Spiral Knights - To Better The Game

To Better The Game

7 replies [Last post]

Fri, 06/19/2015 - 14:00

Shadowxace

Spiral Knights.. What is Spiral Knights..

First i'll start by addressing this to you guys and gals (the Devs).. I have never seen any Dev Team for any game that listens to its players like you guys
and i applaud you for doing so, however.. As good as that may be, it also kills the game.

Example: this game is easy, very easy, it used to be harder and more cooperative, even on elite this game is still rather easy. Who asked to change the difficulty of the game it was fine the way it was, for those of you who don't know the answer, allow me to answer it, the beginners. Lets say 100 beginners asked for the game to be made easier, lets also say that 5 pros and or veteran players said the game was fine as it is, but of course the logical thing to do is to make the game easier to help the beginner players which is the right choice. But for those 5 that said the game was fine does not equal to the amount of players who didn't care to post on the thread or even look at the forums, for them when the game all of a sudden got really easy it be came boring they lost the challenge the game originally had and stopped playing. Don't believe me? When was the last time you really looked at your Friends List? If your Friends list is like mine you probably have a lot of friends, if your like me and you don't like to delete anybody off of your Friends List you may notice some people have not logged on in awhile, for me i have friends who haven't played since 2011, if your thinking that i only friend beginners that end up not liking the game and quit your wrong, most of the people on my Friends List are tier 3 having high level equips. I do not know why they stopped playing and i'm not gonna blame it on the game being made easy, i'm just using my Friends list as an example of people quitting the game for "unknown" reasons.

I suggest to the Spiral Knights Dev Team:To somehow increase not the difficulty but the challenge

Spiral Knights as a whole

Second ill say that SK from when it came out to now has not changed at all it is void of content and needs real updates or completely dropped and turned into a sequel e.g. Spiral Knights 2

Example: how many bosses does this game have? not counting mission mini bosses, but actual game bosses. Can't figure it out? The answer is 4, now 5 (not counting SL versions) snarby, jelly king, the twins, vana, and seerus.(OCH was originally DLC and had to be bought with real cash. now anybody with the CE can play it) For the last 5 years the game has only added but 1 boss to its ranks. For a game tagged in the "mmorpg" genre it lacks a lot of the "rpg" feel to it

(Event Bosses do not count as real bosses Because you must wait for the event to occur to fight them, they are not a part of the game)

Example 2 :every update this game has had did not add anything to the game. A few equips, weapon re-balancing, costumes, accessories, UI changes here and there, PvP, DLC, and events. Remove all of that and its the same game from 5 years ago. No new enemies to complete the monster families( the 3-5 monsters they have added does not compensate for 5 years of gameplay), no new levels or areas of the clockworks.

(The game is a good game the levels (some) are very beautiful. when i first played the game i had an amazing feeling of the game, a feeling of excitement, curiosity, challenge, responsibility(when i first played i was leaning to the guardian kind of gameplay, had plate set, always took the most dmg in the party, took out all the ranged enemies, was always the last to be alive so i could revive my team.))

I suggest to the Spiral Knights Dev team: More REAL game content

Spiral Knights Problems

Third lemme start by saying; who goes to the Arcade map anymore? Why does it take SK longer to load a map than bf4? why has "lag" been the major issue with this game? Battle Spirtes?

Example: Who goes to the Arcade map? No one right? There is no need when you can just press "M" or use the party finder.

Suggestion: Missions should be 1 time only, with the exception of helping others that have not done them(invite only, cause all missions can be soloed).
The "Party Finder" should only be accessed from the Arcade Gates and only show parties in its Gate. On a side note: Prestige Missions could be made with more of a challenge and difficulty if they can only be accessed from the gates(Example: player A presses "M", clicks prestige missions, clicks danger mission heart of ice, mission starts, player walks to arcade, goes to a specific gate and descends through the clockworks, gets to clockworks terminal and uses lets say a second ele to access the danger mission, upon failure of the danger mission the player must wait X amount of days until it appears again(same for those in the party)(mission can only be done once per player and only once no exceptions) with this you can triple the amount of prestige players get from these missions, even add mission styled equips creating a controlled grind and adding a "goal".

