So let's say you grab a Mineral deposit in the Clockworks, and you make it to the elevator. Instead of getting just the pure mineral back, now, you get an extra material: a Mineral Core, named for the type of food that mineral converts to. (Power Core, Divine Core, Shadow Core, Brilliant Core (blue), and Natural Core (green))

For every 1 Mineral piece you get, you get 1 Core back, and the amount required to craft a piece of food is the same as it ever was.

This would render the previously collected minerals entirely purposeless rather than having their utilities diminished.

Since taking away everyone's Sprite Food supply after this update would no doubt make a lot of people furious, everyone in the game would be reimbursed Cores for however many mineral pieces they had, and wouldn't have to recollect all of their food ingredients.

If by Sprite Food supply you refer to crafted food, then this would not make up for the spent Crowns and materials. Either way, this entire change only amounts to replacing the minerals into something else without really solving the issue with minerals, all that it would succeed to do would just be a complicated name-change. I do not approve of this.

What, then, of the Mineral pieces you get from mining?

You have already suggested that they were replaced by cores. But we will roll with this option, it is much better.

Fundamentally, it's the same as Gate Construction always was, but some changes are in order.

I certainly hope so and I agree. Let us get right into it.

One of the problems with this feature before was that not a lot of people were really using it. Some of the people who actually did participate just used it to troll newer players and make Vanaduke harder to reach by putting hard levels in Stratum 5.

That is not true. Everyone was aware of depositing minerals into Arcade gates to collect Crowns in return. The income in Crowns was also proportional to how many minerals of each type was deposited into that gate: the less of a type that was present in a themed strata, the more it would pay out. It served to counter-balance overconcentration of a specific theme for the most part.

Those "trolling" players who made it harder to reach Firestorm Citadel? Some of them probably just wanted to allow a certain theme to be more widespread in order to make some materials that they needed more accessible.

What can we do to fix this?

The only fix it needs, other than being brought back at all, is concerning the issue between Moonstone/Valestone and Sprite food. The first plan in order is, very obviously, to introduce two new types of Battle Sprites to accomodate the use of Moonstone and Valestone into sprite food. Alternatively, I propose that the useage of minerals should be replaced by the respective 0* Shard materials to a reasonable ratio.

First, I would put in a daily reward for each consecutive day you add a certain amount of Minerals in. At first, you only get a few little Crowns, but eventually, you start getting a few thousand Crowns, random Rarities, Materials, Spark Tokens, or other rewards. (Arcade Prize Box, anyone?) Since not everyone uses the same Battle Sprite, we'd have a decent variety of levels showing up even if all players have an influx of the particular mineral that their pet eats.

As tempting as it sounds, I do not approve of this at all. Look up the concept of a Skinner Box and let the fact on how that option will endanger that of crafting sprite food sink in for a moment. We are still assuming of course that people will get minerals, despite your previous suggestion that they are replaced by cores.

In addition, if this could work right without being too much of a hassle on the devs, I'd replace the Geological Survey Prestige Missions with missions that have you put certain Minerals into a Gate. Everyone's mission would ask for different Minerals, so we wouldn't have a huge surplus of the same level theme.

It may cause a surplus of other level themes, however. Again, the previous idea endangers this one.

Finally, I'd have it so that the more Minerals that are put into a Gate, the chances increase for Arenas, Vaults, Aurora Isles, Scarlet Fortresses and other profitable maps appearing throughout the Gate. It'd mostly be a game of chance, and they wouldn't be guaranteed to spawn in a certain stratum, (making sure that higher players couldn't hog all the arenas or that people wouldn't just put everything into one Gate and flood it with Arenas), but people would eventually notice the influx of good levels when they put more in. Of course, those levels can still appear without people dropping in a ton of Minerals.

If it is up to luck despite the amount put, assuming there is a value to trigger this chance when the conditions are met, then it would simply be best to retain Arcade gate construction as it was because it would not really change anything worth the extra effort and ressources. Another alternative would be turning this game of chance into unwritten stretch goals.

Future Stratum Themes: In the chance that Sleep, Stun, Curse, Swarm, etc. levels are ever added to the Arcade, I think they could still work without having their own Mineral recipes. My current idea is that, like Starlight Cradle before them, they'd only show up as individual levels and not as full Strata, depending on the monster theme. (e.g.: Undead triggers Curse, Fiend triggers Stun, etc.) Curse levels only start to appear in Stratum 6 if they ever are added. Another way they can be implemented is to have them as full Strata, but only by complete and total chance, indicated by a "power surge" in the Stratum that happens as soon as the Mineral Box opens.

