I have one really great suggestion.
GET RID OF THE FORGE.
I hate the Forge. I hate everything about the Forge. The Forge makes levelling gear up ten times more of a pain than it ever was. I've got a bunch of every fire crystal but Radiant Fire Crystals are hard to come by, even at the bottom of tier 3. The heat bonuses aren't worth it. The prize boxes (which I've gotten zero of) aren't worth it.
The Forge must die. I really, really hate the Forge. For the love of Nick, get rid of it. Please.
Simple equation here:
No forge=easy weapon leveling.
Easy weapon leveling+unlimited gameplay=easy maxed-out gear.
Easily maxed out gear=bored players.
It gives you something to do in the game. Spiral Knights has never been quick to reward anything, and just like any MMO has a grind of some sort, so does SK.
That said, as this is the suggestions forum, I'd like to hear what kind of constructive ideas you have on Forge system replacement; simply asking the devs to kill something because you don't like it hasn't really done much for us as a forum community.
If those are my only two choices, the forge loses. Everytime. The only thing it serves to do is exponentially expand an already tedious part of the game. What's the point of having heat boosters anymore if you have to keep farming for fire crystals everytime you want to level up? And what do you think the game runs on now, jellybeans? Someone somewhere always has to make a real-money purchase, or the game would eventually have to be shut down.
I'd at least like to be able to collect Radiant Fire Crystals more readily, at least on strata 6 (23-29), if nothing else. Last night I did a Vanaduke run on normal. I got exactly zero Radiants. That feels really wrong.
The only thing that really bothers me about the forge is that those levels which ought to reward the player with radiant fire crystals do not.
http://forums.spiralknights.com/en/node/112706
Gating the crystals is fine, but gating them behind one level that most knights can't really complete is a bit much.
Is your problem with the forge, or with radiant fire crystals? That's where the real issue stands. The forge, as a system as a whole, is perfectly fine. It has made the game drastically more F2P friendly, and overall allows the gameplay part of the game to thrive.
... However the current way the forge is set up is, as I said, heavily reliant on the elite difficulty being used. If you play on the normal difficulty, you will be finding much lower amounts of all rarities, regardless of depth.
Additionally, radiant fire crystals were initially in a really, really good position. They dropped at D22 and later at least, and by halfway through stratum 6 you would only find radiant fire crystals. Life was good...
However people started complaining about not having enough 4* fire crystals. The solution? Make radiants drop at depth 27 and 28 only. This was horribly shortsighted, and lasted over 6 months until it was changed to its current rates, being D25 and later will drop radiants and shining fire crystals.
Stopping shinings from dropping after a certain depth would give us a more even split for the fire crystals. Making radiants drop earlier would also help. The bottom line is the problem with the forge isn't the forge itself, rather the balance of the endgame being in a very unbalanced state. Normalizing rarities and rebalancing their dropping locations would be infinitely better than removing the forge and re-adding mist energy in. Limited playing stinks.
The way I see it, there really is no point in killing the forge. It works well enough. The only issue with the forge as it stands is that it really makes OOO look greedy.
Radiant fire crystals are extortionately hard to get, and not cheap for energy either. That said, having done three complete t3 runs on elite and getting a whopping grand total of THREE radiant crystals, I find myself very discouraged. But every time you try to forge something, and don't have the crystals, it happily pops up a thing for you to buy 50.
How to fix it:
1: There should not be a chance of failure. Seriously, this was a bad idea to begin with.
2: Radiants need to be more common. Seriously you should not ever, EVER complete a t3 run on elite and not get a single radiant.
3: If the failure rate stays, then the other bonuses (which almost never happen), need to be boosted. More than a little. And radiants should be in the forge prize box. (not that i have ever gotten one since the introduction of the forge system to know if they are or not.)
4: Kill that micro-transaction box. Seriously, it makes OOO look insanely greedy. I like the company, and have been a fan of the game for YEARS. But every time I see it, its like a slap in the face.
5: If we can break the crystals down, we need to be able to recombine them at a decent rate. I have legitimately hundreds of the lowest level fire crystal, which I will likely never ever use. I am not saying a 1/1 ratio, probably more like a 5/1.(ie: you break a radiant down and get 5 shining, it should take 25 shining to make one radiant)
Largely I agree with Fangel. A lot of re-balancing of the loot is needed especially for elite difficulty.
Everybody hates rarities. Everybody is so focused on grinding Vana for money that all they get is eternities and a small amount of radiant fire crystals that take forever to gather. There are a few places that offer good rates at Elite and Advanced orbs, but with that comes more grinding.
MY IDEA- since most vanguards are just grinding for money for costumes, they have acquired MANY eternal advanced orbs ( I have like 48 and have no idea what to do with them ) so I have a few suggestions with these rarities.
