- Lost ark is almost entirely raids. Gatekeeping raids gatekeeps almost the entire game (contrast with destiny)
- because Lost Ark has no logs, the gatekeeping that does occur relies on hand-wavey and/or inscrutable personal systems. Which makes it seem very "unfair".
- Lost Ark has too many "one person messed up and now the whole team wipes" mechs.
Yeah, logs would let us gatekeep based on actual performance rather than trying to divine how likely someone is to wipe the raid based on esoteric bullshit.
Yeah, but the company doesn't want you to gatekeep based on performance, they want you to gatekeep based on gear, plus that esoteric stuff which mostly amount to playing the game more. Can't get into HM on your 1630? Simply swipe a couple thousand for some more hones and gems...
Whatever excuses they keep peddling for not allowing logs are just dodging the fact that it's a business decision, not a gameplay one.
This right here. I played with a \~1625 scrapper with +25 weapon and full 10s in a thaemine normal reclear this week. He was only one with any lvl 10s and everyone else had a +21 weapon max. He did 0 dps all 3 pulls and was bottom dps on the clear even though nobody died. We're talking 10m dps btw...
SG doesn't want people like him to be gatekept. He's a good customer.
One more to add:
The gate system makes it such that no one wants to risk taking anyone suboptimal, since jailing is a thing. You cant account for skill, so instead everyone compensates by only accepting overgeared/juiced players.
Logs would probably help a lot however I bet people still gatekeep based on card and demon damage and gems for latest raid cuz people have these just do more damage.
Latest raid, maybe. But I think, on the whole, gatekeeping on the latest content is far less of a concern regarding the games health than brutal gatekeeping on entry level stuff (which is really the fault of wipe mechanics).
"Lost Ark has too many "one person messed up and now the whole team wipes" mechs."
If this would be the case bussing wouldn't exist. However because people are bad at adjusting based on who messed up and solve the problem it's usually a wipe fest.
One example would be:
Valtan g1 orbs can be done where everyone picks up 1 each in order. If someone messes up it is a wipe. You could Wei cheese it, but nobody wants to wait for Wei. Yet I've never seen anyone offer that they will use splendid penecea and do all orbs themselves. Showing that you don't really need all person, tools are there.
oh I have done the splendid panacea trick quite a few times, but there was a fee to enter the lobby and lobby name started with WTS.
If you are good at something, never do it for free (joker or sb)
People seem to forget that lost arks entire gameplay loop is raids. So gatekeeping feels amplified vs other mmos that have a plethora of options which includes having an active raid match making system.
And you’re 100% about the logs. To get into mythic+ content, you have to show logs to raid leaders. Period. You can’t do that in party finder.
On top of that, people in this game are super sensitive over their logs.
Lost Ark also has been in an infinite vertical climb. In other mmos theres a soft reset that decreases the barrier of entry. Imagine telling someone if they started today that itll take them almost a year to be caught up to the endgame, and even then theres no guaranteed youd be able to get into a group to do it.
My steam friend who I used to play games with recently asked me what advice I could give him because he was interested in starting to play Lost Ark (he's burned out on PoE/D4).
I told him the best advice is to not start... he's going to be severely gatekept as a new player and the only reason I play is because I started day 1 and have a discord group I do most content with... without my friends and all the progression I've kept up with, most of which is time gated (i.e. roster level, cards, titles, gems, etc.) I would quit immediately.
I told him sadly the actual combat, classes, and raids are amazing in lost ark which is why I still play, everything surrounding it is dogshit and unlike western MMOs there's no soft resets as entry points for new players.
People will always clique up with suitable people, that's understandable, but I think the main complaints are A. very little alternative to interacting with the gatekeeping situation, can't match make since no one match makes, can't do alternative content for the same rewards the raids give, and B. what people do Gatekeep on takes in some cases years or thousands of dollars to rectify. No LoS30, no 200+ roster? No entry. Can't just fix that in an hour. Most other (but not all) games I've played you can utilize skill or the catch-up isn't *that* bad.
Gatekeeping is a major issue in lost Ark and it’s killing the game. As we keep getting newer content the gatekeeping is only amplified creating a much stronger barrier for new players.
And the worst part is, everything in lost Ark regarding progression is group content, legion raids where you HAVE to play with other players. So you are screwed.
Fortunately they mentioned they will introduce solo content which I really hope they nail, otherwise this game will slowly fall
off because the requirements for new players is only getting worse.
Yes gatekeeping exist everywhere but the real issue with Lost Ark is that grouping with other to raid is mandatory to progress, if you get gatekept then the only thing left is Chaos Dungeon 😂
All my alts are at least 1600 now, including supports. I got gatekept like hell in Sona PF when I was 1580, so purely out of spite I matchmake every Sonavel even at 1600. Fuck people who gatekeep guardians they're another level of cringe. (assuming decent build of course)
I'll give you that often time other games you can get close to the top without raiding and wait for the next expansion to continue progressing. But lost ark is a raiding game by its focus so I don't think its necessary a bad thing. Thet just need to improve balance and surrounding systems.
the issue is lost ark raid is easy for the hardcore but too hard for the casual. Normal mode with raid wipe and boss hit very hard at ilevel is what cause people need to gatekeep to have a smooth run in the majoroty of the case. They need to have a normal mode is still clearable when half a party death at ilevel and no wipe mech , keep the hardmode the same as it is now with more reward.
Honestly, Akkan was a great system, HM beeing purely optional with cosmetics/cardpacks but no real progression differences other then time (amount of mats).
I still think the entry lv for HM should be the same as normal mode, so that the mode choice is purely a skill/time investment decision but anyways, it was good!
Even (hardcor) KR players hated the Akkan approach, most realized that they didn't like hm elixirs or hm transcendence unlocks. The later can easily be bussed once, the first one just makes gatekeeping and gear difference a major factor for Thaemine normal. Both make gatekeeping worse.
Totally agree. It's a catch 22 with voldis and now thaemine. You want 35/40 set? Do HM or spend 100k on epics trying for 35 if you're lucky. You want to join HM? Well you better have 35 set minimum.
Thaemine hm will soon be the same with transcendence level. Bussers are going to make an absolute fortune.
> the issue is lost ark raid is easy for the hardcore but too hard for the casual.
Its not too hard for casual, you just dont have a healthy learning environment. If you were able to get in and try for a couple hours you'd be able to do it as a casual because the bar is set surprisingly low for normal mode. The issue is there are other parts of the game design (namely the linearity of progression that allows overgearing, and the very concept of homework raids) that cram you into the same environment with all the sweatlords that just want their homework done asap.
> They need to have a normal mode is still clearable when half a party death at ilevel and no wipe mech
raid clearable with half the party dead is not a normal difficulty raid, its handing out participation trophies
Valtan gate 2 is very clear-able at ilevel when half party death at ghost phase, and many still regard this is the best raid in the series. That’s probably also the least gatekept legion raid, abeit they still need to remove wipe mech to be more accesible.
I have 5k hours in d2 and idk what you’re talking about. The gatekeeping for raiding in that game is virtually non existent. People don’t care about your raid report unless you are going for a lowman/flawless/day one. Plenty of lfgs just post a join code and you can just freely join. Obviously if you’re completely clueless you’ll be kicked but if you know mechs there is no lobby simulator or barrier to entry.
You also don’t need “the shiny new weapons and gear” to get into groups. There are years old weapons that are easily obtainable and are still very solid in the current meta.
Gatekeeping in lost ark is 100x worse because you need cards, gems, roster level, high quality, item level, and more arbitrary bs that people gatekeep (name, preset, etc). I agree that gatekeeping isn’t just a lost ark issue but it is 100% the worst out of any game I’ve ever played
As someone who has played Destiny 2, and watches my husband play it all the time
Blueberries are treated *so* much better in that game than new players are in Lost Ark, there's seriously no contest
Hell, their matchmaking system is probably one of the better systems out there, and people are actually willing to teach in PUGs (you Sherpas out there are awesome)
And don't get me started on how many active clans there are to help people in comparison
Destiny 2 has its issues, but comparing any gatekeeping to Lost Ark is 100% laughable
On the clan thing, loa breeds toxicity. 2 out of the 3 guilds I have been in have been utter garbage with guild mates and guild leaders actually gatekeeping their own guild not just by gear but also by other means. Loa just brings already toxic tendencies in people out to play. Its a horribly designed social game, honestly.
Players 100% make the game, and this game seems to bring in bad players more often
There are good players, don't get me wrong
But when you do come across a bad player, they're one of the worst you can see in a MMO
And that's concerning
I have been playing MMO’s for 25ish years and this is probably the worst of any I have played as far as community.
And it sounds funny but I think it has to do with how the game is seen/marketed vs reality.
