Yep.. i don't deny it.. doomsday and suchlike. Point I'm making is that there's little point standing in front of the wave with your hands out yelling "gonnae no!" It's happened.. and taking them out now will only do more harm that good. Players that run them dry will more likely leave. Elevator passes allow players to storm through what is admittedly, a short game (with the pass).

Who knows.. maybe something will pop along and fix it all.. Not seen it done before though.

@Diabound:
"Shuffling" parties won't work too well, as there's generally not a lot of parties involved all at once and it will typically always prioritise the party that's on the least deep floor, so it may be an advantage, but it's not really abusable in any relevant way. If someone skips a few floors, so what? They can just take five mins and do the floors for free anyways.
However, it does allow players to jump up and down to change gear, but with arsenal stations, that's only really a minor convenience at most, letting you do it after you absent-mindedly leave the arsenal station THEN realise you need to change. It's only really an "issue" in boss lairs, but since everything's the same anyway there's no need to change. The only time it cna be abused is at the very end of the last boss lair, before the boss map; changing from yoru "lair" gear to your "boss" gear, but that comes at the price of sacrificing your heat. If you have everythin' maxed then...well aye, there's a small exploit. But let's face it, anyone can do that anyways; EP players just get to do it for no energy cost.

@Sev:
CE Prices went up

Couldn't bring myself to read beyond that. I've stated this in many posts before, some of which I'm sure you've been a part of.
TL;DR: Wrong.

Ele passes have had zero visible effect on CE prices. I've been playing the game since just after official launch and CE prices have been much, much higher than they are now, several times. Prices will always, always go up, as they do in every game. There are greedy players who up the prices, and rich buyers who are happy to pay more, causing perpetual inflation. happens in every MMO ever, even ones with good gold sinks.

However, SK is NOT entirely player driven, as prices of almost everythin' are determined by CE (floor fees, craft costs, unbinding...) and the CE prices are determined by the direct correlation to 100 Energy's worth of crowns in a run, or one run's worth of crowns, on an average player bases level (i.e, not FSC) which is JK. A majority of players can and do farm JK, and a heavy portion of them are f2p. Thusly, prices will not break the JK payout unless another, equally accessible run comes out that pays out as well as JK. No one will let CE prices go north of a JK payout.

Elevator passes have had absolutely no visible effect on CE prices or trends at all. The only thing that is truly player driven is UVs and...well, that's just inflation, elevator passes will have an effect on that but...deal with it. The game has good gold sinks (unlike most MMOs) and it's keeping that inflation relatively balanced too.

I had basically stopped playing Spiral Knights altogether until they released Elevator Passes. I bought the plain Elevator Pass for $5.95 then a few days later they debuted the cheap explorers packs. I tried refraining from spending more money so soon, but I eventually bought 4 cheap explorer's packs while they deal was still on so that's 4000 CE brought into the economy thanks to Elevator passes existing. (Most of which I sold to players)

I wouldn't be playing at all if not for the Elevator packs, which means zero chance of me ever buying more CE.
So kindly get rid of your xenophobic anxiety as if Elevator Pass users are somehow killing your precious game.
CE prices will always go up and down. If it gets too inflated, it'll be up to Three Rings to give more crown sinks.

We always need promotions to keep CE in the market, that's a basic MMO neccessity, and EPs have changed that not in the slightest.

And aye, I did skip a lot, and I admitted that, but if his basic premise is that EP have any correlation to CE prices, then it's wrong. There's no two ways about it, but the EPs haven't affected CE prices at all, becasue CE prices are determined upon crown/run value, not the energy spent therein. The only case it'll break is if the vast majority of players own EPs, and by that point it would drive out every single player who doesn't own one so quickly that either the market will crash as usual, or the population will die enough to severely cripple the game which...well, will require such a massive amount of people more owning EPs than currently do, that it's not likely to happen.

I'M GOING TO REPEAT THIS SO IT SINKS IN FOR YOU:

I wouldn't be playing if not for original elevator pass. It re-hooked me long enough that I bought some cheap Explorer Packs when they rolled around, which brought in 4000 CE most of which I sold. I'm still hanging around & most likely will purchase more CE in the future. If not for the elevator passes, there'd be zero chance of me buying CE again because I wouldn't be playing at all.

I'm not going to buy more CE right this instant just to prove a point and win an Internet argument.

Even if half of every player had an Elevator Pass, that's still a ton of real money supporting Three Rings and thus supporting Free-2-Play players, who would have no game at all otherwise. This whole argument is based on irrational fears.

