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: when can you get Cassandra Nova with tokens, why are devs making so many 3-Cost cards, will future game modes be more unique, 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 Series 5 card Copycat! If you don’t know if these cards are worth the Season Pass or Spotlight Cache, 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: How does Copycat interact with Lamentis?
A: Glenn “Lamentis-1 draws cards for both players before destroying either of their decks, so she should copy a card when it’s revealed.”
Q: When will Cassandra Nova be avaliable for token purchase?
A: Stephen “Cassandra will be available in the token shop in a couple weeks after Deadpool’s Diner has ended”
Q: Does Blink shuffle your deck when she swaps a card? Or do the cards simply swap places?
A: Glenn “If you’d shuffle your deck in real life to do it, it shuffles it in our game. This has been the most intuitive rule that avoids picking and choosing weird spots.”
Q: You mentioned if you would shuffle the deck in real life, you will shuffle in game. If that is the case, why don’t Jane Foster, Mind Stone, or Yondu shuffle the deck?
A: Glenn “I’d have to verify some of those cases–Jane and Mind Stone should shuffle, and probably Yondu (slightly different since your opponent has the effect).
But for Pixie, Phastos, and Negative they shouldn’t shuffle–those effects only matter when the card would leave the deck or be seen some other way, and would be executed similarly in paper. (No one’s putting +1/+1 counters on the cards in their Magic deck, either.)”
Q: Why does Gladiator fight a random card in the deck, and not the top card of the deck?
A: Glenn “We thought top card would be a little weaker in the long run as we’d been experimenting with effects that would apply buffs to it, such as the revised America Chavez and new Krakoa. It also unnecessarily damaged the value of stuff like Howard. There’s also a psychological element to losing “the next card” that tends to be a little more frustrating for some people, but that’s a small weight.”
Q: Is the sfx for Copycat intended to sound like the “card disabled” effect?
A: Bella “Ive been told this morning that its being fixed”
Other Questions
Q: Are 1-costs naturally harder to design due to simply being 1-cost?
A: Glenn “Yes, the design space for 1-Costs is smaller. They have a smaller range of Power to differentiate from one another, and a smaller range of appealing effects we can push to competitive strengths. Plus, many decks aim to curve out, so 1-Costs aren’t great unless they’re ideal on turn 1; Nebula and Sunspot are good examples that have succeeded in this role, but decks don’t need a lot of options that work this way.”
Q: What makes 3-costs so appealing in designing new cards; is it simply being able to curve them in for most turns in the game? Or did you think 3-costs were too weak and needed more support?
A: Glenn “Many games have an inflection point upon which the game turns. For us, that’s turn 3; it’s when players have seen all the locations, had meaningful chances to play cards, etc. That’s not to say it’s clear who will win–just that the ‘opening’ portion is over. So, turn 3 is an ideal place to position playing an impactful card. 3-Costs also have the distinction of efficiently using Energy in different combinations on later turns in ways 4 and 5-Cost cards struggle more to do–part of Zabu’s strength was always just letting 4-Costs do that.”
Q: Out of a total of 38 cards released in 2024 so far, only two 1-cost cards have released this year (Miek and Hydra Bob). In comparison, the large majority (almost a third, ironically) of all cards initial costs on release were 3-costs. 2, 4 and 5-costs were pretty evenly spread, but 6-costs were also pretty low as well, coming in at only 3 made.
Is this a conscious pattern that the balance team recognizes? Do you ever try to avoid it or lean into it?
A: Glenn “We recognize it, but our primary goal is always to just make good game pieces and a fun game. How we distribute Costs can impact that, but distributing them more evenly is not a goal unto itself. If the gameplay or data signals we need more or less somewhere, we’ll adjust accordingly–there just isn’t a specific benefit to distributing equitably on its own merit. There’s always more context than that.”
Q: How did you make this seasons music and what did you take into account? It’s great by the way.
A: TheChrisAlan “Hello! Glad to hear you are enjoying it! I took some influence from some of the original composed tracks from past Deadpool movie soundtracks. Particularly songs like Maximum Effort & Twelve Bullets composed by Junkie XL felt very fitting for Deadpool as a character and the season’s art/theme. And so I set off to write something that I could picture Deadpool humming on a regular day – something dynamic, a bit zany and all over the place!”
Q: How long has Deadpool’s Diner been in development?
A: Addison “Depends on what you consider ‘development’ so I’ll let production chime in with their own perspective if they want but we had bugs start coming in March/April so that’s when it became ‘testable’ 🙂”
Q: How do you measure the balance between fun decks vs meta decks?
A: Glenn “Generally, you want the fun things to be strong and strong things to be fun in games. ‘Fun’ is subjective, but there are some things we know are very polarizing (Galactus, having your cards discarded, Clog) vs. just have different groups of fans (Phoenix Force, Destroy, playing with random cards). All of these things are fun to someone, so we want all of them to be viable.
