Okay so the armor hiding under costumes thing is actually a great idea for shaking up the metagame. Since you don't know what armor your opponent is wearing you may have to bring a variety of weapons to fight them. However, this makes it more annoying to build effective LD Loadouts. How do you build for a meta-game that you don't know? I do however really like the costumes idea and feel like it should remain as a periodic game-mode like hazardous lockdown.

I don't really see a point in temporarily turning-off this "inspect" option as many LD players already know what weapons each other use and this will only affect the people who use "inspect" to show off their gear.

I like how I can wear a costume now but it doesn't really change anything with LD.

I think Top-Platinum said it best regarding costumes in Lockdown, being able to show off your costumes is a good thing. Winning matches of Lockdown really is not the top priority for Lockdown-focused players, its more about the Lockdown community itself and showing off how good you are. To be able to do well and have a personal look while doing it can only be a positive thing for the game mode.

As for the mixing of tier 1 - tier 3 I don't see a problem with it, again as Top-Platinum said, "It doesn't split the community since tier 2 and 1 were totally dead." If people really wanted to play tier 1 or tier 2 Lockdown, they would find a way (Probably using the EU server or do a guild match, a simple and easy fix for determined tier 1 and tier 2 advocates).

The only problem I can imagine is how this would feel for new player, and to involve the perspective of new players should be a top priority I believe for the game.

I don't think its improbable to think of a scenario where a new player with a 3* set queues up for a match of Lockdown, unaware that the 3 different tiers are mixed together. Before this change they would just sit in queue forever and probably give up and move on continue the game by leveling up their equipment before they finally reach that 4* item to get them into a match. Now if this change were to go through a new player may just pop into a 5* game unaware of the spanking they're about to receive from the enemy team or the flame they might get from angry team members upset that got this Knight Elite on their team.

Lockdown is a fun and unique game mode for players who are tired of the PvE grind; but I don’t think Lockdown would be fun if you feel useless and die in 2 hits since you like the proper defenses and the ever-so-present Penta-Heart Pendants.

Maybe a possible solution to make new players more in tier 3 Lockdown would be if they had no PvP marked Loadouts they get a temporary Azure Guardian set with Leviathan Blade and Valiance? I don’t know anything about coding so this may be totally impossible, but I think it would be like how in the rank 2-2 missions where we got a temporary battle sprite. That set would give them basic defenses and the ability to use weapons they are already familiar with (proto blade and gun).

With this, new players could feel more useful and give them a chance when they play a match of Lockdown right from the start of their adventure since the learning curve of Lockdown is very high. It would also open them up to seeing new armour (not American sorry) and weapons other players have that they may have never thought to build before since let's be honest, the number of new players I see building the garbage Cobalt with caliber and blaster lines as their endgame set is alarming (new players IMO should be building into a Divine Veil, Dread Skelly Suit, Dread Skelly Shield, Glacius, Acheron and Strike needle, if u wanna fight me about that mail me 😤).

Of course, this is just an idea and is not the final say of how to balance the learning curve of low-ranked players to veteran knights, would love to hear other ideas to balance the learning curve if this change were to go through.

TL;DR I think these changes are for the best for Lockdown and for the game as a whole. It lets veteran players be flashier and gets new players into a new experience earlier. I’m for this change!

Edit: Some grammar and word choice.

I'm a casual player who consistently plays Lockdown, I quickly noticed that health bars of teammates in Lockdown were removed and this partially impacts how I play and may impact how others play. I'm poor at attempting to explain through things so I'll do as best as I can.

Health bars in conjunction with the movements of teammates on the mini-map, overarching sound effects, helped gauge how our team was preforming and helped give us an idea what is going on with our allies. It gives us an idea of where to go to and how to act and to help specific allies and support on points.

I'm sure another user would be able to give a better in-depth explanation of this.

There is a lack of communication in Lockdown since players are mainly locked to text chat which they can't do while they're off in combat, and chat mainly takes place in peace or while a user is dead. Any bit of information we get on teammates is useful, gives ease on deciding how to play, and makes the game more interactive.

