What color are we dying SK? Or is SK dying a certain color? Are they making merchandise? IS THAT WHY THEYRE ASKING US TO CHOOSE A COLOR!? SK IS MADE BY THREE RINGS. THREE RINGS HAVE THREE RINGS. TRIANGLES HAVE THREE SIDES. A CIRCLE HAS ONE SIDE. THREE CIRCLES = THREE SIDES = TRIANGLE. OOO IS OLLOMONOTO CONFORMED

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...the illuminaughty rises...

I think it's just Darkcub starting trolling the forums again w/ another account.

He forgot to place the version of the thread though (I don't even remember what number it was last time)

There is a reason behind every action... a cause and a purpose.

Why OOO remains silent about the development of the game is something I invite you to think about.

Couldn't possibly be the case, Darkcub quit the game!

Players from just about any community will ask this question, and usually it's based on the fact that A) they don't see things, or B) they don't want to see things. Things ranging from players, interactions, etc. In fact, the less players you see in Haven means the more in the clockworks, the coliseum, or their guildhalls. The reason you aren't finding clockwork parties is because they're likely not set to public.

There's only so much to do in this game, and Three Rings isn't going to give endless content other than the things that are randomly generated(I.E., the clockworks and coliseum lobbies). Many players assume that because the game isn't telling them what to do that they don't have anything to do, and thus the game must be dying. No, that just means you can delve into the huge bounties of other things the game offers, such as lore, gear crafting/upgrading/tweaking with UVs, prestige missions, etc, but you need to take the initiative like when the game started. No more handholding from Spiral HQ.

Various posters have been claiming the game has been dying for years. Since Beta even. And years later, here we still are.

Spiral Knights is more or less being recreated right now. A good example of this would be the number of guns that were recently added to the game. Prior to this, we had around 20 five star handguns in game, and they just added on 8 more, with five or six handguns being added over the year prior to the gunner update. Imagine this was done with swords and bombs as well, and I have no reason to believe that it wouldn't be... they've also promised a good number of other changes that I have no reason to doubt will come out within the next three years or so.

The end result of all of this? We can extrapolate that from what's been happening around us, as well as what has been promised to us.

Core/endgame area (new boss that was promised, probably Herex or the Core) that provides fire crystals
Tons more items to craft that are more balanced with one another
Never being forced to pay anything, with costumey motivation to pay anyway
Good reasons to play in the arcade
Updated graphics
More and longer lasting content in general

With these things in place, Spiral Knights will have a much better outlook. As for the game "dying" out, as long as the developers continue to develop it, it won't die. The only thing standing in the way of all this are SEGA/Three Rings' clumsy public relations- if players feel (and they might not.. they certainly shouldn't feel this way exactly now) that the developers are not developing, it all falls apart... but I've written far too much about that, largely because of how often this thread comes up. Similarly, if there were threads asking me for my favorite colour, it would remain pink on all of them.

I made a personal survey a few months back, and it seems that about 71% of SK players are from Steam, the remaining 29% from other websites.

As someone who is returning for the gunner update...

I think the problem with Spiral Knights is its monetization. There is almost no reason for someone to consistently spend money on the game. If anything, it's far more satisfying to AVOID spending money whatsoever. As a result, OOO has to rely on temporary solutions to maintain their income. The most common/easiest are promos: reskins and slight model tweaks. If that makes them the most money, logically that has to be their main focus.

If you think about the updates people truly want, it makes almost no sense, economically speaking, to invest time into making them. New levels? Well yes, that would be nice, but that doesn't make OOO any money directly. Maybe they can make a level specifically tailored for VERY specific pieces of equipment, like the Danger Missions. However, as I said before, it is far more satisfying to NOT spend money making these pieces of equipment. New weapons? Same problem: players are encouraged to work for their new weapons, instead of spending money to acquire them. New Bosses? Same problem. New Tier? Same problem. Updated graphics? Same problem. All these patches would take quite a lot of work to make, but don't make OOO that much money. The most they can hope for is to draw back some of the older players to pick up the game again, but without constant content patches, it's just as temporary as promos.

