Spiral Knights - What does Spiral Knights need right now?

What does Spiral Knights need right now?

17 replies [Last post]

Sun, 04/18/2021 - 12:01

Leidran

Heya everyone! It is I: Mr.”FoV is viable”. And today I want to mostly talk about what I think Spiral Knights needs the most to achieve better quality, thus making people be temped to make its life last longer. I’d also love to see what other people have to say about this, so if you got any other thing/change the game currently needs, please state it on this forum post, although I’d like to ask that you only share what you think is absolutely important to be added or changed to the game currently, since discussing minor things here might make some posts just too big.

With that said, this is what I believe SK definitely needs for it to be not only a better game, but to actually make people stay on the game for much longer, thus creating higher possibilities to make the game’s servers live for more time:

Better servers
This one is pretty simple: Servers that are slightly faster and more reliable than the ones existing currently.
I think this is one of the first things that come to the mind of any player, since everyone could agree that servers can be noticeably unresponsive on missions, having many lagspikes and noticeable delay between a player making an action and that same action taking consequence.
I know this could be expensive, but I think by just buying something slightly more powerful, and doing actions like removing all Haven instances except the English ones would improve things slightly (although I am not a professional on this stuff, so I’m not sure if this would truly help), and I know this sounds crazy, but to be honest any other language instance that is not the English one is next to empty, and you can even see many non-English speakers on the English instances anyways, so I think this would hurt nobody or, if it does, it would be an incredibly small amount of people.
I think I would also improve the wiki servers too, they are just sooooo slow at times, that definitely needs an upgrade too.

Gear rebalancing
I’m gonna start this section with a small anecdote.
About a year ago, I met a Spiral Knights player who just started to play the game, and I decided to help them on the side of grinding and knowing what gear to use. At first, I told her what was the meta and what was not, and then showed her some 5* weapons I had. Eventually, they actually decided to go for a Volcanic Pepperbox and a Wildfire, with a Shadowsun armor, since those were the weapons that although being certainly weak, made them go “Whoaaaaaaa! That’s so cool!”, and to be honest, this actually made me quite happy since this was a similar experience of mine when I first started the game, and made me feel some nostalgia. Although that was until she decided to join a guild and start to go through FSC runs, with their current gear they were kinda obsolete compared to literally everyone else, and then they decided to get the current meta for new players: Chaos set, Combuster and Blitz, which they did not seem to like as much, but agreed to be more comfortable to run FSC with, after some days, we discussed about the game’s balance, and they told me: “if there’s something that of this game that really pulls me back, it’s the lack of variety”, and I think this is a great problem for the game.
Just to be clear, when they said “variety” they meant the amount of weapons that are currently viable and overall just good to use, although I must say that when we talked about armors they did comment that many of them felt really bad comparing it with armors such as the Black Kat, Chaos and Padded armor sets. And to be fair, I think many new players arrive to this conclusion when being introduced to the endgame, or just the weapon selection overall, which means bad since this means less new players will feel motivated to keep on playing the game, mostly because it does not feel right when you just are objectively speaking way less effective than others just because you have chosen what you liked to play with.
So yeah, I believe rebalancing some weapons in the form of buffs and making offensive armors like the ones seen on Hall of Heroes (Vog Cub, Shadowsun, Armor of the Fallen, Deadshot set, Justifier set, etc...) have some more buffs while also adding some weaknesses, taking the Seerus Mask and Padded armor family as an example, since they have a good variety of buffs while also having some weaknesses, making switching armors more frequent and thus making the gameplay a bit more diverse.

More ways to farm Crowns and Radiant Fire Crystals
Nowadays the only ways to farm money and to level up 5* gear at a decent speed is the Fire Storm Citadel (aka FSC) mission, Arcade (although it depends on what levels you find in there) and the Dreams and Nightmares mission (although this last one is only for obtaining Radiant Fire Crystals quickly, you barely get heat or crowns on that one), and I think we really need a good alternative to FSC since the other two mentioned aren’t really that effective and many people can get burned out of it.

