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: was the Destroyer change really a buff, why is bounce always getting nerfed, lots of
This week’s edition comes after the launch new Series 5 card
This week also comes after the latest OTA! If you haven’t seen the changes yet, be sure to check those out first as many questions reference those changes.
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, Hulkling 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: If Iron Lad or Copycat target
A: Glenn “Iron Lad and Copycat should copy Hulkling’s new text. If he doesn’t, that’s a bug, so please report it if you encounter it.”
Q: Were Quicksilver and Domino on the board for buffs, but you made Wiccan instead to help them find a home? And was a 3-Cost equivalent of these cards considered?
A: Glenn “Wiccan was purposefully engineered to work with Quicksilver and Domino; we had no intent to change them. I don’t think a 3-Cost version would necessarily make Wiccan too strong, but it wouldn’t be a particularly interesting card to add to the game either way.”
Q: The OTA notes say Destroyer’s change was made so he would have a better chance at supporting cards like Nimrod and Death. But, considering how now Destroyer no longer destroys the cards at the location he is played, wouldn’t he be worse at supporting cards like Nimrod and Death?
A: Glenn “Like many changes, it may be better in some instances and worse in others. But we believe overall the card is quite a bit stronger, which benefits the decks playing it.
Also, changes aren’t in a vacuum–perhaps the new Attuma is adding more strength than Destroyer hitting his own location took away, for example. Or perhaps not–finding out is the fun part.”
Q: Can Scarlet Witch create a location that is already in play?
A: Glenn “Yes, she can”
Q: Why nerf Taskmaster before the new card that causes an issue is released? Why not nerf him when the problem card is about to release?
A: Glenn “This is the last OTA before some of those cards will release. As stated in the notes, even then we’re usually happy to ‘let it ride’ but in this case that didn’t seem like the best way to go.”
Q: Why did Loki basically get no change within Arishem? Nobody played him for the Power, so 2/2 changes nothing.
A: Glenn “I don’t think you’re weighing this quite right, because Arishem is a deck that values slots highly and Energy a little low. The deck has loads of it, any card is easy to ‘get out’ if you draw it. But 3 Power is a lot to lose–the 3/5 statline is quite good, see Nocturne then and now–and a ‘late’ Loki is much worse when you’re’ playing a 2/2 with one or two other 2-Cost cards already eating slots inefficiently.
Is it a big nerf to Arishem? Probably not, but we went with a lighter touch because Arishem decks are almost dead even on winrate and cuberate. Loki’s the outlier, and his ability to go in a bunch of other decks as a single-card package was more worrying than his specific strength in Arishem.”
Q: Is it a coincidence that Cannonball was bugged while in a Spotlight cache?
A: Glenn “No, we waited to buff him until he would be more widely available. Many players find it frustrating when we buff a card if tokens are the only way to acquire it, so sometimes–if nothing else is creating timing pressure and an easier acquisition opportunity isn’t far off–we’ll sit on the change for a bit.”
Q: Why is the team so quick to the draw when it comes to nerfing bounce (Beast) and bounce adjacent cards? Bounce wasn’t even good or present in the meta this time around! This is in stark contrast to the team’s apparent reluctance to nerf deeply dissatisfying/oppressive decks in the past that the team took forever to even consider nerfing. Now Arishem and Sandman are the ones to go untouched.
A: Glenn “It sounds like you were frustrated by how we approached some cards earlier in SNAP’s live balance journey. That’s fair, and we learned some lessons there for sure. Those lessons are among the reasons we now move a bit faster with a focus on the cards we identify as being the most meaningful contributors to our issues, based on substantially more testing.
I don’t think it would make sense to emulate the previous, dissatisfying approach today, and I hope we’re in agreement there. And Bounce isn’t being targeted any differently, other than that many of its pieces have fine replacements, which restricts which cards we can usefully change.
As for Sandman and Arishem, we’ve impacted those archetypes with multiple changes recently (and Sandman many other times). Arishem is currently a break-even deck—50% WR, 0.01 cube rate—and we’re keeping an eye on Sandman. It’s had a bit of a surge since we locked in this OTA, and we’ve demonstrated (multiple times) that we’ll act to rein it in when it’s out of hand.”
Q: Did you intend to change Attuma and Destroyer in the same OTA so they would both interact with Nimrod differently?
A: Glenn “We liked both changes independently enough to ship them and didn’t have any reason to wait on either one. They weren’t related by much more than coincidence.”
Q: Is there a big disparity in performance in Arishem across different skill caps?
A: Glenn “He gains a bit more than 1% winrate at lower MMR, but his cuberate actually goes down. That’s about it.”
Q: A few high evo questions for you:
1. Are there plans to add any additional cards to his pool?
2. Are there plans for other cards that modify multiples the way he does?
3. Any chance for a Thing buff, he’s lagging behind the other 4 drops currently out there and could use a couple more points?
4. Are you as a team happy with the performance of the card currently?
A: Glenn “1. Yes
2. Yes
3. Yes, but it’s complicated
4. It helms a fine deck, and I’m confident the sun will shine on it again”
Hulkling Questions
Q: Why did
A: Glenn “Game balance playtesting. It’s possible we missed low—we’ll see once the card is live if that’s actually the case. I feel pretty confident 14 would be messed up.”
