I find it so bizarre that I feel I can't recommend this amazing game to my friends because I happened to start playing as the game came out and they didn't. I'm really hoping I'm going to be able to do that confidently in the future
With the state the game is, I don't see myself coming back, and I've stopped last January. The spotlight cache system is bad, because they reduced the tokens from reserves and no more gold in them, and added tickets for Conquest. They just want to maximize their profit margin and used a fun game as the base to keep people playing. It's just another mobile game, that releases content way too slow.
In a vacuum, band aids are better than nothing. But in the context of the last year of Snap, it's hard to get excited. SD created this problem with a series of intenential changes that made card acquisition progressively worse. None of this happened accidentally. For the last year or so, SD has been telling us that they hear us and that they were working on it. Band Aids like these could have been applied at any time. Healthier series drops which were totally at SD's discretion would have reduced bloat in the upper series. None of these things happened until after the community grabbed their pitchforks. What this tells me is that SD is going to do the minimum and only when the backlash is too loud to ignore. These band aids are better than nothing. Arguably they are a decent start. But they also feel like too little possibly too late. This is nothing without meaningful follow up. It does little to restore faith which has been consistently abused. We're not even really resetting the clock here. It's more like plugging a couple holes in a dam full of them.
But like...if these are so easy to implement, why didn't they do it 6mos ago when it was clear this was a serious problem? The fact they will throw the most pathetic bone only AFTER a massive wave of attrition means they didn't fuckin care, and it means that the previous "We are hearing you"s were completely hollow words. It didn't take 6-12 mos to figure out and implement these most basic of balance changes.
If they want to keep the spotlight system, the amount of tokens you get should be decided by equation, based on the number of cards in the pool. Then, there will be no need to do sudden jumps like this, it will just auto balance itself according to the relative worth they want to assign towards acquiring a certain percentage of the card pool. Replacing the "One free Series 3 card/mo" mechanic with a free key each month (after becoming S3 complete) would help a lot also.
Feels to me like they didn't want to implement half-solutions and thought they could figure out a long-term solution faster than they did. Then the massive uproar happened post-series drop and they realised something needed to change. That's the optimistic reading, at least
These should have done last March honestly. It's some step forward but not enough. 200 Tokens used to be in caches, now only 100 Gold was in conquest shop Completing weekly quest used to get us 500 gold, now 100 Duplicate spotlight caches is one that we try to actively avoid. So.. I it's really a bandaid. They nerfed a lot and buffed a bit.
My opinion on this change is that it's really good for new players. Finishing series 3 in 4 months is like getting a new card everyday. This feels great! I feel like maybe I can start recommending snap to ppl again. For me, tho... I'm cl 18k. The worst feeling for me is wasting the 4 keys to get a single card in a week. That still remains. I'm only missing 10 cards. Last month I got Scream out of the random box and it felt great! I don't believe that they can't implement duplicate protection with 80 series 5 cards in this!! Let's wait for more announced changes I guess.
Similar position to you. The only ‘freebie’ I ever got was Makkari and maybe negasonic when the spotlight caches first came out. The dupes just feel so bad.
Yeah this is such a huge problem.. the fact that they keep putting complete trash in caches instead of any of the useful stuff.. Like.. Ajax hasn't been in caches ever !!!
We’ll have to wait and see what the bigger rework is next year, but I wasn’t expecting any short-term fixes at all before then, so I’m pleasantly surprised.
there is no next year, i went from playing 3 hours or more a day on and off in the shuri meta in early 2023 to like get me a negative deck to play and clear missions for 10 minutes once a day so i can shut this sh(t down till tomorrow. ON TWO ACCOUNTS! like holy hell.
So patch goes live jan 14th. Series drop “first quarter of 2025” can be as late as march 2025 And couple months to rework the system will easily take us to may or june 2025. In the meantime, they will keep releasing every card into s5. They will keep filling spotlights with dogshit fodder like in december. SD is really not understanding the urgency required to regain the trust of the player base. They are digging their own grave and we just have to sit here and watch them do it.
@@markmurex6559it actually doesnt make sense for them… It just takes like 5 seconds to figure out why… If you drop a card every time you release one, people will hust wait until it drops and will never invest into your game.
It's a nice short term fix for new players to get to s3 complete sooner and to help reduce the bad feelings from spotlight cache misses, but it's obviously only a first step that doesn't deal with most of the problem. Grade - incomplete.
Why make a card game and intentionally make it nearly impossible to collect the cards. I’ve spent a couple grand on this game since it launched, because I believed the initial promise that their main source of income was going to be cosmetics, not cards. They haven’t even given cosmetics a fair shake. I’m very done with this game… this is Blizzard level shenanigans. Oh wait! LOL
I’m a prime example that if you take ANY time off in this game, you’re fucked. I’m trying to get back into it after dropping off for a few months and I feel like I don’t have a chance of building a Meta deck for who knows how long
I was in the same boat. Took 3 months off and after a few weeks realised I was never going to come close to catching up without whaling so I uninstalled. I don’t regret it at all.
After taking a break for about 6 months I have been able to climb to infinite just buying the last 3 season passes. Am I able to play the most competitive version of a deck? Mostly no, but it is good enough and the meta is relatively open right now.
Fr I took a break from Febuary to August and I saw every control card be completely worthless and obsolete to newer tech cards like USAgent and Red Guardian. Every deck runs them, and a week that i saved 4 caches, I didn’t pull RG.
While temporary bandaid fixes are great and all, the fact that we are still more months away from a major change to the acquisition system is unbelievable. They just keep kicking the can down the road and expecting people to keep on waiting.
I think you're 100% on target with everything you said. Making Tier-3 more rewarding is great for getting people playing! The only difference for T-3 complete folks is when you get the feels bad key it's doubled but still feels bad. Some easier solutions could be making the 4th spotlight guaranteed to be an unowned card, releasing cards at T-4 again and, not progress related, release more 700 gold variants. The vast majority released in the last year have been 1200 and it just makes me not spend money. If I see a couple 700 gold variants I really like I'm more willing to buy a bundle for gold than a single really expensive variant for a card I already have good enough variants for.
Yeah, the gold economy is also not great. They could reduce the cost of variants to 1,000 and 500 instead of 1,200 and 700 for example, or just reward more gold.
I'm surprised it took this long for the community to get angry and the spotlight system. I knew it was terrible day one. I thought they would have made changes a lot sooner. I've been frugal with my keys and horded all my reserve. We'll see if their rework is any good. If not I'll just sell my account and wait for slay the spire 2.
At least they're doing something. Though on the topic of compensation, if Daken really is a card they're giving out with the next season pass, that's the one point where I'd want some compensation for pulling him in this week's spotlight cache because that one actually feels outright malicious.
If you open a spotlight and roll the 4th slot, you should get a random s5 card you don't have, full stop. The only acceptable amount of tokens I would take out of this slot is 6k. A spotlight key should be equal to the cost of card, not 1/6 of a card or even 1/3 of a card.
It feels nice for new players and pretty minimal for long term players. You might get a few more cards in a year if you’re playing consistently. In the short term, not sure how meaningful it is
I agree that this is a compromise and a great step I just think the frustration is the delay that everything runs in. It was known this problem could happen with card acquisition. People have now been complaining for a few months, devs address it, saying we’re working on. Few months go by then hey give us a few months and we’ll get the right thing out there for you. So it’s great it’s a step, I just think the player base is exhausted from changes that need to happen being caught in this months behind loop.
They're good changes, yeah (I'd have liked to see an increase on tokens earned through caches, too, though), and it's good to have a more solid confirmation that SD *is* listening (and that they know these are band-aid fixes). But you're right, it addresses the inflation without fixing the root of the problem. Hopefully those bigger fixes won't take another year...
Over the last few weeks I think we have witnessed in real time what happens when a company "breaches the trust thermocline". If these changes had been implemented six months ago they might have been much more effective. Sadly, once a company breaches the trust it is very difficult to get those customers that it has lost back.
Im in the camp of, yeah this is objectionabley better, but it's kind of too little of a bandaid. It does nothing for me really unless I go 4 keys deep on a spotlight, and even then I think giving 3k tokens would have been fair considering most dupes are going to be a s4 card.
For me, some change can really help people collect card better like: + Get same Token as the card we dupe in Spotlight Cache, a card for a card, more value for Spotlight Key. + Players can choose 1 card form Series 4 and 5 each month like Series 3 (if the Series Pool for 4/5 still as big as now). Save some Token may help people have more choice. This 100% help new player save their key and still got thing they want most. There're ton of card but most people enjoy few of it, let them get that card easier help them playing longer.
I agree, whatever system they decide to pursue, it must take card releases into consideration. The amount of time someone starting today to be series 3 complete should be roughly the same today compared to 2022.
@@jonasmarques3539 They release 5 cards a month. You can only earn 4 keys a month and buy the season pass. You would miss 3 cards a month at minimum. So let's say you have 10 cards left to get and they implemented duplicate protection, you would still be out paced by releases before you get those 10 cards.
JUST DO AWAY WITH DUPLICATES. Give me cards that I don’t already own if I hit the Mystery Cache!! Wasn’t that the entire point of the Mystery Cache in the first place, to get a random card that you don’t have? Jesus Christ is it that hard? Why have I pulled Knull 4 god damn times when I’m missing 40 cards?????
