The Heartbreaking State of Lost Ark - A Long Term Lost Ark Player's Take

[Roanoke]

Very well laid out, exactly the thoughts i have

[Hiroyuuki]

The latest roadmap is somewhat promising i mean… AGS do listen to our feedback to some extent… not perfect but it is what it is… i will keep playing until I get burn out…
Hopefully the class i want to play scouter is release before then…

[Lhamia]

they only listened to half of it with the classes, Lance master was the most wanted class, but they ignored that we want classes being rleased at a “faster pace” that how it was stated in the previousl leaked roadmap

[Vulpine]

Wot are you talking about? They didn’t “listen to a couple streamers”, they listened to the money.
Why would whales whale if honing is easy lul

[kknd]

@Vulpine

Why would whales whale if honing is easy lul

Ah my friend, your vision is too narrow! There are more than one kind of diet for whales! Some whales are indeed there to lord power/advancement over others, some to ‘keep up’ despite limited playtime. Zis is true! But there is another kind of whale diet, ze social whale!

Social whales will buy cosmetics in grand profusion, always trying to have the latest or most unique ‘look’ to show off. For ze social whale, zere is nothing to buy here! It is barren desert with no dessert to be had! How are we going to make ze money when zere is nothing for them to buy I ask you?

All joking aside, I remain puzzled as to the darth of cosmetics for sale to this day.

[Z0D]

Well Amazon is a very poor indie company with next to no resources, so all of this makes sense. I hope they don’t go bankrupt as I haven’t ordered anything there for 10 years.

[Hiroyuuki]

They answered community request for lance master, with next week release date… i know the name is stupid but meanwhile we also get Easter holiday bonus from AGS…
They are still somewhat care and thrive for LA

[Aeskyndr]

Sorry, even if I like your post, but I need to adress some of your points:

@invicta

It became very clear that the opinions of these streamers and content creators were no longer supported by what they actually think, but tainted and manipulated by monetary incentive through being sponsored.

If they would get sponsored by amazon/whoever and don’t say that/have a notice somewhere on their stream then they would be in big trouble.
Instead they prob got some infos from the inside with what we would start and started to concentrate on what we will get.

@invicta

3 years of game content being compressed into a 1 month release, making any person with a reasonable amount of daily playtime feel completely overwhelmed with how many things they have to do to progress their character.

Eh, not really.
Some of my friends can only play a few hours per day, some of them can even only play sometimes on the weekend and none of them have any bigger problems with the content that they have available. And yes, a few of them are in T3.
Does that matter? Not really, but the only thing that is somewhat overwhelming is the amount of collectibles and even that can be done in a few months (except rapport) as a F2P sooo … I don’t know what you mean with being overwhelmed in a game that is similiar to an mmo?

@invicta

• Removal of the July 7th (known as 7/7 astalgia patch) honing changes.

For context, during LOA ON Mini, the director mentioned specifically how the new player experience feels horrible and extremely stressful especially during honing from item level 1340 to item level 1370.

Due to this, the director decided to implement a relief patch, so people could more easily access relevant endgame contents such as Abyss Raids and Legion Raids (namely Argos, Valtan and Biackiss/Vykas)

If you already want to compare it to the Kr version, then you also should know that they didn’t get the change until 19.6.2021 shortly before they got Abelshrud/Brelshaza/whatever her name is and we actually follow the kr release calendar.

16.9.2020 Argos
14.10.2020 Kardan
30.12.2020 South Vern
…
19.06.2021 Astalgia Patch announcement

so i guess we get the honing changes prob around sept if we keep it up with the schedule of releasing 1 content patch every month?

Would it better if we already had it? Yeah, of course, but you shouldn’t forget that the only “real” content that we have atm is Argos and the 2 abyss dungeons and heck they already complain about that that isn’t enough for them.

