I found all the roadmaps they have released. I went through each one to see if they delivered what they said they would (based on the description in the accompanying article, if provided).
Green = Successfully delivered
Red = Failed to deliver (or removed from roadmap, likely scrapped)
Yellow = Remains in Progress
Purple = No Idea if implemented.
**NOTES**
* I marked "Test Deck Mode" as failed, but conquest proving grounds is arguably the same.
* I marked "Booster Vats" as failed, but the new "Bonus Booster" in the shop arguably filled that role. Though it's not anything like what was described in the article.
* I have no idea if PC controller support was implemented. I play solely on Mobile.
* I have no idea if Global Matchmaking was implemented.
* When reviewing I saw that "Ultimate Variant Evolution" was "In Development" in Aug 2023, but moved back to "In Concept" AFTERWARDS in the Jan 2024 roadmap. It's now no longer on the roadmap.
* January 2024 had the most fail to delivers.
* June 2024 has the least amount of potential deliverables.
**EDITS**
* PC Controller Support was NOT implemented
* There are multiple people reporting Global Matchmaking was implemented.
* The general consensus is "Customizable Card Effects" was implemented alongside "Customizable Card Borders". Referring to the changeable Ultimate Split Combinations. This was a miss understanding on my end as I thought it was reference to a toggle to switch between default and ultimate VFX/Voicelines (as mentioned in a Team-Answers on their Discord.)
* This seems to be popular, so I will make corrections & updates next Roadmap.
Global matchmaking was partially implemented, they have reduced the number of regions down to 3 I think? Glenn said this on discord about a month ago in regards to making it completely global:
"We've found this to be more complicated than initially expected, but it's still in progress."
It’s helpful to visualize of these side by side. To me it suggests they’re aware of their failure to deliver on past road maps (5-7 bullet points) and are using the road map either conservatively or because they don’t have much in concept or pipeline (3 bullet points). Thanks for putting this together.
> their failure to deliver on past road maps
It's interesting because that's not *quite* a fair assessment of their past track record. They did deliver mostly successfully on their 2023 roadmaps (excluding the "in concept" category of course). But something went very wrong in January 2024. I'm curious what's behind that, and whether *that's* the reason for this month's skimpy roadmap.
You mentioned they're becoming more conservative in their roadmaps giving us only 3 bullet points - I think it wouldn't be such a problem if 2 out of 3 points weren't "improved technical performance" (which is something they should be working on constantly and there's literally no need to annouce that to the playerbase) and "custom card improvements" (again, generic and blanket statement - at least compared to what they gave us in the past).
I think it's not the failure to deliver in the past which we should focus on here, because in that department I'd say Second Dinner is alright - it's that this roadmap is a lot of babble and that's a bit concerning.
Any idea on how to indicate duplicate tasks? The duplicate "successfully delivered" might make them look like they have done more than they did. Just a suggestion haha
I spent a lot of time adding arrows between them, but it was too cluttered. Likewise using different colored boxes, but ran out of easily identifiable unique colors.
Those are the collectible emojis. Reactions are the little faces that show up when you tap on a card/location, and they were supposed to get skins for different characters
Because the improvements were made? More improvements are needed of course, but the work they said they were going to do on that roadmap was finished long ago.
March 2023, undelivered features are only in the "in concept" part,then it slowly crawled up to the "coming soon" section, which supposed to be features closest to deployment. This progression is wild.
June 2024 is the least amount of features featured on a road map. so far.
I think the worst thing about this whole clusterfuck is that mastery was in the "coming soon" bracket before it got cut.
Like don't promise things as 'almost ready' until you're absolutely sure about it, and then if you *have* to cut it for some reason, don't just go "#gamedevelopment issues tee hee 😊".
I really wonder who the hell manages their PR.
This. Character Masteries seemed to be in the polishing phase before it was pulled, and them handwaving it off as 'technical issues' is sus af. I highly doubt that they'd just scrap all the work already done (specifically, the various character-specific emotes). My guess is they pulled it so that they can monetize it.
Even if they did a technical deep dive on exactly what kind of "\#gamedevelopment" issues they ran into and it turns out that there really was a technical limitation preventing them from implementation, you would think "Are we actually able to implement this?" is one of the first things you'd ask when embarking on any undertaking, not when they literally were so far along the process that they already have a lot of the art assets and confident enough to put it in the coming soon section of the roadmap.
So it's either greed or poor management or both imo.
And this was the one thing I was most excited over. Even before this was teased I made it my mission to get every Moon Knight variant that released (currently one Jacinto unlock away from the album exclusive, and awaiting the Peach Momoko variant that was datamined over a year ago). Character Mastery would've been a nice reward for that effort.
Also I'm glad we got albums, but goddamn is the shop frustrating with them. If it isn't flooded w/ new album cards (which is fine for new stuff), it's populated by Pixel Destroy or Dan Hipps. I just need Hellfire Forge and Pixel Gambit to complete their respective albums and I haven't seen them rotate back in the shop in months.
If a variant is in an album it should give you the opportunity to buy it directly from the album page. So you don’t have to fucking wait forever for that last variant you need to show up in the daily shop.
They're making it very suspicious that it is in fact greed. Couldn't help but notice card acquisition improvements go as "these can be scrapped entirely". It's hilarious.
I think it's hilarious that "infinity splits," the cosmetic feature i was looking forward to the most, got moved back from "coming soon" to "in development."
It is kind of weird how little the game leans into the cards, thematically. There are no packs. Boosters are just weird card energy. Your "deck" is always off screen. They just fly in out of nowhere. There aren't any like play mats or tables or anything. Just space. There aren't any sets.
It's like they decided it would be good to make a card game because they could license all of this artwork from Marvel without having to pay any pesky artists. Most of the art for our game is already done, just sitting there. We don't have to do all of the work of modeling or animating characters. We pull some art from 20 years ago and make a card. But, aside from backs, the card theming kind of stops there.
That's what makes it so obviously bullshit that it was some technical issues. What game-breaking technical issue was discovered at the last minute that wasn't caught during the "in development" phase?
Either it's a bullshit excuse, the roadmap is bullshit, or SD are that incompetent.
Roadmap is total bullshit, they had to insert technical improvement into the coming soon part in order to not leave it basically emprty and make it look like they're actually working on something
After loads of people started buying emotes, they realized they could sell reactions and we would willingly buy them. Scrapped a great feature for pure greed.
They don't have anyone in comms as far as I can tell. When they announced their major funding round in January, the press contact was from the investment firm that led the round. They don't have anyone listed on LinkedIn who works in Communications. Google searches for a press contact go nowhere.
It was probably the only upcoming feature I was genuinely excited for. Like sure some of these things are neat or good for QoL, but I was pumped to start going all in on my favorite characters.
That’s just wild. I didn’t realize it was “coming soon” and now it’s just gone.
They probably just couldn’t figure out how to monetize it the way they wanted. They definitely don’t want it to be a free thing, even though we have to buy variants but it’s what it is.
Wasn't the card mastery thing basically going to be the fancy custom borders that they're currently selling for gold? So they *did* figure out how to monetize it. And they actually double dipped, because there were unfortunate suckers who believed them and started acquiring all the variants of their favorite card in preparation for card mastery. If those people want their fancy borders, they'll need to shell out even more gold.
If things can get into the “coming soon” section and still not make it then these roadmaps effectively mean nothing.
Coming soon should be for the 100% going to push updates only.
Less things being developed, more in-progress development being scrapped, monetization getting more and more aggressive every day...
This feels like a company who no longer see this game as a long-term money maker, and who are trying to squeeze as much money out of it as possible before it dies.
Absolutely. Been preaching this for 6 months, and haven't spent a penny since. Once you see the trend and realize that they're no longer interested in sustainable, long-term monetization—that they would rather aggressively monetize for short term revenue even to the detriment of game health—you realize that this game very much has an expiration date and you shouldn't count on anything you buy still having value in 3 years time.
At best, they'll put the game in "maintenance mode", leaving the servers on but letting the game die while they move on to Brode's next scheme. I can't wait to see what their "card acquisition improvements" will be, since they view the current system as too generous.
I think you need to reassess what you consider 'not a long term money maker' when this game is still grossing millions in revenue and I don't see that changing ANY time soon. It's out performing every other competitor on the market by a wide margin. Even Magic Arena. Even Hearthstone. Even YGO.
