Spiral Knights: Disquiet

Reaction thread to last night’s patch. Over 350 posts, 99% negative. My friends who were long-time Pirates over at YPP! are amazed: this is the worst explosion bar none they have ever seen, and they’ve seen some serious fail from Three Rings happen on Puzzle Pirates.

There’s even been a severe drop in players in dungeons. We’re talking the halving of online population when it should have been doubled at least during a patch night. This is beyond the pale.

Some of the BNP (big name players) like Magnus, who’ve always been on the SK side of the crystal debate, are now calling for boycotts. This is incredibly disturbing.

Part of me fears that the unannounced severity of the patch means that they knew this was going to be unpopular, and they aren’t going to roll it back.

ETA: Along with the unannounced severity of the patch, they also screwed over the crafters of 4* and 5* items: without any warning, they were unable to give these items back to friends and customers. This is unacceptable.

I await further news and will keep y’all posted.

20 thoughts on “Spiral Knights: Disquiet”

  1. When I logged in, an in-game mail was waiting to tell me that weapons/armor you buy from Brinks is now bound to you on purchase. This was not a change discussed in the Release Notes and makes it more difficult to buy things for friends. Of course you can always trade tokens to each other, I suppose, until they take that ability away.

  2. Gear bought from Brinks already binded to the player on purchase. Its just, now it’ll never un-bind.

    • I thought that was the case. So one is totally unable to gift Antigua or other token-bought weapons to friends or guild members. That’s depressing.

  4. Just saw your post in the official feedback thread. If the patch is bad enough to make even the game’s best ambassadors quit…

    :<

    Was incensed that my goal of reaching T3 got pushed way farther away… but now I'm just depressed.

    • I’m seeing people I generally agree with and people I generally disagree with all piling onto the same bandwagon of rage. In another situation, that would be kind of enjoyably harmonious….

  5. I don’t think we will see a total recall of the patch. But if only one or two things could be changed, what would you choose?

    I think the perma-binding of 4* and 5* items (regardless of upgrade) needs to go, primarily. I haven’t really felt the cost increases to crafting, yet, so I’m not sure if that needs to be changed yet.

    I think that as 3R looked at the player data, they felt people were getting (and flooding the market with) 4 and 5 star gear much too quickly and then hanging around at the top tiers getting bored/rich (something you heard a lot on the forums). This was leading to an inflation of CE prices, which people were getting worried about for a while now.

    I understand their attempt to make acquiring/crafting higher star gear slower, and as much as it sucks to have to slowly stockpile CE over a few days to be able to craft something without having to buy extra CE with cash, I think they went a bit too far in restricting things.

    • I would want them to bring down the increase in crystal energy for crafting to something more reasonable. If that were the only thing they were willing to do, that would be the one that got me back into the game. People generally don’t want to spend $20+ on one T3 outfitting, especially when different strata require different gear to get through. I mean, dang, at least they could have made the cost incrementally go up instead of just whoosh-bang-here-it-is—and it could still go up.

      And the increased demand for energy is just going to raise the price in crowns. It might really go back to preview levels.

      The permanent soul-binding I could deal with. I mean, I make instructional videos for a reason: to help others. I could still help in some capacity then. And for me, with the removal of crafting as a way to help others, teaching would be an OK replacement. I just wish I was as good a player as Magnus in order to help as much as I want to.

      • What I think they wanted, was to make people have to save up CE (buying more of it from the market with crowns) and slowly build 4 and 5 star stuff one piece at a time that way. I don’t think they thought of it as people paying 20$ all at once as the only choice. Thing is though, and I agree with you, the increased energy cost is too high right now.

        The balance of online games are always in a state of flux, so I hope in a few weeks or so they tweak stuff again. I don’t think they realized how negatively this patch would be taken by people.

        • You do get a better rate if you pay cash all at once, so it kinda makes more sense to buy the bulk purchase of energy. Otherwise, the actual cost you spend is higher. It might not be much but it’s certainly cheaper per energy unit to buy the $20 pack of energy instead of the $5 pack of energy 4 times.

