Spiral Knights - Sparks of Life

Sparks of Life

8 replies [Last post]

Sat, 03/01/2014 - 06:30

Putkinen

Every single consecutive death within the same level should double the amount of Sparks of Life consumed upon revival. The current event has made it pretty clear that if nothing is done, all future content will have to be designed around infinite respawns. Facerolling through the stupidly unfair fight a few times still has me left with hundreds of the damn things. Mission success should not hinge upon grinding for limitless respawn tokens. The old system of energy revivals quickly got so expensive that the player had to actually admit defeat, something that is no longer true.

Oh, heck, if you wanna be crude, you could just cap how many you can carry to 10 or something and only allow more to be purchased at Arsenal Stations. If your goal for the things was to remove Energy from the system, that'd force people who are actually good at the game to occasionally purchase some too. Something needs to give either way.

Sat, 03/01/2014 - 06:37

Thunder-The-Bright

gods ain't gonna help you, son.

not everyone has bajillions of sparks. I have less than 10. besides, even before guys that had bajillions of energy could blaze through content.

Sat, 03/01/2014 - 06:49

Putkinen

Exactly.

Exactly. You have less than 10. What the hell are you gonna do when they design fights around me, the guy who has 200 just from running Arcade? Not play any of it presumably seeing as it'd have to be stupidly unfair to pose me any threat of running out which is certainly the direction it seems to be going in.

CE revives doubled in cost every time. While you certainly COULD blow thousands of CE just to get up again, few people actually would. It's a powerful enough deterrent to make designing content around not dying feasible. If death means nothing, then all challenge just disappears.

Sat, 03/01/2014 - 07:43

Thunder-The-Bright

gods ain't gonna help you, son.

they'll never design fights that have the specific purpouse to kill you 50 times. some guys can already do a no spark tortodrone fight. I use an average of 3. yes, the spawn in that fight could have been arranged better, but it's still challenging, and not punishing. there are some parts of the fight I can do without taking damage, but up to now I didn't find a strategy to deal damage while doing that. others have already done that.
I don't find sparks that much often, so I can guess that they can't just replensh the sparks they lose in the tortodrone fights in short times. if the drops aren't high, these guys will run out of them. eventually.

Sat, 03/01/2014 - 07:51

Putkinen

Meh.

It'd take quite a few unique events to drain my stockpiles. That's assuming I don't play at all between them. The lack of a real penalty for death is a design issue either way.

Sat, 03/01/2014 - 11:35

Mystrian

How about...

every time you die you get less health refilled?

Sat, 03/01/2014 - 12:18

Skepticraven

Perhaps not double, but at least some form of an increase (perhaps a +1 per death).

Nothing against anyone with a low quantity of sparks... but the idea that you can just power through a boss by reviving seems unbalanced.
It is a cheap strategy, but if you think about it in terms of cost... sparks cost 20E each in the SD. In a single FSC run, you earn enough for 10 sparks. Does it seem fair to die 9 times on the boss and still pull out a profit? I think not. With compounding sparks, that number is reduced significantly.

Sat, 03/01/2014 - 17:28

Hexzyle

I don't think the system should be changed: The people who have 100+ sparks were the ones playing when the droprate was all wonky in its first implementation. I've been playing for a long time, but I took a short break, conveniently when the orb and spark system was first implemented, so I didn't get a chance at that hugely ridiculous droprate of orbs and sparks, I have to grind mine manually like 90% of the other players who weren't 5* or incredibly active at the time.

Sun, 03/02/2014 - 03:11

Straight-Line

Would Mystrian's question apply to this too? I'm just asking because this maybe can tie in to the op's suggestion.

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Sparks of Life