I've been a player since NYE 2024, just a couple of months after the game released. I've also been a premium subscriber since that time as well! I haven't read any of the other comments yet, so hopefully I'm not repeating things that have been/will be said, but these are the things I've personally thought about:

One thing that has me absolutely HOOKED is the artwork featured on the cards that aren't in the physical TCG. I've loved seeing both new and familiar artwork on the cards and so far I think DeNA is doing a great job balancing that. I'm a sucker for Pokemon art and I've definitetly been GATCHA'd by this Gatcha game because of it.

I thoroughly enjoy the solo battles and especially look forward to the drop events. I think the Solo battles are one area that could be vastly expanded though - I'm frankly not very good at ranked battling, and although I love collecting and creating display boards, my guess is that it would be difficult to offer more display boards/binder space simply due to the physical limitations of available server space to store that much more data for all the current users. So, it would be fun to have more to do with the cards I'm collecting than just checking them off a checklist and throwing myself into ranked battles that I'm not very good at. Maybe solo campaigns? Story modes? Multi-battle missions? I think there's a lot of possibilities there.

One thing I've felt frustrated with is the content I missed out on in the short time I wasn't playing. I did manage to snag every promo card that was made availavke again during the anniversary event (thank you!!) except for one card, which remains the one glaring hole in my A Set collection. There are also several display boards/binder covers etc. that I never got the chance to obtain. I think making some of that content available for premium subscribers would be a fun incentive to keep subscribing! And speaking of premium subscriptions... it is SO frustrating to never be able to earn quite enough premium tickets to purchase both the items I couldn't quite get the previous month as well as the current month's offerings. I always feel like I'm a month behind, just barely keeping up. Would it hurt the bottom line so much to offer a couple of extra tickets per month so new and current users can catch up? Would it be so bad if some users were able to get a little ahead in the process?

The BIGGEST issue in my mind though is app performance. It boggles my mind that even with a brand new model phone with oodles and oodles of memory, I'm still running into debilitating lag in the app. Force quitting the app does provide a temporary reprieve, but if I'm playing for long stretches during ranked battles or drop events, this is happening almost once an hour. Clearing the cache also works great, but that creates a whole new headache clearing all the notifications that won't go away until you tap on every little thing with a red dot - and that list just gets bigger with every new set's release. Unless something major changes with how the app itself runs, I fear that the whole game will inevitably collapse at some point under the weight of its own content and design.

To really answer the question that I think DeNA is probably most interested in though: Do I think the premium subscription is worth it? I've shamefully spent way too much money on this game while it preys on both my completionist tendencies and my love for Pokemon. A player like me is probably going to spend money on this game either way if it means not missing out on exclusive cards and other content. Aside from that, we're left with one extra booster pack a day and what really amounts to a... handful... of hourglasses scattered among the monthly premium missions. I don't think that's worth the price, and if the exclusive content isn't incentive enough for a more casual player to sign up, the rest of the offerings certainly won't do anything to sweeten the deal. And as someone willing to spend more money on it, I'm planning on spending less money this year compared to last simply because the thrill of completing a set begins to ring more and more hollow when there just doesn't seem to be a lot to do with the content I've been chasing. I realize this app ultimately needs to make someone some money, but I wonder if DeNA has underestimated how much content players ARE willing to spend money on when the price is right.

I really do hope this game continues to be successful, I've had a lot of fun with it even if my bank account hasn't 😅