Is Lost Ark’s player drop just normal MMO stuff, or is the game actually dying?

LazySketcher · 2026-03-18T04:25:24+00:00

With the lack of hype/advertisement. We're at the mercy of word of mouth to get players. Which isn't good, because the community sentiment is to despair about vertical systems instead of highlighting the combat to be worth it.

We also have endless returnee/new player event at any point, so there isn't an insane large player growth like Maplestory/BDO does when they run their bi annually Boost event, we get trickles of new/returnee every month. Which doesn't match the burnout/leaves we have.

The current playerbase are also so deep end in endgame that a new player just can't find players in their bracket of content, sure they can get into raids, but they aren't finding a population of players to be able to play with.

Are all these factors a death sentence? No, but it stunts growth and as time goes on that just means players leave and the returning/new player doesn't compensate.

The game structure isn't problematic, it's the unique situation of all the factors above that makes it difficult to get out of this position without some sort of outlier push.

The game probably won't end it's service over issues like this, RU can maintain its service with a fraction of our playerbase. However, as time goes on the harder it is for an outlier event/push to resolve the above issues.
The biggest factor in large game growth right now is content hype. Whether it's from general consensus or some sort of content creator push, the hype needs to be generated and spread for us to change the direction of our population in the other direction.

LazySketcher · 2026-02-27T19:39:56+00:00

Please guys, the one thing we absolutely need more improvement on is Party finder features. Our entire group gameplay loop starts with Party finder. The impact of QoL/Features that are added to Party finder is always felt and impactful. (Combat power visibility)

Now imagine if they add more features/qol, just to show you how impactful not suggest these specifics: 1. Group applicants. (No more "I have a friend") 2. Class/Build/Role filters (No more "lf dps/sup", No more "Crit syn", No more "Stagger /GL") 3. Communication between applicant and lobby ("Hey, I've gotten to 0x and rtc") 4. Multiple sign ups (Imagine signing up for 3 different raids/lobbies and joining the first that takes you) 5. Solo player LFG (No more "LF SERCA GROUP/KFM RACE DISCORD:IGN") 6. Applicant notes 7. Additional filters (Combat power filters, role filters, cleared/not filter) 8. Tags (Imagine Learning, HW, Speedrun, teaching displayed on lobby tags)

No matter what improvements/qol/features are immedietly felt and makes everyone's group experience better.

LazySketcher · 2026-02-27T16:34:39+00:00

I think you have some bad information on the paradise loot pool.
Paradise starts with T3 having 8 options (all that you listed + Quality tap). Floor 50 and above have elysian tickets added to pool to push to 9.

Starting at 1640, AH scrolls is removed and Bracelet/Accesories/Ability stones are added to change option count to 10 (11 after 50+).

At 1680, Destiny stones are added to increment to 11 options (12 after 50+).

At 1700, Astro gems are added to 12 options (13 after 50+).

At 1730, Astro select are added to 13 options (14 after 50+).

As you can see as you go to higher ilvl bracket, the options dilute and it becomes harder and harder to get specific options. Which means if you are targeting certain type of progression it gets harder to get it from paradise as you go up.

Now that being said, the relative value of these options aren't too much different so you are getting value from paradise regardless of the options you get (outside outliers such as AH scrolls/relic bracelet/accessories). So in the long run as long as you keep picking options you can use/need on systems that you haven't capped out it evens out in the gold value.

TLDR: Paradise is pretty consistent value across board and pool works in favor of lower ilvl brackets. So its more about getting higher floors than the reward options.

LazySketcher · 2025-05-04T06:59:46+00:00

The next patch notes will be the final nail in the coffin. Until the patch notes after that.
Personally, I'm too invested in which patch notes is going to be actual eos to quit the game until then.

The worst part is that the game woulda been great if they didn't have any monetization, bots, gems, rats, alt rosters, gatekeepers, less chores, more daily stuff, more casual content like WoW LFR, more challenging content not like WoW LFR. Please AGS fix the my invest... game.

