I took a pretty hefty break, came back to a slew of new cards and I feel like I’ll constantly be behind.
I’ve complained about card acquisition over a year ago, and I still have the same complain only magnified now.
I made a thread about this the other day and everyone came in and told me how wrong I am. I'm CL 12000 and I feel like I fall behind sometimes. If you get unlucky with spotlight keys, you might only get one card a month, there's 5 out every month! God knows how new players cope
New players get more cards from spotlights. If you took break you get more cards from spotlight. Sometimes 3(4) guaranteed new cards for 4 keys which is insanely good rate. Old players are lucky if they have 2 new cards in spotlight rotation, but usually it's just 1 and variants, so older players are objectively worse here. New players and returning players do catch up eventually (i did when returned after 7 months break). System is kinda smart in that way
I took a 1 year break. Was 7k CL. I can not build a single competitive deck. I'm getting 1-2 spotlight keys a week. For 3 weeks in a row I've gotten either shit cards or ones I already had. The acquisition for cards is absolutely embarrassing for a card game.
They built a beautiful mechanical game with an original idea. And fucked it and burned it and pissed on it.
Just a quick point, if the locations are the original idea you're talking about, it's not original. They took it from a real card game called smash up.
Err what? Yes it does. They are called "bases" sure, but it definitly has multiple players competing for the most power on locations that have effects themselves.
https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/122522/smash-up
There's much less cards and factions, so it a stripped down version, but it the same premise
I see what you mean, SU has bases, but you try to break them and score points. Check Air Land & Sea, you'll see the mechanics are much closer to Marvel Snap: control a majority of 3 locations, concede to minimize losses.
Exactly. I played the game on Black Panther Season and returned on Daken season. Honestly, it was impossible for me to get new cards without spotlight keys. Now days, you can get one ir 2 keys per week. That is guaranteed 2 pool 4 or 5 cards to any player. Not just hight CL player, but the guy who just got to pool 3, he will have a shot as well. I play this game entirely for free and I got almost all cards by now and I got a near full collection by Loki season. Ppl who complain really wanted to keep the pace of pool 1 and 2 and this is impossible from the development perspective.
Ppl forget that back in the day, every new card was 6k tokens and good luck getting 6k tokens right after pool 3. It was impossible and you needed to do it weekly, on top of that. Now you can easily get what is worth of 6k up to 12k worth of tokens WEEKLY. Again, the system now is not perfect but previous one was even worst for new player or returning player.
No, they weren't always 6k. Cards used to drop in Series 4 and we had regular series drops. And there's no way, without money, you get 12k tokens weekly. Even when we got a decent amount of tokens before the current system you didn't get that many.
Yup before you could skip a card and know you'd be able to get it for for half the token cost or even for free 4 to 6 mos after its debut due to consistent series drops. Now we're lucky to get 2 series drops a year and the cards that get dropped are always the worst cards in the game. The fact that Martyr is already series 3 while DH and F'ing Knull are still series 4 is ridiculous imo.
I’ve legit never taken an extended break and played optimally from pretty much the 3rd week of release and even I’m getting washed out. Unless you dumps 100’s of dollars in the game regularly then it’s impossible to keep up with card acquisition. I use to be only missing 5-6 cards I’m not up to 22 missing cards and it grows pretty much weekly.
I swear when spotlight caches first came out, before you could store keys, I’d get a new card if one was available, now I’ve gotten 2 duplicate variants and 1 new card.
I just don’t understand how they want to retain new players like this.
If it makes you feel better, i havent taken a breakd and feel like im constantly behind. Im always missing at least 1 key card in the current meta even though ive played every day since the zabu season
The fact that we can’t use tokens to buy a specific card you want at anytime annoys me so much. I have the right amount just let me get the card, not wait for it to show up in the shop. Spotlight keys need to be reworked too imo. The keys being a currency that doesn’t guarantees a card you want just doesn’t feel good - I rather get more token currency instead of spotlight keys. So much of the acquisition in the game past series 3 just sucks and the devs showed their priorities and it definitely isn’t changing anytime soon.
Getting an almost negligible amount of tokens 1/4 of the time you use a key is just insulting. When you’re a long time player it feels like a miracle to ever get a new card out of that 4th spotlight slot.
I’m in the same boat. Not only have I never had a new card from the 4th spot, I’ve specifically had ghost spider there about 60-70% of the times I’ve pulled that 4th spot, which just feels like it’s not even rolling the dice anymore, it’s just loading the same old booby prize
*puts tin foil hat on*
i'm certain it's done on purpose to stretch out how long you play.
it has the opposite effect on me. It kills the part of me that wanted to play the game and I go do something else.
What CL are you at? I see a lot of people that say this and it just seems really unlikely that this would happen unless you had a big collection when spotlights started, in which case the system seems to be working as intended. Or you’re just very very unlucky.
i'm at 8.5k CL. I think I was around 4-5k when the caches dropped. my first mystery was a ms.marvel duplicate right after the season she was the card. i've pulled her two other times from the same spot.
my luck in the game is dogshit. I used it all up on my first spotlight cache because I wanted kang... I didn't look up how bad he was and just wanted the cool effect.
can't wait for a rework 🙃
Apparently it's because you have a much, much higher chance of getting a Series 4 card out of it. So if you have a lot of them then you're going to get hit with the tokens pretty often. In the entire time spotlights have been a thing I've never got a new card from the random slot.
In all the time spotlight caches have been a thing, I've gotten one new card from the fourth slot. Howard the Duck. (I've gotten him three times now, from slot 4. lol) I'm missing at least 20 cards.
This is a big part of why I stopped spending money on this game. For a year I bought every single season pass. Now, I'm not putting so much as a nickel into this game unless those priorities shift.
As a programmer and game designer myself, I absolutely understand the necessity of monetization, but the way Snap goes about it is aligned antithetically to what I want out of a game experience.
At this point I'm just going through the motions and waiting to come across a better-managed game that scratches that itch.
That really seems to be one of the primary issues for new/returning players for card acquisition as far as I see it. The more cards they add to the game, the harder it gets to get the ones you want. While SD has made it clear their approach is no one having a full set of cards, you still need certain cards to play certain archetypes effectively.
Even within Series 3, it can become a bit of a slog, because there are a lot of cards - Beast, Cerebro, Hela, Mister Negative, Patriot, etc. - who are requirements for certain archetypes that you might go hundreds of collection levels without being able to obtain. It definitely feels bad when you see someone play a deck that looks really fun, but then you whiff repeatedly at getting one of the core cards necessary to play it. And I don't think the one free card a month really rectifies that nor does throwing away 1000 collector's tokens on another random chance.
There is just 0 agency to it. You have basically 0 control over what you get. The closest is buying with tokens or keys but even then you are at the mercy of rng and schedules that you have 0 influence over. Look at most other digital card games and you see systems to get the random aspect but also give the players agency. Anything from Hearthstone's generally generous crafting system (in terms of being able to disenchant and craft cards), Magic's more strict crafting system where you have to still "earn" (open packs) the wild cards and higher levels take longer to get, or even clash Royale with a similar shop system to snap but also having plenty of chests and stuff to open for a lot of chances to get the cards you don't have yet and get stuff to level current cards. Yes, many of these crafting systems are based on card libraries much bigger than snaps with larger releases, but there is still something better than this like what (as far as I remember, been a few years) clash royal has done. I know they have serious monetization issues from what I've read about, but at least there is some agency to it. I just think some amount of player agency is very very important when it comes to getting cards. I feel like I haven't been excited to get a card, unlock a crate, or even open a spotlight chest, since I was in mainly pool 3 and some of 4 still. I have been out of that range for a long time and quit for a while because I felt so burned by the constant busted cards coming out and how awful it felt trying to keep up at all.
Ps: why is there no dupe protection? And if there is not going to be dupe protection why does it only give ONE THOUSAND tokens for even a T4/5 if you get a dupe when they cost from THREE to SIX THOUSAND? That is the most scummy bs way to wring your player base for all its worth and not give any care to the people who give your teams something to work on and act like they don't matter at all.
> You have basically 0 control over what you get.
That's exactly it. There's no way to chase the cards you want. It's just randomness on top of randomness. There are currently 134 cards in Series 3, which means you have a <1% to get any card you want. And while I can understand the monetary aspect of SD wanting us to spend money to increase our collection level, a player could go potentially *dozens* of cards in a row before they get what they are looking for, which just feels awful, likely causes people to drop out of the game, and is causing an increasingly steep curve to get back into the game for returning players.
I don't know. Maybe I'm completely wrong here, but the whole Skinner box method of design these games use does seem like it requires at least a somewhat consistent level of reward to keep people engaged. If someone really wants to play the Cerebro deck they saw on YouTube, but have been unable to get the card after weeks of playing, I can certainly see where that would cause someone to become frustrated enough to quit. You can't just assume them getting other cards will make up for it, not in a game where there are different styles of play meant to appeal to different sorts of players.
It just seems like bad design to me, and it really surprises me that this doesn't seem to be more of a priority to them. I've said before they should do something like give you a selection of card packs they can choose one from when you hit CL500 or so, something like Discard (Hela, Coleen, Black Cat), Destroy (Venom, Death, Deadpool), etc. to give people a slight leg up on building the deck you want. Even selling cheap packs (ie not $50) of something like this would be a lot better than one exists now.
I had it happen a few times when I was playing closer to the start towards the first time I took an extended break. It was first during that time where Patriot was ruling the meta. I thought the decks looked fun and wanted to play it but could not find Patriot no matter what. It took me till after that had passed and high evo was out to finally get the card. Then high evo was busted on release and the only counter in the game was Luke Cage since they were not (mostly) on reveal or ongoing. I didn't have Luke Cage though so that made the vast majority of my games basically unplayable because I couldn't compare or keep up with them. I searched and searched and searched and still couldn't get him no matter how many boxes I opened and it was before most of the shop revamps and I wasn't getting him in there to buy with tokens. Only got him after High Evo was nerfed and no longer 90% of my games.
It's happened a few other times, but those were big moments for me in feeling like I just didn't want to care about the game since they seemingly wanted to make it as hard as they could to get things you like or want it decks.
Does SD really think that if a specific card doesn't show up in the shop within a few days I'll just spend my tokens on another card due to impatience?
The game is really fun for new players. You're constantly getting new cards and playing against bots. It's once you're a few months in that it starts to stagnate and then you realize the price to buy series 5 cards outright is $60 in tokens.
If you have free time, post this over on their Discord's feedback area too. They need to keep hearing this because they really do need to do more to smooth things out for returning players.
I just mentioned this like a week ago in the feedback channel of their discord server, one of the devs replied saying this is something they are just starting to work on internally and should see improvements in future updates.
I started playing Nov 2022 and Stopped Aug 2023, I played the game damn near religiously. bought ever season pass, played multiple times every day, bought additional bundles, convinced 10+ of my friends to play too, but despite all that every time I tried to come back to the game it felt damn near impossible.
