Spiral Knights - Lockdown and Abusive Affluence

Lockdown and Abusive Affluence

34 replies [Last post]

Tue, 05/15/2012 - 20:00

You-Mad-Bruh

So Ive been playing Tier 3 Lockdown for a couple months now, and Ive noticed there seems to be players who have more money to burn than the players in the other two Tiers. Playing with Tier 3 Lockdown’s biggest names, I now understand that one can legitimately win a match almost entirely by skill or win a match with the excessive abuse of money and diamond-studded gear.

In random Lockdown matches, where I take time to study good players, I meet players who dominate with a perfectly UV’d arsenal AND who seem to have a near-infinite supply of energy to use towards getting back at the fray quickly. These players would, despite being killed numerous times by myself and other teammates, manage to keep coming back as if they had never been killed, and beating them was difficult in itself due to game-breaking gear. Later on in the day my guild would team-up for a few fun rounds, only to be crushed by those same devils I faced on earlier random Lockdown matches. To our horror, we find out their whole team employs the same pay-to-win strategy that got them their steeply one-sided victory, which of course made us give up our plans of “a few fun rounds.”

Ive now begun to think Lockdown victories are mostly won by well-off players. It is true that skill trumps gear, but if you pitch a skilled player against a skilled player with money or better gear, victory obviously favours the better-equipped. Also, those players who obsess about winning so much that they’d willingly waste a fortune of energy to get back on their feet or crowns to make their gear triply godly, don’t realize they create a two-pronged loss. On one hand, it makes the game un-fun; on the other hand the money they spend to win a few matches could instead be used to craft a plethora of new gear or to fund a year’s worth of elevator rides.

What do you guys think?

Tue, 05/15/2012 - 20:06

Thimol

-----

I agree.

No, seriously. That's all I can really say about your post. I mean, LD, at its core, isn't even made to be strictly competitive in the first place, but you have people who would insist on being pros at LD, which is like going to a famous art school and saying you're good at finger-painting. All it takes to be "good" at LD is to have Skolver, Skewer, ASI, and twitchy fingers.

I'd like to see the instant revive option axed. The subsequent reception would be glorious.

Tue, 05/15/2012 - 20:25

Peacemaker-Xseed

Oh you mean the Jempire?

Oh you mean the Jempire? Relax dude, keep playing and dont let your day get ruined. Nobody takes the Jempire seriously anyway.

Tue, 05/15/2012 - 20:35

Thefirstgamer

So I am not alone.

Turns out, I am not the only one publicly ranting (Far from the forums) about pay to win Lockdown players.

It's nice to see others seeing the same thing, as we share the same pain.

Also, The Jempire? Blah, never heard of them, never seen any of them... But I can only assume they're in the same group.

Also wish Trinkets and UVs were disabled in LD, but that isn't going to happen, now is it?

Tue, 05/15/2012 - 20:38

Damienfoxy

May i direct you all to my

May i direct you all to my lockdown rebalance thread in the sugestions forums?

You find it, i'm too lazy to link it

Tue, 05/15/2012 - 20:39

Rommil

link it damien

quit being too lazy.

Tue, 05/15/2012 - 20:44

Damienfoxy

Actually, i'm still on my

Actually, i'm still on my cheap mobile phone, and i can't copy paste with a qwerty keyboard...

I feel like a loser now...

Tue, 05/15/2012 - 20:54

Mayaura

Mawashimono loves the vowel

Mawashimono loves the vowel alliteration of the phrase "abusive affluence". Nicely done, fair wordsmith!

I tell people I never play LD, but that's not strictly true. While I'm waiting in Haven for whatever reason, I will occasionally queue up for Tier 1 LD. It's a blast and really doesn't suffer from any of the problems you described. You outta give it a try sometime.

Tue, 05/15/2012 - 20:57

Sypsy

While I agree with you that

While I agree with you that skill vs skill + gear will tip the scale towards the better geared person, there are really only so much UV's can do.

