Spiral Knights - Put Black Kat nests in the arcade

Put Black Kat nests in the arcade

12 replies [Last post]

Mon, 03/16/2015 - 11:37

Zethalan

Just a thought i had today while hunting some glyphs.

March of The Tortodrones adds mysterious rooms to Infernal Passages and scenario rooms to Devilish Drudgery levels, Caketastrophe adds Creep Cake nests to Clockwork Tunnels, Dark Harvest Festival adds Punkin King arenas to Clockwork Tunnels, so why not put Black Kat nests in Haunted Passages and Candlestick Keep levels? Kataclysmic Confrontation isn't a fun event at all. We have no control over our grinding and the only thing we have to do is to keep speedrunning Candlestick Keep missions while hoping for a black kat to spawn. The event is exhaustive, but i don't need to go to the arcade and have to deal with a couple of compounds and wolver dens before getting to the black kats when i can just open the missions tab and keep speedrunning Alone in The Dark. So put Black Kat nests in Candlestick Keep levels and Haunted Passages in the arcade, and fill the gates with undead levels so we have a reason to go to the arcade during the event and make it seem less exhaustive. Black Kats found in arcade nests will drop ancient page tokens and the book of dark rituals.

P.S.: Increasing Black Kat spawn rates and removing wicked whiskers from non-Black Kat raiments would also be good to "fix" the event.

Mon, 03/16/2015 - 12:00

Petater

Wicked whiskers exist as a paywall, where it so happens a lot of people convert irl money to energy just to buy spots at margrel. Same reason radiant drop rates were reduced in october of 2013.

Mon, 03/16/2015 - 13:25

Fehzor

@Petater

First off, you don't have data or statements to back up either of those statements, regardless of whether they are true and I do have doubts about whether they are true- knowing Three Rings, it's more than plausible that they just made a mistake with regard to the rates or weren't planning around things happening the way they did. In the past there have been equally questionable bugs with weapons, like the shard bombs' invincitinks, the drop rates on the poison barrier and the volcanic pepperbox's backwards knockback. There hasn't been any sort of comment saying anything like "Yes, we're creating a massive paywall that sucks now."

Nor do you know that it actually benefits them in the way that you say- how many people quit the game and/or convince others to quit the game because of these "paywalls"? How many actually go through with the paywall and just eat it? I've seen A LOT of people leaving the game that could be here to tempt themselves with prize boxes, and the whole gear being rare + margrel hats + everything else was a fairly significant factor when it came to them leaving.

Second off, that's a terrible argument. Just because something makes you money doesn't necessarily mean that that thing is a good idea. For example, if the developers required us to gamble to attain pieces of rare gear using energy at a casino themed after........................................fiends, the game would become even more a race for just currency that inevitably provides money for the developers than it already is. That would be what we call a "cash grab" and people do not like it, just as the things in question you're bringing up are also cash grabs which many humans have also stated to not like.

Mon, 03/16/2015 - 14:28

Petater

The paywall rarity in any case intentional or not is a classic economic strategy. If nothing is rare or worth slow grinding for, some more will leave. It keeps people on and provides what little is left in virtual fiat currency. I agree it's killing the game in the long run, but you don't keep a "mistake" around for over a year without some form of analysis.

BTW, the references to back this up is past MMOs and even Valve's economic advisers on managing their steam market. Not to mention I saw in game numerous pay to winners throwing down 5000 energy per invite to margrel.

Mon, 03/16/2015 - 14:46

Fehzor

Yes, lets use Valve as an example. People hate it when you use Valve as an example because Valve is a good example and they're just mad because they're bad.

Once you have purchased anything and enabled trading in TF2, you have all of the functional gameplay elements at your disposal for free after playing for a short while and earning them. You could easily trade even a single cosmetic (which the game grants you for free) for the bulk of these functional gameplay elements. If you don't do so you have most of the functional gameplay elements at your disposal for free within a month or two of playing the game regularly, and mastery of said gameplay elements is much harder than gaining new items to master at any rate.

The big paywalls, the big gets, those are all purely cosmetic. Crazy rare golden strange killstreak weapons, unusual hats, you don't need them for success. Spiral Knights on the other hand is another issue altogether- we're talking about a paywall around end-game gear.

