I'm in the Open Beta - AMA

I've lived in the Philippines for a long time (though I'm actually American). Long story short, this means I was able to get into the open beta.

If you guys want to ask anything about my experience so far, feel free!

Note - Marvel Snap has been released to Open Beta in the Philippines only, so no beta invite is needed here. Any other country still requires an invitation to the closed beta.

What does having lived in the Philippines have to do with getting into the beta?

Quote From Nirast

Quote From rocketfodder

What does having lived in the Philippines have to do with getting into the beta?

They just released the beta in the Philippines a few days ago

Indeed, I said Open Beta on purpose. The game is released in the Philippines region only, in Open Beta. Anyone in the Philippines who has a Google Play account set to the Philippines as their country (or presumably the same for iOS) can download and play the game. So, therefore, I've downloaded and am playing the game.

Can you do a more or less thorough comparison between that game and HS regarding stuff like: amount of luck needed to win a game, prevalence of random things, prevalence of controlled randomness, swinginess of turns/plays, how much skill matters, whether the game provides enough room for player skill to flourish rather than cutting it down like in HS, how they plan to deal with cards clutter in the future, etc.

And most importantly, how far/close is it to a gacha game and others that like to pray on people's weakness and whales (see the diablo immortal videos of some people where everything they are doing is explained in detail). I.e. how much pay-to-win is/will the game be?

Thanks!

Quote From Crusader2010

Can you do a more or less thorough comparison between that game and HS regarding stuff like: amount of luck needed to win a game, prevalence of random things, prevalence of controlled randomness, swinginess of turns/plays, how much skill matters, whether the game provides enough room for player skill to flourish rather than cutting it down like in HS, how they plan to deal with cards clutter in the future, etc.

And most importantly, how far/close is it to a gacha game and others that like to pray on people's weakness and whales (see the diablo immortal videos of some people where everything they are doing is explained in detail). I.e. how much pay-to-win is/will the game be?

Thanks!

That's a pretty tall order to fill as a casual gamer ;)

I can at least say that the game is fun and interesting. What I personally like is that the game combines a relatively quick play with tactical choices.

There is some luck (as always in card games) with pulling cards, but your deck is 12 cards and you have 6 turns so chances are pretty big that you pull your important cards.

The most lucky games are related to the locations. Some will synergize with your deck, while others might not.

Adding the "poker" option of using snaps is also fun in my opinion.

Last the card collection is pretty ok for f2p I feel There is no real rarity for cards, but to get new cards you need to upgrade cards and that costs the in game currency. I am posting for about 3 weeks now and got quite some cards and several different deck building options.

All in all in now mostly playing marvel snap and hardly and hearthstone anymore, so that says quite a lot.

Quote From Crusader2010

Can you do a more or less thorough comparison between that game and HS regarding stuff like: amount of luck needed to win a game, prevalence of random things, prevalence of controlled randomness, swinginess of turns/plays, how much skill matters, whether the game provides enough room for player skill to flourish rather than cutting it down like in HS, how they plan to deal with cards clutter in the future, etc.

And most importantly, how far/close is it to a gacha game and others that like to pray on people's weakness and whales (see the diablo immortal videos of some people where everything they are doing is explained in detail). I.e. how much pay-to-win is/will the game be?

Thanks!

I haven't played Hearthstone in a long time, but I'll give it a try - to add onto what Cleef2 already said.

1. The game currently doesn't have any loot boxes at all. You get new cards by using in-game currency to upgrade your existing cards. This is too confusing to explain in detail. Just suffice to say - the way you get new cards is by upgrading your existing cards. Note - upgrading cards is purely cosmetic. It doesn't change the function at all. This is clearly very different from HS. However, there is also RNG as to exactly which card you get when you get a new one, so that part is pretty similar to HS.

2. As your collection level increases, you progress through certain pools of cards. Up to Collection level 214, you will slowly collect all of the cards from "Pool 1." This is sort of like a starter collection. Everyone gets the cards in a different order from each other, but everyone also has exactly the same collection when they hit level 214. So, the only "P2W" aspect there is how fast you get to the break points between card pools. After Pool 1, though, the progression slows down, and it gets harder to acquire specific cards. Currently, there is no crafting system, so you just have to keep playing until the RNG is on your side and you get the card(s) you want.

3. For gameplay, the games are TONS faster than HS games, and it's not possible to get trapped in a control match that lasts for 30 minutes. The longest game you will ever play in Snap is probably about 5 minutes.

4. In terms of RNG in the gameplay, there really isn't that much. As Cleef said, most of the RNG comes from which locations happen to spawn in for each game. Some will work well for your deck and others won't. If you play Discard, only one of the discards is targeted to a specific metric (it discards your highest cost card), so there is a lot of RNG in that deck - whether you get the correct discard or not. Otherwise, the game's RNG is mostly from the locations and not from the cards or the players.

