Video Gamers Podcast - Limitless Lost Ark - Gaming Podcast

Episode Date: March 7, 2022

Gaming MMO nerds Josh, Michael and Paul are bringing you an episode you can’t miss. We dive into the amazing world of Lost Ark in this week’s gaming deep dive. Join us as we break down what could be one of the greatest entries into the MMO genre in years. If you’ve been on the fence, or wanting to see if it’s worth your gaming effort to dive into the world of Lost Ark, look no further as we break it all down and tell you whether there’s value in Lost Ark’s world or if you should steer clear. Thanks to our LEGENDARY supporters: Redletter, Nevo, Waynerman, TFolls, AceofShame, Jake, RangerMiller, and Ad Connect with the show: Support us on Patreon: patreon.com/multiplayerpodcast Join our Discord: https://discord.gg/Dsx2rgEEbz Follow us on Instagram: instagram.com/multiplayerpod/ Follow us on Twitter: twitter.com/MultiplayerPod Subscribe to us on YouTube: youtube.com/channel/UCU12YOMnAQwqFZEdfXv9c3Q Visit us on the web: multiplayerpodcast.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey everybody, it's Josh and I'm back with another Gaming Quick Takes bonus episode. Ha! Tricked ya! This is just an intro for our regular episodes. But if you wanted to hear that sweet, sweet intro on those bonus episodes, head over to MultiplayerSquad.com where you can sign up to support the show. You get two bonus episodes every week, some killer Discord perks, and our eternal gratitude. We couldn't do the show without the support of our listeners, and you too can join those ranks over at MultiplayerSquad.com. Hello, everyone.

Welcome to Arkesia, a land where the forces of good battle against armies of demons in the Great Chain Wars, and where every single character is an absolute smoke show. This is the Multiplayer Gaming Podcast, where three dads get together and talk about gaming. Today is a Deep Dive Monday, so we are going to be spending our entire episode here talking about the game Lost Ark, the free MMO that has taken the world by storm. We're going to break down the story, combat mechanics, the gear systems. And then at the end of the show, we're going to share our thoughts on the game and decide where it belongs on our overall leaderboard. If you like what we do here, make sure to rate our podcast five stars on Apple and Spotify. Leave us a written review and come check out our patreon page at multiplayer squad.com i am your host paul and the only thing more lost than the

titular arc is me trying to understand all the upgrade systems in this game we're talking faceting upgrading honing engravings, gems, card bonuses. But we're going to get to all of that later. I'm flanked here by two of my best friends and my co-hosts here on the show. I have my support paladin, Josh. I was going to make a reference to an article of clothing because you have your two friends that support you, Paul. I'll let everybody else figure out which article of clothing that might be but yes fair enough and then i have my support bard michael yay i'm a tiny female with a harp i can't be a guy in this game so i can't be yaskier or

anything like that from the witcher it's just me the ugliest bearded man female bard in the world oh very nice i i love the fact that you guys both picked support classes and there are literally only two support classes in this game and uh that's exactly what you both chose we're we're giving dudes you know be helpful yeah i just thought it would be fun i always go dps and then i always die and i thought hey it'll be nice change of pace to be support and then you die and then you yell at me so either way i'm getting yelled at you know yep yep no matter what it's always josh's fault we learned this a very long time ago yeah i pretty much always play a healer in almost every game so what they were talking about this game was like i can't be a pure healer

well this is the closest thing i'm gonna do it very nice yeah this is actually the first time that my main was a dps and it's gonna be a lot of fun to talk about how all these characters work all right now before we jump into lost ark we do have a little bit of housekeeping josh you've got a couple of reviews to read that people have left for the show. Left us a review yet. What are you waiting for? Help us out. Go leave us a review. If you're a Spotify person, rank us five stars on Spotify. Is it rank? Rate? Rate us five stars on Spotify.

Call it whatever you want as long as you do it. Yeah, exactly. So as long as you leave the five-star review, there's a good chance that we'll read it on the show. And we're diving into these first two because I have a feeling this episode is going to go long. We've got a lot to talk about with Lost ark buddy all right it's a big game this first one comes in from easy baked and it's titled easy bakes totally unbiased not too hot but hottest hot take and it says tomorrow marks my six month anniversary with this podcast and this is my first review but if you like waffles and living your gaming life vicariously through other dads,

then this is the podcast for you. The best free podcast money can buy. Come for the deep dives, stay for the Florida story, and make friends on their Discord. You gotta try out this podcast if you like waffles, but let's be real. Hashtag Team French Toast. Hashtag Team Josh.

Oh, I love that. Wait, wait, what do you mean? Oh, at the end. This is all over the place. Wait, you can't say Team Waffles and follow it up with Team Josh. Right. Why not? You can like both.

I like waffles and pancakes, Paul. Maybe Josh's quick take on the Florida story outweighs the appeal of the waffles. I don't know. I almost had to pull my car over when I listened to the Florida man story, the Florida story that one time. I was dying. It was 12 minutes of pure gold. So yeah, there's about 30 more minutes of detail that I had to cut out out of that story. So next time we're all together at a party, I'll make sure to really, really tell it. So, okay. And then this next one comes in from, hey, it's five stars. And it says, Tarkov player that was looking for a good gaming podcast content for the workday.

And congrats, gentlemen. You are my post-lunch listen listen keep up the good work also what's your opinion on tarkov seeing y'all are multiplayer guys i play the fifth thank you for the review actually it comes in from raw i'm sorry the and the title was a um so yeah thanks for the review tarkov a lot of people really like it i hear it's a great game um i it may not be for everybody we may have done an episode on tarkov you may not want to go back and listen to that episode we we did not deep dive it and we certainly did not both murder no escape from target no we never do that seriously, thank you for the reviews. Don't be one of those people that's been listening to the show for six months and haven't left a review yet.

We really do appreciate it. It does really help the show. So thank you very much. Oh, man. All right. I love getting the reviews. Love starting the show off that way. I think that's all that we need to do here at the top.

Let's do it, guys. Let's deep dive Lost Ark. I love getting the reviews. Love starting the show off that way. I think that's all that we need to do here at the top. Let's do it, guys. Let's deep dive Lost Ark. I'm excited. All right. Here's Steam's description of Lost Ark. Embark on an odyssey for the Lost Ark in a vast, vibrant world. Explore new lands, seek out lost treasures, and test yourself in thrilling action combat in this action-packed free-to-play RPG.

Alright, now one of the things I think is funny about that description on Steam is that they leave out MMO, but this is definitely an MMO RPG. Correct. Now, we are all on record as loving the genre. I know that in some combination, at least one, if not all of us, have played games like EverQuest, World of Warcraft, Guild Wars, Star Wars The Old Republic, Wildstar, Lord of the Rings Online, Elder Scrolls Online. I'm sure many more than that. But we all love this genre, correct? I love MMOs. We have lamented many a time that

we felt like it was a dying genre, unfortunately, whether it's just that it's all been done before, there was no innovation, or World of Warcraft just broke the genre because people aren't ever going to recoup that feeling or have something be so mainstream like that. But yes, huge fan of MMOs. Yeah, I think that a lot of that... When we were talking about the possible end of the MMO genre, a part of me broke inside. But then I realized for the last 12 to 15 years, every MMO that has come out has been immediately compared to World of Warcraft. It comes around, it peaks not anywhere near to World of Warcraft. It comes around, it peaks not anywhere near where World of Warcraft was, and it goes away. Talking to you,

Wildstar, really sad about that one. And then that's it. And so the games come and they go. And so Lost Ark was kind of like the litmus test for, is this going to continue to be a genre or not? Yeah, I know that several times we have said that we're kind of chasing that first experience with an MMO. And to be fair, you're never going to be able to experience that again. We're also all now a lot older than back in our teenage years when we were playing MMOs for eight hours a day. All of us have children. And now that we're a little bit older and there are so many MMOs on the market, there's even a lot of free MMOs that you don't even have to pay for. So Michael, why should someone check out Lost Ark? What makes it different?

