I use elevator pass. At some point, especially in F2P games, you have to invest a bit to enjoy the game fully.

Plus the ce price now is really high, you'll lose even more crowns if you play arcade. By using your payout, 80ce for 5700cr.

8000(ce prize now ish)/10= 800cr (each 10 ce)
800*8(80 ce)= 6400cr
So 80 ce now cost 6400cr at least.
6400>5700(lose 700cr)
And if you're using crystal energy, that's even worse!

"And not every thread adressing an issue is whining, nor do you command anybody what issues to adress"
I'm sorry Tersakaff, but yourself tend to wander to those threads adressing issues, and make fun of the OP with the following scheme:
OP : 'lulz i think crowns payout r 2 low plz OOO make arcade better'
Now I'm not saying what you posted isn't relevant. For that matter, OOO banned arena looping monthes ago is being pretty hypocritical, since they just added missions that enable looping legaly any boss level. But you clearly need to reconsider how you treat with other complain threads and how that may affect the answers you get to your complains...

First of all: I agree with you - FSC should not be the sole source of income for the players as it is now. However: the alternative has to be of a comparable difficulty.
Secondly: great language - reading of your posts itself is quite enjoyable.
Thirdly: OOO should refrain from interfering with the market as much as possible - turns out it is profitable both for OOO and the 1% of players having 99% of the cr/CE - the realism win! Another cr rebalance should take place only after a careful consideration.

Nu.

FSC has it's own incentives. If you bring the main incentive, the cr, of doing those stages, then MOST players are going to ditch FSC for the easiest possible stages.

Yeah, I know not EVERYONE; there'll be guys (or gals) who want the difficulty or tokens, otherwise this whole situation will be reversed; More profit from doing other stages (no revives etc) and FSC sinks into the 'barely run', aside from the people that still want to run it.

TL;DR: Doing so would more or less reverse the situation, especially seeing as Arenas and Jelly Farm areas would increase the payout of that strata to BEYOND that of FSC (probably).

What's wrong about optimizing? There's no leveling in SK, of course competitive players are interested in optimizing their gears and skills..

Well was just asking, no harm intended.

Not that I totally disagree with this thread, but comparing the whole of the Arcade to FSC or other profitable missions isn't really realistic, given that you can run FSC in tier three of the arcade any time, you just have to play the tier before it, or get invited to skip it.
[Edit: Herp Derp. Skold's post above appeared while I was typing. My post was written in its entirety before that was there, so none of it is replying to anything he said - even though this fist bit looks like it could be. D:]

Point is, the Arcade INCLUDES the content of all but a few missions, and the only reason why missions are so "profitable" to run is because a majority of players grind the (very) few profitable missions for crowns without end - which happen to be the only missions that are the same as their arcade equivalent (FSC) or close to that (RJP/IMF.)
The vast majority of the missions, even endgame ones and ones composed of levels in even-numbered stratum (which pay decently well in the Arcade) do NOT pay well at all, being less profitable versions of their arcade equivalents.

It's not hypocritical that arena looping was disabled before we got missions that we could loop, the only non-boss missions that were particularly profitable (the arena ones, go figure) were recently changed so that they aren't especially profitable either. That indicates a pattern, not a reversal.
The obvious easy tier 2 boss run in missions (RJP) was also dumbed down and moved up a level, and isn't nearly as profitable as it used to be, or as profitable as it is in the Arcade where it's the same one everyone used to grind back in the day.
Another way of looking at it, is that OOO is telling us to stop grinding what's profitable, and find something FUN to do. Looping arenas or endlessly doing arena missions/RJP is not what the game was meant to be by the designers, I'd be willing to bet.

As opposed to hypocritical, this seems to me a gradual move towards whatever vision OOO has for the game and how they intend it to be played, in a long-term plan as it relates to the mission system.
Just as IMF recently got a buff to the payout, and they're making tweaks that we may or may not have noticed/figured out with each update still... there is a bigger picture at work here than what is profitable, and what's not.

Yeah, the arcade is getting the short stick compared to FSC and the RJP because people can use the mission system to jump straight to those to make some crowns. There seems to be a sort of collective selective memory of before the missions were added, when groups used to VERY frequently get a guild mate or friend to run the first half of a stratum alone so that everyone could join up and run the boss stratum, skipping the unprofitable part before.
I remember when I used to run the arcade a lot more often and as soon as I hit or passed the terminal depth, I started getting tells from various different friends or guild mates asking for invitations to my level because they saw that I was on an even stratum and they started seeing dollar signs.
I fail to see how it's so different now, the only thing that's changed is that there are fewer people playing the arcade because they have to to get to FSC/RJP and the ones there are the ones playing to have fun with it. Now the players who just want to endlessly grind for coins can forgo the rest of Spiral Knights and just play FSC Knights as they desire - good for them. :-\

---===---

All that said, the example that the OP used is kind of an extreme case. The Briar Barrage set of levels have a NOTORIOUSLY HORRIBLE payout, even on an even stratum. On an odd one, it's very significantly worse, able to bring a tier 3 stratum down to tier 1 payout levels with their low enemy density and small size.
I know precisely what gate the OP is referring to here, and the current selection of gates in tier 3 is the main reason I've been playing mainly tier 1/2 arcade levels this week.
It's not even profitability, since I have an elevator pass - the gates that we have right now for tier 3 just all happen to not be the most fun ones we've had in a while.

