April 3 Update - Discussion

I figured out that the monster info popups only show up with Auto Target on. It could probably be its own option I guess. (ed: someone else found that too, took me fifteen minutes to type this, heh.)

...

Mostly hate the rest, but that's been done to death already. :-/

...an interface change to support tablet play.

possibility?

I'm slowly finding ways to turn off some of the things that annoy me...

You can toggle Rank on and off under Options --> Chat. (Why the heck is it under chat?)
Suggestion: Can you also make this toggle turn on / off the rank number over your portrait.

You can toggle off the monster health bars under Options --> Game --> Display Monster Health.

Maybe a simpler way to do this is to put all of the in game visual toggles in one location?

Gotta say that I find myself comfortable with the removal of CE and cr at all times. I guess i'm used to it from other well designed games like monster hunter.

You guys are right. Mainly nick. When playing monster hunter, my currency is the last thing I think about because of the reason you stated.

"The new UI contains a number of improvements and an easier to understand layout."
.....I think not.

The UI definitely needs some changes in my opinion. I think that the shield and player portrait are completely unnecessary, as they take up an incredible portion of the screen. They health bar is pretty good, but not with the other teammates, as it's just a big red bar that's not specific enough to tell us how many bars of health a teammate has left. The name colors make it so Haven isn't as colorful anymore, it really makes it bland. The rank displays are also unnecessary because I could just inspect the knight to see their rank if I really wanted to. The weapon switch wheel isn't very helpful as I can see what weapon I'm holding in my hand and that the wheel itself is very distracting. The new vitapod and vial changes have really upset me, especially when I want to give a vitapod to a teammate with less max health than me. The zoom in feature is cool and all, but it really doesn't serve much purpose. The monster health bars, stats and mini-map that come up really make it seem that SK is getting way too easy as they give you all the information you need right there. (I know that you can toggle the mosnter health bars off but I still feel like with the option to turn them on, it still is too easy) I really liked having to judge a monster's health and make strategic decisions. The flash effects and the items displaying a message when you can't pick them up are unnecessary, and I hated the "Inventory Full" message in the first place. The most dissapointing thing on this update is that I now have to open my arsenal just to see my crowns and energy. I want to see how much energy and crowns I have left, because without any crowns or energy I wouldn't be able to play the game. I think that the shot you get when you start and end a mission is pretty cool, as well as the option to go back to the ready room, but that's about it.

Overall, I really think that this UI needs to either:

1. Have some of the features modified so size, location and all that is better.
2. Have a decision in the Options to have the old UI.
3. Have knights customize it so it can fit their preferences.

"Devilite difficulty has been balanced, including reducing their attack range and dodge frequency."

The devilite nerf was sad. I'm not the best devilite slayer, but I still think that nerfing the last challenging enemy is disheartening.

As for the creep cakes, I expected that, but I was really hoping for a little more NEW content, not recycled content. I also feel sorry for the players that spent tons of money on the game last year for those Spinkle Auras and other accessories.

So, I don't really know how to feel about this update, and since it's here I guess it ultimately doesn't matter.
But! It is interesting to note in the official Feedback thread posted yesterday, that some of the bugs being fixed with part two of this update were found on the testing server. (the I can't click on party members except the newest to join)

... Why did you open the test server if you were going to ignore the feedback and release part of the content 1 day before the TEST PERIOD (ultra short compared to other times) WAS OVER?!

I'd give a review of this update but it's very negative and almost everyone has the same complaints as me and they worded it better then I can right now (specially the UI, I hate almost everything about it); seething rage does that to articulation.

Buuuuuuut:

-I am very disappointed you guy did NOTHING new event-wise for your game's Second Anniversary; seriously, this was supposed to bee huge but you just slapped the same thing from last year with a few tweaks to make it more like previous grind-a-ton events without adding nothing to it like the other events.

-Why are you trying to make the game look more and more like a flash game? I get that the game is available in Kongregate, newgrounds and armorgames but you dont have to try and fit in that badly! Did the steam integration went that badly after the ironlock boxes failed to catch on as the tf2 crates?

-Everything about the UI is very unfinished, nothing fits together with each other; did Ian made all of this or was it someone else? because if it was IT SHOWS. BADLY.

