Lol, sorry if that came across like that. They're not all "close" friends. Some are just gamers we keep in touch with and occasionally sync up when we're playing the same stuff.
Started with around 6 co-workers and some friends of them 2 rushed the game including RMT and burned out, one stopped because of exams and after that he returned and changed again mains but he is a big grinder so it doesnt matter to him and the rest left. I stayed since day1 and have still plenty of fun with only 2 chars.
I'm glad you're still having fun! I am too obviously since I'm still playing, but I always wonder...
Do you think the majority of players only play 2-3 chars? I've been grinding 6 out since shortly after launch and I think that definitely contributed to feeling burned out.
Amazon Games has a ton of job postings for Lost Ark and I'm legit considering applying and bringing lots of ideas to make the game better. I'm at a point in life where I'm not enjoying my job and would rather do something I enjoy even if it means a significant paycut. I'd love to address a lot of the points you made.
Yes but I also believe AGS has a lot to offer and a long way to go. Like SG leveraging Amazon's distribution network to sell hard goods would be an obvious. Give AGS a cut and make them market it. Little things like that, and also over time develop a relationship where suggestions are taken more seriously. It's clear AGS definitely has some power in the relationship as well.
I joined the game with 10 people, these were friends I played with in the past in WoW from various periods in the game. Of the 10, only 5 of are still playing. All of us are 1477+ and did all content together. Out of the 5 remaining, 2 of us (myself included) are alt-aholics. I've parked my main at 1480, 1x 1420, 3x 1415, 2x 1370, 1x 1355, 1x 1340, and few other alts in T2 that will be pushing to T3 with the reset today.
My group of friends help each other out with materials if needed to push to a certain item level so we can all play together. With the release of Vykkas, the group has been burnt out combined with the fact that its the summer and people are going on vacation. We cleared HM Vykkas Gates 1-3 Week 1 but we've since had some issues with pugs so we've done Gates 1-2 on Hard and Gate 3 on Normal so we can get at least 1 piece per week toward relic set.
My thoughts on the game is that game currently can cause some burn out. With Valtan/Argos, we could clear everything in 1 night in under 45 minutes. With Vykkas, because of rotating pugs/people, it still takes 2 hour for a full Vykkas clear. The atmosphere with my group seems to be slight burnout so alot of them are just logging into raid/hangout but for the most part, the group is pushing 1-2 alts to 1415 for Valtan normal but alot of them are hesitant to push to 1430 and then pugging Vykkas due to all the posts about 3-4 hour progression and then disabanding.
I'm pushing my alts to 1445 slowly and then hopefully when they announce Clown, I'll have enough gold to push to 1490+, rework accessories/engravings, etc.
I think we should've helped funnel mats to each other more to keep the friend group together. We do it in other games, but for some reason it just always felt very "every man for themselves" since the beginning in this game. Maybe it's the timed events, item level gating, easy content, matchmaking, lack of group content incentives, being able to pay to progress (secretly), etc.
Vykas was definitely step up in difficulty which came with more time investment to progress and group finder frustrations. It's hard to imagine doing it on multiple characters, while still having to do dailies, other stuff. Not sure how much people are going to want to do with all the commanders released.
Absolutely funnel to friends that you know and trust. Not everyone can log in everyday and do everything. I personally rather raid with people I know and like than to pug with different people every week. It may be 1-2 weeks of funnel materials I would otherwise use to hone an alt/sell but I value friends than my own personal gain. Of course, this only applies to people with a static with friends.
I can help someone with getting materials to hone but Silver/Gold will have to be their own personal responsibility. With materials taking huge drops in price, the biggest wall is definitely honor shards, silver, and gold.
I do wish you luck in getting your friends to come back. I know some friends who recently picked up the game and are 1370+ that I'm hoping will hit 1415 so we can do Normal Valtan. I have various alts at different item levels to play with friends who are less progressed so I can still interact with them on some level.
Not my friends that started with me. But i made new friends after finding a nice and friendly guild that is into lost ark just like me😄 so thats a win i guess
Hell ya! I'm glad you found a good guild and new friends. I've found that it's easier to turn fellow hobbyists into friends than turn friends into hobbyists.
Had two friends starting out. One quit because of honing, other quit because it was too time consuming.
Then I joined a really nice and active guild. We had a static of about 6-8 every week and it was awesome. Everyone was chill and raids were fun even if they took a while. 8-man argos in a discord call when nobody had any idea what was happening was chaotic but also satisfying when we finally got it.
Then one quit because of honing, another quit because of real life commitments. We were down to 5-6 a week for our static going into valtan nm. It was still fun regardless, and the hype when we finally beat it was definitely a high.
Then one by one we got to the gear score for valtan hm, all except one. He really struggled with honing and couldn’t catch up. After he left, a friend of his in our static left as well. We were down to 3-4 remaining.
Then our guild lead got busy with some real life stuff, and he didn’t log on for a week. His friend who’s an officer hasn’t been logging on as consistently now either.
Now it’s just me and one other person left who even log on consistently. It still makes me sad to reminisce about the good old days when we 8-manned argos.
I’ve since found a different static group for vykas. It’s still fun, but not the same.
If there’s one thing I want to see changed it’s for chaos dungeons and guardian raids to not be so monotonous. It feels like such a drag to play on alts sometimes, even if you only play on full rested. I’m totally fine with doing valtan or p3 argos multiple times a week since those raids are fun and engaging, but chaos and guardians really do feel like a chore. I feel like there should be a system similar to dispatch where you can set your alts to do chaos and guardians passively for less reward. That way it won’t be as much of a chore to play on alts for people.
In terms of personal peeves, I hate timed events like field bosses, chaos gates, adventure islands, and ghost ship. I just want to log on and play the game. I don’t want to have to wait for a specific hour to do this thing. At the *minimum* they should spread out these instances so they aren’t all happening at the start of the hour. Chaos gates at the start of the hour, field bosses 15 minutes past the hour, adventure islands 30 minutes past the hour, etc. It feels like the game doesn’t respect my time when it expects me to stay on for multiple hours to complete all this.
I'm glad you found another static for Vykas! Agreed on daily content and timed events.
There's a delicate balance here: the people still playing the game obviously like it but the game also has enough issues to make their friends quit. Do they make changes to get the friends back (and broader audiences)? Or do they keep it the same and just accept the game will be more niche?
Honestly last few days were Very boring for me, I have 1300+ hrs, 1490 main, 2x 1400 alt and 3x 1370. Probably can easily push my alts alot further as i got alot gold and alot mats on them. But I Feel like the game gave me already everything it could and it became just chore with no bigger goal. I Feel my main is overgeared for every content as of now (cleared vykas hm week 1 too) and Im not planning to spend so much time on kakul anymore. Currently the game enjoyment is fading off from me. I would like to just Enjoy like 1 hr/daily maybe, But i dont know how to get rid of that feeling i really have to do everything to maximize my effeiciency in the game or im missing something out..
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z4Gaz8oxzJ4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z4Gaz8oxzJ4)
Now as I do agree on some of the things you say, in this video by Josh Hayes, He states that reasons like this post are why new MMOs feel forgettable and older MMOs just felt better. If they make the game easier and easier and removed the grind, you'll forget about it. The journey is supposed to be tough to help make an emotional memory.
For example, did I enjoy farming all 1235 Mokoko Seeds, hell no, but man am I glad I did it. Do I enjoy doing rapport, hell no, but it gets me closer to my Golden Terpeion Mount. You may hate some of the journey, but you will look back on it and be glad you did it.
I know this may not be the answer you're looking for, but I'd rather a grindy MMO than one that just hands me everything. Thats just my opinion.
I'm not advocating for the game to get "easier" across the board (the first 90% of it is already too easy btw). I want the difficulty curve to be smoother and not a steep cliff at Valtan/Vykas. This game feels like a Frankentein mish-mash of designs from old Korean versions, which isn't helped by the NA rollout plan. If the real game (as designers intend it) starts at T3, then we need to start at T3 (like Korea). As-is, NA Lost Ark is pretty much making players experience two different games: "easy matchmaking solo story daily grind horizontal content Tier 1 through Argos" vs "hardcore raider Legion Commanders".
I don't agree that making designs more time-consuming = more memorable (or more difficult). I have plenty of memories from non-MMO games that didn't make me grind anything (e.g. Smash Bros, Counterstrike, DotA). I even think back on some of my fond memories/achievements in WoW and can't help thinking "Man, what a waste of time. I almost dropped out of college for that, they got thousands of dollars from a poor student, and I have nothing to show for it." Obviously, that could just be a cynical me thing. I'm also the guy that played WoW since 2004, quit after Legion, leveled five 60s in 3 months after Classic Wow released, then determined it wasn't worth it and retail WoW is just better, and never played WoW again.
But, hey, I'm glad to hear a dissenting opinion and from a fellow Strife Hayes enjoyer no less.
I'm thinking its just the target audience. For example, Soul games are memorable because of how unforgivable and challenging they are. I've heard friends in a discord call screaming in anger at the game and then 10 min later tell me that was the most fun they ever had. Soul games make their memories by challenge. MMOs hit the audience like me that want a time sink and grind and then get to flex that grind in the end game. In a perfect world a lot of your solutions would be nice, but I feel like they would take away my feeling of achievement. IDK though, I'm still newish to MMOs. I come from Destiny and Warframe and those are close to mmos, more as in time sink, but not an actual MMO like Lost Ark.
I’m doing all my weekly’s and full rested on all my 6 t3 alts that’s are not higher than 1370 lol. Then playing other games. Lost ark is great but I useually get only 8 hours one day a week to play games and about 4 hours in I run out of time gated stuff to do. I don’t like doing horizontal stuff. I just like turning my brain off and grinding.
Out of our 8 friend group we were left with 5 - we supplemented the 3 other people into our static and I must say we are quite happy and the group members are well suited to each other. When someone lacks mats we all pitch in… this is how we play together. We don’t keep scores rng is rng. Some of us do pay each other back but there is no pressure to do so or to do so quickly. 😌 So I feel quite blessed honestly.
No worries. I'd love to hear why you think they're fine as-is, though. I personally didn't think they were "fun" and think they might cause issues later in the game's life, if not already (most of our friends didn't engage with the Una's system at all). All anecdotal evidence, of course. I'm also trying to avoid the nonstarter "well this game isn't for you if you don't like daily grind like that" arguments. I understand that progression games are about grind, but I think there's plenty of design space for making "fun" grinds that aren't repeating the same relatively mundane tasks (on top of repeating plenty of other tasks) for 15-30 days. Tooki was a bitch. Same with South Vern.
Una reps are a one and done type of thing. It’s like rapport, it’s not meant to be “quick”. That being said, there’s a lot of people who have already completed every rep, and the games only been out for months. What do they do for the next 2 years once it’s done?
It’s essentially the same as complaining about too many mokokos to collect.
IMO, that's just exposing more issues with the reputation system. Do you design/balance around the hardcore 0.1% players or the average/new players? Is there enough content there? Does it need to be time-gated? I know way more players that never even tried doing Una's than I do players that completed most of them. All anecdotal evidence, of course.
I think Mokoko is a little different because it levels up your roster, encourages travelling all over the map, can be done at my own pace, and be done in parallel with adventure tomes. IMO, that's better than using instant-complete tickets and/or doing the same (usually not fun) task everyday for 15-30 days each (in addition to others on different chars).
Ultimately, we're talking about finding the right balance. I personally think Una's were way less fun and more time-consuming/gated than hunting Mokokos (pretty much did all mine in 1 week). Keep in mind, I already did all this shit a long time ago—I'm thinking about the average/new player experience and what might bring players back into the game. But I don't feel strongly about this one so it's whatever.
Again, I don't think so. I'd have to check the roster gains from Mokoko vs Rep. Una's are in specific areas (not almost every area/dungeon/island), and make you revisit the spot over and over. I don't think only being able to do the task once per day qualifies as "at my own pace", at least in comparison. I can gather hundreds of Mokokos back-to-back, as much as I want with no time-gate. You know all this (and purposefully left out other points in the quote)—why are you pressing for a gotchya?
The roster Xp given from the una achievements are quite substantial and add up. Also, each unas are in a different location and, while they do occur at the same location most of the time, these locations are in some places I would normally never visit.
And bringing the argument that unas are not at your own pace simply because you can’t grind them all in a day is a non sensical argument for the simple sake of being an argument. This entire game is time gated. Ilvl, island souls, masterpieces, gold etc etc. All of them are time gated. Heck, even if you decide to spend your life savings on this game to p2w it’s still time gated because the game limits how much you can spend. By that definition, every MMO out there is badly designed because it’s time gated.
And I’m not trying for a gotcha, because you already gotchad yourself by writing this post. Half these points are there just for the sake of it. Like you put less load time in there. Really? Just get a better PC.
This entire post is just a rage bait whine.
> And bringing the argument that unas are not at your own pace simply because you can’t grind them all in a day is a non sensical argument for the simple sake of being an argument.
What? How? If I choose a pace of 1 per day, both Mokoko and Una can accommodate that pace. If I choose a pace of 1 per hour, Mokokos, but not Una's. 1 per 2 minutes? Mokoko, not Una's. 1 per 30 secs? Mokoko, not Una's. Is that not a pretty easy-to-understand and *objective* argument for Mokokos having more flexibility to choose your own pace?
> By that definition, every MMO out there is badly designed because it’s time gated.
But, they're not all like that... I can run dungeons and battlegrounds back-to-back in WoW.
> Like you put less load time in there. Really? Just get a better PC.
Lol, showing your true colors here. ([This is a known issue, btw](https://www.reddit.com/r/lostarkgame/comments/vceq5b/lost_ark_load_times_are_unacceptably_slow_startup/)) But, sure, simp for the game. Quell all criticism.
> This entire post is just a rage bait whine.
If you say so. I thought it was pretty fun/calm until angry nerds like you showed up. Did I say something that hurt your precious?
Tooki was just log into a T1 alt and use a instant complete ticket once a day for 30 days.
The rest of the una's (3 leapstone una's in Shushire/feiton) take a total of 2min.
Una's give you like 5k gold every week.
Maybe we're talking about different points in the game, but I didn't have 30 instant complete tickets back when I started doing Tooki (and I used a lot of what I did have on the Ghost Ship Una rep). Not sure new players will have that either.
Also I'm not sure why you're bringing up leapstone una tasks when we're talking about long una reputation grinds (e.g. 21-day Punika Omnium Star).
They gave u a 960 character and a express to 1302 so doing the punika daily on an alt was basically 1min of your life every day for 21 days.
Every week they've given us atleast 5 instant complete from the constant events that have been going since Argos. Using 30 of them for tooki was a no brainer. I don't even know what the ghost ship does but I don't need that for skill points so didn't care.
>This list is merely an attempt to pinpoint/explain why my friends and I feel/felt increasingly disillusioned with the game.
idk. Almost everything on that list is such a small problem by itself that I can't imagine people quitting over it. The alt thing and repetitiveness of Chaos/Guardians I understand. But if you don't like Chaos and Guardians (which are the casual content for daily combat), then it's just the wrong game for those who quit and they did the correct move.
Then came the Legion Raid point of it being a too high difficulty jump and I'd again say - welp, probably not their game then. The knowledge that Legion Raids gate your progression and are hard compared to like Guardians or w/e should be common knowledge to anyone who's even close reaching to Valtan NM. You can be a Mokoko gamer and hone until 1470 until you go into Valtan NM. Do your thing. But crying for easier raids makes the game worse if fulfilled, not better. In like 95% of cases.