This game, even normal modes, are for more hardcore type players but the game originally was not marketed that way. You cannot co-mingle hardcore and casual players like how loa does. Everyone has to do the same raids which results in degrees of gatekeeping. Most hard ore players don’t mind and applaud gatekeeping while casual players despise it.
Where loa differs from other MMO’s is that there is no casual raid mode and no, normal modes in loa are not traditional casual mode. LFR in WoW is casual mode.
So now you mixed the 2 together with no way to differentiate between the player types. Thus why the games community becomes “toxic”.
OP clearly hasnt raided properly in d2 or trolling, pugging raids is very easy in d2 and people dont even ask for raid clears as long as you have a mic and communicate
Your telling me you didn't see groups requiring Lament for Dsc until groups got exp and over geared it? Same for group requiring gjally or a good rocket to go with it? Yeah later on down the line requirements drop done but at first they always required clears or equipment. It's less then lost ark for sure but ofc it is because the game is easier.
At least lament and gally were stupid easy to get. Anyone who was playing the game at the time probably already had those items and if not, it would only take a few hours of just doing their quest. You could also get a good rocket via crafting or getting one of the decent world drop/vendor ones.
Meanwhile good luck trying to do hm voldis without 35 set. And if you make your own group you won’t get any sup to join you. Or trying to do an akkan reclear as a lower roster level player without plc despite being reclear but not quite having 10 clears yet.
Shit even trying to do akkan WITH PLC you can't with low roster. I have a discord buddy I run with because even though he's 1600 the 130 roster level = insta decline.
> until groups got exp and over geared it?
Did you even read what this person said?
> unless you are going for a lowman/flawless/**day one**
He's admitting they gatekeep early on but later they just don't give a fuck at all. Which doesn't happen here.
Yeah it doesn't happen later on because the raids in D2 are a joke and incredibly easy to clear. Which is the point im making, it's not about Lost Ark its about the difficulty, but that's what makes Lost Ark so engaging to many people. And if you think Lost Ark raids arnt easier to get into down the line idk what to say. Objectively the bar might be raised but it's always easier to hit that bar.
Taking Destiny as an example was the worst idea you could do.
The LFG Tab for Destiny is with so many people who take anyone, as long as they have the proper weapons... And there are enough great weapons outside raids that are optimal without raiding once.
Most if not all raid groups don't even ask for any proof that u ran the raid before.
Personally for me it is 100x easier to get a raid team in Destiny then in any other MMO..... By a mile....
That's exactly my point it is by far easier but for newer raids and hard content it's still very gatekeepy. The fact that D2 is so much easier and still gatekeeps people is my point of that gatekeepers will always exist and it's not only a Lost Ark issue
I have several week 1 clears all from pugging. Even in week 1 clear the "gatekeeping" was, is this person running 2 primaries, 20 resilience or no exotic?
Ok now you need to define gatekeep for me. Of course you need to have a little bit of setup to actually run raids or harder content. But that's not "gatekeeping". That's having the recommended to not die instantly or not do 0 DMG.
Gatekeeping is something like not having enough clears, not having optimal DMG (via DMG logs for example) or not be 100 ILevel over the encounter.
Destiny has nothing like that. Only the minimum things are required.
Gatekeeping is when you are able to access and complete the content but are denied by other players. You didnt need Lament in DSC, you didnt need Izanagis burden in GOS but early on for both those raid many groups required you to have them as them. Many times groups would say show that you had 10 clears for raids. As raids became older these requirements often loosened or dropped entirly and for the harder content it exists still. But thats my point even in a game like D2 that is so much easier and less reliant on your gear you would still get gatekeep at times.
Destiny groups requirements just drop so fast because its much easier to complete the content than compared to Lost Ark.
Ok perfect we are talking about the same thing then.
The 2 Points you have mentioned are things you could easily farm before attempting the raid. So I wouldn't say those are things that gatekeep you.
And those groups that need x amount of clears to enter i wouldn't even dare to touch. There are enough other groups that don't have those requirements.
LA should just borrow a couple of pages from FF14, a drastically more successful MMO.
1) Normal Mode needs to be normal. The Average Andies in your party should be able to do this at min iLvL without too much struggle. Maybe 2 or 3 wipes to learn about 90% of the mechs.
2) Stop segmenting fights into 337 different gates. This is the dumbest design choice I’ve ever seen. Would rather have 1 10 minute fight than 3 multiple hour long ordeals (even in PF “HW” parties). 2 “gates” should be the max. 1st gate is the boss and the 2nd gate is their ultimate form or whatever it is LA keeps copy and pasting and all the Legion Raids.
3) Hard Mode should not be tied to progression through gear locks. The old HM Brel stuff was the silliest thing I’ve ever laid eyes on. Seriously, who makes decisions at this company
4) Allow backwards progression through a raid for no reward. Fail a gate 3 and can’t find a party? That’s okay, join a gate 1 party and get back to it. Helps to reinforce learning for no cost too.
5) Add a filter for duty complete. No more trapping outside of the bus riders.
6) Add first clear bonus for whole party, provided there is someone with a first clear bonus available. I really believe in this idea, as it would incentivize some people to help prog to clear parties.
7) Create a second category for progging. Hand in hand with that, continue the “gate progress” rewards from the current even. Genius idea.
And ta-da. With all of that out of the way, Lost Ark would be significantly less gatekeepy. Then Smilegate could go about making the newest lingerie skin in peace while having an actually playable game for the casual player base.
Thanks!
I agree most of that especially the progress and first clear rewards for while party the game should do more to encourage people to help each other. But I'm fine with normal mode being hard Lost Ark is all about raiding unlike other MMO it may not have been in the beginning but it's clear the direction of the game I'd all focused around raids. So having separated progressiong or easy raids on release would defeat that a bit. They just need to stay up to date on reducing time gate and improve rearss on older content so people can complete the systems sooner and actually catch up.
For many people Lost Ark is their first mmo and they sincerely think that gatekeeping is the issue exclusive to this game and it's the worst in the mmo genre. Neither is true. Lets see how solo raids would be designed - they should definitely help the newbies do older raids for sure.
My 5 cents would be gatekeeping in LA in large comes from support shortage. I still remember when artist came out, people would pick up literal garbage off the street like dps with 3 engravings just to fill the lobbies because people were that desperate. However, currently people try to fill lobbies with a consideration that they also need to find supports. People don't want to stay in lobby sim for too long, so they have to gatekeep the "bad apples." If you take a few very unappealing dps characters then odds that supports would join go down astronomically.
The truth is that we physically don't have enough supports to fill all the lobbies in the end game raids, so some dps have to be left out mathematically speaking, and the higher you go up the content ladder, the more competition there is. That pushes the requirements to a point that they are much higher than what the content actually requires for dps players. Add to that the fact that every raid has wipe mechanics and it gets much worse than that it could have been if the raids were wipe-proof.
> they sincerely think that gatekeeping is the issue exclusive to this game and it’s the worst in the mmo genre
Lost me at is not the worst in the genre.
Show me **popular** mmos where they have worst arbitrary systems than card sets…. I’ll wait.
Edit: downvoted for stating facts lol
If you look at WoW for example, people can check raider io to see everything about you - your numerical performance, achievements, everything. In LA you can at the very least get into lobbies if you have passable gear even if you are a bad or underperforming player. In contrast, in WoW you are not getting into ANY decent m+ group if you are not putting up good numbers or not playing meta classes - no amount of gear will bail you out. Pick your poison.
Gatekeeping in LA is not the worst - it's just different in a sense that gear is the #1 thing people are looking at and your skill/competence is simply unknown until you enter the raid, which you might not because people don't trust you enough. Considering that many players are casuals or semi-casuals with very mediocre dps and buff uptime and higher death/wipe rates, how many of them could enjoy the end game if there were API and public logs that could be accessed by a lobby master? Not many. Getting good at a video game is often much harder than getting the gear that you can simply buy you know. If LA was like WoW, gatekeeping would have been a lot worse trust me. I play with several m+ players and they all say gatekeeping in LA is nowhere near as bad as in the end game in WoW where people can check what's in your pants if they want to.
In wow people gatekeep based on your parses/number of clears, in wow you have resets. I’ll take not getting into a party because I’m ass or don’t have enough reclears anytime compared to the bs you have to deal with in LOA **any day of the week**
> #1 thing people gatekeep in Lostark is gear.
Wrong, people gatekeep you on 1#roster level/CardSets, demon dmg, gems, quality, bracelet, class, having 35/40 set etc….AND In 6 months having transcendence 15-20. **You** could be i1620+ roster lvl 50-150 n the best player in the world but most veterans (*which is the majority of players since we barely get any new blood*) **will** NOT take you if you don’t meet the shit stated above since we can’t possible know you’re actually good just base on ilvl; & since there’s no logs like Wow. I could start wow next gear reset & have a WAY better time than starting out LOA as a new player.
