what I don't like is there's little to no rewards for playing the game more than the bit you need to complete missions. it seems a bit unfair that a "dolphin player" that buys the pass and plays 3hr/day ranking up to medium-high infinite can't even complete his collection
I definitely realize coming out of this video I use some of my resources inefficiently. Not sure it is a huge problem, but I did check my collection. I went from being pretty close to complete to missing 18 cards. Not terrible. Something to think about about.
From my own anecdote: On F2P, it's quite likely for players to get 50 Reserves for 4 weeks season, up to 60 Reserves for 5 weeks season. Especially if we count extra credits from various sources outside of games like twitch drop, vibranium offers, events, random good bundles. In other words, a 13 week cycle could provide 17 keys and 3400 Tokens. Additional 3000 token average from Spotlight caches. For F2P Gold, 6200G for 13 weeks sounds about right, might be slightly higher. My breakdown is 2600 from weekly; 1500 from 3 season rank 90; 800 from 3 season conquest (200G from 4 weeks season, 400G from 5 weeks season); 900 from 3 Seasons cache 1-50; 550 (average) from 3 seasons cache 51+ Extra note on bundle: the formula for good bundle to target is ((1.75*Token) + credit) / Gold price > 1.65 From there we might surmise the token target gain from bundle to be around 5850-6000 Token if we spend 13 weeks of Gold entirely to token (if such good bundle exist). In other words, ideally in 13 weeks, players can get up to 12000 tokens on F2P (provided they hit a good bundle)
Good info, kind of interesting to see it stayed "mostly" the same. It used to be about $50/mo to get 3 out of 4 cards and then $200 for the last card. Basically, the first 3 cards are relatively inexpensive and then the last cards ramp up dramatically.
I think the only thing I'm not in love with when it comes to the economy is the lack of new cards coming from Series 5 to Series 4, thus making it slightly difficult to continually get newer cards. Obviously, SD has to make money, just seems there's no time table for that to change anytime soon.
Favorite topic indeed! KMbest did a similar supplemental commentary to this video (different coverage but very relatable commentaries on the current state of the economy 🙏 )
This was a great comprehensive coverage of the current economy that will help shape how I proceed with spending on the game going forward. I also appreciate the clear boundary between facts and opinions.
F2P= 0$ Minnows= Season Pass 10$ per season Dolphins= Season Pass+gold pass 15$-30$ Per Season Whales= Buying those crazy overpriced bundles pluss season Pass and gold Pass 100+$ a Season
Hey Jeff! I absolutely love your data analysis on marvel snap economy. I wanted to speak on your comment about having enough spotlight cache keysto guarantee what you want out of a cash. I recently made the massive blender that you talked about when it came to the White widow spotlight. I thought I was safe because I had three keys and all three got me the things that I didn't want. And nothing feels worse than that happening. So please, if you're considering taking the gamble, it's absolutely not worth it and it feels so bad waste all your resources when you miss on the thing you wanted to get. Thanks for highlighting this!
Great video with stellar editing! What I think sucks is that it is difficult to use resources like spotlight keys to target cards like USAgent, Jean Grey, Cannonball and Pixie after their spotlight weeks are over but have found great places in the current state of the game. Overall this system is very good for giving someone F2P like me new cards on release which I appreciate but acquiring stuff which I missed is pretty rough especially when on the release week the cards are not deemed worth potentially spending 4 keys on. I hope there might be a reasonable way for players to acquire such cards especially after buffs, like a second chance to roll for them? Love the YT vids keep them coming!
It's nice to see concrete numbers when considering the economy rather than the constant, vague, sky-is-falling vibes from reddit. I appreciate the even-keel explanation and detailed breakdown, including calling it what it is as deeply predatory.
this video has your best editing yet! fantastic work and super informative. i just became collection complete last month after playing since global release and it was not cheap 😂 i think one of the biggest things that makes the economy feel worse than it is, is actually the amazing art and desire to buy new variants, which put gold towards things that provide 0 progression rather than token tuesdays
I was watching this video and an advertisement from TH-cam recommended me another card game with less luck factor, the advertisement said something like "are you tired of RNG?" or something like that. Is like TH-cam knows me better than myself.
Fascinating and informative breakdown as always. I know that my gold usage is pretty suboptimal since I usually spend it on Dan Hipp variants rather than token Tuesdays LOL. Spending gold on variants does still get you some collectors tokens: 2000 tokens for every 10 variants you buy with gold, plus there is the odd bunch of tokens within the albums. I wish we still occasionally got direct to series 4 card releases, that's my main complaint, but I feel like I get pretty good value for what I put into the game, even using gold sub optimally.
This finally bridges my understanding of collectors tokens. Thank you. As someone who has historically fell into overvaluing variants/art (missing 19 cards), this almost feels like a new way to play the game, I'm very intrigued!
Awesome! This almost exactly matches the analysis I did. The one caveat is that there is a chance that spotlights have multiple cards that you're missing if you're not whaling. Also the 1000 token slot still has a chance of resulting in giving you a card you're missing as well (instead of 1000 takes)
Really appreciate the effort you put in to this. It's a complicated subject that needs a comprehensive treatment to be worth doing at all. I hope the video does well enough to keep you motivated to continue providing this level of content. I don't have time to do this kind of analysis, so if you aren't doing it, I'm not playing.
Throughout the first part of this excellent video I was thinking “yeah but what about fomo factor, albums and variants?” And then Jeff went and talked all about that too. Smashed it, sir! Couldn’t agree more. (Dolphin spender’s perspective)
Given that about a year ago I had managed to collect all but 3 cards, and now a year later I'm missing 15 (and that is as a dolphin buying the monthly pass), I feel that the game doesn't give a good way of catching up with some of the older cards, so the hole in my collection is just going to grow bigger and bigger. Given that some of the ones I'm missing are archtype defining cards, it feels frustrating trying to get them, while still investing in the newer cards I want.
Always love these breakdowns. Even as a big spender who is currently collection complete, it's nice to see a breakdown for the inevitable time my play/spending goes down and I have to try to "catch back up".
