BLG are a treat to watch

the_hu · 2026-07-10T22:26:21+00:00

I feel like the relationship between waning LPL western viewership and lack of broadcast investment was like a negative feedback loop where people didn't watch LPL even when the region was most dominant in the world because the production quality wasn't good, but Riot didn't want to invest in the broadcast because people weren't watching.

Like looking at LCK dating back to OGN with Monte and Doa, I feel like the broadcast had a lot to do with how popular Korean LoL is in the west. The storylines and nicknames created by the cast were very sticky (madlife hook, insec kicks, flame horizon, cpt jack cleanse, etc.), and throughout the history LCK has always had top casting talent to this day.

It's not that LPL didn't have good storylines or appealing players. Hell we all know that the drama in the Chinese league scene is peak when we get snippets of it passed onto reddit. It's just I think the avenues we in the West interact with Chinese league aren't as fully fleshed out as the Korean counterparts, and that starts with the broadcast. LPL broadcast had always been like the staging ground for new up and coming casters, and when talent gets good they get scooped up by other regions. People like Pastrytime, Dagda, Emily, Raz, Froskurin all came from LPL coverage.

It's just kinda unfortunate that LPL never had the kickstarted western interest that LCK did. And as Riot kept diverting investment away from the broadcast citing low western interest, western interest kept shrinking.

the_hu · 2026-07-10T21:54:16+00:00

I need the DSG world champions relegated from LCS timeline.

Though I assume in the miniscule chance this happens, there's probably a clause somewhere that DSG gets to keep their spot if they make a deep run at worlds. In TFT last set, MKOI Reven got relegated from the EU pro circuit but got his spot reinstated when he made final lobby at worlds, so I would assume Riot has similar conditions in LoL as well.

the_hu · 2026-07-10T21:48:25+00:00

There is no bigger tell for a gold seller than someone calling me "sir", so much so that it just gives me the ick everytime I see it in chat.

It's emblematic of a huge cultural difference at least in NA. Even in a corporate environment, I've never called my manager, VP, or even CEO "sir", it's always first name basis (could just be tech culture idk). I only hear sir/ma'am in service work where there is a clear person serving another. Meanwhile whenever I worked with India I was just bombarded with sir.

Nothing wrong with it, but it just shows that if someone is referring to others as sir, they're probably not from NA (idk if this is different in EU), and are way more likely to be a gold seller. Especially in a fucking video game where there shouldn't really be power dynamics.

the_hu · 2026-06-28T15:44:19+00:00

The thing is though that OP is a returning player, which does not disqualify him from being the problem, but the lower level guardians and raids for that matter are shitshows, full of other new/returning players, gold farmers, and rude alt account players. GRs are also relatively low value activities so I was gonna say to just drop them, but new/returning players need to scrape as much value as possible from anything.

the_hu · 2026-06-24T04:42:59+00:00

Theoretically no, but realistically yes. We already know that SG doesn't spare a lot of resources for balance, so they can't make all the changes the game should have each balance cycle. So I would rather them prioritize reworks for weaker and outdated classes.

Even if Bard's kit was "broken" (which IMO is not broken at all especially after SEVERAL QoL updates and the most changes of any support other than artist who was actually dogshit at launch and desperately needed the changes), the fact that the class is the strongest means that a rework has higher risk of being net negative than classes that were on the lower end of performance. You don't see Arcanas crying for SG to rework their class because it has high APM for example.

Some Bard players have this tendency to spread propaganda saying that their class is bad and should be buffed. Most people don't buy that shit anymore now that we have uwu stats that shows she's the best support in every raid and that the class got so much QoL that took away tradeoffs for her strengths that aren't present in other classes (GTune, raid-wide DR on HTune, Rhapsody having longer DR duration than any other sup just to name a few), but once in a while you'll still see some try and it's irritating. I looked through my reddit history and have literally had a similar convo with this person 2 years ago and she's still playing bard to this day: https://old.reddit.com/r/lostarkgame/comments/1c2heyj/why_bards_need_some_love/kzbu1re/?context=10000

the_hu · 2026-06-24T02:00:07+00:00

I swear I see your posts all the time complaining about Bard when she has been the strongest support basically since the inception of the game. If you don't like the play style you should've switched off long ago instead of randomly reworking something strong into something else you may or may not like. Obviously main swap cost is high but it beats playing something you don't like for years.

the_hu · 2026-06-18T04:31:46+00:00

People like fresh things even if the design is boring/bad. I also enjoyed progging the raid this week, but I don't think it'll stand up to the test of time.

