This is an attempt to explain how important it is that this issue is addressed quickly.
Grudge engraving books are suppose to be a special item. It is suppose to be an exciting moment when you find one in the game where you cheer out loud. By allowing the bots to easily print thousands of these books you have destroyed that experience for the players.
I clear 6 characters worth of content weekly and do all dailies on most of them every day. I have only found 5 grudge books ever from chaos/guardian/cube/etc. They are suppose to be extremely rare to get.
You need to make these books from Thronespire “Bound to Roster” as soon as possible.
I know it is awkward to ask SG to make changes like this to the game and you are trying to parse what is important to ask of them. This is extremely important.
Please, we beg you, don’t brush these posts off and not pass the information along. This is an easy change that is necessary for the health of the games economy.
If AGS gives any weight to any of these comments in their decision to make this change then this game is doomed.
The economy is balanced and works based on the Korean game. AGS should be trying to maintain that balance because the Korean version works. Allowing the most valuable item in the game to become worthless is such a bad decision.
The game is successful because there are things to work towards like the grudge books. Things are special to have because other players don’t have them. This game is about improving your character constantly. Not everyone is suppose to have the best things.
Why not just give everyone infinite honing mats and the ability to create any accessory you want? If these 20 cheap grudge book wanters had their way this is how the game would be.
Thronespire is a 10x times better gold source for bot and AGS just let them abuse it for months. Players have reported this before thronespite came out and CM did nothing, if you want someone to blame for the inflation, blame them
this can be applied to everything in the game that is botted
adventure tome items, life skill harvests, adventure island gold
it’s all diminished by botting
it was put in this game in measured amounts (if designed properly) to exactly give the players what they need to progress and sustain. any inflation by bots erodes the balance of the game and makes it that much harder for all non-bot players to continue enjoying it
They just looking for 8000 gold grudge books. Bit far away from infinite honing mats. The same 8000 grudge books that people asking for this to be changed already have.
This is all true. The main difference between these things and Thronespire is how easy Thronespire is to fix (make the books Bound to Roster) with minimal effect on real players (all players will eventually need a legendary combat engraving themselves).
Plus it is less tragic if adventure tome items become worthless compared to a legendary grudge book. A friend got one in a cube run the other day and made a groan and joked that he got a garbage engraving book. That is a tragic state for the game to be in.
True. But I don’t think this fact has any bearing on whether this should be changed or not. It is still highly exploited by the bots with a significant effect on the games economy (if engraving books are cheap it means everything else is more expensive b/c now players have the gold they saved on engraving books to spend on everything else).
You are right, Smilegate (the developer) has created a great “intended play experience”. But Smilegate developed the game with a Korean audience in mind. In Korea you need your social security number to be verified by the government to play Lost Ark. This makes it significantly more difficult to bot on the Korean version of the game. In Korean 1000s of bots didn’t make new accounts to reach Thronespire and sell the Legendary Engraving Books, thus tanking their value.
The developers intended to have each actual Korean player to get 2 books to sell or use themselves. Not for each Player to get 2 books and 10 bots farm the books and sell them for half price back to that player. In the process handing over millions of gold to the botters accounts.
I know people that work at video game studios. Most of them don’t even play video games. For all we know most people at AGS barely know anything about Lost Arks economy or have been closely following its trends to see if something is being messed with by the bots. They need the players to point out stuff like this and to explain to them how it matters to fix it for the game to be as Smilegate intended it to be.
Even if you are right this is not the way to do it. Doing it this way is out of AGS/SG control so it could add too many legendary engraving books. Plus it means the botters get millions of gold selling the books on the AH and then people want to buy gold from illegal sources rather than through Royal Crystals.
Why do you assume that bots are the one who botting the tower and not the players who finally reached the ilvl required to actually able to clear the 22nd floor?
I’m actually very skeptical how a bot at ilvl 1325 be able to clear it
Unless you can prove it with video
