Lets just be real - New players have issues coming into Lost Ark because they are just miles behind on way to many things in terms of progression and experience with the game.
So how do you solve that? Throw them into the deep end and let them drown first week like last few months? Or give them fake stats that they loose in few months anyway? Stats that make the core elements of any progression based gaming worth ZERO?
Nope - You create a real path of progression for those players. Progression that actrually gives them a small chance to see a proper RPG based systems instead of RNG crap. And you also adjust the content properly for learning players that are… lets face it… with worse stats and gear than most others just on top of the experience gap.
But lets talk about the real elephant here. It’s not enough to just focus on new players in the current content. There is also a very big part of the current playerbase that is trying to pug their way through the content with horrid results. At the same time - a static group will in most case build up experience, knowhow and skills faster and exactly this is the main problem with Lost Ark right now. The skill gap is soo big right now for Statics vs pugs (and still growing) that most players puging are just giving up and leaving the game.
I know, I know… Just get static… Get better internet… and so on … We have seen how this does not work. Players quit because the game is actually NO LONGER for them. So the real question here should always be… How can we make Lost Ark more enjoyable for those playing in DIFFERENT ways rather than focusing on just 1 or 2 groups like now (statics and new players). What actually can this game do to maintain the playersbase and keep the content relevant for bigger audience of gamers that would be playing if it did. Busing is not fun for players running it. Nor is it enjoyable for those that get bused cause they learn nothing. It is just a way of progression - and at the same time increasing the gap between the least experienced and the most experienced. And lets face it… the content gets way harder to bus as well so eventually those with zero knowhow of the game will hit a wall and quit.
I have played games that focus on so called “hard” content for very limited amount of players. Guild Wars 2 tried it with their dungeons and litterally had to stop producing dungeons because only 1% - 2% of the playerbase was doing the content in their hardcore static group. And in the end it always comes down to the same thing. Money spent vs money earnt when it comes to producing content.
Right now - I personally feel that Lost Ark would be doing alot better as a game with a proper difficulty curve for others than just the very few that eventually will turn into 1 or 2%… And it has nothing to do with burnout or whaling. It simply has to do with tuning the content properly for higher % of players that don’t even want to be top 1%. They just want a good progression based MMORPG game while actually playing it. And right now… Lost Ark just isn’t offering that for the majority of the player base every single month like we see on players leaving. And again… New player expience improvements does not solve this issue at all. Cause those players will eventually LOSE their given Mokoko advantace, and their 4x3 engravings… and all the other stuff. And that is just very lazy developing work - when the game designers could be ceating a proper progression based content with fair difficulty scaling for every player playing the game.