There needs to be a better way for lower levels to get energy. In a month or two, it'll be much harder to start out.

Player run economy is player ran. Your loss is someone else's benefit.

3k crowns per 100 energy is not hostile. 6k crowns per 100 energy is not hostile. 10k per 100 might be borderline there but I doubt it'll get to that point.

People are making an assumption that new players will be free players forever. The more crowns you get per energy the more your dollars in real cash are worth relative to this game. The mist tank is for people who are new and want to try the game a bit more than it is for us who want to play the game more than two hours a day every day. Similarly, people who complain about missing a day and "wasting mist" fall into the same boat and miss the point completely.

As long as we get 100 mist every 24 hours there is no reason that someone can't get to the high end of this game even if the market shot up to 10k crowns per 100 energy. Sure, it may take a while, but nothing is truly free. Anyone who comes into this game, or anything in life, thinking something is free might as well argue that they should get everything for free without having to put the time or effort into it as well, much less any material resources.

Im one of the players who tries to play as much as possible for my friends and guild. Its impossible becuause it focusses to much on energy. think about it:
1-its needed to go in clockworks
2-its needed for reviving
3-its needed for alchemy
4-its needed for buying new weapon/other slots
Its used so much! I think they make it free to enter clockworks or something. Think of it this way:
The 1st 4 clockworks give best benefit now they starting to die out. Player made ones are replacing. The ones that give tons of crowns will be gone in about 1-3 days time. lower the price to like 2200 or something.

You guys are up for a rude awakening when the economy gets stabled in about two to three weeks max Ce will be worth 5k to 10k easily. Personally, I am not selling a bunch of Ce once the market hits 5k to 6k per 100 ce. Average Ce price in a month in of this game will be 10k most likely.

if people are willing to buy energy for 3k crowns per hundo, then energy will be sold for 3k crowns per hundo

short of changing the whole system or flooding the market with cheap energy there's really not anything anyone can do

I remember when I joined the preview event it was at around 9k-10k per 100ce. Hopefully it doesn't get that high on live.

"People are making an assumption that new players will be free players forever."

The game is marketed as free-to-play. New players will have the assumption that, for the most part, as long as they don't care too much about end-game they will indeed be able to play for free forever. This is how F2P MMOs work. You only have to pay if you want certain perks, want to experience ALL of the game (usually you can get about 90% of it for free), or if you want to speed up your character progression.

The current pay-plan only works if they don't care if in 6 months from now they won't have more than a couple hundred players playing the game. In another few weeks (1 month tops) no one is going to be able to farm enough crowns to cover the price energy will have shot up to by then. Personally, I don't see how they'll be able to keep enough players around to even pay for the cost of running the servers. Your average player is not going to pay $3-5 a day just to be able to play the game. Even if you were content with the play time 300 energy a day (still $.75 a day) gives you, that's still way more money than a monthly subscription to any of dozens other MMOs that are considerably better than this one. It's also a quite resonable assumption that the kind of gamers who enjoy this type of gameplay aren't going to be content with the 1-2 hours a day the 100 energy mist tank gives. This isn't some kind of laid-back facebook game where players are going to be content logging in and playing for a few minutes to an hour and call it done because they've used up their resources for the day.

Bottom line, either they make CE farmable in game to the point that the average player can pay their way with what they get in game, or in 6 months the game will be a ghost town. I could even see them having the servers shut down by then. Whoever thought this energy system was a good idea is a class A moron.

For myself, I'm not sinking another penny of real money into this joke. As soon as the price of energy becomes too expensive to afford, I'm outa there. I'd bet a hundred bucks a good 75% or more of the current players will be right behind me.

To the small handful of you who are willing to put up with this BS, I wish you the best.

"if people are willing to buy energy for 3k crowns per hundo, then energy will be sold for 3k crowns per hundo"

I didn't think it took a major in Economics to figure this out.

