Marvel Snap’s Balance Future: Weekly Card Balance Updates, Patch on April 18th!

Marvel Snap has made its “over the air” (OTA) hotfix to nerf Red Skull and Sunspot, and buffs to Shadow King and Sentry. This sort of update where a major game patch is not required has been delayed for some time since the nerf to Zabu and Silver Surfer since early February due to technical issues. This left the meta in a stale state, as one new Series 5 card (that is hard to obtain) per week could not make an impact.

Furthermore, the next patch is confirmed scheduled to be April 18, 2023, continuing with every four weeks and on Tuesdays. After that, there will be weekly card rebalances (around 2 to 4 cards) every Thursday! These will generally be cost and power adjustments, not ability changes, which has to be applied via a patch for now. This is the reason why Shuri was not touched, and will be live with the patch. Check out the official announcement below.

Speaking of changes we’re interested in trying out, we have an exciting announcement about the future of card balance for MARVEL SNAP! Starting with our upcoming April patch–currently scheduled for 4/18–we’ll be making weekly changes to cards in the game. Our patch every four weeks will continue to release on Tuesdays and include card updates as well, but the intervening weeks will each feature changes going live on Thursdays via OTA.

We know this is just the sort of balance attention and prioritization that many of you have clamored for, so thanks for your passionate feedback! It’s been a multi-team effort to get this process buttoned up over the last month, and we all hope you’re as excited as we are.

Let’s go ahead and address some of the questions that should be popular:

Why Thursdays?

Why not? Actually, Thursdays are just a good day to slide into the rest of our schedule and ensure our QA team has enough time to verify these updates. It also avoids stepping on new card releases or hot/featured locations.

What kind of changes will we make?

Our OTA tool gives us the ability to make changes within about a week or two, but it is limited in what we can change. We’re continuing to develop the tool and expand its limitations, but for now you can expect weekly Thursday changes to be numbers-only like the above, with our larger patches still addressing most major changes to card functionality and VFX.

Will we be nerfing or buffing cards?

Ah! Well, as you can see with Sentry and Shadow King, we do intend to buff cards through OTA. In fact, we’re going to guarantee at least one buff in each of these updates. We will also use this method to balance the metagame with nerfs, but only when it’s deemed necessary.

How many cards will change each week?

Our target is 2 to 4 cards each week. On patch weeks it’s possible we’ll change more, as that’s a unique access point for us.

How will we pick which cards to change?

We have a list of buffs (and a very small list of nerfs) that we’re making to existing content. We’re prioritizing them based on how we expect the individual changes to affect the metagame or even combine with new cards and locations, but we’ll shift them around based on the live metagame.

Why not just make all those changes now?

One of the things we’re wary of with balance patches is “how much change is too much?” We’ve avoided changing more than a handful of cards at a time for a while now, and we think that’s a good thing because they’re easier to digest. Plus, pacing out these changes lets us lightly freshen the metagame periodically, rather than shake it all up at once and then watch things settle into a new state of stasis.

How long will we do this?

We’ve planned a trial period for May, and depending on how it goes we may continue onward. We’re optimistic about that at the moment.

That’s all we’ve got for now!

We hope you’re stoked for the future of weekly balance updates, and we’ll see you in a couple weeks as we turn the page on a new SNAPter in the book of digital balance!

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