Hello, and welcome back to Glenn Jones' Diary. We're trying out a slightly different format where we choose only the most interesting or engaging answers from the development team in the official Marvel Snap discord. Hopefully, this format elicits more conversation and opinions from you! Leave a comment below to let us know how you feel about what the Second Dinner team is saying!
Q: With selectable borders being on the roadmap, are there any plans to implement a way to turn unwanted splits into something else?
A: The way the split and variant systems works, if you removed an unwanted one you would be able to roll it again. As a result, we want to add a way to condense the collection in the future to not show all of your unwanted splits or variants instead. Custom Card (a new feature coming in an upcoming release) will eventually be used as a way to condense down the collection but that functionality will not be part of its initial release.
-Stephen
**I see this as a pretty common suggestion. The ability to “craft,” “dust,” “disenchant,” or otherwise remove cards in your collection to get new ones is a popular idea. However, I think people mostly like this idea a) because they've seen similar functions in other games and b) because they feel like this will get them additional items for free rather than because it's a good idea to implement a feature that destroys cards from your collection. Instead, I'd rather see a more creative solution to collection bloat. First, the splits you don't want are undesirable because no one likes the foil effects. When we get new effects, that could ease the feeling of having unwanted cards. Second, we can have organizational features that make navigating our collections more pleasant without removing cards from our collection. Hopefully, the mastery system makes further collecting fun, and albums can improve. I don't see any particular reason Second Dinner would be incentivized to give us free stuff for destroying parts of our collection, so I'd rather not advocate for a system that does that.
Q: 2099 and Hercules are a part of the “big move card” initiative the team has shown interest in. A criticism both cards have been given by a lot of players is their high cost being one of their biggest issues, but the team seems to be leaning into this and doubling down. On one hand I’m excited move is being looked at and I’m even interested in the idea of this… but on the other I still can’t help but struggle seeing the vision in execution.
Is there a combo or playstyle the player base isn’t seeing that the team is in regards to these high cost move cards?
I feel Heimdall is still the best example of the high cost move card due to him never FEELING like a card you need to invest copious resources in, but one that instead pays off multiple of your investments (unlike 2099 who needs to be triggered after you pay for him). Move still doesn’t have another high cost pay off card as great as Death and Knull for example which aren’t expensive investments, but more so reward you for good setups while playing well.
A: Move decks built around smaller cards are already fairly successful, and have lots of great options with some additional future design space we’ve identified. We want to find more diversity, similar to Destroy having Deadpool, Phoenix, and Nimrod, or Discard having Apocalypse, Hela, and Black Knight. Most high-Cost payoff designs we like support would only be supported by the small stuff, but we want to create more decks than that.
-Glenn
**I appreciate the concept that Glenn is pushing here; I do. It's easy to make a good move card simply by making it low-cost. A card will fit into this combo-centric archetype more easily if it's low-cost. I think it's challenging to make a higher-cost card that the archetype wants to use, and it's a challenge that the development team should want to tackle. However, on a fundamental level, the move archetype has two types of cards: cards that get a payoff from another card or effect and cards that provide those payoffs. Dagger does nothing on her own. She needs an additional effect to have any value. Cards like Ghost-Spider, Iron Fist, Doctor Strange, and Heimdall activate the payoffs of other move cards. If the team wants to explore large, chunky, move cards, they need to be the cards that facilitate a payoff, not the cards that need a secondary action. 5/9 Spider-Man 2099 will be useless because it's hard to get the payoff when he has such a high cost. If they want to make higher-curve move cards, they should look at making the facilitators bigger. Maybe there's space for a card like Iron Fist or Ghost-Spider at a higher cost. 5/9 Doctor Strange sounds somewhat interesting. 5/9 Spider-Man 2099 does not. Hercules makes some sense as a larger card, but he still doesn't have enough of an effect on his cost.
Q: Why does Kang have a cost? Given his ability, he doesn't actually cost anything as you get that energy back so is there a reason to have him at a 5 cost?
