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 get answers to questions such as: is Deadpool’s Diner 2.0 better for players, do devs hate High Voltage, how is your feedback heard, 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 of new Series 5 card Gorr! If you don’t know if this card is worth Spotlight Caches, make sure to check out our weekly Spotlight Cache guide, as well as our Bonus Challenge 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 Fenris Wolf check for highest Power with Ongoing buffs like Knull?
A: Glenn “No, Ongoing abilities are only active at a location. If your card had been boosted by something like Shuri, Fenris Wolf will see that buff.”
Q: Will Fenris Wolf check for extra Power from cards like Venom, Hulkbuster, and Blob?
A: Glenn “All of those work.”
Q: Is it intended that Fenris Wolf only checks base Power?
A: Glenn “Fenris’s current function is intentional, but he doesn’t check base Power. It’s just a natural consequence of Ongoing abilities turning off in the graveyard.
After all, it would be pretty weird if a dead Blue Marvel kept buffing your other cards.”
Q: Why did you create Activate to only have 1 usage?
A: Glenn “We did playtest with Activate effects that could be activated each turn by default. However, the design space for these effects was fairly small, and the cards tended to look very similar to one another—lot of emphasis on small amounts of Power at low Costs, since higher-Cost effects couldn’t be a lot stronger. If they were, ramping just a turn faster once could swing the game a lot!
Look at Arana, for example. What’s the multiple use balance point for that effect? 1/1 no buff? And I think we know something like Hellcow would definitely be off-limits.
On Reveal and Activate both can’t be repeated—without help. On Reveal was there at game launch with a ton of cards, so designs like Wong and Odin make a lot of sense to include early. I’m confident we’ll explore similar space with Activate, and maybe more.”
Other Questions
Q: How do cards known to create “feels bad” moments influence design choices?
A: Glenn “As designers, it’s our job to explore all of the space available to SNAP. The more of it we can mine, the more diverse our gameplay can be. And yes, that should include ideas that can appeal to ‘griefer’ gameplay—they’re players too. So how to make that fun?
Notably, none of our cards do random enemy discard anymore, because positioning that kind of card for competitive play does create a bad experience. If you think your opponent has Moon Knight, there are things to consider doing differently because the effect has some amount of predictability to it that gives the victim a sense of agency. That also means players can learn things to do differently next time in a way that fully random discard doesn’t serve.
We also aim to make sure these discard effects aren’t pursued for their own merit. Putting the strength in cards like Fenris Wolf or Stature both lets us weaken the rates on the discard effects themselves and reward discarding a single card. We generally want SNAP to focus on what you can do with your own cards, not what you can take away from your opponent.”
Q: How do you become eligible for welcome back rewards?
A: Griffin “Players eligible for Welcome Back Rewards are those who haven’t played in at least 30 days and logged back in while Deadpool’s Diner is active.”
Q: How exactly do you hear feedback from players?
A: Griffin “This is a topic I could do a full Ted Talk on.
We have tools for collecting data all across the internet as well as in-game via surveys. We monitor public channels like here. We talk directly to creators as well as other player segments.
We promise we hear your concerns and we feel your anxiety as well. The team is fully aware and working to alleviate it.
The team is working on immediate (short-term), intermediate, and long-term plans to help the game and player sentiment.”
Q: Can you tell us roughly when compensation will go out?
A: Griffin “We’re working through the process and aiming to having it delivered before the end of the month.”
Q: Can you explain the design difference in win-centric Deadpool’s Diner and High Voltage? The two modes create very different feelings.
A: Glenn “As we develop new game modes, we’re experimenting with ways to make them more novel from core SNAP as well as one another. This is both to learn how to make them better as well as offer a diversity of experiences.
Generally speaking, PvP games need to reward winning. Without that as an objective, other elements will weaken. The core fun of our game is choosing which card to play where—that decision is reliant on winning being meaningful.
So if there was one, the shift in philosophy was High Voltage—not only did Deadpool’s Diner v1 predate High Voltage, but High Voltage diverged from some base assumptions about as far as we thought we could. However, we don’t think Diner doesn’t ask for an onerous amount of winning—you can get the card with a negative win-rate. We’re seeing a similar phenomenon now as last time, which is that the climb looks steep early.
For my part, I think HV went a hair too far—the gameplay was fun, but it was very close to making winning irrelevant and I think that had a negative effect for some players. So I wouldn’t expect many future game modes to go as far as HV did on that count.”
Q: Are there any cards acquisition changes that you scrapped?
A: Glenn “We’ve certainly explored options we eventually had to reject. However, we can’t really share the models we use or their details publicly.”
Q: With your thoughts on High Voltage, will it even return? And will future game modes avoid a similar low stakes modes?
A: Glenn “I don’t think high stakes or grinds are necessary to make winning matter to players, though they can be useful and fun. Ultimately, an incentive for winning just needs to exist within each individual game.
