Let’s start with the easiest one, Diablo 3. When the game first launched there was an in-game auction house where players could earn real life money by trading in game items. It was horrible. All of the items were completely randomized and nothing that dropped for the player was actually worthwhile. It became less about gearing up and more about finding items that would actually sell on the auction house for real world currency. As a result the player base for Diablo 3 at launch was 6 million (a small amount considering how big Blizzard was at the time) dropped off to about 1 million active players in less than 2 months after release but vaulted to 30 million players after the expansion came out 2 years later. The biggest change implemented was the loot 2.0 system where players would receive items that were geared towards the class that they were playing instead of relying on an action house that gave completely randomized stats. This was important because players no longer needed to choose between using a good drop or selling it for $$$.
Next looks look at Wildstar and why it failed so horrifically. It wasn’t particularly that the game was hard, but rather that the game encouraged elitism. “Adventures” was the main way that a newer player could earn gear but the problem was that they were rated based on the player performance. Many players would drop a group as soon as they weren’t going to get “gold” status and thus earn maximum rewards for the week, they would drop the group and leave the remaining players with nothing for their efforts.
Now let’s talk about WoW and how they created a neat system to help newer players or alts gear up for upcoming raids. Generally when a new raid was about to be released, they would add a series of dungeons (or Abyssal Dungeons in this case) that would help players gear up for the latest content WITHOUT having the clear the previous raid to gear up and get ready the next challenge. Though being previous-raid geared was optimal, newer players had a path to catch up and not need to be carried or learn raid mechanics from the previous raid to progress. This was important because clearing the previous raid was NOT a requirement to the latest content.
So how does this apply to Lost Ark? First of all, the loot system creates an environment where making gold often takes priority over progression. The group finding creates an incentive to take well-geared players over players who actually need loot from a run. The game lacks lateral content that allows players to gear up outside of raiding. It encourages end-game elitism over helping new players out. The worst example of this so far is the Kakul-Saydon fight. Instead of making a balanced fun fight for at-level raiders it instead relied on insta-wipe mechanics to add challenge for the whales with “nothing else to do nothing is challenging,” Of course the game should be easy if you’re already 1560! You had to pay a LOT of money to get there! The whole point of doing that is to flex on other players, not make content that’s impossible for them. Also, once all the other players quit because they can’t keep up with you, what do you have left anyways?
Sorry for the rant, but that’s the game is right now to me.
I never heard about Super express mission and hyper express pass to catch up? We have always eventand you can speedrun to t3 with materials ftom island on the map. They should only give like 200 pheon to new person when he start his journey in this game.
Its really cheap to hone alt to 1415 ilvl and game is start on this ilvl
In d3, you farm for all your items, in lost ark, you can craft your set, only accs have to be found/bought.
Yes, first d3 experience was horrible, with rares having all possible stats, sets were unusable same as many uniques. The great vision of game director that rares should be the best items.
As i remember wildstar it was a hardcore mmo, and after how much time the producer who wanted hardcore quit?
You can compare wow with lost ark that mythical raids, which 99% of the players never experience have max gear in lost ark.
Good comparisons. Especially loot 2.0. The D3 devs knew players just want their loot so why not let it drop for them and their class. To me it’s a more preferable system than getting random drops and having to use the AH. But in LA devs make money per AH trade with pheons so it’s a core system for the game.
I don’t see how your example of Wildstar is related to Lost Ark. The only content that rates performance and gives rewards based on this rating is AFAIK Adventure Islands, and as soon as you enter your entry for the day is claimed, so abandoning group makes no sense.
Maybe PvP has rewards based on performance, but most people don’t care about PvP and I don’t think that it has that issue you mentioned in Wildstar anyway.
Diablo example sort of rings a bell, because Argos loot is so much better than the trash we get from Legion commanders, but you can still buy stuff you need for gold and you get that gold from raids, so while drops will be most of the time either trash or go to AH, I think we are still able to progress at reasonable pace. It would have been nice to have guaranteed class engravings on the loot, but it would put a dent in pheon sales, so less revenue for AGS/SG = won’t happen.
