The Developers at Second Dinner have been answering player's questions over on the Marvel Snap Discord. We've gone through to find the most interesting answers from the past week and summarized them for you here.

  • This recap covers answers given on the Discord from July 25 through July 31.
  • This is not an exhaustive recap of every answer. We've picked out answers to questions that we either felt were the most interesting, enlightening, or provided additional context to previous answers.
  • The transcript below covers the full answers given to the points we've summarized; for the full experience you'll have to scroll through the Discord and see what we haven't covered.
  • If you want to read our previous Developer Discord Recaps, they can be found here.

Collector's Reserves Clarification

  • As previously stated, every player has the same number of cards and other rewards "shuffled" between the same number of caches/reserves. The only thing that is different among players is the order in which they open those rewards.
  • The number of caches or reserves that these rewards are shuffled between is small, "probably" less than ten. (Since Reserves drop every 12 levels, this means every player above CL 1500 should expect a relatively similar experience within 120 levels of other players).
  • If a player has every card, the odds of getting a new card from a Reserve (25%) is evenly distributed among all other rewards.

Players and Matchmaking

  • Current distribution of players across ranks is thus:
    • 85% of players are below rank 50.
    • 15% of players are between ranks 40 and 49.
    • 3% of players are Infinite.
  • They would like a more even distribution between the ranks, mapping to the expectations of an observer (i.e.- 80% of players below rank 80).
  • They aren't going to add more rank floors (they've answered this before) because it undermines the Snap system.
  • However, they do give ten extra cubes to players the first time they reach a new tier to act as a "buffer."
  • Matchmaking is based on players' Rank, MMR, and Collection Level.
  • They have plans to support a competitive scene for Marvel Snap, and are working on some "cool stuff."

Quality of Life Additions

  • More VO and sound effects are being added with each update. The goal is for every card to one day have their own voiceline or sound effect.
  • They're hoping to add in a way to view personal stats.
  • There's a desire to someday have a way to view and save replays of your games.

Release

  • The game will be released in Europe someday. They need to polish their localization system before they can release in non-English speaking countries.
  • The game will be supported on MacOS.
  • They're really hoping to get friendly matches in the game before global launch.
  • All beta rewards will be obtainable by players after global launch; there are no beta exclusives.

Cards and Balance

  • They use both internal data and player feedback to determine whether a card might be too good or too frustrating to play against.
  • Right now, Hellcow is on the watch list.
  • They don't plan on giving players the ability to "dust" cards to craft other cards.
  • They thought about letting players trade cards or Variants; unfortunately the Infinity Split system made it tricky.
  • Beyond nerfs/buffs, they expect that the regular addition of new Locations and new cards will help shake up the meta. They will eventually release one new card every week.
  • They've spent a lot of time on finding the right balance of progression and monetization; it was difficult because they didn't have a lot of games with similar pieces to study.

Locations

  • There isn't going to be a shortage of new Locations any time soon: the team already has 46 Locations that are designed and ready to be added to the game.
  • Project Pegasus is one of them; it's the arm of S.H.I.E.L.D. that ran experiments on the Tesseract.
  • "Project Pegasus" was also Blizzard's internal codename for Hearthstone (synchronicity!).

Variants

  • Some Variants will use different character incarnations of a given hero. For instance, there's a Variant of Wasp with Nadia Pym instead of Janet van Dyne.
  • However, some alternate characters may get their own card - it depends on the character.
  • "Venomized" characters like Gwenom, et al. will be Variants, not their own card.
  • They're open to all sorts of Variant variations.
  • One thing that's very important to them is that each character have a unique, stylized logo so you can immediately tell what character it is across different Variants.

Miscellaneous

  • All of the art for base cards is unique to Marvel Snap. Some Variants are recreations of iconic covers.
  • Things they plan on adding eventually:
    • More emotes (a nice "Good Game," for one)
    • Cool flavor interactions
  • If you're playing against a bot and you need it to retreat (to complete a mission), try snapping on turn 5 if it looks like they have no way to win.

Team Answers Transcript

Quote From Snap Developers

(I think) It's been stated before that, while collector cache contents are random, all players at certain Collection Levels will have collections of the same size. Can you tell us what these "checkpoint" Collection Levels are, or tell us roughly how often they occur?