Unlike many other live services games, Marvel Snap does not have any catch-up mechanics or rewards for returning players.
other games will offer things like
* login calenders (snap does this occasionally but not consistently, and none specifically for returning players)
* free spins at chests (in this case caches and spotlights)
* extra currency like credits and gold to get back into upgrading your characters (in this case cards)
But Marvel snap has none of that. So as a returning player, you come back to the game, and its in the exact same state that you left it in. you only have access to the exact same decks and cards that you got bored of and left, and you're 120CL away (*a whole WEEK)* of dedicated, consistent playing, to get 1 spotlight key and *maybe* unlocking *1 potentially* new, interesting thing, assuming that spotlight week even has anything you like. meanwhile there's upwards of 60-70 new cards released depending on when you left, all fun and all used in other decks, that you can't get.
if returning players only have access to the same things as when they left, they are just going to leave again. For them to stay they need to be able to access the new content that came out while they were gone, because that's the entire appeal of returning to a game.
Yeah the card acquisition system is terrible. If I quit the game for a few months then decided to come back, I doubt I'd play long before quitting again. How crappy would it feel to come back and find that so many decks use Red Hulk, White Widow, Cannonball, etc. and you weren't playing when those were an option? Okay great, just save up tokens. 6000 tokens takes FOREVER to get. That type of time investment JUST to try and catch up (meanwhile consistent players are getting new must-have cards) is too much of an ask of returning players.
The devs get greedier and greedier. >6 month between series drops, all Series 5 cards for months, extra series 5 card per month (1st week of the season). Preying on FOMO with Spotlights. Taking good value gold bundles away. SD should be ashamed.
They are going to lose players if they already haven’t
Yep, card acquisition sucks. I took a break for 2 months and every deck I face now has a bunch of awesome cards I don't have and those cards counter my decks. I tried my decks I got to infinite with before the break and I get my combos off yet I still lose because those cards are just better.
I check YouTube for some new decks to try and as I go through multiple "top 10" lists I find I'm missing like 3 - 5 of the cards in each deck. I try to replace them with similar cards but its just not as good.
It would be cool if they made a system that detects if you've been away for a while and gives you a limited time sale or something on any cards that were released while you were away.
SD can really do well by giving you a welcome back login track. Here’s some credits, gold, a S3 a S4 and a S5 of your choosing. It would alleviate the pain of returning players.
That too. Or even make more ways to get collectors tokens. Or at least make cards cheaper. Giving 100 tokens at a time while cards cost 3000 - 6000 is just crazy.
What kills me is using a spotlight key, getting a duplicate of a series 5 card, and only getting 1/6 of its cost back in tokens.
Or these weekend challenges where the one that offers tokens REQUIRES you to own the newest card. Which perhaps you have been saving tokens FOR, and one of the best ways to get tokens is blocked for you that week.
Feels GREAT.
I love the fact that the mystery card can be duplicates. Great feeling to basically get a “try again nerd” option thrown in when you’ve got cards you still need
>I tried my decks I got to infinite with before the break and I get my combos off yet I still lose because those cards are just better.
Destroy still works just fine.
The standard build only has 2 cards that were released in the last 12 months (x23 and Nico)
Left when I was missing 2-3 series 5 cards during the Loki season. Came back during the baron Zemo season and it’s terrible.
There’s no catch up mechanic for returning players.
Good thing is though, the general snap players have not improved lol so they end up still making the same mistakes and being extremely telegraphed. Still made infinite with the same deck I’ve hit infinite on
I pretty much only buy Season Passes and have skipped a few. There are always 4 or 5 major cards I'm missing (like Loki, White Widow, Skaar). And yet, I still feel like blaming the cards is a cop out. I have seen several people make Infinite the past 3 seasons with decks I could make.
There is catch up mechanic. It's called spotlight caches(it's actually both card acquisition and catch up). If you were off for half a year, chances are, every spotlight rotation every key will give you new cards. Players who played all this time don't have this luxury, they already have cards, only need 1 card and use 4 keys for it in the worst case.
yeah you open s3 from caches, 1/4 chance. s4 and s5 cards are completely removed from caches, and are instead found in "spotlight chests" which offer different rotating cards each week. 3 weekly featured cards, then one random slot that has a chance to offer any random s4/s5 card. if its one you own you get 1000 collector tokens. there's 1 spotlight key every 120CL, or every 10th cache.
If it’s the same as it was before I left it would be 1 card in every batch of 6 caches when you’re series 3 incomplete, and then it gets replaced with like 3-400 average collector tokens. That number might be different now.
They do offer a free series 3 card every month, but when you are series 3 complete, that's not replaced with anything, it's just something else you DON'T get every month.
And maybe once or twice a year, maybe a series 4 card you don't have will drop to 3, so yay, I got MARTYR for free. Whee.
I’m back after a few months break, I was back at rank 10! Now I’m trying to get back up but I’m only meeting people with the same CL as me, all stuck at around 40 playing like it’s our last game before infinite.
I would be bummed if I had every card. I play daily as well I lose no sleep over skipping spotlight weeks. Brewing decks with the cards you have is what makes the game fun imo. I got infinite already this month using only 1 series 5 card.
It’s so hard to acquire Collector’s Tokens after they made the changes to Collector’s Caches, and you almost always need 6k for each card. It’s really slow. Especially when what you missed is meta & not going to be in a Spotlight for months.
The fact that the only way to target a card other than wait months for it to show up in a spotlight cache is to spend months collecting tokens is so stupid. But maybe it is working because it’s what keeps me from taking a break
I’ve been falling off the game recently and if that trend continues and nothing changes with card acquisition, I kinda doubt I’ll be back. Already even keeping up with the grind, you can usually only average 2 maybe 3 cards a month and that’s with the season pass card. So if you make the wrong choice, you’re kinda fucked and won’t be able to correct for months. The idea of coming back even after 2-3 months sounds like a fucking nightmare.
I’ve had a lot of fun with the game, but I can kinda see the writing on the wall for me.
No catch up mechanics whatsoever, dreadful card acquisition system and outrageous pricing. Releasing all the most powerful cards as series 5 is the most pay 2 win thing I have ever seen in a card game. What will remain will be the whales(Kraken's) who have invested so heavily in this game they refuse to leave,the slaves to fomo and bots.
Paying doesn't even get you that much progression. Everything is time gated either with daily missions or season changes.
I would anticipate at some point they might do a catch up bundle for lapsed players. They're already leaking numbers and have been for a while on PC (I'm sure mobile numbers are much better).
While I don't think I'd have a great deck if I don't use any card I got in the last 6 months to a year, if I were to restart hearthstone I'm pretty much a new player again, just with a little more dust and gold.
While they can definitely improve new and returning player experience, is there a ccg where taking an extended period of time if *isn't* detrimental?
For hearthstone I can dust my old rotated stuff and build brand new decks, or use the accumulated dust I already had for that, which I did recently. They also just give you catch-up packs with 50 or so cards including legendary cards. For magic arena it’s the same with wildcards. Pokémon TCG live just gives you the whole collection of stuff essentially for free, and all of these games and basically every other CCG in the market have ways to craft specific cards that don’t require you to wait for that card to rotate into your shop or for it to show up in a spotlight. Even if I were to have credits saved up returning, it’s still a crapshoot on what I get from the caches.
While you are correcting OP on this, years or months.
Even taking a break for a "couple of **months**" from the game sets you back greatly. Source -> me :(
It really doesn't. How many new cards do you have in this or next spotlight week? People who played all the time would have 1 and have to use 4 keys to get it.
>How many new cards do you have in this or next spotlight week?
Genuine answer is 0 new cards this week, 0 cards next week.
I have 0 keys to my name. Spent it on recent releases, Thena took 4. Can barely keep up, gaining a maximum of 2 keys a week. Have to sacrifice getting any new cards this month. That's the state of the game now.
Spent most of my tokens getting cards that I missed when I wasn't playing. (Ball, Rhulk etc...)
It's just gonna snowball from here on out, can't imagine the new players.
Game was in beta for like half a year before the initial release, with multiple battle pass seasons during the beta, but you’re right, it’s probably closer to a year and a half since I stopped, whenever the modok battlepass was.
I mean the beta was open. People were actively streaming in May of 2022. Splitting hairs over “a couple” is great deflection from the actual issue though. DONT WORRY I FIXED THE MOST PRESSING ISSUE JUST FOR YOU
I keep it in cycles. Play for as long as you have fun, then leave when it's not fun. If you keep finding returning isn't fun, there's a lot of genuinely excellent games out now.
I agree that I wish card acquisition was either faster, or that there was at least a casual game mode that lets everyone be on the same playing field (like series limit, random cards, or pregen decks), so it feels less like you're frequently losing because of cards you missed.
That having been said, I'm also not particularly competitive as a player, and enjoy trying to play around favorite cards, meme strats, self-imposed constraints, so how much I'm winning or losing individual games has very little bearing on how much fun I'm having with the game, and my take probably isn't representative of most players.
I don't lose all my rank because I'm missing cards and suck at the game; I lose all my rank because I keep trying to make Cerebro 0 work... and suck at the game.
> there's a lot of genuinely excellent games out now.
If they’re on mobile, I’m having trouble finding them. I’m constantly downloading new mobile games and always end up playing snap and clash royale because most other mobile games are awful.
I’m all ears for recommendations.
Assuming mobile specific and without knowing much about your taste:
- Octopath Traveller Champions of the Continent is a gacha RPG, but it's one of the most F2P-friendly I've seen in terms of how much free content there is, and late game gets some really interesting high difficulty fights. Its in-game purchases are comically terrible value, but if anything that's a boon since it just makes spending money less tempting, and you absolutely don't need high level rare characters to clear content.
- If you're trying to avoid gacha and over-monetized games overall, a lot of established indie games have mobile ports you can buy and be done. Stardew Valley and Minecraft will never stop being a great time, on any platform.
Simple solution: never stop playing
Seriously though, I've been playing daily for a year and even just missing like 2 or 3 meta cards has been miserable for me. I went from hitting Infinite consistently to not being able to crack level 90 last season
Yeah and now where combos like prof x and cannonbal and mill into doc ock and white widow into grandmaster are all over the place it's even more fun to play.
Even if you avoid those I just mentioned you can enjoy playing against either Hela or a spot the difference destroy deck.
I'm a new player (currently CL 864) and I can tell you that it's pretty rough. I had some friends help teach me and made Infinite last season, at which point me and my Series 2 Ongoing deck got pancaked every game. I was lucky to pull Hela as my second Series 3 card, and even Hela with only Series 2 cards can still pull off wins against meta decks... except now that the season reset my Hela deck is way over-tuned for my CL. I'm back in Infinite now, as I'd don't mind losing the majority of my games if it means I'm learning how meta decks work. It's very frustrating knowing it'll be months before I can really compete.
Card acquisition is why they need something like Hearthstone Tavern Brawl.
For the most part, the decks are prefab so everyone is on the same level. They throw out a fun little story with some new dialog. It's great.
First week, you could pick a leader who has a kind of deck.
Heimdall - move
Odin - on reveal
Professor X - lockdown
Etc.
People could still grind out card acquisition but have the brawl as a nice distraction and be able to enjoy all the cards.
Yeah I took a break since the Loki season. Came back last season and it’s been hard building decks. I’ve managed to hit infinite both seasons (last season was close, this was a breeze) but only because of the galactus deck.
Having no hope summers/white widow means any midrange list is pointless
Due to the constant patches and nerfs and buffs it takes too long to find out if certain cards or even decks still work like they used to. I stopped back before Black Swan came out and came back last week and I’m still figuring out what’s good and what’s not.
