Spiral Knights - gates - boosting and rewards

gates - boosting and rewards

9 replies [Last post]

Wed, 04/06/2011 - 10:46

Metaknight

While I get that people would boost the reward for minerals in order to drive people toward depositing certain mineral types, I don't understand why anyone would both.

1.) is it really worth the crowns to drive up the price in order to manipulate deposit rates?

2.) we don't fully understand the ratios needed for certain strata types, so how can anyone even reliably influence the outcome? at this point, isnt it just experimentation?

Additionally, I swore that (at least during the preview) the mineral NPC said there was some sort of reward beyond crowns for minerals deposited. something that you got once the gate was active. Maybe i just misinterpreted what he was saying, but I have not seen any rewards beyond crowns and deciding the outcome of the strata.

Am I mistaken?

Wed, 04/06/2011 - 10:51

Rullerr

Legacy Username

1) How else can you motivate

1) How else can you motivate players to not continue creating the same levels over and over again (look at the latest completed gate and the next one SOOO much slime).

2) There is also not an easy way to encourage experimentation to learn the needed ratios. The best we have is boosting the partiuclar mineral, but with auto sell and a base reward there is no easy way to get people to check or even care if a particular gate has a particular mineral boosted. Add in the crown cost for even a 1 crown boost and experimentation is not likely to occur when there is a base reward.

Might the NPC have been suggesting that you get to impact the world as the gate is now active and you helped form it? Just a thought.

Wed, 04/06/2011 - 11:08

Metaknight

i still get your plan to

i still get your plan to reduce the base reward to 0. and I should stockpile my minerals and wait to deposit them in a gate that has boosted values (so i get more out of it and the person who paid to increase the value is getting what they wanted out of the deal). the autosell is just convenient right now so ive been doing it that way, but its not super rewarding.

perhaps in addition to setting the base to zero, it should be cheaper to increase the reward? im not aware of the current cost, but i would imagine even a slight decrease would help.

i just cant figure who these daddy warbucks / uncle moneybags players would be that would invest such cash in interests of changing the gate outcomes. my crowns are valuable to me -- i want to spend them buying recipes, CE from the market, and for alchemy. i certainly dont have the spare change to invest in such a thing. so.. who does?

Wed, 04/06/2011 - 11:16

Rullerr

Legacy Username

It's the guilds and players

It's the guilds and players who put real money into the game (thereby buying mats with CE either directly or through the market). If you have 20 people organized enough to boost a particular gate it wouldn't be that hard (I think it was 42k crowns for a single crown boost when I looked earlier but I may be misremembering).

It's not going to be singular players influencing the construction, and yes bad guilds could always mess with the ones trying to be useful. But in its current for there is no good way of getting the players who are just starting out and don't know how long they'll stay (i.e. don't have a vested interest in the future of the game) from just going for the biggest crystals and autoselling. The boost mechanic is supposed to provide that, and maybe it's too early to pass judgement, but due to cost of boosting and the base reward level, it's just not a viable mechanic right now.

Wed, 04/06/2011 - 11:33

Metaknight

agreed. that sounds pretty

agreed. that sounds pretty darn expensive, even if you are chipping in with guild members (because I presume a 1 crown boost isnt enough to do the trick) there is just not a strong enough reward for doing that (for the boosters). And at this point, since most people autosell.. it seems like people who boost are just throwing money away, and not reaping any benefits.

i have a feeling something about the system will change soon if this keepas up.

Wed, 04/06/2011 - 11:37

Marteen

Legacy Username

To really make boosting

To really make boosting viable the crowns to boost ratio needs to be increased by at least 3, but limit the amount of boosts to say 4. There should also be some visual clue as to what crystal is being boosted for what gate. For example let's say you have two gates. One gate has the four crystal colors and the largest crystal is the one being boosted. So different crystal sizes mean different levels of boosting. This would make going by gates and seeing say a giant red crystal would indicate that I should stop here and sell all my red crystal.

Going into each terminal and testing to see which crystal is being boosted is time consuming and boring. For now I just don't turn in any crystals and hoard them. If I do happen across a boosted mineral I'll cash in, but otherwise I don't deposit anything.

Wed, 04/06/2011 - 11:41

Rullerr

Legacy Username

I think it had something to

I think it had something to do with the number of crystals left that could be deposited. The idea being that you are the one paying the extra rather than free crowns being introduced into the economy (in the weird chance that a guild gets the needed crystals, boosts, then immediately deposits them all into the boosted gate).

Yeah 1 crown boost is not worth it IMO, and the base value just makes it worse. True if you have a base of 0 you need the groups to be willing to boost and help from gates, and it's still only a one crown increase, but the mindset of nothing vs something I think would really help. But that's my opinion

Wed, 04/06/2011 - 11:57

mrflippy

Legacy Username

Yeah, I remember something

Yeah, I remember something about getting rewards from gates that you helped construct after they were finished, but I don't see any text in the game about it now.

Wed, 04/06/2011 - 12:09

machallboyd

Legacy Username

It used to be that putting

It used to be that putting more minerals in a gate would earn you a slice of the crowns and heat that players hauled out of the gate.

And yeah, I don't think there's anyone who cares so much about ~10 crowns that they'll check all four gates individually to see if a tiny "5" is actually a tiny "6" before depositing at the end of a run. I'll take those 30 seconds of my life instead.

Wed, 04/06/2011 - 12:14

Metaknight

maybe they DID just mean the

maybe they DID just mean the item drops or something unique to the stratas you helped create, but it didnt sound that way to me. interesting that the text isnt there anymore though.

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gates - boosting and rewards