Is There a Booster Priority System in Marvel Snap? A Large-Scale Experiment

Since Beta, the system for obtaining card Boosters has received a number of changes. Previously, at the end of the match, cards of common rarity (with a gray border) received boosters with a very high probability, and cards of uncommon rarity (with a green border) had an increased chance of receiving boosters.

According to the developers, starting November 3, 2022, boosters earned at the end of a match are more likely to be obtained by cards with less than 20 boosters. This change was intended to ensure that the players would not stop upgrading their favorite cards.

Boosters earned after a match will now favor cards with less than 20 owned Boosters.

Marvel Snap November 3, 2022 Patch Notes – Version 8.7.1

However, in the official Marvel Snap Discord, players often ask if the system really works this way. My personal observations indicated that the system for obtaining boosters does not work as claimed. So I decided to test this system and find out how boosters are actually distributed at the end of the match.

Experimental Evironment

First, we need to define the conditions of the experiment. I picked 12 cards and divided them into 10 categories with various in-game parameters.

I built a deck with 12 cards that matched the above parameters and over the course of the experiment regularly updated them to maintain a low number of boosters for the cards from categories number 11 and 12.

Then I played 1000 games and recorded every time any card received boosters. From the data received, I created an Excel spreadsheet with all the necessary calculations.

Possible Outcomes

Before moving on to the results, I would like to outline the main expected and potential outcomes of the experiment and the conclusions that could be drawn based on it.

1. 1The number of boosters received by low rarity cards (numbered 9, 10, 11) is significantly higher than the others. This would mean that the second dinner didn’t really change the booster system.
2. Cards with less than 20 boosters (numbered 11 and 12) received more boosters than the rest. This result would mean that the system works as claimed.
3. All cards have received roughly the same number of boosters, which would mean that there is no booster priority system at all.

Experiment Results

The chart below is showing the distribution of boosters, sorted by frequency. Each column shows the number of boosters received by each card (category numbers are listed at the bottom of the chart).

As you can see from the graph, the boosters are distributed quite evenly, there are no clear favorites. And I could not find any distribution patterns for the parameters used.

In addition, here is another chart showing the number of boosters received by each card, expressed as a percentage and sorted by card numbers. The vertical line shows the average percentage, which is equal to 1/12 or about 8.3%. As you can see, the values do not deviate much from the average.

What Have We Learned?

Apparently, there is no booster priority system. The data show a uniform distribution of boosters even with the sample size of 1000 games. Also, the highest and lowest values during the experiment were constantly changing and have not remained static. Which means that the visible peaks on the charts are just a margin of error, but not a pattern.

It is also worth noting that recently Ben Broad, in response to a question in discord, gave some new information about boosters. He mentioned that there is actually a targeting for cards for which you have a very small amount of total boosters (all-time). It is not entirely clear what was meant.

Nevertheless, considering all of the above and taking into account my personal experience of getting boosters for the cards that I just received, I would assume that only the first dozen or two boosters that you get for the newly acquired card will be given priority over other cards.

In this case after reaching this hidden value (around 10-20 boosters), the priority rule for this card stops working forever and the process of obtaining boosters becomes completely random. Therefore, if you want to get boosters for a specific card, there will be no point in changing the quality of that card in the deck or upgrading it further.

I want to note that the above is only an assumption. It is quite possible that the system actually works very differently. But without additional information from the developers, it is difficult to draw any other conclusion that would describe observation results and data obtained.

But objectively speaking, considering only the data obtained during the experiment, getting boosters is purely random.

Conclusion

Thus, as of today, getting boosters is random (maybe except for getting the first few boosters), at least until the Second Dinner changes the present system so that the boosters can be received in a more predictable way.