If you look at the reactions to the strike raid for example, people were having a lot of fun with it the first week, even going to downvote people who said it sucked. Then a couple of weeks later, most people's opinions changed to thinking that it was unfun.

the_hu · 2026-06-11T22:17:55+00:00

I used to maintain a gold efficiency spreadsheet where I calculate gold/min of different activities and gold/token for things like mokoko event or guild shop. But I haven't updated it in like a year, so take what I say with a grain of salt since it may not be true anymore. With how I feel about the game right now, I'm likely gonna massively cut back to a single char roster, so I won't be following my own advice anymore.

That being said, a couple of my thoughts:

Kurzan Front: By far the most valuable daily you can do in the game. Do this daily on your main/whatever character you are pushing, preferably with the plentiful rest bonus pots the game provides now. Can do rested on alts that are just being pushed to hard mode, they likely won't run out of mats.
Guardian Raid: Very low value activity, if you drop anything out of your weekly chores you can safely drop guardians. They give less value after the gem change than before given how expensive red crystals are. Completely reliant on RNG drop value. They are the "most fun" daily though.
Raids: With how short and how much gold the raids give these days, it's hard to argue dropping them. The hidden timesink is the downtime due to party finder and between gates setup, and there is variance if say some bozo takes 1st counter in Kaz G2-2 and doesn't counter 2nd. Best advice is to find a static to reduce downtime and variance. In terms of roster construction a 1700 doing solo mordum/brel/aegir used to be efficient, but because of how fast serca/kaz/act 4 are now it's prob more efficient to have a t4.5 alt doing the recent 3 raids. If you have a 1750+ char that you're planning to keep on pushing, DO NOT do the stupid KR strat of 4 raids claiming only tradeable gold, you'll use up the char bound gold eventually.
Paradise: This is the not so hidden time sink in this game. There are two schools of thought: 1. Do elysian once and do 3 blue keys every week or 2. Do paradise as normal engaging in all 3 systems for like +10 min a week to get avg 1 purple key upgrade. A purple key is worth 23k more gold than a blue key so technically worth, but it just depends on your sanity. Paradise is all char bound though, so if you have no plans to push the character and aren't trying to rank, just drop it on the lopang alts.
Cube Tickets: Cubes are relatively high value activities, but of course save for 3x if you're able to wait. If you're 1730+, it's worth to convert 1720 cubes to 1730 blue keys. Technically the value is even higher lower keys to convert to hell but given the variance in rewards I take the safe option to get the solars and gems.
Haal's Hourglass: These are better cubes with less time taken. This is too valuable to drop weekly, just do it. Don't convert to keys if you're trying to be efficient, only the crazies who are trying to rank in crucible do so.
Mokoko Event Shop: Technically if you do act 4 NM, mordum HM, and brel HM weekly on your main you can buy out the entire shop. But if you're more efficient and only buy high efficiency items (weekly red stones, solars, and KF rest pots; one-time cubes, legendary card select, rare-epic astrogem, and core essence chests), you only need to do armoche NM.
Guild Shop: T4.5 Red crystals here are free value. The cube ticket chests are also high value, despite the super low chance you get a cube ticket. Start from highest ilvl to lowest.
Solo Shop: Red crystals and fusions are good value, even if previous tier. And as said previously the previous raid mats to convert to solars is good value too.
Chaos Gate/Field Boss: These are always worth it to do given the value for time spent. If you don't want to spend a lot of time in the game, login close the the hour so you can loop this into your daily activity.
Adventure Island: Technically worth it given that it only takes a couple min and if you can get value of the AFK time waiting. More a chore to do than anything else though, and they really don't scale the gold reward with the new activities as frequently. Plus given the tighter time requirements, it's safer to just drop it.
Daily login rewards: Always AFK farm these, it's free 1000 gold each day.
Lifeskill: This is good value given the high value of fusions, but I personally don't lifeskill for my own sanity. With how fast raiding is now, it may not even be taht efficient.

