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19 days ago
Current You'd think after like 15 years I'd stop feeling like a fraud when writing posts but I still do which is both a statement on my self confidence and a compliment to how good my partners are as writers
15 likes
5 mos ago
Why are you talking about Final Fantasy 10 like that
5 mos ago
Final Fantasy 13 is a top five entry in the franchise but ya'll still ain't ready to have that conversation
5 mos ago
This Bears/Packers game is gonna make me believe in the power of Chicago Pope
2 likes
5 mos ago
The older I get the more I start to think BBQ potato chips are the worst flavor, actually.
3 likes

Bio

Look, I got lost on the way to getting some jajangmyeon and it'd be foolish to leave now.

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and make sure you also mention how good it is that you can dodge roll attacks in it. And how you don't see that in any MMO's.

Beside Guild Wars, New World, *starts listing endlessly to make a point without actually wasting effort to look them up.*


I can't help but feel like you're making fun of my earlier statement while also getting said statement wrong.

da fuk is Lost Ark?


A free to play Korean MMOARPG that is popular because it happened to come out just before the internet cums its pants over Elden Ring
<Snipped quote by Fabricant451>
No, I assumed it was your hill.

If a game has numerous bad/mobile-game practices. Why waste so much time defending it?

Also, realize that I've not made any "pay to win" arguments. All of its defenders have. And it screams, lady doth protest too much.


Do you think I'm pro-censorship and also an advocate for diversity in media? Because I am one of those things and I'll give you three guesses as to which I am and two don't count. I can be an advocate for diversity and also think "changing a character in a video game is a bad way to do it".

You're moving the goalposts now, by the way. No one made a pay to win argument here. We're not youtubers or redditors making claims. I'm only 'defending' it because I'm taking the opposite stance to yours in that I made the radical statement that the game can have monetization and not be pay to win. I have said more than once that I don't really like the game all that much.

But a game that is free to play is absolutely going to find some way to make money. That's just the reality of the world. Nothing commercial is made without profit in mind.
The most recent episode of South Park is probably the best they've done in regards to a satirical take on race, specifically performative allyship.

I mean it doesn't really offer anything particularly insightful but it's South Park so I have to give it credit for at least trying.
Real text on a positive rated Lost Ark Review on reddit. (All about it not being pay to win.)

"To determine if Lost Ark is a Pay to Win game, you first need to know what Pay to Win is.

Pay to Win literally means you have to spend money to win.

If you spend money and lose, it is not Pay to Win."

What a bunch of absolute horseshit.

If I keep looking at people defending this game I might hate this game with a fiery passion. (Note, I didn't even actively look for this. It was just in my feed.)

@Fabricant451 Is this one right too? <.<

Because my real question/point, is you're making two separate arguments. 1. It has no bad practices. 2. Others games with bad practices are worse. (You do understand why one doesn't fit the other, yes?)


Pay to Win literally just means you can pay money to get an unfair advantage over other players, be that in buying better gear, buying 5 star characters in whatever gacha bullshit people play, etc. If you can definitively buy your way to being better than someone on an otherwise level playing field, that's pay to win. World of Warcraft selling exclusive mounts for real money isn't pay to win but if it suddenly sold legendary gear that gave you an advantage in pvp and/or pve content that other players couldn't get, that's pay to win. A game lessening the grind doesn't make it pay to win. If Lost Ark started selling gear that was above BiS that utterly ruined game balance, then yeah it'd be pay to win.

My argument isn't that Lost Ark has no bad practices and you'll not find me making that argument. My argument is that it's not, by definition, pay to win unless you change the definition of 'pay to win' to 'paying real money for anything in the game that is beneficial in any way'. Which is a slippery slope to outright saying 'all microtransactions are pay to win' instead of simply 'microtransactions are fucking bad' which is inarguable.

Lost Ark can have bad monetization and other games can have worse monetization without Lost Ark being pay to win. That's not contradictory. What Lost Ark is doing is what SWTOR does and other free to play MMO games do: incentivize players to essentially pay a monthly sub or equivalent. Is SWTOR pay to win if subscribed or preferred players get a mount at level 10 instead of level 25 or have access to more content or customization options? Is Lost Ark pay to win because you can purchase a recurring fee that makes teleports free and slight boost to exp? Because by that logic, FF14 is pay to win because you can buy a level skip to the current expansion and so is WoW because of character tokens. Even ESO does it and that's a buy to play game.

Lost Ark is actively being censored in the US, and they darkened many of the Asian characters skin for the US 'Muh Diversity' crowd.


Is this really the hill you want to die on, my guy

Seems a bit contradicting in those statements. In what they're implying. But most bad monetization practices aren't so zealously defended. Like I'm seeing online. Not from you specifically mind.


