Pokémon Go players are sick of Niantic restricting this major feature

Pokémon Go players are begging Niantic to apply changes to a highly restricted feature, which has been ignored by the developer for five years.

“Trades are dumb,” one player wrote on Reddit. “What’s the point of having the option to trade with friends if you have to be close to a friend to trade,” they explained, criticizing the restrictions applied to the feature.

You can trade with friends, but only when you’re near each other. The range increases with the level of friendship—while decreasing the amount of Stardust spent. To trade with a friend, players need to be within 100 meters apart.

Pokémon Go players generally agreed with the author of this thread. They’re now begging Niantic for a change, specifically the removal of some restrictions.

There are a lot of limits surrounding trades. In addition to the range cap in normal trades, some categories of rare Pokémon are locked behind Special Trades, which cost more Stardust and feature a daily limit use.

“I feel like this should definitely be a feature for the higher friendship levels,” one player said. “In the situation of having a best friend that’s not local to you and getting lucky friends, what’s the point? You aren’t even able to utilize the sole feature of lucky friends.”

“Like the one special trade a day, we should get one distance trade a day,” argued another.

Players didn’t complain about the range restriction as a whole, generally, but argued an exception for best friends would bring a lot to the game.

Reaching the level of Best Friends is the result of a lot of time and gift exchanges. It grants some bonuses, but long-distance trades aren’t one of them.

“It would give me a reason to keep best friends as opposed to just having them for gifts,” one player said.

Trades haven’t been changed since their introduction in 2018, except for time-limited tests where their range was increased. But they didn’t stay in the game after the events ended.