As Petater said, Three Rings is the part of Sega that works on Spiral Knights. I don't see any use in distinguishing between them.

Sega must to decide if they want to continue developing/partnering with OOO so we don't complain how this game is dead.

The simple fact is that players are continually finishing the game and getting bored waiting for new content. Most of these players quietly go on to other games. But some fraction players instead complain on the forums. This happened even when Three Rings was releasing new content rapidly.

* In May 2011, even before the Steam launch, I saw threads about how the game was going down the drain.

* In July 2011, once the initial Steam surge passed through, I saw threads about how the game was dead.

* Later in 2011, when OOO was adding PvP, Shadow Lairs, the first seasonal events, new monsters, etc., there were still these threads.

And these threads continued into 2012, 2013, 2014, and 2015, as OOO became less productive. No matter what OOO/Sega does, players complain.

That's true but players are more apt to complain when they see a lack of action on the part of the developers.

TF2 keeps it's players in touch, Unreal Tournament same thing.
Heck you should see what AQW does, new content on a weekly basis plus blogs from the team throughout the week and while game quality isn't amazing it is assuring to know that the team is invested in keeping you interested.
http://www.aq.com/gamedesignnotes/

That's true, but it's not my point. So let me make my logic more explicit.

Matikclocker's post makes various statements. The one I'm focusing on is: If Three Rings developed this game at a more rapid pace, then players wouldn't complain that it's dead/dying.

My post says: Even when Three Rings developed content at a much more rapid place, there were still lots of complaints about the game being dead/dying.

Therefore my post refutes Matikclocker's claim. (If you wanted to get technical about logic and fallacies, I could lay out this argument symbolically.)

Now you may doubt my assertion that there were really complaints like this in the past. I invite you to read the forums after release 2011-05-17, when crafting costs were raised and supposedly everyone was going to leave. Or after the introduction of Shadow Lairs (2011-10-19), when supposedly everyone but the whales was going to leave. And so on.

Please note that, as a player of Spiral Knights, I too really want new content. But threads like this don't assign the developer resources needed to make that happen.

Yep, I make that point all the time in threads --- for example, here, here, and here.

Then why do the Sega Networks LLC employees continue to direct monetization towards the vanguards and not the new players. Specifically 700e for 50 rads and most players I see who buy the shiny stuff being vanguards idling in haven. Moving the paywall from 4 star hall of heroes to 5 star post-vanguard item levelling seems pretty blunt to me on who the target consumer base is still. You might think differently, but I'm definitely seeing different signals.

Also, I'm not sure if it'll occur to you, but having vanguards leave gives no community base for new players to play with or be helped by. If you neglect one component of your community, it'll affect all. Whether or not the employees are capable of producing adequate content doesn't change the requirements for satisfying said community.

Says the person who started blasting players for not wanting to spend on the game anymore in a troll thread. It's not your decision to make. That's fine if the company doesn't want to keep up with the demands the consumer base make. It's not up to the company for people to spend, it's up to the people to decide if the product is worth it still.

There used to be an objective where guilds would recruit older mature players who were starting out the game, and actually try to have *fun* with them. What's the word? Oh yeah community... The problem is that's severely lacking now. With the tier locking of rarities, that kinda killed a bunch of desire to casually play lower tier levels with the newer players.

And your point about rarities forcing the farming of certain tiers, and hence hurting community, is also quite reasonable.

I would love to see some new daily missions that force players to mix ranks and work together.

That is a really great idea. Goodness knows we could use some new prestige missions. Has it been proposed in Suggestions? I don't read that forum much.

It could be done bluntly, like: You can't get prestige for this mission unless the party contains a certain mix of ranks.

Or it could be done more subtly, like: The mission has a mini-boss, and having part of your party attack it from the back greatly helps. But the enemies around the back adjust to rank in such a way that vanguards will find it nearly impossible to get around there.

i think the employees of OOO develop the game, while sega just sits on them twiddling its thumbs

If you want a suggestion forumy attitude here's one for you - Make a ranked prestige mission in which you can only join lower parties. These would be available to knights at rank 4-1 and higher. Essentially you join in on another party and get some credit for it with prestige.

