I’d like to share my input on the update:

First off, I’d like to share my pre (5/17/2011) game update experience: According to the game counter I have about 200 hours of gameplay clocked into this game so far. I found the game because I played Puzzle Pirates for about 4 years and enjoyed that game a lot. However in the 4 years I played that game, I never bought doubloons once, NEVER. This game on the other hand, in the first few days of playing, I really enjoyed it. Me and my brother who I got to play with me, we both purchased CE in the first two days of playing together.

Now the update, as soon as I saw that 4 and 5 star gear couldn’t be traded, I was extremely disappointed. For me this ruined the whole work together with someone (me and my brother) to craft items. It turned this game into a more solo grinding experience, now I have to go out and find a bunch more recipes, since now we each need a separate one. I want a game where I can work together with someone and play, its just way more fun that way. This also means, after I get all my 5 star gear I need, what else is there to do? I was hoping once I hit that point I could merchant the high end gear and make a little extra crowns or CE, now what is there to do? I was already selling some stuff, and I enjoyed the “merchant” aspect of the game, I could sit there for a hours buying and selling items, now that aspect is gone, all that’s left to do is grind till you die of boredom... Even fighting Jelly King has become pointless, what am I supposed to do with all my Jelly Tokens now? Make myself four Avengers and go have fun killing something? The only useful thing would be trading in the tokens for Swordstones, but those will soon to be worth next to nothing (as well as most materials) with the auction house.

Upon looking at the increase in crafting costs, I can see 800 CE being fair for 5 star items, it’ll make them a little harder to obtain, but you still can’t trade 4 and 5 star items. It’s like a double slap in the face. It will still require countless hours of grinding, and sadly, the fastest way will be doing Jelly Kings runs over and over. It wouldn’t be so bad if maybe there were several other Tier 2 bosses so you could change things up, but again, there isn’t. This is very discouraging for me to continue playing, as I want to play a game where I don’t have to play the same few levels for a week to get a single piece of 5 star equipment, if I wanted to grind I’d go play the countless other MMO RPG grinding games out there (like WoW or LOTRO.) This game is now falling under the category of all those grinding mindless games (which some people do enjoy don’t get me wrong.) However I don’t wish to see this game lose its unique, fun and enjoyable factors.

Onto the auction house, personally I dislike it, especially the 10% fee, it’s quiet a lot. No, it IS a lot. The other reasons I dislike it, is as I stated before Is I enjoyed merchanting items, the auction house ruined that for me. Another problem is you can’t sell 4 and 5 star gear there... That’s probably the only reason I’d actually want an auction house if you could do that. I know many people complained about the trade chat and this does cut it down, but what was so hard about typing /leave 2, if you didn’t like the spam?

Lastly the training hall, which I think is the only positive aspect to the update, nice way to go test out new swords and stuff without venturing into the clockworks. However this could be expanded on greatly. When I first read the update I pictured as arena type deal, where you could set the number on enemies, type of enemies, type of damage they deal and so on. This would allow you to easily test out the differences of various weapons, and would be an amazing addition in my opinion.

All in all, the update is more or less a big disappointment for me. Totalling the crown difference on all the recipes I had collected and never actually crafted the items for, I’ve lost over 150,000 crowns, and on top of that I still have to pay 2.5 times the CE to craft the items… I feel like I wasted so much of my time and this is a huge turn off for me to continue playing. Overall I extremely dislike how it this turned into a grinding game, if the game offered more to do, more dungeons, bosses (and I don’t just mean 1 or 2 new bosses) it wouldn’t be so bad, but there simply is not, it’s too simple of a game presently to spend so much time obtaining the items you’d like.