I have an idea but I think it might be too crazy. It addresses two issues: 1) Too many cards being added too quickly making it hard for players to keep up, 2) The FOMO issue you mentioned and we're all familiar with where we really only have 1 week to decide if we want to go for the new card. The idea is this: Instead of releasing the Season Pass and a another new card, make the spotlight cache for that week a chance to choose one of the spotlight caches from the previous month that a player wishes they'd rolled on. That's one less card being released and a 2nd chance for players that have had enough time to think about their missed opportunity.
Four banger team here. I appreciate that Second Dinner aknowledges these are band aids, hope they have figured a good way to handle card aquisition (and it doesn't take months to be done)
The problem about compensation after the patch releases in January for opening the 4th spotlight cache and getting a duplicate right now, (therefore getting 1k tokens), is, how far back would these compensations track when we as players opened and got that 4th slot? 1 month? 2 months? Doesn't make sense. However, it would have made sense if this compensation indeed existed, but also, came in effect right after this announcement of tjese band-aids was made. Meaning, if you used your keys and opened for Doom 2099, Bruce Banner and Rocket/Groot and you got the 4th slot and a duplicate, then when the patch rolled in January you actually get those extra tokens that you would have gotten with the updated system. (Victoria Hand also applies because she is the first card in January to come alongside Iron Patriot which is the SP card and the patch goes live the 2nd week of January). I think that would have been ideal.
Youre right that our energy would be better spent elsewhere than complaining about a lack of compensation for getting 1k tokens instead of 2k from the next 3 weeks of caches but honestly i think it would be a pretty easy show of good will on sd's part that i think they should seriously consider it regardless
I really love how this will help new players. The spotlight caches still need a lot of work but at least this is something. I'd like to see what will happen with the next series drop. My overall impression, though, is that they have heard the outrage and are looking for fixes.
I'd love to be a fly on the wall at Second Dinner for these discussions around the economy. The bean counters have all the power in the direction for this game. I'm sure flexible series drops came around after someone said Spotlight Cache's were not making enough money. The numbers for season passes and bundles the past couple months must have dropped enough for change to finally be called for (hence the temporary changes). Hopefully some of the devs got their I told you so moment to those higher ups.
They need to up the tokens you get from the collection track. 100 is weak (very low number) and makes it take FOREVER (!!!) to collect enough that way. Also the frequency for which you get them via the track should be upped as well.
If people in your Discord/community doesn't understand how and why a lot of people are saying this is not enough, then I can easily make them see why If they read this comment, by just asking them something very simple: I'm a returning player. I stopped playing the game 8 months ago and just came back the same day this season started. I was ultra competitive (as most people are in this community since this is a competitive oriented channel), finished every season in high Infinite, bought every single season pass and had almost every card. How is this, as the devs themselves are calling it, "BAND AID", going to impact my account in a way where I can get Wiccan, Anti Venom, Scream, Cassandra Nova, Surtur, Gorr, and all the meta defining cards I missed and I NEED if I want to be competitive again without getting my ass blasted by decks I just can't beat with my outdated collection? Is this going to change anything in a meaningful way, resulting in my NOT having to spend money in order to catch up? Anyone who's honest and not ultra biased because they like the game so much, should realize that this band aid (the devs themselves are admitting this won't be enough by calling it BAND AID guys, come on) won't solve much, because it isn't attacking deeper issues like the amount of series 5 that are released each month (releasing less Series 5 cards would DEFINITELY solve more issues).
I share your cautious optimism. As someone who has followed a very strict regiment of key expenditures and hasn't seen a card in the caches (other than new cards) that I have needed in 3 months and doesn't see another until Kang in 5 weeks (and do I really need him?) I think this is a good change and will lead me to being far closer to collection complete...but agree with your assessment.
KM! Always enjoy the listen. Black Swan was my last season because the card acquisition was such ass. I was a nearly collection complete player within about 5 cards, approaching Whale. The number of cards missing just snowballed; so I bailed. This change seems geared to player acquisition and damage control with players on the fence. I think SD has written off any returning players. Thank you again for the killer content. Edit: should mention I am 20 year MTG player - totally accustomed to being screwed financially.
The expectation of compensation is extremely common in the mobile gaming/gacha space because all users are aware, in some way or another, that they are being squeezed for every possible dime in our pockets and so compensation for aggressive monetization is expected. I think that's the cross you have to bear when you're charging $40-100 for a single card.
ur choose of words ring so true so i totally agree with ur opnions as a relative new player still in snap this is going to help my progression in my seriers 3 grind so much faster sure it doesnt benefit veteran players or even returning players for that matter in snap so much but atleast the 2k tokens will help somewhat to get new s5 cards abit faster but at the old end the players will want those permanent fixes regarding the economy in snap hopefully sooner than later but for now im content, and believe or not this puts some faith in me that SD is actualy working to better the game for ALL its players i just hope they dont take to long still the spotlight and cache system needs major rework so for now the fomo will continue sadly
I have only 10 cards missing for this game and believe me, this have been frustrating, spending KEYS to get 1 new card is madness, they need to address this ASAP.
I think doubling the rate of card acquisition for series 3 incomplete players is a great move. Series 3 was a grind not only because you you were lacking key pieces, but because new cards were unlocked at a slower rate. Giving more cards more quickly helps recapture that "Series 1" feel that there was always something new to try. For a series 3 complete player however, this barely moves the needle. The whole spotlight system leads to all these feel bads. We will have to see how SD plans to fix this.
I think I'd like to see one of two changes, if not both! The first is, make all 4 cards for the month available week one. So you can spend all 4 keys and get all the new cards and have the whole month to explore. Each week after, standard rotation of 2 variants and one new card. (New card being the standard weekly releases if you didn't get the set of 4 week one) This also allows those who want them, a chance at the cards and their new variants for their keys. I'd also like to see a "demo" or "test" period I could do with cards before buying. Give me 48 hours or 12 matches or something with a temp version of the cards so I can try it out before I commit.
It shouldve been at least 2k from the jump... Or maybe even half the worth of the card you pulled. They need to fix the spotlights now.. stop the two s4 cards going along with the new card of the week.
Un-installed the game today..sick and tired of losing to the same decks and not being able to get cards. Spent two keys trying to get doom...and of course they give me the other two trash cards..DONE WITH THIS GAME!!!
I have a couple of ideas that could help the entire economy. 1. As they release a minimum of 4 cards a month (excluding the season pass card) they should series drop 4 cards a month. This would balance out the series 3, 4, and 5 pool so 5 isn’t growing without the others doing as well. The start of every new season they will drop 4 cards, 2 from 5 to 4, and 2 from 4 to 3. The dropped cards will be cards that are at least 1 year old. 2. Every year, at the beginning of the year, drop an additional 4 cards. In combination with my first point, the start of the year will always drop 8 cards total, 4 from 5 to 4 and 4 from 4 to 3. 3. The first spotlight key used always gets the new card. On average I get 1-2 spotlight keys a week. That’s if I play that week consistently, which I don’t always do. Let me get the new card and afterwards have the choice to pursue the variants. 4. Make the 4th Spotlight Choice guarantee an unowned card. It can prioritize from the lower pools first. If I don’t own a series 3 card, I will get it automatically before getting any doubles. If I own all series 3 but not 4, it will get me a series 4. If I own all 3 and 4 it will get me a random series 5. Spotlight keys should feel great cashing in, but often times I get disappointed. I want to play the game and try new cards, that to me is fun. 5. If the above changes are made, they can change the amount of spotlight keys acquired from (to me) about 1-2 per week to just 1 per week. I don’t mind less spotlight keys if it means when I do get then I’ll get a new card. 6. Tokens are a great way to buy a certain Card specifically but also a cool way to get Ultimate variants, but I never use them on variants because I’m trying to play catch up with my card acquisition. If card acquisition was easier I could now spend my tokens on that winter soldier variant I got saved for 8 months now. This game is awesome! Gameplay keeps me coming and the variety is entertaining. Hell, even the meta is diverse enough to keep me on my toes. I don’t see myself not playing this game, but I do get frustrated when the last 9 keys I’ve used over the last 7 weeks only got me 2 cards.
i find myself in the wonderful sweet spot of benefting from *neither* of the two changes :D s3 complete for maybe 2 months now, got a small handful of s4/s5 cards (ie i will almost never pull duplicates), and so i will still have 0 chance of acquiring the important buildarounds i dont have.
@KMBest Pretend you are the surgeon. You have complete control to redesign the card acquisition system for SNAP. You have to make sure that SD still makes money and can feed their employees. You also have to make the players happy. What do you do?
unfortunately i cant answer this without knowledge of their actual finances. how much does it cost them to add 1k tokens to the 4th slot in caches? without info like that i just cant do anything
As someone still working through collectors caches for my series 3 im a fan of this change. Hopefully we'll get bigger changes in the future, but its a hopeful start
I think a good system for spotlight cache would be for the whole month all the spotlight weeks can be accessed for that month (Example) so if you want the card that released on the first week but it’s week 3 there’s a separate tab in the spotlight cache screen you can access and it shows the previous spotlight cards and the 2 variants that released with that card and for the last card of the month they can have it be available in the following month for the first week. So this would relieve some stress of getting a card for the month in a week now you have a whole month to decide which cards to get. just a idea 💡
I find what you mentioned about the numbers for spotlights being good on release needing more nuance. Might be wrong, but I remember watching a podcast where a data analyst in the community basically concluded that the system was only really good for newer players who also took advantage of series drops when compensating (I also remember feeling ecstatic about that, because I started playing just two weeks before it was implemented). Again, might be wrong, but I figured it's always been serviceable, if not awful for those with most of the cards
Think I'm in about the same boat as you. I'm a day 1 player that has taken a couple of months off here and there and bought most of the season passes during my active time, with minimal spending otherwise. Currently sitting at CL ~15,000. I'm series 3 complete, so the first change is irrelevant to my experience. Spotlight keys and the rewards for missing the card of the week remain paltry enough that I will continue to abstain from spending keys during any week that doesn't have at least 2 cards I'm missing at a bare minimum. So basically nothing has changed for me; however, I can respect that they're at least finally doing something. I'll probably still take a break from the game at the end of this month, but I'll keep an eye on it, see what changes come in the future, and perhaps pick it back up one day.
