The game is solo-friendly now.

I can't say I don't want it back, but things change. Lots of games have been changed drastically in the past few years. It's just something you have to live with.
/cry

Remember when the integrity of a team was drastically reduced due to that at the time? Wheen everyone could easily get one-shot with only a half of a pip of health to share around the whole team? Sure, revivals back then were technically "infinite", but when it came to reviving with energy, especially in the later tiers... boy did it get costly.

Teamwork - The cooperative or coordinated effort on the part of a group of persons acting together as a team or in the interests of a common cause.

Last I checked, everyone in a party still combines their actions and effort to defeat the same hordes of enemies in a more effective and efficient manner than one person alone could against the same enemies. Therefore, teamwork still exists now just as it did before. The health splitting mechanic was actually incredibly annoying in retrospect. I constantly found myself in danger of dying, not only because of lack of skill, but with constantly reviving that one person who doesn't pull their weight. This new mechanic forces everyone to take responsibility for their own lives, while still contributing to teamwork by pulling aggro from other enemies, kiting them, supporting with other weapons, and, you know, team stuff.

Furthermore, the Shroud of the Apocrea mission was most effective in a group of 4 than solo. Why? More people covering more ground getting more tokens, being able to assist your teammates by locating souls and puzzles, cooperating by communication. OOO even encouraged you to run in parties than go solo.

You know what would be even more efficient? Not dying in the first place.
Know how you can practice doing that? Playing on Normal, and not blowing a spark for every death. You're not -required- to use them, after all. Just run another gate, or start another run. Unless you're in a Shadow Lair. But why would you be doing that at all if you're practicing deathless runs?

We're forced to pay for sparks (as they're HARDLY ever found)

I want to slap people who think Sparks are rare.

Do the Arcade on Elite.

Too hard?

I have a solution for that.
1. Do Vana until you have enough crowns to make an all-around setup.
2. Do the Arcade on Elite.

They are in no way, shape, or form 'rare'. If anything they're still too common, but that's up to debate.

Story time:
After the Sprite update, I had about 80 Sparks, but then I quit playing for two months.
I came back about a week before the Radiant drought started.
I got up to 101 Sparks.
Then the Apocrea came.
Afterwards, I had a whopping 48 Sparks of Life.
As I am currently typing this out, I am sitting here with 111 Sparks of Life.
Want a screenshot?
http://i.imgur.com/sqmfYrn.png
Guess what I did today in one run of the Arcade from Depth 18 to 29?
http://i.imgur.com/Ukp1NLO.png
So far today, I have gotten 4 Eternals, 7 Sparks of Life, and an Elite Orb.

Sparks of Life are way too common in my opinion.

Stop doing boss runs, and instead just do the darn Arcade. You'll be a lot happier since you're not running the same exact thing over and over again, and you get a ton of good drops to boot.

Have a nice day.

@ Dibsville

I don't know what you're talking about. I only get 1-3 on a T3 Elite Arcade, and right now I have 15 sparks. (I stopped playing for a while after the Apocorean, hence why I'm low.)

Sparks of life are way too common for some; spend none regardless.
Sparks of life are tough to find for some; spend all regardless.

The majority of regards I see of sparks being too common are by people who possess a measure of skill to avoid death enough to spend sparks. But does that opinion represent the majority of the players? Don't know. Don't care. None of my actual in game concerns are represented here.

To cut down my abundance, I spent them on others, mainly those who did not ask. No regret behind it. If I recognized a pattern leading to the other player's many deaths, I would try to provide whatever word of advice I could to help them stave off death in hopes that there will be no next time. If not that then, providing they don't mind, I would ask the dead to take note of how one of the other players that are still kicking are handling themselves as an example. I find that some appreciate it, especially if it is effective.

However, since I have received the same kind of guidance and care, I suppose I wanted to pay my respects to them by doing the same with those who needed some sort of help. To each his/her own. Yet it is disheartening to see either someone forcefully removed or discouraged when they can no longer pull their own weight as I do not mind carrying for as long as I know they were trying.