Let me start this out like a real letter....... Dear Spiral Knights, I have been playing this game since about a day or two it came out. I was really excited to see a new online game that looked different from most. Before this update, there was none of this crap about leaving and boycotting (which i am starting to support), but anyways, i really do not see how this update will really help the game in the long run. I have to say whoever came up with this foreshadowing idea is wrong, and this game will majorly suffer from it. From a business standpoint, i do not see how this is benefiting the game. All i see is that more of your "devoted" players will leave. Some great examples of this are SWG which you may have heard of in the forums. But the failure of an mmo that i remember the most was the Nanovor Evolution update. I would know that, because i experienced the decline. I was there on the last day of its existience. I knew tons of players would spend lots and lots of money on the game. Then Smith and Tinker decided to revamp the entire game. This caused the amount of people who played it, i dont mean people who paid for it, BUT played it to decrease significantly. It was a shocker to most when the update arrived (similar to this). The game barely lasted for 3 months after it came out. The game itself was around for more than a year (most said it was amazing). One of the major reasons this happened was that the devs blindly made something for the game which none of their players supported (including I). Now from what i see in this game, it isnt this extreme, but this could evolve into what i am talking about. For one, you have wiped out the merchant "class" which most people were really mad about. Two, you "listened" to us barely about the idea of test dummies for guild halls, but instead turned it into a "advanced training hall" which is mainly just a rehash of all the stuff you see in the clockworks, so that doesnt benefit anyone, and it makes people start to doubt you. Three, now some people might not care, but when you introduced the auction house, you took away a main part of the community, which was interacting with players when you wanted to trade, but now you have replaced it with just a click. Four (yes i do have alot to say) have you ever realized that people dont always have the time to go and find things, i personally have a limit, so the trading saved me soooo much time and frustration, because for what i can say, going through the clockworks over and over with the same boring crappy equipment can get boring, so from what i see, trading HELPS the longevity of the game. Five, this update will cause most people to dread updates because of the stuff you included in this update, thus causing them to not invest for CE, and then that means you WILL lose business, but thats just my guess. Six (one of my biggest complaints) this may be the worst part of it all... Increased Ce prices for crafting, and then you have the idea of implementing a un-binding store. So what you are saying is that 1. we pay to go into the clockworks AKA we pay to play more, 2. we pay to craft, 3. we pay to trade for unbinding, I mean REALLY? Think of this from your average players standpoint, are 12, 13, 14 ect. made of money?????? Thinking into the future, your average kid will play the game longer if he knows it is a sustainable game to play, insted of going through 400 bucks every year just to play, and have you even seen the crafting charts? It blows my mind. I sincerely hope that you are able to actually KEEP your players, let alone get new ones, because this game was gold, now what you have done is taken a chunk of it out, and put some fake gold into it. I believe that because of this update, your business will change, your player base will change, but what I truly hope that you get out of this is that your mindset for making games have changed, and as gamestop's motto says: POWER TO THE PLAYERS, and that is entirely true.

Sincerely,
Digitalartificer

Couple that with the solo problem and the leave party/kick bugs that have been appearing.

The numbers are still pretty bad though.

Advanced Training Hall

I find the Training Hall to be a moderate amusement... I enjoyed learning all of what was in there through trial and error.

Auction House

It's nice, but I don't think I'll be using it often... I've played around with bidding on things, but in the end it was easier to just find other folks to trade with. The 10% listing fee tends to turn me away from actually posting anything there... I'm in agreement with the other players that mention the 5% that's present in other games, it's enough to take into account, but not so much to turn too many away from it.

Boss Tokens

I can support this.

Basil

Yeah... I'm still seeing Basil Ports popping up... nice try though =)

Crafting

I can understand this, but I don't really like it. In my opinion, one or the other should have happened (especially with the amount that crafting costs have risen). The unbinding shop is a nice touch, and it makes it so the 5* gear is truly premium.

Items now display their star value and number of unique variants on the item pill. Handy!

That it is.

Recipe item costs have been reduced.

Aye, but one thing that kind of irks me is the refunds for recipes. With the number of recipes that a good number of us crafters know, we're at the short end of this one. having 100+ recipes myself, I only received a refund on the one recipe that I forgot to learn before I logged off. I'll live, but it's still a little frustrating.

