Im too lazy to read it all. I was gona read it all but when i saw "a. Make crafting above 1* require CE, no ME. If you have enough crowns for the rest of the alchemy cost buying 100CE shouldn't be a problem; especially if…" i stopped readingthere. NO NO AND NO. Why the hell like monkeyman sayed that wont reduce alts. That idea sux cuz of that reason . [ill give a example] Someone wana craft 3star item. He buys 100 CE and uses 100 ME to craft it 100CE+100ME = 200 ENERGY. If OOO Do this it will gona sux hard =.= .I guess u have ur dream 5* set and u suggest that to OOO. Dont be selfish and let other ppls make their sets with less cost geez >.< .

Edit: 2 ppls was faster than me typing o.O. Just saw that with the guns and bombs. Dude no offence but are you stupid ?!?. Why the hell they will not allow peoples to use guns till they get to T2 and bombs till they get to T3. First of all like you probably know there are heck of a lot switches around T1/2/3. Please explain me how u will turn switch that is far away with a sword ?!?Meh that suggestions kinda sux >.<

i ment ya know how switches are behind walls ? How can you hit it with sword wich cant reach it ?!? Well sorry for that selfish offence i tough u have but whatever.I dont know how to reduca alts either. Oh yeah and can ya tell me what loop mean ?

EDIT: I readed all and actually you have some good ideas . I was blinded from the poor ideas on the top. Whatever i love the idea with the Enciclopedia :P

I said the "blinded" thingie cuz i forgot how its the word on english xD

"Guess that's why they created Mist Tanks in the first place >_> "
They created Mist Tanks so this game can be played for free (and to attract players, of course. Only very few people would play this game if it was clearly Pay to play).

"I honestly can't recall playing with ANYONE who used guns or bombs who wasn't 4/5* and wasn't just hitting switches or newb."
Not sure how do you mean the end of this sentence.
But if they didn't use guns, they probably need to learn to play more effectively. Guns are very helpful against some monsters, not to mention gun puppies, switches and explosive boxes that sometimes need to be cleared (yes, it IS possible without a gun, but still).
I have my Cryo Alchemer since I was 2*

A. and if i have ME at 100 and CE at 780 to make a 5* item i have to grind up more crowns to get another 100 units just to do it?

B. then they may as well reduce all energy prices prior to 5/17, since the playerbase will abuse this

C. both but the lack of unique environments turns many away

D. i thought u wanted to end looping not encourage it. i do Vanaduke runs sure for the unique environment but also to make money to get the energy for crafting. now you want me to do other less profitable runs just to end looping? isnt that a bit extreme

but still i think OOO wants people to explore freely

oops that was a typo i meant to write "shortcut/lazy design" but it didnt take. anyways whats the point of having the mouse wheel then? how about those with 4 weapons then?

hold on trying to find it i know there was a topic about it somewhere. in any case in almost every "fix the lag" thread there is always people saying they need compensation for it namely for shields

this reduces sales of CE dur

constant maintenance? the rest doesnt make sense why would u try to kill something that isnt apart of the objective? unless its for loot

u mean waste time and energy in investing in something that might not work for them?

Um... this sounds waaaay past me. I'm only a 2* player entirely. A 3* may be coming for me soon, but anyway...

All my gear is already maxed out since I'm focusing on getting cr. I have absolutely NO USE for ALL the heat I get, and that's usually half the boxes I open. It's ALWAYS 'pity...I can't use ANY of the eat this is giving me...' An alternate use for gained heat would be good. I don't care if it goes to ME, reduction of Lift cost of the pet idea, but just have another use for it.

Laser sights? Awesome. Can never have enough of laser sights. can't always bring my mouse over to a target in time to shoot.

Lag? Mhm. I can almost never seem to shield in time. Even if I run away, I mostly get hit although my computer registers me as being out of strike distance.

Anything else I don't feel up to commenting on. Continue...

You made a suggestion to reduce the impact of alts but never stated why alts are a bad thing. Using alts for crafting only influences the 1 and 2 star equipment market, which is good new for new players since they can get equipment for cheap. At the same time, alts are already being limited by 2 factors:

1. All accounts on a single computer have their ME linked and in order for an account to not be linked to the other ones it must buy CE with real money.

2. Only 3 accounts are allowed to be created on a computer, whether they be paying or non-paying accounts.

There are ways to be past this, namely owning several computers, but even that puts a limit on how many alternate accounts a single person can have.

There have been way better suggestions for how to stop looping, ideas which don't punish players who are not seeking to abuse the system. Your idea is poorly thought out and punishes players who are just playing the game as intended.

