Clockworks are designed to perpetually keep players busy, due to the constant randomization of levels. Many, however, are similar and after you play for a while, even prior to being an end-game player, they blur in with each other and become recognizable. So...they added in PvP.

But PvP sucks unless you have UVs and trinkets (LD), and BN is a ping test, so if your internet is experiencing a down-time, you're screwed.

So..exploring the surface of the planet may not be a bad idea. Since "The Core" (When opened) will likely be the final fron*tier* (Haw haw), they may resort to this.

ALTHOUGH: There would have to be minerals and such on the surface of the planet. I mean, it'd be useless to waste Knights on the surface when it doesn't help them repair their ship (lore).

If this were implemented, I'd suggest it would be part of the Missions system, exploring the surface in search for different/more minerals. But there may be lore clashes...

~Sev

"final fron*tier* "

AWESOME

Elevators run on energy.
What about the surface of the planet? Nothing to do with energy right?

I think that this should be like "Survival/Arena mode", where you explore the surface of the planet (Notice that monsters dont drop any coins)
And so meanwhile exploring you get to discover Lore, Minerals and Treasure boxes and so on more stuff.
But, to go on the wild places of cradle you need to pay 1000 crowns to a knight, so he can open the gate from Haven to craddle for you.

1) Why do monster not drop coins? Are you insane?
No, if monster would drop coins, then this would COMPLETLY replce clockworks, I dont think OOO would like that to happen.

2) Can I invite friends?
Yes, 7 Friends (8 people partys)

3) So it would be a super huge exploration map?
No, They are separate small maps (average size: Normal clockwork tunnels map) and so when you are exploring, You can find various exits that can send you to various places.

4) But hey, OOO is working on the mission system, let them work on that first.
I think that this would be an exellent way to support the Mission system, your missions can be "Rescue the lost knights", and so exploring you can find those knigths, and so they would have to follow you home (Like a mecha knight), or so "Find the missing part of the Broken elevators" and so on.

5) What else?
You also get to find Basil on the wild lands of cradle, theres a 33.33% Chance of getting T1 Recipes, same with T2 and T3 recipes

Well thats what it comes to my mind about the outsides of cradle.

Some kind of mask that needs mist/energy

But I think that it would make it too Clockworks alike

I think that this should be an alternative for those players who want to play the game, but ran out of mist and cant do anything on the game
By just spending 1000cr's they can have as much fun as they can, as long as they dont die.

Oh, neat!
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@Sev:
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Tiers:
As far as difficulty tiers are concerned, by sectioning off parts of the theoretical world map, I guess you could preserve the depth idea and perhaps even the stratum idea and also solve the "Overworld won't make sense" problem by simply making the huge explorable map a strip mine of colossal magnitude. That would allow for the same tier-based setup and so forth, but it seems redundant to me to section the huge map off into areas designated for higher- or lower-tiered players when we can just run around in the clockworks already. This is why I suggested a more dynamic pattern of mob spawns - to keep it challenging without imposing invisible walls (or visible, whatever) on people.

Revives and Pokecenters:
It never occurred to me somehow that there could be more rescue camps/recon areas/crash sites. I guess you could spawn at the last one you successfully rested in or something like that, but that system still leaves me with a feeling of something to be desired, as there's no reliable way to revive yourself beyond having good teammates, which are not only hard to come across in general, but also more or less running on the same healing that you are, even though the hearts are instanced per player. Smaller scale levels in the clockworks with regular healing terminals work really well for keeping parties together when not everyone in the group is dodging bullets like the matrix and dancing circles around the mobs; I might be fine with very limited healing on a six-hour trek through the overworld, but most of these pubs would get slaughtered without the regularly placed healing pads.

Overworld Theming:
Touching again on the Overworld Stratum problem - this would be a lot easier to address if Spiral Knights maps were constructed in a fashion that was slightly more friendly to three-dimensional travel mechanics. The only overs-and-unders I've really seen so far that even allow you to take advantage of terrain features like ramps or stairs have been pretty helpful, but they're few and far between, and I don't see that changing in the near future. Dropping all of these various themes on a big flat plane just doesn't seem like it would work well.

Theoretically, I guess it's not too far of a stretch to take the Pokemon approach (which Canozo suggested) and simply section the world map off into different areas by using the Mt. Moon protocol and forcing dungeons between A and B (like what was done with the rescue camp and Haven) which would also solve our Tier Problem (possibly) - but that still leaves the lore logistics of what the hell this ugly Clefairy is throwing office chairs at me for, because I'm pretty sure Fiends live in the underworld, not on the surface, etc.