So the biggest thing that I got from Lost Ark that's funny is when you said off the review, which by the way, not the review, but the Steam description, which by the way, if you go back in there, I dare anyone to count the adjectives. It was like adjective, adjective, adjective. It was like, they're really trying to sell this game to us with a lot of power words. But when you said it definitely is an MMO,

I feel like part of it really kind of isn't in a way. So it's definitely an MMO, but at the same point, it differs from a lot of free-to-play MMOs because MMO you think like, okay, I'm gonna be grindy. I'm gonna sit in this game for a long time. I've got to devote a half a night or a night to it and play for hours and hours. This really doesn't feel like that. I feel like I can hop in for a half an hour or an hour, get a little bit done. It's kind of like a great marriage between a single player game and an MMO somehow. And that's where I really find that it kind of stands apart a little bit from a lot of the other ones. Yes, it has a lot of the same tropes that come with it. You have to level, you have to get gear,

you fight raid bosses, there's this progression in it, but that's almost any game anyways. I just feel like this one has a little bit of a break from the free mmo genre where you're not sitting there all the time trying to just have to log in play for six or eight hours just to get anywhere and just play with your friends so um i can go a little bit deeper than that but i don't i don't want to get too far into my feelings on it which we'll cover later on and uh and that's kind of you know that's a bit also for a free mmo the uh the story has a lot of great cinematics and it's a good story if you if you choose to pay attention to the story now josh lost ark likes to brag that they blend the best parts of action

rpg with the best parts of mmos so that almost goes in line with what Michael is saying, because I do think that this is definitely an MMO, but it's not a traditional MMO. Do you feel like that's a good description, that it's part action RPG, part MMO? I do. I feel like that's a very good description, because there's times where it feels more like it is an action RPG,

but you see other people in the game. Right. And then there's times where it definitely feels like an MMO when you get into the cities and you're at the auction house and you see hundreds of people riding around on their mounts, or you're grouping up with people to do guardian raids or dungeons and stuff like that as well. So it is an interesting combination of the two. I'm with Michael in that I wouldn't consider it the traditional mmo so um yeah it's it's it's it's its own little niche almost it's hard to explain but there's an awful lot to like about the game and try to figure out where it blends the two

for sure yeah i i think the one thing that really sets it apart from everything else is just pacing and i think that gets a little bit to what michael is saying as well like nothing in this game takes terribly long you can hit max level within a couple days no problem the actual dungeons and the raids they're all relatively short all of your abilities are on very fast cooldowns this is not like world of warcraft where you had certain abilities that would have 30 or 60 minute cooldowns on certain abilities. At most, you're waiting five minutes to use an ultimate ability. And most of your other abilities have cooldowns anywhere from five seconds to 30 seconds. So you're kind of continually doing a lot of action.

Everything works very quickly in lost ark i i feel like it's almost an mmo designed for people that are short on time yeah there's even built-in things that let you catch up if you weren't able to play for the last couple of days all right now normally at this part early on in the episode we talk a little bit about the story now for mmos story is always a little bit of a back burner paul we can cover the whole story man let's do it we got okay okay i was gonna ask can either of you explain the story of lost ark i i can do it i can do it let's hear it michael all right so long ago there was a demon i believe his name was kazaros or something like that and he's demon lord he tried to dominate this land called arkisia

and this is before the game starts long story short they banished him underneath this volcano with this thing called the ark now to make it so no one else could just release him they destroyed the ark split it into seven pieces and uh this is the part where it doesn't get quite as original. You are the chosen one! You are the chosen one, trying to basically make sure that he stays in his volcano dungeon because he's trying to get out. So you're running around as the, basically the hero, trying to reassemble the pieces of the Ark so you can banish him again. And that's the main overarching story, I think. Did I get it right, guys? Did I get it right? I don't know. I didn't read any of the story. I know nothing about the story of Lost Ark.

I barely understood that we were trying to find these pieces of the Ark to put them back together. By the way, I'm very grateful that they just split the Ark into seven pieces to allow us to find and reuse the ark because you would have thought that they would have divided it into a million pieces and spread all the ashes but instead they left it a very manageable seven pieces to find and put back together a very long game that would get tired of breaking up stuff okay and you just go that's enough just throw it in a fire that would have been a lot quicker all right now i think i know josh's and michael's answer to this but i'm gonna ask you guys anyway did you stick around and watch the cut scenes and the dialogue and read everything or did you just button mash to skip it uh skip i uh you michael i actually it's funny because i was I was watching all the cut scenes and actually reading every single quest for the first day.

And then I believe I asked you guys, I'm like, hey, are you guys doing the story? They're like, no, progress. And I'm like, I'm going to progress too. And so I basically skipped everything. But it's funny because later on, actually, you do start to get some pretty intensely cool story and cut scenes especially like around i think it's called rowandale or whatever uh it's like the island where later on in the game and i'm kind of thinking now like maybe i should have watched a little bit more of those cut scenes now the thing is it does make you watch some of the cut scenes some of them you can't skip on your

first playthrough and those ones are pretty impactful and i definitely watched those because i didn't have a choice yeah i was gonna say some of the cut scenes in this game are actually top notch i was pretty surprised by the quality of some of the cinematics uh you know i don't want to i don't want to spoil anything here but when you get into the demon war which is not a spoiler but that's one of the coolest like events in a video game that i've seen and i was really i was really blown away by spoiler, but that's one of the coolest events in a video game that I've seen. And I was really blown away by that for something that's a free-to-play game. That one was like, okay, I could watch this for a long time. So there are some really good ones.

But I feel like there is 50,000 quests in this game because you do them so quickly. And they only take like 20 seconds a piece that i just got to the point where i was like i'm not going to read any of this anymore and i would just instantly start clicking my space bar to skip as fast as i could no it's funny you say that because i here's the bits and pieces that i got right uh on each continent that you go to there's different people and they're all trying to have you basically solve little things for them so that you can get to the Ark that's on their little continent. There's little things called Makoko. I believe there's monorail terrorists.

There's Drunken Dwarf with Legendary Hammer, because what MMO doesn't need that? The one thing I learned from the cutscenes is don't trust priests in this game. Not much of a spoiler because it's all early, but very early on you learn that every priest in this game probably has a hidden demon inside of them and that's what i got from the cut scenes quite literally a hidden demon inside them quite literally my my thing was every time i'd get to a new area i'd be like okay i'm gonna do it i'm gonna watch the scenes i'm gonna read all the quest text and i would do that for 30 minutes and i'd be like okay i definitely don't care about this and then i would skip everything and then immediately yeah like the whole makoko area

i'm like great we drink green juice and get small and ride ladybugs like i don't really care about this area and so i would just start skipping everything just to try to get as much progression as i could in a short amount of time did either of you guys like that area no no you know why it was the worst area in the whole game in my opinion no the monorail the monorail quests in the city where you had to ride the monorail that was a dumb quest but i'm just that was a dumb as an area overall the whole makoko village thing i thought was really dumb i could not wait to get out of that well i think the biggest thing about the makoko village and that whole island thing is that you've just gone through so many epic things. We go to the Makoko place right after, I think his name is Anwen or Anwen or whatever.

Armin. Armin. Armin. Right after Armin basically goes General Zod on these other priests. And it's one of the coolest pieces of any MMO game I've ever seen. And then we're running around drinking green juices with these little Makoko people and we're asking them to ride ladybugs

with little butterflies. And you're like, the epic is gone. It's a little bit of like story whiplash. Like they keep, yeah, whipping you back and forth. It's also definitely like very inspired by Eastern civilization and anime. Like a lot of this stuff's very heightened over the top action you've got these wild demons you've got a lot of like uh like chinese influenced

certain maps that really build in with these like martial arts tournaments it's definitely very cinematic in a lot of ways but if you're not into anime at all this like your mileage may vary yeah if you didn't like mists of it this like your mileage may vary yeah if you didn't like mists of pandaria and world of warcraft actually this is this is better than that but it's definitely very no one yeah definitely huge eastern influence though because you you definitely can't walk around in real life with a sword that is literally four times the size of you and and wield it wait you mean i also can't fight a thousand mobs in high heels? I mean, can you? Mine does. My martial artist sure does.

I don't know if I fight them. I play angry music at them in high heels and they die. Yeah. Oh, goodness. All right. Now let's talk a little bit about the class system because this game is a little bit unique. They wanted to get rid of the old tried and true tank DPS healer trio. Josh, do you want to talk a little bit about how classes are different in this one? I love the classes in this game. And this is one

of the things that sets Lost Ark apart because they have done a lot of unique things. And one of those is getting rid of the Holy Trinity for MMOs, which is DPS tank and healer. And while Michael and I both play a support character, it's a little... Actually, it's a lot different. I mean, yes, I'm helping the party, but I'm still wrecking house as my paladin, doing these huge over-the-top abilities and stuff like that. So basically, the way the class system works is it breaks it down into categories. So you have warrior, you have martial artist, you have mage, you know, what else? Demon hunter. Gunner. Assassin.

