Developer Update for the Week of October 18, 2023: Black Knight Edition (25+ Questions)!

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 why does Alioth destroy unrevealed cards, will devs ever ban cards each week, is that Ben Brode’s voice in the menu music, 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 Black Knight! 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 Black Knight 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: What does the team think about the fact that some decks are just not really able to achieve priority while dodging powerful tech cards, therefore making Alioth’s very existence a source of constant, uncomfortable mindgames between getting Alioth’d or getting shang’d/shadow king’d etc? Alioth does make fighting tech cards easier but is very scary alongside them as well.
A: Glenn “Alioth’s performance is generally at its weakest alongside most ‘tech cards’ like Shang-Chi, Enchantress, Shadow King, etc. because those cards are also strongest when played at the end of the game. That’s among the reasons we were comfortable making him, because he would offer defense and competition for some highly-played cards at the same time.”

Q: How does the team feel about Cost reduction cards post Mobius?
A: Glenn “Mobius has certainly had a large impact on cards whose strength is premised around Cost reduction. That was expected on our end, and we’re letting that experiment run its course. Cost reduction has been a mainstay of SNAP for a long time, so while we were interested to see what the metagame would look like with it weakened, we also know it’s a part of the game players fell in love with and that’s not something we’re aiming to (permanently) change.”

Q: If Black Knight is played and Apocalypse gets discarded, will the Ebony Blade gain the power of Apocalypse when he was discarded or when his ability is activated?
A: Rada ” Ebony Blade will get the post-buff Power of Apocalypse. Consistent with Dracula.”

Q: If Black Knight is played and a location like Sokovia discards a card, will Ebony Blade gain the power of that card?
A: Rada “Yep, Black Knight will activate normally if the discard comes from a location.”

Q: Are the Uatu changes intended to give him a similar gameplay niche as crystal (I.E. a niche effect that some decks will value, even for players nearing collection completion) or is it more to reduce his variance for early pool players who are still learning the nuances of the location system?
A: Glenn “It’s both, with a caveat. Because we make Uatu available to players so early, him being too strong would threaten learning the tensions of location variance for new players. He should just be an option for players who want that info and enjoy having it, not a card good enough to play in most decks.”

Q: With talks about changing Chavez in an OTA since nobody plays her for stats, what does the team think about a mulligan like other CCGs?
A: Glenn “You’re already so likely to see a given card that we don’t want to even further increase it. Mulligans are more important in games with greater variance. You’re not supposed to draw the cards you want all the time, that’s kind of the idea 😉

If we were to change Chavez, it would be a patch, not an OTA. Her numbers mostly don’t matter because, as you note, she is rarely played.”

Q: Nico’s spell to destroy a card and draw 2 cards: if the next card is played onto a destroy location, will the location trigger first or Nico?
A: Glenn “Nico will resolve first, like Iron Fist’s effect.”

Q: Why did you decide for Alioth to destroy unrevealed cards? And why don’t other destroy cards like Destroyer, Venom, or Carnage not have that text?
A: Glenn “We wanted a novel effect befitting the character. His MCU power is to erase things from time itself–being able to make it like a card ‘never existed’ qualifies there, and destroying an unrevealed card, as you noted, is unique.

From there, we also saw he was an effective incentive to gain priority. That’s something we’ve been looking for a while, as one reason we so consistently saw Zabu and Kitty at the top of the metagame were those decks’ ability to throw priority and counter/outscore the opponent unhindered on turn 6.

The restriction to only destroying face-up cards is the default. That’s very important for players to learn to know how all the other cards you listed work. But it doesn’t mean no card will ever blow up an unrevealed thing, just that it’s special and unusual (and needs explicit text, like Alioth has).”

Q: Has the interaction with Jane Foster and Widows Bite changed? It seems any time I play a Widows Bite onto Lockjaw and play Jane Foster, Widows Bite always draws first and blocks further draws.
A: Glenn “It wasn’t changed, it just depends on the order in which Jane tries to draw the cards.”

Q: What made the team decide on how Black Knight and the Ebony Blade function?
A: Glenn “Because unpredictable elements like Sokovia, Black Bolt, and especially Silver Samurai can discard cards from your hand, we decided to go with a low-Cost card so that the player could time the discard more efficiently and ‘lock it in’ rather than setting up a play that could be ruined by the effects above. We also didn’t want the value changing frequently because it asks the player to track the Blade more carefully.

As for why the Ebony Blade doesn’t hold the ability, 1) we were considering adding an ability to the Blade for a long time, and 2) Black Knight is the card that’s visible all the time. Because creating the Ebony Blade has a harsher cost than Thor or Black Widow, we preferred to frontload the ability. We also didn’t particularly like any templates we wrote for the Ebony Blade.”

Other Questions

Q: How does the team feel about creating more cards that are objects and not characters, like Hulk Buster, Quinjet, Cerebro, and Helicarrier?
A: Glenn “Generally, cards are characters. We have a few exceptions, and we’ll probably have more, but that’s the default.”

Q: Is it intended for Conquest weeks to have a different launch time as the new refresh time?
A: Tucker “Not intended! We plan to get that corrected Soon™️. In general we’d like to sync up all the major refreshes (cards, season pass/missions, variant shop, conquest) to the new time”

Q: The zombie squirrels in Central park are awesome, will we be getting new token variants every season like this?
A: Rada “We don’t have plans to hit a token every season at the moment, but we’ll certainly be doing similar stuff to what we’re doing with the Squirrel right now whenever we have something that fits!”

