I don't really find any problems with that said above. I would rather have menders hide in spikes it makes them harder to kill and makes the game harder. I would rather them keep the game hard as hell so I actually have a challenge.

I think the minerals are irrelevant because 95% of the population does not care what is in each gate. Personally I don't, I just sell all of my minerals to one gate no matter how much they are paying and I never look at what is in it. Whatever shows up in the gates is fine by me. I cannot really think of a system that actually forces people to look and think about what they are selling and what the gate will end up being, so until we find out how to do that most people aren't going to give a crap about what minerals that are selling.

Payment during the first half the run I believe should be smaller than the second half. You should be rewarded more for beating harder enemies, let's be honest here the first half of any run is incredibly easy so you shouldn't be payed as much.

Level Arena completion music too loud? There is a mute button on your computer and I assume if your actually hearing it you can turn it down.

That being said I would like to see the Jelly King not open the entire time. I think the Jelly King should be more of a rarity than what it is now.

I believe half the things the OP complains about are based purely on opinion but they can be reasonable complaints. I think energy gates can be worth it, it is only 3 energy and sometimes you can get 3 tokens from it.

I think the minerals are irrelevant because 95% of the population does not care what is in each gate.

I disagree. The Copper Sun gate, for instance, is nothing short of a tragedy.

Level Arena completion music too loud? There is a mute button on your computer and I assume if your actually hearing it you can turn it down.

Though I have my music muted anyway (as I prefer the sound of Kirby 64's soundtrack when playing), players should not be expected to mute an entire part of the in-game sound altogether because of ONE element being too loud. This type of argument has never been relevant. Ever.

I think energy gates can be worth it, it is only 3 energy and sometimes you can get 3 tokens from it.

Sometimes you will get one token from an energy gate. RARELY you will get more. Most of the time you will get a pittance of Crowns, or worse, Heat. The point is that the amount of average energy gates you need to invest into these gates to score these lucky bounties do not begin to outweigh the time or money (as that's what ME and CE amount to as far as gameplay is concerned) wasted trying to win the lottery here.

'- Rocket Puppies are still OP. Rocket hitboxes are too small."

You think so?

I disagree personally, even in T3, rocket puppies aren't that bad at all.

Love the monster balance update. Can't wait to enter the clockworks and whomp on some quicksilvers and oilers.

The only thing I agree with the OP on is the gate construction, but only the part about minerals being largely irrelevant to the average individual, or for that matter, even for a group of average individuals. I have about a 1000 of each mineral right now and I see no real reason to use them. I'll probably use them eventually to get the achievements. Hopefully by then the use of minerals will have improved.

Fallout: I think they were aiming for "possible" with these changes. Oiler rooms were impossible after the update to traps. Time will tell if they overshot and made it too easy. But then again, there are changes coming to the danger rooms too...as noted here.

Boo for nerfing difficulty. I can already beat T3, now it will be even easier.

well every1 has a different issue, i can just repeat what i said

in such a big forum, a poll system would be more than adequate(or even better, an ingame- mail- poll)

wow hated if they do hated if they dont OOO cant win

Welcome to business. You can't please everyone.

If I gave a mouse a cookie and it wanted a glass of milk...I would drown the #$@%&# in milk.

That or charge admission to see my talking (and demanding) mouse.

Wait...what was this thread about again? >.>

You know... when the title said "6-23 Update discussion" I expected at least the OP to be on topic...

This update has several things people have been complaining about for a while. Oilers and Quicksilvers got a nerf to balance out their new activated by floor trap abilities, Phantom respawn times got extended, Shock took a nerf and EVERYBODY and their brother complains about getting shock-locked (we'll see if the nerf fixes the shock-lock issue).

As for the original post:

- Jelly Palace is up 100% of the time, it's still the easiest thing in T2, and the crown payout is 150-200% of what you'll get from any other stratum. Enjoying the game and progressing in the game are almost mutually exclusive.

All boss stratums are up 100% of the time, and they all pay out well.

- The friends list is still about gaming the system rather than keeping track of your friends.

Friend list in games is always filled probably a good 75% with people that are good to play with, not people you just like to hang out with.

- Every gate continues to be polluted with Wolver spam. Careful gear choices are effectively broken by newly-buffed Wolvers appearing everywhere you go.

Yes, there are Wolvers. Mostly they're contained to Wolver dens and Beast based clockwork tunnels. Wolver Dens come in different status effect flavors which show up in status effect stratums (such as High Voltail in Shock statums) and arenas.