Example 2: SK takes awhile to load each map i do not know why but, for such a simple game it somehow has a lot of resources that needs to be loaded. Warframe in gameplay concept is the same as SK (u pick a level and you play that level) its map are a lot bigger and is a much more graphically intensive game, yet its maps take 2 seconds to load.

Suggestion: Good luck with that :1

Example 3: we all know the lag problem its a real party killer. Does not matter how good your internet is or how good your pc is the lag always appears and it will end you

Suggestion: Good luck with that :1

Example 4: Battle Spirtes Battle Sprites Battle Spirtes... You guys have done this all wrong. Before you guys (Devs) finish reading this please i don't care how you do it but go and play Sonic Adventure, beat it, and after you beat it play the Chao Garden ( if Sega made that into a phone/tablet app you know how rich they be right now?)

Suggestion: The Battle Spirtes should always start at base, the white and green thing. You should have never gave the players the option to choose between the 3. Every enemy in the game drops specific items, your Battle Sprite should turn into what you feed it. With all the enemies the game has there can be pretty much no end to what a players Battle Sprite could be.( if done right it could become this games biggest money pool) For real now you could add like fusions or something, fuse the chromalisk style Battle Sprite with the Greaver style Battle Sprite and poof you get a Drakon Battle Sprite! But wait there's more! Fuse that with the Skelly Battle Sprite and get a Skull Drakon Battle Sprite!

Alpha:you got a bone dragon looking Battle Sprite man that is so cool!!
Beta: yeah man its awesome!
Echo: hehe well my Battle Sprite is a white and blue mechaknight with wings and guns shooting everything that comes near me like straight out of gundam! COME AT ME BRUH! SK style DAWG u dont know dis!

Cause i'm hungry ill end this now..

Fri, 06/19/2015 - 14:33

Hexzyle

this game is easy, very easy, it used to be harder and more cooperative, even on elite this game is still rather easy. Who asked to change the difficulty of the game it was fine the way it was, for

So here you say it used to be harder

Second ill say that SK from when it came out to now has not changed at all it is void of content

And here you say it hasn't changed. So what exactly made it easier?

I suggest to the Spiral Knights Dev team: More REAL game content

Please tell me, what is "real game content"? Because I've been baffled by this phrase for years now.

Fri, 06/19/2015 - 16:09

Shadowxace

yes the game is easier, can

yes the game is easier, can you say the game is harder? I cant.

when i said it has not changed i meant that SK is the same game as it was 5 years ago, this game did not grow into something better it stayed the same

the last major updates the game has had can be considered real game content, something that ads to the game. Unless you count costumes and accessories as something that improves the game? Better defines its story?

Fri, 06/19/2015 - 22:05

Hexzyle

yes the game is easier, can you say the game is harder? I cant.

You didn't answer the question. What made it easier?
Saying "it's easier" without indicating why this is so is pointless in a suggestion if you're not identifying the source of the problem so that you can suggest a fix for it.

the last major updates the game has had can be considered real game content, something that ads to the game.

That's very unspecific. What is a "major update" to you?
BS update? GH update? Vanguard Mission update? Gorgo update? Gunner update?

Sat, 06/20/2015 - 12:39

Fangel

Err...

I suggest to the Spiral Knights Dev Team:To somehow increase not the difficulty but the challenge
I suggest to the Spiral Knights Dev team: More REAL game content

Wow, this will be so helpful to the design team.

Sarcasm aside, yes, we do need more difficult parts to the game. The post-vanguard missions are providing that challenge. The only reason those missions aren't that hard to some people is because they've already mastered the game, thus it seems "easier" to them.
Since you drew allusions from other games of completely different genres, let me do the same real quick: in the game "Payday 2", there are giant leaps in difficulty from the second hardest to the hardest difficulty. Many end-game players in that game have figured out how to play the game well on that difficulty, and are asking for a higher one. However, many of the other players have yet to beat even one mission on that difficulty because it's so different.

Spiral Knights has dumbed down some of the AI of the enemies, but that hasn't stopped them from making difficult content. I'm interested more in seeing how the core will turn out, especially since the enemies in there are definitely a difficult system.

