It’s been an exciting year for AMG’s Marvel Crisis Protocol. Between an “emergency” batch of nerfs, a long-planned balance pass, and a meta-shaking new set of legal Crises, it sometimes feels like we’re playing a completely different game than we were 12 months ago.
Amidst all this, and with some exciting new releases on the near horizon, we were able to speak with Atomic Mass Games’ very own Will Shick (AMG VP of Creative Development and Strategy) and Will Pagani (AMG Development Manager) to gain some valuable insight into their design mindset, goals for the game, and future plans.
On Character Balance Passes
As a company, how do you approach evaluating a model that supports both high-end tournament play and casual, kitchen-table play simultaneously? What are some of the challenges of trying to keep both ends of the spectrum excited about a new or rebalanced model?
Our core development philosophy since the start of creating Marvel: Crisis Protocol has been that a great casual game automatically makes a great competitive game. While this may sound antithetical on first read, the reality is that the things that make the best game experience for casual players translate into all the things that make a game really sing at high skill levels.
People who are just looking to play a game or two on the weekend for fun don’t enjoy having their immersion in the game experience ruined because they run into a weird rules interaction that takes precious play time away due to sifting through rule books trying to divine correct interactions. They also want to be able to come to the table with their favorite characters that they spent hours of hobby time on and know that they will be able to have a decently balanced matched game where the decisions they make on the tabletop will be the deciding factor on victory or defeat (tossing in a bit of dice luck as well).
What makes a great tournament game? Clear, concise and balanced rules and characters that allow for player skill expression to be the defining element of victory or defeat (again factoring in that critical luck element). In the end, our goal with any character rebalance is simply to make sure the character is fun to play, within the overall balance curve we have set for the game, and, most importantly, making sure that the character in the game feels like the character from the comics in tone, flavor, and playstyle. If we can accomplish that, it’s our experience that we service all players, no matter how they may approach the game.
Does focusing rebalances on a predefined set of models (those set for repacks) lower the threshold for who could receive some quality of life updates? Are you more willing to look at some of those models a little further from the extremes of the bell curve, or is your general attitude about who gets changes similar to what it’s always been?
The process of repacking previously released characters has certainly opened up the opportunities for us to go a bit further than we might have in terms of looking at characters for changes or rebalances. Part of this is how the spread of those releases allows us a greater window for the crucial testing of those changes in balance while also ensuring that we are working on the steady stream of new characters for the game.
While overall our core philosophy remains the same that rebalances and rule adjustments are only to be done when doing so makes the game overall better than it was, we have been able to do smaller quality of life tweaks that may not necessarily be required within the overall character balance curve. When we did the larger, standalone character rebalances we primarily focused entirely on the edges of the curve, bringing up characters who fell on the low end and toning back characters who were exceeding the high end. Now we do have the chance to also say, “X character is in the middle of the curve, is there something small that we think will make them function better, even if making that change may not necessarily move their position within the overall balance of the game?”
These small adjustments aren’t flashy and and their impact overall may vary, but because we have the opportunity with a brand new card being created to fit the multi-lingual requirements for the repacks, changing a Stamina from 5 to 6 to give a character just a bit more survivability that might currently be lacking is much more available than in the past where all changes fell outside the normal product creation process, and therefore had larger implications for that previously mentioned new product creation process.
Colossus getting a second set of buffs surprised a lot of people because that’s something that’s never happened before. What about him specifically earned attention from the team versus some of the other “fine but could be better” models also set for repackaging soon?
The second round on Colossus wasn’t really planned, but, as we’ve discussed, every repack character gets the same internal dev review when the product comes up in the production cycle. So Colossus certainly benefited from being in the first round of those new products as we looked at him and how his previous changes had been received earlier than we otherwise would have. That review left us feeling that, while the previous changes had improved his performance and place within the game, there was an opportunity and, after much internal discussion, a need to revisit his kit to smooth out some of his play patterns and really ensure he represented the character in a way that hit all of our primary goals for the game.
The team has only changed a model’s threat value once, dropping Bullseye from 3 to 2. Is that a method of updating a character that’s intentionally avoided, or is it just that the need hasn’t presented itself again?
Overall, changing threat value is an extreme rebalance and so it isn’t something we discuss except in extreme cases of character imbalance. Even then, we prefer to simply boost the character’s performance overall, rather than lower their threat value as 95% of the time, it feels better to see characters more powerful than less.
Bullseye was a perfect combination of not hitting the power level of a 3 threat, but also our growing experience with the game and realization that the game needed a few more 2 threat options to smooth Roster and Squad building in the early days of the game. So when it came to looking at Bullseye, we saw an opportunity to address two issues at once, both the character’s overall performance and a lacking threat value option within the game itself.
With boxes like the Spider-Foes starter set, we’re seeing models repackaged sooner than they have been in the past. Does this present challenges with the new philosophy of rebalancing characters when they’re repacked? If a model is too new to justify consideration for updates when it’s first repackaged, is there any avenue for it to be reevaluated in the future, or does that timing mean it’s pretty locked in as-is pending a balance emergency? I’ll admit that this is my one selfish question as a devoted Spider-Foes player who wants to love Sandman and Vulture.
