Developer Update for the Week of April 13, 2024: U.S. Agent Edition (35+ Questions)!

Hello all! Welcome back to this week’s breakdown of what’s happening over on the Marvel Snap official Discord! This week, we get answers to questions such as: what else is coming go the cosmetic shop, why are some players having lag after the update, where are Baron Zemo’s gold weekend missions, and more! If you want to stay up to date with what’s coming and what answers developers have for the community, make sure to check back here each week!

This week’s edition comes after the launch new card U.S. Agent! If you don’t know if this card is worth a Spotlight Cache, make sure to check out our weekly Spotlight guide, as well as our U.S. Agent Bonus Challenge guide! This week also comes after the latest patch! Be sure to read the patch notes as many questions reference the newest changes.

Answers and questions may be slightly rephrased for more clarity and ease of reading. This week’s topics will be divided into Card Specific Questions, Other Questions, and Questions From You!

Remember, you can check out our new Marvel Snap Developer Tracker to see all questions and answers in real time! Topics can also be searched, filtered, and sorted.

Card Specific Questions

Q: With Ant-Man and Rocket Racoon now a 1/5, could Hawkeye see a buff to 1/5 to fit with Cerebro or work with bounce better?
A: Glenn “I’ve considered it, but his condition is a lot simpler and it feels a little off to give that much Power in the starter deck to a 1-Cost. Might explore some other solves. Since C5 now technically has four 1-Cost 5-Power cards, I think that specific upside is fairly low.”

Q: Can new Zabu reduce the cost of 4-costs cards by 2 if you, say, played it on Wong?
A: Glenn “Yes, that works”

Q: Was Sandman too strong pre-nerf?
A: Glenn “No, you’ve misunderstood our intent. We’re saying that before the patch, we’ve always tried to aim Sandman low but relevant. However, that has been a difficult balance point to maintain, and has often meant he just can’t do his job, seeing too little play to be a satisfying card due to the risks of seeing too much.

The patch change is also not a nerf, but a general buff. While he is less impactful alongside Electro in existing Ramp decks, he is dramatically more impactful as an unaided play on turn 5. We expect that will make him more effective as a tech card than he could be as a ramp target.”

Q: Why is Red Hulk started high with a high bonus as well? With one trigger, he’s better than Giganto with no restrictions.
A: Glenn “Red Hulk is certainly something of an experiment, as his drawback is largely centered on how he interacts with the cube system. Because we don’t have many other cards like that, measuring exactly how much Power it’s worth wasn’t straightforward. We probably overshot it a touch, but I don’t agree that it obsoletes either of those cards given most of them still see play in the same decks. Infinaut in Evo is the most prominent case where one’s been replaced, and it’s also enabled other changes like a decreased need for Magik (which is a role of new cards–to create room for variation).”

Q: Have you considered changing Alioth back to targeting all cards played this turn? That way he gains back strength without targeting Invisible Woman so directly.
A: Glenn “We left this alone in part to reduce the amount of change, but also because the new Alioth can still fairly easily lose at Invisible Woman’s location.”

Q: In your blog post, you said you nerfed Alioth because losing to it was frustrating. Well, losing is frustrating, and it makes no difference whether you lose to Alioth, Shang Chi, Enchantress, or any other tech cards. You have answered questions about Alioth many times before, that it is crucial for the health of the game, because before you always wanted to lose prio on turn 6 to Shang Chi, Enchantress, Shadow King or whatever, so Alioth gave you an alternative and a reason to be scared of doing that, so what changed?
A: Glenn “1. Losing isn’t always frustrating to everyone. Some experiences are also more likely to be frustrating than others. Plus, even if something is frustrating, that doesn’t mean it can’t be improved upon.

2. I don’t think I ever characterized Alioth as “crucial” to anything, but you’re correct his purpose was to diversify incentives around how to manage priority on turn 6. That remains Alioth’s role, just in a less universally powerful way (and in a *very* small number of cases more powerfully, such as against Armor). If he’s not good enough at it, we can do a variety of things.

3. Our balance changes don’t serve opinions about the cards, they serve our goals for the play experience–including creating enough flux and change to avoid it becoming stale. In Alioth’s case, we’re weakening a major reward for obtaining priority after months of that being a strong thing to do. Similarly, we recently buffed Angela to return strength to an archetype that had spent months in a much weaker state.”

