I've been playing Spiral Knights since 2013 and have accumulated an astounding (quite sad too) 8857 hours, according to steam. Prestige missions is something I've never missed out since I became a Vanguard in the game. I even have my own team of 3 other knights, all 4 of us are usually online when the prestige mission renews. Besides missing out the oddball release of Black Kat and cake missions, and that one month of moving, it's a daily grind I and the several other people perform religiously.

I'll begin with Arms Appropriation missions. To the unaware knight, "Arms Appropriation" mission is where the player is required to hand in a weapon in exchange for prestige points. Vanguards are required to hand in a 4* and a 5* mission every 10 days if said knight wants the prestige points. 180 points for a 4* and 300 for a 5*. The weapon being asked for is completely arbitrary and differs from player to player, which is the most mind boggling aspect of this mission. When Spiral HQ wants weapons to fight off the evils and further colonise Clockworks, wouldn't it make sense that these weapons are all the same? What's the point of taking a gun from player A and a bomb from player B; moreover, the Spiral HQ NPCs can't even be seen in combat with these weapons! So really, where did the weapons go? As far as I am aware, HQ knights only use the "starter" weapons (Nitronome, Leviathan Blade, and Valiance lines) with the odd one out hacking himself two fluorishes and equipped with a Blitz needle.

This might seem pointless, as prestige badges are capped at 45000 for the horsehead icon, but trust me, there is a small collective of us that wants to go far beyond the 45,000 "milestone". This is similar to people who collect seemingly pointless items such as gift cards and train tickets. The same applies to for example, "catching them all" in Pokemon, it's fair to say 70% of available pokes are just useless, but that's not the point. So please don't tell us "just stop doing it", that doesn't fix the issues with this archaic leftover of a mission. There's even this "unofficial prestige leaderboards" thingy, don't know where it is and I don't care frankly, I'm not here to brag, it's all fun numbers to me.

The knight only has 48 hours available to create the weapon required for the mission. Once the mission on the previous day renews, the knight is able to see what's there on the next day. When the following day comes, the mission comes into effect, where handing in the appropriate weapon will grant the respective prestige points. This is why the mission is archaic.

In the past, heating is simple. Forging a 4* weapon into 5* is a matter of one single FSC run with friends, where the knight will leech heat by reviving another knight who is cooked by fire traps. Half of the heat carried by the suicidal knight is transferred to the "reviver". This is no longer the case obviously. Heating a 4* weapon to level 10, without any doubles or 25% boost, requires about 2~3 hours, depending on skill. Asking most players to do this in just 2 days is simply unreasonable, let alone the fact that there's really no reward besides some points. For myself and several other knights, we do this once every 10 days; trust me, it's a pain.

Nowadays, we find ourselves throwing heat away on the first several days, and needing to spit out a 5* weapon in two days when the mission pops up. It's completely unreasonable.

To make things worse, in the past, the game automatically detects the weapon with the most heat. This resulted in me handing in the wrong weapon twice, and I didn't get it back after whining to the GMs. My other friend was able to get one of his back, so who knows; maybe I'm disliked or something. At least this is now fixed, the game detects the suitable weapon with the least heat. In a rush, things can go wrong!

To tackle this issue, I've made the following proposals:
1. Get rid of "Arms Appropriation" altogether and replace it with something else.
This is the best possible outcome, making the weapons require at least 6 elite orbs and 6 advanced orbs. It's even more costly for players that don't have a bunch of Eternal orbs lying around. As far as I am aware, the three of us who never miss these missions agree that this is the best possible outcome.

2. Reward the player with something on top of the prestige points
This is a more reasonable proposal. A reward should be given besides prestige points. For example:
a) Complete 4* Arms mission, reward x3 Elite orbs
b) Complete 5* arms mission, reward x3 Eternal orbs and a 2-day heat amplifier
This change will give people actual reasons to complete the mission. Maybe the knight has some kind of never used weapon lying around, selling it for 30k to vendors is a joke, unbind is a bigger joke, so why not just exchange it for rarities and a heat amplifier?

3. Allow the knight to hand in any weapon to complete the mission.
If the weapon required is totally arbitrary, why not just let us put in any weapon, as long as it meets the required "stars"?

4. Only ask for weapons Spiral HQ actually uses
The NPCs only use starter weapon lines, just ask knights for one out the three. This makes everything easier and more bearable.

5. Inform the knights of the weapon required before the mission
Since the missions are rotated on a 10-day-basis, why not just tell players which ones are required in upcoming missions? Instead of having 48 hours to finish the quest, knights get 10 days. This allows us to equip the 4* weapon required and effectively utilise heat from missions, instead of letting it go to waste.

Summing up, I'd like to see (1) happen, or a combination of the proposals following (1):
(2)+(4)+(5) -- Reward, only require "starter trio" lines, and tell the knights which one of the three is needed
(2)+(3) -- Reward, any weapon flies.
(2)+(3)+(4) -- Reward, any weapon of the "starter trio"
(2)+(5) -- Reward, inform knights of the required weapon, renewed on a 10-day basis for both missions.
If the (2) is too much, I and most will settle with either (5), (3), or (4). Anything but requiring a 5* to be made in 2 days is good. I personally think the reward proposal in (2) is a fair exchange for a 5* weapon. Maybe instead of 3 orbs, reward 2 or 1. With (2) in place, I don't mind creating a 5* weapon in just 2 days, halving the process means halving the boring Sewer Stash runs, fair enough.

Then comes forging and heating, forging as most probably will agree with me, is a pain. There's so many good missions to heat, but many doesn't have forging anvils. Leaving and coming back after forging is so inconvenient and annoying, most don't have the best load times. Why not just add forging anvils to every level of missions such as FSC? This isn't too much to ask for I believe.

Another annoying issue is forging crystal percentages. 100% should give a 100% chance of getting a heat boost and a high percentage of doubles. I've heated many weapons and landed on Z-E-R-O 25% boosts, this just makes me mad. There should also be an option to use more heat crystals to forge a weapon at say 95% heated, or what I like to say "a pip off". Sometimes the required heat left isn't even visible, having to finish an entire level to get a 99% heated weapon to 100% is a major inconvenience.

Requiring a 4* weapon to reach level 10 makes no sense to me. A 4* weapon at lv10 is more powerful than a 5* weapon until it reaches lv5 or 6, if I can recall correctly. Kind of baffles me, for weapons like Blitz, keeping it at 4* lv10 is just fine, the difference is one charge... what sense does this make? I think the level of upgrade for 4*-5* should be decreased to 7 or 8, where it's perhaps a bit more powerful than a fresh 5* lv1 weapon. I understand the difference is huge for some weapons such as Brandishes, but those are just special cases really.