Missions are fine as is. Arcade needs a re-do to make it more appealing all the time.

Honestly this post isn't anything new, nor is it really offering creative solutions to the problems. A good suggestion will state the problem and a solution, not just a problem and say "fix it". They could make the game harder by making enemies instantly down you and take away your revives, but will that really be a good solution? They could make a tortodrone boss strata where every floor you fight a tortodrone but it's literally the same layout as shadow lair gloaming wildwoods, but would that really be "new content"?

The game is okay as it stands, however I can see more difficult content coming out due to the core and stuff. New swarm monsters would be great, and some sorts of swarm infecting the clockwork floors in tier 3 would make for something cool.

Sun, 06/21/2015 - 01:37

Blandaxt

How i took it..

Well this is my response to your suggestion.

1. I suggest to the Spiral Knights Dev Team: To somehow increase not the difficulty but the challenge.

Response:

I completely agree if I understand your statement the way I am interpreting it. Increasing the a.i challenge for monsters like the gorgo series is the best way any future monster a.i should be created. And should not be based around monster health, defense and offensive damage values.

http://wiki.spiralknights.com/Gorgo

This monster a.i is not based on how difficult it is to take away that monster's health, but on how difficult it is to evade that monsters attack, and how difficult it is to actually land a hit on that monster. This is a perfect example on how good game content is created. The monsters provide adequate challenge to all types of player's playstyles without actually changing the damage values and stats on how that monster takes damage and gives damage. If all future created monsters are based on challenge and not difficulty, then the game will retain it's challenging attributes.

A bad example of a monster that is still currently in the game is:

1a.

The Retrode.

The retrode is just a reskin of the dust zombie a.i mechanic with an added ground beam attack.

a1:- A way to increase the challenge these monsters could offer is rework there walking mechanics to more of a crooked scarecrow walk style with more speed instead of the slow walking pace of the zombie.

Like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JisTU9MKtBs

a2:- They can keep their beam attack, but let them focus more on evasion of hour long range attacks and stays mostly at a distance firering their ground beam wave attack.

a3:- When we come up close to attack them with melee, the monster would try to swipe at me with a sickle arm which is fast at the beginning, but have a slow ending leaving the monster open.

a4:- Lastly, if there are more than one, if one of them uses a grabbing move latching on to the player, the others would quickly rush in to slash at the player while the one grabbing the player would count down to three before exploding in a flashy explosion. (The player can still attack while being grabbed, just cannot move. The grabbing move can be escaped if the player kills the monster holding on to him, or uses shield bash. The player cannot shield while being grabbed.)

a5:- Upon death, these robots have a 50% to explode like a blast cube.

2B.

Another monster that is a bad a.i example is the Zombie

The zombie has a very slow reacting a.i, but supposed to be deadly in swarms which right now they aren’t. They are fodder monsters and going through a whole level of these fodder monsters like the graveyard is extremely boring (especially the way they are spawned. That’s why there was a whole thread created on how to rework the graveyard levels). A way to increase the challenge of these monsters is:

b1:- Give every single one of these monsters a gear. Whether it be a sword, a bomb or a gun. They are supposed to be undead which I am guessing when they lived, they had to be good at one kind of gear to even dare to traverse such dangerous environment. So having each one of these monsters or 50% of them have a gear to attack with would show the skills of the living carry over to the undead and also would make it more challenging for us players.

Like this: https://youtu.be/iTu6MpBOOg4?t=232

the weapons do not have to look special and can be just rusty pieces of gear. Having them performing simple swipes, shots and even have some explode like the Bombies when performing the bomb charge attack would be refreshing.

b2:- They can keep the zombie breath, but have the zombie breath be an aura on their bodies that they emit instead of a predictable 90 degree angle that the emit. Having the aura on their bodies makes it harder for us to walk through a group of them because once we come into contact with them, we would catch the status.

b3:- Their walking speed can stay the same and same with their reactions, but give them more unpredictable behavior such as make it look like they are fighting one of their own while being attacked, but then quickly shift their attention to anyone of our group. Basically, remove their agro behavior and allow them to attack anyone they want nearby.

b4:- Blend in special zombies in the group of bland zombie such as the Almirian Crusader can be made to look like a normal zombie, and the players would get surprised at the encounter.

b5:- Lastly, give all cursed zombies and some regular zombie (not all) the ability to eat your knights health to regenerate their own when they use their grab attack and latch on to us. This would really give them a more dangerous aspect besides their curse status and other status ailments.

