Lost Ark was the biggest MMORPG on Steam at launch. Over 1.3 million concurrent players could be attracted to the title. However, today only a fraction of them remains. But Amazon has a brilliant plan to change that.
What is the core problem of Lost Ark? In recent months, Amazon has repeatedly conducted individual surveys to find out. A common complaint is communication with the players they are directly confronted with.
In an open letter to the community, Amazon now explains the results of these surveys and how they will deal with them in the future. The publisher further talks about the future of Lost Ark in the West and announces a plan to bring back both new players and returnees.
But what exactly were the problems? Many players and Amazon itself called the bots one of the biggest drawbacks of the game. At times, there were really many of them, and it was hardly possible to walk in starting areas without stumbling over bots. Today, according to Amazon, they have managed to ban nearly 99% of the bots and their impact on the game’s economy and have a much better handle on new growth.
Furthermore, the publishers mention the significant effort required to even reach the endgame, where the really good content of Lost Ark awaits, namely the raids. At the same time, they are also too difficult for beginners.
Lastly, Amazon addresses in the letter the enormous time investment that the game can cost for people in the endgame. The publisher wants to tackle all these problems in the near future and even explains partially how Amazon plans to do so.
The Painter has been the last addition for us:
Complete leveling phase will be thrown out, raids are to be easier
How does one want to win back new players? Currently, the path to the endgame is long, leading you through 4 different tiers or item levels. At these, you currently must exchange your already improved set for a new one that you then have to improve from scratch.
This should soon be a thing of the past, as in the future, only 2 out of the 4 tiers (302, 802, 1302, and 1340) will remain. How exactly this separation will look is currently still unknown, but the plan is actually brilliant.
One could speculate that the middle two tiers, namely 802 and 1302, could be eliminated. Then, for example, one would improve the first endgame armor up to 1100 and then directly get the legendary set with 1340. This would make sense and completely eliminate the annoying grind that currently stands at the end of tier 2.
In the later endgame, the gear score, for which you only need silver instead of gold for upgrading, will be further increased. Amazon also admits at this point that the massive cuts in gold earning, although intended for bots, have also affected new players. They say in the letter that they must now react to that.
Raids are to be easier and come earlier: Other announced changes also support this theory. The first raid in the game, Argos, is to be available to players much earlier and also to be significantly toned down. It should serve practically as a practice for later raids and therefore no longer punish so harshly.
Specifically, it is said that Argos will no longer execute wipe mechanics, i.e., no skills that kill the entire group due to the mistakes of individuals. Such a thing only lowers morale early in the game, according to Amazon.
They are also considering reworking the first two legion raids, Valtan and Vykas, in a similar way, but have not yet reached a point with developer Smilegate on that.
Details on the announced changes are not yet available. However, the roadmap for the second half of 2023 should be released this week. This could clarify some open questions.
Too much to do, too little time
What else is coming? There is still no concrete plan regarding the large, daily workload that players have to handle in Lost Ark. However, Amazon uses the letter to show the community that they are also working on these issues.
They are considering reducing daily Chaos Dungeons and Guardian Raids from 2 each to 1, but all these plans are still not finalized. They would, however, recognize that this leads to problems and stress for players.
In the transition period, they announced the revised Cube, which is already live in Korea. This should come to the game soon and combine boss rush and cube into one. It will then be faster and provide more loot than before. With this, Amazon hopes to accommodate the players and offer an interim solution.
What concrete steps will be taken next? This will become clearer over the course of the week. The letter to the community only addresses broad plans over the year. A roadmap is supposed to follow swiftly, in which Amazon has already announced a big surprise.
In a teaser on Twitter, you can see the two new classes, Aeromancer and Slayer. What that means remains to be seen.
What do you think about it? Feel free to let us know in the comments here at MeinMMO.
