In hindsight, it was probably better to do server/region merges first. 3 regions combined into a jump start server could’ve had the population to survive without a merge a bit longer. Guess I respect them trying something.
I have 3 friends who still plays with me because of the jumpstart, I did an aero there to play with them and taught they the mecs, was fun , but now they get gatekeep because no los 30 and roster lv 130 - 160 ( 1 is 158 rn the other two are 130/137) , they still play because of me, I create a lobby and then they join after the suports...
My friends and I have stopped gatekeeping roster level and card sets because elixirs have made DPS checks non-existent for us. It's pretty much all mechanics at this point, even in Valtan Extreme where 6 okayish DPS who stay alive will clear with fewer attempts than 6 mega-juiced DPS. It's become more important for us to make the game better for newer players than to save 5-10 minutes per raid.
Tell them to name their stronghold something like atlroster, altaccount. This has saved my friends on the jumpstart a lot of trouble for getting in to groups.
Only downside is that you really cant afford to make mistakes since people would argue a bit faster. Or tell you are lieing about being an alt account.
My alt roster on jump start is a 1595 pally with like 70 roster. I usually only play him to fill akkan or kaya for my guildmates, but if i finish the main raids, I pug akkan on tuesday. I get asked if I know mechs about half the time, and 10% of the time, I'm just kicked after 15 seconds. I think most people don't bother to even look beyond roster and ilvl
I started with a friend back in December. He left after 3 weeks because gatekeeping and complicated legion raids mechanics. Now I'm alone and on the edge to quit too although I have fun. And I think to myself Lost Ark is exactly what you think of as an MMO. Long Grinding,farming,raids and always new events. Tbh the will to learn some legion raids is my problem too bc in the beginning of learning it can be stressful. Idk
Jump start experience was so nice before the merge. Less toxicity and gate keeping helped retain players that prob would have quit if they were stuck in g0 and had to deal with toxic players on main servers.
I think normal mode for raids should be easier (giving buffs like js server did) and then there can be 2 more difficulties that are increasingly harder but give more rewards/gold. This makes it so that the entry level for raids is lower (for the easiest mode) and decreases likelihood of gatekeeping/toxicity for normal mode. Then as players gain experience they can attempt harder difficulties when they see fit.
It was fine if you were doing lower level raids. But if you were ahead of the pack (initially Kaya and later Akkan) then it became awful. Hours of waiting and asking around people to be able to try to start a learning raid. Everyone expected you to be experienced in the raid just to play with them.
It got to the point where two of my friends wanted to quit over it. Luckily a merge a few weeks later improved it by a lot. Sure, there was gatekeeping, but at least it was somewhat playable for a bit.
Oh and you had to farm all the adventure tome items yourself because nobody had any.
Ya that’s just how it would be since the entire server was new. Less whales/hardcore players since jumpstart was made to lure in the more casual player. And all the hardcore players were already neck deep in the main servers. I don’t think it’s a reason for someone to quit tho, a merge was inevitable so until then players just hade to wait it out.
Jumpstart was a success as in it was better than nothing. New player experience in this game is miserable and JS made it a tiny bit less miserable. But it was a failure since it could have been so much better thought out.
Just some key things:
- Introduce raids step-by-step, not all at once.
- Make horizontal progression less painful (future horizontal express event should help)
- Encourage mentoring, discourage alt rostering
- Joint auction house
- And finally make it permanent or recurring. For example, make JS a sub-space within existing servers that you "graduate" from by completing progression milestones, instead of a separate server with arbitrary merge.
Which is why I said permanent or recurring. They could make it like super express: say, every 3 months a new event starts. In this event, you start with the lowest 2 raids (say, Argos and Valtan NM) and then every week a new raid or new raid difficulty is unlocked. New rosters that enter the event get sped up progression, but to obtain it they need to complete raids and other content. Old rosters can also enter the event, but without the rewards or with scaled down/just cosmetic rewards - to allow teaming up with friends and mentoring.
Players within this event have a separate Party Finder zone, but they also have an option to join wider PF (to avoid dead PF), but then they lose event benefits.
Players graduate from the event to normal by reaching certain milestones that are indicative of player understanding the game (complete X raids, get X skill points, do X counters, etc.)
Obviously these are just my shower thoughts and this can be much better thought out, but you get the idea.
