This event remains the main reason I am not playing the game. Kat Hiss Raiment is next on the list of stuff to get for me. Not only is the grind atrocious, it's the same you do for Black Kat Raiment, and once I acquire enough materials to make it, I have to knowingly pass up what is unquestionably the strongest piece of gear me or anyone else could get their hands on, all for the sake principle.

These days I'm doing the significantly more inspiring and fruitful grind of 1 credit-clearing shmups.

I was gonna keep my yap shut because I thought I was just a whiner, but I took a handful of goes at it in earnest and just found the experience sort of miserable? I had been looking at the numbers, too - what few there are, as determined by community research, and the overall crafting requirements of a BK set, and just kinda... I dunno, bounced off it. "This isn't worth it," was my takeaway. I'm not going to waste my recreational time chasing a grind this dull out of the promise something "might happen"; there are other more worthwhile things I could be doing... 5* BK Set costs 150 ancient pages for the materials just for the raiment.

I know, you don't need Raiment for the bonuses, but, I don't know. "Settle for less" seems to be a weird thing to say to a player who wants to play the game, no matter if it's GH saying it through mechanics or the playerbase saying it in words?

Maybe I'm doing something wrong? If anyone's got a suggestion for how I should go about beating 1-in-25,000 odds that doesn't take the form of "go and buy a Margrel slot" I'll hear it, but... damn. You know what, actually, I've changed my mind; I'm just not gonna bother. Those numbers suck.

The suggestions outlined in post #0 would be great. It'd probably be the healthiest way to do this event - I don't think every player should be able to get a set in the space of ONE event, but it should be doable within a handful of them, right? We're trying to retain players not keep them hostage with adversarial mechanics...

The way the event is currently balanced seems to suppose that players have infinite time and patience... And, uh. No?? We Do Not??

Ugh, yeah; I mean I was going to try and stay positive about it and get into the whole, "It's probably to foster collaboration and encourage people to farm the items together, that's why they drop unbound!" but what really happens is the items involved command crazy prices because why would anyone pass up a win like that for free? Bleh. It sincerely sucks that you had an experience like that. For what it's worth, I'm sorry.

I'm with you tbh, I might check out for a bit and come back if something else big changes. A handful of experiences over the past few days have me thinking I should give the game some time to hit whatever stride it's hoping to, I don't wanna be complaining about stuff all the time.

@Nethorse: Oh lord yes, I was having a look through all the recipes to remind myself how everything worked and I actually lol'd when I came to the Black Kat Mask. It's bad enough that it's a useless dead-end craft because apparently we had to reserve something Super Special for the 5 or 6 people that can actually manage to find a book before the event ends. But to add insult to injury said useless dead-end craft requires the same hyper-rare material you'd be guaranteed to get if you're one of those 5 or 6 people getting the direct upgrade to it. Or even if you're not one of people and are paying your way into the fight, you'd almost certainly want to use said material to craft the armor instead. The silliest part is that none of the other helm pieces require Wicked Whiskers to get to 5*, so they're at least theoretically obtainable with enough regular patience, but the one almost no one would ever want to craft does.

Honestly, putting everything else aside, if I'm going to wear one broken-meta armor set I'd rather stick with Chaos instead. Being able to get CTR Max on every level 10 weapon in the game feels much more useful to me than a bit of MSI.

Honestly, if black kats were to spawn in any place a kat would that alone makes the farm better. Like abandoned cities, and maybe some Arenas... Undead/Fiendish Arcade Gates would be awesome.
But this event was turned into a Player abuse-fest when the Raiment appeared. Yes 4* Black Kat Mask needs Wicked Whiskers speaking about atrocious player de-service.

The Insulting cost of the Bomber, Fencer, Gunslinger Raiments Still need to be reduced to:
3*- 1 wicked Whisker.
4*- 2 Kat Tribe Fetish.
5*- 3 Kat Tribe Fetish.
Keeping the 1-2-3 building pattern of the Raiment, without ripping people off.

And regarding Blak Kat set Power-creeping everything, reduce the Damage from High to low or medium, that will make the set asymetrical, yes, but also, WHo really cares? the damage would be very high, or Ultra, making it "the most damaging set" without stomping other kat sets. Otherwise as Draycos said it, is easier to get CTR UV that damage UV, the fix would be unify the damage to families to just damage, that would probably screw the game more than what "the Katastrofic Compliance" screws the players...

