Promotions - Lifeline of Spiral Knights. Only rescue to run servers. Those are very important of element of Spiral Knights, and so they're made in wrong way.
As the last line of defence before apparent failure, this element should be changed, because current way of promotion is full of holes, shows lack of care and seems to make game money-suck at all. Dear Three Rings, there's no need to be logistician to know it needs to be changed.
1. Target
The biggest problem of promotions is that those are aimed into whales - Players that can throw much money into game to be able draw the rarest of items and not even use it - sell it.
One precent odds are worst thing that can be used in making promitons - Promotions are cosmetics, but instead of making players look, they need to sell them, because it's almost impossible to get an wanted item from box, when <1% is its odd.
Aim promotions to poorer people, that want to look cooler and are able to give some money for game, but not hundreds of dollars.
2. High probablity of loss
Some of promotions after opening one single box will just leave customer dissapointed, because buying raw energy would repay more, item is bad, or just cheap - Making customer dissapointed is unacceptable when you sell something, and everyone who sell anything should know it.
Bad things that nobody wants shouldn't be in boxes - Who would buy Bolted Vee for price worth my few dollars?
Also, there should be things like consolation prizes - Example is Neverwinter Online, when on lockbox there was money pack that repaid price of box opening in 90% instead of making player dissapointed. Something like this could be in Spiral Knights - Why not add 10% of additional item; Energy tank, which would give player some energy?
3. Only one distribution way
Three Rings forgot about adding boxes to Energy Purchases or Supply Depot - a lot of players would like to see this here again and a lot of players loved to buy boxes with energy. There is no need of thinking about OOO's loss or no - they just can make those at least one per month or two.
This way surely enocourages diffrent type of players to buy box.
4. Unfairness - Unique equipment in boxes
5. Short time
Pay to win games... pay to win games everywhere. That's worst type of MMOs and no serious and self-respecting gamer will play these.
Before those boxes there was no way to call Spiral Knights P2W, so don't change it into this crap, I beg.
There's a lot of ways to put unique cosmetics in game and make it available for everyone - not whales that can pay 2 millions for unique weapon.
From crafting in other skin, by event one, to making it droppable.
Also good method is putting it permamently or at long time to energy depot for $$$ for longer time - Like Starter Pack and make it tradeable.
All promos now are two-weeks only and that's horrible if you put something gameplay-changing into it. It's ok when you miss cosmetic, but actuall weapon or defense item makes here an problem. Also DLCs page is almost empty since you deleted few packs year ago. Maybe think about making it full, huh? It's money after all and it's A LOT better option to put gear into Item Shop.
PS - Overcharged Mixmaster still awaits for its fix.
6. Lack of seriousness
Maybe it's only mine personal opinion, but it's hard to be serious knight and rescue someone in serious way when you are pink bunny, seriously.
This game is called Spiral Knights. We're Knights of Spiral Order and We're here to rescue whole race and We should look knight-y.
7. Self-promotion, lore, microcontent
Some players don't even know about promotion occurring, some are not interesed, some wants at least little piece of content. For example - One of recent promotions metions group of Scarlet Scouts, which is nonexistent in game. Why not add temporary microupdate adding those knights to haven for a while, or make simple scenario room with them? You could even make rare pickup drop with scarlet scout that works exactly as Ranger Signal Flare, because why not? Eye candy for everyone and makes some of bored knights want to explore again and meet anything new in real game. And remember - it's not fashion game, but exploration and fighting one still.
That's all from me. Probably won't change anything, but was worth trying.
#6 and #7 cracked me up. I understand that this is an action game, but I have to say the adventure isn't there. Almost every treasure is lying there for you to grab. There are too few things to discover, too few secret rooms, too few interesting encounters (tortodrones which got moved into a separate event and jelly green giant would make great mini boss). This game has lost its luster in my opinion as an adventure game.
But also about the main topic that this is not a dress up game, when you search spiral knights in wikipedia.org, it describes the game as "The game's visual style has been called "adorable" and "cutesy"" ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spiral_Knights ) Which means that the knights visual presentation and to the monsters and everything else in the game will be converted and portrayed in that sense (adorable and cutesy). And most players I have encountered love this game for the fact that it adopted this art style. This means our armors, our weapons and more will all adopt that visual presentation. So whether were wearing a pink or a dress or even a clown outfit, were all still cute knights of the spiral knight order.
I have some more comments, but that's all for now. also, you are right, it's sad that the game has gone pay to win.