Who in their right minds is upvoting this comment, are you people just desperate to blind yourselves from the truth?
AGS has proved in the past to do a terrible job choosing the right direction for their games, AGS has proved in the past to do a terrible job at launching games, AGS has proved in the past to do a terrible job at communicating with players.
Why are you people so eager to defend AGS when they’re at fault for not providing proper communication and not listening or even considering the thoughts of their communities?
Don’t you realize that people who are “COMPLAINING ABOUT EVERYTHING” are doing so in your favor? They’re trying to help make the game better? They’re trying to help the game from failing?
Nobody is criticizing your precious little game that you’re super duper excited about and saying it’s bad - people are criticizing AGS’s incompetence based on not only their recent showings, but also their history with past failed titles as well as the crap show New World has become.
Same kinds of people who are in complete denial about Blizzard and just praise everything they do and go after anyone who criticizes them…
Or the same kinds of people who respond with things like ‘’ who cares ‘’ when people talk about censorship issues.
Because it’s so impossible for them to empathize with other people and they can’t grasp that just because they personally don’t care doesn’t mean that others don’t and that it does matter to others.
I am definitely eager to get my hands on the Sorceress. I always, ALWAYS play the typical mage classes in just about any game I go into.
I don’t think it was the correct decision to remove Summoner. Everyone has a class they want to play from playing or seeing other regions and the classes they have access to. Regardless, there were people excited to play Summoner - I was not one of them, and taking that option away from them seems really insensitive and weird given that Summoner has been advertised as an available class for a very long time now.
AGS feels like a ship with no navigator or captain. They have multiple failed games to prove that and also the floundering and bad decisions that have been made over on the New World front. They have made some questionable decisions with Lost Ark with all the censoring (the Sorceress Founder Outfit looks weird) and now they are just straight up removing a class people have already played in the NA/EU alpha/betas.
They really should have explained in more detail why they were removing Summoner if it really was a technical issue with the class. Or if they were limited to 15 classes at release by their contract. More transparency. I imagine they wont respond to any of these threads asking why Summoner was removed either since the reason is probably about money/contract and AGS has proven time and time again they don’t actually know how to run a game studio.
But just in case @Roxx can you at least give us a legitimate reason as to why Summoner was removed?
This makes zero sense. Why REMOVE a class and hold it back. This might be one of the most ridiculous prelaunch decisions I’ve ever seen. The Summoner was a core class. I know the “Sorceress” is mage-like but that’s one of many features in the evolution of Lost Ark over time.
This is actually a serious problem. There’s no reason for them to do this. The class is literally there and works just fine. I’ve never heard of them taking out a perfectly good class just because it SOUNDS better to have sorceress instead. Why not both? What the hell is this? WHYYYY?
People can bring up the censorship and how its ruining the game and the congaline of white knight contrarians will tell you over and over again how much none of it matters and only gameplay matters. WELL WTF IS THIS?? Gameplay thrown completely out the window. Perfectly good classes removed and this is the foot of the mountain. They haven’t finished tearing this game to pieces yet.
I agree. Striker shouldn’t have been added to the line up if they were going to do this. Sorceress should have been the class they teased with the original Founder Avatar image. People would have been able to accept that way more than what is currently happening.
I would feel bad for the people that want Striker, but its a more acceptable outcome than this.
It’s so weird how few individuals started this “contract” shenanigans.
Number of classes released is a business decision SGR and AGS would make together after leveraging what would be most beneficial/profitable for them. However, people who relentlessly try to defend AGS is making it sound like AGS had their hands tied by contract by evil SGR so they had to remove one class and replace it with another.
Both SGR and AGS know that new class release is a big tool for revenue increase and also “content” they can keep the players tied to the game through the lull that is the wait time for actual content releases.
