The original post constructs its argument using ample evidence from announcements by Three Rings. I like that.

P.S. I don't know the answer.

Yeah, what are players going to do when those battle sprites come out?

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Use them in FSC, obviously. Or will they try to play in the Arcade with them, but figure out that no one else is there but them, cus no one plays Arcade.

:o

!

Solo = Content is easy and you are ALONE

"Here I am making a nice thread about my ridiculous conspiracy, and you darned kids come in and start goofying about everywhere? What is this? "

It's a Forum Site for Ants.

I have a dirty confession to make.

I made some balance suggestions for Wakfu a couple weeks ago. Yesterday they released a list of changes to come by around April for the class I made the suggestions for. Among the changes were a couple of my ideas modified a bit as well as some suggestions from other users. Does this count as infidelity?

I miss playing this game for adventurous shenanigans in the Arcade. I miss joining completely random parties with complete strangers who have never seen my name before who I can not only enjoy fighting alongside, but we work well together as if we rehearsed combinations of attacks and motion because we both know how our weapons work and compliment effects of other weapons. I miss seeing people use Alchemers without switch spamming because they can use it normally. I miss when people use swords for the basic attack combo because using the charge attack means allowing enemies to molest other people in your party. I miss starting sentences without having to talk about myself because I am sick of everything being about personal perspective though there are probably a few people out there who share the same nostalgia. Lastly I feel like a broken record since it seems like I post this same rant at least once a week. Oh look, here comes the gentleman in the white coat with the extra large syringe bubbling with glowing red soda. This is certainly going to be an interesting flav-

I have the answer for your question Nick and the other guys were developing the core and you never know but they might have even completed it

This thread is proof that they are working on things far, far ahead of what we may be thinking: http://forums.spiralknights.com/en/node/74610

Shadow Lairs was made around the time SK was released, or something like that. I stand by mah first poast!!! All of the stuff from beta is the stuff that is going to be released in the future. They edit and do revisions, is what I am thinking. Three Rings probably has a syllabus with all of the things that they plan on releasing in an orderly fashion. We get a dozen hundred accessory patches that lead up to new content, who knows? That's just how the company likes to roll/Nick. Or maybe yeah, they got bored of SK and just want to get paid. We keep falling for the bait, we buy from CE promos and they get their Friday paychecks. Though Spiral Knights is a game, it is also a job. People get tired of their jobs.

Three Rings can just add more lore to the game, extending what happens after the core. I-M-A-G-I-N-A-T-I-O-N.

It's clear that somewhere down the line, something took a turn decidedly for the worse.

That's a link to the early days for the forum. Go ahead and scroll forward about 50, 100, 200, 400 pages. Notice how on the first couple of hundred pages, half the topics have responses from the developers and moderators. A lot of it was idle, friendly chatter with the playerbase. Mods were excitedly reporting about their own adventuring and experiences with various weaponry. Nick would help out with details regarding stats on weapons and always eagerly looking for feedback, especially regarding weapons. When topics were raised about the latest patches that sent people up in arms, devs and mods would engage in reasonable discussions and attempt to defend their choices.

They cared. They cared as much as we do.

So what happened? Are they just sick of the game after working on it for so many years? Did Sega tell the lot of them to keep the idle chatter down and act more professionally, saying as little as possible so that Nick won't spill something that can be used against him? (This has not worked an iota. With the few statements we get from the man, scrutinising players just get that much more time to go through each one of them to find particularly twistable words they can quote, such as the ever-infamous statement about shards not being bomb-like and what each weapon was supposed to do.)

Maybe, from their perspective, the playerbase changed and they just don't like us anymore. It used to be a group of starry-eyed adventurers, eagerly exploring every nook and crany about the game, asking excited questions and sharing tales of the clockworks. Every detail of the game is laid out right there in the wiki. The adventure is gone and we have nothing left to be starry-eyed about. So we demand more. We beat down upon their doors and we demand more. Pitchforks and torches. Petitions and campaigns and witty, sarcastic topics underlined with antagonism.

We are not the playerbase the development team once knew.

I bet my butt white men in black suits happened. Greed, greed, greed. And also server costs.
A black man in a black suit? I have no memory of such things EVER happening.

I just wish OOO could speak straight out about what is happening with, say, Iron Slug, LD balance, the Core and so so so so much more.

Don't worry, OOO is doing a lot. Thats why i love small teams, they care about you.

@ zeddy: I can practically destroy some of your ideas.