Marvel snap toes the line pretty well i think. They are trying VERY HARD to toe the line in just the right way they need to make money but they also realize you need the minows and stuff for the dolphins and whales interact with. I do agree on the fomo and such being "predatory" but thats like the whole of our society. Like how michaels has "sales" every season that drop the seasonal stuff to an acceptable price sometimes even lower but during the season without sales its on a huge mark up. Like most aspects of life and capital society unfortunately deal in this fomo pricing leveraging setting their own price and time frames type of thing. Its just a matter of learning patience and how to navigate it all
Watched this video after the twitch drops streams, it's so useful for people who took a break from snap and got brought back into the game. Thanks Jeff!
@@HooglandiaSnap After watching your video I realized me wasting my 1 spotlight key randomly because it was "new and shiny" was a tough lesson to learn. Thanks again for the informative videos that ultimately save players, like me, time and money.
I always appreciate these videos. As someone who doesn't have a lot of money to spend on games it's encouraging to see how much I can get as a minimal spender. I only buy one our of every two or three season passes, based on how viable the card itself seems, and anecdotally it certainly seems like I'm keeping up okay in terms of playing competitive decks and having enough new cards for the game not to feel stale. It's particularly helpful to know that if I ever decided to shift to buying every season pass, it would functionally result in me getting ~75% of the new cards.
Thanks for this review! Snap definitely has a big gap between player perceptions and the actual economics of the game, which is interesting. The designers have even mentioned that positive changes for players get negative responses. I do still have some issues with the spotlight system, specifically how it requires a fair bit of planning and outside tools to get the most out of it, but I also get to play with new cards like White Widow or Red Hulk on release day, which I never would with the previous model of card dropping every three months.
This is a really good breakdown. I've been trying to explain the gold prices of emotes and stuff to people with the free to play gold totals and why yes it's expensive but the gold economy totals atm it makes sense that they are higher up on total cost. It's also a good indicator of like it depends on how "casual" you are for how much the economy kinda sucks. I think 50% for f2p is a good number and like ifnyou wanna be f2p you should be needing to put in some solid time grinding conquest / ranked / missions to get there. And the light spend of season pass + gold pass allowing like a 25% jump in card also sounds about right. It's been solid with my slightly more than dolphin spending. You can even save resources as a f2p to open stuff to overlap on future caches and maybe see even more new cards just takes time basically
im feeling great as a season pass only dolphin. Im about 5 cards off collection complete and have plenty of resources in the bank. My only issue is there seems to be less cards that are obvious skips. Most recently I skipped cannonball but ended up buying him with tokens after he left the spotlight. I also skipped valentina and us agent but wish i could have both at this point. But i have to skip some and looking at the future releases I wanted to be sure i could get most of them
That's the fomo. On another video for data mines there are two weeks, back to back, that have TWO cards I don't have for four keys each. Everyone eventually builds a fomo immunity and it has served me well by letting cards just go.
Just to check, for a dolphin, that roughly 12 cards per season doesnt include any old cards you pick up feom caches, right? So you'd get 75% of new cards on release but your collection would always be more than 75% complete. Anyone want to try estimating how many new-to-me old cards I get each aeason, assuming I always pick up 3/4 of the cards in the season they're released? I thnk it should converge to a steady state.
I think it'd be hard to estimate, since everyone's collection is different and what old cards they decide to put in caches follows no pattern. I mean look how often Knull has been included as a returning card, vs others that have only been back once or twice
I feel like snap is really good for f2p based on my past experience with duel links, tho I see why it's annoying for moderate spenders who want to spend $50-100 on a deck they can run for a few months
I'm a season pass buyer only and I've been getting Token Tuesday in the past month, the difference is huge. I play for a year and I can tell which cards are a must and which are skipable so I can manage my FOMO even though I want them. Great vid. Do what Jeff says folks
Fantastic analysis, thank you for this Jeff. I appreciate all the hard work that went into creating it especially the breakdown of card acquisition. The only suggestion that I have for the next one is that I would like to see some sort of analysis on how the economics change when you are missing 2 of the cards in a spotlight cache. I think that your advice to only open when you have 4 spotlight keys may have been overly simplistic in that I think there might be an inherent assumption that you are only missing the new card in that instance. I was collection complete post Elsa season and I have since fallen quite a bit behind since they launched the additional card per month. I find myself prioritizing weeks where I am missing 2 cards more than weeks when I am missing just the new card. I also wonder what are your thoughts on opening on weeks where you are missing two cards but you only have 2 or 3 spotlight keys. Thanks again.
Obviously opening on weeks you are missing more cards is better for you. That is pretty specific person to person though and not something I can cover concisely in a general manner in a video like this.
Great video! Thank you for laying out the facts objectively and logically! Great presentation and organization of the way you presented them. Awesome work on the graphics too! Cheers!
Increasing content by one card per season also had the benefit of giving SD some breathing room to give us more rewards in places like albums, login rewards, or the upcoming league thing. When they were at the point of season pass spenders being able to get 12/13 cards any rewards they included could meaningfully make that last card too easy to nab so they probably wouldn’t have given so much album currency.
As a lil dolphin, I really like Snap's economy. Coming from Hearthstone, I'd usually drop over $50 a month to try to open the cards I wanted. For Snap, having that large gap between big spenders and little spenders has actually helped me reign in my spending. I get the pass, I get the gold, then figure out what future cards I want. I did not like spending that much money on hearthstone, and really didn't feel it until after the month had gone by and saw all the little microtransactions I had impulsively done (because I'm an idiot lol). Because I have to be more thoughtful in general with Snap's economy, I don't feel like I'm impulsively buying shit as much either. But I'm also getting hella old, so that could be why. Great video as always Jeff. Thank you shedding light on the obscure economies!