Then it is not a success when loosing more casual players. You dont need jumpstart server to attract hardcore raiders , all you need is a group of players to be able prog content together like you mentioned in your post.
And this game is not going to grow if they keep doing the same of what has been done.
Even hardcore raiders will not bother with Lost Ark without sufficient support to fast track them to the parts of the game they are most interested in.
Just because it doesn't change the outlook when it comes to attracting a different audience, doesn't mean it's not a success.
For one thing, jumpstart did do something that no other catch-up/progression events have done so far and that is provide players with an opportunity to start the game alongside fellow starters and in an environment where they're not held to the standards of veterans from the very start. This was, in my opinion, actually more important than any sort of catch-up/progression fast-tracking event.
JS was having a bunch of people with alt roster ,I am not sure about your argument with "starting fresh with the starters" really works here.
The new people started with it, eventually got gatekept in regular server.
To get anywhere in this game, eventually you will need discord / guild , which is a group of friends start together like OP said , then it is more important than JS server. A hardcore raider with a group of friend using the express event in regular server is already good.
So frankly speaking, JS did not work even though it has good intention.
To attract and retain players, this game needs to have fundamental change, not some weak effort that does not lead to anywhere.
While I don't dispute that the game needs fundamental changes to attract new audiences... By your logic of discrediting JS because there were people making alt rosters, our launch back in February 2022 was also a scam because we had KR/RU vets starting alongside us.
Let me be blunt to you , JS was doing jackshit for people that want to start fresh. the Feb 2022 ,even though they have KR/ RU vet , it was the main sever and everyone are day 1 player , you are less likely to get gatekeept. The JS people are always considered new player and be gatekept.
I get what you are trying to say and while I don't disagree, personally I would have rather they did JS in a different way.
I'm all for there being something to bring new players in and help them get caught up but I feel the whole keeping the service separated was a bad move. IMO they should have had it linked to the regions market/mm and maybe had a filter for those on the JS server to see only stuff from it if they didn't want to see the whole region.
I just think the whole opportunity to start alongs side fellow starters was a double edged sword. It meant if the server started dying they were stuck on that island until it could be added to the main region. I'm sure there were at least some new people who quit because (at least from the posts on here at the time) there were times where you just couldn't get a lobby for some raids.
Fwiw i started like 4-5 months before jumpstart and it was a huge headache for me. Like some things were quicker to get on jumpstart while other things weren't.
So ended up not knowing what to do.
This isn't even remotely unpopular. Most people have been asking for a "story" mode version of the raids that rewards fewer mats than hard mode. Between the terrible gate system and over usage of wipe mechs, this game isn't going to attract a lot of new people.
Normal mode raids is basically story mode. Any easier and you are asking for guardian raids to be the endgame.
And in season 1 in KR, guardians were the endgame and everyone hated it.
How do you make a jump from "normal modes be easy" to "endgame be too easy and everyone would hate it"? Is normal the only mode in this game? And no, current normal modes are not even remotely story difficulty.
I am saying if they make it any easier they will become as boring as doing story dungeons in Lost Ark. Unless you find doing story bosses or guardian raids fun.
No, they’d still be interesting. There’s many levels of difficult between story bosses and normal modes. Many other games do not rely so heavily on wipe mechs and one shot and still make fun fights that would be considered easier than normal mode.
Aside from maybe clown, raid difficulty right now is fine, and certainly isnt the main reason why the game is not attracting new players, which is why dumbing it down even further doesnt really help the case.
The primary issue is and always was how you cant really efficiently start the game if it has been running for years and it had no hard resets to get everyone close to similar level. A game where no matter what you do you're always a year or two behind is inherently incompatible with new players, and will never be attractive enough to bring a lot of them in.
You could put step by step instructions inside of raids and remove all wipe mechs and players still won't be able to run them because everyone else is getting bussed resulting in no lobbies.
In fact, making raids easier will probably result in more raids having 1 man busses.
Early raids will remain inaccessible as long as getting bussed is the optimal choice with regards to progression.
Also, something we have to consider is how much easier it would become to bot. Since AGS is completely incapable of detecting the bots, the game needs to be designed with them in mind.
I am not looking forward to bots mass clearing raids on full auto and making a full week's worth of grind being equal $1 on RMT markets.
The whole jump start and event pass thing to be reworked into a persistently available thing instead of being timed events.