OOO was doing CE promotions long before the Elevator Pass existed, don't blame the need for promotions on the EP.
Elevator Passes support OOO. The longer OOO stays in business, the longer everyone else has a free game in the first place.

@Evil:
Prices have always gone up and down. There's no connection to CE reaching 6,5k and perm EPs.

@Sev:
Missed the "@Dukesky" bit and totally misunderstood, stopped for a few mins to read over and find where I was bein' demeaning QQ

Anyhoo:
They weren't EVERY month, but they were still pretty regular tbh. Frankly, they'd be fools not to have sales; it's basic economics that sales increase...sales. I mean, it's not like they're bad sales, or that they're selling fashion items etc directly, most of their sales are just freebies on top of their standard packages, which is a lot more player-friendly than most MMOs.

I don't think there's been any real damage at all, and if it has, then the dedicated fanbase of P2Ps and sales have kept it firmly under control, but even so I don't expect to ever see any real problems come of the EPs unless a ridiculously high proportion of players have them, by which case ithe CE market both:
a/ wouldn't be that much of an issue to most players
b/ still dictated by a fairly reason crowns/hour rate (let's say 2/3 JK runs worth a day?) at absolute worst, before people simply start refusing to buy again on the premise that they don't feel like grinding days away to pay for ce.

I think they actually decided to keep them on board due to the huge demand to do so. Your very own point dictates that although people continue to buy CE while on an EP, they do so far less; from the Devs' point of view, EPs are probably bad for their profit margin (which, in all likelihood, explains the constant sales) which is why they were originally a one-off. However, people realised that they are a fantastic way for P2Ps to really get their money's worth without hurting the F2Ps, the economy or getting any unfair advantage other than saving time (which is the key prize for P2Ps in MMOs), s they brought them back to maintain a steady playerbase. Hours logged by their playerbase as a whole, I expect, will have sharply rose in contrast to CE purchases. Bringing constant sales keeps their money in check while also maintaining a dedicated playerbase.
~
If I'm right about that, then I can appreciate more than ever a Game company that made the decision to hurt themselves to keep players in for the long-haul, without doin' somethin' to hurt the in-game economy.

As for the long term...well, if it has little~no effect on the short term, then eithere there are no long-term implications, or they're very, very long-term. If something does start cropping up though, then it will be dealt with at the time. Even EP players will start to disapprove of EPs if they feel that they're causing CE to become unreasonably priced.

As for fashion....well, no worries. That's the case across every MMO; s'why fashions always cost more than regular armour; it's just like real life, so featured auctions will remain a brilliant gold sink and a great promotional tool for years to come in MMOs.

For Tsuba:
A short TL;DR of my posts would be:

"EPs have never before, nor currently do, and likely never will have any noticeable negative or positive effect on the CE market or F2Ps in general, and removing them now will do little more than reduce playtime of all P2P players and as a direct bi-product make many of them play less. CE prices will stay the same, the P2P population will be less happy that they've tasted ambrosia and had it taken away, especially due to the fact that the current "demand" to remove EPs is fractional to the demand to bring them in perm. And CE prices have yet to see any effect of either temp or perm EPs.
TL;DR:
EPs have hee haw to do with the economy"

The rate of CE is set, becasue the majority of players do not own EPs, and from then, the majority of players who do own EPs will still refuse to allow it to go above that rate, because they still have to spend the exact same amount of time making the crowns to pay for that energy. The one and only difference is that after a run, they don't NEED to buy energy, but when they do; it's the same runs and the same profits that pay for it.

So more crowns come in, but they get spent on gear, alts, fashions, UVs or some surplus energy, but folk won't be just willy-nilly spending MORE money on energy, just becasue you have a few more crowns. The gold sinks are effective.

The only "problem group" is the one that has as much time as F2Ps and an EP, as they can make their money's worth, but there's only a fractional amount of them enough to have any serious affect on the market compared to the people who are still buying CE to pay for runs, so prices are resitricted to JK.

Severage said:
@Dukesky
Frankly, I don't like your attitude. I'll listen to your argument a lot better when I'm not constantly reading demeaning text. As of what you're saying, that instance doesn't happen to a great population of the playerbase; more people end up with Elevator Passes than come back into the game with them.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

My attitude? MY attitude?

You're basically saying anyone using an Elevator Pass is hurting the game they've paid to support.
Where the hell do you get off calling me demeaning?