Assassin, I guess, is the actual class. And then so you pick the class that you want, and then you get to pick the subclass within that class that you want. And what's interesting about Lost Ark is you don't start from level 0 to 20 as just a warrior and then pick your subclass later on. You literally start the game as your subclass. So I don't really know why they go into the whole warrior archetype, mage archetype, assassin archetype, and martial artist one, because you're not ever playing as just a generic martial artist. You're playing as a war dancer or a scrapper or one of the subclasses in there. So that part confuses me a little bit. But the classes are great, man. Every class is basically a DPS in Lost Ark. You do have two supports, which are the Paladin and the Bard, and you have one kind of tank class, which really is like the purest of the tanks, but it's not really a tank,

which would be the Gunlancer, which is a direct ripoff of the Weapon and Monster Hunter world. But that's it. So there's no Holy Trinity. There is no healers healing the tank and DPS doing that. Everybody is just doing all of these over-the-top skills. Yes, as a paladin, I can help out my team and other classes have debuffs and buffs for their team and stuff like that. But it's a very neat class system. Because I remember all of us were doing this and we had these huge conversations about, hey, what class are you going to pick, Paul? Hey, Michael, what class do you want to be? I'll pick a different class. And then I think we kind of came to realize it doesn't matter. Play what you want. It's funny when you mentioned earlier, too, you're like,

why do they break out these main classes into subclasses? Why not just start that way? Because case in point, the mage. The mage has two subclasses. There's a sorceress, which quite possibly may be the highest DPS character in the game. And then there's the bard, who is by far the lowest DPS class in the game, but also has a lot of support. It's really strange that, like, why are these both under mage? Why weren't they just two different classes? Yeah, it is interesting. It's almost like it would have been neat if you had like a different starting area for each of the archetypes and then you had to like choose a mentor and then they would teach

you the art or something yeah it's a little bit odd because it really is just like 18 different classes or however many there are um now i thought that this would oh before we move on there is also a really big focus in leveling alts in this character. This is not a game that is designed for you to make one main and you spend all of your time on it. You don't only level your individual characters, but you level your roster. Your account, really. Yeah, your account, basically. It's almost like you have your character XP and your full account XP.

And so as you level up alts it's also helping your main and the end game content has built in daily and weekly limits so it almost pressures you to knock out some of your basic stuff on your main now go spend time with your alts so it doesn't really matter what you start to play as because you're gonna max out your level pretty quickly and move on to another class. But I did think it would be helpful as we kind of transition to start talking about combat. Why don't all three of us just talk a little bit about how our class functions? And so even though it's a small sample size of three, I think it'll give like a nice picture of how the combat works and how they're all different so like right before

we go there though it's funny that you mentioned when you mentioned the whole focus on alts in fact built into the game as you progress there's two parts of the game where you actually get tickets to automatically get a level 50 alt and another level 50 alt as you keep going with your main character and the roster quest so the game is even like hey we want you to play alt so bad we'll give you a max level you just got to go ahead and progress the rest of your roster it's just interesting yeah it's almost like that one little carrot in case you're afraid to start another character like well it's already max level so you're not gonna waste time leveling even though it's pretty fast even though it's quick

yeah so yeah josh how about your paladin how how does combat work i i'm i'm digging my pally man in the very beginning i normally go dps and i thought hey this is uh you know this is going to be a little bit weird for me to play a support character because if i'm not dps i'm usually tank but since there's no tank in lost ark i figured i'd try support and give it a shot paladin i'm digging it man he is your typical paladin right holy warrior my all of my skills have to do with either using holy light and holy abilities or these like blue everything's kind of color-coded right so i have these like punishment abilities or judgment is what they call them to where those are like the high DPS ones, more single target, whereas the holy abilities are

much more like AOE. What makes the paladin kind of stand out from the rest of the classes is where I focus support is that I create barriers for teammates. And so I have probably three or four different abilities that put a shield around you and give you a percentage of your hit points as a shield, which can come in very, very handy in Lost Ark because there's really not a lot of healing. Michael can talk to the bard because it's really the only healer class. But even then, it's not like it's just pumping your hit points up like you would think a healer would do. So with the pal then, it's not like it's just pumping your hit points up like you would think a healer would do. So with the Paladin, it's more so like damage mitigation. If I see a boss telegraph and all the bosses have a big red telegraph that goes out, I might pop a barrier

on my team in case somebody doesn't get out of it or something like that. But I enjoy it a lot because the AOEs for the Paladin are incredible, man. I mean, I'll hold my sword up over my head. A huge bolt of holy lightning will come down, hit my sword and then just explode in this like lightning nuclear explosion. And then just everything around me just turns into giblets and then splatters to the ground,

you know, or, or like I'll raise my sword up in the air and an angel will come down and bless my sword and then cast a huge ring of light around it. Everything's very over the top. But the Paladin, I really like. Now, here's the one thing I'll say is that this game does not suit my MMO play style because I haven't touched an alt yet. And I won't because I historically just play one class, get it as good as I can possibly get it, and then just don't play anything else. So I probably had a little bit of a disadvantage there and then I haven't played any alts yet. So we're all stuck at roster level 13?

Yeah, basically. Is that what I'm doing? I think it's because that's what mine's at. Michael, how about your bard? How does that work? Have you guys ever seen Mad Max Fury Road? Oh, great movie. There's a desert chase scene, and there's a dude in the front of this giant train, and he plays this guitar,

and flames fly out of it. That's my character. I play music as a weapon. No, it's incredible, though. i have to say just like josh i i have picked the perfect class for me i love this class um i do almost i i do very little dps but the cool thing about the bard is there are a few spells that actually are heavy hitters they don't come up very often so oftentimes i save them for when we need to do a lot of a lot of you know d checks or stagger checks, because there are stagger checks in some of the fights where you have to stagger the boss a bunch of times back and forth in order to break it out of whatever spell he's doing or he'll wipe the group. So mostly the Bard, when you use your DPS spells, they're really reserved for that.

I do a lot of stuns, and again, I think we're talking about the skill trees a little bit later, so I won't get into that. But a lot of my DPS spells actually do a lot of stunning. But the most important thing about the Bard is very similar to the Paladin. Healing in this game is not a typical heal. If I see a party member who's low on health, I can't just cast a spell on him and heal him. I bubble and mitigate damage before they take

damage. So basically, a good bard has essentially two or three bubbles they can use, and a good bard is kind of like rotating through which ones are on at certain times. Now, it's a little more difficult than just like, okay, this one's up, it drops, the next one's available, because two of my bard bubbles actually have a timer before they start. So one of them is like 12 seconds. And it's only if this harp stays alive that I summon. And so it's quite a lot more intricate than just like, bubble, you get a bubble, you get a bubble, everybody gets a bubble, Oprah bard. It kind of goes pretty far into just really having to make sure you're watching your rotation, which is really cool.

And when I do heal, it's based on when I use damaging spells. I have to damage things, and it builds up kind of like a heal meter. It builds up my bubbles on my main heal. And it's an AOE heal that covers half the screen. And I get to choose, like, hey, do I want to use it now? Because I've only got one bubble. So it's going to do the third of the healing that would do as if I max it out so you really have a lot of like strategy in when you're going to use a heal or if you're going to let the rest of

your group rely on using their potions which is a big part of the game you kind of have to heal yourself with your potions um I love it uh don't play the bard though if you don't like music because literally every single thing you hear everything is a note even it cracks me up it's so funny yeah if i fight in a group it's just it's i hear explosions and then i hear like you do really hear the strumming on the harp during mad combat it's pretty it's pretty comical yeah but's awesome. I love the class. Like Josh, I have always made a class gotten that class to like top in the world of whatever it is. Top healer, top DPS.

So I'm interested in playing an alt in this game, but for right now I am loving just maxing out the bard. I just kind of wish I could be a dude, but I can't be a dude. I gotta be a female. Yeah. Some of them are locked in with, yeah, like your character's sex. It's pretty interesting how they work that in.

Now, I picked a female martial artist. And the specialization I ended up picking is the war dancer. And then I found out later that war dancer is by far the least picked class in Korea, where the game's already been out for a couple years oh wow see you can actually look at the breakdown and there's only it's like less than three percent of all players pick war dancer really and i don't know why i think it's a really fun class like i didn't know that this this woman running around in high heels and all of my abilities are like straight out of kung fu movies it'll be where i do um some some

buttons you actually have to press multiple times to do combos so i'll do one where i do like three kicks in a row and i have to keep pressing that button at the right time and they do combo moves i have other abilities where i press and hold a button and she'll just keep releasing like 10,000 kicks continually so as long as anyone's near me they're gonna get hit a million times in a row i did not know that there was combos in this game that i just learned something because my class doesn't have combos that's really cool are you sure you might want to check your skills you might michael it doesn't at all yeah yeah i did not know that some of my buttons had combos. I'm like, man, that ability really sucks. It only does X amount of damage.

And then some of the abilities have a little symbol that means to hold the button, and other ones have a symbol, meaning you have to press it multiple times. And then I realized, oh, the first kick puts them up in the air. The next kick hits them in the face, and then the final kick does like a giant knockback. Oh, man, a high heel in the face. And then once I realized. Yeah. And then the other little thing the War Dancer does is as I do damage, it starts to fill these three little bubbles that are called esoteric bubbles.

And when those are full, then I can kind of use like a semi-alt. It's kind of like I'll use it actually like once every 20 seconds. I summon this giant tornado, and it kind of like I'll use it actually like once every 20 seconds. I summon this giant tornado and it kind of like pulls people in and attacks everybody. So all the classes actually do play quite a bit different. I don't know about you guys. I do not have a single range ability. I always have to be up in the middle of the action, but I get a huge bonus when I'm backstabbing. So I'm continually repositioning myself behind the boss. And I think the martial artist is the only class that has the backstabbing bonus,

but that kind of also makes them stand out. When it comes to range, it's interesting with the bard, because almost all of my damage spells are ranged, but 100% of my spells that bubble other people are immediate proximity. So I literally have to bounce out, attack, bounce in to help people. So the bard having no hit points, I am in the action all the time and it's terrifying. Yeah, I was just going to say like the paladins melee, I have zero ranged capability at all, but that suits me because I like being in the thick of things but yeah they did a very good job with making all of the classes feel very unique so i think that's

something that would definitely appeal to anybody that might want to play lost ark is that there is there is very likely a class that you will fall in love with and really enjoy the mechanics for and it's not just the skill sets that are different. It's the underlying, like you said, Paul, you build up these esoteric bubbles. Michael, you mentioned your bard builds up these different bubbles, I guess, or healing meters or something like that. Oh, it's serenade. Serenade meter. That's what it's called. Yeah. My paladin builds up a meter that lets me unleash a big AoE team support thing. I know scrappers have green and yellow abilities.

