Spiral Knights - What would you want to see in a future update? (plus a guideline of how we may expect future updates)

What would you want to see in a future update? (plus a guideline of how we may expect future updates)

14 replies [Last post]

Fri, 10/23/2020 - 12:28

Fangel

With the recent update resolving the issues with shadow lairs, fixing a handful of bugs, and adding a new zoom feature to lockdown, it's clear that the style of updates for Spiral Knights has shifted. It's less likely we'll get a single, small change to the codebase at quick intervals (outside of perhaps largescale updates), and so I have a few pieces of speculation as to what types of update structure we can expect.

DISCLAIMER: Please note that this information may not be 100% factually correct. These are primarily assumptions I can gather into the workings of Grey Havens based on personal experience, the current state of employment in the United States, or information gathered from other players who have done a bit more research either based around individual staff members that have their name publicly visible via the game credits.

I feel to open, it's worth noting that Grey Havens is a small company. Before obtaining Three Rings staff that didn't go on to new things when SEGA shut the studio down, I can't imagine Grey Havens had more than ten employees. Their primary goal then, and to this day, is to maintain old Three Rings games and keep them running, which does not require an active development team, and likely only requires a part time support team.

Upon acquisition, the support team for Spiral Knights was cut from around 22 support members to around 6, with one of them being brought back on later. If each member were to work 4 hours a day, every day, then it would cover the entire 24hr cycle. But if you've sent a ticket in since the change over I can almost guarantee you that it doesn't feel like a 24hr coverage, which is definitely acceptable, but it's something to keep in mind. This would suggest regular times or days off (which is good, they deserve that time off), which to me, indicates a part time schedule.

In the United States at least, we have been slowly moving more and more towards a "gig" economy. For those out of the know, this basically means "don't have employees, have contractors" - think of Uber or any company that lets you "set your own hours". This is a way for a company to keep costs down while not binding an employee as hard to the company. This is great for part time work, but can get a bit tricky for full time work, especially because contractor costs are usually a fair bit higher than a standard wage due to the fact you only have them work until the job is done instead of just being on call all the time.

With how small Grey Havens was before acquiring the Three Rings staff and IPs, I can imagine a lengthy process where Grey Havens needed staff full time to aid around the clock with the transition and a few updates, but likely were planning to move staff to a contractor position after some time. This would also give various staff members the ability to find other work for their main source of income while still working on the game they love.

A common topic that shows up on all platforms of discussion about Spiral Knights is the topic of developers. We're pretty certain we had at least one developer working full time for several years, but currently we do not know of any developers working full time on Spiral Knights. While this may make some users upset, this doesn't actually mean that updates, patches, etc. are out of the question. Grey Havens seems to have a positive relationship with current and past employees (as far as I can tell), so it's fairly likely that even if they do not work directly for Grey Havens anymore, they could still score contract work with the company when they deem it necessary.

Until this last update, we didn't have any "proof" that this would happen. However, with updates to Three Rings github directories from a developer that used to work full time for the company, and the fact that they appear to also release personal projects still with this account (ie, it's not an account owned by the company), it's fair to assume that this last update was developed by a previously-full-time employee who was contracted on to perform an update per Grey Haven's request.

Since this past update was heavily inspired by requests from the community (see: shadow lair fixes) it's safe to assume that yes, Grey Havens does hear us about our complaints, however active work on the game may be less of a "they can do one simple small fix", and instead, we can expect updates based on a high hourly rate. Because of this, we should expect less frequent updates, but when we do get updates they will likely be several things bundled together that can be solved together relatively quickly.

Does this cut out the ability for us to receive entirely new content? Not at all, but making something completely new is definitely more expensive than fixing or adjusting something else. While this is the case with a normal company as well, it's even moreso showcased when a contractor is the one being paid.

- - - - - NOW TO THE ACTUAL QUESTION - - - - -

With all this background out of the way, what types of things would you like to see in a bundled update? What small things, such as bugfixes or less complex additions or changes, like a change in weapon behavior, would be fun to see all together?

