Lost Ark has officially reached a new milestone...

...being 98th place out of 100 on steams daily trending games, sorted by "active daily players", Lost Ark threatens to completely fall under the radar.

https://preview.redd.it/l183wis631ie1.png?width=1005&format=png&auto=webp&s=1efc355b69e8c36def356984e6efdefad1a76336

Because I, as many others, still love Lost Ark for what it is and even more so for what it once was, I want to share my opinions about what would benefit the game at the moment in order to revitalise it. Most of my opinions stem either from my experience as a long term player or from my profession as a studied psychologist.

Tip: Primary "filled out" bullet point are the proposed changes, while the underlying "second-row or third row" bullet points below that are mainly reasonings or further explanations.

General:

• From a game design philosophy standpoint, I find it smarter to first fix problems in the game, and THEN acquire new players (or at least do both at the same time). If new players are acquired while the game is underlying severe problems, they wont stay for long
• Beware, hot take: The game needs an own director for the West Audience.
  • The disconnection to the Korean Game is present at all times
  • Western players feel unheard, as changes often depend on Korea’s demands, reducing the trust of western players in SG and AGS
  • Community managers like Roxx and Henry help with communication, but they don’t shape the game. A dedicated Western director could ensure region-specific improvements—something China already has.
  • The urgent need for this was particularly striking when SmileGate stopped informing us about certain dates for updates. Back then, when KR got something, we were assured a pretty accurate date or assumption when this change can be expected for us in the west. Nowadays, if you ask someone about the "Style Book", the Setting option "accumulation of numbers" or even the "Orpheus’s Book" (KR: 오르페우스의 서 - the system implemented to create music together), people will generally tell you they have no clue when this arrives for us. This makes players feel like we were forgotten or less cared about. It is highly important to make players know that the West is not merely a residual region.

Ingame Economy and Honing:

The main problem here is that having a high roster snowballs you unreasonably to generate even higher wealth in this game. Honing to 1680 is expensive, but getting there will get you so much ROT (return of investment) its not even funny anymore. It has always been that way that people who "hone there first" (wherever that is) will make a lot of money while others who hone "there" late or even last typically only end up with lots of gold spent - while the potential gold income sources have deflated in value (like ancient accessories). I am not saying players should not be rewarded for playing much - or even for investing their hard earned money - but the gap it creates should be reduced.

• Finally Reduce Honing costs from 1580 to 1620 and 1640 to 1660.
  • The game has progressed. New & Returning players (and even casuals who don't play as much as some of us do) are stuck behind horrend costs, scaring players off to invest their time into the game
• Add a relic book frog in Kurzan
  • A relic book frog in Kurzan would stabilize prices, reduce inflation, and make engravings more accessible - without devaluing them completely.
  • Relic Books should still remain something of high value. If you deflate the value of everything, achieving it will feel worthless.
• It should be possible for Honing Items (Leapstones, Oreha, Armor & Weapon stones) of all Tiers and Levels to be unbound from character to rosterbound with a 5 to 1 ratio via an NPC
  • Players who decide to replace a character from their roster are often stuck with loads of hard earned materials. Sometimes, players have 1000, 2000 or 5000 leapstones that are of no use anymore. This has always felt terrible and disrespectful for your time spent. Making this character-unbound into rosterbound with a trade-off of 5:1 will ease this feeling. I 100% get that it is important for SG to make sure that we keep spending time on the game, but this surely is not the way
• Rework Yoz' Jar to use this system as a counter against gold inflation
  • What plays into the problem of gold inflation is that people hoard gold (mainly because they feel like investing it is not worthwhile for what they would get), but gold needs to be spent in this game for a functioning economy. This is important because by "investing gold", you "translate your gold" (or the value of the gold) into something else. Say if you buy a skin from someone for 100k gold, you lose 100k gold while the recipient receives it - but you get the skin that was worth 100k gold at the date of acquisition. Of course, this includes the risk of value deflation, the skin could be worth less in a week or a month. I know this sounds like meanie-me is trying to take away gold from people, but this is pretty much the crux behind managing an economy - both in real life and in games. Whenever currency stays unspent for too long, it is of no use to others. This doesnt harm you as much as you might think, trust me - it should even benefit you, no matter on which end you are. Now, to make these kind of translations from gold into something else possible, some other games have added a gambling system where people can invest their ingame-currency for cosmetic things like mounts, costumes, and sometimes with a little bit of luck even real-money currency. Now, SG has done this too, with the implementation of Yoz' Jar.
  • Technically, you could exchange your gold into blue crystals and then buy jars. However, this is horrendly expensive and barely worth it. In addition to that, the cloth that is required to open these have very limited ways of acquisition. To fix this, I propose 2 ideas:
    • a) make the Yoz Jar cheaper in blue crystal rate so that more people intend to buy these and gamble for skins. Still, Yoz Jar needs to maintain a certain value so that the items inside the Jar dont deflate too much. Additionally, the items inside should include more than just regular skins, but something else of cosmetic nature that is highly desired by players.
    • b) add sources of acquisition for cloth. One VERY smart (but weird) way to do this would be to add cloth as a drop from life-skilling. Although it feels weird to drop cloth from chopped trees or fished fishes, this would perhaps motivate more people to do trade-skilling. If more people did trade-skilling, more oreha fusion material could be produced, thus lowering the cost of this - fighting gold inflation and enhancing oreha supply at the same time. If this is not wished because of lack of coherency, cloth could also be acquired for a reasonable amount of blue crystals
• Add in-game cash options that are actually worth it to battle RMT
  • RMT is attractive because it beats ingame money-to-product efficiency by 25-50%, depending on what is offered atm and present RMT rates. If they would increase the efficiency of ingame cash options, more people would cash in the game, less people would use RMT because it does not make up for the risk it involves to be banned

