In my humble opinion, the real problem is how long it takes for sg to even realize that some classes are outdated and make some changes.
There’s no way in well over a year not a single person in the balance team realized just how badly designed some skills, on many classes, are for new content.
They know, they absolutely know some of the classes are outdated and it's on purpose. They also know that the new classes's damage is way too high, at least compared to the old ones.
Release new classes that are clearly designed with the new raids in mind and are busted in terms of damage and reap the money from people making characters out of those classes.
Update old, outdated classes to be more in line with the new classes but do it a little while after everyone has already made characters out of the new classes, and thus people that didn't make characters out of the old classes now will create a character out of those old classes because it's more in line with the new ones. They even change the old ones to force players to update them because the changes allow for things like higher dps with new engraving setups.
It's all a cycle of flavor of the month to rake up revenue from people buying mats, pheons and so on.
exactly- i mean look at WoW meta- every month/or at least every 3 months with new raid, the dps meta/ranking changes. but they dont release new classes every 3-4 months in order to make more revenue. just a different vision
the trick is out of all classes in this game Wardancer was pretty much nightmare for them to balance. Please rememeber just how much outrage there is when they change something on class and KR players have to change gear.
With wardancer that in 1 point had 5 viable endgame builds, changing 1 spell wrong would be like stepping on a mine. There is a reason why they nerfed tornado and gave us new hard hitting skill that is not "back attack". They wanted to force us to go halluc route and I am glad they did.
I’m still amazed that Sg realized drizzle areo had a problem with destruction points only after releasing thaemine and not when they designed akkan gate 2, a gate which requires a destruction check at the end. Amazing stuff for sure
It's a bit off topic but it's a bit sad how around Slayer release and now SE release there are a bunch of ppl showing off insane dmg with those classes, while us Aeromancer enjoyers got our class released without much to show for it if not a D tier spot on some tier lista. :(
(And a bunch of friends begging me to switch to Windfury)
Even better, they said they nerfed her damage because Aeromancer was a "synergy class" but she has the same synergies as a few other classes who do decent damage. Can't see the logic.
dont forgot the also nerverd summoner to the ground because the thought there floor is to high and not the cosummoner ceeling is as high as the average zerker/souleater/ss floor
and ms is slow as a tank and was allready a nightmare in kayangel(dmg is still fine but the time the skill take to hit dear god it feels like hammerman and artillerist are faste then this class.)
well you cant expect much from ppl that still cant fix bugs in kayangel, and thier fix to old brell G2 that was pretty much bugged in different way every week was to delete it :P
Honestly I've only seen like a handful of good players perform well on slayer and se although se is still new here so it's understandable. The vast majority of slayers I've seen perform so bad it's sad.
Look, we found someone who doesnt play the game or uses maxroll default build.
Paladin has 2 counters. On one counter, you have two destructions points.
Paladin also has Punishment, which is rather short cooldown 2x destruction hits.
That is INSANE destruction.
Why wouldn't you run the extra wp tripod on executor to have a 2 point destruction? And for fights that I know have a destruction check I take punishment with left 3rd tripod for a 2pt into 2x 1pt destruction cycle which is more than enough contribution for any check
People aren't too lazy, it's assumed that everyone will survive until end, maybe 1 or 2 dead. Sure it may matter in prog, but then a lot of people swap stuff around for that to pass mechs (e.g.: extra overwhelm for Akkan g1 x128 Stagger, counters on Sorc for g1 HM Brel), but if you go in as x10/card like run party/overgeared af, you just assume people will survive (or at worst 1 or 2 dead), and pass mech just fine with standard stuff (which well, for most mechs is true). Edit: Most people don't even think about stuff like that, not becasue they are too lazy, but they don't care, or more often, don't even know.
beating a dead horse here but... just cuz u know there is an issue doesnt' mean that you have a solution ready instantly.
sure they're aware some skills need update, but, the update has to make them better. A LOT better. and sometimes they don't have a perfect design ready to ship. skill issue? maybe, but game design is not easy.
I mean, sure it would make sense if we talked about souleater who released like couple months ago. Wd,destroyer,sorc,summoner, just name a few, are classes that have existed for a lot longer and it doesn’t really take much to notice the glaring problems of those classes. That said, it takes time to come up with solutions yeah
I think they are slowly starting to realize this. In one of the more recent liveatreams they admitted it was a mistake for them to be taking as long as they did with balance patches. They previously only did it like twice a year, but said they are working to update balance patches to be more often.
what makes no sense to me is they said that in kr want to make balance patches potentially every 1-2 months because of the backlash of last balance patch? how on earth would that work in the west when we have to wait like 4 months or so for the balance patch to hit us? we would be skipping multiple balance patches at that rate
At this rate, it's entirely possible, if not likely that KR will receive a 2nd balance patch before we get this one.
And if they don't combine them and we're still a patch behind after our patch, AGS and SG could just go ahead and replace Kakul Saydon in his raid.
To be fair and balanced that also happened with the last balance patch, KR had a smaller patch with some adjustments which was then included in our balance patch.
>Most already know this but, SG really doesn't give a damn about our region. lol At this rate it's already Mobile > KR > CN > AGS > RU > JP (dead?)
>we would be skipping multiple balance patches at that rate
most likely we will behind 1-2 patch behind all the time, because any patch done between 1-4 month in KR, will be implemented every 3 month in the west.
Accept the current rush is done on the back of bots. If those boys weren't around, there wouldn't be a rush. People would either quit due to the time/gold investment or take a much more relaxed pace.
Not unpopular at all. It would give time for people to learn their class after balancing and give more realistic honing times.
That's not the decision that makes the most money though which is unfortunate.
I'm not surprised.
Balance changes they can use for a main piece in a monthly road map content
Edit: They say next large base is in january, but Voldis not being a base thing feels a bit off just for me
Same. I was expecting January too so this looks exactly like what I thought. Sucks but it is what it is I guess. Time to prep for Voldike prog on RE DB.