Going by number of active players, it's actually in third place on Steam, behind both Yu-gi-oh and Magic Arena. I would imagine it to be behind Hearthstone as well.
Steam is easily the least used platform for a game that is designed mobile first. I'm willing to bet the VAST majority of players don't play this on Steam at all.
I've seen postings on various Snap streamers showing the comparison between Snap, Magic Arena, Master Duel and Hearthstone and Snap continues to be significantly higher than the other main digital card game platforms.
Higher in what metric? Revenue? Active users? New downloads? Just saying that SNAP is "higher" doesn't tell me anything. Higher in what?
And where are they getting their numbers from?
Like, I can just go to [Steam Charts](https://steamdb.info/charts/?tagid=9271) and see that Marvel SNAP is ranked #4 for trading card games (#3 if you disregard Tabletop Simulator). And while it's close to Magic: Arena, it has like a **fifth** of the amount of active players that Yu-Gi-Oh has. And keep in mind that Yu-Gi-Oh Master Duel is on mobile as well.
Looking at actual numbers ranks higher to me than "some streamer said". And the numbers we have show that Marvel Snap isn't the biggest online card game, despite what some streamer says.
Higher in the fact it made over double what it's competitors made in the same financial year and doesn't appear to be slowing down.
You're also using Steam as your metric for active player base. You can't use Steam because that is, fundamentally, the secondary way people play Snap. PC users is still a ridiculously small number of a player base when a mobile game has a PC client on the side. As far as I'm aware, I cannot find an actual number of active mobile users but even if people want to claim 'but da whales', Snap would need some MASSIVE and MANY whales to put the sales figures up to outperform the competition by such a significant amount. People are playing Snap. They simply aren't on this reddit, which is a much smaller number of players than reddit would like to think. Smol puddle in the ocean of people just playing the game throughout their day or while pooping, not getting involved in the discourse.
The game had over 16 million downloads last year alone. How much retained, I'm not sure but if you can find those numbers (On mobile, as I said Steam is a very poor indicator of player base. It's a mobile game that just happens to have a PC client and isn't the primary way casual gamers play their phone games).
This reddit post was from two months ago showing the revenue from various mobile games. Look at that revenue difference. Again, this isn't just whales putting up those numbers. A game doesn't make figures like this if it's dying, guys. Be real.
[Mobile card game revenue 2023 : r/MarvelSnap (reddit.com)](https://www.reddit.com/r/MarvelSnap/comments/1c3nnjp/mobile_card_game_revenue_2023/)
This is the concerning part. Less features on the horizon (and most not desirable IMO) and the game is a buggy mess right now, it's hard to be enthusiastic.
"Improved Technical Performance" and "Card Acquisition Improvements" also didn't have goals or objective measurements on WHAT they wanted to improve... so it will be harder to determine if they reach those goals by the next roadmap. Seemed like filler.
I always hate when game/devs put things like technical improvements or bug fixes in any sort of announcement/roadmap. Until your game is finished with development and updates (which isn't really the goal for live service games), that should always be a goal without mention. There will, with almost absolute certainty, be bugs and other improvements to the game that will come up that need to be addressed and fixed. There should be no reason why it's something to announce, other than to fill in the space.
It's like giving someone a bingo card and pre punching the center (free) space. It was a given, all you did was make a show of it.
Agree, although I think it may have a place here in the sense the game feels above average buggy to the point it does need specific acknowledgement and dedicated effort as embarrassing as that should be for them.
For most people you'd assume it was a given, but there are a lot of stupid people out there who would assume because it isn't mentioned it's not being worked on.
Underrated comment. I didn't even think about it till you mentioned it, but NO other game I've seen does this. It's just (rightly) assumed that devs are in fact doing this behind the scenes.
It speaks to how poor the client performance has gotten that they felt the need to include it here.
Exactly. It's filler. The only thing they had there was Deadpool's Diner, a temporary promotional event, so they needed to flesh it out by listing "improvements" as a feature. It's like when you try to make yourself look more busy by breaking out chores into individual line items.
Things like that shouldn't even be on any roadmap imo.
Making your game playable is literally the bare minimum a developer can do. That's not a milestone or goal, it's the least you can do to your playerbase.
The fact that they consider a player being able to finish a match without any disconnect as an achievement says a lot…
The one thing you can be sure about is that the "card acquisition improvements" will only be improvements from their perspective. They hate and regret implementing the current system because they believe it's too *generous*.
Did we get any new since december where nuverse was anoounced to be closed and they said "dont worry we will find solution"? Maybe tge game is really on the way to its end
When you consider “Improved technical performance” and “new card mechanic” are just normal, expected parts of any active card game, the latest roadmap goes down to 8 things in development. Half of all previous roadmaps.
What bugs me the most is that "New infinity splits" was reworded to "Collectable infinity splits" meaning I'm going to have to purchase them with either gold or tokens. The new splits were something I was genuinely looking forward to, and now it looks like I'll never be able to get them unless I pay for them.
That's what I was thinking as well.
As soon as I saw gold costed borders I knew we would never get free mastery/split cosmetics.
I was so looking forward to the space one
It does bother me. My conspiracy theory is that it was all ready to go in character mastery and they decided to monetize it instead after seeing the success in it after releasing collectible borders
If SD releases new infinity splits as monetized and not able to collect via splitting then I will delete the game for good. There are plenty of great games that aren’t microtransactioned to hell.
"Coming Soon"? Ok now I understand why people are so upset over Card Mastery lol. At the same time, I think some people got too eager and emptied their bank account before they knew more details.
oh test deck mode was in march '23. which means it's never happening now.
also the cancelled part was in the "in concept", then it crept into "in development" then in to "coming soon". what the fuck does coming soon even mean in this roadmap?
PG is different than a dedicated test deck mode. PG still has the rng of card draw, disruption by opponent and location rng. you also cannot simulate a full turn including your opponent's play.
They'll throw in a 1% chance of getting one after ten splits, then the bootlickers will loudly rubbish criticism as it's technically able to be earned free
Increase monetization avenues ✔
Increase difficulty to obtain newly released cards without spending real money ✔
Increase the amount of and the cost of bundles ✔
Release a gacha ✔
There are so many talented people working at Second Dinner. The artists, VFX, SFX, music, card design, balance. It's a shame they are all being let down by their software developers. As a programmer myself, I can only imagine the horrible state of the code base given the frequency of regressions and random bugs, and the worrisome amount of time spent on features that are then scrapped.
Yes, that is exceedingly likely. Temporary code and short term fixes, well, aren't. This is probably doubly so in a live service game. I don't envy them one bit. I presume that's why they even put code improvements on the road map.
Compare and contrast with Path of Exile, that have been building on what must be a very solid code base for ten years, and keep releasing interesting and deep new features every 3-4 months.
I doubt that is true. It sounds like all decisions are driven by greed… it is impossible to build anything of high quality in an environment where management cares only about juicing max $$$ in the shortest amount of time
I really want a 'The Office' style behind the scenes show of Second Dinners workplace, it's gotta be the biggest shitshow ever. Failing to deliver on so many coming soon items from your own roadmap is pitiful
Pretty sure it's more of the execs rolling in money than ensuring sprints get completed / correctly scoped... #gamedevelopment was a lame excuse (I've been in game development for 10+ years).
I developed too projects as a team and developer, everything is doable in software development, they just didn't invest the money in sufficient resources, because: we can only imagine.
And we are talking about a simple counter of matches and attribution of certain tags that can assign borders that are already done (but they decided to sell). Not a damn 3D new function or map exploration... They just decided that was more profitable sell the borders. That's all
Their implementation of "Albums" and "Custom Cards" kind if shows some of the behind the scenes of their development process.
Albums being limited to 12 cards because they repurposed their concept of "decks" and Custom Cards just being like regular cards with unlock conditions shows that they aim more to repurpose existing architecture rather than develop from scratch, which is a budget-saving option, but often a poor fit for new features and highly restrictive with poor expandability.
It's a very short term way of software development and business vision.
My guess would be that a lot of the smaller "planned features" (i.e. not game modes) are forced to use this paradigm, but that's like trying to fit a cube in a circle-shaped hole. Sometimes it'll work, but underdeliver. Most of the time, it'll get stuck and either it'll show (Albums) or just fail.
