Hello, I'm Helstar! I'm selling items. Please note that I am only interested in serious offers. I am not auctioning my items, and I am not in a hurry to sell them. I am only interested in CE. Post in the topic if you wish to offer, I'm not going to be online ingame much at all. Mails and Friend Requests will be ignored. Tells are OK, but obviously that only works if I'm online.

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... And that's all.

EDIT : Since this topic is in Graveyard, I'm going to add back in the part where I described why I'm quitting. Here it is.

I'd like to make a minor note on why I'm leaving/quitting (permanently or otherwise), though. Admittedly, despite the 1119 hours ( 46d, 15h, 06m, 58s) I've put into Spiral Knights, I do not like it. For various reasons.

I think the main problem here is that the developers don't really understand, nor care, about what the people have to say about the content of the game. Since this game launched, there has never been any real additional content. Everything has been a rebranding of something else, or a modified version of something else, or just plain irrelevant. Probably the only exception to this is the two guns that the Ironclaw Munitions Factory / Roarmulus Twins update added, and even that's debatable. There have been no new sets of levels, no new pieces to the random level generator, etc...

By pieces, I'm referring to the segments of levels that are attached to eachother to form the simplistic Depths of this game. Played for more than a few hours? Then you've probably seen them all already. There's nothing new in the randomized levels like Clockworks Tunnels after you've seen all of the possible segments. And quite frankly, static levels (ones that are not randomized, such as Boss stratums) are pretty boring.

There isn't any excuse to this, really. It would be no effort to add more level segments that can be used in the random level generation process. Nor would there be any effort in at least mirroring the pre-existing segments on a random chance to get some amount of replayability.

Take the game Spelunky for example. That platformer has a far more intricate level generation system, despite using the same basic concept (attaching premade pieces to eachother to form the level, with some variations within them). Unless I'm wrong about that, in which case feel free to correct me. Several other Roguelikes also do this. But most Roguelikes have far better level generation systems that allow for unique gameplay experiences. In comparison, Spiral Knights becomes a dull experience very fast, which is a bad thing for an MMO by any standards. Try Dungeon Crawl for an hour, then compare to your entire experience with Spiral Knights --- there are more unique experiences in Dungeon Crawl, trust me.

But that could be considered only a minor complaint. After all, hand-made levels aren't totally boring. But how many of those get added? Hmm, since the release of this game... I'd say a few have been added in 6 months? Not counting the boss stratums. That's hardly worth even mentioning. Are the level designers on break, or something? Hey, let's include the boss stratums and the ultimate boss stratums. That's like, 9 levels added since this game's official release (earlier this year in April or something?). That's pretty ridiculous for an MMO, which are supposed to be full of content.

In other MMOs, there is plenty of endgame content to play, with many bosses. Spiral Knights had only one "endgame boss", Vanaduke, until just recently, with the addition of the Shadow Lairs. Now, discounting the fact that the Shadow Lairs are an awful idea to add endgame content, let's discuss the repercussions of adding in a system of gambling to enable access to the only thing Spiral Knights has for true difficulty. (NOTE: True difficulty isn't entirely accurate since many things in Spiral Knights amount to fake difficulty such as Vanaduke's ceiling falling down at random places with the random fires. Truly based on luck. But we'll get to that later.)

Shadow Keys cost far too much (now, and before the Vendor allowed you to buy them for almost twice the energy cost of crafting a 5* item). Especially when you consider they're only a random chance in Lockboxes. (I've opened almost exactly 50 Lockboxes and have only found one Shadow Key.) Again this ties into what I mentioned earlier about the developers not caring about player interests. I don't think a single person has been in support of the notion to make Shadow Keys obtained through the Spiral Knights equivalent of gambling, except perhaps the creators and a few fellows who simply want to avoid the (quite legitimate) whining.

I don't think this will be fixed for a while. The developers have often been slow about fixing obvious problems in Spiral Knights' design. Take the Sleep UVs for example. Sleep levels were out of the game for months before the Sleep UVs were taken off of items. That is ridiculous and unacceptable. It would be the equivalent of a UV that lets you turn the camera one degree to the right. And yet, those Sleep UVs were able to be obtained for so long. Many people have also voiced problems with the lack of weapon slot key binding, which was only recently addressed and included (I've been wanting it for 6 months, others for longer).

The Royal Jelly --- not the boss in Dungeon Crawl, oops, I'm talking about the Spiral Knights Royal Jelly --- was a very poorly designed boss for a long time and recently has been modified, after MONTHS of time, to be simpler and more accesible to Tier-2 players. Now it's not just a matter of going into a suicidal rage towards the Jelly King, you actually have to be careful (before, there was no choice, since you'd get swarmed by small jellies).

Going back to the point about the Shadow Keys being a rare gimmicky item, it reminds me much of how the other systems in this game are. Lockboxes were already big gambles. Similarly, rolling for Unique Variants on items was too. And finding a Love Puppy is entirely based on luck, as well as the fact that it only has about a 1/12 drop rate for Pendants. This is obviously designed so that players spend more real-money on CE, or something to that effect, but it ends up being insulting. The easiest, most simple question to ask here is, why? Why not allow players to simply buy the UV or Accessory or Shadow Key that they want, instead of putting in the middle agent of luck and the random number generator? The developers would be on the right track with making Shadow Keys buyable, it's a shame they're still absurdly overpriced and aren't a good idea in the first place.

