is the player base too divisive? | Lost Ark 

This is why we all hope solo raid content will be great because it’s too much for requirements for new players that are trying to understand mechanics and more. Elixirs are so wacky, toxic players, gem system(why is there a level 8 for only 4 percent damage increase from a level 7)

It’s impossible to be a casual player when the community itself does not want casual players. I’m a solo player, don’t know anyone who plays the game neither I have a fixed schedule so I can play. I returned with breaker launch and still can’t manage to be accepted in a party mostly because I don’t have the cards to be accepted. I know the mechs but I end up having to pay for the bus so I can enjoy the raid. That makes it extra hard to progress in ilvl and experience new raids because I spent all of the gold too fast. Ultimately I’ll get to the point where I was last time I stopped playing, despite the fact that I really like the game, it’s just unplayable sometimes

If you aren't doing enough for casual players, you lose 95% of the potential player pool of the game.

I left when only Valtan was out, i tried to comeback but there are so many raids now there is no way for me to learn even vykas every raid is on reclear.

I played this game since release (Roughly 5k hours). 1628, 1620, x4 1600, x3 1580 Roster. You could say I am a pretty dedicated player. Doing all raids and dailies for such a long time. As you can tell I am almost finished with 1630 push on my main. But I did not login since monday. I just cant be arsed anymore. I am burned out. Its not even the difficulty of thaemine. I enjoy this kind hard raids. But just all the increasing costs of every system and seeing more and more veteran player rmt and straight up using chaos dungeon bots discourages me. So I tried out the new diablo season on monday with friends that I not played with for a long time since lost ark takes so much time. It was so refreshing that I am not even feeling like logging in lost ark and finish my 1630 char. Also all the negativity around this game which is honestly justified puts me down. I will only touch this game again when I feel like it or if they do major changes.

I’ve returned two months ago and I will continue to play the game, while i enjoy it (1570 main) Most struggle i had so far are not even raids (though solo content would help a lot to understand mechanics without ruining experience for rest of the people in a group) My main struggles right now are: 1. Gold. There is always a lack of it for honing/getting accessories/engraving books. But i don’t mind to grind it, since the process is fun 2. Gatekeep. Yeah, sometimes it feels like lobby simulator, trying to find a raid with ilvl. But eventually i always find one (except Kayangel NM, since there is a horizontal progression gatekeeping) 3. PvP. I love it, but it’s just said to see no PvP seasons for a pretty long time. See no reasons for devs just to enable it constantly I haven’t faced elixirs/transcendence/Thaemine yet. But if i’ll find them too predatory to keep gronding - i’ll just made another small statistic of inactive player and hope they could make some conclusions based on it

I stopped playing untill solo raids are out. If it's not what I think it will end up being ill just quit altogether. This game past 1620 is straight hell unless u have an open bankacount or 16 hours a day. Fuck that

game is not developed around casual gaming, not even a single vertical progression is casual, Their whole business approch is to build fomo around couple of months each year to make casual players swipe credit card and then let them leave so they will return for the next big patch and swipe again. it is what it is

I hope this solo raid content comes soon it will help the new players and casuals from gatekeeping and will enjoy the game at there own phase

Casual are those who play 1-3 hours per week and LA already weeded most of them on Clown-Brel release. Clown is too difficult and Brel is too tedious and long. Now they are finishing the job by making new players, burned out vets, and the rest of these casuals quit. From the ever increasing standard of gatekeeping, to these new rng-fiesta vertical systems that are also too expensive for your average 1620 andy, players are just fed up. Yesterday one of the top post on reddit was a screenshot on EU with over 300+ channels (cause of bots) while steamcharts only logs around 31k online players. This puts into perspective how low player numbers are now compared to let's say Akkan release. And it probably won't stop falling cause AGS/Smilegate looks out of touch with how these catch-up events are implemented.

Smilegate's business modell is to milk the whales by building FOMO and making new characters expensive af. Eventually, this will kill the game in the west.

Triple gold and make everything cost 1/3 of what it is right now, only 1 character gets gold. More people will play 1 or 2 characters, It'll be easier to tap more when you focus on a single character. You can still bus if you're in to that. More people will have more time. Which will mean more people will be willing to teach and have less urgency to get through 1/6 of the raids each week. Helps the casual player immensely, while not punishing the more hardcore players.

