Jack-jg9db: After they launched the serca matchmaking mode I can finally invite my friends to play this game

ArchonW: "Timing matters"

Yep, like I said before elsewhere, Smilegate's fixes are like dumping gallons of water on someone that already died in the desert. When they were still alive, less water could have helped.

People aren't going to stay for QoL changes after they get burned out. And in general, when people leave, they just leave.

Mimir_The_Wise: so sad brother i quite this game when i tried to do ark grid on my alts, its just overwhelming to me , i cant even have astrogems let alone cutting them, and the rng on every system thy add its just crazy to me , and if u are not p2w u are paying with your time, f2p dudes like me must put so much effort into the game and yet u will still get gatekept, i loved this game bro and it had so much potential to be saved but thy just want to let it die just like all the other mmos we once knew, tnx for all the guides you've been dropping mate i enjoyed every minute <3 o7

thefrayedends: As someone who could only manage a couple of months at NA launch, it was another situation where I was disappointed that developers didn't know their audience.

* Rotational/nonexistent skins.

* P2W mechanics should have been softened for the west.

* Mechanical difficulty in group play leads to heavy gatekeeping. --you either have to incentivize mentorship, or provide solo progression curves.

* Lack of in game information explaining things. Especially when mistakes in this game incentivize swiping.

* Botting caused a lot of problems and was impossible to hide.

* Gatekeeping, bussing, poor onboarding all lead to 3rd party rmt becoming more common.

* Game was/is behind KR servers way too far. They should have accelerated getting caught up.

That's a long list of obvious problems/complaints that were all common. It's too long a list to retain players. 1 or 2, even 3, are quirks of the game you love. 4 major complaints = heavy bleeding of playerbase.

As someone who started playing again recently, the game is in a great place, but it may just be too late. The only way they get people back on board at this stage is to pay the biggest content creators in the world to play this game for a few days. Regular advertising will do nothing, they need people to publicly pick up the game and start praising it as fixed/reformed. They also have to allow criticisms from those streamers, or it will seem (and be) inorganic.

MrSirocko: 39, employed, wife and kids, dont have a spare time to do ingame chores or 10 hours a week to prog latest raid. Game just isnt meant for casual players.

Trenk2009: At this point, what Lost Ark needs most isn't better raids, it's **more game**.

The devs spent so much time fixing the broken progression systems that they're finally moving in the right direction—but now they're late. Players aren't just asking for a healthier game anymore, they're asking for **new experiences**.

Aldebaran can't be another half-baked update you finish in two hours and never think about again. It needs to feel like a **true expansion**.

We need meaningful content outside of raids:

* New world activities.

* Better PvP support.

* More engaging life skills.

* Fresh collectibles worth chasing.

* Meaningful progression that happens in the open world instead of being almost entirely locked behind instanced raids.

At this point, it honestly doesn't matter how good the combat or raids are anymore. Those have carried the game for years.

Lost Ark doesn't just need to do things **better**. It needs to do **more**.

gyorfinandor7889: The game is not dead ,obviously have stable 6k- ish player base,and i think they give enough money for smilegate.

Im already uninstall game several time,but this new way (more solo mode-matchmaking mode) forced me to give 1 more try,and as i am having fun ,will play,but doesnt put money in it.

Wonder what will happening next year.

Imagine,if they add these modes from the beggining...

daenithriuszanathos9306: I play solo raids exclusively. I've dropped the game a number of times before and it was almost always because of the gatekeeping. I'm far too casual of a player to enjoy the rigour others expected from me. I play Lost Ark for the lore, role play, and just to relax. When it felt like a second job, I knew I had to drop it. Even to this day, I'm still on the fence, so I'm glad the more casual options are there. Without the solo raid option, I would have permanently left a long time ago.

hao50417: I just came back like 3 months ago from a year break. I’m back just because I heard it had solo mode. I had held 2 jobs and didn’t had the time to keep up with all raid mechs. Now I have 1 job with time to learn raid mech and do it whenever I like. I really enjoy the peace of solo mode. No toxicity. P.S. Nice videos Deathboi523

TyeCozMusic: They said "dailies" and we said, "no"

brahmansam: For me personally, Lost Ark was peak when South Vern was released, along with Valtan and later Vykas. You could still progress fairly easily and gatekeeping was a foreign concept, except maybe with supports having priority, but that was to be expected. Brel and later Akkan, pushed the min ilvl bar higher and higher, gatekeeping came and like every guest having a good time, it refused to leave. Game died for me when I couldn't even get accepted for G1-G2 brel with 1520 supports. Took a break and came back when solo raids were released, and now I'm actually having fun and progressing at my own pace. Too bad february and just around the corner, and the future of LoA west is bleak at best.

Tylobic: 9:58 "The game never lacked quality, it lacked accessibility"

Very true

Also one thing that contributed to the game's downfall is the lack of trust and communication between the players and the devs (AGS losing its two main community managers, SG making a lot of promises but not delivering, ...)

fact0rial104: couldn't summarise better. I played like 1k hour on launch but as i am working it became harder and harder to catch up. i got overwhelmed and quited. Although i came back to do game i couldnt play it more than couple of months. i still love the game and content you create but can't bring myself to play again.

dizzonepnoi: Dope insight!! You’ve hit a lot of relatable topics for me in terms of the LA “efficiency” environment.

As someone who enjoyed playing since NA launch and played casually through school, meant I barely had time to do the bare minimum to stay relevant with my roster level (horizontal content).

