Lost Ark: Amazon Games speaks out about queues, bots and other in-game issues
In a press release published on the night of March 11 to 12, 2022, Amazon Games revealed, once again, to continue working on the resolution of some major problems that Lost Ark players have been experiencing since the game’s deployment in the West. This is the third time that the publisher has communicated in this way, the idea being to keep players informed of the evolution of the situation on the most “hot” points.
Bot Bans
While bots and other illegal farmers have been rampant in the game since its deployment in the West, a large wave of bans took place very recently, on March 5th. Amazon has announced that it is working on developing tools to solve the problem more quickly, but nothing new on this side since February 23, the date of the first report.
Some Gold rewards have also been changed to Silver in order to avoid certain abuses of these bots. We do not know to date if the situation will remain as it is or if it will return to normal one day, when the problem will potentially be resolved.
Last Friday, we started a wave of bot bans that targeted over a million illegitimate accounts. We know that this measure alone will not be enough to solve the problem, and that there are still bots in the game. We want to reassure you: this is only the first phase of an ongoing fight. We continue to perform regular ban operations to remove more bots from the game. We are also working on creating internal methods and tools that will make it more difficult for bots to enter the game, especially the current rate at which they are created. These updates will be implemented soon.
We are also aware of your concerns about the impact these bots could have on the in-game economic system through the buying and selling of gold, and we are monitoring the situation closely. We have also changed the reward from gold to silver for some guide quests and affinity interactions to prevent abuse of these systems by bots and gold farmers.
We would also like to remind you that participating in real money transactions (RMT) through third-party sellers is against our terms and conditions and will result in banning of seller and buyer accounts. . To better protect your account, beware of gold coins and gifts sent by people you don’t know, and always reject items arriving in your inbox if you have any doubts.
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Search for players
According to this short report from the American publisher, the situation seems to have been resolved on the side of the problems vis-à-vis the Player Finder tool, since the deployment of the March update. Nothing more to add: everything is green on all kingdoms a priori!
Our weekly update on March 3 made significant improvements to the player search system on servers and in regions where it was not working properly. Following these changes, we were pleased to read many reports confirming that the system was working much better, even during peak hours.
Thank you for being patient while we fixed this issue; we know how frustrating it was. We will be monitoring the system closely to see if any further adjustments or improvements are needed.
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Language filtering
For gamers who missed the news, Amazon Games is highlighting a new system rolling out in March’s major update. This allows you to filter the discussion channels according to the languages you want to appear in order to avoid discussions where French, English and German speak at the same time in their dialect, for example.
A rather anecdotal but rather nice novelty!
With last week’s update, we added a chat filter to select specific languages. This is a new option developed for Lost Ark in response to your feedback that zone chat could become difficult to follow when multiple languages are used.
To use language filtering, click the “+” button on the chat window to create a new tab, and select the languages (and other chat types) you want to include.
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Queues on Central European Servers
Based on player feedback and the publisher itself, the situation now seems acceptable on the queuing side. This would be due to the banning of almost a million bots recently, but also to certain “adjustments made in the background” by Amazon Games.
Well, let’s not hide it, the reality is also that the maximum peak of players entering the game each day is decreasing day by day, going from more than 1.3 million simultaneously on the day of its release to a gradual decline until reaching the 630,000 stage on the evening of March 11, less than half of the highest peak. Several factors explain this, not simply that “the game sucks” (since it is wrong), but the reality is there. Improvements, perhaps, but fewer players anyway, so inevitably the queues are much less present.
Sources: SteamDB and SteamsCharts
Evolution of the number of players from February 8 to March 12, 2022 (Steam DB)
Evolution of the number of players from February 8 to March 12, 2022 (SteamCharts)
As many of you have noticed, especially over the past weekend, we are pleased to announce that European server queues are becoming more acceptable. This is due to some tweaks being made behind the scenes, including (but not limited to) improved game stability. We know it’s been a long road for people who have stayed on their Central European servers and we We will continue to monitor the situation and improve it as much as possible, including banning bots effectively, as mentioned above.
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About bug reports and fixes
Amazon Games has officially announced the a priori drastic reduction in the number of patches that will be deployed soon. The idea is not to make the game servers inaccessible for several hours for bugs that are certainly annoying but do not prevent the game from operating normally.
We should therefore soon be entitled to weekly patches as offered on other MMORPGs, rather than patches deployed at fairly irregular intervals and preventing players from playing in the morning most often.
As we continue to update Lost Ark and add new content to the Western version, new bugs and issues will inevitably appear. In most cases, fixing them requires a customer patch (and therefore downtime). That’s why, unless it’s a bug preventing the game from working or widespread issues, most fixes will come through our weekly updates. We know that bugs can be frustrating, but since maintenance will become less frequent with the introduction of weekly updates, it will take longer for them to be fixed. Patches are a valuable tool for fixing critical issues, but we want to avoid taking the game offline more often than strictly necessary.
That said, your bug reports continue to be essential. Remember to report any bugs you encounter in the Bug Reports and Translation section of our forum, this helps our team closely track (and fix) any issues you encounter in-game!
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March Login Rewards on Western Europe Servers
Nothing really new to announce on this side from Amazon Games, except that the rewards planned to help players catch up will be deployed “soon”. No information concerning their content or even their date of deployment is currently available, we will have to wait a little longer to find out more.
We briefly mentioned in last week’s Core Issues article that the Western Europe region was going to receive modified login bonuses to help people who had changed regions catch up. We will be giving more information to people playing on the Western Europe servers soon on our official forum. The list of bonuses is not yet fixed, and we will tell you more about it soon.
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Serious issues are still affecting most of Lost Ark’s European servers, especially those in Central Europe, a month after the game’s deployment. Amazon Games has issued a statement to keep players informed of the steps taken to resolve these concerns.
