Welcome back to Glenn Jones's diary. Let's look at the developer answers from the official Marvel Snap discord. This week, there are questions about card changes and the design process.
Q: Why this change for Kingpin?
A: Because we want to have a solid line in the sand for unrevealed cards being largely immune to effects. The more often we cross it, the harder the line is to see and the less special moments when we cross it for good reason become.
In this case, we also wanted to buff Kingpin. Destroying a card has to be costed very specifically, which is why the previous design was weak in the first place. We think this design is more fun, more playable, and less confusing.
-Glenn
Q: Hey!
With some cards needing nerfs or buffs (specifically nerfs), has it ever crossed the teams mind to implement a type of “refund” system? I’m not speaking money, as that’d be tedious and costly, but rather in game refunds of credits or boosters.
I’ve seen in similar Digital Card-games such a system be in place (e.g,. Hearthstone) but I was curious why the team has not gone that path and what’s been the motivations behind it.
A: Our balance patches fulfill a role more similar to content releases in other card games. We're using buffs and nerfs to constantly to stimulate the metagame and create fresh environments, which means we want players to expect cards to change fairly often. Philosophically, we've likened it more to the balance process used by MOBAs or autobattlers.
-Glenn
**Opinion does seem to be shifting on this, but I still believe the no refund policy is a necessity. Offering refunds for nerfs would undermine the system. The problem isn't a lack of refunds, it's that cards are too expensive in the first place.
Q: Has the team considered a 7+ cost card with no discount mechanic?
A: We have. I expect we will eventually make more than one, even.
-Glenn
**Multiple!? Intriguing. Which characters would make for a good 7+ cost cards? The Beyonder or some Celestials?
Q: Ever since the introduction of spotlight caches and the change in collector reserves, many people have been hoarding their reserves expecting for a buff to them. Most of them have a problem with the gold tickets that it contains which kind of forces them to play more conquest (or they get converted into unfair amount of boosters at the end of the season). So, is this a concern for the team that people are hoarding reserves instead of opening for rewards since months? Is this anything that they are looking into? There was nothing about it in the roadmap as well. I am asking this so that everyone who still have their hopes high don't get disappointed if even after months of hoarding there are still no changes.
A: Our stance on reserve hoarding has not changed. We hear the feedback that folks want additional value out of reserves. Based off our models and data, the game economy cannot currently support higher rewards out of reserves. As a result, we have no plans to change collectors reserves at this time. If we did make a major change at some point in the future, we would most likely do it in a way that auto opens hoarded reserves out of fairness. If this happened, our goal would be to make sure folks who are playing and opening reserves to have the most fun out of their time playing Snap do not feel punished.
-Stephen
Q: What is the purpose of introducing an extra card each month?
A: The spotlight cache system dishes out a ton of cards. Much more than we previously gave out in the old system. A large and increasing over time number of players are becoming collection complete or the equivalent of it by owning all the cards they care about which is awesome! However, it means that those players start to stockpile tokens and keys to a point where both become an unexciting reward to receive.
The extra card has two main purposes. To make that first week of the season more exciting with two new cards to impact the meta and to create another reason to consider using the increasing amount of keys and tokens that are being stockpiled after someone hits that collection complete zone.
-Stephen
**Introducing extra cards is a good thing. I am happy to skip an occasional mediocre card, especially if there are more cards per month.
Q: Has the team ever considered publishing a document that details the various layers in marvel snap, like exists for MTG? I know that with a rules enforcement engine it’s not strictly needed, but it could be a helpful resource for understanding some of the more esoteric interactions in the game (e.g. how you can enchantress a cosmo that is moving.)
A: If I had unlimited time, I'd be happy to do it. But the audience for that document is very small relative to the effort required to create it. For example, it would certainly take me personally longer than publishing a single card from scratch, which would be content for all players.