Yes, nerffing the black Kat would cause an outcry... same as making the OCH expansion free... guess what kind of people Cryied out? the Not Kind...

I'm looking forward to Dark harvest... I'm banking on being able to craft the "pumkin costume" instead of another sprite to level up, and gather some Candies for helmets, Draycos said it, all the events need some workout due age or plain disregard for player service. Let's see what happen!

@Pdtopgun
Can't blame you, since UVs and Coliseum aren't okay either. Even mixing Kat+Chaos instead of going full Kat requires a lot of moving parts to keep CTR where you want it. However, if you don't need max CTR, which is reasonable in situations where you're unlikely to fire off charges as soon as they're ready and certainly when not using weapons that don't have useful charge attacks, then Kat wins out even outside of minmaxed UV/trinket situations. Again, it's ridiculous to take a step back from this and acknowledge that we have to compare this to Chaos at all, since Chaos blows everything else out of the water in and of itself.

Speaking of mixed Kat+Chaos, this has reminded me it's a somewhat popular option to settle for the 3* BK Hood, the most attainable of any BK equip, which boasts the DMG+3 / MSI+1 of its higher star cowl/raiment cousins which only differ in their far superior defenses and health bonuses. Requires no Margrel fights (let alone being the user of the book). Still requires a whopping 70 pages which even 14 days of guaranteed 4x pages from prestige mission attendance won't be able to cover without several natural Black Kat spawns filling in the missing pages. Even the minimum option that doesn't require a book still has an arbitrarily awful, anti-gameplay grind!! Everything about this event is so poorly structured you'd not get scoffed at for thinking it was some moustache-twirling ploy to get players desensitized to the rest of the game's gambling problems.

Yep, simply letting the Prestige Mission BKs drop pages/books would be a nice small step. BKs being so rare to the point where players farming it aggressively have playground rumors around their spawning behavior speaks for itself how lame it is. The other common idea thrown around since the event's inception is adding a pages-for-book trade to Montague, so even if you had horrid luck with books you were still working toward something. If the droprate is 1/250 like the community can only guess at, then some of my friends have gone far more than the average of 750 pages without seeing a book.

If it were up to me, and this is some grade-A pipe dream stuff, I'd axe the existing system and just give the random spawns better generic crown/heat/mat drops, leaving the tokens to the event's daily missions or similar arenas populating arcade Candlesticks and Clockworks Tunnels, both ending with a Margrel fight if T3. Failing that, then it'd be nice if something was done about multiboxing and split/rejoin exploitation and the rates (at least) quadrupled in exchange since it's weird they've all but endorsed doing that with the modifications to the event since its original run.

Setting aside the nastiness surrounding the Black Kat gear at large, what sucks the most to me is that 99% of players will never even see Margrel. Whalebait stats are one thing, but locking a unique fight behind a time-limited rare drop?? At least Shadow Lairs are a scam we can do when we please. Those sure are ripe for change too.

This might be the one, guys. Ugh, I'll keep it short because I'm just expanding on stuff I said before, but I keep trying to think this over and figure out if there's a reason why the event is the way it is. The best I have so far is "The drops are meant to be rare to encourage partying up, nominally increasing the spawnrate by 4x for a full party, and the reason books drop unbound is so that players who already have them can share them," but then we run into the adversarial player economy and that line of reasoning falls apart.

When a book drops, the reality is that nobody is going to part with it or even bring that same party along to a Margrel fight when selling the slot or even the book is so much more valuable in even the immediate term. Even I am doing kat keep sprints to see if I get lucky. I mean, it's something to do, right?

This seems to be a feature, too, given how the 5⭐BKC drops. If it were "to encourage collaboration," then defeating Margrel as a group should reward the donor with an *immediate* valuable item, and rewarding the *party joining in* with enough materials to get most of the way there *across the course of the event, or maybe two events at most.* It doesn't. You can't even craft the 5⭐BK hat because it's drop exclusive.

If it were to "reward play," then the books would drop slightly more frequently than they do. They do not. I try not to speak out of turn or make direct accusations, but how am I meant to interpret the event's current design as anything other than engagement inflation?

I want to be clear, too, right; there's an "out" here that I *want* to believe is the case, so I will. MAYBE the event's being run as-is for the first time since the "big revival announcement" so that GH can get a wide range of opinions from both new and experienced players to set a marker to aim for when it comes to making adjustments. You have to test existing systems to make player-cognizant and metric-informed changes.

