A couple of days ago, Survival Mode was officially announced for Splinterlands. These are some of my initial thoughts on it...
What Is Survival Mode ?
Basically, Survival is exactly the same as Wild Mode with the only difference that cards of losing battles get put on a cooldown and can no longer be used unless that period past or if a potion is bought and used to revive the card. There is no extry tax to play this mode and cooldowns of cards also count toward the other leagues. There is no energy and players can play as much as they are able to based on the collection of cards that they own.
Why Survival Mode ?
When it comes down to Splinterlands, Economic incentives are always prioritized over Fun & Gameplay which often makes for sub-optimal game design. Unfortunately, this survival mode also comes 100% from financial incentives!
So that is basically the motive behind Survival mode. It's an attempt to give older cards and rebellion which will be dumped into Wild more use case again in a way to prevent a further dump and inability for the team to sell the new upcoming conclave arcana set.
The "New" Game Mode!
Honestly, it's a bit of an insult to call Survival mode a 'new game mode' as it's exactly the same as Wild with the only twist that cards get put on a cooldown instead of having energy that replenishes. While I think the cooldown will put a lot more weight on each battle increasing the excitement, essentially it's just more of the same what we have been playing for 7+ years. It also should be really easy to implement and I'm puzzled why it will take 2+ months before it is here.
The Survival Mode Reward Pool!
So basically the combined reward pool of Wild and Modern will increase with 33%. Each Season 1.8 Million is given out in Wild and Modern combined which will become 2.7 Million or 5.4 Million each month. This extra SPS is coming from the bags of the team from what I understand and they aim to have it come from the DAO through a proposal probably sooner than later.
So basically, after trying to reduce the SPS inflation for a long time because ther was too much SPS sell pressure, they now with this extra game mode will increase it a lot again out of nowhere. The main question will be if this will either bring in new players, or spike a demand for Splinterlands assets (cards, SPS, Potions) from existing players.
So far, there doesn't seem to be much anticipation of players buying extra cards for this game mode. Looking purely at myself, I have plenty of unused cards so I likely will use this new game mode to try and get more rewards out of the game from the assets that for quite some time have been totally useless. I don't really feel the need to go buy extra cards for this even though I'm quite sure when it will be released there is going to be at least a small demand spike.
I happened to take a screenshot last week of the account value of my alt account and it went from 900$ to 906$ so it barely moved.
Last Week Value Alt Account
Now Value Alt Account
My main fear is that this new game mode will do nothing more than increase inflation again along with the selling pressure pushing the price of SPS down more.
Re-Activating Bot Farms?
So one of the major issues for Splinterlands for a long time is that there were a lot of bot farms that only had the intention to farm rewards without putting anything in. This mainly at lower levels. This problem was combated by introducing a tax on Wild mode where it now is impossible to get some decent returns.
Looking at my own earnings from Splinterlands from owning 2 accounts with a combined collection power of 2M and 277k Staked SPS. The Wild Rewards + Brawls + Staking rewards + SPT Rewards + 5 Land Plot Earnings + Vouchers give weekly earnings which range between 5.2$ and 9.2$. The Wild Tax along with the 35% Archmage cut just put a heavy weight on everything highly reducing the returns.
So after a long crucade to ban all the value extracting bots, it will once again be possible for them to be loaded up using cheap cards and Soulbound cards at the lower levels to get as much SPS as they can from this extra game mode without the need to invest anything more. At the same time without these bot farms, there likely would not be enough games played to give real players quick matchups.
Good & Bad Thoughts About Survival Mode!
+++ At least something is happening, the one thing that Splinterlands needs is a new game mode and I do like the perma death cooldown idea on cards which should make individual battles more exciting.
--- However, Survival mode kind of feels like a lazy and easy solution that might not even work as it's not going to bring in new players while it for sure might activate bot farms and it will similar to wild just be an idle game that is full of bots.
+++ I like the idea that cards get actual use case again and the fact that the cooldowns also count toward other Leagues. However, I would just stick to Wild and Modern while keeping the Brawls and Tournaments out of it.
--- The one thing Splinterlands needs is new players while this game mode is aimed toward existing players who kind of gave up having a lot of idle cards on the side that aren't used now. In the end, what we need is new players entering and there are far better new game mode ideas for that
--- One of the issues with Splinterlands is the crazy time requirement forcing players to run a bot without caring or getting a connection with their cards. This game mode could have been an opportunity to allow players with limited time to still manually enjoy Splinterlands at times that they want but I fear that it will just be more bots running while adding too much to the time requirement of real players.
°°° There should be created an extra lock button for cards that players want to exclude from Survival Mode. I'm not going to want to risk the cards that are played over and over again by my bot in wild.
--- The cooldowns and potions to revive don't really make that much sense as only max level cards which are the strongest potentially would be worth a revive. It also feels like a missed opportunity to give Vouchers some value again or to actually give some value to land.
--- Exploits likely will be found easily as everyone is going to try to min-max this once again. I can see a strategy where you get your energy down to zero to switch to Survival mode to get cards back (especially gold foils) by the time the energy has gotten back to 50.
--- Survival mode also likely won't encourage players to level up their cards as it likely will be more profitable to play 400 battles with a level 1 common card at low level on a lower win rate compared to playing 2 tp 5 matches with a max level before it goes on cooldown.
--- Soulbound cards obviously will be an issue since they include summoners and there are many farming accounts that hold them and will be able to put them to use. At the same time it's not fair to real players to ban them. So either a collection power system should be in place where you can only use soulbound cards if you own enough real cards or they need to restricted to 1 Soulbound card in each lineup or something like that.
Conclusion
While I like the core idea behind the card cooldown, the entire concept of Survival mode kind of feels like a easy solution to give old cards some value again which likely will come with a ton more problems like an increased SPS inflation and the return of Bot Farms while it won't get any new players into the game or really make it more fun as it will mainly be Wild 2.0 full of bots. So while I'm looking to test it out, I don't believe right now that this is the direction Splinterlands needs to really revive itself. There are so many better ideas for game new modes that would be fun and existing for real new and existing players giving older cards more use case again.
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