Some users will prefer this change so there's less "clutter" on screen but I'm sure there will be a decent amount of occasional players who would like having the teammate health sidebar.
EDIT: I also realised that this doesn't allow us to see what the classes/shields are of our teammates.

It's very hard trying to keep track of who's on what team since there's no indication in any player list of who is on what team.

Some feedback while trying it out today:

- The bar up top for striker and recon shakes vigorously when you are either speed boosting or cloaked. For me it's fairly annoying to have something jumping around that much when you're trying to focus on certain areas of the screen.

- I'm not sure if it was intentional or not, but team mates no longer show on the left side of the screen. This could be a plus for strikers and recons to have more visibility on the screen, but for guardian I feel like knowing your team mates health is somewhat critical for how you'd generally play and knowing who needs shield/healing etc.

- There seems to be a bug where if you have a costume shield on it will mess up the guardian, recon, and striker abilities. A normal blue shield as if you were in PvE appears when you go to use your ability. I'm guessing it shouldn't be like that. But then also your shield won't go down, but does deplete, so you don't know when your ability is about to run out.

Let me get this straight- you're taking new players, who have no idea what to do or how to play, and making them go up against seasoned veterans who they cannot affect with their weapons? And you're asking them to sit through a large number of games like this? Because no one is playing the early tiers because there aren't enough new players to form a community of new lockdown people?

Like. The bottom line is that PvP needs a constant stream of capital P for players to function. Maybe to fix lockdown you could............... do something to make more people play your game? Like. A solid stream of new levels designed to keep people playing? Maybe throw in a balance update for swords, bombs, armors and shields, since those are kinda wacky and when the new people get here they're going to want to try out chroma suit or something? I don't know, you're a smart and capable entity of some sort, you can figure it out.

The same weapons and armor prevail, so the costumes don't do a whole lot when it comes to hiding gear.

Negative:

Taking a fellow players name away devalues them as a competitor or teammate further, leaving even more so the focus on self in regards to damage numbers as opposed to victory in a team game using team tactics. Lockdown is already a game where pride and big numbers develops a type of "well it works for me and makes me feel better, why shouldn't *I* do it?" This is a horrible unlivable philosophy which lifts the self above all other people. The same logic is applied to theft, r4pe, and drug addiction. GG.

New players will get devistated especially to those that have been playing 6 years or so.

From a performance perspective, all the different auras etc make Java even more of a Power Point presentation to those that have lesser computers.

Positive:

It's prettier.

The added value of having anyone on any tier level play provides a minor increase in players, but I think this is more because it's something sort of new to lockdown and won't have much staying power.

Newer players have access to krog coins earlier, but having personally sped run to 5* gear from scratch multiple times this is more of a distraction then anything.

I like the steps forward we're making but there is a better way to do it from an ld players' view, and I'm sure this would appeal more to pve only players too.

Costumes are cool, but we need a way to know what armor they're using either way. Up to yall to find a way to do that. I liked the no costumes rule personally.

All tiers in 1 lobby is an iffy choice, but if you made all gear have the same amount of stats on all ranks of weapon or armor, like wolver having the same amount of defense as skolver but the bonus stats like wolver having sword damage increase low and skolver having sword damage increase medium staying the same. Vog for example would follow the same path, but the damage is replaced with attack speed increase and the piercing is swapped for elemental. All status resists would stay true to the gear. Weapons would function exactly the same, statuses and UVs would stay the same for the designated weapon, but the stats itself would be exactly similar to the weapons at lower or higher ranks in it's crafting branch.

I dont mind the removal of the hp meters on the left side of the screen. But please put an hp bar above their head with their name.

I would like the map and compass to display enemies that are not cloaked, on a teammates screen, or firing guns or placing bombs.

Also for balancing purposes, additional uvs over armor bonuses or trinket bonuses will max at medium for purposes of not making Black Kat, Chaos, Snarbolax, Skolver, and Vog severly overpowered.

Also PLEASE make it so either EVERYONE gets 2 trinkets of their choice or NO ONE gets trinkets.