We mostly aim for every deck to be fun within its strength target, and let the chips fall where they may on the meta. Our small team isn’t going to find the best build for the best deck with any kind of reliability, especially given OTAs come after we finalize future designs.
Win rate and cube rate paint a pretty clear picture about the most meaningful contributors to a deck’s play rate (strength vs. enjoyment). We’ll also often dig into its matchup spread for more context.”
Q: Do you have to have teammates in your Alliance to access all of the rewards?
A: Bella “Nope, you can be a lone ranger if you wish. Obviously having more people around will make things easier, but you have the whole feature to play with whether you are alone or not. Hope you enjoy it!”
Q: Will future game modes ever deviate from the base game mode?
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.”
Q: Are there any limitations on naming your Alliance or tag?
A: Ottertron “Yes, you can’t have cuss words or anything like that.”
Q: Why are bots in Deadpool’s Diner? It feels like Pay to Win when streamers pay to skip early stages, then play just bots to get Cassandra quickly.
A: Glenn “The nature of any event that slices matchmaking requires some protection against inordinately long queue times of several minutes or more. In the first couple days, the higher queues are going to be lower population and trigger it more, but that should decrease as the event continues.
Gold wasn’t required for this–many players have climbed to the top level without spending any and there are ~1.5 weeks to go. Even for those that have, it’s also a resource earnable from play. I’d push back on your criteria for ‘Pay to win’ as the mode requires no spend, offers unique rewards, and includes a new card that usually requires Tokens or Spotlight Cache Keys.
‘Pay to collect faster?’ That’s more fair–but also fundamental to almost every CCG and F2P mobile title.
Q: When the game states “highest rank achieved”, is that per season or the entire time you have played Snap?
A: Ottertron “It’s throughout your Snap lifetime.”
Q: Were there other names you considered besides Deadpool’s Diner?
A: Stephen “We went through a few different names for it and different versions of it over the history of the game. Originally when we experimented with a feature like this it was pre-launch in alpha and themed around the infinity stones and rebuilding the infinity gauntlet. Then after launch it shifted to be Hellfire Gala themed for a while. Then we shifted to a version we called Gambit’s Lounge with our favorite Cajun X-Men leading the way. We even played with it being an Arcade for a bit where you would go between arcade cabinets for each table.
Once we had a good sense for when the Deadpool Wolverine movie was going to release we decided to go all in on the merc with a mouth. Deadpool loves food like we do, and we have forever been hoping to do a food themed mode or event, and we landed on Deadpool’s Diner!”
Q: Are Premium Mystery Variants able to pull Spotlight variants that are in the variant pool now?
A: Stephen “Spotlight variants are not currently available in the PMV”
Q: How do people use reference codes when they make an account?
A: Arya “Copy your code on the event page and share it to your friends. For new players they will see a sub-page to enter invitation codes when they view the event page.”
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!
This week is a special edition! We asked reddit what questions players had for developers. This week features a ton of answered questions from both our comments in the last edition, and from reddit questions!
Q: Can I opt out of seeing certain variants I don’t like?
A: The team has stated they are actively working on personalized shops. Beginning iterations are already being implemented, such as random shop takeovers. They also have a rotation system based on skipping variants. Stephen explains more here:
“We intentionally have a ‘do not show’ line that protects everyone from seeing a variant you already have seen recently. We have been increasing that time period with the feedback around album variants.”
Q: Does Ego trump Agatha or vice versa?
A: Both Ego and Agatha play totally randomly, so neither have “control”. Agatha does take control on the turn when she can be played though. Gozz summarizes here:
“Ego and Agatha are fully random (with the exception Agatha will always try to play itself on turn 6)”
Q: Why is White Queen a card, but not Emma Frost?
A: Glenn “Stay Tuned”
Q: Why did you change how move cards resolve? It makes them strictly worse!
A: Glenn “The purpose is stated in the notes–this change resolves both the displayed game state (cards move when they visually move) and a number of bizarre, nonintuitive interactions.
One of the obstacles to strengthening Move cards in general has been how complicated they can make our gameplay, so I’m optimistic that this change will pave the way for us to strengthen some of Move’s options once we see how the change impacts different cards.”
Q: Price of border is too high for single use. Do you have any plans to change them?
A: Borders can be bought for a discount if purchased from the cosmetic shop (when it appears). Borders are also being added as free rewards. Functionality has been added to make them be free rewards for existing systems like the battle pass and the conquest shop.
Q: Could we potentially see a 2v2 mode in the future?
A: Stephen “We want to continue to create new exciting game modes in the future!”
Q: Can you please make the black krackle more visable?
A: Daniela “We know Black Splits could look better, it’s on the to do list! Thank you for your patience!”
