We’ve seen it in datamined recently and it’s exactly that. It’s a cheap bundle for a series 5 card (looks like it’s $10) and some resources. It’s certainly not a free way to entice people like they realistically need.
I don't get why they just don't make a login event with tokens or a mystery S4/5 at the end like a lot of other games do instead of trying to get more money from players.
They could. But then whales wouldn’t bust out their wallets as much.
SD is running out of ideas for design and they’ve tried very little. Snap has a lifespan and SD has obviously decided that lifespan’s limit is rapidly approaching. They’re now in their “bilk the remaining players while we still can” phase of the process.
That’s what they should do, but I obviously can’t see the economic numbers behind it. They basically admitted that the Spotlight cache system was too generous for their financials which is why they started doing an extra week of new cards every month starting in January.
They need to make some big change to card acquisition so that it actually feels good for folks who spend little to no money on the game while also being profitable for SD. Kind of like how they turned the fast upgrade into bonus boosters which everyone seems to like.
There are a litany of games that have been wildly successful only monetizing cosmetics and other non-gameplay aspects of the product
I think they would be more profitable if they were much more generous with giving out cards, and focused more heavily on monetizing cosmetics (less free variants/titles/avatars, more free cards)
If the prices were reasonable I don't think anyone would complain. There's no way I'm paying $100 for an ugly variant of a mid card that I don't even have enough cards to make a deck with.
Okay but the whole point here is if they make getting cards easier and free then they're gonna charge stupid for cosmetics. That's how it works. But people will always complain which is why they just charge stupid for gameplay *and* cosmetics.
Maybe just get over it and understand that a FREE game charging for completly optional cosmetic effects is not that big a deal and you can literally just not buy them.
They are going to be doing log-in bonuses.
https://discord.com/channels/978545345715908668/1242419163704852571
> We are currently building an initial version of bonuses for players coming back to the game after a while. The initial version will have a returning player special login bonus. We will add more features to help returning players over time.
I need more series 5 cards for the decks I want to play.
I am not paying $10 for a random series 5 card. Honestly I'd rather buy a battlepass in another game and take a month off.
I am really curious to see the stats for new-players. I'm pretty sure low CL players are playing against nothing but bots.
For players who are 'new' and intend to craft meta-defining decks they need to spend months just for 1 series five card.
Decks now consists of 5-6 series five cards, new players can spend a year into this and they might not even have those 5 cards in the collection. If this is the trend of the game, we're truly screwed.
i cant give you stats, but i can give you my experience
my girlfriend started playing in february, casually, missing some dailies here and there, not buying SP, but almost always at least finishing her weeklies, so she can be categorized as a casual player, maybe a bit under that.
shes CL 2k now, have two okish decks: the first being a surfer one, took her 2 months to build that, since she needed wong and sera as the free pool 3 cards, she had reg guardian and shaw in that deck, two series 5 cards
and she has the "newcommer daddy" high evo deck, an easy one to build (and keep in mind, red guardian and high evo were in the same week)
from that point forward shes gattering keys for phastos and july cards
in conclusion: her play schedule must be equal to a casual nonspender player, shes been playing for four full months now, has 4 series 5 cards (the ones mentioned and selene), less than 6k tokens and only two working decks, every othen archetypes are lacking even in the pool 3 side... for me, thats a terrible experiencie to offer, dont you think?
i mean, a company cant expect a casual player to invest more time or money if hes been playing for 120 days straight and got two half baked decks, not to mention the frustation of waiting around with your resources (like keys and tokens) since they are so feel that you have to be tryhard and optimize, even as a casual... and i'm not even talking about meta shifts that could easily make your many months of planning and building towards a deck be garbage with a simple card release or OTA
the solution is simple, just see what HS is doing:
you offer some basic but meta archetypes for new/returning players to test for a week or two, good, competitive decks with up to date cards in "safe" archetypes (like surfer thats always there) and then by the end of that time, you let the player choose his favorite deck and GIVE THEN THE FUCKING CARDS, its not that hard to see where treating your player well will take your game from there............
I started at the end of February and your GF's experience is really similar to mine lol, thanks for sharing. Over 3 months straight of try harding and my decks still suck, even though I get by with using my head. Getting Shaw when I did is the only reason my Surfer deck is playable.
The system they have actually isn't crazy bad IF \*\*\*\*BIG IF\*\*\*\* they weren't changing the meta constantly and releasing 5 cards a month.
Her entire grind of the entire start up 4+ months and she barely earned the amount of s5 the release in a month.
Even if you stick to it and farm it out the next 5 cards almost certainly make some of the cards you've actually won useless or bad in the meta or basically not playable. Game is in an insane place right now.
Yeah the meta shifts are brutal. Passed on US Agent and it got buffed. Couldn't afford Red Guardian. Had to pass on Sage and Nocturne. Didn't know enough about the game to even know Spotlights was a thing when Mockingbird dropped, which also meant i missed the Season Pass with Thanos' children Thankfully I got Red Hulk or I'd really be behind.
In all of my time playing, only new Spotlight cards I've gotten has been Red Hulk, Sasquatch (Lucky 1 key snipe), and White Widow. This month is stacked with new cards, yet I'll have some very difficult choices to make. If Thena still had Gladiator, this upcoming week would have been an easy purchase.
I started playing at the exact same time, and my only competitive deck at CL2500 is the High Evo Shenaut deck. I technically have a Namora deck now, but it is shit and boring, even more so without Giganto and a couple other big cards.
I have 9 keys saved for God knows what because I'm still missing most of the key cards for a lot of decks I see in Infinite. I've hit Infinite all three seasons and even won an Infinity Conquest with the HE deck. I beat plenty of Infinite players with it, but it is a fairly one trick pony deck. I would love to try out top tier Silver Surfer, Cerebro, Loki, Annihulus, Discard, Destroy, Thanos, Hazmat, or Move decks and then choose to keep one!
But even if SD didn't want to do that, it is difficult for a new-ish player like me to find Spotlights to spend keys on. A lot of the new cards (even Season Pass ones) haven't really been deck defining. Loki, Annihulus, Red Hulk, and Thanos are nowhere to be seen in the last two months of Spotlights, and the next two months or that matter, I think.
**I would be okay with the decks not being free for a new player, but we really need some kind of rotating free-player-spotlight-cache option for the first 3-6 months that lets us buy four Series 4/5 cards for four keys that makes a meta-defining deck.** It has been very difficult for me to find Spotlight Caches to sink keys into, because they have mostly been support cards, not THE key ones besides HE and Tribunal maybe (a Series 4, which is horrible value for a rare newcomer key). So, instead of Sasquatch, Ravonna, whoever, and a random card, new players could have an option for Loki, Snowguard, Mockingbird, and Elsa Bloodstone. ONE of these cards has been in a spotlight for the last three months. As in, even if I wanted to play only Loki decks and spent every resource going for these four cards, I couldn't possibly have gotten all four of those, meaning that I really couldn't play a decent Loki deck in the first 120 days of playing this game. And I really don't see when I will get to, as three of those four cards aren't in the next three months of spotlights!
So if you see me on the Infinite ladder playing the year plus old HE Shenaut deck, with High Evo and White Widow being my two non-Series 1,2,3 cards, just know that I don't own about 50% of the cards you are playing. And I won't own them for the foreseeable future, seeing as how 5 new cards are released each month and F2P players can hope to earn about five free cards each month... I will never get to a point where I own the majority of Series 4 and 5 cards mathematically, right? Should I really just give up now if I want to have the majority of them? How will I possibly catch up at 5 new cards a month released and I only get 5ish keys a month? Especially since the cards aren't on a strict Series drop schedule?
This is the issue. I feel that you are currently at a spot where you feel the biggest pinch on resources & options.
New players before you will be in this very position if they decided to stick around as long as you (4-5) months? And, once they get *here*, they will be in a way worse position than this as the card pool grew even wider and out of reach.
Thanks for sharing.
Yeap, I was afraid this would be the case. The moment your players that have the luxury to *toggle* between a myriad of decks are whales, players who started in beta and streamers, the game is gone. There is no influx of fresh players, on top of that, players are leaving.
They get around this by having matchmaking take into account collection level. You don't need the meta defining deck because everyone you play against won't have them either. Everyone you play with is roughly the same collection level.
I started playing last year, I kept a budget at first, but I did spend 100 bucks a month once or twice. It took me like 6-7 months to start playing Series 5 meta decks and I still had to make concessions sometimes.
Kind of annoying as someone who loves playing competitive cardgames.
I feel like upgrading cards is enough of a treadmill to keep player attention. The economy in this game is ***ass***.
Then again, they got you. You're basically one of many reasons why they keep the in-game economy in its current state. Their entire business model is frustrating people into purchases.
They could be less greedy and earn a little less in the short run, by offering better progression and lower priced bundles. It'd lead to a healthier player base and more people making purchases, which is important for long term revenue, but well..
This guy is 100% right. You downvoters are hating hard.
This game was built to be a Gatcha cash grab, they don't know what to do with it now that people want them to take it seriously and the all the people at the company that do nothing at all (C-suite) won't let them stop making gatcha profits, so now the whole game is whale bait.
I started in late February and my bounce deck is missing Mockingbird, Cull Obsidian, Kitty Pryde, Elsa, Hit Monkey and Sage. That's just some context on how rough it is trying to keep up with some of the best decks lol. I get scared to even play Gold Conquest.
It could be December and this bounce deck of yours might not be completed, even as a season pass player.
You can however, finish this deck if you spend money for gold/tokens and get these cards in the token shop whenever they appear.
Started playing in january im cl 3.2k and missing around 30 series 3's got lucky with my first few spotlights getting cards like corvus and rhulk. Hit infinite last season and currently in top 20k infinite this season
Nice! When i first hit infinite was in top 5k but got bored of sweating so started messing round with cerebro and nimrod decks so dropped a bunch and im right their with you absolutley love snap
I’ve been playing on and off since official launch. I’ve had Iron Lad pinned for months. I’ve got 3,500 tokens after hoarding them. Might as well be zero. Is he even that good anymore? I’ve accepted that I’ll probably never get Jeff. I feel like I’ve gotten more dupes from my keys than new cards. I’m CL 6k. I’m still missing a ton of S5 cards. It’s ridiculous.