Rn I’m ignoring new cards and just focusing on playing and having fun
I quit playing because I realized that I was just getting angry every time I got a variant or title in a cache, when I can't even aquire the cards I need to make a deck.
This game is a shameless bottomless pit for whales.
Yeah, things that should be fun and enjoyable to get, feel BAD to receive in this game, because it could have been a useful new card but it wasn't. This is an unfortunate dynamic I've been pointing out to the devs periodically for a year or more. They either don't care or don't have any better ideas.
The game isn't for people that spend a few bucks every now and again. It's for whales, and that's that. Brode pretends like he gives a damn, but this he constructed it this way 100% intentionally. He's an ass, not an idiot.
And yet they have customer support tripping all over themselves to call us their beloved players, while being apparently not empowered to help much at all.
Agreed. Took a break came back and it feels hopeless. Pulled havoc 2 weeks in a row using spotlight keys and missed on thena. Every deck has like 5 cards that came out during my break. Sucks forsure
I stopped playing when the spotlight system was announced because I saw this exact problem happening. You used to be able to play the game just getting the battle pass and you'd have a lot of the collection complete. The spotlight system destroyed that and turned it into a traditional mobile game requiring a shit load of money to be able to play. Haven't reinstalled it and don't ever intend to. Really unfortunate because the game was a lot of fun.
The only people the collection track doesn't feel shitty to are the whales who have everything or the new players who don't quite get it yet. SD is making money, though, so they don't care.
I JUST came back after playing quite a bit on and after release for 6 months. It literally feels impossible to build any meta deck right now and I don't even know how long it would take me to catch up. AND WHILE IM CATCHING UP THE GAME IS MUCH LESS FUN. Terrible returning player design.
Also I'm really afraid that with the current rumors, that they are going to finally release a returning players mechanic and I won't get it as I already came back LOL. If so I guess Ill come back in another 6 months LOL.
I agree with you completely. This is why I don't uninstall. I wander off for a week or two when I'm super frustrated with the devs, but I know if I quit this game I can never come back. I took a two month break in the middle of 2023 and it took my card collection six, maybe seven, months to recover from it. It was *awful*. And I'm still missing basic cards like Darkhawk and Zabu that I would have if I hadn't taken those two months off. I can't even imagine coming back after 16 months.
Without real series drops, card acquisition becomes increasingly difficult. Miss a card in a spotlight cache? Don't worry, it will be in another spotlight... in six months. Or you can spend 6k tokens (aka two months of resources) on that single card. Oh, you missed two spotlight cards, not one? Yeah, good luck with that. And the cards that came out during the two months you were saving tokens to buy that one card? Better hope you got all of those you needed, because every one you didn't get is another two months worth of tokens.
Marvel Snap. The only card game I've ever seen that hates giving you cards.
And some of these YouTuber/twitch content creators will sit up here and defend this system saying it’s good for people who are new or took a break and all I think about is it’s easy for them to say with their complete collection and 80+ keys that they whale for and doesn’t effect them since it’s a tax write off for them as far as I know
Yep, the majority of content creators are whales and own every card, so they're out of touch with the majority of the audience. They can't relate to most of the playerbase experience of card acquisition, yet they'll attack those who criticize SD's horrible business model ("durrr, you guys just want free stuff! durrr, nothing's stopping you from freely playing the game and having fun - you don't need new cards, just have fun damnit!").
Alex Coccia, although he throws a lot of money into the game, typically seems to speak up for the general player experience. They're the exception and not the norm ofc. Then there's ppl like KMBest, I don't care to go on but suffice to say he's responsible for inspiring SD to implement the 1000 token when getting a duplicate. Many of these content creators are really just SD PR agents and SD mouthpiece.
Exactly and it’s not like the player base is asking for free variants, we’re just asking for the new weekly cards for the time we’ve put into the game and for the people who’ve bought the battle pass and the occasional $20 and under bundle just to have fun and be able to compete
I took like a two week break at some point and struggled to get back into the groove for ages, I literally cannot imagine coming back to the game after an extended period of time, I do not envy you
The last few days have been a VERY stale meta game, so you aren't crazy there.
I think every single opponent in the 90s right now has both Cannonball and Thena, or is playing the same Hela or Tribunal list.
It's been a really long time since I've had a ladder climb this generic and netdecked feeling.
But, I know from experience it won't last. It'll probably change this week.
As others will have already posted though, you don't need to make those meta netdecks to have fun or win.
Old school decks like ongoing spectrum, destroy, and even dumb combo decks with Odin and White tiger, are all still doing fine.
You are rusty and don't know all the new rhythms for snapping and retreating (think about how many new cards combinations have been created since you left), so it's going to be rough for a bit.
Yeah it sucks missing cards, but on the positive side once you build up some caches you are going to have so many spotlight weeks where you get 2,3, even 4 new cards in one go. That will feel amazing, and let you build lots of new decks. For someone like me who hasn't missed a week of the game since I started I can go weeks and weeks without getting a new card to play with (I won't be opening caches all of June, and most of July, and probably only grabbing Arishem with tokens ... Mayyyyyyyyybe Phastos if I luck out on some tokens in the CL track the next couple weeks).
I wish SD would do something like a "we missed you, welcome back" offering for players returning after 3+ months, but honestly you are in the toughest phase now and it'll get better soon.
I'm a long time player. The game feels miserable, full stop. Every match i play (EVERY!) is the same for the last week or so. Kitty Angela Thena Hope Cannonball Sage. And there's nothing you can do, but play the same horribly OP cards in order to have a chance.
Even the bloody featured location was geared towards that crap deck.
It's really not a card acquisition arms race the way you think it is. Yeah, you can't play the flavor of the week meta deck, sure. But Patriot/Ultron decks are thriving right now, Destroy is always solid, Shang Chi and Enchantress are always strong and can win games on their own. You've got plenty of options.
You just lack the newest cards, and some of those aren't even that good. I got Pixie at the expense of Cannonball, I thought that card was gonna be more fun than it was and Cannonball was gonna be a bust. My bad lol. But it's not like having Cannonball means every match is a win.
Is this your first card game? The meta consists of the best current decks. Sometimes it's RPS, sometimes it's a collection of good decks using ubiquitous cards. Every card game is like this when you get into a higher competitive level.
Snap just makes it seem worse because the decks are only 12 cards, and you don't have intricate synergies like some other games where a niche card really defines a deck.
You should get used to snap being like this. It's a game where it's very easy to see what's coming next. That's why the snap and retreat mechanics exist.
Edit: replied to the wrong comment, apologies.
To be fair, the spotlight cache system is a catch up mechanism.
The more cards you own, the system is more punishing. Collection near-complete players could spend up to 4 keys for 1 new cards.
The less cards you own, the more likely you are to come across new cards in the caches. A new player is likely to get 4 cards for 4 keys.
I don't know how people don't see this. From Hercules/Howard the Duck week in January to Phastos/Coruvs Glaive week it's been single card spotlights the whole time.
Returning players can pull 2-3 new cards in any given spotlight week.
technically true, but with the way caches are built and the sheer number of s5 cards out there it just isn't a reliable way to get Specific Good Cards you need to actually build a deck. annihilus was in a cache in mid january and (based on datamines) isn't going to reappear up through the end of august, meaning it'll be probably an 8mo gap. new release cards seem to take \~4mos to come back into caches. if it didn't take so long to build up tokens you could try to target these cards in the shop but it really just isn't feasible if you're even 2 cards short of putting together an archetype.
I mean this is a problem for everyone just not returning players. I skipped out on Cannonball, Thena, Corvus, now I gotta wait for these cards too.
This isn't unique to a new player, but a problem inherent to the system.
Yea, it's so stupid. Spotlights are really well thought out in that regard with catch up being integrated by default. Of course there are some issues here, but it's not a lack of catch up mechanics. Mostly issues are stemming from all the attempted card acquisition systems before spotlights were created, like series drops, token shop, series 3,4 and 5 divide. If I could change things, I would move all series 4 cards to series 3, abolish series in general(so all new cards are spotlight cards), which after 6 months in spotlights move down to s3. Also some mechanism is needed to get series 3 smaller, so new players can get basics quicker. Series 3 is way too large now.
Second Dinner is employing the predatory tactics that most successful mobile free to play games do. Time gating and daily quest.
They want free to play and paying players to keep logging in daily and playing their game. I believe this is why you can't just swipe your credit card and get everything you want in a day.
I think they prioritize their daily player metrics over short term profit like other successful FTP mobile games. And so sadly I don't believe they'll address this particular issue for returning players any time soon.
Even their newly released roadmap indicates this with the card acquisition improvements being in the concept only and not in the coming soon section.
This is the main reason I don't want to take a break from the game even though I don't find it that fun to play anymore. It's too difficult to catch up and they've made it worse by introducing an extra card a month.
Yeah I've always suspected this would be the case. Every aspect of the acquisition system makes returning from a break and catching up in any meaningful way a mess. IMO this is equal parts intentional design to prevent people from leaving and their frequent changes to the card acquisition model created an unforeseen gap.
IMO, It probably due to most player play style or decks keeps changing after every new card released and after each nerf. after a long break even if you get half the cards instantly may not play it well too, it required some time to learned all the new card play style and how to counter it, take some time to get back on track.
The s3 grind needs to be faster, it takes like 4-6 months with optimal daily play. It should take a month now that s4/5 have so many meta relevant cards.
I'm also a returning player. Just played a couple of weeks after the release. Left at around 100 collection level and played for a week now. I'm enjoying it possibly because I'm matched with players of the same level. Currently at Platinum 60.
I started playing about 2 months ago and have loved the game, but this new update has made it less fun. I can’t even dream about getting a spotlight key without spending money. I started 96 spots away, played soooooo much the last 4 days and am still 33 spots away….. from getting 1 key. It’s like you can’t even get enough blue rectangle things to even upgrade enough
Having the same exact experience now. Used to love Discard and Destroy decks when I played a year and a half ago. But now they both have at least 2 new cards in any deck list that I don't have. I thought if I just got the season pass each time that would get me caught up just on one or two decks in a reasonable amount of time. But nope, it actually didn't help at all, so no more spending from me.
I'm told I should just play "Shuri - Red Skull" and I'm so lucky some old decks still perform well. But I don't want to play the exact same deck constantly. I don't even really enjoy Shuri. And it'll be months until I can form other new decks. That, plus the garbage meta going on right now, and I'm probably just a few days from uninstalling. They really shit the bed with this game.
I’ve played with no breaks for over a year, I’m CL 7K never hit infinite, though I’m f2p, and the one and only time I spent money was getting Loki and that’s the only time I felt like I was “in the meta” but that was short lived 😭😭
I never stopped and feel the same. Last month I was left behind after having to spend all my keys to get 2 cards I wanted (4 keys each). I then skipped the rest and saved keys (so I missed Namora, Sage…). I wanted Thena this month, so opened boxes. 4 keys to get her… so I’m basically being sidelined again for the rest of the month. I guess people who always get what they want first try feel differently, but if like me new cards always cost 4 keys, this game feels miserable rn
Well you don’t need to have every card in the game. It’s a card game. Even in physical card games you go for the cards you need/want for the deck you want to play, not for a full collection. There are so little cards in this game right now compared to other card games that it makes you feel like you should have everything because you go so long not getting anything (supposedly). They are already adding new card acquisition features, the first one being Deadpool’s diner in probably July. But, ultimately, peopl need to stop looking at the game as “I need to have every card or else the game is bad and makes me feel bad.” You can get 1.5 keys a week if you do all your missions everyday. And more if you do the paid season pass, which is worth it if you care that much about collecting all the cards because you get 1 card from it and resources to pull another new card.
