Title. I’ve never felt the need to speak out before this, despite many previous blunders by AGS/SG, but this takes the cake. The Auction House is completely unusable in its current state- YOU CAN’T EVEN CHECK YOUR OWN SALE HISTORY WITHOUT HAVING TO REFRESH IT LIKE 10 TIMES LOL. Just set up the paywall. Here’s my proposal.
Set up tiers that are tied to in-game services like so:
Tier 1 : Completely free to play- no subscription, no Auction House/Marketplace access. Sorry F2P.
Tier 2: $5 a month- Auction House and Marketplace services enabled.
Tier 3+: $5 + $x a month- includes extra goodies like royal crystals and pheons at better customer value (OPTIONAL).
This is just a suggestion, and while obviously there are still workarounds that are abusable, it should give AGS enough time to ban bots while they’re consolidating mats into a few accounts every month instead of selling them separately on thousands of accounts, thereby seriously easing up the marketplace/AH congestion going on right now.
In a recent interview, Elon spoke to why he made Twitter cost $8 a month for a blue check mark. Aside from the fact that it’ll bring in a consistent revenue stream for the app, he made a really good point in favor of this system: On Twitter there were millions of bot accounts and trolls- sound familiar? In Twitter’s current state, it costs the botters nothing to manage these accounts. But if you set up a system where it now costs $8 to be a relevant account, all of a sudden it costs someone with 100,000 bot accounts $800,000 a month to bot while costing the average real human with 1 account almost nothing in comparison. Lost Ark desperately needs this right now.
Obviously some hardcore F2P players will be unhappy about this, but I doubt they’ll be less happy than they are right now. I’ve stayed silent and kept my head down in the past trusting that AGS/SG will fix the issues that we come across, but this is the first and hopefully the last time I’ve felt the need to voice my opinion. The quality of life for real players is at an all time low right now, and if we all just have to pay $5 to get our version of a Twitter Blue Check mark, I’ll do it; I’m sure many others feel the same way. I just want my old happy booba skin game back .
tl;dr add a Twitter blue check mark equivalent to Lost Ark to deter bots from flooding the AH immediately in order to buy time for SG’s devs to solve the bot problems while improving quality of life for real players at minimal cost.
Please comment below your thoughts- would greatly appreciate it if we could get some real action started here.
Well, here is a thing - LOA is F2p game. It’s a F2P game in RU/JP/KR and bots NOT a problem. So, here is a question - what a difference between other versions and western? In particular between RU and western versions.
Our currency. USD/Euro is just too valuable. Haven’t heard about SA having bot issues, have you? Also Steam LUL. Our system is more abusable AND nets like 10x the money for botters. Wouldn’t you bot in NA/EU?
Realy? So, there was NO players from europe in ru? I know some of them. Maybe there is another problem? Here is a hint: starts with A and ends with GS. Look at NW if you want to see what will become with western LOA cause of AGS incompitence.
Aren’t Prime members already paying for monthly subscription anyway ?
They can use that as a way for verification - make 1 month prime membership requirement, after the 30 days the payment can be refunded , but they can use that system to verify if the user is real or not , and not allow e-mail/phone number/card to be used again. And if you pass that verification you can play the game and use AH , if not account get banned along with the e-mail/phone/ card use for it.
AGS as a publisher / game developer (AGS does localization) is lazy disorganized and cheap…did you know we use the exact same forums and website layouts as new world…they literally couldn’t even be bothered to make both games unique experiences visually.
They have terrible outsourced customer service (I knew someone in the inside) they largely use US Territories to save on labor costs like Puerto Rico. So if they had more aggressive banning software that hit innocents they don’t’ have the infrastructure to deal with it.
There is a clear disconnect between SG and AGS somewhere, the fact that they had to take trips to Korea to try to get on the same page (after release) is evidence of this.
I could go on but frankly I think it just boils down to AGS not being competent and whatever they are having SG do isn’t sufficient. What we don’t know is what the deal between SG and AGS to publish the game in the US is. What is the profit % cut for Lost Ark for SG vs what did AGS give them as a lump some up front. If SG got a crap load of money up front with only a small profit incentive I could see why SG could give less a poop what’s going on with the game that would be an AGS profit issue. If it was the other way around and SG getting money from the west depended on it being profitable here I’d be looking to void my contract with AGS to get a new publisher to do localization and marketing in the US. Why? The base game is more or less fine the only issues are the choice of EAC and the marketing and PR and localization that is being done by AGS.
I played NW in release and time to time loging in to see how game is changing. So I know how incompetent AGS is. Also I know that RU publisher is a pos but somehow AGS even worse and it scares me cause I like LOA and spent a lot of time and I don’t want to go to RU LOA. I just want AGS to start working and not kick dicks.
IF LA launched with a sub or box fee i’d be fine with it
But now, trying to introduce that would be an absolutely brutal nightmare. What’s left of the playerbase would mald out and probably simply out of spite disagree with it (even though they would be the same people paying 100 for a skin but wouldn’t pay 5 for a sub)
The sad thing is the damage the bots did has already been done. The market being broken right now is just the tip of the iceberg, the vast amount of wealth that has been stuffed into the game from millions of throw away accounts no amount of golden frog could eat. Players (even F2P) were propelled forward faster than expected by the gold being pumped into the market and those who did GVG Whale have been maxed out since like Valtan release.
It’s hard to blame someone when 100k from AGS is like $200 and 100k from GVG is $15. Most humans value their money more than what the ToS of some Korean P2W game has to say, which is what drove the bots even harder, especially as those who did get banned were found to only end up with Temp. Bans.
Our market is broken in more ways than just the refresh button.
As for the bots themselves:
Banning them will do nothing, at all. This bot is done with it’s script, it’s offloaded it’s gold and is now ready to be thrown away with a new account taking it’s place. By the time AGS detects and bans this bot, it’s already to late. They are forever behind the curve of stopping this.
So sure, try and introduce 2FA, a subscription fee, Captcha, more delays in using the market, etc, etc, etc, but it’s so far beyond to late now we’ll be fighting Thiamine before any changes made today are even felt in game.
my man if this game started out as sub numbers would be dropping like flies and would have swapped to free to play around this time anyway
there is like nothing worth in this game to sub for lol
Since AGS and SG seem hellbent on killing this game off, I support this proposal. Nothing will kill a game faster than introducing a barrier of entry when there was previously none.
We’re already paying a monthly sub with the crystalline aura.
Twitter turned from bots without a blue check mark, to bots with blue check mark even impersonating verified accounts.
You need to understand something, let’s say they made it so only people with amazon prime can access the game or tier 3 or trade on the market, here is what is going to happen:
Mats, engraving books, fish, and collectibles will rise in price dramatically.
Auction house will be dry of accessories and stones. You won’t find the pieces you need and won’t be able to build your characters.
GHLs will be so cheap you won’t make gold from selling them.
Remember that you were able to get 5x3 buying legendary grudge books from bots.
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L takes bro.
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