For players as old as the players that started last June or before.. I believe most of us are tired of these stupid reskinned promos.

CE prices are down by 200 probably because of this promo, and you guys are complaining?

about the broken interface of the CE market? Seriously, make an interface that shows all the bid and ask prices in a graphical form (Quantity demanded vs Price). This way people know exactly where the norms are in both the bid and ask markets, and can adjust their pricing accordingly. By showing top 5 bids and asks, it's too easy fall to price manipulation because people can't see what is beyond the top 5.

This goes for those who've been around since release, the frustration sucks. So much potential but like most games nowadays is about milking the cow. Nothing wrong with that, but its how you do it. A lil late for the 'new danger rooms', 'new missions', 'new GUI' because most of the loyal players who actually splurged cash and were really into this game are fed up. The fun arcade is now dead, running around haven mostly revolves around the Auction House and there were quite the number of people, we actually had a ton of beggers! Back then SK had so much promise and potential, now its all about the promo's. Its better to fill the game with better contents, bosses, balances before you even open up the core. I think it'd be worse if they opened up the core while all this reskinned promo's are being shoved to the players without any exciting game experienced base, free ass kicking contents. SK still has a lot of potential, but they need to come up with a different approach, show some love and provide better contents for everyone to enjoy. Its the experience which creates loyal consumers, not mindless promotion just to make a quick buck. Heck, Blizzard screwed up really bad on player base. Yes, they made money on the initial release but now its down hill with everyone quitting due to the lack of content. Despite the money making RMAH, if the player pool diminishes who's gonna be using the RMAH? I'm actually surprised that SK still has active players with all these new games coming out, which seems like there's still a tinge of hope. I've been playing since release and with this new promo with shiny hyped up reskins I don't feel like chipping in for once. I'm quite happy with the new danger missions and all, its a positive update, but please try to keep it up, or you're just digging your own grave like other games who've done the same thing.

TLDR: RANT/RANT/RANT

Wait, we had a row of danger missions and 'new' weapons. Wasnt that enough? This is just a small break.

And they are not forcing you to buy it so...

Changing a handful of colors on a palette is now called work. No, I'm not asking for new content atm since we got danger missions even though that would be pretty nice. I'm just tired of the constant promos with items with a simple palette change being called new items.. what is even more disturbing is that people actually eat this up and throw money at their computer screens for it. I'm guilty of it also, last 2 promos I think I've bought one or two boxes to try to get an item for a friend but that was about it.

I wonder how many players we have around that act like Chris.. how many Shadow Wing promo packs did he buy to get those 3 or 4 shadow wings? I'm really curious how much money Three Rings does pull in with the reskin promos.

@Wodanct
Did Three Rings force you to buy so?
If yes. I will quit this game.

Back when the game was fun, didn't piss me off, and the elitism was due to actual skill and not how much money you could spend on the game. Judging by the amount of threads of people quitting, accessories aren't enough, OOO needs to learn that content is what will get people to play the game and stay. "Hey you should try out Spiral Knights! Is there a lot to do? Well... Uh.. You can make your knight look really cool, if you pay hundreds of dollars" isn't the best sales pitch. Sitting in haven looking pretty isn't everyone's thing.

We can dream though, this update seems have to been the straw that broke the camels back for some of us though. I have never seen this many threads on the subject, and I certainly have never felt the urge to comment this much.

"For god sakes forget these crappy promo's and focus on making the game better. I'm really getting sick of Promo releases OVER Content releases. Yea I know your a business and all but having the same promo every three weeks is starting to make me mad. New boss ever? How about guild updates? What about buffing Iron slug? Call me a crybaby but I think after seeing this blatant cash grab you should be mad too."

Excuse me, it's a promo release BEHIND/ALONG SIDE a content release.

I guess Maulos doesn't count enough as a boss for you, huh. Well, I guess it's more of a mini boss. The ice danger mission is like a mini ice-vana run, with fiends everywhere.

Maybe I'm more sympathetic towards OOO since I've recently gotten on the development side of games and actually see/live the process of game development, but players are so blind.

Their current focus is on making danger/prestige missions content. It has been, since the mission system came out. The bomb change has been an ongoing thing they've been working alongside the danger missions. It's only been released because it's been "finished" by this time. There's been word that Tortodrone is still being tweaked (just watch : it's going to be in a danger mission, just like the rest of the new content - oh, did I say new content? Yes, danger missions are the 'new content', love or hate it), and you know when it's going to come out? When they finish it. Sure, they're a small team (so I hear), but they can still do multiple things at the same time. Say you're an artist and the rest of the dev team is making a beast-themed level - after you've gone and made a few small tweaks/specific areas, you can reuse existing graphics and you're done. But the rest of the team isn't done, so while you're not doing anything, you can get assigned to chalk up some premium armors to make on the side.

But then you get pissy blind players complaining that suddenly because you've finished that relatively smaller task and they've announced it, that the somehow the whole team spent its focus making armor. That's a completely uneducated assumption.