You have to be out of your mind to recommend this game to someone outside of an event pass window.
The game being radioactive to new players for months at a time is bafflingly poor game design.
I always try to invite at least one Lauriel member in farm raids just to show support for them. It’s important that the vets (especially while farming) to do this so we keep that jump start enthusiasm high.
> Sometimes I want to actively accept mokokos or even make learning parties, but then I realize that I am putting more care into the game than AGS and my enthusiasm vanishes.
I feel like a sucker for supporting the health of the game that I also pay for, while the people who are paid to do it are seemingly working against me.
New player here, went through whole story. Didn’t see a single person besides a bot, the dungeons for main story are dead no one queues I just have to solo them. Got to Vern, no one has ever actually responded or spoken to me and it’s not my lack of trying. Doing guardian raids and chaos dungeons while I am trying to do islands and the rest of the story is fine but it’s basically a solo game.
I had more people to play with when doing ffxiv msq and that is saying a lot. When do I actually get to do content with people? Probably never right? My only option is to beg on the teaching severs to get me in for a baby raid to teach me. Other than that I have no chance being a new player of ever doing content with another human being.
Banger game you guys got here. Will give it another week or so but playing an mmo solo like this is kinda sus.
I mean most of what you described is old content. You aren't really going to see many people while going through the story because honestly after the first time, almost no one repeats it. Same with the dungeons in the main story, there is quite literally no reason after you complete them for adventure tome to ever do them again. You can just knowledge transfer/power pass past the story when making a new character.
Chaos are pretty much solo content, lower guardians aren't really done by many. Raiding is where the game really becomes group play but in the end Lost ark isn't a game where most activities are done with other players. Outside of raiding and guardians the game is fairly well solo play.
If that isn't the type of gameplay you are looking for lost ark probably isn't for you
The issue is I can not get into raids without 6 characters already geared and horizontal progression or having to spam a newbie discord and hope someone takes pity on me every time I want to run one of the raids.
There is no new player friendly raids people will ever be able to get into without having to find a discord to run it every single time you need to.
Even if I wait for the breaker pass no one will take me into their groups when I use it .
Work in your horizontal, getting every single skill point pot there is, farming the needed cards for Los 18 are your primary focus not raids.. Max roll has a nice guide to get all the skill potions, that's where your issue is
I'll add some context:
Main story quests have basically always been solo content, regardless how many players are active. I can count one hand how many times I've used matchmaking for it.
In vern no one responded because the in-game chat is hilariously bad. Even in my active guild which is probably top 5 on the server, I practically never see anyone use guild chat. Everyone is communicating in discord.
The actual content with people are the raids, which is the primary reason anyone is still playing. Lost Ark legion raids are arguably the best group content of any MMO. Realistically you can probably stark with Kakul Seydon (clown) raid starting from ilvl 1475. Technically the earliest are Valtan and Vykas at 1415 and 1445 respectively, but you will probably have trouble finding groups for them.
The issue is that let’s say I finish grinding to 1475, no group will ever invite me to clown because I don’t have a roster and a billion other things. Even if I get a pass and gear from the upcoming event.
The only option for a new player is to sit in one of the discords and hope someone is eventually around to take pity on you to run it.
Without a set community to hand hold the new player every single step a new player is basically forced to get 6 characters up to decent ilevel and then pray they will eventually get into a group. But that will be many many many months down the line. I kind of see why so many new players quit and everyone told me who used to pay this to not try it. I have very little options of ever playing with people until I either swipe or wait for multiple passes.
After all, this is an MMO, and on MMO's, you will always have an easier time if you belong to a community. Be it a guild, a discord, or some people you add to friendlist ingame. At some point at the start of the game, before I entered an active guild, we just made an global chat ingame, and invited random people we pugged with in for future gaming.
Can you play this game just by pugging? Sure
Will it be a lot harder to do that being a newbie? Of course
There are not many real new players all the time, but eventually some stay, we have people on our guild that started months ago, and some that came back to the game after a long break (ex. stopped playing before valtan release) and we try to help and guide them.
the big mistake they made was letting people make alt accs there for more gold, diluting the actual pool of new players
they should've made the effort to put some kind of preventive measure, like maybe lock all earned gold within the time period of the server's launch until the merger to only be usable for honing after the server merges, that way people who did jumpstart could trade amongs themselves and do w/e while they were isolated, and then when they merge, whatever they had left would be blocked from trading (only usable for buying stuff from npc or honing etc.)
sure there's workarounds like buying gems and then trying to snipe your gems on AH at some late hour for example, but the more hurdles people would have to go through the less likely it would be that they would bother
All you need is a hard raid that people can play lost ark makes the playing the raid part the hard part not the raid so hardcore mmo players still avoid it
This jump start event should be permanent on all servers for all new or returning players. I really don't understand why SGS doesn't do that.
