To keep it short, pretty much all of the combat content until level 50 is too easy.
Zone difficulty is whatever but the main concern are the story dungeons and regular dungeons/raids. Everything is easily soloable on Hard difficulty and you only really start seeing the possibility of dying at around either level 35 or above, around Morai Ruins, where if you get surrounded by enemies, you could die pretty quickly.
I’ve heard that Guardian Raids used to be more difficult before they got nerfed and I believe it would be better to go back and release them in their more difficult state for launch, as otherwise many players will breeze through lvl 50 and not feel challenged enough, which may contribute to increased player exodus shortly after launch.
I just want to see the game succeed, unlike New World, and believe the closed beta difficulty was very sub-par and should be adjusted in order to increase the game’s chances of doing just that - succeeding and not losing players.
There is A LOT to do for completionists with Adventure Tome, but many players will be only all about the raiding experience and if Rohendel is all we’re getting on release, they will be “done” with the game within a week.
As someone who’s played multiple MMOs and ARPGs, I’m content with the difficulty progression for leveling in Lost Ark. What’s easy for you might be difficult for someone else. Additionally, the difficulty curve really allows you to learn the game mechanics, character, gameplay, and appreciate the story. The real difficulty begins end game with abyss dungeons and higher ilevel requirement instances that’s wasn’t available on the beta. Personally I feel like it’s well balanced in terms of progression fluidity.
As someone who has played a lots of MMo, MMorpg and rpg, Arpgs… I find the dificulty of this beta a pure boring and easy mess (on purpose, it has been boosted im pretty sure) with actually no logic behind it, if full game will be like that.
Questing is walking npc A to npc B clickin around, it is not fun, nor does it teaches you how to fight.
This game needs more danger, more action, more “dificulty”, because the main core of the game is grind and combat. for combat to be funny, it needs decent dificulty, especially in dungeons, and especially for an MMO for people to play more together.
the progression is not fluid or interesting, it is a pure broken mess, and need a veteran hand on the matter.
That is a fair point for leveling, although I will say that even the most amateur casual gamers might find leveling easy - nothing really does enough damage to kill you if you don’t play Dungeons in Hard mode.
Most importantly, everyone else who does find leveling too easy, will finally reach endgame after the huge chore 1-50 feels due to the lack of difficulty and find themselves with more chores, because everything available to them is, just like leveling, too easy, since the version of T1 we’ve gotten is watered down and nerfed.
After this, what’s the expected reaction? They will likely think the game will continue to be easy, they have no reason to believe otherwise. Everything they have done was easy, and there is nothing else to do until however many months later when they add new content.
This is boring, and they are likely to quit.
Agreed with Xenrail -
Also I think in order to make it harder for some people they could make a dungeon that is harder than the HARD mode right now.
However, as a mage player I find the HARD mode to be too hard to solo by myself. I think playing different classes will give you different difficulty experience. Some classes do better for party, some are OK solo’ing.
They want this game to be inclusive and at least gets you through the story. They don’t want you to be stuck in the campaign before being able to enjoy the full storyline and see the raids. So I think it’s well balanced overall.
Im a bard, the game felt like a real walkcake and I was destroying everything. I know that this is a tutorial but… it is xtremely boring an unfitted. 2 exp per killing is also an odd choice compared to million exp skipping everything. thats not how you make people learn your game.
This shouldnt be like FF14, its not the same gameplay.
an mmo should make you learn its gameplay via playing… and with people. being able easily to solo everything is boring and might make people not be interested in the game quickly.
makin an mmo an easy singleplayer game is not somethin Id call inclusive. Especially knowing how hard it gonna get with last updates if some people I heard is right.
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being able easily to solo everything is boring and might make people not be interested in the game quickly.
I beg to differ … one of the most amazing things about lost ark is the story, cinematics, voice acting, and the cut scenes and immersive experience. Some of us are here to enjoy the artistic creation. It’s a beautiful journey. And I wasn’t sick of it going through it 4 times on different servers. It’s only a few days of main story quest to get to the end game, where you will have the rest of your life to do raids and dungeons.
Believe it or not there are people that are just not good at combat and they are here for the easier stuff. Also real fans wouldn’t drop out the game just because the dungeons are boring. I think if anything, they could make us walk a bit less and do less talking with NPCs.
There are plenty of FPS games for people that want “hard” stuff.
I doubt it will be made to be totally hardass like is being suggested here. I have played on RU servers and that isn’t “hard” either, to be honest, at least not until you get quite advanced. RU is supposed to be the same as KR in that sense, so I doubt that we will see an amped up difficulty for the base game here – at least not anytime soon.
The leveling in this game isn’t supposed to be hard, it takes 12-14 hours to hit max level(and thank god for that) because it’s just a playthrough of the first part of the story, and then you reach end game which gets progressively harder as you get through it.
This isn’t 2004, most mmos aren’t designed to have a difficult leveling process anymore and honestly considering the majority of them are designed with max level content in mind, the easier and faster the leveling process the better.
I’ve given this some thought since I first saw this topic yesterday. I lean toward agreeing with those who want more difficulty.
