Attracting new players is important for keeping MMOs alive and increasing profits, even MMOs with fremium monetization strategies. Lost Ark’s new player experience does not make a good first impression though. It is prohibitively difficult to matchmake into low level content, and bots outnumber human players.
Encouraging new players to skip low level content gives the impression that much of the game is unplayable. Players may opt to play a different game with a smooth progression from the beginning to the end rather than being rushed into Lost Ark’s endgame. Challenge Abyssal Dungeons and Challenge Guardian Raids provide alternative content that new players can enjoy, but they don’t address the issues with matchmaking into existing content.
Abyssal Dungeons, Guardian Raids, Chaos Gates, and Ghost ships would all benefit from a system that matchmakes high level players under the effects of the Scales of Balance with low level players who are waiting in queue or have entered a Chaos Gate or Ghost Ship instance. This would provide a much better experience at low levels and show new players that the game is very much alive.
Goldsellers, their bots, and the inflation they cause are also very harmful to new players and give them a bad impression of the game. Actions such as having moderators visually identify bots and flag them for review or ban, removing gold from accounts that have been caught engaging in RMT, and halting suspicious purchases to prevent credit card fraud are all effective methods to impede goldsellers, but they will find ways to circumvent any method to detect them as long as it is profitable to do so. In order to stop goldsellers, you must force them out of the market.
Currently, item prices have inflated greatly while the price of Crystals has lagged behind. This makes purchasing gold with Royal Crystals prohibitively expensive. This encourages players to engage in RMT, despite the risks and the harm it does to the game. In order to make legitimate gold purchases more affordable, Crystal needs to be made more useful. There are currently few items to spend Crystal on regularly. Players hoard Pheons until they absolutely need to buy endgame gear, restricting the ingame economy and creating an environment goldsellers can exploit. The Crystalline Aura is a monthly purchase at best. Leap’s Essence is only useful until the player’s roster reaches level 30 in all Trade Skills.
Regularly adding new cosmetics, available for Crystals, would have a small but noticeable effect on the demand for Crystals and their price. Adding items that boost the drop rate or amount for Ability Stones, Accessories, Skill Books, and Honing Materials would have a much larger effect on the demand for Crystals. Gold boosters should be avoided as they would cause more inflation. Items that allow players to grind longer will not help much, because players will prefer to use an alternative character or account instead of grinding longer for reduced profit. Items that create a paywall for activities, especially trading, should be avoided as players will avoid using them as much as possible.
The goal is to encourage free players to trade item drops for gold, buy Crystals with gold, and spend Crystals to farm more item drops. Paying players will buy Royal Crystals, trade Royal Crystals for gold, and use gold to buy items that the free players are farming. As Crystal prices rise, the gold on the Currency Exchange will become more affordable and it will gradually become harder for goldsellers to compete. Free players will complain about the rising Crystal price, but as long as it is profitable to buy Crystalline Aura and drop boosters, they will continue buying and spending Crystal.
