I have been wanting to write this for a while now, but it hasn't been until recently that my thoughts have become a bit more coherent, and while I don't know how often GH developers check these forums, I still wanted to try and if possible help others who, like me, were extremely bitter about the state of the game.

I want to start of by saying my thoughts on the game and its developers some years ago were negative and in most cases toxic, which led to me saying things and behaving in ways that I now regret.

Now the only thing I want is to show appreciation to the game and the effort Grey Havens is putting into changing things for the better, even if it is at a relatively slow pace considering how some changes have been long coming. I have been making good use of the new commands to move from place to place in Haven/Ready Room and now my relatively big screen no longer causes the UI to be so small I need a magnifying glass to see which button I am pressing, and I am amazing at the fact we now have custom PvP maps alongside a completely new PvP mode, which, while PvP as a whole is extremely unbalanced and not as popular as PvE, has managed to get me to have fun with the game again.

It is a shame all of this came at a relatively bad time for me as I have been unemployed since recently, and I have been wanting to actually support the game by giving a bit of cash from time to time, which I'd argue is relatively impressive considering I hate nearly all sorts of microtransactions and so much of the money-first design a lot of games seem to be taking now a days that Spiral Knights also has.

All of this said, though, I feel rather worried for the future of the game, even now that I am much more hopeful. There are plenty of bugs and questionable design choices plaguing this game that seem either hard to fix or nearly impossible to solve due to the nature of the game itself, and the game is so old now that I find it very unlikely for this game to stay online and healthy while getting everything fixed.
Constant server lag spikes (which I heard it is being looked at already, at least), BK and Mixmaster/Orbitgun being overpowered and hard to balance due to their ties with economy, monetization and obtainability, overall weapon and armor balance being a mess, the new player experience being mediocre at best, the end game being very lacking in terms of what you can farm/focus on when there are no events online, the already mentioned PvP modes being heavily unbalanced (outside of Blast Network, anyways), bugs like Seraphynx shield not working well when frozen or not being able to join a recently-made public party and having to be invited... And there's probably a whole lot more that doesn't come to mind immediately because I have played this game for so long I subconsciously consider them features at this point hahahaha.

Hopefully this last part doesn't come as my complaining too much or being overly negative despite this supposing to be a relatively positive message, I really appreciate the effort put into the game this far, and I can't wait to see what else we'll get in the future!

As my last point/section/whatever you wanna call this, I'd like to address the community, specifically those who had similar frustrations regarding the current state of this game: I won't lie to you and say that things are better in every way. Yes, things are probably never going to be the same as how they where in the past because lightning doesn't strike twice in the same place (or at the very least, it can only happen in very specific circumstances), yes, Grey Havens has done a decent amount of damage to the community in the past and we should not forget that. But being bitter about it, acting in toxic ways and/or hoping for the game to finally die is not a solution, or at least not a good one, anyways, and will likely leave you feeling emotionally burned out by the end.
If you want some advice, try new things: play other games (Steam and Itch.io has plenty of those, plenty of interesting and free ones in the later website!), try to interact with Spiral Knights in different ways (for example, my main focus has been to make builds by restricting BK and Chaos usage alongside helping new or struggling players overall while trying to make em happy) and, most importantly, try to find a place to belong to and improve as a person (and if you can, try to distance yourself from places that can negatively impact your mental health, a couple of years ago I was probably way too much into social medias like Twitter, and ever since I replaced it with less algorithm-heavy alternatives, I've been feeling a lot better about myself).
I can't say this will make everyone happy or that it is a flawless solution, nor that I have personally managed to do all of these things in consistent ways, but so far I have personally been happier overall, and I'd like to think my mentality has changed for the better of both myself and the people around me.

Have a good one people, and see you in the clockworks!
And thanks again Grey Havens staff for giving this game an other spin, I hope these efforts continue and are appropriately rewarded in time.