My experience as a New player who started after July 20

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To start, a little bit about myself:

  • I am a new player who started playing on July 20.
  • I have 100 hours of game time.
  • I reached ilvl 1370 on my main, 2 T1 alts using free vern power pass and 1 T3 alt using free punika powerpass.
  • I did extensive research before playing, even reading tons of forum topics since launch, I am saying this because I am aware of the problems this game has from launch and what was fixed or improved and what wasn’t.

The experience doing the story was miserable, literally not a single real player I encountered throughout T1, T2 and early T3. Only massive growing amount of bots, where I had to compete for quest objectives for mobs and bosses.

All story dungeons I have done solo as no one is MM these.

The Mokoko challenge has 0 gold in it, while the previous system it replaced “Welcome Challenge” had plenty of gold in it.

Early and easy Rapport NPCs gold rewards were removed.

Hyperexpress has 2K gold nerfed from 12K which was the intended reward to help players catch up.

Only one event is active, and it gives 9 pheons per week. Between 0 gold rewards and low amount of pheons, it’s not possible for a new player to reach the intended easy boost to 1370 and do oreha and argos. You can’t hone because there is no gold, and you can’t get proper accessories because not enough pheons.

Prices of BC is unrealistic for new players, so that along with Mari’s secret shop is something you can’t utilize as a new player.

The Guardian Raid purple chain quest, rewards gold, and it is neither something that is mentioned in the mokoko challenge objectives, nor does the game require you to do it, so unless you do research and find out about it, many would miss out on it. My feedback here would be to include it in the mokoko challenge.

To be able to do the above quest, no one is matchmaking or using party finder for these guardian raids prior to yoho, so what I did is I created my own party, and after 5-10 minutes, one high level player comes in, carries me in a few seconds run. Very kind players, helpful, but not a fun experience.

Once I reached 1370, the community is expecting me to have 3x3 right off the bat to join party finder groups, with no gold and low pheons it’s not possible but to swipe or else you are gatekept from joining parties.

So what I did is that I didn’t spend a single pheon thoughout till I reached 1370.

Used matchmaking for Oreha and Argos G1 to make gold.

I tried to get as much gold as I can from masterpieces and other purple quests and island quests that reward gold, also doing low abyssal dungeons on my alts.

I geared my main to be 3x3 only to be rejected from parties because I am low roster level.

It’s neither pleasant nor fun, between the publisher’s extreme measures of removing gold and pheons and the elite community requirements, new players have no chance.

I have seen how most of the feedback was not acted upon by the tons of threads in the forums, but I will leave my own experience here as a new player.

The game itself is one of the best MMOs and is well polished and extremely fun as gameplay (classes/combat/fights).

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Hello and thank you so much for this feedback! We appreciate the time and detail put into your thread.

I will forward your feedback to the Development team to review! :slight_smile:

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Prices of BC is unrealistic for new players, so that along with Mari’s secret shop is something you can’t utilize as a new player.

Very true and unfortunate. When I started, BC prices were just 100 gold per 95 BC. This current price discourages new player. Dev team need to get on this asap.

So what I did is that I didn’t spend a single pheon thoughout till I reached 1370.

That is wise and I encourage you to not spend anymore pheons until you are 1415 on relics. This is coming from a veteran player.

I geared my main to be 3x3 only to be rejected from parties because I am low roster level.

That is unfortunately but it is the reality of this sort of elitism that’s going on in our NA(where I am assuming you’re playing) culture. Even me, a roster of nearly 200, gets rejected into the Kung guardian raids because of my gear, not necessarily just roster. So you will probably will have to join a guild, make friends to form a party, and or create your own party if being accepted into a party is really difficult. I do understand and empathize.

It’s neither pleasant nor fun, between the publisher’s extreme measures of removing gold and pheons and the elite community requirements, new players have no chance.

We had and still have a botting issue. The publisher took some extreme measure to remove gold but it also hurts new players like yourself. I do not recommend them to restore easy gold earning in early stages though. What they need to do is create games, dungeons, and puzzles that really requires as human to think through and solve to earn gold at the early stages. Something that a bot would almost never can solve.

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What I’d suggest you do is use matchmaking for all content (with exception of maybe Valtan and Vykas, when you have access to it). It’s not ideal, but at least you don’t risk wasting time looking for a group and trying to get accepted into it =f

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It’s a shame how they treat potential consumers. I’m around 1512, and after 1520 (Brelshaza-ready), I will quit until this game get a respectful support.