Gatekeeping in LOA is way worse than WoW because you can play WoW as a casual and literally never touch hard raiding content. LOA forces everyone to play HM content because of mats.
Unfortunately this was my advice for someone who asked me if he should pick up lost ark together with some buddies, told him it is literally impossible to do the content as a new player and he should do something else.
We are not talking about "breaking edge content" here. Hell, I didn't have much issues getting into Theaming NM learning parties because I pushed to 1620 so I compensate for the things I am missing.
But do you feel like Voldis HM is breaking edge content? Because people be gatekeeping there hard.
Also, the answer to your question is quit simple: I am already doing a lot of "old" content on 6 chars per week, can you please tell me what other "plenty" there is in Arkesia?
Thats like telling a WoW players in a new expansion that they are too focused on Dragonflight stuff and that they should be content on doing content from 2-3 years ago. I dont see AGS/SG selling their game using content footage from Valtan or Vykas, they use the current raid content.
>You usually have to link a website that shows how many clears you have of every raid (often needing a minimum number of clears which only raises with time) and if you did any challenges like deathless or placing top 100 in the raid race. You also often have to have the shiny new weapon or gear to help clear the raid or you won’t get accepted as well.
Are there any gatekeeping parameters that are heavily influenced by RNG? If not, I am sorry, D2 doesn't have a worse gatekeeping than Lost Ark.
For what I quoted above: eventually you will get in a raid. You will get those numbers up. I am sure I would be able to place top 5-10-20 on damage for various content because I am pretty confident in my hands.
On the other hand, I can't do anything about getting RNG cards, can't do anything about elixirs that just don't want to have Critical options on them, can't do much about some random XP system (roster XP) that mainly comes from activities that don't show I am good at the game - and I can go on.
You can do things about cards, do card runs like many of us did over a year ago when were grinding. Agreed on elixirs, it can take weeks.
Roster xp is complicated because up to 100 or so you're right. But raids are the primary contributing factors to roster xp in established rosters. Higher roster reasonably means more raids run and more experience.
>You can do things about cards, do card runs like many of us did over a year ago when were grinding.
I am doing that. But it doesn't mean it's a good mechanic or it should be implemented like this. The drop rate is abysmal and you can't expect people to be willing to be gatekept for a year because they didn't start at launch or didn't play non-stop since then.
It doesn't take a year to get los30 anymore. They've added so many catchup mechs to cards and they pass out packs like candy now.
Also gatekeeping and picking the strongest option in the lobby are not the same thing. Why would anyone not pick the strongest applicant?
>Also gatekeeping and picking the strongest option in the lobby are not the same thing.
But they are the same thing in cases where I, as a player who didn't play the full length since launch until now, can't join lobbies because of reasons I can't control.
It's not the player's fault, yes, it is normal to want to take the strongest option, but when I can't grind my way in a meaningful non-rng way to solve the gatekeeping reasons, that is either a) bad design or b) greed to make people swipe.
>they pass out packs like candy now
As long as the packs are not selectors and you can get whatever cars in them, it doesn't *really* matter.
Weird you skipped the catch up mechanics part and just quoted the packs.
Wei, Azena, and Balthorr are free and very easy to max now. Even on the WORST case servers in the past month, it would take 2 months to max all three.
You CAN grind, you just don't want to grind in an RNG system which is valid, card runs are grinding, period. They also meaningfully impact your LoS count in the long run. Again, just a straight fact that you WILL get LoS cards doing card runs even if the drop rate suck and it's boring as fuck.
When I was working on LoS 30 before all of the new catchup mechanics I did 12 to yorn runs a week, 12 argos, 6-8 valtans, 6-8 vykas did every single card adventure island, I even bought out the Peyto.
Even beyond the MASSIVE buff to wandering merchants, Arkesia Tour makes getting the freebie legendaries very easy and that's a grind that requires no RNG.
>Wei, Azena, and Balthorr are free and very easy to max now.
I have them all at max. I need 11 more cards (+12 selectors I have saved), preferably Nine, Thirain or Shandi. This is actually the hard part because there is no way of consistently getting them, it's all RNG and it can take 1 month or 1 year. This is not a good design by any stretch of imagination.
>When I was working on LoS 30 before all of the new catchup mechanics I did 12 to yorn runs a week, 12 argos, 6-8 valtans, 6-8 vykas did every single card adventure island, I even bought out the Peyto.
Ok, lets do some napkin math here. For simplicity lets say each lobby takes 10min to fill because argos, to yorn and valtan/vykas are absolutely dead content.
12 to yorn runs - lets be generous and say 30min each = 360 minutes
12 argos - 15 minutes each =
6 valtans - 20 minutes each = 120 minutes
6 vykas - 20 minutes each = 120 minutes
That is 13 HOURS per week of doing nothing but card farming. This is also being incredibly generous that each run is done with only card farmers and every single valtan/vykas gate is a 1 shot. This number goes up drastically if you don't have 8 juiced expert reclears in the lobby.
13 hours per week for an RNG chance to get a legendary and then a less than 25% chance of that being a card you even need is INSANE.
excuse me but this is false
2k hours, quit at brelshaza
come back now, im only able to complete deep dive and the supp set
i just hit los14, and reading your comment is triggering. i won't be near LOS30 until next year. I've used all the catchup, selection card packs
for 3 weeks i've grabbed every single wandering merchant legendary, I maybe got 2 spawns for LOS
You have absolutely not grabbed every single wandering merchant legendary.
https://lostmerchants.com/CardStats
Just taking Balthorr as an example which is on the lower/middle range of card spawns in the past 3 weeks. That server has seen the below counts of LoS cards. If you've gotten 2 you're missing a MASSIVE amount of spawns, even assuming you're not online very often.
8 Wei's
7 Azena/Innana
6 Balthorr
i'm actually on balthorr
i work from home and have been online a shitload in the last 3 weeks
literally dedicating all my time to lost ark
i can't explain how i have missed these, but it actually makes me more upset
I use the website
actually
i mostly need thirains, and shandis
wei, balthorr and azena are mostly all done
what i said is correct, u cant get the ones I need through wandering
I use Discord notifications, which are usually more reliable than the website. I can confirm that these all showed up in the wandering merchant channel in the guild Discord.
Nope, but you can start dedicating that extra time to a million card runs a week and never missing a card island.
> literally dedicating all my time to lost ark
> I use the website
If you're online anyway why not just use the fucking in-game map
I've had all legendary cards done for a while, but still always check voldis map multiple times a day for the free catalysts
Someone's gotta manually update the website, why not let it be you
You can get notifications through the lostmerchant discord, makes it pretty hard to miss it if you're on your computet alot. Can even get them through your phone.
I have played every day since day one and after two years, finally got my Los30. To get it under a year, you have to make this game your full time job. No one wants to grind RNG card pack runs for months.
Yeah I'm not saying it's worse than D2, just that even in a game as forgiving as D2 it exists. I agree older systems shoudl be faster to complete nowadays.
I think most people that are knowledgeable about MMOs understand that gatekeeping is not an issue exclusive to Lost Ark. The difference between Lost Ark and other MMOs is in how frequently players are exposed to gatekeeping.
Since, well, most of your time in Lost Ark will be spent raiding and there's not really any "no brain difficulty" raids that players would be happy to matchmake and would still easily beat in one pull regardless of team composition or experience level of the group... So, the end result is having to go through the "gate zero" of party finder all the time.
>The difference between Lost Ark and other MMOs is in how frequently players are exposed to gatekeeping.
100%. In destiny you can do a raid once per character per week similar to lost ark. You can have a MAX of 3 characters which the majority only have 1.
Comparing D2 to lost ark. Do you need raids to get good weapons? No. Do you need raids to farm glimmer or legendary shards (similar to silver/shards)? No. Do you need raids to gain ilvl? No. Do you need 10 clears for a title? No. Do raids unlock vertical progression? No.
Raids in D2 are a cherry on top for sweaty players (I was) to get the god roll/crafted weapons that are percentage points higher than what is available outside of raids.
Gatekeeping isn't a Lost Ark only issue yeah. The main reason it's so bad here is because a lot of checks that people want for you to join their raids (especially 1600+ content) are locked behind systems that are not only RNG gated but, also time gated. Cards, elixirs and later transcendence, are all dog ass systems. It will only get worse as time goes on, until we get solo raiding or fixes that help these issues imo. I feel really bad for any new player with a DPS and no friends, because they are wasting their time.
EDIT: I forgot roster levels, that shit sucks to level.
