Spiral Knights - Problem Solved (?)

Problem Solved (?)

26 replies [Last post]

Sat, 09/03/2011 - 16:04

Marqui

Everyone and their mother has been complaining about :
A) The prices of a certain abbreviated tender
and
B) People can't play all day with mist

Now, this topic isn't about my opinions toward either of these subjects, but rather that there may be a way to make everyone happy, or at least go in the right direction.

Story time:
Along with Spiral Knights, I also play another MMO by the name of "Dragon Nest".
Dragon Nest - like SK - used a Fatigues system, allowing players to only play for "X" amount of time per day. When that time was up, they could do everything except complete quests and enter dungeons, but an outcry from the players - like in SK - caused DN to scrap the fatigue system and replace it with something similar, which they like to call "Pwr" (power).

Now, Power works just like mist, in the sense that entry into a dungeon costs "X" amount of points, however whenever a DN player runs out of power, they can still go into dungeons - with a catch.
Whenever a DN player goes into a dungeon without power, their drops and xp are SEVERELY shrunk (about 1/10th of the normal amount I think), allowing players to have the fun of continuous playing while not wreaking havoc on the actual game itself.

With this system, instead of 200 crowns a level a knight would only get 20, instead of 10 mats he/she would get 1, so on so forth. Now I play DN a lot, and whenever I run out of PWR, my day is pretty much done, as I can't really make much progress with anything, but the thing is that I CAN still make progress If I wanted to - and some days I do play longer, but It isn't ever by much.

Now, some people might say that doing this would add more crowns to the system, which we don't need, but mind you that this isn't a power-surge weekend. One knight doesn't reap the benefits of two, but instead ten knights share the benefit of one. If worse comes to worse, make it so that a knight can't gain ANY crowns without mist energy, just so players can still play.

Now as far as CE goes, there's not much you can do about the price of it - no matter which side/ conspiracy you decide to stand by, but the majority of the problem is that players have to take about two runs of the game to buy 100ce. The "Power" system is not meant to be an infinite source of crowns/ CE or to be another way to raise the price of CE, but a way to let players continuously work towards the goal of obtaining "X" amount for this run tomorrow, or enough to craft this piece of equipment, instead of feeling cut-off from the game because they can't play till the next day.

I'm not saying this is THE way to solve the problem, and I know there might be a hole or two there, but I'm trying to put out an idea that could lead the player base and OOO in the right direction. The reason why this is in GD instead of Suggestions, is that I'm wondering what the players would think, and to ask if there's any loop-holes or if this plan just wont work - and if not why?

Discuss

Sorry for the wall of text btw :/

Sat, 09/03/2011 - 16:18

Naruchico

Wonderful

I would say I love the Idea, we can dungeon all we want, but we don't get as much crowns and mats.

That to me is a fair trade.

On top of that, its a great way to practice bosses, its almost like a training mode.

And of course it makes way for new players and people with lots of time to make extra side cash, it may not be a lot but as always its time vs money.

Maybe we could just cut out crowns altogether which would make OOO happy in the sense it wouldn't take away from CE benefits.

Replace the crowns with something, maybe special drops that are extremely rare, kinda like bomb-heads in Krogmo?

I would still dive like crazy if I only got special items that are just cosmetic on top of that it would make the costume part of the AH worth having :D

But of course the rate would have to be very very small like 0.05-0.01% chance of a costume drop.

Anyone else have suggestions?

Sat, 09/03/2011 - 16:24

Glowing-Ember

Well

This is how the economy will naturally turn if players don't start buying from OOO. The results of a delve will diminish in relation to the price of CE, and eventually only mist-powered runs will make a profit.

So, that system is already in place.

By the way, I can play all day with mist. T2 runs yield more than enough to endlessly pay for CE.

Sat, 09/03/2011 - 16:25

Naruchico

Not Quite

Well its not quite that way yet, when your out of mist, or CE, you can't do anything but BN(if you have crowns) or camp in town.

