Glenn Jones's Diary: Dev QAs 12/02
Welcome back to Glenn Jones' Diary, our recap of the most important questions and answers from the development team on the Marvel Snap discord. This week there are several questions about audio and VFX fixes, Ben Brode addresses the restructuring at Nuverse, and we get some answers to some questions about what's coming next season.
Q: What is the design thought process behind Mr. Negative and Sauron and do you think it would be reasonable to have them act similarly? Both cards are enablers to their respective archetypes, but Sauron’s ability is much more forgiving with being able to also target the player’s hand.
A: No, these cards shouldn’t act similarly. All cards exist in context, and finding the right behavior for their specific effect is key to their individual success. Killing or “breaking” a card to make it look like another card doesn’t accomplish the goals or make the game more fun.
Mister Negative’s ability would be dramatically stronger if applied to the hand, because it generates Energy (and potentially a lot of it) in addition to Power. That means he would be about as strong if you drew him as late as turn 5 or even 6, with Magik.
Sauron’s ability is fundamentally much weaker, since it basically only generates Power for a smaller subset of cards in the game, and disadvantages playing many other cards.
-Glenn
**I always like that Glenn's answers all reference making the game more fun rather than adhering to some sort of arbitrary philosophy or design symmetry (as some other games do to a fault).
Q: My Android client got an update today (Nov 27th). What was in that patch?
A: There were some critical issues around upcoming content that needed to be addressed in the currently live client that couldn't wait until the next major release.
-Addison
**Yes, there was a surprise mini patch. Changes are detailed here. I still suspect they're planning on releasing more than 4 cards a month but that there was some reason they wouldn't be able to stick to that schedule change until after the New Year.
Q: Is the VFX also working on VFX for Shuri's ability? I think it would be very helpful, especially for newer players, as it's not intuitive that the effect moves alongside the location if there's such a change, instead of staying in the lane it was played at.
A: Shuri does have VFX that communicates whether her effect will work. When you drag a card out, she only plays VFX on it over the correct location.
I recognize that’s not the same as “marking” that location the way Hawkeye does, but since it does exist it’s not as high a priority for us as targeting some cards that have nothing at all, or supporting new designs.
-Glenn
Q: Will Kingpin's animation return? I will be utterly devastated if I have to live through another season where the coolest animation in snap isn't restored.
A: I believe Kingpin and a few other card VFX fixes should be included in the next upcoming client release.
-Addison
Q: Is the overlapping audio between Thanos and High Evolutionary when you get into a game intentional? Or are there plans to have them go one at a time?
A: This issue should be fixed in the next major client release.
-Addison
Q: A while back, I noticed the unique VFX for HE evolved The Thing, where he throws rocks and junk at your opponents cards and they bounce off the cards because Luke Cage is on their board, was removed and he simply doesn’t do anything now.
Today I noticed Kraven no longer flashes or does his growling noise when cards move to his location. It’s actually hard to notice his power increased at all unless you are watching closely.
Were these effects removed on purpose? Or are they a bug and will be restored at some point?
A: We're looking into Evolved Thing to see what's up there as I'm unfamiliar with that bug (thanks for the report), but Kraven's VFX should be fixed in the next upcoming client release.
-Addison
Q: For a card with the effect of anti-Captain Marvel, I'm sure you guys had a lot of different options for what statline to choose. In the end, how was 1/4 decided from amongst all the options? Also, what balancing knobs are available to be turned for this card in the future?
A: We wanted to pick a value that meant she actually was a threat to move. For example, we playtested a lot with 2/6 and found it was far too common that 2/6 would win any location Marty moved to, thus never moving.
Martyr's a normal card from a balancing perspective, other than it being difficult to cost her up because higher Power causes the issue above.
-Glenn
**I suspect that the team wanted to make Martyr's stat line the same as Captain Marvel’s. This makes them kind of mirror each other and hits from a seasonal flavor perspective. However I think this stat line is weak and uninteresting. While I don't actually think the card is terrible (there are at least twenty cards I'd rate as less playable), it's just kind of unimpactful. It seems like Glenn is implying that at 2/6 she was too strong, which sounds believable. I was pretty excited for a 2/6 Martyr. If 1/5 is too strong or 2/5 is too weak, perhaps they could try something bulkier like 4/8 or 5/9.
Q: You said that, in early testing, the devs discovered the sweet spot for Shang Chi's effect to be 9. Now that the threshold has been increased to 10, why wasn't Abomination's power (the vanilla card) also increased?