One of the biggest issue is the fact that they release Hard Mode and normal mode at the same time. This causes people to believe they have to be prepared for the hard mode release months before its release. Overall the biggest issue, is that you signed up to play a Korean MMO. Korean MMOs have had the same basic design for decades now, you know what you signed up for and then you expect it to change to your will. Korean MMOs are grindfests and they are ALWAYS going to be grindfests that have predatory systems. As much as you might dislike it, it is a fact and you can either accept it and play the game or move on. I will agree that locking materials behind an entire clear of the raid is ridiculous. Especially due to the way jailing works, because it encourages more hardcore gatekeeping.

1 Raid gate system is broken 2 Support requirements is broken 3 Elixir RNG is broken 4 Gear Transcendence RNG System is broken ~ so i had around 90 friends got 9 now all left said f,,, this shite. I play joining brelshaza,kayangel valtan and that all i can do playing solo from 3 weeks was trying get to Thaemine g1 Normal spend few hours no chance no supports available on eu ,so if you don't have static group DONT PLAY GAME.I have 3.600.000 of gold .for what my end game was akkan shite riad as well with freeze mechanic on g2Generaly game designed is total fuckup for eu players.

Godd video, i've liked the "adios" at the end ;)

The thing that i notice about Lost ark is now you need to watch a guide to understand system like elixir and transendance... why it's so difficult to understand thoses system and why are they added like that ? you need first do clear content to get ressources and then get F by RNG ? For me the issue is the KR player base for letting SG creating shitty predatory system without anyone saying anything. I recently heard that they will add solo content, i may come back to the game if it's well made, but i just can't think that it will be that great when the only change for thoses system is a gold cost nerf...

As a casual player I find it very difficult to find groups, both in-game and on discord. Given my timezone and availability to play, a typical scenario goes like this: - waking up at 4 am on Monday morning to play with American players who are progging Thaemine at 1 PM pst only to find the support has dropped out or we dont have enough players for the prog. - not being able to find learning groups for Ivory Tower HM so I can get confidence to pugs properly. - not being able to find enough members for Akkan HM groups when i get home from work.

I watch all your videos and comment on a lot of them. You are 100% spot on. Theamine is pushing me to quit, but I am trying to hold hoping Echidna and Behemoth allow progress without a lot of transcendence to allow me to progress slowly (already cleared hm1-2). We are likely 2 months and 2 weeks away from Behemoth, and there is nothing after that. G3 Thaeomine is toxic for the community as it is too damn hard for casuals so gatekeeping on past clears is common.

Well, playing some devil's advocate, I can point out Smile Gate is at least trying to ease the difficulty after Thaemine. And I get why Thaemine had to be so hard with the narrative of the story with him being this daunting figure. I do agree that locking a system behind basically hard mode is a mistake that they should rectify. I'll also devil's advocate against Thaemine being bad reclear content. I can see how for someone who barely can get 1 character to Thaemine normal, it'll be a fun challenge to do once a week. Only the hardcore players would be able to spam it 6 times a week. So the only people who are going to be overwhelmed by the difficulty of doing it so many times will be those who are hardcore. Anyway, I still would prefer them to make it a bit more accessible to finish transcendence outside of HM going forward because of the content afterward. I cannot devil's advocate for elixirs though. Not even in the slightest.

Great video man but sadly it's impossible it's kind of like convincing FGO fans or Nickki fans that putting a pity in their gacha system and say we're making the game better! But as long as they're 1 person saying they don't want a pity system cuz they'll try to convince other aswell The same hypothetical happened LostArk there no Untiy in this playerbase sady And then you have the language barrier which is another barrier that's why all the other CC's couldn't get through to Smilegate either.

The big problem with this game is the fact that everything is link to the shop. And also, you have to play 6 caracters to be productive

well this game only caters to the hardcore , the type that can either swipe or have all the time in thier hand to run 69 raids a week 😂. When casual people voice up , they got shut down by a pretty toxic hardcore playerbase, guess what you have 10k hardcore sweatlords left with 50 k bots play together. This game is beyond fixing at this point since its too deep in milking the whale business model now. Meh smart Gold River and Vertical Bozo also decide to lock story content behind hardmode clear, wtf as if these hardcore raider enjoy lore and story 😂

Brel HM, Akkan HM, were also hard raids but people didnt complain so much because they could try it at their own pace and IF they want to. With Thaemine we are basically forced to do HM or else you can't progress your char past a certain point. Or you cant even access story (see the latest patch for the 152 people that cleared Thaemine). If the game wants to ho hardcore mode i guess it's fine, but the numbers don't lie and people are quitting. And it's the casuals quitting, not the people with 6chars on 1620+.

tbh lost ark isnt for causal player no matter what, with so many vertical systems and gatekeeping

This game is trying so hard to make people quit it's crazy. I am not going to do 18 raids and 84 dailies a week to watch all of my gold go down the drain in dogshit gold sink full rng time consuming system. Fuck that and fuck them

you realize recently ??? i realize since clown release....