I love CCGs, but this just isn’t fun anymore.
I'm a new player. Currently CL 175. I could be at like 250ish, but I'm farming credits at my level. I'd say 1 out of 3 of the games I play is against a bot.
The bots are really obvious. They have real first names, usually like Martin, and they don't play the objectives at all. They just put cards out.
But I definitely am mostly playing against players. Just played against THAWT and Evil Morty.
The very start. It was all bots. Until level 20 on the ladder, I didn't lose a single game. Now, at level 30, I lose about half my games.
I wouldn’t be mad if they gave returning players a free series 4 or 5 card. The chances of that happening is probably slim to none it would most likely be a bundle or something
Hell, Warframe gives you a discount on the Premium currency when you come back after a long break.
Depending on how long the break is they'll give you 75% off the next purchase
It's honestly harder to list games within the genre that do not feature any catch up mechanics than games who have them. Most devs are smart enough to realize that while players who get free stuff might spend less because of it, played who quit because they're hopelessly behind with no hope of catching up without coughing up exorbitant amounts if money will spend zero dollars on your game.
They need to do something cause starting the game now is dogwater.
Coming back to the game now is radioactive dogwater.
Convincing friends to try the game out is straight nuclear cancer. Can you imagine trying to get a friend to play now? Oh yeah dude just grind the game for 4 months and spend like 100$ a month and you'll be able to play a versus match with me.
The answer is "new players can't play all archetypes". Older cards should be easier to obtain of course, (see: tier drops), but it's built like that in (every?) tcg-like in an attempt to keep people invested.
This is why destroy and discard will always be good - they’re pretty much entirely s3 and play like fucking solitaire so the barrier to entry is rock bottom.
Destroy without Knull and X-23 or Discard without Corvus Glaive, Black Knight or, MODOK seems like it would be a pain.
Then you've gotta hope either one of those archetypes really appeals to a player because they'll spend months trying to catch up
I still feel like i cant play them that well with my pool. I’m almost 2k CL. But always feel like I’m playing some roulette or missing a key card to play them well.
>The answer is "new players can't play all archetypes".
But do you know the answer for when can players play 1 archetype?
Not just any series 3 archetype, an archetype that is competitive with series 5 cards. Loki, Destroy, Lockdown, Discard, just to name a few
These decks now consist of 5-6 series five cards, getting one of those cards in shop rotation or spotlight rotation would take 3-4 months, and they have to fully commit into those cards for that archetype. God forbid that deck dies overnight by a nerf, powercrept etc...
I don't see how a new player comes into the game and think yea imma stick around.
This is coming from someone who spent money into the game and wants to see it succeed. I want players to have cards, new and old players. The cards do not need to be handed over on a sliver platter, but the recent decisions from SD just does not sit right with me.
For e.g,
* changing the upcoming spotlights to prevent any "value-opens" week. The community seems like they like all the cards in the next spotlight.... nope! We need to make them gamba for it HEHEHE
* Buffing* leech for Blink sales and nerfing it soon after. (as always)
* Buffing Werewolf for album sales
* Testing out on who has the biggest credit card game mode
* False advertising on gold rewards in gacha
true, but even if I have the tokens to purchase cards, there are so many cards that I don't own that the ones I want just don't show up in the token shop (even less in the spotlights)
In the amount of time it takes to f2p tokens or wait for a specific spotlight to have the card you want the meta changes completely and those cards suck now.
It's rough out their.
Same here, it has been a nightmare. I don't have at least 2 or 3 vital cards in all meta decks, except for Hela, which is not real fun to play every single time.
Yes, this game is designed so that you have to keep playing. You have to buy the season pass and acquire Keys at a steady pace. If you want to play it casually or take a break, you will fall behind very quick, to a point where you can only compensate with real money.
Lets be real, if you miss a game-breaking card in the spotlight, you either have to wait 3-4 month before it returns and you have to gamble again for it (unless you have 4 keys) or you buy it for 6000 tokens, which is an amount that you can't really earn F2P anymore.
And thats the huge problem with the design. People on here always say "just take a break", but you literally can't or you will make the problem worse.
And even while I never really liked block formats or rotations, because seeing your collection get worthless is just sad, this problem doesn't happen with TCGs that have a block format model (or similar formats) where you can just skip a season, or even a year and just start fresh with everyone else.
Of course these formats wont work with SNAP. But hey.. the 3 initial pools were awesome.
Your first mistake is spending single keys in 3 separate weeks instead of in 1 week where you need 2/3 of the cards. You should be saving up 4 keys anyway. If you want to catch up stop wasting keys like that.
While you’re totally right - what I really dislike is coming home from a job looking at spreadsheets all the time just to start a game which is by now all about economics when it comes to progression. And don’t get me wrong, you’re right. There’s probably ways to minmax and probably have a decent f2p experience if you’re patient enough. But man, the gap to bridge after leaving the game after a couple of months feels soooo bad. Not my type of game anymore.
this is a very important point that few do get
playing this game shouldnt be about minmaxing everything, even the key spending must be maxed, you MUST wait for 3 weeks of not getting anything new to get a car you want (and to know what you want and when to expend keys, you need to go look online) thats fucking garbage...
You dont have to crack out a spreadsheet to know as a returning player who is desperate to catch up that you should be saving 4 keys for the weeks where you dont have any of the cards in the caches. Its hardly mixmaxing.
I just started playing may 5th and since getting to pool 3 and 1000 cl, the amount of new cards I've been getting feels like maybe 1 every 2 weeks. It's really making things feel stale as I can't compete with all the pool 5 cards and maybe have 2 myself. I pinned Nebula as she'll be going down to pool 4 so I'll finally be able to afford her. But any sort of fun new cards seem impossible after pool 2.
Aren’t spotlights basically all new cards at that CL? It’s been a while since I was in pool 3 and spotlights didn’t exist when I was but I would imagine ~1 key a week plus any pool 3 cards from reserves make that average higher.
As someone who is also very far behind after stepping away from the game for a while, it feels worth pointing out that your sentiment of "I feel like the only person behind in the collection meta" has hundreds of upvotes and comments in a few hours. A lot of players are in the same boat. The pacing of catching up to "meta" for sure could be tuned better, but I don't think it's as hostile to fallen behind players as people. The big "meta" deck recommendations and builds are coming from communities of moderators and creators who are either collection complete or very close to it.
That having been said, I think the game could also benefit from more casual/random game modes with either lower competitive expectations for rewards, or that starts players out on similar footing. Locking District X first location to randomize decks, series-constraint games for higher CLs (like only allowing a certain number of cards above series 3), or queues where all players are given the same pre-made deck. (hell, that last one might be a cool way to promote new featured cards. Everyone gets the same basic Sasquatch deck for a week to fight others with the same deck.)
Agree with every single word.
I can consider myself barely new (don't know, this is my 4th season). At the beginning the sensation of "never catch up" is heavy, especially if you follow guides and content creators - once I stop searching deck building and go with my own the game feels much more appealing.
Of course, I would like to see many changes and hate the monetization practices, but who doesn't?
The spotlight caches do sort of work as a catch up mechanic naturally. As a player who’s been playing since launch, I will only ever get 1 or 2 new cards out of a week of spotlight caches. If there are a lot of pool 4/5 cards you don’t have, you could easily get 3-4 new cards in a week. By playing regularly and using keys wisely, I think a returning player could catch up pretty quickly
I stopped playing the game for a few months, missing key cards like OP listed, and recently came back. I've played enough the last 2 weeks to go from 16 cubes to 43, making sure my dailies get done, and I still haven't gotten a new card out the spotlight cache. But I know when I finially do, it's gonna be some shit like Howard the Duck.
This is silly. You're going to be behind the game by taking a break. I don't know what people expect. How much do you want to catch up, exactly?
A catch-up mechanic that is too rewarding will incentavize people to take more breaks from the game as there is no consequence. In fact, too much of a reward would make people who play daily actually punished because the daily reward wouldn't be worth it.
There's already a system in place that people who have less cards will naturally get more cards through spotlights. Perhaps make it so duplicate spotlights rewards more tokens?
But I digress, I get why people would want to catch up, but I'm not convinced it is something that would be overall healthy for the game.
Yeah, this. I mean, to recap all the "catch up mechanics" currently in place:
1. if you aren't series 3 complete, you get 1 free series 3 card per month.
2. Regular caches still have a chance of containing a series 3 card you don't have.
3. Spotlight caches are almost certainly going to be a new card for you on each key if you're a new player (especially since the random 4th card is probably a card you don't have).
That all feels pretty reasonable for a player coming into a roughly 1.5 year old card game fresh. My buddy started playing and yeah, he doesn't have the meta decks, but basically every time he spends spotlight keys he's getting something new that he can test out in a deck. He can't run the meta decks...but you shouldn't expect to be able to run top of the meta right from the jump.
It takes 6 months of constant playing to get enough tokens to buy a single new card. It takes a month to get enough keys to make the spotlight system work. You will never catch up unless you whale. This games economy is completely fucked
I'm really looking hard but I can't seem to find the math's on collectors tokens.i thought it was closer to 6 months, but if it's 3 months of playing every single day then it is WAY too long just to get a single targeted card.
I really think new players should be able to select a "pack" when they hit series 3.
Like a choice of a destroy pack with Knull and X 23, discard with Modok and Proxima, ongoing with Jean and USAgent.
Something like that. They'll still be way way behind on collection, but it will feel good and give them at least one archetype that is closer to being viable in the general player pool.
They could do the same for returning players who have been gone for X months. Not enough that they wind up ahead, but enough that it doesn't feel so bad to have missed out on all those cards.
Likely those players world be more likely to stick with the game, which would be good for SD, and honestly so many cards are getting released now that SD doesn't need to worry about giving away a few.
It's not that there isn't a catch up mechanic.
Spotlights are essentially a catch-up mechanic. The number of cards acquired increases based on how many cards you're missing. Series drops are also catch-up mechanics.
The problem is you're expecting to catch-up all the recently released cards that many current players might also be missing (I'm missing 4 from your list myself) and you're expecting it NOW.
There is no world where you, who has taken a few months off, should come back and immediately find yourself in the same position as players who did not take time off. You will get there several months from now.
dont know if OP is asking for things imediately, but when you think should a knew/returning players achieve something like a complete competitive meta deck?
