Developer Update for the Week of March 2, 2024: Proxima Midnight Edition (30+ Questions)!

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: why was Adam Warlock‘s change a “buff”, why was Darkhawk nerfed, how does the team listen to the silent majority of players, 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 Proxima Midnight! If you don’t know if this card is worth a Spotlight Cache, make sure to check out our weekly Spotlight guide, as well as our Proxima Midnight 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: Is Knull performing too well? His power can often reach higher numbers than Blob.
A: Glenn “Achieving high Power isn’t in and of itself problematic, it just needs appropriate effort. Knull requires other cards, is vulnerable to multiple answer cards, and can even be defeated on Power in some cases. He’s performing like a synergy payoff should.”

Q: Why does Black Swan synergize with the infinity stones when lore-wise she doesn’t want to pursue them when Thanos dies?
A: Glenn “We prioritize gameplay we can capture clearly more highly than maintaining accuracy to lore many players may not be familiar with. The season is about Thanos’s henchpeople, and in our game Thanos is about the Stones.”

Q: Will we get more big bads?
A: Stephen “We have no plans to create new big bads under that label.  It is still entirely possible for us to release a Series 5 card that is desirable and performant enough to stay in Series 5 for an indefinite period of time.  Current ‘Big Bads’ Thanos, Galactus, Kang, and High Evo will continue to stay in Series 5 indefinitely.”

Q: Why will Kang stay a big bad if he never gets played?
A: Stephen “He remains a big bad because we committed to that when we launched him and players made decisions based off that information.  We regularly redesign and buff/nerf characters so we will someday take a shot at shifting  Kang if his performance dictates it.”

Q: Why don’t Namor, Orca, and Warpath behave like Lizard and subtract power when contested?
A: Glenn “We have both, because both are interesting in different ways, but we specifically default to additive because it’s more intuitive and most of the cards you named are positioned for early play.

Where such cards start is a lot less important than how they’re conditioned. For example, if Namor was a 4/11 that got -5 Power if he wasn’t alone, all we’ve really added is an interaction with a handful of cards and locations to negate that ability, and we already have options for that available elsewhere. That Namor would likely be stronger, but making an early Series card less accessible is more damaging to his purpose.”

Q: Do Mysterio clones start in your deck since they count as played cards (unlike broodling)
A: Glenn “They don’t start in your deck, but they are also not added to the board like Broodling. They are added to the game and then staged by the player as an automated action between ending their turn and the reveal process beginning.”

Q: Why did you nerf Darkhawk?
A: Glenn “On the vast majority of days since Blob was nerfed, Darkhawk has had the strongest overall winrate in the game among Series 3 complete players. He’s also been a key player in 2-3 of the best decks in the game on any given week. He’s exerting a lot of pressure on other 4-Cost cards, and he’s done it for a very long time now, so the change is as much for balance as it is to create more novelty in the game experience.”

Q: Were other options considered when nerfing Darkhawk? This change not only removed his option with Zabu, but Ravonna and Negative too.
A: Glenn “Yes, but we felt this one best retained the identity of the card. He was one of the worst-performing cards in Mister Negative decks, so that particular synergy didn’t weight heavily, and Ravonna has plenty of other options.”

Q: How have Hercules and 2099 looked performance wise after their buffs?
A: Glenn “They’ve both improved, though they each have more room. I see a lot of people dismissing 2099, but he currently has a much better WR and CR than actual Spider-Man within our primary cohort.”

Q: How exactly is 2099 playing out according to your data?
A: Glenn “The most successful 2099 decks I’ve reviewed have been using him alongside controlling cards in a Ramp shell featuring Heimdall, not stuff like Iron Fist. Because these decks are playing fewer cards per game, higher individual card Power is more important to them and thus 2099 is more effective at this size. This is the sort of behavior we hope to encourage by aligning synergy at different points along the curve for many decks.”

Q: You mentioned a Spider-man 2099 deck that is performing well, but when I use auto deck builder, it gives me a Phoenix Force deck that substitutes dagger for 2099. Does that mean data really shows he is strong in that deck, or does the auto builder not have enough 2099 data to create the good deck?
A: Glenn “I’ll probably share a version of the 2099 deck in the near future.

