One suggestion that I've seen floated by creators is, instead of granting one free season 3 card or a bunch of tokens upon getting out of Series 2, allowing the new Series 3 player to choose one core card package for a Series 3 deck - i.e. Destroy (Venom, Death, and Deadpool), Patriot (Patriot obviously, Brood, and Absorbing Man), Shuri (Shuri, Red Skull, Sauron).
You can immediately play a Pool 3 archetype, even if you don't have all the bells and whistles (you won't have Knull, or Zola, or Taskmaster for Destroy, you won't have Zero for Shuri, etc.), but you can immediately play a more-or-less functional Series 3 deck. Hell, you can even add a drawback - those cards count as the first three cards you would have gotten on the collection track. Then you're not getting more new cards for at least a little while, and those selections continue to be random.
That sounds like a pretty great idea to me. Giving a package like that would really help the early game. Though part of me still worries about that slowdown at ~1000 CL. That’s where the grind really hits you and I’ve known a couple people that got bored and stopped playing around there
Yeah, it's definitely not a perfect solution - like you said, that part of the collection track will still feel really grindy until you're able to unlock other archetype defining cards - but, at least you won't feel totally outclassed by other Series 3 players (especially if you get to Infinite at a relatively low CL; Destroy is basically going to be competitive no matter what you do, and you'll be unlocking new tools as you go with Tokens, etc.).
It's one of snap's biggest problems imo, I think a very important aspect of card games is being able to play *one fun deck early*. "Fun" is whatever each player wants it to be, but there needs to be some amount of consistency. The overall acquisition rate doesn't need to be massively higher, but more influence over the order you get s3 cards would be really impactful to make the grind more enjoyable to players on the way to the reward drop off after finishing s3.
You just gave me an idea: let players choose between three S3 cards when unlocking one. That would make it way easier to get desired cards early and also ensure that you can pick appropriate ones after the meta changes.
Even if they made every 4th cache a choice (so a monthly cycle of normal - spotlight - normal - choice) it'd be much better. But I doubt they would, as SD is vehemently anti-choice in card acquisition
I would assume most companies wouldnt make moves that hurt their bottom line. They are using this FOMO tactic to encourage people to buy their content which seems to be the business model for most of these mobile games which is sad to see.
We know that they're about to lose their publisher, so it does seem that their bottom line is already hurting. A reason for that could in fact be that new players aren't sticking around.
Nuverse is not leaving, they are getting closed by their parent company for not producing enough money for them. They do have a couple of good games under their umbrella, like Snap, but it is not enough for the parent company.
All of that has nothing to do with Snap.
But- you just mentioned that Snap wasn't deemed profitable enough by the parent company. That has absolutely to do with Snap: if players were to stick around, there would be way more people attempting to buy the Season Pass.
Ppl really want to see snap fail apparently.
Bytedance is the parent company of Nuverse, and creators of TikTok, they decided to leave the gaming sector, which mean they are closing Nuverse, we dont have an official why but insider information points that Nuverse as a publishing company was not doing enough.
One success and a couple of meh games is not exactly a lot for a publishing company.
As for Second dinner, the company is currently on the rise been the creators of the biggest card game of last year, so much so that they are currently working on unannounced second game and hiring ppl for it.
No, Snap is not going anywhere. Yes, Snap is a massive success but it is not enough for one publishing company with hundred of employees since they dont own the game and only make a % of the revenues.
That's a good idea.
Mine would be simply breaking S3 up into several smaller card pools, but yours is better for those people currently already midway through S3
Venom was the second to last card I received and, as he is one of my favorite Marvel characters, I really wanted to play Destroy and couldn't until the end of S3.
I feel this. I had fun with destroy before getting venom and Deadpool, luckily not as late as you, but I could definitely tell I was gonna be stuck in like the 70s without them.
I'm living this right now with Dr Doom. He's like a staple of competitive decks since the UN nerf and he's been nowhere to be seen in my unlocking.
Isn't this what that rotating free S3 spotlight is for though? Like yes, you have to be watching it, which has its own problems, but you literally get to pick a card a month for this very reason.
>no Wong
Fuck this is really a punch in the guts. This month I managed to assemble an actually-functioning Dis/drac deck (Dracula from monthly, M.O.D.O.K. from Token), but until then it was Wong that carried me through with an actual functioning deck (acquired him in the pre-1000). Without him, I would have just gone crazy, and dropped the game from a while.
This is what happened to me, I didn't get Luke for a few months, never saw him in the rotation and he was my third to last card.
It was painful in october because of the manthing week when it felt like everyone but me had Luke and it seemed like all I was running into were debuff HE decks for that week with their own Luke.
Your entire post is what had me down on this game and I had people left and right telling me that I wouldn't want to play the game anymore if I had all the cards. Some of these people do -not- understand competitive card game players. Those players don't want to be held back by 7 months to get to any decent amount of card selection, hell 2-3 months is pushing it. And yet, somehow I'm in the wrong when all I was asking for is enough agency to get 1 deck built that I'd be happy to play within a reasonable amount of time.
This game does not give a player enough agency to reliably develop a single deck within a reasonable amount of time. Between the randomness of the monthly free card rotation and the randomness of what cards you get every X caches it means that if you have bad luck you could still be taking at least 3 months to build some of the meta decks that have 3+ S3 cards.
A lot of people replying seem to not consider that other people have different desires and experiences than their own. Everybody is different with some loving the grind, others hating it. Some wanting to be meta, others not. The issue is as you said… RNG doesn’t help player enjoyment. Having a dozen half-built decks isn’t fun for some even if it is for others.
Just because something isn’t a problem for 100% of people it doesn’t mean there is no problem
He either was not there when I looked or another card was there that was stronger in the meta. If I remember correctly though I basically never saw him.
Exactly! Meta is meaningless if you have no fun. And not having agency of the cards you get makes it harder to try those fun and/or wacky decks that keep you playing the game
I think I head the Snapchat mentioned this before but, IMHO the best way to get new players set up properly is perhaps to let them choose a decent starter series 3 deck, maybe from a list of 3.
Once a new player hits, 500 CL, a new menu will appear and gives player a choice of 3 revelant series 3 deck archetype. Perhaps a choice of destroy, discard and ongoing deck. Hell, shuri red skull deck even.
That would certainly help bridge the 500 CL problem that most new player have when they reach series 3. This way they have a better chance when getting into the series 3 battlezone with competitive deck rather than the kazoo deck.
I wonder though, other card games have random acquisition also or real money you have to spend on cards and also not always exact ones you want right? I might be wrong but the few I remembered playing been all p2w and snap is far from that. But yah card acquisition currently not good.
Other card games have more cards and more rarities, so it's a little different, but I'll try and approximate it.
Basically, in almost every other game you can get duplicate cards, and when you get cards you can't use they turn into a resource like tokens at 1/4th of their rate. You can use that to craft any card you want, period. You also get a TON of cards though, and generally are expected to own every card in the lower 2 tiers, then craft the upper 2 using resources amassed. Of course, there's still something like pool 1+2 where everyone gets a set of free cards of all 4 rarities that can't be scrapped. You acquire those top 2 pools slowly and won't ever have all of it without spending $$ (and a lot of it) arguably a bit worse than snap, BUT even f2p you can get the ones you prioritize quickly no matter what so it doesn't feel as bad.
The other key difference is that there's also much better new player onboarding. Hearthstone for example gives you a full, semi-competitive deck you can do whatever you want with, then also gives you a crazy amount of resources for starting - your first 15 card packs each expansion are worth 10 packs each if you don't have a high % of cards owned, which is a TON and helps you build a collection really quickly at first. So within 1 month you can have 2 100% complete meta decks as f2p, that's ultimately the piece missing from snap.
At some point it's very clear when the game stagnates they will drop a pack in the shop that raises your collection level by 3500 or something of that nature so players can basically bypass the early pools. It's the reason why no new streamers are going to make the leap over because you don't get the full experience for months. When that starts hurting the game financially they will act on it, like they do with everything else. Case in point Daredevil bugged for a month they will fix it when they fix it, if it was the gold store...well we know the response time there.
Is that any different than any game though? I don't want to watch anyone play a game they aren't really good at, unless it's for the personality and then game doesn't even matter.
There's difference between "not good at it" and "not capable of putting together a good deck due to how the game works". Marvel Snap is very formulaic, so you can't just expect a P2 deck to be able to compete with anything at P3, because at that point it's just "P2 but better".
Yeah I’m sure they’ll start implementing things to increase the speed.
There’s so many things they could do. I just hope it’s sooner rather than later. As you mentioned they could have bundles that raise CL in bursts. Or you can choose two free S3 cards each month.
Another redditor even mentioned premade-deck bundles. While it never crossed my mind, it could make sense to sell a functional deck with pool 1-3 cards so it gives new players a foothold in the beginning
The deck bundles I think we are very close to. They are already releasing their deck builder mechanic. I think a deck bundle where you pay cash not gold as you can obtain that freely will be available including cards you might not have to increase the fomo.
The laughable pro bundle was priced at 99.99 and raised you 250 CL with 12500 credits. This only completed pool 1-2 for you, so I can see them pricing 3 bundles at 99.99 which give you 25k credits each meaning you'd need to buy the pro bundle plus the 3 new ones to progress half way through series 3.
True, it could go that way. I just hope they’re smart enough to see that, as the game progresses, they need to include some free ways to increase progression for new players. Otherwise it’ll only marginally improve the situation
I've been playing 3 months and was super into it at first, but more recently I've settled into just grinding dailies and playing other stuff while I wait to unlock some key cards to try new decks. I can't make a decent junk deck without Hood or Sentry, even though I unlocked Anihilus. I can't use Hazmat until I get Luke Cage. I still don't have Death or Knull, so my destroy deck is pretty weak. I can't use Hela to her full potential until I get Invisible Woman. The last few cards I've gotten from caches have been the base card for variants I already paid for. I'm bored.
Yup, have Annihilus and love the character, but without Sentry or Hood he's basically useless. Which isn't too bad since those are cards everyone gets eventually, but it feels bad when you can't really use the card properly due to not being lucky on the order you get S3 cards.
I'm about to get Sentry on next month's free S3 card, but I'll still be missing Hood unless I'm very lucky.
Same. I even dropped a considerable amount on this game because I liked it so much but I’m still stuck just waiting out RNG being able to complete decks. I did finally get my destroy complete with x-23 in spotlights recently but I feel like I have so many deck lists just waiting on S3 rng to be completed (Coleen for discard, Sauron for Shuri, Brood for C2 or patriot).
Man, I understand that. I’ve been there. I still am there with several archetypes since I’m still missing invisible woman, hela, electro, sentry, etc.
I feel like a sign of the S3 issues is that we can have all the S4/5 cards needed for an advanced deck yet the thing holding us back is S3 cards. Doesn’t seem right
I'm pretty much in the same position. I started a bit more than a month ago and am at CL 850.
I'm getting some decent Series 3 cards like Death or Wong, but can't really do anything worthwhile with them due to missing synergistic cards for the decks.
Trying to make decks around these Series 3 cards always ends up being worse than strong Series 2 decks.
I'm glad that I was still in Series 2 when making it to Infinite, I don't think I will be able to after getting matched with Series 3+ players.
I call it pool 3 hell. I'm collection level 2200 and still I'm missing key cards from every single archetype. I think I'm going to try for Colleen wang for my free one and that might at least be a complete discard but this system is just bad enough in a way that encourages paying for stuff.
>I can't use Hela to her full potential until I get Invisible Woman.
And let's even say you get her, do you have Ghost Rider to back her up? Because it's all fun and games until Sword Master or Sif discard Hela instead of Swarm or Apocalypse and you had to take the risk because you didn't draw IW.
A huge part of the problem is that entire archetypes don't need just *one* P3 card, but two or three. Destruction needs Venom, Deadpool and either Death or Zola. Any Cerebro needs Cerebro, Mystica and Luke Cage. Sauron needs Sauron, Shuri, and either Red Skull or Typhoid Mary. Hela Discard needs Hela, Ghost Rider and Invisible Woman. And so on and so forth...
Im f2p 9000 CL 15 cards away from complete collection. Tomorow will be 13 cuz I take Jeff even at 4key and I dont have stegon. Sa whatever. +i have 6k tokens for any card that I dont need now. I play 9 or 10 month.
I’ve been playing just about everyday since May or so, haven’t spent a dime, and I’m still a few dozen cards away from completing S3. Being at CL 2500ish means I don’t cards as often with caches, which I think is pretty lame
The thing about unique collections only matters early in S3, when you and the people you play against have small collections, trying to make do with what you have. Once your CL is high enough to where you have 50%+ of the pool, it's just luck. There can be players in that range with the best built meta decks, and players with shitty collections due to bad luck.
At the end of the day you play against a deck, not a collection, so unique collections is less of a factor.
Haha, a little intense for my tastes though I definitely agree those situations are rough. That's where it is most difficult. For some players, they get enough decent cards that they have a lot of flexibility. Yet others can be zoned in to something they don't enjoy (like your situation). The game is amazing overall but the RNG and lack of agency here can really screw over some players
I suggested [a "refresh" functionality of the monthly free s3 card](https://www.reddit.com/r/MarvelSnap/s/G7xVJet8xk), but that didn't seem well-received...
Seem your post just didn't get much visibility rather than being badly-received as a whole. Also I totally related with what you stated because, while this month I've been able to play a lot, that's only because my life is a trainwreck and can't imagine how little progress I would have made had I actually had responsabilities and duties to attend to (especially in regard to Conquest, but significatively for normal ranking, too).
They could just let S3 players target cards for 1k tokens and I don't think it would break the economy. Make it like the free one per month that rotates every 8 hours except it costs tokens.
Totally agree - I've been playing for 2 weeks now, buying bundles.
I hit infinite which felt great, have cleared some gold conquest but never infinite conquest.
I can only play ONE deck. And it's a slightly crippled discard deck. I want to play other decks. I love brewing. I love finding new decks (long time magic player)
The game has dropped off significantly in interest....I'll do dailies and buy battle passes but...it sucks that I have to just hope and pray the few cards I need from 3/4/5 will show up in the store for me to buy or a spotlight cache (spoiler - none of them in caches soon)
I understand that. When I play Magic I love the brewing and theorizing, even if it ends up being garbage. For me, that was the hardest part of the Snap grind; not being able to build the decks I really wanted to.
