Hello and welcome back to Burning Questions, your weekly look at the hottest topics in Marvel Snap. This week we're talking about Hela (again), insta-retreats, upcoming character albums, and how to quantify fun.
1) Why do people complain about Hela, even though she's not that good?
In the recent patch notes Second Dinner said this about the change to Hela:
“Hela’s seen a resurgence in popularity with Hellcow’s change to Activate and Black Cat’s buff to 10 Power. While her win and cube rates haven’t been out of line, this change has strengthened the deck by making it easier to resurrect more Power with less risk than before, which can feel frustratingly difficult to contest for many decks.”
It's true that the primary issue with Hela isn't just the deck's strength and lack of interactivity, it's the metagame she always brings along with her.
Whenever Hela is consistent enough to be highly played we end up with a triangle of:
- Hela
- Whichever deck can put out the absolute maximum stats very consistently
- The control deck that best messes with Hela
Currently this means move and clog. Last time Hela was popular, Professor X decks took that last role. If clog gets adjusted by the balance team (someday?), War Machine lockdown decks will increase in play rate, or players will find a new deck that beats Hela handily while shutting down other strategies. If move gets adjusted, (which it should) Agatha decks will just slide into that role or some other greedy points deck (Panther/Zola?) will if Agatha's month in the sun is over by then. Hela will always make an unpleasant meta as long as she is consistent and difficult to meaningfully interact with. For the balance team there are two solutions—make her inconsistent again or make it easier to interact with her. I don't believe this change has done either.
Hela changes the way players build decks by creating a sort of “you must be this tall to ride” dynamic. You either have to build a deck designed to beat Hela (see last week's article) or you cut interaction in favor of maximum point output. It leads to a meta where the best decks are unfun, uninteractive, and innovation is stifled. We're currently in a meta that is among the most unfriendly to “good cards” and “mid-range” strategies that we've ever had and I hope action is taken eventually to give us back the various play styles other than combo and point slam—Snap is pretty boring without them.
2) What makes you “insta-retreat?”
There are a few scenarios when my opponent has a board state that just makes me automatically retreat.
The strongest example is when they've played Mr. Negative and Jane Foster. Of course, there are some edge cases when I might choose to stay, but, for the most part, you're better off just cutting your losses and getting out of there. I see way too many people tricking themselves into staying in a Jane + Negative game. Here are a few more times when I immediately move my finger over to the retreat button (of course there are always exceptions, think before you click):
- Opponent has Wong and Mystique and I have no counter. Is it going to be White Tiger? Black Panther? Gambit? Who cares, hit the bricks!
- They have played Storm and War Machine and I don't have a way to play into locked lanes. Skedaddle!
- My board is entirely clogged before the final turn. You definitely have to consider if you're far enough ahead that you can't be caught, but don't trick yourself into thinking your opponent doesn't have Shang or Cannonball or whatever they need. Their deck is built for this! Run!
- Opponent has priority and a giant Venom or Knull alone in a lane. They're going to play Zola! Unless you have the perfect counter, get outta there!
- Opponent played Moon Girl on 5, skipped 6, and now it's turn 7. They probably have 40+ power to drop, just leave!
- You're staring down a lane with Cosmo, Onslaught, and Iron Man. Don't lose to the giant Tribunal number! Scram!
- Opponent has thrown priority and just bounced 4+ 1-Cost cards to their hand with Beast (or Falcon and Black Swan), including a huge Rocket Racoon, Silver Sable, or Human Torch. They are going to murder you on turn 6. Get out!
- Your opponent has priority, but if your combo just goes off you can't lose! They Snap. Look, I know you want to play your Surfer or Odin or whatever, but they just saved you cubes by telling you they have Alioth or Cosmo. Take the hint and leave. Could they be bluffing? They're never bluffing.
3) What characters are you most anticipating a character album for?
They tend to give us albums for characters that are thematically tied to the season.
You can check out the upcoming albums but going to the Schedule section of SnapDotFan and clicking the albums tab.
Upcoming albums
We just got Miles, Carnage and Venom albums are coming next month, and in the datamines we've already seen that a Thor album is coming in November. Whether or not they tie in directly thematically, here are the characters I want an album for the most.
