Glenn Jones's Diary: Dev QAs 12/08
Welcome to Glenn Jones' diary, our weekly look at the developer Questions and Answers from the official Marvel Snap discord. This week the conversation was all about the recent buff and nerfs, card cosmetics, and locations.
Q: Is Black Widow too good?
A: She’s a good card now, certainly. But she does have a drawback—she’s 2 Energy for 1-2 Power, a very inefficient rate. The Widow’s Bite itself also isn’t pure upside, with cards like Carnage and Loki or locations like Nidavellir and Gamma Lab capable of off-setting the loss.
The purpose of most cards is to make some decks better, but not all decks. I think she qualifies, but if her play rate were to climb too high we might consider additional action to narrow her applications.
-Glenn
Q: Are albums replacing the prestige system?
A: Albums are about collecting cosmetics around a theme.
The prestige system will be about going deep on a character you love to collect all of their cosmetics and splits.
-Stephen
**The prestige system sounds more interesting than the overly prescriptive albums. Hopefully it's not similarly paint-by-numbers.
Q: Will there be monthly album releases?
A: We will be adding at least one new album per season! Previous months albums will stay available. We see albums as a goal that’s take a bit more time to complete and don’t want to add time pressure to that.
-Stephen
Q: Why don't locations work in the order they are revealed?
A: We’ve finished an audit of all our triggers related to ending the turn, and are evaluating the work required to build a larger system for triggers we’re happy to stand on for a long time. Locations and cards have systemic overlap, and we’d rather fix it well once than a little a bunch of times.
-Glenn
**This patch included a shake up to how move works and saw over 50 cards get slight text changes for clarity and consistency. I'm hoping they continue to tighten and tidy up the game in these ways. Hopefully locations and triggers are next on the docket.
Q: I was just curious about the interaction between Blob and Arnim Zola. If you ramp out Blob or play Blob turn 6 when Limbo is in effect and Arnim Zola Blob on the following turn, does Blob keep his power or does he go back down to 4 since there are no longer any cards in your deck?
A: Blob’s Power is permanently added, just like Black Panther. He’ll keep it (and gain more if he was played on Vibranium Mines).
-Glenn
Q: You mentioned in an another answer that you can’t really buff Colossus to be meta relevant with a substantial rework. Is there any other cards that are problems like that?
A: There are cards like that, and we’ve been endeavoring to reduce them over time as we go. You’ll see some more updates in that regard in future patches.
In the most technical sense, Colossus doesn’t necessarily require a rework to become relevant. The current rough ratios of Cost to Power used competitively don’t leave him with enough breathing room, but those ratios could change via OTA. It would just be a lot of changes!
-Glenn
Q: Why doesn't Echo have a more obvious animation like Cosmo?
A: Because Cosmo is accessible to early SNAP players and so relevant in that metagame, the VFX needs to be really loud to ensure players don’t miss it. Echo is aimed at and only available to players who have played a fair bit and have more familiarity with these kinds of effects. But it’s possible it should be more clear.
-Glenn
Q: Glenn, you're our only hope.
I know it's been briefly said before but can you pls
1: reconfirm whether any card/decks choices have EVER impacted matchmaking in any way shape or form (previously said no so this is just due diligence)
2: pls explain the philosophy of why the current matchmaking program is used instead of something dumb like the above.
A:
- No, those aren’t a balance for matchmaking. We don’t even have an incentive to do this, so it’s a fairly perplexing conspiracy theory for us.
- Our matchmaking system uses Collection Level (to a point, and only below Infinite) and pairs Infinite and non-Infinite players in different pools. But its primary pairing consideration is matchmaking rating (MMR), which seeks to find players an opponent as close to their skill as possible while keeping their wait time as short as we can. Since we’re prioritizing pairing equivalent MMRs, both players will often be equally skilled. That in turn makes card/deck selection (often) the most significant determinant in the outcome of the game.
-Glenn
**This has long been debated but I think the clearest refutation of a lot of the Snap conspiracy theories running around is that in a lot of cases they don't benefit Second Dinner in any way. Manipulating matchmaking in this way would be an awful lot of extra work for no benefit.
