A survey on the new game mechanics (i.e. Forge) would show the Devs that some of their changes were not for the better. Or were not needed at all.

I personally don't have a problem with the Dark Harvest update. I do however have a problem with most of the changes since and including the UI downgrade.

And I agree, the selectiveness of forum replies by Admins is concerning.

(Note: I love the colors of the UI but the positioning changeup and crown count murder was not necessary. Sadly I'm used to it as normal now)

Yeah, I always click on topics that have that little Admin icon on it. A little more outreach on more pressing SK matters would be appreciated by I'm sure everyone.

But maybe that's just me.

I honestly want to know the reason of the "drop nerf" of radiants fire crystal, 6 crystals at depth 28 per run is really something to say What the...?

but oh well, im with you OP its really lame when you want an answer and they ignored even they dont care to say at least a fake answer or a cheap lie about the "reasons" why is happening this and that. but then a wild newbie appears in the forum and they answer pretty nice since isnt something about a flaw in the game.

I'd like to think the drop rate of Radiants were an unintended bug (much like how CE revives were "removed" from lockdown for a while and how invincibility frames were at one point unintentionally removed from lockdown) and they are curious to see its effects on the game before resolving the issue.

Regarding the forums, there is a separation between the game and the message board itself. The forums are really intended as a means for the players to cultivate discussion among themselves and for the GM/community moderators to make sure everything is civil and tidy.

There is the unfortunate assumption that the forums serve as a way for players to communicate to the developers feedback about the game. It's not. They can't spend 8 hours a day working on the game and then spending the other 8 looking through forums for suggestions and feedback. Their lives, despite how players may want them to, don't revolve around Spiral Knights.

They also work on 7 other games simultaneously.

I believe more often than not, it's the forum moderators who have to report these things upward to the game developers. And I can imagine game developers not being pleased with being bothered with every single complaint on the forums, especially with the mixed threads about how players have too many Radiants and nothing to do with them or too many Eternal orbs, too many/too few Sparks of Life, etc. How can they tell what's legitimate and what's not?

(Filing bug reports is probably the best way to get your messages through to game developers since they all get pretty fast response times and are definitely addressed by personnel who are logged in and play the game. Filing multiple by yourself will just get yourself ignored probably, however if a large number of players were to file bug reports about the same thing, perhaps that would garner some attention... After all, addressing bug reports must surely be a metric they monitor. "Answering forum threads" is not really a metric they probably care about.)

the SK developing team works only on SK. GMs, that serve as the moderators between the community and the developers, are the ones who are directly informed of what the community thinks, while devs are indirectly informed (except Nick, but that's beside the point). practically, GMs say what the community tells them in the forums and with surveys, they crunch the data and give em to the devs. problem is, data is collected regardless of the experience of the knight giving info, so it's not accurate. there may be also SEGA with a sledgehammer in hand watching, so they must be careful.
darny god OOO, just do what is good to the game, not what people want. but you must do it always, not only when you have free time.

here on the forums is not neccessary. you see from the quality of one's posts how he/she understands the game mechanics. on surveys, it could be helpful to better crunch data.

Unfortunately even if you made a topic called "if a developer responds to this I will buy $1000 worth of CE" I doubt they would come out of the woodworks to respond D:

Best time to catch them is shortly after they announce the update since, they have to be on the forums to post it.

@Not-Impressed: You're right, it's definitely less than 7 (closer to 3-4 I think) since a few of those games are not given much attention anymore; but the main point I was making was they do other things outside of SK, both on a professional and lifestyle level.

But in general I believe their priorities lies in the PVE experience and PVP is an afterthought, when in my ideal the PVE would be the "pre-cursor" to a deeper, PVP core game. By encouraging people to play PVP more that alone would spur activity and economy. After all, PVE can only be done so much before you run out of things to do...