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 The Ancient One! If you don’t know if the new card is worth Snap Packs or Tokens, make sure to check out our Bonus Challenge guide for a post-release review of the card and new decklists!
- Second Dinner is now officially self-publishing as of the June 10 patch and relaunch of the Marvel Snap Snap Web Shop!
- Conclusion of the Golden Gauntlet II.
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: When discussing Doom 2099 in some old patch notes, it was mentioned how bringing him below 2 power would cause issues because it’d create a synergy with Ravonna. Are there any other major break points the team has to balance around when making/changing cards and how they go about it.
A: Glenn “Doom 2099 and Ravonna were really a fairly perfect storm, as Ravonna efficiently adds a turn to Doom 2099, whose strength is specifically gated by the number of turns he’s active, while also fueling other synergies. That’s not to say these other cards don’t have impacts, just that all cards have impacts and we much more often design towards making those exciting rather than avoiding them.”
Q: With how similar Surge and Evolved Shocker are, have you considered any Shocker buffs?
A: Glenn “Not really. They’re different cards that get used for slightly different things in often different decks. It’s ok for there to be a range within cards that have similar functions.”
Q: Are there any plans to acknowledge the Iron Heart show coming out soon, like how Agatha was changed when her show released?
A: Glenn “Might do a little somethin'”
Other Questions
Q: What is your process for how you decide to balance cards? Like how you decided to give Toxie Doxie +2 Power instead of -1 Cost or +3 added Power?
A: Glenn “I tend to boil it down to a) why are we making a change? and b) what is the desired effect of the change? There are often multiple ‘correct’ changes that answer both, so it’s actually most important just to avoid the wrong ones.
For example, Iron Patriot’s position as a 2-Cost was something we had playtested quite a lot. We knew we didn’t want a 1-Cost version, and the 3-Cost ones we’d tried hadn’t been very satisfying. Plus, players who enjoyed building around the card would have to much more dramatically change their decks if we nerfed his Cost.
In Toxie’s case, our goal wasn’t to risk making the strongest handbuff card via OTA–just to add a little strength to a card that was languishing. Sometimes we take small swings, just to shake things up in positive directions.”
Q: Has there been a decline in making restrictive locations? Playing Jeff doesn’t have the same impact it once did.
A: Glenn “Early SNAP had, in our opinion, too high a frequency of highly restrictive locations. We’ve since shifted focus more on locations that challenge players to decide where and how to compete, rather than unilaterally narrow their options too often. We think it’s more fun, so I don’t expect to see us releasing them with similar frequency (though I’m sure we’ll release some).”
Q: Why don’t you ever mention the web shop in-game?
A: Griffin “It’s against the various app store policies to promote it from within the app itself.”
Q: What makes the team decide to make an ability into a character vs into a skill?
A: Glenn “Skills open up different kinds of gameplay. Adding variation to the mix is a really fun part of SNAP–Merlin is not unlike Nico, Cable, or Iron Patriot and we desire having variety in cards’ effects. Cards that are very linear tend to need to a) have an important job and b) be very good at the job in order to see play, and skills can help cards unlock more versatility than singular effects might otherwise offer–or, in the case of some effects, restrict their frequency and increase their strength. For example, Nico’s “destroy, draw 2″ wouldn’t be printable on a 1-Cost ever if it was always available, but it’s a lot of fun at that Cost with some frequency.”
Q: Will we ever see if/when skills that’s aren’t created by a character/location, but can be directly put into a deck?
A: Glenn “They’re coming soon (in small numbers)”
Q: Is there design space for more Snap abilities like Hydra Bob? What about things like number of cubes or who has priority?
A: Glenn “I think snapping has a lot of space, especially for game modes. Number of cubes less so—we can change what the snap does and stuff like Bob will still work, but cube-based cards would break (like in Sanctum or Diner).
The game has a lot of pressure on rewarding/punishing priority already, so I’m not sure what we’d do there—it seems a little shallow. I personally like ‘try to win’ a lot more, as you can see on designs like Sanctum Showdown, Iron Patriot, and some future cards.”
Q: What are the design goals when making cards that create other cards?
A: Glenn “We almost always start top-down, looking for ideas from the creative canon that we know we can use to tell a ‘short story’ in the game. Then we just start playing games and iterating on the finer elements—or replacing a weak idea completely until we’re satisfied.”
Q: What happened to that 10,000 point web shop reduction that was mentioned before?
A: Griffin “It’s there. The previous Web Shop had a max of 50,000 Web Points. The new one is at 40,000.”
Q: Now Snap has been banned in more countries, like Iran, Cuba, and Russia. Can we hope that the game will be unbanned in these countries?
A: Jared “Unfortunately we cannot share any details beyond what we have already shared at this time.”
Q: Are Skills exclusive to magic-centered characters?
A: Glenn “They’ll definitely find their way onto other kinds of characters.”
Q: How do choose if a move card will go left or right when designing them?
A: Glenn “Pushing left is ever so slightly weaker than pushing right, because many players more commonly play early cards to revealed locations. That’s part of why Heimdall pushing left is fun, because it creates a sequencing learning about how to build your board.
But it’s mostly the same and we just aim to balance the availability of the effects across Costs.”
Q: What is your vision of the “ideal player journey” you want players to have each season?
A: Glenn “There isn’t a single, ideal ‘player journey.’ Players are myriad, with many different interests–as you’ve pointed out, yours differ from the generalized group I referred to who make Infinite quickly, as theirs differ from more casual players like myself, etc.”
Q: Why aren’t certain bundles avalible on the web shop?
A: Griffin “Some of the more custom in-game offers like this pack and Vibranium Offers didn’t make it into our launch version of the Web Shop. It’s on our list of things to add in the future.”
Q: Since the new web shop is still down for Japanese players, what will happen to their reward track if they want to buy these limited time bundles now?
A: Glenn “As we continue work on the Japanese version of the Web Shop, we recognize that those located there are currently unable to take advantage of earning the bonus rewards from the Milestone Track when purchasing the extended ‘Reaper’s Double’and ‘Toxic Temptations’ bundles which are set to expire.
To reconcile, we’ll be awarding all players who purchase these bundles **IN-GAME** the appropriate Web Points on the Web Shop Milestone Track in the Japan region once the Web Shop is back and running there.
This is a one-time exception we’re making as the Web Shop Milestone rewards are meant as a show of gratitude for players who choose to use the site instead of the convenience of directly in the game.”
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!
There was a huge flood of questions around different aspects of the new web shop. Many of your questions were similar to ones that were flooding discord, so I included them in the general questions instead of this section. I tried to narrow down this Q/A to questions that weren’t super specific or likely outdated, but if you have web shop questions that I didn’t highlight already, please let me know!
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!
More Content