The only, only UV that gives a player a significant advantage is ASI high or v.high on a toothpick (final flourish or barbarous thorn blade).

Why? Because it allows them to equip 2x penta heart trinkets for maximum health, and full skolver/snarb for max damage. If you have no asi on a flourish, you would find yourself moving slower than others and not letting you execute your swings quickly enough. Vog pieces would compensate for this, but you give up damage. I know of some very good players who use asi med, so perhaps you can even be quick enough with asi med. Anyway, this configuration gives skillful people a boost because they can kill multiple people quickly.

Other than this, the other "expensive" uv's are just gravy.
High/max pierce skolver set --> 1 extra hit from a skolver-toothpick. While this can give you the edge in a dual, sloppy play will lead to a quick death with or without this.
Shock/stun immunity --> nice, but not game breaking unless it was the go-to strategy for each team every time. In this case, it's not, and many times a person may not even need status immunity.

So really. If you're looking at a player who is decked out in all sort of expensive equipment, take a second to consider whether it is really giving a huge edge over other people or not. You can ask them to equip a vog/skolver, as if they only had a flourish asi med (which is considered "cheap" by market standards), and let them bump down to vh damage and have only partial pierce. If they can still beat you with that slight handicap, then I would say they are definitely skilled and/or server favoured (damn you latency.) You could even go as far as to ask them to do full vog, and I know I can list some people who can out-play many skolver toothpicks (including yours truly) in just vog. Just don't ask them to take out 3 people at once like they would with a skolver set.

----
Oh and CE reviving is annoying, but you can't do much about it. You can either CE revive too or just kinda chit chat with guildies while waiting to get revived.

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@Mawashimono

Really? you don't play anymore. If I recall, you were pretty good. Maybe this was before everyone got heart pendants and it was common to have skolver/vog with asi/dmg trinkets.

Tue, 05/15/2012 - 21:01

Thefirstgamer

Tier 1 Lockdown is broken as well.

Ordinary players are weaker than anything I've ever seen.

But then, suddenly, Level 10 everything, Emberbreak Helm/Armor, 2 Heart Pendants, Prototype Rocket Hammer, and Heavy Hatchet ASI high going Guardian and healing any damage done, yet also destroying everyone else.

Not to mention half of T1LD players know how to play LD yet, and/or are still in Proto gear.

So Tier 1 Lockdown is, although not appearing to be at first glance, broken.

Tier 2 is anything remotely balanced, but godly UVs will still cause problems there.

Tue, 05/15/2012 - 21:48

#10

Psychodestroyer

Oi guys.

Don't go hating on the Jempire. Although money-spending most of them may be, they're nice guys.

I see them all the time, and they're nice people.

Judging them solely because of the way they chose to spend their money on the game isn't fair.

And I'm not a member of their guild, nor was I paid to say this.

Inb4thatswhattheyallsay

Tue, 05/15/2012 - 22:04

#11

Villainus

Well... I don't like CE revs

Well... I don't like CE revs in LD. I am ok with some guys being blatantly OP like vh asi and that kinda thing.. I can still have fun and pwn with my voltedge. But ce reving is not my style.

Tue, 05/15/2012 - 22:13

#12

Xairathan

UVs

I agree with Sypsy's statement about UVs just being icing on the cake, or padding on the chain mail. I play mainly the recon class, with ASI Medium UVs on my two main swords, CTR Medium on my Acheron, and ASI Low on my Sentenza. This translates to, with my armor set, ASI High on my two swords, CTR Maximum on my Acheron, and ASI High on my Sentenza. My gear varies from shock immunity to Normal/Shadow Medium variants.

Now regarding the actual fight. As a hybrid, I have more resistance to Divine Avengers and Polarises, but less resistance to Final Flourishes and Barbarous Thorn Blades, and only minimal resistance to a Gran Faust. That said, I can still (as a recon, and without a cloak) go up against 2-3 strikers who are pure Skolver and either walk away the victor, or take one or two with me before dying. This is without ASI Maximum UVs, Pierce/Normal Maximum UVs, or any of the other UVs I often hear complaining about.