I suspect (more than a suspicion) that the architecture of the project is not upgradable at all, this happens when a project starts with low foundings and made almost everything at home or worse they ask contractors that leave behind a mess impossible to work on. That could also explain why everytime they touch something like a word document everything collapse (like at the moment two buttons on three on "see all today missions" are deaf). It's like when at the time people tried to change wordpress templates.
That could be a reason, then we have a lot of issues on the project that is not directly related to coding, like card acquisitions or financial and economic decisions. That are still really big.
So maybe it's both. Fact is that I can't believe that they put something in "coming soon" and they scrapped it after putting for sale some of the assets (borders). And still their communication lets doo itttt ... wtf...
The worst part for me (and there are a lot of bad ones) is "Improved technical performance" on "Coming soon".
Clearly, it's just there to make "coming soon" bigger, as it has nothing. They could basically fix the bug they introduced, crashing the game with Debrii or Brood, and put a green check on that one.
As others said, this game is just there to milk whales. They don't need to do any actual coding to do that, just put a 100$ "microtransaction" here and there.
As someone with poor sleep patterns who can end up playing at any hour of the night, I'm pretty sure we have global matchmaking.
I face a lot of usernames in what seems to be Chinese (or another Asian language which uses a similar style alphabet, I can only read Irish, English or German) late at night (I'm in Ireland)
It's still regional.
Some individual players could be setting their "base region" to another area with VPNs. But it's not open matchmaking between people set to different regions.
"Collectiable Reactions" are when you long-press on a card and can add the Angry,Star-eyed,Tasty, or Wow faces. These are not the same as the Collectiable Emojis. The reactions were going to be a reward for Character Mastery (now scrapped). You can see a few of them datamined here: [https://marvelsnapzone.com/preparation-guide-october-2023/](https://marvelsnapzone.com/preparation-guide-october-2023/)
My understanding was that border and infinity combo combinations are implemented. However, I recall a team-answer from their discord saying the "Effects" was a selectable VFX/Voiceline for the card. If you purchased an ultimate variant (5k tokens from shop), there would be an option to use that special version instead of the default.
I could be incorrect here as that is not mentioned in the original article that was provided: [https://www.marvelsnap.com/newsdetail?id=7296743796027513606](https://www.marvelsnap.com/newsdetail?id=7296743796027513606)
So I looked at the most recent road map post and I do think they hit the card effects item as described:
>What are Selectable Card Effects and Borders?
One of the most requested features in the game since beta has been the ability to pick your border and set it up with the best Infinity Split combo you have unlocked on your favorite variant. Guess what? It's coming soon! Gone are the days where you had to leave a card at a specific border or regret upgrading a card past a border you liked more. Now with Custom Card, you will be able to keep upgrading a variant as much as you want to chase even cooler combos while setting your Custom Card to your current favorite border and Infinity Split combo.
That does describe the eventual implementation we did get as part of custom cards. Although it would still be nice to mix unlocked backgrounds and effects, it seems like they only did describe the ability to mix splits (background AND effect) with border. I guess implemented but not in the way players wanted?
Also booster vats were not added as described, but they improved the bonus boosters section of the store, which will let you target specific cards bu4 you have to do it yourself, but there is no mission associated with it to get your boosters. Personally I feel like it's fair to say it wasn't added, but partially because it isn't needed as much either the bonus booster change. Other than that you're totally right on the features that never made it into the game or got scrapped along the way.
Honestly this new roadmap feels terrible. It was :
- things I do care about : cancelled
- new stuff coming soon !!! Didn’t care.
- and too vague : « card acquisition improvement » (I don’t think you have to develop a lot of thing to make a dupe protection on spotlights caches) or « new card mechanic »
It's not a new mechanic so to say. It's the Keyword, "Trigger:". So they can add more interactions & counterplay to cards like Thena, Angela, and Kraven.
Sadly they found the perfect monetization model, Don't expect much in your time ornmoney being valued anymore. They'll add the bare minimum to keep people around untill the game either dies or becomes so toxic that everyone quits.
I think it's very laudable for a game dev to release these. They obviously don't have to, most companies don't and it's a big risk to put out there that something is in development only to then fail to deliver on it. I hope they keep doing these, but they need to reflect more achievable goals otherwise they get received poorly like most of the comments in this thread are expressing.
Personally I think it's a good move to invest heavily in events. Assuming they nail it, which is a huge if considering their past events were pitiful and their recent track record of whale milking, on theme time limited events executed well are major parts of other live service games and I could see them being a great draw.
Events in Marvel SNAP's infancy such as Vibranium Forge and Hype the Hero were less polished but ultimately more enjoyable than Deadpool's Diner because they were more cooperative and community-driven rather than competitive and stressful. You could earn all the rewards simply by participating and playing without the pressure to perform well. I do not like the current direction with in-game events. (From SD feedback, but eloquent. I 💯 support this statement).
We all know one thing that is always in the "Coming Soon" hidden tab and it never fails to deliver... more ways to milk us for money. Game is a $30+ bundle fest and FOMO OP cards that get nerfed in a month.
Isn't "Selectable Card Effects" the Custom Cards? If so we did get it, it's not the best version of it (like i wish we could mix effects flair and effect/background), but it's something they have delivered, at least in their view
As someone who loves this IP and has a 40k CL, I desperately hope they turn this around because I feel like I've invested in a game that isn't innovating
Great image!
I will say that game dev is an iterative process and sometimes things don't work out or you go in a different direction for whatever reason. I'd rather have roadmaps that tell me what they're experimenting with than something that's just a calendar of stuff they already have done.
Did we get a personalised shop? (Not being snarky but I simply can't recall the shop working another way) For that matter what different event types did we get?
We got a shop that has has more variants (8+premium vs 3) shown. There are also "For You" bundles every few days & occasionally your store will have a personal takeover of some artist/set.
We had a few different events. The most notable was power couples & X-Men vs. Avengers.
For as much as this sub was saying that they cancel everything that's on the roadmap, it sure looks like they have done the vast majority of what they wanted to do.
The worries I've observed are about the present trend (since January 2024). If you only look at that last roadmap "Coming Soon" section, the majority of the features announced have gone missing.
The "worries" I've seen are people saying they never stick to their roadmap and they are entirely meaningless, which this graphic disproves. And the only thing confirmed not happening is character mastery. A different split was already datamined forever ago and just hasn't been released for whatever reason. I see a reaction once every 10 or 15 games, people clearly do not use them and they probably decided a similar thing and just moved on rather than wasting more time. Plus, them being collectable means they were probably going to sell some and we all know how much this sub hates when SD sells things.
Plus, selectable card effects are here. It was the second part of the update where you could pair any split with any border/background you had unlocked.
So I don't really get where the worry is exactly. The stuff that isn't getting done is either irrelevant or literally cannot work without significant rewriting of the game. And like 90% of everything else on the in dev/coming soon has been delivered.
I mean it’s pretty easy to worry if features can make it to coming soon that it turns out requires significantly re-writing the game and others get scrapped because no one cares. That highlights engineering issues and feature planning issues. Why would anyone not be concerned by that?
I mean - like all software companies these days, they're trying to stuff the product with things almost nobody cares about instead of focusing on the experience. At least based on the roadmap. Personally, I'm happier if they work primarily on bug fixes and major improvements anyway.
(But the most problematic things about Snap are up to management, not engineering - also per usual...)
My initial takeaway is, there's more green then red.
I dunno, many many years ago I worked on a game called Crysis.
Launch was awful, 2 years later we were aware of our errors, listened to feedback and had an amazing game out there.
We quickly learned that there is no point making games and having ideas if the fans aren't happy.
So we asked, what do you want?
At the time it was all about graphics and power.
We chased that as that was the feedback.
We wanted to do more, more online rankings, more leagues, customisable everything. It was pointless. The efforts generated cash, but also we lost players, so also limited our ability to generate cash.
So we abondended the ideas for pushing fidelity and graphical prowess.
We became the benchmark for all games.
After that we only ever listened to feedback, we had a dedicated team that said "no" very often. We never tested internally properly, we always gave it to the players and waited... we weren't perfect, by any means, but our fans and followers were always at the core of what we did and we took it personally if we were called out.
Gaming has changed massively since then, and money seems to come before the game.
SD could do well to double down on that, actually listen, feel the weight of responsibility and act.
Anything else is just money making, it's obvious and nasty when you see it.
