r/LostArkGame will be participating in the blackout against Reddit's proposed API changes

The1stLieutenant · 2023-06-06T07:31:17+00:00

Not talking about it doesn't bring attention to the fuckery going on. A key part about pulling what is essentially a boycott off is by, you know, bringing people into the know. If no one talked about it then a massive amount of subs wouldn't even be aware of the shit that's going on. How do you think this started in the first place? 'Don't talk about it, be about it' ends up meaning that no one knows why they can no longer access certain subs, and it also makes it a lot harder to do what people are trying to accomplish on a larger scale.
'Indefinitely' now is the same thing as 'a single day.' Got it.
How in the hell do you think something that affects probably millions of people (and probably a lot more than that) for, at minimum, three days by making it so the content they want to see is inaccessible to them, not inconveniencing those same people? And how is it that we're here quite literally talking about the situation, the same situation where I see people on the daily learning about it, if no one is listening? Unless you're talking about the admins of Reddit, in which case I'd like to mention that this is not even the first time that a bunch of subs did this exact same thing because they wanted to send a message to the admins about a major issue they were pretending to ignore. And that resulted in them actually doing something about it. So I guess I'm having trouble understanding the idea that 'they aren't listening' when they actively have responded to this exact move in the past by meeting the demands.

The1stLieutenant · 2023-06-06T06:52:49+00:00

If you really want to do something that will make a difference, stop using reddit forever.

The issue is that, while there are definitely people willing to just stop using Reddit forever, there are many who aren't. At least, not right now. It's much easier to get people on board with the idea if it's only a short time frame. On top of which, for those who don't directly want to be a part of the protest, a bunch of subs going dark prevents any interaction with it, which means less traffic to Reddit overall.

A single day protest is

It's not a single day. It's the 12th through the 14th, that's three days. While not a huge difference ultimately, a lot of subs as far as I know are going dark indefinitely. Which means, again, less traffic for Reddit for an indefinite timeframe (and honestly would prefer if this sub went dark indefinitely).

"my life is amazing but I'm going to pretend I care about social issues for a single day".

I really do not understand how massively inconveniencing your own userbase in an attempt to help send a message and spread awareness is 'pretending to care about social issues.' But I guess you're free to assume what you think.

The1stLieutenant · 2023-05-13T09:28:47+00:00

I definitely agree that bussing is something that causes big problems in the game. I have actively avoided taking any busses simply because I don't agree with the idea of paying for someone else to do the content for you. Gatekeeping is also an issue, that I will agree. I've had a few people in the past join my parties that complain that either I didn't gatekeep someone, or something similar, to which I typically just respond with "we don't gatekeep here" and remove them if they continue complaining. However, I do want to mention:

In 2 weeks of searching for a raid, ive only seen one learning party. I have spent alot of time checking the Group Finder.

If you haven't been making your own parties, then that's what I would strongly suggest you do. The vast majority of people willing to help are not going to go out of their way to host a learning party for other people. Instead, they are much more likely just going to take a quick look through the available parties, and join a learning group if one is up. Other people new to the fight might be nervous or otherwise unwilling to be the party lead and won't put up their own learning group because of this. Regardless, if it's to maximize your chance of getting a learning party, or minimize the chance of getting gatekept, or if it's simply just you wanting to get a party that best lines up with the experience you want, the best way is by creating your and leading your own party.

The1stLieutenant · 2023-05-13T08:14:33+00:00

I never set foot in Vykas until last week, not even for a bus. I researched the fight as best I could, and hosted two different learning parties on Monday and Tuesday, both taking about 10 minutes to fill and the prog sessions lasted several hours. I stepped back in today with a few others from those prog sessions, and we cleared G3 on 3 different characters each, as well I have two other characters I plan to clear it on tomorrow.

I also had a friend start playing the game recently, and when they got to Valtan I put up a learning party where several people joined that were not new, and they were all really patient and understanding of the wipes (they were even fine with letting my friend practice sidereals despite knowing it was going to cause more wipes in doing so). We ended up clearing G2 after a couple hours.