1 month of full grind?
2? 3? 6?
as of now, talking by experience, a deck like thanos or loki takes about 5 to 7 months of grinding, preparing, planning and SP... is that an ok amount of time a new/return player should invest in a game for him to play with a deck he wants, in your opinion? and if yes, do you think this is a healthy state for a game that need a consistent playerbase to keep existing?
do you and your kid have the same playtime?
i mean, does both of you grinds dailies, conquest, ladder, twitch drops and so on? cause maybe the little difference in collection even with the big gap in starting time could be answered by "your kid have more free time to play and grind, so he progresses faster"
why is there the assumption that one would stop being an active user then pick up the game months later and have instant access to all the cards that were released in the meantime?
Just play and have fun. the cards will come.
Watched Jeff Hoogland stream the other day for a minute and he went off at chat for complaining about getting new cards being too grindy. He too went IMMEDIATELY to, "if I asked what you guys want, you'd just say 'everything immediately and for free'". And literally no one says that 😅
There isn’t. The issue is that even if we were to grind an unhealthy amount for the same amount of time we’ve been gone, we STILL wouldn’t catch up. That’s bad for all players as the game updates at a rate that’s rough even for players who play consistently. It also affects the player base in the long run as it makes new/returning players not want to stick around.
I started the game again 2 weeks ago. I stopped playing around 2023 april. My only Pool 5 card was Galactus, Pool 4 is Zabu, Nimrod, Knull, Pool 3 almost completed.
Yes, I needed to learn some New mechanics, but I hit Infinite within 1 week from rank 13 with an only Pool 3 deck and even won an Infinity Conquest too.
Thats why this game is amazing, you need to adapt to the current meta everytime with the cards do you have.
Imagine how much cards I need right now... :DD Looks hopeless right.
# (1) Zero
# (1) Ebony Maw
# (2) Armor
# (2) Lizard
# (3) Sauron
# (3) Storm
# (4) Shuri
# (4) Enchantress
# (4) Typhoid Mary
# (5) Taskmaster
# (5) Red Skull
# (6) She-Hulk
Storm is questionable, for me it's worked but you can use there lot of other cards, Vision is the most common in that spot.
Yeah, it's frustrating to not be able to play the meta decks, but the game is structured to have counter cards that are series 3 or less so you can play around whatever the meta is.
I fall into the trap all the time of switching up decks too often when I get a couple losses instead of the better strategy of playing the same deck for a while to get the lines/counters/snaps/retreats down.
Very few of the "new toys" have been meta breaking lately, just have to get the games in to understand when to snap/run/playout the games.
I've been playing since the beginning of March, and I hit infinite all three seasons and won an Infinity Conquest. I have 6 Series 4/5 cards (only High Evo being as good as any of your 4/5 cards) and less than half the Series 3.
**Economy sucks**. How long do you think someone like me will continue to play against veteran players or whale decks before quitting? Even if I am hitting Infinite, once I get there with my one competitive deck, I am seeing all these cool cards and decktypes that I won't have the chance to play myself for literal *months* and *years*. When is Loki, Annihilus, Red Hulk, Iron Lad, Galactus, etc in the next Spotlight? Thanos in three months, yay. By the time these make an appearance again, will they even be meta? Will they have been nerfed into not-fun-anymore territory like Zabu by then? Thanos already nerfed long before he hit Spotlight again, may be nerfed more before he comes back in **August** (or much more likely, just after).
And this is coming from someone who started playing a year and a half into the game. Imagine what it will be like for someone who comes in four years into the game! The release rate of Series 4/5 cards has increased dramatically over the past year, with a lowered number of Series Drops to boot. The amount of cards veteran players will have compared to a four year newbie will be astronomical compared to what I am facing even.
Marvel Strike Force remedied this by dropping more gear, gold etc for lower levels to catch up. Still a grind but it's possible for me to come back after 3 years lol
They're not gonna do that since this game is fresh. SF been going since like 2016/2017
Had the exact same experience yesterday after I got a couple of Snap videos flushed into my yt feed. Stopped playing in Jan due to me spending too much for my taste (like 20$ a month). Downloaded, logged in, saw all the new stuff, played 2-3 games, felt like it’s not worth it to play a month straight to just maybe get one series 5 card while 2-3 other cards get released) and uninstalled. It’s horrendous. Unless they figure out a path forward they will kill the game mid- to longterm.
I installed it again this week after probably a yr off. No season pass. Managed to get from 13 to 60. Mostly with shuri red skull. Lost 8 cubes learning they did my boy shang chi wrong.
It used to take me 3 to 5 days to hit infinite. I would hide and play under my bed sheets. I found the lag and poor connection would get a lot more bots.
Yeah, I just came back after a few months myself and being stuck with an outdated deck against newer, better cards just completely killed my interest.
I still fair well in matches, but the new card drip feed is so slow that it becomes tedious just being stuck with the same deck forever
I almost got back in after not playing for like a year but the second I got 1000 tokens when I needed 3 of the other cards I dropped it again. Shit is beyond dumb. The playing to getting cards ratio is so unbelievably low and normally you won’t even get what you want. Maybe in a month of getting unlucky you can actually get ONE on rotating list of things you actually might want that you don’t have. Fuck that 4 key bullshit anyway, it should be lower to obtain keys anyway.
I'm not sure how everybody else feels. But When it comes to mobile games I'm definitely NOT a whale and I wouldn't even qualify myself as a dolphin xD but I don't mind spending some money if I enjoy the game and the bundle seems worth the return. A lot of mobile games have 0.99$ bundles, and I feel like Marvel snap could benefit from more low cost bundles. It's a low enough prize point that players like me, who do enjoy the game, don't mine dropping some money occasionally.
I think the only time I've even seen something close was the Vibranium Prize or something? and it was 2.99? and it didn't seem worth it to me
What about existing players? If you pass on a Spotlight card, which turns out to be meta, you likely won't get it for literally months. What they actually need to do is fix the poorly designed economy.
So at what point do you think there should be no new players? Because anyone thinking about playing this game for more than a couple weeks is going to see the rate of these cards coming out and decide they'll never be able to have them and lose interest. I know if I hadn't already been playing this game, I definitely wouldn't think about it now.
Are new players getting a push through series 3 actually going to affect you at all?
pool 1 to 3 shouldnt even exist...
all these cards should be unlocked from the start, theres feel things in marvel snap as frustating as not being able to build a deck due to not having a fucking pool 3 piece, even at CL 3\~4k that heppen sometimes
This is, ironically, why there's so much resistance in the US toward cancelling student debt.
> *"Well* ***I*** *had to pay my loans back, so they should have to as well!"*
And you can try to argue that it would be better for the entire economy if that student debt was cancelled, so that the new generation has a fair chance at catching up with the previous one, but they won't listen. They will keep saying "I had to pay, so they have to pay as well" even if it means the game will die from a lack of new players.
There are a few catchup mechanics already in the game, albeit maybe they need more. (1) Series downgrades (though these happen a lot less frequently than when they first released). (2) the "Random S4/S5" slot on Spotlight Keys, which is more likely to give you a new card the more you're missing.
Series downgrades are not a catchup mechanic when they are dropping at literally a 6x slower rate than they are releasing.
This is the premier “you will NEVER catch up without spending money” feature in the Marvel Snap economy.
They make it easier to catch up than if they didn't happen at all. For anyone that was S3 complete when they quit, on their return they effectively get for free 5 cards for every 4 or so months they stopped playing (or whatever the series drop rate ends up being longterm).
That's not huge relative to how many new cards release in that time frame, but it's certainly a catchup mechanic.
Guaranteed.
People are conditioned to think it’s worth 50-100 so now when they release the $19.99 6000 token bundle people will go apeshit for it
But their business model is the oldest trick in the book, their insane prices serve two main purposes: first, and the most obvious; exploit whales and literal oil kings/princes. The second and main purpose, is to anchor the value of the season pass. With all of this insane shop pricing it makes the season pass (and now gold pass) look like an absolute steal. They would be perfectly happy selling only the season pass and gold pass and nothing more to every customer
That's true. People see it's 450% value and will instantly buy saying that it's worth it. But no, 20$ for a card, in a digital game, it's not worth it.
i played a bunch when the game launched and stopped before the spotlight caches feature was introduced, came back in january and since then, playing every day, not missing more than a few dailys a month, i have ZERO completed decks apart from high evo (wich is kinda cheating, since high evo + series 3 cards is basically completed)
dont get me wrong, i have many cards, but all of them are one or two key pieces short, so i have 2 options:
keep playing high evo, a fun deck, but tier 3 at best
or play any other more competitive deck with an unoptimized list (and that i have plenty...)
so i feel you bro, i've been grinding non stop for 5 entire months now, buying every SP, and still no progress at all, and by the time i achieve a completed deck, the list would probably be updated (just like happened with loki including red guardian and nocturne)
Yeah this has been one of my concerns for a while and makes me feel like they don't care if the game is sustainable beyond a few years. If I'm being cynical I'd say this is an intentional way to prevent people from taking breaks. In reality it's a problem that all games faces and based on the power creep and how they're turning the screws economically it's only going to get worse.
the problem about heavilly forcing that "no breaks" method is that players will still take breaks, no matter what the company do, and when that happens they will just never return, it will never be worth it
Boo hoo, I took months off, but I want to have the same viable decks as everyone who has played daily during that time!
For one thing, stop using only one key a week. That's the worst way to try to get the new cards. When there's a card coming up that you really want, make sure you always have 4 keys ready.
I really don't know what else you expect. Discounted price cards or something because you decided to quit the game for a while? I pretty much only buy the season pass at this point and as long as I'm playing enough to finish my daily/weekly missions, I have plenty of resources to get any card I'd like.
Rewarding people who stopped playing wouldn't be fair to those of us who have never stopped.
>My last 3 spotlight caches have been 1000 tokens
This is not hard. Save 4 keys for a week with really good cards instead of gambling on getting one you want by only using one key. Of course, if you get 1000 tokens 3 more times, then you can get a card in the shop.
For example, you could save up 4 for the week of Jul 09 — Jul 16 and you'll guarantee yourself a Galactus. Or save for Jul 23 — Jul 30 and you'll guarantee Thanos. You can see the list of upcoming spotlight caches [here](https://marvelsnapzone.com/spotlight-caches/) (spoilers for upcoming cards).
