Trading and Gifting coming to Pokemon Go

[InsaneNutter]

Niantic have announced brand-new ways to interact with your friends in Pokémon GO! The Friends feature will start rolling out to Trainers later this week, allowing you to connect with your real-life friends and keep track of their adventures in Pokémon GO. You’ll be able to send them items, earn bonuses and even trade Pokémon!

In order to add a friend in Pokémon GO, you must first ask them to share their Trainer Code with you. To invite a Trainer to become your friend, simply enter their Trainer Code and then send them a request. If they accept, you’ll become friends, and you’ll see them in your Friends List.

You can read the full announcement, complete with screenshots here: Make Way for Friends, Trading, and Gifting in Pokémon GO!

Needless to say i'm pretty excited to see trading added, however due to the star dust requirements for trading Pokemon you don't already have, this shouldn't be seen as an easy way to mass finish the Pokedex. It could however be a nice way to obtain regional or raid only Pokemon you might have missed if you have a local friend with those Pokemon.

It seems like if you do a raid with a trainer that's your "best friend" you can get 4x extra balls, which will be handy for hard to capture legendaries.

Edited June 18, 2018 by InsaneNutter

[theSLAYER]

@InsaneNutter the 1Million Stardust requirement shown in the screenshot seems very expensive.

Only good thing about trading, is it appears to roll IVs per trade.
Could try to reroll for higher stats by trading.

[wrathsoffire76]

Gosh, it's only been 3 years nearly since the first reveal when they showed trading and battling and now we finally have them.

[InsaneNutter]

@theSLAYER My thoughts exactly, so even trading regional Pokemon with a friend is not going to be easy. If you become "best friends" with someone in game you seem to get a discount on stardust when trading, as to how much that is on 1million though...

 

I think to get best friend status with someone you need to do raids with them on 4x different days.

I think it's going to be difficult to fill in your Pokedex gaps with trading, however the rewards could make it a benefit to trade Pokemon with bad IV's to someone you know locally to get better IV's and possible more rare candy from it.

[theSLAYER]

1 minute ago, InsaneNutter said:

@theSLAYER My thoughts exactly, so even trading regional Pokemon with a friend is not going to be easy. If you become "best friends" with someone in game you seem to get a discount on stardust when trading, as to how much that is on 1million though...

 

I think to get best friend status with someone you need to do raids with them on 4x different days.

I think it's going to be difficult to fill in your Pokedex gaps with trading, however the rewards could make it a benefit to trade Pokemon with bad IV's to someone you know locally to get better IV's and possible more rare candy from it.

Furthermore, trades limited to within 100m of distance, and the one special trade a day limit is kinda.. restrictive.

[InsaneNutter]

58 minutes ago, theSLAYER said:

Furthermore, trades limited to within 100m of distance, and the one special trade a day limit is kinda.. restrictive.

Indeed, unless you have a local friend who's travelled to the location of the regional you want you don't have much chance of obtaining something unique via trade. Its not like I could trade regionals with you or anyone else on here.

If a friends traveling its probably easier just to let them log on to your account and catch one for you.

That's how I got a Corsola, my friend went on holiday to Lanzerotti, borrowed my account for the afternoon and caught me one. If you trust the other person that seems a lot easier than trading.

It would still be interesting to add you and others on here for the gifting feature though, might be nice to get a random in game post card from places in the world I've never been.

[theSLAYER]

31 minutes ago, InsaneNutter said:

Indeed, unless you have a local friend who's travelled to the location of the regional you want you don't have much chance of obtaining something unique via trade. Its not like I could trade regionals with you or anyone else on here.

If a friends traveling its probably easier just to let them log on to your account and catch one for you.

That's how I got a Corsola, my friend went on holiday to Lanzerotti, borrowed my account for the afternoon and caught me one. If you trust the other person that seems a lot easier than trading.

It would still be interesting to add you and others on here for the gifting feature though, might be nice to get a random in game post card from places in the world I've never been.

Valid points, they didn't mention whether Gifting required the same restrictions as trading.
If it doesn't, I'll just keep sending gifts. Gotta hatch em Alolans!

I'm wondering if the trading is dependent on the servers noting our GPS locations, or it is simply reliant on Bluetooth transmissions.
(how far can a bluetooth signal go anyway)

Also, 40K stardust (at best friend level) already feels mighty steep to me.. le sigh.

I can understand these restrictions, but this is just plain horrible.
I feel like this is a whole lot worse than the Mew in Pokeball Plus situation.

[InsaneNutter]

3 minutes ago, theSLAYER said:

Valid points, they didn't mention whether Gifting required the same restrictions as trading.
If it doesn't, I'll just keep sending gifts. Gotta hatch em Alolans!

I'm wondering if the trading is dependent on the servers noting our GPS locations, or it is simply reliant on Bluetooth transmissions.
(how far can a bluetooth signal go anyway)

If I had to guess i'd say it was based on GPS location, everyone already has to be using GPS and have a data connection to be on the game, so it would be pointless to complicate things with Bluetooth if you ask me, especially as it's not always the most reliable type of connection ever.

In my experience of owning a device with Bluetooth 4 you can link to a device in the same room as yours, as soon as you go in to a different room the signal is lost. Bluetooth 5 can in theory do 400m, however I suspect in real world usage you'd have to be in the middle of a field with a clear line of sight to get anywhere near that sort of distance.

[theSLAYER]

2 minutes ago, InsaneNutter said:

If I had to guess i'd say it was based on GPS location, everyone already has to be using GPS and have a data connection to be on the game, so it would be pointless to complicate things with Bluetooth if you ask me, especially as it's not always the most reliable type of connection ever.

In my experience of owning a device with Bluetooth 4 you can link to a device in the same room as yours, as soon as you go in to a different room the signal is lost. Bluetooth 5 can in theory do 400m, however I suspect in real world usage you'd have to be in the middle of a field with a clear line of sight to get anywhere near that sort of distance.

However if it's by GPS, spoofers, well, spoof, in order to perform trades.
 

Fair points about Bluetooth. I cannot imagine a trade via Bluetooth in different rooms XD

[InsaneNutter]

43 minutes ago, theSLAYER said:

However if it's by GPS, spoofers, well, spoof, in order to perform trades.
 

Fair points about Bluetooth. I cannot imagine a trade via Bluetooth in different rooms XD

True, if your spoofing then I guess you don't really need to trade to catch out of region Pokemon anyway.

I've nothing against spoofing, however i've played legit since the game launched. If I start spoofing now it will ruin my enjoyment and any sense of achievement when out playing in the future.

I've seen a couple of people in the Facebook group for my town are planning to go the Safari Zone event in Dortmund, Germany at the end of this month. I believe out of region Pokemon are supposed to spawn there, so might end up been traded around locally in due course. I suspect the more rare regional Pokemon might slowly spread locally from that.