Spiral Knights - What killed the game?

What killed the game?

110 replies [Last post]

Tue, 08/14/2012 - 09:30

Round-Shinigami

Lets be honest here: 9 months ago this seemed like a great game with a huge player base, it was active, it was shining. Surely, there were some clouds in the distance, some of us could tell whats going to happen if nothing was done, but most of us quit the game months ago.

Now I come back half a year later and see a ruin in place of Babylon.

So, what do you think has killed Spiral Knights?

-edit-
to be clear: I am not saying SK is dead and buried (that'd be exaggeration). I'm saying the game looks like it shrinked down significantly with less active players and far, far less trading going on.

Tue, 08/14/2012 - 09:36

Aplauses

Ok.

The answer is:
> CE price is too high.

Everyone lose their hope and give up. Then they quit SK.

Tue, 08/14/2012 - 09:38

Round-Shinigami

*Reserved*I'll post my

*Reserved*
I'll post my personal opinion on the matter a bit later, first I would love to hear what today's players think.

Why I see ruin here:
6 UVed caliburs in place of 100s
dirt-cheap "ultimate" items (items having great UVs, like sealed sword CTR VH)
hard to find anyone selling what you like
ce for 82 crowns (was 60 just 9 months ago)

Aplauses
Typical opinion. Its less of a reason and more of a result.
Do you know how CE price is formed? People buy CE and put it on the market, thats the only way. Price goes up when people stop buying CE for $$ and stop putting it on the market.

No I don't blame Steam Trade.

Tue, 08/14/2012 - 09:37

Pokenuevo

Nothing has killed the game. The hate threads only make it seem that way.

Tue, 08/14/2012 - 09:39

Round-Shinigami

Pokenuevo The game's 1/5-th

Pokenuevo
The game's 1/5-th of what it used to be, at the very most. I call this game "dead" compared to what it used to be. Surely, if you started playing a couple of months ago, it may seem brimming with life to you.

Tue, 08/14/2012 - 09:42

Softhead

/disagree

No, no,

Being here, Nothing has really change.

Just demand.

Tue, 08/14/2012 - 09:49

Round-Shinigami

Typically first 15 havens

Typically first 15 havens were full (showing red circle when you try connecting to them). So I was thrown into haven 17-21. I had a hard time finding a quiet place in Haven. Now everywhere seems quiet, except for town square in Haven 1...

Tue, 08/14/2012 - 09:52

Aplauses

I had a hard time finding a quiet place in Haven. Now everywhere seems quiet, except for town square in Haven 1...
You should be happy because you can find quiet place a lot easier now.

Tue, 08/14/2012 - 09:53

Pokenuevo

I started playing in December last year, so I have been here for a decent amount of time. While it does seem quieter in the Havens, there are a significant amount of people doing missions (usually more than half of my friends list is doing this). A good amount of people do Lockdown as well, depending on the time. There probably have been a lot of people who left, but for every person who leaves, a new person joins.

Tue, 08/14/2012 - 09:55

Juances

Ready Room, mission lobbies, easy acces to bosses. There arent much reason to stick around Haven unless you AH.
We became anti-social.

Tue, 08/14/2012 - 10:01

#10

Round-Shinigami

PokenuevoI won't argue about

Pokenuevo
I won't argue about how many new players join the game as I don't have the exact numbers, but the game does seem like it shrinked a great deal. And its just sad. Knowing why would be a good thing. To me :)

Juances
Thats just sad. But true, thanks.

Tue, 08/14/2012 - 10:07

#11

Deltikon

I think I know why...

While a main reason is that the most of the new players from steam got bored and quitted, another, and more serious problem, is really the grinding.

As soon as you reach Tier 2, you end up hitting the grinding wall, and if you want to go any further in the game, you have to constantly beat up royal jelly to get the crowns, so you can buy the energy you need in order to craft better weapons, which they require an enormous amount of it (at least compared to a time before some update made the CE costs way higher than it used to be). Not to mention about the very high CE prices nowdays, which only makes it even harder to get it. And since many people hate grinding, they just leave.

Inb4 50 people tells me that grinding is a feature and it's all part of a MMO.

Tue, 08/14/2012 - 10:17

#12

Round-Shinigami

Deltikon Interesting, I never

Deltikon
Interesting, I never thought of grinding in such a way. And there's always alternative to just buy better gear from supply depot.

