Foul language is not permitted here. Linking to it doesn't justify it.

As for all the UVs and stuff, I disagree. People don't get good because they get expensive UVs, it's the other way around. People who enjoy Lockdown and dedicate a lot of time to it want to improve further and thus, they get better gear. It's like anything else that involves skill and equipment. Let's take Bill Steer, for example. He's a guitarist in (be warned, the following link links to death metal) Carcass. Does he play well because he has a super expensive guitar or does he have a super expensive guitar because he plays well and thought of it as a good investment that could get him a better sound?

You just showcased that you aren't good at LD.
This is the 1000th thread where I get to say the following sentence:

Give a pro vanilla weaps, they will still be pro. Give a noob ASI everything, they'll still be noob.

Writing rants at the point where you snapped is a bad idea. There's usually not a lot of subjective info in them.
So here's a suggestion: instead of you having d***-envy of the people with great gear, invest that energy in actually training yourself, or saving up for gear.

UVs are affordable to F2P players too. If you want ASI med on something, you just need to do a bit of grinding to get it. It's not much at all.

Time isn't free, either, and it takes time being a free to play player. Also takes a load more patience and effort than forking over a credit card number, though. Can even give you a sense of accomplishment and self-gratification if you feel that you've worked hard for your shiny new toy.

The best is when you could be up all night to get lucky.

if I remember correctly you're the guy that spams combos in T3 with a GF and a BTB..so..hypocrisy much? don't think I've ever seen you shield-cancel.
Anyway, krakob is exactly right. You don't get good by using ASI VH stuff, your overall skill doesn't increase, but your power does. The weak players who do spam that stuff might get damage off , but thnoobsey get obliterated in a 1v1 against someone who actually has skill.

it'd be pay to win if UVs were an exclusive feature of dropping a credit card on the game; as it is, they're still readily available to anyone with a significant interest in getting them, even without rolling at all if you're truly a penny pincher

spend a few hours grinding in T1 up to possibly the start of T2 (aka stratum 3, since any time i mention stratums to newer players they act like i'm nuts) and you have a decent chance of getting the orbs of alchemy needed to craft a 2* weapon that you're after. chances are, you'll also get the mats you need to craft it as well, along with the crowns to craft even if you're speed-running through depths to get boxes and find danger rooms. boom, essentially free crafting with a chance to get a UV off of an item!

now, assuming you only get an orb of alchemy every three depths on average, and you clear approximately 18 depths in the span of two hours total (assuming one has basic 4*/5* gear at this point, which i'm assuming you do since you're complaining about lockdown instead of looking beyond T3 and realizing T2 is largely what you're looking for in a pvp environment), you should average about 6 orbs in that two hour period.

from there, you can craft two weapons of your choice and, you guessed it, have a chance for getting a UV. if you get no UV, you can vendor those weapons for 750 cr per weapon, which adds up to 1500 cr back in your pocket, and that's if you're gonna be incredibly lazy and just vendor them as opposed to selling them in haven for a modest markup of 1k cr per item, which i've done countless times. if you do get UVs and don't like them, that's what the auction house is for. and if you're fortunate and get the UV you were hoping for, then voila. that's money you didn't spend on rolling.

yet by your logic regarding UVs, that would still be calling you P2W, since you would eventually be getting asi/ctr UVs and subsequently swinging them around just the same as the people you're ranting about - but wait, you'd also have the self-entitlement to claim that at least you "didn't buy your skill" in a minigame that, as several have pointed out, is just a minigame.

yeah, i get that LD promotes a competitive environment between players, and yeah, i also get that people get high and mighty over what amounts to be a simple game of numbers - but feeding into it with the trite, holier-than-thou attitude just makes you the same thing you're complaining about, with the only difference being that you blame your attitude on lack of gear while you blame everyone else's attitude on having gear.

you'll have to forgive me if i don't see the point of you linking to tvtropes to describe a small portion of the LD community - many of which don't even frequent the forums - when the most anyone's done is essentially told you to calm your tits over something so menial, and listed out ways to where you might find a bit of relief without having to go digging in couch cushions for loose change.