-Glenn
**It would be a lot of work, but something like a rules compendium would be awesome.
Q: I have encountered a lot of afk players on conquest, I lost my patience to wait to end the turn due that "player" which is Agatha doesn´t click "end turn". There´s a possibility to make her auto-click it?
A: We will be reducing Agatha's turn timer in a future patch.
-Glenn
**Thank goodness
Q: What's more time consuming when making a card? The functionality or the VFX? Or is it case by case?
A: The functionality. We develop VFX based on finished functionality, but card function itself requires weeks of iteration and review to finalize. A season spends up to 4 weeks in VFX, but up to 6 months in design.
-Glenn
Q: Is Kingpin's Soul Stone-esque glow more about signaling Kingpin is different now or do you see the effect applying to future debuff cards, too?
A: We generally want to apply VFX to cards that threaten harmful effects at their location. We have a queue going for that sort of thing.
-Glenn
Q: Has the team ever thought about a multiple turn cards? For instance when you play this card for the next 3 turns something will happen?
A: Sure. The design space on "countdowns" is fairly small, since the game has a fixed number of turns, but we'll likely find at least a couple designs in that space one day.
-Glenn
A: The tricky thing with those is the mental tax you're asking the player to remember. Since we're digital, we can do things to ease it (VFX can do a lot of heavy lifting here), and like Glenn said, we'll probably do something in there one day, but often times you can get the same benefit with a simpler deisgn, since we are just 6 turns
-KentErik
**I think the more interesting and outside the box ideas are the ones that excite players the most. Hopefully they have faith in the player base and take some swings with concepts like this.
Q: Have you ever decided “let’s try a card with X” and it was so brokenly overpowered that you scrapped the idea laughing out loud?
A: A few months ago we tried "On Reveal: Fill all your locations with random cards" on a 7-Cost card. It was often hilarious, but overall as busted as we assumed it would be.
-Glenn
A: Surprisingly, one of the most game-breaking mechanics (that took a while to figure out) was:
On Reveal: Draw a card.
-KentErik
**Uhhh… on reveal draw a card does seem pretty busted. The proposed 7-cost card above seems hilarious. I crave more hilarious effects in the game.
Q: The first Spotlight Cache release half a year ago, at July 12, 2023.
The stated main idea behind it, give more new cards to the players, seems to be achieved, as it is fairly easy to see a new card being used since day 1 of being released. How is the team feeling about it now, 6 months in?
A: 6 months in, it's definitely achieved the goal of getting the new cards some playtime. This is super important for helping the game feel fresh, alive, and awesome.
Are there improvements we could make? sure! almost every system can be improved, and in particular, economy systems in general are hard to nail in a single-go, so i think you can expect that one day we'll make some improvements / changes to the system
-KentErik
Q: Hello! As more cards get released, there’s starting to become more and more cards with randomization in terms of outcome. Understandably, RNG can help make games exciting and fun, and a little RNG is always needed. Is there any concern that the game may become too heavily burdened with RNG, similar to Hearthstone’s Dr. Boom? How does the team view the balance between strategy and RNG dependency?
A: Unpredictability and RNG are core to a card game...where you begin every turning drawing from a *randomly shuffled pile of cards*
Not every card has it (caiera and skaar have no RNG printed on them).
i'd say on the whole, we don't really view things from the "RNG" perspective unless a card is truly warping the outcome of the game in a really random way that invalidates all the previous turns.
Many years ago, in early prototyping, Annihilus was a 6-cost card who said "On reveal: move all your cards randomly". Great for move decks! but it was such a vast arrays of random outcomes, it felt like all your previous plays didn't really matter, and your opponent couldn't interact with it meaningful, so it was changed significantly. that is an element of RNG we're very cognizant of.
-KentErik
Q: Will we get the chance to pin variants some time in the future? It sucks to see one that you want but not having enough gold for it at that moment.
A: Sorry, but there are no plans to let you pin variants in the daily offer shop.
-KentErik
Q: Why does the move get so little love?
