Spiral Knights - What killed the game?

What killed the game?

110 replies [Last post]

Sat, 08/18/2012 - 12:21

#101

Dorael

WoW

If you know what you're doing (and setting aside cheesy methods like recruit a friend or having people grind for you, I mean actually just playing normally yourself), it takes around three to five days of play time to start fresh and hit max level. Without getting twinked or given anything either, I might add. It probably takes about a day's worth of play time to gear up a max level character for the current raid content. From there, it's a matter of farming weekly raid content and luck to gear your character for the Heroic version of the current raid content, which is the utmost end game. Same deal with the PvP side of things. It takes longer once you're max level to get to the very very end game because of artificial limitations they implemented that don't reward you for playing twenty four seven over those that play more casually but reasonably. Essentially, how much of the "best" points you can earn to buy the best gear with it capped per week while a second point system that you can buy less than the best gear with isn't capped per week. This is true on both the PvP and PvE side (though on the PvP side all the gear is buyable with these points, the PvE only has a few and has much more reliance on boss drops).

So to summarize, few days of grind to go fresh to max, a day or two of grind to get good enough gear to do the regular version of the content, then 3-12 hours (depending on how good your raid is and how lucky they are with drops) a week of doing the current raid content until you're geared enough for heroic, repeat for heroic until done with the hardest content in the game. Of course this is neglecting the skill component, which is vastly more important than gear. If you are really freaking good at the game and play with people who are also really freaking good at the game, you can actually skip weeks or months of the above mentioned weekly farming stage.

In regards to grinding in general, it's a way of prolonging a game experience. As I said, I'd love for everything to be new all the time. It's just not possible, especially in a MMO. Even more so with a team this small. What sets it apart is whether it's a mindless grind or one that still takes thought/skill, and whether it can still be fun. Again, burnout does happen. All things in moderation. I just don't think the grind in SK is that bad, not nearly.

Sat, 08/18/2012 - 13:34

#102

Round-Shinigami

RanzohI agree, this game is

Ranzoh
I agree, this game is kind of addictive. To me, its addictive because it doesn't give everything right away, you have to "work" to get better stuff (if you don't want to just buy it with $$). I played 100s of games that only needed a day or few to complete, even though I like finding the little secret places, and grew tired of it. Now I want my games to take a long time to beat. Like SK. But not too long or I get bored/tired of waiting.

I don't see a problem with focusing your lifetime career on a single project, as long as this project brings you that what you desire (money/fame/women/whatever).
If you meant spending your free time on playing the same game for many years - its everyone's personal choice. I prefer doing one game for as long as I enjoy it. From time to time I switch them. Sometimes I don't play anything. It depends on person, in my opinion.

Deltikon
I'm just expressing my opinion and asking for people's opinions.
As for crowns, I did 2 jelly king runs - entire tier 2 run from town to town and a mission run. As a result:
- mission made me 2.835 crowns in 3 levels
- entire run made me 5.390 crowns in 8 levels
Basically, it takes 10 days to do 50 runs (20 mist per run, no jelly killing) to get 4* equipment set using only mist energy. In the past (before missions) you could only do 1-2 runs a day on mist alone (maybe 3 if you joined someone near jelly palace).
Surely, its boring to repeat infinitely 2 same levels. But nobody forces you to only play those 2 levels! Explore! Surely its not as profitable, so think what you want: grinding to make 4* equip ASAP, exploring and making 4* equip eventually, or simply spending a few $$ and making the process much, much faster.

I believe that one of the reasons people leave the game is they get to end-game soon. In MMO there is nothing to do after you reach that end-game experience. The sooner you get to it, the sooner you get tired of it and switch to another game. IMO.

Dorael
Thanks for info on WoW. Interesting.

Sat, 08/18/2012 - 15:41

#103

Dorael

Market

Well if you're not talking about grinding as a whole but just specifically in this game, there's a reason that the costs are what they are. Players essentially set supply and demand. CE costing more just means there are that many more players supplying crowns than CE. I would argue that we either need more CE in the system or less crowns. Your argument that having less CE sinks would lower the price for CE isn't quite right in my opinon. It certainly could lower the demand, but that also could mean that less people will actually pay real money to buy CE with. I can't really see how you can adjust the CE side of the equation (well, beyond telling people to spend more cash) without hurting the game in some way. I'm of the mind that sinks have to be implemented on the crowns side instead.