3C.

Another monster that is not very challenging is the Gremlin Scorcher.

Its a.i is like most other gremlins, but its abilities are a scoff compared to other gremlins. I suggest changing its attacks to meet/match the expectations of the prowess of other gremlins. Cause right now, going through a whole deconstruction level with just these monsters feels like a bore sense they are so easy to kill and provide almost no challenge.

C1:- Make it so that it's flamethrower attack behave more like pulse waves which flinch non-shielding players for one second instead of just ground flame for one second. Basically for 3 to 5 seconds, the scorcher will unleash pulses of flame waves that perform like the current attack, but unleashes small quantity of it for every 1 second that goes twice as far as the current attack as long as it remains uninterrupted.

C2:- It's second attack the bullet should be removed for a second attack called oily sprinkler where it throws a bomb like device near the player that sprinkles the whole area near the player twice the size of a 5 star bomb with oil. This oil will allow the whole area to become enflamed for 10 seconds once lite. It will also increase the players movement speed in that area by medium, but will also make all players who did not shield while the sprinkler was active to be susceptible to the fire status even if they are wearing fire resistant gear (like a debuff).

C3:- When all gremlins’ health run low they usually try to get away from the player to hide or heal. So I propose creating a destroyable structure that the gremlins can actually run to heal their wounds. Something like this spawn point that gremlins spawned from in the Operation Crimson Hammer mission. These spots can take in these hurt gremlins and heal them up all the while keeping them safe from player attacks till there healed. If this structure is destroyed, the gremlin inside will be automatically released at their current health.

C4:- If these gremlins have no structure around to heal themselves and no more pills to heal, they should keep on attacking until they have been killed. This way the gremlins do not seem like cowards running away for their lives. Though adding a part in where they are freeing for their lives for comedy sake would not be so bad.

C5:- Lastly, give these gremlins a sort of boost for having such slow movement speed. Something like a trail blaze attack that they emit by default when they are walking. This trail blaze would light up the ground behind where the gremlin is walking to a certain length. These lite places would stay lite for 5 seconds before going out.

4D.

Another monster that is in the game and is considered fodder is the Gremlin Knocker. This monster is also very easy to kill, and barely provide a challenge besides being fodder. Fighting these guys throughout a whole gremlin level is a drag and they need to get an edge so that players can actually feel a challenge while facing them.

D1:- Fix proposition number 1, their movement speed needs to be boosted to the same amount of speed as the Greaver or a little less. This way they can close up on the player quickly with their attacks.

D2:- Give their attack faster initiation. Their attack speed right now is too slow and very easy to see coming. Give them faster attack speed for their first attack called the reaction. To balance this out, give them a slower reaction time once their hit. Make it so that it takes a while for them to get up or recover after taking a hit.

D3:- Their second attack called the explosion; make it so that it has a much larger range of effect around 3 times the size of the current range. Make it so that it does not affect the player if they stand behind the knocker. So only if the player is in front of the knocker will it affect and damage his knight. I know this attack hurts/stuns the monster, but to balance it out, make it that it can also stun its comrades for a small amount of time. So it's a very flashy move, just not very tactical.

5E.

Lastly, another monster that is considered fodder till it powers up is the Lichen.

Some can say that this monster is adequate challenge, but I see it as just another fodder to go through and will not be memorable at the least. It's evolved form the giant linchen colony is adequate challenge in my opinion, especially when there is 3 or more in a hard to maneuver room. But its weaker counterpart the linchen is just way too weak.