completely disregarding that though, if you're going to generalize the entire LD sub-community by the attitudes of a handful of people, then what exactly are you proving other than the fact that at least in your case, they're right? the fact of the matter is, you win some and you lose some. coming on here to complain about it where, even by your own admission, it'll probably fall on deaf ears because you don't have a number next to your name, isn't going to solve much. but even with that in mind, i think a majority of the people who've posted in this thread thus far haven't even tried to argue that LD is a game that's meant to be competitive; in fact, the closest anyone's come to associating one with the other is when i said that it has a tendency to breed competition between players, and even then i've wholeheartedly acknowledged that it's also a minigame and isn't designed for that level of competition. and - here's the real kicker - what's best about all of that, is that many of these players posting right now (i.e. giving you alternatives to consider) are the ones who are playing regularly, and are some of the supposed "swinging their ASI VH Gran Fausts, Divine Avengers, Final Flourishes, Barbarous Thorn Blades and Deadly Candy Pokers" (except in seiran's case, he's got dem boomboompewpews that do it instead)

ultimately, i don't think this is a case of us taking the game too seriously, but rather a case of you taking the losses too seriously. every game's different, and every playstyle varies in some way, shape, or form. someone i've lost to today could very well be on the losing team tomorrow, and conversely, someone i've run through today may very well kick me to the curb tomorrow.

there's really no other explanation other than "let it go". if you're letting a series of matches in a game upset you to the point of typing up strongly-worded paragraphs on a blog and then linking it here, then i think the least of anyone's worries is "how we're going to balance a game to get one person back".

you don't need to spend money on the game to get UVs. I haven't spent a penny and have asi vh ff/gf, bkc, and shadow max ancient plate mail. i'm not here to brag, rather here to say that if you're going to complain for not having an end-game feature that is meant for only the most serious players, then sorry, but you're just lazy. Most games have that end-game content that's really hard to get, and in spiral knights, that's UVs. The only difference is that in SK, you have the option of spending real money for that content.

Also without that temptation to buy energy, nobody would buy it -> OOO gets no money -> players get no updates

Yeah, more like the entire community because you're all just crybabies who suck the fun out of videogames because you think it's "entertainment" to you WELL WAKE-UP CALL IT'S NOT.

You're calling us crybabies in your whiney rant thread? Funny.
Last time I checked we were playing LD and having fun at it, instead of what essentially amounts to complaining because you're losing.

> FSC is for nubbs. Merchanting is OP
I don't merchant; this is why I'm poor :(

> one, generalizing vana to a 45 minute run to completion is hilarious considering i've gone with people who run it in under 30 mins and do so on a regular basis, which cuts your suggestion down by a third in terms of time investment alone

Under 30 mins is a little tougher now with the one-way gates and forced-monster rooms: we've lost one of the '10 second rooms' where we could skip monsters in d25. 45 -60 minutes is fair for a pub FSC run though.

__

You know what though, I'm starting to feel for the OP - this is a more pressing topic but it's hard for new players like Phantomhamachi to get into Lockdown. It's not an issue that has anything to do with it being pay to win - he's just naive on that point because he's new and doesn't see things like movement patterns and prediction as part of anything and just calls blame on it (he can easily just go around and blame "AT" or "spam").

But really, it's an issue of experience.

I have two friends who are really trying to get into it - they're still experimenting with things, but when they run into those rooms with 1-2 seasoned PKers wiping their teams out of boredom, it's easy for them to feel like they're jumping into a pool of sharks, feel like they won't ever improve to that point, and just stop, as Phantomhamachi did. To that same point, I sometimes try to use weapons I'm not as familiar with (3-hit swords) and running into those guys makes me have to revert to being a PKK for the sake of the rest of the team so they can get some playtime outside of base.

> BN > LD

In a similar way, I used to play Blast Network when it had just come out (and I disappeared from SK a month or two later), and was probably "upper-middle tiered" in terms of skill in that game (I had played Bomberman Online a LOT years ago and a lot of the mind games/movements are similar, though BN focuses on racking up points in FFA while BBM focused on survival and '1v1' situations).

Now, it's mostly a graveyard, but I do play it every once in a while now (when I see people playing :\ ). Just like Lockdown, there are a bunch of admittedly amazing players now that, if they don't hold back, lose the people they're playing with. In BN, the issue of losing players is much more apparent (it's hard enough to find anyone to play with- once you find them, you don't want to lose them), so you're more likely to find players there that hold back or give tips to newer ones. At the same time, you run into the same issue of people who just silently go around racking points by "spamming" and clearing rows with max fire or skilled trappers who send you to inescapable death.

Remembering that...
I feel sorry for you if you think you'll escape the issue of veterans wiping the floor with newbies by running to BN lol.