Background and some questions

So real estate is driven by one word: Location.
Entertainment is driven, in the same way, by one word: Immersion. As long as your player is immersed, they are your player in your world; when they leave the world, you have to hope they want to come back.

As a general rule, allowing your players to keep playing is good; telling them that they can not play any more is bad.

Nothing new there. That's been the rule of Las Vegas for decades; it's been the rule of almost all of the entertainment industry since the mid 1970's. Star Wars brought it to the film industry. Etc.

So how does SK hold this up?

A consistent game world matters. A game involves suspension of disbelief. As long as there is consistency, your players will stay in the world. Surprise them with something that makes no sense, and you break that immersion; they have disbelief about the game world.

How consistent is the SK world?

The business model of any online game has to be to sell desirable play. Three rings has the exchange model as well on top of that.

Does the business model work? Does it scale to release?

The business model is currently based around the sale of energy. Energy is used by merchants in the game.

Does the energy system, and the two economies in the game, maintain consistency, immersion, and keep players hooked and coming back?

(Nothing of what I'm going to say involves any private Three Rings information. All of this is observations from someone that sees consistency errors and business model / pricing flaws, who is constantly subject to a lack of immersion and "Stop playing" signals.)

(And yes, all of this is in-world observations. I'm sorry if you don't like that.)

=== Strangers, Crystal energy, Vendors and Mist, and Crowns ===

So what's the story with energy? It emanates from the core, yada yada yada. But you don't collect mist energy faster for being down closer to the core. That seems ... wrong.

Strangers mine crystal energy. They will sell it -- they want other stuff more than crystal energy. Right?

Right?

There's a serious question about the Strangers. Are we actually their business clients, or are we their entertainment? A lot of the stuff about the setup that makes no sense suddenly does make sense if we are the entertainment industry for the Strangers and their world. They provide us with what we need to entertain them; we are their "television", for lack of a better word.

I can't rule that out. That's Three Rings' call. The rest of this post is going to assume that that is not the goal.

So the strangers have plenty of access to mist energy. It doesn't store, even for them. But it's clear that they don't need more mist energy. Now, even mist energy is good enough to run machines, but even the Strangers need the crystal form for other things.

And they'll sell us the crystal form. They want other stuff. What do they want?

One group of strangers provides us with crystal energy for cash. That's one economy. Another group provides us with stuff for crowns. That's a second economy. Now, it sure looks like they want crowns, and cash, and regard energy and tools as just means to an ends.

That's a setup that would imply crystal / crown transfers as well. That's a setup that would imply that the Strangers would take an active role in the exchange, even if they don't have a net change in the total energy through the exchange. After all, they want crowns, and sell crystals, so ...

We've got merchants that take energy for stuff. I can fully understand them taking crystal energy. But mist energy?

So here's the biggie first issue I see: Merchants accepting mist energy. They can't store it, can't keep it, etc. Why would any merchant accept something less persistent than water?

==> Suggestion #1: The assumption that mist and crystal energy are 100% acceptable for all transactions is broken. Machines will take energy in any form, fine; merchants should only accept crystal.
==> 1b: The merchants that unlock extra slots should only accept crystal energy; they may get a price drop in return.

=== Merchants, cost of items, value of exchange energy ===

Merchants sell powerup items. High-end equipment that requires using low-end equipment to make, and energy to alchemize. A three star item, for example, may require a charged 2-star item and 100 energy.

And 100 energy has about as much value as an Emberlight run, or currently, about 8-10K. The market seems to keep that value in the 8-12K range.

But the final price is only around 11K. That's not enough to pay their costs and provide a profit.

"But they don't actually interact with the exchange!". Yea, they don't. Doesn't mean that they don't interact with the Strangers that sell crystal. Sure, we pay the miners cash; they pay the miners something else. Probably crowns. Just because we don't see their actions on the exchange doesn't mean that its value/cost should not reflect the exchange.

==> Suggestion #2: Rebalance the cost of stuff from the Strangers. Take the expected value of the energy to produce into account. Things that require a charged base item should be more expensive than things that don't; things that require a charged alchemy-produced base item should be even more expensive.

=== Keeping new players hooked and playing ===

The value of playtime, as measured in crowns, varies greatly. At the beginner level of play, the crown income, measured either as crowns per hour, or crowns per energy spent, is very low; too low to afford any exchange energy.

The result? New players are told "Sorry, stop playing". Before they get hooked.

