Lost Ark has been one of the most successful MMOs in recent memory, having maintained a strong user base, consistent updates, and a thriving community. It's not always been perfect, but overall it’s always great to see an MMO reach this level of success, and everyone involved, from the players, to the people working on the game, all make it happen. I was once again fortunate enough to talk to Community Manager Roxanne Sabo, inquiring about the current state of Lost Ark, relative to the newest content, and everything there is to come!
MMORPG.com: The Letter to the Community was chock full of great announcements and changes, and many of them are rather unexpected, and unprecedented. Some of them, such as the truncation of tiers, aren't even present in other versions of Lost Ark. Will these changes be exclusive to the North American version, and will we see more of these changes in the future?
Roxanne Sabo, Community Manager: Following our first full year of live service for Lost Ark in the West, one of our major focuses for 2023 is addressing the feedback we’ve received from all types of players. One of those major points of feedback is the difficulty in keeping up with the pace of new content, especially if you’re a new player or someone who wants to return to the game but is intimidated by the amount of work needed to catch up. One of several tactics we’ve identified to address this, as noted in the letter to the community, is to consolidate the current four progression steps into two progression steps in order to help streamline the honing process.
This change is planned to affect all Western players of Lost Ark, not just those in North America. There are new players coming into the world of Arkesia every day, and we gathered a lot of player feedback in year one and have more adjustments to ease the ramp-up for new and returning players planned for the remainder of the year. We’ll be sharing those details with players once we have more information to provide on the specifics of these changes.
MMORPG.com: The ever going battle against botting is always going to be a priority, and oftentimes, as a player, it can be a bit demoralizing to see, even when incredible progress has been made with banning bots, and preventing future ones from popping up. While there's always appreciation for the efforts made, reassurance to the players is always great to see. How can we, the players, feel reassured going forward?
RS: As you just mentioned, and as we touched on in the letter to the community, fighting bots has been — and continues to be — a priority for us. Bots always find a new way to bypass systems. To ensure a great player experience, we have been and will continue to develop systems and restrictions along with Smilegate RPG to hinder and ban bots, as well as prevent them from coming into the game. This month we implemented a number of new changes to battle bots, and we are going to share another update with the community in the near future on where things are with the situation. We want to be as transparent as we can be with the progress on this, which is why we shared that we’ve seen a 99% decrease in bot interactions with the economy, and plan to share an in-depth update on the state of bots similar to the one we gave in May of last year. Of course, we have to be transparent within reason, as giving too much detail into processes could give would-be botters a playbook to circumvent our efforts. However, player trust is a top priority for us and we want to give as thorough an update as we can so that we do assure them that the fight continues to make progress.
MMORPG.com: Because of said bots, a lot of preventative measures have been taken that many players feel are intrusive, such as the time restriction for buying items in the Market and Auction House. Are there any plans on reiterating upon or revisiting said measures?
RS: Those measures have been an integral part of improving the bot situation, but we do understand that some of them result in a less-than-ideal experience for some players. We can’t repeal all of these new measures at once, as we’d run the risk of having the bot problem return to the levels it was previously, but we are keeping a close eye on the situation and looking for those moments where we feel it’s safe to ease some of these restrictions.
MMORPG.com: Slayer being released ahead of Aeromancer is, from what I've seen, a bit of a surprise, but a welcome one. What went into this decision?
RS: From Slayer's very first announcement leading all the way to its release in Korea in January, we saw excitement and positive feedback surrounding the class from our players in the West. With this top of mind, we had a unique opportunity to release the popular and highly-anticipated Slayer class earlier than expected. Given that we’d heard the player sentiment around this new class, we wanted to give fans a surprise and introduce her to Western players a few months early. Both the teams at Amazon Games and Smilegate RPG pay close attention to player feedback, and when the opportunity arises to surprise fans with something they want, we try to do that.
With the Aeromancer class on its way just a few months later, we hope all players can be excited for the arrival of these two new classes, as they will each add a lot to an already deep roster of playable classes in the game.
MMORPG.com: The Akkan Legion Raid is the next step when it comes to gear progression, but there is a pretty big "Fear of Missing Out" feeling. While there are a lot of announced changes alleviating the strain, such as older raids being a bit easier for newer players and honing being easier, is there anything planned for the higher raids (Kakul-Saydon and Brelshaza Normal Mode) being changed?
RS: While we initially announced changes just for Argos, Valtan, and Vykas, the teams re-evaluated the breadth of these changes and saw an opportunity for the Kakul-Saydon Legion Raid to be adjusted as well. Players will actually be able to experience the changes to the Kakul-Saydon Raid through the game’s update this month. The changes to these raids are focused on not removing mechanics or making the content simpler, but making things like full-party wipe mechanics less punishing so that new or returning players can have some of the pressure of making a mistake that ends a run for their entire party alleviated. While supporting players who are still learning is important to us, we also understand that the appeal of Lost Ark’s end game content is its unique challenge. At this time, there are not any changes coming to the Brelshaza raids in Normal or Hard mode.
MMORPG.com: Despite all the changes that have been made, and still being made to make raiding easier, gatekeeping is still a major problem amongst the community. Players getting into, say, Valtan or Vykas for the first time have a very difficult time finding groups. There have been temporary remedies in place, but can we expect more in the future to further help newer adventurers?
RS: As mentioned earlier, improving the onboarding process for new and returning players is a main priority for us this year, as there are new players coming to Lost Ark every day. We have been taking feedback from current and lapsed players and identifying ways that we can improve the experience for new players, so that if you’re coming to Arkesia for the first time or you’re coming back after a while, you feel welcome and like you can partake in the wealth of content that’s available.
In addition to the party-wipe mechanic changes we talked about earlier, which have a big impact on less experienced players being welcomed into parties, we have some big updates planned for later in the year that we feel will greatly improve the new player experience and make it easier for them to progress through their Lost Ark journey. And of course, we’ll continue gathering feedback from all players and use it to build upon and refine that experience for new and returning players. We can’t share more specific details at this point as system changes are in active development, but we are working behind the scenes and are looking forward to sharing the details on these updates soon.
MMORPG.com: Expanding more, will there be implementations to incentivize veteran players to help out or guide newer players?
RS: Without going into too much detail, things like this are part of the adjustments we’re considering to improve the experience for new and returning players. We’ll be sharing more details on these updates as soon as we can.
MMORPG.com: Story express was a very interesting addition, which seemed to be aimed at giving newer players another means to pushing a character to Tier 3 quickly. The player reception was rather mixed from what I could tell, as some didn't feel it was worth it in the short term. If you plan on revisiting this, would there be revisions?
RS: While the Story Express event does help players gear up a new character, it was designed to appeal to a specific subset of Lost Ark players - those who want to go through and experience the story of the game and the lore of Arkesia. We do understand that this particular feature is for a certain subset of players and might not appeal to everyone who plays the game.
While I can’t speak to the future of Story Express specifically, I can assure you that we do take player feedback into account and if there are ways to improve upon new features to the game, we’re always willing to evaluate with Smilegate RPG if an addition to the game needs to go back to the drawing board and be revised. So please, do share feedback with our team as we do listen to those comments and they do have an influence on where the game evolves.