Having heat accumulate into ME seems like one of those ideas that look good on paper but when you try to implement it, turns out it is next to impossible to do so properly. A few points to consider, if OOO makes it difficult enough to turn heat into ME so that it doesn't affect buying CE, then will this change even be noticable? Will new players play with full heat on all equipment frequently enough to actually be able to make use of this? This idea seems like it would help new players but if implemented, the only ones it would benefit are end game players with max heat on all their 5*s. Even then, they probably won't feel much of a difference.

i honestly think that the way the stratum's are right now is perfectly fine if i find a stratum that i make 5k+ ima play that stratum till it disappears when ever a gate comes out i try it from 1-the core starting with 0 crowns and every time i Finnish a level i wright done my current number of crowns then clear them and do the rest of the floor which ever gate i make the most money in that matches the gear i prefer to use I'll do until its gone then ill try the rest of the gates this is the way i play i dont wanna be playing gate roulette trying to make enough crowns to make it by plus i do boss gates a lot i dont want to end up making it to where i make 2 cr every time i do a Vanaduke run thats just ridiculous

#Detheto
Right now the problem is more along the lines of tier 1 being not as profitable as tier 2 and 3 so tier 1 players are at a disadvantage compared to higher tier players in terms of how much crowns they can make with their energy. Allowing players to reach tier 2 more quickly should be seen as a positive, not a negative, since less players will be quitting from frustration of not being able to sustain themselves on CE. This doesn't increase any costs once a player is past 2*. The jump in prices might be dramatic but 3* equipment prices are still quite reasonable given their crafting costs.

Your idea for reducing returns when a player repeats a level is not an incentive to do other levels, it merely punishes players for playing a certain way. An incentive would be giving a bonus to crown drops for doing different gates each run. Incentives work based on rewards, nothing in your suggestion is rewarding a player, it is merely punishing him. A game built based on punishments in order to force players to play a certain way is really no fun. This is why I believe your idea was poorly thought out. I hope this clarification makes my stance easier for you to understand.

Rather than alt crafting affecting the prices of CE, I think it is the other way around and that CE prices are affecting prices of alt crafting. At any CE price, alt crafters have to undersell players who are crafting using CE in order for their items to sell. Players who craft using CE set their prices depending on the largest cost in their crafting, which would be CE. Thus 100 mist energy can be inefficient converted to around 50-80 crystal energy. It would not only take an incredible amount of alt crafting to affect the CE market but also an incredible amount of new players buying all this underpriced gear. I just don't think there are enough new players buying 2* gear to generate enough of a force to affect the CE market.

Your refund idea is interesting, but I fear if it is implemented it may just prompt OOO to increase the cost of crafting yet again.

As for your diminishing returns idea, in scenario 1) OOO would still have to reduce overall crown output by your logic because people would be making more crowns than before like in scenario 2). In any case, I was giving an example not an actual suggestion. I'm just saying what you are suggesting is punishing players for playing a certain way; and that is just not fun. If you want players to do something else you should reward them for it, not punish them for doing it the wrong way. No matter how you say it, giving diminishing returns when doing the same level again within a certain amount of time is punishment. There are many ways that players can repeat a level legitimately without using an alt, players can just be lucky and join friend doing a profitable level and once they are finished another friend gets to the profitable level so the player can join that friend and do the level again. Your suggestion would punish this player instead of rewarding his good luck.
There are much simpler fixes, one of which is detailed here: http://forums.spiralknights.com/en/node/16950

> "a. Make crafting above 1* require CE, no ME. If you have enough crowns for the rest of the alchemy cost buying 100CE shouldn't be a problem; especially if…"

I see where you're coming from but this would be kind of annoying, it might stop an issue but it'd hurt players who don't abuse it as well. A bunch of my friends take breaks from the game and like to simply use their energy for making some items so it doesn't get wasted.

> "c. Have a law of diminishing return for levels. Once a player has gained x crowns from the level they get y% of usual crowns until z time has passed. This would encourage exploring different levels.
d. Have a level select IF c. is implemented, but only for levels already cleared."

I actually thought this already existed, guess I just got better drops last time I ran Royal Jelly Palace. The level select thing sounds convenient, as long as you're able enough arenas are head and shoulders more profitable than other level types(though with that knowledge a lot of levels go unplayed in comparison).

> "Path Markers: Have a line on the ground from the entrance elevator to the exit elevator to reduce back tracking."

Maybe it's just me, but I have little trouble finding the correct path, and I think not knowing precisely where to go promotes explorability, which is positive IMO.

> "Expressions: for player avatars, smiley style, using eyes and mouth only. Another nice way to spend Crowns/CE."

I'm neutral on expressions in particular, but I seriously think there should be more appearance/convenience/fun things that can only be gotten with CE, because as it is people with CE have a lot of control over things and things can became kind of unbalanced. I've heard a lot about the popularity of fun items in games these days.

> "Laser sights: for guns, Metal Gear Solid style. Aiming always seems to be off for me, especially with an analogue stick. I think this is because the game isn't truly top down."

I don't know about a laser-sight, per se, but it seems like I have trouble hitting things sometimes myself. If an enemy is moving in an odd direction I hit about 10% of the time, and oftentimes my projectiles hit the edge of an enemy, dissipate and deal no damage which is really annoying.

