Welcome back to Glenn Jones' diary, our weekly look at the developer Questions and Answers from the official Marvel Snap discord. It's been an eventful week in Marvel Snap. We've felt the effects of last week's major patch, albums were introduced, and people seem to be really enjoying Blob.
Q: I've been playing since global launch and I've done my share of whaling in this game. The result of that is a hefty collection of hundreds of splits of cards that I never look at, think about, nor care about. They exist as a means to get me towards the one split I actually want for a card and then will forever be hidden behind the "Favorites" filter. As the number of cards grows and the number of splits players have for cards in their collection grows, this issue will continue to compound. Does the team have any ideas on how to potentially make engaging with this aspect of collecting better or more interesting?
A: Yep, we feel you on this. We have some ideas that are brewing baking cooking <insert food preparation metaphor here>, but need more time to design before we can commit and announce.
-KentErik
Q: Was it intentional to leave off the words “this turn” on Alioth? I just had an Alioth completely wipe out my Invisible Woman lane even though I didn’t play any cards there on turn 6. I thought the intention was to nerf Alioth a little but this seems like a buff.
A: The intention was a nerf overall. Against specifically Invisible Woman he has been buffed, in part because the turn-limited interaction previously proved quite confusing to players when she was involved.
-Glenn
**As an Invisible Woman enjoyer, I'd like this changed back. She went from underrated and underplayed to too risky to play.
Q: When using the autofill feature, none of my favorited variants are being selected, and I am having to manually change every card. Is this a small glitch in the autofill feature?
A: It’s a bug. It will pull your favorites in our next update
-Stephen
**For now you can click ‘share’ and re-paste your list and it will have your favorites.
Q: Hi Team, this is just me being difficult, not to long after I started playing I decided to go for a full collection of infinite base art cards. Which I was able to accomplish until I couldn't keep up with spotlight releases. Now I'm in love with the Legendary/Foil combination, but unfortunately I had already split a few of my more played cards more than once including... a variant!! which ruined a couple cards for me within this new theme (Base art with Foil/Glimmer). Will the game ever feature customizing cards using unlocked quality and effects in the future?
A: Yes a feature to customize a card based off your previously unlocked splits and borders is in development!
-Stephen
Q: Will there be “arena” background or board customization? For example a winter forest for winter season, that type of thing.
A: We want to do it eventually. It is not a high priority for us right now.
-Stephen
Q: I have at least 5 Dan Hipps but I only see two of them in the album (e.g. Zabu isn’t in the album).
Is this a bug or will you be adding them in the future?
A: We have plans to add many more albums in the future, (including more Dan Hipp albums.) stay tuned!
-KentErik
Q: With so many Hipp variants in the game, will there be any more albums? What else is planned? Are we still only adding one album a month? Why only do 12? Is this more about monetizing cosmetics over cards or is there some other reason for albums to be this strict?
A: We plan to add multiple albums for styles with lots of variants. For example, Dan Hipp will have many albums. Staying Hipp will not be the only Dan Hipp album. Eventually we will add the concept of a parent album for those styles with lots of variants / sub albums if players continue to show interest in the feature.
Albums are setup in 12s for now to make similar in size to a deck and due to technical constraints. We plan to create smaller albums for variant sets with less than 12 cards in the future.
-Stephen
Q: Why did the team decide on only 4 albums at the start?
A: We started with four primarily not to make it feel overwhelming. We felt four was a good number to help folks receive some free rewards and learn how albums work. I acknowledge based off the feedback that I missed the mark on the number of albums we should have launched with. We are working on spinning up more albums than we had previously planned as a result. Many of the new ones we will add will be easier to complete as well (pixels, more dan hipp, etc).
We are also working on tech to have albums contain 6-12 variants instead of only 12 to open up album sets for variant styles with less than 12 variants.
