Pokemon Go’s “flawed” mechanic is useless for online players

Pokemon Go players can’t always take advantage of one of the game’s rarest features due to an incredibly flawed mechanic, and the community is caught in a debate.

Pokemon Go players are discussing the Lucky Friend mechanic, and several are noting that despite being a huge amount of work to achieve, the coveted ‘Lucky Friend’ status is actually pretty useless for most players, even among the most ardent of players.

The problem, as discussed by users on the Pokemon Go Reddit, is that you can only trade with people locally. This means that if your Friend List is predominantly made up of people online, you can never benefit from being Lucky Friends, as you can’t trade.

“If they won’t add global trading for normal use they should at least do global trading when lucky friends,” one player suggested, while another said, “That seems like a good option. You get a lucky friend, you can do a worldwide trade with them. “Cooldown” could be a 30 day thing so you can only get the lucky trade once a month.”

“I have dozens of lucky friends with people I’ve met and played with in real life but I’ll never see them again,” one player lamented, “It definitely feels flawed. I only keep them as friends in case 5 years from now, I randomly run into them again somewhere in LA.”

“I have the same problem,” another user wrote, “And as if to rub it in my face, I need to make 28 more lucky trades to level up. Every time I look at my friends list I have to scroll past all these lucky friends I’ll never get to trade with.”

Even people who play Pokemon Go every day have a small chance of becoming someone’s Lucky Friend. First, you must become Best Friends by interacting with someone on your Friend list a lot, then there’s a minuscule chance that sending a gift, trading, or battling will make you Lucky Friends.

One huge benefit to becoming a Lucky Friend is that the next Pokemon you trade will have the Lucky trait. This means that Stardust prices are slashed when powering up that Pokemon and giving it high IVs.

It’s a shame that Pokemon Go still lacks a proper online trading mechanic, especially as that’s been a core part of the mainline series since the Nintendo DS era. Until such a feature arrives, players must rely on local friends and hope they get lucky to benefit from lucky Pokemon.