Why do people ask for legendary pokemon in exchange for common pokemon?

[Snowy]

Just now i went on the GTS and searched for Ekans, since i couldn't get it on my game. There were several results, all asking for Kyogre, Mew, and quite a few other other legendary pokemon.

Does anyone really think a level 1 Ekans is worth a Mew? Or am i missing something?

 

[Lanstar]

As someone who has lurked the gts through time to time...

Yes, you see lots of crazy trades in the gts. Stuff like Magikarp asking for Arceus. It's a crazy pandemic... But that's one interpretation.

Another way to see it is that the "fair" trades do happen quite often - It's just that the deals are so reasonable that they get traded off very quickly. The ones that remain: the most unreasonable trades. Maybe 10-20, searching for the foolish, usually not increasing, staying up for weeks - or even months. This, despite the fact that probably over 100 trades of the same pokemon occured within a single day - just never seen by the gts lurker!

Simply put, the pandemic is annoying - but not as annoying as you think. I prefer putting up reasonable trades - As of this Generation, I'd put up Miltank for Ekans. I always get good results most of the time doing this.

 

[Shadowgui]

Yeah I've learned that with the GTS it's better to put up your own trade and ask for something reasonable. A good tip is to put up a pokemon that is kind of rare but obtainable in the games (for example, I usually put up baby pokemon like Wynaut or Munchlax; some people are just too lazy to breed them on their own). I usually never have to wait over 3-4 hours for the trade to happen.

 

[Snowy]

It's a pain, that's for sure.

I ended up putting up a Chimchar (since i have a dozen of them) asking for Ekans, and someone made the trade.

 

[BlackButterfree]

'Cause the trollers gonna troll, troll, troll, troll, troll, troll.

 

[kaiomann]

Trades should just get deleted after some time, maybe like 2 weeks. If no one reacted to that trade before the owner just gets his pokemon back and it's not gonna show up on the GTS

 

[CalamityRobin]

Yeah, I definitely recommend depositing a Pokemon instead of seeking. Look up any Pokemon you like and you're going to find a bunch of people demanding legendaries for it. Seriously. Any Pokemon. Not just a few people in most cases. There are seriously dozens or hundreds of people who think putting up these trades are a good idea.

A few of them outright admit they're trolling, but I wonder if some of them seriously think these are going to happen.

 

[Osprey]

Because people are annoying. There's no logical explanation other than trolling. Depositing and requesting works a lot better than sifting through all the stupid requests.

 

[skyradiant]

I remember trying to get a Charmander on the GTS a few months back, and literally every single person was requesting some kind of rare legendary in return (Like Dialga, Arceus, or Diancie).

 

[Life]

Spoiler

Or they're just really optimistic.

 

[Snowy]

'Cause the trollers gonna troll, troll, troll, troll, troll, troll.

Yeah, I definitely recommend depositing a Pokemon instead of seeking. Look up any Pokemon you like and you're going to find a bunch of people demanding legendaries for it. Seriously. Any Pokemon. Not just a few people in most cases. There are seriously dozens or hundreds of people who think putting up these trades are a good idea.

A few of them outright admit they're trolling, but I wonder if some of them seriously think these are going to happen.

That's what i was wondering. Are they just trolling, or do they genuinely think those semi-common pokemon are worth near-impossible to get pokemon. I guess, except for the ones that admit it, we may never know.

Yeah I've learned that with the GTS it's better to put up your own trade and ask for something reasonable. A good tip is to put up a pokemon that is kind of rare but obtainable in the games (for example, I usually put up baby pokemon like Wynaut or Munchlax; some people are just too lazy to breed them on their own). I usually never have to wait over 3-4 hours for the trade to happen.

I've taken this advice and bred a box full of piplups and so far its worked five times.

I remember trying to get a Charmander on the GTS a few months back, and literally every single person was requesting some kind of rare legendary in return (Like Dialga, Arceus, or Diancie).

A few months back? Around October to December last year? Did you give Wonder Trade a try? Reason i ask is because i was breeding and wonder trading Charmander (and other starters), with people like you in mind

Wonder trade has been great. It's got me quite a few pokemon i needed, including a couple of Dragon types that i never expected to actually get.

 

[CalamityRobin]

Well, it's impossible to know how much of it is trolling and how much of it is just people being ridiculously optimistic. I have seen several trades offering the same Pokemon they're asking for with no extra conditions. It just doesn't make sense. If it's trolling, it's not even very good trolling, but so many people offering these... I can't really believe that they are genuine, either.

Let me just try a few searches and see what turns up. Okay, the Fletchling listing is full of these. Nosepass too. Plenty in Whismur, Emboar, Diglett... Skarmory is surprisingly good, but Magikarp... yep, first one is asking for an Arceus. Okay. It's all like this.

 

[Muur]

I remember in like gen 4 is was to exploit a clone glitch.

Now though I haven't got the foggiest outside of them thinking people will actually do the trades.

Putting a Pokemon in, asking for something then going backa few days later usually is enough for me to get what I want

You can turn off legendaries when searching anyway

People are just dicks I suppose.