Personally a few things I'd like to see would be:

A change or fix to the newly introduced Lockdown camera to make it more top-down than a wide view
Give the Lockdown Striker class -2 to all statuses
Change the effects of crafted health trinkets to be percentage based rather than flat health increases
Fix the damage numbers on Neutralizer to better reflect its statusless nature (currently it acts as if it has a status attached)
Change the Hunting Blade and Wild Hunting Blade's damage type to be purely piercing damage
Remove the Emergency Revive from the Elite difficulty, and make Sparks of Life drop more frequently on Normal Difficulty

I believe these changes would be perfect for a few hours of contracted work for a minor update. Obviously if there's any other adjustments, such as backend fixes or database changes, they would happen too, but for a front-end customer-facing update, I think these changes would be a good improvement without breaking the bank.

If you had to bundle up an update, what would you want to see? Keep in mind we're looking at fixes that would be a few hours of dev time. If your fixes can be made in only a few minutes, or take days or weeks to test and prepare, then try to add or reduce items so that it's likely only a few hours of dev time.

Fri, 10/23/2020 - 13:31

Slyqouta

not sure if should be in suggestions but here we go!

short things I would like to see are

1-go over the maskeraith haunted haze ghosts damage and make a few adjustments

2-do more with abnormal status's like making the deconstuctor do defense down or make the amputator do defense down or heart attack

3- modify the misplaced promissory note and put its effect on plate, skelly, magic robe, and jelly lines, also make versions of the trinket for other damage types

4-strap a electron charge vortex to the winmillions charge attack

5- make it so that vials and orbitals dont drop from loot boxes, only items like mecha knights, artillery strike etc.

6- make the elemental shield lines do the status that they are imbued with.

thanks for the analysis Fangel, down the road I would like to see a battle buddy of sorts, but I understand that would probably use alot of time resources to balance, but I can still hope.

Mon, 10/26/2020 - 10:14

Jessecho

Thanks for pointing out the

Thanks for pointing out the activity on the GH github. Here is a package of balance updates I think we should get as soon as possible:

1. Give the normal shots of Catalyzers small damage on first contact, and possibly some light damage over time for active tags. Put a weak Poison on Biohazard's normal shots and buff its charge shot. Buff the Neutralizer's charge further, add Stun, and increase its explosion radius to wider than Biohazard's, almost the same as a Blast Bomb's.

2. Remove Shard Bomb invincitinks and increase the damage of every statusless Shard Bomb.

3. Buff every Cutter's damage and add stagger to DVS's charge, possibly in exchange for higher charge time.

4. Change the Stun weakness on Starlit Hunting and Demo to Stun resistance. Add MSI low to Royal Jelly and Ice Queen, and MSI med. to Mercurial and Merc Demo.

5. Add back Chaos armor's Stun weakness.

6. Add MSI low to Mad Bomber.

7. Add damage bonus med and charge time increase low for all weapons to all Plate armors. Boost the health increase on Ancient and add a health increase to Ironmight and Volcanic. Add Curse resist to the Ironmight and Ancient sets.

Fri, 10/23/2020 - 23:25

The-Ancient-One

Personally. I think I'd like to see what the developers have in mind for Spiral Knights, rather than what the players would like to see. I think that listening to player feedback is a good idea, but that the players are typically wrong in their assumptions and that taking what they say and implementing it directly isn't necessarily a good idea. For instance, Neutralizer's damage isn't "statusless" it's the wrong tier. Like, literally bugged.

I'd also like to see an official discord that I can join, one that doesn't have despicable inhuman garbage presiding over it like I preside over the toilet after consuming a massive quantity of nachos from Taco Bell, but actual professionals like the wonderful game masters. Now move your lovely thread to the suggestions forums like a good little boyo, so that the developers can ignore you in peace, just like you ignore me in peace. Or maybe they can ban you, since you're so hard to moderate? You leave a bad taste in my mouth but I don't dislike you, and I think that's sad of me. Really sad. Like I should be angry but instead I'm just beaten down. Good job.

Sat, 10/24/2020 - 09:00

Jessecho

I also think they should take

I also think they should take down the wall in Aurora Isles and re-open the danger room with the green giant in it, with a lot of boxes at the end. It would be a good place to farm Rarities, and over the years we seem to have gotten the prophesized Arcade Redux in bite-sized pieces instead of one major update. First Compounds, then after a long wait Slime Casino, then Starlight Cradle, then Compound tweaks and Treasure Vaults. It would be a simple change, and hopefully would come alongside a new level, or just more randomizations for old levels. I won't suggest a theme for the new level since I trust the team's artistic direction.

