Why ? So you can abuse our feedback in other to make more money by producing FOMO ? NO thanks
Exactly, they had a slow schedule with all the weeklys for months, we are on an accelerated schedule with slower progression than any other version by far, the rate up isn’t going to “make the game easier” or kill the earlier game, all you can do is dailies for months until the real content that is legion raids, old content is still done weekly in random abyss and guardian raids with equalized gear.
Problem is that damage is already done. A lot of hardcore players and legitimate swipers have already gone through the bad honing rates. What message does it send to them if the honing rate itself gets changed after like a month?
They’re probably not going to quit, sunk cost fallacy. But AGS will get a lot less revenue from them in the future, which means that the money will have to come from somewhere else, i.e more ways to exploit low/medium spenders.
Exactly.
To put things into perspective, average KR player is a family sedan driver, but he’s also racing against another family sedan (content release schedule).
Meanwhile in our version of the game, average players are driving a hippie minivan, 10h+ grinders are driving a sedan and we’re racing against Ferraris.
While whales are those people who spend more money on aftermarket sedan parts that it would cost to buy a Ferrari and they barely keep up in the race.
I think it should be done the way Smilegate had planned/done in the past. Smilegate brought this game from the grave in Korea, and I truly think they know whats best for the game. They have years of data and have already made the mistakes. Theres no need to reinvent the wheel when it already works. I am personally 1352 ftp. After watching Asmongold get to 1370 from pretty much the same spot I am in, I realized that theres no way I can get there before the next content comes out and us ftp players will always be behind. I don’t think content should be delayed. I think we should be sped up to the Legion Commanders which is where the KR/RU retention rates are highest.
To me, this feels like a pretty clear inflection point for Lost Ark. I truly believe that how Smilegate / AGS handle the next few weeks will tell us a whole lot about the shape of the global release and the long-term prospects of our version of this game. Dramatic? A little bit, but I think it’s rather simple. Hear me out.
It’s getting to be pretty well known by now what our version is missing from t1/t2/early t3 compared to other regions: abyss trials, heroic guardian raids, and the bridge/ridge. We also have the item level requirements of Night Fox Yoho and the T3 Abyss Dungeon hard modes shifted from 1355 to 1370.
This creates not only a massive progression gap between 1340 and 1370, but it pairs it with a massive content gap. The game completely falls off a cliff at that point for players that aren’t willing to pay obscene costs to AH their way out of it. And for perspective, this isn’t “I can drop $20 to $40 to support the game” type of cost. It’s hundreds to thousands of dollars in cost.
That’s the first issue: the artificial progression and content gap that exists in large part because our region is missing some of the things that other regions, at the same item level ranges, have available to them. And it’s a big one! It is of course, greatly exacerbated by the fact that it’s almost exclusively mega-whales who have been able to progress past this wall.
The more insidious part of this, and this is why I think how this is handled is such a big deal for the future of the game, is that this represents a significant betrayal of what we were led to believe about this game’s direction from its developers.
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We were reassured that the western release was making efforts to shift away from the p2w elements of the game - and to everyone’s credit, they followed through on this! The changes to pets, the changes to crystalline aura, other changes to the cash shop were all well received and taken as Smilegate/AGS backing up their talk. Except now we’re in a situation where the only reasonable way to bridge a gap in content and progression is to pay significant amounts of money. In that way, our release is arguably more p2w than any other version.
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We were assured that the developers viewed players accessing endgame content as integral to the retention of players and success of the game. This idea cannot coexist with the current state of endgame in the global release. There is absolutely no way that more than 2% of the playerbase is 1370 or above. I would be incredibly surprised to see that more than 2% of the playerbase is 1340+, and the gap between 1340 and 1370 is enormous. Seriously, if you want an easy answer to this entire issue, publicize the statistics on how much of the playerbase is in Tier 3, in Tier 3 above 1340, and in Tier 3 above 1370. The results will speak for themselves, I guarantee you.