These status themes are excluded from the basic four with good reasons. One being that Sleep and Curse are specific to certain monsters and attacks and nothing else. Stun, as it works right now, is far too widespread regardless of status themes to warrant a status theme of its own in general. Creating a gate solely dedicated to them would be adding a concept that would not hold up at all.

I do think, however, that it is long overdue that we finally get access to the Core via Arcade gates and perhaps Swarm leaks before it.

Alloys: These are tools that the staff used to increase level variety back when Gate Construction was around. I think that they would be fine in the players' hands, though, as well. They'd be some of the rarest items in the game, only showing up in Featured Auctions and Boxes, or maybe as very, VERY rare drops. The idea is that you get an Alloy, put it in a Stratum, and it overrides whatever Minerals are already there. Any Stratum theme can be condensed into an Alloy; all monster families, and all statuses. To give an incentive to using them, Spiral HQ will send you a random rare accessory or other special gift once you drop it in the Gate, basically like opening a Prize Box.

NO, absolutely not. NEVER sell power to the player, especially the sort that lets them impose overlapping changes to the game. There was/is a perfectly good reason as to why it is exclusive to the staff.

Gate construction is gone. As an old dev said, they're gone forever now.

I do not remember that statement, but I could better understand now why it caused such a vivid reaction from people. To simply just scrap integral mechanics away like this...I do not deem the action or the thought to be acceptable. I will also not comment further on his flawed analogy.

I will attempt to locate and verify his posts for myself.

Lore-wise, minerals affected gates.

They affected gates to set up each depth into a predictable pattern. Utilizing them to randomize depths works against the fundamental science the minerals have been subjected to since the very beginning and would alienate the players again.

@Melonfish: (I'm not sure if we got that different)

If by Sprite Food supply you refer to crafted food, then this would not make up for the spent Crowns and materials.

I think the idea was to replace the minerals in your inventory with cores, not the already crafted pet-food, so we don't loose collected pet-food ingredients.

What, then, of the Mineral pieces you get from mining?

You have already suggested that they were replaced by cores.

Again, I think Jessecho meant that by bringing a mineral to the elevator at the end of a depth, you'd get the minerals and the same amount of cores.

Separation

We only need a split between pet-food and gate powering for "the old arcade to come back", but I think we have to go deeper.

There is no real guaranty we would see all minerals being equally farmed even if we introduced 2 more sprites because of the difference in sprite-population. (I don't know numbers, or if it's negligible but I'm sure it's there)
The introduction of 2 more sprites may even cause a strong shift towards the farming of moon and valestone, because of novelty.

The problem with the "mineral-core" suggestion is that we would still have a link between the sprite-food we need and the gate-minerals we get and we'd get yet another ice-age, if we assume that shift I mentioned happened.

Since the 0* Shards were mentioned I propose the introduction of 1-5* shards that drop from mined minerals (alongside the usual deposit) according to the stratum.
Those shards can be used to craft the respective ranked food instead. (0* shards are untouched and unrelated)
Yes, this implies I could go running around chopping all minerals down for the materials, but no matter how much demand for any type of food there is, it would never decide which mineral-deposit we ultimately take with us to the elevator.

Furthermore, the new abundance of the shards could be countered if we increase the amount of the required in the food recipes.
It will still be easier to craft food this way but leveling a sprite is quite tedious as it is; also you would have to venture into stratum 5 and 6 to get the 5* shards for the food-stars.

If I can go and gather ingredients for multiple sprites at once it would also further encourage me to buy a second or third sprite once my current one hits level 100, because I already have some materials and don't have to start from scratch. (This works for and against the suggestion)

Personal Gates

Now that we freed mineral deposits from pet food without even having to introduce 2 more sprites, let's just say I agree that:

1. If everyone throws in different minerals and the gates stay random as they are, then there is no point in bringing the old system back.

2. If players have the power to make the gates stay the same forever, it's equally bad.

Idea more fleshed out would be you use theme-appropriate minerals to advance elevator time by 5 units. Use non-strata minerals to advance elevator time by 1 unit. Use the theme anti-mineral to randomize the gate. Had that idea in retrospect.

I like the "personal gate" approach and have nothing to add to that, but that it would allow for some mechanic of combination to give us access to the core. Either by the combination of minerals used throughout the gate, or the sequence of depths visited.