Right now, at most depths, there are maybe two or three possible levels. They're on a timer, and you can pick which of the levels you want if you wait for it.
I propose that instead of being able to wait for the levels to cycle through, the game should pick which one you get randomly. Encouraging players to stand there and do nothing for minutes at a time is bad game design. This would fix that problem.
You didn't address my point: encouraging players to stand there and do nothing is bad game design.
Suppose that if you were to sit in Haven and press the Q key, it gave you one crown. And it was one crown for each time that you pressed it, and you could press it over and over again. Suppose that there was some magical anti-macro code so that you couldn't macro it. Also suppose that holding down the key didn't work, but it only counted each discrete key press.
So tell me, would that be bad game design? If so, then why? It's hard to find reasons why that is bad that don't immediately also say that encouraging players to wait for a different gate is bad. The only one I can come up with is repetitive strain injuries.
Now, you could argue that if players didn't want to sit in Haven and spam the Q key, that they didn't have to. And that would be correct. But there would be a lot of crowns created that way, meaning prices would be higher. The crowns that such players get by playing the game for real wouldn't be worth as much. Players who don't sit there and spam the Q key are thus at a relative disadvantage because of it. That's bad game design.
But that's not the half of it. Computer games are supposed to be fun. That's the only real reason why they exist in the first place. The problem with giving crowns for spamming the Q key endlessly is that it isn't fun. Just like sitting there waiting for elevators isn't fun. A game that says that in order to be competitive, you have to spend a large fraction of your time doing something completely stupid that no one likes to do is not a good game.
Now, some boring things aren't practical to eliminate entirely, for various reasons. But minutes at a time waiting for an elevator is easy to take out of the game. And so it should be done.
There's also the question of building a good community. Part of this depends on the players themselves, of course. But game design has a considerable effect on how good the community is. For example, a lot of MMORPGs have badly designed loot systems that encourage ninja looting. The loot squabbles that arise in those games are completely the fault of the company, for failing to provide a sensible loot system. Spiral Knights has no ninja looters, because it's simply not possible, even for someone who wants to be a griefer.
Rewarding players for doing things that are obnoxious to their teammates, such as refusing to get on an elevator, makes the community worse. Taking that out of the game is easy to do. And so it should be done.
You just wrote a wall of text countering something he addressed perfectly. You pay crowns to turn the cogs, and it switches to the next one. Immediately.
If you can still pick your level by waiting, then that doesn't address the problem.
You pick it by putting crowns in >_>
this problem can be solved by forcing players to move on rather than waiting around (and no they don't get to choose their next floor)
i dont care if you want the profitable levels, picking the next level is a WORSE game design than just waiting patiently
"If you can still pick your level by waiting, then that doesn't address the problem."
Isn't it obvious? With a crown sink added to move the gates, you want people to use it -- increase gate rotation time to something like an hour. See who'd still wait? It's pay up, or move on right now. If someone still want to wait then, well, like I said, there's always the solo/kick options.
The system is fine as it is, if you don't want to wait to play, then go form your own party or go solo. although a crown based level swapper is fine.
the only time people would wait at a lift is if the entire party agreed that they didn't want to go on a wolver level (for example) or if they wanted to wait for an arena - its entirely tactical. if you have a problem with that, then don't go joining a gate with a high frequency of arenas or something.
TL;DR: Deal with it.
Quizzical is right, encouraging players to stand there and do nothing is bad game design.
I don't think paying crowns is a good way to switch the gates either, if it is a small amount of crowns, it might as well be free, and if it isn't a small amount, people won't use it.
Removing the random jump that the gate switching currently has and putting a time to rotate would help, people could at least decide quickly on the time cost vs benefit.
I guess the important question to ask is, what is OOO's goal here? If it is to create variety, so that each run isn't the same, then the current system fails since it takes very little effort (but sometimes an hour of waiting) to get all the arenas. If the goal is to let people choose, then making people wait sometimes as much as 30 minutes to get their choice means the current system fails. Is the system there just to slow people down? Is this something designed to punish people who don't have much time and reward people who can go do something else while waiting?
If nothing else, give people an option to play PvP while they wait, that is at least better than encouraging people to go play another game while they wait.