Sat, 10/24/2020 - 13:10

Zincamania-Forum

Changing a weapon's behavior

Changing a weapon's behavior is not a "less complex change". It might be simple from a technical POV, but it's a change that requires thought and good understanding of game mechanics. Changing WHB to pure piercing damage is easy but it would also make the Wild hunting blade a super effective fiend slaying weapon. Flourishes would be downright left in the dirt if WHB's normal damage was 'simply' changed to piercing damage. The theme of the sword would now be "beast and fiend killer" instead of just beast-killer. And then it's only a matter of time before someone has the genius idea of turning DVS into pure shadow damage 'to be more in line with the WHB'. You cannot casually go changing any item's behavior or stats because people have invested into unique variants for those items and items related to it. OOO made this mistake with the gunner update when they made Valiance garbage without touching it. Just by adding a pure piercing, elemental and shadow variant, Valiance no longer had a use because those guns simply outclass it. Everyone with an ASI VH Valiance basically lost 20k energy when they added Phantamos, Arcana and Riftlocker. What if someone has a WHB with construct VH and slime VH on it and it now deals piercing damage? Same thing goes for every other weapon and armor in the game. If you change damage/defense types or resistance levels, you mess with people's Unique variants they worked hard for. There are more examples from the gunner update like how Magnus guns were previously more Attack-based and were given a monstrous charge attack, making ASI UVs far less desirable than CTR UVs now. If the goal is a simple update without complex changes, they should stick to buffing and nerfing and stay away from reworks/adding new items.

Sat, 10/24/2020 - 14:22

Jessecho

And then it's only a matter

And then it's only a matter of time before someone has the genius idea of turning DVS into pure shadow damage 'to be more in line with the WHB'.

That's just a slippery slope argument. Every update comes with pros and cons, it's a question of net good. If you get hung up on an unlikely and silly scenario like someone having monster Construct UVs on their Wild Hunting Blade, a useless UV on a useless weapon, we will never get a balance update again. Currently, WHB is not a Beast killer; DVS outclasses it against Beasts without many damage UVs, in addition to being faster and more practical everywhere else. Flourishes aren't Beast killers either, as the Shadow Brandish lines rival their damage against Beasts with damage boosts in addition to being easier to hit with.

I don't agree that we should have a Piercing Cutter because we already have fast Piercing Swords. Slow or average speed would be better, like a Calibur or Sealed Sword. WHB should have a minor damage buff and deal Stun, and Flourishes should also get a buff.

Sat, 10/24/2020 - 16:40

Zincamania-Forum

It's a suggestion that comes around every once in a while ever since the game was released, WHB piercing DVS shadow, FoV elemental cutter. It is irrelevant that the construct bonus UV or the WHB are useless in your opinion. The fact is that people spend time and money on getting specific UVs and if you rework an item completely, you risk people being left behind with completely non-matching UVs on their items. You should always weigh the negatives more heavily than the potential positives when calculating the net good. If you screw players over enough they might actually quit the game. Meanwhile at best you will give the remainder of the current playerbase something to be excited about for a couple weeks, you will not attract new players by doing something like a weapon rework. So the question is how much net good will actually come from an update like that.

Just because certain reworks are bad doesn't mean there can't be any balance updates, I said that in my previous post. You can perfectly buff a weapon by increasing the damage numbers, which doesn't screw anyone over regarding their UVs. It also doesn't mean all reworks are bad, some might be reasonable and very much worth implementing. But my point is that such changes are by definition no longer a "simple/less complex change or update" Grey Havens can implement without much thought, which was the main idea of this thread.

To sum it up:
your suggestion of WHB damage buff + deal stun = a simple change (provided DVS gets the same damage buff), can be easily tried out by developers, highly unlikely to negatively impact the game and can be reverted at any given time.

