Jellies.

Even geo knights can beat snipes.

[Hyperion] :

Oh well... what can I say. Thank you Hyperion! You really show the true face of OOO! No more hate ( Oh well... hate for the latency? Maybe.. )

Oh yesh! I wasn't cooking, but my brain is always processing on what to eat, how to eat, and... the same.

Coke and Pepsi differs from place to another? Glad I wasn't the only one thinking so... Chicken Mole is now on my To-Eat List, it shall go down! You don't like Mushrooms? You broke my squeezy heart. And yes I meant to say eclairs, but I don't know how to write the dash on the e. Oreos are called Chocolate Cookies, but they aren't, it is a disguise; it is actually made of white-ish substance surrounded with a mystical dark matter which appears in black in our tiny eyes. Oh! And I'd like to try your hand-made pizza someday, gonna aim for that day!

"Whew. Now I'm hungry."
Mission successful. I'm going to make everybody on Earth hungry, NOT starving. Then cook for all of them. <3

Snipes or Jellies?
If the Snipe is yellowish like you, then Snipes. If not, then none of them.

Im not sure what the cost is to run your current servers, but i know from experience that servers can be expensive to run and to maintain. Theres a mountain of things to calculate into the price, but if youre looking at a decent server with 300-500 player support at a time youd probably be looking at $200 a month or soo. Im not sure what the numeric number of people per server is currently but if you had those numbers you could probably do the math from there just to get a rough estimate of how much it costs them currently for their servers.

Its alot more complicated of a situation than many probably realize.

I think the more important question for that question though is, "How many people are actually playing the game on a regular basis"?

Jellies

Also, Hyper, how is it being a GM? Fun? Tough? Cupcakes?

> I'm actually not. Is this where I have to hand in my gamer membership card?
Nah, I just though the way he was revealing the game was pretty neat and wanted to know if you (that works with games) though the same. :P

> Shooter games aren't really my thing
It isn't my favorite genre either but Metal Gear is more like a stealth espionage game than a shooter, most of the time I'm just hidden on my cardboard box having funny talks on the codec while leaving a trail of adult magazines.

> That's great, I love when game companies do puzzles and mysteries. We've done some of those with Puzzle Pirates (I remember when Atlantis came out, there were lots of tiny clues hidden around the oceans.
I wish I had played Puzzle Pirates by that time now, I love those mysteries. If Nick or some other dev is reading this: could you do something like that on Spiral Knights? I think this would be a really neat way to reveal things.

EDIT: Oh, and I really like lichens but leaving them aside I think snipes are cooler.

Thanks for the responses!

So you are in France (Wiki said you're French GM. Bonjour j'habite en france aussi no wonder i often get you or Atalanta ^^) and you found a job somewhere...on the internet??? which is an American online game's GM in France? And you sent applications (or whatever it is) from France to the states, then you talked via Skype or some kind of talking programs, or you went to the states and met the OOO team to be a GM? Not that I want to be a GM but I'm just curious...

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And you guys do the GM job on your own laptop from anywhere if you have an access to the internet! Wow, surprised, "working" spiral knights from the car? XD So you basically you have a whole list of support requests popping up every few mins (i guess) like facebook timeline? Then you sort out which is the most important? And then you come help us :D!

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Do you know Japanese swear words? Or that doesn't count in the 20 because we don't use ABCDEFG... in Japanese?

I think the more important question for that question though is, "How many people are actually playing the game on a regular basis"?
I'm not sure if that's information I can discuss - sorry! The numbers I personally have access to tend to be very short-term, so that if I, say, notice that the number of players currently online drop by eighty percent in a matter of minutes, I might have an indication that something is wrong and that I need to start running around in circles and waving my arms.

Wowww that was so lame.
Most of my jokes are. I tend to inflict them on my co-workers, the poor people.

On a side note, what does it look like to you as you do your GM work? Do you use a GUI similar to our own?