The way Lockdown is, is a game of skill. You can't help if your opponent CE revives (and yes, if I have mist or if the cost is 2 CE, and the wait is 15 seconds or more, I'd rather spend it than laze around in the Locker Room), but in most situations it isn't about who has the most UVs, but who gets the most hits in, in the least amount of time, while sustaining the least damage. Any complaints about UVs or CE revs are just a front to cover up for inadequacy- if you were truly skilled, you could kill a person multiple times, taking minimal damage, and outplaying them in all aspects of Lockdown.

Tl;dr: UVs matter very little in the grand scheme of Lockdown. What matters is skill, and how one chooses to use their vocal chords expressing their possession or lack thereof.

Tue, 05/15/2012 - 22:46

#13

Villainus

People who pay for their uvs can use them as far I am concerned. I play using virulisk 4* armor (hehe) and I still can kill skolvers in a few hits with no trinkies. You could even pwn with a fencing jacket if you don't get hit. UVs are awesome if you can use them but just yesterday I saw a guy with asi high btb get 3k dmg and skolver coat. The guy was a pincushion. So say what you want it is not just uvs.

Tue, 05/15/2012 - 23:19

#14

Traevelliath

CE Revs...

What most people don't realize, is that the people who excessive CE rev... well... they don't actually excessive CE rev. Most of the time, they rev until their cost is 16... AKA, about 3 times. The cost in sequence is 2, 4, and 8 energy, which isn't a lot.

Also, I used to believe that gear played a major role in the game... and then I met someone who completely pwned me no matter what I did, while still flaunting a set of Heavenly Iron Armor. I even tried pulling out a Voltaic Tempest against him, and I still found myself face down on the ground, starting as some purple numbers counting down the time until I respawned. Sometime later, I met a gunner and, despite both having almost the exact same gunner loadout, I could not get a single shot to hit, while he constantly connected with each of his volleys.

Yeah, gear plays a rather large role in lockdown. But once you get to a certain point, gear just makes very small differences.

Tue, 05/15/2012 - 23:39

#15

Atacii

Don't have a problem with uv's. Gear is always important in mmo's.

CE reving does bother me. There are two ways to gain the advantage in ld, killing players and area denial. Reving mostly removes the penalty for dying, making the game unfair or one dimensional. Either way it's lame.

That being said, go back to suggestions where you belong.

Wed, 05/16/2012 - 02:47

#16

Hellohippo

/agree with Atacii regarding

/agree with Atacii regarding CE revving.

Wed, 05/16/2012 - 03:14

#17

Asukalan

Your argument is invalid.

Yesterday i had fun in playing LD, amongst teams were players in 5 and 4 star equipment, pros and casual gamers. We won, we lost, noone cared who has which UVs, 4 star guys killed 5 star guys, 5 star guys killed others, etc, etc

UVs, CE, its part of the system, deal with it. Complaints like "omgz i got pwned, remove UVs and CE revs from game" are silly. Its like complaining that you lost a race because your car had weaker engine.

Wed, 05/16/2012 - 03:15

#18

Damienfoxy

If you don't want people to

If you don't want people to CE rev, then don't kill em. :P

Wed, 05/16/2012 - 03:31

#19

Villainus

btw...

Voluptas... That username come from Latin? just realized

Wed, 05/16/2012 - 03:37

#20

Icegill

Two points here.

1. This thread is absolutely judgmental because when you see a skolver with gran faust and/or final flourish with polaris or some other 5* gun, you people that agree with this thread think they are rich. I have 10k crowns and 0 CE, I only run on mist and people believe I'm exceptionally great at LD. If you have a problem with ASI, ask them what it is before you say, "YOU ASI MAX FREAK!".

2. If you have such a problem with rich people, then go out there and earn some yourself and come back to tier 3 LD when you're prepared. It is no one's fault you are underpowered in a high powered tier. You don't like tier 3? Switch over to tier 2.