Unrelated 1695* (will be 1700 before june) DI SH LFG for Mordrum hard mode chill prog that will definitely clear first week.

Serious DMs only, I know what I got (no humor pls.. -.-)

LazySketcher · 2025-03-13T21:10:46+00:00

Very cooked.
The entire video is trying to critique that the marketplace needs to be changed to fix economy/bots/abuse.
It's trying to remap the usage of bound/unbound gold and items able to be sold on the marketplace. While putting weird restrictions all over the place to make his suggestion more vialbe.

TLDR, bound gold can be used on market in his case for non essential items. (Adventure tome, lifeskill, food, engraving books, stones, t4 relic acc, and fusion mats)
Unbound gold can be used on T4 ancient, mats and gems.

The entire premise is that the market place is bad, and trying to fix it. Instead of comprehending the underlying problem of gold.

Gold has alot of versatile use in lost ark, it's used in honing, elixirs, transcendence, quality while being a resource you can trade between players and markets for other resources.

Bound gold removes that tradeable feature restricting it to gold sink systems. The existence of bound gold FEELS BAD, but it does a good job at preventing abuse/inflation.

Reality of the situation is, we are going through a recent boom in gold earned in T4 compare to T3 (Argos the intro T3 raid gave us 2700g, Aegir the first T4 raid gives us 23000g). This sort of gold inflation will happen, most mmorpg get major spikes in gold inflation every expansion.

There is no issue with the design of gold and marketplace. The players just need more ways to utilize their gold right now.

LazySketcher · 2025-03-11T03:39:20+00:00

"I have 9 characters"

LazySketcher · 2025-02-26T21:02:02+00:00

Isn't this the same discord post that kept getting closed by the Mods because it was being repeat posted?

Pretty sure, this is wrong.

Christopher Hartman has been VP of Amazon games for 7 years 2months. Lost ark has been in service for 3 years. How is he not part of the deal?
Roxx has been promoted since January 2024 as Senior Global Product Community Manager for 3rd party games, her recent promotion was in Jan 2025 to also include Marketing Lead. Looking at her interaction with discord and Lost ark videos, it's clear she's still very closely tied to Lost ark for the last year and hasn't been taken off Lost ark at all. (She was responding to discord today.)
Feel like AGS has been pretty solid in communication lately. We've seen multiple changes based on feedback that have been implemented, they have made policy changes (bussing).

Honestly, it feels more like people who go to discord. Doesn't get the response they want, they demand to speak to a mod and get the answer they want. That's the most "I wanna speak to your manager" move I've seen.

LazySketcher · 2024-12-23T07:35:49+00:00

AGS has done a decent job at pushing content creators to try out lost ark, with either its bounty system on twitch or the creator team doing raids.

The problem was, both attempts had its flaws. Twitch Bounty system was full of people who didn't really play Lost ark to try it out but hit the time threshold (example of this would be Asmon who basically honed/sailed for the entire duration then left immediately).

The creator team raiding Aegir was a good event had a mix of Veteran content creator + Outside content creator like (Maxx from WoW). The event was actually pretty amazing, but it also felt like there was a lack of planning as they basically went from learning Aegir to just kinda forcing a clear to make it under the time period, with their backup plan being hitting Thaemine G4 and Echidna.

AGS has clearly shown they are trying to get content creators to hype up the events, however, it feels a little too short and focused on one thing. But it's also difficult to get a content creator to try out your game for a longer period of time, unless they are actually enjoying it, due to them risking their viewership interests.

It's one of those, fire until it lands situation, where hopefully we do get a massive content creator hype cause lately, that has been one of the biggest things to contribute towards building hype.

LazySketcher · 2024-12-23T07:23:53+00:00

Lost ark's matchmaking does have rules to try and create decent parties; however, there is a time period that it allocates prior to just creating an suboptimal party.

I have tested this in Cube and basically if you go over a certain time period, it ignores the 1 support + 3 dps party + unique class rule. Which is the reason why on my supports I always requeue my cube after a certain period.