The deckbuilder isn’t perfect, but it’s always learning and getting better. It is informed by the success and frequency of card combinations, so a deck with a low play rate, even with high success, doesn’t necessarily get weighted heavily enough to ‘find’ with SmartDeck unless you’re already most of the way.”

Q: How was the Adam Warlock change considered a buff?
A: Glenn “Cards that add Power to locations are a lot better than cards that don’t.”

Q: Can you explain how drawing cards and draw denial are any different? And why you are you ok with abilities adding rocks, stopping draws, or removing cards from a deck, but not ok with drawing a card?
A: Glenn “Draw and ‘draw denial’ are both powerful effects, and we monitor both carefully. However, drawing cards homogenizes gameplay in a unique way, because it affords the player engaging with it the opportunity to play the exact same cards in very similar orders repetitively. In turn, disrupting someone else’s draws forces them to vary their play and adapt.

Do I think we’re overall too restrictive on draw? I think it’s possible. But the rewards for loosening that are fairly small relative to the risks–SNAP already has *very* low variance when it comes to card access in-game, which is an issue draw denial directly softens.”

Q: Why does the team “buff” cards by adding cost and a little more power, rather than addressing the underlying issue of the card?
A: Glenn “When the Power of a card increases at a better rate than its Cost, that’s generally a buff. However, there’s a larger context–for example, every Power added to Adam Warlock isn’t ‘just’ Power, it’s fractional card draw. Similarly, every Power added to Lady Deathstrike is fractional card elimination. They aren’t the same.

We often like to push the envelope on rates, but we chose to be very conservative with Adam Warlock because he’s owned by the vast majority of players with an effect that is generically powerful even in small doses. If we went 5/6 and it turned out too strong, the result would be *way* more warping than missing high on any new card.

As for why we attempt to find Cost/Power relationships that work at higher Costs, that’s just good practice. We make a lot of cards and want a range of interesting choices to explore. Even if some of those choices turn out not to be strong enough, the net result of approaching the game this way is good.

2099’s Power is just Power, but it offered Heimdall more potential to threaten a location without being vulnerable to common tech cards. That’s also something neither Gambit nor Lady Deathstrike do for Heimdall, so 2099’s not competing directly with them. (Comparing cards that go in different narrow decks isn’t very useful.) I honestly doubted much would change for 2099 but found the experiment interesting, and it’s turned out better than I expected.”

Other Questions

Q: Can comic releases affect season pass themes?
A: Glenn “They can, but our cycles are unique and we haven’t landed in a good spot yet (schedulewise).”

Q: Have you considered making locations that hurt strong meta decks and benefit underperfoming decks?
A: Glenn “It’s not really an effective tactic to do so directly. We want a wide range to exist so that this happens organically within the system, though.”

Q: Will you ever create a format that allows you to add multiple copies of a card to a deck?
A: Glenn “I think we capture that core fun more effectively with mechanisms that copy cards, so while I wouldn’t say never it’s not something I’m actively interested in exploring.”

Q: Are there any game mechanics that can’t be warped with a card?
A: Glenn “There’s nothing that stands out as absolutely off-limits, though we might need tech to develop it. Adding a 4th location is probably just too difficult to consider relative to its gain, though.

Certainly allowing players to unstage Kitty Pryde from play had some unforeseen issues, that’s probably the most notable.”

Q: Could we ever see an adjustment to Subterranea so it’s not so frustrating?
A: Glenn “Stay tuned (but I wouldn’t get too excited).”

Q: Is there a threshold that if enough players want something, SD would change their mind on it? Like players request auto-mute, but SD has made it
A: Glenn “We make the game for the players–we’re not ‘serving medicine’we think players should like, and we change things often based on what we’ve learned players do prefer. I’ve been wrong about plenty of stuff, but all I can do is learn from it and become a better steward.

It can be easy to feel like a community voice is very loud and unified, especially from within that community. However, a place like Discord doesn’t always reflect the larger player base–it’s one of the cohorts we listen to, and we endeavor to weight all of them as best we can.”