I LOOVEED running legion raids but getting gate kept b/c I didn’t have standards like LOS24, or titles was draining. By the time theamine released I grew more tired from the constant gatekeeping and I couldn’t keep up with the demand to enjoy the game

I got back into the game mid way through the guardian knight release and so far I’ve been loving how lost ark feels at the moment!

What got me hooked to LA again was the implementation of solo raids, mokoko raids, and wondering merchants changes.

I’ve got to experience a healthy weekly gold income that I never got to experience back then as a casual. Since you’d likely get gate kept with running the latest raids at iLvl. Moko token parties feel like a free version of bussing while getting an experience of what the raid feels like is a nice touch. I also feel like there’s a lot less daily homework to do which is something I appreciate and vertical progression feels a lot nicer being able to do all your raids.

Although these changes could’ve been done long ago, im just glad these changes are happening later than never

Pandora49771: I quit for all the reasons that were stated. I was a casual though who enjoyed doing lateral progression. To be honest, I never knew when starting the game and investing so much time, that it was really only a monster hunter with memorized mechanics. Not what I was expecting. I kept playing, but realized that after 1000 hours, I felt exhausted and overwhelmed with endless new progression systems. I felt like a weight had been lifted when I hit uninstall. Maybe I'll come back someday but I would probably feel lost

fgmxd4957: Vertical progression bloat that revolved around playing alts and lack of casual group content without alterative ways of progressing in the game were the main two things that really sealed the fate for this game to be a very small, niche MMO in the long run. So much wasted potential.

AuriusFlaire: Everyone is trying to pin it to the bots and p2w which played a part but they all ignored the Korean part in Korean MMO. After very succesfull advertisement from AGS where people without access to electricity knew what the damn game is, people just expected it to be something it never was and it was known from the beginning what type of progression and monetization will arrive to the west. Once people got to the 'end game' they realized and moved on. Happens all the time just on a smaller scale.

werelions8180: Solo mode if ok but not enough. Community is what makes the game not perfect, we need to remove the gate jail, let us re-do the raid if we are stuck in G2. People are afraid of being jailed > gatekeep. If you can clear again the G1 without rewards, people would be less pressured not being able to clear the entire raid. Matchmaking should be buffed too, lobbies are toxic af for HM.

CatalystDestiny: The TLDW for what happened to lost ark is this -

1. Egregious P2W push with a HORRID upgrade system that heavily emphasizes P2W in order to keep up gear score.

2. Toxic playerbase, gatekeeping in group finder was extreme to the point no one could even learn to do the raids and the playerbase was so toxic it drove away the majority of players.

These 2 primary factors combined resulted in a loss of over 90% of the playerbase. The developers desperately have tried to hold onto the scraps that is left with the addition of solo mode raids and the like, but foundational problems still remained and the 90% that left are never coming back, so the game hobbles around with barely 5k - 7k concurrents left anymore. They have already fired most AGS employees with that completely failed studio so any updates for the global version are mostly just AI translated posts anymore. LA could have been great and one of the big ones, but it's just another classic story of why korean MMO's always flop in global/western releases. It's the same mistakes done over and over and over and over again, expecting different results that NEVER happen. TNL also got taught this lesson having lost nearing what, 99% player loss now?

NickNickNick1201: This is such a hard game to take a break and come back from because I’ll be behind in the caste system and catching up takes forever

fingerbvngbeng9851: I used to love this game but I quit right after clearing Thaemine because I was F2P and was drowning like 16 hours a day trying to funnel gold to my main...

shame... I also got into inferno content and cleared Helltan just to find out infernos were removed...

Some of the best combat in gaming, period.

Kokushibo_22: You are so right brother and i come back after 2 years and there’s was so many new systems.I needed some time to understand it and it took me like 2 months but after that i quit again because there’s just no learning parties for the latests raids that’s makes me feel like a bad player even when i did improve my roster with 5 characters to 9 characters and my best was 1600 and now it’s 1720 sure i did put some money but i earn it through playing cs and selling cases in steam. I learned a lot of the new raids up to the new kazeros but only normal modes and solo modes… And the reason i quit is because im tired of playing alone and i just want to play with a friend or someone else that’s it.

TwinsenPRO: i loved the gameplay of the game but i was near a burnout just from trying to stay competitive while having a fulltime job and so on.

id love to return for a chillmode comeback but even with the changes i have the feeling i wont be able to catch up to be able to play the most recent content

deathaggrotheangrychef1016: I just came back after about 18 months. Game is still fun. But the rng progression does suck still. But I seem to be progressing much faster with ilvl. Went from 1600 on my alt to 1702 in 2 play sessions with the events going on. I LOVE that I can do solo for pretty much everything now. No more being gate kept and unable to progress a character. I don’t think I’ll main the game again. But I think it’s something could play a few hours a week now and feel like I’m actually progressing. Once you learn the raids in solo I can bang them out in about 4 minutes a raid now.

AureV28: The game was truly enjoyable for me. Really liked the story as well as the customisations and the raids the were the best thing about the game but most parties I joined either had bad players or players with bad connection and it slowly got unplayable. I'm still stuck at brelshaza gate 4 if anyone knows XD

SteFanDU: played for 8000 hours, having max gear score all the titles that exist and yet being gatekept because of gems or books.

TFM and HM for kazeros was such a amazing fight and thing to overcome just like any other boss.. but to get to a point in Lost Ark where you can freely use all ur alts in unlocked content for that char without being gatekept is just insane.

johnfilios2470: I wish there was a hard solo mode. I don't need more gold or mats. I want to play the game and enjoy the raids how they were meant to be played. Being done with a raid in 2 minutes with no real threat becomes boring after a couple of weeks. Or you know, people could invite a mokoko to play and not gate-keep it.

Jul 26 2026

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