Before they get hooked.

Recently, I played an 8 hour free trial of Vendetta Online. I was expecting a PvP based space battle game with some PvE for fund raising. PvE for earning wealth, PvP for destroying it, with PvP the primary focus of the game. That's what I expected going in, and pretty much what I found.

But 7 hours, 45 minutes later, I wasn't hooked.

I gave them detailed impression from a new player on their forums. Not too surprisingly to the people here, I'm sure, the result was old players over there complaining about a noisy newbie, and developers saying that they appreciate hearing how players take to the game.

But you had no time for social chatting. No time for any guild-level activities. Since the free play was strictly login hours, in order to see what the game had to offer, you had to play a bunch of different things in the game.

"Leveling up" in VO is based on licenses. Complete so many tasks, demonstrate some competence, and get better equipment. Legally, you can't get better than your licenses; illegally (at the pirate station in neutral territory), you can get better. So, after playing some of the basics, I went for what was supposed to be the VO version of EvE's 0.0 space. And, due to the low player level, found it pretty empty.

I had a chance to see the basics of the game. The space battle foundation is pretty decent. The missions that I was able to play, I later found out, went just up to the point where they start getting interesting -- courier runs into enemy territory, etc. But I didn't get to play any of the really interesting stuff, before the game told me, "Ok, that's all, good bye".

With 15 minutes left to play, and nothing really that I saw that I could do, I asked on the forums there what I could do. I was told, basically, shout on the general channel and ask for some PvP combat by the pirate station, so I could re-equip and fight again after dying.

Bottom line?
An introduction, a game that looked at least decent, and no hook. It was a month before I went back, and only because I saw an email from them.

And they are putting in a player driven economy (including shops) and crafting, something like 6 years after initial release.

But that's Vendetta Online. What does that have to do with Spiral Knights?

In SK, you'll get about 2 hours of play, at best, with a decent graphic system. (I got a lot more, only because my graphics are so bad that my frame per second rate is low, and "easy" training levels took me a long time because I can't aim.) And then, you're told "Come back tomorrow".

Well, maybe they will come back tomorrow. And maybe they won't. But you'll get one chance to get them to come back. When they've seen, perhaps, the starter zone (15), the Sparrow dungeon (30), a clockwork tunnels (10), and Firefly (40). That's 95 of their 100. That either gets them to come back, or not.

Even if they come back, then what? 6 levels in Haven? Moorcroft vendors that can't be afforded, return to Haven, and another half run (if they don't die).

And then, again, "Bye bye".

Players are being told "Bye bye" before they really have a chance to get that hook. I'm expecting a very large percentage of people that won't come back a second time, and also a large percentage that won't come back a third time, as they will think the game too expensive.

The value of playtime, as measured in crowns. At the beginning, crowns per energy spent is what matters. And as long as that rate will increase when you have better equipment, the value of that better equipment will determine the exchange price. You reach the point of saying that new players are expected to pay to play, and experienced players are not.

Not "Here's a free play to start, but high-end play requires paying".
You've got "Pay to keep playing while you're starting, and high-end play is free".

That's backwards.

=== Ideas on making things better / more consistent ===

How to solve it? Dang if that isn't a hard point. So lets look at one of the first things I mentioned:
> So what's the story with energy? It emanates from the core, yada yada yada. But you don't collect mist energy faster for being down closer to the core. That seems ... wrong.

Right now, going deeper gives you more crowns per time, and more crowns per energy.

Err, what? Why are there more crowns down there?

"All RPG's pay more as you get better. Nastier stuff guards nastier treasure". Yea, right, Dungeons and Dragons made soo much sense back in the 1970's.

"We want people to play at all levels" -- developers. Hmm.

So how would you get people to play at higher levels, and still have bigger/badder stuff down below that people want to go after?

Really Strange Proposal:
As you go deeper, you gain mist energy faster, as well as "heat" (which will get a new name -- since it represents improvements to equipment, more as a function of being deeper and exposed to the energy radiating from the core stored in those tiny glowing rocks, maybe it should be equipment power) but do not gain crowns any faster. Crowns, after all, are more like "Valuable minerals found on those other worlds, harvested from the ground under certain rocks and/or plants, or picked up by monsters". The amount of that isn't going to change.

But going deeper will expose you to monsters that have absorbed more core energy. They've become nastier from being exposed to more energy; constructs built to operate down there have to be nastier because the things found down there that bother constructs are nastier.