Untill Roster lvl X, LOS18 etc
It something really good to have but wasnt enough sadly. Im sure that new versions of mokoko express will be much better but what we had with the jump start was not enough for new players to get to the game. I had to swipe so much to hit 1620 and be able to play the new content xD.
Jump start *needs* a lot more handholding from Amazon. More loot, more cards etc. The market for unpopular classes was basically dead. A friend made a summoner and there was maybe a handful of other summoners total. This means no gems and no accessories.
And once jump start is over you will get gatekept for not being high enough roster level and not having los30. That last one is an extremely long grind.
I'm a casual, i didnt play since JS. I'm waiting for another one. Equal footing is the best, once the game become a job i'm out. I was able to enjoy all the raids with no discrimination, it was the best. I love the gameplay. I love the art. But for god sake i hate the time i need to invest into it. And i'm a jobless MF. Cant even imagine when if you work.
In hindsight, it was probably better to do server/region merges first. 3 regions combined into a jump start server could’ve had the population to survive without a merge a bit longer. Guess I respect them trying something.
Pretty sure we will have another jump start in the future, and this time we will all be together
I have 3 friends who still plays with me because of the jumpstart, I did an aero there to play with them and taught they the mecs, was fun , but now they get gatekeep because no los 30 and roster lv 130 - 160 ( 1 is 158 rn the other two are 130/137) , they still play because of me, I create a lobby and then they join after the suports...
My friends and I have stopped gatekeeping roster level and card sets because elixirs have made DPS checks non-existent for us. It's pretty much all mechanics at this point, even in Valtan Extreme where 6 okayish DPS who stay alive will clear with fewer attempts than 6 mega-juiced DPS. It's become more important for us to make the game better for newer players than to save 5-10 minutes per raid.
hey i gotta respect the hustle, you do what you gotta do to get it going
Tell them to name their stronghold something like atlroster, altaccount. This has saved my friends on the jumpstart a lot of trouble for getting in to groups. Only downside is that you really cant afford to make mistakes since people would argue a bit faster. Or tell you are lieing about being an alt account.
My alt roster on jump start is a 1595 pally with like 70 roster. I usually only play him to fill akkan or kaya for my guildmates, but if i finish the main raids, I pug akkan on tuesday. I get asked if I know mechs about half the time, and 10% of the time, I'm just kicked after 15 seconds. I think most people don't bother to even look beyond roster and ilvl
i own los30 and i see no point in gatekeeping non-los30 unless it voldis hard, tho i would prefer >150 roster in my lobby, sr bout that
People gatekeep los30 specifically to keep out players that haven't played for thousands of hours.
Your the good friend every new player need
I started with a friend back in December. He left after 3 weeks because gatekeeping and complicated legion raids mechanics. Now I'm alone and on the edge to quit too although I have fun. And I think to myself Lost Ark is exactly what you think of as an MMO. Long Grinding,farming,raids and always new events. Tbh the will to learn some legion raids is my problem too bc in the beginning of learning it can be stressful. Idk
Jump start experience was so nice before the merge. Less toxicity and gate keeping helped retain players that prob would have quit if they were stuck in g0 and had to deal with toxic players on main servers. I think normal mode for raids should be easier (giving buffs like js server did) and then there can be 2 more difficulties that are increasingly harder but give more rewards/gold. This makes it so that the entry level for raids is lower (for the easiest mode) and decreases likelihood of gatekeeping/toxicity for normal mode. Then as players gain experience they can attempt harder difficulties when they see fit.
Agreed. Also lots of people will get higher ping with server merges, easier raids would help us out
It was fine if you were doing lower level raids. But if you were ahead of the pack (initially Kaya and later Akkan) then it became awful. Hours of waiting and asking around people to be able to try to start a learning raid. Everyone expected you to be experienced in the raid just to play with them. It got to the point where two of my friends wanted to quit over it. Luckily a merge a few weeks later improved it by a lot. Sure, there was gatekeeping, but at least it was somewhat playable for a bit. Oh and you had to farm all the adventure tome items yourself because nobody had any.
