Why Spotlight Caches Failed. - Marvel Snap

[@Maxim.Nazarenko]

00:00 - Intro 00:03 - Spotlight Caches 01:12 - Old and new system 05:26 - Ben Brode opinion on the Series Drop changes 07:21 - 1.5 years later with the new system 07:45 - Something many of you do not know about 08:33 - Random slot chances 10:01 - Marvel Snap does not want most people owning all the cards 11:05 - Spotlight schedule 14:31 - Gambling with Keys 18:04 - Acquiring specific cards 20:32 - Increasing the chance of cards getting nerfed. Silver Sable and Hydra Bob 24:11 - Recent announcement of the Series Drop 28:33 - "Don't worry, we have time to fix it" 30:28 - Returning players 31:30 - The Series system has to go 33:28 - You're at will of the Spotlight schedule 34:38 - Whales and Splits 36:55 - The poor indie company really can't afford to give out more resources 38:54 - Maybe that will be enough for people 38:58 - Wrap up our discussion

[@321seb]

it failed because they exploited it and took it from card acquisition to an underhanded way to trick players to waste their keys on cards they don’t want

[@fuzzyotterpaws4395]

The thing is I don't care about variants at all, and I just want unowned cards. I THOUGHT spotlight caches gave you new cards first and then variants if you use more keys, but apparently that's not the case. I remember I USED to have every new card on release and it was nice but now I practically only get like one new card every 2 months at this rate depending on how badly I want a card and how many keys I have and how many it takes. I guess if everyone had every card it would be "too powerful" or "ruin the game" or whatever but still...

[@janxyxy6778]

Which CARDS?!?! You only get 1000 TOKEN!!!!!😂

[@tinminator8905]

I think you are wrong in every way. The reason it is failing is purely psychological in nature. Purely in theory the numerical effect the system has is the exact same as the normal booster pack system. You organically start getting less cards, because what you can get are more often duplicates than before. But psychologically it fails 100% in HOW that happens, leading to feels bad moments for the players. 1. It gives too many decisions for something that is essentially random. You decide when you get cards, but it is all in the hand of the game how much you get rewarded. This leads to either sadness, because you feel like getting the bad RNG is a consequence of your actions. Or anger, because you feel unfairly treated by the game since the amount of good cards you acquire is not matching your optimisation efforts. Getting lucky feels expected and is not crazy rewarding psychologically, because you have few rolls with good odds. If there were boosters there is no decision needed, you roll the dice and see what happens. Low odds with many rolls lead to those addicting and satisfying moments rare card pulls that makes that system so successful. 2. Too little compensation for misses. Getting unlucky can fuck your collection for months and you get nothing in exchange. Here the quantity over quality approach is the more satisfying one again. Getting 1K tokens is in nature a LOT better of a reward than the dust you get in hearthstone for an equivalent epic card. But it feels so much worse, because the stakes are so much higher and your odds so much better. You get compensated decently once for a MASSIVE miss. That feels awful. Getting compensated a tiny amount for small misses very often is so much more rewarding. I think the reason for this is that our brain stops understanding really small odds and really small rewards. So if you go below a minimum, you stop comprehending just how irrelevant a reward is. “It’s still free stuff, so it’s good right?”Is what your brain is telling you. 3. The focus on what you are NOT getting. Showing exactly what is in a cache and not getting it is psychological torture. Oh there is this sweet card I love, but it is paired with dogshit or duplicates, so I shouldn’t open this cache. Your logic is sound, but your brain tells you: “OMG I want this card so bad”. Suppressing that urge is another feels bad.

[@tinminator8905]

@@fuzzyotterpaws4395How much money were you spending? With the olds system I got less than 2 new cards each month. The season pass cards and often, but not always 1 series 5 card with tokens. Now I always get at least 2, often 3 and sometimes 4. On average about 3. That is 50% more than before.

[@tradeo8899]

@@tinminator8905Don’t all of those feels bad moments equal more money for SD?

[@robertgutierrez939]

Duplicate protection would go soooo far to make people happier… or at the very least give me the total cost of the duplicate card in tokens.

[@DexterG909]

A simple fix would be guarantee 1 of the filler cards is 1 you don't have the rest can stay the same

[@ZombiesGoNomNom]

Yeah the crazy thing is just making the schedule or random slot less bad could go a long way but they don’t seem to have any desire to fix it

[@JETFORCEJUN0]

This.

[@OratoryJamesIV]

Bingo. Granting duplicate protection would be an enormous positive step.

[@Retromann1899]

How about change the random pool4-5 to your wish list instead

[@fuzzyotterpaws4395]

I thought spotlight caches guaranteed unowned cards first and then variants but I guess that's not the case. I don't care about variants at all and I just want new cards. I just wish we were able to get cards from the collection track or something for a surprise when opening stuff but maybe that's how it used to be but certainly not anymore.

[@AshTreeDweller]

Zombie thank you so much for never holding back your feedback and always going into depth when explaining these issues.

[@ndruitt]

The Silver Sable/Hydration Robert comparison is perfect. There is literally no reason Sable needed to be nerfed when Bob exists.

[@G3MATR1A]

Because Bob is a max 5 power. Sable was in every bounce deck getting bounced 3 times a game when Toxin released

[@rage9661]

​@@G3MATR1A and she was in deck with agent venom which make her 1/8 without even bouncing her

[@supreme1572]

I told people everything you've said in this video when they ANNOUNCED the spotlight system and people yelled at me and called me an idiot. There might even be an old comment of mine on your video saying this. Now the truly funny thing to me is those same people that called me an idiot have quit this game in the last few months.

