"Since both the Orbs of Alchemy and Sparks of Life are to be bought in the supply depot, does this mean we won't even be able to craft something with our mist? Let's just say goodbye to people coming online to craft something real quick since they don't have time for anything else.."

Right. The energy requirement for crafting is completely gone. It's just crowns displayed, and the orbs are included in the recipe's material list.

I had to calm down, and rethink all the stuff related with BS update, because yesterday I was too angry about it. Talked to few people about it, and to be honest, we think the same.

I'm probably won't be listened to, because I've never bought CE for cash, therefore I'm just an another pawn screaming in the pillow. I hope that post actually gonna be noticed, because I SWEAR ON EVERYTHING I try hard to not cuss - and it's quite hard for me, I'm Polish and we cuss once we start talking and walking. I'd love to post that on my private tumblrblog, and post a link to that, because there would be no chance my long post will be deleted/flooded with other comments, but I don't wanna risk closing my art/private blog like you did with one of two blogs, because of, let's say it, overreacting moderators of DYING mmorpg. I'm gonna put some smart swearwords in my NOVEL in hope somebody reads this ehueheuehue

I've played this game 2 years. Met bunch of AMAZING people. And loads of those amazing people had to leave the game - some because of real life related problems, some because this game became repetitive and boring, and some because of changes they weren't happy about *meaningful glare at that ugly HUD* I loved this game for not favoring P2P players - I still can buy stuff with CE, I have some chance to get DLC.

I love this game. If I didn't, I wouldn't waste 2 years of my life playing this, making expensive gear and new friends (altogether with new enemies). But once I became vanguard, all I do is: several FSC runs per day, Danger prestige mission, normal prestige mission, farting around on Haven, and ocassionally running through Arcade to get Basil recipes (who let's say it, never has anything to sell :T). I've never been fond of that awful chat filter (other word for happy? let me tell ya a hint, it's a G word; according to your ToS this game isn't for people younger than 12, but it looks like it's for 3y.o.s for me) and its policy (an ignore option isn't solution to everything, yanno). I didn't like the idea of undroppable Vitapods (I can't give it to partymate who really needs it, and I picked up one for accident WHAT DO I don't want to leave before I enter lift, because I'm heating a thing). But I can adapt. I can close my eye on few screw-ups (whoopsie poopsie).

There are many things I, as player, not casual one, ain't no happy. I'm pumped about sprites, because you've been teasing us with them since... February? I don't know. But that is. That's all I'm looking forward new update. Sparks of Life is a good thing - for players who keep soloing missions all the time. How many of them first revive's gonna cost? One? What about next ones? Two? Four? 180? I'm selfish li'l bastard, I don't feel like using one on that one partymate, whining "rev pls" every time they decide to spontaneously go Rambo on bunch of stronger mobs. By that you don't suggest players to team up with pugs, or with friends. You force them to solo everything.

Leave health revives as they are. Don't touch that darn thing.

Orbs of Alchemy? I have neutral feelings about it. For now, crafing a 5* items is quite expensive. I kinda hope with those orbs it might be cheaper a wee bit - considering these might drop in Arcade (as long as they aren't gonna be as rare as items, or cost bazilions in AH - who am I foolin' they gonna cost a Vanguard character).

Drop changes? The same as with health revives - don't touch them. Don't you dare. DON'T. NO. BAd. WHERE'S MY NEWSPAPER
Want explanation why? Take your time and actually listen to players.

Do you want players to finish missions first, so they can use 5* gear? Make the missions more interesting to do. All I saw for now are "go from first elevator to another one, trying to not die doing so", with occasional "hey there's a boss let's kill it".

I see you want players to run through Arcade more often. Hell, I'd be blind if I didn't see that! Adding Sparks and Orbs, you're actually FORCING them to go there (alone). Make better drop, going through 4 depths of T3 and getting like 1.5k cr doesn't pay off at all. I don't count mats in, I've got so many of them I give them away to random people.

Difficulty modes? All of my yes! As long as higher difficult means more loot, I'm in.

TL;DR: Leave drop system as it is. Same goes with health revives. Don't touch 'em. I prefer my Sparks of Life as tokens I can buy mats with. Orbs of Alchemy? Nnnnaaaaaah. Battle Sprites? I just hope I can get more than one, because I can't decide between Maskewraith and Seraphinx, they're both cute and useful. Arcade? Don't force me to go there, I don't feel like wasting my whole CE just to get mere few k cr. Instead of changing good stuff, make something with servers, and don't edit original posts before blocking whole topic. At least write something as normal user before blocking it. PEACE

Nick - I'd recommend considering creating multiple feedback threads for this testing server update. There is a lot that people will want to talk about, and it might make things easier on your team, especially when it comes to aggregation of the data by update element and analysis of any trends.