Here’s some of my ideas that shouldn’t take too long nor would be too hard for Grey Havens to do, and maybe wouldn’t need the help of any programmer either, unless the current workers of the company really don’t know even the most basic of programming on Java I guess:

- Small Treasure Vault rework:
My idea here is just make the final boss of this level drop a certain amount of gold slime coins depending on the tier/depth you encounter it. My take would be 10*Startum, or in case that’s too low, 10*depth, and maybe this might look like too much, but taking in account each 50 slime coins are worth 10k crowns (that is if you get a good roll on the slime casino, if not, it’s technically worth 5k), and that the Vault is not as easily accessible as FSC, I think this could be an interesting way to farm for crowns.
I’d also make the slime casino be available forever, except without the chance of receiving a smile lockbox, I think that should only be present when the event is on.

- Arena-after-arena mission:
I guess the tittle of this one is pretty self-explanatory: a mission about going through several arenas, like the ones you could find on the Arcade. Each depth would have a different monster family and status, perhaps even random, similar to some prestige missions (although those only have random statuses, but you get my point). I think this one could be easily made since the levels are already done (the arenas from the arcade), and the only edit that could need is just remove the elevators that allow you to skip several parts of that level, or just block the path with indestructible blocks. And you wouldn’t even need to add lore to the mission or anything like that, you could just add it as a prestige mission that can be done repeatedly, it should be pretty easy.

- Dreams and Nightmares with enemy drops:
Pretty self-explanatory too: a rework that allows for Dreams and Nightmares’ enemies to drop crowns and heat. I think that would make it a bit more viable, without being a complete substitute to FSC, which is kinda what I am aiming at in this section. I don’t really have to say much more about it on this one, pretty simple I guess.

- Arcade bonus:
Every time you reach the last depth in the Arcade, there is a knight asking if you have brought supplies, so I would make it so whenever you have a supply pack of any kind, you can exchange it for a certain amount of crowns, and only a limited amount of packs per run (I think 1 or 2 would be good enough). My suggestion for the amount of crowns you get per supply pack would be this:
- Compact Supply Pack: 2K crowns (1K profit)
- Standard Supply Pack: 4,5K crowns (2K profit)
- Deluxe Supply Pack: 10,25K crowns (4K profit)
I think this would give the Supply Packs a good functionality (because using it on prestige missions isn’t really that useful to be fair), and give more incentive to go to the core more often.

- Prestige mission rewards:
This one is incredibly easy in my opinion. Once a prestige mission is done, it could give to the player some rewards like fire crystals or orbs of alchemy, or even a trinket, so it can be sold for some extra money to a Basil or something. Here’s once again my suggestions for each tier:

Tier 1
Regular mission: 30 Dim Fire Crystals, 10 Warm Fire Crystals
Danger mission: 1 Simple Orb of Alchemy
Arms Appropriation: 3 Simple Orbs of Alchemy (and get the weapon back the next day if that’s not too hard to program).
Geological Survey: 10 Warm Fire Crystals
Monstrous Research: 10 Warm Fire Crystals
Supply Delivery: 1 Simple Orb of Alchemy

Tier 2
Regular mission: 30 Glowing Fire Crystals, 10 Shining Fire Crystals
Danger mission: 30 Glowing Fire Crystals, 1 Elite Orb of Alchemy
Arms Appropriation: 1 Elite Orb of Alchemy (and get the weapon back the next day if that’s not too hard to program)
Geological Survey: 30 Glowing Fire Crystals
Monstrous Research: 30 Glowing Fire Crystals
Supply Delivery: 1 Advanced Orbs of Alchemy

Tier 3
Regular mission: 10 Radiant Fire Crystals
Danger mission: 30 Radiant Fire Crystals, 1 Elite Orb of Alchemy, 1 Eternal Orb of Alchemy
Arms Appropriation: 3 Elite Orbs of Alchemy (and get the weapon back the next day if that’s not too hard to program)
Geological Survey: 10 Radiant Fire Crystals
Monstrous Research: 10 Radiant Fire Crystals
Supply Delivery: 1 Elite Orb of Alchemy

I think I don’t need to explain much about why each thing here except the Tier 3 rewards having more Elite Orbs of Alchemy rather than Eternals, and that’s because for most Vanguards, Elite Orbs are way more rare than Eternal Orbs, and I think that this would actually balance this slightly.

