As I said, credits are the limiting factor unless you've spent a lot of money on the game, which you obviously have if you are sitting on that many credits with no boosters to use them on.
The other factor I mentioned was time (meaning number of games played). If you simply haven't played enough to gain the boosters needed, then you aren't yet to the point more experienced players are talking about, where credits matter far more than boosters. If you keep playing, you will get there eventually.
It's none of my business why you would spend so much money on a game you hardly ever play. My advice was more for people trying to keep their spending in check while actually playing the game.
If you're one of those players who finds themselves drowning in Credits but lacking the right Boosters …
Even if you think you are in this group for now, it will quickly turn around as your collection level increases. Credits are the limiting factor on progression unless you dump your entire life savings into the game, so the Fast Upgrade shop is a big trap, a terrible waste of credits. If you want more boosters for a specific card, just use that card and you'll get plenty of them.
Arson Accusation is a perfectly good card. There's no reason to call it a loser -- it's more of a sidegrade. It works great if you choose to swap it into a deck that uses removal. However, because it's not hugely better than whatever it replaces, people just don't bother.
These deals have nothing to do with whales. A true whale has all the cards long before these offers ever surface.
The portrait bundles are the whale-bait, but I'm not even tempted because this batch is extremely ugly and/or focused on characters I don't care about.
The point of mystery quests like this, just as in WoW itself, is that not everyone will have the patience or desire to do it. So it actually is an accomplishment if you manage to get it done, unlike the monthly card backs that mean nothing more than "i showed up in MM/YY."
I opened nearly 50 before getting a Legendary. Then I didn't see another one for the next 40 or so. Then all three missing ones appeared within the next five packs. <shrug> Random stuff is random.
It lets them put a uniform worldwide runestone price on shop items, and then they can adjust for variations in real currencies by changing the price of runestones in a given country. It's a lot easier to change that one price than to go through the entire shop and adjust the price of every item for each region.
So, instead of being a shady move like Nightmare suggests, it's actually just an efficient business move that has nothing to do with obfuscation or psychological tricks.
The problem isn't that BG is "pay to win" now, or any such silliness. The problem goes all the way back to when BG launched and they didn't bother to monetize it properly. That set up all these extremely unrealistic expectations among the players that it would totally free forever.
If it became popular (and it certainly did!), they were always going to start charging you to play the game with unrestricted access. It took them way too long to figure out how to do that, and that's why people are upset now. The absolute dumbest part is that this is barely any different from the way they monetized HoTS, so it's baffling why they didn't just put this system in place at the outset.
A big part of the reason they designed card acquisition this way is that they wanted to emulate the pre-internet physical trading card experience of different people having very different collections. Anyone with the most rudimentary number sense could have told them that THIS IS AN EXTREMELY STUPID DESIGN GOAL.
It may have been fun and interesting when you were a kid, and you only knew 20 people who collected cards, and if you were to play a game with those cards, the meta would consist of 20 players, and you'd all have extremely limited knowledge of the game system as a whole.
When you are designing a card game for the internet, where everyone has nearly instant access to the full card list, extensive knowledge of the entire metagame, and the ability to play with anyone in the world of any income level, you simply cannot hope that people will be happy leaving the shape of their collection to random chance. Instead of keeping them coming back for more in the hope of getting a specific wished-for card, it's just as likely to frustrate them and drive them away forever.
Needless to say, they very unwisely tipped their hand when they released the monstrously predatory Nexus garbage for testing. They burned a hell of a lot of good will when the players saw just how much money Second Dinner hoped to make from anyone willing to pay cash to accelerate the card acquisition process.
So, for me, nothing short of a total overhaul would ever entice me to spend a dime on Marvel Snap. Ideally, they'd let people buy fixed sets of cards for fixed sums, and find some way other than card acquisition to make additional money.
Also, the question about player retention was adorable -- as if any developer would ever give a meaningful, honest answer to that.
I'm not surprised at all. The hype train was already losing steam, and this brought it to a screeching halt. Dropping the metaphor, people who were not in beta were already losing interest, and I suspect this idiocy caused a LOT of them to abandon the game altogether.
There will always be some who are willing to endure any conditions to play something for free, but people who actually spend money on games are not foolish enough to buy into such a bad deal.
I've been waiting a long time for this feature, and it looks like I'll continue waiting. This drippy half-measure is not even close to adequate. I want UI elements where I can enter how many to open, and I absolutely want the post-opening summary. Without those, I'm better off with the old one-at-a-time method.
Unfortunately I will never truly understand or experience what it feels like to actually possess so many packs that automation becomes a necessity.
You've pretty much answered your own question. Opening more than a hundred packs at one time is extremely tedious. There's no excitement or anticipation because you know you'll end up with all the cards anyway. The only question is how much dust you'll have to spend to grab the last few legendaries.
As I said, credits are the limiting factor unless you've spent a lot of money on the game, which you obviously have if you are sitting on that many credits with no boosters to use them on.
The other factor I mentioned was time (meaning number of games played). If you simply haven't played enough to gain the boosters needed, then you aren't yet to the point more experienced players are talking about, where credits matter far more than boosters. If you keep playing, you will get there eventually.
