Would a larger selection of starting weapons be more appealing to new players?
Allowing them to have 0 star sets that mirror the 3 offensive lines as well as the choice of more "proto" weapons that mirror common ingame weapons.
Currently the proto gear only represents Brandish, Blaster, and Blast bomb families.
If players had more starting selection (choose 2 weapons to start with, limit one of each type) would new players enjoy the beginning game more?
When I start a new knight, I can't even get my early items heated before being given new items by the mission system. I'm overflowing with 0- and 1-star swords, and have trouble deciding which one to use. (And this is all based on experience before the Forge was introduced, when heating was easier.) So I don't feel that lack of variety is a problem.
I'm probably not a typical gamer (and anyway there are many kinds of gamers), but here is what I suspect turns people off from Spiral Knights:
A. The artwork: I love it. I would not play this game if the characters looked like musclebound barbarians and chainmail-bikini-clad nymphs. But some gamers probably look at the artwork and decide that the game is for little kids.
B. The difficulty: For serious gamers, the early levels and missions are too easy. Elite difficulty is not a solution. Perhaps there should be some early mission involving difficult maneuvering, like IMF. But you also don't want to turn off casual gamers.
C. The economy: I know gamers who are ideologically against free-to-play, micro-transaction games. They think it is detrimental to the games industry, exploitative of addictive personalities, etc. And while mist energy is no longer an issue, it was a big issue for the crucial first 2.3 years of the game.
I think the game would benefit from an additional early mission that introduces a weapon testing facility where players can test the initial weapons of weapons HoH. Then, as a reward for completing this mission, give the player two to pick out. (other mission rewards should be balanced accordingly)
Giving a bunch of random weapons for the sake of testing out equipment is kind of... eh. I personally like to keep everything if I have endless space, but those 0* weapons are pretty useless (at least the 1* ones have some LD value).
Just giving the player a wide sleuth of weak, permanent weaponry is pretty useless and clutters inventory.
I'm not saying they get every single type, I said they get to pick 2, and they have to be different kinds. It would be easy to make 0star normal versions of current weapons, just shorten a few blades, shrink some bombs, and change up a bit of the gun models. As for the families that give status let the corresponding weapons deal a moderate stun (like the proto bomb).
I like what they did in the Deluxe starter pack but honestly most of those were rather useless, the armor was nice but the gun broke it's freeze and the sword even with the status has so low a flinch rate and a useless charge that new players are better off with a Zapper and a Hot edge.
It would certainly be more fun for new players to work together especially if they all had different weapons instead of the exact same weapon set (still we have the same problem in the endgame with everyone using brandishes and chaos cloaks)
I pretty much disregarded the OP and wrote what I was thinking about.
I was referring to the random bunch of 0-1* weapons that they currently give you from the missions and that this should be eliminated.
I think.
That the game could, instead of just handing the new players a bunch of 0/1* weapons, lead them to the 2* weapons that they'll be crafting up. While the game already attempts to do this, I'm sure there could be something to be done.