Comet, that means black eyes.

I'm surprised you got rid of the old UI that was actually themed for the Clockworks with gears and stuff. I thought that was a pretty major thing.

I too, am not a fan of the new interface. It is inconsistent, with some edges sharp while others are rounded, and furthermore it's simply not polished. You forgot to change the top left corner for in-game windows.

Let's start with the good things about this update.

Monster health is a good addition. Although I'd have it limited to boss mobs, it does not get as much purpose on common monsters.
Minimap upgrades are decent, not completely necessary but somewhat handy. Being able to zoom in is cool, but I don't understand why that is only available in Haven.
Shield health being visible is kind of useful.
Activities panel is handy for easier access to general areas.
The new imagery for entering an elevator or leaving a party is pretty cool, albeit a little silly.

...And now the endless complaints.

Why does the health bar go by 30 pips, and reach gold level at 61, when the maximum health you'd ever be able to achieve is 58? And that would require you to go guardian in Lockdown, have 5* health trinkets, have ancient plate and a scarlet shield, and somehow get a vitapod from a rock jelly.

Why would anyone ever need such a huge portrait of your character in the screen at all times? Please explain to me why we are able to hide the menu tabs, which barely take any space, and yet we are not allowed to hide this gigantic pointless portrait.

In parties, I'm apparently unable to click every portrait of party members; In a three member party, I was unable to click the first party member (that isn't me), it'd just target the second party member. Additionally, there is absolutely zero indication if any party member is low on energy, and there is no way to see if someone is tabbed, if you are tabbed, or if you're tabbing anyone, besides chat messages. Why would you remove that?

If you're going to update the graphical appearance of the UI, at least do it completely. Only a few tabs are modified, meanwhile items, players and backgrounds are in a completely different art style making it clash really badly and look ridiculously ugly and unfinished. This includes Coliseum games new map icons vs normal gate icons. What was even the need to update the look to this? Some icons look fine, but for most part it simply comes off as trying way too hard to look "shiny" and "neat". The simplicity of the old UI's graphics was wonderful and unique, and proved that you didn't need to get super detailed with those things to make them look really nice.

Just what on earth led you guys to change the appearance of vials/pills/remedies to this? It looks completely out of place when carried or on the ground. It's like slapping a 2D sticker to a 3D model and expecting it to look like part of the model.

Why adapt to the generic MMO standards of name coloring, when Spiral Knights is clearly not a generic MMO? Haven instances don't hold all that many people, and with their names always displaying it's very easy to notice when a friend is around, often also because of their unique costumes. Specific name coloring was not necessary and removed another thing that made the game a bit more original compared to the generic MMO. In addition, it's awfully messy; Guildmate's guild tags are always green, while if they're friends their name is blue, and the prestige badge is the knight's main color. It becomes an ugly mess of colors mashed together. Minimap wise, the dots for people who aren't your friends/guildmates look really ugly and kind of blend with the minimap itself, making it rather confusing and just overall painful to look at.

The weapon switching function is neat, but it is completely unnecessary. Being able to see your weapon's icon change at the bottom of the screen was always enough if you wanted something to confirm what weapon you're using, and usually it's easy enough to just see the weapon in your hand. This new function covers a lot of space near your character, causing a lot of distraction from the action and sometimes hiding objects or entities relevant to the action which can be an issue. This doesn't need more than an option to disable it.

Could anyone tell me what the heck the new unbreakable blocks are supposed to be? I seriously cannot figure out. And why are they so radically different from the other blocks, looking more like a background decoration object, but instead being used together with ghost blocks, which now look completely different? And just... why was this even necessary...?

I also absolutely cannot understand why you'd make us unable to drop our vitapods. Is it because some people would accidentally click on it and drop them? Because that definitely doesn't happen as often as wanting to give a party member a vitapod. There is really no reason to remove functionality over such minimal things.

Making CE/Crowns not visible at all times makes no sense. Don't want a player to focus so much on it? Then don't make energy one of the most important things in the whole game, as it is used for nearly everything, including playing the game itself! When energy is so crucial to the game and many of its features, not wanting people to focus so much on money is definitely not an excuse to remove it. There is no way that would be such a major thing.

All in all, I'd like to ask a final question: Why? Why was this whole update necessary at all? What was wrong with the old UI, what led you guys to rush the release so quickly after just setting the test server up, while this redesign is still clearly incomplete considering how it clashes so much with the old UI and yet there are tons of things which still use old UI design/style? And then pretty much removing some things, like being able to see when someone is tabbed, be it due to the UI being unfinished or a complete removal of it.

This update angers and saddens me, as I know they are not going back with it, and it will be a long, long time before everything is sorted out properly, like always. But above all, it just leaves me perplexed as to why they would do it. Three Rings has done some really silly updates/decisions before, but this UI update tops all of them.

