Yes but the elevator prices were agony

I personally prefer to give my mates full health rather than giving half to my myself and the other half to them.

And revives costed 10 E then doubles, then doubles then doubles etc. rather than a single item that Can be found for free.

Its absolutely bonkers anyone can think this was better.

Only way I can see it being better right now is if we could go over teammates and revive with a spark/see ithers spark count for obvious reasons.

Can, but good luck searching on non-Elite / getting more sparks than losing because on Elite everything 4 shot you. Especially without Vitapods (I really hate getting killed, using ER, killing monster back and getting empty Vitapod).

I run too many FSC to up my torto shield to consider that a valid arguement. I do Vana no vitapod quite often with chaos set and a 3*-4* shield no problem... I have 200 spark of life after all those tortodrone farm (which some didn't require any SoL)

depends on how often you die.. if you don't die a lot then you will probably have a lot of extra sparks, so will like the spark system better.

This.

Also get better. Vets (like me) used to run FSC no MSI boost, no sprite perks and no consumable buffs... If you are having trouble with all this then you should train to get better.

I is noob Full chaos, Bar thorn sh., and lvl. 10 combuster is really all you ever need...for anything.

I really like this game. Maybe a little too much actually. I paid for elevator passes before and really liked that. I do prefer sparks to the way revs for self worked before. I do like the way you could rev friends by giving them half you life. I also liked that you used to be able to drop items in your inventory, sharing was frequently helpful. Overall I think I enjoy it more now than I did in 2011 when I first started playing. But there are certainly things I miss.
The argument for getting "better" assumes that most of the time your dying isn't from lag/latency issues, which I think is mostly wrong. I would gladly contribute more money to this game if they could fix that one problem. I have a brand new PC and excellent internet connection and I spend most of the game avoiding situations where lag will get me killed. With this connection problem your forced to play like a tier 2 player even when you know exactly how and what to dodge. This doesn't work well on T3. I've heard this is more of an issue with steam players. If so I'm screwed because I'm not starting over and there is no way to transfer my gear to a non steam account, and unlinking from steam isn't possible.

"Can, but good luck searching on non-Elite"
I play GitM/LoA/WCC in Easy and I've found sparks. And I consider myself unlucky. I guess you have worse luck than me?

"Vets (like me) used to run FSC no MSI boost, no sprite perks and no consumable buffs..."
And fixed difficulty! There was no "easy mode" back then.

Advanced is the difficulty SK used to be before difficulty settings even existed. Ergo, Normal is Easy Mode.

mystrian, if you used mist it was free, if you used ce, it was around 700-800, depending on ce prices. elevators costed 10 ce.

I miss health revives, and hate the forge, but otherwise I'm fine with what came out in the massive change, and the sparks of life.

Solo (no one to revive you):
Prior to SoL's
1 death = 10E, 2 death = 30E, 3 death = 80E
SoL = 1 rev = 20E in Haven

After the third death solo, you are spending less with the SoL version.
Soloers that die a lot rejoice with the introduction of SoLs.

Full team:
1 death = teammate loses hp
Full team death = 10E, skip a few... 10 team deaths = 200E, 11 team deaths = 240E.
SoL = 1 rev = 20E in Haven

After the 11th full team death, your team is spending less with the SoL version.
It is a LOT more dangerous with the entire team having lower hp because they kept reviving fallen allies.
Teams that die a lot during a single run rejoice after 11 full team deaths.

My Conclusions
If a team has one player that can solo the run, SoLs are worse off at the expense of the one player that always seems to revive the party.
Some players got used to being the last one standing and soloing everything for the party.
Those players are now happy that teammates are now responsible for their own health/revives.
I'm glad I no longer have to put up with having very low HP because my allies always died.
You can tell I was usually playing this role by my inability to use the spark drops I find.

Also, there's a major flaw with the SoLs: the only way to revive someone is through the PARTY MENU. If you are in the middle of a battle, you will be dead BEFORE finding a time gap to revive your team.

With that said, I don't think it's that bad a trade-off, as before you had to be next to their body in order to revive them. Now you can do it from any location: monster infested or not.

I always hate seeing these threads where people whine about not having people carrying them through levels when they repeatedly die. You get free health up to a decent sized health bar or revive each level. People happily soak up damage in most levels now because of this.

You no longer have shared pills so there is a lot more health to go around from that too. You have a passive pet skill that can boost your defense (or offense) and some nice active ones as well on every pet. There's even an easier difficulty to help a bit more if you are having issues (It's not usually much help if you are failing badly though).

>You no longer have shared pills so there is a lot more health to go around from that too
Actually, less. Sure, each got their own pills, but when you die, your pills and pills that lying around are useless, where when we had shared loot, we could die and drop extra health for knights nearby
>You have a passive pet skill that can boost your defense (or offense) and some nice active ones as well on every pet
Defence. Eeeh. Drakon. Eeeh.
>There's even an easier difficulty to help a bit more if you are having issues (It's not usually much help if you are failing badly though).
There no Offline/Local mode and there no No-Shenanigans mode either.

>After the 11th full team death, your team is spending less with the SoL version.
It is a LOT more dangerous with the entire team having lower hp because they kept reviving fallen allies.
Teams that die a lot during a single run rejoice after 11 full team deaths.

Okay. 10ce for first round, he revives everyone, team at 1/4 health (if possible) pops health capsules, +12HP. That's usually enough. If not, other one revives and does the same.
(Through escalating) 40ce versus 16x20ce sparks for everyone every wipeout. 40ce vs 320ce. And then 80ce. And then 160.