Just because a character doesn’t receive updates when they appear in a new product doesn’t mean they will never be considered for updates ever again. We fully embrace the fact that as a living and continuously evolving game system part of our job as designers and developers is to constantly be analyzing and tending to the holistic balance of the game and its characters. There are very likely to be characters that didn’t get adjustments in their repacks that end up having rebalance adjustments made a year or two later. If we determine that a character needs adjustment to continue to push the game forward towards being the best game experience it can be we are going to dive into it.
Let’s Talk Crises
The War of Kings crisis pack and its associated standard rotation for crises have been a huge success. Has anything about how the War of Kings crises have been received informed the next set?
Our production cycle is about 2 years from concept to product on the shelves, so that means that in regards to the next Crisis Card pack, that was being worked on before War of Kings had hit players’ hands. However, I have no doubt that the next Crisis Card pack following Operation: Zero Tolerance will benefit from all the player data we can find concerning how War of Kings and the Crisis rotation system in general has played out among the global community.
One of the biggest changes War of Kings brought to the crisis suite is that 17 is now much more common, and without a 16-threat extract, players can only ever be forced to play at 17-20 against their will. Were these intentional shifts, or just an incidental byproduct of the threat level at which the new crises felt most fun?
We looked at as much event and player feedback as we could dig up when creating the Crisis rotation for events. When it came to threat levels we saw that not only did the lower threat levels typically allow for skews that gave what we felt was an inappropriate amount of weight to Roster construction versus in game skill expression in competitive settings, playing at smaller Threat values was simply considered far less fun by the majority of players across the game. And in many ways it makes sense that players prefer being able to field more of their favorite Marvel heroes and villains than less.
The other significant change was the removal of E secures. Was it just time to let other shapes breathe, or can we expect E secures to be absent or exceedingly rare moving forward as well?
The removal of E secures was done deliberately with this first rotation to challenge players to explore new and different Rosters and in-game tactics. But just because E secures are gone now doesn’t mean they are gone forever. This is probably the most exciting thing about the new Crisis rotation system is that, combined with the annual Crisis packs, the development team is now able to shift and change the competitive environment, keeping players on their toes and the game continuously feeling fresh and exciting as we can use each rotation to pose new questions for players to answer, but at the same time, allow the standard game experience to grow and thrive in ways that might otherwise not jive with the requirements of tight high level competitive play.
Spiders, Game Dev Philosophies & Beyond
Will Shick mentioned in his impromptu Discord question-and-answer session that the team is aware of how prevalent Brace for Impact is and the differing but strong opinions players have about it. A card, character, or crisis being taken a lot is something the community seems to flag as an issue pretty regularly, so can you speak to how you look at those cases as a team and the line between when it’s ok for something to be popular and when popularity may be a sign of something needing to be tweaked?
Something being popular or considered an “auto-take” by players isn’t necessarily a balance issue. In the case of something like Brace for Impact, we specifically designed that card early in the game’s development because we were seeing just how impactful terrain and character collisions could be. Since being able to throw things in the game is a foundational pillar of the experience we turned to Brace as a potent counterbalance to the Throw mechanic. We knew that this would make Brace one of the most useful and prevalent cards, but it is a key counterbalance to a key part of what makes the game feel like a comic book superhero battle come to life.
There are certainly other instances of this but on a smaller scale. For instance we just assume that anyone who is planning to play Avengers will take Avengers Assemble or if you are playing Midnight Sons you are taking Siege of Darkness.
Usually, the times where we may feel the need to step in and make adjustments based on popularity is in cases where the thing is pushing out other viable options that serve similar purposes. To continue the Brace example, that card is unique in its effect and what it does, there isn’t anything else like it. However, if we see a certain character appearing all over the place, and it is pushing out in affiliation options because it is just that much better than any of its competition, we likely need to take a hard look at why and possibly make balance adjustments because that kind of thing only happens when something is breaking the curve.
Soon, AMG will be releasing two spider-themed three-packs. With the incredibly diverse array of Spider-People out there, what made Ultimate Spider-Man, Spider-Ham, Spider-Man 2099, Silk, and Spider-Man Noir appealing to design versus the plethora of other options?
Being able to offer a new version of Miles that represents a different point of his character journey in the comics is something we love to do in the game. Our first version of Miles is very much him at the beginning of his hero’s journey. It represents him still learning and mastering his powers and his responsibilities as a hero. Ultimate Spider-Man is Miles at his peak. This new version shows him fully in control of his powers and as a key hero within the Marvel universe.
Spider-Man 2099 is a character that we’ve been planning to do since we started working on the game but, for one reason or another, just kept falling down the release plan. With his major role in Across the Spider-Verse, however, we knew the time was now. The same can be said for Spider-Man Noir and Spider-Ham.
Silk is a Spider-Verse character who has such a number of great arcs within the comics and is a personal favorite of a few folks in the studio, so she made a lot of sense to us to include as part of this latest Spider-Verse wave.
