1) Are cards releasing too weak?
Over the last few months, the development team at Second Dinner has told us about a shift in their testing process for new cards. It is early, but let's look at how things have changed. After the reversion of Mobius M. Mobius, the team shared the following about changes to their process after having to change so many newly released cards so soon:
“...we just want you to know we’re investigating our process and taking steps to improve. Some of the changes we’ve made:
Season design starts 4 weeks earlier
Season Pass cards receive ~double their previous playtesting
Playtesting methodology keeping Seasons more mixed
Additional investment in personnel and resources for balance work”
Questions about the testing process remained after the introduction of Blob. Here is an official discord exchange between our Dualgloves and Glenn Jones.
“Q: When the Mobius debacle happened, the devs mentioned on the patch notes that you don't release cards just to nerf them a month later. You also mentioned that you would test things more intensively.
But then you release Blob and he is taking over the game. It didn't take a single week for people to see how busted he is when they got their hands on him.
What happened here? Did you guys release an op card on purpose again to nerf later or was it a mistake?
A: While Blob and Mobius may seem far apart to you, Blob was finalized before Mobius released. We just started working on September 2024, for example. We have made adjustments to our process in pursuit of improved balance upon release, but those adjustments wouldn't have been able to impact Blob.
-Glenn”
Did this mean we would have to wait months before the new process had any effect? It looks like we'll start seeing the fruits of this process very shortly:
“Q: How many more pre-Mobius process change cards are yet to be released? One reading of the recent response could be we have 6+ more months of this roller coaster ride and I’m not sure my heart can take it.
A: Our next season will include a couple cards directly impacted by our balance process improvements, but they don't really kick in until after that.
-Glenn”
The team clearly missed too high on many cards, including Elsa Bloodstone, Loki, Werewolf by Night, and Mobius. But is the opposite happening now, or have they hit the mark? Are cards releasing too weak now, or are we in a Goldilocks zone for card releases?
We already see the effects of the development team's new testing process. The evidence is the increased amount of changes to datamined cards.
Black Swan was originally datamined as a 2/3. Supergiant was initially mined as 1/2 prevented cards played that turn AND the next from revealing until the end of the game. Cull Obsidian initially had an ongoing that made him indestructible. He was then changed to 9 power and eventually back to 10 without the ongoing. Corvus Glaive and Proxima Midnight gained a point of power. Pixie and Hope Summers have been made weaker.
It's a good thing that Supergiant wasn't released as initially datamined. She would have just become another overly powered card that needed to get hit with an emergency nerf. But was she made too weak? After a month of weak releases like Hercules, Miek, and (debatable) Grandmaster, I wouldn't mind some vital cards. Black Swan seems playable, but not particularly strong so far. For a card to be worth spending spotlight keys or collector's tokens, it needs to be better than the last several have been.
The March and April cards look strong, but will they stay that way? While I don't want to return to the days of each season pass card completely warping the meta and becoming the best card in the game, I wouldn't mind some more significant swings from the development team.
2) Why did datamines for Spotlight Caches go away?
In the most recent datamines from the latest patch, information about future spotlight caches has been removed.
Tucker from Second Dinner recently had this to say on the official Marvel Snap discord:
“The short answer: The datamined Spotlight schedules were often works-in-progress or otherwise subject to further change, so we couldn't guarantee they would be the finalized version, and we don’t want to disappoint players when the final release doesn't match the datamine."
The longer behind-the-scenes answer: Spotlight Caches are a bit of a puzzle on the live ops side; we want Spotlight Caches to have roughly equal appeal from week to week, so there are quite a few situations where we’ve wanted to swap Spotlight Cache compositions around. For example, when:
- A card has gained or lost some prominence in the meta
- Playtesting has revealed an excellent combo between certain S4/S5 cards that we want to be highlighted in the Spotlight Cache
- An issue pops up with an unreleased card, and we have to delay it
It’s tough to make one swap that balances everything out, so if we want to make one swap, we’ll either need a few swaps to balance out everything, or we should remove a card and replace it with one “on the bench”. And both lead to a solid potential for wreck plans and disappoint players looking for that one card we happened to change.”
A few issues that come to mind from recent caches are the indefinite delay of Firestar and the shorter delay of the Bronze Age Man-Thing variant.
While it is laudable that Second Dinner would want to ensure that the spotlights contain exciting, meta-relevant cards and lessen disappointment over changes, that doesn't seem to be the genuine reason behind this change.
To be frank, datamines were never sanctioned, guaranteed, or intended by Second Dinner. However, as I've said, Second Dinner has wholly abandoned any responsibility for announcing future game content. This change would not sting if the monthly developer video contained a detailed schedule of cards, series, and spotlight variants. After all, any corporation prefers to communicate at a time and in a way it controls. But with no communication, consumer confidence in their ability to use resources efficiently will dwindle. That's not a bug for a gaming company. That's a feature. Second Dinner will likely make more money from this change (in the short and medium term), not less. This is because fear of missing out, impulse purchasing, and less resource hoarding (read: planning), are likely to drive people to spend their keys and tokens differently than before. That is likely the reason behind this change, not some altruistic desire to ensure players get cards at the meta's cutting edge.
3) Who are the most underrated artists in Marvel Snap?
Rose Besch
Artists like Kim Jacinto, Peach Momoko, and Rian Gonzalez are great and have their fair share of deserved fans, but I think if Rose Besch had as many variants as them, she'd be talked about by the community just as much. She's got this ridiculous White Queen ultimate variant coming out, and her Spider-Woman variant is one of my favorite variants in the game.
Jen Bartel
Marvel Snap has dipped into the vast library of Marvel Comics covers and made some of Jen Bartel’s best covers into variants. She is the artist behind my favorite Nebula and the amazing ultimate She-Hulk.
Phil Noto
I put Phil Noto on this list for his art already in Snap (there are only 3 variants) because he is one of my favorite comic artists, and I hope we get to see more of his work. He draws a mean Magik. We've got his Sebastian Shaw from a series of covers that would make significant variants. And this sweet Mirage is coming to the game in April.
Marvel Snap gets much of its art from old covers, from which the artists see no additional money. But Second Dinner has contacted some of the most loved artists to commission art for the game. I hope they commission work directly from these three artists in the future.