These changes are very old but people still bring up complaints with them.
Forge:
Lets face it, heating stuff is harder than this mist days, used to you could do a really hard floor and get multiple levels, now you have to heat an item one level and collect fire crystals to level it once. Some of these are hard to find. Now lets look at why they did this; we were given free elevators, had they kept the old system then people would play until they got lvl10 or just ragecraft stuff up daily, soon their inventory would be full of perfect weapons and they would have nothing else to do. The forge forces players to play the game and thus keeps them online longer. There are some good things about the forge too, double level up is ok but you could do that before, there is a heat boost but why need a heat boost when you could get multiple levels on the old system. The only saving grace of the forge is the Forge Box, with orbs tickets and enough crystals to usually allow you another level, not to mention that these can all stack up making it possible for a perfect forge moment. That moment of glee when I manage to get a forge box is something the old system never had.
Orbs:
Lets face it, as much as you "hate" orbs you hated only being able to play a few free levels before you ran out of mist and had to either spend your CE or leave. With the free elevator orbs are actually a blessing, considering that finding an orb is like finding a large amount of free CE few people can really complain. Only the hardcore "free to play" never buying anything from Kozma or AH nuts can complain, really you don't have to buy CE from Kozma (either with CR or $) but it certainly helps the game when you buy CE either way. I understand that orbs are hard to find but would you rather collect all the CE you need in a few hours or have to log on daily to hopefully earn only a fraction of what you can get now?
Free Elevators:
Best Idea EVAR!
No HP share:
This is a bit tricky, both systems work well but this current one actually works quite well, though it does remove a certain element of cooperation and love.
No item share:
If someone has to use a spark when they die then that is $ in SK's pocket, still.... 20 CE per revive at a flat rate is much better than the exponentially increasing rate of the old days, plus you can find them, that's like finding 20CE!
Items don't get shared anymore because the drops for each monster is separate on everyone's screen, this means no pickup stealing, but it also means you yourself has to go collect your CR and materials. Used to you could split up the party and finish a level fairly fast.
Gate Construction/ mineral deposits:
Lets face it, few if any knights actually knew how to modify a gate with minerals, getting an entire community onboard for creating a specific gate is impossible, most just dump their minerals into whatever gate paid the most. (I did it). With Free elevators people could collect as much minerals as possible and thanks to mineral sharing the income for large parties could provide a nice hunk of change after a dive. Sprites sort of solved this problem but now we are left with two relatively useless minerals (short of prestige missions).
getting an entire community onboard for creating a specific gate is impossible, most just dump their minerals into whatever gate paid the most.
We did this once.
On the forums (and in-game) we had come together to create a pure Jelly gate (RJP included). It was aptly named Project uJelly ;)
The original post was in English, but I believe some people even translated/got people in other language forums to join in. It was amazing.
In the middle of this (like, a few days before the gate was created!!) Three Rings released a patch that prevented same-tier strata to be the same theme, so we went with the next closest things that were likely to have jelly gates.
I still feel a little tinge of personal insult over the fact that they released the patch to break it in the middle of my event, but ay, close enough. Each strata had a Jelly stratum.