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Lost Ark - ARPG releasing this Friday

JTsyo

JTsyo

Lifer
Haven't seen this game on here. It's a Korean game that's making it way over to the West. I actually don't know too much about the game other than it's an ARPG MMO and free to play. Figured I would give it a shot.

www.playlostark.com

The Official Lost Ark Website

A free-to-play MMO ARPG set in a vast, vibrant world with thrilling fights, endless customization, and endless adventure.
www.playlostark.com www.playlostark.com
 
I just could not get into it, not a fan of isometric pov, played the beta/alpha and it looks polished and well done though

i also do not like games that have click to move..500k+ playing on steam atm
 
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I'm going to be giving it a shot through the three-day early access period. The ARPG-esque, isometric view is a little weird for me given that I'm far more used to behind-the-character, third-person camera views in your typical MMO (FF14, WoW, etc.). Although, the part that really made me hesitate was that the game doesn't feature the holy trinity (party compositions including tank, healer, and damage dealer). While that sort of composition is not required for an MMO, I've always enjoyed the cohesion and cooperation required to properly pull it off.
 
I love the combat animations from what I've seen. There's a lot of 'oomph' to it, feels powerful.

I'll give it a try to satisfy my Diablo / Action RPG itch (played enough of D2 Resurrected lately, moving on). Not sure if I'll "commit" to it though, but I'll give it a try for sure.
 
Playing it a little bit here and there, if my carpal tunnel wasn't so bad i think it would be a good game, it's well made, seems to run great, but i hate the click to move system.
It plays ok with a controller, movement is much better that way, they have been setting up new servers to meet the demand, it was over 500k people trying the head start, it goes f2p in a day
 
I gave the game a bit of a try last night. I didn't get too far into it as I'm still in the prologue, but I think I got a decent taste so far...

  • I don't think the game has a very good New Player Experience (NPE). I came into this game with a tiny bit of knowledge mostly from watching videos on YouTube. I've never played the game either through its alpha/beta or the foreign releases. I don't really understand why the game decides to give you a choice of a class and then immediately forces you to choose an advanced class. It makes it seem like the latter was added in later, because it would make far more sense to just remove the original class selection and to choose the advanced class as your first and only choice. Another problem relating to that is that I start the game with six abilities, and I have very little knowledge of how they're useful or what situation they're best for. Given that I'm starting at "level 1" (it's actually level 10), I'd strongly prefer getting these gradually to give me a chance to learn/understand each ability individually. My take is that not giving people enough flashy things to press would seem boring.
  • The idea of locking classes to specific genders is very much not in line with Western approaches to RPGs... unless there's some specificity to names like Witch (female) vs. Warlock (male). On that note, the game doesn't provide a ton of character customization outside of the face.
  • I'm not entirely fond of the UX. The biggest thing that got me at first was that I had no idea where my Founder's Pack was. I saw that I had received the gems in the store menu, but I didn't see anything else. It turns out that the reason why I didn't see it is because I was only looking at one of the menus. The game has two menus, a rather large one at the bottom right, and a far smaller, unobtrusive one at the top left. This might say more about me, but I did not even notice the one at the top left until about half an hour in.
I will attest that I'm not exactly that enthused so far, but I'll try a bit more to see if it grabs me. One minor thing that kept annoying me last night is that so many of the names that I wanted were gone, and it's not like I was trying to get "Bob". I chose an Assassin, which is female only, and the one female preset reminded me a bit of my female Necromancer in Diablo 3, so I tried to use the same name (Alariel), but it was taken. 🙁 In the end, I think I ended up with about 5 L's in the name to make it work.

KMFJD said:
Playing it a little bit here and there, if my carpal tunnel wasn't so bad i think it would be a good game, it's well made, seems to run great, but i hate the click to move system.

It plays ok with a controller, movement is much better that way, they have been setting up new servers to meet the demand, it was over 500k people trying the head start, it goes f2p in a day
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I normally play MMOs with keyboard and mouse, but I agree that I'm not a huge fan of the game's click-to-move system. I'd prefer if they copied Diablo and made it so the same button to move also attacked (I only saw the option to swap move and attack between LMB and RMB). For the uninitiated, in Diablo, you have to hold a button to "force move" when clicking; the game also has a button for "force attack".
 