EDIT:

Also, the price will never be unaffordable. As long as you explore the most profitable gates, you will always be able to go into a dungeon with 100 Energy and come out being about to buy that 100 back, because if buyers can't afford to buy energy at a certain price, sellers won't be able to sell their CE at that price and it will drop anyway (see: supply and demand).

The problem comes when you want to use energy or crowns for something other than exploring gates (i.e. Alchemy), because the higher the price of Energy, the more time it will take you to farm extra crowns (above the break-even amount to buy 100 Energy back) to buy CE, and the extra crowns after that to afford the Alchemy fee.

tbh, right now the price is actually really cheap. With 100 CE, you can waltz into a dungeon, use it all up and come out being able to buy 200+ back. You're actually getting A LOT more value for your crowns than you should be. The only time we a reason to complain is when it is near impossible to buy CE in the Market. THAT'S when there is a problem.

"if people are willing to buy energy for 3k crowns per hundo, then energy will be sold for 3k crowns per hundo"

I didn't think it took a major in Economics to figure this out.

It also doesn't take a major in Economics to figure out that once the demand for crowns is gone, the price of energy will shoot through the roof. This will happen just as soon as the players who actually care enough to pay real money for energy have the 5-star recipes they want. At that point, there is no limit to how high the price of energy may skyrocket because at that point there is so little use for crowns, the players who actually buy energy will have all the crowns they'll ever need just from doing whatever content they feel like playing.

Conjh13, am I understanding you correctly? If I were to summarize all of the changes you want to make, you essentially want to eliminate any incentive to actually purchase energy with real money altogether. If they implemented even half of what you want, there'd be no way for the game to actually make money. I mean, real money. Dollars.

The statement that the game won't be "any kind of success" unless they basically make it free is absurd. Maybe it won't be "any kind of success" among an audience of exactly one Conjh13 and his like-minded friends who are either unwilling or unable to put down so much as a buck towards CE, but as with every other MMO on the planet (whether it's advertised as "free to play" or not, because they ALL have systems to encourage the spending of real money -- they HAVE to), the only thing that determines whether or not the game will be a success is if it has compelling enough gameplay to encourage enough people to pay for it. If it can't do that, there was no point in making the game in the first place.

"Success" will be if it makes profit. I think it's already well on its way to do it with the system in place as it is. It's working well. There'd be no energy to trade on the market in the first place if people weren't buying it with real-life bucks.

TL;DR version -- Energy is difficult for you to get without outright buying it, and that's by design. If it were too easy to get "free" energy, then there'd be no incentive to pay even a single cent for the game, and the servers would shut down within weeks. Literally NONE of your ideas is going to help the game. If you want it to survive, you'll have to accept the limitations on energy, because the system is what it is for a reason. It needs to make money, somehow.

And, for the record ..... the for-free/for-pay setup in Spiral Knights is one of the best I've ever seen. You can do quite well in this game without paying anything, which is more than I can say for most of the MMOs out there that advertise as free-to-play.

No duke, you're obviously not understanding me correctly.

First, if you carefully read my post where I propose changes I say they need to make ONE of them. Not all of them. (Personally, I think eliminating energy as a requirement to use the elevators and for resurrects is probably the best way to go. I can see this working long-term, while still allowing them to make a good profit selling energy to players who want to buy crowns to speed up progression or for crafting.)

Second, look where I mentioned the types of things you typically pay for in a F2P MMO. This is what makes them so successful. Take Runes of Magic for example, as one of the best and most successful. You have no need to pay real money for anything early on, well... unless you want a mount to get around faster. Of course, you don't *have* to have a mount to play the game, but it sure makes it more fun. So a lot of people buy one. But the poor don't. Because they can play the game without it, just not accomplish as much as they'd want to. Then there's experiencing all the content. Most F2P games either have content you have to pay to unlock, or you need to pay to get the gear to do the content. Either way though, you can play through the majority of the game if you want for free, which works, because....