WoW example I don’t get at all tbh. You can try Brelshaza using Argos gear if you want. Clearing Argos P3 twice + once Oreha gives you full set. Go ahead and hone it to 1490 or more if you want. You don’t need relic gear, but you will do about 30% less damage and have probably 30% less HP (if you compare to great quality relic gear), so likely won’t clear that raid. Can still try tho.
Also I’m not really sure why would anyone want to skip other Legion Commanders - they are pretty fun to clear and if you are 1490 then it is much easier too.
You can get gold from doing Una tasks and selling mats, so technically you do not need to clear Legion Commander raids to buy gear.
If you are trying to say that new people should be able to clear Brelshaza or Akkan day 1 they started playing, then this is not that kind of a game. They just decided on a different approach and reward people for not taking breaks, but still give some catch-up rewards, buffs and so on for those who did or just started playing. Do you honestly want newbies in your Clown reclears? Are there not enough clowns already?
I do not know how difficult and punishing WoW raids are, but here one person can wipe whole party with one small mistake, so I would rather prefer they go through the pain at lower ilvl stuff and not bother me with their pepega performance. I will leave that to people running teaching parties.
I see a lot of correlation between the two games and how the design focused on hardcore player base and few but hard encounters. The elitism in Lost Ark now is at the same level it was with Wildstar about 2 months after it went F2P with around 1.3 million users. The game was closed down 20 months later. After catering to 5% of hardcore gamers that eventually burned out within few months. And the revenue for upgrading the engine and making new content was no longer viable when so big portion of the player base left the game every month.
We are seeing exactly the same in Lost Ark NA/EU with massive sever merges now. The toxic elitism and lack of a strong community that takes care of the player base is for all to see. And the Clown is actually the first raid that was specially designed to be unfriendly for bussing and subs. Losing 25% of the player base each month (not counting bots) will eventually finish off the game within 2 years. That is just a simple fact.
The main difference is actually that Wildstar did not have as big of a RMT issue as Lost Ark in NA/EU. This will lead to even less revenue available in Lost Ark for new content and much-needed improvements and upgrades in the game engine. Don’t forget that Lost Ark is running on an Unreal Engine 3 that was released in 2006 and is no longer supported or updated.
Yes Wildstar had no chance to survive because the content was never balanced for the actual player base. NCsoft (South Korean btw) tried the same with Guild Wars 2 dungeon content at the start and said it was designed for the elite to beat. About 2 months later they realized that less than 5% of the player base even tried the content. And of those very few bothered to finish it. So ofc… dungeons in Guild Wars never became a thing cause NCsoft did not have money to make new ones and the game ended up F2P as well. And the dungeons have a story mode now
And that doesnt avoid to have fucking tons of bots farming and farming everyday and sold things in rmah, selling accounts for real money and ppl did money laundering (which it was the real reason why RMAH/AH was closed) so doesnt matter if it cost 60€ or is F2P, if you are not prepared to fight bots, the game will be doomed or fully reworked.
In D3 now you just can trade your items during a couple of days AND just with the people you played when you got that item, so basically all items are bound to player and you have to Solo Farm your Equipment.
In part its fun, I miss to have an AH, because its fun for me too, but the Seasons themes, I see multiple talented themes wasted. If they do some kind of “Solomode” or something where you can combine 2 or 3 season themes, it would be f* awesome, but they dont do it and I think they are waiting to put the best ideas in D4.
But as a person who bought D3 from the beginning, I learnt to not play and dont buy any game of Blizzard in the beginning. Its better to wait a couple of years to join in them and I dont gonna buy or play D4 at first day.
Oh man end game raiding in Wildstar was so much fun. I did them all and was really sad when the game ended. The boss fights were very similar to hell mode raids here in Lost Ark. Tons of personal responsibility mechanics with no real way to get carried. Everyone had to do a large number of mechanics correctly or the party wipes. This style of content is a lot of fun and beating it is incredibly rewarding. It wasnt for everyone though.
