The Developers at Second Dinner have been answering community 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 August 16 through August 21.
  • 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.

Marvel Snap's Current Roadmap

  • These are the main things the developers are focused on currently:
    • Localization and government compliance
    • PC version
  • They have an inbox system and the replacement for Nexus Events in the initial design phase.
  • They're currently working on a competitive game mode; in related news, players have previously discovered hints of a Tournament Mode in the game's code.
  • Also on the roadmap is the ability to add friends, spectate, and challenge friends.
  • They might start sharing their dev schedule and patch cadence with players once things settle down; it changes too much currently.

Player Retention

  • The developers have seen minimal changes to player engagement and retention over the past few weeks.
  • They are working on improving the systems that appear to draw the most complaints, which are currently the Collection Level and matchmaking.
  • They want to please as many players as possible.

Turn 1 and Game Design

  • The devs are fine with the idea that both players don't do anything on turn 1 in most games.
  • At one point in the game's design, they started players with 2 Energy but this meant that Energy amount and turn number no longer lined up and the wording on cards and Locations became too cumbersome.
  • They also found that they missed the slow-roll of the game with a 1 Energy turn.
  • They are trying to discourage too much delay, and are wary of strategies where neither player plays anything until turn 6.

Card Design

  • They design more cards from the "top-down," but some released cards were designed "bottom-up."
  • For Marvel Snap, "top-down" means they take the character from the comics, then design an ability to fit them. "Bottom-up" means they design the ability first, then find a character to attach it to.
  • Examples of "top-down" cards: Rogue, Nightcrawler, Mysterio, Mister Negative
  • Examples of "bottom-up" cards: Zero, Adam Warlock, Cosmo

Cards

  • They've confirmed that She-Hulk was going to be released this month as part of a Nexus Event. They're still working out what they're going to do with her.
  • Rogue does not trigger her On Reveal effect twice when played with Wong because once she's stolen an ability she no longer has her old ability.
  • It is intended that Mysterio and his illusions each boost Bishop; this means he gets +3 Power from Mysterio.
  • Aero can destroy an unrevealed card by moving them to Fisk Tower before they are revealed; this is one of the few ways an unrevealed card can be destroyed.

Cosmetics

  • They will eventually add the option of selecting "Use Random Variant" and other cosmetics for games (like the Random card back in Hearthstone).
  • They take inspiration for new art pieces from all over the Marvel universe, whether it's TV, movies, comics, etc.
  • They hope to add in variants inspired by Marvel's Midnight Suns.
  • Ben likes the idea of creating variant art inspired by OverPower (the '90s CCG that featured Marvel characters).

Miscellaneous

  • Watch D23 to find out if there's any big Marvel Snap news; the Disney & Marvel Games Showcase is on September 9 at 1 PM PT.
  • They've tried a bunch of card acquisition systems that originally sounded great but didn't feel good in practice.
  • The weirdest one they tried had players send characters out on missions to level them up and get new cards, similar to WoW's garrisons.
  • There are no plans to restrict specific combinations of Locations; more Locations will be added over time and they may reduce the chance of seeing certain Locations. This was in response to a question about Fisk Tower and The Bifrost.
  • Ben finally surrendered to the hype and has started watching season 1 of Better Call Saul.

Team Answers Transcript

Quote From Snap Developers

What is the dev schedule like behind the scenes? Are we still getting patches "when they are ready" or is there like.. "we plan to roll out a patch every X Weeks". Can any insight into the development map be shared at the moment?

Stephen: We have a regular patch cadence but we try to avoid promising dates because there are a bunch of reasons we would have to delay a patch.

Main things we are working on right now are localization, government compliance, and PC. There is an inbox system and the replacement for nexus currently in the design phase among a bunch of other stuff. Maybe when things settle down more we will consider sharing a dev schedule. It changes too much right now to stay accurate for more than a week or two. (Source)

Any chance for a tournament mode? Where players can fight each other for cool rewards like credits, gold or even limited cosmetics?

Ben Brode: we are working on a competitive game mode that we think players will really like! (Source)

Will we able to add friend and pvp with friend ? or watch friend playing live

Stephen: Yup it's on our roadmap. Coming in the future! (Source)

Have you seen a significant drop off in player activity over the last few weeks? Or had the opposite happened? Obviously last week a new season was launched so activity would spike but how did last week compare to the opening week of the Thor season? The feedback channel is full of disheartened people with issues about the CL and matchmaking. I want to get the pulse on the state of the game.