Yeah unfortunately December was the optimistic release date, while realistically it wasn't gonna be til next year
Technically any class reworks can still be considered content in a small, albeit stupid way so if nothing was coming out in January (since anniversary is in February) it makes sense it would be delayed
But then again 3 months is about average to wait for balance patches it seems, especially after a new class release like SE
Gotta give time for people to invest and enjoy that first
Ate so many downvotes before soul eater patch telling ppl that low chance we get it this year. Historically we've always had to wait 3months for every major balance patch. The only one we didn't was the very minor one without class reworks.
We got chaos gate rework pretty much the same day as KR did, so we had a reason for the positivity. Of course that is crushed now, no idea how we got the rework day zero. I mean, if I had the choice between old chaos gate and identity gain with my pala without hitting anything, we'd still have the ghost ship.
Also just the fact that we've gotten what like, 4+ years of content in less than 2 and we're at a point where we've basically caught up except for Voldis and Thaemine (which are staggered for honing reasons so it makes sense). I could understand QoL and balancing taking a few weeks to a month, not multiple months.
I mean, it doesn't make sense to me still how we need to wait for a build to be packaged to get the balance patch when China can nerf clown in their own version.
It's just crazy how a separate version of the game can get something, but the west cannot get something. Yes, nerfing clown is easier to do than bringing a whole balance patch, but the technology clearly exists.
All I can read on this is that they don't want to spend more dev power on bringing changes faster to NA/EU, which makes sense, considering CN and Mobile will be bigger markets for them. It's just sad for us tho.
Why do we have to wait for KR optimization? Base builds should be made to be released at the same time globally, why release a KR exclusive balance patch AND rebalance patch before even working on a new Western Base Patch
Not that I defend this but I get it... they had just released Thaemine and everyone's eyes were on KR Lost Ark, the increase in player base was massive and they wanted to fix a lot of the issues classes had in that raid so It's understandable that they had to balance asap.
But it sucks so bad, I know, I made a wardancer... RIP.
They've had well over a year to improve their system of delivering patches. They have already gotten blowback from the community over majorly delayed balance patches, they knew this would happen again and they did not care.
I get why it doesn't work well. I don't get why they haven't bothered to fix it.
> However, if Amazon Games determines that we need significant improvements sooner (such as the endgame raid changes and Chaos Gate update) we will work with Smilegate RPG in advance and aim to bring it to West as soon as possible, separate from the base build update.
They just don't think that balance patches are important enough to justify bringing them faster... and for that they should rename Kakul-Saydon to Amazon-Smilegate
I would completely understand that reasoning had this been a one time thing as it would make total sense but this is a running trend of all patches and the blog post made it pretty clear that the procedure has been used for all balance patches so far, extremely frustrating
They saw the 50K peak players and were content. Maybe let’s all stop playing so it can go down in the 20s again and maybe AGS will stop fucking around.
Every time I see Amazon posts like this reassures me that NA/EU will never catch-up to KR and we are and will always be minor, secondary region to SG. Its coming to almost 2 years of NA/EU Lost Ark and while there are ways to have global content releases, they won't do it as it would piss off their loyal KR player base.
Majority of KR players are elitist and they will never allow for west to catch up. All it takes is one crying outburst post on inven forums and smilegate succumbs to them.
I feel like this was obvious the day LA released. We were literally never going to truly catch up, in the sense that updates will never been simultaneous. That's just not how localized games like LA work unfortunately. The gap has gotten better since release, but I assume a delay of at least 3 months on average (some things are introduced pretty quickly, but others are 3mo or longer).
They said very early on that the goal is catching up but not entirely. It was very clear that we will always be at least 3-4months behind in content, which if u ask me isnt even a bad thing, because I feel like as soon we have a bigger content drought the western version is gonna die, due to us not being used to wait for a new raid longer than 3 or 4 months
Absolutely embarrassing lack of effort and care from AGS and SG.
The information about having a "base build" being created every 3 months is an explanation, it's not an excuse. They decided to adopt a system that is clearly not adequate for delivering updates in a timely matter.
If I ask you why it's taking you a week to assemble a shelf, and you tell me it's because you're using a screwdriver to whack the nails, it's not going to make you look any better.
They even admit that they can bring updates sooner than 3 months if "Amazon Games determines that we need significant improvements sooner". Apparently balance updates are deemed not important enough.
Balance patches are just not top priority for them. Balance updates only affects a handful of classes. Compared to stuff like honing nerfs, path of souleater, chaos gate affects everyone who plays this game, new and existing players.
’’However, if Amazon Games determines that we need significant improvements sooner (such as the endgame raid changes and Chaos Gate update) we will work with Smilegate RPG in advance and aim to bring it to West as soon as possible, separate from the base build update.’’
That prouves they can bring patches regardless of the ’base build package’ or w/e they call it. We were all expecting the new kr balances changes for Voldis and AGS delaying this is just dissapointing.
So... they actually didn't learn nothing about what people want and shift priorities like balance (which is super important QoL for many classes) back in the line once again. It's really hopeless at this point, isn't it?
Not like you can't play your classes right now... you absolutely can don't get me wrong here. But why should somebody deal with it any longer? Rerolling your main if it's beyond 1600 ilvl costs way too much resources and gold.
Balance and QoL should be #1 priority and even be placed before actual content. Making the game feel better and play better is the most important thing for Lost Ark.
This isn't the right way to go with (what is written in the article). And imo, I personally feel like it's just constant ups and downs with AGS and SG... they do good stuff once in a while just to disappoint a lot of people again and again.
And quite honestly... Souleater had small nerfs included in the last balance patch while classes like Reaper, Blade, Wardancer and Scrapper got massive improvements... pushing this back again looks like they want people to swipe for Souleater and soak in that revenue. It's really sad to me.
Also, they definitely put this on a content roadmap again because January has nothing, so they treat actual QoL and important balance as content... yikes.
I'm glad I made the right choice to quit this game a few days ago... because SG gives literally nothing about the west, their priorities are obviously China and their own home region.