High Voltage did tons of things well and was a great new mode for us. I just believe it was (slightly) too ‘winner-agnostic.’ You’ll be seeing HV again!”
Q: Can you elaborate on the “negative effects” of game modes?
A: Glenn “As I am a designer, I largely speak on gameplay effects here. I’m not going to dive deep into the specific data/opinions for HV, but winning is an aspirational motivator for PvP games. It’s a big part of how players set goals, get feedback, demonstrate mastery, experience challenge, etc.
A pedantic thing we designers often do is define fun, but it can be useful to think about. An illustrative one is that “fun is the cognitive mechanical process by which we convert fear into happiness through surprise” (Erin Hoffman). I would personally replace “fear” with “tension,” but that’s what stakes do for SNAP—if the player is invested in the outcome of their game, if they care who wins or loses, then the game is more rewarding when a victor is decided.
After all, look at Captain Marvel. For her to be fun, winning has to matter to the player 😉”
Q: There are a lot of unaddressed issues in Snap, including game crashing, daily shop resets, outdated collection filters, card acquisition, ect. It feels like there is a big disconnect between what players want and developers want. How do you address this, and could you do a town hall format?
A: Griffin “I don’t think I’ve ever seen a town hall format work that hasn’t devolved into chaos.
I also worry that the answer to many of players questions will be ‘we’re aware and it’s on our radar’ and while being true won’t alleviate or help at all.
All of the issues you specifically laid out have either been addressed, are being addressed, or we’re aware of currently.
We’re always open to new ideas on how to communicate so share away in the feedback section.”
Q: How do you feel about the lack of Infinite rank incentive compared to other modes?
A: Glenn “Much like Agony in High Voltage and King Eitri in Diner, for many players we expect Infinite might be the end of the road for them in the ranked mode. There are a ton of players making that level at different times and enjoying different things. For the ones who do value competing for the upper ranks, that’s an incentive. For others, we currently rely on our other game modes to create appealing and achievable goals until the next season.”
Q: Have you asked yourself as developers why players enjoy High Voltage more because it didn’t matter who won?
A: Glenn “A ‘cursed problem’ in normal SNAP is that a) players are strongly encouraged to wait until the last turn for their Big Move, and b) the most tension to retreat is placed on the last turn. That creates a scenario where you build towards a finale–but are less likely to see it the more likely it is to win.
For High Voltage, a mode all about making big finish fireworks, we needed to minimize this issue. That’s a lot of why HV has so few turns, no snapping, and reduced emphasis on winning. I just think we went *slightly* too far on that last one. That doesn’t mean I’m saying HV needs a similar stress on winning to ranked or Diner–it should definitely have less.”
Q: The Series Drop announcement has been a train wreck. Are you planning any immediate action in response to this?
A: Griffin “It’s been a little over 24 hours and it’s a holiday week with many people out of the office (including myself) on vacation.
Discussions are occurring at the levels that they need to be happening.”
Q: One of the answers given regarding the design direction of the game is that the game is designed in mind with the experience of winning, and rewarding winning. However, for one person to win, another has to lose. Does the team also look at how they can alleviate potentially negative experiences of losing?
A: Glenn “The structure of the game, in which retreating is a way to ‘find a win’ with a meaningful decision from a losing position, is a design element addressing that very thing. That’s further reinforced by making cube gain generally the measure of a player rather than strictly wins and losses.”
Q: Do you think Deadpool’s Diner succeeded in making more players happier than last time?
A: Glenn “While I haven’t directly worked on Deadpool’s Diner myself, and it’s early to be sure of the outcome, I know more happy players was definitely the goal. Diner did well after a rocky start the first time, so we didn’t change much—plus, it was repeating quickly.
High bot encounter rates and an incentive to spend gold for the ‘bot queue’ garnered universally negative feedback in v1. While we want some for queue times, the bots weren’t fun to play and were especially frustrating to lose to. The solution for v2—reducing bots, widening a couple matchmaking parameters, and using a ‘drop down’ option for table stakes—had good intentions, but created some different frustrations. We made a hot fix to alleviate some of those, and have already begun reviewing how we could’ve executed better there.”
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!
We had lots of great questions from you all last week! Many of you have the same burning questions as much of the playerbase: can devs fix the daily shop, can they fix card acquisition, is the economy getting worse, ect. These questions have been flooding the Discord, so many of your other questions got buried or were missed due to the Thanksgiving holiday. Due to that, I don’t have any answers for you this week that weren’t already mentioned in the main sections.
I do want to take this time to let players be aware of the ongoing state of Snap. I have seen many community members ask for content creators to speak up more, and many have posted publicly their thoughts (including myself). For players who think there isn’t enough conversation, developers are very actively talking with content creators and listening to their criticisms. All of the creators are actively highlighting issues that all players are feeling, so please know your voices ARE being heard. Keep sharing your thoughts on all platforms, including here in the comments! Change will come in time.
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!
More Content