        • Slowly is right. For those unwilling to shell out cash for CE (and unfortunate to be stuck on T2), it will take about a week and a half to get each item from 2* to 4*.

          17,500 cr and 600 energy (400 of which must be CE) per piece… even if 100 CE stays around 5K cr (and it will likely go up), that’s a lot of grinding/farming.

          I don’t really see why they’d want to weed out players who paid a bunch of cash to skip to endgame content… I’d think those are the game’s main cash cows.

    • I saw that. How well the House of Unbinding shakes out depends on how much unbinding will cost in the end. Sounds like it’ll cost enough to keep people from profiting off of unbound items, and to make a present to a friend really hurt.

  7. How I felt about the patch:
    First few hours after the patch: SEARING DESTRUCTIVE CATACLYSMIC (information redacted)ING RAGE OF THE ANCIENTS
    The next day: I agree!
    So to all the people who are still in the “SEARING DESTRUCTIVE CATACLYSMIC RAGE OF THE ANCIENTS” part, cool down, its not that big a deal unless you are the kind of guy who crafts SUPER ANNHILATIVE ENDGAME (information redacted) for lazy people who just go all, “(information redacted) normal progression from noob to EXTREMELY AWESOME BNP which takes a few months, i want instant awesomeness”. And if you are just that, well, most of the stuff in the patch that makes people go all RAGERAGERAGE is targeted at your class. So has anyone else here cooled down and continued life in SK without giving much heed to the new patch that causes them (information redacted)ing lag spikes and makes everyone want to stick a Flourish into themselves?

    • Well, it nerfs people who wanted to make items for their friends; the costs there are high now. $8 for a piece of armor I want to give to a friend is not worth it. $8 for something non-digital, sure, but for an in-game piece of armor?

      So yes, I’m one of those people.

      Plus, consider the cost of gaining access to upper T3 content now for players still stuck in T2; they basically need to pay $20 to do it. In order to do lower T3 content, they need to pay even more to get the 5* gear.

      The increased costs of crafting also discourages exploration down different weapons lines. This hurts me, because that’s exactly the thing I want to do, and now it will cost me dearly if I want to continue doing so. No, it’s not the way that they intended SK to be played; it’s how I wanted to play it.

      Given that dungeons are repetitive, and it seems likely that new content will not be given to T2, the game may implode if they don’t adjust costs, which they appear loathe to do.

      But hey. I’m one of those people who don’t fit into the mold of one armor, two swords. I don’t really matter to the SK team, and that’s fine. If I do play, I’ll play on mist energy and stop when it runs out. I still have a mist tank from gaining access to T3, so there’s that.

      And apart from that, my interest in SK is very low right now, given that I don’t know how the developers will react to future problems. Well. I know how they’ll react; by bringing down sweeping changes that devalue crystal energy overnight.

      I’m contemplating pulling my YouTube channel (except that BSW games really need video tutorials) and the entire diary. It depends on what happens next. If I do that, I’ve done quit and I’m not coming back.

    • I’m still playing — I haven’t bought CE with anything other than Crowns for a month now (slowly stockpiling most of it), and I’m not in a hurry to get to T3, so I’m still in a comfortable place. I’m also a bit of a collector so I’m having fun gathering the recipes for various sets, and I guess I’m just resigned to the fact it will take longer for me to make them all now.

      I do think crafting costs and binding is currently too harsh. I’m also not to thrilled with how expensive they seem to want to make unbinding. I understand the reasons behind what they are doing, but they are too harsh in trying to rein in ‘high tier item glut’ by making crafting crazy expensive/restricted and hurting all crafters in the process.

      Online games are always in flux, and I’m open to waiting a while and seeing how things develop past this point.

      • You have a very good point about the fluctuations of online games.

        Another game I play on my spare minutes, Echo Bazaar, recently had a development pretty much the opposite of Spiral Knights; they noticed that players weren’t playing the game according to the original design, but decided after a bit of fighting to acquiesce and adapt. And now I’m back, grinding away for amber to get a permit from the Bazaar.

        It’s easier to think of it as Always Release Day.

        • Ha, I played Echo Bazaar for a while too, it’s been awhile since I checked in, I should see what’s new there. =3

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