No one logged in today because of Lost Ark

I kinda recant my earlier posts in this thread. I have had a blast this evening in Lost Ark. The early content so far has been fun and ive met some great people on Galatur server. There seems to be a genuine desire from a lot of the community there to have a good game and community. The combat and systems start to make a lot more sense and the game literally has in game videos to explain each system to you. The story is still awful and it wont replace Final Fantasy for me, but its fun and worth playing.

This is probably whats hooking people a lot more with the game. Im spoiled with games having better constructed worlds but Lost Ark's appeal generally is more about its gameplay content which is what all it needs anyway.

I've looked even more into how is the gear progression for Lost Ark's endgame.... Systems upon systems of RNG that are expensive to boot! The way the rng systems have rng systems inside them made me feel like paying tetris would be more fun than gearing up for endgame. Second job vibes. Made me really glad we have FF's simple gearing system. Which is why I'll proudly stay a casual player. Which is a lot of fun. And the devs are dedicating 2022 to adding more casual content to the game, since they realize a lot of people have no interest in raiding.


One thing that horrorized me though is the global chat. Worse than league of legends. A lot of people saying really cringy and inappropriate sexual stuff, people arguing... and apparently if you don't skip cutscenes in dungeons on your first time people will flame you and even sometimes kick you from the dungeon. In there everyone is forced to watch cutscenes until everyone on the party accepts to skip, so you can imagine...

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Originally Posted by Atelier-Bagur

Am I the only one who didnt find the ARR MSQ a complete snorefest? I thought it did fine introducing the world of Eorzea to the player.

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Maybe. I think it does introduce the world well, but that doesn't mean it's not boring, and it contributed to me taking, I think, about 4 attempts to get into FF. It's not to do with attention spans, the story itself (i.e., as opposed to the lore) is just very boring and poorly presented. It's probably worse when you don't know FF.

Like, I'm not that picky on story quality but ARR is a very large amount of "OK, and why should I care?" Most factions look very one-dimensional for a while. I'd say about towards the end of ARR+ is where it actually gets interesting.

But, hey, opinions are like assholes. World introduction in games is not the easiest thing. It was panned a lot but the way Destiny 1 introduced the world was very much to my liking, intriguing and mysterious, and mainly lore focused so no need to skim through too much dialogue to see if a Scion is saying anything of use besides "let's go here".

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Originally Posted by Xaruko_Nexume

I kinda recant my earlier posts in this thread. I have had a blast this evening in Lost Ark. The early content so far has been fun and ive met some great people on Galatur server. There seems to be a genuine desire from a lot of the community there to have a good game and community. The combat and systems start to make a lot more sense and the game literally has in game videos to explain each system to you. The story is still awful and it wont replace Final Fantasy for me, but its fun and worth playing.

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It's great to have an open mind! :D

Personally I just think the big cinematic dungeons and raids are way cooler than FF14's, and god I wish FF14 will learn something from Lost Ark. Stuff like riding a siege machine, battling through hordes of demons, turning into little small dwarves and fighting on a dining table... I thought Pagl'than was cool but this is another level. Nothing will beat a dungeon like the Dead Ends due to its emotional weight but this game's dungeons are way, way more epic. Little touches like climbing cliffs, or pushing a lever desperately to get a gate to lower so you can run from the boss burning you to a crisp... these all add to the dynamism of a dungeon and heighten it cinematically that FF14 simply doesn't. FF14 is way too static.

I also really enjoy the job design in this game. Every skill feels meaningful and there's a lot of thought you can put into each skill, and I don't mean the customization, I mean the skills themselves. It's a system that is simultaneously complex enough for hardcore players to play with but also easy enough that new players won't be overwhelmed (I think).

Having strong competition can only be good for the game. I am wary of the P2W elements but the other parts of the game are things I hope SE learns from.

People are showing such a beahviour here, declare a game bad and a failure to start with just cause Korean. It's the same attitude people who only play western mmos have towards ffxiv tbh.
Also, even if you don't like a mmo as much as another, you know there's no rule saying you can only play one, right? You can play multiple and have fun and also not having a gatekeeping attitude.
I'm not playing LA and I also think it's too hyped, but I also know how much people have been waiting for it and how much they're loving it, and how it's basically there to stay. I just wish Elyon didn't have the opposite treatment.

