Hello and welcome back to Burning Questions, where we look at the hottest topics in Marvel Snap each week. This week, we got a monetization-forward patch and High Voltage kicked off again!
1) What kind of catch-up mechanics does Snap need?
Aside from a variety of controversial bundles the latest patch contained some pretty solid catch up improvements for new and low collection level players. The addition of a rotating series 3 cards in the shop will help new players get into the archetypes they want much faster and new Snap Pack bundles at CL 214, 486, and 1000 are crucial catch up for new players.
The X-Men and Destroy themed bundles may help some players who happen to be missing specific cards, but without any kind of discount these are primarily targeted at players who are happy to spend to get caught up. But what the game really needs is better catch-up mechanics for lapsed players. I'm talking about former whales or medium spenders who took a break and come back feeling hopelessly behind. We've been told this is being addressed, but what form should catch-up mechanics for ex-highly-engaged players take?
Here are a few ideas:
Purchasable, meta-relevant card packages
You can buy individual cards, but there's currently no way to buy Cannonball and Mercury or Victoria Hand and Misery for example. Themed bundles are one partial solution to this, but an additional way to buy popular groupings of cards would help returning players get back into the competitive deck they want to play more quickly.
Returning player login bonuses
These have already been introduced, but they should be frequent and generous! The only way a returning bonus is going to convince a player to stick around is if it includes new cards. The final level on these could be a Snap Pack or unowned Series 4 or 5 card by some other method of delivery.
Past Season Pass themed bundles
One of the main card types preventing former highly-engaged players from jumping back in is missing Season Pass cards, which is especially problematic given how strong Season Pass cards tend to be. I'm not saying they should just be able to get past Pass cards for $10, but perhaps focused themed bundles that contain all of the past Season Pass cards that cost something less than 5000 Tokens would be a good way for players to actually catch up in the ways they need to.
Free Series 5 card selection
Simply put, no returning player catch-up mechanic will fulfill its design goal without giving out free Series 5 cards in addition to cheap ones. There are a variety of ways this could be implemented that balance helping returning players with Snap's need to sell cards. What would work best is to give a free choice of any specific Series 5 card to any player who hasn't logged in for at least 60 days. It could also come in the form of multiple Series 5 Snap Packs.
Series Drops
When a player leaves and comes back to a bunch of old cards in their Snap Pack pools that they need to wade through to get the newest cards they actually want to play, that is discouraging. Part of the function of a mechanic like Series drops is to ease returning to the game! They should do additional series drops for a variety of other reasons, but they would alleviate one of the primary problems returning players face quite effectively.
2) Which other 2-Cost cards could be given 4 Power?
The last two OTAs buffed 2-Cost cards beyond the “vanilla” threshold of Shocker at 2/3. This was long overdue following the release of powerful 2 drops like Iron Patriot, Surge, and Merlin among others. A 2-Cost card needs to be doing something pretty special to make its way into a deck at 3 Power.
Slowly adjusting the relative power of different places along Snap's Energy curve is slow work. It's not limited to 2-Costs either, 5-Cost cards need a similar renovation project. So far, Doctor Strange, Domino, and Invisible Woman have been given a much-needed fourth point. What other 2-Cost cards could use some help?
One of my favorite pet cards since the beginning of Snap, Quake has never been especially competitive in the 2-Cost slot. Whether or not an extra point of Power would make Quake “meta” or not is irrelevant—it would introduce so many more people to the joy of Quake scams. This card especially needs to have enough built-in Power because it's competing with other location manipulation, like Legion, in addition to other 2-Cost cards.
Once upon a time, Jeff was the premiere 2-Cost card. While a lot of his dropoff has to do with meta changes and nerfs to cards like Professor X, much of his initial appeal was because the 2-Cost slot was so generally weak. That's been corrected and now Jeff deserves another point because he's a joyful character that should have a role in this game.