As a player that has every card except Caiera, I agree with you. I am also a player that took several months off. When I left we had the original system and when I came back I was 3 cards away from bring series 3 complete. After a year and quite a bit spent I am caught up and feel like I can’t take another break without falling behind. The biggest problem I see is time. No time away from the game and it takes too much time to get the card that comes out in the spotlight cache if you do not have the keys or if you are on the fence. I understand cards get nerfed etc. but a good example is Nocturne and another is sage. Nocturne was a hyped card and meta for a minute. Had to spend tokens to get her cause I didn’t have the keys. Now I never used her since they nerfed her to a 3/4 and then made several bangers of the 3/5 or 3/4 slot that scales (surter). Sage on the other hand I almost didn’t pull but glad I did. With the new Gorr/negative deck with task master, that is a fun deck and I have access to it. It is very painful to be in a spot where it is almost impossible to be diligent with resources. This weeks spotlight cache is a good example. You are going to put the most anticipated card this month with Miek/Daken, two series 4 cards that have a low play rate.
As someone who started playing the game ~3 months ago Im so happy that it wont take me another 3 months to collect the other half of the season 3 cards. I've been playing the same deck all this time because it's the only meta relevant one I can make.
There's a 3rd improvement that's not being spoken about: notice how there are suddenly Season Pass cards returning in upcoming spotlights all of a sudden in January/February: - Hawkeye Kate Bishop - Blink - Baron Zemo Noteworthy because there were NONE in the last 7 months (Skaar was the last one May 21st)
I think the s3 drop rate increase is actually pretty huge for new players. Sure, it'll still take a long time for a new player to be seriously competitive, but messing around with new cards is just fun. At least now they should be sufficiently entertained while they accumulate enough cards to be competitive if they even care about being competitive.
I think double series 3 acquisition is great for new players. Saying doubling the token for duplicate from spotlight is "rewinding the clock" I think it's generous on KM's part. We have more than twice the series 5 cards now, if they are truly addressing the inflation they would need to cut the price on series 5 by halve. Otherwise I dont think it will be close to feeling like when the spotlight first launched.
I think this tiny changes are good, but the real changes need to be impactful and no take too much time (I’m worried that the changes will come in 6 months)
I think they could solve a lot of this by fixing the collection track. Put cards back in there. I remember getting random series 4 cards and it was so exciting. Increase tokens back to a fair amount. Even put gold back in there. Nobody wants gold conquest tickets.
The ball is truly in SD' court now as the saying goes. The community has done all their part of repeatedly giving feedback and asking for better economy for basically over a year to a dangerously ballooning extent, and Second dinner has as of now promised for both impactful/regular drops and a significantly better acquisition in 2025. So they have to really deliver this time, deliver big, bigger than ever.
Fairly balanced take KM. One comment on this, you mentioned SD's willingness to give up money, and I'm not sure I agree that this is what's happening here. I suspect based on the numbers available to us of viewership and play numbers, that this change was forced upon them as an effort to stop the bleeding and overall generate more money (or lose less) to keep as many players engaged as they can. Things were on a downward slope and the series drop being mediocre was a last straw of sorts for a lot of people that I think might be what is finally causing some action on their part. Obviously, we don't have access to all the data just a small amount so could be way off, but just a guess.
Making series 3 easier to complete is 100% a good move, but I do wonder what they will do next year. Card acquisition is a very important part of a CCG for most players. If you aren't playing for top leaderboards, getting new cards is what brings you back, and that's usually the case for a lot of players. Make getting new cards too hard, and more casual players will not want to put in the effort, make it too easy, and people will get bored and quit your game, thus putting you back at square 1. What I think they should do is make getting series 5 cards a bit easier (maybe make them 4k tokens, with 2k tokens for S4), but also allow us to choose between more cards. Something like what they did with old variants, where you have like 8 options that rotate every X days sounds great, actually. Variants sadly aren't enough to keep players because, as shiny as they are, what is fun is finding new ways to play the game, unlocking new archetypes, new decks, and for that you need new cards. And for returning players, maybe something like what Hearthstone did? HS has this thing that if you haven't played for X months, you can get a free meta deck, but then HS releases a batch of new cards every 3-4 months. For Snap it would make sense to give returning players after X weeks, either Y tokens, or Y new cards to choose from, thus helping them keep up. I don't know the numbers, but it should help and it works wonders for HS which is over a decade old at this point, and is still fairly popular.
This is alright, but it might be too little too late for me. I don't mean it in a petty way either, it's just gotten really tiring to juggle tokens and keys. I've been playing for 2 years, basically every single day, I've spent thousands of dollars and it's still not enough to keep up. Sure, you can compete without all the new cards, but it's annoying to always miss out on the shiny new toy. Worse is when a card comes out and it's "not worth it" but a month later it's in every god damn deck (Wiccan currently, Sage a few months ago) and you have to pull 46 keys or wait weeks for it to show up in your token shop.
Like you said this sort of puts us back to where we started when spotlights were first introduced BUT theres a couple of major changes they had made to the spotlights between its lainch and now that still makes the system overall worse. First was that 1 new xard each month used to be a series 4 card, with the last one being Miek i believe, but now every new card is series 5. So before we were able to buy 1 new card each month with tokens for essentially 50% off, allowing us to save more keys for the series 5 weeks. Also, we used to only get the pass card as the new card on the first week of the season, which again allowed players to save up more keys for the following weeks. These 2 changes were a major blow to player resources that, imo makes an, 1k extra tokens for a spotlight dupe not at all impacful. Imo if they revert these changes back so we dont get a new card (besides the pass card ofc) the first week off each season and also guarentee that 1 new card each season releases as a series 4 card then we'll be a lot closer to a stable and balanced economy. Sdd in more relieable and meaningful series drops and also further improving the new player experience (plus something to help returning players catch up) then the game will 100% be back on track (in my humble opinion ofc).
Thank you. All valid points. SD needs to work past the “low hanging fruit” resolution to make people re-engage, in the game, when things have gotten to this point.
Even though I'm fairly close to being collection complete (barring a few s4/5 cards), I can definitely appreciate the 2000 collectors tokens since they're so expensive to collect. I think what most people are worried about is SD moving on from addressing the card acquisition issue after this update and it being the only "fix" we get which doesn't actually solve the issue. After SD seemed fairly tone deaf with the series drop this month, bringing back modes that people don't like such as "Deadpool's Diner 2.0" without making it much better from the first time, and creating an even more expensive premium season pass, players simply don't trust SD much anymore to do the right thing
11:55 well, as much as I don't like the Spotlight system (due to its lack of agency) it did affect their bottom line because it indeed made cards being cheaper to acquire, so they have done this before.
As someone that's collection complete with plenty of keys and tokens, I'm concerned how they can change the economy to be more welcoming to new players without meaningully degrading the value of keys and tokens. They need to make the game more welcoming, but loyal customers feeling burned after an economy change is a pretty bad potential outcome. I think a lot of the people complaining may be skeptical of a change regardless due to a lack of trust in another economy change after the last one (spotlight caches & "flexible" series drops) has led us to this point.
This doesn't really help me as and end game player or make anything feel less bad but a step in the right direction and I'm happy for the pool 3 gamers. Also thanks for the doom 2099 arishem list, got me back to infinite yesterday!