And with that said... I think those are all my main ideas that I believe would improve the Spiral Knights experience™ and are the most necessary changes. I’d really like to hear more ideas from other people, so please comment yours too! (and also evaluate my ideas if you feel like it).

Apologies if in advance my grammar is not completely right, my brain turns off every time I write something so big.

Sun, 04/18/2021 - 16:56

Graevy

500th identical post

Mon, 04/19/2021 - 03:27

Leidran

I just want something to make things fresh

I'm bored ok :')

Mon, 04/19/2021 - 22:35

Deurus

literally GH: "I dont

literally GH: "I dont care"

Don't get me wrong, those suggestions are right in the place but fixing or any improvement of the game it's not in plans, probably cause they doesn't have any programmers .

Tue, 04/20/2021 - 09:55

Choridia

How serious I am with this

Spiral Knights needs to become abandonware. That would solve a lot of problems.

Wed, 04/21/2021 - 02:21

Leidran

SK ain't dying soon (sadly)

What I mean with this is that this game can't become abandonware because Grey Havens is basically holding and choking their IPs with chains rather than letting it be something else that can be beneficial to their player base, and people giving them 200 bucks every time equinox boxes pop up does not help either. We can try to convince people to stop giving them money, but many people will even lick GH's shoes to justify them spending so much into this dead and underated game.
I just wish they did the Valve move to let fans do great things with it, but almost no company can or will think that way, mostly because there's so much people that don't know how videogames work in these kind of teams, and they think hearing the fanbase it's wrong and all that stuff, when it's actually the contrary.

Thu, 05/13/2021 - 15:46

Guin-Aoiichi

More Character Customization

That's what the game needs more . Customization.

Because if you like the character you use . You want that character to stay alive.

For example , i saw an EYES usable in the market for like a million or billion crowns..... How the hell is that a reachable goal ?

Also the wiki says there are like 20 different kind of eyes . But only 2 are sold in Haven ? ( not counting the Market ).

I saw in the market there is a " Custom Shield " option.... But NO shields were being sold there.

The same with eyes . Only two pairs of eyes were being sold last time i checked.....

Why not add ALL eyes to the Vatel's shop ? ( the guy that sells the eyes )

Sat, 05/15/2021 - 11:52

Kikume

Spiral Knights 2.0: Beyond the Core

The former lead designer, Nick Popovich, left the team in early 2014. The game has been on a steady decline ever since.
If I were to be elected as the lead designer/director of Spiral Knights, I would immediately start the work to bring about the following changes:

New Hardware
It's a high-time to ditch the piece of sh!t server(s) that's currently running the game and invest in a new state-of-the-art high-capacity, high-performance server stationed on each major continent. Net proceeds from Spiral Knights 2.0 will be used to invest in more servers as needed instead of paying the salaries of lazy butts who seem perfectly content to rehash the same tired old events (looking at you, GH).

Re-codified Source Code
Game designers no longer code in java. Java is so yesterday. Time to move on to a more modern platform that's capable of handling the rigors of today's gaming standards. Recodified from scratch to run lean and fast, smoothly with minimal lag, and bug-free. That means I'll need to hire experienced programmers who know what they're doing. Excellent salaries with good benefits & incentives to attract the best of the best.

Spiral Knights 2.0: Beyond the Core (BtC)
The current Rank-10 missions are complete trash, badly in need of an overhaul.
The existing Rank-10 missions will be replaced with 36+ missions, including 7 new and epic bosses.
The new missions will offer a cohesive & compelling story/plot.
The new missions will shed much-needed light on the background and history of Morai War.

Players will gradually uncover the true nature of Clockworks and how they came to be in the current predicament.
Rank 12+ mission will introduce a new team-play mechanic that will enable bonus treasures (inaccessible in solo-play)
With special consumables, farm special resources and capture special select enemies in Rank 12+ missions (see Guildhall 2.0)

Farm special materials for their weapon augmentations and armor upgrades in Rank 13+ missions (see Weapon Augmentations, UV Max+)
Rank 14+ boss missions will require a special access crystal (consumable) to unlock the boss room. Farm the crystals from SL (see Shadow Lair 2.0)
Players will have the option to launch RAID missions on Rank 14+ boss stages.