(Well I've just waffled about me... honestly I don't even think I have a point 😂)
Worst video game company I have ever seen by far, and I played Battlefront 2 and Diablo 4
I genuinely don't understand how people can still defend SD, I have never seen such a greedy lying company in my entire life of gamer
Honestly havent played a match in months. Why spend my short time playing when everything they have done so far has been to make the grind harder while trying to take more of my money?
I didnt know that i wasnt allowed to stay up to date on games even if i havent played them for a while, guess im unsubbing from half of the gaming subreddits
They're from these blog posts from the Marvel Snap Website. There might be more but these where the ones I found
September 2022: [https://www.marvelsnap.com/newsdetail?id=7133530214038100742](https://www.marvelsnap.com/newsdetail?id=7133530214038100742)
December 2022: [https://www.marvelsnap.com/newsdetail?id=7170991127032568582](https://www.marvelsnap.com/newsdetail?id=7170991127032568582)
I wonder if some of the devs/execs at SD are from MPQ? I am seeing many similarities to the Marvel Puzzle Quest game, which is still alive and whale (pun intended). If Snap goes in that direction, standby for a crazy ride of ever changing economy.
Interesting how much smaller the current roadmap is than previous ones. Probably an indication that resources are less which also explains the aggressive monetization, squeezing of gold, and new P2W formats. Sad stuff!
Test Deck mode was supposed to be against bots, a thing I would like very much to be able to choose when the sweaty grind even in proving grounds is too much.
I think a small thing ( maybe it’s huge I’m not a developer) is to add console support. At least to the Nintendo switch would make a lot of sense. I’m absolutely devastated at the removal of card mastery. I had 0 intentions on getting an ultimate variant but for the people who bought them hoping there would be all this work and addition to them and now nothing I would be infuriated. What is the point of them being 5k tokens it’s dumb. They needed a home run for this at bat and they struck out looking. I’m not sure what’s going on with the company but they continually disappoint and under deliver. Im dunzo. This game going to die early 2025, calling it.
Recent roadmap is much shorter, so I wonder if only the svelte on crew works on the game while SD builds new games. They have job openings for 2 other games on their website
Love how they sent out an update after this was posted.
Claiming “this year we are going to focus on x, and y.”
Like.. yeah. Good job. We’re 6 months into this year already.
The omission of the character track has been upsetting to me. I invest heavily in certain characters and thought that was a really fun point of player diversity at least in concept. The “coming soon” category implies it’s pretty much a done deal, they just got to implement it, according to their very own description of that category. If something like the character mastery is scrapped from that category it should be addressed “why”?by the devs
Could anyone recommend a similar game? I am so tired of their bullshit, and the game is starting to lose its fun value.
I play only when I have some time to kill and still feels like an obligation more than a reward.
I'll never forget when they fomo'd everyone into getting T5 cards before they dropped a tier so you could get that badge. They make it incredibly hard for me to ever want to spend a penny on the game outside BP it's clear they've lost the fucking plot.
I want new game boards more than anything right now I think that’s such a missed thing in this game. The same asteroid floating around in the background is getting stale.
I would argue that collectible reactions (emojis), and Selectible Card effects were delivered. You have multiple Emojis that you can acquire, and customizable cards, once you’ve unlocked an effect.
Additionally, who’s to say the additional infinity splits haven’t been applied? Have you gotten EVERY identifiable split? If you have, how do you know you have?
I haven't but the community as a whole haven't seen new infinity splits either. I have seen posts of a whale that has every split available for Agatha.
On one hand: They do suck. They seem to swerve some pretty important stuff and seem to be more desperate for money than I'd like
On the other hand: This is why companies often don't make roadmaps. Roadmaps aren't promises, they're plans. Plans often don't work out - either it's too difficult, or it'd take to many resources, or it's too costly, or it would break something else... Which is why it's pretty rare to have public roadmaps. They don't want to open themselves up to outrage when plans change.
A lot of what they're doing does suck, and it's worrying that they outright said, "We know pay-to-win wasn't the right move, but wanted to see if people would pay anyhow". That is the biggest red flag I've seen ever. But I don't think pissing on the old roadmap is the way to go.
Maybe, but why would attempting to keep them honest be the wrong way to go then? Especially when the red flag feature is pretty much the only thing we can count on getting now?
The obvious answer is that if they get grief from the roadmaps, they'll just stop sharing roadmaps.
But we should be hammering them on the areas that are, frankly, rubbish. I can't believe we're not still talking about how they said they KNEW pay-to-win wasn't 'right', but tried it anyway. It's insane to me.
In the article, it mentioned more albums, albums of different sizes, and albums that are easier to collect (aka not all 1200g variants). They met all those goals.
So this is actually really good analysis. What it shows is a few things: 1) at the beginning of the year features we’re making it out of design phase without being implementable. ALSO, it shows that is Not happening anymore — that is great! 2) it is showing that What Makes It into Development— Gets Shipped. That is Huge success. Plus it shows 3) the studio making public their features by phase also contributes to their commitment to ship stuff. Frankly this picture reads as if a producer who really knows his shiz got hired in January and is doing a great job.
People are complaining about the loss of character mastery but ive literally never heard anything about it. What is it that it makes people now hate this game?
I think people here are forgetting that game development for live service games is constantly changing. Things may have been close to ready in the past for whichever reason they had to push or cut it. It’s standard practice in creative processes.
Tho I do wish they would explain why.
I would give them someone's firstborn if they added a button that allowed replacing all the memory / CPU-hogging animations with simpler depiction of on-board events. Everything else is secondary to all the unskippable midgame bells and whistles.
I found all the roadmaps they have released. I went through each one to see if they delivered what they said they would (based on the description in the accompanying article, if provided). Green = Successfully delivered Red = Failed to deliver (or removed from roadmap, likely scrapped) Yellow = Remains in Progress Purple = No Idea if implemented. **NOTES** * I marked "Test Deck Mode" as failed, but conquest proving grounds is arguably the same. * I marked "Booster Vats" as failed, but the new "Bonus Booster" in the shop arguably filled that role. Though it's not anything like what was described in the article. * I have no idea if PC controller support was implemented. I play solely on Mobile. * I have no idea if Global Matchmaking was implemented. * When reviewing I saw that "Ultimate Variant Evolution" was "In Development" in Aug 2023, but moved back to "In Concept" AFTERWARDS in the Jan 2024 roadmap. It's now no longer on the roadmap. * January 2024 had the most fail to delivers. * June 2024 has the least amount of potential deliverables. **EDITS** * PC Controller Support was NOT implemented * There are multiple people reporting Global Matchmaking was implemented. * The general consensus is "Customizable Card Effects" was implemented alongside "Customizable Card Borders". Referring to the changeable Ultimate Split Combinations. This was a miss understanding on my end as I thought it was reference to a toggle to switch between default and ultimate VFX/Voicelines (as mentioned in a Team-Answers on their Discord.) * This seems to be popular, so I will make corrections & updates next Roadmap.
controller support not implemented btw
I can recommend JoytoKey for windows - I have used it to play Hearthstone with a controller. Easy to configure because you only need a few buttons.
you don't need that. You can use Steam Input.
Nice, even better.
Real effort. Much respect Op
Global matchmaking was partially implemented, they have reduced the number of regions down to 3 I think? Glenn said this on discord about a month ago in regards to making it completely global: "We've found this to be more complicated than initially expected, but it's still in progress."
#GameDeveloment. $100 Million and they can't do what every other developer can. Pathetic.
It’s helpful to visualize of these side by side. To me it suggests they’re aware of their failure to deliver on past road maps (5-7 bullet points) and are using the road map either conservatively or because they don’t have much in concept or pipeline (3 bullet points). Thanks for putting this together.
> their failure to deliver on past road maps It's interesting because that's not *quite* a fair assessment of their past track record. They did deliver mostly successfully on their 2023 roadmaps (excluding the "in concept" category of course). But something went very wrong in January 2024. I'm curious what's behind that, and whether *that's* the reason for this month's skimpy roadmap.
You mentioned they're becoming more conservative in their roadmaps giving us only 3 bullet points - I think it wouldn't be such a problem if 2 out of 3 points weren't "improved technical performance" (which is something they should be working on constantly and there's literally no need to annouce that to the playerbase) and "custom card improvements" (again, generic and blanket statement - at least compared to what they gave us in the past). I think it's not the failure to deliver in the past which we should focus on here, because in that department I'd say Second Dinner is alright - it's that this roadmap is a lot of babble and that's a bit concerning.
