Happy New Year everyone! Welcome back to the last edition of Burning Questions for 2024!
1) What does Marvel Snap's 2025 acquisition rework need to accomplish?
So far we've been given a small Series drop, some smaller acquisition changes set to go live in January, and the promise of a larger series drop in early 2025. Second Dinner has also stated that they are developing a system to address the primary concerns with the acquisition system and that they feel like they've found a design that they are happy with. It will take a few months to develop it, test it, and gather behind-the-scenes feedback, but they claim it is coming, which gives me a lot of hope for the future of the game. So what must this rework achieve?
It needs to make the game cheaper. That may sound simplistic or reductionist, but it's the main thing any new system must do. There is a lot of chatter about the system not giving players enough agency over which cards they get, the inherent variance in the system, and how difficult it can be if you fall behind, but the fundamental issue is that players feel like the game is too expensive. If the new system is just a reshuffling and reskinning of what it is currently, players simply aren't going to accept that. If the idea is to just make acquisition feel better by changing some of the most frustrating aspects of it (the spotlight duplicate slot, new card rotation in the shop, etc) that will not be enough if the cost remains the same overall.
Frustration among the player base has exceeded the point where superficial or minor changes to the acquisition system are going to have much of a positive impact. Whatever happens next, it must include a reduction in the cost of acquiring new cards. If this is something Second Dinner is unwilling to do, player sentiment will continue to drop. If this is something they are unable to do, there are deeper structural issues with the company and the game that threaten the long-term viability of Marvel Snap.
2) What was your favorite new card from 2024?
Kate Bishop has been my favorite new card from this year. I was excited even before Kate’s release since I'm a big fan of the Matt Fraction/David Aja and Kelly Thompson comic runs that focus on her. I'm happy that the card got an ability that allowed her to pay off my excitement. Like Nico Minoru before her, she's interesting because she's dynamic. Each game with her plays out differently and she is flexible enough to be used in a variety of decks.
When she first released, her Acid Arrow was terrorizing the meta as a key part of clog decks. But I've also enjoyed her in Zoo decks, as a solid way to increase consistency in Wiccan decks, and as a spicy way to provide a deck with occasional unpredictable reach thanks to Grapple Arrow. Kate has always been good, but rarely controversial since she hasn't felt overwhelming at any point. I had a lot of fun playing this card and the additional cards it generates this year, and I expect her to remain relevant for quite some time.
3) What was your favorite new variant from 2024?
My favorite variant from this year was one of the first. Released all the way back in January, this Maria Wolf Ghost Rider variant is one among the best in the game. Maria Wolf variants are always solid (her art is just incredible and so unique) but this one is her best. That this was available for free through the conquest shop also meant everyone had a chance to get this sweet variant. Now we just need more reasons to play Ghost Rider in 2025.
4) Q: Reading the update about Tokyo 2099 (thank god) I'm wondering something related - does the team consider Mindscape an Anti-Discard location? It messes with Apoc, Dracula and even Hela (albeit in a different way) pretty hard.
A: Technically yes, but it doesn't really accomplish the goal because it's incredibly disruptive to both players. A good basic example of what we're looking for is something like Wakanda vs. Destroy--the non-Destroy player can largely ignore it.
-Glenn
Author's note:
I'm really happy that Second Dinner decided not to add Tokyo 2099 to the game. It once again shows they're responsive to feedback. I do think there is room for a location that is specifically disruptive to discard, though. Perhaps it could block discard for a single turn or make it so that cards like Swarm, Apocalypse, and Scorn are just discarded without their ability activating. Whatever they come up with needs to be less total than Tokyo 2099 was.
5) Q: The team has made it pretty clear they do not like when one single card has a monopoly on a specific slot in every deck. Silver Sable being nerfed so it wasn't "The 1-cost" and Nocturne being nerfed so she wasn't "The 3-cost" are some examples, though how far does this philosophy stretch when it comes to creating and reworking cards? A lot of people would argue Hydra Bob has certainly been made into "The 1-cost" since his buff, and many would say that Cosmo has filled the role of "The 3-cost" at many points in the game's history. When agent venom was performing well shadow king received a buff despite already being a competitive tech card, which was seemingly a choice to try and make the card *more* universal in application and thus have less competition. When it comes to cards like shadow king, cosmo, shang-chi, or even alioth, does the fact these cards interact directly with the opponent make their generalist utility more acceptable? Or did cards like sable and nocturne truly cross thresholds that others have not met?
A: There’s a fairly significant difference for us in a card being the best at a job vs. being the best card. A major reason for this is deck size—if Nocturne is the best 3-Cost in the game for too many decks, it makes the game less diverse and restricts deckbuilding to 11 cards.
However, the dynamic is different if the card is the best at a specific role, because if a deck isn’t interested in that role then it doesn’t matter as much that one card is the best. Conversely, if two cards are equally good at a role, then the 12-card deck means players are incredibly likely to see one of them, reducing diversity another way.
Take Shang-Chi. He’s the best at what he does, but not every deck wants to use that effect. But if we made a card that was like “4/4 - On Reveal: Return the enemy card here with the most Power to your opponent’s hand” that would warp the metagame significantly around such decks having two effects that punish single high-Power cards.
So essentially, the more specific a card is, the more strength it’s allowed to get—and the less likely we are to deliberately overlap it with another card. Generally useful cards that give you a lot relative to their Cost need to either have some kind of downside or find exactly the right spot.
-Glenn
Author's note:
Glenn makes an interesting point with his hypothetical 4/4 that returns a card to your opponent’s hand. Adding redundancy can sometimes push a card out of decks, but it can also make existing cards and decks far stronger, since it can compound with existing cards to make something problematically consistent. This is part of where the Hellcow rework went wrong. Hellcow made Hela far too consistent since that deck could now miss key discarders and still work. It's also part of why a card like Luke Cage is a bit of a development constraint.
In the early days of Snap it was fine that Cage acted as a total shutdown on affliction because there was so little of it that he needed to be global to have any chance to see play. If he were to be introduced today though, he'd probably be divided up into a few different cards rather than having all of that power on a single card.
For example, you could slice Cage into three cards. One that blocks affliction in one lane, another that has high power and blocks some small amount of affliction globally, and a third that blocks affliction for certain cards (based on cost or some other feature).
That's it for this week. See you next year!