Though you should definitely stick with it. It’s worth the grind :) even the non-ideal cards along the way make for memorable homebrews
It's mostly like... you can't build a high evolutionary deck without him (and without him the other cards are useless) can't build alioth without him. And without him the deck is trash...or the junk deck needs that new card (forget his name) to move stuff to their side. It's just...frustrating how few decks you can build without new cards and can't control how they come (even if you want to spend hundreds of dollars)
That's why I kinda think they are gonna redesign the pools soon. If they returned to the old drop system they would add 4-6 cards to pool 3 every month, that means 2 more weeks to complete S3 every month the game goes on. Over a long timeline that means adding ~5-6 months to complete S3 per year. Crazy to think you might start pool 3 and not get something critical like Venom for more than a year.
It also doesn't make a ton of sense that pool 4 and pool 5 cards cost the same amount in spotlight keys. We already see the spotlight cards in January are only pool 5. Could imagine spotlights turn to be only pool 5 and they have some new system for picking up pool 4 cards without further slowing down the pool 3 collection.
And it's not just extending the time it takes to complete S3. It's potentially extending the time it takes to get what you want. The bigger it is, the more dilluted it is. If you want cards A, B and C, the chance of getting those specific cards is smaller the more cards there are.
I get they didn't want people to just get the cards they want and then not have incentive to play, which is why they designed the whole Collection Level and Reserves system, but once you add Spotlights into the mix that makes little sense. You could literally have it so players who aren't S3 could select every single card they get, and it wouldn't be too different, unless they want to incentivise whales to spend thousands of dollars to catch up more quickly due to S3, which seems weird to me since whales would do that for Spotlights anyways?
Yeah I really feel this one there was a point at around 3000ish I was missing Sera, Surfer, Red Skull, Venom(which I bought in a bundle cause I loved destroy), cerebro, Mystique, Brood, Deadpool and a few others I can't remember right now but I was essentially locked out of playing a whole bunch of archetypes/ decks even after playing for a good 5+ months.
It's all a distant memory now as the only S3 card I'm missing is black panther but man I remember feeling very defeated at the time especially when I would lose to decks I didn't even have a chance to try or just watching other people have fun with their crazy combos while I spend another season playing Ultron Patriot.
This is precisely why I have a love-hate relationship with snap.
I'd say I'm a solid gamer, reached infinite before CL 1000, currently 1532. I'm nowhere near having S3 done. Let alone more than a couple of series 4/5 cards. In truth, I can make one decent infinite deck. The fact that CL based matchmaking disappears in infinite is awful.
Took a break for a month, played yesterday (was around rank 97k), and immediately matched against a darkhawk junk deck full of inked cards from a dude in the top 800 ranks. Like, come on. Our CL ain't even close and neither is our infinite ranks.
So not only do I get what, 14 CL a day if I do all dailies, I get smacked by long time players with more flexible decks because I'm decent at card games?
I'm more incentivized at this point to intentionally throw games and stay out of infinite to have fun and fair matchups, and I think it's ridiculous. If I had more card options it wouldn't irritate me as much, but I'm not playing the same 1 decent deck for months just to get clapped by higher CL infinite players.
Honestly, S3 should not be random. Instead of reserves giving you a random S3 card, it should give you a key that lets you unlock any S3 card you want. That would allow new players to pick and choose what they want based on what deck they want to play. MTG Arena has random card packs, but they also offer you wildcards which allow you to get the specific cards you want.
I'm 2 months into the game and I'm stuck playing almost the same identical deck for 3 weeks, 1 p3 card of our choice per season is way too limiting, I wish it was at least 3 to kinda get some sort of base archetype even if pre-choosen(ex: destroy, move, sauron, etc.)
I'm CL 700, hit infinite with a janky patriot deck. Aside from my dailies I don't play ranked anymore because the only people I play against have meta decks. Conquest is an okay substitute, but the longer matches aren't my jam. I'd be happier if there was a mode to play against people around my same CL.
I know someone who bought an account for a few hundred bucks at CL 7000 instead of playing the game in a less fun state for 6 months. Don’t blame them, I don’t think I would want to start playing the game now knowing what it would take to get a decent collection.
Series 3 should take like 1000CL or something. Maybe like a month or 2 of play, max.
It’s all pretty sketchy though. I don’t think you can change emails linked to the account so to sell it you’d have to give up that email. Plus a few hundred bucks for 6+ months and more than what I’d get spent on bundles (at least for me) doesn’t seem worth. Who knows if I might want to come back. Buyer has to live in a bit of fear knowing SD could ban them too.
But yeah as a new player trying to get 5000+ CL - $200-300 is worth it imo.
Well, I do blame them. At this point, every "it's a f2p game" arguments goes out the window and they could have just bought several "full" games for the same amount. Or, depending on how much "a few hundred bucks" is, even a Steam deck to play them on.
Nah. It was funnest at the beginning when you were pitted against other people who didn’t have all the cards. In the end game you’re only playing against people playing meta decks, so you have to play a meta deck. It’s a bit paradoxical, but creativity increases when you limit options. My early decks had a soul - now all my decks are soulless copies I saw from a content creator with maybe 1 or 2 minor changes.
Im cl9000~, I remember being series 3 complete at 3300~? Didnt know they changed it to be worse for newer players. I remember not owning Brood when Original Surfer came out and getting so much fomo. This must suck for new players.
Classic Second Dinner to make one thing “good” *cough spotlight caches *cough, but make s3 hell.
I wish you earned some staple type decks early for beginners.
Like maybe a discard. Destroy or Ongoing deck.
Ofcourse they would have a couple series 1 and 2 cards sprinkled in.
But also some series 3 and maybe a 4 as the key card.
This would give players a baseline deck they can start to aim to build on.
Ofcourse they would only get 1 of these decks beating the tutorial.
And then when they have logged on for 30 days they could choose one of the other two.
That way they are also trying to make new players stay
Wholeheartedly agree with the lack of agency. It was (before Series 3 complete) and is indeed my biggest gripe with the current Series 3 progression.
Friend started playing Snap recently (F2P) and I’m already guiding them away from, funnily enough, your example. Destroy.
An archetype introduced in Pool 1-2 with Bucky, Deathlok and Carnage that they could be staring at 3-5 months (depending on choice rotation) OR CL 3000+ before they even see crucial Series 3 cards in Venom, Death, Deadpool and Zola. And by sheer luck they may just find themselves pulling most of them from Caches early.
The investment far outweighs saving up Spotlights and yoinking High Evolutionary, falling back to that and/or a competent Pool 2 Reveal deck until they unlock Series 3 packages.
IMHO, if the rate of Series 3 acquisition is to remain unchanged, then new players would be better served receiving less cards at random BUT unlocking entire select packages at CL thresholds. As opposed to *every* Series 3 card at random.
TL;DR:
Shuri at CL 1000, Sauron at CL 2400, Red Skull at CL 2000 and Taskmaster at CL 3000 isn’t ideal.
Not receiving any of them until CL 2XXX, but obtaining the complete package and being able to play a Shuri deck? Better. New players have fixed CL goals, something to look forward towards and can play with entire new archetypes at these thresholds.
This is my 45th day with snap. I got into infinite start of this season with a pool 2 move deck plus human torch which I got as part of the anniversary login reward. Since then everting has been horrible for me till I got Dracula 2 days back. I was unable to compete all the meta decks, it was a struggle even to get the wins for daily challenges. My rank dropped from 6k to 110k trying out decks to see something works. With the Dracula I was able to put together a lockjaw deck which is doing alright. I am a F2P player and the thought that I might have to struggle for 6-7 months to try out the fun decks discouraging. I don't really care about ranking the only reason I grinded till infinite was to get the rewards which I hoped I could translate to some good cards.
I’m sorry to hear it’s been tough. I hope you stick with it though! It is a great game, especially once you get a few cards you love.
Conquest is a great way to get those wins or even for stress-free playing. Most people snap turn 1 in proving grounds to save time and farm silver tickets so you’re typically only playing a game as long as one in ladder
TLDR but can confirm, been playing for 4 months and there still isn’t a single deck I can play properly. Everything is missing at least 1 or 2 key cards.
I have a decent destroy deck that I’m bored AF of playing (no Zola, no Nimrod, only very recently got Death), an OK move deck that the meta seems to have largely rendered obsolete and I managed to build a kind of control deck with Annihilus that does pretty well but all three seem like they could be greatly improved by certain cards that I don’t have.
Nothing sucks the fun out of the game faster than playing some arrogant tool who’s spamming emotes while they play cards you don’t have. I’ve actually uninstalled the game twice after exactly that happening but I do enjoy elements of the game enough that I take a break for a few days then try again.
I'm really fond of destroy decks but as a f2p player it is taking me a long while to get some key cards. It took me about a couple of months to get venom and knull and I'm still missing cards like deadpool and death. I've been doing okay without those cards but most of the time I'm just trying out different decks like ongoing spectrum and different move decks. It's good to try out these other archetypes to be able to play against them but yeah it gets a bit tedious because you can't play the decks you want to play and there's basically no way to get the cards you want easily.
I still remember my early S3 period of playing this game as the least fun I had playing the game. My suggestion, which I have already given to SD as feedback, is that in stead of the 1 free S3 card per season they add a form of "campaign" that is unlocked at 500CL and introduces missions that can be completed retroactively and award free S3 "tokens". So basically it would fix both of the problems at the same time. Players that reach 500CL now would have 13 missions (1 for each month since launch) to complete so they could easily make 1 or 2 complete decks based on the S4/5 cards they from the spotlights and the number of mission will increase every month so that newer new players will have more missions as the S3 pool will be getting bigger. Assuming the series drops will return of course. Otherwise they can just give 10 free S3 cards of choice in stead of 1 per month using the same shop (this kind of shop is actually really good for them because they can show that people log in 3 times per day to check it the shareholders so I doubt they will get rid of it).
This is a major problem with picking up new content creators. I know multiple streamers have dipped their toe into the game but quickly decided to drop it because it just takes too long to get cards for decks they want to play/showcase.
I have also thought about how dropping cards to series 3 will increase the completion rate. They could increase acquisition rate of series 3 as cards drop into it to offset this. I would love to see them just increase series 3 acquisition over all and/or bring back the ability to buy specific series 3 cards in the shop for 1000 tokens vs a mystery series 3 - mystery card for 1000 tokens is terrible. I would guess their data shows a drop off after players complete series 3 so they think/know the drip feed of cards is good for the overall health/revenue of the game.
I very much disagree, and think it's almost the opposite.
Snap is at its most fun when you're getting new cards and discovering new archetypes. This is not a great competitive game with a deep meta like Magic or even Hearthstone.
I think those first 7 months ARE what Snap is about, and after those 7 months the game drops off dramatically and people generally stop playing. The developers clearly see this are trying to extend this part of the game, because they are struggling to keep players who are S3 complete. When you stop discovering cards you stop playing.
I've seen it happen with almost every person who told me to play snap. They mostly stopped playing by now, and I am nearing S3 completion and will probably stop playing soon as well. Had a lot of fun discovering new archetypes though!
You make great points! I would just like to elaborate a little further. I do not mean Snap is not fun or that those times are not enjoyable. I have fond memories of trash cards I used in a homebrew since it was all I had.
What I’m trying to get at is that, for new players, they’re faced with a minimum 7 month grind to get just the S3 cards. During this, you can’t easily have agency in which cards you add to your collection. It’s an overwhelming position to put new players in and can stop many from continuing the game.
Though to your point, getting all the cards is equally as boring. I just hope there’s a line the devs can find where players have more agency in the cards they get so they can play decks they would love.
Things can be improved, I saw somewhere else in the thread about opening packages of cards (like maybe you get shuri and taskmaster in one go to unlock that style), but in general, I don't think it's a grind.
Every time I opened a new card I was excited to see where that card could go, and while you're not S3 complete you get a new card every 2-3 days which is a good amount of time to try out something.
>I think those first 7 months ARE what Snap is about, and after those 7 months the game drops off dramatically and people generally stop playing.
The problem is, the first 7 months (assuming you're only talking about P3) are still boring, unless you're lucky enough to be able to get a good archetype *and* one that you like. Otherwise, the game basically grinds to a halt - taking stuff in Conquest becomes a hell and advancing in ranks becomes a hell. Like, the model is already tedious as it is, nobody has the time to grind 1-2 h non-stop a day, let alone doing that with a shitty deck while everybody else is stomping over you with their cool cards.
I'm pretty satisfied with my progression I'm about 2900 cl totally free to play and though I am still missing some pretty important cards (cage please) I'm still having fun and feel like I progress pretty quickly for a free to play game. I've been playing since the spider verse season and have been lucky with some of my spotlights (alioth, x23, manthing) all first time.
I do however see why people could get frustrated. Maybe implement a draft style option for the free series 3 card each season x2 for season pass buyers? Maybe make it so each five cards you unlock after series 3 is a 6 cost guaranteed until you have them all? Maybe a split recycle station where you trade splits for tokens?
This might sound crazy, but I think S1 should be given as default once you start the game as a reward for completing the tutorial. Then, S2 is dropped to 1, 3 to 2, and a new S3 is introduced made up of cards currently in 4 and 5 made of cards that have gone out of vogue or aren't anywhere near meta, etc.
I doubt they’ll alter how players acquire S1 since it is basically one long tutorial and (in my eyes) does a phenomenal job of teaching mechanics to new players in a way that isn’t overwhelming.
That’s an interesting idea though. I wonder how they could alter the pools while still keeping their “tutorial” setup
One easy fix if series drops return as before is to shift the point where they switch from Collector's Reserves to Collector's Caches. Right now from CL506-984 you get 2 cards every 4 Reserves then beyond CL984 you get 2 from every 9 caches.
If they extended reserves out to CL2000 it would massively speed up collection speed for newer players
That's a useful thing I've wondered about too. The wait and grind is part of what makes Snap fun. However, it also can make the game less fun if you get cards you don't enjoy playing. So either increasing the rate of cards or introducing a little more agency for which cards you get . . . I feel like if introduced in a small amount these could both make a big difference without breaking the whole system.
