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: was Luke Cage kept as a 3-Cost for Cerebro, what are Marvel Snap’s biggest weaknesses, what makes you eligible for the Dark Avengers Global Bounty Event rewards, 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 Series 5 card Moonstone and the OTA Balance Updates! If you don’t know if this card 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: Why does Rocket and Groot not gain Power if the opponent has Luke Cage, yet Scream gains Power in the same scenario?
A: Glenn “Amending this answer: Scream is the bug, not R&G. We will be updating her to behave the same way.”
Q: With how powerful Luke Cage has become, has the team considered splitting his effect into 2 different cards? One for friendly afflictions as a build around, and another for a tech card option?
A: Glenn “We have considered it, but aren’t taking that kind of action right now.”
Q: Why doesn’t Luke Cage prevent Cassandra Nova or Silver Sable from triggering in the same way he stops Rocket and Groot?
A: Glenn “If there was a card that prevented cards in deck from being afflicted then Nova or Sable would be affected by that card, but there isn’t. While Luke can disable their steal after the fact, a reduction did occur. We decided to draw the line on that element.”
Q: Why doesn’t Alioth remove Evolved Hulk’s ability?
A: Glenn “Alioth should remove Hulk’s ability, as well as other Evo cards—if it’s not, that’s a bug. However, the Power Hulk earns isn’t tied to his ability the way something like Devil Dinosaur’s Power is. The ability triggers in hand, and permanently applies the Power to the card.”
Q: If you removed Tokoyo 2099 because it too “crudely” countered discard, how is Luke Cage any different in that he crudely counters Ajax decks?
A: Glenn “Locations are very different from cards. Getting randomly and completely defeated by a game element is the design team setting you up for a bad time. Offering players the opportunity to choose counters and strategies is the core CCG experience.
Is Luke too impactful and covering too much ground? Perhaps, that’s certainly a reasonable position to take. But it isn’t the same kind of issue that Tokyo 2099 was, it just has a cosmetic similarity.”
Q: Now that Arishem has been changed, are the cards that were changed because of him under review to be changed back? Like Doctor Octopus being reverted back to a 5/10 with his old ability.
A: Glenn “Our philosophy is usually to let the live game continue to develop and review the data. As things stand out, we reconsider them.
For Doctor Octopus specifically, the previous design wasn’t changed just because of Arishem. That just served to highlight that the role Ock’s design was playing tended to be polarized around being too weak or too effective at locking up a location in a really frustrating way. We’re happier with the new design.”
Q: Is it intended that
A: Glenn “Yes. Knowing what
Q: Why does
A: Glenn “Hulkling’s design as a 6-Cost card made it more likely he’d be played alongside cards like Lockjaw and Jubilee, where the effect wouldn’t activate unless it started the game there. At the time, we generally preferred doing things like Copycat, so
Q: Could Luke Cage have been changed to a 4/6? And did you stick with a Power nerf so he could stay in Cerebro?
A: Glenn “Yes. We probably would’ve changed Luke Cage to 4/6 as an experiment, except that we value highly the contributions he offers Cerebro.
We usually don’t weigh Cerebro much for OTAs–it’s an impossible constraint to operate under at all times. But Luke’s a special case.”
Other Questions
Q: With new cards all being themed around the season, will more obscure characters ever be added without a theme?
A: Glenn “We believe reward spaces like game mode prizes are a great way to distribute those kinds of characters and intend to use them to do so.”
Q: Have you ever scrapped an entire season before?
A: Glenn “Depends on when you mean. Have we ever identified a season theme but then discarded it before designing the characters? Yes, but that’s about as far as it’s ever gotten.”
Q: Why does destroying a card in the deck act as the same thing as destroying on board? Meanwhile discard has its own term for targeting your hand.
A: Glenn “Convention, mostly. ‘Discarding a card [from your hand]’ is a consistently defined game action in many games, so we haven’t deviated from that. It’s sort of like how most PC FPS games use the same basic controls for movement—no need to confuse wider expectations.
However, we have also decided that a third type of elimination would be useful. Stay tuned!”
Q: Have you changed anything about the bots or their frequency?
A: Glenn “We evaluate and iterate on all of the system elements related to matchmaking by fairly regularly in minor ways.”
Q: Are you aware that playing Iron Patriot on Isle of Silence makes the game stutter severely?
A: Glenn “Yes, we’re investigating this bug.”
Q: Will matchmaking be updated to always account for major CL differences between players?
A: Glenn “CL is already always a factor for matchmaking players. Our matchmaking uniformly prefers close CL matches, but how rigid the range is depends on how long it might otherwise take to find a match.
There are ranges where that barrier is a hard stop, especially at lower CLs, to ensure a more fun game. But none where it is ignored, even after Infinite—just a difference in flexibility.”
Q: Why does the leaderboard often not match up with the live game?
A: Glenn “The leaderboard doesn’t sync with the live server as often as your client, so they can ‘disagree’ from time to time.”
