I'd totally be fine, and probably play the game more, if they incorporated the old elements of the game ALONG with the rarities.

For the mineral part, I'd also totally be okay with adding it back into the game, but I'm pretty sure they removed it because only valestone and moonstone would be deposited like, ever, because of Battle Sprites, so Three Rings(at the time) had to remove it, because there would only ever be like, freeze strata.

It seems like most of your issues are systems that promote microtransactions. Unless GH gets hosting in magical christmas land where server time is free, I don't see them supporting anything that's going to reduce microtransactions.

Sure, players started quitting after the removal of Mist, but consider also that Sega eventually was running the game with just an art team (all the devs quit or something), meaning no new content for a long stretch of time. The current system has issues, but it's not like the previous one didn't. Also, even if ME stopped people from sitting down and playing SK all day, it wouldn't prevent them from playing other games.

Mist Energy forced someone to pay into the game for you to progress. No matter how you parse it, the game forced the userbase to buy into their game. Now-a-days, the game has taken a better approach - you pay with your dime, or you pay with your time. In the past you couldn't even "pay" with your time - the game turned into an interactive chatroom after an hour or two of play. This causes players to view the game as money grubbing since it's demanding they pay to keep playing, so they stop playing.

Mist energy turned off a HUGE portion of new players. Almost every friend I introduced to the game back then stopped playing after one or two sessions. Now however? Most of those players have reached vanguard and have a generally positive experience with Spiral Knights. They aren't playing every day since they aren't heavily invested in it, but it's not just "some cash cow" to them anymore. This means they're more likely to tell their friends about the game, which means more players in the game, and more players in the game means more people willing to spend money in the game, etc.

Money used to be mandatory. Now it's an option to speed up your progress.

Energy used to be used for heating. How? You paid for elevators - heating was never free. Now energy can be used to level up your gear through fire crystals. The issue with fire crystals is that they only drop a fair amount on the elite difficulty, and they cost far too much on the supply depot at higher star levels. Lowering supply depot prices and/or standardizing rarity drop rates across difficulties would prove a much better solution (however increasing chances for leveling up gear to be something like 80% 90% 100% would be cool, if it's 100% across the board we'd need better incentives for higher levels of crystal usage).

Energy used to be used for reviving. "But Fangel we could health share!" ... Yes you could, but a rapidly increasing energy cost loomed over your team at all times. Your opinion on difficult content would change drastically under the old system - paying $5 per revive after paying 10 energy to go down several depths wasn't sustainable. The emergency revive + spark system has made content significantly easier, and lowering a revive from thousands of energy to a maximum of 50 per revive was a good change.

As a side note, you can purchase 10 sparks of life for 200 energy in the supply depot when in haven. 20 energy per revive plus many more for free if you play well is fair, however I would prefer for sparks of life to drop more frequently on lower difficulties and/or depths - it may encourage players to seek out easier levels when they can't take on tougher challenges without the help.

Energy used to be used for crafting. In fact, energy is still used for crafting since you can buy orbs of alchemy for the exact same cost as you could before. What about daily "free" crafting? Well with unlimited playtime, you now have to go play the actual game to get your "free" crafting. This encourages players to actually play the game instead of logging in for 5 minutes to craft twice then log off because now they can't play until tomorrow. Eventually you might find yourself in a situation where you have too many orbs of alchemy and no way to use them - for example, my 700+ eternal orbs of alchemy that are all bound to me.

- - - - - - -

So often I see posts talking about how the current system needs to be reverted, however when you compare the two systems, the current one is the only one that would've carried the game past the 5-year mark. In the past you got 100 energy every 22 hours for free that you'd have to use up since it wouldn't carry over. Now you can make 2000 in 5 days before getting to tier 3 (I had an alt of mine pull this off - I didn't even realize I had generated that much until the crown king feed told me I made 200k+).

On top of that, you can generate the old equivalent of ~267 energy by simply finding a single eternal orb of alchemy. At best you could generate ~763 energy a week under mist energy, meaning finding 3 eternal orbs of alchemy in a week's time is already more "energy" in your inventory than the old system.

Certain "workarounds" are looked upon with rose tinted glasses - some more than others. "Free" heating is something a lot of people don't understand was paid for by your energy fee. If you died on that level and didn't get revived, you'd end up paying 10 energy for no heat. It seemed passive but it was a paid service. Health revives are a feature that can be played around with, however they severely penalized teams with a single bad player while being indifferent to teams with fair players. An emergency revive per floor takes out the issue of one player sucking everyone else's health while still granting players upwards of a free extra 30 pips of health per floor. I wouldn't be against a reworking of revive mechanics but reverting isn't the way to do it.

The current system has taken energy out of the game's progress entirely. In what other game would you propose a change that made someone have to pay money that you could buy off them for in game money just so you could progress into the game? You wouldn't because changing a game to be like that seems absurd.