When the game released on steam i played it for like 6 month and bought the battle passes. I think that was fine and i got a lot of cards and had fun. What made me quit the game were the dailies and the fomo that comes with them. You only climb your track by upgrading cards for credits. Dailies are your nr. 1 source for credit aquisition. That sucks. Not only that you have to them daily, also because the objectives suck. Stuff like "Play 1 6 cost card" or "Win location with x power" or "win location with one card". I had no problem logging in, but the dailies made me throw games just to complete dailies. Or the dailies forced me to play a deck that i didn't want to play that day. That in my opinion is the biggest flaw this game has (if it is still like that). But i really like watching it, so thanks for the great content you put out :)
Great video again. From a F2P perspective, I think another good way to spend gold in order to acquire collector's tokens is to look at your Albums progess. There are some Albums that gives you 2000 collector's tokens when you got 6 variants. So depending on your "Free progress", it might worth it to acquire card variant for 700 gold in order to complete the milestone and get te 2000 collector's tokens. By example, I had 3 Max Grecke Heroes alreadly just by playing the game and being lucky. So I bought the other 3 for a total of 2100 gold to access the 2000 collector's token reward (1.05 gold per token) in addition to getting closer to the Daily offer shop reward of 2000 tokens when you buy 10 variants which will be a bonus but could be calculated as 3/10 of 2000 tokens = 600 collector's tokens "on it's way". Do you think logic works ? But yes, you do have to be lucky and get at least 3 variants for free for a dedicated album and it depends on where you are in the game. Gardakan,
I really enjoyed this video, Jeff. I enjoyed the transparency and the clarity of the data provided. I hope my comment helps you and other players, as they play Marvel Snap. I am not a Whale because I only buy season passes, but I believe I am one of those Dragons that you spoke of in the latter half of your video. I personally have not used a spotlight key since January 2023 and have 16 spotlight keys and 21,500 tokens. I have only purchased Red Hulk for 6k Tokens this year. With that said, at this time, I am currently missing 21 cards. To maximize my spending, I will not use a spotlight key until there are 3 cards in the Spotlight Cache that I have not yet attained. This is difficult for most due to FOMO, but most of the S5 cards have not been worth it in my opinion. Something that was not mentioned that SD will be doing approximately every 6 months is series drops. SD announced on December 19, 2023, that Series drops would return and SD did a series drop in January. Per a May interview with Marvel Snap Zone and SD, they will be doing another series drop in June. If you hold on to your tokens, you will be able to purchase cards for 1k tokens and 3k tokens for the series of dropped cards. This allows for the spotlight keys to fill out the rest of my collection. The only issue I find with this is that I am at the mercy of SD and the grouping of the cards for the Spotlight Cache. In summation, stacking your tokens and spending them every six months, in my opinion, possibly, is the best way to proceed. Then post series drops using your keys as required, but preferably only using the Spotlight Keys when there are 2 or 3 cards in the cache that you don't own. All this said, things are in constant flux and can change. I hope this helps in some capacity.😁
Tbh it's not efficient spending 1000 tokens on cards that series drop into S3. Just open regular caches on the track for those after the drop, and you won't need to spend tokens
@Xencam I am series 3 complete. SD dropped 5 additional cards into Series 3 last January. I anticipate they will do the same thing this coming June, so using 1k tokens that I earned by just playing the game and without spending money to buy five cards that were just series 5 or 4 previously for 1k tokens each would be optimal spending. You then have 5 additional caches to use towards collecting other cards.
when they went to a new card + the season pass card....that was kinda the beginning of the end. stopped being fun putting money into the game to stay collection complete. Benn playing less and less, last season pass I only got to 48 after doing every single season pass since launch. Havent even purchased this pass. Game had a great run but they accellerated the new cards when they should have slowed it. Still had fun getting a couple games in with Spectrum this morning.
I wonder if capping the collectors tokens would have a similar spending effect as the spotlight caches. Say that tokens are capped at 12,000 or so, letting people bank them for a card or two they really want but forcing them to spend if they want to be efficient.
People always complain about marvel snap costs by comparing the price to other games you can buy, but they never do time comparisons. If you put in 2 hours a week playing snap throughout a year then you are spending 104 hours a year playing snap. If you also buy all the season passes you are spending 120 dollars. There for you are spending about 60$ per 50 hours of gameplay, which is right about what people would expect for a AAA game. The economy makes total sense and is totally fair if you enjoy the game.
Yep. People paying $70 for a triple A game they play for 25-30 hours happily, but they think paying $120 a year for something they spend hundreds of hours on isn't reasonable.
@@HooglandiaSnap So true. Thanks for the reply! You are a great streamer and I hope you keep putting out content for as long as you enjoy it. Especially love your deck building.
I think the game is in a good place currently, and I'm excited for the upcoming series drops. I think the only thing I'd change is making the duplicate S4/S5 random card feel better. Maybe in addition to the 1000 tokens, they could include a random variant art or something
I just jumped back in after having life get busy enough to kick my Snap time to the curb. I was near collection complete when Nimrod released, now I'm trying to catch up so I'll have competitive options. I'm fortunate enough to be able to drop whale money into the game, but that only goes so far. Lack of series 4/5 pulls in normal collection progression limits options and makes the spotlight system worth little more than the rotating shop options. FOMO hits me in the opposite way of its intention with this game, where I don't use resources because I'd need one or two more cards to finish a decklist past what's on offer.
I m the small spender category player, buying a season pass and a gold pass, and I managed to open 9 keys in the zemo season (5 weeks), granted that I got almost 80 collection levels for 25 credits each coz of all the new cards and variants I hadn’t upgraded. Start of the season I had 0 keys and 0 credits just around 500 gold. I used all the gold to refresh missions as it allows to get credits along with season points! This way I managed to get red hulk (on first key), white widow (used all 4 keys) and valentina (used all 4 keys). I used to convert gold to credits instead of tokens coz I needed to complete my series 3 collection. But now that I have done it, I find it a bit hard to still buy tokens with gold just because of the amount of keys I managed to get in 1 season. I believe I can get 6/7 keys in a 4 week season, which is better than buying tokens only if the spotlight caches are good, but the upcoming seasons have quite some bad caches and I have a lot of those cards already :( I really wonder if buying tokens is the best use of the gold or not 🤔
Before you’re series 3 complete, credits are better - they speed up your series 3 collection, and you have few enough S4/S5 cards that spotlight weeks you open during will typically have multiple cards. But around that CL5k mark, both of those turn - you stop getting new cards from reserves, and you have enough S4/S5s that tokens are at least as efficient while being more flexible than spotlights. And that’s the perspective of this video - endgame players, who are past that point. Because if you’re playing snap long-term, you’ll be in that position for much longer than you’re in the early game.
