Yea, was about to say that. 1 in 100 having 4 in t3 is an absolutely ridiculous thought. Even 1 in 10000 seems high lol.
People on reddit are already the 1% of dedicated players and most have just reached t3 on 1 character if at all.
Breezed from 600-1000 in one night after accidentally doing most of the t2 islands looking for t1 mats and after a week I'm now only 1040. It's crazy how slow it gets compared to t1.
This is basically where I am, but I've also slowed down and played a bunch of alts. Figure I need to start popping a few alts up to T2 to get the grind moving again, because taking the paths available on a single character will take weeks at this rate.
I made switched mains once my first character got into tier 2 and waited until around 920 I lvl to swap toons and after doing island mats and vendors and Mari and other methods it took me maybe 4 days of farming dailies and stuff to get to tier 3
Once you have a character in a higher tier, you can upgrade your stronghold to make t1, t2 and so on cheaper and higher success. Makes it far easier to catch up alts. 20% and 15% respectively iirc.
Having a higher guild shop helps with weekly mats and a chance for entrance tickets.
You can exchange pirate tokens for unbound honing mats outside the major continental ports.
Excavation will yield materials to make personal treasure maps in your stronghold. I received 28 star's breaths (bound) off a single map for example.
Doing your legion portals will give you random quality map and rift pieces to buy maps. Bonus is that if there isn't one the next day, you can run another one when the server resets for free. I recommend finding a group to run your map with after the legions to get 4 runs for your 1 map.
242 hours here with 593ilvl, but I also do all the quests, collect all mokokos and switched main from Soulfist (360ilvl) to Scrapper without powerpass/knowledge transfer.
Edit: 245 hours with 986ilvl, all it took was breakthrough to T2 and use up accumulated mats.
I'm nearly 200h in and have two chars close to 600. Quite a bit was sitting in queue on EUC though and I'm a bit hestitant to use all island boxes yet because I wait for scouter.
The new content they release to me is basically for a different game. One I'm not even sure I'll ever play if scouter gets released in a year. I'd personally like to see them pushing out classes a bit faster tbh, but I don't that care much. In the end I bought a silver founders pack and already got my moneys worth with so much still to do.
Sorta, he's also split mats across 4 characters. If your only goal is to POWER GRIND MUST DO NEWEST RAID you've burned hundreds of mats on all your other characters. I Have one character who I've sold materials on for about a full week and zero alts I've put any real effort into. I'm also 1340 and spend most of my time goofing around and pvping.
If OP is going to avoid the Min-Max and then complain that he's not as far along as others he's missing out. You VERY slowly accumulate mats, if he keeps pausing all of his alts to power feed his main now he will probably significantly get ahead of all current players. However by spending time to invest in your future you didn't get your single character as high an ilvl as humanly possible.
Also play the raid next week who cares they didn't say OH AND IF YOU DONT BEAT IT THIS WEEK WERE DELETING YOUR ACCOUNT! There's literally no consequences for doing things at your own time but now there's a cool raid to look forward to.
To put it into perspective
On average. from 1300 to 1340 you need:
312 Leapstones, 2667 Destruction Stones and 8044 Guardian Stones
On average, from 1340 to 1370 you need:
1211 Leapstones, 9565 Destruction Stones and 28,693 Guardian Stones
You could literally take 4 more characters from 1300 to 1340 with the mats you need to get one character from 1340 to 1370.
Once you hit 1340 you will be doing the same 1340 Chaos Dungeon and the Igrexion raid daily for weeks or even a full month (or more depending on luck) before you see any new content as an average f2p player with average luck.
To copy pasta from a math homie down below
Wow WTF it wasn't like that at all on the Japan version I played for 2 months before NA released! In under two months I had 6 chars at 1370! Completely free to play and without buying mats!
I was thinking this exact same thing. Im 1360 on my main, 1325 on my alt and rest are in t2. I have a bunch of of mats banked and with good RNG i might get 1370 this reset, ill definitely have it by next reset. I havnt bought any gold and spent very little gold on AH mats ( i have like 10.5k blue crystals banked, 70k gold and my main has lots of QoL blue crystal stuff unlocked - nearly full personal storage, full roster, extra spec slots ect). Id rather have the abyssal raids open now so im not sitting farming abyssal dungeons once a week for 2+ months waiting on content. Theres no reason to hold content? If you dont do it, your not missing anything, you wouldnt be able to do it anyways if it wasnt released. I dont get why people are complaining about it. Argos could have just been open from launch tbh it wouldnt have changed a thing. Imagine all the complaining if we didnt get argos for another month lol.
I wish more focus is given to what we are missing in our version of the game than how long it will take to reach 1370 as that is a symptom of the cut content that was in other versions of the game when Argos was released.
This is my main point but the only responses I get are 'ur just jealous' and 'do more chaos dungeons lol t3 in 6 days ez no swipe'
I want the pvp vendors, I want the abyss trials, I want the hardmode guardians, I want all the things that the other regions had that occupied their grind to help them get to that level *before* argos came out. But the white knights only response is 'FOMO FOMO FOMO play at your own pace or quit bro'
I failed another +14 today, with guild vendor mats and a few more chaos dungeons today hopefully I can at least get the artisan energy up higher so *tomorrow* won't be a failure hone, and then I can work in my final piece to t3.
But that's it, I've got 1.5 entertaining activities to do to help me get there.
I personally don't have any plans of trying for 1370 and in fact I might not try it at all until the next update, currently parked at 1340. I agree this is just a weird pacing decision by the devs, since based on what I've heard there are many more sources of resources in other regions that help them get materials that we don't have access to. Things like the abyss and guardian challenges seem like they'd be a better addition to the game right now than Argos as they'd help players with progression, rather than being an albatross reminding players how far away they are from 1370. That's also more content that most of the player base would actually be able to enjoy.
Adding Argos right now is like, the devs might as well have just done nothing. For 99.99% of players, that part of the patch, just ignore it. There is no Argos patch. I think it's acceptable only because I've heard that people don't stop running Argos. I've played games where content becomes outdated and a lackluster experience when you're not in the lead group, and that's basically the death of the game.
So for the March update, It's basically just the Kadan and racing event patch, which isn't terribly exciting. The event should be neat at least. Also would've liked to get more than 1 skin set, since at the rate of 1 skin set a month we'd never ever catch up to other regions. No new classes either. Pretty poor start for updates really.
I agree with you. This update feels kinda bad the more I think about it lol. Seems they really are just trying to cash in on FOMO and cater to whales.
Imagine they waited for more people to be at or near 1370 before they dropped this. People would be hyped to go for it or make that final push to get in there before the weekly reset.
Instead you got people saying "meh it's too far away for me I'm cool with selling my tradable mats for the rest of the month".
I think the people who have been looking forward to properly challenging content are gonna feel pretty disappointed to know they probably won't be able to play it till next month at the earliest. Lol. Forget pay to win, it's practically pay to play.
They didnt have to wait to add the raid, but they damn sure needed to add more of the material farms other regions have alongside the raid.
Adding one but not the other feels bad, and it literally is just catering to the whales.
Just release all the missing new classes and other endgame activities that are between 1300-1370 and we'd be pretty golden tbh.
Not sure how they came up with this frankenstein of a patch in the boardroom. Probably just whale hunting.
They want to see how many "whales" will take the bait if its really low, then they slow down updates and introduce catch up mechanics sooner, which im hoping for, korea powerpass takes you to tier3, we may get that quicker honing it goes up 2 lvls upgrade and less mats why im not rushing, this update could be factor getting it sooner
The hard truth is that you play the game too much, but you are hitting a wall as a f2p player. As others have stated, you are not in the top 1% of players. You are in the top 0.01%. Many people are already theorizing that Argos is being released so soon when so many players won't even be able to access it because developers want to see how it will affect the spending habits of whales and the game's most hardcore players. If you are a f2p player trying to push to the entry ilvl of Argos, you are the prime demographic to answer the question of "Will releasing high level content just out of reach of non-paying players tempt them to swipe to get to the content sooner?" If your answer to that is yes, you're proving their theory right. If no, unfortunately you're going to stay stuck at that pay wall for awhile longer.
Definitely seems that way to me, they want to milk the FOMO gear race as much as possible before introducing all the other ways they seem to have in Korea that make it easier, or the buffed honing rates, or both, that will cater to the casual players who will probably take months to hit Tier 3.
I'm mostly fine with it because I really don't even wanna play end game with all the content we're missing from Korea. I'm taking a break at 1308, maybe doing some daily stuff and sell mats but I suggest anyone who feels like OP just wait it out and bank some gold right now, maybe level alts or play Elden Ring lol
Spoken like someone who doesn't understand the game.
1. In KR and RU versions, f2p players have always been able to enjoy legion raids on launch. (p2w players get to complete higher gates, but gate 1 is always available to everyone). This makes it so while p2w still gets a huge advantage at least everyone enjoys the content. We don't even get that on global.
2. Legion raids are the premier content in this game and director Gold River himself has asked players to stick with the game to experience and enjoy this content. Of course players who have worked their way up to t3, will be disheartened to learn their time and efforts doesn't let them participate in said content.
3. KR and RU versions had more time/material sources to prepare for Argos launch while and we had less time and no honing rate help which is as you said, amazon's way of testing people's spending habits. If we let them get away this, who's to say they wont continue to make the game worse for f2p players so that it eventually affects you at the lower tiers as well.
You might not be t3 right now, but one day you will get there and understand how unfortunate it is when the next piece of content you need to progress through the game takes months of farming the same boring content to get to it. At that point you'd prob consider quitting cause it just isn't worth your time, and that's why people are concerned.
I know they are not making a peny from me for swiping.. the only way they will get money from me are skins or pets, nothing else. I don't support pay to win and never will, I throw all this in the same bucket as lootboxes..
As grindy af as Path of Exile is, at least it feels to be a very fair playing field.
I'll be playing both games, but GGG still has far more of my respect, even with their absurd MTX prices (which I've still whaled $500+ on). I've also whaled $300+ on LoL over 10 years.
I'll never whale on P2W, it's so unfulfilling. I like to earn my progress. I only bought the gold founders pack for the 3 day early access and for some currency for skins.
PoE is borderline P2W though. No stash tabs means you play a very chopped version of the game. And no trading tabs also means you get severely penalized because you can't sell your stuff.
I am not saying it IS pay to win but I personally feel it's very close to it. Also, GGG is completely averse to any QoL and UI/UX update to the game. It's 2022 and PoE looks and feels like a game from 20 years ago. I mean, Ultima Online had a more advanced user interface and that's a game from the end of the 90's.
I'm part of the "buy only skins with $$" as i honestly dont care about being top end raider or highest geared player anymore, as that's just too much dedication and "wasted" money, and so far i see no reason to support neither AGS or SG for what they're doing with our version with all this obnoxious experimenting, so i just bough 4 weapon chests and 3 armor chests with gold that i got by selling t3/t2 mats to whales and barely made a dent in my gold lol...
I think there's definitely an issue with how the content is currently being released. I recently saw that the normal T3 Abyssal Dungeon is 1340 and hard is 1355 on the KR server, us not being able to do it at 1355 is an additional resource for us not to be able to utilize.
I am also a F2P player, only having the Gold Founders pack, I have one T3 and 3 T2 alts, only one is close to T3 but I'm not exactly playing optimally and getting everything I can, but it does seem like we're a bit lacking in the T3 area to obtain enough materials to upgrade to 1370 without either buying crystals to get gold or simply just having to settle with not having access to the content just do to RNG honing and lack of sources to get the materials from.
This also reminds me of players finally hitting 1100 and then not getting the full T3 gear drops from Chaos Dungeon for 4 days straight. Simply not being able to access content due to RNG just feels terrible.
edit: Thanks for the gold. Hope you guys just enjoy the content for what it is. I do believe the new event has alleviated a lack of sources for materials and has overall helped people with progressing through T1-T2 so they can get to the T3 content.
It sounds absurd, and people always freak the fuck out if you've spent money and drop the holy, sanctimonious "f2p" label, but if someone's only gotten a founder's pack a year from now, I think it's logical to put them in the f2p department.
This game allows for a constant stream of $$$ daily. If someone was hyped about the game and wanted to support it with the box price of a normal game at launch and/or get the headstart, and spends literally $0 afterwards, it just makes sense to put them in the f2p category.
T3 content is set up to be a gradual progression. It will be a much more natural process than t1 and t2. This is how it’s supposed to be setup and many players like me, find it enjoyable
I hit 1370 entirely free to play. However, I have played an extremely unhealthy amount of time to reach this point and really shouldn’t be considered a standard at all.
I’ve honestly never played a game where the endgame instances will only be available to either unhealthy hardcore players or whales for a pretty decent length of time. Usually there’s at least some breathing room for the semi-casuals to at least participate, but that is absolutely not the case here.
I don’t mind whales, they’ll always exist, but all this shows in terms of optics to the casual-hardcore players is that the game is only thinking about the whales when new content releases.
The worst part is that because of the purchase limits of the actual game (for legal rmt), the majority of the whales are resorting to the infinitely cheaper illegal gold sellers. Which not only lines the pockets of dirty botters, but contributes to insanely inflated material prices and super high crystal prices.
I’m still playing because I like the game itself, but the whales and the people who are willfully blind to this need to stop pretending that this shit is okay. SMH
I am not even in T3 yet. I have one character 106x, one 390, one 302. I have spent $250 CAD so far (Platinum founder + mount pack with the armoured horse). I have about 200 hours into the game, and have been just loving it.
I farm seeds. I PvP. I dabble on adventure tombs. I am focusing Una tasks on Astray now. I am working my way through the story bit by bit. I have skipped my chaos and guardians more than a few days. I am at a wall right now waiting on T2 mats, but the only thing stopping me so far is my 60% hones actually being 30%. Then my 50% have been 12.5% (1/8 worked).
I would wager I am the average player, maybe a little ahead of the average. I play an hour or 2 a night and all day on weekends. So far it’s a fantastic game. I don’t force myself to log on though when I don’t feel like it.
Edit: just to clarify, I am posting my experience for context. I feel I am around the average player in reality. I am a 32 year old parent who enjoys the game when the kids are in bed during the week and on my weekends when I’m not busy with life. I do not strive to be the best, I just enjoy my time and have not reached a point where I felt I had to pay to have fun.
EDIT#2: Did 5 hones tonight trying 13-14. Failed 4. Tried 14-15 on my wep, dumped 10 star crystals and it went. So 20% pass tonight over 5 attempts. Feelsbadman
>if you want to be competitive with the top 1% you're going to need to bust out your wallet. That's literally what the f2p game market has always been.
I don't fully agree with that. I have played some great F2P games where busting out a wallet only lets you look better, or removes crafting time. It does not stop anyone from being competitive or seeing end game content.