While the nerfs to the devilites make sense if they were too difficult, please condier this as well: we need to also balance the monsters that are too easy.

Too easy monsters: Retrodes, Scuttlebots, normal Wolvers, Virulisks / Chromalisks.

Retrodes - Players are given far too much time to react to their burst attack.

Scuttlebots - Their attack does not have a large enough range. Lack a second ability.

Normal wolvers - Players are given far too much time to react to their bite. Their bite covers a small area, so a faster attack speed is necessary.

Virulisks / Chromalisks - Their second ability, invisibility, isn't far powerful enough and not used often enough.

@Softhead - I have never "left" nor said I have, I simply have my periods of activity and periods of inactivity. (Currently, moderately active, although casual.) Despite the huge lack of content and disappointing updates, Spiral Knights is still an enjoyable casual game to play every now and then with friends, and there is no harm in doing so as it is free to play.

I find it kind of silly that the first thing that people say when they see me, or other players who have gotten inactive, are completely off-topic things like those.

Agreed. The only good point regarding parties is that I can instantly see what negative status my allies have.

*raises hand*

...I like the new UI changes :3

*puts hand down*

*hides*

The wheel is worst than that, you can't see at all if an opponent come from the right. Since we are switching almost everytime in LD, that's just horrible.

The wheel appears for one second. It's not big enough to completely hide anything (may have to do with resolution). Anyway, you should know when an enemy is coming from the right, there's enough space on screen

I don't see why there are two of the same weapons in it. I have 3 weapons equipped, but I see 2 of each weapon. That's a total of 6. In Lockdown some strikers usually just switch weapon and strike without looking at what they have because they already know what it is unless it's an unexpected double change. The wheel doesn't really help me at all.

I feel like the new UI is taking a step backwards. The old UI was unique, compact, and simple to use/adjust to. The new UI is overly complicated, looks like something from a cheap MMO, and is incredibly annoying in many ways.

First, the pros.
-The picture of your party you see before going down a depth is pretty awesome, as is the portrait of your party when you head back up.

-Being able to hide the toolbars makes the screen seem a bit less cluttered.

-Love the birthday event, nice to let everyone get a crack at some of the best accessories in the game imo, and not have it as a CE purchase perk only.

The cons

-The weapon switch wheel, while entertaining for the first 30 seconds, quickly becomes a hassle as it covers a good portion of the screen, and makes a small sound every time you switch weapons.

-The gigantic portrait of your knight in the upper left hand corner does nothing at all. No movement, and it takes up far too much space. If you're a big enough egomaniac where you need a huge picture of your face in the corner at all times, just open up your character viewer.

-The new avatars for parties/lockdown parties are cheesy looking, and take up way too much space. Combine that with a chat box that can't be closed, and in lockdown you're unable to see the last member of your team if it's a 6v6.

-The health bar and shield bar were perfectly fine where they were, and the weapon slots were fine where they were as well. Now when i get cursed, I can't tell which weapons are cursed without consulting the gigantic wheel of fortune weapon system.

-The color-coding of names is not very useful. If you stuck the color coding system solely to the mini map it would be more useful. A small gripe, but I like being able to see people's personal colors, and not the generic white/green/blue.

-The new damage animations are flashy, but ultimately incredibly annoying, especially in PvP. If you've got a person shooting at you with an AP/sentenza, your screen is forced to have a seizure until the shooter reloads, and continues the assault on your computer screen. Unnecessary and distracting.

-All in all, the new UI seems cheap and overused. The new boxes and graphics used in the UI seem like they should be part of a concept of a game, not the finished product released to the public. I personally hope that if OOO insists on the new UI being used, they at least have an option to use the old UI, or to remove/hide certain parts of the new UI. Or a combination of the two perhaps.

Please please PLEASE heed the suggestions of many of the players and try to reach an agreement that works for all parties involved. This hastily put out UI does not satisfy, yet alone make me want to play for continued periods of time.

+1 for Soli

I'd also like to point out the fact that, before the update, I kept my graphics' settings on "Low" because I wanted a clean screen and a fluent and smooth game.
Now even if I am on "Low" my screen is filled with effects, stuff blowing up here and there, giant numbers popping up...

Does that mean i'm gonna get 1 frame per second on vana fight with 25 fire floor and smash animation and 2 slag guard rushing and 3 needle animation and 4 player in 1 room and 53 hearts on thw floor and 6 1 heart on the floor?

/exploding 2001 laptop

Okay, OOO. I just don't get it. You have plenty of people saying that this is bad, but you just don't seem to care.

I gave you a fair chance with this, too. I saw the original screenshot and I thought, "This doesn't look good from what I'm seeing, but I'm not going to complain about it now. I'll give it time. I'll play around with it. I'll wait and see if they fix some of the blatant errors I see."

