Since its release, Lost Ark has grown significantly. The current “culmination” of that growth came in the Arkesia Ignited update in October, which brought the storyto a head as Kazeros is on the precipice of resurrection. To deal with that, Arkesia Ignited brings new tools to players.
Amazon’s Community Lead for Lost Ark, Roxanne Sabo, spoke to Game Rant about how the team at Korean developer Smilegate approaches new mechanics and what, in particular, Arkesia Ignited brings to the table.
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In an interview with Game Rant about Lost Ark’s October updates, Community Manager Roxanne Sabo detailed new mechanics and future dates to watch.
How Lost Ark’s Mechanics are Built
Coming on the heels of the gear transcendence system, Sabo promised the new options in Arkesia Ignited are nothing short of a game-changer for players of the MMO. This isn’t hyperbolic: new features like the Ark Passive System dramatically change character builds, she explained.
Ark Passives integrates many older character-building systems into one, streamlining the process. After completing North Kurzan, players can enable the system to combine Engravings and gear set effects into one user interface. Then there are things like Hyper Awakenings, which Sabo said were tools to help players with new, challenging content and addressed some development challenges.
We were eager to bring the massive Tier 4 update and content to
Lost Ark
in the West, but we knew it would be a bit challenging and a different experience due to the fact that the game has only been out for about 2 and a half years in our region. To help approach this, we’ve had to continually make tweaks and changes, like spacing out the release of the Behemoth and Aegir Raids on both sides of the major update, and releasing Hyper Awakening Skills so that players would have that extra power boost available to help them clear new and challenging content.
Hyper Awakenings augment the game’s existing Awakenings with a new gauge. The gauge fills while characters are in combat, and pressing the associated hotkey (Alt+V by default) advances from Awakening to Hyper Awakening. Each class also has two Hyper Awakening abilities, with the exception of Gunslinger/Deadeye which gets three. As if that wasn’t enough, characters under Hyper Awakening are invincible.
That sounds amazing, even like something that could trivialize the game. Smilegate considered that, so it applied meaningful limitations to the new mode. Most notably, Hyper Awakening uses are limited, only able to be used once per area or content gate. Additionally, the invincibility doesn’t shield against wipe mechanics, and the raw strength scales only off the character’s base attack power. Players also are limited as to where Hyper Awakenings can be used. These new mechanics in Arkesia Ignited show the different perspectives Smilegate takes when developing gameplay for Lost Ark, Sabo explained.
Lost Ark
is being developed using both the ‘top-down’ and ‘bottom-up’ methods. The most important narratives of
Lost Ark
are conveyed to the staff using the ‘top-down’ method, but the specific details are decided in a huge meeting with many staff members using the ‘bottom-up’ method. Lots of team members share their ideas, and those that resonate get to become a part of Arkesia’s epic stories.
Put another way, some mechanics are designed to emphasize certain narrative elements within the game, while others are designed first, and their narrative significance is found after the idea resonates with the team at Smilegate. It would be easy to read something like Hyper Awakening being a natural response to the rising threat posed by Kazeros in Arkesia Ignited, for instance, though it also served an important role outside the narrative of the game, as Sabo detailed.
Lost Ark is a top-down fantasy MMORPG developed by Smilegate and published by Amazon. Players that enjoy the Diablo series but are looking for something with a greater MMORPG-style feel should enjoy this release.
- Developer(s)
- Smilegate RPG
- Publisher(s)
- Amazon Games
- OpenCritic Rating
- Strong