Just a thought.

Much of these changes (loot pickup, revives, et cetera) will ultimately drive me away from Spiral Knights. For good.

The free revive is per player.

@Zeddy

Caustic Quills
Don't stack up. Your announcement said they would. If this is a deliberate limitation to make me spread the effect out, the spread of the attack needs to be much, much wider.

You can upgrade the spread with skill points.

So the Preview Server just updated for me. What's that?

- red blinking border when you have low health
- long food crafting
-still no price for harness
----small sprite timer font
-poor knight preview
+elite mode
+powerful revive with ce
+mecha giant, that can poo
+++++++++++++ i got true love locket from love puppy ++++++++++++++++
+sprite uv list

I maxed it. The spread is 3 tiles at max.

Where did you find 5* rare mat?

Glowing screen when low on health:
Please make this optional in the graphics menu. Some people like it, some don't.

Separate loot, no health revs, instant emergency rev:
I see this is all an attempt to eliminate making runs with an alt account in tow. I completely understand where OOO is coming from on this, however I don't think the players who play without alts in tow (the majority) should have to suffer for those who do. I like the free emergency rev, the no health rev is a bit extreme to me as I usually end up being the tank of my team as I do a lot of JK runs with new players. As for the separate loot...don't, please just don't....I don't want to run everywhere in a mad dash trying to collect my things before their timer expires.

Battle sprites:
Seems to be coming along good. Obviously a few kinks to be worked out, but that's to be expected.

Difficulty mode:
Freakin' love it. Please for the sake of nostalgia implement the Old Royal Jelly mechanics into the elite difficulty. I remember it taking me 2 weeks playing everyday before I was finally able to defeat the Royal Jelly goin' at it with a S. cobalt set, scarlet shield, T. calibur, and pepperbox. (I've been a faithful player since May 2011) I felt like it was a huge accomplishment in this game, and I want other players to be able to see what it was like.

Equipment Limits:
Unlike most people I'm completely fine with this as long as 2 things are assured.
1. Equipment limits will not effect Arcade Runs (finally a good way to revive the arcade!)
2. Equipment limits will not effect Lockdown

If you make separate loot, then 90% of veterans won't party with others anymore, me included.
This is so incredibly stupid. As are removing health-revives.
The equipment limit is idiotic as well, of course, but it doesn't concern me or my friends.
I don't know why you do testing feedback though, you never listen (removed language)
The difficulty levels seem like a good idea, apparently the battle sprites are coming along well. But I'd rather the game stay as it is if you put in the daft idea of making separate loot. I guess I could live with no health-revives, but there's no point to remove it.
It's idiotic.

inb4 you remove this post because you don't like criticism.
This is the UI update all over again..

(Edit: Please avoid using offensive language)

After thinking about the other, non-battle sprite updates...

I think they're going to be okay. It's not the end of the world. I could be wrong, since I don't know how they work. (The revives and alchemy, that is.) As long as it doesn't make moving forward in the game too different, it should be fine. The alchemy thing... @Malsvirbranea has it right that we'll be able to use more mist. I hope OOO doesn't screw it up too badly, and make it HARDER to get past HoH, though.

I really dislike the red flashing on the screen whenever I get hit. The screen shaking is fine by me, but the red is really irritating to my eyes. PLEASE make this optional. The weapon charging bar is okay, good for newbies, though I personally disabled it.

I still wish you would make it so that only ONE person in the party has to walk through loot in order for everyone to get it. I was talking about it with my guildies, and they were all freaking out. They thought that each person gets whatever loot they walk through, and making it unavailable to other players. I couldn't get them to understand that EVERYONE gets EVERYTHING, as long as you walk through it, and that whatever appears on your screen is yours, and the loot ALL appears on everyone's screen until you personally walk through it. You say that it's to make it so that there's no reason to not party together, but it also makes it so there's no incentive TO party together, unless you make it so that loot (or at least crowns) increase in parties, like they do now.
The changes to the loot system may kill the in-game economy, but then again, it might not, since there will always be lazy/impatient people...

The player menu is annoying. I still stand by what I said earlier: Keep it the same as before, and make the battle sprite menu accessible by clicking on its mini-portrait. If you're going to make us keep the portraits up there, at least give it another menu!

I don't know about this, but you may want to actually announce the changes BEFORE you implement them, unlike with the UI. Make a thread for whining and a thread for serious discussion, lol. I could be wrong about that, though. At least give a better explanation for the changes than you've given us, please.