@invicta

Staggered class release for monetary profit: currently, not all classes are available for launch and we are currently missing 7 classes, which will slowly be implemented into the game at around a monthly or bi-monthly cadence, this is really good for the game company, since it can generate hype, interest and most importantly money, but for the playerbase who wants to play a certain class, once that class is released, they would have to invest a ridiculous amount of time or money in order to get it up to where their main might be.

Yes, for players that want to play a certain class is that quite a disappointment. Heck even I wait to finally play destroyer again and also wait for scouter, but if I’m honest … we already knew that that would happen? And if they don’t use the waiting time to gather material/gold to help their primaray class or don’t play until it is available then … what are you doing? Probably writing a toxic complain (I don’t talk here about OP since his/her post is how a complaining post should be)

@invicta

• Horrible User Experience and Feedback (Mostly for EU): if you have been playing on the EU Central servers for the initial release, there were multiple game breaking issues that were handled way too late, and that we got almost no compensation for.

Issues include:

1. Crystalline Aura not working (Which is a premium paid subscription by the way), we got 3 days crystalline aura compensation (that other servers which had no issues also received? XD), during the days where it was bugged, so even the compensation we received was a shot in the dark since no one got to benefit from it, and in a recent forum post by Roxx, she states there is no compensation planned currently.
2. Extremely long queues: I am talking 5-20k people queues on any given server on EUC, which translates to about 3-9 hrs of purely sitting inside of a queue.
3. Completely broken matchmaking: you finally endured sitting through a 6 hour queue, only to suddenly realize that you cannot even get into solo instances (chaos dungeons, which are your dailies btw) or queue up with others to do various game contents (guardian raids, abyss dungeons etc)
4. Broken Store: for most players, trading in the auction house, whether it was gold to crystal exchange, or purchasing any goodies would be completely unavailable for most of the day.
5. Botting Issues: horrible anti-cheats and using steam as a game launcher means botting and using cheats or hacks becomes laughably easy, this issue is not so awful on other servers mainly due to Korea and Japan requiring mobile phone verification and having way stricter policies.
6. Unfair account bans: countless people got banned for simply trading in the auction house (yes, literal bots running around not getting banned while legitimate players do) with no feedback, no compensation, nothing.
7. Outright lies: when the EUC issues got out of hand, we got an entirely new region, EUW, one of the ideas people had to motivate people to join EUW was to implement an instant level 50 boost so players do not have to go through a 12-15 hour leveling process all over again, it was officially stated that this cannot be done because apparently ‘‘not possible.’’ due to powerpasses only working on rosters in which there is already at least one level 50 character.

This is a straight up bullshit lie, on Korea, Russia and Japan, a completely freshly created account can purchase an instant boost to fucking Punika while never having played the game before.

8. Horrible communication: there are countless changes to the game that happen that do not get added whatsoever into patch notes, including NPC rewards being changed, Island Rewards being changed, collectibles names being changed (Island Token > Island Soul).
9. Horrible advertising: on any other Lost Ark release, when new content would be coming out, especially with skins, we could open the official game site, and be able to preview the skins we want to purchase.

Let’s crack that nut.

1. CA is bound to the cash shop (which is already a somewhat stupid idea, but nothing that ags can change). If the cash shop server is suffering from heavy traffic then of course is everything that is connected to it also suffering from it. If you then activate your compensation (btw other region except euw also somewhat suffered under that problem) if you already knew that there was a problem … what are you doing?

2. Btw. one of the reasons why i trans’ed quite early to a lower pop server (in my case sirius), but you have something siimiliar in every server based game that reached their server capacity. And please tell me one popular release that didn’t have similiar issues.

3. AGS isn’t at fault here. The game was never intended for the amount of players that we had. They even fixed that in a realtivly timely manner. Yes, we had a few rocky weeks with the MM, but you had time to do your collectibles, which are also important for your progress?