A: I'm not sure about the comment you're referring to, but we didn't increase Abomination's Power because it didn't seem clearly necessary in either direction the way it did for She-Hulk. He's on a list of several cards we might move up as we gather data about the world with Shang-Chi at 10.
-Glenn
Q: I’ve noticed that for all stat lines from 1-4, the vanilla stat of the card with no abilities is often matched by card with a positive effect (Ice Man vs Misty, Jeff vs Shocker, etc etc) but for 5, Abom is notably the only 5/9 available.
Is there a reason those cards at lower costs have positive abilities while matching their vanilla counter parts? Have you ever considered rebalancing power overall to give those positive cards 1 less power, to sort of protect the vanilla stat line? I understand it makes HE stronger unless he also gets reworked so that when he’s in the deck, those cards also lose 1 point.
A: Power is complex in SNAP. We need lower-Cost cards to compete with higher-Cost ones, otherwise there's not enough reason to play them--accumulating Power is ultimately what the game is about, so we need to structure cards around Power values that let it matter.
We don't particularly care about "protecting" the vanilla stat line--it's not a principle worth adhering to at the cost of gameplay. That line's very important in other games, where indefinite endgames and attrition are commonplace so cards need to be more consistently aligned. Ours exists for onboarding new players, and in competitive play it is meaningfully replaced by Patriot and High Evolutionary.
-Glenn
Q: About the Nuverse thing, Will Marvel Snap be closed or what? Can you enlighten us?
A: *crawls back into discord for this one*
HELLO FRIENDS
Marvel Snap is going nowhere. Kind of like the Blob. We are immovable! Or at least, we only move in the direction we want to move... Which is FORWARD!
Definitely a lot up in the air right now, and we'd be super sad to hear if our friends at Nuverse are negatively impacted, BUT none if it will affect our ability to make Marvel Snap maximally awesome.
-Ben Brode
**This is in reference to the news that Nuverse, the current publisher of the game, will reportedly be closed down. It remains to be seen what this will mean for snap. Thankfully, it appears Snap will survive but will have to find a new publisher, which is no easy task given issues such as localization and monetization.
Q: Does the new feature location already have set cards for each match that a card played would transform to or are they always random?
Just had a game where my opponent got 2 Cerebros for playing two 3 cost cards at the location and I got 2 Invisible Woman for playing two 2 cost cards.
A: Nope, just randomly picked for each trigger event.
-Glenn
**I've seen mostly negative reactions to Tarnax IV. Revis called it “X-Mansion on turn 6”, but I've really loved it and think it's super fun. What do you think of it? Oppressive or interesting?
Q: In the text of Jeff, "Nothing can stop you from moving or playing this to any location.” Is there any reason or purpose?
A: That text, like all text, is disabled in Deep Space. Jeff’s not immune to Leech, either.
-Glenn
Q: Have you considered for future events doing a temporary OTA? Mainly as a conquest and ladder "hot location" kind of deal. For example a 24h period where angela is original stats or surfer gives +3 for the day.
A: One of the things we want to be avoid doing with OTAs is destabilizing players’ collections or their ability to maintain decks too much. That’s why we prefer to keep a regular OTA schedule with meaningful space, so that the cadence is predictable and players can build appropriate expectations.
**I actually love the idea of doing changes that are announced as temporary. Like “this month these three cards are boosted, they'll go back next month.” There is space there to keep the game interesting and thematically interesting. Maybe this type of thing could be it's own separate game mode.
That’s not to say we’d never do this sort of thing, but I’d probably oppose doing it for all play modes with a given card, which we currently don’t support (the card is the card).
-Glenn
Q: Since the power description starts with "after each turn", does that mean Havok gains an extra +4 at the end of the game with no consequence? (i.e., eating 1 more max energy doesn't matter when the game is done)
Does this mean Havok is a 2/4 if you play him on the last turn?
A: After turn 6, he will gain Power. (Assuming you have Max Energy to absorb. I wouldn’t suggest getting a table at Bar Sinister.)
-Glenn
Q: If you play Havok turn 2, that means you get "stuck" on 3 energy all the other turns (u gain 1 max energy and havok "eats" that 1 energy at the end of the turn)? Or it works otherwise?
A: You’ll be stuck on 2 Energy all game if you play Havok on turn 2, since he knocks you down to 1 at the end of turn 2.
-Glenn
**Some interesting answers here about Havok’s functionality. It seems it's less like a reverse Electro with a bonus and more like a super powered version of Sunspot that leaves you with a hard preemptive energy ceiling.
