Developer Update for the Week of March 8, 2023: Days of Future Past 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 after the new season went live! Make sure to check out what’s coming this season if you haven’t already. New cards like Kitty Pryde and Negasonic Teenage Warhead are mentioned frequently in this developer update, so make sure you know what new cards are heading in this season as well!

In this edition, we get answers to is the customer service ever getting better, how does Kitty Pryde work and synergize, and can you get the new Steampunk variants even if you don’t own the base card! Answers and questions may be slightly rephrased for more clarity and ease of reading.

This Week’s Questions

Q: Are series drops going to happen more frequently than once per season?
A: Stephen “They are tied to patches at this time. Long term we want it to be once per season towards the end of season.”

Q: Is Second Dinner looking to improve the quality of Customer Support both in game and in discord? Most times messages are copy and pasted, and at least when I see them are not always relevant.
A: Stephen “We are listening to feedback and agree there are opportunities to improve the CS experience. We are working with out partners to take steps to make it a better experience.”

Q: Will the new Thanos animation be visible to the other player as well? Or just to the Thanos player?
A: Stephen ” Both players can see it”

Q: Last update to the roadmap was 2 months ago, when there will be a next one?
A: Stephen “Working on the updated one. Should share soon”

Q: Was the upcoming steampunk variant rush originally planned for the Quantumania season?
A: Stephen “Yes was originally planned for this season. We felt it still fit the days of future past vibe so instead of holding it longer went ahead and got it out next season”

Q: Is the new steampunk variant event’s drop rate the same as any other variant?
A: Stephen “We doubled the drop chance fro 5% to 10% for this one. Want you guys to get hyped and feel like you can get more than last time”

Q: Do you need to own a base card for it to be obtained in the Variant rush? If I don’t own Cerebro, for instance, can I still have a chance to get the variant?
A: Stephen “You can get any of the variant rush variants regardless of base card ownership”

Q: Are there plans for login events or possibly new types of events in the future?
A: Stephen “We want to do login bonuses again. Working on a better system so we can do it without heavy as a lift on our side”

Q: Is the Kang “free snap” mechanic intentional and/or going to change?
A: Glenn “This is an intentional element of Kang’s design, but (like virtually all card elements) subject to change if our data and other feedback indicates it’s an issue. Keep in mind that using Kang this way may increase how often you win with a snap, but it will “cap” your wins because they’ll be worth less cubes more often.”

Q: Will the upcoming card Kitty Pryde gain power from other card effects like Beast of Falcon?
A: Glenn “No, Kitty Pryde will only gain power if you return her to your hand with her own ability”

Q: Can you pull Kitty Pryde from play and play her in the same turn, is there a manual way to undo it?
A: Glenn “Yes, you can return and play Kitty in the same turn. Because of this functionality, the only way to “undo” your actions with Kitty Pryde while playing cards is to use the “Undo All Actions” button accessed by tapping your energy meter.”

Q: Does Kitty Pryde synergize with Quinjet?
A: Glenn “No: she started in your deck, she just took a brief detour to a location. However, Beast would accomplish your goal of making Kitty cost 0 on subsequent turns.”

Q: I was looking at the news wire for the new season and saw Kitty Pryde was a 1/2 in the news feed, but in the season video she was a 1/0. Which one is the true stat line?
A: Stephen “1/0”

Q: How does Negasonic Teenage Warhead work with turns and destructions?
A: Glenn “If you play Negasonic and end turn, then both players play to her location on a subsequent turn, she’ll destroy whichever card reveals first. She also doesn’t care about turns, she just looks for the next card played at her location. Negasonic’s effect isn’t active until she’s revealed. She also won’t destroy cards until those cards are revealed and finish their on reveal effects.”

Q: Is it ok to buy the pass/bundles directly on the Nuverse website?
A: Stephen “The Nuverse webshop is supported”

Q: What percentage of suggestion posts and feedback do you all read?
A: Stephen “I check discord and Twitter daily and so does most of the team. I read most of the posts. I try to respond to the new questions and jump in where it makes sense in feedback and suggestions.”

Q: Any plans for dealing with collection bloat or unwanted splits? Over time our collections are filling with extra infinity splits, many of which will never see play.
A: Stephen “We know this is a mounting issue. We have other higher priority things to solve right now but this is on our minds too”

Q: is it intentional for Absorbing Man to copy ongoing effects? One example is Absorbing Man copies Electro’s +1 power as well as the ongoing ability.
A: Glenn “It is intentional element of the design. A future patch will include a template update making this interaction (and Mystique’s with On Reveal) more clear.

Q:What are factors leading to a card rework? What are the deciding factors that a card gets the Wolverine treatment rather than slight stat adjustments?
A: Glenn “It depends on the role we’d like the card to fulfil, how well it’s doing, and how effective the available “knobs” are, which is designer-speak for the card elements we can change to tune the balance. Generally, we want to change cards rarely from a rework standpoint, but not never. The more a card costs, the more tuning we can do with Cost and Power, since the relative strength of higher values changes. Take Wasp, for example-she has basically no knobs, because Cost and Power are both too sever, so if we wanted to buff or nerf her, we’d have to get creative. But Magneto’s full of knobs-Cost, Power, costs pulled, total cards pulled.”

Q: Why doesn’t Knull work well with Mister Negative, unlike Devil Dino or Darkhawk? Is it intended? It seems very inconsistent.
A: Glenn “This inconsistency was purposefully introduced because we felt players being unable to calculate Knull’s Power accurately ahead of playing him would be an unpleasant experience. We will be revisiting this functionality in a future patch, as of right now it’s more inconsistent than we need it to be to achieve our goal.

Q:Are you satisfied with the Silver Surfer balance adjustment?
A: Glenn “Surfer has appeared in our Top 10 decks a few times this month, so I am tentatively satisfied that we are at least close to a good spot. He is particularly vulnerable to a couple popular decks, so that’s also a factor to weigh.

Q: Do you have plans to add animations to the rest of the cards that don’t have their own animations currently?
A: Nicki Broderick “Yes! We’ve got an amazing VFX crew that’s jamming on fx for new cards and locations, as well as catching up on our backlog whenever time allows. We prioritize cards and locations that have more complex gameplay mechanics so the visuals can help communicate what’s happening!”

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!