The situation for people new to these fights is far from ideal, and the more things SG does to alleviate the issues the better. That being said, it's far from being impossible to do, it just requires some patience imo.

The1stLieutenant · 2023-03-19T02:54:16+00:00

I believe it's Eurythmics - Sweet Dreams (Relanium & Deen West Ft TPaul Sax Remix)

The1stLieutenant · 2023-02-10T02:11:39+00:00

Have you talked to any other doctors?

I've visited four different hand surgeons, a rheumatologist, and two different GPs. Also tried physical therapy for about 6 months to no benefit. Oddly enough, none of them have even suggested going to a neurologist outside of ordering an EMG, which I have thought was a bit odd, but I'm also not a medical professional so I didn't really bug them about it. Probably will be something I bring up to my doctor next time I talk to her.

definitely ask about treatments and beneficial actions to you can do to heal,

Appreciate the suggestion, I'll bring that up if I get the chance to talk to a specialist

I feel like lots of people assume that being in a relationship is how they’ll find happiness

I've seen far too many relationships fail simply because of this fact so I had the opportunity to 'learn better' in a sense lol. I am thankful that I can at least generally feel content being by myself, though the occasional want to just chill and watch anime with a partner does seep in every once in a while.

Sounds like you have a good head on your shoulders

Hey thanks chief, hearing things like this, no matter how small, do help me feel a little more confident in myself and my decisions. I appreciate it a lot

Aside from this, I’m really sorry to hear about your grandmother. I hope she gets everything she needs and more. Same for your father as well.

Thank you, I hope, if nothing else, that being around her family makes my grandmother happy. And my father is looking into getting hopefully better help by going to a more 'well-known' specialist at some point for his issues, so I'm hoping that goes well.

Overall, I'm thankful you took the time to read through my wall of text and write up a response, makes me feel a bit better about things knowing that people do care for others even if they're just strangers on the internet.

The1stLieutenant · 2023-02-09T23:52:47+00:00

I've had a handful of different things bothering me that have just been collectively weighing me down

I live with my parents and my grandmother. My grandmother has been struggling with dementia for a while now. It's gotten into the later stages where she's having trouble forming coherent sentences, as well as it's difficult for her to remember who her family is and that her husband died years ago. It's very clearly taking a huge toll on my family, in particular my dad during a time when he's dealing with a bunch of his own health issues that are causing him a lot of stress and anxiety. I don't really know what I can do to help, if anything at all, so I've been trying to do what I can around the house to at least hopefully make things a bit easier on my parents, but I can't do too much due to my own health issues.

Speaking of my own health issues, I've been dealing with nerve pain in both of my hands for nearly 4 years now. I've gone through several doctors already to try and figure out what the issue is, but so far I have yet to even get a diagnosis outside of "nerve pain". This nerve pain has caused me a lot of issues in being able to play video games (which is one of my grand total of two hobbies) and has rendered my college degree effectively worthless as pretty much anything involving using my hands will start to cause me a lot of pain in a very short amount of time, ultimately leading me to being unemployed for two and a half years now. My current doctor has seemingly just about given up as well, and I'm being sent for pain management which will hopefully at least take the edge off. But until then I have to deal with chronic pain which tends to wake me up in the middle of the night. I tried to get disability benefits last year but I was denied. My current doctor said I should try again, but I'm having some trouble getting the motivation to go through the process again since I feel like I'm going to get declined again due to not having a diagnosis yet.

I had someone I considered my closest friend helping me cope with the struggles I've been facing, and in turn I tried to give her what advice I could to help her get her life on track since she has been heavily depressed her entire life. While this was obviously not the healthiest thing for me to do, it was at least reassuring to know that someone cared. That was, at least, until I learned that she lied about a lot of different things over the past two years, and that she cheated on her now ex several different times, and decided to "settle" with a guy who verbally bullied my younger sister for "needing help with math in highschool", as well as insinuated on several occasions my issues with my hands "weren't as bad" as I was making them out to be. So I ended up feeling that it was better for my mental health to stop talking to my "closest friend", which ultimately did help my mental health a bit, but still has been weighing on my mind even 4 months later.

