A few suggestions that I feel would help improve the multilayer aspect of Spiral Knights such as;
-Create party's outside of the clockworks.
-A group boot system.
-A loot change system.
-Party Actions
-And Team Attacks.
I really enjoy spiral knights, I play it with a few friends and its all very good but not very streamlined, Perhaps I am missing a functionality of the game but I feel it should be possible to form party's outside of the clockworks. If this is already in the game I have been unable to find out how to do it and if that is the case should maybe be made more apparent as spiral knights is a social game.
As an extension of this I thought of a few more ways that it could be improved. such as while in the clockworks, I have been in a few party's where the leader is the one whom is inactive, stopping the entire progression, a group vote option would change that where all remaining players can vote if they want to forcibly remove this person so that another will become the host.
A loot swap system. give party's the choice of how to gain loot/heat, if it should be divided equally, only to the person that killed the respective monster or to anyone. I often found in my games that people would steal what i had worked to achieve.
Party actions. Its a multi-player game, that should be taken advantage of, instead of just being easier with more people, there should be certain placed that can only be reached with a specific amount of players. even if this is just an alternative path it would make things much more dynamic and would give a reason for having more people in a party. because right now I can solo the levels i need too quite easily, there is no motivation to play with anyone new. some exampled of this can be moving a block or picking up another player to throw like a vase to reach a certain place.
Team charge moves. just because it would be cool and give players something to work towards discovering, have it that when both players have a fully charged move and are within close proximity to each other the charge will turn say 'red' for example. when one player releases the attack button, the nearby player has a moment to do the same, and once launched the two will perform a unison attack dealing more damage, and if there was a different attack for each combination it would be something worth trying to discover.
I have plenty of examples where such things have been implemented if any of the ideas require more elaboration.
-Runeologic
University 2nd year Games Art and Design student.
Ahoy, all that sounds pretty good except this:
"A loot swap system. give party's the choice of how to gain loot/heat, if it should be divided equally, only to the person that killed the respective monster or to anyone. I often found in my games that people would steal what i had worked to achieve."
Loot is already divided, sort of. Basically if one person picks up a coin or heat, its as if everyone picked up the same coin or heat. Minerals are also divided, and picked up materials are divided randomly. The only thing that isn't random is the useable items.
It's a pretty elegant system and I can't think of much of a way to improve it.