I don't think that's contradicting. Lost Ark not being pay to win doesn't contradict that there are games with worse monetization than it. SWTOR, for example, a game I genuinely enjoy literally locks you out of having multiple action bars and being able to move above a light jog unless you give them money to do so.

I mean even the people I've seen defending the game, casually talk about how it'll die down in hype and go away in a month. And for a f*cking MMO. That's NOT AT ALL a good thing. This isn't a flavor of the month indie title. A good MMO, will not die in a month.


Most MMOs have their most populous period at launch and then again at expansion releases. I don't think it'll die but I also doubt it'll go the way of New World.



I mean I don't play many mobile games but that looks like a typical MMO character menu to me

[/quote]

If Lost Ark didn't exist. I wouldn't have seen a random unfollowed user on twitter say, "Guys, some play to win games are good. And some not pay to win games are bad. Guys. Guys."


Lost Ark isn't pay to win. It's 'pay to convenience'. You can't just buy the best gear and pay to beat the raids, but you can buy stuff to remove teleport cost or various other quality of life shit that one could argue shouldn't be behind pay wall. But a free to play game is going to try and make money somehow, that's just the nature of the beast.

Also that twitter person is right.

With the entire comment section grilling him for the fact he used to go after bad monetization practices, and also knew exactly what game he was defending. (And I use paid hacks semi-ironically. Youtubers gotta eat too. But it's only because the game has spent "Raid:Shadow Legends" money on advertising itself/paying people daily to play & stream it.


If someone wants to go after bad monetization practices there are dozens of worse examples than Lost Ark. Also, games having streamers do advertisements is not new nor is it always someone faking it. Sometimes, yeah, it's clear that the person is just throwing away morals to make a buck which hey that's the hustle in this world, but sometimes someone can genuinely enjoy a game and also do an ad for it.

I think it's just because I heard some fuck with a thick accent, pretend to be excited when he could jump in an MMO. And it made me lose my mind.


Maybe it was done for laughs. Or maybe he's not an MMO player. You also can't even jump in Lost Ark outside of scripted 'press G to jump' sections. You can dodge roll though which is something a bit more unique to the MMO space.

I've loved to hear examples of ARPG'S it's better than in comparison.


Victor Vran, Titan Quest, Last Epoch, Wolcen: Lords of Mayhem, I think it's better than Torchlight, MU Legend.

I don't think it's outside the realm of possibility that Lost Ark, when the hype dies, can sit comfortably among the Diablos and PoEs of the world.

Because you can't have sex with characters in those games but you can in Lost Ark.

But I suppose everyone said the same thing about Tera too. About how great the combat system is. And eh? I suppose it's probably more fun to play, then it is to watch.


TERA was a breath of fresh air in the genre at the time because of its combat but because that's where the focus was you then had to contend with a fetch quest boring ass MMO where the fun stuff wasn't killing mobs but killing BAMs and dungeons but then that game had a myriad of other problems least of all doubling down on giving all the cool shit to the little girl loli race.

TERA could've been cool, man. Now I'm sad.

But the kind of zealous online defense and equal parts hatred that I'm seeing from the community about this dated MMORPG. I think I'll stick with the cash grab I'm already fooling myself into playing. Thanks.


Again, not a cash grab but also it's more of an ARPG with a chat room than a full on MMORPG. I'm not defending the game because, again, I don't think it's the kind of game for me (I like my games to at least pretend to have a story) but I can absolutely understand why there are people genuinely having fun with and enjoying it. Hell, I know someone who wasn't gonna play it and now almost has a max level character with plans to make more and they haven't spent a dime other than the head start.

If Horizon Forbidden West sucks I'm gonna bash my head against a wall and never play video games ever again
If Flee or Mitchells vs the Machines doesn't win the Best Animated Feature at the Oscars then I will continue to mock them and call them out of touch while also caring way too much about pointless award shows.

I just think it would be nice if something other than a Disney movie won because in the past ten years only 2 animated movies won that weren't Disney and like sorry, Brave, but ParaNorman was better and also fuck you Big Hero 6, Princess Kaguya ruled.

What I'm saying is I've never forgiven them for giving it to the rat chef movie over Persepolis
I think your problem is sourcing opinions from people you deem to be paid hacks and not streamers or people you trust or like trying the game that is free out for yourself since the only thing wasted then is time. But as someone who has played a lot of MMOs, Lost Ark is better than New World because New World is on fire so much you can survive a winter with it as your primary heating source. And saying it doesn't look better than mobile games is a bit disingenuous.

I don't even like the game because its story is super shit and I disagree with gender locked classes but even I can't deny that the actual use of skills and moment to moment fighting of enemies is solid enough to be better than garden variety ARPGs. It doesn't have the polish of a AAA budget or even a AA Diablo knockoff but it's a good enough veg out game that'll absolutely die down in a month as is the way.
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