Third, in most F2P MMOs the vast majority of the money comes from a very small percentage of the players. I saw a statistic on this once for Runes of Magic. I don't remember exactly what it was, but it was somewhere in the neighborhood of 10% of the players provide 90% of the money. (One individual was literally spending over $5,000 a year.) The reason this is important is because it's a percentage. Even the players who are willing to pay aren't going to stick around if everyone else leaves. Your percentage of players paying a lot of money is never going to go much over 10%. When it's not *possible* to reasonably play the game without spending real money, the number of those players still willing to stick around and spend the money with very little company is going to be VERY small indeed.

Also, those players who do pay the big bucks don't care that they are essentially paying for the other players to play. But not very many people want to play in a ghost town. It's not fun.

And, for the record ..... the for-free/for-pay setup in Spiral Knights is one of the best I've ever seen. You can do quite well in this game without paying anything, which is more than I can say for most of the MMOs out there that advertise as free-to-play.

You obviously don't get it. For now, you can do that. In another 2-3 weeks all you'll be able to do without paying real money is whatever you can get done with your mist tank. Have fun with that.

Don't call me stupid.

I'm not.

Honestly, only time will tell. Maybe the majority of players are a lot more resilient than we make them out to be - maybe the few players who stick around will be enough to keep the game going. Really, we'll only know once Three Rings makes any changes (or rather, none at all).

I used to be with everyone who just said "There are ways to make your Energy back easily, just do 1-2-3" - and, in a way, I still am, because right now it is entirely feasible. However, I've always been irked by the Energy system in some forms, and I have begun to see where players like conjh13 are coming from.

Maybe I'm just a cynic, but I completely believe that the Energy system is a large hump for new players, that definitely makes or breaks them staying. At the same time, I also think those who come into the game with the ability and intention to pay, will end up paying to bypass that system. The only people who are dissuaded from playing the game due to Energy are those who never had the intention to pay money all along. Of course, this is all speculative.

Point being though, that unless you go read up and converse heavily with players, you won't really know about how to earn all of your energy back. Once players figure this out, they may be more inclined to stay. However... as evidenced by the preview event, near the end (before an official date of release was even announced), we saw prices skyrocketing to 10k+ (over 20k on bad days). In general, the players who had stuck around may have been able to make ends meet, but new players definitely could not.

Not sure what I'm trying to say really - I can see both sides, and I wish there was something that could be done to alleviate any problems that may occur (if they will at all). I don't believe Energy costs from revives should be removed, as that is something I think should be a bonus. Energy costs from elevators though, that is a different story entirely.

I'm curious why you don't also suggest that Person B could quit before Person A resulting in Person A quitting because they can no longer buy their crowns with energy. What happens then?

Edit: I have to ask, how familiar are you with YPP? They've kind of done this before.

A. Fix the exchange rate for crystal energy and crowns. This would most likely mean allowing players to buy energy directly from the game itself for crowns. If they want new players to actually keep playing, they'd have to fix it at around 2K crowns per 100 energy because you can't farm much more than that in T1.
It would be more sane to fix it at around 5k per 100, seeing as that's how much the average joe makes on a T1 run. If they do this, no one would want to sell energy since they can just make much more running those T1 runs. Energy will no longer be a public currency, merely only buying batteries for your own knight
B. Remove energy as a requirement for just playing the game. This means no energy costs for elevators, and probably no energy costs for resurrecting. A crown cost for resurrecting might be a reasonable substitute. The reason I mention resurrecting is because new players will die way too often to keep playing, and will quit just as quickly as they will with the current system. New players are what keeps any MMO going, because there will always be a steady flow of veteran players quitting. It's just how it works.
So how would Three Rings make money? Only off alchemy? Give me a break, they need players that PAY. Not new players that don't pay. New players that are willing to buy energy, or a high enough price to encourage payers to actually sell energy.
C. Make energy farmable in-game in such a fashion that your average player can get enough to keep playing indefinitely.
Same problem with the second, how would they make money? Unless they make it so you farm just enough to cover elevator costs and the first few deaths, this would be just like suggestion B. In my opinion, all of these choices are way too shallow and will not work.
It also doesn't take a major in Economics to figure out that once the demand for crowns is gone, the price of energy will shoot through the roof. This will happen just as soon as the players who actually care enough to pay real money for energy have the 5-star recipes they want. At that point, there is no limit to how high the price of energy may skyrocket because at that point there is so little use for crowns, the players who actually buy energy will have all the crowns they'll ever need just from doing whatever content they feel like playing.
The demand for crowns won't disappear. Three rings balanced it so you need crowns just as you need energy. Recipes, crafting, equipment, all of them. You see people buying them for crowns as well as energy.
At the point where a player has all the 5-star recipes they want, they can still craft things which require energy, crowns, and materials (paid with either energy or crowns). After that, unless they're staying to play with friends, what point is there more? They “beat” the game. Why should they continue playing? At this point they should just sit back and let the other players sell energy and climb up the ranks.