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There is a significant sense within the playerbase that the only rationale we can grasp for why these things are the case - the missing progression content, the shifted item level requirements, the release cadence - is that developers wish to milk the whales out of as much money as possible right after new content is pushed out.
So what we’re left with here is the idea that developers seem more interested in milking the whales than in making a compelling, fair, playable game for everyone else.
That’s the big problem. That’s where this goes from a cynical little moment in time into a canary in the coal mine with respect to the future of this game.
People are paying close attention to how this gets resolved. I think an intelligent, fair solution would go a long way toward showing people that their trust in this game was warranted, and that they are right to be optimistic about its future. Mishandling this would do the exact opposite, and that’s really not a place anyone wants to see this game be right now.
Good luck!
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waiting until then doesn’t seem like a good decision since you still need weeks of hard abyssal/argos clears to get the new sets which means you will forever be behind as new content releases.
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except for the last paragraph, everything you said was true.
I doubt you guys want feedback considering Smilegate and Amazon went out of their way to nerf the speed on which player can progress through the game when compared to the Korean Lost Ark client, with a reduction in the material and gold rewards, removal of heroic guardian raids and abyssal trials, and the increased item level requirement from 1355 to 1370 to access hard mode abyss dungeons. Even if you had the intention of reworking the game, at this point a ton of players who spent a lot of money on the game would feel cheated if things were suddenly made easier, so the risk of them not wanting to spend so much more money anymore would prevent the devs from making any necessary reworks to be made in the game in a timely manner (and no, addressing the issue one or two months from now is not a timely manner).
But if you want feedback, here it is. Players on 1340 have very little content to aspire for, because normal mode Oreha’s Well is extremely easy and unrewarding and the grind from 1340 to 1370 is extremely long and obnoxious, so at this point there’s almost no reason to continue playing the game, because there’s no more fun to be had with boring and repetitive content.
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I heard from a few friends who play in RU that Chaos Dungeon and Guardian Raid give double the amount of Mats compare to NA/EU. Idk if it true, but I feel like being choke by AMG now.
you guys should not have rushed an update that most people can’t play and have released the other content that we are missing which supplies honing materials as stated here:
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They did because it’s a cash grab before they buff and add sources for earning the mats.
I think its a good time to just reinstate the honing system we were supposed to receive in the beginning aka the system the Korean client has. I agree that it would have been too simple to start the game off but at this point the hardcore players have done the hard work and gotten the benefit. T3 should stay exactly the same.
I think the attempts for tier 1 and 2 should just be 100% no matter what and have significantly less resources to upgrade. Such as maybe 1 leapstone and that doesnt change just so we can get to tier 3 quickly. And even for tier 3 up to 1370 right now, to increase chances to at least 40-60% base rate and then beyond 1370 significantly decrease it until the other content for 1400 is here. These activities getting released too soon with no way to actually get there naturally. Its physically impossible to get to 1370 by any natural means except spending money.
Thats not true. You get materials relevant to the chaos dungeon your doing. So it seems like they get double. You also get double just for having rest bonus and thats currently on Global servers
t3 honing already made 2 of my friends quit, and me completely switching to my alt for now… it’s insane
Hello to everyone who checks out this post and I thank u for Your time,
as someone that played the Korean CBT2, early season 1 in korea, had around 1850 hours in russia and over 500 hours in our current version. I thought about sharing the view of a very dedicated player that was excited for the EU/NA/SA version of the game for about 7 years and still looks forward for the game to be as successful as it can be. You can call me a shill.
The problem right now doesn’t necessarily sit in the honing process but rather in the way the content got released. Lost Ark is, as i have explained to several of my friends, a very free-2-play friendly game that allows you to reach the required Gearscore on your MAIN for upcomming content shortly before they get released IF you have a couple alternative Characters that can funnel materials to your Maincharacter. This is not the case right now for the Western release, even tho it is the case for every other current region.
But im not here just to rant or show flaws, rather do I want to present a way to not only
calm alot of people but also bring it closer to the glory that it currently stays at in Korea.
