Lost Ark year end press conference. What is coming in 2022.

Kumapon

Smilegate had their year end press conference today over in Korea. In the conference they talked about what is coming to Lost Ark in 2022.





Here are some of the highlights. Translations not done by me, done by TheSpaceAlpaca of the LOA reddit community.


- No more fully equalized hell mode. They will still equalize iLevel (and potentially other stuff), but things like tripods/engravings/etc will no longer be invalid.

- Focus on class balance in 2022, specifically on bringing up underperforming classes/builds

- For PvP they will balance stat effects and equalize cc duration. No more 21:9 angle? (or something related to equalizing camera angle at least)

- Restricting number of raid runs per account to cut down on extreme cases of gold generation (specifically mentioned too many people running stuff like Argos 7+ times). Inflation hurts F2P most. Adding more gold sinks to address, specifically they will shift end of dungeon/raid rewards from costing crystals to costing gold

- Better hard/hell mode rewards for legion raids. Stuff like mounts/exclusive avatars

- Optimization/clarity around back/front attacks. New icons. Balancing set/engraving effects to not be weighted so heavily towards this

- Lots of QoL improvements. Streamlining and adding in-game tracking of dailies/weeklies among many other things

- Moving to DirectX 11 next week. 1.5x fps improvements in many areas and better load times

- Two new classes (under Specialist main class). Artist support class (releasing in Jan 2022) and damage dealing class which uses weather effects

- Realm v realm continent called Rowen out December 29th (Viking themed).

- Second new continent called Elgacia. New abyss dungeon, story, exploration, guardian raid, and legion raid (but shorter, only 2 stages). It seems that this will be rolled out in/after summer of 2022

- 3rd new continent called Plecia exploring Arman's past. Mainly story

- 4th new continent called Voldis? Maybe 2022 maybe after. Lots of story but also some raid, etc content

- FEMALE ZERKer will be coming 

- Going through older classes and updating skill animations to be in line with newer. Some skill updates/replacements as well for balance reasons

- Third awakening. Not a choice between 1st/2nd/3rd but an entirely new guage for each class. Must be built up and can only be used once (?) per instance

- Wants to develop events/content that is geared towards fun and less hardcore than just endgame raids introducing crazy new mechanic after new mechanic. More replayability. Games within a game. (seems like he's talking about introducing mini games, etc)

- New type of PvP not based around current fighting mechanics (seems like a PvPvE MOBA)

- A Battle Royal mode

- Also some kind of mario party esque board game with mini-games

- Also tower defense

- More relationship levels for certain npcs

- More festivals and housing related things to promote interaction between players (can visit across servers). Players can host their own events? Expansion of estate and new indoor housing to display achievements

- New pro PvP league in KR

Kumapon

Here is a peak of the new Artist class. It will be under the specialist. This will be a support class like the Bard. Also shows off the new loli race. 


 



This video shows off the new mini games coming to Lost ark.

MaxBacon

BEST GAM

this development team puts so much effort on this game is gg, the MMO that can jab at FFXIV on the west o//

Kratier

looks very promising, like BDO did in its first year and a half

still, amazon games will fuck this up, and ruin it for everyone i'm sure

MaxBacon

Kratier said:

looks very promising, like BDO did in its first year and a half

still, amazon games will fuck this up, and ruin it for everyone i'm sure

just the publisher, not much they can do that can go wrong, don't see much on any super greedy approach nothing compared to what LA RU did, and I wouldn't be worried at their stability server-wise as the alpha and beta went smoothly already

Kumapon

The biggest takeaway for NA/EU from the press conference is the fact that we won't be spending months slowly going through the t1 and t2 contents before we're able to experience the t3 content (legion raids).

In the press conference the game director said " "NA/EU players will be able to encounter legion raids extremely quickly... almost immediately (following the game release)."

Although I am trying to figure out how they'll do it without stepping on any legitimate issues that might turn new players away.