Wow. I'm absolutely dumbfounded at how you arrived at that (100% incorrect) conclusion. You're either extremely stupid (not likely because your post looks more well-written than that) or you didn't think it through *at all*. THINK about it. In a couple more weeks, the demand for crowns will be ZERO for all practical purposes. I already explained why. Going back to supply and demand, if the demand for crowns is zero and the demand for energy is extreme, guess which will have no value, and which everyone will want? You won't be able to buy energy for any amount of crowns you can conceivably acquire with said energy because the crowns will be all but worthless to the players who provide the energy. We're already knocking on the door of farming crowns to buy energy not being sustainable. In another week, 2 max, it won't be. I'd bet the farm on it.

Don't be so quick to attack him. He's right in the fact that once energy goes beyond the full-run pays for it, it will start falling back down as people cannot afford more luxury energy. The people selling the energy will have no one to sell to and they have to lower the price.
I don't see how the demand for crowns is zero. Energy is a rising currency, crowns is for buying stuff, it's like the price of food and the coin. Sure, the coin may as well be going down, but it will still have some value. There will ALWAYS be demand for the crowns.

First, if you carefully read my post where I propose changes I say they need to make ONE of them. Not all of them. (Personally, I think eliminating energy as a requirement to use the elevators and for resurrects is probably the best way to go. I can see this working long-term, while still allowing them to make a good profit selling energy to players who want to buy crowns to speed up progression or for crafting.)
Or, you know, they could just pay someone who has the recipe already to do it. Can be in crowns or energy.
How would eliminating energy for resurrections be good in any way? LOLOL I CAN GO SOLO JELLY KING, no, beyond that. Hey you, guy in armor, lemme into t3, what, yes I'm wearing proto armor, lemme in anyways! I AM INVINCIBLE!
Second, look where I mentioned the types of things you typically pay for in a F2P MMO. This is what makes them so successful. Take Runes of Magic for example, as one of the best and most successful. You have no need to pay real money for anything early on, well... unless you want a mount to get around faster. Of course, you don't *have* to have a mount to play the game, but it sure makes it more fun. So a lot of people buy one. But the poor don't. Because they can play the game without it, just not accomplish as much as they'd want to. Then there's experiencing all the content. Most F2P games either have content you have to pay to unlock, or you need to pay to get the gear to do the content. Either way though, you can play through the majority of the game if you want for free, which works, because....
This is a MTMMO (Micro Transaction). Runes of magic? Playable without buying anything? You can't upgrade your gear past +6 without them, you don't stand a chance against cashers within a decade (Yeah, it takes that long to try and get the stuff without paying). This isn't a pay2win game like ROM.
Third, in most F2P MMOs the vast majority of the money comes from a very small percentage of the players. I saw a statistic on this once for Runes of Magic. I don't remember exactly what it was, but it was somewhere in the neighborhood of 10% of the players provide 90% of the money. (One individual was literally spending over $5,000 a year.) The reason this is important is because it's a percentage. Even the players who are willing to pay aren't going to stick around if everyone else leaves. Your percentage of players paying a lot of money is never going to go much over 10%. When it's not *possible* to reasonably play the game without spending real money, the number of those players still willing to stick around and spend the money with very little company is going to be VERY small indeed.

