Last week, MARVEL SNAP developers teased that changes were coming to the card acquisition system of the game, but were reticent in providing details. Now, we're not experts in game design, but we figured now would be a great time for OutOfGames to share five ways we'd fix card acquisition in MARVEL SNAP.

Before we begin, we should add a disclaimer: we aren't going to suggest anything that fundamentally goes against Second Dinner's design philosophy with regards to SNAP's card acquisition system. This means that, as much as we'd like to suggest something like, "Let players dust cards they don't want and craft cards they do," we won't because the developers have explicitly stated that this isn't something they want in MARVEL SNAP.

That being said, let's begin with something we're close to 100% certain needs to happen in the near future.

Split Series 3

We've talked about this before: Series 3 is too big. It has 92 cards and, if Second Dinner keeps up the monthly Series Drops, will have over 100 cards by the end of July. That's a massive section of the card pool, especially when you consider that the next biggest Series - Series 1 - has 46 cards, and Series 2 has only 25. Add to that the slowness of unpacking new cards from Collector's Caches and Reserves, and it's easy to see why, for a player just starting to trudge their way through the Series, it starts to feel like an endless climb.

The problem with acquiring cards in Series 3 isn't that cards are earned in a random order - that's how it is in Series 1 and 2, and most players appear to be OK with that. If players weren't, they never would have made it to Series 3 in the first place. But when it comes to Series 3, there are a number of issues (some of which we'll address later), and it all comes down to this: it feels impossible to unpack the cards one actually wants from a Collector's Cache when there are so many other cards in Series 3.

We've previously recommended sending a few cards from Series 3 down to Series 2, but now we think that things need to be a bit more drastic: If we're going to fix Series 3, it needs to be cut in half. There are enough cards in the current Series that an earlier ur-Series 3 can have 40+ cards without taking Series 3 Prime below 50. Cutting Series 3 into easier-to-digest pieces decreases the apparent variance of card acquisition and gives players a better chance of opening desired cards. It's simple math - if there are fewer cards you could receive, it feels like you're more likely to get the cards you want.

Our first change is a balm, a small salve for players who tremble at the idea of slogging through the massive Series 3. Our next solution returns to those players their control over targeted card acquisition.

Add Series 3 Back to the Token Shop

This is another solution that we've bandied about before, and we'll repeat ourselves: the Choose Your Card Shop, while nice on paper, does not work for players who have just begun Series 3 - partly because the massive number of cards in Series 3 makes it very unlikely that the card they want will show up in any given refresh, and partly because it's a once-a-Season magic bullet that doesn't do enough to grow their collection by itself.

Cutting Series 3 out of the Token Shop was, in our opinion, a huge mistake. It took away player agency and reduced the buying power of Tokens, a splashy currency that Second Dinner has been pushing on players recently with Token Tuesday and other Shop bundles. Thanks to those aforementioned bundles and changes to the Collector's Reserve, Tokens aren't hard to come by these days, and players should have more freedom to determine how they spend those Tokens, instead of being limited to the much smaller and much more expensive card pools of Series 4 and 5. (Don't get us started on Ultimate Variants.) If someone wants to drop 1000 Tokens on Adam Warlock, they should be free to do so. Frankly, we think Second Dinner would want to encourage that: With more ways to spend their Tokens, players will be more willing to buy Shop bundles containing Tokens.

If Second Dinner is unwilling to bring Series 3 cards back into the Token Shop, we have another suggestion that could help players near the beginning of Series 3 in a different way.

Extend the Mystery Card Reward

The Mystery Card Reward on the Collection Ladder is exactly what it says on the tin: a new card. It's an actual, achievable target that lies only a few steps up the Collection Ladder, incentivizing players to climb and see what new card they get to play with. Then the Mystery Card is replaced by the Collector's Cache near the beginning of Series 3. A Cache only contains a new card 50% of the time, but there's no in-game explanation of Collector's Caches or Reserves to tell players that; they have to find out by using a third-party guide. But even a helpful, easy-to-parse guide put together by an incredibly handsome writer can't change the fact that, thanks to Collector's Caches and Reserves, Series 3 is synonymous in every player's mind with an immediate throttling of their card acquisition.

