You’re looking at the steam charts, but it doesn’t show that on the week of launch, there were over 50,000 concurrent players logged into the game. The steam charts only shows the averages for the given months, but the player base dropped like a rock during the first week. I would know, I was there.
A lot of my accomplishments (not all of them) have felt like they have been trivialized and don’t mean very much. I still love the game and want it to succeed, but that’s also why I’m posting. The game is in a dire position, and we need to push our feedback at IMC if we want things to change. It’s not dead yet, and something has to be done instead of us all just sitting silent and hoping things improve. We’ve been giving IMC our hope for a long time, and I’ve been helping them in more ways as much as I can. Now I felt like I had to step up and say something. Something has to be done or the situation is only going to get worse.
What i saw is simply they got rise of playerbase both average and peak, in just three months after release and fall from it since then
I can only imagine you praising lost ark now for it’s player base just so in the next 5 years or more you and others got sick of it, and say the same thing like how you said it for tos
You know what they said, bad ex always looks ugly and your new gf/bf always looks the best lol
As much as I want to give more feedback for tos, it doesn’t seems matter to imc, nor they care about it
They would even go secretly interview handful of players instead
Complaints overflow since day 1, since you loved the game and love blinded by it
Don’t get love blinded by lost ark now haha
Luckily, this would be the worst feature to be ever implemented in this game. The last thing i need is someone telling me my class sucks cause i do low DPS. At least the rankings keep it uncertain as things are left partially to skill and gear.
TOS had an early access founder pack period of 30 days, those are the people that paid to play for the hype.
Its all on IMC’s court to save or screw their game, really. IMC’s lack of response with regards to the game’s problems is all that needs to be said about what IMC feels about it.
I believe there have been many feedback regarding this drop of players way before Lost Ark came about, even by KToS players in respective forums and Hope To Development posts. The recent February Hope To Development post by IMC is a great example, many issues were brought up (class balance issues, population concerns, content, etc) that could’ve been addressed by IMC, but instead they used that opportunity to tell players they fixed a Monk bug that existed since Goddess Patch saying they “added a function” when it should’ve been fixed from the beginning while other important issues got ignored. This has happened many times with the Hope to Development posts, especially since the advent of Goddess Patch. Ask any KToS streamer nowadays about the state of KToS and they’ll say something along the lines of “ghost town”.
IMC also did a series of secret interviews with various players in IToS (for once) in January, asking a series of questions pertaining to ToS’s problems (I got an interview too), but if the KTEST patch on February is anything to go by, IMC didn’t do anything with the feedback and just proceeded as if nothing was wrong. I’ve seen the kind of responses that other interviewees have thrown out and IMC hasn’t shown much that would indicate them following up on it. I was pretty excited for the interviews as I thought IMC was about to turn over a new leaf, but I guess I’m wrong. Forget Lost Ark, IMC themselves aren’t attracting new players, aren’t keep their dedicated player base satisfied enough to stay nor are they showing that they care about changing so far. We can’t do anything if IMC themselves aren’t doing anything about it.
I’ll stick around to see the game somehow rise up or finally announce its closure just because I love the game, but its disheartening to see the game go down like this. Whether things will change, only time will tell.
IMC wants us to compete for rewards, meaning we have to optimize our equipment, class build, gameplay rotation, etc, and yet we don’t have the tools to gain information and practice to do this efficiently. Every other game has training dummies and/or training areas, yet this game has more competition and focus on DPS than the rest, without those features. They put such a high focus on so many different item stats, options, proc effects, skill modifications, and yet we have to do primitive things to optimize because they won’t give us the tools to do so effectively.
This is just one of my spreadsheets that I had to use to attempt to math out what works, what doesn’t, what’s effective, etc. This is also how you end up finding bugs that you have to avoid, because making an assumption on how things work is dangerous in this game. Everything would be astronomically easier if they would do simple things like spawning a training dummy for us to test on, but they won’t give us any quality of life.
Regardless of how you personally feel about DPS meters, even just for personal use it would be helpful. This is the game IMC designed and how they want us to play it, yet they make it as inconvenient and difficult as possible.
Nobody forced you to be first, you decided to make the spreadsheets yourself. And your “regardless of how you personally feel about X” applies to every single one of your arguments too.
I think you’re missing the point…
The point is that the content of the game is so focused on being competitive, but it doesn’t give you the tools to be like that in a correct way. And also that if you play for a while constantly, the only thing to do is just upgrade your gear in any way, pushing you towards that competitive phase of the game even if you don’t notice it early on.
Being 1st or 50th or 200th in a ranking doesn’t matter, you’re always “pushed” to try to rank higher because every content of the game, even the “Casual/Arcade” Heroic Tale has a ranking, and if you’re not focused on getting a better gear/be a better player, you’ll get bored pretty fast on this game, because there’s nothing else to do besides that.
My point is that the content in this game is not focused on being competitive, at all.
You can experience all the content in the game without trying to rank high in everything, most of the ranking rewards are also cosmetic.
This “ranking” problem is not in the game, it’s in your minds.
