The unjustified honing system implemented by Smilegate is to blame for the destruction of Lost Ark

If you have been paying attention to the community feedback for Lost Ark, you have probably heard about the significant difference in the experience of honing that exists between the new servers that are located in North America and Europe and the older servers that are located in Russia and Korea. These older servers are located in Russia and Korea, respectively. The deployment of brand new servers helped shed light on the aforementioned distinctions and similarities. This disagreement can be attributed to a wide variety of different factors, and both sides of the argument have some compelling points to make in their defense of their positions.

What does it mean to "hone" exactly?

1. In Lost Ark, honing is a fundamental mechanic that is required to be utilized in order for a player to progress through the game's various equipment levels

2. If the player is able to successfully level up their equipment, their character will see an increase in their overall gear score

3. Accumulating the required number of gear points is necessary in order to unlock almost all of the content that the game has to offer

4. As a direct result of this, the honing mechanic serves as the primary focus of the Lost Ark gameplay system

5. Case in point: Case in point:The majority of the rewards that players earn from engaging in other types of content can, either implicitly or explicitly, assist in the process of honing

6. This can be done in either direction

For a good number of players, the fact that this crucial element of the gameplay is wholly contingent on random occurrences is a source of annoyance and frustration. After a certain point, it is no longer a guarantee that you will be able to upgrade your equipment to the next level after reaching a certain point in the game. As the item level increases, the chance of success decreases until it is below 15% in the later stages of tier three. The higher the level of the item, the more quickly the chance of success decreases. The worst part is that if a player's attempt at honing fails, they do not get any of the materials back that they put into that attempt. This is the only way to recover any of the resources that were wasted. In the event that multiple attempts at honing are unsuccessful, the amount of honing materials and other resources, such as gold and silver, will be depleted at a rate that is exponentially faster than before.

This source of frustration is made even worse by the fact that major content that is used to collect honing materials, such as Chaos Dungeons, Guardian Raids, and Abyss Dungeons, are subject to daily and weekly time limits on their availability. These time limits prevent players from accessing these areas of the game as frequently as they would like. The period of time that occurs between gear scores 1340 and 1370 has been given the nickname "the content wasteland" by the player community because of the severe stagnation that takes place during this time. After reaching a gear score of 1340, this stalemate sets in.

What aspects of the situation in Russia are different from those in Korea?
There have been three significant upgrades implemented to the older servers, which, when combined, make the process of honing a great deal more bearable.

To get things started, honing skills on older servers is objectively easier than it is on more recent servers. This is because older servers have more content. When older servers are used, there is a one hundred percent chance that items from tiers one and two will be successful. In addition, the level of the gear you use will increase by a factor of two for each success you have. Despite the fact that this difference does not directly affect the honing process for tier three, players are able to save all of their gold and crystals for the tier three honing process thanks to the guaranteed success rate. This allows players to get the most out of the tier three honing process. Imagine what you could do if Mari's Shop always rescued players who were stuck in honing hell. You would have hundreds of crystals at your disposal. You probably used them to improve your equipment, but think about the other things you could do if you still had them. Players who logged in to older servers did not have to be concerned about these kinds of issues. To make matters even worse, the success rate is 20% higher across all servers when the player's gear score is between 1302 and 1370.

This is true regardless of which server the player is using. This is true for both more recent and more established servers.

The second problem is that the new servers have an extremely low amount of content, making it significantly more difficult to acquire materials for honing. This is a problem because it makes it significantly more difficult to level up. Because the minimum required gear score for Abyss Dungeons and Raids is lower on the older servers, players on those servers do not face the content wasteland that a large number of players in the west are currently caught in. This is because the older servers have been updated less frequently.

Players are strongly encouraged to utilize the power passes that are made available to them by Smilegate in order to create secondary characters. These secondary characters will be of assistance to the main character in their search for materials to hone their skills with. Having said all of that, putting this into practice can prove to be quite difficult. As a result of the fact that honing in tiers one and two does not necessarily result in success, the progression of these characters to tier three requires additional effort on their part.

The current method of honing in the Western version of Lost Ark is not only tedious for players, but it also requires them to put in a noticeably greater amount of time than their counterparts in other regions. Other versions of the game have different methods of honing. When the game reaches a certain point, players will begin to become frustrated and leave the game. Smilegate and Amazon need to come to the realization that players' patience is running thin, and it is only a matter of time before they meet the same degree of failure as New World did.