Spiral Knights - How Spiral Knights could benefit from "borrowing" ideas.

How Spiral Knights could benefit from "borrowing" ideas.

13 replies [Last post]

Mon, 11/21/2016 - 08:22

Umbra-Lunatis

Spiral Knights is a uniquely good game, despite all the baggage it's got from past shady SEGA contracts. It sports a huge variety of weapons, enemies, environments, and ahemcostumerecolorscough. And it's been decently fun to spend time on for (in my case) about four years.

However.

I've been playing/critiquing some other games that possess certain qualities, and I'd like to state my personal opinion on why Spiral Knights would benefit from "borrowing" certain things from those games.

Metal Gear Rising:Revengenenence
MGR is a fantastically edgy hack-and-slash that puts you in a scenario where you slice up cyborg policemen and learn about meme-nihilism. You're also a cyborg ninja with a sword.

What SK could "borrow" from this game
The fast-paced melee-combat action of MGR is the reason I'm writing this thread. Though the game offers less in terms of customization and isn't at all multiplayer, its combat-pacing overshadows SK's by a mile due to its varied-combo, high-speed swordplay and dynamic impacts.
(You can feel the ridiculous amounts of trauma your weapon is causing to the enemy due to "impact" particles that vary in intensity based on the relative power of your attack)

Skylanders: Brutal Mockery of Spyro's Canon Series
Actually, I don't know anything past the first installment because I wasn't willing to spend money on a sequel. Maybe it's gotten better, but the first one was high-functioning shovelware. Regardless, I picked it up to critique it a month or so back.

What SK could "borrow" from this game
Skylanders: Spyro's Adventure possesses a -lot- of graphical and spatial effort. The environments are beautifully rendered, projectiles actually go up ramps, and certain characters can fly a short distance off the ground. There are water-based environments, with certain other characters being able to swim/surf across. Bridges construct themselves out of thin air, ingame currency doesn't bind to a grid system in the overworld, certain types of puzzles like laser-redirection exist, and parts of the environment are destructible (not just blocks).

And yet, it got...boring after a while. I've said before on Twitter that Spiral Knights would fare wonderfully on the Skylanders engine, as it has a lot more to offer.

I'd like to hear others' opinions on this matter.

Mon, 11/21/2016 - 17:53

Midnight-Dj

Because history is written in blood.

GH should learn from Warhammer 40K and give the Spiral order a few shades of grey when it comes to morality. Make clockwork into more of a dystopia where thousands of lives were sacrificed every day to keep the run down mechanism of cradle operational. While creatures from beyond the veil of reality plotted for their own agenda.

how can they make SK grey:

-Morai war is in fact an invasion by the Spiral Knights against the Morais, it was a last ditch gambit by the Spiral order to assault the morai home world to seize the planet core and use it to revive their old and dying planet Isora. When this failed, the last of the fleet was obliterated and only skylark survived. Of course, all of these history was erased by the upper echelon of the spiral order.

-The core is not a benevolent being, but rather an unstoppable force of nature that has destroyed every single civilization that once called cradle home through a complex sets of subtle machination. Almire, Kat tribe and the Owlites. Tinkinzar, seeing that his kingdom is next on the list, decided to rebel against the core, trapping it into the metal shell. It is said that it was the will of cradle who shot Skylark down in the first place, the Spiral knights played right into its hand, becoming its unwitting liberator.

-The Spiral Order is not all chuckles and sunshine, when it first seized power from the old Spiral Confederacy, it was thought that the leader of the Spiral Order destroyed all of the religion and art facilities that were on Isora. They thought this could lead to an era of enlightenment and tolerance, but, they were wrong.

-Captain Ozlo and Biscotti were once the Admiral and vice admiral of the Spiral Order's fleet respectively. However, during the Morai war when Ozlo wanted to use WoMD on Morai population, Biscotti, unable to bear the lose of innocent lives, started a mutiny. Ozlo ruthlessly apprehended his one time friend and demoted her to the chef of Skylark, ever wondered why Biscotti put dark matters into her cupcakes? It wasn't an accident, it was to kill Ozlo

Mon, 11/21/2016 - 20:53

Umbra-Lunatis

woah woah woajg

back up a bit there fren

SK isn't a moral-bender edgy kinda game; leave that to MGR and shadow the badplothog. I'm suggesting things that could improve the "dreamscape" of what Spiral Knights is and should continue to be without turning it into a nightmare.

Though, edgy backstories for enemies like Vanaduke are neat. I'd like to see an explained Swarm backstory, and maybe an Apocrea or Moorcroft one, but nothing that interferes with the "Lawful Good" characterization of the Spiral Order. It just wouldn't fit.

Tue, 11/22/2016 - 03:16

Midnight-Dj

@Umbra

SK isn't a moral-bender edgy kinda game;

Really? So a group of alien specie came to your planet, killing everything they can find to in order to make more new weapons of war. You have to see things from other people's (like a Gremlin who just had his whole family killed off by a knight) PoV for once and you will realize just how unjustified the spiral knight's actions are.

I am not trying to bend the moral of the game, it is just so that SK itself is a twisted game, intentional or not, I highly doubt in a more realistic setting anyone native to cradle would consider the knights 'heroes'. More of a 'necessary monster to keep a bigger monster at bay (swarm)'.

Tue, 11/22/2016 - 08:25

Umbra-Lunatis

comment removed

nvm that was mean i apologize

Tue, 11/22/2016 - 07:02

Midnight-Dj

@Umbra

I never said anything about RP (in fact, I don't do that anymore) but my statement stays true, SK is a twisted game with a layer of sugar coating. You can't deny the fact that Spiral Knights have killed far more than they have saved. Game mechanic wise, we are genocidal maniacs, just because we hail ourselves as the hero in a story doesn't mean we are good (or even lawfully good). I am not saying SKs are evil because I want them to be in my head canon, there are simply too many evidence in the campaign and the game mechanic to proof that they are not all good.

