How do you feel about progress carrying over from beta to release?

I was blessed to have received an invite into the closed beta for Marvel Snap, and I’m having a blast playing the game. One thing that surprised me was all the monetization was already in and active. You could spend your real money. But why would the developers let people spend money on a closed beta when the progress would get wiped when the game went live? The only answer that made sense was progress wasn’t going to get wiped. I started digging around the Marvel Snap website, and discovered that was exactly the case.

Does my progress in closed beta carry over to official launch?

Yes! As mentioned above, players in this closed beta can keep playing even after official launch. All accounts and progress will be carried over once MARVEL SNAP has been released officially in your region.

Some people are understandably worried this decision will give beta testers a huge head start. As of this writing, I’m already at Collection Level 265 and I have acquired many cards. I can make decks far more powerful than someone with only the starter set.

But there are two mitigating factors. First, it’s impossible for a new player to matched against an experienced player. The ranked ladder is broken into tiers, one at every ten levels (except for the first two which are just five levels each). You can only be matched against people in your tier. A new player starts at Recruit (1-5) and then Agent (5-10) before they get to Iron (10-20). Once you get past level 10, it becomes your floor. You can’t drop below that level again. A new player will not be matched against any beta tester until they progress into at least Iron.

The second factor is that not long after release the number of players who didn’t participate in beta will far exceed the number that did. At least, Second Dinner hopes that’s the case. There will be a low percentage chance any player you see after release was in the closed beta.

Second Dinner could always change their mind and reset progress, but I find that idea to be incredibly unlikely. They would have to wipe out all the cards and other rewards from closed beta. Some of those rewards would have come from players spending their real money. I can’t imagine that would go over well.

Blizzard is facing a similar situation with their Diablo Immortal PC beta. It’s running on the same servers as the mobile game. The PC beta testers are playing alongside players in the live game. Blizzard has stated that progress earned in the PC beta will also not be wiped. It’s something of a different situation than Marvel Snap, but in both cases, beta progress will carry over to the live game.

How do you feel about progress from a beta version carrying over to the live game? Do you think either Blizzard or Second Dinner should revisit these decisions?