Trainers, it is official — the Pokémon GO trading system has gone live for everyone who managed to reach Trainer Level 10, bringing the joy of making Friends, Gifting and exchanging Pokémon to millions of players all across the globe!
There are a few rules that our readers need to be aware:
- Trading is limited to players that have reached Level 10
- The minimum required age to trade is 13 years old. Younger player are not be able to participate in trading.
Aside from that, the Friends tab should be available worldwide now. The devs have shared their fair share of insights in a recent blog post titled Inside the Philosophy of Friends and Trading, which will we try to summarise below:
- The primary goal of the new Friendship and Trading features is to encourage players to play together and connect meaningfully in-game
- Gift Postcards are big deal, as they bring distant players together and create an inherent emotional connection between players
- Gifts intentionally drop better items than PokéStop spins
- Friendship bonuses are designed to keep communities together and actively raiding
When tight-knit friends take on a Raid Boss, even a small group can be mighty.
- Trading is balanced around Stardust, a scarce resource, which prevents a number of disruptive trades to occur. Harder-to-obtain Pokémon require “prohibitively high” amounts of Stardust to trade.
- HP and CP are intentionally re-rolled, again reaffirming the idea that trades shouldn’t influence the game in a negative way
- Special Trades are capped at once per day intentionally, but are designed to become more accessible as you level up your friendship
- A lot has gone into preventing the creation of a black market
- Mythical Pokémon cannot be traded at all, as all Trainers must complete the appropriate quest to obtain them (A Mythical Discovery for Mew)
The devs have also explained the stat re-rolling mechanism:
We first look at your friend’s Trainer level to confirm the Pokémon is not powered up past what would ordinarily be obtainable for someone at that level. Next, we assign minimum stat values based on your Friendship level, and that base increases the higher that level is. In other words, as your Friendship level increases with a friend, you’ll have a better chance of receiving a strong Pokémon when trading.
We are super excited to see where this update takes us in the future — two years after launch, Pokémon GO feels stronger than ever!