Welcome back to Burning Questions, where we try to investigate and answer the questions at the top of the Snap community's mind. Today, we're discussing daily rewards, Cerebro, custom cards, and more!
1) Should Daily Rewards Be Bankable?
We have daily missions, and now, with the addition of the daily gold pass, logging in to collect your rewards every day is more important than ever. But should these rewards disappear if we don't log in? Should we be able to bank them and collect them later?
The simple answer is no. I've seen people ask about this for daily missions and am now hearing the same thing concerning the gold pass. Why do daily missions and the gold pass exist? Their sole purpose is to drive engagement. If they aren't time-sensitive, then Second Dinner has no incentive to have them. The gold pass is a “good deal” (value in a mobile game is relative). You get 1800 gold for $5. In exchange, you are required to engage with the game daily. If they just wanted to sell some gold, they would have added a totally different feature. They added this for exactly one reason: to increase engagement.
Look, there are plenty of reasons to criticize Second Dinner on monetization. However, expecting features that solely exist to drive engagement to require no engagement is misguided. Now, should the game be so demanding of your time? Should you have to log in and collect engagement bonuses daily to feel like you're not falling behind on card acquisition? That's a separate question and is worth discussion. Very few games demand so much of their players to keep up. That has more to do with their flawed acquisition system than it does with their engagement drivers. Picking up your resources feels especially important to a player base thirsty for those resources. The acquisition system is like a gorilla sitting on your chest. Sure, it makes your hands and feet hurt, too, but the problem is the gorilla on your chest.
2) Is Cerebro Dead?
This season, Cerebro is sitting at around a 1% appearance rate and a mediocre 53% win rate. Is Cerebro dead?
When Loki was the main meta tyrant, Cerebro enjoyed some time in the sun as a good counter to that deck. But today, the deck is being played less than it ever has. What happened?
Math happened. Cerebro 2 has a soft cap of 24 power per lane, 28 with Blue Marvel. Cerebro 3 usually tops out at a maximum of 28 per lane as well. 28 per lane used to be an easy win. Playing Cerebro used to be less about what your opponent did and more about dodging the many locations that kill your combo. Well, with the addition of a lot of giant cards like Blob, Skaar, Cull Obsidian, and Mockingbird, there are a lot of decks (especially Thanos) that can easily get above your maximum number without even having to attack you with Rogue or Enchantress.
The other main problem for Cerebro has been the change to Luke Cage. Affliction has always been a challenge for Cerebro decks, whether from locations or opposing cards. Now that he is above the threshold for both Cerebro 2 and Cerebro 3, they are left with no affliction protection. There has been some tinkering with Cerebro 4, and Cerebro 5 has enough new tools that people are trying to make it work. But the two best Cerebro versions, 2 and 3, appear dead in the water. A slight improvement to M’Baku and Cable going to 2-3 hasn't moved the needle.
So is there any hope?
It's probable that some of the deck's main predators get a balance change soon (looking at you, Mad Titan!), but there is additional help in the way.
Both US Agent and White Widow look pretty strong in Cerebro 2, so it's possible we won't have to wait long for the Cerebrenaissance.
3) Alternate and Unique characte versions
May's newly revealed season theme is The eXiles, which is all about hopping between alternate universes and meeting wacky versions of familiar characters. The season's star will be Blink, from the Age of Apocalypse storyline (a.k.a. Earth-295). A new variant featuring Ms. Marvel from the 2018 eXiles comic book series.
That's Kamala from Earth-81111, a dystopia mired in war. Her rugged look in the variant matches her tough life.
We've had several variants for alternate timeline versions of characters before of course. One example is this awesome Jeff Dekal variant of Magik from a What if…? comic. In that story, the Illyana Rasputin of Earth-18133 runs away from the New Mutants and becomes the Sorcerer Supreme.
In celebration of the new season theme, let's look at some of the coolest alternate universe versions of characters that are ideally suited to become Marvel Snap variants.
Old Man Logan
It is a classic comic book storyline and the inspiration for the Logan film.
Bloodstorm
What if Storm had pickpocketed Dracula when she was a child?
Juggernautical
Like the Juggernaut, but a boat!
Dark Beast
Also escaped the Age of Apocalypse, like Blink.
The Maker
In the Ultimate universe, Reed Richards became a deranged supervillain!
That's just a small sample of the variant potential the multiverse brings. For example, beloved Snap artist Peach Momoko has just started an alternate universe X-Men series centered on Armor, set in the new Ultimate universe. I'm sure some of the characters coming to that series would also make gorgeous variants.
Let's peek at the official Marvel Snap Discord and see which questions and answers are the most interesting this week.
4) Q: I was under the impression that finishes and effects from any variant could be used on any variant with the caveat that you can’t separate the effect and finish. Was I wrong in that thinking or did you guys make a change? Any chance of it actually happening?
A: For this v1 it is by variant, but we are going to make split combos usable by character in a future update. So if you roll a Gold/Krackle on your Hellfire Gala Prof X and you decide to buy Pandart Prof X, then in the future update you will be able to immediately apply that Gold/Krackle to your new Prof X variant or any other Prof X variant you own
**This is great to hear. Decoupling the splits from the variant is good for multiple reasons. First, it's better for us players since we immediately throw our hard-earned ink/gold + Krackle combo directly onto a new cool variant. That is amazing. Second, it shows that Second Dinner is intelligently adjusting monetization as the player base evolves. Many players, myself included, try to get one “terminal split” for each card. I've got gold + rainbow Krackle Jeff. I don't need any more Jeff variants or splits ever. That poses a problem for the long-term financial health of the game. I might buy a flashy new Jeff if I can swap my cool split onto it immediately. I saw some concern that giving players this agency would be problematic for the company since earning credits to upgrade cards is the main gameplay loop for the collection side of the game. That is true for a player's first year of playing, but upgrading cards is a game of diminishing returns as players start to collect more and more “terminal splits.” This is a cool thing for the players and a savvy move by Second Dinner.
5) Q: The other event had 20 cards with new text (10 couples).
This one has 70, more than 3 times compared to the previous.
Tbh I'm not that familiar with the Marvel universe to have them all in my mind (even if I was, 70 feels like a lot) – and since the combinations of these cards influence the outcome of the game directly, has the team considered how to maybe simplify it?
A: We're still in the stage of experimenting with these kinds of events, to understand more about what players enjoy and how to best invest our resources for making future ones even more fun. In this case, one of the reasons we went "wide" was to reduce how often players would guess and be wrong about a card's team affiliation.
**It makes sense to slowly experiment with these initial “imbalance patches.” With a player base complaining about 24-hour featured locations being too long, it is wise to be cautious. The first imbalance patch was relatively minor and narrow. This one is wider but still not too dramatic. I expect the next step in the experiment to be a much bigger swing. I'd encourage you to be open-minded about the changes in imbalance and embrace the week of change. They are an excellent way to avoid a stale meta (this week had promised to be a real slot), and it is also a way to avoid things like card rotation that traditional TCGs usually have to deal with. Between new cards, OTA adjustments, and imbalance patches, the development team has a nice kit of tools to keep the game fresh for years to come without having to rotate out or totally rework the strongest cards eventually.
That's it for this week! There are so many ways you can join in on the conversation! Leave a comment below. Hit me up on Twitter if you've got a Burning Question you'd like answered. Head to the official Marvel Snap discord and submit a question for the developers.