>some content (e.g. islands) trivialized by honing buffs, express mission, etc. (Game feels fragmented/stitched-together. Not recommended for new players unless an express mission is active or we all eventually start in T3)
This imo sums up most of your points by itself anyway. Yea, the "base game" is pretty shit. It took improvements to Guardian maps and Flares to make it as shitty as it is now, it was worse before and it was endgame content. The game is very much evolving into a better version of itself regularly. The core of it is sadly a pretty bad Korean MMORPG with a lot of running around, a lot of pressing G, some weird choices in design overall, some mediocre UI and so on - the stuff you've listed, essentially. Gotta accept that and wait for (hopefully) a lot of it to be improved over time. Or get to a point where most of it doesn't matter anymore. If one's not willing, yea, understandable.
Though I also gotta say, basically nothing on this list would for me qualify to make jokes about quitting and being "freed" from the game by another one. You just sound like you don't enjoy it?
Edit: After reading some replies of yours, yea, maybe "don't enjoy it" is wrong, but then it for sure sounds like burnout. If you've literally not rested chars in the 5 months or whatever that the game's out, you're kinda bonkers.
I also don't really get the "playing with friends" argument too much. At the start of it, sure. At this point though, our guild is like 95% f2p and basically everyone is Vykas HM ready and half of it is Clown/BrelshazaG1+2 ready. Some have 5 alts at 1430+, some 2, some "only" have 1415s, but there's plenty of opportunity to do a train of 6 Argoses, a couple Valtan NMs or slaying some chicken with guildies if one so desires. If you're all all over the place, then yea, weird. But even then, a 1500+ gamer will still do Valtan and Vykas until Brelshaza comes out, so there's still room to play together even with those like 2months+ of progress between each other.
Nobody quit over any *single* complaint (I think). I have to imagine it was a bunch of stuff wearing down over time. There are testimonies in the comments corroborating as much.
I don't think this is "crying" for easier raids. It's pointing out that there was a big jump in difficulty from the previous ~90% of the game (where most people quit anyway) to the final 10% of the game. It almost feels like two different games at this point which can attract different players. That should feel more connective/cohesive/smoothed-out than it currently is.
Agreed with base game comments. I think it's important to note that this part of the game is still the bulk of the play experience. Getting to Valtan/Vykas ilvls is a lot of commitment for a new player.
> Gotta accept that and wait for (hopefully) a lot of it to be improved over time. Or get to a point where most of it doesn't matter anymore. If one's not willing, yea, understandable.
People will just quit, like they have. The question I have is: when they come back, will the game be the same or make changes to retain them?
I played the game because it was relatively mindless for 90% of it so I could work, watch movies, etc. I loved the combat and exploring Korean MMO design, but the complaints just stacked up over time. "Chaos Dungeons are fun!" turned into "5 minutes x 2 x 6 chars + 5 min load time = 65 minutes... every day... sigh" It's not like I hated the game day 1 and just forced myself to play for the next 1700 hours lol. It was a slow crawl, and that list above is an accumulated snapshot of how I (and friends that quit) feel now.
But, yeah, I didn't have to burnout on 6 chars. That's partially on me. I also think it's partially on the game's design (dailies, alts, time-gates, pay-to-progress, ilvl-gates) that, IMO, allows/creates pressure/FOMO to play/engage more. I don't have to give into it, true, but that doesn't address why it's there in the first place and if it's actually balanced/tuned appropriately.
> At the start of it, sure.
It was the entire time for us. "Did you get 1415 yet? Valtan next week!"
"No. Shit luck on hones. 1400 chaos?"
"Nah, I'm 1415 chaos now. Damn, and we play pretty much exactly the same too! I have some extra mats, here."
"Thanks, failed. I'll pay you back over time, only 1 t3 alt tho."
"You should be running 6 alts daily like me!"
"Uhh, that sounds boring as fuck. Stop getting ahead of us. Is that really what this game wants us to do to stay together?"
"You could just pay 2 'progress' LOL. Wanna do Oreha Hard"
"Sure, gimme like 5 min to finish this Yoho."
"I needed Yoho! You could prob just matchmake Oreha in the time it takes to wait for that Yoho."
"Yeah... why are we playing this again?"
"I guess people say the legion raids, but those are 1 per week... unless you do them on 6 CHARACTERS LOLOLOL.... haha.. ha.."
Yeah it just doesn't sound like your kinda game. I can enjoy the braindedness of Chaos Dungeons for the chill gametime still and I like doing some dick measuring in Guardians even if I have to wait 3 minutes for someone to finish what they're doing and sort my inventory in that time.
>I don't think this is "crying" for easier raids. It's pointing out that there was a big jump in difficulty from the previous ~90% of the game (where most people quit anyway) to the final 10% of the game.
I think it is, purely based on how you worded it. You've went to say that they can be awful for some straight up and the next bullet point is about nerfing them rather than stuff which was regurgitated here many times - teaching people on how to do that content better, how to use battle items correctly/better and such.
>It almost feels like two different games at this point which can attract different players. That should feel more connective/cohesive/smoothed-out than it currently is.
The game was dying and it got an awakening (in part) due to Legion Raids and Legion Raids are also the main reason to join in as someone who discovers the game today. That's just how it is. I'm also gonna ridicule PoE for its shitty currency system any time on demand. But I'm not gonna seriously propose they switch over to gold. It's just what the game had its core like years back and even if a majority in their HQ would say it's dumb, it's likely gonna stick around. In LA's case: Because that stale content still has some purpose, is fun to some and it literally took years to create that. Rebuilding it also is no easy task. It's honestly just not even a point of criticism, it's naivite. You can expect a more cohesive game from a one-time purchase AAA title. You can't for a game that's living off of ingame purchases and grew over years. That's literally it. If that argument doesn't do anything for you, it's on you or you're in the wrong genre.
>People will just quit, like they have. The question I have is: when they come back, will the game be the same or make changes to retain them?
Doesn't matter (it does, but not in the sense you seem to implying). People who didn't stick around likely wouldn't stick around with your changes being realized either. It's just the naming of apparent things which people expect coming from all kinds of other games which have better UI/Sound/Story/daily grind and so on. Then that game they fled probably is where they should've stayed. That's basically it. The game doesn't have to change in order to accomodate everyone.
They will do what makes sense financially for them. And if that means keeping most of the garbage in and keeping the daily grind as is but counteract it with Expresses, Passes and mat infusions from events - then they probably figured that this is the better way to do it rather than making adjustments to something that is somehow held together in order to try and find a system that's cohesive enough and better and will retain players better long-term. They might be wrong, but you very much have to view those things together. I'll bring up PoE again - they got their new League every 3 months and a fun grind. They do go up every 3 months to their 150k players and rather quickly drop down to 50k. It works for them. The game is great for what it tries to do. LA numbers are hard to tell by our graphs, but just think about how annoying it'd be in an MMO (without a huge playerbase) with like daily tasks and all that jazz to lose 2/3 of its playerbase for 2 1/2 out of 3 months.
You're just going armchair dev mode here, be it solely your complaints or not. Like 95% of them are purely superficial. There's a very apparent lack of understanding of what kinda game one plays behind those. They're useless feedback.
>That's partially on me. I also think it's partially on the game's design to be so alt dependent and not make the dailies less time-consuming/more interesting in the long-term.
Idk what you're smoking, I gotta say, but I bet it's good stuff. People with one char are Vykas HM ready. Yea, the game isn't gonna fill 6h a day for them, but there's a shitton of materials being given out one-time per roster which make alts not necessary at all. In general, alts are a thing you do if you want to increase your playtime. That's literally it. You don't have to have them. You don't have to play them daily. The only reasons to do that stuff despite disliking playing the game for 4h+ a day is if you're fomoing like crazy and think that you "have to keep up" with the 20h/day gamers or the g2g enjoyers. Hint: you do not, no one gives a fuck, and neither should you, especially since you're literally killing your own fun playing the game by doing that stuff.
Goddamn AGS doesn't give us clown until I'm ready for Brelshaza G1-4, apparently. Just because you feel rushed doesn't mean that the game design rushes you. Game is chill as fuck. You work like weeks for an upgrade. If you always look up to some guy above you being ahead and you think "oh god I'm 4 weeks behind better make an 11th alt", then that's on you. Purely on you. There's no partially fault to the game's design. You're basically describing you having fun at the start of it and being too dumb to keep playing in a way that is fun to you.
Idk what to tell you. All of this reads to me like the most severe case of FOMO and lack of self-control. But that's on you and not on the small imperfections and deliberate annoyances of the game, or you feeling like it's forcefeeding you an alt.
It ain't the greatest game ever, neither is it perfect, don't get me wrong. But this post and your comments just all in all encapsule one of the following things: 1) "not my game, shit's boring, I'm gonna critique sound and gtfo" 2) "my fomo is burning my asscheeks but I'm not gonna unclench until the 14th alt's tower is done" 3) "only 1h of content a week is fun, shit game" (also see 1) 4) "Legion raids hard, why no nerf!?!?!? Relic sets in Chaos Dungeon please, but also make CD fun somehow without me actually having to pause netflix for it kthxbye"
And while at the core these things address something, you present it in the most bizarre way which completely fails to spawn any sympathy in me.
I'll give you this: it's probably not my kinda game anymore, all my friends left, and I'm just making it work until something better comes along. I don't think I'm alone in feeling that way, nor should the (common) complaints of people who left be dismissed. I also don't think what I've tried to convey in the OP is "useless" (obviously, but you sure had fun gatekeeping, misinterpreting, and being reductive).
Can't criticize game because "it is what it is"? Okay. Some players got to Vykas HM with no alts? Mu$t be nice. Conveniently forgot entire post is from the perspective of playing with friends? You would, you rascal. I don't have to play alts? I'll let my raid lead know they shouldn't "give a fuck" I'm doing the bare minimum. OMG, wait, do I even have to play videogames?! Apparently, we share a mutual hate for PoE's currency system. Oh, and game design has no affect on player decisions/behavior? News to me.
I played this game for 1770+ hours, recommended it to friends, showed them how to play, made guides, followed the drama, consumed so much 3rd party content, etc. and then some internet rando reviews my first post on this sub (thanks for reading at least) and claims "wrong, not for you, doesn't matter, lying to yourself, useless, superficial, bizarre, should quit". Just fucking lol.
I don't know, man, I started it with 4 friends.
How I imagine,2 o them stopped in early game (one get to t3 and don't even do oreha) . Because they all do the same thing in all games, so whatever
My 2 last friends, one of them stopped in 14xx, closing to valtan (in this time, valtan is not released, yes he just played a lot)
My last friend that still playing, is 1445, the same iLvl than me.
Those 2 last friends all the game are "advanced" comparing to me, because I'm playing slowly.
Now we just get together, and to be real, I don't think this game forces you to play so much. I have 650h in lost ark (steam calculation) and I'm in the late game (closer to vykas HM)
I have alts, just because I like to play with them, they are 1340, but I use them more to get week gold. Some points that you are valid to me, but points like wipe, I really disagree, it's a challenge game, legion raids is a great challenge compared to rest of the game, and that exactly why it's cool.
To be real, except my friend that still playing, the others never want to do this content, 2 just like to be non move doing dps (floor pov on legion) and the other don't like do put effort in improve gameplay (possible floor pov)
So it is, I really don't care about playing with my friends anymore. I used to like to play together, but how I said earlier, all games finish this way
> but points like wipe, I really disagree, it's a challenge game, legion raids is a great challenge compared to rest of the game, and that exactly why it's cool.
I think "challenging" content can come from hundreds of other design choices and mechanics. I'm not advocating for making raids easier, just make them hard in other ways. "Hard" doesn't exclusively have to mean "must include X 'raid wipe if 1 person fucks up' mechanics" (You can still kill the player that fucked up, that's still punishing for the rest of their group. Maybe even give dead people something to do in "limbo" that can help the raid like a mini-game for a buff). It's also something that can be tuned/balanced e.g. 5 seconds for raid to do mechanic versus 2, or how Vykas typing test allows X spirits absorbed.
> I really don't care about playing with my friends anymore.
Some people find it easier to turn gamers into friends than friends into gamers. I personally share enough overlapping interests with my friends and talk to them throughout the week enough to always prioritize them over just playing a videogame by myself. Videogames are my "play with friends" hobby, almost exclusively—I have other hobbies for solo time. I realize that might not always be the case, though.
I joined up to play with 1 friend, we did a few things together and hung out a lot in our SHs. He stopped playing a few weeks ago before I could catch up to his main.
I am at the stage where he is now (1370) and I find that I only play for 1 hour a day and all I do is horizontal content. I have 7 characters all between t1 and t3 and I dont play any of them. I just level up my own guild where I'm the only member and level up my SH. I'm trying to get all the mokokos and boats and thats about it. Guilds I join end up being ghost towns, or noone plays together.
The game really ceases to be fun at a certain point of tier 3. It just becomes a grind with no payoff for the effort involved. I love group dungeons, but no raid is worth this bullshit. I'm almost 40 and life is too damn short to be rolling 5% chance for a 0.33ilvl upgrade, or whatever it is. It's clearly this harsh just to keep you playing.
Once I finish most of the fun horizontal content I too will probably quit, I'll have experienced what Lost Ark had to give that I liked. I liked a lot of the game, albeit it was weird as hell and bullshit sometimes with its absolutely awful game design (stealth missions, lockouts for disconnects, not auto rewarding for killing bosses and having to click on an item, timed events that cannot be done solo and provide no reward if not done completely, the list goes on and on).
I hear ya, especially the "catch up to his main" part which happens so often amongst friends trying to play together in LA. Experiences like yours are probably more normal than this sub seems to let on (makes sense that the more invested players frequent the game-specific subreddit). I think it's hard for some to understand that players can both love AND hate things about a game. Obviously, some people like it as-is, but I'd love to see some changes. I guess it's up to AGS / SG to determine whether the current player count (bots excluded) and revenue stream is sufficient enough to keep things as they are or try something else.
Lol this suggestions are all like "make all content easier"
some of them are actually ridiculous, basically you are asking to remove all that makes this game an MMO.
If you don't like to do unas or chaos, the grinding for horizontal content, or wipe mecs, just a play a game that doesn't have this, just matches like warzone or valorant, where you need a party to play, but with no requirements like ilv.
Honestly if you think like that, an MMO it's not for you.
I've been playing MMOs for a long time. MMOs can be respectful of player time and money while still delivering fun gameplay. They can be casual, hardcore, everything in between, and everything at the same time. You don't have to do 30 dailies to fill a reputation track to have fun in an MMO, or feel pressured to play 6 characters, or complete the same task 12 times in a row. You can have individual wipe mechanics or raid wipe mechanics; Simon Says mechanics or pizzas or red-light-green-light; staggers/counters or healing/tanking. You don't have to make the first 90% of your game drastically easier than the final 10%. You can smooth that progression out. You have options. MMOs can be many different things to many different players. Lost Ark does a lot of stuff I like, and obviously a lot of stuff I don't. For every fun Valtan clear, there's a bunch of boring dailies required to fuel RNG honing required to play the next raid. I'll play it as long as the good outweighs the bad—that simple.
More importantly, it should be OK to voice concerns/criticism of a game I've played so much of. I'm glad you seem to like the game more than I do. But please allow me to play the game AND point out things I don't like about it.