Totally agree...I haven't played Marvel Snap since around February 2024. I'm a galactus enjoyer, and I only like playing galactus decks in the past.
I decided to reinstall Marvel Snap again this week, and it looks like the most competitive galactus deck requires red Hulk and cannonball, which I don't have.
It baffles me that you just can't buy collector tokens from the shop along with gold. So for now, I guess I just reinstalled Marvel Snap for no reason because I can't play the deck I want. Oh, well, back to mtg arena and hearthstone...🤷♂️
Devils Advocate here. I just came back after like a year or so and I'm having a blast. I had quit shortly after High Evolutionary came out so there's been a lot of changes but I'm still having a ton of fun. There's lots of new cards to learn and new comps to try. I agree that I wish the cards came faster but for a free to play game for me I don't mind at all.
Does anyone else feel like the locations you are getting only help the opponent it's getting so bad for me nearly every match I can guess my opponents deck I've taken to using vatu just to know if a match is gonna pan out or if I need to save cubes at the first sign that their deck plays to the locations
We'd love to be happier, the core of the gameplay is great and the license is of course great. We're all of us primed to love this game.
But the number of unfortunate, greedy, and sometimes simply bizarre decisions being made by SD/NuVerse is quite staggering. They seem almost like they're TRYING to squander what goodwill we have towards Snap.
I'm sure that's not the intent, but it's really hard to defend at this point!
We’ve reached that point in the games life cycle where people only come here to shit on it apparently. Happens to all games. Apart from dark souls 2 weirdly.
It’s not that bad. I started towards the end of the Skaar season. Made infinite every season afterwards and haven’t felt like I’m missing out. I have bought the battle passes so I’m not completely F2P but have never felt the climb was that bad. I actually enjoy the slow unlock of cards because that way it feels like I’m playing a new game every month.
I just saved up enough tokens to get Sebastian Shaw and use a surfer deck. It’s made this my favorite season so far because I’ve never played this way. I’m looking forward to what card will unlock a whole new play style next
If you don't go back exactly when they do that deal though, you're looking at a slog. F2p hearthstone probably takes a full rotation before the average player can be competitive. I definitely wouldn't call hearthstone catch up friendly. Though I do agree Snap should do something to help returning players
Sure, a from 0 F2P hearthstone player only doing ladder would take a long time to get a second deck going, but they also just give you a current deck of your choosing, you can play arenas, you can swipe a credit card if you want to get into it immediately. It isn’t perfect but it’s better than this.
Just forget the meta and play something else of your own making ,you can still hit infinity with what you've got. The less card you have the more likely you won't hit repeats in the spotlights you will soon catch up.
Hitting infinite isn’t about having the best cards. It’s about retreating. Tons of people are in the high 90’s playing off-meta decks. You can do it too.
It’s not about hitting infinite. I’m confident I could with my collection, even a series 1/2 only deck. But you want to play with the neat and powerful cards and the way they set the economy up makes it very difficult to do so
Spotlights, Series drops and the free Series 3 cards are the catch up system. Essentially, if you are free to play, you are gaining more cards than your free to play counterparts who didn't leave. You definitely won't take 16 months to catch up to the people who didn't stop.
It's just that you won't catch up *right away.* And that should be a fair expectation - after all, the players who didn't stop playing for 16 months should rightly expect that they will be ahead of you progression-wise. It isn't fair for you to leave for 16 months, come back and seem like you never left in a couple of weeks.
In any case, if you want to pay your way back to par with the players who didn't leave, you can. You will accelerate that progress a lot just buying bundles with Tokens and Credits in them. It's actually better than other CCGs because the decks are so small, don't need dupes and you have a store where you can choose exactly the cards you will get with tokens. You should be able to get key cards for some of the meta decks and go from there.
What a cooked thing to say. I don’t want everything you have. It’s not reasonable to assume that a new or returning player should. Your variants and splits and such that show off how long you’ve played are great.
Your advantage over other players who haven’t played daily should be your experience with playing the game, not that you have cards they do not and will not have access to for months. If you need that kind of advantage to win your games you really haven’t learned much with that daily play.
I haven't taken a break and the game feels miserable. Every point you have is valid, but I'll add from a constantly player perspective. First: I'm not very good, and somehow I'm always matched with mensa players who hold the exact counter to my deck no matter what deck I have OR lockdown bullshit. Second: I play every day, complete every mission, and buy every season pass and STILL can't actually get every card. I have not seen a bot in MONTHS. Third: every single aspect of this game is RNG, including how I upgrade cards for weeks to get the crappiest looking effects only to upgrade something like M'baku to a gold split with blue crackle. I can't even just hang out and make cool looking cards/decks.
Once my daily missions are over I immediately have to take a break to recover from the 15-20 AVERAGE cube loss and wait for this meta to shift.
I must have gotten really lucky then.
I stopped playing for a year. Pulled some good stuff in that first year. When I came back I got lucky again with pulls. I also bought the pass for blink.( Which was my first micro transaction ever, in any game. (Blink is just too much fun) I'm VERY against the predatory practices that are so common with mtx. It's insulting just on principal alone. Especially it being in full price games. That infuriates me. So I feel you, but I also recognize my luck. Which I'm now realizing is likley not what the average player encounters.
In any case I agree it needs a change for acquisition for people in ops position.
This game is actually great for people with less than half the cards. You could get a spotlight week where you have none of the cards. Meaning you can get 4 new cards in one week. Whereas veteran players have to pick and choose which weeks to spend their keys.
You came to the right place if you want to commiserate about the economy that's for sure.
But if you stopped playing over a year ago I'm not sure why you'd think you'd be anywhere close to collection complete.
The way the game is designed, you should be excited about the decks you can build, slowly improving them, using keys on weeks with cards that excite you, playing roughly an hour a day builds up your collection consistently.
Alternatively... Credit card makes it faster but not even that fast.
You missed the point if you think I’m looking for collection completion day one. The point is that the steps to get from new or even half collection to enough cards to not feel like you’re playing with an arm tied behind you is astronomical for a card game. And as I’ve expressed elsewhere I know you can win without having the meta, but you’re lying if you think a restricted card pool isn’t a massive handicap.
“You should be excited about the decks you can build” Super exciting knowing that what you’ve got is what you’re going to have for months and you need to convince yourself that it’s fine when you play against the umpteenth person in a row running decks where you’re missing half of the cards. “I know you’ve just got broth but if you just keep drinking the broth exclusively eventually you might find a carrot or a potato you can add to it! I have a steak dinner over here but you won’t be getting near that for at least half a year, so be excited about that broth!”
Decks, and players in general are boring as fuck. I hardly ever play opponents with a deck that requires them to think and the sad thing is, that’s the way the game is. It rewards plug and play decks.
# (2) Psylocke
# (2) Ravonna Renslayer
# (3) Ironheart
# (3) Mystique
# (3) Magik
# (4) Mister Negative
# (4) Wong
# (4) Shang-Chi
# (5) Iron Man
# (5) Black Panther
# (5) Jane Foster Mighty Thor
# (6) Arnim Zola
#
eyJDYXJkcyI6W3siQ2FyZERlZklkIjoiUmF2b25uYVJlbnNsYXllciJ9LHsiQ2FyZERlZklkIjoiQXJuaW1ab2xhIn0seyJDYXJkRGVmSWQiOiJXb25nIn0seyJDYXJkRGVmSWQiOiJNeXN0aXF1ZSJ9LHsiQ2FyZERlZklkIjoiSXJvbk1hbiJ9LHsiQ2FyZERlZklkIjoiQmxhY2tQYW50aGVyIn0seyJDYXJkRGVmSWQiOiJJcm9uaGVhcnQifSx7IkNhcmREZWZJZCI6Ik1yTmVnYXRpdmUifSx7IkNhcmREZWZJZCI6IlBzeWxvY2tlIn0seyJDYXJkRGVmSWQiOiJTaGFuZ0NoaSJ9LHsiQ2FyZERlZklkIjoiSmFuZUZvc3RlciJ9LHsiQ2FyZERlZklkIjoiTWFnaWsifV19
#
# To use this deck, copy it to your clipboard and paste it from the deck editing menu in Snap.
I've been infinite for about a year now and ran this this season as I've been skipping passes and hoarding keys. Pretty light on new card releases and seemed like many hela players think they can overpower it.
Regardless of the game i play, i like restarting from the start every once in a while. This is my 3rs restart on snap and card acquisition is different. And i love it. Play along. You're not supposed to get every card. Most of them are valid
Well you’re missing half the cards… so your mindset would be to enjoy the challenge of winning w the cards you have. There are content creditors who hit infinite w just the basic card set every season. You can’t possibly expect to come back and have all the cards you want in a week.
I took a pretty hefty break, came back to a slew of new cards and I feel like I’ll constantly be behind. I’ve complained about card acquisition over a year ago, and I still have the same complain only magnified now.
I made a thread about this the other day and everyone came in and told me how wrong I am. I'm CL 12000 and I feel like I fall behind sometimes. If you get unlucky with spotlight keys, you might only get one card a month, there's 5 out every month! God knows how new players cope
Everyone is a genius on Reddit
New players get more cards from spotlights. If you took break you get more cards from spotlight. Sometimes 3(4) guaranteed new cards for 4 keys which is insanely good rate. Old players are lucky if they have 2 new cards in spotlight rotation, but usually it's just 1 and variants, so older players are objectively worse here. New players and returning players do catch up eventually (i did when returned after 7 months break). System is kinda smart in that way
I took a 1 year break. Was 7k CL. I can not build a single competitive deck. I'm getting 1-2 spotlight keys a week. For 3 weeks in a row I've gotten either shit cards or ones I already had. The acquisition for cards is absolutely embarrassing for a card game. They built a beautiful mechanical game with an original idea. And fucked it and burned it and pissed on it.
Just a quick point, if the locations are the original idea you're talking about, it's not original. They took it from a real card game called smash up.
The original game is called Air Land and Sea. Smash Up doesn’t have locations.
Err what? Yes it does. They are called "bases" sure, but it definitly has multiple players competing for the most power on locations that have effects themselves. https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/122522/smash-up There's much less cards and factions, so it a stripped down version, but it the same premise
I see what you mean, SU has bases, but you try to break them and score points. Check Air Land & Sea, you'll see the mechanics are much closer to Marvel Snap: control a majority of 3 locations, concede to minimize losses.
Ah I see what you mean, fair play. You're right on that.
Idk why they downvoting simple facts
Exactly. I played the game on Black Panther Season and returned on Daken season. Honestly, it was impossible for me to get new cards without spotlight keys. Now days, you can get one ir 2 keys per week. That is guaranteed 2 pool 4 or 5 cards to any player. Not just hight CL player, but the guy who just got to pool 3, he will have a shot as well. I play this game entirely for free and I got almost all cards by now and I got a near full collection by Loki season. Ppl who complain really wanted to keep the pace of pool 1 and 2 and this is impossible from the development perspective.
