i think the honing rate is okay as it is right now but there are way to many less ways to get the materials. launching argos was too early aswell
T3 honing would be fine if we had the other events weekly for matierals.
Buffing T3 honing is just too soon and most likely wont hit until Valtan drops.
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Thank you Shadow_Fox for organizing this and reading feedbacks still.
This is the most I’ve felt somewhat heard since Roxx responded to threads, but now actively looking to hear feedback from players is another great start. I just hope we can get more guidance on when you believe changes can be made or at least timelines of your thoughts, but I know you guys don’t want to overpromise and underdeliver, but I guess currently players just want any kind of promise - not even an overpromise.
As for my thoughts/feedbacks on the issues - I think many players have brought up way too many great points on the biggest issues plaguing the honing system.
As it stands, its just… underwhelming and unrewarding. The feel of getting on your main, doing dailies, and failing all of them or getting like 1/6 success rate feels yeah - you’re getting no where or earning nothing for your progress. And yeah - there are even players who don’t mind grinding everything else and then continuing even more with like endless chaos dungeons run for more mats, but as it stands now is it just requires either an absurd amount of time investment to potentially push for the most recently released end game content, or you’re stuck doing a repetitive boring daily routine for a month+ to catch up as f2p with less time.
Which… is fine in a sense, but it kind of deviates from the goals we’ve heard were intended for players to try and catch up to global as fast as possible. I think that’s the biggest problem for me is… we’ve heard one things (So kind of promises and goals to look forward to) and yet, the system in place right now says otherwise. We’re already lacking material resources and yet still have a honing system in place with low rates… but the goal was to push everyone to get caught up to better tier 3 content asap? It just seems counterintuitive.
Its like most people don’t mind all the content releases and we encourage fast content releases too. I believe it was gold river who said they wanted us to get caught up with global as fast as possible so a lot of content releases is nice… but its also like what are you guys doing to help support that push for the rest of the players? As it stands, sure fast and more content are coming out but what’s the point if it comes out and no one can reach it because we’re lacking sources, honing rates, etc to reach it.
Players don’t mind the grind - but we need it to be a meaningful grind with a goal in sight or something to strive for instead of feeling like we’ll get no where for our playtime.
Tl;dr summary- unrewarding feeling since you can do so much and just fail all of it feeling we got no progress within a day or days
- also just feels counterintuitive towards the goal of getting players to enjoy end game tier 3 content where a lot more players were retained. Now it just feels like do your same dailies and pray for 1 or 2 successes and time to play alts (but not even all classes are released so just play whatever to farm resources if its not what you really want to play)
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That Fox video explains very well the issue.
I put in several hundred hours on RU to try out classes and learn the game to be prepared for NA/EU launch.
I have put something like 500-600 active play hours in to the NA/EU version - which is an absurd amount, but I was ill for 3 weeks and playing LA was one of the only things I was physically capable of doing and which provided an extremely needed distraction.
The amount of playtime I put in over the past month is completely unreasonable to expect out of anyone - and certainly not the vast majority of players. It’s probably several MONTHS worth of playtime for a lot of people.
And still, after those hundreds of active play hours, even with robust game knowledge I only achieved 1350. The entire first week that I was T3 (which would be almost 3 weeks now) I used all bound & unbound materials without selling anything and made almost no progress.
Even factoring in the materials that I HAVE sold now over the past week and half or so, the extra honing attempts would barely approach or cross in to double digits. And with the honing rates I’m confident that the difference it would’ve made is very small at best - it certainly wouldn’t have allowed reaching 1370 had those materials been used. It might’ve been enough to fail 10ish times and pity upgrade 1 more piece of gear for, literally, 1 ilvl gain.
The only people this doesn’t really alienate are the spendies, the people who have swiped and are swiping. And now, like Fox elaborates on in the video, this is going to create an even larger gap between people who spend and who do not - which is one of the things that many people who have been following and waiting for the game have been telling other people WOULDN’T happen.
But here we are.
If something isn’t done quickly, like next week, to facilitate and expedite player progress towards these encounters then it will become more and more of an issue that the playerbase/ex-playerbase/potential-playerbase talk about as they encourage others to stay away from the game/stop playing. If there are no changes to help bring more balance to player progress then the gap will get substantially larger between swipers and non-swipers with each week that 99% of the playerbase is locked out of the content - because each week is extra clears for those that are able to enter the encounter, and it creates a deficit that literally cannot be worked away at because of the time-bound nature of the encounters themselves.
This is coming from someone who has been waiting for this game for 3+ years. The camp of people who have heavily praised the game in many aspects and who will take their own precious time to create posts like this because they care about the health and success of the game that they enjoy and want others to enjoy.
And again I’ll echo a sentiment made by Fox in his video: This all just makes me sad. Things seemed like they were going so well. I feel like a lot of the things I told other people not to worry about and tried to reassure them wouldn’t happen are happening and will continue to happen in the future.
Whatever action is taken, and hopefully there is action and not inaction, needs to come quickly and be heavy enough to make a real difference. Confidence in the game and the path it is taking is wavering even amongst those who want nothing more for the game than to see it succeed.
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make honing rates same as korea with +2 milestones.
give us same honing material sources korea has as well.
Theres like 100000 post about the current state of the game and the best yall do is asking “Honing thoughts?” ?
Heres what we think:
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Firstly I’d just like to say thanks for being active here over the weekend and trying to get to the more pressing queries (especially regarding honing, which many of us feel is the biggest hurdle for the game right now).