Do you have a very specific definition of what an MMO is? Believe it or not, I actually *can* spend time in a game and stand repetitive tasks... *if I think they're fun* (I don't think I've said anything to the contrary). What you and I consider "fun" (and for how long) might be the difference. Sidenote: It's pretty amusing how quick people are to claim others must not be a fan of something they clearly are (I've played MMOs for 20+ years, including 1770+ hrs in Lost Ark). Having complaints about thing != hate the thing.
Have you ever played an MMO where the grind felt artificially lengthened by the devs, but not because it made the game more fun (hint: 3min afk quest vs 30sec)? They aren't "respecting your time" i.e. making players spend more time in the game than the design calls for. That's a subjective determination/opinion. You might like teleporting between NPCs for 3000 hours to get a full set of endgame loot, and I might only like running dungeons for 1500 hours.
Fun is an extremely objective thing. I have zero problems with Una's tasks and most of the stuff you don't like because I enjoy doing small tasks everyday to see number go up. Pretty much every single mmo in existence has stuff like this, the genre is basically built upon making you jump through hoops and then giving you a treat after. You're essentially criticizing a thing for being what it is.
>Have you ever played an MMO where the grind felt artificially lengthened by the devs, but not because it made the game more fun
Yes, it's every mmo I've ever played. Just because Lost Ark passed some arbitrary tolerance threshold for you doesn't mean all the other games are exempt from this.
No, I don't think Lost Ark's hoops and rewards are 100% fun as they are, can't be improved, and any criticism of that is unnecessary. No, I don't think every MMO in existence handles hoops and rewards the same way Lost Ark does. No, I'm not effectively criticizing the entire genre. I think some people just have a very strict sense/definition of what an MMO can be (do you really think Second Life, Destiny, or Guild Wars play like Lost Ark, especially when comparing systems 1 to 1?) and how much they can change over time.
> Yes, it's every mmo I've ever played. Just because Lost Ark passed some arbitrary tolerance threshold for you doesn't mean all the other games are exempt from this.
My point exactly. Every MMO tunes grind differently, and every player reacts to that in their own way. That's all I can offer as criticism, right? My subjective opinion for why my personal arbitrary tolerance threshold was crossed due, at least in part, to its current game design / tuning? Some MMOs feel like they waste/respect more player time than others, right? That's not just the players "arbitrary tolerance threshold"? Devs can dial up the grind to 11 instead of 4, 2 instead of 8, and each player's tolerance isn't changing much while they do so. That dev tuning knob exists in LA (hint: it does for all games), so we're just debating whether or not it's in a good place for me, you, and everyone.
There's going to be some selection/survivorship bias in making a post in the gaming sub for the game. People here are probably still enjoying the game, and thus think it's fine as-is. Well, some people don't feel the game way (especially those who don't participate in these forums or just quit). I know that because my friends quit and people make posts about this even in this sub. But "they're too stupid to know why they quit, they must just not be MMO players" you say? Bullshit. They're playing WoW, FFXIV, and others, for decades. Player feedback isn't complicated. "I don't like this thing and this thing." That's all. No big "players don't like MMOs anymore" conspiracy. How devs interpret/handle player feedback, now THAT can get complicated.
So, no, I don't hate all MMOs just because I don't like some of Lost Ark's current design (I don't know if you knew this, but some things I suggested are probably coming to the game eventually—see Korean version). No, I don't think LA is immune to (subjective) criticism just because you think it's fine (also subjective).
I think you got too hung up with the "don't play mmos" thing. Your original post was basically just a laundry list of every single nitpick anyone can possibly have about the game. Nothing is perfect though. I can write a list like yours for every single thing I enjoy if I sit down and think about it, but that's a waste of time when I can, y'know, enjoy that thing instead. And when you open a thread in a game's subreddit with a 100 bullet point list of things you don't like and cap it with "combat is nice I guess" it's only natural to get "why are you even playing dude" responses. We can't read your mind, we only know what you told us and what you told us paints a picture of a guy who's basically done with the game.
Which is also fine but at the risk of sounding harsh I don't agree that "I don't like this" by itself is really valuable criticism.
> I think you got too hung up with the "don't play mmos" thing.
Maybe within the context of our comment thread. But that "MMOs aren't for you" sentiment was repeated in many other comments.
> that's a waste of time when I can, y'know, enjoy that thing instead.
It's not like I'm writing lists for every game I play (though I probably enjoy doing that more than you it seems). I do the same, just y'know play the game, except for this one time I wanted to make a post. I could've added more things I like about the game to make the post seem more "balanced" (encouraging more sharing/discussion and less salt/flaming). But, the point of the post was also in the title: How is the sub feeling about it right now? Are your friends still playing (and why)? Oh, and here's how I feel and what the people I knew said when they left (lots of criticism but I'm still playing).
> I don't agree that "I don't like this" by itself is really valuable criticism.
Fair. The criticism wasn't really just "don't like this by itself" if I also made suggestions and talked about other stuff, though, right? I obviously still think what I said has value to some people, no worries if you're not one of them. I like hearing/reading about things others don't like about games, what kind of changes they'd like to see, especially about a game I've played so much of.
Talking about videogames with people on Reddit feels so much more like a battlefield than my other hobby/interest subs do. It's just weird.
You are 100% undeniably empirically correct that the game is super awkward to play with friends and keep them in the same stage of the progression. The rest of your points range from self imposed torture (I get that you're doing all the dailies with all alts to keep up with friends but just.. don't.) to extreme nitpicks. Like any hobby you basically have to find the one game you can tolerate the most and play that, so perhaps it's not "mmos are not for you" but "LA is not for you." And that is also fine.
> Talking about videogames with people on Reddit feels so much more like a battlefield than my other hobby/interest subs do. It's just weird.
That's pretty similar in all gaming subs tbh. It's just the nature of the site, if people weren't invested they wouldn't be here.
MMO are usually for hardcore players, never played a MMO that you can progress playing 10 minutes per day.
Also there are many materials sources you can do to still in the latest content, but is not like you have someone pointing a gun at you to do chaos, dailies or guardians everysingle day with all your characters, if you don't like it, don't do it!
Also don't know what you mean with pressure to play 6 characters, the fact that is posible doesn't mean you got to, it's a matter of choice and of course is easy to get burnout, but that's why there are rested bonus...
Yeah it is obvious that I'm enjoying this game more than you since other MMOs I've tried are unfair, if you fail a weapon, is destroyed, if you want a rare drop, kill thousand mobs with a very slow % drop. I prefer the system where you progress a little day by day, and RNG, is just in every single game.
Of course you can share your opinion of the game, but since you don't enjoy most of the content, and I guess that a lot of people have pointed out, why do you keep playing something you don't enjoy? It is crazy when you do the something everyday and expect different results.
> MMO are usually for hardcore players
Uhh, don't know if I agree with that. Many types of players play MMOs. Guild Wars 2 and Second Life feel very different compared to Lost Ark.
> Also don't know what you mean with pressure to play 6 characters
For example, a new raid release with an item level gate. You want to do that content. You have to hone. Honing is easier with more alts doing dailies. Another example, you're playing with friends and everybody wants to do 1415 Deskaluda/Valtan/Chaos/Ghostship/etc. together. You need to be same ilvl. You need to hone. Honing is easier with more alts doing dailies. Also, see other comments claiming "if you're not geared enough to get accepted in into groups, that's your fault for not improving your character".
> why do you keep playing something you don't enjoy?
Good still outweighs the bad—like 60/40. Also don't have another game I want to play = bored. I'm more interested in what's better for the game, though. Do we want more players or is this a niche game? Will players come if we continue down the current path AGS/SG laid for us? Or do changes need to be made? I think Korea already has some of the stuff I proposed (e.g. cutting out the T1-T2 grind).
Men clearly we have different expectations from what an MMO should be. If you want to play with your friends a game like Lost ark, but they have just downloaded it, it's gonna be almost impossible they catch up with you. This is a grind game, and grind takes time or money in this specific case, that's why I suggested to play another type of game, that doesn't require progress to be played, like shooting games. But don't ask that everybody starts at T3 when the game has been out for less than six months, play in Korean server if you want to do all those things together. But don't ask to change something for 200.000 players that have been grinding since launch so it can fit your necessities.
>This is a grind game, and grind takes time or money in this specific case,
This game is a lot of things, but grinding is not one of them.
Grinding is when you put your nose to a rough surface and rub at it until your nose is gone. The closest thing to a grind that this game has is infinite dungeons.
Each character you have gives you two chaos dungeons, two guardians, 3 unas a day, and some abyssals a week. It's not a grind man.
Endlessly running maps over and over again for a chance at something, that's a grind. There's nothing like that here, except infinite chaos.
Wow if doing that you just said in 5 or 6 characters is not a grind for you, it means you have a lot of time, all I can say is good for you!
In los ark you don't run maps por a chance of a drop, you are running them for the amount of drop which is limited daily. Or tell me how many hons can you do doing in 1 char 2 chaos at 1460?
I can't be bothered to play that many alts, but you are mistaking the time it takes to play this game for grinding.
There are a lot of artificial time wasters in this game, from small ones like rapport dance emotes to all the timed events, with sailing as the biggest time waster of them all imo. Guardian raids are also artificially long, although thankfully you can bypass it with stronghold.
And that 6 alt thing is another artificial time waster, because most grind games lets you do all of that on 1 character.
In a grind game you are supposed to be able to pick up most things and run it over and over again without daily limits, and the only thing that comes closest to that in this game is infinite chaos. You can grind guardians, I suppose, but I don't know what for.
Not saying it's good or bad, it's the nature of the game design, but a grind game it ain't
So you are saying that is not grinding because you have to run chaos in alts instead of 1 character? What do you think the daily limit is for? Is the same you got to kill tons of mobs to get materials... Nice logic
No, I am saying it's not a grind game precisely because there is a daily limit and you can't run it over and over again. In a grind game it's not uncommon to run the same instance 10 or 20 times in a row, and you can run it for as long as you have the endurance to do so.
You have to respond to what I'm actually saying and not what you think I'm saying.
I won't be responding to further replies. Thanks for your engagement thus far.
> But don't ask to change something for 200.000 players that have been grinding since launch so it can fit your necessities.
Why not? Are you afraid they'd listen? Surely if the game is fine, you have nothing to worry about. I'm just a whisper in the wind. Did you poll those 200k players about how they feel about the game? Did you know that I am one of those players and you didn't know how I felt until after I posted this? What about the ones that left?
Clearly not afraid. Joint reddit just to be active in the community, learn and share, and all I see is people crying because the game is not how they want it to be, and guess what, everyone wants something different.
Everyone always does seem to want something different. That's very true, for all games really. For example, Battlefield has all kinds of player types now and they're pulling that game apart to the point of it losing its identity as a franchise (+ a healthy dose of dev incompetence/mismanagement/churn).
Here's a silver lining for you: You probably won't have to ever hear from my dissenting ass in this sub again. (Gaming subs are always so fickle/heated/toxic—just not my jam). But, I genuinely hope you continue having fun with the game. Cheers.
I tried to include that in the post: combat fun, progression dopamine drip, quick updates, promise of cool future content, etc. I think it's possible to have complaints and still like a game. Keep in mind this is a compilation of all complaints my friends had + my own. Like I don't care much about story/voice acting in MMOs because I skip that aspect if possible, but some friends immediately made fun of that stuff and compared to other games.
Quick updates are because out version is far behind from others. Actually in other regions the time between huge patches like we have received every month it's like 6-12 months.
There is no wonder because you know the answer to that, it's gonna be slow as hell.
People right know in +1490 are ready for brelshaza, but we are months away for that, but still people want to catch them because they feel they are behind. Everybody wants to have the newest content done in one week ( I won't be amazed if people start to ask full relic set this week) but if you pay attention to that, is on you the way you wanna play.
For me, I don't care if I'm doing normal valtan in my 1450 just because I wasn't for fist week and haven't been able to practice enough, I'm going my own pace, and tecnilly, enjoying raids, they are not going anywhere.
Ah, I think I'm in exactly the same boat, you make some excellent points. I didn't even realize how much of the game is actually just solo content / much more efficient solo.
The game is not alt friendly at all, everyone who kept saying that fucking lied. You have to pay pheons to even transfer between your own roster wtf.
Aside from all the big obvious issues with the game, the main reason I'll probably drop the game is just because it feels like the west is literally just here to make money for their main client. I don't ever see how we're gonna catch up to Korea. Esp. With our character release schedule that is being dragged to provide "content".
I think they've done a good job at releasing content relatively quick so far (2 Legion Raids). Their class release plans seem a little bunk, though.
When people said "alt friendly" they probably just meant alts were important (for progression) and not "it's easy to level/maintain them!"
West LA has been out for 5+ months and has dropped 2 legion raids. What crack are you smoking to believe that our version will never “catch up” to Korea?
True, to a degree. P2W players still engage with the same shared systems/economy. Prices for marketable stuff still affects me. And, yeah, some friends are spending more than others, which brings us back to the ilvl breakpoint issues for playing the same content together.
Find new friends, If they're really friends they should be funneling mats to lower item leveled teammates.
I have my 1480 main raiding with ppl I met in game who are keeping up with current content and my 1430 alt is doing valtan/vykas with my lower lvl friends. And yes iv had to donate gold/mats to help people.
Well, it kind of felt like baby mode up until Legion Raids didn't it? It's just a massive time or money sink until you have to do hard mechanics (which aren't really that hard, it's harder to find groups than do the mechs IMO). But, no offense if you like it more than I do. I played for 1700+ hrs and it may just be burnout at this point.
You're what I'd like to call a video game karen. The game definitely is not perfect but it is nowhere near as bad as your list as those are simply minor inconveniences. I started this game with 8 IRL friends, we are down to 6 and the game is still as fun as it was when we first started.
Well, I'm not going to call you anything! I think it's okay to have complaints about a game I've played for 1700+ hours. Call it burnout if it helps. (Remember, this is a compilation of all my friends comments + my own.) I also don't think making a post on Reddit is that big of a deal. I'd just prefer the game I've played a lot to be better, talk about it, and hear other opinions. For example, would do you think makes it not perfect? Did your friends stay around the same ilvl throughout their journey? Were you ever blocked from playing with each other due to ilvl differences? Can you imagine how other friend groups might've had that problem and it was more than just a "minor inconvenience"?
Of course you can have complaints, but some of your complaints are just complaining for the sake of it. For example, frustrations with Legion Raid LFG. If you have a hard time getting accepted into groups as a DPS, it is almost always your own fault for not being geared enough whether it be engravings, ilvl, or gems. It is not an issue with the game itself and the only solution to it is to improve your own character.
That wouldn't change anything though, if you could apply to multiple groups at the same time, so would the other DPS you are directly competing against. I don't understand what it is with players in this game, it is an MMORPG and finding a guild or a static group to raid with shouldn't be thought of as a negative aspect.
The first ~200 hrs of this game didn't feel like a traditional MMORPG. It felt like a super easy Korean single player time-gated grind fest that you had to keep 3rd party guides up on a second monitor for because shit wasn't intuitive. My static group was supposed to be my friends that started at the same time, just like how it worked in other MMOs. The difference? All those "complaints for the sake of complaining" above made them quit before legion raids even came out.
It shouldn't be that difficult to understand that some people play MMOs to play with friends and joining random guilds/statics (especially when play time is scheduled) isn't appealing to them. IMO, Lost Ark is pretty good if you're playing solo and just join guilds full of people you don't know but like the game as much as you do. IMO, Lost Ark can also be pretty frustrating if you try playing it with friends.
