Developer Update for the Week of April 6, 2025: What If… Edition (20+ Questions)!

Welcome back to this week’s Developer Update! Here’s a round up of this week’s Marvel Snap news:

• This week’s edition comes after the launch of the newest Season, What If…?
• New Season Pass card Captain Carter and Series 5 card Goliath: Make sure to check out our Bonus Challenge guide for a post-release review of the cards and new decklists!
• The latest patch! If you haven’t seen what was changed with the update, be sure to check out the official patch notes and the datamine for the upcoming seasons!

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!

Card Specific Questions

Q: Why doesn’t Sam Wilson’s Shield buff Captain Carter despite the Shield saying “when this moves to Cap’s location”?
A: Glenn “At no point did we plan for the Shield to buff Carter. That’s not the story the Sam Wilson Captain America card is telling mechanically and creatively. That story is about Sam dealing with the legacy of picking up the shield Steve carried and becoming Captain America–it’s not a story Captain Carter plays any part in.

The only reason we wrote ‘Cap’s Shield’ is because ‘Captain America’s Shield’ didn’t fit on three lines, and we thought it sounded better than saying ‘the Shield.’ I am sure wishing I’d gone with ‘the Shield’ these days, though!”

Q: Does Silver Surfer create design constraints? Like if Lasher, Scarlet Spider, or Captain Carter were 3-Costs, they would be too strong because of Surfer?
A: Glenn “Not really. It comes up from time to time, but it wasn’t a factor in any of the examples you cited.

Lasher: We wanted the effect cheap so that you could pair it with a wider range of enablers, and also to facilitate activate.

Scarlet Spider: 3/4 would be too strong at base rate, and 3/3 looks a bit too weak even if it might be fine.

Captain Carter: Has the potential to make more Power on-curve with minimal investment than is appropriate for a 3-Cost card.

I don’t recall a recent Series 5 card where Surfer was a limiting consideration in design. Comes up with OTAs more often probably, but still not much of a blocker.”

Q: How will Mysterio interact with Strange Supreme? Will the real Mysterio be safe?
A: Glenn “He’ll be equally able to absorb all 3–he can’t tell them apart either.”

Q: If Captain Carter won’t get a buff from Cap's Shield, would Bucky ever get a buff if he becomes Captain America in a future card?
A: Glenn “If we made Bucky Barnes, Captain America (or any other major character as actual Captain America), I imagine we’d at least consider expanding the Shield. It’s still Sam’s card and Sam’s legacy that we’re aiming to showcase with the design—for example, we’re not changing Mjolnir to buff Steve anytime soon, either—so my inclination is we’d keep everything as-is. But there’s at least a conversation to have there.”

Q: If Eson can pull new ‘phases’ of Khonshu, why isn’t Victoria hand buffing them? They both use keyword “create”. Same with Apocalypse
A: Glenn “Because while a transformed card counts as having been created, it doesn’t count as having been created in the player’s hand—Khonshu is transformed after he’s discarded and returned, it’s not the same thing as adding a card to hand like Agent 13 does.

Apocalypse isn’t transformed or otherwise recreated, he just gets Power.”

Q: Will Goliath get the ability in the future to update his power while in hand, like Knull and some other ongoings do?
A: Glenn “Yes, we’ll be updating him.”

Other Questions

Q: Why were the prices of packs omitted from the initial announcement?
A: Glenn “We’re still finalizing the finer points, so we didn’t fix those values unnecessarily early. We have prices we’ve planned, but we’re maintaining flexibility to ensure we release the best system we can as we continue to test, model, and even collect player feedback.”

Q: Was the new system not meant to improve card acquisition rate overall as well as agency?
A: Glenn “Given the price of the packs and the drop rates of other rewards (including bonus cards) isn’t released yet, the potential of the system to improve card acquisition rates isn’t public. However, improving agency is our primary goal–getting 3 cards a player wants, for many, is more fun than getting 1 card they want and 3 they don’t. The system will actually favor longer-term players, as they’ll be able to spend resources to target specific cards more often.”

