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 Gambit Horseman of Death, the latest patch and the latest OTA! If you haven’t seen what was changed with the balance update, be sure to check out the official patch notes!
If you don’t know if Gambit Horseman of Death 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!
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: Can you confirm or deny if Star-Lord MotS season pass variant is designed to look like Glenn?
A: Glenn “I can confidently deny this.”
Q: Since the team gave Master Mold an extra Power a few months ago, do you think it was a mistake given that the card won in the Golden Gauntlet?
A: Glenn “Being a playable card isn’t inherently problematic, no.”
Q: What card does Glenn hope to see make a comeback by either meta shift or new releases supporting them?
A: Glenn “I kind of miss Nova being a strong card, but that’s mostly just a numbers thing. I’ll say Yellowjacket for new, and Thor for existing.”
Q: Has a card that was fully changed, such as Chavez, ever been considered for a return/revert? Like if feedback on a fully changed card was terribly received would you consider reverting it?
A: Glenn “We might consider a different change, but it’s fairly unlikely we’d revert a full rework. We only rework cards when they pass a problematic threshold, and the new design missing doesn’t remove the previous problems. Chavez is an example of a card I would never revert.”
Q: Mysterio was just updated and it was partly because of the bugs. Out of curiosity, what’s the next most technically disruptive card after him?
A: Glenn “Super-Skrull, probably.”
Q: Is it intentional for the shield to not buff team clash Captain America?
A: Glenn “If you witness this again, please report it as a bug. It’s expected that the Shield would buff Cap, and our internal production builds reflect that as being the case, as in the previous run.”
Q: How much pretesting does the team do before releasing a card in game? And how many changes do you usually make before releasing them? Have there been some instantly perfect cards before?
A: Glenn “It varies from card to card, but I don’t think we’ve ever spent less than 4 weeks with a card in the regular testing pool. We’ve never released a card without trying any changes, but we have occasionally released a card exactly how it started in testing after trying a few things. I think that’s true for all of these at release:
* Blink
* Makkari
* Hope Summers
* Goliath
* Nocturne”
Q: When did the team come up with the idea to make rocks a playable archetype?
A: Glenn “We’ve had Rocks on the proverbial whiteboard for a while.”
Other Questions
Q: When evaluating card releases, especially season passes, does the team monitor any data related to completion of weekend missions?
A: Glenn “Yeah, we track the clusters where new cards get used and can separate the data out to identify the weekend mission window.”
Q: Is there a reason why you previously mentioned a “rework to the Infinite climb”, but it wasn’t mentioned in the roadmap?
A: Glenn “We’re still in early stages of what that rework may look like, which in turn impacts when it may happen (and what might get prioritized around it). That’s not ideal for inclusion on the roadmap.”
Q: Will you ever improve variant acquisition? We’d all like to choose our favorite variants more easily.
A: Griffin “It’s always hard to answer ‘will we ever’ questions as ‘ever’ is a long time.
Both ladder and the Shop are things the team are constantly evaluating. They’re not at the front of our priorities list right now but the team is aware of players’ desires to have those features both updated.
Q: Why does the game still send notifications at a set time about the reset, even though the US has had a time change? Shouldn’t it automatically notify when the actual daily reset is?
A: Griffin “I’ll check with the team on this. The notification system and the game’s daily reset aren’t connected together like that.”
Q: Some players watched the GG stream, but already owned the Cable variant, so they were supposed to recieve a mystery variant instead. It seems like many players aren’t recieveing those mystery variants though. Is this being investigated?
A: Griffin “The team is aware that some players did not receive the MV. Please contact customer support directly and they can get you what you’re missing.”
Q: Have you considered making a season theme out of the current Ultimate comic line? Or is there a hesitance around making a theme around an ongoing comic?
A: Glenn “I wouldn’t say there’s hesitance—we’ve discussed Ultimate seasons for sure. But a challenge we do have is that a majority of our players aren’t dialed into ongoing comic series. So we need more than the comic to tie it together—we need a strong creative tie that reads for a broad audience.
Plus, we start working on seasons 6-9 months ahead of release, which complicates making those ties well. We have to talk to more people at Marvel for that sort of thing too, since the Games team is a different group than Comics, just like they’re different from the MCU. Again, added complexity.
It just winds up being substantially easier for us to make seasons for past arcs than ongoing ones. It also gives us a an advantage in selecting themes we know people loved, and knowing best how to manifest them.”
Q: How do you calculate how much of different rewards a player will recieve in different parts of the game?