[@ZombiesGoNomNom]

lol yeah i know the feel, if you said anything questioning the long term viability of spotlights close to release people got MAD

[@Zzzodiackillerrr]

Same especially on reddit. I got mass downvoted. Im talking 100-200 downvotes. Ik spotlight caches were a horrible change bc as time goes on it would get harder and harder to get cards bc of the stupid duplicate dystem. If that was taken out to where you couldnt get a card you already have or some sh!t variant, i wouldnt even complain. I swear r/marvelsnap is full of know it alls who couldnt pass a test with all the right awnsers already circled for them... Edit: the SC is still kind of ok overall for brand new players to pick up new cards faster, but way worse for everyone else

[@sycasey]

The thing is that on release they weren't releasing a new card in the cache during the first week of a season (when you can get the Season Pass). That made the math seem to work (you'd have more chances to save tokens and/or see cards rotate back into the caches because of that extra week). Then they started releasing a new cache card during that week too. That blew it all up.

[@josephnywayfarer1345]

Second Dinner should have a pop up poll in game during the month where folks can vote on cards they want to show up in the spotlight caches. At the end of the month those votes are tallied and the top 4 show up 1 at a time in the next months caches.

[@3245m]

Finally someone talked about how the season pass never appears on the spotlight caches! Thank you! It is hard to be a F2P in this game, I'm almost giving up....

[@regista4]

It's supposed to be hard to be F2P - if it was easy to be F2P the game wouldn't make enough money. The bigger issue is that the game's monetisation still feels awful for season pass only and dolphin level spenders.

[@mchlup]

There's two ways to fix the random spotlight cache slot. 1, Make it so there's duplicate protection and the card is ALWAYS a new Series 5. 2, If you obtain a duplicate you get the exact value of the card in TOKENS, so if it's a Series 4 you get 3k tokens/Series 5 you get 6k tokens.

[@LiquidLanyard]

I think they should 1- drop a ton of cards to series 4. 4 should out number 5. 2- add back the ability to get 4s in normal progression but with a rubber band mechanic. The game should try to keep you at 70-80% completion. Your level of completion directly affects your odds of opening a level 4. If you want to hit 100%, spend tokens/keys.

[@louisfriend9323]

The system already keeps you at 75% completion as f2p, 88% as season pass buyer. With only 52 weeks in a year and 104 returning spots, the total size of series 4 + 5 needs to be (drastically) reduced so cards can return quicker. For new players, the number of collector caches you get until CL 1000, should be at least doubled to CL 1500 or even CL 2000.

[@Galaktika113]

@@louisfriend9323 Actually my % of completion reduced a lot for the last year (10~15% less) because of spotlight caches scheduling (repeats), I am f2p

[@LiquidLanyard]

@@louisfriend9323 I don't know if that's accurate. I hover right around 10 shy of completion. I'm currently 8 shy but it's not uncommon to for me to be 12 shy. By my count, there are 310 unique base cards in snap, putting me over 97% complete. I've been playing since close to launch but I just get the season pass. They definitely need to do something. Dramatically increasing pool 3 may not be the best way to go. Maybe it's changed but it's tough to get newer cards when you're still in series 3. If you make collecting series 3 cards go super fast, when you're series 3 complete, you're ability to collect cards without spending money is going to fall off a cliff, which is going to feel worse. Series 3 should be the biggest pool, followed closely by 4. Series 5 should be reserved for cards released in the past 6 months. The fact Jeff is still series 5 is baffling. 'Big bads' are dumb. If there is an archetype, you should have a reasonable ability to play it once you're series 3 complete.

[@renhardhalim]

reduced the SERIES 5 cards to 5K instead of 6K

[@renhardhalim]

@@louisfriend9323 I'am an season pass only buyer. Playing everyday and guess what?? I never complete my card collection even once. My closest record is 4, now i'am missing around 15 cards. I wonder who tf is in the wrong in here!!!!!!!

[@Maxim.Nazarenko]

I tried to tell people that it's bad idea, back in the day, when Second Dinner introduced Spotlight Caches change. It's logical - they want to sell to people the idea that it will be easier to acquire new cards, but it will be not. They are not interested in easy card acquisition, they are interested in growth of their revenue. Of course they will tell that they are thinking about the players. Otherwise - not so many people will buy this change.

[@9871ish]

Glad to see someone pointing out the lack of agency being the real issue with acquisition as its always been my biggest complaint. I stopped buying season passes last year, had to wait months to get mrs. marvel by which point she was nerfed. I see three potential fixes for spotlights: 1. Have a rotation of the last month's spotlights available to target so even if you miss a card the week it comes out, you still have until the end of the season to pick it up (probably goes against their FOMO design too much). 2. Individualize spotlights somehow to reduce the issues created by their weird curation of caches. Make it a higher chance that players will be shown cards they don't have (doesn't interact well with spotlight variants). 3. Give players the choice when a variant is rolled in the cache to convert the duplicate to tokens, preserving the current system but slightly less punishing as even on a bad week you could come out with a new card and the cost of a series 4 (too "generous", but introduces the most agency).

[@kenny_g3260]

The Loki example around minute 22 is exactly what happened to me. I've been playing since near the beginning of the game, but very irregularly and casually (work means that I'm occasionally not playing games for a 2-3 months every year). I'm missing a lot of staples. I spent all of the last summer planning around going in for the August cache with Wiccan, Loki, and Pixie just to see Loki get nukes from orbit from an archetype-defining card to a supporting card for another recent series 5 card that I didn't have (Arishem). Nerfing Surtr while he's still a Series Pass card alleviates some of the feelings that these are intentional practices, but it still feels bad with how difficult it is to plan as a f2p player.

[@SymbiSpidey]

Yup. That Loki deck was some of the most fun I've had with the game...then they basically made it an obsolete card.

