Spiral Knights - My Feedback

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Sat, 04/27/2019 - 08:25

Kenpachi-Espada

Greetings, it is I, Gerudum! I have come to discuss how I feel about the current Spiral Knight Life, and what I would like to see changed.
Let's get straight to the point, I'll be reviewing everything I think should be changed or have a problem with. Anyone is open to discuss their problems or respond to other people's!

Crafting, Heating, and the Forge System

Orbs of Alchemy

The crafting system is in a pretty solid place right now, however, there are a few problems that I have with it. The first one is orb of alchemy drops. The rarity of orbs of alchemy isn't my problem it's how they overlap. Different tiers of orbs of alchemy overlap at different depths, so if you get an orb to drop, theres no guarantee it's what you want. For example: eternal orbs start dropping at depth 15! That's not even tier 3. When I go to farm elites, it's very annoying to start getting eternal orbs when I dont need them. Same goes for advanced. They also overlap with elites at a few depths. I go to farm advanced and sometimes get elites. It's really annoying and if it wasn't like this, it would save a lot of time.

Fire Crystals

Now with fire crystals, it's not the first few levels of crystals that are problematic for me. It's the last level of crystal, radiant fire crystals. They don't reliably drop until the last few depths of the clockworks. Depth 27 and 28. They sometimes appear in 25 and 26, but it's pretty rare. Also shining fire crystals are still dropping a lot in this range, which decreases how many radiants I could be getting. Furthermore, it takes a long time to get to these lower depths, if you're farming via arcade you're investing quite a bit of time for a chance at radiants. It just sucks. All of this adds up to a really long radiant fire crystals grind.

Valestone and Moonstone
Short and to the point. Valestone and Moonstone literally has no use. Because prestige also has no use. All prestige does is give you a fancy little icon next to your name, nothing that affects gameplay, so what's the point of grinding prestige? Valestone and Moonstone used to be used in a system called gate creation where players could influence what kind of levels generated. After it was removed, valestone and moonstone were reduced to prestige minerals... Unless you're bringing us new pets please give us another use for these crystals.

Balancing

Armors

So armors. There's 2 armors that are really above the power curve. Chaos set and Black kat set. I dont have a big problem with black kat set because it's really hard to obtain. However, chaos set is an easy to obtain armor and isn't difficult to learn. You trade off status defect for insane power. Also Chaos is the only set that gives Charge Time Reduction to swords. That's pretty sad for people who want to build a defensive charging sword build. Personally I would probably nerf chaos damage bonus to low, but I would want to see other armors get buffed instead. The meta is pretty stale with everyone using chaos set. Black kat is still kinda rare with how hard it is to obtain and as I said before I don't have a problem with that. I just want something to promote using other armors, and can we please get a sword charge time reduction set that isn't chaos?

Weapons

Mmm weapons. Here I'm just going to list off every weapon I think has problems.

Flamberge and Rigadoon - Status Chance too low

Brandish Lines - Split Normal Damage makes them do too much damage against enemies they should be weak against

Troika Lines - Completely outclassed by sealed sword, sealed sword does everything it can do and better.

Winmillion - Stops at 4* which limits its damage potential. Knockback on big projectile is weird, I think the hitbox on the charge swing is also pretty weird, missing at even point blank sometimes.

Wild Hunting Blade - Even though it has no status, does the same damage as Dread Venom Striker.

Antigua Lines - Outclassed in damage by basically any other gun.

Tortogun Lines - Charge attack shards can't spawn directly on top of enemies, knockback from shards landing makes it hard to get the damage over time effect.

Catalyzer Lines - Hard to use in parties

Blast Bomb Lines - Some of them stop at 4*

Levels
No, I'm not going to ask for new levels. There's a few things here that make me sad. For one, theres a ton of mission unique levels that are really fun and cool. However, they never appear in arcade, ever. There's too many levels to count, but if these got added to arcade it would really spice up gameplay and increase the possibilities endlessly. Secondly the blocked off area in The Jelly Farm, this is where the giant green jelly used to be housed, but it was blocked off because it was too hard for new players. I think it could be brought back now that everyone is better at the game. Finally, shadow Lairs. These beasts are way too expensive! It costs 1800 energy just to play one and the rewards are not worth it. They are a lot of fun but are not accessible for the average player. In my perfect world, they would be free and you'd have to reach the core to access them. However, they probably won't happen. I would really like to see shadow Lairs become more accessible so more people can enjoy them.
Conclusion
I believe that is everything I wanted to talk about! I hope you guys read this, have a nice day.

