One unique aspect that SK has that other big title MMO won't have is the small community feel and developers listen (at least occasionally). When developers stop listening, SK is just another MMO with a small player base. (That and the hilarious community and Game Masters, something I think it's hard to find elsewhere.)

While I may usually appear as a critic of the Dev, that doesn't mean they didn't make good decisions. So here are some examples:

1. Elevator pass. Basically a monthly subscription option with no contract. Very good move.
2. Guild Hall expansion. Overall it's decent but a few areas appear to be unpolished or not thought out. e.g. mist well.
3. Danger missions. It's right in-between Shadow Lair and Rank Missions / Clockworks in terms of difficulty and it's inexpensive (20 CE). A good distraction from the good, old, repetitive FSC runs.

The hate for pets is for a few reasons-

*That it would change the nature of the game, and that we don't know that we would want such a thing.

*That there are large imbalances that should be ironed out before any such huge changes complicate things even more. (See guardian items)

*That everyone who suggests them is almost entirely ignorant (most of the time) and rather than researching the topic, posts something like "I want pets because Pokemon and can we have a Silver Hedgehog suit?"

*That the knight is already strong enough to defeat everything, and that pets would simply over-power her.

Aside from that- the devs have been making mostly good decisions so far; I haven't seen how pets have gone, but Guild Halls, danger missions and the new shard bombs were nice. Speaking of the new shard bombs, removing the old shard bombs was a bad call, but considering that the year prior to last summer consisted mostly of the devs making things like shadow lairs and monster nerfs that were simply infuriating...

Just what is it people want out of the core that isn't just as readily accomplished through, say, danger missions?

On a more personal note I would appreciate it if you could graveyard that gun thread if you're no longer running it, I swear it gets bumped once every fortnight or thereabouts.

Also, part of the hate for the whole 'pets' thing stemmed from the fact that most people who asked for pets either a) gave no information whatsoever, b) wanted something ridiculously overpowered, or c) were just after clones of small fluffy creatures from other games. There were some decent threads, but in the main they died after a while after being forgotten about.

I am fine with the whole idea of pets, so long as it is balanced and does not wreck the game. I'm also happy with the implementation of guild halls, which is a considerable improvement on what we had previously (one room with an alchemy machine and a view). So yeah, I'm pretty cool with the amount of response that we get from the devs, particularly when you compare it with the amount of response that certain other MMOs and MMORPGs give to their player bases.

the idea of having pets it's not so bad, if you can make it good.
the 2 cents of shamanala are actually good. but I don't think that they will stop right there. if they do something like that, it would be suiciding: people (maybe the same that wanted pets) would like cit:"real pets, not this crap". and with promotions/ power-ups/ equip on pets (I'm fearing this since I saw the news, and I know that this will be the next thing after pets) they will get over powered. if they do a difficulty balance, it should be really great, but only if you can do danger zones/ Shadow Liars without having one. pets should help, not being difficulty nerfers or something you just must have.
P.S.: I've seen in tons of MMOs that devs often listen to new players, and practically only because they need new players. really: some features weren't in the "to do" list till a new one had approved. the thing is, and will always be, that new ones wants to be overpowered, and they don't understand that the game has a structure until they find out.

I think the big question is: so why some suggestion got drafted but some others continue to get ignored.

The simplest, obvious reason is: maybe these suggestion have already been considered and they don't fit in the current development direction.

But that beg the question: but why people keep asking for them over and over and over again?

This seems to be a paradox. On one hand, the Devs were saying "NOPE.AVI". The community is like "Can we has this plox?". The cycle repeats resulting in waste of time and energy.

Solution. Start from the middle. Look at the root of the cause and deal with it. The only real root that I see the two sides can't compromise on is "money". So what can the Dev do? Promote more event only content, which has the following advantages:

1. generates hypes and retain customers who are packing their bags;
2. satisfy the collectors and flippers;
3. publicity for Twitter and FB;
4. content reuse. These contents are for limited time and would make regular (but random) returns. This is similar to the "Mutation" mode in Left 4 Dead 2;
5. short development and maintenance cycle for new contents. The new contents you develop would be target for a 2 weeks life cycle. Once the event is offline, you can take your time to fix bugs and release the bug fixed version in the next return of the event;
6. no better reason for energy promo and more boxes to open with a 1% chance to get unique costumes.

Remember that shard bomb fiasco? Have you Devs thought about creating a mini game in which you can only use the old RSS as weapon to kill off things like Zombies and Trojans and make the mini-game event only? This way, people can still play with old RSS while your not polished enough new shard bomb can stay (whether or not people still use it is another issue).

Meh, give me a Rocket Launcher that shoots rabid gremlins or chainsaws over these pets anyday. I would love nothing more that to use it on those devilites that keep aimbotting me to oblivion, that'd be a sweet, sweet revenge....

...But that's just me.

Please people, just because the game was really insane and now it is playable, doesn't mean it is a piece of cake.
People here are saying that the Dangerous Missions is child play are really sadistic.

The challenge level is high, and mobs like the owl-ghost are really powerful.

Dont get me wrong Klipik.
I play the game for quite a few years now and I do Vanaduke runs all the time.
I know how one can get used to a map and a mob. I am just saying that the game is not easy.

When I am playing with friends, which are also at the same level as I am, we have lots of fun and beat the crap out of many monsters. But we dont say that the game is easy. It has a good challenge level.

About the "Kat"... I really cant see a cat or Katze on those creatures. I know they do "Meaw" and are called Kat, but for me they are Owl-Ghosts that even drop owlite feather sometimes. No hard feelings though.

So no one is worried about pets lagging in (U)FSC? The furnace are already lagging some people. That seems like a more legitimate reason for opposing to pets.

Eltia, if you mean graphical lag, then I can see the concern. Still, they're basically an extra one (to four) objects on the screen with graphical effects. I'm sure most people can handle what will equate to four extra monsters. As for internet latency, that's always going to be an issue before and after.

As for difficulty balancing, I honestly think they should add something to a difficulty level where you'll NEED your pet companion to accompany you because of the extra firepower required. Heck, Shadow Lairs aren't that hard and they're going to get easier with people in a party (Yay Seraphyinx) with debuff and defense pets.

Graphical lag is what I was referring to (hence why I mentioned about the furnace).

The problem is that these pets would have their own attack animation also. Now compounding with graphic lag in the background and other mobs (think that last room in FSC before Vana), wouldn't it be a concern to people who have older hardware? Let's not forget burst load (when furnace burns while some other people's pets are launching some 1337 attacks).

I learned this lesson by using shard bomb in that room (enough to force someone to rage quit due to the lag). So is the problem of graphic lag real for pets? It's possible and this is definitely something that the Devs should test prior to release.

Myself, I'm not looking for any kind of optimization at launch. I'm looking for mainly two things:

1. well thought out design decisions are very, very important. Knee jerking post launch makes the Devs look bad. If you design decisions aren't sounded in the first place, you could launch features early but the effort to fix it would increase and got postponed indefinitely;
2. reasonable performance testing prior to launch. I don't need my SK to run at 60 FPS. But burst lag issue should be investigated and tested prior to launch. So before launch, please test your proto-pets in a snowing map or in FSC when the furnace are burning?