E1:- I propose giving the small linchen the ability to eat items dropped, blocks, bushes, or any other item/object in the area that is not cosmetic including us knights. This gooey insatiable hunger will even go as far as to eat each other to evolve to a stronger linchen. When the linchen eats other items, it will use that item to heal itself. When it munches on a knights health by attaching itself to the knight for 3 to 4 seconds, it will heal itself while damaging the knight's health. It will also go as far as to munch on other monsters nearby in order to heal itself. The only monsters it cannot feast on are shadow damage theme monsters such as undead and demons like the fiend family (they don't taste good). This appetite will appear as soon as the linchen starts to lose health.

E2:- Create a giant linchen counterpart for every type of linchen. Such as a giant linchen oiler (Some might argue that the giant toxoil is the same, but I say not), giant linchen quicksilver and a giant linchen void gel. Having them not have a giant for feels like they do not contain the urge to merge like the other linchen which feels very odd to me.

E3:- Giver every small linchen the ability to call onto any nearby linchen to merge. Basically creating a magnetic quality from linchen to linchen that will pull the similar lichens closer to each other at a very quick speed making it harder for us knights to kill the small ones before they merge together to form the giant linchen. We should not have to shield bump these guys into each other to create the giant linchen or have it happen by chance. It should be a function they already come with making it a challenge for us to overcome.

E4:- A linchen for me is a unicellular organism and when they fuse and become a giant linchen, they become a Multicellular organism. This means that "By contrast, colonial, or pluricellular, organisms are the result of many-celled individuals joining together through colony formation, filament formation or aggregation." So basically, my point is that linchen should have the ability to asexually Divide and Conquer. Still confuse, well basically once a giant linchen has been formed, it will start to continuously spawn in smaller linchen every 5 seconds when it is hurt. These smaller linchens will not be targets for its voracious appetite, but will instead focus on fighting us the players and fusing again in order to create another giant linchen. Divide and conquer for the win!

If your feeling more interested in this biology stuff, then watch this educational video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9UvlqAVCoqY

E5:-

Finally, these guys do not seem deadly in any shape or form, but look more like a slimy form of my squishy pillow that is trying to eat me. I like that they keep that look, it good for their appearance, but they need something to make them deadly. And what would that be?! Well my friend, what else would be deadly then a flaming fire ball or rock and ice called a meteoroid. Instead of having them spawn randomly out of thin air saying hi, how are you? Can I eat you? No? Let me rephrase that, Let me eat you! How about letting the player come into the level looking for the monster, then a red dot with an area 1.5 times larger than a 5 star bomb is show under the player with an explosion time. Once that time reaches its end a huge meteor with lots of other smaller meteors lands around the area of the player. Of course this meteor is not harmless and it will do some if not hardcore damage. Then the linchen(s) will start to spawn out of the meteor misshapen and what not with a glowing core and probably saying in their squishy nucleus "Invasion time! Gobble them up mates.". So yeah, spawn these freaky aliens in a meteorite flashy fashion instead do the appearing out of thin air you got going on. It's really not appealing to me.

These are all 5 star versions of the monsters. Tier 2 and 1 can have some of their abilities remove and they can move at slower speeds with slower reaction speeds.

6F.

Lastly the positions of these monsters are terrible. They usually are found behind blocks and they are not even blended in with their environments making the level super predictable and easy.

F1:- Place these monsters against the wall and have them move once a player attacks them or when we come near like the tortodrones.

F2:- Have these monsters not spawn in once we get near an area, and have them spawn in once the level is loaded and those with extra effects like the linchen will spawn once the player gets near. Or we can have a mixture of both like the deconstruction zones have all the gremlins already spawned in, but can also have other monster spawned in like the prestige missions in the deconstruction gremlin zones.

F3:- Give the monsters the ability to break blocks and make it that if a monster breaks a blast cube, it would not get hurt unless we players initiated the explosion.

Well that is all I have for now on how to improve the challenge and not the difficulty. Hope you guys agree with my ideas.

Sun, 06/21/2015 - 03:09

Blandaxt

Some more replies..

@op:

"Second I’ll say that SK from when it came out to now has not changed at all it is void of content and needs real updates or completely dropped and turned into a sequel e.g. Spiral Knights 2"

Completely disagree with that statement and I believe SK has changed from when it started. But if you are suggesting that these updates are not very substantial, then I totally agree with you there. Moving on.