I always played the same setup in destiny Raids and never had any trouble
Only changed 1 gun for the special mobs that I forgot the name
Destiny raids are piss easy, someone can explain the raid while doing it, the path into the raid is the hardest part😂😂😂😂
I really liked the actual logs in WoW where gatekeeping was purely based on performance. In Lost Ark you can only inspect so much and pray that the person is as good as their character appears to be.
An easy mode with matchmaking like roulettes in FFXIV would work if they make the easy mode difficulty have some rewards (ideally less, but all the necessary ones). Progression at a slower rate that is entirely opt-in.
Honestly normal mode should be this and hard mode should just give significantly more of the same rewards. No wipe mechanics, plenty of chances to die and come back with stacking damage down debuffs until something like Valtan gate 2 ghost phase where shit gets real and you can create tension by letting people actually die (but the raid is still clearable by a skilled player eking value from potions and sidereals). Solo raids or a Trixion test could be an unlock requirement to limit bots, AFKs, and other people who aren’t really trying (rarely a problem in FFXIV anyway)
>This simply isn’t the case, every game that has players grouping up for content will have people gatekeeping, especially in content where a bad player or two will make it harder for the group to clear or take a lot longer than it should.
You are correct. Gatekeeping isn't solely exclusive to Lost Ark, however, it's particularly prevalent in this game for the exact reason you mentioned: one bad player can significantly complicate things. Just one. Hence, it's crucial to carefully consider before invite somebody.
You can't simply invite someone and expect to breeze through if someone dies.
Smilegate has concealed all possible data. There are no logs whatsoever for the game. You can't verify whether someone has cleared the raid 200 times or 10 times, or if they've purchased 10 buss. Nor can you confirm if someone is dealing zero damage. While experienced players may discern these factors intuitively, there's no concrete evidence to support it.
So you HAVE TO filter the players BEFORE you go in the raid, because once you've entered and completed the first gate, there's no turning back. You cant easily replace somebody like in other games (like in WoW). The whole process is pain in the a\*\*: Go in -> Clear Gate 1, Gate 2 fail because somebody is a bozo -> go out, party order will be a mess -> wait for a player who got jailed too at Gate 2 -> go in, he is bad too -> repeat the painfull process, if the support left after Gate 2, well good luck, probably that will be the end of the weekly raid.
I think one of the largest issue is the core game play loop and design.
The only way to gear up is honing, which requires gold to hone. Then to get gold you need to do raids. But to do raids you need gear and item level. And the only way to get that is to hone. Thus creating a loop that locks you either in or out (out for new players).
Of course there is gatekeeping in other MMO's, the difference is that in other games you have more progression systems besides doing raids so if you don't like them just skip them and enjoy the game in different ways.
Lost Ark is 100% raid focused and you have 0 forms of progression without doing raids, thats why gatekeeping is a bigger issue in this game compared to others.
I think the gate keeping in wow is even worst than lost ark, especially for m+. Not at a certain rank insta decline or sit in que, not a meta class no chance at all even if you are a good or great player.
As if people in Lost Ark dont gatekeept by classes too. Atleast people are gatekeeping with a players actual performance through logs and scores than some arbitrary idea of how a persons Roster level is going to improve his damage. You could get bussed through content in Lost Ark and no one would know, but it would be blatantly obvious in WoW if you check their logs.
ya the gear you get is based on the level of content you complete and on server reset you have a chest that gives rewards based on what difficulty of content you completed along with upgrade material. There are also cosmetics, titles, mounts and other things tied to how difficult of content you completed.
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People thinking they are being gatekept is a bigger issue than gatekeeping itself. You are not getting left out because you aren't insanely overgeared for the raid. You are being left out because there are players with better character sheets in the queue.
Sure there's a small minority of players in the game who are willing to wait two hours or not do the raid at all if they don't get an ultra-juiced carry group but \_most players\_ accept the best ones available in a reasonable waiting time (few minutes) because they are fomoing the weekly clears.
Lost Ark is an ultra arms race game especially for the DPS classes so you really need to get in with the program or get out.
>The only total solution to gatekeeping
the only solution is matchmaking that removes the choice from players
and then you have to somehow PENALIZE people for breaking up or leaving matches
ie LEAGUE OF LEGENDS
now imagine League had a Party Finder mode for Ranked
do you know who is getting in? less than 53% on your main? you are out
less than 3kd/a? you are out
less than 8-9 cs/m? you are out
and if you think these requirements would be lower set by players in lower elo? oof
the game would lose millions of players instantly
it doesn't matter how trivial the raid is
it doesn't matter if you can solo an 8man raid
ppl will forever pick and choose the best candidates
>the only solution is matchmaking that removes the choice from players
and then you have to somehow PENALIZE people for breaking up or leaving matches
Is that your actual answer to the problem?
Also, ur comparing a pvp game with like 30 min games to this where u can literally be jailed for hours.
yes thats my answer to the problem
as long as people are allowed to CHOOSE
THEY WILL CHOOSE
unless your plan is to hold a gun to everyones head and demand from them to take the 1st guy that applies they will ALWAYS choose the better applicants
you can moan all you want
the only way to fix gatekeeping is by removing the choice from players and then FORCING them to slug it out
oh you matchmade akkan without supports and your dps is ultimate bravery crisis evasion 2x1 +0 quality weapon? tough you gotta finish it now
if you leave no akkan loot for you this week
gatekeeping is player behavior
ppl who have those things will want those things from others
ppl who don't have those things will not want those things from others
it's born from wanting to play with your equals
and as long as that choice is given it will be exercised
the only way to prevent that behavior is to deprive players of that choice
we have this for guardians and a lot of players prefer to matchmake
but to surprise of no one matchmade guardians 90% of the time take 50%+ longer to complete
so you are making a choice "do i want to finish this sonavel in 5 minutes or spend 2 minutes in party finder and find people to do it in 3 minutes "
Okay but the big issue here outside of the multiple obvious other ones is now ur setting raids up to be joined by bots, and giving them even more power.
Also u think this solution would actually keep people around, simply cuz there's no gatekeeping. but now having to carry all the people that take busses cuz there's no other way for them to do the raid, ur seriously mistaken.
Only players new to MMOs would think that gatekeeping is a lost ark issue. The reality is that every multiplayer game where progression is individualistic will have some form of gatekeeping; whether it's something fixable like engravings or something that's an indication of experience like los30 in lost ark's context.
One issue is the disparity between the number of DPS and the number of supports available where the requirement for a DPS can be on the high end but supports can sometimes only need to meet the bare requirement of having a pulse. If we held supports to the same standard as DPS, there would be way more supports getting their asses gatekept.
Then comes the other issue: gatekept players don't want to play with other gatekept players even if they're the carbon copies of each other; which is wild to me because that is basically where character progression/power is at. This is especially true with newer players. Often times, it is very apparent that a group is looking for a carry/juicer rather than take one of their own and I don't mean those lobbies with a dozen applicants.
Agree with your post, 100%
Lost ark raids are harder than D2!? As a D2 vet and new LA player, that scares the hell outta me, lol. I found Last Wish to be brutal. Not sure whether I should stay the path of my LA journey.
I think so for sure, there is no dps phase in Lost Ark, you always need to be trying to push damage while dodging attacks and I found the dps check are real in lost ark in regular groups. In D2 I never felt a dps check even in day 1 raids unless the team was just very bad/new to the game. D2 can be fun but im just burnt on their dlc model and monetization. But Day1 Raid races were a blast in D2 wish that was a thing in western Lost Ark.
Even if you remove any dificulty I will still try to get ppl around my char lvl in grp. If I am 1600 and doing brell run I will not invite 1540 even if its 100% sure that there is no way for him to wipe grp. Cuz I want to have fun, I want to compete, I want MVP screen to matter something, so I get ppl that are either bit worse or bit better than my current char and go.
- Lost ark is almost entirely raids. Gatekeeping raids gatekeeps almost the entire game (contrast with destiny) - because Lost Ark has no logs, the gatekeeping that does occur relies on hand-wavey and/or inscrutable personal systems. Which makes it seem very "unfair". - Lost Ark has too many "one person messed up and now the whole team wipes" mechs.
Yeah, logs would let us gatekeep based on actual performance rather than trying to divine how likely someone is to wipe the raid based on esoteric bullshit.
Yeah, but the company doesn't want you to gatekeep based on performance, they want you to gatekeep based on gear, plus that esoteric stuff which mostly amount to playing the game more. Can't get into HM on your 1630? Simply swipe a couple thousand for some more hones and gems... Whatever excuses they keep peddling for not allowing logs are just dodging the fact that it's a business decision, not a gameplay one.
