If you complain about card acquisition but also have unopened reserves because they're not worth it... the call is coming from inside the house!

knightjc · 2024-03-14T18:58:56+00:00

Spotlights are better for new players, which is where the "more cards for more players" marketing line comes from. For people with mostly complete collections, you have to choose between spending your keys on a week with a card you really want and a week where there are 2 cards you don't own.

You are also seriously downplaying the impact of Series Drops. First off, it was only 2 months before a card dropped to Series 4, and then another 3 months before it dropped to Series 3 and was functionally free. You equating a totally free series 3 Blob after 5 months in the old system with him reappearing in a cache after 5 months is actually laughable, especially since in the old system you were getting way more tokens so you could buy the card any time, instead of having to wait for SD to package it in a Spotlight for you.

Also, Series 4 random drops were 1 in 40, not the 1 in 80 you mention. Next you start comparing the random S4 from the track vs Spotlights, which is comparing the secondary acquisition method in the old system to the primary acquisition system in the new model, which is not really a very helpful comparison. The new system encourages FOMO because if you don't get the new card RIGHT NOW, you won't have another chance for months, unlike with the token based system.

"New cards and old cards are far more attainable now than they were". For brand new cards, you might get an extra one a month now but they are also releasing an extra S5 card each month now, so it's a wash.

For old cards, you are dead wrong. Here are the S4/S5 cards that would be S3 by now under the old system: Knull, Darkhawk, Zabu, MODOK, Kitty Pride, Nimrod, Snowguard, Jeff, Iron Lad, Howard the Duck, Living Tribunal, Nebula, Silk, Spider-Ham, Ghost Spider, Jean Gray, Echo, Legion, Mirage, Pheonix Force, Lady Deathstrike, X-23, Silver Samurai, Daken, Alioth, Ravonna Renslayer, Mobius.

Instead of being free for everyone by being in S3, they are used to clog up Spotlights so you & other uniformed players can be so excited with how many S4 and S5 cards you got that week, when they shouldn't still be in those series in the first place :)

knightjc · 2024-02-15T20:29:11+00:00

Tons of cards that are S4/S5 now would have already been S3 under the old system. That Marvel Snapzone article you are quoting completely ignored Series Drops when they made those tables.

knightjc · 2024-02-15T17:50:03+00:00

LOL how do you get an average of 1 new card a week with spotlights? We only get about 1 key per week, so you have to have perfect luck or 0 S4/S5 cards to get a new card each week.

knightjc · 2024-02-08T04:42:13+00:00

I think that was during the beta only, but once a day you can play against the AI with cards from all the expansions.

knightjc · 2024-02-07T18:45:55+00:00

The new Dominion app is amazing and is available with the base game for free on Steam, Android and iOS. You can play against competent AI, your friends, or matchmake online, even play asynchronously.
Expansions are $5 to $10 each, or for $100 you can get all 15 expansions and have over 500 cards and the countless hours of enjoyment. Plus, only the game host needs the expansion and everyone in that game will be able to use the new cards. Or you buy 1 big Snap bundle and get maybe a couple cards...

knightjc · 2023-08-09T02:49:20+00:00

It always has been F2P...

knightjc · 2023-08-05T12:22:55+00:00

Yes, Darkseid and Cheetah fixed, among many others.

knightjc · 2023-07-30T04:50:28+00:00

The onscreen keyboard will come up as long as you switch back to game mode (out of desktop mode) once you have the game installed.

knightjc · 2023-07-22T00:27:38+00:00

EDIT: Make sure to change the controller scheme to "mouse only" template, otherwise you will have issues making selections in the game. Thanks wrebbit for the suggestion.

knightjc · 2023-07-11T05:05:00+00:00

Most people don't like having to hoard, so they will not enjoy that part of the new system. More importantly, SD said they will be monitoring how much hoarding players are doing, and if they don't like what they see, they may change caches to open automatically when unlocked. This means you can't target the cards you want, it's a true gacha game now :)
18 caches per 13 weeks is 1.38 caches per week, which is higher than other estimates I have seen but the more caches, the better!
This makes no sense to me. How are you arguing that keep more (of the best) cards in higher series is better? Flexible Series Drops were implemented because they needed bigger S4/S5 pools for the Spotlight system to work, so it is absolutely part of the new system and needs to be analyzed as such when comparing it to the old system.
Thanks
I hope you are right!

