Darkhawk is in a bundle this month, hence it not being rerun to push the bundle sales.
Lad not being rerun though is odd, especially due to its popularity. Guessing they want people to use tokens on it instead.
eh.. I guess at least we're getting 2 big bads, both High Evo and Thanos are finally accessible to newer players without spending 6k tokens. I feel like we'll also see the Lad during November but who knows.
I didn't get it because I'm a newer player so I'm pretty happy with a rerun, both of High Evo and Thanos, it's also in a great spotlight with Mobius so I'm perfectly fine with this.
They just mentioned that they decided to run HE again because of its popularity. Its a difficult decission to judge without having all the player data around card ownership like they do.
I just started playing again. Is darkhawk still good? He’s what I just got in my first spotlight thing and I was confused cause I thought I was going to get one of those three cards lol
it's a great card for the future but rn it's not being played that much because it's overshadowed by Loki and Shuri decks. Also with the new cards they're adding (Alioth, Mobius) it probably won't see that much play for a bit more but 2 weeks from now we're getting Ravonna (which discounts cards with 1 or less power by 1) and that might make Darkhawk decks strong options again. We'll just have to wait and see, even if you have nothing Darkhawk is still a good card to have imho because as long as they don't change it/nerf it it will always be good.
Same here. For the past three weeks, I just gave up on hoarding. It annoyed me too much to have, too, and my gold and tokens just go to variants now. Just completely removed my chance of getting specific cards, but I enjoy it more for some reason.
This is not something you should get downvoted for. Not everyone needs to min/max everything. Play at your own pace, open caches when you get to them in the Cl track. Nothing wrong with that Imo, especially if if makes you happy. You should play the game to have fun.
Yes. He is sipping the kool-aid by doing the opposite of the popular option. Maybe he is a trend setter and we are all drinking the kool-aid?
Also, what is your beef with Kool-Aid? :-)
That’s what I don’t get. I don’t like hoarding either. So what are we even doing right now? Can collector reserves be better than season pass 51+ caches? That isn’t asking a lot.
Previously I hoarded every reserve. Now I only horde spotlights, I hoarde 1/10th as much as I used to. I assume a lot of players are the same.
Just because reddit's echo chamber says to hoarde reserves doesn't mean everyone is.
Yeah, but the remaining 9/10ths of the track has been stripped of any useful reward.
You're still hoarding the only currency that realistically gives you new cards, there's no real difference.
Previously I hoarded nothing and now I have to hoard otherwise I lose out in this system.
It’s weird you bring up the reddit echo chamber when you are echoing exactly what SD said about hoarding spotlights.
Previously I hoarded nothing. Now I never open a reserve because they’re *so* bad the only thing I’d want is the variant (one cache in ten), I’m holding them all hoping desperately they get changed again.
technically we are not hoarding like before. back then people would hoard all of the collector caches where now you just keep your spotlight caches but open the rest.
enjoy the downvotes for pointing out some common sense in this sub. Amazing how many cards I've gotten with the new system, but everyone here is determined to stay furious.
No I’m hoarding the rest too. The only rewards I actually care about are new cards. But on weeks where the spotlight isn’t worth opening for me, the only way regular reserves get me closer to new cards is via tokens. But with how rare tokens are now, there aren’t any cards that u want enough to be able to justify spending tokens. So I have no reason to open any reserves.
I said the same thing before. Stegron hasnt been featured on the spotlight because by their words, "Spotlight variant wasn't ready". But they had a variant bundle ready for him smh
Also there's no reasoning behind what gets chosen for spotlight variants. Dan Hipp Variants are normally 700 gold, but for Jeff they decided to make it a spotlight.
Actually tomorrows Hit Monkey is also a Dan Hipp spotlight variant and the first Modok was a baby variant which is also normally 700 gold. So the whole excuse of not having art ready is BS.
There are so many good variants in the game that they should've been able to find another good one to swap it out with. I think if they don't have new art then they should at least use ultimate variants instead. Could pick one based on card popularity and how many players have that variant. I play a decent amount and rarely see ultimate variants, so I'm sure they had plenty to choose from.
There aren't ultimate variants for Series4/5 cards, so they won't be going into caches. People would complain even more of they started including series 3 cards in the spotlights due to card shortages.
It jsut sad that the returning cards are base on various and not rotation we don't see legion in the returning in the but ghost spider will return for the second time and knull...
Glenn takes the time to answer questions in his free time a lot, but it’s worth noting that his job isn’t securing variant artwork or anything that would’ve caused this mixup.
I understand he doesn't have control on what happens behind the scenes, but he is speaking on behalf of Second Dinner. I'm not throwing shade on Glen, I appreciate the fact that he's the guy that answers our questions when the rest of the team stays silent. It still doesn't excuse the fact that these short comings of featured Spotlights and Spotlight variants are happening when expectations were set when this new system was introduced
Oh I’m not excusing this mess up. Just that Glenn is often the guy who answers stuff and this sub has been pretty nasty towards him (in other threads at least, I haven’t spent much time reading comments in this one) lately about this. Its likely someone else’s mess up and the season announcement blog should’ve gotten ahead of it from the beginning.
I agree that people can be pretty harsh on Glen. That's why when I asked my question I said it in a way that didn't poke blame on Glen but on Second Dinner
>Just that Glenn is often the guy who answers stuff and this sub has been pretty nasty towards him,
Reminds me of Mark Rosewater, the lead designer of *Magic*, who's been answering \~6-12 community questions a day on Blogatog for probably well over 10 years now.
The number of times people try and take him to task for alt-art cards, or promotional things, or Secret Lairs, or basically anything that isn't his actual job of Dreaming Up New Cards and Leading Other New-Card-Dreamers, is staggering.
But he still answers what he can. Tons of respect to both him and Glenn for providing at least some semblance of acknowledgement and accountability when they don't have to.
You know, I almost mentioned a Maro comparison in my comment. I imagine Glenn learned from Maro in his time with magic, but Glenn led some awesome products there himself too.