1) Storm
Come on, everybody has a ton of Storm variants! She may have the highest number of amazing variants of any character in the game. So many people would be able to fill this album on day one.
2) Captain Marvel
Captain Marvel has always been a bit of a pet card for me as well as a character I love. She's got a ton of great variants already and I'd love to show them off and get an alternative emote and some Carol reacts.
3) Jeff, the Baby Land Shark
It's everyone's favorite Kelly Thompson creation, Jeff. Whatever happened to the Juicy Jeff emote that we thought would be used for the Jeff League? This would be a perfect way to give it out.
Now let's hop over to the official Marvel Snap discord and check out some questions and answers from the dev team.
4) Q: While discussing Hela in one of the posts last week, someone said an anecdote that stuck to me.
A hypothetical card with "On Reveal: you have 50% of win the game" will always have an acceptable win rate, but is it fun to play against?
That came back to me as Hela was barely changed in this OTA with the notes stating her win rate isn't out of the line, but the impression I get from the frustration manifested in the community isn't that she wins a lot, but when she wins it doesn't feel fair or even predictable. You can't guess where her power will be concentrated so it feels as that hypothetical card, it's a coin flip.
So my question is: if the cube and win rates don't tell the whole story of a card, is there any way you guys measure the "fun"? Is it just monitoring social media and content creators, or is there a collection of data you could extract such a metric?
A: There are many ways, both data-driven and anecdotal. One data-based way we measure fun is by looking at what players choose to do when winrate or cuberate aren't their primary motivators.
For example, if a card's performance is bad--say it's a 50% deck or worse--but tons of players opt to play it, that's an indicator that those players enjoy the experience. They could win more with something else, but they like doing it that way.
Clearly, Hela is such a deck for some people. I understand that there are other people that dislike playing against Hela--they may even outnumber the people who enjoy playing with her. But as a CCG, our goal is to support as wide a range of appealing gameplay as we can for of our players.
Author's note:
I fundamentally disagree with Glenn's data analysis here. People who play Hela despite her performance could be doing it for any number of reasons other than because they enjoy it. It could be because it's easy. Or because it's less stressful than other decks. Or because it feels deterministic on the final turn and a lot of players gravitate towards that dynamic. It could be because they perceive it to be better than it is. The notion that the data indicates people enjoy it is projecting something onto the data that isn't there. It is very similar to the issue with hot locations. Their data may show an uptick in engagement on those days and they might falsely interpret that as meaning people enjoy them. In fact, it could just as easily be because some people feel like it's easier to climb while grinding hard on hot location days, so they play longer and with fewer breaks to try to take advantage. The same players may report lower enjoyment on those days, despite higher engagement. Higher engagement data does not directly equal enjoyment and understanding that is important for long-term viability rather than short-term engagement alone.
5) Q: Within Marvel Snap, we often see quick changes to overplayed or overperforming cards, but why don't we see the same urgency or adjustment speed given to underplayed or underperforming cards? For example, Adam Warlock and Kang are in desperate need of reworks, as they are cards that rarely, if ever, see play.
A: The purpose of our balance changes is explicitly to maintain a healthy and interesting metagame. The cards exerting negative pressures on a metagame *must* be changed to accomplish that goal, while the cards exerting no pressure *can* be changed to support that goal.
We always endeavor to do a mix of both, and we accept that some players will prefer different candidates for buffs or reworks than others.
Some cards, such as Kang and Adam Warlock, have proven themselves to be complex in other ways that delay the speed with which we're happy to make a change, because we prefer to avoid unnecessarily adjusting cards multiple times as a general rule. So if a card's "issues" are complicated, it will take us longer to resolve them.
Author's note:
Personally (and I know it's not universal), I think OTAs are most fun when they really shake up the game. It nicely supplements the slow drip of one card per week to occasionally feel like we have a new toy to play around with. While the changes in the last patch were pretty major and shook up the metagame, it feels like OTAs recently have been playing it a little safer. I'd love to see some more big swings in future OTAs.
That's it for this week! See you next time on Burning Questions!