But after the last handful of little oddities I have personal issue with since coming back to the game, that voluntary faith that this is all very careful research is tenuously offered at best.

Shoutouts to everyone in the thread, btw, but especially @Pdtopgun for the recipe breakdown (reply #1) - a total perspective on the matter really drove home how utterly beyond the pale the design of this feels from outside.

We can always go back to the OG Chaos Set: Low on Both pieces, so the entire set gives: Medium CTR and Medium Damage to All... which considering that affect all weapons it should be that... (Wonder when that change happen), Black kat just shows even more the lack of care for the community that designers Had when they made the Raiment... yes, They didn't dropped with the original black kat cowl (30 January 2013) they where added after(17 September 2014) the cowl was a stand alone item like the 3* allstars SwiftStrike Buckler... but the designers went Full Greed and made a Symetrical set out of the black kat... and put it behing an egregious farm...

Talking about the farm all You need is 2 books... that's is insulting on it's own, but, lets move on for math sake.
Why 2? well You trade slots with other people with books (Yay! cooperation, obviously not what happen) so You all 4 get Margrel Miraculous Materials... for a total of 2 - 5* hat and 8 whiskers, that is enought to craft a 5* set and "start" 2 others at 3*... now that's lovely... in gnarnia! maybe, that might happen... maybe...

Let's get back to reality, that enforces somewhat a secondary market, based on elitism and the worst part (yes it can be worst) based on nothing else that a random drop (speaking of empty power). Something that should be a good thing became horrendous, became a "privilege".

What could we do? remove the Damage High from the Black Kat Raiment, in fact, make it gradually grow like the other sets... Low on 3 and 4* and medium at 5*. No need to touch the movement speed. You will have damage High-Ultra on every weapon! (why is that? black kats hats are another layer of insult to the players and the 4* shouldn't be crafted at all) that's a lot, unless the OCD doesn't allow You to have anything less that Max on everything! which You still can, thru different methods.

Will people revolt? (yes the same kind that cryout because OCH became free and demanded a re-fund) yes like a privilege once that purpose has been emptied of content, people will rebel... 1º those that are Complacently Comfortable on the "Elite" because "they have been robbed from their legitimate power" showing that there was never power there, just a self percieved privilege... 2º those who found themself believing the lie that "they needed a Chaos set or a Black Kat set to play the game" seeign the privilege.
There is other poeple that will continue playing those sets, because they like the gameplay or what the sets gives.

Peoples excuses to Not change things:
That will make gambling on UV worst... No it wouldn't mathematically it won't. UV Very High is less likely than UV low, medium and High!
Thousands will leave the game... No there aren't thousands players and new players wont leave because a set hidden after ton of unnesesary grind was nerfed (yes 3 youtubers might cryout) the rest of playerbase will adjust the gear and will resume playing.

So as a final Concept: an Event that Should encourage cooperation and good will, by poor (not really poor, bad faith I'm calling it directly, BAD FAITH) design promoted the opposite. Zeddy was affected by bad actors because of this event, this is not the designers fault, but the designers lack of foresight allow the bad actor to do bad.

And NO, I'm not a designer, I'm a player I'm good at seing what's wrong, not fixing it, so I wont suggest a fix that makes things worst.

@Son-Of-Vanatos
that's the worst luck I've ever heard of with books lol, insanely bad. my condolences

Uncapping family damage bonuses would help CIV/WHB against their counterparts, but still wouldn't hold a candle to weakness-matched damage from Elemental and Piercing weapons respectively, and they really should be ele and pierce respectively imo... Even before damage bonuses inflate the damage from Brandishes faster than other weapons, a DMG+0 Combuster will do far more against Undead than a DMG+3 CIV. Gets more pronounced as you climb in bonuses, too, where a DMG+6 Combuster would blow a DMG+9 CIV out of the water because split damage scales harder (it's like two different damage types hitting separately, not a lerp between the two attack values vs. enemy defense values). But even if we compare against a monotype weapon like Flourishes as pure Piercing or Rocket Hammers as pure Elemental, weak dmg types having so much less enemy defense to get through brings them far ahead of Normal with a conditional DMG+3...

Would be neat if CIV had Freeze on it too, or uniquely crazy-good Freeze against Undead specifically

Jeebus, that's the worst luck.

