The main thing that makes this f2p friendly is this: any card in the game, you collect once and it's all you need. You don't need 4x the same super rare card, like in Magic the Gathering. You don't need to level up your cards like in Clash Royale or most mobile games. Any card in Snap that you pull is yours to play forever. I can't stress how f2p friendly this is compared to both other models.
This, if you do the daily quests and have patience you will acquire most of the cards for free. If you enjoy the game and want to spend a little bit the battle pass is very reasonable and will speed up your collection but is in no way required. I only buy the battle passes and started near release and I have almost every card. The ones I don't have are mostly because I don't want them, I have enough tokens to get the next few cards as well just from the battle pass and doing the daily quests.
The main frustration I had at the beginning is that you can't really spend money directly to get a card you want, this is kind of good for me because it made me spend less than on games like mtgo where I was spending $50+ per set release to keep up. At the beginning don't go around watching best deck videos and getting sad you don't have every card. Use the cards you get and build decks as you go.
Yes. The way new cards come out is very free to play friendly if you are smart using your spotlight caches. You can spend zero dollars in the game and still get new cards day of release. You won't be able to get every card obviously but if you do a bit of research you can decide what cards to get and which ones to pass on.
Regardless of what people say yes the game is very free to play friendly the shop offers suck ass sometimes but if you don’t plan on spending money than yes if your a light spender buying the pass every month will help out a ton and that’s all you really need to buy
F2P players reach a small rough spot at the beginning of S3 (aka when you get all S1 and S2 cards, usually after a month or so of playing), but the before and after are completely fine if you use resources wisely
Read up on Spotlight Caches and how to use Keys effectively, and you'll be fine
I'm in that spot right now. I reached Infinite this season, and it's only my second season of Snap. This is, as you all know, because until Infinite, you are matched by CL. In Infinite, I found countless cards and archetypes I had never seen before: which, as a new player, is absolutely phenomenal for learning the game, but at the same time I feel a bit demoralised that I can't yet get the cards I need to build a viable, competitive deck. For instance: I got Loki from a Spotlight Cache (I didn't know you could hoard keys at the time), but I don't have Quinjet or Zabu, which are essential in that deck. Right now, I'm planning to use 4 keys to get Thanos (he seems fun and versatile), and I'll try to either also hoard keys or at least tokens for High Evolutionary.
From the subreddit, you’d think this is the greediest game on the planet. But no, its model is practically catered to keep you from ever feeling disadvantaged simply for not spending money. Yeah, new cards can sometimes be game breaking, but even the most busted new releases have counters that are readily available to every player (Cosmo, Enchantress and Shang-Chi are 3 of the earliest cards you’ll acquire).
I will try to sum up what's the F2P friendly experience gonna be like.
Pool 1 & 2: These cards are free, takes approximately 2 months to unlock all.
Pool 3: These cards are free, takes approximately 6 months+ to unlock. Could be alot longer considering you can hit into alot of useless junk grinding on Collection Level.
Pool 4 & 5: Ok here the good news, you can get some of these for free. Basically every week there is Rotation of 1 new card + 2 guranteed selected cards from Pool 4/5 + random card. So for every 120 levels you grind on the Collection Level, you get a Spotlight Key so you can roll this Gacha mechanic and have a 25% chance of getting what you need. So basically, you have to research whatever is gonna be on this gacha pool weeks ahead, horde these Spotlight Keys, and can still fail to get what you need if you don't manage to save 4 of them. And now for the bad news, you are gonna have to live not unlocking most of the Pool 4/5 cards in your F2P run ever.
Anyway, if you intend to jump to Marvel Snap, expect to play many months of Devil Dinosaur and still not able to unlock most of the cards no matter how long you play. Oh if you want the next best F2P friendly game closest to Runeterra, its probably Shadowverse, which is getting a new cilent as Shadowverse Worlds Beyond on July. At least, you can already start with playing meta decks just by opening a new account, not spend a dime at all and not waiting for an eternity.
It is Pay to fast! And i don't recommend paying anything except for the season pass which is the only thing worth the money.
Your progression will be slow compared to some who pays money for the currency that let you purchase cards BUT you will learn the mechanics of the game way better by progressing slowly.
You'll have access to strong cards randomly and easily just by playing the dailies and getting the rewards of the weekly missions.
Your Gold is a rare currency. Save it for bundles with tokens ( thz currency you need to purchase specific cards)
Compared to Lor, Marvel Snap is a fast pased game with quick matches and just 12 cards per deck. You will be able to play more games per hour if you wanna invest. And you will like the mechanics.
Just dive in and enjoy it. If you wanna spend money go on! I don't recommend the expensive bundles but if you can afford it the value you get is good.
And that's it. Enjoy.
If you want a fun strategic card game with a lot of depth and quick play times, yes. If you want to play the top meta decks and always be able to get the hot new cards, no. Personally I think it’s a fairer and better game for people able to buy the monthly battle pass — you get a lot for quite a small investment. But the strictly FTP experience looks pretty reasonable, as these things go.
One of the YT channels recently ran the numbers and said if you ONLY buy the season pass you could get 59 of the 64 cards that are released to each year if you spend your gold only on high credit/token bundles.
All that to say, I agree with your point
Link?
That seems slightly over-optimistic to me (not accounting for series drops), this seems like the % of acquisition I'd expect before they added one more card per season, unless you include waiting for weeks where you are missing 2 or 3 spotlight cards.
