Spiral Knights: Partial Hiatus

First of all, a really good post by Copperwire about Fun in relation to game content.

Second of all, the other Spiral Knights Crusaders are coming to my home city, and this is exciting to me. I’ve befriended so few people over the years because of really quite terrible things happening when I trusted too easily; I’m grateful that Spiral Knights let me have that extra interaction I needed to feel comfortable with my soon-to-be visitors.

(As a note, they actually met over Puzzle Pirates, also a Three Rings game, and from thence blossomed a beautiful relationship.)

But while they’re traveling, they won’t be playing the game, and I’ll be busy cleaning house and then entertaining them and working to make up missed hours at work and suchlike, which means for me a short hiatus from playing Spiral Knights for about a week.

And maybe when the Crusaders return to the game, the changes will sit better with us (unlikely), or there will be extra tweaks. I have no idea how money stats will look on Three Rings’ end, nor how quickly they would act nor how they will act if crystal energy buys actually drop off severely enough. I know for now I’m holding off on buying crystal energy until a few more months go by, to get a feel for how new production releases will go, how rocky they might be. I have enough stockpiled, and enough weapons and not much of a rush for T3, that I can go on for quite some time.

At this point, I just want to see new content for T2. Us Crusaders worry second-most that new content will stop showing up for T2, thus making expensive advancement required. I like more than most a familiar run, but even I can only stand so many re-themed small sets of configurations. At that point I would stop playing—not out of spite, but because Spiral Knights and my desires would no longer match up. My friends are already tired of the lack of content at our level. I understand that new content is going to be a priority soon, so I’m cautiously optimistic.

What do the Crusaders worry about first-most? The coming lack of a feeling of achievement for players who don’t shell out for T3. There’s a ceiling we feel we’ll hit as casual players, and perhaps the Spiral Knights team can’t or even won’t prioritize us. That’s really the breaking point for us, alongside the content. And for this, I worry a lot more.

Does a hiatus from playing mean I’ll stop posting Spiral Knights content? Well, no. There are great aspects of the game, whatever the payment structure might do to it in the end, and I want to help those new to the game, or even those new to the concept of working up heat levels on their weapons for upgrade purposes.

8 thoughts on “Spiral Knights: Partial Hiatus”

  1. it’s great that you’ll be getting to hang out with the crusaders. despite the plethora of acquaintances, it’s hard to find people worth the plane ticket, you know? so kudos. :)

    new content for t2 would be pretty awesome for me, if only because depth 13 appears to be where my level of incompetence starts showing up. i can count on one hand the number of times i’ve even made it to the jelly castle (once i even reached the king! and died within a minute) …granted, it would help if spiral knights didn’t hate my laptop; having to restart every 20 minutes because my laptop disconnects/bsod-reboots and hoping against hope i’ll make it back before i’m booted for inactivity gets really draining after a while. i like to pretend i’d be better at not dying if half of my attention span wasn’t focused on the race against my laptop’s imminent explosion.

    sad thing is though, all my armor is 5*. my weapons would be, but i’m waiting on the 5* khorovod upgrade and a hail driver isn’t a huge priority (it’s on my list, but it’s my “meh, whenever” list). so yeah. divine veil/vog cub coat/grey owlite shield and i sometimes die even on d9. but at least i acknowledge this. the game would be much more stressful if i john-rambo-ed everywhere and wasn’t aware of my limitations. :)

    an expansion of the advanced training hall that actually let us practice stuff would be nice. i mean whoopty shit, we can throw vials and one-hit trashcans. and stand on fire pits to see what happens if we die in there (nothing, you just hit the attack button to resurrect with full health. BORING.)

    oh hey, guess who’s the delighted new wielder of a khorovod with a UV very high damage versus the undead? :D:D:D:D:D i’d been casually UV hunting using my mist energy, and got lucky on the 5th troika. *happy khora dance*

  2. I’d really like at least one more boss for T2. I think ideally, each tier should have at least 3 boss options when a dungeon is created.

    • That would be nice variety. Heck, just special levels other than the Royal Palace that also give out serious heat and treasure would be nice.

    • Actually the devs say they’re working on a beast-theamed boss at the moment.
      Sadly it is for t1.

      • I know. I don’t mind that it’s tier 1; it’ll help out newbies in terms of getting to T2, as well as giving them heat to level their weapons.

        I wonder if they’ll make the Jelly King harder to balance things out.

  3. Aside from Firestorm, which is a great change of pace, T3 is more of the same level-wise.

    Also, the developers still have done nothing to balance T3 status effects/monster attacks. Many T3 levels are more frustrating than challenging (taking massive burn damage from a red rover/retrode across the map or being infinitely shocked/frozen by a variety of enemies). Greavers are especially absurd, as their “haze” can inflict status effects through your shield. Devilites attack almost instantaneously and commonly with status effects. Several fire gremlins can shield lock you in place for 15s or more with a sea of flames. Shield gremlins have a stun attack with no charging/warning animation that, especially with lag, can come out almost instantly. Rocket puppies homing missiles weave around all obstacles, even doing reverse thrust turns to circle tightly around blocks you hide behind. Quicksilvers can self shock, toxic gels love using spike attacks, and challenge rooms can spawn wave after wave of these or other broken enemies en masse.

Comments are closed.