Table of Contents
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: why doesn’t Mystique copy cards behind Invisible Woman anymore, are counter cards too punishing, why don’t the devs force app updates, 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 Series 5 card Speed! If you don’t know if this card is worth Spotlight Caches, make sure to check out our weekly Spotlight Cache guide, as well as our 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: Captain Marvel will move if she can predict her movement winning you the game, even with Kraven. If Hercules is on the board, does she know where she will be randomly moved to?
A: Glenn “I’m not in the code, but I believe the functionality is that she would know the future in this case and move accordingly.”
Q: Is Arishem just another (old) America Chavez? A card that you out in your deck but never play?
A: Glenn “America’s biggest offense wasn’t being a card you rarely play; it was just an additional undesirable issue on top of the generic deck thinning. Arishem is a fairly unique kind of card in that vein, but not the first (High Evolutionary) or the last.”
Q: It was previously teased that White Queen’s name would be changed to Emma Frost. What happened to that change?
A: Glenn “We encountered some technical issues related to how assets are named and stored that slowed our ability to make this kind of adjustment, and has led to some larger work.”
Q: Is it intended that Mystique doesn’t copy cards behind Invisible Woman anymore, and Task Master won’t copy Power anymore? Or is this a bug?
A: Addison “Hey, thanks for bringing this up!
There was some work done under the hood last patch to bring some consistency to how ‘Last Played’ is handled, specifically to support some upcoming cards. There was some confusion on our end as to what was intentional and what wasn’t with how this change impacted existing cards. The specific case you mentioned with Mystique and Invisible Woman was one that I had originally thought was working correctly after the change, but that, after some discussion, gameplay engineering and design confirmed today to be a bug.
So it’s been written up, it’s getting addressed, and with any luck it’ll be a server hotfix-able change we’ll be able to roll out sooner rather than later (as always though, plans could change and there could be some weird client dependency that changes this).
Thanks again! 🙂”
Other Questions
Q: Do you intend for certain cards to create a higher mental load for players? Like you need to remember who played Dracula first vs Captain Marvel first to know what will actually happen at the end of a game.
A: Glenn “‘Intended’ is a strong word. It’s true that we make many decisions to lighten the mental load of the game, but in some cases every path will have something tricky. In those cases, we always ask ‘is this cool enough to be worth it?’ Cards like Captain Marvel and Cerebro are great examples where we think the answer is a resounding yes.
When we’re in such a spot, we always aim to default to the execution that best matches existing game rules if possible. That way, if something confusing does happen, it doesn’t introduce additional doubt to other working systems and interaction. That’s more valuable than improving a card’s deckbuilding options, especially considering we have other tools for that.”
Q: Was Snap ever influenced by the CCG Urban Rivals?
A: Glenn “I haven’t heard of it personally, but as I aim to be a walking Wikipedia for CCGs I’ll check it out.”
Q: Marvel Snap and Fortnite introduced Gwenpool at the same time. Was this a coincidence, or was this coordinated between developers?
A: Glenn “Just two teams with a similar good idea in concert with Deadpool & Wolverine as far as I know.”
Q: Are some counter cards (like Luke Cage) too punishing to other decks or gameplay styles?
A: Glenn “To answer these kinds of questions, you have to have a definition or set of thresholds that qualifies as ‘too much.’ Is Luke Cage in too many decks? Does he win too many games or cubes? Do fluctuations in his presence correlate to meaningfully lower play rates for other cards? And so on.
In the case of these cards, none of the answers to those questions have required much action. For example, at 2-Cost we determined Luke was too ‘free’ to play, but 3-Cost has proven an effective spot to require commitment.”
Q: Any updates on updating the Fast Forward mechanic?
A: Glenn “We have some improvements to fast forward coming in a future patch.”
Q: Does data indicate players disliked The Peak more than Dream Dimension? And are location frequencies considered with meta balance?
A: Glenn “Yes, the difference was fairly stark in how players behaved against each location.
And yes, we also maintain a balanced frequency among locations that help various decks. A few months ago, we rebalanced a number of location appearances for this purpose.”
Q: Why don’t you force players to update their app immediately on release?