Your logic is incorrect. Its like saying GTA is a bad game because you have can wait till your favourite car has come, However, there is an alternative :D You can just get in another car! and its exactally the same in this game, if you do not wish to wait, then go solo.
At the end of the day, the system works, it fits in with the story of the game, therefore, DEAL WITH IT.
Not going to say anything for or against this (though I'm mostlly against even though I don't wait 70% of the time).
But don't the clockworks in a given gate rotate all together at the same time? Like even if you and a friend are on different stages (but same depth) in the same gate, the levels below will still rotate at the same speed. So if the system is kind of like that, then a method for making the clockworks move by crowns might not be possible since you'd affect the entire gate's rotation as well. (And if it only affected a single person's instance, that would be weird since its no longer "in real time" if everyone isn't rotating together). Though if the system doesn't work like this...
/derp for writing this response XD
I support this idea. I would have suggested this myself by Quizzical beat me to it.
I thought of this recently while I was waiting with a group at the Clockwork terminal. We waited 10 minutes for an arena to come around. We were rewarded for 10 minutes of doing nothing. Rewarding players for doing nothing for a prolonged period of time is bad game design. If you randomize all the levels then players won't wait at the elevators because the result will not change regardless of how long you wait.
But don't the clockworks in a given gate rotate all together at the same time? Like even if you and a friend are on different stages (but same depth) in the same gate, the levels below will still rotate at the same speed. So if the system is kind of like that, then a method for making the clockworks move by crowns might not be possible since you'd affect the entire gate's rotation as well.
To the best of my knowledge, all gate states are the same for all people. For example, going up to haven and then back down to one of the subtowns does not change which level is showing on the gate.
This, however, I think is to prevent people from getting around the wait. So, the question returns, what is OOO's goal in making people wait? I can't see anything good coming from tempting people to do something else while they wait on SK (be it another game, or whatever), I know several times i ended up not returning and just idling out.
Let's back up a minute and consider a basic principle of game design. This is largely a restatement of what I said above.
Computer games are supposed to be fun. The very reason they exist in the first place is for fun. Game designers should try to make their games fun to play.
In an online game like this, there are a lot of things that you can do. Some of them are fun, and some aren't. The game will reward you for doing some things and not others. What the game rewards you for doing should coincide with what is fun. That encourages you to do fun things, rather than saying you have to spend a lot of time doing something completely stupid for the sake of the reward. That makes the game more fun.
Now obviously, it isn't possible to do this perfectly. One problem is that opinions on what is fun can differ. Game designers ought to take their best guess on what players will enjoy doing, and offer rewards for that. Another problem is that sometimes there are sometimes things that aren't fun that have to be part of the game for other reasons. For example, few players enjoy lagging, and so game companies should (and do!) try to minimize lag, but the state of modern technology is that 0 ms ping times just aren't practical.
So, does anyone enjoy standing there waiting for elevators for its own sake? Put another way, if the game offered no rewards for it, would you stand at an elevator and wait several minutes before getting on anyway? Maybe you occasionally would for one reason or another, but usually not. Virtually no one would routinely stand and wait at an elevator for several minutes before getting on. It's not something that players enjoy doing for its own sake, and so the game should not give rewards for it.
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Why do you think Three Rings designed the elevator system the way they did? Do you think that in the game design phase, they thought, wouldn't it be neat if we gave players extra crowns for selectively standing there and waiting for elevators? Of course not.
Rather, they probably thought they were randomizing the levels quite a bit with the elevator system. They've put a lot of work into randomizing a lot of things in the game, and there are good reasons for this.
You know how in a lot of games, players complain that there isn't enough content? They could redo what they've already done dozens more times. But doing the same content over and over again gets boring. Players want more variety of content than that. That's the real reason why players want new content.
One way to run out of content and get bored a lot more quickly is to skip a large fraction of the content. But people don't typically skip content for the sake of skipping content. Rather, people skip some content because other content gives better rewards.
If level A gives better rewards than level B, and you get to choose between them, then some people will choose level A every single time. For those people, level B might as well not exist. In some games, this makes a large fraction of the game's content superfluous. Now, people can do level B, but the game implicitly punishes them for it, by not giving as large of rewards as level A.