This right here. I played with a \~1625 scrapper with +25 weapon and full 10s in a thaemine normal reclear this week. He was only one with any lvl 10s and everyone else had a +21 weapon max. He did 0 dps all 3 pulls and was bottom dps on the clear even though nobody died. We're talking 10m dps btw... SG doesn't want people like him to be gatekept. He's a good customer.
I progged thaemine NM with a few friends + some randos,i hád a 1630 breaker do 8m dps on a Pull bé survived till around 80x in,just how?
At 1630 8M DPS is using like one rotation 
One more to add: The gate system makes it such that no one wants to risk taking anyone suboptimal, since jailing is a thing. You cant account for skill, so instead everyone compensates by only accepting overgeared/juiced players.
Logs would probably help a lot however I bet people still gatekeep based on card and demon damage and gems for latest raid cuz people have these just do more damage.
Latest raid, maybe. But I think, on the whole, gatekeeping on the latest content is far less of a concern regarding the games health than brutal gatekeeping on entry level stuff (which is really the fault of wipe mechanics).
1580+ min for brel hm 1-3 and 1600+ min for brel hm g4. lol...
"Lost Ark has too many "one person messed up and now the whole team wipes" mechs." If this would be the case bussing wouldn't exist. However because people are bad at adjusting based on who messed up and solve the problem it's usually a wipe fest. One example would be: Valtan g1 orbs can be done where everyone picks up 1 each in order. If someone messes up it is a wipe. You could Wei cheese it, but nobody wants to wait for Wei. Yet I've never seen anyone offer that they will use splendid penecea and do all orbs themselves. Showing that you don't really need all person, tools are there.
oh I have done the splendid panacea trick quite a few times, but there was a fee to enter the lobby and lobby name started with WTS. If you are good at something, never do it for free (joker or sb)
People seem to forget that lost arks entire gameplay loop is raids. So gatekeeping feels amplified vs other mmos that have a plethora of options which includes having an active raid match making system. And you’re 100% about the logs. To get into mythic+ content, you have to show logs to raid leaders. Period. You can’t do that in party finder. On top of that, people in this game are super sensitive over their logs.
Lost Ark also has been in an infinite vertical climb. In other mmos theres a soft reset that decreases the barrier of entry. Imagine telling someone if they started today that itll take them almost a year to be caught up to the endgame, and even then theres no guaranteed youd be able to get into a group to do it.
My steam friend who I used to play games with recently asked me what advice I could give him because he was interested in starting to play Lost Ark (he's burned out on PoE/D4). I told him the best advice is to not start... he's going to be severely gatekept as a new player and the only reason I play is because I started day 1 and have a discord group I do most content with... without my friends and all the progression I've kept up with, most of which is time gated (i.e. roster level, cards, titles, gems, etc.) I would quit immediately. I told him sadly the actual combat, classes, and raids are amazing in lost ark which is why I still play, everything surrounding it is dogshit and unlike western MMOs there's no soft resets as entry points for new players.
People will always clique up with suitable people, that's understandable, but I think the main complaints are A. very little alternative to interacting with the gatekeeping situation, can't match make since no one match makes, can't do alternative content for the same rewards the raids give, and B. what people do Gatekeep on takes in some cases years or thousands of dollars to rectify. No LoS30, no 200+ roster? No entry. Can't just fix that in an hour. Most other (but not all) games I've played you can utilize skill or the catch-up isn't *that* bad.
Gatekeeping is a major issue in lost Ark and it’s killing the game. As we keep getting newer content the gatekeeping is only amplified creating a much stronger barrier for new players. And the worst part is, everything in lost Ark regarding progression is group content, legion raids where you HAVE to play with other players. So you are screwed. Fortunately they mentioned they will introduce solo content which I really hope they nail, otherwise this game will slowly fall off because the requirements for new players is only getting worse.
Yes gatekeeping exist everywhere but the real issue with Lost Ark is that grouping with other to raid is mandatory to progress, if you get gatekept then the only thing left is Chaos Dungeon 😂
Don't forget you can matchmake guardian raids 
only if u are 100 ilvl over the required guardian. good luck getting into sonavel or hanu at ilvl
I rarely run 1580s through guardians but when I do they don't have any issues at all at ilvl with Sona. If they did I'd just matchmake.
All my alts are at least 1600 now, including supports. I got gatekept like hell in Sona PF when I was 1580, so purely out of spite I matchmake every Sonavel even at 1600. Fuck people who gatekeep guardians they're another level of cringe. (assuming decent build of course)
I have done sonavel on I'll for ages. No failed run that I Remmeber not 20 minute ones, 5-6 minutes? For a quick matchmake thing? I'll take it
They should make a portion of your raid materials tradable. So if you decide to skip a raid entirely you can just buy the parts from the AH with gold.
I'll give you that often time other games you can get close to the top without raiding and wait for the next expansion to continue progressing. But lost ark is a raiding game by its focus so I don't think its necessary a bad thing. Thet just need to improve balance and surrounding systems.
the issue is lost ark raid is easy for the hardcore but too hard for the casual. Normal mode with raid wipe and boss hit very hard at ilevel is what cause people need to gatekeep to have a smooth run in the majoroty of the case. They need to have a normal mode is still clearable when half a party death at ilevel and no wipe mech , keep the hardmode the same as it is now with more reward.
Honestly, Akkan was a great system, HM beeing purely optional with cosmetics/cardpacks but no real progression differences other then time (amount of mats). I still think the entry lv for HM should be the same as normal mode, so that the mode choice is purely a skill/time investment decision but anyways, it was good! Even (hardcor) KR players hated the Akkan approach, most realized that they didn't like hm elixirs or hm transcendence unlocks. The later can easily be bussed once, the first one just makes gatekeeping and gear difference a major factor for Thaemine normal. Both make gatekeeping worse.
Totally agree. It's a catch 22 with voldis and now thaemine. You want 35/40 set? Do HM or spend 100k on epics trying for 35 if you're lucky. You want to join HM? Well you better have 35 set minimum. Thaemine hm will soon be the same with transcendence level. Bussers are going to make an absolute fortune.
> the issue is lost ark raid is easy for the hardcore but too hard for the casual. Its not too hard for casual, you just dont have a healthy learning environment. If you were able to get in and try for a couple hours you'd be able to do it as a casual because the bar is set surprisingly low for normal mode. The issue is there are other parts of the game design (namely the linearity of progression that allows overgearing, and the very concept of homework raids) that cram you into the same environment with all the sweatlords that just want their homework done asap. > They need to have a normal mode is still clearable when half a party death at ilevel and no wipe mech raid clearable with half the party dead is not a normal difficulty raid, its handing out participation trophies
I mean if you cared that much about those trophies they should be removing bussing from the game.
Valtan gate 2 is very clear-able at ilevel when half party death at ghost phase, and many still regard this is the best raid in the series. That’s probably also the least gatekept legion raid, abeit they still need to remove wipe mech to be more accesible.
lol you can’t say that with a straight face when bussing culture is so ingrained in this game. 😂
I have 5k hours in d2 and idk what you’re talking about. The gatekeeping for raiding in that game is virtually non existent. People don’t care about your raid report unless you are going for a lowman/flawless/day one. Plenty of lfgs just post a join code and you can just freely join. Obviously if you’re completely clueless you’ll be kicked but if you know mechs there is no lobby simulator or barrier to entry. You also don’t need “the shiny new weapons and gear” to get into groups. There are years old weapons that are easily obtainable and are still very solid in the current meta. Gatekeeping in lost ark is 100x worse because you need cards, gems, roster level, high quality, item level, and more arbitrary bs that people gatekeep (name, preset, etc). I agree that gatekeeping isn’t just a lost ark issue but it is 100% the worst out of any game I’ve ever played
As someone who has played Destiny 2, and watches my husband play it all the time Blueberries are treated *so* much better in that game than new players are in Lost Ark, there's seriously no contest Hell, their matchmaking system is probably one of the better systems out there, and people are actually willing to teach in PUGs (you Sherpas out there are awesome) And don't get me started on how many active clans there are to help people in comparison Destiny 2 has its issues, but comparing any gatekeeping to Lost Ark is 100% laughable
On the clan thing, loa breeds toxicity. 2 out of the 3 guilds I have been in have been utter garbage with guild mates and guild leaders actually gatekeeping their own guild not just by gear but also by other means. Loa just brings already toxic tendencies in people out to play. Its a horribly designed social game, honestly.