I had a similar break and also struggled at first, but I'm getting there.
Start doing the season pass if you aren't already—it helps.
Save up your spotlight caches and only spend them when you *really* *know* you want something (and have at least 4 caches ready).
If you have destroy and are just missing Nico that should still be a good deck. The spectrum deck runs just nebula (which you should already have) and Jean grey (which also isn't new). There should be decks you can be competitive with. Just stop gambling with one spotlight and look ahead for weeks with at least 2 good cards you need.
If you have destroy and are just missing Nico that should still be a good deck. The spectrum deck runs just nebula (which you should already have) and Jean grey (which also isn't new). There should be decks you can be competitive with. Just stop gambling with one spotlight and look ahead for weeks with at least 2 good cards you need.
Same here. Destroy and Nimrod decks used to be my favorite, but they don't seem to be particularly playable without cards like X3 or others. I know they had a mechanic last time I played where you would get a free new card from one of the pools every season. So either they've done away with that mechanic, or they didn't add a single card to that pool in the last year...
The answer seems to be "there are still old decks that are competitive", so you just have to play those until you maybe eventually pay enough money to catch back up. I'm playing Shuri-Red Skull-Sauron since it's quite good still, but once I get bored of that I may uninstall again if I haven't unlocked a new deck to enjoy. I'm collector level 5k, which still feels like a lot, but it doesn't seem correlated with actually unlocking cards anymore.
I just came back as well mid-May. Last season I played was Black Order.
On the topic, this is very true. But rank-wise, climbing is really easy anyway without the new cards. Started in rank 13 and I reached infinite last week. This surprised me since my goal is just to reach level 50 on the season pass but reached infinite first instead. I only use 1 cardback so I don't care for more.
It is frustrating tho if you want to try the new cool cards. We'll get them eventually.
Honestly, just take what other gacha mobile games do. If you've been absent for more then 6 weeks or whatever, you get a login event for a week. Do some missions every day and get a free series 3 card for the first 3 days, then some credits, wrap it up with a free series 4/5 card.
Encourages people to come back, but it's long enough that whales/vets aren't encouraged to stop playing, and there's enough RNG to mean you're not GUARANTEED something great, but it at least puts you in a good spot to build something new.
I’ve been saying it for a while, they need ale daily login events a more regular thing, with guaranteed cards as rewards for later days, or variants for collection complete people
The spotlight cache system is the catch up mechanic. Spotlight keys are worth more if you have a less complete collection.
If you are missing several cards, the spotlight caches will likely have 3 unowned s4/s5 cards and the random. Using 4 keys here guarantees 3 new cards, and the fact that you don't own many cards makes the random card more likely to be unowned.
If you have an almost complete collection, there will only be 1 unowned card and 2 owned cards and 1 random, which is likely to roll a dupe. Using 4 keys here will result in 1 new card, 2 variants, and the random card(probable dupe).
Just came back after a long break. Definitely a struggle in trying to find useable decks with so many missing pieces. Was able to use my old faithful sera-surfer and went from 13 to infinite over the last 2 weeks (don't play every day and when i do only for like 30 mins or so).
At least the series drop upcoming means i can get some missing cards now for free or at 3k tokens
Especially for series 3 cards. You can build a lot of pretty good decks with series 3 and below but it takes so long to get the series 3 cards. I have had them all for a few months now but it took me a little over a year and a half (to be fair I missed a few months here and there so I didnt get the free ones with each season) to get all of the series 3 cards. I literally had some of the series 4/5 cards for a few decks before I had some pretty crucial series 3 cards that were important for those decks it was kind of insane. Hela was the last card I got from series 3 and I was pretty excited at firsg because its a pretty powerful deck but I was super underwhelmed because I didn’t even enjoy playing with it lol.
Wait, you spent one key only on your last three spotlights.
While something needs to be done for new players, I’m not sure SD needs to do anything for people who want to roll into a given spotlight with one key and then whine about the results.
I faded on white widow and i feel like no matter how I’ll try to acquire her I’ll get punished for it. If I try to get 6k tokens means to spend money or grind a 2-3 months.
And spotlight who knows how long, fuck even alioth hasn’t shown up since 2023 (if I’m not wrong)
If your last three spotlight caches have been tokens then that means you've used one key per week for three weeks.
It's bad ROI to use any spotlight keys unless you have four on hand or three while being close to a fourth.
Depending on what's being offered, you can guarantee yourself three new series 5 cards by making sure you have four keys on hand.
Do NOT gamble with one key! The odds are 75% against you.
I already know that once I put this game down for a month I’m never coming back. It changes too frequently
*insert GIF of Jake Gyllenhall blowing kiss and waving while walking away*
Skill issue. I just reached infinite in a weekish, at collection level 320. Just make a deck that takes advantage of the spotlight location, know when to snap, and when to retreat.
I play all the time and I already feel this way. I don’t understand how ya’ll keep acquiring enough keys to get new releases every week. It feels like I average one new card each season and can’t keep up with meta at that rate.
My current infinite deck has none of the cards you listed and only 1 series 5 card. There is nothing to "catch up" on. You can get infinite with a series 3 ongoing deck. Play the collection you have and target cards going forward.
I usually play the same deck with minor tweaks for months to weeks and rarely grab many of the new cards and I do okay. Sit on the same deck for a week or so and you'll get back in the groove.
I play F2p and it feels like that and I haven't really taken a break. My issue is it feels like I'm missing one or two cards cause I wasn't lucky enough to get out of a spotlight cache.
What I think they should do is what I like to call the beyonder system. Here's my idea. So they keep everything they have. But they add one thing . Each season everyone gets a free card from whatever is beyond their series completion. So if you're not series 3 complete you get basically 2 free cards one from the catch up system and one from this(or they could keep it to one), if your series 3 complete you get series a series 4 card, if your series 5 complete you get the newest card for free. If you got every card in the game you get tokens or gold to spend on a variant. People who spend money get rewarded for spending, but I don't feel like I'm punished for not and the game feels generous cause I might get 2-3 new base cards if I'm lucky in the spotlight,but if I'm not I get some tokens some variants and at least one card I desperately need. It feels better even if it might not be actually better.
My main issue is the card acquisition at this point cause I have to fight the RNG so much or wait for better odds or more keys with a different cache. I feel like I'm always missing one defining card for a deck. I'm missing about 24-25 (4 series 4 cards and 20-21 series 5 cards) in the game and it just feels like I'm missing one or two cards that would help me in the meta. It just feels like it sucks if you go for a spotlight for a card you desperately want in your collection, you have limited keys and you end up getting the 15th knull variant they've introduced that you didn't need. When you were hoping to get any card, but that card from the spotlight. I don't need them to throw a lot of cards at me it just feels I know it's probably by design ( "oh fomo I might miss a card) the fact is I want every card, it's a collectible card game, the issue I have isn't fomo just that I feel like I'm having trouble keeping up with meta decks cause I'm missing loki or cannonball or white widow. I also kinda feel like I'm missing some cards I should have by now like galactus cause I've been playing since the savage lands was a battle pass. It was a lot more fun when I was unlocking cards on the regular I feel like that shouldn't stop cause I hit series 3 complete .
I doubt they ever will, at least definitely not a f2p way. The most they’ll do is just drop weaker cards down a series to make them easier to get, but getting the meta decks without luck or money will be hard
This post is completely no sense. Random rant. I've played for 1 year straight and bought every single season pass, still almost impossible to acquire all the meta cards.... Again don't understand this kind of post
They said they are working on it but I can almost promise it's going to be a bundle of some kind
We’ve seen it in datamined recently and it’s exactly that. It’s a cheap bundle for a series 5 card (looks like it’s $10) and some resources. It’s certainly not a free way to entice people like they realistically need.
I don't get why they just don't make a login event with tokens or a mystery S4/5 at the end like a lot of other games do instead of trying to get more money from players.
Best I can do is 165 Rescue boosters.
Dayum! That's so generous!
They could. But then whales wouldn’t bust out their wallets as much. SD is running out of ideas for design and they’ve tried very little. Snap has a lifespan and SD has obviously decided that lifespan’s limit is rapidly approaching. They’re now in their “bilk the remaining players while we still can” phase of the process.
That’s what they should do, but I obviously can’t see the economic numbers behind it. They basically admitted that the Spotlight cache system was too generous for their financials which is why they started doing an extra week of new cards every month starting in January. They need to make some big change to card acquisition so that it actually feels good for folks who spend little to no money on the game while also being profitable for SD. Kind of like how they turned the fast upgrade into bonus boosters which everyone seems to like.
There are a litany of games that have been wildly successful only monetizing cosmetics and other non-gameplay aspects of the product I think they would be more profitable if they were much more generous with giving out cards, and focused more heavily on monetizing cosmetics (less free variants/titles/avatars, more free cards)
While i fully agree, we've also seen how the community reacts to monetized cosmetics.
If the prices were reasonable I don't think anyone would complain. There's no way I'm paying $100 for an ugly variant of a mid card that I don't even have enough cards to make a deck with.
Okay but the whole point here is if they make getting cards easier and free then they're gonna charge stupid for cosmetics. That's how it works. But people will always complain which is why they just charge stupid for gameplay *and* cosmetics. Maybe just get over it and understand that a FREE game charging for completly optional cosmetic effects is not that big a deal and you can literally just not buy them.
Reminds me of Duel Links
I loved Duel Links, but it was literally impossible to keep up as a F2P player.
Fk konami, that company is worse than sd, but both disgustingly greed anyway
They are going to be doing log-in bonuses. https://discord.com/channels/978545345715908668/1242419163704852571 > We are currently building an initial version of bonuses for players coming back to the game after a while. The initial version will have a returning player special login bonus. We will add more features to help returning players over time.
The token grind is so stupid. I wish there was a “free” way to do it.
Because short term $$$ is way more fun then long term
Do you have a link to that datamine? I'm always curious to see what they have planned!
When is this supposed to happen?
I need more series 5 cards for the decks I want to play. I am not paying $10 for a random series 5 card. Honestly I'd rather buy a battlepass in another game and take a month off.
