I might be the only one to complain but i really think this is one of the biggest issue.
i take it that most of the peopole are kids and are not willing to pay "real money"
to play this game and waiting 24 hours before u can play is also really annoying.
therefore i suggest the makers to rethink this idea and place themselfs in the peopole that play spiral knights.
A few questions i would like to ask u for that are
Would u like to wait 24 hours?
Do u got the money for energy crystals?
I would've answerd no to both questions just cause i haven't gotten any familiar with the game and i just started it, it looked more like here u can play and now pay us!
If i was them i would decrease the amount of hours to 5~ 10 so that peopole wouldn't have to wait that long, because if noone can play spiral knights they wouldn't earn any money to begin with right?
Just make a optional "Cash shop" peopole can purchase cash items for there character to look cooler similiar to the game Maplestory.
Create some servers here and there for more population and not to many peopole at 1 spot. And maybe more maps so we can explore.
Its just a suggestion, mainly thing is to rethink the energy system.
Energy System
You make excellent points Jamie! People like me and a few others I know cannot afford to buy that much energy. I LOVE playing Spiral Knights but I cannot afford to put that kind of money into it with how much I love to play it. Heck, I don't even have a credit card. I have to buy mine with crowns, which is costly (in virtual money.) That would be my only complaint about this game. Oh, and the 24 hour wait. That makes me all sad inside. =(
♥ Kitty
I have to agree with Jamie's comments.
As it is, I have invested over 15 dollars in this game and I've only been here a few days. I know I won't play this much everyday during a whole month, but still: a 15 dollar investment should definitely give you more than a few days' worth of play, no matter how much you play.
Like Jamie said, I'm a little hesitant to give away invites to my friends because I know they don't have that kind of money. It makes it rather hard to pick this game over other free-to-play and even pay-to-play MMORPGs when you compare the costs.
Remember that it's not necessary to actually purchase all the energy you use; once you start adventuring in the deeper levels, high coin payouts allow you to purchase some of the energy you need on the exchange. (which, incidentally, I'd love to see made more accessible from the menus, including a way to access the exchange while adventuring- it's not good if you run out while between towns and lose your progress)
That depends on other people being willing to trade their energy (real money currency) for coins, of course. Towards this end, I'd like to see slightly lower crafting costs in energy, and more coin-based items sold by vendors, thus increasing the demand for coins, and giving free players someone to buy energy from.
It would also help if even "low level" towns offered a way for people to purchase better recipes/ items: there is a "vendor level" bar shown at every shop I visit, so hopefully something will be added to take advantage of that. (buy all their items, and access a new vendor level's worth of inventory, etc) Currently, I really do feel that crafting costs (energy) make a coin purchase VASTLY preferable: I've spent far more than the crafting cost of an item trying to track down single recipe components, often without luck. Charging me a fortune to get the pieces- and then again to assemble them- makes crafting less attractive than it should be.
Reducing the raising costs would also be helpful. At very least, it takes extremely tight planning to adventure between towns with the current allocation of mist energy; giving free players a slightly wider pool (or decreasing the total cost-to-next-town) would help. There's been talk of tweaking the costs for elevators to lobbies, treasure vaults, and terminals (non-playable levels), which would help towards this end and allow even free players to more completely participate in full adventures. (the energy costs for crafting, raises, and additional runs are all incentives to pony up for cash on their own)
Basically: it's still a work in progress, and I suspect they're monitoring expenditures closely to see what the final values should be. Hopefully the final version will be better adjusted in that regard!
I'm going to plug the monthly elevator pass again. Price it at around 2500 crystal energy. Once you have it, you get a month of unlimited elevator use. Players can use their daily 100 mist for the first handful of revives. Excessive reviving, crafting, slots, etc. still require crystal energy purchases.
That's the equivalent of 250 floors, so not a bad deal.
I'd be okay with having a larger mist energy tank even if it still only accumulates at a rate of 100/day
that way i wouldn't feel so obligated to play every single day like clockwork to avoid wasting energy
Perhaps a larger mist energy tank could be a free gift for paying customers? More flexibility in when you play would be a nice incentive to pay up.
If there were any permanent account upgrades, I'd probably buy them all right away.
how about when youve runned out of energy and you reach a elevator you can convert heat into mist energy (but only a limited value) and then tadaa you can continue down.
Basically I had an idea I sent in a long time ago, like January-ish:
You let people pay to get their Mist Energy tanks increased, this is a permanent upgrade. So people that play less can pay once and their energy can recharge and fill the tank and they can do a few runs to the core or whatever when they play.
Then as an extension of this, with the larger tanks, you could pay to have mist energy refilled instantly at the end of the day as a kind of subscription method. So you can have as much Mist energy as you want a day, since you can't (or at least shouldn't be able to) sell Mist energy on the exchange I thought it would be a pretty balanced trade off to buying crystal energy.
This is a dangerous topic for developers to tread upon, but I do want to let you guys know:
This is the first phase of the Preview Event. Right now, we're mostly just trying to get players into the game, see some early behavior patterns, and most importantly, make sure things on the technical side aren't horribly broken.
