Let me begin by saying I really did love this game, I'm not a naysayer or a flamer, I'm actually quite a positive person. I enjoy giving feedback, new ideas and constructive criticisms, and I've made a few posts on the forum to such ends. This isn't a rant. It's simply the opinion of a player that really loved the game, and probably won't play it anymore.

It's cute that you slide all these nerfs into a patch with a highly anticipated feature (see the less-useful Auction House). I'd like to put into perspective some things that might be misunderstood:

• Concerning the Jelly King and the new boss gems, the range of jelly tokens dropped from the Jelly King used to be 3-5. Now it is 1-3. The minimum is now the maximum. Those who love this change, answer me this: Did it really disadvantage you if someone joined your group right before the boss? It may seem unfair - you did all the work - but the amount of tokens you earn is not divided. Did you even care anyway? The game is set to add players to groups in the earliest depth possible. It's very unlikely that a random player would joinyour group right before the boss, which means you probably invited them anyway. What DOES disadvantage you, (the one who fought his way down there) is this: if anyone has to leave, I'll be damned if you'll find someone to fill their place. People won't want to help you if they're getting punished for it.
• I hear a lot of people complaining that the new energy costs screw over F2P players. While of course this is true, there seems to be a misconception that P2P players aren't effected too. At the prices they're asking and the rate energy is spent, this game will now cost more money to play regularly than a typical MMO. Even disregarding the rest of these blunders, there is NOWHERE NEAR enough Spiral Knights content to warrant such a cost.

I've only read through the first four pages. I'm not going to waste time reading more of the same stuff, nor do I have much to say about it. It should be quite obvious by now that most of this update was a big mistake. Both the logical, criticizing responses and the angry outbursts are quite warranted (though the former are clearly more helpful than the latter). I think Cheeserito's post sums it up nicely. Particularly:

"I feel a little hurt by this, because there isn't much of a difference between people who have already learned their recipes and those who have not. Other than the fact that the people who have unlearned recipes can now make a huge profit between selling it for even a 2k markup and the nice refund they must have gotten, while people like me who have learned recipes made a commitment to certain items and get nothing for it."

I bought energy on two occasions from you, Three Rings. Both were $20 purchases. I did so because I genuinely enjoyed this game, thought it had new horizons, and I had faith that my money was well placed. I could have stayed F2P - I'm not rolling in money. In fact, I'm deliberately not playing any MMOs right now because I CANNOT afford the monthly $15 subscription fee. But I gave you guys $40. Do you know why that is? I consider it a donation, to people I "know" are moving the gaming industry in the "right direction". I applauded your fairness and cleverness in finding a good, and surely successful balance between F2P and P2P gaming, and I shouldn't have to explain that part. But now you turn around and do this? And with no warning? I was wrong. I feel cheated, I feel like my $40 was wasted on the same old purse-gouging drudgery, and frankly, I don't know what you could do to make it up to me - or anyone.

Like many others, I wasn't even near my computer when the patch was applied... long before I knew what it entailed. I had been excited. My inventory was full of bound gear just waiting to be crafted. All of it to sell. Now it's all worthless. I had several sets intended for another character, but since I could merely trade him the armor after-the-fact, I kept the recipes on my main character with all the materials for simplicity's sake. Now that is worthless too, and I would have to find and re-purchase these recipes on the other character.

I'll never understand why MMOs drive themselves into the dirt time after time with the same failures:

1. If your players are happy, they'll keep playing, and you'll keep getting money.
2. If the players are unhappy, they'll quit, and the game will fail.

When you are making an update, you should be looking at every single change and analyzing the benefits/disadvantages to the PLAYERS. Keep that up and the cash flow will maintain itself. 90% of this patch was pure hindrance and disadvantage.

You're striving to hold us back so that you don't have to create reasons for us to move forward. This is a horrible strategy.

I understand that this game is having content issues. But you know what? I didn't see anyone quitting over it! I could barely scrape together groups to try and tackle Vanaduke. People were content farming for items and crafting different sets to add to their arsenal. I know a few people who took breaks... to wait for NEW CONTENT. And these were people who were serious about the game. Who bought LOTS of energy. And you think they'll keep playing when they return to see this? Costs inflated, rewards cut down, and still nothing new?