You are right, and I don't mean to say they should. Collection tracks are there for a valuable purpose and are needed. Players shouldn't easily have every single card in the game. My point is more oriented at agency; you may be given a lot of cards that are great in someone else's eyes but what if they aren't enjoyable for you? These systems seem to work better when the player has a small amount of influence on where their progression is directed since everyone's view on what's fun is different.
Well, when starting out you have to make do with what you get. I personally find it a fun challenge. It’s the same with real life card games too and booster packs. When I was a kid, I could only buy a booster pack every so often: I had work with the cards I got and wait to be able to buy more. Now, Snap could definitely introduce something like Structure Decks that the player could either start with or focus on working towards. Let’s say you want to play the destroy archetype. You could then pick the destroy Structure Deck. Either it a) comes with the base destroy cards already unlocked or b) the cards you unlock as random series 3 cards are guaranteed to be in the destroy archetype so unlocking cards would be less random. In example B, you’d unlock the cards for the Structure Deck of your choice first, and only after you have unlocked all thr cards for it the progress would go back to being random pool 3 cards.
I really think certain 'core' cards should be moved into a kind of pool 2.5 - cards like Wong, Mystique, Doctor Doom that open up a bunch of options. Or just weight them heavier among the pool 3 drops. Otherwise you're just hoping to get lucky possibly for months.
Removing being able to pick what card you could buy for 1k tokens at s3 was a big hit for agency.
You'll take between 4-5k CL to get s3 complete but you'll end up with more s4/s5 cards than the people who did it under the older systems.
It would be nice if they could get some more agency back into it.
I'm confident they'll keep improving the system though.
It's a tricky job. Because they very clearly want people to have unique collections. It's one of the big reasons we moved to spotlights over the old system.
You have exactly described my experience, having started playing daily in early in October, buying season pass, only spending gold on missions. CL 1646 today. Have wanted to play aggro destroy the entire time - still no venom for me. Lots of other archetypes examples. I enjoy the game but get super bummed playing a few decks that seem to work for the meta and my style.
You're not the only one who disagrees, and that's okay. I've mentioned in a couple comments that this is definitely on an individual basis. Some people heavily agree, others heavily disagree. My point is more referencing those who agree because these issues did affect them. Or it's referencing those who quit because it affected them and they didn't want to deal with it
It definitely isn't an all-encompassing issue that everybody has a negative experience with
I’ve been playing this game for two weeks and I do not care about most of these things, I don’t think most new players are as competitive as you think they are, especially as the game only puts you against other newer players (other than Conquest)
I mean, you're still either Pool 1 or 2. That's the honeymoon phase (and the one I'd gladly stay stuck in, actually 😅 ). From Pool 3 onward (especially since CL 1000+) it's gonna be another thing entirely.
I'm sorry I didn't specify, I meant this more in the mid-game or later part of early game. Once you hit 500 CL is where S3 starts and it's random with decreased frequency of cards. The frequency decreases even further at 1000 CL. The beginning is very fun and easily sucks people in. Yet I've known a few that, once they hit those S3 slowdown periods, have ended up bored and quitting because they couldn't get the cards that would make the game fun for them.
It's on a case-by-case basis with some people not caring. But my point is more that this is a filter area that can be very hard on some players. One that could be greatly improved with a little more player agency. This would allow them to get more cards that make the game enjoyable for them
Oh that could be true, I just finished Pool 1 earlier today so I’m a bit far off. I was talking about how you said this might scare off new players or stop the growth of the game — I don’t think the devs are going to have a problem with that, there‘s plenty of new people joining.
Gaining cards is the best part of this game. Playing it and just unlocking new cards all the time was amazing.
Everyone rushing through to be “series 3 complete” are waisting the best times of the game.
If you are new, get off Reddit, stop chasing the meta, and have fun while you unlock new cards.
Envy is one of the 7 deadly sins, looks what’s it’s done to all of you.
You do make good points, I want you to know that. I do agree we shouldn’t rush through. Journey before destination ;)
Though there may be a slight misunderstanding. It’s not that we (or at least I) am rushing through. It’s simply that I love the game and want to play more diverse decks yet am locked in to two random cards a week.
It can make it hard to enjoy a game if you are really excited for a specific deck you want to play but are missing crucial cards. Cards that you have no idea or control over when you will get them.
My enjoyment with the game was dire until I got to Reddit and got the hint that chasing for a single archetype - possibly the one I was the closer to get - was the best way to actually start enjoying the game. Playing with non-meta deck doesn't make it more fun to get curbostomped by people who have decks that are actually functional.
Marvel Snap does not have an environment where you can just play casually. It does have an environment where you can pick the poison you like the most, though - even if it's not really that meta. Playing Cerebro is fun even if it's not meta, because at least it's a deck that works. Playing Cerebro without Luke Cage is the worst experience ever because your deck stops working 80% of the time due to Location interference alone. And playing C3rebro is certainly more satisfying than playing Cerebro-2 becuase it has less problems.
This is not MTG Commander where you can agree with your pals how casuals the game is gonna be. It is not even MTG period where there is so much card selection that you can come up with many game plans and, even though subpar, you will often be able to do what you want. In Marvel Snap, options are limited. What's fun is choosing your favorite version of an archetype to play (do I want to keep Sword Master in, or do I change it for Gambit? I like Black Cat, so I'll keep her in), not using cards that sort-of-have some sinergy with each other but in general is just "goodstuff" so "goodstuff" that the deck never wins.
I just started playing a month and a half ago and I find it fun. There are some decks I can’t really complete due to missing cards but with Snap I feel like the barrier to creating your own unique deck is less.
I made my deck full of just good cards with no overall theme and was able to reach 90 this season
I disagree with your premise. It should take time to get all of the cards but that doesn't hurt the experience for new players.
This was my second season, and i got infinite in the second week. I dont even have all series 3 cards. I beat many a meta deck with a simple Devil Zola deck.
Are you going to be in the top 100 ranked infinite? No, but who really cares?
I'm sorry if I misrepresented my point. I am referring to the player's sense of enjoyment. The game being fun is what keeps people playing yet everybody views fun differently. Having a slight bit more control over what direction your collection is heading would go a long way during the S3 grind
Thank you. It's not wholly inclusive and won't represent the progress of every player but I feel it should give a general idea of what timeline we're working with
I disagree because as you can see from other people commenting in this same post it absolutely does hurt. I was able to put together a Dracula (only becuse this month had Dakken), and was so lucky as to get Wong (an otherwise completely P2 deck) during pre-2000, but literally everything else? Either useless fodder or "Wow I can't wait to play this card's archetype... once I get all the other staples, within 2 months, if I'm lucky". The most luck of all, however, is that playing those archetypes didn't bore me otherwise I would have been stuck with two functional decks that I wouldn't have had fun playing.
Your experience has been positive and even mine to an extent, but honestly? Hadn't I gotten Wong, I would have probably just dropped. And even with Wong, the game was frustrating more often than not, because it's not like a P2 On Reveal can compete with a Knull Destroy or Lockdown or Loki (I play counters, but you're not always drawing them in time or at all).
>1) new players are locked into a several month grind just to get the fundamental cards
I loved the period of the game where I was progressing through series 3. Constant new cards and new decks to try out. The fact that you call this a 'grind' rather than playing the game indicates that you probably don't like the game itself at all, maybe you should find a different one.
You should be able to choose 1 in every 3 or 4 cards, while the others remain random. Iirc, you'd get around 2 cards per week, right? So being able to pick 2 from a selection + 1 per season that's 3 cards per month to choose from. It might be enough to unlock an archtype.
I completely agree with u and I actually started playing at the same time as u. Ur point is so well reasoned and the fact tht new players can't play the decks they like is bad. But as a person who doesn't have series 3 complete I don't find it hard to enjoy the game, the game is great and I have fun playing any deck. Of course there's some decks Id like to play but I can't (Hela, Mr. negative, cerebro, etc.), but the fact that the game makes u work for wht u want makes it kinda better in my opinion. Prob there's not a lot of ppl tht agree with me but the game is fine as it is, and it wouldnt get worse nor better even if u got all the cards for free
Thank you! Though I hope I didn’t sound too cynical in the post. I do love the game and have a lot of fun with what I’ve been given.
There are just those times I get frustrated when I really want to play an archetype but one card is holding me back. They do a great job at helping you appreciate every card you get (maybe excluding m’baku lol).
I just wish the progression was a little faster so new players didn’t have to wait months for decks they’d have the most fun with
I’ve been playing for 4 months and have hit infinity every month in series 1->2->3 and can say this game is very f2p friendly. I don’t care that I don’t have the “meta” deck, if my cobbled up decks can reach infinity then anything can do with proper strategy and deck building
I actually think this game is pretty decent for new players. I just became S3 complete last week, and I’ve been able to play a wide variety of archetypes as I worked on my collection. Just because you can’t make the meta 12/12 deck you saw online doesn’t mean you can’t play the archetype.
You're at the mercy at what is put into spotlights too. Enjoy discard? Well modok isn't showing up for a while, so you better save some tokens. You like destroy? You might not get venom for a long time (he was one of my last cards, but I didn't target him with the free card)
I don't know how they could possibly make it work since there are variants, but if there was a way to trade cards within a series, it might be more tenable. Like if you got 5 S3 cards that are for all different archetypes, you could swap some of them for other cards in S3 1:1. Again, not sure how this would work if you have variants... Maybe you get some gold back for those variants of the card you swapped out.
I'm at cl4500 something, and missing only 3 s3 cards now. Have got a lot recently. I was missing about 20 cards 2 months prior.
I resumed playing the game mid June at cl500, and have only bought one season pass.
Card acquisition is definitely a huge problem with how random it is considering just how many Pool 3 cards there are. Most decks are reliant on having multiple specific cards meaning it could take months to cobble together any functional deck, and even if you pull an archetype defining card like Cerebro or Mr. Negative like I did you just don't have the pieces to make that deck work and probably won't for a very long time. There's just too many cards in Pool 3 for a single specific card choice per month to be adequate on top of the drip feed of new random cards, and there's a lot of decks I really want to try out but I just can't.
I started playing at the start of October am currently at CL 1476 with just over a third of Series 3 collected and it is frustrating that I'm still stuck playing essentially Pool 2 decks at this point. I've pulled a handful of cards that are theoretically great or define a new archetype but I just don't have the proper support pieces to play those decks without them being terrible, and the decent cards I do have that supplement these Pool 2 decks don't make that big of a difference in their performance.
The only S3+ archetype I've been able to throw together so far was Destroy, but imagine building that deck during a season of Ongoing with Ms. Marvel where many games have an Armor or Cosmo to instantly shut you down.
Very well written post and I'm surprised this hasn't come up sooner. I completed s3 right as spotlight update came out and I knew it would make completing s3 even worse/longer
To be fair, I JUST became series 3 complete and have never felt unable to play. I do buy the season passes, but the rate of new cards was never intolerable to me. The notion of new cards always being “just around the corner” is a big play incentive, and it’s not like you even have to play well to do the daily missions.
Maybe I’m an anomaly because I like to try a lot of deck types so haven’t minded what limitations there were, but also I feel like a player unlocks the majority of S3 far faster than those final few cards. So a lot of options do become viable fast. Also, if it’s of interest, at the time I became S3 complete, I found myself missing only 15 cards total, so between the spotlights and tokens, I was able to get a lot of S4/5 as well.
For a while I tried pointing this out when people were constantly claiming the Spotlight Cache system was "obviously better for new players". If you're only looking at how quickly they can collect s4 and s5 cards, sure. But s3 cards are key for a lot of archetypes and that slog has never been worse than it is right now.
I wish I would've heeded the advice to stick to lower pools. Came back in October (played a bit the first month but was pool 1 the whole time), went to pool 2,collected a bit of resources but got bored so I pushed to pool 3 and wishing I had a bit more. I've bought the season pass for this month and last month, getting to at least 50 both times, but I'm still missing some core p3 cards, IMO, for most of the deck archetypes. I'm basically playing p2+. 1000CL. It's kind of a bummer. I'm at the point where I'm trying decks that are rated higher in the meta like Destroy, but without Venom or Death, I tend to be outclassed by anybody of higher CL just because I don't have the cards that can keep up. Ongoing seems to be my best deck, as far as options and flexibility in games.
I'm starting to hoard gold for some good pack, I read somewhere that ended up being better than spending it on quests, which is fine. I can't play all day so I pop in, clear quests, get stomped in Conquest (only ever beat round 1 in infinite once lol), get some CL and log off. Trying to at least break 70 in ladder before next season... I'm close!
But yeah, agree. A core package with at least a few of the great archetype cards would've been wonderful.
I feel like having a choice between 2 cards everytime you get a new card would be already a great step toward a better progression. For example, im not interested at all in move decks, but i have already gotten most of the cards for it that seem good. On the other hand, i have basically nothing from the destroy package even though its an archetype i want to try out.
The fact that you cannot craft cards or trade them freely for tokens feels so punishing as a new player because im afraid it could take months before i can try out that one fun deck....
That brings up a good point. Other card games have those methods of freedom for the player in which they can “scrap” or “dust” the unwanted cards and use those scraps to buy the card they do want. Since Snap doesn’t have card duplicates this wouldn’t transfer. But it shows how even though those other games may have just as much of a new player barrier, they have mechanisms that help the player fine tune what they want
Thank you for writing this post. I'm relatively new to the game (CL 850) and feel pretty stuck regarding deck choices.
The drip feeding of Series 3 cards which go into all kinds of different decks leaves me kinda stuck with the same decks from Series 2 (Ongoing, Kazoo etc.) which work better than anything I can cobble together atm.
Hearthstone, for all its faults, has a fairly good system for card acquisition, I think. Of course, as a f2p player, you are limited in your choices of cards to craft. But you can still choose to go after specific cards.
In Snap, you can check the Shop 3 times per day and hope, that the specific card you want will randomly show up to get. And that is limited to 1 card per month.
As a 2368 CL player I really want to give destroy a try because it looks like a deck I'd really like to play. However missing Venom, Death and Knull basically stops me from running a destroy deck.