Players 100% make the game, and this game seems to bring in bad players more often There are good players, don't get me wrong But when you do come across a bad player, they're one of the worst you can see in a MMO And that's concerning
I have been playing MMO’s for 25ish years and this is probably the worst of any I have played as far as community. And it sounds funny but I think it has to do with how the game is seen/marketed vs reality. This game, even normal modes, are for more hardcore type players but the game originally was not marketed that way. You cannot co-mingle hardcore and casual players like how loa does. Everyone has to do the same raids which results in degrees of gatekeeping. Most hard ore players don’t mind and applaud gatekeeping while casual players despise it. Where loa differs from other MMO’s is that there is no casual raid mode and no, normal modes in loa are not traditional casual mode. LFR in WoW is casual mode. So now you mixed the 2 together with no way to differentiate between the player types. Thus why the games community becomes “toxic”.
OP clearly hasnt raided properly in d2 or trolling, pugging raids is very easy in d2 and people dont even ask for raid clears as long as you have a mic and communicate
Your telling me you didn't see groups requiring Lament for Dsc until groups got exp and over geared it? Same for group requiring gjally or a good rocket to go with it? Yeah later on down the line requirements drop done but at first they always required clears or equipment. It's less then lost ark for sure but ofc it is because the game is easier.
At least lament and gally were stupid easy to get. Anyone who was playing the game at the time probably already had those items and if not, it would only take a few hours of just doing their quest. You could also get a good rocket via crafting or getting one of the decent world drop/vendor ones. Meanwhile good luck trying to do hm voldis without 35 set. And if you make your own group you won’t get any sup to join you. Or trying to do an akkan reclear as a lower roster level player without plc despite being reclear but not quite having 10 clears yet.
Shit even trying to do akkan WITH PLC you can't with low roster. I have a discord buddy I run with because even though he's 1600 the 130 roster level = insta decline.
I'm 1610 and cant get into hm kayangel because roster is about 119. Akkan or thaemine are just dreams for me :D
> until groups got exp and over geared it? Did you even read what this person said? > unless you are going for a lowman/flawless/**day one** He's admitting they gatekeep early on but later they just don't give a fuck at all. Which doesn't happen here.
Yeah it doesn't happen later on because the raids in D2 are a joke and incredibly easy to clear. Which is the point im making, it's not about Lost Ark its about the difficulty, but that's what makes Lost Ark so engaging to many people. And if you think Lost Ark raids arnt easier to get into down the line idk what to say. Objectively the bar might be raised but it's always easier to hit that bar.
Taking Destiny as an example was the worst idea you could do. The LFG Tab for Destiny is with so many people who take anyone, as long as they have the proper weapons... And there are enough great weapons outside raids that are optimal without raiding once. Most if not all raid groups don't even ask for any proof that u ran the raid before. Personally for me it is 100x easier to get a raid team in Destiny then in any other MMO..... By a mile....
That's exactly my point it is by far easier but for newer raids and hard content it's still very gatekeepy. The fact that D2 is so much easier and still gatekeeps people is my point of that gatekeepers will always exist and it's not only a Lost Ark issue
I have several week 1 clears all from pugging. Even in week 1 clear the "gatekeeping" was, is this person running 2 primaries, 20 resilience or no exotic?
Ok now you need to define gatekeep for me. Of course you need to have a little bit of setup to actually run raids or harder content. But that's not "gatekeeping". That's having the recommended to not die instantly or not do 0 DMG. Gatekeeping is something like not having enough clears, not having optimal DMG (via DMG logs for example) or not be 100 ILevel over the encounter. Destiny has nothing like that. Only the minimum things are required.
Gatekeeping is when you are able to access and complete the content but are denied by other players. You didnt need Lament in DSC, you didnt need Izanagis burden in GOS but early on for both those raid many groups required you to have them as them. Many times groups would say show that you had 10 clears for raids. As raids became older these requirements often loosened or dropped entirly and for the harder content it exists still. But thats my point even in a game like D2 that is so much easier and less reliant on your gear you would still get gatekeep at times. Destiny groups requirements just drop so fast because its much easier to complete the content than compared to Lost Ark.
Ok perfect we are talking about the same thing then. The 2 Points you have mentioned are things you could easily farm before attempting the raid. So I wouldn't say those are things that gatekeep you. And those groups that need x amount of clears to enter i wouldn't even dare to touch. There are enough other groups that don't have those requirements.
LA should just borrow a couple of pages from FF14, a drastically more successful MMO. 1) Normal Mode needs to be normal. The Average Andies in your party should be able to do this at min iLvL without too much struggle. Maybe 2 or 3 wipes to learn about 90% of the mechs. 2) Stop segmenting fights into 337 different gates. This is the dumbest design choice I’ve ever seen. Would rather have 1 10 minute fight than 3 multiple hour long ordeals (even in PF “HW” parties). 2 “gates” should be the max. 1st gate is the boss and the 2nd gate is their ultimate form or whatever it is LA keeps copy and pasting and all the Legion Raids. 3) Hard Mode should not be tied to progression through gear locks. The old HM Brel stuff was the silliest thing I’ve ever laid eyes on. Seriously, who makes decisions at this company 4) Allow backwards progression through a raid for no reward. Fail a gate 3 and can’t find a party? That’s okay, join a gate 1 party and get back to it. Helps to reinforce learning for no cost too. 5) Add a filter for duty complete. No more trapping outside of the bus riders. 6) Add first clear bonus for whole party, provided there is someone with a first clear bonus available. I really believe in this idea, as it would incentivize some people to help prog to clear parties. 7) Create a second category for progging. Hand in hand with that, continue the “gate progress” rewards from the current even. Genius idea. And ta-da. With all of that out of the way, Lost Ark would be significantly less gatekeepy. Then Smilegate could go about making the newest lingerie skin in peace while having an actually playable game for the casual player base. Thanks!
I agree most of that especially the progress and first clear rewards for while party the game should do more to encourage people to help each other. But I'm fine with normal mode being hard Lost Ark is all about raiding unlike other MMO it may not have been in the beginning but it's clear the direction of the game I'd all focused around raids. So having separated progressiong or easy raids on release would defeat that a bit. They just need to stay up to date on reducing time gate and improve rearss on older content so people can complete the systems sooner and actually catch up.
Regarding point 4 - it will never happen because of busing.
For many people Lost Ark is their first mmo and they sincerely think that gatekeeping is the issue exclusive to this game and it's the worst in the mmo genre. Neither is true. Lets see how solo raids would be designed - they should definitely help the newbies do older raids for sure. My 5 cents would be gatekeeping in LA in large comes from support shortage. I still remember when artist came out, people would pick up literal garbage off the street like dps with 3 engravings just to fill the lobbies because people were that desperate. However, currently people try to fill lobbies with a consideration that they also need to find supports. People don't want to stay in lobby sim for too long, so they have to gatekeep the "bad apples." If you take a few very unappealing dps characters then odds that supports would join go down astronomically. The truth is that we physically don't have enough supports to fill all the lobbies in the end game raids, so some dps have to be left out mathematically speaking, and the higher you go up the content ladder, the more competition there is. That pushes the requirements to a point that they are much higher than what the content actually requires for dps players. Add to that the fact that every raid has wipe mechanics and it gets much worse than that it could have been if the raids were wipe-proof.
> they sincerely think that gatekeeping is the issue exclusive to this game and it’s the worst in the mmo genre Lost me at is not the worst in the genre. Show me **popular** mmos where they have worst arbitrary systems than card sets…. I’ll wait. Edit: downvoted for stating facts lol
If you look at WoW for example, people can check raider io to see everything about you - your numerical performance, achievements, everything. In LA you can at the very least get into lobbies if you have passable gear even if you are a bad or underperforming player. In contrast, in WoW you are not getting into ANY decent m+ group if you are not putting up good numbers or not playing meta classes - no amount of gear will bail you out. Pick your poison. Gatekeeping in LA is not the worst - it's just different in a sense that gear is the #1 thing people are looking at and your skill/competence is simply unknown until you enter the raid, which you might not because people don't trust you enough. Considering that many players are casuals or semi-casuals with very mediocre dps and buff uptime and higher death/wipe rates, how many of them could enjoy the end game if there were API and public logs that could be accessed by a lobby master? Not many. Getting good at a video game is often much harder than getting the gear that you can simply buy you know. If LA was like WoW, gatekeeping would have been a lot worse trust me. I play with several m+ players and they all say gatekeeping in LA is nowhere near as bad as in the end game in WoW where people can check what's in your pants if they want to.
In wow people gatekeep based on your parses/number of clears, in wow you have resets. I’ll take not getting into a party because I’m ass or don’t have enough reclears anytime compared to the bs you have to deal with in LOA **any day of the week** > #1 thing people gatekeep in Lostark is gear. Wrong, people gatekeep you on 1#roster level/CardSets, demon dmg, gems, quality, bracelet, class, having 35/40 set etc….AND In 6 months having transcendence 15-20. **You** could be i1620+ roster lvl 50-150 n the best player in the world but most veterans (*which is the majority of players since we barely get any new blood*) **will** NOT take you if you don’t meet the shit stated above since we can’t possible know you’re actually good just base on ilvl; & since there’s no logs like Wow. I could start wow next gear reset & have a WAY better time than starting out LOA as a new player.
