Spiral Knights - A discussion about Heat

A discussion about Heat

16 replies [Last post]

Mon, 02/10/2014 - 13:23

Zopyros-Il

TL;DR
Talking about Heat. Namely how Heat, which is essentially our experience points, constitutes as part of both monster drops AND Treasure Box drops. There are many times in the game where you gain nothing from Heat and since it's a part of the drops, you lose out on potential Rarities, Tokens, Materials, and Crowns.
Is anyone bothered by this mechanic?

(Something that I started thinking about more in depth after Fehz's thread: All levels are economically forced to pay out about the same)

I think it's always been a mild problem, but recently became a bigger problem with the implementation of the Forge and a necessity for certain Rarities. Also, I hate that I have to make a TL;DR for forums, where we're supposed to come and discuss things in length, but that's neither here nor there. Moving on.

Before, the only time that you wouldn't want Heat is if your gear is fully leveled. The devs encouraged you to constantly expand your arsenal so this wouldn't really be a problem, but the cost and time needed to constantly be doing so still led to some lengthy periods where players would have no need for Heat at all. It would just be a wasted drop from monsters and Treasure Boxes. The monsters weren't a problem since Heat is, in essence, experience points and wasted EXP is just an inherent part of capped leveling systems. The problem is with the Treasure Boxes and how often they would drop Heat instead of Crowns, Materials, and Tokens. It felt like a waste of a Treasure Box!

Then came the Forge and Rarities. The Forge and Fire Crystals acted as a stop-gap to slow players from rapidly leveling their gear since now they can make new gear relatively easily. However, it also makes a TON more points in the player's experience where they have absolutely no need for Heat. It made it that even more so, Heat is a potentially wasted drop from Treasure Boxes. It becomes even worse with the addition of the Rarities, another potential drop from these same Treasure Boxes and are highly sought after. It becomes even WORSE than that when some of those Rarities are items that would allow the player to level up and start Heating their equipment again.
The Forge system really seems to punish the players for getting Heat from Boxes, especially since because of how it works it makes so many times where Heat is unwanted and a wasted drop.

Now before anyone mentions this, I understand that Battle Sprites can level up from Heat as well. However, the amount of Heat needed to level them up is so absurdly high that it is always better to just feed them and level them up via that route.

So.
What are your opinions on Heat dropping from Treasure Boxes?
Is it a waste and you'd much rather have the other goodies dropping from them or do you like getting a little extra Heat from the boxes?

Mon, 02/10/2014 - 13:58

Valorai

Heart of Valor

Heat: It's hawt.

Mon, 02/10/2014 - 14:03

Poomph

Heart of Wind

I wish we could make fire crystals from heat. We could set a specific heat crystal to make from heat. Heat at the end of a level would be distributed towards making this fire crystal. It'd be filled up with a normal heat bar, once the heat bar got filled, we got X amount of that fire crystal. I don't really know an amount that would be fair, I guess 10? That could actually help the radiants issue, but won't help the Arcade.

Mon, 02/10/2014 - 14:05

Valorai

Heart of Valor.

Just out of heat? Naw, that'd be too easy. Maybe a new material would be required, something like the soul gems from skyrim, but crystals.

Mon, 02/10/2014 - 14:08

Poomph

Well

Obviously it wouldn't heat like a level 1 5-star item. It'd probably have the heating rate of a level 10 5-star item.

Mon, 02/10/2014 - 14:50

Whimsicality

I for one am fine with getting heat, even when I don't need it. Call me nuts, but I like picking stuff up in video games regardless of how superfluous it is. Shiny things are nice. I'd rather see heat drop and pick it up than see nothing altogether. Nothing is stopping me from doing another run and finding other boxes, meaning another chance at getting something nice.

Now, if we're going to be spitballing ideas on how to improve on the Forge system (outside of being patient for the arcade redux), here is a fantastic suggestion by tumblr user Scorchedwork.

"Here is an idea; What if Fire Crystals had to be mined like normal minerals? They came from ‘Fire Crystal Viens’ and would maybe look like [the image in the link]. The weaker the flame towards the surface but, the hotter the flame and intensity the closer to the core you get. "

Mon, 02/10/2014 - 16:13

Megawatt-King

I can get annoyed for the

I can get annoyed for the wasted heat when my weapon is only 1% from leveling up on a FSC level... But I don't mind it too much to actually be angered at it. What annoys me is the stupid forge and the stupid radiants. It's so obviously unnecessary and serves for nothing but as a way to get more money, but at least it's better than elevator costs, I guess. I really do want the rads though.

>the hotter the flame and intensity the closer to the core you get
Surely he means the other way, but that's not a bad idea actually.

Mon, 02/10/2014 - 16:30

Fehzor

I think that heat was originally meant to be the big limiting factor in a pay to playher's progress. Like, think of it as a barrier. You have to gain X heat before you can craft up a level. Should you not need your heat, the game makes you feel like you're wasting a valuable resource by showing it go to waste on not heating your gear. The forge was probably implemented as an additional check against this, where the radiant issue exists because OOO is clumsy and meant to release the gunner update + arcade redux part II update in November.