A: Glenn “We map it using a variety of variables–it wouldn’t really be something I could share in this forum if I wanted to, and we wouldn’t for proprietary reasons.
I can note that we consider how rewards are distributed based on a variety of slices, such as how often a player plays, how long, their winrate, their collection, etc. That gives us the ability to get a picture of how our rewards are experienced across many different cohorts of players.”
Q: Since we haven’t gotten a new 1-Cost character since Headpool, are 1-Cost cards being replaced with Skills?
A: Glenn “No, but they do overlap roles a good bit. So if a season has one, there’s less room for another, just like other categories.”
Q: Are there plans to bring back conditional bundles for earlier cards that didn’t get a bug-free launch? Cards like Web Sling and Deafening Cord have their only variants unable to be purchased.
A: Griffin “The team is testing those conditional bundles returning on the Web Shop. While we don’t have any long term plans beyond testing right now, there’s a possibility the availability of previous bundles will be expanded.
That said, most Variants become available again, in one way or another, within a year of its initial release. That could be re-runs of bundles, Collector’s Vault, or in the Shop itself.”
Q: Are there any plans to let old cardbacks come back to the game for purchase somehow?
A: Griffin “We’ve definitely discussed this. We know there’s a desire from players to be able get older card backs. No firm plans on when or where but it’s on our list!”
Q: Why do you make players use specific teams for multiple team clash missions? Why not let players just play the team they want to?
A: Griffin “It encourages players to try other decks as well as increasing the diversity of decks that you play against. We’re open to feedback on it, though!”
Q: You’ve said before you like to wait 2+ weeks to gather data before taking action against a card. If that’s the case, why did you buff the season pass card after only 1 week?
A: Glenn “We’ve expressed that as our preference, but can (and have) made occasional exceptions. We’re also generally more willing to pull the trigger on buffs than nerfs, because a nerf materially changes the value of acquiring cards negatively–it’s more frustrating. Hence ‘against’ in your own question.
Basically no one complains about a card they already own getting better, but it’s frustrating for a card you just acquired to get nerfed. As such, we like to be more confident that a nerf is warranted.”
Q: I noticed that when the new OTA and Team Clash came out that there was a Lockheed bundle available to purchase both in the client and Web Shop. It seems to be missing now, so was it intentional or did the dates of release get mixed up?
A: Gridfin “I don’t believe it was intentional. It’s on our schedule for March 24-30 so it must have just popped up briefly in error.”
Q: Farro Iron Patriot was originally listed for 2000 tokens as an available purchase for the Dark Avengers Featured Set. I was specifically saving for it. Now after the update, it’s been replaced by Skan US Agent for 3500 tokens. Why the change?
A: Glenn “The Farro Iron Patriot Variant originally appeared in a bundle about six months ago. In general, we don’t make bundle Variants available through other acquisition methods until around 9–12 months after they first release.
We missed that timing when setting up the Featured Set, so we made the change to swap in the U.S. Agent Variant, and we’ve also added another Super Rare Iron Patriot Variant to the Dark Avengers Pack.
We want to be fair to everyone who picked up the original bundle and stay consistent with our usual release timelines. Sorry for the late change, and thanks for understanding.”
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: Was Aurora’s design made with Objective and any future keywords in mind? If not, is there a possibility her text is getting buffed based on new keywords?
A: Glenn “Doubt it, she’s doing plenty! Her purpose isn’t to buff every keyword we make.”
Q:I know that the cheating “Daredevil” bots don’t exist any more. However, can a bot preview what cards you’ve played (before revealing) and then decide whether or not to RETREAT or stay in the game?
A: Glenn “Our new ‘fallback bot’ does not have the ability to know what’s coming from you or random outcomes. It makes plays based entirely on its own understanding of Snap and how to play with and against the decks it’s learned. It’s a pretty good player, but that strength comes from how good its decisions are–not a massive information advantage.
Q: In the alliance area, we could improve the notification system when a member writes a message. I believe the social aspect of the game still lacks a lot for interaction between members. Do you have a timeline for this?
A: Griffin “We touched a bit on this [previously]:
‘The Alliances feature is not where we want it to be and it deserves a larger update, however it’s not at the front of our list of priorities at the moment.’
‘The team has some ideas for how to bring Alliances to life in the future and we’ll continue to read and digest your feedback on the feature.’
We don’t have a hard plan for Alliances right now. Just some concepts and ideas that can change and evolve over time.”
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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