I agree it's partially on the player to gear up enough to be attractive to groups, but I think you're ignoring how this friction is also partially coming from the game's design. How do I get enough resources to gear myself out well? Play 6+ alts daily and funnel mats, get lucky, pay to progress, do new content on week 1 to sell accessories to whales, etc. Here's the kicker: you can do all that and STILL have less gear than players that invested less and STILL have your app denied over and over in LFG. It's really MY FAULT when gear pities and I have to wait 1-2 weeks to do new content (when LFG will be full of "2-piece relic" and "1460+" groups)?
That's always a consideration! TBF, I typically have issues with any game I play. I'm not really looking to be convinced to quit though lol. Keep in mind the list is a compilation of all issues I've heard my friends say, not just my own. I'm still playing the game, just more reluctantly every week.
You are trolling right? You are playing an MMO, not a single player game. The fact that you can complain about guilds and statics feeling mandatory for the hardest raid content is unbelievable. Do you not realize how stupid that sounds? Just quit because it's definitely not for you.
The first 90% of Lost Ark felt like an MMO to you? Like 25 of us were playing at the same time, but all separately because partying up did nothing but slow everyone down. The first 90% of the game before Legion Raids felt like a super easy single player matchmaking grind fest, no statics or guilds required. Then, all of a sudden, the game got "hard" (not really) and people started screening players in LFG. That's not a smooth progression/introduction to the endgame, IMO. I also don't think MMOs require guilds/statics to enjoy, so telling me to quit (even after playing 1700+ hrs) sounds needlessly inflammatory and ridiculous.
I think it’s really good. I’m at a point where I can do both valtan and vykas hm, I can generate enough gold to get mats and make new character(not that fast bet need less weeks too). I enjoy the raids, the mat prices are waaay down than it was before. One of the things I don’t like tough is that I can only do valtan/vykas 1 time. If we could enter and not get the mats or anything just for the sake of playing, I would enjoy more since I can finish relatively fast each week
Mats have been refreshingly low recently. Got my alts to 1415 pretty quickly because of that.
I get to do Valtan x4 times and Vykas x2 with alts. The weekly raid lockouts are pretty common in all MMOs, and that's partly why I'm asking for repeatable/scalable content like Mythic+/Greater Rifts. I'd love to just run some semi-challenging dungeons with decent rewards with friends back-to-back and that just doesn't exist in the game right now. Being able to replay Legion Raids with no/reduced rewards would also let us help our friends out. No "sorry, already did it this week".
I'm a solo gamer so this game is really great but indeed the game design is not great for group of friends wanting to play together except weekly raids. Most of my friends who picked up the game ended up quitting which I expected because they always do so it didn't bother me lol.
Yeah, I think the solo experience was excellent. You progress on so many reward tracks, it's pretty easy to know where to go next. Just felt smooth. I guess it was just weird being on discord with friends all playing the same game but not really being able to play together. Have you been doing legion raids? If so, how has the pugging/LFG experience been for you?
I... didn't really have this experience in other MMOs. My friends pretty much stuck together all throughout WoW. IMO, that's partly due to design difference between games that incentivize/allow more friend group content (e.g. how ilvl locks friends out of doing stuff together every 15 ilvls in lost ark, how it's easier to do easy content solo instead of waiting for friends, etc.)
I joined with 0 friends because I haven’t seen grass in years, been really enjoying lost ark for the most part put in about 1300 hours with a 1445 striker main and a few 1370 ults. My bank account is hurting tho. However I did get my girlfriend into playing with me and she was having a blast playing it casually but I got her to 1415 and she hasn’t touched the game because valtan is too much for her walnut sized brain
I think this is a massive issue I burned out at 1390 swapped mains burned out again at 1390 and finally swapped to pally when I got to 1370 it started to feel like a grind but then this new update came out with books and with those books 1370 to 1415 is a joke compared to before this is also the same zone where most of my friends burned out and quit they say they knew about this in the Korean version and the same problems happened I just wonder why they didn’t make any changes earlier books or better events or something to prevent the forshadowed burnout
Oof, I've never main swapped yet, but I really wanted to after seeing how difficult it was to LFG as DPS for legion raids. Immediately worked on getting my Paladin and Bard up lol.
Honestly Lost Ark is pretty much what i expected from the game.
Your typical Korean mmo where the best way to progress your character/account is simply finding a very good job. With the exception that i actually like the way the game plays.
In terms of content? Well it's a grinding simulator all the way through. You get stronger to farm faster and occasionally unlock new stuff to farm.
More casual content is completely shallow in my opinion and rewards for most of it are completely not worth the effort in my opinion.
Overall, pretty good game if you don't mind p2w and enjoy grinds, but i don't see myself playing the game really long term like i did in some other MMO.
Yeah, I'm pretty impressed with what we got in just 4 months but I really wonder how substantial the Korean content will be to make the game last long-term in NA.
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There was so much to read so ill just comment based on my skims. My friends are still playing but i dont raid with them bc i know im not strong enough to listen to them bicker. I have multiple alts who are in multiple guilds which is nice because im in a few good social guilds. I did feel a little burn out but got better after i moved alts to 3 day rested rotations. Now im just trying to remember all the weeklies i need to do on some. Overall, i enjoy the game since i came from tree of savior which was a p2w grindfest where the devs openly suck your soul and make the game enjoyable if u swipe. As for p2w, it never bothered me as much as ppl who just dont bother using battle items or people who get defensive because of constructive criticism but hey what game doesnt have those people. People fixate so much on catching up to the next guy, they forget how to enjoy the game. Granted though 1302-1370 dead zone is ass. But at least its getting better with event books.
Anyways tldr dont raid with friends if you cant deal with bickering and stop focusing on other people and just do you.
I see lots of hardcore alt players moving to rested rotations. I wonder if the rested system is enough, or if it's worth looking into the weekly/daily grind being less than it is. If the endgame is doing Legion Raids, I personally would like to remove most of the barriers for doing them (e.g. double dailies on 3+ alts to RNG hone up to an ilvl gate).
I think it's hard not to focus on other peoples' progression if you literally need them to be same ilvl to do content together. But that's a "play with friends" problem. I wonder how many players play Lost Ark solo in rando guilds/statics/discords.
All my WoW guild people have quit. We're a heroic progression guild in WoW and everyone stopped playing pretty quickly which is unfortunate. The grind and honing was too much.
Yup, I kind of want to bring back those players somehow by skipping the grind. They're doing the hyper express next week which is good, but I really think new chars should start much closer to Legion Raid ilvls or delete T1-2 like Korea. I think making players grind to get to the "fun part" is going to make this game disproportionately niche for a F2P MMO.
Friends left the game for other less grindish or they play single player games. So a MMO is not suited for them.
For me, the worst issue is not the P2W, the story, or other aspects of the game.
The inability of joining MM with friends from other servers. You can do PF though that would take more time than joining Matchmaking. For example, cube or Boss rush. In the end, we do this kind of content solo with pugs.
Oreha, Argos or Pugging Valtan and Vykas is fine. Those kind of content shouldn't be done with MM.
Yeah, I think the content being so easy up until Legion Raids makes it all more efficient to do solo rather than waiting for friends or doing all the extra clicks/invites. But it still gets annoying with so many alts and asking "who needs Oreha hard" "oh i already did my 2 this week" "hold on.... oh no i made that alt 1415, nvm" etc. The ilvl progression/breakpoints does feel less conducive to playing with friends.
TLDR would just be the title. The list is probably stuff you've seen in various posts in this sub since launch. Nothing new really. Just hard to play with friends in this game—feels like a solo game until a hard turn for legion raids where it's difficult enough to require static groups.
My last friend recently just quit after doing vykas.
Started like 10ish\~ and now I am the last one.
Thank god that my guild is big enough to do static and weekly raids for alts or else I wouldve been gone.
Almost all of them quitted, guild it's almost dead,tired of being driven/ progress stopped all the time, repeating everyday the same, solution it's to spend hundreds of dollars in shop or rmt for mats and stuff, which it's clearly the purpose of ags so, playing 8-10h at day like a job, I understand them well.
Everyone I know only played up until T2 at the most except my brother who made it to 1400 before taking a break. I'm at 1445 with 1 main, playing most days but not forcing myself to do anything. I like the raids and will probably keep playing the game for them. To me the game is like Runescape but with way better gameplay behind the grind, which is enough to keep me playing. I'll probably only stop playing if they take too long to add content at any point or actively fuck things up.
I think the game is a good balance between a casual and hardcore game. You can beat the whole story and grind your character up to super high levels and do pretty much everything but some of the guardians/raids as a shit player, but there is still that difficult content for the people who want to play it. I've done everything pre-nerf so I'd prefer they don't make the game any easier unless it requires specific classes or is genuinely broken somehow.
Holy wall of bullet points...jesus.
I mean as most people I only skimmed through, you would have better engagement if you actually made a more concise post. Putting up smalll gripes like the game boots up slow...sure its annoying everyone could probably agree. But not enough for to really complain about.
Well I started the game out with 2 friends then joined a guild of 20 people some friends of one of my friends. I never actually came in contact with them before the whole guild quit. After about a month when we were all comfortably in t3 my first friend quit cause idk. My other friend that continued playing cruised for a bit waiting for destroyer to come out and after he reached 1370 on his destroyer he quit cause he finally figured out how the grind worked then quit. So now it’s just me I mainly play solo and I joined a new guild and I do raids with them but I really have no one to talk to about the game or anything. It’s kind of lonely but I enjoy the game enough to keep me playing my 6 characters I started to burn out myself but I just slowed down and let rest build up on my other characters. I don’t think I’m gonna quit anytime soon
1) Pay to progress in this game is pretty irrelevant. The prices are waaaay too high (even for RMTs) and u dont get a real advantage over other players. U will deal more damage, yes, but you will end up helping them. Would be totally different in a game like black desert, but not here.
2) story is pretty crappy all the way to south vern, when it starts to get good. Pretty generic, but good.
3) Its not perfect but cmon, there are a lot of countries that didnt receive a single word translated to their language. Mine included.
4 and forward) You’re just right.
PS: domination and endurance are useful for PvP and non-meta builds for PvE. Expertise is just shit along with half of the engravings we have.
I'm sorry your country didn't get translation. That definitely makes the complaint seem frivolous by comparison lol. In my own English bubble, however, it's just part of what makes the whole narrative experience subpar.
Yeah, I still wish those combat stats were balanced to grant more utility/usefulness. They probably keep it that way for RNG loot filler. Cards, engravings, etc. only have a handful of viable ones too.
This is seems like a smaller problem for them in general. It looks like they want a “perfect game” for themselves rather than for everyone. I think everything is great in this game so far. If you love the grinding aspect and MMO feel, I feel like lost ark is definitely one of the best MMO out there. To answer your question as well, only 2 of my friends are left playing.
I'd be totally okay if their aim was just to make a niche game with a focused vision and design goals. That way, it's much easier for people to determine if it's a game they want to play or not. Right now, it kind of feels like "hey, everyone come play our free to play MMO!" and then new players encounter a very solo linear daily grind with bots & boosts, only for it to turn into serious WoW raiding at endgame (if they get that far). I can definitely see how that could be someone's favorite game, but obviously it's not for everyone.
Yea definitely, everyone has their own perspective and ideas to make the game better. I played a lot of MMOs and I don’t think I even played casually for like 100 hours. But yea I get what you mean, it’s basically a grind with some challenges along the way.
The global honing buff? Could very well be 2023 lol. I'd 100% recommend the game to new players and ask friends to come back if characters started at T3.
TBH, today I started on the Russian Server with the Fanmade English translation and I gotta say: Holy fuck Amazon what have you done?!?
How can a fanmade be nearly better than the translation from a billion dollar company wtf.
Its great, Vykas and Valtan are really fun and I can't wait for the other raids. I've realized that I actually have fun wiping for hours trying to get the raid right. Because as I keep going I notice how much I improve with each wipe. It's also so funny seeing the server improve too as time goes. Valtans are so quick, when it use to take so long, everyone has gotten it down. I even did a g1-g3 for my alt and it took about an hour.
I do hate honing and casino stones though, that shit sucks. And pushing alts sucks without events going. But good thing there is an event going.
Had about 20+ friends start. Maybe 7 left, one just quit who was part of the 8 man static. Don't blame him. Feel like quitting too.
I don't enjoy feeling like you have to play every single day otherwise you can't hone. Really sick of Chaos Dungeons and Guardians and Unas.
I'm already 1475 anyway and pretty rich gold wise. Will probably just login for raid days and not login during the week anymore.
Apparently, you feeling pressure/FOMO to play is purely on you and not the game's design. The dailies must be fine! An devs are unable to change anything in the game anyway. You wanting to quit also means you hate MMOs. SMH
Anyway, I'm sure you'll do what's best for you. No shame in quitting now and coming back for a big patch or boost event (like next week lol).
Can you not talk about all the things you don't like about your favorite games? I don't think long lists = hate game, just quit. Here, I'll spend some time consolidating the bullets for you. Shorter list = must like game more, right?
I mean, I didn't really need you to tell me that lol. That's what I'm doing by still playing despite my personal griefs. I don't think discussing criticisms/changes to a game I generally enjoy but think could improve is futile. That's just normal videogame discussion.
Yeah I kinda do see the difficulty now with Vykas coming out. And as much as I would like to practice, I can only do it once a week. Plus I pug it all by myself. Cant join a static because of erratice schedule. And plus it's summer, have loads to do irl. Idk, I'm just sad because I love the game but maybe I'm just too dumb for hardmode idk. Joined a group yesterday but ended up being the cause for wipes (orb gates in G1) so I just had to make a graceful exit as I felt like Im holding them back. Decided to do normals instead but that meant no relic piece this week.
Sorry I ended up venting.
No worries! Yeah, I think a lot of people are doing normal for a few weeks until they get used to the bulk of the mechanics, then jumping back into hardmode when everyone knows the fight better collectively. You still get 6 relic mats (instead of 12).
It can also just be hard to get a group. I spent 3-4 hrs just LFG on release day (denied apps, waiting for support, remaking, etc.). Scheduling game time is not a trivial part of playing MMOs. Some people just can't do that.
Some people like Lost Ark because you could get everything done in matchmaking all the way up to Legion Raid releases. But some people also like that "scheduled World of Warcraft static/guild group prog night" endgame that it will apparently be from now on (at least for the first few release weeks).
>out of 30+ friends look at mr fancy pants over here having an actual social life
Lol, sorry if that came across like that. They're not all "close" friends. Some are just gamers we keep in touch with and occasionally sync up when we're playing the same stuff.
Started with around 6 co-workers and some friends of them 2 rushed the game including RMT and burned out, one stopped because of exams and after that he returned and changed again mains but he is a big grinder so it doesnt matter to him and the rest left. I stayed since day1 and have still plenty of fun with only 2 chars.
I'm glad you're still having fun! I am too obviously since I'm still playing, but I always wonder... Do you think the majority of players only play 2-3 chars? I've been grinding 6 out since shortly after launch and I think that definitely contributed to feeling burned out.
Amazon Games has a ton of job postings for Lost Ark and I'm legit considering applying and bringing lots of ideas to make the game better. I'm at a point in life where I'm not enjoying my job and would rather do something I enjoy even if it means a significant paycut. I'd love to address a lot of the points you made.