A: Addison “There are a handful of reasons and some of them just boil down to ‘because we can and it’s neat!’ From a QA standpoint though, we like the slow rolls because it allows us to watch in real time for issues to surface and gives us an opportunity to follow up and address them (either through a follow up client update or a more rapid server fix) before the majority of players update or turn off the tap entirely if something catastrophic is occurring. We actually update the client for internal employees first though as our initial canaries 🙂
That all being said, there is risk and you rightfully pointed out sometimes there are weird behaviors as a result of NOT updating immediately. We try to test for and catch a lot of those scenarios during the course of development, but there are a lot of things like data ‘stuff’ that can get messy and hard to keep track of version to version.
We’ve also had to approach recent feature development of things like Alliances with backwards/forwards compatibility in mind which adds additional hurdles and fun testing each release!
But again, ultimately, I think if you were to ask a lot of folks on our team WHY we do it this way they’ll come back to the ‘because we can ‘answer haha.”
Q: With a new card release, do you guys typically have an idea of what ‘meta’ might evolve around it? and do you feel you’ve been reasonably able to ‘predict’ that so far?
bonus for the QA team (i think): is part of the testing process being like ‘yeah no bugs, but that could really make whatever archetype OP’?
A: Glenn “We don’t aim to predict metagames; it’s a lot of work, and you’re wrong frequently enough that the work is typically wasted. We aim to predict the kinds of decks a card might enable, and assess whether those decks are fun, whether the card pool will provide players with the support or counters they might need, and whether we have the ability to take meaningful balance action if necessary.”
Q: Is part of your Q/A testing process to say “yeah no bugs, but that could really make whatever archetype OP”?
A: Glenn “Speaking for design, we welcome feedback from every team, especially QA! They participate in 1-2 playtests each week, and if they encounter anything wonky during testing we’re always glad to hear it.”
Addison “Just to echo Glenn, QA can and do discuss cards from a balance perspective and give feedback to design where appropriate, but it’s not a huge priority for us. We DO however have the folks with the inside track keep everyone in the loop on which upcoming cards look like they’ll be the most wild upon release!”
Q: Why do gold splits look different now?
A: Addison “Hey, thanks for the question. The current gold splits being more muted in color is a bug that we just couldn’t get resolved before our release submission. We have a fix in the pipes on our end and so I’m hoping it’ll reach you all soon.”
Q: Have you removed Hellfire Gala variants from the shop? I can’t find any despite checking daily.
A: Glenn “We don’t remove variants from the shop, but the addition of more variants will over time impact the frequency of their appearance. We do have some tech improving that will help the shop show players the kinds of variants they’d prefer.”
Q: Do you feel like your experience as a developer makes your Snap experience different or unique from other players?
A: Glenn “I can’t speak for all devs, but my live play sessions are usually with some kind of purpose, even when recreational. I’ll be trying a new deck, a new idea, want to see some of our VFX, break the meta, finish Infinite, whatever.”
Q: Do you get excited for content in development that will be released soon, or are you mellowed out once you can unlock the card?
A: Glenn “Most of my excitement is reserved for seeing cards go live for players, rather than waiting for them enter the queue.”
Q: Do you get frustrated when when you find issues with the game, even if you know changes are in the works?
A: Glenn “I don’t really get frustrated with SNAP, but I think that’s largely because I have a specific mental framework for my job. I tend to treat my projects like a puzzle I’m studying, so even a setback is just a learning moment.”
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: When will you revert the Zabu nerf? He’s basically a worse psylocke at this point.
A: Devs have stated they have a change ready to go, but haven’t implemented it yet. It’s predicted the change will involve the new keyword “activate” the team has teased. If true, we could see that change for Zabu in the next few weeks since “activate” goes live next season.
Q: Can you add a “collect all” button for the collection track? How soon could we get it?
A: Stephen “We have plans to add this but no ETA right now.”
Q: I have Alliance suggestions!
A: Many of you have asked for features or changes to be made in Alliances. The team is actively taking notes of these suggestions and issues in an effort to improve Alliances. Keep your feedback coming by posting about it where devs check like here or on social media, leaving suggestions on the discord, or leaving feedback on surveys!
Posting your feedback on the Q/A channel simply gets redirected to feedback by a mod and the question goes unanswered.
Q: Would they consider giving Copycat some sort of visual cue? It would help out hearing impaired players and (selfishly) players who prefer to listen to other music while playing.
A: Glenn “As a general rule, we will be very deliberate when we want to inform the opponent of otherwise hidden information (Red Hulk). It was an oversight that the sound could be heard.”
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!
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