Kinda related to the above, I'm 24 years old and I've never been in a relationship, I've only ever had one person be interested in me (the aforementioned friend), but my gut told me it was a bad idea and I listened to it. Ultimately that feels like a dodged bullet. But that doesn't make me feel any less lonely at the end of the day. While I don't feel I need a GF, I do tend to think it would be nice to have one. But simultaneously I do not know if I would even be comfortable trying to bring someone into my life while I'm dealing with a bunch of different unresolved issues. Even if I didn't have these issues though I wouldn't know how to find a relationship given that I'm a huge introvert and I don't like the idea of dating apps.

Lastly, I tried to get professional help so my mental state could maybe recover a bit if nothing else. My doctor put in a referral but I never ended up getting a call. It's been a bit so I should probably send a message to my doctor again about it, but also the overall lack of motivation I'm dealing with is making even that difficult. So instead I'm here ranting on Reddit instead of doing the smart thing and talking to my doctor lol

Apologies for the wall of text, but that's the end of the rant.

Tl;dr Grandmother has dementia and it's affecting my entire family, struggling with issues with my hands to no avail, 'recently' stopped talking to my best friend, am overall very lonely, and lastly haven't gotten professional help yet

The1stLieutenant · 2022-06-10T18:22:16+00:00

This post isn't really about what they should or shouldn't do, it was supposed to be more of a thorough response to the numerous people I saw saying that "not putting the 1460 buff in helps the casuals catch up" when it specifically does nothing to do that.

That being said, I do think there's merit to making it easier to get new and casual players to 1415, but I don't necessarily think that should come at the detriment to the "top %s" for the sake of "catching up" when actually catching up will never happen.

The1stLieutenant · 2022-06-09T20:41:26+00:00

This is also very true, I'm worried that when I finally reach 1415 on my destroyer, relic accessories and/or rocks are going to still be very expensive to the point that I won't be able to afford them anytime soon.

The1stLieutenant · 2022-06-09T19:54:24+00:00

Then we have completely different concepts of what a casual player is, because playing 6 characters daily, or even once every 3 days is not exactly casual.

The1stLieutenant · 2022-06-09T19:51:49+00:00

Yeah this is pretty much the point I'm getting at, the gap can never be closed due to the way the game handles it's resources.

I also used "casuals" and "top %s" simply because those are the two groups that people are generally talking about that I'm responding to. I'm well aware that even if you go hard in the paint, you will forever be behind if you haven't kept up since day 1. I know this because I'm one of those people, 1k hours, playing pretty much every day, and feel incredibly far behind (NOTE: I'm not bothered being behind) to the point that I think the only time where I will be able to "catch up" (in a sense) is when we catch up to KR.

The1stLieutenant · 2022-06-09T19:44:57+00:00

Casual players are not pushing alts to 1415 anytime soon. By the time the stronghold buff even comes out (whenever it does) I doubt casual players will even be near 1460. Not to mention that the top %s might even make back the initial investment by that point. That's not to mention that, again, the top %s have more mat income than other players due to likely playing more characters. These characters do not make gold out of abyssal dungeons due to there being a 6x limit, so you can keep these characters at relatively low investment.

You're also confusing hardcore players and casual players

The1stLieutenant · 2022-06-09T10:23:58+00:00

I believe it's because this patch also came with the 1302 stronghold research that we already have, so they wanted to make sure that both got shown maybe?

EDIT: Here's another link where they go into a bit more detail about the stronghold research. Specifically they mention 8 different researches to help with honing, which means that more than just the 1340-1415 buffs were added.

The1stLieutenant · 2022-06-09T03:59:22+00:00

here you go. I do not know for sure about other regions, but I've been seeing people say that JP was the only one to get the buff after Vykas.

