Hello and welcome back to Burning Questions, a weekly exploration of what's hot in the Marvel Snap community. This week new limited time mode Grand Arena kicked off and the movie that this season's theme revolves around released in theaters!
1) What are your first impressions of Grand Arena?
Grand Arena has been fun and diverse so far, but it very much feels like a meta in flux as people learn the mode and start to branch out beyond the pre-constructed decks. In my early games it felt easy to win against those who were sticking to the pre-cons with Sera Tech, but the situation developed quickly. Players realized the needed to have Cosmo in the Mr. Fantastic Ongoing deck and we moved into a more inbred Ongoing meta. Cards like Super Skrull and Echo only have utility in extremely Ongoing tilted metas and they've both been good for me.
The destroy deck has a high ceiling and is probably the easiest pre-con to play, so that deck is rampant, despite being pretty predictable and easy to counter. I do think that the advanced energy curve and what kinds of combos it enables hasn't been fully explored yet. A ticket system doesn't encourage experimentation and discovery of off-the-beaten-path strategies, but I think that the event pass, which greatly alleviates that tension, will help the meta in this mode continue to evolve. I'm curious how the meta is going to change from here and I'm hoping people find clever ways to use the extra energy. Be sure to check out my preview guide to Grand Arena and let me know what's working for you in the new mode in the comments!
2) Should you buy the Grand Arena Premium event pass?
The Premium Pass provides an extra 200 Tokens, 200 Credits, an Emote, some boosters, and Glory. At a cost of 1200, it's not such a good deal that it immediately pays for itself, but it is worth it if any of the following describes you:
- You don't love the new mode and you want to be able to get both cards with minimal play time. The pass provides so much acceleration (probably unintentional to some degree) that you should be able to get the 4000 Glory required to get both cards pretty easily if you buy the pass. The cards can be earned without the pass by buying a few ticket refreshes from the rotating shops and playing a lot though, so this is more of a shortcut than a necessity.
- You love the mode and want to have maximum ability to experiment and tinker with all of the champions. There are some pretty obvious, straightforward strategies in Grand Arena, but if you're interested in really trying some outside-the-box ideas to fully explore the potential of the mode, the extra tickets and leeway you'll get by grabbing the pass will make up for any losses you sustain in the trial and error process.
- You love the contents of the shop beyond the new cards. If you really like the cosmetics available in the Grand Arena shop, the additional 1800 Glory that the premium pass provides will help you get more of them. If you really dig this season's theme, the boosters for the new characters are a nice little bonus.
The Premium Event Pass is not a necessity and if none of the situations above apply to you, then you should skip it.
3) Have you watched Fantastic Four: First Steps yet?
Yes! For the first time in over a decade I actually went to see a movie on opening night. I don't want to give any spoilers, so I'll just say I enjoyed it and this movie demonstrates more understanding of what makes Fantastic Four great than any of the previous movies did and that we really need to get some cool variants for the Fantasticar. The film felt like a lovely tribute to Jack Kirby.
Now let's peek in on the ask-the-team channel on the official Marvel Snap discord!
4) Q: Why is a tie equal to a loss? I really want to understand your point of view. You cannot really tie on purpose in this game, so a tie punishing both the players with a ticket lost creates a really "feels bad" moment. Especially with the amount of rng in the game. Why do you treat a tie equally to a loss? Why can't both the players get losers xp but a ticket back also?
A: The goal of every game of Snap needs to center around winning and being rewarded for those wins.
Ties are not wins, which is the main goal. We want to avoid a scenario where players are incentivized to try and tie, therefore returning Tickets to both players. While it may be seen as an edge case, players have proven to be resourceful when it comes to finding the most efficient path of progression. This also can cause game quality to go down or even animosity between those trying to win and those trying to tie.
Ties are rare to begin with, so this shouldn't be a major hindrance to any player's experience of Grand Arena.
-Griffin
Games should line rewards up with incentives. If tying receives equal rewards, that’s a misalignment because both players will prefer to tie over winning. Will all players try to coordinate in this way? No, of course not. But we want that number to be zero.
-Glenn
Author's note:
Griffin and Glenn covered the compelling design reasons for this system above including abuse prevention. Beyond that, however, I don't want a tie to be like a win. A tie is not a win and wins should feel distinct and be rewarded that way.
5) Q: Hi team! Very grateful for the way you all engage with the questions in this forum. This one is specifically for Glenn, though I'd be happy to hear from others as well!
A while back, when discussing Fantasticar (and, to a lesser extent, Kid Omega), you mentioned that the team would be open to hearing ideas for other avenues of monetization that were not cosmetics.
I am wondering, if this is something you're able to discuss at all, why SD/Marvel Snap is not interested in further exploring the cosmetic monetization space. Looking at a game like Fortnight, which has made at least $3.8 billion dollars in a single year entirely on cosmetic microtransactions, it appears to be a model that works.
Is there something different about a game like Marvel Snap vs. Fortnight, where a different monetization model is necessary? I know I've seen suggestions for changes that can be made to the variant shop, other desired cosmetics (like game boards), that would potentially increase cosmetic spend. I know personally, for example, I would spend more if the variants that showed up in my Collector's Vault corresponded to the cards I play more often.
Truly just curious to hear your perspective! I fully understand if this isn't something you're able to comment on, and appreciate any time you spend on this. Thanks for all you do!
A: This is not exactly my purview, but I can add some context.
I think Snap has explored cosmetics fairly deeply--I'm not sure if any digital CCG has been able to use them as effectively as we have. We do still believe there is room to innovate further and bring players more rad stuff (and agency in selecting their rad stuff).
But the value of cosmetics to players can vary widely by platform, genre, target audience, IP, scale, style, etc. which in turn impacts their use as monetization. Certainly games like Fortnite and League have been very successful, while there are plenty of games that have failed.
If I thought Snap could work relying only or even primarily on cosmetics, I'd be beating that drum louder than anyone else, but the data indicates otherwise.
-Glenn
Author's note:
The player numbers on games like Fortnite and Leagues or Legends are much higher than Marvel Snap or any card battler could ever hope to achieve. The only games that are able to leverage cosmetics enough to be their sole monetization are games with truly enormous user numbers. There are quite a few examples of games failing to be financially viable by focusing their monetization too much on cosmetics alone. There are a lot of failed card games out there and even more examples of failed attempts at something like Fortnite. Comparing Snap to the biggest games in the world isn't a logical way to analyze the issue. Moreover, implying that Snap "is not interested in further exploring the cosmetic monetization space" is disingenuous. Snap hyper-monetizes cosmetics. Snap has monetized cosmetics more deeply and successfully than any other card game and has made cosmetics almost a game on their own. I agree that Snap is too expensive. Lack of monetizing cosmetics is not the reason.
That's all for this week! Come find me on social media for more Snap and comics talk!