Table of Contents
Hello all! Welcome back to this week’s breakdown of what’s happening over on the Marvel Snap official Discord! This week, we are a bit lighter on news leading up to the Thanksgiving holiday, and likely due to the next big update coming next week. Consequently, there will not be an OTA scheduled for November 23, 2023.
We do still get some exciting answers to questions such as: Will the developers address waiting until the end of a turn to Snap, when will get get info on Series Drops, how can you get the Captain Marvel Card back, 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 Annihilus! If you aren’t sure if this card is worth opening a Spotlight Cache for, make sure to check out our weekly Spotlight Cache Guide, as well as our Annihilus guide!
Answers and questions may be slightly rephrased for more clarity and ease of reading. This weeks topics will be divided into Card Specific questions and Other questions.
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 the team ever consider switching or altering some of Nico’s spells? This might make the card feel fresh and keep it as a really fun card.
A: Glenn “Nico is a fairly complex card to learn to play with and against, so we’re not eager to add to that burden.”
Q: Since Krakoa and Ego are both locations and characters, could we ever see them released also as cards (with different abilities)?
A: Glenn “Maybe? I’m not sure we would do this, but I’m not ready to rule it out.”
Q: Why does Gladiator pull from deck and not from hand?
A: Glenn “That effect would be dramatically stronger, and very unfun to play against frequently. Imagine a world where Black Bolt costs 3 Energy.”
Q: Why does Echo triggers after locations? If someone plays Ongoing onto Sinister London with Echo there, the card copies to a new location first then only the original gets disabled.
A: Glenn “The default ordering for triggers is players, locations, cards. Cloning Vats and Sinister London interact the same way here.
We’re aware there is a fairly significant amount of confusion around trigger orders, and we’re considering the potential ramifications of changing that base order.”
Q: Why does White Queen show what card was copied, but other copy cards like Mirage don’t show what was copied?
A: Glenn “White Queen’s VFX was updated, but we’re rolling that back. We want to preserve the secrecy of her effect when cards are tied.
Generally, we prefer not to reveal specific information when cards are moving from one hidden zone to another, or from nothingness to a hidden zone. Not only does it make those cards stronger, but it reduces stress on VFX and the mental load for players. The total amount of information under consideration for players being lower makes the game simpler to play (less pure solving) and higher tension. Good players will win more with the info, but we think it’ll be less fun overall.
We’d never make that change to Loki for these reasons. Knowing all of the cards in your opponents hand is powerful and even appealing, but it makes games less fun on average.
As one relevant example, we consider it upside that Leech triggers before the player draws for turn, because both players know it’s possible that draw was the key ability they’d need. Uncertainty is more fun and synergizes better with the snap mechanic.”
Q: Since Spider-Man already has a Scarlet Spider variant, does that mean Ben Riley has no chance of being a card?
A: Glenn “No; though it is a weird wrinkle, it’s not a dealbreaker for us. We could also consider Chasm.”
Other Questions
Q: It’s great you guys are increasing the play test time of cards by 4 weeks, but how relevant is play testing when OTAs a week or 2 after the cards release can drastically change the meta and relevance of what’s good?
A: Glenn “Very relevant, because we’re not playtesting to ‘solve’ the metagame. There’s no way we could even do that, it would require so much more play time than we have, and if we could do it then it would mean the metagame is way too simple.
The purpose of our playtests are to figure out whether cards are appealing, whether their decks are fun to play with and against, and to determine the balancing point for the card relative to the general strength of its competition. We want all of our new cards to be relevant, but we certainly have to accept some may release in a more hostile metagame than others, or struggle to find the right home, because we’ll never perfectly simulate the live metagame–OTAs or no.”
Q: Will you ever design cards with effects like “can’t be discarded,” “can’t be destroyed from your hand/deck,” and/or abilities that apply those effects to other cards? Are those effects even possible with the way the game logic is set up?
A: Glenn “We can do those, the issue is those effects aren’t worth very much and we prefer SNAP cards to be about the story they tell. For example, Apocalypse is a great take on ‘can’t be discarded’ because his mechanism actually allows for a lot of synergy and makes creative sense.”
Q: How do locations like Grand Central or X Mansion determine who’s random card reveals first? I have seen mine reveal first when I didn’t have turn priority.
A: Glenn “I believe those are currently random.”
Q: Once matchmaking goes global, will post-Infinite rank also be global?
A: Glenn “Post-Infinite standing is already global.”
Q: Since the random card in Spotlight Caches have a 66/33 chance for Series 4/5, how does the game randomly pick?
A: Stephen “Rolls the series first then picks a card from that series”
Q: When can we get an update on Series Drops?
A: Stephen “We will share more info on series drops before the end of the year”
Q: Have you considered adding cards based on original characters from other Marvel games like Marvel Contest of Champions?
A: Stephen “We currently have no plans to integrate with other Marvel mobile games at this time. We continue to discuss opportunities with our awesome partners at Marvel games for cross over opportunities with console/PC Marvel games to similar to what we did with Midnight Suns.”
Q: What’s the most exciting part in creating a new season?
A: Stephen “I love the process of coming up with the theme for each season and how much creativity it causes on the team to make that season feel super dope with unique variants, music, characters, etc. I always get pumped when we can do an MCU season or classic comic storyline season”
Q: Any chance we see Agent Venom added as a card?
A: Glenn “Probably a when, but I am also a Big Fan so pretty biased.”
Q: Would Sylve ever be added to the game? And if so, would she be her own card, or a variant of Loki?
A: Glenn “We don’t currently find MCU Sylvie mechanically and creatively distinct enough from Loki and Enchantress to merit her own card. She is in many ways an amalgamation of MCU/comics versions of those characters. Our thoughts could change, though.”
Q: When will the webshop gold bonus be active?
A: Stephen “We are planning to have it turned on before end of the year for the webshop. We will be sure to share once its live”
Q: How can I get the Captain Marvel cardback advertised in the season video?
A: Stephen “It will be available next month as part of a new feature in our upcoming update”
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 Daredevil be fixed? Why wasn’t a broken card disabled like Kitty Pryde?
A: Glenn “We have a fix to original functionality for Daredevil in an upcoming patch. The issue with him was inadvertently created by correcting some unrelated VFX bugs. It’s just not something we can fix via OTA.
The situation is unique from Kitty Pryde with regard to our threshold for disabling a card, which is very high. You can choose to not play Daredevil and experience no adverse effects. Kitty could crash the game for both players regardless of whose deck she was in, which is a very meaningful difference.”
Q: What does the team think about the deliberate delay of players, especially in Conquest?
A: Glenn “We’re working on adding the ability to ‘undo’ ending your turn, which will remove the primary incentives for this behavior.”
Q: We’ve gotten the PC client, but we still haven’t gotten the Mac OS client. Do you have plans for Mac OS?
A: Ben Brode “The game is avaliable on M1 and M2 macs right now – unfortunately it isn’t a simple task to create a steam version for the Mac right now. Maybe some day!”
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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