I Tried Playing Survival
Hello there! @saydie here, manually playing Splinterlands everyday!
One of the biggest things that took place during last season was the return of the Survival Mode after it was paused for more or less 6 months in order to revamped some mechanics of the mode as well as to provide measures to various exploits that exists in the mode before. Now, survival is back with a new Bracket system that gives certain caps of what level of cards can be used, much similar to when there was still leagues and card cooldowns were also adjusted based in the bracket cap they belong in order to improve the availability of cards as well as the match flow. The reward pool allocated for the mode was also tweaked, so that its distribution will be based on the player's overall participation, so the more you win, the more SPS you can get at the end of the season.
As a player with not a big card collection, my overall participation in the mode will be limited and due to my other commitments last season, I was not really able to play the mode, but this time, I tried to play Survival for real and I just though to share my experience here after I played my first 25 battles.
Survival Mode Experience
Similar to the previous season, I chose to play the same Bracket V with Gold league minimum Archon level to max Archon level. This bracket is similar to what a Diamond League is, and since I played modern with mostly max-level cards, I chose this bracket so that I do not need to adjust my strategies with lower-level leagues. At the same time, this is an active Bracket, meaning all the players here will play manually; otherwise, they need to choose an Automated bracket.
Since I did not play Survival last season, my ratings did not move up, and I have remained in the same rating this season of 260 rating or the minimum rating for Bronze league. After that, I played my first 25 battles, or about the same number of battles I played at minimum in modern in a day, and from that, I want to find out how much rating I will get, starting from scratch.
Immediately, what I noticed was the incredibly long matchmaking time to find an opponent, and oftentimes, there are no suitable opponents to be found. Well, with only 19 players in the bracket, that is reasonable, but there were also supposed to have liquidity bots to provide matchmaking, and matching with them also proves to be difficult.
Eventually, I find my first opponent, which is a liquidity bot, and the next thing I noticed was that it was using minimum level Archons, unlike the previous season, where I was immediately faced with a maxed level deck. Unfortunately, I lost that Battle despite using max-level Archon, so immediately, I'm one Archon down already, even before my 25 battles.
I can't let that first loss discourage me, so I still continue with my battles until reaching 25 battles. Fortunately, the only loss that I have was during the first match, and has managed to reach 740 rating, which is around Bronze I tier.
That said, I still lose a significant number of cards, but where it hurts more is when I lose an Archon because that means that I won't be able to use that element any longer, since I do not have multiple Archon copies.
In terms of matchmaking, out of my 25 battles, I only ever faced another player in three battles, and it was the same opponent, too. The rest, it was all liquidity bots. Fortunately, I have won all my battles against the other manual player, despite both of us using max level team.
After playing all my 25 battles, I once again look at my battle history to know how long it takes for me to finish 25 battles in Survival Mode right now, and it takes more or less about 3 hours. Well, that was a lot of time for 25 battles, and I can see the long matchmaking time to be an issue if I play moving forward, because it probably was not worth the time investment, and waiting for an opponent is not fun.
Since I'm at it already, I just continue playing the game until I reach Silver III, before I stop playing. I think it is a good stopping point for me since I have now lost 47 cards and will wait until most of them are usable before I battle again.
Closing
And that was my Survival mode experience so far. In terms of the gameplay, my main complaint about facing max-level cards off the bat seems to have been addressed, and looking at Discord today, it seems that the team has done something to make Survival matchmaking faster, though I have not experienced it yet, since I was waiting for my cards to be usable again.
Thank you, and see you on the next post!
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