So I know that a while ago for Morostide they stopped releasing new pumpkin designs in the hope that everyone could catch up if they hadn't participated in a few years to complete their collections. (Very amazing of you by the way! I thought I'd never get them all!) So what if for a few Survivals we did a strain catch-up where there aren't new strains released so everyone could get a chance to collect all the previous avatar skins? Just a thought (:

I don't really know how necessary this is? How many skins do people normally manage to unlock during Survival? I've apparently managed 5 every year so far, but I'm sure that's more than average because it's more than I realized :x

I'm not exactly opposed to the idea, but admittedly, I'd be pretty disappointed by it for selfish reasons since I'm already running out of strains that I actively want to unlock versus ones that I'm willing to unlock because they don't squick me out but don't really expect to use.

I don't know. It sounds okay in theory, but realistically, unless zombie strains stop coming out completely, some newer users might never catch up and people already rioted the last time staff tried to stop with the zombies

Five is a bit more than average. It's easy to grab four, but five tends to require a lot of planning and grabbing strains with various amounts of stages. If you only get eight stages strains, which is the vast majority, you usually just end up with four.

I don't think it's necessary to stop strains for one year, since that's a big reason for why people are so excited for Survival each year. Watching the new strains progress and guessing what the end result will be is a big part of the event. Staff could just have some years where we get six stage strains instead of eight, which could let people gather five.

Okay, thanks! I wasn't sure if most people even managed four because I'm online all the time but other people might not be :') And I thought my 5th strain this year was an extra one until I counted and had 20 unlocked...

Five was possible this year because of the extension. Six was the magical number for this year since it relied on getting strains to progress (sometimes you had to manually save your HA to get it to move) and just being lucky enough to not be affected by the virus clearing. Getting five the other years is impressive though!

I think this could easily be worked in while keeping new zombie infections - just reduce the time it takes for the really old strains to progress. They already cost more to get infected with, so having them progress faster makes sense imo.

[edit]Added source, because I'm a dumb.

That would be appreciated too. We're paying almost two mill for some strains, they could stand to have a small boost. It could be thing you only get through payment if Subeta wants the sP sink to be more effective.

Yup! The viruses from 2009 cost 1.75m, while the ones from 2018 cost 75k which is... really weird to me, so having them slightly increased in price but also speeding their progression up would be fab. Newbies would benefit too because they can actually get the zombie skins they want now without breaking the bank, or having to pick only 3-4 fav skins out of 45, with more coming out each year.

Also the fact that the "free/any" infection can literally re-infect you with viruses you've already been infected with... :X Yeah. The VIP def needs a li'l bit of love for 2020 and beyond!

I like the idea of having older strains progress a bit faster (even though I already have most of the really old ones, so it wouldn't help me as much).

With the new ones it makes sense to have a wait in between stages since part of the fun is the anticipation of seeing what the next stage will look like.

Either way, it would take a long time to completely catch up (if anyone were to ever catch up at all). But this would still be a nice little change to help people get more of the infections they really like or want a bit faster. Especially for new users starting from scratch.

I like the idea of the older strains going a bit faster. Hell I would pay extra even if it meant I could speed up the virus stages because 8 stages takes so long lol I myself don't have a good majority of the strains but I still like being able to see new strains each year so I don't like the idea of having a year without virus for people to catch up.

I have 21 unlocked. Only managed 5 this year. I might have been able to squeeze in one more, but the calculation was just too close to be able to guess if vial virus (the 4 stagers) would have finished early enough to get a sixth.

Other than this year, I've managed to get the max possible and I still have 25 locked viruses. Of those, there are probably about 5 that I would never want. So yes, I definitely want some ability to play catch-up.

I don't want it by not having viruses for a year.

I really love the idea of older viruses progressing faster.

I don't think it's a good idea to stop new strains for a year, even while still keeping all the previous ones available. In 2013 they tried to stop it, and it was before the VIP was introduced, and no one liked it. That was also my first Survival, and I didn't really take part in it and might have done if they did them that year.

I suggested the option to pay to speed up progressions out of frustration at all the errors that happened, and other people said that we should be able to do that for older strains, or not even pay at all since the older the strains are, the more expensive they are to get without going for the random option. I also agree with what was said above about releasing some that only have 6 stages like the 2010(?) ones. I noticed that over the last few years, the number of new viruses has eventually reduced to 4, but I don't think they're going to reduce it any further.