Q: Will you ever buff Kang? Or rework him?
A: Glenn “Kang’s effect is novel and that has value to us and to many players. However, it’s not an effect with many balance dials, and is clearly too weak.
He is a candidate for a rework; one thing we wonder about is how far of a departure from the original would players accept? Or do they really value his particular ‘redo the turn’ space and just want a more fun execution? Feel free to post about it in the feedback channels if you’re so inclined.
Q: Will generated cards ever use a variant you own instead of the default art?
A: Glenn “I don’t foresee us doing this generally, because our coverage will never be complete enough to cover the fail cases. It’s also a feature for endgame players that the base art is an at-a-glance clue as to whether the card was generated or started in the deck.”
Q: Does matchmaking consider the deck you use? If not, why do I get matches so frequently where I get paired against a counter deck, or I counter my opponent’s deck?
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. 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: Could we ever get the ability to trade in variants or splits we don’t want?
A: Stephen “No plans to do this at this time. In general our philosophy is we do not want players to destroy their collection. At some point in the future we do want to address collection bloat but that would most likely be something more like archiving cards/splits you have earned but dont want them distracting you in your normal collection view.”
Q: Can we please get new Pixel variants?
A: Glenn “If I can keep sending these posts to Jonny hopefully so!”
Q: Are ultimate variants upgrades still coming?
A: 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.”
Q: Is a draft mode in the works?
A: It is listed on the most recent roadmap!
Q: Would you accept new card creation by fans?
A: Glenn “We think it’s cool that people enjoy making the cards, but we don’t seek them out explicitly for inspiration. There are some ethical and legal reasons for that.”
Q: When will we see more character albums?
A: Stephen “We want to see how the Deadpool and Wolverine one do but we are already planning to add more each season following the Deadpool season”
Q: Can you add the ability to pin a daily offer variant?
A: KentErik “sorry, but there are no plans to let you pin variants in the daily offer shop.”
Q: Any plans to add single player content?
A: Glenn “No plans at the moment.”
Q: How will you handle multiple versions of the same character? Why are some new cards, while others are variants?
A: The team has mentioned in the past that it depends on how popular the different versions of the character are. Lesser known versions are more likely to be variants, but more popular, well known versions could be full cards.
Q: Could we ever see card rotations?
A: Glenn “I do think OTAs, events, and other innovations are all ways we can mitigate or eliminate our need for rotation. However, we’re not really evaluating rotation right now, just how we can make the game even better.”
Q: How do you choose which characters to make cards for first?
A: Glenn “We try to find a theme that’s appealing and includes characters we’re excited to design around and release. Sometimes we’ll weigh whether there are specific opportunities for cool variants with a given theme.”
Q: Could we see a Moon Knight buff?
A: Glenn “We’re trying out a couple ideas.”
Q: What comes first, the character or the ability?
A: Glenn “We have a small stash of abilities we want to find homes for, but mostly it’s the character first. When we pick a character, if an ability in “the vault” works, we usually just start there.”
Q: Can we see variants for generated tokens (like Winter Soldier or the Void)?
A: Glenn “It’s not practical to ~double the art resources for every card that makes tokens”
Q: Will there ever be more permanent series 5 cards?
A: Stephen “No more big bads. The spotlight system removed the need for cards in that category.”
Q: Would adding bios to each character ever be considered?
A: Daniela “Yes! This is something we’ve talked about, no timeline as of yet though”
Q: Why don’t you offer refunds for nerfed cards?
A: Ben Brode “We want to be fairly aggressive with balance changes which means we are often nerfing the best cards. If we gave refunds, that means often the cards folks are buying end up just being free (they get the card and the 6K back). This kind of inflation will result in the currency being somewhat useless.
We also want our designers to just nerf cards when it’s the right thing and not to have to worry about what this could do to the in-game economy.
Finally, when we nerf cards we aren’t trying to make them unplayable, just bring them into a fair position. They should still be useful and you still have the card.”
Q: Is Venom’s voiceline getting fixed?
A: Stephen “The voiceline will be changed in a future update to ‘We are Venom’. It may take a couple of months due to our patch cycle, but the change is already set to come.”
Q: When could we see new split options?
A: Stephen “The work is largely done for these. You can expect them a patch or two after Alliances.”
Q: How will I be able to unlock new splits?
A: Stephen “New splits will be earned as a new reward type across the game that you can apply to a character of your choice. They can also be bought for gold if you want it now. When you unlock a new split for a character it will also be ‘discovered’ and combo on all future infinity splits for that character.
For example, if you earn the ‘Bananas Flare’ that rains bananas around the card and you apply it to Magneto, you will immediately be able to equip your Magneto Custom Card with No Finish / Bananas Flare. If what you really want is Gold Foil / Bananas Flare then you will have to get it through infinity splits.”
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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