Tue, 08/14/2012 - 10:20

#13

Entropize

1.Ubernerfs to weapon thats

1.Ubernerfs to weapon thats not even OP
2.The CE price is damn too high!!!
3.They ruined the ammount of cr on clockswork
4.More prize boxes!Weed colored armors!YAY!
5.More noobs on LD than it used to be

Tue, 08/14/2012 - 10:21

#14

Deltikon

Except...

...you need even more energy to buy weapons from there! It's much more reliable and cheaper to get weapons by recipes than by the supply depot, and it's still a pain to get all you need for 3* or higher equipment.

Tue, 08/14/2012 - 10:23

#15

Eltia

@Deltikon

I can relate what you said and I don't think every MMO is about grinding. e.g. I participated in beta of Guild Wars 2 and I don't see a lot of grinding involved. (You could grind if you want to, or you can just travel around the world and attend events around you and enjoy the contents this way.)

It's all about the design. SK is designed around legalizing RMT (Real Money Trade) and grinding. It was the design that make the game this way.

Tue, 08/14/2012 - 10:25

#16

Vaclavv

yawn.

If I had 1 CE for every time someone proclaimed the death of the game I'd be the richest man in it.

Tue, 08/14/2012 - 10:23

#17

Softhead

Does anyone remember the Promo for Preview/Beta?

"No Grinding".

Utter Bull.

Tue, 08/14/2012 - 10:29

#18

Saberyoko

What?

I know what....

>Wepons/Equip Supply.

Make anyone who spends a lot of time, effort and patience to create your favorite/powerfull equips looks like a crap...just buy CE and done.
Oh yes...

>CE market.
F2P suffers...P2P laughts.

Tue, 08/14/2012 - 10:33

#19

Deltikon

But the game shouldn't be designed like that, Eltia

OOO need to make the stuff more accessible for mid-tier players if the developers want to keep them interested. If you force them to do the same thing over and over again, nobody will want to play the game. Accessibly and fun are extremely important for a game like this, and for any other MMO, and forced grinding kills both of them.

EDIT:
@Tohru-Adachi: lol, now that I remembered, they did said that, but that was long ago. Guess time really decays a game...

Tue, 08/14/2012 - 10:37

#20

Eltia

@Deltikon

What makes you think I agree with the current design of SK. (lol)

The whole problem of this bomb patch is that it's not fun! We pay money for fun, not to be consistent with some mathematical / scientific theories we never heard of. WFC if the old RSS is not "very bomb like". Your customers love it and are paying money for it. Think of the old RSS as an Easter Egg in SK: the players found an unanticipated way to enjoy this item and loving it.

Old RSS is fun, it's part of our collective memory of SK. Many years later when we look back to SK, RSS will be the thing that many people recall and say "oh yea I had one of those and it's fun".

Anyhow, getting ready to call Sega now. Wish me luck!

Tue, 08/14/2012 - 10:39

#21

Softhead

God's speed.

Tomorrow would be the judgement day.

Tue, 08/14/2012 - 10:44

#22

Byas

The game is not bad, a couple

The game is not dead, a couple bad patches here and there but nothing game killer. Overall is still the same as ever.

Tue, 08/14/2012 - 10:45

#23

Round-Shinigami

Deltikon I believe when they

Deltikon
I believe when they said that, they meant it as OOO the independent company, not OOO as part of SEGA.
As for accessibility vs fun, its a complex thing. The faster you get all the weapons you want to 'beat' the game, the faster you stop playing it (my personal opinion). At the same time, the harder it is to make/get something unique, the faster you lose interest in the game. Its a delicate thing, requires a good "feel" for this kind of stuff - how to satisfy a lot of players without getting them bored too soon.

Personally, I agree that mid-game and end-game content in this game is kind of... limited. Not too much of it. But it was enough to keep me for over 9 months (and I'd keep playing but my life took a big turn).
As for supply depot - my thoughts exactly. You just give players a way to buy their stuff with $$ without even properly introducing auction house and bang - they're all buying stuff from SD and ignoring AH, CE market, thus driving CE price up. Company benefits in short term (few months) as more players buy more CE to spend it instantly, and high CE price drives people insane and forces them to either buy CE for $$ or just leave.

But what happens when everyone who had $$ bought their stuff from supply depot, and everyone who didn't want to spend $$ were left with huge CE price and only 100 mist a day?
Player base shirning.