RAID missions can have up to 8 players in a party instead of the usual 4.
Superior-grade materials have a higher chance of dropping in a boss fight.
Special Attack skill scrolls are obtainable only from RAID missions (not a guaranteed drop).

=======================================================
Guildhall 2.0

The current system of guildhall upgrades and facilities is mostly superficial and colossal money-sink... or at least it used to be when it was first implemented in late 2012. Although the upkeep was eventually greatly reduced in cost, most of the guildhall upgrades are still don't offer anything substantial.

Enter the Guildhall 2.0. Guildhall 2.0 will completely remove the annoying upkeep. Good riddance!

The cost of creating a new guild will be increased to 10k Energy units + 500k crowns. Creating a new guild should be a major commitment and not something to be done on a whim or as an afterthought. The change in cost reflects the new philosophy.

The installation cost of certain guildhall facilities will also be greatly increased. One such example is an Advanced Training Hall (ATH). Unlike the lackluster Training Hall in the current version, guildmasters will be able to build additional facilities within the ATH such as the Monster Arena, and/or reproduce the various subsections/substages of unlocked ranked missions.
----------------------------
Monster Arena (MA)

Monsters captured from Ranked Missions can be added in MA (costs Energy units).
Once added, everyone in the same guild can fight that monster at any time for training purposes.
Once added, that monster is permanent and accessible to the guild members at any time.

Multiple monsters can be added to an MA. Players can select the type & the number of monsters to duel in the arena.
Arena Monsters have a very low chance to drop special loot.
Players can compete in the Monster Arena for weekly competitions and possibly win some prizes based on their weekly performance rankings.

----------------------------
Sub-Stage Trials

Guildmasters who have completed a relevant mission stage have the option of adding Trials to their ATH.
Trials are very challenging subsections found in certain Ranked Missions, reproduced in ATH for the purpose of:
1. Allowing the guild members to practice and hone their skills at clearing the challenging subsections of relevant Ranked Missions from the safety, comfort, and convenience from within their ATH. The practice will also help with their Ranked Mission progression.
2. Allowing the guild members can compete for weekly prizes pending their Trials performance which are automatically tracked and compared against others on the same server every week in real-time.

=======================================================

Shadow Lairs 2.0

Shadow Keys will have their price halved in an effort to render SLs more accessible.
SLs will serve as the farming ground for boss-stage access crystals in the Ranked Missions.

=======================================================

Weapon Augmentations

Weapon Augmentation Materials (WAMs) are materials dropped in Rank 13+ missions.
WAMs are available in three grades: Low, Average, and Superior. Higher the grade, greater the magnitude of augments.
WAMs from common enemies will be Low-grade most of the time. Rarely, Average-grade WAMs can drop from common enemies.

Special treasure boxes from team-play has a low chance of dropping Average-grade WAMs
Superior-grade WAMs are most likely to be found from Rank
WAMs allow for further upgrades of player's gear.

Here are some of the examples of what WAMs can do:
Charged attacks from Voltedge, Combuster, Glacius, Obsidian Edge, etc. can be upgraded to have a longer and wider range.
Projectiles from Blitz Needle Gun, Spiral Soaker, etc. upgradeable to have a longer range and less spread (more concentrated firepower)
Vortex bombs upgradeable to Hyper-Vortex variant (greater radius, longer duration, shorter charge time, and slightly more damage)
Status bombs such as Shivermist Buster upgradeable to have a greater radius, longer duration, and considerably more damage.

The actual augmentations, both the type and the degree, will depend on the type of augmentation material (melee, gun, bomb) and its grade (low, average, superior).

Superior-grade mats are dropped by Rank 14+ bosses (very small chance). Players can boost this chance by participating in RAID missions.

=======================================================

There's more to Spiral Knights 2.0, but I do not have the time nor inclinations to type them all out in details right here right now.

Of course, all of this is just a fantasy/fiction and nothing will materialize until I become the lead designer/director of this game.
But what are the chances of that happening? (Hint: It's not good.)

Sat, 06/19/2021 - 15:59

Corinthmaxwell

The only thing this game needs.