You're demeaning anyone who's bought the pass, and you've bought the pass yourself, so you make no sense whatsoever.
The very notion you put forth that I've hurt the game and continue to hurt the game by using my Elevator Pass is demeaning.

Your 'instance' doesn't reflect anymore of the playerbase than mine.

You're demeaning anyone who's bought the pass, and you've bought the pass yourself, so you make no sense whatsoever.

Just to point out that you can do something yourself and realise that it's a bad idea BECAUSE you did it. In this instance it's not the case, but it's perfectly plausible to have views against something you've done.

If I may add two cents to the argument, Sev, I must say I'm impressed by your economic analysis, but I believe two things need to be said.

First off, EPs, for a short time, should reduce CE prices, as they replace some of the energy used to run levels.

Secondly, these promotions are turning the game from its current F2P model into the standard F2P model where one pays for content.

Also, for more or less the same reasons, no more power surge weekends.

Okay the Only thing to help CE be Easy to get it outside of Buying CE.
Totaly Diffrent Sence.

The SK-Spiral Knights Team Sould put in a Missions Bank where you can go get missions and they pay for you run It Succesful.

Say they want you to go Kill JK they Pay for the Run once done.
They give you CE Energy and a Reward of somekind like more Energy.

If you can get Missions that do such a Thing it will make it easyer on F2P Players As they Might not Do what others do.
It may Even Force Prices of CE to Fall to Such a Limit that they will not rise so High Again.

But cause their is only one way of Getting CE it makes it Harder to Get CE for others.

SK probebly will not do what i said cause all they are Intressted in is Money.
I bet that if This was in Affect People will still Buy CE and it will come to a Point where it is Fair as it is.

CE Prices are not going to Fall easy so youd Need to Have all the Expirience of the Game to get all the Gear Recipys and the Runs to Buy CE and make CE Price Way Cheap.
People will jump for this as their will be CE that People put up maybe per lot 2000 CR!

I think the Affects of my Idea may Prove to be Affective but you need to Consider the SK Team and the Cost to which they Make this Effect Work.

They could always Activate it to People that have Buyed some CE in the Past which is Fair too!

But just think about it first before Supporting it :)

Thanks and you have put alot of Effit into this Fourm here! Good work!

I'll be the first to admit I didn't read through every post and suggestion.

That being said

I don't believe elevator passes have as huge of an effect on ce prices as people who are against them believe.

My reasoning is that the elevator pass, while adding crowns into the game, removes the useage of ce for going down floors. Thus people with elevator passes don't need to buy energy from the market to do another run. They may have the crowns but not as much to spend it on, if anything it should be the "rare" accessories that will be valuable. Also they now have 100 mist a day that they have trouble using up (a pve'er will run out of the ability to use it up shy of crafting items to sell on market).

The current "spike" in ce prices are due to 2 things in my belief.

1st. The winter promotion is over, during which there was a $3 pack with an elevator pass attached that lots of people bought, with 1,000 ce from each of those packs it drove prices down due to people buying 10+ packs at once.

2nd. There is a probable increased number of players currently playing. With the permanent introduction of the elevator pass and the steam promotion I believe there are a lot of players who are now playing that were not before due to not having a subscription they were able to pay or just not knowing about the game.

As far as the promotions Three Rings are currently pushing, they are working to try to keep prices down yes, however the way to fix the market currently resides in making it harder to outbid someone by 1 crown or making a market ceiling rather then taking away an item that quite simply is better for three rings and the game.

Secondly, these promotions are turning the game from its current F2P model into the standard F2P model where one pays for content.

What content? Currently, the only things that only P2P can get are ..blastech..primsatech? w/e, the battle royale costume armour, and an EP. I believe absolutely eveyrthing else is acquirable for F2Ps to some degree or another.
And the EP hardly counts as "content" because it doesn't give you anything that F2Ps can't get, it just gives the P2Ps quicker/cheaper access to the same content, which is the entire point of P2P in any MMO; to get a hold of things quicker. You're trading money for time.
The Blastech (or w/e/) armour is the only thing that is literally P2P only that I can think of, and that's an aesthetic costume, therefore not "content".

So I reject your claim.

really? REALLY?

*presses back button*

OP's idea will result in Three Rings losing money. Therefore, it's not gonna happen.

Sorry, but all of you are wasting your time here. /thread

that they could lose money now and fix potential problems later, or make lots of money now and have potential problems later.
Like I said, by the looks of things, I reckon they already made the decision to lose money in the short term in favour of fixing things later on, keeping players around and dedicated and overall keeping players happy and willing to spend in the long run.