Snap Chat, So To Speak

 I am finding my desire to play against people who have clearly spent hundreds of pounds to power up their decks just so they can get "free cards" is waning quite considerably.

I've been playing Marvel SNAP for a little while now - apparently since November - and I don't play it "competitively" (the way I used to when I first installed it years ago) because there is demonstrable evidence the algorithms that run it are incredibly biased against players who don't pay for content and cards. 

But even if you ignore that, it is clearly a "pay to win" game, because if you pay for "premium content" or you pay for collector tokens, or gold (which allows you to pay for collector tokens) then you can get far more powerful cards, and far more specific cards.

Essentially the more real money you spend, the better your decks are.

And I have no problem with this, because that's how capitalism works. It's how I have games I like on the PS5, and streaming services, and better stuff in my house. It's how I have more DLC for certain games and why I have a Thestral Mount in Legacy.

What I object to - and I don't think this is entirely unfair - is when it is allowed in competitive games. When you have one player who has a pistol and one player who has a tank. Or one player who has a wand that casts tickling charms and one player that casts killing curses.

I think that if the game is going to be truly fair, and that if you match two players up and they have an equitable chance of winning against each other - then you should match players that are at least of vaguely equal power. Not one deck that is WILDLY over-powered compared to the other. 

I'm not suggesting you wait for two players with the same decks - that would be ridiculous. But there must be some way to measure the potential of the various decks, and if you have one deck that can easily, obviously and blatantly overpower another then perhaps you don't match the players. 

Also - and it's not too hard to do this - perhaps put some thought into the locations as well. If one player has a motion based deck, and another has a destroy based deck, don't pick locations that BLATANTLY favour one player over the other. Because that just seems to be a tad one sided. Either provide locations that can help them both or hinder them both. 

But when one has a destroy deck, and one has a motion deck, and you have Danger Room, Death's Domain and Fisk Tower then really - just how do you take that as not favouring one player over another? 

These are just things that have been annoying me for a little while, but it turns out if you mention these things in chat rooms (discord, reddit or the like) people tell you that you are just being a sore loser or a bit grumpy. 

Then when you point out that in 284 games the 50/50 chances have gone against you 232 times which is far more than random chance would suggest is possible, they tell you that you are exaggerating or making it up. (But that's where the algorithm stuff comes in).

So overall this is where the "not being competitive" comes in, because while I do get a little annoyed about it, it's not so much that I want to uninstall the application and stop playing. Because as annoying and rant-inducing as it can be, there are fun times with it as well.

Especially when someone clearly thinks they are going to beat you, and you can drop in a card at the last moment and completely screw them over. (Someone was 12 points up in every location, then I pulled out KillMonger and wiped out 8 of their cards, shredding them completely. Kind of funny).