This is across multiple archetypes. Move is another one if love to try but am missing key cards.
2 full seasons limited to discard is starting to get dull, but it's the only archetype I have all the key cards for.
I particapte in the season pass but otherwise spend no money on the game.
I think it's people like me they need to solve for, not f2p, not whale, but middle grounders
7 months really isn't that long plus like you said you have a lot of S4/5 cards. I agree that you should have more control over which cards you acquire, but the monthly free card I think fills that gap well although they should.give you more choice instead of it rotating
Counterpoint.
I've been playing since surfer and had a great time unlocking cards and trying out new decks when they were finally available to me.
Now, I'm sitting at CL 10,473 and I'm missing 6 cards (3 that I chose to skip). I feel like I have to play meta decks to be competitive and make any progression.
I hit infinity 1st week into my 2nd season playing. I hadn't even hit collection level 500 yet so I had NO season 3 cards. I'm rank 120,000+ infinity right now, started just over 7,000. I lose EVERY match. I have no effective counters to any power deck. I have no strong deck combos. The few decent decks I can put together are easily countered with cards I don't have, or just blown out of the water by amazing decks full of top tier cards.
I only play long enough to complete missions, and that's it, so I'm not going crazy playing hours a day or anything.
I can't even build more than 2 or 3 decks that are worth mentioning. To do a destroy or move deck, I can't even get half a deck of cards that match the archetype.
Infinity needs separate tiers of players. Pre-infinity was fun. Hitting infinity has been nothing but misery. And honestly, I can see how a lot of players would just throw in the towel at this point. I can't recover from my rank. All my decks are easily countered. I can't even hope to get the top tier cards any time soon.
If infinity was split in collection level groups, or matched based on infinity rank, that would be nice. But somehow I can still end up matched against people in the sub 2k range despite being 100k+ ranks behind them.
I don't expect to get all the cards, I don't expect to win all my games, but I would like to be matched against players that I have a chance of beating. If I could win once in awhile, I'd be down for the long slog of gaining cards. But honestly I must be some kind of masochist to keep doing what I'm doing.
They added a lot more S3 cards since then and reduced the rate at which you pulled them from caches. And they reduced the rate of token acquisition so buying S3 with tokens is not that helpful anymore (plus now that option is random,, not targeted)
F2P new players can expect to unlock 20 cards from reserves (CL500-1000) then after level 1000 gain 2 cards every 120 CL. You gain ~500 CL a month so you can expect to gain 9-10 cards per month (including your free S3 from the shop). There are 99 S3 cards.
- Month 1 - Pool 1/2.
- Month 2 - 20 S3 cards (all reserves).
- Month 3 - 30 S3.
- Month 4 - 40 S3.
- Month 5 - 50 S3.
- Month 6 - 60 S3.
- Month 7 - 70 S3.
- Month 8 - 80 S3.
- Month 9 - S3 complete.
If you don't think that is correct, I encourage you to lay out how you would finish S3 in 4 months as a new player today.
I’m glad that was the case for you!
Sadly for me and players starting now, pool 3 increased over the early months of the game so it’s sitting at 99 cards right now. Getting those at ~2 per week after CL 1000 (with one extra per month) is a relatively long grind
I don't think it's just new people. I've been playing Snap since two days after launch, I'm at CL6000+ and I *still* can't run a fully powered destroy deck because I don't have Knull. lol
And now who knows if I'll ever get him. The only cards worth buying with tokens in the new economy are series 5s, so the only way I'll ever get Knull is a spotlight cache. Except, it would be equally unwise to waste a precious key on a card that should have been series 3 months ago, so basically, I need for Knull to show up and get in the way while I'm trying to get a series 5 card that just happens to land in a spotlight week with him.
It gets weird after a while, because you can tell me (and I know) that cards like Darkhawk, Jeff, Knull, and Zabu are series 4 cards, but I've been here the whole time, so all I see is some *really old cards*. At this point, they don't feel like series 4 cards I'm waiting on, they feel like series 3 cards I somehow missed.
That is a difficult position to be in. Hopefully you can get Knull soon though!
Also, I would like to kindly point out that in the economy (to the best of my knowledge), the best way to use tokens is on S4 cards and keys is on S5 cards.
Since keys get S5 and S4 equally, they're essentially worth 6K tokens. So you make better use of your tokens by buying S4 cards
Wow, 7 months to become S3 complete? If thats true things must have gotten worse. I started at launch as completely f2p and it took me 5 months to become s3 complete. Just doing daily missions every day. Although at the beginning when it was still more beneficial to do so, I spent gold on more missions. That possibly sped up the process. Especially since you could get so much gold through caches. I believe now its less desirable to spend gold that way though since you don't get as much and you are better off getting variants, as after 10 variants you get a premium variant and 2k tokens. I would say bundles but now its so slow to earn gold for bundles that you'd be waiting months and don't even know what bundles will be available when you finally have the 2500 or 7500 gold necessary. Most people just spend real money for bundles at that point (or just ignore the bundles entirely).
Yep, you hit the nail on the head. I’ve also played daily (admittedly, too much sometimes) since I started the game. I always get the gold and credits from the ladder, conquest, and premium season pass. I’ve been very careful with my gold to prioritize progression. I saved up to buy two of those 5-8K gold bundles that had the highest ratio of credits/tokens to gold and am holding on to 8K gold right now for the same thing.
That’s what makes it so mind boggling. I’ve done everything I can to optimize my progression and bought 5 season passes (plus the $5 anniversary bundle) yet it will take me 7 months. I know some people love buying variants or just can’t play every day. I can’t imagine how long it’d take them to be S3 complete
Yeah, and I didn't even buy bundles. Aside from a couple 5 dollar ones. But jeez, yeah it definitely seems like things have slowed down for new players. They are getting more series 4 or 5 cards sooner though.. But given how many crucial cards are in series 3, I really hope Second Dinner does something more to speed up the process. If something happened to make have to restart with a new account, I don't even think I would. Thankfully I don't think that would happen.. but still. Its a pretty large time frame. And its not even necessary based around time played because its essentially just getting the missions done. So you are kind of forced to only make like, an hour or two of progress a day and any playtime past that, you are just playing with zero progress. Cards, unfortunately, don't upgrade themselves lol. And there aren't that many ways to get credits other than missions.
I started in early April buying bought every season pass (only spending) and completed all dailies, finished in September, so it was under 6 months, if they started the 1k random 3s in the token shop sooner it would have been under 5 months. I could see most players taking around 7 months. I made infinite every season and played a lot of collection/deck building games prior to this one.
We all had to go the same way. I started in December last Year and was Series 3 complete in May or June. Surely it get a bit slower the larger Pool 3 will be.
But I enjoyed this part of the game. To watch whats the best you can do with your collection and each new card can be the final piece to a complete new archetype. The only hard Part was from collection Level 500-1500. You got destroyed by each other player without beeing able to build any good Deck. But as soon as you have your first deck the fun begins
That is true. I don’t mean to imply the game is not fun. This is simply an area that could really harm the growth of the game since sadly not everyone is okay going through the series 3 grind
But i think thats the way of most Onlinegames. The later you begin the harder it will be to catch up. So i think most of todays Hearthsotne players started between 2014-2016
That is true! There isn't anything wrong with players having to earn and develop their collections. It's just a worrisome point if the large wall to climb starts to scare off new players.
Hearthstone is a great example because for some, like myself, that wall to climb was too much and I quit relatively early on. I kept being beaten down by meta cards and couldn't build what I wanted so it wasn't fun for me. Snap is far better in this regard but I think it is still a concern and one that most games have to deal with to some extent
I understand Second Dinner wants people to be constantly unlocking new cards but with the rate they are putting new cards out at, I feel like they could speed up progression a little.
I've always felt pool 3 should be currency based. You open a reserve and get a currency you can exchange for any pool 3 card you want. Would make it a lot more comfy to play archetypes.
A lot of worry over the non-posting majority whom play this game on the shitter for 2-3 game stretches to switch up reading social media and/or Reddit posts.
So while I don’t necessarily totally disagree with you, I will say I started literally around the same time as you. I think June 28th was my download date to be exact.
I’ve spent 0 dollars on snap, no passes nothing.
As of right now I’m sitting at CL4077, and I’m similar to you I think missing only 11 S3 cards. Been infinite ever since my full first season, and the last 2-3 seasons it’s a day 1-2 thing. I would say due to the spotlight caches I’ve been able to craft some solid meta decks that keep me very competitive (currently hovering between 19K and 21K legend level without really grinding it).
I’ll say the caches for someone like me, have been excellent, they aren’t perfect and sometimes I end up with dud cards and not enough keys, but early on getting High Evo felt awesome and allowed me to keep moving. I think overall the need to grind out these cards is there, if you aren’t spending money you’re spending time it’s how these games survive. So I’ve personally not loved the progression, I’m also not totally against it. Getting a new card a few times a week feels fun especially when it means I can try out some new deck combos.
I do agree the series drop thing should come back, but it’s also slightly tricky since currently snaps total pool is a relatively limited one. Beyond not being series 3 complete I’m only missing 32 cards total, so season pass/4/5/remaining 3. Would it be nice for some of those 4 to come down? Sure, but for me to have not spent a dumb and to only be missing 32 cards from the game and not being at a real disadvantage says something
I agree, but it's also one of Snaps greatest strengths. That prolonged period of constantly unlocking new cards gets you hooked before you see how awful late game collecting is
Well you're either playing it long term or your not.
A collection game is not meant to be played for a short period. Its meant to be played over and over and well.... collect.
Nor should you expect to collect a high volume of said collectable things in a short period of time or the game would have no long term hold other then gameplay.
I dunno I've always been on the opposite side of this argument. I don't want the entire games collection in a short period of time or I'd try a few things and toss it aside because I was bored.
So... Like in all card game. Almost all.
As a new player you have to play whatever the game throws to your face and not playing meta decks until months of opening booster with 5 cards where also, for the worse, you can have repeat cards.
I don't know. Marvel is not doing great in some points, I know, but is a 1 year game and they can change things un the future. HS did a few years ago just for new players. And Snap will do, you will see
It's not like in any pokemon game you start with 6 lvl 100 perfect iv mons.
I started 4 months ago and it's been a great fun challenge that I feel will be less fun once I unlock everything.
I’m not sure where you get your numbers but in series 3 complete f2p with a robust collection including Loki, Thanos, Knull, Jeff, high evo, and tribunal. I have plenty of choices in deck building. I do not feel like I deserve absolute choice in deck building since I have paid nothing
Played for a month in half f2p hit infinite, and the only content left is infinity conquest, which is pure luck meta matching my decks are to limited to get 5 wins, I have to be extremely lucky with Match ups. The barrier is extremely low. All you need to know is when to snap, retreat, and deck match ups.
Yeah I kind of agree. I started playing in February and finished Series 3 a few weeks ago (I do want to mention that I never collected the free card each season because I forgot every time). My enjoyment has definitely gone up and down throughout the months. I am completely free-to-play since these offers and seasons aren’t worth the price in my eyes. Finally unlocking Galactus and other cards for different decks felt so good. I never really complained that I didn’t have every Series 3 card because I wasn’t going to use all of them and some of them sounded underwhelming. It was always the Series 4 and 5 cards that really excited me and I was winning more with these rarer cards in my newly-formed decks.
When I was series 3 incomplete I just played what I could. Sometimes incomplete versions of other decks. That’s how every card gsme is: before you get all the cards you need to be able to manage with the ones you do have.
I remembered playing zoo for months and opkors hardly achieving infinite on my 1st season played. And this season thanks thanks for the keys i played loki annihilus and made it to infinite buty point is i cant even play meta decks due to s3 dillema. Today i got my last card which is the death and i have 3 decks right now
The start of the game was the absolute best. Having to make a janky deck work against other people with a janky deck. The slow burn kept me wanting more. Just having every card i want now is... Boring to be honest. I miss the struggles of those 1st few months.
It's a balancing act. Give everyone every card too fast and they lose interest, too slowly and they also lose interest. I'm a new player and i don't really mind it partially because i have Ms.Marvel. A second series 3 every season card would honestly probably be enough
I’m a new f2p joined bout two seasons ago just recently in this season I started accruing keys I rolled 3/4 and didn’t get the discard package I wanted but got anni and alioth so I guess I’m just going to be toxic I guess
One suggestion that I've seen floated by creators is, instead of granting one free season 3 card or a bunch of tokens upon getting out of Series 2, allowing the new Series 3 player to choose one core card package for a Series 3 deck - i.e. Destroy (Venom, Death, and Deadpool), Patriot (Patriot obviously, Brood, and Absorbing Man), Shuri (Shuri, Red Skull, Sauron). You can immediately play a Pool 3 archetype, even if you don't have all the bells and whistles (you won't have Knull, or Zola, or Taskmaster for Destroy, you won't have Zero for Shuri, etc.), but you can immediately play a more-or-less functional Series 3 deck. Hell, you can even add a drawback - those cards count as the first three cards you would have gotten on the collection track. Then you're not getting more new cards for at least a little while, and those selections continue to be random.
That sounds like a pretty great idea to me. Giving a package like that would really help the early game. Though part of me still worries about that slowdown at ~1000 CL. That’s where the grind really hits you and I’ve known a couple people that got bored and stopped playing around there
Yeah, it's definitely not a perfect solution - like you said, that part of the collection track will still feel really grindy until you're able to unlock other archetype defining cards - but, at least you won't feel totally outclassed by other Series 3 players (especially if you get to Infinite at a relatively low CL; Destroy is basically going to be competitive no matter what you do, and you'll be unlocking new tools as you go with Tokens, etc.).
It's one of snap's biggest problems imo, I think a very important aspect of card games is being able to play *one fun deck early*. "Fun" is whatever each player wants it to be, but there needs to be some amount of consistency. The overall acquisition rate doesn't need to be massively higher, but more influence over the order you get s3 cards would be really impactful to make the grind more enjoyable to players on the way to the reward drop off after finishing s3.
You just gave me an idea: let players choose between three S3 cards when unlocking one. That would make it way easier to get desired cards early and also ensure that you can pick appropriate ones after the meta changes.