You're putting too much effort in fluff leaned towards packing your pockets, when new content would do just that, AND make the players happy (not that they weren't already - before this patch). And I hear you locked down a petition thread to revert the changes? Very mature of you.

This is all very depressing and disappointing. I really hope this changes, but I won't hold my breath. In the mean time, I'm removing my billing information and calling it quits. I'm sure plenty of other will be doing the same. We'll be listening, but it's going to take some doing to regain our trust.

@Shinko about locking parties
You must not have been invited to revive a friend before if you want parties to stay locked, sometimes things happen, whether its skill or just lag, and people die, parties get wiped. But as long as there's an open spot on a non boss level, you can call in a friend to save your tails without wasting any more energy. They do NOT need to stop invites altogether Also sometimes you may go in a level with the wrong gear and you want to switch out by returning to haven, locking the party in in between zones will stop people from doing that and I don't see that as very useful.

@monstrous

There is a difference between grinding to simply survive and grinding to turn a profit. Its the same thing but doing so for a profit makes you feel all warm and fuzzy inside. And to a certain point, grinding for profit doesn't take as much effort, one or two arenas can level a 3 star to level 5, even in Tier 1 I think. This job can also have the added bonus of being made easier by working with others, for if they die, you get their heat, for FREE. But having to fight to make sure that you always earn 5k crowns takes longer. Plus grinding for profit has the bonus of including grinding to survive INSIDE of it.

Oh and I never really bothered to level weapons for selling (did it thrice?). But that's still my opinion.

The auction house is badly designed. The mails don't tell you the quantity (or, presumably, the UV) that was sold, so if you have more than one auction for shards or more than one auction for brandish, you get a completely ambiguous mail. Searching is very non-intuitive. I've figured it out, and noted how you have to be on 'materials' or 'swords' or whatever it is you want before you fill in that text search box, that search box isn't enough on its own. Still. It took time, some confusion and mistakes, and I have a degree in computer science as well as years of gaming. Not good. Also I led a newbie to the auction house so he could buy swordstones. An hour later I noticed the -same newbie- was trying in chat to buy a swordstone from someone, anyone. While standing next to the auction house. Okay, he was pretty stupid. Fine. Compared to 150+ iq computer game designers, most people - most CUSTOMERS - are pretty stupid. It's your job to be smart enough to cater to that, and you're failing.

Forcing all the feedback into a single thread sucks too. I'm reading over and over and over and over and over how we have to start from depth 1 to get tokens from the bosses (blatantly not true. Obvious from the release notes, plus I started a run from the terminal through the Jelly King and got my 4 tokens like everyone else) and who's quitting and whatever. You should have let there be a thread for bitching about changes in crafting and changes in tokens so that we could actually talk about the auction house, which nobody seems to be doing.

I do notice you changed the name of the thread, which feels like it's almost directly in response to my feedback on -that- issue, but... honestly... why is it in one thread? We can't have a discussion about -anything- in this thread, only bitching on top of bitching about crafting costs. I haven't read nearly all the posts, so I have no idea where the non-discussion is at, but I'm sure it's -still- about crafting costs but I've spent an hour reading this thread and I'm not reading any more. It always pi... ticks me off when people post blind, but this thread is growing absurdly fast so here I am doing it.

Also, since when is the saxon term for urination banned? Just because saxon terms for copulation and defecation are barred is no reason to add that word that I now am not even allowed to say on the forums ('if it's filtered in game, it should be filtered in the forums' ) ... not that that rule is actually enforced, every day people fill the forums with F- this and F-that and you're an A-hole, but, hey. Also words related to supressing and decreasing that are in some contexts used in reference to mental capacity are filtered. 'course we'd never have a conversation that uses those words approriately, just as we'd never actually talk about g... err, a synonym for homosexual and/or happy pride marches and days, or y'know, refer to friends or coworkers proclivities by a synonym for happy that is the -preferred- term by that community. Right, but, really 'p---d off' in American dialect and 'got p---d last night' (means drunk on their side of the pond, see) are hardly controversial phrases or worthy of filtering. Not to say the word in question can't be used offensively, but then again, I'm pretty sure I can offend anyone I want to without using a single controversial word. Filtering f---, sh--, and a--hole is one thing (just stop filtering the synonym for donkey when it doesn't join up with 'hole'... geez!) Seriously, I never minded the filter when I was on puzzle pirates too much, until I tried to... uh... the evil permaban word that isn't quite 'snicker', y'know. But clearly the filter dictionary is going to grow without bound until someone says 'enough is enough'. If it ain't in George Carlin's 7-words sketch, it shouldn't be filtered.

