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 Spider Noir and the latest OTA! If you haven’t seen what was changed with the balance update, be sure to check out the official patch notes!
If you don’t know if Spider Noir is worth Snap Packs or tokens, 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: Were you surprised to see Cerebro win the Golden Gauntlet?
A: Glenn “We weren’t surprised; Cerebro has been one of the strongest decks for several months. There was a period where C2 exceeded C3 earlier this year, but C3 has had the crown among Cerebro decks for a minute.”
Q: How did you decide Spider Noir would look for 8 cost and not a different number?
A: Glenn “🕷️ (We balanced around the number being 8)”
Q: Why doesn’t Red Shift generate cards in the same style? All other card generators do it.
A: Glenn “I’ll flag it, thanks.”
Q: My opponent played Acid Arrow, which switched to my side. I had played Chameleon on the same turn, and in the same location. Chameleon revealed after Acid Arrow, and then copied its text and switched to my opponent’s side. Is this Interaction intended?
A: Glenn “The outcome is the desired effect, but I agree the text is unclear and we should update it. Thanks!”
Q: Why is Cobra (a bad card) an activate instead of an On Reveal like other tech cards?
A: Glenn “We just don’t want to have too many cards whose floor is ‘maybe destroy a card’ and ceiling is ‘destroy a card to win 8 cubes.’ While that level of attrition-based interaction is core to many CCGs, we want timing and snapping to be a lot more important for Snap because that better suits our core fun.
We did think about Horde and similar stuff, but it wasn’t a heavy weight on the decision beyond adding another thing Cobra might be able to help counter.”
Q: Did you intend for Man-Spider to merge with cards in different locations?
A: Glenn “Yeah, he started merging with a card at his own location. That tweak to the original design was added because we felt the card was a little ‘flat’ on appeal, and also because it helped differentiate the card a bit more from things like Black Panther as a combo by challenging the opponent to predict rather than just react.”
Q: Why would you create High Voltage mode with a specific card ban list, but then allow Kang to have those cards as choices? A Shang Chi for example.
A: Glenn “The reason to ban a card isn’t necessarily because the gameplay shouldn’t be allowed. Sometimes, it’s because having it available at will creates a problem. Allowing Shang-Chi in any deck is different from allowing his effect to pop up every now and then. That said, it’s pretty common for us to ban completely.”
Q: Does Spider Noir count cards that are hidden from Invisible Woman or Supergiant?
A: Glenn “Unrevealed cards don’t have a calculable Cost, so no, they won’t count.”
Q: Why is Debrii still on the Sanctum ban list after her nerf?
A: Glenn “Just an oversight since the timing was close–we lock banned lists in patches, well before OTAs would even be drafted much less final.”
Q: Why are you nerfing Storm and not War Machine, especially when Electro into WM is a strong combo too?
A: Glenn “Storm is the card that stops the opponent from engaging with the game’s core fun, where they play their cards. War Machine is the card that enables satisfying combos for the person who puts it into their deck.
I don’t disagree Electro and War Machine could be a satisfying play line that also addresses the concerns, but Storm is the least net fun of the three cards that create the combo, so she’s a reasonable target to guarantee the efficacy of the change. She’s not a card we generally want to be super-popular, so landing her in a healthy zone is just harder to do the more aggressively she’s costed.”
Q: With Spider Noir being able to pull a skill after activating his requirement, and thus wasting it, is it time to change cards like this, Jubilee, or Zombie Galacti from targeting skills?
A: Glenn “That’s a change we’re already considering, for some of these, yep. It’s a bit of a finer line than it might seem, because we don’t necessarily want to enable future players to ‘tutor’ for specific characters by filling their decks with skills, as skills become more common. That’s not in the spirit of the cards mechanically.”
Q: With Human Torch constantly dominating the meta, why is the team being so precious with him and avoiding changes?
A: Glenn “We changed Human Torch from a 1/2 to a 3/3 a few months ago–I wouldn’t say we’re being particularly precious with him, compared to many cards this version has ‘lived’ for a very small amount of time. But Torch is purposefully an exciting reward, and there are advantages to trimming around the edges with something as loud as Torch in the game because it magnifies the outcome of smaller changes more clearly. We can always nerf him; but if we nerf him, we can’t as clearly evaluate other aspects of the Move decks.
There’s also a bit of a Mister Negative thing going on with Torch, where his best outcomes polarize into very memorable games while his worst ones don’t.”
Q: So I have generated Hydro man with Iron patriot, I assume this is not intended and it is enabled by mistake, right?
A: Glenn “Sneak peek!”
Other Questions
Q: Is it possible to explore the game design of a card that cares about retreating?