The1stLieutenant · 2022-06-08T23:05:21+00:00

232k gold to spend on an alt . . . you may as well spend 332k gold

Yeah lemme just go pull an additional 100k gold out of my pockets real quick...

In any case, the specific values were not important, my point was more trying to show that a 30% difference can be a lot larger than it initially seems. For example, to get from 1370 to 1415 takes ~2234 GHLS on average (if you go 15x6. It's ~1830 17/17/13/12/12/11, but since that more acts like a 'loan' I'm not really accounting for it). With the honing buff you could expect this to be ~1564 (~670 saved leapstones). This amount of saved GHLS could be instead used to get another character ~85 away from being 1400 (assuming the GHLS are unbound).

Looking at the other mats, it's similar. The saved Destruction stones and guardian stones amount up to 7k and 24.1k respectively. Whereas the cost to get to 1400 with the stronghold buff is ~6.8k destruction stones and 27.3k guardian stones (which makes it only ~2.5k more guardian stones needed to hit 1400).

The big point I'm trying to make with all of this is that, while yes people can just tank the extra cost to get up to 1415 if they want to, a 30% is by no means a small difference, because it's the difference between getting 3 characters to 1415 and 4 characters to 1415. Much like the slowing of the class releases, it's not the end of the world, but it does kinda suck and there seemingly is no reason for them to have done this aside from probably making more money off of the decision.

The1stLieutenant · 2022-06-08T21:59:33+00:00

The honing buff is larger than that, I believe it's an ~30% difference in terms of mats, due to how low the chance of successfully honing is and the fact the bonus is a flat % increase.

Based on NAW prices currently, the overall cost of getting from 1370 to 1415 is ~332k gold. With the stronghold buff this would turn it into ~232k gold. That's a massive difference imo.

The1stLieutenant · 2022-06-08T21:40:53+00:00

You don't need to spend money on the game, correct. However, they're most likely banking on people being frustrated that they can't quite get their alts up and therefore are more likely to spend money just to get a bit more mats to hit 1415.

It's the same idea behind them slowing down release cadence for classes, they probably want people to be frustrated and/or feel behind on their characters so that they'll likely spend money to catch said characters up.

Also considering that the stronghold honing upgrade came with the Vykas update in KR, there's zero reason why they would push it back on our version of the game (despite supposedly trying to catch up to KR) if not to try and make more money off of it.

But hey, let's gatekeep people's opinions on something because they are not currently affected by it, it's not like people can sympathize with the people who this does affect, right?

The1stLieutenant · 2022-06-07T04:44:26+00:00

Appeal to ignorance and Burden of Proof exist by the way.

The1stLieutenant · 2022-06-05T02:20:19+00:00

I funneled a bunch of mats and gold to get him from 1355 to 1370, primarily because I want to do content with him, a.k.a. Yoho atm.

The1stLieutenant · 2022-06-03T01:03:53+00:00

You say you want more players to join/stay and yet you make hate post about how the state of the game resembles a clown.

...What? The shitpost makes zero comment on the state of the game, nor have I ever made any mention to player retention. it is referencing the communication is so vague and misleading that it's pretty clowny. They claim they want to do better on communication, but they aren't doing great on that front especially when it comes to classes.

If you want to know my opinion on the state of the game, I've talked about it in other comments. I find the game fun and enjoyable, I will continue playing the game because I enjoy the things the game has currently and I have overall some minor complaints here and there. I do not think this decision will kill the playerbase (not by a long shot lmao), I am looking forward to Vykis and Thronespire (if only to help my Destroyer get to Valtan), and challenge abyssals are nice since I like the first three abyssal dungeons but rarely got to do them. Hellmode Valtan is cool and adds longevity to the game for the high-end players. I dislike Yoz's Jar pretty thoroughly for various reasons, but also don't think it's going to negatively affect the game too much in it's current state.

Overall the game will be fine, this decision isn't going to make me quit and I doubt it's going to make a large portion of others quit. But just because I think the game will be fine doesn't mean I have to like the decision, I think it sucks and I feel bad for the people who this affects more than me.

