I’ve heard some variant of a similar story the past week or so as people boot up Lost Ark, the new Korean MMOARPG from Smilegate and Amazon, namely that they started playing, and didn’t stop until late in the morning.
The way this is organized, there’s really no way to get lost or feel stuck like you don’t know what to do next or how to make progress. Yes, Lost Ark does have a hilarious amount of confusing currencies and systems, but in terms of quest design, these little micro quests are designed to give you rapid fire dopamine hits as you level toward 50, or get new pieces of gear with that little “upgrade” arrow on them.
Lost Ark is designed to essentially never stop rewarding you for more than a few minutes at a time. Even if that reward is just a small pile of XP or currency, it adds up, and the game does not require long stretches of downtime in between making progress, nor forcing you to go back and grind old areas to make progress toward new levels, at least not during the main campaign.
Layered on top of all of this is a Clash of Clans-like base-building system that asks you to complete lengthy building projects or send out recruits on missions. It’s not a new concept, and yet it is another reason to log in every day, even if you’re skipping other tasks like daily bounties. It only requires a few button clicks to keep building or keep raking in currency, and is a longer time grind on top of the short, quick rewards that pervade moment to moment play.
Lost Ark is kind of masterful in its addictive design, keeping players engaged without employing actual gambling mechanics or forcing people to hit paywalls to feel like they’re making significant progress. Maybe that changes in the ultra late game, but for now, this is the reason why it feels like the last fifty hours have almost flown by.
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