Lately, I was thinking on this, because a forumer posted it on your comment.
If I recall correctly, the forumer quoted this:
We are removing mist energy for a couple of reasons. First, so that elevators will stop requiring the use of energy. Second, from a design perspective, we want to encourage Spiral Knights players to experiment with more of the game than our research shows that they currently do. It turns out that providing energy to players in greater or lesser amounts does not encourage them to try out different weapons and gear, something we have always believed was a core part of the Spiral Knights experience.
Frequently OOO indicate it by his words. They want that us explore the game.
If you look in the link on the "Orbs of Alchemy for Crafting" section, you will see that they want that players amass a higher arsenal, mainly the newbies. They say that orbs dropping would make to players experiment more varied equipment and playstyles.
You can found the same on About page:
"Co-opererative exploration"
"Create an Arsenal"
"... amass an arsenal of weapons and gear ..."
"Explore the mysteries of Clockworks"
I will quote again a part present on forumer's quote: It turns out that providing energy to players in greater or lesser amounts does not encourage them to try out different weapons and gear, something we have always believed was a core part of the Spiral Knights experience.
But, in practice, it doesn't occurs. On my opinion, it's because of a little word: Missions
Yes, this little word that is present on very beginning of the game. Why missions is a problem to this objective?
OOO want us to move like people do in a gallery: look at every single thing of it, moving in every direction. But the missions make us move in a linear way, indicating progress, advance and reaching of higher ranks. The missions are more present, they appear more. How a newbie have this linear thing more clear, he/she goes through it, trying to reach the higher ranks the most and easiest way possible. But, on a certain moment, they will find the big bad Hall of Heroes that stops it progress, so they start focusing in a single set, so they can continue to progress. And the better way to pass fastly is grinding, exactly what the newbies want, because they want to progress and not explore.
Do you see what I'm trying to point out? Since the beginning of the game, we, players, are enforced on linear path, this path is emphasized to us, like a big red carpet with a lot of arrows with flashing lights pointing the way.
If OOO really want that us explore the game, they need to make something about missions and how it's emphasized more than anything on game. Particularly, I think they need to restrict missions. Make it less available or more hard to access, like don't letting us play more than 3 missions for day. I don't know if it's the better idea. I just know that something need to be made.
So, on the same time that I'm sending a open letter to OOO, I'm letting forumers to look at my analysis and say what they think about the topic and/or critize my analysis.
Now... Discuss!
P.S: And sorry for any bad english on wall text.
We over on the suggestion's forum have spoken a lot about this in the past.
A good suggestion to fix this is to make the arcade mandatory in order to let players progress in missions. By having players explore the game, they will explore the arsenals, the guilds, and everything there is to offer. A few ideas include: Making minerals mandatory for mission gates, making players have to run into a certain level type to unlock a mission, and many others I can't think of right now. Fehzor should have quite a few threads on the topic - try using a google search for their threads in the suggestions forum with the "site:forums.spiralknights.com" search parameter.