Stephen: There has been minimal change to engagement and retention. We would love to make everyone happy but sadly that is an impossible dream. We are continually working on improving CL and matchmaking but those changes can take time (Source)

From my experience it looks like most games have fewer plays on turns one and two - in part because the meta is favoring big ramp end game decks, and in part because players are choosing to use their one and two drops to fill in the gaps of later turns.

It’s obviously a fine way to play, but I’m wondering what the team thinks of it. Is the desired balance of cards and mechanics such that more frequent early plays happen, or is it fine as is?

Ben Brode: I think it's ok as-is - we actually attempted to completely remove turn 1 because it doesn't always matter and would speed up the game, but it actually made our labelling feel quite weird. "After turn 3" became "After the 3-Energy turn" since Energy and turns didn't line up any more. And actually having a bit of a slow-roll into the game was something we missed when we didn't have turn 1. So yeah, not the biggest deal if people are always playing 1 drops on turn 1. There's an extreme though, where neither player plays anything until turn 6, so we do need to be careful with strategies that encourage too much delay. (Source)

When you create a card or location, do you think of a character or location first and then think about what effect it could have? Or do you think of an effect or ability first and then think about which character it would match?

Ben Brode: we have done both of those things many times - we call them "top-down" and "bottom-up" design (Source)

Roughly what percent of the card designs have been top down/vs bottom up?
Could you give some examples of each type?

Ben Brode: oh gosh I'm not sure
Top Down: Rogue, Gambit, Nightcrawler, Domino, Multiple Man, Invisible Woman, Mysterio, Mr. Fantastic, Storm, Magik, Killmonger, Green Goblin, Mister Negative
Bottom Up: Zero, Medusa, Adam Warlock, Viper, Ironheart, Rescue, Cosmo

Generally i think we do more top-down, especially these days (Source)

Was She-Hulk planned as a Nexus Event card? Any info on when those cards are going to be available?

Stephen: Yes she was going to be a Nexus card. Still working on next steps there. (Source)

Why when I play rogue where is Wong she don’t activated the effect twice?

Stephen: When Rogue activates and steals an ability, her ability changes to that new one. She cannot steal two abilities because her ability changed (Source)

Mysterio and his 2 illusions activate Bishop's ability 3 times. Is this working as intended or a glitch?

Stephen: Working as intended (Source)

If you play Aero with priority and it moves their play to Fisk Tower, is it intended that their card gets destroyed before it is revealed?

Ben Brode: yes, one of the few ways that can happen (Source)

Hi feedback team. I just wanted to raise the suggestion to have an option to "Select Random Variant", so that each game you play you will see a random variant in your deck if you happen to own more than one 😄

Stephen: Love this idea. We will add it at some point! Same w other cosmetics too (Source)

What limits does the art team have? Does all card art have to be original or are they able to pull from anything whether it be comics, shows, or movies. If it's completely open, does that mean there's potentially limitless options. (Not truly unlimited, but there's plenty of places to choose from)

Ben Brode: We take inspiration from all over the Marvel Multiverse! We have stuff that only appeared on TV, only appeared in comics, and only appeared in movies. (Source)

With Marvel’s Midnight Suns getting variant covers on upcoming physical Marvel comics, could we see Marvel Snap variants get their own comic covers in stores?

Ben Brode: I sure hope so - we created a lot of super rad art for this game (Source)

Any plans for variants from the Overpower series? Or is that kind of a nightmare for licensing or whatever it's called? Those sets had some real bangers.

Ben Brode: I loved Overpower - any pieces you particularly loved? (Source)

Any possible big news for Marvel Snap coming out of D23 next month? Saw the announcement from Marvel Games socials…

Stephen: Watch D23 and find out! (Source)

What are some of the theorized solutions you can share to the card acquisition system that players have said doesn't feel great from the get-go?

Ben Brode: hahaha the downside of sharing this stuff is that these systems sound great (and so players will be unhappy they don't get to play with them), but only revealed themselves to be not-fun in practice. This is often the case in game dev, where we get excited about an idea, try it, and realize it sucks.

Anyway with that in mind, we tried a whole mission system where you had characters you were levelling up and sending on missions to get you new cards, kind of like the garrison system from World of Warcraft. There were a bunch of others but that was the weirdest one. (Source)

are there any plans to restrict location pairings in games? with the growing number of them having restrictive effects this seems to be leading towards a non-game scenario (Bifrost moving cards to Fisk Tower) Is this the intended direction?

Ben Brode: no current plans for that - we have LOTS or more locations coming and we could also reduce the chance for some over time, but no plans for banning specific combos (Source)

Has nothing to do with the game but have any of you been keeping up with better call Saul and hyped for the finale?

Ben Brode: the hype finally got to me - i've started watching season 1 this week (Source)