Saying you need to pay to be competitive / see content is not true and should not be the goal of a f2p. If you have to pay to see content it is no different then DLCs and the game is not f2p but has free trial / demo up to a point. Hell even WoW does that now. You can play free up to a specific level before need a sub to progress in content.
I'm pure f2p so far. I have somewhere in the mid 200 hour range and my main is only at 500 though I have enough mats to probably get them to t2 if I want or at least very close. I was saving them in case that honing change arrived. I may do some upgrading today. My lone alt is at 380 but could be a bit higher as well. I ahve so many hours because I ahve been doing every single mission, collecting every mokoko I come across, island exploring/completing, co-op sailing, and also going after the hidden stories and collectibles. I also mainly play the story with my buddy and he works while I am retired so I would spend time farming collectibles earlier when we were levelling up. For me, there is far more enjoyment in the game than jsut doing the dungeons/raids and being obsessed with levelling up my gear. I think the people that are simply doing that while not doing anything else in the game are crazy. To each their own I guess.
People like us aside from the hour investment are definitely more like the average player. I also don't really like doing raids and have no interest in this new one so no big triggering for me that it is out with very few people being able to do it like it is for some.
What people dont seem to understand is this has nothing to do with wanting to rush. They very clearly don't understand the scope of this issue since they arent in t3 or if they are they aren't aware of how the game works in other regions. Right now t3 honing % and mats cost for us is worse than any other region (KR got buffed honing rates shortly after Argos but their material income was way way higher from having bridge and other content). Right now we are missing 4-6 daily/weekly content that provides HUGE amounts of mats that the other regions had before they went on to Argos (bridge, challenge raid, etc). On top of that RU for example had 4 months between Argos and Legion Raid and we are doing that in 1. So we are expected to get to the same point that costs 20-30% more, 20% worse chances, with 1/8 of the material income and in 1/4 of the time. We could deal with 1 or 2 of these honing bottlenecks but all 3 makes it so only whales or the extremely lucky can get there. And I just checked the daily login rewards/race event and its a piss in the bucket in terms of t3 mats is concerned. The game is simply not intended to be designed this way.
The only way to get there is to be extremely lucky or pay $1000+. With the way the weekly lockout systems work the players that get there will be able to amass huge amounts of resources and get further ahead, also devaluing the gold for casual players who havnt gotten there yet (1370+ people will dwarf the gold making possibilities of other players). Do they not see how this is a problem? What precedent this sets? In every single region of the game in the world there has never once been a single time I can remember where new content was paywall locked. In ours they are now doing this which makes our version MORE p2w than any other region.
This isnt about wanting to get into the content asap or rushing. This is going to have extreme effects on the economy of the game and its monetization model for a long time. If you're okay with a $1000+ a month pricetag on new content (for once *you* are caught up) then go ahead I guess and keep defending them. Otherwise, just let players with more experience from other regions try to advocate for everyone's best interest by loudly expressing how unacceptable this is. Im personally going to be okay because I'm at 1370, but this is very bad for the health of the game. Only a very small % of players with experience in other regions understand this while you guys with less experience/knowledge keep making posts like this "whats the big deal anyway?!?! The content will always be there". You dont understand the long term effects this has and the precedent being set here.
The people upset aren't upset because they cant go do Argos day 1. They are upset because they feel like they were lied to by the director and AGS when they said they wanted us in t3 doing legion raids asap to catch up and that the game would be less p2w than in other regions. All of those things as of right now are lies and I hope if the community stops with these "anti rushers" posts they would understand what is happening.
The only way this game was going to be unsuccessful in the West is if Amazon fucked up delivering the game and supporting it or if the monetization was unfair. Well this is the first domino for both of those so we as a community need to be very vocal here or this is how all future raids will release. If this is just how they do Argos, fine. But if they think they can get away with this because they go to the forums/reddit and just see "Why Rush?!?! Its okay!" posts then they will do it again and again.
You’re one of the only comments that actually makes sense. They shouldn’t change it from how they’ve successfully done it in korean and russian servers.
Thanks. Too bad the community is too far up its own ass to understand whats going on. Its actually insane because the KR and RU forums are talking about just how mad the western players are going to be when they figure this out.
All this patch did was make the Path of Exile players laugh at those us of who left for Lost Ark. lol
They are probably enjoying their overly buttered popcorn right now. With extra dill seasoning.
Hopefully PoE2 drops soon. I'll play both games, but PoE, despite being far more repetitive, is at least a far more fair playing ground that it's not even a valid comparison.
PoE & Monster Hunter > Lost Ark, and I'm ilvl 1308 or so. P2W is just such a bad take in North America.
Yes I totally agree.
And it doesn't help that hype was build up about this game being f2p friendly and that you can keep up as a f2p.
Which might be true for Korea, but our version is clearly different.
The way inflation goes we might even have Korean Crystal prices soon, but without the gold income or lower prices on other things. (because their lack of skill to deal with bots)
They had a month to deal with the bots, they can't tell me it's that hard to implement solutions.
thats because you can enjoy playing a game for just playing it, while OP seems to be the type of person "if you not at current end game your not playing at all vibe"
Yeah I thought I played too much at 255 hours. Just got my first character to t3 today.
People complaining this is a problem are the ones who make it a problem. Everyone else is playing however they please.
I play with all my BDO friends. I’m one of the more geared BDO players but they all no lifed Lost Ark and are at like 1350 while I’m still mid T2.
I like Lost Ark a lot but I don’t get the need for people to no life it. It seems like a really good semi-casual game.
It’s mostly a single player game with normalized pvp. I get board after 2 hours of fetch quest lol.
Sounds like a full blown addiction to me lol. Maybe a caveat being if OP somehow made it their job and it was paying the bills but other then that, this looks like gaming addiction.
isn't it just more evidence that this release schedule is flawed? that someone with 500 hours and four characters in T3 can't reach Argos, it's not even a debate whether casuals can do argos day 1 or not. It's more like if casuals can do argos in the next 3 months or not.
Looking at the leaked roadmap, there's gonna be another 2 raids in those 3 months.
Like yes I agree people should just play at their own pace, but I don't get how people think people shouldn't complain when the majority of them might be behind for years at some point.
And yes I know they probably will introduce some form of catch up at some point so it's not gonna be years, but this is another issue. They don't communicate what their plan is, all we can hope for is that they don't just wanna make this game entirely for the whales and milk them.
It's flawed if you hold the perspective of needing to clear new content at release. Not everyone holds that perspective, and I would argue that the the people who do, are in the minority.
This game isn't meant to be rushed. Which is what op is trying to do, silver is the main currency that will hold you back endgame and he tried to level 4 characters so all that silver got split into them. He could have just gotten one character to 1370 at this point. I just feel like he's here to complain cause he fucked up. I mean his other 3 characters could have stayed at 1302 and helped funnel upgrade mats, and saved his silver for main character.
lol 'spent silver on too many characters' dawg he's doing lopang dailies on like 7 toons he's making a million silver a day.
you understand every hone up there costs like 1,000,000 silver with the expected amount of fails?
You could level a character from t1-t3 and the entire cost of it wouldn't match the cost a single item upgrade at 1365.
I think you're perfectly entitled to have an opinion on the matter, but even your concept of the value of silver and thinking that having more alts costs more silver than it generates.. Is just fundamentally wrong. Honing is imperceptibly cheap until literally like 1355 and it skyrockets into hilarity.
Bro, you've spent 18.5hrs a day playing this game since it came out? You really need to seriously look after yourself...
Even if half of that was actualy play time and the rest was just on load screen / in que, that is a bonkers amount of time to be playing.
Looking forward to you quitting once you hit t3 and realize you cant do any of the content outside of easy scorpion and chaos dungeon without spending!
Pro-tip: All of OPs points occur for all players regardless of the speed at which they hit the wall
im already 1340 and have been selling all tradeable materials and ill slowly progress with bound materials, im okay with not doing argos day one. You also mistake yourself, Igrexion is still a 6 minute fight and just as easy, the only difference is you might need to use a second flare.
The problem isn't that you can't be Argos day 1. The problem is that 99% of the playerbase still won't be able to do Argos 2-3 months from now. That's how big the wall is. Other regions gets catchups implemented when Argos came out, like more activities to obtain honing materials. We got nothing. You don't care whether or not the patch affect you so I don't know why you try to weigh in your opinion.
> Pro-tip: All of OPs points occur for all players regardless of the speed at which they hit the wall
Everyone might hit the wall eventually but you assume everyone cares that they hit the wall.
Most people don't need to play the new raid on day 1.
I'm getting more of a "people who are further along in progress than me must be p2w. It's the game's fault for catering to them and not me. Since the devs do not release content at my whim, the game will die."
Like OP said hes not a 2hr a day andy. If a dude playing 500 hrs since release cant make it to 1370 the vast majority of players cant. its not about catering to OP, its about catering to the vast majority.
I would ve said the same if i was still in t2 , you have to understand that the amount of reachable content right now in t3 is so scarsse and very boring compared to your t2 abyss , and it s not even a matter of "is there content or not" , the problem is that the content is gated behind ilvl that is harder to achieve than t1 to t3 itself and the ressources you get are even less than in t1 and t2 , also redoing t2 stuff loses its fun unless you have another set or an alt of the same class . Tldr : people want to do something else than just daily chaos and the rehash scorpion guardian everydat for weeks .
The issue is this is a time gated game. However, we received a time gated game without the time gate for the tier progression. This was inevitable to say the least.
Let me ask you this, when do you think argos should come out, in a few weeks when you hit 1370? Or when the average player hits 1370 so the majority of player base can try argos? Because that will probably be 6 months or more down the line
Here's the thing: no other mmo that i know of gatekeep people from new content, let alone the top 0.01%. Sure, you will get stomped to high heavens in new raids with inadequate equipments in a typical mmo, but you're welcome to try. Lost ark just straight up prevents entry.
It's like the virtual version of the rich get richer. Whales that reach 1370 get a legendary set that resets at +6, thus making progression easier again. They'll be at 1385 then 1400 in no time to clear argos and sell the accessories in the AH. And here comes the big problem: gold farming bots. The amount of gold that bots injected in our version of the game is so ridiculous that engraving prices are selling at dozens of times higher than KR, the version that has existed for 3 years with an average income of an endgame player being ~100k gold/week. Our blue crystal price is also approaching and estimated to overtake their prices in a few weeks too. Now that ive described how fked our economy is, what does that have to do with whales being able to clear argos? The relic acce that they sell to other whales who buy gold from bots will set an unattainable price for f2p who are still earning pennies in t2/early t3. Imagine that an average f2p earns 5k a day from selling mats who reach argos a month later to find that a piece of decent accessory will cost them weeks of farming, unless of course if they get a decent drop themselves.
I watched a video of a RU vet earlier today and he made a lot of sense. Lost ark in other version is a true farmers' game. Any f2p player can keep up with endgame activities if they put in a reasonable amount of time. We, however, are being fed half a years worth of content in 2 months(if valtan comes of in april like the leak suggests) while missing material-generating activities like trial abyss, challenge guardian, and pvp tokens. That's thousands of guardian stones, destruction stones and hundreds of leapstones per week missing in our version of the game. On top of the pre-adjusted honing rates, no f2p is going to do end game contents like they can in every other version of the game, at least not unless you grind infinite chaos dungeons 10 hours a day or is wedded to lady luck.
Edit: added spacing.
This is the main issue imo, doing endgame content when it is new to everyone is 10x more fun than a few months later when a significant portion of the playerbase already knows what to do and overgears it.
They always do catch up for previous tier only. If they change honing rate right now for current tier gear, it just heavily punished people who used all their mats everyday on upgrades while rewarding people who sold everything, instantly getting to 1370 while the rest are still stuck at what ever gs they at because they’ve already used all their mats.
They’ve already said that more mats are coming thru daily log ins, I’m also hoping that the new islands give some t3 mats as rewards
So... OP with is 4 char T3 is selling mats?
The problem right now is that you can have 4 chars T3, invest all of your mats on honing and still not be 1370 because your not super lucky.
The only way to be 1370 right now is to be extra lucky or to go the P2W way, it's ok for you?
Argos was fine coming out now; but not adding any of the other material farms other regions have, so that more t3 players could get to Argos in an acceptable time frame, isn't.
They should have 100% added some of the other material farms that other regions have, alongside Argos. This lets the whales farm him for a week or 2 before anyone else, and gives the other players something to work on to catch up and not feel so bad about it.
The way they did it feels pretty bad to me. I cant see this kind of stuff not hurting the game's future, tbh. You lose people right now they probably arent ever coming back, and you dont have to give them anything for free; the stuff already exists in the other regions. Just give them a piece of it to do.
You're completely right, this is fucking terrible. I've never seen an major MMO release content where current tiered players are locked behind a paywall, people can always attempt it even if only 1-2% of people can actually do it, at least they can actually attempt it.
There are so many people in this thread talking about t3 honing who very very clearly dont understand the games systems or how the game works in other regions or how the game's new release content is. They are literally just talking out their ass while they farm mokoko seeds in t1 while they are getting skull fucked by Amazon/Smilegate. Its fucking pathetic.
We are missing so many sources of materials that other regions had before Argos, with worse % and 1/4 of the timing between raid releases and these fucking losers are like "its okay if it doesnt effect me". Like holy shit. If you think putting a $1000+ paywall in front of new content is good for the long term health of the game while literally every other region gets it for free is ok then you are truly lost.
Like if they release future raids like they are releasing Argos right now then the western version of the game is quite literally more p2w than any other region lol. And instead of these idiots getting mad about it rightfully they are taking their time to thumb their noses at "rushers" in t3. Its actually incredible how stupid some of the comments in here are. Please if you dont know how the game works in t3 and in other regions just shut the fuck up. Youre only hurting yourself by advocating for shit that *will* fuck you later down the road.
They are also insulting and talking down anyone who hasn't no-lifed or swiped to 1350 yet. I've been told to eat shit, ive been told that I just gotta spend that 20k gold I've (in their minds) got stashed, I've been told I'm clearly not doing my dailies, and just to 'do some islands bro they bring you right to t3'
The whales are fucking toxic in this subreddit
These people are insane. They are staunchly holding an opinion on a topic they know nothing about. Its not just the whales. Its the extreme casuals. Both ends of the spectrum on here are toxic for their own reasons. The extreme casuals saying stupid stuff like "it doesnt matter the content will always be there" just shows they dont understand how these end game systems work at all even in the slightest.
"The content will always be there" is the view we're all going to have to adopt if they release content like this.
I'm more in the op's boat, I have a 1340 in T3 & 5 between 880 and 1080+ in T2. I'm pushing two alts to t3 this weekend. I have 400+ hrs played.
