I am 1000% positive that the Survival mode is a cheating son of a bitch. For the last couple months, I've pretty much played nothing but SFV Survival mode. I'm trying to get through the hard difficulty with every character.
The CPU does it's usual input reading shit at times, like just unreal reads on everything you do and perfect blocking, perfect whiff punishing. They will just turn it on at a random point, and you are fucked. I have been playing this mode for a long time and have noticed it feels a lot worse now.
So I've been playing with Juri for the past month or so, getting into the high 30's frequently, then getting fucked. Last night, I fell asleep with the game running, and my PS4 went into the sleep mode. When I got back up and turned it on, I resumed my Survival game in progress. The difference this time is that I was not connected to the server, not logged into CFN. I proceeded to blast through the levels, like butter went all the way to level 48, everything felt noticeably easier - the after round rewards were actually helpful - when I was low on health, I would get health I needed, and when I was high on health, almost always Lv 2 or 3 Damage or Defense boost. When you're connected to the server, you will frequently go several rounds without a useful reward available for purchase. I played it up until Level 48, then saved and quit, because you can't collect the FM reward if you're not logged in.
So I logged in, and resumed the game. Lvl 49 was Rashid. Now connected to the server, the Cheat Chip was activated and he fucking owned me, perfect reads and blocking. I said fuck this, and paid the FM to resume my game. I used a ton of items, and got through him and then Bison after that, finally clearing it.
But I'm telling you it could not be clearer to me that this game input reads and plays dishonest with the difficulty level when you are logged in. They want you spending your FM to resume games, not restart from the beginning. I wish I could definitively prove this, but I am personally 100% sure that when you are not connected to the server, the game plays fair.