Developer Update for the Week of December 6, 2023: Huge Patch Edition (60+ 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 why didn’t Loki get nerfed, why do weekend missions only give 200 tokens, is Second Dinner closing, 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 Sebastian Shaw, as well as the launch of the new season Hellfire Gala and the newest patch! If you haven’t seen the patch notes, be sure to check those out first as many changes and additions are referenced in the questions. Also be sure to check out our Sebastian Shaw guide!

Answers and questions may be slightly rephrased for more clarity and ease of reading. This weeks topics will be divided into Card Specific questions, Other questions, and Album questions.

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: What made you decide on Martyr being a 1/4? What balance knobs are available to be turned for her?
A: Glenn “We wanted to pick a value that meant she actually was a threat to move. For example, we playtested a lot with 2/6 and found it was far too common that 2/6 would win any location Marty moved to, thus never moving.

Martyr’s a normal card from a balancing perspective, other than it being difficult to cost her up because higher Power causes the issue above.”

Q: Why wasn’t Abomination increased to 10 Power?
A: Glenn “We didn’t increase Abomination’s Power because it didn’t seem clearly necessary in either direction the way it did for She-Hulk. He’s on a list of several cards we might move up as we gather data about the world with Shang-Chi at 10.”

Q: Since Havok states he gains power at the end of a turn, will he gain power at the end of a game? Can you play him on turn 6 for a 2/4 of power?
A: Glenn “After turn 6, he will gain Power. (Assuming you have Max Energy to absorb. I wouldn’t suggest getting a table at Bar Sinister.)”

Q: If you play Havok turn 2, will you get stuck on 3 energy all the other turns?
A: Glenn “You’ll be stuck on 2 Energy all game if you play Havok on turn 2, since he knocks you down to 1 at the end of turn 2.”

Q: With drawing cards being such an important mechanic, why can Black Widow prevent you from drawing card(s) be balanced? How is the card balanced when it adds power to your side, clogs your opponent’s side, and removes a card draw?
A: Glenn “She’s a good card now, certainly. But she does have a drawback—she’s 2 Energy for 1-2 Power, a very inefficient rate. The Widow’s Bite itself also isn’t pure upside, with cards like Carnage and Loki or locations like Nidavellir and Gamma Lab capable of off-setting the loss.

The purpose of most cards is to make some decks better, but not all decks. I think she qualifies, but if her play rate were to climb too high we might consider additional action to narrow her applications.”

Q: Does Havok synergize with High Evolutionary since the absorbed energy is unused?
A: Glenn “No.”

Q: If you ramp out Blob and play Arnim Zola on him, does he keep his power or revert to a 4 power with no cards left in the deck?
A: Glenn “Blob’s Power is permanently added, just like Black Panther. He’ll keep it (and gain more if he was played on Vibranium Mines).”

Q: Why doesn’t Echo have a more obvious animation like Cosmo?
A: Glenn “Because Cosmo is accessible to early SNAP players and so relevant in that metagame, the VFX needs to be really loud to ensure players don’t miss it. Echo is aimed at and only available to players who have played a fair bit and have more familiarity with these kinds of effects. But it’s possible it should be more clear.”

Q: Why we’re Loki and Werewolf not addressed in the patch?
A: Glenn “As we’ve said a few times now, patch changes are not reactions to the current live metagame. That’s what OTAs are for. Patches are locked many weeks in advance. For example, this patch was locked when Loki was still a 3-Cost card and Werewolf wasn’t even released, as the Thanksgiving break added extra time to our normal cadence. Our next OTA is 12/21.

Frankly, Loki is not even an undisputed best deck right now, much less an all-timer. Lockdown, BounceHawk, and ZabuHawk have all had equivalently strong performances over the last couple weeks, trading places on our leaderboards. Discard and Destroy have both been nipping at everyone’s heels. With the change to Alioth, we expect to see additional shakeups.

Is Loki still too strong? Yeah, I think so, especially in Conquest where you can’t surprise him when it matters most. But we wouldn’t prep a second nerf for him before seeing the results of the first change to 4-Cost, especially when we wouldn’t be able to easily undo it if it was too much. This patch also predates our test run of the improved OTA for Mobius.

Werewolf’s a fairly interesting case, as his overall metrics are typical of “just a good card.” But he has a very high skill ceiling and the metrics polarize among different sets of players. Just yesterday we had a discussion about these kinds of cards and how to best evaluate them.”

