Hey @bjangles - great write up! I love the bracket approach with modified cooldowns based on level limits!
I have to agree with @keeegs here - too many brackets is no good for a trial...
- it will be overwhelming to decide what you want to lock into
- match liquidity will be lopsided;
- some pools will deplete much faster
I expect it will be a confusing and frustrating experience for many.
TDLR: Cut to 3 manual leagues and 1 botted league.
- Manual only Silver
- Manual only Gold
- Manual only Diamond/Champ
- War of the Machines mode - all card levels allowed.
Read below for my reasons...
I'd much rather ask: what does Survival mode solve?
First, Survival Mode is a lot of fun as a manual player in a high stakes game.
It allows players to think creatively in a way that ranked play doesn't.
I don't think we need a novice or bronze league version of survival. The costs of novice and bronze and silver decks are still fairly close, and we have Frontier mode specifically designed to guide players up to Silver level decks.
Survival mode is designed for players with lots of cards, but we still want to encourage card scarcity through combining.
By the same token, having liquidity bots with ghost cards in manual mode defeats the purpose of survival, and I'm 100% convinced that the bot operators aren't able to "tune the difficulty" consistently, and it creates too much work to keep adjusting them.
I'd much rather modify the matchmaking to address the known issues (see my earlier post with specific adjustments to the matchmaking algorithm)
Secondly, I do think there is benefit to a bot-friendly survival mode.
This provides utility for lots of excess unused cards, allowing the deeply-invested an opportunity to make use of their extra copies of max cards.
The whole point is we want to use bots in this mode to chew up cards. No one is going to say "I'm having so much fun botting my 10,000 Level 1 Kelya decks". Plus it will create too many matches for the servers if bots can play endless level 1 cards with 1/10 of the cooldown.
So just one botted survival league - and it's no league limits, no holds barred....
I'm saying we literally call it bot mode. If it wasn't copyrighted, I'd call it SkyNet.
In Summary: Cut to 3 manual leagues and 1 botted league.
- Manual only Silver
- Manual only Gold
- Manual only Diamond/Champ
- War of the Machines mode - all card levels allowed.
As for Playing in Multiple Brackets?
I think players probably should only be able to pick one manual league. Allowing play in multiple leagues will make understanding cooldowns more complicated ("Is the cooldown right? Which league did I lose my Tofu?").
Also for overall player satisfaction, it makes players feel weird when top accounts dominate low level leaderboards, etc.
But I see no problem with allowing players to play survival manually and in bot mode - My thinking though is that cooldowns from one mode would also be on cooldown in the other bracket.
Hey, really appreciate the thoughtful breakdown—and I do think a lot of your points make sense in isolation. That said, the goal of this whole idea, imo, is to test a system that invites more player types to actually show up & participate.
We’re not launching a final product here—we’re running a sandbox.
So while I get the argument for trimming things down to 3–4 brackets, I’d argue the reverse:
If we don’t test more, we won’t know which player segments are showing up, which brackets are working & where we’re missing traction.
A few quick clarifications:
Liquidity across brackets is something to watch, but that’s precisely why this format matters—let the data show us where things are sustainable.
I agree the system needs to be easy to understand—but I’d argue locking people into one bracket per season actually simplifies that, not complicates it.
Bots are here because we can’t ignore them—this mode can either absorb card supply or be gated for manual diehards. This test explores both angles side by side.
If we limit the menu too early, we end up baking in assumptions before we’ve seen actual results. The whole point here is player-driven evolution—the brackets with poor turnout, lopsided cooldowns, or confusing UX? They’ll be the first to go. But let’s start with options, and trim back from real feedback.
Again, appreciate the feedback—and I think once we’re through a full few seasons of data, this’ll all be a lot clearer.
I can get behind a sandbox testing concept :)
I think we should do 4 for 2 seasons and then try another 4 for 2 seasons etc and then we can try refine it down from there.
10 is way to many. Especially if you are locked into one. We need to slowly engage the wide community into survival. Not overwhelm them