so before i started this game, i did watch youtubers from other lost ark regions talk about the game, they mostly agreed on that the game is relatively balanced, and that this game respects the time you invest into it. However, after spending triple digit hours in this game, i feel like that is only part of the story. so here are my thoughts on the issue
tl;dr - this game is definitely worth trying and respects your time if you are a casual gamer/someone who likes to play multiple titles at the same time. this game is less suitable for one game at a time purists who borderline the hardcore and spend 4+ hours gaming per day
long explanation
before investing time/money into a video game, many players will ask if the game is “worth playing”. this is usually a pretty complex question, as it really depends on what you subjectively consider value to be.
there’s always the group of people who say that it’s a free game and you lose nothing from trying it, so if you agree with that mindset then why yes, its a free game, cost you nothing to try, so why not.
however, if you believe your time to be too valuable to waste on things that you are not going to do for the long term, then the question here you want to ask may be “does this game respect my time investment?”
the answer is interestingly not so black and white
does this game respect your time?
it really depends. sometimes yes, sometimes, no.
how is this answer derived?
lost ark is a game that divides most of its activities into short 15-20 min intervals that you can complete without a heavy time investment.
island adventures, events such as grand prix, guardian raids, chaos dungeons, weekly/daily ulna’s tasks, sailing co-ops, etc, etc.
this is a great design for casual players who may only want to log on for short 30 min-1 hour sessions, as they can still get most/all of their progression activities done without a heavy time investment into the game.
my casually playing friend, who quite literally only play this game during downtime at work, is able to hit tier 3 around the second week of grand prix event while never playing quite long enough to even do an abyssal dungeon during his session.
all things considered, lost ark respects his time investment very well. while he did not exactly keep pace with the rest of our group who game considerably more hours per day, he is not that far behind. he’s at 1360 right now while the rest of our friend circle are around 1370-1385.
so far that sounds pretty neat.
so then, what is not quite as great?
before we talk about that, we have to discuss something called time gating.
most of you mmo veterans may have a good understanding of what the term means.
however everyone defines it a bit differently, similar to what one considers p2w may be less so in another’s eyes.
for the sake of this review, please understand time gating as such - an implementation within the game system, that purposefully slows or completely halts player progression for the game until a designated amount of time has passed. upon which the player will once again be able to continue progressing through the game.
lost ark is, in my opinion, a very, very heavily time gated game.
nearly every source of progression in this game has a limited number of entries per day/per week.
as this is not a discussion over whether time gating is good or bad, i’ll leave that for you to decide on your own.
however, as progression is time gated, and most progression activities can be completed within a short time frame. this means that you will be able to cap out on meaningful progression within around 60-90 minutes of play time per day or so. so, what does this mean to you as a player?
this translates to, if you play this game past that approx. 90 minute window per day, your game time will become significantly less efficient relative to your game progression.
ergo, if you are someone who enjoys gaming sessions for 3-5 hours per day, and you are a game purist that pours your time into one game at a time, this game absolutely feels like it wastes your time. combine that with the fact that most scheduled events are only available at certain VERY SHORT (approximately 3 minutes) timing windows through out certain hours of the day (adventure islands, non adventure island islands, chaos gates, basically anything that spawns on a timer) if you absolutely want to complete everything every single day, there are days when you will have to complete 1 event on the hour, wait 55 minutes until the next activity that takes you 5-10 minutes, then wait another 55 minutes until the next scheduled event which you need to participate in, etc etc.
of course, you can maximize the efficiency here by looking at the schedule and figuring out your plan for the day, you might start the morning at 11 AM PST to finish your island adventures for the day on spawn, work on your dailies/weeklies/chaos dungeons/guardian raids during the downtime, then go to the next scheduled event (fieldboss/chaos gate/grandprix) at 12 noon, continue to work on your dailies/weeklies/alts, go to tooki island at 12:50 to do the daily quest in order to unlock the giant heart rep reward, finish up your daily activities, maybe go to some other event/adventure island at 1PM, visit alakir at 1:50 etc etc.
yes, you could do something similar to the above
but this is when you realize you are treating this like a job, and you may be ironically checking your watch more often then when you are actually at work.
of course, you could skip out on most of the horizontal progression activities. after all, they either offer very little benefit to your direct character progression, or their meaningful rewards take weeks, if not months, to unlock.
therefore, you can find yourself be finished with the game after playing for about an hour a day, and if you are looking for more, you may find that the game is finished with you (for the day anyways).
in summary, this game can be played meaningfully in a very casual manner. however, unlike a relationship with your pet or other humans. the more serious you are about this game and the more time you invest into it, the less it gives back to you.
my recommendation is to play this game casually, and you’ll have a great time.
bonus question: suppose if you ignored all of that and still try to squeeze every last drop of gear progression out of the game to itemize as fast as you can to the end game, what will happen?
first of all congratulations, there is no rolling credits to tell you you’ve completed the challenge.
so what awaits you then?
imagine that you are on an island sitting at a beach, the gentle sound of waves slowly pushing against the sand, only to retreat back into the ocean, the vast blue pour endlessly into the horizon, so serene.
and thats it. there’s nothing there waiting for you really. you get to do the latest dungeon, and the latest raid, your routine stays the same except the monsters have different colors and names.
the end game right now feels so empty if you pushed your way here, you ironically find that the greatest challenge, the de facto final boss was the honing npc all along.
seriously tho i was so disappointed by the first “hard” abyssal dungeon. its essentially all the same except bosses hit harder, not a lot of depth.
but perhaps legion raids will be fun though.
anyhow thats just how i feel regarding the subject
what are your thoughts? does anyone have a different view on the matter?
