Hello and welcome back to Glenn Jones' Diary!
This week Glenn embarked on a little press tour, appearing on KMBests's podcast:
This week we’re joined by Principle Game Designer @Glenn_Jones_
— The Snapshot (@TheSnapshotPod) September 11, 2023
Enjoy.https://t.co/Kjs9kTocTg pic.twitter.com/1vhU6UMQXo
...and YouTube channel!
He's rumored to be on another major Marvel Snap podcast next week. He's quickly challenging Brode for "Face of the Game" at this point. This week, players were interested in the new leaderboard. I think the leaderboard is mostly good, but we could use a little bit of a harder reset to get it started in a more equitable way. There is also quite a bit of interesting information about card design.
27)
Q: If the blade buff goes well, will you consider adding similar targeting to cards like Sword Master as well?
A: We don't want all discard to "target" but Blade was doing particularly poorly, and we think he has more potential than that.
-Glenn
26)
Q: I figured putting two questions in the same post made sense.
- Would Ronan ever see a buff (either to himself or one of his synergies like Baron Mordo or Master Mold)?
- Has the team ever considered buffing Rescue?
A: 1. Yes, we expect to find a healthier spot.
- We have some thoughts on that brewing.
-Glenn
25)
Q: Hello! In a recent match I had Spider-man 2099 moved for a first time to a location that my opponent was going to play a card on, but since i had priority Spider-man moved and didn't destroy the yet unrevealed card.
- Is this how the card is intended to work - destroy only revealed cards or was this a bug?
- Have you considered buffing Spider-man 2099 in some way so that he may see more play?
A: 1. He is intended to destroy only revealed cards. That's kind of an unwritten rule of the game, with some specific exceptions.
- We're thinking about it.
-Glenn
24)
Q: I like to play a deck with guardians of the galaxy. My question is if you plan to add an effect to those cards, such as Star Lord.
A: Many of those cards are core to our S1/S2 experience, so we don’t intend to complicate them.
-Glenn
23)
Q: Hi, are there any plans to make all cards have a pixel variant?
Like Jeff or X-23?, pixel variants are the category that can offer a full deck of that type of variant. Might as well have them all. Pixel variants are the way, pixels are life. I've been trying to collect them all, but I see no point in doing so if the new cards will not get pixels.
A: If I can keep sending these posts to Jonny / Impulse, hopefully so!
-Glenn
**#savethepixels or #disgustingpixels or #onlypixelcrystal?
22)
Q: I genuinely love this new remix and I’m wondering if you’re gonna put it somewhere like on the YouTube or Spotify
A: Hello! Very similar to how we released the game's soundtrack on Spotify, iTunes, Youtube, etc, once there is another albums worth of music (it's getting close) we will be working to get that released on all streaming platforms as well! Vol. 2
-Chris Alan
21)
Q: Bounce, which was already in a bad place, just got hit hard by the collector nerf, on Loki's behalf. Will you consider making Monkey 2 energy again, or other buffs to bounce?
A: Collector wasn’t in the top-performing Bounce decks, though they weren’t our target.
We already expect some upcoming releases to have positive and negative impacts to Bounce, so we do expect to buff that deck but want to see how a few things settle first.
-Glenn
20)
Q: With an enemy Mobius in play, will a discarded Swarm cost 0 or 2? Swarm's wording states adding two **copies** that cost 0, which makes me think it is a "unique" card with a base cost of 0, which is what Mobius will see. Or will Mobius know it's a Swarm and set its cost at 2?
A: The copies have cost modifiers, they'll cost 2.
-Glenn
19)
Q: Hello. For the leaderboard launch this season players got into infinite with different amounts of snap points and ranks, and from your reply in a different thread this was based off our MMRs from previous seasons. Was this intentional?
Wondering if snap points will reset at the end of each season, so that everyone gets placed back into equal footing?
A: SNAP Points purposefully don't reset to 0, but we do adjust them at seasonal reset to reduce the impact of past seasons' results and give players room to aspire to higher standings. We'll use this season's data with the feature live to improve that tuning for subsequent seasons and ensure they're appropriately competitive.
-Glenn
18)
Q: I'm playing on Infinite rank and I'm matching with players without the new rank number that goes along hitting Infinite. Is this supposed to happen? Are those players bots? Or am I matching against players not in Infinite rank?
A: Great question, and one that’s meaningful now that more people are Infinite. Your leaderboard standing is actually only visible to your opponent if you’re in the Top 5000 players, and vice-versa. It’s a little bit of prestige for that accomplishment.
-Glenn
17)
Q: You've announced only real players in infinite. Does that mean I could wait significantly longer for a game compared to pre infinite.
A: Yes that is possible. We are trying it out to see how everyone responds to no bots at infinite which is one of the most common requests we have seen since the games release.