[@DarthSoto78]

This system was fine when you had the season pass week to save up keys. When they started putting a card out on season pass week is when it started to feel awful.

[@AntonioBuonoG]

Yeah, the catch up week was wonderful.

[@joseph2000117]

Excellent point

[@rayman17420]

​@@AntonioBuonoGyeah between the one week.off from a new card in the spotlights and having 1 new card be released as series 4 each season, I found i could keep up with the new cards (still had to skip one every other season or so) with just the premium pass and maybe another $20 on cheaper bundles each month (so im still spending to just keep up, for f2p it much be so much worse) SD must have realized this same thing and put an end to small spenders (who are also at least launch players) being able to keep up with their collections so they put a stop to it right quick. Imo the games heading into a death spiral because the new and returning player experience is horrible (I've seen data backed estimations that less than 3% of new players keep.plsying after just 1 month which is untenable for any live service game but especially a pvp focused one). So there's little to no new players replacing those who naturally quit the game over time. Plus those of us who are veterans but f2p or small spenders are running out of the resources we were able to hoard back from before spotlights were introduced so once we start missing out on 75% of the new cards, I have a feeling many f2p/small spending vets will also start leaving. And as i said above, coming back to SNAP after some time off is hell so once most people quit they'll never return. Add in competition like Pokemon Pocket coming out recently, SD should be doing everything possible to keep players in the game but imo theyre in full on maintenance mode, doing the bare minimum while they milk the p2p/whale players as much as possible before the eventually EoS.

[@josephnywayfarer1345]

I agree 100%

[@fouzwerg]

That and they kept recycling the same cards in spotlights which made it meaningless

[@fuzzyotterpaws4395]

I forgot you used to be able to get gold and more than 100 tokens from the track😭

[@madnessobserver]

By far the most insidious part of the card adquisition system is how tied it is to the balance of the game and vice-versa. As you mentioned this extends beyond the obvious perverse incentive of keeping good cards expensive: on average a F2P player can only guarantee 1 new card per month (you get 4 keys per month and you need 4 keys to guarantee a new card), this means that whichever card the community collectively hypes up as "the strongest card of the month" will be naturally overepresented in the data and thus will be more likely to be subject of (often undeserved) nerfs compared to similar if not stronger cards. So basically, F2P players are by design continously punished for using their resources as they are expected to. The only exception that confirms this rule would be Arishem, which I guess boosted the playrate of the game to an extent SD must be very pleased with, which is why they refuse to nerf him in any meaningful way, they'd rather nerf like 8 other cards as collateral instead. Which is another issue, imagine spending your good earned money on Loki (or worse, on Loki and his variants) because his "fill your hand and then transform them into your opponent's cards" archetype seemed cool to you, but after Arishem comes out Loki gets reworked into something that functions so differently it cannot ever be played in the way you actually bought him for, and on top of that he literally doesn't even work anymore outside of Arishem.

[@rapalborde5211]

Yeah loki rework sucks it only benefits arishem and is theost annoying card in arishem you do not want to play mirror matches where the opponent has +1 max energy. I hope they change loki back to its previous version even if it loses the -1 cost, they could make it +2 power instead

[@Retromann1899]

@@madnessobserver I quited the game for 2 months after that suck changes.🤣

[@noffpoppin]

I'd be curious to learn how many keys can a player expect to get per month if they only buy the Season Pass?

[@rapalborde5211]

@@noffpoppin i think its about 6 keys

[@oramonika9758]

Returning player. I played from the beginning. We kinda knew when certain cards were going to drop series level so we could plan accordingly. Now it's literally a gamble.

[@Stickyz]

Not even, now it's nothing. No one expects the good series 5 cards to drop, only the weaker and underperforming cards.

[@MakoTrevelyan]

I’ve wanted Sersi for so long but don’t want to commit tokens for her, yet she has never returned to spotlight. Even Misery is slated to return before her.

[@alessandropanarelli9072]

tokens are only for ultimate variants

[@TheArctus]

Spotlights had so much potential. We're going into what feels like a do or die time for snap, they sold back to back broken season pass cards, botched a series drop, and most of the caches coming up have 2 series 4 cards. They're killing themselves, this is embarrassing

[@julio543mrb]

i totally agree with you in the way that, they are gonna make the card adquisition feel "less bad" for as long as they can until figuring out a way to make it "decent enough" but im afraid that its going to be too late that people just wont care or simply move one to the next novelty and its sad because marvel snap is a great card game gameplay wise but very underwhelming in the other stuff, nice video keep it cool man.

[@cycle1990]

i have 600 unopened caches and i dont plan to open them since they r useless to me, hoping to get collectors tokens the only currency i care about is not worth, the moment they took out gold from the caches was where they died for me

[@cycle1990]

people should stop supporting to buy the season pass or any amount of real money until they change

[@sagibear2506]

I posted similiar in other snap yt. If we as a player community do not buy the next season pass as a protest to series drop and card acquisition if will definitely be a wake up call to SD. I for one WILL NOT get the next season pass.

[@cheechp3209]

Just scummy practices. Feels bad all round.

[@louisfriend9323]

They wanted to be generous and get more cards in the hands of more players. But then found out their business people will try to manipulate that for the most money, surprise!

[@fuzzyotterpaws4395]

The thing is I don't care about variants at all, and I just want unowned cards. I THOUGHT spotlight caches gave you new cards first and then variants if you use more keys, but apparently that's not the case. I remember I USED to have every new card on release and it was nice but now I practically only get like one new card every 2 months at this rate depending on how badly I want a card and how many keys I have and how many it takes. I guess if everyone had every card it would be "too powerful" or "ruin the game" or whatever but still...

