Table of Contents
Welcome back to this week’s Developer Update! This week’s edition comes after the launch of the new Series 5 card Cosmic ghost Rider and the latest OTA! If you haven’t seen what was changed with the balance update, be sure to check out the official patch notes!
If you don’t know if Cosmic ghost Rider is worth Tokens or Snap Packs, make sure to check out our Bonus Challenge guide for a post-release review of the card and new decklists!
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!
See all individual questions and answers updated in real time!
Card Specific Questions
Q: Does Air Walker prefer pulling a card from hand vs the deck, or is it an equal chance?
A: Glenn “The latter, each card has an equal chance.”
Q: Why does Cannonball have a higher Power than Shang-Chi? You can get zero value from shang at times, but get at least some value without Mercury with Cannonball.
A: Glenn “Cannonball’s Power has changed in the past–it impacted his play rate and winrate substantially negatively, and the change was very small.
One reason for that is that the opportunity cost of playing a 5-Cost card is a lot higher than a 4-Cost one, meaning it has a tighter window in which it can be played and makes it harder to combine with other cards.
The other reason is that sometimes, flipping one lane in your favor can flip another to your detriment. Cannonball is relatively easy to mitigate if your opponent does not have Mercury.”
Q: Is it correct that Sparky’s listed as a Series 5 card in the Super Premium Pass? If so, why make that change?
A: Glenn “The information is correct. The goal was to provide more value to the Super Premium Pass while also allowing players to choose to spend their Tokens as well.
Considering the price of the SPP is not changing, the cost of acquiring a card from the SPP is not changing. We’re just allowing another option for those who wish to grab it via Tokens a season earlier.”
Q: Is the new card for Deadpool’s Diner going to be Super Adaptoid like the season preview shows, or will it be Danger like the infographic shows?
A: Griffin “I believe that screenshot was outdated. Danger is currently the only card available from DPD.”
Other Questions
Q: Will the Infinite top 5k border bundle be on the webshop?
A: Griffin “Not at launch but we hope to add it in the future along with other personalized and conditional bundles.”
Q: Are there any plans to implement Series 6 cards and beyond?
A: Griffin “No plans for that right now. Not saying it would never happen but discussions to those levels haven’t happened yet.”
Q: Why didn’t High Voltage start right on a daily refresh this time?
A: Addison “There was a super fun issue with our backend flag that controls when the mode is available available not being respected by our Live environment (but working on our test environments). We had to dig in and find a solution!”
Q: What makes Character Mastery so difficult to improve quickly?
A: Glenn “The concept of a novel is very simple, but its execution can be very difficult and time-consuming. Building (and rebuilding) code can be the same. It’s also further complicated by competing demand for engineering resources as well as aligning on the specific changes we want to make.
We’ve committed to improving character mastery–the feature missed its target. But knowing it missed and making the next shot aren’t the same.”
Q: Do bots get more difficult the higher tank you climb?
A: Glenn “Like the rest of our matchmaking, bots weigh players’ CL and MMR much heavier than their rank. If two players are very far apart in skill and/or CL but both at the same rank, they won’t be facing the same kinds of bot *or human* opponents.
The purpose of this design is to make more equitable games than prioritizing rank would otherwise, since it’s entirely possible for very mismatched players to be at the same rank.”
Q: Do you check on retreat rates for locations to purge restrictive/ negative locations like you once did?
A: Glenn “We check in periodically, but it’s not the kind of thing that experiences significant change in short lengths of time. The last update was enabled by gaining access to new tools and data, not the data changing.”
Q: Does Snap use Engagement Optomized Matchmaking?
A: Glenn “Our matchmaking is certainly optimized for our engagement goals, but we don’t use what is conventionally labeled as EOMM. Since not everyone knows the specifics, I’ll elaborate on both.
EOMM is a generic label, but it’s most often used to refer to a system that manipulates aspects of the player experience like win streaks, loss streaks, blowout wins, close losses, etc. The purpose is to create an “ideal distribution” for the game and improve player retention. We don’t use that kind of system.
Our matchmaking primarily prioritizes MMR (skill) and CL (collection size) in order to find the fairest match each time, which we define as a game in which both players are approximately equally likely to win. That’s what we think makes Snap more fun–playing individual games you can win or lose based on your own choices. If a player has high MMR relative to most players with similar CLs, the system might compensate by widening the band to allow for higher CL pairings, and vice-versa.
And no–at no point does either player’s deck enter the equation.
The ideal ‘vision’ for our system is that two players can have very different skill levels, but find Snap an equally challenging gameplay experience that will reward them for improving. Our goal is for that kind of experience to create healthy retention because it’s simply more fun.”
Q: Why does matchmaking even take CL into account? A new player could spend a bunch of money and get a high CL, but be horrible at the game.
A: Glenn “We did previously implement matchmaking that *heavily* prioritized MMR. We shifted to also valuing CL because players were very vocal about large CL gaps creating a sense of disparity in their games. If players consistently feel like they’re being paired unfairly, our system isn’t achieving its goals.”
Q: Why did you add tech cards to the ban list this last High Voltage?
A: Griffin “We’re trying new bans to see how it goes. We’ll continue to try new ban lists in future iterations of HV.”