Q: Can the new music be added into different menus? I love the new tracks, but it’s a bit disappointing when the music cuts off when I swap to a different tab.
A: TheChrisAlan “This past patch brought the seasonal music to more places, including the shop and the game modes section.  For the deck building section, that is going to remain as it is because some of these seasonal tracks can get a bit high energy which could be distracting to players in deep thought while deck building.  There are more plans to continue improving on this even more in future!”

Q: Why not revert some old nerfs now that Mobius has had such a big impact on cards in the meta?
A: Glenn “Our philosophy around card changes involves keeping them to a small number for regular updating, 3-8 being the approximate range. We also prefer to time updates so that they have the most potential to be impactful. If we changed everything we thought could change every time, it would be very destabilizing and also quickly run us out of the queue of updates we use to make regular balance changes.”

Q: Any chance you will ever re-release season pass variants, or are they gone forever when a season ends?
A: Stephen “Season pass cosmetics are exclusive to that season pass and we have no plans to bring them back.  We think of season pass, bundles, etc similar to how a clothing company offers unique styles each season.  Once the season changes a new unique set of styles are available.”

Q: Does SD prefer for players to reveal first? In the comments for Alioth, it says “its purpose as an incentive to push Power into play during the first five turns of the game.” Does that mean you don’t like the idea of players playing psychological warfare to get an advantage?
A: Glenn “Deciding to throw priority is a much more fun and interesting decision if it has appropriate risk/reward. However, revealing second was mostly just an advantage before Alioth, as it both protected final plays from interference and ensured your own interference had maximum impact. Alioth’s role was to put tension on that, and make players want to reveal first more often.”

Q: Does the way you guys have designed the game allow for the possibility of a future card that might destroy (and *not* discard) a card that is in your (or your opponent’s) hand?
A: Glenn “It’s technically possible, but not space I’m eager to explore.”

Q: Do you have a playlist for Snap music?
A: TheChrisAlan “You can listen here!  The new music will eventually be released on all streaming platforms too!  https://spotify.link/0s4rhkleVDb “

Q: A few weeks ago Glenn shared a deck at first he was simply having fun with, but now that has since with a few tweaks become what the community largely deems as a meta deck and a very strong one at that. Did Glenn have any idea that it could eventually become what it is today? Does this encourage or discourage more sharing of other developer decks?
A: Glenn “Had no idea; I played at most 20 games with it before sharing it.

We already exercise general caution around sharing data and deck optimization. We prefer players to find their own fun! But we’re in favor of sharing something novel or interesting if we think players might enjoy it, as long as it won’t be too disruptive. In this case I just happened to be ahead of the curve; If I’d sourced the deck from our internal data instead of my own play, I likely wouldn’t have shared it.”

Q: How do you guys prioritize functionality vs novelty when creating new cards? How much do you try to be at least lore-relevant, if not lore-accurate?
A: Glenn “It’s important to capture some element of the character’s fantasy. It’s not always easy, because our character selection is guided by creative themes while our mechanical design is guided by the metagame. However, we always want to line them up as best we can. One of the great tools we have to help that is VFX, of course.”

Q: Is Ben Brode the Laugh that plays in the beginning of the october music?
A: TheChrisAlan “Is Ben Brode the Laugh that plays in the beginning of the october music?”

Q: Even though the team has stated they don’t want to use keywords, would you ever implement a “stiffle” card (counter a triggered ability)? Or are these counter effects off the table due to the language?
A: Glenn “The language isn’t an issue; we theoretically could make such a card and create some word we like. I prefer the gameplay space of things like Armor or Luke Cage rather than diving into that complexity, though. Plus ‘counter your card’ is classic TCG talk that has some potential to turn people away.”

Q: With more cards that interact with locations and more move cards in the meta, is the team interested in adding back removed locations like Milano or Plunder Castle?
A: Glenn “Not really. We’ll still make some restrictive locations, but we prefer to use incentives and drawbacks to change which locations you want to play on rather than full-on barriers.”

Q: I enjoy how featured locations shake up the meta. Has the team considered card bans to further this idea?
A: Glenn “Ideologically, banning cards is something we’d like to avoid. We use featured locations, OTAs, and in the future game modes to create this kind of experience.”

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!

Last week, we didnt have many questions. Make sure to leave yours down below in the comment section!

Q: Are there plans to improve the shop to be more personalized? It would be great to have a more tangible way to find the variants I like.
A: Charlene “There are definitely plans to take this further beyond showing new releases.  Personalized Shop is currently under active development to address how to better serve Variants to each of our players.”

Q: Will you have a season theme based around 80’s and synthwave vibes?
A: The developers won’t confirm or deny possible themes, but Nicki’s explanation on how they pick themes, and it seems very possible for the 80’s theme to happen if the cards match the idea.
Nicki Broderick “We plan our themes for seasons many months ahead! We have a huge backlog of ideas and themes we want to explore that are a mix of comic inspired, Marvel’s show/movie schedule, etc. There’s a variety of factors that influence the theme, but we typically look at things like new characters to introduce, an artistic glue that can hold stuff together, an opportunity for cool/unique designs, etc.”

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!