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 Ares and the latest OTA Balance Updates! If you don’t know if Ares is worth Spotlight Caches, make sure to check out our Bonus Challenge guide for a post-release review of the card and new decklists!
This week, many questions reference the OTA, so be sure to read about the changes and our analysis so answers make more sense.
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: Is it intended that if Blink swaps a card into Anti-Venom, the next card you draw won’t be 0/0?
A: Glenn “Blink pulls the card, resolves the card, then shuffles. While we don’t spell it out, we assume a shuffle in cases where cards are being added to the deck like this. However, we could consider adjusting the ordering so that the shuffle is always performed after the card is put into the deck, but before the pull, which might make some of these interactions a little more intuitive.”
Q: Is it intended or a bug that Super Skrull ignores Moonstone? Or that Moonstone ignores a Mystique that copies Super Skrull?
A: Glenn “Yes, these effects ignore each other in the same way that Super Skrulls ignore one another. Among the reasons to do that is even more nonintuitive results being possible.”
Q: If hawkeye or basic arrow are played and opponent plays a red guardian, the on reveal effect of my card is cancelled (I don’t get the +3 power). Since it’s a on reveal effect, it seems like that’s not intended. If it is, can you explain how it works?
A: Glenn “I’m inclined to agree that feels unintuitive, especially given interactions like Nico, Iron Fist, and Iron Patriot. I’ll look into it.”
Q: Since the team is willing to double up on characters like Doom or Spider-Man, could Ego ever be a card and a location?
A: Glenn “It’s a possibility. We’d likely pursue a very different design, given Agatha is already a card with similar function to the location.”
Q: In the Pantheon album that just launched, Heimdall is one of the cards, despite being exclusive to a Bundle. Is this a mistake or will this be a recurring change now that the Collector’s Vault is a feature?
A: Griffin “It’s not a mistake. We’re aware of the feedback that trying to target specific cards in the Collector’s Vault does not feel great. This feedback has been passed along.”
Q: Follow up on Moonstone + Super Skrull question: Is this an acceptable design tool that the team uses when creating new cards? If the team comes up with a new design for a card but it breaks something else or interacts weird with an existing card, wouldn’t you just redesign or rework the effect, rather than arbitrarily decide that two cards will just ignore each other and call that a fix?
A: Glenn “If we used the criteria you described during design, Super Skrull wouldn’t exist in the first place. We’d rather make fun cards with some unusual interactions than not make the cards. I’m sure you can find a few weird things in any CCG, because their designers always have to make the same decision at least once. We make it a bit more often, because we lean harder on digital rules and accessible text than most.”
Q: Why nerf Araña instead of Human Torch? Why not make Torch +2 instead of double power each move?
A: Glenn “Doubling Human Torch’s Power is a very appealing dream. The card’s effect is exciting, and we’d like to preserve that excitement if possible.
+2 per move would be a dramatically less appealing card, and also quite clearly too weak to see play. Human Torch hasn’t always been strong enough for competitive play as-is, so exponentially nerfing him would be a super harsh change and no doubt very frustrating for fans of the card.”
Q: With Rocket and Groot all but replacing Nocturne in high level play, and now additionally a 3/6 with up-side in the form of Luna Snow, I’m curious to understand what is the reasoning of Nocturne continuing to languish at 3/4? Is this to allow Magik decks like Mr. Negative to continue to see viability or something else entirely?
A: Glenn “At 3/5, Nocturne’s play rate was far too high and broad. Location variance is an important element of SNAP gameplay, and positioning a card to be very strong in positional play while also disrupting locations proved to be a bit more than we wanted in that category. It’s fair to say that includes Magik, though we weren’t explicitly aiming to make Magik stronger.
It’s possible we’ll explore other rates for Nocturne, but given we’ve seen that 3/5 is undesirable I wouldn’t expect us to try it again soon.”
Q: Was a nerf to bounce cards considered instead of the key move cards? Bouce was the reason those move cards were so strong.
A: Glenn “We always examine a range of options when considering balance changes directed at a deck. In this case, we chose what we believed to be two of the softest options that still accomplished our goals.”
Q: Do you test traditional move decks with the nerfs before the changes went live? It feels like bounce move is largely unaffected by the changes, but traditional move suffered greatly. Araña doesn’t help protect Madame Web from Red Guardian anymore.
A: Glenn “We always look at the other decks impacted by the change. We don’t believe the outcome is as dramatically different as you seem to, but we’ll also be able to look at data to verify that. Depending on the outcomes, we may make secondary changes.
For example, if it does bear out that Red Guardian is now defeating Madam Web too often, we could perhaps consider giving her +1 Power. That’s not something we could reasonably consider when she was one of the highest winrate cards in the best deck.”
Q: Does giving a card +1/-1 Power really make a difference in their play rate?
A: Glenn “It varies, but it has the highest impact at the lowest Costs. It is rarely meaningless, though in some cases (such as Leader) it may prove to be very small.”
Q: Is Red Guardian on your radar? He is in a significant number of decks and counters a bunch of popular cards.
A: Glenn “We’re monitoring Red Guardian closely, but he hasn’t ‘crossed the line.'”