Ideally, you'd like to fix this by making all levels at a given depth give comparable rewards to each other. But for a variety of reasons, this is basically impossible to do in practice. Some places will give better rewards than others, and then players will figure out which places give better rewards and farm them endlessly.
This ought to be discouraged, as it makes players get bored with a game and quit sooner. Three Rings is aware of this. It's the reason why they've nerfed loot in Jelly Palace, for example.
I'd contend that the current system was an effort at mostly giving players a random level at each depth to do. Players who really wanted to pick this level over that one could do so by waiting, but that was never meant to be something that you'd do every day.
Rather, by systematically waiting for more profitable levels, players have found a way to abuse the system that was never intended. It's kind of like how loot used to be distributed round robin, but players figured out how to grab junk items when it was someone else's turn for loot, but leave valuable things on the ground until it was their own turn. Giving players a small measure of control over the loot system allowed them to abuse it, and Three Rings had to randomize it. The time has come to do the same with gate selection.
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"You pick it by putting crowns in"
This wouldn't work very well for a variety of reasons. If the number of crowns is too small, then players would systematically choose some levels and disregard others. If too large, then players wouldn't use it at all.
There is also the issue of who pays the crowns. And that could end up being a source of considerable dispute. It's not hard to imagine players standing at an elevator and saying, I'm not getting on until you pay crowns to switch the gate. Encouraging players to grief each other like that is bad game design.
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"increase gate rotation time to something like an hour."
That creates other exploits. With one hour gate rotation times, you'd be able to look at a gate before you join and mostly know exactly which levels you'll do all the way down through the whole tier. If you know that it's going to switch in 30 minutes, then you'll largely know which depths you'll get to before the switch and which depths you'll get to after it.
That would allow people to look at the four gates and pick the one that will predictably be the most profitable. It would also encourage people to wait 10 minutes or 30 minutes or whatever before starting. Making payouts depend on real-life time of day any more than absolutely necessary (e.g., as caused by more players being online at some hours) is horrible game design.
Computer games out to fit around whatever else you have to do in real life. Players shouldn't be asked to schedule their lives around an online game. And yes, this is a reason why raiding in many MMORPGs is such an awful game mechanic.
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"The system is fine as it is, if you don't want to wait to play, then go form your own party or go solo."
You're basically arguing, it's fine that players are abusing the system. Either abuse it yourself or put up with reduced payouts compared to what others get. As I've explained above, that's terrible game design. Your argument works just as well as an argument against removing the hypothetical "get a crown for pressing Q in Haven" mechanic if it were part of the game.
"Its like saying GTA is a bad game because you have can wait till your favourite car has come,"
I've never played Grand Theft Auto, but I have the impression that it's a single-player game. You can do a lot more with goofy rewards in single-player games, as you're not implicitly competing against other people. In Spiral Knights, if everyone except you gets double crowns, then that hurts you, as it makes the things you want to buy more expensive.
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There is one other point that I'd like to make, which is kind of an esoteric advantage of the current system.
Who waits for arenas while they're not solo? Is it players who think that this level is more fun than that one, and so they'll wait? Usually no.
One common class of people who wait is those who think that this level is too hard, so I'll wait for a different one. That is, it's players who aren't very good at the game, and don't want to get better.
A more common class of people who wait is those who think, this level doesn't give enough loot, so let's wait for another level to cycle in that does give more loot. That is, it's players who are willing to abuse the system in order to maximize their loot.
But go back to the question I asked: who waits for arenas when they're not solo? If the goal is to maximize your loot, then that's done by going solo. You get the same crowns as before, but also get to keep all of the materials. If people are trying to maximize their loot, then why are they in a group in the first place?
The answer to that is pretty simple: because they're not good enough to clear the level solo. That is, they're not very good at the game.
So who waits for arenas when they're not solo? Mostly players who are bad at the game. If you tell your party that you want to wait for an arena, that's what you're telling them.
Thus, this gives bad players a way to announce that they're bad players. That makes it easier to pick out bad players and avoid grouping with them in PUGs, without always having to sit there and watch them die a lot.