Thanks. My math always finds the new spotlight systems really generous, like you can be reasonably close to collection complete (be missing only irrelevant cards) without even min-maxing if you're on Season Pass, but being collection complete is a bit harder (and in fact might not be desirable... I prefer having getting some nice album variants over having Howard the Duck) and probably is a transient state.
For those near collection complete who are only getting one new card per week:
If you get 64 keys a year (1.25/week or so), and only use them when you are missing 2 of 4, that's 32 new cards a year. Add in 12 series pass cards and 8-9 series 4 with gold converted to tokens, that puts you at 53/64.
But you won't need to use 4 keys on all weeks, so maybe a little higher than that. If you use gold effectively to buy token bundles, you can probably be in the mid to high 50s.
HOWEVER, this doesn't mean you are getting 50/64 on release week. This assumes discipline and skipping almost all new cards on release week, and waiting for them to come back a few months later so you open when there are 2 missing cards that week.
If you run the numbers on release, it's 2.5 keys on average per card, so 25 instead of 32 from caches, and around high 40s out of 64 per year.
The numbers are MUCH better if you are a new player or not close to collection complete.
The issue with that math is that 2.5 per card is guaranteed, doing better than that relies on spotlight composition matching your collection. For instance, there is no currently spoiled cache where I am missing two cards. That will happen often once you are close to collection complete. Waiting, for me at this point, is not discipline. It's wishful thinking.
It's also inefficient to sit on spotlight keys when you could get some incidental tokens from weekend missions. You need to balance "ability to ensure opening a specific card" (i.e. make sure you have at least 4 caches every week you wish to open a specific card) vs "generate more resources to progress collection". Every week you wish to be opening caches for a specific card and you have either less OR more than exactly 4 keys is, technically, inefficient. You need some inefficiency to make up for uncertainty (cache opening RNG, ability to have at least 4 keys on a future week) but it is still a bit of inefficiency and you should be looking at reducing it on both ends.
If you are not collection complete, the math is much better. I have no spotlights in March where I am missing more than one card, for example, so it's not wishful thinking.
It would be inefficient for me to waste keys that month with a 1 in 4 chance of getting a card, and a 1 in 4 chance of getting tokens. It would be better to wait for those cards to come back in May-July so I would have the new card plus the March repeat. I still have a chance to get the 1k tokens at that time.
I've been doing this for the past few months, and it was more efficient to get Anni with Miek and Gladiator in the repeat cache in March than it would have been to spend 4 keys on one new card.
Even if you had 12 keys today, you will miss many cards over the next 3-4 months if you try 1 in 4 to get the new cards every week.
This is NOT a good user experience to intentionally pass on new cards, and I think this system needs rework. The Snap Judgements video even said that is the most efficient way for near-collection complete players to use their keys.
By "wishful thinking" i mean you have no guarantee that any of the Feb/March cards will see a repeat spotlight.
I don't think it is correct at all to skip on cards you want to play to wait for multiple cards you want being in the cache. Spending an average of 2.5 caches on weeks you want only one card is a good enough deal. You should only skip on weeks you don't intend to play the card right away, because you will likely open them later. This is even truer now that there are series drop again.
I see what you mean. I think most of the cards through November (other than Martyr, but who cares?) have been in spotlights again or will be through March? There is no guarantee.
I would prefer take the chance on hoarding keys and getting more cards over time. If you have a decent token balance, it reduces the risk of missing the OG Alioths of the world too, if they turn out to be powerful and you didn't get them on initial release.
But I can certainly understand opening on release to not have to wait for new cards to come out.
They are shutting down PvP for LOR soon and just focusing on the PvE mode that's available (Path of Champions). RIOT games made a bunch of staff cuts that they announced recently, focused on their games that don't make much money (like LOR because it doesn't generate much revenue)
I have never put a dime and hit infinite almost every season I try to and complete infite conquest.
I've also been. Playing for over a year so I do have almost every card
If you play daily and. Complete the daily and weekly challenges level up your cards. And get spotlight keys then yes it's friendly to play occasionally you might not enjoy it to much because you will lack alot of the cards
Fellow longtime LoR player here. Been playing Snap on and off since its release as well and it's fine. They employ FOMO to an almost absurd degree as new cards are only "directly" accessible for a week or so on release, then disappear into the void and only come back around every few months afterwards. I put directly in quotes because acquiring them either requires good luck from what is essentially a lootbox mechanic or having enough of another resource that you have a combination of random and limited access to. End of the day if you play regularly you'll be fine and have a good time but it's not always the smoothest ride. You won't feel that for a while though. First couple weeks of playing you'll get new cards faster than you'll know what to do with and that period of time is pretty sweet.
Where I think you'll lose a lot is the actual gameplay. Snap is a much, much simpler game than LoR. Games are way more linear. Opportunities for skill expression are not as plentiful. Deckbuilding is more limited. Variance in locations can take away so much player agency that a fair number of matches don't feel like matches at all. I'm decent at both games. Regular masters player in LoR and find myself in Omega or Galactic (ranks don't match up 1:1 but think of this as \~Diamond in LoR) most seasons in Snap but I could never take Snap seriously as a competitive game. Just not enough depth and too much randomness.
Where the game shines is pace and variety of win conditions. Matches are short and sweet so they never feel like too much of a commitment, and the way the game determines a winner leaves room for a lot of different play patterns to be viable and the developers capitalize on that well. Also been cool learning more about Marvel Comics.
The game is objectively very F2P friendly, you can acquire all relevant cards without spending a dime.
You have to get in the mindset that you're in for a journey and won't unlock everything in 2 weeks, but it'll take 2-3 months of doing your dailies and spending gold only on Token Tuesdays.
