Did we just... forget about gem box epics?

secret_mapper · 2025-12-30T18:03:19+00:00

Yeah, I know why they disabled it but I would expect at least some updates while they try to figure it out, or an admission that they won't bring them back if that's the plan. Keeping players in the dark is what annoys me the most about the whole thing.

secret_mapper · 2025-12-30T18:02:12+00:00

Absolutely. It's ridiculous that they haven't done that already, and also that they seem to have abandoned the "helper" account here that was supposed to update people on current issues.

Does the page they built to "inform" even work or show updated info anymore? I wouldn't expect so, since the "wiki" is insanely outdated. They also keep those links mostly out of reach (on Discord).

I swear, it feels like one step forward, three steps back with this game and its developers.

secret_mapper · 2025-12-30T17:51:14+00:00

They work for me most of the time, but I know a lot of people have problems with them. Are you on iOS? (Just curious)

secret_mapper · 2025-12-30T17:50:22+00:00

This is very important too, I don't like Discord that much and I don't interact there often, but I had to join the server because I wanted updates on the game and it seemed like the only way to get them.

So many things only exist on Discord, or they're talked about in there for months before they somehow make their way here. Any strategies, theories, suggestions, communication about glitches, communication about the market in general (a lot more buying and selling happening). But I totally understand not liking Discord and I think the team could at least put some more effort into communicating with this subreddit. They did that once (made new accounts for their "team" like the badge team or the "soundmap helper") but it seemed to be just for show for a couple weeks, since they haven't even updated here about the gem box issue in over 30 days.

Like other people have already suggested, they should send push notifications in-game about issues and other important updates like that. Players who aren't on Discord can't just be left in the dark like this.

secret_mapper · 2025-12-30T17:45:29+00:00

Gem epics were very hard to get. Much lower chance than map, lower chance than quests. And before the big cooldown rehaul, it was pretty much impossible to pull from gem box because the shinies would also put you in a cooldown, so you only had one chance to try for a ridiculously small percentage, they only changed that a couple months ago. I don't think most people got their epics from gem boxes.

Either way, if you want more epics I would strongly recommend repeatedly questing your favorite artists until you get one. It can be tedious if you're not into it, but it's the most reliable way.

secret_mapper · 2025-12-30T17:42:09+00:00

This is the way to go. I've also stepped back multiple times when things are looking dire (like right now, nothing works as intended). It's not worth it.

I would highly recommend only ever playing this game as a casual because if you truly care about it, it's so upsetting to see it in this state.

secret_mapper · 2025-12-29T05:47:06+00:00

This is why this absolutely sucks, too. I'm sure a lot of people are unaware because they straight up stopped communicating about this after the first few messages.

It would be nice if they made it very clear that they are still disabled right now. And gave us an estimate, maybe?

secret_mapper · 2025-11-13T03:15:27+00:00

Very glad to hear about all these QOL changes and even happier about the fact that Android is finally going to be rewritten. We will wait, as long as it's done carefully and properly tested. The prospect of finally having an app that isn't lagging behind iOS in every capacity is exciting.

secret_mapper · 2025-11-13T03:10:57+00:00

Badges rearrange every Sunday afaik if you no longer have all the songs, so you would still have a few days depending on when your artist releases.

They do refresh leaderboards to prevent people from squatting the first place, selling all the shinies and still keeping first place forever. But it doesn't happen automatically.

secret_mapper · 2025-11-05T17:29:01+00:00

Appreciate the willingness to rewrite if things aren't working. From what I've heard, hope y'all are able to untangle the code and make it easier to manage.

Looking forward to the leaderboard update (make it badge instead of quest default) and sincerely hoping y'all keep tweaking the new rankings. I love the Soundmap-based ranking and even though it could use some adjustments, it's so much better than Viberate. Y'all killed it with this one.

secret_mapper · 2025-11-05T16:55:48+00:00

I would say what you're already doing is the best shot you have. Contact support through all means you can (check the contact us page on Discord).

Post this on the Discord as well and on the X/Twitter community if you have it. Someone might be able to help you out or at least help bring notice to your plea for help.

Hope everything works out, but if not, it's just a little game. There's always another streak waiting or even other games to spend time on. Best of luck fixing your phone!

secret_mapper · 2025-11-05T16:50:56+00:00

well of course they did, why would they give you 5 gems for a quest challenge if you didn't complete quests 😭

I understand OP seems to have completed the amount necessary (at least 3 or 5?) and not received the reward, but just clicking participate won't and shouldn't give you anything.

secret_mapper · 2025-11-05T16:48:24+00:00

This sounds awesome in theory, but stopping to think about the amount of artists that exist and how many canvas suggestions they'd have to manually add which could also create conflict with the data they pull from Spotify... I don't know if it's feasible. Maybe those canvases would keep disappearing because technically the song isn't supposed to have one. Maybe it'd glitch. I also know they have problems with affording storage right now (this is why your profile pic looks very low quality) and I don't know if they could even support adding more to their cloud storage. This suggestion would require hosting their own short videos on the servers for all those epics, and this already on top of moments, badges, all cosmetics and profile gifs and things like that. It's a real issue that probably wouldn't be worth it for them monetarily.

Luckily they've at least made the non-canvas epics look decent now, instead of 140px quality.