As a big fan of POE, I'm used to the movement system. LA does it better though. I'm totally digging the game so far. I really enjoyed POE but always wished it had more to it, well LA has more to it, and that's an understatement. My brain is on information overload though! I'm wrapping up my second day playing, I took it very slowly as I had no idea what I was doing but today things started to pick up. Playing through to L50, as you progress, the game introduces more and more features, allowing you time to figure things out.

For those that don't like the mouse click movement, the game does offer controller support, so maybe that will work better for you.
 
Been watching some streams of this. Seems like a slower PoE with a ton of extra systems stacked on top. My one concern is that so far seems a bit one note, just blasting big groups of enemies (PoE has the same problem, but gets around it by being super fast). Will give it a try this weekend. One thing I definitely don't like is the gender locked classes.
 
Played a bit, seems pretty fun. I can see how this is going to become incredibly grindy. Watching some of the guides, the RNG seems to get pretty crazy at the higher end.
 
I decided to try out another class this weekend, and played a little bit of Mage/Sorceress. Ultimately, my big thing about playing Assassin/Shadow Hunter is that all of my abilities felt like some variant of "Slashy Slash", and given that you start with six abilities, I wanted something that felt like it had more differentiation. I think Sorceress does that to a degree, but it's not perfect. One thing that stood out quickly when doing the advanced class testing was that abilities that lacked a cast timer (i.e. instant cast) still felt like they had lag from button press to cast where I'd be standing around as a glass cannon. It felt more like they had an invisible half-second cast time. I was tempted to try Bard, but once I heard that a bunch of abilities had musical notes associated with each cast, I dropped that idea very quickly.

I'm tempted to try out the Warrior as well. I noticed in the little info card (there's an 'i' button at the top of the class selection menu), that Warrior was the highest picked class by a decent margin and the worst was the male martial artist.

I think the one thing that I'm missing in this is a pet class. I can't say that I gravitate toward pet classes in your typical MMOs (e.g. WoW), but I do enjoy multi-pet classes in ARPGs (e.g. Necromancer in Diablo 3 or Acolyte in Last Epoch). At least from what I've seen, the only "pet" you get is the non-combat variety.

WhiteNoise said:
Gender locked classes like this game and POE isn't a big deal to me but it seems to have many people upset.
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In the end, I wouldn't make classes being gender-locked as my reason for not playing, but given how Western games generally don't do it, I can see how it might turn off some players that are looking for it to lean more into the RP aspect of MMORPG.
 
After playing it over the weekend, the game seems pretty easy. Though I only finished the the starting city, Pridehome, area. The moves are flashy but combat doesn't seem that great. I'll play the game through and try out the endgame stuff where the real meat is supposed to be.
 
JTsyo said:
After playing it over the weekend, the game seems pretty easy. Though I only finished the the starting city, Pridehome, area. The moves are flashy but combat doesn't seem that great. I'll play the game through and try out the endgame stuff where the real meat is supposed to be.
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Pridehome is the noobie area, so not surprising that you find it easy. I have died a few times in the Hard mode dungeons. I have gotten to Luterra (lvl 30), the scenario just before you get there is pretty neat. This is where the game opens up and starts to introduce all the grindy elements.

The biggest challenge, at least for me on the assassin class, is figuring out the timings so you are not animation locked inside a boss attack. I like all the hidden stories and quests that reward exploration, though it is tempting to just follow a guide to finish it all (I am trying to do it on my own as much as possible).

The world bosses are a cluster (each zone has one or 2, good rewards for killing once), cannot tell what the heck is going on with all the other people attacking, just throw attacks at it and pop healing potions. Since the servers are so busy, pretty much anytime a boss is up people will announce in chat so you can switch to the proper channel to participate. I imagine it will start to be tough to kill them as the game ages. Curious to see what the raid bosses are like.
 
quikah said:
The world bosses are a cluster (each zone has one or 2, good rewards for killing once), cannot tell what the heck is going on with all the other people attacking, just throw attacks at it and pop healing potions. Since the servers are so busy, pretty much anytime a boss is up people will announce in chat so you can switch to the proper channel to participate. I imagine it will start to be tough to kill them as the game ages. Curious to see what the raid bosses are like.
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How hard is it to get the materials to craft the potions?
 
