Developer Update for the Week of March 15, 2023: Pre-Patch Edition!

Hello all! Welcome back to this week’s breakdown of what’s happening over on the Marvel Snap official Discord! 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! For further information on what’s coming to Marvel Snap, check out the Development Roadmap:

This week’s edition comes as we prepare for the March 2023 Marvel Snap patch which should hopefully be next week! We are predicting this date to be March 21 at the same time as the Steampunk Variant Rush event to be deployed together. Therefore, some questions reference the upcoming patch that has been confirmed to target a nerf for the top tier Shuri and Thanos decks that dominate the meta.

Furthermore, we get answers to questions such as: are Quake and Baron Mordo getting a buff, will we be getting an annual season pass, and will we ever get an update to the season pass cache! Answers and questions may be slightly rephrased for more clarity and ease of reading.

This Week’s Questions

Q: Will more cards get voice lines in the future (like Iron Man, Spider Man, Captain America, etc..)?
A: Nicki Broderick “Yeah! We’re exploring adding more VO to the game in the coming year. It takes us a bit to get new lines as we localize all of our VO in a ton of languages!”

Q: Are Quake or Baron Mordo on the buff watchlist? They are kind of fun but so inconsistent it makes them difficult to justify being in a deck.
A: Glenn “Stay tuned, we will have announcements in this vein in the coming months.”

Q: Many games offer a similar deal of a year long premium bundle to otherwise monthly things like battle passes at a discount for players who already are likely to buy the pass monthly. Will Snap do something similar?
A: Stephen “It’s been on our backlog for a while. We will do this eventually! No ETA when at this time”

Q: What’s the current state of card/border customization?
A: Daniela “We’re playing around with the idea of further customization but no ETA yet, but it’s on the radar!

Q: It’s been almost 5 months since the global release, do you know when the beta content will be available for everyone?
A: Nicki Broderick “We’re still working on a cool plan for this! We appreciate everyone’s patience!”

Q: Is the upcoming balance patch that was mentioned by the devs just for Thanos and Shuri decks, or will there be other balances as well?
A: Stephen “There are more adjustments than just those two decks”

Q: Will the battle pass or season caches ever be changed? Tired of getting boosters so often.
A: Stephen “It’s on my list to redesign the post-level 50 season pass experience but no ETA right now”

Q: When can we expect to get details on the new Token Acquisition and Token Shop experience improvements?
A: Stephen “More info will be in our upcoming blog that comes out in the next week or so”

Q: What are the dev’s experience playing the game? How do you feel about the ranked ladder? How do you keep your own experiences/frustrations in or out of balance discussions?
A: Daniela “This is an interesting question. I can speak for myself here at least. I barely hit gold every season. I don’t hate the ladder because I am not a competitive player here, I’m not trying to hit infinite. One thing I do hear quite a bit though internally when we talk about things like this is ‘as a player, I [feelings], as a dev, I [feelings]’ so we try to separate those experiences and emotions. We see the full picture, so I know I try to separate both sides while being aware of both sides. Especially as a UX designer! I can’t speak too much on the balance conversations since I don’t take part on those most of the time, but our team does discuss this stuff weekly! (Maybe even daily!)”

A: Glenn “We do just as Daniela described in balance conversations too, and we have players with range of climbing interests. Part of being an effective designer and communicator in games is being able to isolate elements/experiences and examine them from multiple perspectives– complaints or “I have [thing] aren’t the kind of feedback one typically gives or receives, because we learn how to give more useful context. As a balance designer, I might tell the team ‘Over the weekend I found playing against Thanos frustrating because of the way Space Stone and Reality Stone made location variance feel one-sided. I think I played less games than usual, and the Hot Location felt less meaningful to build around.'”

Q: Who decides which variants get added to the game, and when they are released?
A: Nicki Broderick “This is a collaboration between a variety of folks at Second Dinner! In general, it’s a conversation between our Design, Product, and Art team to come up with the best strategy for releasing new variants each week.”

Q: How are the stats and the state of 1 and 2 cost cards? I ask this because I only seem to see as 1 drops Sunspot, Zero, Ice Man, or Korg. The only 2 drops being Armor, Scorpion, and Lizard.
A: Glenn “The variation is better than you describe, but there’s plenty of room to improve. We have some solutions we like, and you’ll hear more about them soon.”

Q: Are cards ever buffed/nerfed due to primarily player request?
A: Glenn “It’s not a very realistic scenario that a card and all of its decks would be balanced but the player base would have a major frustration with it, but in a hypothetical scenario we would certainly be monitoring the card. But generally, the answer is no. The primary role of player feedback in balancing is adding context to the data we’re seeing. Data tells what’s going wrong, players tell us how they feel about it, and we examine both to find solutions we believe will be satisfying.”

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 have a question for the developers, be sure to submit it in their official Discord in the “#ask-the-team” channel and you might see your question in the next update!