I find it all to be poorly thought out due to one basic fact- introducing the forge confuses and overwhelms new players, who have to learn combat mechanics + puzzle elements + battle sprites + the weird new UI + where the dash/bash key are + what autotarget is + which gear they should craft. Honestly, OOO should have came up with a better solution to the issue at hand, and probably shouldn't have even had heat/heat crystals to begin with... or at least introduced them later.

---For instance---

Imagine:
-No heat drops in T1.
-Heat feeds battle sprites, but in such a way that battle sprites require food and heat to progress. This is mentioned, but should feel natural.
-0-1* gear do not have to be heated at all. Starts and finishes at "level 1", which is actually just level 10.
-2-5* gear requires heating just like it used to. Upon getting past the correct hall of heroes, this is explained. CTR buffs for 0/1* gear built in.
-There is no corny dialogue before or after the bit where the knight is informed that heat will now heat gear.
-There is a minimal amount of lore regarding what heat is presented during this mission. i.e. One sentence or less. Not three paragraphs on what heat is made of.
-The mission introducing heat is called something appropriate like "Leveling weapons", and does not contain a bad pun. (though I do love bad puns)
-Heat requirements for gear are raised by a large amount. Like 10 times what they used to be.
-"Forging" gear can be done to make gear heat much faster. This is explained in said "leveling weapons" mission.
-All heat crystals can be used on all gear types, but are better the higher star level etc.
-Leveling up gear still has a chance to drop forge prize boxes, and leveling them up is still referred to as "forging".

---The idea being---

New players are introduced to the game without having to worry about heating their gear. This helps them find a playstyle, and doesn't overwhelm them with information.

The introduction to the mission is clear and crisp as well as easily found, rather than unexplained or hidden behind lore/corny dialogue.

The forge is seen as allowing players the freedom to heat their gear faster, rather than being a massive paywall, despite time/effort to heat remaining the same. (Idea courtesy of suggestions forum)

Making heat crystals work no matter what makes it so that playing in harder modes is never a loss for players. That said, 5* gear would still benefit a lot more from 4/5* heat crystals, making farming JK for heat for a 5* weapon a waste of time.

Mon, 02/10/2014 - 16:42

Usevnsevnsixfivfor

@Fehzor

Completely leveling up a gear with Fire Crystals only should make it drop a forge box 20% of the time. 3* boxes can't have 2-3 UV ticket or a SL Key, 4* box can't have 3 UV ticket or SL Key, 5* box gives either 2-3 UV ticket, and has current SL key droprates. This makes boxes a BIT more common, but lowers droprates to balance things out. Would be a nice achievement idea as well.

Mon, 02/10/2014 - 19:33

Sonosuke

#Sonosuks

Actually, heat does affect Battle Sprites. It's just that the bar moves so little it may as well not affect them at all.

Mon, 02/10/2014 - 19:45

#10

Kesari

Conversion

Heat is useless 90% of the time, it seems.

Instead of heat being wasted, I feel that one of the following should occur:
- Heat is stored in a canister of some sort (which can be bought), and is able to be extracted at a later time, perhaps even sold.
- Unused heat is used to slowly 'charge' empty crystals, which could be purchased for significantly less than full crystals.
- Unused heat is converted into crowns.

Whatever heat the pet is using is pointless, you could fill the same amount with a 0 star material.

Mon, 02/10/2014 - 21:12

#11

Zopyros-Il

Beep Boop

@ Poomph and Valorai
Not too fond of that idea, since it almost becomes just another factor to the Heating process and could lead to more of OOO's patented "balancing". However, it would be nice as a way to essentially store acquired Heat for a later use when you're not maxed out or waiting on Fire Crystals to drop.
But I agree with Valorai that it's just too easy to get Heat that way. It needs to be fleshed out a lot more, but that might get a little off-topic.

And I agree that Heat is indeed pretty hot. Would be a pretty misleading name if it wasn't. :P

@ Whimsy
Well shinies are always nice to get, but I would like them to be actually useful to me. Especially with the possibility to get so many extremely useful and valuable things instead.
I'm perfectly fine with getting it from monsters since it's, as I said, experience points. It's just a problem having it pop out of Treasure Boxes.

And I'd rather avoid getting into the Forge too much since this is about Heat and not the Forge and Fire Crystals, though they are related.
I'm also pretty biased about the Forge and have a VERY bad opinion of it, it's design and the philosophy that went into those design decisions, and how terribly it hampers the flow of the game. I could talk for days about better ideas than what OOO decided to put in, but to be curt, I do really like that idea you linked. I especially like how it stops Minerals from being an oddball mechanic and applying the "mining" to another aspect of the games.

@ Megawatt
I'm pretty sure that no one in their right mind likes the Forge at this point...