And as you use the green abilities, it builds up your yellow meter. And then as you use the yellow meter, it builds up your green abilities. So you're juggling these back and forth and everything. So there's a lot of nuance to the way the classes play. Oh, yeah, absolutely. And in the beginning, you only have a couple of abilities that you can use, but then as you level your class and you max it out, you end up with a total of 18, or at least there's 18 for the martial artist, and you can equip eight of them. So there's a little bit of swapping abilities in and out as you learn them,

but then there's also the skill point system where you can bring up a tree of all swapping abilities in and out as you learn them but then there's also the skill point system where you can bring up a tree of all of your abilities and you get to put points into them and as you put in more points then it gives you the ability to customize and upgrade those skills and so there's basically three tiers you put in a few points you get a minor upgrade you put in more and you get a moderate upgrade, you put in more and you get a moderate upgrade. And then if you max it out, then you get like a really beefy upgrade to that ability. And I was curious to know how you guys felt about this system. I love it. They call it the tripod system, which is the world's weirdest name for basically saying

we can let you customize your skill tree. It get the name of the developer yeah the developer is tripod i mean i guess okay so i didn't know that actually so it makes more sense now you have to look at it for like 30 seconds when you load the game it says tripod and well i don't ever pay attention to the splash screens i just thought they meant because each level there's usually three there's three branches three tiers yeah to pick from so i was like oh a tripod has three legs so that makes sense but um this is where your character build really starts to shine in my opinion i love the theory crafting and the ability to just completely change a build up and say hey you know what i've been playing this for 20 levels now i want to mix it up a little bit and the tripod system i I think, is phenomenal.

It's one of my favorite parts of the character customization as far as that goes. Because it's like you said, you spend a few points. And every time you spend a point... So if you spend one point, the next time you have to spend two points. And then you have to spend three points and so on. So it gets more and more expensive to go further in this tier. But the stuff that it does to customize your skills, I think are really, really good. Maybe it makes your character move faster for a couple seconds when you activate the

skill. Maybe it gives you more of your ultimate generation when you use this skill. So you generate your ult faster. Or maybe it throws a debuff on the monsters that you hit with it you know and that's just tier one and then you move into tier two and it's like well now it does 50 more damage but it's no longer an aoe it's a single target ability so there's some very drastic changes to the skills that you have as your class with this system i think think is great. I really, really like the system. No, I am absolutely enthralled by it. I love the way they did it. It's just complex enough to where you can create a customized character on how you want to play it based on what you want your class to do, but not complex enough to be absolutely mind-boggling where you're having

to Google every single thing and figure out what the best meta is and all this stuff what i like about it as well is you have presets up top and so you can say okay when i'm soloing when i'm doing the storyline as a bard i don't want to have all these heels and bubbles it doesn't make sense i want to be able to kill things faster and so i can swap seamlessly back and forth. And it's funny because as a free game, it's still really not a pay-to-win, but this is where Tripod kind of makes some of their money. You can get two tabs starting out, doing quests and all kinds of stuff. You can open up a third preset, but also you can buy it with real money if you want to, to customize your class more. So it's not really a pay-to-win, but it's a pay for convenience if you want it to be. And I more. So it's not really a pay to win, but it's a pay for

convenience if you want it to be. And I like how you can just change it out quickly. And to Josh's point, every single time, I've got one ability that has a bubble, right? Well, how do I want to customize this bubble? Do I want to have it so every time I cast it, everyone else runs now 40% faster? Or do I want to have it to where when I cast this now, the boss moves 20% slower? And it's based on just what I want to do with it where when i cast this now the boss moves 20 slower and it's based on just what i want to do with it the overall spell does the same thing but the side effect is a little bit different which is it's it's brilliant i love it and i love that you can move seamlessly through because a lot of games you have to spend in-game currency to respec and i'm doing air quotes

here um you know world of warcraft especially like i to spend 10,000 platinum to respec my character. Oh, I'm going to this raid. I got to do a little bit differently. In this one, it's like, I'm not feeling this one. I just go in the... I press K on my keyboard and I click a different one and I've done it instantly and it's good. They've made it so convenient, so fun, taking away a lot of the pains and the bums from a lot of other MMOs and just truly made it enjoyable to customize your class. Yeah. Yeah, that's very true. And you can even very quickly swap maybe just for this one boss. Maybe I don't need the extra AoE. Instead, I'm going to pick this other ability and you can actually fine tune even just from fight to fight. There's no cooldown on swapping out all of your

skills. Now, if we're going to talk about a game as massive as Lost Ark, we have to talk a little bit about endgame content. So Lost Ark, you max out at level 50, which is the soft cap, very quickly. You won't even be done with the storyline. You have to keep going with the storyline to finish that up. But once you hit 50, Josh, I'll let you talk a little bit about this first because this seems very much up your alley you hit level 50 you get to vern castle and you get to unlock chaos dungeons oh buddy and there it's true man so you know one thing we need to i don't know if we'll have a lot

of time to dig into we've kind of been hinting at it, but this is an action RPG. It's very akin to Diablo, right? So if anybody that's ever played Diablo understands the way the combat works, you are fighting literally hordes of hundreds upon hundreds of monsters at a time. Yeah. It really needs to be played to experience it, but it's very, very akin to Diablo. And in some ways, I'm going to say it's even a little bit better because of the number of skills that you have. And so that's the way the combat works. When you get to the end game, this is when combat gets difficult. This was one of my complaints in the beta and early on is that you are just an absolute wrecking machine.

You don't even really have to worry about dying while you're leveling. of my complaints in the beta and early on is that you are just an absolute wrecking machine. You don't even really have to worry about dying while you're leveling. Very, very seldom was I ever in fear for my character's life until I got to level 50. And then the game dials up the difficulty level a pretty good bit. And then it introduces you to the end game content. So you have Chaos Dungeons, you have Guardian Raids, you have Abyssal Dungeons. All this stuff they have these names for. But basically, Chaos Dungeons, I love because they are exactly that. It drops you into a small little map, almost just like a room. And then it sends 5,000 monsters at you at one time. And you and your team or solo or whatever, just go absolutely ham for the next probably 90 seconds. You have to kill enough monsters so that a portal appears. You move through the portal and now you move into

room number two. And then it throws harder monsters at you. So maybe now you're fighting monsters and little mini bosses. And then you go ham all over again, and then you move to level three. Now it's giving you an actual boss boss with a couple of mini bosses and still 5,000 monsters. And you just blow every AoE you've got, every skill you got. You're running around like crazy. There's just jibs everywhere. It's phenomenal like i think it's just pure chaotic fun it's literally chaos like when i went into it i had a buddy um and he's i'm like explain them all to me he's like chaos dungeons that's you'll see they're just it's exactly that they're chaos and it's it's like you might have 200 mobs on your screen at once three seconds later there's none

and there's 200 again And there's 200 again, because there's so many AoEs going off. There's so many colors. My bard's going nonstop. It's insane. It's crazy. Yeah. And the other key thing is that once you do your first Chaos Dungeon, this is the first time that they start to give you your upgradable gear. So very similar, like if you've played WoW, this is how you get your tier one gear where you can basically wear it. And as you run end game content, you're going to start getting drops. These are things like harmony, leap stones, guardian stone fragments. I mean, all kinds of things like this. And you can use those items

to upgrade your gear to give you a higher item level. And as you get your character to a higher item level, you unlock more difficult Chaos Dungeons. So when you do these things, there's not only different dungeons within the Chaos Dungeon system, but there's also different levels that unlock as you get better gear. Now, I was hinting at this earlier. This is where the game starts to get incredibly confusing. The first time you start to learn these systems, because there's like eight different systems that all work toward improving your gear. Michael,

I'm going to go ahead and give you the honor of trying, trying to explain how you upgrade gear in this game so let's say you've run your first chaos dungeon you've got some uh fancy new gauntlets or a chess piece what what do you do now with it i feel i feel like uh josh got chaos dungeons which is crazy and i'm sitting here going hip hip hop hip hop anonymous he get all the easy ones now so to put it in a nutshell when you hit when you do your first chaos dungeon you do two of them or is it after your first you get to do two you do you do your first two chaos dungeons yeah yeah and you you basically get your first end game set of gear which is your tier one ultimately you can

think of this as the last set of gear you which is your tier one. Ultimately, you can think of this as the last set of gear you're going to get because even though it goes to tier two or tier three, you are no longer running around the game looking to get a new sword or looking to get new shoulder pads or a new chest piece. And so basically what you do is as you do these chaos dungeons and as you do pretty much anything else in the game from this point on, you get these pieces that drop. There's little green gems and little red gems. I forget exactly what each one of them is called,

but essentially the green gems do your gear. The red gems do your weapons. There's other pieces. And basically what you do is you do what's called honing. And you collect. I know, right? We're going in circles, guys. Stick around.

