Spiral Knights - Servers, game-balance and bugs that have been here for years.

Servers, game-balance and bugs that have been here for years.

5 replies [Last post]

Tue, 12/29/2015 - 01:13

Phelyne

So I sent this mail to Spiral Knights Support, who couldn't redirect the mail directly to the developers, but gave me a link to this forum in which they assured me that the developers will read it. Below, I have removed some text asking them to redirect it to the developers, but otherwise it's pretty much the exact same thing. This was the reply I got from a Game Master:

"Greetings,

The servers themselves have not been experiencing problems. What has been
happening is a latency issue with a portion of the internet very close to our
location preventing players from connecting to the servers, although the
servers themselves continue to run without issue. This situation is as
frustrating for our staff as it is for our players. While unfortunate, it is
beyond our direct control but we're hopeful that whatever is causing the issue
is rectified soon.

Regarding your comments and suggestions, I'm afraid that Game Masters have no
input to change, implement or fix game features. The best way to get a
developer's attention is by posting in the Suggestions forums here:
http://forums.spiralknights.com/en/forum/7

While we may not always post in the Suggestions forum, our staff does take the
time to read them along with the discussions they spark. We certainly
appreciate the suggestions our players make, and the amount of thought you
clearly put into them.

Best wishes,

- Clotho"

So here's what I wrote originally, and I'd suggest the developers take their time to read the whole thing, even if it's long. Spiral Knights needs these fixes really badly:

"So first up, I'd like to say that you need to improve your servers really
badly. I've had perfect internet connection this whole week, super fast
download speeds and all, but I've had 1-2 bars of connection this whole week.
Is it that big of a deal? Yes. Yes, it is. The game often doesn't register
that I use shield, and I've died countless times because of that. I know it's
not just me that's having connection/server issues. Everyone that I've asked
have had connection/server issues, and I asked quite a bunch. They all had 1-3
bars of connection. Aside from not being able to use shield, enemies and
knights often teleport around. When the connection really drops, I cannot even
use Battle Sprite Skills. This ruins the game, and I don't want Spiral Knights
ruined even more than it already is by the lack of updates and money-hungry
promotionspams.

I'm sure you're aware that your whole community is going insane over the lack
of new content, and most of it is leaving, and that they're furious about
things like how there's still no 5 star version of the Windmillion, and all
you get at Basil after the gunner update is gunner armor recipes, so I won't
complain further about that, since you're obviously not up to fixing any of
these issues.

However, there is a few things that you just need to fix.
1: Even if you have a 64-bit System, you always run on 32-bit Java. This
causes the game to lag.
2: No matter how many GB Ram you have, 512MB is all that is allowed. Players
made it possible to fix this by changing some things in whatever folder Spiral
Knights is installed in. However, it's against the rules to 'mess with the
files'.
By default, there should be better defaults. Even the most humble of PCs have
2GB RAM. You could also add a new tab in "Options" for this.
3: I have yet to find a way to fix this one. When you tab out of Spiral
Knights, it often will not be possible to tab back in. It simply does not
happen. The best solution is to open up tax manager, go to Java, click it,
right click Spiral Knights and then click "Maximize". It usually works after
1-2 tries.

There's a lot of other unfixed bugs, but I'm going to skip to the balance of
Grinchlin Assault!
Due to bad servers, and poor game balance I just wasted 23 Sparks of Life on
that mission, and still didn't beat it. I gave up. No, you didn't misread it.
I did say 23 sparks. Counting in the Vitapod +12 and the Ultra Health Capsules that I purchased from Basil before starting the mission, this is roughly 47 thousand crowns.
So here's where the balance of the mission is broken, and where bugs start
fucking me over:
I tab out to reply to a message, which will take ~5 seconds, I assumed.
However, Spiral Knights.exe didn't quite agree on that. It decided to not let
me tab back in to the game with the Battlepod that was literally 1 hit away
from dying, and I finally managed to get back into the game after 30-45
seconds. In the meantime, a Darkfang Mender had spawned. Or should I say,
respawned. Because you can't kill it. It respawns. I the Darkfang Mender heal
the Battlepod, and I quickly use my very last Spark of Life, and I revive and
slaughter the Darkfang Mender. However, that was only to discover that it had
healed the Battlepod to full HP.
I'll be honest. I almost cried from frustration since my day had already been
utter shit.
Overall, I think the developers of Spiral Knights are treating their community
like they don't care at all about the game, and they're selling out big-time.
Fixing these simple bugs and issues would prevent hundreds, if not thousands
of players from leaving early. So even if the developers are just selling out,
they should fix these bugs so their money-dispensing slaves will stay a bit
longer.