-Are battle sprites taking that much effort that an unfinished UI no one asked for is the best you can show for progress after 2 months?

-It's obvious you guys arent focusing on retaining veteran players in favor of just gaining new ones.

-WHY NERF DEVILITES BUT STILL IGNORE ARMOR AND WEAPON BALANCES THAT HAVE BEEN PROMISED FOR AGES NOW?!

All in all, I'm just disillusioned with OOO and it's handling of this game: I loved the game and all the attention the game got the first year after release - What happened/is happening? I get you are a small team, I get that making new content is a long, time consuming process but what are you guys doing anymore? And till things get straightened out, I am done with this game, never gonna put a goddamned cent into again.

... I guess I can take comfort that you guys arent as bad as Hi-Rez, at least.

for those wondering, the unbreakable blocks that where replaced where those tan ones with a gold rim.

Anybody else have to squint to see which haven they are in?

Oh For the love of God... I still don't get why everyone's complaining. I have no problem with the new UI at all, in fact i'm already used to it. My only problem is that everytine i want to check how much money or energy i have, i need to open the inventory tab. At least OOO are really trying to satisfy their consumers by releasing new content, unlike some other MMORPGs which just keep getting worse and worse. I mean come on, do any of you know how long it takes to develop new content?? Do you know the kind of hardships and difficulties the Dev team face? I really don't think you do. Because if you did, you'd start appreciating that they actually put an effort into making all these updates. It takes months of planning and developing, not to mention they have to meet expectations and deadlines. They also have limited amount of funds to work with, which makes it much more challenging. They have an idea,and discuss the idea to make sure it is actually possible. They need to make sure the idea is something that benefits both the players, and the developers. The players matter because this game is all for you, but the developers matter to, you forget this is their job, and their pay. This is how they pay rent and eat at night. Next comes the actual art. The Artists have to work their asses off to build content for players, and the players seem to barely notice the amount of time that has to go into every single individual item, floor tile, prop, and effect.

Once the art is done, comes the Coding. Let me tell you right now this is not easy, I have experience with some forms of coding languages. This stuff takes time. you have to experiment and try all kinds of combinations just to preform simple tasks, Just that button click has a few lines of code behind it. Once the coders have worked on getting every one of those little details done, comes the final phase, the Testing. This is where the whole team gets together and plays the content. they make sure everything is working correctly and not causing minor bugs to show up.

Now of course, bugs happen. Let's explore why that is: A bug is created, simply because a part of code that is added, may accidentally effect a previous existing code line. There's more likely millions of lines of code in that favorite game you play, so being able to test every single thing for inconsistencies, is impossible for most development teams. This is where the players come in. If the team can make sure there is no major bugs or exploits, the players can do the rest. With so many active players, eventually all of the little problems will be found and reported and they can fix them.

Happy anniversary SK. I'm a new player, but SK has a really nicely done system with ce/cr economy, level-up equips, and gameplay.

I'm no graphic designer and I know many of us think we know what's best for the game, but I trust OOO to do what it wants to do with SK. Good or bad. I am sure the developers have invested much more time staring at the roots, the positives, and the negatives of SK than almost all of its players.

I do share the same concerns with many people and its UI and I'm sure even more will express the same opinion, so I will hold myself back.

I do appreciate the zoom button. I plan on exploring all of haven and anywhere else with it.

The results screen certainly brings my character out after a mission. Mwaha.

I feel LD's view of your teammates health and icon is much more obstructive than its previous. I would much rather focus on how many of my teammates are recon/striker/guardian so I can quickly glance and adjust appropriately.

Now, previously, I had trouble reading the numbers of my vials. How many I had of each vial is what I mean. They're at the bottom and much easier to read, but I much prefer the previous hp bar there. It seems the closest possible to the character.

"Gotta say that I find myself comfortable with the removal of CE and cr at all times."

I'll agree with you on the crowns thing - I don't need to see that when I'm in the Clockworks.
I like having it be visible when I'm in a town, but I can get around that by clicking open my inventory.

If I can find the person who said this earlier, I'll give them the +1 and kudos but this is the best statement yet regarding CE:

"Not knowing how much energy you have and going into the Clockworks, is like getting into a car with no gas gauge".
All drivers learn very early on, if you check no other thing on your car, pay attention to the fuel gauge.