Paying other people to play spiral knights for me is a solution to the problem of "I would like a kat hiss raiment and don't have one", but it involves buying energy which means somewhere down the chain GH was monetarily rewarded for this gambling sweatshop disguised as a recreational activity.

With my wallet I would like to continue my vote for anything else, anyone else, as I have for the past decade.

@Son-Of-Vanatos
If universal bonuses were tracked completely separately and only the highest of univ vs. weapon+family bonuses was taken for calculations, it'd work in theory but be a mess to play around in practice. Ideally, the goal is to make more things viable rather than dethrone what's currently meta. You can't kill the idea of a meta, only what currently represents it. Just making family bonuses capable of exceeding the cap without imposing other limits, then making anti-family weapons do the correct damage types would be enough.

I don't like how split damage works right now, but like what they do for resistances. Making it a clean interpolation between the two defenses instead of being two separate attack calculations would curb the ballooning they're prone to. Was a big fan of Argent Peacemaker and Sentenza being split Pierce/Ele and Pierce/Shadow before they were adjusted (AP was an anti-Undead/Fiend gun, Sentenza Beast/Gremlin), and I could see Amputator being split Ele/Shadow (Jelly/Construct).

@Zeddy
"[I'd pay other people to play the game for me,] but it involves buying energy which means somewhere down the chain GH was monetarily rewarded for this gambling sweatshop disguised as a recreational activity. With my wallet I would like to continue my vote for anything else, anyone else, as I have for the past decade."
This is what holds me back, too. GH being financially rewarded for stunts like this is how things got to this point in the first place.

I mean as miserable as it is to admit, the way that we stop this is we just stop this. The less engagement it gets, the less it influences overall play metrics. Even if merchants are still selling items related to the event, we should just... not bother buying. Which sucks, and this isn't how it'll even work, but it's basically the only thing left to make a broad statement that "this isn't how we want to play."

It's kind of an untenable choice for every class of player, because the players that really care about it either want the slot sale value or the items themselves, and the players that don't care about it contribute to active play time anyway.

...as for the split damage thing, I'm not going to say I disagree; the game needs balancing, but the reason I have come to like it is because nothing else feels strong. It's really galling to go from ⭐⭐⭐⭐ to ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ and lose damage output. It feels like I'm getting worse at the game, it's kind of miserable.

It's really no wonder people want the BK set so bad. It's a really rare item that makes a player feel, noticeably, a bit stronger and faster in all the ways that are most visible. Of course it feels like it's an abuse of player goodwill. Every other design choice seems to play directly into the compulsion to grind for it.

The bit that really stings here is having hung out with enough veterans to know the state of the game and how it's been historically handled, but being new to the game and naïve enough to genuinely want to keep saying "Well, maybe if we're really polite and nice..."

I mean, I wouldn't want to make changes to a game in my free time either if every time I tried, there was another complaint, but... have we been making that many changes? Creating a customer-facing experience is just going to be like that!

Like, at the same time, it'd be nice to see *more of them*, so that it at least feels like the dialogue is a little less one-directional. More iteration, more... more anything, honestly. Even a statement of "Yeah, we ran it as it is to gather data," or... something? Turbillion rework was nice, forge rework was nice, OCH going free feels pretty good to me just because it's a cute little missionpack. I'm seeing nice gestures! I really want to offer up an olive branch over that, right? But there's a lot of historic stuff to walk back... I don't even know if it's possible for GH to split some instances off into Beta Branch and invite testers. I'd like them to? Or set aside a month and make a little "something's getting weird with the clockworks!" and turn the game into a testbed for a little while to square up some old grievances. Outreach. Dialogue.

I mean even though I agree with you and was even quick to say "well let's all just stop playing >:L" after this, the tortodrone thing, the silver personal colour and the slime casino changes... there's still the part of me that wants to whine something along the lines of "but my cute lil knight and gremlin game <:(". There's still part of me that wants to say "Even though I've learned about some things I want to keep dialogue open and be receptive and supportive." I mean, I don't know for sure that the designers and GMs are walking away from the forums mumbling "wow you're all a bunch of really miserable so-and-sos, huh," but I know I don't want them to be feeling that way if they are. I don't wanna speak for all present but "we're not haters, we care about it."

I like it here. I want to like it here. Maybe an appeal to emotion is a waste of time, but Spiral Knights is this tiny little pocket of pretty peaceful gameplay that a lot of people have a lot of history with and a lot of affection for.

