I haven’t seen a topic on this in a long while (sorry if there is).
A few friends started playing recently, some close to 50 some doing lower tier endgame.
While a lot of the content can be helped, activities such as chaos gates cannot. Either way, seems like a lot of early content just dies out and the game revolves around the players who started playing when it came out. I could, of course, be wrong, but this is how it feels watching a new player play. I’m also aware that with the mokoko buff players can get to tier 3 (content where there are more than enough players) quicker, therefore maybe that’s what they are supposed to do? sort of skip chaos gates and field bosses for now? although they would lose out on some collectible ingredients, but oh well.
If this is the case then, not bad, but seems like a bit of waste of content, since they could just be nerfed so players can still enjoy them solo, or allow others to help, instead of them just being skipped and done once the players themselves are high endgame.
Please contribute with your opinion on this and/or an explanation if this is not quite the case.
P.S. On a completely different note, seems kinda weird that it’s pretty easy to destroy your honed gear if you are new. My friends know to be careful, as did the majority playing the game I’m sure, but the fact that you can is strange.
The game revolves around skipping t1 and t2 as fast as you can, so yes, it is wasted content, but it is also very outdated content.
A good suggestion is to add matchmaking for “old” content and with current rewards that place new players with veteran players in the same dungeons at least. So veteran players can run more diverse content and new players see instanced content populated.
As for low-level field bosses or chaos gates, there isn’t much incentive they can give. People just don’t do that content anymore and there is very low recycling of players so you won’t see those areas populated ever, except for bots. The only way I see at least field bosses (chaos gates could be universal instancing matchmaking where low levels can go in with high-level players in any chaos gate) being populated is by making events that boost universal rewards, like gold (which they won’t since we have a serious botting issue), maybe card packs or boxes that let you choose bound honing materials.
However, I will not get my hopes up. The management of this game is questionable and they are not willing to put development type to fix these issues. My suggestion is for your friends to get to t3 asap.
@o-o I hope it is fine to tag you. I will make sure not to, if it isn’t.
While most of the action does happen in tier 3 and the majority of players have reached and are playing in this tier, my friends quite enjoy the story and progression, and it is to be appreciated that the game slowly teaches you certain mechanics in earlier dungeons.
If the work input and demand ratio allows it, I suggest changing all content prior to Argos and allow it to be done solo or with a custom number of players.
For example:
Chaos Gate - Make it scale all the way down to 1-2 players and/or remove scale of balance
Abyssal Dungeons (This is the most important one) - Similarly to Guardian Raids, allow solo/duo/trio custom entry and scale it down.
I for one learnt a lot about my skills and how to manage my build rotation in abyssal dungeons.
This would be a work in progress as content like Argos will eventually become old and not played eventually and might need the same treatment, I assume.
While it is true that a player could skip lower chaos gates, field bosses and ghost ships and come back for collectible ingredients later and find a guild to help/simply join older content there are a few problems with this, as follows:
*This content will not be meaningful.
*Guild mates might not be interested/ not have time when a player wants to do this content.
*While I do not know myself how helpful the new player mokoko buff is, it seems strange to take away all these rewards from players early on. Could be entirely wrong on this one.
In conclusion, depending on the number of new players and amount of work needed to implement these changes, I really hope the team can at the very least justify changing the abyssal dungeons, if nothing else. It would make an amazing start.
imo stuff like that should scale you up or the boss down depending on ammount of players once you enter so when you are late and enter a chaosgate with 2-3 ppl your daily is not wasted and you can still clear it in similar ammount of time as if u had 15 ppl atleast
That’s a very good point. They could create a special entry where wipe mechanics’ requirements scale down to the number of players, for example, if 8 players have to collect orbs otherwise everyone dies, make it enough for 2 orbs to be collected the rest can collide with the boss. Another example would be to make wipe mechanics just deal damage if failed, therefore allowing for carries.
Once more, a lot can be done but much may not be justified if there aren’t enough players who would like to see these changes. Also it very much depends if the team intended for the early content to be swiftly skipped and/or if the player base has comfortably accepted it.
Old content needs to be incentivized for T3 players to run it. Rather than creating new content, give a reason for players to run the content already in place. Streamline old content that current T3 players do not need.
Abyssal Dungeons
Once you surpass the ilvl cap, have it normalize players to the ilvl cap for that Abyssal. You should still be able to get Cards, Gold, and Engravings.
Adventure Islands
After receiving Island Souls and Maps, most players will not ever return. Perhaps Gold, Pirate Coins, RNG Sailors, Cards, etc. could help with that.
World Bosses
Only give player lockouts for the World Boss run that week. If your ilvl significantly surpasses the World Boss, normalize the players. Have the World Bosses give off an aura. Add Gold or some other form of loot that would incentivize players to run all former World Bosses.
Ghost Ships
These need to be overhauled entirely. Not quite sure why anyone would go to anything but the 1415 GS.
Sailing Events
Pretty much everyone only runs Gienahs or Sun Coins. Co-op sailing should be across servers and work like Gates of Harmony rather than be channel based.
Chaos Dungeons
They need to remove the amount of T3 tiers so there are only 3, similar to how the last tier of Chaos Dungeons works. T1 and T2 should probably just be 1 dungeon each Tier with players being normalized to the Tier. Rewards should drop in boxes similar to how the Guardian Challenge works.
It is a shame that most MMORPGs make the same mistake in how they treat progression and content. In all reality the games tend to not have much content at all when you distill it down to end game content. Currently, you have 3 Legion Raids as actual content. The rest is time filler horizontal progression stuff. You have an absolute ton of content already created, use it.
You need to keep a regular player base in tier 1 of the game, attract new players, I can imagine the frustration of people who started the game now and can’t make the content, a reward system for players who are in the higher tiers to help players low tier would be valid, a reward system like the Una’s Task, with goals to be beaten to earn rewards would be very interesting for old players helped the new ones, as rewards could give pheons, or some new currency to exchange in a store of rewards which can have skins, materials, dyes, mounts, cards, pirate coins.
Skipping through low tier content to higher tier is actually beneficial and a previlege for newer players for they now have the source and strength to accomplish any low tier activities from raid boss to doing adventure tomes and etc.
The one part I do want to address and hopefully AGS sees this are the low tier islands. Theres a small amount of players and many of the times no one showing up to participate in these islands. There are no set rewards to want to encourage any of the higher tiers to want to come back and do it. This highly affect new players and the people who still wants to do progressive content to achieve certain items to unlock their collectable rewards. If only they can do something to encourage more players to go back to low tiers not only will it benefit the growth of lost ark but the community as a whole in staying active/productive, having something new and different to do each day.
