Marvel Snap’s Card Acquisition and Economy Conundrum

19 Comments

1. I feel sad because in every announcement it feels they are trying to drain players from their goodwill for the game. I am currently series 3 & 4 complete and the way things are i have no reason to spend either money or time in the game as “infinite” rewards are worthless

2. I wish I’d never left Legends of Runeterra. I don’t know what it’s like now, but at the time, the card acquisition system was great. I never felt like I’d have to wait more than a month or so to have EVERY CARD in the game. (I imagine it’s harder for new players to jump in? I had played since beta.)

   My point is, that game was making its money off of cosmetics, while LETTING THE PLAYERS HAVE ACCESS TO THE CONTENT, and I was happy to contribute every once in a while.

   Second Dinner, look at how allowing all players to have Kitty Pryde shook up the meta, and think about it.

3. Great articlre that highlights a lot of the stuff wrong with the progression system. I am collection 4500 or so and its been nearly 500 collection level since I got a new card and I’m not even series 4 complete. I think changing the token aquistion to be minimum 300 could genuinely solve the problems plauging the game in this regard.

   • I’m at a similar CL, and fully agree.

     I actually lucked into opening Darkhawk a few days ago. Almost feels dirty when so many people are clamoring for him, and I only have 4 Series 4 cards.

     • Same boat as you both, and the worst feeling is opening a cache and getting an avatar, title, or a pixelized variant I couldn’t care less about instead of tokens or a new S4/5 card I don’t have. Feel like it’s been so long since I unboxed anything I cared about

4. Personally, I have no issues if they want to keep cards in series 4. What anyway make me disappointed with the actual system is the incertitude related to the pity timer. We know that players should find series 4 every 40 boxes. Well, it is not in this way. I found for example Stature at CL 6.5012 and my previous series 4 was Sentry at CL 5.734. So if there is the pity timer it should always be on and not like now sometimes yes and sometimes no.

   • the pity timer is 2 S4 cards in 80 caches. the first one can be in cache 1, the second in cache 79. its stupid i know.

     its a cat and mouse game second dinner plays with the playerbase in regards to card acquisition. typical predatory “1 step forward, 2 steps back” type of stuff to try and milk the playerbase. shortsighted imo, but thats how they like to operate.

5. The “we needed to make this change to make this other change we are going to do, but we didn’t tell you that ahead of time and we still aren’t telling what any of the other changes are going to be” excuse feels really flimsy and sounds more like they really didn’t think players would be upset about keeping cards in series 4 and now they are scrambling to fix it but don’t know how. Another thing that seems to be forgotten is how it now takes new players longer to get series 3 complete, which is a complete joke because now since you can’t even spend tokens on series 3 cards there is no good reason to not just give new players all series 3 cards at once or greatly, greatly speed up their acquisition

6. It definitely feels like a slap in the face for the loyal players.
   Also if we’re series 3 complete, rewarding us with 3000 tokens (the value of a series 3 card) would mean we don’t miss out on a reward, and we can use the tokens towards cards to complete our collection.

   • Series 3 cards are 1000 tokens unless you meant Series 4

7. I think you’ve got the right ideas here.

   Personally I always thought that they should have made it so players can get full collections within a month or two of regular playing (maybe 3 by this point with how many cards there are now) without paying, only paying to get there earlier, and make money off cosmetics, season pass cards (which might remain exclusive for 3 months or something) and ultimately from in game tournament entries or similar.

   I know Brode had this vision of unique collections and less net decking but it just doesn’t work that way. All their worst decisions, like Nexus Events and putting every single new card behind a 6000 token wall that ensures most players don’t care about most new cards at all, have come out of trying to monetise people getting those last few good cards for their decks.

8. Solution here is:
   1. Before completing series 3 you can have a free series 3 card every month, every series 3 card cost 1K, every series 4 cost 3K, every series 5 cost 6K. Series 4 and 5 maintain the actual rarity when opening new boxes.
   2. Once you get all series 3 cards, you can have a free series 4 every month, every series 4 cost 1K, every series 5 cost 3K. Same reward system is implemented when opening box as in series 3. Moreover instead of 40 box for a new series 4, you can find it one every 12 box (maintaining also the 3X ratio that is in the cost of the cards).
   3. If you have completed all series 3&4 you just pay 1K for series 5 with no free card. Same reward system as in series 3 is implemented when opening boxes.

