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Pokémon Go trading and friends lists are coming soon

Pokémon Go trading and friends lists are coming soon

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‘We wanted to make sure we got this right’

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Pokémon Go trading
Image: Niantic

Two years later, Pokémon Go is finally getting trading.

Today, developer Niantic announced that the feature will be coming to the game soon as part of Pokémon Go’s big summer update, which will also add a new friend feature to the augmented reality mobile hit. Trading has been a long-promised feature for the game, one that Niantic insisted was coming since Pokémon Go debuted back in 2016. “We wanted to make sure we got this right,” Kirsten Koa, a Niantic software engineer who served as technical lead on the feature, explains. “I hope we came up with something that’s natural and enjoyable.”

“We wanted to make sure we got this right.”

The key to trading is a new friends feature, which allows trainers to get closer by playing the game together. To add a friend, you’ll need their trainer code. If they accept, they’ll then be added to your new friends list (which is currently capped at 200 but will likely expand as the feature becomes more popular).

You’ll be able to increase your friend level with other trainers by doing gym and raid battles together and by exchanging gifts, which is another new feature coming with the update. Players can collect gifts from pokéstops to share with friends, and some items will only be available through gifting, such as the new 7km eggs that will house exclusive Alolan pokémon. As your friend level increases, you’ll also earn other rewards at specific milestones.

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Of course, the most important part of all this is that you can now trade pokémon in the game, and the friends system was built at least in part to facilitate this feature. Here’s how Niantic describes the way trading will work:

Trainers who are connected as friends in Pokémon Go and within close physical proximity to each other will soon be able to trade pokémon. Trainers will earn the candy of the pokémon received in trading, and that bonus can increase if the pokémon traded were caught in locations far apart from each other.

The friendship level between players trading pokémon will provide unique bonuses including stardust discounts. Higher friendship levels between trainers will unlock the “special trades” option, which includes the ability to trade certain pokémon, such as regional pokémon, legendary pokémon, and shiny pokémon, and add new pokémon to their pokédexes.

Trainers who require parental approval and registration through the Pokémon Trainer Club to play Pokemon Go will be unable to trade with other trainers in the game.

According to Niantic, the reason players will have to be close together in order to trade is 1) to build on the real-world social aspect of Pokémon Go, and 2) to ensure that players can’t just fill out their pokédexes through remote trading. The developer still wants you to go out in the real world to find rare creatures. “We wanted to reinforce the idea that playing with others is important to your pokémon journey,” explains Noa.

“It took two years for us to build that feature — that’s how hard it was.”

As for why it took so long to implement, Niantic says that it was because of the challenge in maintaining the balance of the core game, while also ensuring that the trading feature was safe for younger players. “We believe this is the best way to be fair, safe, and fun for users,” says Niantic’s Kento Suga. “It took two years for us to build that feature — that’s how hard it was.”

The new features are expected to start rolling out later this week, and Niantic says that trading will be a big focus of its upcoming Pokémon Go summer tour, which kicks off on June 30th in Dortmund, Germany.

The update follows a steady year of improvements for the game, which started with the addition of co-op raids last summer and was followed by features like dynamic real-time weather and story missions and daily quests. Come November, players will also be able to transfer monsters caught in Pokémon Go to a new Nintendo Switch game called Pokémon: Let’s Go — and even carry them around in an adorable pokéball controller.