My Thoughts on Accelerated Content release

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Not speaking for anyone else, but I believe most of the community is in agreement of catching up to Korea’s Lost Ark version. Many of us are probably playing not only for what this version of the game currently has to offer, but for what it will be like in, hopefully, the near future.

This is not meant to come across as too critical, but AGS doesn’t seem to be too prepared. Their stance is a wait and watch approach, followed by timid response based on results and player feedback. This is a very reactive approach and not proactive at all. This could be a significant factor for the delay of roadmaps, lack of details in patch notes, and other stuff we’ve seen. I believe that Korea’s version is already very good and is what most of us are looking forward to; AGS just needs to find the best method to serve it to us.

I don’t think the early Argos release was inherently bad. I believe that rapid, consistent content release is a good thing. Just feed us the necessary resources via events and other sources to allow us to keep pace with new vertical content. The current problem seems to stem from releasing progression content at a default or even slowed rate while trying to put forth vertical content faster. That doesn’t add up; abundant resources are a necessity for accelerated vertical content. I’m not asking for 100% of the players to be able to partake in new vertical content. Having at least 10% of the active player base able to participate on the week of initial release is already great; especially compared to the less than 1% we probably had for the Argos release.

AGS’s response to player backlash from the Argos incident also worries me. They seem to instinctively opt to stall future vertical content as the optimal solution, and instead, substitute with injecting honing material. Honing injection should not be a replacement for new content. Depending on how severely and how often they respond this way, we might never be able to catch up to Korea’s version.

From my perspective, a more competent solution would be to inject the necessary resources into the game to help players keep up with frequent content updates. Not with a wait and watch approach but push us to the doorsteps of new content they may have planned.

This was something I wanted to speak my mind about before the actual roadmap is out.

Time for more Lost Ark! & waiting on tomorrow’s update!

Edit: I don’t have the experience nor qualification, but I’ll toss out an example road map that I believe is somewhat reasonable and that I would personally be satisfied with. If AGS is confident in reliably pushing out content even faster or better, I’m all for it.

  • Character: 2 new characters every other month. That means we would be caught up with character before the end of summer.
  • Skin: 2+ new non-limited skins every other week or so. First season limited skins maybe 6 months in and second season after a year. Also throw us new pets and mounts in a similar fashion.
  • Content: A large content update every other month. Valtan+Vykas normal around May, since April seems unlikely at our current pace. The respective hard mode 2 months later. Kakul Saydon the update after that. Then Brelshaza normal after that, then finally followed by the hard mode.
  • Events: Seasonal events and accelerate events by increasing the resource rewards to keep us up to pace with the rollercoaster of contents.

If we ever get to that point, I’m positive that we will still have a lot more catching up to do for the new content out on Korea’s version by then.

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I agree, also the key formula of Korean success is whatever you do, do not piss off the majority of the players because they are keeping the whales whaling and they are contributing skin sales, keeping the game alive on the long run.

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but for what it will be like in, hopefully, the near future.

This is crucial. I said this in another thread but you’re essentially on life support if you have nothing to look forward to in a live support game. And our version is missing a ton of crucial parts of the game, including classes, that are pretty much make or break for a lot of people that don’t want to be in a vegetative state while waiting for their classes to release.

You need to provide a concrete roadmap that has info about these things, otherwise a big layer of the playerbase just has nothing to be really excited about. Same goes for skins. These things are the questionable parts of our release. Yes, we all know that eventually raids will come, but we have no clue how AGS wants to handle class releases, nor skin releases, and we need to know these things.

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True, and this applies to every successful game. My of our concerns are probably the result of our slow progression and them pushing back content release.

I agree. Classes, skins, vertical/horizontal content… none should take priority over the other. They are all content that target various players. If they get on track with a confident roadmap and keep us going forward at a steady sprint to catch up, all these things should be coming out fairly smoothly and rapidly.

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Edited main thread a little.

That aside, I’m curious what others think about it, or am I just being unreasonable. I feel that pushing for legion raids is very important because, from what little I know, that was one of the main reasons that made the Korea version do so well.

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Most players want the whole game and see no reason to withhold it. But they are going to make more money gating the content and releasing it in this fashion. Look how much they have already made off people pushing through 1370 deadzone.

They will do it again.

This model is going to continue, there will be a carrot and a huge honing/time-gate to reach it which can be passed with cash.

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That’s what it looks like. I’ll likely continue as f2p at this rate. Though if they keep withholding content until players start getting bored and leaving, there won’t be as much profit for them either.

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The ideal is not the majority of your players. The idea is your core audience. If your core audience isn’t enough to sustain your business then you have a failed product.

To blindly appease the masses can do more harm than good. Because you lose what makes your game unique and attractive.

A lot if people, not to say in this thread, keep saying WoW this, FFXIV that, if Lost Ark pivoted and because like those games then that is just that. People can very well just switch to those. After all it is just now a clone.

Foe example. LV during the economic downturn tried to market themselves as the approachable brand. They dropped their product quality to try abs attract a wider customer base. They still have not recovered from that move. Many of their core audience moved on. The newer customers were not stable enough to offset that.

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I want Lost Ark to remain the carbon copy of the original version; albeit possibly with more QoL changes. I rather nothing be ‘fixed’ if it isn’t broken. I just want AGS to have a reliable, steady way to release content and catch up to Korea’s version at a reasonable pace.