After last weeks November 29th maintenance, Smilegate released a massive communique regarding upcoming updates they will be focusing on for the first half of December.
http://www.inven.co.kr/board/lostark/4820/604
The pertinent part comes after the notes regarding changes made for that specific patch (where they made some adjustments based on player feedback including reducing the item level requirements for some end game content).
The upcoming changes for December 5th and 12th will include balance adjustments for existing classes, making it easier and adding different ways to farm accessories, implementing and enforcing a very strict macro blocking policy (basically, they are warning players to even disable their mouse utilities which normally provides the ability to perform macro like actions), lowering the current “difficulty” of some island content (difficulty in the sense that there is currently an inordinate amount of traveling back and forth being an island and a continent in order to complete various quests – more on this later).
Additionally, they are reviewing the current difficulty of completing adventure books (part of the games achievement system where you can earn some pretty decent rewards including special mounts, additional class and life skill points, etc) as well as acquiring Island Hearts (this is an important game mechanic which opens up additional content), buffing stats on legendary items, and making the game more “alt” friendly.
One of the games core systems is its sailing. It was partially designed to act as a time sink as well as providing an alternate means of exploration and farming. The main problem is that some of the games level 50 world questing (blue colored quests), Epona’s Dailies (green colored quests), and the adventure/exploration questing (purple colored quests) require travel between continent locations and islands. With continents, there is a faster “ship transport” that can move you in between the 5 current continents quickly (but at a significant cost in silver shilling). The only way to travel between continent and islands is via sailing (which even with the fastest ship, can take 5-10 minutes one way).
The concept is fine but it admittedly does get old after awhile when you take on say an Epona’s Daily (which is sort of like a courier style quest where some of them need to be completed elsewhere). That is why the game has something called an Epona’s Coupon which allows the autocompletion of these quests (once they’ve been done once by the player). While these can be earned in limited ways in-game, it’s a popular cash shop item (I refer to it as the most blatant of pay-2-convenience items in the game).
I do laud most parts of the games story line questing since many of the key story line ones; they’ve tried to put a twist on some of the usual kill “n” amount of mobs, deliver this thing somewhere else, fetch or gather type of quests. That isn’t to say there isn’t a lot of the mundane stuff (which there is during the main line questing). A lot of the Epona’s Dailies/Weeklies aren’t as creative though which thus makes them feel more like the typical MMO daily chore. But they need to be done since you unlock things like required emotes or songs that allows progressing past certain quests (which opens up quest lines to acquire island hearts or additional songs/emotes). Generally, it’s just different mechanics similar to grinding for gear (or the materials needed to enchant them or in other cases, crafting gear).
But some of it istedious and that is some of the feedback they’ve been receiving from their Korean player base now that being three weeks in, have many past the leveling phase into the end game progression grind. Myself, I just resumed a few days ago (new account), hit 50 in around 30 hours which included collecting the Mokoko seeds (these are hidden throughout the game world and if not done while questing, can take roughly 5-6 hours of running back to all of these earlier places including dungeons, to look for). I realize the amount of time they spent designing these hidden spots in the game (meant to appease those into adventuring/exploration). Plus not all of them can easily be gotten to as you need a song first to open up access to the place where they are hidden. The game currently has like 650 of them and I’ve managed to collect 514 of them while re-leveling and doing my fresh 50 questing.
So yes, the game has several different forms of grinding involved besides the usual gearing which is also item level gated (for different tiers of Guardian Raids and Chaos Dungeons). But I can see where the Korean feedback is coming from since there is a level of tedium involved with some of these where it can begin to feel unfun after awhile. The game isn’t very alt friendly at this point because while the Mokoko seeds that are found are counted account wide, only one character can claim the rewards associated with them. Likewise, Island Hearts, songs, and special emotes are character based meaning you will need to regrind each of those for every other character created.
Given the current tedium involved, this is what they are probably going to try tackling first (to try to make it alt friendly). The alternative is they could just bite the bullet and make those unlocks account wide (and compromise on completely nerfing the current acquisition methods except maybe reducing some of the back and forthing around). From Smilegate’s perspective, they’re having all of these subclasses being created and so they don’t have this desire to discourage players from not wanting to create/play alts. Myself, my take has always been that I don’t mind grinding so long as it is fun. I’m kind of enjoying things on my new character (Soul Master again but this time, playing it properly). I would love to level up my Summoner and Berserker but am waiting to see what adjustments they make.
As far as the prior queue situations, they’ve begun to drop into the low 4 digit range during Korean prime time. So the additional 2 servers plus the increased capacity for all of them as well as the drop off of the more casual players, has stabilized the login situation for the time being. Given the much larger numbers that previously projected or even anticipated, the game is considered a huge success in South Korea (which now places larger pressure on them to not just continue to service this well into and past official launch, but also positioning this for the larger global market). I’m personally not expecting Smilegate to make any comments regarding a western release until next year though given this recent note about upcoming changes which they will need to implement and then monitor at least throughout the remainder of this year.
One final note; there are some folks once again taking some of these notes as a sign that the game will be officially launching on December 12th. Maybe I’m missing something but given how Smilegate has communicated about prior closed beta tests and the current open beta test (with several weeks time leading up to them), I think there are some folks who are reading too much into Smilegate’s message about these upcoming changes.