A: I think we gave Move some fairly strong cards last year, and I’m sure we’ll give them more. As an archetype, Move can be tricky to balance in a fun spot because it can be very overwhelming for players. Not knowing where your opponent will play mystery cards in their hand is actually less burdensome on the mind than not knowing where cards you can see already will wind up. So we like move, and we want to make cool move cards, but we try to monitor carefully how much is going on in a given turn.
-Glenn
Q: I'm wondering what the rationale for having Miek activate at end of turn instead of an on discard trigger similar to bishop and have him move at end of turn.
A: Two discrete triggers is a level of complexity above our general targets for card effects in SNAP.
-Glenn
Q: On a previous question about Blob, Glenn said that the only parameter on normal levels for him was his play rate. That got me thinking, since not every player owns every card, how is that (and any other factors) considered when analyzing the data? For example, a card owned by twice as much players but played in the same amount of decks (let's say Thanos) would be considered to have half the play rate of Blob? And do you guys factor stuff like people getting bored and playing off-meta stuff cause playing mirrors or with the same deck for too long is just boring for some players? Thanks
A: We look at play rate for cards in multiple ways, including games played relative to the total number of players who own the card, raw volume of games and wins, and how often a card is played in a given deck.
-Glenn
Q: When the Mobius debacle happened, the devs mentioned on the patch notes that you don't release cards just to nerf them a month later. You also mentioned that you would test things more intensively.
But then you release Blob and he is taking over the game. It didn't take a single week for people to see how busted he is when they got their hands on him.
What happened here? Did you guys release an op card on purpose again to nerf later or was it a mistake?
A: While Blob and Mobius may seem far apart to you, Blob was finalized before Mobius released. We just started working on September 2024, for example. We have made adjustments to our process in pursuit of improved balance upon release, but those adjustments wouldn't have been able to impact Blob.
-Glenn
**This is interesting. It will be interesting to see if we begin to get cards that are more balanced upon release starting in March or so.
Q: Quick question about Blob and multiple activations (i.e., Wong, Kamar-Taj, Odin).
The 15+ power stat is per-activation, right? So he would gain 15 power from the first activation, and then if you still have cards left the second activation would then have a separate absorption counter that goes to 15 again, right? It’s not just looking at his total power and capping that?
A: Correct, his actual Power doesn't matter, just the amount gained.
-Glenn
Q: Respectfully, Selene was and should be used to be disruptive, a 1/2 it has a marginal impact, as 1/-1 there was at least options to use it with viper or annihilus when you don't draw the hood, in that same line, I spent 8 keys in total for selene and annihilus, 1200 gold for a selene variant, and 700 for an annihilus one, if I feel really bad with this nerfs (considering the selene buff as nerf), and I spent money, I can even imagine how f2p players feel when 8 keys and 1900 will just collect dust in their collection after weeks or months of saving, could you give some insight about the team thought process in that aspect?
A: While I understand you disagree right now, we believe she is now a better card--even with Annihilus, and certainly without. If we're wrong, we'll find out and adjust accordingly.
-Glenn
**I've seen a couple people say they feel like Selene got nerfed. She is definitely better now.
Q: One thing I was interested to see in the ota was no change to Black Knight/Ebony Blade. I don't necessarily think the card is a problem (and am somewhat of a fan myself), but I've heard a lot of discussion around the card. How does the team feel about Black Knight? Fine? Potentially problematic?
A: We're happy the card began seeing real play in a novel strategy, and we'll continue to keep an eye on it.
-Glenn
**Is Ebony Blade going to be the next community bugbear? It is quite strong.
That's it for this week. Come back next week for more of Glenn Jones's Diary, head to the official Marvel Snap discord, and post a question in the ask-the-team channel!
The Blob change means merging Red Skull into Infinaut is 34 and you stop merging, but merging Infinaut first will stop Blob at 20 and leave Red Skull in the deck. https://t.co/NacKBWciw0
— Glenn Jones (@Glenn_Jones_) January 18, 2024