[@andymatthews5298]

As someone who has decided it’s time to stop Snap, I agree so much with all these comments; the game is literally designed and managed to infuriate. That’s not a word I use lightly

[@ocara50000]

1k tokens is disgustinf

[@cycle1990]

@ocara50000 yea, and i always get the 1k tokens instead one of the many s5 cards in missing XD haha smh

[@renhardhalim]

the fact that gacha system doesn't have a guaranteed pity is fkin disgusting

[@bwill1268]

They need to bring back the random chance of getting a series 4 and 5 card from the cache pool and give you a card you don’t have on the random slot

[@halflink9298]

Thanks for explaining the random spotlight spot, as a new player of 2 months 2.5k CL, I was absolutely horrified when I pull asecond Toxin in a random slot after just pulling him a few weeks ago….. at that point I only had 4 series 5 cards…. Def feels bad.

[@LumberjackNick]

“Oh goody. Alright.” lives rent free in my head.

[@fuzzyotterpaws4395]

I thought spotlight caches guaranteed unowned cards first and then variants but I guess that's not the case. I don't care about variants at all and I just want new cards. I just wish we were able to get cards from the collection track or something for a surprise when opening stuff but maybe that's how it used to be but certainly not anymore.

[@banksybum317]

I remember pulling darkhawk my third month playing and that feeling hasn’t been felt since. Use to be so exciting.

[@D00M3R-SK8]

I got Knull when it was S5, from the old system. Was a great day. I never seen a second S5, however. I know plenty of people that never even got one. The Game has always been utterly stingy with the card acquisition, and hiding this behind the premise of it being like a phys card game, and everyone having "unique" collections just isn't going to fly any more. You know there is something wrong with your game, when even the whales have a terrible time. I just came back off my 3rd, long break, and I am now facing around 22 S5 cards I'm missing (I previously was missing 1 S4 and 1 S5 card, before I stopped playing at the end of June, I think. It was Eternals season) and all decks have at least 2 cards I'm missing. Now I am willing to buy these cards, but getting them to show up in my shop, that's another story. The acquisition is artificially stalled in such a way, to try and get people to spend money. This means that those of us that actually spend a decent chunk on the game, actually end up suffering the most (especially if you take a long break) Even if I wanted to throw a grand at it, it wouldn't matter. Would have the same limitations as a F2P player, because you simply cannot get at the cards until they show up in the shop (being able to trade gold for tokens now will speed things up, but you still are limited to 3 cards a day, and you have to wait till the ones you want show up) The variant shop is even worse. The "album" variants fill the shop every day, so chances are it will take over 12 months to get the one you want, unless you buy it the day it comes out. PS: not buy all 20+, but buy 4 or 5 to get a few decks up and running. This can take upwards of a week to complete the cycle of all your missing cards. It's especially more frustrating when they start to come in the wrong order. So say you specifically want 3 cards, but one is key to the deck, the one that is key will more often than not be hiding at the back of the pile, where as the other stuff flashes up first. You can let cards go by, then change your mind and have to wait the cards to all appear before you see the same one again. I feel just by increasing the cards offered to 9 a day (3 each time) I mean we could even go for 6 a day and just show 2 each time. It would at least speed up the acquisition of cards for returning players, and those wanting to finish their series 3 collections. Have them offer S3 cards until S3 complete. You could even have it so it shows 1 x S5 and 1 x S4, then the remaining 6 would be S£ cards. Then they still have options for higher tier cards, while being able to quickly move through Series 3, and have far less headache when it comes to getting the cards you actually need. it wouldn't even take up that much space, neither. An extra 2 cards each cycle, that's it.

[@geoplays99]

Great video, insightful as always. I really feel like the outrage over everything is coming to a head and we might see significant changes soon. Maybe it’s cope. I just love this game and want it to succeed

[@Danielsworlds]

new cards should come out in spotlight cashes at series 5, largely as is. After 3 months a card will show up as the secondary options in a spotlight cash letting people get them for a second time without tokens. 6 months after release a card should drop to series 4 and shortly after have its 3rd appearance in a spotlight cash. After a year of release a card should drop to series 3 and no longer shows up in spotlight cases preventing bloat to the higher card pools. Season pass cards should have a 3 month exclusivity window where they are not in series 5. after 3months they become purchsiable with tokens but not in the spotlight cash pool yet. 6 months after a season pass cards release it will show up in a spotlight cash for the first time and a year after release drop to series 4 and have its second appreance in spotlight cashes. This keeps season pass cards exclusive for a time, insentevises spenders to buy it to get that exclusive window but allows a road to acquisition for others and at a slower rate of release to normal cards to keep its exclusive feel. This system keeps the series 5 pool from bloating to insane sizes, like it is now, provides a path and a plan for players who want to get specific cards. Did you miss a card the first time around? Cool wait 3 months save your keys and grab it then reliably. Or wait 6 months and get it for the discounted token rate. or if its a card you aren't interested in personally. its ok. wait a year and you can grab it as your free monthly series 3 when ever you feel like it. A single card should not be able to show up in the spotlight cashes more than 1 every 3 months. and "big bads" could have that Cash appearance rate dropped to very 6 months to keep them feeling special. Bump the amount of tokens gained from normal reserves by a bit to help players. Does not need to be a lot with this system allowing for more series 4 cards more often the feels bad of missing a series 5 at launch and having to spend 6k on it should be reduced. Make the random card slot on spotlight cashes have a 33/66 split between series 5 and 4 like it is now. But reward 2k tokens for series 5 dupes and 1k tokens for series 4 dupes. Merry Christmas i fixed the economy. This still lets players who want to whale get their shiny things on launch and season pass cards to sell to players to keep SD happy. But give a path to actually acquire cards that does not just feel like I'm praying for it to show up in a cash sooner than a year later.