But it's not worth it. Allowing l33t speak in names would give idiots a way to tell you that they're idiots before they actually do anything, but that's not worth it, either.
Now, there is one other significant class of players who will wait for arenas in groups: those who mainly want heat, not loot. That is, they want levels that drop lots of heat, and they want to be in a group with you so that they can take your heat when you die. But that is a very small class of players.
That's a pretty weak argument for forcing random levels on players, in my opinion.
It's a monumentally broken game in terms of stratum themes and crown accruement anyway. I believe it is perfectly fine the way it is: Those who want to wait for a level that's more suited for them can, and those who want to run through hacking & slashing at everything that comes their way can.
As stated above, games are meant to be fun, so people should be able to use their energy as they see fit.
Random level selection would break the game significantly more than people waiting for arenas.
The whole point of having three different special damage types that mobs can deal or resist is so that you have to bring the right gear for the job. If you had to go through random levels in a race themed stratum, there would be little issue since the status would be the only really random thing. If, on the other hand, you were in a status themed stratum you'd be up the creek the moment you step into the elevator. You can occasionally get up to 5 levels on one line, meaning you have to take a gamble as to whether you have the right gear or not.
Why should I have to risk getting a level that my gear is completely unsuitable for just so we can't force the game to give us arenas?
Every in-game action I take is my choice, based on my own opinions. If I think that 10 minutes is worth the extra crowns for an arena, it's my right to choose to wait; if not, then it's my right to go on. The game certainly isn't forcing me to do anything; I'm making a decision based on how my own priorities are met by the conditions that the game places before me.
Time is just as much a currency in Spiral Knights as Crowns and Energy are. Mist regeneration and heat are good physical examples of the time you spend (not) playing being worth something in-game. I can spend that optimally or sub-optimally as I choose, and I believe that the current system offers more and better choices to the players.
On a lighter note, I pass the time with my party by playing "I Spy." I give 10 crowns to whoever wins!
To the best of my knowledge, all gate states are the same for all people. For example, going up to haven and then back down to one of the subtowns does not change which level is showing on the gate.
Just was checking. Oddly enough at one point I tried to dive down to emberlight from haven repeatedly to see if it would change XD (yay for gate access otherwise I would've lost a lot of crowns heh)
Removing the ability of players to choose the next level completely would, IMHO, be as bad for the game as removing the ability for players to choose which gates they play and almost as bad as choosing which tier they start on.
The cost of choosing the gate is very very low, it is just the time it takes to run from one to the other.
The cost of choosing the tier is pretty low. If you have taken an elevator down to the town, you have free access, otherwise it costs a few crowns for the entire tier. Taking the elevator down usually involves playing the upper tier, which can be both fun and profitable, it does, however, take some time and energy.
I don't mind there being some sort of cost associated with being able to choose, but the cost being "boring time-waste" isn't a good one.
Oh, making the next level being random wouldn't, if I understand the looping exploit right, prevent people from looping. Rather, it would encourage it since you could no longer run a stratum normally and just choosing the arenas when they come up.
"It's a monumentally broken game in terms of stratum themes and crown accruement anyway. I believe it is perfectly fine the way it is"
Err, what? It's broken and should stay broken?
"As stated above, games are meant to be fun, so people should be able to use their energy as they see fit."
Because you think it's fun to stand there waiting for several minutes? Wouldn't it be more fun if you got to do everything else the same, without the waiting for several minutes?
"The whole point of having three different special damage types that mobs can deal or resist is so that you have to bring the right gear for the job."
So you bring gear that tends to work well for a lot of the levels in a stratum. Or maybe you bring gear that will help you with the hardest mobs or the hardest levels in the stratum. In case you haven't noticed, there are an awful lot of levels in which mobs deal multiple types of damage (not counting normal) in a single level.
"If, on the other hand, you were in a status themed stratum you'd be up the creek the moment you step into the elevator."
If you really can't beat anything while using gear matched for something else, then the problem is you.
"Every in-game action I take is my choice, based on my own opinions..."
Suppose that the system of pressing Q in Haven giving you one crown were in the game. Your argument would just as well apply to say that that should be left alone. For that matter, if there were a duping bug in the game, your argument would say that that should be left in, too. Yes, it's a reductio ad absurdum.
