Awesome job, things are looking great so far! Please release this in a format that is not farmable/abusable with alts and we are looking at a perfect event!!

// edit: removed praise of GH, as it is no longer applicable

The decision to launch the event on live out of the blue like this is baffling to say the least. There are several things that still needed to be fine-tuned, bugs that haven't been addressed (or GH is outright ignoring) and the Mandolin is more or less in a broken state at the moment. (Was, more on that in a sec)

The movement and attack speed bonuses are still too high. Some monsters zip across the map with only 2-3 spikes, and the same scenario described in my previous feedback posts where monsters will keep up with the player, or even outrun them still happens. This makes charge attack-heavy builds (or using bombs in general) frustrating to use.

Im disappointed that GH decided to backpedal on the change to monsters properly reacting to diskgun bullets. They fixed it during testing but decided to un-fix it when porting to the official servers.

Several recent replies in this post expressed concerns about how easy it'll be to abuse alt farming with the spikes being unbound, and yet the event launches without any change to them. So many people are just alt farming the event right now because of how outrageous the material requirements are for the slicer. We literally said this was going to happen if the spikes were to remain unbound. And the insane part is, it almost seems like the "response" to this concern was to... further increase the amount of spikes needed to make the gun??

The spike cost was already excessive but somewhat reasonable (-ish, aside from the arcade availability). Collecting some 7,000 spikes in like 12 days is just not feasible for most players. (Not all of us have the time to grind arcade for hours every single day. No genuinely, with numbers this high, it almost seems as if this event was designed to be alt farmed. What the hell man.

A topic players brought up during the first couple waves of testing is about arcade availability. If this event is to be exclusive to construct-themed arcade levels, what are we to do if our 4 gates have no constructs in a particular stratum? In all honesty, this is something I completely overlooked while playtesting the event.

If I'm not mistaken, (I was only online briefly and I'm unale to check the current gates) as of last night our only source of S3 spikes are from a couple of starlight cradle levels (mistakenly labeled construct levels for some reason) and the only gate with spikes in S4 is the gate with Roarmulus Twins.

We're expected to farm up literally hundreds of spikes from a very limited selection of levels. Not to mention some floors can drop single digit amounts of spikes.

Disclaimer: I don't have a Mandolin yet (I don't think a single player on the server has the gun) but from what im reading, it seems like GH did fix some of the issues with the slicers.

This event launched far too soon to consolidate feedback about the Mandolin. The gun was made (easily) available for about two days, (barely enough time for players to use the thing) and is now on the main server with little to no acknowledgement of the numerous bugs the weapon had.

Under the assumption that they fixed the gun shooting completely through walls, this is my additional feedback during my very brief period of testing the Mandolin out:

• The light attack bullets have a bunch of collision issues at the moment. Particularly the bullets will collide with the player that fired them and be destroyed before reaching their intended target.
• I noticed an issue where under certain circumstances, bullets returning to the player will collide with my shield, and cause a shield "tink" that usually happens when you successfully block incoming damage. (I know this one sounds super vague, but hey I literally only had one session to test out the gun before it was moved to live.)
• An indicator for the extra damage when bullets are returning is nice but it's definitely a bit too much. The gun already fires very wide bullets (visually larger than orbit/mixer) the glow effect is a bit extreme and it begins leaving a trail of sparkles.

  Id suggest decreasing the bullet size (visually) and reduce some of the particle effects

• The screenshake effects from diskguns appear to have been completely removed from the game?

  This is coming from someone who personally didn't mind the screen shake effects. I feel that it adds to the "impact" of each bullet. But regardless, there exists an option to disable it now, why remove it outright?

• I was also going to yap about all the players complaining about the effectiveness of the stun status but right now that's the least of my concerns. (My TL;DR is, it's fine as is, stop complaining. The only suggestion I'd like to put out there is to increase the stun proc chance on the charge attack, since it's lower than orbit/mixer for some reason.)

There also seems to be issues with spikes spawning out of bounds occasionally. Over walls, inside starting rooms, ect...

Another bug which was reported early on in testing is that enemies from respawn pads will cause spikes to infinity generate. Particularly a set of respawning bombies in a Danger Room variant. This is still the case as of right now, and can not only generate infinite spikes, but also becomes extremely unfun to play against when you have a bunch of buffed minis, Mecha knights and bombies swarming you constantly.