if you get lucky on your keys its great. I've had to go 3/4 or 4/4 to get the new card each week every week for the last month. I cant stock up any resources because every release is just a slot machine
I feel like there's an extra issue here with the spotlight system: The 2 existing cards added to each spotlight are NOT picked at random - the frequency with which some cards appear is much higher than others (see X-23, Modok, Knull). Also, it does not look like cards that appear more are picked at random - cards that are more important to the meta at a given point in time tend to appear more infrequently - see Annihilus, Mockingbird, Hope, Cannonball, Ms Marvel only showing up after the nerf etc So if you weight better cards more in your collection track,s the spotlight system is not as efficient as it sounds for an average f2p player
I could be wrong, but my understanding from the video is this is only talking about how many *brand new* cards f2p get every 3 seasons the week they come out. Any returning cards players get that they didn't already own is bonus and would add to the number of cards seen here
The way I see it, $10 battle pass and $5 gold pass a month should be the optimal way to play this game. See it like a monthly subscription. Like any other media, the best way to measure your spending, look at the time you are spending playing the game. Going to the movies for 2-3 hours might be $40-$50. a Triple A video game might be $70 for 15-30 hour campaign a month. So yea, Im spending up to 2 hours a day in this game (not in a row) so that way $80 a month doesn’t sound bad.
The part that sucks isn't the amount of money I need to spend, but the amoun of TIME i need to play. To get the maximum amount of free rewards as you explained in this video, I need to play EVERY day, grind out my dailies, grind out my rank, grind out Conquest just to still feel like I'm barely getting all the cards I want. If I miss even just a couple of these rewards, let alone god forbid take a break from playing the game for a couple weeks, I get drastically pushed behind on cards for potentially months. There is no way for me to take even just a small break and then step back in and catch up on progress missed without spending money. I don't want to feel like I'm being held hostage by a video game.
If you aren't enjoying actually playing the game, just move on. No reason to play a game that feels like a chore. SNAP dailies take like 15-20 minutes a day. If it isn't fun for that much, the game is probably worth taking a break from.
Well done video. I was reading a book that was talking about Las Vegas whales. According to the author of the book, a whale in Las Vegas is someone who is willing to gamble 1 million dollars over a 3 day weekend..... In comparison calling a Marvel Snap big spenders a minnow, would be an insult to minnows. To be fair, a whale in a gambling town also gets other perks as part of his or her experience (dining, free rooms and airfare... who knows what else).
As a season pass buyer I already felt like I was basically getting all cards. So this cideo solidifies that. I am a atudent and only work part time 2 days a week and the game is very affordable for me. If i was working full time I can easily imagine not going to McDonalds once a month to buy the season pass.
I see their arguments against a dupe protection and yet why don't they just introduce something like a threshold as in: if you have more than X missing cards, that 4th slot guarantees a pull. Kinda a middle ground
This is the type of video that we need right now, the actual information and solid numbers istead of all the clickbait videos, articles and randos in the internet complaining about a system that they don't actually know Very useful video I'm going to share it in the groups of Marvel Snao that I'm in hopefully more people watch it and learn about how the monetization works for the game to stay successful and how generous the game is compared to others
up until Mockingbird, or thereafter i was spending keys wild, cuz luckily i was able to obtain series card that i didn't have within one or two pulls, so much so that I'd stop hoarding gold for Tuesday bundles, alas 2️⃣nd 🍽 generosity has waned
It isn't actually true that all economic changes have been to the players' advantage. Specifically the removal of guaranteed series downgrades about 15 months ago (i.e. Thanos is still series 5) was scuzzy.
I said each change has made it objectively cheaper and easier to get new releases. Which is measurably true. Thanos is literally never going to downgrade, and they told us that when he released.
Remember when you used to do bundle value breakdowns every so often? Im sure theyre a struggle for longevities sake in the video space but maybe making it part of the stream sometimes?
My only issue is the 4th spotlight not guaranteeing you a new card and giving you minimal resources instead. Overall its not a bad system at all but thats my only gripe at the moment
what I don't like is there's little to no rewards for playing the game more than the bit you need to complete missions. it seems a bit unfair that a "dolphin player" that buys the pass and plays 3hr/day ranking up to medium-high infinite can't even complete his collection
Letting you endlessly grind rewards means people who can't or don't want to do that feel cheated and burn out/leave. Very bad for a game long term.
Definitely favorite part of the vid was breaking down spending tiers. Provided a lot of insight into what’s worth spending on
I definitely realize coming out of this video I use some of my resources inefficiently. Not sure it is a huge problem, but I did check my collection. I went from being pretty close to complete to missing 18 cards. Not terrible. Something to think about about.
that's why I loved this breakdown as well
I'm doing my part! 10/10 would watch again.
So 10/10 I did watch again
Always wondered what was optimal after the latest changes to the economy.
Great video, and great editing.
From my own anecdote:
On F2P, it's quite likely for players to get 50 Reserves for 4 weeks season, up to 60 Reserves for 5 weeks season. Especially if we count extra credits from various sources outside of games like twitch drop, vibranium offers, events, random good bundles.
In other words, a 13 week cycle could provide 17 keys and 3400 Tokens.
Additional 3000 token average from Spotlight caches.
For F2P Gold, 6200G for 13 weeks sounds about right, might be slightly higher. My breakdown is 2600 from weekly; 1500 from 3 season rank 90; 800 from 3 season conquest (200G from 4 weeks season, 400G from 5 weeks season); 900 from 3 Seasons cache 1-50; 550 (average) from 3 seasons cache 51+
Extra note on bundle: the formula for good bundle to target is ((1.75*Token) + credit) / Gold price > 1.65
From there we might surmise the token target gain from bundle to be around 5850-6000 Token if we spend 13 weeks of Gold entirely to token (if such good bundle exist). In other words, ideally in 13 weeks, players can get up to 12000 tokens on F2P (provided they hit a good bundle)
Good info, kind of interesting to see it stayed "mostly" the same. It used to be about $50/mo to get 3 out of 4 cards and then $200 for the last card.
Basically, the first 3 cards are relatively inexpensive and then the last cards ramp up dramatically.
I think the only thing I'm not in love with when it comes to the economy is the lack of new cards coming from Series 5 to Series 4, thus making it slightly difficult to continually get newer cards. Obviously, SD has to make money, just seems there's no time table for that to change anytime soon.
