Table of Contents
Hello all! Welcome back to this week’s breakdown of what’s happening over on the Marvel Snap official Discord! I took a quick break last week, but we are back on schedule now! This week, we get answers to questions such as: is the new Agatha here to stay, why can’t War Machine be an Activate, could Galactus see a buff soon, 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 Araña! 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! This week also comes after the latest patch, so make sure you are familiar with the new changes so questions make sense!
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: Have any Galactus buffs been considered?
A: Glenn “We decided to wait until Symbiote Spider-Man ‘settled in’ before considering any buffs to Galactus.”
Q: Will Arishem get a “playable” Power buff like High Evo did?
A: Glenn “High Evo got that buff in part to support being an underplayed archetype. That’s not an issue for Arishem.”
Q: Is the change to Agatha permanent?
A: Glenn “Maybe? We’ll see how it goes.”
Q: Will a future card ever get Agatha’s old ability?
A: Glenn “We aren’t committed to the current Agatha functionality–it’s a change we made in part to let players celebrate her MCU encore. We’ll examine in the future whether to revert her or not based on how players enjoyed the change.”
Q: In the wake of War Machine’s new Ongoing text, was Sandman prematurely nerfed?
A: Glenn “As the notes state, Sandman proved that he was often worse than the disease he theoretically cured. War Machine wouldn’t change that; best case he would weaken Sandman a little while the same issue remained.”
Q: Did you consider that old Sandman would actually synergize with new War Machine by locking your opponent to 1 card while you weren’t?
A: Glenn “I think that’s a fairly weak synergy, and didn’t weigh it heavily. To make WM and Sandman a ‘combo’ you have to build your deck to want to play multiple cards while under Sandman, which in turn means you’re making your deck worse than a normal Sandman deck when you don’t draw the War Machine.”
Q: Was the reason for Agatha’s change influenced by bot farmers at all?
A: Glenn “It was 0% of the reason”
Q: Can you explain why an Activate text for War Machine wasn’t an option?
A: Glenn “There’s not much to explain other than our competitive team thought the activate version of the card wouldn’t be very good, and possibly even weaker.
Unlike Symbiote Spider-Man, War Machine as an activate is giving up being able to be played on turn 5 for any function as well as turn 6, which is a lot of the game to lose. While playing War Machine on turn 5 wasn’t the strongest thing to do, making the ability fully non-functional is a lot weaker.”
Q: What made you go with Agatha taking control on even turns, instead of odd ones?
A: Glenn “Choosing to play herself is an important element of the design, and she costs 6–an even number.”
Q: Move now has a passive move card with Madame Web, and destroy now has Attuma. Could we ever see an equivalent effect with discard?
A: Glenn “I don’t think it’s fundamentally impossible. However, the cards you note care about other cards in play, which means you can easily manipulate them for an advantage. You can’t similarly protect or prioritize cards in your hand, so the design space for a satisfying card is a bit smaller.”
Q: Is it possible for Hulk Buster and Phoenix Force have a way to showcase their art better, like how Symbiote Spider-Man takes priority over the host card?
A: Glenn “It’s not a given that players would rather show off HB and PF than the cards they merge with—for example, I imagine Deadpool is more popular than Hulkbuster and also his most common merge buddy. Somebody always has to ‘lose’ here.
We also want consistent rules for structural reasons and future proofing. While we don’t have such a card right now, eventually we expect we’ll want to do something that cares about what things are merged with, and having to reteach such an interaction is a cost to ‘future us’and future players.
‘Rule of cool’ is important, but can’t win everything.”
Q: Is Arishem’s split effect to generated cards going to be fixed soon?
A: Glenn “Won’t be fixed in the upcoming client release, but should be fixed in the next major one after that. The fix was checked in, just didn’t make the cut in time for this more immediate one.”
Q: Phoenix Force is a very unique ability that single handedly mixes archetypes into something new. Will we ever see more effects like this?
A: Glenn “Yeah, we’ll explore it more.”
Q: With a low playrate for Nova, could he see a return to +2 Power from the beta?
A: Glenn “No, that doesn’t seem likely.”
Q: Does Hydra Bob show that 1-Cost cards have too low of Power?
A: Glenn “1-Costs are a fairly mixed group, but Bob does demonstrate that playing a 1-Cost almost purely for Power is a high bar, relative to cards like Korg, Blade, X-23, etc.”
Q: Has it been considered to buff Thanos by letting him not count as a drawn card at the start of the game (like Agatha)?
A: Glenn “Yes, it’s under consideration—likely at the cost of one or more draws from the Stones.”
Q: Why doesn’t Brood or Mister Sinister get the Power buff from Araña?