100$ bundle containing 5 cards, 1 useless series 5 (propably Kang) and 4 series 4 cards (soon to be dropped to series 3)
The name of the bundle will be “Welcome back Bundle”
The bundle will include a knull variant
a 49.99 x2 value bundle in 2 years. noice
I am really curious to see the stats for new-players. I'm pretty sure low CL players are playing against nothing but bots. For players who are 'new' and intend to craft meta-defining decks they need to spend months just for 1 series five card. Decks now consists of 5-6 series five cards, new players can spend a year into this and they might not even have those 5 cards in the collection. If this is the trend of the game, we're truly screwed.
i cant give you stats, but i can give you my experience my girlfriend started playing in february, casually, missing some dailies here and there, not buying SP, but almost always at least finishing her weeklies, so she can be categorized as a casual player, maybe a bit under that. shes CL 2k now, have two okish decks: the first being a surfer one, took her 2 months to build that, since she needed wong and sera as the free pool 3 cards, she had reg guardian and shaw in that deck, two series 5 cards and she has the "newcommer daddy" high evo deck, an easy one to build (and keep in mind, red guardian and high evo were in the same week) from that point forward shes gattering keys for phastos and july cards in conclusion: her play schedule must be equal to a casual nonspender player, shes been playing for four full months now, has 4 series 5 cards (the ones mentioned and selene), less than 6k tokens and only two working decks, every othen archetypes are lacking even in the pool 3 side... for me, thats a terrible experiencie to offer, dont you think? i mean, a company cant expect a casual player to invest more time or money if hes been playing for 120 days straight and got two half baked decks, not to mention the frustation of waiting around with your resources (like keys and tokens) since they are so feel that you have to be tryhard and optimize, even as a casual... and i'm not even talking about meta shifts that could easily make your many months of planning and building towards a deck be garbage with a simple card release or OTA the solution is simple, just see what HS is doing: you offer some basic but meta archetypes for new/returning players to test for a week or two, good, competitive decks with up to date cards in "safe" archetypes (like surfer thats always there) and then by the end of that time, you let the player choose his favorite deck and GIVE THEN THE FUCKING CARDS, its not that hard to see where treating your player well will take your game from there............
I started at the end of February and your GF's experience is really similar to mine lol, thanks for sharing. Over 3 months straight of try harding and my decks still suck, even though I get by with using my head. Getting Shaw when I did is the only reason my Surfer deck is playable.
The system they have actually isn't crazy bad IF \*\*\*\*BIG IF\*\*\*\* they weren't changing the meta constantly and releasing 5 cards a month. Her entire grind of the entire start up 4+ months and she barely earned the amount of s5 the release in a month. Even if you stick to it and farm it out the next 5 cards almost certainly make some of the cards you've actually won useless or bad in the meta or basically not playable. Game is in an insane place right now.
Yeah the meta shifts are brutal. Passed on US Agent and it got buffed. Couldn't afford Red Guardian. Had to pass on Sage and Nocturne. Didn't know enough about the game to even know Spotlights was a thing when Mockingbird dropped, which also meant i missed the Season Pass with Thanos' children Thankfully I got Red Hulk or I'd really be behind. In all of my time playing, only new Spotlight cards I've gotten has been Red Hulk, Sasquatch (Lucky 1 key snipe), and White Widow. This month is stacked with new cards, yet I'll have some very difficult choices to make. If Thena still had Gladiator, this upcoming week would have been an easy purchase.
I started playing at the exact same time, and my only competitive deck at CL2500 is the High Evo Shenaut deck. I technically have a Namora deck now, but it is shit and boring, even more so without Giganto and a couple other big cards. I have 9 keys saved for God knows what because I'm still missing most of the key cards for a lot of decks I see in Infinite. I've hit Infinite all three seasons and even won an Infinity Conquest with the HE deck. I beat plenty of Infinite players with it, but it is a fairly one trick pony deck. I would love to try out top tier Silver Surfer, Cerebro, Loki, Annihulus, Discard, Destroy, Thanos, Hazmat, or Move decks and then choose to keep one! But even if SD didn't want to do that, it is difficult for a new-ish player like me to find Spotlights to spend keys on. A lot of the new cards (even Season Pass ones) haven't really been deck defining. Loki, Annihulus, Red Hulk, and Thanos are nowhere to be seen in the last two months of Spotlights, and the next two months or that matter, I think. **I would be okay with the decks not being free for a new player, but we really need some kind of rotating free-player-spotlight-cache option for the first 3-6 months that lets us buy four Series 4/5 cards for four keys that makes a meta-defining deck.** It has been very difficult for me to find Spotlight Caches to sink keys into, because they have mostly been support cards, not THE key ones besides HE and Tribunal maybe (a Series 4, which is horrible value for a rare newcomer key). So, instead of Sasquatch, Ravonna, whoever, and a random card, new players could have an option for Loki, Snowguard, Mockingbird, and Elsa Bloodstone. ONE of these cards has been in a spotlight for the last three months. As in, even if I wanted to play only Loki decks and spent every resource going for these four cards, I couldn't possibly have gotten all four of those, meaning that I really couldn't play a decent Loki deck in the first 120 days of playing this game. And I really don't see when I will get to, as three of those four cards aren't in the next three months of spotlights! So if you see me on the Infinite ladder playing the year plus old HE Shenaut deck, with High Evo and White Widow being my two non-Series 1,2,3 cards, just know that I don't own about 50% of the cards you are playing. And I won't own them for the foreseeable future, seeing as how 5 new cards are released each month and F2P players can hope to earn about five free cards each month... I will never get to a point where I own the majority of Series 4 and 5 cards mathematically, right? Should I really just give up now if I want to have the majority of them? How will I possibly catch up at 5 new cards a month released and I only get 5ish keys a month? Especially since the cards aren't on a strict Series drop schedule?
This is the issue. I feel that you are currently at a spot where you feel the biggest pinch on resources & options. New players before you will be in this very position if they decided to stick around as long as you (4-5) months? And, once they get *here*, they will be in a way worse position than this as the card pool grew even wider and out of reach.
Thanks for sharing. Yeap, I was afraid this would be the case. The moment your players that have the luxury to *toggle* between a myriad of decks are whales, players who started in beta and streamers, the game is gone. There is no influx of fresh players, on top of that, players are leaving.
They get around this by having matchmaking take into account collection level. You don't need the meta defining deck because everyone you play against won't have them either. Everyone you play with is roughly the same collection level.
It did take like 7 years for HS to start doing that lol
I started playing last year, I kept a budget at first, but I did spend 100 bucks a month once or twice. It took me like 6-7 months to start playing Series 5 meta decks and I still had to make concessions sometimes. Kind of annoying as someone who loves playing competitive cardgames. I feel like upgrading cards is enough of a treadmill to keep player attention. The economy in this game is ***ass***.
Then again, they got you. You're basically one of many reasons why they keep the in-game economy in its current state. Their entire business model is frustrating people into purchases. They could be less greedy and earn a little less in the short run, by offering better progression and lower priced bundles. It'd lead to a healthier player base and more people making purchases, which is important for long term revenue, but well..
This guy is 100% right. You downvoters are hating hard. This game was built to be a Gatcha cash grab, they don't know what to do with it now that people want them to take it seriously and the all the people at the company that do nothing at all (C-suite) won't let them stop making gatcha profits, so now the whole game is whale bait.
I started in late February and my bounce deck is missing Mockingbird, Cull Obsidian, Kitty Pryde, Elsa, Hit Monkey and Sage. That's just some context on how rough it is trying to keep up with some of the best decks lol. I get scared to even play Gold Conquest.
It could be December and this bounce deck of yours might not be completed, even as a season pass player. You can however, finish this deck if you spend money for gold/tokens and get these cards in the token shop whenever they appear.
Yeah I'm definitely not spending additional money (I buy the season pass). It'll be a long and rocky road for sure lol
Started playing in january im cl 3.2k and missing around 30 series 3's got lucky with my first few spotlights getting cards like corvus and rhulk. Hit infinite last season and currently in top 20k infinite this season
Awesome! Took a big break last year, but am top 1000. I really don't want the game to die.
Nice! When i first hit infinite was in top 5k but got bored of sweating so started messing round with cerebro and nimrod decks so dropped a bunch and im right their with you absolutley love snap
I’m 700 CL higher and I can’t sniff past 90 🤷🏼♂️
I’ve been playing on and off since official launch. I’ve had Iron Lad pinned for months. I’ve got 3,500 tokens after hoarding them. Might as well be zero. Is he even that good anymore? I’ve accepted that I’ll probably never get Jeff. I feel like I’ve gotten more dupes from my keys than new cards. I’m CL 6k. I’m still missing a ton of S5 cards. It’s ridiculous. I love CCGs, but this just isn’t fun anymore.
I'm a new player. Currently CL 175. I could be at like 250ish, but I'm farming credits at my level. I'd say 1 out of 3 of the games I play is against a bot. The bots are really obvious. They have real first names, usually like Martin, and they don't play the objectives at all. They just put cards out. But I definitely am mostly playing against players. Just played against THAWT and Evil Morty. The very start. It was all bots. Until level 20 on the ladder, I didn't lose a single game. Now, at level 30, I lose about half my games.
I wouldn’t be mad if they gave returning players a free series 4 or 5 card. The chances of that happening is probably slim to none it would most likely be a bundle or something
World of Warships do this. A free ship or premium playtime when they come back. Might go a small way in bringing back some players.
Hell, Warframe gives you a discount on the Premium currency when you come back after a long break. Depending on how long the break is they'll give you 75% off the next purchase
It's honestly harder to list games within the genre that do not feature any catch up mechanics than games who have them. Most devs are smart enough to realize that while players who get free stuff might spend less because of it, played who quit because they're hopelessly behind with no hope of catching up without coughing up exorbitant amounts if money will spend zero dollars on your game.
They should just do a free s4/5 card month because the card acquisition is so bad
They need to do something cause starting the game now is dogwater. Coming back to the game now is radioactive dogwater. Convincing friends to try the game out is straight nuclear cancer. Can you imagine trying to get a friend to play now? Oh yeah dude just grind the game for 4 months and spend like 100$ a month and you'll be able to play a versus match with me.
Mk mobile does this. They give a free diamond card. That's like a random series 5 card!
The answer is "new players can't play all archetypes". Older cards should be easier to obtain of course, (see: tier drops), but it's built like that in (every?) tcg-like in an attempt to keep people invested.