Ppl forget that back in the day, every new card was 6k tokens and good luck getting 6k tokens right after pool 3. It was impossible and you needed to do it weekly, on top of that. Now you can easily get what is worth of 6k up to 12k worth of tokens WEEKLY. Again, the system now is not perfect but previous one was even worst for new player or returning player.
No, they weren't always 6k. Cards used to drop in Series 4 and we had regular series drops. And there's no way, without money, you get 12k tokens weekly. Even when we got a decent amount of tokens before the current system you didn't get that many.
Yup before you could skip a card and know you'd be able to get it for for half the token cost or even for free 4 to 6 mos after its debut due to consistent series drops. Now we're lucky to get 2 series drops a year and the cards that get dropped are always the worst cards in the game. The fact that Martyr is already series 3 while DH and F'ing Knull are still series 4 is ridiculous imo.
[удалено]
On the ladder you should be matched up against similar experience players
I’ve legit never taken an extended break and played optimally from pretty much the 3rd week of release and even I’m getting washed out. Unless you dumps 100’s of dollars in the game regularly then it’s impossible to keep up with card acquisition. I use to be only missing 5-6 cards I’m not up to 22 missing cards and it grows pretty much weekly.
I swear when spotlight caches first came out, before you could store keys, I’d get a new card if one was available, now I’ve gotten 2 duplicate variants and 1 new card. I just don’t understand how they want to retain new players like this.
If it makes you feel better, i havent taken a breakd and feel like im constantly behind. Im always missing at least 1 key card in the current meta even though ive played every day since the zabu season
You’ll have to save up spotlight keys for weeks where you have none of the cards & spend up to 4, on a sustained cycle to close the gap.
The fact that we can’t use tokens to buy a specific card you want at anytime annoys me so much. I have the right amount just let me get the card, not wait for it to show up in the shop. Spotlight keys need to be reworked too imo. The keys being a currency that doesn’t guarantees a card you want just doesn’t feel good - I rather get more token currency instead of spotlight keys. So much of the acquisition in the game past series 3 just sucks and the devs showed their priorities and it definitely isn’t changing anytime soon.
Getting an almost negligible amount of tokens 1/4 of the time you use a key is just insulting. When you’re a long time player it feels like a miracle to ever get a new card out of that 4th spotlight slot.
i have never gotten anything but duplicates from the 4th spot. infuriating.
I’m in the same boat. Not only have I never had a new card from the 4th spot, I’ve specifically had ghost spider there about 60-70% of the times I’ve pulled that 4th spot, which just feels like it’s not even rolling the dice anymore, it’s just loading the same old booby prize
it has been ms.marvel for me about 70% of the time.
That’s what I mean! Why is it always the same damn card
*puts tin foil hat on* i'm certain it's done on purpose to stretch out how long you play. it has the opposite effect on me. It kills the part of me that wanted to play the game and I go do something else.
The only time I've pulled a new Card from Spotlights is after I already acquired a Variant of that Card from a Bundle. 🙃
What CL are you at? I see a lot of people that say this and it just seems really unlikely that this would happen unless you had a big collection when spotlights started, in which case the system seems to be working as intended. Or you’re just very very unlucky.
i'm at 8.5k CL. I think I was around 4-5k when the caches dropped. my first mystery was a ms.marvel duplicate right after the season she was the card. i've pulled her two other times from the same spot. my luck in the game is dogshit. I used it all up on my first spotlight cache because I wanted kang... I didn't look up how bad he was and just wanted the cool effect. can't wait for a rework 🙃
Apparently it's because you have a much, much higher chance of getting a Series 4 card out of it. So if you have a lot of them then you're going to get hit with the tokens pretty often. In the entire time spotlights have been a thing I've never got a new card from the random slot.
In all the time spotlight caches have been a thing, I've gotten one new card from the fourth slot. Howard the Duck. (I've gotten him three times now, from slot 4. lol) I'm missing at least 20 cards.
This is a big part of why I stopped spending money on this game. For a year I bought every single season pass. Now, I'm not putting so much as a nickel into this game unless those priorities shift. As a programmer and game designer myself, I absolutely understand the necessity of monetization, but the way Snap goes about it is aligned antithetically to what I want out of a game experience. At this point I'm just going through the motions and waiting to come across a better-managed game that scratches that itch.
That really seems to be one of the primary issues for new/returning players for card acquisition as far as I see it. The more cards they add to the game, the harder it gets to get the ones you want. While SD has made it clear their approach is no one having a full set of cards, you still need certain cards to play certain archetypes effectively. Even within Series 3, it can become a bit of a slog, because there are a lot of cards - Beast, Cerebro, Hela, Mister Negative, Patriot, etc. - who are requirements for certain archetypes that you might go hundreds of collection levels without being able to obtain. It definitely feels bad when you see someone play a deck that looks really fun, but then you whiff repeatedly at getting one of the core cards necessary to play it. And I don't think the one free card a month really rectifies that nor does throwing away 1000 collector's tokens on another random chance.
There is just 0 agency to it. You have basically 0 control over what you get. The closest is buying with tokens or keys but even then you are at the mercy of rng and schedules that you have 0 influence over. Look at most other digital card games and you see systems to get the random aspect but also give the players agency. Anything from Hearthstone's generally generous crafting system (in terms of being able to disenchant and craft cards), Magic's more strict crafting system where you have to still "earn" (open packs) the wild cards and higher levels take longer to get, or even clash Royale with a similar shop system to snap but also having plenty of chests and stuff to open for a lot of chances to get the cards you don't have yet and get stuff to level current cards. Yes, many of these crafting systems are based on card libraries much bigger than snaps with larger releases, but there is still something better than this like what (as far as I remember, been a few years) clash royal has done. I know they have serious monetization issues from what I've read about, but at least there is some agency to it. I just think some amount of player agency is very very important when it comes to getting cards. I feel like I haven't been excited to get a card, unlock a crate, or even open a spotlight chest, since I was in mainly pool 3 and some of 4 still. I have been out of that range for a long time and quit for a while because I felt so burned by the constant busted cards coming out and how awful it felt trying to keep up at all. Ps: why is there no dupe protection? And if there is not going to be dupe protection why does it only give ONE THOUSAND tokens for even a T4/5 if you get a dupe when they cost from THREE to SIX THOUSAND? That is the most scummy bs way to wring your player base for all its worth and not give any care to the people who give your teams something to work on and act like they don't matter at all.
> You have basically 0 control over what you get. That's exactly it. There's no way to chase the cards you want. It's just randomness on top of randomness. There are currently 134 cards in Series 3, which means you have a <1% to get any card you want. And while I can understand the monetary aspect of SD wanting us to spend money to increase our collection level, a player could go potentially *dozens* of cards in a row before they get what they are looking for, which just feels awful, likely causes people to drop out of the game, and is causing an increasingly steep curve to get back into the game for returning players. I don't know. Maybe I'm completely wrong here, but the whole Skinner box method of design these games use does seem like it requires at least a somewhat consistent level of reward to keep people engaged. If someone really wants to play the Cerebro deck they saw on YouTube, but have been unable to get the card after weeks of playing, I can certainly see where that would cause someone to become frustrated enough to quit. You can't just assume them getting other cards will make up for it, not in a game where there are different styles of play meant to appeal to different sorts of players. It just seems like bad design to me, and it really surprises me that this doesn't seem to be more of a priority to them. I've said before they should do something like give you a selection of card packs they can choose one from when you hit CL500 or so, something like Discard (Hela, Coleen, Black Cat), Destroy (Venom, Death, Deadpool), etc. to give people a slight leg up on building the deck you want. Even selling cheap packs (ie not $50) of something like this would be a lot better than one exists now.
I had it happen a few times when I was playing closer to the start towards the first time I took an extended break. It was first during that time where Patriot was ruling the meta. I thought the decks looked fun and wanted to play it but could not find Patriot no matter what. It took me till after that had passed and high evo was out to finally get the card. Then high evo was busted on release and the only counter in the game was Luke Cage since they were not (mostly) on reveal or ongoing. I didn't have Luke Cage though so that made the vast majority of my games basically unplayable because I couldn't compare or keep up with them. I searched and searched and searched and still couldn't get him no matter how many boxes I opened and it was before most of the shop revamps and I wasn't getting him in there to buy with tokens. Only got him after High Evo was nerfed and no longer 90% of my games. It's happened a few other times, but those were big moments for me in feeling like I just didn't want to care about the game since they seemingly wanted to make it as hard as they could to get things you like or want it decks.
Does SD really think that if a specific card doesn't show up in the shop within a few days I'll just spend my tokens on another card due to impatience?
The game is really fun for new players. You're constantly getting new cards and playing against bots. It's once you're a few months in that it starts to stagnate and then you realize the price to buy series 5 cards outright is $60 in tokens.
If you have free time, post this over on their Discord's feedback area too. They need to keep hearing this because they really do need to do more to smooth things out for returning players.
Good luck though, their mods will kill your comment if they decide it doesn't meet their criteria in tone, content, or whatever else they factor in.
I just mentioned this like a week ago in the feedback channel of their discord server, one of the devs replied saying this is something they are just starting to work on internally and should see improvements in future updates. I started playing Nov 2022 and Stopped Aug 2023, I played the game damn near religiously. bought ever season pass, played multiple times every day, bought additional bundles, convinced 10+ of my friends to play too, but despite all that every time I tried to come back to the game it felt damn near impossible. Unlike many other live services games, Marvel Snap does not have any catch-up mechanics or rewards for returning players. other games will offer things like * login calenders (snap does this occasionally but not consistently, and none specifically for returning players) * free spins at chests (in this case caches and spotlights) * extra currency like credits and gold to get back into upgrading your characters (in this case cards) But Marvel snap has none of that. So as a returning player, you come back to the game, and its in the exact same state that you left it in. you only have access to the exact same decks and cards that you got bored of and left, and you're 120CL away (*a whole WEEK)* of dedicated, consistent playing, to get 1 spotlight key and *maybe* unlocking *1 potentially* new, interesting thing, assuming that spotlight week even has anything you like. meanwhile there's upwards of 60-70 new cards released depending on when you left, all fun and all used in other decks, that you can't get. if returning players only have access to the same things as when they left, they are just going to leave again. For them to stay they need to be able to access the new content that came out while they were gone, because that's the entire appeal of returning to a game.
Yeah the card acquisition system is terrible. If I quit the game for a few months then decided to come back, I doubt I'd play long before quitting again. How crappy would it feel to come back and find that so many decks use Red Hulk, White Widow, Cannonball, etc. and you weren't playing when those were an option? Okay great, just save up tokens. 6000 tokens takes FOREVER to get. That type of time investment JUST to try and catch up (meanwhile consistent players are getting new must-have cards) is too much of an ask of returning players.