Sound logic, but the free mist energy is still there. Sure, it can take them a few days, but eventually they can get another 100 energy to sustain them for another extra full dungeon. It would just take longer.
You obviously don't get it. For now, you can do that. In another 2-3 weeks all you'll be able to do without paying real money is whatever you can get done with your mist tank. Have fun with that.
I haven't bought energy yet. I'm doing fine. My mist tank hasn't been filled since the early-access weekend. I now have 5k CE under my belt, a fine set of T3 gear, many recipes, and I've helped several friends from another game get T2 gear and dungeon-ed with them. They haven't paid a single cent, and all have above 500 CE. This game is more resilient than you think.

conjh13: And what is preventing me from making the very same case that "if the game is fun enough to begin with" you'll continue to have players willing to pay outside currency for ingame convenience? It works both ways. The fact that it works both ways is the point of the system in the first place.

I am going to ask again: how familiar are you with YPP? Your comparison between the two games leads me to believe you haven't really gotten into YPP much, if at all.

Did I mention that I haven't spent any money yet and I'm already in full 4 star gear doing T3 content a mere week into the game? If Energy were around 6k crowns it might have taken me... what, an entire three weeks at most? I doubt even that though. Furthermore, you're kind of working under the assumption that current end game is all there ever will be. I'm fairly certain they're developing more stuff.

I think what would really help the game out is an Auction House, like people keep asking. Most of you are completely neglecting how much you are essentially making in mats per run. The average T2 arena floor gives me around 2-3k crowns and 30ish mats (not to mention tons of heat). That's enough to buy 10 floors worth of energy in one floor. If I wanted I could do 3 arena floors out of every 5 floors with the current gate setup.

Conjh13 .... you'll pardon me for saying so, but the more you post about how "other MMOs" work, the more I become positively certain that you don't really know what you're talking about. I'm no stranger to the genre myself -- the number of MMOs, both officially "for-pay" and "for-free," that I have under my belt .... well, let's just say that it's extensive. I've been in more betas than I can count. It's just about the only type of video game I play anymore.

I can tell you one thing -- the vast, vast majority of "free" MMOs out there right now are basically less than half a game without some kind of real money investment. To be honest, this is only the second or third one I've ever encountered in which it's even THEORETICALLY possible to actually see nearly all of the content without investing so much as a dime. The rest treat the 'free' moniker to mean a set of basic or trial areas that you'll never be able to venture beyond, or some sort of wretched sort of half-existence for your character in which they hit a wall that makes any kind of experience gain/grinding/exploration nigh on IMPOSSIBLE unless you purchase either equipment, the "premium" plan, the "special real money currency," or whatever their version of it is.

Wizard101 is a good example. One of the most successful out there. "Free" basically means "until you hit level 10 and finish these thirty quests." Nothing wrong with that; they sell more subscriptions and crowns every day. Has the game "died" because they basically can't play the game perpetually without opening their wallets? Have people left in droves? HARDLY! There's literally over a million players, which for an obscure, casual, "free" MMO, is an uncontested success.

Here's the simple truth, as I see it. You PERSONALLY don't want to buy crystal energy. Fine. Your choice. To assume that NOBODY will want to, to the point that the game becomes a ghost town, however, is egocentrism of the highest degree.

To be limited to an hour or two of play per day as a free player is not going to be a death sentence. I'd go so far as to say that more than fifty percent of people I've encountered so far in tier 3 or higher gear have spent some kind of money, and there's a WHOLE lot of people at that point already ..... enough to support a healthy game population all on their own, almost. The system is working, and by that, I mean it's making money for the company, players are sticking around after signing up, both free players and pay players, and more people are coming in every day, by the barrelful.