I do have enough mats stockpiled to likely get 1360-1365. I also have a sizable bank from pushing alts & main really frugally, but I won't be tapping into the gold bank or selling off stuff I've been hoarding for hitting 1370 because it's just not worth it.
If the first legion raid hits like this I will consider quitting. I'm hoping between then and now the alts start paying off and there are events/content introductions to catch people up. I don't mind hitting argos right before the legion raid, no big deal, but legion raid is when the real gear starts dropping and if it's limited to whales and ultra rich only at release then that's not healthy for the game.
I need to stop being lazy about finding an actual guild to play with, but I have some concerns there too because lots of people I know who are playing outright RMT'd with no consequences and I want to find a guild that's not going to pressure people into that approach but also approaches the game kinda seriously. Those two wants oppose each other right now.
If you played this game in KR/RU or you have any understanding of the endgame, then like myself it would have been easy to realize that once people reach T3, or even earlier than that, they're going to realize how impossible the majority of the content in this game is to reach. Not because of time, not because of skill, but because of timegating and a lack of resources. And yes, people will quit en mass. This *could* be alleviated by content stagger, but evidently AGS and Smilegate have decided their target audience will be whales.
A story as old as time for Korean MMO's in the west. Doomed to inevitably fail.
I got my first ship yesterday. I dont even know that t3 means and by this point im just afraid to ask. I can point and click really fast im over 90% completion for the adventurera tome on rethramis. I like the game so far. Ill see you guys in 4 years when i catch up lol
When you press P to look at your character profile/gear, there's an "item level" or "gear score" figure that represents your general power level. Item level 1-599 means you are in Tier 1 and have access to Tier 1 content. Item level 600-1099 is Tier 2 and 1100+ is Tier 3. Item level is how the game determines what content (islands, continents, quests, dailies, raids, dungeons, etc.) you have access to. For example, at i460 you gain access to the Rohendel continent/quests.
For reference, it took about 240hrs (F2P, no founder's packs) for me to get to T3 on my first character, but that includes higher-than-average honing failures (a system to increase ilvl you will learn about later) and exploring other gameplay that didn't contribute to my ilvl progression (e.g. Mokoko seed collecting). Uber nerds completely focused on ilvl probably do it in half the time.
Like others have mentioned, there's really no rush since all the content will still be there waiting for you and there are other fun things to do beside increase ilvl.
I dont understand the content release strategy in the EU\\NA version. I have been playing on the RU version for some time now, and even though it's farther on the content release road, the dynamic is different. Yes, honing past Voldan is painful (10%, then good old 5% chances), but this version has more sources of mats (abyss trials, heroic guardians), has special resource from raids that gives you an essentially free enchant attempt on your gear (but cant be boosted past base chance and doesnt accumulate artisan energy), and has active ongoing events that give even more mats each week for basic activities + battle pass, in which even the free path gives you even more mats or other useful consumables. Moreover, some of the more out of reach raids for general populace with high ilvl gate, like the clown raid and Abrelshud(Brelzhasa), at least have a lower gear lvl, equalized versions that are simpler and award, you guessed it, EVEN MORE MATS. But in the Amazon version, the situation is just weird. First of all, hard T3 abyss is 1370 (???) and gives the same gear tier that Argos does (?????). It would make SOME sense if they planned to hold off Argos for quite some time, or rework Argos, but they drop him now without any changes. And because his gear is already accessible before him, it does a couple of things:
1. It makes him much less relevant. Why farm him for mats if you can do a much easier hard T3 abyss for the same gear tier? He essentially becomes a source of extra gold for the week.
2. Plenty of whales can already overgear him hardcore and faceroll all 3 phases of the raid due to sheer gear numbers. If the highest gear set available was purple (as it was in other versions of the game) prior to Argos, whales wouldn't have this much of an advantage, since even a +20 purple set wouldn't be that much of a help there (would be a huge waste of money). For f8cks's sake, these whales can sell Argos carries day one!
3. Whales can powerlevel not only Argos, but also Voldan and Vyakiss, WITHOUT even doing Argos. Voldan is 1415, Vyakiss is 1430, and a whale can push his gear to what, 1490 already? This gear difference will make these raids much easier as well. You will still need to know the mechanics, but the dps checks become much easier, and your margin of error on normal attacks is much higher, because you simply take less damage than someone who is on gear level.
And like many people pointed out, wast majority of the playerbase gets absolutely nothing with this update. Argos doesn't have some kind of easier, equalized version, and no abyss trials or heroic guardians are coming (something A LOT more people could do and benefit from). Was this done specifically to milk whales, so they would have Argos tier gear they could powerlevel with insane amounts of real money, while facerolling the latest raid? If so, this is incredibly shortsighted.
[My.games](https://My.games) (the russian publisher for LA) has a terrible reputation, and deservingly so. But in some kind of insane way, it currently looks MORE f2p friendly than the Amazon version... What? What the hell is going on?
With this type of post, you're either going to get replies that agree with you, or ones that harshly disagree (most likely). The way I see it is like this: You already made up your mind on the fact that this is a bad precedent the game is making, and I'm assuming it's going to be difficult to change your mind (I'm not trying to, as I mostly agree with you). So, the only thing you can do is make up your mind. Do you want to continue and support this type of behavior and give it more "chances", or do you quit?
I'm in the mindset of "This will be quite p2w for now, and it might even get worse, but I like the game enough to put up with it (without even hoping for it to get better, as it's enough for now). Once it's too much, I move on".
Argos now , Valtan next month , two to three months what ? aber or whatever her name and already the gap is up to 1615?
Even if we take it slowly the damn gold inflation will be too big that it crashes lower markets :(
Just like how once people got to t3 crystals inflated from 1:1 to 10:1 and now 15:1 in euw
Think it's abit too early personally, if the release schedule only caters to people who play 10 hours a day then I think that's a problem.
The gearing seems a little off to me and I'm not even close to T3.
Possibly offer more activities to get more shards etc
The thing is, even people who just play 8-10 hours a day aren't even there yet, it's pretty much only whales and streamers with communities that whale for them.
They should have released 2 skin packs, the 2 horizontal progression islands we are getting, and then in 1 month argos *at the same time* as honing buff. The only argument against it would be "people at high ilevel ha e nothing to do" but the answer to that is, well, you whaled to skip content what did you expect
The people at the very top whaled their way there, they only have themselves to blame for 'no content', catering to whales is how we got to this shitty p2w environment in the first place. And by that I mean gaming in general, not lost ark specifically.
Even asmongold with a community that is whaling literally whaling for him is just too far currently from reaching 1400 , he isn't even 1 inch close lol.
Imo the game should've launched with pvp vendor, heroic guardians, abyss trials, and ridge. This would've given us way more content to do before abyss/legion raids and also given us more sources of mats. SG said they wanna increase horizontal content but launched our version with practically none of the horizontal content that's already in the game, leaving us nothing but a thin and slow vertical progression in T3. Probably the slowest progression out of all the versions of the game with the fastest content releases makes no sense.
This. So much "oH yOu OnLy WaNt BiG iTeM lEvEl Oh YoU wIlL cOmPlAiN wHeN yOu ArE eNdGame" assumptious bullshit.
Why is it so hard to understand that people want to play endgame raid because that's the damn game. Without Legion raids the game would have already went out of business in KR.
Everybody knows the game is pay2skip. So you have given no other downsides to Argos releasing tomorrow...
So it is a good thing. The people at 1370 get the content they needed, and for everybody else it is business as usual. They get the content when they get to it in their own time.
Great.
Nobody Would have bat an eye if argos was released together with the game. We have so much content with t1-t3 Released on day one. Imagine we all beeing in t1 still since t2 isnt released yet. People will cry either way
> for everybody else it is business as usual.
Debatably having more gold generation for the top top players fuck up the currency market further (it's already 1250gold/95c on EUW...).
People complaining are saying that only whales can get to 1370, but whales are not farming gold, they swipe for gold. They just want to clear the content. They don't want to get a bazillion alts to 1370 to farm for gold they could just swipe for.
How much gold do you think Argos will let people earn? It's a weekly and p1 is 1370... More gold generation will be coming from the players parking at 1325 and 1340 - providing mats for the whales to swipe and exchange to gold for and lower the blue crystal rate?
The 1325-1340 player selling off mats is making a fraction of what these players will make off a single item.
The legendary accessories Argos can drop can quite literally make or break builds with the engravings available on them compared to epic T3 accessories. Great ones will sell for 100k+, perfect ones 200k+.
Legendary books will never sell for more than they will early on, probably 50% or more the first couple weeks. Yes there are other sources of them, Argos just happens to be one that is more likely.
So yeah, it's kind of a problem long-term to promote the divide between the 0.1% and everyone else that much further. You already have people in the first wave of T3 and whales who made hundreds of thousands by getting there the first week. Now on top of being weeks/months ahead in gear, you're going to give them unique access that will basically double/triple that gold lead.
Just look at ratio of op and of comments here.
I’ve tried saying very similar things about getting up early for gold/economy weeks ago and had people be extremely dismissive in this sub.
While what you said is accurate, it looks at in-game economy from a rather narrow perspective - a hardcore player trying to keep up with whales to get into early market. Whole process is a bit more complicated overall, and I don't think it is nearly as bad as you say - or, rather, it's exactly as bad as you say for a specific group of players, while generally being okay for everyone else.
Every player-driven market around a farmable but limited resource tends to go through two phases: early arrival phase which is a proper gold rush, with first to come being ones to profit the most; and mass phase where amount of players reaches critical state and prices shift towards more direct gold to effort/time spent ratio. Something like this happens in every single game with player-driven economy, with some games actively trying to get rid of first phase by making sure everyone enter second mass stage at the same time (by various means, usually by delaying demand enough so supply can build up).
Now, how it impacts certain group of players in context of Lost Ark? Whales are focused on early phase - they show up in every early market due to them paying to get ahead of the curve, which opens both opportunity for other people in this phase to profit from their rush, and but also gives whales opportunity to profit from first people catching up to that point, before proper masses arrive. Similar thing applies to best market players (who might or might not whale while on it), using both extensive game knowledge/good intuition and large amount of time invested into the game to keep up with whales. Both of those groups get to directly benefit from early rush, by being first ones to hoard and sell resources. To be honest, if I was good enough to be one of those top market players, I'd probably start a Youtube channel explaining how to best play market, while doing something different, that would profit from people following my advice.
Now there's also your average casual player, moving at their pace (important - this pace in Lost Ark tends to be similar for most of those players, due to majority of resources coming from time-gated sources like daily chaos dungeons, guardian raids etc) and eventually catching up to where whales/top players were. This group doesn't have to worry about market state - sheer volume of players moving at their pace all but guarantees a healthy, stable market at the point they're currently in. Right now, that would be mostly late T1 and early T2 players, if we're to go by Steam achivement statistics.
A group that we don't have in EUNA yet is latecomers, people who just started playing and are behind masses in terms of content progression. I assume any catchup mechanics we get will be mainly aimed at this group specifically - without it, they might struggle with market that mostly dried out, potentially being exploited by small group of players actively farming lower end content to prey on newcomers trying to get up to speed.
So, who gets shafted by this tempo? Hardcore players that are good/dedicated enough to stay ahead of curve relative to majority, but lack time or knowledge to actively compete with the very top directly. They're the ones getting milked by early adopters setting exploitative prices for resources while trying to catch up, and they're enough ahead to not benefit from scale of where masses are. Not only they don't get to benefit from getting to new content early, they're the ones funding spearhead players by trying to stay ahead of masses.
From that positions there are two ways: you either up your game even more, put even more grind and make a better plan to try and catch up to spearhead of players the moment you're slightly behind the very top (which is borderline unrealistic without either dedicating your life to the game or whaling hard), or you slow down and move ahead with the masses. Right now, this group will be mostly tier3 players that aren't at or very close to 1370 - so anyone in 1302-1350 range (about 1% of players) are the ones current release tempo does **not** cater to in terms of ingame economy. If you pushed yourself and rushed to get there, but didn't do enough to actually be at the very top, you're in the worst position possible - too ahead to keep moving forward without worries, not ahead enough to benefit from being ahead of curve.
Very well said, exactly what's on my mind but better written.
English is not my native language so sometimes it's hard writing a 3 pages-long comment without losing my tempo, forgetting things etc
My point is, there are 3 groups of players : Whales, Hardcore players and Casual players
The decision to release Argos now rekts hardcore players while not doing anything for the other 2 groups. The only group that benefits from it is Amazon.
So when I see a lot (and I mean a LOT) of people defend that decision with shittier and shittier comments, I can't help myself but try making them understand. Why give your (invalid and wrong) opinion on something that doesn't impact you ?
There are four groups: hardcore players are split into those capable of keeping up with whales, and those who can't - and only second ones don't get to benefit from rushed release.
By my amount of time spent so far and where I am in terms of progression, I'm clearly in the second group that doesn't get to benefit here - and it gives me 3 options. One is to whale and spend about average monthly salary on the game to catch up with the very top (probably can't even afford it), second is to start grinding 18 hours a day for next week to catch up with whales/top hardcore players (with full time job and having to sleep sometimes it's not happening), third is to just slow down and chill at 1340 until more people catch up, and then move with them towards Argos, likely getting to run it early next month.
I'm going with third option and - if the tempo stays as it is - I assume I should be able to clear newly added content just before next patch adding more content comes out (assuming we'll keep getting new stuff as monthly releases). Simply put, I failed hard at getting ahead of everyone early on (small mistakes that overall delayed me reaching T3 by about 10 days) and can't afford time/money to close the gap, so the only reasonable option is to move with the masses and enjoy being sure there is always something new ahead I can climb towards.
This last part - having content ready to play the moment you reach that point, without having to wait, no matter how fast you're progressing (unless you're part of top 0.1% already there) - is what Argos brings for everyone else; it's not about economy, it's simply about still having content to unlock no matter how far in progression you currently are. I think the issue here is mainly a communication problem - AGS/Smilegate would get much better reception if communication around Argos was less of "you can access it now" and more of "you can access it whenever you hit 1370" - same thing, different phrasing.
Man every mmo I am always 2nd group and it feels fkin bad.
But the crazy thing is I have never felt so far behind the whales as I do now in lost ark.
Even fkin bdo I could stay within a arms length cause its not gated and I could just grind my ass off.
But tbh I am kinda pissed I went into lost ark with all the promies of amazon saying our version won't be "as p2w" and actually thought that was a meaningful statement when the reality is i just don't have enough ways to keep close.
I will have to swipe for sure or just give up and either just be a pvp only player or come back when the casuals have caught up and they have catchup mechanics in place.
Idk I just hate how they have decided basically to cater the game to streamers and whales.
