I was expecting this thread to ask posters why they are bored, if they are bored. However, that's not the case. You're simply just ranting about players who rant. I might just have to agree with Shoebox's answers.

shoebox hod did you do that O_O

Edit: Nevermind. Thanks!

"Too easy?
A: Run FSC in proto gear."

And Ive done that and with proto weapons as well with The-Rawrcake.

Guess what, it makes it MORE boring. The only challenge is staying awake and keeping your attention span on the screen for 30 minutes per enemy. Its not hard, its tedious and annoying.
Needless to say we quit after the first floor.

Using weaker weapons and putting yourself at a disadvantage is NOT an excuse for making the game more "fun"

If the entertainment value has lowered because there's no new content, then we need new content. The level is still exactly the same, regardless of gear, so the challenge is going through it without getting bored of the repetitive enemy patterns and aesthetics

Yeah. How about you run the entire clockworks (0-29) with full proto and tell me you're not bored on the fifth hour in T3.

TL;DR
Its not making the game more fun, its making the challenge the equivalent of: How long can you pay attention to the screen.

"Guess what, it makes it MORE boring. The only challenge is staying awake and keeping your attention span on the screen for 30 minutes per enemy. Its not hard, its tedious and annoying.
Needless to say we quit after the first floor.

Using weaker weapons and putting yourself at a disadvantage is NOT an excuse for making the game more 'fun' "

Aha, you touched on something nice there. Difficulty shouldn't be because of stats (increasing HP), but because of behavior. It kind of gives the fun arcade-gameplay feel when monsters can both die AND kill fast, because it's more about overcoming their behavior in interesting ways that express the player style (ex: some people like to optimize, others like to play around with things like neutralizer - in short, player choices) than farming to overcome a 'stat barrier'.

I did my first shadow lair run recently (snarbolax) and actually, it was really fun! I liked having all the rooms where you fight monsters, where there are combinations of things shooting and flying around you, where every party button was pretty much a mini danger-room.
If those things were more accessible, I wouldn't really care about the reward - I'd have so much fun just playing shadow lairs and trying to survive against all the combinations of monsters at once.

My brother is a gunner and he loves deconstruction zones (even though I tell him they're barely profitable) - he liked the open area and monsters everywhere. Stepping back from the optimization feeling a bit, that's true.

You know what'd be nice?

Danger missions

I think I brought this idea up before, and I guess its pretty relevant now:
Survival Minigame.

Make a place where swarm( or monsters) respawn, and make the maps

Make it like a minigame, where 2 guilds can team up, or play against each other to see who can survive the longest in the arena. No healing items, maybe have the same Special classes as in Lockdown. Make the enemies be part of the Swarm, and that with each "wave" complete, more spawners, turrets, and swarm seeds appear.

Fun, New, Accessible to all, and the Seeds + Turrets can make it a challenge.

Heck recycling LD maps probably would work too, with the intricate layouts making the game objective different with each map.

Its an Idea in progress,but I think if it was worked out more thuroughly, it could be pretty good.

EDIT: If someone copies this to Suggestions while im afk, that would be great. Otherwise I'll do it in a minute.

Artificially making the game harder, running with not fully optimized gear/armor, and running currently hardly ever run "difficult" levels are not viable ways of making the current bored player not bored. We should be able to experience a non-tedious, relatively (or customizably) quick challenge in optimal gear designed by the game to be appropriate. Fiend levels, btw, are not difficult.

-Entropize

"Still many ways

>Use WHB and Neut for FSC
>And apparently stuff considered useless like cautery sword in RJP

Simple, just use so called underpowered gear. Everywhere I got, brandishes. OP swords that make everything TOO easy. Zombies? Charge spam. Jellies? Charge spam. Fiends? Cha- OH. FIENDS. Those things ALWAYS give a challenge? Go run like Dark city or something? I don't see anyone doing those anyway."

That still isnt an excuse. Using different gear shouldnt be the way to make a game harder while ALSO keeping a higher entertainment value.

Fehzor said it best just above this post.

I just ran a no shield run of T3 with a friend (long story)and guess what, HE dies more than ME with a Grey Owlite Shield. And guess what, I revived with CE every time i died. My final rev was at 160 at the end of a arena.

I'm P2P, and my friend gets annoyed when I dont utilize each advantage of the game (he's pessimistic though.), so when we say:

"What do I do after I can run everything in proto if I really want to?"

we mean it. To win the game, all you do is pay money! If Revives damage the enemy, then I can say that if you gave me an infinite mount of CE, I can beat every level without any weapons or shield.

