Team Answers Recap for Dev QAs - 10/20
Welcome back to Glenn Jones' Diary, our weekly look at the Dev team Questions and Answers from the Marvel Snap discord. This week there are a couple of questions about upcoming cards and the community had a lot to say about Alioth.
16)
Q: Do y'all have a playlist for the music for snap? I love this season's theme music and Lokis from last.
A: You can listen here! The new music will eventually be released on all streaming platforms too!
-Chris Alan
15)
Q: Some cards like Gambit and Rogue are perfect, ability-wise, both functionally and, albeit less importantly, in terms of lore accuracy. How do you guys prioritize functionality vs novelty when creating new cards? How much do you try to be at least lore-relevant, if not lore-accurate?
A: It’s important to capture some element of the character’s fantasy. It’s not always easy, because our character selection is guided by creative themes while our mechanical design is guided by the metagame. However, we always want to line them up as best we can. One of the great tools we have to help that is VFX, of course.
-Glenn
14)
Q: A few weeks ago Glenn shared a deck at first he was simply having fun with, but now that has since with a few tweaks become what the community largely deems as a meta deck and a very strong one at that. Did Glenn have any idea that it could eventually become what it is today? Does this encourage or discourage more sharing of other developer decks?
A: Had no idea; I played at most 20 games with it before sharing it. We already exercise general caution around sharing data and deck optimization. We prefer players to find their own fun! But we're in favor of sharing something novel or interesting if we think players might enjoy it, as long as it won't be too disruptive. In this case I just happened to be ahead of the curve; if If I'd sourced the deck from our internal data instead of my own play, I likely wouldn't have shared it.
-Glenn
13)
Q: I had Black Knight get taken out by Killmonger. I then discarded a card but the Ebony Blade never spawned. Is this how it’s supposed to work? Doesn’t say he’s ongoing.
A: He's a one-time trigger, not Ongoing. But like any card with a trigger (unless otherwise specified), Black Knight has to be in play to trigger. For example, dead Bishops don't gain Power, either.
12)
Q: Will Werewolf by Night's ability before or after the on reveal triggers for a card? For instance, if I have 2 cards in a lane already, and I carnage that lane, will my carnage eat the Werewolf?
A: On Reveals trigger ahead of "After you play" triggers.
-Glenn
11)
Q: It's been a while since the rockslide nerf and was wondering if you guys noticed his win rate and usage fell off enough to consider giving back some power.
A: Rockslide is among our top 25 cards in the last week and Darkhawk is in the top 5, so I don't foresee a buff flying their way. One shell for that deck is performing particularly well right now.
-Glenn
10)
Q: I saw Glenn say they won't make Agatha stronger in the previous reply. Apart from Agatha's performance, I am more curious about the initial motivation behind her design. Why did you create a card that seems to encourage players to go idle? What is the concept behind Agatha? Has the team ever considered reworking her to address the negative user experience associated with her?
A: We have some ideas about ways we could improve the Agatha experience for players. As far as her goals, she’s a card that demonstrates unique digital space and also provides a novel deckbuilding challenge. Big fan of cards like that generally.
**Be sure to check out our guide to Agatha here.
9)
Q: I’m wondering if you as developers are seeing healthy or unhealthy side effects for cost-reduction cards. In your opinion, has Mobius caused a ripple effect (or *wave*) ;) of cost-reduction cards dropping in play?
A: Mobius has certainly had a large impact on cards whose strength is premised around Cost reduction. That was expected on our end, and we're letting that experiment run its course. Cost reduction has been a mainstay of SNAP for a long time, so while we were interested to see what the metagame would look like with it weakened, we also know it's a part of the game players fell in love with and that's not something we're aiming to (permanently) change.
-Glenn
**It's been an interesting experiment but eventually Mobius will have to be changed from a 2/3 to something less optimal in my opinion.
8)
Q: Are the Uatu changes intended to give him a similar gameplay niche as crystal or is it more to reduce his variance for early pool players who are still learning the nuances of the location system?
A: It’s both, with a caveat. Because we make Uatu available to players so early, him being too strong would threaten learning the tensions of location variance for new players. He should just be an option for players who want that info and enjoy having it, not a card good enough to play in most decks.
-Glenn
**This is an interesting answer. I can see how having a strong Uatu from an early collection level could make players develop bad habits or underdevelop important skills. It sometimes feels as if the dev team is actually balancing 3 or 4 games at once, not just one.
7)
Q: I’ve see posts about the devs interest in OTAing Chavez. i was wondering if the team thought about a “mulligan” feature at the beginning of the game like how hearthstone does it. I run Chavez a lot and I still don’t draw the cards that I want all the time. And most times I don't even play her for those games either because she isn’t always the best play on turn 6. So I don’t see how you can OTA her without a complete change to the card.