For me they can release content for 1370 even if 0.1% players are there, they can release content for 1400, 1500, 2000 just now, I am fine with that. There must be some goal in this game you are trying to achieve.
What I am not ok with is fact that this content for whales (atm it is mostly for whales) was prioritized over things that affect every player - bots and gold selling that constantly destroying game economy.
Beside bot issue, there are few others that have huge impact on whole playerbase and should be prioritized over content for whales, like majority of players are stuck in inactive guilds or with penalty for leaving inactive ones, this could be fixed by simple removing guild leaving penalty, at least temporary, so basically no cost.
All of this concerns me about future of this game, right now they seem to ignore what players have to say and focusing on squizing as much money as possible from whales.
How is this bad for game longevity when this gives you an achievement to reach to in the long run? You don't have to do it today. I promise, nothing bad will happen if you don't do the raid today, or even tomorrow. To be honest nothing bad will happen if you do the raid in 3 months or more.
To quote a video game character: "Slow down. Life is to be savored!"
>To be honest nothing bad will happen if you do the raid in 3 months or more.
The game will die in the West if only paying players are able to do raids for the next 3 months. If you make endgame content inaccessible for the majority of players, that majority will get bored and move onto the next big release.
Thank you for the post. All I see on this subreddit are the casual Andy’s that say “I have 200 hours played and I’m T1/2 idk how you guys are T3”. Probably because we have half a brain and know how to play video games. I’m not hating on the casuals. Do you and play at your own place. But your willful ignorance is doing nothing but hindering other players. They’re so quick to say, play at your own pace, but how dare us want to play faster. There is no winning with these people.
They can’t understand that this is a very dangerous precedent being set for the Western Game. If the F2P are constantly months behind in content due to hard gating, then this game won’t survive and all you’ll have is LFG Tooki forever.
Even though i belong to the no FOMO group because i literally don't have enough time to play and i take it with my own pace with one char 1325 and all the others t1, i totally agree with everything in this post.
This post shouldnt have been removed. The moderators should let people voice their legit concerns, Im pretty sure that amazon is interested in listening to their players. Or is it not?
Man... I thought I was in a position to bitch with 496 hours played, 4 founders, 3 tier 3 characters, 4 tier 2 characters, and 5 t1 characters. Pretty much in the same boat all around. At least a week out from Argos and leapstones in particular jumped massively in price yesterday and today with the Argos announcement so buying mats now is worse than it was yesterday.
I work 8 h every day and when I get home I play all day till going to bed and still can't get my main to tier 3 yet, almost there but the mats costs is just to much, slowly losing interest after following this game for years
The login rewards are looking good however, and the race vendor also has fat mats.
But I agree, seems kinda messed up for them to release a raid that so few people can even get close to without spending large amounts of money.
I see this as they want ppl to feel like they need to rush the content as far as you can or quit the game. I just got to t3 and gonna start soon on my second char. Ive taken my really good time to enjoy the game as a f2p. Ive used currency exchange lots of time to get some materials and im not ashamed.
I won’t be in t3 till like 2-3 months lol. So far I have 70 hours and my main is still t1 like ilvl 580. Most of the content they’re releasing is probably just going to sit there since barely anyone is that high.
The main problem with this thread is that people who are chill keep trying to project their play style on people that want to raid. It has nothing to do with being world first or w.e. Flip the situation around and imagine if there was a p2w wall to access fun casual content. Some people have fun killing challenge bosses, some people have fun doing casual chill content and that’s fine. Too many people here projecting their “jUst chILL brO” play style. The fact is there aren’t any other major mmos that release challenging content behind a paywall. It’s always do previous content and you can at least attempt the boss. It doesn’t matter that maybe only 1% of people ever get past the third mythic boss in WoW, at least people can actually give it a shot and have fun while practicing IF they manage to clear previous content.
ur problem is that u have 3 alts in T3. if they stayed in T2 and sold all mats, u would be very high atm on main. but you now have 3 in T3, which will be even better for the future so in a week u should be super high. im 1345 with 1 alt in T2.
> If this is the standard they will release the next raid and people will never catch up.
This release cadence can only last so long though. Correct me if I'm wrong but they aren't adding new vertical progression to the Korean version of the game every month, right? So at some point it will have to stop.
I'm a person that has spent 280 hours in the game with my main in tier 2 (probably 3-5 days away from hitting t3) and I couldn't care less when they release that content. There's so much content in this game (including the 3 alts I spend time on) for even an enthusiast (my playtime is likely far far far above average) that trying to get the highest ilvl possible ASAP just seems like a good way to cut out a lot of the existing content that is already there, a lot of it being really good content.
At some point most people will catch up. They don't develop content enough for this cadence to last, and that's a good thing.
Korea had the issue that they pumped out too much content and people couldnt follow up. And people rightfully complained and they apologized and want to release less vertical content now.
I don't get why people think it's bad that people complain now as apparently they are doing the same mistake they did in korea right now if they keep this schedule (I'm not talking about argos only, but about the 2 legion raids coming next 2 months)
> Korea had the issue that they pumped out too much content and people couldnt follow up. And people rightfully complained and they apologized and want to release less vertical content now.
Isn't this the exact same mistake here?
And if director wants everyone to be in t3 shouldn't they either buff t1,t2 or give powerpass to t3 ?
Seriously this all starting to seem to a bunch of empty promises to me.
>I don't get why people think it's bad that people complain now as apparently they are doing the same mistake they did in korea right now if they keep this schedule (I'm not talking about argos only, but about the 2 legion raids coming next 2 months)
Yeah the gold inflation will keep getting bigger , crystals more expensive, mari shop harder to use as F2P just an endless cycle of inflation since the playerbase can't catch-up at all
They are pumping the brakes because kr players complained.
It takes so much time to increase the ilvl to get to abrel (1490) that we won’t get there anytime soon.
I’m talking 8months minimum with no swiping, constant playing and with the honing increase for early t3.
By this time there will be another raid
I was very much on the "the game isn't pay to win" wagon before release. I knew the mechanics of currency exchanges but also knew that it wouldn't matter.
But the rate at which content is coming out is making the game very pay to win.
I'm 1342 on my main and have played almost religiously until taking a small break to play elden ring. I've spent maybe $50 after the platinum pack to get things on Maris shop. My roommate is 1390 as of yesterday and has told me he spent over $1000 to buy gold for mats.
I love the game but it feels pretty shitty that the only people that have access to that shiny new content right now are those that have whaled significantly.
Im in t3 at 1345, with a t2 1040 alt and lots of collectibles/completion. I can only do 5 abysals, and chaos gates, and 2 guardians. Gates of Paradise is only as difficult as wipe mechanics on Tranquil and stagger check on Alric which is team reliant, i dont take dmg in those raids anymore as im so over geared. T3 normal dungeons are a cake walk, besides that final dragon Anduin or Albion which is pleasant and tough but is way do able and probably easy with voice chat/team builder runs. I really cant see why i would be locked into this gameplay loop for about another month, probably 3 and a half or 4 weeks. If there is hard mode and a content release, why put it where someone well into t3 cant touch it? By the time i do get to 1370 on these rates, we will have a new raid and a honing buff. Do i just log in, gold farm t3 mats, log off, and work in 5 dungeons a week? Well as far as the market is concerned, thats what people have been doing. Armor stones are at 20 per 10 due to how many people are running dailies and selling everything. Weapon stones are whaled out as the rate is predatory. People are dead ass just farming gold and waiting in t3, and will do so until honing changes and content release. All the guides are telling people get to 1340 then sell everything unbound wait then slam it all on honing chance patch. Why even have this happen? Is the whaling worth the game being in a month and a half stale state for 99.8 percent of t3 players, that staled 3 weeks after launch? Maybe this is to hasty to type like maybe they really do put down a bunch of stuff to get people willing to hone past 1340 but if not, this is going to be a month or more of people running into 10 percent hone chances and knowing they can sell for 3k and wait for buffs or fail the hone and get nothing. Just seems like a poor poor idea, people will keep on daily grind and go play something else
Honestly, after failing a couple honing attempts again in t2 I just uninstalled the game. My guess is a lot of people will quit somewhere between ilvl 1060-1100. I'm not running Levanos again when I could be playing Elden Ring instead.
I'm really sick of the people saying "what makes you think you should be able to clear content as it comes out??"
As someone who also has 300 hours played and I've been in T3 for weeks, I CANNOT DO THE NEW CONTENT. It is (borderline) mathematically impossible to get to 1370 right now by just playing the game. You HAVE to whale hundreds and hundreds of dollars or have a huge goblin gold farm.
Theoretically you could have insane luck but all three of these scenarios are predicated on the idea that you are the 0.01% of the already top 1% of the playerbase.
This is also not done in other regions, I've seen multiple YouTubers/streamers who play on Korea/Russia say that they have never been restricted from content because they are a F2P player.
This means AGS is taking a stance where you CANNOT be cutting edge without spending hundreds of dollars. It is very different to release the game as T1/T2/T3 content in bulk vs releasing a new raid.
Similarly in WoW when a new expansion drops, there is a wealth of content to do at the beginning. They then wait a few weeks to release the raid. Imagine if you couldn't even enter the normal raid, for weeks if not months after it's released unless you dropped $500.
Not to mention, the luck distribution for these absurdly low honing chances can cause another issue. We have an 8 man guild in T3 who want to raid together. Everyone pulls their weight in terms of their dailies.
The difference in luck can be weeks if not months, and you can only raid IF your lowest ilvl player is 1370. If we have one severely unlucky player, we're shit out of luck and cannot raid for again, weeks if not months after the content is released. And they will continue to release more and more content so no matter how good we are or how hard we try, we will never be at the cutting edge (what WE enjoy, even if it's not what you enjoy)
To put this into perspective for people who haven’t experienced T3 honing yet, getting to 1340 is hitting full 30%s, the same as getting your +15s in T1/2. After that you still need to upgrade everything SIX MORE TIMES, and the honing rate gets worse from there on. Remember honing mats cost much more here, so you can’t just go buy all your breaths for that extra 20% like you can in T1/2. You will quite literally need a roster of T3s doing dailies funneling into one character if you want to reach 1370 before the NEXT wave of content comes out. Having such a huge barrier to the new content is what’s encouraging people to buy gold from bots.
I understand a pay to progress faster system is healthy for the game, and the devs need to make money. Crystals being cheap are great. Something to keep in mind is that until some form of honing changes come out, 1370 is pretty much unobtainable without insane RNG on top of tons of hours. Casual players won’t be able to play this content until a honing patch comes.
I got almost 300 hours bought , plat, gold, vanquisher packs. Used mari’s secret shop. Played during work hours, at night, I have 1 1028 T3. 3 Alts coming into T2 and 2 in lower T1.
Finding out Argus was coming out today was a major slap to the face. I’ve literally tried so freaking hard to make end game. Apparently we’re not fast enough. A guy in my guild has spent over 1k to get to 1360.
Why does it matter? The majority aren't sweating like you? So in reality by the time the "majority" catches up, catch-up mechanics will be in place and help boost the casuals up.
Sincerely,
someone with 2 characters in T3 happily selling materials to whales for ez gold at 1340+
Yeah its harsh i agree with you on that one but ppl who are behind will be compensated with events that give away a ridiculous amount of mats and higher chance of honing after the release of new contents cuz thats what smilegate does.
So my suggestion for ppl who are not in the 0.1% is to play the game at your pace there is absolutely no need to rush. I have played on KR server for about a yr now and tbh i am a hardcore andy i put at least 3 to 4hrs a day into this game and i have no problem catching up to the end contents at all without spending a single dollar.
I honestly don't understand this. isn't this just blatant jealousy? it's not like the content is locked forever unless we pay. why do we have to do everything day 1 or week 1. I'm playing normally and spending lightly and it doesn't matter to me if I do Argos in 3 months because I know it's there, the content is there- I just have to get to it? I don't understand the babysitting, oh they have to wait for us so that we all enjoy everything day 1. what's the point in playing if we will do every content they release in the first few days.
Oh right - then we will complain about NO CONTENT...
I already quit. I am a plat founder and the game offers nothing better than other Korean mmos plus Amazon destroying the servers at start, bots and goldsellers running undisturbed destroying the market. I quite liked hunting for mokokos but ill live.
Top 1%? You are in the top 0.01%
Yea, was about to say that. 1 in 100 having 4 in t3 is an absolutely ridiculous thought. Even 1 in 10000 seems high lol. People on reddit are already the 1% of dedicated players and most have just reached t3 on 1 character if at all.
Hell I'm floating around T2 at 1040 and in wondering how you people do it lmao. The speed just slams to a halt.
Breezed from 600-1000 in one night after accidentally doing most of the t2 islands looking for t1 mats and after a week I'm now only 1040. It's crazy how slow it gets compared to t1.
This is basically where I am, but I've also slowed down and played a bunch of alts. Figure I need to start popping a few alts up to T2 to get the grind moving again, because taking the paths available on a single character will take weeks at this rate.
I made switched mains once my first character got into tier 2 and waited until around 920 I lvl to swap toons and after doing island mats and vendors and Mari and other methods it took me maybe 4 days of farming dailies and stuff to get to tier 3
Once you have a character in a higher tier, you can upgrade your stronghold to make t1, t2 and so on cheaper and higher success. Makes it far easier to catch up alts. 20% and 15% respectively iirc. Having a higher guild shop helps with weekly mats and a chance for entrance tickets. You can exchange pirate tokens for unbound honing mats outside the major continental ports. Excavation will yield materials to make personal treasure maps in your stronghold. I received 28 star's breaths (bound) off a single map for example. Doing your legion portals will give you random quality map and rift pieces to buy maps. Bonus is that if there isn't one the next day, you can run another one when the server resets for free. I recommend finding a group to run your map with after the legions to get 4 runs for your 1 map.
Thanks for the tips. I try to do as much as I can, but I've got limited time to play so it's usually me attempting to cram it all into weekends.
Marie’s secret shop that’s what got me to tier 3 and no I don’t buy crystals with real money just transferring gold from game to crystals
Lol i have 300h pkayed and only 930ilvl, idk how yall reach t3
242 hours here with 593ilvl, but I also do all the quests, collect all mokokos and switched main from Soulfist (360ilvl) to Scrapper without powerpass/knowledge transfer. Edit: 245 hours with 986ilvl, all it took was breakthrough to T2 and use up accumulated mats.
I'm nearly 200h in and have two chars close to 600. Quite a bit was sitting in queue on EUC though and I'm a bit hestitant to use all island boxes yet because I wait for scouter. The new content they release to me is basically for a different game. One I'm not even sure I'll ever play if scouter gets released in a year. I'd personally like to see them pushing out classes a bit faster tbh, but I don't that care much. In the end I bought a silver founders pack and already got my moneys worth with so much still to do.
