Hello and welcome back to Glenn Jones' Diary, our weekly look at the developer questions and answers from the official Marvel Snap discord. This week, we're talking Pixie, shop changes, draft mode, and sideboards.
Q: Can you make it so the end turn button only activates when held down. I’ve lost a lot of games because I accidentally pressed the button.
A: We won't be making that change--it would add friction to the game flow for every game to address a relatively infrequent issue. However, we are adding the ability to "undo" ending the turn soon.
-Glenn
**This feature cannot come soon enough. Hopefully it comes in the 3/12 patch.
Q: What do I have to do to get on the list for getting these custom bundles? I've never seen one, but I would buy it if you gave me it. What are the criteria for getting them?
A: Personalized bundles should start rolling out to more and more folks over the next week or so and hopefully to everyone shortly after that so hopefully you'll start seeing them soon tm (I just tested these changes yesterday!).
-Addison
**I finally got one today. Most of these have been inspiring. Usually, they are decent value, but nothing is unmissable. Don't let the FOMO get you.
Q: The new bundle has a spotlight key and this is dangerously close to P2W territory. like really close. Are you guys really gonna keep selling keys in bundles?
A: We see it as very similar to selling credits, but its good to understand not everyone views it that way. We will talk about it some more and use the data and feedback from this test to inform what to do next.
-Stephen
**I agree with Stephen on this one. If you were under the impression it isn't possible to pay more to get the new cards more easily, that ship sailed long ago.
Q: Is there a reason we cannot just complete an album as a checklist rather than waiting for a random card to fill up the shop? And for those people who don't want the album variants, they would have the space for more random variants. Is there an economy reason as to why this is not possible? Would it matter if someone was just using the gold they would spend either way?
A: If we setup the albums for direct purchase, being able to target a purchase outside of the daily offer shop would come as a premium action at a higher price point than if that variant was in the daily offer shop. We would not remove those variants from showing up in the daily offer shop.
Our plan for players who wish they saw less album variants is to improve our personalization engine for the daily offer shop to recognize that some players want to see other variants.
-Stephen
**I've got to agree with Stephen again (what is happening). The albums are cosmetic quests designed to earn revenue. It doesn't make sense to sell them from within the album.
Q: Is the team aware of how difficult it is to get variants in shop that you actually want to buy with the current system pushing album variants so heavily? Are there any plans to improve the shop experience for players coming up?
A: What we have observed is that there are two camps of players coming out of the current shop experience. One that wants more access to the album variants they want and haven't shown up yet and another that wishes they could stop seeing album variants. As a result, we are investing deeper into personalization tech to be able to tell which type of player someone is so we can give them their preferred experience. I dont have an ETA for when it will be rolled out yet but we are actively working on improving it for both camps of players.
-Stephen
**I've definitely felt like my shop is overly cluttered with album variants I have no interest in, so that would be a welcome change.
Q: When discussing Pixie, a lot of people are talking about two cards "swapping their costs". That's not my intuition about what a shuffle of costs means - for me, it's the process of making a list of all the costs in the deck, rearranging them randomly, and then assigning this new list to the original cards. This also makes much more sense when there's an odd number of cards in the deck.
So, what's the actual technical process here? Is the game choosing pairs or cards and swaps their costs (potentially leaving one card "unshuffled"), or what I've described?
A: It’s essentially a list that’s randomized and reassigned.
-Glenn
Q: I wanted to ask a follow up question about Pixie based on the answers to these two posts:
My question is - if I only have a single card of a particular cost - say, Doom is my only 6 drop, for example - is it possible in the shuffle for him to get his own cost back? Or is that only possible if there's another 6-drop in the deck? Are there protections for when the two lists are shuffled to prevent a card from getting matched with its own cost entry from the other list?
A: It's possible for a single card to get its own Cost back, but improbable. If it was fixed to avoid that, it wouldn't be a truly random shuffle.
-Glenn
**A lot of people have been frustrated with Pixie's ability being a shuffle rather than a swap. Would it be too strong as a swap? It would certainly be easy to force certain discounts.
Q: Which are the reasons that made you decide to release Mockingbird with 9 Power?
Considering her effects, I think it’s quite similar with Stature but Stature has less ways (only 3 not that good cards and 1 location) to discount her compared to Mockingbird (one of the strongest card in the game Thanos is enough of an example, even without talking bout the multiple favourable locations) and mostly considering the speed to nerf back in the days both Stature and Blackbolt when their deck was the strongest in the game, where that would look kinda weird considering the Spotlight system.
A: You need to occupy 4 location slots with cards that probably aren't very strong to get a 1-Cost Mockingbird, which can be a fairly meaningful drawback because it restricts your space to make other decisions. Stature is more narrow, but we also have the benefit of lots of live data "proving" Stature's impact at different Powers vs. just testing data for Mockingbird. We did consider 5/8 and 6/10, which played fairly similarly, but we prefer to release on the strong side when the water is murky because releasing weak is like not releasing a card at all. Plus, we want to avoid buffing cards after they leave Spotlight Caches because players (understandably) find that frustrating.
-Glenn
**My worry with Mockingbird is that she will be a Thanos card, which would be a bit of a letdown. Using her with various tokens or her fellow S.H.I.E.L.D. agents would be much more interesting. Also, yes, let's revert the Stature nerf. It's time.
Q: You already addressed the metrics of Hela and how she looks fine from a winrate/cube rate standpoint. But my question is regarding the "fun" aspect of the card.