I'm a new player that started in mid Oct 2024 From my point of view here is what i think of the changes and my suggestions and what 2nd dinner needs to do to actually FIX the entire situation of card acquisition in general. When I first started it was amazing that i got a card every few Collection Levels, however as i progressed that did slow down a bit as new cards were spread out a bit farther apart. Then i hit pool 3 reserve caches and not only was i not guaranteed a new card now i get some other thing that's not as helpful. finally got up to the collection caches and they got even worst! I'm still not getting a guaranteed card AND in place i have a chance of getting something completely useless like an avatar portrait or a title! Before I get into the solution lets talk about how the current CL system is just so we are on the same page as of this writing 12-20-24. In general how you acquire and move up the track is fine, other than going from gray to green border should cost $50 credits. But they way they have the levels progress where you get credits/booster/mystery card at the start of the game is perfectly fine. I think it's great that a player needs to acquire all pool 1 before those mystery cards become pool 2. Moving up past that changing mystery card to caches (reserve/collectors) is fine but whats inside needs to change. I don't know how high up this same rotation goes other than adding “spotlight keys” but it will be fine if it just goes up infinitely as is at that point. Meaning every X level your getting a cache, or booster, or credits, or spotlight key. Card Acquisition Solution(s) 1) Pool 3 is way too big, spread out some of the the cards to be in pool 1 & 2 or possibly even back to 4 (more on this later) 2) STOP dropping cards down to series 3 from 4+ 3) When a player gets to a cache they should automatically give a new card no matter what. (With the above mentioned change it will be likely that the new card acquired could be a pool 2 if that's what players are up too, and then as they progress will eventually get a pool 3). 4) In ADDITION the caches should give a bonus item of whatever 2nd dinner already has as the primary item them currently. (Ex: collection caches can give titles) Not saying that all caches are equal, but they remain the same as they are, but ALWAYS including a new card also. 5) Once a player collects all pool 3 cards this process can continue into pool 4 cards, and potentially into pool 5 if and ONLY when 2nd dinner creates pool 6 set of cards. Lets talk briefly about token shop, it's not perfect, but will do for now. And even with collection tokens as an insane 6000 for a new pool 5 card the system works. With the above change, you can keep the option to buy a random pool 3 card, but should always also include an option for a random pool 4. and have the rotating every 8 hour card changing but ONLY rotating throughout the pool 5 cards you have not yet acquired! I can not stress that enough, it should NOT have pool 4 included in it's rotation. Before we leave off I just want to add that 2nd dinner could be adding new cards into ANY of the pools doesn't always have to be a really cool new OMG insane pool 5 card! You wanna add a nobody “no ability” 1 cost 2 power card great throw it in pool 1! we could definitely use more no ability cards anyway. Also would could do with season passes with existing pool 5 cards not just a brand new card. I don't' know if you “KM BEST” or anyone else reading this has any pull to get this information to 2nd dinner, but feel free to share these ideas with those that can make things happen!
It's crazy that people called out the limitations of this card acquisition system when we switched from the much more manageable, easy-to-engage-with, non-gacha token system but all of the SD lovers and defenders drowned them out because "it's technically more cards!" If you ever stopped to think about card acquisition for two seconds -- especially after the first series drop they did with the new system in place -- you could tell that this is exactly where we were headed. I took November off and I haven't been able to log in that much this month (not that it matters, since I also don't have keys atm) and I'm basically going to be 3 cards short of BiS in every deck I play for the foreseeable future. It just makes me want to quit altogether.
I had to laugh out loud when I heard "someone like me that 4-banged 2 of the last 3." FIVE OF THE LAST SEVEB! And yes, the other two were 3-key weeks 😭 And no, I don't expect compensation for that...
The 3 a week in the spotlight cache and how infrequent their schedule for what gets put in is the problem for me. The month gets datamined and there are times (minus the new cards) I literally just won’t get anything new the whole month lol
Hot take - I say we have two spotlight caches at the same time that last 2 weeks long and alternate weekly, giving people one more week to get new cards and one less spotlight cache every month. Just the window in which they add a new card and acquisition time for it before the next new card drops needs to be slowed down entirely
There shouldn't be duplicates on the spotlight cache unless we had completed that series, keys are not easy to get to receive that bad reward when we use them
I'm glad they helping newer player's. Four months to get all series 3 is still ridiculous. For me with a high ish collection level the system is still horrendous and the pricing is still outrageous. I want to see meaningful card acquisition change ASAP. I'm giving them until the end of Q1. If no meaningful changes are made I'm out.
Flexible series drops was and still probably is the biggest issue, you built up your series 4 and 5 pool enough at this point we could go back to more regular series drops
I would say a meaningful change to the agency is when a card comes out the last weeks card is in another page and by the end of the month the last 3 move out or something.
It may sound good or decent, but I think these fixes are barely more than their roundabout way to throw the community a bone and hope it shutss people up enough to buy season passes into Q1 of 2025. All their promises are expected to come through over Q1, which reads as a final squeeze of the player base before the meetings start about whether the game is worth keeping or not. I'd be surprised if that topic wasn't already on the docket.
Its only greatly beneficial to new players because their goal is to show two great charts at the end of Q1, good attrition of existing players as indicated by season pass purchases and good new player base. Which would lead to the game looking successful and their takeaway would be "well if these problems were really problems, we wouldn't see this kind of increase" and use that to justify keeping the game at its costly rate.
They're at a crossroads, and they aren't looking at our feedback to make decisions, if they were, they would have been showing that for the last two years. Their decisions are driven by our purchases and that's really the only method we have to be heard.
Cautiously Optimistic is how I'm feeling too. This is objectively good for newer players. It's pretty good for me as a veteran player. Will I be changing my 2/5 rating in the app store? No Will I be buying this season pass or the next one because of this? No They still have to show that they are doing more than just "hearing us".
I bought every season pass from Wave (soft launch) to Blink. I haven't played the game since Blink, and the prospect of catching up after an absence is what stops me from returning. These changes seem good, and I wish they did this earlier in 2024. However, they aren't enough to make me want to return to the game ... The prospect of playing catch up is still daunting, even with these changes.
Love this video. You make great points especially your inflation analogy. I respectively disagree on 1 thing. I think SD shouldn't and isn't giving up profit. The $$ and time price to gain a meta-competitive collection IS going up. And now it is above the "profit-maximizing price". So these changes should increase profit.
Exactly. New players having a better time starting is actually helping their bottom line for example. Keeping players happy is helping their bottom line. Players who are not happy leave the game and basically can't return for obvious reasons. If the economy and the reward systems aren't good enough, more players will leave the game and that hurts the bottom line for SD in the long run.
@@KMBestInASnap I do. Making Series 3 4 mo instead of 8 mo means more new players means more money. If you think of all of the elements together as a price, the game is too expensive. That's what the community is saying and I agree. If your profits are lagging because so few people are spending money reducing price should increase customer traffic. And they're doing it without making a $50 bundle cost $40 because they're afraid of short term losses.
I’m not a new player - but I accidentally lost my 4200 CL account by not binding it to Apple 😅 I’ve restarted and I’m 2000 CL and my only good cards are arishem, red guardian, and gorr. I’m soooo happy about the series 3 changes
The big issue with spotlights is that the acquisition isnt targeted, and the pool from which we get the spotlight cards is getting larger and larger over time. I knew from the very beginning that spotlight system wouldnt fly. At least now we have at least arrived to the point where other people are starting to see it as well. The only way it could work is if cards were dropping to S3 at a much faster rate, which would keep the pool of spotlight cards more manageable. But S3 pool of cards growing just as fast makes things harder for new players as long as the acquisition is random. But lets hope second dinner actually understands all of the issues and manages to fix them. I just dont understand why Second Dinner is so hard stuck in keeping the acquisition of cards random. It would work much better if people had more agenda in getting the cards they want, because then people could also get the newest and coolest releases when they release, which would make it much more effective hyping up the new releases. Instead of "oh cool a new card. I dont have tokens/spotlights right now so I guess I will get the card in 3 months time". This is a separate issue from the acquisition speed issues though.
maybe this is too generous of a suggestion for "returning" players, but here goes: if you do not log in for 7 days, from day 8 until day 30 (the maximum), a 100 daily credit login bonus will be stored for you until you log in. so, whenever you *do* log in after day 7, you will be rewarded with 100 credits for each day you did not log in. this means you can get a minimum of 700 credits for logging in after a week of not playing, or up to 3000 credits if you've been away for 30 days or longer. to earn a spotlight key, you have to spend around 6000 credits, so after a month break you would still be able to get half a key's worth of progression in terms of credits, for free. alternatively, they could swap out the credits for tokens, so at max you'd get 3000 tokens, which equates to a series 4 card or half a series 5 card.
I find it so bizarre that I feel I can't recommend this amazing game to my friends because I happened to start playing as the game came out and they didn't. I'm really hoping I'm going to be able to do that confidently in the future
This really is the crux of it for me.
With the state the game is, I don't see myself coming back, and I've stopped last January.
The spotlight cache system is bad, because they reduced the tokens from reserves and no more gold in them, and added tickets for Conquest.
They just want to maximize their profit margin and used a fun game as the base to keep people playing.
It's just another mobile game, that releases content way too slow.
In a vacuum, band aids are better than nothing. But in the context of the last year of Snap, it's hard to get excited. SD created this problem with a series of intenential changes that made card acquisition progressively worse. None of this happened accidentally.
For the last year or so, SD has been telling us that they hear us and that they were working on it. Band Aids like these could have been applied at any time. Healthier series drops which were totally at SD's discretion would have reduced bloat in the upper series. None of these things happened until after the community grabbed their pitchforks.
What this tells me is that SD is going to do the minimum and only when the backlash is too loud to ignore. These band aids are better than nothing. Arguably they are a decent start. But they also feel like too little possibly too late.
This is nothing without meaningful follow up. It does little to restore faith which has been consistently abused. We're not even really resetting the clock here. It's more like plugging a couple holes in a dam full of them.
Same here, I warned 12 friends away from this game, and 5 of them tried it, and now only 1 plays occasionally.
@@Kromattyep.
But like...if these are so easy to implement, why didn't they do it 6mos ago when it was clear this was a serious problem? The fact they will throw the most pathetic bone only AFTER a massive wave of attrition means they didn't fuckin care, and it means that the previous "We are hearing you"s were completely hollow words. It didn't take 6-12 mos to figure out and implement these most basic of balance changes.
If they want to keep the spotlight system, the amount of tokens you get should be decided by equation, based on the number of cards in the pool. Then, there will be no need to do sudden jumps like this, it will just auto balance itself according to the relative worth they want to assign towards acquiring a certain percentage of the card pool.
Replacing the "One free Series 3 card/mo" mechanic with a free key each month (after becoming S3 complete) would help a lot also.
Couldn't have said it better myself tbh.