So we get a system where going deeper down gives you more mist energy, more weapon power, nastier monsters, more frequent deaths, and more energy expenses for the deaths. But not more crowns. Maybe even less crowns.

Now the energy exchange is available to everyone to afford. The expected crown to energy rate at the exchange is more stable, more constant; it becomes possible to price items sold by vendors based on reasonable expectations of the exchange.

What else can we see from such a setup? Clockwork tunnels, being access to the mechanics of the world, don't have "shinnies" -- those are found on the "yellow" floors from other worlds. The levels from other worlds can be nastier than the maintenance levels, and have a correspondingly higher crown payout. High-end players are doing deep levels for raids, special drops, and equipment powerups, and either shallow levels for crowns, or buying crowns by selling energy. Low end players are doing shallow levels for crowns, and buying exchange energy with those crowns.

And then there's the cash market for energy. How bad is that?

Yea, I'm hooked. I like the game. As it is now, it's not worth paying on my system; if it was released now, I'd say "Too bad, could have been great", and walk away like Bang Howdy. But it's not being released now.

We've been told that some graphic low-end cleanup is coming (good). If we can see some response improvement (other thread), even better. The idea of characters being able to block got a response from the devs that they have something along those lines in mind. And as a merchant, personally, I really like the idea of a player game economy. There's all sorts of things that might make the game better.

But do I buy energy? How much?

=== What do you get per dollar? ===

Well, that's the problem. If I buy too much, the excess is wasted. If I buy too little, I'll need to spend more later -- and my energy per dollar is too low.

Yea, I'm looking at the whole "You get significantly more bang for your buck", and thinking "The game isn't worth $50", not knowing what, if anything, will be done to make it better on my system, seeing that even high-end macs are having trouble, and ... cautious.

The 75 cent package ... well, that's great for protecting an account from deletion. Back in the day, if that had been available for YPP, I'd have protected 25 accounts. Today? If it would double the amount of mist energy and accounts I could play, I probably would. But apparently you don't get extra mist energy for extra accounts, even if paid, if I've understood the posts from the developers.

And beyond that? I finally realized that 75 cents gives you 200 energy -- and that's mist+50, and mist+150, or the two initial upgrade slots. 75 cents per month for basic upgrades? That's not really expensive. Even if a $3 purchase gave me 6 months instead of 4 months, if my idea is to unlock those, the 75 cent package is probably the way I'd go. And I still want to see that made "Login days" instead -- right now I feel I'll be wasting it if I'm not playing every day. The only reason I would consider it is that 75 cents per month is cheap even if I don't play.

But beyond that? When everything I look at indicates an energy consumption rate of about one energy per minute, more if you are dying (faster on treasure levels, faster on levels with energy gates, faster when dying, and slower only if I'm playing solo and taking 20-30 minutes for a clockwork level, 30-40 minutes for a fixed level), I'm seeing price per minute of play. And I'm back to "How much to spend before I can make emberlight runs and buy what I need". And if I buy too much, its wasted as crowns have no value; too little and I feel short changed.

What's the solution? Flatten the pricing curve -- I should feel less waste by getting a smaller package. And, tell us more about what's planned. You may think that is the best thing since sliced jelly cubes, and if you told the players you might get some very different feedback before you implement it.

For example, since the economy is completely garbled right now (I know, there's some people trying to sell items for crowns, but so far I've gotten almost all of my 2-star, and all of my 3-star drops for free from people who had tons of them and no need for crowns), I'd really like to see a notice that the game will be wiped before the next beta phase, and the energy purchased returned for reuse. Lacking a wipe and restart, there's no way to really tell what the effect of any economic (or other major) changes will be.

=== Summary ===

TL;DR summary: Looking at those questions at the top of the post:

How does SK handle immersion and keeping players playing?

SK is constantly telling new players not yet hooked to stop playing.

How consistent is the SK world?

There is huge consistency issues; swords that do normal instead of piercing, piercing resistant shields that break just as fast in bramble or spikes, the behavior of the merchants, etc.

Does the business model work? Does it scale to release?

The model of selling play time seems to be backwards.

Does the energy system, and the two economies in the game, maintain consistency, immersion, and keep players hooked and coming back?

I say no to all of these. I'm hooked more by the potential than consistency, immersion, or the economy.

(EDIT: Added section headers)
(EDIT 2: Made them bold)