Hello and welcome back to Burning Questions, your weekly romp through Marvel Snap's hottest topics. This week, we got a banger OTA, a late seasonal video, and Pre-Con Grand Arena is kicking off! Let's dive in!
1) Is Human Torch dead?
Johnny Storm is alive. Human Torch was out of control to such a degree that, despite his quite substantial nerf, he's still a solid build-around. What has changed is that he's worse as an incidental move card, and it's actually even more important to move him a bunch of times. With Araña and Sparky providing extra power, I still think Torch can scale high enough to see plenty of play.
Doubling in Marvel Snap always seems to find a way to be relevant. Torch may need to be changed to +6 rather than double for the long-term health of the move archetype. What this change does, though, is open the door for other movers. Here is a comparison of Torch, Vulture, Spider-Punk, and Dagger (who is trickier to approximate).
As you can see, the other scalers really do keep pace with Torch now through three moves. Start with Araña, however, and you're back to old Torch's scaling. The play patterns have changed—using Araña and Sparky as soon as possible is more critical—but Torch can still light it up.
2) Why was the seasonal video so late?
There were multiple questions about the seasonal video in the official Discord. Because of the holiday weekend in the US, the video wasn't released until Tuesday morning, just before the new season. So, how does something like this happen?
Clearly, the video isn't being shot right up till the end, but they do mention editing. Wolf-eared listeners probably detected the replaced audio line in the video. The line "with brand-new abilities" in the section on Team Clash was clearly edited in later. Who knows what the line had been or why it was edited? It could have been due to a technical issue with the initial recording, some late change in the development process for the mode, or a change dictated from outside. They also mention "getting approvals." From whom?
Some may be surprised at how many outside stakeholders are involved in a game that involves intellectual property. The videos certainly need to be cleared internally, but also most likely from legal teams and Marvel itself. Marvel would have approval power over everything added to the game, from character names and nameplates to seasonal content to every single variant added to the game.
While Second Dinner should stop letting holidays disrupt their schedule so much and plan around them better, it's almost certain that a delay like this is due to the compounding disruptions of the holiday on multiple organizations trying to work together, rather than on Second Dinner alone.
3) What's a variant you've passed on and regretted?
Well, in light of recent changes, it's definitely this ridiculously awesome Spider-Man Noir.
I've also always coveted the following trio of variants whenever I see them on an opponent's board. I almost can't believe I passed on an Inkpulp Panther, a Justyna Enchantress, and a Jacinto Juggernaut, since they're all cards that see play and artists whose work I appreciate.
Now, let's hop over to the official Marvel Snap Discord and grab some exchanges from the ask-the-team channel!
4) Question:
This edition of Grand Arena has 8 entirely new champions, but with the restriction that players are only able to use the precon decks. As someone who would prefer playing customs, will we get the opportunity in the future to deckbuild with *every* champion here next time?
Answer:
While I can't promise every Grand Arena run will feature deckbuilding--we're experimenting with all prebuilts for a reason--we do expect to continue offering Grand Arena with deckbuilding even if we sometimes offer it without. The champions aren't restricted to one or the other, so future Grand Arena runs will continue to rotate through all our champions, new and old, with their offerings.
-Glenn
Scosco's Note:
If you haven't heard, the latest run of Grand Arena (which starts today!) is going to be limited to pre-constructed decks only. Read all about it here! While it's not an experiment that appeals much to me, as someone who gets their greatest joy in this game from deck-building, it is one that I think is worthwhile. I saw quite a few people request this on previous runs, and it's far less technically complicated than separate pre-con and constructed queues. It's hard to envision separate queues working out very well, even if it were easy to program.
The key to any experiment like this is to make sure you have enough game stuff to do that appeals to different types of players, and with Team Clash coming up later in the month, full of "new" cards and half-deck restrictions, I'll still get to scratch the theory-crafting itch (keep an eye out!).
5) Question:
Weapon X Wolverine is now a separate card from classic Wolverine. However, there is a variant for the original Wolverine that depicts Weapon X Wolverine. This creates a legibility problem for the game, where it can sometimes be hard for players to tell what the card is that is on the board and what it is going to do.
This has occurred across other cards as well of cards: Spider-Man has both Symbiote suit and Scarlet Spider variants, and both of those are now separate cards. Deadpool has a Headpool variant, which can be especially confusing since both of those cards usually go in the same deck.
And this is likely to be an issue for future cards; Sasquatch variants depict both the Heather McDaniel and Walter Langkowski versions of the character, and Robbie Reyes is a variant for Ghost Rider.
Is this an issue the team has plans to address?
Answer:
Given how dramatically different the art on cards can be, it's already often a surer bet to rely on the logo. And we've seen this to be the case in general--we get very few reports of players confusing multiple variants, with Headpool Deadpool outnumbering all of the rest combined, in my experience.
For now, we're planning to address this issue by 1) being more diligent in our future variant selection for characters/mantles we'd like to repeat, and 2) using logos with significant enough differentiation from similarly-named cards.
I'm personally pretty reluctant to pursue the more "radical" fixes we see suggested from time to time, such as "relocating" specific variants to more appropriate cards. I'd really only want to even consider that if recognizing variations was proving to be a very real problem for most players, which hasn't been the case so far.
-Glenn
Scosco's Note:
This isn't something that bothers me a lot, but the game will inevitably go in unexpected directions as it ages, and I find the different nameplates to be sufficient differentiation. I've confused a card or two in my time, but it's not even usually for this reason, and it's generally when I'm not super focused on my match anyway.
That's it for this week! Let me know which variants you regret passing on in the comments! Come find me on social media!