Lower level compounds are mostly fine but my issue is with the more advanced ones. Teir 3 compounds are a pain. It's so frustrating to be going strong through the clockworks on elite and then you hit a compound and suddenly you're mobbed with 10 enemies that look easy to fight until you wack them and discover a way too beefy health bar. That coupled with the little bit of input lag Spiral knights seems to have regardless of the network conditions makes the game go from enjoyable to not-so-fun in 2 seconds. It just feels like a weird difficulty spike in an otherwise smoothly scaling game.
Complaints that I've heard numerous times from anyone that grinds in the clockworks is that compounds,
Have too many enemies
Don't give enough loot
Just aren't fun
They feel like a relic from Ye Old Spiral Knights where the game was more pay than play. (It really does feel like it's made to mill through your mist/energy/sparks of life)
And I agree with these statements. My suggested change is to either add more loot boxes to the levels, tone down the number of enemies (Seriously there's only so many tiny slimes I can take), or give them lower health. Less frequent compounds could also work in my opinion.
Discuss in the replies.
I like compounds, they’re fun and challenging but the problem is why’re not very rewarding, in my opinion, everything should stay the same but the mini monsters now drop as much loot as a regular monster. This would balance the effort-to-reward ratio. More loot boxes are fine too, but I prefer more crowns/heat on levels with that many monsters. Making them weaker would make compounds way less challenging so I don’t support this suggestion.