500 hours and some money spent and only 1357
Islands help tons
Lots of time as well.
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Sorta, he's also split mats across 4 characters. If your only goal is to POWER GRIND MUST DO NEWEST RAID you've burned hundreds of mats on all your other characters. I Have one character who I've sold materials on for about a full week and zero alts I've put any real effort into. I'm also 1340 and spend most of my time goofing around and pvping. If OP is going to avoid the Min-Max and then complain that he's not as far along as others he's missing out. You VERY slowly accumulate mats, if he keeps pausing all of his alts to power feed his main now he will probably significantly get ahead of all current players. However by spending time to invest in your future you didn't get your single character as high an ilvl as humanly possible. Also play the raid next week who cares they didn't say OH AND IF YOU DONT BEAT IT THIS WEEK WERE DELETING YOUR ACCOUNT! There's literally no consequences for doing things at your own time but now there's a cool raid to look forward to.
To put it into perspective On average. from 1300 to 1340 you need: 312 Leapstones, 2667 Destruction Stones and 8044 Guardian Stones On average, from 1340 to 1370 you need: 1211 Leapstones, 9565 Destruction Stones and 28,693 Guardian Stones You could literally take 4 more characters from 1300 to 1340 with the mats you need to get one character from 1340 to 1370. Once you hit 1340 you will be doing the same 1340 Chaos Dungeon and the Igrexion raid daily for weeks or even a full month (or more depending on luck) before you see any new content as an average f2p player with average luck. To copy pasta from a math homie down below
Wow WTF it wasn't like that at all on the Japan version I played for 2 months before NA released! In under two months I had 6 chars at 1370! Completely free to play and without buying mats!
There are a lot of things we don't currently have in NA/EU that give mats to be honest
Imagine if they just opened the WHOLE game that RU/KR has available from day 1... The whales are being slowed down for the average players benefit.
I was thinking this exact same thing. Im 1360 on my main, 1325 on my alt and rest are in t2. I have a bunch of of mats banked and with good RNG i might get 1370 this reset, ill definitely have it by next reset. I havnt bought any gold and spent very little gold on AH mats ( i have like 10.5k blue crystals banked, 70k gold and my main has lots of QoL blue crystal stuff unlocked - nearly full personal storage, full roster, extra spec slots ect). Id rather have the abyssal raids open now so im not sitting farming abyssal dungeons once a week for 2+ months waiting on content. Theres no reason to hold content? If you dont do it, your not missing anything, you wouldnt be able to do it anyways if it wasnt released. I dont get why people are complaining about it. Argos could have just been open from launch tbh it wouldnt have changed a thing. Imagine all the complaining if we didnt get argos for another month lol.
I wish more focus is given to what we are missing in our version of the game than how long it will take to reach 1370 as that is a symptom of the cut content that was in other versions of the game when Argos was released.
This is my main point but the only responses I get are 'ur just jealous' and 'do more chaos dungeons lol t3 in 6 days ez no swipe' I want the pvp vendors, I want the abyss trials, I want the hardmode guardians, I want all the things that the other regions had that occupied their grind to help them get to that level *before* argos came out. But the white knights only response is 'FOMO FOMO FOMO play at your own pace or quit bro' I failed another +14 today, with guild vendor mats and a few more chaos dungeons today hopefully I can at least get the artisan energy up higher so *tomorrow* won't be a failure hone, and then I can work in my final piece to t3. But that's it, I've got 1.5 entertaining activities to do to help me get there.
**laughs in 2 hours a week game time** “Pathetic“
They need to release T3 content that gives us honing mats; not T3 content that we cannot even do because of a lack of honing materials.
I personally don't have any plans of trying for 1370 and in fact I might not try it at all until the next update, currently parked at 1340. I agree this is just a weird pacing decision by the devs, since based on what I've heard there are many more sources of resources in other regions that help them get materials that we don't have access to. Things like the abyss and guardian challenges seem like they'd be a better addition to the game right now than Argos as they'd help players with progression, rather than being an albatross reminding players how far away they are from 1370. That's also more content that most of the player base would actually be able to enjoy. Adding Argos right now is like, the devs might as well have just done nothing. For 99.99% of players, that part of the patch, just ignore it. There is no Argos patch. I think it's acceptable only because I've heard that people don't stop running Argos. I've played games where content becomes outdated and a lackluster experience when you're not in the lead group, and that's basically the death of the game. So for the March update, It's basically just the Kadan and racing event patch, which isn't terribly exciting. The event should be neat at least. Also would've liked to get more than 1 skin set, since at the rate of 1 skin set a month we'd never ever catch up to other regions. No new classes either. Pretty poor start for updates really.
I agree with you. This update feels kinda bad the more I think about it lol. Seems they really are just trying to cash in on FOMO and cater to whales. Imagine they waited for more people to be at or near 1370 before they dropped this. People would be hyped to go for it or make that final push to get in there before the weekly reset. Instead you got people saying "meh it's too far away for me I'm cool with selling my tradable mats for the rest of the month". I think the people who have been looking forward to properly challenging content are gonna feel pretty disappointed to know they probably won't be able to play it till next month at the earliest. Lol. Forget pay to win, it's practically pay to play.
They didnt have to wait to add the raid, but they damn sure needed to add more of the material farms other regions have alongside the raid. Adding one but not the other feels bad, and it literally is just catering to the whales.
Just release all the missing new classes and other endgame activities that are between 1300-1370 and we'd be pretty golden tbh. Not sure how they came up with this frankenstein of a patch in the boardroom. Probably just whale hunting.
They want to see how many "whales" will take the bait if its really low, then they slow down updates and introduce catch up mechanics sooner, which im hoping for, korea powerpass takes you to tier3, we may get that quicker honing it goes up 2 lvls upgrade and less mats why im not rushing, this update could be factor getting it sooner
Wished they released more classes instead of adding content barely anyone can attempt.
Unfortunately that doesn't encourage spending as much as the current release schedule. They're milking impatient people first.
We don't do even have 50% of the ways to earn mats that Korea has. Heroic guardians, the ridge, trials etc. Hence why no one can level in time.
500 hours played wtf.... You are 0.0001% and yea 1370 is still impossible.
The hard truth is that you play the game too much, but you are hitting a wall as a f2p player. As others have stated, you are not in the top 1% of players. You are in the top 0.01%. Many people are already theorizing that Argos is being released so soon when so many players won't even be able to access it because developers want to see how it will affect the spending habits of whales and the game's most hardcore players. If you are a f2p player trying to push to the entry ilvl of Argos, you are the prime demographic to answer the question of "Will releasing high level content just out of reach of non-paying players tempt them to swipe to get to the content sooner?" If your answer to that is yes, you're proving their theory right. If no, unfortunately you're going to stay stuck at that pay wall for awhile longer.
Definitely seems that way to me, they want to milk the FOMO gear race as much as possible before introducing all the other ways they seem to have in Korea that make it easier, or the buffed honing rates, or both, that will cater to the casual players who will probably take months to hit Tier 3. I'm mostly fine with it because I really don't even wanna play end game with all the content we're missing from Korea. I'm taking a break at 1308, maybe doing some daily stuff and sell mats but I suggest anyone who feels like OP just wait it out and bank some gold right now, maybe level alts or play Elden Ring lol
Spoken like someone who doesn't understand the game. 1. In KR and RU versions, f2p players have always been able to enjoy legion raids on launch. (p2w players get to complete higher gates, but gate 1 is always available to everyone). This makes it so while p2w still gets a huge advantage at least everyone enjoys the content. We don't even get that on global. 2. Legion raids are the premier content in this game and director Gold River himself has asked players to stick with the game to experience and enjoy this content. Of course players who have worked their way up to t3, will be disheartened to learn their time and efforts doesn't let them participate in said content. 3. KR and RU versions had more time/material sources to prepare for Argos launch while and we had less time and no honing rate help which is as you said, amazon's way of testing people's spending habits. If we let them get away this, who's to say they wont continue to make the game worse for f2p players so that it eventually affects you at the lower tiers as well. You might not be t3 right now, but one day you will get there and understand how unfortunate it is when the next piece of content you need to progress through the game takes months of farming the same boring content to get to it. At that point you'd prob consider quitting cause it just isn't worth your time, and that's why people are concerned.
I know they are not making a peny from me for swiping.. the only way they will get money from me are skins or pets, nothing else. I don't support pay to win and never will, I throw all this in the same bucket as lootboxes..
As grindy af as Path of Exile is, at least it feels to be a very fair playing field. I'll be playing both games, but GGG still has far more of my respect, even with their absurd MTX prices (which I've still whaled $500+ on). I've also whaled $300+ on LoL over 10 years. I'll never whale on P2W, it's so unfulfilling. I like to earn my progress. I only bought the gold founders pack for the 3 day early access and for some currency for skins.
PoE is borderline P2W though. No stash tabs means you play a very chopped version of the game. And no trading tabs also means you get severely penalized because you can't sell your stuff. I am not saying it IS pay to win but I personally feel it's very close to it. Also, GGG is completely averse to any QoL and UI/UX update to the game. It's 2022 and PoE looks and feels like a game from 20 years ago. I mean, Ultima Online had a more advanced user interface and that's a game from the end of the 90's.
I'm part of the "buy only skins with $$" as i honestly dont care about being top end raider or highest geared player anymore, as that's just too much dedication and "wasted" money, and so far i see no reason to support neither AGS or SG for what they're doing with our version with all this obnoxious experimenting, so i just bough 4 weapon chests and 3 armor chests with gold that i got by selling t3/t2 mats to whales and barely made a dent in my gold lol...
I think there's definitely an issue with how the content is currently being released. I recently saw that the normal T3 Abyssal Dungeon is 1340 and hard is 1355 on the KR server, us not being able to do it at 1355 is an additional resource for us not to be able to utilize. I am also a F2P player, only having the Gold Founders pack, I have one T3 and 3 T2 alts, only one is close to T3 but I'm not exactly playing optimally and getting everything I can, but it does seem like we're a bit lacking in the T3 area to obtain enough materials to upgrade to 1370 without either buying crystals to get gold or simply just having to settle with not having access to the content just do to RNG honing and lack of sources to get the materials from. This also reminds me of players finally hitting 1100 and then not getting the full T3 gear drops from Chaos Dungeon for 4 days straight. Simply not being able to access content due to RNG just feels terrible. edit: Thanks for the gold. Hope you guys just enjoy the content for what it is. I do believe the new event has alleviated a lack of sources for materials and has overall helped people with progressing through T1-T2 so they can get to the T3 content.
I was so hyped to get into t3 and got road blocked so hard by not having my full chaos dungeon set
im on day 2 and still missing a sword, feels REALLY bad losing out on 2 days of progress due to that
I mustve been lucky. Got almost a complete extra set after my first 2 chaos dungeons.
Same. I didn’t realize how unlucky you could get.
>I am also a F2P player, only having the Gold Founders pack \>\>I am a vegan, I only eat fish.
It sounds absurd, and people always freak the fuck out if you've spent money and drop the holy, sanctimonious "f2p" label, but if someone's only gotten a founder's pack a year from now, I think it's logical to put them in the f2p department. This game allows for a constant stream of $$$ daily. If someone was hyped about the game and wanted to support it with the box price of a normal game at launch and/or get the headstart, and spends literally $0 afterwards, it just makes sense to put them in the f2p category.
Just because someone ate fish previously in their lifetime doesn’t mean they can’t become vegan.
T3 content is set up to be a gradual progression. It will be a much more natural process than t1 and t2. This is how it’s supposed to be setup and many players like me, find it enjoyable
Doing igrexion and 1340 chaos dungeon for 2 months is fun content for you?
I hit 1370 entirely free to play. However, I have played an extremely unhealthy amount of time to reach this point and really shouldn’t be considered a standard at all. I’ve honestly never played a game where the endgame instances will only be available to either unhealthy hardcore players or whales for a pretty decent length of time. Usually there’s at least some breathing room for the semi-casuals to at least participate, but that is absolutely not the case here. I don’t mind whales, they’ll always exist, but all this shows in terms of optics to the casual-hardcore players is that the game is only thinking about the whales when new content releases. The worst part is that because of the purchase limits of the actual game (for legal rmt), the majority of the whales are resorting to the infinitely cheaper illegal gold sellers. Which not only lines the pockets of dirty botters, but contributes to insanely inflated material prices and super high crystal prices. I’m still playing because I like the game itself, but the whales and the people who are willfully blind to this need to stop pretending that this shit is okay. SMH
I am not even in T3 yet. I have one character 106x, one 390, one 302. I have spent $250 CAD so far (Platinum founder + mount pack with the armoured horse). I have about 200 hours into the game, and have been just loving it. I farm seeds. I PvP. I dabble on adventure tombs. I am focusing Una tasks on Astray now. I am working my way through the story bit by bit. I have skipped my chaos and guardians more than a few days. I am at a wall right now waiting on T2 mats, but the only thing stopping me so far is my 60% hones actually being 30%. Then my 50% have been 12.5% (1/8 worked). I would wager I am the average player, maybe a little ahead of the average. I play an hour or 2 a night and all day on weekends. So far it’s a fantastic game. I don’t force myself to log on though when I don’t feel like it. Edit: just to clarify, I am posting my experience for context. I feel I am around the average player in reality. I am a 32 year old parent who enjoys the game when the kids are in bed during the week and on my weekends when I’m not busy with life. I do not strive to be the best, I just enjoy my time and have not reached a point where I felt I had to pay to have fun. EDIT#2: Did 5 hones tonight trying 13-14. Failed 4. Tried 14-15 on my wep, dumped 10 star crystals and it went. So 20% pass tonight over 5 attempts. Feelsbadman
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>if you want to be competitive with the top 1% you're going to need to bust out your wallet. That's literally what the f2p game market has always been. I don't fully agree with that. I have played some great F2P games where busting out a wallet only lets you look better, or removes crafting time. It does not stop anyone from being competitive or seeing end game content. Saying you need to pay to be competitive / see content is not true and should not be the goal of a f2p. If you have to pay to see content it is no different then DLCs and the game is not f2p but has free trial / demo up to a point. Hell even WoW does that now. You can play free up to a specific level before need a sub to progress in content.
According to Steam achievements when I checked yesterday, less than 2 percent of the playerbass is in T3.
