Lost Ark coming to NA/EU! Smilegate to pair with Amazon Game Studios as Publisher!

[Coldkil]

Point is to put monetization and microtransactions EVERYWHERE to make ALL THE MONEY.

Well, from what i have spent in pheons (zero), i don't think it's a really successful strategy. I have 500+ of them, bought some pieces and be done with it. The fact you don't have to constantly upgrade stuff means you have literally to buy things once.

EDIT: my points is that yes, liketly they're made to make people spend more money but they are not actually needed overall, the free ones you get are enough to buy anything.

[Ophenia]

Yeah, i don't really know the reasoning behind their existance. Some sort of "bot countermeasure" or to make so people cannot just buy everything from the AH and will go actually do the content?

As far as I've read on the forums, they're mostly here to limit flipping (buying just to resell at higher cost). I'm not sure how much it's working though.

[Coldkil]

As far as I've read on the forums, they're mostly here to limit flipping (buying just to resell at higher cost). I'm not sure how much it's working though.

It probably is, but in the end most if not all gear is just limited in number of trades, so it's already inherently "capped". They're annoying but given how much i use them (next to nothing) i don't even really care that much.

[Frostfred]

I guess there are several reasons behind them. I think to lessen bot trading and flipping may be two of them, but as pheons are only required for gear, it's not really effective. Imo the main reason is, that it's one of their main sources of income. People who want to get good stuff of the AH for multiple chars have to buy pheons to be able to equip them. While you can get honing materials, gems, ... at quite acceptable rates without buying anything from the store, the right gear with the right engravings and the right stats is just too rare to farm (for the most part), and buying pheons is the only way around that.

The side effect is, that many people don't want to spend anything on pheons, so they have alts running around with comparably bad gear / maybe just the class engraving, which can cause issues in random groups, which can lead to frustration, etc. Imo for the long term health of the game it would be better to remove pheons, or drastically reduce the pheon costs for gear, or make it more readily available ingame.

[Aliven]

As far as I've read on the forums, they're mostly here to limit flipping (buying just to resell at higher cost). I'm not sure how much it's working though.

Ah they want to limit fliping, but you can spend moneys so you can flip as much as you wallet let you.

Solid logic on theyr part.

[Ophenia]

Ah they want to limit fliping, but you can spend moneys so you can flip as much as you wallet let you.

Solid logic on theyr part.

Well, they know players will find a way around any limitation put in place, so better make money from that while limiting it a bit !
(don't misunderstand, I hate pheons and their existence is an insult, but I can understand the point on company's side)

[xenogear3]

I killed Argos again. Thanks to a P2W guy who did 40% damage !
Overall, the team is better and faster than last week.
I only got 10 blood this week. 4 more weeks to go.

Orejas Well hard mode is too hard for me.

I am F2P. Don't have gold/silver and that blue material upgrade.
I have to wait for the next event.

[Aliven]

Well, they know players will find a way around any limitation put in place, so better make money from that while limiting it a bit !
(don't misunderstand, I hate pheons and their existence is an insult, but I can understand the point on company's side)

Create problem, sell the solution. Disgusting practices

[xenogear3]

"Good" gacha games are all like that.
At first, you have too much of everything.
Then, you start to run out of this and that.

Gold first. Silver next. Pheons. Potions. One after another.

I am impressed with how the potions are designed.
The new players thought the game is super easy because they can use 2 potions.

[blackpink]

Create problem, sell the solution. Disgusting practices

people always think it's disgusting practices until they become a business owner themself.

[Ghost of Cow]

Pheons really aren't a "problem" for like...anyone, though?

It's pretty hard to run out of them, they give them to you all the time, and you don't need to keep buying gear over and over or anything.

It's almost like it's a system that they don't really care about, but has stuck around.

[Aoewy]

Its if you gear up alts, I have 8 characters, 6 of them are either 3x3 + 1 or higher. Those accessories aren't expensive thank to argos/oreha having 100% class engraving, but they still cost pheons, as well as how many stones you need to roll until you get the one you need. So the more characters you have, obviously the more pheons you need. I had to buy 2 or 3 times the 100 pheons pack so far, but I just use gold that I convert into blue crystal anyway, so its more of a nuisance / another gold tax on top of the market cut.

[Ophenia]

I killed Argos again. Thanks to a P2W guy who did 40% damage !
Overall, the team is better and faster than last week.
I only got 10 blood this week. 4 more weeks to go.

Orejas Well hard mode is too hard for me.

I am F2P. Don't have gold/silver and that blue material upgrade.
I have to wait for the next event.

Blue upgrade mat is very easy to get at the stronghold, even without doing life skills stuff outside. The stronghold’s farm give you more than enough mat to craft them.

And for gold well… Una is the way. If you don’t upgrade, you can also sell your inbound mats, I’ve done that for one week and I’ve gained like 30k gold at the time. Now gold is no longer an issue, I’m oscillating between 50 and 70k depending on the activities.

- - - Updated - - -

Pheons really aren't a "problem" for like...anyone, though?

It's pretty hard to run out of them, they give them to you all the time, and you don't need to keep buying gear over and over or anything.

It's almost like it's a system that they don't really care about, but has stuck around.

« They give it all the time » ? Last event’s shop didn’t have them, and this one gives 9 per week - one legendary accessory is 15.

I don’t have the problem as I’m patient and I don’t need to gear all my chars right now (not doing legion raids on any char). But for someone who’s unlucky on drops and want to not be weeks behind, of course pheons are a limiting factor.

They could at least link the pheon cost to the gold value. Paying 15 pheons for a 5 gold stone that you’ll fail cutting properly is disheartening.

[Fkiolaris]

The main problem I have with pheons is that it prevents experimenting or, as the current event shows, gearing fast-tracked alts on their way to 1370.

[xenogear3]

How long is Lost Ark's start up time (booting up time)?
The time between click the "Lost Ark" shortcut and the login screen shows up?

Mine takes 3 to 5 minutes.

[KrayZ33]

How long is Lost Ark's start up time (booting up time)?
The time between click the "Lost Ark" shortcut and the login screen shows up?

Mine takes 3 to 5 minutes.

Long, but not *that* (5 minutes, lol) long.
But I certaintly did start the game 2 times because I thought I hadn't double-clicked or I thought it hung up on me.

Been a while since I started though, but the game has EasyAntiCheat... and that program is absolute shite and probably the reason why it takes so long, pretty much all games that have it and I've played take long to start up.

[Ophenia]

How long is Lost Ark's start up time (booting up time)?
The time between click the "Lost Ark" shortcut and the login screen shows up?

Mine takes 3 to 5 minutes.

A good 3 minutes here as well, not on SSD though

[Aoewy]

Just tried it, 1m20sec, on SSD. Its long yea, and as another poster mentioned, EAC is probably the problem behind that

[Haligy]

https://www.playlostark.com/en-us/ne...r-2022-roadmap

[Ophenia]

I'm such a fucking moron

Last weekend I spent some time and gold getting some good build for my 1370 gunslinger, bought some accessories and I've been lucky on my first gem, getting 6/6/3 which was enough to reach 3x3 (and another one at 2)... But something felt wrong.

That was a fucking Tier 1 Gem.
Gunslinger is already squishy but mine is missing 10k vitality so i let you imagine rofl