I’m just gonna brain dump a lot of thoughts about survival mode… i reserve the right to be wrong and change my mind and welcome your thoughts.
With one of the largest collection of cards by BCX or CP in Splinterlands I guess I’m in considered the target market for the new Survival mode game. Most of my cards are off working 1300 plots but i could be convinced to swap out some of them back to play this mode and i still have a good number that aren’t working the land because they aren’t maxxed level cards… but maybe they will find new life. Maybe i’ll open a bunch more packs so i can keep farming and still have cards to play. Maybe i’ll just focus on renting maxxed cards for land work and use my more old an now exotic cards in survival mode. In any case I am just starting to think through a few things and thought i’d share.
Now to be clear I may have the collection for this. But I actually hardly play any computer games at all. I play splinterlands in spurts so they shouldn't build this around someone like me. However if i knew a game was happening every X minutes i may be more inclined.
However here's the perspective i come from. I don't enjoy the BLIND style play of splinterlands and we have just convinced ourselves it's solid. This style will still have that blind style play. I would prefer a back and forth choose cards style. I have sometimes thought of creating that style and implementing it the nice thing is it would use the same game engine and the same replay system and rule sets etc... just the choosing and ranking stuff would need to be developed. Maybe AI coding is getting close enough that i'll be able to create it in 2025 by myself as a non-code writer (who understands code decently)
Anyway these are my thoughts
REWARDING GREATNESS
The mode rewards not just winning but how much you win by which I think is awesome. If you win and your guys don’t die you get to use them again. There have been many times i’ve played a battle and was so proud none of my guys didn’t die and I thought there should be a bonus for that. Not just how much you win but how well you played compared to the other team.
MORE SUMMONERS
Survival mode may not have win streak bonuses but they're even more important now because you don't loose your summoner.
It seems like you’re gonna need a lot of summoners in this mode no matter how you think of it.
In the previous image these players all have lost about 55-70 games that would represent that many summoners.
But i don’t think people will play as much as they do modern/wild so i don’t think you’ll be playing 200-400 games a month. Specially if matchmaking is harder to figure out. So then 50-80 summoners isn’t maybe even needed. Plus they come back anyway. So part of me wonders how many summoners you may need anyway.
MORE CREATIVITY
One obvious perk to survival is you’re gonna have to think of a lot of more ways to win instead of just playing the same set of cards every time the ruleset allows it. This means way more creativity.
You may end up playing with cards you’ve never played with before… and this may make it more fun than ever.
RISK MANAGEMENT
In ranked play the idea is you go all out with the best team possible every time. Now you may try to win with new unique methods because you have cards you will eventually end up having to use… specially if you’re worried about loosing you may not want to risk your best card on a ruleset it may not shine brightest on.
If you do NOT think you're gonna win (because you don't play the ruleset well or whatever the reason may be) do you just put in crappy cards?
Will we see lots of people putting in 1 card teams?
Seems like there should be a penalty for not using all the mana or fleeing and risking no cards… if so how would they handle legit technical challenges or mistakes where they don’t field a team? I still think there needs to be a requirement to field a team or have something happen if they don’t.
Also risking high BCX cards vs 1BCX cards is way different I guess we could see people who have a terrible setup for a ruleset maybe just kind of risking 1bcx cards… assuming there is a requirement to field an actual team.
We will be paying way closer attention to anything you can figure out about opponent. Will they still share what they have played recently? Anything you can figure out will make a difference.
do you play with lower level cards and keep best cards for end hoping everyone else runs out? Or do you play with best cards hoping you just keep winning?
Also your risk here impacts what happens to your guild… did you risk a card that you may have needed to play your brawls for your guild
I’m guessing you play your guild matches first before you go and play survival mode. Then you hope they come back to you in time for the next brawl in X days.
We may have boosts of play after guild brawls are done.
Another question: Will survival have similar seasons and will the seasons end around the same time? That would make big differences.
Now all of this is with a grain of salt because those with high level gold foil teams may not even feel that harsh of an impact. Specially those that have lots of legendaries… they can just play a bunch of max level teams until they eventually loose a bunch and come back the next day around the same time and keep going because they come back that fast legend-max-gold
But even non-gold legend cards don’t have along wait specially if you have a couple copies you may not even feel the pain of loss in survival mode and may not have to deal with being really creative.
You almost will want to play legendaries more often because you know they’ll come back faster.
And contrary to what town hall listener expressed how he thought there was a disincentive to level up cards… seems like winning your games and not having losses is a big incentive so not playing with low level cards would be bad not just because you may not win but also because you don’t want losses at all. Also maxxed cards come back around 3x faster
MATCHMAKING ALGORITHM
Which leads us to a huge discussion… will it still be pairing up people as soon as it finds matches? I think this approach will have issues. If you want to win trade simply play when not a lot of people are playing and see that your rulesets match up.
There is a discussion of win trading and those with multiple accounts.
they need to figure out a different way to pair players because there aren't a ton of us that can play this to start or play the entire season. Also there are reasons to play less specially if you loose a decent amount.
But luckily I think there is an easy solution… one that i think Splinterlands should have used a long time ago for ranked play. Scheduled times, countdown timers. What does this mean?
MATCHES EVERY X MINUTES (Possible Solution)
- Let’s say that there is a match every minute at the top of the minute. There is an expectation set and people would know that.
