Marvel Snap card acquisition thoughts
Marvel snap card acquisition is rather slow compared to rate of cards coming out. Which is averaging 5 cards per month, one season pass card and one each week spotlight. Cards come from spotlight caches or token shop. These resources are limited by design. Second dinner on purpose is trying to stop people from having complete collections. Therefore, power creep becomes a problem something the designers have to deal with. They have improved card acquisition, but newer players will take months to get a sizable collection. I started play snap in June 2023, 8 months ago, assuming no cards are added that maximum of 3 more months. Almost a year to become pool 3 complete, which is a big ask. I have some thoughts on card acquisition. My collection is currently the following.
Series 3 – 103 / 104 Leaving Agatha Harkness
Series 4 – 9 / 24 important cards Echo, Hit Monkey, Zabu and Knull
Series 5 – 14 / 29 important cards Annihilus, Blob, Caiera, Gladiator, Galactus, Ms. Marvel, Thanos
Couple here which are archetype defining therefore deeply important cards. Some good cards missing, some tech. How it currently works, second dinner moves cards between pools after many months. Can be many months before a card comes back into the spotlight pool.
Here my suggestion
Pool 1 remains the same
Pool 2 remains the same
Pool 3 archetype defining cards, bundle together cards, say a destroy bundle or random collection of cards from each group. A bundle is given once a certain collection level is reached.
Pool 4 acts like pool 3 does now, random card acquisition would include 5 card bundles here until a certain threshold is reached 75% of cards owned.
Pool 5 maximum of 15 cards
Pool 6 maximum of 20 cards
Introducing a hard limit on number of cards in pool 5/6. Giving players groups of cards, something that happens in pool 1. Bundles would work like that, just in small packs for players to open. This could be a collection reward or part of the spotlight cache system. Archetype defining or dominated cards can move to pool 3. Good cards go into pool 4.
How does card acquisition work? Collectors reserves, spotlight caches, token shop.
Reserves drop rates it also explains how it currently works. I would remove golden ticket, 50 tokens adding 100 tokens and spotlight key or pool 4 / 5 card.
Spotlight cache duplicated cards give 3,000 or 6,000 collector tokens instead. Given how long it takes to gain a spotlight, key makes sense to boost the numbers.
Second dinner has many serious improvements to card acquisition, but still more they could do. Increasing the number of free monthly pool 3 cards is another option. Could do a cache bundle 5 cards per month for free.