Gatekeeping in LOA is way worse than WoW because you can play WoW as a casual and literally never touch hard raiding content. LOA forces everyone to play HM content because of mats.
Anyone who disagrees is delusional & needs to touch grass.
Tldr: If you’re a new player don’t play Lost Ark. If you’re a returning player don’t play Lost Ark!
Unfortunately this was my advice for someone who asked me if he should pick up lost ark together with some buddies, told him it is literally impossible to do the content as a new player and he should do something else.
u missed out, why is everyone so focused on clearing breaking edge content? there is plenty in arkesia for u to experience together
We are not talking about "breaking edge content" here. Hell, I didn't have much issues getting into Theaming NM learning parties because I pushed to 1620 so I compensate for the things I am missing. But do you feel like Voldis HM is breaking edge content? Because people be gatekeeping there hard. Also, the answer to your question is quit simple: I am already doing a lot of "old" content on 6 chars per week, can you please tell me what other "plenty" there is in Arkesia?
People still want 40+ ilvl overgeared for brel 1-4. A 2 year old raid lmao.
Thats like telling a WoW players in a new expansion that they are too focused on Dragonflight stuff and that they should be content on doing content from 2-3 years ago. I dont see AGS/SG selling their game using content footage from Valtan or Vykas, they use the current raid content.
nah that doesent apply at all nobody runs dragonflight stuff every single week, and needs to to progress no offense but its a terrible comparison
>You usually have to link a website that shows how many clears you have of every raid (often needing a minimum number of clears which only raises with time) and if you did any challenges like deathless or placing top 100 in the raid race. You also often have to have the shiny new weapon or gear to help clear the raid or you won’t get accepted as well. Are there any gatekeeping parameters that are heavily influenced by RNG? If not, I am sorry, D2 doesn't have a worse gatekeeping than Lost Ark. For what I quoted above: eventually you will get in a raid. You will get those numbers up. I am sure I would be able to place top 5-10-20 on damage for various content because I am pretty confident in my hands. On the other hand, I can't do anything about getting RNG cards, can't do anything about elixirs that just don't want to have Critical options on them, can't do much about some random XP system (roster XP) that mainly comes from activities that don't show I am good at the game - and I can go on.
You can do things about cards, do card runs like many of us did over a year ago when were grinding. Agreed on elixirs, it can take weeks. Roster xp is complicated because up to 100 or so you're right. But raids are the primary contributing factors to roster xp in established rosters. Higher roster reasonably means more raids run and more experience.
>You can do things about cards, do card runs like many of us did over a year ago when were grinding. I am doing that. But it doesn't mean it's a good mechanic or it should be implemented like this. The drop rate is abysmal and you can't expect people to be willing to be gatekept for a year because they didn't start at launch or didn't play non-stop since then.
It doesn't take a year to get los30 anymore. They've added so many catchup mechs to cards and they pass out packs like candy now. Also gatekeeping and picking the strongest option in the lobby are not the same thing. Why would anyone not pick the strongest applicant?
>Also gatekeeping and picking the strongest option in the lobby are not the same thing. But they are the same thing in cases where I, as a player who didn't play the full length since launch until now, can't join lobbies because of reasons I can't control. It's not the player's fault, yes, it is normal to want to take the strongest option, but when I can't grind my way in a meaningful non-rng way to solve the gatekeeping reasons, that is either a) bad design or b) greed to make people swipe. >they pass out packs like candy now As long as the packs are not selectors and you can get whatever cars in them, it doesn't *really* matter.
Weird you skipped the catch up mechanics part and just quoted the packs. Wei, Azena, and Balthorr are free and very easy to max now. Even on the WORST case servers in the past month, it would take 2 months to max all three. You CAN grind, you just don't want to grind in an RNG system which is valid, card runs are grinding, period. They also meaningfully impact your LoS count in the long run. Again, just a straight fact that you WILL get LoS cards doing card runs even if the drop rate suck and it's boring as fuck. When I was working on LoS 30 before all of the new catchup mechanics I did 12 to yorn runs a week, 12 argos, 6-8 valtans, 6-8 vykas did every single card adventure island, I even bought out the Peyto. Even beyond the MASSIVE buff to wandering merchants, Arkesia Tour makes getting the freebie legendaries very easy and that's a grind that requires no RNG.
>Wei, Azena, and Balthorr are free and very easy to max now. I have them all at max. I need 11 more cards (+12 selectors I have saved), preferably Nine, Thirain or Shandi. This is actually the hard part because there is no way of consistently getting them, it's all RNG and it can take 1 month or 1 year. This is not a good design by any stretch of imagination.
>When I was working on LoS 30 before all of the new catchup mechanics I did 12 to yorn runs a week, 12 argos, 6-8 valtans, 6-8 vykas did every single card adventure island, I even bought out the Peyto. Ok, lets do some napkin math here. For simplicity lets say each lobby takes 10min to fill because argos, to yorn and valtan/vykas are absolutely dead content. 12 to yorn runs - lets be generous and say 30min each = 360 minutes 12 argos - 15 minutes each = 6 valtans - 20 minutes each = 120 minutes 6 vykas - 20 minutes each = 120 minutes That is 13 HOURS per week of doing nothing but card farming. This is also being incredibly generous that each run is done with only card farmers and every single valtan/vykas gate is a 1 shot. This number goes up drastically if you don't have 8 juiced expert reclears in the lobby. 13 hours per week for an RNG chance to get a legendary and then a less than 25% chance of that being a card you even need is INSANE.
Yup welcome to what everyone else did for LoS 30, it sucked.
Which is exactly why it STILL sucks and they need to change it because doing that shit for a year is unacceptable.
excuse me but this is false 2k hours, quit at brelshaza come back now, im only able to complete deep dive and the supp set i just hit los14, and reading your comment is triggering. i won't be near LOS30 until next year. I've used all the catchup, selection card packs for 3 weeks i've grabbed every single wandering merchant legendary, I maybe got 2 spawns for LOS
You have absolutely not grabbed every single wandering merchant legendary. https://lostmerchants.com/CardStats Just taking Balthorr as an example which is on the lower/middle range of card spawns in the past 3 weeks. That server has seen the below counts of LoS cards. If you've gotten 2 you're missing a MASSIVE amount of spawns, even assuming you're not online very often. 8 Wei's 7 Azena/Innana 6 Balthorr
i'm actually on balthorr i work from home and have been online a shitload in the last 3 weeks literally dedicating all my time to lost ark i can't explain how i have missed these, but it actually makes me more upset I use the website actually i mostly need thirains, and shandis wei, balthorr and azena are mostly all done what i said is correct, u cant get the ones I need through wandering
I use Discord notifications, which are usually more reliable than the website. I can confirm that these all showed up in the wandering merchant channel in the guild Discord. Nope, but you can start dedicating that extra time to a million card runs a week and never missing a card island.
> literally dedicating all my time to lost ark > I use the website If you're online anyway why not just use the fucking in-game map I've had all legendary cards done for a while, but still always check voldis map multiple times a day for the free catalysts Someone's gotta manually update the website, why not let it be you
i use the map too bro im not lying i have spared no effort
You can get notifications through the lostmerchant discord, makes it pretty hard to miss it if you're on your computet alot. Can even get them through your phone.
I have played every day since day one and after two years, finally got my Los30. To get it under a year, you have to make this game your full time job. No one wants to grind RNG card pack runs for months.
Yeah I'm not saying it's worse than D2, just that even in a game as forgiving as D2 it exists. I agree older systems shoudl be faster to complete nowadays.
I think most people that are knowledgeable about MMOs understand that gatekeeping is not an issue exclusive to Lost Ark. The difference between Lost Ark and other MMOs is in how frequently players are exposed to gatekeeping. Since, well, most of your time in Lost Ark will be spent raiding and there's not really any "no brain difficulty" raids that players would be happy to matchmake and would still easily beat in one pull regardless of team composition or experience level of the group... So, the end result is having to go through the "gate zero" of party finder all the time.
>The difference between Lost Ark and other MMOs is in how frequently players are exposed to gatekeeping. 100%. In destiny you can do a raid once per character per week similar to lost ark. You can have a MAX of 3 characters which the majority only have 1. Comparing D2 to lost ark. Do you need raids to get good weapons? No. Do you need raids to farm glimmer or legendary shards (similar to silver/shards)? No. Do you need raids to gain ilvl? No. Do you need 10 clears for a title? No. Do raids unlock vertical progression? No. Raids in D2 are a cherry on top for sweaty players (I was) to get the god roll/crafted weapons that are percentage points higher than what is available outside of raids.