- - - - - - -

The old Spiral Knights was excessively more micro-transactiony - however the microtransactions were limited. You would buy "energy". You would spend "energy", and get in-game progress. Now we have an extra step added - buy energy, spend energy on rarities, use rarities to get in-game progress. Energy is no longer the "thing" you spend real money on - promotional prize boxes are. The sudden increase in options and steps has made the money a separate entity from the game, thus you see "purchase orb" rather than "spend energy", even if the prices are the exact same with literally zero differences besides two clicks added.

The game hasn't suddenly become more money grubbing. In fact, if anything, it's actually become less of a suck on your wallet. Words and phrases and a few extra steps have been added or moved around. I know I haven't spend a dime of my own money on progression in the game since 2013 when these changes all happened, instead using my money to support the game through promotional boxes I enjoyed.

I wasn't planning on making this but I kept adding more, so for you all at home:

TL;DR - The game is less micro-transactiony now since no money is required for progress - only faster progress. We used to pay for heating (elevators), reviving, and crafting, and now all we have to do is invest time in the game. We just have more steps involved and since we don't directly use energy now it feels like more purchases rather than spending a universal resource, which separates money from the game instead of linking them together.
New system good but grindy, old system meh and more money grubbing (but it has a handful of cool ideas which we hold onto when we should let go).

First of all, I'd like to correct you, that 333,200 / 10,000 = 33.32. I don't know what costs you took into account when making this number, but I'll accept it. I'm not going to respond to the "old days" economics, since I don't remember almost any of it, only the fact, that energy was about 5k at the time. Now with those things out of the way, I'll dive into your post, reacting on some of your lines.

...a single T2 or T3 run would get you easily enough crowns to buy yourself some energy as energy only costed 3k-5k at most.
I don't see a reason why would somebody do that, unless you don't want to stop playing with your friends. Actually, I remember doing something like this once. I farmed first two levels of Roarmulus Twins for energy in the Mist Well, then I bought energy for the crowns to refill the Mist Well and continued farming with little, but seemingly infinite gain. The next day Guild Officers removed the Mist Well.

This does not account for however lucky you may be if you manage to find orbs...
In such amount of full arcade runs, it would be more common to find an orb than not. Also, Eternal Orbs for some reason drop in whole Tier 3. If you find an orb in Tier 3, you can be almost sure it is Eternal Orb. But yes, it's simplier to not count with it, for several reasons, actually (I mean this seriously).

Shining crystals now cost 350 energy...
Fire Crystals are overpriced, yes. Nobody will tell you to go buy crystals, it's way more efficient to grind for them. Even Fangel pointed that out.

Let me tell you how much you had to pay to get from defender elite to champion without giving up any of anyone's hard earned money: roughly 14,000 crowns.
I highly doubt this number is correct. I'll go with 5k for 100 energy. You had to buy 2,800 energy for 4 items. That's about 140k crowns. (Actually I hit your numbers.)

You get this number if your patient, and smart. Being patient and smart in the new system is worthless.
Being smart in new system requires visiting levels that are most likely to give you what you need. If you need Eternal Orbs, you won't be farming Snarbolax all the day. Being patient requires you to farm the same missions over again and again. This is actually the same as always.

Now, unless you live, breath, eat, and sleep Spiral Knights, I'd like to see you get 333,200 cr in 10 days.
Now this is not as impossible task as you think. There are people with highly optimised loadouts for the Firestorm Citadel, which on Elite yields around 8k crowns/run. These people usually complete whole Citadel in about half an hour. This cost evenly divided between 10 days requires you to earn 33,320 crowns/day. This means, they have to do this mission about 4 times a day, what takes them about 2 hours. Not that bad, huh? But yes, not everyone is capable of something like that, definitely not your typical Defender Elite. But with some more time invested per day, earning 300k in 10 days should be still possible.

There's a really simple solution to this problem. Don't die.
That's easier said than done. I guess that means you've got no problems with putting missions on Elite for those extra possible drops. Yes, but really. There's little difference between the difficulties. When I tried killing Vanaduke without revives, I ended up about the same both on Normal and Elite. I guess I was just underestimating easier difficulty.

It just gave you a chance at finding stuff if you put it on the hardest difficulty, which is pointless to most people because everything is found behind a box that you get to after a big battle in which a lot of people die.
I guess you're talking about boss stratas. There are always some boxes before the boss. And if there's trouble with big fights, we've got Arcade, too. There you don't have to go through very difficult fights to get to boxes. But most people will keep playing boss missions, because they yield the most, yes.

