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: were split rates nerfed, is Character Mastery coming after all, why wasn’t War Machine nerfed, 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 Series 5 card Misery! 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! Also be sure to check out the latest OTA changes, as many changes are referenced in this edition.
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: Why is Bast an On Reveal and changed to Activate?
A: Glenn “It’s a mixed bag for Bast, as there are upsides and downsides to Activate vs. On Reveal. Since it mostly polarized strength toward drawing Bast early, which was already the best time to draw it, we decided that wasn’t the right way to go.”
Q: Can Hela be adjusted to offer a playstyle that isn’t just “play big cards”?
A: Glenn “We already have Ghost Rider and Black Knight as ‘midrange-playable’ reanimation cards. Hela is purposefully paying off a linear strategy that dedicates itself wholly to her endgame. We don’t currently intend to change that aspect of her play goal.”
Q: Will Misery still trigger if played on Armor?
A: Glenn “Misery will trigger cards whether they can be destroyed or not.”
Q: Will a Widow's Kiss now be destroyed if played onto Space Throne?
A: Glenn “Yes, it’ll be destroyed there.”
Q: Why wasn’t War Machine + Storm + Legion adjusted in the OTA?
A: Glenn “We use the OTA to adjust imbalances and other metagame issues based on their impact and severity. The War Machine deck wasn’t one of the best or most popular decks over the last few weeks, and has numerous points of interactions, thus we didn’t consider adjusting it further. Like any other deck, if it proves problematic it will earn that attention.”
Q: Two questions about vanilla cards:
– How much the interaction with H.E. is “holding back” a possible buff to the power of some of the vanillas, like The Thing and Abomination (the others seems fine to me)?
– Do you actively look at the “vanilla” statline as a reference for how much power cards with the same cost should be? If yes, is there any plan for a big overhaul of those cards to adjust the curve to new values?
A: Glenn “-High Evo isn’t a factor at all. But just buffing the vanillas isn’t a change we would ever make in a vacuum, because…
-You generally want the vanilla to be the worst card of its cost, or very close to it, in CCG design. It’s a common misconception that the vanilla represents an ‘average’ card. So the vanilla statline is a reference–it’s the floor. That said, we could potentially raise the floor–it would just entail additional changes.”
Q: Was it considered to change Hellcow by discarding cards after the end of the round?
A: Glenn “An element of our design philosophy is that we avoid executing effects ‘weirdly’ unless we have specific and worthy cause. Executing something once without condition is the express domain of On Reveal and now Activate, while end turn triggers primarily repeat effects based on the action of each turn.
We could’ve considered having Hellcow discard a card each turn, but that’s a farther departure and would merit more testing. It would likely make more sense to make that a new card.”
Q: Why does Misery retrigger On Reveal without requiring destruction, but Grand Master requires movement to retrigger?
A: Glenn “Misery triggers the cards On Reveal effects while they are in play, then destroys them. Grand Master moves the card, then triggers its On Reveal. We didn’t find it necessary or particularly sensible to have the execution of the second part of the effect to be a prerequisite for the first part—that would be kind of like Grand Master not moving a card if Cosmo was in the middle location.
If Misery did work like Grand Master, we’d have weird things like Venom trying to eat your graveyard or White Tiger sending Tigers to locations from off the screen.
As for why we built Grand Master that way, we added elements to ensure he was distinct from Absorbing Man and offered novel gameplay. Specifically, we found it really delightful that he kind of ‘plays SNAP for himself.'”
Q: If Multiple Widow's Kiss are on the same location, why don’t they both destroy when the location is full?
A: Glenn “Triggers in the game don’t check simultaneously. Everything fires one at a time, and the Kiss trigger won’t resolve if the location isn’t full.”
Q: Why doesn’t Zabu have vfx anymore?
A: Glenn “During the last patch, a bug was introduced to Zabu’s VFX that occasionally broke it. We couldn’t fix that until the next patch, so in adjusting the new behavior we disabled it until the fix is in, which won’t be long.”
Q: If Hela brings back a silenced card, will it be cleansed when revived?
A: Glenn “‘Cleanse’ is not an effect in the game. Leeched Hela will reanimate Leeched.”
Other Questions
Q: I love the new music! How did you make it?
A: TheChrisAlan “Glad to hear you are enjoying it! I drew some inspiration from Mick Gordon’s work on Doom Eternals. Wanted something dark and edgy. The main instruments in the track are guitars, bass, and synthesizers. When doing these new season music tracks I look at the new season’s art, the characters, their lore and then try my best to represent that in the music. Regarding availability on Spotify, I can’t say when for sure yet.”