Amazon Games will never see my money again after that. Unless they improve exponentially. I’m just playing yet because I trust they would learn their mistakes with New World so I invested time, but clearly, update after update, nothing change.

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I’ve stopped playing for some weeks now (after 1000 hours around ilvl 1450), and I think Lost Ark is a very flawed MMO, especially for new players. It is impossible to start playing now, you’ll be alone in areas full of bots. Also, the way the content is made, you’ll never be able to find a party full of newbies. Most of them will be experienced players who only want to do the content fast (understandable, they’ve doing the same thing for months on different characters).

I honestly don’t know how the game is still doing fine in Korea, maybe there’s a lot of things we didn’t get in the western version yet, which makes me wonder what’s the point of giving us a flawed version. But maybe it’s just that the game is like that. The biggest problem of Lost Ark imo, is that for an MMO, it has no point. Yes, the combat is fun, but there’s no point in honing and getting stronger. In other games, you farm to level up, get richer, so you can buy a house, so you can buy a rare mount, craft an armor that looks cool, or be stronger than other players for guild or world pvp. Also because of the numerous instances, the game is totally antisocial. Oh yeah, and characters are not linked to an account, so alts can be in another guild. There’s no guild content anyway.

Another flaw, which makes the game “elitist” as you said: the wipe mechanics. It’s a very stupid decision, that a single player can make a whole 8-man raid fail because of some complex mechanic you can’t really know. Die and retry is good for solo games like Dark Souls, but when you have to rely on 7 other strangers, it will never be good.

In the end, Lost Ark is a fun game to play as a party, with friends. The problem is, you can’t play with them, because every content is gated. Doing the raid bosses (once) are a real challenge. After some weeks, it becomes a chore. I’ve been shitting at Amazon for how they handled things (badly), but ultimately I think this game has too many flaws to be successful in the West on a long run. It will maintain a strong and smaller playerbase though, probably around 20k, which is probably already good. But it will never be able to get new players.

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It is very clear that they don’t care about getting new players, contrary to what many may think, but the welcome challenge was replaced with the mokoko one only to remove gold from it to hinder bots while knowing full well they will affect new players tremendously. Bots don’t care, they will load hundreds of thousands of accounts and run Una tasks and Thornspire with damage hacks, you are only affecting real players with this.

The removal of pheons came since June content udate, when the event vendor NPC had no pheon rewards, followed by July’s event of 9 pheons per week. They are pushing players to swipe to get pheons. Otherwise, to welcome new players and existing ones for their alts, they would’ve increased the amount from the event, along with the amount of login rewards (15 pheons only lmao) and from June’s event, and even run multiple events concurrently, yet they did not and their intention is very clear.

Only way to encourage new players, and to get existing ones to push their alts further, is to put the gold rewards back in the Mokoko challenge and early NPCs, and run multiple events for good amount of pheons.

BCs are through the roof even after the massive bans of previous bots (600K bots at one point) and bans on RMTers because whales are not swiping, why read below.

A game with no new players, but bleeding existing ones is destined to die, which makes the only ones left whom are mostly whales who invested tons of money and time to tighten their wallets because of the uncertain future.

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Your roster level has nothing to do with why youre getting rejected from these parties. People dont want minimum ilvl on things. I like you missed the boat on alot.

(Rapport gold has been gone since at least April when I started)

The game is definitely not new player driendly, even with the welcome quests it wasn’t. It continues to get worse.

I feel for someone to start now and get to end gamish and caught up they have to start knowing they are going to do this. There’s nothing here for someone “trying out the game” to encourage them to stick around

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Sadly this isnt true, Ive seen multiple posts where they say they dont accept anyone under roster 140. which is funny to me because ive been playing since launch and im only 120 because i do 0 horizontal content. hell even my stronghold just hit level 35. I also know one of the guys in my guild does this.

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I don’t know about that. I have no problem getting into Argos P3 parties while being on ilvl (1412-1400) and 3x3. I do of course go for the alt lobbies with a bunch of 1400-1415 ppl, and maybe some 1430.
OP is 1370 and can’t get into P1 with 3x3. You can’t expect people with higher ilvl to go for P1.
I did recently matchmake P1 Argos so I kinda understand why they don’t want newbies, but it doesn’t change the fact that new players are having a hard time finding party.