@ Fehz
Making it act as a limiter towards pay-to-players seems like part of it's initial design. It might also be to create a slight Skinner Box effect with the whole "Level up!" hook.
However, practically all sensible thought seems to have been thrown out the window with the Forge in favor of monetization. Seems like there was minimal thought put towards the actual progression and feeling of the system.
Still, I'm not really here to talk about the Forge and more about Heat itself, how it drops, and how people feel about it taking away from other possible drops.

... But I like your progression model so much. I'd say make an entire thread dedicated to it, but that would be such a massive overhaul of the early-game again that I don't think OOO would ever care to try it.
Yours really takes into consideration how much information is thrown at the player at the time and giving them enough time to process it all. The only thing that OOO feels to thoroughly explain is the enemy damage types, but then they do it multiple times through the Missions and it's just so ridiculously redundant. Ugh.

Mon, 02/10/2014 - 21:57

#12

Akuryo

o....o)

Heat -> Crowns conversion would be illogical

Crafting excess heat (along with other useless crystals/shards) into fire crystals sounds ok. but it would make FSC grinding even more frequent/prevalent.

Fire Crystal mining like the normal giant crystal mining might be good. but they would drop as how fire crystals normally drop if its the case.

and yes i kinda of do feel that heat dropping from boxes is too much (if not illogical). maybe they should make them drop less in boxes and have crowns fill in that hole.

Tue, 02/11/2014 - 11:46

#13

Zopyros-Il

Beep Boop

@ Sonosuke
Mentioned that aspect about Heat already. :P
However, like others and myself have already mentioned, Heat has such a small effect on their progression that it's always better and easier to just feed them something. Even a 0* material probably provides more Heat than an entire Clockworks run.

@ Akuryo
I think they should just remove Heat from boxes entirely. OOO has made it so that at far too many points in a player's progression, Heat is just a useless drop. With how often that happens, OOO shouldn't hinder their progression by making it so they get something so useless instead of something like Heat Crystals.

If they really want to keep Heat in boxes, just make it a separate box entirely. That way they can balance out the Heat output of levels that have low monster populations and Crown output just by making an abundance of these boxes.

Tue, 02/11/2014 - 12:09

#14

Fehzor

I only bring it up because OOO has recently had the perfect chance to re-balance drops, wherein they failed to produce a perfectly viable system.

---

As for heat being in boxes, I would say that since there is a surplus of heat, it wouldn't effect anything so directly. As we've established, heat is worthless 90% of the time despite being required for literally everything, and monsters drop heat much faster than boxes do anyway.

Rather, what replaces heat in boxes would effect things. If heat is in 20% of boxes, then we'd effectively get 1/.8 times as much loot from boxes... unless they replaced it with fire crystals, or something else... in which case we'd get 20% more of that. Since all boxes have the exact same drops relative to their level (aside from gear+maybe material drops, which are level dependent and certainly negligible) it wouldn't change much aside from how people feel when opening a box and finding nothing.

Tue, 02/11/2014 - 15:25

#15

Skepticraven

@1st post

Heat does not affect rarities from boxes. Rarities are considered a "bonus" drop on top of the standard drops (crown, heat, token, item, and material).
Red boxes do not drop items (think vials/barriers).
Heat is in approximately 35-45% of red boxes, and 25-35% of green boxes.
Items are the real waste for green boxes (30-40%), if you don't use them.

Source

Wed, 02/12/2014 - 22:24

#16

Zopyros-Il

Beep Boop

@ Skepticraven
That is amazingly helpful! Thank you so much! /salute

I did not know that about how Rarities functioned and I'm pretty sure a lot of others didn't as well. That is really useful information!

Though those percentages for Heat drops is far more than I thought they were. Nearly 50% for the Rare Treasure Boxes is too high for a box that the game makes out to have actual treasures in it. With the abundance of those Treasure Boxes as rewards in the more difficult areas, that's just worrying. You still make a lot of Crowns from these runs, but if nearly half of those boxes are going to be dropping Heat that you don't even need since you're already able to do those difficult areas and are probably fully heated, it's just a waste.

And while I kind of agree with the usable items being a bit of a waste, I don't want to get too far off topic with them. They're a neat aspect to the game, but OOO hasn't done a great job on making them valuable enough that you'd constantly want and use them.
For a quick solution, I'll just say that OOO should shove those into separate boxes as well. Stock the level's more arena-like rooms with with them to warn players of the danger and also send the message that, "Hey! You should use these in this fight!"

@ Fehz
Well they have another chance to completely re-vamp the drop rates and progression, but I severely doubt they'll make use of the opportunity. If anything, things will wind up more borked than before.

It might change more than we expect with those percentages that Raven brought up being so high. Possibly being able to get nearly 50% more actual loot might change things up in the market a little bit. If it were all changed to Crowns, the amount of Crowns you'd get from things like Danger Missions could be ridiculous.
But if we can replace that missing 50% with something else, like your material idea from your thread or maybe some gear or even recipe drops, things could get interesting.

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A discussion about Heat