Amazon is addressing criticism of Lost Ark’s gender-locked classes as well as the revealing armor for female characters. Franchise Lead Soomin Park gave a statement to Eurogamer about these two issues, and emphasized the company’s relationship with Smilegate RPG on Lost Ark and how these will be addressed going forward.
Lost Ark has had a successful launch and grew its global player base significantly with the Western launch, but those gender-locked classes (and sometimes, locked subclasses) have been met with criticism that the practice is outdated or a call to simply have additional options open and available to any character you create.
Park noted that the Korean build will be getting a female Berserker soon, and that changes will come gradually overall, since it’s all going to depend on the work that Smilegate RPG does. “Classes are tied pretty closely to their character models in terms of function and animation, so bringing opposite gender characters to a class takes more work than just making a differently gendered model available,” he says.
When it comes to armor sets, everything from genuine criticism to memes have centered around just how revealing the female armor sets are (sometimes even more so with progression). Park says that Amazon will be “making adjustments so that the more revealing options won't be front and centre in places like our marketing or the initial character creation screen”, so this is more of a shift in presentation more than anything at this time.
However, he does also refer to new outfits and options in the works to add to the ones already in game. So there will be alternatives on the way for those who want them. “We are also including in some new outfit options that are not quite as revealing, but these are an addition and not a replacement.” This will enable players who want something closer to the Korean experience to have those originals while there are alternatives coming for those who want them.
No word on just when to expect any of these new options or whether they will be sold.
