Welcome back to Glenn Jones' Diary our weekly look at the developer questions and answers from the official Marvel Snap Discord. There are plenty of questions about the recent OTA balance changes.
Q: It’s been a very long time since the Chavez rework, and I am just curious how she’s performing on your metrics and if it meets the goals you guys intended for her? Big fan of the character and I feel like I never see her in play anymore
A: In fairness, you didn't see her in play very often before either. But we do have a small change coming.
-Glenn
**The team has a pretty good track record with reworks (Spider-Man, Wolverine), so when Chavez was reworked, I was pretty optimistic. After all, 2 energy for 5 power seems pretty good. It turns out, however, that not being able to predict where that +2 will go and having to eat up a board space with a 2-3 is not so great. I think 2-3 +3 would probably have brought her to playability, but she is interesting at 1-2, +2, especially for bounce. I'm not sure yet if they achieved their goal of making Forge and Chavez both playable or if they've now made neither quite good enough to be competitive. I think there are probably a lot of players out there with some pretty fancy splits for Chavez, so it would be nice for her to see some play.
Q: Are Big Bads still a thing? Will new ones be added? Will old ones ever downgrade in series?
A: We have no plans to create new big bads under that label. It is still entirely possible for us to release a Series 5 card that is desirable and performant enough to stay in Series 5 for an indefinite period of time. Current “Big Bads” Thanos, Galactus, Kang, and High Evo will continue to stay in Series 5 indefinitely.
-Stephen
Q: It was stated previously that Kang is a big bad, which as a villain in marvel cannon he sure is, but in snap… I haven’t seen him in probably a year.
Is he remaining a big bad because, well, he’s a literal big bad villain? Or because he has some underlying great performance that no one is seeing?
A: He remains a big bad because we committed to that when we launched him and players made decisions based off that information. We regularly redesign and buff/nerf characters so we will someday take a shot at shifting Kang if his performance dictates it.
-Stephen
**Players purchased these cards assuming they would not downgrade, so it makes sense that Second Dinner keeps the promise that those cards remain “big bads.” For now. I'd like them to be able to downgrade once enough time has passed. Also, can we please get a Kang rework sooner rather than later? Not only is he bad at the moment, but he's tedious on the rare occasion you see him in the wild.
Q: The subterranea course is very frustrating, it really hinders any player. Will we have any adjustments someday?
A: Stay tuned (but I wouldn't get too excited).
-Glenn
**Could this mean an adjustment to location appearance odds? Was this about the Darkhawk change? I do feel like they could use more of a rarity gradation than there is currently. Common and rare locations are generally fine, but some uncommon locations (like Subterranea) appear entirely too often. We could use a level in between uncommon and rare. To check a location’s rarity, click on the location you're interested in from this list.
Q: Knull has been unchanged since release, which could lead me to think he has not exceeded any internal metrics the team has set. It seems like he can achieve really high power pretty consistently, almost akin Blob on release. When Blob was changed, it was to make him reach a specific range of power more consistently (and limit his ceiling). Is this something the team ever considered for Knull? Or does his average power already fall into a range the team is content with?
A: Achieving high Power isn't in and of itself problematic, it just needs appropriate effort. Knull requires other cards, is vulnerable to multiple answer cards, and can even be defeated on Power in some cases. He's performing like a synergy payoff should.
-Glenn
**I think Knull feels perfectly balanced for the reason Glenn states here. He can achieve high power levels, but you must work for it. This is in direct contrast to the initial Blob release (and arguably the current Blob). Lockjaw is still among the lowest investment ways to get a huge power spike. We will see if changing him to 4-cost is enough. I think some of the recent releases are too easy to pay off. With so many high-power, low investment cards being added recently, and other huge cards coming down the pike (like Red Hulk), I think the metagame has been negatively affected. Hopefully, we get some meaningful balance changes soon to open the game to various strategies.
Q: When the team was designing conquest, what made them ultimately land on 10 cubes as the "HP bar"?
A: At 8 cubes, the game can be over in a single go, which is not the vision for Conquest as a game mode--ranked already offers that. We wanted a number that made snapping meaningful in a unique way. But we also wanted a game length that aligned with our vision for the pace of SNAP as a game. It turned out a very small amount of additional health sufficed for all of that.
-Glenn
**I do think 10 cubes is great for conquest… in theory. In practice proving grounds is too grindy, silver should probably just be nixed, and infinite runs take too long.
Q: With places like discord, twitter (X), and reddit being platforms some people like to express their feedback on, how do you determine what the general consensus is? How do you learn what the consensus is of the number of people who don’t express their views on social media?
A: We appreciate both the vocal minority and silent majority. The passion and care from those who share their experiences with the hope of improving a game they love gives us a sense for the emotions and feelings that the game is evoking. We capture the silent majority and the things players do through data and surveys. Then we capture what a player is thinking as they play the game through our design intuition and understanding of psychology and motivation theory. With those powers combined (what a player feels, thinks, and does) we are able to make informed decisions about what’s best for the game, the players, and the business needs of the studio.
-Stephen
**It is important to balance actual player behavior with the vocal player complaints and synthesize the two. However, I sincerely hope Second Dinner isn't relying too much on whatever pseudo-scientific, corporate conception of “motivation theory” they have internally landed on and that it's a minor aspect of their decision-making.