Q: Why was Thanos nerfed for yet another patch?
A: Glenn “As stated in the notes, the Mind Stone change was not motivated by Thanos’s performance. In fact, we made it early so we could figure out if he’d need a buff and to let us measure where to aim it.”

Q: Why was America Chavez a problem for deck thinning, but Magik isn’t? Magik allows you to draw an extra cards every game.
A: Glenn “Magik costs Energy, you have to draw her to benefit from the effect, also risks benefiting the opponent, and has additional counterplay—she’s a card. Chavez didn’t behave like a card.”

Q: Why did Elsa get a nerf?
A: Glenn “When locking this patch, we didn’t yet know the outcome of the OTA nerfs to Loki or Elsa. Our goal with today’s change wasn’t to nerf Elsa, but to set a more conservative line for the way 2-Cost cards affect other locations. A nerf was incidental to that goal, so we compensated with +1 Power. If it turns out we have more room to give her strength than we thought, we will.”

Q: Since the new Alioth text box doesn’t specify “this turn” will it now blow up ALL cards behind an Invisible Woman regardless of when they were played?
A: Glenn “Yep.”

Q: Any chance we see an Alioth rework since he was nerfed due to being unfun card but the cards stats were fine?
A: Glenn “To be clear, the stats had stopped saying Alioth was fine. We expected him to grow weaker over time as players learned their way around him, but that wasn’t the case.

I would consider this fairly close to a rework for Alioth—it’s in the same spectrum as Leader for me, as was Galactus’s change. As often as possible, we want to retain the core fantasy of any card we’re making substantial changes to. Many players love Galactus, and we don’t want to change him into something totally different because of his detractors any more than we would make Darkhawk start counting cards in your own deck.

When a card is really unpopular, like Crystal was, that’s a different story. Our players are telling us in that case that they don’t even really like what the card does, which gives us more confidence in larger changes.”

Q: Are you open to reverting the Luke Cage change?
A: Glenn “I’m always open to making any change the data indicates is best. In Luke’s case, our considerations were this route or increasing his Cost and Power to better suit his impact, so we’d probably do that if the global element proved essential.”

Q: What’s the rationale behind giving Ebony Blade such a powerful effect?
A: Glenn “We debated only giving it one of the bonuses, but decided to try both since the card has been so weak. It’s very conditional, and has other meaningful counterplay around Black Knight himself.”

Q: Why doesn’t Spider-Man get a buff from Elsa after being played in her full lane?
A: Glenn “The new trigger timing for Elsa is after the card you played resolves, which means it has revealed and its On Reveal effect has finished. When that happens for Spider-Man after he’s played there, Elsa’s location isn’t full.

The buff will apply to the card that resolved when the location was full of revealed cards. So if you play Mister Sinister as your third card, he’ll get the +2 Power (after he makes a 2-Power Clone).”

Q: Why wasn’t Stegron considered to move unrevealed cards? His additional power to compensate has acted more like a second nerf by removing him from Cerebro 5.
A: Glenn “As the notes say, we’re standardizing unrevealed cards to not be movable unless specifically required. It was a constant note of confusion because destroy and move were different in this regard–there are many questions in this very forum about it.

We don’t consider either change a clear nerf. Being unable to hit unrevealed cards is fairly sideways, as knowing what you’ll hit with priority is powerful in its own way; making the Storm play pattern stronger also isn’t desirable for us. Power is Power; we can’t weight every Cerebro deck in our balance changes, but we’ll make more good cards with 5 Power.”

Q: I totally get the reasoning for changing Chavez away from her old design, but what were the reasons for choosing this to be the new one? How did Shaw influence it? What about the Shadow King change? I also happened to notice it appears to be a Forge version of Okoye, two cards which already exist in the game, was that relevant to the decision too?
A: Glenn “Agnostic of Shaw, we’ve had “more cards that buff cards in-hand” on our to-do list, since it’s fun space. We wanted one that was friendly to new players and this design fit the bill.

Shadow King wasn’t a factor, as America is a card players get way before they see him.

I’m not sure what you mean about Forge and Okoye; America operates in similar space, but they’re all meaningfully different cards. Okoye is “wide” Power without choice, Forge is “tall” Power with choice, America is “taller” Power without choice. Giving cards like these to players early in their journey helps them learn what they like to do, as well as what’s strong to do and how hidden information interacts with snaps.”

Q: Now that Luke Cage only effects one lane, will Typhoid Mary and Hazmat be adjusted to one lane as well?
A: Glenn “We may buff Hazmat, as that card was underperfoming previously (though that was in part because lots of people were playing Luke). Mary seems less likely, as there are other ways to mitigate her downsides, but possible. As always, we’ll give it some time, and then look at the data.”