One of the complaints if Scarlet Witch went to 2/4 would be the loss of a location changer from Cerebro 3 decks, but Wanda isn't even seeing much play there these days. The devs are clearly wary of making location change too strong, since they've stated in the past that returning Scarlet Witch to her stats from way back in the Beta, 1/2, would be way too strong. Given her random nature, Wanda could go to 2/4 without causing any real problems. Plus, C4 can use all the help it can get; it's worse than C2 and C3 and even lags far behind C5 and C6!
No matter how many buff payoffs they give us, no matter how many perfect synergy pieces they give Okoye, she never manages to rise above her status as the first warning sign you're facing a bot. Give her more power please.
While I'm not actually convinced Cobra is as bad as most other people I've seen talk about him, he's definitely not great. Giving him an extra point puts him in prime position to be pulled out occasionally as a Hot Location hero or meta-dependent tech card (hello Horde?!).
The buff I actually want for Colossus is to 5/10, but I'd take an extra Power point as a consolation. More power makes him more appealing for Namora and Spectrum decks.
This is the curveball. Pixie is only a 2/2 and her stats aren't terrible. However, the devs are clearly reluctant to introduce my preferred Pixie change (1/1, it would be fun!). A 2/4 Pixie would be a blast and a meta force.
3) What should I play in High Voltage?
It depends on your goals and preferences. Here are a variety of decks that should appeal to a range of Snappers.
HV AllGoing
HV Killgoing
HV Ultron Surprise
HV CB
HV V
HV Fireworks
HV Fenris Package
HV Cageless
HV Krakens
4) Question: Hey Team.
- Purchased Fallen One with Snap Packs
- Realized there's an update a bit late...
- Updated the Game
- Fallen One Bundle not showing up
- Deleted and Reinstalled the Game
- Fallen One Bundle not showing up
- Played a few games with Fallen One
- Fallen One Bundle not showing up
Can I please just get the bundle to show up? Seems there's a bug if we didn't update before buying snap packs…
Answer:
There’s indeed a chance that those who acquired Fallen One before updating did not trigger the conditional bundle. I’ve let the team know that some are having this issue.
-Griffin
Author's note:
Yeah, the variable-priced bundles are a total miss, both from a design standpoint and a technical one. They should remove it or differentiate them with Gold, PMVs, or Credits like other “For You” bundles.
5) Question: Has Snap implemented any sort of EOMM?
Answer:
Our matchmaking is certainly optimized for our engagement goals, but we don't use what is conventionally labeled as EOMM. Since not everyone knows the specifics, I'll elaborate on both.
EOMM is a generic label, but it's most often used to refer to a system that manipulates aspects of the player experience like win streaks, loss streaks, blowout wins, close losses, etc. The purpose is to create an "ideal distribution" for the game and improve player retention. We don't use that kind of system.
Our matchmaking primarily prioritizes MMR (skill) and CL (collection size) in order to find the fairest match each time, which we define as a game in which both players are approximately equally likely to win. That's what we think makes Snap more fun--playing individual games you can win or lose based on your own choices. If a player has high MMR relative to most players with similar CLs, the system might compensate by widening the band to allow for higher CL pairings, and vice-versa.
And no--at no point does either player's deck enter the equation.
The ideal "vision" for our system is that two players can have very different skill levels, but find Snap an equally challenging gameplay experience that will reward them for improving. Our goal is for that kind of experience to create healthy retention because it's simply more fun.
Author's note:
I appreciate this thorough and interesting answer from Glenn. For those keeping track:
- Matchmaking mostly takes into account Matchmaking Rating (MMR) and CL
- Deck choice has NO impact on matchmaking
- Your CL matchmaking band can widen if you have very high (or very low) MMR
- Matchmaking doesn't take into account loss streaks, cube differential, etc. Though I should note here that these almost certainly influence bot encounter rates, just not matchmaking level.
That's it for this week! Come join me on Bluesky (@scosco) where I'll be giving out PAX Borders this week to help celebrate High Voltage!