The charge of crowns to repeat a mission would be extremely screwy and people would ignore it anyways, assuming they would still profit the most from King of Ashes.

We have to just completely make all missions unplayable to truly solve the terribly-dumbed-down-game issue.

and the chatting missions.

I get what you're saying but if you make all rank missions non repeatable than half the games content is cut. YOU just can't justify that, no matter how much you think it will help the economy or revive the arcade

"Making missions like these non-repeatable will resolve some complains from people about the arcade now becoming useless." Making missions like these non-repeatable will create complaints from everyone about how they have to spend all their energy on one FSC run, as opposed to spending it on three of the mission version. I like the arcade, don't get me wrong, and I think it's sad about how few people go in. Maybe they should add something more exclusive? I mean, equipment drops are already more common in the Clockworks, so maybe do something like that again.

Give the missions a lower payout, or make them cost more energy if you've done them before, x1.5 or x2 energy. (Pass-holders would have to pay 5 energy to run a mission they'd already done.)

Problem

You might think that you cut out a lot of content by removing repeated access to missions, but actually I think missions cut out game content. If you run through the arcade, you have a chance to see tons of different kinds of enemies and levels. This is the hard work of OOO to design all these various levels and monsters, which keep the game interesting and are only available in arcade.

What missions are worth repeating? The boss ones, of course! These are the only ones that are repeated (barring helping a lower star friend). In these missions, you see the SAME levels over and over; effectively, you have cut out all the other variety of enemies and missions from the game.

Boss missions will always be preferable because they are easy access to the deepest depths of a tier, where the most crowns can be earned, and they offer the opportunity to earn boss tokens. But you are missing out on a lot of the content that Spiral Knights has to offer, and players lose out on the experience of Spiral Knights. As bad as missions might taste when you have done them 100 times, in practical terms OOO seems satisfied with the economy that has come out of it. Rather than try to fix what isn't broken, namely missions, we should make the arcade more competitive so that it is a viable alternative to missions.

Idea

The arcade should offer scaling bonus crowns for completing consecutive levels. The bonus might scale, for example, as 20/50/100, increasing as you complete consecutive depths with a cap at 100. These numbers may be multiplied by the stratum number you are in. The first level you complete receives the bonus 20 factor, so by the third depth you are receiving full value.

Additionally, the gradient in income between the uppermost and lowest depths in a tier should be narrowed. In T2, you earn about 25-30% in depth 9 of what you can earn in depths 16-17. This value should be at least 50%. This way, you can still play arcade and potentially profit from the upper depths (with the inclusion of bonus crowns for consecutive levels), even if you don't have a full tank of energy. Without this, even with bonus crowns, it becomes more efficient to run missions at deeper depths than start at the highest depths and work your way down.

Ideally, you are rewarded for lasting longer in the arcade, and, for a given amount of energy, you earn potentially more crowns for your energy if you can last, say, 4 depths and not revive. At this point, repeating missions becomes worthwhile if you are farming boss tokens, while arcade is preferable for earning crowns. I think this would make a great balance between the two, and it circumvents restrictions on mission-play that might frustrate players in possibly unpredictable ways.

Example math

JK runs net you probably an average of ~2300 CR for 3 levels. If you were to do the same with this system in the arcade, remembering that JK is in the 4th stratum so you multiply bonuses by 4, you would earn:

2300+4*(20+50+100) = 2980 Crowns for depths 15-17 (Compare to ~2000 for running only depths 15-16 on a JK run, the crowns:energy ratio is equal).

At depths 9-11, you would probably earn something like:

1200+3*(20+50+100) = 1710 crowns.

For all of tier 2, assuming you can complete it, you might earn:

~5000+3*(20+50+100+100)+4*(100+100+100+100) = 5000+810+1600 = 7410. (crossroads don't apply the bonus)

I dunno the values can be adjusted (perhaps multiplication by tier is more appropriate than by stratum), but in principle I think it presents a possible solution to the stagnation of the game caused by repeatable missions. Remember that each time you die and revive, your ratio of crowns earned vs. energy spent goes down, so completing an entire tier with a favorable profit isn't necessarily easy.

OOPS
I just realized while rereading this that, if you do mission 5-2 JK runs, and you only do depths 15-16, you earn about 2000 crowns for 20 energy. An entire tier takes 80 energy. In other words, the entire tier needs to reward at least 8000 crowns to break even with the mission reward. So my scaling might need a 4th factor - say 150, which brings up the total reward for tier 2 to 8360 - and maybe a fifth because in order to make it worthwhile players should earn ~10000 if they can last all of tier 2. Just consider, at a rate of 10000 crowns for completing all of tier 2, if you revive more than twice in trying to beat tier 2, you actually lose money. I also estimated the 5000 crowns base profit, so that number could be off. I am too tired to mess around with it anymore, right now, but I would probably make it a 4 scale system and raise the value of all the factors so it adds up to 9500-10k for the entire tier, assuming 5000 crowns base reward is correct.

Additional Notes

I have let the bonus scale only 3 times, so that players are not discouraged from joining parties that are already halfway through a tier. If it scaled, say, 4 or 5 times, there would be little incentive to join any party partially through a tier because you wouldn't have much time to reap the benefits of a maximum reward. Alternatively, OOO might be interested in discouraging people from joining partway through a tier, to force a party to rely on its own energy for revives alone. Perhaps a 4 scale system would be better, although I think it's worthwhile to allow players with less than 50 mist energy to go adventuring and not feel they are shortchanging themselves because they can't play at the full bonus cap.

I prefer a scaling bonus over a flat bonus for 2 reasons.

1. You cannot die, give up, and just start over. This forces you to consider reviving and challenges you to delve deeper rather than "bursting" 2-3 depths at a time.

2. The purpose of these changes is to force players to experience more of the arcade and not just boss runs. If you have a flat bonus, what incentive is there to play upper depths when you can just join a party that is just reaching FSC/JK/IMF in the arcade and maximize your crown gains?

Coexistence is a more plausible idea, why shoot for one when you can have both?

What Doctorspacebar said.

Haven's scaling bonus idea is actually pretty smart. Would this mean extra reward (per floor) for descending from Depth 0 all the way to Depth 29?