-Stephen
**I have noticed very slight increases in queue times. This is one of the best changes in a while so I hope they trust us to deal with the small increase in waiting.
16)
Q: Please explain infinite ranking. Maybe I missed this somewhere. I win 2 cubes and I get a +(let’s say 7) and I lose two cubes and I get a -(let’s say 9). Rank drops real hard when you lose. Doesn’t pump when you win. And if you don’t play for 12 hours, you go from +\- 2300 to +\- 5500. How does this system work?
A: Great questions! the amount you gain / lose is influenced by a few factors, not just how many cubes were at stake. most significantly, it cares about your mmr vs. your opponents mmr, and ergo, who in theory should come out on top.
As for the not playing for 12 hours, what you're probably experiencing is that a lot more players started getting to infinite in that time (as we're still early in the season) and have higher snap points, thus bumping you down. (for example, imagine you were the first person to hit infinite after the season roll. You would be #1 on the leaderboard! ... but then after another 1000 people hit infinite, they may have more snap points than you, and thus bump you from being #1 on the leadboard)
-KentErik
15)
Q: Does the team nerf cards when not exceeding their data? Some cards or deck/strategies may have lower or higher threshold but is the balance change data driven?
A: If we’re having or seeing anecdotal experiences, we’ll investigate, but if meaningful data doesn’t support a change we’re unlikely to make one. That’s one of the ways we check potential bias.
-Glenn
14)
Q: Hey! AFAIK as of this moment, rank 300(my rank) is about 9k Snap Points. Rank 25 is about 10k. I get 1-15 SPs for a win from what I could tell so far. That means I need to win ~100 or more games without losing to get to Rank 25. That just seems unreal and incorrect. Am I missing something?
A: Your SNAP Points do reward volume if you’re a winning player. However, we’re going to continue tuning the exact math around past performance vs. current performance for future season resets.
-Glenn
**They've confirmed that the formula will be tweaked. I think that is great news. Hopefully, it still places weight on previous performance (correlated to MMR, basically), but it tilts further towards current performance. I think players will find that more intuitive and rewarding.
13)
Q: Since The Pig is 0/0 by default, running Mobius would make it 0/N all the time, meaning that if someone had Mobius on board and something big like Infinaught in hand, they'd get a card with 20 power for free after being hit by Ham.
A: Nope, it was primarily influenced by Apocalypse, Living Tribunal, Odin, Heimdall, etc. Ham exerted a lot of pressure on building around those cards, and now they have some counterplay.
-Glenn
12)
Q: With Max Grecke High Evo coming out this month as a repeat. For those who do already have that specific variant, what will happen for the rolling possibilities?
A: The fallback when you already have the base card and the spotlight variant is a premium mystery variant. You will see the premium mystery variant in the set of 4 rewards in the spotlight preview at the top of the CL track instead of a High Evo card
-Stephen
**This is disappointing, and I sympathize with anyone who opens a cache that week and gets a measly premium mystery variant because they already pulled the Grecke High Evolutionary.
11)
Q: I was wondering what the process was like for finding the new mechanic for Snowguard? Since her power is shapeshifting, I would have thought maybe you'd have gone with Merge or even perhaps bounce as a readaption of the hand transform power.
A: We did consider merge, but it was excessively complex. Bounce mechanics, we've learned, are one of those things that sound great in theory, but often don't play out as well. We've burned a lot of playtest time on bounce cards we ultimately killed, so we didn't do that here.
Her powers do include "aurora manipulation" and she specifically forms them in the shape of animals, which we decided was consistent enough with the art and VFX.
-Glenn
10)
Q: Was ever considered for Loki to pull from the starting hand instead of the deck? If so, did that turn out to be too weak like old Crystal?
A: We did try a variety of sources for him to "steal" from, and a variety of ways to buff what he stole.
-Glenn
9)
Q: When creating new cards how do you keep a good balance between an easy to understand effect and something that is fun to play?
Do you have any secret rules you follow?
A: We have some useful practical heuristics, like keeping cards at 3 lines or less and avoiding multiple sentences/abilities. We have killed cards for being too complex—in fact, that’s one of the reasons we didn’t like the “temporary Leech” idea popular among some players when that card had On Reveal. None of the text options we had met our standards.
-Glenn
8)
Q: When designing new cards what comes first between the character and the ability? Is it difficult to match the two?
A: We have a small stash of abilities we want to find homes for, but mostly it's the character first. When we pick a character, if an ability in "the vault" works, we usually just start there.
-Glenn
7)
Q: How are season pass cards designed when it comes to statlines? Are they held to a higher or lower standard of balance than other cards? Are they made to be sure that they aren't too weak? Are they given more time to be changed after release than other cards?
A: We don’t have different thresholds, but we may play the cards more and choose effects that are safer to risk being strong than we would for different effects. For example, Daken isn’t supposed to be stronger than X-23, but we wouldn’t have made Lady Deathstrike a Season Pass card at any rate, or push her strength a risky amount.