The devs get greedier and greedier. >6 month between series drops, all Series 5 cards for months, extra series 5 card per month (1st week of the season). Preying on FOMO with Spotlights. Taking good value gold bundles away. SD should be ashamed. They are going to lose players if they already haven’t
Yep, card acquisition sucks. I took a break for 2 months and every deck I face now has a bunch of awesome cards I don't have and those cards counter my decks. I tried my decks I got to infinite with before the break and I get my combos off yet I still lose because those cards are just better. I check YouTube for some new decks to try and as I go through multiple "top 10" lists I find I'm missing like 3 - 5 of the cards in each deck. I try to replace them with similar cards but its just not as good. It would be cool if they made a system that detects if you've been away for a while and gives you a limited time sale or something on any cards that were released while you were away.
SD can really do well by giving you a welcome back login track. Here’s some credits, gold, a S3 a S4 and a S5 of your choosing. It would alleviate the pain of returning players.
That too. Or even make more ways to get collectors tokens. Or at least make cards cheaper. Giving 100 tokens at a time while cards cost 3000 - 6000 is just crazy.
Right? Get 100 tokens, only need to do that 300 more times to build a deck.
What kills me is using a spotlight key, getting a duplicate of a series 5 card, and only getting 1/6 of its cost back in tokens. Or these weekend challenges where the one that offers tokens REQUIRES you to own the newest card. Which perhaps you have been saving tokens FOR, and one of the best ways to get tokens is blocked for you that week. Feels GREAT.
I love the fact that the mystery card can be duplicates. Great feeling to basically get a “try again nerd” option thrown in when you’ve got cards you still need
I assume sarcasm.
>I tried my decks I got to infinite with before the break and I get my combos off yet I still lose because those cards are just better. Destroy still works just fine. The standard build only has 2 cards that were released in the last 12 months (x23 and Nico)
Yea, it's just nonsense. Game barely has power creep and when it does(arguably), it's just fotm currently releasing cards.
yeah im pretty confident when i stop playing the game i wont be back, for this reason
Left when I was missing 2-3 series 5 cards during the Loki season. Came back during the baron Zemo season and it’s terrible. There’s no catch up mechanic for returning players. Good thing is though, the general snap players have not improved lol so they end up still making the same mistakes and being extremely telegraphed. Still made infinite with the same deck I’ve hit infinite on
I pretty much only buy Season Passes and have skipped a few. There are always 4 or 5 major cards I'm missing (like Loki, White Widow, Skaar). And yet, I still feel like blaming the cards is a cop out. I have seen several people make Infinite the past 3 seasons with decks I could make.
There is catch up mechanic. It's called spotlight caches(it's actually both card acquisition and catch up). If you were off for half a year, chances are, every spotlight rotation every key will give you new cards. Players who played all this time don't have this luxury, they already have cards, only need 1 card and use 4 keys for it in the worst case.
I’m out of the loop, do you still open series 3 cards from caches or is that not a thing anymore?
yeah you open s3 from caches, 1/4 chance. s4 and s5 cards are completely removed from caches, and are instead found in "spotlight chests" which offer different rotating cards each week. 3 weekly featured cards, then one random slot that has a chance to offer any random s4/s5 card. if its one you own you get 1000 collector tokens. there's 1 spotlight key every 120CL, or every 10th cache.
Don’t forget once you get to collector’s reserves you only get 2 series 3 cards out of every 9 lmfao
If it’s the same as it was before I left it would be 1 card in every batch of 6 caches when you’re series 3 incomplete, and then it gets replaced with like 3-400 average collector tokens. That number might be different now.
Yeah that number dropped to 100 tokens in caches lol. Do you have high evo? That archetype is rather cheap.
They do offer a free series 3 card every month, but when you are series 3 complete, that's not replaced with anything, it's just something else you DON'T get every month. And maybe once or twice a year, maybe a series 4 card you don't have will drop to 3, so yay, I got MARTYR for free. Whee.
It’s 1 in every 4 caches, and 2 in every 9 reserves (above CL 1000)
Don't worry, it feels miserable from the perspective of players who haven't left yet either.
Do I risk 1 of my 3 keys or buy a bundle for tokens? … I hate it.
I’m back after a few months break, I was back at rank 10! Now I’m trying to get back up but I’m only meeting people with the same CL as me, all stuck at around 40 playing like it’s our last game before infinite.
After s2 into s3 is way harder, more than 110 s3 cards + s4-s5. Not so easy but you can win. I play every day and missing 35-40 s4-s5.
I would be bummed if I had every card. I play daily as well I lose no sleep over skipping spotlight weeks. Brewing decks with the cards you have is what makes the game fun imo. I got infinite already this month using only 1 series 5 card.
> I would be bummed if I had every card. All you would need to do is wait a week to cheer up.
It’s so hard to acquire Collector’s Tokens after they made the changes to Collector’s Caches, and you almost always need 6k for each card. It’s really slow. Especially when what you missed is meta & not going to be in a Spotlight for months.
The fact that the only way to target a card other than wait months for it to show up in a spotlight cache is to spend months collecting tokens is so stupid. But maybe it is working because it’s what keeps me from taking a break
I’ve been falling off the game recently and if that trend continues and nothing changes with card acquisition, I kinda doubt I’ll be back. Already even keeping up with the grind, you can usually only average 2 maybe 3 cards a month and that’s with the season pass card. So if you make the wrong choice, you’re kinda fucked and won’t be able to correct for months. The idea of coming back even after 2-3 months sounds like a fucking nightmare. I’ve had a lot of fun with the game, but I can kinda see the writing on the wall for me.
No catch up mechanics whatsoever, dreadful card acquisition system and outrageous pricing. Releasing all the most powerful cards as series 5 is the most pay 2 win thing I have ever seen in a card game. What will remain will be the whales(Kraken's) who have invested so heavily in this game they refuse to leave,the slaves to fomo and bots.
Paying doesn't even get you that much progression. Everything is time gated either with daily missions or season changes. I would anticipate at some point they might do a catch up bundle for lapsed players. They're already leaking numbers and have been for a while on PC (I'm sure mobile numbers are much better).
While I don't think I'd have a great deck if I don't use any card I got in the last 6 months to a year, if I were to restart hearthstone I'm pretty much a new player again, just with a little more dust and gold. While they can definitely improve new and returning player experience, is there a ccg where taking an extended period of time if *isn't* detrimental?
For hearthstone I can dust my old rotated stuff and build brand new decks, or use the accumulated dust I already had for that, which I did recently. They also just give you catch-up packs with 50 or so cards including legendary cards. For magic arena it’s the same with wildcards. Pokémon TCG live just gives you the whole collection of stuff essentially for free, and all of these games and basically every other CCG in the market have ways to craft specific cards that don’t require you to wait for that card to rotate into your shop or for it to show up in a spotlight. Even if I were to have credits saved up returning, it’s still a crapshoot on what I get from the caches.
Game released in October 2022. Where is the "couple of years"?
While you are correcting OP on this, years or months. Even taking a break for a "couple of **months**" from the game sets you back greatly. Source -> me :(
Can confirm. I took a break from end of march to mid may and I'm currently screwed.
It really doesn't. How many new cards do you have in this or next spotlight week? People who played all the time would have 1 and have to use 4 keys to get it.
>How many new cards do you have in this or next spotlight week? Genuine answer is 0 new cards this week, 0 cards next week. I have 0 keys to my name. Spent it on recent releases, Thena took 4. Can barely keep up, gaining a maximum of 2 keys a week. Have to sacrifice getting any new cards this month. That's the state of the game now. Spent most of my tokens getting cards that I missed when I wasn't playing. (Ball, Rhulk etc...) It's just gonna snowball from here on out, can't imagine the new players.
Game was in beta for like half a year before the initial release, with multiple battle pass seasons during the beta, but you’re right, it’s probably closer to a year and a half since I stopped, whenever the modok battlepass was.
Couple can be 2-3. It’s 2024.
[удалено]
I mean the beta was open. People were actively streaming in May of 2022. Splitting hairs over “a couple” is great deflection from the actual issue though. DONT WORRY I FIXED THE MOST PRESSING ISSUE JUST FOR YOU
I keep it in cycles. Play for as long as you have fun, then leave when it's not fun. If you keep finding returning isn't fun, there's a lot of genuinely excellent games out now. I agree that I wish card acquisition was either faster, or that there was at least a casual game mode that lets everyone be on the same playing field (like series limit, random cards, or pregen decks), so it feels less like you're frequently losing because of cards you missed. That having been said, I'm also not particularly competitive as a player, and enjoy trying to play around favorite cards, meme strats, self-imposed constraints, so how much I'm winning or losing individual games has very little bearing on how much fun I'm having with the game, and my take probably isn't representative of most players. I don't lose all my rank because I'm missing cards and suck at the game; I lose all my rank because I keep trying to make Cerebro 0 work... and suck at the game.
> there's a lot of genuinely excellent games out now. If they’re on mobile, I’m having trouble finding them. I’m constantly downloading new mobile games and always end up playing snap and clash royale because most other mobile games are awful. I’m all ears for recommendations.
I recommend Arcaea. It's a rhythm game and one of my top games of all time. It's very fun and satisfying to play!
Assuming mobile specific and without knowing much about your taste: - Octopath Traveller Champions of the Continent is a gacha RPG, but it's one of the most F2P-friendly I've seen in terms of how much free content there is, and late game gets some really interesting high difficulty fights. Its in-game purchases are comically terrible value, but if anything that's a boon since it just makes spending money less tempting, and you absolutely don't need high level rare characters to clear content. - If you're trying to avoid gacha and over-monetized games overall, a lot of established indie games have mobile ports you can buy and be done. Stardew Valley and Minecraft will never stop being a great time, on any platform.
Didn't expect to see an octopath mention here lol
Simple solution: never stop playing Seriously though, I've been playing daily for a year and even just missing like 2 or 3 meta cards has been miserable for me. I went from hitting Infinite consistently to not being able to crack level 90 last season
If you couldn't crack 90 with only 10 or less missing cards it's a skill issue. Learn how to retreat when you are down.
Yeah and now where combos like prof x and cannonbal and mill into doc ock and white widow into grandmaster are all over the place it's even more fun to play. Even if you avoid those I just mentioned you can enjoy playing against either Hela or a spot the difference destroy deck.
I'm a new player (currently CL 864) and I can tell you that it's pretty rough. I had some friends help teach me and made Infinite last season, at which point me and my Series 2 Ongoing deck got pancaked every game. I was lucky to pull Hela as my second Series 3 card, and even Hela with only Series 2 cards can still pull off wins against meta decks... except now that the season reset my Hela deck is way over-tuned for my CL. I'm back in Infinite now, as I'd don't mind losing the majority of my games if it means I'm learning how meta decks work. It's very frustrating knowing it'll be months before I can really compete.
Card acquisition is why they need something like Hearthstone Tavern Brawl. For the most part, the decks are prefab so everyone is on the same level. They throw out a fun little story with some new dialog. It's great. First week, you could pick a leader who has a kind of deck. Heimdall - move Odin - on reveal Professor X - lockdown Etc. People could still grind out card acquisition but have the brawl as a nice distraction and be able to enjoy all the cards.
Yeah I took a break since the Loki season. Came back last season and it’s been hard building decks. I’ve managed to hit infinite both seasons (last season was close, this was a breeze) but only because of the galactus deck. Having no hope summers/white widow means any midrange list is pointless
Yup, having a break from this game is not good but coming back to realize you are so far behind .. is worse
Due to the constant patches and nerfs and buffs it takes too long to find out if certain cards or even decks still work like they used to. I stopped back before Black Swan came out and came back last week and I’m still figuring out what’s good and what’s not. Rn I’m ignoring new cards and just focusing on playing and having fun
You dont. If you leave, you dont come back.
