Reading through the Patch Notes for the July 30th update, I noticed something. OOO has a vision for Spiral Knights, and wants to make the game, community and structure even better. They want us to party up, and want to discourage soloing, as single-player wasn't their creative ambition when creating this game. I loved the changes, the promise of "Exciting Missions" and additions to the already-exciting Battle Sprite system.

However, some of this didn't work the way we, the players wanted it to. The Forge added a incredibly unwanted Luck element we didn't really want. I personally love the concept, and enjoy the choice of risk, testing your luck, but it just didn't cater to players needs. They wanted to level up their weapons, and didn't think it actually did this in the right way. I dislike the new revive system, and how I have to grind for something I didn't have to before; The right to revive.

But i'm 100% in love with their creative vision. I want reasons to party up with my friends, but you accidentally took mine away. The community kept rejecting the hours of work that OOO put into their updates. Sometimes it did work, sometimes it didn't. However, I believe there is a way to reduce this trial-and-error type of update.

How about you tell the community what you want to do, and we have our say in it? If you asked the community, for example; "How could we make you want to party up with other people instead of soloing?" The community would answer, and if there was any flaws in an idea, the community would debate it amongst themselves. I believe seeing what the consumers think before putting pen to paper would make all parties happier, and would stop the community shunning changes in most occasions. If you could see the outcry over some systems at the moment, would you choose to still include them?
I trust OOO to come out with the right decisions for their own game eventually, but this could reduce the amount of trial and error involved in the process.

By no means do I mean that this is the most practical way of doing it, but any extra communication would be very much appreciated. Explaining to the community, or certain members of it, such as those which are to be in the preview server would give extra opportunities for people to provide their opinion or constructive criticism before hours of work are spent into a feature that the community may fall in love with.. or hate with all their hearts.