Q: How do you measure the sentiment of the silent majority?
A: Stephen “We appreciate both the vocal minority and silent majority.  The passion and care from those who share their experiences with the hope of improving a game they love gives us a sense for the emotions and feelings that the game is evoking.  We capture the silent majority and the things players do through data and surveys.  Then we capture what a player is thinking as they play the game through our design intuition and understanding of psychology and motivation theory.  With those powers combined (what a player feels, thinks, and does) we are able to make informed decisions about what’s best for the game, the players, and the business needs of the studio.”

Q: Does having more cards at different costs outweigh wether a card actually works at a higher cost?
A: Glenn “No, diversity of Costs doesn’t ‘trump’ gameplay goals, but that’s not a reason to make everything cost less, either. It usually just means iterating on the card at its higher Cost.”

Q: How are move decks viewed internally? Based on Q/A and patch notes, it seems like the team doesn’t want move to he good. You often speak of Sandman or Galactus the same way you speak about move decks, erring to the side of caution.
A: Glenn “Move is a very challenging deck to play against for a lot of players, because it substantially increases the complexity of playing your turns. Move decks are actively lying to the opponent–there are cards in play that say the ‘wrong’ numbers and are in the ‘wrong’ places. Compare to Galactus–Galactus is very surprising and frustrating, but he is also hidden information so you aren’t as subject to “
‘analysis paralysis.’ For those reasons, we do want to position Move decks and cards carefully. But no, it isn’t constrained the exact same way as Galactus or Sandman.”

Q: Can you explain what group of players you primarily balance from? It may explain why some changes seem to baffle the vocal community.
A: Glenn “Our primary slice we use for general metagame analysis is Series 3 complete players roughly in the top 50% of our MMR distribution. However, we also check several smaller slices with different criteria for every change at various CLs and MMRs.

We won’t be regularly checking our metagame against a variety of biased samples from other communities to highlight discrepancies for members of those communities–it’s not a very productive use of time. Our Notes are built to serve the needs of the general audience, which is to quickly understand what changes we made and why so that they can get back to the fun of playing the game.”

Q: Would you ever make cards in a design space that say “this card acts like a 4 cost” to open up (or prevent) interactions?
A: Glenn “I don’t expect so. The design space for that seems very small and mostly confusing.”

Q: Do different departments of SD communicate with each other about card designs or balance changes?
A: Glenn “Design and Product have a weekly meeting discussing upcoming card adjustments, and we also maintain a channel for all upcoming card changes that’s open to discussion for any of our coworkers. Feature development/iteration are always large projects with a lot of cross-team involvement and visibility.”

Addison “Because QA works on like…everything…we generally have representation on every team or with every major initiative and are actively encouraged to raise concerns or identify how one change might impact another or how features might impact our liveops pipeline or whatever. This is all super rad.”

Q: It was previously stated that Ultimate variants would “probably not” end up in albums, but the artgerm album has one. Does this mean other variants types could be in an album now?
A: Stephen “We will not put bundle, season pass, conquest, or spotlight variants in an album unless they became more broadly accessible or have an alternative the player could do to fill that slot.

Ultimate variants have no timed exclusivity and can be worked towards and acquired, so they qualify as a potential album variant.”

Q: You mentioned yourself that the recent meta was well balanced. If so, why make changes to it? It felt nice to have stability for a while.
A: Glenn “Most (not an overwhelming majority) of the feedback we’ve received around last month having fewer changes was negative, even though it was a very balanced metagame.”

Q: When creating a new card, is “gaining energy” or “cost reduction” a more challenging effect to balance?
A: Glenn “Gain Energy, by a lot.”

Q: In the survey for clan names, what does T.E.A.M.S. stand for? Might be relevant for voting.
A: Glenn “We have some pitches, haven’t locked one in yet”

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:I really like a variant which from previous season pass. Will you add a event in future that offers a chance to get those variants？
A: Stephen “In general our philosophy is not to bring them back just like a clothes collection in a retail store shifts over time. We have not re-run a variant bundle yet and have no plans to at this time.”

Q: Is there a place to send you guys card ideas?
A: Glenn “We think it’s cool that people enjoy making cards, but we don’t seek them out explicitly for inspiration. There are some ethical and legal reasons for that.”

Q: Blob ate a 20 power Thanos, but only gained 10 power. Is that a Bug?
A: Glenn “This is a bug.”

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!