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 did Silver Sable get nerfed and not Hydra Bob, where is the PMV in the conquest shop, will we ever be able to see our opponent’s hand, 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 of the new season Dark Avengers and the new Series 5 card Victoria Hand! 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: Why does Victoria Hand show the power increase of cards in her hand, when Cosmo and Blue Marvel don’t?
A: Glenn “We did consider having the Power only apply in play, but we were only willing to do that if we could preview the Power in-hand, like Knull. That turned out to be way more difficult than one might expect, as the preview function is designed to apply to the card with the ability, and Victoria isn’t the one in need of a preview.
However, it’s not especially weird to execute this way. Even though Blue Marvel and Cerebro, like many cards, implicitly refer to cards in play, we have Ongoings that affect the hand, like Sera. But the words for clarifying the exact function we wanted to the letter are kind of awkward: ‘Cards created in your hand have +2 Power while in your hand or in play’ or similar.
Given that we can rely on the game to visually reinforce the desired behavior, we decided to go with the simpler wording because the risk of confusion is fairly low.”
Q: Why did Silver Sable get nerfed while Hydra Bob runs rampant at a 1/5?
A: Glenn “Hydra Bob’s in many fewer kinds of decks than Silver Sable was–he’s being competed with more effectively. That’s likely because Bob doesn’t have as many extra ‘hooks’ like being good to bounce, causing afflict, high-rolling on Power-reliant cards, etc.
That said, Bob is certainly very strong and it’s not unreasonable that he may merit adjustment.”
Q: People may not be playing Hydra Bob as much as Silver Sable because he released as a worse card and people saved their keys. Does this impact of card ownership create a difference in balancing for you?
A: Glenn “We do account for ownership biases in how we examine decks and winrates by slicing the data different ways. Bob is a generically good option, but not a freeroll or the best option for as many decks as Sable was among players who have him.
For clarity, I agree Bob is very good. What I am asserting is Sable was meaningfully better, which is why we have treated the two cards differently.”
Q: When Lasher gets a Power change by something like Blue Marvel or Nidavellir, his activate gains that Power too. Why is this different than merge cards or cards like Brood or Scarlet Spider?
A: Glenn “Lasher says ‘What is my Power right now?’ and then uses the value.
Scarlet Spider duplicates his card object in another zone. That action doesn’t involve any specific checks–any modifiers attached to the card get duplicated, any modifiers attached to other cards don’t.
Similarly, the ‘merge’ action mashes one card into another. Modifiers attached to the merging card get merged, others don’t. Agony doesn’t say ‘After you play a card, add my Power to it and…’ If she did, she’d work like Lasher.
Like Lasher, Venom looks at a card, checks its Power, then destroys it and gains that value if the destroy resolves. It’s just a different game action than merge.”
Q: Follow up question: aren’t all modifiers “attached” to the card since they get buffed?
A: Glenn “No, all modifiers affecting a card aren’t attached to the card in question. For example, Negative Zone’s ability is attached to Negative Zone but affects cards there, Blue Marvel’s is attached to Blue Marvel, Wave attaches an ability to each player that then affects their cards in-hand. Affecting a card doesn’t mean a modifier has been attached to that card. By contrast, Scorpion, Ironheart, Elsa Bloodstone, and Phoenix Force attach modifiers to the cards they affect.
Scarlet Spider is duplicating himself and each of his modifiers, which aren’t restricted to Power changes. That’s one way he is specifically different from Lasher, it just happens that Power is the most visible and meaningful element on cards generally.”
Q: With the new meta we are in, Loki has disappeared. Could we see a return to his old ability and stats?
A: Glenn “The reason we ultimately moved away from the hand conversion angle wasn’t strength—the card we moved to wound up being a buff. The issue was that this function was eating up all of the design space for fun cards and decks in this space. For example, cool and fun designs like Kate Bishop and Victoria Hand winding up as Loki’s sidekicks rather than interesting game pieces on their own is a sad outcome for us.
While we do want to update Loki, we likely won’t return to the old design.”
Q: When is the Daken Variant getting changed?
A: Griffin “We’re aiming to have it delivered after the swap is made in the next Patch. It’ll be shortly after that once all users have updated.”
Other Questions
Q: Are spotlight variants ever coming back?
A: Glenn “We still intend to make them available after a time delay, but we haven’t locked in on the best way(s) to do it yet.”
Q: Is there any intention of fixing card splits on mobile where after you spend the credits, it stays on that card so you don’t have to hunt for it again?
A: Glenn “We agree this flow needs to be revised and intend to do so.”
Q: Since the upcoming patch that updates the Spotlight dupe reward (1000->2000 tokens) is scheduled for the 14th, and assuming it’s live before the reset of that day, will the changes reflect on the current spotlight cache (Victoria Hand week) or will they be in effect from the next cache (Moonstone week)?
A: Griffin “This is a great fringe case to note!
You are correct, there will be a small window on the Tuesday of the patch update where after you download it you could spend Spotlight Keys and earn the increased duplicate rate of 2000 Tokens before the Weekly Reset. We’ll leave it up to players to make the call on if they want to wait for that chance or not.
An additional callout that we’ll be sure to add to the patch notes as well: **Players NEED to update to the new patch on the 14th BEFORE spending Keys in order to get the new duplicate rate of 2000 Tokens!**”
Q: Why couldn’t the change to 2k Tokens happen sooner?
A: Griffin “The change requires a patch to be updated as well as testing to ensure it didn’t break something else. Our next patch was Jan 14.”
Q: Has the team explored a card that you could play directly to your opponent’s side?
A: Glenn “No, nor do I expect to. There’s not much space there in the first place, plenty of abilities can get close to that, and the big one: navigating what would happen if you try to stage a card the same turn the opponent fills their side of that location.”
Q: Why is there no PMV in the conquest shop this season?
A: Griffin “This was an unintentional change and we’re working on adding it back in. Apologies!”
Q: How do you feel about your recent dev videos getting flooded with negative reviews?
A: Griffin “Players have opinions! And that’s a good thing. We’re working on making the game the best it can be. Many of the comments were about card acquisition and we’ve commented on the future of that recently with updates coming in next week’s patch.”
Q: Why have recent token tuesdays offered a much higher token to gold ratio?
A: Glenn “Bundles and special offers can vary in currency rates from time to time. The ‘default rates’ are those always available via the shop.”
Q: Can we expect any card acquisition updates with the upcoming patch?
A: Griffin “No updates beyond what we’ve already shared is on the way next week.”
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: Has the design space for looking at your opponent’s hand been explored?
A: Glenn “We’ve done it very sparingly with cards like White Queen. I think it’s the sort of thing that’s best in small doses in most CCGs, but SNAP wants it even less due to the central mechanic of the game raising the stakes against hidden information.”
Q: Will you ever introduce a “flip a coin” or “roll a die” mechanic into the game?
A: No direct answer to your question, but Glenn recently mentioned how they might use these mechanics if necessary when discussing why Bruce Banner says 25% chance to Hulk out.
Glenn “The templating is a bit more novel, for sure, but ultimately that was just what we felt communicated the effect best. If we’d wanted a different chance, like 50/50 or 1/6, we might’ve gone with ‘flip a coin’ or ‘roll a six-sided die’ instead. Generally, we prefer to avoid direct math in the effects, that’s just where we ended up here.”
Q: Questions about new game boards:
A: Second Dinner announced new board art is “in concept development” in their latest roadmap. No further news or comments are being made on their release since they were only teased and not fully designed yet.
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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