In conclusion, the doors for entry to lockdown are far too high. UVs and double heart trinkets tear at the lockdown scene's survival.
I care deeply about lockdown, and even if this is created as a second playlist I will be very happy.

Just got back from playing two games as a T2 player. My loadout was sealed sword, antigua, fencing cap and jacket. I have very little experience in lockdown, but a LOT of experience with PvE. All of which are commonly used pieces in lockdown as 5* weapons. I primarily accomplished nothing, and felt bad for bringing the team down.

I could-

1.) Use the guardian shield... but since I died in like 2 sword hits or 5ish gun hits there was very little point to this beyond shielding team members, who failed to protect me given my small health pool and the fragile nature of the shield.

2.) Death mark people to remove their defenses... this proved rather pointless, as it gave away my position and subsequently lead them to destroy me. Further, attempting to help team members with my death mark didn't appear to accomplish much due to the fast paced nature of lockdown and the not so fast paced nature of the death mark, which as previously stated alerted other players to my presence and got me killed very quickly.

3.) Attempt to fight alongside my tier 3 comrades.... with no way to see enemy health, finishing off other players proved nearly impossible. At best, I was a goofy distraction that the opposing tier 3 lockdown players ignored.

Should you choose to pursue this further I would suggest-

1.) Revamping the recon class massively...

2.) Improve the guardian shield...

3.) Allow strikers (and other classes) to do damage without using weapons...

4.) Adding more things for T2 players to do...

I'm not saying that you need to follow this to the letter, mostly just shooting some ideas.

+ Being able to play with the same outfit as you do in pve
I don't wanna have to get accessories for my Lockdown gear too, that's stupid. I have my costume set already in pve and I wanna be able to use it everywhere.

+ Being able to hide what helmet and armor you wear
This game (Lockdown) does not allow for you to be protected against more than 2 defense types at once, which means there's always 2/4 weapons that will deal alot of damage to you even if you maxed out your UVs. Hiding your helmet and armor provides a chance for enemies to use a weapon you have defense against, which makes it more worth to invest in armor defense at all. Not to mention the surprise factor when you all of a sudden can mist walk bombs without the obvious gear change to for example mercurial to walk a shock bomb. Also you could go around being immune to driver status and no one would know, thinking they're just unlucky.

+ No team member names constantly on the screen
The unnecessary UI takes up alot of space on the screen, I would encourage even more things taken away for space to see your surroundings. If I really want to see who my team mates are, I'll just check in the social tab LOL.

+ Allow low tier players in
Some times there aren't even enough people online to play a 4v4 game, so I bet anyone would take easy targets over nothing at all.

- The striker booster meter is obviously graphically bugged, so no need to talk about it as it will be fixed anyway.

- There was times the color of team mates were wrong. Might wanna fix that too.

- The guardian shield, as well as the striker booster, sometimes looked like a regular shield bubble from pve. Also obvious graphical bug.

To sum it up: All intentional changes are very much welcome, all graphical bugs are easy to fix for you.

All that's missing that auto target is still there. And this whole update, together with hardcore weekends, proves you can get creative with ways to have the players decide costumes, auto target and UI with voting or lobby starting before the game starts. Just a simple check box list when you are first to queue or want to make a new lobby have options for these things.

My most basic thoughts here after playing some games yesterday:

- I don't think removing tiers was a good idea. Tier 3 gear can be hard enough to reach for new players, let alone optimal 5* PvP sets. Tier 1 and 2 players will certainly be able to find games more easily, but it's probably not worth it because of two problems. The first is that it will be hard for the lower-tier players to even have fun when their attacks hardly hurt T3 players, and they get killed in 1-3 hits (maybe more or less depending on their class) in return. The second is that higher-tier players will be fundamentally weighed down with lower-tier players on their team, which, aside from making it harder to win, I could see leading to toxicity towards the low-tier players.

