Team Answers Recap for Dev QAs - 11/17
Hello and 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 questions about play testing and card interactions.
Q: Spectrum does buff Ongoing cards that have had their card text disabled in Deep Space, but Spectrum does not buff Ongoing cards that have had their abilities removed by Zero/Sauron/etc.
Is this intended? Are the effects of “card text is disabled” and “remove the abilities from” supposed to be the same or different effects? I understand it Spectrum not buffing a card with abilities removed, but I feel like it should also not buff a card with its text disabled. What’s the difference between “disabled” and “removed”?
A: Yes, these are different effects. The card on Deep Space still has its ability and is thus an Ongoing card; the ability is just "turned off." For example, if it was moved, the ability would turn back on. That's not true for Sauron or Zero, where the ability will remain removed even if the card changes zones completely.
-Glenn
Q: I remember that the balancing of the Phoenix Force in its season was to avoid the big risk of shang-chi. with the latest balancing, is it possible for PF to regain its 6-power considering PF is still an underperforming season card?
A: That was a factor, not the only factor, and it was in part a problem because Phoenix cost 5 and was vulnerable—a larger investment to lose. I don’t think Phoenix’s metrics indicate that card needs to be a 4/6.
-Glenn
Q: Did Baxter Building used to give +4 Power at some Point??? Thats where the Fantastic 4 live after all, it giving +3 always felt like an unfortunate balance decision. Have the team considered buffing Baxter Building to give +4 Power? Could it happen?
A: I’ve never really given Baxter Building much thought, but I do agree the number 4 would be nice.
-Glenn
**This would be a very cool flavorful change.
Q: MODOK has become a staple in discard as a pretty unconditional turn 5 setup. For the most part, no matter what you can play MODOK without drawbacks.
This is a little early but-
Annihilus has been looking to be tee’d up to be a similar slot as MODOK but for junk.
Is this something the team finds healthy? The reliance on a T5 setup card for most versions of an archetype.
A: Yes, because it accomplishes a couple things. The first is it helps “split” mechanics into different archetype identities, such as Nimrod-based Destroy and Knull-based Destroy. The second is that a turn 5 card having huge impact for an archetype gives the opponent a chance to evaluate retreating before the final double if they’re too far behind, weakening the cube rate of the given card.
-Glenn
Q: After the changes to Wave and Alioth, haven't you thought about bringing back the old Galactus?
A: If you mean the 6/7, sure. If you mean the 6/3 or 6/2, no. That card has fundamental issues with what we want for gameplay and how we balance.
-Glenn
Q: How long after a card is touched in an OTA can we expect some change to be possible for it? You’ve stated in the past you like to wait a bit to let the meta settle when changing a cart, which makes sense, but how long exactly would constitute a underperforming card that recently got nerfed, for example, getting a second look?
Also, as an aside, which card is the hardest to adjust?
A: Generally, prefer to give it a couple months—we don’t want a single card to feel overworked. But we’ve made plenty of exceptions to that preference.
There are a lot of ways to consider hardest, but I guess one answer I’ll give is Colossus. He serves his Series 1 functionality well, but is impossible to position at a competitive rate without landing too far from the vanilla curve. For example, 5/10 now makes sense for him as a theoretically viable Shuri card (would dodge Shadow King and Shang-Chi), but is weirdly strong relative to Abomination. But we didn’t think 5/9 would have been enough even when Shang-Chi was hitting 9 Power.
-Glenn
Q: So my friend and I got into a debate about whether either of these interactions are bugs or working as intended.
Case 1: Professor X on a Death's Domain or Altar of Death. If you play Jeff there he will stay in that location with no issue.
Case 2: Professor X on Luke's Bar. If you play Jeff there he flies out back into your hand.
To me, I feel that if he stays on the destroy locations, he should stay on Luke's Bar, or vice versa since he is essentially bypassing Professor X's text entirely. To my friend, Professor X protects Jeff from dying, but not from moving, so the interactions work as intended. Please help us settle this debate once and for all!
A: Case 1 is correct, because Professor X has an ability that prevents cards from being destroyed. Case 2 is more complex; Jeff ignores restrictions that impede him entering or leaving locations, and bounce is one of the latter, so he ignores a different Professor X ability (code wise). It’s not our intent that “Nothing can stop Jeff from being bounced” so it’s an element we intend to adjust.
-Glenn
**This is a pretty surprising answer to me. I'd assumed that was the intended interaction, but it's good to know that it's not and that Second Dinner is looking to adjust it.
Q: I was wondering if 1. Global Matchmaking is still coming? 2. Would it reduce the amount of bot matches due to more players in the same queue?
A: Global matchmaking is still coming. We have already condensed it down to 3 regions.
Bots are necessary or the amount of people who could reach high ranks would be extremely small because bots represent almost all of the cube inflation necessary each season. However, the rate we serve bots is relatively low. My guess is you are mistaking some players for bots.
-Stephen
**While I do think players occasionally think they're playing bots when they are actually facing a player, I also think the bot count is too high.
Q: The latest patch notes mention an 'internal meta' diverging from live and I was wondering how often they converge or if there's any interesting details/specifics that you're able to talk about.