Think about this:
When they created the new danger missions (after Legend Of Almire), what was involved in that?
- Some new art
- Some new randomly-generated level layouts
- Some specifically-designed level layouts
- Some new enemies
- Maulos, the mini(?) boss.
That, among probably some other things I've overlooked.

That's some work for art, more work/testing/tweaking for level design, and some programming new behaviors for the new enemies. They'll probably release a danger mission when those parts are done, but what do you think happens when they're done programming enemy behaviors? They'll tweak and test, but aside from that, they can um, I don't know, be working on other features like weapon mechanics or the new guild system? Maybe another danger mission?

Then the release comes and they'll go into bugfix/hotfix mode for a bit, then get back to work on the other upcoming features.

...But that kinda thing is invisible to players. All we see is "hey, update happened", "hey, btw, here's a promo", and some of you guys are just like "omg they're not working on anything else!!!!11!"

What do you expect? Want them to throw up something unfinished as proof they're working? That's sloppy.

Just watch: we won't see a new set of story/campaign missions until -wait for it- a whole set of missions are complete. If, theoretically, they made a post-vanaduke t3 boss level set, we won't ever see it until they've finished making the 6+ story missions that lead up to it. Until then, we won't see anything about it. This is going to be due to the whole focus on story instead of the more un-focused Arcade game where we'd "randomly" run into boss tiers. No more of a "hey, here's a sneak preview of the new boss, since we just made a new boss tier" - it's going to be integrated with the Missions.

Anyway, my favorite is the 'cash grab' claim. Get this though,
Just because you make a hook for cash doesn't mean it will be successful. If they want to make money, they have to make content that people want to pay for - AKA: Content that makes player happy.

I've played Spiral Knights on-and-off since April 2011 and I'm pretty much end-game and have never spent money on the game. Now that I have a full-time job, I kinda want to spend some money as a 'thanks for the good times', but there's no real push for me to do it other than charity, and I'm still too selfish for that. I don't really need CE except to maintain my trinket slots and maybe vanity craft once in a while. I've lived without OCH.

I WANT 3 rings to want to make money, because the best way for that to happen is to make content that makes players WANT to spend money.

Remember the whole shadow key thing? Elite-level content with a high CE entry point. Yeah, that wasn't successful.
Now, we're getting FREE danger missions.

Lockboxes? The last time that CE-key-and-box thing happened was mirrored lockboxes - players usually spend cash to be able to customize and express themselves uniquely (and that's why promos tend to have this gambling aspect of chance with them - to take advantage of the narcissistic rich people - remember how CE prices dipped a little with the Sun boxes? Those things looked cool), but watch this:
Look at the last two promos with boxes. Did you need to have a key to open them? NOPE.

I don't completely agree with the direction the game is going (I really don't like the chokehold that missions are putting on the game, but I don't see it ever being Arcade-centered anymore - but the prestige/danger missions are like mini throwback to those times), but at the very least, I have an idea of the direction and a kind of feel for the timing.

I can't speak for the rate that the content is being made, but I am convinced that due to the mission system, there's going to be a huge slowdown in the rate the desirable content will be released.

It's probably buried in my terrible wall of text, but I'll write it out again:

Remember when Snarbolax and RT were being introduced, they hyped us with sneak peeks, and we were basically getting a new boss every month?

That's not going to happen for any tier 3 boss content any time soon unless it is either
a) Premium content (like OCH)
b) Danger Mission/Prestige mission content.

We probably won't have a regular t3 boss any time soon because it will pretty much have to be tied into the campaign, and that means that not only the Boss levels but a whole set of other story missions have to be made so they can release the whole package at once.

:/

Anyway, I'm bringing this off-topic - I have many misgivings towards the mission system lol.

Actually Gwen, the Leafy Aura's a reskinned Sprinkle Aura combined with the fluttery effect from the Love Aura. Which for some reason or another, people have taken to mean that it's as expensive as the Sprinkle Aura, which is hilariously pathetic in itself. But yeah, close enough.

That being said, this promo's probably not one I'm gonna be actively participating in. You all have fun with your boxes~

OOO WORKS ON MULTIPLE PROJECTS, THIS IS JUST TO TIDE YOU DOWN UNTIL NEXT RELEASE,AND GET MONEY TO KEEP THE GAME RUNNING

I was inactive between August 2011-around late January 2012 so I don't know what the releases were all like for that. I don't feel like going through the announcement history again. I did it once before and noticed they had a pattern of creating content for newer players first and older players last.

If you wanna ignore OCH, feel free to remove a month or so from your calculations as well. While I haven't played it, they did create new enemies, weapons, and levels and art for that.

They had phases where focus was obviously more tilted towards certain other things - they basically made whole other games with Blast Network and Lockdown, then monster/weapon rebalancing, which is kind of like polishing up the existing content. Performance tweaks too.

The mission system marks a huge turning point in the game's focus though. They redid the UI quite a bit, changed/added more in-game cutscenes, made the new rescue camp [which were actually really respectable new levels/art and stuff! I'd want that stuff in tier 3!] and character creation - since getting new players into the game is really important. A lot of that new content is overlooked by older players because honestly, it's not something we really get to see, and if we do, not really more than once lol.

