Amazon Games has said it “made a mistake” releasing ‘Lost Ark’s first major update a month after launch.
The MMO Action RPG was released on February 11 for PC and an update for the title released on March 10, bringing raids into game.
This led to concerns from the fanbase as the raid’s final boss, Argos, required certain level gear before taking it on. To upgrade gear requires upgrade materials that players felt became difficult to obtain without using real-world money.
In a blog post, Amazon Games addressed player concerns and revealed that it would be supplying more progression materials for players to progress to Tier 3 “through fun in-game events, injecting more gold into the mid to end-game, and continuing our hard stance against bots.”
Amazon Games wrote: “With that important context, let’s talk about Argos. We’ve seen player concerns that releasing Argos before a significant portion of the player base had progressed through Tier 3 made Lost Ark feel pay-to-win.
“We never wanted players to feel rushed in their quest to hit item level 1370. We considered having Argos available at launch, but viewed the Abyss Raid as an important stepping stone, helping bridge the gap to end-game activities that have yet to be released in the Western version of Lost Ark (we’re looking at you, Legion Raids). Through that lens, we wanted to give Argos a spotlight and a special introduction into Arkesia.”
They added: “We made a mistake releasing the March game update too quickly after launch. Data we analyzed alongside Smilegate RPG from their previous launches projected that a larger portion of players would have reached the level required to challenge Argos. “However, we overlooked certain variables, such as players spending more time on horizontal content and the price of honing materials increasing due to bots and real-money transactions. These factors contributed to a scarcity of T3 honing materials.
“Together, our teams at Amazon Games and Smilegate RPG are continuing to gather data on play patterns in the western version to better inform our future content roadmap. We appreciate the patience and support we’ve seen from the community while we continue to learn together and work on updating our roadmap, and apologize for the confusion our early excitement has generated.”