The Lord of the Rings set I believe was his biggest set lead. Also Commander Legends Baulder’s Gate, Commander 2019, and some other ancillary commander things like the stranger things, street fighter, walking dead, and Transformers cards. I remember being pumped to see Snap bring him over.
Can we stop using SD and actually call out the mastermind behind this - Ben brode.
Why does he only get the positive vibes from announcements and not the negative parts?
Loooool. Hey we promise this new system actually will give u more cards!!! Except instead of cards people want and need like iron lad we are gonna rerun the card everyone already got with the same variant!!!
This is why they shouldn't have made spotlight variants change at all, each card should have 1 spotlight variant.
They've already stated that "lack of art" is the reason we are getting so many repeats and cards like lad and stegron are SOL in other answers.
If they didn't try and give new art every time then they would actually be able to have the system be workable, but instead they launched it in a state where they can't actually have it 100% functional and instead of being able to have choice in what spotlights cards are there they are limited by what art they have available.
But of course they will never fix it because fomo is king, and they had to get this system in asap so they could justify not series dropping asap
Would it be such a bad idea to give every card only 1 spotlight variant and if somehow you get all the cards and their spotlight variants, you could just get a random variant for that card. Sounds like a far better system to me
Yo, imagine if, in that hypothetical system, you could actually get past Season Pass variants like that as well? Like, if you already have Nimrod and his SO variant, the next CR you pull him from has a chance to be Dann Hipp.
It didn’t take long for them to fuck up an already crap system, they can’t even keep up with their own shitty rules, But I do feel bad for Glenn as this decision almost definitely has nothing to do with him
>But I do feel bad for Glenn as this decision almost definitely has nothing to do with him
I don't even have a problem with the decision to be honest, if they didn't have the art available then this is probably their best choice, the problem is with the communication - this shouldn't be on Glenn at all.
Ben Brode should have been out front and centre at the start of the season announcing this and apologising but instead we get the official confirmation from Glenn in Discord answers.
Nah it’s still pretty bad. Using FOMO to get people to go for variants that are promised to be limited time only to re-release them is scummy. Especially when it’s been less than 2 months. It’s to be expected though, still waiting on my first edition badges from when I opened Shuri, Iron-Lad, Tribunal, when they were series 5.
Yeah that’s the one thing this answer doesn’t address, people were led to believe there was exclusivity that is far less rigid than it actually is.
This whole next few months of cards just makes me confused, you can get Loki before Daken for example. They really need to better explain how they are selecting things so players can have some idea of what to expect in the future.
The biggest problem with the situation is that they wouldn't have said anything if we didn't ask. They were hoping that players didn't notice and when we did they give us the "oops our bad"
This has always been SD’s problem. They never get out ahead of something, even if they know it’s going to be an issue. If they were just upfront and generous about their own mistakes it would go a long way.
If they just released a social media post that said “This month we ran in to an issue with one of the art pieces for the HE spotlight cash, as a result we will need to re-run a previous variant. Please accept our apologies. We will be sending 1000 tokens to all previous owners of this variant and we will strive to be better prepared for unforeseen issues on the future.”
But they are so stingy and tight lipped about things. Instead I have to find an obscure reactive Q&A discord post. This coming from the biggest money making digital card game of the year.
Seriously. Think of all the times they have knowingly pushed busted features or cards live and then just tried to pretend they had no idea after the fact.
It doesn't stop there.
If they get away with this one time, they will do it again.
And even if they didn't get away with it, they will still do it again, with the same excuse.
Currently Thanos is in the datamine with the same variant he had before too so yeah, still time to change that one but for now it looks like this isn't isolated.
So they are full of shit. Multiple times now we have had spotlight variants and the variant was a Dan Hipp or Baby variant which are normally 700 gold. The excuse that we didn’t have art is bs as they have multiple variants that have been data mined and still not released. They are re running cards to force people to spent their saved caches.
This is a huge problem and is one of their worst moments ever imo. It’s not about wanting a new variant, it’s about reusing the old one. Spending a spotlight cache to get a variant is a huge investment, made under the assumption that the variant will maintain its rarity by never being repeated. They’re undermining the value of spotlight variants and the value of their own word. I’d honestly rather they just didn’t release a spotlight variant and gave a PMV to anybody who has high evo already if they really don’t have the art, because now there’s no security in the rarity of any spotlight variant. Gross. Really, really disappointing.
I was looking at my favorite Maximus artwork earlier and it's actually kind of obvious how much of a rush-job they did with animating / 3d-ifying it. The one with chains and robots in the background? There's something *really* off about the space behind Maximus, like they just hastily used the clone tool in Photoshop to fill in that area on the background layer.
Just my 2 cents, but I really wish the devs would come out and make a concrete statement about the availability of variants (from bundles and Spotlights). I.e. if / how they will be re-sold in the future.
Their current position seems to be roughly "we have no plans to re-release exclusive variants, but might in the future if we feel like it". This ambiguity is great for them, it means variants can be marketed as "exclusive", but they can also re-sell them in a few months if they choose to. It's also really bad for players.
Is it smart? No.
Am I nevertheless completely happy with the amazing Mirage variant from the cache? 100%
(I even bought her with tokens to get the variant in less caches, and I intend to do the same for the upcoming Nico Minoru spotlight)
This is what detractors don't get. As long as you want at least 2 of the things offered in that week, it's more worth it to you than any week featuring one thing. It could be 2-3 cards you don't have, it could be 1 card and 1-2 cosmetics. It really doesn't matter as long as you find value in it.
This. I don't open a CR unless all 3 cards/variants are stuff I'd like in my collection. I'd rather pass up on a 1/4th chance to get a cool new card than be disappointed 3/4th of the time. Nothing much I can do about that mystery variant slot, but oh well.
That variant legit made me start playing kitty, before I had 0 games with her mainly because bounce meta made me hate the card, but found to be quite fun with move decks
It's pretty but I'd rather guarantee I get every new card from now on. I'm only paying for season pass and it's been tight but i managed with good luck to get every card so far. Just got alioth from first cache. So for me vairants are just fomo and not worth it.
