It took me 450 hours to see what's going on

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#1

This is a money machine to them and nothing else. There was no passion involved in the development of this game nor in Amazon publishing it. It’s a generic bad vs good storyline that took inspiration from many other actual passion projects. Isn’t that what Smilegate does with their other projects too?

Whoever is handling the updates for the Western Release I don’t really care but I see what they are doing.

With a flick of a switch they could turn on a whole host of quality of life features or even classes but they don’t because they can trickle them in their monthly updates to make it seem like huge changes. What they did is start with a huge steaming dog plop, hype this up to the max as they do hold that power through Twitch and whatnot, milk it while it’s stinky and hot then actually start switching on already created improvements when players start dropping which creates a contrast of “wow this game is a lot better than it was” which retains players. Why would anyone want to be under this treatment and continue to pay them knowing they purposely constrict enjoyment they could of gave the players from the start but decided to use psychological operations for more money.

I for one don’t like being part of some psychological experimentation or treated like cattle and appreciate when games are made and published with passion not greed. That and this game really, really tries to get people to have Lost Ark as part of their daily and weekly routine. Not everyone likes cleaning their bed in the morning but do it enough and eventually not doing it feels wrong. If the company was passionate about making enjoyable games they would not need to go to these measures to try and keep people trapped into playing.

If this is the type of game people regard as high quality these days I feel really worried about what future generations will see as their norm.

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#2

First MMO?

#3

are you new to gaming?

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#4

Since you are clearly done… mind sending me you mats and gold? Thank you, have a great time and don’t let the door hit you on your way out :v: :grin:

#5

like i am not agreeing with the OP here but i still think your type of behavior is actually worse for the game than his post tbh

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#6

Why? I’m low on gold and mats… :confused:
And i did wish him a great time wherever he goes…

#8

You had 450 hours of enjoyment. Possibly for free.

Now, I don’t approve of the free 2 play model, I think it’s a crap shady practice that uses constant nagging and prodding to try to get you to pay money for nothing rather than simply offering you something at a standard price.

If you payed money for your 450 hours of entertainment and feel as if you made a mistake. Then learn from your regret and learn to control your own impulses.

But if you look at 450 hours of entertainment for free, and still feel entitled to anything else, then your parents failed their job to teach you anything of worth, and you’re simply an entitled brat.

#9

You’re quite correct in many ways, OP, but it’s really pointless to address this in a forum of people who are literally swimming in their addiction to these kinds of designs. It’s just like trying to convince a drunk or drug addict to stop drinking or using – you can’t. They either decide to stop because they come to their own realization, or they don’t, but you won’t convince them, either way, by anything you say – the addict is self-driven, self-directed. I mean, after all, this is what heavy drinking and drug use are, right? I mean why are you drinking heavily or using drugs if you don’t want to do that? That’s the typical kind of answer you will get from an addict, having dealt with this kind of thing in numerous contexts.

Games don’t have to be designed this way, and the SP ones historically were not (they are being infected with the same design ideas now, though, due to the “game as a service” idea that has impacted SP games now, too). And initially MMOs were not designed to be addictive in this way either – they were primarily social games, which were designed for more or less constant group play and social interaction, and yes they were time-consuming but the focus was spending long periods of time socializing with others while you gamed, as we see in the old skool MMOs.

What happened is that over time the market grew and changed, and the internet grew and changed. A lot has been discussed about this in other threads of this forum and elsewhere, and I won’t repeat it here, but the summary is that socialization moved outside the games, the games themselves became more “gamey”, while at the same time the degree of competition between different MMOs and between MMOs and other online games intensified dramatically, meaning that games were all seeking ways to capture and retain market share.

The old models (mostly monthly subscriptions) weren’t competitive, and so more and more games moved towards new business models which were “free”, but which also had many incentives designed to drive player engagement on a daily basis in order to retain players and market share in a very competitive market. The games that do this most effectively cater to very base aspects of human nature – greed, the desire to dominate others, the desire for a dopamine rush in gambling and so on – because these are indeed very strong motivators which are very deeply enmeshed in human nature, and some people have a difficult time resisting the impulses they bring on – which results in more engagement from these players, higher market share, and more sales.

Of course that is pernicious on a human level, but as I say above, you can’t expect the people who are acting out on their addiction to agree. From their perspective, everything is fine. And from the perspective of people who skate on the edge of the addictive behaviors – the people who see other addicting themselves, but have, themselves, enough willpower to not give in completely to the same impulses – you will, yet again, get no support because they enjoy skating on the edge of the addictive behavior, collecting their dopamine hits, feeding their own base desires in ways that they feel more able to control.

Ultimately all you can do is make choices for yourself and try to influence the people around you in the actual real world – not the internet. You’re not wrong in the conclusions that you draw, in other words – you’re just mistaken that this audience is going to do anything other than treat them with extreme disregard.

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