I feel this is a perfect and well thought out response to the update and I completely agree. I may continue to play for now but there isn't really any reason for me to continue. And the $90 bucks I spent on energy? And the $50 more I was planning to spend. Screw it. Forget the $50 I was going to spend to continue my crafting and recipe hunt and the $90 was lost to a game where I was looking for new bosses and new items to craft and sell and recipes to give/sell to those not lucky enough to find them. My main point, I played this game for the craft and sell because that is the kind of thing I like to do. Horde mats and make all kinds of stuff till i get something worthwhile to sell.

Also, just something that bugs me, why use our login name in the forums instead of one of our character names? It kind of makes the login in name kind of pointless since you are giving it to everyone and anyone to see anyways.

You guys really just ruined this game for a lot of people. :/

The Auction House we wanted so bad is nothing more than a huge crown sink. The "Advanced Training Arena" is a waste of what could have been more levels, monsters, etc.. You killed half of the market by binding our four and five star gear. You jack the crafting cost up so high that I soon expect crystal energy costs to go well over 10k for 100. You give end-gamers nothing to do but grind.

Not logging on or spending anymore money until it's rolled back.

Seriously, you guys [banana]blocked yourselves.

Edit: Also, I love how an Admin or Developer hasn't shown that they have even acknowledged what has been posted here, except for editing out naughty words that we use to express our sincere disappointment and rage.

EDIT: language. (I acknowledge the irony of this edit after what you just said. We are watching this thread and cataloging the feedback you are all giving us.)

#### you.

[Edited for language.]

EDIT: lolumad

Lol @ izoold

---

The Spiral Knights team seem pretty cold with their cut and dry responses. Please hire a warm and cuddly representative if the company can "supposedly" make more money from the current update. Thanks.

---

As for me, I will discontinue to play this beloved game until more favorable changes are made in the future. Au revoir!

The very essence of every opinion and debate is boiled down to one sentence about this patch

"Devs, you're doing it wrong."

The major mistake was a lack of warning!
This leaving people with lots of items that they can't sell or return to their friends. Lots of merchants disheartened by ruining their plans.
Here are some constructive ideas
Options:
Have a roll back (updates not data) - implement the changes in a week
unlock the 4* 5* equipment made before the update or all the equipment
make un-binding a piece of equipment possible maybe with a crown or energy fee

Nevermind.

When this patch rolled out, I had two 5* items under construction by friends. I'd already turned over the materials and crafting costs. I'm out hundreds of thousands of crowns because of this patch, and it has added no content that I particularly care about. It is safe to say that I am disappointed.

I was really enjoying this game. I liked running the clockworks and working towards new items, but OOO's decision to destroy so much of the fruit of my effort over the last few weeks has left me disillusioned. I'm certainly not going to give them any more of my money until some of these policy decisions are reversed.

zoooooooooooom i love this update =D
specially the no trading past 4star thing - i was getting annoyed with people just buying 5 star equips with CE.
Sker4life

I've been playing for less than a month, got hooked instantly. Up till now I've only been playing off of ME + maybe 200 CE I bought with crowns to mess around with; so pretty casual overall. I just started doing JK runs 2 days ago (minus actually getting to JK, just the floors before him) and got really excited at the 7500+ crowns per run. My goal from the start was to collect every item in the game and stockpiling mats, not about reaching the endgame or crafting/selling items.

I don't mind the 4/5* binding change, only b/c I prefer to play solo and craft my own items, BUT I can definitely see how this peeves a lot of players. If I were into crafting, guilding, and playing with the game economy, I'd probably leave for that reason too.