First thanks the vid as always:D, 2nd as a casual player who never enjoyed hell or hard content, I do not think Thaemine normal/hard would be that much of a hard content, it is more like unusual at first (for me) but I defenetly can say the players make the raid hard...

I want to get into Lost Ark, but was curious how long are the wait times for PvP?? Also, can I level up in the game just doing PvP?

good video

@Brother Chris you hit the nail on the head, its also goes by the name of "gatekeeping" but it's nothing new, it started and been getting steadily worse since Brelshaza and it IS the fault of the developers - the new systems always give such a clear power advantage that you dont want to play with anyone that dosent have them and of course there is also jail to consider and just 0 incentive to take someone who dosent have LoS30/elixirs/trans. You wont get any extra rewards for doing so and the illness thats called "bussing" is allowed so why even bother... To sum it up - gatekeeping is real, it IS the fault of the developers and unless the devs hard change course the future of this game can only go in 1 direction because I also agree with your stance about needing new players.

You are taking the words out of my mouth. You could be my brother ;)

This was a great video. I definitely agree with you. But I feel like a lot of the people who say it’s not that bad get over it are just being realist. They know it’s not going to change. This is just what the game is. And if you don’t like it you might as well stop. Cause it’s getting worse not better. And time has proven they aren’t changing. On the other hand if the gamers don’t rise up it will never change. It’s the classic realist vs optimist.

Pls One more time ... Why we should consider developers as enemy ?!

The raids are hard but can be overcome with practice but the game won't let me practice. Stupid business model, the game progress is made for raid gold farmers that have no life with 200 characters. Imagine Disney parks operating this way, they will be out of business in no time. Even if I drop $10k, I still can't progress because I have no "friends" to do the raids. so dumb.

Solid take. Def agree

Good video

link your twitch stream so i can show up next time when you are live :)

Gatekeeping will exist no matter what they do to the game, it's the players that are broken and they will find whatever reason to complain even if It does not affect game play, i am waiting for gatekeeping because of lack of legendary skins😂😂

I agree

You know, as someone who plays the game since pre-launch, that took a 5 month brake, I am now Forced into NOT raiding. as soon as a casuals/returning or new player reaches 1610 the game becomes unplayable, not because of the difficulty but because if the STUPIDITY of the active player base. What do you mean you gonna spend 20mins on a boss for some people to learn a new raid. The game been Hard is one thing, People Gatekeeping re-clears from week one though is another, that's the real issue for me. Solo raiding won't solve the casual player base problem. Because the people who play it are so toxic and elitist it's insane. This game won't last in the west if they keep the game like that, at least not for some one that looks to play an mmo as a game not as your main job.

This is a great video and I hope everyone who is playing or used to play watches it. I think the largest problem we have as a playerbase is there is too many vocal people super far one way or another and its just too much. People throw around crazy buzzwords and defend that till death. Like "Elixirs are the worse dog shit system ever invented and smiliegate are idiots to ever think it would work anywhere". IMO that is such a terrible take, constructive criticism and real feedback helps the game improve. Completely bias takes one way or the other with no basis in reality that complete blow an issue out of proportion only hurts the game and the community and distracts from actual issues or problems. Actual example happened yesterday. Some guy clipped Pheons in the event shop and began to make huge sweeping declarations like "OMG THEY NERFED OUR STORE COMPARED TO KR, ITS SO BAD". In reality, the only thing we got less of was Pheons, we got 4x - 10x every other item, but the damage was already done. Hundreds of people poured into the thread, commenting how dog shit AGS must be to nerf our event shop etc etc. When the truth came out and a comparison was posted it it got like 10% of the engagement. All this does is hurt the game, scares new players away, drives existing players to quit. Not directly because of an issue, but becuase someone lied about an issue.

no

I am surprised lost ark does not have more players it is an amazing game. I am still so mind blown that more people play WoW over lost ark. I cant see it.

We have gold sinks that are unnecessary for us since we've been getting new stuff a LOT quicker than they did in Korea. And don't think they'll really change it because of the rice eaters who play this game for a living. And don't throw the racist card, I'm half Korean.

Everyone is blaming Thaemine for killing the game but Voldis is the smoking gun. The longest and most gatekept raid. Voldis hard should have been 1610 not 1620. It's wrong players are going into Thaemine with