Q: Are there any 6-Costs that
A: Glenn “He can’t generate Agatha or Thanos.”
Q: How did Hulkling’s bug of copying his own ability make it past play testing?
A: Glenn “It’s a common misconception for players to assume a card ‘always worked’ the way it’s printed, but that’s rarely the case. Most cards are iterated on many times, have many different abilities, etc. It’s easy for a card that changes later on to have less than 100 human games, and
We also do play simulations without human players, and those won’t catch unexpected outcomes unless we directly look for them. Similarly, when we merge design work into the live game, the process involves manual review and occasionally a change can get overwritten. I’m not sure if that happened here, just speaking in generalities.”
Q: Following up the previous question: Do you think 100 games is sufficient to determine if a card is balanced? If a card is underpowered after 100 games, do you just sign off and release it?
A: Glenn “That depends on your definition of ‘sufficient.’ If it’s ‘perfect balance’ then no—but the sample to do that isn’t plausible to execute on for every card, especially given OTAs will inevitably change the context they’re released in anyway. So we have to choose a different threshold.
Our development process aims to get cards balanced as appropriately as we can, sure. But more relevantly, we test to verify that we have meaningful dials available that can be turned to create satisfying gameplay when we miss.
For example, we found
Our goal isn’t to release cards below the mark for meaningful play, so no—we don’t sign off if we think a card is too weak, we improve it. And as we’ve demonstrated, we’re happy to quickly adjust cards if they fall too short of the target.”
Q: Why does
A: Glenn “We tend to reserve ‘get’ for the player, such as Psylocke.
Q: Is it intended that
A: Glenn “No. We don’t want to overload the start of the game with unnecessary VFX, and introducing a memory challenge that might not even matter on turn 0 of every
Q: Why did you scrap
A: Glenn “He was just too good. We couldn’t find a Power value that kept him feeling like a Hulk at 5-Cost with that effect, and we valued maintaining his fantasy of large Power highly.”
Q: Will future 6-Cost cards be made with
A: Glenn “I guess it’s not impossible, but seems pretty unlikely.”
Other Questions
Q: Will you ever add a mechanic that includes a “choose one” mechanic?
A: Glenn “No; we already have a ‘choose one’ for every card in determining which location to play at, which can touch a lot of similar space. I wouldn’t say we’ll never do this, but it’s not actively under consideration.”
Q: Why do the gold splits look darker now?
A: Griffin “Last Tuesday’s patch introduced all-new rendering tech that allows us to make a major overhaul to cards’ Finishes.
Not only will this allow us to iteratively improve current options but it also provides a clear runway for potential new options as well.
You will see differences in some of your current Finishes but this is just our first pass utilizing this new system.
We’ll be continuing to hone and improve based upon your feedback so please keep letting us know how you feel about them.”
Q: How do you decide in which instances you allow a card‘s cost to be reduced to 0 and at which point do you reconsider implementing a minimum like with e.g. Quinjet?
A: Glenn “Our current line is that passive reductions on cards use a minimum of 1 (Quinjet, Sera, Ravonna) while reductions applied due to actions or triggers don’t (She-Hulk, Beast, Death). We don’t limit locations since they’re symmetrical and it adds more dynamic gameplay to leave them be, but we’ve thought about it.”
Q: Why did Alliance point values get a 1.5x increase for 1 day?
A: CJ “Hiya, it was a buff for Jeff Week!”
Q: Is it intended that token cards filling up the location Clubhouse do not result in giving your other cards +1 Power?
A: Glenn “The fucntion was intended. We thought the sequencing puzzle was interesting. However, it’s proven more confusing than we’d like, so we may adjust this location to be more clear in the future.”
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: Will you ever add a card with an alternate win-con?
A: Glenn “The space is very tricky, as Galactus has shown us. Many of the decks that do that in other games still let both players experience the core fun of the game, but SNAP is already so short and so confined it its game space that shortcutting it further risks making it feel like it’s not SNAP at all.
I’d generally rather look at combos that make 100 Power at a location or something than win the game outright, but if the right idea and execution came along we’d explore it.”
Q: Can we get a MacOS client?
A: Devs have stated before that they don’t have current intentions on making a specific Mac version of the game. You can download Snap on the app store, but no plans to make a Mac steam version of the game. You can also use a windows emulator to play Snap with Dev assurance it won’t trigger anything to ban your account.
Q: Will there be a way to opt out of future leagues?
A: This actually gets asked a lot. The team hasn’t confirmed or denied it, but they have acknowledged players want it and appreciate your feedback!
Q: Can we get a PvE or Co-Op mode?
A: The team has stated before they likely won’t invest in PvE content. Co-op is considered to be friendly battles. Here is Glenn’s thoughts on adding PvP over PvE content:
Glenn “CCGs tend to more heavily revolve around PvP than PvE by their nature. Building a collection and expressing oneself through decks and gameplay is core to the fun, and that requires another person to experience fully. Even in CCGs that make it available, it tends to be more of an occasional side dish than anyone’s main course.
There are logistical and systemic elements to introducing PvE to PvP games as well, of course. And they can change your audience’s behavior. For example, I loved Runeterra’s Path mode, but that also meant I stopped pursuing Master rank (their Infinite equivalent).”
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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