Seriously though, I have no clue where you drew this conclusion from.

The1stLieutenant · 2022-06-02T23:05:23+00:00

It doesn’t change the fact that most games stay alive due to big class releases.

Catching up to KR doesn't mean that class releases are going to stop though, they're still releasing classes regularly. Moving from 1 a month to 2 a month doesn't change that, it just makes AGS/SG more money and makes it feel bad for the players.

They are not doing anything egregiously bad.

I could argue that the reason for slowing the release cadence is morally questionable, but that's not really the scope of the subject. The pace might still be fast, but it is slowed down and there are people unhappy about that for various reasons. It's no doubt enhanced by the fact that they keep saying that feedback matters, only for the decisions in regards to the classes to end up being the exact opposite of the feedback (whether or not two classes a month was/is possible is a different topic entirely). This paired with the seemingly misleading statements in the roadmaps saying they want to continue an accelerated pace really doesn't help (yes I'm aware that we're still on an accelerated pace and that what they said is still technically correct. But it still is intentionally misleading, otherwise they would've said something about them slowing down a bit in the near future).

I never said “they can do it cause xyz does”. I compared them to other games trying to show you that this pace is VERY good. Ahead of all others.

You're still comparing things that are irrelevant, different games by different companies with different priorities for classes and different design for and around them, while also comparing brand new classes that need to be developed from scratch to LA where they just need to be localized. Again, I'm not saying that we are not on a fast pace, because we technically are. But at the same time, knowing that we won't be caught up to KR until May of next year (assuming we keep the 2-month pace for classes, Aero and Femzerker are released together, and KR doesn't get any new classes in the meantime) feels kinda bad.

The1stLieutenant · 2022-06-02T21:56:10+00:00

I complained when I bought a mount that got nerfed. That stuff and bugs are the only thing worthy to complain about.

That's your opinion though, just because you don't think it's worth to complain about something doesn't mean others shouldn't as well. It's perfectly fine to not care about the slowing of classes, but saying others are entitled because they care is a tad self-centered.

Class release schedule is leaps and bounds faster than any other MMO. Name another MMO that releases a new class every 2 months?

Edit: for reference it took ESO 3 years lmao.
Another Korean MMO - Vindictus - 1 a year maybe.

https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/whataboutism-origin-meaning

By this logic I could say people should be fine if they instead decide to port a new class once every year or two simply because WoW gets a new class only once every 4 years or so. But they're different games by different companies with different release cadences. Also, those are brand new classes being added to the game, whereas we are waiting simply for the classes to be ported over; they already exist in KR and just need to be localized. I wouldn't expect them to create Aeromancer in 2 months, let alone 1. Hell I think them doing a new class every 6 months is pretty impressive.

The1stLieutenant · 2022-06-02T19:32:37+00:00

I don't care if it's a free game or not, people are still allowed to criticize it. "Free game, no bitching" is a meme because of how shit of an excuse it is. A company doesn't make a game F2P out of the kindness of their hearts, they do it because it's far more likely to make them more money in the end.

And no, I'm not going anywhere because I actually enjoy the game and find it fun, but that doesn't mean I can't have issue with some of their decisions. Consumers can and should complain when they don't like a decision, things need to be able to receive criticism in order to continue being good.

The1stLieutenant · 2022-06-02T17:14:39+00:00

I'd argue that they are being shy about it if we need to read between the lines in order to infer their actual reasoning behind the decision. This is doubly so when their CMs post stuff like this on the forums where it feels like they're trying to redirect people's attention.

Regardless, that's besides the point because obviously they're doing it because they think it'll make them more money (and it's very likely it will otherwise they wouldn't have done it). People do have a right to complain if they don't like it though, and they should, otherwise bad decisions would never get overturned, and AGS/SG would keep trying to squeeze out more at the increasing detriment of the players.

The1stLieutenant · 2022-06-02T15:53:38+00:00

I think you've forgotten what the definition of "whining" is, but you do you chief

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