I've been playing Spiral Knights on and off for about over a year now, gotten to Tier 2 and am one piece of equipment from Tier 3, all done as an F2P. And I keep asking myself why I continually put the game aside for such long periods of time. There's great gameplay, the game looks fantastic, it's constantly updated, and has a very nice and open community. Plus, it has very interesting mechanics implemented into it, namely the Energy system. It ties into how much you can play with the Mist Energy and even what equipment you can use depending on how much energy you accumulate through missions. So, where's the problem?

Well, the problem becomes obnoxiously apparent once I pick it up again.
The staggering Energy costs between the equipment levels makes it a real struggle to continue on.
For people like me who don't have the money to spare to buy Energy, it becomes a real hassle. Aside from having limited Energy to complete missions and levels with, it also limits our equipment since we can only essentially afford the one set that we chose at the outset. F2Ps don't have the Energy to make armors for the various floors and situations the game throws at us, we just have to rely on what we got. I still haven't been able to complete a Tier 2 mission due to my Gunslinger setup, not being able to protect me against Shadow and I imagine there are others out there who are going through the same ordeal.
The only solution in-game being hours of endless grinding, and if you're going for the most profitable routes, grinding the same levels over and over again. Sure we get to do some fun and unique missions afterward, but when we hit that next Hall of Heroes that needs us to have the next level of equipment, the grinding starts all over again. It becomes repetitive and exhausting to work for that next armor set.

However, as much as it sounds like a problem with how much these missions pay out, it really isn't. It's the Energy Depot.
This constantly fluctuating marketplace is essentially run by the players, namely the players who buy OOO's Energy Packs not to craft with but to sell to the other players. There's a common misconception going around some of F2P players that anybody who buys the Energy Packs is contributing to the Energy Depot when that's not the case at all. Most of the energy bought in those packs goes towards crafting, buying keys/shadow keys, and upgrade slots. None of that goes back into the market. The bits that do, are priced according to the amount of Crowns that the rest of the players are making via Missions and the Arcade. The more Crowns that players can make and the easier it is to do so, severely devalues the Energy on the market causing the price of Energy to go up to compensate.
Now, I'm not an economist, so my explanation isn't the best out there. I'm sure there are some forumites out there who can explain this much better than I can and with a deeper understanding of it to boot.

So. Are there any solutions? I don't know. Some would argue that it isn't a problem to be solved and that F2Ps should help pitch in to OOO's profits as well, whereas the F2P players would ask why it was made a free-to-play game at all if they want us to pay for it. Some would say grinding is part of the game, others would say this amount of grinding is excessive and so on and so forth.
But for now, I just want to put forth some ideas that I had. So give it a read if you wish and I'd love to hear feedback about them.

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- Reducing Crown payout on Missions/Boss Runs in a different way
The main contributing factor to the rising cost of energy is the ease of access to highly profitable missions. OOO has tried to fix this in the past by cutting down the overall payout of various missions, namely the boss areas. This honestly isn't the best fix. It just makes people do the most profitable missions areas over and over again.

Proposed fix: Why not make it so that the more floors you go down, the more money you get?

Every Terminal you hit would activate a Crown multiplier, so the longer you go the more you make. If you take a shortcut and start at the Manor or Emberlight, you don't get the multipliers from the floors you skipped. So if you start from the very top at Depth 1, by the time you hit the the last Stratum or the Firestorm Citadel, you're making exponentially more than when you started out and even more if you had just done the Vanaduke mission.
It would bring use back to the now utterly abandoned Arcade, and make it more of an effort to get higher Crown payouts, thus reducing the price on the Energy Depot after a while. It would also get people to stop farming the Missions so frequently, only doing so if they need the materials or tokens from the boss. It would also add much needed variety to the life of a Crown farmer. I can only imagine the boredom of having to go through the same floor hundreds of times just for new armor.
Granted, this would make getting Crowns a much more time consuming process. Something else this would do is also having the side effect of cutting down the costs of basic 0-1 star materials in the Auction House. With so many people doing the first few floors again, basic materials would begin to be put back up for auction at reasonable prices.

- Making more incentive to sell Energy on the Market
Now being a F2P, I'm not 100% sure how the other end of the Energy market works, but from what I've read on the wiki and forums, there's barely any incentive to even put your energy up on the marketplace. Spending hard earned money buying Energy, converting it into Crowns, and only getting a handful of Crowns more than if you had just done an Arcade run or two. Plus, why even use it for that? Why not use it to craft a sweet new armor set?

Proposed fix: Give people who make successful sales at the Depot a coupon of some sort that reduces their Energy costs elsewhere.

Whether that be for elevators, crafting, unbinding, etc., so long as there's a bigger incentive to put more energy into the marketplace, this causes there to be more competition for lower prices so they can benefit from this bonus. Especially if it would reduce crafting cost or the price of shadow lair keys.
Doing so would even give more incentive to F2P players to buy Energy Packs if they have a shot at getting reduced Energy costs, especially with how expensive things are these days.

- Have a source of Energy at a fixed price
One problem (and benefit!) with the Energy Depot is that the prices are always fluctuating. And unfortunately they've been on an upward trend since I started playing. When once I could buy a pack of Energy for 5000 Crowns, now I have to shell out 8500+. The equivalent to 4 or more Jelly Palace runs.

Proposed fix: Have a source of Energy somewhere at a fixed price determined by OOO and players.

This would still fluctuate according to player needs, but would help determine the overall price of the market and HOPEFULLY make it more stable. You could even make it a chore to get to, such as only at a certain terminal or after a boss floor via the Arcade.
Another thing you could do is have the price increase depending on your equipment level. However, this brings up the problem of players giving lower tier players their Crowns in exchange for cheap Energy...

- Make more outlets and uses for Crowns and Energy
There really aren't a lot of ways to use the Crowns and Energy you've accumulated after curbstomping Vanaduke for the umpteenth time. Sure there's always new equipment that MAY come out, but what are you going to do in the meantime? Play Lockdown? Try the Shadow Lairs?
This overabundance is part of the problem that contributes to the inflation of the Energy market. How do we fix it?

Proposed fix: Add some other uses for Energy than elevators, crafting, and buying stuff.

Maybe something story related that we all have to pitch in for at one point. Maybe a raid boss that requires players to sink in more energy than usual. SOMETHING ASIDE FROM SILLY ACCESSORIES.
And while we're at it why not Crowns as well? We need a sink for both of them, considering they are both (technically) Spiral Knight's currency. Maybe use Crowns for betting on new and existing mini-games. Hell, maybe even pay a little bit to spectate an event. Or make something that costs both Energy and Crowns.
This is where we need someone with a real business sense to look at this. There needs to be a way to balance it all out somehow.

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I know this is probably going to be picked to shreds by the vets of the forums, but I'd still like to get people talking about it. These fixes are big changes if ever implemented (which I HIGHLY doubt would ever happen), but are more rational than "hurr GeT Rid oF Enurgy EnTireLy." If you don't think so, or if you have your own idea, post it here!

(I have searched the forums previously about some of these matters and I know there have been proposed Crown and Energy sinks before. The other ideas I hadn't seen, but if they were posted, I'm sorry I missed them.)