I think I'd be fine even if it's long ass time as long as it was scheduled, it's really just about having that information available
I think they said series drops would happen again either later this month, or in June
They have just announced this will happen at the start of June.
This is the content we need. Thank you for your service.
Favorite topic indeed! KMbest did a similar supplemental commentary to this video (different coverage but very relatable commentaries on the current state of the economy 🙏 )
The nerdy number crunching side of my brain finds these types of breakdowns soooo satisfying. Another great video, Jeff
This is such a necessary video to exist to counterpoint the swamp of misinformation produced by upset gamers. Thank you for the breakdown!
Tremendously well done video where we get the perspective from the devs and users explained and voiced
This was a great comprehensive coverage of the current economy that will help shape how I proceed with spending on the game going forward. I also appreciate the clear boundary between facts and opinions.
I always thought F2P players were "Minnows" while small spenders were "Dolphins"
Words can mean whatever you want
Typically minnows spend a minimal amount of money but not 0 or they would just be called F2P.
Minnows = f2p
Dolphins = Season pass only
Whales = Season Pass plus extras
F2P= 0$
Minnows= Season Pass 10$ per season
Dolphins= Season Pass+gold pass 15$-30$ Per Season
Whales= Buying those crazy overpriced bundles pluss season Pass and gold Pass 100+$ a Season
I like how you got three different answers after someone said "Words can mean whatever you want" further proving their point :D
Such a useful video. Your teacher training showing in how clear the information was shared.
Hey Jeff! I absolutely love your data analysis on marvel snap economy. I wanted to speak on your comment about having enough spotlight cache keysto guarantee what you want out of a cash. I recently made the massive blender that you talked about when it came to the White widow spotlight. I thought I was safe because I had three keys and all three got me the things that I didn't want. And nothing feels worse than that happening. So please, if you're considering taking the gamble, it's absolutely not worth it and it feels so bad waste all your resources when you miss on the thing you wanted to get. Thanks for highlighting this!
Great video with stellar editing! What I think sucks is that it is difficult to use resources like spotlight keys to target cards like USAgent, Jean Grey, Cannonball and Pixie after their spotlight weeks are over but have found great places in the current state of the game. Overall this system is very good for giving someone F2P like me new cards on release which I appreciate but acquiring stuff which I missed is pretty rough especially when on the release week the cards are not deemed worth potentially spending 4 keys on. I hope there might be a reasonable way for players to acquire such cards especially after buffs, like a second chance to roll for them? Love the YT vids keep them coming!
The best advice you can give anyone opening spotlights is to only open when you have 4 keys!!
sometimes you gotta let that one arm bandit just spinnnnnnn (they're pretty good about doling out the weekly cards).
It's nice to see concrete numbers when considering the economy rather than the constant, vague, sky-is-falling vibes from reddit. I appreciate the even-keel explanation and detailed breakdown, including calling it what it is as deeply predatory.
this video has your best editing yet! fantastic work and super informative.
i just became collection complete last month after playing since global release and it was not cheap 😂 i think one of the biggest things that makes the economy feel worse than it is, is actually the amazing art and desire to buy new variants, which put gold towards things that provide 0 progression rather than token tuesdays
them adding the bonus 2k tokens for buying 10 variants was the real MVP in me finishing my collection
Great breakdown on how to spend for all ranges even free to play. As a returning player this is super helpful. Thanks as always!
I was watching this video and an advertisement from TH-cam recommended me another card game with less luck factor, the advertisement said something like "are you tired of RNG?" or something like that. Is like TH-cam knows me better than myself.
Fascinating and informative breakdown as always. I know that my gold usage is pretty suboptimal since I usually spend it on Dan Hipp variants rather than token Tuesdays LOL.
Spending gold on variants does still get you some collectors tokens: 2000 tokens for every 10 variants you buy with gold, plus there is the odd bunch of tokens within the albums.
I wish we still occasionally got direct to series 4 card releases, that's my main complaint, but I feel like I get pretty good value for what I put into the game, even using gold sub optimally.
This finally bridges my understanding of collectors tokens. Thank you. As someone who has historically fell into overvaluing variants/art (missing 19 cards), this almost feels like a new way to play the game, I'm very intrigued!
Awesome! This almost exactly matches the analysis I did. The one caveat is that there is a chance that spotlights have multiple cards that you're missing if you're not whaling. Also the 1000 token slot still has a chance of resulting in giving you a card you're missing as well (instead of 1000 takes)
Really appreciate the effort you put in to this. It's a complicated subject that needs a comprehensive treatment to be worth doing at all. I hope the video does well enough to keep you motivated to continue providing this level of content. I don't have time to do this kind of analysis, so if you aren't doing it, I'm not playing.
Throughout the first part of this excellent video I was thinking “yeah but what about fomo factor, albums and variants?” And then Jeff went and talked all about that too.
Smashed it, sir! Couldn’t agree more. (Dolphin spender’s perspective)
Given that about a year ago I had managed to collect all but 3 cards, and now a year later I'm missing 15 (and that is as a dolphin buying the monthly pass), I feel that the game doesn't give a good way of catching up with some of the older cards, so the hole in my collection is just going to grow bigger and bigger. Given that some of the ones I'm missing are archtype defining cards, it feels frustrating trying to get them, while still investing in the newer cards I want.
Always love these breakdowns. Even as a big spender who is currently collection complete, it's nice to see a breakdown for the inevitable time my play/spending goes down and I have to try to "catch back up".
Jeff as always using data instead of feelings to break down the economy. Always appreciated.
Animations in this video were superb!
Marvel snap toes the line pretty well i think. They are trying VERY HARD to toe the line in just the right way they need to make money but they also realize you need the minows and stuff for the dolphins and whales interact with. I do agree on the fomo and such being "predatory" but thats like the whole of our society. Like how michaels has "sales" every season that drop the seasonal stuff to an acceptable price sometimes even lower but during the season without sales its on a huge mark up. Like most aspects of life and capital society unfortunately deal in this fomo pricing leveraging setting their own price and time frames type of thing. Its just a matter of learning patience and how to navigate it all
Watched this video after the twitch drops streams, it's so useful for people who took a break from snap and got brought back into the game. Thanks Jeff!