Q: Some languages are getting OTA patch notes with changes for Selene, Hela, and Doom 2099. What’s up with that? Why didn’t they make the final cut?
A: Glenn “We often prepare more changes for OTAs than we implement; usually 10-14 that we narrow down. In this case, we also asked for those changes to be translated early to accommodate our partners overseas in celebrating Lunar New Year. It was just an oversight that they went live in a few languages after we finalized the list.”
Other Questions
Q: Why was the Webshop Galactus spin improved so much, and with no announcement?
A: Griffin “With the App Stores down, we wanted to shine a bigger light on the Web Shop.
As for why no announcement, we’re running real fast over here. Pardon our dust!”
Q: If the Galactus spin was improved because of the app stores outage, does that mean the spin will be reverted to the old style soon?
A: Griffin “It’s all TBD right now. We’re making a lot of really fast, short term decisions to help the game out on a day-to-day basis.”
Q: Do you ever reserve a great build around ability for a more known character?
A: Glenn “Occasionally yes, but our focus is much more on making engaging seasonal content than ensuring a given design winds up on a character it may fit slightly better.
We begin all seasonal planning with themes and characters, then use those characters canon and relationships to develop their abilities. We may use gameplay goals to help develop those ideas, such as wanting a ‘SHIELD lord’ for card creation and using Victoria Hand there.
So while we might end up with an ability that seems like it would make sense on a later card, they almost always come from the character. The exception is usually when a season ‘trades’ designs with another for various reasons.
It’s true that we want popular characters to line up with exciting designs, but in some ways it can be more important for underserved characters because the design will carry the bulk of the card’s appeal. So it can vary from season to season how we want to approach it. Plus, we often want the highest-profile character to be a Season Pass, and the Season Pass has some more specific constraints on the kinds of designs we’re happy with.”
Q: Why reserve rewards for purchases for the webshop, but not for purchasing in the app?
A: Glenn “In-app purchasing is super convenient, and we want our content to be accessible to all. But we do pay a price for that convenience–a share of the revenue goes to the app store as an intermediary, which doesn’t happen in the web shop. So web shop rewards are just a little show of gratitude for players willing to use that route instead.”
Q: When will the Bounty rewards be sent out to everyone?
A: Griffin “Probably early next week.”
Q: Has the feedback been passed along about how terrible it feels trying to target a specific variant?
A: Griffin “We’re aware that players wish there was a way for them to target certain variants, absolutely. Some of this is by design but we’re always looking for ways to improve the Variant Shop.”
Q: Now that Snap is back on the Google Play store, when will it be back on the Samsung store?
A: Griffin “No ETA at the moment. We’re still working on it.”
Q: With the Asgard Besieged location live, have you ever considered giving the Destroyer to the losing side instead?
A: Glenn “No, because that design would essentially always force both players to contest Asgard Besieged—doing anything else would just get you blown up. With this version, it’s (mostly) each player’s option to figure out if and how to use a potential Destroyer.”
Q: When Character Mastery goes live, will it be avaliable for every card at launch? Or a select few?
A: Griffin “It’s coming at launch for every card!”
Q: Each OTA for a while had a text rework change (Hela, Arishem, Thanos, Typhoid Mary, etc), but I noticed this one didn’t. Is that pure coincidence?
A: Glenn “Yes, coincidence. We generally prefer to avoid text changes—we don’t actively want to redesign cards we’ve already released. We’d much rather keep the majority of our focus on designing new card abilities! But from time to time we see an opportunity or recognize that a card isn’t satisfying its goals well enough with the current execution at any Cost and Power, and then we consider options.”
Q: Does the team try to hit a certain number of nerfs/ buffs/ reworks in an OTA?
A: Glenn “We operate under a general rule of avoiding more nerfs than buffs and staying at 10 or fewer cards. Beyond that, we like to stay flexible based on the health of the metagame.”
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: Regarding the character mastery, is there already a release date or what more information can you share?
A: Griffin (announcement) “Last week’s service interruptions in the US prevented us from performing our usual QA and testing on the upcoming patch.
Due to this interruption, we’ve delayed next week’s patch one week to February 11. This patch includes Character Mastery (which we’re excited about!). Next season still begins on Feb 4 as scheduled.
Thank you for your understanding and patience.”
Q: Any chance of introducing some kind of ranked checkpoints? I really don’t like the slog after reaching a certain rank and hitting the wall of people afraid to risk more then one cube.
A: KentErik “during our soft launch, we had a ‘floors’ system in place, where every tier (30, 40, 50, etc.) acted as a floor upon reaching it. After playing with it for a while, we made the decision to instead move to the “bonus ranks” system as a way to provide some protection against losing your tier, but not provide a universal stop-gap like the floors. After the change, the ladder felt much better and more engaging on the whole, so that’s why we’ve kept it that way.
we have zero plans to go back to a floors system.”
Q: Will there ever be new game formats introduced?
A: Glenn “Yes, we intend to experiment with a wide range. However, the farther we deviate the longer the mode may take for us internally, since testing and implementation are different challenges.”
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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