Now is time to act.
Lost Ark has been gaining more and more popularity over the years mainly for its PvE content and the campaign, which is not to discredit the PvP. There is a gap in the market when speaking of isometric PvP MMORPGs and RPGs too. I’m talking about the popular ones of course. There were lots of players buying Diablo 3 at the time who wanted to play a great Hack n’ Slash game but also wanted a great PvP experience at the same time. Most of them ended up devasted with the realization that PvP is dumbed down to playing an agile class that can one-shot the entire screen the quickest. The PvP in Diablo died so quickly there was no time for improvements. That’s because first impressions matter a lot!
First impressions are to stay
First impressions of PvP in Lost Ark are fantastic! I spent most of my time in the beta playing PvP trying out different combos and learning counterplays but like any other was also interested how will I be rewarded if I do really well? Turns out that not that well. The rewards are not worth the time and effort put in except for the top 30 and top 100 players. That is mindblowing how limited and narrow is the group of people that are rewarded with meaningful rewards. In League of Legends for example, 40% of all ranked players receive a skin for reaching gold or higher rank. That’s almost half of the players and since “it’s not that hard” many players are eager to play PvP since the rewards seem to be within hands reach. To have a healthy PvP community consisting of both PvP players and PvE players you need to please both sides. Please, for the sake of Amazon’s “Inclusivity” how about we respect the time of both mentioned groups so that there are lots of players for the matchmaking to choose from and so that all the players will find PvP fun and rewarding regardless of their dedication or goals.
Making PvP rewarding for all.
If we had a daily reward for winning a PvP match that would be in gold. This would work great in grasping the interest of many casual players, gold farmers that are eager for a daily shot of extra income and fun. FFXIV does this well. There you earn special seals that you can exchange for exclusive costumes and trinkets. Imagine if could earn PvP exclusive mounts AND other things such as skins, pets and more. Each season there would be new PvP skins that you could obtain with PvP currency in that season. Additionally, you could make PvP matches give little amounts of gold. Crumbs are always better than nothing, gold wouldn’t be restricted to 3 matches per character or anything of that kind. That’s because in PvP many players stick to one character that they feel comfortable with and incentivizing most players to play with different classes would end up bad for anyone involved be it regular, dedicated PvPers and casual/daily players who are not playing their favourite class with their class at a satisfying level. Lastly please make seasonal rewards more pleasing for players that reach ranks that aren’t as high as diamond. Yes, I’m talking about participation trophies that are valuable. Not all players value titles and slight gear upgrades, though most players equally value gold and skins.
Quality of life changes.
Let all players use awakening skills without having to stock up with chaos shards. Many new players simply don’t know they need these shards to use awakening skills and they’re simply being taken advantage of. This is an unnecessary requirement that can be removed from the proving grounds since it’s not any meaningful money sink and is simply inconvenient. Secondly, add prebuild PvP skills preset and a quick video tutorial explaining the mechanics and their default skill preset for new players to start with so that they’re not overwhelmed by having to spend HUNDREDS of skill points to be able to compete. I tried to get one of my friends into PvP in the beta but most of the time in response he spoke out on how the system is too intimidating with having to spend 340 skill points just to see if your build holds up against other players and repeat it or having to learn how to make a build. So maybe there should be a prologue for PvP too to make it more accessible.
Conclusion.
While I know this forum is mainly for the localisation team to take feedback from I’d love for you guys to pass this feedback to Smilegates regarding adding the prologue. I also believe you could increase the rewards so that PvP does not univocally sound like just more side content. If you want more players to interact with content then rewarding them accordingly is the way to go. Hopefully, I sold you on some of the ideas I mentioned.
I’m confused, I could be wrong about this but isn’t most of this already in the game?
You do get special seals that you can exchange for mounts and auras and other trinkets every PvP season.
You get upgrading materials from PvP, not quite the same as gold but close.
You do have prebuilt PvP skill presets, though I think they should be less confusing, most people I saw had issues trying to understand how to “use” them.
I understand the point behind more accessible seasonal rewards though.
As for other PvP improvements and QoL, it might take a while for our server to get them but the developers very recently said that they acknowledge that they’ve disregarded PvP for too long, and that starting now, they’re going to start working on improving the PvP experience for everybody.
I literally have an entire chapter of my post dedicated to explaining why all types of players deserve meaningful rewards and participation trophies. I even pointed out for you that the rewards for players that didn’t achieve the top ranks are not satisfying. Where in my post have I stated that the rewards for top players are bad?