This just means we can keep playing the clock-works even if we don't get much or anything

Sat, 09/03/2011 - 16:30

Soulstaker

I swear SK will not survive

I swear SK will not survive for one or two years if they do not fix the CE problems.Take runescape as an example.Ik there's no dungeons.Instead the whole world is like a dungeon.Entirely free.There's always inflations but no energy to stop us to have fun.There's npcs around.I usually kill giants and sell their big bones in the grand exchange for quick money.Entirely free and it was super successful.Reason why because they had memberships but let's first not go to that yet.Free to players in runescape enjoy 15% of the game.But since runescape is huuuuuuge. Free to play enjoys a lot.Games are for having fun not limiting you...

Sat, 09/03/2011 - 16:36

Marqui

I'm glad people like the

I'm glad people like the idea, I was kinda' worried there for a bit. :?

@Windowl

For the most part, players can be self-sustaining in playability, but only if they use CE to continually play, which is kind of a mobius strip when you think about it (play so you can get crowns, spend crowns to get CE, spend CE so you can play, essentially no profit in the end). So it's like you said, were pretty much there already, why not make it an official thing?

Sat, 09/03/2011 - 16:45

Naruchico

Another Idea

This was a last minute thought, but they could easily change the system to more of a "Freemuim", but cut drops by say 1/5 and make a subscription that you buy with in-game CE, so basically Free-Players can go down as much as they want but get 1/5 of all the drops, where is you manage the crowns, or pay out for CE you can buy a 30 day "Premium" account that boosts your income to the full 100%

We can still play 100% of the game, you can still get the premium account as a free-player, there is still a large drive to buy and sell CE both for money and crowns, and its all balanced nicely so free-players work harder, or pay out?

It sounds fair to me, any thoughts?

Sat, 09/03/2011 - 17:14

Marqui

@Naruchico I suppose that

@Naruchico

I suppose that would be... possible.
My main thing is that I think the game should be able to be played by everyone, anytime, as much as possible.
Your idea and the Decreased drops are the same, but one is for everyone, one is a subscription type option, which would make it harder for players to get to the subscription option in F2P, as well as new players to join in. That and the game's strength comes from micro-transactions, since most players would choose WoW over any other subscription based game apparently (it was a study from way back when :/ ).

So yeah, the principle is the same, except the subscription cost is replaced with having daily mist.

Sat, 09/03/2011 - 17:21

Naruchico

On that topic

I meant it as in its not a subscription but a premium account, where you can pay real money to get the CE to activate it, or do the market CE trade to get it.

No direct subscription fee's sorry for the confusion.

Basically its an A or B account status

A: Basic
B: Premium

Basic gets 1/5 of the drops and crowns.
Premium gets 100% drops and crowns.

Premium could cost something like 2000-3000 CE to make it somewhat costly but also within $5-10 worth of CE.

So its basically a Premium account you can buy, or earn in-game.

Sat, 09/03/2011 - 17:31

Marqui

right, but I think the thing

right, but I think the thing is players already grieve that they can't get enough CE or play as much as they'd like, so giving new players restricted status would put them off enough to not want to play the game at all. And then if it costs 3000CE, thats 3kCr for the premiums, but 15k for the non-premiums so they can become premium. You could counter that by making it cheaper for non-premiums, but then it becomes dirt cheap for premiums, in which case why make a system to divide them at all?

not trying to knock on your ideas, just putting it out there

@everyone else
Seriously, Feel free to comment on this, I know it's a wall of text, but knowing if this idea is accepted by the playerbase would be a great help in fixing problems :/

Sat, 09/03/2011 - 18:00

#10

Naruchico

True

I didn't think of that you have a point, premium would turn into a one off thing to chain out more premiums. touche XD

Well someone post us some better Idea's plz XD

Sat, 09/03/2011 - 18:03

#11

Acid_Snow

Legacy Username

Decreased drops? How about no drops, just vials

I doubt it would be adopted if the drops were reduced. Possible, but I feel there should be no crowns, heat, materials, or minerals gained; only vials to use on monsters and pills to heal and remove status effects. It'd be a cool way to practice techniques and get used to certain combinations. Alternatively they could just upgrade their training hall and make it some type of simulation room.

