Opening 300+ Collector’s Reserves: Can the Economy Handle Better Rewards?

Marvel Snap’s Collector’s Reserves are a highly discussed topic since the release of Spotlight Caches. Ever since the reserves had its Gold removed, Collector’s Tokens reduced, and Gold Conquest Tickets added, many players have argued the current Collector’s Reserves are not even worth opening due to their low value. Some players felt so strongly about this that they have stopped opening their reserves in hopes that a change is made to them, making the rewards inside more worth it.

Recently, developers have broken silence on the matter and made some comments about these reserves. When asked if they plan to make changes or are concerned about players hoardings, Developer Stephen made this comment on the official Discord’s Q/A channel:

Our stance on reserve hoarding has not changed.  We hear the feedback that folks want additional value out of reserves.  Based off our models and data, the game economy cannot currently support higher rewards out of reserves.  As a result, we have no plans to change collectors reserves at this time. If we did make a major change at some point in the future, we would most likely do it in a way that auto opens hoarded reserves out of fairness.  If this happened, our goal would be to make sure folks who are playing and opening reserves to have the most fun out of their time playing Snap do not feel punished.

Collector reserves

This statement raises an interesting question: If the game’s economy can’t handle better rewards in the reserves, are the reserves valuable at all? To analyze this, we aren’t going to talk hypothetically or open 9 reserves to breakdown the contents. Instead, we are going to break open 6 months worth of reserves all at once and see how valuable these reserves really are.

I had a total of 299 reserves saved since I didn’t need the contents inside. A bit of info about my account and my 6 month stash:

• I buy each Season Pass
• I collect every daily Mission and get all Credit bonuses from Conquest and Ranked rewards each season
• I spend Gold mostly on high value Bundles
• I don’t convert Gold into Credits or buy Missions
• I am Series 3 complete

What Was Inside?

In total, I opened 299 banked Collector’s Reserves. My rewards were as follows:

• Titles: 34
• Avatars: 24
• Variants: 41
• Collector’s Tokens: 6,800
• Credits: 17,600
• Gold Tickets: 40

Using the Credits earned from these reserves, I was able to get 3 more Spotlight Keys. I also opened additional rewards from 35 new reserves:

• Titles: 5
• Avatars: 2
• Variants: 6
• Collector’s Tokens: 900
• Credits: 2,300
• Gold Tickets: 2

By just looking at the numbers, it seems there isn’t very much contained in 6 months worth of reserves. But to do a true analysis, we need to look deeper into these rewards.

The Variants

I won’t spend long on this topic because art is subjective, so the value of them may be more or less depending on if the player likes the art. I received 47 variants for 6 months of reserves, making it about 7 to 8 variants a month on average.

In these variants, I also got 3 Dan Hipp variants that fit into the Staying Hipp Album, which got me to a new Album tier (2,000 Credits, not accounted for in my total Credit pulls). As more Albums are added to the game, these variant rewards may become more valuable since they can double as extra rewards, like I received.

The Collector’s Tokens

Collector’s Tokens used to be the primary way we collected cards, but after Spotlights were introduced, they are much harder to obtain. My 6 months of rewards netted me 7,700 Collector’s Tokens, which is enough to buy 1 Series 5 card, or 2 Series 4 cards. After 6 months, I got enough Tokens to buy 1 or 2 cards. At first glance, that seems outrageous! Only 1 card after 6 months of rewards?! However, we need to look at this reward in the context of the whole token economy.

You can get an average of 200 tokens each week if you use the newest Spotlight card. That means over 6 months, you have the potential to get 5,200 Tokens as a rebate for owning the card. You can also low roll the Spotlight caches and receive 1,000 Tokens. To quantify this amount of tokens, we will take 6 months worth of Spotlight keys and divide by 4 (1-in-4 chance for a mystery card duplicate with bad luck). Simplifying to about 5 Spotlight keys earned per month for a season pass owner multiplied by 6 months is equal to 30 keys. Divide that by your 1-in-4 chance and you get 7.5, or about 7,000 tokens if you low roll a duplicate every mystery card.

Now add these tokens amounts together. 7,000 + 5,200 + 7,700 = 19,900 tokens. Now this is a very generous amount, as you would have to be very lucky to get every card released, while also low rolling duplicate cards. So let’s say conservatively you get less than half of the extra token amount on top of the 7,700 from reserves. Call it 12,000 tokens every 6 months. Which gets you 2-Series 5 cards or 4-Series 4 cards.