You can choose to play “competitively” or not, you can choose in what content you want to do it, the game isn’t forcing you.
Do you want to know the fix to this problem?
IMC doesn’t want anything from you specifically, they just made a ladder system, you know the rules, you take an active part into the system voluntarily, you could literally do 1 run of WBR, get your weekly rewards and call it a day without actively participating into the system.
Regardless of how i personally feel about DPS meters, they are one of the most hated features in other games by the casual playerbase. There has been negative feedback about them even in your new love Lost Ark. They are tools of alienation that impose forced choices on class and gameplay upon people.
I’ll be frank, you’ve helped people and that’s cool, but even if they made a statue about you in the game for reaching certain milestones, nobody would care. People don’t care about the achievements of others, especially strangers. It’s just how it works, people forget national heroes and historic figures, imagine when they have to remember about that guy that killed X boss first.
I’m sorry this isn’t part of the topic, but this piqued my interest.
Assuming by this statements, you are casual player, correct?
And well Crevox (I don’t need to assume, but I still put this just in case) is a competitive player.
That is true, you don’t need to be competitive because it is in the mind. So by that logic, the solution that you would be proposing for a competitive player, is to stop thinking competitively?
No offense, I am genuinely curious, your answer is most appreciated.
So, for example, lets switch the places, today yochuico2 is the top ranker and Crevox was a nobody. Is it okay if Crevox becomes the top ranker next week? Why or why not?
Oh and this one, please don’t generalize. I for one, am proud of some people who reach their dreams or goals through hardwork, whether they are my friend or not. Also, I don’t simp Crevox, but I applaud that man for putting up calculations and sharing them (not the one he posted now), which players seldomly do. I also did that in RO.
Before I forgot, It’s okay to talk bad about a game you played for years. It just shows you loved the game and find some dissapointments in it. You have every right for the time and money you invested.
What’s not okay is dissing a game you haven’t experienced the entirety of. That is just plain salty.
I propose to close territorial warfare to become a full PVE game
Or delete the tax system
Reality Paying Taxes to the Government to Sustain Society
But the game’s tax is only a one-sided benefit
I rank in stuff, within my limits, without tryharding too much, as i understand that tryharding and credit carding to stay at the top is loser mentality. There’s no point in taking part in a race you know is rigged from the start. This is not a sport, it’s an mmorpg.
He claims that those are problems imposed on him by the developers.
That’s not how it works in the game to begin with.
Is it a dream to be first in a weekly ladder in a game with a low player count?
Is it a dream to do the first clear of a content in a game with a low player count?
Strong rankers left the game over time and they are already being forgotten.
People might care for one week, they might see someone as an expert on their class, but the moment they are gone from the game, it won’t take much for people to forget them.
It’s just the bold truth.
Nobody cares in the long term about the achievements of strangers. People don’t care about what mounts a person they don’t know has. They don’t care about the titles.
Do things for yourself or don’t do them, plain and simple.
you dont need to be competitive if you dont want to
you can just ignore and play freely at your own pace, play like its not a race, pretty much like you can stop playing if you get sick of the game, its development progression or imc incompetency
what happen to tos right now is pretty common for any mmo out there which already in its end of lifetime. especially, mind you, how indie like developer imc is. the issues, the solutions, the complaints, imc and tos wasnt the first one
and i dont see it will stop many developers out there, especially koreans, to do the same for their games in the same situation, even including lost ark, who knows, no need to overpraise lost ark really.
all in all imc just try their best to milk the last spurt of the game lifetime
unless tos is your very first mmo well then have fun complaining
for OP if you wanna play the game, best avoid seeing playerbase from the chart
seeing it will just reduce your interest in playing, though you will see it yourself in game lol
unless you have fun playing solo in multiplayer massive game, this game suit you
That is unrealistic yeah. Okay, so let me rephrase the question.
So if you are a top ranker for years, you have done plenty of hardwork to get to where you are today. Is it alright if someone beat you to it in just a few months?
If yes, why? If no, why not?
Again, you are generalizing.
It may or may not be a goal or dream for you, but that’s not the same for everyone.
Just like you said,
But I do understand your point, especially the “Do things for yourself or don’t do them”
Unfortunately it’s not the same for everyone.
Can you imagine if everyone is like that?
Competition is also one aspect of social interaction.
But at the end of the day, you do you, I suppose, and I respect that.
Also, yeah ranking doesn’t matter much if there are only few people who play it.
I consider myself a casual player…but i still need to play competitively in order to enjoy. No need to compete on top charts, im already happy if I kicked rank 99th when im rank 100th. That’s still an achievement.
Its like, playing competitive is setting a goal for yourself, something to do in order to keep playing. If youre not playing like that, do you even enjoy playing the game? like you login, play daily content, then logout without even achieving something, no goal at all.
Im not saying this is how you should play the game, but a little bit of competitiveness will help to atleast enjoy and stay in this dying game.
Soft-resets in gear are to be expected in most vertical MMOs, all games with a gear score are doing it. Either with catch-ups or by releasing stronger and easier to obtain baseline gear.
The games that Crevox cited do this. Literally.
