Spiral Knights - Five days as a noob

Five days as a noob

18 replies [Last post]

Mon, 01/05/2015 - 16:39

Orangeo

After having quit around the time pets/foraging was added, I started playing this game again five days ago using a new knight after having heard of the gunner update. Here's the progress I've had so far, as told by the event hub/my memory;

I...

earned roughly 160,000 crowns; 50,000 were made off of items I got from the lotto/prize wheel, so I believe I've generated around 110,000 crowns.
made it to rank 6-2, with the only mission remaining being the 4* hall of heroes.
made three pieces of equipment reach a 4* rating and two more reach 3* rating. Two 5* orbs, one 4* orb, four 3* orbs, and 30,000 crows remain.
completed roughly 230 levels, having beaten the Snarbolax 3 times, Royal Jelly 6 times, and the Roarmulus twins 12 times (some of which were speedruns) while also having done several tier two basil runs.
made one giant wall of text

...and I'm already tempted to quit again. Now my rate of progress isn't necessarily typical for a new player; I'm only one sample, but I figure since I'd originally started playing on my main just a little after the first rose regalia update I have a good deal of veteran experience combined with a good deal of beginners perspective from having started over with the new mission system, thus leading to this thread. Here's the observations I've made of my feelings towards the amount of spiral knights I've played;

The gameplay is very repetitive isn't often very fun. This may be due to personal taste, and as a veteran I know more entertaining levels lie ahead, but at my current rank most of the only interesting levels are boss dungeons with their unique gimmicks. However, those lose their luster rather quickly due to the repetition even as a tier three player. In terms of PvP, blast network is nothing more than a minigame, and lockdown certainly isn't intense or competitive by any means compared to virtually any PvP oriented game.
Solo play is easier than group play. This could be partially because I'm a veteran among beginners, but most of the weapons in this game support solo play rather than social play, and those which don't are often underpowered or unnecessary until you reach the end of the line. Magnus line guns can get one hit kills at more angles with weaker solo enemies, and are far harder to use with groups. Weapons from the Pulsar line obviously screw with teamplay. The list goes on.
Goals are the more enjoyable part of this game; the repetitiveness of the gameplay isn't very noticeable if your short-term goals are continually completed and replaced. However, the second I was short on orbs and unable to progress to new missions, I immediately started enjoying the game less to the point of starting to actually die in tier two levels due to haste and apathy.
Gear isn't all that balanced, which severely cuts into the amount of goals I can take. Instead of collecting a few gunner sets, I'll just make maybe one, and both chaos pieces.
Rarities are overpriced, sink equally overpriced CE, and aren't dropped or given out in quests enough to, well, complete quests in a timely fashion. That's a rather obvious conundrum.
Removing mist and adding orbs is advantageous to new players if they play frequently enough; the fact that they're tied to star levels influences players to work on more gear at a time, increasing their goals, however the rarity drop shortage undermines this benefit.
The forge system is trash; with the drop rates as they are, OOO literally seems to expect me to pay CE to not only craft, but level my gear as well, at least in tier 3. The only advantage players get compared to before is the chance of getting forge prize boxes which drop variant tickets, things that were originally used to sink crowns.
The supply depot is trash; when I'd originally started playing this game, the first thing I did with my cash-bought CE was to foolishly sell about half of it for crowns and buy unusable armor I ended up not wanting. Now new players can not only do this more easily, but also sink CE in the process.

That's not to say OOO is totally crooked or incompetent; the new gunner armor for example forces you to buy 1* gear for crowns from a merchant, and in turn not only sinks crowns but also makes UV ragecrafting less easy, causing UV rolling a more viable option than it would be otherwise, perhaps sinking more. That's not too significant though. Now, consider the possibility of players like me rapidly joining, adding around 100k to society's crown supply, and quitting. Isn't that just going to raise the trade price of CE and, in turn, make more people buy it? In other words, is it actually advantageous for OOO to be complacent and let new players join and drop spiral knights within a week as opposed to improving it? That's a scary thought.

Mon, 01/05/2015 - 18:00

Pandafishie

made one giant wall of text
Nice.

Mon, 01/05/2015 - 20:16

Abelisk

Lockdown can get intense.

Mon, 01/05/2015 - 20:33

Bopp

great

I'm running a similar "experiment", at pretty much exactly the same timing. So your reports are quite interesting. Keep up the good work.

Mon, 01/05/2015 - 20:59

Orangeo

You only want me for my data, not my personality!

Lockdown getting intense? Yeah, it gets about as intense as "all you can quaff" from castle crashers. X button for shield, Y button for hammer. I mean I suppose that can get intense emotionaly if you just really love quaffing, but conceptually it's incredibly weak and non-technical. This is coming from a Quake III/SD Gundam Online player.