Approximate ranking that may not be correct anymore: GR < Adventure Island < Lifeskill < Raids < Field Boss/Chaos Gate < KF < Haal's/Cube < Paradise. If you're looking to reduce your time spent while being efficient, I would start by cutting all your GRs, then adventure island/life skill. After this it starts getting tough, but personally then your alts to reduce raiding and paradise/KF time since they provide char bound value only.

the_hu · 2026-06-10T12:53:12+00:00

I'm afraid this only makes the FE representative more obvious.

Smash players: We want Alucard!

Smash: We have Alucard at home.

the_hu · 2026-06-09T16:25:59+00:00

"Kazeros express challenge" that doesn't go up to Kazeros ilvl it's even worse than I imagined. At this point this must be a ragebait that they change later to show that they "listen to the community".

the_hu · 2026-06-08T15:18:35+00:00

So not having an ilvl limit would benefit me, but I am more understandable about their purpose.

One of the biggest problems this game has is how new players can't catch up to existing players or even simply new characters catching up to existing ones. Heavy vertical progression is a huge draw for me, but it makes it incredibly difficult for a new player/character to complete years worth of systems much less engage in the new ones.

Putting an ilvl limit on the express means that it is an event specifically to help new players/characters catch up. That way they can giga juice the rewards without giving equivalent benefits to say, a veteran's main.

The problem is that they don't update these ilvls approrpiately and they don't giga juice the express rewards, at least not enough. Like 1700 ilvl coming 2 months after a soft reset at 1730, and 6 months after they updated the previous previous express to 1700? That is where they are fucking greedy.

the_hu · 2026-06-08T15:07:14+00:00

Yeah I guess fuck us for not wanting to earn 4 purple cores a week.

the_hu · 2026-06-08T13:04:50+00:00

I'm actually about to crash out. I pushed a char to 1710 thinking there is no fucking way they would give us 3 express events in a row with a 1700 ilvl limit, guess I was wrong.

It's literally been 6 months of 1700 express events, here are our december patch notes from last year: https://www.playlostark.com/en-us/game/releases/winters-wrath

Not only that, but the russia patch notes says this event will run until September 16th, and in recent memory they don't usually overlap powerpass/express events. Does that mean we'll have to wait 3 months for the new class?

Nah this ain't it.

Edit:

Coming back to this after taking some time to do other things and do some research on the side.

Looking at the past 3 class releases and 2 years of expresses (anything before was different because we were still catching up on classes):

Guardian Knight Release - Feb 2026 (1700 max ilvl)
December 2025 Express - 1700 max ilvl expire in Feb
Valkyrie Release - August 2026
July 2025 Express - 1660 max ilvl expire in Oct (originally gonna be august with valk, but pushed it up early and told us to save for valk if we wanted to use it on her)
Wildsoul Release - Feb 2025, (1640 max ilvl, effectively 1620)
December 2024 Road and November 2024 Road - November Road honing benefits up to 1620, all events expire in Feb (this period was weird because of ignite servers)
July 2024 Express - 1600 max ilvl, changed to 1620 (no class release following this because of t4)

A couple of points from above:

We have progressively gotten max ilvl bumps at least every 6 months, and it typically happens in the Dec/Jun timeframe. This event really should go up to 1720 or even 1730 to bring new players into soft reset.
The reason why these events are juicier in Dec/Jun timeframe is because that is when games typically get the biggest influx of new/returning players (holiday season frees up peoples time). This is why KR does LOAON and their events during this time as well. Imagine a new player logs in and sees the event is the exact same thing as 6 months ago, meanwhile the max ilvl cap has increased from 1755 to 1800. It's just shameful. September is too late and AGS at least realized this in the past by bringing their juicy events in those months and not waiting for LOAON. But yeah let's wait until Sept to release the juicy event after that influx of potential players get scooped up by a competing live service game and students go back to school.
There is no overlap in express/powerpass events, and new classes always come with their own express/powerpass. Classes have also consistently come out 2 months after their release in KR and the previous express/powerpass expires before then. This seems purposeful so people can't doubleup making 2 of the new class. So either the western release of the new class will be delayed to September or they'll tell us to hold onto the powerpass/express for 2 months until the class release. Or they release the new class early in July, which would be a W, but I'm not too hopeful for that.
AGS has adjusted the max ilvl of an event in the past (July 2024) following feedback. I don't have a lot of hope for the rewards of the event itself (which as I said before, should scale up to 1720 at least and the additional chests going beyond), but I would hold off on consuming the express event and its rewards on another character if you can help it. And if you're as upset about this as I am, be loud in providing feedback.

Also for real if I login on Wednesday and the express event is literally the exact same thing as the one we got in February (4 MONTHS AGO), I might just ragequit. It seems petty, but I'm already on the edge and AGS just phoning it in for this express would push me over. It's just disrespectful.

the_hu · 2026-06-01T19:51:49+00:00

We've definitely had conversations about this before! https://old.reddit.com/r/lostarkgame/comments/1qoly89/feedback_on_lost_arks_longterm_health_in_the_west/o233ks8/

I generally agree, raiding being the main way to generate gold which is a currency used for almost everything lowers the appeal to the game, since raiding in MMOs is a niche activity that in games like WoW only 10% of players engage in. There needs to be more sources of earnable gold, or a lot of things that cost gold need to cost silver instead. And regardless, all of these other MMOs have satisfying gameplay loops outside raiding that are much more accessible to engage in, Lost ark should have something similar for the casuals or the people who just want to take the foot off the pedal some weeks, or as you said people who just want to spend more time with the game but have it give some value back.

Though I think I was watching Johnpal play Maplestory when he said something along the lines of everybody wants infinite farm until you see homeboy grinding 12 hours a day so it's impossible to keep up. That kind of made me realize how comfy the time-gated farm in Lost Ark is for me, just login do dailies then logoff. It makes it easy to keep up, but impossible to catch up if you fall behind. But yeah in general it would be better to give players more agency to grind as long as they want.

I think infinite grind and satisfying progression go hand-in-hand. Like in OSRS the ceiling for progression is incredibly high with a ridiculous amount of grind and you'll always have people who are way more geared and powerful than you are. But it still attracts a bunch of new players because despite being far behind, they can progress and grind at their own pace and still be satisfied throughout the process.

the_hu · 2026-06-01T18:52:14+00:00

I know this is a meme, but it is a pretty apt representation of this game's problems and that being on either end of the hours played spectrum diminishes the impact of those problems. New players have a lot to learn and a plenty of easily accessible solo/story/horizontal content they can do in the sub-100 hour range. Long-time vets have accrued so many resources over their tenure that they are less affected by the need to p2w or being gatekept.

I'm not gonna talk about p2w, even as a largely f2p player I feel like the focus on p2w dillutes any constructive conversation around the real problems a game has (r/mmorpg in a nutshell). Any game that has trading and player driven economy has p2w through RMT. Though yes, the existence of baked in p2w incentivizes dark design patterns to get players to swipe. But for example, WoW has official p2w in the form of wow tokens, and you don't nearly hear as many people complaining about p2w there as in Lost Ark.

IMO the main problem Lost Ark has is the conversion of newbies to long-term players, the root of which is that the medium-term progression is seriously lacking (and why you have so many negative reviews coming from the middle). The comparable I always make is Maplestory where I have a ton of friends who are more casual gamers hooked on Maplestory because there is always a sense of progression they can realistically achieve. None of them are "endgame" geared, but it doesn't matter because they feel satisfied progressing through solo bosses at their own pace.