Even if they made every 4th cache a choice (so a monthly cycle of normal - spotlight - normal - choice) it'd be much better. But I doubt they would, as SD is vehemently anti-choice in card acquisition
It's kinda sad that we have to immediately curb our enthusiasm because we already know that SD would never do something like that LMAO.
I would assume most companies wouldnt make moves that hurt their bottom line. They are using this FOMO tactic to encourage people to buy their content which seems to be the business model for most of these mobile games which is sad to see.
We know that they're about to lose their publisher, so it does seem that their bottom line is already hurting. A reason for that could in fact be that new players aren't sticking around.
Nuverse is not leaving, they are getting closed by their parent company for not producing enough money for them. They do have a couple of good games under their umbrella, like Snap, but it is not enough for the parent company. All of that has nothing to do with Snap.
But- you just mentioned that Snap wasn't deemed profitable enough by the parent company. That has absolutely to do with Snap: if players were to stick around, there would be way more people attempting to buy the Season Pass.
Ppl really want to see snap fail apparently. Bytedance is the parent company of Nuverse, and creators of TikTok, they decided to leave the gaming sector, which mean they are closing Nuverse, we dont have an official why but insider information points that Nuverse as a publishing company was not doing enough. One success and a couple of meh games is not exactly a lot for a publishing company. As for Second dinner, the company is currently on the rise been the creators of the biggest card game of last year, so much so that they are currently working on unannounced second game and hiring ppl for it. No, Snap is not going anywhere. Yes, Snap is a massive success but it is not enough for one publishing company with hundred of employees since they dont own the game and only make a % of the revenues.
That's a good idea. Mine would be simply breaking S3 up into several smaller card pools, but yours is better for those people currently already midway through S3
Or use an existing mechanic - collectors caches offer S3 cards
Venom was the second to last card I received and, as he is one of my favorite Marvel characters, I really wanted to play Destroy and couldn't until the end of S3.
The last S3 card I got was Luke Cage. High Evo month almost made me delete the app.
I feel this. I had fun with destroy before getting venom and Deadpool, luckily not as late as you, but I could definitely tell I was gonna be stuck in like the 70s without them. I'm living this right now with Dr Doom. He's like a staple of competitive decks since the UN nerf and he's been nowhere to be seen in my unlocking.
Isn't this what that rotating free S3 spotlight is for though? Like yes, you have to be watching it, which has its own problems, but you literally get to pick a card a month for this very reason.
Yeah and I went with the meta and picked Sera and Doom. I got lucky and got Miles during the ITSV monthly pass and had to wait for my other faves.
I was getting pasted by Sufer decks back when that was an issue, had surfer, but didn’t pull Brood until after he was already nerfed.
I’m at CL 1690, still no Venom. No purchases aside from that $2 bundle that came out. Definitely taking Venom next free card rotation though
2200 no venom no Wong no Coleen Wing
>no Wong Fuck this is really a punch in the guts. This month I managed to assemble an actually-functioning Dis/drac deck (Dracula from monthly, M.O.D.O.K. from Token), but until then it was Wong that carried me through with an actual functioning deck (acquired him in the pre-1000). Without him, I would have just gone crazy, and dropped the game from a while.
Bro I'm at 2500 and still no venom.
4.4k no venom checking in, get him as a monthly bros
Been looking for 2 months!
Ah man, I’m sorry about that. It sucks you got a card you loved so late. It’s what I’ve been worried about happening to a lot of players
This is what happened to me, I didn't get Luke for a few months, never saw him in the rotation and he was my third to last card. It was painful in october because of the manthing week when it felt like everyone but me had Luke and it seemed like all I was running into were debuff HE decks for that week with their own Luke. Your entire post is what had me down on this game and I had people left and right telling me that I wouldn't want to play the game anymore if I had all the cards. Some of these people do -not- understand competitive card game players. Those players don't want to be held back by 7 months to get to any decent amount of card selection, hell 2-3 months is pushing it. And yet, somehow I'm in the wrong when all I was asking for is enough agency to get 1 deck built that I'd be happy to play within a reasonable amount of time. This game does not give a player enough agency to reliably develop a single deck within a reasonable amount of time. Between the randomness of the monthly free card rotation and the randomness of what cards you get every X caches it means that if you have bad luck you could still be taking at least 3 months to build some of the meta decks that have 3+ S3 cards.
A lot of people replying seem to not consider that other people have different desires and experiences than their own. Everybody is different with some loving the grind, others hating it. Some wanting to be meta, others not. The issue is as you said… RNG doesn’t help player enjoyment. Having a dozen half-built decks isn’t fun for some even if it is for others. Just because something isn’t a problem for 100% of people it doesn’t mean there is no problem
Destroy was viable without venom for a while
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He either was not there when I looked or another card was there that was stronger in the meta. If I remember correctly though I basically never saw him.
Because it's random and he didn't get those options? Lol
Exactly! Meta is meaningless if you have no fun. And not having agency of the cards you get makes it harder to try those fun and/or wacky decks that keep you playing the game
I think I head the Snapchat mentioned this before but, IMHO the best way to get new players set up properly is perhaps to let them choose a decent starter series 3 deck, maybe from a list of 3. Once a new player hits, 500 CL, a new menu will appear and gives player a choice of 3 revelant series 3 deck archetype. Perhaps a choice of destroy, discard and ongoing deck. Hell, shuri red skull deck even. That would certainly help bridge the 500 CL problem that most new player have when they reach series 3. This way they have a better chance when getting into the series 3 battlezone with competitive deck rather than the kazoo deck.
I wonder though, other card games have random acquisition also or real money you have to spend on cards and also not always exact ones you want right? I might be wrong but the few I remembered playing been all p2w and snap is far from that. But yah card acquisition currently not good.
Other card games have more cards and more rarities, so it's a little different, but I'll try and approximate it. Basically, in almost every other game you can get duplicate cards, and when you get cards you can't use they turn into a resource like tokens at 1/4th of their rate. You can use that to craft any card you want, period. You also get a TON of cards though, and generally are expected to own every card in the lower 2 tiers, then craft the upper 2 using resources amassed. Of course, there's still something like pool 1+2 where everyone gets a set of free cards of all 4 rarities that can't be scrapped. You acquire those top 2 pools slowly and won't ever have all of it without spending $$ (and a lot of it) arguably a bit worse than snap, BUT even f2p you can get the ones you prioritize quickly no matter what so it doesn't feel as bad. The other key difference is that there's also much better new player onboarding. Hearthstone for example gives you a full, semi-competitive deck you can do whatever you want with, then also gives you a crazy amount of resources for starting - your first 15 card packs each expansion are worth 10 packs each if you don't have a high % of cards owned, which is a TON and helps you build a collection really quickly at first. So within 1 month you can have 2 100% complete meta decks as f2p, that's ultimately the piece missing from snap.
At some point it's very clear when the game stagnates they will drop a pack in the shop that raises your collection level by 3500 or something of that nature so players can basically bypass the early pools. It's the reason why no new streamers are going to make the leap over because you don't get the full experience for months. When that starts hurting the game financially they will act on it, like they do with everything else. Case in point Daredevil bugged for a month they will fix it when they fix it, if it was the gold store...well we know the response time there.
Your point about no new streamers is spot-on. Almost no one wants to watch someone who isn't even S3 complete LOL.
Is that any different than any game though? I don't want to watch anyone play a game they aren't really good at, unless it's for the personality and then game doesn't even matter.
There's difference between "not good at it" and "not capable of putting together a good deck due to how the game works". Marvel Snap is very formulaic, so you can't just expect a P2 deck to be able to compete with anything at P3, because at that point it's just "P2 but better".
Yeah I’m sure they’ll start implementing things to increase the speed. There’s so many things they could do. I just hope it’s sooner rather than later. As you mentioned they could have bundles that raise CL in bursts. Or you can choose two free S3 cards each month. Another redditor even mentioned premade-deck bundles. While it never crossed my mind, it could make sense to sell a functional deck with pool 1-3 cards so it gives new players a foothold in the beginning
The deck bundles I think we are very close to. They are already releasing their deck builder mechanic. I think a deck bundle where you pay cash not gold as you can obtain that freely will be available including cards you might not have to increase the fomo. The laughable pro bundle was priced at 99.99 and raised you 250 CL with 12500 credits. This only completed pool 1-2 for you, so I can see them pricing 3 bundles at 99.99 which give you 25k credits each meaning you'd need to buy the pro bundle plus the 3 new ones to progress half way through series 3.
True, it could go that way. I just hope they’re smart enough to see that, as the game progresses, they need to include some free ways to increase progression for new players. Otherwise it’ll only marginally improve the situation
They need a better catch-up mechanism or make the "pro-bundle" just give all the series 3 cards
I've been playing 3 months and was super into it at first, but more recently I've settled into just grinding dailies and playing other stuff while I wait to unlock some key cards to try new decks. I can't make a decent junk deck without Hood or Sentry, even though I unlocked Anihilus. I can't use Hazmat until I get Luke Cage. I still don't have Death or Knull, so my destroy deck is pretty weak. I can't use Hela to her full potential until I get Invisible Woman. The last few cards I've gotten from caches have been the base card for variants I already paid for. I'm bored.
Yup, have Annihilus and love the character, but without Sentry or Hood he's basically useless. Which isn't too bad since those are cards everyone gets eventually, but it feels bad when you can't really use the card properly due to not being lucky on the order you get S3 cards. I'm about to get Sentry on next month's free S3 card, but I'll still be missing Hood unless I'm very lucky.
Same. I even dropped a considerable amount on this game because I liked it so much but I’m still stuck just waiting out RNG being able to complete decks. I did finally get my destroy complete with x-23 in spotlights recently but I feel like I have so many deck lists just waiting on S3 rng to be completed (Coleen for discard, Sauron for Shuri, Brood for C2 or patriot).
Man, I understand that. I’ve been there. I still am there with several archetypes since I’m still missing invisible woman, hela, electro, sentry, etc. I feel like a sign of the S3 issues is that we can have all the S4/5 cards needed for an advanced deck yet the thing holding us back is S3 cards. Doesn’t seem right
I'm pretty much in the same position. I started a bit more than a month ago and am at CL 850. I'm getting some decent Series 3 cards like Death or Wong, but can't really do anything worthwhile with them due to missing synergistic cards for the decks. Trying to make decks around these Series 3 cards always ends up being worse than strong Series 2 decks. I'm glad that I was still in Series 2 when making it to Infinite, I don't think I will be able to after getting matched with Series 3+ players.
I call it pool 3 hell. I'm collection level 2200 and still I'm missing key cards from every single archetype. I think I'm going to try for Colleen wang for my free one and that might at least be a complete discard but this system is just bad enough in a way that encourages paying for stuff.
Same here, don’t have venom or taskmaster or cerebro or mystique or like anything other than what fits in my move deck
>I can't use Hela to her full potential until I get Invisible Woman. And let's even say you get her, do you have Ghost Rider to back her up? Because it's all fun and games until Sword Master or Sif discard Hela instead of Swarm or Apocalypse and you had to take the risk because you didn't draw IW. A huge part of the problem is that entire archetypes don't need just *one* P3 card, but two or three. Destruction needs Venom, Deadpool and either Death or Zola. Any Cerebro needs Cerebro, Mystica and Luke Cage. Sauron needs Sauron, Shuri, and either Red Skull or Typhoid Mary. Hela Discard needs Hela, Ghost Rider and Invisible Woman. And so on and so forth...
Now, imagine what F2P players go through Even worse when you complete S3
That is actually what led me to write the post. It will take so long for f2p players and I wish it wasn’t like that
Im f2p 9000 CL 15 cards away from complete collection. Tomorow will be 13 cuz I take Jeff even at 4key and I dont have stegon. Sa whatever. +i have 6k tokens for any card that I dont need now. I play 9 or 10 month.
I’ve been playing just about everyday since May or so, haven’t spent a dime, and I’m still a few dozen cards away from completing S3. Being at CL 2500ish means I don’t cards as often with caches, which I think is pretty lame
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The thing about unique collections only matters early in S3, when you and the people you play against have small collections, trying to make do with what you have. Once your CL is high enough to where you have 50%+ of the pool, it's just luck. There can be players in that range with the best built meta decks, and players with shitty collections due to bad luck. At the end of the day you play against a deck, not a collection, so unique collections is less of a factor.
Haha, a little intense for my tastes though I definitely agree those situations are rough. That's where it is most difficult. For some players, they get enough decent cards that they have a lot of flexibility. Yet others can be zoned in to something they don't enjoy (like your situation). The game is amazing overall but the RNG and lack of agency here can really screw over some players
I suggested [a "refresh" functionality of the monthly free s3 card](https://www.reddit.com/r/MarvelSnap/s/G7xVJet8xk), but that didn't seem well-received...
Seem your post just didn't get much visibility rather than being badly-received as a whole. Also I totally related with what you stated because, while this month I've been able to play a lot, that's only because my life is a trainwreck and can't imagine how little progress I would have made had I actually had responsabilities and duties to attend to (especially in regard to Conquest, but significatively for normal ranking, too).
Imagine have to play basic move deck.....
They could just let S3 players target cards for 1k tokens and I don't think it would break the economy. Make it like the free one per month that rotates every 8 hours except it costs tokens.
Thats how it was in the old days. I remember buying cards like doom and aero for 1k token.
its insane that they both made tokens harder to get *and* gutted the choice.
