Hi! I just watched this particular Extra Credits, and it made me start to think. Where does Spiral Knights stand here? Now, no, there is nothing for you to buy with real money that you cannot buy with Energy, with the exceptions of the Deluxe Starter Pack and family, but...those aren't too fantastic or too long lasting.
But, no, would you pay money into this game to get some new toy or something you really want? Not really to power on through the game with, but more, just to...have fun with what you get?
Personally, I think that it doesn't really help when only costumes are pumped into the community. Sure, it may look flashy, but, does it really expand what we do?
Some of these awesome events, those like the Trotodrone events, bring us new weapons. For example, the Busters. I got one of those guns, and I love it. It's something I really feel that I would actually drop real money in for just because it's so fun. It doesn't really give me a big boost, either. It's not the next Polaris, but it's really fun to use. The tricky thing is that others don't feel the same way; some think it's powerful and don't want to pay, others think it's useless, and others just want to point at it and call it P2W for no reason.
But, while that's my view, what do you think? Do you see something wrong? Are all the costumes fine? (Okay, no one agrees with me, right?) I know that the developer team isn't releasing much, but maybe it has to do with how the model of the game is, with the game not really getting enough money and it's being shut down?
Buying that kind of content feels like cheating, and sucks all of the depth out of the game-- a problem that Spiral Knights already suffers from.
If I'm set for life with my brandishes and I refuse to use my crafting materials to make new and exciting things as was intended, then I'm missing out on all of the depth the game has to offer. I can use brandish + antigua for most content, but if I tried shivermist buster + catalyzer, I might have more fun even if just for a run every twelve. The game certainly provides measures to counter this (random + bound rarities), but it still suffers due to the general cost of finding radiant fire crystals, random trap weapons (I'm looking at you, winmillion), general sameness between armors (and to a lesser extent weapons), and lack of necessity to craft anything but the best.
I think that Three Rings is 100% in the green with what they are trying to sell when it comes to costumes, and that they should really keep moving further in the direction that they've been going. As cliche as it is to say this, look at Team Fortress 2. They have the biggest rabbit hole of pointless cosmetics that I've ever seen, and I see a ton of people willing to dive down it. But the big take away message from it is that a level 69 strange festive collectors robo sandvich with 10,000 kills that costs 3 million USD does EXACTLY the same thing as the sandvich that the noob next to you just picked up for free. THAT. Is the optimal way to distribute your microtransactions.
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I sincerely apologize to everyone for posting my opinions, which are inevitably wrong. Holding opinions is really a nasty habit.