Today, Second Dinner announced an interesting change to the card acquisition system of MARVEL SNAP: Spotlight Caches, which are designed to help players add newer and rarer cards to their collections at a faster pace. They detailed the new system in their blog post, which we'll quote below as we analyze what this means for the game.

What is the Spotlight Cache?

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Spotlight Cache is a brand new way to acquire newly released cards, Series 4 cards, and Series 5 cards. Spotlight Cache system will appear after you’ve passed Collection Level (CL) 500. A Spotlight Cache will replace Collector’s Caches and Collector’s Reserves every 120CL. This means that one in every 10 Collector’s Reserves are becoming Spotlight Caches.

Why are Spotlight Caches so exciting? The answer is the CARDS! Each week, three different Series 4 and 5 cards will be featured – including the new card released that week! When you open a Spotlight Cache, you’re guaranteed to open one of those three cards, or a random S4/S5 card. If you already own one of the featured cards, the Spotlight Cache will instead feature a time-exclusive variant for the featured card. A picture is worth a thousand words, though, so here’s what it might look like for a week:

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The Spotlight Cache reward pool changes each week and features 1 brand new card, 2 existing Series 4/5 cards, and a Random Series 4/5 card.

Let's do some quick math before we move on, so we know exactly what we're getting into. On average, it costs 50 Credits to move up one level on the Collection Ladder - at that rate, moving up 120 levels (enough to get to the next Spotlight Cache) costs 6000 Credits. If you want to open four Spotlight Caches, that'll set you back 24000 Credits. Since the Spotlight Cache refreshes every week, it's probably best to temper your expectation of getting the brand-new card, as you'll probably open two (at most) Spotlight Caches in a given week.

Now, it's vital to point out that even owning a card available in the Cache won't guarantee getting a new card (either the newest card or one that you don't won) because that card is replaced by a Variant - which means you could spend all those Credits and wind up with a Variant for a card you already have. Still, this is an improvement to the game's card acquisition - who could've guessed that having a spot on the Ladder that is a guaranteed card would help card acquisition?

More Card for More Players

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You might be asking, “Why are you making this change?’. We want to bring more cards to more players – and this system helps make that possible for all players, no matter where they’re at in their journey. Whether you’re still working through Series 3 or you have nearly all Series 4/5 cards, you’ll see an increase in cards earned with the change to Spotlight Cache. If you’re a free-to-play player that completes your Daily Missions, you can expect to get a Series 4/5 card from your Spotlight Cache almost EVERY WEEK – this is a huge increase from having to grind 6000 Tokens to get a single Series 5 card all month in the old system!

We don't want to be the grump, but this does more to showcase how bad the previous system was, rather than demonstrate how great this new system is. That being said, we do like what we're seeing so far.

Also, it's important to note that Gold has been removed as a potential reward from Collector's Caches and Reserves, which means that free-to-play players will be relying more heavily on Weekly Missions for Gold (if that system remains the same). We guess it's a new way for Second Dinner to incentivize player spending on the game - that is, unless a player opened Gold from a Collector's Reserve and said, "I hope I never see another bar of Gold as long as I live," thereby summoning a tiny devil named Goldy who made all the Gold disappear with a spritely whistle and chuckle. [EDITOR'S NOTE: sule, no one's going to get that reference, you idiot]

Every Card Release is Impactful and Accessible

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One of the main feedback topics we’ve seen is that players didn’t feel they were able to enjoy or engage with new card releases each week. We definitely want to address this! Previously, we saw a very small portion of players able to get the new card each week. But, with Spotlight Cache, ~25% of players who finish their Daily Missions can get the new card each week – for free! This is going to bring more diversity to the decks you’re playing and seeing each week. Get ready to experiment in the Proving Grounds, build brand new decks, and face off against new cards while ranking up!

We know you like to target which cards you’ll add to your collection – this isn’t being removed. Featured Series 4 or Series 5 cards in Spotlight Cache give you the perfect opportunity to add cards you’ve been looking for to your collection. Have you been hoping to get the mighty Thanos to lead your growing army of heroes and villains? When Thanos is being featured in the Spotlight Cache, opening one that week gives you 1 in 4 chance to earn Thanos! Opening another one will give you 1 in 3 chance, and if you open 4, you are guaranteed to get all the featured Series 4/5 cards that week – including Thanos!

While the Collection Level Track and Spotlight Cache system will be your primary source for new cards to add to your collection; Collector’s Tokens and Token Shop will still exist as a back-up support system for unlocking targeted cards. As part of this change, we’re increasing the overall availability of cards, decreasing the emphasis on Token Shop, and decreasing the Collector’s Tokens that players receive in other ways. If a card has been eluding you in the Spotlight Cache, spending Collector’s Tokens in the Token Shop is another path to target the exact card you want. But, these won’t be your primary card acquisition tools, so spend them carefully and wisely!