Are they just sick of the game after working on it for so many years? Did Sega tell the lot of them to keep the idle chatter down and act more professionally, saying as little as possible so that Nick won't spill something that can be used against him?

on the first: if they were, they could quit or get new ideas. since the community has lots, they could just make one.
on the second: it's probable, since SEGA doesn't do much MMOs, but I think they are intelligent enough to see that it's counterproductive. it's better a dictator that listens to his people once in a while than a good king that decides on his own. chatting creates risks: ok. no chatting creates "lonliness", which makes people ask for things. not so good. think about it: if they kept releasing things, they would satisfy the 90% of the noobs. they would be too busy to ask. but they would run out of ideas. wait, this is not in the topic at all. well, in conclusion, someone should check other OOO games to see how is the situation. just for seeing.
as for the community, I don't think that is the problem. well, not the community itself. it's only too big. when a community is little, you can know practically everyone. now it's impossible. also, I see admin names that I have never seen before on those topics. so, they are working reeeeeeeeeeealy hard, or they have already quitted. I hope not. but actually, I just had some other idea. could they be overrun by support requests? you know how many players do a request daily? just asking.

I really hope that: 1 they are working on something really big. 2 SEGA is not bossing them around. 3 they still enjoy running with their alts. 4 that I will not die for this post. now, in the bunker!

You forgot that between april and november 2011 the spiral sallet was released in TF2.
Kinda points at the devs needing the promotion.

The player base has changed dramatically since beta, and 000 continues to respond to those changes. The big difference, however, is that the communication is now indirect--based on survey info, info gathered from player behavior, etc. Realistically, if they continued the same level of engagement they used to have with the (much smaller) player base from beta on the forums--as Zeddy links to--the whole staff would do nothing but respond to snark all day. I mean, seriously: check out the tone of the posts by the players, not just by the staff members, and then meander through the first couple pages of any section of the forums now. For every addition, rebalance, change, etc. made in-game, there is at least some small segment of the SK population screaming about it, and often when the idea is just floated, long before anyone outside of the 000 staff has any idea how the new material might even be implemented. Given that (often caustic) environment, I can't say I could blame 000 for backing off of direct communication. We can point fingers and argue as to which came first, the change in the player base or the change in 000's interaction with their players, but the fact of the matter is that SK has "grown up," and no amount of kvetching is going to bring back the old days--and that includes overanalyzing every move 000 makes.

Maybe if they start making less money off of promotions they will look at other means to make money... like gameplay content? For most companies these days its all about the money.

I have never been touched by another community member from this game like I have with Zeddy. Zeddy, your post is DEAD. ON. RIGHT!
I used to be a nicer and less crazy-raging-rantish player back in the early days of this game. The community has changed due to the collaborations that Three Ring has done with other companies. Steam, Kongerate, SEGA, and w/e other companies they have teamed up to gain more players into this game. These different companies have different types of communities. Three Rings is at fault for the community that they have nowadays. Steam players are more hardcore and more logical thinkers when it comes to ways of making game money. I don't know what type of playerbase did Newgrounds and Kongerate bring, but casual players who are casual and simple with less greedy and hardcore intentions would be the ones who had no community and formed the original SK community, before Three Rings partnered with Steam and just had SEGA. I was from the original SK community. I joined Steam around last year of April, but still stick to my casual gaming. All these different communities have created this current SK community. Companies CAN loose interest in their game if their community becomes distasteful, which can change the way the company works and treats the game.

The newbies (w/e community they may originally come from) that come into SK follow their peers. More irritating greedy foo's continue to grow in this community, I AM SAD.

Those of you who insist that the Core isn't already opened should give Recon Module: Entrance to the Core a read, then go play a Shadow Lair.

It really has a lot of thought put behind it. *hats off to Fehzor*

Anyway, I think that since Sega came by, they forced an income on OOO and that is why lately each and every event has a box promo on it: they need money or Sega will shut them down - which anyway, when PSO2 comes by, they will most likely because come on, it is Sega.

Also, the Sega joining most likely forced what other people said: a silent treatment, a non-disclosure agreement, as well as having to agree to Sega businessmen regarding monetary issues - the two more obvious being the Shadow Key debacle and the Valve pact (they don't have to blame for that - or maybe they have too?) with Expansion Missions. But it looks like that OOO isn't happy about this either, because OOO said that another Expansion Mission was on the way and we don't have it yet.

More on the non-disclosure agreement: We could "chat" before with devs, they could get our ideas more directly, discuss them etc. As Suggestion board doesn't get filtered, only really popular suggestions - like the Guild Hall one - may really get to OOO's ears (yeah, I know GMs have stated that they give devs what new suggestions were made, but then again, if they don't catch their eye or keep being popular they don't have infinite memory on what was suggested) which has caused a "now what? what do you want?" from devs.

We can see they are a bit lost regarding gear balancing - I could also say that I THINK that the Shard debacle was forced by Sega due to RSS being a FOUR STAR weapon - and I don't know what they are really going to do about it, just look at the Chaos Set right now and Mad Bomber Set. Which, btw, OOO said they were "taking feedback about it", like with RSS changes... and after another update, there hasn't been a response and lots of Chaos Sets are most likely already crafted or on its way to it.

