Welcome back to Burning Questions, your weekly exploration of hot Marvel Snap topics. This week we're talking about feelings of frustration, the return of the Diner, and cranberry sauce!
1) Why does Marvel Snap feel more frustrating?
I've been seeing an increasing amount of people frustrated with the decks they're playing against. The villains of the moment are Arishem and the new disruptive builds based on Fenris Wolf that mill and deplete your hand. So, what is going on? Has Second Dinner just printed a lot of unfun cards? Is the playerbase addicted to toxic interactions? I don't think these explanations are accurate; I think the root cause is one that has plagued collectible card games since their inception: power creep.
Once upon a time, there was a popular side-quest among players: put together a random pile of cards, either by randomly selecting them (by draft or other means) or by choosing all the cards you need boosters for, and take that deck and see if you can actually win with it. Players would do this for fun. Content creators used to make whole videos this way. You certainly wouldn't be able to climb to the top of the global leaderboard with decks like this, but you could occasionally stay cube neutral or win a few conquest tickets if things broke just right. I see a lot less of this these days. Most of the decks you will face are strong enough that you almost can't win with these types of decks anymore. I want to be clear I'm not talking about piles of “good cards” decks—those are actually experiencing a bit of a renaissance thanks to powerful new cards like Anti-Venom and Malelith.
You must be this tall to ride
When did this all start? Probably around the time of the introduction of Loki, a time I've seen a lot of players pinpoint as a turning point in the game. I think when players said they didn't like losing to Loki “because it's not fun to lose to your own cards played back at you,” they were misidentifying the cause of their frustration. They just didn't like losing. Loki wasn't inherently frustrating, he was too strong. I think this is something that Second Dinner struggled with as well. After some initial changes to Loki, they weren't seeing data that showed the deck was too powerful—in fact, that deck's statistics were quite middling. But I think what Loki did was help create a scenario where bad/meme decks went from having a small chance to win to having practically no chance to win.
Now, on the post-infinite ladder, you need a good, synergistic, or otherwise powerful deck or you're going to spew Snap Points. Gone are the days of playing a couple of terrible “pet cards” just because you like them and gone are the days of silly drafted decks. This shift may have occurred around the time of Loki's release, but it's true under the rule of Arishem as well. Players say they don't like playing against Arishem because it feels especially bad since it's hard to predict, but players just don't like losing to Arishem because it's too strong.
Again, recent data has shown Arishem isn't dominant. It simply feasts on bad decks and can compete with proper decks. It creates a line above which you need to reside to be able to win anything. Decks like Loki, Arishem, and all of the meta-dominant new decks in between, like Agent Venom, have meant traditional decks like Discard have needed to be enhanced, either with balance changes or new cards, to compete. Just look at how much more powerful traditional discard decks are now than they used to be. Decks are just so darn powerful now.
So what is the solution?
I'm not sure there is a solution. I'm not sure this is even a problem. Power creep is an inevitable and unavoidable part of collectible card games. Of course, Marvel Snap’s flawed acquisition system, as always, exacerbates things, but the problem is that all of the players from the beta or those who started around global launch were accustomed to an environment where “for fun,” “screw around” decks could win occasionally. We've crossed a line where that's no longer really true. It's also not like this is something other card games have. If you just queue up a game on MTG Arena based on cards with cool art or enter a game on Pokémon TCG Live with a deck built around your childhood favorite Pokémon, you're more likely to lose every single game than to win one. Pokémon Pocket isn't going to be a savoir here either. In the opening weeks of the game you could certainly win some games with your cute little Kabutops deck or Gengar deck, but that window is rapidly closing as more players open the most powerful cards and get the hang of the game’s sequencing.
It's hard to say the solution is a player mindset adjustment—that just seems like a bad business approach. Perhaps new game modes that can capture the casual feeling of early Marvel Snap is the best avenue to address this. Certainly solving player anxiety around card acquisition would help dissipate some of the negative sentiment around losing to powerful, new cards.
2) How will the Deadpool's Diner metagame differ from Ladder or Conquest?
The short answer is, it really won't. Unlike High Voltage, the Diner isn't different enough to create its own distinct metagame. While High Voltage may have started to feel a bit solved by the end of its week, it was nice to have a game mode that felt truly different.