Because people weren't review bombing them, and dropping the game. They like money.
Greed... The answer is often greed...
Feels to me like they didn't want to implement half-solutions and thought they could figure out a long-term solution faster than they did. Then the massive uproar happened post-series drop and they realised something needed to change. That's the optimistic reading, at least
These should have done last March honestly. It's some step forward but not enough.
200 Tokens used to be in caches, now only 100
Gold was in conquest shop
Completing weekly quest used to get us 500 gold, now 100
Duplicate spotlight caches is one that we try to actively avoid. So.. I it's really a bandaid.
They nerfed a lot and buffed a bit.
FYI pretty sure weekly quests have always totaled 200 gold. Otherwise I agree.
@wrkahl they always have. No idea where they're getting that 500 figure from (but this is the second video I have seen them past it under)
Don't mind me, I'm here to reward level-headed takes with engagement
My opinion on this change is that it's really good for new players. Finishing series 3 in 4 months is like getting a new card everyday. This feels great! I feel like maybe I can start recommending snap to ppl again.
For me, tho... I'm cl 18k. The worst feeling for me is wasting the 4 keys to get a single card in a week. That still remains. I'm only missing 10 cards. Last month I got Scream out of the random box and it felt great! I don't believe that they can't implement duplicate protection with 80 series 5 cards in this!! Let's wait for more announced changes I guess.
worst feeling as a ftp is spending 6k on a new card and then it getting nerf
Similar position to you. The only ‘freebie’ I ever got was Makkari and maybe negasonic when the spotlight caches first came out. The dupes just feel so bad.
It’s alright. Helps but as long as we have miek and daken weeks card acquisitions going to suck.
Yeah this is such a huge problem.. the fact that they keep putting complete trash in caches instead of any of the useful stuff.. Like.. Ajax hasn't been in caches ever !!!
We’ll have to wait and see what the bigger rework is next year, but I wasn’t expecting any short-term fixes at all before then, so I’m pleasantly surprised.
Pinning this comment for when the promised “rework” bears no meaningful difference to the existing system or is abandoned all together.
there is no next year, i went from playing 3 hours or more a day on and off in the shuri meta in early 2023 to like get me a negative deck to play and clear missions for 10 minutes once a day so i can shut this sh(t down till tomorrow. ON TWO ACCOUNTS! like holy hell.
So patch goes live jan 14th.
Series drop “first quarter of 2025” can be as late as march 2025
And couple months to rework the system will easily take us to may or june 2025.
In the meantime, they will keep releasing every card into s5. They will keep filling spotlights with dogshit fodder like in december.
SD is really not understanding the urgency required to regain the trust of the player base.
They are digging their own grave and we just have to sit here and watch them do it.
Being this slow to get to these adjustments is truly damning for this development team. This a PR move more than anything else.
they suck at their job and that is why they work at sd and not some larger inc.
@@sunnymederental3703couch warriors tell others how they suck at their job they never worked in. Peak comedy 😂
@@Rambrus0 say hi to your mom when you get your morning milk from her, get rekt you low-brow. let me take a wild guess, you are american. wow.
@@Rambrus0 maybe. But it's still a true statment
@sunnymederental3703 yet they got you playing their game, keep crying there buddy
Dupe series 4 gives 3k tokens. Dupe series 5 gives 6k tokens. Every time a new card is introduced, drop a series 5 to 4 and series 4 to 3.
That makes too much sense for SD to do. They would rather screw you over and let you hope for a positive change that never comes.
@@markmurex6559it actually doesnt make sense for them… It just takes like 5 seconds to figure out why… If you drop a card every time you release one, people will hust wait until it drops and will never invest into your game.
It's a nice short term fix for new players to get to s3 complete sooner and to help reduce the bad feelings from spotlight cache misses, but it's obviously only a first step that doesn't deal with most of the problem. Grade - incomplete.
Why make a card game and intentionally make it nearly impossible to collect the cards. I’ve spent a couple grand on this game since it launched, because I believed the initial promise that their main source of income was going to be cosmetics, not cards.
They haven’t even given cosmetics a fair shake. I’m very done with this game… this is Blizzard level shenanigans. Oh wait! LOL
I’m a prime example that if you take ANY time off in this game, you’re fucked. I’m trying to get back into it after dropping off for a few months and I feel like I don’t have a chance of building a Meta deck for who knows how long
That's exactly what happened to me, takes WAY too long to get even close to being back on top of things
I was in the same boat. Took 3 months off and after a few weeks realised I was never going to come close to catching up without whaling so I uninstalled. I don’t regret it at all.
You don't need to always follow the meta tho. I've beaten plenty of meta decks with just the cards I have from series 2 and 3
After taking a break for about 6 months I have been able to climb to infinite just buying the last 3 season passes. Am I able to play the most competitive version of a deck? Mostly no, but it is good enough and the meta is relatively open right now.
Fr I took a break from Febuary to August and I saw every control card be completely worthless and obsolete to newer tech cards like USAgent and Red Guardian. Every deck runs them, and a week that i saved 4 caches, I didn’t pull RG.
You nailed it. Great first step but it will all depend on what they do to solve the acquisition issues.
It is not a great first step, it is least of what could've be done.
It's a good step in the right direction, but until the actual reworks come, I'm staying away. Been burnt too many times.
While temporary bandaid fixes are great and all, the fact that we are still more months away from a major change to the acquisition system is unbelievable. They just keep kicking the can down the road and expecting people to keep on waiting.
I think you're 100% on target with everything you said. Making Tier-3 more rewarding is great for getting people playing! The only difference for T-3 complete folks is when you get the feels bad key it's doubled but still feels bad. Some easier solutions could be making the 4th spotlight guaranteed to be an unowned card, releasing cards at T-4 again and, not progress related, release more 700 gold variants. The vast majority released in the last year have been 1200 and it just makes me not spend money. If I see a couple 700 gold variants I really like I'm more willing to buy a bundle for gold than a single really expensive variant for a card I already have good enough variants for.
Yeah, the gold economy is also not great. They could reduce the cost of variants to 1,000 and 500 instead of 1,200 and 700 for example, or just reward more gold.
Pinky promise it’s a bandaid 😂 not enough in my opinion. But thank you km for standing up for the community
Now with more tokens we need that spotlights contain only S5 cards. So the way of acquisition is clear: S5 - keys, S4 - tokens.
I'm surprised it took this long for the community to get angry and the spotlight system. I knew it was terrible day one. I thought they would have made changes a lot sooner. I've been frugal with my keys and horded all my reserve. We'll see if their rework is any good. If not I'll just sell my account and wait for slay the spire 2.
At least they're doing something.
Though on the topic of compensation, if Daken really is a card they're giving out with the next season pass, that's the one point where I'd want some compensation for pulling him in this week's spotlight cache because that one actually feels outright malicious.
If you open a spotlight and roll the 4th slot, you should get a random s5 card you don't have, full stop. The only acceptable amount of tokens I would take out of this slot is 6k. A spotlight key should be equal to the cost of card, not 1/6 of a card or even 1/3 of a card.
SD laughs in your face. That would be fair.
At least give us a random series 4 card we dont have
It feels nice for new players and pretty minimal for long term players. You might get a few more cards in a year if you’re playing consistently. In the short term, not sure how meaningful it is
I hope its not too little too late. They've had so long watching their player numbers plummet and only now they start the process of change?
I agree that this is a compromise and a great step I just think the frustration is the delay that everything runs in. It was known this problem could happen with card acquisition. People have now been complaining for a few months, devs address it, saying we’re working on. Few months go by then hey give us a few months and we’ll get the right thing out there for you. So it’s great it’s a step, I just think the player base is exhausted from changes that need to happen being caught in this months behind loop.
They're good changes, yeah (I'd have liked to see an increase on tokens earned through caches, too, though), and it's good to have a more solid confirmation that SD *is* listening (and that they know these are band-aid fixes). But you're right, it addresses the inflation without fixing the root of the problem. Hopefully those bigger fixes won't take another year...
Over the last few weeks I think we have witnessed in real time what happens when a company "breaches the trust thermocline". If these changes had been implemented six months ago they might have been much more effective. Sadly, once a company breaches the trust it is very difficult to get those customers that it has lost back.
With how many times I have pulled a dupe of Sebastian Shaw 1,000 tokens was never enough.
Im in the camp of, yeah this is objectionabley better, but it's kind of too little of a bandaid. It does nothing for me really unless I go 4 keys deep on a spotlight, and even then I think giving 3k tokens would have been fair considering most dupes are going to be a s4 card.
For me, some change can really help people collect card better like:
+ Get same Token as the card we dupe in Spotlight Cache, a card for a card, more value for Spotlight Key.
+ Players can choose 1 card form Series 4 and 5 each month like Series 3 (if the Series Pool for 4/5 still as big as now). Save some Token may help people have more choice. This 100% help new player save their key and still got thing they want most.
There're ton of card but most people enjoy few of it, let them get that card easier help them playing longer.
I agree, whatever system they decide to pursue, it must take card releases into consideration. The amount of time someone starting today to be series 3 complete should be roughly the same today compared to 2022.
Just add some damn duplicate protection. They are so clueless
That way it would be just too easy to complete the collection. This can't happen, otherwise it would literally break the game.