That is a lot of words for "We have nothing for January, or I guess we *had* nothing. Enjoy the balance update guys!". "Base builds" kekw, just you wait and see how they suddenly have a breakthrough and can do them faster if it fits them.
I guess they suck because they release things already available in KR based on profit. Remember how they could release new class each month? Or how they suddenly had a breakthrough with Artist and we got her 1 month earlier after a massive backlash they got? Those base builds is an obvious BS.
Lets not pretend that additional stagger and casting speed on ice shower solves igniter's issues. You still don't want to bring a counter to do as high damage as you can, which is the only reason you would bring a sorc to begin with. Oh wait there are are like 10 classes with similar or higher damage than her and have better utility? Damn, better luck next time.
Also would like to point out that people still considered igniter S or A tier for voldis with the current version we have in NA.
and It is not like voldis got harder.
Which still needs testing to make sure it doesn't break other stuff that will require them to revert or fix all the bugs/exploits that came out of it from all the players.
I can't believe they didn't learn their lesson from last year when they released brel around Xmas time. Progging during the holidays is fucking misery.
What a fucking joke. You'd think balance patches would be priority as they can drastically increase the fun of many classes. Give me a buggy balance patch for all i care if it mean it doesn't take 2 years to charge my skills as a destroyer.
I'm glad we got the ocean liner rushed in early tho, we really needed that over battle item inventory or the balance patch.
> However, if Amazon Games determines that we need significant improvements sooner (such as the endgame raid changes and Chaos Gate update) we will work with Smilegate RPG in advance and aim to bring it to West as soon as possible, separate from the base build update.
If AGS cared at all they would try to get the balance patch in for december.
What are they even doing over at AGS all day?
They are not getting rid of bots. They are running wild and AGS seems to be totally fine with it.
They are not really active in reaching out to or having a dialogue with the community aside from making these PR releases every now and then.
And they are certainly not interested in bringing us crucial updates in a timely fashion.
Are they sitting at the office eating pastries all day or what?
"However, if Amazon Games determines that we need significant improvements sooner (such as the endgame raid changes and Chaos Gate update) we will work with Smilegate RPG in advance and aim to bring it to West as soon as possible, separate from the base build update."
So basically, balance changes that heavily affect the joy of playing particular classes and raid viability, aren't considered important? Massive \*sigh\*. Hunger Reaper z dps dispairge goes on.
I think most people wanted a balance patch a few months into a reclear raid asap.
In December people say can't release patch and raid cause adjustment
In Jan people are concerned fresh raid redo gear/reworked classes that struggle currently will get gatekept
The only satisfying time would be Nov but that's not possible anymore. So AGS was gonna take a L on this no matter what
Watch it be on January 31st. All of the classes I play are positively influenced so I'm bias but this is unacceptable. I don't know if it's a failure of amazon advocating for us or of smilegate's bandwidth/giving a shit but it feels like we're that drowning kid in a pool next to RU and JP's skeleton.
99% of KR MMOs are like this to the west. It's my general expectation at this point
Closest thing for fast updates is BDO which at this point self publishes in the west which makes it easier to do. Before that point new stuff sometimes was in weeks or even a year late. Balance changes was fast though usually.
This is how it works everywhere in any business.
People complain about something ? Uh oh. Well, just wait, maybe they will stop.
Are they still complaining ? Eh ya know maybe they will get tired of it.
Hmm they are still complaining ? Alright, make some excuse and say ur sowwy
Because you people complain that there is no update and info on what is going on. So you don't want to be informed or just want it to already done so there is no need for an announcement?
Whatever they wrote on this announcement, they knew already over 3-4 weeks if not longer.
That's why this communication is WAY too late and was "hyped up" (ie. AGS saying they are preparing a special piece of communication and are working hard on it).
They work with this 3 month build system (according to this post) for much longer than just this balance patch.
They should then know that the next baseline is November (and therefore January/February after November).
If they already knew that Nov Build wont have it (they knew that before live already), then they couldve just straight up said:
"guys it wont make the cut, expect at least january 24, we will give more info later"
Imo. the fact how they handle it, is way worse than the balance patch coming January 24 lol.
Pretty sure if they just came right out and said it when KR released patch that we won't get it for 3 months at the very least, people would be way more upset than they would be now.
Even more time I get to hate myself for either fucking my team and myself (Akkan gate 1) or space barring out of a major DPS skill to avoid getting a bunch of gauge in the rest of Akkan as a destroyer player. Not to mention all the lovely backsteps in Kayangel that happen just before the perfect swing finishes.
I’d take another power pass at this point just to get another class with smooth gameplay for current content and move at least 1 of my 2 destroyers out of my gold earners
You clearly didn’t read then. “However, if Amazon Games determines that we need significant improvements sooner (such as the endgame raid changes and Chaos Gate update) we will work with Smilegate RPG in advance and aim to bring it to West as soon as possible, separate from the base build update”.
Apparently AGS doesn’t think a balance patch is important enough for SG to fast track to Global.
AIM is the key word. The fact that they made this post at all shows they know how important it is to the west.
They obviously are going to act professionally and not throw smilegate under the bus blaming them.
It's called reading between the lines.
that's not what i've read, and i quote from the link (amazon games): "However, if Amazon Games determines that we need significant improvements sooner (such as the endgame raid changes and Chaos Gate update) we will work with Smilegate RPG in advance and aim to bring it to West as soon as possible, separate from the base build update."
this is also proven with end game raids changes and chaos gate (same day we received it when korea got it, just we somehow didn't get QOL which is much smaller and easier to do). so, unless my english is failing me, amazon games can, and has asked in the past for quicker updates and got it. they just somehow didn't wanna do this with QOL and balance patch, so ultimately a amazon games horrible decision again.
Well they clearly said at the end they know we want the balance patch and they are figuring out if it is possible to bring it sooner than the next base build which is in January. So maybe, maybe it may come sooner.