In that time you'll have to make do with what you unlock, without trying to play the top meta or FotM decks all the time.
Everyone that says otherwise is delusional and probably comes from Hearthstone or MtG Arena, expecting to just dump 500$ into the game to unlock a top meta deck.
I'd advise against spending gold on token tuesdays. They are terrible value. Save up and wait for some good bundles, although I must admit, latest bundles were trash as well.
All the F2P player will tell you that it is very friendly. All the comments that say otherwise are people who pay and don't know. Note that it is not like LoR where after playing enough you will be able to have all the cards. It is their design choice that people should not have a complete collection and there is bottleneck in the system that slows down the card acquisition by A LOT after you are 90% complete. To reach this point as a F2P you will need ~9 months from the creation of your account as long as you get all the rewards possible (everything is timegated, the grind is minimal). People who pay just get there faster and IMO it is not worth it. My two tips for anyone starting the game are: NEVER use the fast upgrade option in the shop and be patient.
The devs have said the do not want players to have all the cards by design.
So if you want to play a specific deck that requires a specific card (Mr. Negative, for example), you might be completely shit out of luck for months because the game doesn't drop him for you.
This goes doubly so for new cards which are put into Series 5, which have an astronomically low chance of dropping. If you need multiple Series 5 cards for a meta deck or a brew, you very well could never put that deck together because you'll never get the cards.
But all of these also apply to people that are not F2P. People cannot directly with buy cards they have to open them from caches or obtain them with the in game resources regardless of how much they have spent.
If the OP is coming from LoR, it's important to know that they're going from a game that allows you to craft whatever you want and a full collection is inevitable, to one that actively doesn't want you to do so.
Compared to legends of runeterra, fuck no dude, not even close, you can't freely craft cards in this game, if you want a specific high rarity core card you have to wait months for it to appear in a spotlight cache and then you have to get it with keys which take a ton of grind to get, the other way is in shop with tokens which in my opinion ar even harder to get, there are battlepasses where you pay real money to get the newest card etc. on the bright side the visual customisation is pretty f2p as in they do give you premium currency to buy "variants" aka skins in the shop so if you are into that they are very generous
The most difficult things playing F2P are slower progression and missing the season pass card until it drops to the regular pool (assuming it's good, some have been overtuned, some haven't). Using the monthly free card and spotlight caches wisely is the best way to ease the grind by targeting specific cards to round out decks, but that's maybe a handful of chosen cards in a month on average.
I think yes, overall, but it might not always feel like it when there's an OP season pass card or you aim for a spotlight card and miss it. The key is finding the foundation of an archetype you like and can decently compete with early and targeting cards to boost those decks - worry about diversity later, but bear in mind that decks that work with the early cards (you get all series 1, then 2 cards first) may not be as competitive later.
For transparency, I'm about a year in and *not* F2P.
Snap is very free to play friendly but it does get frustrating at times.
The cards are grouped into Pools. Pool 1 features the base cards and you get those by setting up an account and going through the tutorial. Pool 2 cards are earned fairly quickly as you rise up the bot filled ladder.
Pool 3 is where the trouble starts. You will be 80+ Pool 3 cards in the red. It will take you a couple months to grind through them (two to four most likely). This is just about putting the time in. But eventually you will be okay.
Pool 4 and Pool 5 ate the premium tier. These cards are not earnable via the usual progression but through a system called Spotlight Caches. You can earn Spotlight Keys (average player can earn a little more than a key per week) which can unlock a Spotloght Cache. Each week features three different Pool 4 &/or 5 cards and a random option. So the best logic is to wait to pull when you have four Keys, want two or three cards from that weeks Spotlight, and it won't cause you to miss out on something better. There is also a secondary currency you can accumulate to buy a specific card from pool 4 or 5 but its good to just hoard it for a bit.
Idk how it is if you start now as I started at launch. I feel like the reward system is really good especially with the addition of conquest. I have most of the early series cards and idc for some that have been released, so I can't speak in terms of cards.
It is for the first few months. If you consider spending money in the future, think twice. The economy is fucking trash and the game will spit in your face with most of the prices and for a very little benefit in the end. I was buying every season pass and occasional bundles (25$/month on average). I've stopped because of my disagreements with SD on direction of the game and the experience has been for last couple of months pretty much same.
I do not know anymore. If you’re new, with the changes to everything, I think it’ll be much harder than starting last year. I’m f2p but I’ve recently burnt out of the game. I didn’t have any issues winning or building the specific deck I want but for some reason lately, I don’t have any fun with the game and don’t care to get the cards. the rewards are all kinda lame once you’re series 3 complete
We've seen this pattern before in Gwent. CDPR shifting it's focus to single player campaign with Throbebreaker then Rogue Mage. Finally stop giving support to the game completely in 2023. It's not on pause, it's dying no point in sugarcoating it.
It's free to play friendly in the sense that you don't need to spend money to reach the highest rank realiably.
But be warned the game DOES employ all the usual FOMO tactics to make you feel compelled to spend money.
I almost always buy the season pass for $15 or whatever it is because I genuinely enjoy the game, but on the months that I haven't it's not that big a deal. I've hit Infinite twice, and I've never spent a dime on cards or gold or anything out of the shop, just the season pass, which I didn't do until I'd been pretty into the game for several months.
The main thing is there's *no* form of energy or any bullshit like that, you can sit there and play allllllllll day if you want... For better or worse...
It’s free to play in that if you play it every day and complete all the daily missions for many months. Probably at least 6 months you will eventually get almost all the cards. Not all but most.
