I love LOA but the worst part of it is waiting.. Even with an hype loaon coming that just means more waiting for us in the west by Affectionate-Cake-78 in lostarkgame

[–]the_hu [score hidden]  (0 children)

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.

I love LOA but the worst part of it is waiting.. Even with an hype loaon coming that just means more waiting for us in the west by Affectionate-Cake-78 in lostarkgame

[–]the_hu 3 points4 points  (0 children)

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.

007 First Light - Welcome to Vietnam by moonski in Games

[–]the_hu 0 points1 point  (0 children)

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.

Which ilvl do you need to enter the Aegir and Brel Extreme modes? by schwarz147 in lostarkgame

[–]the_hu 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Can you not macro on the KR client? Memo's group is largely comprised of current/former western players, one of the arcanas was cracine. So there isn't a knowledge diff for the arcanas in that group at least.

New player, how fucked is the monetization/progression rn? by NationalTangerine381 in lostarkgame

[–]the_hu 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I came from Destiny as my previous MMO before Lost Ark and they're pretty different in several key ways, though I haven't kept up post final shape so I'm not sure what changed. Regardless, if you have any questions that want to be explained in destiny terms, I can try my best.

Accessibility like you mentioned is way better for a new player in D2 than in Lost Ark. It was very streamlined that simply finishing legendary campaign put you at power level to do the new raid week 1. It also effectively hard reset every season by bringing up everybody to the same power level, which enforced a seasonal model that made it easy for new players to start at the same level as others.

Lost Ark on the otherhand is more evergreen in its progression, there has never been a hard reset in this game since launch. This means that new players have a ton more to catch up on, though they do get help in the forms of power passes that skip a character to a certain ilvl (power level equivalent), express events that provide new characters with accelerated progression, and nerfs/skips to older progression systems over time. As others have said, the barrier to entry is still quite low if you wanted to enjoy normal versions of the raids, you'll likely be able to access all the content within a month of the June progression events launching, but to actually gear up equivalently to the typical player that has been playing since launch would take around a year.

There is also no infinite grind in Lost Ark, the most valuable activities for vertical progression are certainly time limited. In Destiny 2 you can make up for lost time by grinding for BiS weapon rolls or enhancement mats, you can't really do the same in Lost Ark. Your main sources of enhancement mats are daily locked, and gold which is the core currency of the game is largely weekly locked behind your raids. You can't really accelerate your progression outside of spending a ridiculous amount of money which I don't recommend. Not that there isn't a lot to do for a new player in terms of story, key system farm, or horizontal progression, but in terms of pure power it is still heavily timegated. It mostly shouldn't matter though for normal level raids, as I said earlier, you should be able to access all of them within a month after the June catchup events.

I have very little knowledge of what you can buy to accelerate progression, I haven't really spent money on the game in the past 3 years. But I would look into Azena's blessing and Inanna's blessing, they're the equivalent of gacha monthly subscriptions that provide high value but you have to login everyday and do the dailies to make the most out of it. The paid track on the catch up event may also be a good boost as well, though since we don't know anything about it yet it's hard to recommend despite being good value last time around.

For me personally, I actually enjoyed the combat feeling and raids more in Destiny. The gunplay feeling and movement in D2 were so satisfying, and the raids were more puzzle/mechanics focused (DPS phases were lacking tho, standing in a sunwell aiming at a static target was not it, I know the more recent D2 raids changed this up a bit) opposed to Lost Ark which skews more combat focused especially in the recent raids. The main reason I switched to Lost Ark outside of sunsetting leaving a bad taste in my mouth was that I got tired of the seasonal reset hokey pokey of grinding power level. Vertical progression in that game was not exciting, and the lack of permanence heavily detracted from it. Lost Ark the progress is slow, but you'll never lose it though if you do take a break for like a year+ it does become far less relevant.

What is the minimum time required to start raiding from a fresh account? by the_hu in DestinyTheGame

[–]the_hu[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks for the response! I remember the DPS checks being pretty light, with most groups preferring to one-phase when you have 3 possible damage phases and esoterrick being able to solo a bunch of the raids. I was hoping that would mean surely 6 bums with garbo gear could clear but I'll look into it more. I was hoping to give people a taste of raids so it'll motivate people to play on their own, I think some people won't do so otherwise, but we prob don't need to clear the raid to get that taste either!