I find that it's not uncommon for a tier 3 run to pay out similarly to an FSC run or higher if I can hit a few arenas and clockworks tunnels levels, and maybe Jelly Farm if I'm lucky. 7-8K or more isn't that great for two stratum, but considering the incredibly high enemy density for parts of FSC, that's pretty good for a "random" variety of levels, and an included odd stratum which is basically a wash if you're counting your coins the whole time you play.

I guess my main point is that while I do very STRONGLY feel that the Arcade needs to have some attention and reward added to it with regards to the things that are unique to it in particular, there's also the fact that to a certain extent the players DO control what levels we get.

Poison stratum in the odd half of tier 3 bite if you want profit because of the chance of getting the Blight BLVD set - this is kind of a known thing.
Fiend and shock stratum are a pain to play sometimes, though fiends are profitable.
Jelly themes tend to pay well because of how often we get Jelly Farm and Arenas in them.
Gremlin themes tend to give us lots of deconstruction zones, which are a bit of a wild card with regards to payout and for fun sometimes.
This stuff is up to us, we have a fair degree of control over this part of it.

Personally, I hope that the part that's up to OOO goes in favor of making the Arcade not just more profitable (which I agree would be nice) but also more exciting, and rewarding in terms of the variety.
There are still a handful of things that are ONLY in the Arcade, and I personally hope that those features are emphasized in a future update in a way that brings more appeal to the Arcade.

Until then, I'll still keep running the arcade primarily for those features:
Graveyards (not the watered-down mission one)
Arenas
Treasure Vaults - though I REALLY hope that a future update brings them a buff in some way - either a payout buff, or increased odds of finding something good in the chests (maybe if not increased chance of finding gear, a chance to find accessories, lockboxes, or keys in them might appeal to OOO.) ;-) ;-)
Danger Rooms

Of course, on the other end of the spectrum... having some sort of "entry fee" to replay missions, or some way to just pull down the amount of profit that people can currently make endlessly grinding FSC... could bring people back into the arcade, AND (I hate to bring it into this thread for fear of what may come) regulate CE prices, which are arguably tied to FSC profits right now.
Moving RJP up a depth was a brilliant way to balance that area and reduce grinding. Obviously having the "last mission" suddenly become easier isn't as much of an option, but SOMETHING to mitigate this could probably solve most of the problem as is stands.

"S5 : 400 cr"

This can't be accurate.

OOO killed their "changing world" model

They did that with the update that took out all of the original levels and replaced them with randomly generated Clockworks levels.
The missions just made it seem like there was more in the arcade than there actually is.

After first completion of a mission, any succeeding completion of said mission should provide only about 25% of initial income.
Problem solved. Who's with me?

That way players would redo completed missions only in case a friend or guild mate would need assistance in one. But main gameplay would be moved back to Arcade.

People could purposely not do the core in KoA, like how people directly go to haven once they get on the elevator from d28-d29 in KoA.

I only read the first few posts. For one thing, you are only losing money in the arcade if you are using CE. This is fine for me, because I can't even get on that often, and I only have enough time to (usually) only run off my 100 mist. It would help if we did get more money, but look: CE prices would go even higher.

On the note of CE, the system has a flaw: players need pay for the CE then they must sell it. However, if there isn't enough people to pay for the CE, the price of CE will clime. As it climes, less players will be motivated to play. When there are less players to play, than the community will weaken, and then there will be less people to pay. It might continue like this till there is such a small player base, that eventually, there will be only a few people like "NOO THIS GAME CAN'T DIEEE! I LOVE EEIIIIIIT! )))))))X" and the game will have to close. If this were to happen, than OOO would have to snap some CE into the air and put that in the market, lowering the price to a level to keep it from shooting through the roof.

OR

A few F2P players will leave and very few will buy CE anymore. This could impel the payers to start selling CE for less till it finally gets to the point that F2Pers will willingly buy it because it is not expensive at all anymore.

In the new patch notes, zombies now only drop loot if you can kill them without letting them get totem rez'd.

It will take a bit more skill to sqeeze all of them crowns out of FSC. Experienced players will either be able to earn as much as they always did, or have some habits to break.

Newer players in FSC, or those that take longer will have an interesting challenge before them.

I wonder, I wonder...

(Anxious to hear the new music for slime levels. :D)