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 Firehair – if you don’t know if Firehair is worth Spotlight Caches, 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: Did you intend for Cull Obsidian to be played with an unrevealed 1-Cost, even if it’s a skill that will banish itself?
A: Glenn “It was intentional to allow him to work with a staged 1-Cost card, but we should at least revisit the execution of that aspect in the wake of skills. Thanks!”
Q: How does the team feel about Zabu, specifically in regards to being very strong on turn 1 or 2, but useless late game?
A: Glenn “Historically, many 1-Cost cards have had significant impacts on a given deck when drawn early. Zabu’s just another one now, and not particularly special in that regard.”
Other Questions
Q: When Zabu was initially nerfed, it was stated the team was working on analyzing the state of 4-Cost card strength without Zabu. Now that Zabu has settled as a 1-Cost again, is your work done on 4-Costs?
A: Glenn “I wouldn’t say the work is “done” but we have integrated it into a larger review that’s in progress.
Q: What’s the team’s stance on the reports that some pixel art may be stolen art from fan made content?
A: Griffin “We’re aware of these reports and we’re looking into it.”
Q: Does the team have an opinion on what happens when it feels like you hit a wall on ranked and no matter what you do, you can’t seem to win. Eventually the wall breaks and you can climb again.
A: Griffin “Game psychology is not my area of expertise but I find it endlessly fascinating. As a poker player, I’m all too familiar with the feeling you’re having.
Poor luck can completely corrupt your mental state and put you on ’tilt’. Your negative emotions push you away from your normal play style or decisions which have brought you success.
My number one recommendation is to just take a break and do something else for at least 30 minutes. Take a walk, get some food, listen to your favorite song. Anything to take your mind away and recenter yourself.”
Q: Is the team aware that custom cards aren’t showing split effects?
A: Glenn “We’re aware of this bug and already have a fix ready to deploy in our next patch.”
Q: Is the plan still that every variant will be in an album at some point, or has that changed?
A: Griffin “If I counted right, we currently have 46 Albums with a max of 12 cards each, some being smaller. 3000 Variants would mean we’d need 250 different albums to include them all. That’s not even counting new Variants introduced every season.
I’m not saying we’ll NEVER have every Variant in a album but it would take us a while to get there if we do. Barring any major changes to the Album feature, that is.”
Q: There are multiple cards that double Power, but only Living Tribunal divides Power. Will we see more Power dividers, or is there a technical limitation?
A: Glenn “Division always creates the question of ’round up or round down’ so it does have some processing issues at the human level to navigate, and we don’t really want to mix different versions of that answer into different cards, so it’s easier to avoid them. There are also various outcomes that are tougher to navigate, such as layering different Ongoing effects that interact with one another.
We’ve designed these cards a few times–I killed one from the August season just a couple weeks ago, in fact–but usually we just wind up finding something that looks a bit more appealing to do instead.”
Q: Are season recaps coming back at all? Or have they ben canceled?
A: Griffin “The recaps won’t be returning as a result of our publishing situation changing. There’s a chance we can bring it back in some form in the future but it’s not high on our priority list right now.”
Q: With Alliances feeling a bit stale, will we be getting any news about improvments soon?
A: Griffin “We don’t have anything to share on Alliance improvements right now. When we do, we’ll be sure to share.”
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: When will there be compensation for the khonshu token mission instead of eson?
A: Compensation should have been delivered today to all players who picked up Eson on his release week. Players who didn’t get him will get no compensation.
Q:I would like to ask if we players could help you create new amazing cards?
A: Glenn “We think it’s cool that people enjoy making the cards, but we don’t seek them out explicitly for inspiration. There are some ethical and legal reasons for that.”
Q: Will we see competitions/tournaments between alliances one day?
A: Alliance competitions were on the June 2024 developer roadmap, but the idea has since been scrapped (for now at least) as the team as removed it from current roadmaps.
Q: Why are Agamotto’s spells interacting with locations like Vormir that should only be interacting with Characters?
A: Glenn “We have an update forthcoming to align the resolution of skills and cards a bit better.”
Q: If Shanna spawns Iron Fist, he moves her to the left. If she spawns Zero however, his ability impacts the next card played. Both cards are on reveal and specify ‘the next card you play’ so why do they operate differently when spawned? Is this a bug or intended?
A: Glenn “Zero and Iron Fist don’t have the same condition. Iron Fist moves a card after it resolves, so he sees Shanna finish resolving and moves her. Zero, like Shuri or Forge, applies before a card begins to resolve, and Shanna is already underway. If Zero worked like Iron Fist, it wouldn’t synergize with Sentry, while if Iron Fist worked like Zero… well, that just wouldn’t work.”
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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