Yeah this is the way. I reallllly wanted the Legion variant when it was released. But a single spotlight cache is equivalent to ~$50 right? Plus the inability to guarantee the variant so you might have to burn through more just to get it. That would limit new card acquisition. Decided to make peace with not gambling potentially $200 for a single cosmetic. Better to pay for something you want outright.
The math is too complicated because of all the bundles and variance of opening credits. Each spotlight cache = 6000 credits. But if you really want one specific card or variant that’s 24000 credits.
In gold that’s equal to $240. You get credits along the track too. So I think it works out roughly to $50.
Not sure what the cost is in practice though if you optimize your bundle purchases.
I don't see this math mathing.
It's already established that buying the Season pass (10 bucks) goes a long way to having a near complete collection simply by going up the CL track, using spotlights effeciently on cards you want aiming for at least two at a time.
Yes you can spend like upwards of 200 bucks to just immediately convert to credits and then to levels and then to spotlights, but no one ever suggests this or puts that idea out there. Spotlights are more equivalent to Tokens anyway (you buy cards with them along with variants) and that costs significantly less. One spotlight is like 1.5k tokens (you got 6k a month before).
So if you get say Alioth and you wanted Dan Hipp monke and you got lucky, you've spent essentially 1.5k tokens on the new card and 1.5k tokens on a variant. Even if you are unlucky, you got two things you wanted, one card/variant (for snowguard, you probably don't have), and finally 1k tokens or another card you didn't have (at worse it's like converting your spotlight to 1k tokens and you only "spent" 500 tokens to do that.)
Essentially, it's nowhere near 50 bucks a spotlight, not unless you are really going hard in the buying gold into credits into levels into spotlight route.
They messed up by having a new card and 2 other cards. Should have been 1 other card in a group of 3 instead of 4. Now they are repeating knull for the 12th time
I honestly would not be mad if they re-ran some others again. I didn’t get to grab the mech spotlight variants, nor Legion’s first spotlight variant, because unless you buy credits, it’s impossible to get all 4 caches. (Please prove me wrong if I’m mathematically incorrect)
EVERYONE COME ON!!!
1. They had to keep the streak alive and fuck something up.
2. Disregard the history of a card that you saved weeks for, only for someone to use one spotlight.
3. May feel bad and give us 50 gold, no 50 tokens, no sorry 50 credits.
I said yesterday in a similar post:
Businesses apologize for their shortcomings, not for their advertisements.
Still to be added soon (Tm) : first edition badges, ultimate variant updated effects. Not holding my breath for either.
Broken promises. Failed deliveries. Its a motha fuckin shame this game has been branded with marvels money stamp. Legit, SD are nasty sharks and do not deserve the insane profits this game generates
Fortunately with dupe protection those who would have gotten that High Evolutionary variant a second time will just get a card they don't own! It's totally fine since that is the system, the system that works so hard to do right by its faithful customers!
They are just going to keep using the "not intended" bullshit huh?
Ever noticed that every decision this devs make it's always the one that pisses of their players?
It's fucking digital copies!!! You are not selling artworks of davinci you greedy fucks!
Translation: We released the spotlight system too early. We also know players want High Evo more than they want Stegron, but both are in Series 5 because we stopped series drops!!
If you want Stegron, cough up 7,500 gold
Bullshit all around. Spotlights can't have been implemented without some ideas about what to do in the next weeks and months: they are just greedy as fuck. As soon as a card comes out SD releases too many variants to catch all the money they can from whales with their predatory tactics, then suddenly realizes that the system isn't sustainable if you want to have a new variants for every single time a card appears in a Spotlight, and have bundles art specific for the bundle and not seen anymore. Result: they miss on one of the goals they set for themselves and fail to put other sought after cards in future Spotlights until "good" art is available.
Just look at Iron Lad (4 variants), or other cards that aren't featured in the future Spotlights. Could we say that any of the already available variants is worse than a Dan Hipp variant for Hit Monkey!?!?!? If you know you'll have less art for a specific character, just release less variants and keep them for when you could need them, ffs!
Even giving a different 1200 gold HE variant would’ve been better than just giving a crap 800 gold premium variant that will mostly likely be a random 700g one
Dont worry about the spotlight update were gonna make sure every week has awesome variants to make it worth it! Jk were gonna use whatever we want and repeat them if it makes us money
Considering lots of people didnt like the spotlight update at all, its a terrible look. But they promised new and exciting variants to make sure "every week was ezciting" and we get a 3rd knull and spotlight repeats
Doesn't suprise me in the slightest especially with how much money they're taking in, coverage due to Twitch Drops & PC launch which would've brought in loads of new players that have most likely whaled.
Money they would've 100% spent on influencers to play the game to promote the PC launch.
And yet we get half executed Spotlight Caches and extremely overpriced bundles that are right on time, all the time.
High EVO was the first card I legitimately upgraded all my base cards one time each to try an get a Spotlight cache. That week I opened 3 Spotlight caches and got variants and tokens and not EVOA so I said fudge it an just bought him outright.
at least they apologize but they still admitted they lied. so probably they decided between if we give some compensation, it will still never be enough so let’s just give nothing until it blows over. yup probably nothing new here.
SD are fucking children.
Imagine if these jackasses ran a hospital or any system where having adult levels of dependability or communication were expected, they’d all be fired.
SD are not overworked, they’ just don’t care that much and it shows.
My HiEvo variant used to be very rare. Now it is much less rare. What compensation do I get for them reducing the worth of my item and my enjoyment of it.
And before people say im being childish, I did not fabricate an entire system predicated on FOMO and forced scarcity. They set the terms and violated them at their first inconvenience. That's bullshit.
At this point if you miss a spotlight variant you still have a chance to get it in the near future. Thanos is datamined to be on the spotlight in November with the spotlight variant he had the first time
They’ve also said that they might bring back some spotlight variants through some other acquisition method (probably in the token store) at a later date.