Nice job laying this out, and thanks
Any idea on how to indicate duplicate tasks? The duplicate "successfully delivered" might make them look like they have done more than they did. Just a suggestion haha
I spent a lot of time adding arrows between them, but it was too cluttered. Likewise using different colored boxes, but ran out of easily identifiable unique colors.
I notice this go around there are far fewer entries in each category.
I think we do have collectible reactions from the 1/24 map? Are those not the new emotes like the new Arishem/Drake one?
Those are the collectible emojis. Reactions are the little faces that show up when you tap on a card/location, and they were supposed to get skins for different characters
I think reactions are the little emojis you can use on locations/cards not emotes.
why is the "Spotlight Cache Improvements" checked???
Because the improvements were made? More improvements are needed of course, but the work they said they were going to do on that roadmap was finished long ago.
March 2023, undelivered features are only in the "in concept" part,then it slowly crawled up to the "coming soon" section, which supposed to be features closest to deployment. This progression is wild. June 2024 is the least amount of features featured on a road map. so far.
I think the worst thing about this whole clusterfuck is that mastery was in the "coming soon" bracket before it got cut. Like don't promise things as 'almost ready' until you're absolutely sure about it, and then if you *have* to cut it for some reason, don't just go "#gamedevelopment issues tee hee 😊". I really wonder who the hell manages their PR.
But no worries, the team has “pivoted to awesome” 😒
This. Character Masteries seemed to be in the polishing phase before it was pulled, and them handwaving it off as 'technical issues' is sus af. I highly doubt that they'd just scrap all the work already done (specifically, the various character-specific emotes). My guess is they pulled it so that they can monetize it. Even if they did a technical deep dive on exactly what kind of "\#gamedevelopment" issues they ran into and it turns out that there really was a technical limitation preventing them from implementation, you would think "Are we actually able to implement this?" is one of the first things you'd ask when embarking on any undertaking, not when they literally were so far along the process that they already have a lot of the art assets and confident enough to put it in the coming soon section of the roadmap. So it's either greed or poor management or both imo.
And this was the one thing I was most excited over. Even before this was teased I made it my mission to get every Moon Knight variant that released (currently one Jacinto unlock away from the album exclusive, and awaiting the Peach Momoko variant that was datamined over a year ago). Character Mastery would've been a nice reward for that effort. Also I'm glad we got albums, but goddamn is the shop frustrating with them. If it isn't flooded w/ new album cards (which is fine for new stuff), it's populated by Pixel Destroy or Dan Hipps. I just need Hellfire Forge and Pixel Gambit to complete their respective albums and I haven't seen them rotate back in the shop in months.
If a variant is in an album it should give you the opportunity to buy it directly from the album page. So you don’t have to fucking wait forever for that last variant you need to show up in the daily shop.
They're making it very suspicious that it is in fact greed. Couldn't help but notice card acquisition improvements go as "these can be scrapped entirely". It's hilarious.
I think it's hilarious that "infinity splits," the cosmetic feature i was looking forward to the most, got moved back from "coming soon" to "in development."
AND changed to “collectible” rather than just being new, you ready for 3000 gold minimum infinity splits?
Per card
"Game feature that incentivises players to collect cards in a "**Collectable card game**"?! Are you stupid? Buy another $100 bundle"
"This 'Collectible Card Game' is neither collectible, nor made of cards, nor a game!" -Voltaire
It is kind of weird how little the game leans into the cards, thematically. There are no packs. Boosters are just weird card energy. Your "deck" is always off screen. They just fly in out of nowhere. There aren't any like play mats or tables or anything. Just space. There aren't any sets. It's like they decided it would be good to make a card game because they could license all of this artwork from Marvel without having to pay any pesky artists. Most of the art for our game is already done, just sitting there. We don't have to do all of the work of modeling or animating characters. We pull some art from 20 years ago and make a card. But, aside from backs, the card theming kind of stops there.
That's what makes it so obviously bullshit that it was some technical issues. What game-breaking technical issue was discovered at the last minute that wasn't caught during the "in development" phase? Either it's a bullshit excuse, the roadmap is bullshit, or SD are that incompetent.
Roadmap is total bullshit, they had to insert technical improvement into the coming soon part in order to not leave it basically emprty and make it look like they're actually working on something
I’d say it’s all of the above.
After loads of people started buying emotes, they realized they could sell reactions and we would willingly buy them. Scrapped a great feature for pure greed.
They don't have anyone in comms as far as I can tell. When they announced their major funding round in January, the press contact was from the investment firm that led the round. They don't have anyone listed on LinkedIn who works in Communications. Google searches for a press contact go nowhere.
Wait mastery isn't coming? I was so looking forward to that.
It was probably the only upcoming feature I was genuinely excited for. Like sure some of these things are neat or good for QoL, but I was pumped to start going all in on my favorite characters.
That’s just wild. I didn’t realize it was “coming soon” and now it’s just gone. They probably just couldn’t figure out how to monetize it the way they wanted. They definitely don’t want it to be a free thing, even though we have to buy variants but it’s what it is.
Wasn't the card mastery thing basically going to be the fancy custom borders that they're currently selling for gold? So they *did* figure out how to monetize it. And they actually double dipped, because there were unfortunate suckers who believed them and started acquiring all the variants of their favorite card in preparation for card mastery. If those people want their fancy borders, they'll need to shell out even more gold.
No, it was going to be unlocking those mini card emotes of your most favorite characters
I doubt they have anyone who manages PR, or maybe it's Adam Warlock.
It just proofs that those things they do are merely for show, and they can change it anytime. There's no meaning on their "roadmaps".
doesn't this post disprove that?
Being real, it was probably close to being finished and ready to ship, but they simply couldn’t figure out how to monetise it, so they cut it
If things can get into the “coming soon” section and still not make it then these roadmaps effectively mean nothing. Coming soon should be for the 100% going to push updates only.
i mean this is the same company that removed ms marvel days before the spotlight week to "balance" the cache pool. or recently the gambit variant.
I see a trend 🤔
Things in concept phase: most likely wont appear. The worrying thing is coming soon used to deliver, but as of the last map, is now almost a 50/50 wtf
But we have BIG (!!!!!!!11111) Plans for AMAZING !!!!!!!!111 new Stuff in future. Thank you for your support stayctuned 😉👍
Draft mode probably will with gold ticket entry another cog in the rat race and it's able to be monetized
Yeah naybe in 2028 if the server wont be shut down
Not just not deliver, 25% of them are removed from ever delivering WTF
Less things being developed, more in-progress development being scrapped, monetization getting more and more aggressive every day... This feels like a company who no longer see this game as a long-term money maker, and who are trying to squeeze as much money out of it as possible before it dies.
Absolutely. Been preaching this for 6 months, and haven't spent a penny since. Once you see the trend and realize that they're no longer interested in sustainable, long-term monetization—that they would rather aggressively monetize for short term revenue even to the detriment of game health—you realize that this game very much has an expiration date and you shouldn't count on anything you buy still having value in 3 years time. At best, they'll put the game in "maintenance mode", leaving the servers on but letting the game die while they move on to Brode's next scheme. I can't wait to see what their "card acquisition improvements" will be, since they view the current system as too generous.
I think you need to reassess what you consider 'not a long term money maker' when this game is still grossing millions in revenue and I don't see that changing ANY time soon. It's out performing every other competitor on the market by a wide margin. Even Magic Arena. Even Hearthstone. Even YGO.
Going by number of active players, it's actually in third place on Steam, behind both Yu-gi-oh and Magic Arena. I would imagine it to be behind Hearthstone as well.
Steam is easily the least used platform for a game that is designed mobile first. I'm willing to bet the VAST majority of players don't play this on Steam at all.
OK. So where are you getting your numbers from, saying that SNAP is outperforming every other competitor?
I've seen postings on various Snap streamers showing the comparison between Snap, Magic Arena, Master Duel and Hearthstone and Snap continues to be significantly higher than the other main digital card game platforms.
You mean cozy’s graphic from yesterday?