[@miguelarrocha2703]

I wish I could give you at least 100 likes for this video. Thank you very much for addressing this issue that generates frustration for many players like me who have only been in Marvel Snap for a short time.

[@andrewmcbride88]

Get rid of boosters and give us tokens for increased agency. Let us purchase any card without having to wait for it to show in the shop.

[@ickyog]

With x23 and Sasquatch going down to series 4 that means we're only getting two series 5 cards in spotlights that arent new cards the whole month

[@BetarayBillLover]

25:00 that was 100% me I used too laugh at the doomers and now I see myself stand with them shoulder to shoulder

[@crowashington]

As you expertly pointed out, There are many fixable issues with the spotlights system. I just hope they do it.

[@sycasey]

I wonder if the "feel bad" element could be helped by introducing a set schedule for when cards will return, and sticking to it. If players know that a card will definitely be coming back to the cache in 3 months, 6 months, whatever, then they can plan for it. The black box of uncertainty is the big issue, similar to when the set schedule of series drops just turned into random ones. (And honestly, forcing themselves to re-release certain cards within a certain time frame will probably also force Second Dinner to exercise better judgment about series drops, as having too many cards in Series 4/5 is going to eventually make that scheduling impossible. You can still keep the best cards in S5 indefinitely if you want, just on a regular rotation that players can plan for. Whales still get the first-mover advantages and will want to keep paying for full collections either way.)

[@kilgannonstuff]

it’s also the art. if they don’t have art for the card it can’t go in spotlights. which is dumb

[@ivanvontempske5116]

I'm not expecting any positive player experience changes in the future. The only change to Deadpool's Diner was to remove bots, which made the terrible 600k to 30Mil grind more painful. They want to monitize that pain, as shown with the popup to buy bubs after going down a table. The bad 12 card series drop confirmed nothing is getting better.

[@markmurex6559]

Great video! I hope SD makes some needed changes in the near future.

[@fuzzyotterpaws4395]

15:03 I and most other players don't even get to have that many in the first place lol. I only get 4 keys a month if I'm lucky. You have to play a ton, and get credits, specific boosters, and gold to upgrade everything up the track and that takes a while so keys are hard to pile up especially since you basically need 4 if you want a card...

[@agustinfandino8950]

Yeah, I had to use 4 keys to get Gorr and it felt pretty bad. Now I only have 1 key left. A good solution would be ensuring you get offered at least 1 card you don't own, or letting me "block" one of the options to increase my chances.

[@ocara50000]

Both professions could happen at the same time. Plus would be exciting if the variants were good

[@jchaney229]

I think all they truly need to do is remove the conquest tickets for 500 tokens and maybe just up the tokens for the random dupe to 2-3k so it isn't as wasteful

[@joseph2000117]

Simple fixes like this would go a long way to making the system pretty good. However SD is doing their best to window down the player base to non-vocal whales who never voice negative feedback

[@tinminator8905]

I think you are completely wrong and misreading the issues on a fundamental level. The system is more generous than most other card games. It simply feels horrible and psychologically fails to provide satisfying moments. This means that as a game designer it is FUNDAMENTALLY BROKEN. Giving you marginally more cards will not make you ANY more satisfied. It needs to be reworked from the ground up, making it more generous has not lead to more player satisfaction. Making less generous hasn’t either. It is just broken.

[@lucasfilipe1634]

5 Spotlight Caches per week: 1 Card release + 2 Cards + 1 Ticket for any card featured that season + 1 Ticket for a spotlight variant from cards you own and 2000 tokens. that makes so you have it increases the chance of gettingn the new card from 25% to 40%.

[@Maxim.Nazarenko]

I also felt that there was big crash of players and overall interest in Marvel Snap in april/may this year.

[@joseph2000117]

Same. I wonder what the exact reason was either Rulk or Widow going crazy or May having good but boring cards. But I noticed too at the time based on KZbinr view count. It was a quiet quiting of snap and the yter didn't want us to notice lol

[@joseph2000117]

Oh yeah and Leech blink lol

[@fallguybuddy2654]

The bob example is exactly why I’m stopping. If they’re gonna nerf cards at least give us better agency to get them faster. I’m stopping until they’re done “working” on it.

[@bovinomaravilhadbz2056]

thank you for telling the truth on your channel

[@Donnysaurbear]

Great info and perspective…thanks

[@SolosKnifeReviews]

Again, you’re absolutely spot on!

[@marshall5912]

I said when I first started playing the game 2 years ago that the card acquisition system was fundamentally flawed. A card game predicated on “here’s a card game where you CAN’T get the cards you want” is gonna have issues when people want to play the new cards.

[@joseph2000117]

Once you realize SD is doing their best to window and purge down the player base to non-vocal whales who never voice negative feedback, a lot of their actions make sense. They only want ride or dies till they release their next game

[@APSx_]

one of my favorite marvel snap content creators ❤

[@seejeh4060]

Banger video as always my man

[@fitzciaran]

Great analysis, decoupling card acquisition and split/variant acquisition could help. It's been great to see a sustained push from creators and this issue, gives me hope that the pressure could turn this around, feels like an inflection point, either there is significant improvements or the game dies... and either way, the problem goes. Right from the initial announcement I hated the spotlight system and it's lack of agency and suspected the bloat of series 5 to the point where most players have most of the total cards but NOT most of the current good ones (cards released in the past 6 months or so.)

[@ConFusi0n]

You did a really good job articulating this. It's hard to pin down why the spotlights feel so bad when it seems like mathematically we get more stuff. I think when the spotlights came out I was maybe 70% s4/s5 complete, after a few months I was closer to maybe 90-95, but it's been slipping back down since then. Great video.

