Last week after a long time, I gave Survival Mode another Chance (Link) and to my surprise, I actually had some fun with it and it felt quite rewarding...
Manual Survival Mode
I was not aware of it when I started to play, but apparently there had been changes made quite some time ago to Survival mode (Link) in that...
- The rewards were extra Glints & some exclusive card based on your ranking at the end of the season
- Cooldown was pretty much scapped in manual Play mode
The main requirements in order to get a ranking and rewards is to get at least 100 battles in with a 50%+ win rate and depending on your ranking you will receive a certain amount of Glints and a certain number of the Common Unlocked Reward Card.
When it comes down to reward cards, they kind of found the way to make unlocked ones work in that they limit the droprate so the whales who want those cards are pretty much forced to buy them off the market. This makes it so that their values start pretty high but inevitably will also start dropping as more people start maxing them out and no longer need to buy extra ones. It's the same mechanic of the unlocked golden cards. The main issue that I see is that the team will start pushing their luck on this as they see that it's working but at some points the whales might say 'it's too much' and they might stop buying them.
Personally, I just sell every single reward card that I get which can be sold as I have a large enough collection and am totally burned out and not up to date with new cards at all. I also anticipate that prices of these cards will be in a continued downtrend as sellers are bound to undercut themselves. I also always list them at quite a lower price compared to the cheaper listing so I'm sure to have them sold quicky. In my eyes, it are hot potatoes which you want to get rid of as quickly as possible.
Also with the 2000 DEC Wild Tax that needs to be paid, I want to make sure to have that covered by these sales each season.
I did get 3 of the Darkguard Hellion along with 1 Luckiest Longshot which I managed to sell for ~1642 DEC only needing a little more to cover the Wild Costs.
What Made Survival "Fun"
With fun I mean acceptable in a way that it doesn't feel like an obligation like most of the game. Starting Survival from level 0 was pretty dull as I was able to play the same deck over an over again winning easily which in a way also kind of felt good for a moment. Aside From This Maual Survival allowed me to
Play When I Want: This is one of my major complaints about Splinterlands as Modern pretty much forces everyone to play the game near full-time while Wild makes everyone not care at all as the bot does the work. Splinterlands really needs something where players can come in when they feel like playing and stop when they are done depending on when they have time. 100 Battles in a 15-day season feels quite reasonable.
Not Getting Punished: with a minimum cooldown when you lose a macth or a card gets killed, it's a much better stystem compared to having to wait days otherwise in order to get a card back and a massive difference between common, rare, epic, & Legendary cards which screws up regular deck I often play.
Feels Rewarding: and this in a way without overly dilluting things as it gives some glints which is fun to build the soulbound reward cards and maybe get some extra Energy. The reward cards also can actually be sold to recover the Wild Tax. The fact that there is a leaderboard and very few people actually playing means you are sure to end quite high.
Gives Owned Cards Usecase: For the first time ever, I actually felt like I could play and have some fun with a very limited selection of the cards that I owned. Most remain totally useless though.
Next Survival Season!
I actually kind of looked forward to participate in the next Survival Season but for some reason manual play is disabled and I have no clue why nor the energy to really dig in to research why.
So I entered the Automation Allowed Expert 11 League starting from zero in the hope to kind of replicate the run.
However, there is no cooldown reduction here and the opponents from the start at the bottom of the league are max level so it's kind of impossible an not fun. I pretty much gave up on it after losing my first 2 matches thinking Screw this nonense.
Conclusion
I actually against all my expectations had a bit of fun playing Survival in Manual last season. For some reason now it has been disabled and the automation allowed league instantly made me give up on Survival again.I still think that some kind of Draft / Arena Mode done right (no pay2win) is what Splinterlands needs to actually attract new players but at the same time I fear that that never will come as the pattern of sacraficing fun for economy remains quite dominant in this game.