Developer Update for the Week of April 27, 2024: White Widow Edition (20+ 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 are the chances Doctor Octopus always pulls Shang-Chi, why is this season full of new toxic cards, can we get multiple custom card slots, 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 White Widow! If you don’t know if this card is worth a Spotlight Cache, make sure to check out our weekly Spotlight Cache guide, as well as our White Widow and Baron Zemo Bonus Challenge guide!

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: Is it intended that if Lady Deathstrike destroys Nova on a location with a Brood with 3 Power, she will also destroy Brood (and the Broodlings) despite them being 4 Power after Nova?
A: Glenn “Correct, her ability looks for every valid target on resolution and then locks them in. Everything in the game is coded that way; for example, Carnage won’t eat Angel if the first card he eats summons Angel into play, nor will Destroyer blow Wolverine up over and over if he jumps left to right. Overall, I think this structure is much easier to understand and predict than a system of rechecks.”

Q: Why does Invisible Woman Reveal before Dark Dimension?
A: Glenn “The rule is that locations happen before cards when their triggers are the same. For example, Bishop gets his +1 after Death’s Domain destroys the card you play.

Cards’ On Reveal abilities happen before everything else, but that’s also because locations can’t reveal at the same time as a card—even if they did share the timing, they couldn’t share a window.”

Q: Why does Nico trigger before locations if the rule is locations trigger before cards?
A: Glenn “Nico and Iron Fist are unique, because they attach their trigger to the player to accommodate the delay (in case Nico is transformed or otherwise removed, for example). And players’ triggers do precede locations. However, these abilities are also themselves created by On Reveal abilities, so there’s some ground to stand on within the existing logic.”

Q: Do you know what the mathmatical chance of pulling Shang-Chi is with Doctor Octopus? The memes suggest it’s 100%
A: Glenn “If the opponent has Shang-Chi in a 7-card hand and you play Ock at an empty location, my napkin math for HYPGEOMDIST indicates you’re >50% to pull the Shang. Given any opponent with Shand-Chi in their deck is also ~67% to draw it by turn 5, it’s just a mathematically likely outcome.”

Q: Why does Red Hulk‘s power grow if he gets discarded and is in the graveyard?
A: Glenn “Hm, that sounds like a bug. I’ll look into it.”

Other Questions

Q: Why write text as “once per game” for cards like Black Knight instead of “The next time x, y”?
A: Glenn ” ‘The next time’ has proven to have some confusing expectations with cards like Shanna and Jubilee, and once per game is very clear in function without being any longer.”

Q: Will there ever be card with “twice/3 times/etc. per game”?
A: Glenn “Probably!”

Q: Why don’t I face many bots after rank 90?
A: Glenn “The only reason a player encounters a bot in the upper ranks of the ladder is if the matchmaking queue is taking too long to find them an appropriate match within their MMR band.”

Q: Can you clarify what qualifies as being “upper ranks” and if possible explaon the thinking around this change (if it is indeed a change)? Is the thinking that too many players are hitting infinite?
A: Glenn “There’s been no change, nor do we believe too many players (or too few) are Infinite. The system has always been designed in the interests of providing timely matchmaking queues; it’s just a mathematical inevitability that populations reduce the more you restrict matchmaking by skill or rank, because a) skilled players are a minority in the total audience, and b) making Infinite additionally selects skilled players into a different matchmaking pool for post-Infinite play.”

Q: Is it intended that if a card is destroyed immediately when placed onto Castle Zemo, it will reappear on the opponent’s side despite being destroyed?
A: Glenn “This is a bug.”

Q: What does the team think about the X-Men ’97 show?
A: Stephen “It’s must watch TV for me every week.  I remember as a kid making sure I had a VHS ready to record it every week when it came out in the 90s.  It’s one of the main reasons I fell in love with comic books and Marvel.  So glad they brought it back and hope it’s had success for them so we can get more stuff like it in the future!”

Q: Are you concerned about nerfing cards too soon after release? Players saved up for cards like Red Hulk only for a nerf a few weeks later.
A: Glenn “Our goal remains the same: to release cards that impact the metagame and find healthy long-term homes, which should make them additive to any collection. I don’t think you have to look far on the nerf list to see that many of the cards we’ve adjusted remain excellent, and we expect the same for Red Hulk.”

Q: Would you consider featuring cards in a cache or something that have been recently buffed? While it feels bad to get a card and see it nerfed soon after, it feels worse to pass on a card during its spotlight week only to see it be buffed when it is unavailable.
A: Glenn “We are considering improvements in this space.”

Q: Why are you incentivizing toxic gameplay with multiple new cards this season?
A: Glenn “One of the things we’ve experimented with this year is building seasons to cater to gameplay that matches their creative. Planet Hulk was a season for big Power, Black Order was for Thanos and blades (discard), and AvX was for team-up combos. Part of the fantasy of Zemo’s Thunderbolts are that the heroes are actually villains, so this season is tempting players to the dark side a bit.”

Q: Why do super rare avatars cost 400 Gold? Could we see any adjustments to match the rare avatar cost?
A: Stephen “The avatars rarity matches that of their variant.  We are not currently planning to make any changes.”

Q: When will the Vibranium Offers return?
A: Griffin “Thanks for all these reports. Vibranium Offers appeared in error and the team has now removed it. Let us know if you’re still seeing it or experiencing errors.”

Q: Is it intended you can buy multiple pro bundles?
A: Stephen “Yes the pro bundle being available for an additional purchase was intended.”

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: Can we get multiple custom card slots so we can make multiple cards for different decks?
A: Stephen “We plan to add ability to earn more custom card slots in the future.  Don’t have an ETA right now”

Q: Could we see any plans to change the daily offer shop to rotate every 8 hours?
A: KentErik “no plans to change it atm.”

Q: How could you get an art variant that you made in MarvelSnap?
A: Stephen “Hit up impulse139 on Twitter.”

Q: The card that has more splits, seems to have lower chance get booster. Is that true? Is boarder the only factor?
A: Stephen “If you have less than 50 boosters on your infinity card then it will get 2x weight.  If you have over 50 boosters on your infinity card then it gets 1x weight… The system looks at the card you are playing in your deck when determining weights… Custom cards are treated like infinity border cards for booster selection after each match”

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!