I think most of the sentiment and objections to energy removal from the HUD follows this logic.

Why is there only one candle on the cake helms, this is a 2nd birthday after all.

+1

I had the same thoughts / hopes that the cakes would have 2 candles on them this year, making it a unique collectable.

An update like this after a while isn't enough to keep me satisfied to continue in the game, nor will the battle sprites. My advice to people reading this - go play something else, there are many other better games out there.

1. The update is slow.
2. There is an armor preview glitch. I can't close it!
3. The original style to most things were good enough like the energy meter and inventory interface.

When I am unhappy. >:X No not really. ;P

One more thing (I keep discovering new things about this that drive me up the wall), The act of switching weapons is also incredibly distracting and once again, invasive. I'm trying so hard to like something about this update, but just about the only piece of useful information we have now that wasn't available before is enemy health gauges.

I feared that this would add more to my lag. Good to see that it isn't. Well, I still haven't try on the older computer yet...

Few things that I didn't like,
- I can't see who I tabbed or who have been tabbed
- The chat obscures party members list
- Self/team portrait are too big
- The health and shield bar. Too big

My advice to people reading this - go play something else, there are many other better games out there.

Thanks for being useful.

I have an old computer and its pretty slow trying to open it. D:<

Message to Thimol: Don't be so negative, if you don't like the game take your own advice. I personally like it because there are many things you can do to interact with other players. (A very sociable game. ^.^)

No promo? /sad

Okay, so I've played around (slightly) with the UI and it works for the most part, so here is what I have to say.

• A common complaint is the fact that currency is no longer displayed by default and can only be displayed by opening up your Arsenal. I think that there should be a toggle to hide and display crowns and energy so that we can have it handy for when we need to check our funds, without having to bring up our entire Arsenal and clog up a good chunk of our right screen.
• Another common complaint is the inability to manually drop your vitapod. There are two reasons why this is annoying. The first is that you might want to hand it over to a party member instead of keeping it to yourself, especially so if you feel that your party member(s) need it more than you do. The second is simply for those who want to impose a restriction on themselves for, say, a no-vitapod run or some such. Even if the majority won't do this, having the option to is nice.
• Weapon wheel is fine, and not too big on bigger resolutions. Then again, I feel that this whole UI rehaul wasn't really aimed at those with lower-resolution monitors as a whole. Maybe this should be reworked, but I digress. It is, however, a bit awkwardly placed. It'd make a little more sense to have it below your character as opposed to the side of it, and I have heard complaints about it getting in the way when it's right next to your character so maybe it should be moved elsewhere? Maybe add a toggle/customization option to allow people to choose where it appears.

  Addendum: On the subject of weapons, I feel that there should be a clear indicator when your currently equipped weapon is cursed. I noticed that unless you make your move and risk getting drained by the curse effect or start changing weapons you have no way of telling that the weapon you are currently holding is cursed. Maybe have a toggle option to display the weapon icon somewhere for reference, or add a HUD effect when wielding a cursed weapon. Getting cursed now is much more dangerous than it was previously, though the weapon wheel does allow you to immediately gauge which of your weapons are cursed and which ones are not at a glance, so that's a point in its favour.

• The character display is a little on the big side, the character display being as big as the mini-map and the health bar being rather lengty - stretching up to 30 pips before the override makes an appearance - making it seem rather...excessive. We were told of a gold override when it surpassed 30 silver pips, but there is currently no way to exceed 56 HP, making the gold override at 61 HP seem like an ambiguous remark though I am under the impression this is intended for future updates. But I digress. On its own, it's fine, but when you add party members to the equation that's where the "Holy Vog, it's huge!" cries come in. I really think you could afford to squeeze them together some more, as the spacing just makes it cover more of the left area of the screen. Even playing on a 1280x800 resolution, 6-man parties from Lockdown just makes me wow at how it extends all the way to the bottom of my screen. I cannot even begin to imagine what it's like for low-resolution players at this point. As I said, it's a little on the big side, and you might want to squeeze party members a bit closer together. Shrinking the character displays with lower resolutions or even adding a customization option for the players could solve this problem.

