Welcome back to Burning Questions, where we try to investigate and answer the questions that are making the rounds in the Snap community. Today we're discussing Avengers vs X-Men, casual mode, Thanos, and more!
1) What did we learn from the Avengers vs. X-Men in-game event?
When the AvX imbalance patch went live, I was happy but not blown away. I thought it was a good, gentle step in experimenting with these types of events in a way that made me very optimistic about future events. However, I didn't expect the event to shift the meta meaningfully and essentially thought it was a wider version of the Valentine's event. While the Avengers failed to make a huge splash, the X-Men buffs were quite strong. While Thanos still ruled the week and discard continued to look scarier, decks, including the X-Men, saw quite a bit of play and success. Second Dinner hit the nail on the head for buffs that felt meaningful without feeling oppressive. Moreover, we learned a few things from the event.
Silver Surfer is just a few points off being a tier 1 deck. The X-Men bonuses pushed Surfer over the top, and this archetype was a really solid choice for the week. Alexander Coccia posted a list that saw a lot of play.
The deck I shared a few days back has legitimately proven to be a meta contender. I'm so glad its been successful for everyone <3 pic.twitter.com/cOoqbiU3I4
— Alex Coccia (@AlexanderCoccia) March 17, 2024
I had a lot of fun playing 3-cost cards in my Surfer deck, such as Wolfsbane and Negasonic Teenage Warhead, which had previously felt a touch too weak.
Another thing we learned is that Havok is just a small buff away from being a legitimately powerful card.
X-Men event has renewed my love for Havok this morning on the ladder. Fun set so far with this pile of cards. pic.twitter.com/kOzGX2eB68
— Jeff Hoogland (@JeffHoogland) March 15, 2024
I played many games with this list from Jeff Hoogland and was blown away by how good Havok was behind Storm or to counter Thanos decks playing Professor X. This deck also highlighted just how good Bast is, especially with Havok.
The main takeaway from the event is that these types of events can successfully shake up a meta and allow us to play underplayed cards for a while. I'm excited for the next one. Guardians would have been one guess, but they decided to make that change in this last OTA. Maybe we'll get an all-animal buff that makes all the cute critters in the game super-charged.
2) Does Marvel Snap need a true casual mode?
From scanning social media and comment sections, it's clear that rank anxiety, competitiveness, and tilt are real parts of many snappers' experiences. Would a casual mode alleviate some of these negative feelings? Additionally, some complain about anything other than the standard Marvel Snap environment. People generally complain about hot and featured locations, location variance, and events like the Valentine's and Avengers vs. X-Men imbalance patches. Perhaps giving people a place to hide from these stressors would reduce negative feedback. There are even players who think the snapping mechanic is a cause of unnecessary negative stress. Suppose Second Dinner was to introduce a limited sandbox mode where players could choose locations or limit them and modify other parameters. In that case, it might give players a place to experiment freely. It could have a strict queue maximum for finding another player and then match you with a bot if no immediate pairing is available.
It's true that Proving Grounds largely fulfills the role of a casual mode. But even proving grounds has its own meta and snapping etiquette that keeps it from being an ideal place to test a deck.
Months ago, I would have thought introducing a casual mode was a massive waste of resources. However, I've realized recently that while I would probably never play such a mode, the game is a major source of anxiety and even anger for many players, and a casual mode could go some way towards relieving that. If that helps with player retention, that would be worth the resources.
3) Back to Basics - Which cards have the best base art?
While Marvel Snap has many amazing variants, the first art a new player sees is important, too. Let's take a moment to appreciate some of these amazing tone-setters. Here is a gallery of my 10 favorite base arts in the game.
My favorites are probably Dagger and Havok. They both have so much kinetic energy baked into the art! Let me know which base art you like the most in the comments. Are Dagger and Havok at the top of your list? Would your list be similar to mine or different?
Now, let's peek at the official Marvel Snap Discord and see what Glenn and the company are discussing.