- One huge perk is ability to be even more sophisticated with match making. Splinterlands matchmaking algo can take into account how many times they’ve played and maybe pair up people that don’t get to play often. It would give more ability to find more compatible pairings.
- One question is would we even want to be paired up against similarly ranked players in this mode? You’d be hoping for mismatches all the time wouldn’t you because you don’t just want to win you want to destroy and have no losses on your team.
- So the matchmaking algo is gonna be huge.
- Simply taking the first two people that request a game is gonna be problematic to say the least. As stated previously if you play two accounts at the same time and get a similar ruleset then things will be horrible.
- One benefit of playing every X minutes style is that you know when the game starts.
- You can also have waiting rooms where people can chat and crap talk and just create a buzz (there are hive chat protocols that are free and easy to implement and verify the account)
- What happens if you set it to a game every 1 minute and no one shows up… you stay in the queue and it starts when next person joins… i guess you’ll know who you’re playing haha.
- But if that unfortunate scenario happens then the system can adjust to every 5 minutes and the thing is you’ll know when the next game is 7:05, 7:10, 7:15 … you’re not waiting around you have an expectation you look at the clock and say… oh i should go join the lobby.
- We really would be helped by having a fun interactive lobby experience.
- Also one other perk is that there may be an understanding that most games or all games have the same ruleset that round … this helps to increase the discsussion around the water cooler after the match. But also works for win trading reasons so you have less ability to know if your two accounts are playing eachother because everyone is getting the same ruleset that round. But you could have a couple rulesets.
- Heck you could even show X number of possible rulesets in the lobby but that may scare people away for that round so probably not.
- If there are perks to hitting a rating and just camping out there that means even less games so we really need to consider this option
Regardless…Matchmaking algo needs some serious thought that’s the obvious thing… and i know they’re talking about figuring things out as they go later on. But this one is one of the things they should do right from the beginning. Put some serious thought into matchmaking algorithm and what happens if there aren’t as many players and the impacts that may have.
DAILY RANKING DETERIORATION AND NOT SEASONAL
I really think they should have a daily rating deterioration to give incentives to keep going.
There is an obvious strategy to hit a high ranking and just stop playing for many days
Lots of people who maybe just wait for cards to come back… maybe that’s fine but at a price to the ranking.
In this case maybe there doesn’t even need to be a seasonal reset… but there could still be. Or it doesn’t have to be as severe
But then the question is what happens to those who go on vacation?
Maybe there is ability to buy a potion with glint or dec for those who need a break that doesn’t impact their ranking?
I really don’t have the perfect solution… just spit-balling ideas.
Those who stay in the fight and keep battling are for sure more worthy of laud and honor and rewards than those who fight and run away for many days just to come back when their team is restored.
This mode is a “hard core” mode after all so it should reward those who stick around and keep going.
One option is if you play enough one day you don’t get the deterioration the next day. Another option is you only go down if you don’t play X number of games in a X day span. Another option is you have a cap of how much you fall so you don’t go all the way back to zero just because you stop playing for a trip or just to take a break. You aren’t in the top rankings but you’re not at start all over and why bother territory. So maybe you only go down when you’re in highest ranks
With that said I’m not gonna do well because i don’t play the game very often and go on long breaks even with modern/wild. hahaha … so i’m cheerleading ideas that will work against me.
CARD RENTING AND REVIVING
using rented cards is gonna be tough to figure out
Using someone else’s card and getting it into a 7 day cooldown and then stop renting it would be horrible.
Season rentals aren’t much better if you play the card the last day of a season and it looses then you stop renting? That’s not much better.
So how do you figure this out? Would be awesome if they figured it out in some unique way.
All I have right now is to say that if you play with a rented card you should be required to have the potions needed to revive that thing. Not sure what that looks like technically speaking and if that’s too much work to begin with but that’s my first thought.
Maybe starting off rentals should not be considered … then added in when there is a solution and maybe after deciding if the game mode is popular enough to necessitate it.
pay to win is possible but may greatly benefit economy... Buy potions to restore your best guy.
I think an easy fix is that it should cost more and more each time you bring back same card...That Could be a fix. Otherwise you may just keep reviving the same 1 card over and over and over… it will likely be the same summoner.
Legendary cards have an incentive because maxxed versions can come back in 2 days and the gold foil ones can come back in 1 day.
One option on the table that i think is pretty decent is to only allow play with Season Rentals and then to simplify they'll come off cooldown regardless at end of season. This solution while maybe it has issues is also very simple to implement.
BOTS AND IDLE PLAY
While i would personally love a version of splinterlands that is idle play. I didn't think about this being that at all... but lots of people are responding that they think this could become that. I'm not certain this will be the case. @yabapmatt has constantly said he's open to feedback on this and they'll be testing it out. Also he's using SPS coming from the company coffers and if they want to test it out and see how it goes why not? Honestly in my working with projects this is not a huge one from what i can tell and from what they've said. I think they should do a release that isn't full featured and test it out and see the response then if it's really popular do more.
I'm pretty sure they'll still respond to DAO votes if the community feels very passionate about something. And if they look to get funds from the dao at some point then it will be the will of the community that decides if SPS comes from the DAO at some point.
If it is decided that maybe we need an idle style game that everyone has equal access to then maybe that's on the table but i wonder how many SUMMONERS these bot accounts have access to that we're worried about them.
But regardless i do think they bring up points that the team will need to think about... BUT their assurance of problems is what makes me trust their take on the project so very little.
Published with PeakVault
