Stop lying to yourselves and lying to other people
I wasn't really planning to post anything, just lurking the subreddit checking patch notes/kr notes
Sigh here we go with the disclaimers again
wHy NoT jUsT rEpLy To ThE tHrEaD
Bots are setup to literally censor certain comments from even existing, you can hate my takes all you want but sometimes the downvotes literally don't make sense, case in point its not just me:
Random returning player asking about PVP being downvoted to negative and a LOT of other instances where this happens.
Regardless, lets get into this.
Multiple people in his thread already addressed the issue.
ACTUAL new players, not returning players or alt rosters, have an experience like this:
They join the game, get a free boost to tier 4, are absolutely clueless about combat mechanics since they didn't have the years of experience we had as players who played since launch, get boosted by endgame players in raids for mokoko tokens, and as soon as they hit 1700, their progression halts to almost nothing.
Just as an example, raising an alt of mine from 1688 to 1700, without buying any fusions or additional materials from the AH, cost me a million gold.
Even if I was unlucky and the average is way lower than that, 1700-1720 is an insanely costly honing phase.
Once you're past that, then you need to actually work on endgame player stuff, which is relic books, high mid accessories, lvl 8 gems, the usual stuff I complained about in a million threads.
So the most realistic thing is this:
New player joins > gets a bunch of free carries > has 0 progression available to him as he doesn't have an established roster > quits or somehow ends up in the 0.00002% that ends up whaling to gear up.
The thing that the author of that thread forgets to tell you is this:
No new player wants to stay a new player forever.
None of us who played the game and stayed playing did that.
We all want to be at endgame, some of us not at the extreme (multi-roster, rmt, swiping thousands of dollars etc), but we still want to play endgame content.
Before western launch most players/streamers who played in KR RU JP told you that the game IS pay to win but that the pay to win isn't that bad and that you can keep up with the game, and that was a real statement, no one lied.
Valtan-Vykas-Clown you could keep up at least one character ready for the next raid if you played a normal amount, hardcore players had 6x 1475 at that point
The power gap between a +25 weapon and an esther weapon that cost tens of thousands of dollars isn't as big of a power gap as say a 2000 combat score player vs a 5000 combat score player.
I want you to read that again, as insane as the cost of an esther weapon is, relic books, lvl 10 tier 4 gems, min maxing your karma to max level, and min maxing your arc grid are more expensive.
We didn't care about esther weapons because zeals (an esther weapon owner) was getting out dps'd by good players, and at the end of the day we all did the same content.
Its not the same anymore.
No you CANNOT join raids being ''average'' anymore.
Back in the day a 10x title or decent gear could get you accepted, now the bare minimum is a yellow title (first month clear, SS/CC/DI) or being pretty overgeared.
https://www.reddit.com/r/lostarkgame/comments/10dz8zp/to_those_lobby_who_already_requires_phantom/
Funnily enough, even 10x title was too much back in the day, and people actively gatekept you if you didn't have it.
You know what this did to the game?
-239,537 players in a matter of less than 5 months
Brel HM gatekeeping practically removed the entire playerbase lol
This is where even as someone who really likes gold river, this was one of his BIGGEST mistakes.
Compare that to the new gatekeeping, which is combat score and frontier titles.
Old titles used to take 10 weeks on a single character, 5 weeks on 2 characters, etc
So you could realistically ''get there'' at some point.
Frontier titles just make it so that you never get there.
If you don't fomo hone your character to be ''strong enough'' to prog week 1, you're essentially never doing that raid until it becomes irrelevant.
It took an entire YEAR for people to stop gatekeeping brel HM based on frontier titles.
If you disagree with me, post a screenshot of yourself or anyone you know getting into kazeros HM lobby without a frontier title or crazy high combat score, without being invited by a premade or a friend.
So what does this all mean?
So those ''new players'' you're so concerned about are eventually gonna be here, with us, and they're gonna feel the struggle and end up just quitting.
Criticizing games works, look at maplestory, look at WoW after the backlash they got from shadowlands, the game is objectively better now.
Here, even a recent example, had we not all gone super mad on the subreddit, you wouldn't have the balance patch tomorrow, you'd be waiting till a month from now.
I am not sure if this is ags doing this (cause they did collaborate with the subreddit after shutting down their forum and hiding in discord) or its RMT sellers panick downvoting any criticism of the game.
I've said this before, I will say it again:
People who love something will criticize it so it gets better, people who are indifferent will just move on to the next ''new game'' that gets them views/cash.
I moved on to Aion 2 because its literally the only game in 2026 with decent graphics and combat.
I don't care if WOW or OSRS aren't ''as pay to win'', im not paying a subscription to play 2005 graphics and terrible combat (OSRS im referring to, WOW has decent tab target)
After MONTHS of thread after thread after thread trying to send feedback to the devs, trying to push for change, trying to hopefully get someone to fix a game I love.
I get called mentally ill, insane, dumb, regarded, and all sorts of other shit for literally providing feedback on a video game I love.
If you love a game and want the ''positivity'' to come back, maybe ask the devs to actually make the game good again so people have something to be positive about.
I recently thought oh maybe if they announce some changes in the next dev livestream for lost ark I'll come back, since the roadmap is only until march.
Then I saw this:
Its something like 27 million gold to go from +20 to +25
''Oh finally I have my relic books finished, and arc grid too, that was awful... Oh wait, I have to spend 27m gold to get my weapon to +25 again''
yOu DoNt NeEd +25
Syla is by no means a ''bad player'', and bro is 5400 combat power.
So yeah, I am not saying to just be a negative person, I hate that as much as everyone does, you can check the Aion 2 subreddit and see how awful it is with ''THIS GAME IS PAY TO WIN TRASH'' every comment and every post.
But if you don't riot against these changes the playerbase will shrink to nothing.
Instead of a hard reset on gear (you can keep gems and relic books so the ''investors'' aren't mad), they just add another soft gear reset.
The more we keep tolerating this crap the worse and worse the world will get.
Tolerating price hikes due to ''inflation'' made basic products 5x the price they were a few years ago, big corporations are literally making basic hardware unpurchaseable unless you're omega-rich.
A 32GB DDR5 ram was going for like 150 euros last year, today its 700 euros.
Stop defending corporations, you're not making money out of it, and even if you are, eventually you'll be too poor to afford that shit too.
Posted Jan 14, 2026, 3:15 AM UTC