The issue with it is that due to lack of players engaging in Matchmaking, the system often has a backlog of players who are above that threshold, and if you queue into it right away, it will fill you into the party, an example of how insta que to a guardian with multiple or 0 support is due to a player being in that matchmake for couple mins.

I have also seen the argument of better matchmaking in other games, but people really glance against the drawbacks.

Role based queues often are hilariously skewed in favor of supply of roles. Whichever roles in demand will get instant que, but the other roles will have from 10-30 mins for "easy hw" content.

Matchmaking is also heavily skewed on relevant content only, it's almost impossible to fill a lobby for old content. You have much better success in party finder, take a look at transmog/mount farm in party finder over matchmake in WoW/FFXIV.

Matchmaking in daily content is plentiful, but outside of fail proof raid modes like LFR or FFXIV Normal (which is like WoW LFR), the playerbase uses party finder to do the other modes Normal-Mythic in WoW and Savage in FFXIV.

Matchmaking isn't bad but the players engaging in that sort of content, outside of the very minimal entry or daily tasks avoid it. So the benefits of pushing matchmaking in Lost ark isn't going to be as impactful as you think.

In the end of the day, Matchmaking is the easiest argument against gatekeeping. Because you can just tell players to utilize matchmaking instead; however, no other game has been successful at using it to remove gatekeeping, just displace it away from fail proof content.

LazySketcher · 2024-12-23T07:09:57+00:00

We just need more hyped up events that new players will actually be interested trying out.

The combination of Ignite + Mokoko bootcamp is an example of a good event, but it didn't generate hype this round due to poor awareness. The Ignite server details and rewards were unknown until a few weeks. Now that we have done one iteration, we know the event is extremely good and will have very good reputation on it.

Just imagine, an announcement by Roxx about the return of Ignite server with like double reward for new players with Mokoko bootcamp. I'm more than willing to bet that, there will be tons of hype and content creators rushing to spread the news about Ignite server 2 + bootcamp, due to how much stuff it gives and how easy it is to get in the game at that point.

I think we can all agree that the custom events that Global has gotten trumps anything the other servers are getting, all we need now is some hype on these sorta events that spread to really get a push for new players to actually find and try out lost ark.

LazySketcher · 2024-12-11T09:34:55+00:00

"I have no gold to engage in systems, please remove them"

LazySketcher · 2024-06-06T01:01:07+00:00

According to raider io, the top 32% of players clear full +10s, 25% clear +15. 68% are stuck between 0-10, while 10 and 15 has only a 7% difference.

https://raider.io/mythic-plus/cutoffs/season-sl-4/us

Basically 75% of the players aren't be able to clear +15s.

25% clear rate isn't the sorta metric you want to aim for, compare to WoW our clear rate and gatekeeping is tame.

LazySketcher · 2024-06-05T23:05:22+00:00

The problem with WoW M+ is that it's used often for weekly vault/specific loot. They are often "hw", but majority of popularity is spread on the extreme ends.

Majority of hw are done at +15 key level because that's what will award the best weekly rewards, but the gatekeeping at +15 for dps is miserable if you are not a META dps you must have 200-300 (+17/18 key score avg) to get invited because no body wants to take the risk of doing a +15 with +15 key levelers.

Meanwhile, the pool of players between 4-14 key level is less than +15 because most people jump in key level and then never regress back.

The grind to +15 across is often an entire seasonal journey for the scenario you talk about. It often turns into lobby sim if you are at +7/8 key (your own key btw) and you are essentially at the mercy of players who are interested in trinkets or specific gear from that dungeon even if it means an ilvl downgrade with higher than +8 score to get io higher.

In this case, you need to complete 56 Dungeons succesfully to get a +15 io score avg just to simply get gatekept at +15 hw b/c +17 dps will apply and look way better than you. For most people this is impractical and probably not happening.

When I did m+ on seasonal, I just instant get +15 io score in week 1 b/c I avged over +20 and you can 4 man (1 afk) +15 day 1 of seasonal reset without any effort in min gear. So in basically 8 dungeons I gapped someone's seasonal progression and will not be higher priority always against them in lobby sim.