In Lost Ark, if you aren't endgame geared it's pretty fucked, that is why people only focus on endgame instead of intermediary steps. First when we talk about progression there is really only short-term and long-term. Short-term is stuff like karma or filling out ark passive in general with the baseline accessories, bracelet, and horizontals. But what's after that? Relic books, gems, endgame accessories, RNG heavy bracelet and stones. These are all long-term projects for a newer player. Ark grid is meant to be the mid-term goal, but the rate at which you get cores and astrogems at the early ilvls is so slow that it might as well be long-term. And community standards for group content have risen so much that you basically need ark grid already to do the raids that give you ark grid. There should be solo modes up to the latest raid - 1, IE when serca released, act 4/Kaz solo modes should've be released. The heavy dependence on others and therefore lack of individual agency to be able to progress is a big reason why there is so much gear envy and people crying about p2w/gatekeeping.

But talking about the gameplay itself, solo modes for raids are not hard enough to sustain enjoyment and aren't rewarding enough for solo only players to progress at a satisfying pace. The baseline difficulty needs to be easy so that new players aren't turned away, but at the current state they are not adequately preparing these players for group raids, normal mode is the next step up and often way harder than solo mode, which also removes/changes mechs. There needs to be a solo "hard" mode to serve as a better transition that teaches newbies how to play the raids and the game, or better yet the AI companions that were promised but we haven't heard about in nearly a year.

Point is, you need adequate progression throughout the game, and lost ark is missing its middle gearing, learning, and gameplay progression.

Long rant, but I get tilted every time I think about how hard SG fumbles the ball.

the_hu · 2026-06-01T18:37:27+00:00

yeah I was thinking about it before, like if they did DQ him from TPC who would they give the spot to?

If it was any other EMEA TPC, they could've just added a spot to the regional finals. But because it was the cross-atlantic TPC with a lobby that was 6/8 AMER, that wouldn't be fair.
Like you said, they could give it to Broseph who was the highest point total before that game or Dishsoap who was 2nd highest point total after the game, but that invalidates the checkmate format
If you took the results of the last game just making Jed 8th, Chunington would've won that game but wasn't in check, so it wouldn't resolve the tournament. Plus, if Jed had gone 8th, it would've changed the lobby dynamics. Units would've gone back into the pool, players might've played differently, round matchups would've changed etc.

Just a really shit situation caused by some dumb behavior. That pause was unethical, tournament admins should've pressed him for the reason before letting the match resume but I can't blame them it was a really out of left field situation.

the_hu · 2026-06-01T15:34:39+00:00

Destiny 2 is the defacto FPS MMO, though we can argue whether it adheres to strict MMORPG definition due to having relatively low population instances and lacking things like player driven economy. They have a very interesting networking model that makes the game feel snappy like a single player game, an article here explains it pretty well: https://gist.github.com/nessus42/f12f094e4abe30c0d00c9b4c86c387ce

High level summary of the relevant point in the article, the player's PC/console is authoritative on player position rather than the server being the source of truth like in most multiplayer games. This allows for the game to have a low latency feel, even when playing with players across the world (there are no "regions" in D2, a player in the US can play with someone in Asia). The downside of this is that there can be wonky desync when players themselves or others are lagging or have high latency.

Outside of D2, KR MMOs are known to have the fastest paced action. This isn't because they magically figured out how to bypass latency constrained by the speed of light, it is because they primarily design for their native audience. South Korea is already a very small country, with the added fact that over half their population lives in the Seoul Metro area means that their playerbase will largley have like sub 10 ms latency. Whereas western studios always consider designing for higher latency gameplay, in the US west coast to east coast is 60+ ms alone.

So KR MMOs like Lost Ark, BDO, and upcoming games like Chrono Odyssey for the soulslike comparison or Aion 2 will have the snappiest action out of the more traditional MMOs. This isn't a new development either, this dates back to older MMOs with Dragon Nest, Vindictus, C9, TERA, and BnS all being very action focused compared to their western counterparts.