He said that he had a problem with the fact that he feels like he can’t stop playing cause he’s “gonna get behind”, but the very fact that we have gear soft-resets and catch-ups are the reason for why you can quit and come back to the game without being totally excluded.
So the answer is yes, for me it would be fine if someone could beat the rank 1 in a couple months, but that’s not the case in the current game.
In the current iteration of tos you get a big boost for starting the “next raid expansion” as a pre-existing player with average gear AND on top of that you get to keep part of your enhances in this new system AND you also get the chance to clear harder content earlier than other people and snowball an advantage.
It follows that the catch-ups and the shortening of grinds over time is necessary to make it playable for people that don’t tryhard.
We can take the crown as an example, before getting a catch-up mechanic/change, people that rushed it and pushed it had a huge damage advantage for several months, and they could snowball that advantage into silver, snowballing gains. At that point, even if they made the system less grindy, you have already reaped the snowballed rewards for months.
Honestly my problem with these systems is not the grind itself or the mechanics they implement as a catch-up, but the fact that we are left completely in the dark about how long a system will last before getting a catch-up patch, or how long a system will last overall. Is crown forever? Are arks forever?
There’s no clear distinction between what is a permanent system and what is a temporary system.
This creates a feedback loop where casual players refuse to enhance or partake into a system as they fear they will just waste resources.
An example of this is Gabija’s Authorities, we’ve never been told how long a season would last, so buying them or not is basically a gamble for a non-hardcore player, for all we know the season might end tomorrow.
You have something in common with Crevox in this one. And yeah, that’s a problem that this game and every other MMO that has been around for too long has.
It’s as you say, there’s no way to know what system will stay or will be easier to get in the future, making the game having “seasons”, the start of a big patch where all the top/geared players has advantage over the new players to gear up; and the end of a big patch where they simplify a lot of ways to upgrade their gear, where new players have a good window to catch up, and all the efforts the top players did get trivialized.
With the new gear Earring coming up, I’m pretty sure that after some months/patches, IMC will implement a system to reroll the stats/options of them, just like they introduced Sandra’s Magnifier to Random Ichors after a lot of time where you have to pray with normal Magnifiers/Blacksmith to have at least 2 stats on them that suits you.
And that will make most of the effort the people did before those items got implemented almost meaningless. They’ll feel as if the game doesn’t respect the time you put on it.
I understand your point, that’s why long ago I chose not to take part of that and just focus on my own/my party achievements and enjoy the game as it is. I play one of my favorite Classes, a non-meta Class, and I won’t change that for being more “competitive”.
My problem is that the game doesn’t give you much choice to do besides “gear up as much as you can”. And when it does it stamps a Raking system to it, as if they try to make everything competitive.
Casual things like Fishing, Heroic Tale and even Exploring (through Adventure Journal) have a ranking, that’s just not healthy.
Poor Healers are out of the game technically if they don’t do Party content, because they’re not DPS, they don’t take part on most Rankings, and if they wanted to “gear up as much as you can”, they’d have to make another character, a DPS character to upgrade everything, because to upgrade the new Aether Gems you have to do it Solo, and DPS your way up. You can’t be a Tank if you wanted to because “you don’t DPS”, same problem as Healer but worse, you don’t have a place in the game.
I don’t know when it happened, but at some point the game completely forgot that not every player wants to “gear up as much as you can”, and now almost every content is aimed to that. Every content now is DPS/Boss focused.
I’d love to see this fixed, have just a few rankings for the true competitive people, and let the rest enjoy the game with more content that highlights the good things about the game and more casual friendly.
You don’t have to be competitive, but IMC focuses a large amount of their development time on it and it’s a large focus of the game as a whole. It’s their choice to develop the game like this and they actively want players to engage in the game this way. If nobody did at all, then the game would’ve lost players a whole lot sooner.
You don’t have to be competitive, but IMC focuses a large amount of their development time on it and it’s a large focus of the game as a whole. It’s their choice to develop the game like this and they actively want players to engage in the game this way. If nobody did at all, then the game would’ve lost players a whole lot sooner.
People want the rewards that IMC develops only for people who compete and win. IMC adds incentive so people play the game the way they want us to play. If you don’t want the rewards, that’s fine, but a lot of people do. They are adding the new pilgrim system with a lot of special rewards, and if anyone wants them, they’ll have to compete. It’s IMC’s choice to block these rewards behind being competitive and winning this content. If there was no damage ranking, no clear time ranking, no server first title and reward, then the majority of people bothering to do this would not care. They actively choose to spend development time and resources on this instead of anything else, and if this is the only content that IMC decides to put out, you either play it or have even less to do for more months while waiting for content that isn’t this.
And despite this all being true, that doesn’t make it okay to make the experience crappy for those that end up wanting to compete. The tools not existing that would make the experience a whole lot more enjoyable is also IMC’s decision and something we end up just having to deal with. There’s really no excuse they can’t just put a training dummy in the game. Every other game has one and they are not anywhere near as competitive as TOS. That’s just one feature, but it often feels like they go out of their way to make the whole experience as annoying and difficult as possible.