This might backfire, but it is a feature I'd like to play with.

Sat, 09/03/2011 - 18:14

#12

Mohandar

If dungeoning no longer costs

If dungeoning no longer costs CE, problems will get worse, because every time you use up CE, OOO makes money. Or rather, you are spending some equivalent of real world currency each time you use CE (even if you aren't spending it out of your own pocket).

Endgame players will have zero incentive to spend energy in dungeons- all the mats are worthless anyhow. They'll just dungeon with like-minded friends for fun and be a drain on the servers. Think Vana speed runs.
Newbies will have an even harder time getting higher tier equipment. Sure, it may cost nothing to dungeon, but they will be getting far fewer crowns, and competing with better equipped players who are also buying CE. The logical conclusion is that better equipped players will out-earn newbies, and because CE will cost drastically more, it will take newbies even longer to earn the crowns to buy.

This turns SK into a 'freemium' game, because in order to access endgame content, you will need to spend unhealthy amounts of time earning crowns, or buying CE with real money. As it stands, SK is already headed in that direction because there is more incentive to buy CE with crowns than to buy crowns for CE. Such a change would help only initially (as the current CE reserves are quite large if we consider they will only be used for crafting), but once the excess CE was used up, this situation would arise. OOO will also never make such a change, because in that interval, they will make very little money because CE will be artificially cheap for quite some time.

TL;DR: yes, CE prices being too high IS a problem; no, free dungeons with zero mats/heat will NOT solve the problem.

Sat, 09/03/2011 - 18:15

#13

Marqui

@Acid_Snow "This might

@Acid_Snow

"This might backfire, but it is a feature I'd like to play with."

Color me interested, how could it backfire? :/

Yeah, it would probably be better to have nothing drop, but at the same time, if nothing was there to benefit a player, I have a hard time thinking it would be very popular... but I could be wrong, I would certainly still do runs if I got nothing out of it - just not all the time :P

Sat, 09/03/2011 - 18:22

#14

Naruchico

Wait

If you think about what Marqui initially said in short form.

"When you run out of mist/ce your income steeply drops, but you can still go down with 1/10 of the gain"

I honestly think it wouldn't change much, it just gives people who want to continue playing that option, which is fair, casual players can keep being casual, the CE market wouldn't change by much, but the limitation on game-play time would go out the window.

I think it would solve the problem, and it wouldn't hurt the game or OOO income, it would increase it.

as many people have said the more players, the more chance of Income, and if OOO makes more money, it also means they can afford better servers to sustain the amount of players it has.

At current the model, the servers, and the overall lag/game performance shows they are just trying to be a small time game, but the problem is Spiral Knights pulls in the big league gamers.

Sat, 09/03/2011 - 18:26

#15

Eradicats

Legacy Username

I must agree, we're nearly to

I must agree, we're already at the point where spending CE to run the clockworks give severely reduced crowns.

However, I still like the idea on a fundamental level (an option for severely reduced gains for free instead of running on CE) because I feel it would help solve the newbie dilemma... where you're almost done with a dungeon, have no mist, have no CE, and don't have enough crowns for a 100CE trade. This would fix a total mood killer and would stop people like that dumb PC gamer review guy from ragequitting.

Sat, 09/03/2011 - 18:27

#16

Acid_Snow

Legacy Username

@Marqui

How could it backfire? pringerX said it all. I had a sinking feeling something was wrong with it, but was too lazy to really work it out. That said, if we just make the training hall a simulation room... it would be tough on the programming team, but a cool feature nonetheless. It would probably reach out to the hardcore players who want to say they've done it all and for the newer players who want to get used to the different monsters' attack patterns.