Q: Now that America Chavez won’t be at the bottom of your deck always, will Cable ever go back to taking the bottom card of your deck? What about Mantis taking on this ability?
A: Glenn “Given we’re having more cards and locations care about the top of the deck, we prefer to keep that the default to increase the ways those effects can be interacted with. That said, we’re not happy with either of those cards quite yet.”

Q: Were discard decks considered when making the change to Chavez?
A: KentErik “They certainly were considered, but ultimately the change to Chavez is on the whole healthier for the game, so we wanted to go through with it. We think there’s exciting design space to explore to help bring back things like the Dracula+Apoc interactions and how Chavez empowered those, so we’ll be exploring those in the future.”

Q: Do you think the +1 power to Aero is enough since she can’t move unrevealed cards now like Arnim Zola?
A: Glenn “We wanted to minimize the number of cards affecting unrevealed cards to better draw this line for comprehension, especially among cards early-game players may encounter. Aero had an execution that doesn’t require unrevealed, and the current card wasn’t performing great, so we’re mixing it up.

We think she’s still fairly effective at disrupting a lot of the same combos, by pulling the first piece rather than the second.”

Other Questions

Q: I noticed many cards with abilities share Cost and Power with vanilla cards despite no downside (Misty Knight and Ice Man for example). Have you considered reworking power across the board (like -1 power) to protect the vanilla stat line?
A: Glenn “Power is complex in SNAP. We need lower-Cost cards to compete with higher-Cost ones, otherwise there’s not enough reason to play them–accumulating Power is ultimately what the game is about, so we need to structure cards around Power values that let it matter.

We don’t particularly care about ‘protecting’ the vanilla stat line–it’s not a principle worth adhering to at the cost of gameplay. That line’s very important in other games, where indefinite endgames and attrition are commonplace so cards need to be more consistently aligned. Ours exists for onboarding new players, and in competitive play it is meaningfully replaced by Patriot and High Evolutionary.”

Q: How does the team handle a bug when it is reported?
A: Glenn “A lot of it depends on how the bug is reported. When a bug is reported via Discord or Twitter, it’s playing a game of telephone and might not get to our QA team with enough information or context for them to reproduce the bug and get it fixed. When it’s reported in-game via Main Menu>Settings>Report a Bug, that gives us the ability to backtrace the user’s games and find the issue they’re describing, making it much more likely we can successfully investigate the issue.

That’s really important, because in many cases a bug might be caused by something a player never sees or doesn’t correlate to the issue–for example, a large percentage of Kitty Pryde crashes were actually the result of an opponent staging Mysterio, but since the game irrecoverably crashed no player could know that was the case.

Once we’ve confirmed a bug exists, we triage it based on the damage it does to the user experience and assign it to the appropriate party for a fix. Some fixes are quick enough even a dullard like me can do them, but others are complex or require functionality we haven’t added to the code yet. Depending on how much work that is, we may have to triage the bug against larger work in progress, because our ad hoc bugfix resources are finite and dedicated time is usually scheduled a month or so in advance.”

Q: With Nuverse closing, will Snap be closing too?
A: Ben Brode “*crawls back into discord for this one* HELLO FRIENDS. Marvel Snap is going nowhere.  Kind of like the Blob.  We are immovable!  Or at least, we only move in the direction we want to move… Which is FORWARD!

Definitely a lot up in the air right now, and we’d be super sad to hear if our friends at Nuverse are negatively impacted, BUT none if it will affect our ability to make Marvel Snap maximally awesome. ❤️”

Q: With many cards and locations in marvel snap mirror each other, Wakanda and Armor, Invisible Woman and Dark Dimension, etc, are there any card abilities you still want to explore as locations, or vice versa?
A: Glenn “Yes 🙂”

Q: How does this probability work of Hot Locations appearing? Is it on a “per game” basis where at the start of the game the 3 locations are all determined, with probabilities that ensure a 50% chance that the featured location is one of them? Or does each location have a independent probability of being the hot location, and all 3 locations together have a 50%.
A: Glenn “It’s closer to the former, in which the game picks 3 locations to start and there’s a 50% chance one is the given location. Not exactly that, but about as specific as I’ll get. Not going to go all Monty Hall here 🙂”

Q: Would you ever do a temporary OTA like a hot location for 24 hours? For example: For 24 hours, Silver Surfer gives +3 power.
A: Glenn “One of the things we want to be avoid doing with OTAs is destabilizing players’ collections or their ability to maintain decks too much. That’s why we prefer to keep a regular OTA schedule with meaningful space, so that the cadence is predictable and players can build appropriate expectations.

