I've been playing plenty of Survival Mode in Splinterlands last week testing out the new game mode and while having fun, it's also clear that some adjustments to how things work need to be made.
My Survival Mode Strategy Experience So Far
So far I have mixed feelings as I enjoyed my sessions playing Survival Mode on my main account with Max level Cards available. To be honest, this mostly is due to the fact that the SPS earnings are great along with some satisfaction to put others their Max level Cards on Cooldown. At the same time, there is just too much about it that is frustrating (especially while trying it out on my Silver Level Alt Account) and if feels like there are many leaks that will get exploited.
I played 200 Battles on my main account in which after an initial climb I earned around 1200 SPS in the last 146 battles (300k SPS Staked). Of those matches I Surrendered 42 of them as I saw I was up against a player with just way better cards and battles that were bound to end in a loss and all my cards getting cooled down. So the best thing to do is either go all in or all out and looking at it now, I should have surrendered more. With Max level common cards including 400 copies, you more or less are able to surrender 400 times just waiting for the battles where you know you can survive without any harm.
Playing on my Alt account though, the experience was horrible though to the point where I just plan to capitulate on that account as I also just don't have the time to play and running a bot there for me is not an option.
This is what the 60 first battles on my alt account looked like facing max level decks in around 33% of the matches and I ended up throwing the towel before the match around half the time.
Big Survival Mode Problems!
- 1) The Surrender Exploit: To play correctly, you simply need a bunch of cheap level 1 Summoners and cards that allow you to surrender without harm. This create a dynamic where a very small percentage of the matches actually are matches. As a Max Level player you either crush someone who has lower level cards or manually throw the battle against a stronger player. As a lower level player you kind of have to do the same as so often you are just left without any chance. This simply doesn't bring a fun dynamic to the game and beats the entire purpose of battling with the life or death of your cards on the line.
- 3) Bad Cards Are Still Useless: So one of the ideas behind Survival mode is to give old cards that aren't used that much more usecase. However, when I look at the cards that I have left after a long session, it are all the ones that are generally not used in Modern/Wild ranked and playing them in Survival also likely won't get you that far as most of the time you still are just up against the best cards in the game.
- 4) Inconsistent Cooldown Times: What they tried to do with the cooldown times is to boost the value of Legendary cards as they have the lowest cooldown at 2 days while Common Cards have a cooldown time of 5 days (both at max level). This kind of completely screws up the flow as someone who plays at Max level kind of also has their legendary cards on a 5-day cooldown while the common ones require a whopping 400 copies instead of just 11.
- 5) Infinite Soulbound Reward Card Value Extraction: As Soulbound reward cards from the Chaos Legion Set included summoners and so many of them were printed. Accounts that used bots to just extract them now has a free pass to just spam play them running bots and eventually will be matched against each other allowing to extract more SPS without any intention to ever put something in the game. Older reward cards that are not soulbound and Chaos Legion cards also have massive supplies and once bots are all set again it will be an issue.
- 6) New Player Unfriendly: Survival Mode is another thing that was introduced toward the whales and the existing players while it likely won't get a single new player in the game as the requirements in order to get anything going are just so high. In that regard, it all looks like a short term band aid with an eye on Chaos Legion being dumped into wild while nothing really is added to the game in terms of actual value. Card prices have gone up slightly but I doubt it will be a sustainable solution as only new players coming it can fix this. At this point, Splinterlands still is a horrible experience for new players with a massive cost of entry.
- 7) Increased SPS Inflation: Basically what this mode did was introduce 33% more SPS into the overall reward pool. While most goes toward higher Level players who probably aren't looking to dump, it also likely decreases their willingness to buy more and eventually it will put pressure on the SPS price as there are no new players to buy it up.
Survival Mode Solutions!
Many of these solutions go against my own play and agenda to earn as much but are needed to make the game more fun, fair, and sustainable.
- 1) Re-Introduction of Leagues: It simply should not be possible if you see a strong opponent to surrender without any consequence. This dynamic also creates so many more battles as cards get prevented from being on cooldown. What should be done is to require at least 2 Cards to be played at the level of the league a player is in.
| League | Common | Rare | Epic | Legendary |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bronze | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 |
| Silver | 4 | 2 | 1 | 1 |
| Gold | 6 | 4 | 2 | 2 |
| Diamond | 8 | 6 | 3 | 3 |
| Champion | MAX | MAX | MAX | MAX |
As it is right now, players at the highest level can easily work together and just milk rewards forever if in each battle just 1 of the players gives up 2 level 1 cards which keeps everyone their max level cards alive so they can do it again and again and again.