Now, if you consider this amount of tokens within the parameters of the Spotlight economy, things start to make a little more sense. Players who plan ahead and aim for weeks with multiple cards they need can get at least 1-2 new cards per month, and possibly more depending on your collection. With the game giving you new cards primarily through this system, tokens have to be more scarce. So the game giving you 2 to 4 cards worth of tokens every 6 months is a way for players to grab a few cards they want without jeopardizing the spotlight system. We will look more into this idea in a different section.

The Filler Rewards

I think it’s pretty unanimous that the filler in reserves are the worst feeling in the world to pull. I don’t know about you, but I don’t need 26 Avatars and 39 Titles. The problem is these reserves were initially designed to give players Boosters in varying amounts, but they were heavily criticized since you also got Boosters on the Collection Level Track and in the Season Pass. They were eventually removed of course, but not until a new filler reward took its place (Titles, and lots of them).

Unfortunately, these rewards are needed in the game’s current state. The game doesn’t have other rewards to give you, and it can’t just give you more of the good stuff. So even if you pull a good title or avatar once in a while, the majority of these rewards are just shoved in the reserves to give you something to open.

Credits can also be argued as filler in these reserves, as they don’t provide new content directly. They do however boost your collection level faster and give you more opportunities to split cards. As shown in my openings, the Credits allowed me to open an additional 35 reserves and get 3 more Spotlight Keys as well!

The Gold Tickets

Whether Gold Tickets are better or worse than filler rewards is a hot debate, depending on the player. For most players, it’s a pointless reward. If you don’t play Conquest, you don’t want the tickets. If you do play Conquest, you can get an unlimited supply of Gold Tickets by just playing the mode and winning. So why even include these as rewards?

Over 6 months, I acquired 42 Gold Tickets, which is equal to 7 tickets per month. If you don’t play Conquest, you can start a Gold Ticket run, forfeit it, and gain 75 Medals without even playing a match. This can net you a few more Credits, a new Mystery Variant, or get close to the monthly Gold reward in the Medal Shop. That’s content you can create using a reward you don’t want. If you do play Conquest, those Gold Tickets can simply give you more shots at Infinity Tickets, or provide more opportunities to gain Medals faster with your wins.

After constant criticism and feedback over Gold Tickets being in the reserves, developers have finally commented on the matter. When asked why the developers initially decided to add Gold Tickets into reserves, Stephen had this to say:

At the time conquest had just come out and we felt they were perceived as a valuable reward that would help players save time and jump straight into gold conquest to try to earn an infinity ticket.  Unfortunately the perception of gold tickets did not reach that bar.

Hopefully in the future as we add more features (events, clans, more game modes, booster vats, etc), we can find a replacement for gold tickets with something that the community values more.

So there you have it. The developers agree that Gold Tickets haven’t been as good of a reward as they hoped. Judging by Stephen’s first comment, it’s unlikely we see Gold Tickets being swapped out for quite a while. In the meantime, they can still hold some value if you use them effectively instead of letting them expire at the end of a season.

Can Collector’s Reserves Afford Better Rewards?

When you look at all of the rewards in 6 months worth of reserves, many players will say it’s mostly junk. While there is some junk like Titles and Avatars, many of these rewards are meant to boost the Spotlight system. They aren’t meant to carry the economy like they used to in the pre-Spotlight Era.

When I read about players opening their hoard of reserves on reddit, I see constant complaints about there not being enough Tokens to buy a single Series 5 card after 4 or 5 months. I think this is looking at the new system, trying to make it into the old system, and getting upset when it doesn’t work. The new Spotlight system is actually great if you can responsibility manage your keys by planning them out in advance. The Tokens are meant to save you keys on a week or two where you only want 1 card and don’t want anything else. For example:

Coming up, Grand Master will be featured in the Spotlight Cache, alongside Loki and Hit Monkey. I’m really interested in Grand Master, but I already own Loki and Hit Monkey, and already have variants I like more. I could risk 1 Spotlight Key to snipe out Grand Master, but I could very easily spend 4 trying to get him. By using my tokens, I can save those keys for a week where I’m happy with multiple rewards in a cache.

The lack of tokens in the reserves are also subsidized by the influx of tokens in other areas. You can buy tokens with your Gold. You can get tokens by using new cards you got with keys or tokens. You can even get tokens from Albums and bonuses in the Daily Offer shop. This means the token rewards in the reserves are meant to be a piece of the puzzle, not the entire economy. If you value tokens over all other rewards, great! Buy the token bundles. Go for the bonuses. This can net you a much higher token amount over 6 months.

If you increase the token amount, the Spotlight system begins to fall apart. Players could easily start to get a full collection and start hoarding resources so they will forever have a full collection. While this may sound great to many of you, this goes against the philosophy Second Dinner has for the game in having unique collections. It also simply reduces the need for players to spend money. The game needs to make money to continue on after all.