Now, with all of that said, I can see the benefit in making it easier for low-tier players to find games of Lockdown. Still, I would suggest finding a different way to do this besides mixing everyone into the same pool. A few ideas:
1) Matchmaking could force an equal amount of players of each tier to be on each team, using the standard tier-sorting system. This would leave less reasons for flaming, but it's still not a perfect solution. There's a pretty big difference between 4* and 5*-equipped knights in PvP. This would also lead to longer queue times, albeit not as long as normal Lockdown.
2) Others have said this already, and it's not exactly directly making it easier for low-tier players to find a game, but another solution would be to find a way to increase the incentive to play PvP. There are a lot of ways to do this, but I think I'll just leave it to the actual game developers to determine the best way.

- The enabling of costumes is certainly nice in that it adds variety to what people are wearing in Lockdown, more than just seeing everybody wear the "meta" armor sets. I'm still undecided on if hiding the armor sets people wear is good or bad for game balance, though. It certainly adds more strategy in that you can't be sure of an opponent's capabilities and weaknesses just from a quick look at them. It should generally be possible to get an idea within a couple of interactions with that opponent, though. Still, it's possible to change loadouts mid-game, and it could get confusing dealing with an opponent who repeatedly switches their resistances around to deal with your damage types and status effects. I think this could lead to a more interesting and thoughtful gameplay experience, but if it gets to be a problem, one solution to consider could be forcing "Allow Full Inspect" to be on during Lockdown games.

Others have already touched on the various bugs, so I won't mention them in this post. Overall, it's nice to see that changes to the gameplay experience are still being considered, and I think it will result in many improvements down the line. Hopefully this feedback ends up helping in at least some form!

Echoing the positive thoughts expressed thus far. Strutting my snazzy costumes during matches feels awesome - and the removed tier restrictions should help newer players with farming coins and getting a feel for the game mode. At the very least, I'd love to see the costume changes become permanent.

Thanks for taking the time to experiment with some tweaks in response to player feedback! Much appreciated.

@Fangel so to enjoy the game you have to keep spending energy on anything it seems. I'd rather choose the class for free like it always been which is perfect this way, but only at the start of the game, during the whole match you can't change it. Imo unecessary change but would be interesting seeing this added.

About trinkets trust me, without trinkets you die way too quickly especially as striker. I make you a example, I get charged by a storm driver (probably by you), not only as a striker with 2 trinkets my hp would get very low already, but also I'd get shocked and basically I'm already dead. Or I get combo'ed by any heavy, my hp literally flies away and either I stay in the battle close to die or I'm forced to run away and heal myself. Without trinkets you really die too quickly man, currently with 2 is perfect, not too much and not too low, instead of dying instantly making it very annoying and boring, it gives you one more chance to either fight or retreat, please don't make lockdown like call of duty with fights of 1 second where people die instantly, it never been a good gameplay mechanic and never will. Imagine no trinkets in a game with people using arcana. YYEEEEAAAHH good luck with that, few shots and you are 1%/DEAD already, that's a lot of fun bud hell yeah goddamnit let's goooo. *dies inside*
If the hp being too high was really a issue in lockdown, then I could mention the guardian having their shield buffed and with 2 trinket slots actually being very tanky, unless you are skilled and using powerful weapons. 2 guardian close eachother is already hard af to kill them unless you are not alone, but hopefully gvgs and team work in general isn't a thing in lockdown, because if they were and people used more guardian class, you'd have a very hard time fighting enemies, like almost impossible to break their defense. And no, I don't want this to get changed currently, it's still fun and challenging fighting guardians, but just saying if I had to "complain" about HP related things, guardians are very strong, but it's fine currently.

Some people actually were against hp trinkets only because it costed keeping the slots. Just keep in mind that if trinkets slots would get unlocked permanently for free by for example playing ranked missions, you'd proably have to spend more in something else, for example in weapon slots. Actually weapon slots could be more useful than trinket slots especially in pve, and raise it's price from 250 to idk 450 or 500, but trinket slots meanwhile being unlocked for free and forever. Imo would be cool, also because at low ranked missions you get trinkets as a reward but can't use them unless you spend energy, and either you open your wallet or spend all of those few crowns you have and make you broke instantly, MEANWHILE those trinkets being totally crap. I always liked the idea of free trinket slots, Imo is a fair thing. The only loss from this is that lockdown users doesn't have to spend energy anymore for them. NANI?! Doesn't sound like a good change for grey havens.