-Stephen
**Albums entered the game with a bit of a thud. They are just too prescriptive to feel fun and lean into trying to get you to buy stuff to feel like a bonus. If either of these axes had been shifted they likely would have been more well-received. I was hoping for less of a Panini sticker book and more of an individualized artistic project. Making the albums vary in size doesn't solve the fact that you need exact variants. I don't really get how that is supposed to be fun. It could solve the second issue and make people feel like they're at least getting bonus cosmetics though. We'll see. Hopefully the prestige system is more fun.
Q: How does the auto deck builder work? Does it have anything to do with the current meta?
A: Our awesome data science team built an algorithm based off the current meta that will help you build a competitive deck with whatever card or cards you select to kick it off. As the meta shifts over time, deck builder will give different recommendations
-Stephen
**As someone who had no interest in this feature it has been surprisingly good. It definitely speeds up the deck building process and can help with brainstorming ideas.
Q: Is it a design goal for the game to never have to implement a format for only recently released + core cards due to balance/power creep issues (like the Standard formats in Magic or Hearthstone)? I see it as a very good thing for this game's uniqueness and longevity that all cards are used in all types of play and the pool slowly and carefully grows over time, but was curious if that's also your long-term goal.
A: All games with regular content releases eventually face the same challenge, and rotation has been a consistently effective way to address it.
However, since we know that would work if we need it way down the road, we’re prioritizing exploring different ideas and solutions. We’d love to innovate there!
-Glenn
**I think it is important to note that rotation in traditional card games is a solution to a problem, not a feature. Every game tries to deal with player churn in different ways. On a basic level, power creep is an important way to keep players interested in coming back. However, that creates its own player fatigue with constantly chasing stronger new cards and players resent their favorite cards being invalidated. Rotation is the traditional system conceived to balance these two forces. Other games attempt novel ways of solving this problem. Flesh and Blood, for example, doesn't rotate but instead cards that win enough get removed from the pool. The issue with that is it's hard to introduce powerful new cards that players will feel excited about without power-creeping all of the other cards.
I really hope that Second Dinner finds an innovative solution that does not involve rotation. They would be the first ones to successfully do so.
Q: What do your metrics show about Elsa? Don't u have a feeling that these 2 nerfs were too much?
A: The additional Power wasn’t enough compensation for limiting her to one lane, so we’ll likely improve her in the future.
-Glenn
**Elsa is definitely nearly unplayable in her current state.
Q: With the team focusing down on low cost cards abilities to affect 1 location (such as with Luke and Elsa) will we see similar treatment for 3 cost cards or is 2 cost a boundary for the limit.
A: 2-Cost is a unique line. We expect the effects to mix a lot at 3-4, depending on the strength of the effect in question. For example, Cosmo and Shang-Chi are clearly appropriate at one location, while Cerebro and Patriot are clearly not.
Even the 2-Cost line will be slightly fuzzed from time to time--for example, Scorpion can be played on-curve and theoretically apply his benefits to multiple locations, but your opponent gets a lot of control in that respect. But effects as powerful as Luke's used to be should cos the opportunity of a more impactful turn than 2.
-Glenn
Q: While the main attraction of Blob is him piling up your entire deck together, he does have a sometimes very relevant second line of text. Being immovable is Blob's gig, of course, but him having an Ongoing also weakens him in one of the decks where he would likely shine pretty brightly otherwise, Sauron decks.
Was this line of text added as a lenticular way of preventing these cards for mixing? Or is it just a concession in attempting to better fulfill the immovable Blob?
A: The Sauron element wasn’t purposefully sought—we started with an Ongoing because “just being big” isn’t quite novel enough. But we didn’t mind it; Taskmaster-based decks are difficult to design around generally, so slicing the ways you could use Taskmaster with Blob up a bit was helpful.
-Glenn
Q: Will the removed locations like Sandbar, Milano and Krakoa ever come back?
And if yes how will they be changed?
A: Yes, we just triaged them behind some other work related to locations. We’re expecting to rework each of them, and one is already on its way in a future season.