Q: Does the team considered deck cost (card Series in a deck) when looking at play rates of a deck?
A: Glenn “We normalize cards based on their Series, and thus can compare apples to apples by building performance scores using that normalization. For (a simplified) example to illustrate what I mean: if a Series 3 card is played 20% more than the average Series 3 card, and a Series 5 card is played 20% more than an average Series 5 card, that indicates interest in each card relative to its peers is roughly comparable among players who have access, even if the number of games is very different.”
Q: I assume the reveal that you are still working on Character Mastery means that you were able to resolve the previous implementation issues you faced, and you’re now more certain you’ll be able to realize the feature fully?
A: Glenn “Not really; the technical lift on the original scope of the feature was simply too high. However, feedback from you all in the wake of its previous removal from the road map demonstrated to us how important the feature was to players. So we recommitted to finding a path that could work.”
Q: When are split rolls determined?
A: Griffin “It’s determined as soon as you hit the Split button. So feel free to upgrade to Infinity and wait to hit Split until you’re ready.”
Q: Since FEAST says “all” players get energy and not “both” players, does this mean future game modes may include more than 2 players?
A: Glenn “We’re not planning to add more players, but the words are functionally identical and we didn’t see any potential for it to be confusing in practice.”
Q: What is the criteria for “intuitive and consistent” as described in the OTA notes? Isn’t intuition entirely subjective?
A: Glenn “I wouldn’t go so far as to say intuition is an ‘entirely subjective’ aspect to measure–it’s not spice levels in food 😉 However, there are certainly areas of nuance where reasonable people will disagree. And as team members change roles or come and go, different people will have different approaches. For example, just this year we changed when staged moves resolve from sequential to the top of the turn, in large part because we decided the way the game is represented visually was more important to match functionally.
As for the goal, we want SNAP to be one of the most approachable CCGs in the world, and intuitive gameplay is a big part of that. There are plenty of complicated CCGs already–prioritizing accessibility is a way we can set ourselves apart, welcoming potential new and lapsed CCG players into a really fun genre. When a game mismatches a new player’s expectations and confuses them, for many that’s a flag that the game might not suit them. We want to avoid that as much as possible, because it gives the player more time to see how much fun they could have playing SNAP.
Of all the potential audiences, veteran CCG players like yourself are already the best-equipped to avoid or overcome those moments. You’ve felt them before; you’ve trained to build a mind palace of in-game interactions; and you know what you love about CCGs already.
As for how we judge the intuition around certain interactions, we rely on past experience, subject matter experts, playtesting, and eventually live play. I don’t really keep track of where we catch what most often–cards change so much internally, after all. But when we feel a miss, we look back at how we could’ve done better.”
Q: Is the idea of a card being the star on a bad team a way of thinking for you? (I.e. Misery in her move deck)
A: Glenn “Every deck has a best card. Some decks are more heavily impacted by their decks’ best card than others, but it’s a spectrum. For example, on one end you have things like Mister Negative and Hela, lynchpin cards; on the other you have things like Cassandra Nova or maybe Darkhawk, great cards in decks that are flexible enough to work without them. The ratio can vary, and certainly some decks have one or two standout cards amidst an otherwise average mix.
When we look at balancing decks that are too strong, we tend to look at their strongest cards first and what dials those cards might have. When we’re trying to buff decks, we tend to do the opposite (or make a new card).”
Q: Has the team ever used A.I. like ChatGPT to make card designs or variants?
A: Glenn “Nope.”
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: Why aren’t cards dropping Series? It makes it difficult for players to catch up once you get behind.
A: Griffin “The team is absolutely aware of this issue and we’re working on things behind the scenes to alleviate it. We don’t have anything to share right now, though.”
Q: Were Gold, Inked, and Kirby Dot split rates nerfed?
A: Snap Team Announcement (Paraphrased) “We identified a future change to split rates that were accidentally put onto live servers early. We did not intend to release any rate changes until the launch of character mastery and we will be addressing this as soon as possible.
Until the change is intentionally released in December, rates of acquiring Inked, Gold, and Kirby Dot are temporarily increased above normal rates until then. This increase will be live for the same amount of time that rates were decreased. We will have more information on Character Mastery at a future date.”
Q: How do you ask the devs questions?
A: You can ask questions directly by visiting the official Snap discord page, and post your question to the “ask the team” channel.
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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