Do you think we’re likely to get an update on AGS/SGR intentions regarding changes (or lack thereof) to honing or materials gain within the next week or so? The reason I ask is that with threads like this ongoing many players feel backed into a sort of ‘limbo’ where they’re concerned to use materials in case of a change which gets implemented shortly after and devalues their investment. Appreciate you taking the time to answer if you get to this
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They are not.
This… Best example would be Shangra island soul…
I would rather farm peaches and play songs until my finger bleed and the island kicked me out each time
Rather than doing alakkir / spida / tooki and get shitfuck RNG
Hey, thanks for opening a discussion regarding topic!
As many players already mentioned, 1340-1370 road is way too tedious, also we are missing all the extra sources of mats that KR realm has, that includes normalized guardians/abyss/pvp vendor and so on.
Keeping in mind, tier 3 progression is a long process and there’s no big resets or leaps in honning levels once legion raids start. Speed running mmorpg shouldn’t be taken as a main way of playing, but wish devs/publishers wouldn’t force that type of playstyle with pacing of patches
Personally, I’m playing at my own pace currently, sitting at 1350 and using only bound mats. But i do feel like we should get a bit of a boost to honning chances, or at least reduce require mats to progress. Another thing is, at least from my experience, ppl are worried more about pacing of endgame content (as mentioned earlier), rather than chances itself. As far as I’m aware, developers in KR recently had to apologize to players, cause vertical progression pace has gotten so fast, free players couldn’t keep up. Please, try not to create the same feeling our fellow KR friends had not so long ago.
I know it’s a very thin line between group A:“I can’t keep up, too much content!”, and group B:“omg im already 1370, there’s nothing to do”. I just hope this resolves sooner than later.
Peace.
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People are just rushing things, they want to max out a month old game then complain of lack of content, if everyone max out to 1370 next post we will see is “Max out already, boring game no content, I am quitting refund me please”
Max is not 1370, not even close, honing continues to +25 in Lost Ark, most of the end game BEGINS at 1370, this is the fallacy that a lot of folks who haven’t seen other regions don’t understand.
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Adding group C “man…i want to play end game content but my RNG sucks balls and the resources is just not enough. i feel like i waste my time. I rather play other game that respect my time more. /Uninstall”
You AGS team exactly know what to do.
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I’ll start by saying, I love this game. I play 8-12 hours most days. I also participate in the royal crystal purchases and Mari’s shop much more than my fair share. I’m also doing daily’s on 7-9 characters almost ever day. Even with all those things, I cannot participate in the current content release. There isn’t enough funneling in the world with the current resources available and current honing rates to get there without spending thousands of dollars, real money trading, or just being absurdly lucky.
Honestly, the current honing rates wouldn’t be a problem if Argos wasn’t released for another 4 weeks, but here he is. I had several friends that are 1325-1340 quit the day of the patch when no honing changes were introduced. They all are playing this game like a full time job and it’s still not enough to be able to do the content available to whales. I don’t have an issue with people spending thousands for an advantage. Where I take issue is that even spending hundreds and playing 8-12 hours a day, I’m probably 3+ weeks away from being able to participate in the recent content release.
Content pacing with the current honing rates is predatory monetization. Everything was going great. Whales were spending thousands and thousands of dollars. Hardcore players were spending hundreds and hundreds of dollars. The f2p experience was decent for those players. Argos releasing without honing changes felt like, “Hey, I bet if we don’t release the honing update with Argos we can make all those people only spending hundreds spend thousands!” If someone who is playing the game 60+ hours a week, spending $100+ a week, and still isn’t able to participate, it’s a problem. It is not only blocking out the majority of the player base from participating, it’s making people feel like it’s not worth their time to play because if they don’t spend thousands they don’t get to raid.
I have no issue with players paying to support the developer and publisher. If they want to buy power beyond what is needed to participate and clear the content, that doesn’t effect me. What effects me, is not being able to do the content at all. It makes me re-consider investing my time in the game because I know I’m weeks “behind” now, but I know it only gets worse from here. If Valtan releases in a month, the gap between the content and me is only going to get wider, no matter how much I play.
If the game was released with the honing patch notes that were originally put up, the pacing would have been fine. Now, even if they are to release the honing changes, I believe we still won’t be on pace to be ready for Valtan in 4 weeks. The honing patch needs to be released ASAP, and Valtan needs to be delayed at least 2+ weeks to let people get caught up enough. The population is going to plummet if people think they can’t play the parts of the game they want to enjoy. There’s no incentive when its behind a paywall that isn’t even reasonable enough to climb.
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There is an empty desert of content between 1340 and ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------1370
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To many cryers here. Enjoy the game omg. 1383 atm wit out pay a €€. If u dont like asian mmos games leave to other game and stop try fuck this awesome game
I have a 1345, 1340, 960, 960, 563, 543, 540, 520, 420… I can confirm, these are not roster bound. I wish.
The director himself and multiple veteran players already said that “the game only really start at T3 raid”. They wanna get contents out real fast (legion raid), Valtan is scheduled to release next month (leaked) but the progress rate doesnt match up. With the current rate, the non-whale players will be doing argos when Valtan release. It is like playing WoW/FF14 but always one raid tier behind.
I highly doubt you’re not supplementing your honing without swiping here and there. I was one of the first tier 3 players in NA/EU, sold my mats early to whales, still don’t have enough gold to push to 1370 without insanely good RNG. I’ve been playing the game upwards of 16 hours a day+ the last few weeks, I am actively doing every weekly/daily available across two tier 3 (1350 and now a 1340 after accepting that pushing the main wasn’t going to be the play) with four tier 2 alts ranging from 840-1060, I sell everything unbound. I can tell you right now while doing unlimited chaos dungeon, it’s still no feasible for myself, let alone someone playing at a much healthier amount to achieve 1370 right now.
E: Grammar.
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