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: are artists using AI in their art acceptable, will beta content be added to the Collector’s Vault, are the season missions bugged, 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 season featuring Surtur and Series 5 card Frigga! 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: In a meta that heavily features explosive last turns, has the team re-considered their stance on Sandman?
A: Glenn “Our goal is not to eliminate any particular stripe of gameplay, just to find healthy frequencies for it. Because we also value creating fluctuations within the metagame, we’ll often push and pull strength from archetypes (within certain tolerances) over time.
What we previously wrote about Sandman is true–it has historically failed to function as a flexible card and largely supported one specific strategy that’s fairly frustrating to position as a tier 1 deck. While we may look for more ways to create the former, I don’t expect us to return to the previous Sandman in the near future.”
Q: Could we see Professor X improved in the future?
A: Glenn “One of the challenges for Professor X is that he is specifically positioned to be a meaningful support piece for an early Series archetype using Warpath and Destroyer. We want to preserve that, and have thus been constrained in past adjustments. If and when we find a better approach that solves our challenges better, we’d be happy to improve him.”
Q: Will Surtur inevitably get a nerf since he gives +3 Power, like previous cards had?
A: Glenn “The number 3 in a text box isn’t inherently too strong—it’s just a number. Red Hulk says 3, Klaw 7, Shuri says ‘double,’ etc. Everything has additional context—for example, I doubt you’d have similar concern if Surtur cost 4 or 5 Energy.
When you give any Power buff repeatedly, that’s going to impact the strength of the given value more, of course. And as we increase such a number, we bear that in mind.”
Q: Will Fenris Wolf remove a card from the graveyard, making Hela unable to also revive it?
A: Glenn “Fenris functions fairly similar to Hela in that it returns the discarded card to play.”
Q: Why does Surtur’s text say “cards with 10+ Power” instead of the standard “cards with 10 or more Power”?
A: Glenn “‘N or more’ is our standard template. There are a few reasons to prefer it, but the biggest is that we commonly use ‘+N’ to refer to increases in Cost and Power, so we want ranges to be more different visually so that cards are easier to interpret at a glance. We’ll be updating this text on Surtur to that standard.
As for why it released that way, I’m not sure. Playtest cards often go through iteration on text, with a final pass before the season locks from design. Often, we’ll shorthand text quickly before we’re sure about how we want it to work. In this case, that final pass seems to have been overwritten by later data that somehow referenced an older version of the card.”
Q: Was Surtur designed to make Skaar cost 0? Or did you want a card that gives +3 each turn?
A: Glenn “Among the most appealing things for players to do in playtesting with Surtur was make Skaar 0-Cost, so we did aim for a balance point that our team thought could be in-bounds and allow for that pattern. That’s how game design tends to work–you set gameplay goals, then iterate in search of an execution that will satisfy them.
We don’t generally target cards at experimenting with premises like ‘What if a card gained +3 Power each turn?’ Even if that was a thing, we already made Thena 😉”
Q: Does Malekith card about cost reduction?
A: Glenn “No. Like Silver Surfer and other cards that say ‘#-Cost’ Malekith looks at the base Cost of cards.”
Q: Can you see the cards Malekith pulls?
A: Glenn “Yes! You can view the card that your Malekith brings down before it’s revealed. Obviously, but to be clear, your opponent can not.
Q: It was previously said there is a fairly high bar for cards to recieve negative Power. Was Gorr given -1 Power for lore or balance?
A: Glenn “It was both; Gorr’s relationship with the All-Black that gives him his powers isn’t exclusively beneficial to him.
However, for future reference: ‘a fairly high bar’ does mean we’re willing to do it. If negative Power was just for balance and it was also the best way to accomplish our goal, we’d execute on it that way.”
Other Questions
Q: Will beta content return into the Collector’s Vault?
A: Griffin “Right now, only Bundle Variants are included in the Collector’s Vault. Other items may be added in future but we don’t have any plans for that right now. I’ll pass along your request for Beta Season Pass Variants to be added.”
Q: With the constant increase in content and unlocks, players starting the game now will take years and years of grinding to get a completed card pool. Are there any plans to increase card acquisition rate?
A: Glenn “It is the nature of CCGs that collecting every card becomes increasingly difficult over time. Whatever improvements we make to card acquisition aren’t going to change a fundamental aspect of the genre, nor would pursuing that outcome be a responsible goal for us.
Another fundamental aspect of CCGs we’d expect to continue is that newer players often acquire more content new to them at a faster rate than players with huge collections. That’s already the case today, with the structure of Series 1-3 and Spotlights all rewarding equivalent effort with more cards for smaller collections.”
Q: You mentioned that improving how fast players acquire cards is not a goal, but what about improving the posssibility of acquiring a specific card?
A: Glenn “You have misconstrued my response to a different question. I didn’t say that improving the speed isn’t a goal. My intent in that previous post was to clarify that if we have released 3x more cards, it necessarily would have to be meaningfully slower to collect all the cards than it is now. That doesn’t mean it would be 3x slower, just that it has to be slower. Relative speed can increase.
Personally, I believe much of the joy in a CCG is the moment of acquiring new content, and how SNAP handles this in Series 1/2 is integral to its success. I’m optimistic about bringing a little more of that joy to endgame collection.
As for your question about specific, the simple truth of CCGs (and games like them) is that agency and value are inversely linked. You can make randomized content easier to get, which tends to be better for players because a) getting new content is often fun, even if it’s not exactly what you wanted and b) it reduces ‘wait time’ on new toys. I do think on both counts SNAP has room to improve, and we’re trying. In addition to internal efforts we’re not ready to present, game modes housing new cards is one recent way we’re taking aim at this issue.