I dont like the mess on all Knight heads. Let have na option to show or not the rank at least. Now is a big mess in Haven whem lots of Knights stay togeter....

The update was terrible. in lockdown, its changed SO MUCH! i use arrows for my attacks and now its a mess. sure i can use mouse but im 200% more confortable with the way arrows used to be.

not only lockdown, this game looks like a bunch of 7 year olds would play this game.

ALSO, the monsters need to be HARDER!!! its so EASY to kill vana! i did it with a 3* antigua. THATS HOW MESSED UP THIS IS! at least make him faster or something...

maybe the whole guild, celestial vangaurds, isn't a fan with the wheel and the life being moved and the shield stuff. it takes WAY too much space on our screen especially for lockdown.

i do like the cake things though exept the fact they only have 2 attacks and its SO EASY! if you guys don't make the game harder the game wont be as fun.

WAY TOO MUCH LAGS! some of our computers are cheap and not $800 so it wont be able to handle such detail and stuff like that. i play on med graphics and its just a child's video game when i see it.

if you ask me, this whole update was pointless and irritating.

There is an option in chat settings to not show player rank (over their heads in haven/etc).
In the options is also the checkbox to enable/disable enemy hitpoints, and a few other options which are new.

I did decide to rebind all of my buttons (default f1-6) for showing the social/etc menus since having to click to open the side bars is very annoying. Maybe it's just because it takes 2 clicks (while in combat) instead of the 1 top left old social button click to find your friend/guild to invite to a clockworks game.
So to adapt I've just rebound these buttons to one click show my social/etc, since I cannot click f4 or top buttons since I'm on a laptop (toggled to computer functions, not game ones).

I have read a lot of comments of people being unhappy with the change. However, I love it!!!!! Sure there are bugs, but doesn't everything have bugs when it first comes out. Even cellular phones in their first month on the market have bugs.
The new UI looks crisper, I like the changes in the vials, I like the cake mission (I can actually obtain a slice of cake, without dying a thousand times).
I am eager to see what else you have in store for us....Oh btw, did I mention that I LOVE IT!!!!!
Spiral Knights is the best game ever, keep the new stuff coming.....I LOVE IT!!!!! I feel like I am playing a brand new game all over again, it is wonderful.

Didn't read the entire thread and assume that this has already been mentioned but wanted to add my "vote". The new UI changes are almost all negative and a step in the wrong direction. As with every major update this game had done there will be some people who rage against any change. I've been playing since official launch and I have never seen such an overwhelming negative reaction among friends and guildmates to any previous update.

Major Dislikes:
1. The weapon switching animation clutters the screen and I don't want it or need it. Would like to toggle it off.
2. The shield bar animation is distracting as well. I would probably be fine it if it weren't animated and didn't overtake the health bar.
3. The lack of crown and energy info without opening the arsenal.
4. The picture of my knight taking up so much screen real estate at the top left. Not sure what a second image of myself adds.
5. The new art style of the UI and the vials. I know design is subjective and a matter of taste but I think the older stuff just looked better than the new.

Most of the other stuff I could get used to but it is not an improvement. Given a choice I would go with previous UI and not just because that is what I am familiar with. I personally think it was more appealing visually and functionally.

About the only positives to the new UI is the easy access go to guild hall button, the elevator animations and the scroll bar for chat. The negatives of this update far out weigh the positives.

I'm gonna write a song. To the tune of "War is Over" by John Lennon.

So this is SK.
And what have they done?
The UI is stupid.
The changes are dumb.

And so this is SK.
And the UI still sucks!
Three Rings, they changed it.
And we're just crying ducks.

And oh I miss it!
The oh-old U I!
It really sucks now...
SK might just die.

You guys like that? Want some more?

Okay, so about the update...

I love:

• Our new health bars
• Monster health bar
• The new tabs and the ability to hide them
• Zoom-in and change instance button
• Knight display on top right
• Name colors

But I think this should be improved/changed:

• Not displaying crown and energy outside of arsenal - Please at least let us choose whether to display it or not
• Screen tremors - Please give us options to disable this
• Weapon switching wheel - Again, please, give us options to change it's size or position(lock them below shield health, or maybe even an option to hide them
• Teammates health getting blocked by chat in LD

Especially this:
Not displaying crown and energy outside of arsenal

That part single-handedly made me hate the new UI...