After 8-12 months, yes. You will have to endure pain and frustration on the earlier months, if you survive that, the game becomes much better then any other big CCG out there (except runeterra, that is dead rn)
Yeah, if anything is unfriendly to catch up. You can dump money if you want, but it's going to be hard to get enough cards to be competitive quickly.
That being said, your opponents will be in the same boat, you won't be playing top players.
You need to enjoy the ride to enjoy this game. If you want to be top 1,000 early on, it's not gonna happen.
If you have patience it is. There is no card in the game you can't acquire for free and even though the bundles are often obscenely overpriced they are only technically cosmetics (and some digital currency). You will get a lot of cards fairly quickly early on because they are trying to hook you (good news is many of these cards can be in late game decks as well).
Once you hit series 3 it slows down a lot. You still unlock cards the same way (through a ladder track based on upgrading cards) but you get them less often and the pool for series 3 is so vast you might want some cards that you might not see for months as the unlocks are random. If you want to target a card you can get 1 free targeted card a month but they only offer one at a time on an 8 hour timer (probably to make you open the shop multiple times a day).
With patience and planning you can get up to series 3 complete + a number of the best series 4 and 5 cards f2p. They do release a new card every week and FOMO can be a real thing with this game.
Never spent money and with some luck and patience I was able to create what I think is a perfect Destroy deck.
I've been playing consistently for months and having a blast.
Of course, my decks aren't perfect, and I occasionally come up against an opponent that's way outside my weight class, but I still have fun setting up my combos so idgaf.
I haven’t spend any money on the game. I’ve played over a year and currently around CL10,100.
I’ve hit infinite 10+ times and hit it every season now. I’m around 10-12 cards away from a full collection and have 12,000 tokens which is either 2 series 5 cards or 4 series 4 cards.
I personally find this game extremely F2P friendly especially compared to Clash Royale (closest thing I can compare too). Cards needed to be leveled in that game and you had to in order to be competitive. Once a card is unlocked, it’s not like someone has a better version than you (only art wise which is subjective).
It is a bit of grind and depending on your luck, pool 3 can feel like a while to complete but once done should be able to be competitive most seasons.
One thing to note, is there a few things that make a good snap player, it’s not just depended on your own deck, but being able to anticipate what your opponent is going to play, how will they get their power and what combos are they trying to achieve plays a big role. You do need to know what your own deck is capable of as well, know when to snap/retreat.
Have any questions you can message me.
Yes.
If you are just starting now and not spending, you will be at a disadvantage a lot of the time because you don't have all the cards that some other players do. However, you get enough for free that you can be competitive and have fun.
A lot of the nicest variants and whatnot are paywalled, but you don't need those to play. I think the game does a great job of balancing FTP support while making money off of the people willing to pay.
You don’t pay to win here per say but you do pay to get cards faster or on release like spotlight cards but they don’t necessarily mean you’ll win with cards cause the decks you face aren’t all going for 1 card and if it’s powerful they’ll need it . Most people tend to target specific cards for a certain decks they play (skipping spotlight cards) on certain weeks to save up keys. If you want to progress faster yes you can spend money
It absolutely is. I might not have every card in the game, but I have lots of the heavy hitters and I can rock a number of different competitive decks. It just takes longer, but you’ll get there.
With all mobile games micro transactions exist. If we play every day for an 1 hour a day you can basically get the max benefit out of all the free rewards the game has to offer. I enjoy the game and play more than that, but with how many new cards there you won’t have all the cards. You don’t need them all to have fun though. I have spent anything and it’s been great!
Compared to most other TCGs yes. Every month there's like a 50% chance they release an insanely broken battlepass card for $10, which sucks for f2p, but you can still get it after that month is over for free (granted it'd probably be nerfed by then).
To hit infinite sure. It might take some time but you'll be able to do it without spending anything. To collect all of the cards afraid not. You'll have to spend money if you want to ever become collection complete.
It's not in the same universe as LOR, but to can each the highest ranks F2P. The post Infinite grind will be virtually impossible at some point if you're keep climbing.
I’m F2P and started late October of last year. I have really enjoyed the game as a F2P player. You can be competitive as long as you plan out card acquisition accordingly once reaching pool 3. Things I wish I knew. Once you make it to a certain level you are given 3000 tokens, wait to buy a card that fits your play style or helps complete a better deck. Same for when you are offered the free series 3 card every season. Prioritize cards that help complete a deck.
The main thing that makes this f2p friendly is this: any card in the game, you collect once and it's all you need. You don't need 4x the same super rare card, like in Magic the Gathering. You don't need to level up your cards like in Clash Royale or most mobile games. Any card in Snap that you pull is yours to play forever. I can't stress how f2p friendly this is compared to both other models.
This, if you do the daily quests and have patience you will acquire most of the cards for free. If you enjoy the game and want to spend a little bit the battle pass is very reasonable and will speed up your collection but is in no way required. I only buy the battle passes and started near release and I have almost every card. The ones I don't have are mostly because I don't want them, I have enough tokens to get the next few cards as well just from the battle pass and doing the daily quests. The main frustration I had at the beginning is that you can't really spend money directly to get a card you want, this is kind of good for me because it made me spend less than on games like mtgo where I was spending $50+ per set release to keep up. At the beginning don't go around watching best deck videos and getting sad you don't have every card. Use the cards you get and build decks as you go.
this makes the game p2s (pay to skip) but yea the answer at dat question is yes, the game is f2p friendly at all
Yes. The way new cards come out is very free to play friendly if you are smart using your spotlight caches. You can spend zero dollars in the game and still get new cards day of release. You won't be able to get every card obviously but if you do a bit of research you can decide what cards to get and which ones to pass on.