With the old revival system, I felt as if a consensus could be better reached as to how to handle floors, be it a team composed of all skilled players or green horns, if not know when to fold them. Even with the health sharing there were some, including myself, who asked to not be revived because their heat was important.

[I feel like I could keep droning on but I'll stop here]

I miss the health sharing system. And I learned from my downs when I was downed, providing that lag (or latency) was not the culprit. Some just learn slower than others.

As a matter of fact, I play T3 Elite all the time. Arcade and FSC. Today I found the first spark in 3 weeks.

Common? I think not.

I got 13 Sparks today.
Want to ask all the people who did runs with me and saw me say "Spark" every time I got a Spark drop?
And the people who literally took the time to scroll down and look at my Sparks just because I wanted to prove a point to people who think they're not common? (I wanted someone else to see that I wasn't lying about it just to make it seem like they were common. Then again, everyone else got as many Sparks as I did, so it's pretty useless anyway).

Stop running FSC.

Stop.
Running.
FSC.

Stop.
Running.
FSC.

BTW what the heck do THOSE "FSC" initials stand for?
I have absolutely no idea, those were just the the first images that came up when I googled "stop", "running", and "fsc". I just went with it.

Is the rarity of the SoL are validated by your experience and observation with your ranking to take into account? Because, if that's the case, I can say within the past two months, I've found only three Sparks of Life. If I were to play the game as frequently as some of you or as infrequently as others, should the experience of your find be reflective upon my own?

I only ask because now a days I do not find sparks at such a rate of which many of you speak, disregarding the abundance I had prior to the Apocrea mission. Should I run FSC all day every day? Should I run clockworks for every time I log in? Or should I just follow you all in hopes that I find sparks as frequently as some of the above mentions?

Is there any assessment for how many Sparks of Life drops are found per hour within missions or clockworks? Has anyone actually ran those numbers? Or are we just going off of what is being said in such threads as this one or other threads which speak of the change in their drop rate per update? Also can SoL have other uses such as opening energy gates or activating downed mecha-knights?

-Sparks are only too common for people with too much free time. For people who play only an hour or two a day, the drop rate is fine. For people who only place a few times a week or a month, it might seem low, but really you're not playing frequently enough for the system to do its work. You want to get more drops, you have to work for them.

-the new revive system is only more punishing for people who play in parties and die a lot.

-Better picture of FSC.

-buying 20 revives for 16kcr is actually very reasonable, given the amount of deaths you should be able to get 16k in. (definitely less than 10 no matter your progress in the game, provided you don't do anything stupid.) (probably more like 5.)

How to explain this...

Spark of life and other rarities are easily found on Treasure Vaults map, and always HAVE BEEN. It's a Treasure vault with 20+ boxes in it, you are bound to find them.

They are pretty common as I have 200+ and never dropped below 200 once I hitted it. My friend is at 400+ Spark and the only reason is because we ran Treasure Vaults runs for Shinning/Radiants and Spark (just after the update, I mean, who would farm cr when you can stock up on rarities? while making cr)

The only people I see w/o Sparks are the one farming post-missions. And the only people with sparks are the one who knows the Arcade..

You know you can do Vana in 4* with Arcade? While passing along 1 Treasure vault (at least, if not 3) from 18 to 28?

no?

oh well

Honestly the worst part of the removal of health split revives was just that it invalidated all the symbolic fanart. The game itself isn't really too broke' because of the new revive system. In the very least, you have to admit there are bigger things regarding the new "let's all solo" attitude.

There were problems with the system, namely sharing single plips and having some guy run in circles around vannaduke for an hour only to slip up and lose (Me!) causing everyone to have been robbed of 30 minutes time.

Personally I think that there should have just been a high minimum-HP requirement for splitting. You should have at least half of your own health in order to split. Health splitting is to help people when they end up taking more fire than you, not for hanging on when you're bound to fail and have someone rage-team-revive afterward.