Of course, for players playing the card is always fun, the person made that deck because they liked it, but in the community there's a growing sentiment about how powerless any deck feels when your opponent's Hela deck has a good draw. Even if you can see what's coming and can avoid a big cube loss most of the time (hence the cube rate being fine), it can still feels really bad, as Allioth felt in its first iteration, for instance.
Do you have any form of measuring this kind of feeling in the community and, if so, is it important to you and how you decide to adjust a card even if the metrics says it's "ok"?
A: We do, but Hela is fairly unique from Galactus and Alioth. A metaphor one of our game directors has used that's guided us for a long time is that "SNAP is mostly a game about comparing two awesome sand castles, not constantly kicking down your opponent's sand castle."
Both of those cards definitely do a lot of kicking, but Hela does essentially none. Her deck challenges you to outmaneuver her (hard), stop her (doable), or (my preference) do something better than she is.
-Glenn
**This quote sums up a major Second Dinner philosophy. "SNAP is mostly a game about comparing two awesome sand castles, not constantly kicking down your opponent's sand castle.”
Is Snap succeeding at this goal if Shang Chi is the most played card in the game? More importantly, would we want it to be more true? As a fan of interaction I want more and even partially overlapping interactive cards, not fewer.
Q: War Machines ability says "Nothing can stop you from playing cards anywhere" does that include energy cost? Could I potentially play 6 cost card on turn 5 even if I have 5 Energy to spend?
A: No; you can’t even start to play a card without enough Energy for its Cost, so there’s nothing there to not be stopped yet.
-Glenn
Q: Would War Machine's effect make it so you ignore Supergiants effect? AKA let your card be revealed.
A: No, the abilities aren’t related.
-Glenn
**Come on people, let's not waste the man's time.
Q: What does T.E.A.M.S stand for? Feels important to know when voting.
A: We have some pitches, haven’t locked one in yet
-Glenn
**I'd rather they go with Divisions from the D in S.W.O.R.D. and S.H.I.E.L.D.
Q: I saw on Twitter that if I attend "Pax EAST 2024", I can get free Captain america card variant, card back and title.
It look so cool but unfortunately crossing the pacific ocean for that is quite tough, so is there any other method to get those reward or is it also limited reward for those who attend Expo.
Thank you for your hard work for this game.
A: These cosmetics are exclusive to event attendees; I'll be missing out on them myself.
-Glenn
**I don't have a problem with this. Exclusive items at cons are meant to be marketing and it's in all our interests for the game to grow through effective marketing. They're just cosmetics, not game pieces or currencies.
Q: Does Pixie's “started in your deck” clause exist because of Thanos?
A: Mostly yes, but not how you might think. It's less that Pixie was broken with Thanos, but more that she worked so well with Thanos that it seemed unlikely other Pixie decks would get their chance to shine.
-Glenn
**This is hilarious. Glenn's implication here is that the community would shove Pixie into Thanos lists and call it a day on experimenting with her. It's funny because I'm reasonably sure he is right. The community tends to find lists that function well enough and don't have to push much farther than that.
Q: Hello,
Would you know if any limited/draft environment is planned or even discussed in the future?
I.e. Draft a deck from multiples choices then play with it against others draft decks?
Thanks
A: We have discussed it quite a bit! We know based off data that draft mode has not performed well in our competitor games, that draft mode goes around the core progression loop which is challenging for long term reasons to play a game, and the process of drafting is time consuming so we would have to make sure there is a pay off given Snap matches last 3-4 minutes. We have some ideas around how to overcome those hurdles, so a draft mode is possible in the future but it is not coming soon.
-Stephen
**This saddens me as someone who has draft mode at number 1 on my wishlist. But it's unsurprising if you've been following what the various team members have said about draft mode in the past. Players tend to overestimate dramatically how popular draft modes are in card games.
Q: With the increasing amount of tech cards in the game, has the idea of adding a sideboard to the game been considered? At least for the longer formats of Marvel Snap such as Battle Mode (and Conquest), I recognize it's not practical for ladder.
I'm interested to also hearing about what the team thinks about the balancing implications of adding a sideboard in Marvel Snap.
A: I’m fairly negative on sideboards, though I am one person and can be defeated! For me, there are a few issues with them:
- Sideboards as a concept are high complexity and inaccessible. They slice the audience thinner and more CCG-vet/competitive for any feature, and we like game modes to have broad appeal.
- The UI/UX would be high-friction by its very nature, slowing game sessions.
- But my biggest issue is that sideboarding likely doesn't solve the problem everyone thinks they have (inability to counter enemy deck or insulate your own deck). It probably just makes it much worse, by further homogenizing deck selection away from diverse decks and risky strategies and towards ones that can more easily incorporate counter cards (which already have an advantage in Conquest especially). You won’t get “less Loki/Sera” with sideboards, you’ll get way more.
I do think there are interesting solutions to be found for these game modes. I just personally don’t think sideboards are a good one, at least for SNAP.
-Glenn
**Conquest mode needs some adjustments, but I agree with Glenn that sideboards aren't the answer. I went over a few ideas in my last Burning Questions article. Check it out and leave a comment with how you would fix Conquest mode.
That's it for this week. Head over to the ask-the-team channel on the official Marvel Snap discord, submit a question, and leave a comment below to join in on the conversation!
❤️❤️❤️#MarvelSnap pic.twitter.com/TSo9nBOvLs
— Richard Holcomb (@InfiniteVeritas) February 29, 2024