In subsequent phases, we're going to be focusing much more closely on the energy system, payment models, and getting all of that stuff where it ought to be.
So! Do know that we're listening to your ideas and concerns. If you don't see movement right now on things, it's not because we're not interested; we're just not to that phase yet. We'll be shaking things up in the future, and though it might be a bumpy ride, in the end, we hope to provide options for numerous different playstyles.
how about making it all like every other F2P mmo, with just getting a vip store, i'm not saying removing the energy system but making it so it dosent affect overall gameplay, only some aspects, like alchemy or upgrades.
I actually prefer not having a VIP store: the game is set up so that there is nothing that a paying player can have that a non-paying player can't also acquire (even crystal energy). All paying offers is doing more stuff faster.
First comment: I'm *VERY* new to this game.
Second comment: It sounds very much like the doubloon system from YPP, with a "slow, once a day minor free gain" and a decent pacing of extra consumption.
With that observation, then I'd say that "Free to play" probably (based on the ftp games I've seen) generally give you limited things to play with, and limited areas to play in, before you have to send in money. Here, it sounds like you can also trade coin for "energy" or access to the extra (good; like YPP); the question is, do you get enough "free" to get hooked, and enough coin to get the energy? And, do the "other 1%" have enough desire for coin to sell energy?
Meanwhile, I'm downloading a copy onto a PC that I can use tonight ...
Thankyou for that post, Cory! Very helpful and reassuring.
One thing is certain, the model needs to change. It currently punishes people for wanting to play the game a lot. I like the idea of buying 30 day upgrades with energy that do things like reduce how much energy alchemy costs or how much energy using lifts cost. I don't however want to see them implement something that gives paying customers things that non-paying customers can't have. I like that you can buy people's energy for crowns and hope they never get rid of that. It gives people who don't pay money a chance to experience things they may otherwise not have and being able to sell energy gives people an extra incentive to buy energy with real money. Being able to sell energy is really a win/win situation.
i'm not too thrilled about the pay energy each level, one at a time, model of dungeon running. the prospect of not being able to get to the next level and getting booted back to town because you don't have energy remaining (rezzing or just plain bad math at working out how much you'd need to get to the end/crossroads) is annoying. paying one lump sum of energy for a chunk of levels would seem more usefull.
and the above comment about the cost of getting booted from a party, it should definately not send you back to town, but rather to a parellel dungeon level at the same depth and energy cost to continue on your own or with other pugs. energy is the games core curency and allowing it to be wasted like that at the whim of another player is an unacceptable inequity.
> I actually prefer not having a VIP store: the game is set up so that there is nothing that a paying player can have that a non-paying player can't also acquire (even crystal energy). All paying offers is doing more stuff faster.
A non-paying customer only gets 100 energy; there's stuff to buy at 150 or 250 energy in the starting town.
That only happens if you send in some cash.
Any sort of "Make the free tank larger" has to take that into account -- some stuff has to be at the level where you have to either pay cash or use the exchange.
> high coin payouts allow you to purchase some of the energy you need on the exchange. (which, incidentally, I'd love to see made more accessible from the menus, including a way to access the exchange while adventuring-
You can, at least now -- I don't know if you could when you wrote that.
> At very least, it takes extremely tight planning to adventure between towns with the current allocation of mist energy; giving free players a slightly wider pool (or decreasing the total cost-to-next-town) would help.
Letting people save their "in progress" state would help. Forcing people back to town when they can't finish a dungeon is a bad design. Give people a way to abort back to town, or let them stay (and store up mist to continue).
"A non-paying customer only gets 100 energy; there's stuff to buy at 150 or 250 energy in the starting town.
That only happens if you send in some cash."
Hi! There's actually an energy exchange set up, which functions pretty much the same way the doubloon exchange in Puzzle Pirates does. The vendor is one of the ones with the energy symbol on its face, and there's one in every town.
"Hi! There's actually an energy exchange set up, which functions pretty much the same way the doubloon exchange in Puzzle Pirates does. The vendor is one of the ones with the energy symbol on its face, and there's one in every town."
You can also reach the exchange now by clicking on the energy symbol in the lower right corner. Now I can quickly buy some crowns when I find a snazzy new recipe from a merchant.
Hello Gaea! Yea, I saw it. Today I saw buys around 3500, and sells ... a few at 5000, and a lot around 6500.
When the distance between buy and sell is under 5% for a 2% fee, then I'll agree that the market is working.
Right now, it seems like I can make around 500 crowns per hour, maybe less. That's a long time to spend in the beginner area before being able to purchase a slot upgrade. And maybe if I spent the time to learn what's where, I'd be able to pick up crowns faster.
(For that matter, how do you sell the vendor trash that I've been picking up? It is vendor trash, right?)
So yea, someone who uses the exchange can trade at least four hours for 200 energy for an upgrade. That's assuming that deeper player bring in 1200-1500 per hour.
