Spiral Knights - Player Maturity

Player Maturity

13 replies [Last post]

Sat, 04/16/2011 - 08:51

ubertuba

Legacy Username

Spiral Knights has been given favourable mention (twice!) on penny arcade. And the maturity level of the average player is rather high. Case in point, i rather ripped off a certain fellow in a trade deal - he wasn't quite aware of the value of what i was selling. Realising his mistake, he sent me a nicely worded letter asking if he could have his money back. It was beautifully worded, capitalized, punctuated. A full paragraph of text without the word "faggot" in it would do, but no, this was panacea. Of course he still didn't get his money back, but i thanked him politely for his letter.

In fact in my 36 hours(!) playing the game, i haven't seen the language filter be used ONCE. That's a whole lot of people not swearing. I'd guess, based on this, that right now your average player is a middle class 20-something (Probably quite a few university students). And here's the point: These people have disposable income.

Please, don't advertise on Neopets again. (It may or may not have worked for Bang! Howdy, but if you go that route, be prepared to lose the majority of the players you currently have. If people wanted to be surrounded by screaming idiots, they would work for EA)

Now, as you have this rather unusual player base, you can do a few things that other multiplayer games can't afford to.

1. Requiring Higher Levels of Co-operation.
Right now i can solo to roughly the same depth as i can co-operatively. The downside is that i get less dps, the upside is that i get more of those oh-so-important health capsules. It just takes longer. If you want to add enemies that really require a two-player concerted effort (Say, ones that can only be dealt damage from behind), the player base can handle it.

2. Co-operative Puzzles.
I get the feeling these have already been suggested and vetoed internally. I urge you to reconsider that decision - players can and do communicate in dungeons.

3. You can make direct appeals to the player base.
TRD can still be considered an "indie" game company - which has some currency with your current audience.
For instance, while i would never buy a premium item from one of those nasty Korean companies,
i would consider buying one from you because of your "indie" status.

4. You can make the game a little nastier/ less forgiving/more competitive.
I realise this is something you've been working hard to avoid thus far, but just be aware that the player base can handle it if you do choose to go that route.

5. You can have better writing
Right now what little speech there is designed for clarity and little else. But if you want to have something a little more subtle, perhaps flesh out the plot, the option is there.

Sat, 04/16/2011 - 09:34

Negimasonic

Um...this game was designed

Um...this game was designed to be a simplistic affair at its heart. So no.

Maybe a yes on the cooperative puzzles.

Also you start this off with saying you ripped someone off? Way to go...

Sat, 04/16/2011 - 09:40

Metaknight

signed.

signed on the co-op / harder puzzles.

Sat, 04/16/2011 - 10:16

adrian783

Legacy Username

also never trade with this

also never trade with this guy

Sat, 04/16/2011 - 10:45

SirNiko

Legacy Username

A major reason for SK's high

A major reason for SK's high average maturity level is going to be the energy system. By limiting play per day you draw a crowd of older player who would normally be shut out by high per-day play time requirements.

I would like to see more options for high-skill play. As it stands, much of the content is relatively easy outside the odd Danger Room or a party facing Jelly King without poison bombs. My only gripe is that it is still relatively easy to hit the skill cap on maximizing profit per energy point when running dungeons. By allowing me to pick optional hard paths for greater rewards I would still have a skill-cap to aim for, while less skilled players could continue to play on 'normal' difficulty and enjoy a slower but still steady rate of progress.

Sat, 04/16/2011 - 14:18

CrashFu

Legacy Username

Heh.. the players may be

Heh.. the players may be FRIENDLY but they certainly don't have this whole "co-op" thing down. The normal case of random dungeon parties sees an awful lot of ignorant and inconsiderate behavior such as:

Players at full health hoarding all of the health capsules while teammates struggle along with only a single point of health left and not enough energy to revive themselves...

Players dying, and despite having plenty of energy with which to rez themselves, opt to stay dead until teammates do all of the work...

People constantly shoving monsters away from my bombs or out of the path of the projectile it took me four seconds to charge up. Yeah. That's great. Someone just did thirty damage to one of those slimes and got the rest to follow them away from the bomb. I guess they weren't aware that I was about to do seventy damage plus guaranteed fire to EACH of them. Or when I'm about to do at least 210 damage to that wolver by getting him to stand directly on top of my crystal bomb, they go and valiantly save his life.

Oh, and here's my favorite one: when someone decides to go back to town, doesn't warn the rest of the party before getting to the elevator, and then we get to watch in horror as the biggest vitapod we've ever seen, three super-health capsules, a mecha-knight kit or two, and a pile of super fire vials are left at the top of the elevator when the rest of us didn't have anything.