Sat, 08/18/2012 - 16:32

#104

Deltikon

In that case

OOO should make better, and a LOT better, promotional items. I mean it, if they putted a nice camo instead of that puke colour on the hunter costumes, a lot more people would have bought it. And maybe the price would have suddenly drop from 8,5K to 7K if not even less. They just need to make the real money purchases more attractive in order to keep the markets stable.

But I don't even think that's necessary since the only people who would stop buying CE will be the ones who don't have the will to grind forever, which they would rather use the energy on crafting rather than selling it, so it's irrelevant for the CE market. More, with less demand and keeping the supply, everyone, specially the f2pers get to benefit with that. So reducing the CE costs for everything would kill two snipes with one stone.

Sat, 08/18/2012 - 21:53

#105

Round-Shinigami

Deltikon Weird. It was way

Deltikon
Weird. It was way harder to get crowns in the past (before mission system you had to do entire 7 levels and you got like 5-6k crowns for jelly, and price was 7k cr per 100 ce) and yet more people were playing than now.
As I said, nobody forces you to play only JK to get 4* items. And nobody stops you from getting $10-20 CE pack and getting those items much, much faster. Free to play can also be called "free to try", except in this game there is no limit to "try", you can play for free forever.

Dorael
I'm talking about decreasing CE sinks for a simple reason:
The more ways you have to get equipment for ce, avoiding crowns - the less reason you get to sell CE for crowns.
The less CE you sell on the market, the higher the price gets!

The only time CE price drops is when a lot of CE is being sold. And supply depot gave people just that - a way to use any amount of CE without converting it into crowns (no more need to buy items from AH as you can get most of them, excluding boss token items, from SD).
If items in SD were sold for crowns, people would be forced to sell CE and get crowns, making the price drop every time something is purchased. Devs already experimented with crown sinks, some of it was successful (first time featured auctions started, they managed to drop price a notable amount, reason's simple - auctions were done in crowns, not CE), others - not so much (take punch for example, not many use his services, although now he allows fixing UVs and is much, much more useful).

As for camo set - I wouldn't buy it anyways. If they made a mewkat pocket available at a low price, though, I'd grab one.

Sun, 08/19/2012 - 08:18

#106

Ranzoh

Oh, and the mist system has

Oh, and the mist system has its ups and downs. While it is great that is free and controlled to 100 capacity for price purposes, it can be a deterrent for those that want to use it to play the depths(cause that's where you'll want to earn more stuff possibly in the long run), at least gameplay choice speaking. Yeah, they made battle network and lockdown to break the monotony of clockworks or to give some players something to do while mist regenerates(albeit rather slow for hours to get back even 50 mist for one undying run), but even that can get rather monotonous real quick(because of unbalances and so forth), and plus it assumes that we'll always have crowns on us.

At the same time with the capacity though, it is rather pressuring to use it all up, and it can be a deterrent for those that may possibly have something else to tend to. If we can't be here while we can possibly regenerate like a week's worth of energy, then we'd have incurred a lot of opportunity costs there. I guess there's the option of crafting, but, even that is rather iffy and slow to gain what we could've had. But I guess the option is there.

Sun, 08/19/2012 - 08:55

#107

Deltikon

I'm okay with the mist limitation.

It's not like spiral knights is the only game I play, and neither is to other players, despise being a real bummer only having 100 per day... It's with the grinding that I'm more upset with.

Mon, 08/20/2012 - 06:03

#108

Kitty-Softpaws

Aside from nothing to do but

Aside from nothing to do but grind in the same spot, sk has become a game about appearance. All of these past updates have been nothing but accessories. The player base has died out & re-birthed to this new community of greedy rodents wanting to pimp their cheese. I'm not a fashionista or into spending money on things I have to gamble for. It's too much of a girly girlish game now. What happened to the Zelda based similarity? It's not even classified as an mmorpg to me anymore.

And also, you loose more than you benefit outside of the gameplay. Now I remember why I disliked f2p.

Mon, 08/20/2012 - 06:12

#109

Undying

This has been said, but I

This has been said, but I can't agree more. Every single update is Accessory, or "spend more money" related. Any new content is usually useless before it's even released. I haven't played much in a while. Mainly because there hasn't been anything new, other than a pair of wings, and a goofy looking hat. There's never any new, playable content.

Mon, 08/20/2012 - 10:00

#110

Deltikon

Yeah, lack of real updates bothers me too.

All I have now are prestige missions to keep me entertained and the almost empty arcade... lockdown is a p2w toothpickfest and blast network is pretty much dead (and I suck at it too). A co-op game mode simillar to the Mann VS machine on TF2 would actually be pretty exciting for example. Or they could make a pvp better than the p2w fest.

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What killed the game?