Now I'm glad you agree that the Margrel/radiant paywall is killing the game in the long run, because Valve doesn't have any such paywall like that for actual non-cosmetic content. Since other successful companies have proven to us that it's a bad idea (they even removed set bonuses that required hats!) to use the classic economic strategy of this "paywall" on legitimate content, perhaps the OP is correct in saying that we should learn from their example and move the paywalls into the realm of novel cosmetics.

From here the obvious place for you to argue is that we're a smaller scale game and require the extra funding. But again, perhaps we wouldn't be such a smaller scale game if we didn't chase players away with paywalls on legitimate content.

----

As a humorous side note- the devs took a year to put poison barriers back into the game, and still haven't acknowledged the shard bomb bug. Apparently, they do keep "mistakes" around for over a year without much analysis.

Mon, 03/16/2015 - 14:52

Petater

Valve did it right. I'm using them as an example of generating and trying to keep some items rare to provide market backing so when people spend, they spend considerable money. I feel three rings tried the same with radiants and... well.. yeah

Mon, 03/16/2015 - 15:18

Fehzor

Right. So the solution could perhaps be for Three Rings to balance the black kat event around being fun rather than an evil money grabbing paywall, and then to release boxes and cosmetics akin to Valve's unusuals and high rareness and what have you. The same could indeed be done for radiant fire crystals and the forge in general.

Tue, 03/17/2015 - 11:09

Fangel

Hmm.

I honestly feel that 300-500 ancient pages should be usable to buy or simulate a book of dark rituals. Since the event is pretty much confirmed to revolve around the book now (instead of the pages... Which is a shame) it would be great if we could slowly "work towards the end goal", which is a book of dark rituals.
After that you can balance the kat spawn rate so that a crazy person who devotes their entire time to farming kats can get 1-2 books of dark rituals per event (or enough pages for two), and the casual player can get one book in two event's time. A mediocre player could farm for pages and get one "book" per event.
Alternatively, have us only need 200 pages to perform the dark ritual, but don't award us with the black kat cowl for beating Margrel. Instead, award us two wicked whiskers for our trouble. This means 200 pages = 2 wicked whiskers, and if you find a book while farming for pages, then that's 1 BKC + 1 wicked whisker.

These changes would make farming the event more fun, as it's not up to chance to the Nth power, it's just the base chance to find black kats instead of black kats and their rare book.

Tue, 03/17/2015 - 14:02

Zethalan

@Fangel

That seems like a good idea. But they still gotta remove the wicked whiskers from the non-Black Kat Raiments, otherwise people will only aim for the Black Kat stuff. Right now it takes 200 ancient pages to craft a 5* Kat Cowl, if they do the same with the basic raiments it will take 400 ancient pages to get a 5* Kat set. If they give us chance to perform a dark ritual for 200 pages and award us 2 whiskers it will take 1k ancient page tokens to get a 5* Kat Raiment, this includes the mediocre ones, so if you want a full Kat set you will need 1200 ancient page tokens. It's still too grindy, but this number works for the Black Kat Raiment, additionally they can make the BKC craftable from the 4* one, meaning everyone will need 2k ancient page tokens for the 5* Black Kat set. It is very grindy indeed, but you still have the chance of getting a book from a black kat which will award you whiskers AND the BKC, meaning you will need at least 800 ancient pages for a full set, or Margrel fight invites.
I also think they should balance the Kat gear and buff the mediocre Kat sets a bit so they can "compete" with the Black Kat set. This can be done by giving them a small damage buff, another status resistance or something else. Why would you craft a Kat Eye set for something other than costume purposes when the Sacred Grizzly Shade set is better? Kat Claw offers asi for swordsmen but you can replace it with a trinket and wear Snarbolax set for higher damage. Kat Hiss is currently the only shadow bomber armor in the game, but what if they give us shadow demo suits?

I don't think the wicked whiskers should be used as a paywall for something other than Black Kat stuff because it's just not worth spending money with the mediocre raiments. Everyone is sick of finding one black kat per hour of AiTD speedrun. We need more reasons to go to the arcade. I'm proposing these ideas to fix the Kataclysmic Confrontation once and for all so the event becomes both fun AND grindy. We all want to be rewarded for our efforts during the event, just like we want radiants. People will keep complaining about the black kat event unless something is done about it, and events aren't supposed to be an evil money grab thing. People will keep complaining about radiants unless they are given something like a forge pass or something similar to spend money on the game and heat their weapons.