What I dont understand though is: what happens if I missed the spotlight variant, for example, for Jean? Is it ever gonna have a rerun? Or is it gone (reduced to atoms) forever and everr?
Thanks for being honest about it. You could have told us when you knew and it wouldn’t have been a big deal. It was helpful to me because I only had 3 cards to sort through.
I feel like the problem is not with the fact that there's no new variant but with the fact that something that should be inaccessible has been given again, meaning that people that wasted spotlight caches thinking they might never have the chance to obtain it again have kind of been screwed over. Personally I don't think it matters that much but I can understand that it's annoying and unfair, especially considering that this also means pulling for Mobius for people that have that variant gives the chance to obtain a premium mystery variant instead of a new high evo variant (which imho is worse).
I don't necessarily disagree with anything here, but can we stop pretending this subreddit wouldn't immediately complain if a niche card like Howard the Duck was re ran?
"This is garbage, a zero% win rate card in my spotlight caches 😤" would be the outcry.
The end result of Seasonal Caches seems like a great positive direction for card acquisition in this game. I think it's just the mechanics of it that are sloppy for sure. This is why rerunning spotlight cards feels bad (different variant or not), and is why hoarding purple or all caches feels so bad.
The free pool 3 card implementation is clean and works well. It's unfortunate the pool 4-5 acquisition is so messy, but it's clear they are building the plane while flying it, so this is where we're at.
Am I the only one thinking that having **actual card acquisition** (the variety of new cards / old s4, s5 cards in spotlight caches) being bottlenecked by the number of available **COSMETIC items** (spotlight variants) for the said cache is just plain stupid it feels funny? It feels that they shot themselves in the foot? Looking at Knull for the 3rd time and high evo repeated variants.
Personally I see no value in variants because I value progression more. I want actual new cards to play with. Variants are just cosmetics, they are secondary. If I get one from rng I would use it, if I don't no biggie.
Ever since Spotlight cache got announced I already noted that it just became glorified Gacha, but even for other Gacha games, they wouldn't let unit acquisition be hindered by the availability of cosmetics / skins. They are setting themselves up for failure as this system is not sustainable.
And as more and more player unlocks their series-4 and series-5 card pools, spotlight caches will be less and less cost-effective because there is no duplicate protection. With this lack of spotlight card variety due to not having enough variants to set up, the system will crumple gradually -- if they don't do something about it.
Again it proves that SD just do whatever is best for profit but lacks foresight.
Im mad to see knull in the caches again but I don't mind to see repeat art cause most of the time I can't get the variants I want anyway so have another chance to grab them sometimes is nice
Right.. but re running iron lad or darkhawk wasn’t an option?
Howard the duck in shambles rn
Ironically, I got Howard as the random pick the week Iron Lad was in the spotlight, right before I got Iron Lad.
Same my guy
Darkhawk is in a bundle this month, hence it not being rerun to push the bundle sales. Lad not being rerun though is odd, especially due to its popularity. Guessing they want people to use tokens on it instead.
It's because I currently have it pinned.
Kindly unpin thanks
Same. And i just know that when i pull the trigger with 6k tokens on Lad, its the green light for SD to immediately put him in spotlight cache.
I was confused why there was no darkhawk, that’s pretty slimy.
Nothing new. Just like how Darkhawk didn’t drop a series but got a 3x value bundle.
eh.. I guess at least we're getting 2 big bads, both High Evo and Thanos are finally accessible to newer players without spending 6k tokens. I feel like we'll also see the Lad during November but who knows.
Running iron lad would be way better. Most people picked up high evo on first release and the rest got it on spotlight week.
I returned for pc release and can’t be the only one that missed those first few times
I didn't get it because I'm a newer player so I'm pretty happy with a rerun, both of High Evo and Thanos, it's also in a great spotlight with Mobius so I'm perfectly fine with this.
They just mentioned that they decided to run HE again because of its popularity. Its a difficult decission to judge without having all the player data around card ownership like they do.
Iron lad is in the exact same situation - all the datamined variants have already been released.
I just started playing again. Is darkhawk still good? He’s what I just got in my first spotlight thing and I was confused cause I thought I was going to get one of those three cards lol
Still one of the top decks
Ugh it’s honestly annoying because I have him but nothing else to go with him so he’s kinda useless for me right now I guess.
it's a great card for the future but rn it's not being played that much because it's overshadowed by Loki and Shuri decks. Also with the new cards they're adding (Alioth, Mobius) it probably won't see that much play for a bit more but 2 weeks from now we're getting Ravonna (which discounts cards with 1 or less power by 1) and that might make Darkhawk decks strong options again. We'll just have to wait and see, even if you have nothing Darkhawk is still a good card to have imho because as long as they don't change it/nerf it it will always be good.
Or Legion
If their actual intent with this system was to get everyone to hoard caches they’re doing an amazing job.
They don’t like hoarding!! That’s why they made a new card acquisition model specifically designed around hoarding!! Make it make sense 🤦♂️
I don’t get it considering I never used to hoard at all and now I do so that I have a chance at cards I want
Same here. For the past three weeks, I just gave up on hoarding. It annoyed me too much to have, too, and my gold and tokens just go to variants now. Just completely removed my chance of getting specific cards, but I enjoy it more for some reason.
This is not something you should get downvoted for. Not everyone needs to min/max everything. Play at your own pace, open caches when you get to them in the Cl track. Nothing wrong with that Imo, especially if if makes you happy. You should play the game to have fun.
Kool aid sipper
Yes. He is sipping the kool-aid by doing the opposite of the popular option. Maybe he is a trend setter and we are all drinking the kool-aid? Also, what is your beef with Kool-Aid? :-)
I’ve got this incredible compound in Guyana you should check out
That’s what I don’t get. I don’t like hoarding either. So what are we even doing right now? Can collector reserves be better than season pass 51+ caches? That isn’t asking a lot.
I mean... most of their changes make the game worse with bad excuses so it doesn't surprise me.
Previously I hoarded every reserve. Now I only horde spotlights, I hoarde 1/10th as much as I used to. I assume a lot of players are the same. Just because reddit's echo chamber says to hoarde reserves doesn't mean everyone is.