-Glenn
**Looking back, I think the removal of that handful of locations and adjustments to location frequency was one of the best and most underrated changes they've ever made to the game. Since then, in my opinion, nearly all of the new locations have been both impactful and fun, which I think is ideal. Locations were becoming oppressive and they successfully steered them back to being a delight.
Q: How much did Blob influence Chavez' change?
A: Not at all, we've wanted to change Chavez since before Blob existed. The accompanying notes were clear on the motivations.
-Glenn
Q: I have seen in many snap shots a number limit of about 2 billion power on a location, is there a specific reason for this limit or was a number chosen arbitrarily? I don’t understand much about game programming so the answer may be simpler than I think.
A: 2,147,483,647 is the "int" limit for c#
**Well, now we know!
-KentErik
Q: Hey Glenn I am not sure if you were part of the team back when scarlet was changed from a 1/2 to a 2/3 but since them a lot in this game has changed and scarlet has become less and less playable to a point ppl that are pool 3 or above barely see her esp pool 3 complete. I wanted to ask have you looked ad her playrate and is there a way we can ever see a revert? I love her so much and with the addition of new cards such as snowguard it would be really nice to see her shine again. Thanks!
A: I wasn't here, but I played at the time. She's still a reasonable performer with a lot of good company around her winrate today, but not one of our strongest cards. Our reluctance to revert that particular change is that it was based on her outsized performance within the new user experience. That experience would still be affected about as much today as it was then, because it's relatively similar.
-Glenn
Q: One thing I've noticed a lot ever since it was discussed in Galactus's big rework is that a lot of cards (particularly 6 cost) at Snap's launch lacked sufficient "knobs" to balance their power. I think immediately of Galactus (of course), Chavez, and Leader, all of which have required reworks.
I've also noticed that there seems to be a lot of effort to make sure that all newly released cards have sufficient knobs to balance them after release. However, it seems like Blob totally lacks these knobs. His cost obviously can't be increased and his base power doesn't really seem like a meaningful leverage point (the difference between 30 vs. 34 power usually doesn't matter). Of course, adjusting his base power *would* make him weaker, but it's not crazy to imagine a world where he hits the "soft limit" of 0 power and is not meaningfully weaker.
Additionally, the vast majority of his power is contingent on the base power of other cards, and it doesn't really make sense to nerf other cards' power because Blob benefits from them too much.
I'm not saying Blob is overpowered or anything, way too early to tell. Just making an observation on how his design seems to be slightly at odds with most new cards. Is this something that was a concern while he was being designed? Am I totally missing some aspect of his design that allows you to adjust his power level short of a total rework? Thanks.
A: We could adjust his base power, as you noted. If that wasn't enough, another knob would be changing it from the whole deck to some number-N cards in the deck.
We're still pretty early in the discovery days of Blob and where he should be, so hard to say what, if any, changes will be incoming for him.
-KentErik
**I think we need more time with Blob to see if he needs to be adjusted. Changing his effect from the whole deck to some number of cards doesn't seem like a good change to me though.
Q: Speaking of the knobs discussion, I was wondering what knobs could be changed to make Martyr better. Compared to someone like Gladiator, who at least works most of the time, Martyr feels really unremarkable in the decks she's in.
How do you adjust the knobs of a character like that, especially when it was mentioned that her previous higher power iteration didn't have enough of a downside for her?
A: tons of knobs! a 4/15 martyr would probably be broken with a card like Zero, and super super broken with Prof X. that's why she's not that but we have knobs, and we'll use them
-KentErik
**I think 1/5 Martyr would see play. I think 5/10 martyr would be really fun.
That's it for this week! Head over to the Marvel Snap discord, in the ask-the-team channel, to ask a question and possibly have it featured here!
Leisurely Infinite this season, played this deck for 99% of the games. Lot of fun, felt like I played way more 8-cubers this time than last. pic.twitter.com/YP9nkKEwiy
— Glenn Jones (@Glenn_Jones_) December 9, 2023