Lost Ark Online

I don't think its been mentioned recently with all the p2w/p2progress and soft cap talk, but another method of progressing your main is to have alts that can do dailies/weeklies so that you can essentially feed your main. So if you're the type to grind away at content you have plenty of meaningful content through your alts as well.

Yeah, I love BDO, so grinding is my fucking jam. I'm super excited for this, but also bummed at the prospect that I'll lose all that progress/cash I threw at BDO if I swap to this.

Everything about this seems like something I'll absolutely love though. I hated grinding in my youth, but as I get older and more free time, I absolutely love just sitting down, smoking a hit or two, throwing on some music/tv/twitch and grinding for hours late at night. Something about it is extremely peaceful/relaxing.

mkopec said:

Dude this game has been out for a few years now. All they are doing is localizing the game for US, basically one big translation plus some voice acting. This is not alpha by any means like we know alphas to be. this is more like beta 5.

Click to expand...

Well yea, its a quality game. Its why I think it will be more successful than New World.

mkopec said:

Meh the two games are entirely different and while there is some crossover, these two games attract completely different people. I think games like Diablo2 and POE should worry more. But thats just my take on it.

Click to expand...

I feel like Lost Ark is mostly going to attract the ARPG crowd and KR MMO players (BDO, Elyion, BLESS, etc.). I feel like New World has more "western" appeal to it and agree that the two games will compete with each other very minimally.

I enjoy Lost Ark, its pretty and I have fun.

New World makes me hate life.

If Lost Ark offers a premium sub that removes the gating id pay for it np, especially if it was like the traditional 10-15 montly

Springbok said:

My problem with Lost Ark was never the ride to 50, or the end game content per se, it was always gating shit behind time locked ptp asian bullshit.

Click to expand...

Eh, I see the appeal of being able to "finish" your content each day/night/week, etc. and then go do other shit. That'll help free up a lot of my gaming backlog. However, I also understand shittiness of wanting to play the game, but you kinda can't.

Do we know if they are adding more classes before release?

I played Bard to 15 and Soul Fist or w/e to 25, or 26.

Id assume they will be adding more classes, from my understanding some of the classes that are missing are from when the game originally first came out. The intro story for those classes or screen with skills ect prob just wasnt done being put to english yet. I got a Berserker to around 35 in the alpha and the only complaints I have are world bosses have a FUCK load of health which is fine but people can easily reset them. I did all the world bosses up to 35 and prob had up to five if not more resets happen, some 10-15minutes into the fight. I also noticed as the game progressed and got harder I needed to dodge more which again is fine but I found myself animation locked a lot when needing to dodge.

Hamshire said:

Id assume they will be adding more classes, from my understanding some of the classes that are missing are from when the game originally first came out. The intro story for those classes or screen with skills ect prob just wasnt done being put to english yet. I got a Berserker to around 35 in the alpha and the only complaints I have are world bosses have a FUCK load of health which is fine but people can easily reset them. I did all the world bosses up to 35 and prob had up to five if not more resets happen, some 10-15minutes into the fight. I also noticed as the game progressed and got harder I needed to dodge more which again is fine but I found myself animation locked a lot when needing to dodge.

Click to expand...

Yea, we should see a new class for the upcoming beta, no idea which and maybe another for launch. I think people will say combat feels clunky for a couple of reason; Not being used to the hotkey setup, and playing a class that might not have much mobility beyond the Dodge. All the boss fights I did on the way to lvl41 were all about being patient for the opportunity to deal dmg while staying mobile. I really hated running into a boss with double armor, which required Weak Point skills to get through... but not having them slotted in. Maybe for a long tedious fight.

This might attract people who like PoE / Diablo, but those people will tire of the game quickly since LA has nothing in common with either game other than its isometric viewpoint. It is truly a MMO before anything else. Amazon has a lot of work left to do with LA before, but I imagine the Alpha client we played is fairly old compared to what the Beta will have in regards to the translations (lots and lots of VA / Subtitle mismatches).

I'm kinda curious how long I will play the game though. There is so much I'll feel that I -need- to do which could be time gated that I might end up frustrated with that grind and bail. I guess it will come down to how engaging it all is, if it supports a casual playstyle like BDO (which I doubt) I can see myself playing a long time, but I think character progress will end rather abruptly with every form of progression being locked in their Raids, which is like WoW. In WoW, say with a new expansion, I just level up a character and do all the content up to Mythic and then bail. I think LA will be like that. I'll have fun with it til then though, I'm sure.

Brahma said:

I really hope they have a sub model that opens everything up. I hate timer gates.

Click to expand...

Having a sub option is doubtful, for a number of reasons. The closest thing to it is the Beatrice Blessing. In order to do a subscription model, first they have to get Smilegate to code for that, having an account flag that removes the limits and all that. A bit of work, but doable. Also, the daily/weekly limits are pretty much the main incentive to swipe. Usually it's grind your ass off, or pull out the cc, but in LA it's just wait til next week, and the next and the next, or swipe. In addition, some of the things that whales buy off the cash shop to sell to players is bags of upgrade mats. Sub model affects this market. A sub model has the potential to be more successful, but to do it properly would require a fundamental redesign of the endgame. Sort of like they did with Season 2, but a bit more drastic. And if they did add a sub, you can be certain that other regions would complain that they didn't have that option.

TLDR The entire game is designed around the cash shop. Having a sub option breaks this design.

DatModz is one of the few people who was allowed to stream the tech Alpha for a couple of hours so he might have inside info.

For those that can't or don't want to watch, he says the next beta is in July.

Rumors going around that the 15th class for NA will be Sorceress, which they just showed off in the Korean Summer update video. Apparently, they did this for the JP version where they released a class in the JP beta and then it was released on the live servers for Korea.



Translated notes -


One thing that really caught my eye was the mainline quest revamp and faster leveling. Similar to the JP and RU version, some updates seem to come at similar times and some updates are delayed. I wonder if this is something NA gets right away? Especially with the all the P2 "Progress" going around.

Delly said:

One thing that really caught my eye was the mainline quest revamp and faster leveling. Similar to the JP and RU version, some updates seem to come at similar times and some updates are delayed. I wonder if this is something NA gets right away? Especially with the all the P2 "Progress" going around.

Click to expand...

The pay to progress really has little to do with the leveling to 50. Leveling to 50 the first time isn't horrible, although IMO there's too little focus on combat (the game's primary strength) and way too much on npcs yakking at you (one line at a time). It becomes a chore if you like running up alts, (although that's a little less work than the first time, since you can mainly do only the main story quests, since the small amounts of xp you get for side quests are unnecessary and most of the rewards beyond that are account level things you can only get once anyway) and while you can buy a boost to 50 for relatively little cost, it can add up, especially when you need to start buying character slots as well. The quest/leveling revamp is translated badly, so hard to see what they are actually doing there. The prologue is already fairly short and skippable on any character if you've done it once.


I am interested in the Practice Range improvements, and the different voice choices. I made an older looking Scout on one of my alt accounts and it was quite disconcerting having an old man constantly giggling like a 15 yr old korean kid during combat.