Lost Ark Online

Raes

Raes

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Kirun said:
And honestly? That sounds amazing to me. Sure, it's not going to be a game I can devote 40 hours a week to, but it's nice to have a game that can be used for "side" activities or when you get bored of your "main" game/MMO.
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I mean, for all the issues I have with it, I've been playing it since RU launch, off and on. I have 8 50s on my main account, and 9 more on my alts accounts. I take breaks and then come back for certain events, or new class releases. I just would rather be able to earn my gold just by playing my main account.
 
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Tide27

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This whole thing sounds right up my alley then.

I have no desire to spend the time to worry about running bleeding edge content a few weeks into the US release.

I enjoy arpgs and I enjoy mmos. Seems a blend of the best of all worlds. I am sick to death of the current mmos, Maybe not so much because there is something inheritently wrong with them, but we've all been left with only a few mmos that have been running 10 to 15 years. Enough is enough for me.
 
Kirun

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Raes said:
I just would rather be able to earn my gold just by playing my main account.
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Yeah, that's understandable and hopefully something they consider modifying for Western audiences.

I just know from having played BDO that Korean games, while grindy as fuck, offer absolutely phenomenal gameplay/combat systems. Having an ARPG/MMO hybrid to fuck around in once or twice a week with awesome/fun gameplay sounds right up my alley, especially as one of those "I need a break from X and just want to blow some shit up" type of games.
 
Raes

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Kirun said:
Yeah, that's understandable and hopefully something they consider modifying for Western audiences.

I just know from having played BDO that Korean games, while grindy as fuck, offer absolutely phenomenal gameplay/combat systems. Having an ARPG/MMO hybrid to fuck around in once or twice a week with awesome/fun gameplay sounds right up my alley, especially as one of those "I need a break from X and just want to blow some shit up" type of games.
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They can't change it for the west. The entire game design/monetization is based around limiting your ability to earn gold.

Yes, the combat is what interested me and keeps me playing. And what makes the leveling to 50 so tedious. It's like 15% combat, and 85% traveling and spamming "g" to skip dialogue one line at a time. Plus every cutscene is unskippable the first time you encounter it, per server.

Other than that, the game/world design is phenomenal. Actually won like 6 awards at the Korean Game Awards in 2019.

What sucks for me about the NA release is my two main classes won't be in, Scout and Reaper. So, I'll basically be spinning my wheels and storing up gold til they are added.
 
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Tide27

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Would you mind elaborating just a tad on this needing a 2nd account thing? You mentioned you had 9x 50s on one account, and then 8x on another. What is it about the different accounts helps you generate the currency? Since this is a F2P game, as stupid as it sounds...why would be the benefit of having 17x capped toons on 2 servers, versus...say..17 accounts with 1 main per account?
 
Raes

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Tide27 said:
Would you mind elaborating just a tad on this needing a 2nd account thing? You mentioned you had 9x 50s on one account, and then 8x on another. What is it about the different accounts helps you generate the currency? Since this is a F2P game, as stupid as it sounds...why would be the benefit of having 17x capped toons on 2 servers, versus...say..17 accounts with 1 main per account?
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Sorry if my shorthand was unclear. On my main account I have the 8 classes I like to play. I have 4 alt accounts, each with 2 level 50s, 1 also have a level 49 HK that I haven't felt like finishing yet.

What I do: Log in alt account 1. Do my 3 dailies (6ish minutes). Work on my weeklies, usually 1 boss rush (i forget what its called exactly) just kill the first boss, that weekly is done (less than 1 minute). 2 guardian runs. Kill weakest guardian (the bear), need 6 "souls" for the weekly, they usually drop 1 each time and you can only collect 2 souls per day, but there's a system where for every soul you don't collect per day you get half a bar, 5 bars max of "double loot". I bar, 1 kill, 2 souls drop. 30 seconds per kill. Then I spend my labor points gathering. Mining is about 15 minutes, with ok gold. Fishing is like 30 minutes, but like 3x gold. Depends on how much time I feel like spending that day.

Objective is to earn 72 Epona points each week, which earn you Epona Badges (amount you get per point goes up with gear level). You trade the badges to a vendor for a bag with gold in it. 80 badges = 200 gold. 200 badges = 500 gold. 500 badges = 1200 gold. Each bag also has a chance to drop gold plates. Light plates are worth 100g, Heavy are 1000g, and the last one is worth 10k and really rare. Usually get a few light plates total every week, plus the occasional heavy.

