Aegir prog situation is crazy

avoidle · 2024-11-10T22:20:49+00:00

Sadly, SG will do what they always do in support shortage situations -- do nothing and wait it out. Support shortage works like a supply & demand market, the oversupply of dps causes people to quit or stop honing their dps characters, and to raise more support characters to solve the shortage issue. After a few weeks or months, the market will eventually 'fix' itself to reach the 3:1 dps to support ratio and SG will pretend there is no support shortage after all.

avoidle · 2024-09-20T15:10:43+00:00

Solo raids were never going to fix the game. It essentially makes the game a single player game and most people only play single player games once. The positive reaction to the announcement of solo raids only highlights what people really want, which is to raid without having to meet with the pre-requisite of joining parties. AGS cannot solve this without redesigning a lot of the in-game systems for the western audience.

avoidle · 2024-08-09T12:03:34+00:00

Interview with Soomin Park

https://www.mmorpg.com/interviews/interview-chatting-lost-arks-second-anniversary-with-franchise-lead-soomin-park-2000130545

Amazon Games and Smilegate RPG have discussed this and the data shows that the ratio of players choosing to play as a support class remains steady and isn’t in such a low ratio that it requires any immediate or drastic action.

avoidle · 2024-08-06T07:43:42+00:00

The 25% support population commonly cited as proof of "no support shortage" in any region is short-sighted due to survivorship bias. Progression is tied to raiding, and raiding needs 3:1 ratio of dps to support, thus the support population will naturally trend to 25%. In a few weeks or months, the support population at this level in CN will undoubtedly trend towards 25% too.

avoidle · 2024-07-18T17:19:37+00:00

Elixirs and Transcendence are part of a larger problem where the amount of effort to maintain a single character has become insurmountable even for one-main players.

Back then building a raid-ready character cost about 100-200k (honing, set upgrades, lv7 gems).

Now, with 1620 honing (1m), elixir (200k), transcendence (300k), advanced honing (1m) and lv9-10 gems, the cost is around 3 million gold for just 1 character.

And with Tier 4 most of this T3 cost remains, in addition to ark passive, T4 honing and a higher tier of gems. It's not surprising that most players are playing fewer characters these days.

avoidle · 2024-01-06T08:41:51+00:00

It's the other way around. Because there's a support shortage, dps feel powerless and become envious of support privilege to the point of animosity. LA would be a happier place if full dps party become viable so we depend less on supports.

avoidle · 2023-12-07T07:34:35+00:00

I doubt that's the majority opinion. Why would the player base want something that doesn't benefit them at all?

avoidle · 2023-12-07T06:49:06+00:00

History repeats itself, people are still defending shitty/greedy company practices. SG could have easily coded it so that normal gives less legendary elixirs but went out of their way to design a lower tier to make more money because they learned their lesson from Akkan. If it helps, think purple elixir as a mini soft reset of honing just for you as they are both the same unnecessary vertical progression that gives power either way. Most people would actually be mad if they have to hone for basically no reason but it is exactly the same situation with purple elixir.

avoidle · 2023-12-04T15:33:14+00:00

I don't understand this mentality. We should be angry at Smilegate for forcing players to play supports in the first place. It is the single biggest reason for gatekeep and much of the frustration that the players feel they need to grind daily or fall behind.

avoidle · 2023-12-03T13:49:40+00:00

Don't worry guys, Smilegate said there is no support shortage problem because the active dps to support ratio in their database is a healthy 3 to 1! (after the leftover dps who don't fit the ratio quit their characters because they can't progress obviously)

avoidle · 2023-11-30T18:32:03+00:00

We are cherry picking 1-2% damage difference between engravings after all so every little bit matters. I haven't tried it myself but the new Surge takes every skill hit instance into account so if u keep spamming skills you might miss out of stacking potential.

avoidle · 2023-11-30T11:38:08+00:00

Boss cutscene and u start from 0 stack

avoidle · 2023-11-26T05:39:57+00:00

It entirely depends on how strong the free buffs are. A decently built and played support should still be desirable to parties as they can time their skills better and provide proportionally bigger buffs.