Everyone wants to talk about "fixing this game", and everyone wants to throw up suggestions about what the game "needs". Right now, the only thing(s) the game really has any actual "dire need" of is to fix the mistakes Three Rings made half a decade ago, just so that they could keep appeasing their "whales".

Splitting Crystal Energy & bonus Crystal Energy from Prize Box sales was the first huge mistake that got made, and there's nothing anyone can say or do to prove that it wasn't a terrible decision to do so. There wasn't any reason to give in to demands from people whining & complaining about their hoarded CE barely having any value above 4,000 Crowns at all, just because the user-controlled CE market prevented them from gouging newer and/or free-to-play users for every Crown they had.

Deliberately lowering the drop rates for Radiant Fire Crystals -- which also permanently hindered player progression -- was not only a horrible decision to make, it was based in nothing more than sheer ignorance. It wasn't bad enough that OOO decided that players somehow had it too easy with carefree item leveling, they decided to introduce a system that would randomly refuse to "ALLOW" you to upgrade your gear level by level unless you burned through the maximum amount of "special" super-rare items to do so. And let's just face facts, GH team.....People aren't going to throw what little free time they have in this day & age into actively playing a game that makes it next to impossible to get and/or upgrade better gear, especially not when similar games don't force such arbitrary restrictions on them. Not only that, the few random here-and-there items we're given in Mission Mode don't even remotely prepare you for the majority of the challenges waiting to ambush you down in the Clockworks.

Last I checked, this game was meant to be for everyone, and not just exclusively for the pay-to-play crowd that are essentially doing nothing more right now than "keeping the lights running". Perhaps this game would have a more active player community if the current staff decided to remember that. >_>

Sun, 06/20/2021 - 01:15

Sweet-Hope

>>> Arcade adjustment

reworking arcade is too much work for GH (would be the better) but GH can just add the same amount of boxes you can find in clockworks in any levels so levels like toxic city or jigsaw axy wouldnt feel like a punishment when those lands on depths 27-28, and adjust the payment of arcade levels. like if a good arcade level gives 12 k cr due the clockworks and arenas on their depths in tier 3, then adjust any arcade level to give that same amount of CR not matter the level, sometimes when arcade spawn in tier 3 with those jigsaw valleys or those toxic cities on depths 26-28 you end with 7k cr the entire run and with less rarities it dont worth it.

that way people can choose to play freely and worth the time without waiting for a good gate in arcade.

>>> bring back health share revive.

there is not a good argument to justify the removal of a good gameplay mechanic of the game and the reason why the game got popular, they only it got removed was because SEGA greedy hands to make people spent on energy to get spark of lives, and people saying "Im FiNe ThEy GoT RiD oF hEaLtH sHaRe ReViVe, PeOpLe JuSt SuCkEd My LiFe ReViViNg ThEm" then just dont revive them as many people do not reviving others with spark of life, i revive players 1 time per run or 2 if they are totally new players but not going to keep them reviving, spark of life its a limited resource and also the mechanic to revive others its PLAIN BAD clicking on them and then revive (2 clicks) and also locks you in place until you finish is just bad.

also its lead players to believe they can revive much time as they can and they waste sparks on anything else while keeping them for areas they really will need them, once they die and dont have any of them they will wait for a revive or leave the party, on worst scenario people will kick them, and thats a pretty bad experience for them.

i wouldnt mind if emergency revive its removed in favor health share revival, if im able to carry a group then its my damn problem if i revive people with my health, if players keep dying then its simple DONT REVIVE IT like you do with sparks, prolly others will revive them with their health to get the heat simple as that.

Thank you, i also agree removing energy from prize boxes was just a bad idea and dont feel like a promo anymore, prize boxes were pretty nice with energy packs, getting 14 boxes and only getting maidheadbands or worthless stuff dont feel anymore like a promo this the biggest reason why i stopped to buy promo and boy i really spent a lot in them im even afraid to look at my history of purchase in steam due the amount i spent.

Mon, 06/21/2021 - 07:28

#10

Naveil

$0.02

Unfortunately, I think there's a large disparity between what the playerbase wants vs. what Grey Havens is capable (or willing) to do with the game. I'm hardly an expert on this, but I think it's decently established that Grey Havens doesn't have the capacity as a company to provide new content at a steady pace.