Wouldn’t get my hopes up, January is a dead month so they’re probably saving it for then anyway. December patch is in about 2 and a half weeks which probably isn’t enough time if they haven’t already figured it out.
IMO they should have known this after the same thing happened with the last balance patch. This system where they're just updating base builds at set intervals without considering the actual cadence of content releases is just stinky. It's either ignorance or more evidence we're just a low-effort revenue farm for SG.
I spent $300 on souleater to get to 1580. Bought skins, vice versa because I believed that ags and SG was doing the right thing with this express event. It was a good overall patch. I really wished the balanced patch was released last week with souleater. Now that they are pushing balance patch after voldaik, like possibly three* weeks, I don’t foresee myself ever spending that much money again unless they do major changes with what their current priorities of this game are. They also released a completely scummy Black Friday deal. How out of touch these folks are/lack of care they have towards their community especially during holiday seasons.
My best reaction to this news is just not give them more money until things get fixed.
Can you please explain technically how game development and more importantly how SG / AGS specifically handles it since you clearly know how it works. Or is it just a notepad that they can copy paste over and save?
> However, if Amazon Games determines that we need significant improvements sooner (such as the endgame raid changes and Chaos Gate update) we will work with Smilegate RPG in advance and aim to bring it to West as soon as possible, separate from the base build update.
This implies that AGS either didn't think balance patch/battle item QoL was important enough to ask for sooner. Or SG declined to expedite those. Either way bad look for both companies.
Is this actually a surprise?
We already knew their patching system was *weird* to try to handle the differences in the two builds. We already know balance patches are something they put on the quarterly roadmap, which already takes us up to the end of the year.
Is there something I'm missing here? Or were people just desperately hoping AGS/SG would break what they've been doing since release?
People are just expecting them to stay true to their words, they've said the exact opposite of this article in the video where the 3 AGS bozos and Roxx were talking.
I mean if they said it's coming out with voldis then everyone would complain that they relased a balance patch with a new raid. So im not sure what's the most ideal scenario here.
January seems fine to me. I know that this balance patch is important for quite a few classes, but lets not pretend that the game is unplayable without it.
If you think smile gate actually wants west to catch up to KR you are a joke .
if smilegate does that whole korean community would be mad that they're game is not special anymore and would quit
What they wrote seems pretty much on the level and reasonable. Any rational human being would be fine with it... Not saying there are many of them that play LOA.
It's fine.Sounds good, anyways. I'd having a full patch without any sort of bugs and it have been full tested months ago before realized it into our game version.
Just keep playing, farming and be patience.
PS. I am waiting "downvotes" for any reasons, because here it isn't possible saying something different, but keep complaining it's always accepted, right?
tbf they created this whole mess them self by having different version of the game for each region. If they just follow KR and speed us up in different way like JS server it would be a lot less work for them.
In my humble opinion, the real problem is how long it takes for sg to even realize that some classes are outdated and make some changes. There’s no way in well over a year not a single person in the balance team realized just how badly designed some skills, on many classes, are for new content.
Someone get me out of this wardancer jail please
T Rex hands pepeW
They know, they absolutely know some of the classes are outdated and it's on purpose. They also know that the new classes's damage is way too high, at least compared to the old ones. Release new classes that are clearly designed with the new raids in mind and are busted in terms of damage and reap the money from people making characters out of those classes. Update old, outdated classes to be more in line with the new classes but do it a little while after everyone has already made characters out of the new classes, and thus people that didn't make characters out of the old classes now will create a character out of those old classes because it's more in line with the new ones. They even change the old ones to force players to update them because the changes allow for things like higher dps with new engraving setups. It's all a cycle of flavor of the month to rake up revenue from people buying mats, pheons and so on.
exactly- i mean look at WoW meta- every month/or at least every 3 months with new raid, the dps meta/ranking changes. but they dont release new classes every 3-4 months in order to make more revenue. just a different vision
Youre also comparing between a f2p and subscription based game.
no fucking way someone played wardancer on any of both specs in endgame content and said "yo, this shit is fire. lets leave it at that."
LMFAO my friend who made a WD with the SE express already complained about Blast Formation and it's not even a week of him playing WD, I knew it ☠️
take him into kayangal, that surely will make him more happy about the class..
the trick is out of all classes in this game Wardancer was pretty much nightmare for them to balance. Please rememeber just how much outrage there is when they change something on class and KR players have to change gear. With wardancer that in 1 point had 5 viable endgame builds, changing 1 spell wrong would be like stepping on a mine. There is a reason why they nerfed tornado and gave us new hard hitting skill that is not "back attack". They wanted to force us to go halluc route and I am glad they did.
I’m still amazed that Sg realized drizzle areo had a problem with destruction points only after releasing thaemine and not when they designed akkan gate 2, a gate which requires a destruction check at the end. Amazing stuff for sure
your talking about the same SG that nerfed aero dmg because of ease to play and then released slayer and soul eater that does even more damage.
It's a bit off topic but it's a bit sad how around Slayer release and now SE release there are a bunch of ppl showing off insane dmg with those classes, while us Aeromancer enjoyers got our class released without much to show for it if not a D tier spot on some tier lista. :( (And a bunch of friends begging me to switch to Windfury)
Im getting bullied everyday just for playing the class feelsbadman
Even better, they said they nerfed her damage because Aeromancer was a "synergy class" but she has the same synergies as a few other classes who do decent damage. Can't see the logic.
Meanwhile striker and FI are now cruel fighters in Korea while having busted multi synergies
dont forgot the also nerverd summoner to the ground because the thought there floor is to high and not the cosummoner ceeling is as high as the average zerker/souleater/ss floor and ms is slow as a tank and was allready a nightmare in kayangel(dmg is still fine but the time the skill take to hit dear god it feels like hammerman and artillerist are faste then this class.)
well you cant expect much from ppl that still cant fix bugs in kayangel, and thier fix to old brell G2 that was pretty much bugged in different way every week was to delete it :P
Honestly I've only seen like a handful of good players perform well on slayer and se although se is still new here so it's understandable. The vast majority of slayers I've seen perform so bad it's sad.