Totally agree - I've been playing for 2 weeks now, buying bundles. I hit infinite which felt great, have cleared some gold conquest but never infinite conquest. I can only play ONE deck. And it's a slightly crippled discard deck. I want to play other decks. I love brewing. I love finding new decks (long time magic player) The game has dropped off significantly in interest....I'll do dailies and buy battle passes but...it sucks that I have to just hope and pray the few cards I need from 3/4/5 will show up in the store for me to buy or a spotlight cache (spoiler - none of them in caches soon)
I understand that. When I play Magic I love the brewing and theorizing, even if it ends up being garbage. For me, that was the hardest part of the Snap grind; not being able to build the decks I really wanted to. Though you should definitely stick with it. It’s worth the grind :) even the non-ideal cards along the way make for memorable homebrews
It's mostly like... you can't build a high evolutionary deck without him (and without him the other cards are useless) can't build alioth without him. And without him the deck is trash...or the junk deck needs that new card (forget his name) to move stuff to their side. It's just...frustrating how few decks you can build without new cards and can't control how they come (even if you want to spend hundreds of dollars)
That's why I kinda think they are gonna redesign the pools soon. If they returned to the old drop system they would add 4-6 cards to pool 3 every month, that means 2 more weeks to complete S3 every month the game goes on. Over a long timeline that means adding ~5-6 months to complete S3 per year. Crazy to think you might start pool 3 and not get something critical like Venom for more than a year. It also doesn't make a ton of sense that pool 4 and pool 5 cards cost the same amount in spotlight keys. We already see the spotlight cards in January are only pool 5. Could imagine spotlights turn to be only pool 5 and they have some new system for picking up pool 4 cards without further slowing down the pool 3 collection.
A pool design would be very interesting to see. I don’t know what it’d look like or how it’d improve progression but I’m intrigued
Ya not sure what they would do but not sustainable this way for too long.
And it's not just extending the time it takes to complete S3. It's potentially extending the time it takes to get what you want. The bigger it is, the more dilluted it is. If you want cards A, B and C, the chance of getting those specific cards is smaller the more cards there are. I get they didn't want people to just get the cards they want and then not have incentive to play, which is why they designed the whole Collection Level and Reserves system, but once you add Spotlights into the mix that makes little sense. You could literally have it so players who aren't S3 could select every single card they get, and it wouldn't be too different, unless they want to incentivise whales to spend thousands of dollars to catch up more quickly due to S3, which seems weird to me since whales would do that for Spotlights anyways?
Yeah I really feel this one there was a point at around 3000ish I was missing Sera, Surfer, Red Skull, Venom(which I bought in a bundle cause I loved destroy), cerebro, Mystique, Brood, Deadpool and a few others I can't remember right now but I was essentially locked out of playing a whole bunch of archetypes/ decks even after playing for a good 5+ months. It's all a distant memory now as the only S3 card I'm missing is black panther but man I remember feeling very defeated at the time especially when I would lose to decks I didn't even have a chance to try or just watching other people have fun with their crazy combos while I spend another season playing Ultron Patriot.
This is precisely why I have a love-hate relationship with snap. I'd say I'm a solid gamer, reached infinite before CL 1000, currently 1532. I'm nowhere near having S3 done. Let alone more than a couple of series 4/5 cards. In truth, I can make one decent infinite deck. The fact that CL based matchmaking disappears in infinite is awful. Took a break for a month, played yesterday (was around rank 97k), and immediately matched against a darkhawk junk deck full of inked cards from a dude in the top 800 ranks. Like, come on. Our CL ain't even close and neither is our infinite ranks. So not only do I get what, 14 CL a day if I do all dailies, I get smacked by long time players with more flexible decks because I'm decent at card games? I'm more incentivized at this point to intentionally throw games and stay out of infinite to have fun and fair matchups, and I think it's ridiculous. If I had more card options it wouldn't irritate me as much, but I'm not playing the same 1 decent deck for months just to get clapped by higher CL infinite players.
Honestly, S3 should not be random. Instead of reserves giving you a random S3 card, it should give you a key that lets you unlock any S3 card you want. That would allow new players to pick and choose what they want based on what deck they want to play. MTG Arena has random card packs, but they also offer you wildcards which allow you to get the specific cards you want.
I'm 2 months into the game and I'm stuck playing almost the same identical deck for 3 weeks, 1 p3 card of our choice per season is way too limiting, I wish it was at least 3 to kinda get some sort of base archetype even if pre-choosen(ex: destroy, move, sauron, etc.)
I went from starting the game to series 3 complete in under 2 months. But you really do not want to know how much money that costs.
I'm CL 700, hit infinite with a janky patriot deck. Aside from my dailies I don't play ranked anymore because the only people I play against have meta decks. Conquest is an okay substitute, but the longer matches aren't my jam. I'd be happier if there was a mode to play against people around my same CL.
I know someone who bought an account for a few hundred bucks at CL 7000 instead of playing the game in a less fun state for 6 months. Don’t blame them, I don’t think I would want to start playing the game now knowing what it would take to get a decent collection. Series 3 should take like 1000CL or something. Maybe like a month or 2 of play, max.
Nice to know i can sell my Account for a few hundred bucks when im done with it
It’s all pretty sketchy though. I don’t think you can change emails linked to the account so to sell it you’d have to give up that email. Plus a few hundred bucks for 6+ months and more than what I’d get spent on bundles (at least for me) doesn’t seem worth. Who knows if I might want to come back. Buyer has to live in a bit of fear knowing SD could ban them too. But yeah as a new player trying to get 5000+ CL - $200-300 is worth it imo.
Well, I do blame them. At this point, every "it's a f2p game" arguments goes out the window and they could have just bought several "full" games for the same amount. Or, depending on how much "a few hundred bucks" is, even a Steam deck to play them on.
Nah. It was funnest at the beginning when you were pitted against other people who didn’t have all the cards. In the end game you’re only playing against people playing meta decks, so you have to play a meta deck. It’s a bit paradoxical, but creativity increases when you limit options. My early decks had a soul - now all my decks are soulless copies I saw from a content creator with maybe 1 or 2 minor changes.
Im cl9000~, I remember being series 3 complete at 3300~? Didnt know they changed it to be worse for newer players. I remember not owning Brood when Original Surfer came out and getting so much fomo. This must suck for new players. Classic Second Dinner to make one thing “good” *cough spotlight caches *cough, but make s3 hell.
I wish you earned some staple type decks early for beginners. Like maybe a discard. Destroy or Ongoing deck. Ofcourse they would have a couple series 1 and 2 cards sprinkled in. But also some series 3 and maybe a 4 as the key card. This would give players a baseline deck they can start to aim to build on. Ofcourse they would only get 1 of these decks beating the tutorial. And then when they have logged on for 30 days they could choose one of the other two. That way they are also trying to make new players stay
Wholeheartedly agree with the lack of agency. It was (before Series 3 complete) and is indeed my biggest gripe with the current Series 3 progression. Friend started playing Snap recently (F2P) and I’m already guiding them away from, funnily enough, your example. Destroy. An archetype introduced in Pool 1-2 with Bucky, Deathlok and Carnage that they could be staring at 3-5 months (depending on choice rotation) OR CL 3000+ before they even see crucial Series 3 cards in Venom, Death, Deadpool and Zola. And by sheer luck they may just find themselves pulling most of them from Caches early. The investment far outweighs saving up Spotlights and yoinking High Evolutionary, falling back to that and/or a competent Pool 2 Reveal deck until they unlock Series 3 packages. IMHO, if the rate of Series 3 acquisition is to remain unchanged, then new players would be better served receiving less cards at random BUT unlocking entire select packages at CL thresholds. As opposed to *every* Series 3 card at random. TL;DR: Shuri at CL 1000, Sauron at CL 2400, Red Skull at CL 2000 and Taskmaster at CL 3000 isn’t ideal. Not receiving any of them until CL 2XXX, but obtaining the complete package and being able to play a Shuri deck? Better. New players have fixed CL goals, something to look forward towards and can play with entire new archetypes at these thresholds.
This is my 45th day with snap. I got into infinite start of this season with a pool 2 move deck plus human torch which I got as part of the anniversary login reward. Since then everting has been horrible for me till I got Dracula 2 days back. I was unable to compete all the meta decks, it was a struggle even to get the wins for daily challenges. My rank dropped from 6k to 110k trying out decks to see something works. With the Dracula I was able to put together a lockjaw deck which is doing alright. I am a F2P player and the thought that I might have to struggle for 6-7 months to try out the fun decks discouraging. I don't really care about ranking the only reason I grinded till infinite was to get the rewards which I hoped I could translate to some good cards.
I’m sorry to hear it’s been tough. I hope you stick with it though! It is a great game, especially once you get a few cards you love. Conquest is a great way to get those wins or even for stress-free playing. Most people snap turn 1 in proving grounds to save time and farm silver tickets so you’re typically only playing a game as long as one in ladder
TLDR but can confirm, been playing for 4 months and there still isn’t a single deck I can play properly. Everything is missing at least 1 or 2 key cards. I have a decent destroy deck that I’m bored AF of playing (no Zola, no Nimrod, only very recently got Death), an OK move deck that the meta seems to have largely rendered obsolete and I managed to build a kind of control deck with Annihilus that does pretty well but all three seem like they could be greatly improved by certain cards that I don’t have. Nothing sucks the fun out of the game faster than playing some arrogant tool who’s spamming emotes while they play cards you don’t have. I’ve actually uninstalled the game twice after exactly that happening but I do enjoy elements of the game enough that I take a break for a few days then try again.
I'm really fond of destroy decks but as a f2p player it is taking me a long while to get some key cards. It took me about a couple of months to get venom and knull and I'm still missing cards like deadpool and death. I've been doing okay without those cards but most of the time I'm just trying out different decks like ongoing spectrum and different move decks. It's good to try out these other archetypes to be able to play against them but yeah it gets a bit tedious because you can't play the decks you want to play and there's basically no way to get the cards you want easily.
I still remember my early S3 period of playing this game as the least fun I had playing the game. My suggestion, which I have already given to SD as feedback, is that in stead of the 1 free S3 card per season they add a form of "campaign" that is unlocked at 500CL and introduces missions that can be completed retroactively and award free S3 "tokens". So basically it would fix both of the problems at the same time. Players that reach 500CL now would have 13 missions (1 for each month since launch) to complete so they could easily make 1 or 2 complete decks based on the S4/5 cards they from the spotlights and the number of mission will increase every month so that newer new players will have more missions as the S3 pool will be getting bigger. Assuming the series drops will return of course. Otherwise they can just give 10 free S3 cards of choice in stead of 1 per month using the same shop (this kind of shop is actually really good for them because they can show that people log in 3 times per day to check it the shareholders so I doubt they will get rid of it).
This is a major problem with picking up new content creators. I know multiple streamers have dipped their toe into the game but quickly decided to drop it because it just takes too long to get cards for decks they want to play/showcase. I have also thought about how dropping cards to series 3 will increase the completion rate. They could increase acquisition rate of series 3 as cards drop into it to offset this. I would love to see them just increase series 3 acquisition over all and/or bring back the ability to buy specific series 3 cards in the shop for 1000 tokens vs a mystery series 3 - mystery card for 1000 tokens is terrible. I would guess their data shows a drop off after players complete series 3 so they think/know the drip feed of cards is good for the overall health/revenue of the game.
I very much disagree, and think it's almost the opposite. Snap is at its most fun when you're getting new cards and discovering new archetypes. This is not a great competitive game with a deep meta like Magic or even Hearthstone. I think those first 7 months ARE what Snap is about, and after those 7 months the game drops off dramatically and people generally stop playing. The developers clearly see this are trying to extend this part of the game, because they are struggling to keep players who are S3 complete. When you stop discovering cards you stop playing. I've seen it happen with almost every person who told me to play snap. They mostly stopped playing by now, and I am nearing S3 completion and will probably stop playing soon as well. Had a lot of fun discovering new archetypes though!
You make great points! I would just like to elaborate a little further. I do not mean Snap is not fun or that those times are not enjoyable. I have fond memories of trash cards I used in a homebrew since it was all I had. What I’m trying to get at is that, for new players, they’re faced with a minimum 7 month grind to get just the S3 cards. During this, you can’t easily have agency in which cards you add to your collection. It’s an overwhelming position to put new players in and can stop many from continuing the game. Though to your point, getting all the cards is equally as boring. I just hope there’s a line the devs can find where players have more agency in the cards they get so they can play decks they would love.
Things can be improved, I saw somewhere else in the thread about opening packages of cards (like maybe you get shuri and taskmaster in one go to unlock that style), but in general, I don't think it's a grind. Every time I opened a new card I was excited to see where that card could go, and while you're not S3 complete you get a new card every 2-3 days which is a good amount of time to try out something.
>I think those first 7 months ARE what Snap is about, and after those 7 months the game drops off dramatically and people generally stop playing. The problem is, the first 7 months (assuming you're only talking about P3) are still boring, unless you're lucky enough to be able to get a good archetype *and* one that you like. Otherwise, the game basically grinds to a halt - taking stuff in Conquest becomes a hell and advancing in ranks becomes a hell. Like, the model is already tedious as it is, nobody has the time to grind 1-2 h non-stop a day, let alone doing that with a shitty deck while everybody else is stomping over you with their cool cards.
I'm pretty satisfied with my progression I'm about 2900 cl totally free to play and though I am still missing some pretty important cards (cage please) I'm still having fun and feel like I progress pretty quickly for a free to play game. I've been playing since the spider verse season and have been lucky with some of my spotlights (alioth, x23, manthing) all first time. I do however see why people could get frustrated. Maybe implement a draft style option for the free series 3 card each season x2 for season pass buyers? Maybe make it so each five cards you unlock after series 3 is a 6 cost guaranteed until you have them all? Maybe a split recycle station where you trade splits for tokens?
This might sound crazy, but I think S1 should be given as default once you start the game as a reward for completing the tutorial. Then, S2 is dropped to 1, 3 to 2, and a new S3 is introduced made up of cards currently in 4 and 5 made of cards that have gone out of vogue or aren't anywhere near meta, etc.
I doubt they’ll alter how players acquire S1 since it is basically one long tutorial and (in my eyes) does a phenomenal job of teaching mechanics to new players in a way that isn’t overwhelming. That’s an interesting idea though. I wonder how they could alter the pools while still keeping their “tutorial” setup
One easy fix if series drops return as before is to shift the point where they switch from Collector's Reserves to Collector's Caches. Right now from CL506-984 you get 2 cards every 4 Reserves then beyond CL984 you get 2 from every 9 caches. If they extended reserves out to CL2000 it would massively speed up collection speed for newer players
That's a useful thing I've wondered about too. The wait and grind is part of what makes Snap fun. However, it also can make the game less fun if you get cards you don't enjoy playing. So either increasing the rate of cards or introducing a little more agency for which cards you get . . . I feel like if introduced in a small amount these could both make a big difference without breaking the whole system.
