Aino and I spent a good chunk of our time testing Preview Server along with many others whether thats from 30 minutes to 5 hours. It is still our own personal time to test something. And it was not looked at or discussed.

Aino posted his feedback on the Preview server post and many others, including myself, have done so too. Please, GH, take the time to look at them and atleast tell us why we had the server run in the first place.

People are still opening gambling boxes for $1000 in Haven to get tickets.
Might as well turn everything into crap /s

While I'm super happy to have the preview server as a regular part of development, I'm also fairly busy and my schedule didn't let me even start playing Spiral Knights until later today.

I'll need to wait to give my own personal feedback, but what I can agree on is that the testing server is rather pointless if it's being used as a one-day preview of what's releasing the following day.

While players were certainly wanting the spike event to return shortly after the server issues from the previous event, most players would have preferred to have time to cook the changes before pushing them to live.

Every preview we've had recently has been used fairly successfully - from fine tuning the spikes to testing two versions of DVS to see which one worked better. This slime spike preview was not around long enough to correct design issues, and now it's a bit too late to fix it as it's gone live.

I believe this preview was lauded as being brief, but it was far too short for what it's worth. If anything, Grey Havens should consider private testers for shorter tests like this and keep the public tests as the longer ones. If you're looking for quick bugfixes on a tight schedule, private testers could be given those parameters instead of promoting the entire playerbase to give feedback that doesn't have time to get implemented.

Hopped into the game today (haven't played in preview server and never will because why if GH will never listen) and played Onyx Clover gate first strat of T3 since it has slime levels. I didn't mind it when they had at least two spikes max but once they get max spikes then it becomes ridiculous. In Starlight Cradle I did the danger room that you pay with energy and faced off against FIVE giant lichen colonies, all of them with max spikes on them. Mind you I played this game for years just like other vets and know plenty of movement tech, dodges, positioning and flash shields, and against five giant colonies that only have like 1-2 seconds of cooldown before launching another mass spike attack consecutively with a very large health pool on each of them in a small room is not fun. I'd rather face two Radahns from ER than go up against whatever I just faced because at least for the former there is a learning curve while in here they just decide to add a buff element to existing enemies and throw a bunch of them at your face. Now again I'll give the benefit of the doubt that it was in a danger room where a bunch of lichens spawn and that's my fault on going in there during the event, but when the only option I had was to spam OE charges to weaken them and reduce their damage by a tiny amount due to the spikes, there really isn't much of a learning curve. It's just keep throwing attacks at them until they die and such, especially when I was cornered and didn't have much of a way out since it was five of them and they cover a wide area each. If the room was bigger then I'd have a different opinion, but other than that it's the same ole thing as the first event.

Also what was the reasoning behind picking up the spikes when they pop out of the ground instead of just... walking over them to collect them? Now because of that you have to click a button to perform the action and if enemies are around (especially spiked), you're basically vulnerable until you drop it, and even dropping it you have 2-3 frames on you where you're defenseless and guaranteed hit. I'm not aware yet but throwing them against enemies damages them so that's a plus I guess, but the old way of collecting them was kind of better imo. Everything else regarding spike being off the HUD and such doesn't matter to me much so I won't give my feedback on that. Also like Aino's video there were some instances where a few spikes were stuck in block or behind a gate that required a second person to keep open.

I also don't like how some people still defend GH's actions and assume that the game is going to make a comeback. Before and during the revival of SK I still had doubts that it'll occur and so far I was right in which the revival really wasn't much to begin with. Most of the new things were just QoL updates and this event as a sprinkle. Yes it increased the playerbase but over time it started dropping back to regular levels, albeit a bit higher which is nice if anything. Other than that the event itself REALLY NEEDS major work and hasn't risen the player count much because of how grindy it is and how overtuned the enemies are in which newer players won't have much of a chance and the event being basically geared towards maxed-out players.

Tl;dr: Second event was kind of a downgrade imo, some of the QoL updates are nice but meh, GH needs to add more testing time for events like this like maybe up to a month or so.

@Fangel: No mean to disrespect but as much as you have great feedback, I wish you could be more blunt and provide more direct criticism. The wording and approach you normally do I understand you're looking at both sides and look at the positive aspects of things, but you're not necessarily adding much on the more negative aspects. People are very upset at this event and have the right to be so we can't give GH the benefit of the doubt when for the second spike event they only had the test server open the day before public release. That is definitely not enough time and to me that shows incompetence from GH. I work in the aerospace industry and work like this will get immediately rejected by QA, they won't even bother to look at the whole thing. Now both fields are entirely different and understandable, but this type of approach GH is doing is really lazy and inefficient. If they kept the test server open for maybe a month and actually read players' feedback (not just the whales or endgame players), then we would have a better event. Not perfect but much better. Constructive criticism is valid but we have to put it in a way that doesn't give them much benefit of the doubt at least for how far we all are in this point of time in the game; it's 2026 and we went several YEARS without actual new content such as new unique levels and bosses for example, the only new content we got being the post-FSC story levels. If it were 2013 then yes the way you would explain it would make sense because they're still barely adjusting to the transfer (don't remember when GH acquired the game so bare with me) but now we're in 2026 and already some of us are kind of fed up with how they're treating the game. GH promised us a return of the game and kind of set themselves to putting high standards on it, but so far it doesn't seem like it and most of these new updates are QoL things which I understand are needed, but they really needed more time having people test their 'new' content until they get it right. Again no hard feelings but some of us vets are either over it or very upset at the current state of the game in how GH is rushing 'new' content. We're allowed to voice opinions in a way that demands better action and accountability from them so we can't give them much positive reinforcement. It's not to say negative reinforcement is good since it can also backfire as well, but we're at a point in time where the dedicated players REALLY want to see actual progress and not flipflopping random content until they make it work in their eyes. If we give them the benefit of the doubt often then it'll have them assume that they don't really have to do much to appease the general playerbase, and I get that there isn't much staff at GH but I mean... they could've gone with temporary interns at least but they either refused or don't have enough resources for more people. I mean I heard some people wouldn't mind working there as unpaid interns but I don't know much about that part. So yeah we technically have to be blunt and hard on GH or otherwise we won't get meaningful results down the road, especially when they were ambitious that they plan to bring the game back better than ever. But overall they have the say on what gets released and how it's released with barely much player feedback implemented into it. Again no hard feelings.

NGL it would be infinitely better if your knight just automatically picked up the spike they walked over... if they're spamming attacks they throw it and probably deal damage, otherwise it just saves time

Right now you can run over to a spike and depending on lag and what animation your knight is in, you might just start shooting your gun instead of picking up the spike in time to stop a problem from turning into a big problem

Also a smidge sad there's no new items

The flow of aurora levels now is just horrid, instead of being able to shatter the spikes by walking over them, I have to purposefully alter my playstyle around picking up each spike to yeet it at a random enemy or wall in order to collect it unless I want to suffer.

I don't know chief, but this is just straight up not fun.