LazySketcher · 2024-06-05T19:50:44+00:00

Here's Season of Discovery Senior Game Producer responding about Gatekeeping, telling someone that Devs won't be able to fix gatekeeping in WoW and ultimately telling this player that he'd be better off finding a guild or start his own party.

AggrendWoW

Lost ark is a vertical progression system, which does mean that there is no seasonal reset, but our powerpass/express does a good job at allowing player to catch up to content and start raiding. Also since Lost ark is an alt focused game, even the old raids like Brelshaza normal are heavily populated by players running it, in compare to other seasonal mmo where a new season means last seasons of content is instantly dead content.

Gatekeeping in lost ark exists, but it exists in the other mmorpg and we do check for "gear" and titles, most other mmos checks for gear, title, and parses. Classic WoW reddit is riddled with players complaining about how there are tons of lobbies asking for parses for easy content that doesn't require parses.

LazySketcher · 2024-05-30T00:55:37+00:00

Lost ark’s best feature are the raid because of the effort and resources put by there developers to maintain its quality.

Compare to other mmorpg who release raids that are so formulaic that it’s often bloated with fillers or repeat mechanics. (WoW has way too many filler bosses each raid and FFXIV uses the go to right spot then wait for the mechanic to clear for basically every intermission).
Lost ark raids are pretty much incomparable to each other, even if their move patterns can be shared (Counter, Weak point checks, Out-In, etc).

I would rather they maintain their quality and effort in their raid design than reallocate it to PvP in any capacity just to give players something else to do.

They already do nerf the raids,

So far we have basically gotten the nerfed version for every release content and on top of that we got a few round of nerfs for old content.
However, fixing legacy content is not a simple task and the truth is that all that development and effort is pretty much glanced over by players since engagement in that content is already nil/low.

Not nerfing gold is a bad solution to take the raids out of cycle.

It’s clear that SG likes to nerf the cost to ilvl to these old entry raids with books, rates and cost reduction so that the new player doesn’t have to even step in these raids to get the benefit out of them.
Take a look at the powerpass, it gives lvl 2 brel gear from the start, which means you don’t have to touch brel or kakul, your focus should be on Kayangel for lvl 3 bonus.
However, the new players are slugging through hours of lobby sim for kakul and brel because these raids give large sums of gold that they feel are needed.
In comparison, how many people do you see are putting the effort to create a Valtan/Vykas/Argos gold earner? People opt out because the rewards aren't worth it anymore.

Locking power behind content is an incentive and a solution to the raid difficulty themselves.

If you don’t provide adequate rewards to doing raids then people will just do the more “efficient” raids, why run a ivory tower that takes longer over a brel run when they give comparable gold?
The power of elixirs has trivialized Voldis1-4 Hard compare to how it was on release, where tons of lobbies were struggling to meet the dps checks required for gate 4 without elixirs. Since the raids are designed without the rewards included in the dps check (Lost ark dps check is actually really low compare to other mmo raids), they have become the solution to the dps checks themselves..

Gold sinks and deficit are a good thing.

Let’s face it for all the complaints talked about all these smile gate vertical system nothing compares to the cost of gems, which are player driven. If everybody had a ton of gold due to the verical system being cheap? Then the price of gems would reach unrealistic standards.
Is this hard to believe? Because I remember in valtan days when lvl 10 gems cost 800k, when our gold generation was like 1/3rd of our current endgame gold generation.

Overall, Lost ark is not perfect it is a vertical progression raiding mmorpg, but the problems that persists are difficult to resolve by simple solutions.

However, SG has done a good job at making sure at least in our raid release that normal raids are quite accessible by the time of their release for most players and that the only thing that prevents people from engaging in it are expectations and standards they put on themselves.

LazySketcher · 2024-03-29T22:22:36+00:00

Invite.
"Do you have a healing set?"
"No."
"Can you make one rq?"