Adding more agency or velocity to Series 3 might be an effective shift to make as it grows. And I know many players are really eager for change, and we hear you. However, as a designer my focus is currently on thinking about ways we might sustainably revise these systems, rather than spending engineering resources on temporary or uncertain improvements. I’m a ‘measure twice, cut once’ kind of person in that way.”
Q: Loki was reworked so that card generating cards weren’t just “Loki Food”. Will we see new card generators or synergies in the near future?
A: Glenn “We already have content planned that will improve some of these cards, and we’ll continue monitoring their ongoing gameplay in the interim.”
Q: Why aren’t there cards that can interact with your opponent’s graveyard to counter different decks?
A: Glenn “When the mechanical space for a mechanic is narrow, you don’t get much mileage from hate cards. Imagine we made a card that was ‘On Reveal: Your opponent discards Hela if able.’ That’s not great design.
As we grow and more cards overlap, the need for that kind of interaction becomes more appropriate. For example, we released Mobius when we knew cost reduction had hit the critical mass necessary for competitive interaction.
I do think interactions with the ‘graveyard’ are approaching that point, but it’s a little complicated because we don’t really have that zone: we look at whether cards have been discarded, whether they’ve been destroyed, and where they currently are–all for different reasons. That’s not to say we won’t make cards in the space, just to explain that it’s complex and identifying how and when to affect cards like Wolverine, Deadpool, Apocalypse, etc. is part of the puzzle.
I imagine one step will be actually naming the zone in a way that players learn it as such.”
Q: You have mentioned before that you balance cards that surpass your designated thresholds. Are Snap’s thresholds much different than other CCGs?
A: Glenn “I would say we target a fairly similar range. Cubes do make some wins worth more than others, but we regard that as more of a spectrum of the experience because winning and losing are often still the primary feedback players evaluate themselves by.”
Q: Have you considered dropping some cards from Series 3 to Series 2?
A: Glenn “Many elements of the game are tied to when a player transitions into Series 3, but this isn’t cosmetic. It’s a structural element of the experience and how the game is built.”
Q: Could cards be made from characters who aren’t in the comics, but are original to the MCU?
A: Glenn “We’re always on the lookout for characters that are connecting with audiences and how we can bring their joy into SNAP.”
Q: How do you choose between which version of a character to use for a card?
A: Glenn “That’s a mostly call made by the art team and Marvel on an individual basis. Sometimes, the specific theme for a season might lean us one way or another.”
Q: Are the new season missions bugged? They are showing very abnormal patterns.
A: Griffin “Yep, the Season Missions are not correct and we’re working on a fix. Not intended at all.”
Q: Will some characters never be eligible to appear in Snap?
A: Glenn “We certainly won’t have everyone, both for rights reasons as well as appeal.”
Q: Would you ever remove Limbo from being generated on turn 6 through sources like Scarlet Witch?
A: Glenn “Generally, we prefer to avoid ‘hidden rules’ for cards. In this case, Limbo is an outcome that can uniquely impact the game and challenge players, which we like, so we haven’t considered that.”
Q: Could we see improvements to the Collector’s Vault to add a refresh or a reroll function?
A: Chris “We’re looking into all options to iterate and make the Vault the best feature it can be for our players. Right now we only have a little bit of data to work with since the feature is so new. As we run the vault more often and survey players, we can be more confident in any changes we make. So for now, you may see some minor changes in the coming months, with the possibility of larger changes in the future, but I don’t have an exact timeline on that or know exactly what things might change, but we’re very excited for the future of this feature and will continue to iterate.”
Q: What is the team’s stance on artists for variants using AI, such as the new “138 Game Art Studio” Dracula variant?
A: Second Dinner Statement (From Griffin) “It recently came to our attention that one out of our many partner art studios was not transparent about the use of Generative AI in their art pipeline. While none of this partner’s work has been released for players, we have made the decision to discontinue our working relationship and remove all of their art from upcoming content releases.
Our team at Second Dinner is dedicated to uplifting original art and artists, and we’re incredibly proud of the relationships we’ve built with the more than 200 artists who have contributed over 1,750 pieces of original art for our players.
Thank you for your continued support!”
Q: As we see more modes introduced that break the game’s typical rules, are there any unbreakable rules of the game?
A: Glenn “I would say we have relatively few ‘unbreakable rules’ from the design perspective–we like to follow any fun we can find. As collaborators, we do restrict ourselves (for now) on elements that require a ton of engineering lift, such as expanding past 3 locations, 4 cards per location, etc. because the amount of effort required to make it work isn’t justified by the relative gain.
We’re also careful about some conditional functions, like Cerebro, as the more of those we have the more confusing their interactions can become (such as Ajax and Throne Room). We’ll usually look for other options vs. implementing an effect that can be conditional on other conditional effects.”
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: Card Acquisition Questions:
A: Questions about new players getting cards and only adding Series 5 cards are asked constantly. I’m combining many of your questions from last edition into this one section since they all have the same response:
SD has stated they are “working on improvements” but don’t want to share what that looks like, or why cards rarely appear in Series 4 anymore. If we get actual answers on this subject in the future, I will share it in the next edition.
Q: Be wary about paraphrasing:
A: I know this wasn’t a question, but I thought it would be a good time to clarify this. I often shorten questions to make them easier to read. I don’t shorten dev answers unless they have irrelevant info or are incredibly long. As for the Storm question last week, I actually didn’t cut Glenn’s answer.
If you (or anyone) wants further clarification or don’t understand a reference devs make, let me know in the comments and I will elaborate for you.
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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