I actually have a few GUIs. My actual game client looks identical to yours. I don't see it much, though (which is one reason that if you've sent me a /tell in-game, I've probably ignored you. Sorry! We don't see those, because we're not looking.). GMs do most of our work in a web browser window, which is black and white with color-coded tickets depending on if someone's already looking into them or not. It's really basic to look at, but very functional and quick to load, which is great. It's basically a list with some sort and search functions at the top. We have another webpage where we answer e-mail, and that's also very bare-bones but functional. Most of the backend stuff is like that: "Boring to look at but it works!"

Also, Hyper, how is it being a GM? Fun? Tough? Cupcakes?

Love it. I've been working for Spiral Knights for a bit over two years now (I started working for SK a few months before official launch), and I'd be perfectly happy to keep at Three Rings for another twenty. They're really cool people. I can honestly say I really like everyone I work with, all the way up. I like people in general, though - it takes a lot to break my cool, let alone get past the 'mildly irked' stage. The actual GM-ing is very fun, too. One of the neat things about this being a smaller company (I'm guessing - I've never worked for, say, Blizzard) is that rather than specializing too much, I get to do a lot of different things. I also get to do stuff like this; I like hanging out with players and chatting when I can, because you're all interesting people and on the whole knights are excellent, even if sometimes they've overdosed on nopetopus and need a bit more calming manatee. Do people get really abusively angry sometimes? Sure. I recently answered an e-mail that called us all kinds of really vile names. That kind of thing isn't fun (it's also a really bad way to get a positive response from someone you hope will help you out. Courtesy works wonders.). But it's also rare enough that I can remember every time it's happened, and given the volume of discussions we have via support ticket and e-mail with people, that rarity is notable. Gamers get a bad rep a lot of the time, I think. It's just that, like in most large and diverse groups of people, the most unpleasant people tend to be unpleasant in the loudest possible way, so they're very noticeable.

On the whole, my job description boils down to "help as many people as possible to have as much fair fun as possible". How could that be anything less than awesome?

What's your favourite Shard Bomb, Hyperion?
This is my ten-foot pole. This is me not touching that question with it. ;) Honestly, though, I'm not a bomber enough to really have an opinion there. Maybe one of the GMs who has the strategic mind necessary for effective and enjoyable bombing (see above regarding my tendency to charge in and die horribly) might pop in and discuss that one, but I have no idea.

@Byas: that video's hilarious. Thanks.

@Eclaium Salut! We applied online. I'm not sure how it worked for everyone else, but I didn't travel to San Francisco for interviews. For the application, we sent in a CV along with a letter and a proposal for something that customer service could do to help make the game more awesome. (I think Poseidon's hiring questions thread is lurking in the Announcement forum somewhere, if you want to go spelunking!)

And you guys do the GM job on your own laptop from anywhere if you have an access to the internet! Wow, surprised, "working" spiral knights from the car? XD So you basically you have a whole list of support requests popping up every few mins (i guess) like facebook timeline? Then you sort out which is the most important? And then you come help us :D!

Pretty much! The car was only because I didn't have any electricity, and this place did, but it was closed, and I'd been driving around trying to find somewhere I could work from! I stayed in the car because the weather was awful. I have a laptop and a PC, and I work from both. And the list of support requests and complaints is very accurate - we look into most of them in the order we receive them in, but if we get one with a subject line that indicates people are actually stuck, those get faster attention, because being stuck sucks and we want to rescue people as fast as possible.

Do you know Japanese swear words? Or that doesn't count in the 20 because we don't use ABCDEFG... in Japanese?
I don't read any of the Japanese alphabets personally. Any Japanese I have comes from watching anime, which means I can mostly vow undying love or threaten people with death. Not very useful!

Hi Handbreaker! Our GM knights (so my knight that is actually named Hyperion) do have some superpowers (we walk through walls when we want to, for instance, and we can be fast and invincible), but the knights we actually use to play the game are ordinary knights, and earn their crowns and wait for mist to replenish and buy CE just like everyone else. Actually playing the game with all the superpowers would be really boring - I know there are folks who find it too easy as it is, imagine how easy it would be if you couldn't be defeated! And yes, I do know Nick's secret.

Hi Msaad! I answered that one earlier in the thread. Why'd you pick Msaad? It's fun to say.