FIRST- allow either selling or down-crafting of orbs of alchemy, possibly even upgrading them. some may say, "There's no need, just go grind JK for a bit and you'll get enough." Sure, you may get like 3 advanced orbs in a good 2 hours of grinding, but what am I gonna do with the rest of these 50 eternal orbs? With selling them, you could get money to transfer to E and then buy the orbs you NEED. Down-crafting could also solve this problem.
SECOND- Completely rework the forging system. My idea is that the heat bar should be greatly increased, and shouldn't need fire crystals to level up, similar to the old days, but to put the stockpile of 4* fire crystals ( I have like 2000 ) you could use them as a heating aid, just apply some fire crystals to have the gear automatically gain some heat right there. This would relieve the grinding wall that people go through in order to fully heat their gear.
THIRD- Change reviving back to the old ways, where you could give half your health to each other. some people may think "You don't need to use any sparks to beat any missions" But that isn't always the case. You could be lagging, purposely getting killed by a jerky party leader, or just made a slip up, so why have to use any sparks for that? Sparks should just be used when either nobody comes to heal you or you all die and cant revive each other. That is all I have to say.
You bring up some good points, but really the current system is so close to perfect but just misses the mark.
Orbs of alchemy being non-transferable counteracts their cost in energy. In the past a 5* item would be worth 800 energy. Now it's worth 3 eternal orbs. You can buy 3 eternal orbs, however, it is very easy to stockpile them. At this point, the cost for crafting a 5* item has dropped by 800 energy, meanwhile the crafting costs for 3* and 4* items has remained the same. Your weapons in the end cost less to make because of this. This is good.
This also makes veteran players play lower levels to find the necessary orbs of alchemy and fire crystals. Typically, tier 2 players will be learning the game and might need some help. Veteran tier 3 players can give said help while getting rarities they need. Bam, more players in lower tiers.
The only issue with orbs is how many of them you can get over time. Personally, I think having a "group alchemy station" would be a good fix for this. Up to 4 players could pool resources together to help each other craft items. The overall cost of crafting would increase, but you could help another player trying to get a 5* armor by putting 5 of your eternal orbs into the machine. You would pay 33%-66% more in total resources, but players with abundant resources will love to give them away.
Next, your forge change. There are many ideas for the forge, and to be honest, yours seems alright. However, really, all the forge needs changed is the scarcity of radiants. Everything else about the forge is perfectly fine, but radiant fire crystals drops simply don't allow for a large arsenal of 5* gear to be made without dedicated farming of some of the hardest levels of the game.
But with your change gear would turn more into a battle sprite-esk type of leveling up. That would be an interesting change, as you could technically make all fire crystal types give heat in varying amounts.I will however say that fire crystals should be mandatory to level up to levels 5 and 10 in all gear, with their current amounts standing. This drops the crystal requirements for 5* items from 453 at 100% to something like 148 radiants, which is a huge improvement.
However if we ignore my modification to your system, it would be a more fun system. However it would require more active grinding to level up your gear than passive grinding that we have now, but instead of having your progress based on chance it's based on how often you run, which is better overall.
Personally, I believe we should have a "heat crystalizer" item that we are given after every few bosses. The idea is that we heat this item with heat collected, and after it's fully heated it condenses the heat into a fire crystal. This would allow for all that "excess heat" you acquire all the time to be converted into crystals of your choice, granted you're of the correct rank. This also makes heat amplifiers super useful in obtaining fire crystals, and makes your grind overall more fun as, again, you have a progress bar to see how far you've gotten.
Lastly, the revive system. I believe we need a way to rework teamwork into the game, but I don't think bringing back the health revive system is the way to do it. Instead, I propose a "life essence" rarity to be added. This rarity is essentially a spark of life that can only be used on teammates, and is like a collectable ER for them. Make them drop x3 the rate of sparks of life, and make sparks of life drop a bit more rarely. Life essences are used like old health revives, but don't come with all the negatives of that system. Since you can't use the essences on yourself, you won't feel bad parting with them.
Sparks of Life would remain the no-touch revive item that can also be used to revive yourself. Life essences would be the heat-of-combat revives that you can only revive others with.
And what would you replace the forge with? Mist energy? Would we limit the playtime of players and revert back to when the game required someone somewhere to make a real-money purchase for anyone to advance past tier 1?
The forge is fine. The drop rates of radiant fire crystals needs to be bumped down so that the current D25 is D24, and shining fire crystals should stop dropping at depths 27 and lower.
Seriously. The forge is a great addition, however it relies heavily on the elite difficulty for loot, and constantly replaying. If rarities were made more, well, static across difficulties, and the radiant change I posed above was implemented, then the forge would be in good standing.
When the update was first dropped, the forge was great. 4* fire crystals were a problem, but not near-impossible like radiants are now-a-days. People were just too lazy to stop farming vanaduke to go get shinings, and here we are now with the current issue.