A: Glenn “Her ability is largely implemented like Aunt May's, but I agree the wording we shipped isn’t clear relative to existing cards. We’ll look into it.”
Q: I noticed Agatha never uses Activate if it’s on the board. Is this intended or a bug?
A: Glenn “We decided not to ‘teach’ Agatha activate, for now.”
Q: Is it intended that Baron Mordo prevents Death from reducing under 6 Cost? Or is this a bug?
A: Glenn “Mordo wins, similar to how Wave won previously.”
Other Questions
Q: We have seen in the past cards with combinations of On-Reveal + Ongoing existed, and some exist still now. Is this something the team is considering to do with activate as well? And if so, when?
A: Glenn “We generally avoid the former u less we have a compelling reason, and I imagine we’ll do the same with the latter. So rarely, and when it accomplishes something specific.”
Q: Why do I keep getting matched against opponents with higher CL and Rank post infinite?
A: Glenn “Our primary matchmaking weights in Infinite are MMR (an internal rating of players’ true skill), not rank or CL. The bands are also wider, to ensure speedy matchmaking.
While MMR can correlate to rank, it doesn’t always, and only does so generally. For example, the top 25% of ranked players likely has a mix of players whose MMR is in the top 25% as well as ones who are not. Rank is essentially just a value that measures a players’ most recent matches.
Collection level is purely a measure of a player’s credit usage, so it has no meaningful bearing on MMR. We do use CL thresholds for very early matchmaking, when players can have fairly disparate collections, but once a player is a bit into Series 3 that’s no longer true and thus no longer needed. (The more cards you have, the less impactful missing a given card becomes.)”
Q: Is the team constrained by balancing based on cards in Spotlight caches? Or can changes to a recently featured card take priority over maintaining the trust in spending resources on a card?
A: Glenn “We aim to avoid nerfing cards in recent and upcoming Caches when we can, but Spotlight Caches are planned multiple months in advance and OTAs are based on the metagame in the last week or two, so conflicts will inevitably arise.”
Q: Is creating 2 cards with too similar of an ability a design constraint for you?
A: Glenn “Yes, that’s a design constraint we consider.”
Q: If the leader of an Alliance goes inactive, is the group doomed to die off, or can someone else take over leadership?
A: Addison “When a leader has been truly inactive (no game activity or Alliance activity) for 30 days or more, a button will become available to Officers of the Alliance to claim ownership of the Alliance. If no valid officers are active for that same duration of time, the button will become available to Members. In all instances, if there are multiple valid folks who receive the option to claim, it’s a first-come, first-serve situation.”
Q: Is it more important to focus on preserving the existing player base, or to attract new players?
A: Glenn “Since you need to do both, it’s not really about which is more important–it’s about how to best serve the interests of each. These groups often want different things, so when we can identify features that might appeal to both, that’s a fairly efficient way to target our resources. Deadpool’s Diner is a good example of that, as a new game mode and card served existing players well, while new users can easily appreciate a game with a fun tie-in to a Marvel movie giving away themed cosmetics.”
Q: Is there a specific reason that cards/locations list out costs 1, 2, and 3 or 4, 5, and 6 instead of “3 or less” and “4 or more”?
A: Glenn “It is slightly cleaner to read, and does also offer players the ability to discover how cards can be exceptions. However, it’s also something we might adjust.”
Q: Are more Alliance bounty types on the way?
A: Addison “We definitely have new bounty types in the pipes (I know because my team’s tested some), I think most recently we put out new ones for Activate. I’d imagine over time you’ll see a wider array come your way. One thing that we’re having to keep in mind is that we often have Alliances that have players on different client versions of the game, so handling the reconciliation between previous clients and new bounties is something we’re trying to be careful with.”
Q: Has the team noticed that cards that have given +3 Power in the past have been too strong vs +2 Power?
A: Glenn “We tend to exercise more care around +3–it’s just a bigger number, and we have enough scaling in various places to use it. Thena spent a long time at 2/2 +2, for example.”
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 doesn’t Onslaught allow Madame Web to move 2 cards?
A: Glenn “It was not our intent for Onslaught to double Madame Web as she is setting a rule for her location (similar to Professor X). It has been interesting to see that expectation however, and we may reconsider.”
Q: Were cards like Daken, Thor, and Beta Ray Bill considered when designing Symbiote Spider-Man’s effect? After merging, the combined cards don’t get buffs.
A: Glenn “It was considered, but this is consistent with how we want many other interactions in the game to work. When cards refer to a name, they mean that name.”
Q: Could we see new backgrounds to the game board added to Snap?
A: Griffin “It’s definitely something that we’ve discussed but we don’t have anything to share right now.”
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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