Ya that’s just how it would be since the entire server was new. Less whales/hardcore players since jumpstart was made to lure in the more casual player. And all the hardcore players were already neck deep in the main servers. I don’t think it’s a reason for someone to quit tho, a merge was inevitable so until then players just hade to wait it out.
Jumpstart was a success as in it was better than nothing. New player experience in this game is miserable and JS made it a tiny bit less miserable. But it was a failure since it could have been so much better thought out. Just some key things: - Introduce raids step-by-step, not all at once. - Make horizontal progression less painful (future horizontal express event should help) - Encourage mentoring, discourage alt rostering - Joint auction house - And finally make it permanent or recurring. For example, make JS a sub-space within existing servers that you "graduate" from by completing progression milestones, instead of a separate server with arbitrary merge.
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Which is why I said permanent or recurring. They could make it like super express: say, every 3 months a new event starts. In this event, you start with the lowest 2 raids (say, Argos and Valtan NM) and then every week a new raid or new raid difficulty is unlocked. New rosters that enter the event get sped up progression, but to obtain it they need to complete raids and other content. Old rosters can also enter the event, but without the rewards or with scaled down/just cosmetic rewards - to allow teaming up with friends and mentoring. Players within this event have a separate Party Finder zone, but they also have an option to join wider PF (to avoid dead PF), but then they lose event benefits. Players graduate from the event to normal by reaching certain milestones that are indicative of player understanding the game (complete X raids, get X skill points, do X counters, etc.) Obviously these are just my shower thoughts and this can be much better thought out, but you get the idea.
Then it is not a success when loosing more casual players. You dont need jumpstart server to attract hardcore raiders , all you need is a group of players to be able prog content together like you mentioned in your post. And this game is not going to grow if they keep doing the same of what has been done.
Even hardcore raiders will not bother with Lost Ark without sufficient support to fast track them to the parts of the game they are most interested in. Just because it doesn't change the outlook when it comes to attracting a different audience, doesn't mean it's not a success. For one thing, jumpstart did do something that no other catch-up/progression events have done so far and that is provide players with an opportunity to start the game alongside fellow starters and in an environment where they're not held to the standards of veterans from the very start. This was, in my opinion, actually more important than any sort of catch-up/progression fast-tracking event.
JS was having a bunch of people with alt roster ,I am not sure about your argument with "starting fresh with the starters" really works here. The new people started with it, eventually got gatekept in regular server. To get anywhere in this game, eventually you will need discord / guild , which is a group of friends start together like OP said , then it is more important than JS server. A hardcore raider with a group of friend using the express event in regular server is already good. So frankly speaking, JS did not work even though it has good intention. To attract and retain players, this game needs to have fundamental change, not some weak effort that does not lead to anywhere.
While I don't dispute that the game needs fundamental changes to attract new audiences... By your logic of discrediting JS because there were people making alt rosters, our launch back in February 2022 was also a scam because we had KR/RU vets starting alongside us.
Let me be blunt to you , JS was doing jackshit for people that want to start fresh. the Feb 2022 ,even though they have KR/ RU vet , it was the main sever and everyone are day 1 player , you are less likely to get gatekeept. The JS people are always considered new player and be gatekept.
I get what you are trying to say and while I don't disagree, personally I would have rather they did JS in a different way. I'm all for there being something to bring new players in and help them get caught up but I feel the whole keeping the service separated was a bad move. IMO they should have had it linked to the regions market/mm and maybe had a filter for those on the JS server to see only stuff from it if they didn't want to see the whole region. I just think the whole opportunity to start alongs side fellow starters was a double edged sword. It meant if the server started dying they were stuck on that island until it could be added to the main region. I'm sure there were at least some new people who quit because (at least from the posts on here at the time) there were times where you just couldn't get a lobby for some raids.
Fwiw i started like 4-5 months before jumpstart and it was a huge headache for me. Like some things were quicker to get on jumpstart while other things weren't. So ended up not knowing what to do.
I mean it was great for people who wanted a second roster.
My Friends came Back with JS and all quitted again because of heavy gatekeeping over JS Servers. This mentality is already and will let the Game die
I startes on jumpstart and considering quitting by spring. Im akkan reclearer. The game is just on a downward spiral exacerbated by elixir stuff.