So it's going to be closer to 5k energy than 2k energy, on average, for CE. NOT the death knell you're making it out to be. It'll be the lifeblood of future development for the game -- the people that want to play hardcore and make a solid hobby of it will pay the laughably small amount of money that the company is asking for in order to get an amount of CE that will last them WEEKS, and the free players will sign off and do something else after their 90 minutes of play is up for the day, and once every couple of days they'll be able to buy a bit of extra time.

THIS is reality.

Conjh13 .... you'll pardon me for saying so, but the more you post about how "other MMOs" work, the more I become positively certain that you don't really know what you're talking about. I'm no stranger to the genre myself -- the number of MMOs, both officially "for-pay" and "for-free," that I have under my belt .... well, let's just say that it's extensive. I've been in more betas than I can count. It's just about the only type of video game I play anymore.

Right back at you. I've played so many different MMOs (beta and otherwise) that I can't remember most of them.

I can tell you one thing -- the vast, vast majority of "free" MMOs out there right now are basically less than half a game without some kind of real money investment. To be honest, this is only the second or third one I've ever encountered in which it's even THEORETICALLY possible to actually see nearly all of the content without investing so much as a dime. The rest treat the 'free' moniker to mean a set of basic or trial areas that you'll never be able to venture beyond, or some sort of wretched sort of half-existence for your character in which they hit a wall that makes any kind of experience gain/grinding/exploration nigh on IMPOSSIBLE unless you purchase either equipment, the "premium" plan, the "special real money currency," or whatever their version of it is.

Obviously then we've been playing different F2P MMOs. I've mostly been focusing on ones that get good ratings on sites like MMORPG.com. Every single one I've ever played (until Spiral Knights) allows the player to play as much as they want without spending real money and level to max level without spending a dime. You just can't participate in end-game content without spending, usually due to a need to unlock it or to buy gear for it. A handful of these include Runes of Magic, Perfect World International, FlyFF, Atlantica Online, and too many others I can't remember right now.

Here's the simple truth, as I see it. You PERSONALLY don't want to buy crystal energy. Fine. Your choice. To assume that NOBODY will want to, to the point that the game becomes a ghost town, however, is egocentrism of the highest degree.

I don't mind spending a little cash on in-game currency. I strongly object to having that be a requirement just to play the game, particularly at the rates they're charging for this game. Again, for me it's a simple matter of math: I can get a lot more entertainment value for $30 a month elsewhere. Yes, SK isn't there yet, but that time is not so far off. Even at 3K per 100 my profits left over from a full T2 run after replenishing the energy spent is not that much any more. Sometimes I barely clear 1-2K. And that's on perfect, or near-perfect runs which are fairly common for me now.

To be limited to an hour or two of play per day as a free player is not going to be a death sentence.

No one cares about those players, for too many reasons to mention.

I'd go so far as to say that more than fifty percent of people I've encountered so far in tier 3 or higher gear have spent some kind of money, and there's a WHOLE lot of people at that point already ..... enough to support a healthy game population all on their own, almost.

Just wait until they find out they're going to have to spend that money on a weekly or daily basis. They'll be leaving so fast it'll make your head spin.

The system is working, and by that, I mean it's making money for the company, players are sticking around after signing up, both free players and pay players, and more people are coming in every day, by the barrelful.

The system is currently in a bubble state, not unlike the dot.com bubble just before Y2K.

So it's going to be closer to 5k energy than 2k energy, on average, for CE.

I think expecting it to stay that low is wishful thinking. Even at that rate, it's still barely break-even.