I'll gather more opinions from lots of players and think it over before I put a general idea into first (third) post, please keep posting your opinions, its very interesting.

Tue, 08/14/2012 - 10:51

#24

Dorael

Good times

Oh these are always fun! I love it when players make wild claims and accusations without hard data to back it up. They were fun in WoW and they're fun here. Like, oh noes, WoW is dying! They lost 1.1 million subs! Nevermind that it was in a lull before an expansion, or that they still have 9.1 million left, or are 136.5 million dollars a month from those remaining subs. Whatever will they do?!

CE prices rise because there's too much crown in the system, not necessarily because not enough CE is there. I'm surprised there are as many people paying for CE as there are for the price to be less than half of what you can make in FSC considering how many more F2P players there are.

Tue, 08/14/2012 - 10:52

#25

Deltikon

Eltia

Ah, my bad. For a moment, thought you did, hue...

But it's true the bomb sucks now, yet, its still fun to see those fancy explosions. They just need to make it a lot more powerful and efficient, just like the good ol' shard bombs.

And I wasn't specifically talking about the bombs. It's the whole game itself. There's so many people grinding on FSC and the Royal Jelly Palace just to get money so they can buy other even more expensive gibberish. That's not how it's supposed to play the damn game.

And also another thing it's ruining the game is the p2w elements they added. Heart trinkets and UV locking are the main things that are making the LD unbalanced has hell, therefore, rubbish. Only real reason to go there, on my case at least, is to grind krog koins so you can get other recipes.

Tue, 08/14/2012 - 11:03

#26

Deltikon

Round-Shinigami

Yeah, I know OOO was bought by sega, although I'm not very sure it's the main reason. But nevertheless, it still takes quite a lot of grinding to get any further in the game.

It's true, it's a delicate thing. Stuff too cheap and they reach the endgame too rapidly, and eventually get bored because in this case there's not much of it... But too expensive and it will force you to grind to get whatever you want, which is a pain in the ass. And pain is not pleasure, unless you're a masochist.

As for the supply depot, I'm fine with it, as long as they keep it restricted to only skip the grinding. Even so, it's more effective to buy a recipe and use the energy to craft stuff rather than directly buy it from depot. If they start introducing more exclusive content, asides Crimson Hammer, I'll be really pissed with it.

And my point exactly, if you don't have dosh to spend on the game, you have to grind. And that breaks the fun in it.

Tue, 08/14/2012 - 11:07

#27

Volebamus

I fail to see how it's dead

As previously mentioned, using haven as a basis for the game's vitality is highly mistaken due to the mission lobby. We don't have direct access to numbers that give a more accurate look at the playing population, such as simultaneous active accounts and peaks/lows in a day/week.

And quite honestly, nothing now seems much different than over a year ago. Like usual CE threads, complaint about lack of content, etc are still just as cyclical long after I stopped playing. But it's not like I stopped playing for any other reason besides the usual thing about not much new things to do at endgame.

Tue, 08/14/2012 - 11:10

#28

Asukalan

Missions that replaced

Missions that replaced arcade.

OOO shoot their own foot.

Tue, 08/14/2012 - 11:13

#29

Asukalan

Pretending they care about

Pretending they care about players opinions, doing test server to test something out and release it despite negative comments. Not fixing old bugs.

OOO shoot their own foot.

Tue, 08/14/2012 - 11:14

#30

Asukalan

Missions that replaced

Keeping players in dark, not telling us anything. Once every 2 months we get just info "oh look what we are doing" and then nothing from things they mentioned.

OOO shoot their own foot.

--------
Yes, that was triple post, no, it was accident. Yes, it was same thing. No, i decided it to change to something that makes sense.

Tue, 08/14/2012 - 11:15

#31

Deltikon

Asukalan, you don't really need 3 posts to complain about 1...

...thing.

Missions mostly replaced arcade because for making the boss strata more accessible. They just need to lock the boss missions as soon as they are cleared to return the arcade pretty much like normal. But since you mention it, it wasn't drectly the missions, but mostly the HoH.

Tue, 08/14/2012 - 11:20

#32

Round-Shinigami

DeltikonI grinded my way

Deltikon
I grinded my way into shadow lairs and into "ultimate" gear set and it was a lot of fun. You see, I just enjoyed the game. But yeah, you have to do a lot of repeating in order to gain stuff without paying a single $. I paid for elevator passes, and enjoyed the game to the fullest. If I didn't, I'd be stuck in tier 2 for a lot longer period of time, thats for sure.