I speak not only for myself here, but for
many people. I don't think I've heard anyone say "I'm satisfied with how
Spiral Knights is at the moment.""

I'm surprised if no one has posted something like this yet, since it's so bloody relevant to the game, so I sort of doubt that this will make any change at all, but one can dream.
-Phoenix

Thu, 12/31/2015 - 01:59

Klipik-Forum

You could have written a slightly less aggressive email from a slightly more objective standpoint. It would have at least made someone who can effect the change you're looking for want to read it.

Thu, 12/31/2015 - 14:24

Fangel

Ditto

I agree with Klipik.

Also try not to use swears on the forums, even if you did copy and paste that message. There is no swear filter for the forums like there is in the game, so you need to act as your own filter.

Fri, 01/01/2016 - 04:57

Phelyne

Yeah, sorry about the swearing.

I was really tired and mad when I wrote this, and in the original (I edited a tiny bit at the end out) I actually apologized for the swearing.
On another note, sure, I'm sorry about the swearing, but I don't think it matters that much compared to what I'm actually trying to say here. So please try to stay on topic, eh?

Fri, 01/01/2016 - 18:00

Holy-Nightmare

....

Squeaky wheel gets the oil

OOO should start pushin whoever is at fault for causing the lag on a daily basis. Check in every day, be polite, but always tell them to please hurry up people are counting on you.

Sat, 01/02/2016 - 14:23

Fangel

See there's nothing you haven't said that hasn't already been said. I initially wrote a really long post, deleted my progress and moved onto another thread because I was simply writing the same thing over and over.

I simply stated that you should watch the swearing because there can be in-game consequences for continuous swearing on the forums. First few times it's alright but it's better to censor yourself on the forums and not get a warning/ban.

Your arguments are real. Three Rings really ought to allow for 64bit java and potentially an in-game performance setting ability, such as RAM allocation, by default in the client. Most people quitting because of bad performance aren't the ones trying to optimize their game through java technicalities. Tabbing out and your game not responding would have been aided by these optimizations, but sometimes java itself is just a pile of manure and no level of optimizations will help.

Now, Grinchlin Assault is, by far, the most challenging content in the game. I mean, when the mission's common strategy to beat it is to die and spark at the battlepod, that's how you know it's got some flaws behind it.
However, running the hardest content in the game on the highest difficulty alone is the fault of the user, not the game. Blowing 23 Sparks of Life on one level is your problem, not the game's.

That being said, I've been running the mission without sparking with a group of people because we mesh well together with fighting styles and roles. We all typically use our ERs, but that's free so it's not a big issue.

The servers have so many variables going on with them it's not easy to just say "fix it". There's server load, upkeep, hardware limits/age, other uses, software... On top of that, there's player connection to the server, various ISPs which may or may not be trottling internet... Yeah. It's hard to tackle all the issues, hardware and software, because it's not going to simply "fix" everything. Players on wifi will continue to have worse connections than those connected via cable because of the nature of how that all works. Players with limited internet or lesser providers will run slower and cut out.
Software optimizations and upgrading hardware is pretty much all they can do, outside of adding additional servers. Adding additional servers would be very helpful however, as the Oceania area has plenty of potential paying players but no server to keep them around. IMO best to add a server there than to optimize what we currently have, but after getting a server out there some game/server optimization would be wonderful.

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Servers, game-balance and bugs that have been here for years.