4) Q: I just noticed that the vast majority of 6-cost cards are characters many would consider the villains of Marvel (6 heroes, 18 villains and 4 neutral entities)... is this intentional? I know Marvel usually has teams of heroes go against a single villain (e.g. X-Men vs. Magneto), but the percentage seems pretty skewed... does the team just view the villains as having greater power? I'd love to hear more about the design choice!
A: It’s largely a symptom of that dynamic. Cards that feel like they appropriately capture villains tend to merit larger effects and thus Costs to capture them, while heroes should feel fun to squad up.
-Glenn
**This is noticeable in the game. Bigger and “scarier” cards tend to have higher costs and chunkier stats. There's a psychological element that makes this feel like a “flavor” fit (when a card in a game matches its function or in-game role well with the lore around it). However, I'd love to see the development team stray from this more over time. Unlike in a game like Magic, it makes less sense for giant monsters to be in-game stat heaps. I think the villains of the Marvel Universe can be flavor matches based on their impact just as easily. When we get long-awaited cards like Dormammu or Fin Fang Foom, making them giant units with big late-game effects seems easy. But I think it would be as cool if they were very powerful low-cost cards, too. Because of Snap's six-turn format and small deck size, 6-cost cards struggle to be the most impactful cards in the game simply because they are often played alone on the last turn. Only the strongest abilities, like Dr. Doom, Galactus, and Magneto, make the cut, while many 6 drops languish in collections. Playing multiple cards on the last turn often feels far more powerful, which puts pressure on 6 costs to be great. A good example is Ultron. His ability is strong, and his stats are alright, but he would be much more playable at 5 or even 4 energy to be played alongside something. Making more of the iconic villains of Marvel at a lower cost will help give the game more interesting and useful cards all along the energy curve. Something like Zabu's effect is impactful enough to be on a character like Dormammu without making him feel too small.
5) Q: Does the SD balance team believe that Thanos's design (and the stones' design, as an extension of that) is inherently problematic for the game going forward?
The OTA patchnotes today said that SD doesn't think the Mind Stone change "... is likely to fully solve the 'Thanos problem'" but that you're looking for a better solution. In other topics, Glenn has noted that new cards are more likely to end up in Thanos than other archetypes because the archetype is so versatile. And obviously after more or less four months of Thanos as the best or one of the best decks, he's seen multiple nerfs and hasn't gone anywhere.
However, last week's patch notes included this: "Once we see how this change affects Thanos decks, we'll look for the right spot to add back some of the strength we took away in previous balance patches."
The change in tone between the two is really interesting to me, especially since its only been a week (from our perspective).
A: I might not go so far as to say "inherently problematic," but Thanos does provide us with a unique challenge due to his flexibility and strength. When we wrote the notes for Time Stone, we were worried it was a slightly too harsh a blow, as Thanos decks at that time played a lot more expensive cards and losing access to the Energy would hurt that a lot. Demonstrating part of the challenge, Thanos adapted in such a way that the Time Stone change stopped being much of a nerf at all.
-Glenn
**There is something funny about Thanos being so strong that even the development team has trouble reining him in. They expected the Time Stone change to be very impactful, but the Mad Titan brushed that change off like it was nothing. Even the two latest changes to Psylocke and Time Stone only appear to be speed bumps, and those seemed like pretty strong nerfs when they were announced.
I think it's true that Thanos poses a design problem. His ability to adapt and snatch up so many new cards and give them their best homes is his most concerning aspect. If every new card is just a Thanos card it takes excitement away from every new release. Telling Second Dinner to simply design cards that don't synergize with Thanos isn't a solution since it means the team is limiting themselves in the design process. We'd miss out on new and interesting designs. Making Thanos future-proof is a design challenge, and it's a chance for the design team to show their creativity. We should acknowledge that Thanos is an important (and expensive) card for many people while also acknowledging the design challenge he poses. I half-jokingly put out the idea on Twitter that Thanos should be relegated to his own game mode. The fact that so many competitive community tournaments turn into Thanos fears shows that people with skills could flex in such a mode. Whatever the team does with Thanos, I hope it's something interesting and outside the box.
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.