Ben Brode: I don't have the exact numbers offhand but it's relatively small, probably less than 10 boxes worth. (Source)

How does having all the currently available cards affect the odds of what rewards a player gets from the Collector’s Reserve? Does the 25% chance of getting a New Mystery Card change to a 25% chance to get a variant? Or does the 25% get evenly distributed to the other rewards?

Ben Brode: the latter (Source)

I'm curious, what is the player distribution for each of the ranks ATM?

Ben Brode: 85% of players are below rank 50. 3% of player are Infinite. 15% of players are 40-49. (Source)

You mentioned a bit ago 85% of players are below rank 50 and only 3% have reached infinite. I'm curious is this what the team has targeted or is there still work to do? I feel every game I'm in is a nail biter and over the last week fell from rank 68 to 57 and still going. Right now it feels like I'm just getting hammered with decks with more fleshed out cards Hellcow, Death being two huge cards I'm missing for the current 'meta'.

Anyways back to the point, what do you guys hope to see with ranked play and the bell curve if you will for players and ranks?

Ben Brode: I think we'd like even distrobution between all the ranks, so that it maps to your expectation of rank 80 = 80% (Source)

Has the dev team considered a ranked floor? Ex. Once you hit level 60 you cannot decay past that point on losses

Ben Brode: yes we actually tried it like that. It creates a lot more moments where the stakes don't matter because 1 player is at the floor and so is "unbluffable". We instead give you 10 extra cubes when you first rank up to a new tier to help give you some buffer. (Source)

Wouldn’t it be more fair and fun if matchmaking was based on rank ladder, instead of on the CL? Just because you are high on the CL doesn’t mean you are good (asking for a friend)

Ben Brode: It is based on Rank, MMR, and CL (Source)

What do you think or plan about future competitive scene or tournament. I think this game is super fun and want to see top player play in competitive scene

Ben Brode: we have a lot of thoughts about this and we're working on some cool stuff (Source)

Is it a goal for every card in the game to have an accompanying sound effect/voiceline? Cards like America Chavez and Agent 13 lack sounds when played, as an example.

TheChrisAlan: That would be the goal one day! There's just a lot to chew off. You'll notice with each update more and more sound effects and VO coming into the game! For America Chavez her special moment is when she enters your hand, you'll hear a sound at that moment. (Source)

Are any plans on showing personal stats? like win streak, max points made in a location, my most winning location, most used card, and so.

Ben Brode: yes that's something we'd love to do! (Source)

Any plans to add a "save replay" or "view replay" to the game?

Ben Brode: yes, we'd love to do this some day (Source)

Can you confirm the game will be released in europe some day ? Currently no EU country has been available for open beta, and the game has started releasing in east asia 😦

Ben Brode: yes some day we will release in EU! Workin' hard to get there as soon as we can! We don't have a localization system yet, so we can't release in any non-english-speaking countries until we've got that! (Source)

Any chance the little flag that allows it to run on macOS will be ticked?

Ben Brode: yeah we were just looking into that! I'll check in and see how that's going (Source)

Any plans on a friend's list? My brother and couple of guys at work play and would love to be able to challenge them to games with our decks

Ben Brode: playing against a friend is something we'd love to do before global launch if possible (Source)

With the cancellation of the Nexus Events, what happens to all the cosmetics that were tied to the 1st event? Will they be acquirable later on in a different way, potentially being added to the global pool of cosmetics, or will they remain exclusive to those that pull them before the event concludes?

Ben Brode: there are no exclusive rewards before global launch anyway - everything will be made available in some form after we launch globably (Source)

What's your stand on Leader? He seems way too overpowered. I can't figure out a way to play around him. He counters all your potential swings and adds his power to it.

Ben Brode: Right now that data seems like he might be in an ok place but y'all's feedback is an important component in considering whether card might be too good or too frustrating. Thanks! (Source)

Any chance of moving hell cow to bucket two/1? Feels like an essential card for discard decks.

