@Reydann, @Cleaver (dev)

Thanks are in order for posting an enticing enough iteration of this discussion into the subsection of the forums most likely to actually be read by the devs, this opened up the opportunity not only for good discussion among the community but an actual dev reply. Cheers, friend.

My roses also go to Cleaver, thank you so much for sparking new hope in this discussion. I don't know if similar promises were made in the past but it doesn't seem like it.

My best wishes to the team and their current undertaking with modernizing the game, I can't imagine working with code this old greases the operation in any way but you're still doing it. I cannot wait for the mission/arcade update(s) you guys may have in store, here's to the future of SK!

I get where you're coming from, but I think just doing arena after arena sounds infinitely worse than another decade of vana farming. Combat is a big piece of the puzzle, but not the entire thing. I like running through different floors and seeing cool level layouts and even to this day I see clockwork tunnel rooms I've never seen before. If we want something infinite then you may as well just suggest the game just does infinite random d30 levels after you hit the core. I see no reason to limit it to generating arenas.

Personally, I'm not sold on the idea of infinite levels past d29. The meta would shift to just extending your play session as long as possible. It would encourage people to burn out of the game hard and fast. With vana I can at least just do one run a day and get a decent amount of money. I think rewarding more sporadic play sessions is far healthier.

Nothing in the game should be nerfed, if FSC was changed to give less crowns people would just quit. I don't think only a flat reward at the end of a stratum/section would be the solution either, the arcade should be continuously rewarding as you progress through each level, not a slog that you have to make yourself go through just to reach a light at the end of the tunnel, that just encourages you to speedrun each level and get to the end as fast as possible while ignoring everything else the arcade has to offer. Dungeon crawlers are fun because you're making linear progress and the game becomes noticeably more rewarding and challenging, but with how SK works you have 0 reason to ever explore T1 or T2 arcade as a vanguard, the only exception being terminal recipes, which just give you the problem of speedrunning and ignoring everything. Arenas are a small-scale example of what arcades should be.
I think the game has more fundamental problems that make FSC king, but imo a good quick solution would be an infinite arcade mode after d29 and an arcade-wide boost to drops. If arcade gave you 2x or 3x the amount of crowns so many more people would do them over vana, and radiants (ignoring how awful the forge system is) shouldn't be some super rare thing that a full T3 arcade run only gives a dozen of, a more rewarding arcade just encourages people to play the game more. Farming is always going to be time consuming, but it should also be fun, if most of the game is unrewarding and an unfun drag, you aren't encouraging people to spend money, you're encouraging people to quit the game, which is what we've seen happen for years.

Unfortunately this conversation is looking way to down the line, end game content like Vanaduke is the core of the economy and any tweaks need to be pondered deeply, we're just scratching the small itches with QoL updates and changes and it's time to talk about the Duke? To soon for something that big and drastic no matter how badly the want is, Vana's been holding Cradle up for awhile he can hang in there longer. Many things make him hard to adjust without breaking things, his legions of undead zombies are one of the easier enemies which makes numbers how they get you more mobs means more drops and that's why Vana reigns supreme for grinding resources. No other zone or monster can compare to the endless army and even before the missions were added players would look for an Arcade gate with Vanaduke to do farming.

Even though Vanaduke is very significant in Spiral Knights he isn't all there is to do of course, shuffling around drop rates and amounts to make something else comparable to Vanaduke is a mistake. Ideally a new boss should take the stage eventually that has it's own theme, levels, tokens, etc. A new token boss would be huge, giving a new big bad to farm for new weapons and armor but comparing to duke is hard and a new boss is a big big ask.

The approach being taken to re implementing content is good especially when lacking the mind that put this all together, it can be messed up easily and a big change in the wrong direction to early for something important could put the last nail in the coffin for Spiral Knights.
The Road Map should look something like this in terms of priorities:
>Bug Fixes and System upgrades/improvements

>QoL updates

>Implementing Existing Unused Content
Implement existing assets in engaging ways such as:
Jelly Green Giant themed zones that can unlock say...a poison alchemer that doesn't exist currently.
Make a shock themed zone where the Gram(shock troika) can finally be obtained.
Make the Green and Blue Mineral Battle Sprites

>New Content
-Make new cycling events like Black Kat, Tortodrones, and Apocrea
-New Rank Missions OPEN THE CORE
-New Tier 3 Token Boss
-Find out whats on the moon that orbits Cradle!
-Go back to Isora and save the Spiral Knights homeworld in a Dynamic DLC!

