Hello,
Love the idea of these spikes, and the general idea which I am guessing is to have rotating buff events on different enemy types in the clockworks. This is great as it adds some varying challenge and the opportunity for better rewards. It forces you to respect the powerful enemies and play more safely/strategically than you otherwise might.
Fit and finish
Someone else mentioned the colour, what I am imagining is that this yellow is the luminite colour, and there will be different energy attunements of the 5 crystals. However there are 6 enemy types, so not sure how that matches up.
The pickup sound of the crystals doesn't feel quite right to me, doesnt quite fit in with the rest of the sounds imo. sounds a little bit cold, hollow, whereas the rest of the sounds in game are generally bright, full and sort of golden (hope that makes sense)
The spike positioning, floating above the enemy, keeps it uniform across enemy types, but seems a bit odd to me, I had envisioned them actually coming out of the models' backs or something. but then you'd need to rig every model, so this makes sense. They just seem a bit "removed" from the enemy
Power level!
I think aside from just accumulating the floating spikes, it would be awesome to have some other indication of their power level, for example, advancing through tiers of: none -> size increase -> energy aura -> bigger aura + spike effect etc. Some more indication of their power.
Rewards
As others have said I think there needs to be a greater variety of rewards available from trading in, perhaps including crowns directly, but definitely craftable diskgun materials!!!
Ideas from PSO2
I used to play PSO2 (not new genesis) a lot, which does PVE fighting really well imo. One thing they have is a "PSE burst", you basically kill lots of monsters in quick succession and you have a chance of triggering a burst, which will then keep spawning mobs, eventually culminating in a mini boss fight. This could be tied in with the spikes, by eg. you collect lots of spikes, which then draws out a miniboss enemy (can be reused from what is already present in missions/prestige etc.)
My experience with this new floor modifier was tons of fun, but it also raised a question of how less experienced or skilled players should interact with it. I tested Tier 1 depths in the arcade, across both stratums, and toyed around with what was added. My first "experiment" concluded with me losing ~99% of my health (even though all my equipment was 5-star with heavy normal and elemental resistances +true love locket and Penta heart pendant) because a Tier 1 Thwacker attacked me at light speed after picking up 12 crystals that I physically couldn't prevent him from gathering. The buffs this modifier grants to enemies sometimes lets their attacks pass through my shield HP (shield HP isn't lowered, but my Knight's HP is affected (this happened only once, but my other attemps at recreating this were met with regular shield breaks accompanied by half of my health missing)), which leaves me wondering if players using 0–2 star equipment should entirely avoid these enemies and even levels with this modifier altogether.
Despite how harsh my experience with this modifier was in T1, it's great for Tier 2 and Tier 3 depths. It prevents arcade runs from getting too stale, provides a good challenge, and, in my opinion, allows players to better learn how each enemy type behaves. However, some enemies start bugging out when they get enough crystals attached, such as Shankles (those square spike slimes in Clockwork Tunnels). When a Shankle gets these crystals, it starts moving off its designated track and eventually gains an ability to move diagonally. Furthermore, if a crystal spawns in the exact same spot as an invincible Shankle, the Shankle gets stuck and is unable to move until the crystal is picked up by you or an enemy (after i removed the spike from an invincible Shankle during my run, the Shankle also started bugging out). Overall, this level modifier is very good, but it still needs a bit of polishing.