Lost Ark - Gameplay: First Impressions

Now that I've put a few hours into Lost Ark -- after spending so much time playing around with the character creator and test arena -- I thought I'd talk a bit about the game itself.

Lost Ark is a unique blend of an ARPG and MMO. You have the isometric view and combat of an ARPG, mixed with the multiplayer, dungeons, raids and pvp of an MMO. Every character is a combat character. There is no need for Tanks or Healers, but in saying that there is the Support class which is the Bard.

Because this game has been out for several years already in Korea and Russia, the game as we're experiencing it now is already a polished gem that's filled with content and really has no need to be delayed until March next year. Unfortunately, because Amazon Games is the one publishing it, they're waiting for their own game, New World, to make as much money as it can before releasing it.

My disgruntledness aside...

Because the game has been out for so long and is already filled with more content than a normal MMO upon release, it is a little bit overwhelming. There are different currencies and game systems already in place that would feel a lot nicer and more intuitive to understand if they were brought out gradually. But it is what it is.

Anyway! Let's have a look at a few notable things in the game.

 

Dungeons:

As part of the quest chain we're following, I was requested to join a dungeon group! Well, you can enter solo as well, but I wanted to have a look at the group play. And I have to say that western audiences are probably going to get shitty at this -- during their first dungeon anyway, while they get used to the fact that this isn't your standard MMO.

Everyone has to look out for their own health and interests.

My bard, whilst a support character in theory, will NOT heal you. There are no healing abilities. Just the healing ultimate which takes a while to get enough power for and does minimal healing. I'm better off buffing everyone's attack power rather than wasting my power on a tiny group heal.

Unfortunately it was obvious in the dungeon that people weren't expecting to not have a proper healer like you would in other MMOs. We get 213128011 health potions for a reason, people! USE THEM! There is no "healer" class.

 

Rapport and Quests:

Overall the quests are fairly standard. Kill 10 of those, loot 10 of this, find 3 flowers on the ground somewhere, etc.

I don't like how every quest thrusts you into a cutscene, but that's pretty standard for Korean MMOs and I'll get over it. I think the cutscene UI could be a little nicer though and more obvious with the dialogue selection clicking. The background is too transparent for me.

As you complete quests and gain XP, as well as the typical XP gain for your character you get Account XP too that will affect every character that you make. Reminds me of the Legacy system in SWTOR which I really liked!

There is also this game system called Rapport.

As you meet NPCs in the game, there are certain ones you can gain friendship with! And as you increase their friendship they give you gifts and more quests.

We start off with this chick in the tavern who decides that you're her hero because you saved her from a fiery demon. And you end up trying to encourage her how to cook and get forced to eat her disgusting food. 😅 It's rather amusing. I felt bad telling her that her food was god-awful and lied to her face so not sure what happens if you're honest with her. The honest choices seemed mean.

It looks as though there's quite a few of these Rapport NPCs which is good -- many people to befriend!

 

Combat, Keybinds, and Skills:

I'm a little miffed that you can't change the keybinds entirely. AND you also can't put usable items where you might want to. One bar is "only for toys, emotes, and mounts" whereas I'd love to put my movement-speed buff there too in easy clicking position.

My general playstyle with games is Shift+E, Shift+R, Shift+F for a few things and then 1, 2, 3, 4 etc.

I keep my main abilities there, in easy reach. Usually have an E for Interrupt, side mouse buttons for AoE, and Tab Targetting usually sucks so I change Tab to something else.

Because this game is a blend of an ARPG and an MMO the abilities are more ARPG inspired, so there's not really any interrupts and no need to really target anything, etc. But I can't personalise my attacks as I would like.

So I've tried to just take the system they have and work with it, but it doesn't feel quite as intuitive as it should just yet. (Hey! I even change my keybindings in Path of Exile, haha.)