"I don't mind there being some sort of cost associated with being able to choose, but the cost being "boring time-waste" isn't a good one."
Then what should it be? I haven't seen any decent options for one.
"Oh, making the next level being random wouldn't, if I understand the looping exploit right, prevent people from looping."
That is correct. It also wouldn't fix the buggy Vanaduke fight. Fixing looping would require other changes.
"Removing the ability of players to choose the next level completely would, IMHO, be as bad for the game as removing the ability for players to choose which gates they play and almost as bad as choosing which tier they start on."
Why?
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Some people have said, if you don't want to wait, then go solo. If I go through a level and get a bunch of heat, why should I get no credit for the heat I earned just because some idiot group leader refuses to get on the elevator?
And even apart from that, the problem with certain methods of farming being unduly effective is that it causes higher prices for everyone who doesn't do them. For example, if there were a crown duping bug that some people knew how to exploit, huge numbers of crowns might be created that way. In one sense, players would be free to refrain from using the duping bug.
But if they wanted to buy anything, they'd be competing with others who did use it. Too many crowns chasing too few goods causes too high of prices. Players who refrained from using the duping bug would be faced with outlandishly high prices for anything that they want to buy. Players who don't use the duping bug are thus made worse off by its existence.
The difference between allowing players to cherry-pick arena levels and allowing a crown duping bug is not one of type, but only one of degree. Picking levels for players randomly would mean pouring fewer crowns per player into the system, and so everything would be cheaper. That's everything, from CE to recipes to materials. If others cherry-pick arena levels and you don't, then that makes you worse off than if others couldn't and didn't.
You want players to never be able to choose to fix the problem. I'd rather do the opposite. Allow players to choose without waiting to fix the problem.
"Allow players to choose without waiting to fix the problem."
That creates severe problems of its own. People would figure out, at each level, this is what offers the best loot or is the easiest or whatever. And people would pick the same level at each depth every single time. The other options might as well not even exist. Just like that, perhaps half of the game's content essentially vanishes.
Don't think it wouldn't happen, either. It already does, if given the choice. You know how in Ashen Armory, at the fork, nearly everyone goes left instead of right? The right-hand path might as well not even exist. The time and effort put into creating it was wasted.
Losing half of a game's content is pretty game-breaking, don't you think? I say it's better if the game has more content, not less.
players waiting for the floor they want is not abuse of the system!
Its set in place so players can do what they want at the cost of waiting a short period!
Putting it on a random system is a poor way to go cause you may never get what you want!
Again if you were not able to wait for the floor people want it would greatly effect the market on materials increasing the price of the already rare materials making it harder for everyone to get what they want!
So please put more thought into ideas before you come up with one that would wreck the game for everyone!
<"It's a monumentally broken game in terms of stratum themes and crown accruement anyway. I believe it is perfectly fine the way it is"
Err, what? It's broken and should stay broken?>
Actually the two different statements were: "The game as a whole is broken for those reasons" - This game has a long way to go with their balance issues, but that would be off-topic.
And: "I believe it is perfectly fine the way it is: Those who want to wait for a level that's more suited for them can, and those who want to run through hacking & slashing at everything that comes their way can." - Pertaining to this topic, stating randomizing levels would be bad for players.
Those bogged down by players who want to wait should choose more like-minded group mates or kick them. Not to mention the clockworks aren't supposed to be random, but orderly.
"players waiting for the floor they want is not abuse of the system!"
Do you really think that Three Rings anticipated that players ought to systematically wait for certain levels? Or was it mainly intended as a way to randomize the levels? I strongly doubt that they expected that a large fraction of players would want to systematically stand there and wait for the "right" level at a large fraction of the elevators. That it happens is a sign that something has broken down and should perhaps be fixed.