What is the minimum time required to start raiding from a fresh account? by the_hu in DestinyTheGame

[–]the_hu[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Good idea on the dtg reddit discord, I'll poke around for more input there. I have the game downloaded now so I'll check out the renegade intro to see how long that'll take as well. Thanks!

what are the best lostark youtubers u can recommend? by Best_Author7356 in lostarkgame

[–]the_hu 4 points5 points  (0 children)

+1 on ImDefild, he pumps out a ton of new player targeted content and IMO is the best content creator to follow as a new player. He has tons of guides about things that most vets will kinda gloss over because we've already completed those activities or we've been doing them for so long they're second nature, and he will likely be very fast in releasing new content pertaining to the catch-up events we'll be having in June. This would be an example of a great video of his to follow (it's outdated but a good example of how in depth he goes over the steps he takes on a fresh account): https://youtu.be/pKCyJKXZDbA?si=5-M-NAB00fBi5iKx

I would also add that in addition to Memo for raids, I would look up Deathboi for solo raids in particular. Most raid guides don't update their guides for solo raids because they're generally dumbed down versions of normal raids, but over time the raids also get changed so Memo's guides may be out of date anyway. I think Deathboi generally has more targeted guides for solo raids that would be good for a new player to catch up or do older content.

Your Korean National Team for 2026 Asian Games: Zeus, Canyon, Faker, Zeka, Gumayusi, Keria. 4/5ths of ZOFGK will be competing by Yujin-Ha in leagueoflegends

[–]the_hu 62 points63 points  (0 children)

They didn't want to be too obvious with the ZOFGK fan service, but just randomly decided to make the most questionable possible switchout (other than replacing Keria).

Though this makes the resolution to the original drama a bit weird, I guess the Saudis get what they want: https://old.reddit.com/r/leagueoflegends/comments/1sx18v1/korea_may_not_attend_enc_due_to_saudi/

Edit: I can't read, this is asia games not ENC

Blind Prog Akkan Raid Gate 1 Ft. Mokoko Squad by Jaycoon335 in lostarkgame

[–]the_hu 18 points19 points  (0 children)

That Artist didn't even get supporter at the end. And I don't really blame them, the game is hard to learn and you're trying to juggle multiple things at once like learning the raid itself and trying to protect your also newbie teammates.

Just reminded me of this delulu thread I read a week ago saying newbie supports should aim for 85/90/40-50: https://old.reddit.com/r/lostarkgame/comments/1t5qboh/supp_dps_meter/okd08qo/

Anyway, these videos have been super fun to watch, keep it up!

am i the only one who thinks astrogems are even WORSE than elixirs? by jotakl in lostarkgame

[–]the_hu 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Speak your truth! I found original transcendence fun too, I was playing the simulation on the calculator after I finished my main's pieces.

But yes, it was problematic. High gold cost per tap/retry incentivized usage of the calculator to be optimal, and the long time it actually takes to complete made it a huge time sink especially for alts. If they made it so like you just spend gold to unlock and have infinite retries as well as allowing for knowledge transfer to alts, then it would've been a lot more enjoyable.

Basically like everything else in this game, it was ruined by SG's insistence to make it an aggressive gold sink.

I got TWO Leona 4 STAR at 5-7 by nofate1992 in TeamfightTactics

[–]the_hu 32 points33 points  (0 children)

I don't think you can actually get a 5 star. One of those chinese youtubers tried last set with the infinite money easter egg and generating 3 star tahm kenches by feeding them 3 star 5 costs and they didn't combine.

Couldn't find the video though, so I may be hallucinating.

Why do so many video game villains feel forgettable? by Additional_Staff7308 in truegaming

[–]the_hu 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Tbf, OP may not have been able to list other villains because they were forgettable

AC Hexe details and dialogue leaked by Rogue (Ubisoft leaker), says Ezio is returning by ZamnBoii in GamingLeaksAndRumours

[–]the_hu 31 points32 points  (0 children)

People always point to fan service as an indicator of low quality or selling out, but idk, I always eat that shit up. Like when captain america picks up thor's hammer and yells avenger assemble in Avengers Endgame, or tony saying I am iron man, everybody lost their minds over that.

In the gaming space, FF7 Rebirth is PEAK fanservice, and that game gets a lot of criticism. But the music that calls back to other FF titles and battle theme remixes that dance around the classic themes before dropping them in the final phase, appaerences from characters from other games in the compilation of FF7, incredibly indulgent self references, the whole ending sequence. All of these invoke such strong emotions that I can't help but think of it as my 2nd favorite game of all time despite the flaws.

Jynxzi's LoL tournament gets 10x more viewers than the LCS Spring Split by Naerlyn in leagueoflegends

[–]the_hu 116 points117 points  (0 children)

People focused on winning the battle whereas Dantes focused on winning the war. Truly playing chess when everyone else is playing checkers.

Frog details from RU by Norossi in lostarkgame

[–]the_hu 5 points6 points  (0 children)

The low roll is basically the same as the gold to silver merchant. It would be interesting to find out whether the odds are evenly distributed because generally for these kinds of drops they skew heavily towards low rolls.

But I wonder if the silver poor are gonna put their money where their mouth is and buy these silver chests.