PRO:
-overall makes the HUD look A LOT nicer
-the gushing out stuff effect is cool
-end of a run picture looks cool

CONS:
-so annoying to check your inventory, loadouts, guild list, etc. because of the extra step(s) you have to do which builds up sooner or later
-the switching weapon idea just takes up way too much space
-UI itself takes too much space
-makes you lag even more
-the descend picture is just so..............weird
-so complicated, can't even find where to show your crowns

because there's just so much problems, it'll take too much space so i'll leave it like this

I'm gonna repost my old thoughts about the new UI:

The new UI clashes with the rest of the artstyle real bad. Like, I know the UI is supposed to be visible for new players and you can actually hide parts, but even then it's still too intrusive. The old minimalist style was spot on, being both usable an unobtrusive. Also the knight picture at the top left is HUGE and completely unnecessary. Also the way the "chatbox" was moved up is quite annoying. Also whoever overused pillow shading like a "cool looking effect" should be stripped of their artist badge.

PS: Actual UI features that everyone wants is chat tabs, resizing the chat window, customizing chat colors, being able to give people specific colors, etc.

If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

Why did you try to fix it? I rarely saw any people suggesting a new UI, but rather more content and balancing instead.

Heard a rumor this started from kongregate users, but IDK if it's a legitimate statment yet.

Beveling out every text box and button doesn't make things better...

At first I'd laugh that off as silly, but after looking at the new UI, it feels like a very cheap flash game UI, so now I'm not sure...

@Happyapathy

THIS. THIS SO VERY DAMN MUCH, JESUS CHRIST.

Finally, I think I know what's wrong with the Shield bar.

It reminds me of Gmask. No wonder I feel censored since the update.

As expected, SK is now laggier on my old laptop. Oh well...

Also, this is how it looks like at 1024x600
https://www.dropbox.com/s/ngg0z12qrqavaqn/spiral_2013-04-04_11-09-59.png

Devilite nerf? More monsters nerfs, a new UI that spoon feeds players... This game has successfully turned into Hello Kitty Online.

Remove the 13 age limit and let little children play this game since you keep dumbing it down for ____ to play.

+1000

After looking at Murex's screenshot, I'm pretty certain the problem with the mug shot is how it scales with resolution. Here is mine in 1080p. Note the mug shot is about the right size (but could be a bit smaller).

Update: fixed link.

I feel sorry for those in the Community Management staff that have to read through posts like yours.

@Eltia
Cannot access the page for some reason. End up getting an error.

This is a bunch of things I put in suggestions before I knew this thread was a thing.

(weapon wheel)
I'm perfectly fine with this being a feature- it could be helpful to players using the scrolling option. But a lot of us DON'T use scrolling (not hard to find four convenient buttons), and it clutters the screen a fair amount. Give us an option to turn it off.

I think I may have mentioned this somewhere before, but yeah, when you're "downloading the rest of the game" (which imo is cruel to people who think they've actually finished the download), you can disconnect for being idle. This is really, really dumb. Please fix it D:

Oh, and also, I'm asking this because this patch broke my download (again! But not on steam! Fix your updater!), and now I'm trying to reinstall. Which itself is not working.

(new block textures don't make sense)
They just don't. They seem to be supposed to be pipes, but why would you put a pipe randomly in the middle of a floor? Also, they are often rotated wrong. And there are no bent-arm connectors, tri connectors or quad connectors where appropriate. Also, what was wrong with the old ones.

-------------

On to other things, I'm getting a bit dissapointed in this game's artistic direction. I did not start playing this game for a bunch of glossy, shiny buttons and textures. The actual UI looks kinda ugly to me atm but I figure that's more out of me being used to the old UI than anything else.

That how mine looks too, even better then you use the weapon wheel or use an arsenal station to compare weapons, you get an extra bunch of boxes all around blocking the screen. Training halls are also fun places to try and read the chat box. Less clutter they said...

@Shidara

I wouldnt be surprised if they are actively ignoring most of the bigger posts in this thread, considering they mostly have the same complaints.

