Deja vu by Unicornkitty

Looks like the game's having another crisis. Energy prices are rising, players are getting whiny, everyone's quitting.. I can't imagine why this is happening! Wait, yes I can. The last big boom of new players are all reaching 5* now, getting lots of crowns they want nothing to do with (except to buy CE with), and those who do buy energy have no reason to sell it for crowns anymore. Didn't this happen 2 months ago? Yeah.

The only things that have changed since then are PvP and Roarmulus. Punch and Vise, various bugfixes. Absolutely nothing else has changed. And frankly, these changes haven't been what the game needs--remotely.

PvP
To my knowledge, the game is still hosted on Amazon's lovely cloud somewhere in Western US, which spells lag for most players who live in any other part of the world. This renders PvP unplayable for many--although without lag, the game is still full of irritating features/bugs. PvP ended up like most other bosses: there's no reason to do it once you've got enough coins for the 1-3 items you want to buy/craft. At first I thought it'd would be fun, it'd be a challenge, etc, but it quickly became evident that win/lose was based on how badly you were lagging in the match, and score rankings weren't even based on SKILL, but on the FREQUENCY in which you play the game. You can win every match you play for an hour a day, and still not rank. Whereas a player who sits at the computer for 6 hours a day and LOSES EVERY BATTLE will end up in 1st place. Not only that, but there's still no prize for being on the leaderboards. It really oughtn't take this long to implement something; hell, even a temporary CE or bombhead prize would suffice as a placeholder until you figure out what you're trying to do.
tl;dr: There is no reward for playing PvP. I'm not talking about a physical 1000ce prize, but there's no satisfaction from playing PvP anymore. If you lag, you lose. And if you don't play for 8 hours a day, you still lose in the long (week-long) run. Bombheads are rare enough that it's not even a factor in whether or not I play anymore, let alone winning another krogmo coin--add that to the useless stack of hundreds that I've got.

Roarmulus
Roarmulus never made it big like Jelly or Vanaduke; it's down there beyond salvaging, just like Snarby. The levels are dull and repetitive, more timing based than skill based; material/crown/heat gains are unimpressive, and Brinks' rewards aren't even that attractive to farm. Honestly, Roarmulus really had no hope of ever making it big, and frankly I don't see any future bosses (save for T3 maybe) making it big either, unless they sport some very attractive rewards like Sealed Sword, Crest or FoV.

Punch and Vise
Punch was supposed to be a crownsink, and for a brief moment, it worked. Everyone scrambled to purchase CE and sell it so they could afford Punch's outrageous prices. Soon it became clear that he had a knack for screwing you over with crappy UVs and just stealing your money--really, 375kcr (6-7kce) for a triple UV, which very well might end up as LOW LOW LOW? No thanks. You're better off masscrafting an item for a UV, instead of betting with Punch. You'll always lose. (in before "hurr durr no I got CTR:very high on my sword and it only took 3 tries")

As for Vise, he's ANOTHER ENERGYSINK in the game. That's honestly the last thing we need. What is it with making everything cost energy in this game? If Vise cost crowns (an absurd amount), people would be just as likely to purchase CE and sell it on the player market so they can unbind an item that much faster. Might mean a slight loss in profits, but it won't spell out another failing game.

No other changes?
No, and the power plays and giveaways really aren't helping the game right now. Certainly can't save yourselves with a second Steam release, and new content (be it clockworks, balancing or guildhall) is faaaaaaaaar off. You might as well work on fixing what's already there, instead of trying to hide it behind new shiny things before everyone those shinies are broken too.

What ever happened to the Rose Regalia-style events? That was wildly successful for both your pockets and the game's success, and the game is screaming for a) new rare items and b) an inflow CE right now. Instead of churning out a new rare, purchase-able item which will net you tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars in a couple weeks, sure, just do another Birdsong giveaway. Just prepare for the hate that'll follow from more disgruntled players who didn't win, come Monday.

Maybe while you're at it, you could fix PvP so that it's SKILL BASED scoring, and add rewards so that players will actually PLAY it. It doesn't have to be a transcendent fabric that's had tens of days of thought put into it. Just put a shiny placeholder in there, hell, distract ME.

In before
"Shut up whiner and don't play the game if you hate it". I don't hate the GAME, I hate what's HAPPENING to it--I'm not going to pretend that the game is perfect and that I love everything about it when it's clearly FAILING YET AGAIN while everyone around me is getting bored/disgruntled/angry and quits playing.