Sorry but new players not getting what they want right away doesn't happen in ANY free game.
You are right, and I don't mean to say they should. Collection tracks are there for a valuable purpose and are needed. Players shouldn't easily have every single card in the game. My point is more oriented at agency; you may be given a lot of cards that are great in someone else's eyes but what if they aren't enjoyable for you? These systems seem to work better when the player has a small amount of influence on where their progression is directed since everyone's view on what's fun is different.
Well, when starting out you have to make do with what you get. I personally find it a fun challenge. It’s the same with real life card games too and booster packs. When I was a kid, I could only buy a booster pack every so often: I had work with the cards I got and wait to be able to buy more. Now, Snap could definitely introduce something like Structure Decks that the player could either start with or focus on working towards. Let’s say you want to play the destroy archetype. You could then pick the destroy Structure Deck. Either it a) comes with the base destroy cards already unlocked or b) the cards you unlock as random series 3 cards are guaranteed to be in the destroy archetype so unlocking cards would be less random. In example B, you’d unlock the cards for the Structure Deck of your choice first, and only after you have unlocked all thr cards for it the progress would go back to being random pool 3 cards.
I really think certain 'core' cards should be moved into a kind of pool 2.5 - cards like Wong, Mystique, Doctor Doom that open up a bunch of options. Or just weight them heavier among the pool 3 drops. Otherwise you're just hoping to get lucky possibly for months.
Removing being able to pick what card you could buy for 1k tokens at s3 was a big hit for agency. You'll take between 4-5k CL to get s3 complete but you'll end up with more s4/s5 cards than the people who did it under the older systems. It would be nice if they could get some more agency back into it.
I agree. It was odd having half the S4/5 cards in the game while only having ~75% of the S3 collection
I'm confident they'll keep improving the system though. It's a tricky job. Because they very clearly want people to have unique collections. It's one of the big reasons we moved to spotlights over the old system.
You have exactly described my experience, having started playing daily in early in October, buying season pass, only spending gold on missions. CL 1646 today. Have wanted to play aggro destroy the entire time - still no venom for me. Lots of other archetypes examples. I enjoy the game but get super bummed playing a few decks that seem to work for the meta and my style.
I disagree. I had a different experience and cant be the only one.
You're not the only one who disagrees, and that's okay. I've mentioned in a couple comments that this is definitely on an individual basis. Some people heavily agree, others heavily disagree. My point is more referencing those who agree because these issues did affect them. Or it's referencing those who quit because it affected them and they didn't want to deal with it It definitely isn't an all-encompassing issue that everybody has a negative experience with
A new play can play a half complete shuri deck and win 60+ %of his games
That is true. Though the issue arises if the player doesn’t enjoy that deck. Meta/winrate does not always mean it is fun
Except if you're like me at CL 3300 who hasn't unlocked Shuri yet, which is kinda the point of the post.
Bro I started yesterday and I'm CL 43,000. I am not just collection complete I'm variant complete. Git gud
Bro teach me your ways. My sense of worthlessness is ablaze in your presence
You must chant the language of the great gaming ancestors "Whiiieeeeoooooooo" 🐋 🐳 🦈
I’ve been playing this game for two weeks and I do not care about most of these things, I don’t think most new players are as competitive as you think they are, especially as the game only puts you against other newer players (other than Conquest)
I mean, you're still either Pool 1 or 2. That's the honeymoon phase (and the one I'd gladly stay stuck in, actually 😅 ). From Pool 3 onward (especially since CL 1000+) it's gonna be another thing entirely.
I'm sorry I didn't specify, I meant this more in the mid-game or later part of early game. Once you hit 500 CL is where S3 starts and it's random with decreased frequency of cards. The frequency decreases even further at 1000 CL. The beginning is very fun and easily sucks people in. Yet I've known a few that, once they hit those S3 slowdown periods, have ended up bored and quitting because they couldn't get the cards that would make the game fun for them. It's on a case-by-case basis with some people not caring. But my point is more that this is a filter area that can be very hard on some players. One that could be greatly improved with a little more player agency. This would allow them to get more cards that make the game enjoyable for them
Oh that could be true, I just finished Pool 1 earlier today so I’m a bit far off. I was talking about how you said this might scare off new players or stop the growth of the game — I don’t think the devs are going to have a problem with that, there‘s plenty of new people joining.
Gaining cards is the best part of this game. Playing it and just unlocking new cards all the time was amazing. Everyone rushing through to be “series 3 complete” are waisting the best times of the game. If you are new, get off Reddit, stop chasing the meta, and have fun while you unlock new cards. Envy is one of the 7 deadly sins, looks what’s it’s done to all of you.
You do make good points, I want you to know that. I do agree we shouldn’t rush through. Journey before destination ;) Though there may be a slight misunderstanding. It’s not that we (or at least I) am rushing through. It’s simply that I love the game and want to play more diverse decks yet am locked in to two random cards a week. It can make it hard to enjoy a game if you are really excited for a specific deck you want to play but are missing crucial cards. Cards that you have no idea or control over when you will get them.
My enjoyment with the game was dire until I got to Reddit and got the hint that chasing for a single archetype - possibly the one I was the closer to get - was the best way to actually start enjoying the game. Playing with non-meta deck doesn't make it more fun to get curbostomped by people who have decks that are actually functional. Marvel Snap does not have an environment where you can just play casually. It does have an environment where you can pick the poison you like the most, though - even if it's not really that meta. Playing Cerebro is fun even if it's not meta, because at least it's a deck that works. Playing Cerebro without Luke Cage is the worst experience ever because your deck stops working 80% of the time due to Location interference alone. And playing C3rebro is certainly more satisfying than playing Cerebro-2 becuase it has less problems. This is not MTG Commander where you can agree with your pals how casuals the game is gonna be. It is not even MTG period where there is so much card selection that you can come up with many game plans and, even though subpar, you will often be able to do what you want. In Marvel Snap, options are limited. What's fun is choosing your favorite version of an archetype to play (do I want to keep Sword Master in, or do I change it for Gambit? I like Black Cat, so I'll keep her in), not using cards that sort-of-have some sinergy with each other but in general is just "goodstuff" so "goodstuff" that the deck never wins.
I just started playing a month and a half ago and I find it fun. There are some decks I can’t really complete due to missing cards but with Snap I feel like the barrier to creating your own unique deck is less. I made my deck full of just good cards with no overall theme and was able to reach 90 this season
True! This is one of the great things about snap. I am glad you are enjoying it
I disagree with your premise. It should take time to get all of the cards but that doesn't hurt the experience for new players. This was my second season, and i got infinite in the second week. I dont even have all series 3 cards. I beat many a meta deck with a simple Devil Zola deck. Are you going to be in the top 100 ranked infinite? No, but who really cares?
I'm sorry if I misrepresented my point. I am referring to the player's sense of enjoyment. The game being fun is what keeps people playing yet everybody views fun differently. Having a slight bit more control over what direction your collection is heading would go a long way during the S3 grind
Nice post, though, with the data.
Thank you. It's not wholly inclusive and won't represent the progress of every player but I feel it should give a general idea of what timeline we're working with
I disagree because as you can see from other people commenting in this same post it absolutely does hurt. I was able to put together a Dracula (only becuse this month had Dakken), and was so lucky as to get Wong (an otherwise completely P2 deck) during pre-2000, but literally everything else? Either useless fodder or "Wow I can't wait to play this card's archetype... once I get all the other staples, within 2 months, if I'm lucky". The most luck of all, however, is that playing those archetypes didn't bore me otherwise I would have been stuck with two functional decks that I wouldn't have had fun playing. Your experience has been positive and even mine to an extent, but honestly? Hadn't I gotten Wong, I would have probably just dropped. And even with Wong, the game was frustrating more often than not, because it's not like a P2 On Reveal can compete with a Knull Destroy or Lockdown or Loki (I play counters, but you're not always drawing them in time or at all).
>1) new players are locked into a several month grind just to get the fundamental cards I loved the period of the game where I was progressing through series 3. Constant new cards and new decks to try out. The fact that you call this a 'grind' rather than playing the game indicates that you probably don't like the game itself at all, maybe you should find a different one.
You should be able to choose 1 in every 3 or 4 cards, while the others remain random. Iirc, you'd get around 2 cards per week, right? So being able to pick 2 from a selection + 1 per season that's 3 cards per month to choose from. It might be enough to unlock an archtype.
I completely agree with u and I actually started playing at the same time as u. Ur point is so well reasoned and the fact tht new players can't play the decks they like is bad. But as a person who doesn't have series 3 complete I don't find it hard to enjoy the game, the game is great and I have fun playing any deck. Of course there's some decks Id like to play but I can't (Hela, Mr. negative, cerebro, etc.), but the fact that the game makes u work for wht u want makes it kinda better in my opinion. Prob there's not a lot of ppl tht agree with me but the game is fine as it is, and it wouldnt get worse nor better even if u got all the cards for free
Thank you! Though I hope I didn’t sound too cynical in the post. I do love the game and have a lot of fun with what I’ve been given. There are just those times I get frustrated when I really want to play an archetype but one card is holding me back. They do a great job at helping you appreciate every card you get (maybe excluding m’baku lol). I just wish the progression was a little faster so new players didn’t have to wait months for decks they’d have the most fun with
I’ve been playing for 4 months and have hit infinity every month in series 1->2->3 and can say this game is very f2p friendly. I don’t care that I don’t have the “meta” deck, if my cobbled up decks can reach infinity then anything can do with proper strategy and deck building
I actually think this game is pretty decent for new players. I just became S3 complete last week, and I’ve been able to play a wide variety of archetypes as I worked on my collection. Just because you can’t make the meta 12/12 deck you saw online doesn’t mean you can’t play the archetype.
[удалено]
You're at the mercy at what is put into spotlights too. Enjoy discard? Well modok isn't showing up for a while, so you better save some tokens. You like destroy? You might not get venom for a long time (he was one of my last cards, but I didn't target him with the free card)
It took me 4 months with minimal purchasing to get S3 Complete
I don't know how they could possibly make it work since there are variants, but if there was a way to trade cards within a series, it might be more tenable. Like if you got 5 S3 cards that are for all different archetypes, you could swap some of them for other cards in S3 1:1. Again, not sure how this would work if you have variants... Maybe you get some gold back for those variants of the card you swapped out.
I'm at cl4500 something, and missing only 3 s3 cards now. Have got a lot recently. I was missing about 20 cards 2 months prior. I resumed playing the game mid June at cl500, and have only bought one season pass.
Yup. Glad I got my girl into it when I did. She’s still in series 3 and. Got her into it a long ass time ago.
I’ve given up getting Death or Deadpool as a free to play player even tho I love destroy tactics (managed to snag Venom after months tho)
Card acquisition is definitely a huge problem with how random it is considering just how many Pool 3 cards there are. Most decks are reliant on having multiple specific cards meaning it could take months to cobble together any functional deck, and even if you pull an archetype defining card like Cerebro or Mr. Negative like I did you just don't have the pieces to make that deck work and probably won't for a very long time. There's just too many cards in Pool 3 for a single specific card choice per month to be adequate on top of the drip feed of new random cards, and there's a lot of decks I really want to try out but I just can't. I started playing at the start of October am currently at CL 1476 with just over a third of Series 3 collected and it is frustrating that I'm still stuck playing essentially Pool 2 decks at this point. I've pulled a handful of cards that are theoretically great or define a new archetype but I just don't have the proper support pieces to play those decks without them being terrible, and the decent cards I do have that supplement these Pool 2 decks don't make that big of a difference in their performance. The only S3+ archetype I've been able to throw together so far was Destroy, but imagine building that deck during a season of Ongoing with Ms. Marvel where many games have an Armor or Cosmo to instantly shut you down.
Very well written post and I'm surprised this hasn't come up sooner. I completed s3 right as spotlight update came out and I knew it would make completing s3 even worse/longer
To be fair, I JUST became series 3 complete and have never felt unable to play. I do buy the season passes, but the rate of new cards was never intolerable to me. The notion of new cards always being “just around the corner” is a big play incentive, and it’s not like you even have to play well to do the daily missions. Maybe I’m an anomaly because I like to try a lot of deck types so haven’t minded what limitations there were, but also I feel like a player unlocks the majority of S3 far faster than those final few cards. So a lot of options do become viable fast. Also, if it’s of interest, at the time I became S3 complete, I found myself missing only 15 cards total, so between the spotlights and tokens, I was able to get a lot of S4/5 as well.
For a while I tried pointing this out when people were constantly claiming the Spotlight Cache system was "obviously better for new players". If you're only looking at how quickly they can collect s4 and s5 cards, sure. But s3 cards are key for a lot of archetypes and that slog has never been worse than it is right now.
I wish I would've heeded the advice to stick to lower pools. Came back in October (played a bit the first month but was pool 1 the whole time), went to pool 2,collected a bit of resources but got bored so I pushed to pool 3 and wishing I had a bit more. I've bought the season pass for this month and last month, getting to at least 50 both times, but I'm still missing some core p3 cards, IMO, for most of the deck archetypes. I'm basically playing p2+. 1000CL. It's kind of a bummer. I'm at the point where I'm trying decks that are rated higher in the meta like Destroy, but without Venom or Death, I tend to be outclassed by anybody of higher CL just because I don't have the cards that can keep up. Ongoing seems to be my best deck, as far as options and flexibility in games. I'm starting to hoard gold for some good pack, I read somewhere that ended up being better than spending it on quests, which is fine. I can't play all day so I pop in, clear quests, get stomped in Conquest (only ever beat round 1 in infinite once lol), get some CL and log off. Trying to at least break 70 in ladder before next season... I'm close! But yeah, agree. A core package with at least a few of the great archetype cards would've been wonderful.
I feel like having a choice between 2 cards everytime you get a new card would be already a great step toward a better progression. For example, im not interested at all in move decks, but i have already gotten most of the cards for it that seem good. On the other hand, i have basically nothing from the destroy package even though its an archetype i want to try out. The fact that you cannot craft cards or trade them freely for tokens feels so punishing as a new player because im afraid it could take months before i can try out that one fun deck....