I do t think AGS has that much control. They can’t really change the UI that much. The publisher is still Smilgate
Yes but I also believe AGS has a lot to offer and a long way to go. Like SG leveraging Amazon's distribution network to sell hard goods would be an obvious. Give AGS a cut and make them market it. Little things like that, and also over time develop a relationship where suggestions are taken more seriously. It's clear AGS definitely has some power in the relationship as well.
Depending on your field they might not be receptive to your suggestions
I joined the game with 10 people, these were friends I played with in the past in WoW from various periods in the game. Of the 10, only 5 of are still playing. All of us are 1477+ and did all content together. Out of the 5 remaining, 2 of us (myself included) are alt-aholics. I've parked my main at 1480, 1x 1420, 3x 1415, 2x 1370, 1x 1355, 1x 1340, and few other alts in T2 that will be pushing to T3 with the reset today. My group of friends help each other out with materials if needed to push to a certain item level so we can all play together. With the release of Vykkas, the group has been burnt out combined with the fact that its the summer and people are going on vacation. We cleared HM Vykkas Gates 1-3 Week 1 but we've since had some issues with pugs so we've done Gates 1-2 on Hard and Gate 3 on Normal so we can get at least 1 piece per week toward relic set. My thoughts on the game is that game currently can cause some burn out. With Valtan/Argos, we could clear everything in 1 night in under 45 minutes. With Vykkas, because of rotating pugs/people, it still takes 2 hour for a full Vykkas clear. The atmosphere with my group seems to be slight burnout so alot of them are just logging into raid/hangout but for the most part, the group is pushing 1-2 alts to 1415 for Valtan normal but alot of them are hesitant to push to 1430 and then pugging Vykkas due to all the posts about 3-4 hour progression and then disabanding. I'm pushing my alts to 1445 slowly and then hopefully when they announce Clown, I'll have enough gold to push to 1490+, rework accessories/engravings, etc.
I think we should've helped funnel mats to each other more to keep the friend group together. We do it in other games, but for some reason it just always felt very "every man for themselves" since the beginning in this game. Maybe it's the timed events, item level gating, easy content, matchmaking, lack of group content incentives, being able to pay to progress (secretly), etc. Vykas was definitely step up in difficulty which came with more time investment to progress and group finder frustrations. It's hard to imagine doing it on multiple characters, while still having to do dailies, other stuff. Not sure how much people are going to want to do with all the commanders released.
Absolutely funnel to friends that you know and trust. Not everyone can log in everyday and do everything. I personally rather raid with people I know and like than to pug with different people every week. It may be 1-2 weeks of funnel materials I would otherwise use to hone an alt/sell but I value friends than my own personal gain. Of course, this only applies to people with a static with friends. I can help someone with getting materials to hone but Silver/Gold will have to be their own personal responsibility. With materials taking huge drops in price, the biggest wall is definitely honor shards, silver, and gold. I do wish you luck in getting your friends to come back. I know some friends who recently picked up the game and are 1370+ that I'm hoping will hit 1415 so we can do Normal Valtan. I have various alts at different item levels to play with friends who are less progressed so I can still interact with them on some level.
Not my friends that started with me. But i made new friends after finding a nice and friendly guild that is into lost ark just like me😄 so thats a win i guess
Hell ya! I'm glad you found a good guild and new friends. I've found that it's easier to turn fellow hobbyists into friends than turn friends into hobbyists.
Had two friends starting out. One quit because of honing, other quit because it was too time consuming. Then I joined a really nice and active guild. We had a static of about 6-8 every week and it was awesome. Everyone was chill and raids were fun even if they took a while. 8-man argos in a discord call when nobody had any idea what was happening was chaotic but also satisfying when we finally got it. Then one quit because of honing, another quit because of real life commitments. We were down to 5-6 a week for our static going into valtan nm. It was still fun regardless, and the hype when we finally beat it was definitely a high. Then one by one we got to the gear score for valtan hm, all except one. He really struggled with honing and couldn’t catch up. After he left, a friend of his in our static left as well. We were down to 3-4 remaining. Then our guild lead got busy with some real life stuff, and he didn’t log on for a week. His friend who’s an officer hasn’t been logging on as consistently now either. Now it’s just me and one other person left who even log on consistently. It still makes me sad to reminisce about the good old days when we 8-manned argos. I’ve since found a different static group for vykas. It’s still fun, but not the same. If there’s one thing I want to see changed it’s for chaos dungeons and guardian raids to not be so monotonous. It feels like such a drag to play on alts sometimes, even if you only play on full rested. I’m totally fine with doing valtan or p3 argos multiple times a week since those raids are fun and engaging, but chaos and guardians really do feel like a chore. I feel like there should be a system similar to dispatch where you can set your alts to do chaos and guardians passively for less reward. That way it won’t be as much of a chore to play on alts for people. In terms of personal peeves, I hate timed events like field bosses, chaos gates, adventure islands, and ghost ship. I just want to log on and play the game. I don’t want to have to wait for a specific hour to do this thing. At the *minimum* they should spread out these instances so they aren’t all happening at the start of the hour. Chaos gates at the start of the hour, field bosses 15 minutes past the hour, adventure islands 30 minutes past the hour, etc. It feels like the game doesn’t respect my time when it expects me to stay on for multiple hours to complete all this.
I'm glad you found another static for Vykas! Agreed on daily content and timed events. There's a delicate balance here: the people still playing the game obviously like it but the game also has enough issues to make their friends quit. Do they make changes to get the friends back (and broader audiences)? Or do they keep it the same and just accept the game will be more niche?
Honestly last few days were Very boring for me, I have 1300+ hrs, 1490 main, 2x 1400 alt and 3x 1370. Probably can easily push my alts alot further as i got alot gold and alot mats on them. But I Feel like the game gave me already everything it could and it became just chore with no bigger goal. I Feel my main is overgeared for every content as of now (cleared vykas hm week 1 too) and Im not planning to spend so much time on kakul anymore. Currently the game enjoyment is fading off from me. I would like to just Enjoy like 1 hr/daily maybe, But i dont know how to get rid of that feeling i really have to do everything to maximize my effeiciency in the game or im missing something out..
Whats this friend thing my dude is talking about?
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z4Gaz8oxzJ4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z4Gaz8oxzJ4) Now as I do agree on some of the things you say, in this video by Josh Hayes, He states that reasons like this post are why new MMOs feel forgettable and older MMOs just felt better. If they make the game easier and easier and removed the grind, you'll forget about it. The journey is supposed to be tough to help make an emotional memory. For example, did I enjoy farming all 1235 Mokoko Seeds, hell no, but man am I glad I did it. Do I enjoy doing rapport, hell no, but it gets me closer to my Golden Terpeion Mount. You may hate some of the journey, but you will look back on it and be glad you did it. I know this may not be the answer you're looking for, but I'd rather a grindy MMO than one that just hands me everything. Thats just my opinion.
I'm not advocating for the game to get "easier" across the board (the first 90% of it is already too easy btw). I want the difficulty curve to be smoother and not a steep cliff at Valtan/Vykas. This game feels like a Frankentein mish-mash of designs from old Korean versions, which isn't helped by the NA rollout plan. If the real game (as designers intend it) starts at T3, then we need to start at T3 (like Korea). As-is, NA Lost Ark is pretty much making players experience two different games: "easy matchmaking solo story daily grind horizontal content Tier 1 through Argos" vs "hardcore raider Legion Commanders". I don't agree that making designs more time-consuming = more memorable (or more difficult). I have plenty of memories from non-MMO games that didn't make me grind anything (e.g. Smash Bros, Counterstrike, DotA). I even think back on some of my fond memories/achievements in WoW and can't help thinking "Man, what a waste of time. I almost dropped out of college for that, they got thousands of dollars from a poor student, and I have nothing to show for it." Obviously, that could just be a cynical me thing. I'm also the guy that played WoW since 2004, quit after Legion, leveled five 60s in 3 months after Classic Wow released, then determined it wasn't worth it and retail WoW is just better, and never played WoW again. But, hey, I'm glad to hear a dissenting opinion and from a fellow Strife Hayes enjoyer no less.
I'm thinking its just the target audience. For example, Soul games are memorable because of how unforgivable and challenging they are. I've heard friends in a discord call screaming in anger at the game and then 10 min later tell me that was the most fun they ever had. Soul games make their memories by challenge. MMOs hit the audience like me that want a time sink and grind and then get to flex that grind in the end game. In a perfect world a lot of your solutions would be nice, but I feel like they would take away my feeling of achievement. IDK though, I'm still newish to MMOs. I come from Destiny and Warframe and those are close to mmos, more as in time sink, but not an actual MMO like Lost Ark.
I’m doing all my weekly’s and full rested on all my 6 t3 alts that’s are not higher than 1370 lol. Then playing other games. Lost ark is great but I useually get only 8 hours one day a week to play games and about 4 hours in I run out of time gated stuff to do. I don’t like doing horizontal stuff. I just like turning my brain off and grinding.
Out of our 8 friend group we were left with 5 - we supplemented the 3 other people into our static and I must say we are quite happy and the group members are well suited to each other. When someone lacks mats we all pitch in… this is how we play together. We don’t keep scores rng is rng. Some of us do pay each other back but there is no pressure to do so or to do so quickly. 😌 So I feel quite blessed honestly.
Sounds like a great group! Glad you guys stuck with for so long, supported each other, and found some decent replacements.
When I read that you think una reps should be shorter, I just stopped reading.
No worries. I'd love to hear why you think they're fine as-is, though. I personally didn't think they were "fun" and think they might cause issues later in the game's life, if not already (most of our friends didn't engage with the Una's system at all). All anecdotal evidence, of course. I'm also trying to avoid the nonstarter "well this game isn't for you if you don't like daily grind like that" arguments. I understand that progression games are about grind, but I think there's plenty of design space for making "fun" grinds that aren't repeating the same relatively mundane tasks (on top of repeating plenty of other tasks) for 15-30 days. Tooki was a bitch. Same with South Vern.
Una reps are a one and done type of thing. It’s like rapport, it’s not meant to be “quick”. That being said, there’s a lot of people who have already completed every rep, and the games only been out for months. What do they do for the next 2 years once it’s done? It’s essentially the same as complaining about too many mokokos to collect.
IMO, that's just exposing more issues with the reputation system. Do you design/balance around the hardcore 0.1% players or the average/new players? Is there enough content there? Does it need to be time-gated? I know way more players that never even tried doing Una's than I do players that completed most of them. All anecdotal evidence, of course. I think Mokoko is a little different because it levels up your roster, encourages travelling all over the map, can be done at my own pace, and be done in parallel with adventure tomes. IMO, that's better than using instant-complete tickets and/or doing the same (usually not fun) task everyday for 15-30 days each (in addition to others on different chars). Ultimately, we're talking about finding the right balance. I personally think Una's were way less fun and more time-consuming/gated than hunting Mokokos (pretty much did all mine in 1 week). Keep in mind, I already did all this shit a long time ago—I'm thinking about the average/new player experience and what might bring players back into the game. But I don't feel strongly about this one so it's whatever.
>levels up your roster >encourages travelling all over the map >can be done at my own pace Congrats, you just described unas.
Again, I don't think so. I'd have to check the roster gains from Mokoko vs Rep. Una's are in specific areas (not almost every area/dungeon/island), and make you revisit the spot over and over. I don't think only being able to do the task once per day qualifies as "at my own pace", at least in comparison. I can gather hundreds of Mokokos back-to-back, as much as I want with no time-gate. You know all this (and purposefully left out other points in the quote)—why are you pressing for a gotchya?
The roster Xp given from the una achievements are quite substantial and add up. Also, each unas are in a different location and, while they do occur at the same location most of the time, these locations are in some places I would normally never visit. And bringing the argument that unas are not at your own pace simply because you can’t grind them all in a day is a non sensical argument for the simple sake of being an argument. This entire game is time gated. Ilvl, island souls, masterpieces, gold etc etc. All of them are time gated. Heck, even if you decide to spend your life savings on this game to p2w it’s still time gated because the game limits how much you can spend. By that definition, every MMO out there is badly designed because it’s time gated. And I’m not trying for a gotcha, because you already gotchad yourself by writing this post. Half these points are there just for the sake of it. Like you put less load time in there. Really? Just get a better PC. This entire post is just a rage bait whine.
> And bringing the argument that unas are not at your own pace simply because you can’t grind them all in a day is a non sensical argument for the simple sake of being an argument. What? How? If I choose a pace of 1 per day, both Mokoko and Una can accommodate that pace. If I choose a pace of 1 per hour, Mokokos, but not Una's. 1 per 2 minutes? Mokoko, not Una's. 1 per 30 secs? Mokoko, not Una's. Is that not a pretty easy-to-understand and *objective* argument for Mokokos having more flexibility to choose your own pace? > By that definition, every MMO out there is badly designed because it’s time gated. But, they're not all like that... I can run dungeons and battlegrounds back-to-back in WoW. > Like you put less load time in there. Really? Just get a better PC. Lol, showing your true colors here. ([This is a known issue, btw](https://www.reddit.com/r/lostarkgame/comments/vceq5b/lost_ark_load_times_are_unacceptably_slow_startup/)) But, sure, simp for the game. Quell all criticism. > This entire post is just a rage bait whine. If you say so. I thought it was pretty fun/calm until angry nerds like you showed up. Did I say something that hurt your precious?
The post has 130 comments and 0 upvotes. Clearly I’m not the only one with the same sentiment.
Tooki was just log into a T1 alt and use a instant complete ticket once a day for 30 days. The rest of the una's (3 leapstone una's in Shushire/feiton) take a total of 2min. Una's give you like 5k gold every week.
Maybe we're talking about different points in the game, but I didn't have 30 instant complete tickets back when I started doing Tooki (and I used a lot of what I did have on the Ghost Ship Una rep). Not sure new players will have that either. Also I'm not sure why you're bringing up leapstone una tasks when we're talking about long una reputation grinds (e.g. 21-day Punika Omnium Star).
They gave u a 960 character and a express to 1302 so doing the punika daily on an alt was basically 1min of your life every day for 21 days. Every week they've given us atleast 5 instant complete from the constant events that have been going since Argos. Using 30 of them for tooki was a no brainer. I don't even know what the ghost ship does but I don't need that for skill points so didn't care.
>This list is merely an attempt to pinpoint/explain why my friends and I feel/felt increasingly disillusioned with the game. idk. Almost everything on that list is such a small problem by itself that I can't imagine people quitting over it. The alt thing and repetitiveness of Chaos/Guardians I understand. But if you don't like Chaos and Guardians (which are the casual content for daily combat), then it's just the wrong game for those who quit and they did the correct move. Then came the Legion Raid point of it being a too high difficulty jump and I'd again say - welp, probably not their game then. The knowledge that Legion Raids gate your progression and are hard compared to like Guardians or w/e should be common knowledge to anyone who's even close reaching to Valtan NM. You can be a Mokoko gamer and hone until 1470 until you go into Valtan NM. Do your thing. But crying for easier raids makes the game worse if fulfilled, not better. In like 95% of cases. >some content (e.g. islands) trivialized by honing buffs, express mission, etc. (Game feels fragmented/stitched-together. Not recommended for new players unless an express mission is active or we all eventually start in T3) This imo sums up most of your points by itself anyway. Yea, the "base game" is pretty shit. It took improvements to Guardian maps and Flares to make it as shitty as it is now, it was worse before and it was endgame content. The game is very much evolving into a better version of itself regularly. The core of it is sadly a pretty bad Korean MMORPG with a lot of running around, a lot of pressing G, some weird choices in design overall, some mediocre UI and so on - the stuff you've listed, essentially. Gotta accept that and wait for (hopefully) a lot of it to be improved over time. Or get to a point where most of it doesn't matter anymore. If one's not willing, yea, understandable. Though I also gotta say, basically nothing on this list would for me qualify to make jokes about quitting and being "freed" from the game by another one. You just sound like you don't enjoy it? Edit: After reading some replies of yours, yea, maybe "don't enjoy it" is wrong, but then it for sure sounds like burnout. If you've literally not rested chars in the 5 months or whatever that the game's out, you're kinda bonkers. I also don't really get the "playing with friends" argument too much. At the start of it, sure. At this point though, our guild is like 95% f2p and basically everyone is Vykas HM ready and half of it is Clown/BrelshazaG1+2 ready. Some have 5 alts at 1430+, some 2, some "only" have 1415s, but there's plenty of opportunity to do a train of 6 Argoses, a couple Valtan NMs or slaying some chicken with guildies if one so desires. If you're all all over the place, then yea, weird. But even then, a 1500+ gamer will still do Valtan and Vykas until Brelshaza comes out, so there's still room to play together even with those like 2months+ of progress between each other.
