Shadow Lair Payout Buff
ven, 08/09/2019 - 06:55
So, you guys are keeping Shadow Lair difficulty... but the reward is the same? I'm sorry, but that isnt going to sit well with the community. You need to increase the rewards in order for the community to be satisfied with this change. Here's my possible changes.
Change 1: Raw Payout
Simple, we increase the amount of crowns and rarities Shadow Lairs are dropping significantly. It's taking the average player tons of sparks to clear one, they need something to seek after behind it. Maybe change the red boxes to purple. Considering the playerbase is always starving for Radiant Fire Crystals, perhaps greatly increase that.
Change 2: New Drops
We could introduce new drops to Shadow Lairs, perhaps variant tickets as possible drops. Maybe drastically increased odds of getting an equipment piece to drop. What if each Shadow Lair had a rare trinket or something that could drop?
Change 3: New Craftables
Sanctuary hasn't had any new craftable since it's release. People like weapons, perhaps add some new variants of existing weapons here that are really good. Maybe you could even introduce a craftable mixer this way...but as if that would happen :C
Conclusion
I think all of these combined will make Shadow Lairs much more worth running considering you guys are keeping the difficulty, I hope you make some changes so many people are able to enjoy Shadow Lairs again. Remember YOU guys made it cost more time and money to do these things, but we're not getting anymore in return. Please consider these ideas.
lun, 08/12/2019 - 14:34
#2
I think a better idea is to
I think a better idea is to give a fair warning to new players much like the one they put up near Danger Rooms. I almost entered a Danger Room once before I got my Fang of Vog but the warning sign made me reconsider. In addition, the devs should disable sparks of life usage in Shadow Lairs so that if an inexperienced Knight enters one by accident, at least they do not burn through all their sparks for little reward at the end.
Example message: Warning! The path beyond this point is far more dangerous than anything you have previously encountered. By entering you will not be able to escape until you complete the challenges within. Turn back while you still can.
lun, 08/12/2019 - 14:57
#3
What?
I can understand having a warning sign but why would we want to disable the sparks? The Shadow Lairs are Tier 4 now so not being able to spark would make them virtually impossible or be a way to get gray hair for $5.
mar, 08/13/2019 - 09:11
#4
About a warning message...
I think it's worth noting you need 1800 energy to get a key unless you possess the superluck necessary to get one from a lockbox. Regardless of that, there's already a knight at the D23 Terminal who warns the player about the Shadow Lairs, isn't there?
On the original topic, it would be nice if Shadow Lairs actually had a payout that matched their difficulty. The SL gear being hybrids of existing gear was interesting and it'd be neat if there was more SL gear available. Particularly themed weapon sidegrades, like maybe a poison snarble barb.
mar, 08/13/2019 - 12:14
#5
My previous post
Sorry my previous post was in response to Divine-Slayerx' suggestion of making knights deal more damage in shadow lairs to compensate for the difficulty.
There are 2 ways a mission in Spiral Knights can be made easier: the first option is to complain on the forums about the ridiculously broken mission that feels punishing to the 8+ year veteran knight. The other option is practice. Danger Missions are hard when you first play them but for experienced players they have become routine. Grinchlin Assault retains its difficulty a bit better because it is only available for 2 weeks a year or so. Meanwhile FSC is routine for your average Defender Elite with a blazebrand and a strike needle in ash tail because they have played it more than any other level. The cost of the shadow key is what keeps Shadow Lairs from getting played over and over until they are mastered. With the amount of power creep over the years (Introduction of pet abilities, Black Kat, Brandish buffs, Gun buffs, new pickup items like damage boost, etc) it seems understandable that they'd want to raise the difficulty when some players were capable of soloing these without ever losing their emergency revive.
So with that in mind, I think these requirements must be met for an increase in rewards to be a good idea:
1. The run overall should not get more profitable in terms of crowns. We do not want to reimburse the Shadow Key completely. It was good the way it was: when counting the rare material and all crowns and other drops, you almost break even with the 450 Energy cost of the key in a group of 4. You make no money on the run but it is good fun and you get radiants.
2. The rewards should not be rare or unique drops that you only expect to get once every 5-10 runs or less. A player may do 20 runs and still not get the drop which will be frustrating to some players.
Some possibilities:
UV tickets: good reward, can only be consumed by players and doesn't add to the crown pool to buy more keys. Downside is that if these drop reliably, players interested in UV rolling will view them as crowns and their high value may possibly make Shadow Lairs a lucrative farm which must be avoided.
Gear drops: decent reward I suppose, but if you decide to use it, you probably were going to craft it at some point anyway. I think most gear drops will never get used by the Shadow Lair audience because they are all knights that already have a bunch of gear.
Radiant crystals: A good option, since they are bound items that only serve to encourage playing the game more with a wider variety of gear. Runs the risk of players grinding them for radiants, but I think that is acceptable since it wouldn't replace farming for crowns in other parts of the game.
New craftables: A good option. Perhaps "Void weapons" as reskins of Celestial Orbitgun, Celestial Vortex, Celestial Shield and Celestial Saber. Same functionality, and similar aesthetics but Dark and purple themed. I think the slashes of a celestial "void" blade could look really awesome. These could be very expensive (1 million crowns crafting cost and some new materials they could add in various levels of the clockworks so that players are encouraged to go out and hunt for them everywhere). These weapons should be permanently bound to the player, because that way they serve as an additional form of prestige for beating the Updated Shadow Lairs.
Shadow lairs are not fun now and require a lot of sparks to get through. I tried Snarby with my friends and almost ended up quitting in the final depth because of a shortage of sparks. Monsters barely drop anything useful and the payout is incredibly low compared to the amount of time, sparks, and ce wasted.
I would never go on a shadow lair after this experience if nothing changes.
However, there could be some kind of buff issued to weapons when entering a shadow lair to make things less dreadful.
Anyway, I completely agree with Rakaraka.