It's not cheating, really, as it's within the rules as they are. But it is the sort of, "that isn't what was intended!" thing that gives good reason to change the rules. For some sports comparisons, consider the four corners offense, goal tending in basketball (which wasn't originally illegal until players came along who could do it), hack-a-Shaq, Wisconsin football going offsides against Penn State in 2006, or the baseball player who discovered that the rules didn't specify that he had to go back to the previous base after a foul ball, so he stood right next to the next base immediately before the pitch. All of those were within the rules, but an unintended abuse of the rules that ended up leading to the rules being changed. The last two led to very quick rule changes, before the next games were played.
"Again if you were not able to wait for the floor people want it would greatly effect the market on materials increasing the price of the already rare materials making it harder for everyone to get what they want!"
To the contrary, the reason that rare materials are rare in the first place is that people avoid doing the levels that drop them. This would lead to less of that, and the rare materials would drop in price. It would lead to a price increase on things that drop in huge numbers in tier 1 arenas, but those are vendor trash as it is.
"Those bogged down by players who want to wait should choose more like-minded group mates or kick them."
Ever hear of a pick-up group?
And the problem is that you don't find out that your group leader is a griefer who will refuse to get on elevators and let you move on until he does so, and by then it's too late.
Okay, first of all, let me get this straight... If I, or any one player, wish to wait for a level to rotate for, say, an arena, or to avoid the level Devilish Drudgery because I or them are poorly equipped and admittably can not efficiently fight them with currently equipped gear, I or them are now considered griefers? I fail to understand how making use of an implemented, and what I do believe is an intended game mechanic, makes us griefers because you or someone else have a short attention span. (I swear, people who wait just take too much flak for no apparent reason these days...)
Back on topic..
"I propose that instead of being able to wait for the levels to cycle through, the game should pick which one you get randomly. Encouraging players to stand there and do nothing for minutes at a time is bad game design. This would fix that problem."
It may not be flawless, but this is how it was created. Levels cycle through in real time, as if spinning gears and rotating sections within the Clockworks cycle in and out of range of the elevator. Considering the backstory of the Clockworks, this kind of mechanic would make the most sense and this is why I believe it was intended and would not be subject to any major tweaks.
"Suppose that if you were to sit in Haven and press the Q key, it gave you one crown. And it was one crown for each time that you pressed it, and you could press it over and over again."
I can not even begin to express how laughably terrible this is as a counter-argument. Of course a function like this would be broken. Why? It creates crowns for pressing a button. Waiting for a level to cycle out in exchange for a more profitable level can not be compared to a broken function that could potentially spawn 1K+ crowns a minute for absolutely nothing. By the time the levels have cycled, the person pressing Q would already had beat those who waited for the profitable levels because of the time it takes for the levels to cycle and all they had to do was spam one single button for free crowns. I can not begin to fathom how this "argument", if you can even call it one, is even remotely relevant to the subject. Falling back to an argument like this gives me the impression that you had no actual argument in the first place and merely took an act of desperation.
"Computer games are supposed to be fun. The very reason they exist in the first place is for fun. Game designers should try to make their games fun to play."
In all MMOs, there will always be an action that is exceedingly boring, but also rewards you greatly when it's done and over with. In other games it's called grinding, and it keeps you in one spot for several hours, grinding levels to achieve this one particular level, so that you can do this one particular thing in the game that you would consider fun. In this game, it's called waiting, and it only lasts for a couple of minutes instead. And if you can not find anything to do in the time-span of 10 minutes, be it read a book, peek at the television or boot up music, then hope to god that the party leader is understanding and willing to go with your short attention span and not wait for the levels to cycle. (Yes, I realize that crown-farming could be considered grinding, but this is not the subject at hand.)
"Who waits for arenas while they're not solo?"
I do, but I always make sure it's okay with the rest of the party.
"One common class of people who wait is those who think that this level is too hard, so I'll wait for a different one. That is, it's players who aren't very good at the game, and don't want to get better."
Or they were equipped for another family of monsters in an element-stratum and feel that they do not have the necessary equipment to fight them. If I have no shadow defence and negative fire resistance, I won't play Everyone's Fired if I have an alternative - that would be having a death wish and is simply put, stupid.
"A more common class of people who wait is those who think, this level doesn't give enough loot, so let's wait for another level to cycle in that does give more loot. That is, it's players who are willing to abuse the system in order to maximize their loot."