Q is for some defensive bubbles that make explosions when things get too close to me
W is an AoE knockback
E is a musical note that I throw like a grenade
R is a targeted knockback wave

A is an AoE that lingers on the ground and slows things while poisoning them with my music
S is an AoE that stuns things with my bursts of music
D is an AoE that lifts everything up in the area and heaves them back down to the ground
Side-mouse-button is a ground-target AoE that I can aim.

It's not my usual keybind playstyle, but I'm dealing with it. As you can see I have defensives on QWER, except E which is a 6sec attack. And a mass of AoE on ASD. Trying to keep it simple in my brain for my fingers. And this is why I would've sucked playing a Gunslinger! 😅

Each skill has it's own tree that you can slowly unlock as you level up and gain skill points, and you can have multiple presets each with different abilities and skill point selections.

 

Photo Mode:

As we all know by now, I love a good photo mode.

Being that this is more of an ARPG, I wasn't really expecting a photo mode. Although, that would be pretty cool so you could admire more of your environment and not just the isometric view.

Instead, what we have is a Selfie Photo Mode! So you can take glorious photos of that character you spent so long on in the character creator.

Unfortunately it's very basic. You can do a couple of emotes and print-screen at the right time, or you can stand there and print-screen. There are no filters or fancy poses or anything like that.

 

Gathering and Crafting:

Normally I don't spend so much time in a beta. I tend to quickly play for an hour or two to see if I like it and then turn it off until the game is released. This time around I was unable to do that simply because I knew there was gathering and crafting in this game, but couldn't work out how to do it.

Gathering and Crafting are two of my favourite things in a game, so I needed to find it to see if I enjoyed it or not.

After Googling though, I discovered that you can't access these so-called "Lifeskills" until later on, once you're past Level 20 and have arrived in a different town or city somewhere. I didn't want to play for quite that long in this beta so I ended up not bothering.

By the looks of things though, there seems to be quite a few gathering skills, and I've noticed you can get crafting recipes from some of the Rapport NPCs, and those make mention of a Stronghold which I assume is going to be the player home you get to decorate and whatnot.

All of this is assumption. I guess I'll find all of this out upon the game's release.

 

Pets and Mounts

Not that it's really needed in an ARPG, but there is a mount system if you just want to zoom past all those annoying mobs you should be wailing on. I'm not sure how it'll be upon release, but in this beta you got your first mount pretty early on by just following the main quest-line.

In saying that though, this beta does start you at level 10 in the game, so upon release it could take a little while longer than an hour to get your first mount, haha.

The Pet System though is definitely interesting!

If you're a subscriber (easily accessed by buying it off the in-game cash shop every 30 days and activating it in your inventory WITHOUT having to deal with account websites) your pet has a bunch of perks you can activate. These perks include:

• in the field gear repair
• added inventory space
• special perks that is different on each pet (but you can change it with the help of an NPC if you like the look of a particular pet) the one I used in the beta gave my character +5% health and mana.
• and best of all... PICKS UP LOOT FOR YOU!

😊😁😊

 

Overall, I am finding the game quite enjoyable. My main grievances during this beta are as follows:

• No Oceanic servers available. 205ms ping. Yay. Not really noticeable though, thankfully.
• Classes are gender-locked.
• The Quest Cutscene UI is ugly.
• NPC's out in the world repeat their voiced ambient dialogue over and over and over, and grunt and moan a lot.
• The inability to set keybindings to your own preferences is bleh.
• Slightly overwhelmed with the sheer amount of content due to being an already released title elsewhere.
• People in chat are stupid and were giving me a headache with their idiocy. But that's not the game's problem and is the same in every MMO ever, haha. Fixed by closing chat. But I wanted to whinge anyway.

I'm looking forward to the game's actual release next year!

It should be a far better release than New World, considering the game is technically already released in other regions. 😅

Now I can get back to some Final Fantasy XIV while we play the waiting game!

 

Until next time!! 😊

 

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_{All screenshots in this post are courtesy of me, @kaelci and are from the game: Lost Ark Closed Technical Beta.}