As a business, Three Rings needs to make money to survive. The way Spiral Knights makes money is through players purchasing Crystal Energy. From the company's point of view, the more CE purchased the better. Thus it's in their interest to add as many ways as possible for players to spend that CE. However this needs to be balanced against the need to let players feel that they're getting good value for their money - if they feel they're being ripped off they'll stop spending actual real moneys on the game, and revenue will fall. So it's a balancing act between maximising revenue, and minimising outrage.

This need to maximise revenue is undoubtedly part of the reason for the recent rise in CE costs for crafting items. The other part of the reason is the stated issue of game balance, making sure that high-level items remain rare and special, something that's only achieved after considerable time and effort so that they feel like an achievement. However, I don't think that increasing the energy cost of Alchemy was the best way to do things.

200, 400 and 800 CE feel like a lot. It doesn't matter that 800 CE costs less real money than a moderately fancy Starbucks coffee, it feels expensive in the context of the game and what people are used to. It feels like a rip-off, a transparent attempt by the company to milk players for as much money as possible. It fosters resentment

You can get a lot of Clockworks playtime for 200 energy, let alone 800. That's a lot of fun - whacking monsters, collecting goodies and levelling up items. I don't mind paying the elevator fee, because I know that it opens the door to enjoyable gameplay. The payoff is almost immediate.

Meanwhile, handing over that big a lump of CE for one item feels like a big payment for little immediate payoff. Your ability to whack monsters (or avoid getting whacked by monsters) might be somewhat improved, but that's not really something that's immediately apparent.

Three Rings need to get the players to burn through as much CE as possible if their game is going to be financially viable. Fine, that's understood. But gouging their players for CE at every opportunity is not a good way to do it while maintaining community goodwill.

The suggestion:

Playing Spiral Knights is fun.

Paying money for stuff is unfun.

A dose of fun can encourage people to do stuff that they would otherwise consider to be unfun.

Rather than increasing the direct CE cost of crafting items, I would propose increasing the amount of Heat needed to level up items to meet crafting requirements (that is, getting 3* items to level 5, and 4* items to level 10). The more Heat required, the more Clockworks runs needed to accrue that Heat; the more Clockworks runs made, the more elevator fees that must be paid. It takes more time and effort to level up your items, which makes getting those top-star items more of an achievement.

Rather than taking 800 CE from the player in one lump, charge them 200 CE in a lump, and spread the remaining 600 CE across the elevator fees they need to pay to bring their item to level 10 in order to upgrade it. You could even tweak the Heat payout so that they'd need to make 1200 CE worth of Clockwork runs to hit level 10 - because the players are getting a nugget of delicious Spiral Knights gameplay with each 10 CE they spend they're less likely to resent that cost. Of course, endless repetitive grinding is somewhat unfun, so it'd need fine-tuning until it hits the sweet spot.

Yes, it's possible for players to use their Mist Energy to pay those elevator fees, but with only 100 ME per day it'll take them a lot longer to raise the Heat than if they were spending CE on it to play for longer each day. Maybe even implement a Heat multiplier for each floor, based on whether the player used ME or CE to pay the elevator fee - so those who buy and use CE will have the gratification of levelling a bit faster than those who just use their daily ME allowance. It's a reward for supporting the game financially.

Basically, there are various ways to add incentives to buy CE that don't spark player outrage. Making things painfully and obviously expensive is not really one of them.

I'd be interested to hear what the devs or other players think of this proposal.