Hey, Bubs

Deadpool's Diner as a gameplay mode has been released for Marvel Snap.

I have found myself not enjoying it much at all. There's multiple issues here for me, so I'm going to outline them.

First; It's predatory. Studies have shown that the more "currencies" you put between the real dollar amount and acquisition, the more people are likely to spend. Because the "currencies" aren't 1=1 versions of money. 

Well, the Diner introduces Bubs as a currency that you can earn ONLY in the diner and that you MUST use if you want to play...unless you want to pay some gold. How do you get gold? Funny you should ask! You get THAT by playing the regular game or by paying actual money. Playing the game gives you gold at an incredibly slow rate so hey, you want to get in on the Diner action right? 

And you just lost 20k Bubs and are broke?? They won't refill for hours so you can't keep playing the Diner? 

Well I'm sure you DO have $99 for 8,000 gold which will then get you 945,000 Bubs! How does math work?

Second, the Diner forces you to bet, automatically raising the stakes on turns 4 and 5. I've already seen comments online about how this feels like gambling and the issues it raises for people who just want to play a 3 minute game and maybe get their daily goals met. 

As a subset of this, if you want to get to the fifteen million Bubs you need to complete the sequence, you have to start betting at higher and higher and higher stakes. That's a must; there's no way to get there without it. 

Third, it uses the worst FOMO to encourage play: a new card is available. Yes, it'll become part of the shop in August but you could just earn it now, right? F2P players pretty much have to grind this out if they want the card.

And this is coming at the worst possible time because Arishem decks have taken over the meta and are not that fun to play against. Which matters because:

Fourth, holy shit this is grindy as hell. Because of the way the Diner is set up, players are encouraged to play their best decks at all time to maximize everything. Experimentation is cast aside for pure competition. 

But part of the joy of Marvel Snap is making up weird shit and playing it in the Conquest modes where your rank isn't impacted, or just changing decks up when you realize that what you have isn't facing the meta well. Yes you can change in the Diner too but the impact feels bigger. If you aren't playing the best deck, it feels like you're playing it wrong.

Fifth, they did a terrible job of explaining how things worked. And given the FOMO and betting aspects of the Diner, I'm thinking they did that on purpose. That feels incredibly shitty. 

Now, there is one thing they did right: once you hit a certain level of Bubs, you can't go below it. Every time you hit that rung on the ladder, you don't fall further, even if you lose. You just have to stop playing until your Bubs refill. 

But the downsides have been such that it's done something even worse for me. 

It's made the game unfun to play. At least for now.