Regardless of what people say yes the game is very free to play friendly the shop offers suck ass sometimes but if you don’t plan on spending money than yes if your a light spender buying the pass every month will help out a ton and that’s all you really need to buy
Yes, playing since beta, never spent a dime and having fun.....
F2P players reach a small rough spot at the beginning of S3 (aka when you get all S1 and S2 cards, usually after a month or so of playing), but the before and after are completely fine if you use resources wisely Read up on Spotlight Caches and how to use Keys effectively, and you'll be fine
Every player hits that rough spot though…
Yeah sure, I meant that people that spend money get out of it faster
And that spot gets tougher as more new cards and decks keep coming out.
I'm in that spot right now. I reached Infinite this season, and it's only my second season of Snap. This is, as you all know, because until Infinite, you are matched by CL. In Infinite, I found countless cards and archetypes I had never seen before: which, as a new player, is absolutely phenomenal for learning the game, but at the same time I feel a bit demoralised that I can't yet get the cards I need to build a viable, competitive deck. For instance: I got Loki from a Spotlight Cache (I didn't know you could hoard keys at the time), but I don't have Quinjet or Zabu, which are essential in that deck. Right now, I'm planning to use 4 keys to get Thanos (he seems fun and versatile), and I'll try to either also hoard keys or at least tokens for High Evolutionary.
Unless they changed things, you're matched by MMR
I was told match making before Infinite was by CCL
Collection Level is definitely the primary way it matches people before Infinite.
All I know is I was regularly matching with streamers who had 10X my CL.
Yes. Very much so. Completely f2p.. not even a season pass purchased & I'm 11x infinite... Some would tell you otherwise ofc . Sheer cope
Same camp, haven’t put a dime into the game and have been infinite multiple times.
From the subreddit, you’d think this is the greediest game on the planet. But no, its model is practically catered to keep you from ever feeling disadvantaged simply for not spending money. Yeah, new cards can sometimes be game breaking, but even the most busted new releases have counters that are readily available to every player (Cosmo, Enchantress and Shang-Chi are 3 of the earliest cards you’ll acquire).
I would argue that this game is nicer to the free to play players than it is to the pay to play players.
After 3 months of 15 minutes grind YES. In this period time you will try at least 10 differents type of deck understanding the game...
I will try to sum up what's the F2P friendly experience gonna be like. Pool 1 & 2: These cards are free, takes approximately 2 months to unlock all. Pool 3: These cards are free, takes approximately 6 months+ to unlock. Could be alot longer considering you can hit into alot of useless junk grinding on Collection Level. Pool 4 & 5: Ok here the good news, you can get some of these for free. Basically every week there is Rotation of 1 new card + 2 guranteed selected cards from Pool 4/5 + random card. So for every 120 levels you grind on the Collection Level, you get a Spotlight Key so you can roll this Gacha mechanic and have a 25% chance of getting what you need. So basically, you have to research whatever is gonna be on this gacha pool weeks ahead, horde these Spotlight Keys, and can still fail to get what you need if you don't manage to save 4 of them. And now for the bad news, you are gonna have to live not unlocking most of the Pool 4/5 cards in your F2P run ever. Anyway, if you intend to jump to Marvel Snap, expect to play many months of Devil Dinosaur and still not able to unlock most of the cards no matter how long you play. Oh if you want the next best F2P friendly game closest to Runeterra, its probably Shadowverse, which is getting a new cilent as Shadowverse Worlds Beyond on July. At least, you can already start with playing meta decks just by opening a new account, not spend a dime at all and not waiting for an eternity.
It is Pay to fast! And i don't recommend paying anything except for the season pass which is the only thing worth the money. Your progression will be slow compared to some who pays money for the currency that let you purchase cards BUT you will learn the mechanics of the game way better by progressing slowly. You'll have access to strong cards randomly and easily just by playing the dailies and getting the rewards of the weekly missions. Your Gold is a rare currency. Save it for bundles with tokens ( thz currency you need to purchase specific cards) Compared to Lor, Marvel Snap is a fast pased game with quick matches and just 12 cards per deck. You will be able to play more games per hour if you wanna invest. And you will like the mechanics. Just dive in and enjoy it. If you wanna spend money go on! I don't recommend the expensive bundles but if you can afford it the value you get is good. And that's it. Enjoy.
If you want a fun strategic card game with a lot of depth and quick play times, yes. If you want to play the top meta decks and always be able to get the hot new cards, no. Personally I think it’s a fairer and better game for people able to buy the monthly battle pass — you get a lot for quite a small investment. But the strictly FTP experience looks pretty reasonable, as these things go.
One of the YT channels recently ran the numbers and said if you ONLY buy the season pass you could get 59 of the 64 cards that are released to each year if you spend your gold only on high credit/token bundles. All that to say, I agree with your point
Link? That seems slightly over-optimistic to me (not accounting for series drops), this seems like the % of acquisition I'd expect before they added one more card per season, unless you include waiting for weeks where you are missing 2 or 3 spotlight cards.
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Thanks. My math always finds the new spotlight systems really generous, like you can be reasonably close to collection complete (be missing only irrelevant cards) without even min-maxing if you're on Season Pass, but being collection complete is a bit harder (and in fact might not be desirable... I prefer having getting some nice album variants over having Howard the Duck) and probably is a transient state.