I'm not sure if he'd get more or less play at a lower cost as he's effect remains the same so just wondering if theres a point to it.
A: If you can play Kang the turn you draw him, he nets you a free card draw--this is a very strong bonus that would see play in most if not every deck. An Energy cost restricts which turns Kang can be drawn and converted into a free card.
-Glenn
**Kang is a weak card that probably does need a rework. An easy solution would be to make him cost less. A 3/0 or 2/0 Kang would certainly see play, but more for the reason Glenn notes above rather than directly for his effect. I think he probably needs a rework since his ability is tedious anyway. I'm happy he's not strong with his current animation and game-lengthening. How would you rework Kang?
Q: Spider-Man 2099 buff or a nerf?! Spiderman 2099 was not a playable card(atleast in meta prespective) in many of the move decks which wanted to play thier move cards more often towards the end of the game mainly on turn 5 and heimdall on 6. Now with its recent change you can only play spiderman2099 and then heimdall to destroy a random card in that location which it moves to... How does devs come to this conclusion it will make the card/archtype better..?
A: We're not certain if or how much of an improvement it is, but it's meaningfully different and (as you note) the previous card was already underplayed. There's not a lot lower to go, but we'd like to learn what a change like this might do, so we're running the experiment.
-Glenn
Q: Was the Ghost change supposed to be a buff or a nerf? You worded your reasoning to make it sound like this was supposed to be a buff, but it is actually a massive nerf to the card. Just wanted to get clarification on which way this change was intended.
A: This is a buff. A 3/5 is generally a good bit stronger than a 1/2, and Ghost's effect doesn't meaningfully contradict that.
-Glenn
**Here are two questions asking if cards were buffed or nerfed. Second Dinner usually tries to change cards in ways that are not strictly a buff or a nerf and instead make the cards better in some ways and worse in others. In the instances above, I think they're both buffs. Ghost wasn't played much at all and now has a big enough body to be considered in some builds of Sera or Spectrum decks. But is her size increase enough to offset her diminished synergy with Valkyrie? It's a very small buff. As for 2099, 5/9 is quite obviously better than 4/6. However he has become even harder to combo with. These may be buffs, but they are slight, and I think neither is likely to see a lot of play.
Q: Is Domino on your radar at all for a rework? I love Domino and her voice lines, but I haven't been able to justify her in a deck for a long time. Is she on the list somewhere? Or are you happy with where she is today?
A: We're fairly happy with Domino as a design.
-Glenn
Q: Do you think you'll ever add a card that has synergy with Domino and Quicksilver to give them some play in matches beyond early games? Maybe something like an ongoing card that gets +2 power for every turn where you spent all available energy.
A: Stay tuned.
-Glenn
**Wow, this would be interesting! I think Domino and Quicksilver are bottom-tier cards, but they have a clear enough effect that if a card were released that had explicit synergy with them, they could become playable. There have even been situations in the past where Domino has been playable (Lamentis hot location). The above-proposed energy useability would probably not be enough, though. The synergy would have to be stronger than that even.
Q: Glenn recently said the adjustment to Knull is in active development along with other cards. Back when Knull was changed, I remember Glenn saying that the plan was to keep these ongoing cards at their base power until played but have a way to display their accumulated power for players to see.
Is this the plan? If not, what is the goal for adjusting Knull and the other three ongoing cards?
A: Yes, that is the plan.
-Glenn
**This would be a welcome change as it would make much more logical sense, especially for new players. It does seem technically challenging to find a way to do this that is clear, though.
Q: I mostly want to know what makes you guys wanna nerf something im general after seeing the destroy post. If it's purely because it's a high performing deck that's right behind the game breaking ones then wouldn't that be a good thing? The power output of most destroy decks is high, but not unbeatable unless the player gets very lucky with locations on top of a good draw order, and there are plenty of tech cards that disrupt practically all plays. I doubt this would be the only reason though which is why I'm asking what leads to this decision, because from what I can tell it's in no way game ruining. If the main reason for nerfing the archetype is because it's a high performing deck, then why not try to improve other archetypes with minor buffs, like giving more discard cards a guaranteed target? In smash ultimate a lot of the changes were buffs to weaker characters instead of major nerfs for the stronger ones. I know it's a very different game and any changes to a card affect all decks, but I think it's worth considering as it would overall make more players happy.