As it stands, I'm leaving for the increase cost of crafting. It's just a grindfest at this point. Pre-update, every 24 hours I could either make one 3* gear or do one JK run to get crowns, and hopefully buy a new recipe along the way. I figure by the time I was ready to craft 4/5* gear I'd get CE with a mixture of crowns and real money. Now, not only do I need CE for every 3* item, but I need twice as much as before, AND for every 5* item I need more than double the original. I just finished doing a JK run, and it just wasn't fun anymore, b/c the whole time I just kept thinking about how many freaking times I would have to do this in order to fund everything. It just lost its fun & casual allure. Now it's just a grindfest. Sure, it's all a matter of perspective, if I'd picked up this game tomorrow all these post-update changes would be the "norm."

Sadly, less than 24 hours ago I was strongly considering buying some CE to 1) support the game & 2) to speed up my crafting, and I'm not just saying that to make a point. Will be checking the forums now and then to see if any positive changes occur, at which point I may come back to SK. For now, I've got other games to entertain me.

It's difficult to imagine any player spending money on CE to upgrade a character, now that we all know that OOO is happy to literally destroy huge portions of your characters' extant value without warning.

It's like you've just bought a shirt, only it has a radio-controlled self-destruct switch. At any time, the manufacturer can just flip a switch and destroy the shirt you bought from them--with no warning and for no apparent reason. You might buy the shirt anyway cause it's not terribly expensive, it's a cool shirt, and the notion that the company would actually use the self-destruct switch seems so absurdly remote. The first time they do actually flip the switch on a handful of your shirts, though, I would expect you to stop buying stuff from that company.

That's what OOO has done with this patch. Every person who was leveling an item for eventual sale or who had paid in advance for such an item just had a huge portion of value--value that, in many cases, was paid for by CE that was purchased for real money--destroyed. OOO has literally stolen back the product they sold you. Keep playing the game if it's fun, but be leery of buying more product from OOO--they have demonstrated how little they respect their customers very clearly with this patch.

So let me get this straight. These updates included:

CONS-
1. Getting only 1 token for your boss run.
2. Crafting energy demands doubled.
3. Crafted bound items remain bound.

PROS-
1. Auction house included DERP DERP DERP.

If there are any pros or cons I'm missing, please let me know. PLEASE, let me know. Give me another perspective. Please.

Afternote-
I was really hoping to buy CE for SK. I thought, "Woah, this game is great! It's only going to get better so I'll sure buy some CE one day to support the game!"
Now, I'm not sure if the statement holds true anymore..
I'm not paying you anything.

Stuff you left out:

PROS:

- Training hall (I guess if you are a 'tard... though you can like, test weapons, not that you can sell them off if you didn't like them).
- snipes with headgear
- lower recipe prices
- no energy cost if invited to clockworks

CONS:
-inviting to basil is now useless (not even crystals, which is silly considering you get less CR from crystals than it costs to port there)

Just in the spirit of fairness.

I like to use the hall to mess around when I'm bored. I'm going to explore mostly on mist for the time being and it's nice to be able to swing my sword without having to pay 10 ME for the ability. Also I've been trying to troll people by hitting them with the fire pots :P

Oh good. So now there's no reason for all my recipies except the 2* versions?

So what, this turned from 'team/friend-based gameplay' to 'every knight for themselves and /only/ themselves'?

I guess the only upside to this change is that...oh wait. there /isn't/ one. What the BLOODY BLUE BLAZES IS THE POINT?! SERIOUSLY.

I think Spiral Knights simply WAS too good to be true.

It was quite simply the best F2P model I've ever seen - those with patience could enjoy everything the game has to offer, and could play indefinitely for free, though progression is slowed after a certain amount of continuous play. Meanwhile, those more willing to part with their cash, or those less patient, funded their ability to do this.

I believe that if the new crafting costs had been in place from the start, nobody would have thought them outrageous. The game may not have been as popular, as free progression takes more than twice as long, and continuous free play may be tougher as energy is in higher demand and less people pay. But this is speculation.

I can think of three scenarios explaining the decision (these are not all mutually exclusive):

1 - The initial costs used have proved to make free play too attractive - this has led to a lower-than-projected income from CE, and the maths has been recalculated to take into account the lower-than-anticipated willingness of players to part with cash for CE. These new crafting costs are what has come out, and they've been directly applied.

2 - The game is not currently seen to have tapped enough of the market that changing the prices now will upset enough people to do the playerbase any long-term damage. Or at least, not enough damage to offset the additional anticipated income.