Without mist the previous system would truly suck.
However everyone using their own sparks to revive themselves doesn't promote the team spirit or co-operative play that SK is all about. We now usually revive ourselves and there are no incentive to doing missions with others because they don't really help us.
I am torn on deciding whether I like the new system or not.
I personally find sparks once in hours and hours and hours of elite T3 gameplay, but if sparks are fairly abundant for you, then you probably think the new system is great. If your drop rates aren't so good, you'll miss the old system.

Pill management is pretty easy. Just remember that a dead knight can't eat pills. Eat them before you die and hopefully, you don't die. Don't stockpile them.

Sol may be better in the long run if you solo or doing and thing you will die a lot in but me feel less willing to lend a helping hand to another player. Some people I party with die rather frequently and I want to revive them I can do this easily with friends and guildies but not as easily with random players. In a sense it feel that SoLs keep me from partying with random players and in that sense from meeting new people.

Overall though I've grown used to Sol's (and soloing most of the time) and the only thing that still bugs me is when I die at the end of a level and need to use and spark life even though there a heart pad or health boxes up ahead.

A possible solution to this problem could be to make a pickup that actually revives fallen members with a certain amount of health, they would be rare-ish and are only usefull when partying. They could be bought ahead of time from basil but you can only carry 3 so it not necessarily a replacement for the always useable SoL that restores you to full health while granting you huge attack boost and no to mention it damage and stuns surrounding enemies.

@thread:
...wtf?

Veteran player here: I gain sparks over my regular runs on Elite, and I use them when doing difficult content.

I also see the entire spark system in context of the rest of the changes:
- Loot system change:
Run together with your teammates so you collect loot together

- Difficulty addition: Elite adds more HP than enemies used to have;
Run together with your teammates to kill them faster.

- Battle sprites: Many of them have area-effects.
Run together with your teammates to get the most benefits

- Emergency Rev: More forgiving for some mistakes; If you don't spark, 2 strikes and you're out.
Run together with your teammates to stay alive with teamwork.

- Sparks of Life: Better players are awarded with extra revives, and they can bring back the teammates that die and use theirs. Don't want to use your own sparks?
Run together with your teammates to keep them alive

:|

The whole system is like subtly trying to tell people to stick near each other to prevent bad things from happening (instead of the old system's "fixing the bad things that happened"), but somehow everyone's managed to take it the wrong way lol.

Let me clarify that my points are about how the system seems to be designed to encourage parties to work together, to avoid the very things this thread is complaining about. I'm not making any qualitative claims about whether the old system was better or worse, but how to live effectively with the new system.

That said, I won't respond to points about old vs new system because they're unrelated. And I probably also agree.

> Enemy's hp also scales with the party size. Sometimes it's easier to solo than having a whole party.
Sure, solo has the smallest HP scale, and duo has a forgiveable-enough scale that you can still split up and solo everything, but 3-4 person parties, that scale becomes annoying. But people still seem to push to try to separate from each other in actual parties, instead of at running in at least pairs.

> Most of those AoE effects are either barely effective or simply used solely for the player's self benefit (particularly the Seraphynx's barrier). Nobody ever takes advantage of my valkyrie barrier anyways.
Seraphynx barrier is a weird one because it's one of those things that 'lies' because of latency issues (when you're running with someone, you're actually 1-2 tiles behind them, so most people running with a barrier ... aren't really in it). But that aside, quills and haze, buffs and Heart Attack (I love that move) and Drakon's barrier/firestorm damage/effects are great for keeping health up and battles short when dealing with periodic waves.

> Sparks, revs
Again, all I'm saying is that death is more of a 'costly' mistake now. You outline all the costs related with dying and I don't debate that, but my point is that the new system seems to be designed for actual teamwork while teammates are still alive (running near each other and fighting the same enemies) to prevent death instead of remediating it after it has already happened.

-----

Of course, if everyone plays like before and just split up and try to solo everything, actual teamwork is nonexistent and you're just running a slower, inefficient round with a chatroom so you can talk with other people who happen to be in the same room, and you're punishing yourself for your (or your teammates') deaths by keeping monster HP scaled up when someone's "permanently" down. If you [reader] are staying away from your teammates and then complaining about deaths/lack of cooperative play, that's your own fault.

>This applies to Charred Court and then bugger all. Besides, it only really benefits you if your team-mates are lagging behind. Competent Knights will keep up with you.
But it's still applies. Also, Deconstruction Zones. Also, define competent. And I should just move on with my teammates after clearing a room, leaving the loot?

>This is remedied by the Emergency Revive mechanic and really, if you die twice on the same level with a free 30 HP revival then you would probably just be a burden to those who stayed alive to revive you. Also, here's a cool tip: while in Haven you can purchase a bundle of 10 Sparks of Life from the Supply Depot under Rarities for 200 E, saving you 30 E per Spark!
So, when I die twice because of random stuff going on, being blindsided by something (C42, mortafires), enemies swarming me, not being able to pop a capsule because of enemies or lagging (especially lagging) I should instantly forfeit my party? Even Shadow Lairs? Or pay for something that used to be mostly free (and still overall cheaper)? Don't think that everyone around you is scrubs that should made it in 1.5 lives or leave, that's really mean

>So you're telling me the ability to pass 1-3 pills to another person while dead is better than having 4 times as many pills drop in the first place so everyone already has 3 pills, hence plenty of health, hence not being dead?
You die at same speed wherever you heal or not. You can't overheal. It's still 12 pills per team. Basically, yes.