I bought the Pokécoin ticket that ran from 16th-30th May… for science. This article describes my experience with the ticket, what I thought and whether I would buy it again. Let’s get straight into it.
I took to Twitter to see how many of the Twitter community also bought the ticket and a surprisingly small proportion of trainers bought it. Bear in mind these results are only representative of the online community and there will be a proportion of players that do not interact with the online community.
for a piece i’m planning to write for @PokemonGOHubNet, I’m interested whether you bought the Pokécoin ticket, your motivation for buying it/not buying it and if you bought it how you’re finding it so far
likes & RTs appreciated for engagement 🤍 thank you #PokemonGO
— phrixu (@phrixu) May 21, 2024
The results showed that only 17% of players bought this ticket. There were some issues with it not showing up in some trainer’s store also which is to be considered.
The Daily Pokécoin Field Research Ticket granted you a field research task daily, rewarding you with 20 Pokécoins. This totalled to a maximum of 300 Pokécoins if you complete the tasks every day. The ticket was selling in the shop for £1.99 or the equivalent in your local currency. If you purchased the ticket you received a bonus field research task the first time you log into Pokémon GO each day between May 16th, 2024 12:00 am local time and May 30th, 2024 at 11:59 pm local time.
A couple of things to note about this:
- To obtain this field research task every day you will need to have three or fewer field research tasks active when you log in for the first time each day.
- You must claim the completed field research tasks from your field research screen to obtain the Pokécoins.
Task variety
The following table shows the potential field research tasks that you could receive, these tasks replace the usual daily task.
| Task | Reward |
| Catch 5 Pokémon Use 3 Berries to help catch Pokémon Make 3 Nice Throws Make 3 Great Throws Walk 1km Transfer 10 Pokémon Power up Pokémon 3 times |
20 Pokécoins |
The Good
To state the most crucial part of this article, I collected all 300 coins throughout this ticket. In terms of task distribution, I had the following:
- Catch 5 Pokémon – 6 times
- Use 3 Berries to help catch Pokémon – 5 times
- Power up Pokémon 3 times – 3 times
- Make 3 Nice Throws – 1 time
Fellow GoHub team member Glawhantojar also bought the ticket, and he said he got every single task at least once. Although I only got 4 out of the possible 7 unique tasks, I am happy with my distribution.
Sometimes when I am at work I struggle to hit 1km logged on PoGO throughout the day (don’t judge me) so I am happy I didn’t receive the ‘Walk 1km’ task. The tasks I got were easily completed within a minute or so of opening the game in the morning and did not take up too many resources.
Unexpectedly, something I enjoyed about this ticket was that it encouraged me to keep up with the field research streak/stickers. I hardly ever find myself looking at field research day-to-day and this ticket kept me consistently logging field research.
As £1.99 is a small purchase price and the ticket lasted 15 days the coins started to feel free (girl math) and it was nice to have the small boost of coins throughout the 2 weeks. As someone who has, at most, 1 Pokémon in a gym at any time I do end up buying coins when I want to remote raid, so I can see myself purchasing this ticket in the future if it still works out at a discounted rate.
The Bad
If you complete each day’s field research you will be rewarded with a total of 300 Pokécoins. Buying 300 Pokécoins in the shop will set me back £2.97 in my currency. The ticket itself marks a 33% discount on what 300 Pokécoins would cost you if you bought them outright, on its face this is a decent discount however there are caveats to this.
If you have too many field research tasks in your stack when you log in for the first time you will not receive that day’s Pokécoin field research, and you will miss out on 20 Pokécoins. This wasn’t too much of a bother for me as I’m rural and hardly ever spin more than one stop a day during the week. I can see how this would be pretty annoying for anyone who spins more stops or potentially has an autocatcher/spinner on overnight.
The ticket doesn’t say this, but there is the possibility if you don’t claim the previous days Pokécoin field research you might not get the next days. Again, missing out on 20 Pokécoins.
I cannot confirm this as I did not experience it, but there are reports that the 50-coin daily limit was still in place during this ticketed period. This means that if you claimed your task and had a Pokémon knocked out of a gym that had been there over 8 hours you would not receive 70 coins… and be capped at 50 coins. So, if you’re able to earn 50 coins daily from Gyms, this ticket would not have been any benefit to you.
This is a good first step, and I think opens up some interesting possibilities for future research. I would much rather see this dropped as a research questline, with tasks that reward 20 Pokécoins per task. This way trainers wouldn’t be at risk of missing out on the tasks each day if they forget to clear enough room in their field research stack. Alternatively, if there is no room in the stack it should override the last task. There is no reason why trainers should pay for these coins and not gain access to them.
If I am to buy coins, I usually buy the 5600 coin bundle on the webstore for £39.99 which sets me up for a good while. This means 300 coin equivalent is £2.31 and brings the discount down to 14% which feels less impressive. In some currencies due to ticket price to coin price disparity the ticket didn’t offer any discount at all! At the end of the day, coins can be accessed for free in Pokémon GO so this ticket is a luxury. I think offering a better bonus – 500 coins at £1.99 (60% discount) – and keeping it proportional across all currencies so everyone gets the same discount would incentivize more people to buy.
There are lots of ways to make a model like this work. I think we can take this ticket as a trial run and hope that it is improved and smoothed out if it returns in the future.