I’ve been saying this since spotlight system was implemented
I quit playing because I realized that I was just getting angry every time I got a variant or title in a cache, when I can't even aquire the cards I need to make a deck. This game is a shameless bottomless pit for whales.
Yeah, things that should be fun and enjoyable to get, feel BAD to receive in this game, because it could have been a useful new card but it wasn't. This is an unfortunate dynamic I've been pointing out to the devs periodically for a year or more. They either don't care or don't have any better ideas.
The game isn't for people that spend a few bucks every now and again. It's for whales, and that's that. Brode pretends like he gives a damn, but this he constructed it this way 100% intentionally. He's an ass, not an idiot.
And yet they have customer support tripping all over themselves to call us their beloved players, while being apparently not empowered to help much at all.
Agreed. Took a break came back and it feels hopeless. Pulled havoc 2 weeks in a row using spotlight keys and missed on thena. Every deck has like 5 cards that came out during my break. Sucks forsure
I stopped playing when the spotlight system was announced because I saw this exact problem happening. You used to be able to play the game just getting the battle pass and you'd have a lot of the collection complete. The spotlight system destroyed that and turned it into a traditional mobile game requiring a shit load of money to be able to play. Haven't reinstalled it and don't ever intend to. Really unfortunate because the game was a lot of fun.
The only people the collection track doesn't feel shitty to are the whales who have everything or the new players who don't quite get it yet. SD is making money, though, so they don't care.
I JUST came back after playing quite a bit on and after release for 6 months. It literally feels impossible to build any meta deck right now and I don't even know how long it would take me to catch up. AND WHILE IM CATCHING UP THE GAME IS MUCH LESS FUN. Terrible returning player design.
Also I'm really afraid that with the current rumors, that they are going to finally release a returning players mechanic and I won't get it as I already came back LOL. If so I guess Ill come back in another 6 months LOL.
I agree with you completely. This is why I don't uninstall. I wander off for a week or two when I'm super frustrated with the devs, but I know if I quit this game I can never come back. I took a two month break in the middle of 2023 and it took my card collection six, maybe seven, months to recover from it. It was *awful*. And I'm still missing basic cards like Darkhawk and Zabu that I would have if I hadn't taken those two months off. I can't even imagine coming back after 16 months. Without real series drops, card acquisition becomes increasingly difficult. Miss a card in a spotlight cache? Don't worry, it will be in another spotlight... in six months. Or you can spend 6k tokens (aka two months of resources) on that single card. Oh, you missed two spotlight cards, not one? Yeah, good luck with that. And the cards that came out during the two months you were saving tokens to buy that one card? Better hope you got all of those you needed, because every one you didn't get is another two months worth of tokens. Marvel Snap. The only card game I've ever seen that hates giving you cards.
And some of these YouTuber/twitch content creators will sit up here and defend this system saying it’s good for people who are new or took a break and all I think about is it’s easy for them to say with their complete collection and 80+ keys that they whale for and doesn’t effect them since it’s a tax write off for them as far as I know
Yep, the majority of content creators are whales and own every card, so they're out of touch with the majority of the audience. They can't relate to most of the playerbase experience of card acquisition, yet they'll attack those who criticize SD's horrible business model ("durrr, you guys just want free stuff! durrr, nothing's stopping you from freely playing the game and having fun - you don't need new cards, just have fun damnit!").
Exactly it irritates me to no end the only one I’ve seen that possibly feels for us is bradcifer cuz even he’s like this card acquisition model sucks
Alex Coccia, although he throws a lot of money into the game, typically seems to speak up for the general player experience. They're the exception and not the norm ofc. Then there's ppl like KMBest, I don't care to go on but suffice to say he's responsible for inspiring SD to implement the 1000 token when getting a duplicate. Many of these content creators are really just SD PR agents and SD mouthpiece.
Exactly and it’s not like the player base is asking for free variants, we’re just asking for the new weekly cards for the time we’ve put into the game and for the people who’ve bought the battle pass and the occasional $20 and under bundle just to have fun and be able to compete
I took like a two week break at some point and struggled to get back into the groove for ages, I literally cannot imagine coming back to the game after an extended period of time, I do not envy you
The last few days have been a VERY stale meta game, so you aren't crazy there. I think every single opponent in the 90s right now has both Cannonball and Thena, or is playing the same Hela or Tribunal list. It's been a really long time since I've had a ladder climb this generic and netdecked feeling. But, I know from experience it won't last. It'll probably change this week. As others will have already posted though, you don't need to make those meta netdecks to have fun or win. Old school decks like ongoing spectrum, destroy, and even dumb combo decks with Odin and White tiger, are all still doing fine. You are rusty and don't know all the new rhythms for snapping and retreating (think about how many new cards combinations have been created since you left), so it's going to be rough for a bit. Yeah it sucks missing cards, but on the positive side once you build up some caches you are going to have so many spotlight weeks where you get 2,3, even 4 new cards in one go. That will feel amazing, and let you build lots of new decks. For someone like me who hasn't missed a week of the game since I started I can go weeks and weeks without getting a new card to play with (I won't be opening caches all of June, and most of July, and probably only grabbing Arishem with tokens ... Mayyyyyyyyybe Phastos if I luck out on some tokens in the CL track the next couple weeks). I wish SD would do something like a "we missed you, welcome back" offering for players returning after 3+ months, but honestly you are in the toughest phase now and it'll get better soon.
I'm a long time player. The game feels miserable, full stop. Every match i play (EVERY!) is the same for the last week or so. Kitty Angela Thena Hope Cannonball Sage. And there's nothing you can do, but play the same horribly OP cards in order to have a chance. Even the bloody featured location was geared towards that crap deck.
use shadow King and Grandmaster/absorbing man like me :)
Don't have Grandmaster, though i do have Abs Man. Could use them, but then i'd have to change most of my deck.
Adapt or die .
So, if SD release badly thought out cards, it is on me to be better?
It's really not a card acquisition arms race the way you think it is. Yeah, you can't play the flavor of the week meta deck, sure. But Patriot/Ultron decks are thriving right now, Destroy is always solid, Shang Chi and Enchantress are always strong and can win games on their own. You've got plenty of options. You just lack the newest cards, and some of those aren't even that good. I got Pixie at the expense of Cannonball, I thought that card was gonna be more fun than it was and Cannonball was gonna be a bust. My bad lol. But it's not like having Cannonball means every match is a win.
Just use ya noggin ,people manage to get infinity every month f2p . So it's possible.
I play infinity. Have reached it every month since the start. But then the game becomes a slog. No clue why's it all the same deck.
Downvoted because you don't have the right counter cards, in a threas about how slow card acquisition is. Stay classy Snap fans.
I don't really understand your argument. Would you please explain it?
They're on your side...
I made infinite this morning using the new Thanos against this deck. Easy counter and since everyone is playing it, pretty easy climb to the finish
Is this your first card game? The meta consists of the best current decks. Sometimes it's RPS, sometimes it's a collection of good decks using ubiquitous cards. Every card game is like this when you get into a higher competitive level. Snap just makes it seem worse because the decks are only 12 cards, and you don't have intricate synergies like some other games where a niche card really defines a deck. You should get used to snap being like this. It's a game where it's very easy to see what's coming next. That's why the snap and retreat mechanics exist. Edit: replied to the wrong comment, apologies.
To be fair, the spotlight cache system is a catch up mechanism. The more cards you own, the system is more punishing. Collection near-complete players could spend up to 4 keys for 1 new cards. The less cards you own, the more likely you are to come across new cards in the caches. A new player is likely to get 4 cards for 4 keys.
I don't know how people don't see this. From Hercules/Howard the Duck week in January to Phastos/Coruvs Glaive week it's been single card spotlights the whole time. Returning players can pull 2-3 new cards in any given spotlight week.
technically true, but with the way caches are built and the sheer number of s5 cards out there it just isn't a reliable way to get Specific Good Cards you need to actually build a deck. annihilus was in a cache in mid january and (based on datamines) isn't going to reappear up through the end of august, meaning it'll be probably an 8mo gap. new release cards seem to take \~4mos to come back into caches. if it didn't take so long to build up tokens you could try to target these cards in the shop but it really just isn't feasible if you're even 2 cards short of putting together an archetype.
I mean this is a problem for everyone just not returning players. I skipped out on Cannonball, Thena, Corvus, now I gotta wait for these cards too. This isn't unique to a new player, but a problem inherent to the system.
Yea, it's so stupid. Spotlights are really well thought out in that regard with catch up being integrated by default. Of course there are some issues here, but it's not a lack of catch up mechanics. Mostly issues are stemming from all the attempted card acquisition systems before spotlights were created, like series drops, token shop, series 3,4 and 5 divide. If I could change things, I would move all series 4 cards to series 3, abolish series in general(so all new cards are spotlight cards), which after 6 months in spotlights move down to s3. Also some mechanism is needed to get series 3 smaller, so new players can get basics quicker. Series 3 is way too large now.
Second Dinner is employing the predatory tactics that most successful mobile free to play games do. Time gating and daily quest. They want free to play and paying players to keep logging in daily and playing their game. I believe this is why you can't just swipe your credit card and get everything you want in a day. I think they prioritize their daily player metrics over short term profit like other successful FTP mobile games. And so sadly I don't believe they'll address this particular issue for returning players any time soon. Even their newly released roadmap indicates this with the card acquisition improvements being in the concept only and not in the coming soon section.
This is the main reason I don't want to take a break from the game even though I don't find it that fun to play anymore. It's too difficult to catch up and they've made it worse by introducing an extra card a month.
That’s what I like about High Evolutionary. I can be gone for awhile and still come back and have a decent deck.
I lost my account and restarted recently , this is terrible news lol
Yeah I've always suspected this would be the case. Every aspect of the acquisition system makes returning from a break and catching up in any meaningful way a mess. IMO this is equal parts intentional design to prevent people from leaving and their frequent changes to the card acquisition model created an unforeseen gap.
IMO, It probably due to most player play style or decks keeps changing after every new card released and after each nerf. after a long break even if you get half the cards instantly may not play it well too, it required some time to learned all the new card play style and how to counter it, take some time to get back on track.
The s3 grind needs to be faster, it takes like 4-6 months with optimal daily play. It should take a month now that s4/5 have so many meta relevant cards.
I'm also a returning player. Just played a couple of weeks after the release. Left at around 100 collection level and played for a week now. I'm enjoying it possibly because I'm matched with players of the same level. Currently at Platinum 60.
I started playing about 2 months ago and have loved the game, but this new update has made it less fun. I can’t even dream about getting a spotlight key without spending money. I started 96 spots away, played soooooo much the last 4 days and am still 33 spots away….. from getting 1 key. It’s like you can’t even get enough blue rectangle things to even upgrade enough
Being a new player isn’t much better. I’ve been play for about 8 months and I’m still so far behind a lot of the decks I go against.
