The honeymoon period may be over for Marvel Snap as the game has started to slide into the same gacha territory as the majority of major mobile games on the market. While the game was initially praised for its non-intrusive monetization system of cosmetic-only purchases, that system has started to evolve into a gacha grind to acquire the new cards being released with each new season. Marvel Snap ingeniously hooked players early by making new cards easily and frequently obtainable, but now it seems this strategy could be coming back to bite developer Second Dinner.
Collecting cards is a huge aspect of Marvel Snap, and with over 200 for players to collect, working to obtain them all is no easy task. With certain cards dominating the metagame, players unlucky enough to lack those cards are at a huge disadvantage. Second Dinner touted Marvel Snap as a game focused on delivering a competitive card-battling experience without pay-to-win elements, but the recent changes to the way new cards can be obtained suggest the studio wants players to open their wallets in order to unlock the Marvel Snap cards they need.
Marvel Snap Makes Collecting the Latest Cards an Expensive Task
The core of Marvel Snap's card collection mechanic revolves around unlocking new cards by upgrading the rarity of players' current cards which, in turn, increases their Collection Level. Early on, players will unlock a random new card very frequently in their Collection Level progression. Climbing the Collection Level ladder allows players to unlock Marvel Snap's different card pools, which opens up the variety of cards players will be able to obtain. This method of obtaining cards works well for the first couple of card pools, as players are guaranteed to collect every card in pools 1 and 2 by Collection Level 475.
However, once a player reaches Collection Level 500, they are no longer guaranteed to unlock new cards from pool 3 and beyond. Instead, players have a 50/50 chance to earn either a new card or some currency via Collector's Caches. This gamble gets even worse once players reach Collection Level 1000 and those Collector's Caches become Marvel Snap's Collector's Reserves, with only a 25% chance of yielding a new card. This gatcha-style gambling system only gets worse as players increase their collection levels and encourages them to spend money on more than just cosmetic card variants if they want to increase their Collection Level and get another shot at earning a new card.
Second Dinner tried to address this issue by adding the Token Shop to Marvel Snap for players over Collection Level 500 to spend the new Collector's Tokens currency and buy the specific card they are after. The problem with this shop is that it's limited to one random card every 8 hours, so players still have to gamble on the card they want to show up. The prices for these cards are also quite high, with pool 3 cards costing 1000 tokens, pool 4 costing 3000 tokens, and pool 5 costing 6000 tokens. With players only having a small chance of earning a measly 100 tokens per Collector's Cache or Reserve they open, obtaining a desired card from the Token Shop isn't any less of a gamble than the previous method.
Players who are really committed to collecting every card in Marvel Snap will need to spend a pretty penny on credits to upgrade their cards and be lucky enough to get a new card, or at least enough Collector's Tokens from increasing their Collection Level to purchase a new card. With newly added cards belonging to pool 5 and each one costing 6000 tokens in the shop, players will have a very difficult time obtaining them without dropping some cash. While Marvel Snap offers cards to free-to-play players in the beginning, with a steady stream of new cards, that stream will dry up unless players are willing to pay the more they play.
Marvel Snap is available now for PC and mobile devices.