I'm really sorry you feel that the newest season of Survival has been ruined with the new features or changes.
However, I'm a tad confused about some of your criticisms.
Let me go through and address each one:
they removed trading keys or elites getting free crate keys every month
While you're unable to gift players keys that were already purchased, players are still able to gift other players keys, both in the online store and in the in-game store.
Elites no longer receive free promotional keys every month-- that is correct. Instead, Patrons now receive these free keys every month. However, it's not as if there is a void where the promotional keys were for Elites. These Elite keys give more perks (such as /thru and /ascend and /descend, which are extremely convenient), provide the opportunities for rarer spawners, Mana, Money, Experience, etc. and other items that can be resold for cubits (TP Pads, Elite Multitool, Elite Mystery tools, etc.) This is once a week Elite crate is arguably better than the monthly promotional key. (Excluding the Mystery Crate) The common and uncommon rewards from promotional crates (a handful of black scrolls or white scrolls, 4 CE books, pins, spawner bundles, or pins) can be worse than the common rewards from the Elite crate, and you receive 3-4 of those crates per month. Of course, there is no chance of obtaining SVAs from Elite crate, but you are able to resell things you receive from Elite crate for cubits to buy svas or promotional crates.
No way of buying them from other players with ingame currency forces them to.
Reminder that you can prestige to receive cubits for free, cubit payouts on certain gamemodes, King Benny giveaway, discord giveaways, event payouts, players call sell items on ah for cubits, there is a cubit to money exchange, people will buy mana and souls for cubits, etc. I have not spent more than $100 in the years I have played on here, and I still manage to make cubits from these various methods, and so do other players.
Another feature that was removed.... [is] loot no longer drops in PVP.
Like others have previously mentioned, there is a large amount of player input that is going into the Survival PVP discussion. It is important to remember that harsh insults or complaints are not as productive to improving the server-- and especially PVP-- as genuine constructive criticism or suggestions. "This new change sucks." "The new arena is awful." "Staff don't know what they're doing." are not helpful. (I am not suggesting you are saying this, but there are many people who are.)
I think there are definite pros and cons to the changes in PVP. Of course, there is far less risk going into the pit now, and players dropping their items made it easier for new players to gain starter armor. On the contrary, there is less risk for new players to accidentally lose their items from dying to the full SVA players who inevitably dominate in pit, and there is now more incentive for players to use their SVAs now that there is less risk of losing them. I certainly appreciate being able to go in with my SVAs without worrying about grinding out the 12k+ souls for Holy Scrolls each time someone stronger kills me. An issue that immediately was fixed with this change that no one seems to acknowledge, is now there are no invisible players walking into pvp just to grab items, or at least the concentration of players walking in invisible is significantly less. Now there is less spam from new players saying "give my stuff back pls" when they unknowingly walk into pit, and less ranked players complaining about invisible unranked players in pit.
The PVP arena was made for people to risk their loot being lost by fighting other players, but now that is not even the case.
Warp Abyss now serves this purpose. I understand there are many complaints about Abyss as well, such as the arena being too big, or the exists being too far apart, etc. but I think Abyss is a necessary distinction, so new players will not accidentally wander in pit and lose all their items and quit (I'm sure there are countless stories of this, and I know at least one personal friend who experienced this). You have to go out of your way to go to Abyss, and the warnings are everywhere. It is extremely hard to mistake the risk. Of course, since there is lots of player input being regarded for these new changes, it is reasonable to assume that changes to Abyss may happen, sooner or later.
Also, SVAs are useless now too, what will the groudon sword help you for now, killing iron golems faster?
I have seen more players in pit using SVAs for PVP since they will not lose them, so this claim is not true.
Also SVAs are great for the PVE bosses, isles and minibosses, and grinding MCMMO.
manacube has removed soo my features from the elite rank.
Players who have purchased the ranks before they removed the features still have access to the features. If you do not have access to them, simply make a ticket. For example: I initially purchased VIP+ back in 2018 back when VIP+ had infinite fly, instead of MVP+ (ranks were also much more expensive and global). When I returned in late 2021, I still had infinite fly from VIP+, as well as rename perks, etc. which are no longer available to those ranks. When rename perk was removed from Elite, I made a ticket and it was returned to me.
The only thing that is not kept is obviously the keys, but that's a separate issue.
The answer to that is because they are 'gritty' [Greedy]. They just want more money. Elite users (who have already spent approximately 200~$) will most likely not mind spending another 800 just to upgrade to patron and get all of those features back, and manacube is taking advantage of that.
This is also not true.
Elite ranks significantly outnumber Patrons and Patron plus's combined. Most Elite ranks are
not spending hundreds or thousands of dollars for the features. Additionally, to my knowledge, many of the perks you mentioned that were removed from Elite were not simply transferred to Patron. Fast-place, rename, artmaps, chatfeels, etc. simply became crate rewards, and while Patrons may be more likely to have them, it is not just given to Patrons.
And let's not even mention all of the false bans that the new(ish) anti cheat has committed.
This is not a survival feature. If players feel they were falsely banned by anti-cheat on KitPVP, they can appeal their bans here on the forums. Bans for hacking on Survival require ample evidence by staff or from other players.
the issue is that they try to frame it as "the best rank" at the store and manipulate people into buying it by adding a fake 90% discount or something
This is a legal sales tactic, but rank prices have not always been this price. When I purchased VIP+ in 2018, my rank costed around $20.
It is understandable that there are concerns or complaints about certain marketing tactics Manacube uses, but you must remember that Manacube and Manalabs are a
business. They can only continue to create and produce new content and make the server more enjoyable because they are able to make such a profit.
There are also some decisions that seem like it's about money when it's more-so about reducing lag. Preventing certain ranks from being kicked for being AFK is a way to reduce lag. It ensures that the players who are AFKing have some sort investment in the server. If someone attempted to lag the server by flooding it with nonranked accounts and AFKing, this would help automatically reduce and regulate lag.
Posts like yours are extremely helpful in continuing the discussion about the future of Manacube. Thank you for sharing.
Once again, I am sorry to hear you feel that Survival is ruined now.