Q: We just got the global Dark Avengers event. If completed every player will get 2 free s4 cards. Last month for Christmas we got s5 Elsa. While not free, this season pass also has a s4 card, Daken. Are these additions part of the team ongoing effort to get more cards in players hand?
A: Glenn “Yes, we’re exploring ways to distribute more S4/S5 cards. Not everything will get repeated, but we’re trying some things and will be trying more.”
Q: What exactly do players need to do to be eligible for the rewards from the global event?
A: Griffin “All you need to do to be eligible to reap the rewards is play at least once with one of the Bounty cards during the duration of the event. That’s it!”
Q: Does it matter what mode I play to count wins toward the global event?
A: Griffin “Wins in any mode count! Including Proving Grounds and Conquest.”
Q: What made you change “The Peak” to a new location effect?
A: Glenn “While evaluating our locations, one of the metrics we weighed was how often a location’s appearance led to an unforced (no snap) retreat prior to turn 4. That event is a significant indicator that the presence of the location is damaging the game for the player, as they’d rather lose a cube than play at all. The previous version of The Peak scored too high here relative to other locations.”
Q: Based on your previous answer about The Peak, how was that location changed and not Dream Dimension (which is very unpopular)?
A: Glenn “Well, we’re not measuring how much players enjoy the location with that metric, or enjoy its effect happening. The question being asked is ‘Does this location being in the game make someone want to quit that game more than play it out?’
The later trigger opens up potential for the location or other game elements to change, so players are more likely to play on even if they really dislike the location. It’s equally applicable to Dream Dimension, the structure of Dream Dimension is just such that players would rather play.”
Q: Why is the global event a web browser with social media updates and not in game?
A: Griffin “We wanted to experiment with a ‘low lift’ community event that required minimal dev resources (to the game itself) while still encouraging play and delivering cool rewards.”
Q: Do you think so many card releases are the explanation for unintended interactions, like Luke Cage and Scream?
A: Glenn “We have made some process adjustments, as we onboarded two designers into leading seasons over the last year (for 2023 and most of 2024, that was just me). Developing systems that keep us in alignment was a new challenge, and I’m happy with the progress.
However, occasional things will slip by unintentionally, or be deemed meaningful to do differently. That’s not unusual in CCGs. I think it’s fair to say our release cadence adds pressure that can contribute to them, but our response is always to diagnose and then see how we can improve the process.”
Q: Will we be getting an infographic for Deadpool’s Diner again like the first tike?
A: Griffin “Due to the fact that we had the holidays directly after DPD and the designers/data teams would be out, we didn’t plan to create one. By the time we were back in January, we felt it would be old news. That was the plan from the beginning.
Just to clear the air on this, DPD wasn’t as well-received as the first go-around and the numbers indeed reflect that. Your feedback has been vital and the team is looking into improvements for whenever it returns again.”
Q: What do you think are Snap’s top 3 strengths and weaknesses?
A: Glenn “My personal list from a design perspective, in no particular order:
Strengths-
* Ratio of depth to complexity
* Game length
* Use of tension
Weaknesses-
* No factions
* Deck size
* Limited balance dials”
Q: Why hasn’t the top tier move deck been nerfed with the OTA?
A: Glenn “While the ‘Move Bounce’ deck is very successful at ‘high infinite’, we hadn’t seen similar success at other levels of play, or for other Move decks.”
Q: When you are analyzing different pocket metas, how many metagames are there that you analyze?
A: Glenn “Broadly speaking, there are about five metagames. We slice them with more specifics, but here’s a generic sense of them:
* S1/S2 focused
* S3+, casual
* S3+, competitive
* Infinite
* “Nosebleed” Infinite
We address these pocket metagames primarily with matchmaking, ensuring that players are finding fun and healthy games with like-minded players as often as we can, and we’re continuously improving on this element. It’s also an indirect target of game modes to offer players different goals they can self-select for.”
Q: Can you comment on how players tend to react to Ego?
A: Glenn “*Thanos Snap*
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: Will you change scream so her ability works on unrevealed cards?
A: Scream used to do this, but her effect was updated to be consistent with other cards. See Glenn’s reasoning at the time here:
Glenn “We’ll be updating Scream to align with existing cards. We don’t want to split hairs on stuff like Kingpin and Hazmat being able to see cards differently.
Q: Is it intended that if I play Agony and another card to a location in a turn and both cards get Juggernauted to another location but still end up on the same location, Agony won’t trigger?
A: Intended. The cards weren’t played together on the location they ended up at.
Q: Can we hope to see anything special with any of the (ultimate) non-token producing variants? They are pretty pricey after all.
A: Ultimate Variants were previously on the roadmap to be improved with “ultimate variant evolutions”. Other projects have taken priority since then, but here is Stephen’s reasoning for the lack of Ultimate variant improvements:
Stephen “We built some prototypes that were cool, but we felt did not quite deliver on the fantasy and value level of Ultimate variants. We are going to continue to prototype it, but we felt it made sense to remove it from the roadmap because we aren’t sure when/if we will be able to ship it into the live game / in your hands in a reasonable period of time.”
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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