- 2) Adjust Cooldowns based on Card Level: The artificial attempt at making Legendary Cards way more valuable is another case where 'fun & gameplay comes at the cost of the economy making things worse. Things would be so much better if the cooldowns were just based on the Level of the card also because commons need a whopping 400 card to be combined to get to max level. I don't mind if the lowest cooldown times were increased a bit while others were decreased to make everything more consistent. This looks like a better and easy solution just on the top of my head...
Cooldown Adjustments
This simplifies things and also doesn't make a difference between certain levels. For example, a Level 4 epic gives an edge in the match but has the same longer cooldown period as a level 3 Epic. 4 Different levels of cooldown would highly simplify things and make it easier to manage as a player. You play a long session and after that just wait a couple of days to be allowed another session with all the cards if you have them at a specific level.
| Legendary | L1 | L2 | L3 | MAX |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cooldown | 15 Days | 10 Days | 6 Days | 3 Days |
| Gold Foil | 10 Days | 7 Days | 4 Days | 2 Days |
| Epic | L1 | L3 | L5 | MAX |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cooldown | 15 Days | 10 Days | 6 Days | 3 Days |
| Gold Foil | 10 Days | 7 Days | 4 Days | 2 Days |
| Rare | L1 | L4 | L6 | MAX |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cooldown | 15 Days | 10 Days | 6 Days | 3 Days |
| Gold Foil | 10 Days | 7 Days | 4 Days | 2 Days |
| Common | L1 | L5 | L8 | MAX |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cooldown | 15 Days | 10 Days | 6 Days | 3 Days |
| Gold Foil | 10 Days | 7 Days | 4 Days | 2 Days |
The gold foild should not be half the time as they also earn more in the matches already. a 33% cooldown decrease already seems a solid enough benefit. In the end, the entire point of Survival mode is that cards do go on cooldown so the earnings from individual battles are actually great.
Another solution could be to Base the Cooldown on how many of a specific card are in circulation which effectively combats the reward extraction of overprinted free Soulbound Reward Cards / Regular Reward Cards & Chaos Legion Cards while it boosts the value of cards where good money was paid for by players. It also would make a unified rule for the Regular Foil and Golden Foil Cards while giving extra incentives for players to get the new conclave arcana set. However, this gets way more complicated because of the different levels and also makes it harder to make it that all cards of a player who is at a certain level release at the same time.
From What I understand, a new season resets the cooldown which also doesn't make much sense as it beats the purpose of cooldowns and will create so many spam battles at the end of the season. The entire point of Survival mode is that the stakes are high with less battles available. This beats both those causes.
3) Soulbound Card Earnings Restriction: One of the issues with Wild why a entry tax each season was introduced is that is was possible to just run a bot at nearly no cost and milk rewards forever. Survival Mode now more or less re-introduces this and it for sure is something that will need to get fixed. A Solution could be for the Wild Batte Pass to also count toward Survival which will cut out most of the bots but also all the low level players as they will be unable to recover the cost. A better solution would be to give Soulbound cards the same status as Starter Cards used to get. This in that they can help you win a battle but don't count toward the Reward points cutting down the earnings of those who almost exclusively use these soulbound cards.
One of the things Splinterlands really needs to do is
Make it so that cards paid for with real money have an earnings edge over cards won for free by playing the game!
Right now there simply is too much incentive and ability for players who want to extract value to do so by having full focus on playing would Soulbound Reward cards.
Conclusion!
I'll keep it at this for now as I could go on about things for much longer. Basically, Survival mode just like everything else in Splinterlands suffers from the fact that the Economy is put first at the cost of Fun & Gameplay along with Cards Paid for having no real advantage over Cards Earned for Free which brings about a long list of issues that holds the game back and makes it impossible to attract new players. Fixing re-introduction of Leagues, along with the adjustment of cooldown times and the restriction of soulbound reward cards to earn are all easy things that could be done to improve things. More optimally would be to actually create an entire different game mode that solves all of the current problems in the game while being friendly toward new players. However, at the current pace of development that would likely take years. Shoutout to 
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