That’s not to say we’d never do this sort of thing, but I’d probably oppose doing it for all play modes with a given card, which we currently don’t support (the card is the card).”

Q: How does the new auto deck builder know what cards to give you?
A: Stephen “It uses a data science powered model based on your collection and the current meta to give you an amazing deck to play and compete.  Picked up a new card and unsure how to use it?  Get a full deck recommendation with Deck Builder.  Have a shell you like but you’re missing a few pieces?  Get a full deck recommendation with Deck Builder!”

Q: Weekend missions used to award a varying amount of tokens for the new card. Devs mentioned previously the token amount was based on predicted popularity, but now it’s always 200 tokens. Did the dev’s change how token amounts are assigned?
A: Stephen “We heard a bunch of feedback about how frustrating it was to not be able to plan your token budget for the month with the flexible amount of tokens per character.  As a result, we have stabilized it at 200 tokens for a while now.  We would love to hear more feedback about this if the preference is actually for it to be more flexible week to week!”

Q: In the Hellfire video you showcased winter variants, which as many people thought were exclusive after last year’s event. Are there plans to change exclusive status of other variants like battle pass, conquest, etc.?
A: Stephen “No plans to change the exclusiveness of other variants.  The winterverse variants are seasonal themed with winterverse and we wanted to bring them back with that annual event especially given we no longer do variant rush events.”

Q: Do the game designers who work on Marvel Snap need to also have some sort of coding background?
A: Glenn “I had never scripted before, but learning how to do it and to communicate our needs based on the code has been an essential part of my job.”

Q: I remember hearing once that Ben Brode singlehandedly picked the character-specific booster colors for every character in the game. Is that something he still does as new cards are added?
A: Nicki Broderick “One of our incredible tech artists picks the booster colors these days. 🙂”

Q: Why don’t all locations activate left to right?
A: Glenn “I avoid answering questions I’ve already answered when there isn’t new information to add, in order to ensure new questions get more visibility.

Since this one has been in the works a while, I can elaborate a bit. We’ve finished an audit of all our triggers related to ending the turn, and are evaluating the work required to build a larger system for triggers we’re happy to stand on for a long time. Locations and cards have systemic overlap, and we’d rather fix it well once than a little a bunch of times.”

Q: When is the next roadmap update?
A: Stephen “We will have another official roadmap update in Jan I believe”

Q: Are we going to get an Ultimate pixel variant?
A: Stephen “Maybe one day?”

Q: You mentioned in an another answer that you can’t really buff Colossus to be meta relevant with a substantial rework. Is there any other cards that are problems like that?
A: Glenn “There are cards like that, and we’ve been endeavoring to reduce them over time as we go. You’ll see some more updates in that regard in future patches.

In the most technical sense, Colossus doesn’t necessarily require a rework to become relevant. The current rough ratios of Cost to Power used competitively don’t leave him with enough breathing room, but those ratios could change via OTA. It would just be a lot of changes!”

Q: After seeing how Annihilus brought Sentry into a fun new space, do you ever hold out on buffs because an upcoming card you have planned will make old cards better? Similarly, do you ever design new cards that could work well with an underutilized card?
A: Glenn “Yes and yes, we actively do both of those things all the time.”

Q: Can you give examples of when you have done this? (see previous question)
A: Glenn “Certainly:
* Phoenix Force: Human Torch, Multiple Man
* X-23: Deadpool
* Black Knight: Ghost Rider
* Sebastian Shaw: Okoye, Nova

We also frequently explore how we can make cards that might “change a matchup” with a unique effect they couldn’t previously access. For example, Blob’s pretty great against Darkhawk.”

Q: Can you reconfirm whether any card/decks choices have EVER impacted matchmaking in any way shape or form?
A: Glenn “No, those aren’t a balance for matchmaking. We don’t even have an incentive to do this, so it’s a fairly perplexing conspiracy theory for us.

Q: Can you explain the philosophy of why the current matchmaking program is used instead of somethimg dumb like the above question.
A: Glenn “Our matchmaking system uses Collection Level (to a point, and only below Infinite) and pairs Infinite and non-Infinite players in different pools. But its primary pairing consideration is matchmaking rating (MMR), which seeks to find players an opponent as close to their skill as possible while keeping their wait time as short as we can. Since we’re prioritizing pairing equivalent MMRs, both players will often be equally skilled. That  in turn makes card/deck selection (often) the most significant determinant in the outcome of the game.”

