Developer Update for the Week of June 7, 2023: Conquest Mode Edition!

Hello all! Welcome back to this week’s breakdown of what’s happening over on the Marvel Snap official Discord! This week, is a bit lighter on news, as the developers haven’t answered many questions (likely in preparation for the OTA update tomorrow and new patch release). We do, however, get lots of information about the new Conquest mode releasing soon! 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 season Spider-Versus, as well as the release of the new card Ghost-Spider! If you haven’t seen the news on what cards will be downgrading this season, make sure to check that out! Also make sure to check out the highlights new features of Conquest mode in our guide!

Answers and questions may be slightly rephrased for more clarity and ease of reading. This weeks topics will be divided into card specific questions, other questions, and Conquest Mode Questions.

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: Why is The Living Tribunal ongoing? Why not trigger at the end of the game like Dracula?
A: Glenn “The card was implemented this way at one point, but it had a lot of nonintuitive interactions with cards like Captain Marvel and Dracula. Since those cards have already proven confusing on their own, we prefer to minimize adding more things into the mix.”

Q: Why did you decide to make Cyclops lower power with unspent energy and not how much energy was spent?
A: Glenn “We wanted every HE card caring about unspent energy to have the same input, but allowing that input to scale would’ve made it impossible to balance.”

Q: Is Shanna in a good place balance wise?
A: Glenn “The buff helped, but she’s still a bit weaker than we’d like. However, we have some other cards and changes coming that might benefit her, so I’d like to see how those shake out.”

Q: Are you ever going to fix the bugs that Kang causes?
A: Glenn “We’re continuing to look into Kang. One difficult element is sourcing the precise details of some issues.

I don’t know whether you submitted this bug or not, so if you did thank you! But I’m going to use this question as an opportunity to communicate to the community how important it is bugs get reported in-game. Those reports give us the ability to backtrace the game state for all the details of the error. The diagnosis may seem obvious–maybe these locations matter–but the backtrace is how we figure it out for sure.

For example, one reason Kitty previously crashed games was if the opponent was playing Mysterio. No social media reports could get that information to us, because each player only knows their side of the game.

The in-client bug report system I’m referring to doesn’t use a customer support page or need many details:

1. From the home screen, click the gear icon in the top left.
2. Scroll down, click “Report a Bug” which pops up an in-client text field.
3. Type a short summary of what happened–“Kang crashed my game”–click Submit, then click past the confirmation.

That’s it!”

Other Questions

Q: Do you use data from Battlemode when balancing?
A: Glenn “We don’t currently monitor battle mode for balance purposes. That may change as we start getting Conquest data.”

Q: Why is creating controller support high on your development priority list?
A: Stephen “Controller play represents a large and growing part of PC gamers plus this work enables us to continue taking steps towards getting Marvel Snap on consoles in the future”

Conquest Mode Questions

Q: In the video it showed an entrance fee for the conquest mode. How does this work? Is this to “skip” to that level instead of winning tickets? Or do you need to pay this to enter that mode? Or is there something else?
A: Tucker “The Proving Grounds is always free to enter, and winning 1 battle in the Proving Grounds gives you a free ticket to the Silver Conquest. (Likewise, completing the Silver Conquest gives you a free ticket to Gold and completing Gold gives you a free ticket to Infinite.)

Spending your gold on a ticket allows you to start a run in that higher stakes level right away, making it a super effective way to quickly catch up on rewards in the medal shop (like how refilling missions for gold lets you catch up for the Weekly Challenge if you took a break for a few days).

The rewards in the Conquest medal shop have been tuned so that a player who never buys a ticket can collect the exclusive Conquest rewards for that season.”

Q: If I win in the Infinite Conquest multiple times with different avatars in one season, can I get Infinite Borders for those avatars? Or is it limited to one avatar border per season?
A: Tucker “There’s no limit on the number of Infinite Conquest Avatars you can get in a season!”

Q: Are the infinity avatar upgrades from conquest permanent (between seasons) or only for the final week of the season?
A: Stephen “It’s a permanent upgrade for the avatar you won the conquest with.”

Q: Does Conquest mode have ranked mode’s one game victory system, or battle mode’s 10 life system? Do I have to beat a player multiple times to climb ranks in Conquest?
A: Stephen “Conquest uses battle mode with 10 life per player”

Q: During a Conquest run, is my deck locked in for the whole rank, like all 5 games, or can i switch in-between each match?
A: Stephen “Can switch between each match”

Q: Is there any limit to how frequently a player can enter the Conquest Proving Grounds? (That is, the lowest tier of Conquest). Is Conquest Proving Grounds a mode that players will grind repeatedly for medals and keys?
A: Stephen “There is no limit to playing proving grounds.  In many ways it represents an unranked match where you can complete missions and try different decks”

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!

Last week, I only had one question asked: Has it been considered for locations to loop around so move decks have more viability. This one question as not been answered (yet) but I will be sure to add it next week if they do answer it.

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!