into a potentially game-losing bug with Lucky Energy and getting timed out, which left a bad impression. ![]() Related to the topic of gameplay, there’s of course the bugs to mention. I really hope we’ll see big improvements to the speed and responsiveness of PTCGL’s gameplay, because in its current state I honestly haven’t enjoyed it much. When playing Lunatone Solrock, I had to actively remember to not bench a 2nd Lunatone before using all my Solrock Abilities for the turn, because the difference in animations would otherwise cost me a good 10 seconds every time (when having 1 Lunatone in play, you can click through the Abilities pretty fast, with 2 to select from it makes me want to play a different deck). I don’t know if others have the same problem, but I found it extremely annoying. I can’t count how many times I played something like a Scoop Up Net, and then tried to click on my Radiant Greninja to use its Ability, only to be shown the picture, because apparently the Item card’s animation wasn’t fully complete yet. What makes it even worse is that when you click on a card too early, while still in “animation mode”, the game will show you the enlarged card picture, which you can only close by clicking the button in the top right corner. In addition to the visible animation, they also have some sort of “endlag”, where it looks like the animation is done, but the game is not ready to accept new inputs yet, which makes the gameplay feel even more clunky. Even very simple effects take seconds, and something like playing a Marnie starts to feel like it takes an eternity. The animations are slow, much slower than in PTCGO. This design decision by itself isn’t a huge issue, and might even make sense for the Pokémon TCG, but it’s not executed well. In PTCGL, you cannot interact with the game while an animation is active, instead you have to wait until it’s done. In those games, the animations add to the visuals of the game without hurting the gameplay, which is ideal. You can play down multiple cards from your hand almost simultaneously and any animations will play separately from that. In games like Hearthstone or MTG Arena, when a card you play triggers an animation, that animation does not stop you from interacting with the game. Animations by themselves are a good thing, but the way they are implemented in PTCGL severely limits my enjoyment of the game. My biggest complaint by far are the animations, that make the game feel very slow and unresponsive. ![]() Unfortunately, I think it’s pretty bad in this aspect. Ignoring how the game looks, for me the most important part is how it plays like. The PTCGL team has acknowledged this and announced an improved game board a while ago, so I don’t think it makes much sense to discuss it until we are able to actually use it in game. It gets the job done, but compared to other online card games, I think most people would agree that it looks rather lifeless. Visually the game board looks quite unimpressive. A lot has been said and written about the visuals and feel of PTCGL, mostly in a negative sense, and unfortunately my experience so far has been similar. The most important part of an online simulator is the gameplay, so let’s talk about it first. Quick note, I have not tried out the mobile version yet, so everything I talk about is in the context of the desktop version. In the weeks since then, I’ve played about 60 games total on Live, and wanted to share my thoughts on the state of the beta. Earlier this month, the Pokémon TCG Live beta was expanded to Germany, so naturally I wanted to give the game a try! I haven’t followed the game much beyond its initial launch in Canada, so I was very curious to see how much has changed since then.
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