So, Tl;dr version? Yes, I reaaaaaally think Sega has a hand on this. And I don't think, sincerely, that they want Spiral Knights to REALLY succeed - it would just get on the way of Phantasy Star Online 2 and they wouldn't get 100% profit.

Fast edit: BTW, those times Nick and so appear ingame? Take the chance and tell them things! It is the perfect chance to give them feedback! I am SURE they want it. But they have to be cautious :/

This game, for economic reasons I'll guess, can't really go in the direction it would want to go, but it has to go in the direction user experience pushes.

>Retention rates are low, release a new tutorial area (again and again and again)
>Not making enough money and people rushing through the content too fast, raise craft costs, binding, put obligatory tier clearance (remember when it didn't exist?)
>People don't even get to T3 before dropping the game, release more T1 and T2 stuff to make stuff interesting, also make most monsters easier and add more types of them
>Not making enough money, release accessories and promos. This was a pretty good call I'd say.
>Still not good enough, people are bored without direction, content needs streamlining for the masses, release missions,hall of heros, depot
>Etc etc etc.

The core is not a priority at all really I'd say, but looking at statistics, most of these changes haven't had much impact on the amount of online users. Although they have kept the game alive, which may not be the case otherwise.
I don't think the SEGA acquisition has anything to do with this, OOO still has creative control and such, it's not as if they had been bought by Activision. A lot of "nuisance" changes happened WAY BEFORE the SEGA acquisition.

I'm still waiting for the core since Beta, I remember asking the devs (back when they would pop in the arcade) and they told me "the core is crazy!" as if they were playtesting it already. Nick decided to change plans because players it seems though.

Something that always stood out to me was that this was Nick's game. He essentially said that he could now make a game in his own vision, something he always wanted out of those experiences of old classics. Considering that, I was able to follow along with the game for a while and see why _x_ was there, or why _y_ would be implemented, or why _z_ functioned like it did; could sympathize, comprehend his decisions.

At some point, any connection I could see dissolved, and it makes me wonder if the current game is really within the acceptable bounds of what Nick envisioned. And if not, if he could really allow it to come this far.

1. +1 I support this the most, this would force players to go into the arcade to get the tokens if they wish to do the missions or repeat them if they have already done them. If they don't wish to however for boss dungeons then they can go to them from the Arcade instead.

2. Neutral. The first part i am fine with as it would help new players to the game to get what they want from Brinks slightly easier. The second part i am not sure about, it may cause uproars in the community.

3. +1 i would like more minibosses in the game, the Arcade need some then giving them their own missions. The Big Iron and Maulos were good examples but they were in the danger missions only and can only be fought every 4 days.

4. +1 THAT sounds very good, i have seen very few games which the NPCs are smart instead of being very stupid: getting caught in crossfire, alerting the enemys, etc. Puzzles themselfs would be very intresting, making SK more zeldaish or some sort.

There is something i would like to suggest a bit, i wont go much detail into this at the moment: How about when you select to start a mission, instead of starting it, it is added to your "missions tabs" and it would make levels of that mission appear in the Arcade or some sort, thus you will have to go into the Arcade to do the missions. You can only have one at a time and can remove them at will but they can't be removed if you are in the Arcade/Clockworks. Missions that replace Depth 4/13/23/Moorcroft/Emberlight cant be selected, boss dungeons CAN be selected but it wont change the Arcade, it would mark the boss dungeon upon completing it give you the rewards. I am not sure about Operation: Crimson Hammer through as all depths on it are marked "???".

Just realized after reading the thread. I started playing SK the EXACT same day when sega took over OOO.

Is it a sign? o.o

http://forums.spiralknights.com/en/node/75025

the tenth thing could be the answer for your question perhaps a secret door or something which takes us to a secret boss aka king tinzinkar who in turn begs for his liefe and tell us how to get to the core!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1

Not enough people look at gate maps for them to care.

How do we know that they arent working on a manor update or a complete ovehaul to the arcade. As someone else mentioned, its a small team. But they are getting more money,getting more staff and standards rise. Especially the latter may cause a major update to take longer than usual to achieve their visions more accuratly than the game is since launch.

Whatsup with all the pessemism?

Actually, if they would be doing all that they would be teasing about it since quite a while ago. Remember how they added photos and teasers of features such as Mission Mode, Guild Hall or the actual Battle Sprites - even if the estimated release date is in SIX MONTHS?

If there was something, anything of a hint of a very big update coming by, they would have already gone far and beyond of advertising it. I don't really think there is going to be in half a year any interesting content. Because come on, this Kataclysmic thing was a timed event full of grinding and was advertised like it may have been a new actual boss, with a promo similar to Roarmulus Twins - and it was, only that for two weeks and no dungeon!