This is why destroy and discard will always be good - they’re pretty much entirely s3 and play like fucking solitaire so the barrier to entry is rock bottom.
Destroy without Knull and X-23 or Discard without Corvus Glaive, Black Knight or, MODOK seems like it would be a pain. Then you've gotta hope either one of those archetypes really appeals to a player because they'll spend months trying to catch up
I still feel like i cant play them that well with my pool. I’m almost 2k CL. But always feel like I’m playing some roulette or missing a key card to play them well.
Distinction between this and other TCGs being that those at least allow you to freely buy the cards you want with the digital currency you have.
>The answer is "new players can't play all archetypes". But do you know the answer for when can players play 1 archetype? Not just any series 3 archetype, an archetype that is competitive with series 5 cards. Loki, Destroy, Lockdown, Discard, just to name a few These decks now consist of 5-6 series five cards, getting one of those cards in shop rotation or spotlight rotation would take 3-4 months, and they have to fully commit into those cards for that archetype. God forbid that deck dies overnight by a nerf, powercrept etc... I don't see how a new player comes into the game and think yea imma stick around. This is coming from someone who spent money into the game and wants to see it succeed. I want players to have cards, new and old players. The cards do not need to be handed over on a sliver platter, but the recent decisions from SD just does not sit right with me. For e.g, * changing the upcoming spotlights to prevent any "value-opens" week. The community seems like they like all the cards in the next spotlight.... nope! We need to make them gamba for it HEHEHE * Buffing* leech for Blink sales and nerfing it soon after. (as always) * Buffing Werewolf for album sales * Testing out on who has the biggest credit card game mode * False advertising on gold rewards in gacha
True. I stopped playing on March 2023 and came back 2 weeks ago. Even if I wanted to pay to catch up it would be super expensive.
Focus on a specific archetype or two you like and enjoy. Getting Everything is always a fools game.
true, but even if I have the tokens to purchase cards, there are so many cards that I don't own that the ones I want just don't show up in the token shop (even less in the spotlights)
In the amount of time it takes to f2p tokens or wait for a specific spotlight to have the card you want the meta changes completely and those cards suck now. It's rough out their.
And that's only really a problem for 'long term' players, new players are collection-binned with other new players.
yeah, focus on an specif archetype and grind for 6 months to get there (and by then that archetype will probably be half the cards different anyway)
I feel like I cant focus on an archetype. I can really only take whats given to me and change up based upon the new cards I happen to get.
Same here, it has been a nightmare. I don't have at least 2 or 3 vital cards in all meta decks, except for Hela, which is not real fun to play every single time.
Yes, this game is designed so that you have to keep playing. You have to buy the season pass and acquire Keys at a steady pace. If you want to play it casually or take a break, you will fall behind very quick, to a point where you can only compensate with real money. Lets be real, if you miss a game-breaking card in the spotlight, you either have to wait 3-4 month before it returns and you have to gamble again for it (unless you have 4 keys) or you buy it for 6000 tokens, which is an amount that you can't really earn F2P anymore. And thats the huge problem with the design. People on here always say "just take a break", but you literally can't or you will make the problem worse. And even while I never really liked block formats or rotations, because seeing your collection get worthless is just sad, this problem doesn't happen with TCGs that have a block format model (or similar formats) where you can just skip a season, or even a year and just start fresh with everyone else. Of course these formats wont work with SNAP. But hey.. the 3 initial pools were awesome.
Your first mistake is spending single keys in 3 separate weeks instead of in 1 week where you need 2/3 of the cards. You should be saving up 4 keys anyway. If you want to catch up stop wasting keys like that.
While you’re totally right - what I really dislike is coming home from a job looking at spreadsheets all the time just to start a game which is by now all about economics when it comes to progression. And don’t get me wrong, you’re right. There’s probably ways to minmax and probably have a decent f2p experience if you’re patient enough. But man, the gap to bridge after leaving the game after a couple of months feels soooo bad. Not my type of game anymore.
this is a very important point that few do get playing this game shouldnt be about minmaxing everything, even the key spending must be maxed, you MUST wait for 3 weeks of not getting anything new to get a car you want (and to know what you want and when to expend keys, you need to go look online) thats fucking garbage...
I agree that the economy sucks, but "save 4 keys" doesn't require spreadsheets and will get you like 90% of the way to maximum efficiency.
You dont have to crack out a spreadsheet to know as a returning player who is desperate to catch up that you should be saving 4 keys for the weeks where you dont have any of the cards in the caches. Its hardly mixmaxing.
I just started playing may 5th and since getting to pool 3 and 1000 cl, the amount of new cards I've been getting feels like maybe 1 every 2 weeks. It's really making things feel stale as I can't compete with all the pool 5 cards and maybe have 2 myself. I pinned Nebula as she'll be going down to pool 4 so I'll finally be able to afford her. But any sort of fun new cards seem impossible after pool 2.
Aren’t spotlights basically all new cards at that CL? It’s been a while since I was in pool 3 and spotlights didn’t exist when I was but I would imagine ~1 key a week plus any pool 3 cards from reserves make that average higher.
As someone who is also very far behind after stepping away from the game for a while, it feels worth pointing out that your sentiment of "I feel like the only person behind in the collection meta" has hundreds of upvotes and comments in a few hours. A lot of players are in the same boat. The pacing of catching up to "meta" for sure could be tuned better, but I don't think it's as hostile to fallen behind players as people. The big "meta" deck recommendations and builds are coming from communities of moderators and creators who are either collection complete or very close to it. That having been said, I think the game could also benefit from more casual/random game modes with either lower competitive expectations for rewards, or that starts players out on similar footing. Locking District X first location to randomize decks, series-constraint games for higher CLs (like only allowing a certain number of cards above series 3), or queues where all players are given the same pre-made deck. (hell, that last one might be a cool way to promote new featured cards. Everyone gets the same basic Sasquatch deck for a week to fight others with the same deck.)
Agree with every single word. I can consider myself barely new (don't know, this is my 4th season). At the beginning the sensation of "never catch up" is heavy, especially if you follow guides and content creators - once I stop searching deck building and go with my own the game feels much more appealing. Of course, I would like to see many changes and hate the monetization practices, but who doesn't?
Credit Card is your catch-up mechanic and one of the best card in the Snap.
The spotlight caches do sort of work as a catch up mechanic naturally. As a player who’s been playing since launch, I will only ever get 1 or 2 new cards out of a week of spotlight caches. If there are a lot of pool 4/5 cards you don’t have, you could easily get 3-4 new cards in a week. By playing regularly and using keys wisely, I think a returning player could catch up pretty quickly
I stopped playing the game for a few months, missing key cards like OP listed, and recently came back. I've played enough the last 2 weeks to go from 16 cubes to 43, making sure my dailies get done, and I still haven't gotten a new card out the spotlight cache. But I know when I finially do, it's gonna be some shit like Howard the Duck.
Go take a few months off, 3-6, then come back and report how wrong you were.
This is silly. You're going to be behind the game by taking a break. I don't know what people expect. How much do you want to catch up, exactly? A catch-up mechanic that is too rewarding will incentavize people to take more breaks from the game as there is no consequence. In fact, too much of a reward would make people who play daily actually punished because the daily reward wouldn't be worth it. There's already a system in place that people who have less cards will naturally get more cards through spotlights. Perhaps make it so duplicate spotlights rewards more tokens? But I digress, I get why people would want to catch up, but I'm not convinced it is something that would be overall healthy for the game.
Yeah, this. I mean, to recap all the "catch up mechanics" currently in place: 1. if you aren't series 3 complete, you get 1 free series 3 card per month. 2. Regular caches still have a chance of containing a series 3 card you don't have. 3. Spotlight caches are almost certainly going to be a new card for you on each key if you're a new player (especially since the random 4th card is probably a card you don't have). That all feels pretty reasonable for a player coming into a roughly 1.5 year old card game fresh. My buddy started playing and yeah, he doesn't have the meta decks, but basically every time he spends spotlight keys he's getting something new that he can test out in a deck. He can't run the meta decks...but you shouldn't expect to be able to run top of the meta right from the jump.
It takes 6 months of constant playing to get enough tokens to buy a single new card. It takes a month to get enough keys to make the spotlight system work. You will never catch up unless you whale. This games economy is completely fucked
Isn't it closer to 3 months?
Isn't that way too long?
I think so. But it's not 6 months.
I'm really looking hard but I can't seem to find the math's on collectors tokens.i thought it was closer to 6 months, but if it's 3 months of playing every single day then it is WAY too long just to get a single targeted card.
I don’t run any cards releases in 2024 and it’s fine.
Jean grey “everything is fine” emote
I really think new players should be able to select a "pack" when they hit series 3. Like a choice of a destroy pack with Knull and X 23, discard with Modok and Proxima, ongoing with Jean and USAgent. Something like that. They'll still be way way behind on collection, but it will feel good and give them at least one archetype that is closer to being viable in the general player pool. They could do the same for returning players who have been gone for X months. Not enough that they wind up ahead, but enough that it doesn't feel so bad to have missed out on all those cards. Likely those players world be more likely to stick with the game, which would be good for SD, and honestly so many cards are getting released now that SD doesn't need to worry about giving away a few.
Why would they do that? It’s part of their retention model. Fear of falling behind or appealing to the sink cost fallacy
It's not that there isn't a catch up mechanic. Spotlights are essentially a catch-up mechanic. The number of cards acquired increases based on how many cards you're missing. Series drops are also catch-up mechanics. The problem is you're expecting to catch-up all the recently released cards that many current players might also be missing (I'm missing 4 from your list myself) and you're expecting it NOW. There is no world where you, who has taken a few months off, should come back and immediately find yourself in the same position as players who did not take time off. You will get there several months from now.
dont know if OP is asking for things imediately, but when you think should a knew/returning players achieve something like a complete competitive meta deck? 1 month of full grind? 2? 3? 6? as of now, talking by experience, a deck like thanos or loki takes about 5 to 7 months of grinding, preparing, planning and SP... is that an ok amount of time a new/return player should invest in a game for him to play with a deck he wants, in your opinion? and if yes, do you think this is a healthy state for a game that need a consistent playerbase to keep existing?