But it came out exactly the same with all the mistakes several people had already mentioned. Eury, you told us to wait until we got the chance to play with it and that people don't normally like new stuff. I wanted to like this update. I thought it might be a chance for OOO to come out with something fresh that would show all the doubters (including myself) that they could do something good with this. I really did. But I just can't bring myself to like it. But I'm not just going to tell you, "DONT LIEK OMG BURN IT BCUZ I DUN LIEK IT!!11!1one!" No. I'm going to explain to you why I don't like it and maybe, just maybe, you'll see it from a player's point-of-view. Of course, that's probably just more wishful thinking.

First, I'm going to talk about the one basic property any good UI should have: unobtrusiveness. A good UI should be barely noticeable. The player should be able to interact with the game without even having to think about how to navigate the UI. It should be intuitive. The old one accomplished that with its simplicity. It seems to me (no accusations, though) that whoever designed this new UI wanted people to be noticing it all the time, but they didn't even bother finishing it (I'll talk more about the later). The big image of the player blocks out much of the upper left corner and in the clockworks, I had to strain my eyes to see my allies' health bars due to the darker color. This wasn't as much of a problem in the old UI because all the player icons were tucked neatly into small rectangles that told you everything you needed to know at a glance, the way an intuitive UI should.

So I've outlined a few of the functionality issues, now let me get into aesthetics. Put simply, it looks unfinished. It doesn't fit the feel of the game as much as the old one did, and the gradient effects look like they were part of a slacker's school Photoshop project. And having only most things with gradients just lends to that poorly-done look. It doesn't make the game look better; it makes the game look worse.

Please, OOO, listen to your fans on this one. As far as I can see, most of us just don't like it. I could list more issues, but I don't have the time or energy right now. (Speaking of no Energy...) Like I said, I gave it a good chance and I was disappointed. You can do better. I know you can do better. I just hope you take the time to accept more people's constructive criticism. It honestly makes me sad that you just kind of brushed off the people who had complaints about it with what was essentially saying, "you just don't like it 'cause it's new!" You shouldn't have to learn the interface or get used to it.

That is all.

+1 for everyone who dislikes the new GUI. And from what I have read. Everybody gets one! Hooray!

OOO its lucky.. because they dont have a similar rival game.. because if they mean to have a rival MMo game similar to spiral knight i would bet they would start to make an effort to keep the game attractive, fresh and fun.. but since they dont have rivals they can do lazy updates and call it "new" without hear their customers. oh well i just hope someday a new MMo with similar Spiral Knights traits pops up and give it try.

Because honestly i dont understand why the "need" to make a new UI with useless feature like the BIG PORTRAIT OF OUR KNIGHTS in our party and the display of our health and shield bar in have and the removal of useful information from the UI like CE/CR or even party info...

Oh well lets see what we going to have...as "next updates"

SO, I MUST BE THE ONLY PERSON TO LIKE THIS REDESIGN FOR THE MOST PART

I wil admit, I'm not quite a fan of the Name Color Changes, the Cr/Me/Ce not being readily seeable, or the new icons for stuff, but other than that, I kinda like it.

STILL, DUNNO WHY EVERYBODY GOT THEIR JIMMIES IN A KNOT

Tell me when an admin replies, I'll be crying in a corner.

I mostly like the functional updates of it.
The chat, I admit does look a bit silly. I'm fine with it, but I understand why people don't like it.
The health and shield does look silly outside of Levels.
The clashing UI colors are, in fact the thing, thinking about it, that do bug me the most. Perhaps if the work on it a bit more, this won't be an issue anymore.

Other than some minor complaints, yes, I am content with it. Especially since I usually play it on a small resolution, so having so much stuff clutter my vision was...unfavorable.

I was so shocked to find out how easy it is to kill monsters during clockworks runs. Using a combuster it takes 2 hits to kill a gun puppy when before it took about 2 full combos. I also find that the health bar is quite annoying in LD because I have to constantly look at the top right corner to see my health. But over all i think OOO did a good job on this new update but if they could just tweak somethings it would be better.

If I had to choose the most important things to change about the update, it would be these:

• Please let me see my energy and crowns. Please. :]

• Please make the weapon wheel less obstructive. I know this is a feature more ingrained in the UI so probably a change won't happen. Even so, my opinion must be heard, and the weapon wheel just hurts.... PvP and PvE. :|

• Please remove the...dare I say explosive hit animations. I.e. the particles that appear when someone hits something (sword on enemy, sword on player, etc.). It's extremely distracting and honestly so flashy that I keep wanting to impulsively blink every time I hit something. No like. :[

Good things:
Going back to the Ready Room – It's nice to get away from all that guild/rank/name text all over my screen (see bad things below).
Mission report portraits – Looks really nice. Great job!
Haven zoom – It is what it is. Although really... what's the point??