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Originally Posted by Atelier-Bagur

Am I the only one who didnt find the ARR MSQ a complete snorefest? I thought it did fine introducing the world of Eorzea to the player. I hate how we devolved with such short attention spans where unless you see epic whooshy wooshy adrenaline pumping action 24/7 on your daily basis, its considered a bore in the everyday community. Its one of the reasons I couldnt get into the world of Lost Ark in its first few hours, so much weird "epic" set dressing nonsense thrown right into you like bruh can I just please start as just a random off the mill adventurer with the most basic of gear and skills and let me slowly get an understanding of your world please?

That being said though, Im in the minority here and yeah the first few hours of Lost Ark has much more "interesting" stuff going on but there's no sense of attachment to it imo.

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I love ARR, it's the only expansion I did go through many times while watching cinematics still and reading. Like you I like down to earth stories, not epic stuff. Same thing with SB. Sadly as you said most people find non-epic stuff boring. I have the same with other games, I actually liked BDO story a lot while evrybody says it sucks, just skip.

I dont blame them for playing other games ffxiv endgame is basicly raid once per week then afk wait for S rank spawns if you have everything levled up allready.

I'm one of those people that love ARR... sometimes I'll create an alt and replay the beginning of ARR just because I like the early game so much... When I started playing I didn't read the forums/reddit or watched videos on it, so I didn't know that great things awaited after arr... after playing so many mmos where the quests are simply meaningless and made to skip, ARR's story was really nice and down to earh, it was cozy just being an adventurer and experiencing the world building of eorzea. I also loved stormblood. But not for the plot, but because it was the first expansion that focused on the friendship and companionship of the scions and you. It felt like going on an adventure with friends that can rely on eachother rather than what I felt was a very solitary experience in heavensward. Back then it felt like the scions weren't your friends, more workmates that valued you as an asset. That's how I saw it at the time at least. The same friendship was also present in shb and ew, which is the main thing that makes the msq after heavensward feel so different imo.
In relation to Lost Ark, it's kinda like ARR in a way... a very cliche story that isn't impressive on its own, but the presentation and the cutscenes are very nice

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Originally Posted by Xaruko_Nexume

I kinda recant my earlier posts in this thread. I have had a blast this evening in Lost Ark. The early content so far has been fun and ive met some great people on Galatur server. There seems to be a genuine desire from a lot of the community there to have a good game and community. The combat and systems start to make a lot more sense and the game literally has in game videos to explain each system to you. The story is still awful and it wont replace Final Fantasy for me, but its fun and worth playing.

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This game just has a bit of a different spark that kind of separates it from many other similar mmos. I have tried many Korean MMOs in the past, or others in the f2p genre. Generally, I will give each game a good try. As soon as I felt how fluid the combat was, I wanted to see more of it. It throws you right in with several, varied skills, and the animations are nice. The story is fairly generic, and the English VA is a bit.. hilarious, but, like other's have said, the combat and encounters are the actual reason for play. Now, I haven't done much, just the first bit through the game, took part in killing a world boss, did a few 'secret' treasure dungeons and regular dungeons. A game like FFXIV has a pretty heavy focus on the story, and the quality is definitely higher here in that regard, but I am still listening or reading through the dialogue. I like to have some context on the world state of a game. I expect most people are probably skipping everything in general.

In regards to pay to win, that could be a problem, not that I expect to get heavily invested in two mmorpgs, but it hasn't been as in your face or anything right at the start, and I appreciate that they actually have some armor sets with a different look outside of the cash shop, unlike Black Desert when I played that years ago. I actually bought some outfits for dark knight pretty much immediately, so my character wouldn't look so dumb.

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Originally Posted by Atelier-Bagur

This is probably whats hooking people a lot more with the game. Im spoiled with games having better constructed worlds but Lost Ark's appeal generally is more about its gameplay content which is what all it needs anyway.

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Yeah, that's what I felt, I am usually the kind of person that plays some games with terrible gameplay mechanics *Cough running back and forth in the swamp because of some stupid quest in Witcher 1 Cough* just to experience the story. Lost Ark felt *decent* as far as gameplay goes (I hope combat gets harder during leveling but from what I've seen it only gets hard in the end game.) but the world really didn't interest me in the slightest.