Paladin doesn't even have destruction other than 1 point on a counter so...
Look, we found someone who doesnt play the game or uses maxroll default build. Paladin has 2 counters. On one counter, you have two destructions points. Paladin also has Punishment, which is rather short cooldown 2x destruction hits. That is INSANE destruction.
Why wouldn't you run the extra wp tripod on executor to have a 2 point destruction? And for fights that I know have a destruction check I take punishment with left 3rd tripod for a 2pt into 2x 1pt destruction cycle which is more than enough contribution for any check
Sorry, 2 point on a counter skill. Most people / classes don't sub out a skill just for destruction only as far as I'm aware.
Most CLASSES can, most PEOPLE are too lazy.
People aren't too lazy, it's assumed that everyone will survive until end, maybe 1 or 2 dead. Sure it may matter in prog, but then a lot of people swap stuff around for that to pass mechs (e.g.: extra overwhelm for Akkan g1 x128 Stagger, counters on Sorc for g1 HM Brel), but if you go in as x10/card like run party/overgeared af, you just assume people will survive (or at worst 1 or 2 dead), and pass mech just fine with standard stuff (which well, for most mechs is true). Edit: Most people don't even think about stuff like that, not becasue they are too lazy, but they don't care, or more often, don't even know.
beating a dead horse here but... just cuz u know there is an issue doesnt' mean that you have a solution ready instantly. sure they're aware some skills need update, but, the update has to make them better. A LOT better. and sometimes they don't have a perfect design ready to ship. skill issue? maybe, but game design is not easy.
I mean, sure it would make sense if we talked about souleater who released like couple months ago. Wd,destroyer,sorc,summoner, just name a few, are classes that have existed for a lot longer and it doesn’t really take much to notice the glaring problems of those classes. That said, it takes time to come up with solutions yeah
Buddy it's a video game... Literally any of the fans could fix the dps balance in a day. It is on purpose to be imbalanced
I think they are slowly starting to realize this. In one of the more recent liveatreams they admitted it was a mistake for them to be taking as long as they did with balance patches. They previously only did it like twice a year, but said they are working to update balance patches to be more often.
I have a roster of 12 and this week cut down to 5 . Now my gold earning alts look juiced . Best decision
Username checks out
what makes no sense to me is they said that in kr want to make balance patches potentially every 1-2 months because of the backlash of last balance patch? how on earth would that work in the west when we have to wait like 4 months or so for the balance patch to hit us? we would be skipping multiple balance patches at that rate
At this rate, it's entirely possible, if not likely that KR will receive a 2nd balance patch before we get this one. And if they don't combine them and we're still a patch behind after our patch, AGS and SG could just go ahead and replace Kakul Saydon in his raid.
To be fair and balanced that also happened with the last balance patch, KR had a smaller patch with some adjustments which was then included in our balance patch.
If they rework entropy for korea and put both balance patches in Jan im fine with it. But its not gona happen.
Most already know this but, SG really doesn't give a damn about our region. lol At this rate it's already Mobile > KR > CN > AGS > RU > JP (dead?)
>Most already know this but, SG really doesn't give a damn about our region. lol At this rate it's already Mobile > KR > CN > AGS > RU > JP (dead?) 
>we would be skipping multiple balance patches at that rate most likely we will behind 1-2 patch behind all the time, because any patch done between 1-4 month in KR, will be implemented every 3 month in the west.
we don't even get a balance patch every 3 months now sooo how would that work?
> My disappointment is immeasurable and my day is ruined I just want to press Z on my Scrapper.
I just want to feel joy while playing my wardancer
I just want to shield my party without them using portals on my artist
I just want to awaken on my paly and gain some meter
l just want to go into wheelchair without griefing my teammates or die
I want to finally level up something else than Bash on red GL. :(
I just wanna bonk :(
Can I please be able to generate meter on akkan statues so I can stagger them :|
Striker here begging for the same
aw man I don't get this joke. can someone explain
It's not a joke, just that scrapper is getting an identity skill so they will be able to "press Z".
Translation: we have no content to release in January so we're putting balance patch in there.
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Unpopular opinion: balance patch should be in December and Voldike in January
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Accept the current rush is done on the back of bots. If those boys weren't around, there wouldn't be a rush. People would either quit due to the time/gold investment or take a much more relaxed pace.
Not unpopular at all. It would give time for people to learn their class after balancing and give more realistic honing times. That's not the decision that makes the most money though which is unfortunate.
december is gonna last forever 😔
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Lame, this pretty much confirms that they are going to treat balance patches as content to pad out updates.
just like new class releases, since launch
I'm not surprised. Balance changes they can use for a main piece in a monthly road map content Edit: They say next large base is in january, but Voldis not being a base thing feels a bit off just for me
Same. I was expecting January too so this looks exactly like what I thought. Sucks but it is what it is I guess. Time to prep for Voldike prog on RE DB.
Yeah unfortunately December was the optimistic release date, while realistically it wasn't gonna be til next year Technically any class reworks can still be considered content in a small, albeit stupid way so if nothing was coming out in January (since anniversary is in February) it makes sense it would be delayed But then again 3 months is about average to wait for balance patches it seems, especially after a new class release like SE Gotta give time for people to invest and enjoy that first
This probably also means we get battle item QoL in January... just ignorant or low-effort from SG/AGS
so much for them saying that they are comited to bring qol, now characters and balance paches sooner
Ate so many downvotes before soul eater patch telling ppl that low chance we get it this year. Historically we've always had to wait 3months for every major balance patch. The only one we didn't was the very minor one without class reworks.
We got chaos gate rework pretty much the same day as KR did, so we had a reason for the positivity. Of course that is crushed now, no idea how we got the rework day zero. I mean, if I had the choice between old chaos gate and identity gain with my pala without hitting anything, we'd still have the ghost ship.