I think I lot of poeple have hammered a lot of the important parts home already, but the more voices, hopefully a change will happen.

I honestly believe (as does many others by the looks of it), that they changes will only want to encourage solo play. I don't see any reason to party with other people with these updates. If I can't rev them, and they can't rev me, and the monsters have 4x the amount of health, it just doesn't make sense. Why would I make the enemies harder for no forseeable reason? This reminds me of back when you couldn't rev people and you just had to hope they would get to the elevator. I don't see any reason why we can't rev each other. As others have said, we are not sure where you guys are getting your information about team revs weakining parties. Will that is true in some cases, it's very rare that happens. And if it does, it is because the party is bad to begin with. Not because of the game mechanic.

Having to pick up your own loot doesn't make any sense either. If you are trying to make loot payouts fair to everyone, I think this is the fairthest possible answer you could have come up with. I agree with other people's suggustions and make loot auto picked up. Or simpler then that, make it so mats are split an shared like heat and tokens. That seems like a much more logical answer to me.

The orbs seem to be an interesting concept. I am not really sure what the point of having large piles of CE is though anymore. Because now it's just being used to play levels and buy things from the supply depot, and if 50% of it's use is pure currency, it seems reduntant with crowns.

I feel like all sprite feedback is getting washed out by these concerns for these other updates. Maybe releasing both sets of this information at the same time was a bad idea.

And finally, the flashing red for damage is really really annoying. I get where you are coming from, but that concept works much better in a game that can show you the direction of the attack. It doesn't translate well in Spiral Knights. Please remove that as well as the low health red.

I love Spiral Knights. I have almost 1800 hours logged. I play it every day, religiously. And these updates scare me. For the first time, they scare me that this game will just become unplayable. I pray that most of these changes don't see the light of the test server. I'd be really interesting in knowing what the thought process is behind all of these, and if these are part of a bigger picture, I feel we need to know a little more on that because they seem so anti-player right now.

Thanks for implementing the choice to play on increased difficulty. That was overall the easiest and cost-efficient move you could make in keeping your veteran player-base. It will keep me buying those elevator passes, probably going to be a repeat passer. I appreciate it guys.

Hmm... I guess it's my turn to add my 2 cents...there's no need to grill me for my opinions, it's rather long...but... clearly this is what I think of these new updates...Now where to begin...

Ah...the Battle Sprites. Personally, I do enjoy the Battle Sprites. They truly are a great addition to the game. I mean, making us all work even harder to build a powerful sprite is truly thrilling. Sure we had items in the preview to help us mature the sprite to an even farther level, which sadly took the fun out of raising the pet, but the true task at hand will be developing the sprite in the future when the sprites are officially introduced into the game. I am quite excited to actually grind and make a stronger sprite in the real game. It will be very time consuming with material farming, but that's where the fun is! Those who are experienced in the game should know where to find the materials; rather it be converting your Grim, Primal, and Forge sparks, or plunging into the clockworks and finding those proper stratas or missions.

The one draw back I'm not too thrilled with the Battle Sprites would be their attack cool down time. What I mean by this is the fact that the attacks all share the cool down of one attack. Depending on which attack you use, you'll have to wait the certain amount of time of that certain attack. (example: You end up using ATTACK 1 and have to wait a certain amount of time to use it again which is understandable, but in this case if you use ATTACK 1 you end up having to wait for ATTACK 2 and ATTACK 3, and if you use ATTACK 3 (which normally takes longer to charge), you won't be able to use ATTACK 1 or ATTACK 2 until ATTACK 3 has fully cooled down and is ready to be used again). Because of this, I find the Battle Sprite becomes useless once you use their attacks. They just become a cute little accessory over your shoulder. Now, if their attacks could stack together, meaning you use one, and wait for that one attack to charge while using another attack would make the bet extremely more helpful. (example: You use ATTACK 1 and wait for it to recharge, and can still be able to use ATTACK 2 and ATTACK 3 (that is if they haven't been used yet). The down side to this will be, people will just be letting the Sprite do all the work since it doesn't take any damage.

Now... I guess that kind of ends my opinion about the Battle Sprites. Other than them all being so cute that I could die... but then again...if I were to die...no one will be able to revive me...which comes to my next rant...

