Look, I understand probability. I’ve been opening booster packs since before most of you were born (I’m old) and playing TCGs just as long, so you don’t have to teach me about the luck of the draw. I’m just as much of a degenerate gambler as every otherPokemonfan, and I recognize these ups and downs are what make it exciting.
But once you get to a level of investment in shiny cardboard that it becomes financially impactful (I’m also poor), it’s important to take statistical probability into account. To that end, I’m here to tell you that there’s something wrong withPokemon TCG Pocket’spull rates.
I’m not just pulling this out of mySolosis. I’ve talked to a number of Pocket collectors who have all had similar experiences. Namely: pulling basic ex cards is way, way harder than it should be. Or at the very least, it seems harder than pulling cards thatshouldbe rarer. Some higher-rarity cards actually have better pull rates than ex cards, but even the ones that don’t feel like they’re easier to find than ex cards. Now comes the fun part: let’s do some math!
Ex Pokemon Should Not Be This Rare
According to the in-app Offering Rates chart for the most recent set, Shining Revelry, you have a 6.664 percent chance to pull an ex Pokemon, and a 0.74 percent chance to pull any specific Pokemon. That makes ex Pokemon rarer than one-star Illustration Rare cards (10.288 percent) but not as rare as Full-Arts (2), three-star Immersive Art cards (0.888), and gold crown cards (0.16) - though it’s worth noting that pulling a set’s immersive art card is more likely than pulling any specific ex Pokemon.
Shining Revelry also features one-rainbow badge Shiny Pokemon and two-rainbow badge Shiny ex Pokemon, both of which are rarer than standard ex Pokemon at .714 and .333 percent, respectively.
You would need a significant sample size to see these pull rates average out, and unfortunately I don’t have the finances to open 10,000 Shining Revelry packs to see how accurate the listed rates are. Ihaveopened just over 100 packs from this set and I have about 4,000 cards total, so we can get some idea of how the odds have been treating me.
With 100 Shining Revelry packs, one should pull roughly seven ex Pokemon, ten one-star Illustration Rares, two Full-Art cards, one three-star Immersive Art card, and one Shiny Pokemon.
I’ve pulled five ex Pokemon, ten one-star Illustration Rares, three Full-Art cards,threeImmersive Art cards, two Shiny Pokemon, and - while their pull rate is only .333 percent - I’ve managed to pull three Shiny ex Pokemon, including two Shiny Charizard ex. In summary, I’m pulling fewer ex Pokemon than what the odds suggest, and more of, well, everything else.
Again, 100 is not a massive sample size. But when I looked at the other four sets, it turns out I under-pulled ex Pokemon in every single one of them. This is still not out of the realm of standard deviation, so I had two other friends who are hardcore into Pocket check their pulls, and they both pulled either on par or one under ex Pokemon pulls in every set.
My Collection Is Struggling
If this was happening to me in the physical Pokemon TCG, I’d have nothing to complain about. In fact, I’d love to pull fewer ex Pokemon and more of the rarer cards. But Pocket has no secondary market; you basically get what you get. When you have to open 100 packs in a single set just to craft a single ex card, missing any ex cards is a big deal.
I suspect my friends and I aren’t the only ones either, given the fact that I almost never see ex Pokemon in my Wonder Pick offers.
Even if the probabilities are accurate and my friends and I all happen to have exceptionally bad luck, I’m still confused as to why the pull rates for ex Pokemon are so low. This rarity symbol system in Pocket would suggest these are the rarest of the common cards, but it turns out they’re even rarer than one-star Illustration Rares. These are essential cards for deck-building and playing competitively, and you need all of them to complete the core collection in every set.
When you’re hunting for a specific ex Pokemon to finish a collection or build a deck, having just a 0.74 percent chance to pull it is pretty brutal. I get the chase – in fact, Ineedthe chase – but at a certain point the chase needs to end, and it would be nice if I could get there before the next set comes out, instead of always falling further and further behind.
Aside from increasing the rates for ex Pokemon, there are a lot of other solutions to this problem. More Wonder Pick events with ex Pokemon in them could help. Letting players trade down higher rarity cards for lower rarity cards might smooth things out too. Lowering the Pack Point cost to buy ex Pokemon would also be really nice.
I don’t expect Pocket to actually do any of these things, but my little frustrations with the game are starting to add up. Towards the end of each set my Pocket playing routine is always the same: I open the game, think to myself ‘time to pull a bunch of worthless junk’, and I’m almost always right.
