Because the majority of you are so fixated on what gives the most Crown Output, you're raising the prices. It's because of the players that run these inane tests to find out which has the best crown output, and then plays purely those areas for maximum profit. I saw a post in here where someone wanted to do a run of the DLC level and most guys just balked on it going "Eh, it's only XXXX Crowns for 50 energy, I'd rather do FSC runs and get YYYY Crowns for my energy" Like, seriously? You guys haven't played enough FSC lately? I imagine most of you have the entire layout etched into your memory.

When you're going for the absoloute highest profit, the CE prices are going to rise accordingly. The problem is that the people who grind FSC until the atmosphere of the level loses all meaning, are not the ones being harmed by this. to new players, a 7k-8k per 100ce rate is pretty stifling.

"Well it's because of the Mission System! It's gotten too easy to grind FSC!"

The Mission System is a necessity at this point because it provides free basic loadout for new players. If it weren't for the mission system, people would still be driving up the CE prices through various means and there'd be no way to counteract it. Furthermore, it provides new players an incentive to keep playing. It gives them a much more gentle progression curve than what the clockworks proper did. Players otherwise might get chased off.

"Who cares! It just means more of them will pay to play! Spiral Knights needs to thrive too, you know!"

Not necessarily. As an anecdotal example, my friend and I didn't actually buy CE until we were already at 4* with a few 5*. I was also sitting at around 650-750 CE, so I wasn't far off from yet another 5* piece. I didn't buy CE out of necessity, I bought it because they were offering something and I thought it'd be neat to get. I had no problem doing dedicated playing with my bro for a week or so until I had saved up enough.

People prefer to have the choice, or at least the illusion thereof. If it feels like they have no choice but to pay to progress on a reasonable scale, they may, but they may just find the game frustrating and go somewhere else. The rising imbalance will make players feel they have no choice. That hurts Spiral Knights because that person may have paid at some point if he or she hadn't felt so frustrated by the curve. Also, that person might have told someone else about the game (I did this to one person, after all) that could have wound up paying.

There's a lot to consider with a game like this, but I've fallen off track.

tl;dr guys, stop playing the game solely for crown outputs because you risk hurting the entire game by doing so.