If you mean abuse as in excessive use of an action, then yes, you are correct. If by abuse you mean taking advantage of an unintented mechanic then no. Considering how long this game has been out for, if waiting for the levels to cycle, as they do in real-time, was unintended, then something would have been done about it by now. Otherwise, Three Rings have been digging themselves a hole for this entire time, and done so consciously. This, does not make sense to me.
"But go back to the question I asked: who waits for arenas when they're not solo? If the goal is to maximize your loot, then that's done by going solo. You get the same crowns as before, but also get to keep all of the materials. If people are trying to maximize their loot, then why are they in a group in the first place?
The answer to that is pretty simple: because they're not good enough to clear the level solo. That is, they're not very good at the game."
So apparently party play for fun is now considered as "you're too bad at this game to play solo". So I, who have solo'd several arenas in all tiers, am now not good enough to do it anymore simply because I enjoy playing with other people? Because I enjoy running through the Clockworks with other players for faster and varied gameplay? So the ultimate goal in this game is to play everything solo and never socialize ever again? Your logic, it makes no sense.
"So you bring gear that tends to work well for a lot of the levels in a stratum. Or maybe you bring gear that will help you with the hardest mobs or the hardest levels in the stratum. In case you haven't noticed, there are an awful lot of levels in which mobs deal multiple types of damage (not counting normal) in a single level."
"Oh no! A gun puppy! Darn it, I was prepared to fight beasts so I brought piercing armour! Dang it, I'm screwed!!"
Actually, no, not really. In case you haven't noticed, people gear up for the type of damage that the majority of the monsters in that level inflict. Optimally preparing yourself for everything is practically impossible, therefore you bring gear that is better suited for the anticipated majority of the monsters you'll be facing off with. Just because there happened to be a few gun puppies in a beast stratum I wouldn't drop my skolver for grey feather, because then I'd be ill prepared for the majority of the monsters in that level, as it is a beast-themed level.
""Every in-game action I take is my choice, based on my own opinions..."
Suppose that the system of pressing Q in Haven giving you one crown were in the game. Your argument would just as well apply to say that that should be left alone. For that matter, if there were a duping bug in the game, your argument would say that that should be left in, too. Yes, it's a reductio ad absurdum."
The only absurdum I see here is pressing Q, which I have already addressed to previously in my post. (I still can't believe you pulled it out again..)
"For example, if there were a crown duping bug that some people knew how to exploit, huge numbers of crowns might be created that way. In one sense, players would be free to refrain from using the duping bug."
The difference is, that bug abuse is an offense because it is an exploit of unintended feature that shouldn't have been in the game in the first place. Exploiting bugs get you into trouble, whereas waiting for level cycling is not. If it was an exploit, Spiral Knights would have a lot more "retired Knights"...
"Don't think it wouldn't happen, either. It already does, if given the choice. You know how in Ashen Armory, at the fork, nearly everyone goes left instead of right? The right-hand path might as well not even exist. The time and effort put into creating it was wasted."
I seem to have walked a forbidden path. Dear me, am I a wasted player for playing a wasted part of the game now?
"Do you really think that Three Rings anticipated that players ought to systematically wait for certain levels?"
Yes! I do!
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There's probably more I would like to address, but this post is long enough as is.
If Three Rings didn't anticipate players waiting for levels then I have to wonder what the point is of both being able to see which way levels will rotate and having the next level icon displayed on the lift at the end of any given stage. =\ Maybe they didn't expect players to do this for the loot but it sure seems like they expected players to do it for one reason or another.
The Treasure Vault / Graveyard depths just seem to reinforce this belief. These bring the one type of depth in the entire Clockworks that is obscured to the player.
Right now the random level mechanism is used only for graveyard/treasure vault.... I assume OOO intends those levels to be extra profitable, so they don't want everyone to always wait for them (though vault is not really that profitable currently).
Allow players to choose level is a valid strategy... e.g. you don't really want to mess with T3 wolvers with your chosen equippment. I don't think taking it away completely is the way to go.
I've seen suggestions in other threads that OOO could make it into another crown sink - pay crowns to make the gate shift right now. I think that is a good compromise. Pay, or wait. Party disagree about waiting? Go solo or kick.