The insane part is how quickly everything happened. The gun was only made available for like, two nights during testing and boom: it's on the main server now. There was barely enough time to playtest anything.

And the sudden launch of the event without any preview builds addressing bugs with the Mandolin gave me and a handful of friends the impression that the gun was added to the official game in a complete broken state (it might even still be. I haven't seen anyone use the 5-star yet)

Everyone I've spoken to has shared the same opinion that this event simply wasn't ready yet. And the abrupt push to the live servers is frustrating because now, drastic changes to this event have to combat the "but it's unfair to all the players to already did it" (it's almost like this is literally the point of a testing server). Which honestly gives me the impression that the developers didn't want to continue working on the event. We shouldn't be settling for "good enough"

And last but not least: remove the spike counter. Just get rid of it already. I'm tired of saying the same things over and over again, read any of my previous replies where I explain why it should be removed.

@spark-of-kill

This game might not be for you. The update is fine, and many people are clearly enjoying it. Your personal gripes might get addressed by GH, but it's not that important, so calm down and be civil.

Edit: Maybe GH could set up an in-game poll or survey to get the majority playerbase's opinions on new changes as they come in. This would prevent loud minority opinions from causing changes that would upset other players.

I agree with you there, Mandolin barely felt playtested when it only existed for a bunch of days in preview then was instantly pushed to live server. I really appreciate Gray Heavens taking some feedback on Mandolin, fixing its damage and giving it stun which I find unique (though unfortunately Orbit Gun/Mixmaster remain unchanged but what can you do). But, there were still some issues present with the weapon itself that could've been fixed if it was let to cook a little longer.

As for the recipe requirements, I am a little saddened that the costs did not get decreased. Gray Heavens knows that Slicer as a weapon type is powerful on its own, which is why they decided to make it a little tougher to obtain. And I think that's pretty reasonable! However I still disagree with the current crafting requirements, especially with the 4* and 5* variants, the amounts you need is quite absurd, considering that the Arcade's gate layouts can be a little inconsistent.

One of the bigger problems with the event is the methods in which a lot of people are encouraged to use to speed things up (you know what I mean). Due to the fact that the requirements are quite obscene, most people will result in ways to duplicate event items which gives them a significant advantage in material gathering. Making the requirements bigger only feeds into this problem further! There are other ways to solve this problem!

I think that a good start would be reducing the spike costs for 4* and 5* Slicers, primarily the 4* Mandolin spike cost. Its 5* form is its strongest form, but people should atleast have enough time to craft the 4* variant to use in Tier 3 levels without using any dubious methods. If the items are just a little more accessible, less people will be inclined to either spend an outrageous span of time farming the event, or resort to duplication methods. Furthermore, so people engage more in higher level difficulties (and engage with the event's mechanics more) I'd say it would be fair to make spike spawn rates scale with difficulty, with elite guaranteeing one spike spawn from a Construct enemy. It will be chaotic for sure, but it has the possibility to get more people play around spikes and their mechanics on a deeper level.

Personally speaking here (opinion warning seek cover) for me the most disappointing part about the event was that it ends up being something you farm really selfishly and do not engage with other players to efficiently farm (like Kataclysmic Confrontation, AKA Black Kat event). Most parties are dead ever since people found out how to farm the event with the most efficient way possible. The fact that it requires so much of your time in order to obtain a usable Slicer for Tier 3 also makes it so every other lobby (Danger Missions, Ranked Missions, miscellaneous Arcade gates) dies immediately when the event is out and remains dead until it ends (like in the case of Kataclysmic Confrontation).

TL;DR yeah it feels a little rushed, it's not just you.

>Those are all non-issues.
>This game might not be for you.
>calm down and be civil

@Zosu @Thats-Rough-Buddy
That boot you're licking CANNOT be that tasty bro... There's genuinely no way you can just up and dismiss genuine concerns as "nah they arent a thing you're just bad".

This update was rushed and unpolished to the point where, as of this post, the servers are crawling to a halt due to how many players are generating arcade levels (clockwork tunnels, compounds etc), combined with a number of them even using alts to farm an insane number of spikes. It's unplayable no matter how you're looking at it.