We'll be honest - we thought for a second that this change would replace the Token Shop. While not perfect, the Token Shop remains the only way to guarantee adding a specific card to your collection, so we're happy (well, happy might be too strong of a word) to see that it isn't being shown the door just yet.

Upgrade Cards to Get More Cards

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We want to continue the excitement of progressing your Collection Score through the early Collection Level Track. For many established players, they missed the excitement of earning new cards in the Collection Level Track. So, we’re going back to our roots: upgrade cards to get more cards. We think this will be a much more enjoyable experience, provide clear goals, and again… bring more cards to more people!

We think the Spotlight Cache system will be a huge improvement to card acquisition for all MARVEL SNAP players. We’ve been talking about card acquisition changes for a while now and you’ve probably noticed a few changes while we’ve been exploring how to make this a better experience for all players. As always, this is an iterative process… and we plan on continuing to change things up and improve the system! Please keep sharing your thoughts and feedback so we can deliver on the forever game we believe MARVEL SNAP can be!

We're glad that it didn't take the developers too long to realize that guaranteed cards on the Collection Ladder is a great incentive to keep players engaged in the fundamental card collecting system. As a Series 3 complete player, I'm regularly stock-piling Credits mainly because I don't feel that there's any reason to use my Credits to upgrade cards and climb the Ladder. Now there's a shiny carrot dangling above me, and my smooth-brain self is ready to drop those Credits.

FAQ

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  • What happens to saved Collector’s Caches and Collector’s Reserves when the change happens?

Any saved Collector’s Caches or Collector’s Reserves will be turned into Spotlight Caches at the appropriate rate once the new system is live.

  • How are Collector’s Caches and Collector’s Reserves changing?

Every 4 Collector’s Cache now contain:

2 x Series 3 or below cards

1 x 100 Tokens

1 x Credits Box that can contain 150 or 200 Credits

Every 9 Collector’s Reserve now contain:

2 x Series 3 or below cards

1 x 100 Tokens

3 x Credits Box that can contain 150 or 200 Credits

3 x Cosmetic

  • Will Series 4 and Series 5 cards still appear in Collector’s Reserves?

All Series 4 and 5 cards are moving into the Spotlight Cache. Spotlight Cache replaces the current system and results in more cards for more players.

  • Are there fixed odds of finding a Series 4, Series 5, or Spotlight Variant in Spotlight Caches?

Think of the Spotlight Cache like a bag of four items. You pull out one at a time at random, each item having equal chance to be picked. You’ll have a 25% chance to get one of those, then a 33% chance to get one of the remaining options, then a 50% chance to get one of the remaining options, and finally a 100% chance to get the last item. Once the bag is empty, we fill it back up with four items. With Spotlight Cache release, whether something is S4, S5 or is a variant does not impact their drop chance. We want to see how this system plays out and continue to improve the system!

  • Will I know about Spotlight Cache rewards ahead of time?

We plan to announce the weekly Spotlight Cache reward pools at the start of each season. We hope that this will allow you to plan ahead and get excited for what’s coming in each season of MARVEL SNAP.

  • How does this interact with Flexible Series Drops?

This feature requires a healthy supply of Series 4 and 5 cards to function—more than our previous system could maintain over time. The recent reduction in Series Drop frequency for cards from Series 4 to Series 3 ensures that we can continue giving away this many cards through Spotlight Caches at this pace. We will announce any Series drop at least two weeks in advance of it happening. Since each of these announcements will precede a patch by two weeks, that’s a 6-week “safe” window to spend tokens on a card without it dropping.

There's one Question we're surprised doesn't register as Frequently Asked: When will Spotlight Caches come to MARVEL SNAP? Our guess is that they'll be here sometime during the July season (possibly at its very beginning), but who knows.

The change to Collector's Caches is welcome (although it sounds like there are additional changes coming to the CL - either they're moving Caches down the ladder into Series 2, or cards from Series 3 are moving down into Series 2 - thereby moving Series 2 up into Cache range). The change to Collector's Reserves... is fine. We think this means there will be more cards on average, but it also means there will be more cosmetics, which a lot of players see as superfluous.

Final thoughts: this change is welcome, but not the final salve to fix the problem of card acquisition in MARVEL SNAP. It will speed up the process of collecting new cards for players lower on the CL and give every player more chances to acquire cards they don't already own. Within the systems Second Dinner has designed, this is one of the better ways they could have solved this problem.

How do you feel about Spotlight Caches? Share your thoughts in the comments below?