A: We don't specifically try to predict what the live metagame will be internally--that would be a time-consuming fool's errand. What we mean when we talk about our internal metagame is more about which cards and decks we think are viable and the ways in which they all interact or can be countered.
For example, we didn't test Loki with Kitty and Angela much, because Kitty was awkward with Loki--but it turned out this awkwardness was more than compensated for by the strength of the shell when you're not planning to play your Loki cards. That error was compounded when Elsa was introduced, as we didn't revisit our flawed assumption.
We do test cards we think go in Lockout decks and make sure the decks feel beatable when a card could improve them, even if the ways you try to beat them might change. When we think we have a deck that's performing too well, we'll put some active effort into "cracking" it to figure out if it's actually too good.
Sometimes, these efforts will mismatch the live experience, though. I think we underestimated Alioth in live in part because the inherent bias of testing impacted our results. Alioth's way easier to beat when you're certain he's in your opponent's deck, and less frustrating if you're playing games with that certainty.
As for our vision, we have general balance metrics for a deck's healthy metagame preference. If a deck's nature is unhealthy, such as Galactus or Lockout, we adjust those metrics for that accordingly to be more discerning. It's fair to say we don't want Professor X to ever be one our most-played cards, for example.
-Glenn
Q: The earlier question about fundamental numbers in snap’s design made me think of another one, the hand size limit of seven. As an avid bounce player, is this ever a space that could be looked into, or would it be too broken balance wise to consider?
A: I don't think it's broken, but it's an accessibility and UI/UX concern. We want a limit so that the hand remains navigable, and we don't want to worry about designs overwhelming players with too much information to parse.
**Personally, I'd love to see cards that affect the hand size limit. It sounds like that would be difficult enough from a technical standpoint that they're unlikely to consider it.
-Glenn
Q: Will there ever be cards that impact game speed via the timer or turn skips?
I ask because Magik and Kang extend game time, and it's annoying when players take all of their allotted time on their turns. Sometimes it's like opponents do that to grief when they are losing. It'd be really cool to have a card that makes the timer last only 10 seconds rather than a full minute. It'd also be cool to have a card that skips a turn (except the last turn)
A: I expect this is a when, not an if.
-Glenn
**This mechanic sounds stressful
Q: I'm curious as to why the team decided for gladiator to have the word "add" as opposed to doc ock "pull" since they both have the same functionality?
A: “Add” is our default word. Ock has “pull” for flavor and to evoke the right vibe in a physical sense, but Gladiator’s story is a “call-out” which doesn’t suit it. We deviate in small ways from the defaults when we feel the meaning is clear and more enjoyable with a different word, such as Wolverine using “regenerate.” We did debate something like “Challenge a card in your opponent’s deck.”
-Glenn
Q: I am a big fan of Mr. Negative decks, at the moment the deck is very weak. Are there any plans to buff the card itself or the archetype? At the moment even if Mr. Negative was a 4:1/2 the deck would still be bad.
A: We intend to continue releasing strong cards for Mister Negative--that's how we prefer to buff decks, when we can, and was a goal for Ravonna Renslayer.
We're reluctant to buff Mister Negative himself, because a) the deck already mostly revolves around drawing him, so we're raising the ceiling which doesn't improve his average efficiently, and b) the deck was a real powerhouse in Series 1-3 play before release, and we don't want to disrupt that experience for relatively small gains in competitive play.
-Glenn
Q: Like the gold or the tokens, the keys are a new currency, we can obtain the gold in various forms, will we can obtain keys like the gold in conquest, events or reaching certain rank?
A: We'll explore different avenues for Spotlight Cache Keys in due time, but engineering-wise, no, keys are not limited to the collection track.
-Chris
Q: This is more in response to the play testing reference during the last OTA.
It’s great you guys are increasing the play test time of cards by 4 weeks, but how relevant is play testing when OTAs a week or 2 after the cards release can drastically change the meta and relevance of what’s good?
You guys have said you don’t lock OTAs too far in advance unlike patches, so how do you guys play test balance of a new card when your OTAs change the conditions you guys spent so much time play testing?
A: Very relevant, because we're not playtesting to "solve" the metagame. There's no way we could even do that, it would require so much more play time than we have, and if we could do it then it would mean the metagame is way too simple.
The purpose of our playtests are to figure out whether cards are appealing, whether their decks are fun to play with and against, and to determine the balancing point for the card relative to the general strength of its competition. We want all of our new cards to be relevant, but we certainly have to accept some may release in a more hostile metagame than others, or struggle to find the right home, because we'll never perfectly simulate the live metagame--OTAs or no.
-Glenn
**I think the extra play test time will be enough to ensure that cards like Elsa come in more appropriately tuned, since it should give the team time to try decks other than the most straightforward. The cards that have been over tuned recently have relied on all-in greedy builds (Loki) or were so good that they didn't need to be played with many cards that highly synergize with it and could be played with any good cards, and therefore find a home in every deck (Elsa).
That's all for this week. Head to the Marvel Snap discord and ask a question to potentially be featured here.