@@jonasmarques3539
Spoiler alert: it wouldn't
No it wouldn't 😂 it takes a month to get 4 keys they release cards every week it still wouldn't be ez to get collection complete
In fact you would never catch up as a free to play player as a whale you're probably already collection complete
@@jonasmarques3539 They release 5 cards a month. You can only earn 4 keys a month and buy the season pass. You would miss 3 cards a month at minimum. So let's say you have 10 cards left to get and they implemented duplicate protection, you would still be out paced by releases before you get those 10 cards.
JUST DO AWAY WITH DUPLICATES. Give me cards that I don’t already own if I hit the Mystery Cache!! Wasn’t that the entire point of the Mystery Cache in the first place, to get a random card that you don’t have?
Jesus Christ is it that hard? Why have I pulled Knull 4 god damn times when I’m missing 40 cards?????
This ☝
I have an idea but I think it might be too crazy. It addresses two issues: 1) Too many cards being added too quickly making it hard for players to keep up, 2) The FOMO issue you mentioned and we're all familiar with where we really only have 1 week to decide if we want to go for the new card. The idea is this: Instead of releasing the Season Pass and a another new card, make the spotlight cache for that week a chance to choose one of the spotlight caches from the previous month that a player wishes they'd rolled on. That's one less card being released and a 2nd chance for players that have had enough time to think about their missed opportunity.
Four banger team here. I appreciate that Second Dinner aknowledges these are band aids, hope they have figured a good way to handle card aquisition (and it doesn't take months to be done)
The problem about compensation after the patch releases in January for opening the 4th spotlight cache and getting a duplicate right now, (therefore getting 1k tokens), is, how far back would these compensations track when we as players opened and got that 4th slot? 1 month? 2 months? Doesn't make sense.
However, it would have made sense if this compensation indeed existed, but also, came in effect right after this announcement of tjese band-aids was made. Meaning, if you used your keys and opened for Doom 2099, Bruce Banner and Rocket/Groot and you got the 4th slot and a duplicate, then when the patch rolled in January you actually get those extra tokens that you would have gotten with the updated system. (Victoria Hand also applies because she is the first card in January to come alongside Iron Patriot which is the SP card and the patch goes live the 2nd week of January).
I think that would have been ideal.
Youre right that our energy would be better spent elsewhere than complaining about a lack of compensation for getting 1k tokens instead of 2k from the next 3 weeks of caches but honestly i think it would be a pretty easy show of good will on sd's part that i think they should seriously consider it regardless
They should, but they won't. It's SD we are talking about.
I really love how this will help new players. The spotlight caches still need a lot of work but at least this is something. I'd like to see what will happen with the next series drop. My overall impression, though, is that they have heard the outrage and are looking for fixes.
I'd love to be a fly on the wall at Second Dinner for these discussions around the economy. The bean counters have all the power in the direction for this game. I'm sure flexible series drops came around after someone said Spotlight Cache's were not making enough money. The numbers for season passes and bundles the past couple months must have dropped enough for change to finally be called for (hence the temporary changes). Hopefully some of the devs got their I told you so moment to those higher ups.
They need to up the tokens you get from the collection track. 100 is weak (very low number) and makes it take FOREVER (!!!) to collect enough that way. Also the frequency for which you get them via the track should be upped as well.
If people in your Discord/community doesn't understand how and why a lot of people are saying this is not enough, then I can easily make them see why If they read this comment, by just asking them something very simple:
I'm a returning player. I stopped playing the game 8 months ago and just came back the same day this season started. I was ultra competitive (as most people are in this community since this is a competitive oriented channel), finished every season in high Infinite, bought every single season pass and had almost every card.
How is this, as the devs themselves are calling it, "BAND AID", going to impact my account in a way where I can get Wiccan, Anti Venom, Scream, Cassandra Nova, Surtur, Gorr, and all the meta defining cards I missed and I NEED if I want to be competitive again without getting my ass blasted by decks I just can't beat with my outdated collection? Is this going to change anything in a meaningful way, resulting in my NOT having to spend money in order to catch up?
Anyone who's honest and not ultra biased because they like the game so much, should realize that this band aid (the devs themselves are admitting this won't be enough by calling it BAND AID guys, come on) won't solve much, because it isn't attacking deeper issues like the amount of series 5 that are released each month (releasing less Series 5 cards would DEFINITELY solve more issues).
I share your cautious optimism. As someone who has followed a very strict regiment of key expenditures and hasn't seen a card in the caches (other than new cards) that I have needed in 3 months and doesn't see another until Kang in 5 weeks (and do I really need him?) I think this is a good change and will lead me to being far closer to collection complete...but agree with your assessment.
KM! Always enjoy the listen. Black Swan was my last season because the card acquisition was such ass. I was a nearly collection complete player within about 5 cards, approaching Whale. The number of cards missing just snowballed; so I bailed.
This change seems geared to player acquisition and damage control with players on the fence. I think SD has written off any returning players.
Thank you again for the killer content.
Edit: should mention I am 20 year MTG player - totally accustomed to being screwed financially.
The expectation of compensation is extremely common in the mobile gaming/gacha space because all users are aware, in some way or another, that they are being squeezed for every possible dime in our pockets and so compensation for aggressive monetization is expected. I think that's the cross you have to bear when you're charging $40-100 for a single card.
ur choose of words ring so true so i totally agree with ur opnions as a relative new player still in snap this is going to help my progression in my seriers 3 grind so much faster sure it doesnt benefit veteran players or even returning players for that matter in snap so much but atleast the 2k tokens will help somewhat to get new s5 cards abit faster but at the old end the players will want those permanent fixes regarding the economy in snap hopefully sooner than later but for now im content, and believe or not this puts some faith in me that SD is actualy working to better the game for ALL its players i just hope they dont take to long still the spotlight and cache system needs major rework so for now the fomo will continue sadly
I have only 10 cards missing for this game and believe me, this have been frustrating, spending KEYS to get 1 new card is madness, they need to address this ASAP.
I think doubling the rate of card acquisition for series 3 incomplete players is a great move. Series 3 was a grind not only because you you were lacking key pieces, but because new cards were unlocked at a slower rate. Giving more cards more quickly helps recapture that "Series 1" feel that there was always something new to try.
For a series 3 complete player however, this barely moves the needle. The whole spotlight system leads to all these feel bads. We will have to see how SD plans to fix this.
I think I'd like to see one of two changes, if not both!
The first is, make all 4 cards for the month available week one. So you can spend all 4 keys and get all the new cards and have the whole month to explore. Each week after, standard rotation of 2 variants and one new card. (New card being the standard weekly releases if you didn't get the set of 4 week one) This also allows those who want them, a chance at the cards and their new variants for their keys.
I'd also like to see a "demo" or "test" period I could do with cards before buying. Give me 48 hours or 12 matches or something with a temp version of the cards so I can try it out before I commit.
"I wouldn't expect compensation if I bought a game on steam today and it went on sale for new years" is a better analogy
It shouldve been at least 2k from the jump... Or maybe even half the worth of the card you pulled.
They need to fix the spotlights now.. stop the two s4 cards going along with the new card of the week.
Un-installed the game today..sick and tired of losing to the same decks and not being able to get cards. Spent two keys trying to get doom...and of course they give me the other two trash cards..DONE WITH THIS GAME!!!
I have a couple of ideas that could help the entire economy.
1. As they release a minimum of 4 cards a month (excluding the season pass card) they should series drop 4 cards a month. This would balance out the series 3, 4, and 5 pool so 5 isn’t growing without the others doing as well. The start of every new season they will drop 4 cards, 2 from 5 to 4, and 2 from 4 to 3. The dropped cards will be cards that are at least 1 year old.
2. Every year, at the beginning of the year, drop an additional 4 cards. In combination with my first point, the start of the year will always drop 8 cards total, 4 from 5 to 4 and 4 from 4 to 3.
3. The first spotlight key used always gets the new card. On average I get 1-2 spotlight keys a week. That’s if I play that week consistently, which I don’t always do. Let me get the new card and afterwards have the choice to pursue the variants.
4. Make the 4th Spotlight Choice guarantee an unowned card. It can prioritize from the lower pools first. If I don’t own a series 3 card, I will get it automatically before getting any doubles. If I own all series 3 but not 4, it will get me a series 4. If I own all 3 and 4 it will get me a random series 5. Spotlight keys should feel great cashing in, but often times I get disappointed. I want to play the game and try new cards, that to me is fun.
5. If the above changes are made, they can change the amount of spotlight keys acquired from (to me) about 1-2 per week to just 1 per week. I don’t mind less spotlight keys if it means when I do get then I’ll get a new card.
6. Tokens are a great way to buy a certain Card specifically but also a cool way to get Ultimate variants, but I never use them on variants because I’m trying to play catch up with my card acquisition. If card acquisition was easier I could now spend my tokens on that winter soldier variant I got saved for 8 months now.
This game is awesome! Gameplay keeps me coming and the variety is entertaining. Hell, even the meta is diverse enough to keep me on my toes. I don’t see myself not playing this game, but I do get frustrated when the last 9 keys I’ve used over the last 7 weeks only got me 2 cards.
i find myself in the wonderful sweet spot of benefting from *neither* of the two changes :D s3 complete for maybe 2 months now, got a small handful of s4/s5 cards (ie i will almost never pull duplicates), and so i will still have 0 chance of acquiring the important buildarounds i dont have.
@KMBest Pretend you are the surgeon. You have complete control to redesign the card acquisition system for SNAP. You have to make sure that SD still makes money and can feed their employees. You also have to make the players happy. What do you do?