The blind guy is driving the bus. We're 5% into the honing system. All right. Go ahead, Michael. Yeah. So essentially with honing is you get any gear that drops inside of this chaos dungeon, you're going to immediately dismantle it into these gems and crystals and things. And then you go talk to a guy who's essentially the honing master or your blacksmith, whatever.

It's your gear upgrader guy and you essentially just basically go in and click max out on you know you click let me go to level seven on this piece from level six you hone it you have a pretty good chance early on of honing it up you've got to upgrade before you hone yeah that's right you gotta upgrade you gotta upgrade and then you gotta hone it so yeah you's right. You got to upgrade it. And then you got to hone it. Max upgrade. Yeah. So you hit the max upgrade button, then you hit the hone button, and then you hit the hone button again. And then while it's doing that, you have to hit the gets results button

because they wanted to put another button in there to make sure that you're like, do I want to see if this worked or not? But then it levels up that piece of gear. And essentially, it's all based on item level at this point. The total item level that you have or total gear score that you have based on the items

that you have says if you can go to the next level of Chaos Dungeons, because there's four different levels of Chaos Dungeons. You start at number one, you go to number four, and so on and so forth. Now, the thing is, is that actually, I don't know if I'll get into this, but you can't progress in the game in the main story without honing your gear and getting to a certain gear score. I'm at a place right now that you have to have a 460 gear score to get to. So you have to do these Chaos Dungeons and you have to do these Abyssal Dungeons and Guardian Reigns to get any farther.

And that was the craziest way to explain how to get your gear good that anybody can possibly ever explain. So anything you guys want to add? Hopefully a lot. Well, we're not going to go into the detail, but there are also engravings where you have to get these individual gems and they all have different power-ups and you got to try to find the right ones and there's a lot of RNG involved

and then you can equip that. The game's also got gems. It has where you collect different cards and as you equip different card sets, that gives you bonuses to your character. That still conf i don't skill runes that you can attach to your skills yes uh there there are literally like i was telling our friend shane that ultimately this is actually a good thing because when you play an mmo inevitably you get bored of everything and this game seems so overwhelming the first time like you see the word faceting it's like i don't know what that means and you do a quick google search well here's

a 30 minute video on lost ark faceting guide it's like all right well i guess i'm watching this now but then like you have to do that with all eight of these systems yeah there are still things in this game i don't understand how they work and if if you hit escape in Lost Ark, it brings up a menu. And there's like 40 different screens, whether it's your titles or your adventurer's tome. And then as you click and add more things to your tome, you get more rewards through that. Like you have to end up watching hours upon hours of guides or to have your friends talk you through how it works because it is not very intuitive at all. Well, Paul, when you hit the escape button too,

I don't know if anybody else is like this, but on my cell phone, when I sit there and I see a bunch of notifications or little pins everywhere, I have to go in and clear them out. Oh, yeah, I'm like that. Yeah, Paul's menu he just talked about. Every time you do anything in this game, there's a notification that says, hey, there's a new thing on your roster. Hey, there's a new thing on your honing. Hey, there's a new thing here. And you're like, I got to go through and clear all these things

out. It's like playing whack-a-mole with notifications. It's crazy. Yeah, the systems in this game are insanely convoluted. They are learnable. It's not, it's not like a reason to not play. It's just that they're saying, Hey, look, you've gone through all of the story. You've gone through all of the leveling. Welcome to the end game.

And it's like, they try to just present the end game to you and give you like, Hey, you can do 5,000 different things. Now, do you want to go focus on your rapport with these characters? There's a, an entire rapport system. Do you want to increase your gear level? Right these characters? There's an entire rapport system.

Do you want to increase your gear level, right? Like, well, here's a way to do that. Do you want to increase your skills? Here's a whole separate system for that. Oh, do you like base building and kind of behind the scenes stuff? Well, here's your stronghold. And there's 40 different levels of your stronghold to do. It gets a little bit mind numbing after a little while.

But it's like you said, Paul, for people that want an MMO and they want endless content, this game feeds that. Because if you're a completionist, or you're the kind of person that says, Hey, I want to get absolutely sucked into this MMO and I want to dump 2000 hours into it without running out of content, man, is this the game for you? Because every single one of these systems could easily provide you with hundreds of hours of content if you want to try to learn them and max them out and become an expert at them. You don't have to really understand any of them to play the game. It's very easy to just jump

into a Chaos Dungeon or a Guardian a guardian raid but if you want to kind of keep progressing and getting higher and higher in the end game then you do have to learn these systems and that's it's kind of one of the craziest parts about it too that you hit on the head exactly is like what do you want to do today like there are things that i still haven't done and i've i've got a really good bard i'm pretty far into the game i still haven't done my stronghold i still haven't visited all the island quests. There's island quests you have to do. That's a whole different 5,000-hour game. There's sailing ships. You have to level up your ship to go to different places. There's sea

battles that I haven't even looked at yet. I mean, there's so many different things. It's like, hey, what do you want to focus on today that I feel like you're never running out of content to do? And it's like hey what do you want to focus on today that i feel like you're never running out of content to do and it's it's i mean it's crazy now well even within the ship sailing there's even different kinds of ships that you unlock because you need like a certain icebreaker ship right go into the tundra and you have to recruit new crew who are going to come with you on these missions and you have to equip them and even that customizes and changes your ship you can take any one of these systems and it's a whole game in and of itself yeah you know josh is absolutely right you can play thousands of hours and you're not

going to run out of things now one thing because i know we're getting late in the show there for for people that like the more kind of traditional mmo late game stuff. There are raids. There's kind of a nod to the Monster Hunter series as well. So the Guardian raids are basically your team goes and fights one mob. That's it. It's a big giant beast of a thing. The fights probably take 20 or 30 minutes. There are mechanics that you need to learn, but it's very over the top. Think Monster Hunter world, right? You're just trying to take down this big fantastical beast. And then there are my favorite, which are the Abyssal Dungeons. The best.

The Abyssal Dungeons are where you 100% need perfect teamwork with your team that you go through to be able to beat these bosses. This is where your very in-depth raid mechanics come into play. This is not just tank and spank on some giant beast. This is, hey, party member one needs to go grab this sword. Party member two has to wait exactly two seconds before he grabs his sword while party member one starts trying to break the boss's shield. Oh, by the way, if you guys grab your sword too close to each other, the whole party wipes, you know, or things like that. You know, oh, hey, this boss does this shockwave that's a specific color.

Everybody needs to run around the arena and collect the orbs of that color. If you pick the wrong orb, you heal the boss. Like these are your very in-depth mechanics. I think the Abyssal Dungeons are 100% why I play Lost Ark for those mechanics, and they're where the game really, really shines. Yeah, the only complaint I have about the Abyssal Dungeons is that you are replaying dungeons that you did earlier in the game. They just add additional raid-like mechanics to the boss. And they're shortened, though. You don't have to do the whole

dungeon it's like a quarter of the the dungeon that you have to run through but yeah you're right i mean it is stuff that you've seen before as far as the maps go but the bosses are new and the mechanics are new in those but so that's like that's just some of the end game raid type stuff there's also a very fleshed out pvp system which i'm dying to try and haven't even touched yet like that's that's lost arc there's i feel like there's 500 things that I haven't even done yet. And I'm pretty sure I have like 200 hours in this game already. So yeah, for the final end game content, you're talking your chaos dungeons, the raid dungeons. Guardian raids and the abyssal dungeons.

That's what I mean. Guardian raids and your abyssal dungeons. And those have limits for how many you can run each day one of the neat things is that if you miss days they give you a a rest bar and so you actually can get additional materials so it's not like you fell behind your friends as long as you're hopping on every couple of days you can actually relatively keep pace which i think is really really nice um now we we talked about how many other things there are in in this game i don't know if there's any that you want to talk about specifically

the one thing i did also want to mention is as you do build up your stronghold you can actually send a crew out to accomplish missions and those missions can actually be the end game content so even though those things are relatively short, I mean, my goodness, Chaos Dungeons are, what, like five minutes? They're pretty quick. Now, if you don't have time for an Abyssal Dungeon, then go ahead and pop your crew into a ship from your stronghold. They're going to do it for you and bring you back all the materials.

It just takes 12 hours, and then the game gives it all to you for free. So you can literally still keep pace with everybody, even if you don't have time that day to do any endgame content. Anything else in this game you guys want to talk about? I was just going to say, Quality of grind for the people that like it, but manages to do away with the grind of most other things that MMOs try to throw at you. Most MMOs try to slow you down by giving you, hey, we want you to run really far, or we want you to go kill 50 rats, or you have to go kill 5,000 rats before you can progress for this quest or whatever.