Volebamus
I'm sure usual discussions are called that for a reason ;) ok maybe its a bit of exagerration to call it dead, but demand for usual items has dropped significantly, same as supply, at the same time CE price went up.

I'll have to repeat: CE price uses good old supply-demand laws. The less supply with fixed demand, the higher the price is going to be over time. In our case demand is infinite (people spend CE on everything daily) and supply is limited (people don't buy $10.000s of CE daily, and if they do, it doesn't end up on CE market).

Considering CE price, a lot of paying players have left the game, or simply stopped buying CE and putting it on CE market.

"They just need to lock the boss missions as soon as they are cleared"
I love that idea. What I would love even more: no "direct access" to boss strata from login screen, having to go through town hall into Arcade and finding boss strata (with visual hints, obviously) to access that level. We don't need 1-click-shortcuts for everything, I believe. It simply cuts down time required to do the mission, and cuts down amount of time we spend in the game doing nothing useful. Certainly, it helps you reach a higher rank faster, but what happens next, after we reach that higher rank?

Tue, 08/14/2012 - 11:25

#33

Volebamus

@Round-Shinigami Still think

@Round-Shinigami

Still think the reasoning is mistaken. There's way too many factors that affect CE, but from what I can tell right now it could just as likely be due to the crown sinks not being as strong as the CE sinks. There's always a reason to use up CE, but not as much ways that crowns could be useful, as something like Punching is now heavily discounted due to the large amounts of variant tickets that have been amassed. That, and CE always goes upward until OOO does another promotion, though this recent one doesn't seem that impressive.

And why is reading anything from Asukalan still like shooting myself in the foot. Even GodofSkype eventually quit this type of gimmick.

Tue, 08/14/2012 - 11:30

#34

Dorael

@Round-Shinigami

What? Why would you ignore the supply and demand of crowns? You know the crowns-CE market is a two way trade, right?

Tue, 08/14/2012 - 11:35

#35

Asukalan

Forgot about this: Rich being

Forgot about this:

Rich being d****

http://i.imgur.com/tWiuq.png

Blocking CE price from natural drop.

Tue, 08/14/2012 - 11:37

#36

Volebamus

Oh hell. No way I'm gonna be

Oh hell. No way I'm gonna be suckered into the all-losing game of arguing about price walls.

Time to get lunch anyway.

Tue, 08/14/2012 - 11:46

#37

Deltikon

Round-Shinigami

You may have enjoyed the accomplishment of getting the awesome gear and the access to shadow lairs (I would), but I doubt you enjoyed the grinding itself.

And again, as you said, if you don't pay money for the game, you'll be forced to do the same thing over and over. Only effective way to solve this is to make the crafting costs cheaper in terms of energy, and maybe everything else too, just enough to not make everything into a chore.

Asukalan, that can be easily solved if OOO putted a limit for how many offers a person can put.

Tue, 08/14/2012 - 12:52

#38

Dorael

@Volebamus

It's okay, we already have a thread discussing the merits and/or reasons (or lack thereof) behind price walling over here. I'm still waiting for someone to sufficiently explain to me why price walling to such an extent is profitable.

Tue, 08/14/2012 - 14:35

#39

Dorael

wtf

Price Walling is killing the game!

Tue, 08/14/2012 - 14:58

#40

Virtuewis

The game is dying?

/shrug I'll probably keep playing it even after it's dead as long as I'm still having fun.

Tue, 08/14/2012 - 15:04

#41

Deltikon

@dorael

It's actually forcing the energy sellers to reduce their prices. Which is a good thing, I believe... But it does show how easy it is to manipulate it.

Tue, 08/14/2012 - 15:28

#42

Dorael

@Deltikon

Objectively, it is neither a good thing nor a bad thing. It is just a thing.

Subjectively, it is good for F2P players and/or players who have more of their wealth in crowns than energy. It is bad for P2P players and/or players who have more of their wealth in energy than crowns.

Tue, 08/14/2012 - 16:36

#43

Deltikon

Yeah, I suppose.

But since I'm a f2per, its only good for me hehe. :u

But yeah, this game really needs some serious fixing to be good.