Sat, 04/27/2019 - 14:10

Bopp

response

All of this has been discussed heavily, but of course you can discuss it some more. I generally agree with all of your points, but some of them are much more important than others: Radiants and armor, in my opinion.

The Orb of Alchemy thing doesn't bother me much. Higher-star Orbs cost much more energy, so in a sense the game is being generous in giving them so freely. Lower-star Orbs can be purchased easily.

The scarcity of Radiant Fire Crystals is a major concern among the players, and I do wish that Grey Havens would lessen it a little.

Making Valestone and Moonstone useful is a very low priority. You are correct that prestige is cosmetic. But cosmetics are a huge part of this game, so don't ignore them as a motivator for players.

Yes, armor should be balanced. The imbalance has grown worse over the years because of various buffs, nerfs, and rule changes.

Yes, weapons should be balanced, but it's a lower priority than armor. Players happily use Antigua-line guns, even though they are weak.

The fact that some content is mission-only (e.g. Arkus) doesn't bother me. The fact that some content is Arcade-only (e.g. danger rooms) doesn't bother me.

Sat, 04/27/2019 - 22:34

Top-Platinum

Antigua is weaker, but got

Antigua is weaker, but got more bullets and longer range. Don't forget the range especially.

Sun, 04/28/2019 - 02:03

Fehzors-Forum-Alt

Though some of your points are poorly thought out, you aren't wrong in that these are indeed some perceived issues the game faces

For instance, you want veilstone to do something, but is it really necessary for them to do something new? Why not just remove green and blue minerals instead? And in what way does finding eternal orbs determine the drop rate of elite orbs? The same goes for other drops as well.. would you be happier with less if it didn't mean more elite orbs etc? Radiant crystals are meant to slow down players, and most never make it to five stars. Why do we need less of a grind in a game where the only play element is grinding? Why not just more areas? Your post, like so many others, is useful for the wrong reasons- it shows how you perceive the game, rather than critically thinking about it.

I think the main take away however is that none of the things you mention are prize boxes.

We'll see changes like the ones you desire when the developers are able to sell us content successfully.

Optimally, we would pay for blue and green pets first, and then they would get added into the game at a later date with a different skin on them.

For this to happen, players need to realize that it's OK for the devs to release formerly paid content to the wild. They're starting to do this with former costume items, like skolver slippers.

The other thing that needs to happen is for players to accept and predict this new model of payment, where paid players get their content a few months in advance and everyone else gets it for free a few months down the line.

The last thing that needs to happen is for the developers to be willing to try this, and to realize that they can produce something a LOT more valuable than cosmetics.

They likely don't see this for a number of reasons- Operation Crimson Hammer not bringing in enough revenue to warrant more expansions. The game being harder and harder to add onto. Levels being costly to make and hard to package. But when they do see this, if they do see this, things will be much different.

Tue, 04/30/2019 - 14:15

Mrsnippy

I think the orb and fire

I think the orb and fire crystal systems and drop rates are fine as is. Sure sometimes it's hard to get enough rads, or sometimes you get an orb that you didn't need at the moment, that's not a big deal, imo.

As for the armors, and to me this is the most important point by FAR, you can't power curve an MMO down. You can't nerf the best armor in the game 5+ years after the fact, that would be the worst thing for character progression this game has ever done. You're correct in saying that armors are stale because 99% of them are useless, but trying to fix this through nerfing chaos would be very, very, very stupid.

The only option to fix armors is to tune other armors up, not tuning chaos down.

Tue, 04/30/2019 - 20:03

Kenpachi-Espada

Response

@Promos-are-Content
Yeah, there really isn't anything to say against promotions. Grey Havens probably doesn't have many other money options at the moment, we don't know how well supply depot specials are in motivating players to buy energy. Promotion boxes seem to be the only good money making option . DLC would increase playerbase and probably bring hype but, the problem with that is that they are one-time purchases. So there will be a maximum amount of money a particular DLC could generate. For example: if we had a new DLC come out for 7 USD or something, and the game had 500 active players at the time of release. The maximum possible money made would be more or less 3500 USD before taxes, but they probably wouldn't get near that, not everyone is going to buy it or be able to buy it, after all. After the initial hype, money gain would be slow. So i guess we just wait for Grey Havens to get into a comfortable situation.
@Mrsnippy
True, the best thing to do would be to buff other armors. Having veterans suddenly become weaker out of nowhere would be detrimental the playerbase and would also screw over people who were in the process of making Chaos Armor line. Hopefully, somewhere down the line we can get changes to other armor sets.

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