Spiral Knights - Death Penalty + Increase Spark of Life drop rate: Giving purpose to Normal/Advance Difficulty

Death Penalty + Increase Spark of Life drop rate: Giving purpose to Normal/Advance Difficulty

8 replies [Last post]

Tue, 08/12/2014 - 08:14

Momofuku

This will not be a popular suggestion. I emphasize that the crown penalty goes hand in hand with increased drop rate.

Problem: There is little to no incentive to playing Normal or Advanced difficulty without a death penalty. Because the heat/crown payout on Elite is higher than the other two modes, players are encouraged to glass cannon their way to victory. Even worse, if you wanted to farm Sparks of Life you would do so on Elite anyway because the drop rate is higher.

This is fine and dandy for experienced players, and a death penalty won't affect them as much. They don't die often anyway.

Inexperienced players should be discouraged from tackling Elite straight on without learning monster behavior/boss strategies. But they are discouraged from playing Normal or Advanced modes because of reduced pay out and are frustrated with playing Elite because it is less forgiving; monsters do more damage and have more life. They find themselves with very few Sparks of Life but see no incentive in playing lower difficulties because of reduced pay outs.

The goal is to allow inexperienced players a means of accumulating Sparks of Life and learn monster behavior/boss strategies.

Solution:

Add a 500 cr penalty to dying and "respawning" in Haven (after you have consumed the emergency revive). This will make players approach unfamiliar missions with caution as it will not be worth playing Elite mode all the time if you die and lose all the crown you would have earned. Spending a Spark to revive of course does not cost you 500 cr.
Increase Spark of Life drop rate in Normal and Advance modes, such that sparks drop more often in Normal than in Advanced, and more often in Advanced than Elite. "How much more" is vague, but I would like to see 2x drop rate in Advanced and 4x drop rate in Normal.

This allows players to use Normal and Advanced modes, where players are less likely to die and incur the 500 cr penalty for respawning in Haven, to farm Sparks of Life. By using those modes to ease into the game/a particular boss mission, players can build a safety net of Sparks of Life to prepare themselves for Elite difficulty missions.

Economic/Market Impact: I don't foresee any economic side effects, since Sparks of Life are a fixed supply depot sale, and the increased drop rate is solely valuable to new players who will play Normal mode than a veteran (who can probably afford Sparks of Life and would be better off playing Elite for better crown payout than to sit through Normal mode just to get Sparks). There won't be any significant changes in amount of crown in circulation; perhaps a slight decrease due to the death penalty and more players playing Normal/Advanced modes.

Tue, 08/12/2014 - 16:04

Fangel

Gah...

I want to say this is a bad idea, but it actually wouldn't be a bad one.
People who need sparks play on elite to get sparks and then die... Using the sparks they are trying to get. Since sparks of life are bound to the player, it's not like you're going to get rich off of selling them.

However, it shouldn't be a fixed 500 crown leave-to-haven penalty. The penalty should worsen depending on what difficulty/tier. On elite you should pay a 5000 crown leaving cost. On advanced, 2000 crowns. On normal, 500 crowns. Why is this? It makes it so if you are out of sparks, leaving the party would not be as effective as reviving yourself with energy. If you think you can revive once and finish the level alive on elite, then it would be smarter to revive yourself with 50CE. If you don't think that you can do that, you should suck up to the 5000 crown leaving cost. On advanced or normal, you could probably leave and think back to your mistakes. On advanced, if you lost your ER but have sparks, it would cost about the same to revive as it would to be going back to Haven, so that keeps you in the game. If you don't have sparks then you're pretty much paying for another spark by leaving. On normal, you're losing more money if you use a spark, but you're gaining more sparks of life anyways, sooo...

With those improvements, I'd be fine with this change.

Tue, 08/12/2014 - 20:26

Grandfatherclock

Deaths

In PvE, I can say to myself that I am experienced, and only die when I lose connection. However, with people always complaining about lag and disconnecting, it does not seem to be a problem limited to myself. Having to pay a large fine like that while a new vanguard or about-to-be vanguard farming for mats and crowns and dying by lag would be aggravating and heartbreaking. Maybe the fine should only go to those that have a full connection or not dced, if possible. However the increased drop rate is a great idea imo.

Edit: and I mean the large 5000 crown fine, not the 500 one. Not everyone is rich :P

Tue, 08/12/2014 - 22:48

Mephisto-Philus

Huh?

I can see people abusing the idea by farming sparks.

Wed, 08/13/2014 - 07:18

Fehzor

This seems a bit flawed, largely due to the difficulty to implement such a thing fairly, the unintended consequences of forcing people backwards, and really the lack of necessity.

If I get rid of my crowns etc. then what happens? Does the game keep track of it and take it when I get it next time or can I just dodge it? If I can't dodge it and the game does that, then it would seem really helpless to need 25,000 crowns and have negative 50,000 crowns my failings. If I can dodge it, then it just becomes a hassle.

When I was a tier one knight approaching tier two, the difficulty increase felt HUGE when I saw how hard and easily I would fall if I did not play well. A death meant losing all of my energy for a while and having to wait an entire day to try again. One of the biggest things that the last update did was allow knights the ability to explore ahead freely. You don't have to worry about failing in tier two or three as a lower knight any more, because you can try and try again-- which is really a blessing, to just be able to run out and fail as often as you would like, so as to live and learn.