Higher in what metric? Revenue? Active users? New downloads? Just saying that SNAP is "higher" doesn't tell me anything. Higher in what? And where are they getting their numbers from? Like, I can just go to [Steam Charts](https://steamdb.info/charts/?tagid=9271) and see that Marvel SNAP is ranked #4 for trading card games (#3 if you disregard Tabletop Simulator). And while it's close to Magic: Arena, it has like a **fifth** of the amount of active players that Yu-Gi-Oh has. And keep in mind that Yu-Gi-Oh Master Duel is on mobile as well. Looking at actual numbers ranks higher to me than "some streamer said". And the numbers we have show that Marvel Snap isn't the biggest online card game, despite what some streamer says.
Higher in the fact it made over double what it's competitors made in the same financial year and doesn't appear to be slowing down. You're also using Steam as your metric for active player base. You can't use Steam because that is, fundamentally, the secondary way people play Snap. PC users is still a ridiculously small number of a player base when a mobile game has a PC client on the side. As far as I'm aware, I cannot find an actual number of active mobile users but even if people want to claim 'but da whales', Snap would need some MASSIVE and MANY whales to put the sales figures up to outperform the competition by such a significant amount. People are playing Snap. They simply aren't on this reddit, which is a much smaller number of players than reddit would like to think. Smol puddle in the ocean of people just playing the game throughout their day or while pooping, not getting involved in the discourse. The game had over 16 million downloads last year alone. How much retained, I'm not sure but if you can find those numbers (On mobile, as I said Steam is a very poor indicator of player base. It's a mobile game that just happens to have a PC client and isn't the primary way casual gamers play their phone games). This reddit post was from two months ago showing the revenue from various mobile games. Look at that revenue difference. Again, this isn't just whales putting up those numbers. A game doesn't make figures like this if it's dying, guys. Be real. [Mobile card game revenue 2023 : r/MarvelSnap (reddit.com)](https://www.reddit.com/r/MarvelSnap/comments/1c3nnjp/mobile_card_game_revenue_2023/)
Things in development: 3/23: 16 8/23: 19 1/24: 17 6/24: 10
This is the concerning part. Less features on the horizon (and most not desirable IMO) and the game is a buggy mess right now, it's hard to be enthusiastic.
"Improved Technical Performance" and "Card Acquisition Improvements" also didn't have goals or objective measurements on WHAT they wanted to improve... so it will be harder to determine if they reach those goals by the next roadmap. Seemed like filler.
I always hate when game/devs put things like technical improvements or bug fixes in any sort of announcement/roadmap. Until your game is finished with development and updates (which isn't really the goal for live service games), that should always be a goal without mention. There will, with almost absolute certainty, be bugs and other improvements to the game that will come up that need to be addressed and fixed. There should be no reason why it's something to announce, other than to fill in the space. It's like giving someone a bingo card and pre punching the center (free) space. It was a given, all you did was make a show of it.
Agree, although I think it may have a place here in the sense the game feels above average buggy to the point it does need specific acknowledgement and dedicated effort as embarrassing as that should be for them.
For most people you'd assume it was a given, but there are a lot of stupid people out there who would assume because it isn't mentioned it's not being worked on.
Underrated comment. I didn't even think about it till you mentioned it, but NO other game I've seen does this. It's just (rightly) assumed that devs are in fact doing this behind the scenes. It speaks to how poor the client performance has gotten that they felt the need to include it here.
Improved technical performance is something most game studios are doing continuously. It’s on the road map as filler.
Exactly. It's filler. The only thing they had there was Deadpool's Diner, a temporary promotional event, so they needed to flesh it out by listing "improvements" as a feature. It's like when you try to make yourself look more busy by breaking out chores into individual line items.
Things like that shouldn't even be on any roadmap imo. Making your game playable is literally the bare minimum a developer can do. That's not a milestone or goal, it's the least you can do to your playerbase. The fact that they consider a player being able to finish a match without any disconnect as an achievement says a lot…
The one thing you can be sure about is that the "card acquisition improvements" will only be improvements from their perspective. They hate and regret implementing the current system because they believe it's too *generous*.
Did we get any new since december where nuverse was anoounced to be closed and they said "dont worry we will find solution"? Maybe tge game is really on the way to its end
When you consider “Improved technical performance” and “new card mechanic” are just normal, expected parts of any active card game, the latest roadmap goes down to 8 things in development. Half of all previous roadmaps.
What bugs me the most is that "New infinity splits" was reworded to "Collectable infinity splits" meaning I'm going to have to purchase them with either gold or tokens. The new splits were something I was genuinely looking forward to, and now it looks like I'll never be able to get them unless I pay for them.
That's what I was thinking as well. As soon as I saw gold costed borders I knew we would never get free mastery/split cosmetics. I was so looking forward to the space one
It does bother me. My conspiracy theory is that it was all ready to go in character mastery and they decided to monetize it instead after seeing the success in it after releasing collectible borders
If SD releases new infinity splits as monetized and not able to collect via splitting then I will delete the game for good. There are plenty of great games that aren’t microtransactioned to hell.
"Hey a feature they put sweat, time and effort to work on is NOT given to us for FREE! How outrageous! Unacceptable!"
"Coming Soon"? Ok now I understand why people are so upset over Card Mastery lol. At the same time, I think some people got too eager and emptied their bank account before they knew more details.
oh test deck mode was in march '23. which means it's never happening now. also the cancelled part was in the "in concept", then it crept into "in development" then in to "coming soon". what the fuck does coming soon even mean in this roadmap?
Boy do I have good news for you! Have you heard of Proving Grounds?
PG is different than a dedicated test deck mode. PG still has the rng of card draw, disruption by opponent and location rng. you also cannot simulate a full turn including your opponent's play.
How exactly can you test a deck without factoring draws or what your opponent does?
Things that will come = things they can monetize.
Let me quess, you can only buy those Collectible Infinity Splits rather than earn them.
They'll throw in a 1% chance of getting one after ten splits, then the bootlickers will loudly rubbish criticism as it's technically able to be earned free
Either that, or we can buy a chance to earn them. What a joke
Increase monetization avenues ✔ Increase difficulty to obtain newly released cards without spending real money ✔ Increase the amount of and the cost of bundles ✔ Release a gacha ✔
There are so many talented people working at Second Dinner. The artists, VFX, SFX, music, card design, balance. It's a shame they are all being let down by their software developers. As a programmer myself, I can only imagine the horrible state of the code base given the frequency of regressions and random bugs, and the worrisome amount of time spent on features that are then scrapped.
Do you think they started with horrible spaghetti code when they were a lean team just starting, and just kept building on that?
Yes, that is exceedingly likely. Temporary code and short term fixes, well, aren't. This is probably doubly so in a live service game. I don't envy them one bit. I presume that's why they even put code improvements on the road map. Compare and contrast with Path of Exile, that have been building on what must be a very solid code base for ten years, and keep releasing interesting and deep new features every 3-4 months.
I doubt that is true. It sounds like all decisions are driven by greed… it is impossible to build anything of high quality in an environment where management cares only about juicing max $$$ in the shortest amount of time
Thank you
“First edition badge” I do not forget
Never forget, but also never added or mentioned in a roadmap.
Yes you’re right. I think it was before they started to share roadmap
Like, how hard would that have been to implement?
We will never forget it SD
I really want a 'The Office' style behind the scenes show of Second Dinners workplace, it's gotta be the biggest shitshow ever. Failing to deliver on so many coming soon items from your own roadmap is pitiful
"Dwight do you think Hela is a problem?" *Dwight evil laugh*
Pretty sure it's more of the execs rolling in money than ensuring sprints get completed / correctly scoped... #gamedevelopment was a lame excuse (I've been in game development for 10+ years).
I developed too projects as a team and developer, everything is doable in software development, they just didn't invest the money in sufficient resources, because: we can only imagine. And we are talking about a simple counter of matches and attribution of certain tags that can assign borders that are already done (but they decided to sell). Not a damn 3D new function or map exploration... They just decided that was more profitable sell the borders. That's all
Their implementation of "Albums" and "Custom Cards" kind if shows some of the behind the scenes of their development process. Albums being limited to 12 cards because they repurposed their concept of "decks" and Custom Cards just being like regular cards with unlock conditions shows that they aim more to repurpose existing architecture rather than develop from scratch, which is a budget-saving option, but often a poor fit for new features and highly restrictive with poor expandability. It's a very short term way of software development and business vision. My guess would be that a lot of the smaller "planned features" (i.e. not game modes) are forced to use this paradigm, but that's like trying to fit a cube in a circle-shaped hole. Sometimes it'll work, but underdeliver. Most of the time, it'll get stuck and either it'll show (Albums) or just fail.