Tue, 08/14/2012 - 17:15

#44

Virtuewis

@ Deltikon

Why do you play bad games? Is it one of those deals where it's so bad, it's good? :P

Tue, 08/14/2012 - 17:55

#45

Round-Shinigami

IMO: what "killed" the game

IMO: what "killed" the game was missions update. Both missions interface and supply depot.
You no longer have to go around, talk to people to get to know the game.
You no longer need to go into arcade and try to reach next depth trying to stay alive.
You no longer have to try and earn yourself a decent weapon - calibur is given free of charge.
No more figuring out where to find that boss guy - you get a direct shortcut. And weapons to beat him with are available for CE right there, in supply depot!
As soon as you beat the boss, you can immediately make yourself a set of new shiny armor with recipes you got free of charge (or ones you bought in hall of heroes). And then you can move onto the next tier, thats right, no real reason to stay in tier 1 no more. If in the past it took a week or several, now its all done in a day (well, you could probably do it in a day in the past, but the game didn't offer "direct shortcut to boss" and "best weapons and armor for this boss" for CE right in the login screen).

Arcade? I remember hearing that word somewhere... does it still work?

Now, back to mission interface. After beating snarby once you are free to move onto boss 2 aka jelly king. If you got CE, you'll clear him fast (couple of runs at most) and move on to roarmulus twins. Got good gear from Supply Depot - and you're done with Roarmulus twins, which moves you to... dunno, when I stopped playing we didn't have further missions.
I had all 5-star gear by the time they introduced mission system and start-jelly king only took me a day. 2-3 days and I'd beat all the missions. Since its a MMO, I'd expect it to take me no less than 3 months to reach vanaduke (which happened, by the way). But with new mission system and some 10-20k ce I can do it all in under 2 weeks now (from total newbie state).

Old game kept me playing for 9 months and had a good chance to keep me playing for another year or so if I didn't have a need for dramatic changes in my life. New game with mission system (which simply repeats the old game by replacing arcade with a bunch of shortcuts, thus throwing out the good stuff) wouldn't make me stay for more than a week or two. Its too simple, its too accessible, its too short.

And its all my personal opinion.

I believe its the hall of heroes that killed recipe trading, supply depot that killed item crafting and mission system that killed arcade and entire fun of adventuring in SK. Now its just a bunch of shortcuts with items and bosses accessible from login screen. Its short, and thus, boring.
A side effect of mission screen: you no longer need to be in Haven to start a run. As such, you get less "social" feel of the game. Less talking, less friends, less reason to stay in the game. Less fun.

Less fun = less players.
What started as a good thing turned out to be a disaster, as everything that could go wrong, went wrong, it seems.

Again, this is all my personal opinion:
I believe, Mission System update killed Spiral Knights as it was, now this game is less than it used to be.

Thanks for all the opinions! I hope to read more of them!

Tue, 08/14/2012 - 18:07

#46

Virtuewis

Round-Shinigami

Here's my opinion: They might have accidentally killed the game for him/herself (If my hunch is right). My hunch is based on this quote:

" Since its a MMO, I'd expect it to take me no less than 3 months to reach vanaduke (which happened, by the way). But with new mission system and some 10-20k ce I can do it all in under 2 weeks now (from total newbie state)."

Here's why I think this:

How did they get some 10-20k ce? Did they grind for it, or did they buy it? If they grinded (ground? lol) it, it took longer than 2 weeks. If they just bought 10-20k ce, they may have wrecked the pace of their playing experience (if they were worried about enjoying long term progression).

Does that make any sense or am I trippin'?

Tue, 08/14/2012 - 18:09

#47

Dorael

If they grinded (ground? lol)

Thank you for that.

Tue, 08/14/2012 - 18:15

#48

Etendue

I don't think the game is

I don't think the game is dead.

However, I've been around as long as you have. Based on my own anecdotal evidence, I think the game is shrinking. Heck, it's certainly not getting any better, at least in terms of player count.

Tue, 08/14/2012 - 18:18

#49

Battlee

BATLEE PLANS!!!!!!

what killed the game ultimately was the high greed of players and high ce prices

Tue, 08/14/2012 - 18:33

#50

You-Mad-Bruh

To me, it's the surge of

To me, it's the surge of unwanted underage players. Too many damn toddlers bypassing the age requirement and making the community look bad and making it difficult to continue taking the game seriously.

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What killed the game?