[@zubsiro]

In my opinion it failed because it uses the gacha aspect seen in PvE games where not getting what you want sucks but has no competitive consequences like an ONLY PvP game, like Snap, does. The worst part is a new player in those PvE games you pull for 1 character and boom you play as them, in Snap a new player pulls for one card and then need to wait months to get the other cards needed to even play a cohesive deck

[@720pchannel]

Spot on. I play a gacha game and even taking a few weeks or even a fucking month I can get new chars if I manage my resources right just as soon as I return

[@andysabur4966]

sorry late reply, and incoming wall of text that basically agrees with you snap was my first gacha. wasnt feeling good about it, so i thought "you know what, let's just jump to these 2 gachas that just got promoted to me, cant be worse than snap" 9 months later, ive spent hundreds more (like those double topups with the 100dollar pack just get me) spread across 4 games (2 action 2 strategy) and im still happy bout it, tho i am starting to cut down to go full f2p cuz i do want to play normal games lol turns out, i'm perfectly fine with gambling as long as there's mediocre to great stories and pretty pixels and pleasing sounds (and the pixels and sounds are actually better than snap). i shudder to think there's full gachas that's pvp, i heard it's an absolute whale town there. in retrospect shouldve seen it coming. i used to play lol for a year and grinding out to perma unlock champions was a grind even if the rotating free heroes was cool

[@zombiegoatt4282]

They need to just give us packs each pack has a guaranteed 4 star with a small chance for a 5 star. When you pull a 4 star you also get 100 tokens. When you pull a 5 star you also get 200 tokens. If you pull a duplicate 4 or 5 star you double the tokens. Limit packs to 5 per day and a guarantee 5 star on pack 35. This means you get 1 guaranteed 5 star each week. You can still run caches with this system to introduce new cards but keys are actually in packs guaranteed 1 key on pack 13. So you limit keys to 2 per week which seems like a fair system to me. I would also suggest getting 25 credits in place of series 3 cards.

[@wesleysolomon5364]

Correct. If you already own a variant you like, why would you waste a key on one you'll never use? I called out this problem on one of your videos months ago! And it's an easy fix too! Create a system that randomly rotates your favourite variants for cards in your decks. Having to swap out variants yourself is so tedious and boring. SD could easily fix this issue for players. Also, why can't we show off our collections to other players? That's the point of collecting cards IRL, to show them off. I know, I used to play YGO years ago. EVERYONE wanted to see your file. Lol. And Pokemon Pocket has this feature right of the bat!

[@ZombiesGoNomNom]

yeah having a random variant selection would be cool and ive gotta imagine at least make them some more money off getting people to buy more variants

[@Maxim.Nazarenko]

Completely agree.

[@adamn7777]

I haven't played for a year and this month I have at least 1 card in every one of those spotlight groupings and a good chunk of those cards are included in the series drop. I think I have 12 series 5 cards and somehow still would have duplication issues with these spotlights. Another issue with the spotlights is the only way to attempt to plan around them is to use datamined info because they don't publish this info ahead of time so people can plan accordingly in a system that basically requires planning. It's meant to feed into FOMO more and I think a fundamental misreading of the audience thinking that card game players would just be happy to open one card a week come what may and have a unique collection. The best fix I can think of with the lowest possible cost is that the spotlights are 3 procedurally generated cards based on what the user doesn't have and one new card with a similar logic they use for cards appearing in the token shop to give every card an equal chance. Eliminates the planning from players and devs and keeps the randomness they so love. This way though if you save up 4 keys for a new card you like if you have to use all 4 they're for 4 new cards

[@Thebu7cher]

I'm a semi free to play it's possible to 2 keys ever week but it's a grind I'm tired of now I'm getting feed up😢

[@shanedbunting]

Yeah I'm in a similar boat , I use Google surveys and have had them buy me 3 season passes and I got one from a content creator . Currently missing 18 cards , 16 S5 and 2 S4 🧐

[@sync8221]

new to the game who do you do actually? i know finishing dailies are important but how do you get 2 keys (12k credits if im correct) per week

[@shanedbunting]

@@sync8221 part of what I do is to only try to do splits from grey or green border for the rebate quality it provides . When you move up 30 or 32 spaces on the CL track you can expect to get between 100 and sometimes 200 credits. I have also been using the variant shop to fill out some albums for the resources and getting the 2000 credits from using the shop 10.times has helped. Its just tedious .

[@Thebu7cher]

@sync8221 nah you need boosters first I've been playing since the game came out so the best booster farm is conquest you'll need to build a deck and go there or use any card go aquire booster then you'll see your way to something like that... Every game of conquest grants you 6 booster and at the end of it all one card will get all that booster.... It's the best way to do it and it's the easiest way.... Don't worries about climbing yet get as much booster first so when you start your climbing you won't have to worrier about boosters.... Assuming you go all the boosters you need you gotta climb you'll get credits. Buy credit for the shop and buy form conquest. And if you want pick up the season pass there extra credits there and there free credits there as well. Happy trail.

[@japan100100]

@@shanedbunting Ok and? You aren't really meant to have every single card unless you are an ultra whale. And after buying 3 passes and playing for awhile, you should a good enough collection to easily do good on ladder. I dont get why people complain about not having a few cards. I dont even use my tokens for new cards, only for cool variants, and yet I feel fine with the slow trickle of new cards I get. I sometimes only need to use 1 key to get a new card I want, and have a few keys in reserve for future investments. I've spent 6-7 keys once just to get a variant I want. Not a big deal, if you are patient.