A: Glenn “The core game mechanic of snapping provides plenty of encouragement for retreating. It’s hard for me to imagine a mechanically relevant way to care about it that wouldn’t be better executed by caring about a snap.”
Q: Why doesn’t Snap give options to see opponent’s hands through On Reveals like other CCGs?
A: Glenn “It’s a lot stronger than it is fun, and would require an inordinate amount of work on the UI end to display intuitively. We hit about as much of this space as we want to with effects like Daily Bugle and Mirage.”
Q: Can you add mode types to friendly battles?
A: Glenn “It’s not being actively worked on, but it’s on our list of considerations.”
Q: What is your ideal number of tech cards to exist? It seems like my opponent’s always have answers to my combos.
A: Glenn “Different problems require a different ranges of tech cards. It’s about creating a balance between allowing powerful things to exist because the answers to them are effective enough to prevent any one thing from being the best thing. Should your opponent lose all those games because the game didn’t have a way to stop your combo?”
Q: As a dev, what makes you want to boot up the game in your free time and play it for fun?
A: Glenn “I have many work reasons to do it, but as a player I most enjoy brewing up decks with new cards or playing decks I see online that look interesting.”
Q: Could we see a “bot mode” for players in the future?
A: Glenn “A bot mode would either increase the wait times of players who didn’t select it, or increase how often players not selecting it would play bots. Those are both bad outcomes.
It’s possible we’ll explore some kind of PvE experience with bots in the future, but that would be based on its merits as an LTGM, since it by definition couldn’t improve the ladder matchmaking experience.”
Q: If the worry is that people will split off from ladder to the point that ladder que times/bot games increase, doesn’t that speak to the need of providing those players with a consistent (not LTGM) mode to engage in that ensures their long term investment in the game?
A: Glenn “That’s a very binary way of thinking about it, and audiences aren’t binary in their interests. Yes, if 40% of our players want a PvE mode and will quit without one, we obviously should make it. But if something more realistic would happen, like 20% of players would play 5% more while 80% of our players would have 5% more bot matches, it’s way less clearly beneficial—and thats without even considering financial elements that speak to its viability as a feature.
As for why ladder matters so much, it’s the core of our game—everything in Snap points back towards it in ways large or small. Plenty of examples of games that lost players or sustainability or both from damaging their core loop.
We’re certainly sympathetic to players wanting more than ‘just ladder.’ That’s why we’ve made ~7 game modes with more coming, and additional content for older ones at increased frequency. We haven’t seen signs from Conquest that a full separate queue running against ladder at all times is beneficial though, so I question the assumption that there’s a ‘need’ for that specifically.”
Q: There are about to be more Series 5 cards than Series 3 cards. I know the team doesn’t want to do Series Drops right now, but things have gone too far.
A: Glenn “We make a lot of Series 5 cards, and we don’t make new Series 3 cards, so it’s inevitable we’d have more 5s than 3s eventually unless we were dropping them fast enough to maintain an equilibrium. The game started with a more aggressive drop schedule in that space, and it wasn’t viable. Similarly, direct Series 3 cards are ‘too free’ to make efficiently—even LTGM reward cards only cost gameplay, but we can make them. Plus, we get a good bit of feedback around making too many cards already.
I’m not sure what metrics you’re using for ‘too far’ or evaluating the necessity of one Series being larger than another—there is no established ratio we’re maintaining. We’re not a CCG with rarity schemes or conventional booster packs, we don’t have cause to maintain scale across Series the way Hearthstone needs more commons than epics.”
Q: Are you planning on doing any Series drops in Q1 of 2026 like you did in 2025?
A: Glenn “We are discussing various potential futures for Series Drops, but we’re not ready to share any of them yet. We’re working on a variety of larger initiatives first, because how those resolve would impact any decisions we’d make in that space.”
Q: Don’t you think dropping all the current series 5 tech and archetype defining cards to series 3 (or series 4) is a good idea so players can make more decks?
A: Glenn “It’s a pretty significant foundation of CCGs that different cards and by extension decks have a range of accessibility. It provides different player journeys, having collectible goals, exciting ranges, diverse metagames, and also monetization. Growing your CL should feel good, and increasing the strength of your collection is one of the ways we accomplish that.
Do I think we have the perfect composition for Series 3? No, probably not—there are so many configurations it could have. But do I think players should also need Series 5 cards to build some decks? Yes, I do. We’re a CCG.
Competitive decks are clearly very accessible in our game. The world champion is a free-to-play player, other GG winners have also had decks well within F2P. How many other CCGs can say the same?”
Q: Do you think adding a Series 6 could help Series 5 bloat?