Q: Is the Series 5 bloat ever going to be addressed?
The removal of S4 releases contributed to this and the announcement provides no indication of change on this front, meaning S4 Packs will hold significantly less value.
A: Glenn “The Series system wasn’t designed with any premise that higher Series will have fixed ratios vs. lower Series. Furthermore, we released more Series 4 cards last month than any other season (the 3 Portal Pull cards) so it’s inaccurate to say that we’ve removed them; they’re just being released in a new way. As for the value of a Series 4 pack, you buy it and get an unowned Series 4 card–that’s a fairly consistent value. If we were to follow your assumption, fewer Series 4 cards also would mean a player is able to get a specific card they want from that pack more often.”

Q: With more cards being released each month, has the QA team made any changes to workload or hired people to accommodate?
A: Addison “Both! Everything with our department is a matter of trying to shift resources and adjust strategy depending on whatever the new needs are release to release. That’s just the nature of game development!

At the moment, we have some additional folks we can include along the pipeline to help test, but we also have changes to that pipeline itself that we can make or expand on to help scale.

As always, we’ll kind of see how things go over time and adapt as needed.”

Q: When can you confirm if Snap Packs will launch in April or June?
A: Griffin “As soon as we know we’ll let everyone know.”

Q: The season pass card enters the new S5 pack pool instanly when the season ends. So if I don’t buy the current pass, can i wait to the next season and do a mega open to get all that season cards + the season pass card?
A: Griffin “Yep. That would work.”

Q: Are tokens replacing credits as login reward, or are they additional?
A: Griffin “No, Tokens will be an additional login reward.”

Q: Hey Addison, I noticed that the Patch Notes mentioned some changes around the post-season rank reset rules, when should we expect to see these in effect?
A: Addison “The new rules around Rank Reset mentioned in the patch notes should occur at the end of the April “l’What If…?’ season going into the start of the May season. I would not expect to see them take effect as we transition from ‘Prehistoric Avengers’ to ‘What If…?’ (previous rules should apply).”

Q: The app store says High Voltage is coming again this month. Can you confirm we are getting it 2 months in a row?
A: Griffin “Yes, it’s back. The other events weren’t quite ready for the spotlight.”

Q: Why is the PMV removed from this month’s twitch drops?
A: Griffin “We’re trying Volts this time. That’s it. Trying something new.”

Q: Has something changed with Snap’s customer support?
A: Glenn “Great question! Starting this month, we have moved to a new Customer Support team as part of our on-going publishing transition.

While the new team gets familiar with our process there may be a few lapses in previous coverage. You can expect new agents coming to help more on Discord in the coming days and weeks.

In the meantime, please head to the support site if you have an issue to open a formal ticket. https://marvelsnap.helpshift.com/ “

Q: Will we be able to preview what cards we can unlock from each pack?
A: Glenn “You’ll be able to see the cards you can get from each pack, but if you own every eligible card you won’t be able to acquire that pack at all.”

Q: Is there a threshold you measure for when the meta is mostly mirror matches each week when a new card is released and tested? Is this something you would change?
A: Glenn “No, we don’t exercise a rigid threshold in the short-term. Metagames are often self-correcting, so we give them the time to do that. If an issue persists, that’s when we consider corrective action. All of our data indicates that the ‘weekly metagame’ element of SNAP is an important feature for a majority of players, and one of our key appeals relative to our competitors.:

Q: Will we ever see a card that takes advantage of the banished graveyard?
A: Glenn “We expect to make designs that might care about banished cards, such as counting them, checking their qualities, etc. But we plan for the cards that are banished to stay there.”

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 does the new system mean for Series Drops and their frequency?
A: Glenn “I’m not particularly involved with Series Drops, but it’s long been established that Series 3 isn’t an inevitable landing place for every card in Marvel Snap (just tons of them).”

Q: One thing I’m not entirely clear on regarding rewards is what will happen to the Spotlight Chests I’ve already claimed when the Snap Packs arrive?
A: I assume by “Spotlight Chests you’ve claimed, you are reffering to Keys you have claimed off the CL track. If that’s wrong, let me know. Any remaining keys you have will be converted into 3,000 tokens per key.

Q: Does the new Snap Pack system completely remove chests? or is it just an addition to the existing system?
A: Spotlight Chests and keys will be removed from the game and replaced with Snap Packs. If you are referring to Collector’s Reserves, those are staying as is.

Q: I have a bug regarding copy pasting deck codes! Is this being fixed?
A: This has been reported already! No official word on how soon it will be addressed, but it is reported. Players are saying if you reset the game after seeing the bug, it fixes itself so you don’t have to copy paste over and over.

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!