although players do not like the rising energy prices, in general the prices are fair. it is dictated by the supply and demand of Cr/CE as well as the yield of Cr/100 CE from a Clockwork run. If you can convince enough players to spend real $ for CE, yes you will eventually lower CE market prices.

what else would lower CE prices, raise elevator prices, reduce rewards on Clockwork runs so they are less profitable.

But of course, if they did this, the same people complaining about high energy prices will still be saying it is too expensive to play.

Yes, most people would like to get everything for free or the next best thing, getting it without much effort of earning it. But alas, if you aren't trying to get rich quick and you're willing to take time to earn and be patient, you can play without infusing any more real $ into the game.

Unicornkitty, Thank you very much for pointing out the lack of worth in playing pvp and the failure of the current ranking system. I've been trying to suggest changing the ranking system to no avail, like changing it to rank kill-death ratio or something else. However, would there be a problem in changing the rankings to make it skill-based? The only notable problem I can see is that bribing becomes worthless once you realize you're facing the guy with the best kill-death ratio. The only reason I still play Blast Network is to sell mod calibrators by buying them with tokens (hey, I win my games now and then, so why not?)

Although I like the fact that you're concerned about pvp, how does it relate to ce prices going up so much? Just wondering.

The surge allowed people to get double crowns for mist than they normally could, which meant everyone had more money. More money all around creates inflation, and therefore a (temporary?) spike in CE prices. In addition there aren't as enough things to spend crowns on, so they're not worth very much and there are less CE sellers looking for monies.

@ Ranzo's edit
The steam promotion caused a ton of people to buy starter packs. A lot of these people were newer, hadn't placed a solid value on the CE yet, and because they were T1 they didn't have a lot of crowns or a way to get a lot of crowns. So a ton of the new players sold CE, dramatically increasing supply for a while. Now that the insurge of new players has died down, supply also drops, causing prices to go up. Also, a lot of the steam players are now T3 and able to get a lot of money and buy CE with it, increasing demand.

ce prices arent "fair" when people artifically make the price rise but putting up a wall of 200+ requests at a peak price, waiting for other offers to raise up price and then removing all 200+ and then putting it back at a higher price over and over.

I agree with these sentiments to a degree. Personally, I feel BN doesn't do anything for the gameplay or the economy, as there's a bunch of people crammed into the cloud servers who aren't actually playing Spiral Knights.

Look I'll be frank here. If there isn't any OOO regulation on the economy, the game will most likely tank. It's not working out how they planned, as people would rather not play than put their credit card numbers in. They're also paying to feed the bandwidth of the BN players.

Every time a player goes into a BN game, the pay 200cr. Every time a SK player goes to another level, they pay 1/10th of the trade cost, which would be 570+-cr. Good BN players get 4 times the amount back every time they play. Good SK players can maybe net 1.5-2x their gate cost in an arena or in certain T3 levels. Good players in BN just...show up. Good players in SK have been playing long enough to have the gear necessary to delve into the richer areas, which will cost what....20KCE for a 4* set with a 5* in there somewhere?

...more timing based than skill based...

Aside from that, you have some good points.

PvP rank is based more on who played pvp longer and less on who is good at the game. They should make it so you lose rank points for every loss and gain rank points for every win. That way there would be some value to pvp ranking other than amount of time spent playing pvp. Either way you should still get your coin so you can get pvp rewards eventually.

Also, lag is a real killer in bomber... erm blast network. Also, the game has a few glitches. Anyone who hid in a supposedly safe spot and got clipped by an explosion can attest to this. But I can't use that as an excuse. I'm just terrible at the game. O: Hopefully I'll be better at lockdown when it comes out. (=

I also agree that Roarmulus has terrible rewards. I play the strata because I love the level layout and the boss, but the rewards are not that great. This is especially true on Warfare Workshop. The token reward is not much better. What do you trade your tokens in for? Catalyzers (a gun that is awesome when used accurately but is inaccurate by design,) Shock bombs (not as powerful as fire bombs, not as much CC as frost bombs, not that great on beasts and gremlins,) Quicksilver gear (only source of movespeed boost in the game, but has defenses covered by no less than 3 other existing armor sets,) and pulsars (actually a decent weapon.) Basically, stuff that looks cool but isn't as good as what already exists (except maybe the pulsar line...)

Yes, Roarmulus rewards could use some tweaking.