You wanted to know why we think its boring. We say its boring cus its easy. You say use underpowered equips. We say all that does is make it tedious.

And yet you restate the previous point.

The fact is, if the game has come to the point where it is boring, you cant tell people to make it harder by using weaker weapons and equips.

The coreect answer, as we've said, is that we need something new. New mechanics, new content.

How about we give an example.

Say a player goes to UFSC with full proto, and let's say he dodges every attack and takes no damage at all. If that theory is true, then all he has to do is attack at the correct time, over, and over,and over,and over,and over again until the enemy dies. In the end it took him 15 minutes to kill a slag. He continues through UFSC and completes it unscathed. Now calculate the time he spent there, and then ask was ANY of it more enjoyable, than if he were to do it with friends with stronger equips.

The entertainment value does NOT increase by making the game harder.It increases when something new to the players is introduced.

Continue discussing.

You are supposed to use whichever weapon or gear you prefer.

If your playstyle prefers the mechanics of Triglav, then use a Triglav. If your playstyle prefers the mechanics of an Alchemer, then use an Alchemer.

Throwing a Neutralizer infront of someone who doesn't like the gun / its mechanics and saying "Go use this, it is more difficult to use" will not make it any more fun.

******You are not supposed to use non-optimal gear. You are not supposed to use optimal gear. You are supposed to use the gear that you prefer and the gear that is the most appealing to your playstyle. That gear that you prefer may be non-optimal. That gear you prefer may be optimal. Who knows, it's different for everyone.

Using proto armor instead of normal armor to hinder your defenses is a type of fake difficulty. The game is the same, your dodge skills are the same, you just have to not take a break and keep staring at your screen long enough. In fact, with normal armor, you would do stuff like jack around making it a bit more fun. With the lowered defenses, you just simply have to pay more attention to the same content that may not be fun to you after you have gone through it 500 times, and go through the motions again and again with the same dodge skills required.

However, the one thing that has been brought up that actually would change the mechanics of the game is removing the use of a shield.

You lose the mechanic of shield bumping. You lose the mechanic of shield cancelling. You lose the mechanic of starting a charge attack safely without firing off a normal attack. You lose the mechanic of being able to walk slowly with a shield up, which made aligning your character for certain things easier.

But will I start playing Spiral Knights again just because I can remove my shield?

Eh, neh. It's not my game, I am not supposed to be creating it: Only keeping my elevator subscription / promo paying status active in order to support the devs. It's there job to create the game at that point, not mine.

Devs are the ones that should be making the new content / more challenging content. We are the ones that support them. We don't take both jobs.

There IS NOT A TL;DR, you read my whole post and breathe in all of my points, or you do not comment on it period.

Increased difficulty = more fun?

This I shall dub the Goku Complex.

Sooo...

Devs provide the disadvantaged(server) players weaker enemies?

Thus the server advantaged ones get angry for being too easy.

Probably we need a solution to end up boredom to both of these players
since one update can benefit one and uh.. makes it difficult for the other.

Probably Adding variety or randomness(we have one, clockwork levels but like 80% of players are obsessed with grinding, thus Vicious cycle of grinding)

Or it's just me.

@Owao: Greaver boss, you say?

Yeah, more enemy mechanics and more weapon mechanics would make things much more fun. Perhaps a "defensive" enemy, like this one.

-GHOSTMANE THUNDERHAND: A member of an elite order of Gremlins, the Thunderhands transcend detached weapons. They merge machinery with their bodies and master martial arts to make themselves a pinnacle of defensive fighting. Only an ingenious knight or a well-coordinated squad will be able to strike them down, and often they are found guarding Keys!

The Ghostmane Thunderhand is in the Ghostmane garb and wears a headband, and their face is half covered by machinery, and wear gauntlets and boots made of Moonstone. They can attack with quick Jabs that create small electrical explosions; these explosions will block bullets. They can also kick, firing an electrical projectile (or spread of projectiles, like a Gun Puppy) as they do so. They have a spinning kick attack that creates a ring of electrical explosions, and can easily push away enemies.

By default, they wait for an enemy to attack while moving toward them in a martial arts stance. If an enemy gets close, they'll attack; if it takes a while, they'll kick at them. If a bullet comes toward them, they'll quickly Jab to deflect the bullet. They'll dodge out of a Bomb's radius if they can. Fighting Thunderhands would require more strategy than just "run up and beat the **** out of em all", which would increase the fun factor by a lot. Bombers, Swordies, and Gunners alike would have to think to fight a Thunderhand. Enemies like this is what we want.