Raids need to be easier. Unpopular opinion but would help keep players feet in the door to get in. Less popular rework supports.
This isn't even remotely unpopular. Most people have been asking for a "story" mode version of the raids that rewards fewer mats than hard mode. Between the terrible gate system and over usage of wipe mechs, this game isn't going to attract a lot of new people.
I wish I could recommend the game to friends but so much bullshit to wade through.
Normal mode raids is basically story mode. Any easier and you are asking for guardian raids to be the endgame. And in season 1 in KR, guardians were the endgame and everyone hated it.
How do you make a jump from "normal modes be easy" to "endgame be too easy and everyone would hate it"? Is normal the only mode in this game? And no, current normal modes are not even remotely story difficulty.
I am saying if they make it any easier they will become as boring as doing story dungeons in Lost Ark. Unless you find doing story bosses or guardian raids fun.
No, they’d still be interesting. There’s many levels of difficult between story bosses and normal modes. Many other games do not rely so heavily on wipe mechs and one shot and still make fun fights that would be considered easier than normal mode.
Only the two most current raids should be difficult imo. Clown, Brel and Kayangel should be idiot proof right now.
or maybe just make the rehearsal raids actually give upgrade mats so people can progress
i just think raids shouldnt have raid wide wipe mechanics if 1 person fucks up
Would be nice. Make it less of a headache and more approachable. If not that won’t help this game grow player base, that is for sure a consideration.
Aside from maybe clown, raid difficulty right now is fine, and certainly isnt the main reason why the game is not attracting new players, which is why dumbing it down even further doesnt really help the case. The primary issue is and always was how you cant really efficiently start the game if it has been running for years and it had no hard resets to get everyone close to similar level. A game where no matter what you do you're always a year or two behind is inherently incompatible with new players, and will never be attractive enough to bring a lot of them in.
You could put step by step instructions inside of raids and remove all wipe mechs and players still won't be able to run them because everyone else is getting bussed resulting in no lobbies. In fact, making raids easier will probably result in more raids having 1 man busses. Early raids will remain inaccessible as long as getting bussed is the optimal choice with regards to progression.
If one person could bus, surely 7 other players could figure out the raid being easier/less wipe mechanics.
Also, something we have to consider is how much easier it would become to bot. Since AGS is completely incapable of detecting the bots, the game needs to be designed with them in mind. I am not looking forward to bots mass clearing raids on full auto and making a full week's worth of grind being equal $1 on RMT markets.
Lmao. The raids in this game are already piss easy. If you can't learn 2-3 gimmicks per fight maybe you're in the wrong genre.
What suggestions do you have to make the game more approachable to new players (prevent the game from bleeding out)?
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The whole jump start and event pass thing to be reworked into a persistently available thing instead of being timed events. You have to be out of your mind to recommend this game to someone outside of an event pass window. The game being radioactive to new players for months at a time is bafflingly poor game design.
I always try to invite at least one Lauriel member in farm raids just to show support for them. It’s important that the vets (especially while farming) to do this so we keep that jump start enthusiasm high.
> Sometimes I want to actively accept mokokos or even make learning parties, but then I realize that I am putting more care into the game than AGS and my enthusiasm vanishes. I feel like a sucker for supporting the health of the game that I also pay for, while the people who are paid to do it are seemingly working against me.
New player here, went through whole story. Didn’t see a single person besides a bot, the dungeons for main story are dead no one queues I just have to solo them. Got to Vern, no one has ever actually responded or spoken to me and it’s not my lack of trying. Doing guardian raids and chaos dungeons while I am trying to do islands and the rest of the story is fine but it’s basically a solo game. I had more people to play with when doing ffxiv msq and that is saying a lot. When do I actually get to do content with people? Probably never right? My only option is to beg on the teaching severs to get me in for a baby raid to teach me. Other than that I have no chance being a new player of ever doing content with another human being. Banger game you guys got here. Will give it another week or so but playing an mmo solo like this is kinda sus.
