The new set is... simply terrible.
Today we got the whole set leaked at Pokémon Zone and I was absolutely excited to get to know the new cards... only to discover that they are 90% terrible.
Being frank here, this game desperately needed new strong and strategically interesting cards at this point. Their speed of releasing new cards is very slow and a lot of players already dried out. Most content creators even stopped posting new content, since there are little stuff to be made that already hasn't been done at this point.
Now they're releasing new cards, but the vast majority of them are a mix of:
Terribly designed coin flips (total 8 / 80 random damage variants)
Awful coin flip vanilla cards (the likes of "flip 2 coin, you deal 20 damage for each heads")
Repeated, uninspired and uninteresting Vanilla cards (like 2 mana deals 40 / 3 mana deals 60, no effects)
Terribly boring and all the way very bad reprinted Vanilla cards (no effects, high mana costs, low damage, basically cards you ignore)
Only about 10% of the cards we're receiving are interesting, such as Lucario, Combee, Shaymin, Palkea, etc, and there aren't a lot of them for interesting deck building. I'd say the most interesting part by far are the new trainers, which aren't a lot too, alongside the 3 poke tools. Even most of the new EX are "ok" to "kinda not so good", not to say that they're skipping on a lot of them, like 2 of the Gen 4 starters, which sounds strange to say the least.
Even the new evolutions too, most of them are like...??? Like Rhyperior for example costs 4 to retreat, 4 to attack and has to discard the top 3 cards of its deck in order to do it? What about Tangrowth that needs 4 energy to deal 90, while also having 130 HP? What about the stage 2 bellossom, that deals 80 for 2 mana (no effect, nothing). Even Glaceon needs 2 water energy to deal incredibles 60 damage with a chance to paralyze, while any other eeveelution was made with double color deck in mind, mixing its cost with normal energy? Why are these cards so bad and very poorly made?
And why I'm I saying now that this new set will kill this game even more than the bad trading system? Well, because we have 4 types of people playing Pocket right now:
Collectors: casuals that only like to expand their collection.
Casuals: people that don't care / aren't too much into matches, people that are OK or straight up enjoy coin flips.
Hardcore tcg players: people that want to strategise and win matches. People that need quality, otherwise they go play other tcg.
Deck builders: hardcore players that are specially focused on creating new strategies and coming up with the future of the game's actual gameplay. These people need to be served with good tools to work, at the same time that most of the content creators are at this class.
With that said:
Collecting cards is not nearly enough to keep players engaged "forever", they will dry out if that's the only thing they can do, eventually (already happening).
Casuals are fine, but casuals need hardcore players to stay engaged with the game, talk about the game, same way they need creators and lots of cool events (which the game is lacking, they're either bad or only OK) to keep them engaged. Otherwise, they're casuals, they come and go.
Tcg players hate coin flips, as "luck" is not good for any strategy. It's ok to have some, no problem, but the game can't turn into a clown fiesta, at the same time that they also need cards that make investing on the game actually worth it. They also really need the game to stay hot, with lots of content creators, new stuff, etc, just like casuals do.
Deck builders need variaty, lots of it, so they can come up with new and interesting stuff for everybody. If you wait 2 months to receive lame cards, vanilla stuff, etc, they simply judge the game is not being serious with their time spending and they simply move on.
To finish, this game already had plenty PLENTY of vanilla stuff and the player base needed actual brain cells to be used now, cool effects, new possibilities, lots of changes. I don't think we're getting it, actually I think this expansion is the worse expansion so far, much inferior to mythical island. And look, people were expecting 280 cards, something closer to the first big set, but we're getting HALF of it. For roughly 2 months (maybe more). 140 cards, which 90% of them are lame. What do you think will happen? Not hard to guess.
But this is my opinion, share yours too. Very frustrated with the news, alongside the trading system... I'll play a little, but it will dry out fast and I think I'm mostly done with the game. If the game meant only for casuals, fine by me, but plenty of people interpreted it wrong then, and they will move out. Since it's pkm, the game won't die, but the momentum, the hype will. That's all.