When I first started playing Spiral Knights I remember it was a lot of teamwork. I mean I remember dying countless times over and over again and not knowing anything and ended up reviving myself which led to my downfall of well, not being able to go anywhere (because I ended up using all my mist to revive). It was because of this, other players taught me how to save my energy and have others split their health to revive me and in return what ever heat I had gained 30% of it would be shared. It was extremely helpful and because of that I truly enjoyed the game. The fact that teamwork was so helpful made Spiral Knight different from most other MMO's. I depended on my party members to help me when I was in a pinch! But, with this new system, we aren't able to revive one another, instead we need an item? A Spark (Whatever those are). Dear god, imagine those who travel down into Shadow Lair and die left and right...Just think of how expensive that will be... With this new revive system, I believe people will end up being greedy and hoard their Sparks (whatever those are). "Who cares if my party member die, I'm keeping these for myself." is what I'm thinking. I mean there are those who are willing to help others, but running into pick up groups where you're not friends with any of those players and refuse to talk to you and ignore you when ever you say "Hi!" (those cold hearted people...), it's literally one man for himself... Then again, who really cares with the revive system since all the Heat, Crowns, and Materials only spawn and can be picked up by and only YOU. It's as if you're playing solo...heck just play solo. The team work system is completely wiped off the surface with by this new revive system and item drop system, which leads me to my next opinion...

I've tested the Item Drop System with a random knight that I friended in the Testing Server. (Thank you for testing it out with me, Lordgrea <3) We went down into the clockworks together and tested out the Item Drop System along with the Revive System. We came upon a group of crowns and heat and a few materials. Lordgrea ran towards the pile of loot and collected everything first, while I kept an eye on my crowns in the arsenal interface. Nothing budged...apparently I didn't collect anything while he picked up the pile of crowns. This blew my mind away. If memory serves me right, all items (minus materials, vials/capsules, and weapon/armor drops) fade away after a certain amount of time. This becomes completely unfair if one were to be in a group that ends up separating from the others (which I tend to do a lot because people forget about the fork in the road). What will happen to my share of loot? BLIP! GONE! NADA! ZILCH! If things are going to be set up like this it's better just to play solo so you don't miss a single drop. Because from the looks of it, that's what you're practically doing in this new system. Reviving you no longer require the help of your team-mates unless you have that Spark (whatever those are), and item drops that drop for you, only you'll be able to see... which if you don't, they'll be disappearing over time. To be honest this new drop system...I don't see why this needed to be changed... The older system worked, and was working perfectly fine... =/. People would help pick the items together and each everyone gets the same equal share of loot (minus weapon/armor drops, materials and vials/capsules).

I do like the difficulty changes though. Since I consider myself an Elite Player, I like the concept of having a Tier 3 monster in Tier 1. Instead of me One Hit KO a monster in Tier 1 with a 5* weapon, it takes me the same amount of time to kill an enemy as if it's in Tier 3. I really like having that... (though the monster's are just as um...slow as they are in Tier 1). But I don't like the new preview inspection window... I mean I do like it, but I don't at the same time... Reason is. It's missing the indicator that show's all my buffs and debuffs like in the previous interface.

Now my last rant I guess... the crafting... *cries*. I normally don't like heading over to Punch to roll those Unique variants onto my gear. He's mean and evil and never gives me the good stuff no matter how many crowns I fork over... he just doesn't like me. And whenever I end up getting a Slime Low on a Flourish...he just laughs at me... That bully :(. And because of this, I end up turning over to the Alchemy Machines, which give me a bit more luck (though they're just as bad as Punch :P). I like to craft my items, always have to be honest. I don't like to buy them straight off the Auction House from other players. If I want something I take the effort to make it myself. I mean it is a game after all, why not play it. I like trying to craft certain items to get certain UV's. Sure majority of the time I don't get anything because of my horrible luck, but it gives me a reason to log on and use my 100 mist to craft. With this new system, I have no idea how expensive crafting those 5* items are going to be...especially since I'll be needing 3 of those Orbs... Are those Orbs going to end up costing the same as the crafting costs? (10, 50, 200, 400, or 800 CE?) Or are they going to be more expensive? It's just mind boggling that the crafting is going to be changed, it's just going to add up to the number of beggars in Haven... "can I has an orb plz". I don't get why we need to change the crafting system. It was already difficult enough to gather the proper energy to craft to begin with. Now it's going to be more difficult to craft with these orbs...since we need a certain amount of them. And the prices... (I doubt they cost 1 energy like in the testing preview...)

But yes... again...this is my feedback on the new content... sure it's long but I thought I'd try to make it as detailed as possible so that people can understand what I agree and disagree on...Instead of saying, "OMG THIS IS SO COOL" or "I HATE YOU OOO's YOU RUINED ANOTHER GAME I LIKED!" :P (do keep in mind this is my feedback on the new updates...)