5. Player skill - this matters for sure. I find myself thinking pretty hard sometimes about my best play in a specific situation. The fun part is that it usually comes down to trying to predict what my opponent is going to do. At bottom, Snap is largely a mind-game against your opponent - trying to figure out how they plan to win, and then trying to outmaneuver them.

6. Swingyness - This is hard to say exactly, as a comparison to HS. Sometimes, you just draw crap and your opponent draws like a god. However, in those cases, you can just "peace out," and have a minimal loss of ranking (usually just 1 "cube." I'll explain cubes below). That being said, the game is almost never decided until the cards flip on the last turn (turn 6). I've lost games I was expecting to win, and I've won games I was expecting to lose. So, yeah - a lot of games aren't decided until right at the end. I'm pretty sure that doesn't count as swingy, but I could be wrong.

7. Cubes - Each game starts with one cube at stake. If you win, you would gain 1 cube and if you lose, you lose 1. In reality, if the game goes to the end, you never gain or lose less than 2 cubes, because the "pot" doubles at the final turn. But if either player "Retreats" before the final turn ends, they will only lose 1 cube and their opponent will gain 1 cube. EXCEPT - if you are confident of winning the game, you can "snap" your opponent and the cubes will double when that turn ends (going from 1 to 2 or from 2 to 4). If both players snap and stay to the end, the game is worth 8 cubes. So, each game brings the possibility of gaining or losing either 1, 2, 4, or 8 cubes, depending if either or both players snap (or if one of them retreats before the end).

*Edited to add points 6 and 7.

I might as well add this here. I've been playing Snap for 2 weeks now and I got to Collection Level 300. Most people think the progression is pretty bad, I think it's probably fine. It should be noted that I have not reached Pool 3 where I heard a lot more people complain about and that you should understand that getting cards become exponentially harder (literally). You could get the meta decks relatively easily even with bad luck compared to other games. The more fun decks though? Not so much. Deckbuilding feels restricted and luck plays a lot in higher collection pools.

Also, I understand that it's a beta. Nevertheless I'd say that the matchmaking system is pretty bad. They have a casual matchmaking system where the only mode is ranked. They have it where your cubes (rank) and collection level (card pool) don't matter and only your MMR matters. I think that you can easily see why this is bad but to illustrate it. I am rank 55 which is relatively in the middle, however I am facing people who have already reached the highest rank and I fight them regularly. I've faced too many people with a much higher collection pool as well with the upgraded versions of the meta decks. It gets pretty frustrating when you can't climb not because of your skill but because the game had been rigged against you before your draws. Meanwhile, streamers face bots on the regular because their MMR is literally too high to face real people. I'm curious if you guys had any similar/differing experiences.

Quote From FenrirWulf

I might as well add this here. I've been playing Snap for 2 weeks now and I got to Collection Level 300. Most people think the progression is pretty bad, I think it's probably fine. It should be noted that I have not reached Pool 3 where I heard a lot more people complain about and that you should understand that getting cards become exponentially harder (literally). You could get the meta decks relatively easily even with bad luck compared to other games. The more fun decks though? Not so much. Deckbuilding feels restricted and luck plays a lot in higher collection pools.

Also, I understand that it's a beta. Nevertheless I'd say that the matchmaking system is pretty bad. They have a casual matchmaking system where the only mode is ranked. They have it where your cubes (rank) and collection level (card pool) don't matter and only your MMR matters. I think that you can easily see why this is bad but to illustrate it. I am rank 55 which is relatively in the middle, however I am facing people who have already reached the highest rank and I fight them regularly. I've faced too many people with a much higher collection pool as well with the upgraded versions of the meta decks. It gets pretty frustrating when you can't climb not because of your skill but because the game had been rigged against you before your draws. Meanwhile, streamers face bots on the regular because their MMR is literally too high to face real people. I'm curious if you guys had any similar/differing experiences.

I'm a lot lower than you rank wise (39) with a collection level of 325 or something. If you are 55 that would mean to me you are at least a lot better then me, meaning your MMR is also a lot better.

That might explain why you queue into better players or players with better collection levels because you are playing well.

So far I haven't noticed what you have noticed and deck matchups seem fine for me.

As there is not so many players yet, having a higher MMR would mean that at this moment you queue a bit unevenly. When there is (a lot) more players I would believe this would probably dissapear.

And thanks for the additions everybody to my story ;)

 so what are Snaps? for those unitiated?

Quote From CuddlyCactus

 so what are Snaps? for those unitiated?

So cubes are basically your ranked points. Each match has a base of 1 cube to win/lose. However, each player can raise the stakes once by snapping which is doubling the cubes won/lost. Staying until afterthe last turn also doubles the cubes as well.

So what stops a player from conceding during turn 6 when it's clear they are gonna lose? Or simply to prevent the other guy from gaining 2 cubes instead of 1? Or to cut your own losses during any point of the game?

I mean, it must be quite a bit swingy for there to be options against losing after every turn. Or a huge amount of cards, or just some binary mechanics, etc. Otherwise there's no incentive to ever finish a game, let alone risk more cubes by snapping.

