It is the 3rd Millennium. For more than five years Spiral Knights has sat immobile on the Golden Throne of java. It is the foremost of MMO by the will of its players, and master of thousands of P2W players by the might of their inexhaustible wallets. It is a rotting carcass writhing invisibly with shifting update schedules and radio silence. It is the Carrion Lord of the MMO scene for whom a thousand hours of human lives are sacrificed every day, so that it may never truly die.

Yet even in its deathless state, SK continues its eternal vigilance. Mighty prize boxes cross the micro-transaction infested miasma of the internet, the only route between distant player bases, their way lit by paypal, the legal manifestation of the SK's will. Vast armies of fanboys give battle in SK's name on uncounted websites. Greatest amongst its soldiers are the GMs, the overpowered administrators, bio-engineered to only give the player base cheeky replies and little else. Their comrades in arms are legion: the data slaves and their countless research sheets, the ever vigilant newbies, and the fan artists, to name only a few. But for all their multitudes, they are barely enough to hold off the ever-present threat from other better MMO games, their own self assurance, the need for more monetization - and worse.

To support Spiral Knights in such times is to spend untold thousands. It is to support the most hopeless cause imaginable. These are the tales of those times. Forget the hope of new DLCs and gear updates, for so much has been canceled, never to be developed again. Forget the promise of cheaper crystal energy and caring about the fan base, for in the Grey Havens HQ there is only silence, prize boxes and timed events. There is no fun amongst the MMORPG, only an eternity of paying and grinding, and the laughter of former players who left SK to play better games.

And here we have another example of a salty player who doesn't understand that the new system was made for long term, not to help players get to 5* in 3 days.

This is the price for the free elevators, get over it. You could play 24/7 if you wanted to.

You can still get to the endgame way faster due to all the free crap they give you throughout the missions and the fact alone that there are missions so you can choose to play whichever places you want to apart from the arcade.

@Fangel
"I see many new players joining and staying since they like the game, plus they get free access to the second part of the game (tier 2) with literally no investment other than their time."

Uh, hello? Time is the only thing you can invest. Don't feel too bad, barely anyone else understands either. You could spend 30 hrs farming vana, or 2.5 hrs working, to achieve the same result. The only scenario where you pick farming vana is where you have nothing else going on in your life.

Commented just to say that Midnight-Dj's interpretation is pretty spot on in regards to player progression. It is only steady during the early stages of the game where you don't have 5* items to craft and heat. The drop rates of radiant fire crystals are too damn low to have any reasonable/steady rate of progression.

Assuming you are even using the level 2 heating option in the forge (which can really backfire) it takes 302 radiant fire crystals to heat a single 5* item. Could be even more if luck isn't in your favor.

It takes five 5* items to make the minimalist set (helm,armor,shield,2 weapons), which equates to 1510 radiant fire crystals just to full heat a set.

Average runs likely net ~24 radiant fire crystals (vana, full tier 3), which means you'll have to farm these areas ~63 times just to get a full level 10 set of 5* equipment. The arcade is terrible for farming radiants too just because it oftentimes doesn't have levels that pay out well, and it takes a lot longer to get to the actual depths that matter in regards to radiant crystals.

People also get tired of spamming vanaduke over and over again.

Dreams and Nightmares is simply too difficult for most players to get through without sparking in the last room, though the payout is okay. You'd still have to run it around 63 times to heat.

Worst of all, the numbers I proposed above are only taking into the account five 5* items for the literal minimal set a player could have. It doesn't take into the account the variances of useful swords you will want to have for the different enemies you face. It doesn't take into account the variances of armor and shield you will want to have for different situations. It also doesn't even take into account potential side-arms for guns. Adding all those will easily put that number of crystals into unfathomable levels of farming for the average player, which ultimately drives people away from the game. They plateau their progress after they realize getting 5* isn't worth it unless you're rich because, as most of us know, most 5* items don't become better than their 4* counterpart until around heat level 7-8.

In my opinion, the area past the crossroads in t3 should only drop radiants, and before the crossroads should be only shiny. It doesn't make sense to me how I could venture all the way to depth 28 and still get screwed over with shining fire crystals at the deepest normal depth in the entire game.

In regards to the whole revive system. It's already been asked by the player base to bring it back SO MANY TIMES. I don't think we need another thread for it. And although it does sound nice for it to come back, GH has already stated that they have no plans to reimplement it. So please, don't ask about it again as it's already been confirmed it's not coming back. As for how slow the game goes, it's either the game goes really slowly because of the mist energy and elevator costs allowing you only 10 free floors a day. Notice how I said FLOORS, not MISSIONS. So literally you'd only have enough energy to do 3 full RJP runs and then one more floor. It's still slow. So it's either slow progression by limited play time each day (like what a lot of mobile apps do) or you can play as much as you like and have the system we have now. In both systems, we've had so many people complain about the elevator costs and now people complain about the current system.

I still cant see any diference betwen 3 rigns and Grey Heavens,

of course you can't, GH is just the remnant staff from OOO.

If progression was fast, you'd get to the end hella quick, and then what? There'd be nothing to do. At the very least, this keeps you occupied.

I never said progression needed to be fast, but really there is no excuse for progression to be this slow, at all. Getting stuck grinding over and over again is not only too time consuming for a regular player, but it is just not fun at all.

The answer to stopping players from progressing to fast is sure as hell not by putting this progression behind hours and hours of daily grinding.