Sat, 09/03/2011 - 18:51

#17

Marqui

@Acid_Snow Hmm, I didn't see

@Acid_Snow
Hmm, I didn't see his post I guess :?

@PringerX

Well, the main Idea is to fix the play-time problem, allowing players to play even when out of mist, just with highly decreased rewards/ no rewards at all.
It's pretty much already been established that CE is a problem, but that there's no legitimate way to fix it without hurting OOO in the process.
As for the second paragraph, that's already true in this game, and has been for a while. The whole point anyone I know - myself including - is to farm crowns to get CE. That, and not all end-game players are bugs in a net - whenever you finish a console game, you trade it in for another, so I would imagine that the same principle applies, since there are "Quitting sales" in the bazaar and such.

But yeah, you raise a good point, and I didn't think too hard about how the plan would be implemented, but just the general idea - but the basic principle still stands, which is to allow players to continue delving after running out of mist, the key is that there aren't any strong incentives to continue playing except having a good time (it's just playing to play :/ ).

As a side note, using Ce for elevators would still give players crowns, heat, and mats, keeping the incentive to spend Ce on playing and keeping the system relatively unchanged.

Sat, 09/03/2011 - 19:53

#18

Mohandar

@Marqui

"CE is a problem, but there's no legitimate way to fix it without hurting OOO in the process."
Basically, they won't fix it. The only reason to fix it would be if the lack of new players and CE buyers starts to actually hurt their bottom line, and I suspect the game is still going strong at this point. If you admit this point, you will be voiding your argument... are you sure you want to do that? The other option is for players to fix CE, and we all know how well that goes. I'm hopeful that OOO will be able to think of something, but I wouldn't bet much on it.

"using CE for elevators would still give players crowns, heat, and mats, keeping the incentive to spend CE on playing and keeping the system relatively unchanged"
If players cannot get an equivalent value in crowns and mats in a level, then they will not spend CE. And if you allow some amount of return from free dungeoning, no matter how small, then CE will inflate to the point where it is difficult or impossible to "get your money's worth" in a level. This is already true in most of the upper half strata- the 10CE currently costs 650cr, and many of these levels return 500cr or less, mats included. If CE reaches 10-15k per 100, the vast majority of levels will fall into this category, and no one will ever spend energy on elevators.

Sat, 09/03/2011 - 19:56

#19

Naruchico

Another Idea

Maybe they could remove the cost to go down, but instead give us a kind of ticket system.

Say "Clockworks Access Cards"

We all get for free:
"Basic Access Card" Which means little to no drops, only thing is pills, pods and vials that stick normal

Purchasable Cards
"Veteran Access Card" this card will cost moderate amount of crowns and increases Income by 50%(lasts 24 hours)
"Spiral Order Access Card" this card would cost CE, but give you a 200% increased of drops. (last 7 days)

The cards don't stack, so if you buy a higher one it cancels out the other, and if you buy one before its time runs out it only restarts the clock.

Then we would only need CE really for these access cards, crafting, trinkets, boosters, etc.

Mist would have to be removed or else it would just make for easy cash crafting.

But I think this could work out, the market would scale with it over a period of time, just like before when CE prices where low, but they would balance out quickly, and with the proper pricing could easily make the game a profitable venture for OOO without limiting game-time, and also with-out dividing players up, they could still play together, its just when the coin hits the player its recalculated to scale with their access card.

Any thoughts?

(I know its similar to my other Idea, but having smaller increments of pay/time could balance it out so you couldn't premium stack like the other idea but as a side note, that basically already happened with the older players who bought up CE when it was 3-5kcr before.)

Sat, 09/03/2011 - 20:12

#20

Marqui

@PringerX "If you admit this

@PringerX

"If you admit this point, you will be voiding your argument... are you sure you want to do that?"
It sounds like I've upset you or started an argument? I can never tell with just text, if so then I apologize...