Lost Ark does away with all of that. You are progressing at such a rapid pace that you'd never actually feel like you're stuck anywhere until you get to the very end game portion. I'm starting to experience a little bit of that grind right now. But the way that you beat the grind is by doing the Chaos Dungeons, the Guardian Raids, and the Abyssal Dungeons. And so it's like, well, I want to do that anyway. So I would say that they absolutely nail the quality of life stuff in this game, which is very rare for an MMO. Yeah, it really doesn't feel like you're doing a job. Like a lot of MMOs, you're kind of like, I have to log in today because I have to do this for an hour before

I can even play the game. In this one, yes, there are things like that you have to do this for an hour before I can even play the game. In this one, yes, there are things like that you have to do, but you can also choose which ones you want to do. And to Paul's point, if you can probably go forever without even doing an abyssal dungeon, you can just say, hey, I don't want to do those. I'm going to have my stronghold do it every time, you know, and just not do those fights. If you choose to do something else, like something I haven't even gotten into yet, it's like professions. If you want to just go out and log and mine and do things and build things, I don't even know how those work yet, but I know they exist. And so it's just nice because it does remove a lot of that grind piece. It does remove

a lot of that feels like a job piece that other MMOs have. And it just makes it like Josh said, the quality of life stuff is very well polished. All right. So before we move into our final segments here, how about both of you tell me one thing? What's your number one criticism? a lot. If you are going to progress with friends and you want to go through the story with friends, there are many dungeons that you have to do by yourself. If I want to hop in and play with Josh later on, and he's at one part of the story, I can't go play with him because you can't progress the story. I had a buddy, he and I basically leveled the whole way from 25 to 50 together because we happened to be at the exact same part of the story. And what had to happen was I had to say, okay, I'm logging off

for the night. And he's like, okay, I won't touch the story until I play with you again. And he had to go do other things. But we noticed that about 30, sometimes 50% of our playtime each night was us not playing together. And for an MMO, I think that's kind of a sin. It's great that we have to do this story stuff. It's great that they want us to see and experience certain things because the game does make you feel like you are this hero. You're the chosen one. But in an MMO, I want to do it with friends. And there's so many pieces of the content where you're like, oh, hey, look, a solo dungeon to where it actually kind of became a joke with my buddy and I. When are we going to have another group dungeon in this story?

Like, it's, oh, look, another solo dungeon. I'll see you in a few minutes. Let's race to see who can finish it first. And I'm like, I'm a bard. It's not going to be me. I don't do any DPS. And so that's my biggest criticism of this game is it does do a good job of combining MMO with single player, but it does really hammer in the single player sometimes a bit too much. It's funny you brought that up because that honestly is very, very similar to my complaint in that I felt like the leveling, I just wanted to get through the leveling. And while the zones are very unique, it was almost like I wish that it was harder. There was a part of me that there was not any. There was absolutely zero challenge for me from level 1 to level 50.

And so I felt like there was a point where I was just wanting to get through the content so that I could get to level 50. And I get you only have to do that once because then you can power level all of your alts up to that level. But I don't know if I wish that the combat was a little bit harder as you're leveling, or maybe there's just not. I mean, you go through what, like 12 different worlds, almost like these different zones when you're leveling and they look very different. Like, that's cool. Like, that's very neat that they're unique. But at some point I just go like, dude,'t i don't want to run through this zone again i don't want to have to do that i just want to go play with my friends and do teamwork type stuff because michael is 100 correct and that trying to level with a friend in this game is not something that really is easy to do now i did that

with our friend andy literally did the entire from 1 to 50 with andy but like michael said it was hey oh you gotta go well i guess i'll stop playing right now you know and kind of do it like that because there's no other way to actually level together and i feel like part of an mmo you know i wasn't a huge world of warcraft guy but very similar is like how fun was it to go camp some area and slaughter monsters or go do these quests together where it really was fun and helpful to have a friend along? And Lost Ark completely misses the mark in that regard. I actually have a friend who started playing the game because he saw me putting 50 hours in it. And he messages me.

He's like, hey, man, I'm in Lost Ark. You want to group up? You want to play? And I'm like, I really can't play with you. I can go back and do the dungeon you're in right now, but then I'm going to stand there while you do a lot more story. And I'm going to help you with the dungeon for a minute. But I said, you just got to get to level 50. And then we can play together. We saw that with our listeners. People were saying in our Discord server,

hey, what server are you guys on? Hey, I picked up Lost Ark. This game's great. I'm having a lot of fun. Can I play with you guys? And we kind of went, no. And it's not that we don't want to play with you. It's just that I'm level 43, you're level 37. I'm further in the story and you can't catch up to me and I can't really go back. I mean, I could, but what's the point at that point? So yeah, they missed the mark. What about you, Paul? Is there something that really kind of was off for you? Yeah. My biggest complaint's a little more basic than your guys. It's the load time of the game. When you double click Lost Ark, I timed it today. Do you guys want to take a guess? How long do you think it takes? Two minutes and 14 seconds. 3.27 because I don't know why. Michael is shockingly close. I have an M2 drive, right?

This game is going to load as fast as possible, and it is three minutes and 12 seconds from the time I double click until I am finally in the game. It is the longest load times that i can think of since rust grand theft auto online okay maybe that was brutal that was brutal which don't forget that one dude fixed it just by cleaning up a little bit of code but yeah i i hear what you guys are saying about not being able to level together i'm less critical of that because you can hit max level in two days yeah so it's like okay well then once you're max level we can do everything as long as we log in around the same time because if you complete your abyssal dungeons you get locked out you literally cannot run them

so you just need to make sure you and your buddies are doing them together otherwise you can't play we we had that happen last night. Josh and I were going to run an Abyssal Dungeon. Michael didn't realize that he already hit his cap, and so Michael logged out, and Josh and I had to run it without him. I was very sad. I was really looking forward to finally playing that with you guys, and I was like, oh, I can't even go back and not get the rewards. It'd be nice if they let me do the Abyssal Dungeon and just not get the rewards for it, you know, and just be able to play with you guys, but I can't. And they'll let you do that for the others just not the abyssal dungeon so if you want

to run a chaos dungeon you can click a button that says i don't want this to count as loot and you just get to play it you don't get anything but you can at least run it with your friends but the abyssals are a little different well the abyssal dungeons are the ones that you want to play with your friends because everything else i can plug. Yeah, everything else I'll plug. Like a Chaos Dungeon, I don't even know what other classes in there with me. I don't care. It's mayhem. You know, the Abyssal Dungeon, though, you want to be able to like, hey, can we all just hop in Discord real fast and let's talk through it because there's a lot of coordination and I'll play with my friends. It's like a raid. And it's a bummer that they limit them so much. Yeah. All right. Well, we got to move on to the last parts of the show here. Josh, do you have some reviews that were left on Steam? I do. This game is free to play on Steam.

So all you got to do is just go search for Lost Ark and you can download it and play it for free. But you guys have heard kind of what we thought about this game. We always go to Steam to say, hey, maybe my opinion, Michael's opinion, Paul's opinion are just three old dads. Maybe there's people with other opinions out there. So we always pull some Steam reviews to kind of give you an idea of what the other gamers think in this regard. So I always pull two positive ones and two negative ones. First one is positive. This person has 141 hours on record, so they've played a pretty good bit. And the review is random player in game chat. This'm still here somehow. Maybe I enjoy shutting my

brain off and autopiloting. Maybe I sunk costs because I bought the Founders Pack. Maybe because it's full of incredibly attractive heroes and villains. Maybe my character is the cutest and I have bonded with her. Confused? Yeah, you and me both. Oh, boy. No, I think what this person's saying is that there's a lot to offer. Because yes, sometimes you can just do the combat and kind of autopilot it because you're just smashing everything. And that's very satisfying. If you spent money on the game, maybe you feel obligated to play it. Although, I mean, it wasn't very much. You could get a founder's pack for $15 and you don't have to pay anything for it. This one made me laugh because of the incredibly

attractive heroes and villains in this game. There is not an ugly soul running around in Lost Ark. All smoke shows. Yes, exactly. Paul alluded to that in the very beginning of the show, which made me laugh. All right, this next one is not recommended. 36 hours on record. Garbage questing system that boils down to mindlessly riding your horse from point A to point B to point C while mashing G. Put almost 40 hours into the game waiting for the fun to start, but it never did. Combat is the only good thing about this game. Too bad it only lasts for one minute and then it's back to riding your horse. Now, this is talking about the leveling, obviously, that we just kind of talked about there is a lot

of travel there there's no difficulty in the leveling system like in the in the getting to end game and so i think this guy just kind of got fed up with that i feel like he's riding his horse too much right right i feel like the leveling i feel like the leveling though is really it's really about the story that's for people who want to play that that you know a diablo or something like that where you really want to get the story a lot more because the game does really like if you stop to pay attention it's kind of like all the all the positives i say about oblivion like people notice you and they're like hey that's the guardian that's the guardian mommy mommy that's the guardian he's yeah the world does respond to you which is great