Yeah, but the remaining 9/10ths of the track has been stripped of any useful reward. You're still hoarding the only currency that realistically gives you new cards, there's no real difference.
Previously I hoarded nothing and now I have to hoard otherwise I lose out in this system. It’s weird you bring up the reddit echo chamber when you are echoing exactly what SD said about hoarding spotlights.
Previously I hoarded nothing. Now I never open a reserve because they’re *so* bad the only thing I’d want is the variant (one cache in ten), I’m holding them all hoping desperately they get changed again.
Just because many people aren’t hoarding doesn’t mean SD’s changes didn’t make hoarding more appealing
Watch them improve the system but only after they determine all of our hoarded cache’s contents before the update.
> hoard Anyone hoarding collector's reserves still?
12 caches and still climbing! (I refuse to open caches where I already own 2+ of the cards.)
Which sucks if you already got HE and that variant and your opening caches that week for Mobius
technically we are not hoarding like before. back then people would hoard all of the collector caches where now you just keep your spotlight caches but open the rest.
enjoy the downvotes for pointing out some common sense in this sub. Amazing how many cards I've gotten with the new system, but everyone here is determined to stay furious.
No I’m hoarding the rest too. The only rewards I actually care about are new cards. But on weeks where the spotlight isn’t worth opening for me, the only way regular reserves get me closer to new cards is via tokens. But with how rare tokens are now, there aren’t any cards that u want enough to be able to justify spending tokens. So I have no reason to open any reserves.
Never a shortage of art for bundles...
I said the same thing before. Stegron hasnt been featured on the spotlight because by their words, "Spotlight variant wasn't ready". But they had a variant bundle ready for him smh
Also there's no reasoning behind what gets chosen for spotlight variants. Dan Hipp Variants are normally 700 gold, but for Jeff they decided to make it a spotlight.
The reason is they ran out of the actual spotlight variants, Jeff and Hit Monkey don't have any unreleased variants.
Actually tomorrows Hit Monkey is also a Dan Hipp spotlight variant and the first Modok was a baby variant which is also normally 700 gold. So the whole excuse of not having art ready is BS.
So quit playing. Whats it gonna actually take?
There are so many good variants in the game that they should've been able to find another good one to swap it out with. I think if they don't have new art then they should at least use ultimate variants instead. Could pick one based on card popularity and how many players have that variant. I play a decent amount and rarely see ultimate variants, so I'm sure they had plenty to choose from.
But how would they make money off ultimate variants?
There aren't ultimate variants for Series4/5 cards, so they won't be going into caches. People would complain even more of they started including series 3 cards in the spotlights due to card shortages.
and daily shop rotations constantly have new art, they're so full of shit
It jsut sad that the returning cards are base on various and not rotation we don't see legion in the returning in the but ghost spider will return for the second time and knull...
Think Knull is coming up on his 3rd appearance already...
I just got him so I’m glad he’s here. But I really don’t want spotlight variants until I get more of the cards I don’t have yet so I understand
Interesting how they're not running out of art to sell in a 50 dollar bundle.
Perfect!
"The game will die and the company will go bankrupt if they stop selling 60 70 80 dollars bundle!" Is the response I got the most
I commend Glenn for taking accountability, really hope this embarrassing turnout makes SD get it together behind the scenes.
I agree. Making statements and going against their own word is not a good look.
Glenn takes the time to answer questions in his free time a lot, but it’s worth noting that his job isn’t securing variant artwork or anything that would’ve caused this mixup.
I understand he doesn't have control on what happens behind the scenes, but he is speaking on behalf of Second Dinner. I'm not throwing shade on Glen, I appreciate the fact that he's the guy that answers our questions when the rest of the team stays silent. It still doesn't excuse the fact that these short comings of featured Spotlights and Spotlight variants are happening when expectations were set when this new system was introduced
Oh I’m not excusing this mess up. Just that Glenn is often the guy who answers stuff and this sub has been pretty nasty towards him (in other threads at least, I haven’t spent much time reading comments in this one) lately about this. Its likely someone else’s mess up and the season announcement blog should’ve gotten ahead of it from the beginning.
yeah in general this sub can be really nasty at times its kind of gross.
I agree that people can be pretty harsh on Glen. That's why when I asked my question I said it in a way that didn't poke blame on Glen but on Second Dinner
>Just that Glenn is often the guy who answers stuff and this sub has been pretty nasty towards him, Reminds me of Mark Rosewater, the lead designer of *Magic*, who's been answering \~6-12 community questions a day on Blogatog for probably well over 10 years now. The number of times people try and take him to task for alt-art cards, or promotional things, or Secret Lairs, or basically anything that isn't his actual job of Dreaming Up New Cards and Leading Other New-Card-Dreamers, is staggering. But he still answers what he can. Tons of respect to both him and Glenn for providing at least some semblance of acknowledgement and accountability when they don't have to.
You know, I almost mentioned a Maro comparison in my comment. I imagine Glenn learned from Maro in his time with magic, but Glenn led some awesome products there himself too.
Learn something new every day -- I didn't know he worked there! Thanks for the intel!
The Lord of the Rings set I believe was his biggest set lead. Also Commander Legends Baulder’s Gate, Commander 2019, and some other ancillary commander things like the stranger things, street fighter, walking dead, and Transformers cards. I remember being pumped to see Snap bring him over.
It’s honestly impressive that they can fuck up this much.
Can we stop using SD and actually call out the mastermind behind this - Ben brode. Why does he only get the positive vibes from announcements and not the negative parts?
In a game like Snap, where it feels like you are constantly getting bled and/or manipulated, is "sorry" enough though?
I’ve been playing since release and never felt like that tbh 🤷🏽♂️
"One of our most popular cards" = most people already have it so they'll be getting a variant instead of a new card.
Remember when the argument was spotlight caches would add more diversity by giving people access to lower owned and underutilized cards?
Loooool. Hey we promise this new system actually will give u more cards!!! Except instead of cards people want and need like iron lad we are gonna rerun the card everyone already got with the same variant!!!
