CAUTION SPOLIERS

The new tier 3 boss was herex...

I mean... really. There's nothing in development (probably)

I'd talk about what we can do to help the game along. Buying prize boxes shows we're still here, but isn't going to be enough to sustain the game's development forever.

I'd even argue the Gunner update was of no significance at all

I'd argue the other way actually. After having the new guns for some time I can say that the update did a lot more, it's just not necessarily having to do with the items on the surface.
It used to be blitz needle was your charge weapon, alchemers were your "high skill level" weapons, and antiguas were your lower skill level weapons (and polaris was your "annoy your teammates" weapon). However, the gunner update revamped the entire system, making each individual gun usable in its own way. The only one to suffer from these changes was the catalyzer, and honestly, its first pass was the best one (after adding 1 damage into it to break blocks). The gunner armors are better as specialist gear - used to mix and match into your playstyle instead of locking you into one specific playstyle.

Before the gunner update you didn't see many different weapon types. Post gunner update I'm seeing people using all different types of guns - blaster variants, autoguns, pulsars, magnuses... pretty much every weapon but catalyzer I see people using normally. Compare this to swords where you see brandish or sealed sword, and that's about it.

Gunner update did do a lot for the game, but it was the evolution of playstyles over time that really made the update worthwhile. I have a friend who's new to the game, and she uses literally only autoguns. Or at least, did until mecha knights became too much. In the old system, that would be not just impractical, but nearly impossible to play competitively. In the new system they've powered through all of the old missions without much problem on elite. Gunner update has had massive impact on the game, but it's what's not in the patch notes that makes it that impactful.

Thanks for the link, Bonjourhippo. For years I've been telling players "go away, come back, no big deal". It is gratifying to hear that philosophy stated explicitly by SK's designer.

He's trying to manage expectations. We'll see whether it helps. There are always inattentive and immature players. They might still get enraged if updates don't come as rapidly as they want.

Disclaimer: This post is not intended to defend the lack of SK updates. I want updates just as any other players does.

Well as you may (or may not) know, SK runs on a set of libraries made by OOO (http://www.threerings.net/code/ for reference) which surely do the job, and that's great but working with legacy libraries (over 10 years old in that case) in an industry that changes constantly is just a bad move, not to say it's a worthless experience but definitely not optimal; in layman's terms it's much like working with a typewriter and trying to convince anyone that qualifies you to use a computer. As far as a learning experience, the only relevant experience one would get out of it is Java programming, which in itself is ok but just not specific to game development. The point is it gives little transferable skills; it would be a much different story of course if the game ran on a more modern engine, say, Unity or Unreal, but that's not the case.
Now you might point out that SK, being an MMO, has a much longer lifespan than your average game and that's true, definitely; but the engine in use has little to no reputation, and knowing this engine only qualifies you to work with games that use it, that is OOO games only for the most part.
So to summarize:
- Mentioning in your CV your experience working with a legacy engine, in 2016, barely qualifies as a relevant experience, it certainly won't shine on your paper.
- Directly as a consequence of what's just above, it's pretty much a waste of time if you're looking for a career, which most developers will anyway.
- Working on a project that sees close to no large scale update is hardly interesting; unless you have a passion for repeating the same code patterns needed to implement the monthly new costume. Again, save for the repetitiveness, you will get little to no insight of how a game works, unless you're specifically interested in the game mechanics concerned with milking the 10$ monthly allowance of the casual P2P players.
I could go on with this for a few pages but I believe that'll give you enough to think about; I'm a developer myself so I like to think I know what I'm saying, but I won't hold it against you if you don't take my word for it, this is the internet after all.

Again if you're not convinced by the reputation bits of those libraries, feel free to check out OOO's Google group dedicated to the said libraries; spoiler alert, it's a bit dead..https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/ooo-libs

Last but not least a quick disclaimer to just remind that this only applies to Spiral Knights; OOO as a whole always seems to have great game concepts and so whatever's coming next from them will surely be interesting to work on; just that what is currently released isn't.

Bonjourhippo,
I think the only thing I agree with here is that using the libraries isn't optimal compared to using something like Unity or Unreal. Oh and the facts that the libraries are old and that the google page is quite inactive.

Otherwise, here are some other things to think about too. That collection of libraries is code built with Maven and Ant projects and that use java for functionality, and OpenAl and OpenGl to help the developer deal with graphics. Sure, possibly, since I haven't quite looked into the code too much myself the Open graphics libraries may be abstracted behind java code so you really ultimately deal with java code writing only. That's a possibility.
But still, by learning the libraries and how they work, you can take them and use them to build a game (which is their purpose) and learn more than just java by doing so. You can learn maven, ant, opengl, openal, design principles and practices, how to deal with code you didn't write, how to deal with really old code (which by the way does entirely exist in the industry), how to deal with undocumented, or rather, not google-able code, and i'm sure if i gave it more thought than i have which isn't much some more things besides that.

Those libraries are tools to help you build a game. Yes, they're older and they don't have much of a reputation, but that's not surprising with today's generation that was brought up with constant ease and instant gratification type programming lessons. Unity is used when you want to whip up a quick game by yourself and don't have the time otherwise. These kinds of old code based libraries are used when you want to do something cool and really impress someone, and yes, believe me, if you can make something of high quality with libraries like these, oh you better bet moneys that it'll get looked at harder than if you did the same thing in Unity.

Why? because it took you a drive, passion and dedication level that Unity literally does not take. When you're trying to get a job, it isn't just about can you build a thing - which basically if you're using Unity, any young person can do before they even hit high school - it's about can you build a thing when the odds are against you and you actually have to work for it.

The game development professor I had in college told our class once that if we could build a game from scratch in assembly, we'd practically get handed jobs. Just some food for thought. What we ended up using was Cry-Engine (i think community edition) because my professor agreed that though Unity was cool, it would be more worth to use Cry-Engine as it was a real in-house tool used by developers that worked on Crysis, which at the time was free, and then it ended up being sold on steam for some small-ish sum of money. It was a giant pain to us, and we had to learn how to try and deal with it. But if we had done something better than we did with it, it would have been much more impressive had we done the same in Unity simply because Cry-Engine has a lower ease of access. And that equates to this scenario here with the OOO libraries. They're harder to use and learn and old. But they're valuable because they're tools that you can use to build your own game with. Honestly, if you wanted, I'm sure you could even build your own Unity-like program with those libraries at your disposal. Besides, how do you think Unity was built anyways? with code similar to something you'd see in these OOO libraries. Not java sure, but a programming language is pretty much generic once you learn one or two of them.

TL;DR
I'm not the brightest chip on the old block, but I'm not easily convinced by any of your arguments here really.
The one argument that makes sense is that using OOO libraries to build a game isn't optimal, but that's because they're less accessible, less google-able, and you'd have to take time to use them well.
The rest of the arguments have an alternative view point for their values outside of just programming. Game development and the characteristics that make a good developer are most exercised by using old legacy code.

Just my two sense. I'm a developer too. :)