After Lost Ark’s second CBT, I wrote a brief comparison between it, MU Legend and Devilian. Being able to get in playtime constrained only by the amount of time I can put in (versus being limited by having to split time with two other folks) has allowed me to look more closely at things that I missed in the very short time I spent in the first two CBT’s.
I was not able to play on day 1 but finally managed some play time on day 2. Graphics update = noticeable improvement in some areas and not so great in others (color wise). Digressing, part of that time I ended up wasting was due to spending way too much time in the character creation/customization part not because it has a ton of options; part of that was because I was trying to find a way to see if I could shrink the ears on the mage/magician (it’s design is elf-influenced). The following was like “take 5” of my character creation since the previous recordings went on too long haplessly looking for ear resizing options…. in the end, I wasn’t satisfied with how this test character came out looking.
I only created this character (subclass I selected at the end was Arcana) in order to play through the entire class prologue (though this is the main class I will be going with once the game launches in Korea). I will play it until I get the newly added mount (around level 12 I believe). I want to really try the Infighter’s new subclass for the remainder of the closed beta; Soul Master.
I don’t intend to put up a lot of game play video from the final CBT (will be just redundant) since there are streamers blasting through the game, but the following is what I wanted to capture. It’s the final few quests of the mage/magician starter/prologue where the worlds animals show support/affinity/affection for your character (it’s a core concept behind the design of the summoner subclass which has the ability to harness the ancient spirits to summon these beasts). And mixed in there is the soundtrack (like the one from 14m55s); it’s another reason why TERA and Devilian struck a chord with me; their soundtracks were created by the same composer where there are some great pieces just as there are in LOST ARK. Yes, I am one of those who isn’t concerned with leveling the fastest or skipping past the cutscenes. And yes, my game play is terrible (nothing new though) since part of the reason is that I hadn’t bothered redoing my skill bar hotkeys.
This is also unfortunately where LOST ARK’s fixed quarter view camera (a staple in the ARPG genre which this hybrid MMO borrows from) limits the exploration capabilities of the game. Yes, the world environments are gorgeous but you just cannot get to many of these places (it’s a limitation the studio’s director covered in several interviews). The game world has a lot of zones but much like MU Legend and Devilian, it’s not completely seamless (there are still loading screens moving between certain locales).
This fixed camera does allow for cinematic transitions involving your character though (allowing game play and story to flow/transition without the usual cutscene (with your character rendered in it or eliminating loading screens in some cases) and it is very well done (a level of refinement that was missing in Devilian and felt bland in MU Legend); these transitions are utilized to make it seem less jarring from an immersion point of view (again, not everyone cares about that aspect unlike myself). It’s why I eventually began to favor the 3rd person/movable camera given how I really enjoy exploring out of the way places in an MMO.
Revisiting the movement and combat, I still see people asking about this. There is no WASD movement option and likely never will (else it would be in this final CBT). Devilian was a very odd exception with having multiple control schemes (WASD as well as the traditional point-to-click movement) and that led to some small quirks including a character having to complete its full animation (meaning force stand didn’t work the way most ARPG players expected holding the “shift” key to work).
It’s a design dichotomy because you are more or less direct controlling your character with WASD whereas point-to-click means your character paths on its own for a bit to where you clicked or follows along the path as you hold the mouse button down continuously to move. That WASD aspect gave characters in Devilian this far more mobile feel to them (and is something I still miss) because the schemes were not mutually exclusive (you could do both at the same time) which worked really nice in end game content where you needed to be actively moving (unless content was outgeared). But if you were coming strictly from any ARPG (Diablo, Path of Exile, Torchlight, Grim Dawn, etc), the behavior was something not expected.
MU Legend’s design followed a stricter ARPG control scheme (which when taken together with the limited rigging of models, made characters look and feel stiff during movement/combat). LOST ARK has its own twist on the non-target combat system. As I mentioned before back during LOST ARK’s first CBT, you don’t use force stand still since you just let off the mouse click. One mouse button is solely your movement (no skill attached to it) and the other is your primary attack with no movement ability attached to it (the buttons can be inverted with an option).
I know a lot of people felt that Devilian was trash but one of the key things that I really enjoyed about it was it’s combat early on (before you even unlocked the more powerful higher level one including your ulimate). MU Legend’s combat was something I deemed as lackluster from the start and that opinion never changed (stopped playing after the first month, tried out the emphasizer/spellbinder a few months later until I hit 65 and found the end game combat there equally boring where I stopped again). As I noted before, LOST ARK gets the combat right where it has this satisfying feel from the get go where you know it will only get better at higher levels (and as you unlock the Tripod system).
As far as more indepth writeups, I’m probably not going to do any since as noted up top, there are folks streaming the life out of this CBT or creating that detailed content on YouTube. If anything, I’ll probably have footage of the usual quirky stuff I tend to find in these games.