Lack of Content: Yes we need more content
Make more gear: Already have swords, guns, and bombers and their respective armors.
Proto gear fsc run: Already done with no deaths

Proto gear weapon fsc run: Have fun wasting over a day of your life chipping away at enemies not counting the 5+ hours Vanaduke will take.

Didn't read alot of this...

But I just Wanna point out...

Not using Optimal gear does not make the game harder... it makes it take longer... Take this from someone Who'es Had DA, Brandish... The works. What I use not, is NOT optimal gear... you wanna know what it does? Make it take longer.

At this point in time, having Better gear, means doing the same stuff, faster. Theres no defence boosts, or anything for using non optimizing gear... And that takes away quite a bit of possible Gameplay.

As to those who still think that its nice and dandy... You just haven't gotten bored yet.

To me, what is making SK boring is the feeling that I'm not making progress anymore.

I can spend weeks grinding up for a new shiny weapon, or a new shiny armor set, but in the end, I'm spending hours on end surrounded by flames and undead, wearing the same armor I always do, wielding the same weapons I always do, killing the same zombies I always do, and doing the same damage I always do. I've even started gunning, but that lasted only a few weeks before I fell into the same type of rut.

Without a definite goal in mind, or a sense of accomplishment as I approach such a goal, I feel like I'm just running in place, wasting time.

Because I realized Dungeons of Dreadmor is actually pretty good.

Doing something IRL...

See I run on mist nowadays. Haven't bought CE for the past few weeks. I play for an hour or two a day, and then I do something productive. I'm not spending 10+ hours straight of pure grinding, because everything is all the same and I can't mentally handle it (I have no idea how people can make 50k crowns off of FSC runs in a single sitting).

That's a bit... depressing

I am annoyed by the game because it takes a ridiculously long time to upgrade to 5*.

I have currently hit the HoH mission, which requires you to have one of helm, armor, shield, and weapon at 5* level. That totals at 3200 ce and 100000 cr, if you're not using the reward recipes provided.

Crystal costs are currently at about 8k per hundred.
On a good Vanaduke run, you can get about 8k, if you're lucky.
The amount of time spent grinding in order to get past this mission is just ridiculous.

I mean, I understand that you don't want it to be TOO easy to get to end-game, but at the current rate, it would probably take a good MONTH of grinding just to be able to get there. All this is doing is discouraging players from trying to progress, because the price is either irl cash or something that takes more time than most people have.

I can relate to all of you. I may not be the richest guy here, but I have stocked 2 shadow keys and a max curse protection item for UFSC... And I am not doing it.... I mean: why? To have more cr and/or CE? Nothing new. Nothing at all. I feel disappointed by OOO. My SK activity is now limited to tabbing guildponies on prestige missions - I have ceased to buy elevator passes, and the mist can be used by them in this way. They still enjoy it.

Playing on a one-bar connection makes the game extremely challenging. You 3-4 bar players can cry me a river and tell me this game is too easy, well guess what, I dare say that once a 3-4 bar player gets knocked down to a one bar he/she would never make it out of FSC's D24 alive.

However, it does get boring on the other hand because I'm getting sick of bs deaths and I feel as if OOO doesn't even care.

I've said it several times on this forum so far...

But the reason it's so easy to get bored of SK is because out of every MMO I have ever played, and I have played a lot, this one gets actual content updates the least frequently BY FAR. Sure, they add random crap like accessories and small tweaks here and there fairly often... but actual, new content is super few and far between.

Too long, didn't read? How would you survive if you have to read a lovely book?

1. lag. i get lag, and lots of it. if too many animations are happening at the same time, i literally get screen freezes, and some seconds later there is a flash and im dead or very close to it. is it my PC? idk, i just know i played warhammer space marine no problem on way higher settings than i play this game. lately im getting dropped by the servers or something, and the durations of it are only getting longer. i'll be playing CW or LD, and suddenly people walk off the map. i used to get so confused but now i just go in survival mode and try to dash back in the locker room or just shield up and run in circles until its over. amazingly the longest of this has happened for almost 30 seconds - i could probably die in t1 in my 5* gear in that time -_-.

2. lack of content. most of the missions were, as mentioned, repackaged normal CW levels that i've already seen for a year. other than that, since the time i've started (post twins) the only really notable content additions were PVP, a few missions perhaps and OCH, which isnt even accessible to everyone. updates have usually meant trivial things so far. the accessories probably helped boost OOO's income, now they should use that income to develop something for everyone. *cough* t3 boss *cough*.