Tue, 03/17/2015 - 14:15

Fehzor

You know, Fangel's idea is what I've been thinking all along and it doesn't necessarily invalidate what Petater has said regarding the poor business practices. If we MUST keep the disgustingly low odds etc. then giving guaranteed books at a still-slow rate would be just as good. Apocrea has shown that items can be guaranteed via token drops -and- seen as valuable and rare..

And I have a better idea regarding the non-black kat raiments. Instead of removing the wicked whiskers, why not make them into fun new class armors? The same could go for the hats.

New kat ___ cowl/raiment:
-MSI: low
-Class damage: med
-Class bonus (asi/ctr): med
-Slightly less normal defense than currently has
-Slightly negative resists towards everything

This would work extremely well if we were to just accept that the kat-whiskers have been spoiled and move on to a better Spiral Knights that has a legitimate means of checking out a certain controversial novel. This would also blow mad bomber out of the water, but we already did that so who cares (until it's fixed???)

Tue, 03/17/2015 - 16:15

#10

Fangel

Well if you're a solo'er, it'll still hurt

If you spend 200 ancient pages for a margel fight then yeah, it'll still hurt to get that. However, you can make 200 pages in a single event, and if you need to buy the materials from the auction house you can. These 200 page fights would still award a single whisker to partymates, so if you get a group to farm kats and you all get 200 pages each, that's 5 whiskers from just that group per person. If any of you find a book as well then that's an additional whisker. Get an organized guild together and you can have a lot of margel fights that are fun to farm for and fun to have.

My idea is to make people not want to charge other players the insane 3000 energy fee just to join a fun bossfight. Imagine if we had to pay 3000 energy to fight vanaduke? That just wouldn't be fun.

If you do what I've said, I'm fine with having whiskers be on the armors, perhaps reducing them by one whisker each on all non-black kat items and increasing them by one for the black kat sets. Thus with a full party you'd only need 600 total pages (400 if you're supplying them every time) for a full 5* claw raiment, but you'd need 2400 pages for a black kat one. With a coordinated guild or friend group, you could get all those pages in one event easily.

I would love if the default kat armors had a MSI on them as well as what they currently have. Would make more people use them seriously.

Tue, 03/17/2015 - 20:47

#11

Zethalan

Hmm

That is true. I forgot that you can join someone's Margrel fight and get more whiskers when farming with other people, my bad. But well, decreasing the amonut of whiskers of the non-black kat stuff and increasing the amount of whiskers of the Black Kat items can work IF they give us a craftable book or let us perform a dark ritual for 200 pages, that would work perfectly.

MSI on the standard Kat items? That sounds cool too, but i'm not sure about slightly negative resists on everything, mainly because i like to mix my Kat Hiss Cowl with my Volcanic Demo Suit and a Grand Solstice Ring for fire undead and fiend stratas, or with Bombastic Demo Suit for wisp immunity in Heart of Ice and arcade runs. But i would indeed like to see more MSI, perhaps i could trade the Mighty Boom II sprite perk for Swiftsteps II to dodge a little easier.

Just a note: Nobody commented about Black Kat nests in the arcade :x

Wed, 03/18/2015 - 10:43

#12

Fangel

Well yeah...

See what's suggested in this thread is a solution to a problem, and we all have discussed time and time again solutions to the problem. As of right now it wouldn't be smart to have Black Kats in the arcade without a D19 clockworks tunnel/candlestick keep because missions would be so much easier to farm still.
Black Kat nests would have to give a fair amount of ancient pages/book drop chance in comparison to speedrunning candlestick keeps in missions to make them more valuable because, let's be real here, either you're farming the event or you're not even going to try farming it.

Having Black Kat nests in the arcade will not fix the problem, however they wouldn't be a negative addition either. The event was okay until we needed whiskers to make the armors, thus making them all a rich or lucky knight's armor, hence allowing us to gain whiskers via our pages (which are essentially a progress bar that anyone can benefit from) is the best way to balance out the event.

We all can fight black kats, but a rare amount of us will fight Margel. It's not fair that the unlucky or not-super-rich players cannot achieve these gears while the rest of us get a huge stockpile of ancient pages with nothing to use them on.

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Put Black Kat nests in the arcade