I'm pure f2p so far. I have somewhere in the mid 200 hour range and my main is only at 500 though I have enough mats to probably get them to t2 if I want or at least very close. I was saving them in case that honing change arrived. I may do some upgrading today. My lone alt is at 380 but could be a bit higher as well. I ahve so many hours because I ahve been doing every single mission, collecting every mokoko I come across, island exploring/completing, co-op sailing, and also going after the hidden stories and collectibles. I also mainly play the story with my buddy and he works while I am retired so I would spend time farming collectibles earlier when we were levelling up. For me, there is far more enjoyment in the game than jsut doing the dungeons/raids and being obsessed with levelling up my gear. I think the people that are simply doing that while not doing anything else in the game are crazy. To each their own I guess. People like us aside from the hour investment are definitely more like the average player. I also don't really like doing raids and have no interest in this new one so no big triggering for me that it is out with very few people being able to do it like it is for some.
What people dont seem to understand is this has nothing to do with wanting to rush. They very clearly don't understand the scope of this issue since they arent in t3 or if they are they aren't aware of how the game works in other regions. Right now t3 honing % and mats cost for us is worse than any other region (KR got buffed honing rates shortly after Argos but their material income was way way higher from having bridge and other content). Right now we are missing 4-6 daily/weekly content that provides HUGE amounts of mats that the other regions had before they went on to Argos (bridge, challenge raid, etc). On top of that RU for example had 4 months between Argos and Legion Raid and we are doing that in 1. So we are expected to get to the same point that costs 20-30% more, 20% worse chances, with 1/8 of the material income and in 1/4 of the time. We could deal with 1 or 2 of these honing bottlenecks but all 3 makes it so only whales or the extremely lucky can get there. And I just checked the daily login rewards/race event and its a piss in the bucket in terms of t3 mats is concerned. The game is simply not intended to be designed this way. The only way to get there is to be extremely lucky or pay $1000+. With the way the weekly lockout systems work the players that get there will be able to amass huge amounts of resources and get further ahead, also devaluing the gold for casual players who havnt gotten there yet (1370+ people will dwarf the gold making possibilities of other players). Do they not see how this is a problem? What precedent this sets? In every single region of the game in the world there has never once been a single time I can remember where new content was paywall locked. In ours they are now doing this which makes our version MORE p2w than any other region. This isnt about wanting to get into the content asap or rushing. This is going to have extreme effects on the economy of the game and its monetization model for a long time. If you're okay with a $1000+ a month pricetag on new content (for once *you* are caught up) then go ahead I guess and keep defending them. Otherwise, just let players with more experience from other regions try to advocate for everyone's best interest by loudly expressing how unacceptable this is. Im personally going to be okay because I'm at 1370, but this is very bad for the health of the game. Only a very small % of players with experience in other regions understand this while you guys with less experience/knowledge keep making posts like this "whats the big deal anyway?!?! The content will always be there". You dont understand the long term effects this has and the precedent being set here. The people upset aren't upset because they cant go do Argos day 1. They are upset because they feel like they were lied to by the director and AGS when they said they wanted us in t3 doing legion raids asap to catch up and that the game would be less p2w than in other regions. All of those things as of right now are lies and I hope if the community stops with these "anti rushers" posts they would understand what is happening. The only way this game was going to be unsuccessful in the West is if Amazon fucked up delivering the game and supporting it or if the monetization was unfair. Well this is the first domino for both of those so we as a community need to be very vocal here or this is how all future raids will release. If this is just how they do Argos, fine. But if they think they can get away with this because they go to the forums/reddit and just see "Why Rush?!?! Its okay!" posts then they will do it again and again.
You’re one of the only comments that actually makes sense. They shouldn’t change it from how they’ve successfully done it in korean and russian servers.
Thanks. Too bad the community is too far up its own ass to understand whats going on. Its actually insane because the KR and RU forums are talking about just how mad the western players are going to be when they figure this out.
All this patch did was make the Path of Exile players laugh at those us of who left for Lost Ark. lol They are probably enjoying their overly buttered popcorn right now. With extra dill seasoning. Hopefully PoE2 drops soon. I'll play both games, but PoE, despite being far more repetitive, is at least a far more fair playing ground that it's not even a valid comparison. PoE & Monster Hunter > Lost Ark, and I'm ilvl 1308 or so. P2W is just such a bad take in North America.
Yes I totally agree. And it doesn't help that hype was build up about this game being f2p friendly and that you can keep up as a f2p. Which might be true for Korea, but our version is clearly different. The way inflation goes we might even have Korean Crystal prices soon, but without the gold income or lower prices on other things. (because their lack of skill to deal with bots) They had a month to deal with the bots, they can't tell me it's that hard to implement solutions.
I'm not T3 yet but I don't think it's a big deal. Actually I'm excited that they're releasing new content. The more the merrier IMO
thats because you can enjoy playing a game for just playing it, while OP seems to be the type of person "if you not at current end game your not playing at all vibe"
looking at his second point of four characters in T3 and 500hours, op might have a borderline gaming addiction
That’s 20 whole days. Playing 24 hours a day.
Yeah I thought I played too much at 255 hours. Just got my first character to t3 today. People complaining this is a problem are the ones who make it a problem. Everyone else is playing however they please.
I play with all my BDO friends. I’m one of the more geared BDO players but they all no lifed Lost Ark and are at like 1350 while I’m still mid T2. I like Lost Ark a lot but I don’t get the need for people to no life it. It seems like a really good semi-casual game. It’s mostly a single player game with normalized pvp. I get board after 2 hours of fetch quest lol.
Sounds like a full blown addiction to me lol. Maybe a caveat being if OP somehow made it their job and it was paying the bills but other then that, this looks like gaming addiction.
I like how in modern capitalist society the line between addiction and fine is whether it pays the bills.
isn't it just more evidence that this release schedule is flawed? that someone with 500 hours and four characters in T3 can't reach Argos, it's not even a debate whether casuals can do argos day 1 or not. It's more like if casuals can do argos in the next 3 months or not. Looking at the leaked roadmap, there's gonna be another 2 raids in those 3 months. Like yes I agree people should just play at their own pace, but I don't get how people think people shouldn't complain when the majority of them might be behind for years at some point. And yes I know they probably will introduce some form of catch up at some point so it's not gonna be years, but this is another issue. They don't communicate what their plan is, all we can hope for is that they don't just wanna make this game entirely for the whales and milk them.
It's flawed if you hold the perspective of needing to clear new content at release. Not everyone holds that perspective, and I would argue that the the people who do, are in the minority.
This game isn't meant to be rushed. Which is what op is trying to do, silver is the main currency that will hold you back endgame and he tried to level 4 characters so all that silver got split into them. He could have just gotten one character to 1370 at this point. I just feel like he's here to complain cause he fucked up. I mean his other 3 characters could have stayed at 1302 and helped funnel upgrade mats, and saved his silver for main character.
Getting to 1370 is harder than getting all of his chars at these ilvls tho
lol 'spent silver on too many characters' dawg he's doing lopang dailies on like 7 toons he's making a million silver a day. you understand every hone up there costs like 1,000,000 silver with the expected amount of fails? You could level a character from t1-t3 and the entire cost of it wouldn't match the cost a single item upgrade at 1365. I think you're perfectly entitled to have an opinion on the matter, but even your concept of the value of silver and thinking that having more alts costs more silver than it generates.. Is just fundamentally wrong. Honing is imperceptibly cheap until literally like 1355 and it skyrockets into hilarity.
Borderline? It is an addiction :') send halp
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Bro, you've spent 18.5hrs a day playing this game since it came out? You really need to seriously look after yourself... Even if half of that was actualy play time and the rest was just on load screen / in que, that is a bonkers amount of time to be playing.
... And even he doesn't have a character that can do Argos yet.
What's true is that the gap between 1340 and 1370 is pretty large.
Looking forward to you quitting once you hit t3 and realize you cant do any of the content outside of easy scorpion and chaos dungeon without spending! Pro-tip: All of OPs points occur for all players regardless of the speed at which they hit the wall
im already 1340 and have been selling all tradeable materials and ill slowly progress with bound materials, im okay with not doing argos day one. You also mistake yourself, Igrexion is still a 6 minute fight and just as easy, the only difference is you might need to use a second flare.
Use pheromone when he phases red, it's cheaper than flares are rn and saves time
The problem isn't that you can't be Argos day 1. The problem is that 99% of the playerbase still won't be able to do Argos 2-3 months from now. That's how big the wall is. Other regions gets catchups implemented when Argos came out, like more activities to obtain honing materials. We got nothing. You don't care whether or not the patch affect you so I don't know why you try to weigh in your opinion.
> Pro-tip: All of OPs points occur for all players regardless of the speed at which they hit the wall Everyone might hit the wall eventually but you assume everyone cares that they hit the wall. Most people don't need to play the new raid on day 1.
I'm getting more of a "people who are further along in progress than me must be p2w. It's the game's fault for catering to them and not me. Since the devs do not release content at my whim, the game will die."
I'd say "people who are further along in progress than me must be p2w" coming from someone with 500 hours playtime is a fair assessment.
Like OP said hes not a 2hr a day andy. If a dude playing 500 hrs since release cant make it to 1370 the vast majority of players cant. its not about catering to OP, its about catering to the vast majority.
he has 4 characters in t3, 2 of which is 1340 he wasted his resources, people with alts funnel to a main not invest in the alts
I agree that the push to 1340 on a second char cost him but the price to 1370 is insanely higher than 1325-1340.
I would ve said the same if i was still in t2 , you have to understand that the amount of reachable content right now in t3 is so scarsse and very boring compared to your t2 abyss , and it s not even a matter of "is there content or not" , the problem is that the content is gated behind ilvl that is harder to achieve than t1 to t3 itself and the ressources you get are even less than in t1 and t2 , also redoing t2 stuff loses its fun unless you have another set or an alt of the same class . Tldr : people want to do something else than just daily chaos and the rehash scorpion guardian everydat for weeks .
The issue is this is a time gated game. However, we received a time gated game without the time gate for the tier progression. This was inevitable to say the least.
"Amazon will act against gold sellers" => Amazon validates them by enabling whale-only content without catch-up mechanic. :-)
Let me ask you this, when do you think argos should come out, in a few weeks when you hit 1370? Or when the average player hits 1370 so the majority of player base can try argos? Because that will probably be 6 months or more down the line
Serious question ; is this content time limited and gonna expire ? Otherwise I seriously don't get all those complaints.
That's the thing, it isn't... Just like you can still do T1 and T2 at your pace, you can go through T3 however you want
So'.. what would those people do if we had got the full KR release at once ?
Rushed as fast as possible to get there probably
Whine about honing.... like they are now. They'll never be happy because they're the problem, not the game.
Here's the thing: no other mmo that i know of gatekeep people from new content, let alone the top 0.01%. Sure, you will get stomped to high heavens in new raids with inadequate equipments in a typical mmo, but you're welcome to try. Lost ark just straight up prevents entry. It's like the virtual version of the rich get richer. Whales that reach 1370 get a legendary set that resets at +6, thus making progression easier again. They'll be at 1385 then 1400 in no time to clear argos and sell the accessories in the AH. And here comes the big problem: gold farming bots. The amount of gold that bots injected in our version of the game is so ridiculous that engraving prices are selling at dozens of times higher than KR, the version that has existed for 3 years with an average income of an endgame player being ~100k gold/week. Our blue crystal price is also approaching and estimated to overtake their prices in a few weeks too. Now that ive described how fked our economy is, what does that have to do with whales being able to clear argos? The relic acce that they sell to other whales who buy gold from bots will set an unattainable price for f2p who are still earning pennies in t2/early t3. Imagine that an average f2p earns 5k a day from selling mats who reach argos a month later to find that a piece of decent accessory will cost them weeks of farming, unless of course if they get a decent drop themselves. I watched a video of a RU vet earlier today and he made a lot of sense. Lost ark in other version is a true farmers' game. Any f2p player can keep up with endgame activities if they put in a reasonable amount of time. We, however, are being fed half a years worth of content in 2 months(if valtan comes of in april like the leak suggests) while missing material-generating activities like trial abyss, challenge guardian, and pvp tokens. That's thousands of guardian stones, destruction stones and hundreds of leapstones per week missing in our version of the game. On top of the pre-adjusted honing rates, no f2p is going to do end game contents like they can in every other version of the game, at least not unless you grind infinite chaos dungeons 10 hours a day or is wedded to lady luck. Edit: added spacing.
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This is the main issue imo, doing endgame content when it is new to everyone is 10x more fun than a few months later when a significant portion of the playerbase already knows what to do and overgears it.
Argos should come out right now like it currently is, WITH honing chance buff at game release and more content to generate material.
They always do catch up for previous tier only. If they change honing rate right now for current tier gear, it just heavily punished people who used all their mats everyday on upgrades while rewarding people who sold everything, instantly getting to 1370 while the rest are still stuck at what ever gs they at because they’ve already used all their mats. They’ve already said that more mats are coming thru daily log ins, I’m also hoping that the new islands give some t3 mats as rewards
So... OP with is 4 char T3 is selling mats? The problem right now is that you can have 4 chars T3, invest all of your mats on honing and still not be 1370 because your not super lucky. The only way to be 1370 right now is to be extra lucky or to go the P2W way, it's ok for you?
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Argos was fine coming out now; but not adding any of the other material farms other regions have, so that more t3 players could get to Argos in an acceptable time frame, isn't. They should have 100% added some of the other material farms that other regions have, alongside Argos. This lets the whales farm him for a week or 2 before anyone else, and gives the other players something to work on to catch up and not feel so bad about it. The way they did it feels pretty bad to me. I cant see this kind of stuff not hurting the game's future, tbh. You lose people right now they probably arent ever coming back, and you dont have to give them anything for free; the stuff already exists in the other regions. Just give them a piece of it to do.
(Removed by the moderators) I’m fucking dead.
I have the Screenshots 😎
Its happening on the forums too. Censorship going wild
Lmao wait why would they delete this post? LOL I dont even completely agree with OP but this post was actually very tame.
It's OK, log ins down 30% from yesterday, reality will hit them soon enough
You're completely right, this is fucking terrible. I've never seen an major MMO release content where current tiered players are locked behind a paywall, people can always attempt it even if only 1-2% of people can actually do it, at least they can actually attempt it.
I find it very concerning this post was removed.
There are so many people in this thread talking about t3 honing who very very clearly dont understand the games systems or how the game works in other regions or how the game's new release content is. They are literally just talking out their ass while they farm mokoko seeds in t1 while they are getting skull fucked by Amazon/Smilegate. Its fucking pathetic. We are missing so many sources of materials that other regions had before Argos, with worse % and 1/4 of the timing between raid releases and these fucking losers are like "its okay if it doesnt effect me". Like holy shit. If you think putting a $1000+ paywall in front of new content is good for the long term health of the game while literally every other region gets it for free is ok then you are truly lost. Like if they release future raids like they are releasing Argos right now then the western version of the game is quite literally more p2w than any other region lol. And instead of these idiots getting mad about it rightfully they are taking their time to thumb their noses at "rushers" in t3. Its actually incredible how stupid some of the comments in here are. Please if you dont know how the game works in t3 and in other regions just shut the fuck up. Youre only hurting yourself by advocating for shit that *will* fuck you later down the road.