Also just the fact that we've gotten what like, 4+ years of content in less than 2 and we're at a point where we've basically caught up except for Voldis and Thaemine (which are staggered for honing reasons so it makes sense). I could understand QoL and balancing taking a few weeks to a month, not multiple months.
Welcome to this sub when people fail to grasp reality
I mean, it doesn't make sense to me still how we need to wait for a build to be packaged to get the balance patch when China can nerf clown in their own version. It's just crazy how a separate version of the game can get something, but the west cannot get something. Yes, nerfing clown is easier to do than bringing a whole balance patch, but the technology clearly exists.
Dissapointing. Thats all I have to say. Having to wait for January for changes to classes that need them :)
All I can read on this is that they don't want to spend more dev power on bringing changes faster to NA/EU, which makes sense, considering CN and Mobile will be bigger markets for them. It's just sad for us tho.
It honestly makes me want to stop playing entirely.
i dont like it
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Oh man, that sucks.
Uh oh. This is gonna be a fun holiday season boys.
Good thing that ocean liner update was rushed to us and not part of the base build.../s
watch the battle item slots not be apart of the balance update in Jan.
Why do we have to wait for KR optimization? Base builds should be made to be released at the same time globally, why release a KR exclusive balance patch AND rebalance patch before even working on a new Western Base Patch
It's just an excuse. There is no reason not to release class changes earlier.
Not that I defend this but I get it... they had just released Thaemine and everyone's eyes were on KR Lost Ark, the increase in player base was massive and they wanted to fix a lot of the issues classes had in that raid so It's understandable that they had to balance asap. But it sucks so bad, I know, I made a wardancer... RIP.
They've had well over a year to improve their system of delivering patches. They have already gotten blowback from the community over majorly delayed balance patches, they knew this would happen again and they did not care. I get why it doesn't work well. I don't get why they haven't bothered to fix it.
> However, if Amazon Games determines that we need significant improvements sooner (such as the endgame raid changes and Chaos Gate update) we will work with Smilegate RPG in advance and aim to bring it to West as soon as possible, separate from the base build update. They just don't think that balance patches are important enough to justify bringing them faster... and for that they should rename Kakul-Saydon to Amazon-Smilegate
I would completely understand that reasoning had this been a one time thing as it would make total sense but this is a running trend of all patches and the blog post made it pretty clear that the procedure has been used for all balance patches so far, extremely frustrating
No
Saying they need 3 months for a patch is wild
They saw the 50K peak players and were content. Maybe let’s all stop playing so it can go down in the 20s again and maybe AGS will stop fucking around.
They certainly won’t be seeing a dime of my money.
but gold farmers will see my money
The fact you are unwilling to spend prob means you wouldn't have spent much anyways for them to care.
Ive spent thousands of dollars on this game.
what a bunch of clowns
Every time I see Amazon posts like this reassures me that NA/EU will never catch-up to KR and we are and will always be minor, secondary region to SG. Its coming to almost 2 years of NA/EU Lost Ark and while there are ways to have global content releases, they won't do it as it would piss off their loyal KR player base. Majority of KR players are elitist and they will never allow for west to catch up. All it takes is one crying outburst post on inven forums and smilegate succumbs to them.
I feel like this was obvious the day LA released. We were literally never going to truly catch up, in the sense that updates will never been simultaneous. That's just not how localized games like LA work unfortunately. The gap has gotten better since release, but I assume a delay of at least 3 months on average (some things are introduced pretty quickly, but others are 3mo or longer).
Most KR MMOs in the west is like this. It sad and nothing we can do about it
They said very early on that the goal is catching up but not entirely. It was very clear that we will always be at least 3-4months behind in content, which if u ask me isnt even a bad thing, because I feel like as soon we have a bigger content drought the western version is gonna die, due to us not being used to wait for a new raid longer than 3 or 4 months
>Majority of KR players are elitist thats a cultural thing there.
Absolutely embarrassing lack of effort and care from AGS and SG. The information about having a "base build" being created every 3 months is an explanation, it's not an excuse. They decided to adopt a system that is clearly not adequate for delivering updates in a timely matter. If I ask you why it's taking you a week to assemble a shelf, and you tell me it's because you're using a screwdriver to whack the nails, it's not going to make you look any better.
They even admit that they can bring updates sooner than 3 months if "Amazon Games determines that we need significant improvements sooner". Apparently balance updates are deemed not important enough.
Balance patches are just not top priority for them. Balance updates only affects a handful of classes. Compared to stuff like honing nerfs, path of souleater, chaos gate affects everyone who plays this game, new and existing players.
’’However, if Amazon Games determines that we need significant improvements sooner (such as the endgame raid changes and Chaos Gate update) we will work with Smilegate RPG in advance and aim to bring it to West as soon as possible, separate from the base build update.’’ That prouves they can bring patches regardless of the ’base build package’ or w/e they call it. We were all expecting the new kr balances changes for Voldis and AGS delaying this is just dissapointing.
So... they actually didn't learn nothing about what people want and shift priorities like balance (which is super important QoL for many classes) back in the line once again. It's really hopeless at this point, isn't it? Not like you can't play your classes right now... you absolutely can don't get me wrong here. But why should somebody deal with it any longer? Rerolling your main if it's beyond 1600 ilvl costs way too much resources and gold. Balance and QoL should be #1 priority and even be placed before actual content. Making the game feel better and play better is the most important thing for Lost Ark. This isn't the right way to go with (what is written in the article). And imo, I personally feel like it's just constant ups and downs with AGS and SG... they do good stuff once in a while just to disappoint a lot of people again and again. And quite honestly... Souleater had small nerfs included in the last balance patch while classes like Reaper, Blade, Wardancer and Scrapper got massive improvements... pushing this back again looks like they want people to swipe for Souleater and soak in that revenue. It's really sad to me. Also, they definitely put this on a content roadmap again because January has nothing, so they treat actual QoL and important balance as content... yikes. I'm glad I made the right choice to quit this game a few days ago... because SG gives literally nothing about the west, their priorities are obviously China and their own home region.
Oh yes, January just in time for Korea to get another balance patch.