While forcing the knight into doing what they can do until they are good enough to legitimately partake in more advanced content is a good thing, the emergency revive system already punishes players back into where they can practice. If I'm failing at a borderline rate, the game will slow me down every time I die by removing my emergency revive on the next level; i.e. it takes two deaths to knock me out the first level, then one the next until I quit dying. If I die any more than once on average per level, then I am penalized harshly at that line. If I fall below 1.5 deaths per level, then I am basically force-evicted and begin to waste my precious crown gathering time until I decide on my own to leave.

The one thing that I do agree with you on is having normal/advanced mode give out more sparks. That would be nice if it isn't already a thing.

--------

I think that really we shouldn't have difficulty settings like we do, as it separates the community up more than it has any right to. Newer knights should be put into parties with more experienced ones, so that they can learn from them, and older knights should have a chance to see and meet new people, as well as fail occasionally because of them. Without doing so, the game becomes dull much faster.

If we need a higher difficulty setting, shadow lairs have the idea down pat. Make that difficulty setting, but separate it and make it harder to access. Maybe put it at the second elevator by Basil, and make it require a pass of some sort.

Wed, 08/13/2014 - 06:37

Riftlocker

← Skepticraven

"Even worse, if you wanted to farm Sparks of Life you would do so on Elite anyway because the drop rate is higher."

Citation required. My data is elite only. Lancer-Knightz data is crown-based. I didn't take much data for normal mode, but fire crystals do seem to be reduced (no where near enough for orb/SoL). I'd like to know the comparison for sparks on different difficulties.

Wed, 08/13/2014 - 07:30

Momofuku

@Fangel: I do like the idea of increasing penalty based on depth, but it would only further convince players that FSC is the only late depth mission to run--the penalty of dying in a lower payout mission of the same death would be too much. I figured a fixed flat rate like 500 cr would basically not affect any veteran player's endgame mindset, but drastically affect a lower tier player (and thus, they will be less inclined to piggy back an FSC mission that they would likely die in wearing t1/t2 gear).
After having played some other RPGs lately, noticing Spiral Knights has no "fear of death" consequences makes Normal/Advanced modes pointless to play solely because it's a better investment of your time to chug through Elite. I considered a 500 cr penalty for reviving to Haven a modest tax and make players think twice before approaching an unfamiliar, potentially dangerous mission.
@Grandfatherclock: I too agree that 5k would be way too high, and I would cap at 1k at most unless there is some serious desire to create a crown sink in the game (that isn't Punch).
@Mephisto-Philus: That's partly the point--many inexperienced players struggle with lack of Sparks and having increased drop rates for Normal/Advanced modes give them a purpose in the game. Your trade off is more sparks (which are bound and can't be sold) in exchange for crown/heat payout you would have gotten if you played Elite. On an extreme end, I might even suggest removing Spark drops in Elite altogether and force players who are good at playing Elite to buy the Sparks they need.
If you could average 1 Spark every 5 depths of Normal you complete, I'd hardly consider that an abusable "farm" technique given the much lower crown/rarity pay out. And spark farming gives little benefit other than being able to run Elite modes without paying to revive, which is the purpose it should serve.
@Fehzor: It's pretty simple though--if you don't have enough crowns (ie. less than 500), then it will take away all of it. There's no need to keep track of how much you "owe" and it's mostly there to serve as a deterrent for new players to jump right into Elite right away without thinking twice. Certainly there are many ways to get around this penalty if you wanted to (store money in an alt, convert the crown into CE) but surely you can agree this is a huge hassle for such a small tax? Going around purposely holding less than 500 cr at any given time is a little extreme to avoid a small taxation, and newer players who do this to avoid the tax will benefit, but it is hardly considered an advantage for all the hurdles they will jump just to do so.
The penalty could instead be scaled by difficulty, where there is no death penalty in Normal, 250 cr in Adv, and 500 cr in Elite.
@Mega-Tundrus: Sorry, I did not do science on the drop rates for the game but since Fire Crystals (a Rarity type drop released at the same time as Sparks of Life) are noticeably affected by difficulty, I can only assume the same applies to Orbs and Sparks of Life. The drop rate for Sparks in Elite (at the current point in time) is abysmally low that it's safe to say you can't really "farm" for Sparks right now.
At best, the Spark drop rate could be the same across all difficulties. The game can give Normal and Advanced modes more purpose by increasing the Spark drop rates as an incentive to use those difficulties in exchange for the lower crown/heat payout.

Wed, 08/13/2014 - 08:17

Fehzor

It costs 100 cr to mail cr to myself, and even less to give it to someone else (like an alt) as I go back to haven. And oh this is but half of it :)

Also, I do think you assume a bit much about the drop rates, though that's beside the point regarding what the drop rates should be.

Wed, 08/13/2014 - 10:59

Fangel

Good point...

The penalty could instead be scaled by difficulty, where there is no death penalty in Normal, 250 cr in Adv, and 500 cr in Elite.
As I was reading the responses I realized that this is probably much better. Remember the old tier fees when elevators cost energy? These could be related to something like that.

Also, if you want to go full "lore" on this, you're paying the crowns so a team can bust you out of the clockworks while you're presumably surrounded by enemies. You aren't getting a free ride back. :P

Search

Death Penalty + Increase Spark of Life drop rate: Giving purpose to Normal/Advance Difficulty