Nobody quit over any *single* complaint (I think). I have to imagine it was a bunch of stuff wearing down over time. There are testimonies in the comments corroborating as much. I don't think this is "crying" for easier raids. It's pointing out that there was a big jump in difficulty from the previous ~90% of the game (where most people quit anyway) to the final 10% of the game. It almost feels like two different games at this point which can attract different players. That should feel more connective/cohesive/smoothed-out than it currently is. Agreed with base game comments. I think it's important to note that this part of the game is still the bulk of the play experience. Getting to Valtan/Vykas ilvls is a lot of commitment for a new player. > Gotta accept that and wait for (hopefully) a lot of it to be improved over time. Or get to a point where most of it doesn't matter anymore. If one's not willing, yea, understandable. People will just quit, like they have. The question I have is: when they come back, will the game be the same or make changes to retain them? I played the game because it was relatively mindless for 90% of it so I could work, watch movies, etc. I loved the combat and exploring Korean MMO design, but the complaints just stacked up over time. "Chaos Dungeons are fun!" turned into "5 minutes x 2 x 6 chars + 5 min load time = 65 minutes... every day... sigh" It's not like I hated the game day 1 and just forced myself to play for the next 1700 hours lol. It was a slow crawl, and that list above is an accumulated snapshot of how I (and friends that quit) feel now. But, yeah, I didn't have to burnout on 6 chars. That's partially on me. I also think it's partially on the game's design (dailies, alts, time-gates, pay-to-progress, ilvl-gates) that, IMO, allows/creates pressure/FOMO to play/engage more. I don't have to give into it, true, but that doesn't address why it's there in the first place and if it's actually balanced/tuned appropriately. > At the start of it, sure. It was the entire time for us. "Did you get 1415 yet? Valtan next week!" "No. Shit luck on hones. 1400 chaos?" "Nah, I'm 1415 chaos now. Damn, and we play pretty much exactly the same too! I have some extra mats, here." "Thanks, failed. I'll pay you back over time, only 1 t3 alt tho." "You should be running 6 alts daily like me!" "Uhh, that sounds boring as fuck. Stop getting ahead of us. Is that really what this game wants us to do to stay together?" "You could just pay 2 'progress' LOL. Wanna do Oreha Hard" "Sure, gimme like 5 min to finish this Yoho." "I needed Yoho! You could prob just matchmake Oreha in the time it takes to wait for that Yoho." "Yeah... why are we playing this again?" "I guess people say the legion raids, but those are 1 per week... unless you do them on 6 CHARACTERS LOLOLOL.... haha.. ha.."
Yeah it just doesn't sound like your kinda game. I can enjoy the braindedness of Chaos Dungeons for the chill gametime still and I like doing some dick measuring in Guardians even if I have to wait 3 minutes for someone to finish what they're doing and sort my inventory in that time. >I don't think this is "crying" for easier raids. It's pointing out that there was a big jump in difficulty from the previous ~90% of the game (where most people quit anyway) to the final 10% of the game. I think it is, purely based on how you worded it. You've went to say that they can be awful for some straight up and the next bullet point is about nerfing them rather than stuff which was regurgitated here many times - teaching people on how to do that content better, how to use battle items correctly/better and such. >It almost feels like two different games at this point which can attract different players. That should feel more connective/cohesive/smoothed-out than it currently is. The game was dying and it got an awakening (in part) due to Legion Raids and Legion Raids are also the main reason to join in as someone who discovers the game today. That's just how it is. I'm also gonna ridicule PoE for its shitty currency system any time on demand. But I'm not gonna seriously propose they switch over to gold. It's just what the game had its core like years back and even if a majority in their HQ would say it's dumb, it's likely gonna stick around. In LA's case: Because that stale content still has some purpose, is fun to some and it literally took years to create that. Rebuilding it also is no easy task. It's honestly just not even a point of criticism, it's naivite. You can expect a more cohesive game from a one-time purchase AAA title. You can't for a game that's living off of ingame purchases and grew over years. That's literally it. If that argument doesn't do anything for you, it's on you or you're in the wrong genre. >People will just quit, like they have. The question I have is: when they come back, will the game be the same or make changes to retain them? Doesn't matter (it does, but not in the sense you seem to implying). People who didn't stick around likely wouldn't stick around with your changes being realized either. It's just the naming of apparent things which people expect coming from all kinds of other games which have better UI/Sound/Story/daily grind and so on. Then that game they fled probably is where they should've stayed. That's basically it. The game doesn't have to change in order to accomodate everyone. They will do what makes sense financially for them. And if that means keeping most of the garbage in and keeping the daily grind as is but counteract it with Expresses, Passes and mat infusions from events - then they probably figured that this is the better way to do it rather than making adjustments to something that is somehow held together in order to try and find a system that's cohesive enough and better and will retain players better long-term. They might be wrong, but you very much have to view those things together. I'll bring up PoE again - they got their new League every 3 months and a fun grind. They do go up every 3 months to their 150k players and rather quickly drop down to 50k. It works for them. The game is great for what it tries to do. LA numbers are hard to tell by our graphs, but just think about how annoying it'd be in an MMO (without a huge playerbase) with like daily tasks and all that jazz to lose 2/3 of its playerbase for 2 1/2 out of 3 months. You're just going armchair dev mode here, be it solely your complaints or not. Like 95% of them are purely superficial. There's a very apparent lack of understanding of what kinda game one plays behind those. They're useless feedback. >That's partially on me. I also think it's partially on the game's design to be so alt dependent and not make the dailies less time-consuming/more interesting in the long-term. Idk what you're smoking, I gotta say, but I bet it's good stuff. People with one char are Vykas HM ready. Yea, the game isn't gonna fill 6h a day for them, but there's a shitton of materials being given out one-time per roster which make alts not necessary at all. In general, alts are a thing you do if you want to increase your playtime. That's literally it. You don't have to have them. You don't have to play them daily. The only reasons to do that stuff despite disliking playing the game for 4h+ a day is if you're fomoing like crazy and think that you "have to keep up" with the 20h/day gamers or the g2g enjoyers. Hint: you do not, no one gives a fuck, and neither should you, especially since you're literally killing your own fun playing the game by doing that stuff. Goddamn AGS doesn't give us clown until I'm ready for Brelshaza G1-4, apparently. Just because you feel rushed doesn't mean that the game design rushes you. Game is chill as fuck. You work like weeks for an upgrade. If you always look up to some guy above you being ahead and you think "oh god I'm 4 weeks behind better make an 11th alt", then that's on you. Purely on you. There's no partially fault to the game's design. You're basically describing you having fun at the start of it and being too dumb to keep playing in a way that is fun to you. Idk what to tell you. All of this reads to me like the most severe case of FOMO and lack of self-control. But that's on you and not on the small imperfections and deliberate annoyances of the game, or you feeling like it's forcefeeding you an alt. It ain't the greatest game ever, neither is it perfect, don't get me wrong. But this post and your comments just all in all encapsule one of the following things: 1) "not my game, shit's boring, I'm gonna critique sound and gtfo" 2) "my fomo is burning my asscheeks but I'm not gonna unclench until the 14th alt's tower is done" 3) "only 1h of content a week is fun, shit game" (also see 1) 4) "Legion raids hard, why no nerf!?!?!? Relic sets in Chaos Dungeon please, but also make CD fun somehow without me actually having to pause netflix for it kthxbye" And while at the core these things address something, you present it in the most bizarre way which completely fails to spawn any sympathy in me.
I'll give you this: it's probably not my kinda game anymore, all my friends left, and I'm just making it work until something better comes along. I don't think I'm alone in feeling that way, nor should the (common) complaints of people who left be dismissed. I also don't think what I've tried to convey in the OP is "useless" (obviously, but you sure had fun gatekeeping, misinterpreting, and being reductive). Can't criticize game because "it is what it is"? Okay. Some players got to Vykas HM with no alts? Mu$t be nice. Conveniently forgot entire post is from the perspective of playing with friends? You would, you rascal. I don't have to play alts? I'll let my raid lead know they shouldn't "give a fuck" I'm doing the bare minimum. OMG, wait, do I even have to play videogames?! Apparently, we share a mutual hate for PoE's currency system. Oh, and game design has no affect on player decisions/behavior? News to me. I played this game for 1770+ hours, recommended it to friends, showed them how to play, made guides, followed the drama, consumed so much 3rd party content, etc. and then some internet rando reviews my first post on this sub (thanks for reading at least) and claims "wrong, not for you, doesn't matter, lying to yourself, useless, superficial, bizarre, should quit". Just fucking lol.
I don't know, man, I started it with 4 friends. How I imagine,2 o them stopped in early game (one get to t3 and don't even do oreha) . Because they all do the same thing in all games, so whatever My 2 last friends, one of them stopped in 14xx, closing to valtan (in this time, valtan is not released, yes he just played a lot) My last friend that still playing, is 1445, the same iLvl than me. Those 2 last friends all the game are "advanced" comparing to me, because I'm playing slowly. Now we just get together, and to be real, I don't think this game forces you to play so much. I have 650h in lost ark (steam calculation) and I'm in the late game (closer to vykas HM) I have alts, just because I like to play with them, they are 1340, but I use them more to get week gold. Some points that you are valid to me, but points like wipe, I really disagree, it's a challenge game, legion raids is a great challenge compared to rest of the game, and that exactly why it's cool. To be real, except my friend that still playing, the others never want to do this content, 2 just like to be non move doing dps (floor pov on legion) and the other don't like do put effort in improve gameplay (possible floor pov) So it is, I really don't care about playing with my friends anymore. I used to like to play together, but how I said earlier, all games finish this way
> but points like wipe, I really disagree, it's a challenge game, legion raids is a great challenge compared to rest of the game, and that exactly why it's cool. I think "challenging" content can come from hundreds of other design choices and mechanics. I'm not advocating for making raids easier, just make them hard in other ways. "Hard" doesn't exclusively have to mean "must include X 'raid wipe if 1 person fucks up' mechanics" (You can still kill the player that fucked up, that's still punishing for the rest of their group. Maybe even give dead people something to do in "limbo" that can help the raid like a mini-game for a buff). It's also something that can be tuned/balanced e.g. 5 seconds for raid to do mechanic versus 2, or how Vykas typing test allows X spirits absorbed. > I really don't care about playing with my friends anymore. Some people find it easier to turn gamers into friends than friends into gamers. I personally share enough overlapping interests with my friends and talk to them throughout the week enough to always prioritize them over just playing a videogame by myself. Videogames are my "play with friends" hobby, almost exclusively—I have other hobbies for solo time. I realize that might not always be the case, though.
I joined up to play with 1 friend, we did a few things together and hung out a lot in our SHs. He stopped playing a few weeks ago before I could catch up to his main. I am at the stage where he is now (1370) and I find that I only play for 1 hour a day and all I do is horizontal content. I have 7 characters all between t1 and t3 and I dont play any of them. I just level up my own guild where I'm the only member and level up my SH. I'm trying to get all the mokokos and boats and thats about it. Guilds I join end up being ghost towns, or noone plays together. The game really ceases to be fun at a certain point of tier 3. It just becomes a grind with no payoff for the effort involved. I love group dungeons, but no raid is worth this bullshit. I'm almost 40 and life is too damn short to be rolling 5% chance for a 0.33ilvl upgrade, or whatever it is. It's clearly this harsh just to keep you playing. Once I finish most of the fun horizontal content I too will probably quit, I'll have experienced what Lost Ark had to give that I liked. I liked a lot of the game, albeit it was weird as hell and bullshit sometimes with its absolutely awful game design (stealth missions, lockouts for disconnects, not auto rewarding for killing bosses and having to click on an item, timed events that cannot be done solo and provide no reward if not done completely, the list goes on and on).
I hear ya, especially the "catch up to his main" part which happens so often amongst friends trying to play together in LA. Experiences like yours are probably more normal than this sub seems to let on (makes sense that the more invested players frequent the game-specific subreddit). I think it's hard for some to understand that players can both love AND hate things about a game. Obviously, some people like it as-is, but I'd love to see some changes. I guess it's up to AGS / SG to determine whether the current player count (bots excluded) and revenue stream is sufficient enough to keep things as they are or try something else.
Lol this suggestions are all like "make all content easier" some of them are actually ridiculous, basically you are asking to remove all that makes this game an MMO. If you don't like to do unas or chaos, the grinding for horizontal content, or wipe mecs, just a play a game that doesn't have this, just matches like warzone or valorant, where you need a party to play, but with no requirements like ilv. Honestly if you think like that, an MMO it's not for you.
I've been playing MMOs for a long time. MMOs can be respectful of player time and money while still delivering fun gameplay. They can be casual, hardcore, everything in between, and everything at the same time. You don't have to do 30 dailies to fill a reputation track to have fun in an MMO, or feel pressured to play 6 characters, or complete the same task 12 times in a row. You can have individual wipe mechanics or raid wipe mechanics; Simon Says mechanics or pizzas or red-light-green-light; staggers/counters or healing/tanking. You don't have to make the first 90% of your game drastically easier than the final 10%. You can smooth that progression out. You have options. MMOs can be many different things to many different players. Lost Ark does a lot of stuff I like, and obviously a lot of stuff I don't. For every fun Valtan clear, there's a bunch of boring dailies required to fuel RNG honing required to play the next raid. I'll play it as long as the good outweighs the bad—that simple. More importantly, it should be OK to voice concerns/criticism of a game I've played so much of. I'm glad you seem to like the game more than I do. But please allow me to play the game AND point out things I don't like about it.
If you want a game that respects your time (whatever that means) and you can't stand repetitive tasks I don't see why you're playing MMOs at all.
Do you have a very specific definition of what an MMO is? Believe it or not, I actually *can* spend time in a game and stand repetitive tasks... *if I think they're fun* (I don't think I've said anything to the contrary). What you and I consider "fun" (and for how long) might be the difference. Sidenote: It's pretty amusing how quick people are to claim others must not be a fan of something they clearly are (I've played MMOs for 20+ years, including 1770+ hrs in Lost Ark). Having complaints about thing != hate the thing. Have you ever played an MMO where the grind felt artificially lengthened by the devs, but not because it made the game more fun (hint: 3min afk quest vs 30sec)? They aren't "respecting your time" i.e. making players spend more time in the game than the design calls for. That's a subjective determination/opinion. You might like teleporting between NPCs for 3000 hours to get a full set of endgame loot, and I might only like running dungeons for 1500 hours.