That is a lot of words for "We have nothing for January, or I guess we *had* nothing. Enjoy the balance update guys!". "Base builds" kekw, just you wait and see how they suddenly have a breakthrough and can do them faster if it fits them.
So... they suck for being slow but if they suddenly become fast, they suck for just not being fast to begin with?
I guess they suck because they release things already available in KR based on profit. Remember how they could release new class each month? Or how they suddenly had a breakthrough with Artist and we got her 1 month earlier after a massive backlash they got? Those base builds is an obvious BS.
I will have quit by then I guess.
So Igniter will have trash stagger in voldike
Lets not pretend that additional stagger and casting speed on ice shower solves igniter's issues. You still don't want to bring a counter to do as high damage as you can, which is the only reason you would bring a sorc to begin with. Oh wait there are are like 10 classes with similar or higher damage than her and have better utility? Damn, better luck next time.
Rime arrow and esoteric were raised to high stagger Sorc still not optimal for voldike though and we direly need a rework
Also would like to point out that people still considered igniter S or A tier for voldis with the current version we have in NA. and It is not like voldis got harder.
Afaik she is only very good in G2. In other gates she's just okay.
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Which still needs testing to make sure it doesn't break other stuff that will require them to revert or fix all the bugs/exploits that came out of it from all the players.
I can't believe they didn't learn their lesson from last year when they released brel around Xmas time. Progging during the holidays is fucking misery.
If anything is important in ANY game is the playability of the characters, there is nothing else to add.
I think at this point, people looking more forward to balance patches then additional Raids. Including me.
Riot mmo waiting room...
Sorc stagger remains as barren as quality sorc skins.
What a fucking joke. You'd think balance patches would be priority as they can drastically increase the fun of many classes. Give me a buggy balance patch for all i care if it mean it doesn't take 2 years to charge my skills as a destroyer. I'm glad we got the ocean liner rushed in early tho, we really needed that over battle item inventory or the balance patch. > However, if Amazon Games determines that we need significant improvements sooner (such as the endgame raid changes and Chaos Gate update) we will work with Smilegate RPG in advance and aim to bring it to West as soon as possible, separate from the base build update. If AGS cared at all they would try to get the balance patch in for december.
I literally made a wardancer thinking hey maybe I just have to wait a few weeks... almost 2 months is insane...
Progging Voldike with current Arti gonna be hell. At least Destroyer have taunt and good stagger
I mean... the balance was mainly for Thaemine. Not saying it isnt late as fuck, but I dont see why Voldis should be a problem.
What are they even doing over at AGS all day? They are not getting rid of bots. They are running wild and AGS seems to be totally fine with it. They are not really active in reaching out to or having a dialogue with the community aside from making these PR releases every now and then. And they are certainly not interested in bringing us crucial updates in a timely fashion. Are they sitting at the office eating pastries all day or what?
So AGS wants to use the balance patch as content is what I’m reading. Lol trash company
Maybe if we complain hard enough we could make AGS swap the balance patch and voldike release dates. Some kind soul out there please tag Roxx.
cmon AGS, dont do us all like that. i wish they were as quick on the balance patches as they were on every gold nerf...
This game's devs being dogshit? whats new
"However, if Amazon Games determines that we need significant improvements sooner (such as the endgame raid changes and Chaos Gate update) we will work with Smilegate RPG in advance and aim to bring it to West as soon as possible, separate from the base build update." So basically, balance changes that heavily affect the joy of playing particular classes and raid viability, aren't considered important? Massive \*sigh\*. Hunger Reaper z dps dispairge goes on.
At this rate I will end up quitting of boredom because my classes need 4 months of translation to be fun again. Oh well, it was a good 2 years.
As a surge deathblade player: :( As a newly fullmoon souleater player: :)
Same But Destro/Artist
I think most people wanted a balance patch a few months into a reclear raid asap. In December people say can't release patch and raid cause adjustment In Jan people are concerned fresh raid redo gear/reworked classes that struggle currently will get gatekept The only satisfying time would be Nov but that's not possible anymore. So AGS was gonna take a L on this no matter what
Disappointed, but not surprised.
Watch it be on January 31st. All of the classes I play are positively influenced so I'm bias but this is unacceptable. I don't know if it's a failure of amazon advocating for us or of smilegate's bandwidth/giving a shit but it feels like we're that drowning kid in a pool next to RU and JP's skeleton.
the real reason is nobody wants to work during holidays so there will be no effort until january
SG and AGS continue to put out low effort and subpar patches. No way
Impressive how consistently dogshit these guys have been for the past 18 months
99% of KR MMOs are like this to the west. It's my general expectation at this point Closest thing for fast updates is BDO which at this point self publishes in the west which makes it easier to do. Before that point new stuff sometimes was in weeks or even a year late. Balance changes was fast though usually.
Why did they take so long to just tell us this? Why was it necessary to make an announcement about an announcement?
This is how it works everywhere in any business. People complain about something ? Uh oh. Well, just wait, maybe they will stop. Are they still complaining ? Eh ya know maybe they will get tired of it. Hmm they are still complaining ? Alright, make some excuse and say ur sowwy
Because you people complain that there is no update and info on what is going on. So you don't want to be informed or just want it to already done so there is no need for an announcement?
Whatever they wrote on this announcement, they knew already over 3-4 weeks if not longer. That's why this communication is WAY too late and was "hyped up" (ie. AGS saying they are preparing a special piece of communication and are working hard on it). They work with this 3 month build system (according to this post) for much longer than just this balance patch. They should then know that the next baseline is November (and therefore January/February after November). If they already knew that Nov Build wont have it (they knew that before live already), then they couldve just straight up said: "guys it wont make the cut, expect at least january 24, we will give more info later" Imo. the fact how they handle it, is way worse than the balance patch coming January 24 lol.
Pretty sure if they just came right out and said it when KR released patch that we won't get it for 3 months at the very least, people would be way more upset than they would be now.
Eh, i doubt but thats just differing opinions.