I feel like everyone here has a different and very nuanced sticking point in the game's history that makes them reluctant to nod and say "good job" - and I don't want to tell anyone they're wrong for that, but for me, that sticking point was the forge, so you can understand why *I* fell for it, right? "Well, they did a nice thing in my eyes! Maybe it'll be your turn soon, too!"

Honestly, I hope I'm right, but... hope into one hand.

That trailer had a lot of things, including normal attacks from bombs! The "no grinding" pitch reflected heavily in how carefully orchestrated the game was around its initial Mist/CE systems, where you could technically grind but the game held much more respect for the player's time.

re: family damage bonuses
I was beating around the bush about this earlier but personally my preferred solution to the family damage problem is to simply remove them since typed damage is already functionally similar. Game's got enough enemy diversity in its harder stages that the concept of doing extra damage to a single family where a number of enemies have no family assigned at all is an antiquated one at the best of times. Family damage UVs would be better off being consolidated to generic damage if not removed, and existing family bonuses on weapons and armor are better served as functionally suitable effects rather than purely statistical - like giving CIV Ele/Freeze, or WHB Pierce and the ability to flinch when the dmg threshold's met on each ghost swing which would also help compensate for it being slower for no reason.

One of the worst parts of the event for me is that it incentivizes running through levels, not killing anything. At least the Tortodrone event encouraged you to kill fiends and thus engage with the combat. I think the event would feel at least a little bit more fun to play if Black Kats could spawn when you killed a regular kat. Maybe keep (or improve) the chance for a BK to simply replace a kat, but also add a chance for a kat to spawn a BK when killed.

I also think it might help to make books available for sale for a high number of pages, so that every kill feels like a tiny bit of progress towards your goal, rather than having to win the lottery. I understand they want the event to require grinding, but I think these changes would go a long way towards making it feel less tedious.

Having come back to the game during this event after seeing Operation Crimson Hammer being made free, I cannot agree more with the points raised in this thread. Kataclysm is simply *incapable* of being engaged with in any reasonable manner, and so people have converged on unreasonable means.

Let's compare to the other two 'occasional' events. Shroud of the Apocrea has a clear, easily-accessed, repeatable way to engage with it; running the mission, which can be done repeatedly and infinitely. March of the Tortodrones is slightly less easily-accessed, but one can still run any fiend-focused level and kill fiends for glyphs; *any* fiend anywhere can drop glyphs during the event.

Kataclysmic Confrontation, meanwhile, has interlocking levels of luck-based mechanics as essentially the only method of engagement. The only clear and easily-accessible way to get Ancient Pages is a single, once-per-day prestige mission that rewards four pages (and NOTHING ELSE, as the guaranteed Black Kat spawns in these missions drop no event items). Anything beyond that requires finding a random Black Kat (approx. 1/90 chance to replace any other Kat) in a mission, which requires luck in itself, and even then that only rewards either one or three Ancient Pages. Further, the Black Kat has a *vanishingly* small chance (approx. 1/250) of dropping a Book of Dark Rituals. Multiplying out, you have a 1/22,500 chance to get a Book of Dark Rituals from any 'normal' Kat spawn during the event.

The *only* thing that matters when one is attempting to get Pages or the Book is fighting Black Kats. Nothing else matters. This leads to finding and speedrunning levels that have a large amount of Kat spawns, running past every enemy which isn't a Black Kat, and repeating ad nauseam until you have the Pages or Book. This is... *not* an intended gameplay pattern for this game. Both the other events incentivize gameplay through having you either run the Apocrea mission or kill Fiends. This event actively anti-incentivizes gameplay in order to maximize Black Kat spawns and fights.

Meanwhile, the gear from this event (other than the non-Black Kat headgear) all requires items dropped from (or is directly dropped from), Margrel, the boss spawned by the same 1/22,500 droprate item.

Put all of that together and you have an event that is a mind-numbing pain to engage with in any way that's not running the 1/day prestige mission and calling it a day. Either one speedruns undead-themed levels over and over, trying to get Black Kat spawns, or one farms preposterous levels of crowns in order to *buy* a Book of Dark Rituals or a slot for yourself in a party fighting Margrel, due to the extreme rarity of the Book having created a player economy around it.