Also as a side note I am genuinely asking all of this, I'm not trying to be rude or anything like that. I just want to understand more about what goes into major decisions such as this since I'm not a game developer. Thank you for reading and for the work you put into this game.
A: Balancing cards by constantly improving weaker ones isn't a viable strategy for long-term metagame health--it just puts you on an endless path to power creep.
While elements of our process has changed, our core strategy for balance has not. It is based on a combination of objective analysis and playtesting experiences. We detailed it in this excerpt from a balance patch in 2023:
Let’s talk about our general process for balancing SNAP. Every week, our design group looks at metrics for both individual cards and “clusters,” the groups of cards that most commonly make up various decks.
For individual cards, we focus on win percentage when drawn, popularity, and cube contribution, the number of cubes a card yields.
For clusters, we focus on win percentage against the field, average cubes per game, the percentage of all games using that cluster, and its matchups.
Each of these values has tolerances, and that’s what determines whether we make a balance change. Exceeding one tolerance doesn’t mandate a buff or a nerf, but it does build the “watchlist” you may have heard about. When a card goes on watch, we discuss potential changes and begin playtesting them, just in case. If things don’t improve on the live game, that’s when we’ll make the change.
But which change to make? Our goal is to find a version of each card that makes the game more fun, not just turn strong cards into weak ones. If one of our adjustments prevents too many players from enjoying their card, we’ll revisit it later.*
-Glenn
Q: Saw on a screenshot of the discord on Twitter that said there where plans to nerf destroy. Does this mean that the game is actually attempting to move to a more “chaos” heavy system and away from decks being balanced? I know destroy has been good, but as someone who has played/played against a lot of destroy it feels as though Destroy is the one consistently balanced deck in the game. With SC and SK you take away the high power options, Armor is an early game killer, etc. It just feels like this ain’t happening to balance the game, but rather to push $$$
A: We have balance thresholds for decks and cards that determine outliers in performance. When something distinguishes itself as an outlier over a meaningful sample of time, we take measured action--that's the key to our corrective balance strategy, and fairly typical of most live balance.
Another purpose of our balance changes is to create flux and change in order to ensure the metagame doesn't just remain diverse, but also remains interesting every week. We don't view this as chaotic, but it is purposefully disruptive. It is also purposefully impermanent--if we make a change and wind up disliking the results, we're always willing to revert it or try something else. Both of these elements set SNAP apart from many other games in the genre.
We're not predicting the future, just making educated guesses, but we prefer to make our guesses, learn, and let the results--even the "bad ones"--contribute to a dynamic play experience. Over time, we hope to reduce our regrets, of course.
-Glenn
**I think there is a significant portion of the player base that wants to be left alone to fully ink their favorite deck and get off huge combos with it without the interference of hot locations, balance changes, and meta shifts. I'm on the opposite side of the issue, where I love meta churn and new things to tinker with, and I think the constant balance changes are the best thing about this game. Having developers that are “purposely disruptive” to the metagame is my gaming dream come true. However, this is in direct contrast to what some players prefer. There is a reason Commander has become the most popular Magic: the Gathering Format: some people want to play with their favorite and familiar cards and do crazy combos. This approach makes a lot of sense in a game that lets you cosmetically customize your favorite cards to the degree that Snap does. I think Second Dinner has an unenviable task of keeping both of these camps engaged and interested without frustrating either side. I don't think the destroy archetype needs to be balanced, but I also have no particular emotional attachment. It will be interesting to see how the dev team proceeds.
That's it for this week! Hit the comments below to join the conversation, or head to the ask-the-team channel on the official Marvel Snap discord to submit your question.