After analyzing the Collector’s Reserves by opening 6 months worth of rewards, I can see how Stephen’s comment makes sense. The game currently doesn’t have enough unique rewards available without breaking the economy to a place where players have no need to spend money anymore. While I would love to have every card in the game, all the time, without spending money, I also understand the game has to make money to continue to grow. Card games that fail to pay the bills get shut down (see DC Duel Force or Elder Scrolls Legends for reference).

So while we wait for new rewards to be created and introduced into these reserves, what can be done?

WHAT ABOUT THE GOLD!?

We all miss the days when Gold was a reward in collector’s reserves. It made collecting variants and buying bundles much easier! Unfortunately, those days are gone. They did, however, add new ways for players to get that gold still.

You see, during the few months as the game transitioned into the spotlight system, the game added gold into 2 new areas: the Conquest Medal Shop and Weekend Missions (now called Bonus Missions). In this transition period, players could gain gold from reserves, weekly challenge milestones, the season pass, as well as these new areas. This lead to an influx of Gold in the economy, which definitely spoiled the player base.

Once Spotlight’s launched though, we lost the Gold in the reserves. This brought Gold acquisition to a little below where it was. Later the Web Shop would also add a little extra gold into the rewards for players who spent at least $25 that season. Of these newer gold areas, 2 can only be accessed by players who spent money, but the conquest shop is open to all players.

This essentially moved Gold, a premium currency, to benefit more of the paying player base. Players who are more free to play definitely took a pay cut in Gold, but paying players can feel more rewarded.

How I Would Improve Reserves

I think the biggest factor for me that the old reserves had was the fun factor. Rewards used to be more randomized and luck based. While this of course meant you could low roll, the high rolls felt incredible! Did you roll boosters, avatars, or titles again after 100 reserves? That sucks… but then… BAM! You hit the jackpot and snagged a Series 5 card at a 0.5% chance! Now every time you open a reserves, you’re on the edge of your seat! Could it be a new card?! Could it be gold?! Could it be a cool new variant?!

The new system just doesn’t have that same feeling. There are no chances anymore. It’s predetermined every 9 reserves what rewards you get. You get 3 cosmetic boxes, 3 Credit boxes, 1 token box, and 2 Series 3 boxes (or 50/50 token or Gold Ticket). There’s no fun in that! It’s a slog. The only fun is did you dodge an Avatar and Title in the cosmetic box and roll an actual variant, and even that is more relief than it is fun.

Variants

Random

On Reveal: Set this card’s Power equal to the Power of a random card in your deck.

Unreleased

view card details Start a deck Decks with Random

Snap needs to return to form and make reserves more Random. In the past they said they made rewards predetermined to “help protect against bad luck”, but I think it’s more to regulate the economy. But there is a middle ground to that idea.

Add an option where any reward could roll a small chance (maybe the old .005%) at a premium reward instead of the preplanned reward! This could be a Premium Mystery Variant, a bonus spotlight key, a token pack containing tokens in a range of 500-1000, or even just a small 50-100 gold reward. The fact that the chances are so low prevents the economy from breaking. But it also gives these reserves that special fun factor it desperately needs. All it takes is a special popup screen like a gold box that you get to tap to open, showing you rolled the super special reward! After you hit your first one, the reserves will start to feel different because they are actually fun again and you have something to chase.

You can see this idea in practice with the Season Pass Caches! These caches haven’t really changed since launch, so they offer a 40% chance for Boosters, 40% for Credits, 15% for Gold, and 5% for a new Variant. I LOVE opening these caches because of this. Sure, I get a ton of Boosters for cards I never use, but when I get a little Gold or a new Variant, I feel ecstatic! WOW! I was expecting Boosters, but I just got a free Variant! A reward that seemed trivial in the Collector’s Reserves, but feels amazing here!

This idea also better fits the game’s theme of individual player’s journeys. Sure, some players will have better luck than others. Some players may never see this additional rewards. But the stories people tell will keep that excitement up for everyone. I remember when reddit used to be full of posts saying “guess what I rolled in the reserves!” These moments just don’t happen anymore, and it’s a magic of the game needlessly lost.

This idea doesn’t make the existing rewards better or fix the filler content. There’s no real way to do that without adding more content to the game. This idea, instead, focuses on bringing a little excitement back into these bland loot boxes, which is a reward the economy can definitely handle.

What Do You Think?

Are Collector’s Reserves in a good place in your opinion? Are they not worth opening? How would you make them better? Let us know in the comments!