Q: What would happen to the meta if Leech was (hypothetically) removed from the game?
A: Glenn “Very little, but that’s because most release valves are like fire extinguishers–very little would change if they were removed, except that you’d be in trouble if you needed one and it was missing. Having cards like Leech, Mobius, etc. ensures that players can react to specific gameplay strategies as they arise.”

Q: Why doesn’t Iron Man double living Tribunal’s power before being split between locations?
A: Glenn “Living Tribunal applies ‘last.’ That’s important for him to work at all, as any other answer means that the locations won’t have equal Power a ton of the time. If Iron Man applied after LT, so would Devil Dinosaur, Knull, Nidavellir, etc.”

Q: Could move cards like Ghost-Spider or Iron Fist get an indicator like other cards that show what will be targeted?
A: KentErik “Yes, we would like to add it to any card where we can try to preview a target / targets for you”

Q: Is there a card that the team would like to buff or nerf, but don’t know how because it would likely ruin the card?
A: Glenn “I don’t know if I’d go so far as to say ‘ruin’, but Valkyrie is an example of a card that has a lot of numbers but is fairly inflexible.”

Q: Why did you move all of the good cards out of Cerebro 4 and into Cerebro 3 or 5?
A: Glenn “Every Cerebro deck inevitably gets potential new cards; we don’t set out to improve any of them specifically, since it will always happen organically.”

Other Questions

Q: Why didn’t Baron Zemo get gold weekend missions like previous season pass cards?
A: Stephen “Zemo will still get season pass missions with the same total Gold other season pass cards have received from weekend missions.

The final two weekend of the season will both include a Zemo mission.  That mission will have double the amount of gold as usual to ensure the same total amount of gold from weekend missions.

Think of the other few weeks as extra credits that previously wouldn’t have been available plus you aren’t forced into playing a Zemo deck every weekend if you would prefer not.

We could have communicated it better but our intent was to add value not add stress like it has so far.  Hopefully everyone can enjoy a few weekends of broader missions and extra credits before pulling out Zemo decks to finish the season with big gold missions.”

Q: How will the new weekend mission system work for 5 week seasons like this one? Previous 5 week seasons offered more total gold (600 vs 750).
A: Stephen “Week 4 and 5 of the season will have a Baron Zemo weekend mission with 375 Gold each for 750 Gold total to represent the 5 week season.”

Q: Will you add new ways to spend collector tokens?
A: Stephen “We plan to add additional opportunities to use tokens on cosmetics in the future.  Still working out design details but will share more in the future.”

Q: What Avatars do devs like to use?
A: Addison “rock on Live, though in playtests internally I tend to use M'Baku because his is my favorite of the starting set of avatars!”

Stephen “I primarily use infinite conquest versions of Kael Iron Man, Kim Jacinto Darkhawk, or Kai Doom.  I also use the spotlight version of Artgerm Jean Grey for my Phoenix force deck.”

Q: Would you ever make proving grounds only 1 round?
A: Stephen “We may make proving grounds 8 health one day…we have talked about it but there is some UI weirdness that we have to solve first.  We dig that the community creates its own memes and rules and try to embrace them when we can.”

Q: What all can we expect to see in the cosmetic shop?
A: Stephen “All rare and super rare avatars will show up in the new cosmetic shop section as well as some new emotes.  We plan to add additional cosmetics to it over time like titles, card backs, and new yet to be released cosmetics like collectible borders and splits”

Q: Do Cosmetic Shop purchases progress your bonus reward bar?
A: Stephen “They do not contribute towards the daily offer bonus rewards”

Q: Is the new custom card feature mentioned in the patch notes already in the game?
A: Stephen “That feature is in the next update later this month!  It was accidentally included in these patch notes”

Q: Will every new variant in the daily shop to release alongside its avatar from now on?
A: Stephen “Yup!  When a card comes out in the daily offer shop its avatar will also be available in the cosmetic shop.”

Q: Are the avatars in the Cosmetic Shop exclusive to the shop?
A: Stephen “The Super Rare avatars will be limited to being available only from the cosmetic shop or from a PMV if you have all the super rare variants.”

Q: Have you discussed only reworking a card dramatically if has entered Series 3? Some players bought Alioth or Zabu right before the change and got the rug pulled on them.
A: Glenn “Our card changes are made in support of fun gameplay and a healthy metagame. Tying them to indefinite Series adjustments doesn’t align with their purpose.”

Q: With emotes in many new places, are they exclusive to certain areas or will they all end up in the Cosmetic Shop?
A: Stephen “Emotes are exclusive to where they appear.  Album, Bundle, and Season Pass emotes will not appear in the cosmetic shop.”