9. Honestly, just more tokens on the collection track would do it.

   I’m sick of opening titles and, especially, avatars. I have enough; I don’t need any more that I don’t get as part of bundles, events or season passes.

10. I used to love Snap, but I quit a few months ago due to the extremely poorly designed economy. It feels like Snap is a collectible card game that hates giving out cards, it is a bizarre design decision. The game has been successful but, in my opinion, it’s partly because the economy is so heavily front-loaded. Many players don’t realise how bad things are at high CL, because they never get there…

    Why did I quit? After completing Pool 3, my collection progression hit a brick wall, and the game just got really stale. Having meta cards locked behind a paywall stinks, I hate the battle pass system. The “no refunds” policy for nerfs is gross, and almost unique amongst digital CGs. For example, releasing Silver Surfer / Zabu as “OP, must buy” cards, only to almost immediately nerf them, was extremely dubious. The gatcha tricks, which force daily logins and grinding, also feel really oppressive to me. And that’s sad because, at it’s core, the game is really fun!

    Reading this article suggests that, as the card pool grows, so do the problems with acquisition. I will check back in a few months to see if things have improved.

11. The biggest problem with all the acquisition in Snap is that it completely craps on player agency. Getting though pool 3 takes about 6 months right now, from when you begin playing, depending on how much gold and/or cash you dump into CL progression. This is only going to get worse going forward and as such, they need to begin nipping this in the bud so there’s some feeling of player agency and road to progression so people can have more than one buildable meta deck every 2-3 months. And heaven help you if the meta turns against your chosen archetype.

    The best things they could implement to achieve more player agency and ease of basic deck building:
    – When opening a cache with a new card or variant, give a choice of two knowns and a third choice of a randomized other.
    – Expand the Collector Token shop to 8 cards on offer with pool 3 cards available, in a 4/2/1 + featured configuration among pools 3/4/5 respectively. When a pool is completed, begin offering variants from that pool in the appropriate slot. (In addition to the current variant acquisition model.)

    If they don’t ease off trying to monetize base cards and their acquisition, they will absolutely kill this game.

12. It’s really frustrating and baffling that they treat fixing the card acquisition process as some impossible to solve problem that needs months and months of cogitating and planning to figure out. The new cards cost way too much for the amount of tokens players get. The solution is simple then: decrease the token cost of new cards and/or increase the amount of tokens the players get. This isn’t complicated math here. Most players get enough tokens over the course of a month to get 1 series 5 card while over the same period of time they release the equivalent of 3-4 series 5 cards. That means if you want players to keep up with the release of new cards either increase the amount of tokens players get by 3-4 times or cut the token costs to 1/4 to 1/3 of what they are now or change both so that the amount of tokens earned lines up with the amount it takes to get the new cards.

13. This is certainly my most played app game ever. Likely played this more than every other app game combined. It scratches the MtG itch for free. I prefered when the drops were predictable and I trust they will become so again. So far all the acquisition changes have been positive over time for me, so I expect this one will be, too.

14. I uninstalled the game after a content creator I like described the Thor bundle as reasonably-priced at $15. I could buy some of the best indie games ever released for that. I’ve spent more than the cost of a triple-A game on Snap and it feels really bad. Spending money on a game where the creators have so little respect for the players feels Bad. It’s especially frustrating because I understand that the game has to be profitable, but the monetization could be dialed down by over 90% and it would still be profitable – and much better for the long-term health of the game. Instead they’re trying to milk us for everything they can get and then they’ll act confused when the game folds in a couple years.

15. Man. I have completed Series 3 and was hoping to pick up Shanna later on this month… But it says I have used my “free Series 3 pick for the season” even though I haven’t. The chance to get only +100 tokens once you finish Series 3 is a poor reward.