This event sorely, desperately needs a rework. What I would personally recommend is making the prestige mission repeatable (providing an easy and repeatable way to engage with the event), allowing the guaranteed Black Kat spawns in the prestige mission to drop event tokens such as the Pages and the Book of Dark Rituals (providing easily-accessible and repeatable Black Kat spawns), adding the Black Kat arenas from the prestige mission to normal Arcades as Mysterious Rooms, with the same guaranteed Black Kat spawns (providing guaranteed Black Kat spawns for those running Arcades), letting the Book of Dark Rituals be bought with enough Ancient Page tokens (providing a guaranteed way to get the Book of Dark Rituals for the unlucky, plus flavorful as you're rebinding the book out of its pages), and maybe changing Black Kat spawn mechanics to perhaps a 1/50 chance to spawn a Black Kat when any undead enemy is killed (providing an incentive to run normal gameplay and farm undead floors, much like March of the Tortodrones providing an incentive to farm fiend floors).

I did well over 500 runs of Weight of Darkness and killed about 70 black kats, no book.

I'm disappointed and burnt out... :/

that happen because we tend to ignore patch notes since they say:
"we done things"
"we did stuff"
"now we seriously(maybe) did the thing we said"
Granted the mayoriy of changes have been small.
Except the forge one, and that patch note was abysmal, Not actuall number where given, not a single one.
"chances increased" "chances doubled"
I WANT A REAL NUMBER not a conceptalization of an imaginary feeling that maybe kinda could be somelike cool!

I mean I'd still recommend the game to people, it'd just come with some caveats, and some clear warnings about parts of it that aren't worth pursuing at all.

if you picked up MH Rise/Sunbreak then I'd happily play through that with you; would also go back and replay 4U or GU. Both very good games.

Your heart's in the right place with all you're speaking on here. Summarizing my own thoughts since you already know I 100% agree: GH has almost never shown more than superficial interest or awareness in how Spiral Knights plays. That's the #1 thing that should change, and it's historically proven with almost all content updates past 2013 being heavily flawed in some way or based on unreleased, in some cases still unfinished content. There's healing wrench objects that got placed in certain March of the Tortodrones danger rooms and Mimic Vaults... that do literally nothing despite having what looks like a healing pulse. How does something like that make it to release at all, let alone stay there indefinitely, unless a dev team isn't playing their own game?

There was some headache around how LD/BN Crucible levels were being handled as well, where broken or poor levels got dumped into the pool with no way for players to at least vote them out themselves, so I'm curious if they'll handle whatever's next with more care having learned anything from that or keep up the trend.

"Look, I'm not saying the game has to live up to the quality of its contemporaries...".
I am, otherwise whats the point, does that sound cynic? yes, it is cynicism. I will not allow the game to predate on anyone, if it wants to be predatory I will tell people is predatory, I will not lie, nor allow bad things because "this game". A cynic will ask the what not the whos, there will be no "feelings" will only care for what is given, and If the game can't stand agaisnt others because have predatory designs is the games fault.

I'm not a designer of the game, I'm a player, I can point whats wrong, Not fix it. I understand my place and will not pretend otherwise. Nor will accept when someone tries to numb me into comformity or tells me I should fix it if I so smart, I will not fix it nor pretend I have the solution nor the ability to do so. I am a Player and I do what players DO. play when the Game is good, Don't when the Game is Not.

@Jcrayno:
Alright, rather than litigate intent, I need to explain that what I mean is *this game absolutely needs to stop being predatory,* but I don't think it's reasonable to ask it to be as big as Guild Wars just because both are free. There are limits to what is considered "reasonable scope." Maybe instead of "quality" I should have said "scale" but it should have gone without saying that it absolutely DOES have to live up to a decent standard of monetisation ethics. You are absolutely right to point out the problems with it, I just don't want to give the impression that I'm expecting GH to start the whole project over from scratch because the cost and scale of that undertaking is fundamentally untenable at this time.

My intent, for what it's worth, was to put Spiral Knights next to other games to point out just how much it is asking players to put up with, and how fragile of a position it might be in because of that.

@Zeddy:
It's a cute idea! I don't especially want to set my stall on the idea of promising an entire game, though. Game development is hard and I have other things to do. Small animation projects are leagues easier by comparison. I've made mods for other games but because SK has a strict no-modding policy I have no strong interest in drawing GM ire. Offering work if the opportunity presents itself is another matter, though. This kind of goes back to what I was *trying* to say before - I don't want spiral knights to become a "completely different" game and I don't want to replace it, I just think it would be nice if it took this opportunity to be the best version of *itself*.

Unless you were teasing - in which case, good one~ ;P