Q: Has the introduction of leaderboards helped with player retention on the ladder?
A: Glenn “Yes, it’s had a positive impact on several metrics we value.”

Q: Any update to letting players customize card borders or choosing between rarities?
A: Stephen “A version of this is coming in a patch early next year”

Q: Would you ever try Variant Rush events again?
A: Stephen “We have no plans to do them again.  We stopped doing them because they seemed to create no change in engagement”

Q: Will more flare colors be added?
A: Stephen “We want to add a variety of new splits in 2024”

Q: Does the team prioritize new features or fixing bugs?
A: Addison “The answer is probably “boring” but it’s a balancing act.

We tend to have different folks doing different things so the scope of each can vary release to release. Some time is usually dedicated to tackling existing known issues, other time is dedicated to new feature/content development and resolving the issues that come with those.

My team’s role as QA is not only to investigate and find issues but also to advocate on behalf of players to try to prioritize getting as much of the “major” stuff fixed as we can within the time constraints each release has.

It’s important to also consider that different folks on the development team have different strengths or areas of expertise.  The scope of what someone tackles per release for any given person or team can swing wildly depending on what’s on the development calendar or in the bug database at the time.”

Q: With the recent change of Mobius, the possibility of “patch” style effect changes through OTA’s was introduced. Considering that patches are not reactive to the current metagame and often feel out of touch with their changes – (no Loki or WWBN nerfs, Elsa possibly nerfed too much) – what are your thoughts on doing balance changes only through OTAs?
A: Glenn “We’re proceeding cautiously but expect to leverage the technology more in the future. We aren’t planning to do it again in 2023, as personnel availability is lower during the holiday season and we want to ensure we can handle anything that might go wrong with new tech.”

Q: If we perform an infinite conquest with a new spotlight avatar frame equipped, does this result in a new unique spotlight + infinite avatar frame avatar? Or do we just get the art with the default avatar frame?
A: KentErik “you’ll get the spotlight avatar with the infinite frame”

Q: Was it intended that new vs old decks you create were reversed?
A: KentErik “it was intentional! We felt the action of making new decks, or editing your most recent decks, was used more often-than-not, so we flipped the rotation to make them more readily accessible”

Q: Why does the auto deckbuilder ignore your favorite list?
A: KentErik “We have this updated in a future build to pull from your Favorites!”

Album Questions

Q: What happens if you complete an album, like Venomized Villains, but then in the future you add more variants to the album. Will you also add further rewards? Or will incomplete albums need more variants?
A: Stephen “Additional variants would potentially be part of their own separate album”

Q: Will albums be replacing the prestige syetem?
A: Stephen “Albums are about collecting cosmetics around a theme. The prestige system will be about going deep on a character you love to collect all of their cosmetics and splits.”

Q: Will we have new albums each month? If so, do we keep the previous months’ albums as well, or do they go away at the end of the month?
A: Stephen “We will be adding at least one new album per season!  Previous months albums will stay available.  We see albums as a goal that’s take a bit more time to complete and don’t want to add time pressure to that.”

Q: Are specific Albums (Venomized Villains, Jim Lee and Dann Hipp) permanent or will they eventually rotate out and new albums be rotated in?
A: KentErik “the albums you see in the build are permanent additions to the game. New albums will be additively added on later.”

Q: Will Ultimate, Spotlight Caches, and Bundle variants ever be a part of an Album?
A: KentErik “Probably not with the current implementation, due to their general inaccessibility.”

Q: Will emotes ever be added that are time limited or exclusive, but not in an Album?
A: Stephen “I am sure we will do this either as part of premium season pass or a bundle at some 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!

We took a break last week since the patch was delayed. If you have questions for the devs after the latest patch, make sure to ask them in the comments! Here are answers to some questions from the last edition:

Q: Are there any plans to release premium card backs through the collector caches?
A: Stephen has mentioned they have no current plans to change Collector reserves for the time being. A premium mystery variant has been added to the week 4 conquest rewards though for all players!

Q: Can we have featured artists more often so players can get more variants they are after?
A: Stephen “We are working on more improvements to the shop to add popular and personalized for you variants to show up and be called out as such similar to how we call out new variants now.  That will come soon in a future update”

Q: Why after Infinite sometimes you see the level rank of your opponent and sometimes not?
A: Glenn has stated that only players who are in the top 5000 players will have their ranks displayed, as it is a big accomplishment.

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!