Q: Does the team think about the possibility of customizing our cards, such as choosing between rarity or effects already unlocked?
A: A version of this is coming in a patch early next year
-Stephen
**It sounds like the January patch will be a major one for cosmetics.
Q: Will there be some time limited emotes we will be able to buy/win/collect? I’d love to have something very limited
A: I am sure we will do this either as part of premium season pass or a bundle at some point.
-Stephen
Q: I'm aware that more splits are planned for the future but i was thinking it would be cool for cards to have a booster color for their flare where it matched the colors found in their boosters but don't know the logistics is this is even possible in the future.
A: We want to add a variety of new splits in 2024
-Stephen
Q: What is your view on Loki and Werewolf?
That is, is there any reason for us to not see any adjustment to the two cards that are backbones to possibly the best archetype in the game for quite some time?
A: As we’ve said a few times now, patch changes are not reactions to the current live metagame. That’s what OTAs are for. Patches are locked many weeks in advance. For example, this patch was locked when Loki was still a 3-Cost card and Werewolf wasn’t even released, as the Thanksgiving break added extra time to our normal cadence. Our next OTA is 12/21.
Frankly, Loki is not even an undisputed best deck right now, much less an all-timer. Lockdown, BounceHawk, and ZabuHawk have all had equivalently strong performances over the last couple weeks, trading places on our leaderboards. Discard and Destroy have both been nipping at everyone’s heels. With the change to Alioth, we expect to see additional shakeups.
Is Loki still too strong? Yeah, I think so, especially in Conquest where you can’t surprise him when it matters most. But we wouldn’t prep a second nerf for him before seeing the results of the first change to 4-Cost, especially when we wouldn’t be able to easily undo it if it was too much. This patch also predates our test run of the improved OTA for Mobius.
Werewolf’s a fairly interesting case, as his overall metrics are typical of “just a good card.” But he has a very high skill ceiling and the metrics polarize among different sets of players. Just yesterday we had a discussion about these kinds of cards and how to best evaluate them.
-Glenn
**I understand that there is a gap in the win rate for Loki based on MMR level and also that the deck took a bigger hit from the Chavez change than many expected, but I'd still like to see Loki lose a point of power. As for Werewolf I think he also could lose a point of power, but I think if he goes to +1 for his effect, that would be too harsh. Just shave a single point off of Loki and Werewolf each and I'd be happy, but I think a lot of people are hoping for a bigger hit in the 12/21 OTA.
Q: just wondering the developer reasoning why chavez deck-thinning is bad for the game but magik making so so so so so [did i say so] many games 7 turns constantly is fine. so many matches that magik elongates often see those giant plays on the last turn[s] that depend on pure RNG rather than skillful playing of "fair" cards. thanks.
A: Magik costs Energy, you have to draw her to benefit from the effect, also risks benefiting the opponent, and has additional counterplay—she’s a card. Chavez didn’t behave like a card.
-Glenn
Q: Alioth has now received the anti-fun nerf, where stats say it’s fine but player sentiment says otherwise. I think changing a card in that position is always the best call, like with Galactus and leader previously. After all, snap is a game, it should be fun!
To that point, is there any chance Alioth (and maybe Galactus I guess) get the leader treatment of full effect reworks to better align with player sentiment for and against? As of now, they just have double restrictions, which (using Galactus as evidence) feels a lot less fun to play by comparison. Whereas leaders current effect works efficiently and feels good to slot in to decks that make sense.
A: To be clear, the stats had stopped saying Alioth was fine. We expected him to grow weaker over time as players learned their way around him, but that wasn’t the case.
I would consider this fairly close to a rework for Alioth—it’s in the same spectrum as Leader for me, as was Galactus’s change. As often as possible, we want to retain the core fantasy of any card we’re making substantial changes to. Many players love Galactus, and we don’t want to change him into something totally different because of his detractors any more than we would make Darkhawk start counting cards in your own deck.
