If you don’t want to lose any brain cells, it’s best to avoid getting too involved in the forums for the game during this technical beta (this applies to the Steam community discussions AND the official forums). There’s some good topics BUT there are also the usual troll infested ones that is customary at this stage. That includes all of the p2w/not p2w arguments, whether or not beta progress will be wiped (revealing once again that common sense isn’t very common), or the game being too easy (where once you present the retort that the challenge begins at level cap, is normally met with some inane response). There is obviously more, but this is the usual drivel that gets posted.
Is the game for everyone? Most definitely not. Some folks will absolutely hate it, and I have no problems with that. And if they want to opine about it, that is also fine (but with the following caveat mentioned in the next paragraph). Myself, I’m ok with the game (while it is on the higher end of the scale, it’s never been my most top hyped game even though it became something I was looking forward to). I have no illusions of this being the end all be all, since it will always be a Korean designed MMO. The graphical aesthetics (heavily eastern influence) is already a known polarizing issue when it comes to games that come out of Asia. The camera and control scheme is also going to be a hit or miss for some, as will the actual game play. And last but not least, the way free to play business models tend to monetize the in-game cash shop, will always be a controversial topic (because everyone has their own personal definition of what pay to win is).
The issue I have is with the “attention” seeking concern trolls who make multiple posts/replies to get a reaction, and keep poking the bear to garner even more reactions. Myself, I didn’t even bother leaving feedback for New World on Steam. I just made a blog posting here eviscerating it to get my opinion of it off my chest, and called it a day. No one cares anyway about what some random blogger like myself thinks. It’s not going to change the minds of those who really do like the game (more power to them). And no one would care if I posted the same on New World’s Steam discussion forum. I blog just to dump what I’m thinking about, so that it doesn’t fester in my head (if I had the talent for keeping things short and sweet, using Twitter would be a godsend; but that isn’t me as this blog post clearly shows by being on the usual wordy side).
But I digress, Amazon Games does need to do a much better job at messaging what this game is though. Just like the Korean betas, there are players who have no idea about the niche this game was designed for. There are many who are asking about different control/movement schemes as well as whether on not the camera can be unlocked. There’s a lot of feedback requesting for WASD movement and moveable camera. Both of these aren’t going to happen since the design that exists is a deliberate decision covered by Smilegate RPG’s game director. They came to that decision after their 2015 focus group tests which was also in conjunction to the objectives of the game during that timeframe when they were also trying to carve out a specific niche from the multitude of MMO’s that used WASD movement and an unlocked third person camera.
During the timeframe the game was still in early development, there was this drive by many different Korean design studios, to create a Diablo style MMO-ARPG with an isometric quarter view camera, click to move movement and combat. And there were several of those: Bluehole Ginno with Devilian (which was one of the rare cases of having WASD movement alongside click to move with a mouse), NPICSOFT with Elite Lord of Alliance, Webzen with MU Legend, and NCsoft with Lineage Eternal (aka Project TL). Only the latter has yet to launch while both Devilian and ELOA are no longer in service. MU Legend is no longer in active development; publishing has been taken over by Valofe.
The MMORPG market has also stagnated over this time which has led to MMO players looking for any new title to latch onto. Lost Ark represents one of the last major MMO’s out of South Korea to finally make it over to the west. And it’s no surprise there are so many different demographics giving it a try, and finding it to be not exactly what they expected. It’s not an ARPG like Diablo or Path of Exile. It has that same fixed isometric camera and a similar (but not exactly the same) control scheme. For some ARPG players, the scheme used for Lost Ark is driving them crazy even though it isn’t that big of an issue. Myself, I always change the keybinds for this game to use my function and number keys for the main combat due to muscle memory (I still find myself trying to move with WASD so I just reassign those off of actual skills and put a regenerative battle potion for health on W).
Lost Ark is also MMO style linear progression with the usual gating mechanic via item level/gear score (and not the sort of item hunt with RNG based itemization where the focus is on build diversity). And as mentioned up top, it was not designed to have WASD movement and an unlocked camera. The games underlying pathing engine and server AI (for it’s simulation code for things like skill prediction) are designed for click to move (this affects things like targeting and monster aggro).
Smilegate RPG has seen this feedback several times over (KR, RU, and JP) and have made it clear that this is the system they will be sticking with for Lost Ark. Myself, I would’ve preferred WASD and an unlocked third person camera system because it would’ve made the entire exploration aspect of the game, that much more immersive (think in the context of how exploration is in ArcheAge, Guild Wars 2, and even Genshin Impact). But understanding their original design objectives, I’m ok with Lost Ark being the way it is. It’s unfortunate Amazon Games did not touch upon this with a more comprehensive message with Smilegate RPG, outlining some of these details (so that it would save them from having to see umpteen different posts about this topic).
Another thing driving some players “crazy” is the leveling process (including complaints about too many cutscenes). In order to preserve part of that story telling aspect, Smilegate RPG made many key cutscenes non-skippable for the initial playthrough. All of this was a deliberate design decision by the original team (most of whom are no longer with Smilegate due to the labor practices they had in place several years ago) to have the leveling process incorporate that sort of cinematic design. Yes, the game does tend to overuse far too many fetch and kill quests as filler to draw out the main story quests. Like most MMO’s, the 1 to max level process is a tutorial to the actual end game. For Lost Ark, that’s a 10-12 hour journey if you bullrush the main quest, exploration/expedition quests, and only gather mokoko seeds that are easy to get to. For myself, I’m taking the usual semi-casual route (during this technical beta, I’m not focusing on collecting mokoko’s like I did with the Korean soft launch since it’s only a week long).
But the complaints about allowing all of these cutscenes to be skippable is like reaching to a point where “why even bother playing this game?” There is always that particular demographic that wants to get to end game now, everything else be damned. And yet if all of this was skippable, these same folks would be crying about how there isn’t any story/lore. I’m not saying the game has a really deep story to it. But it does try to present it in ways much better than most other Korean (and even western) MMO’s do (yes, I’m regretting reading some of these posts on Steam and their official forums).
As far as performance issues, I’m not encountering any (though there are some players experiencing FPS drops and stuttering that are likely due to their particular hardware configuration). In reality, the client performance for myself is so far the best I’ve had to date, based on how much smoother the wall of glory siege (below) was for me compared to my KR beta experience.