 

[Silverwynde]

Yeah, I definitely recommend depositing a Pokemon instead of seeking. Look up any Pokemon you like and you're going to find a bunch of people demanding legendaries for it. Seriously. Any Pokemon. Not just a few people in most cases. There are seriously dozens or hundreds of people who think putting up these trades are a good idea.

A few of them outright admit they're trolling, but I wonder if some of them seriously think these are going to happen.

That's what I've been thinking too, as you actually could trade some Event Legends on the Gen V GTS. As long as the Pokemon had no Ribbon preventing the trade from going through, it was fair game. That's the reason I was able to score several boxes of shiny Automatons; a good number of them were gleaned from the Fifth Gen GTS and I had to cough up a number of Deoxys, Mew and Arceus in order to get them. They were pricey but to me, totally worth it.

It does depend on the Pokemon, though. I handed over a spare Groudon for a shiny level 100 Ditto only to find that the Ditto was flawless and Japanese. Perfect for shiny breeding. So that trade was definitely worth it. But others, not so much. (I've lost count of how many Golett I have given up Legends for, only to find that they weren't 6IV or had their HA. I barely use the GTS these days; there are no legit trades on there now.)

 

[Stratelier]

I think the first reply nails it on the head: 1 - People post stupid trades simply because they can (which is not limited to the main series - Pokemon TCGO has this same problem), and 2 - since these trades never actually get accepted, they stick around on the GTS forever (unlike the TCGO). It's been a problem ever since the GTS was first introduced, back in Gen 4.

Gen 6 at least made some improvements:
- Being able to scroll through a list of all trades (they are also in newest-first order, so it's usually not worth scrolling past the first 20 because by that point you'll probably only find the stuff that nobody will trade for). Back in Gens 4-5 you were only ever shown 7 offers or less (and usually only 5 or 3), then you had to change your search parameters (you couldn't just refresh the list).
- "Pokemon I have" filter: Probably the single best thing introduced in the Gen 6 GTS. It won't solve the problem of stupid trades demanding legendaries for commons, but it at least cuts through all the stuff you simply don't have the Pokemon to trade for.
- Pokemon Bank: If you store all your legendaries in the cloud, the above filter will stop showing you these stupid trade offers simply because you don't currently have the Pokemon they're demanding.

 

[Vegito]

Just now i went on the GTS and searched for Ekans, since i couldn't get it on my game. There were several results, all asking for Kyogre, Mew, and quite a few other other legendary pokemon.

Does anyone really think a level 1 Ekans is worth a Mew? Or am i missing something?

Well it's like this. many many people horde their legends. Most of these people have multiple games. However the majority of players don't have multiple games, not ones at least that trade with each other. If you're trying to get all of the Pokemon and you have a limit of one game it really isn't fair if you are trying to collect all of the Pokemon to have one of each (instead of a PokeDex listing only) to trade off your Legendary Pokemon for one you don't have. There are plenty of people out there that have multiple copies of Pokemon Legendaries and it isn't going to kill them to trade one of these extras away.

 

[Ziggy Stardust]

Most of them are probably either trolls or naive kids.

However sometimes I do this to transfer myself items from a game to another, since I just have one console and Pokébank won't transfer items. I put, say, a Lv.2 Zigzagoon in GTS, requesting a Lv.100 Garchomp. In my other game I have a Garchomp and I pack it with an item, and then I do the trade through GTS. It's safer this way because I'm pretty sure nobody will give a Garchomp for a Zigzagoon.

I do this only for items, but for people without Pokébank, this is the easiest way to transfer the pokémon itself.

 

[skyradiant]

I remember trying to get a Charmander on the GTS a few months back, and literally every single person was requesting some kind of rare legendary in return (Like Dialga, Arceus, or Diancie).

A few months back? Around October to December last year? Did you give Wonder Trade a try? Reason i ask is because i was breeding and wonder trading Charmander (and other starters), with people like you in mind

It was last August.

 

[CalamityRobin]

Most of them are probably either trolls or naive kids.

However sometimes I do this to transfer myself items from a game to another, since I just have one console and Pokébank won't transfer items. I put, say, a Lv.2 Zigzagoon in GTS, requesting a Lv.100 Garchomp. In my other game I have a Garchomp and I pack it with an item, and then I do the trade through GTS. It's safer this way because I'm pretty sure nobody will give a Garchomp for a Zigzagoon.

I do this only for items, but for people without Pokébank, this is the easiest way to transfer the pokémon itself.

It might be interesting to check one of these lists one day and then compare it the next day to see if that's what is going on. I'd like to think that is is, because I can't get my head around so many people either trolling or expecting these trades to really go through. Some people maybe, but this many?

It'd be nice of the GTS would give more information on the Pokemon, such as abilities, so people don't get scammed as much by people making untrue claims, but that's a different issue, I guess.

(I wrote more here and realised I was thinking of something else, so I deleted it!)

 

[ocelotlrama jaguar]

No idea. I was always under the assumption that is was a bunch of kids who think that what they are trading is very special or just some random troll who thinks it's funny. Still, I'll take this generation's GTS over Gen IV's. That was the pits!