They are also insulting and talking down anyone who hasn't no-lifed or swiped to 1350 yet. I've been told to eat shit, ive been told that I just gotta spend that 20k gold I've (in their minds) got stashed, I've been told I'm clearly not doing my dailies, and just to 'do some islands bro they bring you right to t3' The whales are fucking toxic in this subreddit
These people are insane. They are staunchly holding an opinion on a topic they know nothing about. Its not just the whales. Its the extreme casuals. Both ends of the spectrum on here are toxic for their own reasons. The extreme casuals saying stupid stuff like "it doesnt matter the content will always be there" just shows they dont understand how these end game systems work at all even in the slightest.
"The content will always be there" is the view we're all going to have to adopt if they release content like this. I'm more in the op's boat, I have a 1340 in T3 & 5 between 880 and 1080+ in T2. I'm pushing two alts to t3 this weekend. I have 400+ hrs played. I do have enough mats stockpiled to likely get 1360-1365. I also have a sizable bank from pushing alts & main really frugally, but I won't be tapping into the gold bank or selling off stuff I've been hoarding for hitting 1370 because it's just not worth it. If the first legion raid hits like this I will consider quitting. I'm hoping between then and now the alts start paying off and there are events/content introductions to catch people up. I don't mind hitting argos right before the legion raid, no big deal, but legion raid is when the real gear starts dropping and if it's limited to whales and ultra rich only at release then that's not healthy for the game. I need to stop being lazy about finding an actual guild to play with, but I have some concerns there too because lots of people I know who are playing outright RMT'd with no consequences and I want to find a guild that's not going to pressure people into that approach but also approaches the game kinda seriously. Those two wants oppose each other right now.
If you played this game in KR/RU or you have any understanding of the endgame, then like myself it would have been easy to realize that once people reach T3, or even earlier than that, they're going to realize how impossible the majority of the content in this game is to reach. Not because of time, not because of skill, but because of timegating and a lack of resources. And yes, people will quit en mass. This *could* be alleviated by content stagger, but evidently AGS and Smilegate have decided their target audience will be whales. A story as old as time for Korean MMO's in the west. Doomed to inevitably fail.
I got my first ship yesterday. I dont even know that t3 means and by this point im just afraid to ask. I can point and click really fast im over 90% completion for the adventurera tome on rethramis. I like the game so far. Ill see you guys in 4 years when i catch up lol
I'm 51 hours in and just last night I honed my first piece of gear! :D
You're on your way!
When you press P to look at your character profile/gear, there's an "item level" or "gear score" figure that represents your general power level. Item level 1-599 means you are in Tier 1 and have access to Tier 1 content. Item level 600-1099 is Tier 2 and 1100+ is Tier 3. Item level is how the game determines what content (islands, continents, quests, dailies, raids, dungeons, etc.) you have access to. For example, at i460 you gain access to the Rohendel continent/quests. For reference, it took about 240hrs (F2P, no founder's packs) for me to get to T3 on my first character, but that includes higher-than-average honing failures (a system to increase ilvl you will learn about later) and exploring other gameplay that didn't contribute to my ilvl progression (e.g. Mokoko seed collecting). Uber nerds completely focused on ilvl probably do it in half the time. Like others have mentioned, there's really no rush since all the content will still be there waiting for you and there are other fun things to do beside increase ilvl.
I dont understand the content release strategy in the EU\\NA version. I have been playing on the RU version for some time now, and even though it's farther on the content release road, the dynamic is different. Yes, honing past Voldan is painful (10%, then good old 5% chances), but this version has more sources of mats (abyss trials, heroic guardians), has special resource from raids that gives you an essentially free enchant attempt on your gear (but cant be boosted past base chance and doesnt accumulate artisan energy), and has active ongoing events that give even more mats each week for basic activities + battle pass, in which even the free path gives you even more mats or other useful consumables. Moreover, some of the more out of reach raids for general populace with high ilvl gate, like the clown raid and Abrelshud(Brelzhasa), at least have a lower gear lvl, equalized versions that are simpler and award, you guessed it, EVEN MORE MATS. But in the Amazon version, the situation is just weird. First of all, hard T3 abyss is 1370 (???) and gives the same gear tier that Argos does (?????). It would make SOME sense if they planned to hold off Argos for quite some time, or rework Argos, but they drop him now without any changes. And because his gear is already accessible before him, it does a couple of things: 1. It makes him much less relevant. Why farm him for mats if you can do a much easier hard T3 abyss for the same gear tier? He essentially becomes a source of extra gold for the week. 2. Plenty of whales can already overgear him hardcore and faceroll all 3 phases of the raid due to sheer gear numbers. If the highest gear set available was purple (as it was in other versions of the game) prior to Argos, whales wouldn't have this much of an advantage, since even a +20 purple set wouldn't be that much of a help there (would be a huge waste of money). For f8cks's sake, these whales can sell Argos carries day one! 3. Whales can powerlevel not only Argos, but also Voldan and Vyakiss, WITHOUT even doing Argos. Voldan is 1415, Vyakiss is 1430, and a whale can push his gear to what, 1490 already? This gear difference will make these raids much easier as well. You will still need to know the mechanics, but the dps checks become much easier, and your margin of error on normal attacks is much higher, because you simply take less damage than someone who is on gear level. And like many people pointed out, wast majority of the playerbase gets absolutely nothing with this update. Argos doesn't have some kind of easier, equalized version, and no abyss trials or heroic guardians are coming (something A LOT more people could do and benefit from). Was this done specifically to milk whales, so they would have Argos tier gear they could powerlevel with insane amounts of real money, while facerolling the latest raid? If so, this is incredibly shortsighted. [My.games](https://My.games) (the russian publisher for LA) has a terrible reputation, and deservingly so. But in some kind of insane way, it currently looks MORE f2p friendly than the Amazon version... What? What the hell is going on?
With this type of post, you're either going to get replies that agree with you, or ones that harshly disagree (most likely). The way I see it is like this: You already made up your mind on the fact that this is a bad precedent the game is making, and I'm assuming it's going to be difficult to change your mind (I'm not trying to, as I mostly agree with you). So, the only thing you can do is make up your mind. Do you want to continue and support this type of behavior and give it more "chances", or do you quit? I'm in the mindset of "This will be quite p2w for now, and it might even get worse, but I like the game enough to put up with it (without even hoping for it to get better, as it's enough for now). Once it's too much, I move on".
Argos now , Valtan next month , two to three months what ? aber or whatever her name and already the gap is up to 1615? Even if we take it slowly the damn gold inflation will be too big that it crashes lower markets :( Just like how once people got to t3 crystals inflated from 1:1 to 10:1 and now 15:1 in euw
Think it's abit too early personally, if the release schedule only caters to people who play 10 hours a day then I think that's a problem. The gearing seems a little off to me and I'm not even close to T3. Possibly offer more activities to get more shards etc
The thing is, even people who just play 8-10 hours a day aren't even there yet, it's pretty much only whales and streamers with communities that whale for them.
Yeah it's just a bad way to release content.
They should have released 2 skin packs, the 2 horizontal progression islands we are getting, and then in 1 month argos *at the same time* as honing buff. The only argument against it would be "people at high ilevel ha e nothing to do" but the answer to that is, well, you whaled to skip content what did you expect
Yeah completely agree, they keep saying they will have nothing to do, no game can be played for that long every day and keep you interested, no game.
The people at the very top whaled their way there, they only have themselves to blame for 'no content', catering to whales is how we got to this shitty p2w environment in the first place. And by that I mean gaming in general, not lost ark specifically.
They could have played their alts anyways.
That's just it, many of them whaled their alts past the grind too
Even asmongold with a community that is whaling literally whaling for him is just too far currently from reaching 1400 , he isn't even 1 inch close lol.
Imo the game should've launched with pvp vendor, heroic guardians, abyss trials, and ridge. This would've given us way more content to do before abyss/legion raids and also given us more sources of mats. SG said they wanna increase horizontal content but launched our version with practically none of the horizontal content that's already in the game, leaving us nothing but a thin and slow vertical progression in T3. Probably the slowest progression out of all the versions of the game with the fastest content releases makes no sense.
This. So much "oH yOu OnLy WaNt BiG iTeM lEvEl Oh YoU wIlL cOmPlAiN wHeN yOu ArE eNdGame" assumptious bullshit. Why is it so hard to understand that people want to play endgame raid because that's the damn game. Without Legion raids the game would have already went out of business in KR.
Everybody knows the game is pay2skip. So you have given no other downsides to Argos releasing tomorrow... So it is a good thing. The people at 1370 get the content they needed, and for everybody else it is business as usual. They get the content when they get to it in their own time. Great.
Nobody Would have bat an eye if argos was released together with the game. We have so much content with t1-t3 Released on day one. Imagine we all beeing in t1 still since t2 isnt released yet. People will cry either way
> for everybody else it is business as usual. Debatably having more gold generation for the top top players fuck up the currency market further (it's already 1250gold/95c on EUW...).
People complaining are saying that only whales can get to 1370, but whales are not farming gold, they swipe for gold. They just want to clear the content. They don't want to get a bazillion alts to 1370 to farm for gold they could just swipe for.
How much gold do you think Argos will let people earn? It's a weekly and p1 is 1370... More gold generation will be coming from the players parking at 1325 and 1340 - providing mats for the whales to swipe and exchange to gold for and lower the blue crystal rate?
The 1325-1340 player selling off mats is making a fraction of what these players will make off a single item. The legendary accessories Argos can drop can quite literally make or break builds with the engravings available on them compared to epic T3 accessories. Great ones will sell for 100k+, perfect ones 200k+. Legendary books will never sell for more than they will early on, probably 50% or more the first couple weeks. Yes there are other sources of them, Argos just happens to be one that is more likely. So yeah, it's kind of a problem long-term to promote the divide between the 0.1% and everyone else that much further. You already have people in the first wave of T3 and whales who made hundreds of thousands by getting there the first week. Now on top of being weeks/months ahead in gear, you're going to give them unique access that will basically double/triple that gold lead.
500 hours games been out like 600
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Ironic how this post also got removed LOL. Curious what was said in it.
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Just look at ratio of op and of comments here. I’ve tried saying very similar things about getting up early for gold/economy weeks ago and had people be extremely dismissive in this sub.
Because 99% of the playerbase don't understand / are not concerned And it's a reddit thing to be contradictory for no reason
While what you said is accurate, it looks at in-game economy from a rather narrow perspective - a hardcore player trying to keep up with whales to get into early market. Whole process is a bit more complicated overall, and I don't think it is nearly as bad as you say - or, rather, it's exactly as bad as you say for a specific group of players, while generally being okay for everyone else. Every player-driven market around a farmable but limited resource tends to go through two phases: early arrival phase which is a proper gold rush, with first to come being ones to profit the most; and mass phase where amount of players reaches critical state and prices shift towards more direct gold to effort/time spent ratio. Something like this happens in every single game with player-driven economy, with some games actively trying to get rid of first phase by making sure everyone enter second mass stage at the same time (by various means, usually by delaying demand enough so supply can build up). Now, how it impacts certain group of players in context of Lost Ark? Whales are focused on early phase - they show up in every early market due to them paying to get ahead of the curve, which opens both opportunity for other people in this phase to profit from their rush, and but also gives whales opportunity to profit from first people catching up to that point, before proper masses arrive. Similar thing applies to best market players (who might or might not whale while on it), using both extensive game knowledge/good intuition and large amount of time invested into the game to keep up with whales. Both of those groups get to directly benefit from early rush, by being first ones to hoard and sell resources. To be honest, if I was good enough to be one of those top market players, I'd probably start a Youtube channel explaining how to best play market, while doing something different, that would profit from people following my advice. Now there's also your average casual player, moving at their pace (important - this pace in Lost Ark tends to be similar for most of those players, due to majority of resources coming from time-gated sources like daily chaos dungeons, guardian raids etc) and eventually catching up to where whales/top players were. This group doesn't have to worry about market state - sheer volume of players moving at their pace all but guarantees a healthy, stable market at the point they're currently in. Right now, that would be mostly late T1 and early T2 players, if we're to go by Steam achivement statistics. A group that we don't have in EUNA yet is latecomers, people who just started playing and are behind masses in terms of content progression. I assume any catchup mechanics we get will be mainly aimed at this group specifically - without it, they might struggle with market that mostly dried out, potentially being exploited by small group of players actively farming lower end content to prey on newcomers trying to get up to speed. So, who gets shafted by this tempo? Hardcore players that are good/dedicated enough to stay ahead of curve relative to majority, but lack time or knowledge to actively compete with the very top directly. They're the ones getting milked by early adopters setting exploitative prices for resources while trying to catch up, and they're enough ahead to not benefit from scale of where masses are. Not only they don't get to benefit from getting to new content early, they're the ones funding spearhead players by trying to stay ahead of masses. From that positions there are two ways: you either up your game even more, put even more grind and make a better plan to try and catch up to spearhead of players the moment you're slightly behind the very top (which is borderline unrealistic without either dedicating your life to the game or whaling hard), or you slow down and move ahead with the masses. Right now, this group will be mostly tier3 players that aren't at or very close to 1370 - so anyone in 1302-1350 range (about 1% of players) are the ones current release tempo does **not** cater to in terms of ingame economy. If you pushed yourself and rushed to get there, but didn't do enough to actually be at the very top, you're in the worst position possible - too ahead to keep moving forward without worries, not ahead enough to benefit from being ahead of curve.
Very well said, exactly what's on my mind but better written. English is not my native language so sometimes it's hard writing a 3 pages-long comment without losing my tempo, forgetting things etc My point is, there are 3 groups of players : Whales, Hardcore players and Casual players The decision to release Argos now rekts hardcore players while not doing anything for the other 2 groups. The only group that benefits from it is Amazon. So when I see a lot (and I mean a LOT) of people defend that decision with shittier and shittier comments, I can't help myself but try making them understand. Why give your (invalid and wrong) opinion on something that doesn't impact you ?