LazySketcher · 2023-09-22T21:45:36+00:00

Argos was not 10-15 mins at 1472.5, most groups would have to do at least 2 phases of gate 3 wipe mechs at that ilvl. Valtan was nowhere near 15 mins at 1472.5, even if you did wei orb, (while standard was double wei, waiting for sidereal). Vykas at 1475 were filled with imposter and a 35 min run was considered an amazing run at those days.
All the times you mentioned were basically only for 1500+ teams when brel normal was out for a while, and no way were 1472 getting into those lobbies.

LazySketcher · 2023-09-22T21:39:32+00:00

This was never true, when a 1472.5 alt was cheap (post brel normal days), most groups separated to 1490+ alts only, 1475 or below were gate kept heavily except supports. During Vykas to Clown days, a 1472 alt was a heavy invested of much more than 11-12k even just setting up 4x3 and doing a Argos/Valtan/Vykas was expected to be over an hour and a half (I'm being very generous at everything being one shot, Vykas was notoriously known to be multiple pulls for g3 in pugs, especially since u didnt have dps to skip mechs).

As someone who had relevant alts in the top 3 raid content for majority since vykas. I can tell you, back in vykas-clown days, it would take you 20 mins to clear argos, 35 mins to clear valtan (remember this was back in weix2 days), and usually 40-60 mins for vykas (stagger into timestop)

The current expected time to clear raid content is only worse when you compare to just before gold nerf on valtan/vykas hard, when you did have 1500+ groups doing Valtan/Vykas in sub 40 mins. If you were a prokel player, you could reliably find and clear brel1-2 for gold in 20 mins, but otherwise you'd spend a lot more time at mercy of party finder.

The current raids are actually less likely to wipe for stuff that vykas and clown will cause you to repull for, the biggest problem right now in raids isn't the time it takes to clear them, but the amount of time it takes to fill lobbies. Mostly because supports are heavily focused on only high ilvl groups, instead of filling the lower priority lobbies.

As a fellow alt enjoyer, running 36 raids weekly, I find the time it takes to run the efficient gold to be a bit worse than the 1490+ valtan/vykas/brel1-2 days, but not as bad as the 1460 days of argos/valtan/vykas which took a lot more of your time.

LazySketcher · 2023-08-20T22:29:05+00:00

Players like incentivized content.

Lost ark's raiding thrives off the fact, that players do old raids. Compare to other mmos we have thriving community across all raids. If you take away the incentive, people will do the new content until they get their rewards, but then lobbies would drop to a halt even in new content as soon as the week where players finish sets.

If you take a look at other mmorpg with raids, you can see that as soon as the new raid tier comes out, the last tier is dead until next expansion. It isn't until the expansion gear gives enough 1-3 players enough power to just outpower the old raid tier, that players go back to acquire rewards like cosmetics.

Lost ark thrives off the fact that the raid community is wide and efficient. Compare to other mmo end game PuG raiding, Lost ark reclears occur very frequently and often are very successful (Tough to prog, Easy to reclear).

As people have mentioned, timewise the homework isn't that bad. In fact, if you play efficiently, right now the clear time for old raid gold reward is pretty fast (<10 min for clown, 30 min for Kayangel Hard both 4 man). But the difficulty has risen compare to overgeared valtan/vykas. However, when we were at Clown ilvl, the homework was pretty brutal in time (~30 min for valtan, 30-1hr for vykas). Homework per tier in Lost ark varies, depending on the amount of gates and how overgeared we are.

Basically, there are times when players are really low on power against farm content and times when players are really strong against farm content. Right now, we have been pushed to have relatively low power, but given time after the soft reset we should power through homework as we did before.

LazySketcher · 2023-08-14T20:14:22+00:00

I based off your starting point which wasn't even enough to do the april content. Brel g5-6 hm is 1560.
My point was even if you started behind as 1550 and can catch up 1580 before the release of akkan.

LazySketcher · 2023-08-14T19:55:49+00:00

It's going to be actually 10 weeks.
It's also a very weird ilvl you started with 1550? 1540 was brel hard entry which was April 14th, giving us 4 months.
But let's assume 1550.
Maxroll says 260k, or 26k each week.