Class Balance

I wont go into much detail here because class balance is a very highly complex topic that on its own deserves an own post. One standpoint is important tho, especially with the upcoming promised balance patch for KR on the 26th (? i think) of Februrary:

• Don't nerf certain classes, instead try to adjust other classes to the same level
  • Sometimes, classes are too strong, others are too weak. However, because simulataneously, raid difficulty is a big concern for many players, nerfing the classes that are currently strong could exacerbate this worry
  • Classes that perform well are oftentimes framed as "too strong" and then receive a nerf (sometimes a pretty big one at that) because devs are trying to "adjust" them to other classes. Nerfing them surely is an option, but that does not fix the problem that other classes feel like gigashit. I personally advocate to adjust weak classes TOWARDS the strong classes, and not try to find a "middle", because that would require taking a way a good chunk of strength from them which - i am sure - will frustrate many players for many valid reasons. Sure, if one class is particularly outstanding for little to no reason, nerfs can make sense.

This should do for now. I will come up with more points some other time, but I do think these are very important to implement - although some of them might seem trivial. I miss when being annoyed by NPCs spamming "Lailai" voicelines was my main concern.

Thank you for your time and perseverance,

Valak

EDIT: This QoL section was a part of the original post, but I decided to put this at the very bottom because I noticed players focused too strongly on the fact that I proposed QoL changes when bussing&RMT and economy and gatekeeping and stuff like this are a problem. Because I understand this, I put this section to the very end, so that interested people can still read this, but it doesnt take away too much of the main body of the post.

Quality of Life & UI-related:

Why do I propose QoL changes when the Game has bigger issues? Well, I think because they stopped doing regular QoL overhauls, it did something to the game... Some of these might seem unimportant to some, but sometimes - simply changing something for the mere sake of change will deliver the message of care.

• Rework the entire dyeing-system to a system that makes you not wanna punch your monitor
  • There is 0 reason you cant inspect your whole character before deciding to apply the dye - this includes the dying of MULTIPLE gear sections without having to apply it
• SG needs to hire an UI-Artist (yes, they dont actually have one, they are currently freestyling all UI-related designs as of my information - taken from their own website).
  • The whole UI masks feel a) out of date, which makes them b) depressing to look at and c) counterintuitive to a point where it annoys players
  • Examples: Why are there all guardians and all Kurzan Fronts on the Map, when a character only does one at a time until they hone to the next episode? - I know this is fixed on the korean Warmap, but the example still stands
• Make Mounts useable inbefore boss encounters (in the hallways between gates which are sometimes filled with mobs and sometimes not)
  • This does so many things: it makes the way towards the boss not annoying but instead a show-off arena for peoples mounts - which they worked hard for or spent money on. Generally, mounts are only really used when you are playing alone - like farming something horizontal or when navigating through cities. Changing mounts to be more present in raid areas by the way could also impact the readiness for people to invest into buying them - potential profit here SG :)