Got a little excited there gonna mention some other core(pun intended) things that are critical to a successful future for Spiral Knights. Getting back to where the old team left off, the Arcade Redux and restoring it's glory with Arcade exclusive themed areas and gear that can only be accessed through them so Vana isn't all your eyes are on but that shiny sword you can only get in the new level the homeland of the Greavers the Twilight Evergardens!

What I'm getting at is their are more ways to balance Vanaduke than shuffling crowns, fire crystals, heat, and material drops. Twist the world and create other incentives for players to seek while also preserving Vana's dignity and value.

For an example of how simply adding a new boss mission isn't enough, look at RJP vs. IMF. The former is more lucrative than the latter in terms of time efficiency; similar total payout but the latter is full of slow switch-fence mechanics and a boss that can be extremely slow depending on RNG. Today, unless you want to get IMF's unique boss token equipment, there is little reason to play it over RJP. This was not always the case. Once upon a time under a different F2P system, these differences were less important as raw time efficiency was less of a priority than the quality of time spent within each level. Naturally, materials from levels unappealing to burn energy to play for their low rewards or short length were worth more than materials from stages that could be cleared for better rewards against time/energy. In addition to elevator costs, there used to be a 200cr T2 / 300cr T3 latejoin fee if you did not clear that gate's preceding tier first. This did nothing to stop paid players from farming FSC per se, but it kept other stages relevant for casual or free players.

In the current game with fewer restrictions and an order of magnitude longer grind, there are no such systems in place, and all that matters is the ratio of rewards against time. It is impossible to stop a situation like FSC because the factors that limited it were erased; if you simply dethrone it, something else becomes the new FSC. It's also a risky idea to introduce limiting factors to it based on the hyper-optimization it's seen as there's a high chance doing so would negatively impact casual play - like D25 Charred Court and Treasure Troves playing far worse than on release due to drop collection no longer being shared across the party, implicitly to combat players running multiple sessions of the game at once and carrying their alts (though ideally that'd have been what got addressed...).

Missions and firecrystals/orbs were new systems that actually encouraged playing only the most rewarding levels. Missions let you jump straight to a specific level range with no questions asked once you've unlocked them, and while rarities are awarded generically across any stage with boxes, they're still tied to the presence of boxes. Which stage is available straight from Haven, has heaps of boxes to boot, has strong crown payout directly from raw drops and indirectly via tokens, and is very fast to clear once optimized? That's right, it's a D28 arena your friend invited you to! ... or a mission that's permanently available and has only one short stage before you start seeing radiants, then you get FSC. The Arcade is as good as dead beyond entertainment value, and rare, unique rewards drive the rest of the game's content; past that, the glacial progression pushes you hard into doing whatever's most efficient instead. But if it's too dangerous to try putting the Vog genie back in the lamp, and any new content or even player-customized levels would be doomed on arrival without exclusive or competitive rewards, what could be done?

Plenty of flavors of answer here, mostly hinging around uplifting other levels. Bringing radiants earlier to D21+ instead of D25+ would put way less pressure on FSC for endgame progression without eroding the ungodly amount of time it asks of the player, just widening the scope of levels they can play, notably including Danger Missions. Adding tier clear bonuses of some kind for each gate that rotates into the Arcade - whether a unique reward or just some forge lootbox - would do some good too. There are a number of ancient stages that have very low or inconsistent box quantities that would benefit from having some extra guaranteed boxes; hopefully more than just two tacked on the end. Boosting the crown/heat payout of odd strata would be a good move, too, where even in the mist energy days people would waltz past D19 stages or only join at D21+...

It's easy to conceptualize all kinds of answers to this from a gameplay quality perspective. The real elephant in the room is what GH is willing to compromise on - how any solution would impact the game's progression, because rarities being such a bottlenecked pain to farm and crueller things like upgrading to a 5* weapon too quickly being a trap are ingrained in SK's business strategy. The fact that it sucks is deliberate. Microtransactions slowly got more aggressive over the game's lifespan under SEGA, and then when GH bought it they never alleviated it beyond the two boxes for Compounds, adding to it in parallel with cosmetics and lootbox equipment... That's what makes this tricky - what we currently have is a game that started strong and slowly drifted into a shell of itself focused more on squeezing value from its existing playerbase than growing, continuing that trend through 2016 onward, but now there's stated intent to alleviate this and to bring something new to the game; open wishes for everyone to tell their friends the game's coming back even before they've revealed what they'll do...

Saying something will be done is a big change in status quo over leaving it unaddressed. What GH chooses to do - the ripples it'll have on the entire game - will bring substance to that and set the stage for the future to come. Actions are louder than words, so it goes. Here goes a very pivotal time!

thank you for the developer response. It's really reassuring to hear the devs have this problem on their minds and want to give incentives to play every type of content. Can't wait to see what changes are in store for the arcade!