The point about Love Puppies is pretty good, you know. There are people in this game who have gotten rich for doing nothing, without having to pay real-money for CE, just because they got lucky on some random drops (Love Puppies dropping Pendants, or simply finding rare items in green/red treasure boxes). That's hardly fair to the majority of players, and only furthers this game's status as being entirely about luck and gambling. You can gamble all your energy away trying to run Perimeter Promenade II over and over for 12+ Gunpuppies, all of which have the chance to be a Love Puppy --- try it out sometime, I sure did, and guess where that got me? (HINT : Read what Trinkets I'm selling. And hey, it's also where I found a Sloom after the Sleep-element levels were removed! Uhm, but seriously, don't gamble away your Energy like that, the chance of finding a Love Puppy is too small, even at 12+ Gunpuppies per level.)

That aside, I'd like to say that the basic gameplay mechanics are solid. The game plays similarly to old Arcade-RPG games like the first Zelda game, with similar gameplay traits. So it's hard to argue there. However, where Arcade games and those early Action-RPG Zelda games featured no luck or randomness in attempting to succeed or take down a boss, Spiral Knights does. A very easy example is Vanaduke. Anytime someone so much as steps in front of him, he begins to smash his club or charge forward (and then possibly smash his club), causing fire to fall from the ceiling. This hits anyone unlucky enough to not see the orange circle beneath them, and places fires at random positions. That is very poor boss design, and does not make for a fun experience.

Another problem with the bosses is that they are all designed with singleplayer in mind --- there is no boss you truly need multiple people for. And it's easy to see what happened to that end. Almost every boss is a summoner in disguise. Vanaduke has his Slag Walkers/Guards, Jelly King has the small jellies (and now the turrets too), Roarmulus Twins has the four scuttlebots. And Snarbolax? He isn't even worth talking about, his battle gimmick is based on randomness (hoping he gets close to the bell, oh and by the way you can't stun him if he's attacking or underground, OOPS). But the problem with summoners is that taking out minions of a boss isn't fun, and while it may work in other games, and indeed, other MMOs, it does not work in an MMO based around reflexes and quick thinking like Spiral Knights. The minions summoned are very obviously just a method to distract players from the boss, so that parties have something to do (which doesn't work well because the bosses are still easily soloed). The obvious solution here is to create various bosses, some of which can be completed with any amount of people, and some requiring 2 or more people, so that no stupid summoner gimmicks need to be included. But I guess that's too obvious of a solution for the developers, who seem to have no intent on creating additional content anyway.

I think the developers are actively trying to make the game more dull, for some reason, without understanding what they're really doing. Take for example, the Jigsaw Valley levels. Previously they had Gremlins, Beasts, Constructs, and Jellies. Now they only have the monster type based on the Stratum type you're in, with possibly an additional monster type. Areas are becoming less diversified, so that specific sets of gear are required, thus requiring people to obtain different equipment (when, if the enemy groups were balanced, a well-rounded setup should work fine in a level like that). Another thing is that Menders lost their ability to attack. Now they're just healers. Not even in T3 do they attack anymore. But there's no real reason why except that the developers are trying to limit how diverse the gameplay experience can be. This is also evident in how only premade levels are being added, and not more randomly selectable level segments.

Another point I'd like to touch on is the community. I think many people in this game are elitist and not willing to be kind. Everyone is taking themselves too seriously and not having fun. Considering that this game isn't really fun and new content isn't being added, that isn't surprising. It's almost as if people come on to use the game as a chatroom, occasionally run a gate, and then have time to run their rich guilds and consort with their elitist circles of friends. This is not an inherent problem in the people playing, but rather that the game is designed specifically to encourage this. There are large gaps between people of differing gear (and even UVs), and nothing to do once Energy has run out (unless you want to play a Bomberman clone with a poor movement system, or Unreal Tournament's Domination mode in disguise as actual PvP). The Training Hall is a joke, it'd probably be better if you could run the first dungeon for free --- at least that would be something to do once or twice. Maybe even let people run some kinds of gates without reward if they don't pay energy (which would be similar to how some other MMOs only allow you to gain so much Experience in a certain timeframe).

Speaking of Gates, that system is awful. It used to be that organized Guilds could make some effort towards affecting an entire Gate. But after it was changed so that the first and second Stratum of a Tier can't be the same, there's no way anymore. Why even pretend the players can influence the Gates if they can't? On that note, why not add a Gate for each Guildhall, so that those areas aren't so plain?

Another thing I'd like to see is levels and gates with no element. With all kinds of monsters and elements included in them. That would be an interesting change of pace, and potentially dangerous at Tier-3. Alas and alack, it seems the developers are intent on NOT allowing enemy types/damage to be diversified, hence levels like Jigsaw Valley being nerfed.

Finally, yet another quick note here, I'd just like to say that there is way too much focus on useless effects and such. The Core for example, why does that area have so much slowdown? There's really no excuse to it. Snarbolax and Roarmulus Twins used to be like that too, with lots of slowdown from fog effects or something, until it was changed months later. It's weird that even high-quality computers have trouble running this game at different graphics settings. There's also quite a bit of lag for many players, and a while after playing (especially if the Mail function is used) the game will start freezing at random intervals for no reason. Why aren't these problems being addressed and fixed?

I am not saying any of this to attack anyone, nor to make a point, nor to offend anyone, nor to be angry and vent. I'm just explaining a couple issues I have with this game and explaining why I've quitted it. Hope you have a good day, bye bye for now.