> "Interact button: Seriously, I don't know if it's meant to be, but reviving people is HARD! Just give have a button if you press it within a marked radius carry out the appropriate action, regardless of the avatar's direction. Keys, pots and shards aren't as hard but could still benefit."

I do feel that sometimes I have to be more precise than I should need to when reviving, it's also really annoying when I rush over to revive someone midcombat only to find out someone already took care of it but they haven't revived yet for some reason.

> "LAG COMPENSATION: If possible ESPECIALLY for shields. The amount of times I've been hit by something even though I've shielded in ample time is tremendously disheartening."

I actually mentioned something like this in a different thread, but people (presumably people with little lag) were against my idea of lag causing the character to shield automatically.

> "Excess Heat energy: When all equipment is at 10, the excess heat could accumulate and get converted into a Mist Energy Tank at a certain point (After MANY runs)."

I LOVE this idea, I really REALLY wish heat could be used for something else, I've gotten TONS of the stuff that simply goes to waste because most of the time everything I have is already level 10.

> "Gear cull: To reduce the learning curve for newbs, eliminate useless equipment (i.e. ALL 0* gear), though maybe have it as costume gear."

Sadly enough, 0 and 1 tier gear is going pretty much unused in the game, it doesn't take long to get tier 2 gear and the jump from 0 to 1 just isn't very much. There's also the fact that only the haze bomb (which is soon going to be a tier 2 item if I'm not mistaken) is the only tier 1 item that goes all the way to tier 5.

It's kind of a tough problem to tackle (which is probably why problems exist :D), I think more variables in armor would create more reasons to use differing types of armor. But as it is many armor types (even upper tier armor types) are going almost totally unused, people see that some types of items give certain bonuses and then they just don't have any reason to check out other armor types. With additional variables (slight move speed increase, aggro decrease, aggro increase; appearance changes like auras, etc.) it could cause many different types of armor that were previously ignored to be checked out.

> "Swords only at T1: Only allow guns when you hit T2 and Bombs at T3. In my experience they're a distraction until the aforementioned tiers and there's a bunch of other reasons too."

I'm not sure I understand completely, making entire weapon types unable to be used you're pretty far in the game seems... pretty dumb, to be blunt.

But on the other hand bombs under tier 5 do seem to have bad radiuses and guns just don't compare to sword damage at all (which is probably why a ton of players, especially newer players, don't even give guns a try). They both have advantages swords don't offer, but I don't think it's an exaggeration to say swords overpower them at least 75% of the time.

Don't be angry for people commenting your ideas. They might have just ignored it. That said, monkeyman135 has given much good input in this forum and I agree with many of his views on your suggestions.

I'd like to point out that Mist Energy is shared between characters. Are you talking about multi-clienting? That's a whole other issue.

I'm not 100% sure what this looping business is all about. Is it that players are using alternative accounts to gain access to high paying levels? Isn't there a timeout on inactivity though?

Path markers: I think this is a bad idea. The randomness and uncertainty is one of the interesting parts of this game's mechanics. Why ruin that? Besides, most players would try to kill and collect as much loot as possible. Do you want it to be over with as quickly as possible?

Expressions: That'd be cool, but the characters in SK doesn't really have "faces". I guess they could expand the emotes a bit though.

Auto-sell: I kind of agree with you, but I also think the whole gate creation thing needs some re-evaluation. It's just more or less impossible to affect the final result. Auto-sell just makes it even harder.

Excess Heat energy: I disagree for two reasons. 1) The energy system is fine the way it is, we don't need more "free" energy. 2) It would blend two very different things. Heat levels equipment. It has nothing to do with Mist energy.

Encyclopaedia: This might not be a bad idea. I had this little idea some time ago about a "monster museum" or such, where you could inspect and perhaps train on strategy. The monsters would be locked untill you killed such a monsters, as you mention here, or maybe if you get some kind of special token.

Swords only at T1: I disagree. Too much complexity.

I think the introductory part of the game and info stations are sufficient for the most part. There is, however, quite a bit of information that's mentioned in the wiki that is pretty important to basic understanding, but does not exist anywhere in-game.

The easiest way to reduce crafting and grinding alts: make it impossible to send or trade items and crowns between two accounts that coexist on the same computer. Also make moving crowns or items between such accounts though a third party a bannable offense. Educate users on why this policy exists. That way a player can have an alt, but that alt will only provide extra play time to that player. Any crowns or items earned by the alternate account cannot be moved to a player's main account unless that player has two computers.

The easiest way to reduce looping alts: Make it impossible for invites to be sent between two accounts that coexist on the same computer. Make it impossible for two accounts that coexist on the same computer to be on the same floor at the same time (joining such a party would produce an error message.) That way you can't use your alt to loop a level unless you have two computers.

only gonna comment on 3
laser sight: brilliant. May reduce system performance for older PC's though. Have it as an option like damage numbers.
Encyclopedia: brilliant brilliant brilliant.
Sword t1/gunt2/bomb t3 restriction: NOOOO.NOOOOOOo. TERRIBLE. HORRIBLE.