Fangel's suggestion of WHB damage converted from normal to piercing
= a complex change that will...:
1. ...impact the playstyle of the weapon (changes which enemies you can use it against effectively),
2. ...impact weapons related to it (now DVS loses its value against beast and fiend, same for flourishes because their damage would be so much lower)
3. and potentially ruins previous UVs a player might have on this or related items (Construct/Slime UV on WHB, Beast/Fiend UV on DVS)
= a change like this has potential side effects and therefore requires careful consideration before implementing AND it cannot easily be reverted once it goes live (because the revert has the same potential negatives, where people might have invested in specific UVs for the new version of the item, now risking to screw over these players with a revert)

Sat, 10/24/2020 - 18:51

Jessecho

When you put it like that, I

When you put it like that, I can see where you're coming from. I think balancing gear can pull in new players by breaking down a barrier to entry. In a game where crafting new equipment takes a long period of grinding, especially in the beginning, there should be more viable gear options than SK currently has, and you shouldn't be screwed because you picked something that was good early on, but completely outclassed when you hit Tier 3 or even before. By the time you find out, you've usually wasted a lot of time and money.

Maybe it would help if the missions gave you the 2 Star Wolver, Demo, and Padded sets as rewards instead of those useless defensive armors, and stressed the importance of offensive bonuses. If GH did that, and only upgraded a handful of offensive armors (Mad Bomber, Starlit, Kat sets, Fallen) the game would get much more accessible without them having to get bogged down in fixing any of the really trash armor sets. It's similar for weapons. A lot of them would do just fine with a simple damage increase, like DVS, Troikas, Flourishes, and Turbillion. Others like WHB only need minor mechanical updates, such as my suggestion of adding a status effect. The ones that are deeply mechanically flawed like Catalyzers and Shards can be left for a later day, unless they're just bugged like Neutralizer is and need to be fixed asap. Because I agree that going too deep on balancing gear leads to a Gunner Update scenario. It took forever, and definitely wasn't worth everything that OOO put into it. Other than that, the only way to pull in new players and retain the old is to add new levels, or a new event.

Wed, 11/04/2020 - 19:50

Fangel

well this wasn't supposed to become a suggestions forum

I guess my old home on the suggestions forum shows through pretty hard, I was mostly wanting to get ideas of what small changes would look like, and what the community might find as a net positive without adding new gear into the mix.

Obviously if we could add a new cutter line that dealt piercing damage, I would accept that, but that requires artists to create the new weapon visuals (and previous lines if needed), developers to implement crafting recipes and weapon descriptions, etc. There's a lot more that requires additions to the game instead of changes of existing items.

In the context set up in the original post for this thread, I wanted updates that require minimal developer time bundled together. I can give more backing to the choices I selected:

1. Lockdown Camera Fix: Requested to allow for recon to be able to play on fair ground. Current version is hard to use outside of map awareness, however the map overlay already did this better. A change to your view in your immediate area would allow for better combat without sacrificing recon's ambush playstyle.

2. Striker Status Debuff: Currently, Strikers in Lockdown are useful in pretty much all scenarios. Strikers also have a natural resistance to all types of bombs due to their speed. Making them unable to naturally walk through several mist bombs at the same time unless they specialize their gear would create a direct counterplay for other classes to take advantage of.

3. Health Trinket Percent Scaling: Health trinkets scale oddly. In tiers 1 and 2, Penta-Health pendants make you essentially god. In Lockdown Untiered and Tier 3 Lockdown, health trinkets are almost mandatory to participate (but require PvP-exclusive crafting items). Additionally, the specialness of a True Love Locket is lost when you can craft an identical trinket (no other special/unique drop from a rare monster works this way). Making heart pendants scale as a percentage would make them more fair in PvE (including shadow lairs due to the larger vitapods) while also scaling to make PvP more reasonable (guardian is tanky, striker is squishy)

4. Fix Neut Damage: Neutralizer damage is straight up bugged. A weapon should deal the proper amount of damage no matter how often it is used.

5. Wild Hunting Blade turned Piercing Damage: Cutter lines are never used in a practical setting. As an avid user of cutters, I can say that the Dread Venom Striker is objectively better due to its speed, faster charge time, and ability to inflict status. Its normal damage works hand-in-hand with its playstyle, and it is in a perfect spot as general utility. Wild Hunting Blade, however, is outclassed in quite literally every way. It deals bonus damage to beasts (but damage bonuses only go up to +6, making it not worth using for most players), but it has a slower attack speed, slower charge time, all in exchange for better flinch rates on enemies on the charge (which leaves you very vulnerable, especially with the slower attack speed).