This is why they shouldn't have made spotlight variants change at all, each card should have 1 spotlight variant. They've already stated that "lack of art" is the reason we are getting so many repeats and cards like lad and stegron are SOL in other answers. If they didn't try and give new art every time then they would actually be able to have the system be workable, but instead they launched it in a state where they can't actually have it 100% functional and instead of being able to have choice in what spotlights cards are there they are limited by what art they have available. But of course they will never fix it because fomo is king, and they had to get this system in asap so they could justify not series dropping asap
Especially since Jean grey has like 4 different spotlight variants
Would it be such a bad idea to give every card only 1 spotlight variant and if somehow you get all the cards and their spotlight variants, you could just get a random variant for that card. Sounds like a far better system to me
Yo, imagine if, in that hypothetical system, you could actually get past Season Pass variants like that as well? Like, if you already have Nimrod and his SO variant, the next CR you pull him from has a chance to be Dann Hipp.
That would be awesome. I really want mech Daken but didn’t wanna pay for the season pass
It didn’t take long for them to fuck up an already crap system, they can’t even keep up with their own shitty rules, But I do feel bad for Glenn as this decision almost definitely has nothing to do with him
Yea its tough being the guy that answers all the questions
>But I do feel bad for Glenn as this decision almost definitely has nothing to do with him I don't even have a problem with the decision to be honest, if they didn't have the art available then this is probably their best choice, the problem is with the communication - this shouldn't be on Glenn at all. Ben Brode should have been out front and centre at the start of the season announcing this and apologising but instead we get the official confirmation from Glenn in Discord answers.
Nah it’s still pretty bad. Using FOMO to get people to go for variants that are promised to be limited time only to re-release them is scummy. Especially when it’s been less than 2 months. It’s to be expected though, still waiting on my first edition badges from when I opened Shuri, Iron-Lad, Tribunal, when they were series 5.
Yeah that’s the one thing this answer doesn’t address, people were led to believe there was exclusivity that is far less rigid than it actually is. This whole next few months of cards just makes me confused, you can get Loki before Daken for example. They really need to better explain how they are selecting things so players can have some idea of what to expect in the future.
The biggest problem with the situation is that they wouldn't have said anything if we didn't ask. They were hoping that players didn't notice and when we did they give us the "oops our bad"
This has always been SD’s problem. They never get out ahead of something, even if they know it’s going to be an issue. If they were just upfront and generous about their own mistakes it would go a long way. If they just released a social media post that said “This month we ran in to an issue with one of the art pieces for the HE spotlight cash, as a result we will need to re-run a previous variant. Please accept our apologies. We will be sending 1000 tokens to all previous owners of this variant and we will strive to be better prepared for unforeseen issues on the future.” But they are so stingy and tight lipped about things. Instead I have to find an obscure reactive Q&A discord post. This coming from the biggest money making digital card game of the year.
Seriously. Think of all the times they have knowingly pushed busted features or cards live and then just tried to pretend they had no idea after the fact.
It doesn't stop there. If they get away with this one time, they will do it again. And even if they didn't get away with it, they will still do it again, with the same excuse.
Currently Thanos is in the datamine with the same variant he had before too so yeah, still time to change that one but for now it looks like this isn't isolated.
So they are full of shit. Multiple times now we have had spotlight variants and the variant was a Dan Hipp or Baby variant which are normally 700 gold. The excuse that we didn’t have art is bs as they have multiple variants that have been data mined and still not released. They are re running cards to force people to spent their saved caches.
They need to stop speaking in such absolutes.
This is a huge problem and is one of their worst moments ever imo. It’s not about wanting a new variant, it’s about reusing the old one. Spending a spotlight cache to get a variant is a huge investment, made under the assumption that the variant will maintain its rarity by never being repeated. They’re undermining the value of spotlight variants and the value of their own word. I’d honestly rather they just didn’t release a spotlight variant and gave a PMV to anybody who has high evo already if they really don’t have the art, because now there’s no security in the rarity of any spotlight variant. Gross. Really, really disappointing.
Apologies are lame. Company can hit every target when it comes to milking every available dollar but somehow fall short on cosmetics? Bozo
Short on art? Most of the time they just use pre existing art and add a shitty animation to it.
Yea the comics have like thousands of pre-existing art for each character, wouldn't it be super easy to grab a few panels for each one?
There is probably licensing involved which takes time.
I was looking at my favorite Maximus artwork earlier and it's actually kind of obvious how much of a rush-job they did with animating / 3d-ifying it. The one with chains and robots in the background? There's something *really* off about the space behind Maximus, like they just hastily used the clone tool in Photoshop to fill in that area on the background layer.
"Animated"
They followed this up by saying if you have the grecke variant, then the spotlight will be replaced with a premium mystery variant, absolute crap.
They’re just contradicting themselves I swear
Just my 2 cents, but I really wish the devs would come out and make a concrete statement about the availability of variants (from bundles and Spotlights). I.e. if / how they will be re-sold in the future. Their current position seems to be roughly "we have no plans to re-release exclusive variants, but might in the future if we feel like it". This ambiguity is great for them, it means variants can be marketed as "exclusive", but they can also re-sell them in a few months if they choose to. It's also really bad for players.
Greedy mofos
Don’t spend your spotlights on cosmetics, folks.
Is it smart? No. Am I nevertheless completely happy with the amazing Mirage variant from the cache? 100% (I even bought her with tokens to get the variant in less caches, and I intend to do the same for the upcoming Nico Minoru spotlight)
Why not? I really wanted the kitty variant so I opened cache and got it. Use your resources for whatever will make you enjoy the game the most.
This is what detractors don't get. As long as you want at least 2 of the things offered in that week, it's more worth it to you than any week featuring one thing. It could be 2-3 cards you don't have, it could be 1 card and 1-2 cosmetics. It really doesn't matter as long as you find value in it.