Our best hope is that the Arcade Redux has some sort of built in mechanic that encourages people to spend money, without being too restrictive to F2P players. If it can make OOO a more reliable source of income so they don't have to rely on constant promos, then I'd expect more content patches at a better rate. Of course, that begs the question: What would be this miraculous mechanic?

Edit
I forgot: they could also lock new levels/equipment behind a pay wall, but that'll REALLY piss people off. They tried it with OCH and that got them some serious player backlash. Maybe something more like Shadow Lairs, but that's not much more popular (also if you split the key cost, it's not that hard to make the money without spending anything).

I have a much shorter answer for travelling-cheetah.

EVERYBODY HATES P2W GAMES.

@Kyuzwei

"all you are saying is if any f2p game wants to make money they gotta block half there content behind paywalls to make a stable game that gets constant cash flow"

I'm not saying that... If anything I said the exact opposite: "I forgot: they could also lock new levels/equipment behind a pay wall, but that'll REALLY piss people off". There are other forms of monetization outside of paywalls. Off the top of my head, Candy Crush has an amazing system going.

"...I played a game called Grand Chase..."

I did a quick google search for Grand Chase. The second link lead me to an announcement by them saying they're closing down servers because they have "no more options we can exercise to prolong the life of such a beautiful experience." That tells me the game is dying, despite this core fan base that you are talking about.

And for the bit where you said it makes no sense adding new content as they have nothing to gain from it... what? I'm scratching my head at that. How does ADDING new content to a game reduce possible profit?

Adding new content takes a lot of time and effort, with very little direct benefit to the company. Promos on the other hand take very little time and effort for major direct benefit to the company. For example, Danger Missions. I spent $0 on all 4 Danger Missions which each took about a month and a half of work from the developers. When the Guardian Armor Package first showed up, I dropped $25 in a heartbeat for some re-colored armors.

"...has the possibility to bring back older and newer players who are interested in said new content..."

Good in theory, but let's look back at this graph here. Switch the zoom of the graph to about 1 year. The Gunner patch went live on December 3rd. If you look at the graph, there is a definite spike about when the patch goes live, but within 11 days, the graph is now lower than it has ever been.

"I'm willing to bet Three Rings actually made quite a bit (and by quite a bit I mean a lot) from all the promotions, flash sales, orbs, hell probably even crystals over the time it hasn't had a single update"

I think you may have been misinterpreting me, because this is (sorta) the core of what I'm saying. The Gunner update was a WIP for over a year now, and it's already started to lose momentum. At the same time, OOO has been spitting out about two promos/sales a month. Why is there this imbalance? Because Promos are making them far more money for the amount of effort they have to put into it, compared to content patches. That is because the current mechanics of the game encourage the player to avoid spending money for as long as possible. Spending money is a sign of defeat: You're admitting that the drop rates have won, and you don't have the will to continue grinding. On the other hand, promos are things people want for the sake of having, and will happily throw money at. From an objective standpoint, making promos is what's making them money. Adding content is NOT making them money.

"...and to that I say look at games like Path of Exile and Warframe"

Well lets look at Warframe first. Warframe is run by Digital Extremes LTD. "Beginning in 1994, Digital Extremes partnered with Epic Games (at that time, its shareware publisher) and co-created Unreal and its counterpart Unreal Tournament." Also, "Digital Extremes completed work on the Multiplayer component of 2K Games’ blockbuster, Bioshock® 2 as well as the PC version of THQ hit, Homefront™." Moving over to their staff, they have "over 200 of the industry’s most talented artists, designers and programmers."

Opening up Spiral Knight's credits in game, I see approximately 35 different names. I'm going to guess Digital Extremes has a much larger budget and more resources to work with.