Each daily is worth 2 Epona points, each weekly is worth 12. Maximum Epona that can be earned from dailies is 18 per day. No max on weeklies. So, with 2 level 50s per alt account, I can get my Epona gold bag on day 2, then all I have to do is log in and spend my labor points, til weekly reset.

With my current gear score I get like 715 Epona Badges per week. Which is 1 1200g bag and 1 500g. And I've been fishing, though it puts me to sleep. Pearls that you get from fishing, currently sell 40g for a stack of 10. I get like 80-110 per account per day.

So, long story short, 5 accounts, spending around 45 minutes a day per account for the first 2 days, and 30 minutes the other 5 days, nets me around 24k gold, give or take. Nearly 5x more than a normal "free" player can earn. "Nearly" because there's a couple things I don't bother with that give gold, like weekly dungeons, or some ocean "adventures" shit. I'm just looking to make gold quickly and efficiently.
 
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Cinge

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Not sure I will go that far. That's sounds way too close to people who do dailies on multiple characters just to maximize gold income.

I am sure I will have alts, I plan to play 2 or 3 atm with a 4th when it come out, but mainly because they look fun to play, not just to get as much gold as possible funneled to one account.

I think the closest I came was AA when I had a 2nd account for labor.
 
Raes

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It's has nothing to do with maximizing gold income. It has to do with being able to progress at a reasonable rate. Everything at endgame is gated by gearscore. In order to get to the next tier of gear, you need to get your current gear to all +15. Once you get to like +12 the % chance for an upgrade is like 30%, at 14-15 it's like 15%. 6 Pieces of gear, 400+ gold per attempt. You get a few percent bonus for every fail, but it still eats gold like crazy. 24k gold a week ain't a lot, trust me. And this is in RU, max gear score for them is 1575 right now. And, as I've probably mentioned before, there are other things you need/want to spend gold on, too. Each rank of an engraving takes 20 books. RU has 4 ranks now, but NA will prolly start with 3. The popular books? Or class engraving books for popular classes? Can cost over 1k gold each for rank 3, not much less for rank 2. Then there's cosmetic (plus 1% attack power per piece) outfits/weapons, if you don't want to spend cash on those. Or mounts.

No one is saying it's necessary, far from it. It's your choice. Be casual, be swiping, or be grinding a few extra accounts. And it's literally no different than your Archeage example. Pre Season 2 you could earn decent money just having alts on 1 account. That was before they added "workpoints" (ie labor points) that are shared between all your characters. And was the exact reason why I made my alt accounts in the first place, when they updated to season 2 and gave everyone 1 free level up boost. I didn't even know about the Epona bag yet, another addition of season 2. That's just icing on the cake.
 
Uriel

Uriel

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Raes said:
Sorry if my shorthand was unclear. On my main account I have the 8 classes I like to play. I have 4 alt accounts, each with 2 level 50s, 1 also have a level 49 HK that I haven't felt like finishing yet.

What I do: Log in alt account 1. Do my 3 dailies (6ish minutes). Work on my weeklies, usually 1 boss rush (i forget what its called exactly) just kill the first boss, that weekly is done (less than 1 minute). 2 guardian runs. Kill weakest guardian (the bear), need 6 "souls" for the weekly, they usually drop 1 each time and you can only collect 2 souls per day, but there's a system where for every soul you don't collect per day you get half a bar, 5 bars max of "double loot". I bar, 1 kill, 2 souls drop. 30 seconds per kill. Then I spend my labor points gathering. Mining is about 15 minutes, with ok gold. Fishing is like 30 minutes, but like 3x gold. Depends on how much time I feel like spending that day.

Objective is to earn 72 Epona points each week, which earn you Epona Badges (amount you get per point goes up with gear level). You trade the badges to a vendor for a bag with gold in it. 80 badges = 200 gold. 200 badges = 500 gold. 500 badges = 1200 gold. Each bag also has a chance to drop gold plates. Light plates are worth 100g, Heavy are 1000g, and the last one is worth 10k and really rare. Usually get a few light plates total every week, plus the occasional heavy.