Mon, 01/05/2015 - 20:59

Abelisk

Lockdown can turn into the point where nodes are constantly being "uncapped", the timer is ticking, and the opponents are challenging. A majority of times, the games are fairly easy to play through. A majority of intense games come from Guild versus Guild Lockdown matches, usually because the more skilled players of the apparent guilds are faced off there. I doubt you have participated in an intense Lockdown game as they are quite similar to a good MOBA round.

Mon, 01/05/2015 - 21:37

Orangeo

Admittedly I'm not a MOBA fan

Admittedly I'm not a MOBA fan and I think I've never done GvG, but those don't happen frequently to my knowledge and thus don't pull the average too much.

Even if they did, I still seriously doubt the intensiveness of the play. In a game like SDGO (which isn't necessaraly great due to bugs, lag, and the north american playerbase being bad) youcan pull off all sorts of crazy stunts. Catch a guy with your melee weapon, then instead of ending your combo, dash to his back, shoot a stun beam through him and into one of his teammates coming to save him, then mouseslash and get them both in a delicious double combo. LD in spiral knights?

You gotta slice, you gotta cancel that slice, and you gotta go fast like sanic!

Now I'm not saying LD has to reach the standards of PvP based games, it's just that in no way shape or form is it the "reason" why people stay. Perhaps a few teir 3 players, but certainly not newcomers.

Mon, 01/05/2015 - 21:42

Abelisk

Lockdown is biased around

Lockdown is biased around gear. That's one downfall to Lockdown. However, that tells newcomers to create gear and empower their gear themselves before stepping in Lockdown. Setting up a gearset is important in Lockdown since what you wear is what you are. Of course you need skill as well.

I play as a vigilant Recon. My main weapons are Faust and Mega Tundrus... I can pretty much counter and defeat any Striker out there - no, really. It's all about skill when using Recon. This is besides the point though. My point is Lockdown can center around your premade gearset and your skills in Lockdown.

There are lots of games out there, so good luck finding a fun one(or good luck with the game you've been playing if any)!!

Mon, 01/05/2015 - 21:45

Sweet-Hope

This is coming from a Quake III/SD Gundam Online player.

Oh boy, Quake 3 arena? that game is purely skill based not like LD. i saluted you Q3A player! for those good tastes

Mon, 01/05/2015 - 21:48

Tempas

Lockdown is quite literally

Lockdown is quite literally the reason why most of the tier 3 players that I personally know stay in this game at all. It isn't intense for newcomers or 'fun' for them because they don't have the gear for it and/or all they do is mash their attack button because that's what PvE has taught them(and lockdown won't teach them otherwise too, quickly that is, due to Auto Target being enabled by default meaning that they might get a hit or two in per fight and will think that they just need better timing). That being set aside lockdown is incredibly amazing. Each (good)player you fight has a different strategy and you need to come up with ways to combat that strategy and you need to do it quickly and correctly(if you make a mistake you're bound to get punished, and that's not only from strategy slip ups. Such slip ups can include predicting your opponent wrong or just aiming wrong). With all the things you can do and all the techniques to master, lockdown in my opinion is quite literally a masterpiece that has occupied players(more tier 3 players than newcomers) for years.

Mon, 01/05/2015 - 21:52

#10

Fehzor

Definitely an enjoyable read. I've noticed similar things, but it had been a while since I've actually felt those things directly. It almost makes me think they should just remove the forge entirely... It might lose money, but we really can't know that for sure. There are almost certainly too many factors to look at-- the humans are very complicated in numbers, yet simple when alone and we are talking about a lot of humans. What if the forge being removed made people happier, and they in turn hung out longer and paid more into the game?

I'm also interested (on a personal level and not) about what gear you used for this, and how that went for you.

Mon, 01/05/2015 - 23:15

#11

Orangeo

Late edits

@Itsmeandersonlol

Recon without a bomb? Neat. That certainly takes some sword timing and decision making, but that's still not a wide variety of skills. It is still somewhat fun, I enjoyed running around with my quicksilver/dusker/nightblade/flamberge* in teir two back in the day, it's just that PvP's not the keeper.

Of course, I'm not re-quitting just yet (as I at least want to go through and see just how hard heating 5* items supposedly is) but I wanted to make the point that the second you feel like you can't progress towards a new item, simply playing PvE or PvP for playing's sake won't fill the hole.

*at the time, all shadow resistant T2 armor had fire weakness, making flamberge useful with nightblade. Plus I had a gold regalia set and made one for style.

@Sweet-Hope

Admittedly I played it mostly in just elementary/middle school and currently am not great at it. Not to mention how Quake Live completely messed it up, adding in visible item spawn timers and creating weapon loadouts while buffing the shotgun damage and rocket travel speed just to make the whole game more like CoD or something. Now instead of me being the only little kid online, it's chock full of midgets who aim for the head with rocket launchers instead of getting a bounce before a direct, while at the same time complaining about "railgun spam."