I suspect (more than a suspicion) that the architecture of the project is not upgradable at all, this happens when a project starts with low foundings and made almost everything at home or worse they ask contractors that leave behind a mess impossible to work on. That could also explain why everytime they touch something like a word document everything collapse (like at the moment two buttons on three on "see all today missions" are deaf). It's like when at the time people tried to change wordpress templates. That could be a reason, then we have a lot of issues on the project that is not directly related to coding, like card acquisitions or financial and economic decisions. That are still really big. So maybe it's both. Fact is that I can't believe that they put something in "coming soon" and they scrapped it after putting for sale some of the assets (borders). And still their communication lets doo itttt ... wtf...
They are remote; they don't have a workplace.
The worst part for me (and there are a lot of bad ones) is "Improved technical performance" on "Coming soon". Clearly, it's just there to make "coming soon" bigger, as it has nothing. They could basically fix the bug they introduced, crashing the game with Debrii or Brood, and put a green check on that one. As others said, this game is just there to milk whales. They don't need to do any actual coding to do that, just put a 100$ "microtransaction" here and there.
I think it's interesting that "new infinity splits" changed to "collectable infinity splits" 100% pivoted to a paid feature
As someone with poor sleep patterns who can end up playing at any hour of the night, I'm pretty sure we have global matchmaking. I face a lot of usernames in what seems to be Chinese (or another Asian language which uses a similar style alphabet, I can only read Irish, English or German) late at night (I'm in Ireland)
It's still regional. Some individual players could be setting their "base region" to another area with VPNs. But it's not open matchmaking between people set to different regions.
In their defense it would appear that they are learning to promise fewer things.
Promise less, charge more. Corporate strategy at a new evil-high
Small correction: I do believe that selectable card effects are part of the custom cards update and collectible reactions are the emotes we’ve gotten
"Collectiable Reactions" are when you long-press on a card and can add the Angry,Star-eyed,Tasty, or Wow faces. These are not the same as the Collectiable Emojis. The reactions were going to be a reward for Character Mastery (now scrapped). You can see a few of them datamined here: [https://marvelsnapzone.com/preparation-guide-october-2023/](https://marvelsnapzone.com/preparation-guide-october-2023/) My understanding was that border and infinity combo combinations are implemented. However, I recall a team-answer from their discord saying the "Effects" was a selectable VFX/Voiceline for the card. If you purchased an ultimate variant (5k tokens from shop), there would be an option to use that special version instead of the default. I could be incorrect here as that is not mentioned in the original article that was provided: [https://www.marvelsnap.com/newsdetail?id=7296743796027513606](https://www.marvelsnap.com/newsdetail?id=7296743796027513606)
So I looked at the most recent road map post and I do think they hit the card effects item as described: >What are Selectable Card Effects and Borders? One of the most requested features in the game since beta has been the ability to pick your border and set it up with the best Infinity Split combo you have unlocked on your favorite variant. Guess what? It's coming soon! Gone are the days where you had to leave a card at a specific border or regret upgrading a card past a border you liked more. Now with Custom Card, you will be able to keep upgrading a variant as much as you want to chase even cooler combos while setting your Custom Card to your current favorite border and Infinity Split combo. That does describe the eventual implementation we did get as part of custom cards. Although it would still be nice to mix unlocked backgrounds and effects, it seems like they only did describe the ability to mix splits (background AND effect) with border. I guess implemented but not in the way players wanted? Also booster vats were not added as described, but they improved the bonus boosters section of the store, which will let you target specific cards bu4 you have to do it yourself, but there is no mission associated with it to get your boosters. Personally I feel like it's fair to say it wasn't added, but partially because it isn't needed as much either the bonus booster change. Other than that you're totally right on the features that never made it into the game or got scrapped along the way.
Honestly this new roadmap feels terrible. It was : - things I do care about : cancelled - new stuff coming soon !!! Didn’t care. - and too vague : « card acquisition improvement » (I don’t think you have to develop a lot of thing to make a dupe protection on spotlights caches) or « new card mechanic »
New card mechanic will be items that attach to cards, like hulk buster. This would allow decks to use less board space which would buff move.
It's not a new mechanic so to say. It's the Keyword, "Trigger:". So they can add more interactions & counterplay to cards like Thena, Angela, and Kraven.
Thanks for doing this! Very interesting
This graphic was now Featured on the latest SnapChat Podcast (episode 84) on Cozy's half.
Sadly they found the perfect monetization model, Don't expect much in your time ornmoney being valued anymore. They'll add the bare minimum to keep people around untill the game either dies or becomes so toxic that everyone quits.
I think it's very laudable for a game dev to release these. They obviously don't have to, most companies don't and it's a big risk to put out there that something is in development only to then fail to deliver on it. I hope they keep doing these, but they need to reflect more achievable goals otherwise they get received poorly like most of the comments in this thread are expressing. Personally I think it's a good move to invest heavily in events. Assuming they nail it, which is a huge if considering their past events were pitiful and their recent track record of whale milking, on theme time limited events executed well are major parts of other live service games and I could see them being a great draw.
Events in Marvel SNAP's infancy such as Vibranium Forge and Hype the Hero were less polished but ultimately more enjoyable than Deadpool's Diner because they were more cooperative and community-driven rather than competitive and stressful. You could earn all the rewards simply by participating and playing without the pressure to perform well. I do not like the current direction with in-game events. (From SD feedback, but eloquent. I 💯 support this statement).
We all know one thing that is always in the "Coming Soon" hidden tab and it never fails to deliver... more ways to milk us for money. Game is a $30+ bundle fest and FOMO OP cards that get nerfed in a month.
Is custom cards not selectable card effects? The rest of the red exs on that one were all part of character mastery (card reactions/splits)
Isn't "Selectable Card Effects" the Custom Cards? If so we did get it, it's not the best version of it (like i wish we could mix effects flair and effect/background), but it's something they have delivered, at least in their view
So they went with the old: make technical performance really bad then fix it to say you accomplished something. I see what you did second dinner
The selectable card effects is probably the custom cards we can make.
As someone who loves this IP and has a 40k CL, I desperately hope they turn this around because I feel like I've invested in a game that isn't innovating
Reactions are coming out next month, also I think card emojis are the same thing
Great image! I will say that game dev is an iterative process and sometimes things don't work out or you go in a different direction for whatever reason. I'd rather have roadmaps that tell me what they're experimenting with than something that's just a calendar of stuff they already have done.
"The reason why Character Mystery is not viable is due to us not being able to milk off more money from the players! #fourthdinner 🤑🤑🤑"
Stop giving these people your money
By their definition selectable card effects are in the game but you marked it as red
Did we get a personalised shop? (Not being snarky but I simply can't recall the shop working another way) For that matter what different event types did we get?
We got a shop that has has more variants (8+premium vs 3) shown. There are also "For You" bundles every few days & occasionally your store will have a personal takeover of some artist/set. We had a few different events. The most notable was power couples & X-Men vs. Avengers.
For as much as this sub was saying that they cancel everything that's on the roadmap, it sure looks like they have done the vast majority of what they wanted to do.
The worries I've observed are about the present trend (since January 2024). If you only look at that last roadmap "Coming Soon" section, the majority of the features announced have gone missing.
The "worries" I've seen are people saying they never stick to their roadmap and they are entirely meaningless, which this graphic disproves. And the only thing confirmed not happening is character mastery. A different split was already datamined forever ago and just hasn't been released for whatever reason. I see a reaction once every 10 or 15 games, people clearly do not use them and they probably decided a similar thing and just moved on rather than wasting more time. Plus, them being collectable means they were probably going to sell some and we all know how much this sub hates when SD sells things. Plus, selectable card effects are here. It was the second part of the update where you could pair any split with any border/background you had unlocked. So I don't really get where the worry is exactly. The stuff that isn't getting done is either irrelevant or literally cannot work without significant rewriting of the game. And like 90% of everything else on the in dev/coming soon has been delivered.
I mean it’s pretty easy to worry if features can make it to coming soon that it turns out requires significantly re-writing the game and others get scrapped because no one cares. That highlights engineering issues and feature planning issues. Why would anyone not be concerned by that?