You don’t need to provide details about who or why, but are there any characters you wanted to create, or kits you wanted to give certain characters, that received pushback from Marvel and led to significant changes?
The instance of this that sticks out most in my mind was when we were first pitching the game to Marvel. Originally, we had planned to have the first two followup character packs be Hulk and Abomination. However, when we presented the release plan to Marvel, they strongly suggested we swap out Abomination for M.O.D.O.K. We learned a little later that the reason for their suggestion was that M.O.D.O.K. was going to be appearing in a wide variety of Marvel properties so they were trying to help Crisis Protocol align with those plans, without necessarily giving away all the secrets to us directly.
Overall, Marvel has been great at being very open and trusting of us to know who and when to introduce characters into the game.
When you approach designing a model, how much do you consider the affiliation’s design as a whole? Are characters more often created in a vacuum, or do the needs and existing synergies in an affiliation frequently play a significant role in design?
Whenever we design a new character, we always do so from the ground up, meaning that we focus solely on creating the character rules to be as evocative of the character from the comics and media rather than think about how those rules will add to or interact with what currently exists in the game. We believe that this approach of character and theme first and foremost has been the key to the game’s success, helping us to create characters that feel appropriate to their comic selves and thereby creating a game that feels straight from Marvel comics.
Once we have the character designed to be as close a thematic match to the source material as we can, we will then look at things like how it interacts with its home affiliation(s) or the current meta of the game. However, while we might make adjustments based on those things, we always use the initial design as an immutable North Star. We won’t make any change that pulls the character away from the theme and source material.
Could you speak a bit about the general playtesting process and how the feedback from playtesters informs your decision?
The testing process in general goes like this:
First, we create the initial character design following all the things we just talked about. From there, we do an initial Dev Team pass where we talk about the proposed design and try to identify any immediate mechanical or balance concerns (or debate if some key theme is missing or not defined well enough from the proposed design). Once we have an accord on the initial design, it gets passed over to our Lead Dev, who takes the design doc and turns everything into official technical rules text. This is most important when a character has a brand new ability that may not previously exist in the current game.
Once that is done, we do another team review and then the character goes to Alpha testing. This stage is us just playing games internally. Our goal at this stage is to make sure the rules function like we want and that nothing about the character is completely broken or useless. This stage usually goes for about 4-6 weeks. Once we are happy with the Alpha testing, it goes to external playtest.
We are fortunate to work with a number of great playtest groups all around the world. Each playtest cycle lasts around 6 weeks and most characters will go through 2-4 cycles before being locked. We use a playtest forum to host feedback and discussion about each cycle. Additionally, the devs will often hold direct calls with groups to discuss feedback in real time. Internally, we have two dev meetings every week where we go over all feedback, both external and internal (as we continue to test internally alongside external testing), and determine tweaks or changes based on the feedback.
Once a character is at the end of the testing process, we will have one final review where we, as a Dev Team, will go over all the feedback and determine if we are happy with where the character is or if we need to send it back for another cycle.
With the new starter set releases right around the corner, what do you see as the ideal path for a new MCP player to take?
I think it depends a lot on the player. My first suggestion is to just pick the starter that has the characters you like most in it. One of the biggest reasons we are releasing the new Single Player Starters is because we want to provide more options for players to be able to join the game with the section of the Marvel Universe that appeals to them the most.
While we have just two Single Player Starters releasing this year with the X-Men and Spider- Foes, additional starters will be releasing next year, providing more entry points for players.
And while more character selection is great, I think it would be remiss not to also mention that these boxes significantly reduce the cost of entry into the game, coming in at under $100 and including everything you need to play the full and complete game, just like the original Core Sets did. Everyone at Atomic Mass Games is committed to seeing our games grow and for more people to discover the joy of hobby miniatures gaming, so being able to offer affordable, yet complete entry products has been a major push of ours. So if cost is one of your considerations as a new player, there’s no other starter product I can think of that provides the same value for the price.
Currently, the vast majority of leaderships benefit all allies, while only a few limit their effect to affiliated allies (e.g., Weapon X, Corvus Black Order). What led those leaders to function in that way? Is it something you consider when designing all leaderships?
Typically, the limited Leaderships are featured on special Leaderships that aren’t printed on characters directly but can be found on Team Tactic Cards. A player choosing to use one of these Leaderships is already making some pretty specific Roster or Squad decisions to gain access to them, so we often push the abilities on these cards slightly and then balance around making their effects more restrictive to a smaller pool of characters. This ensures that we have fewer variables to account for, both in the present and the future.
When designing standard Leaderships, we almost always approach those with the knowledge that those effects are going to have a much broader impact across the game and therefore we will be a lot more conservative with them comparatively.
And that wraps up our time with “The Wills”! A huge thank you to them for their valuable time and to Atomic Mass Games as a whole for this game we continue to love.
Have any questions or feedback? Drop us a note in the comments below or email us at contact@goonhammer.com. Want articles like this linked in your inbox every Monday morning? Sign up for our newsletter. And don’t forget that you can support us on Patreon for backer rewards like early video content, Administratum access, an ad-free experience on our website and more.