It's none of my business why you would spend so much money on a game you hardly ever play. My advice was more for people trying to keep their spending in check while actually playing the game.
Even if you think you are in this group for now, it will quickly turn around as your collection level increases. Credits are the limiting factor on progression unless you dump your entire life savings into the game, so the Fast Upgrade shop is a big trap, a terrible waste of credits. If you want more boosters for a specific card, just use that card and you'll get plenty of them.
Arson Accusation is a perfectly good card. There's no reason to call it a loser -- it's more of a sidegrade. It works great if you choose to swap it into a deck that uses removal. However, because it's not hugely better than whatever it replaces, people just don't bother.
These deals have nothing to do with whales. A true whale has all the cards long before these offers ever surface.
The portrait bundles are the whale-bait, but I'm not even tempted because this batch is extremely ugly and/or focused on characters I don't care about.
Collector Tokens should have been in the game way before launch (or at launch at latest), not some vague amount of time after launch.
The point of mystery quests like this, just as in WoW itself, is that not everyone will have the patience or desire to do it. So it actually is an accomplishment if you manage to get it done, unlike the monthly card backs that mean nothing more than "i showed up in MM/YY."
I opened nearly 50 before getting a Legendary. Then I didn't see another one for the next 40 or so. Then all three missing ones appeared within the next five packs. <shrug> Random stuff is random.
It lets them put a uniform worldwide runestone price on shop items, and then they can adjust for variations in real currencies by changing the price of runestones in a given country. It's a lot easier to change that one price than to go through the entire shop and adjust the price of every item for each region.
So, instead of being a shady move like Nightmare suggests, it's actually just an efficient business move that has nothing to do with obfuscation or psychological tricks.
The problem isn't that BG is "pay to win" now, or any such silliness. The problem goes all the way back to when BG launched and they didn't bother to monetize it properly. That set up all these extremely unrealistic expectations among the players that it would totally free forever.
If it became popular (and it certainly did!), they were always going to start charging you to play the game with unrestricted access. It took them way too long to figure out how to do that, and that's why people are upset now. The absolute dumbest part is that this is barely any different from the way they monetized HoTS, so it's baffling why they didn't just put this system in place at the outset.
A big part of the reason they designed card acquisition this way is that they wanted to emulate the pre-internet physical trading card experience of different people having very different collections. Anyone with the most rudimentary number sense could have told them that THIS IS AN EXTREMELY STUPID DESIGN GOAL.
It may have been fun and interesting when you were a kid, and you only knew 20 people who collected cards, and if you were to play a game with those cards, the meta would consist of 20 players, and you'd all have extremely limited knowledge of the game system as a whole.
When you are designing a card game for the internet, where everyone has nearly instant access to the full card list, extensive knowledge of the entire metagame, and the ability to play with anyone in the world of any income level, you simply cannot hope that people will be happy leaving the shape of their collection to random chance. Instead of keeping them coming back for more in the hope of getting a specific wished-for card, it's just as likely to frustrate them and drive them away forever.
Needless to say, they very unwisely tipped their hand when they released the monstrously predatory Nexus garbage for testing. They burned a hell of a lot of good will when the players saw just how much money Second Dinner hoped to make from anyone willing to pay cash to accelerate the card acquisition process.
So, for me, nothing short of a total overhaul would ever entice me to spend a dime on Marvel Snap. Ideally, they'd let people buy fixed sets of cards for fixed sums, and find some way other than card acquisition to make additional money.
Also, the question about player retention was adorable -- as if any developer would ever give a meaningful, honest answer to that.
If they provide the tools to create a deck that 95% of the player base cannot hope to use well, it's still a design fail.
All those buffs to Rogue, and the entire class is still a Dumpster fire. Amazing.
It's so broadly strong in the field, though. Wouldn't it be better to ban it?
Hearthstone lore is not the same as official WoW lore. That's why we can have fun things like Ragnaros, Lightlord.
I'm not surprised at all. The hype train was already losing steam, and this brought it to a screeching halt. Dropping the metaphor, people who were not in beta were already losing interest, and I suspect this idiocy caused a LOT of them to abandon the game altogether.
There will always be some who are willing to endure any conditions to play something for free, but people who actually spend money on games are not foolish enough to buy into such a bad deal.
I've been waiting a long time for this feature, and it looks like I'll continue waiting. This drippy half-measure is not even close to adequate. I want UI elements where I can enter how many to open, and I absolutely want the post-opening summary. Without those, I'm better off with the old one-at-a-time method.
You've pretty much answered your own question. Opening more than a hundred packs at one time is extremely tedious. There's no excitement or anticipation because you know you'll end up with all the cards anyway. The only question is how much dust you'll have to spend to grab the last few legendaries.
With Brann, you get two of each, minus one due to board space, which means if you high roll, you'll have two 6-attack charge minions.
Without Brann, if you have two Castle Kennels in play, you can boost the charge to 9 attack.
It also lets DH fish for Relics.
Seems like a fun game, but I hate everything about the business model and the way they are rolling it out.