Having tier 2 missions in general that are open to all ranks and show up on all party finders would also be a super fun way to encourage playing together. Potentially make custom puzzles where higher tier enemies spawn so the vanguards will need to focus fire on them, and various trial and error switches that need to be hit rather quickly so lower level players can try to solve the puzzles while the vanguards hold off the enemy.

Heck, class missions would be a lot of fun, where players pick a "class" to play beforehand and get buffs/nerfs, and need to complete a few levels like that. Higher ranks unlock more classes, meaning lower star players would usually play the low defense VIP player, potentially able to deathmark enemies but not kill them, while vanguards have access to "protector", "aggroer", "slasher", "gunslinger", "demolitions", and more. Goal is to keep VIP alive - VIP can revive other players like the old health revives, and overall you get a lot of people being friendly with each other of all ranks working together for a lot of fun. You can also just go all vanguards if you want to play with friends, but have there be crown/heat bonuses for each player, but the higher their rank the less of a bonus. You want high ranking players for their access to all the playable classes, but you also want some lower classes for the reward bonuses.

@Bonjourhippo

"Endless" content is very possible for them though.. games like puzzle and dragons pull it off with ease and I've written a good many ideas for how it could be done for our game in a similar fashion. See-

http://forums.spiralknights.com/en/node/108062
http://forums.spiralknights.com/en/node/112494

Endless content is kind of a pipe dream in itself though. Even having a few balance updates for things like armor, and basic communication with whoever is in charge would be wonderful. Currently there are a handful of rather serious questions that should be answered-

Will there ever be a bomb or sword update akin to the gunner update?
Are there plans to finish the story line and if so, will development continue after that?
Is the arcade redux still in the cards for us at all?

@Petater

With the tier locking of rarities, that kinda killed a bunch of desire to casually play lower tier levels with the newer players.

Tier locked rarities makes me play lower strata more as opposed to less, actually. It's like OK, what levels provide rarities that I can actually put to good use? And the answer is quite clearly:

A. Dreams and Nightmares/D27 + D28
B. All of tier 2

Naturally, many of my runs are with newer players.

Post number 10

Pretty much hits the nail on the head. My solution for players is to buy boxes- if those sell well, there will be less need for players to buy things like fire crystals.

My solution for developers is to make all fire crystals far rarer, and then heavily decrease the prices in energy so that it's feasible to just buy them- think 1-2 energy per fire crystal, about. That way, players 'grow up' buying fire crystals and it feels natural to do so as opposed to coming across the great wall of radiant fire crystals like 'OH LORD'. 6.3K energy is way too much to expect people to pay per item.

@Dreemurr

Petater's comments in particular are rather noteworthy on the subject of who is developing the game. OOO and SEGA are pretty much one and the same at this point, aside from in the literal sense that SEGA bought OOO and the scarier sense that many of the employees that originally worked on SK are now gone.

They will give us accessories for the next fifty updates or so... Maybe 51.

Sure. I wasn't as interested in the specific reward as in the general idea of getting ranks to mix.

After playing this game for such a long time I stopped.

In 2011 even with game designers actively releasing shadow lairs and pvp, players saw it wasn't enough. The creativity, design space, and story could be expanded so much, why wasn't more being done? New content, bosses, levels, floors, gear and server improvements should have been rolling out weekly or monthly. OOO needed to identify their audience as mature people from many different countries and make the sk world something special.

Instead I see it has been prize boxes and meaningless dress up accessories for years. It makes me sad that this oppertunity to create more and build up sk wasn't taken. It makes me angry that I wasted so much time with sk.

I have since started up with a different game, a mobile one. Surprise surprise it is from Sega Japan. There is absolutely nothing wrong with how sega developes and releases content in this game. The artwork is beautiful and the content was thoughtfully made so everything has a purpose. There are events and new places to fight every week. The only thing that sk had better was player to player transactions and the ce market to do economic analysis on.

I know now it was never a problem with Sega's ability to design content for sk. The reason for lack of content and the prize box disease doesn't even matter. Only thing that matters is, there is no content, there is not enough content. Coming to terms with that statement means the rational thing to do is find other things to do in life.