A: You’re already so likely to see a given card that we don’t want to even further increase it. Mulligans are more important in games with greater variance. You’re not supposed to draw the cards you want all the time, that’s kind of the idea. If we were to change Chavez, it would be a patch, not an OTA. Her numbers mostly don’t matter because, as you note, she is rarely played.
-Glenn
**I'm starting to think Chavez is like our year one training wheels. I think a Chavez rework could breathe a great deal of freshness into the game. Players always work to minimize variance on an individual level, but variance game-wide is important for keeping the game fun and replayable.
6)
Q: In a recent team answer, it was mentioned that some retired locations won’t be returning as their restrictive nature is less desirable from a developer perspective than lighter incentives. How distinct are traditionally restrictive locations as incentives for different cards relative to “softer” locations in the team's eye?
A: I’m a huge fan of soft restrictions and “minigames” like Vormir and Asgard.
-Glenn
5)
Q: I know it's a bit early for this question but I'd love to know how Nico specifically her destroy and add two cards ability works with locations like Altar of Death or Vormir. What would happen first, Vormir killing the card or Nico and if it's Vormir does that mean you don't get the draw? Same question for Altar of Death.
A: Nico will resolve first, like Iron Fist's effect.
**Multiple times Glenn has compared Nico's functionality to Iron Fist. This is excellent news for her spells since most of them are a lot stronger if she resolves first.
4)
Q: I saw in another post that Alioth was made in mind for decks that put power on the board and to make players be more aggressive, if that's true then why rework Leader and Aero when they were doing the exact same thing as Alioth albeit to a bit lesser degree, wouldn't leaving them untouched be better if the team really wanted to make cards that rewarded being aggressive?
A: The degree is everything. There are a variety of good cards and strategies to play into Alioth, and you have a lot more agency. Old Aero and Leader didn't care as much about where the opponent played or which cards they played, plus Leader mostly didn't want priority at all.
-Glenn
3)
Q: While it is true that Alioth gives more incentive to fight for priority, what does the team think about the fact that some decks are just not really able to do so while dodging powerful tech cards, therefore making Alioth’s very existence a source of constant, uncomfortable mind games between getting Alioth’d or getting shang’d/shadow king’d etc? Alioth does make fighting tech cards easier but is very scary alongside them as well.
A: Alioth's performance is generally at its weakest alongside most "tech cards" like Shang-Chi, Enchantress, Shadow King, etc. because those cards are also strongest when played at the end of the game. That's among the reasons we were comfortable making him, because he would offer defense and competition for some highly-played cards at the same time.
-Glenn
**Interestingly, a divide has emerged between priority grabbing Alioth decks and traditional tech decks. This will be a trend to keep an eye on.
2)
Q: Why does Alioth destroy face downs when other cards don't?
A: We wanted a novel effect befitting the character. His MCU power is to erase things from time itself--being able to make it like a card "never existed" qualifies there, and destroying an unrevealed card, as you noted, is unique.
From there, we also saw he was an effective incentive to gain priority. That's something we've been looking for a while, as one reason we so consistently saw Zabu and Kitty at the top of the metagame were those decks' ability to throw priority and counter/outscore the opponent unhindered on turn 6.
The restriction to only destroying face-up cards is the default. That's very important for players to learn to know how all the other cards you listed work. But it doesn't mean no card will ever blow up an unrevealed thing, just that it's special and unusual (and needs explicit text, like Alioth has).
-Glenn
**Readers, what do you think about a 6/6 Alioth that ONLY kills unrevealed cards? Would it accomplish the mission of carving out space for decks that fight for priority or would it be too weak?
1)
Q: Featured locations are a really great mechanic of Snap that can allow fun and unusual decks to thrive for a limited time. I love being able to "take a break" from the Meta. Has the team considered other similar mechanics to switch things up, such as Card Bans? (For example: Cosmo is banned for 24-hours & players can go nuts with crazy Wong combos.)
A: Ideologically, banning cards is something we'd like to avoid. We use featured locations, OTAs, and in the future game modes to create this kind of experience.
-Glenn
**Are hot and featured locations fulfilling their role? I honestly barely notice them anymore now that they're 24 hours. While I'm sure that delights quite a few players, I actually like the idea of short-term mini-metas. Maybe we could do one 72 hour hot location per month and keep the new locations on their same featured location schedule. Also, Glenn mentioned new game modes as an additional way to mix up the meta. Maybe we're getting a draft mode?
That's all for this week. Head to the Marvel Snap discord and ask a question to potentially be featured here.