[@jinchu9999]

I honestly thought the community was kind of already aware of the pros and cons behind this system, even back when it released. It's just a shame that we have seen almost every negative prediction come true

[@mchlup]

The Silver Sable and Hydra Bob, nerfing and not nerfing scenario is the scummiest thing the devs pull in this game all the time. Once a card returns to spotlight caches and players can get it, they nerf it 1 week later. It's happened so many times already. Really glad you pointed it out. It's funny, they nerfed Surtur and now one plays him really (after players spent their hard earned cash getting the season pass).

[@bayareaeventz]

Found this on twitter. Thanks for the information. Good watch

[@fuzzyotterpaws4395]

10:19 That makes no sense! I thought you were SUPPOSED to earn everything in a game! Maybe because this is the only card game I play and it's not a normal console game or whatever, but I thought the GOAL was to get every card in the game! You play more and grind to get the cards as a reward. I thought veteran players were supposed to have everything, kinda like in Helldivers 2 how I played a lot and now have everything so I want the same feeling in Marvel Snap...

[@ledsenkatt]

It's a mobile game, made to keep profiting

[@licespice0]

I’m completely free to play and the only season pass card I’ve been able to get this year has been Kate bishop because I got her randomly out of a spotlight cache like a month after she released.

[@BetarayBillLover]

I feel like they should put the pass card in the first cache of every season, don’t even get me started on Bob it is so damn frustrating he has not been back yet but I also don’t want too spend tokens because I know 100% he will be nerfed the second I get it I find the ppl behind this game more and more incompetent with each passing day especially recently, I thought things were turning around with high voltage but things are worse now then ever Yeah nerfs feel awful everytime

[@joseph2000117]

Incompetent? No sor these people are very smart and genuinely know what they are doing. They must balance between customer vs money amd we're losing lol

[@BetarayBillLover]

@ well if we’re losing then I’d argue they are being incompetent at their job cuz that would mean they are failing at balancing the two things

[@recycl0ps890]

I bought shuri during her boost at any location. Got nerfed.i bought other cards at their height and most often all card i buy gets nerfed

[@stefann8291]

Another problem with the cache system that is seldom mentioned is that it’s really important that you plan how to utilize your keys, but you actually couldnt if it weren’t for data mines. There is no official way to know what will end up in a future cache apart from the current season.

[@andread7577]

Great analysis

[@jjqq4116]

Just let us choose the card we want to unlock from the shop where all cards are available. This game is going to die from greed.

[@desmondkorea]

I like the editing very clean bro

[@ZombiesGoNomNom]

Thanks!

[@dondiwhitaker3997]

I think we all gotta be patient and have confidence that they will work this out. This is my favorite game and i think they will fix this in time.

[@lizzieflamingo7367]

The thing about returning players rings so fucking true. I got really burnt out on the game towards the end of Exiles season and so I stepped away from some months. I'm just now returning, having missed Eternals, all the Symbiote stuff, Young Avengers, Gwenpool, most of Nine Realms etc and looking at the next 2 months of spotlight caches, it's almost NO cards I don't have besides the new stuff. It's so frustrating to constantly lose to decks playing things like Malekith, Anti Venom, Scream, or Arishem and not knowing when I might even have a chance to get those cards. I hope something is done about this soon

[@vii109]

A problem too is most the spotlight variants are awful. Look at the legion this week. They're just throwing anything into those, compared to the quality we had at first. Those first knulls, thanos, and even Jean greys or Echos. They were glorious. These recent ones are just... whatever. (Excluding the ones of the season cards)

[@lucasfilipe1634]

You must be out of your mind calling a Trad Moore art awful. If you don't like it, don't need to shit on it, mate.

[@ronciego9249]

I really wished they eliminated the random card from the cache, because grinding to save up on a key just to have a duplicate of another card (convertible to only 1,000 credits) is really disappointing and discouraging

[@zeroisnine]

Haven't watched the the reason is VARIANTS. (1) they limited what could be put in caches because some cards didn't have any (2) they mixed gameplay rewards and cosmetic rewards.

[@araisikewai]

Spotlight system could have worked. The problem is they're opaque on what cards get into spotlight and they abuse their power on it with limiting access to more recent cards from ever entering while rotating the same cards in the spotlight for the 3rd/4th times. And the change to the spotlight roster were much more pronounced in the last 6 months.

[@Oaty86]

I came back recently after a 6 month hiatus, I gave the game a really good push trying to get back into it but it still feels stagnant with the same old decks running around, nothing new creatively. Trying to get key pieces to make new decks was a nightmare. I cracked 6 caches over the last 2 months and got 4x of the ? card which gave me 1k each. The cards I was cracking for had at least 2 cards I did not have some had 3. I have managed to buy 1 card with tokens and acquire 1 new card from the spotlight cache. This game feels inaccessible to anyone who is not dumping huge amounts of cash into the game, and it does not feel like it is growing, the content seems stagnant and it feels like there should be some sort of card rotation happening. The lightning event was great fun, but everything else has been a huge disappointment. The card shop has frequently has $100+ deals and I look at them with disgust as I generally will equate use to a World of Warcraft subscription of approx $30-40 to spend every two months of play I get. I can't see how anyone but massive whales are able to play and enjoy this, eventually the whales are going to get annoyed and the replacement whales are not going to appear because the appeal is not there and the upfront investment cost is too high without any form of rotation.

[@Maxim.Nazarenko]

Same as always. Always look what people do, not what they say. Same for the Second Dinner.

[@ashleygray1632]

I said this would be an issue when they changed it. A simple starting fix would be too allow is to craft any card we want, not in a rotation.