...would you rather a peaceful chat in haven with friends that you will party with in the clockworks the next day, or a silent monster killing-fest with seemingly mute "friends"...
The best thing I can say here is that it is different. The previous system was more of this "chatty" aspect, simply because it forced you to stop (unless you wanted to pay). But you wanted to play the game, and the only thing left was looking around and starting some friendly conversation. I remember those hours with <10 Mist Energy, where I was talking with some people with my "decent" English. Yes, there was something about it. But silent monster killing-fest was there too. Noone could guarantee you, that people you'll play with will talk with you. (Just one quick flashback: I remember doing once Vanaduke. We were quite unexperienced party and Vanaduke showed it to us really well. I finally had enough energy to craft another 5* item, but that day, I was so determinated to success that I spent all of that energy for revives. We eventually managed to get to the final phase, and then we were screwed, because I had (shadow) Virulent Catalyzer. :D ) Then the new system came, busted the doors open and yelled: "Hey, we're giving you freedom, you can play as much as you want!" I felt the Mist Energy removal, for me, it was motivation to come back everyday and use the most of what game gave me for free, because I was limited and haven't got enough. Then, I was free, but without motivation as well. Also, I finally finished the 5* Hall of Heroes grind, because I got mailed all new mission rewards, which were just enough to complete it. Luckily, I had some 5* items already heated up. :) But you are really free. You can do whatever you want, whether it's chatting or slashing monsters in the Clockworks. You don't have to look for the most efficient route, and if yes, you're looking for different efficiency than before (payout for time invested as opposed to payout per depth, where you went for every crown possible). Grinding events like Kataclysmic Confrontation, Shroud of the Apocrea, Winterfest, Caketastrophe etc. have potential to drag many players in the game. You can also easily experiment with anything you want, because if you screw up, no problem, you can restart the mission/expedition and try it again/differently. Now that I do some data mining in Tier 1 (even on Normal), I can see how it was difficult during previous system. Also, there still are chatty people. I did end up few times chatting at the final depth of our expedition with some random person I just met, and those are one of my most enjoyable experiences. So, you can't really point with your finger and say: "This system was clearly better than the other." They are different and both have some pros and cons. Though I liked that team-based aspect of old revive system.

...that will likely never see the words vanguard over their knights...
As I explained earlier, it isn't that much of a difference. The bigest is doubled Energy price. And you can't really deal with that.

And finding a game of Blast Network isn't as difficult as meeting a Vanguard in Tier 1 Arcade, although I was never looking for something like that. Maybe, in the end, both aren't that rare.

Lastly, about SK community. You have no proof that people are leaving because the new system is clearly worse than the old. People are coming, play the game, but eventually get tired of it and leave. Some of them return one day, but some doesn't. This way game can't have constantly raising number of players. Games gain most of people's attention on launch, in my opinion. From that point, they may be growing, but eventually start dying out. SK is out here for 6 years and the last surge of attention seemed to be with the Battle Sprite update. I think there was also announcement on Steam, global announcement in Steam news window, that could drag new people in. Now the only ways new people can find this game are in MMORPG free-to-play lists or hear about it from friends. Forgive me this little bit of darkness, but end is inevitable. The community is bound to slowly die out and game to one day shut down its servers. You can see this everywhere, not only on games. So don't be too angry that there are less people. Even better, completely forget about it and enjoy the game for what it is. Maybe forget mostly about my speech of end.

http://steamcharts.com/app/99900#All - I've seen this link once on the forums. From this I've made my opinion about reducing SK population.

- Sincerly, the one, who was mentally driven to several extremes by this thread,
Vanguard Nitronicx

I still can't clearly see the point why are you putting Fire Crystals in that equation, other than proving that they are overpriced. They are never worth your money in the Supply Depot. When 50 Shining Fire Crystals cost 350 Energy and you can get the same amount of Crystals with about 2 Tier 3 Arcade runs (which on previous system cost 180 Energy), it's clearly an isssue. And you can get additional 10k-15k crowns with those 2 runs (very rough estimates). I also heard, that Forge exists because previously, you were limited with your Mist Energy (time) and with its removal, other mechanic slowing your progress was needed. Still, you can achieve end-game in Spiral Knights easier and faster than in most other MMORPGs.

Making a reasonable cost for 5* Hall of Heroes reflecting every factor is quite difficult, as it needs to account varying amounts of grinding/time players have for the game.

Now you say that about that graph, there seems to be something about it. Many people came. I ignore the initial drop, with new people, some may not like the game and leave very soon. But after 4 months the number was back at where it was before. One thing to note though, population decrease at the same rate after that spike as with the system before, if not less.

Also, I probably shouldn't say you should ignore the decrease of the players, because you shouldn't ignore the problem when you see it. These forums are here to discuss such problems, however this one is not simple and can't be solved for good, it will keep coming back. I was never thinking about this problem, because I've never felt there is too few players.

To reply to more unrelated things, I didn't wonder if you speak like that. Most of texts on these forums are for me simply "good" and occasionally someone not as experienced pops up with "not as good" text. There it ends for me. If you are comparing your style to mine, I simply happened to develop the one I use. Of course, there are some holes in my English and I believe it is far from perfect. I'm not from English speaking country and I don't speak with English speaking people, only chat on the internet (mostly in SK). And don't worry about those "emotional extremes." Extremes is actually exaggerated. You don't have to be sorry, because most of those "extremes" were actually good. I was pissed off a bit at the beginning, but that quickly disappeared, as I didn't want to be mean in my reply. As I continued I also felt quite nostalgic and in the end I felt... I don't know acutally how to name it, satisfied, maybe? It definitely felt great. Don't limit yourself because of me. I'll get through it.