Well judging by what you said in your first post "Most of the community is getting sick and tired of the boxes and Custumes (LOOK AT THE FORUMS).", one could assume that many people are indeed F2P due to some of their complaints involving having to pay.

i dunno, might just be me.

Also, i'm pretty sure the majority of players are F2P, with a small minority of players funding the rest via energy sales. So no, you're probably not the only surviving free-to-play player, because there are tons more who still actively play.

Don't you know yet. Phantomhamachi is the last surviving f2p player in Spiral Knights. Please try to keep up.

@Ark/fastdinoturtle:
I'm an F2P player as well (I NEARLY paid money as a token of thanks, but then Fire Crystal drop rates went down and I decided not to support that).

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:; you know, the general idea behind selling things is that you sell things that people are willing to pay for. If it's something that's not high in demand or 'valuable' enough to pay for, it won't sell well. In-game, you can tell those things by how much the energy costs, because when people are purchasing a lot, then energy enters the game and the energy prices go down. They don't profit if they don't make something that people think are worth paying for.

Yeah, for F2P, they need promos and and events to convince people to pay into the game (from the sound of it and looks of the enregy prices, this must have been quite the successful event that players paid a significant amount into). But at some point, both developer ego ("I want to make something cool") and player retention ("I'm bored of this game so I'm gonna stop playing") will take effect and further development goes into the game to appease that.

T3 boss stratum can take at least a month on top of other things they might be working on at the same time and to keep it a 'surprise' or whatever, we won't get any news about them until they're almost done. If they start giving information before it's ready, then we get the community snafu with the gunner update where hype built on hype and then got let down when it got delayed.

Costumes/promos just need a schedule and bam, they exist (so it doesn't get in the way of other things and can be released when they want to). So that said,

Whats wrong with prize boxes? As long as OOO continues making other content, I don't see any issue with them making some boxes on the side. Even if it is excessive.

^

I bought $25 worth of energy around when I started. I guess I'm not f2p.

Do you not realise some of the money goes into adding to this game? So what ever we got added to Spiral Knights so far (don't care if you think it is good or not) came out of thin air. Great. Very clever.

Here have an AKD award for being a nit wit.

Three Rings, as well as every other company, needs to make money to:
A) Pay employees
B) Continue running
C) Pay taxes or other third parties (such as SEGA)

They aren't being greedy, they're simply pumping out content that doesn't change gameplay and requires a purchase with real money to get in. Since aesthetics don't affect gameplay, then there's no reason to complain about them.

Promos are nice, and you aren't obligated to either buy into them or collect every costume. You can if you want, but it won't make you better at the game or anything.

First of all, I kinda agree with the boxes, but the Devs do need the money. Hopefully that gunner update will be as good as it is delayed. Better be good because like all those good big budget games (Bioshock Infinite) got pushed back a couple times and they ended up pretty good. Also, I am still F2P and will keep that title for all eternity! But I actually was thinking of getting an elevator pass during the Mist energy era but my brother rejected my request... so I'm still f2p!