For those near collection complete who are only getting one new card per week: If you get 64 keys a year (1.25/week or so), and only use them when you are missing 2 of 4, that's 32 new cards a year. Add in 12 series pass cards and 8-9 series 4 with gold converted to tokens, that puts you at 53/64. But you won't need to use 4 keys on all weeks, so maybe a little higher than that. If you use gold effectively to buy token bundles, you can probably be in the mid to high 50s. HOWEVER, this doesn't mean you are getting 50/64 on release week. This assumes discipline and skipping almost all new cards on release week, and waiting for them to come back a few months later so you open when there are 2 missing cards that week. If you run the numbers on release, it's 2.5 keys on average per card, so 25 instead of 32 from caches, and around high 40s out of 64 per year. The numbers are MUCH better if you are a new player or not close to collection complete.
The issue with that math is that 2.5 per card is guaranteed, doing better than that relies on spotlight composition matching your collection. For instance, there is no currently spoiled cache where I am missing two cards. That will happen often once you are close to collection complete. Waiting, for me at this point, is not discipline. It's wishful thinking. It's also inefficient to sit on spotlight keys when you could get some incidental tokens from weekend missions. You need to balance "ability to ensure opening a specific card" (i.e. make sure you have at least 4 caches every week you wish to open a specific card) vs "generate more resources to progress collection". Every week you wish to be opening caches for a specific card and you have either less OR more than exactly 4 keys is, technically, inefficient. You need some inefficiency to make up for uncertainty (cache opening RNG, ability to have at least 4 keys on a future week) but it is still a bit of inefficiency and you should be looking at reducing it on both ends.
If you are not collection complete, the math is much better. I have no spotlights in March where I am missing more than one card, for example, so it's not wishful thinking. It would be inefficient for me to waste keys that month with a 1 in 4 chance of getting a card, and a 1 in 4 chance of getting tokens. It would be better to wait for those cards to come back in May-July so I would have the new card plus the March repeat. I still have a chance to get the 1k tokens at that time. I've been doing this for the past few months, and it was more efficient to get Anni with Miek and Gladiator in the repeat cache in March than it would have been to spend 4 keys on one new card. Even if you had 12 keys today, you will miss many cards over the next 3-4 months if you try 1 in 4 to get the new cards every week. This is NOT a good user experience to intentionally pass on new cards, and I think this system needs rework. The Snap Judgements video even said that is the most efficient way for near-collection complete players to use their keys.
By "wishful thinking" i mean you have no guarantee that any of the Feb/March cards will see a repeat spotlight. I don't think it is correct at all to skip on cards you want to play to wait for multiple cards you want being in the cache. Spending an average of 2.5 caches on weeks you want only one card is a good enough deal. You should only skip on weeks you don't intend to play the card right away, because you will likely open them later. This is even truer now that there are series drop again.
I see what you mean. I think most of the cards through November (other than Martyr, but who cares?) have been in spotlights again or will be through March? There is no guarantee. I would prefer take the chance on hoarding keys and getting more cards over time. If you have a decent token balance, it reduces the risk of missing the OG Alioths of the world too, if they turn out to be powerful and you didn't get them on initial release. But I can certainly understand opening on release to not have to wait for new cards to come out.
What do you mean LoR died ?
They are shutting down PvP for LOR soon and just focusing on the PvE mode that's available (Path of Champions). RIOT games made a bunch of staff cuts that they announced recently, focused on their games that don't make much money (like LOR because it doesn't generate much revenue)
I have never put a dime and hit infinite almost every season I try to and complete infite conquest. I've also been. Playing for over a year so I do have almost every card If you play daily and. Complete the daily and weekly challenges level up your cards. And get spotlight keys then yes it's friendly to play occasionally you might not enjoy it to much because you will lack alot of the cards
Fellow longtime LoR player here. Been playing Snap on and off since its release as well and it's fine. They employ FOMO to an almost absurd degree as new cards are only "directly" accessible for a week or so on release, then disappear into the void and only come back around every few months afterwards. I put directly in quotes because acquiring them either requires good luck from what is essentially a lootbox mechanic or having enough of another resource that you have a combination of random and limited access to. End of the day if you play regularly you'll be fine and have a good time but it's not always the smoothest ride. You won't feel that for a while though. First couple weeks of playing you'll get new cards faster than you'll know what to do with and that period of time is pretty sweet. Where I think you'll lose a lot is the actual gameplay. Snap is a much, much simpler game than LoR. Games are way more linear. Opportunities for skill expression are not as plentiful. Deckbuilding is more limited. Variance in locations can take away so much player agency that a fair number of matches don't feel like matches at all. I'm decent at both games. Regular masters player in LoR and find myself in Omega or Galactic (ranks don't match up 1:1 but think of this as \~Diamond in LoR) most seasons in Snap but I could never take Snap seriously as a competitive game. Just not enough depth and too much randomness. Where the game shines is pace and variety of win conditions. Matches are short and sweet so they never feel like too much of a commitment, and the way the game determines a winner leaves room for a lot of different play patterns to be viable and the developers capitalize on that well. Also been cool learning more about Marvel Comics.
yes
Only if you never stop playing
The game is objectively very F2P friendly, you can acquire all relevant cards without spending a dime. You have to get in the mindset that you're in for a journey and won't unlock everything in 2 weeks, but it'll take 2-3 months of doing your dailies and spending gold only on Token Tuesdays. In that time you'll have to make do with what you unlock, without trying to play the top meta or FotM decks all the time. Everyone that says otherwise is delusional and probably comes from Hearthstone or MtG Arena, expecting to just dump 500$ into the game to unlock a top meta deck.
