New token system kills my enjoyment in playing this game. I was forced to play all the way from Haven with my 4 and 5 star gear. Needless to say it was super boring. And to my great surprise when i reached Moorcroft gate... guess what??? I was informed by the spiral warden that i need more tokens to acess yet another sequence of 80 energy cost of solid boredom (minimal and presumably even more than 80... I didn t bother to inform myself). To express my anger i was throwing all my potion arsenal at the warden. But now seriously. I m really sorry to say it but this system really punishes Emberlight players. I played from Emberlight with a reason. I m well prepared to take the challanges THERE . Haven and Moorcroft levels are just boring for me, no challange there... This new system for me means 150 energy traded for boredom (just up to Moorcroft)... Dear developers I don t think so, I m sorry, you ve just found the way to limit already limited game even more.
punishment for Emberlight players
Gate specific limits are the one that makes no sense at all.
It's telling you that you need to waste at least 200 ec or more if you want to play any other gate after you've already reached emberlight tier.
I haven't tried the new limitations yet, but from what I've gathered at the forum you're actually required to do Haven - Moorcroft - Emberlight 2x in every single gate before you're allowed access to Emberlight - Core content. And that does seem to be Sheloba's point here. It means you spend at least 300 energy every week on non-challenging levels. And that's if you pick only one gate to play that week. And I'm not one to complain about the profitability of those levels. :P *cue the complain wagon*
Yea I don't really understand their idea to limit the tiers in every gate separately either. I'm sure it'll have a good reason or fix in the future though :D
Ugh, Gate tiers? That suuuucks.
Having to play new gates from Haven does make more sense from a story point of view (and I'd like to see this idea expanded), but it was not a good idea to introduce it at this stage. I would've liked to see a way of making the levels between Haven and Emberlight not colossally boring, easy and unprofitable introduced before we were forced to play them over and over, even after we've gotten full 4 star gear and earned our passage!
I know it's beta and rolling out features takes priority over maintaining a consistent enjoyable experience, but I'm worried that if they continue to introduce things in this manner after release they're going to turn a lot of people off.
I think what I miss now is that there's no longer a community of players you can interact with down in Emberlight and Moorcroft Manor. Now the only people you see there are those in your pary. I'd really like to be able to hang out in crowds in those areas, especially because I really like the new designs. I usually don't mind interacting and explaining things to the newbies, but I can only handle so many inane questions flying though the chat before I long for a quieter place outside of a Clockworks level.
Sidenote: there seemed to be a bit of mass confusion today among many of the newer players that revealed they really don't read the forums - what could be done about this?
Though a bit of a flaw with the current setup is that it's difficult to acquire the recipes necessary for the 4-star gear without going beyond Emberlight. I seems like this will create a sort of artificial bulge of players right before the Tier transition.
Kharnor has already summed my thoughts nicely about individual gate tiers. If I was soloing or in a random party I probably wouldn't have had the patience to do a Haven to Emberlight run.
Though thank you for making it really easy to re-invite people who are blocked by the Spiral Warden.
I think making the community focused in Haven is a great thing. It destroys the separations between old and new players, so they can learn from you. You'll thank the devs later. Why does this need to be done? Check out the Free Pie thread, that's cause everyone from Moorcroft and below was up to speed typically, but not in Haven.
So yeah, I love this new system. As Evolution said, you won't be starting the game with 5* gear when this is released. This system probably won't even seem to be in place, because of what you'll have to do for your gear anyway. AND on release you'll have all that energy you've bought here + the 25% more, so it'll take you a day or so to get back to Emberlight anyway probably.
Bolgron you're missing the point. The new changes disallow entry at the Emberlight-depth on a per-gate basis. Any gate you wish to enter from now on, you'll have to start in Haven. With 0* and 5* equipment alike. Every new gate.
"... it'll take you a day or so to get back to Emberlight anyway probably." I didn't buy any energy so I'll be starting on zero. But that's beside the point.
Sure, having to start all the way from Haven is a bit of an inconvenience, but I don't find it boring. That could be because the first one I did was Amber Falcon which had a crap-ton of arenas, but it gave me an excuse to go through the Tier 1 and Tier 2 dungeons in search of my Elemental Hood Recipe (which I haven't found...). The only major problem is getting the energy to do the runs, which actually isn't so bad: by the time I'd made it to Moorcroft Manor I'd already made up all the crowns I'd need to buy it, and nearly twice that much when I hit Emberlight. I even found a couple of Holiday Tailed Helms along the way.
Look at it this way: it gives you an excuse to solo Arena dungeons and grind for Sealed Swords and Antiguas.
i've got the token requirement down, and going from haven down to meet the warden in the first place is reasonable because the system just got implemented: when the game is released you'll need to do this all anyway as a new knight so the pain of being bored from haven down this one time is understandable since it's a peculiarity of our knights existing before the change was made
lucky for me i managed to get some 4-star gear when i heard this change was coming (not that i needed it for the depths i was playing at mind you)
i did NOT like that my tempered calibur became a 3-star item, but it helped that the ascended calibur doesn't need sun silver or some other impossible material anymore
I have posted my opinion here: http://forums.spiralknights.com/node/864#comment-5373
Basically, general progress is good, specific gate progress is bad.
So, I'll try posting here instead of the ragequit thread.
The new gate restrictions are not anything that would make playing the game enjoyable. It's one thing to have to pass through the first two tiers for one time to make sure you have the ability to get there. It's quite another matter to have to do that for every single gate, and keep doing it because the gates are constantly being retired and new gates appearing.
The game is its most fun when it's challenging, and there does come a point when your skills are gear are good enough to play at the lowest levels of the clockworks and taking on Lord Vanaduke. To be continually forced to play in "easy" levels does wear down one's enjoyment quite quickly.
I should also bring up that it is now impossible to venture much past Moorcroft without having some kind of crystal energy at your disposal. This is a pretty significant barrier to any players who don't have the ability to purchase energy on their own, and farming up the coins in the low levels is even more tedious. I'm not saying that the game shouldn't be able to make money, but that it's much more of a required subscription game now than the "free to all, but the nice goodies require some form of donation" that is the norm for a lot of games out there.
I know this is a closed beta and that things are in flux. I have huge issues with the interface and how the mouse can call up unintentional menu items during a difficult fight. But I'm assuming that things like that will be fixed. The new gate structure is worse than the interface for me, and hopefully this will get trashed very, very soon.
Gate tiers are to balance difficulty.
So it's takes roughly the same amount of time to kill said enemies as someone with the appropriate gear in said gate.
Plus, you could always just gear yourself up, then change to higher gear at each sub town.
You're looking at this the wrong way. It's a beta, a stage where new content is released rapidly. Normally, you would have this system implemented before you started even playing. Doing Haven - Moorcroft and then Moorcroft - Emberlight a few times would be absolutely normal in order to gain enough heat/crowns for better gear.
Right now you're "penalised" in a sense that you can't get back to your older way of playing immediately, yes. But if you can't deal with that, then I suggest you stop playing the beta and come back when the game releases in a more complete stage. After all, we're here merely to find bugs and give opinions of how things are running from a normal player's point of view. With normal I mean, for this update specifically, picture yourself being a new guy, what do you think of the limits? Are they actually that limiting? (seeing how around 3-4 runs should give you about all the tokens needed when starting off from 0)