At least this is the impression without playing the game. Feel free to contradict me with some examples if possible :)

Quote From Crusader2010

So what stops a player from conceding during turn 6 when it's clear they are gonna lose? Or simply to prevent the other guy from gaining 2 cubes instead of 1? Or to cut your own losses during any point of the game?

I mean, it must be quite a bit swingy for there to be options against losing after every turn. Or a huge amount of cards, or just some binary mechanics, etc. Otherwise there's no incentive to ever finish a game, let alone risk more cubes by snapping.

At least this is the impression without playing the game. Feel free to contradict me with some examples if possible :)

It's completely intended that you can "cut your losses" at any point you see fit. It's actually one of the issues with snapping - you might scare your opponent away and only get 1 cube - whereas not snapping could win you two cubes instead. It's all part of the mind games

Quote From Crusader2010

So what stops a player from conceding during turn 6 when it's clear they are gonna lose? Or simply to prevent the other guy from gaining 2 cubes instead of 1? Or to cut your own losses during any point of the game?

I mean, it must be quite a bit swingy for there to be options against losing after every turn. Or a huge amount of cards, or just some binary mechanics, etc. Otherwise there's no incentive to ever finish a game, let alone risk more cubes by snapping.

At least this is the impression without playing the game. Feel free to contradict me with some examples if possible :)

Next to what sto650 mentioned: you and your opponent can snap also anywhere between t1 and 6, so at some point you might be invested to finish the game because otherwise you loose cubes. Ofcourse it's better to concede if you know for certain you'll loose, but the are some bigger plays possible t6, so judging what you and your opponent play and guess what he has in hand is a big thing.

I also feel that it's not too bad to concede early or something as the games are lot faster. Your time investment is not big per game, while in HS that is typically different (even agro games in HS tend to take a lot longer than a full snap game)

Thanks guys. Hopefully they'll release an open beta in europe to be able to play it. Seems something i might enjoy (since mind games take skill). Making the game closer to poker is definitely an interesting take.

Quote From sto650

Quote From Crusader2010

Can you do a more or less thorough comparison between that game and HS regarding stuff like: amount of luck needed to win a game, prevalence of random things, prevalence of controlled randomness, swinginess of turns/plays, how much skill matters, whether the game provides enough room for player skill to flourish rather than cutting it down like in HS, how they plan to deal with cards clutter in the future, etc.

And most importantly, how far/close is it to a gacha game and others that like to pray on people's weakness and whales (see the diablo immortal videos of some people where everything they are doing is explained in detail). I.e. how much pay-to-win is/will the game be?

Thanks!

 

4. In terms of RNG in the gameplay, there really isn't that much.

 

I'm sorry what?

Your opponent plays Morph, it could play a 1 cost, or it could catch Hulk or The Infinaut. Creating either an instant win or instant loss.

Maybe Jubileewill hit something good, maybe it will be useless. Same for Gambit

Sometimes Yondu removes the player's key card, sometimes it allows them to actually draw a key card that never would have been drawn on curve.

Plus the locations

The game has tons of luck.

But it's still fun :)

There is more RNG now than there was when I made the comment.

But you didn't quote the entire section there - I specifically said that a lot of RNG comes from the locations. And obviously some of the cards have randomness built in. However, cards like Gambit will not always be random - like if the opponent only has one card, or only a few cards and all of them are valuable.

Only an idiot plays Morph, by the way.

Edit - all of that being said, I've had enough of Snap, personally. I got into the 2200+ Collection Level, and the vast majority of my opponents were just playing brain-dead BS counter-decks. Like, their entire deck is nothing but "screw you" cards. Example: One of my favorite decks requires killing off some units. So, I would set up my kill location, but the dying cards have low value, so I would usually not have priority for flipping. So, guess which card would nearly always come down on my opponent's side on the same turn I try to kill off my units? You guessed it - Armor. Or maybe they would switch it up and have Cosmo instead. Same difference. Almost every. Single. Time. Or if not that, they Shang-Chi my Death. So, maybe I switch to playing a Zoo deck with the Ongoing theme - it doesn't care about Armor, Cosmo, or Shang-Chi, so it should have better luck, right? Nope- in that case, they will have Enchantress for sure. Or the card that steals an ongoing ability, forget the name. And they always have Green Goblin and often Hobgoblin as well. Or else Professor X.

Most of the player base apparently loves winning the higher levels of Snap by just driving their opponent up the wall with frustration, while playing decks that don't have a wincon other than screwing over your opponent.

Got old enough that I'm done with the game. If I ever come back to it again, I'm starting with a fresh account, so I don't have to play against all that junk.

Quote From sto650

 

Only an idiot plays Morph, by the way.

Morph has its place. If people are running big boys due to a certain Featured or Hot Location, it can be a nice highroll card. Also, Mister Negative makes Morph more attractive as well.