but you have to pay attention to it and i think through the leveling you're you're too excited to get to max level just so you can play with your friends and you kind of miss some of that so it's kind of weird yeah all right this next one is positive review i've been in a gaming slump for a while and this has absolutely got my interest diablo style combat and an mmo with all the collecting etc i've logged a large amount of hours in Diablo 3. The combat in that is smooth, and Lost Ark feels similar in that the combat just feels great. The controls are a little different, but after a couple of hours, it was absolutely fine. I've only experienced a few hours, but I can tell that this is a game I can finally look forward to and spend time with due to the activities on offer. So there's one thing in there that we should probably just briefly mention,

is that some people have a very hard time getting past the movement in this game, which is based on mouse clicking. I still hate the movement in this game. It took me a while to do. I'm very used to it at this point. I'm very used to it at this point. But man, if they came out with a patch and said, hey, we'll let you move around with WASD, I would be so happy. But no, you move your

character with your mouse and not with any keyboard commands. It's very strange. No, I have an MMO-style mouse where I've got a 12-key at my thumb. And I'm used to casting spells using my thumb position on my mouse and moving around with wasd i would probably do anything to be able to do that with wasd and cast the spells on my mouse because it's it you just can't do that in this game and i know i can remap a lot of things if i wanted to using like software and stuff but i want to play the game natively how it is so right well and you can't yeah you can't remap it for the movement anyway you just have to get yeah it's literally impossible um so all right and then this last one is not recommended 42 hours on record the combat here is why you stick around skills feel rewarding to use and everything moves

at a good pace keeping you actively dodging attacks or using interrupts wisely unfortunately they really want you to do things other than the combat. There's a management metagame that feels like any mobile strategy title. You can get teleport points around the world, but if one is on another continent, you need to sail to that continent using the sailing metagame. It's all systems upon systems, and none of them are enjoyable. The most fun I had while sailing was when I told the game to go somewhere and watch YouTube in another window until I reached my destination. The quests were designed by someone who hasn't played an MMO since Anarchy Online. They're abysmal.

A frequent quest type is to pick up a box and bring it somewhere a few feet away. Sometimes you use your emotes until the game tells you that's enough. Rarely do you do anything cool. That's also a problem. The game loves to have the supporting cast take the spotlight.

You are not the main character of your own adventure. You're there so the NPCs can be the heroes. Even if these NPCs weren't unbearable, this would be annoying. They are unbearable, so the problem is exacerbated. I have a good time whenever it lets me run a dungeon and play this like an action RPG. Every time it tries to do mmo stuff it falls flat on its face and it really wants to be an mmo i feel like that's a very fair negative review which was extremely hard to find by the way i i actually found myself agreeing with a lot of that uh but only to a to a little bit of a point you know it, it is true, though. There are a lot of quests where I'm like, all right, what do I type now?

I got to type slash talk. And then I got to wait 30 seconds. And now I swipe, yeah, slash encourage. Okay, and what's next? And you're like, how many times do I got to do this? I feel like you don't do those as much, though, as what this guy was saying. I feel like you don't have to carry the boxes as much,

maybe once a zone. But I agree, though. There is a lot of that tedious stuff sometimes. However, comma, not as tedious as a lot of quests in a lot of other games where you might have to ride your horse for 15 minutes. I don't mind the sailing because if I want to stop on the way and kill some pirates, I can do that. Right.

Yeah, I don't think that they're saying anything wrong in that review. I just don't think those things are as big of an issue as he does. You know what? They don't think those things are as big of an issue as he does you know what they don't make you sail if you want to hold alt and click where you want to go and alt tab out and watch youtube then great now you don't have to waste your time sailing if you don't enjoy sailing like i don't know that's i don't find a complaint and i think that's actually a bonus yeah it i think what the the the issue here is because the game focuses on quality of life stuff so much that you really notice where they don't have the quality of life stuff. Like, you know, there's the – Michael mentioned the Roendel zone.

And it's like I had to climb up these big, tall vines. And it was like 20 seconds of me climbing these vines. And I'm like, dude, where did this come from? This game doesn't make me do that. Like, why? Why now? So you do notice it when there are those kind of quality of life failures. And I think that's what this guy was kind of touching on and noticing more so.

Well, maybe he would enjoy Lost World. New World. Yeah, tell him about New World. All right, guys. So that's the Steam reviews. That's a little bit of what the other people that are playing Lost Ark think. It is now time for us to guess what we think the overall Steam review score is for Lost Ark. On a scale of 0 to 100, we are going to guess where we think

it falls. And Michael, since this is your very first deep dive with us, I think you get to go first, buddy. It's so funny because it is my first deep dive. And I went through this whole entire thing saying, hey, guys, if I get confused, just sit me in the corner. I'll figure it out after a few minutes. And now I've got to actually try and guess where this is. Now, just to the listeners who might not know, we go at this blindly. We try to make sure we do not ever look at the store page and see the actual Steam review score for this. So I have no idea. That being said, it's an MMO. I want to say it's pretty positive. I want to say that... I mean, it's interesting because you read some reviews that were negative, and I haven't heard anyone say anything negative about this game at all. So I don't know how to gauge it. So I want to say that i mean it's interesting because you read some reviews that were negative and i haven't heard anyone say anything negative about this game at all so i don't know how to gauge it so i want

to say it's an 82 all right 82 for michael paul i think it's a lot higher than 82 we know there are a ton of people hopping into it now maybe because's free, it's going to bring additional negative ratings. I think this one's going to be right around 91%. 91% from Paul. My guess, and just so people know, since I do pull the reviews, I always write down my guess first before I go to the Steam page and actually start looking up these reviews. So I wrote down 86%. I thought this is a very fun game. It's not going to be everybody's cup of tea. I said 86%. The actual overall rating is 72%. Oh, wow. Now, I will say this with a caveat that this game got review bombed. When this game very first came

out and people could start playing it, it was overwhelmingly positive reviews. And then server issues started to hit. And famously, if you try to play at primetime, even on our server, there's like a 6,000 person queue. It is way, way worse in Europe. Apparently, they're saying, hey, we can't add any servers over there for whatever reason. And it's like a 21,000 person queue. Oh, wow.

And so most of the bad reviews in this game were simply touching on the fact that having to queue to play it really sucks for people. So the game did get review bombed a little bit. But normally, when you get review bombed, you wind up down in the 30s and 40s. And this game is still in the 72% range, which I think is actually saying a lot in that regard. Yeah, I think it's pretty good. What was the longest queue you guys have actually had? 7,709 people.

It took an hour for me to get through the queue. My highest was like 8,800, but it didn't take all that long. I want to say it was like 30 minutes. My longest queue ever actually came at the strangest time. It was like 1 in the clock in the morning. Last Saturday, it was like 13,100. And I just wanted to log in because I'd forgotten to

do something with the mailbox real fast. And I was like, nope, bedtime. We're doing this. But it was an odd time to have that high of a demand. Alright. So, wait. Who won that? Michael. All right. So wait, who won that? Michael. Michael won.

How about that? Well, Michael, guess what you get to do, buddy? What am I going to do? You get to introduce the next segment. Oh,

the funniest part is I was going to ask you guys the rules on this because I've listened so many times and I, I can't remember which one is best. So I'm going to... Well, we'll get to that. But you got to introduce the segment first. So it's Make Love, Marry, or Murder. So this is the part, guys, where we basically rate the game on if we want to make love,

marry, or murder the game. That was a great intro. Wait, wait, you got to wait for us to hit the music, Michael. was very and then you gotta get into the mood oh oh that's right that's right all right all right so paul hit that music all right let's let's hit it all right guys this nasally voice is gonna ask you if you want to make love marry or murder this game i don't even like i went all all Metallica at the end of that. What's happening in life right now? I'm scared.

I have to go to the corner, guys. Come get me when I'm figured out where I am right now. Which way is up? So just in case anyone's a little confused, Make Love basically means it's a fun game. It's good for a short amount of time, but it's not marriage material. This is where you just want to play it for a bit, but it's not going to last forever. Marriage means the game is absolutely phenomenal, well worth your time and your money investment. You would stick with this game for a very long period of time, maybe even forever.

And then, of course, murder is definitely the worst of the bunch. This game is no good. It means you want to murder it and have nothing to do with it. So I don't know. Josh, how about you go first? What do you want to do with Lost Ark? It's a Mary for me. It has a lot to offer.

I have, in full disclosure, I think this game has a ton to offer to people. I think it succeeded as an MMO. I think it succeeded in having a very, very fun combat. I am starting to stagnate on the quest line because even when you get to the end game, you have to get to a certain gear score and then it unlocks a new region in the world. And then you have to go back to questing through that region. I struggled to go through this last region. I have to get to gear score 600 now. When that happens, I have to do another quest line and go through that region. I'm not

looking forward to that part. I feel like I'm actually done with the questing part of it. I just want to do dungeons. I just want to slaughter monsters. I just want to get my character stronger. I don't really want to go back to that. So it's not a perfect game by any means, but there is so much fun to be had in this game. You could literally sink thousands of hours into it. I think it has a lot to offer for everybody. For me, I could definitely see dabbling in Lost Ark for a long time until maybe the next big MMO comes out. So I think it's definitely marriage material.