Let’s say if you participate in 5 pvp matches in one week you get a bunch of gold simply because you tried. You don’t have to winy any of them but you don’t get any pvp tokens that way.
Thanks for replying. I have to disagree. PvP playerbase consists of tens of thousands players. Do you know what would a player looking for a new PvP experience would call this? A dead game.
It’s important to grow PvP at release because if not most players will see it as a minigame in the PvE game. Imagine how much bigger of a deal would proving grounds could become if we had not 16k players but 50k or 80k. The ranks and tiers wouldn’t be so dilluted because the lack of players.
I know this is just my speculation but based on other mmorpgs about 10% of players interested in this genre play PvP. We could have so much more player variety than fighting the same players over and over as you win again and again (or lose to them repeatedly).
This PvP experience simply needs more players. Any players. Hardcore, casual, weekend players and meatshield players. The more the merrier. If we had bad players come more often to the proving grounds then queue times could get shorter and also matchmaking would get more precise. Daily and weekly roulettes are a great way to introduce more new players.
PvP has a high barrier of entry. It’s not that easy to pick up and this is directly linked to the small playerbase. As it increases and the gameplay on lower level gets easier more new players will be willing to join.
The PvP community will grow if there are players who are interested in PvP because they enjoy PvP, not because of being given a handout for participating so that they can go on and do their other weekly things. If anything, it would only make people resent PvP because they’ll feel it is essential to be efficient in their routines to include it. This is exactly why people are frustrated with the state of current WoW. People had to PvP in Shadowlands to make their PvE experience more fulfilling, and vise versa. Nobody wins when you drag people’s arm and tell them they have to do a certain type of content.
It would be optional, I don’t know a single person resenting life skills or their stronghold that they invested time in to have some extra benefits in PvE. Don’t read too much into what could go wrong right now and instead think on what can we do to make PvP more rewarding for everyone.
I know plenty of people who resented life skills when they were ‘optional’, as people were handed 3 daily platinum field tickets on their main and each of their alts.
Your participation trophy is getting seals that can be traded for materials to upgrade your PvE gear, and you get a pretty decent amount of them, win or lose. If you just want participation trophies - queue normal games with friends just to get your dailies and weekly caps done.
Ranked is all about ego. You’re literally given a shiny little icon that tells you how good or bad you are at the game. What does ranked give you? Well if you get platinum you get an entire exclusive cosmetic set for that season to wear on your character. You also get titles and glowing auras if you get Masters/GM. Also, a ton of cash shop crystals as a reward. This is much more than any other Eastern MMO I can think of where ego is the only reward you get. If you’re Gold or below you only get a part of the costume and not much of anything else because well you’re below average. That’s supposed to fuel your desire to get better. If it makes you want to give up when you don’t get a shiny top rank badge right away, that’s a you problem, not the game’s problem. Regardless of what your rank is you still get a ton of mats for pve, titles, and even mounts just for participating, regardless of win/loss. I don’t get what the problem is. You’re not gonna get the same bragging rights rewards as a Grandmaster, because that’s just not how it works.
If the only reward you get from playing PvP people who want to play this mode exclusibely will surely absolutely love the item level upgrades. While it is sometimes fun to upgrade gear by playing PvP what do actually PvPers get out of it? Not much. If gameplay is the only thing to keep these players around then they won’t stay for long without any other progression systems. I actually believe a PvP battlepass would help a ton! Only if it had rewarding milestones of course.
You only get crystals if you’re top 100 players in PvP. This is a extremely limited group rewarding exclusively the best of the best. Please don’t say it brings rewards to everyone or that it will bring new players to the game because it won’t. It was there for some time now and all it did was affect the top players.
“If you’re Gold or below you only get a part of the costume and not much of anything else because well you’re below average.” Now you’re just talking straight out of your ass. Gold rank and lower players make up of a 90% of all PvP players so I have no idea in what world or parallel universe would you call them below average if based on that the average player is gold or below. Secondly you get a “part of a costume” how flattering and motivating. I got half a skin. People who get just pants after doing their best in ranked are standing up and clapping when reading through your post. Finally someone who understands their mindset. I’m sure the microscopic PvP community couldn’t agree more that the gamemode is in it’s prime and that it has been bigger than ever!