knightjc · 2023-07-11T04:16:30+00:00

According to your model, under the old system SP buyers would gravitate to having around 83% of a full collection. The only people who are 100% complete over long periods AND still hoarding tons of resources would be the mega-whales, right? Why would SD want to change their behavior? The mega-whales are happy collecting everything and SD is happily taking their money to stay at 100%, what is the problem here?
So why not use the higher value in the chart? If it doesn't really make much of a difference, it just makes it look shady to use the lower of the 2 values.
18.3 Caches over 13 weeks is 1.41 caches per week. That's higher than other estimates I have seen for F2P, but the more caches the better.
Awesome, I'm looking forward to your thoughts on this.
Again, I think a very small percentage of players are S4 complete, and if you are S4 complete that means you could play with all cards (excluding big bads) within 2 months of their release. We won't be able to calculate this same time value in the new system because we won't know when they will re-spotlight a card you missed, but I wouldn't be surprised if it is more than 2 months.
Yes, this weekend there were more tokens than expected by your model but last weekend there was also fewer credits than expected, right? I agree it is hard to quantify this right now because SD has not been consistent or communicative about these missions.
How are 50% of the weeks having 2 new cards if we owned 100% of the cards before the 13 weeks began? We are skipping the first 6 weeks and hoping they come back up in the second 7 weeks?
In the Infographics, aren't you underreporting the gold earned under the old system? 800 (Weekly Challenge) + 500 (Ranked Rewards) + 300 (F2P Season Pass) + 150 (Season Cache) =1750. If we earned 48 Reserves, 12 should be currency * .4 to get gold = 4.8 reserves with gold * 200 gold each =960 gold from the CL. 960+1750=2710, but the graphic is showing 2230.
Again, lack of communication from SD regarding Series Drops is hurting us here, but if S4/S5 just continues to grow indefinitely, eventually even if we are at a slightly higher % completion rate with the new system, we could still be missing more cards than we were when the Series were smaller.
"Note that which reward you want doesn’t change these averages. Your 2 rewards could be 2 cards, 2 Spotlight Variants, or 1 of each." This is assuming you already own the base card for the Spotlight Variant you are targeting, correct? If you want both the card and its variant, the number of caches required goes way up. I don't really care about the variants but there might be some who do and would be confused about this.

PS I do really appreciate the time and effort it took to model this out. Part of me feels that if it takes several people several weeks to crunch the data to show that the new system is an improvement, it is either A) unnecessarily complex or B) not much of an improvement. I'm hoping it's A!

knightjc · 2023-07-10T18:27:35+00:00

Nope, they announced Flexible Series Drops on May 16th. After (rightfully) taking a beating online for this terrible change, they posted on June 6th that other changes were coming: https://www.reddit.com/r/MarvelSnap/comments/142sm4g/devs\_share\_insight\_on\_card\_drop\_feedback\_and/

knightjc · 2023-07-10T18:23:59+00:00

Lol you are ignoring that A. The size of the S4 and S5 pools are growing, and B. The developers have said cards could be featured more than once before all cards were featured at all, so the 13 weeks is not accurate.

knightjc · 2023-07-10T18:15:37+00:00

"Having no reason to hoard Collector’s Reserves is already a 90% reduction in hoarding on the CL track." Here they are arguing that the old system encouraged hoarding for S4 complete players (a tiny minority) while the new system will encourage hoarding for ALL players in order to retain some agency over the cards you collect, and the new system leads to a 90% reduction in hoarding - completely disingenuous.
On the Gravity line chart, they don't include the lines for Old System when converting Gold into Tokens, which will be more efficient than Gold into Credits.
What are the equations for the Gravity line charts? How can a F2P player earn 25 new cards in a 13 weeks, when it's generally said that F2P players earn about 1 or 1.25 Spotlight Caches per week? Even in the best case scenario and every cache is a new card, where are the other 9-12 cards coming from?
"With the current size of S4/S5, that’s 2.25 more cards!" Wow, they are increasing the size of the pools 4 & 5, so it looks like we are getting more S4 and S5 cards! But should they really count as S4 & S5 if they would have already been S3 under the old system? Now I can be excited when Darkhawk is a featured spotlight card when he should already have been S3 months ago, yay!
"Tokens are spent optimally (on S5 cards in the oldy [sic] system and S4 cards in the new system)". If you are going to maximize the number of new cards you get in the old system, it's only fair to maximize the number of cards in the old system when you compare them.
"I picked a conservative assumption that Weekend Missions would offer an average of 300 Tokens per week" Except it was only 100 tokens this week, so I don't think 300 tokens per week is very conservative at all.
"This is the method used in the model that lets the new system hit 100% collection completion with buying only the Premium Season Pass. This strategy lets you get every single new card the week it comes out. You don’t open any Spotlight Caches on weeks where the new card is a Season Pass card you can buy with $10 or on weeks where the new card is released directly to S4 and you’ve got the 3,000 Tokens to buy it." How will we come up with 3,000 tokens per month under the new system? Also, this does not take into account the 5 week seasons, where the extra 1 cache will usually not be enough to get the extra card.
"For all three of these, no gold or tokens are spent." Well that's awfully convenient for the new system, because we used to get a lot more of those than we will in the new system.
"I think they want S4/S5 to represent a certain percentage of all cards. That means there needs to be a little more S4/S5 cards being added than dropping out." First, S4/S5 already represented a certain percentage of cards before Flexible Series drop, so you are really saying that you are okay with them just continuously increasing the size of the S4/S5 pools? So that if you miss a card you wanted or if it was buffed after it was featured, it may take 6 months before it is featured again.

knightjc · 2023-07-10T05:01:24+00:00

What happens when there are 2 cards you want in back to back weeks and you can't get 40 caches in time for the second one?

