From what I can tell, no more health-sharing revives will NOT be popular.

I agree why not keep the loot sharing similar to how it is now except make it that each party member gets the material dropped. They will still have the sharing feature just like Podukt said, we are doing a specific room killing off enemies while collecting loot from other Knights in our party. I also solo all my missions unless some friends/guilds want to team up then I open my party, if we have to run around the clockworks that a fellow Knight has already cleared just to get loot about 90% of the time the party leader will shout cmon or hurry up! Worse case is the Knight collecting loot from cleared areas might get removed from party.

Another note is I am guessing Beta testing Knights or alts won't be able to use the Tier 2 or Tier 3 gear due to their rank isn't high enough to use the weapons they work hard to earn from doing Arcade runs back in the day if it was a Beta user, or tabbing a friend/main account while farming materials and tokens for gear that most Knights have to do Rank Mission for?...I think it can go either way good or bad, I see nothing wrong with this update but just saying how will the Beta using Knights feel about this if in fact they do return to experience this new Battle Sprites update.

- Divine Crusader of Over Powered Noobs & Sword of Skylark

edit: nvm, BN/LD are probably need spark revs too

While some of the things announced sound interesting and I'd like to see how they pan out, there are a couple little things I'd like to voice my concerns over. I understand I'm probably going to be in the minority here, for my reasoning if little else.

Pretty sad about health-sharing revives going away, but I suppose you expected a bit of that and understand where your reasoning comes from. It was nice to be able to share heat between my husband and myself when only one of us was working on something.

As far as the equipment limit goes ... I've already hit Vanguard and done whatever at the end of the game except for a couple Shadow Lairs, and I'm really not the sort of person who wants a big challenge when she's trying to relax and have fun; if I want a challenge, I have all sorts of real-life things to deal with. Half the time, I like to run around like a dork in earlier missions with big weapons, just to run of some steam and make a satisfying splat ... will I be unable to do that at all now, or will the limit only apply to Missions, allowing us to be dumb in the Arcade?

I can see Produkt and Stwhitestorm's concerns about the loot sharing, and while I haven't had the experiences they have, I would like to point out that there is still a perfectly valid reason to play without a party: you either particularly enjoy solo-ing or particularly dislike running with others. I'm a little concerned that we're moving toward a model where you essentially HAVE to go out with a party, because that's the point I'd have to stop playing ... not because I would want to go out in a blaze of anger over changes, but because I get anxious playing with others and it would no longer be fun.

As I've said, I don't expect my concerns to be in the majority and I realize I'm far from the average player, but I appreciate at least the opportunity to voice them.

"We are adding important new items to the game. Orbs of Alchemy and Sparks of Life (the existing material will be renamed). Orbs of Alchemy replace the energy requirements for alchemy meaning that alchemy will require Orbs of Alchemy in place of energy.

Sparks of Life are used to revive knights and replace the energy cost associated with revives. Sparks of Life can be purchased in in bulk via the Supply Depot or individually when needing to revive in the Clockworks. This cost will no longer escalate as it does now. Additionally, every knight will receive an ‘Emergency Revive’ that is used immediately after dying once per level. An Emergency Revive instantly revives you with a generous amount of health.

Orbs of Alchemy and Sparks of Life will drop in the Clockworks (through Missions and the Arcade), and also be available for purchase with energy. The overall cost to craft an item and revive regularly should remain about the same in aggregate, it will just be done with Orbs and Sparks of Life.

In conjunction with this change, and after much debate, we are removing health sharing revives. Our observations show that health sharing to revive downed party members ends up being detrimental to teams working to complete levels; diluting overall team health to the point of team members being repeatedly one-shotted in combat.

However, you will be able to use Sparks of Life to revive downed party members just as you can with energy now."

I do not like that AT ALL. OOO Do not add this, however the difficulty thing is pretty interesting as I'd like to see how that would affect PvE. But orbs of alchemy and Sparks of Life(Not the material) are going to be very horrible. You will lose alot of players.

^He just said that hard mode = more loot...

Okay thank you so much for clarifying for us, back to testing Battle Sprites :)
- Divine Crusader of Over Powered Noobs & Sword of Skylark

Equipment Limits

One additional change to support this: going forward, players will have an equipment limit on their weapons and gear. Mission rank will prevent players from using gear deemed too powerful for their experience. For example, a 3* item would say, 'Requires Rank 5-1 to equip.'

So, this means more people will do clockworks to do RJP and Roarmy twins to use 5* gear? seems like a good feature to bring back the arcade somewhat.

Difficulty Modes and Loot Distribution

You can now set the difficulty mode of Missions and Arcade runs. Difficulty will adjust the strength of monsters and traps as well as their damage types. Playing on increased difficulty will reward you with more loot.

We have also changed the way that loot is distributed. Loot will now be individually distributed to all players and never randomly assigned or split. Each player sees only their own loot on each level and must collect or ignore each piece. This includes vitapods.

This change means that there are zero reasons to NOT party with others. You’ll get the same amount of loot regardless of party size.

I am all for not having the vita's dissapear when someone picks them up, but for going over each piece of crown/heat can be a bit tedious.

