Developer Update for the Week of May 18, 2024: Sage Edition (15+ 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: Is global matchmaking still coming, is Red Hulk balanced now, does Snap have too much content, 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 ! If you don’t know if this card is worth a Spotlight Cache, make sure to check out our weekly Spotlight Cache guide, as well as our Sage and Magneto Bonus Challenge guide!

Sage and Magneto Decks: Bonus Challenge (Weekend Mission) 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: Does Nocturne dieable Deep Space like Nico can?
A: Glenn “Nocturne will need to have her ability in order for it to trigger; she can’t change Deep Space. Nico works because she attaches a trigger to the player for their next card, and the player isn’t at any location.”

Q: Did Adam Warlock’s change to a 5-Cost improve him like you had hoped?
A: Glenn “No, I expect we’ll rework him in the future.”

Q: Why was Darkhawk nerfed again if he wasn’t even played much in the meta?
A: Glenn “The low play rate was part of the reason why we let the deck sit for a bit. Since it wasn’t stifling much, there was less risk to seeing if its matchup spread changed over time, but it didn’t.

While play rate is one meaningful criteria for balance adjustment, it’s not the only one. Darkhawk was an outlier on multiple other axes for a while now.”

Q: Why buff Leech to nerf Hela instead of just nerfing Hela?
A: Glenn “Hela isn’t the only card Leech can affect, nor is she the strongest. Hela decks’ play rates are well within bounds, their winrates are sub 50%, and their cube rates are decent but nothing exceptional. Plus, they have several bad matchups.

We don’t mind providing players with tools to better combat decks they find frustrating—that’s the goal of the Leech adjustment, not a specific target on Hela. She’s just one of many potentially impacted cards, and given she could use some counter pressure that was a positive.”

Q: What does your data suggest about Red Hulk‘s strength after his nerf?
A: Glenn “His stats have been in line with a number of other good cards seeing healthy play. Nothing special beyond being one of the best 6-Costs.”

Q: When buffing Leech, was there any worry that doing so would reduce the amount of meaningful and unpredictable Turn 6’s? To what degree does that impact your thinking on Leech as a card?
A: Glenn “Leech does have that effect sometimes. However, it’s more often resulting in no turn 6 at all, weakening his cube-earning potential as a passive cost to playing him.

The game wants a mix of effects and endgames; all one way or the other would be bad. That said, we do prefer facilitating turn 6 happening more often, because the game has the snap mechanic and final double as existing pressures against them.”

Other Questions

Q: Do you think Snap has too much content every week for players to keep up with?
A: Glenn “Many CCGs occupy different ranges of time and hobby for players. Traditional card games have always been a small number of sessions a week, for solid chunks of time. As a mobile game, players can play SNAP every day with much more variation in session time. As such, our philosophy is that people should feel like there’s something new and interesting to do in the game every day.

Thus, we believe ongoing refreshment is a more fun experience than a static metagame. There is a balance to be struck, and we do talk about that balance and how it could change or improve. Of course, the best equilibrium for the game also might not be the best equilibrium for every player (a common scenario in all games).”

Q: Could we ever see a better implementation in the order of operations during movements? Especially when dealing with New York.
A: Glenn “There are a number of confusing interactions and experiences due to the current implementation of “staged moves” like Vision and New York. We’ve identified a solution we like and you can expect to see it in a future patch.”

Q: What do you consider a “God Split”?
A: Glenn “Testament Magneto in gold with gold metallic border and red krackle is up there for me. I’m also a fan of inked pixels in general 🙂”

Q: Can we ever see Global Matchmaking?
A: Glenn “We’ve found this to be more complicated than initially expected, but it’s still in progress.”

Q: What is process of how the weekly mission titles are selected each season?
A: Charlene “It’s a process of taking a look at all of the elements we have coming together for a season (theme, characters, locations, art, etc) and then trying to bring in a cohesive arc around it. We also make sure to bounce it with each other – especially those of us who are more steeped into the lores – to sanity check that they chapter titles makes sense. It’s a subtle touch, but it’s something we put care into when thinking of the season design!”

Q: What is more important, buffing a weak card or nerfing a strong card?
A: Glenn “There’s so much context accompanying any individual change that any generalization wouldn’t be very useful. However, I can say that we aim to make our OTAs ~50% buffs or more as often as possible, because we know it’s more exciting to try building decks with those cards.”

Q: Are there any books or papers about game design that influence dev’s design philosophy on Snap, or that you just find interesting?
A: Glenn “Loads of stuff;  I actually teach a course using ‘Characteristics of Games’ as primary text. There’s lots of quality, reviewed, and highly searchable dev content between various books and GDC talks for specific stuff; Cursed Problems is one of my favorite talks. Project Horseshoe is another lesser-known repository of game dev knowledge.

A few works from other trades I’ve found useful are How Not To Be Wrong, Confessions of an Advertising Man, and Creativity, Inc.”

Q: Does the team hire artists for new artwork?
A: Glenn “We often commission artists for original work in addition to using existing pieces.”

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: So now they’re going to sell old spotlights for gold? Pretty lame imo. If I’m not mistaken they said variants from caches would be distinguishable if they ever made them available again, any info regarding this?
A: Spotlight variants have their own rarity labeled “Spotlight”. No word on cost compared to rare or super rare variants.

Q: Can custom card keep the original background in the future?
A: Stephen “We will add a new split type in the future that is effectively ‘None’ that will enable this functionality”

Q: The game has some good mechanisms in place to support new players, but I’m wondering if the devs have thought about anything for longstanding players, to support their loyalty. Perhaps the Prestige track will fulfill that role?
A: A Prestige track has actually already been announced in a previous roadmap, and it appears to have morphed into the upcoming “Character Mastery” feature as of the latest roadmap.

Q: Series Drop When?
A: Check out the latest news on the new Series Drop here!

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!