Thanks for the updated economy breakdown, was looking forward to this and cba to do the math myself :)
As someone who was on hiatus since hit monkey, this video was really helpful to get caught up on the economic changes in Marvel Snap. Thanks you🎉
Welcome back! Just keep aware of which spotlight weeks are coming up and open on weeks you are missing the most cards. Best catch up plan.
@@HooglandiaSnap After watching your video I realized me wasting my 1 spotlight key randomly because it was "new and shiny" was a tough lesson to learn. Thanks again for the informative videos that ultimately save players, like me, time and money.
I always appreciate these videos. As someone who doesn't have a lot of money to spend on games it's encouraging to see how much I can get as a minimal spender. I only buy one our of every two or three season passes, based on how viable the card itself seems, and anecdotally it certainly seems like I'm keeping up okay in terms of playing competitive decks and having enough new cards for the game not to feel stale. It's particularly helpful to know that if I ever decided to shift to buying every season pass, it would functionally result in me getting ~75% of the new cards.
Thanks for this review! Snap definitely has a big gap between player perceptions and the actual economics of the game, which is interesting. The designers have even mentioned that positive changes for players get negative responses. I do still have some issues with the spotlight system, specifically how it requires a fair bit of planning and outside tools to get the most out of it, but I also get to play with new cards like White Widow or Red Hulk on release day, which I never would with the previous model of card dropping every three months.
I think there are plenty of people who like the SNAP economy, but happy people aren't loud on social media. Only unhappy people are.
Just wanted to note the typo 1:56. Great video!!
This is a really good breakdown. I've been trying to explain the gold prices of emotes and stuff to people with the free to play gold totals and why yes it's expensive but the gold economy totals atm it makes sense that they are higher up on total cost. It's also a good indicator of like it depends on how "casual" you are for how much the economy kinda sucks. I think 50% for f2p is a good number and like ifnyou wanna be f2p you should be needing to put in some solid time grinding conquest / ranked / missions to get there. And the light spend of season pass + gold pass allowing like a 25% jump in card also sounds about right. It's been solid with my slightly more than dolphin spending. You can even save resources as a f2p to open stuff to overlap on future caches and maybe see even more new cards just takes time basically
Good job. It should take like hours for preparing this 15 min. of pure gold.
im feeling great as a season pass only dolphin. Im about 5 cards off collection complete and have plenty of resources in the bank. My only issue is there seems to be less cards that are obvious skips. Most recently I skipped cannonball but ended up buying him with tokens after he left the spotlight. I also skipped valentina and us agent but wish i could have both at this point. But i have to skip some and looking at the future releases I wanted to be sure i could get most of them
That's the fomo. On another video for data mines there are two weeks, back to back, that have TWO cards I don't have for four keys each. Everyone eventually builds a fomo immunity and it has served me well by letting cards just go.
Really informative video!! exactly what I wanted to see as a returning player who hasn’t played in months.
Great Video Jeff! And kudos to the Editor!
Thank you for the break down. It was very interesting to hear how it all works.
Thanks for putting in the effort Jeff! Have some engagement.
Great content as always!
Videos like these with facts are much appreciated. Keep up the great work!
Just to check, for a dolphin, that roughly 12 cards per season doesnt include any old cards you pick up feom caches, right? So you'd get 75% of new cards on release but your collection would always be more than 75% complete. Anyone want to try estimating how many new-to-me old cards I get each aeason, assuming I always pick up 3/4 of the cards in the season they're released? I thnk it should converge to a steady state.
I think it'd be hard to estimate, since everyone's collection is different and what old cards they decide to put in caches follows no pattern. I mean look how often Knull has been included as a returning card, vs others that have only been back once or twice
The steady state is around 10ish missing cards from your collection.
I feel like snap is really good for f2p based on my past experience with duel links, tho I see why it's annoying for moderate spenders who want to spend $50-100 on a deck they can run for a few months
Always appreciate your info and insight Jeff!
I'm a season pass buyer only and I've been getting Token Tuesday in the past month, the difference is huge. I play for a year and I can tell which cards are a must and which are skipable so I can manage my FOMO even though I want them. Great vid. Do what Jeff says folks
Fantastic analysis, thank you for this Jeff. I appreciate all the hard work that went into creating it especially the breakdown of card acquisition. The only suggestion that I have for the next one is that I would like to see some sort of analysis on how the economics change when you are missing 2 of the cards in a spotlight cache. I think that your advice to only open when you have 4 spotlight keys may have been overly simplistic in that I think there might be an inherent assumption that you are only missing the new card in that instance. I was collection complete post Elsa season and I have since fallen quite a bit behind since they launched the additional card per month. I find myself prioritizing weeks where I am missing 2 cards more than weeks when I am missing just the new card. I also wonder what are your thoughts on opening on weeks where you are missing two cards but you only have 2 or 3 spotlight keys. Thanks again.
Obviously opening on weeks you are missing more cards is better for you. That is pretty specific person to person though and not something I can cover concisely in a general manner in a video like this.
Great video! Thank you for laying out the facts objectively and logically! Great presentation and organization of the way you presented them. Awesome work on the graphics too! Cheers!
Increasing content by one card per season also had the benefit of giving SD some breathing room to give us more rewards in places like albums, login rewards, or the upcoming league thing. When they were at the point of season pass spenders being able to get 12/13 cards any rewards they included could meaningfully make that last card too easy to nab so they probably wouldn’t have given so much album currency.
Thank you, kind sir. Algorithmic support coming your way!
As a lil dolphin, I really like Snap's economy. Coming from Hearthstone, I'd usually drop over $50 a month to try to open the cards I wanted. For Snap, having that large gap between big spenders and little spenders has actually helped me reign in my spending. I get the pass, I get the gold, then figure out what future cards I want.
I did not like spending that much money on hearthstone, and really didn't feel it until after the month had gone by and saw all the little microtransactions I had impulsively done (because I'm an idiot lol). Because I have to be more thoughtful in general with Snap's economy, I don't feel like I'm impulsively buying shit as much either.
But I'm also getting hella old, so that could be why. Great video as always Jeff. Thank you shedding light on the obscure economies!
When the game released on steam i played it for like 6 month and bought the battle passes. I think that was fine and i got a lot of cards and had fun.
What made me quit the game were the dailies and the fomo that comes with them.
You only climb your track by upgrading cards for credits. Dailies are your nr. 1 source for credit aquisition. That sucks.
