At the end of Marvel Snap’s Loki-themed season in September, developer Second Dinner introduced the card Mobius M. Mobius, which immediately had a big impact on the game. The 2-cost, 3-power card has an Ongoing effect that prevents your cards from having their cost increased, while preventing your opponent from getting the cost of their cards reduced. Mobius instantly made cost reduction cards like Zabu, Sera, and Death much less powerful and took some of the top decks way down in the meta. It was a cheap card that was easy to include in a wide variety of decks, and it saw a ton of play throughout October.
Last week, Second Dinner hit Mobius with the nerf hammer as part of its frequent balance overhaul to shake up the meta. In the patch notes, the studio explained that it always intended to make adjustments to Mobius down the road, so going forward the TVA agent’s effect would only last one turn instead of the entire match. This change made Mobius virtually worthless, and players immediately dropped him from every deck. Now, just a week later, Second Dinner has received so much backlash to the nerf that it has decided to revert the change, returning Mobius’ previous ability, but increasing his cost from two to three.
This is an unprecedented situation. Balance changes are frequent in Snap, and sometimes even drastic, but we’ve never seen a balance change almost immediately get reverted this way. My sentiment, and the one it seems a lot of players share online, is that it’s not so much the fact that a good card was made worthless, but that everyone who bought the card when it was good was left hanging when it got nerfed. Second Dinner may enjoy tweaking cards frequently to keep the meta fresh, but as a customer, it’s getting frustrating to make decisions about what to invest in when I’m anticipating the card will lose value in a matter of weeks.
As a Series 4 card, Mobius was one of the cheaper ones. Still, 3000 Collector Tokens doesn’t come easy, and it’s painful to see a card you just bought turn into a pile of ash and blow away in the wind like it just got snapped (the other kind), especially if that card sees a lot of play in your decks. I was in even worse shape, having bought Mobius in the Form and Function bundle last month for 7,500 gold. There was other value in the bundle (10,000 credits is nothing to scoff at) but that was the equivalent of roughly $90. I’m glad Mobius is getting re-re-balanced, but something more needs to change.
Some Recent Marvel Snap Nerfs
In terms of overpowered cards getting nerfed, Mobius is far from an outlier. The season pass card for October, Elsa Bloodstone, got nerfed just a few weeks into the season. When balance changes happen, Second Dinner doesn’t offer any kind of refund on collector tokens or gold you may have spent to acquire the card. Sometimes cards get buffs too, so in a way it all evens out. Unless you’re buying every single card though, you’re going to get left holding the bag more often than not.
Second Dinner intentionally designs for impact, knowing it’s going to nerf new cards eventually. That’s its way of keeping the meta in constant flux, but it has a knock-on effect of shaking the player’s confidence in their purchases. When Elsa Bloodstone was released, everyone immediately knew it was too powerful and would be getting a nerf sooner or later, it turned out it was sooner, but those who bought it early got the benefit of using an OP card for a few weeks.
I’m nervous about that strategy because it veers too closely to pay-to-win for my taste. I don’t think it’s good to incentivize people to buy cards as soon as they launch because they can expect to have an unfair advantage with them for a few weeks, nor do I want to feel left behind as a mostly free-to-play player.
Spotlight caches are another way to get Tier 4 and 5 cards, but just like tokens, there’s no refund system when cards get nerfed.
I’ve always thought of balance changes as a way to solve problems; a tool for finding balance in a competitive game. But it’s clear that Second Dinner’s philosophy is to use balance changes to add variety to its game - change for the sake of change. The way Snap grows and evolves quickly is certainly one of its strengths, but this approach to balance is making it harder to get excited for new cards. Why spend my hard-earned tokens on a card that could be useless next month? I could try to wait it out, ignore the hype around a new release and only buy cards that rotate in once they’ve proven to be good for a while, but you never know when the nerf hammer is going to come down.
Lots of digital card games make balance changes like this, but Hearthstone at least gives players a refund when cards are changed. Marvel Snap’s cards change so frequently that that might not be a viable solution, but it feels like some kind of compensation would be justified. Maybe allowing a limited number of trades would help, so if one of your cards from last month gets torched you can swap it for one of this month’s cards. Even refunding a fraction of the tokens I spent to help me make progress towards my next card would help. I don’t expect Second Dinner to stop rebalancing cards so frequently, but it’s time for a little bit of give with all of this take.
Next:I Hit Infinite Rank In Marvel Snap With Terrible Cards And So Can You