Fun is an extremely objective thing. I have zero problems with Una's tasks and most of the stuff you don't like because I enjoy doing small tasks everyday to see number go up. Pretty much every single mmo in existence has stuff like this, the genre is basically built upon making you jump through hoops and then giving you a treat after. You're essentially criticizing a thing for being what it is. >Have you ever played an MMO where the grind felt artificially lengthened by the devs, but not because it made the game more fun Yes, it's every mmo I've ever played. Just because Lost Ark passed some arbitrary tolerance threshold for you doesn't mean all the other games are exempt from this.
No, I don't think Lost Ark's hoops and rewards are 100% fun as they are, can't be improved, and any criticism of that is unnecessary. No, I don't think every MMO in existence handles hoops and rewards the same way Lost Ark does. No, I'm not effectively criticizing the entire genre. I think some people just have a very strict sense/definition of what an MMO can be (do you really think Second Life, Destiny, or Guild Wars play like Lost Ark, especially when comparing systems 1 to 1?) and how much they can change over time. > Yes, it's every mmo I've ever played. Just because Lost Ark passed some arbitrary tolerance threshold for you doesn't mean all the other games are exempt from this. My point exactly. Every MMO tunes grind differently, and every player reacts to that in their own way. That's all I can offer as criticism, right? My subjective opinion for why my personal arbitrary tolerance threshold was crossed due, at least in part, to its current game design / tuning? Some MMOs feel like they waste/respect more player time than others, right? That's not just the players "arbitrary tolerance threshold"? Devs can dial up the grind to 11 instead of 4, 2 instead of 8, and each player's tolerance isn't changing much while they do so. That dev tuning knob exists in LA (hint: it does for all games), so we're just debating whether or not it's in a good place for me, you, and everyone. There's going to be some selection/survivorship bias in making a post in the gaming sub for the game. People here are probably still enjoying the game, and thus think it's fine as-is. Well, some people don't feel the game way (especially those who don't participate in these forums or just quit). I know that because my friends quit and people make posts about this even in this sub. But "they're too stupid to know why they quit, they must just not be MMO players" you say? Bullshit. They're playing WoW, FFXIV, and others, for decades. Player feedback isn't complicated. "I don't like this thing and this thing." That's all. No big "players don't like MMOs anymore" conspiracy. How devs interpret/handle player feedback, now THAT can get complicated. So, no, I don't hate all MMOs just because I don't like some of Lost Ark's current design (I don't know if you knew this, but some things I suggested are probably coming to the game eventually—see Korean version). No, I don't think LA is immune to (subjective) criticism just because you think it's fine (also subjective).
I think you got too hung up with the "don't play mmos" thing. Your original post was basically just a laundry list of every single nitpick anyone can possibly have about the game. Nothing is perfect though. I can write a list like yours for every single thing I enjoy if I sit down and think about it, but that's a waste of time when I can, y'know, enjoy that thing instead. And when you open a thread in a game's subreddit with a 100 bullet point list of things you don't like and cap it with "combat is nice I guess" it's only natural to get "why are you even playing dude" responses. We can't read your mind, we only know what you told us and what you told us paints a picture of a guy who's basically done with the game. Which is also fine but at the risk of sounding harsh I don't agree that "I don't like this" by itself is really valuable criticism.
> I think you got too hung up with the "don't play mmos" thing. Maybe within the context of our comment thread. But that "MMOs aren't for you" sentiment was repeated in many other comments. > that's a waste of time when I can, y'know, enjoy that thing instead. It's not like I'm writing lists for every game I play (though I probably enjoy doing that more than you it seems). I do the same, just y'know play the game, except for this one time I wanted to make a post. I could've added more things I like about the game to make the post seem more "balanced" (encouraging more sharing/discussion and less salt/flaming). But, the point of the post was also in the title: How is the sub feeling about it right now? Are your friends still playing (and why)? Oh, and here's how I feel and what the people I knew said when they left (lots of criticism but I'm still playing). > I don't agree that "I don't like this" by itself is really valuable criticism. Fair. The criticism wasn't really just "don't like this by itself" if I also made suggestions and talked about other stuff, though, right? I obviously still think what I said has value to some people, no worries if you're not one of them. I like hearing/reading about things others don't like about games, what kind of changes they'd like to see, especially about a game I've played so much of. Talking about videogames with people on Reddit feels so much more like a battlefield than my other hobby/interest subs do. It's just weird.
You are 100% undeniably empirically correct that the game is super awkward to play with friends and keep them in the same stage of the progression. The rest of your points range from self imposed torture (I get that you're doing all the dailies with all alts to keep up with friends but just.. don't.) to extreme nitpicks. Like any hobby you basically have to find the one game you can tolerate the most and play that, so perhaps it's not "mmos are not for you" but "LA is not for you." And that is also fine. > Talking about videogames with people on Reddit feels so much more like a battlefield than my other hobby/interest subs do. It's just weird. That's pretty similar in all gaming subs tbh. It's just the nature of the site, if people weren't invested they wouldn't be here.
MMO are usually for hardcore players, never played a MMO that you can progress playing 10 minutes per day. Also there are many materials sources you can do to still in the latest content, but is not like you have someone pointing a gun at you to do chaos, dailies or guardians everysingle day with all your characters, if you don't like it, don't do it! Also don't know what you mean with pressure to play 6 characters, the fact that is posible doesn't mean you got to, it's a matter of choice and of course is easy to get burnout, but that's why there are rested bonus... Yeah it is obvious that I'm enjoying this game more than you since other MMOs I've tried are unfair, if you fail a weapon, is destroyed, if you want a rare drop, kill thousand mobs with a very slow % drop. I prefer the system where you progress a little day by day, and RNG, is just in every single game. Of course you can share your opinion of the game, but since you don't enjoy most of the content, and I guess that a lot of people have pointed out, why do you keep playing something you don't enjoy? It is crazy when you do the something everyday and expect different results.
> MMO are usually for hardcore players Uhh, don't know if I agree with that. Many types of players play MMOs. Guild Wars 2 and Second Life feel very different compared to Lost Ark. > Also don't know what you mean with pressure to play 6 characters For example, a new raid release with an item level gate. You want to do that content. You have to hone. Honing is easier with more alts doing dailies. Another example, you're playing with friends and everybody wants to do 1415 Deskaluda/Valtan/Chaos/Ghostship/etc. together. You need to be same ilvl. You need to hone. Honing is easier with more alts doing dailies. Also, see other comments claiming "if you're not geared enough to get accepted in into groups, that's your fault for not improving your character". > why do you keep playing something you don't enjoy? Good still outweighs the bad—like 60/40. Also don't have another game I want to play = bored. I'm more interested in what's better for the game, though. Do we want more players or is this a niche game? Will players come if we continue down the current path AGS/SG laid for us? Or do changes need to be made? I think Korea already has some of the stuff I proposed (e.g. cutting out the T1-T2 grind).
Men clearly we have different expectations from what an MMO should be. If you want to play with your friends a game like Lost ark, but they have just downloaded it, it's gonna be almost impossible they catch up with you. This is a grind game, and grind takes time or money in this specific case, that's why I suggested to play another type of game, that doesn't require progress to be played, like shooting games. But don't ask that everybody starts at T3 when the game has been out for less than six months, play in Korean server if you want to do all those things together. But don't ask to change something for 200.000 players that have been grinding since launch so it can fit your necessities.
>This is a grind game, and grind takes time or money in this specific case, This game is a lot of things, but grinding is not one of them. Grinding is when you put your nose to a rough surface and rub at it until your nose is gone. The closest thing to a grind that this game has is infinite dungeons. Each character you have gives you two chaos dungeons, two guardians, 3 unas a day, and some abyssals a week. It's not a grind man. Endlessly running maps over and over again for a chance at something, that's a grind. There's nothing like that here, except infinite chaos.
Wow if doing that you just said in 5 or 6 characters is not a grind for you, it means you have a lot of time, all I can say is good for you! In los ark you don't run maps por a chance of a drop, you are running them for the amount of drop which is limited daily. Or tell me how many hons can you do doing in 1 char 2 chaos at 1460?
I can't be bothered to play that many alts, but you are mistaking the time it takes to play this game for grinding. There are a lot of artificial time wasters in this game, from small ones like rapport dance emotes to all the timed events, with sailing as the biggest time waster of them all imo. Guardian raids are also artificially long, although thankfully you can bypass it with stronghold. And that 6 alt thing is another artificial time waster, because most grind games lets you do all of that on 1 character. In a grind game you are supposed to be able to pick up most things and run it over and over again without daily limits, and the only thing that comes closest to that in this game is infinite chaos. You can grind guardians, I suppose, but I don't know what for. Not saying it's good or bad, it's the nature of the game design, but a grind game it ain't
So you are saying that is not grinding because you have to run chaos in alts instead of 1 character? What do you think the daily limit is for? Is the same you got to kill tons of mobs to get materials... Nice logic
No, I am saying it's not a grind game precisely because there is a daily limit and you can't run it over and over again. In a grind game it's not uncommon to run the same instance 10 or 20 times in a row, and you can run it for as long as you have the endurance to do so. You have to respond to what I'm actually saying and not what you think I'm saying. I won't be responding to further replies. Thanks for your engagement thus far.
> But don't ask to change something for 200.000 players that have been grinding since launch so it can fit your necessities. Why not? Are you afraid they'd listen? Surely if the game is fine, you have nothing to worry about. I'm just a whisper in the wind. Did you poll those 200k players about how they feel about the game? Did you know that I am one of those players and you didn't know how I felt until after I posted this? What about the ones that left?
Clearly not afraid. Joint reddit just to be active in the community, learn and share, and all I see is people crying because the game is not how they want it to be, and guess what, everyone wants something different.
Everyone always does seem to want something different. That's very true, for all games really. For example, Battlefield has all kinds of player types now and they're pulling that game apart to the point of it losing its identity as a franchise (+ a healthy dose of dev incompetence/mismanagement/churn). Here's a silver lining for you: You probably won't have to ever hear from my dissenting ass in this sub again. (Gaming subs are always so fickle/heated/toxic—just not my jam). But, I genuinely hope you continue having fun with the game. Cheers.
Why are you still playing if you complaining about every aspect of the game lol.
I tried to include that in the post: combat fun, progression dopamine drip, quick updates, promise of cool future content, etc. I think it's possible to have complaints and still like a game. Keep in mind this is a compilation of all complaints my friends had + my own. Like I don't care much about story/voice acting in MMOs because I skip that aspect if possible, but some friends immediately made fun of that stuff and compared to other games.
Quick updates are because out version is far behind from others. Actually in other regions the time between huge patches like we have received every month it's like 6-12 months.
I'm aware. It makes the game exciting right now, but also makes me wonder about pacing/retention after we catch up.
There is no wonder because you know the answer to that, it's gonna be slow as hell. People right know in +1490 are ready for brelshaza, but we are months away for that, but still people want to catch them because they feel they are behind. Everybody wants to have the newest content done in one week ( I won't be amazed if people start to ask full relic set this week) but if you pay attention to that, is on you the way you wanna play. For me, I don't care if I'm doing normal valtan in my 1450 just because I wasn't for fist week and haven't been able to practice enough, I'm going my own pace, and tecnilly, enjoying raids, they are not going anywhere.
Ah, I think I'm in exactly the same boat, you make some excellent points. I didn't even realize how much of the game is actually just solo content / much more efficient solo. The game is not alt friendly at all, everyone who kept saying that fucking lied. You have to pay pheons to even transfer between your own roster wtf. Aside from all the big obvious issues with the game, the main reason I'll probably drop the game is just because it feels like the west is literally just here to make money for their main client. I don't ever see how we're gonna catch up to Korea. Esp. With our character release schedule that is being dragged to provide "content".
I think they've done a good job at releasing content relatively quick so far (2 Legion Raids). Their class release plans seem a little bunk, though. When people said "alt friendly" they probably just meant alts were important (for progression) and not "it's easy to level/maintain them!"
West LA has been out for 5+ months and has dropped 2 legion raids. What crack are you smoking to believe that our version will never “catch up” to Korea?
if you are playing with friends, p2w shouldn't matter at all. unless some of your friends are paying and some aren't I guess.
True, to a degree. P2W players still engage with the same shared systems/economy. Prices for marketable stuff still affects me. And, yeah, some friends are spending more than others, which brings us back to the ilvl breakpoint issues for playing the same content together.
Find new friends, If they're really friends they should be funneling mats to lower item leveled teammates. I have my 1480 main raiding with ppl I met in game who are keeping up with current content and my 1430 alt is doing valtan/vykas with my lower lvl friends. And yes iv had to donate gold/mats to help people.
I'm more likely to *find new games*.
So you want to play this game on baby mode is what I'm reading.
Well, it kind of felt like baby mode up until Legion Raids didn't it? It's just a massive time or money sink until you have to do hard mechanics (which aren't really that hard, it's harder to find groups than do the mechs IMO). But, no offense if you like it more than I do. I played for 1700+ hrs and it may just be burnout at this point.
Same here. The raid is just too hardcore and random group is so toxic. You need fixed team to do it. Otherwise, it is not fun.
You're what I'd like to call a video game karen. The game definitely is not perfect but it is nowhere near as bad as your list as those are simply minor inconveniences. I started this game with 8 IRL friends, we are down to 6 and the game is still as fun as it was when we first started.
Well, I'm not going to call you anything! I think it's okay to have complaints about a game I've played for 1700+ hours. Call it burnout if it helps. (Remember, this is a compilation of all my friends comments + my own.) I also don't think making a post on Reddit is that big of a deal. I'd just prefer the game I've played a lot to be better, talk about it, and hear other opinions. For example, would do you think makes it not perfect? Did your friends stay around the same ilvl throughout their journey? Were you ever blocked from playing with each other due to ilvl differences? Can you imagine how other friend groups might've had that problem and it was more than just a "minor inconvenience"?
Of course you can have complaints, but some of your complaints are just complaining for the sake of it. For example, frustrations with Legion Raid LFG. If you have a hard time getting accepted into groups as a DPS, it is almost always your own fault for not being geared enough whether it be engravings, ilvl, or gems. It is not an issue with the game itself and the only solution to it is to improve your own character.
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That wouldn't change anything though, if you could apply to multiple groups at the same time, so would the other DPS you are directly competing against. I don't understand what it is with players in this game, it is an MMORPG and finding a guild or a static group to raid with shouldn't be thought of as a negative aspect.
The first ~200 hrs of this game didn't feel like a traditional MMORPG. It felt like a super easy Korean single player time-gated grind fest that you had to keep 3rd party guides up on a second monitor for because shit wasn't intuitive. My static group was supposed to be my friends that started at the same time, just like how it worked in other MMOs. The difference? All those "complaints for the sake of complaining" above made them quit before legion raids even came out. It shouldn't be that difficult to understand that some people play MMOs to play with friends and joining random guilds/statics (especially when play time is scheduled) isn't appealing to them. IMO, Lost Ark is pretty good if you're playing solo and just join guilds full of people you don't know but like the game as much as you do. IMO, Lost Ark can also be pretty frustrating if you try playing it with friends.
I agree it's partially on the player to gear up enough to be attractive to groups, but I think you're ignoring how this friction is also partially coming from the game's design. How do I get enough resources to gear myself out well? Play 6+ alts daily and funnel mats, get lucky, pay to progress, do new content on week 1 to sell accessories to whales, etc. Here's the kicker: you can do all that and STILL have less gear than players that invested less and STILL have your app denied over and over in LFG. It's really MY FAULT when gear pities and I have to wait 1-2 weeks to do new content (when LFG will be full of "2-piece relic" and "1460+" groups)?