@solkanar512- I'm using OS X as well and haven't had any issues with the AH...

@ extremekiwi8
Yea, the lack of interaction from trade is kinda disturbing. That's how I got into the guild was when I was buying some mats then got invited to guild.

Yes, this patch killed it. I have only see 1 to 2 guildies online for 30 min or less then poof gone.

They've been said elsewhere, but I think it's important you hear from folk. Once I got over the heart-attack from the new Crafting prices, heh, I got to grips with the AH. On the whole my opinion is very positive, it does pretty much what I was hoping for, and what it needs t'do. However, some points that have been bugging me:

- I've lost a few items when battling for the last bid, but not knowing I've been outbid. I know it's a drain on the server, but would it be possible to implement a 'refresh' button that was available only for the final few minutes of an auction, or something like that?
- As the post immediately above me puts forwards, a wish-list would be ideal. Whether you can store specific items [for when you're broke and you plan on bidding on after your next cw-run], or just stores the item you're looking for and calls up a list .... Something which can save having to slog through pages of AH to find the one item you're really looking for, basically.
- Would it be possible to add the functionality to manually remove auctions from your "My Bids" and "My Auctions" tabs? My list gets a little crowded when I run out of funds and switch seller - leaving me with two of the same item in my lists.

Other than those three points, I think the AH is a wicked addition to the game and at times highly amusing watching the prices fluctuate from tens of thousands to just tens. Love it.

{EDIT:} Oh yeah, and thanks! >.<

If you wish it, Raul, IT WILL HAPPEN.

Now, let's try to drop the matter for the time being and at least support them in whatever way we can.

If anything, we should voice our critiques civilly and whatnot, instead of wishing the game to upend itself.

Oh no we had numbers, but they took the method of getting those numbers away. Of course no one other then fanbois and clingons dared to contest me, because I"m effing right and we all know it.

This comment left in a previous thread that is also now locked beyond pisses me off.

"Here's the deal: We're still watching the data. No matter how much forum HWFO goes on about an issue, reacting prematurely without waiting for adequate gameplay data to come in for analysis would be plain stupid.

Calling any particular staff member out on the forums to demand that they "fix" or "address" the issue may feel good, but it doesn't change the fact that we must analyze a proper sample of the game data to see how a release--any release--is affecting our players' actual gameplay."

^That was said by Eurydice and then she locked the thread.

1. NO one's going to see it
2. I think the rage, the dropped player fanbase, the bitching, the complaining, and people asking for older versions, is all the data you need to realize your crap is going belly up and WE aren't happy. I think the feedback thread on 5-17 was MORE then enough "DATA" to prove that people are not happy with the direction the game is tanking. But because I don't work for you and I don't have a degree and yada yada, you just ignore me.

Even my buddies over at the runic games forum think this crap is going belly up.

But hey, I don't know EFFIN nothing do i? Nope, not a thing...

But hey, I don't know EFFIN nothing do i? Nope, not a thing...

Nice to see you give up your lying troll ways and be honest, for a change.

How could it possibly go over my head?

I'm way up here on this cherry picker I borrowed from you.

those numbers werent representative because I haven't deposited any minerals in ages in the old system. in hope to ever affect something. And it DID devolve into nitpicking. Also the post with minerals deposited numbers was in another thread I linked to in an edit. (if that's what the "disappeared" post you meant was; if not I feel silly now).

Just to clarify~

@Tiv I was referring to posts or thread disappearing, I was referring to the actual counter that was removed from the game to hide the fact their player numbers have dropped to crap. It is the only conceivable reason it could of been removed.

Also, yah it did evolve into bigotry from the damn fanbois and clingons. Still got the dev's attention though.

As for representation of number, we can't get taht anymore because they removed all ways to do it, except going through and counting every player in the gates, instances, and the number of instances.

@Shoe Good ol Southpark, too bad I don't like it.

I understand why it was originally changed, but is there any way we could have the option to sort by price per auction as well as price per item in lot?