Each daily is worth 2 Epona points, each weekly is worth 12. Maximum Epona that can be earned from dailies is 18 per day. No max on weeklies. So, with 2 level 50s per alt account, I can get my Epona gold bag on day 2, then all I have to do is log in and spend my labor points, til weekly reset.

With my current gear score I get like 715 Epona Badges per week. Which is 1 1200g bag and 1 500g. And I've been fishing, though it puts me to sleep. Pearls that you get from fishing, currently sell 40g for a stack of 10. I get like 80-110 per account per day.

So, long story short, 5 accounts, spending around 45 minutes a day per account for the first 2 days, and 30 minutes the other 5 days, nets me around 24k gold, give or take. Nearly 5x more than a normal "free" player can earn. "Nearly" because there's a couple things I don't bother with that give gold, like weekly dungeons, or some ocean "adventures" shit. I'm just looking to make gold quickly and efficiently.
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Would you say that 24k is a lot of gold per week? What percentile of players do you think that would put you in? And also, how much $$$ would it cost to achieve the same thing with say 1-2 characters, either buying stuff directly or buying resets ( I have no clue how the p2w cash shop stuff works).
 
Raes

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Uriel said:
Would you say that 24k is a lot of gold per week? What percentile of players do you think that would put you in? And also, how much $$$ would it cost to achieve the same thing with say 1-2 characters, either buying stuff directly or buying resets ( I have no clue how the p2w cash shop stuff works).
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Well, like I said, max gear score in RU is 1575, so the economy is different than NA will be at launch. NA will have up to Bern, where you hit 50. RU has Rohendel, Yorn, Payton, Papanuki, and South Bern. Each continent ups the max gear score. My Scout currently is at 1350 GS. I could burn 50k gold in a day and not get to 1500 even. Gold cost per upgrade attempt goes up with the gearscore. And, like I said, 24k is roughly 5x what you can make on a single account.

Also, I feel like I've given the wrong impression. I haven't been doing the alt grind every week since launch. I play for 3-4 weeks and then don't touch the game for like 3 months. The extra accounts are there so that when I do play, I can earn a decent amount of gold to make a bit of progress. But, most of my progress still comes from the periodic free shit they give you as a catchup mechanic. Like, items that give you 100% chance to succeed an upgrade. Enough of those to get you to a certain gear score. Currently that gets you 1050, but it skips from 1050 to 1302 ( I don't know why, there are several weird jumps like that). I still don't have the engraving ranks I need, I've been working on them slowly, plus taking advantage of the free ones they give you during events. They're not account/character bound, which is great. Plus, I have bought costumes and mounts off the AH. Like the new motorbike mount was 3.5k. The costume that went with it was like 6.5k. Legendary costumes (2% AP, instead of 1) costs like 15-20k gold.

And the gold I do make? That's to feed my Scout, and somewhat to feed my Reaper. I'd never be able to make enough to gear up my other 6 alts.

I don't really know the cash equivalent. You can pay with cash for either cosmetics/mounts/pets and sell them on the AH, or you can buy blue crystals (these are used to add gear/skill presets, warehouse space, 30 days of time on your pets extra abilities etc), and sell them on a separate AH just for that. Currently, in RU I think 100 crystals sells for like 500ish gold. Also, there's a sales tax in the white (cash shop) crystals, lol. Something like, selling 100 blue crystals costs you 5 white crystals.
 
Caeden

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Man, after being really excited to try this, the past two pages have completely deflated me.
 
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Cybsled

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All these last few pages have confirmed to me is this is another fucking p2w Korean MMO. What a shocker.
 
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Voldeth

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Raes does a pretty good job of summarizing Lost Ark's 'p2w' -- I do think that the Western audience is certainly going to be a bit challenged by the concept and how it works, since it's not really a traditional P2W format. The term that makes more sense is pay to progress a bit faster.

As an example, the founder packs contain absolutely nothing that is P2W. The potions, shillings, etc that it provides is incredibly trivial. Stuff like porting around at a reduced cost is a very, very small quality of life improvement. You won't ever run into a moment while playing where you think to yourself, "boy, I sure feel disadvantaged that I paid a bit more shilling to port around."

t's important to understand that in LA, there are effectively 4 currencies;

1-Shilling, which you obtain in abundance (this is the droppable currency). For NA's start, there won't be very many things to spend this currency on since respecing is now free.
2- Royal Crystals which is the cash shop currency.
3- Blue Crystals, which is another cash shop currency.
3- Gold, which you obtain in limited amount in game but you can also exchange Blue crystals for in the cash shop.

