Right now, this game seems very communist; Everybody in the party gets the same exact amount of crowns, heat, everything except for pickups. That's fine and all, but I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one who wishes Spiral Knights could be a bit more...competitive. Besides, I can just stay behind and only follow the rest of the players to party buttons after they killed everything, and still reap the same awards that they fight for.
Bonus crowns would be awarded at the end of each floor. They would be awarded for things like Most Damage Dealt, Least Deaths, Most Kills, etc. Not only would that make it a bit more fun to play in a group, but it'd also be reason to play better.
Since you wouldn't want to give people free crowns for just running away from everything, the bonuses' size would depend on how well you do. Each bonus starts as 0 crowns. As your stats get better or worse compared to the rest of the players, the bonus' amount would change.
Say you all have 0 deaths. That means you all get a 0 crown bonus for least deaths at the end of the level. Someone dies at some part of the level, That makes the other 3 players have a tiny crown bonus compared to the guy who just died.
But, that system alone would turn all of the players against each other. In order to fix that, there could be bonuses for co-op achievements; things such as Most Saves (kill an enemy who was attacking another player), Most Items Given (Collect an item, drop it, have another player pick it up), Most Revives (revive other players, either by giving health or by clicking the Revive All button), etc.
My main problem about the current system is that no matter how crappy I do, I'll always get the same amount of crowns and heat as the rest of the players. It leaves me a bit guilty that I get the same amount of crowns as the people who play better and fight harder for those crowns, plus I'm not really motivated to play better, aside from the want to not spend more energy to revive. The addition of bonus crowns could give more motivation to do better, and add a little friendly competition to each game.
So, discussion, suggestions, opinions, just give feedback on this, please. :3
This would make people play more selfishly, it would have idiots who think they're elite suiciding into enemies, and it would make the game much less fun for anyone who doesn't care about those metrics.