It’s quite unrealistic and highly unlikely that AGS was pushing for Sorceress addition and SGR restricted them from doing so because of contract clause, when it’s in both of their interest to release limited number of classes at start. Realistic scenario is that they both concluded it would be in both of their best interest, business wise, not to add but to just replace. Again, there is no players’ best interest in this matter, and implying that AGS is some kind of a champion of people being held down by evil business contract is just ridiculous.
No wonder AGS doesn’t bother to explain anything properly when they have people throwing at their feet for free.
Why is AGS so committed on a quest to destroy Lost Ark even before the game release?
I was hoping for at least a good first month after release like new world had but with this decisions I doubt Lost Ark is even gona survive launch. -.-
I was all in favour of them adding sorceress to the release roster for a more westernized “mage” gameplay trope, but never in my dreams had I thought she would come at the cost of another class entirely. That’s a different ball game altogether now.
Can’t imagine how all the summoner mains must feel now, cannot fathom the pain and loss they’re going through right now.
Bad planning, lack of foresight, bad communication, you advertise one thing founder’s pack-wise, then will release another… it’s a PR nitemare for a game that still hasn’t even come out yet.
This whole situation is very much not PogChamp, I dare say.
The Sorceress class addition was really exciting news, and the community all seemed super hyped about it on the forums, discord, and twitch. Great reveal!
But replacing Summoner with no clear explanation as to why has left a lot of people dumbfounded. Is there a hard lock for AGS of 15 classes at launch? If so, why? If 15 classes is set in stone, why was Summoner the class that was replaced? I don’t feel as if the paragraphs about “New and familiar”, “A wide range of playstyles” or “Gender locked classes” in the dev update really answers that question clearly.
Summoner was the only mage DPS in the NA/EU build and has a very unique playstyle, so having more than 1 option for a mage DPS would have been very welcome. Launching with 16 classes or replacing one of the classes with an abundance of choices, like a martial artist, makes more sense to me. So again, why summoner?
I have been preparing myself to main summoner for quite a while now. Watching korean summoner guides on YouTube and summoner streamers on Twitch helped me to get over the announced delay of Lost Ark.
As 2022 got closer I have been finetuning my spreadsheet with tripods, engravings and gems. I also preordered the platinum founders pack to get the summoner skin.
And now AGS takes all that away without any explanation, whatsoever. I am frustrated, disappointed and feel empty. My excitement about the game was murdered by AGS.
In addition, it is very sad to see how few people complain in the forums about this terrible decision by AGS.
It was my main and I prepare everything for it. Search builds making plans etc. Now they randomly remove the class. Must be a joke right? My hype getting destroyed by Amazon little by little. In the end when the game launch I might not play the game LOL. The censorship and other garbage things they have done what are you guys doing really?
Bringing the latest class to this release of the game gives us unique opportunity to shine a spotlight on some of Lost Ark’s newest content and introduce it to brand new players. This will help us and Smilegate RPG gather more player feedback on fresh content, which is invaluable and can help guide more content and creative decisions in the future as the game continues to grow.
I understand that this was not an ideal decision for all players, especially since we are sticking to with 15 classes at launch and it is a replacement and not an addition. Summoner will return in the future, but I apologize to anyone who was looking forward to creating that class at launch (my first ever character was a summoner as well)
Could we have an estimate of when summoner will be available at least? Could be months or years for what we know considering the number of classes that are available in KR and have yet to be introduced in NA/EU.
I think this is a great change for the NA/EU Market. Many people I’ve spoken to were disappointed at the lack of a traditional Mage at launch. I believe this will be a great way to convince friends to play.
Thanks, Roxx, AGS, and the SGR team for making this happen for our version.
That is far from any explanation. Nice PR answer tho.
Most players in NA/EU are no players of Lost Ark or you do have any data that all of us play or RU or KR version?
Have you ever thought to ask the community what we think about this decsion? Sorceress class is less popular and played on KR servers than Summoner and maybe you made more people happy now than happy.
and what about those players who will be disappointed by the lack of pet class?
Removing something that was promised from the beginning is WAY worse than not giving players something that they were not even expecting/promised to receive at release.