@Tempas

Movement prediction in a two dimensional grid and potentially aiming wrong? OHH NOOO, how unheard of! Clearly those two traits make it a skill intensive game!

Admittedly, it might be more skillful than the vast majority of PvE levels, but that's not saying much. The problem with SK gameplay in general is that it's entirely based around your ability to point and click, avoid punishment, and quaff real fast. Imagine if you were playing street fighter, but most of the characters got changed to Dudley and all you needed to do to win was was avoid using punishable moves, no combos or joystick tickling at all.

@Fehzor

Firefly shade armor, just to try it out. Haven't had too much trouble getting the blueprints, got a 5* for 26k off the AH. I got a 3* plate shield off of my main, but I made three weapons on my own, which is effectively the same as two weapons and a shield monetarily. Tundrus is great for murdering the royal jelly.

As for game quality, look at cellphone app micropay games. Watch that southpark "freemium" skit or something. It seems like a slightly bad game can actually generate more revenue in some cases, and that's not even taking into account the fact that bad games are also cheaper to produce. It's counter intuative, but try to extend that principle beyond games; is complacency profitable? That's kinda creepy compared to the "move forward!" pep talks you get hammered with in youth.

Tue, 01/06/2015 - 03:07

#12

Fehzor

Unfortunately I am in agreement with you when it comes to quality and profits.

Tue, 01/06/2015 - 15:27

#13

Fangel

Ehh...

Lockdown itself can get intense when you have players on both teams who actually play the objective. More often than not in a random game you'll just have people who want big numbers, but when both teams are having a point tug-of-war, that's the sort of intense game that you can have. They are not common, but even if you lose it feels great to have a worthy opposing team.

For a few tidbits you have in here, the game is now easier for solo play which is a shame really. However it's only easier if you have some experience. A newer player will have trouble, thus teamwork is required. An experienced or returning player will know how to play the game at least a bit, so they'll have an easier time soloing. The game has moved towards a more "you carry your weight and I'll carry mine" instead of "we all will carry each other's weight". Both are good for different reasons, but the one we have now makes solo play easier while almost completely removing the bonuses from teamplay.

The grind in the past is about the same now. It used to be you got powerful weapons that you would level up to more powerful weapons as you acquired the money for it, but now-a-days you're leveling up those same weapons at a slower pace but still upgrading them in about the same time... If you're on the higher difficulties. Newer players will have a hard time getting the items they need to level up until they venture into higher difficulties, which aren't really all that much worse in all honesty.

Three Rings is having a hard time deciding if it wants to appeal to new players or old players, as for the most part updates pushed out favor one or the other, but rarely both.

Tue, 01/06/2015 - 16:31

#14

Klipik-Forum

I said most of what I have to say on this here.

But I will say about Lockdown, Lockdown is one of the most fun games I've ever played. Spiral Knights, sadly, comes in firmly behind.

Tue, 01/06/2015 - 19:37

#15

Orangeo

So my sibling and I had each

So my sibling and I had each hit rank 6-2 the day before I'd posted this, both of us being short on orbs even after grinding roar enough for two weapons each. Unlike just generating a wall of text like I did, he effectively just stopped playing for two days in spite of the fact that he used to run FSC all the time on his main and grinded more than I did.

We just ran that poison/construct level which supposedly has a good 4* orb drop rate, and I got 1 each run 4 times in a row somehow and he got zilch, leading to a rather prompt ragequit. When you combined that with threads like this, where tier 2 players decide to cut their profits and play easy bosses with crap weaponry so they can feel "skilled" to get over the fact that they actually just feel "poor," (perpetuating their economic disparity) suddenly it's pretty easy to see what a choke point the 4* HoH is. I think making the roarmulus twins mission give out an elite orb would help this a good deal, perhaps the skelly set mission could have its rewards removed as balance. Right now I'm kinda worried OOO has it set up to deliberately strangle players, given that I got 0.57 orbs per run, and that I'd read the average for that level is 0.56 (as tested by tier 3 players), I'm tempted to believe OOO screws over people who haven't passed the HoH on purpose.

@Fangel

While there is something to be said for my soloing capability being directly related to my experience, allot of the actual weapons are simply harder to use in groups. Even if I were a new player, I think having new players with pulsars as allies would only make it harder in early tiers.

Wed, 01/07/2015 - 15:20

#16

Fangel

... Which is where players learn

There will always be players who don't know how to utilize weapons, especially situational ones like the pulsar. Pulsars are not an offensive weapon - they are a utility that happens to dish out a fair amount of damage. Players who use it as a "keep-away" gun are using it correctly if they are not hindering teammates. However, you only learn how to make use of those weapons in those ways through practice and unintentionally angering people.