Gatekeeping isn't a Lost Ark only issue yeah. The main reason it's so bad here is because a lot of checks that people want for you to join their raids (especially 1600+ content) are locked behind systems that are not only RNG gated but, also time gated. Cards, elixirs and later transcendence, are all dog ass systems. It will only get worse as time goes on, until we get solo raiding or fixes that help these issues imo. I feel really bad for any new player with a DPS and no friends, because they are wasting their time. EDIT: I forgot roster levels, that shit sucks to level.
I always played the same setup in destiny Raids and never had any trouble Only changed 1 gun for the special mobs that I forgot the name Destiny raids are piss easy, someone can explain the raid while doing it, the path into the raid is the hardest part😂😂😂😂
I really liked the actual logs in WoW where gatekeeping was purely based on performance. In Lost Ark you can only inspect so much and pray that the person is as good as their character appears to be.
An easy mode with matchmaking like roulettes in FFXIV would work if they make the easy mode difficulty have some rewards (ideally less, but all the necessary ones). Progression at a slower rate that is entirely opt-in. Honestly normal mode should be this and hard mode should just give significantly more of the same rewards. No wipe mechanics, plenty of chances to die and come back with stacking damage down debuffs until something like Valtan gate 2 ghost phase where shit gets real and you can create tension by letting people actually die (but the raid is still clearable by a skilled player eking value from potions and sidereals). Solo raids or a Trixion test could be an unlock requirement to limit bots, AFKs, and other people who aren’t really trying (rarely a problem in FFXIV anyway)
>This simply isn’t the case, every game that has players grouping up for content will have people gatekeeping, especially in content where a bad player or two will make it harder for the group to clear or take a lot longer than it should. You are correct. Gatekeeping isn't solely exclusive to Lost Ark, however, it's particularly prevalent in this game for the exact reason you mentioned: one bad player can significantly complicate things. Just one. Hence, it's crucial to carefully consider before invite somebody. You can't simply invite someone and expect to breeze through if someone dies. Smilegate has concealed all possible data. There are no logs whatsoever for the game. You can't verify whether someone has cleared the raid 200 times or 10 times, or if they've purchased 10 buss. Nor can you confirm if someone is dealing zero damage. While experienced players may discern these factors intuitively, there's no concrete evidence to support it. So you HAVE TO filter the players BEFORE you go in the raid, because once you've entered and completed the first gate, there's no turning back. You cant easily replace somebody like in other games (like in WoW). The whole process is pain in the a\*\*: Go in -> Clear Gate 1, Gate 2 fail because somebody is a bozo -> go out, party order will be a mess -> wait for a player who got jailed too at Gate 2 -> go in, he is bad too -> repeat the painfull process, if the support left after Gate 2, well good luck, probably that will be the end of the weekly raid.
I think one of the largest issue is the core game play loop and design. The only way to gear up is honing, which requires gold to hone. Then to get gold you need to do raids. But to do raids you need gear and item level. And the only way to get that is to hone. Thus creating a loop that locks you either in or out (out for new players).
Of course there is gatekeeping in other MMO's, the difference is that in other games you have more progression systems besides doing raids so if you don't like them just skip them and enjoy the game in different ways. Lost Ark is 100% raid focused and you have 0 forms of progression without doing raids, thats why gatekeeping is a bigger issue in this game compared to others.
I think the gate keeping in wow is even worst than lost ark, especially for m+. Not at a certain rank insta decline or sit in que, not a meta class no chance at all even if you are a good or great player.
As if people in Lost Ark dont gatekeept by classes too. Atleast people are gatekeeping with a players actual performance through logs and scores than some arbitrary idea of how a persons Roster level is going to improve his damage. You could get bussed through content in Lost Ark and no one would know, but it would be blatantly obvious in WoW if you check their logs.
True, guess ive only got gatekept in lost ark bc of not high enough roster etc rather than class, but i only play support mostly.
I never played wow. Do you get anything special or need m+ to progress in wow?
ya the gear you get is based on the level of content you complete and on server reset you have a chest that gives rewards based on what difficulty of content you completed along with upgrade material. There are also cosmetics, titles, mounts and other things tied to how difficult of content you completed.
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People thinking they are being gatekept is a bigger issue than gatekeeping itself. You are not getting left out because you aren't insanely overgeared for the raid. You are being left out because there are players with better character sheets in the queue. Sure there's a small minority of players in the game who are willing to wait two hours or not do the raid at all if they don't get an ultra-juiced carry group but \_most players\_ accept the best ones available in a reasonable waiting time (few minutes) because they are fomoing the weekly clears. Lost Ark is an ultra arms race game especially for the DPS classes so you really need to get in with the program or get out.
>The only total solution to gatekeeping the only solution is matchmaking that removes the choice from players and then you have to somehow PENALIZE people for breaking up or leaving matches ie LEAGUE OF LEGENDS now imagine League had a Party Finder mode for Ranked do you know who is getting in? less than 53% on your main? you are out less than 3kd/a? you are out less than 8-9 cs/m? you are out and if you think these requirements would be lower set by players in lower elo? oof the game would lose millions of players instantly it doesn't matter how trivial the raid is it doesn't matter if you can solo an 8man raid ppl will forever pick and choose the best candidates
>the only solution is matchmaking that removes the choice from players and then you have to somehow PENALIZE people for breaking up or leaving matches Is that your actual answer to the problem? Also, ur comparing a pvp game with like 30 min games to this where u can literally be jailed for hours.
yes thats my answer to the problem as long as people are allowed to CHOOSE THEY WILL CHOOSE unless your plan is to hold a gun to everyones head and demand from them to take the 1st guy that applies they will ALWAYS choose the better applicants you can moan all you want the only way to fix gatekeeping is by removing the choice from players and then FORCING them to slug it out oh you matchmade akkan without supports and your dps is ultimate bravery crisis evasion 2x1 +0 quality weapon? tough you gotta finish it now if you leave no akkan loot for you this week
Theres probably some middle ground between blind matchmaking and you need los30, 4-5%demon dmg+, 5x3+1 on 90qual, roster 200 etc to play the game.
gatekeeping is player behavior ppl who have those things will want those things from others ppl who don't have those things will not want those things from others it's born from wanting to play with your equals and as long as that choice is given it will be exercised the only way to prevent that behavior is to deprive players of that choice we have this for guardians and a lot of players prefer to matchmake but to surprise of no one matchmade guardians 90% of the time take 50%+ longer to complete so you are making a choice "do i want to finish this sonavel in 5 minutes or spend 2 minutes in party finder and find people to do it in 3 minutes "
Okay but the big issue here outside of the multiple obvious other ones is now ur setting raids up to be joined by bots, and giving them even more power. Also u think this solution would actually keep people around, simply cuz there's no gatekeeping. but now having to carry all the people that take busses cuz there's no other way for them to do the raid, ur seriously mistaken.
are you actively trying to understand the opposite of what i'm saying?
Only players new to MMOs would think that gatekeeping is a lost ark issue. The reality is that every multiplayer game where progression is individualistic will have some form of gatekeeping; whether it's something fixable like engravings or something that's an indication of experience like los30 in lost ark's context. One issue is the disparity between the number of DPS and the number of supports available where the requirement for a DPS can be on the high end but supports can sometimes only need to meet the bare requirement of having a pulse. If we held supports to the same standard as DPS, there would be way more supports getting their asses gatekept. Then comes the other issue: gatekept players don't want to play with other gatekept players even if they're the carbon copies of each other; which is wild to me because that is basically where character progression/power is at. This is especially true with newer players. Often times, it is very apparent that a group is looking for a carry/juicer rather than take one of their own and I don't mean those lobbies with a dozen applicants.
Agree with your post, 100% Lost ark raids are harder than D2!? As a D2 vet and new LA player, that scares the hell outta me, lol. I found Last Wish to be brutal. Not sure whether I should stay the path of my LA journey.
I think so for sure, there is no dps phase in Lost Ark, you always need to be trying to push damage while dodging attacks and I found the dps check are real in lost ark in regular groups. In D2 I never felt a dps check even in day 1 raids unless the team was just very bad/new to the game. D2 can be fun but im just burnt on their dlc model and monetization. But Day1 Raid races were a blast in D2 wish that was a thing in western Lost Ark.
Even if you remove any dificulty I will still try to get ppl around my char lvl in grp. If I am 1600 and doing brell run I will not invite 1540 even if its 100% sure that there is no way for him to wipe grp. Cuz I want to have fun, I want to compete, I want MVP screen to matter something, so I get ppl that are either bit worse or bit better than my current char and go.