Existing players don't count that stuff because we're either above it (see: rescue camp) or not interested (see: everyone but the <200 people playing lockdown at a time ;_;)

When players want content, it's usually in the form of levels and enemies and gear, because those are the things that are most important to us. But creating and making sure new systems (missions, or heck, the shard bombs, guild system, etc) aren't broken can take at least a month, and they aren't the most obvious. Until those huge, silent beasts are tamed, we'll see smaller updates or armor promos instead. Once systems are set into place, content can be made much faster. They got the danger mission system all set up with Legions of Almire, and look how quickly they've gotten the two other danger missions out.

But anyway, yeah, if you want to completely ignore the lower level content, it will seem slow.

Oh, and F2P games? They exist to make money, either through ads or lots of microtransactions (selling little things for real money). Guess which model SK is following?

The reason I brought up the Shadow Lair thing is this: if we look at the high-CE shadow keys as their attempt at getting higher level players to buy and sink CE into getting access to 1337 missions, it didn't work too well. They probably learned from it and now, the new higher-level stuff is more accessible. That was one of the first things the devs straight up clarified when they announced danger missions - there would be no special CE cost to get into danger missions. They want to make money, but if something won't work, they won't continue the pattern.

OCH was probably supposed to be like CE in the sense that you can only get it if someone down the line paid real money, but you could 'trade' for it in-game. Due to the game being integrated into Steam, they kinda hit a roadblock that kept them from doing that, but last I heard, they were working on trying to get it more accessible as well.

----
edits:
@promos:
I have friends that won't buy CE unless there's a good promo. The really savvy buyers know to wait for deals before spending money. That's why CE prices drop after more successful updates/promos - because people feel like they're getting a good value by buying, then decide they want to sell their CE for crowns.

I have started in june last year, and we had a bunch of promo since then. to be honest the growth of this game is quite slow. for example, the core is still closed, the guild hall is still crap & empty. the worst part is we even get our old toys "revamped."

Mission implement.

New LD maps.

Crash site.

Anniversary missions.

And yet you still complain?

Let me say one thing.

I lloked back. There wasn't that much new crap then as in now. It's just that you've got older.

Even with new crap, I still feel bored.

they messed up the ce market with uv ticket, as a remedy they have the obligation to make promo to balance it. assuming they don't have the guts to take back the tickets

Nj, even you know that's not what holla wanted to say. His last phrase says it all "Focus on the game and the money will come, it really is that simple.". Have you seen how many people have quit the game this past few weeks? Old players that splurged their wallet out on this game? And who's liking these promos? New players, 3*, 4* players that just want to buy ce and are all excited because it dropped 200cr.

I completely agree with you on this Holla, the guild updates especially have been announced so long ago now, i mean, this is all they work on. If they don't have the full update ready yet, launch what you do have, give the players a reason to stick around and then give them more and more, little by little. FREE STUFF that is, stuff anyone can enjoy and make them want to spend money on the game. Danger missions were awesome but what i feel is that you guys just keep releasing harder and harder updates trying to purposely make the new players waste ce on reviving (Shadow lairs, danger missions). Why not a new boss, why not some new weapons (OCH stuff is not included because it's not free...), not just nerf the old weapons to the extent where you have a thread with a petition to bring the old ones back with over 180 replies and not a single Admin answer (RSS line nerf). What you guys did wasn't change it, you made a whole new bomb, one that isn't good at all i might add. If you were so eager to release these new bombs why not just make new ones, and not replace something that was perfectly fine?

Basically, release new weapons, new armor, new mobs and bosses, give the people what they actually ask and they will happily spend their money! (I haven't seen a single thread in this forum asking for more costume/accessory promos...)

There is no point in trying to tell Njthug that OOO may be doing anything wrong, you know? Those people send them cookies, its not like they will say bad word about OOO, waste of time.

I have to agree here.

Oh well, community will NEVER be satisfyied and forever demand new content.

Rather than taking everyone's approach of looking at potential viable crown sinks, I have a different opinion on the matter. What we need isn't less crowns in the system via sinkage but simply less crowns in the system, period. I think it's high past time they nerfed FSC payout. It should be around the same as Danger missions are, if not lower. The fact that the highest payout yield in the game is so ridiculously easy to run and farm is what causes the price of CE to steadily rise over time moreso than anything else, in my opinion.

Fixing existing bugs doesn't make OOO earn any money, so why would they bother fixing them? (sarcasm, any respectable developper's first concern is troubleshooting, not making sparkling mustaches and leaves at 50$ piece)

MMOs are more likely to be littered with bugs since they can be rushed, while console games can't really be sold with bugs otherwise it's bad business for them and negative sales returns.

The bugfixes I see in logs are the fixes of bugs introduced at the previous updates. Many old bugs have always remained, unless you've played this game for 3 weeks you should know that.