As I noted in several updates in this previous posting (regarding these jump-start/fresh start servers), the jump-start aspect primarily focuses on fast vertical progression with gear/item level to get players into raiding as quickly as possible. It however pretty much ignores horizontal progression (*). A really simple example is leveling up your stronghold in order to research the tier 3 honing buffs (increasing the success rate, lowering the XP required, lowering the costs, etc). You need enough gold and materials to do this research. So you need to mindfully log and mine so you can research to upgrade your stronghold, and to research these buffs.
With gold, if you aren’t lucky with Fate Embers or the Blooming Mokoko event, you need to grind out Abyss Raids (but also need to be aware you’ll also need gold once you hone past +15 on gear). I’ve yet to get any Fate Embers since this jump-start went live so yes, you are still subject to the standard RNG with them dropping during your runs (and then if they do drop, your chances of it being gold will be low as well). As for honing, I constantly am running out of destruction stones (weapon) from honing failures (I’m trying to hit 1460) since I’m missing the stronghold buffs. I blew through most of my fusion mats from honing failures with my armor (only one of them was a one tap going from 1445 to 1460 while every other slot was failure until almost close to pity). And I need to hit each item level mark for the super express to get the rewards (more stones, more fusion mats, etc). If I run out of fusion mats, my alternatives are Mari’s Shop (where I only have a few blue crystals or I could get more by swiping) or fishing a lot so that I can craft (but I’ll also need to complete the research and also need gold to craft them). Thus I know what I need to grind to get there. But explain to me how that RNG failure aspect is actually fun to a player who is COMPLETELY NEW to the game (and potentially runs into poor RNG). Newsflash: it is not.
Since the game does not provide alternative methods to acquire gear past the relic grade (from the hyper express pass; if you don’t use the pass, you can only get epic grade Dimensional gear from tier 3 chaos dungeons; after that, you need to run Abyss dungeons for legendary tier, and then the initial legion raids for relic grade gear), you need to run Brelshaza legion raids to get that ancient gear (to gear transfer your +15/1490 relic gear so that you can lower the honing costs/better success rate until you hit +15 with the ancient gear; at that point, gold is also required). I mean I get it; this entire design is meant to drive players into a specific content flow. That is one of the problems with Lost Ark’s item level treadmill/raiding push design though. It’s their primary focus while mostly ignoring everything else (including “jump starting” at least portions of the horizontal progression to match this compressed vertical gear progression). Veteran players (what comprises most of these fresh start servers) know about this BUT completely new players are going to drown in learning about all of the horizontal stuff they need to do in order to optimize their characters.
Let me put this a different way using Guild Wars 2 as an example. If ArenaNet mainly prioritized raiding and fractals and constantly gated gearing/character optimization behind these, that prioritization would DEVALUE the other parts of the game that many players find fun (like it’s exploration, it’s crafting, it’s open world events and metas). I don’t have to do raiding/fractals in order to enjoy playing Guild Wars 2 (where there are so many other things to do when it comes to PvE, WvW, achievements, renown [even though I don’t really care for systems like this], crafting, exploration). Guild Wars 2 is far from perfect either (a lot of annoying story quests, annoying mob aggro, ton of bugs/glitches, etc).
My point is that Smilegate RPG/Gold River is overtly focused on legion raids and very little else besides some of the story aspects (which is of average quality IMHO), and that shows in the challenge they are running for the Thaemine legion raid in Korea (the first 10 clears will have their names in a sort of “hall of fame” leaderboard on the KR Lost Ark site and in-game special title/icon; after those clears, the raid will be nerfed, and continue to see nerfs over time) by overtuning it to where KR leviathans are finding it difficult with their mega-swiped characters (lot of teams are disbanding in just the first few days). I’m talking about the following where they (Gold River and some of the designers) talk about this stuff.
As soon as I watched this (with a english translation transcript), more so has this game dropped down on something I intend to play with any frequency (because they are so narrowly focused on raid challenges and methods to make it easier over time for players to meet those item level requirements). Anything else of consequence including most of the other systems in the game, are just seen as a means to an end versus trying to make those other systems more fun/engaging for demographics who don’t want to constantly have to be doing this item level grind.
AGS themselves aren’t any help because their community engagement is similarly narrow focused (most of the folks they end up engaging with and getting feedback from, are those who have stuck with the game, and enjoy the raids/game play loop). Newsflash: A LOT DO NOT ENJOY THIS WHEN IT IS THE PRIMARY FOCAL POINT (it’s hard for those who do enjoy the raids to understand this differing point of view though). As I noted before, they did put out a player survey on Reddit back in August, but failed to make note of that on their own official site/notifying players via e-mail (I get some of their other marketing stuff, but it is always inconsistent when it comes to updates, and never have I gotten an e-mail asking to voluntarily fill out these surveys). Thus I only learned of that after the fact. So when their outreach is lousy like this, it’s no surprise they aren’t going to get a broader amount of feedback (especially from those who have lowered their engagement level with the game but not completely quit/uninstalled).
So after seeing the above, I am more so convinced that the core issue with Lost Ark, will never be addressed because a lot of this is Gold River (he’s a great communicator but his vision for the game is fairly narrowly focused). The concurrency numbers for this past weekend also spell this out (unsurprising to me because you aren’t going to gain back a lot of casual players who found the game off putting once they got into tier 3). I noted in my prior postings that they really needed to peak at close to the CCU’s they had back in April (the peak however was only around 56K where it is slowly tapering off) in order to at least show a marked reversal of the declining trend over time. One month in, I do expect the CCU numbers to cave (and I expect AGS to merge the server into the general pool within the first 3 months).
And again, it is obvious most of it is churn from veterans (existing ones and ones who quit after previous raids; the number of actual new players is not enough to sustain these jump-start servers and does little with addressing the overall retention issue because you cannot half-ass the jump-start aspect by only doing the vertical portion, and mostly ignoring the horizontal portion). Yes, some folks are enjoying this jump-start since they’ve been able to take part and learn raids they were never able to do before (since it hasn’t reached the gatekeeping stage yet, but expect that to change in the next week or two). While it is easy to construe these posts as being negative, it is me being realistic regarding why this game has problems with retention (I didn’t expect Lost Ark to become this narrowly focused end game where most everything else is just a devalued means to an end).
(*) Yes, I know Tripod Studio is working on a horizontal revamp that will be released in KR first. But there aren’t specific details on what that will entail (like it if will be just making them less of a grind/removing portions of it, or actually making some of it fun for even casuals to enjoy/giving this demographic activities to keep them engaged). The point is that for something like a jump-start, they should’ve also automatically unlocked more of that horizontal content such as various island related content (songs/emotes/souls) and giving your stronghold a more appropriate level/accelerated research that at least gives you the T3 honing buffs from the get go.
NOTE: 0 Fate Embers since the jump-start went live. Gave their fresh start a shot but it’s just not fun. I think I am done with Lost Ark for awhile.
