So, Marvel Snap got a new way of acquiring cards. Sort of. Which almost nobody likes.
It's lead me to think about what's going on here and I think I've got it worked out.
Basically, it's Enshittification, but disguised as giving players 'more options' and being better for new players. Like most enshittification efforts, there's a half truth there.
The first part: Spotlight Caches. The initial notion is neat: let's mark the crates on the ladder that will give you a character (or an alternate art)! Players now know what they are working towards. Visualized goals help motivate players.
Plus, looking at my own track, the Spotlight Caches really are just a new color: the rate at which I was getting new characters/alternative art is the same rate as before! I can just see my goal and I think that's a positive.
However with this came other changes: First, the Spotlight Caches would only offer you a chance at one of three cards, with a fourth opportunity to get kicked in the junk.
Each week: three cards are offered-the new hot card, and two other rare cards, with a fourth random alternative art card. If you already have one of the cards shown and that's what you open up, you get an alternative art version of that card.
So, the more cards you have, the more likely it is that you're going to get an alternative art card. Or; kicked in the junk. To ensure that you get the card you want, you need to have four Spotlight Caches available to open that week.
What this system means is that if you don't have cards, you're more likely to be rewarded with a new card, even if it is one you don't want. But if you do have a lot of cards, you're more likely to get a random art card-and because tastes vary wildly, that new art might be great, it might suck ass. Just depends on the tastes of the individual.
And if you get a duplicate card? Well that's just tough: it seems there isn't any duplicate protection.
And this might be fine, except the time it takes to get Spotlight Caches means that you are either playing Marvel Snap as a full time job, or you are waiting a long time* to get four of them to open in one week AND waiting for a week when a card (but hopefully two or three) you want is available, oooooooooooor you're paying them money. *By a long time, I mean that it will take me, someone who has plenty of free time to play, plus gives them $10 a month, at least two months to get enough Spotlight Caches to ensure I get the thing I want. It will take longer for someone who doesn't have my luxuries.
The point is; this punishes entrenched players and doesn't reward new players nearly quickly enough. Things were better when you didn't have a choice and just got what you got. We didn't know what we were getting but hey, maybe it's cool, maybe it's just an alt-art but, interestingly, not having a choice made us feel better about the results.
One reason for that is because one could earn tokens via gameplay and with enough tokens, players could simply purchase a card from a rotating collection on offer. The new card was up for a week, and the other two options, a rare alt-art card and another card, rotated every eight hours.
If you just played the game, it was possible to earn enough tokens to acquire one card per month, and you got to pick the one you wanted. If you gave them $10 a month, you'd get a card for that, too, along with a boost of rewards to make it easier to acquire a second (or maybe even a third!) card.
Which meant that players DID have a choice for what card they want for the month and could work towards it. Once again: an achievable goal that players could visualize, and options for those goals that players had control over.
However, this leads to the second change made: the one that took away our ability to earn tokens that allow us to purchase things. Gold (which let us buy tokens-F2P games are pernicious in their currency manipulations) was removed from the ladder, so you can only earn paltry amounts via gameplay oooooooooooor you're paying them money.
Then they cut the amount of tokens we might earn on ladder from 200-500 to 50. Once again: you can earn enough tokens to buy a card but the method has now been cut from once a month to once every two or three months! Maybe more-I haven't really parsed it out but the point remains: they are leveraging players' FOMO about being left behind in a changing metagame against their wallets.
Which sucks. Our choices have been nerfed and the community is pretty unhappy about this situation. The fixes seem pretty easy: offer duplicate protection and restore the gold and tokens rewards on the ladder. Apparently "the data" is going to guide the developer's decisions, but in the meantime the community is unhappy.
An unhappy community leaves & where there's nobody to play your game, your game withers.
But it was inevitable, because the shareholders must be appeased.
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