This game will end bros, sometime during this infinite timeline. don't just simply dismiss valid criticism and make it worse for everyone

@Thats-Rough-Buddy, that reply was posted the morning after the update came out, long before the servers started exploding. Most of it was actually written the day of the update, how tf am I supposed to bring up issues that haven't happened yet??

@Thats-Rough-Buddy @Zosu, you have to do some next level gaslighting to say that infinite spike generation, spikes spawning out-of-bounds, concerns about the event being easily abused with alt farming (and even worse, encouraged), concerns about spike scaling and bugs with the new gun aren't "real issues".

And even worse, the fact that GH pushed this to the live server after people gave feedback about these problems. In case you weren't aware, half of the server problems at the moment are from people abusing alt farming in some way. All of this was completely avoidable if they didn't rush this event out early.

Alright, after getting my mandolin, I come back bearing feedback.

+1 to everything Spark-Of-Kill said, and also:
Love the gun, but terrible event, had absolutely 0 fun and I hated farming it. This is all due to the fact that it's another event designed to be farmed with alt characters in order to cover the outrageous amount of materials needed to make the gun.
An mmo should be social and fun, alt abusing should be eliminated not encouraged.

Server degradation aside, it's crazy to completely dismiss genuine concerns regarding the rollout of a new event. GH is clearly excited to get new content out, that much is blatantly obvious after speaking to the new NPC in the arcade. However, Spark's writeup does a great job addressing issues with the monster spike grind. If I want to grind honestly and without alts, what am I to do if I prefer bombs or charge-heavy builds? Why should I be forced to alt farm if I want to get the new weapon in one go?

I know Cronus already stated that GH hopes to rerun this event somewhat frequently, but without any idea of when that will actually be, people have understandably resorted to finding the best farms, through alts and/or exploits. I don't know if that has anything to do with the servers degrading, but it's clear that this event needed a bit more time in the oven, and I hope we at least get some word from GH regarding future plans on this event.

Would you rather have no Spikes and infinite Sparks? Or no Spikes and no Sparks?

Personally, I feel like nerfing Deconstruction Zone spawn rate wasn't the right solution, and there are better ways to address the obscene scaling.
I think that either enemy AI towards Spikes should be tweaked, or Spike spawn conditions should be touched up.

In the case of the former, I don't think enemies should seek out Spikes unless they're aggroed or noticed a player nearby. Gremlin Menders follow a similar ruleset where they usually do not try to heal other enemies if the player is out of sight.

Alternatively, I think that aggro state could also be used as the main spawn condition - if the Spikes start to only spawn after an enemy has noticed a player Knight for the first time, then there wouldn't be a bunch of stray Spikes lying around.

If either of these methods are implemented, then I think the nerfs to Deconstruction Zones could be safely reverted, and they SHOULD be, because right now you rarely ever collect more than single-digit worth of Spikes in there despite being the signature Construct/Gremlin themed level.

I'm also a fan of the spike counter. It's cool to see how many you got this map. During BK event, I use a counter app on my phone and tap it whenever I find a BK, but sometimes I forget ^_^" . The counter helps compare maps/areas in this case.

I think it's normal for SK to have some mystery stuff players have to find out. If someone cares, they can find forum threads about it. Some ppl are just happy to play tho.

I don't mind stray spikes (Grandish dislikes them). Spikes also only appear when a player is in proximity to a spawn area, even if the mobs are long gone and I think that's okay. For example, in Deconstruction Zone, you can visit a spawn site that has been long abandoned by mobs coming after you and sometimes lone spikes will appear there. It's fun to walk through all those areas and check for extra spikes.

The uselessness of spikes after you crafted what you wanted, isn't perfect, but there are many other useless things in SK. For example, endgame players (like my main), with everything 5 star lvl 10 have no use for orbs and fire crystals. You just have obscene numbers of untradable, unsellable stuff in your inventory. So, I'm kinda used to that. I think, you can at least vendor the spikes or sell them to noobs for fire crystals, if you don't want them any more. It's not bad.

So I don't know if this is intended or a bug, but mandolin's first 2 shots are weird, there seems to be a bigger delay between the first and 2nd bullet input than the delay between the 2nd and 3rd bullet. You can easily reproduce this by double clicking, mandolin will just shoot 1 shot but doing a triple click will produce mixed results.