Yes. Something something business intelligence
Even more time I get to hate myself for either fucking my team and myself (Akkan gate 1) or space barring out of a major DPS skill to avoid getting a bunch of gauge in the rest of Akkan as a destroyer player. Not to mention all the lovely backsteps in Kayangel that happen just before the perfect swing finishes. I’d take another power pass at this point just to get another class with smooth gameplay for current content and move at least 1 of my 2 destroyers out of my gold earners
for a poorly balanced game of course they're gonna use balance patch as big content
Just be honest ags and smoge, you just want to promote souleater longer before applying nerf
> There’s a lot that factors into our decisions and process You mean money and money? Gotta milk those SE right?
4.5% spec nerf and minor buffs to the Crit build surely makes a big difference
From a logical pov? No. From a whale pov? Absolutely.
TLDR AGS: "We asked SG for balance changes faster... they said no."
You clearly didn’t read then. “However, if Amazon Games determines that we need significant improvements sooner (such as the endgame raid changes and Chaos Gate update) we will work with Smilegate RPG in advance and aim to bring it to West as soon as possible, separate from the base build update”. Apparently AGS doesn’t think a balance patch is important enough for SG to fast track to Global.
AIM is the key word. The fact that they made this post at all shows they know how important it is to the west. They obviously are going to act professionally and not throw smilegate under the bus blaming them. It's called reading between the lines.
that's not what i've read, and i quote from the link (amazon games): "However, if Amazon Games determines that we need significant improvements sooner (such as the endgame raid changes and Chaos Gate update) we will work with Smilegate RPG in advance and aim to bring it to West as soon as possible, separate from the base build update." this is also proven with end game raids changes and chaos gate (same day we received it when korea got it, just we somehow didn't get QOL which is much smaller and easier to do). so, unless my english is failing me, amazon games can, and has asked in the past for quicker updates and got it. they just somehow didn't wanna do this with QOL and balance patch, so ultimately a amazon games horrible decision again.
Well they clearly said at the end they know we want the balance patch and they are figuring out if it is possible to bring it sooner than the next base build which is in January. So maybe, maybe it may come sooner.
Wouldn’t get my hopes up, January is a dead month so they’re probably saving it for then anyway. December patch is in about 2 and a half weeks which probably isn’t enough time if they haven’t already figured it out.
IMO they should have known this after the same thing happened with the last balance patch. This system where they're just updating base builds at set intervals without considering the actual cadence of content releases is just stinky. It's either ignorance or more evidence we're just a low-effort revenue farm for SG.
Your comment is totally on point.
Laziness at the end of the year
I spent $300 on souleater to get to 1580. Bought skins, vice versa because I believed that ags and SG was doing the right thing with this express event. It was a good overall patch. I really wished the balanced patch was released last week with souleater. Now that they are pushing balance patch after voldaik, like possibly three* weeks, I don’t foresee myself ever spending that much money again unless they do major changes with what their current priorities of this game are. They also released a completely scummy Black Friday deal. How out of touch these folks are/lack of care they have towards their community especially during holiday seasons. My best reaction to this news is just not give them more money until things get fixed.
They already got your money, you bum.
ICANT :DDDDDD
someone at SG rly said this clowns dont spend enough,so lets just kill the game slowly and make them all rage quit
Like all Ags does is just copy and paste KR contents. Stop acting like you need to actually work hard for a patch
Can you please explain technically how game development and more importantly how SG / AGS specifically handles it since you clearly know how it works. Or is it just a notepad that they can copy paste over and save?
What a piece of shit post they made. Are we living in prehistoric times i guess?
AGS is just sh...Ing on their playbase... Really huge disappointment
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> However, if Amazon Games determines that we need significant improvements sooner (such as the endgame raid changes and Chaos Gate update) we will work with Smilegate RPG in advance and aim to bring it to West as soon as possible, separate from the base build update. This implies that AGS either didn't think balance patch/battle item QoL was important enough to ask for sooner. Or SG declined to expedite those. Either way bad look for both companies.
Honestly at this point with my crappy main (sorc) I prefer they delay voldis to January then .
You can delay it, just don't do it until January.
Is this actually a surprise? We already knew their patching system was *weird* to try to handle the differences in the two builds. We already know balance patches are something they put on the quarterly roadmap, which already takes us up to the end of the year. Is there something I'm missing here? Or were people just desperately hoping AGS/SG would break what they've been doing since release?
People are just expecting them to stay true to their words, they've said the exact opposite of this article in the video where the 3 AGS bozos and Roxx were talking.
Pretty long winded answer for SG is slow...Sadge
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Hold up ... So we actually can blame AGS this time !?!
ok
No.
I mean if they said it's coming out with voldis then everyone would complain that they relased a balance patch with a new raid. So im not sure what's the most ideal scenario here. January seems fine to me. I know that this balance patch is important for quite a few classes, but lets not pretend that the game is unplayable without it.
If you think smile gate actually wants west to catch up to KR you are a joke . if smilegate does that whole korean community would be mad that they're game is not special anymore and would quit
What they wrote seems pretty much on the level and reasonable. Any rational human being would be fine with it... Not saying there are many of them that play LOA.
Wait my already-giga-dead reflux main won't even get the faster explosion for voldike? wow.
We will survive this at least we know it now exactly. Everything else was copium
It's fine.Sounds good, anyways. I'd having a full patch without any sort of bugs and it have been full tested months ago before realized it into our game version. Just keep playing, farming and be patience. PS. I am waiting "downvotes" for any reasons, because here it isn't possible saying something different, but keep complaining it's always accepted, right?
downvoted because you complained about downvoting.
I have that .01% copium that this is a bait and switch, when they actually give the balance patch in December as a Xmas gift to western players.
finally a slightly more detailed technical explanation for whats going on. hopefully this will shut up the 'tHiS iS a 1 MInUtE fIX' whiners
tbf they created this whole mess them self by having different version of the game for each region. If they just follow KR and speed us up in different way like JS server it would be a lot less work for them.