Monster habitats:

i was thinkng that when ever i go down to the clockworks, i always feel like im not really in the monsters habitat just because the monsters do not really have anykind of behavior. i do not mean battle behavior, i mean other behaviors that would distinguish the monsters as being alive or have artificial life. im not trying to say to make an ai or make a huge program just to show this, i mean to just program some actions the monsters do when the knights are not attacking them before the battle start or after the knights have aboned the battle and the monsters are no longer chasing the knights.
Here is one example: i come to the clockworks around the beast family area and see a couple wolvers that are fighting the hell out of each other for a piece of meat. not that theres actually a piece of meat there, thats just the reason there fighting and not that there actually gonna kill each other, u just see them biting, and mauling each other. i think just coming upon that scene, i would feel that the wolvers are not just waiting there for me to come to give them a good wacking, which would feel like thats all there made for. well it is all there made for (lol), but still giving them other behavior would make it feel i actually entered there habitat instead of just coming to an area where i dont feel they really fit there. i think it would give them a better purpose then to just apear then be killed by our might.

another example:
would have to be coming to one of the gremlin family and see one of the gremlin thwackers working on a bridge. not that he would be actually working on the bridge or even be doing anything to the bridge, but it would seem like he belongs there. he would not be just sitting there doing nothing and waiting for me to come and give him a bullet of my blackhawk into his head. i mean, these small behaviors would give the monsters life and they would not just be just enemies, they would be enemies with that have style (that have more purpose then for me to kill them). when i mean style, i mean they would not only be made for fighting, but they would seem like they can also do other things. not that they can of course. we already have some small examples in emberlight, where we can see some gremlin working on a bridge or having conversations with each other.

one big example of individual monster behavior that seperates the families and i dont know if anyone noticed this, but if u create two giant linchen colonies next to each other, they would start to try to attack each other. This was before a couple patches around 3 months ago so i dont know if it is still the same way. when ever i would reach a linchen theme base level, i would create giant linchen colonies for fun (hoping a beeter item payout). odly after i created two next to each other, after i have vacated the premises, they would start to try to attack each other as if trying to absorb each other. i thought that was a great monster behavior that indicated there apetite for absorbing other linchens. i do not see this kind of behavior with any other monsters. An example of monster behaviors that could be implemented is two alpha wolvers debating who should be leader of the pack or something along those lines.

Infiltrating there habitat:

Heres the thing about doing a run into the clockworks, once u have done it a few hundred times, u notice everything is predictable. im not saying that because there predictable, u can easily swurve around enemy attacks and give them a one two three and take em down. what im saying is you know where each monster is going to apear, u know what each of their attack paterns are and what their next moves are about to be and this makes the exploration of the clockworks more of a (chore) homework to get crowns then an adventure to reach the core. i know this is what we call grinding in games and we also know most people hate that part in the games and of course i do too. grinding is like u have this new toy when u were 3 years old, and u keep playing with it the same way u did sense u were three without ever briging it outside and bringing it to new places with u to see if its more fun there. thats more torture to me. anyway back to spiral knights.

so about how the monsters appear. why not make it that there are already monsters there also from the post that i posted above have their own natural behaviors. and after we start to attack them, then they go into this alert mode, and when their in this mode they call some back up after we start to kill a few of them.

so for example:
we dive into the clockworks and fell into the gremlin family level theme. right after we meet a few gremlin knocker (after we took a sec to notice their unique behaviors while running towards them) we start to fight them and take 2 of them out (notice that we met them, and noticed them from a distance, they did not appear out of nowhere). usually theres about 4 to 3 of the that are summoned, so theres this one guy left all by himself against 4 knigts. so he goes into this alert mode and calls for help ( using his stylish radio comlink :p). he calls for 1 mender and lets say about 3 to 4 lumbers. now the knights are met by a suprise attack and are completely surrounded by 4 lumbers and a healer backing them up ( cause thats all healers can do, back monsters up). this small scene would add a bit more variaty in the game and the fact that the monsters we met at the begining did not appear out of thin air makes it seem like were actually invading their territory and not just passing through an unhabited area and getting ambush by teleporting monsters.