4. Similiar to point 1-3

5. Can I tell you something? Even games with better AC have similiar problems. And even without steam you could bot as easy as with steam. They made even use of the Trust system to stop them somewhat temporarily. But botting and fighting against it, is like a cat and mouse game … if you catch it, you find another way to stop them from catching you.

6. Accounts that got banned cause they bought a tradeable founder item (which then got refunded) got, as far as I have read, unbanned as long as they talked to ags about it. Not great that that happened, but I can understand that it did.

7. It’s not a lie if we don’t have it. Can you buy, in your words, a fing Punika Powerpass? Can you buy any powerpass? No, you can’t. And who knows how the NV powerpasses are coded. I don’t know that, you prob also don’t know that, only ags and sg know that. And yes, the roster versions of the pp probably need the msq in nv to be completed … at least with one char per server.

8. Yes, we would like to have more communications, but since ags prob doesn’t check every patch that they get from sg to 100% (and they prob also didn’t notify ags about that change), eh. Yes, we can mostly blame them for any translating errors or cahnges. And heck souls works way better then token. Now if they would change some of the other names for something that sounds and works better, that would be great ^^.

9. They do … that already to some extent? Yes, it is “somewhat hidden” and not on the face like the kr version, but here is the link for that - Omen Cosmetics - Available Now - News | Lost Ark - Free to Play MMO Action RPG

Let’s use the next phrase as point 10.

10. P2W. Yes, LA was and will always be P2W to some degree, but in our case it is better to define it as Pay to progress, which is basically a “fairer” version of P2W.

If you really need to play 3 months to be able to access the last content then … what are you doing?

Tbh I could have reached prob 1.4k by now, but I’m not even 1370, why? Cause I only upgrade as long as I don’t fail an upgrade and if I fail, I sell the rest of the mats and you don’t need to spend any irl money to have access to argus and yes, some of them prob don’t have 1370 yet since rngesus hates them, but that is basically like every mmo.
You don’t get your gear from dungeon x or if it drops another player get it? Yeah? That is similiar situation to not succeed in honing.
Was Argus released to early? Probably, but they learned from their mistakes and wait to see how many of the playerbase can do the next content.
And like I already mentioned, players are already complaining that they don’t have anything else to do, while prob the same players complained that Argus was release to early.

And yes, most players play for the endgame … which prob around 25%-35% of the active playerbase, that is interested in doing “harder” content have prob completed argus and are waiting for the next challenge (and complain that they don’t have anything to do and talking about how easy it is, since they took the easy road and used a guide for that xD)

@invicta

In the past, I knew that as a free to play player I will never be able to reach +25 on all my gear, and I was perfectly fine with that, let the whales be happy with maxed out gear and an illusory sense of superiority, as long as I can enjoy and clear the contents with lower gearscore, I am satisfied.

As of right now, not only is it a hopeless dream to ever max out your gear, it’s also pretty unrealistic to even be able to access content before it eventually becomes outdated and new content comes out.

Do you really complain about not reaching max gearscore after you already said that you are completly fine with not reaching it? oO

If you do not have any real problems with rng (like needing to hit 100% artisan every time) you shouldn’t have any problems with reaching 1415 as long as your goal is to reach 1415.

@invicta

Also, if you are a member of a guild that was trying to do region/server first clears of equalized contents (Hell Mode), say goodbye to that wish as well, since even the entry point for that content has become an unrealistic goal if you wish to not drop a ton of cash on upgrading your character.

As far as I know, only Brelshaza was region first cleared by a f2p team, but everything else was cleared by whales, which is to be expected since, like you already said so, LA has P2W elements and especially in korea where you can buy literally everything in the cash shop (not talking about mari).

@invicta

Last but not least, to people who aren’t worried about this yet, AGS has delibirately disabled server announcements for gear upgrades, why?

Happy that they disabled that, already hated that concept in BDO where it turned that perm off. It just a trick to let other whales know that they need to do more whaling. And that guy literally just pushed for the gear. Not even full epic access oO. But hey, at least he can wait now months until his gear is outdated xD.

