This is exactly why I picked up Blistered Hearts last year and spent the first two days biting people this year. It's all about strategy. :P

Last year I had eyesore, and literally no one wanted it.

I kind of wish they'd bring back the old old system for biting. I think it was during the second pandemic that you could bite people and bring them up to something like your stage minus 2-3? So you could skip the first few stages of an infection and accomplish more.

I don't know if it would work now that you can put on a stage 8 skin in your wardrobe, but there must be a way to tweak it to work today. Maybe each bite shaves off 10-15 minutes for your progression, so more bites can lower the time between stages?

Ooh, and then you could add a cooldown for each person you bite, so you can't just sit there and bite the same person over and over? Like say I bite Amber, and now I have 20 minutes before I can bite her again. But during that time, I can go bite Ariel, Keith, and Rah. That way it encourages people to spread the love around and you don't have an issue where popular players race through their infections in no time, while less well-known players never get bitten.

My main issue is the long wait time in the beginning, when you sign up for an old strain and nobody bites. I remember from last year, you only needed to wait for about 24 hours to get infected without being bitten. But it was different this year. If I had known that the wait time could be this long, I would have chosen to bite or sign up for a new strain in the beginning.

And apparently, it could take people 3 or more days (is there even an upper limit?) to get infected without being bitten due to the long queue (reference below). I don't know if the queue is there for programming reasons, but it discourages and punishes people wanting unpopular strains. I had to switch to a more popular strain after almost 3 days of useless waiting. Not announcing this in the news or FAQ section also causes a ton of frustration and confusion among the "unbittens".

Three days to wait is just ridiculous and poorly thought out. And no fun at all. And this is supposed to be fun.

I agree the wait for not getting bitten should be less, or something to make sure that you can get an unpopular strain without being almost penalized. honestly if they had an instant infection for each strain and it was like 5 mil, a bunch of people would go that route and a ton of sP would get sunken.

... I would totally pay 5mil for an instant infection.

I got the achievement last year, because my virus was extremely popular. Was one of the first users to have it! Butterfly Bruise ftw.

It was the first pandemic, but it didn't really worked the way you stated. In fact, it was the opposite

Biting overrid ANY VIRUS, even if you were 100% done when you were bitten, and you lost 1-2 stages. I lost my virus to someone who had something I did want and couldn't bite. I lost access to the Zombie Den. It was just extremely annoying.

I'm not liking how stages have suddenly slowed down. I find myself waiting 15+ hours to move to the next stage, rather than 8-12. Not only have the wait times for getting a strain without biting increased, but so have the wait times between stages. And don't get me started on the queue system. Last year was much more fun, for sure. This year, it's not. Makes me worry how bad next year will be, if anything is further changed. I understand the message is "nobody can have everything" and yes, that may be true, but I'd at least like us to get the ones we want, even if it takes a couple years. 4 per year is a good amount, I was able to get 4 last year. This year, that probably won't happen. Thanks, programmers!

Next thing you know, next year we could only be progressing 1 stage per DAY!!

Yeah, I wish communication was clearer. I tried making a board in survival about point 1 but my board was dragged down by all the other busier threads. |D

edit: actually you can't put on another skin to bite someone unless your current progression is mature enough to bite (if you said that then my bad my brain can't function this morning orz)

dang well that is too convoluted for my brain this morning lol =___= ty for the info, sweetie~

I have waited a lot also since I cannot find anyone to bite me for what I have. :C

I got my first new skin yesterday and signed up for an instant infection with Doom Bloom. It's been nearly 24 hours and the first stage isn't showing up yet even though I'm supposed to be infected. This is just boring.

Looks like you're on stage 2 to me:

I was looking at the Delish previews on the news page and nothing was showing. I then tried looking at the previews in the HA forum and my infection shows there. Thanks for the help.

been 24 hours waiting on dolly dreadful...this is ridiculous. Makes it impossible to get many skins this year.

Also been waiting 24 hours on butterfly bruise. Posted on the forums to get bitten too, no luck whatsoever.

[edit] Just got it now. After more than 24 hours and a second clicking of the link (which also took my sP).

Staff should AT LEAST make the event a little longer due to all those bugs with the waiting... It's being 90% stress and 10% fun

For me the biggest frustration is with how long the viruses are taking to progress, which just adds to my frustration with this year's event as a whole. Having to wait up to 16 hours for a strain to progress to the next stage is very annoying when you've already had to wait almost a day to be infected because only one person is biting for that strain. As of writhing this post my HA is currently stuck on stage 2, because stage 2 took almost 16 hours to show, even though I'd been infected Sunday morning. ?

Not to mention the earlier errors with the queue waiting for the infection to even start showing on my HA. All in all, as much as I love subeta and Pandemic/Survival, I feel like something really needs to be done to minimize all the waiting & the bugs users are experiencing. Survival is supposed to be fun, not boring & frustrating because you're constantly waiting.

I'm up to nearly 36 hours waiting for Baker's Kiss and this is just ridiculous. I've had someone with Baker's Kiss bite me in hopes of getting infected sooner, and yet my option on the forums still says "Bite" instead of "Infected."

This is absolutely ridiculous. I'm so sick of this website lately.

Not really? I mean they made a survival faq, so I think that's a cheap excuse tbh. :l

UAs are helpful, don't get me wrong... but this is kind of a situation where I feel like the communication needs to come from programmers.

has not been on in over a week. hasn't been on in over a day. appears to not be involved in events?!

The FAQ was made on the 15th, and hasn't been updated since, despite there being numerous things from this thread that SHOULD be posted in it. So.... yeah, I stand by what I said.