They make too much money already.
unfortunately i cant answer this without knowledge of their actual finances. how much does it cost them to add 1k tokens to the 4th slot in caches? without info like that i just cant do anything
As someone still working through collectors caches for my series 3 im a fan of this change.
Hopefully we'll get bigger changes in the future, but its a hopeful start
You got the best deal out of all other types of players.
I think a good system for spotlight cache would be for the whole month all the spotlight weeks can be accessed for that month (Example) so if you want the card that released on the first week but it’s week 3 there’s a separate tab in the spotlight cache screen you can access and it shows the previous spotlight cards and the 2 variants that released with that card and for the last card of the month they can have it be available in the following month for the first week. So this would relieve some stress of getting a card for the month in a week now you have a whole month to decide which cards to get. just a idea 💡
I find what you mentioned about the numbers for spotlights being good on release needing more nuance. Might be wrong, but I remember watching a podcast where a data analyst in the community basically concluded that the system was only really good for newer players who also took advantage of series drops when compensating (I also remember feeling ecstatic about that, because I started playing just two weeks before it was implemented). Again, might be wrong, but I figured it's always been serviceable, if not awful for those with most of the cards
Think I'm in about the same boat as you. I'm a day 1 player that has taken a couple of months off here and there and bought most of the season passes during my active time, with minimal spending otherwise. Currently sitting at CL ~15,000.
I'm series 3 complete, so the first change is irrelevant to my experience.
Spotlight keys and the rewards for missing the card of the week remain paltry enough that I will continue to abstain from spending keys during any week that doesn't have at least 2 cards I'm missing at a bare minimum.
So basically nothing has changed for me; however, I can respect that they're at least finally doing something.
I'll probably still take a break from the game at the end of this month, but I'll keep an eye on it, see what changes come in the future, and perhaps pick it back up one day.
As a player that has every card except Caiera, I agree with you. I am also a player that took several months off. When I left we had the original system and when I came back I was 3 cards away from bring series 3 complete. After a year and quite a bit spent I am caught up and feel like I can’t take another break without falling behind. The biggest problem I see is time. No time away from the game and it takes too much time to get the card that comes out in the spotlight cache if you do not have the keys or if you are on the fence. I understand cards get nerfed etc. but a good example is Nocturne and another is sage. Nocturne was a hyped card and meta for a minute. Had to spend tokens to get her cause I didn’t have the keys. Now I never used her since they nerfed her to a 3/4 and then made several bangers of the 3/5 or 3/4 slot that scales (surter). Sage on the other hand I almost didn’t pull but glad I did. With the new Gorr/negative deck with task master, that is a fun deck and I have access to it. It is very painful to be in a spot where it is almost impossible to be diligent with resources. This weeks spotlight cache is a good example. You are going to put the most anticipated card this month with Miek/Daken, two series 4 cards that have a low play rate.
As someone who started playing the game ~3 months ago Im so happy that it wont take me another 3 months to collect the other half of the season 3 cards. I've been playing the same deck all this time because it's the only meta relevant one I can make.
There's a 3rd improvement that's not being spoken about: notice how there are suddenly Season Pass cards returning in upcoming spotlights all of a sudden in January/February:
- Hawkeye Kate Bishop
- Blink
- Baron Zemo
Noteworthy because there were NONE in the last 7 months (Skaar was the last one May 21st)
Daken is in the caches *right now* and is a season pass card. An extremely forgettable and series dropped one, but a season pass card nonetheless.
@@ArtelindSSBit was so long ago though
I think the s3 drop rate increase is actually pretty huge for new players. Sure, it'll still take a long time for a new player to be seriously competitive, but messing around with new cards is just fun. At least now they should be sufficiently entertained while they accumulate enough cards to be competitive if they even care about being competitive.
I think double series 3 acquisition is great for new players. Saying doubling the token for duplicate from spotlight is "rewinding the clock" I think it's generous on KM's part. We have more than twice the series 5 cards now, if they are truly addressing the inflation they would need to cut the price on series 5 by halve. Otherwise I dont think it will be close to feeling like when the spotlight first launched.
I think this tiny changes are good, but the real changes need to be impactful and no take too much time (I’m worried that the changes will come in 6 months)
I think SD will dangle a carrot on a stick for as long as possible.
I think they could solve a lot of this by fixing the collection track. Put cards back in there. I remember getting random series 4 cards and it was so exciting. Increase tokens back to a fair amount. Even put gold back in there. Nobody wants gold conquest tickets.
The ball is truly in SD' court now as the saying goes.
The community has done all their part of repeatedly giving feedback and asking for better economy for basically over a year to a dangerously ballooning extent, and Second dinner has as of now promised for both impactful/regular drops and a significantly better acquisition in 2025. So they have to really deliver this time, deliver big, bigger than ever.
Fairly balanced take KM. One comment on this, you mentioned SD's willingness to give up money, and I'm not sure I agree that this is what's happening here. I suspect based on the numbers available to us of viewership and play numbers, that this change was forced upon them as an effort to stop the bleeding and overall generate more money (or lose less) to keep as many players engaged as they can. Things were on a downward slope and the series drop being mediocre was a last straw of sorts for a lot of people that I think might be what is finally causing some action on their part.
Obviously, we don't have access to all the data just a small amount so could be way off, but just a guess.
Making series 3 easier to complete is 100% a good move, but I do wonder what they will do next year.
Card acquisition is a very important part of a CCG for most players. If you aren't playing for top leaderboards, getting new cards is what brings you back, and that's usually the case for a lot of players.
Make getting new cards too hard, and more casual players will not want to put in the effort, make it too easy, and people will get bored and quit your game, thus putting you back at square 1.
What I think they should do is make getting series 5 cards a bit easier (maybe make them 4k tokens, with 2k tokens for S4), but also allow us to choose between more cards.
Something like what they did with old variants, where you have like 8 options that rotate every X days sounds great, actually.
Variants sadly aren't enough to keep players because, as shiny as they are, what is fun is finding new ways to play the game, unlocking new archetypes, new decks, and for that you need new cards.
And for returning players, maybe something like what Hearthstone did?
HS has this thing that if you haven't played for X months, you can get a free meta deck, but then HS releases a batch of new cards every 3-4 months. For Snap it would make sense to give returning players after X weeks, either Y tokens, or Y new cards to choose from, thus helping them keep up.
I don't know the numbers, but it should help and it works wonders for HS which is over a decade old at this point, and is still fairly popular.
This is alright, but it might be too little too late for me. I don't mean it in a petty way either, it's just gotten really tiring to juggle tokens and keys. I've been playing for 2 years, basically every single day, I've spent thousands of dollars and it's still not enough to keep up. Sure, you can compete without all the new cards, but it's annoying to always miss out on the shiny new toy. Worse is when a card comes out and it's "not worth it" but a month later it's in every god damn deck (Wiccan currently, Sage a few months ago) and you have to pull 46 keys or wait weeks for it to show up in your token shop.
Like you said this sort of puts us back to where we started when spotlights were first introduced BUT theres a couple of major changes they had made to the spotlights between its lainch and now that still makes the system overall worse.
First was that 1 new xard each month used to be a series 4 card, with the last one being Miek i believe, but now every new card is series 5. So before we were able to buy 1 new card each month with tokens for essentially 50% off, allowing us to save more keys for the series 5 weeks. Also, we used to only get the pass card as the new card on the first week of the season, which again allowed players to save up more keys for the following weeks. These 2 changes were a major blow to player resources that, imo makes an, 1k extra tokens for a spotlight dupe not at all impacful.
Imo if they revert these changes back so we dont get a new card (besides the pass card ofc) the first week off each season and also guarentee that 1 new card each season releases as a series 4 card then we'll be a lot closer to a stable and balanced economy.
Sdd in more relieable and meaningful series drops and also further improving the new player experience (plus something to help returning players catch up) then the game will 100% be back on track (in my humble opinion ofc).
the changes are good but im still not gonna spend money any more until things get better
Thank you. All valid points. SD needs to work past the “low hanging fruit” resolution to make people re-engage, in the game, when things have gotten to this point.
This feels like trying to calm down a murderer on a rampage and you get them to calm down just a little bit. Big win? Maybe.
Even though I'm fairly close to being collection complete (barring a few s4/5 cards), I can definitely appreciate the 2000 collectors tokens since they're so expensive to collect. I think what most people are worried about is SD moving on from addressing the card acquisition issue after this update and it being the only "fix" we get which doesn't actually solve the issue. After SD seemed fairly tone deaf with the series drop this month, bringing back modes that people don't like such as "Deadpool's Diner 2.0" without making it much better from the first time, and creating an even more expensive premium season pass, players simply don't trust SD much anymore to do the right thing
11:55 well, as much as I don't like the Spotlight system (due to its lack of agency) it did affect their bottom line because it indeed made cards being cheaper to acquire, so they have done this before.
As someone that's collection complete with plenty of keys and tokens, I'm concerned how they can change the economy to be more welcoming to new players without meaningully degrading the value of keys and tokens. They need to make the game more welcoming, but loyal customers feeling burned after an economy change is a pretty bad potential outcome. I think a lot of the people complaining may be skeptical of a change regardless due to a lack of trust in another economy change after the last one (spotlight caches & "flexible" series drops) has led us to this point.
Good on em. It's a step in the right direction for sure.
This doesn't really help me as and end game player or make anything feel less bad but a step in the right direction and I'm happy for the pool 3 gamers. Also thanks for the doom 2099 arishem list, got me back to infinite yesterday!
i just feel like a test subject in an experiment for these developers.