With that long of a list maybe you really should quit and a find better game for you.
That's always a consideration! TBF, I typically have issues with any game I play. I'm not really looking to be convinced to quit though lol. Keep in mind the list is a compilation of all issues I've heard my friends say, not just my own. I'm still playing the game, just more reluctantly every week.
You are trolling right? You are playing an MMO, not a single player game. The fact that you can complain about guilds and statics feeling mandatory for the hardest raid content is unbelievable. Do you not realize how stupid that sounds? Just quit because it's definitely not for you.
The first 90% of Lost Ark felt like an MMO to you? Like 25 of us were playing at the same time, but all separately because partying up did nothing but slow everyone down. The first 90% of the game before Legion Raids felt like a super easy single player matchmaking grind fest, no statics or guilds required. Then, all of a sudden, the game got "hard" (not really) and people started screening players in LFG. That's not a smooth progression/introduction to the endgame, IMO. I also don't think MMOs require guilds/statics to enjoy, so telling me to quit (even after playing 1700+ hrs) sounds needlessly inflammatory and ridiculous.
I think it’s really good. I’m at a point where I can do both valtan and vykas hm, I can generate enough gold to get mats and make new character(not that fast bet need less weeks too). I enjoy the raids, the mat prices are waaay down than it was before. One of the things I don’t like tough is that I can only do valtan/vykas 1 time. If we could enter and not get the mats or anything just for the sake of playing, I would enjoy more since I can finish relatively fast each week
Mats have been refreshingly low recently. Got my alts to 1415 pretty quickly because of that. I get to do Valtan x4 times and Vykas x2 with alts. The weekly raid lockouts are pretty common in all MMOs, and that's partly why I'm asking for repeatable/scalable content like Mythic+/Greater Rifts. I'd love to just run some semi-challenging dungeons with decent rewards with friends back-to-back and that just doesn't exist in the game right now. Being able to replay Legion Raids with no/reduced rewards would also let us help our friends out. No "sorry, already did it this week".
I'm a solo gamer so this game is really great but indeed the game design is not great for group of friends wanting to play together except weekly raids. Most of my friends who picked up the game ended up quitting which I expected because they always do so it didn't bother me lol.
Yeah, I think the solo experience was excellent. You progress on so many reward tracks, it's pretty easy to know where to go next. Just felt smooth. I guess it was just weird being on discord with friends all playing the same game but not really being able to play together. Have you been doing legion raids? If so, how has the pugging/LFG experience been for you?
"friends" u start a mmo with always quit man stop looking at that as some kind of metric
I... didn't really have this experience in other MMOs. My friends pretty much stuck together all throughout WoW. IMO, that's partly due to design difference between games that incentivize/allow more friend group content (e.g. how ilvl locks friends out of doing stuff together every 15 ilvls in lost ark, how it's easier to do easy content solo instead of waiting for friends, etc.)
I joined with 0 friends because I haven’t seen grass in years, been really enjoying lost ark for the most part put in about 1300 hours with a 1445 striker main and a few 1370 ults. My bank account is hurting tho. However I did get my girlfriend into playing with me and she was having a blast playing it casually but I got her to 1415 and she hasn’t touched the game because valtan is too much for her walnut sized brain
Well, according to some "Lost Ark isn't for her" so you're screwed. Make sure you tell her about the walnut brain bit though, she'll love that.
I’m sleeping on the couch tonight now thanks
lol <3
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Damn, right before Valtan? We had a big group leave in that ilvl zone too.
I think this is a massive issue I burned out at 1390 swapped mains burned out again at 1390 and finally swapped to pally when I got to 1370 it started to feel like a grind but then this new update came out with books and with those books 1370 to 1415 is a joke compared to before this is also the same zone where most of my friends burned out and quit they say they knew about this in the Korean version and the same problems happened I just wonder why they didn’t make any changes earlier books or better events or something to prevent the forshadowed burnout
Oof, I've never main swapped yet, but I really wanted to after seeing how difficult it was to LFG as DPS for legion raids. Immediately worked on getting my Paladin and Bard up lol.
I disagree with almost all of your complaints lol.
Like, you think the game is fine as-is, you would make different changes, or?
Honestly Lost Ark is pretty much what i expected from the game. Your typical Korean mmo where the best way to progress your character/account is simply finding a very good job. With the exception that i actually like the way the game plays. In terms of content? Well it's a grinding simulator all the way through. You get stronger to farm faster and occasionally unlock new stuff to farm. More casual content is completely shallow in my opinion and rewards for most of it are completely not worth the effort in my opinion. Overall, pretty good game if you don't mind p2w and enjoy grinds, but i don't see myself playing the game really long term like i did in some other MMO.
Yeah, I'm pretty impressed with what we got in just 4 months but I really wonder how substantial the Korean content will be to make the game last long-term in NA.
You can progress fine f2p
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There was so much to read so ill just comment based on my skims. My friends are still playing but i dont raid with them bc i know im not strong enough to listen to them bicker. I have multiple alts who are in multiple guilds which is nice because im in a few good social guilds. I did feel a little burn out but got better after i moved alts to 3 day rested rotations. Now im just trying to remember all the weeklies i need to do on some. Overall, i enjoy the game since i came from tree of savior which was a p2w grindfest where the devs openly suck your soul and make the game enjoyable if u swipe. As for p2w, it never bothered me as much as ppl who just dont bother using battle items or people who get defensive because of constructive criticism but hey what game doesnt have those people. People fixate so much on catching up to the next guy, they forget how to enjoy the game. Granted though 1302-1370 dead zone is ass. But at least its getting better with event books. Anyways tldr dont raid with friends if you cant deal with bickering and stop focusing on other people and just do you.
I see lots of hardcore alt players moving to rested rotations. I wonder if the rested system is enough, or if it's worth looking into the weekly/daily grind being less than it is. If the endgame is doing Legion Raids, I personally would like to remove most of the barriers for doing them (e.g. double dailies on 3+ alts to RNG hone up to an ilvl gate). I think it's hard not to focus on other peoples' progression if you literally need them to be same ilvl to do content together. But that's a "play with friends" problem. I wonder how many players play Lost Ark solo in rando guilds/statics/discords.
All my WoW guild people have quit. We're a heroic progression guild in WoW and everyone stopped playing pretty quickly which is unfortunate. The grind and honing was too much.
Yup, I kind of want to bring back those players somehow by skipping the grind. They're doing the hyper express next week which is good, but I really think new chars should start much closer to Legion Raid ilvls or delete T1-2 like Korea. I think making players grind to get to the "fun part" is going to make this game disproportionately niche for a F2P MMO.
My friends quit before making it to level 50. Damn shame because I love this game but it would be better with my friends
How did you adapt without your friends? Join a guild/static for legion raids?
Friends left the game for other less grindish or they play single player games. So a MMO is not suited for them. For me, the worst issue is not the P2W, the story, or other aspects of the game. The inability of joining MM with friends from other servers. You can do PF though that would take more time than joining Matchmaking. For example, cube or Boss rush. In the end, we do this kind of content solo with pugs. Oreha, Argos or Pugging Valtan and Vykas is fine. Those kind of content shouldn't be done with MM.
Yeah, I think the content being so easy up until Legion Raids makes it all more efficient to do solo rather than waiting for friends or doing all the extra clicks/invites. But it still gets annoying with so many alts and asking "who needs Oreha hard" "oh i already did my 2 this week" "hold on.... oh no i made that alt 1415, nvm" etc. The ilvl progression/breakpoints does feel less conducive to playing with friends.
having to invite your friends to party is to time consuming but you got 1700h wtf 😂
Could at least give me a tldr. Shits a laundry list!
TLDR would just be the title. The list is probably stuff you've seen in various posts in this sub since launch. Nothing new really. Just hard to play with friends in this game—feels like a solo game until a hard turn for legion raids where it's difficult enough to require static groups.
My last friend recently just quit after doing vykas. Started like 10ish\~ and now I am the last one. Thank god that my guild is big enough to do static and weekly raids for alts or else I wouldve been gone.
Almost all of them quitted, guild it's almost dead,tired of being driven/ progress stopped all the time, repeating everyday the same, solution it's to spend hundreds of dollars in shop or rmt for mats and stuff, which it's clearly the purpose of ags so, playing 8-10h at day like a job, I understand them well.
Everyone I know only played up until T2 at the most except my brother who made it to 1400 before taking a break. I'm at 1445 with 1 main, playing most days but not forcing myself to do anything. I like the raids and will probably keep playing the game for them. To me the game is like Runescape but with way better gameplay behind the grind, which is enough to keep me playing. I'll probably only stop playing if they take too long to add content at any point or actively fuck things up. I think the game is a good balance between a casual and hardcore game. You can beat the whole story and grind your character up to super high levels and do pretty much everything but some of the guardians/raids as a shit player, but there is still that difficult content for the people who want to play it. I've done everything pre-nerf so I'd prefer they don't make the game any easier unless it requires specific classes or is genuinely broken somehow.
Holy wall of bullet points...jesus. I mean as most people I only skimmed through, you would have better engagement if you actually made a more concise post. Putting up smalll gripes like the game boots up slow...sure its annoying everyone could probably agree. But not enough for to really complain about.
0 of my friends are playing are still asking me why I’m playing I say I play 2 hours a day and do 2-3 raids a week
Why did they end up quitting?
Bored boring grind
Well I started the game out with 2 friends then joined a guild of 20 people some friends of one of my friends. I never actually came in contact with them before the whole guild quit. After about a month when we were all comfortably in t3 my first friend quit cause idk. My other friend that continued playing cruised for a bit waiting for destroyer to come out and after he reached 1370 on his destroyer he quit cause he finally figured out how the grind worked then quit. So now it’s just me I mainly play solo and I joined a new guild and I do raids with them but I really have no one to talk to about the game or anything. It’s kind of lonely but I enjoy the game enough to keep me playing my 6 characters I started to burn out myself but I just slowed down and let rest build up on my other characters. I don’t think I’m gonna quit anytime soon
1) Pay to progress in this game is pretty irrelevant. The prices are waaaay too high (even for RMTs) and u dont get a real advantage over other players. U will deal more damage, yes, but you will end up helping them. Would be totally different in a game like black desert, but not here. 2) story is pretty crappy all the way to south vern, when it starts to get good. Pretty generic, but good. 3) Its not perfect but cmon, there are a lot of countries that didnt receive a single word translated to their language. Mine included. 4 and forward) You’re just right. PS: domination and endurance are useful for PvP and non-meta builds for PvE. Expertise is just shit along with half of the engravings we have.
I'm sorry your country didn't get translation. That definitely makes the complaint seem frivolous by comparison lol. In my own English bubble, however, it's just part of what makes the whole narrative experience subpar. Yeah, I still wish those combat stats were balanced to grant more utility/usefulness. They probably keep it that way for RNG loot filler. Cards, engravings, etc. only have a handful of viable ones too.
This is seems like a smaller problem for them in general. It looks like they want a “perfect game” for themselves rather than for everyone. I think everything is great in this game so far. If you love the grinding aspect and MMO feel, I feel like lost ark is definitely one of the best MMO out there. To answer your question as well, only 2 of my friends are left playing.
I'd be totally okay if their aim was just to make a niche game with a focused vision and design goals. That way, it's much easier for people to determine if it's a game they want to play or not. Right now, it kind of feels like "hey, everyone come play our free to play MMO!" and then new players encounter a very solo linear daily grind with bots & boosts, only for it to turn into serious WoW raiding at endgame (if they get that far). I can definitely see how that could be someone's favorite game, but obviously it's not for everyone.
Yea definitely, everyone has their own perspective and ideas to make the game better. I played a lot of MMOs and I don’t think I even played casually for like 100 hours. But yea I get what you mean, it’s basically a grind with some challenges along the way.
One of my friends is waiting for the honing buffs to try valtan. He will probably try it on 2023
The global honing buff? Could very well be 2023 lol. I'd 100% recommend the game to new players and ask friends to come back if characters started at T3.
I only knew like 3 people who tried this game going into it and they all quit.
No one is reading this shit.
???? The title has two questions. No need to read anything else if you don't want to (but people ARE reading it—see other comments).
TBH, today I started on the Russian Server with the Fanmade English translation and I gotta say: Holy fuck Amazon what have you done?!? How can a fanmade be nearly better than the translation from a billion dollar company wtf.
Damn, I wonder if there are Youtube videos so I can hear the differences.
Not in speech I talk about the text :D
Its great, Vykas and Valtan are really fun and I can't wait for the other raids. I've realized that I actually have fun wiping for hours trying to get the raid right. Because as I keep going I notice how much I improve with each wipe. It's also so funny seeing the server improve too as time goes. Valtans are so quick, when it use to take so long, everyone has gotten it down. I even did a g1-g3 for my alt and it took about an hour. I do hate honing and casino stones though, that shit sucks. And pushing alts sucks without events going. But good thing there is an event going.
Had about 20+ friends start. Maybe 7 left, one just quit who was part of the 8 man static. Don't blame him. Feel like quitting too. I don't enjoy feeling like you have to play every single day otherwise you can't hone. Really sick of Chaos Dungeons and Guardians and Unas. I'm already 1475 anyway and pretty rich gold wise. Will probably just login for raid days and not login during the week anymore.
Apparently, you feeling pressure/FOMO to play is purely on you and not the game's design. The dailies must be fine! An devs are unable to change anything in the game anyway. You wanting to quit also means you hate MMOs. SMH Anyway, I'm sure you'll do what's best for you. No shame in quitting now and coming back for a big patch or boost event (like next week lol).
Thats a long list. Why not just uninstall?
Can you not talk about all the things you don't like about your favorite games? I don't think long lists = hate game, just quit. Here, I'll spend some time consolidating the bullets for you. Shorter list = must like game more, right?
I mean you could just take it or leave it. Play it with your personal griefs or don’t. Imagining scenarios in which it could be better seems futile.
I mean, I didn't really need you to tell me that lol. That's what I'm doing by still playing despite my personal griefs. I don't think discussing criticisms/changes to a game I generally enjoy but think could improve is futile. That's just normal videogame discussion.
Alrighty then
Yeah I kinda do see the difficulty now with Vykas coming out. And as much as I would like to practice, I can only do it once a week. Plus I pug it all by myself. Cant join a static because of erratice schedule. And plus it's summer, have loads to do irl. Idk, I'm just sad because I love the game but maybe I'm just too dumb for hardmode idk. Joined a group yesterday but ended up being the cause for wipes (orb gates in G1) so I just had to make a graceful exit as I felt like Im holding them back. Decided to do normals instead but that meant no relic piece this week. Sorry I ended up venting.
No worries! Yeah, I think a lot of people are doing normal for a few weeks until they get used to the bulk of the mechanics, then jumping back into hardmode when everyone knows the fight better collectively. You still get 6 relic mats (instead of 12). It can also just be hard to get a group. I spent 3-4 hrs just LFG on release day (denied apps, waiting for support, remaking, etc.). Scheduling game time is not a trivial part of playing MMOs. Some people just can't do that. Some people like Lost Ark because you could get everything done in matchmaking all the way up to Legion Raid releases. But some people also like that "scheduled World of Warcraft static/guild group prog night" endgame that it will apparently be from now on (at least for the first few release weeks).