I keep creating some new characters to try out different classes. This time, I created a Warrior and settled on the Paladin advanced class. I tried out all three subclasses, and I had originally strongly considered the Gunlancer simply because I wanted more of a tank character. However, the class just seemed the most boring when it came to combat against the summoned minions. I thought that Berserker and Paladin both felt fine overall, but I just sort of enjoyed the Paladin a bit more. Outside of creating characters and playing a bit in the starting city, I really haven't had much time to play.

quikah said:
I haven't had to yet. I have gotten enough from quest rewards and loot to keep me filled.
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Ah, okay. I was curious if things got painful after a while when it came to healing in combat. I saw some people saying not to waste your potions while leveling or something like that.
 
this game is pretty wonky when you are trying to play with a friend. grouping up to do like, 3 or 4 quests, and then getting sent into individual dungeons, then having to regroup for a few more quests, and then getting sent into another individual scenario is kind of poop.
i absolutely loathe click to move. i also don't like genderlocked part, and i really dont like that every female character looks exactly the same with regard to body shape. the combat looks really cool, but feels a bit weird to me. im sure that will go away as i play more. overall, right now, i give it a solid meh.
 
Aikouka said:
How hard is it to get the materials to craft the potions?
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When you get your stronghold and go there you can start crafting potions right away. You just need the plants and such to craft them. You'll also get loads of potions as drops during your daily chaos dungeons and dailies.
 
I actually got a chance to do a bit more than just mess around with creating characters and playing in the first city. One thing that I noticed very quickly is that you get a rather dismal amount of experience from enemies. I was killing them as a chance to get used to my abilities more, but I was getting maybe 2 experience each. I ran into a few fancier mobs that had more health and did more damage, and those gave me more experience, but still not enough (around 80). I though that was a bit disappointing; I didn't want to only grind enemies, but I don't want grinding enemies to feel worthless either.

I'm kind of still in a bit of an explorer mode as I'm not necessarily paying a ton of attention to quests, but enjoying running around a bit. I have noticed that enemy aggro is a bit odd. Creatures will aggro you, but in some cases, it takes a while for them to aggro, and in other cases, it's nearly instant. (This is for the same type of enemy.) Humanoids don't seem to have this problem as they aggro immediately.

Although, I did notice that the game seems to lack something of a threat table? Or at least it doesn't handle it the same way as other games? For example, someone trained through an area, and destroying that stream of mobs looked like a ton of fun. So, I attacked... but some of the mobs that I hit still kept following the person that ran through. There also seems to be a bit of a stricter leash on mobs. I was gathering up some mobs to dispatch, and even though I hadn't gone far and I believe I had hit each mob at least once, I had a few run back to reset.
 
IME, most XP is from quests. The only point to griding mobs is for the collection drops for each area adventure tome. You need to grind A LOT to get them all.

My understanding is that there is no threat. It is all random. This is why there is no traditional tank/healer/DPS roles. Everybody needs to deal with boss mechanics when they get focused. Gunlancer has a taunt, but it only lasts a few seconds.
 
I played a bit more Lost Ark this weekend, and this is a weird way to put it, but I think I might've had a bit of fun! Although, I'm not sure if it was because of a choice I made, or the game is getting more involved with its mechanics. I was doing the last dungeon in the first area, and I always saw the Hard Mode option, but I assumed that it was like WoW's Heroic Mode, which was something that was intended for max-level players. I decided to try it since the recommended gear level wasn't much higher than normal mode, and it wasn't too bad. I actually enjoyed the last boss fight because it had some fun telegraphs that I had to pay attention to, but I don't know if it did those only because I was in Hard Mode, or if the boss just does that regardless. Up until then, boss fights just never felt that involved, so I didn't really care about them. I'm only level 20, so I'll have to see where things go from here.
 