As far as the CE spending goes, maybe I wasn't explaining clearly - as things are now, players use mist to run a dungeon, buy CE , and then use the CE to run again, allowing themselves to be sufficient (that is, if they're successful in doing the run and the tiny little variables here and there, but that's not really the point). The idea is that this would be unchanged if a way to play without using mist - resulting in no reward - were to be implemented.

Basically speaking (because I think that there's been some confusion, which might be my fault, there's ninety things going on right now, and a car just crashed across the street, so I'm all out of sorts) the original idea was to allow running of dungeons without the regular reward whilst not using mist, so that after using your daily mist, you could still play and have a very minuscule reward that had no strong impact upon the game as a whole, but that made you feel as though you were still progressing - if even the slightest bit.
However, saying we don't allow players to gain anything - no matter how small - from runs without mist is still a completely viable option. You still get to play, run with friends or guilds, practice, whatever.

Try to understand that this thread isn't a "LOLOLOL OOO GIVE US FREE CE AND MIST CAUSE I DONT WANNA PAY FOR ANYHTING LOLOLOLOL", because it's not, the idea was to solve one problem, with hopes to calm the other. I know that the plan isn't fool-proof of course (or even fleshed out very much, as I mentioned in the original post), which is why I posted it here, so that not only could players mention what may or may not work, but offer feed-back as to how one should go about fixing it.

Sat, 09/03/2011 - 20:24

#21

Marqui

Weird double post

Sat, 09/03/2011 - 20:25

#22

Marqui

@Naruchico THANK YOU. I've

@Naruchico
THANK YOU.
I've been having a problem trying to express what I meant to say, since everyone seems to be getting tied up with the CE part of the post, so thanks for clearing some of that up.

Sun, 09/04/2011 - 05:26

#23

Naruchico

Just glad to help, too many people are getting all too stuck on the mention of CE, and they think this is another CE thread, when really this is a game-play thread.

Sun, 09/04/2011 - 12:53

#24

Naruchico

Another thought

Maybe instead we could ask OOO to do a test run with a special gate, a free gate with all (?) levels so we know nothing that is down it, but the rewards are really low, and there is no boss levels.

Then we could vote and they could measure the statistics of how many players used this gate, how much it makes, etc. then have us the players vote if we like it.

Then it wouldn't have to harm the current game, and would be a simple test run to see if it works out.

They could easily just place an NPC to access it, and if it doesn't work out how they would like it, remove said NPC.

But I think it would spread like wild-fire, new players would be excited the same as old, and with its low income would make it just a viable option to keep playing, on-top of a good test run for new weapons, with a little side-cash of crowns for going down, what 50 crowns a level isn't enough to make a huge impact.

and of course it can always be rescaled as OOO see's fits but it would definitely spark some new players to join, and bring back some of the old players that left, even if it is a test run.

any thoughts anyone?

Sun, 09/04/2011 - 18:53

#25

The-Rawrcake

+1, definately good ideas

+1, definately good ideas here, all it takes is one and

"and of course it can always be rescaled as OOO see's fits but it would definitely spark some new players to join, and bring back some of the old players that left, even if it is a test run."

is achieved, some people that i know would come back for sure :3.

Sun, 09/04/2011 - 21:36

#26

Quasirandom

It looks like Dragon Nest is

It looks like Dragon Nest is still in beta, so their item mall may not be out yet. But the power system there has an entirely different purpose. Nexon isn't trying to make money by making players buy power. They're trying to prevent people from pouring massive amounts of time into the game, and let players who have less time not fall too far behind. They'll presumably try to make money off of an item mall completely separate from the power system--and that's an item mall that Spiral Knights does not have.

The crystal energy system is the way that Three Rings is supposed to make money on the game. If you replace that by a system that isn't intended to make money, then they won't make any money at all. That's a non-starter for what should be obvious reasons.

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