*SOME* people actually use skill instead of UVs although the people that do use UVs, you need to find a way to bypass them or perish/rage quit.

Wed, 05/16/2012 - 18:04

#21

Thrillhaus

More days of whine and roses

People who think lockdown is all about skolver and ASI likely haven't even put in the time to become skilled enough for their opinion to be worth anything. If you've actually tested lockdown weapon damage, you'll find that full skolver only provides half a pip of health's worth of protection against FF/BTB compared to having no piercing defence at all. Furthermore, having the damage bonus from skolver only provides about 1 extra pip of damage per sword hit. Skolvers (without additional piercing defence) and all other armours die from the same number of sword hits. The only exception is jelly and ancient plate sets which provide additional pierce defence/health.

Also, while having ASI helps in certain situations, it is not absolutely necessary to be successful, especially in randoms. Out of curiosity, I've been using ancient plate to lower my ASI from high to low/med (which given the price, especially of low, is not prohibitively expensive) and have still been able to perform well, despite not having the damage boost either. Where ASI helps most is when you're caught off guard with no booster as a striker and are forced to full combo someone face to face (or if that happens to be your play style, in which case, reread the first sentence in this post). In situations where you're in control and know what you're doing, the deciding factor is your familiarity with the timing of your weapon, and a reliable connection. At any rate, if you feel you do need ASI, wearing partial or full vog provides it with a very small difference in defence/damage. Bobxloblaw's 28k damage screenshot using full vog is proof that skill trumps gear (found in this thread: http://forums.spiralknights.com/en/node/50058).

It is not usually the case that people purchase UVs and immediately become "gods" at lockdown, but rather that they have played long enough to acquire the necessary experience and happened to have accumulated wealth during that time to augment their arsenal with UVs for that extra edge against other experienced players with UVs.

Despite that fact that I've already spent money on UVs, I actually wouldn't mind the option of UV-disabled lockdown as it would give whiners one less excuse for losing. However, there's absolutely no valid argument against trinkets as they require neither vast wealth nor luck to acquire and are available to anyone. Saying trinkets are unfair is like saying 5* armour and weapons are unfair to those with only 4*. If you can make four 5* items (armour and two weapons) and view that as totally legitimate, then you should have no qualms with crafting an additional two 4/5* items.

Wed, 05/16/2012 - 07:38

#22

Fehzor

Speaking of which, how much

Speaking of which, how much does jelly armor help you over others?

Wed, 05/16/2012 - 07:44

#23

Obeynone-Jr

Everyone should migrate to

Everyone should migrate to Blast Network? No? Ok .____.

Wed, 05/16/2012 - 08:12

#24

Damienfoxy

Get your BS network outta

Get your BS network outta here!

Silly bombers...thinking blast network will stay around much longer.

Wed, 05/16/2012 - 08:20

#25

Jmsa

...

Here you go Damienfoxy: http://forums.spiralknights.com/en/node/53913

Wed, 05/16/2012 - 09:35

#26

Pepperonius

T1 Lockdown

T1 Lockdown can be balanced, and it isnt broken. Yes, if you go down in proto, you are going to get smoked. That being said, people who go down in proto almost immediately receive a set of 1* armor from some of us. We have so much of it from mist crafting for UVs. The sad thing about t1 lockdown is that it is underplayed. It is the only LD where you can't get 2 or 3 hit, and while hammers do tip the scales, the best players i see down there use the heavy hatchet or the thwack hammer. Those two weapons allow a striker to be knocked off a point, as opposed to the rocket hammer blasting THROUGH a point.

I highly suggest people try out T1 lockdown. That being said, take 300 crowns and get a full t1 equip (if you did the games starting missions, you already have your t1 equips) and heat them up first. It makes a big difference in t1 to have fully heated gear.

Wed, 05/16/2012 - 10:23

#27

Weegeeftws

.....