Firstly, I should say I enjoyed the pace. The game didn’t feel grindy. I stayed immersed in the story instead of having bits of story sandwiched between lots of grind.
Repopulation happens quickly so an increase in difficulty would need to take into account whether a battle can be finished before repop or if the intent is to have us pull enemies away from their spawn points.
I think needing a proper spec and rotation is best left until level 50.
It shouldn’t be quite this easy. My understanding is the game will be rated M and therefore doesn’t need to provide child-friendly difficulty.
Most of the way to 50, outside of dungeons I just ran around spamming two AoE abilities and I put all my skill points into boosting those first. Elites throughout the zones didn’t instill any fear or even caution, just greed. There was no pack of enemies I hesitated to dive into at any level.
Someone in this thread or another suggested this might be a quicker leveling experience than whatever was originally released, similar to how WoW went back after a couple of expansions to make the old content faster. Whether it’s true or not, it does feel that way to me.
Once I reached 50 I focused on exploring other aspects of the game and visiting various islands, then created a second character. I can’t speak to any of the end game dungeons or content.
No need for adjustments.
After you hit Lvl 50 it gets harder and harder.
Everything starts with Equipment Category 1 (Tier 1) and with that it gets harder and harder with every Tier.
If you reach Rohendel and do some Raid and Dungeons there you will understand what i mean - you can get Tier 2.
Tier 3 and upcoming Tier 4 ist even much harder.
Leveling is just a small part of an expierence of a game.
one of the reason of leveling is actually feel rewarded to learn the mechanics and growing strong in the thematic rpg world.
Whats the point of having to lvl if it is that stupid, and absolutely not Mmo or rpg like? Just get rid of the leveling then, it would be wayy much better. leveling is a waste of time in Lost Ark.
I have a friend who is legally blind who loves playing games (as he can see the game enough, but to a point due to the nature of his one working eye), and I have to assist him in gaming. If the base difficulty were to be increased, he would likely be left unable to play.
The leveling in this game is fine. If anything, they should change it so you can skip all cutscenes if they do any leveling rework. Why should leveling be harder and gatekeep people from playing. The game scales in difficulty properly so if someone is really bad they will struggle more than someone who is good at a certain Item level. Depending on what we get from either RU or KR, there are certain systems that help level alts. Example would be boost with blue gems which you can pay $$ or exchange with gold. The other one (dont remember the exact number) is you pay gold to have your alt “train” and after awhiile it will level to 50.
One of the questions recently posted said if its not hard why should we level its a waste of time. I agree, but you are looking at a selfish point. The game is F2P and has to make money somehow. Boosting to 50 for one alt is good marketing. I would have an issue if leveling was taking a week, but leveling after first character is between 9-10 hours, if not faster depending on player and their account level. I leveled on beta 1-50 in 11 hours on first character. Remove cutscenes and add account level for extra stats + skill points, I can go faster.
Leveling in this game is fine. Its actually done overall well. Adding difficulty would just be annoying down the road. First character might be fun for some but when you are leveling your 7th alt, you just want to hit end game asap.
I see a lot of lies and selfish statement around. you can make the leveling fast without it to be like a cakewalk, the problem is that the leveling here is completely useless and doesnt provide anything for the players and the game itself, apart from those who wants to enjoy the story, ofc.
I have a friend who has only one eye and he agrees that this beta had one of the worst leveling out there. Because the leveling was useless.
Its like people are so entilted to be force to share experience with people, or doesnt like to not being held by the hand constantly, its crazy. this is a +18 game.
Mind I ask which dungeons did you exactly find too difficult in hard mode as a mage?
I should probably also precise that I enjoyed the leveling experience itself but found the choice for killing monsters to provide a meager “2” EXP really baffling. In a game where gameplay is absolutely nailed and a huge part of it is combat, it did feel rather weird that the best way to level up fast was to just beeline through the main story and none of it required getting at least some experience from killing enemies. I’m not talking about mobs giving millions of exp but it sure feels to me like they could’ve given something like 20-100, so that if someone enjoys the combat a lot, they could get around that 10-20% of a level up by doing just that, whereas this is completely not an option in this game.
Just felt a very counter-intuitive decision to me, though perhaps a good deal of feeling that way is that’s just how KR grinding MMOs have always been made.
I very much a enjoyed it as well, though it didn’t really satisfy me challenge-wise when it comes to combat and dungeon difficulty.
I’m just worried that all the combat loving players (those who don’t really care for all other side activities the game has to offer) will feel the same and quit the game shortly after hitting 50 and experiencing T1.
Wouldn’t want to see that happen. I hope I’m just overreacting though.
Nah, you’re not overreacting. We got pvp but… its not the same, and in truth, pvp has not too much content either to mantain the core players
in kr they are adding harder stuff on endgame and reworking other, for this very fact. I know lost ark is simple and not the new mmo everybody want-and nobody should expect, its ok- but it has fun gameplay, they need to focus on it
if the west go all pussywoopy about it, and add all the new content, people will have hard times on endgame content.
Yes, I made some research before actually give my opinion on the matter.
I guess some people forget the story behind the game, which is from 2018.