Inconsiderate, incompetent hoarders. That's the majority here. :I

Sat, 04/16/2011 - 14:29

Negimasonic

in order: 1. I don't know

in order:

1. I don't know about you, but when I stay at full health if someone else is dying, its so I can revive them so I get their heat (and if I die they can sorta get it back). The faster you die, the faster I come to help you (unless you keep doing it...)

2. Because of #1. They're waiting for you to revive them so they don't waste heat among the party, that's the preferred method of doing things.

3. Not like the game bothers to tell you what damage you do to other monsters, they can't be certain that you actually are dealing serious damage or just minor damage. Besides, if you're charging bombs like that, your part is support, whether it worked or not. I use freeze bombs on occasion, and even when I'm working with people who use swords, giving them a break when the freeze bomb hits allows them to get a slight advantage. Also, I don't know what bomb you're using but my Freezing Alchemizer (II) has an effect that lasts a few seconds, so even if they miss the initial blast for damage, they tend to get caught in the status I intended anyway.

4. Can't be helped. I didn't learn for awhile that I could drop my vitapods and stuff. I don't recall this being taught in the tutorial but if it was, it was a minor note at best. Chances are other people don't know this kind of thing either. Besides, anything could've come up in their life, and they thought they were going to go down further but then something happened and they were forced to leave instead. Bothering to continue down to the next level with you just to drop their stuff just may not be worth it to them.

Sat, 04/16/2011 - 14:53

LaliPop

Legacy Username

my thoughts

Hi all!,

I don't necessarily agree with all your suggestions, however it occurred to me that the structure of this game uniquely allows for some trial an error among the Dev team to see what would work...

Because of the gate, map system, where maps are born and dye, Devs CAN try new things and see how they are received, and guess what, they can get rid of them in 8 days and no one even has to know it was an experiment!

i say try it. try it all, just one gate at a time and maybe pop up a little question that pays the player a few crown to complete asking how they like the new level content.. cant loose right?

Sat, 04/16/2011 - 17:32

CrashFu

Legacy Username

@ NegimaSonic 1.

@ NegimaSonic

1. Intentionally trying to get your teammates killed so you get more heat is a real @%!* move and grounds for a filed complaint any time it happens. That heat the "rescuer" gains? That's MY heat. I lost that because they got me killed by hoarding health vials they didn't need. Their selfish behavior not only hurts my item advancement, it also hurts the team because having to stop to revive people and having everyone at only half health in the middle of a battle just makes things harder on everyone.

2. Reviving someone isn't going to do much if the person alive only has one health left and the dead person is hoarding health vials.

3. There is an option you can turn on to show how much damage you do. I do not know why it is off by default. Probably so the people who are pushing monsters away from my 100-200 damage attack won't feel bad when they realize they're only doing 20 damage. Even though you can't see how much damage OTHER people are doing, it's just "common" sense that if someone spent four seconds charging up an attack, you shouldn't interfere with it once it has already started with your wimpy little basic attacks.

4. "I didn't know" only works once as an excuse. And the idea is that BEFORE you climb into the elevator, you say "I'm going back to town. Here is my stuff" and you proceed to drop your level 5 vita-pod and mecha-knight kit and your stack of three super health vials on the ground, and wait to see if anyone goes to pick it up, and THEN you get on the elevator.

Sat, 04/16/2011 - 19:36

Negimasonic

1. Lol, if I was

1. Lol, if I was intentionally trying to get my teammates killed, I'd open up danger room gates (especially in Tier 1) instead of running by them :D And I wouldn't use support type weapons like freezing vaporizers since stopping the enemy wouldn't help me at all. Actually since I've reached Tier 2 I tend to have full, or nearly full, heat anyway since I've been reduced to leveling one item at a time, so there's no rush to gain a massive amount of heat. Now if you really felt someone was hoarding capsules and stuff, you should also leave most of the fighting to them, there's no reason to rush into it.

2. Uh player 1 has one health (and also to prove a point, 100 heat). Player 2 is dead (has 100 heat, currently lost).. Player 1 revives player 2. Player 2 comes back to life (1/2 health bar and 70 heat, player 1 has 130 heat now). Player 2 uses one of those health capsules they've been hoarding, their health is now 8 and 1/2. Player 1 dies.

Player 2 then has choices. They can duke it out with the rest of the enemies, or revive p1 (player 1). Since they have two more capsules that they've been hoarding, either option will work (and in the end p1 would be revived anyway since it'd be stupid to leave p1 there). But for the sake of this discussion, let's say they revive P1, P1 revives with 4 and 1/4 health (the 1/4 is still shown as half). P1 now has 91 heat. P2 now has 109 heat. P2 uses a health capsule for safety (1 remaining). And they finish the battle and move on. So for the cost of no energy, the party came out with all of their heat, just distributed slightly differently.

