If you've played the mission "The Ancient Generator", you may recall your encounter with Razwog. Do you remember where he was? Up on higher ground, overlooking the room you're in. Lots of top-down or angled camera games have that sense of vertical depth that keep the levels compact and visually pleasing. So, why do levels in Spiral Knights play like a really elongated labyrinth with a ton of wasted space in between rooms? There's almost no feeling of a y-axis other than a few sloped corridors, but they're always so isolated from the rest of the level that they don't give the feeling that you're descending from where you were.
When have you ever seen that sort of thing other than in certain Wolver Dens and Scarlet Fortress--where rooms and areas are separated by height, rather than a lot of boring empty space? When I'm in what's supposed to be an "indoors" or "facility" level, it feels like the same "I'm suspended on a structurally unsound bridge maze hanging over blank nothing, but this time with really short walls around me" because the map designers apparently haven't been in any sort of building ever. The only levels that make use of all the space they have are the boss stratums--where things look more compact and to the point, rather than dragging out the gameplay with a bunch of long corridors--and only half of them are designed with a y-axis in mind. Most bigger buildings are built vertically, and for good reason, so why can't that be shown and replicated in the multitude of factories and compounds that can be found within the Clockworks?
This isn't a realism complaint, mind you. I'm not saying that Clockworks maps should be built like skyscrapers. This is more of a complaint about the extremely bland level design that puts me to sleep, and why it's necessary to have more than four directions available to the player in a 3D game that allows 6.
I know that Spiral Knights is due for a revamp of just about every important mechanic that makes the game, but level design is what immerses the player and keeps them in the exploratory mindset. I'm not sure what kind of executive decision it is as a game designer to break up the action and fun of your game with a million 30 tile-long corridors with no interesting scenery between areas, but it really needs to change to reflect the pacing of the game that the trailer shows off.
Please, I'm sick of hallways and being restricted to playing a 2D game rendered in a 3D engine.
The Spiral Knights engine doesn't actually support a y-axis very well. You could never, for instance, have one knight walk on a floor directly above another one.
Having two different height levels next to eachother also tends to invite buggy behaviour, but I think they've gotten most of that ironed out at this point.