I'm a regular T1 LD player, it's fun, balanced (mostly... you still have those blooming' hammers, although they can be side-stepped) and it's a very close-knit community ^^ I play with the same people almost every time I play it and have acquired a number of friends through it who, when we are waiting, usually come and hang out in Haven and have a little chat :)

I can't suggest any sort of load out because I do not know what type of player you are but, personally, I am a bomber (the reason I loved the new update a little more than some people x) ). But as said before you get some really good T1 gear from the early missions. Oh plus about the hammers, I can take one easily, hatchets, are a lot hard to take ;-;

And we are a friendly bunch, me and a friend have even gone about taking a T2 lock down player's alt and helped them get some gear etc. etc.
I even met the guy in T2 LD on his main xD He was a dusker clone but whatever, I can kill them too.... sometimes xP
The more T1 LD players there are, the more fun for everyone, because everyone in T1 matters, you can't solo most things and a leaver makes all the difference, this is the reason we are close, because we ALL matter :)

~The Mighty Cheese Knight; WeeGee

Wed, 05/16/2012 - 13:09

#28

Thrillhaus

@Fehzor

Jelly allows you to tank one more toothpick hit than skolver (5 vs 4) when both are paired with dual pentahearts.

Wed, 05/16/2012 - 13:29

#29

Xylka-Mkii

I Agree!

Wed, 05/16/2012 - 15:02

#30

Mr-Baldy

I hate UVs but if I had them, I'd find something else to hate.

If it's about ASI, I've killed full Vog toothpickers with Radiant Sun Shards without being touched. I may sometimes die to full toothpick combos but I usually kill the poor fella unsmart enough to stand over my bomb.
I die to people like Thrill because he's better than me. I will continue to blame his UVs and his computer even though I've faced better equipped people and came out on top.

In the end, I think status UVs are the only things worth getting for me. (Walking through haze bombs is fun.)

Wed, 05/16/2012 - 16:00

#31

Shade-Nimbus

Welcome to SK, you must be new here

Like many speculators, im willing to bet those "devils" you faced were indeed Jempire lockdown players. When it comes to pvp, they are notorious and widely ridiculed for their CE-rev abuse and simply could never win against SK's best LD teams without it.

In my opinion, a lockdown team's obsession with winning is sad and kinda pathetic. The fact that they spend countless tiring days just to make sure they get on the top leaderboards every week makes us wonder....do they have social lives or do anything else besides SK? The fact that they could never accept defeat and will spend a ton of CE just to win tells us that they are sore losers and unsportsmanlike. And finally, the fact that they are brainwashed into mistakenly thinking themselves as "better than everyone" makes us feel sorry for their insecurity.

Just like post #2, the Jempire are the laughing stock of the Lockdown community and are thus never taken seriously by any self-respecting Lowdown player.

Wed, 05/16/2012 - 15:56

#32

Traevelliath

Random tangent about Jelly Armor...

Every GLD bomber's worst fear: The Shock Immune Ice Queen Set :P

Thu, 05/17/2012 - 14:44

#33

Merchant-Sk

Dude, it's their money. I

Dude, it's their money. I don't see why they can't spend it on whatever they please. If they have money to buy CE while you dont, oh well too bad.

Thu, 05/17/2012 - 15:09

#34

Wheatis

im gonna try to make it clear

im gonna try to make it clear for ya: as far as UVd equipment are concerened, there really isnt much to worry about as it is proven they make a minimal improvement in your offense/defense, no matter how high or low a UV is.

Now CE reviving on the other hand presents much more of a problem. Rich P2P lockdown players know very well that they have an advantage over a couple types of LD players: casual P2P players that buys ce with real money but much less than them, and F2P players.The reason why people like Jempire lockdown players get ridiculed by everyone is because most of them are in the upper tax bracket when it comes to spending money on the game. They take advantage of the fact that they can buy large sums of ce and use it on lockdown while the majority of other lockdown players cant. Thus, they take the easy way to victory by "purchasing" their wins each match through lots of CE revs. Although there is nothing wrong with that (in fact, it gives Three Rings the money to keep improving the game), it certainly does not take any skill to do so.

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Lockdown and Abusive Affluence