"Missions should be 1 time only, with the exception of helping others that have not done them (invite only, cause all missions can be soloed). "

Hmm, I totally agree with you that completing missions only once is fine as long as all the monsters currently in missions can be found in the arcade. This way, there are not mission exclusive monsters, just event exclusive monsters which are spread throughout the arcade. This way, the arcade will always be packed; while all the monsters in missions will increase the variety of the arcade (This will also include dlc monsters). This way, any grind wall that we need to go through will also be located in the arcade even if it’s a dlc grind wall like grind for och weapons.

About making some prestige missions locked for a certain amount of days, I completely disagree with you there. Prestige should be earned daily and the current system works. Though, the way we access gates really destroys emersion. Having us physically go to the mission gates to actually access the arcade seems so much more appealing to me.

"SK takes a while to load each map i do not know why but, for such a simple game it somehow has a lot of resources that needs to be loaded."

Not sure why either. I have an internet speed that allows me to load a 1080 pixel video in YouTube in seconds, and yet the game takes 2 minutes to 3 to load. Maybe it's my outdated pc. Anyway, we can’t suggest how to fix this on our end sense we do not have knowledge on the specs that the dev team uses to run the SK servers on.

" we all know the lag problem it’s a real party killer. Does not matter how good your internet is or how good your pc is the lag always appears and it will end you"

Lag is a problem in all online games that uses internet and is more like real life cancer. It's unsolvable and it will kill us all. HEHE, joke aside, yeah lag right now has too many factors or causality and no game as of current can boast they are lag free. So yeah, moving on.

"The Battle Spirtes should always start at base, the white and green thing. You should have never gave the players the option to choose between the 3. Every enemy in the game drops specific items, your Battle Sprite should turn into what you feed it. "

Completely agree with you there. I thought this is the system the devs would have gone through and i would gain a battle sprite based on the recipes I carefully picked out. But noooo, instead we get a chuck bucket where we just stuff down any sort of mat down our cute little pet’s throats. This basically destroys any sort of mystery, and any sort of hope that I would be able to experiment and grow my sprite the way I want. Sure it would be a lot more work to create a system that changes our sprites attacks and behavior and look based on what they eat and what condition of the item before they eat it, but it would be so much more fun in my opinion than what we have now. Also, the sheer amount of limited choices to the imaginative sundry of variations I had expected to come out by this time really puts a downer on having a pet. Well can't do much with a small team I suppose.

Anyway, your post kind of made light on your thoughts on the current SK and I agree with you on most of it. I think as SK has been kind of advertising, their small team can't do much with their current work pace. Having them work harder is all up to OOO and so far, their major focus is on cosmetics to attract already most paying customers who might have drifted off. I feel SK needs more major back up cause it's slow pace might not keep it afloat forever. Anyway, who knows what the future will bring.

Sun, 06/21/2015 - 03:06

Blandaxt

Lastly ..

An addition of my own to your suggestion. This game out around 2009 - 2010. Its graphics are good, not phenomenal, but good. A comparable game that is coming out this year has good graphics, yet what surprised me about this game is the ingenuity of the different sort of weapons that that game has. The name of this game is called Lost Ark Online. The ways the attack patterns, the way these attacks are enacted just feel so original and filled with thought. Comparably, SK has some interesting weapons, but it’s so lack luster when it comes to ingenuity. Almost every weapon follows the same mechanic and really shuts down the variety of playstyle this game could have. Oh well, this is just another gripe I have with the way things are going (not comparing the graphics too much cause I really don't care much about graphics a whole lot).

Besides the weapons, the different level design, the different mechanics inside the levels such as activating a switch to connect a bridge together, or pulling two islands together for safe passage, mechanics that can only found in those levels, Or having a chase scene where the path behind the player is breaking as they are running, or having a beast chase us as we run, etc. So many more ways these levels can be designed, yet we have not seen too much variety excluding the new missions like the Collector which had an interesting level design or the new sl missions which also had something new to bring to the table with its puzzle mechanic. Overall, we need more levels like these and less of the staple levels that can be found everywhere.

Anyway, here hoping for a brand new adventure to the years to come.

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