Path of Exile is a more reasonable comparison. They are run by Grinding Gears, which is a bit more comparable to OOO. However, I know absolutely nothing about the game, so I'd have to sink a week or so into it to come back with a reasonable opinion. On first glance though, I do concede you have a valid point. However, I would like to point out that most of their major content patches appear to be spaced out over several months, with many minor tweaks and promos in between. Most of their announcement section is instead dominated by PvP and player events, not just promos. The difference I see is that they are using their PvP and Events to keep players engaged with the game. It's a mechanic that encourages people to replay levels for other reasons than grinding.

So modifying the conclusion I made before, no the Arcade doesn't need to encourage players to spend money. It needs to encourage players to keep replaying the same content for little practical gain.

Re-reading through your post I guess you did cover some of the things I said you didn't, and for that I am sorry. (not a great idea to type things at 5AM in the morning, eh?) As for the Grand Chase one, I'm pretty sure I specified that the game switched developers? I'm assuming the link you clicked the for the Grand Chase Philippines server which shut down a few months back but the site is still there for some odd reason. The link you'd want to click on is the very first one, grandchase.elswordonline. Sooo yeah, the game isn't dead yet and it's only around still because of the paying player base, if you look at the site and look at the majority of weekly patches they are just returning Gacha events for all your gambling needs.

The points covering both of my comments on new content that you gave valid refutes for are indeed primarily true, developing new content does take time and money, but at the same time you kinda answered this one yourself in your own post, "The most they can hope for is to draw back some of the older players to pick up the game again, but without constant content patches, it's just as temporary as promos." This is EXACTLY what they need to do. (The constant updates part) Now for the Gunner Update, lets be real, almost everyone thought that since it took a year they had merged the Gunner Update with the Arcade Redux and maybe even the new Missions, instead what we got was a bunch of re-skins and a now very bloated Basil, any returning player who did indeed come back to check and see what was finally added that they waited a year for would only need a day to figure out there is still no point in coming back. We need continuous, actual content updates that draw in the people who stopped playing because of that lack of content, this in turn will bring back more players who are willing to pay for the game.

And you are right, adding content is not making them money. It's the adding of said content that gives players reason to pay for it, this is especially true for players who want things now instead of wanting to work for it, and those are the people constant updates would capitalize on and they would see a steady profit gain from adding the content because of that. Americans generally want immediate gratitude instead of delayed gratitude, just the way society works today.

And lastly for the Digital Extremes bit... um... the initial dev team that worked on Warframe was about 30 people, it is indeed now 200~ some developers but that wasn't until the game launched both on the PS4 and Xbox One, for a long time the game was being run by 30 or so devs who not only created a whole new game engine, but pushed out at least 10 major content updates on top of weekly updates in the time since release while Spiral Knights sat there for a year to churn out an update with so much hype that the hype was bigger than the update itself. Yeah, it is indeed a much bigger dev team now, but the initial dev team really wasn't that big. As for budget... Warframe started as an experimental project from a small group of DE devs to try out the f2p market, so no the initial budget really wasn't something insane. They do indeed have a MUCH larger budget now but that's only because the game has been madly successful and worth putting the money into. As for Path of Exile you'd want to look at the Patch Notes section in the forums and not the announcements as those announce new leagues etc, they update pretty much weekly and even if there small updates for the type of game that PoE is, the constant balance updates and additions and tweaks to skills, enemies etc impacts the game hugely. If Three Rings did something like PoEs weekly patches even if there small changes the overall growth of the game would have been atleast 3x what it is now because they only did one single big? idunno, update.

"So modifying the conclusion I made before, no the Arcade doesn't need to encourage players to spend money. It needs to encourage players to keep replaying the same content for little practical gain." Yeah. I agree with this 100%, encouraging people to play more makes the players want to invest more into the game.

No disrespect, but...Dying or not, what is your point? If it is dying then what? You will no longer pay to play? Well, you don't have to pay to play now.
It is a pointless topic.
Please tell me what is your point of concern?

A. It is "dying," so nothing you can do about it, except play until it does.
B. It is not "dying," so nothing you can do about that, so play.
Therefore, just play.

