In League of Legends, the patch team has been doing lazy fixes for years. A champion is overpowering? Just nerf it. And we are now seeing this happen with Lost Ark. The game doesn’t need to nerf the bosses, it needs to change some unfair mechanics that offer no content, only suffering, and it needs to improve the learning curve. I will outline some examples below:
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T1 content is supposed to be introductory endgame content. It should aim to teach players the importance of counter-attacks, various checks, dodging attacks, etc. To address this, T1 guardian raids should have more indications of the boss HP progress and stagger bar progress, and when counter-attack opportunity appears, it should display some text like “charging” so that players naturally learn to associate charging to turning blue to time to use counter-attack. For players with Ur’nil’s roster quest active, the guardian hunting NPC partner should even advise to do counter-attacks whenever it happens. Currently, the only way to learn is to google and god bless if you can read Korean to learn from veteran Korean players. This is just a terrible game design.
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Matchmaking needs to be adjusted. As an experienced programmer, I understand changing some framework-level codes can be difficult and can easily break the game. To address matchmaking, instead of editing, simply add more flexibility. For the 8-man raids, allow the raid leader to change the party composition. I don’t understand why this was never implemented. For normal matchmaking, show the party player composition on the accept screen. See 2 bards and a paladin in the party? Decline it and try again.
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The game’s approach to voice chat is cautious and I can understand it coming from one of the most toxic games ever. But the option is there and I bet 80% of the player base don’t even know there is voice chat built into the game, nor do they seek to use it. Having voice comms can assist with a lot of the teaching process from veteran players to newer players. Considering disconnecting from voice comms is easy, promote the use of voice comms for the raids.
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Structure of guardian raids. Currently, there is not a lot of reason to do T1 and T2 guardian raids until the player reaches a high item level and simply overpower the bosses to just get the progression. The items they offer barely matter and the materials we acquire from them are abysmal. Changing the T1 boss runs with more teaching tips can help with this, but also giving Guardian raids special drops like Abyss dungeons will also help. The HP buff should be reverted - increasing HP is a lazy solution and it doesn’t even make the fight harder, just more annoying… Alternatively, you can simply make the boss do more damage, this will teach the players to dodge the attacks. How many times when you get one shot by an ability and from then on you actively try to dodge it?