Step 1 - The playerbase is very much scattered around the place, with the majority(assumption!!) sitting in Tier 2. And players might think that they need that time in the tutorialzone, keep in mind as this wasn’t meant to be a tutorial and is rather older content that got left behind when season 2 released. You’re not supposed to sit in those early stages of the game, it is more meant to be a quick in and out clap on the cheek and you move on.
→ Activate the catchup related buff that lets people progress through Tier 1 and Tier 2 with 100% upgrade chances and much smaller cost. This will be a much needed stepping stone for people to reach Tier 3 and help with the absurd high material cost.
Step 2 - The very small amount of people in Tier 3 are missing various contents that provide them with aditional materials, like the weekly Abyss Trial or Heroic Guardians, that are rosterwide weeklies so you only have to do them with 1 character. This provides slightly more materials that also helps with the current market situation.
Step 3 - With the leaked roadmap we saw valtan on his way and if this doesn’t get delayed we will need a helping hand to reach the starting line that allows you to reach the before mentioned goal of getting to the requirements of new content as a free2play player on 1 character that we focus on. This could be achieved with the catchup systems that are currently active in korea,japan and russia. This would ensure a smooth path and relieve the stress many hard pushing players experience right now. (If there are current plans on delaying valtan disregard this part)
Note : I want this community to improve so if u have any type of constructive argument being it negative or positive please reply, I wont take my time replying to non interesting arguments
Hope you have a nice day - Andi
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Something that’s bad, such as honing in and up to T3, should not stay bad just because others suffered through it.
As one of those fairly far into what we have in T3, I would love to see changes to make honing more accessible for my alts and my friends who are stuck.
They should not feel so discouraged just because others before them did.
Problem is that damage is already done.
And that’s the problem. Amazon keeps making the same mistake over and over again and they’re not learning their lesson. They act without thinking of the consequences and only after they screw up, they start looking for a solution to a problem that cannot be fixed.
The first time it happened was when they messed up the EU servers situation on release. They could’ve clearly seen that the EU audience is bigger than NA but for whatever reason NA has two regions and the bigger region EU only one. No one there stopped for a second to think and say “Hey, guys, EU is bigger, let’s open a 2nd region on release so we don’t have server problems.” No, they opened EU West after the damage was done and EU West didn’t solve anything since people who started on one server already wouldn’t just reroll on a completely different region after investing so much time and effort on the start, especially those who started playing on the early start.
And they did exactly the same mistake now with Argos. No one thought for a moment “Look, the situation between 1340-1370 is hilarious, we cannot release Argos without releasing additional content that gets people from 1340 to 1370 and let it run for at least a month.” Most likely because they haven’t even played and tested the game to this point and have no clue what we’re even talking about. No, they released Argos and now they’re looking for a solution to a problem which should have never existed in the first place. And a solution to a problem that simply cannot be fixed without messing up even more. They cannot release the additional content required to progress normally to Argos because it is way too much to simply prepare a patch in 4-5 days before the weekly reset. And they cannot risk pissing the 1370 people off because 1 of them pays for a thousand other free players.
And they will keep making the same mistake in the future because they clearly don’t understand how the game works. I mean they royally messed up their own game New World, what do you expect for a game they didn’t even developed, just published. They did the same mistakes in NW as well, but that’s a topic for another forum.
Every damn time.
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I definitely don’t agree how the Honing changes for T1 through T3 were not rolled out with Argos. We are currently missing a lot of core content that helps alleviate material shortage like Heroic Guardians, Abyss Trials, and South Vern. This version of Lost Ark is the most P2S (Pay 2 Speed) out of all the regions when stated it would be otherwise. Please consider introducing the honing changes and implementing the heroic guardians and abyss trials in a patch before the next content update.
I love this game and I could careless if it’s P2W, P2S, whatever you want to call it. I just hate to see friends and people on my server quit because of the T3 honing despair from 1340 to 1370. For the immediate health of the game, I think the implementation of these features and changes are needed to keep a healthy player count.
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