What is very grindy is the process of upgrading your gear. The main component that will prevent you from continuing the upgrade process is gold. Thus a significant focus on your end game progress is focused on making as much gold as possible. There are two primary ways to achieve this;

1- Complete your dailies/weeklies. This is where alts factor in and why you can't really progress very much with just one character -- provided you have 2-3 and you're keeping up on your dailies/weeklies, you'll be able to keep upgrading your gear in a reasonable timeframe. I'll define 'reasonable' here as being able to complete all content as it's released and feel a sense of progression similar to any MMO. You will hit a wall if you try to play with only one 'main' and don't funnel additional gold via alts (unless you also significantly use method 2).
2- Whale the AH.

The 'issue' with 2 is that, especially for something like NA where we'll undoubtedly see content released at a quicker pace, spending cash here is going to be incredibly stupid, especially at the beginning. Timmy 'can't progress to the next tier of content' shouldn't really occur for a bit. It's also unfortunately why Amazon can't really do much to change things. The entire end game system revolves around the gold farm to upgrade your stuff. With that being said your average player really won't be impacted very much here. Sure, you'll have a few whales that will upgrade their gear to +20 because they swiped a lot. The increase from your +15 will be rather trivial in comparison however and the next tier of content that gets released will have you starting back with new gear regardless.
 
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Tide27

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I'm actually ok with all of this.

The game looks phenomenal, the graphics and combat look amazing , and it's free.

I have zero issue with a developer trying to make money from a product. There is zero reason , in my case , to feel I need to be a first to 50, first to a certain teir of content, etc. So therefore there is no need or requirement for me to feel the need to toss RL currency into the game.

Someone else progressing to the next level of content before me has no direct impact on my enjoyment level. I think that is why I currently like ESO the most in terms of mmos....I can leave the game for 6 months, log in , and still be just as relevant at content as when I left.

I am not a pvper for the most part, but it seems that even that content is not effected by a cash shop, as everything is equalized in their PVP scene. So whether you are dirt poor, or have 30k cash invested in a toon...you are still equal I think.

Clearly I have not played the game, and only going off of videos and others people's perception....but this type of p2w model does not impact my enjoyment level of the game...though I can see it impacting those that feel the need to be first in line and racing for content.

Solid win from.my perspective.
 
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krismunich

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Voldeth said:
Raes does a pretty good job of summarizing Lost Ark's 'p2w' -- I do think that the Western audience is certainly going to be a bit challenged by the concept and how it works, since it's not really a traditional P2W format. The term that makes more sense is pay to progress a bit faster.

As an example, the founder packs contain absolutely nothing that is P2W. The potions, shillings, etc that it provides is incredibly trivial. Stuff like porting around at a reduced cost is a very, very small quality of life improvement. You won't ever run into a moment while playing where you think to yourself, "boy, I sure feel disadvantaged that I paid a bit more shilling to port around."

t's important to understand that in LA, there are effectively 4 currencies;

1-Shilling, which you obtain in abundance (this is the droppable currency). For NA's start, there won't be very many things to spend this currency on since respecing is now free.
2- Royal Crystals which is the cash shop currency.
3- Blue Crystals, which is another cash shop currency.
3- Gold, which you obtain in limited amount in game but you can also exchange Blue crystals for in the cash shop.
[..] regardless.
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Thank you, Vol! That helped me understanding the whole P2W debate/issue much better than 4 hours of YT videos on the topic.
 
mkopec

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Yeah I cant stand the mindless grinds like this purely based on RNG. This is the thing I hated about Black Desert. Once you got to a certain point you would have to RNG upgrade your gear through some BS gambling upgrade system or grind endless amounts of money to buy that gear from someone else that RNG upgrades with endless supply of gold for fun. Not to mention the 1000 cuts to your pocket book by making the game as painful to play as possible without spending some moneys. It wasnt up to Genshin levels of thievery, but it was there for sure.

I have a problem with games that aggressively try to take your moneys like this.
 