3 - The initial costs were intentionally used to make the game as a whole attractive, and build up a sufficient playerbase that the cost increase, though driving away many, would leave enough CE-buyers to make more money than before.

The effect the change will have on free players is yet to be seen - at best, however, progression has been drastically slowed past 2-star gear. At worst, if crown-energy prices rise as much as many doomsayers predict, free play will be much tougher once the player's mist energy dries up.

I'm f2p, and I don't expect my 5* crafting to be that much tougher. I've been crafting what I have on my own, and I'm just going to turn the crowns I save on recipes into CE for the crafting. The CE hike on 4-5* isn't even worth discussing.

Basil ports were lame. Those of us who are reasonable prefer the game without them.

High level trading both is and isn't the late game. The late game which is built into SK is farming Vanaduke for Fang of Vog. Once you get Fang of Vog, you wait for updates. The late game that some people have created for themselves is about making tons of money by selling high level gear. That late game is now over, but it's not so core to the game that "the game is dead".

I'm just going to sit back and enjoy the inevitable opening of the core.

This is the only update that turn us down T.T

You made a horrible mistake.

You know this is a good game but you ruined it.

Please Devs, PLEASE TAKE NOTE OF OUR COMMENTS.

Why did you put forums if you didn't read them?

well i don't care about your answer anyway... maybe a week i'll quit.

The auction house, while a much needed addition, was implemented in the worst way possible.

• Listing fees
  This is stupid. Seriously, way to try and nickel-and-dime the community. At the very best players will just pass the fees on to the buyer. (yes i know this gets refunded IF the item sells, but keep in mind thats a huge IF.)
• Listings expire
  With the limited amount of available items to put up for auction (since this update so graciously removed all 4 and 5star items with the exception of a very limited few) there will be so much competition, that its going to take ages for anything to sell since the limited items available to even be put up will be in massive quantities. With that being said, items we put up are going to take a LOT longer than 2 days to sell unless its something insanely rare, in which case people will by pass the auction house completely.
• Commission fees
  10% of the selling fee? Not so much a big deal on small items (though don't worry those wont sell since the market is flooded with them anyway) but, As far as reagents and items that are more rare (Like [Sun Silver] or a high grade [Heart Pendant]) are you really going to give up 1/10th of the asking price? Or are you going to take your chances and spam trade chat? It's just stupid.
• Limited usage
  So intelligent players aren't going to waste money putting high grade items up for sale due to the stupid nickel and dime fees, They aren't going to bother putting common materials up due to the listing fees and high probability of not selling (who wants to waste money). And the only other thing that might have been viable, actual weapons and gears have been removed as a possibility.

So, tell me what is the point of an auction house that no remotely intelligent person would ever use?

While we do need changes to mechanics of crafting, the changes we got are not the changes we need.

• Energy costs increased
  This is a complete mystery to me. Why increase the amount of energy people need to craft things? There are so many better solutions if you want to grub for money.
  1. Cash shop
     I mean expanding beyond the simple idea of cash currency (Crystal Energy) and allowing players to purchase items from an actual cash shop. These items would not interfere with in-game play these items would focus on fashion. People pay a lot of money for fashion (hence the success of that Rose Regalia "event").
  2. Unique Variant modifiers
     This is a little trickier, but perhaps allowing users to manually add a UV to their items? Or maybe allow "leveling" a UV on an item via a CE expendature (example Charge Time Reduction: Low-->Medium) for 2x the Energy cost of the weapon's Energy Crafting Cost?

     Or perhaps just paying a higher energy fee when crafting to increase the proc rate of UVs?
     10% more energy paid modifies the proc rate by 1.1 (which, assuming the proc rate being 10% would be 0.1 x 1.1 = 0.11, or a 1% higher proc rate...up to double the energy cost (200%) for a 0.1 x 2.0 = 0.2 double chance)

• Price hike
  A mild price hike in the actual RMT (real money trade) value of Crystal Energy. People would be more understanding for a mild price hike for CE (after all we ALL understand F2P games need to rake money in some how). But players aren't stupid and we know when someone is trying to gouge our pockets.

All I am saying is, there are so many better solutions than what we were given it feels like either zero thought was put into the decision process, or someone hates their users.