another example woul be:
going down into the clockworks and meeting a pack of wolvers (who did not appear out of thin air or randomly pop from the ground) they did not notice us cause they were facing away and have bad hearing (lol) and we start to slash at em. they get alerted and start to bark furious ( which would mean calling for help). so unexpectedly 4 to 5 silkwings pop from some bushes and 3 alpha wolvers pop intoaction. also notice from the moment they appear they start to attack, they do not have to notice where the knight is sense they are back up for those wolvers that were calling for help. so now the knights have to deal with three angry alpha wolvers and a flock of 5 silkwings backing them up ( cause thats whay healers do wish they did something else). i only say to leave the monsters out in the field for the knights to notice so as to increase the difficulty of being swarmed by monsters. Also the alert mode is not a frequent event, and because of that, it is not predictable to knights that does the clockworks 5 to 6 times a day using elevator passes or ce.

for example:
if u ever went into a level that was named deconstruction in it, once you entered the level via the party button, u would notice all the monsters are all outside waiting for you. besides the ones that are locked in a cage and the ones that teleport to u after activating and item from mission, there all there. What increases the dificulty about them being all there is that if you are fighting one of them, another would come to join the fray. and if you are backing away, you woud attract more attention until a whole swarm of monsters are chasing you. this increases the number of monsters you have to deal with and gives you the feeling you are actually being pushed by the inhabitants of that teritory which would be the gremlins. if this were aplied in other levels (maybe not all levels) and monsters had the ability to call for help, it would increase the feeling that were invading there teritory and give the feeling that the monsters have connections with another ( that they work together to push away the opposing threat). the only monsters so far i see have a deep connection is the devilite and the gremlins. when a Pit Boss devil comes to an (unemployed) Devilite forces him to be a (worker) Devilite Overtimer. why not create these kinds of connections with the wolver. where if a silkwing was about to die, the wolvers would all rush to attack the player attacking that silkwing or something similar to that.

this next sugestion is a bit off topic but ill mention it anyway.

Healers:

we all know healers do what they do best and cant do nothing else which is heal and heal and sometimes give a knight a little knockback. But for me, i think that is just a bit too underpowered sense they also are suppose to be a part of the fighting force that the knights are trying to eradicate. One aspect of being a healer which i am not sugesting from the game logic is that that a healer must know how the body of the patient functions and what to do to heal there ailment. So just using some basic logic, sense the healers knows how the body of that patient functions, they should also know how to manipulate it. so now if we were to aply this to the game, the menders ability to heal i think is still in debate wether it is magic or science. so assuming it is which ever one of those two, the menders should have an ability to enhance monsters that are near death instead of healing them.

for example:
a turret is shooting 3 volleys of energy bullets at a knight, 3 knights start to shoot at it and the damage done to it exceeds the menders healing ability. So instead of healing it, the mender gives it a temporary 4 to 5 second heightened damage ouput. so now the bullets take about 10 %to 15% more damage then it could have before. not that the knights cant dodge the bullets, but if it were to hit a knight with low health, it would have taken on of them out out of the three opposing shooters.

another example:
the enhancements do not always have to be damage output or a defensive increase. it can also be some actuall physical implementations. for example. an alpha wolver is close to being killed by a knight with barborous thorn as his weapon. theres one silkwing there trying to heal the alpha, but the alpha is close to death. so instead of healing, the silkwing enhances the alpha ability to follow a player during the time it is attacking for 3 seconds. this would give the wolver the ability to home in on that player and give him an unexpected challenge.

Last but not least:

I think the devs do not want to give healers the ability to heal so that they can just be in the healing catogory an not be able to inflict anykind of offensive damage. then why not create alternate forms of healers that sway away from the crowd healing objective.

for example:
we do not have to actually create a new family of monsters, but give a monster the ability to heal for himself only. here is a deadly combo witch would be overpowered (op) but definetly a good challenge. Give greavers the ability to heal base on 25% of the damage they took out of one knights health. this would give greavers a vampiric like appearance. It would seem that they're sucking the life away from the knights that it attacks. I only say it would be op if a flock of greavers attacked you from all sides. that would mean any health that is lost from that knigt while fighting them would heal that greavers health. i do not know how much health a greaver has sense the information about the amount of health a monster has is not given to us, but i think that ability would heal a greavers health pretty quickly. this ability is kind of like a healers ability to heal but solely for that monster alone.

well thats all i have to say. hope i get some good comments.