Cybsled

Cybsled

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Tying upgrading gear to cash shop shortcuts is what BDO and Archeage did, though. Archeage had a massive bonus to whaling - it was almost impossible to get good gear without swiping a credit card because of how bullshit their gear upgrade system was.

The way you are describing needing multiple alts to get gold kind of reminds me of Archeage and labor. The only way to circumvent needing to buy labor pots was to have multiple alts that you could log in to spend the labor for you.
 
Zindan

Zindan

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mkopec said:
Yeah I cant stand the mindless grinds like this purely based on RNG. This is the thing I hated about Black Desert. Once you got to a certain point you would have to RNG upgrade your gear through some BS gambling upgrade system or grind endless amounts of money to buy that gear from someone else that RNG upgrades with endless supply of gold for fun. Not to mention the 1000 cuts to your pocket book by making the game as painful to play as possible without spending some moneys. It wasnt up to Genshin levels of thievery, but it was there for sure.

I have a problem with games that aggressively try to take your moneys like this.
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I'm not seeing how you would want to play LA then, tbh. Other than initial leveling up process, of course. After that the game seems to turn into something far worse than BDO, its just presented in a much more familiar form. You still have to grind for the currency to play the RNG upgrade game. In BDO nothing limits your progress, nothing limits your meaningful playtime aside from you yourself. Reading what has been described here about LA, the games monetization system limits how you play and for how long you play. How is that good?

Given the rates that Raes described, if you don't swipe or make several alts, you are going to be effectively locked out of content for months and months, and even when you acquire enough gold to begin the upgrade process, good ol'RNG can fuck you over. I guess I sound a bit negative towards the game, but I already know that I won't be playing it for an extended amount of time due to it having all the shitty things I hate about typical mmo's built into its endgame (RNG upgrading, dailies, mechanics based raids). So for me it will be easy to lvl up a couple characters, hopefully experience everything I want too, then uninstall.
 
Brahma

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Voldeth said:
Raes does a pretty good job of summarizing Lost Ark's 'p2w' -- I do think that the Western audience is certainly going to be a bit challenged by the concept and how it works, since it's not really a traditional P2W format. The term that makes more sense is pay to progress a bit faster.

As an example, the founder packs contain absolutely nothing that is P2W. The potions, shillings, etc that it provides is incredibly trivial. Stuff like porting around at a reduced cost is a very, very small quality of life improvement. You won't ever run into a moment while playing where you think to yourself, "boy, I sure feel disadvantaged that I paid a bit more shilling to port around."

t's important to understand that in LA, there are effectively 4 currencies;

1-Shilling, which you obtain in abundance (this is the droppable currency). For NA's start, there won't be very many things to spend this currency on since respecing is now free.
2- Royal Crystals which is the cash shop currency.
3- Blue Crystals, which is another cash shop currency.
3- Gold, which you obtain in limited amount in game but you can also exchange Blue crystals for in the cash shop.

What is very grindy is the process of upgrading your gear. The main component that will prevent you from continuing the upgrade process is gold. Thus a significant focus on your end game progress is focused on making as much gold as possible. There are two primary ways to achieve this;

1- Complete your dailies/weeklies. This is where alts factor in and why you can't really progress very much with just one character -- provided you have 2-3 and you're keeping up on your dailies/weeklies, you'll be able to keep upgrading your gear in a reasonable timeframe. I'll define 'reasonable' here as being able to complete all content as it's released and feel a sense of progression similar to any MMO. You will hit a wall if you try to play with only one 'main' and don't funnel additional gold via alts (unless you also significantly use method 2).
2- Whale the AH.

The 'issue' with 2 is that, especially for something like NA where we'll undoubtedly see content released at a quicker pace, spending cash here is going to be incredibly stupid, especially at the beginning. Timmy 'can't progress to the next tier of content' shouldn't really occur for a bit. It's also unfortunately why Amazon can't really do much to change things. The entire end game system revolves around the gold farm to upgrade your stuff. With that being said your average player really won't be impacted very much here. Sure, you'll have a few whales that will upgrade their gear to +20 because they swiped a lot. The increase from your +15 will be rather trivial in comparison however and the next tier of content that gets released will have you starting back with new gear regardless.
Click to expand...

Fantastic explanation!
 
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