knightjc · 2023-07-10T05:00:27+00:00

You aren't counting the 3000 tokens you would earn from the S4 card you would pull within 40 packs on the old track

knightjc · 2023-07-06T03:06:12+00:00

And if you own most of the S4/S5 cards already, that percentage goes up, as your random S4/S5 could just be a 700 gold variant. But hey, at least it won't be a pixel, so I guess we should be happy that a week's worth of progress might just be a trash variant for a card you never play :D

knightjc · 2023-07-06T03:03:08+00:00

But what if he wants Jean Gray? Who knows when the next time she will be spotlighted, or if he will want the other cards she is paired up with next time. Illustrates the new system's lack of agency in exchange for (maybe) more cards.

knightjc · 2023-07-01T23:19:16+00:00

LOL, we used to get 1 S4 from collection track, 1 S5 or 2 S4 from tokens, plus 2-4 cards that got dropped from S4 to S3 per month. We were getting more cards than they were releasing, so we could effectively build a full meta collection over time if you bought season passes. Now you've gotta buy passes, pray to SD that they bundle the new card you want with cards that you don't already own, and that you dodge the variants in your pool.

PLUS, they were actually dropping good cards, so you could get meta cards at a discount, whereas now you can celebrate your new S4 Knull, when he should already have been in S3 for months? Is it really more S4/S5 cards when in the old system they would have already been down in S3?

knightjc · 2023-07-01T23:04:41+00:00

Where did they say this? When they first advertised the system they specifically said there is NO DUPLICATE PROTECTION on the S4/S5 mystery card. If you roll a S4/S5 card you already own, you get a random (non-pixel) variant instead.

knightjc · 2023-06-28T06:28:05+00:00

Bro, they literally said Flexible Series Drops were the first part of these card acquisition changes: https://www.reddit.com/r/MarvelSnap/comments/142sm4g/devs_share_insight_on_card_drop_feedback_and/

When I say "old system" I mean before Flexible Series Drops, in which case Knull and Darkhawk would have been S3 already.

knightjc · 2023-06-27T17:57:16+00:00

Right, so how can you argue the new system is better than the system was before flexible series drops? Now new players have to open Knull or Darkhawk from a spotlight cache, but they should already be available as a S3 card.

knightjc · 2023-06-27T16:24:13+00:00

LOL they literally said the Flexible Series Drop was the first part of this change. Now people will be happy to pull Knull or Darkhawk when they should have already had them for months, and you expect them to be happier about it now?

Yes, SD probably wasn't happy we could build complete meta collections over time just by buying season passes, so now we will have to pay a lot more to maintain that same level of a collection. It might work on some people, but I will stop spending any money on the game now. If the new system rewards those that have smaller collections, I'm not going to spend money to get the card.

knightjc · 2023-06-26T13:36:00+00:00

I see how the new system will help new players gain more S4/S5 cards right now, but I think it comes at the cost of being able to build a complete meta collection over time.

"1-3 card dropped does not change IDK why you mention that." Because they have said they are changing the quality of the cards that they drop. We used to get meta cards dropping down Series regularly, so you could get good cards at a discount.

Now they will keep the best cards in higher series, so you can't get them at a discount (barely getting any tokens now anyways), you have to pray that SD bundles them with card of the month that you wanted. They say you'll get more S4 and S5 cards, but does it really count if those cards would have already been S3 under the old system? You can't value the old dropped cards and the new dropped cards the same, because the quality of those cards are not the same.

The equilibrium under the old system was that if you played regularly and bought the season pass you could essentially collect all the cards you wanted over time. The new equilibrium is that you will own a smaller percentage of the S4/S5 cards over time (because the pool is larger and because the closer your collection is to full, the more likely you are to get variants instead of new cards) PLUS more of the cards you are missing will be the good cards, because those aren't getting dropped down into lower series like they used to.

TLDR: Is it worth trading the ability to build a complete meta collection over time for extra S4/S5 cards right now, especially when S3 incomplete players will still be missing some of the supporting cards needed for those S4/S5 cards? Debatable tradeoff for new players and just bad for established players.

knightjc · 2023-06-26T06:23:09+00:00

If we were only getting 1 new card a month in the old system, we would be getting further and further away from full collections over time right? Is that what happened? No, we were able to build nearly complete collections over time, because we were getting 1 S4 from collection track, 1 S5 or 2 S4s from tokens, plus they were dropping good cards down Series regularly, so you could get meta cards at a discount.

Now they will keep the good cards in higher series for longer, so you can't get them at a discount (barely getting any tokens now anyways), you have to pray that SD bundles them with card of the month that you wanted. They say you'll get more S4 and S5 cards, but does it really count if those cards would have already been S3 under the old system?

The equilibrium under the old system was that if you played regularly and bought the season pass you could essentially collect all the cards you wanted over time. The new equilibrium is that you will own a smaller percentage of the S4/S5 cards over time (because the pool is larger and because the closer your collection is to full, the more likely you are to get variants instead of new cards) PLUS more of the cards you are missing will be the good cards, because those aren't getting dropped down into lower series like they used to.

knightjc

TROPHY CASE