I don't know if it is dying or not, and I don't care because I, we, have no control over this matter.
Just play and stop fretting over nothing.

I never once thought SK was dying, and I have played since it started. Only this year has this topic started to appear, over and over and over again.
Just pointless.

Enough already.
Cheers.

Is Micro-Wave by any chance from Europe? Because that would explain why he couldn't get a game of Lockdown at the time of this thread's creation.

So... quitting sale anyone? because clearly this game is only trying to prolong it's death for a little while until it runs out of juice or at least it seems to be so considering the ammount of people who make all these kinds of threads over and over and nobody has a better response to this other than "It's not dead yet" (yet... as in soon XD)

So yes, I'd be willing to buy your items for a really really low price... actually, just mail me your stuff for free, game's dead right? soo there will be nobody left to purchase your stuff, and your virtual money will just fade away into the void.

PLEASE PUT IN GRAVEYARD. if you think the game Is dead/dying then get out. Your only going to discourage others and make them leave!

i do feel the game is... not as crowded as it used to be.

- haven 1 was hard to get into at times.
- zonechat would be filled with vendors, players looking for SL teams. (asked around in a few havens for a SL... not 1 reply)
- mats would be sold minuits after putting them in the AH (for reasonable prices) now they get mailed back to me because nobody buys anything anymore (except costume crap)
- i also used to get a few guild requests every day (been back since gunner update and only 1 invite)

again, not dying but lost a HUGE chunck of players (and gunner update did nothing to bring them back. wich i can agree on, didn't change the game all that much) so if OOO wants more players, they need to get out a huge content patch (levels, boss, misions, maybe new pvp mode, etc.) ASAP

adding the new guns did nothing for the older players (if it wasn't for the gilded griffin recipe being so hard to get i would have finished the guns i wanted on day 1) now i'm back at hoarding crown and mats, selling the mats to hoard more crown...

@Holy-Nightmare steam users tend to look at those ;)

but the game is so old now it hardly does anything to attract a new crowd on steam :s

for example... back when i started with spiral knights TF2 was at it's all time peak (hats and guns, and guns and hats...) so when SK offerd a hat everybody in my list jumped on the game. not a lot stayed but i had a small group of friends that stayed. we played together every day (doing or RJP runs or ICMF runs) we helped each other get to T3 and finaly managed to clear FSC for the first time.

months past and eventualy... the game became boring, my friends started to just craft away their energy and i just did some solo runs. after a while i also stopped visiting haven :( more months past and then news of a DLC came! i started playing again, the DLC came out and i was having fun (found a nice guild that was pretty close to the group i had in the beginning) and again... the guild died out, and i again quit playing.

after that i picked up the game but i went solo... only to do vanaduke runs i joined random teams and after a while these became more and more rare to the point where we are today... allmost non-existant and i started to solo vanaduke.

i've seen a lot of people go... but never seen a lot of people come (back) into the game. i think it's with every F2P game if people don't know about it, they won't bother (yet an other F2P game... i'll pass! SK doesn't realy stick out) also a lot of stuff happend in this game wich rubbed a lot of people the wrong way. -> new UI (nobody asked for) forge update (people wanted free elevators and an other energy system... not that) and allmost forgot the DLC (paid content)

could also be people are just afraid to play the game (elite gamers ingame having all the best stuff and they have to start their way up... the long and now grindy way up) if it wasn't for my friends i wouldn't get past the helmet :) and stopped right there (allthough i liked it) and back in they day, you could either spend real money and so pay your way to the top. or you could do the oldfashion grind (like i did) i now have a full arsenal of things i need for PvE and looking back it was fun. (remember we had no misions or HoH, just the arcade and basil) i tried starting with a new knight after the forge update and stopped after defeating snarbolax! it just wasn't any fun! i had to grind for so many items (just to grind even more of them) it just wasn't much fun. it's a long way to the top... and once you're there, the game either stays with you or gets boring. with the forge... it could be the grind will just make it boring faster.