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 Redwing and the announcement of the newest Series Drop! If you haven’t seen what cards are dropping, be sure to check out our guide!
If you don’t know if Redwing is worth Spotlight Caches, 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: Is Scream eligible for a cap like Surtur?
A: Glenn “It’s possible, but we prefer to avoid ‘caps’ as a dial when possible. As a balance dial, they’re a bit inelegant and also harm the ‘dream’ of the card, so we tend to look elsewhere by default.”
Q: Cards like RedHulk, Ross, Super Skrull, Gorr, etc have a pay-off that is dependent on the opponent rather than the player playing them. Have you thought about changing them so that they are more reliant to the player playing them?
A: Glenn “These cards purposefully expand into that design space, and we’ll continue to explore it from time to time. It’s one of the ways we can craft unique risks/rewards that let players decide which tradeoffs are important to them.”
Q: Have you considered removing Arnim Zola or Task Master from cards that Black Vortex can generate?
A: Glenn “We generally prefer not to ‘hide’ rules like these. For example, removing those from this pool but not X-Mansion’s is inherently unintuitive. We also do want some “duds” in these random pools. However, I’m open to the idea that we should draw some of these lines more generously.”
Q: With Nimrod dropping to Series 3, will he be removed from the upcoming Spotlight cache?
A: Griffin “In a similar situation to Nebula, we’re unable to change it due to the timeframe for determining drops and setting up Spotlight Caches.”
Q: When Deadpool and Hulkbuster / Agony merge, if they are destroyed, why doesn’t it count as 2 destroys? Can this be fixed?
A: Glenn “When cards merge, they become one card. We aren’t going to change that.”
Q: How did this Redwing bug make it past QA testing?
A: Addison “Bad miss on our end. We’re discussing it internally to figure out what went wrong, why it was missed (or if something changed after testing, why it wasn’t retested), and what we can do better going forward.
Shouldn’t have happened!
Fortunately this looks to be something addressable server-side, so we’re working on a fix now. Hopefully corrected sooner rather than later though no ETA yet.”
Q: Was Redwing too strong with a “once per turn” text so he could trigger multiple times?
A: Glenn “Well, elsewhere there are players indicating a bug to get the second use is too strong, so at least some players agree with our assessment that it was too much.
I do think it was a fairly close call on which restriction to use, and while I often “lean strong” on close calls, the amount of Energy that Redwing can cheat is very high.”
Q: How does Rocket and Groot steal Power from a card if it gets destroyed first?
A: Glenn “The cards aren’t in play, but they do exist and thus their Power is being stolen. This matches how we handle other triggers, like Angela, and has other meaningful interactions, such as Deadpool.”
Q: Does Selene moving down to Series 3 make her less likely to get a buff or a rework?
A: Glenn “The drop doesn’t impact her chances either way.”
Other Questions
Q: Will any more cards be added to the ban list for Sanctum Showdown before it releases?
A: Glenn “We’re not planning to further update the banned list ahead of release.”
Q: How much does MMR correlate to your rank or CL status?
A: Glenn “MMR’s calculation isn’t based on rank. Rank, CL, and MMR are all separate values matchmaking uses to find fair matches in a timely fashion.”
Q: Do long-time players who regularly hit infinite end up with harder climbs as a result of their MMR going up season after season?
A: Glenn “Players with high MMRs based on strong past performance will face more difficult opponents during their climb, but they won’t face a harder climb (relatively speaking) because these players are themselves also better at SNAP. Our matchmaking doesn’t feed weaker players to stronger ones, it endeavors to offer both groups a climbing challenge that suits their skill level.”
Q: How new player friendly is Sanctum Showdown’s matchmaking?
A: Glenn “We’ve adapted the matchmaking algorithms previously used for HV for Sanctum.”
Q: Does your data indicates that 3k CL players are evenly matched against players with 5 times their CL?
A: Glenn “If two players are being matched, it’s because their combination of MMR, collection level, and rank indicate that the matchup is in a fair range.”
Q: How do you manage bias for cards you like or dislike when buffing and nerfing?
A: Glenn “We use a lot of data, but we’re players too and that’s a feature, not a bug. We have a broad team culture and openly discuss all of our changes, so I don’t have major concerns about our gameplay biases being a systemic risk. Every idea has to stand up to scrutiny.
That’s not to say we’ll never miss—we totally will. But the process is solid, and some amount of misses are a necessary (and fixable) tolerance within our approach.”
Q: How does dropping cards in Series address card acquisition problems?
A: Glenn “S4 and S3 cards cost less than S5 and S4 cards, respectively, making them easier for all players to acquire via tokens. The newly S4 cards are also themselves among the cards that previously had lower drop chances from Spotlight Caches, so their chances have been increased. The newly S3 cards also no longer drop from Spotlight caches at all.
Overall, there’s a broadly positive impact on ease of acquisition, though the degree can vary from card to card.”
Q: Do you think releasing more cards into Series 4 that aren’t as powerful would get more cards into players hands?
A: Glenn “New cards will necessarily release across a range of strength. We also already release cards directly to Series 4–they just come through game modes first. We’re releasing 3 this month, which is a substantial percentage of our new content.”
Q: Is it intended that if a location changes into Project Pegusus or Tinkerer's Workshop, that Energy gets added to the current turn and next turn? It makes cards like Wiccan fail to stay in curve, or let’s you float energy for 2 turns.
A: Glenn “This function is intended, because the locations do need to also add Energy in the same turn when revealed through normal means as the turn begins. We don’t differentiate between these two manners of revealing locations within the location’s behavior. I think it’s fair that we consider improving on that, both to eliminate this confusion and open up some potential design space.”
Q: Is the team aware of the bloat all of these bundles, vibranium offer, and collectors vault create in the shop? And what about the return of Spotlight variants to the shop?
A: Griffin “We’re definitely aware of this feedback around the Shop. The team is working on adjustments and potential long-term solutions but we don’t have any details to share on that right now.
As for the returning Spotlight Variants, we’re still tossing around ideas for the best way to bring them back. Nothing has been decided upon but we’re eager to bring them back as well.”
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: Could a 2v2 mode be a thing one day?
A: Stephen “We want to continue to create new exciting game modes in the future!”
Q: Having more power with Iron Patriot at Cancun does not get you the card discount. Is this a bug or acting as intended?
A: Rada “There cannot be a winner on Cancun, therefore [Iron Patriot] can’t trigger as he checks for winning, not greater Power.”
Q: Is the “Legendary” word (which was erased from Eson) going to come back later on for other cards?
A: Sorry, devs have a strict rule that they don’t comment on any datamined content. So no answer possible here.
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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