Q: Are there any plans to implement a crash detection?
A: Griffin “9 times out of 10 these issues are due to local memory on a players’ device. There is a way to report bugs via the settings menu. It’ll even provide you code you can copy and reference if you’d like to open a Customer Support ticket to expore it deeper.”
Q: Are you exploring more cosmetic types to add besides borders?
A: Griffin “Yes, we are exploring more ideas for other cosmetics. We don’t have anything to announce right now but please keep sharing your ideas of new things we can bring to the game. New game boards are personally high on my wish list!”
Q: Are there any plans to make ports for gaming consoles?
A: Glenn “We don’t have any plans for that right now. We’re focused on our current platforms.”
Q: Is there a plan to let people who don’t have access to the shop anymore redeem codes somehow?
A: Griffin “Currently, those systems are inherently tied together. I’ve shared this feedback with the both the Web Shop team and it’s on our list to investigate more in the future but it’s not a current priority.”
Q: Are you thinking about adding card backs to the daily shop?
A: Griffin “Yeah, it’s been and is being discussed.”
Q: Has the team fixed the bug that stopped you from giving Snap Packs as a reward? If so, are there still plans to use them as rewards?
A: Glenn “Yes, the technical issues at launch have indeed been fixed. Snap Packs can be used directly as rewards and I believe there are plans to use them as such in the future.
As their values vary, not just for each pack but also to each player, utilizing them widely requires more thought. For example, a Series 3 Snap Pack has much more value to newer or lower level CL players, while a Collector’s S5 Pack is worth 4000 Tokens so it would need to be added as a high level reward.
All that to say we can indeed do it, but the team is always thinking about the best way to deploy them.”
Q: Why do you nerf premium cards as they enter Snap Packs? Can you improve communication to players so they can spend their resources more fairly?
A: Glenn “It is a function of our balance frequency and the kinds of data that earns a nerf that these timings will often overlap. We generally want at least 2 weeks of play data, often more, before nerfing a card–especially new ones, because they can take longer to solve and longer to react to.
Once we do decide balance action is warranted, our OTA changes are regularly scheduled–the 2nd and 4th week of the season. These dates will always be in close proximity to when cards change packs. We also tend to remove changes the closer we get to the date, as we get more updated and accurate data–that means sometimes a card we think we’ll OTA on Monday gets removed before Thursday comes.
When we find ourselves in a spot where we’re certain an upcoming balance action might change players’ choices, we have occasionally been able to give a heads up. But we often aren’t certain, given the practices I mentioned above.”
Q: Recently it feels like a lot of cards have been released that have been too strong, and have subsequently had to be nerfed fairly quickly. What steps are you taking to ensure cards at release are strong but not overpowered?
A: Glenn “Two things contributed to this dynamic recently:
1. Fantastic Four season introduced a new archetype to the game, which widened our ‘error bars’ a bit because in addition to finding the right balance points for each card, we also had to try and approximate the best version of the larger deck.
I don’t think we were effective enough at the latter, which had impacts on the former. That’s something we’ve taken and applied to improving our approach to future seasons already.
2. We generally aim high, rather than low, because releasing a strong card we might need to nerf is more fun than releasing a weak one. I’ve talked about this often in the past.
I think we’ve had a fairly even mix of too strong and too weak in a binary sense–Mole Man, Mad Thinker, Silver Surfer First Steps, and Terrax the Tamer have all received buffs, and arguably there are more new releases that merit them. But the impact has certainly been higher on cards being too strong, and that’s because of how we target.
If you aim for exactly the middle, you’ll hit above and below it about equally. If you aim slightly above the middle, your high hits will be farther from the middle than your low hits.”
Q: With the frequent OTAs that buff and nerf multiple cards at a time, do you ever think “Maybe we should have released this card as it is after the OTA”? Or is it just too impossible to predict the metagame or a card’s performance?
A: Glenn “Of course–we don’t release a card expecting to change it. But game design is an imperfect science, and a handful of people testing for a couple months aren’t going to find everything. That’s why a core aspect of our approach is to ensure the cards can be balanced, in addition to striving for the right initial balance point.”
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: With so many cards piling into Series 4 and 5, are you planning a series drop soon so new players can catch up?
A: Griffin “We’re aware that new and returning players are struggling to catch up and we’re working on ways to help with that issue right now. Series Drops aren’t out of the picture, but there are other ways we can help these players catch up than just Series Drops.”
Q: Could the developers add or even update the filter options when we’re viewing our collection to build a deck? We still have the same options, discard, destruction, etc., and new modes have been released in addition to these.
A: You can use the search bar above the filters to make your own categories! The game saves your last 4 searches as a new “custom” category. This works for all card text and artist names!
(Same question, but in Portuguese for the original commenter)
Q: Os desenvolvedores poderiam adicionar ou mesmo atualizar as opções de filtros quando estamos vendo nossa coleção para montar um deck? Continuamos tendo, descarte, destruição,etc… ou seja as mesmas e foram lançados novos modos além desses.
A: Você pode usar a barra de pesquisa acima dos filtros para criar suas próprias categorias! O jogo salva suas últimas 4 buscas como uma nova categoria “personalizada”. Isso funciona para todos os textos de cards e nomes de artistas!
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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