Solo/Social play and Instancing:
As for going solo, there's also things to address like kicking obnoxious or incompetent/afk party (is it even a party?) members, which can't really be done if it's just an open environment, right? Also kind of defeats party buttons, which are a very very very nifty game mechanic that I would hate to see discarded. What about things like buttons/switches that drop gates? Would these have to be instanced per player? Leaving one big map open all the time for people to meander around in seems like it would pose a lot of instancing issues. I can't help but feel as though it would also pose the same problems that you see in games like WoW or Runescape where people who don't know the meaning of social interaction sit in the same spot killing the same enemy for hours and hours for that one rare drop, or for the common drops, whatever. (This could theoretically be solved by ramping up enemies over time if a party stays in an area, but it would definitely need to be addressed somehow.)

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@Canozo:
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Energy:
Can't really make an argument for "It requires energy to stay on the surface" when you have a mist tank designed to pull energy from the air. (Atgatg mentioned the surface being bad - which doesn't fit with the lore at all, otherwise this might work.) It makes sense to me that the alternative to this is placing energy gates and elevators everywhere, or lots and lots of Mecha Knights and AutoTurrets, which would only underline the instancing problem. Scrapping the energy system entirely would be a bad idea, and I'm pretty sure I don't need to explain why.

Crowns:
I don't feel that removing crowns from possible loot on the surface is going to do anything but increase the chances of getting other stuff, or just having way too much heat. I don't see any reason the surface shouldn't be a profitable place to be - if it provides a different experience, some players will like it more, and some won't. As for sectioning it off in a fashion that requires the opening of a gate with crowns exclusively - definitely not. That sets a very dangerous money-driven precedent with the potential to make a lot of players angry. Sure, the starter gate being a thousand crowns doesn't seem so bad, but higher prices for farther gates would quickly stack up, especially if they were set up in a fashion where you had to pay every time, which you didn't really clarify on. I'm all for discovering lore and quiet little groves full of treasure boxes, though, and I'd love to see more things like that implemented in the clockworks, too (which will probably happen with the coming missions system).

Friends:
I'm pretty sure the party member limit is imposed for network reasons, and/or to make sure a GM has a slot if they need to pop in and fix something. Eight-person parties don't seem like a bad idea for a much larger and potentially more dangerous overworld, but with bullets and stuff flying around that might get a little bulky - which is another thing to address in general. How many players should an overworld be allowed to hold? Haven is easy because nothing is actually happening - but if you had an entire Haven worth of players swinging swords, shooting guns, making mobs angry, etc - you'd probably need a bomb-diggity connection just to try to participate, let alone be useful in any kind of fight. Purely speculation though - correct me if I'm wrong.

Branched paths with alternate exits:
This would be amazing for the Clockworks. Whether or not dividing areas into smaller themed levels for an overworld is a good idea is still to be determined, but compartmentalization like that might not be a bad idea, especially when you consider that each map loads from a tileset to save memory, and having all the themes on the same map would require all of that to be loaded at once. Switching out the planet surface idea with a bunch of smaller, sectioned-off areas seems like a bit of a harsh turn on the idea, but the alternate exit concept really expands the possibilities for where you could take a party, especially if the surface, like the Clockworks, has that random-generation aspect. Perhaps instead of elevators going down, the surface of the planet could be a series of interlocking, sliding plates? Energy gates on connecting bridges, or just requiring energy to extend the bridges from level to level would make an excellent energy sink, and putting places to rest and recover among the alternate exit paths would give players a place to log out and recharge, perhaps. Figuring out how to make a map that accurately displays the world would be a nightmare, but just seeing how far you could get in a direction full of moving land-islands would be a neat concept to consider.

Up-and-Coming mission system:
ThreeRings is definitely working on a mission system. If it incorporates some of these elements I will be pleased.

Strangers on Cradle:
Snipes too. There's also the chance of finding all sorts of other stuff that we don't know about yet - it's an unexplored (by the Order, at least) planet. Putting Strangers in the proposed resting points wouldn't be a bad idea.

Some closing thoughts:
There is, however, one glaring flaw in the concept of providing alternate exits, rescue camps, resting spots, the surface in general, etc. These things can't just simply disappear. A huge part of what makes Spiral Knights different from so many other games is how dynamic the Clockworks' structure is, and adding more areas that are (more or less) permanent seems like a move in the opposite direction. Expanding on Haven would be easy to do, but adding more places that serve the same purpose just because you're way out in a map somewhere seems kind of silly. I see the value in changing your respawn point to be somewhere else because of where you want to be in the overworld / on the surface, but I also feel that it would be a parallel to allowing players to simply start their tier-3 trek at the terminal before FSC (which some jerks do anyway, but oh well). If there was a way to properly implement the same dynamic design into the surface of the planet while expanding upon the size and depth of the current map designs, a very happy compromise could probably be made that worked out for everyone, but even if that happened - there would still be instancing problems, and even if the dev team wanted more than anything to implement a big beautiful surface for us to run around on, it would still take forever for a competent team of people working around the clock to create the assets needed for it.

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@Nacho:
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Cows:
Perhaps instead of a Treasure Vault / Graveyard equivalent, one might come across a Stranger's ranch. It might be a Snipe ranch, though, so you would need to probably visit several before you find these things that you're looking for that nobody seems to know what they are.