Q: I’ve noticed that whenever the devs talk about move whether in the Q&A or patch/OTA notes they seem to always mention that they want to be cautious with move. Even when you hyped up the move season last year, the following month you changed ghost spider to a 1 cost and said “We were a little gun-shy on the strength of some of our recent Move cards, as the deck can be really potent in addition to occasionally melting brains over the sheer number of possible moves you can make.” The only time I’ve seen such sentiment is when talking about sandman/galactus. Is that how move is viewed internally? A sort of “we don’t mind if it exists, but it should never be played above x percent of the player base.”
A: Move is a very challenging deck to play against for a lot of players, because it substantially increases the complexity of playing your turns. Move decks are actively lying to the opponent--there are cards in play that say the "wrong" numbers and are in the "wrong" places. Compare to Galactus--Galactus is very surprising and frustrating, but he is also hidden information so you aren't as subject to "analysis paralysis." For those reasons, we do want to position Move decks and cards carefully. But no, it isn't constrained the exact same way as Galactus or Sandman.
-Glenn
**Is he saying that a complicated deck is undesirable because it is more confusing and frustrating to the opponent? This bolsters my argument that the team is intentionally simplifying the game to counteract the usual complexity creep that comes with adding new cards. Yeesh.
Q: Help me understand the logical line between “drawing cards is a strong effect” and “ putting rocks and widows bites to stop opponent from drawing multiple times while buffing my own cards” is.
What’s the difference? Sounds to me like denying draw several times in a match should be considered more of a threat than Adam Warlock pulling probably one bad card at the end of the game.
A: Draw and "draw denial" are both powerful effects, and we monitor both carefully. However, drawing cards homogenizes gameplay in a unique way, because it affords the player engaging with it the opportunity to play the exact same cards in very similar orders repetitively. In turn, disrupting someone else's draws forces them to vary their play and adapt.
Do I think we're overall too restrictive on draw? I think it's possible. But the rewards for loosening that are fairly small relative to the risks--SNAP already has *very* low variance when it comes to card access in-game, which is an issue draw denial directly softens.
-Glenn
Q: I could see that Adam warlock was a previously unpopular card and you would want to see his play rate rise, but I cannot seem to find any way where this is a buff.
Could you please give an example of a scenario that does not require locations that makes this change benefit Adam warlock.
A: Cards that add Power to locations are a lot better than cards that don't.
-Glenn
**I think a super-reliable Adam Warlock would be bad for the game. Being able to draw an extra combo piece reliably has a more massive effect on the meta than attempting to deny decks their combo pieces with disruption. Adam's also definitely better at 5-4 than at 2-0, but likely not super playable. Don't fret too much if you're a massive fan of the character. In the notes, it was stated that this may be a first try at changing the card, and a more profound change may happen if he still sees very little play and maintains his dismal win rate. They performed a similar experiment with Spider-Man 2099, “not expecting much,” according to Glenn. But 2099 at 5-9 has been better than expected so that he may stick there for a while. I don't think Adam will be surprised in the same way.
Q: Why has darkhawk out of all the cards rn been nerfed. And at what point did he past SD card thresholds. as I feel I haven’t seen a lot of darkhawk and now wondering why he been change
A: On the vast majority of days since Blob was nerfed, Darkhawk has had the strongest overall winrate in the game among Series 3 complete players. He's also been a key player in 2-3 of the best decks in the game on any given week. He's exerting a lot of pressure on other 4-Cost cards, and he's done it for a very long time now, so the change is as much for balance as it is to create more novelty in the game experience.
-Glenn
**My biggest problem with the Darkhawk change is that it now overlaps with Devil Dinosaur and Ronan. I think it's unlikely that all three will see play. It seems based on older data, which makes sense since second dinner plans and locks these changes in advance. I don't think Darkhawk was on the verge of a significant comeback. Also, I think having a big stat stick at a lower cost, the role Darkhawk generally served, was interesting. That's what made him unique. It's also not getting at the root of the problem: Zabu’s synergy with Shang and, to a lesser extent, Enchantress. I don't hate this change just because Darkhawk has had so much time in the sun, and it's okay to give other cards some time to shine, but it's far from the team's most clever change.
Q: Wanted to check in if the team had new information regarding what variant types may or will not show up in the albums.
There's an older post that says "probably not".
Could you provide new information on the likelihood of each variant type in future albums.
- Ultimate Variants
- Spotlight Variants
- Bundle Variants
A: We will not put bundle, season pass, conquest, or spotlight variants in an album unless they became more broadly accessible or have an alternative the player could do to fill that slot.
Ultimate variants have no timed exclusivity and can be worked towards and acquired, so they qualify as a potential album variant.
**It's not a great look to have a previous answer saying “probably not” and then put an ultimate in an album. But at the end of the day, albums are expensive quests for cosmetic whales anyway. Most people interested in completing that particular album are happy to buy the Ultimate Jane Foster. Again, it's not ideal, but it's expensive cosmetics over more expensive game pieces.
That's it for this week. Head over to the official Marvel Snap discord and submit a question in the ask-the-team channel to see if you can get your question answered and featured here. Be sure to let us know what you agree with or disagree with in the comments below.