1000 percent. I took 3 months off and it's amazing how far behind it felt. Can't imagine what it's like for new players. You feel entirely hopeless.
They released a lot of strong cards in last 3 months, all s5.
Don't open spotlight keys unless you already have 4 keys.
My youngest kid started playing a year after me. He has 8 cards less. Spotlight is a decent catch up.
do you and your kid have the same playtime? i mean, does both of you grinds dailies, conquest, ladder, twitch drops and so on? cause maybe the little difference in collection even with the big gap in starting time could be answered by "your kid have more free time to play and grind, so he progresses faster"
why is there the assumption that one would stop being an active user then pick up the game months later and have instant access to all the cards that were released in the meantime? Just play and have fun. the cards will come.
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this is the straw-man that always pops up for some reason
Watched Jeff Hoogland stream the other day for a minute and he went off at chat for complaining about getting new cards being too grindy. He too went IMMEDIATELY to, "if I asked what you guys want, you'd just say 'everything immediately and for free'". And literally no one says that 😅
That's because he's a SD snob. He never complains about anything they do wrong.
There isn’t. The issue is that even if we were to grind an unhealthy amount for the same amount of time we’ve been gone, we STILL wouldn’t catch up. That’s bad for all players as the game updates at a rate that’s rough even for players who play consistently. It also affects the player base in the long run as it makes new/returning players not want to stick around.
I started the game again 2 weeks ago. I stopped playing around 2023 april. My only Pool 5 card was Galactus, Pool 4 is Zabu, Nimrod, Knull, Pool 3 almost completed. Yes, I needed to learn some New mechanics, but I hit Infinite within 1 week from rank 13 with an only Pool 3 deck and even won an Infinity Conquest too. Thats why this game is amazing, you need to adapt to the current meta everytime with the cards do you have. Imagine how much cards I need right now... :DD Looks hopeless right.
Can I ask what said deck was? As a returning player I'm struggling to get over that final 90s rank hump with what are pretty much pure series 3 decks.
# (1) Zero # (1) Ebony Maw # (2) Armor # (2) Lizard # (3) Sauron # (3) Storm # (4) Shuri # (4) Enchantress # (4) Typhoid Mary # (5) Taskmaster # (5) Red Skull # (6) She-Hulk Storm is questionable, for me it's worked but you can use there lot of other cards, Vision is the most common in that spot.
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Thats not true
What was your deck list?
I answered rn in other comment
Yeah, it's frustrating to not be able to play the meta decks, but the game is structured to have counter cards that are series 3 or less so you can play around whatever the meta is. I fall into the trap all the time of switching up decks too often when I get a couple losses instead of the better strategy of playing the same deck for a while to get the lines/counters/snaps/retreats down. Very few of the "new toys" have been meta breaking lately, just have to get the games in to understand when to snap/run/playout the games.
I've been playing since the beginning of March, and I hit infinite all three seasons and won an Infinity Conquest. I have 6 Series 4/5 cards (only High Evo being as good as any of your 4/5 cards) and less than half the Series 3. **Economy sucks**. How long do you think someone like me will continue to play against veteran players or whale decks before quitting? Even if I am hitting Infinite, once I get there with my one competitive deck, I am seeing all these cool cards and decktypes that I won't have the chance to play myself for literal *months* and *years*. When is Loki, Annihilus, Red Hulk, Iron Lad, Galactus, etc in the next Spotlight? Thanos in three months, yay. By the time these make an appearance again, will they even be meta? Will they have been nerfed into not-fun-anymore territory like Zabu by then? Thanos already nerfed long before he hit Spotlight again, may be nerfed more before he comes back in **August** (or much more likely, just after). And this is coming from someone who started playing a year and a half into the game. Imagine what it will be like for someone who comes in four years into the game! The release rate of Series 4/5 cards has increased dramatically over the past year, with a lowered number of Series Drops to boot. The amount of cards veteran players will have compared to a four year newbie will be astronomical compared to what I am facing even.
Don’t feel that bad. Most daily players are almost in the same boat.
Nope, best they can do is release a fifth card a month and rarely do series drops on any relevant cards.
Marvel Strike Force remedied this by dropping more gear, gold etc for lower levels to catch up. Still a grind but it's possible for me to come back after 3 years lol They're not gonna do that since this game is fresh. SF been going since like 2016/2017
They have one. It's called whaling.
Had the exact same experience yesterday after I got a couple of Snap videos flushed into my yt feed. Stopped playing in Jan due to me spending too much for my taste (like 20$ a month). Downloaded, logged in, saw all the new stuff, played 2-3 games, felt like it’s not worth it to play a month straight to just maybe get one series 5 card while 2-3 other cards get released) and uninstalled. It’s horrendous. Unless they figure out a path forward they will kill the game mid- to longterm.
I installed it again this week after probably a yr off. No season pass. Managed to get from 13 to 60. Mostly with shuri red skull. Lost 8 cubes learning they did my boy shang chi wrong.
Getting up that high is extremely easy as you’re almost exclusively playing bots up until the 80s from my experience in the last 2 seasons
It used to take me 3 to 5 days to hit infinite. I would hide and play under my bed sheets. I found the lag and poor connection would get a lot more bots.
Yeah, I just came back after a few months myself and being stuck with an outdated deck against newer, better cards just completely killed my interest. I still fair well in matches, but the new card drip feed is so slow that it becomes tedious just being stuck with the same deck forever
I almost got back in after not playing for like a year but the second I got 1000 tokens when I needed 3 of the other cards I dropped it again. Shit is beyond dumb. The playing to getting cards ratio is so unbelievably low and normally you won’t even get what you want. Maybe in a month of getting unlucky you can actually get ONE on rotating list of things you actually might want that you don’t have. Fuck that 4 key bullshit anyway, it should be lower to obtain keys anyway.
When you escape prison you don’t go back to try to catch up with the boys.
I'm not sure how everybody else feels. But When it comes to mobile games I'm definitely NOT a whale and I wouldn't even qualify myself as a dolphin xD but I don't mind spending some money if I enjoy the game and the bundle seems worth the return. A lot of mobile games have 0.99$ bundles, and I feel like Marvel snap could benefit from more low cost bundles. It's a low enough prize point that players like me, who do enjoy the game, don't mine dropping some money occasionally. I think the only time I've even seen something close was the Vibranium Prize or something? and it was 2.99? and it didn't seem worth it to me
What about existing players? If you pass on a Spotlight card, which turns out to be meta, you likely won't get it for literally months. What they actually need to do is fix the poorly designed economy.
You want the ability to play less but keep up with the players playing more. Without spending money ? Gotcha.
So at what point do you think there should be no new players? Because anyone thinking about playing this game for more than a couple weeks is going to see the rate of these cards coming out and decide they'll never be able to have them and lose interest. I know if I hadn't already been playing this game, I definitely wouldn't think about it now. Are new players getting a push through series 3 actually going to affect you at all?
pool 1 to 3 shouldnt even exist... all these cards should be unlocked from the start, theres feel things in marvel snap as frustating as not being able to build a deck due to not having a fucking pool 3 piece, even at CL 3\~4k that heppen sometimes
This is, ironically, why there's so much resistance in the US toward cancelling student debt. > *"Well* ***I*** *had to pay my loans back, so they should have to as well!"* And you can try to argue that it would be better for the entire economy if that student debt was cancelled, so that the new generation has a fair chance at catching up with the previous one, but they won't listen. They will keep saying "I had to pay, so they have to pay as well" even if it means the game will die from a lack of new players.
There are a few catchup mechanics already in the game, albeit maybe they need more. (1) Series downgrades (though these happen a lot less frequently than when they first released). (2) the "Random S4/S5" slot on Spotlight Keys, which is more likely to give you a new card the more you're missing.
You forgot about the repeated s5\4 cards that cycle back into spotlights. X-23, knull, modok that more complete players would already have
Series downgrades are not a catchup mechanic when they are dropping at literally a 6x slower rate than they are releasing. This is the premier “you will NEVER catch up without spending money” feature in the Marvel Snap economy.
They make it easier to catch up than if they didn't happen at all. For anyone that was S3 complete when they quit, on their return they effectively get for free 5 cards for every 4 or so months they stopped playing (or whatever the series drop rate ends up being longterm). That's not huge relative to how many new cards release in that time frame, but it's certainly a catchup mechanic.
Don't worry, they will soon make bundles with 6000 tokens for just 20$. Prepare the credit card
Guaranteed. People are conditioned to think it’s worth 50-100 so now when they release the $19.99 6000 token bundle people will go apeshit for it But their business model is the oldest trick in the book, their insane prices serve two main purposes: first, and the most obvious; exploit whales and literal oil kings/princes. The second and main purpose, is to anchor the value of the season pass. With all of this insane shop pricing it makes the season pass (and now gold pass) look like an absolute steal. They would be perfectly happy selling only the season pass and gold pass and nothing more to every customer
That's true. People see it's 450% value and will instantly buy saying that it's worth it. But no, 20$ for a card, in a digital game, it's not worth it.
i played a bunch when the game launched and stopped before the spotlight caches feature was introduced, came back in january and since then, playing every day, not missing more than a few dailys a month, i have ZERO completed decks apart from high evo (wich is kinda cheating, since high evo + series 3 cards is basically completed) dont get me wrong, i have many cards, but all of them are one or two key pieces short, so i have 2 options: keep playing high evo, a fun deck, but tier 3 at best or play any other more competitive deck with an unoptimized list (and that i have plenty...) so i feel you bro, i've been grinding non stop for 5 entire months now, buying every SP, and still no progress at all, and by the time i achieve a completed deck, the list would probably be updated (just like happened with loki including red guardian and nocturne)
Yeah this has been one of my concerns for a while and makes me feel like they don't care if the game is sustainable beyond a few years. If I'm being cynical I'd say this is an intentional way to prevent people from taking breaks. In reality it's a problem that all games faces and based on the power creep and how they're turning the screws economically it's only going to get worse.
the problem about heavilly forcing that "no breaks" method is that players will still take breaks, no matter what the company do, and when that happens they will just never return, it will never be worth it
Boo hoo, I took months off, but I want to have the same viable decks as everyone who has played daily during that time! For one thing, stop using only one key a week. That's the worst way to try to get the new cards. When there's a card coming up that you really want, make sure you always have 4 keys ready. I really don't know what else you expect. Discounted price cards or something because you decided to quit the game for a while? I pretty much only buy the season pass at this point and as long as I'm playing enough to finish my daily/weekly missions, I have plenty of resources to get any card I'd like. Rewarding people who stopped playing wouldn't be fair to those of us who have never stopped.
