Lost Ark

For some reason, I experienced no queues when I tried it :)

I couldn't stomach more than 10 minutes, though.
 
For some reason, I experienced no queues when I tried it :)

I couldn't stomach more than 10 minutes, though.

That is really not very long. I can't think of much you could bounce off so quickly.

Let me guess…. The controls were not familiar enough? You want to jump in and immediately know how to control the game perfectly?

I find the 8 abilities pretty awkward, too. I don't think I properly got the hang of it until after level 50 and still fumble a bit when I need to use a counter ability.

But I find it also makes the game feel fresher and less like a Diablo clone. There's a bit of learning something new involved.

Obviously you wont see any challenge in the first 10 minutes, or even 10 hours, but once you get to 50 and the real game starts it gets pretty challenging and fun with the various dungeons and raids. There's a couple of them that I actually think are too hard and I've even considered complaining to them about how some mechanics are taking the fun out of some bosses.

Like, the final tier 1 abyssal dungeon has so many instant wipe mechanics that your gear score is almost completely irrelevant.

Theres another guardian boss with an instant wipe that I hate because you have to keep up 1 or 2 stacks of a debuff so you have time when he starts casting the wipe to get 3. I feel like it ruins the fight focusing on the wipe mechanic when its more fun to focus on smashing up the boss with the excellent combat system.

But most of the end-game content has been very fun.

There's just a few things that I'm kind of too lazy to do. Lots of collecting stuff. Plus, I can't really be bothered running my two level 50 alts through the storyline to the tier2 areas.

But, yeah, over all my impressions are pretty positive. I'm not much into questing, but if you can push through it and get to the end-game there's some great dungeons…. and more questing. :p
 
Joined
Jul 10, 2007
Messages
2,976
Location
Australia
No, the game screamed of spectacle over compelling design - and seemed to offer zero challenge or interesting progression (it seemed to me you essentially had all skills from a very early stage).

Coupled with what I know about having to drone through 10-20 hours of "tutorial" zero challenge content made me quit before investing.

I like the whole rags to riches thing too much.

I hate games that start me off as some kind of superhero that can do amazing things - because it dulls my sense of progression.
 
Is it that Korean MMO?
Oh, um. It wasn't my number 1 vote, but if we're going by hours played then I suppose it was my most played game of 2022. I don't think I saw it on the list but I wasn't looking.

There is a lot to like about Lost Ark but it eventually started feeling like logging in to do daily/weekly chores to get upgrade materials and gold then see them all vanish on failing 1% chance to upgrade.

New raid would come out and it was clearly going to be a couple more months of grinding daily chores to get in at minimum gearscore but then there's new items to start the process again.

The raids are really hard too, which I'm fine with, but people started to get really elitist and would quit the raid if it didn't look like we'd win it easily. They want overgeared whales who pay to buy and upgrade everything and that's not an option for me. Top Korean players have spent $700,000 USD on upgrades and auction house. Good groups would be selling raid "Bus" where you'd have to pay thousands of gold to get a spot in the raid.

So here's the catch that no one really mentioned in the loads of fan hype videos I was watching to try and work out how P2W it really was...

1. You can't give gear to your alts! Can only sell it in the Auction House.

2. The "pheon" currency that you use to buy things on the auction house is probably the most p2w thing. You get like 10 per month in the daily login rewards and in tier1 the price was like 1 coin per item, but at high level it keeps going up to like 15 coins and beyond.

Last time I logged in was August.

edit:
Couple more things worth mentioning, especially for anyone reading who was thinking about trying it out,

The leveling dungeons are great but everyone will be soloing them. At launch there were groups but don't waste your time in a queue for leveling dungeons, anymore.

The bots! I'm not up to date on the bots but I would say even though Steam says theres 300k players at least half of those could be bots. I've never seen a game with more bots running around. :)
 
Last edited:
Joined
Jul 10, 2007
Messages
2,976
Location
Australia
Back
Top Bottom