Aikouka said:
I played a bit more Lost Ark this weekend, and this is a weird way to put it, but I think I might've had a bit of fun! Although, I'm not sure if it was because of a choice I made, or the game is getting more involved with its mechanics. I was doing the last dungeon in the first area, and I always saw the Hard Mode option, but I assumed that it was like WoW's Heroic Mode, which was something that was intended for max-level players. I decided to try it since the recommended gear level wasn't much higher than normal mode, and it wasn't too bad. I actually enjoyed the last boss fight because it had some fun telegraphs that I had to pay attention to, but I don't know if it did those only because I was in Hard Mode, or if the boss just does that regardless. Up until then, boss fights just never felt that involved, so I didn't really care about them. I'm only level 20, so I'll have to see where things go from here.
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I am up to lvl 46. I am enjoying it. Do everything in hard. Normal mode is pretty braindead, you can ignore most mechanics since they do so little damage on Normal. (you would need to do both modes for Adventure tome if you want to progress that). Things are pretty simple at low level regardless.
  • Combat is fun. Very similar to PoE/Diablo. There is some depth there, like back/front attacks, various modifiers to attacks (stagger, push, still not completely clear on how everything works).
  • The stronghold (unlocks ~lvl30) is kind of dumb, very reminiscent of those time gated website games. Various activities will have timers on it to completion. AFAICT you don't really need to do anything with it unless you want to really compete at high end raids. HP potion creation is unlocked almost immediately after completing the stronghold tutorial which is the main thing you want it for.
  • Gearing is VERY boring. Minor cosmetic variations for various items. Basically stat sticks. This is supposed to get better at max level.
  • Story is mostly forgettable. Voice acting is OK.
Overall, worth putting some hours in as a F2P game. The game is P2W for the end game, you need tons of materials to upgrade your raid equipment. Either buy them with $ or grind the end game dungeons A LOT. Won't notice it until then.
 
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quikah said:
I am up to lvl 46. I am enjoying it. Do everything in hard. Normal mode is pretty braindead, you can ignore most mechanics since they do so little damage on Normal. (you would need to do both modes for Adventure tome if you want to progress that). Things are pretty simple at low level regardless.
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Yeah, I wish they'd just give you credit for Normal if you beat it on Hard. I did notice that I didn't have it marked for Normal completion, so I'll have to go back and do that. Also, I didn't even get ushered to do the second dungeon in the first area, which makes me think I must've missed some sort of side quest or something?

quikah said:
Combat is fun. Very similar to PoE/Diablo. There is some depth there, like back/front attacks, various modifiers to attacks (stagger, push, still not completely clear on how everything works).
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I know they had a very basic introduction to some of those effects in the prologue, but I'll admit that I still don't really get all of it. Seems like some of it is just another word for things like stuns, and that some abilities have bonuses against stun immune enemies to make up for it?

The biggest thing that drags me down with the combat is that I'm not a huge fan of heavily cooldown dependent combat. Although, I've had that sort of thing in the past with WoW (old Retribution Paladin rotation was pretty much all cooldowns), but I think it helps when ability combinations make a bit more sense? Right now, I mostly just adjust enemies to account for the AoE style (i.e. line, cone, etc.) of specific abilities.

quikah said:
Gearing is VERY boring. Minor cosmetic variations for various items. Basically stat sticks. This is supposed to get better at max level.
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I noticed that you can buy skins for characters -- one of them being included in the pack that's available on the Steam store -- and I believe they replace the cosmetic portion of your gear completely? I've been tempted to grab the one because I don't really care for the overly lewd outfits for the Assassin. Not that it's some sort of puritanical view or anything... it just looks kind of silly. I want to look like an assassin not a Victoria's Secret model.

quikah said:
Overall, worth putting some hours in as a F2P game. The game is P2W for the end game, you need tons of materials to upgrade your raid equipment. Either buy them with $ or grind the end game dungeons A LOT. Won't notice it until then.
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I did technically buy the one expensive founder's pack, so I've already put money into the game. Although, I only picked up the chest, so I could get the second one that they were offering as a freebie to those who may have switched servers.
 
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