A: Glenn “Not really, it just recreates pretty similar issues in slightly different ways. The upside would probably be distributing token prices in more polarized ways, but I’m not even sure that’s more fun and I can imagine better ways to do it.”
Q: Did you add new tech to the game that lets Spider Noir see card costs and create a live effect? If so, will we see this kind of tech being used more in the future?
A: Glenn “Good eye! Yes, that’s some new technology and you can expect to see it popping up in a couple more places soon.”
Q: Do bots know the meta decks and out to players against them?
A: Glenn “Bot decks are generated automatically from the metagame, and they learn to play their decks over time. They don’t use actual games being played on live or any matchup data to do this–they teach themselves.
The bots, like a human, plan turns based on how both decks might play. For example, if you play Mister Negative, and snap on the next turn, a bot will have an elevated retreat frequency just like a person. But it can’t see you stage the Mister Negative–it sees your plays when a human would.
However, we do modify their behaviors. For example, bots retreat less often than humans because we’ve essentially modified them to be “in a situation where you might retreat, stay +N% of the time.” That’s a simplification, but means bots should be retreating against Mister Negative less often than humans in the above example.
We similarly warp their decks. They don’t build decks themselves, so without guidance they’d just pick the same version of each deck every time. We force them to diversify builds to provide a variety and different strengths/weaknesses in the pool.”
Q: Why do you have variant packs? Why not use their same format in the token shop as the gold shop so players can choose?
A: Glenn “We already have a gold shop for variants, and various other paths toward specific variants. Some players enjoy randomized rewards, and there are cool and unique things we can do with pack structures beyond a random PMV or shop takeover. If they didn’t have an audience, we wouldn’t make them.”
Q: Glenn mentioned that Bots learn over time, based on their own games. This has created additional questions for me. Are there a finite number of bots, or if there is a need for a bot and none are available, is a new one generated? Is there a bot leaderboard? Do bots have their own ranks, and are they aligned with player ranks? Are the smartest bots now playing against in the 80s/90s? Are the smartest bots the oldest bots? Do old bots get discontinued/reset or remain at their strong learned state?
A: Glenn “They’re not an army of individuals 🙂 Bots are only differentiated in base construction, so the fallback bot is basically one bot with many instances for play. The discontinued ‘Daredevil bot’was a separate entity, and while older it didn’t learn anything–that’s why it ‘cheated,’ to even the playing field since it wasn’t good at playing Snap.
The process that makes bot opponents constrains them based on CL and MMR, to tune the bot’s deckbuilding prowess and behavior–this manages their efficacy regardless of how smart they get. For example, a bot might play a worse Surfer deck against lower CL players, or snap more conservatively against lower MMR players to avoid accidentally exploiting them. (Just examples to illustrate my point, our very smart data team manages the actual execution.) So yeah, the bots in the 80s and 90s generally play stronger decks more accurately than the ones in the 50s and 60s.
To your questions about ‘getting smarter’ above: Around a year ago, we did spot a brief spike in bot winrates. When we investigated, it turned out an update had resulted in improved play! So we immediately weakened them to compensate, and everything returned to the status quo. I mention this example just to demonstrate that we do actively monitor their performance for unexpected outcomes and take action when we see it, since I know that’s a concern.”
Q: Do you think adding a way to purchase all variants at any time would increase variant sales? I have a dozen variants I am looking for that I would buy immediately if I ever saw them.
A: Glenn “No, we don’t have any desire to sell every variant in the game on-demand at this time. I know we’ll continue improving on systems to engage players with variants–I agree we could do a better job with albums specifically, as one example. But those systems rely on some element of scarcity to function. It’s actually more similar to how Magic Arena relies on rarity to engage players in earning and opening booster packs.
We do cosmetics differently from many CCGs, but I also personally think we also have the most robust and exciting CCG cosmetic system in the world. How we manage availability is an aspect of sustaining it, as is engaging its audience.”
Q: It sems like a pretty consistent theme that cards granting +3 power usually end up being nerfed to +2 (ex. Surtur, Galacta, now Sparky…). Why do cards still release with this kind of buff given that they inevitably drop down to +2?
A: Glenn “Generally, we’d much rather take a chance and release an exciting card that might be too strong than risk releasing a card we think might be a dud. And we still release the occasional dud!”
Q: Do you remove Proving Grounds from your data? Players like myself often use it to test decks out.
A: Glenn “We don’t really factor Conquest outcomes into the balance data on a regular basis, as we’ve seen over time that it very rarely differentiates meaningfully from ranked.”
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!
Due to the holidays and SD devs being unavailable for questions for a short time, we had to skip questions last week. If you have any questions for the devs, the Thanksgiving holiday in the US might delay the next edition. Happy snapping everyone and enjoy your Thanksgivings!
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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