I made this thread originally in General Discussion. It received a lot of hate and was promptly sent to the Graveyard. Hopefully this is a better place to post it.

Some of you may have some serious complaints regarding the Crystal Energy system and how much the game Spiral Knights runs off of it. I have found that without purchasing any Crystal Energy or elevator passes with real money, it can take an incredibly long time to get to the end-game in Spiral Knights. (approx. six months of casual gameplay) This would not be a problem if the game introduced new content throughout those six months pretty regularly. However, this is not the case. It takes around 1 or 2 weeks to get to full 3 star equipment. By that time many will have perfected their skill with Spiral Knights and encountered everything in the game on Teir 2 and below. After that, it takes forever to get to full 4 star equipment, and there is absolutely nothing new to do through that entire time. Once you're Teir 3 you're finishing up the mid-game. There's some new content and a few new bosses, but that gets old after a few weeks, too. It then takes an insane amount of time to get to full 5 star equipment. This is not an enjoyable experience and games really shouldn't have to be designed this way. I respect that Spiral Knights was extremely hard to build and that it is free to play, but to be honest a system like that just isn't very fun after the first two weeks.

I have played another game recently that appears to excel in place of Spiral Knights's shortcomings. I recommend it to those who are a bit tired of Spiral Knights and were hoping for something better when they started playing the game. If nothing else, I recommend everyone who reads this post to try it out for a bit to see for themselves how good it is.

I speak of Vindictus, a free to play game with beautiful graphics, a satisfying plot, and amazing boss fights. It's a game very much like Spiral Knights in many ways, and yet completely different in how it implements its features.

Spiral Knights has a top-down 3D hack and slash combat system with a very limited range of items and abilities. The game has two currencies, Crowns and Crystal Energy, which fluctuate trading prices. You do not gain any permanent stats. All your equipment is bought or crafted with crowns and energy and practically worthless materials. There are massive taxes imposed on buying and selling equipment and the crafting system destroys the value of monster drops. The game is run entirely on energy, which is limited to the point of allowing you to play for 10 small dungeons runs a day unless you buy Crystal Energy. Crystal Energy is massively overvalued and can allow you to do more dungeons. People can purchase Crystal Energy using real money in massive amounts. The only input of Crystal Energy into the market is through people paying money for it. This means the entire game is Pay to Win. The in-game speed-trading system is a bidding system, forcing people to bid and bid and bid again and again if they want the lowest prices. The plot is close to non-existent. It is also possible to do arbitrage on the two in-game currencies, due to the trades between them differing by more than 2% in price at any given time. Spiral Knights is free to play.

Vindictus has a 3rd person 3D hack and slash combat system with a wide range of items and abilities. The game has one stable currency. There are permanent stats, skills, and abilities. Equipment can be crafted almost entirely from materials found in the game. There are no taxes imposed on buying and selling equipment and the crafting system creates and maintains value for monster drops. The game has fluid and well-designed quests and plot, which all tie together beautifully. The game is limited by tokens that are refilled around every two days, allowing you to play 8 large dungeons a day. However, the first 10 dungeons do not cost any tokens to play, so you can play them as much as you want. Tokens are not purchasable or trade-able through practically any means. There is a token which is purchasable and trade-able, but it is expensive irl and does not break the game. The in-game speed-trading system is a Marketplace system, allowing people to buy everything for the lowest price at any moment. This eliminates town trading chat almost entirely and makes purchases easy. There is an extensive class system and well-developed end-game content. There is about ten times more content in Vindictus than Spiral Knights overall. This is not an exaggeration in the slightest. There is an item mall which has items that cost money, but practically all of these items are "inner armor" costumes. None of the buy-able items break the game. Vindictus is free to play.

Vindictus can be explored further here and playable here.

Thank you for reading this post and considering a fun alternative.

Also, before you flame about how Nexon created Vindictus which means it must be a horrible game, please note that Valve helped create it and try it out to see how good it really is.