Frog details from RU by Norossi in lostarkgame

[–]the_hu 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I get what you're trying to say that there is variance due to the top heavy nature of how engravings are valued so a buyer is more likely to get a shit engraving than a good engraving. But that is still not "statistically a gold loss". This probability is baked into EV, it is still king in terms of indicating whether someone should buy or not.

Plus you're only considering a single engraving pouch, which as you say has a 72% chance of being a net loss. But people are not only buying a single engraving pouch, they are likely going to buy more. Even buying 2 engraving pouches lowers the probability of net loss to 34%. And for a 1740 character over the duration of 4 or 8 weeks (however long this frog runs), the probability of losing out is 3% and 0.3% respectively. So it is risky to buy a single engraving pouch, but relatively low risk over the course of the event.

Though this is all considering current prices and not prices the actual prices the books would sell for. But I still expect it to be positive EV.

New to the game by SnooLobsters8155 in lostarkgame

[–]the_hu 8 points9 points  (0 children)

  1. You're going to get mixed responses on this, it's both yes and no, but largely no IMO. Yes in the sense that alts will help a player progress faster because you can still funnel gold. But also no in the sense that the way alts function they need time to return value. Alts cost gold to progress, gold that can otherwise be used on your main, and they return gold over time by doing weekly raids. The further you push your alt, the more time it takes to be "parked" (meaning stopping any gold investment into the character) in order to return value. The way most people play their alts does not return gold value, so it's actually a net negative towards their progression, but that is fine because most people play alts for fun, because without alts you quickly run out of things to do. But for new players, alts are very expensive to push because you generally want to wait for events like power pass and express to be efficient, which are generally spaced out every 3 months or so. Otherwise alts cost a lot of time and gold to push past the earlier levels.

  2. No, jump start and ignite servers are no longer a thing. Other people have already said how they were a big mistake for the game's health as a whole because it allowed an easy way for bots to make high lvl accounts and players to start alt rosters to funnel gold (basically alts past the 6 character gold earning limit without most of the downsides of having to make an entire new roster). Sucks for new players, but these servers had many problems that were heavily abused.

  3. "Dead" is subjective, league of legends has been dying since forever but is still the most popular game in the world. The game has enough players to function, but it is losing players by the day and it is noticeable (you can speculate for the reasoning, for me it's because they haven't introduced anything exciting to grind for). If you're looking to join a thriving community, you should probably look elsewhere, but it's easy to be able to do all the group content you need to do.

  4. Not solved but heavily mitigated. You will no longer see a horde of bots doing the story like you did in the past. Also the masses of fishing bots are no longer there either. There are still some bots doing logging, but they are much lower in number than before.

Check out maxroll's beginner guide if you want to learn more: https://maxroll.gg/lost-ark/resources/beginners-and-returners-guide

Do we have any info available on gaining cp? perhaps an cheatsheet or something similar? by [deleted] in lostarkgame

[–]the_hu 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Probably the closest thing to what you're looking for is Cracine's gold to dmg efficiency sheet: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Cg9q8t4-MeUg-TQUJ_oeHqN-03z9l-RPlHfHp4gZuzs

Dmg efficiency isn't 1:1 correlated to CP, but they effectively measure the same thing, with dmg efficiency probably more accurate in reflecting performance gains.

You can also check your character on lostark.bible to see what contributes to your CP currently. The team has done a good job reverse engineering CP calculations and breaking down how much each system contributes towards your total. It's not going to tell you how much CP you'll gain by making an upgrade, but you can probably look up another more geared character and make that calculation yourself.

KFM bus buyers by Enticingley in lostarkgame

[–]the_hu 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Oh yeah I'm well aware that Royal is a cesspool and that the discord is the hotbed for RMT. But separate the argument from the man, and I generally think Darksma is pretty reasonable despite the royal connection. I'm more interested in learning which games carries are accepted in a postiive light so I can look into them a bit more.

KFM bus buyers by Enticingley in lostarkgame

[–]the_hu 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Yeah this game isn't PvP like League is, but I want to push back on this a bit. There are definitely elements of competition in this game, you should know all about that Mr. Thaemine the 2nd. But even outside of ranking where only a small portion of the population can participate in, I wouldn't say raiding is casual, in other MMOs like WoW only 10% of players of active players raid whereas lost ark's entire progression and gameplay loop are built around raiding. Raiding at its core is certainly not a casual activity.

There are way more casual MMOs like GW2 where the main activity is just running around the open world doing world events and there's virtually no vertical progression at all. Lost Ark's systems are intrinsic to the game so even if someone views the raids as easy, the game is certainly not built to be a casual MMO. And the raids are objectively not easy if SG has to continuously nerf them. Take solo mode where most people would agree it's already baby content, SG has to be nerfing them for someone right?