Please do not compare ranks in games that are solely designed with PvP in mind such as LoL and others with ranks in Lost Ark or any other mmorpg. The target audiences for these games are vastly different and they have simply different goals. In Moba games and games like CS:GO your rank is almost everything because it’s displayed everywhere you go and it’s a thing that is important to any otherplayer too simply because 100% of the players playing those PvP games are playing, you guessed it, PvP modes. If you get a high rank in Lost Ark all your rank says is “look, I play PvP” instead of “I belong to the best of the best players and I’m simply better than you” like in games thay have ranked system build into the core gameplay experience. Your rank in PvP is literally worthless to most of players in an mmorpg so there’s your ego thing. Mmoplayers play this genre to have fun, feel powerful and rewarded and also to look good or badass. People rate you by your looks and performance, not by some title that has to specifically say your rank or else nobody will know when did you get it from. So maybe if you were rewarded with more than a “shitty little icon” the world would become a better place.
Don’t talk about PvP standard of other eastern mmorpgs because we are literally getting a westernized version. This argument just goes straight out of the window, but if you really want to make it your point then I’ll be happy to clear it out for you thay there is not standard of a eastern mmorpgs pvp gamemode. Look how specialized and narrow that term is. I get it that eastern mmorpgs either have a dumpster fire of a pvp or there simply is no pvp but this doesn’t matter here. Lost Ark does fantastic across the world and climbs the statistics like crazy and while it might seem absolutely crazy to you games just like any other businesses need to make improvements to stay on the top and keep the rival companies in check. That’s what you do, innovate and improve. Like I suggest in my original post, there is not a better time to shake up the PvP in this genre than to do it now.
“That’s a your problem and not game’s problem” mindset is exactly why PvP has thousands of players, let’ say 15k players instead of 50-300 thousand players. Why improve if it looks fine for me? Lastly, most players care about skins, mounts and practical rewards other than a title respected by so few people. In fact they care so little they simply don’t go out of their way and don’t bother to fight for grandmaster.
Spazz with all due respect I have played a lot of PvP in Lost Ark and I’ve never needed a reason to play it other than the enjoyment of playing it. What you’re suggesting is fabricating a playerbase of players who feel like they SHOULD go and PvP rather than feeling like they WANT to go and PvP. It’s not sustainable, nor is it necessary.
No need to argue here, we must simply have different goals and ideas for PvP. Although I must point out that I simply disagree that I’m suggesting to make player feel like they should play PvP instead of making them want PvP. Increasing rewards and also balance is crucial to the fun factor and enjoyment at least for me that is.
I think you should focus more on ways to make PvP more appealing, rather than ways to incentivise people to continue playing PvP in its current state if that’s your outlook.
The PvP system in this game is horrible, but I think the devs are aware of it. Let me show you some statistics to back up my claim.
Russian Servers (PvP is cross realm) Ranking info: 1-10th place Grandmaster, 11-40th place Master, 2000+ Diamond, 1800+ Platinum, 1600+ Gold, 1400+ Silver, below 1400 Bronze. Rewards: Grandmaster: 5k crystals, aura, title, skin. Master: 1.5k crystals, aura, title, skin. Diamond: title, skin. Platinum: skin. Gold: 2/3 parts of skin. Silver: 1/3 parts of skin. Bronze: NOTHING. Problem: There are only 12 people on the server with a rating over 2200 and this season started a few months ago. That means 10 Grandmasters, 2 masters, because they are not over 2200 rating! 30 players are in Diamond. 60 players are in Platinum. The ladder does not keep track of the rest, but I would estimate around 150 players are in gold. The rest is in silver or bronze. Now I do not know the exact playerbase of the Russian servers combined, but I think it is safe to say this system is broken.
Solution: Ratings need to be inflated. In most competitive games; like chess and WoW, the highest rated players in a season are usually 3000+ and I think that is a good number. It leaves a big enough gap between Diamond and Grandmaster. I also believe a percentage-based reward system is better and more fair than rewards going to the top 40 or top 100 in case of EU. Something like 0.1-1% of the highest ranked players get Grandmaster. I also believe that if such a large part of the playerbase is in Bronze they should at least get some kind of reward. I mean, why would you even try to get into PvP knowing that about 90% of all players are in Bronze and they do not get any end of season rewards for their participation?
To be honest the PvP competitive scene is an absolute shitshow for many reasons. For example, you could be a diamond scouter and get queued into a game with four bronze players, and one opposing silver to serve as a counterweight to your involvement. I don’t need to say how horribly unbalanced that is, not to mention the fact that the diamond player can come away from that game earning 17 points, which is arguably more than they would get in a game full of diamond players. Further to that, if you continue to queue game after game, rather than wait a little while, chances are you’ll run into the same players for 10 games in a row because I assume the matchmaking takes people in on first come first serve basis. There’s a whole host of other things wrong with PvP in Lost Ark, and it needs some serious love, but I don’t think that love can come from Amazon, only Smilegate themselves.