I'm a new player that started in mid Oct 2024
From my point of view here is what i think of the changes and my suggestions and what 2nd dinner needs to do to actually FIX the entire situation of card acquisition in general.
When I first started it was amazing that i got a card every few Collection Levels, however as i progressed that did slow down a bit as new cards were spread out a bit farther apart.
Then i hit pool 3 reserve caches and not only was i not guaranteed a new card now i get some other thing that's not as helpful. finally got up to the collection caches and they got even worst! I'm still not getting a guaranteed card AND in place i have a chance of getting something completely useless like an avatar portrait or a title!
Before I get into the solution lets talk about how the current CL system is just so we are on the same page as of this writing 12-20-24. In general how you acquire and move up the track is fine, other than going from gray to green border should cost $50 credits. But they way they have the levels progress where you get credits/booster/mystery card at the start of the game is perfectly fine. I think it's great that a player needs to acquire all pool 1 before those mystery cards become pool 2. Moving up past that changing mystery card to caches (reserve/collectors) is fine but whats inside needs to change. I don't know how high up this same rotation goes other than adding “spotlight keys” but it will be fine if it just goes up infinitely as is at that point. Meaning every X level your getting a cache, or booster, or credits, or spotlight key.
Card Acquisition Solution(s)
1) Pool 3 is way too big, spread out some of the the cards to be in pool 1 & 2 or possibly even back to 4 (more on this later)
2) STOP dropping cards down to series 3 from 4+
3) When a player gets to a cache they should automatically give a new card no matter what.
(With the above mentioned change it will be likely that the new card acquired could be a pool 2 if that's what players are up too, and then as they progress will eventually get a pool 3).
4) In ADDITION the caches should give a bonus item of whatever 2nd dinner already has as the primary item them currently. (Ex: collection caches can give titles) Not saying that all caches are equal, but they remain the same as they are, but ALWAYS including a new card also.
5) Once a player collects all pool 3 cards this process can continue into pool 4 cards, and potentially into pool 5 if and ONLY when 2nd dinner creates pool 6 set of cards.
Lets talk briefly about token shop, it's not perfect, but will do for now. And even with collection tokens as an insane 6000 for a new pool 5 card the system works. With the above change, you can keep the option to buy a random pool 3 card, but should always also include an option for a random pool 4.
and have the rotating every 8 hour card changing but ONLY rotating throughout the pool 5 cards you have not yet acquired! I can not stress that enough, it should NOT have pool 4 included in it's rotation.
Before we leave off I just want to add that 2nd dinner could be adding new cards into ANY of the pools doesn't always have to be a really cool new OMG insane pool 5 card! You wanna add a nobody “no ability” 1 cost 2 power card great throw it in pool 1! we could definitely use more no ability cards anyway. Also would could do with season passes with existing pool 5 cards not just a brand new card.
I don't' know if you “KM BEST” or anyone else reading this has any pull to get this information to 2nd dinner, but feel free to share these ideas with those that can make things happen!
It's crazy that people called out the limitations of this card acquisition system when we switched from the much more manageable, easy-to-engage-with, non-gacha token system but all of the SD lovers and defenders drowned them out because "it's technically more cards!"
If you ever stopped to think about card acquisition for two seconds -- especially after the first series drop they did with the new system in place -- you could tell that this is exactly where we were headed. I took November off and I haven't been able to log in that much this month (not that it matters, since I also don't have keys atm) and I'm basically going to be 3 cards short of BiS in every deck I play for the foreseeable future. It just makes me want to quit altogether.
I had to laugh out loud when I heard "someone like me that 4-banged 2 of the last 3." FIVE OF THE LAST SEVEB! And yes, the other two were 3-key weeks 😭
And no, I don't expect compensation for that...
The 3 a week in the spotlight cache and how infrequent their schedule for what gets put in is the problem for me. The month gets datamined and there are times (minus the new cards) I literally just won’t get anything new the whole month lol
Lmao the band aid to surgery analogy was hilarious😂😂😂
Hot take - I say we have two spotlight caches at the same time that last 2 weeks long and alternate weekly, giving people one more week to get new cards and one less spotlight cache every month. Just the window in which they add a new card and acquisition time for it before the next new card drops needs to be slowed down entirely
There shouldn't be duplicates on the spotlight cache unless we had completed that series, keys are not easy to get to receive that bad reward when we use them
I'm glad they helping newer player's. Four months to get all series 3 is still ridiculous. For me with a high ish collection level the system is still horrendous and the pricing is still outrageous. I want to see meaningful card acquisition change ASAP. I'm giving them until the end of Q1. If no meaningful changes are made I'm out.
Flexible series drops was and still probably is the biggest issue, you built up your series 4 and 5 pool enough at this point we could go back to more regular series drops
I recently lost access to my account, and the thought of dropping another $1k-$2k just to get back to where I was is enough to make me quit
It's like the update says: it's a good band-aid for now, but we need to see the larger rework (apparently in a few months)?
I would say a meaningful change to the agency is when a card comes out the last weeks card is in another page and by the end of the month the last 3 move out or something.
It may sound good or decent, but I think these fixes are barely more than their roundabout way to throw the community a bone and hope it shutss people up enough to buy season passes into Q1 of 2025. All their promises are expected to come through over Q1, which reads as a final squeeze of the player base before the meetings start about whether the game is worth keeping or not. I'd be surprised if that topic wasn't already on the docket.
Its only greatly beneficial to new players because their goal is to show two great charts at the end of Q1, good attrition of existing players as indicated by season pass purchases and good new player base. Which would lead to the game looking successful and their takeaway would be "well if these problems were really problems, we wouldn't see this kind of increase" and use that to justify keeping the game at its costly rate.
They're at a crossroads, and they aren't looking at our feedback to make decisions, if they were, they would have been showing that for the last two years. Their decisions are driven by our purchases and that's really the only method we have to be heard.
why is the announcement only in the discord? I havent seen it ingame or any of the other "official places"
Cautiously Optimistic is how I'm feeling too. This is objectively good for newer players. It's pretty good for me as a veteran player.
Will I be changing my 2/5 rating in the app store? No
Will I be buying this season pass or the next one because of this? No
They still have to show that they are doing more than just "hearing us".
I bought every season pass from Wave (soft launch) to Blink. I haven't played the game since Blink, and the prospect of catching up after an absence is what stops me from returning.
These changes seem good, and I wish they did this earlier in 2024. However, they aren't enough to make me want to return to the game ... The prospect of playing catch up is still daunting, even with these changes.
The main start of the issues of the economy was flexible series drops
Card packs are needed now
Love this video. You make great points especially your inflation analogy.
I respectively disagree on 1 thing. I think SD shouldn't and isn't giving up profit. The $$ and time price to gain a meta-competitive collection IS going up. And now it is above the "profit-maximizing price". So these changes should increase profit.
Exactly. New players having a better time starting is actually helping their bottom line for example. Keeping players happy is helping their bottom line. Players who are not happy leave the game and basically can't return for obvious reasons. If the economy and the reward systems aren't good enough, more players will leave the game and that hurts the bottom line for SD in the long run.
you think? i find it hard to believe these aren't money-losing decisions at least in the short term, which is theoretically all they'll be around for.
@@KMBestInASnap I do. Making Series 3 4 mo instead of 8 mo means more new players means more money. If you think of all of the elements together as a price, the game is too expensive. That's what the community is saying and I agree. If your profits are lagging because so few people are spending money reducing price should increase customer traffic. And they're doing it without making a $50 bundle cost $40 because they're afraid of short term losses.
I’m not a new player - but I accidentally lost my 4200 CL account by not binding it to Apple 😅 I’ve restarted and I’m 2000 CL and my only good cards are arishem, red guardian, and gorr. I’m soooo happy about the series 3 changes
The big issue with spotlights is that the acquisition isnt targeted, and the pool from which we get the spotlight cards is getting larger and larger over time. I knew from the very beginning that spotlight system wouldnt fly. At least now we have at least arrived to the point where other people are starting to see it as well. The only way it could work is if cards were dropping to S3 at a much faster rate, which would keep the pool of spotlight cards more manageable.
But S3 pool of cards growing just as fast makes things harder for new players as long as the acquisition is random. But lets hope second dinner actually understands all of the issues and manages to fix them.
I just dont understand why Second Dinner is so hard stuck in keeping the acquisition of cards random. It would work much better if people had more agenda in getting the cards they want, because then people could also get the newest and coolest releases when they release, which would make it much more effective hyping up the new releases. Instead of "oh cool a new card. I dont have tokens/spotlights right now so I guess I will get the card in 3 months time". This is a separate issue from the acquisition speed issues though.
maybe this is too generous of a suggestion for "returning" players, but here goes:
if you do not log in for 7 days, from day 8 until day 30 (the maximum), a 100 daily credit login bonus will be stored for you until you log in. so, whenever you *do* log in after day 7, you will be rewarded with 100 credits for each day you did not log in. this means you can get a minimum of 700 credits for logging in after a week of not playing, or up to 3000 credits if you've been away for 30 days or longer. to earn a spotlight key, you have to spend around 6000 credits, so after a month break you would still be able to get half a key's worth of progression in terms of credits, for free.
alternatively, they could swap out the credits for tokens, so at max you'd get 3000 tokens, which equates to a series 4 card or half a series 5 card.