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 Surge and the start of the newest season, New X-Men! To find out how Surge and Esme Cuckoo is doing, make sure to check out our Bonus Challenge guide and the latest Ranked Meta Tier List 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: So Surge needs to be in play to continue her chain, but how does she interact if you Misery her with Firehair in play? Will Firehair be able to continue the chain?
A: Glenn “No. Firehair doesn’t gain Surge’s ability, so it won’t be there to be repeated later the way it would with something like Absorbing Man.”
Q: How do you determine the Cost of Tokens cards?
A: Glenn “We usually match tokens’ Costs to the effects that created them, when possible. For example, the Klyntar Symbiote costs 4, and so does Sentry’s Void.
In circumstances where we deviate, it’s usually for cause or vibes. For a cause example, Sam’s Shield being indestructible at 1-Cost comes up a lot more. In other cases, it links to feel: Monster Island feels like a 6.
-Cost in flavor.”
Q: If Prodigy copies an on reveal effect from the card in front of him, will that ability proc?
A: Glenn “Yep!”
Q: How did you come up with On Reveal being the best execution of Surge’s ability?
A: Glenn “We considered a variety of wordings executions, and felt this one vast covered the majority of use cases and desired gameplay, plus the technical elements of how VFX sources the original card to make clear what’s going on.”
Q: Could you play Grand Master on a Surge-boosted card to let it pass the buff twice?
A: Glenn “No, Surge does not ‘add’ an On Reveal to the affected card. She’s looking for the card marked to trigger her own On Reveal.”
Q: Since the recent Series 4 cards were all from past seasons, what season was Gorgon designed for originally?
A: Glenn “We designed Gorgon (and Toxie Doxie) during Dark Avengers.”
Q: Why did you settle on Esme as the featured Stepford Cuckoos, rather than Irma, Celeste, Sophie, or Phoebe?
A: Glenn “Esme features more prominently in the New X-Men storyline we drew inspiration from for the season. I imagine you’ll see more Cuckoos down the line 🙂”
Q: I moved Human-Torch to Hercules’ location and Batroc followed. Hercules then moved Batroc away instead of Human-Torch, even though Human-Torch moved there first and Batroc FOLLOWED. Is this intended? It doesn’t seem correct based on wording.
A: Glenn “This interaction, like many that use the same window, should depend on play order (timestamp). When Human Torch moves to Herc’s location, both Batroc and Herc want to trigger. If Batroc was in play first, he’ll move before Hercules can trigger, but that means he’ll trigger Hercules himself before Herc ever has a chance to trigger on Torch.”
Q: Is it intended that if Surge is destroyed or nullified via Red Guardian, that her chain stops working?
A: Glenn “Yes, she’s the source of each additional proc.”
Q: If you copy a card that has Surge’s “spark”, can you copy that spark to the new copy?
A: Glenn “The spark is applied to the card by Surge and identified then, so she can’t pass it via copying the card.”
Q: If you can get a second Spark on the board, can they both give you “sparks”?
A: Glenn “You can have one spark per Surge, so multiple Surges can lead to multiple sparks. This difference is most clear when using Absorbing Man or Odin on Surge.”
Q: Mobius seems to be everywhere now that the new cards get countered by him. Could we see a neef to him in the future?
A: Glenn “While it’s true that Mobius’s utility has increased recently, that’s the sort of behavior we expect to cyclically see from cards. Goliath similarly saw an uptick in Enchantress. What we’ve also seen is that the old adage remains true: ‘Threats are better than answers.’ By which I mean that several Cost-reduction cards continue to outperform Mobius himself, indicating a healthy relationship between the two in the metagame.”
Other Questions
Q: Will the Creative House Pocket Spotlight variants for the new cards be avalible to collect this season since they were featured in the season video?
A: Griffin “If you see Variants featured in videos or marketing for a season, it’s a good assumption you’ll see them in the Shop that season.
The reason I’m not simply confirming your question outright is that it’s not our current plan to announce what and when all Variants are arriving in the Shop.”
Q: Are there card ideas you had to scrap because the text to explain it would be too long?
A: Glenn “There are certainly ideas we’ve generated that we didn’t feel could be communicated and executed within our text constraints. However, we start from the premise of knowing those constraints, so it’s not that common since we target the kinds of cards we know we can make from the start.”
Q: If you already owned the PAX 2024 cardback, what happens if you earn the twitch drop reward for the same cardback?
A: Griffin “If you already have it but claim the Twitch reward, then it’ll appear in your inbox but nothing really happens as it’s already unlocked for you.”
Q: Has the team considered making a card that benefits from being banished, and possibly it a deck type like destroy and discard?
A: Glenn “Sure have”
Q: After we collect our 25 credit or 50 gold, the game screen will automatically move back to the top of the store instead of staying on same screen. Is this a bug or are we expected to re-scroll back after each transaction?
A: Griffin “It’s a bug. The team is aware!”
Q: How does the team think Snap Packs have performed? Do you think they have done a good job of helping players be collection complete?
A: Glenn “It’s far too early to be definitive about Snap Packs’ impact. So far, I think it’s going pretty well and feedback has been great.
As has been stated before, making sure players are collection complete isn’t the goal of the card acquisition system. If players wish to do that, Snap Packs definitely can expedite that process for them.”
Q: Would you ever rename cards to fit synergies? Like if you were to make a card like “Activate: move your spiders to another location” to make new “doombot” style synergies, would you rename Araña to spider girl?
A: Glenn “We’d likely pursue a different solution than renaming the card if we wanted that function. She’s also not the only “spider” without the word in the name, Silk being another example.”
Q: Why am I being matched with players with a collection level 10 times higher than mine?
A: Glenn “CL is an indication of collection size, which can link to gameplay but doesn’t necessarily. We do band matchmaking to account for CL in the pairings it prefers, but it’s a softer bend than MMR because MMR more accurately measures the winning chances of each player.
For an extreme example, a player who owns every card but chooses to play more casually will have a much higher CL than a highly competitive player who has only invested their tokens in acquiring the best deck. Matching those players for a fair game between equals can’t be done via CL.”
Q: How do Snap Packs help returning plauers catchup more than the Spotlight system? Couldn’t new or returning players get more cards with keys?
A: Glenn “While it’s true that players returning could theoretically acquire more cards via Keys—not always the case, but possible—that doesn’t necessarily make them better for returning players. It’s more important to returning players that they be able to play the decks they want—probably the very decks that convinced them to return! The Spotlight Caches’ randomization of available content made them not a reliable way to accomplish this goal. Snap Packs have random elements too, but you can target cards much more effectively than before which we believe is much more important to returning players.”
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: Will you ever let players get cardbacks from sources outside of the season pass? Such as previous cardbacks in a shop?
A: Griffin “We don’t have any plans for that at the moment. I’ll provide the team with the feedback that you’d like them to return at some point.”
Q: Can you give option to filter out derivative variant like foil so the collection page is not cluttered?
A: You can already do this! At the bottom right corner of your collection screen, there is a filter button. Click/ tap that, then tap the “favorites” button. This will make every card only display once, featuring the variant you favorited!
Q: A lot of players hate Conquest, are you looking at making changes so players don’t have to forfeit tickets to get the rewards?
A: Glenn “We have a few internal resources dedicated to some Conquest improvements, and plan to assign more as we can prioritize it higher.”
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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