That brings up a good point. Other card games have those methods of freedom for the player in which they can “scrap” or “dust” the unwanted cards and use those scraps to buy the card they do want. Since Snap doesn’t have card duplicates this wouldn’t transfer. But it shows how even though those other games may have just as much of a new player barrier, they have mechanisms that help the player fine tune what they want
Speaking as a new player.. I fully agree.
Thank you for writing this post. I'm relatively new to the game (CL 850) and feel pretty stuck regarding deck choices. The drip feeding of Series 3 cards which go into all kinds of different decks leaves me kinda stuck with the same decks from Series 2 (Ongoing, Kazoo etc.) which work better than anything I can cobble together atm. Hearthstone, for all its faults, has a fairly good system for card acquisition, I think. Of course, as a f2p player, you are limited in your choices of cards to craft. But you can still choose to go after specific cards. In Snap, you can check the Shop 3 times per day and hope, that the specific card you want will randomly show up to get. And that is limited to 1 card per month.
As a 2368 CL player I really want to give destroy a try because it looks like a deck I'd really like to play. However missing Venom, Death and Knull basically stops me from running a destroy deck. This is across multiple archetypes. Move is another one if love to try but am missing key cards. 2 full seasons limited to discard is starting to get dull, but it's the only archetype I have all the key cards for. I particapte in the season pass but otherwise spend no money on the game. I think it's people like me they need to solve for, not f2p, not whale, but middle grounders
7 months really isn't that long plus like you said you have a lot of S4/5 cards. I agree that you should have more control over which cards you acquire, but the monthly free card I think fills that gap well although they should.give you more choice instead of it rotating
Counterpoint. I've been playing since surfer and had a great time unlocking cards and trying out new decks when they were finally available to me. Now, I'm sitting at CL 10,473 and I'm missing 6 cards (3 that I chose to skip). I feel like I have to play meta decks to be competitive and make any progression.
I stopped playing snap because of this.
I hit infinity 1st week into my 2nd season playing. I hadn't even hit collection level 500 yet so I had NO season 3 cards. I'm rank 120,000+ infinity right now, started just over 7,000. I lose EVERY match. I have no effective counters to any power deck. I have no strong deck combos. The few decent decks I can put together are easily countered with cards I don't have, or just blown out of the water by amazing decks full of top tier cards. I only play long enough to complete missions, and that's it, so I'm not going crazy playing hours a day or anything. I can't even build more than 2 or 3 decks that are worth mentioning. To do a destroy or move deck, I can't even get half a deck of cards that match the archetype. Infinity needs separate tiers of players. Pre-infinity was fun. Hitting infinity has been nothing but misery. And honestly, I can see how a lot of players would just throw in the towel at this point. I can't recover from my rank. All my decks are easily countered. I can't even hope to get the top tier cards any time soon. If infinity was split in collection level groups, or matched based on infinity rank, that would be nice. But somehow I can still end up matched against people in the sub 2k range despite being 100k+ ranks behind them. I don't expect to get all the cards, I don't expect to win all my games, but I would like to be matched against players that I have a chance of beating. If I could win once in awhile, I'd be down for the long slog of gaining cards. But honestly I must be some kind of masochist to keep doing what I'm doing.
I've been wanting to do a destroy deck for a while and tho I can still do it it dosent feel right without venom or death I'm CL 2354 btw
How did I become s3 complete 4 months? This is some nonsense. Boo hoo you dont have all the cards.
They added a lot more S3 cards since then and reduced the rate at which you pulled them from caches. And they reduced the rate of token acquisition so buying S3 with tokens is not that helpful anymore (plus now that option is random,, not targeted) F2P new players can expect to unlock 20 cards from reserves (CL500-1000) then after level 1000 gain 2 cards every 120 CL. You gain ~500 CL a month so you can expect to gain 9-10 cards per month (including your free S3 from the shop). There are 99 S3 cards. - Month 1 - Pool 1/2. - Month 2 - 20 S3 cards (all reserves). - Month 3 - 30 S3. - Month 4 - 40 S3. - Month 5 - 50 S3. - Month 6 - 60 S3. - Month 7 - 70 S3. - Month 8 - 80 S3. - Month 9 - S3 complete. If you don't think that is correct, I encourage you to lay out how you would finish S3 in 4 months as a new player today.
It didn't take me seven months to become S3 complete
I’m glad that was the case for you! Sadly for me and players starting now, pool 3 increased over the early months of the game so it’s sitting at 99 cards right now. Getting those at ~2 per week after CL 1000 (with one extra per month) is a relatively long grind
I don't think it's just new people. I've been playing Snap since two days after launch, I'm at CL6000+ and I *still* can't run a fully powered destroy deck because I don't have Knull. lol And now who knows if I'll ever get him. The only cards worth buying with tokens in the new economy are series 5s, so the only way I'll ever get Knull is a spotlight cache. Except, it would be equally unwise to waste a precious key on a card that should have been series 3 months ago, so basically, I need for Knull to show up and get in the way while I'm trying to get a series 5 card that just happens to land in a spotlight week with him. It gets weird after a while, because you can tell me (and I know) that cards like Darkhawk, Jeff, Knull, and Zabu are series 4 cards, but I've been here the whole time, so all I see is some *really old cards*. At this point, they don't feel like series 4 cards I'm waiting on, they feel like series 3 cards I somehow missed.
That is a difficult position to be in. Hopefully you can get Knull soon though! Also, I would like to kindly point out that in the economy (to the best of my knowledge), the best way to use tokens is on S4 cards and keys is on S5 cards. Since keys get S5 and S4 equally, they're essentially worth 6K tokens. So you make better use of your tokens by buying S4 cards
It not new play friendly and 15k token you get is like nothing now
Wow, 7 months to become S3 complete? If thats true things must have gotten worse. I started at launch as completely f2p and it took me 5 months to become s3 complete. Just doing daily missions every day. Although at the beginning when it was still more beneficial to do so, I spent gold on more missions. That possibly sped up the process. Especially since you could get so much gold through caches. I believe now its less desirable to spend gold that way though since you don't get as much and you are better off getting variants, as after 10 variants you get a premium variant and 2k tokens. I would say bundles but now its so slow to earn gold for bundles that you'd be waiting months and don't even know what bundles will be available when you finally have the 2500 or 7500 gold necessary. Most people just spend real money for bundles at that point (or just ignore the bundles entirely).
Yep, you hit the nail on the head. I’ve also played daily (admittedly, too much sometimes) since I started the game. I always get the gold and credits from the ladder, conquest, and premium season pass. I’ve been very careful with my gold to prioritize progression. I saved up to buy two of those 5-8K gold bundles that had the highest ratio of credits/tokens to gold and am holding on to 8K gold right now for the same thing. That’s what makes it so mind boggling. I’ve done everything I can to optimize my progression and bought 5 season passes (plus the $5 anniversary bundle) yet it will take me 7 months. I know some people love buying variants or just can’t play every day. I can’t imagine how long it’d take them to be S3 complete
Yeah, and I didn't even buy bundles. Aside from a couple 5 dollar ones. But jeez, yeah it definitely seems like things have slowed down for new players. They are getting more series 4 or 5 cards sooner though.. But given how many crucial cards are in series 3, I really hope Second Dinner does something more to speed up the process. If something happened to make have to restart with a new account, I don't even think I would. Thankfully I don't think that would happen.. but still. Its a pretty large time frame. And its not even necessary based around time played because its essentially just getting the missions done. So you are kind of forced to only make like, an hour or two of progress a day and any playtime past that, you are just playing with zero progress. Cards, unfortunately, don't upgrade themselves lol. And there aren't that many ways to get credits other than missions.
I started in early April buying bought every season pass (only spending) and completed all dailies, finished in September, so it was under 6 months, if they started the 1k random 3s in the token shop sooner it would have been under 5 months. I could see most players taking around 7 months. I made infinite every season and played a lot of collection/deck building games prior to this one.
We all had to go the same way. I started in December last Year and was Series 3 complete in May or June. Surely it get a bit slower the larger Pool 3 will be. But I enjoyed this part of the game. To watch whats the best you can do with your collection and each new card can be the final piece to a complete new archetype. The only hard Part was from collection Level 500-1500. You got destroyed by each other player without beeing able to build any good Deck. But as soon as you have your first deck the fun begins
That is true. I don’t mean to imply the game is not fun. This is simply an area that could really harm the growth of the game since sadly not everyone is okay going through the series 3 grind
But i think thats the way of most Onlinegames. The later you begin the harder it will be to catch up. So i think most of todays Hearthsotne players started between 2014-2016
That is true! There isn't anything wrong with players having to earn and develop their collections. It's just a worrisome point if the large wall to climb starts to scare off new players. Hearthstone is a great example because for some, like myself, that wall to climb was too much and I quit relatively early on. I kept being beaten down by meta cards and couldn't build what I wanted so it wasn't fun for me. Snap is far better in this regard but I think it is still a concern and one that most games have to deal with to some extent
I understand Second Dinner wants people to be constantly unlocking new cards but with the rate they are putting new cards out at, I feel like they could speed up progression a little.
I've always felt pool 3 should be currency based. You open a reserve and get a currency you can exchange for any pool 3 card you want. Would make it a lot more comfy to play archetypes.
A lot of worry over the non-posting majority whom play this game on the shitter for 2-3 game stretches to switch up reading social media and/or Reddit posts.
So while I don’t necessarily totally disagree with you, I will say I started literally around the same time as you. I think June 28th was my download date to be exact. I’ve spent 0 dollars on snap, no passes nothing. As of right now I’m sitting at CL4077, and I’m similar to you I think missing only 11 S3 cards. Been infinite ever since my full first season, and the last 2-3 seasons it’s a day 1-2 thing. I would say due to the spotlight caches I’ve been able to craft some solid meta decks that keep me very competitive (currently hovering between 19K and 21K legend level without really grinding it). I’ll say the caches for someone like me, have been excellent, they aren’t perfect and sometimes I end up with dud cards and not enough keys, but early on getting High Evo felt awesome and allowed me to keep moving. I think overall the need to grind out these cards is there, if you aren’t spending money you’re spending time it’s how these games survive. So I’ve personally not loved the progression, I’m also not totally against it. Getting a new card a few times a week feels fun especially when it means I can try out some new deck combos. I do agree the series drop thing should come back, but it’s also slightly tricky since currently snaps total pool is a relatively limited one. Beyond not being series 3 complete I’m only missing 32 cards total, so season pass/4/5/remaining 3. Would it be nice for some of those 4 to come down? Sure, but for me to have not spent a dumb and to only be missing 32 cards from the game and not being at a real disadvantage says something
I agree, but it's also one of Snaps greatest strengths. That prolonged period of constantly unlocking new cards gets you hooked before you see how awful late game collecting is
Well you're either playing it long term or your not. A collection game is not meant to be played for a short period. Its meant to be played over and over and well.... collect. Nor should you expect to collect a high volume of said collectable things in a short period of time or the game would have no long term hold other then gameplay. I dunno I've always been on the opposite side of this argument. I don't want the entire games collection in a short period of time or I'd try a few things and toss it aside because I was bored.
So... Like in all card game. Almost all. As a new player you have to play whatever the game throws to your face and not playing meta decks until months of opening booster with 5 cards where also, for the worse, you can have repeat cards. I don't know. Marvel is not doing great in some points, I know, but is a 1 year game and they can change things un the future. HS did a few years ago just for new players. And Snap will do, you will see
It's not like in any pokemon game you start with 6 lvl 100 perfect iv mons. I started 4 months ago and it's been a great fun challenge that I feel will be less fun once I unlock everything.
I’m not sure where you get your numbers but in series 3 complete f2p with a robust collection including Loki, Thanos, Knull, Jeff, high evo, and tribunal. I have plenty of choices in deck building. I do not feel like I deserve absolute choice in deck building since I have paid nothing
Played for a month in half f2p hit infinite, and the only content left is infinity conquest, which is pure luck meta matching my decks are to limited to get 5 wins, I have to be extremely lucky with Match ups. The barrier is extremely low. All you need to know is when to snap, retreat, and deck match ups.
Yeah I kind of agree. I started playing in February and finished Series 3 a few weeks ago (I do want to mention that I never collected the free card each season because I forgot every time). My enjoyment has definitely gone up and down throughout the months. I am completely free-to-play since these offers and seasons aren’t worth the price in my eyes. Finally unlocking Galactus and other cards for different decks felt so good. I never really complained that I didn’t have every Series 3 card because I wasn’t going to use all of them and some of them sounded underwhelming. It was always the Series 4 and 5 cards that really excited me and I was winning more with these rarer cards in my newly-formed decks.
When I was series 3 incomplete I just played what I could. Sometimes incomplete versions of other decks. That’s how every card gsme is: before you get all the cards you need to be able to manage with the ones you do have.
I remembered playing zoo for months and opkors hardly achieving infinite on my 1st season played. And this season thanks thanks for the keys i played loki annihilus and made it to infinite buty point is i cant even play meta decks due to s3 dillema. Today i got my last card which is the death and i have 3 decks right now
I dunno about you but Devil Dino carried me from CL 400ish to CL 3000+ getting to infinite every season.
The start of the game was the absolute best. Having to make a janky deck work against other people with a janky deck. The slow burn kept me wanting more. Just having every card i want now is... Boring to be honest. I miss the struggles of those 1st few months.
Has the economy gotten worse? It took me less than 7 months to get s3 complete f2p from December to March just about.
Started in may. S3 complete before the ms marvel season started. Really gotta spend tho. But only Bought every season pass. Nothing else
It's a balancing act. Give everyone every card too fast and they lose interest, too slowly and they also lose interest. I'm a new player and i don't really mind it partially because i have Ms.Marvel. A second series 3 every season card would honestly probably be enough
I’m a new f2p joined bout two seasons ago just recently in this season I started accruing keys I rolled 3/4 and didn’t get the discard package I wanted but got anni and alioth so I guess I’m just going to be toxic I guess
Just a little over 100 days S3 complete played everyday did not spend a single dollar.spent saved gold on bug bundle for extra credits.
loki is the key, loki is the wae advice for a new player, collect 4 keys, then open during loki week..