Here's what you do to gain advantages from the sparks.

1) Buy SoLs from the depot/grind Arcade or EFSC.

2) Find a way to kill someone w/o an ER (shieldbump a Jelly Cube, Fire Pot/Magma Driver some oil, etc.).

3) Offer to revive for 2-3kcr each time.

4) ???

5) Profit!

SoLs in the depot (assuming 100CE=8kcr) are worth 1.6kcr each (and 1.8k each with currect CE prices). That means an EFSC run gives 4-6 SoLs in pure cr, assuming no revives or heat, crystals, minerals, orbs, materials, sparks, or equipment drops from boxes or monsters. You can add an extra two sparks from the Almiran Seals. Can't do EFSC? A few JK runs should start you off!

What I mean by this is that SoLs are not really rare or expensive, it's just that they don't drop or cost derpbillion CE just for a few, and it still benefits both the devs and the WHOLE community. I'll find a way to make Radiants as a wild card from this later.

uh.

This was "teamwork" before sparks:
- Everyone for themselves
- Leech players die, living players run to steal heat for themselves, if they need it.
- Someone brings an alt along to farm for crowns and kills it at the beginning of the stage to revive it at the end, since all the drops get distributed.
- Skilled players recognize the leeches/alts and refuse to revive them til the end of the stage because they're just stealing health.
- Players don't really care for each other until their healths start to get low, so they tend to fight different monsters anyway.
- If the entire team dies, one person would volunteer to revive (or a richer player will revive the person with least deaths) and they'd health-revive each person, possibly in order of importance/skill.

Teamwork after sparks:
- Everyone for themselves
- Leech players die and stay dead
- No more alts unless the owner wants to use sparks and run them around, lol.
- Skilled players recognize the leeches and make their own decision to whether or not they want to use a spark to revive them (or they leave).
- Skilled players might watch for each other by fighting the same monsters for safety so they don't waste their own sparks.
- If the entire team dies, each person has to self-revive (or a richer player will revive the others).

If anything, I think the new system SHOULD promote more teamwork. By making it so drops are per-individual, it should encourage people to stick near each other and fight the same monsters (you know, negating the monster HP-increase from having more people around and while making it safer for everyone with their pet skills), because it kills them quicker and is safer. Since you get one free revive per floor, it should make safety and working together a little more important.

Did people somehow miss the point? >_>

So you want to discourage team play by having mats not be duplicated like it is now? Remember when tokens and the like didn't come to you? Remember when everyone got the same crowns and hearts? Remember when a +18 vitapod and a stack of pills and capsules were sitting right there but someone just takes it from you? Do you want all that again?

Oh, gotcha.

But if we could rev eachother like before, what would balance it out?

Please stop saying... That word. I'm already getting a bad vibe from this ;-;

Don't blame you there, Whim. I don't party with anyone but my trusted confidants anymore. People I've befriended and are familiar with. We all share a synergy and hivemind, so we know exactly what to do, what to attack, and who to help when they need it. We each are built in a certain way, so we know which roles we have to fill in order to minimize death~

I don't think the teamwork aspect's left the game at all :<

this is for you
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OZRo5xVfNrI

For once, I actually agree with you.

Another thing are these "silent rich vanguards". They're not bad, but in some cases they can be.

An example would be back in Apocrea, someone would sit at the elevator while everyone gets sigils and their faces stared off (refer to here)

Another example is that they most of the time won't let you execute good tactics in parties. Like in FSC, i use the shiv's damage to kill that one last slag so i can charge up my Blitz to blam the trojans.

And as their name goes, the mostly if not never talk at all. They just go along with it without a care in the world.

Again, nothing bad, but it can be. Another reason why I like solo. More freedom and control.

ليه ماتفرجتش علي الفيديو اللي بعتلك اللينك بتاعه؟

You know Arabic? Because that's not what I said but that's what I'm thinking