I think it was a really big mistake to hit max level and start endgame content and then have to keep playing the storyline. They should have reduced how much XP you get with leveling to where you don't hit level 50 until you finish the overall quest. It does feel a little bit backward. Now, all that being said, I completely agree with you, Josh. I do think it's a Mary bit backward. Now, all that being said, I completely agree with you, Josh. I do think it's a Mary as well. I think the few things about the game that detract from the fun are way outweighed by what actually is exciting about Lost Ark. I love the fact that I can play an MMO and I can just hop in and play 45 minutes and that's all I really have to do every

day and I'm going to be on pace with everybody else. I love the fact that it allows you that kind of leeway, but at the same time, I don't fish and mine and hunt and do all these other things. If I had no other game to play and all I had was Lost Ark, which is free, man, you can have it way worse off than Lost Ark. This game gives you so much fun and it's completely free. How is it not marriage material? I am also absolutely marrying this game. I think that it's funny that both of you complained about the quests after max level. I actually love that. I love that it's still making me immerse myself in the lore. Now that I'm already max level though, and I'm kind of doing it at my own pace, I can still do the abyssal dungeons and stuff while I'm actually doing the

leveling or I'm sorry, the quest line. I actually find myself paying more attention to it now and actually watching the cinematics as I go and appreciating the lore a little bit more. That being said, everything you guys said, I love the fact that I have so many different things I can do. I don't have to log in for eight hours to get something done. I can just meet up with my friends, do a couple of abyssal dungeons this week. I don't have to touch it again for a while. I love the fact that I actually get... And again, you guys know I'm a story i'm a story hand i love the stories of all these things i love that the world around me reacts to me when i'm walking through and you

know because i look i feel like in this game i truly am the hero of kvatch and so it's done it right again i'm gonna stop mentioning that at some point but i'm marrying this game it's one of my favorite mmos ever and applause button for it the the last thing i'll say about lost ark before we do the leaderboard in world of warcraft when you're out collecting whether it's herbs or mining or whatever sometimes you're fighting other people over who gets to right click that node first one of the coolest things in lost ark is if you start chopping at a tree and someone else walks up and they right click the tree dude it converts into a two-person saw and you saw the tree down together and it's faster so you both get the mats and it's quicker because you're doing teamwork that's like a little microcosm of what this game does right that's just such a neat idea the first

time i saw that because i was the jerk that was racing somebody for the tree because i needed to get wood and i was like dude that's there's a tree and i saw the other guy going for it and i like i have a little dodge skill so i like dodged towards the tree and i was like i got it first sucker and then the dude starts chopping it and i'm like it's my tree like and then all of a sudden this giant saw comes out between the two of us and we chop the tree down together. And then I was like, I love you, man. Like, yeah, that was it was a really cool moment to have happen. Yeah. So, so neat.

All right. Well, guys, let's go into our last segment. Let's go to the leaderboard and see where this game stacks up. Full disclaimer. up full disclaimer i have nothing to do with this leaderboard up until this point uh all for the leaderboards will be assessed by me again there's the michael disclaimer all right so if you're new to the podcast we have an overall leaderboard where every time we deep dive a game, we rank it against all the previous games that we have done. We currently have a list of 66 games, which you can see at multiplayerpodcast.com. It is right there on the front page. And we have crowned a new number one game overall.

We have God of War 2018 at the top of the list. We also have some other things on here like Satisfactory at 7, Demio at 17, Among Us at 25, A Way Out at 37. I know I don't need to go any lower, but at the very bottom, we always got to poke fun at them a little bit. Battlefield 2042. So we have crowned a lowest game rated and a highest game rated here just in the last couple of months. Guys, as we take a look at Lost Ark, what are you thinking? I mean, we all said Mary,

so it's going to be somewhere in the top. Here's my one caveat to this, and I'm a little conflicted because I think Lost Ark has a lot to offer. But at the same time, I think that it does not do a great job of encouraging you to play with your friends. The three of us, we tried to play last night and we could not. But for the most part, the three of us have not actually gotten to play Lost Ark together very much. And so I think that's a failing in the game itself. And so on the leaderboard, I'm inclined to could be higher, but I want to knock it down a few pegs because of that. I'm in the, personally, I'm in like the 20 to like 23 range.

I keep looking at tribes of Midgard and wondering whether we have that rank too high, or I just, I would obviously much, much rather play lost arc over Tribes of Midgard. But I feel like it's in that area somewhere for me. What are you thinking, Michael? I feel like you hit it exactly right. One of the things that kind of knocks this game up a little

bit for me is the fact that it's an MMO that truly appeals to so many different audiences. If you're like us, and you're dads, and you're busy, and you play late at night after your kids are in bed, and you've only got an hour to play, this game is for you. If you're a mobile gamer, and you don't want to spend six hours on a game, and you're like, hey, I'd like to check out an MMO and give it a try, this game is for you. It's one of those things where it appeals to so many different people because you don't have to be married to the game, even though I chose to marry it. Now I'm stuck with it. But you don't have to be married to the game all the time like other

MMOs. Now I'm just curious to see how it would stack up against other MMOs in my mind. I think it's one of the best. There's nostalgia picks like everquest but i'm with josh i think it belongs probably in the maybe around 20 what do we have around 20 again yeah so we're looking at like 15 is risk of rain 2 split gate demio destiny 2 rainbow 6 siege the forgotten city and then like black ops cold war at 21 resident evil village 22 tribes of midgard 23 i would say i deep rock galactic which you've played at 24 so it's like would you rather play deep rock galactic with friends or would you rather play lost ark oh lost ark by oh yeah and i'd rather play this like i love forgotten city i love that game i this is better than forgotten city i think okay

so we're in the we're in the low teens yeah i think i'm okay with that i you know i think it's a phenomenal game my my immediate thought was put it one right above destiny two i think these two games are incredibly similar they just have a different perspective they these are two games that you could argue are incredibly bloated with systems upon systems upon systems but i think lost ark does it better than destiny i i was kind of thinking you could put it at 18 but i'm fine anywhere near that range i think i think 18 is perfect because i would rather play Lost Ark over Destiny 2. But then as you look above, I would rather play Terraria, Risk of Rain, Splitgate. Right. I think I'd rather play those over Lost Ark.

I think it's a great spot. And it moves Destiny 2 down one more, which is always a win in my book. Yeah, we're trying to get Destiny 2 out of the top 20 somehow, right? Is that what we're doing? It's like the goal to just drop it down. These games are so similar. similar i mean they really are similar but destiny 2 doesn't have a smoke show for the heroes and the villains so it's true but it does it does have good gunplay which you don't get at all with lost ark now which is why i like it so much okay so is that consensus 18 are we all

cool that at 18 michael down all right locked and loaded then we will have lost ark at 18, Michael? Lock it down. All right. Locked and loaded. Then we will have Lost Ark at 18. I'm a little surprised. Initially, I thought it would have been a little higher. Then I thought it might be a little lower. And then I hit the end game, and I kind of got that hit of, like, endorphins and adrenaline. But I think that's probably fair. Over time, I'm curious to see if our thoughts move.

Well, my thing is I've got to go back and play, like, there's four games immediately above this game that i haven't played and so i'm like yeah they're better it's better than all those games those games are dumb i didn't even play them uh so i but i'm happy with it in the top 20 because i think it probably would make my personal top 20 you know we did the top 10 list a few weeks ago i think this game is it it's probably the best MMO I've played more recently, aside from the nostalgia feeling I get of EverQuest. And it's free! If you're listening, it's free! Go pick it up!

Try it! It's like, you don't have to pay for a single thing in this game. Five stars. Just like the podcast. Alright, well, we are definitely out of time for today. Hopefully you guys enjoyed this episode. I'm sure many of you out there have already tried Lost Ark since it is free.

But our next deep dive is going to be Elden Ring. For a very long time, we had been touting February 2022 as such a huge month, getting two heavy hitting games. We have been engrossed in Elden Ring for these last few days, and we can't wait to have that episode released two weeks from today. So if you wanted to play the same games that we're going to cover, Elden Ring is coming up next. And as always, the next episode will be on Thursday when we talk about this week in

gaming. Anything else, guys, or is that it? That's it. Boy, we're getting, we're getting chatty,

man, hour and a half. We were bringing it to the people. Well, I think, I think it's shorter than the last deep dive on God of Wars. So we're, we're,

we're bringing it down a little bit. All right. You know, we're getting there. We're getting, it's free like lost arc. Maybe we're giving you too much, but at least it's free.

All right. Thanks everybody. Happy gaming. Thanks guys. All right. Thanks, everybody. Happy gaming. Thanks, guys. See you, everybody. Cheers.