From what I understand from these answers the way he works is as follows:
If you play Havok on 2, he'll lower your max energy from 3 to 2 on the following turn (turn 3). On the next turn (turn 4) Havok would again rob you of that increase from 2 to 3 and leave you with 2 again. Essentially he'd hard cap you from gaining energy increases and cap you at the energy you have when you play him. Perhaps I'm interpreting Glenn’s answers here incorrectly, but these things always get clarified more before release.
It seems like (the Viper play everyone is talking about aside) Havok will be a card you want to play later in the game and combine him with both energy boosting abilities and cost reduction abilities.
Q: Why not Emma Frost?
As in, why is her card named "White Queen"? It felt so weird in the update video when Ben said "Who wore it better: Professor X, Sebastian Shaw or 'White Queen'?" No one talks about Emma that way. When there's a book about her it's called "Emma Frost" or "X-Men Black: Emma Frost" or "Giant-Size X-Men: Jean Grey and Emma Frost". Jean, Shaw and Selene all use their regular names in their cards so why can't Emma? It just feels like the card was named by people who don't know the character.
A: Stay tuned
-Glenn
Q: With the Blob coming, will you add effects that shuffle cards back into your deck, and/or prevent *yourself *from drawing cards?
While I doubt Crystal will be reverted back to her old self, I could see how her old effect could be cool with the Blob. Do you have any cards in mind for the future that might have similar effects?
A: Stay tuned
-Glenn
**A couple of cryptic answers here. Is White Queen being changed to Emma Frost in game? Is Crystal being changed to a shuffle draw card again? That would be a big boon to Blob.
Q: How does the deck autocomplete thing work?
A: It uses a data science powered model based on your collection and the current meta to give you an amazing deck to play and compete. Picked up a new card and unsure how to use it? Get a full deck recommendation with Deck Builder. Have a shell you like but you’re missing a few pieces? Get a full deck recommendation with Deck Builder!
-Stephen
Q: This feature looks amazing, but i have few questions.
How does the algorithm decide how the deck gets auto-completed?
Can we set X cards we want in the deck and only the remaining cards get auto-completed? is there a limit?
A: You can utilize Deck Builder complete your deck from anywhere between 1 to 11 cards in your deck!
You can pick one card and it will generate 11 additional cards to complete a fun competitive deck for you to play!
You could alternatively have a partially built deck with 3 or 7 or even 11 cards pre selected by you and then use Deck Builder to fill the remaining slots to make an awesome deck.
-Stephen
Q: In the Hellfire video you showcased winter variants, which as many people thought were exclusive after last year's event. Are there plans to change exclusive status of other variants like battle pass, conquest, etc.?
A: No plans to change the exclusiveness of other variants. The winterverse variants are seasonal themed with winterverse and we wanted to bring them back with that annual event especially given we no longer do variant rush events.
-Stephen
Q: How do albums work?
A: Each album (for example Venomized Villains) will have unique cosmetic rewards. One of those will sometimes be a new Emote! If you collect all 12 variants in the Venomized Villains album then you will unlock a brand new Venom emote to flex with! Three of the four albums we are launching in December will each have an awesome new emote as a reward.
-Stephen
Q: Stephen mentioned that if you collect all 12 variants in an album, you will receive an award. Are albums a specific set of 12 variants, or are albums twelve variants of a larger set of possible variants? For example, there are 35+ venomized variants. Would an album of venomized variants be 12 specific variants or 12 variants from the full set.
A: Each initial album launching in December will be 12 specific variants each around a theme. There will be a reward for collecting 3, 6, 9, and 12 variants in each of these albums. The rewards will range from exclusive variants, emotes, or card backs to an amount of credits, tokens, or even a spotlight key.
-Stephen
**I was hoping there's a bit more of a free form or complexity to the albums than simply being “collect these exact 12 variants for a reward.”
Q: Token quests used to reward much more than 200 tokens. The reason for the variance provided by the dev team was that the tokens rewarded were based on their predicted adoption/popularity of that card; less popular cards give more tokens. Well Martyr is probably the least popular card to be released in months with many people planning to skip the card this week, but her quest still only rewards 200 tokens. Did the dev team change direction on this? Is 200 tokens the new norm for every weekend quest?
A: We heard a bunch of feedback about how frustrating it was to not be able to plan your token budget for the month with the flexible amount of tokens per character. As a result, we have stabilized it at 200 tokens for a while now. We would love to hear more feedback about this if the preference is actually for it to be more flexible week to week!
-Stephen
**Yeah, I think it's a bit disingenuous to claim you thought people asking for predictably when planning their token use meant they wanted to get the low end every time…
That's it for this week! Head over to the Marvel Snap discord and ask a question to potentially have it featured here!