I need to say it again:

I really like how you complained, even if some of your stuff is questionable … I mean, c’mon, if you are a long term Kr player you should know at least half of the stuff that you can find with a simple google search.

And to the other guy who posted that RU wizard guy … srsly dude?
Yes, we have the skins already on our clients … the skins that KR/RU also has. But we are using classes that they didn’t have at the time, when the skins were released and yes, most of them are not dyeable since the function wasn’t implemented yet, and yes, you could prob activate also the dye function for that skins, but complain about that to sg and ask the cms if they can ask sg about that since ags doesn’t have developing rights, they just have right to publish.

Sigh…

Long Text, but I needed to explain a few things ^^. Just created the account for this post that is one of the best complaining threads that I have read.

[Alexandria]

Edited.

[Scareth]

Well said. Thank you for putting this together.

[Hiroyuuki]

@Aeskyndr

AGS isn’t at fault here. The game was never intended for the amount of players that we had.

Server stability and managing the bots/cheaters are AGS responsibility. It is a fact.
Most of the time the server queues are from botters

[Panky]

Too long didn’t read

[Ryouma]

if we had the honing buff we would atleast be more people in t3 in 1400+ or whatever and they could stoop delaying so we can actually catch up fast

but not giving mats resources but nerfed gold income( btw the enrf gold we have from abys etc is after honing buff for them, they also have alot more mats and still had the problems so ye)

they also had atleast some things todo cause hm is 1355 yoho 1355 not 1370

u cant argue that we should look at korea and hope to get the same treatment they have 4 years of data we have a client thats done until January 2022

we could atleast have hoped for all the qol changes the mats income and honing chances like it was planned before they said cause feedback we didnt release a big lie btw

no one gives feedback like that maybe some pople who dont know the game that were beta tester

also saying its sgs fault or sayin sg this sg that their they dev and ?

mygames killed ru cause of greed not sg, sg gave ags a client like i said whos done whats more that u want changes like ilvl etc come from ags asking sg to do them or other changes bla

its just a p2progress fest right now may will be valtan delay for sure not gonna happen that like5-20% of the players be at 1415 or higher unless big luck or p2w kek

i mean we get content we already have in 4 months/ guardian trials so we gonna have anmother 4 for abyss trials and than 4 for bridge or what same for classes it aint content it aint good

i dont gear up right now beyond 1385 cause i think its a waste of mats my main reaper probably takes another 6 months or whatever to release and iam not alone on the waiting game

its difficult to change mains once ur on the 1400+ even with all events i mean hell u want to say kr had to wait long

kr got fucking 7 events supporting them with south vern release and a ticket and mats until 1340 not 1000 we have what 1 event ? and ark pass

[Aya]

Some of the best-written feedback I have seen on this forum.

[Lagoz]

Good collection post, but everything here has been said a million times over. Redacting the planned honing changes from launch ruined the whole experience and lead to the delay of Legion Raids and a huge exodus of players even before many reached T3.

I don’t know why AGS and SG decided to not follow the planned route and decided to torture us with the version we currently have but I’m hoping we’ll reach Astalgia by June and the game will recoup at least part of its’ lost players. Mistakes were certainly made…

[Vett]

Where’s the TLDR!?

[Meemo]

good interesting read, thanks

[Shashayhay]

You implying that streamers changed their minds on releasing LA with only tier 1 content because of sponsorships is just straight up stupid. I have never heard anything more ridiculous in my life. If it only had tier 1 content the game would have died instantly. You lost all credibility in the very start of this long tired post.

[moongawd]

This is an invaluable thread. Just want this game to thrive and prosper in a way that is healthy for everyone

[Raegik]

Tried getting several friend and family members to play the game, but they can’t even login. I know this might not mean much, but that’s 5 new real people that won’t be playing now.