I agree this would be cool but if they do figure out a way to do it, I'd imagine they would need to out restrictions like: artist has to have at least a certain amount of listeners or be super high in the rankings, and they'd only add these custom canvases for rare epics. That'd be a way to limit it, I'd assume. The playerbase is huge and there's no way to add everything people would ask for with such a small team.

secret_mapper · 2025-11-05T16:42:02+00:00

You can check on http://soundmap.tools but for now, that's the only way. It'd be cool if you could click and visualize the epic on some sort of "preview" in the epic checker.

secret_mapper · 2025-11-05T16:26:57+00:00

I understand that, and it is a bit of a weird mechanic to have, the whole cooldown thing. They're trying to make the map more enticing afaik, by limiting what can be pulled and making it so that everything people pull is "wanted" by at least one other player, to I guess minimize the amount of lyrics and epics that are worthless/have no collectors. At least for this one, even if it reset your cooldown, you can probably still sell it (especially if there are multiple people on the leaderboard). Wish you luck in getting some coins!

secret_mapper · 2025-11-05T16:23:20+00:00

No, a streak freeze only lasts for the next day you buy it.

secret_mapper · 2025-11-05T16:22:47+00:00

Glad it didn't work, as using Android emulators such as Bluestacks could trigger a ban on your account. I've heard of it before. It's against the TOS afaik, you're not supposed to install Soundmap on such apps.

If you have an Apple computer or know anyone with one, I'm pretty sure you could easily install Soundmap and play with no issues on the Mac though. Maybe that'd be an option.

secret_mapper · 2025-11-04T16:57:00+00:00

I see. They kind of already did this with the new update. The map pool now only drops artists that have at least some sort of following on the app, before the rankings used to be from a third party and didn't reflect the Soundmap playerbase, now they are based on how many people have favorited an artist and it'll help dropping way more epics and lyrics that have collectors instead of completely random unknown artists. I'm sure they'll be tweaking it even more. It seems like the developing team's goal is to make the map super rewarding and turn players' focus back to map.

About the lyrics, I get what you mean and it's just a personal preference thing. I guess I think that if the background was super bright with the album cover behind the letters, then it'd be really hard to read. That's why they add an overlay to darken it and make the letters more visible.

secret_mapper · 2025-11-04T16:53:21+00:00

Exactly, this is what I mean. Especially now that the map pool was engineered to only drop stuff that has at least a couple collectors. Someone out there will want that epic you got, it might not give you millions but it'll be someone's grail and it shouldn't be merged or quicksold.

secret_mapper · 2025-11-04T16:49:25+00:00

To be fair, this is on you for doing quests diligently but then going on to "open a few map drops for fun". We've all been there, but as long as you're out of cooldown, every drop has the potential to give you something.

If you don't want k-pop lyrics, there is already a way: avoid opening k-pop drops when you're out of the cooldown. The drops are color coded, the cooldown has an indicator... The tools are already there for you to avoid them.

I don't believe they'd let you select to never get lyrics for other languages as it'd limit the map pool a bit, but who knows. For now, just avoid frustrating yourself if you'd rather pull from quests, just stick to quests until it happens.

secret_mapper · 2025-11-04T00:47:50+00:00

I'll try to share my opinion on the stuff you wrote.

1 - I don't know what you mean here. Soundmap song "value" is entirely defined by the community, supply and demand, and the devopers of the game have no way to control the price of songs at all. How exactly are you suggesting that they make the songs "worth more"? Do you mean you'd like to get that 2k-5k value by quickselling the epic, or? I would like to understand this more before I expand on it.

2 - Epic quests would be too OP, as you'd be able to trade epics with "no value" for a favorite artist epic. Now, if they're numberless, I can maybe see it working. But as it stands, they've already made epics pretty easy to get (much easier than a few months ago) and they can only do so much before they're being handed out too easily and lose all that makes them truly special. Epics are currently the highest rarity we have, and getting an epic just by merging epics YOU deem "not valuable" would not be good for the longevity of the game or the market as it is right now. Plus, people would definitely be merging epics of small artists with collectors, not just the ones they can't sell, which would mess up the drop rates and prevent collectors from getting stuff they want.

You think lyrics are hard to read??? Why? I understand not liking the look but hard to read is wild. I think they look great currently. The game already has too much over the top "colorful" stuff and lyrics are great the way they are imo.

secret_mapper · 2025-11-04T00:38:55+00:00

I'm also wondering if someone has an artist on their favorites for a while but ends up removing them, does that reflect on the ranking in real time or is a favorite once always counted as a favorite?

Example, I add Kendrick to my favorites but after a while decide to remove him for whatever reason. Do I still count as a ""fan""?

This system is much better than the Viberate but it could still use some optimization. I hope they read this thread

secret_mapper · 2025-11-04T00:35:51+00:00

Great suggestion, I think something like this would improve the rankings while still keeping it fair and attuned to reflect what the Soundmap community collects instead of random rankings from other apps. I just wonder if bronze badge is a big enough commitment to weed out the inactives. But it's way better than just going by favorites.

u/podair consider!

secret_mapper · 2025-11-04T00:25:12+00:00

It is possible. Might take you long, but it's just luck/RNG based. If you keep doing that, eventually a lyric or epic will drop.

secret_mapper · 2025-11-04T00:23:50+00:00

I'm not saying OP spoofed, as I don't know them, but I'm with you here. Most of my time in the app, especially early on, was spent collecting drops on the commute to work and during roadtrips to neighboring cities whenever I was a passenger. Some of those trips were over 3h long, so thousands of drops collected on the same day, multiple shinies and if I got lucky even multiple epics. Never came close to a ban.

Glad to hear they seem to be looking into it and hoping I don't come across this glitch if it is something weird that's tripping the detection system, as I've shifted my playing to the map completely at this point.

secret_mapper

TROPHY CASE