And even they could... why would they? A new update would appease current players and would almost certainly bring old ones back for a bit, but it wouldn't make the game grow. The ship has been sinking for years now, and I'd imagine that any new blood is spawned entirely from the old TF2 promotion from years back. I can't imagine an incentive to check out this decade-old MMO which, once again, is evidently stranded on a sinking ship.

The only way I could see this iteration of SK coming back into the limelight is if there were some huge marketing push, which in turn would probably be fuelled by a new update or some major overhaul. Unfortunately, that loops back to the main issue at hand, which is that Grey Havens isn't capable of doing so.

It's not like there's any incentive for GH to do this either, they make enough money off prize boxes anyway. Effort is only incentivized by reward, and right now there is none.

Yeah, the situation is very bleak when you think about it, and while it's fun to dream up Spiral Knights 2 or what-have-you, it really isn't realistic unless GH secretly have a team of shadow programmers and artists who have been working on the next big thing™ behind our backs lol

Regardless, it'd be nice.

Mon, 06/21/2021 - 15:37

#11

Thats-Rough-Buddy

tbh i'd love it if the entire

tbh i'd love it if the entire game were functionally optimized (written in optimized cpp or something), without changing any of the aesthetics or adding new content.

there is absolutely no reason that this game should run worse than battlefield 4 on ultra graphics settings. function > form bb

with that said, i have accepted that the game is "as-is", and the only way for a player to continue enjoying the game after completing all of the content is to play the game in a creative way.

hoping for anything else is just setting yourself up for disappointment.

Tue, 06/22/2021 - 18:58

#12

Guin-Aoiichi

QUESTION

Where are people getting their information ? How do they know , what Grey Have can , and can not do ?

Tue, 06/29/2021 - 22:42

#13

Corinthmaxwell

ANSWER

Where are people getting their information?

Look far back enough through the announcements, and you'll find it yourself. >_>

Sat, 07/03/2021 - 22:29

#14

Kazevedo

What SK needs?

Accelerate this:
https://steamcharts.com/app/99900
The devs don't communicate the problem (or anything else) with the players, people try guess what is wrong with then ("have no programmer", "the programmers are working in other things", "they cant invest in this now", "is hard to do it", etc), I never saw this, it is sick! Or everyone here can read the dev minds from home? So many years with the only new content being reskins.
I love SK, but please, let it die. Is painfull see the game in this state. So other company can buy, or if not, we can study a private server possibility and learn how to create new content and share new stages, enemies, bosses, weapons, etc. With the community effort, we can promote the game to be popular and grow. After all, all here is just the community.
To be honest, reading the "deleted post" complaints, idk why the players not create an own forum. We are barely alone (have only a ghost to delete posts here).

Wed, 09/08/2021 - 10:49

#15

Quenzetta

Seriously…..

What it needs? A Switch and/or Playstation port (though Java might make this an issue). To put out advertisements. To make new content, namely weapons, including DLC. Just shiny new things in general. I wonder why Grey Havens keeps this game alive? It’s a fantastic game but what do they get out of it at this point? Is the money even THAT good especially considering their audience is mostly gone now?
I’m considering games like Ninjala and Splatoon on Switch, which are really popular, online games that share a similar art style already. Then you have the retro gamers who would eat it up for nostalgia. It’s a great game with a lot of potential but the passion isn’t there anymore for it. They need to advertise or give it something new to draw people in.

Sat, 01/15/2022 - 13:15

#16

Mattihood

Honestly? The Valve treatment

Honestly? The Valve treatment on SK would've probably been the only hope for this game. Let the community make a big update to the game. Otherwise we're going to be seeing a slow and steady decline until only the billionaires remain.

Thu, 01/20/2022 - 19:11

#17

Khillurtofu

Deurus, you make it sound as

Deurus, you make it sound as if the game is on life support and is only being kept online for the profit generated by the prize box events.

If you think that's the case, then what do you think would be necessary to breathe new life into this game and rejuvenate its player base, and the likelihood of that happening?

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What does Spiral Knights need right now?