The worst part is that Second Dinner cuts players off immediately; there's no gradual weaning, just an abrupt jump from the last Mystery Card to Collector's Caches. If you've ever had an addiction (maybe you collect Official Kellogg's Cereal Brand Bobbleheads), then you know the empty feeling that comes from being made to quit cold turkey - for instance, if your girlfriend gives your set of vintage Tony the Tigers to Lenny Two Hats, the homeless guy who hangs out at the gas station. You can't sleep, you can't eat (especially not Frosted Flakes), and you begin to wonder why you bother getting up in the morning. We're not saying that players are addicted to the Mystery Card - it's better that they aren't. This was just a fictional analogy with no bearing on recent events to demonstrate what happens when something a person is used to is suddenly taken away from them, Lisa.

If Second Dinner wants to make climbing through Series 3 a lot less of a slog, then they should replace some of the early Collector's Caches with more Mystery Cards. Our recommendation would be to weave them in, replacing every second or third Cache with a Mystery Card (while retaining the same odds of getting a card from a Cache), then have them slowly drop off at the higher levels of the Collection Ladder. This would make early Series 3 acquisition a lot quicker, but more importantly it would give a more desirable target to players for climbing up the Collection Ladder while slowly getting them used to Caches and Reserves.

Duplicate Protection

It took Hearthstone a few years to figure out that players don't like to open packs that contain Legendaries they already own, but once they got the memo they added in duplicate protection that guaranteed any Legendary opened would be an unowned one from that set (and, eventually, they extended this to the other rarities). Now, while MARVEL SNAP doesn't have packs to open and therefore doesn't need to worry about players getting duplicates of base cards, they do have something that can be a duplicate: Variants.

The MARVEL SNAP version of duplicate protection would look like this: a player who owns a Variant of a card would be protected from unlocking the base version of that card from Collector's Caches or Reserves until they had every other unowned card from that Series. As an example: If this duplicate protection had existed in December, then the Signature Nick Fury that was a log-in reward would have protected everyone who received it from unpacking the base Nick Fury until they owned a copy of every other Series 3 card. In the real world, this Variant that looked almost exactly identical to the base card didn't prevent Nick Fury from hanging over every player like the Sword of Damocles, waiting to appear in a later Reserve that would immediately feel like a waste.

This change might also provide a useful incentive for players to buy the Season Pass if it contains a Variant for a Series 3 card they don't already have, which can only be good for Second Dinner's bottom line.

Deliver to Us the Booster Sink That Was Promised

In the early days of MARVEL SNAP's beta, when Eru Ilúvatar was placing stars in the sky above Eä, a prophecy was spoken that one day there would be a Booster Sink - a mythical construct of pure dream and desire which would cause the mountains to quake and the rivers to rise, heralding a new epoch of equality and justice throughout the realm. Even now, many players (while some call them fools) wait for the Booster Sink of Promise, scanning the heavens for the signs of its arrival.

We never got many specifics about the Booster Sink, except that it would give players another way to spend their excess Boosters and cause angels in ecstasy to run barefoot over the sands of the Empty Quarter. We don't really know what the Booster Sink would look like (or even if we could look at it directly without being burned to ash by its celestial aura), but our guess is that it would have some cosmetic benefit. Perhaps it could give players more control over their cards' Split effects, something that might be nice for very handsome writers who are tired of getting the Rainbow background every single time.

Whatever form the Booster Sink takes (whether that of the Half-Man, Half-Lion Protector Deity or the Jackal-Headed God of Destruction), we think it's long past time that the players got to see what all the fuss was about. Anything that gives players more choices of how to spend their in-game currency would be a boon.

How would you make MARVEL SNAP's card acquisition feel better? Are there any problems you feel we've overlooked? Share your thoughts in the comments!