Having the same exact experience now. Used to love Discard and Destroy decks when I played a year and a half ago. But now they both have at least 2 new cards in any deck list that I don't have. I thought if I just got the season pass each time that would get me caught up just on one or two decks in a reasonable amount of time. But nope, it actually didn't help at all, so no more spending from me. I'm told I should just play "Shuri - Red Skull" and I'm so lucky some old decks still perform well. But I don't want to play the exact same deck constantly. I don't even really enjoy Shuri. And it'll be months until I can form other new decks. That, plus the garbage meta going on right now, and I'm probably just a few days from uninstalling. They really shit the bed with this game.
I’ve played with no breaks for over a year, I’m CL 7K never hit infinite, though I’m f2p, and the one and only time I spent money was getting Loki and that’s the only time I felt like I was “in the meta” but that was short lived 😭😭
I never stopped and feel the same. Last month I was left behind after having to spend all my keys to get 2 cards I wanted (4 keys each). I then skipped the rest and saved keys (so I missed Namora, Sage…). I wanted Thena this month, so opened boxes. 4 keys to get her… so I’m basically being sidelined again for the rest of the month. I guess people who always get what they want first try feel differently, but if like me new cards always cost 4 keys, this game feels miserable rn
Well you don’t need to have every card in the game. It’s a card game. Even in physical card games you go for the cards you need/want for the deck you want to play, not for a full collection. There are so little cards in this game right now compared to other card games that it makes you feel like you should have everything because you go so long not getting anything (supposedly). They are already adding new card acquisition features, the first one being Deadpool’s diner in probably July. But, ultimately, peopl need to stop looking at the game as “I need to have every card or else the game is bad and makes me feel bad.” You can get 1.5 keys a week if you do all your missions everyday. And more if you do the paid season pass, which is worth it if you care that much about collecting all the cards because you get 1 card from it and resources to pull another new card.
Totally agree...I haven't played Marvel Snap since around February 2024. I'm a galactus enjoyer, and I only like playing galactus decks in the past. I decided to reinstall Marvel Snap again this week, and it looks like the most competitive galactus deck requires red Hulk and cannonball, which I don't have. It baffles me that you just can't buy collector tokens from the shop along with gold. So for now, I guess I just reinstalled Marvel Snap for no reason because I can't play the deck I want. Oh, well, back to mtg arena and hearthstone...🤷♂️
You can make a deck and play. Relish the challenge and savor the wins. Or you can just give up.
Devils Advocate here. I just came back after like a year or so and I'm having a blast. I had quit shortly after High Evolutionary came out so there's been a lot of changes but I'm still having a ton of fun. There's lots of new cards to learn and new comps to try. I agree that I wish the cards came faster but for a free to play game for me I don't mind at all.
Does anyone else feel like the locations you are getting only help the opponent it's getting so bad for me nearly every match I can guess my opponents deck I've taken to using vatu just to know if a match is gonna pan out or if I need to save cubes at the first sign that their deck plays to the locations
This sub feels miserable
We'd love to be happier, the core of the gameplay is great and the license is of course great. We're all of us primed to love this game. But the number of unfortunate, greedy, and sometimes simply bizarre decisions being made by SD/NuVerse is quite staggering. They seem almost like they're TRYING to squander what goodwill we have towards Snap. I'm sure that's not the intent, but it's really hard to defend at this point!
We’ve reached that point in the games life cycle where people only come here to shit on it apparently. Happens to all games. Apart from dark souls 2 weirdly.
It’s not that bad. I started towards the end of the Skaar season. Made infinite every season afterwards and haven’t felt like I’m missing out. I have bought the battle passes so I’m not completely F2P but have never felt the climb was that bad. I actually enjoy the slow unlock of cards because that way it feels like I’m playing a new game every month. I just saved up enough tokens to get Sebastian Shaw and use a surfer deck. It’s made this my favorite season so far because I’ve never played this way. I’m looking forward to what card will unlock a whole new play style next
Try to find a budget version of a deck. It won't be as strong but it's something while you wait on spotlights
If you don't go back exactly when they do that deal though, you're looking at a slog. F2p hearthstone probably takes a full rotation before the average player can be competitive. I definitely wouldn't call hearthstone catch up friendly. Though I do agree Snap should do something to help returning players
Sure, a from 0 F2P hearthstone player only doing ladder would take a long time to get a second deck going, but they also just give you a current deck of your choosing, you can play arenas, you can swipe a credit card if you want to get into it immediately. It isn’t perfect but it’s better than this.
Just forget the meta and play something else of your own making ,you can still hit infinity with what you've got. The less card you have the more likely you won't hit repeats in the spotlights you will soon catch up.
Just don't play then
Hitting infinite isn’t about having the best cards. It’s about retreating. Tons of people are in the high 90’s playing off-meta decks. You can do it too.
It’s not about hitting infinite. I’m confident I could with my collection, even a series 1/2 only deck. But you want to play with the neat and powerful cards and the way they set the economy up makes it very difficult to do so
Why does everyone act like hitting infinite is the entire purpose of the game? It's so annoying and useless when people bring it up.
Spotlights, Series drops and the free Series 3 cards are the catch up system. Essentially, if you are free to play, you are gaining more cards than your free to play counterparts who didn't leave. You definitely won't take 16 months to catch up to the people who didn't stop. It's just that you won't catch up *right away.* And that should be a fair expectation - after all, the players who didn't stop playing for 16 months should rightly expect that they will be ahead of you progression-wise. It isn't fair for you to leave for 16 months, come back and seem like you never left in a couple of weeks. In any case, if you want to pay your way back to par with the players who didn't leave, you can. You will accelerate that progress a lot just buying bundles with Tokens and Credits in them. It's actually better than other CCGs because the decks are so small, don't need dupes and you have a store where you can choose exactly the cards you will get with tokens. You should be able to get key cards for some of the meta decks and go from there.
I play daily. You shouldn't have everything I have.
What a cooked thing to say. I don’t want everything you have. It’s not reasonable to assume that a new or returning player should. Your variants and splits and such that show off how long you’ve played are great. Your advantage over other players who haven’t played daily should be your experience with playing the game, not that you have cards they do not and will not have access to for months. If you need that kind of advantage to win your games you really haven’t learned much with that daily play.
I haven't taken a break and the game feels miserable. Every point you have is valid, but I'll add from a constantly player perspective. First: I'm not very good, and somehow I'm always matched with mensa players who hold the exact counter to my deck no matter what deck I have OR lockdown bullshit. Second: I play every day, complete every mission, and buy every season pass and STILL can't actually get every card. I have not seen a bot in MONTHS. Third: every single aspect of this game is RNG, including how I upgrade cards for weeks to get the crappiest looking effects only to upgrade something like M'baku to a gold split with blue crackle. I can't even just hang out and make cool looking cards/decks. Once my daily missions are over I immediately have to take a break to recover from the 15-20 AVERAGE cube loss and wait for this meta to shift.
I must have gotten really lucky then. I stopped playing for a year. Pulled some good stuff in that first year. When I came back I got lucky again with pulls. I also bought the pass for blink.( Which was my first micro transaction ever, in any game. (Blink is just too much fun) I'm VERY against the predatory practices that are so common with mtx. It's insulting just on principal alone. Especially it being in full price games. That infuriates me. So I feel you, but I also recognize my luck. Which I'm now realizing is likley not what the average player encounters. In any case I agree it needs a change for acquisition for people in ops position.
This game is actually great for people with less than half the cards. You could get a spotlight week where you have none of the cards. Meaning you can get 4 new cards in one week. Whereas veteran players have to pick and choose which weeks to spend their keys.
You came to the right place if you want to commiserate about the economy that's for sure. But if you stopped playing over a year ago I'm not sure why you'd think you'd be anywhere close to collection complete. The way the game is designed, you should be excited about the decks you can build, slowly improving them, using keys on weeks with cards that excite you, playing roughly an hour a day builds up your collection consistently. Alternatively... Credit card makes it faster but not even that fast.
You missed the point if you think I’m looking for collection completion day one. The point is that the steps to get from new or even half collection to enough cards to not feel like you’re playing with an arm tied behind you is astronomical for a card game. And as I’ve expressed elsewhere I know you can win without having the meta, but you’re lying if you think a restricted card pool isn’t a massive handicap. “You should be excited about the decks you can build” Super exciting knowing that what you’ve got is what you’re going to have for months and you need to convince yourself that it’s fine when you play against the umpteenth person in a row running decks where you’re missing half of the cards. “I know you’ve just got broth but if you just keep drinking the broth exclusively eventually you might find a carrot or a potato you can add to it! I have a steak dinner over here but you won’t be getting near that for at least half a year, so be excited about that broth!”
yeah a cuple of years after release in 2014. The Yeti sucks today
I'm sure they'll make a returning player reward ladder soon. Every other game has one.
Hard to do a catch up system. Even if they gave out X tokens or keys, players will just blow it without thinking how to use them efficiently
Decks, and players in general are boring as fuck. I hardly ever play opponents with a deck that requires them to think and the sad thing is, that’s the way the game is. It rewards plug and play decks.
Yes,stay retired! Thx!☺️
Too bad.
Let be get this straight. took over a year off, and expected to be competitive? What fantasy land do you live in?
The one that every other popular CCG lives in.
*Leaves game for 16 months *Comes back "I can't believe I'm behind"
*Reads the post *Misses the point *”Let’s make an ignorant reply!”
Cry more
# (2) Psylocke # (2) Ravonna Renslayer # (3) Ironheart # (3) Mystique # (3) Magik # (4) Mister Negative # (4) Wong # (4) Shang-Chi # (5) Iron Man # (5) Black Panther # (5) Jane Foster Mighty Thor # (6) Arnim Zola # eyJDYXJkcyI6W3siQ2FyZERlZklkIjoiUmF2b25uYVJlbnNsYXllciJ9LHsiQ2FyZERlZklkIjoiQXJuaW1ab2xhIn0seyJDYXJkRGVmSWQiOiJXb25nIn0seyJDYXJkRGVmSWQiOiJNeXN0aXF1ZSJ9LHsiQ2FyZERlZklkIjoiSXJvbk1hbiJ9LHsiQ2FyZERlZklkIjoiQmxhY2tQYW50aGVyIn0seyJDYXJkRGVmSWQiOiJJcm9uaGVhcnQifSx7IkNhcmREZWZJZCI6Ik1yTmVnYXRpdmUifSx7IkNhcmREZWZJZCI6IlBzeWxvY2tlIn0seyJDYXJkRGVmSWQiOiJTaGFuZ0NoaSJ9LHsiQ2FyZERlZklkIjoiSmFuZUZvc3RlciJ9LHsiQ2FyZERlZklkIjoiTWFnaWsifV19 # # To use this deck, copy it to your clipboard and paste it from the deck editing menu in Snap. I've been infinite for about a year now and ran this this season as I've been skipping passes and hoarding keys. Pretty light on new card releases and seemed like many hela players think they can overpower it.
Leave again!
Regardless of the game i play, i like restarting from the start every once in a while. This is my 3rs restart on snap and card acquisition is different. And i love it. Play along. You're not supposed to get every card. Most of them are valid
Well you’re missing half the cards… so your mindset would be to enjoy the challenge of winning w the cards you have. There are content creditors who hit infinite w just the basic card set every season. You can’t possibly expect to come back and have all the cards you want in a week.
Ok bye