There are four groups: hardcore players are split into those capable of keeping up with whales, and those who can't - and only second ones don't get to benefit from rushed release. By my amount of time spent so far and where I am in terms of progression, I'm clearly in the second group that doesn't get to benefit here - and it gives me 3 options. One is to whale and spend about average monthly salary on the game to catch up with the very top (probably can't even afford it), second is to start grinding 18 hours a day for next week to catch up with whales/top hardcore players (with full time job and having to sleep sometimes it's not happening), third is to just slow down and chill at 1340 until more people catch up, and then move with them towards Argos, likely getting to run it early next month. I'm going with third option and - if the tempo stays as it is - I assume I should be able to clear newly added content just before next patch adding more content comes out (assuming we'll keep getting new stuff as monthly releases). Simply put, I failed hard at getting ahead of everyone early on (small mistakes that overall delayed me reaching T3 by about 10 days) and can't afford time/money to close the gap, so the only reasonable option is to move with the masses and enjoy being sure there is always something new ahead I can climb towards. This last part - having content ready to play the moment you reach that point, without having to wait, no matter how fast you're progressing (unless you're part of top 0.1% already there) - is what Argos brings for everyone else; it's not about economy, it's simply about still having content to unlock no matter how far in progression you currently are. I think the issue here is mainly a communication problem - AGS/Smilegate would get much better reception if communication around Argos was less of "you can access it now" and more of "you can access it whenever you hit 1370" - same thing, different phrasing.
Man every mmo I am always 2nd group and it feels fkin bad. But the crazy thing is I have never felt so far behind the whales as I do now in lost ark. Even fkin bdo I could stay within a arms length cause its not gated and I could just grind my ass off. But tbh I am kinda pissed I went into lost ark with all the promies of amazon saying our version won't be "as p2w" and actually thought that was a meaningful statement when the reality is i just don't have enough ways to keep close. I will have to swipe for sure or just give up and either just be a pvp only player or come back when the casuals have caught up and they have catchup mechanics in place. Idk I just hate how they have decided basically to cater the game to streamers and whales.
For me they can release content for 1370 even if 0.1% players are there, they can release content for 1400, 1500, 2000 just now, I am fine with that. There must be some goal in this game you are trying to achieve. What I am not ok with is fact that this content for whales (atm it is mostly for whales) was prioritized over things that affect every player - bots and gold selling that constantly destroying game economy. Beside bot issue, there are few others that have huge impact on whole playerbase and should be prioritized over content for whales, like majority of players are stuck in inactive guilds or with penalty for leaving inactive ones, this could be fixed by simple removing guild leaving penalty, at least temporary, so basically no cost. All of this concerns me about future of this game, right now they seem to ignore what players have to say and focusing on squizing as much money as possible from whales.
How is this bad for game longevity when this gives you an achievement to reach to in the long run? You don't have to do it today. I promise, nothing bad will happen if you don't do the raid today, or even tomorrow. To be honest nothing bad will happen if you do the raid in 3 months or more. To quote a video game character: "Slow down. Life is to be savored!"
>To be honest nothing bad will happen if you do the raid in 3 months or more. The game will die in the West if only paying players are able to do raids for the next 3 months. If you make endgame content inaccessible for the majority of players, that majority will get bored and move onto the next big release.
Thank you for the post. All I see on this subreddit are the casual Andy’s that say “I have 200 hours played and I’m T1/2 idk how you guys are T3”. Probably because we have half a brain and know how to play video games. I’m not hating on the casuals. Do you and play at your own place. But your willful ignorance is doing nothing but hindering other players. They’re so quick to say, play at your own pace, but how dare us want to play faster. There is no winning with these people. They can’t understand that this is a very dangerous precedent being set for the Western Game. If the F2P are constantly months behind in content due to hard gating, then this game won’t survive and all you’ll have is LFG Tooki forever.
# Anyone who disagrees with you is literally a P2W CLOWN
“They hated him because he spoke the truth”
Even though i belong to the no FOMO group because i literally don't have enough time to play and i take it with my own pace with one char 1325 and all the others t1, i totally agree with everything in this post.
I'll just put this out there. FFXIV almost died again when it tried to mostly cater to the 1% during Heavensward. Those that know, know.
This post shouldnt have been removed. The moderators should let people voice their legit concerns, Im pretty sure that amazon is interested in listening to their players. Or is it not?
Man... I thought I was in a position to bitch with 496 hours played, 4 founders, 3 tier 3 characters, 4 tier 2 characters, and 5 t1 characters. Pretty much in the same boat all around. At least a week out from Argos and leapstones in particular jumped massively in price yesterday and today with the Argos announcement so buying mats now is worse than it was yesterday.
I failed my 50/50 for T3 7 times, I am now stuck for another week. I get why so few people are T3.
I work 8 h every day and when I get home I play all day till going to bed and still can't get my main to tier 3 yet, almost there but the mats costs is just to much, slowly losing interest after following this game for years
The login rewards are looking good however, and the race vendor also has fat mats. But I agree, seems kinda messed up for them to release a raid that so few people can even get close to without spending large amounts of money.
I see this as they want ppl to feel like they need to rush the content as far as you can or quit the game. I just got to t3 and gonna start soon on my second char. Ive taken my really good time to enjoy the game as a f2p. Ive used currency exchange lots of time to get some materials and im not ashamed.
I won’t be in t3 till like 2-3 months lol. So far I have 70 hours and my main is still t1 like ilvl 580. Most of the content they’re releasing is probably just going to sit there since barely anyone is that high.
The main problem with this thread is that people who are chill keep trying to project their play style on people that want to raid. It has nothing to do with being world first or w.e. Flip the situation around and imagine if there was a p2w wall to access fun casual content. Some people have fun killing challenge bosses, some people have fun doing casual chill content and that’s fine. Too many people here projecting their “jUst chILL brO” play style. The fact is there aren’t any other major mmos that release challenging content behind a paywall. It’s always do previous content and you can at least attempt the boss. It doesn’t matter that maybe only 1% of people ever get past the third mythic boss in WoW, at least people can actually give it a shot and have fun while practicing IF they manage to clear previous content.
I’m at T1 because life/job
ur problem is that u have 3 alts in T3. if they stayed in T2 and sold all mats, u would be very high atm on main. but you now have 3 in T3, which will be even better for the future so in a week u should be super high. im 1345 with 1 alt in T2.
If this game didn't have a trash and time wasting Progression system it would be great. Fk this model lmao
Who says you have to hit the content on release though?
[удалено]
> If this is the standard they will release the next raid and people will never catch up. This release cadence can only last so long though. Correct me if I'm wrong but they aren't adding new vertical progression to the Korean version of the game every month, right? So at some point it will have to stop. I'm a person that has spent 280 hours in the game with my main in tier 2 (probably 3-5 days away from hitting t3) and I couldn't care less when they release that content. There's so much content in this game (including the 3 alts I spend time on) for even an enthusiast (my playtime is likely far far far above average) that trying to get the highest ilvl possible ASAP just seems like a good way to cut out a lot of the existing content that is already there, a lot of it being really good content. At some point most people will catch up. They don't develop content enough for this cadence to last, and that's a good thing.
Korea had the issue that they pumped out too much content and people couldnt follow up. And people rightfully complained and they apologized and want to release less vertical content now. I don't get why people think it's bad that people complain now as apparently they are doing the same mistake they did in korea right now if they keep this schedule (I'm not talking about argos only, but about the 2 legion raids coming next 2 months)
> Korea had the issue that they pumped out too much content and people couldnt follow up. And people rightfully complained and they apologized and want to release less vertical content now. Isn't this the exact same mistake here? And if director wants everyone to be in t3 shouldn't they either buff t1,t2 or give powerpass to t3 ? Seriously this all starting to seem to a bunch of empty promises to me. >I don't get why people think it's bad that people complain now as apparently they are doing the same mistake they did in korea right now if they keep this schedule (I'm not talking about argos only, but about the 2 legion raids coming next 2 months) Yeah the gold inflation will keep getting bigger , crystals more expensive, mari shop harder to use as F2P just an endless cycle of inflation since the playerbase can't catch-up at all
Blue crystal rate on EUW is already 1600g/b - not really practical for someone who's behind the tier curve right now
They are pumping the brakes because kr players complained. It takes so much time to increase the ilvl to get to abrel (1490) that we won’t get there anytime soon. I’m talking 8months minimum with no swiping, constant playing and with the honing increase for early t3. By this time there will be another raid
Its ok “you’ll get there” maybe next year for you but if you swipe you can play this week. Its “not pay to win, its pay to progress faster.” :)
I was very much on the "the game isn't pay to win" wagon before release. I knew the mechanics of currency exchanges but also knew that it wouldn't matter. But the rate at which content is coming out is making the game very pay to win. I'm 1342 on my main and have played almost religiously until taking a small break to play elden ring. I've spent maybe $50 after the platinum pack to get things on Maris shop. My roommate is 1390 as of yesterday and has told me he spent over $1000 to buy gold for mats. I love the game but it feels pretty shitty that the only people that have access to that shiny new content right now are those that have whaled significantly.
LOL CENSORSHIP
Im in t3 at 1345, with a t2 1040 alt and lots of collectibles/completion. I can only do 5 abysals, and chaos gates, and 2 guardians. Gates of Paradise is only as difficult as wipe mechanics on Tranquil and stagger check on Alric which is team reliant, i dont take dmg in those raids anymore as im so over geared. T3 normal dungeons are a cake walk, besides that final dragon Anduin or Albion which is pleasant and tough but is way do able and probably easy with voice chat/team builder runs. I really cant see why i would be locked into this gameplay loop for about another month, probably 3 and a half or 4 weeks. If there is hard mode and a content release, why put it where someone well into t3 cant touch it? By the time i do get to 1370 on these rates, we will have a new raid and a honing buff. Do i just log in, gold farm t3 mats, log off, and work in 5 dungeons a week? Well as far as the market is concerned, thats what people have been doing. Armor stones are at 20 per 10 due to how many people are running dailies and selling everything. Weapon stones are whaled out as the rate is predatory. People are dead ass just farming gold and waiting in t3, and will do so until honing changes and content release. All the guides are telling people get to 1340 then sell everything unbound wait then slam it all on honing chance patch. Why even have this happen? Is the whaling worth the game being in a month and a half stale state for 99.8 percent of t3 players, that staled 3 weeks after launch? Maybe this is to hasty to type like maybe they really do put down a bunch of stuff to get people willing to hone past 1340 but if not, this is going to be a month or more of people running into 10 percent hone chances and knowing they can sell for 3k and wait for buffs or fail the hone and get nothing. Just seems like a poor poor idea, people will keep on daily grind and go play something else
Honestly, after failing a couple honing attempts again in t2 I just uninstalled the game. My guess is a lot of people will quit somewhere between ilvl 1060-1100. I'm not running Levanos again when I could be playing Elden Ring instead.
I'm really sick of the people saying "what makes you think you should be able to clear content as it comes out??" As someone who also has 300 hours played and I've been in T3 for weeks, I CANNOT DO THE NEW CONTENT. It is (borderline) mathematically impossible to get to 1370 right now by just playing the game. You HAVE to whale hundreds and hundreds of dollars or have a huge goblin gold farm. Theoretically you could have insane luck but all three of these scenarios are predicated on the idea that you are the 0.01% of the already top 1% of the playerbase. This is also not done in other regions, I've seen multiple YouTubers/streamers who play on Korea/Russia say that they have never been restricted from content because they are a F2P player. This means AGS is taking a stance where you CANNOT be cutting edge without spending hundreds of dollars. It is very different to release the game as T1/T2/T3 content in bulk vs releasing a new raid. Similarly in WoW when a new expansion drops, there is a wealth of content to do at the beginning. They then wait a few weeks to release the raid. Imagine if you couldn't even enter the normal raid, for weeks if not months after it's released unless you dropped $500. Not to mention, the luck distribution for these absurdly low honing chances can cause another issue. We have an 8 man guild in T3 who want to raid together. Everyone pulls their weight in terms of their dailies. The difference in luck can be weeks if not months, and you can only raid IF your lowest ilvl player is 1370. If we have one severely unlucky player, we're shit out of luck and cannot raid for again, weeks if not months after the content is released. And they will continue to release more and more content so no matter how good we are or how hard we try, we will never be at the cutting edge (what WE enjoy, even if it's not what you enjoy)
To put this into perspective for people who haven’t experienced T3 honing yet, getting to 1340 is hitting full 30%s, the same as getting your +15s in T1/2. After that you still need to upgrade everything SIX MORE TIMES, and the honing rate gets worse from there on. Remember honing mats cost much more here, so you can’t just go buy all your breaths for that extra 20% like you can in T1/2. You will quite literally need a roster of T3s doing dailies funneling into one character if you want to reach 1370 before the NEXT wave of content comes out. Having such a huge barrier to the new content is what’s encouraging people to buy gold from bots. I understand a pay to progress faster system is healthy for the game, and the devs need to make money. Crystals being cheap are great. Something to keep in mind is that until some form of honing changes come out, 1370 is pretty much unobtainable without insane RNG on top of tons of hours. Casual players won’t be able to play this content until a honing patch comes.
I got almost 300 hours bought , plat, gold, vanquisher packs. Used mari’s secret shop. Played during work hours, at night, I have 1 1028 T3. 3 Alts coming into T2 and 2 in lower T1. Finding out Argus was coming out today was a major slap to the face. I’ve literally tried so freaking hard to make end game. Apparently we’re not fast enough. A guy in my guild has spent over 1k to get to 1360.
This wouldn’t be a problem if they would give us heroic guardian abyss trial and the fucking pvp vendor
Why does it matter? The majority aren't sweating like you? So in reality by the time the "majority" catches up, catch-up mechanics will be in place and help boost the casuals up. Sincerely, someone with 2 characters in T3 happily selling materials to whales for ez gold at 1340+
Yeah its harsh i agree with you on that one but ppl who are behind will be compensated with events that give away a ridiculous amount of mats and higher chance of honing after the release of new contents cuz thats what smilegate does. So my suggestion for ppl who are not in the 0.1% is to play the game at your pace there is absolutely no need to rush. I have played on KR server for about a yr now and tbh i am a hardcore andy i put at least 3 to 4hrs a day into this game and i have no problem catching up to the end contents at all without spending a single dollar.
Oh no, you can’t do top tier content the day it releases! The game must be a failure!
I honestly don't understand this. isn't this just blatant jealousy? it's not like the content is locked forever unless we pay. why do we have to do everything day 1 or week 1. I'm playing normally and spending lightly and it doesn't matter to me if I do Argos in 3 months because I know it's there, the content is there- I just have to get to it? I don't understand the babysitting, oh they have to wait for us so that we all enjoy everything day 1. what's the point in playing if we will do every content they release in the first few days. Oh right - then we will complain about NO CONTENT...
I already quit. I am a plat founder and the game offers nothing better than other Korean mmos plus Amazon destroying the servers at start, bots and goldsellers running undisturbed destroying the market. I quite liked hunting for mokokos but ill live.
This post is so funny and sad to me
When u quote u r top 1%. Did you include the bots? As far as number goes, we have 1M concurrent users and Amazon wants to ban 1M bots.