Not only that you have to them daily, also because the objectives suck.
Stuff like "Play 1 6 cost card" or "Win location with x power" or "win location with one card".
I had no problem logging in, but the dailies made me throw games just to complete dailies.
Or the dailies forced me to play a deck that i didn't want to play that day.
That in my opinion is the biggest flaw this game has (if it is still like that).
But i really like watching it, so thanks for the great content you put out :)
Excellent breakdown and visuals
Great summary, thanks for sharing this 😊
Great video again.
From a F2P perspective, I think another good way to spend gold in order to acquire collector's tokens is to look at your Albums progess. There are some Albums that gives you 2000 collector's tokens when you got 6 variants. So depending on your "Free progress", it might worth it to acquire card variant for 700 gold in order to complete the milestone and get te 2000 collector's tokens. By example, I had 3 Max Grecke Heroes alreadly just by playing the game and being lucky. So I bought the other 3 for a total of 2100 gold to access the 2000 collector's token reward (1.05 gold per token) in addition to getting closer to the Daily offer shop reward of 2000 tokens when you buy 10 variants which will be a bonus but could be calculated as 3/10 of 2000 tokens = 600 collector's tokens "on it's way". Do you think logic works ?
But yes, you do have to be lucky and get at least 3 variants for free for a dedicated album and it depends on where you are in the game.
Gardakan,
I really enjoyed this video, Jeff. I enjoyed the transparency and the clarity of the data provided. I hope my comment helps you and other players, as they play Marvel Snap.
I am not a Whale because I only buy season passes, but I believe I am one of those Dragons that you spoke of in the latter half of your video.
I personally have not used a spotlight key since January 2023 and have 16 spotlight keys and 21,500 tokens. I have only purchased Red Hulk for 6k Tokens this year. With that said, at this time, I am currently missing 21 cards. To maximize my spending, I will not use a spotlight key until there are 3 cards in the Spotlight Cache that I have not yet attained. This is difficult for most due to FOMO, but most of the S5 cards have not been worth it in my opinion.
Something that was not mentioned that SD will be doing approximately every 6 months is series drops. SD announced on December 19, 2023, that Series drops would return and SD did a series drop in January. Per a May interview with Marvel Snap Zone and SD, they will be doing another series drop in June. If you hold on to your tokens, you will be able to purchase cards for 1k tokens and 3k tokens for the series of dropped cards. This allows for the spotlight keys to fill out the rest of my collection. The only issue I find with this is that I am at the mercy of SD and the grouping of the cards for the Spotlight Cache.
In summation, stacking your tokens and spending them every six months, in my opinion, possibly, is the best way to proceed. Then post series drops using your keys as required, but preferably only using the Spotlight Keys when there are 2 or 3 cards in the cache that you don't own.
All this said, things are in constant flux and can change. I hope this helps in some capacity.😁
Tbh it's not efficient spending 1000 tokens on cards that series drop into S3. Just open regular caches on the track for those after the drop, and you won't need to spend tokens
@Xencam I am series 3 complete. SD dropped 5 additional cards into Series 3 last January. I anticipate they will do the same thing this coming June, so using 1k tokens that I earned by just playing the game and without spending money to buy five cards that were just series 5 or 4 previously for 1k tokens each would be optimal spending. You then have 5 additional caches to use towards collecting other cards.
when they went to a new card + the season pass card....that was kinda the beginning of the end. stopped being fun putting money into the game to stay collection complete. Benn playing less and less, last season pass I only got to 48 after doing every single season pass since launch. Havent even purchased this pass. Game had a great run but they accellerated the new cards when they should have slowed it. Still had fun getting a couple games in with Spectrum this morning.
Snap releases 64 cards a year under this new system. Games like Magic release 4x that in a single set. I'm very confused why you think 64 is too many.
Engagement for the Engagement Gods! Likes for the Like Throne!
Hear Hear!
Engagement!
Engagement
Mtg viewer here for the engagement vibes. Still have no idea how this game works.
I wonder if capping the collectors tokens would have a similar spending effect as the spotlight caches. Say that tokens are capped at 12,000 or so, letting people bank them for a card or two they really want but forcing them to spend if they want to be efficient.
Reddit would have a field day with that change tbh
People always complain about marvel snap costs by comparing the price to other games you can buy, but they never do time comparisons. If you put in 2 hours a week playing snap throughout a year then you are spending 104 hours a year playing snap. If you also buy all the season passes you are spending 120 dollars. There for you are spending about 60$ per 50 hours of gameplay, which is right about what people would expect for a AAA game. The economy makes total sense and is totally fair if you enjoy the game.
Yep. People paying $70 for a triple A game they play for 25-30 hours happily, but they think paying $120 a year for something they spend hundreds of hours on isn't reasonable.
@@HooglandiaSnap So true. Thanks for the reply! You are a great streamer and I hope you keep putting out content for as long as you enjoy it. Especially love your deck building.
Thanks for all these data 😍
Engagy engagy engagement! I don't play the game anymore but I always enjoy your content and appreciate very much the work put into this.
Thumbnail game on point
1:50 i wonder if the typo was another one for engagement
I think the game is in a good place currently, and I'm excited for the upcoming series drops. I think the only thing I'd change is making the duplicate S4/S5 random card feel better. Maybe in addition to the 1000 tokens, they could include a random variant art or something
I just jumped back in after having life get busy enough to kick my Snap time to the curb. I was near collection complete when Nimrod released, now I'm trying to catch up so I'll have competitive options. I'm fortunate enough to be able to drop whale money into the game, but that only goes so far. Lack of series 4/5 pulls in normal collection progression limits options and makes the spotlight system worth little more than the rotating shop options. FOMO hits me in the opposite way of its intention with this game, where I don't use resources because I'd need one or two more cards to finish a decklist past what's on offer.
Thanks for the breakdown! I always wondered - what's the assumed playtime per day?
It's assuming you clear your dailies and battle pass free stuff. Varies, but typically 15 or so a day.
I m the small spender category player, buying a season pass and a gold pass, and I managed to open 9 keys in the zemo season (5 weeks), granted that I got almost 80 collection levels for 25 credits each coz of all the new cards and variants I hadn’t upgraded. Start of the season I had 0 keys and 0 credits just around 500 gold. I used all the gold to refresh missions as it allows to get credits along with season points! This way I managed to get red hulk (on first key), white widow (used all 4 keys) and valentina (used all 4 keys).