Msaad...looks a little like Nasod from Elsword Online....

Anyway, you'd better put up that [INQUIRY SHIELD] Nick gave you from last Cristmas...thousands, yes, THOUSANDS will be raving over this:

And yes, I do know Nick's secret.

Be on your guard...

And yeah, GM superpowers would be sweet when making the game and testing bugs, but in playing the game, it'd be like using a cheat device on a console.

I like how this thread turned into a clockworks confidential about Hyperion.

Come to think of it, I just realized that Hyperion is a Leeeroy like me! Cheeeeers~

Ok, last question for me. Is your name related to the weapons brand "Hyperion" in the videogame Borderlands by anyway? And did you like the game if you've played it before?

Sincerely yours...

~Dragneel

Great to see a GM interacting with the community on such a pleasant note. It takes away from all the other negative threads being developed.

@Hyperion: Are you good at Lockdown? I would love to play with a GM one of these days... crowbar vs GF. Also, do you currently have an alternate account in which you play regularly and interact with the community as another identity?

I always loved Hyperion! You give french people a good name ;)

*high-five from Quebec, Canada*

(apparently we are known for being helpful to others!)

What other games do you play, Hyperion?

I think I've mentioned that my favored playstyle generally involves charging into the fray and dying quickly, yes? I'm probably not the best person to ask advice of. I'm very much a "play the game in the way that is the most fun for me regardless of whether it's actually effective" type of player, except when I'm with a PUG in which case I play whichever way they happen to be playing. The weapons I find the most fun (and that are very effective in the right hands, which mine probably aren't) are the Troika line of swords and the Alchemer guns.

You've actually got the start of a pretty good (and very fun to use) loadout there. Consider going with the Chaos set and adding a Vortex bomb to the mix - use the Alchemer on single targets and small groups, and against hordes, pull em together with the bomb and flatten them with a Suda charge. Troikas should be treated more like a bomb on a stick than a sword - your basic swings are more useful for knocking things out of your way and playing vortex billiards than damage.

@Dfliyerz: He mentioned the Troika. Which reminds me, which one do you use? The Sudaruska Line or the Triglav Line?

I enjoy this thread greatly. Can a GM / community chat thread be a regular thing?

Is either the tortodrone or Super Brawl coming back?

As stated many many times in this and hundreds of other threads, Game Masters do not govern content, that is the developer's job.

Also...

⇓⇓⇓⇓⇓ This ⇓⇓⇓⇓⇓

Are you vana grinders or clockworks runners when you play your alts?

Well, which troika line? Or is there some "Third Troika" we don't know about? Snipes are NINJAS!!!
The blade like high velocity wings seem adorably dangerous... I used to run into mobs too, then I took a pylop spike to the heart. Now I shoot them as I charge then bust out my sword. And ya know what I can do with my sword? I CAN SWING MY SWORD!!!
So... what monster do you hate the most?
Most despise Grimalkins(huge purple stalker kats), menders, greavers, and fiends in general, but I HATE WITH A PASSION GREMLIN DEMOS!!!
OMFG THEY MUST DIEEEEEEEEE!!!

Is there any second secret OOO "detective" guild, since Just Desserts was disbanded?
Did you ever visit the Core? (lol)
Are you a rich person living in a villa or rather someone with a small rental house? (Don't worry, we'll always love you :P)
What's your favourite Spiral Knight NPC?
What style of combat do you preffer, Bombing, Swording, Gunning, or are you just an allround player like me?
Favourite TV show?
Do you have any pets?

Answer the question.
Do you like deadpool?

Are you hyped for the game?

Do you like bomberman/LD/BN?

Do you also like Insomniac games/Naughty dog/Sucker Punch's games?

Ifso, which are your fav?

Mine is R&C, infamous and Sly Cooper.

What would you, as a gamer, want to appear in the game.

What is your favourite monster?

Would you visit Pre-war Almire? What are the sights you want to see?

Mine is, well, the golden leaves, and the grand Citadel. Seems so cool!

Do you daily loot FSC?

What is Chimmichangas?

Pwease?