As for the hall of heroes, the only reason that the 4* one is so bad is because the game is not evenly paced at all anymore. Back before orbs, you had limited play every day to make progress actually feel important. Now with infinite elevators, you can speed through all the missions as fast as you want and only at the 4* hall of heroes does the game make you notice how fast you've been moving. The way to get past that is an overhaul of how the mission system works. Perhaps have missions unlock after X amount of time or depths completed in game after completing the previous ones? Or make missions become unlocked with adventuring in the arcade? Maybe even bring back minor gate shifting so that you need to use minerals to power up mission gates(if you don't have the right minerals it's time to go hunting in the arcade!). In order to make the 4* hall of heroes seem like less of a roadblock you need to slow players down so they aren't expecting to speed through the game and get frustrated when a sudden progress wall is in their way when in the past, that wall was smaller but present every day.

What many new players and what you are now experiencing isn't as big of a wall as you think it is, you were just moving so much quicker along that it hurt harder when you smashed into it. The player wants to keep moving fast as they're used to it, but the wall doesn't budge. Hence that's why a lot of those threads asking about where to find orbs comes from. Many people also don't want to pay energy for orbs, although that should be considered the "default" way to level up gear. Unfortunately, the 5* progress wall will hit you even harder, especially if you pick up at full speed all over again.
An artificial way to make progress feel better is to do open arcade lobbies between every 1 to 2 missions. You might find some good loot along the way and it will overall slow down your progress which will make the progress walls less painful when they do show up.

Wed, 01/07/2015 - 19:22

#17

Orangeo

You don't need to tell me how

You don't need to tell me how to use a pulsar or anything, I know. Take my tundrus for example though; I can get monsters to face me way way more easily when I'm the only target they have. That's an inherent trait of the weapon and even if I had three clones of myself I'd possibly run more efficient solo. Yes, group play is how you learn to use weapons in a team based setting effectively, but when the amount of skills required to play solo is that much lower, do you think people are going to choose team mode? New players are going to play the mode they feel they're better at, which will inevitably be solo mode, preventing them from learning teamplay and in turn making them want to solo even more.

As for the 4* HoH wall, true, it's not as big a wall as I think it is, but it's also not as big or small a wall as anyone thinks it is; orb drops are left up to chance, so the size of this roadblock varies from person to person. For me, I only had to buy one set of orbs from the supply depo. My sibling on the other hand hasn't even gotten three individual orbs to drop as of yet, which goes further into how this game really splits people up and supports soloing. The plus side to grinding is that, while painstaking or lengthy at times, you make definitive progress. With random chance drops, you haven't a clue if your work is going to pay off. Here's my point; if you say "do this much work," people will be far more willing than if you say "work until I say stop." Adding an orb reward to Roarmulus wouldn't kill anybody. Of course, the option to buy CE does give a definitive worst-case scenario for roadblock size, but at 8k per unit that's a substantial wall. The reason why progress is restricted goes back to what I was telling Fezor; a deliberately less entertaining game can actually attract more buyers. I mean did anyone ask for the forge?

Furthermore, ask yourself why they let players move so fast early on instead of having even pacing the whole time. Look at how many crowns I'd generated before hitting the roadblock. The 4* HoH is a deliberate attempt to make the game less fun and entice you to spend money to avoid, and it's been put just far enough back so that if it actually causes a player to quit, they'll have poured out a solid 100k crowns, inflating the CE price. It's intentionally fast at the start, and the wall is just as purposeful. None of this is a design oversight. I mean do you think it's an accident that 99.9% of the time you roll the prize wheel, you were just one spot away from a lockbox even though the odds of rolling one are less than a percent? The game has blatantly become more deceptive.

Does no one see how much a problem it is that the main motivator to spend money on CE is to avoid playing the game you're spending money on?

Wed, 01/07/2015 - 23:27

#18

Fe-Tarkus

The problem with teamwork in this game is that any sort of support is centered around making fighting/killing things more easily. The decreased damage from poisoning enemies is hardly useful. The Seraphynx shield is the only truly defensive move a Knight has, but the small range makes it difficult to use. The heart attack certainly helps teammates, but it helps them no more than helps yourself.
SK is a solo-centric game where all players can move quickly, have great power, but conversely can only take a few hits on their shields or armors. The closest thing to teamwork is in LD, but that doesn't have much content. SK is pretty boring for being a Multiplayer game, but it's simple and casual... so comfortable to play...

I just periodically check in with SK every couple weeks or less often. Light novels and web novels are more interesting. Worm was a delightfully long read a week or so from finals last year... Took me a week of several hours of reading per day.

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Five days as a noob