Your initial assessment of the update is correct. and I don't think he needs to read 9 pages of posts to come to the conclusion that the update was a waste of resources. Nor should his words get lost in that sea of text. He is a symbol of the "long lost pros" and heyday of SK people talk about. If OOO cares at all about true endgame players, there is no better perspective that OOO should start taking to work then from players like Tennis.

The United Nations definition of poverty besides deficiencies in basic assets includes components of powerlessness, discrimination, exploitation, exclusion and voicelessness. I want to highlight the last one, voicelessness. Take a breath and think to yourself, does your voice have any sway here. Shouldn't the player base have some say and shouldn't the player base have some hand on the direction of the world of spiral knights? There are comments that the outpouring of feelings attached to every patch is unwarranted or is unproductive criticism or is tl:dr or even that we should have faith in OOO. However, the opinions of the player base has been continuously disregarded when it comes time for action and outcomes by OOO. Here's an example, was there an outcry after the Shard bomb patch? What was the effect of that outcry? Nothing. If one player happened to received 9,155,000 crowns worth of UV tickets (Over 9 Billion Crowns) in "compensation" for that patch, what does the player who actually loved his/her shard bomb trust?
It of course remains to be seen what happens with the UI, but if neglect occurs over and over again it isn't an accident, it is the policy and everyday practice. Better the cycle is broken sooner rather then later not that I doubt we'd just "get used to the new UI" because our muscle memory is so set, as soon as we put on hands on the mouse and awsd keys. But I think updates tips OOO hand on what they feel is important for them to work on and at this moment the views of endgame players and OOO differ.

Anyway, what are you thoughts, Tennis, that the two biggest problems plaguing spiral knights that drove away the player base of when we started playing, besides of course the Mayday the 17th patch, is consistent unreconcilable latency problems and rehashing of content. This is all about priority of attention and resources, especially if OOO has a limited supply of help. (Not to mention balancing and bug fixing which should be constantly be addressed in any game.)

It is one thing to know what causes lag, the support and engineering team knows but after all this time, has anything substantial been done? Every other friend back in the day when they were around said their screen freezes when monsters spawn, they can not control their character, they can not see incoming attacks, they "rubberband" etc. The problem has never been the difficulty of the game, they didn't need monster nerfs, the only thing holding them back, was poor latency. The frustration and self disappointment when this occurs day after day feeling like you're dragging the party down or you are draining everyone's HP, it eats at the soul and it is not like training hard will make latency problems go away. It isn't fun, people should not ever have to feel that way so they are right to leave. Likely you've seen comments like, sk coding is complex, java is at fault or they have a small staff, next time I feel through voice chat, her tears, a friend who's knight is crippled by this issue, try talking to her about complex codes. If this was a priority to OOO they would put resource here instead of the UI and give a greater number of people a chance to play and have fun.

About rehashing, the players face a repetitive cycle, FSC/JK, same missions, or clockworks floors that at first glance seem to "rotate" but in reality are just similar tilesets pieced together. It is no wonder that with the environment being so repetitive that the players got reskined promotion items and events. With the exception of snarb, the bosses are all summoners. Even the most challenging places to fight, the Shadow Lairs (which takes ~15 FSC runs worth of profit to access) are reskins. Speaking of the Shadow Lairs, back when they first came out a friend gathered a group of buddies and wanted to go. He wasn't a cutthroat, hardcore sk player, he was an easy going good person who was T3 and been playing about a year or so. He bought the key didn't ask anything from his guildmates and wanted to enjoy something new with them. The day came, he used the key and somewhere during the first floor there was such problems with screen freezing and lag (goes back to problem 1) that his client crashed. When he was able to getting it working again he was in haven., dropped out of the run. Looking back at their guild facebook page and seeing the anger and the ....I don't even know how to describe it, soured?!? I understand why people stop playing when the only choice is the same old FSC or a sour lemon. If this was a priority to OOO they would put resources here instead of the UI and give people more good places to play/explore with friends.

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This is not really for the player base but who is this games target audience, children? My guildmaster was a married military veteran who was trying start a new career. The guildmaster of CDG was a bankerwoman from Singapore. The guildmaster of BlackLight a man who loves spending time with his family. My very first friend in the game a father of a newborn son who sometimes burped up his food. The friendliest girl I met in all of sk was restarting back up at her university. Know what is common about all of them, they are all gone. This is not a dress up game, why do people like lockdown so much, combat, at its core people are attracted to this game due to a combat system some say is similar to Zelda a Link to the Past with the added enjoyment of team play.