Q: Why is my game lagging so bad after the update?
A: Stephen “This particular update has a Unity version change as part of it.  When we update the version of Unity it means that all assets have to be redownloaded.  While those assets are downloading performance degrades.

A way to get through it quicker is to go to settings and hit ‘Download All Assets’.  Once you get them all redownloaded then performance should be similar to the previous version of the game.

We are also rolling out optimizations to collection track performance in the next patch later this month that will hopefully make that experience much better.”

Q: Why does the new Bonus Booster section not always feature 3 cards?
A: Stephen “If you have less than 3 cards that need boosters to be upgradable then only the cards that still need boosters will show up.

I took a note to update this feature to fill any remaining slots with random other upgradable cards.  No eta on when that change would hit”

Q: Why are emotes costed at 2200 gold and avatars at 250 and 400 gold?
A: Stephen “Emotes are priced based off being the top prize for completing an album.  Albums are a major goal and accomplishment.  It was important to maintain the value of completing an album, but we wanted to make some emotes available to folks not interested in albums as well.  If it ends up missing the mark we will re evaluate whether they make sense in the cosmetic shop”

Q: Why does my collection track have a yellow icon in some items now?
A: Stephen “It means it came from a collectors reserve!  We wanted to enable you to see the history of opening them”

Q: In the accidental notes for the upcoming custom card update it reads “As a result when you Infinity split a variant you will not get a duplicate combination.” Does that mean if I split Phoenix Force and get Gold/Blue Krackle that I will NEVER get Gold/Blue Krackle for say Pixel Cyclops? Since the Custom Card will allow me to assign that combo to any card?
A: Stephen “It means that you will not get Gold / Blue Krackle for Phoenix Force again on another variant.  You can then apply Gold / Blue Krackle in Custom Card to any Phoenix Force variants.

You still have to unlock Gold / Blue Krackle on Cyclops to use it on Cyclops variants”

Q: Is the team considering hiring more people to keep up with these bugs and maintenance needs?
A: Glenn “We’re constantly hiring; in fact, we’re onboarding a record number of employees right now, including engineering hires.”

Q: A term was used in your blog post was “turn 6 meta”. What exactly does this mean?
A: Glenn “The ‘turn 6 meta’ was a commentary on most decks having become quite settled on specific cards and play patterns for use on turn 6. That’s not problematic, but in general SNAP is more fun when turn 6 isn’t predictable, because it heightens the tension around the cubes at stake and makes good decisions feel more rewarding.””

Q:Is the team aware of the bug that disables the End Turn button and may cost players the match if they are playing a deck that doesn’t play cards on turns 1 and 2?
A: Glenn “Yes, we have a fix for this prepared that should ship alongside the Cache update.”

Q: Which card saw the highest drop in play rate after its nerf?
A: Glenn “Probably the original Leader rework, but I don’t track that. (historically speaking; we do track winrate deltas)”

Q: With a huge number of titles and Avatars, but a small number of emotes, will they have a weighted appearance rate in the conquest shop?
A: Stephen “We have some safeguards to make sure an emote shows up within a reasonable time period to protect them from the number of avatars”

Questions From You!

Each week, I ask readers of the weekly dev update to leave their questions down in the comment section. That way we can ask those questions on your behalf, or let you know the answers if those questions have been asked before! I read each comment you leave, so I will be adding this section at the end of each week’s edition to highlight your questions that you asked last week!

Q: What are your thoughts about these Mill decks, especially on hot location days when they destroy your entire deck?
A: Glenn “Part of the purpose of hot locations is to shake up the metagame, and in this case with a location that supports Zemo. Without the help of Kamar-Taj, this gameplay is dramatically less consistent, and even borderline irrelevant in some matchups (Loki, Thanos, Ramp, some Bounce lists). Even for others, it’s quite beatable.”

Q: Why does Conquest feature the same locations repeatedly in different matches over the same game?
A: KentErik “Luck is like that sometimes, I’m afraid to say.”

Keep Your Questions and Feedback Coming!

That’s all for this week’s update! Be sure to check back here at Marvel Snap Zone for next week’s update! If you enjoyed the amount of content in this edition, make sure to keep asking your questions to the developers by submitting it in their official Discord in the “#ask-the-team” channel. If you have questions and don’t use Discord, leave your questions for the developers in the comment section here, and I will make sure your question has been answered by the devs!

If you have feedback or changes you would like to see with these weekly updates, also let us know in the comment section!