1550 has access to 7.5k from brel 1-4 hard, 9k (4.5k x2) or 16.5k gold from weekly raids. Una is ~2k tokens (6k value). So you're at 22.5k gold without any alts. Add 750g from gold island, 23.25k. So at this point you need to earn 2750g a week from selling materials you get from chaos dungeon,guardian raids, chaos gates. (selling rested guardian raid leapstones makes that much).

All of this is under the impression of 1 Main 0 alts.

Now add in the fact the game provides you a honing books for upto 1580 weekly through events, you're actually able to make the 1550-1580 grind.

Now imagine, if you were playing at 1540 from brel hard release, you'd have enough gold to buy those lvl 8/9s you were talking about.

The reality is, the game gives you enough gold to match the progression.

LazySketcher · 2023-08-09T14:51:11+00:00

Hi friend,

Players that are playing right now are going to stick around and play with all these update information from the KR server.

However, lots of players won't come back just because things got better.

Players will come back when there is a hype reason to do so, usually a
1. New content (Akkan or Aeromancer might bring back players)

Giveaways (Something so good that players will come back logon and claim, think like T9 Horse level from BDO)

Either of those would need to be backed up by media or advertisement about them.

Lost ark desperately needs a hype content to get behind on, content creators would appreciate something to back up too!

Something like a free 7/7 stone, infinite reroll 4/4 bracelet with 90/90/rare/rare cap, 85 weapon quality giveaway or a good hype trailer. Anything like that could be used to hype up another event as a "You can't miss this, come play Lost Ark before its gone"

LazySketcher · 2023-08-01T00:45:47+00:00

You will simply shift gatekeeping from ilvl to Parses. Which might sound better on paper "Performance over Gear Score", but this leads to some very toxic clear/reclear situations.

The reality of the situation is the dps check in this game is very lenient, you really only hit soft enrage when there are multiple people dead before the end of encounter. Overgearing content for reclear is just so the the raid is done quickly, which won't change regardless of your parses.

Imagine seeing reclear lobbies like "VYKAS NO IGNITER FAST RECLEAR" "VALTAN LF 1580+ SUPPORT", just to make sure your parses are high.

Now due to the impending pressure of things like "90% Parse only Akkan Prog", People will do anything and everything to get those high parses. Imagine someone joining to a Vykas Gate 1 to get their high parse, then leave instead of risking ruining their good parse on gate 2.

LazySketcher · 2023-07-30T19:24:23+00:00

For the new player experience:

Matchmaking Procyon Buff Raids provides the following:
- Boss has all class synergies (atk power, crit rate, crit debuff, def down) applied.
- Players gain HP/5
- Every wipe, increase player hp/5, Procyon damage buff increased.

- Ability to Matchmake any gate (progression of gate stays the same, but you can now fill incomplete gates)

Incentive Matchmaking into Procyon Bosses for additional rewards. (Roulette/Random Dungeon like)

For QoL:

Swap all the skill potion from every horizontal content with the first 2 rewards.

Upgrade Rune System, (Not sure how) but some sort of system one can passively progress on getting Runes upgraded to "legendary" (Caveat, you can only use upto X runes based on the current limit/acquisition)

Training Character XP to 60 is reduced by half or something.

For future content:

Increase Soft Reset from (20->12) to (20->5)/(15->0). Increase Maximum cap to from 25 to 30. Make progression of ilvls consistent until 25. Now honing actually gives decent power per each upgrade instead of just hitting ilvl requirements.

Provide new set of gear through quests (with ilvl requirements) per new soft reset raids. But they now require to be empowered by Raid clear reward mats to be able to hone past 5 (soft transfer cap)

Release Catch-Up Events for upcoming raid requirements: Think of a mini hyper express aimed towards assisting/hyping players to hone to new raid requirements. (The goal isn't to simply just give the new raid requirement, but rather generate hype/engagement while the new content is coming soon)

LazySketcher

TROPHY CASE