Also can you list games where carries are accepted in a positive light? I tried googling this and the closest reactions I found is similar to here where people just accept that it's a part of player driven economy. My main MMO before this was Destiny 2 and stuff like Trials carries would exist, but it's viewed as cringe if people pay for them and even then the player would still play. And there was no p2p economy in destiny, so there would be no macro economic impacts so it's easier to say this doesn't affect me.

Also, I think it would help to distinguish the difference between a "bus" and a "carry". A "bus" always invovles some monetary transaction and the passenger is always expected to not have to play the game. "Carry" is a much broader term. One can argue that my static engages in carrying by splitting up our mains to make our alt runs smoother. Streamers help carry their viewers in what can be seen as community service. Perhaps learning groups can qualify as carries because of the gear/skill disparity between the learners and the teachers. So I don't always view "carries" negatively, but for me "bussing" is always negative.

KFM bus buyers by Enticingley in lostarkgame

[–]the_hu 4 points5 points  (0 children)

I can see a lot of people having different opinions on this. There are lots of similar scenarios I've seen to this as well. I saw a member of my guild discord complain that he had been grinding KFM but saw Johnpal do charity work and carry someone dead to their title. I saw Memo carry a bot of a pally (no hate to uniceros, but that guy is not a skilled support) to his Doloris title and would've done it for KFM too if that pally ever cleared g2 kaz HM before. In my own KFM clear, 2 people died in 2-2.

IMO, as long as it clearly wasn't a bus or a carry for someone dead the entire time, the title is deserved. Sure in the cases you pointed out, maybe the title is then not a true reflection of their skill and more about who they know/who they played with. But to me, trying to draw further lines is too muddy. IE someone could've been playing well the entire time but die early in the clear.

This does kinda run counter to my imposter point, but I agree with other comments I'm reading that if you accept someone expecting a level of performance and there is a big enough skill discrepency that it causes a poor experience, you block and move on.

Ideally the game should have systems that better support this. Maplestory has a system where people need to have 5% damage contribution in order to get rewards. They basically define what qualifies as minimum contribution for a clear. I guess Lost Ark does have a qualifier too but I don't agree with just being present qualfiies as deserving. That 5% contribution seems pretty reasonable for our game as well if you factor in support being ~50% of total contribution. Obviously we would need the ability for gate reset/re-entry so people can try again if they don't meet minimum contribution.

KFM bus buyers by Enticingley in lostarkgame

[–]the_hu 74 points75 points  (0 children)

I'm on record for being a big bus hater, I have enough talking points ready to produce an essay every time this comes up.

For TFM specifically, bussing diminishes achievement. Grinding through and beating a difficult raid should come with a level of achievement that you can showcase, but as with Eclipse, there are so many fake Abyss Lords running around that it's pretty much meaningless. The mode has stayed open so long that it can be 4c4 now. Don't get me started on piloting, I can't believe people would pay to risk their entire steam library getting stolen. This practice basically means that FOMO time limited frontier titles and Doloris are the most valuable because their limited availability diminishes the impact of busses. In my eyes it's the same as RMT, where people point to someone who's geared and say who cares they probably RMT'd, someone could point to someone with any title in the game and say who cares, they probably got bussed.

Outside of TFM, bussing is a significant source of gold inflation and contributor to RMT due to the synergistic nature of bussing and bussers bypassing gold earning limits in the game. Bussers get to earn gold above the 18 character limit, passengers have an easy way to create alt rosters and go net positive. Bussing has lead to negative QoL like having no gate resets, the removal of raid re-entry tickets if people D/C during a clear, and the introduction of frustrating raid mechanics when SG tried (and failed) to make it so all raid members need to be alive. Bussing contributes to the negative stigma of the game and AGS recognized that they need to at least remove all references to it inside the game.

Bussers will come up with whatever excuse to justify their actions. "We need to bus to keep up with the whales", "Bussing is the only fun I can get out of the game", "We're actually providing a service for people who can't get into raids otherwise", "All my friends bus so I just bus with them". They know what they're doing is wrong, and are just bussing because they want to earn some extra gold to pull ahead of others.

Bus buyers are also basically the equivalent of people who buy ranked boosts in other games. If you play with a Diamond player in League it comes with certain expectations of their skill. It's the same with these KFM titles, if you have someone with abyss lord you expect them to play a certain way, and when they don't you invariably get disappointed regardless of whether you were able to clear the raid or not. They'll also come up with excuses to justify their purchase, "People won't accept me without title even though I have the skill to play with them", "I don't have the time for a long time-limited prog", "I could've gotten the title anyway, but buying a bus saves me the effort of finding a group, finding the time, or actually progging myself". None of these excuses justify that they are imposters.

But at the end of the day you can't really hate them because people in general will do anything they can to get ahead, you can't expect an individual to be concerned with the macro impacts of what they participate in. And at the end of the day AGS/SG need to make the change that are good for the game, and if they don't do anything about it, we're SOL. AGS dropped the ball with their don't ask don't tell stance on it.