Ultimately, the Wild Hunting Blade is bad at what it does, on top of being a weapon style that is incredibly difficult to master. New players often see the very high speed and damage stats shown on the weapon bars and then get obliterated due to the lack of flinch, the knockback on hits, etc. Experienced players don't use Wild Hunting Blade because of its normal damage and the fact that everything it does, other weapons do better (acheron and flourish lines are much better at killing beasts). Making this weapon deal pure piercing damage would give it a purpose as a great beast slayer, while also having the side effect of killing fiends quickly too if you are comfortable being that close to them. It's worth noting we only have a single attack style for piercing swords (flourish), and even normal damage cutters perform well against both fiends and beasts. A piercing cutter expands the types of piercing swords while still being effective in use VS the targets it deals good damage against.

It's worth noting that just because acheron exists doesn't mean you can't fight slimes with a combuster. Similarly, I can see myself continuing to fight beasts and fiends with a DVS if WHB is changed to piercing, but I would start actually considering bringing a Wild Hunting Blade along to missions instead of only ever bringing a DVS because it is better in every way. I'm fairly certain the only time a Wild Hunting Blade would be useful in its current state is in wolver dens if constructs spawn and if you do not have any damage boosting gear VS beasts or swords, but you have two weapon slots for a reason.

Weapon reworks do happen. Shard bombs got reworked, catalyzer (regrettably) got reworked, magnus got reworked. The gunner update was full of "add a different damage type and status to existing gun" - Winter Grave, Wildfire, all the specialized Blasters. If Wild Hunting Blade had the exact same speed, charge time, etc. as the DVS then I might vouch for changing both, but I do not see any issue with making the weaker cutter have a better time standing out.

6. Lose Elite ERs, get more Sparks of Life on Normal: Emergency revives have padded the negative side effect of dying since their introduction. While necessary after health revives were removed, Elite difficulty doesn't feel like a hard mode, just a "bring black kat and blitz/acheron mode". Changing the drop rates of Sparks of Life on normal to give players more chances to progress more easily on the lowest difficulty while making Elite a more expensive option to die on would give each difficulty level a reason to be played.

Hopefully that makes my reasoning clearer. I do like the other ideas posted here too, like fixing the haunted haze ghosts so they're more of an actual source of damage, and the general armor nerfs/buffs. Who knows, maybe a handful of these will end up on a Grey Haven's post-it note of things to call in a developer for.

Mon, 11/09/2020 - 19:27

#10

Fishysh

fnd

fix neut damage it's nearly been 2 years

Wed, 11/18/2020 - 21:43

#11

Jenovasforumchar

hmm..

Something that I really really much would like to see is a level editor of some sort.

Yes, this is not a small easy thing. Yes, this will take a long time to program and would most likely require more than one single person. And yes, I also know about the puzzle-like structure that SK is using instead of a single unchanging map (certain story missions aside).

But it is a thing that would give the best long-time reward, since players can provide content themselves instead of having a stale situation where everyone knows each room instantly, knows each hidden switch without even needing to search...

So there are multiple categories here. People could create event maps (a full level that looks the same each time you enter it) or they could create jigsaw pieces (one room or part that can randomely appear in a non-event level).

There should definitelly be a voting system and some sort of option to share it with other players. The Maps and jigsaw pieces with most votes could be highlighted as best of day/week/month.

There is a lot of glitter that can be added on top of that. A level editor or editing tool itself would already be a great deal, if everyone can check out the stuff that other people are doing.

Cheers~

Sun, 11/22/2020 - 17:58

#12

Fishysh

we have a level editor, the

we have a level editor, the exact one gh uses. gh has plenty of unused content that they can implement without the community's help anyway. This game is like nachos with the toppings on it but you haven't put it in the oven yet, and your oven is also broken. Yeah, there's cheese and ground meat on it, but it's not melted and it's cold. Actually the oven isn't even there. And ovens haven't been invented yet. Just some ingredients sitting out for 9 years.

Fri, 11/27/2020 - 14:54

#13

Jenovasforumchar

@fishy super hot

We have a Level Editor? Where? You don't mean Spiral Spy, do you? I mean... that one is just for looking how epquipment looks on a knight, right?

It would be most convenient, if a Level Editor would be ingame, but even an extern one is super useful by dedicated people.

Let us invent the oven!

Sat, 11/28/2020 - 10:53

#14

The-Ancient-One

The level editor is bundled with one of the free software packages the devs put out. Look into spiral-view, they have a launcher for it.

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What would you want to see in a future update? (plus a guideline of how we may expect future updates)