TL;DR Free classes but locked during the rest of the match would be a unecessary but cool change imo. No/limited trinket slots would make it a horrible experience, always low hp after one single hit and dying after a simple combo or VERY FEW shots from an arcana as a striker. The solution isn't killing hp trinkets for balancing out the game, it's... balancing the game, the stats, everything. Something way deeper than simply hp trinkets. I get the curiosity in changing things and seeing if they work out, but right now except few things the game feels ok, no need to change it drastically.

If we had to balance stuff, then the first thing and the most logical one that comes in mind would be nerfing the swings of the acheron and ofc keeping it's charge damage since it doesn't inflict status on charge. Easy thing to do.

I highly agree on what theirillusion and dutch-oven said also. The idea of voting in the waiting room for enabling/disabling or changing things sounds great and probably would make everyone happy (finally). Btw @Fangel I didn't want to go against you, but as a person that plays mainly lockdown and as a striker but sometimes switching to guardian, the things you said Imo would really make things worse, probably only "casuals" would find those changes interesting, but I'd only suffer from this. Spending for changing class and especially as a striker dying too often from simple combos, gun charges and very short fightings due to hp being too low for everyone.

I know plenty of people that doesn't care about pvp but loves pve, so imo grey havens should instead focus on pve and adding more things that would make them earn money. People would come back knowing spiral knights got new missions and levels. A new dlc sounds great to me, the devs just needs to sit and work on it, and since this is a mmorpg then make some things hard to earn and craft, so you'll see people grinding and spending money to be quicker. At the end of the day this is what really matters here, money. Only going for cosmetics imo is a cheap way to keep the game running, you also have to give players a reason to keep playing the game, not just milking out the few left while seeing the current players count falling down. Hope I didn't sound too rude but this is how I think it is, gotta shake things up. The costume allowed in lockdown for example is to make people care more about costumes and accessories, which is cool btw don't get me wrong, but only focusing on cosmetics? eh... I hope they got some ideas stored. They also still have some unused items and enemies in the game files, for example those golden enemies. With enough creativity they could pull off something cool and make people grind and spend again. They could even add more items to craft in the current events, like new trinkets of tortodrones, black kat, pumpkin, apocrea... you get what I mean. Just needs to find ways to make new levels and items that also make them earn, not like the sleep update, I doubt it really did something there except simply adding items in hall of heroes and variety in arcade, people managed to craft them pretty easily by simply grinding. So many ways to keep the game somewhat alive and stretch it's lifetime and fill their pocket. But since I don't work for them and idk them personally, maybe in reality they work somewhere else and barely has time at all for spiral knights (and puzzle pirates). So eh. But I hope that devs reads this and somehow gets motivation out of this, spiral knights can still deliver.
(Yes kinda off-topic)

Im going to assume you've never played lockdown. The armor you are using is VERY important. There is a pretty dangerous fraction of the ld players who have chaos with double elemental max, making arcana near useless, like Armourer, but sometimes they use other sets, letting you build multiple loadouts to fight specific loadouts better. snarbolax using a total of normal high and shadow high will let you survive an extra acheron swing, along with normal max and shadow max on bk, even if the enemy is using full bk. Same thing applies to skolver, double piercing high lets you surive an extra btb or ff hit, even if they're using full bk. Skolver doesnt give gun damage bonus, so you shouldnt be very afraid of gunning from them. BK, Skolver/Snarbolax, Gunner armor with damage increase all change the general damage of each class of weapons seperately. The only unclear stat is ASI and status resistance. You fight them once and you'll have a general idea of what their uvs are. You have no idea what you're talking about. Hope this helps.

The LD changes are welcoming (and even more so after you patched the lag issues) and make LD feel like a fun game mode rather than 100% tryhard.