I've been away from my computer for a few hours doing other things, and have thought long and hard about what to say in response to the update. I came up with a number of responses, from denial to anger to compromise to sadness, but then I came up with the words that most appropriately describe how I feel:

"In an earlier post in these forums I had implied that Three Rings should perhaps consider hiring me to work on fixing the bugs in the Spiral Knights client while the primary developers worked on other things. I, Irthan, hereby rescind that motion; there is no way that I would feel comfortable working in an environment that would authorize the release of such a buggy and inadequate piece of software such as the latest update to the Spiral Knights client."

I've seen the new UI, I read the test feedback before it was even added to the live SK server. My thoughts haven't changed. I know they are looking at players feedback to decide what to "change". No I didn't waste my time reading 5 pages of post to read the same things again. I have no problems with a new UI. I have problems with all the useless info it gives. I have problems with the Devilite nerf. I have problems with the game being repeatedly dumbed down for certain players. I got frustrated and made a quick post. I stand by what I said. Monster nerfs, new UI telling people monsters HP, boss HP, enemy weakness.. might as well let little children play the game now. (even though I know that age 13 rule is there because of a bill)

I started playing this game back when it was released on Steam. I remember FSC being hard. I remember brandishes not doing 5 explosions. I remember a lot of things that have made this game incredibly easy over time. UV locking. UV rolling. Weapon Buffs. Monster nerfs. I guess in short I'm just tired of it. I enjoyed Spiral Knights while I played and enjoyed the friends I had.

Games change. Players can either change or move on. I chose to move on and play Spiral Knights when I have nothing else to do elsewhere. Though I have been waiting for new challenging bosses or enemies.

If I did any, which I suspect I will have.

Good:

-Asthetic of buttons/menus
-Sliding menus
-monsters on minimap
-Particle effects/hit markers
-Reason to go in the arcade
-ZOOM :D 

Good and Bad:

-Monster HP bars - HP bars were a good addition, especially since you can turn them off if you don't like the clutter. They can give you an idea of what enemies to target with which attacks to prevent charge attacks being wasted on overkill. However, they seem to not work properly. Monster HP bars will go down the same amount every hit, and then on the last hit the seem to take less damage even though the numbers are the same. Not sure if this is some hidden "monster sonic mode", a bug, or my eyes playing tricks on me.
-Player HP bar - It looks nice. I've yet to see gold health, but I haven't run FSC since the update either. Other than looking nice, it has a whole host of problems. The biggest problem is the placement. If you are playing on a small screen, the HP bar + portrait + minimap cover a large portion of the upper screen. If you're playing on a large screen, the problem is the opposite but just as bad. The new UI clears up more of the screen, but the placement of the health is so far in the corner on a 1080p/1920x1200 or higher display, it's hard to notice. With the old UI the HP bar was in the middle bottom of the screen, as opposed to the current top right. The bottom center of the screen is within the player's field of comfortable vision, or at the very least the peripheral. With the new UI, not only is the HP moved to the top of the screen (which is less comfortable to look at), it's in the corner. This means that when your health approaches zero, you have to keep looking away from your character to see exactly what you have. Also, since the bar is no longer grouped into fifths, it's hard to count your exact health without opening the player card.
-Shield Bar - I guess it might be useful to some people. I really don't care about it either way, but the fact that it gets bigger when you shield is extremely annoying. Especially when shield canceling, it's distracting.
-Devilite changes - the range decrease was unneeded. The dodging frequency decrease was welcome, but overdone. Dodging constantly around in a circle was a tad excessive, but reducing it this much makes them too easy. Increase it a little bit.

Bad:

-Party HP bars - these became worse in every way. Not only are they not graduated so you can't see how much HP your teammates have left, they are scaled so you can't see who has most total. Which leads my to my next gripe.
-Vitapods - Not being able to drop vitas for our teammates is a hinderance to teamwork. Example - I run RJP with randoms, and I roll with heart trinkets. That means that whoever I run with usually has less health than me, so I used to drop the first vita to them - too bad. Now I'm stuck with it. I assume this was put in as a response to people accidentally dropping vitas, then recovering them to find they'd lost HP - but really, is that enough to turn it off permanently? At least give us an option to enable dropping.
-Weapon Switching - Again, it's a nice looking addition. For the first three seconds. Then it comes up in a combat situation, and all it does is get in your way and cover an important part of the screen (right next to you). Again, all we need is an option to turn it off.
-Screen Shake - Who thought this was a good idea? It may look cool in theory, but it's disruptive and distracting to gameplay. Leave the shaking to the DualShocks, please. 
-recycled promotion - Not much to be done about that. Devs were busy with sprites and horde monsters (hopefully), oh well.