At its roots, OOO should be trying to enhance this and work on outcomes that benefit the most people. You'll read posts like there should be more content, there should be more gear, there should be more plot development, there should be more item balance. You know what I say, OOO should be developing even more then that, where is the vision,

Why not let players play with friends in pvp games without having to rig up some sort of gvg. Hell lets have a new pvp game. Why not fix the lag and then develop a brand new tier where we can fight as parties of up to 6. Hell don't just give the monsters better AI, create monsters that feed off the knights actions with counterattacks, with retreating kiting actions, with misdirection, you know, monsters that fight more like us rather then a scuttlebot or Rabbit. Lets have a new stratum where we take Striker, Recon and Guardian Modules into the clockworks and have to utilize them in a way to fight and problem solve enhanced monsters/puzzles. We always fight in little rooms with traps and mobs, can't there be some change in the battlegrounds themselves, there are ramp designs lets have combat areas which utilize high ground, low ground mechanics. Why not a new stratum where we fight with the zoomed in perspective of The Silent Legion, or a more zoomed out camera. Hell why not give gunners what they really want... what they really really want......unique looking hats.....and then give them trinkets which expand gun range. Spiral knights was about diversity and customization, bring back the name colors... and you know what is real prestige how about designing symbols that displays next to the name of the top 10 LD players in the category of Damage, Caps and Defends and if a person has high marks in all three recorded statistics they get another awesomely prestigious symbol. In each guild the T3 player who has the highest value of some formula which factors in T3 monster kills, levels played and crowns earned gets a symbol which defines them as that guild's T3 ACE, guildmasters should have a special animation for the guildname under their name, rainbow letters, italics, something. The holders of the new symbols can be reassessed on a timely basis and at the end of that cycle they can get a mail from the Spiral Order congratulating them it could offer them some sort of gift, a mist tank, weapon slot, anything, make it up they earned it.

Want people to play more often, more regularly, want stronger guilds, what about giving minerals an alternative use, let minerals be used to pay guildhall fees so we don't have to worry about upkeep, and/or for crafting give an option to put in minerals to enhance specific uv rates. I've never needed heat, maybe 2 days out of the whole second year I've been playing, why not create some mechanism which like a honeybee where any unused heat is collected and goes back to the guildhall. What does extra heat do in a guildhall, maybe it creates new animation effects for the hall to show how alive the guild is or gets converted in the mist well to usable energy so we don't have to worry so much about mist well thieves.

What about even more trinkets besides gun range, balance out movement speed buffs and let there be MS trinkets, miner trinkets that let you enhance your mineral collection, busy bee heat trinkets that lets you enhance excess heat collection. How about a trinket that lets you use a movement technique "flash" which when off cooldown lets you blink a short distance. Or another trinket that lets you use a movement technique "shadow" which when off cooldown lets you ignore damage and unit collision for a moment. Then you'll really be fighting like a wolver with swords. Or what about a trinket which increases the life of shields or increases the restoration of a broken shield or enhances the knockback of shield bumping. What about bomb enhancing trinkets for blast radius and number of explosions. Want to give option to Plate armor, give it an ability, any uv or bonus defense attributes beyond the regular stats of the armor are enhanced by some percent, could even work this somehow into increasing the effectiveness of the Guardian module especially for the new clockworks tier.

The most exciting things brings something worth achieving like passion and honor or an intellectual stimulus like a change/options to the metagame. If people want to explore use of Mercurial stuff with the new movespeed trinkets and a five star swiftstrike shield which gives ASI and MS so be it, but they will have to do it against a faster, smarter AI where there might be a legitimate place for damage, weapon range bonuses, ctr, farming enhancers and whatever else can be dreamed up after testing and balance by the hardworking players on the Test Server.

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Tennis you know what comes to mind when I think about the next "big" update.
Why in the world would any true end game player who has created a knight with two years of funds who has the skill of two years of battles need a Battle Sprite to do their fighting, especially if the only place to go is FSC. Besides the novelty and however big a material sink they make it, would a player who has crafted every item in the game fight any better with a Pet, would a player who has maximum uvs and optimized gear really fight any better with a Pet? Come to think of it....wouldn't people much rather prefer their long lost friends and guildmates with them instead....

Thank you for reading this Tennis, the words I wish I could say to all endgamers - When you kill Vanaduke for the hundredth/thousandth time, go to D29, don't press the "Esc" button, because when you get to D29 and as you step on the elevator and it says "Advance Now", ask yourself if it truly back up to haven you want to advance onward too?

SK is a better place with skillful, good mannered players such as the legendary Guildmaster Tennis, you'll always have my respect and friendship ~DawnSymphony~