But still the game is not very friend towards new PvP players, especially those that are low tier...may as well consider adding certain pre-set loadouts for players that do not yet have 5* gear? The effectiveness of the gear can be somewhere between unheated and fully heated 4*, if it matters

Some more radical changes such as eliminating/limiting UVs/DMG buff stacking is good for me, as well as limiting the use of trinkets of strikers. But these changes may not be welcoming for some of the old LD players/players that only do PvP so that might come later

Another issue is whether the guardian shield strength scales with anything---or stays at original strength even if everyone's going tier 1 or tier 2 gear. If that's the case low tier LD can be quite painful

But overall pretty fun change and I see more people doing LD!

If we're going to throw 1* players in with people who have thousands of hours of game time, this is the biggest argument so far for normalizing weapon damage across tiers. I realize this is a massive amount of work and balance disasters waiting to happen, but it would be tremendously more friendly towards new players if their 2* flourish did the same base damage as a 5* Final Flourish.

Predicting armor from the number of hits it takes to kill them becomes a grey area when they DON'T have defense UVs. BTB/FF will kill Skolver, Snarbolax, Vog, BK all in 4 hits without UV's. Acheron in 3. This may create a problem in combat because you won't necessarily be looking at your health mid combat, removing the ability to understand how much damage they are hitting you with, which will often lead to having no idea what armor they are using. Unless they are using defense UV's.

Although I take back what I saaid about never having played lockdown. I messed around with your lockdown calculator a little. Good job, very accurate too. I'd never known the exact numbers, just percentages. Interesting knowledge.

Excellent fixing of the bugs.

To clarify, the players I worry about are mainly the ones that are mostly limited to three star weapons, perhaps they are starting to upgrade to 4 star but have not been able to heat anything or obtain armor with useful bonuses as even 3 star black kat is rare and expensive for them and other 3/4 star armors lack status resistance at a sufficient level, that sort of thing. Unless the game is changed, there's very little use putting them up against five star players.

The reason I worry about these players is because they are the future of lockdown, PvE, you name it. Gimping them would be like raising the price of education through the roof for future generations in America, causing considerable debt.

An intriguing fix for this situation would be to have lockdown take place at depth zero on normal mode, forcing some semblance of balance across star/heat level, though T2 may be wiser since 0/1 star gear is exceptionally powerful mechanics wise.

For the most part I want to say that both the changes are positive for Lockdown as a whole. The costumes helps me play more casually as I'm not trying to match my weapons against their defenses so I can actually take time to enjoy using one weapon rather than constantly switching them up, and the untiered does help more games to get started.

I will note that I see more players cycling through lockdown lately, likely in part to the untiered change. This is good because it means more games get started, but it also means that lockdown games can stop as suddenly as they start the moment one player starts making it unfun (most common "unfun" methods are: mist bombing a critical entry/exit point, spawn camping, low ping + high attack speed flinchlocking, and pulsar blockades). Certain "unfun" games can be avoided simply by walking away, but being spawn camped by a pulsar blockade and a mist bomb really isn't fun for either team.

I know that fun is subjective and that certain steps have been taken to circumvent certain methods (pulsar was nerfed, hazardous hardcore mode was introduced to prevent mist bombing the point as easily), however certain steps could be taken to counter spawn camping and flinchlocking higher pinged players, such as activating switches inside the spawn area that creates hazards or defenses to the spawn and extending invincibility frames on higher pinged players.

Basically, I believe every (intentional) change to lockdown thus far has been an excellent choice and does assist in making the game a better experience while keeping it fresh. However, I do believe that such changes should be optional for GvG games with some sort of way to select what options you want on or off, but in random teams it should remain as is.

EDIT: I actually really like the idea above of making coliseum games a daily prestige mission/option. That would encourage everyone to play more PvP and see more life in there, as well as get more "testers" for these experimental changes.

I don't know how I kept forgetting about it, but there is one other glitch due to costume shields being that if you have a costume shield equipped it will cause your "lockdown shield effect" to be invisible (at least to yourself, not totally sure if it's invisible to foes/allies) and be replaced with the standard "shield" bubble that you see in the clockworks. This only happens if you have a costume shield equipped and all effects related to the shield should still work as usual just without the visual effect to know if you're being helpful or not.

nice

nvm

Than-One is one of the reasons why lockdown is dead.