Things to add:

-Make "Lock HUD" retract the sliding menus on the bottom left and right, and the one near the minimap.
-Allow us to resize the GUI, or autoscale it to resolution - the minimap at high resolution is tiny!
-color coded monster dots? Unnecessary, but would be nice.

Things to change:

-allow us to toggle player name colors in haven.
-make the rank displayed above player names look nice(r)? It looks like it was stuck on as a last-minute addition.
-make the enemy info available without turning on auto target.
-Add zoom to the clockworks too :D

Bugs:

-the "max health!" Message floats up for everyone when a party member with full HP steps over a heart, even if you got it already. Not sure if this is a bug, but if not it should be an instances thing.
-Friends have reported that joining parties on elevators was not fixed.

Alright. Now that I'm out of class for the day and had the time to run around in-game and see the new UI for myself, I'm going to write up my own review.

- First off, as an artist who's looking into game design, why did you feel the need to change the established graphical style of the UI in the first place?
For years, you guys at OOO defined the look of Spiral Knights with the yellow and blue circles, clockworks and gears in the background, soft rounded buttons and a very easy to read interface that wasn't intrusive and overly noisy. For years, its simple styling worked at conveying all relevant information and helped to define the Spiral Knights experience. Why was there any need to change it?

This new UI, while it looks very shiny and "new," doesn't fit the feel of the game at all. It's too overly flashy for how simple of a game Spiral Knights is. It's also far more in-your-face than the previous iteration. Nearly every action brings up an unnecessary and flashy window to shove unneeded information into our faces. Even an act as simple as going down the elevators has been turned into some ridiculous fanfare with the rather silly "ADVANCE" window that comes flying in.
Simply, it's not something that I ever expected from SK. It seems overtly childish and something I'd except from an MMO that my little siblings play. Everything is shoved in your face when before it was shown much more eloquently and subtly. Shield health pops up over your health, the big new weapon wheel pops up annoyingly whenever you switch weapons and leaves no icon anywhere for what weapon you're currently using,

It's not just that I've grown accustomed to the minimalist but super effective UI that SK started out with. Even when I was just starting out, I was never confused with any element aside from your ridiculous tendency to reuse the same assets multiple times for different items (Blitz and Volcanic Pepperbox have the same weapon icon, almost ALL Gunslinger hats use the SAME model and texture, etc.). IT WORKED. Plain and simple.

So I ask again, why did you feel the need to change it?

- Moving on, why was this shipped out when it was rather painfully obvious that it wasn't ready by any stretch of the imagination? For one thing, you were still getting feedback from the testers about it before releasing it to the public. Did you really not care for their input? Then why did you ask in the first place?
Then there's all of the assets still from the old UI that quite frankly don't fit their own game anymore thanks to the new UI. Materials and equipment icons still use the simple graphical style from the old UI and look severely out of place in the new UI.
And come on, the loading screens still flipping use the old UI graphics for crying out loud!

Even some of the new things don't work as you intended them to. The brand new Knight portrait that stares into your soul constantly has the tendency to not render any accessories on it. The new Health and Shield bar are ALWAYS present and intrusive when they don't need to be. When people join your party, their portraits don't even fit properly in the little circle given to them. Most players' names don't even fit right in the new party icons. It is also impossible to tell who's the Party Leader and also very hard to read when a Knight is downed. Plus the new oversized Party icons overlap with the chat box, especially in Lockdown. Then there's all the bugs that were shipped with it as well.

Was it really necessary to ship out such an unfinished product OOO?