BehindCurtai, I wouldn't recommend wasting your time in the beginner's area for buying such expensive items and upgrades if you're going to do so with the crown exchange system. You're probably better off adventuring deeper to other towns with what you can get easily right now. You'll find that getting a few thousand crowns is not much of an effort once you're close the the core.
Seriously. A couple days worth of dungeon-running from Moorcroft to Emberlight (protip to Curtai: both of those are subtowns) can easily net me 10000 crowns, and the truly difficult stages are only past Emberlight anyway.
@ aioli, not_shiro
I really have no clue where he's coming up with 500 crowns/hour either. I made...1284 on an alt, doing all the rescue camp levels, just to make sure it could be done. And that's more than enough to buy some "better" gear befor heading to Haven. If that's what you want, anyway. I guess some people are just better with money?
10k for Moorcroft to Emberlight? That sounds a little high, I went from Haven to Emberlight and had made little over 11k when I was done. I could have gotten unlucky, but I think 6~8k is a more reasonable estimate for my test run.
"10k for Moorcroft to Emberlight? That sounds a little high, I went from Haven to Emberlight and had made little over 11k when I was done. I could have gotten unlucky, but I think 6~8k is a more reasonable estimate for my test run."
I said a couple of days of it. xD A single run between the two points will usually get me roughly half, sometimes slightly less.
Sorry, I'll try to word things more coherently next time. I'm bad at that.
Ah, sorry, that's my bad. I mistook that as an average.
First off, I apologize for the length of this post up front. There’s a lot to say and I’m not a particularly concise writer as is. Second off, most of this post was prepared yesterday, I was planning on making my own thread, so my apologies if it duplicates some of the points already made by nigelino.
There’re two threads that touch on this right now, and they’re linked here, but I wanted to compile everything into one large argument about why the financial model, as it is, could use some adjustment.
Right now, a game like World of Warcraft allows unlimited access for a monthly fee of 15 dollars. People can play as little or as much as they want. In Spiral knights, 15 dollars might give someone about 2 weeks if they’re playing a decent amount daily, and even less if they’re playing very frequently, doing a lot of alchemy, unwilling to stop rezzing when a particularly hard area keeps killing them, or whatever else. Rezzing needs to be changed, that’s very clear, but I’m not going to dwell on it much as it’s being discussed in another thread, here: http://forums.spiralknights.com/node/200
Another thread mentions subscriptions: http://forums.spiralknights.com/node/41
I like the idea. Either that, or energy costs need to be lowered drastically, or the amount of energy gained for paying should be increased. I still am uncomfortable with not having any option for subscription, even if crystal energy was cheaper/went further. See my WoW argument for why.
I can’t begin to understand the full scope of a financial model of a game like this, but with 4 hours of gameplay a day--heavy but not unreasonable hyper-addict levels--with no alchemy or rezzing, it’s going to suck up roughly 480 energy, if the time it takes me to do a run is about average and I’m not going hyper fast or slow through dungeons. This is based on taking about an hour to go from Emberlight to the Core, which will cost 120 energy. 4 runs, 480 energy. That’s 380 energy in real dollars a day, which is basically $1.50ish, offset some (but not much) by package deals. If anything it will be more in practice, since I take things slow and cautiously and am generally soloing.
That is a lot of money to be dumping into a game on a reoccurring basis just to play it, when so many free-to-play MMOs are available (which typically use Cash Shops exclusively for upgrades and items). Alchemize an item with a 200 energy cost, and you've just cut out, essentially, an hour and a half of gameplay, roughly.
The model might work well for the very casual person who only wants to play a half hour a day. They can use up their mist energy and put money in when they want to alchemize something. But for someone who wants to play a few hours every other day, or for the person looking for a major timesink, they really can’t use Spiral Knights without investing serious money. Pay as you go is nice to have, and works well for people who are playing infrequently. It’d be nice, however, to have some kind of 30 day upgrade that makes gates and alchemy free, give the current trinket and weapon slot upgrades as part of the deal, and perhaps gives a certain number of free Rezzes per dungeon. That way people who want to play heavily every day don't have to invest 30+ dollars a month just to play.
If not subscriptions or tweaking of how far crystal energy goes, maybe Mist Energy could come back much faster. 100 mist energy every one or two or three hours, rather than 24. I want to believe that letting people play the game can’t be harmful, financially, and the 100 energy cap still restricts plenty of features from people who don't pay, without restricting them from simply playing the game itself quite so much. The argument against this, as I see it, is that more play means people can farm more crowns which could then be used to buy crystal energy, thus giving them access to otherwise pay-only features. I don’t have an answer to that problem, but hopefully there is an answer.
Tl;dr: Please fix the energy model before launch so 15 dollars gives a month of more or less unrestricted play, like in every other mainstream MMO ever, and ideally make the free to play option a little more appealing. I can’t, with the energy system as it is right now, recommend Spiral Knights to my friends in good faith. It’s simply far too expensive to even play the game freely, never mind exclusive content like upgrades and alchemy made weapons.