I remember when a lot of self proclaimed “Hardcore” raiding guilds from Wow and other games disbanded after failing to beat Kuralak the Defiler-only the 2nd boss in the first raid. The issue wasnt the difficulty of the content, everuone always beat it eventually. The issue was toxic players creating division and breaking guilds apart from the inside.
The kinds of games like Wildstar and Lost Ark really want you to find friends and like minded people to challenge the content with. Its gonna be a challenge. You will fail over and over at first. Its very important to pair with People you dont mind wiping with over and over again. If you dont find that the experience will be miserable.
People are going to have to accept the fact that for a long time there will not be kakul carries, everyone has to pull their own weight you cant have a group where one person is doing 60% of the work. Luckily Kakul is optional, are there a few things I think the raid could use fixed? Sure, things like flame hitboxes and the dodge back counter seem a bit wonky. But all the instant kill stuff is entirely avoidable and extremely predictable. As with every single other raid we’ve had it just gets easier and easier as more people clear it.
He is as optional as Vykas or Valtan are. Well, I guess if you knew you couldn’t clear him and didn’t hone to 1475 then you have the option not to do it now and still have Argos gold, but otherwise you kinda want to clear it for gold at least. Also, Chaos Dungeon 1475 is pretty nice to have, but it makes that optional Clown into “do it or lose it” situation.
As for lack of carries I couldn’t care less, but I must admit that G3 is over tuned. No other raid has this kind of difficulty spike between gates. In fact I find Valtan G2 and Vykas G3 easier than earlier gates. I think that this might have been a mistake by SG, especially if you compare people progging Valtan or Vykas with very little weekly content to take their time back in the days, so it was more relaxed. Now a lot of people have 6xValtan, 6xVykas and either 6xArgos or 6xClown. It could be just too much for a lot of people to also spend a lot of time trying to beat Clown and they will just burn out.
I sort of wish there was actually NM and HM Clown, so we could have an easier version to get ourselves comfortable. They could even have those on same ilvl for all I care.
He is absolutely NOT “as optional as Vykas or Valtan” both Vykas and Valtan are mandatory raids to get your relic set, the gain that Kakul gives to your relic is is ~2-4% overall damage increase it is incredibly minor in the grand scheme of things. The same way Brelshaza will not be “optional” if you want to progress your character further.
People have to remember the Combat Director changed with Kakul, all fights going forward, Guardian Raids included, will have significantly more individual responsibilities and requirements. The entire vision for the combat of the game changed with Kakul as there was a brand new director making those decisions. They are actively designing fights around combatting bussing as well meaning 1 person can cause a wipe, unfortunately if you don’t like that you might as well stop as it didnt change for RU, JP or even in KR so it’s not going to change here.
When people were progging Valtan and Vykas they didnt have full rosters so it wasn’t as big of a deal now you have a full roster. Are we going to have the same complaints when Brelshaza releases that people cant get their x6 Valtan, Vykas and Brels done? You have to be willing to just close the game and use rested its not that big of a deal.
You do have a NM and HM it’s called Rehearsal. If you want to get comfortable with the basics of the fight such as the normal patterns and such do Rehearsal on an alt then try on your main in normal Kakul, it is not a big deal to just do g1 and g2 and be content. You will get your level 2 relic. The only thing making people upset is their pride getting crushed by a gate they can’t clear. You can’t just tickle the boss and eventually they fall over, this boss demands aggression and awareness if you don’t have those…Tough shit.
Extremely challenging raids can be fun if you have a good group with the right mindset. But not everyone plays MMOs for that reason alone and if you cater ONLY to that group and ONLY create that kind of content you end up with a falling player base and the game becomes unsustainable which is exactly what happened to Wildstar. And even the people who do manage to complete that end-game content will get bored with doing the same thing week after week and move on to something else.
That’s why many of the long-running MMOs are more geared towards casual play with the option of end-game raiding. Believe it or not many players enjoy finishing the adventure logs and collecting island souls while other players are more concerned with gearing up for end-game content. It is possible to cater to both but it requires more resources to be split and a huge player base to support which is why games that cater only to hard core end game raiding always fail.