As opposed to reviving by energy where P2 loses that 30 heat from the beginning forever. And P1 would still likely die (then they'd revive them and take their heat anyway). But the distribution is much worse. Instead player 1 would leave with 70 heat and player 2 would leave with 100 heat as well as wasting energy on a revive.

Also perhaps you should consider asking that player to drop one for you. Though honestly there tends to be no need for that since if you die they revive you and blah blah blah.

3. I already know that option. I have it on by default but it definitely does not show you other people's damage as you already wrote. But on that same note, you don't know that those other people are doing 20 damage, they could be doing 3 hits of 80 faster than waiting for your slow 1 hit of 200. I've also seen someone using a cold snap bomb on Tier 2. Nothing is wrong with that weapon but its still a 1 star weapon that needs charging, has a big flashy area of effect, but doesn't actually do a lot of damage (though the freezing chance is nice).

4. Didn't know works as long as no one actually tells you. I made it through more than one jelly king fight (mostly dead but that's not the point) before one time someone mentioned when I said I was leaving to drop my stuff and actually bothered to teach me how to drop my stuff. If I had left on my own for whatever reason, no one still would've told me. If I continued to leave on my own for any reason, how could anyone teach me I'm doing the wrong thing since I'm not there to know that its even possible to give away my stuff. If I made it to Tier 2 without knowing this, I'd bet others have as well, maybe some have even on into Tier 3.

Also, you don't know that other person's situation, anything could've happened to make them leave suddenly. I know adults play this game (technically I am one but not one with responsibilities yet), but what if something happened like their child called for them while they were at the elevator? They should wait for the game to load and pay 10 energy just to go down a level and quit without profit? Ignore their child, just for you? No I don't think so.

Or to use an example that is more likely to happen, someone is just playing along and they died. But hey they didn't want to wait for you to revive them so they used energy and continued on, then they reached the elevator and got ready to descend and then they got the "does not have enough energy to move on" thing. Well then they have an awkward situation, they can try hoping someone pays for them. Or they can leave (fyi, they bought a super AWESOME recipe at the last terminal, so they also have no crowns to buy energy). I'd rather leave than force someone to pay for me.

Sat, 04/16/2011 - 21:30

#10

CrashFu

Legacy Username

2. You're still missing the

2. You're still missing the point. You lose a third of your heat EACH TIME YOU DIE so if people are intentionally preventing you access to any health capsules, and they AREN'T using their abundance of health to take the front lines in the fight (if they were brave enough to do THAT then they wouldn't be hoarding all of the items for themselves in the first place) AND they are CONSTANTLY interfering when YOU try to kill the enemies, you are going to die again and again. Which means at the end of the dungeon, you won't have any heat left.

And no, usually they aren't reviving anyone. You die, the hoarders just go running ahead down the next path to loot the big crystals. They aren't going to revive you; they have to sacrifice health to do that, after all, and they're far too selfish. What with their mature adult business they need to rush off too so fast that they don't have one second to click and drag a couple items and type out "going back to town" first. ;)

Sun, 04/17/2011 - 08:33

#11

SirNiko

Legacy Username

The hoarder gives up half of

The hoarder gives up half of his life every time he revives his teammate. Allowing the other player to die repeatedly to get his heat is time consuming, difficult, and risks wasting energy if the party runs out of cumulative health.

While this is a possibility, it's not something I've come across as a problem. If you find another player is taking more health capsules, compensate by playing more defensively. Hearts are automatically shared among all players and those account for more health refills than capsules any day.

Ultimately, the thing that determines who gets the most heat is who is the best at surviving. Or at least, this has been my experience.

Sun, 04/17/2011 - 13:12

#12

CrashFu

Legacy Username

@ SirNiko You've lucked in to

@ SirNiko

You've lucked in to some decent groups, then. Half the ones I've wound up in were full of people who don't know the meaning of teamwork.

As for heart drops.. that's a decidedly random thing. Some days you'll find enough, frequently enough to keep everyone at full health through the entire level. Other days you never find a single one and those health capsules make the difference between life and death.

Sun, 04/17/2011 - 13:23

#13

Negimasonic

lol, all my experiences with

lol, all my experiences with item hoarders have always resulted in me being revived (when I wasn't getting to the health capsules first >.> believe me, if I see one, I want it). Also regardless of who they are, they tend to die again anyway allowing me to get my heat back (but if I'm running all level 10 items it's kind of useless so I don't mind).

Basically you've always run into some bad teammates, and I always run into good people :D That can't be changed, I don't want your luck.

Oh yeah those freeze bombs would be a bit helpful though if you did like SirNiko said and backed off when you see someone with too many capsules. If you bring the enemy to them, they have to fight :D Meanwhile you can sorta help out if you like with the freezing letting them deal damage and you stay safe(r).

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Player Maturity