We prefer not to weaken Season Pass cards lightly, as we both have faith in our testing as well as the added consideration of how many players are enjoying their new card. We’re stewards of the content, and players should feel safe trusting that we take it seriously.
-Glenn
6)
Q: I'm curious, what led the team to design Iron Lad in his current state? His ability seems like it would belong in the copycat group of Abs Man, Mystique, Morph, and Rogue, but afaik Iron Lad doesn't have any mimicry powers. Wouldn't his design make more sense on someone like Hope Summers, or any of the other mimics in Marvel canon?
A: Creatively, Iron Lad's story has a huge focus on who he'll grow up to be, and whether that fate is malleable or not. We thought this mechanic was a cool way to nod at that, which is a difficult thing to do within our design space. Once we knew the card was fun, that made it easy to run with.
-Glenn
**I like the reader's suggestion for Hope Summers to have Legion's ability. That would be perfect from a flavor perspective. Personally, I've always wished Kiitty and Jeff's abilities were swapped for flavor reasons. While I like that they don't let flavor dictate card design too much, it's pretty satisfying when they nail it. Loki and Alioth are both pretty spot-on from a flavor perspective. Rogue, Nimrod, and Deadpool stand out as flavor winners too. What are your personal flavor hits and misses?
5)
Q: Is the team satisfied with the playtesting aspect and quality control of releasing new cards or is this something that you are actively looking to improve in the future?
As previously stated new cards are in development and testing for a few months at least before being released but often they are released with numerous bugs.
I'm guessing the playtesting of cards includes testing the card with each location on board and I could not see missing some of these mistakes to be that common?
Is the reason for this time or resource constraints to fix such bugs to meet card release schedule, inadequate playtesting or some other technical issues?
A: I think you're confusing playtesting and QA, but we're always working on improvements to both. In my role, I work with both groups, but do different work in each case.
Playtesting is focused on measuring the appeal, strength, and applications for new cards. We want to make sure they're awesome game pieces players will be excited to use. We build and play decks based on how we expect the world to use the card, and as playtesters encounter unusual interactions we report them and fix them. We put some effort into potentially weird interactions, but the focus is primarily on the player and their experience with the card. For example, is the interaction consistent with what they've learned, what would they prefer to happen, etc.
Our QA team focuses on reviewing how new content achieves its goals and intersects with existing content, and reviewing corrections to be sure the problem is solved. It's a lot of documentation and recreating game states. Among design's duties is to help build a list of interactions to check, and help review the full list to verify the expectations are accurate. And you also have to factor in how corrections work--fixing one bug can potentially cause another to occur, but you might've already checked for that one.
As you can imagine, this is an exhaustive task that gets larger with every new release, so QA and Design are both looking for ways to make it more efficient.
-Glenn
4)
Q: I noticed Dan Hipps' birthday is later this month! Any plans to celebrate one of the best Marvel Snap artists in fantastic fashion?
A: We’ve been exploring new ways to celebrate our amazing artists! Stay tuned! 👀
-Chris
**I've noticed that there are quite a few new Dan Hipp cards slated for release later this month. Peach Momoko is getting a major spotlight with all three of the November season pass variants featuring her art and several bundles throughout October and November.
3)
Q: How often does the team work on the idea for a card only to realize that it becomes too overbearing with something like Zabu or Silver Surfer, and do you think cards like this limit the design spaces of what’s possible? Conversely, have there card ideas that were scrapped for being too weak to tech cards like killmonger?
A: Not really. Our balance philosophy permits moving things around, so we can give different cards time in the Sun without making anything permanent.
-Glenn
2)
Q: Hello team! As I remember seeing token variants (zombie squirrel) from a post a few months back, I'd like to ask if there's possible custom animations down the road too? Or maybe voicelines even?
A: We plan to add custom animations and voice lines to ultimate variants (both future and existing) in a future update
-Stephen
1)
Q: Will we be able to do anything useful with splits that we're not using eventually?
A: Right now splitting a character multiple times unlocks new split types like ink and gold foil and Krackle flare. We have some plans on how having a lot of splits for a character can further benefit you. More to share in the future.
-Stephen
**This seems likely related to the "Prestige Level" that was teased in the last Snap Development Roadmap. I'm guessing it's an additional prestige track like your collection track. Hopefully, having a lot of splits of one character gives some cosmetic benefit like the special audio and VFX that are coming to Ultimate variants soon.
Made Infinite with a neat brew. I bumped into someone playing something similar around 93, and used my version the rest of the way. Thanks for the cool deck idea, [opponent]! #MARVELSNAP pic.twitter.com/1j86LXPFLG
— Glenn Jones (@Glenn_Jones_) September 9, 2023
That's all for this week. Head to the Marvel Snap discord and ask a question to potentially be featured here.