- Next point. Why did you feel it necessary to completely rearrange the positions of vital information around the UI? Health is at the top, vials at bottom, no Energy or Crowns visible, selected weapon icon isn't visible, and all of the various tabs have been moved from the top to the bottom. It breaks nearly every single habit that your veteran players have ingrained in their heads! What was wrong with the positions of the old UI? It's been in use for so long that every player knew where to look for the information they needed. But now they have to look in the opposite direction for the needed information or even click and open some tabs just to get the information that they want.
I just don't see the point in doing that. Everything worked fine where it was. Nothing was in the way like it is now. The oversized Health, Shield, and Knight portrait clutter up the screen too much. The weapon wheel is really useless in my opinion since most players only have two weapons and most players that have more than that know their weapon positions. Plus it further clutters the screen while not leaving behind any useful info unless you're switching weapons.

Was it necessary to rearrange and even hide VITAL information that every player uses?

*****

Vog, I could go on and on, but I'll stop there for now. Overall I'm very disappointed in this update. It just keeps bringing to mind the old saying, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." And you guys fixed it... or tried to, but messed up pretty badly and broke a lot of things that really worked.

Sometimes I look at this game and really love it. The art style and gameplay are really unique and fun. The community is one of the nicer ones I've encountered and extremely welcoming towards artists. It even made me seriously consider taking up the Game Artist position for OOO's Philadelphia branch.
But then there's the lack of updates. The long droughts of any new content. The complete lack of any balancing (Iron Slug's continued state of uselessness, Shard bombs are still buggy, etc.). The utter laziness of some parts of the game (GUNSLINGER HATS). The ignorance of any feedback that the community gives towards recent changes (Shard bombs, Chaos set's completely unnecessary buff). And now completely unnecessary changes to things that really didn't need any change whatsoever...... actually that applies to most of the things that I already mentioned...

I really don't know how to feel about things right now. I just don't like this new direction that OOO seems to be pushing Spiral Knights. I still want to hold out hope that they can come back from this and fix up the game, balance our gear, and give us something new to play with soon, but I'm losing faith fast.
I guess I'll stick around a little while longer. See how things go and if they listen to any of us. If I don't like what I see, don't expect to see me around as much.

I play at 1280x720, most stuff on low, windowed. Gameplay with groups of enemies is much tougher in my experience because of the larger shinier splash when they attack, get hit, or whatever. A group of slimes or a group of wolvers are very difficult to make out when and where an attack is occurring. Usually they are easy but I got dominated several times because I had no idea when to shield\dodge.

Everything else I may get used to, but the health all the way up top cluttered in all the other stuff is also tougher for me to make out without looking away from the center of the screen.

The biggest hassle is the party member's life bar though. I could not easily discern when someone was dead (or them me). I get it that no red means no life but still. It is ANOTHER thing that appears to take more concentration to decipher than the obvious graphics from the previous design.

EDIT: New biggest gripe is the Party finder continually updating the chat window and making the noise. I sure hope I missed the checkbox to prevent this!

I never thought SK could evolve as much as I could make me too sad to play it one day.
This is the worst update I've ever seen in a video game, now i'm just wondering if they will have the humility to back up.

A large community gathered in this game because of a nostalgic 8bits feeling that got a taste of childhood for many of us, a minimalist, oldschool yet well rounded design. They just destroyed it with the latest patch !
(Why they lock the vitapods if there are 3 more annoying tabs to open accidentally in each corner, the vanity of the notice board of the player you are playing (inception much?) is useless, ruining an incredible art-style by choosing realistic vials, the informations redundancy, taking the health bar the farthest of the eyes when it was good down in the middle ... so much irrational things I can not figure out all of them !)

I've got a bad feeling at the moment when I found that the test server was only open for less that 2 days ...

The patch and updates before mostly fulfilled me with joy ( except the shard bomb one ) therefore this is the first update that make me think about QUITTING THE GAME FOREVER if this disgusting UI stay against the community's wish.

From now on this is one sad birthday I will remember.

Sincerely, Hemsy.

Am I the only one that likes the new UI? I just tested out for like 5 minutes but it looks pretty sweet...

I really hate how those Vials/Pills/Vitapots look like tho, feels like im back in 2006.

+1 to pixelhat/zopyros. UI did not need to be changed.

And now a quote from Shigeru Miyamoto: "A delayed game is eventually good, but a rushed game is forever bad."
Now replace "game" with "update".