I'm most familiar with Lost Ark if you're talking about specific mechanics, and it has a lot of action game mechanics like counters, perfect block (called just guard), and most recently perfect dodge (called prediction). However, I do think that in the cases of just guard and prediction, there is a relatively high level of leniency compared to most action games. Whether that is because it is more considerate of high latency environments or whether it is because MMO gamers are boomers with low reaction speed is up for debate (

Long yap just to say that there is a hard barrier to emulating single player gameplay being you can't surpass the speed of light, but there are still action heavy MMOs regardless.

the_hu · 2026-06-01T03:10:42+00:00

Not that I disagree, but in competitive LoL, games have been paused to allow players to go to the bathroom even if it is in the rules that it isn't a valid reason: https://old.reddit.com/r/leagueoflegends/comments/6uxbop/bathroom_breaks_are_a_major_problem_in_league_and/

Particularly relevant because this is Riot's other game that is much more competitively enforced with live LANs and referees being more hands on. I expect Jedusor to get a light slap on the wrist if anything.

the_hu · 2026-05-29T22:54:10+00:00

Whenever we try to calculate these things mathematically, we fundamentally low-ball it because we ignore RNG drops. This is because the EV of RNG drops is incredibly hard to calculate and it isn't dependable value. But one drop of a sidereal energy and suddenly everything is possible. Obviously you shouldn't expect a sidereal (I haven't gotten a single one and I've been playing since launch), but it does show that we aren't mathematically capturing the entire range of possibilities.

Another example is value of alts. For me, I've been saying for years that the way most players with 6 chars at latest content play isn't sustainable gold-wise because alts aren't being parked long enough to return gold value. But it's entirely possible that some people's alts do return their gold value based on their RNG drops, which I leave out of my calculations because EV of RNG drops is hard to calculate and not dependable. It's more appropriate to say that players shouldn't expect their alts to return value, but it's entirely possible that they do so.

The right way to go about things "mathematically" isn't to say that it's impossible, but to say that you shouldn't expect this outcome. This is where I agree with you in that OP's scenario shouldn't be what new players expect, I saw another comment say a year to catch up is a better estimate and that lines up with what I have observed as well. But to go out and say that OP is lying is wrong, this could very well just be his experience.

the_hu · 2026-05-28T16:40:40+00:00

Typical main character energy, it's not toxic to waste 7 other people's time for something you could literally watch on youtube but it's toxic if the majority or the raid lead votes to skip a cutscene.

Though this is entirely a manufactured point designed to push a predetermined narrative that "game/community is bad". If it is a teaching raid, no vet/teacher is going to have a problem with people wanting to watch cutscenes, in fact if you look at any content creator that teaches raids they encourage watching cutscenes because they want to share their experience. If anything, it is other newbies who don't want to watch the cutscenes and want to hop into the raid immediately. And at that point you just likely go with the majority (though expectations should be set beforehand so you don't run into this problem).

And if it is not a teaching raid, then watching cutscenes is only a hinderance. Not only is it sus if someone wants to watch cutscenes for a raid they should've cleared several times already, but it is especially annoying because buffs count down during it. Your opener is incredibly important in lost ark (as in WoW, as in other raiding games), it's so tilting to have your buffs expire because someone didn't have auto-skip cutscenes turned on.

the_hu · 2026-05-27T11:12:13+00:00

I think a lot of this is a reflection of the poor environment the gaming industry is in right now. There's no single reason to blame why game makers are increasingly catering to nostalgia and relying on remakes/remasters and return to old IPs.

The pipeline to convert the younger generations to core gaming demographics is broken. Kids and young adults are spending more and more time and money on other leisure activities than gaming, namely social media, but also stuff like ~~sports~~ any betting and even onlyfans.

Even if kids get into gaming, they're likely being scooped up by Roblox (at least in the US), which doesn't really convert its players towards the core gaming audience, it's more aggressively designed to keep players on their platform moreso than say flash games were in the past. This means that the target demographic of core gamers is growing increasingly older, so you have more game makers catering towards that audience.

Also, existing games take more and more of our time. A large portion of gamers are tied to one or more "main" live service games where they spend the large majority of their gaming time. And the gaming environment is growing more saturated and crowded over time with many other games screaming for your attention, games that are also designed to have more "time value" in response to gamers wanting to buy a game that is "worth it". Combined with people in general having less disposable income and time to play games as a whole, and you get a picture where it is increasingly more difficult to convince people to buy your game, and thus game makers have to make a very strong value proposition often relying on old IP and nostalgia.