- Menders still hide in spikes.

Menders "hide" as far away from the players as possible, usually in the corners as they can't run anymore. If spikes are in the corners then that's where they stay anyways.

- Danger rooms and arenas are still completely dominated by Gun Puppies and Demos regardless of theme.

2 different types of danger rooms until they do the update on them to mix up the layout and enemies that Nick said was in the works. You get Wolver/Gremlin danger rooms and Slime danger rooms. No Gun Puppies are ever in the current danger rooms. Arenas you get 18 Gun Puppies, and the only time you get a bunch of Demo Gremlins is if the final wave is full of them.

- Energy gates are still broken. Payouts are never worth it. Never.

Broken? No, they do exactly what they're intended to do. Payout worth it? Nope, I'll agree with you on that.

- Crown rewards for the first half of a run versus the second are still broken. You cannot justify drastically reduced rewards for the first half of a run as long as you refuse to balance stratum themes.

First half of a tier the reward is getting to Basil, 2nd half of a tier the reward is a lot of heat/crowns.

- Level/arena completion music is still way too loud, a problem I could fix myself in 30 seconds.

Incidentally you can, play with your sound settings.

- Rocket Puppies are still OP. Rocket hitboxes are too small.

The only Rocket Puppies that could be considered OP are T3 ones, they take more finesse then your regular Gun Puppy.

- Some items still lack 5* or even 4* upgrades. These should have been in the game at release, even if it meant using placeholder artwork.

It could be that some items were never meant to go to 4 or 5*.

- The auction house still hasn't been replaced with a materials market interface, similar to the one we have for CE.

Has never been said that it was going to be replaced, nothing wrong with how it currently works.

- Gate construction is still broken. Minerals are irrelevant and every single gate is full of so much random stuff that it's often impossible to predict which resists you need.

Actually, if you look at the gates a large part of them are status effect stratums. You are getting exactly what it says you should with the exception of random Graveyards and the occasional odd floor. And it was never stated anywhere that a (Monster) stratum must have ONLY that kind of monster. It just means the majority of the monsters will be that type. You can't just carry Normal/Ele defense anymore. You need a more rounded defense on a lot of stratums or some enemies are just going to eat through you.

~Gwen

Is it just me, or is Nick drinking Ian's tears as he made this patch?

I dunno, I mean, after having a taste of the players' tears from Ian's mug, I suspect he began to feel a little... naughty.

that got my blood boiling and i liked that >.<

Advising people to use a Shivermist Buster to handle the first room of "Flame Lash Arena: Slimey Showdown" goes against the spirit of the game. The game was never meant to severely stack the odds against players such that a single weapon must be used. The wide selection of equipment is pointless unless all there is more than one way to clear danger rooms and arenas.

I actually tried Shivermisting the first room once, and it didn't go nearly as well as my usual strategy: CIV charge one of the red rovers down at the start, and then (if the second red rover misses the oilers miraculously, or if the CIV swing was started early enough that I can make it to the other before it fires) swap to DA and break the other red rover, or slowly circle the room batting oilers back with DA until the count gets low enough that I can freeze vial the remainder and break the second red rover. Incidentally, this becomes trivial with 2+ people: just burst down the two red rovers before they can fire, and then just remember to handle the waves in the right order so you don't get the four red rovers at the same time as oilers. So without Shivermist, it's still doable solo and easy to do in a (coordinated) party.

A bigger issue is that the balance between solo and multiplayer is just really wonky overall. In general, going solo is easier than going with a PUG, which discourages meeting different players. In a decent number of cases, going solo is still easier than going with people you know, because the "one-size-fits-all" health and damage scaling seems to make many monsters harder than the benefit of having extra people can account for. Then there are the couple super-specific cases where having multiple people makes a challenge much easier (1st arena room, first wave; trojans; tortodrone) (incidentally, has anyone tried 4 shivermists as a group response to the fire slime danger room?). I think it would be worth looking into creating specialized multiplayer gates with challenges that are designed to provide a satisfying experience for a group, as opposed to attempting to just scale the experience between 1 and 4 players with some numeric changes. Sure, being able to adjust group size on the fly is nice, but I'd be willing to give that up for being able to play with true multiplayer puzzles.

While almost entirely a perfect update, I would just like to say that I hope that at some point the Red Rovers get their Über-fire of doom back 'cause they were the only things which I honestly dreaded in an arena. Everything else though, I'm rather thankful for, heh.