Ben Brode: Yeah Hellcow seems very good. I would say she's on the watch list. (Source)

In regards to players Speaking about the ability to "dust"/destroy cards to craft other cards: (Pulled from Nexus Event Chat with Players)

Stephen: we have no plans right now to ask players to destroy things in their collection (Source)

Might be a bit pie in the sky…but would you ever consider a system for friends to trade Variants, or even cards themselves?

Ben Brode: yes we have considered that but unfortunately it's a bit tricky with the infinity split system (Source)

Other card games have expansions that shake up the meta every once in a while. Is there concern that the relatively slow drip of new heroes is going to keep players interested? Is the expectation that we’ll be playing the same decks/some evolution of the same decks for the life of the game?

Ben Brode: we have a lot of tools to shake up the meta - buffs/nerfs, new locations, new game modes, and also we plan on (eventually) releasing about 1 new card a week. Should feel really fresh. (Source)

were there any alternative card reward methods you considered before settling on the one we currently have?

Ben Brode: yes this is probably the thing we spent the most time on - very challenging because there aren't really any other games that have so few individual game pieces but don't allow power progression, (and still monetize well enough that we can afford to do marketing and grow the game) so there wasn't a lot to look at and copy. (Source)

How many more locations do you have planned? I love how we get a new one every week but is there a limit eventually?

Ben Brode: we have 46 locations that are designed and ready that aren't in the game yet

but we keep making more (Source)

Are there any easter egg or reference to past projects from the dev team or something?

Ben Brode: Project Pegasus is a Marvel location, but it also just happens to be the internal codename we used for Hearthstone

oh crap that location hasn't been released yet LOL (Source)

Today i saw a "variant" of Wasp that featured Nadia instead of Janet.
Should we expect more variants with entirely different characters?
Will Miles be a variant of Spiderman?
Will we see a Laura Kinney Wolverine?

Ben Brode: really depends on the character! but yes, some characters are variants (Source)

Are there any possibilities for Venomized Characters as Cards? Such as Gwenom, Gwenompool, etc. Not as variants.. but as actual cards with their own abilities? Or are these more likely to be Variants?

Ben Brode: those are definitely going to be variants (Source)

Are there any plans or are you at least open to the possibility of doing the two variants with the same artist of the same character but different version. For example chibi Tessa Thompson Valkyrie and chibi comic accurate Valkyrie or pixel art spider man and pixel art scarlet spider?

Ben Brode: certainly open to that (Source)

Since all the cards have the same font art do you have one guy that makes all these amazing custom fonts/logos?

I love cool custom fonts lol. As a follow up question will we ever see variants with changes in font style or color? Or potentially as an additional benefit of an infinity split?

Ben Brode: Usually we try and use the logo that already exists from the comic books, but a lot of our characters never had a solo run, so we work with some very talented logo artists who custom create logos for 'em.

Very unlikely for us to change logos. As players we build a connection between art and gameplay. I never have to read the card if I can see immediately that it's "Beast", even if the art is totally different. Because we have so many wild variants, we rely on the logo staying the same to always be that connection. (Source)

It appears as though much of the base card art is taken from the 2015 "The Ultimates" comics. At least at first glance.
Is that correct?
How long did it take to determine the art direction of the base cards compared to what direction variant art would take?

Most games only have to choose a single unified art direction. So I am intrigued to hear more about the decision making process, and inspiration from comics.

Ben Brode: All of the base art is created from scratch for MARVEL SNAP! We have some variants where we wanted to take iconic covers from Marvel history and do our awesome 3D effect to 'em, but none of the base cards are done with that method (Source)

Any plans for other emotes or phrases. Like i would like a Respect Good Game. Would be nice

Ben Brode: yes, we have some more plans here, especially for a respectful GG emote at some point (Source)

recently found out that if you play agatha in your deck she gets all the boosters for herself - are there any other neat secret interactions players haven't found yet?

Ben Brode: I'm not sure but we're planning on adding a bunch of cool flavor interactions (Source)

how can i make the bots retreat for the "make 5 enemies retreat" mission? I have no idea how to do it considering the fact that I keep encountering bots (didn't find a player in 2 days). Will i just end up losing 4000 season pass exp?

Ben Brode: Try to snap when they have no possible winning play on turn 5 (Source)