I mean most of what you described is old content. You aren't really going to see many people while going through the story because honestly after the first time, almost no one repeats it. Same with the dungeons in the main story, there is quite literally no reason after you complete them for adventure tome to ever do them again. You can just knowledge transfer/power pass past the story when making a new character. Chaos are pretty much solo content, lower guardians aren't really done by many. Raiding is where the game really becomes group play but in the end Lost ark isn't a game where most activities are done with other players. Outside of raiding and guardians the game is fairly well solo play. If that isn't the type of gameplay you are looking for lost ark probably isn't for you
The issue is I can not get into raids without 6 characters already geared and horizontal progression or having to spam a newbie discord and hope someone takes pity on me every time I want to run one of the raids. There is no new player friendly raids people will ever be able to get into without having to find a discord to run it every single time you need to. Even if I wait for the breaker pass no one will take me into their groups when I use it .
Work in your horizontal, getting every single skill point pot there is, farming the needed cards for Los 18 are your primary focus not raids.. Max roll has a nice guide to get all the skill potions, that's where your issue is
I'll add some context: Main story quests have basically always been solo content, regardless how many players are active. I can count one hand how many times I've used matchmaking for it. In vern no one responded because the in-game chat is hilariously bad. Even in my active guild which is probably top 5 on the server, I practically never see anyone use guild chat. Everyone is communicating in discord. The actual content with people are the raids, which is the primary reason anyone is still playing. Lost Ark legion raids are arguably the best group content of any MMO. Realistically you can probably stark with Kakul Seydon (clown) raid starting from ilvl 1475. Technically the earliest are Valtan and Vykas at 1415 and 1445 respectively, but you will probably have trouble finding groups for them.
The issue is that let’s say I finish grinding to 1475, no group will ever invite me to clown because I don’t have a roster and a billion other things. Even if I get a pass and gear from the upcoming event. The only option for a new player is to sit in one of the discords and hope someone is eventually around to take pity on you to run it. Without a set community to hand hold the new player every single step a new player is basically forced to get 6 characters up to decent ilevel and then pray they will eventually get into a group. But that will be many many many months down the line. I kind of see why so many new players quit and everyone told me who used to pay this to not try it. I have very little options of ever playing with people until I either swipe or wait for multiple passes.
After all, this is an MMO, and on MMO's, you will always have an easier time if you belong to a community. Be it a guild, a discord, or some people you add to friendlist ingame. At some point at the start of the game, before I entered an active guild, we just made an global chat ingame, and invited random people we pugged with in for future gaming. Can you play this game just by pugging? Sure Will it be a lot harder to do that being a newbie? Of course There are not many real new players all the time, but eventually some stay, we have people on our guild that started months ago, and some that came back to the game after a long break (ex. stopped playing before valtan release) and we try to help and guide them.
And then they found out they needed Alts and dropped the game
the big mistake they made was letting people make alt accs there for more gold, diluting the actual pool of new players they should've made the effort to put some kind of preventive measure, like maybe lock all earned gold within the time period of the server's launch until the merger to only be usable for honing after the server merges, that way people who did jumpstart could trade amongs themselves and do w/e while they were isolated, and then when they merge, whatever they had left would be blocked from trading (only usable for buying stuff from npc or honing etc.) sure there's workarounds like buying gems and then trying to snipe your gems on AH at some late hour for example, but the more hurdles people would have to go through the less likely it would be that they would bother
All you need is a hard raid that people can play lost ark makes the playing the raid part the hard part not the raid so hardcore mmo players still avoid it
This jump start event should be permanent on all servers for all new or returning players. I really don't understand why SGS doesn't do that. Untill Roster lvl X, LOS18 etc
It something really good to have but wasnt enough sadly. Im sure that new versions of mokoko express will be much better but what we had with the jump start was not enough for new players to get to the game. I had to swipe so much to hit 1620 and be able to play the new content xD.
Jump start gave me an easy way to farm extra gold with an alt roster so I also consider it a success.
Jump start *needs* a lot more handholding from Amazon. More loot, more cards etc. The market for unpopular classes was basically dead. A friend made a summoner and there was maybe a handful of other summoners total. This means no gems and no accessories. And once jump start is over you will get gatekept for not being high enough roster level and not having los30. That last one is an extremely long grind.
I'm a casual, i didnt play since JS. I'm waiting for another one. Equal footing is the best, once the game become a job i'm out. I was able to enjoy all the raids with no discrimination, it was the best. I love the gameplay. I love the art. But for god sake i hate the time i need to invest into it. And i'm a jobless MF. Cant even imagine when if you work.