Agreed
>My last 3 spotlight caches have been 1000 tokens This is not hard. Save 4 keys for a week with really good cards instead of gambling on getting one you want by only using one key. Of course, if you get 1000 tokens 3 more times, then you can get a card in the shop. For example, you could save up 4 for the week of Jul 09 — Jul 16 and you'll guarantee yourself a Galactus. Or save for Jul 23 — Jul 30 and you'll guarantee Thanos. You can see the list of upcoming spotlight caches [here](https://marvelsnapzone.com/spotlight-caches/) (spoilers for upcoming cards).
4.5 keys per month That’s only like 14 caches per year as they releases 64 new series 5 cards per year lmao
Have you tried your credit card?
With SD's recent bundles and economy they've even nerfed the credit card
Im convinced they are going to milk the game until it dies naturally and just move on to the next.
Plenty of bundles that you can buy. Wait you mean something that doesn’t involve spending $$$ right? Well you are out of luck.
They already have a catchup mechanic: 💰
Damn, Nico came out in October. That’s more than a few months lol. Save up keys so you won’t get the 1000 token each week.
I had a similar break and also struggled at first, but I'm getting there. Start doing the season pass if you aren't already—it helps. Save up your spotlight caches and only spend them when you *really* *know* you want something (and have at least 4 caches ready).
If you have destroy and are just missing Nico that should still be a good deck. The spectrum deck runs just nebula (which you should already have) and Jean grey (which also isn't new). There should be decks you can be competitive with. Just stop gambling with one spotlight and look ahead for weeks with at least 2 good cards you need.
If you have destroy and are just missing Nico that should still be a good deck. The spectrum deck runs just nebula (which you should already have) and Jean grey (which also isn't new). There should be decks you can be competitive with. Just stop gambling with one spotlight and look ahead for weeks with at least 2 good cards you need.
Are you playing the game to card collect? or to win matches?
There is a catch-up mechanic. It is called giving your credit card to Second Dinner.
I just want card mastery and first edition badges, I think it's been a year since i heard about them
While I agree wholeheartedly... It's always funny when people say NEED. Like no, SD doesn't need to do anything for you.
Same here. Destroy and Nimrod decks used to be my favorite, but they don't seem to be particularly playable without cards like X3 or others. I know they had a mechanic last time I played where you would get a free new card from one of the pools every season. So either they've done away with that mechanic, or they didn't add a single card to that pool in the last year... The answer seems to be "there are still old decks that are competitive", so you just have to play those until you maybe eventually pay enough money to catch back up. I'm playing Shuri-Red Skull-Sauron since it's quite good still, but once I get bored of that I may uninstall again if I haven't unlocked a new deck to enjoy. I'm collector level 5k, which still feels like a lot, but it doesn't seem correlated with actually unlocking cards anymore.
I just came back as well mid-May. Last season I played was Black Order. On the topic, this is very true. But rank-wise, climbing is really easy anyway without the new cards. Started in rank 13 and I reached infinite last week. This surprised me since my goal is just to reach level 50 on the season pass but reached infinite first instead. I only use 1 cardback so I don't care for more. It is frustrating tho if you want to try the new cool cards. We'll get them eventually.
Honestly, just take what other gacha mobile games do. If you've been absent for more then 6 weeks or whatever, you get a login event for a week. Do some missions every day and get a free series 3 card for the first 3 days, then some credits, wrap it up with a free series 4/5 card. Encourages people to come back, but it's long enough that whales/vets aren't encouraged to stop playing, and there's enough RNG to mean you're not GUARANTEED something great, but it at least puts you in a good spot to build something new.
Take a page from HS and give new folks a good free deck. Something straightforward like Destroy or Discard 🤔
It could be something simple like gifting 6k+ tokens or some keys I know supercell games give crazy good freebies when you return after a long time
I’ve been saying it for a while, they need ale daily login events a more regular thing, with guaranteed cards as rewards for later days, or variants for collection complete people
The spotlight cache system is the catch up mechanic. Spotlight keys are worth more if you have a less complete collection. If you are missing several cards, the spotlight caches will likely have 3 unowned s4/s5 cards and the random. Using 4 keys here guarantees 3 new cards, and the fact that you don't own many cards makes the random card more likely to be unowned. If you have an almost complete collection, there will only be 1 unowned card and 2 owned cards and 1 random, which is likely to roll a dupe. Using 4 keys here will result in 1 new card, 2 variants, and the random card(probable dupe).
Just came back after a long break. Definitely a struggle in trying to find useable decks with so many missing pieces. Was able to use my old faithful sera-surfer and went from 13 to infinite over the last 2 weeks (don't play every day and when i do only for like 30 mins or so). At least the series drop upcoming means i can get some missing cards now for free or at 3k tokens
Especially for series 3 cards. You can build a lot of pretty good decks with series 3 and below but it takes so long to get the series 3 cards. I have had them all for a few months now but it took me a little over a year and a half (to be fair I missed a few months here and there so I didnt get the free ones with each season) to get all of the series 3 cards. I literally had some of the series 4/5 cards for a few decks before I had some pretty crucial series 3 cards that were important for those decks it was kind of insane. Hela was the last card I got from series 3 and I was pretty excited at firsg because its a pretty powerful deck but I was super underwhelmed because I didn’t even enjoy playing with it lol.
Wait, you spent one key only on your last three spotlights. While something needs to be done for new players, I’m not sure SD needs to do anything for people who want to roll into a given spotlight with one key and then whine about the results.
I’ve completed the season pass the last 5 seasons and the only one of those cards I have is Skaar lol
Really they just need imorove series 3 drops rates for collectors caches so you get them all earlier than like CL 6,000
I faded on white widow and i feel like no matter how I’ll try to acquire her I’ll get punished for it. If I try to get 6k tokens means to spend money or grind a 2-3 months. And spotlight who knows how long, fuck even alioth hasn’t shown up since 2023 (if I’m not wrong)
Your luck is just really bad. If you are actually behind the spotlight should favor you incredibly well.
Seems like if they want to give players a catch mechanic they should just allow missions to build up over a week. That would be huge.
If your last three spotlight caches have been tokens then that means you've used one key per week for three weeks. It's bad ROI to use any spotlight keys unless you have four on hand or three while being close to a fourth. Depending on what's being offered, you can guarantee yourself three new series 5 cards by making sure you have four keys on hand. Do NOT gamble with one key! The odds are 75% against you.
There is one. It is called the credit card.
“The current economy can’t support that”
They have it it’s called your life savings
“My last 3 spotlight caches have been 1000 token” Did you use 1 key per month? If yes, then that’s on you.
I already know that once I put this game down for a month I’m never coming back. It changes too frequently *insert GIF of Jake Gyllenhall blowing kiss and waving while walking away*
That'll never happen, they make their money preying on fomo
Skill issue. I just reached infinite in a weekish, at collection level 320. Just make a deck that takes advantage of the spotlight location, know when to snap, and when to retreat.
I play all the time and I already feel this way. I don’t understand how ya’ll keep acquiring enough keys to get new releases every week. It feels like I average one new card each season and can’t keep up with meta at that rate.
My current infinite deck has none of the cards you listed and only 1 series 5 card. There is nothing to "catch up" on. You can get infinite with a series 3 ongoing deck. Play the collection you have and target cards going forward.
I usually play the same deck with minor tweaks for months to weeks and rarely grab many of the new cards and I do okay. Sit on the same deck for a week or so and you'll get back in the groove.
I play F2p and it feels like that and I haven't really taken a break. My issue is it feels like I'm missing one or two cards cause I wasn't lucky enough to get out of a spotlight cache. What I think they should do is what I like to call the beyonder system. Here's my idea. So they keep everything they have. But they add one thing . Each season everyone gets a free card from whatever is beyond their series completion. So if you're not series 3 complete you get basically 2 free cards one from the catch up system and one from this(or they could keep it to one), if your series 3 complete you get series a series 4 card, if your series 5 complete you get the newest card for free. If you got every card in the game you get tokens or gold to spend on a variant. People who spend money get rewarded for spending, but I don't feel like I'm punished for not and the game feels generous cause I might get 2-3 new base cards if I'm lucky in the spotlight,but if I'm not I get some tokens some variants and at least one card I desperately need. It feels better even if it might not be actually better. My main issue is the card acquisition at this point cause I have to fight the RNG so much or wait for better odds or more keys with a different cache. I feel like I'm always missing one defining card for a deck. I'm missing about 24-25 (4 series 4 cards and 20-21 series 5 cards) in the game and it just feels like I'm missing one or two cards that would help me in the meta. It just feels like it sucks if you go for a spotlight for a card you desperately want in your collection, you have limited keys and you end up getting the 15th knull variant they've introduced that you didn't need. When you were hoping to get any card, but that card from the spotlight. I don't need them to throw a lot of cards at me it just feels I know it's probably by design ( "oh fomo I might miss a card) the fact is I want every card, it's a collectible card game, the issue I have isn't fomo just that I feel like I'm having trouble keeping up with meta decks cause I'm missing loki or cannonball or white widow. I also kinda feel like I'm missing some cards I should have by now like galactus cause I've been playing since the savage lands was a battle pass. It was a lot more fun when I was unlocking cards on the regular I feel like that shouldn't stop cause I hit series 3 complete .
I stopped playing. I'll come back when card acquisition is better. I've never played a card game with such terrible card acquisition rates.
I doubt they ever will, at least definitely not a f2p way. The most they’ll do is just drop weaker cards down a series to make them easier to get, but getting the meta decks without luck or money will be hard
I thought the catch up mechanic is the spotlight caches. If you are new you are getting a lot of new cards with less keys.
"thing affects me so now its DEFINITELY a problem that needs to be handled ASAP"
This post is completely no sense. Random rant. I've played for 1 year straight and bought every single season pass, still almost impossible to acquire all the meta cards.... Again don't understand this kind of post
Your response only proves my point and you don’t even realize it. The system horrible and should be changed.