Marvel Snap continues to make changes to how new cards are acquired in the collecting and battling card game, with the most recent change being the weekly Spotlight Cache.
It seems as though the game’s developer Second Dinner has not quite been able to find a happy medium for card acquisition in the game, which is especially a problem considering there’s a brand new card every single week.
Each week, the Spotlight Cache features three different cards from Series 4 and 5, including new ones that are added outside of the season’s current season pass. The issue is that these caches are only every 120 Collection Levels on the collection track, whereas new cards used to be acquirable as random drops in Collector’s Reserves, which are found every 12 levels.
Related: Marvel Snap’s newest season pass card further strengthens both Destroy and Discard decks
“[I’m going to] be honest, I hate how the caches are now,” said the original poster of the thread in question. “I haven’t gotten a new card since Legion and that’s because I was holding tokens since I heard about his release date. Now keep in mind I’m only missing seven cards, Pool Four and Five cards, and I’m roughly Collection Level 7,000 and it seems like if I hold gold for Token Tuesday, I’ll maybe get a new card once a month. Hope they change it soon.”
Now, new cards are only found within Spotlight Caches or purchased through the Token Shop with Collector’s Tokens. The game now gives out fewer Collector’s Tokens overall, too, after changing the possible drops from Collector’s Reserves to severely limit what can be earned.
New possible rewards include 100 Collector’s Tokens (when Series 4 cards cost 3,000 and Series 5 cards are 6,000) or Gold Conquest tickets, a mode that some players may not even enjoy playing.
“The new system may be statistically slightly better, in terms of total new cards, but it’s worse when it comes to agency, hoarding feels like shit, and opening Collector’s caches is almost irrelevant now, when they used to be really fun,” another player said. “I suspect the devs just looked at the data, and ignored how the system feels. It’s a really good example of really bad design.”
The Spotlight Caches are great for players who may be missing many cards, but for veterans of the game with high Collection levels and not many cards missing, the new system feels a bit more punishing.
Even with the Spotlight Cache, nothing is guaranteed. Other possible rewards from the new caches include variants of one of the cards in the cache that players may already own, or other random variants.
Related: Marvel Snap’s Collector’s Reserves will have a 50 percent chance of being useless for some players
“This is the absolute biggest problem with this system,” said one player of the Spotlight Caches. “How can you justify a 25 percent chance when a spotlight cache is so hard to get? Now maybe as time passes and we’ve amassed a fuck ton of them by hoarding it’ll feel different, but that’s quite a dog shit design.”
Thankfully, Second Dinner has promised it’s continuing to work on card acquisition as part of its roadmap throughout the year and beyond.