In terms of story, the only time SK actually evoked some emotion from me is the Arkus fight. The reason is because that was the only occasion where the SK was morally grey, Arkus simply wished to be left alone and we killed him. It was the only one mission in SK I could remember that is not a story of 'hero slaying the villain'.

My suggestion is simply for GH to add more missions like Arkus, where the bad guys we fight aren't just some Saturday morning cartoon villain (I am looking at you Herex) but some one with goal and aspiration like us. Sure, they can still be 'lawfully evil' but at least now they will be fleshed out, if done well, they can be solid bad guys that makes players both fear and respect.

Tue, 11/22/2016 - 07:43

Bopp

seems on-topic

If the topic is borrowing ideas from other games, then Midnight-Dj's posts are on-topic. The original post is more about game play and graphics than plot, but some players care about plot.

I don't expect much from most video game plots. But the plot serves as raw material for new mission ideas, so it can be important in giving the designers ideas about new playable content.

Tue, 11/22/2016 - 07:57

Umbra-Lunatis

@mid

I like that last suggestion. It's what I sorta touched on earlier; Vanaduke and Arkus have essentially the same backstory archetype. And for those two, it fits their character. Those kinds of boss battles are great as "dark" ones in Fiend or Undead environments.

Though I can't agree with you on the "overall" stuff like the practicality of touching on everything that the game purposefully overlooks (due to inherent lack of development or developers not wanting to make everything a moral issue), morally ambiguous backstories for the "Already Evil" characters add depth to them. Herex going insane would be a pretty good development of character given the circumstances.

Tue, 11/22/2016 - 07:59

Aferron

Yes.

Intersting ideas. I do agree with the part about graphical/scenic aspects of Spiral Knights. At the moment, the levels feol too plain, boring, even. I think it can borrow some ideas from Bastion(Never actually played the game, but it look cool).

Like in Bastion, Spiral Knights also has floating pieces of land. However, I dare say Bastion provides more visualy appealing levels compared to SK.

Spiral Knights levels are too blocky, whereas Bastion levels feel more natural, like actual floating pieces of land.

TL;DR Spiral Knights levels are too plain, also blocky and unatural, especially the Sky Islands

Tue, 11/22/2016 - 10:35

Dats-Mah-Boi

Awesome ideas Umbra, but I

Awesome ideas Umbra, but I think SK would benefit from taking a more Legend of Zelda approach rather than fighting?

Imho, it needs more complex puzzles with proportionate rewards. Unfortunately, recent threads complaining about Gremlin Thwackers and Chaos/BK gear being balanced among others made me realize how low the average playerbase skill was, so perhaps Roarmulus is already too complex for most, which is cool.

I think they need to optimize the game's performance first before anything else. It doesn't make sense being able to run a 2016 game at 90 fps ultra graphics during multiplayer, and run SK with frame drops as low as 5-10 fps from time to time and constant server failures, both jumps/rubberbanding and full on connection dropped. SK needs to be pulled out by the roots and recreated, rennovated. Unfortunately GH are not too money-hungry (good morals, but bad for the business), so that will never happen.

I like you enthusiasm, but I think it is misplaced.

Tue, 11/22/2016 - 12:29

#10

Fangel

hmm

While I can agree with Midnight on more complex backstories, I don't think they need to be "morally grey". I love having characters that feel alive in the game world, and dialogue is a huge factor for that.

Personally, I think we need more "heavy" scenes in general. Blades of the Fallen, The Silent Legion, A Call to Arms... Each one of those missions had a very simple concept that was executed perfectly.

On top of this, I think more efforts could be made to turn parts of missions and arcade into feeling more engaging. I'd say more puzzles with rewards (imagine solving a difficult puzzle to gain access to a danger room instead of paying energy), using monsters in more scenarios or filling in gaps (ie, minis outside of compounds, or a construct trojan-tier enemy), utilizing new blocks in puzzles (misery blocks, gravity explosion blocks, etc), and using music in a more organic way. The music thing is already done in a few places in the game, but there are many opportunities to make the player experience more engaging with it.

Also @visually appealing floating islands, the Clockworks are a manufactured place, so I guess the blockiness or unnatural feel from the islands is actually a good fit.

Tue, 11/22/2016 - 17:55

#11

Abelisk

The problem with Spiral Knights is

● The dungeons ramp up difficulty by including enemies with higher DPS (my eyes are glued to the mini enemies at this point) that are aggravating.
• What Spiral Knights needs in terms of increasing difficulty is not enemy buffs, but environment buffs. Tough puzzles and problem-solving. Co-op highlights. We need puzzles that genuinely scratch our head and spent up to an hour on it. This is what Legend of Zelda was and should be in SK.

Wed, 11/23/2016 - 12:27

#12

Fangel

ehhh

See, I think more complex puzzles should be involved, however this game revolves around combat pretty heavily. Spending an hour on a puzzle isn't fun. Spending 2 seconds on it isn't fun either. Having more puzzle elements in the game that can be used to get extra loot or bonus combat areas would be perfectly in-line with how the game acts right now.

Wed, 11/23/2016 - 13:58

#13

Varriscious

<!>The Demon Hound, Recon Ranger Niro<!>

To the past posts about Edgy-ness, we, the Recon Rangers, pretty much fill in the dark stuff about this game. We are, the dark side, of the Spiral Order.

Search

How Spiral Knights could benefit from "borrowing" ideas.