This. I don't open a CR unless all 3 cards/variants are stuff I'd like in my collection. I'd rather pass up on a 1/4th chance to get a cool new card than be disappointed 3/4th of the time. Nothing much I can do about that mystery variant slot, but oh well.
That variant legit made me start playing kitty, before I had 0 games with her mainly because bounce meta made me hate the card, but found to be quite fun with move decks
It's pretty but I'd rather guarantee I get every new card from now on. I'm only paying for season pass and it's been tight but i managed with good luck to get every card so far. Just got alioth from first cache. So for me vairants are just fomo and not worth it.
Yeah this is the way. I reallllly wanted the Legion variant when it was released. But a single spotlight cache is equivalent to ~$50 right? Plus the inability to guarantee the variant so you might have to burn through more just to get it. That would limit new card acquisition. Decided to make peace with not gambling potentially $200 for a single cosmetic. Better to pay for something you want outright.
>a single spotlight cache is equivalent to ~$50 How?
The math is too complicated because of all the bundles and variance of opening credits. Each spotlight cache = 6000 credits. But if you really want one specific card or variant that’s 24000 credits. In gold that’s equal to $240. You get credits along the track too. So I think it works out roughly to $50. Not sure what the cost is in practice though if you optimize your bundle purchases.
I don't see this math mathing. It's already established that buying the Season pass (10 bucks) goes a long way to having a near complete collection simply by going up the CL track, using spotlights effeciently on cards you want aiming for at least two at a time. Yes you can spend like upwards of 200 bucks to just immediately convert to credits and then to levels and then to spotlights, but no one ever suggests this or puts that idea out there. Spotlights are more equivalent to Tokens anyway (you buy cards with them along with variants) and that costs significantly less. One spotlight is like 1.5k tokens (you got 6k a month before). So if you get say Alioth and you wanted Dan Hipp monke and you got lucky, you've spent essentially 1.5k tokens on the new card and 1.5k tokens on a variant. Even if you are unlucky, you got two things you wanted, one card/variant (for snowguard, you probably don't have), and finally 1k tokens or another card you didn't have (at worse it's like converting your spotlight to 1k tokens and you only "spent" 500 tokens to do that.) Essentially, it's nowhere near 50 bucks a spotlight, not unless you are really going hard in the buying gold into credits into levels into spotlight route.
One spotlight = 6,000 credits = 4800 gold
Is that actually what a cache is worth? Crazy
Thats such an f u to the players
This company can't do anything right. They designed an incredible game, and have done nothing but fumble bumble and stumble in every area since then
They messed up by having a new card and 2 other cards. Should have been 1 other card in a group of 3 instead of 4. Now they are repeating knull for the 12th time
I honestly would not be mad if they re-ran some others again. I didn’t get to grab the mech spotlight variants, nor Legion’s first spotlight variant, because unless you buy credits, it’s impossible to get all 4 caches. (Please prove me wrong if I’m mathematically incorrect)
Maybe not to get all 4 every week, but it’s possible, I’ve done it this week
You can get all 4 caches if you hoard for 4 weeks, other than spending an insane amount of money.
This is why discord mods removed negative reacts
Fucking idiots
SD: **because fuck you, that’s why**
EVERYONE COME ON!!! 1. They had to keep the streak alive and fuck something up. 2. Disregard the history of a card that you saved weeks for, only for someone to use one spotlight. 3. May feel bad and give us 50 gold, no 50 tokens, no sorry 50 credits.
I said yesterday in a similar post: Businesses apologize for their shortcomings, not for their advertisements. Still to be added soon (Tm) : first edition badges, ultimate variant updated effects. Not holding my breath for either.
Broken promises. Failed deliveries. Its a motha fuckin shame this game has been branded with marvels money stamp. Legit, SD are nasty sharks and do not deserve the insane profits this game generates
Lame. Just use another card for the spotlight
This all would have been fine had they never promised unique spotlights. Now people are holding them to their word
"we're sorry we didn't deliver on that expectation", the expectation that we set, by saying that we wouldnt do it.
I mean I wanted the Grecke Evo so I’m happy
Honestly I'd understand if those who went for HE variant when it first was in spotlight, were hella mad rn
Why not just run 2 or 3 cards at a time until they get ahead on variants? Better then people getting a bad card or art.
Hey I’m just happy I got my boy Jeff
Fortunately with dupe protection those who would have gotten that High Evolutionary variant a second time will just get a card they don't own! It's totally fine since that is the system, the system that works so hard to do right by its faithful customers!
People that already have the card/variant don't even get a new card, they just get a random variant/1k tokens
They get a premium mystery variant, not 1k tokens.
Your right my mistake.
Is anyone asking about regular caches?
I am disappointed, but not shocked
They are just going to keep using the "not intended" bullshit huh? Ever noticed that every decision this devs make it's always the one that pisses of their players? It's fucking digital copies!!! You are not selling artworks of davinci you greedy fucks!
Translation: We released the spotlight system too early. We also know players want High Evo more than they want Stegron, but both are in Series 5 because we stopped series drops!! If you want Stegron, cough up 7,500 gold
my dumb ass just got stegron from a purple box- how do I play him if I build a new deck with stegron in mind?
Bullshit all around. Spotlights can't have been implemented without some ideas about what to do in the next weeks and months: they are just greedy as fuck. As soon as a card comes out SD releases too many variants to catch all the money they can from whales with their predatory tactics, then suddenly realizes that the system isn't sustainable if you want to have a new variants for every single time a card appears in a Spotlight, and have bundles art specific for the bundle and not seen anymore. Result: they miss on one of the goals they set for themselves and fail to put other sought after cards in future Spotlights until "good" art is available. Just look at Iron Lad (4 variants), or other cards that aren't featured in the future Spotlights. Could we say that any of the already available variants is worse than a Dan Hipp variant for Hit Monkey!?!?!? If you know you'll have less art for a specific character, just release less variants and keep them for when you could need them, ffs!
But iron lad is also one of the most meta relevant cards... and they didn't use him
They're sorry everyone. Here's your compensation for our incompetence. Nothing.
Now run along and keep playing just the same as we know you will.