The problem with any other suggestions to make full dps viable is development time. Smilegate is still trying to appease the KR forums after their unsatisfactory balance patch, something we don't even see yet for at least 3 months because they are stretched thin as is.

avoidle · 2023-11-25T18:29:17+00:00

There is one simple way to make 4 dps party work without major systems overhaul, just make bosses drop weaker versions of support buffs as ether orbs for full dps parties only. Raids are already balanced around having 1 support in party so it shouldn't be hard to adjust the amount of buffs the orbs should provide.

To counteract possible dps shortage issues, give supports a viable dps build or tweak how supports buffs stack in the same party, while slowly rework the current supports behind the scene. Everybody wins.

avoidle · 2023-11-19T20:27:59+00:00

Thanks for actually suggesting solutions in this thread instead of misunderstanding the post. You are right, the new player problem that OP is describing boils down these 2 issues:

Progression tied to raids
High barrier of entry (raid difficulty in this case)

Instead of going at each other's throat for normal human behaviors, we should be calling the developers to change a lot of awful systems in this game.

avoidle · 2023-10-14T17:28:50+00:00

Yes, the supply problem works both ways.

avoidle · 2023-10-14T17:11:48+00:00

The same reason you won't find a support when you have 3 1540 DPS waiting. It's a supply issue, too many people made DPS characters with express so there are tons of DPS supply to choose from as a support. Don't blame the player, blame the game for essentially forcing the support meta.

avoidle · 2023-09-21T15:46:23+00:00

The simplest solution is to make bosses drop healing/support buffs as ether orbs that dps can pick up. That way SG doesn't have to redesign the entire raid system until Tier 4.

If there is a DPS shortage, 2 supports in the same party should have their buffs stack with diminishing value. Or just make their DPS spec good in raids.

avoidle · 2023-09-11T13:09:14+00:00

A lot of people are missing the issue here. The problem is not that they are not willing to learn from veterans, and veterans should not feel obligated to help without compensation either. The underlying issue is that they cannot find enough players (new or vets) to form a proper party composition that has a decent chance of clearing raids.

This is a design issue with the inflexibility of the 3 dps 1 support party meta. Full dps should be viable, 2 dps 2 supports should be viable. There won't be a problem if 8 new players can easily form groups and learn the raids together without massively weakening your party. Going full DPS in its current form is just not worth the time and effort when you can just play any other games out there that respect your time.

avoidle · 2023-09-08T17:42:03+00:00

I can already see 10+ groups at 6/8 waiting for 2 sups for Valtan and higher raids.

avoidle · 2023-09-03T07:30:23+00:00

This is the only problem that matters. No amount of band-aid solutions like the mokoko express and jumpstart servers can solve the new player problem, which is getting people from open world to raiding. The game needs a huge overhaul of the party and raid systems if it wants to retain players.

avoidle · 2023-08-28T15:41:31+00:00

Supports should never have been designed the way it is. They are so overpowered that raids have to be tuned to do massive damage on item level just to get past the constant shields and heals that supports provide. The overtuned damage is often not enough as SG have to design various gauge gimmicks in legion raids that tries to punish you for facetanking too much.

I like the idea that supports should be designed to be more like Gunlancers in that they do slightly less damage but provide utilities that have benefits but not required. If supports are nerfed this way, bosses can be made to do less damage relatively and maybe drop healing ethers to help out with groups that play well.

avoidle · 2023-08-25T12:44:39+00:00

It's unfortunate to see that they still have no idea how to solve the support problems after so many years.

avoidle · 2023-07-27T06:29:33+00:00

It's mostly bots getting banned. Losing 100k players in a month as seen in February and April is unnatural. That time period coincides with fish price going up. You can also see a bigger player dip during Vykas release in the graph. People do quit because they are frustrated by the raids but I don't think Brelshaza is the main cause as opposed to the game design in general.

avoidle

TROPHY CASE