It's not about being AFK. It's about being dead for too long. So I guess you could say our time in dungeons is not unlimited indeed.

shouldn't OOO be happy to let us spend our energy in any way?

Nope. There's plenty of ways in which you're not supposed to spend your energy. ;) Maybe this here is in place so you don't abuse mist energy, I dunno.

There are more lucrative ways to exploit mist energy... I don't know why this is in place either. I don't particularly mind it. There have been prior (fruitless) discussions about it (and other pre-release "features") here: http://forums.spiralknights.com/en/node/826

And, about your other point .... personally, once I've spent hundreds of energy clearing multiple tiers, and I need to leave for a few minutes to answer the phone, or do some chore, or make a snack, I do NOT want to be getting booted out of the clockworks and losing all of that energy just because the game doesn't think I deserve to be there unless I can give it my undivided attention for four or more hours.

Oh please, could you blow this up any bigger? How many hours did you spend to get to that floor, and how many hundreds of energy? You don't need to give this game four hours of undivided attention. And you lose 10 energy at most when you get booted, that's less than $0.04 we're talking about. Well boo hoo... that couldn't have cost you an hour's wage. And yes, it's only 10 energy, the rest you already got your crowns, materials and tokens for.

But I forgot, you're not trying to make a point here. This is just another rant / flame / whine thread where kids are crying till they get their candy.

Move your mouse once every 10 minutes and you'll be fine. Heck, there have even be suggestions of putting a stapler on your spacebar if you need to step out. Personally, I don't see what's the deal. If you don't have time to play, you can easily take the elevator back up and come back later and not lose anything. Just take the elevator straight down to floor 8 or 18 when you come back.

lol. so meta. flamers complaining about flaming. what's next, cats and dogs cowering while it is raining geckos?

This literally doesn't mean anything.

And, to summarize my argument against your post: AFK people are wasting server resources simply by being online but not active. You get the same boot for standing around in town, where you're not causing any mob spawns, mob interactions, or loot drops. It actually makes more sense, for server stability purposes(which is likely the reason AFK kick exists), that you be booted when in a dungeon than otherwise.

I realize that, in your little world, OOO is out to get you and you're a victim. However, if you put more than a second into thinking about your crying, you'll see that the world really doesn't revolve around you and that if you have a real problem with this, stop dying. Park yourself somewhere intelligent before going AFK. And once you find a nice spot, set something on your keyboard to prevent auto-kick. Hell, if you're REALLY that concerned about it, invite a friend to your group, then go back to haven, and have your friend hold the spot/progress for you while you're off pooping or whatever drew you away.

Pretty much every online game in existence has an autokick feature, and some of them have autokick features shorter than 10 minutes.

So before you go all rampage on someone else, consider that there is solid thinking behind actual arguments, and not dismiss it with a set mindset.

I'm just seeing this whole thing being blown out of proportion.

You can pass all of these things off as "this game isn't WoW", but in actuality, you're just insulting the company when you say garbage like that. No, it's not WoW, but it still has every right to the systems that the developers found necessary to impliment, and when you spout your whining and claim foul play, you're arguing against a team of people considerably more intelligent and qualified to make these decisions than you are.

The servers don't need to be under threat of overload for measures against useless population nodes to be in place.

The amount of flaming on these forums can get pretty ridiculous. Someone should be able to make a suggestion without being accused that they're whiny for not liking things just as they are. If no players ever made any suggestions I'm sure this game wouldn't be as good as it is today.

Pretty much every online game in existence has an autokick feature, and some of them have autokick features shorter than 10 minutes.

Actually, Arterra and I play another game that's instance based and casual much like SK and that doesn't have an autokick feature. So let's try to keep an open mind and realize there are different way of doing things. This game's only been out for about a month - isn't it a bit early to claim that nothing could or should change about it?

Imma break this down for you, nice and simple like (Always wanted to be a cowboy).

Anyway 45cents for 100 energy. Therefore;

4.5cents for 10 energy.

I'm guessing we can all agree to this point.

The costs involved with you having your own separate instance of the game, which is in effect not being used, tying up resources (costs electricity, costs money to pay maintaince workers to maintain the service, money in water to hydrate the worker, BALBLABBAbhhh) which could be used on other things, costs more than 4.5cents. Consumers get what they pay for, you paid 4.5cents to be there and you are extended privileges (such as idle time) and all that fancy jazz. After a certain point you begin to cost them money, thus cya later. Alternatively you may not be costing them money, but if everybody was allowed to do this there would be a cut-off point where it would.

Also, before you claim you paid for your energy, Three Rings has not drawn a distinction on how you earn your energy, only that you have it, so the person who got his 10 energy from selling materials or the person who spent real life money to get it is the same, thus everybody who is down there have the same rights, we've all spent our 4.5cents, it's just energy isn't transferable into real life currency.

Now about the AFK kick. From a game design point of view, using death to hide is kinda like cheating : / you're dead the game assumes you've given up, it's unfair to let you hide dead tying up resources for infinity, the game assume you'll revive, and find a hidey hole and that's when the AFK kick comes into play and assumes you've left your computer to take the dump of a lifetime or something (1/8th of an orgasm for a male y'know). This part here however is mostly my opinion and speculation, the above is simply common sense.

"I can't imagine a dead person uses up much server computation power, and the server would be running anyway whether they're there or not"

A dead person generating their own instances would use up more space than someone sharing a spot in Haven (this could be debatable as there would information sending to peers and back, but still an entire level generation, mobs, etc, MAYBE), or not logged on at all.

Assuming the most logical speculation is true, your reprieve from the boot kick would be to pay more for your energy to justify the costs.

...is that this game devotes more resources per player than other comparable casual-style F2P games (actually, I wouldn't call Pocket Legends "comparable," although they do share the same casual model and target demographic). Or perhaps those other games don't have the requisite population to make server cleanup a priority? Or perhaps that those other developers have limited resources and chose to devote them elsewhere, for good or ill?

"Yet somehow there are games that cost less than this one and yet didn't find it necessary to implement such a feature. Maybe the extra revenue they get from attracting and not annoying customers exceeds any savings the feature in question might bring."

That's even more speculative than my little costs rant. Speculating on business models and how some games have x feature some don't have y is just pointless, games aren't built to have interchangeable replaceable features, they're generally built with a concept in mind. The Devs know why it's in, so go post this on the suggestion forum as it's apparent we don't know for CERTAIN, we only can give best guess/common sense, but who knows the original idea for it might not be based of common sense.

Also this game is free, that 4.5cents can be gained for no IRL money, which would technically lower their profit per floor more, which I'm sure the developers considered.

@SirNiko - I'm T3.

Maybe "casual" game was not the right phrase for it. There are hardcore gamers who also like to be able to pause their gameplay when real life interrupts, and schedule their gaming around their lives and not the other way around. SK seems to attract a lot of them - just ask many of the former WoW players why they like this game. So I guess the term should be not so much "casual game" as "a game for people who like to also have a life."

I suspect the back-to-haven timer for a dead player is because of the way a party can drag someone down to the next floor, although it's not quite clear to me how that could be exploited. Maybe the devs just don't want people getting deep into the dungeons if they die in the first little bit of the shallow levels.