[@sceif]

I stopped playing about 2 months ago for many of these same reasons. I was paying 15 dollars a month and maybe getting 2 of the 5 or 6 cards to debut that month and I felt that spending that much on a mobile game every month i shouldn't be falling behind 3 or 4 cards each month. They hide so many cards under the cover of randomness that often it's far more frustrating than satisfying. I know many went through this like me where a spotlight for the week had a new card you'd like to have in your collection and possibly play now or in the near future and you had to "compete" with getting with 3 other possibilities, often none of which were an appealing outcome because you had that card and were often going to get a variant that you didn't like over your current one for that character and therefore you basically got nothing. The choices you have to buy variants with gold? Random. The one card that shows up to purchase with collector's tokens? Random. What item/card shows up in caches? Random. The effects the cards get when you upgrade past ultimate? You guessed it, Random. The fact that regular currency is even a part of the caches is a joke, i mean you spend a thousand or so to upgrade a variant and climb the ladder and the reward is getting 100 to 200 of it back. Oh geesh thanks, that somehow makes me happy? Portraits and tag lines just don't feel like much of a reward and almost always feel like a disappointment, and of which ones of those pop up? Yep, random. I've gradually went from being able to build most of the decks I wanna or at least one fairly close sub to doing so to missing 1-3 cards for almost any deck i wanna try and just not possible to play as I'm missing key cards and too many overall. If I was a F2P player I'd expect this, but when I'm shelling out at least 15 every month and I feel this way? Time to move on. Just way too much unnecessary randomness and it makes nothing more than a gacha game, just a little more covert about it.

[@joseph2000117]

If they take away my spotlight keys for the new system fuck em

[@braydenmiller7224]

I am a returning player. I came back during the start of the kate bishop season after leaving at the end of the zabu season. Every spotlight since i have returned has been entirely cards i do not own. Even with that I do not love the system and thats as someone who does not have to worry about burning keys on duplicates. There are a lot of cards I would like to get and play that I think a lot of players seem to have gotten while I was away that have not shown up in the spotlight since I returned and are not scheduled to get there soon. I want to get cards like thanos, galactus, arishem, darkhawk, ajax; knull. The list goes on. They all feel like strong staples for their decks that I do not have and cannot get. And I am also finding it hard to harness what agency I have through targetting certain spotlights because it feels like, with how powerful and unique a lot of the new cards they are releasing in the spotlights are, there arent many weeks that feel good to pass up on in order to save my keys for the ones I really need/want. I also understand that while I dont have those cards many players do and if they put those back in the spotlights its good for me but other people may be displeased. I dont know how they are meant to navivate that dilema without something major changing. Additionally I dont like the philosophy that better cards ought to be higher series. When a plain good card gets into the spotlight i feel obliged to get it even if its not a card i find super fun or appealing. Stuff like hydra bob, nico, gladiator, etc... not to mention some of the cards i did use keys on just got nerfed soon after. I got loki, white widow, and silver sable when they cane through and they are all worse now than when I got them... and im still mad they nerfed my main man klaw despite admitting his win rate was reasonable - just too high for a low series (accessible) card A good place to start would probably be through the tokens. Ive had arishem pinned for what feels like forever but the rate i acrue tokens is pathetic. Im not getting any sizeable chunks from duplicates or anything like that (which i hear doesnt feel good anyway cause the value is still too low compared to just getting a new card with your key) so im just telying on caches and might get like 100 tokens every 10 or so caches so dont worry. Just let me open 600 caches and ill be there. It feels like a slap in the face to, after opening a bunch for titles, avatars, and pixel variants I will never use, be given 1/60th of a card

[@ZombiesGoNomNom]

thanks for sharing your experience as a returning player

[@Jlevens]

They should move a lot of old and non special cards to series 3 and keep around 25 cards in series 4 and 12 in series 5

[@blastarrow6562]

Great video and breakdown

[@JLedSnap]

A card that has been one of the best cards in the game since release (Arishem) hasn't been re-run in spotlights and they will probably delay it as long as possible (no new spotlight variants are even in data mines)

[@astralwerk]

And besides... We all are moving to play Marvel Rivals on december 6 🥳🎂

[@Kromatt]

Dec 6 is exile day, whatcha talking about 😏

[@pyrosdestiny]

Snap gameplay is the best card game I have ever played. Short,fun, interactive and visually engaging. SD have acted in nothing but bad faith. They just trying to milk and exploit the loyal fanbase. The game is extremely expensive and just doesn't feel worth it. Gatcha and fomo mechanics cheapened the entire experience. Enough is enough.

[@pheckeht]

YES 40 MINUTE TED TALK. LES GOOOOOOOO

[@turtato2155]

Its been a while since. I played but how im the world do you get series 4 cards. Is it only through the spotlight cache

[@ZombiesGoNomNom]

caches or 3k tokens

[@regista4]

The early and mid game of Snap was one of the best gaming experiences I've ever had. The late game experience was one of the worst. I was sad that I felt like I had no other option but to quit playing and spending money on it but I've not regretted the decision once.

[@ZombiesGoNomNom]

Yeah it really is sad, I’ve seen far too many people have the exact same experience you have described

[@SymbiSpidey]

The sad part is I'd be willing to spend money on cosmetics if the card acquisition was better. But because I can't even build the decks I want to play, I see no point in buying cosmetics at all. In fact, I'm skipping the Season Pass this month entirely because I'm just gonna end up playing the exact same decks I've been using for months anyway.

[@maksfronczak9365]

I really like the spotlight caches idea and even execution. It was a unique card aquisition idea for a card game

[@malbi885]

yeah the last 2 months I've been getting the random card result on my first key practially every week there is a card I want and it feel so bad to keep getting a pittance of tokens for yet another dupe and there are still plenty of series 5 cards I don't have!

[@andrewmcbride88]

If they don't nerf Bob before he returns to spotlight but they do after, I will literally drop this game. That will be the most obvious cash grab and the final straw.