As for the Diner, decks that have clear Snap conditions and can tell by turn 3 if they're “doing their thing” are going to be solid choices. This means a variety of decks should be good choices for Deadpool's Diner. Here are a few:
Phoenix Force
Phoenix Force can generally tell if things are going to work out by turn 3 and when this deck gets all of its pieces it usually wins. Phoenix Force is probably the deck that benefits most from the way the Diner works.
Alioth Door Slam
Wiccan Prio
If you race hard for priority and have Alioth in hand you'll be favored to win. This is the type of deck that has a bit more Bub equity than Cube equity.
Bounce Move
With bounce move decks you generally know how things are going by turn 3. That's not to say you'll always win if things are going well, but you'll often know if your early draws are going to prevent you from winning and you can happily cut and run to the next match.
This isn't meant to be an exhaustive list of Diner decks. There are others like Tribunal, Discard, Negative, and Deadpool Destroy that have a good idea of how things are working by turn 3, but really, any deck that is doing well on ladder is going to be good in the Diner as well. Just play what you're comfortable with and be deliberate with your retreating and you'll get to the reward tier you're aiming for. Don't play at the higher tables until you can afford a loss; try to get to 2 or 3 times the buy-in for each table before playing there to prevent going bust too quickly.
3) What would you order from Deadpool's Diner?
The Diner plates this time are a mix of traditional Thanksgiving dishes with some oddities mixed in. I'm one of those people who grew up on the gelatinous “cranberry sauce” that retains the shape of its container, but I recently started making cranberry sauce from scratch and it's both surprisingly easy and tasty.
However, there is really only one choice for the best Diner item—this epic looking beer (Hefeweissen? Märzen?) with Bratwurst sticking out of it.
Now let's jump over to the official Marvel Snap discord and snag a couple of interesting questions and answers from the Ask-The-Team channel.
4) Q: Modern B Mo Have you / would you consider Activate cards that also cost a resource to activate, or is the plan to keep it free?
Something like Activate (costs 1 energy) or Activate (Must Discard 1 Card)
A: We did, but we found the design space on these fairly small.
-Glenn
Author's note:
While the design space is clearly limited on this—you’d need to make both the card and the activate cost quite cheap—I would personally love to see this explored eventually. By making the activate cost energy you can make far more powerful activate abilities and this would also give such cards an additional balance knob. What about a 1-Cost card with an extremely powerful 6-Cost Activate? The drawback would be that you basically don't play a card on the final turn and it is telegraphed, but I think a suitably powerful effect could be dreamed up.
5) Q: Judging by a response to a previous question, the team is overall happy with the performance Deadpool's Diner. Given that player sentiment/satisfaction towards the mode has been predominantly negative, how does that feedback factor in? If players are "engaged" but hating the experience, is that considered a positive?
A: We'd push back on your assumption that sentiment around DD has been predominately negative. There are many different ways we can measure sentiment and satisfaction. Community hubs like here, Reddit, and social media platforms are one. Surveys are another. Data is another way you mentioned.
Players may prefer one game mode over another and that's totally okay. Our goal is to make sure there's something for everyone.
That said, if the sentiment and data changes, we'll be listening!
Author's note:
This is a particularly illustrative example of how information bubbles function. For the original poster to claim that it is a “given that player sentiment/satisfaction towards the mode has been predominantly negative,” strikes me as a statement made by someone who is only seeing views that match their own from peers or social media. I think that sentiment around the previous Diner was widely negative in the first few days and rightfully so. Being able to go bust in your first game was a terrible misstep and there were quite a few issues with the onboarding and messaging surrounding the mode. However, as the mode wore on I saw more and more positive vibes, particularly among more casual players that don't enjoy the post-infinite ladder. In the new Diner, there are a few quality of life changes to prevent the painful first impression that the previous Diner suffered from. I've advocated in the past for more drastic changes to Deadpool's Diner and I get that player engagement is a poor metric for player enjoyment (see hot locations), but my impression is that most people like having the Diner around as an alternative in addition to liking the free card.
That's it for this week! See you next time for more Burning Questions! Come find me on Twitter and Bluesky (scosco) for decks and comic related posts! Let me know your thoughts on the Diner in the comments below!