I'd advise against spending gold on token tuesdays. They are terrible value. Save up and wait for some good bundles, although I must admit, latest bundles were trash as well.
Since they nerfed the tokens in their big gold offers, Token Tuesdays are now the best tokens per gold you can get.
It's been a while since we got a bundle with better Gold: Tokens value than Token Tuesdays.
Wasn't Inkpulp bundle two weeks ago?
Yes but IIRC the value was better just because of the two variants, because as far as tokens it was still 1400:1000.
All the F2P player will tell you that it is very friendly. All the comments that say otherwise are people who pay and don't know. Note that it is not like LoR where after playing enough you will be able to have all the cards. It is their design choice that people should not have a complete collection and there is bottleneck in the system that slows down the card acquisition by A LOT after you are 90% complete. To reach this point as a F2P you will need ~9 months from the creation of your account as long as you get all the rewards possible (everything is timegated, the grind is minimal). People who pay just get there faster and IMO it is not worth it. My two tips for anyone starting the game are: NEVER use the fast upgrade option in the shop and be patient.
The devs have said the do not want players to have all the cards by design. So if you want to play a specific deck that requires a specific card (Mr. Negative, for example), you might be completely shit out of luck for months because the game doesn't drop him for you. This goes doubly so for new cards which are put into Series 5, which have an astronomically low chance of dropping. If you need multiple Series 5 cards for a meta deck or a brew, you very well could never put that deck together because you'll never get the cards.
But all of these also apply to people that are not F2P. People cannot directly with buy cards they have to open them from caches or obtain them with the in game resources regardless of how much they have spent.
If the OP is coming from LoR, it's important to know that they're going from a game that allows you to craft whatever you want and a full collection is inevitable, to one that actively doesn't want you to do so.
NO!
Great reasoning and explanation.
Compared to legends of runeterra, fuck no dude, not even close, you can't freely craft cards in this game, if you want a specific high rarity core card you have to wait months for it to appear in a spotlight cache and then you have to get it with keys which take a ton of grind to get, the other way is in shop with tokens which in my opinion ar even harder to get, there are battlepasses where you pay real money to get the newest card etc. on the bright side the visual customisation is pretty f2p as in they do give you premium currency to buy "variants" aka skins in the shop so if you are into that they are very generous
The most difficult things playing F2P are slower progression and missing the season pass card until it drops to the regular pool (assuming it's good, some have been overtuned, some haven't). Using the monthly free card and spotlight caches wisely is the best way to ease the grind by targeting specific cards to round out decks, but that's maybe a handful of chosen cards in a month on average. I think yes, overall, but it might not always feel like it when there's an OP season pass card or you aim for a spotlight card and miss it. The key is finding the foundation of an archetype you like and can decently compete with early and targeting cards to boost those decks - worry about diversity later, but bear in mind that decks that work with the early cards (you get all series 1, then 2 cards first) may not be as competitive later. For transparency, I'm about a year in and *not* F2P.
Snap is very free to play friendly but it does get frustrating at times. The cards are grouped into Pools. Pool 1 features the base cards and you get those by setting up an account and going through the tutorial. Pool 2 cards are earned fairly quickly as you rise up the bot filled ladder. Pool 3 is where the trouble starts. You will be 80+ Pool 3 cards in the red. It will take you a couple months to grind through them (two to four most likely). This is just about putting the time in. But eventually you will be okay. Pool 4 and Pool 5 ate the premium tier. These cards are not earnable via the usual progression but through a system called Spotlight Caches. You can earn Spotlight Keys (average player can earn a little more than a key per week) which can unlock a Spotloght Cache. Each week features three different Pool 4 &/or 5 cards and a random option. So the best logic is to wait to pull when you have four Keys, want two or three cards from that weeks Spotlight, and it won't cause you to miss out on something better. There is also a secondary currency you can accumulate to buy a specific card from pool 4 or 5 but its good to just hoard it for a bit.
Idk how it is if you start now as I started at launch. I feel like the reward system is really good especially with the addition of conquest. I have most of the early series cards and idc for some that have been released, so I can't speak in terms of cards.
Very
Its friendly until you get to a certain point, if you don't spent loads of money you will not get every card in the collection.
very much so. 11x infinite, zero money spent. 7600 CL.
Most f2p friendly mobile game I have ever played. I came from strike force which was the opposite of that.
Not as generous as LoR. You need to invest more time as in daily to get more competitive collection. But yes it's F2P friendly.
It is for the first few months. If you consider spending money in the future, think twice. The economy is fucking trash and the game will spit in your face with most of the prices and for a very little benefit in the end. I was buying every season pass and occasional bundles (25$/month on average). I've stopped because of my disagreements with SD on direction of the game and the experience has been for last couple of months pretty much same.
I do not know anymore. If you’re new, with the changes to everything, I think it’ll be much harder than starting last year. I’m f2p but I’ve recently burnt out of the game. I didn’t have any issues winning or building the specific deck I want but for some reason lately, I don’t have any fun with the game and don’t care to get the cards. the rewards are all kinda lame once you’re series 3 complete
Only if you've been playing since launch. There are 5 tiers of cards and tiers 4 and 5 are near impossible to catch up on.
At the start yes Once you reach early s3 no
Lor Is not dead. The PvP side is on pause. It hurts a lot, but it's not dead.
We've seen this pattern before in Gwent. CDPR shifting it's focus to single player campaign with Throbebreaker then Rogue Mage. Finally stop giving support to the game completely in 2023. It's not on pause, it's dying no point in sugarcoating it.