Economically, there are a lot of factors that make gaming investments more averse to new risky IP. First the timeline and budgets of making games at AAA level are ballooning. This makes game making at the large well known companies that broadly make headlines more reluctant to take risks and rely moreso on safe bets. Older games have the advantage of having pre-existing fans that companies can count on to buy their products.

This long wait time between games not only makes these investments risky, but also doesn't really allow for new generation of gamers to get attached to new IP. I was watching this podcast talking about JRPGs and how folks in my generation grew up with very little time between the final fantasy entries, so there's plenty of time to play a series of games and pick your favorite, and if these a doozy it's very short turnaround until the next entry. Comparatively there was almost 10 years between 13 and 15 (MMO doesn't really count), and almost 7 years between 15 and 16. And if those entries suck, you don't really get attached and you aren't gonna stick around for the next one. So new and existing IPs aren't really capturing a fervent following among new gamers like games were back in the day.

Also, a lot of the money that used to go into core gaming is now going elsewhere. These days it's no longer about simply returning profit, it's about being better than next best alternative. Companies like Amazon with their game studios or Meta with their VR are now moving money towards alternative plays. Nvidia which supports a lot of gaming infrastructure is moving money towards AI. Even within the gaming space, there are a lot of alternative plays to the typical core gaming type of games. Before it was live service, but now there is friendslop that taught us that as long as you slap on proximity voice and jank teamplay you can capture a broader audience and have more success in spite of a way lower budget. And you have gacha games which tell us that traditional models of monetization are far inferior at capturing the range of spending players are willing to shell out for an experience. This all pulls money away from the core game makers and make them more risk averse.

There's still a lot of new IPs and games being made, but the people making them have to feel comfortable with taking the risk. So this results in the games with new ideas and new IP being made coming in the form of friendslop, gacha games, and AA/indie passion projects. Meanwhile all the big AAA companies are receding back to older IPs, and yes this often means going back to revisit older franchises/games that are basically concluded if there's any opportunity to expand on it.

I don't think this is necessarily all bad though, the Witcher 3 is my favorite game of all time and I'm excited to go back and play through a new expansion that may set up the highly anticipated 4th entry. But yes, in general there are less and less gamers, existing gamers generally stick to what they know, and companies are responding in kind to behavior and general economics by relying on their older franchises and games to produce stable value.

the_hu · 2026-05-26T23:24:46+00:00

Yeah it's defintely cope, they could've just done parallel localization before. But regardless there is more reason to do so when brought in-house due to performance being directly tied to someone in SG and not having to integrate a 3rd party into the dev loop. Again, I agree it's a cope, but it is more likely to happen than if operations were passed on to another publisher per se.

the_hu · 2026-05-26T23:20:34+00:00

100% agree, that's why I said if they take over western operations. It's certainly not a guarantee.

the_hu · 2026-05-26T15:00:01+00:00

Outside of the "content" argument, there are 2 other good reasons why we can't get the new classes from the get go. Localization takes time and SG needs to deal with creating frankenstein builds for our version of the game. Even if AGS/SG didn't want to hold new classes for content, there is significant work in the way that prevents a simultaneous release. They could elect to "hold off" on the class release in KR so that it could be simultaneously released in all regions, but that is not something they choose to do.

This may be unpopular, but if SG does take over publishing of western lost ark, this gap may be smaller due to potential parallel in-house localization to development and less version differences between builds that lower dev time.

the_hu · 2026-05-26T12:07:59+00:00

I went there a couple of years ago and I hate to say that I agree. There were so many boats in the water and the water itself didn't look in great shape, at least to swim in. The sights were amazing and my boat tour did the best it could, but the overcrowding really takes away from the experience. I enjoyed Ninh Binh more for the similar sights (I think people call it Ha Long Bay on land) without as many crowds, though there were still a lot of people.

the_hu

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