07-15-2023, 06:47 AM
I've talked with you personally extensively about why my views differ entirely from yours on these matters but I'll do my best to give my opinion.
For context I have played LC since 2007. I played Original EP1 Aeria Games before the evasion changes where you could legitimately dodge every monster in the game and be effectively PVE immortal. When you were in your level 30s for weeks. Back when the game was drastically different that no one can repeat now due to that being lost to time, even in old code the community has. I have seen the game through every large change, as a player and as a private server developer.
Marketing Woes
This is just something that simply isn't realistic from any standpoint. Official LC players have known about private servers for over a decade. Many of them will never try it simply because of the fact that no private server lasts long. There has been only a couple notable exceptions, yet they are still lost to time as we discuss this. You want to advertise to new players who've never touched LC? Even if you ignore the problem that the license holder of LC (Which seems to still be Gamigo) can shut you down at any point, LC isn't exactly a game that has the chops to appeal above every other game out there. It never has been. It's a relic of a past when the market was flooded with Korean Grind Fests. Those died out as the WoW model took hold and korean grind mmos are nearly gone except old ones like LC. No one wants to play it and the p2w korean grind historically appeals poorly to Western audiences and that's a statistical fact to the point where any Korean game that gets a Western port is nearly completely changed monetization wise when compared to the West. All of this to say is, the focus needs to be on current or past LC players. Chasing new people is a crazy idea no server or official has ever had a chance of doing well.
Neglecting Newbies
LC has never been balanced or newbie friendly. It is a Korean P2W Grindfest. It is that at its roots, it is a game propped up by cash items being the norm. Quests and story has always been filler as it is in every grind p2w korean MMO. You can dress it up however you want but this is the core of LC's balance. It's all unbalanced and always has been. It's unbalanced on purpose and appeals to whales shitting on f2p players. It would take a lot to change this and make it better, but at what cost? You can't throw out the opinions of the current player base to chase a non-existent one. That's how things die as shown a lot in today's climate. Organizations, games, and even events try to appeal to broader audiences while alienating their core user/playerbase and find themselves not being appealing to the people they expected would come. It's an insane risk. It's even more insane when you realize you are dealing with BARELY triple digit player numbers. You flat out cannot risk losing the current playerbase or you are on a dead server. Do you know what kills a MMO more than anything else? Low player numbers.
Don't Play the "Old Game" Card
I can't really respond to this as I don't know what you showed/told them or how that may have skewed their responses but LC is an old ancient game, yes. It's unappealing to the average MMO player in todays world. That's just a simple fact you cannot ignore. The games market is over-saturated with dozens of huge live service games fighting for everyones attention and you think a korean p2w grind mmo from 2005 built on a DX8 Serious Sam Engine is going to charm its way into taking F2P players from Lost Ark? FFXIV? WoW? RuneScape? Valorant? League? etc. That's not reality you are living in if you believe that. Maybe in your idealized version of LC that just...isn't obtainable at least not from the community. Maybe a team exists out there that could update the engine and more, but at that point you're making a new game and its no longer LC to the current players.
Embracing Change and Innovation
Private server owners have done their best however at the end of the day you are working on a illegitimate version of the game. So you aren't attracting professional developers who could bring great change and groundbreaking features. No one is looking to attach their real name to copyrighted code they legally should not have access to. The pool of developers that LC has had in its entirety of private servers has never been experienced enough to change the game at the levels you think it should be. Also, as I said above, you can't alienate the current players. The current servers that come out are a product of what the community wants. Does every server do it perfectly? No. Does every server do its best to appeal to every player at least at the start? Yes. Why wouldn't they, even if they were doing it for easy money. You are just looking for talent that just isn't here and never has been. If it has or does exists, it has never been exerted in a meaningful way so that must say something.
Fostering a Welcoming and Inclusive Environment
You're unfortunately asking too much here. At the end of the day, the current people making servers are exactly as I said above, a product of the community. The LC community is toxic, extremely so. It's filled with racism, homophobia and more. It's not a positive community. I cannot speak for the official players, but the private server community is this way, which means a lot of the developers and server creators are too. That's not to say everyone is this way, obviously this forum wouldnt exist nor would its answers if that was the case. But you kind of have the best you're gonna get is my point. We all have limits to our patience, and unfortunately it often gets tested by someone typing through a poor google translate asking questions that make no sense. Where the only solution is connecting to their PC to do it for them. It's just not that encouraging to help people who need their hand held that much. I have helped many people over the years, but I want people who will I can lead to an answer, not one that needs a step by step teamview connection. This is how I was taught, I asked lots of dumb questions, but I eventually got to where I knew a decent amount. Good resources exist here for people who know how to access them.
That's my personal perspective of someone who has been here from the beginning.
If you want LC to be a better game, you're eggs should be in the Fawkes basket. Private servers aren't saving LC.