So at first I was one of the guys saying we need catch up mechanics.as soon as possible. But then after seeing what happened to the lost ark west. I would say it has done more harm than good.
1 and the most common thing is we don’t have the SSN that lost ark kr have. Bots.abused the catch up merchanic and flooded the market with Their.dirty.gold. the reason why we accepted.bots.before is that they are being culled before they reached t3 but because of this catch-up mechanic. They have an express ticket to ruining our economy.
2 skill difference of players. Again before I stated.that a gamer will always be a gamer whatever month he started.in lost ark…but now because of.the catch-up mechanic your common parking raid is now infested.with 2 liner or worse 1 liner dps that makes you fail even the simplest deskaluda raids.
3 they missed on the good part of island hopping for story lines aka starlight glacier Sasha…now since they missed the lore they will only.think of.this game as a.mobile game where you only.progress vertically where the main gameplay is getting rid of your checklist day in day out.
4 people will disagree with this but new players actually got.destroyed.by this catch-up mechanic seeing how the market is so inflated atm because the bots have abused this too…yes they can reach legion raids faster but will they enjoy.it with their trash gear. And will they ever experience the thrill of making your character stronger.on how expensive.the pheon is atm
5 also the main mentality even in rl. The more.effort.you put.into something the more.valuable it is. But.since.you don’t even need to put any effort in reaching legion raids, it is more likely.that you will quit within a heart beat since you didn’t even invest anything to it. Also t3 is where lost ark showed it’s true color and became a mobile game and lost all it’s other rpg factor
The population should have been going up sin ce they released.the catch up mechanic but lost ark is bleeding players and is nearly gonna lose an entire region at this point. If the bots didn’t get a free ride along with the new players then ithis is ok but unfortunately west is different from kr
This was their trump.card to bring in more new and returning players but it utterly failed In The west
It took them weeks before to hit tier 3.and most of them are banned before they even reach it. Now they have an express ticket where they can farm the t3 mats nonstop with their army thus injecting more.dirty gold into the market
Poster beside, they arn’t technically wrong really. The 10-50 + T1 to T3 grind took SEVERAL weeks prior to the growth support which gave plenty of time to catch “some” of the bots. Plus the growth support in T3 HAS degraded the quality of players doing Yoho & Deskaluda where you got people in less then 2x3 in the groups with still having purple and blue items equippped with rainbow stats since they dont really spend much time at the early T3 level getting some “okish” gear.
My alts have noticed the average time to kill both yoho and deska getting longer in random MM by several minutes. Yoho’s for example usually died right around the time of the first tornado phase and you would never see the phase 1 orbs. Now you almost always see the phase 1 orbs and its not uncommon to get 2 phase 3 tornado phases. Same now with Deska where usually he died right around the first “run away” phase. I’ve lately seen him get to the 2nd run away more often.
lets revolve all decision making around bots and cheaters shell we?
let new players grind alone when 99% of the playerbase is at t3… right
yoho was always hell… now deskula is too… I dont care anymore I dispatch this garbage content anyway
guardians has too much hp… its not about 3x2 and 3x1 garbage, I see them in vykas too, people have no shame
do deskula with full 1415 with 3x3 and even 4x3… it will take you 6-7 or even 10 mintues with a support
the 3 minutes raids always evolves overgeared players
they are also designed to be annoying, moving all the time, knocking you off with every attack, teleporting throughout the map, absolute garbage content
yeah that’s about the attitude of every single compliant i’ve seen on the forums who has no idea how the real world works.
this is why they do not take any feedback from people on the forums that seriously…just a bunch of basement dwellers who wants their food brought to them and then it’s up to AGS/SG to fix what players begged for asap because you are the customer right?
Dirty gold definitely made the situation worse but it’s such a complex issue, to blame catch up mechanics is not the right solution. Our game version was messed up before even Valtan was released. RMT took hold since first official week and has been healthy ever since. The bot economy can only be solved by making it incredibly inconvenient to bot.
People forget quick huh. Back in February there was a large outcry when the game was new to everyone that T1-T2 guardian raids and dungeons were too hard. They werent, but a majority of the active base felt this way and AGS had those metrics backed up publicly. They as a result nerfed all relevant T1-T2 content. The skill difference has always exist and will always exist, the only way to alleviate it , is to allow new players to engage in relevant content sooner so they learn faster. This is what catchup mechanics enable. It will suck early on but as more people play normal standards will start to be followed because everyone will be exposed to them.
This is why gatekeeping and bussing is a double edged sword. While on one end it keeps these players out of runs, thus making yours faster; it also keeps new players almost forever ignorant. They will either quit because it’s very hard to naturally learn raids by experiencing them or progress so slowly and never make meaningful progress and stay forever scuffed. The community of experienced players cant have it both ways, too many people who are experienced underestimate how difficult the game actually is to average normal people. If you want competent people in all or most of your runs, do. not. pug.
This is largely irrelevant. I played through all of those islands did a bunch of horizontal content none of it made you any better at the game. The purpose of doing those things is to set you up much later down the road to allow you to build meta. You need these points and sub stats for skills, legendary cards from rapport rewards, etc. Most of that stuff is min/maxing homework that was recommended for people to frontload. You don’t actually need all of it early on or really even in the midgame.
Yeah market was messed up but not by catch up mechanics with bound mats, but by rampant RMT and botting.
At this point im starting to wonder if you think people who join this game need to do everything you did in order to enjoy the game. This is your personal opinion about how you feel about the game. The ironic truth is you can very easily pay to progress in this game. You can have experienced a sense of investment and accomplishment in a myraid of ways also, not simply grinding, raiding and being f2p hyper efficient. The main content is the legion raids in this game, when people see this game via videos or streams they expect to LEARN real time how to do these raids. They don’t expect to be having to buy busses and being forced to die to do runs because someone preaches to them they arent experienced enough. Some people very dearly find satisfaction in being extra prepared and doing everything ahead of time and only playing with people who have done the same. A new player will never represent this type of player until they catch up.
Your post wont encourage smilegate to remove or lessen catch up mechanics because they know better. We do not even have all of them yet. Tired of seeing 1 engraving newbies? Theres a mokoko buff exclusive to new players that give them significant combat stats which can make up for a lack of proper builds or optimal set ups to a degree. Things like this need to be employed so newbies have an opportunity to learn but not too much at the expense of those players who they share these runs with. Most of the issues you have with “new players” in this post really does get solved by existing players interacting with them in a healthy manner. If you aren’t interested in doing that, which is well within your right, you probably should start caring less about them to begin with. They don’t get better simply because you want them too lol.