Bad things (not already stated above):
Health – ...I wish the health was in a more noticeable place. Keeping track of my health is hugely important and changes the way I do battle. Having to look so far away causes me much issue. I suppose this isn't a huge thing, but it still bugs me A LOT. Also, If I have over 30 pips of health, I still want to see it. I have a problem with pre-update being able to see all my health and post-update not being able to see it. That's definitely a step backwards. Also... can we see all of our allies's health too please?
Gear stats – The little pips look really blocky and the pips describing 5* gear often envelop the words [i.e. normal, elemental, speed] identifying them.
Profile/health/shield display – Unless we're getting our wish of a Trojan attack on Haven or something, I see absolutely no point of this outside of actual gameplay. Also, as many have said, I know what I look like, and the portrait doesn't even get it right – my com unit and sunglasses don't show in the portrait.
Not being able to drop Vitapods – I don't necessarily want to repeat what everyone else has said, but I think that's saying something: this is a problem. I wanna help out my smaller friends by giving them Vitas. I want to save time (and still eliminate the possibility of hearts on the prize wheel) when exiting Vanaduke by just tossing my Vita on the floor.
Mini-Map – As many have said, I feel like the new HUD overhaul completely changed to tone of the game. It went from an almost "survivor"-like, rusty, metallic kind of game (emphasized in the level textures, buttons, menus, and even the prize wheel texture), to a sleek, modern, "I-want-to-press-the-pretty-buttons-even-though-I-already-know-what-they-do" feel which seems inappropriate for the game I love. Moreover, I know who's in my guild or my friends list from their names – I don't need them color coded. May I please see the personal colors again? Haven isn't the same without all that color. :3
Menus (or lack thereof) – Again, because it's so important to me, please let me see my energy and crowns. I track my progress and keep myself from overplaying this game by monitoring my stash. No stash means both no good way to track my progress as I play (good payout run? bad payout run?) and also no way to monitor how much I've played (once I've seen my crowns fluctuate about 1000 in either direction, I know I've played enough LD for the day and should get to more productive things). Also, as others have said, being able to respond to invites and trade requests and whatnot would be nicer if done in one click rather than two.
Unbreakable blocks – ...why did something that worked perfectly fine have to be changed? Now those things look like multicolored tire axles with the tire rubber stripped off... that's the best I could think of. But seriously, ...I don't understand why. Why change something perfectly fine? What are those things even supposed to be?! >_<
And last but not least, SEE THE FIRST THREE THINGS AGAIN. They are important.

Other than all that.... good job on the update. I'm not necessarily averse to change – I want to accept it as much as possible. However, some of what I've listed here is more than nit-picky. It's actually functionally a problem. It keeps me from enjoying the game or helping other people or being efficient or not getting seizures more than pre-update. So yeah... a lot of what went into this is good, but a good bit of it is hard to use as well. Remember... if it ain't broken, it don't need fixin'. I don't think anyone ever said, "My energy and crowns are ugly. Get rid of them." :c

Something I threw together to have a visual of my thoughts: http://i.imgur.com/IdiUqY2.jpg

UI
-Nobody needs the picture. Get rid of it
-The color scheme is harsh on the eyes, stick to the old one.
-Rectangular buttons are ugly, make them cute round icons again
-Shield bar is near-useless, the colorful sphere was a great indicator
-Make the crown/energy display available outside of the inventory like before
*It's also incredibly bland compared to before
-I didn't include the weapon scroll, but I think it's obvious that needs to go as well.
-No more rainbows in Haven D:

Game mechanics
-Vitapods and vials are absolutely atrocious
-Screen shake is laggy and distracting, nobody's benefiting from this

If you guys were trying to make buttons that stand out a little bit more (Not as flat looking), you're going about it wrong. The Achievement Screen is a perfect example of buttons that stand out without being distracting. You guys don't need to outline EVERY SINGLE BUTTON, we have eyes; we can see.

For the most part this is a really good update, and certainly fitting for the anniversary! I really like how easy it is to hide things now, it really removes a lot of clutter when I'm in missions! (Or it would, if I didn't keep opening the arsenal to check my energy.) ;)

My only complaints are things we can't see: energy/crowns, our teammates' total health, how many empty hearts we have over 30. (I do also wish the consumables would move back to the top, since downward vision is so limited that area would be usefull for aiming. That's more of personal preference, though.) Hopefully some of these will be easy to fix, and I look forward to seeing what's in store for year 3!

Is it just me or this humongous Health bar turns out to be not as effective as the old, modest one? I kept getting hit but yet I'm less aware of where my Health are. I think after two years our brain have already been wired to detect changes in the bottom centre of the screen. And when we detect no such changes (because that's where the utility belts are now), we just assume everything are OK (which aren't).