Marvel Snap Devs Detail Alliances Designed For Accessibility

Marvel Snap Devs Detail Alliances Designed For Accessibility

Highlights

  • Marvel Snap’s new Alliance feature offers a social system for players to connect, team up, and earn rewards in a clan-like system.
  • Alliances were designed to appeal to both new and veteran players, offering flexibility for different skill levels and playstyles.
  • Players can choose how much they engage with Alliances, making it a social feature that enhances gameplay without feeling mandatory.

As a seasoned gamer with over two decades of gaming experience under my belt, I must say that Marvel Snap’s new Alliance feature has truly taken mobile card battlers to a whole new level. It’s like Second Dinner heard the collective cry of gamers worldwide for a social system in this game and delivered with style!


In the past two years since its debut, Marvel Snap has risen to become the leading mobile card battling game, and its latest addition, the Alliance feature, adds a fresh layer of interaction to the game. Although Marvel Snap has long facilitated player versus player (PvP) battles, it lacked a robust social network for players to connect beyond their in-game matches. With the introduction of the Alliance feature, gamers can now band together to tackle challenges collaboratively, exchange messages through text chat with fellow alliance members, and collect rewards within this clan-style system.

Recently, Game Rant interviewed Kent-Erik Hagman, Design Director of Marvel Snap, and CJ Robinson, Senior UX Designer from developer Second Dinner, regarding the development of Alliances. Although this feature had been planned for a while within Marvel Snap’s development plan, Second Dinner aimed to introduce it in an enjoyable manner without overwhelming players interested in trying it out. The outcome is a social aspect that enables various types of gamers to engage with Marvel Snap differently, enhancing the gaming experience offered to users.

Marvel Snap’s Alliances Were Designed For Players of All Skill Levels

A significant challenge when developing a social aspect for Marvel Snap was ensuring it would attract both beginners and seasoned gamers. The versatility of the Alliance system is one of its key advantages, enabling novices to team up with veterans to grasp the basics while they embark on their Marvel Snap adventure. For instance, alliances can be utilized for experienced players to share their top Marvel Snap decks with newcomers as they advance through the initial stages of the game.

As Hagman describes:

“Forming alliances would provide a platform for novices to enter and learn from more seasoned players. For instance, upon unlocking a new card, an experienced player might say something like ‘check out these strategies since you’ve now got this card’, guiding them on potential auto deck builds centered around their freshly acquired card. We found this collaborative approach very appealing.”

From my gaming perspective, Alliances provide an exciting opportunity for dedicated gamers like myself to band together, dive deep into challenges, and rack up as many points as we can from those tantalizing bounties. Striking a balance between us hardcore players and the more casual ones was a key focus for Second Dinner when designing Alliances, and this concept is evident in the bounty system that forms the heart of the gameplay within Alliances. When it comes to the rewards for these bounties, Hagman explains how the team aimed to find a sweet spot where everyone could enjoy chasing bounties and earning Marvel Snap rewards without feeling swamped, stating:

In an effort to avoid making it obligatory, we deliberately chose not to overwhelm with rewards. It was more about finding the right balance, similar to passing a needle through a thread.

Players Can Choose to Engage with Marvel Snap’s Alliances as Much or as Little as They Want

When considering whether to join an existing alliance or establish a new one, or simply collaborating to accrue benefits within a community-based environment, Second Dinner aimed to devise a framework that allows players to decide the level of their involvement and corresponding rewards they receive.

Robinson sums this philosophy up nicely, saying:

“Instead of creating a job, we aimed to develop a social aspect. This feature was intended to be accessible to all users, hence our focus on customization. For instance, we considered filters like ‘What are the clan’s preferences for deck building?’ or ‘I want to find a clan that enjoys deck creation.’ To make this more user-friendly, we introduced Alliance tags, allowing players to easily identify and join clans based on their interests.”

In various perspectives, the added Alliance system in Marvel Snap can be explored, based on what each player desires from this feature. Generally speaking, Alliances appear as an enjoyable enhancement to the existing game modes and options, but they are not compulsory for those who choose to avoid engaging with them.

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2024-08-07 16:53