• Bound items
  This is the dumbest, most stupid, annoying and most of all useless "feature" of many, many online games. I don't know how it ever became so popular, but it is something that has become so ingrained in today's games that I won't argue against item binds (but I will fondly reminisce about the GOOD days of online gaming, like Ragnarok Online before that terribad Renewal update haha). I guess this bullet is a moot point. Moving on~ :P
• Auto-bind crafting results
  Okay, this is taking the absurd level of stupidity associated with item binding to a whole new level of derpness that I have not seen on any game past or present. Seriously this is shocking because it is so absurd and stupid there is absolutely no intelligent, justifiable reason for it.

  Seriously, try me. Give me your best shot. Justify it (intelligently). You can't. No one can. All this "feature" does is destroy a facet of the game that people enjoyed. I know, people enjoying something? Better put an end to that.

• Market destruction
  While no one can really say there was a "real" market (at least by conventional gaming standards), people will argue that a trade channel and whatever we had before this train wreck of an update came through was better. Through increased energy costs, and auto-binding you've not only destroyed people's ability to buy, sell, and trade items, you've effectively killed a lot of freedom in the play styles of a huge portion of the player base. That is what really has everyone so upset: the freedom to play how we want being killed. Instead we're all being forced to do the same thing with very, very little deviation (which is boring, duh!).
• Boss tokens
  While I will partially concede that the way boss tokens are awarded and divided up is a good thing (after all its not fair for someone to get just as much reward as someone else for only 1/2 the effort...or whatever), there is another problem here as well. It goes back to the auto-binding (herp, derp) thing which is really lame. Some people really liked grinding those bosses, or would come along with other people on their runs because the rewards and the -freedom- they had with those rewards gave a lot of incentive. We're basically all being forced to be stingy misers with the fruits of our endeavors instead of having the freedom to acquire, sell, or trade things.
• Basil ports
  Well this one is a partial victory for you guys as well. So what people can't cheat the system and skip to buying whatever recipes they want. That was an unintended exploit from the beginning that got fixed.

  However, since it's been fixed and the minerals have been removed from terminals, why not let us port directly down to the terminals from haven? As long as we've made it to that terminal once before legitimately, we should be able to skip to it again at any time we want (though a direct port would forfeit our ability to wheel and deal with Basil). If we're not looking for recipes why should we waste our time with the preceding levels if we've already proven our mettle?

  This should have been obvious (like so many other things). Now that I think about it, I'm not surprised that idea never occured to you guys, or if it did, I am not surprised it wasn't implemented (people might actually like it!).

  In closing, it is a common CM trick to open "feed back threads" that rope all the community's ramblings (likes, dislikes, rants, raves, etc, whatever) into one area for easy management. I think it is important to know, however, that these feedback threads aren't taken as legit suggestions by the people with power. Our feedback is no more useful to Three Rings/SEGA/whatever than reasoning with a brick wall. No, they wait to see what people do in-game.

  That is to say, they way to see if enough people are willing to suffer through the BS in game and keep playing and paying regardless of what we say on here. The truth is, no matter how unhappy we ALL are with the update, some people will continue to play (unhappily) because they're still convinced that they still like the game. This behavior tends to contradict our voiced opinions on the forum (hence why feedback threads are nothing but a parlor trick more or less). If you guys FEEL a particular way, then act the part. Don't say one thing and then do another.

  Sorry for the wall of text, I am gone until all this BS is fixed.

  -Adam

this update is very good, it shows how much the devs want to maintain this game on a certain style even if less CE will be brought complessively

come on it's common knowledge that a lot of players wanted to rush T3 and spent huge amount of money to buy the gear, do you still think the update is driven by greed?

If the idea was to slow progression into the higher star weapons, why not just make higher-grade materials that much more rare? also perhaps increase the amount of said ingredients that are required to make higher-star equips? sure some people will still be able to "buy their way into the endgame" but I think you just missed a key word there: BUY, as in, they are SPENDING MONEY to get into the higher tiers. this update makes CE MUCH more valuable while making CR MUCH less valuable, which will prevent most casual players from playing beyond their ME allotment as they can't afford any CE from the market. 3* equips will be the farthest some may go, as it will... you know what, lets just see how this all plays out. I am now more curious that furious, and while people are wildly speculating stuff, I want to see what REALLY happens (besides the number of people quitting trolololo)