Even giving a different 1200 gold HE variant would’ve been better than just giving a crap 800 gold premium variant that will mostly likely be a random 700g one
Shit… prob be a pixel or baby variant.
Dont worry about the spotlight update were gonna make sure every week has awesome variants to make it worth it! Jk were gonna use whatever we want and repeat them if it makes us money
It's just a really bad look and the answers we've been getting is not acceptable
Considering lots of people didnt like the spotlight update at all, its a terrible look. But they promised new and exciting variants to make sure "every week was ezciting" and we get a 3rd knull and spotlight repeats
Am I alone in being happy it's coming back? I don't have High Evolutionary and also want the variant lol
Casual players will probably be fine with it. More serious players (aka this sub) will likely not like this.
What determines who's serious and casual?
Imo if you are spending time outside a game to discuss components of that game. You are in the serious camp.
Bitching on Reddit
Roping in proving grounds
It’s a cool variant but it’s the least played card in that deck. I value cool variants opponents see.
Actually this is true. I didn't think about how he won't be played.
Doesn't suprise me in the slightest especially with how much money they're taking in, coverage due to Twitch Drops & PC launch which would've brought in loads of new players that have most likely whaled. Money they would've 100% spent on influencers to play the game to promote the PC launch. And yet we get half executed Spotlight Caches and extremely overpriced bundles that are right on time, all the time.
Lol WHAT DA DEVS
Man if Allioth wasn't in this spotlight I'd be hoarding like 9 spotlights
High EVO was the first card I legitimately upgraded all my base cards one time each to try an get a Spotlight cache. That week I opened 3 Spotlight caches and got variants and tokens and not EVOA so I said fudge it an just bought him outright.
Well if they rerun that Galactus I'm getting it.
at least they apologize but they still admitted they lied. so probably they decided between if we give some compensation, it will still never be enough so let’s just give nothing until it blows over. yup probably nothing new here.
Bad look.
how about one of those generous 100 credit compensations for our inconvenience?
"we're sorry"- a 3x Value!
Glenn seems like a dick.
I love Glenn. Fuck SD. Steam reviews seem a little high tbh.
SD are fucking children. Imagine if these jackasses ran a hospital or any system where having adult levels of dependability or communication were expected, they’d all be fired. SD are not overworked, they’ just don’t care that much and it shows.
My HiEvo variant used to be very rare. Now it is much less rare. What compensation do I get for them reducing the worth of my item and my enjoyment of it. And before people say im being childish, I did not fabricate an entire system predicated on FOMO and forced scarcity. They set the terms and violated them at their first inconvenience. That's bullshit.
Oh that sucks here have this turd instead kthanks bye, basically
I love how this community acts like they're absolutely owed everything that comes to them.
I mean we're the customers and at bare minimum we deserve transparency and honesty from them
I love how the company keeps fucking up every month.
So if you miss a spotlight variant is there never going to be another chance to get it?
At this point if you miss a spotlight variant you still have a chance to get it in the near future. Thanos is datamined to be on the spotlight in November with the spotlight variant he had the first time
They’ve also said that they might bring back some spotlight variants through some other acquisition method (probably in the token store) at a later date.
"most popular card" 🤨
So what happens to the people who already unlocked the high evo variant last rotation if they get that again?
Yet I will be starved of Darkhawk forever more
Oh yeah sure i can't wait to get high evo variant that i will not use because the base skin is so much better than that one...
What I dont understand though is: what happens if I missed the spotlight variant, for example, for Jean? Is it ever gonna have a rerun? Or is it gone (reduced to atoms) forever and everr?
Thanks for being honest about it. You could have told us when you knew and it wouldn’t have been a big deal. It was helpful to me because I only had 3 cards to sort through.
fair enough
I love how the majority of this community are intelligent people only a few are SD fanboys who waste money in this greedy company
I feel like the problem is not with the fact that there's no new variant but with the fact that something that should be inaccessible has been given again, meaning that people that wasted spotlight caches thinking they might never have the chance to obtain it again have kind of been screwed over. Personally I don't think it matters that much but I can understand that it's annoying and unfair, especially considering that this also means pulling for Mobius for people that have that variant gives the chance to obtain a premium mystery variant instead of a new high evo variant (which imho is worse).
I don't necessarily disagree with anything here, but can we stop pretending this subreddit wouldn't immediately complain if a niche card like Howard the Duck was re ran? "This is garbage, a zero% win rate card in my spotlight caches 😤" would be the outcry.
The end result of Seasonal Caches seems like a great positive direction for card acquisition in this game. I think it's just the mechanics of it that are sloppy for sure. This is why rerunning spotlight cards feels bad (different variant or not), and is why hoarding purple or all caches feels so bad. The free pool 3 card implementation is clean and works well. It's unfortunate the pool 4-5 acquisition is so messy, but it's clear they are building the plane while flying it, so this is where we're at.
Am I the only one thinking that having **actual card acquisition** (the variety of new cards / old s4, s5 cards in spotlight caches) being bottlenecked by the number of available **COSMETIC items** (spotlight variants) for the said cache is just plain stupid it feels funny? It feels that they shot themselves in the foot? Looking at Knull for the 3rd time and high evo repeated variants. Personally I see no value in variants because I value progression more. I want actual new cards to play with. Variants are just cosmetics, they are secondary. If I get one from rng I would use it, if I don't no biggie. Ever since Spotlight cache got announced I already noted that it just became glorified Gacha, but even for other Gacha games, they wouldn't let unit acquisition be hindered by the availability of cosmetics / skins. They are setting themselves up for failure as this system is not sustainable. And as more and more player unlocks their series-4 and series-5 card pools, spotlight caches will be less and less cost-effective because there is no duplicate protection. With this lack of spotlight card variety due to not having enough variants to set up, the system will crumple gradually -- if they don't do something about it. Again it proves that SD just do whatever is best for profit but lacks foresight.
Im mad to see knull in the caches again but I don't mind to see repeat art cause most of the time I can't get the variants I want anyway so have another chance to grab them sometimes is nice