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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 is the next roadmap, why is Arishem only 7 Power, is Kang ever getting a rework, 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 card Thena! If you don’t know if this card is worth a Spotlight Cache, make sure to check out our weekly Spotlight Cache guide, as well as our Thena 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: Why is Arishem only 7 Power?
A: Glenn “We tried bigger numbers; he was too strong. We think the magnitude of his ability still captures his largeness.”
Q: With Phastos ability of +2 Power or -1 Cost, does each card get the same modifier as other cards in the deck?
A: Glenn “Each card gets an individually randomized outcome.”
Q: Can Sersi transform multiple cards into the same kind card? Like can 2 different 4-Cost cards transform into 2 Red Skulls?
A: Glenn “I believe that is possible, but I would have to check the code to be sure.”
Q: Can Arishem generate Kang?
A: Glenn “Nope, nothing can generate Kang. (I’ll double check on the off chance anyone decided to write an exception for this case)”
Q:Glenn stated that you prefer to have 3 meaningful balance levers on each card. What would those levers be for Arishem, as it feels like in standard play he doesn’t have those since his body doesn’t feel meaningful most of the time? Or would the aforementioned “rule” be more of a guiding principle that you’re willing to subvert for the “rule of cool”?
A: Glenn “The latter. Arishem’s Power is meaningful but not a strong dial; the best dial he has is how many random cards he shuffles in, as it both weakens his deck and strengthens counters like Darkhawk.
The rule of 3 dials is most meaningful from a systems perspective, though it can be applied usefully to individual cards. (And it is just a heuristic, not an inviolable law :))”
Q: Is Kang up for a rework, or is he forever a dead card?
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: If Sersi is played on Wong, will she trigger once or twice?
A: Glenn “Should be twice, because Wong’s bonus On Reveal fires before Sersi’s. So the bonus will transform Wong, and then the original will transform that 5-Cost into a 6-Cost.”
Q: Do you consider Arishem a replacement for draft mode?
A: Glenn “Arishem is in some ways his own game mode, and that was purposeful. Other digital CCGs have had some memorable deck modification shenanigans, and Arishem was inspired by that kind of work. However, his existence has no impact on our game mode work.”
Q: Why is Venom‘s voiceless “I am Venom” instead of “We are Venom”?
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: Is it intended that Thena doesn’t trigger if one of the two cards played leaves the board?
A: Glenn “It is supposed to count the cards you played, regardless of how many still exist. There is a bug in the implementation.”
Other Questions
Q: With Devil Dino, Darkhawk, and Ronin in the game, could we see a card added that cares about how many are cards in your own deck?
A: Glenn “We could make such a card, but its balance would need to be fairly different.”
Q: A few months ago, you mentioned you tried a card with the ability “On Reveal: Fill all your locations with random cards” on a 7-Cost card. Was this Arishem in testing?
A: Glenn “It was!”
Q: How long does a card need to wait from release to be nerfed? Hope Summers seems worthy of a nerf by now.
A: Glenn “We don’t have a set time for this; certainly our goal is that it’s never necessary. In Hope’s case, she’s just one of many strong cards, not an outlier on any axis or approaching a concerning threshold right now.
We don’t balance around numerical aesthetics. If a card looks ‘proper’ but plays too weak for its gameplay goals, that doesn’t help the card or the player.”
Q: Within the company, are there any discussions or frustrations between devs and management for what makes the game fun vs how the game is monetized?
A: Glenn “The entire SNAP team has the opportunity to make their thoughts heard on any element of the business with our executive leadership, their managers, and discipline leads like myself. Fun and monetization are both topics we discuss openly and candidly as a team.
Healthy debate is an important part of any great company in my opinion. I’m happy to have a leadership team that welcomes such discussion in public and private, and I’m confident that SNAP is better for it.”
Stephen “We are a unique company in that everyone up to the most executive levels are all game developers by trade. We are always discussing what’s best for players and how to balance that with the realities of running a company profitably.
Like Glenn mentions, we have healthy debates all the time. It is common for someone at any level to bring a concern, be heard, and potentially drive a meaningful change to a feature or strategy. SD is a special company and I’m grateful to be part of it.”
Q: Why did you make the changes to movement in the patch?
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: Why wasn’t Ikaris featured with the other Eternals?
A: Glenn “Given the range of characters available among the Eternals, we knew we could do another season of them down the road and wanted to plan accordingly. We like to feature a diverse range of powers and characters for creative and mechanical reasons, and we already had art in the works for Gilgamesh. So Ikaris made sense to delay given some overlap with Gilgamesh (big strong dudes) to ensure each season had a satisfying spread.”
Q: Where is the gold missions for the weekend missions?
A: Griffen “We’re continuing our testing. This month will be backloaded for the final two weeks.”
Q: What’s it like working on a remote team?
A: Addison “From a personal standpoint, my favorite aspect of being remote is that it offers me more flexibility when it comes to responsibilities. I’m able to pick my kid up from school, get her to and from events, take her to the doctor, whatever without too much disruption or needing to take large chunks of the day off from work. My previous decade in the industry saw me commuting on average about 3 hours a day which doesn’t leave a lot of time to like…be a good spouse or parent.
On the professional end of things, being remote allows me to interview and hire folks to my team without having to ask them to uproot themselves and move. It expands the talent pool dramatically and it’s resulted in us finding really great people who might not have otherwise even interviewed had we expected relocation.
On the flip side, you get far fewer water cooler chats or just mindless chatter while in the middle of random tasks. You have to make a more concerted effort to building and maintaining the social aspects of working with folks that occur more naturally in-person and you have to actively seek out feedback or opinions on things that might have otherwise been floated as casual banter.
And then from a personal standpoint, I have a harder time drawing the line in the sand between business and personal hours and the difference can become a bit blurry. There’s no real pressure from the company or anyone I work with or anything, but it’s more my own desire to be hooked in and engaged with stuff because I like what I do and what I work on and it’s easy to do work things on the side while I’m playing games in the evening or prepping dinner…like responding to Discord posts like this after hours 🙂”
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: Why are Blade and Gamora featured in the season pass, but aren’t part of the Eternals?
A: Glenn “Within the constraint of S1/2/3, we didn’t have a wealth of Eternals-adjacent characters to choose from.
Blade appeared in the post-credits of the Eternals movie, so that one’s an MCU wink. Thanos is technically an Eternal, and Gamora is his favorite daughter.”
Q: When is the next Roadmap?
A: Stephen “We will be sharing the roadmap on IGN [Live]!”
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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