In conjunction with this change, and after much debate, we are removing health sharing revives. Our observations show that health sharing to revive downed party members ends up being detrimental to teams working to complete levels; diluting overall team health to the point of team members being repeatedly one-shotted in combat.

I'm sorry, but in my opinion, that taught me how to not get hit, and use teamwork. and I'd appreciate it greatly if this wasn't implemented, but I guess I'm gonna have to try inb4 I knock it.

I gotta say everything is pretty cool but... I officially ran out of fingers. Basically to use your battle sprite efficiently you MUST have a gaming mouse, or you must be some kind of mutant alien with more than 5 fingers per hand...

My client crashes and must be restarted after each mission, this is a serious problem, my friends are having it too.

Thank you for clarifying on the Equipment Limit. The way I initially read it, I thought that the limit was dependent on the level you were playing rather than your level (i.e. I couldn't use a Final Flourish on the Snarbolax, because it was too heavy a weapon for T1). I see that that's not the case now. Thank you again!

Hey, Nick, how do we get Ultimate Evo Materials or are they not in the Preview build?

Drakon is pretty cool, I'll likely be using it on the live servers

Seraphinx feels broken, the light beam is rather lacking and heart attack is lacking hearts.

Maskwraith is pretty great, I like the invisibility and Hex is cool.

The special perks are the real selling point, High Shock resist? Medium Sword ASI? This stuff is awesome!

I hesitate to even make a suggestion here as past experience leads people to believe all suggestions are basically ignored as developers will do whatever the frack they want without regard to players opinions... That being said I'll attempt to offer a few suggestions.

-Splitting loot is fine, only if you make all loot auto pick up, don't leave it lying around on the ground ever, as soon as a monster is killed it's picked up and put in your inventory. Having to run around picking up loot has long been considered a bad game play element and many games have phased this out. SK should too. This will fix parties running around looking for loot and being bored out of their mind.

-Allow sub rank knights to still equip high * items but display a warning that they can't use the item to it's full potential until they rank up. So if a knight equips a 5* weapon, it'll only be as effective as a 3* version if their rank allows 3* gear. This will still allow you to rake in money when new players decide to buy CE so they can get 5* gear right at the start.

-Also could you fix all the interface bugs with the auction house. There has been a persistent memory leak that's readily apparently with lots of auctions in your bid history. Simply bid on a lot of things, open and close the auction house repeatedly and it'll get pretty bad pretty fast.
-Also if you open the mail window over the auction house, it's really hard to open mail, it requires a double click instead of a single click, and sometimes that doesn't even work (especially if the 2nd or 3rd tab of ah is open)

No more health-sharing revives? I'd say around 90% of the times I have died were on purpose (either going AFK or sharing heat) and another 5% were from lag.
Combined with not letting other party members pick up your loot for you there are no reasons to party with other people anymore, you would have to stay near them at all times to avoid missing your drops and they would be a hinderance rather than a help.
I sencerely hope you listen to feedback regarding these changes and revert them before they go live.

Orbs of Alchemy? Seems like an unnecessary step in crafting, and by the looks of it will make crafting costs go up for those who do not run the clockworks constantly.

Equipment limits seem like yet another attempt at copying generic MMOs, most people won't really care about them but people who haven't played since missions came out aswell as extremely Pay-to-Play users and a few who have 5* alts or simply refuse to do missions won't be happy.

Difficulty modes on the other hand will be much appreciated, there has been much talk of how the game has been made easier since it first began and this should satisfy people who feel the normal levels aren't a challenge anymore.

Getting all the key bindings is pretty hard. :c

Question: So the Ultimate forms will vary, something like Wolver series 5* versions? (Vog, Skolver, Snarbolax)

New Items

Personally, I'd much prefer it if the Sparks and Orbs dropped in the Clockworks more often than in Missions. Additionally, the loss of health-sharing revives severely limits how many mistakes people can make. I'm not a big fan of the "emergency revive" idea; it's like giving people a free health pill and leads to an everyone-for-themselves sort of mentality. You only get two chances, and then no one can help you without paying.

I'd instead like a system where you require more and more health to be revived each time you're KO'd, perhaps your friend has to stay near you long enough for you to be revived, or even a wait time before you can get back up and help your teammates if you're dying too much. The regular server's system is admittedly too abused to be kept, what with people exploiting the last-stand mechanics, but I don't think throwing team revives out of the window is a fun alternative.

Difficulty Modes and Loot Distribution

I'm very excited to see how difficulty will affect enemies. Please don't make it a flat boost to their stats; make them more difficult in entirety. Smarter, not fatter.

As for the loot distribution, I can see why you're doing this despite forcing people to stay together on even the most scattered of levels: to crush alt farming for good. However, I'd love to see this limitation removed on certain levels, like Clockwork Tunnels, Deconstruction Zones, Charred Court, Dry Dock, Treasure Vaults, and Graveyards, since those often split people up anyways, forcing them to stay together even when the levels are designed so everyone is running everywhere.

In addition, this means that dead players in general that decide to stay dead will no longer get what they haven't earned, which is pretty good.

Equipment Limits

Bye bye 5* Recruits.

On an unrelated note, when can we expect balance changes for our equipment?