When a card is really unpopular, like Crystal was, that’s a different story. Our players are telling us in that case that they don’t even really like what the card does, which gives us more confidence in larger changes.
-Glenn
Q: What's the rationale behind the Ebony Blade buff? A potential 4/20 that can’t be destroyed or have its power decreased seems very overwhelming. What’s the rationale behind giving the Blade such an extraordinary powerful effect that negates almost all counterplay? Wasn’t there other satisfying design space to find besides cranking powerlevel to 11?
A: We debated only giving it one of the bonuses, but decided to try both since the card has been so weak. It's very conditional, and has other meaningful counterplay around Black Knight himself.
-Glenn
**My feeling is that the Blade is now strong but probably not too strong. I think they kind of had to go with the nuclear option to get the card to playability.
Q: Like Luke Cage will Hazmat and Typhoid Mary see changes to not effect all locations, or do you all have different plans to address the collateral damage?
A: We may buff Hazmat, as that card was underperforming previously (though that was in part because lots of people were playing Luke). Mary seems less likely, as there are other ways to mitigate her downsides, but possible. As always, we'll give it some time, and then look at the data.
-Glenn
**As a Hazmat enjoyer, she could definitely use a touch up after the Luke Cage change. My suspicion is that Cage was not changed to a 3 or 4 cost with his global effect intact because he would be disproportionately useful for Silver Surfer or Zabu decks respectively.
Q: I didn't see this in the patch notes, and it's a relatively minor change, but I was wondering what the reasoning was in flipping the deck list around so that newer decks (and opened deck slots) are all the way to the left now? My deck list is now "backwards", and I've confirmed with some other people that they're experiencing the same. I was just wondering if this was intentional.
A: it was intentional! we felt the action of making new decks, or editing your most recent decks, was used more often-than-not, so we flipped the rotation to make them more readily accessible
-KentErik
**Thank goodness for this change. I always love when there are small quality of life changes.
Q: Were discard decks considered during Chavez changes?
A: They certainly were considered, but ultimately the change to Chavez is on the whole healthier for the game, so we wanted to go through with it. We think there's exciting design space to explore to help bring back things like the Dracula+Apoc interactions and how Chavez empowered those, so we'll be exploring those in the future.
-KentErik
Q: Most seen location: Limbo
at the risk of sounding like someone who completely hates magik [i don't but man is she overplayed right now] i noticed in almost all the screenshots from the season recap i've seen limbo is the most seen location. is this something that the team is happy with? we're not all seeing it because it pops up more than most on the board. it's magik.
A: magik's winrate is in a healthy spot, and there's fun counterplay interactions with cards like Scarlet Witch, the-oft-forgotten-Rhino, Legion, and now Nico. She's definitely high up on the play count meter (players like to build for a 7th turn!), but it isn't necessarily translating to a lot of W's for those players.
-KentErik
Q: Locations trigger before cards?
In a recent Elsa Bloodstone question it was mentioned that locations trigger before cards as the reason for her effect not being applied. Is this new and I missed it in the notes? I was under the impression that cards were able to go off first with some exceptions such as Deep Space.
A: Cards' On Reveals trigger ahead of everything, but when a card and a location have the same trigger timing--such as Angela and Cloning Vats--the location triggers first.
It's always worked this way, and one reason I like it is that the flow shifts down vertically from a visual standpoint. However, we're considering whether that matches players' intuition well enough and experimenting a little with what it might look like to do it the other way.
-Glenn
**On reveals triggering before everything but other triggers going after the location triggers is definitely not intuitive.
Q: Can you explain how Snap calculates MMR, e.g., win rate, cube rate, etc?
A: Our methodology is proprietary, so we won't make it publicly available.
-Glenn
Q: Reading the post on reddit, 99% of people mute immediately.
What's the point of paying to get the new emotes when no one will even see them?
A: I wouldn't believe everything you read on reddit
-Glenn
**Funny answer, but I do wonder how many people mute immediately. Probably not very many.
That's it for this week! Head over to the Marvel Snap discord and ask a question to potentially have it featured here!