I used to convert gold to credits instead of tokens coz I needed to complete my series 3 collection. But now that I have done it, I find it a bit hard to still buy tokens with gold just because of the amount of keys I managed to get in 1 season. I believe I can get 6/7 keys in a 4 week season, which is better than buying tokens only if the spotlight caches are good, but the upcoming seasons have quite some bad caches and I have a lot of those cards already :(
I really wonder if buying tokens is the best use of the gold or not 🤔
On average you'll get fewer cards buying levels for keys with gold than tokens yes.
Before you’re series 3 complete, credits are better - they speed up your series 3 collection, and you have few enough S4/S5 cards that spotlight weeks you open during will typically have multiple cards.
But around that CL5k mark, both of those turn - you stop getting new cards from reserves, and you have enough S4/S5s that tokens are at least as efficient while being more flexible than spotlights.
And that’s the perspective of this video - endgame players, who are past that point. Because if you’re playing snap long-term, you’ll be in that position for much longer than you’re in the early game.
I watched it on Twitch, but i here as a sacrifice to the algorithm gods!
if you get lucky on your keys its great. I've had to go 3/4 or 4/4 to get the new card each week every week for the last month. I cant stock up any resources because every release is just a slot machine
I feel like there's an extra issue here with the spotlight system:
The 2 existing cards added to each spotlight are NOT picked at random - the frequency with which some cards appear is much higher than others (see X-23, Modok, Knull).
Also, it does not look like cards that appear more are picked at random - cards that are more important to the meta at a given point in time tend to appear more infrequently - see Annihilus, Mockingbird, Hope, Cannonball, Ms Marvel only showing up after the nerf etc
So if you weight better cards more in your collection track,s the spotlight system is not as efficient as it sounds for an average f2p player
I could be wrong, but my understanding from the video is this is only talking about how many *brand new* cards f2p get every 3 seasons the week they come out. Any returning cards players get that they didn't already own is bonus and would add to the number of cards seen here
The way I see it, $10 battle pass and $5 gold pass a month should be the optimal way to play this game.
See it like a monthly subscription.
Like any other media, the best way to measure your spending, look at the time you are spending playing the game.
Going to the movies for 2-3 hours might be $40-$50.
a Triple A video game might be $70 for 15-30 hour campaign a month.
So yea, Im spending up to 2 hours a day in this game (not in a row) so that way $80 a month doesn’t sound bad.
The part that sucks isn't the amount of money I need to spend, but the amoun of TIME i need to play. To get the maximum amount of free rewards as you explained in this video, I need to play EVERY day, grind out my dailies, grind out my rank, grind out Conquest just to still feel like I'm barely getting all the cards I want. If I miss even just a couple of these rewards, let alone god forbid take a break from playing the game for a couple weeks, I get drastically pushed behind on cards for potentially months. There is no way for me to take even just a small break and then step back in and catch up on progress missed without spending money. I don't want to feel like I'm being held hostage by a video game.
If you aren't enjoying actually playing the game, just move on. No reason to play a game that feels like a chore. SNAP dailies take like 15-20 minutes a day. If it isn't fun for that much, the game is probably worth taking a break from.
I was so confused about the ghost noise 10m48s until I made the whale connection...I need some sleep.
Great video as always mate.
Well done video. I was reading a book that was talking about Las Vegas whales. According to the author of the book, a whale in Las Vegas is someone who is willing to gamble 1 million dollars over a 3 day weekend..... In comparison calling a Marvel Snap big spenders a minnow, would be an insult to minnows. To be fair, a whale in a gambling town also gets other perks as part of his or her experience (dining, free rooms and airfare... who knows what else).
Awesome work, Jeff and Ed.
Thats the good stuff!
Great video, Jeff.
As a season pass buyer I already felt like I was basically getting all cards. So this cideo solidifies that. I am a atudent and only work part time 2 days a week and the game is very affordable for me. If i was working full time I can easily imagine not going to McDonalds once a month to buy the season pass.
So can we no longer get series 4/5 cards through the gold collectors reserves on the track? I assume not with the spotlight keys?
Keys and tokens are the only ways to get s4/5 now yes.
Ah, economics. The Marine Biology of Mathematics 🐋
I see their arguments against a dupe protection and yet why don't they just introduce something like a threshold as in: if you have more than X missing cards, that 4th slot guarantees a pull. Kinda a middle ground
Haven’t dipped in for a while because marvel snap economy grind.
Beard looking good bro.
This is the type of video that we need right now, the actual information and solid numbers istead of all the clickbait videos, articles and randos in the internet complaining about a system that they don't actually know
Very useful video I'm going to share it in the groups of Marvel Snao that I'm in hopefully more people watch it and learn about how the monetization works for the game to stay successful and how generous the game is compared to others
"like some kind of dragon." :D
I almost only ever spend gold on variants, which is, i suppose, an extension of my foiling out my irl mtg decks.
Appreciate the breakdown!! thanks!
Great video. This was very insightful
Fantastic breakdown. Thanks for the great content.
up until Mockingbird, or thereafter i was spending keys wild, cuz luckily i was able to obtain series card that i didn't have within one or two pulls, so much so that I'd stop hoarding gold for Tuesday bundles, alas 2️⃣nd 🍽 generosity has waned
Dang you Jeff ✊️ I'm addicted to AFK journey now and spent this months dolphin money on that instead!
It isn't actually true that all economic changes have been to the players' advantage. Specifically the removal of guaranteed series downgrades about 15 months ago (i.e. Thanos is still series 5) was scuzzy.
I said each change has made it objectively cheaper and easier to get new releases. Which is measurably true.
Thanos is literally never going to downgrade, and they told us that when he released.
Remember when you used to do bundle value breakdowns every so often? Im sure theyre a struggle for longevities sake in the video space but maybe making it part of the stream sometimes?
Too many people complained when data mined bundles released differently, so they made it so we couldn't datamine bundles anymore like we used to.
My only issue is the 4th spotlight not guaranteeing you a new card and giving you minimal resources instead. Overall its not a bad system at all but thats my only gripe at the moment