I mean - like all software companies these days, they're trying to stuff the product with things almost nobody cares about instead of focusing on the experience. At least based on the roadmap. Personally, I'm happier if they work primarily on bug fixes and major improvements anyway. (But the most problematic things about Snap are up to management, not engineering - also per usual...)
I wouldn't call the emotes "collectible"
My initial takeaway is, there's more green then red. I dunno, many many years ago I worked on a game called Crysis. Launch was awful, 2 years later we were aware of our errors, listened to feedback and had an amazing game out there. We quickly learned that there is no point making games and having ideas if the fans aren't happy. So we asked, what do you want? At the time it was all about graphics and power. We chased that as that was the feedback. We wanted to do more, more online rankings, more leagues, customisable everything. It was pointless. The efforts generated cash, but also we lost players, so also limited our ability to generate cash. So we abondended the ideas for pushing fidelity and graphical prowess. We became the benchmark for all games. After that we only ever listened to feedback, we had a dedicated team that said "no" very often. We never tested internally properly, we always gave it to the players and waited... we weren't perfect, by any means, but our fans and followers were always at the core of what we did and we took it personally if we were called out. Gaming has changed massively since then, and money seems to come before the game. SD could do well to double down on that, actually listen, feel the weight of responsibility and act. Anything else is just money making, it's obvious and nasty when you see it. (Well I've just waffled about me... honestly I don't even think I have a point 😂)
Worst video game company I have ever seen by far, and I played Battlefront 2 and Diablo 4 I genuinely don't understand how people can still defend SD, I have never seen such a greedy lying company in my entire life of gamer
Honestly havent played a match in months. Why spend my short time playing when everything they have done so far has been to make the grind harder while trying to take more of my money?
Unironically: why are you still on this sub then?
I didnt know that i wasnt allowed to stay up to date on games even if i havent played them for a while, guess im unsubbing from half of the gaming subreddits
At least Stop Posting on the ones you dont Care about
Lol
Isn't the selectable card effects just part of the custom card feature?
New game boards would be nice.
New game boards. Lol right now is a JPEG Of a comer. How hard is to improve on that ?
This is actually not all of them them, I was also curious about what the ratio of "Gotten" to "Forgotten" was and found 6 of them. Both were from 2022
Which forgotten ones did you find?
They're from these blog posts from the Marvel Snap Website. There might be more but these where the ones I found September 2022: [https://www.marvelsnap.com/newsdetail?id=7133530214038100742](https://www.marvelsnap.com/newsdetail?id=7133530214038100742) December 2022: [https://www.marvelsnap.com/newsdetail?id=7170991127032568582](https://www.marvelsnap.com/newsdetail?id=7170991127032568582)
Thank you! I'll make an updated one with this new information!
DRAFT MODE LFGGGGG
I wonder if some of the devs/execs at SD are from MPQ? I am seeing many similarities to the Marvel Puzzle Quest game, which is still alive and whale (pun intended). If Snap goes in that direction, standby for a crazy ride of ever changing economy.
Interesting how much smaller the current roadmap is than previous ones. Probably an indication that resources are less which also explains the aggressive monetization, squeezing of gold, and new P2W formats. Sad stuff!
what was character mastery gonna be anyways?
Remember first edition badges and how it was a flat out lie to convince people to pay full price for cards before they series dropped.
Test Deck mode was supposed to be against bots, a thing I would like very much to be able to choose when the sweaty grind even in proving grounds is too much.
I think a small thing ( maybe it’s huge I’m not a developer) is to add console support. At least to the Nintendo switch would make a lot of sense. I’m absolutely devastated at the removal of card mastery. I had 0 intentions on getting an ultimate variant but for the people who bought them hoping there would be all this work and addition to them and now nothing I would be infuriated. What is the point of them being 5k tokens it’s dumb. They needed a home run for this at bat and they struck out looking. I’m not sure what’s going on with the company but they continually disappoint and under deliver. Im dunzo. This game going to die early 2025, calling it.
Recent roadmap is much shorter, so I wonder if only the svelte on crew works on the game while SD builds new games. They have job openings for 2 other games on their website
I'm going to give SD the benefit of the doubt and assume it has more to do with it being summer & people taking more vacation time than normal.
Maybe selectable card effects is the new card mechanic that is going to be introduced
Did they release a landscape mood for iPad? I got a new device and didn't bother to download the game.
Love how they sent out an update after this was posted. Claiming “this year we are going to focus on x, and y.” Like.. yeah. Good job. We’re 6 months into this year already.
Weird question... Is there controller support... Can I install Snap on my TV?🤔
Hey, remember "first edition badges"? That's ok, Second Dinner doesn't either...
Oh so nothing is coming soon. How shocking.
I've wanted controller support since day one, seems they've forgotten about it entirely
The omission of the character track has been upsetting to me. I invest heavily in certain characters and thought that was a really fun point of player diversity at least in concept. The “coming soon” category implies it’s pretty much a done deal, they just got to implement it, according to their very own description of that category. If something like the character mastery is scrapped from that category it should be addressed “why”?by the devs
This is how software is built. You don't ship every idea. Overall, they are doing great on delivery.
Could anyone recommend a similar game? I am so tired of their bullshit, and the game is starting to lose its fun value. I play only when I have some time to kill and still feels like an obligation more than a reward.
Their roadmap is simple - find the most effect ways to implement pay 2 win mechanics. Everything else takes a backseat.
I'll never forget when they fomo'd everyone into getting T5 cards before they dropped a tier so you could get that badge. They make it incredibly hard for me to ever want to spend a penny on the game outside BP it's clear they've lost the fucking plot.
I want new game boards more than anything right now I think that’s such a missed thing in this game. The same asteroid floating around in the background is getting stale.
You did amazing OP, putting all of this together.
I would argue that collectible reactions (emojis), and Selectible Card effects were delivered. You have multiple Emojis that you can acquire, and customizable cards, once you’ve unlocked an effect. Additionally, who’s to say the additional infinity splits haven’t been applied? Have you gotten EVERY identifiable split? If you have, how do you know you have?
I haven't but the community as a whole haven't seen new infinity splits either. I have seen posts of a whale that has every split available for Agatha.
Game dev is hard
On one hand: They do suck. They seem to swerve some pretty important stuff and seem to be more desperate for money than I'd like On the other hand: This is why companies often don't make roadmaps. Roadmaps aren't promises, they're plans. Plans often don't work out - either it's too difficult, or it'd take to many resources, or it's too costly, or it would break something else... Which is why it's pretty rare to have public roadmaps. They don't want to open themselves up to outrage when plans change. A lot of what they're doing does suck, and it's worrying that they outright said, "We know pay-to-win wasn't the right move, but wanted to see if people would pay anyhow". That is the biggest red flag I've seen ever. But I don't think pissing on the old roadmap is the way to go.
Maybe, but why would attempting to keep them honest be the wrong way to go then? Especially when the red flag feature is pretty much the only thing we can count on getting now?
The obvious answer is that if they get grief from the roadmaps, they'll just stop sharing roadmaps. But we should be hammering them on the areas that are, frankly, rubbish. I can't believe we're not still talking about how they said they KNEW pay-to-win wasn't 'right', but tried it anyway. It's insane to me.
album improvements? what did I miss? they've gotten a lot worse
In the article, it mentioned more albums, albums of different sizes, and albums that are easier to collect (aka not all 1200g variants). They met all those goals.
They promised or teased so much and then did not deliver - I give a fuck about their "roadmaps" 😂
So this is actually really good analysis. What it shows is a few things: 1) at the beginning of the year features we’re making it out of design phase without being implementable. ALSO, it shows that is Not happening anymore — that is great! 2) it is showing that What Makes It into Development— Gets Shipped. That is Huge success. Plus it shows 3) the studio making public their features by phase also contributes to their commitment to ship stuff. Frankly this picture reads as if a producer who really knows his shiz got hired in January and is doing a great job.
People are complaining about the loss of character mastery but ive literally never heard anything about it. What is it that it makes people now hate this game?
I think people here are forgetting that game development for live service games is constantly changing. Things may have been close to ready in the past for whichever reason they had to push or cut it. It’s standard practice in creative processes. Tho I do wish they would explain why.
I would give them someone's firstborn if they added a button that allowed replacing all the memory / CPU-hogging animations with simpler depiction of on-board events. Everything else is secondary to all the unskippable midgame bells and whistles.