NOT the death knell you're making it out to be. It'll be the lifeblood of future development for the game -- the people that want to play hardcore and make a solid hobby of it will pay the laughably small amount of money that the company is asking for in order to get an amount of CE that will last them WEEKS, and the free players will sign off and do something else after their 90 minutes of play is up for the day, and once every couple of days they'll be able to buy a bit of extra time.

THIS is reality.

That's your opinion. My opinion is that you have your head in the sand along with the majority of other people involved with the game. Time will tell which of us is right.

I think i will take advantage of this market for another week and then help the price increase on ce =) all you need is about 20 people with a lot of ce to stop selling for a cheap price....not that hard =0

It's okay if YPP wasn't your thing but please don't talk about it like you know it. Certainly don't build arguments around such false knowledge.

When did I ever try to claim like I know anything much about YPP? It's an online game about doing puzzles. And it presumably has a Pirate theme. You don't have to play it AT ALL to figure this out.

Spiral Knights is not a puzzle game. It's an action RPG. There are literally no relevant comparisons to be made between the two. You just spent who knows how much time typing up a lengthy, entirely irrelevant post. Good for you.

I'm close to being done playing, so whomever said SK will be a ghost town in 6 months may very well be correct. Maybe not a ghost town but I bet more players stop playing within a month. I have been "grinding" for days now and cannot get the mats I need to create my 5 star blade and 4 star armor and helm. Also they have tacked on items needed to craft because they were not required a week ago. I won't even tell you how much real dollars I have spent but most younger players will not spend this. I could be wrong, I just know I am at the point where it has stopped being fun. Yes, I am older and don't move quite as fast so I die a bit more than the average player. That's not a big deal really but when I cannot even get my hands on the mats I need...........I have tried posting WTB but I'm not getting anywhere ( with the exception of one time ) Maybe I will feel different tomorrow, who knows. I don't know what changes should be made but I think they should change something to make it just a bit easier. They would still make money. Even stopping the elevator fee would help a little. Or maybe have one gate stay free to enter.

And now energy prices have increased by another 500crowns per 100 overnight. This, at a time when demand for crowns should be at peak because the masses are just hitting the more expensive 4-star and 5-star recipes. Yet even that isn't enough to slow down the rising cost of energy.

Costs are now already well beyond the capacity of an average new player being able to play without shelling out real money.

But hey, if they're fine with the one or two hundred players they'll have left, good for them. Unfortunately though those couple hundred players will never pay enough money to keep the game going because there's nothing for them to spend much real cash on.

I'm done paying real money for this and I'm done playing.

Good luck to the rest of you.

You people put way too much emphasis on progression and way too little on actually having fun playing the game. The grind (for crowns, mats, heat, recipes) is tolerable because the game itself is fun. Raising the length of the grind to a remotely near reasonable level (4 star gear in a week?) wouldn't be a bad thing, it'd be a good thing. If burnout is an issue you should be playing less, not more.

And now I have to ask: conjh13, who completely missed or ignored my point about YPP and who likely hasn't seen T3 content if they think recipes are the expensive part of the end game, you're done paying real money? Why, because you get more crowns for your money? How much did you spend anyway for having just joined on the 9th?

"You people put way too much emphasis on progression and way too little on actually having fun playing the game. The grind (for crowns, mats, heat, recipes) is tolerable because the game itself is fun."

It's fun but the whole point of most games is progression unless it's a skill based game (FPS, Dota, etc.). Progress from ground level to the center of the earth. The game restricts you from progressing until you meet certain gear criteria. Crowns, mats, heat and recipes are things you need to put emphasis on because they control your progression.

I think the problem is the game itself. It's fun but not fun enough to run the same gate literally 400 times in a row to afford new items. It doesn't help that T3 is supposedly worse than T2 for everything except finding 5* mats/recipes. That means you will be grinding the CRAP out of T2 until you have hundreds of thousands of crowns to start running T3 for a loss of crowns in hopes you gain the recipes you want.

Nickel and Diming 1k/profit per run when you need ~400k for a full 5* set is not reasonable.