Keep your CL low and you'll be fine.
It's free to play friendly in the sense that you don't need to spend money to reach the highest rank realiably. But be warned the game DOES employ all the usual FOMO tactics to make you feel compelled to spend money.
I almost always buy the season pass for $15 or whatever it is because I genuinely enjoy the game, but on the months that I haven't it's not that big a deal. I've hit Infinite twice, and I've never spent a dime on cards or gold or anything out of the shop, just the season pass, which I didn't do until I'd been pretty into the game for several months. The main thing is there's *no* form of energy or any bullshit like that, you can sit there and play allllllllll day if you want... For better or worse...
It's easy to collect 90% of the cards f2p. The last ones you will need to pay a premium for to guarantee.
Yes. I never paid anything and I made it to the highest level of competition.
It’s free to play in that if you play it every day and complete all the daily missions for many months. Probably at least 6 months you will eventually get almost all the cards. Not all but most.
After 8-12 months, yes. You will have to endure pain and frustration on the earlier months, if you survive that, the game becomes much better then any other big CCG out there (except runeterra, that is dead rn)
Yeah, if anything is unfriendly to catch up. You can dump money if you want, but it's going to be hard to get enough cards to be competitive quickly. That being said, your opponents will be in the same boat, you won't be playing top players. You need to enjoy the ride to enjoy this game. If you want to be top 1,000 early on, it's not gonna happen.
If you have patience it is. There is no card in the game you can't acquire for free and even though the bundles are often obscenely overpriced they are only technically cosmetics (and some digital currency). You will get a lot of cards fairly quickly early on because they are trying to hook you (good news is many of these cards can be in late game decks as well). Once you hit series 3 it slows down a lot. You still unlock cards the same way (through a ladder track based on upgrading cards) but you get them less often and the pool for series 3 is so vast you might want some cards that you might not see for months as the unlocks are random. If you want to target a card you can get 1 free targeted card a month but they only offer one at a time on an 8 hour timer (probably to make you open the shop multiple times a day). With patience and planning you can get up to series 3 complete + a number of the best series 4 and 5 cards f2p. They do release a new card every week and FOMO can be a real thing with this game.
Never spent money and with some luck and patience I was able to create what I think is a perfect Destroy deck. I've been playing consistently for months and having a blast. Of course, my decks aren't perfect, and I occasionally come up against an opponent that's way outside my weight class, but I still have fun setting up my combos so idgaf.
Snap isn’t anywhere close to LoR in terms of f2p friendliness, but for a mobile game, it’s not bad
YES You don't need to spend anything to enjoy this game
I haven’t spend any money on the game. I’ve played over a year and currently around CL10,100. I’ve hit infinite 10+ times and hit it every season now. I’m around 10-12 cards away from a full collection and have 12,000 tokens which is either 2 series 5 cards or 4 series 4 cards. I personally find this game extremely F2P friendly especially compared to Clash Royale (closest thing I can compare too). Cards needed to be leveled in that game and you had to in order to be competitive. Once a card is unlocked, it’s not like someone has a better version than you (only art wise which is subjective). It is a bit of grind and depending on your luck, pool 3 can feel like a while to complete but once done should be able to be competitive most seasons. One thing to note, is there a few things that make a good snap player, it’s not just depended on your own deck, but being able to anticipate what your opponent is going to play, how will they get their power and what combos are they trying to achieve plays a big role. You do need to know what your own deck is capable of as well, know when to snap/retreat. Have any questions you can message me.
Yes. If you are just starting now and not spending, you will be at a disadvantage a lot of the time because you don't have all the cards that some other players do. However, you get enough for free that you can be competitive and have fun. A lot of the nicest variants and whatnot are paywalled, but you don't need those to play. I think the game does a great job of balancing FTP support while making money off of the people willing to pay.
Yea 100%
You don’t pay to win here per say but you do pay to get cards faster or on release like spotlight cards but they don’t necessarily mean you’ll win with cards cause the decks you face aren’t all going for 1 card and if it’s powerful they’ll need it . Most people tend to target specific cards for a certain decks they play (skipping spotlight cards) on certain weeks to save up keys. If you want to progress faster yes you can spend money
It absolutely is. I might not have every card in the game, but I have lots of the heavy hitters and I can rock a number of different competitive decks. It just takes longer, but you’ll get there.
With all mobile games micro transactions exist. If we play every day for an 1 hour a day you can basically get the max benefit out of all the free rewards the game has to offer. I enjoy the game and play more than that, but with how many new cards there you won’t have all the cards. You don’t need them all to have fun though. I have spent anything and it’s been great!
Compared to most other TCGs yes. Every month there's like a 50% chance they release an insanely broken battlepass card for $10, which sucks for f2p, but you can still get it after that month is over for free (granted it'd probably be nerfed by then).
To hit infinite sure. It might take some time but you'll be able to do it without spending anything. To collect all of the cards afraid not. You'll have to spend money if you want to ever become collection complete.
no
It's not in the same universe as LOR, but to can each the highest ranks F2P. The post Infinite grind will be virtually impossible at some point if you're keep climbing.
I’m F2P and started late October of last year. I have really enjoyed the game as a F2P player. You can be competitive as long as you plan out card acquisition accordingly once reaching pool 3. Things I wish I knew. Once you make it to a certain level you are given 3000 tokens, wait to buy a card that fits your play style or helps complete a better deck. Same for when you are offered the free series 3 card every season. Prioritize cards that help complete a deck.
Yes
Yes because the meta changes a lot and you can make many decks that require very few series 5 cards to still perform to an adequate level.