Maybe if your raid group has people with roster level under XYZ then you get one additional respawn per such player. Or people with low roster get some bonuses during raid to damage and/or defense. I mean just Argos and maybe Oreha of course.
You would no longer get this bonus if your roster has character with for example +1415 ilvl.

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1400 for a non support is going to be difficult unless the group is just trying to have a warm body in regards to P3.

I barely even see just P1 groups, most people would prefer to just buy a bus and not miss out on rewards since your going to make similar gold (after bus fee) in those scenarios as well

People also generally view 1385 vs 1370 very differently for Oreha.

Again i was in the same boat as the OP and im not dismissing the struggle and am just pounting out what geneally tends to be the case.

I’ve made or responded to posts about how unfriendly and cold this game is for newbies and its going to start (has kinda already started) causing serious attrition issues.

All of his issues have existed since at least April when I started though i did have the welcome tutorial.

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damn must be hard for new players, i am a player from week 1 and didnt know they nerfed all these gold rewards since i claim them back in the day. i stoped playing for 2 months but since I optimized my economy in the early months , now I have a solid roster that produces me around 60-70k gold per week. My advice for you is get your main to 1385, get the stronghold research and try to push some alts to 1340+, with at least 3 characters in t3 your gold income should be a lot better, and always try to sell great honor leapstones and use the bounded from una quest

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Stronghold researches cost a ton of gold, which a new player does not have :slight_smile:
I know the feeling of op as i rerolled from EUW to EUC.

You are constantly gold starved and it only gets better after pushing 2-3 alts to 1340 or 1370. Let the main stay at 1385 for a few weeks.

Try to do the horizontal content for masterpieces, also the guardians chain gives some nice amount of gold, but most new players will not know where the quest continues… This helped me a lot.

But yeah what i really found strange was the express event. At 1370 giving 20k stones, but only 2000g which was not even enough to hone the weapon with all these bound destruction stones…
It´s like: “Here get some mats to push further. If you enjoy the game swipe hard to continue and buy pheons and gold!”

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Sorry, but this happens when players ignore horizontal content and rush vertical. I was playing on main last express mission. Was crawling slowly through t1 and t2, doing all horizontal content, getting high roster level. When i reached t3 i had enough pheons and gold saved and boxes with honing mats to make 1370 right away with 4x3. Guess what, i wasnt rejected in party finder on most content.

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unfortunately there is no real solution to the bad new player experience until they can kill bots BEFORE they earn anything at all to affect the economy

you either have a saved economy and bad new player experience

or you have a ruined economy and new players AND BOTS get enough gold to actually play the game properly

weeding out the bots is apparently not going to work

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All true and sad.
Next AGS game will be better…
images

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I started playing just a week earlier than you, OP, and I have had a different experience in regards to a few of your points.

While I agree that bots in the early-leveling game are definitely a problem, I also met quite a few other players along the way, even teamed up to kill a couple of the low-level ‘world bosses’ while it was still level appropriate. I imagine the region you are in makes a difference there though. I’m NA east.
It also, presumably, matters how much you are actually actively paying attention to whether there are other real (non-bot players) or not, seeing as they will get lost in the sea of bots if you are not that observant.

I also didn’t find earning gold to be an issue. I have a friend who started a month before me though, and he says the same thing as you.
The main difference between the two of us is that I made alts and knowledge transferred to get them to 50 immediately after I was able to, sinking all of my ‘extra’ gold into it, while he did not. (Power passes were disabled, so I hadn’t used any of those until this past week, after buying a few character slots …the first money I spent on the game).
I think it helps that I did NOT ignore horizontal content though, as Islands and those “hidden” guardian quests that you mentioned were probably one of the main sources of the gold that I used for the knowledge transfers.

The second main difference between my friend and I regarding gold-earnings is that I started using the AH to SELL things that had any value whatsoever as soon as I had a level 50 doing tier 1 stuff…he also did not do that.
Things that only sell for ~10 gold might not seem “worth it” to list, but I was earning an extra 300 to 500 gold per day while in T1 doing it, and that’s just gone up as I got into higher tiers.

I can’t comment regarding party finder issues, as I have only used matchmaking, not party finder, so far. It’s nearly instant and doesn’t have any gatekeeping going on, so it works for me.

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Really glad i stopped playing this game after valtan release I stopped at 1420. Imagine this you hard grinding for entire week with 4 different alts at 1370 and then you funnel all those hard work into your main but all your hard work goes to waste because of rng

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Imagine quitting this awesome game. You will regret you decision

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