Lost Ark has so far proved to be an enormously popular MMORPG. It surpassed Counter-Strike: Global Offensive as the second most popular game on Steam earlier this month and peaked at well over 971,000 active players in the last twenty-four hours. However, it’s not a perfect game either, and complaining about it seems to be almost as popular as playing.
Lost Ark’s Surrender Vote system is the latest feature to land in the fans’ crosshairs. The system is supposed to let players pull out from an unwinnable raid, but a minority of Lost Ark players seem to abuse the system.
A Lost Ark player spelled out the problem in a Reddit post earlier today. They report that one or two players will charge out during a raid, seemingly channeling the spirit of the legendary World of Warcraft troll Leeroy Jenkins. Also, like Jenkins, their antics quickly cause the raid to spiral into disaster. Unlike the infamous WoW player, however, Lost Ark trolls do it by simply torpedoing a carefully laid plan, but by spamming the Surrender Vote even when other players still have a chance at salvaging the raid.
The problem might not be so bad if the developer better integrated the Surrender Vote with Lost Ark’s user interface. Instead, the game simply opens a large window in the middle of the screen. This is a serious issue in an action MMORPG like Lost Ark. The pop-up obscures parts of the floor, making it harder for players to move and evade attacks. That’s assuming players can even see an attack coming with a large widow obscuring important signals. These flaws make the Surrender Vote a popular tool for griefers, who deliberately start the vote at an inconvenient time.
There are a few ways that developers could fix this, of course. One commenter suggested letting players customize where these windows can appear on the screen. This was a feature of some older MMORPGs like 2011’s Rift. It would solve both the current problem and Lost Ark’s general issue with excessive pop-ups. Smilegate could also relegate the voting window to the corner of the UI or have a transparent “press X to Surrender” timer appear somewhere on the screen. Of course, all of this assumes that the Surrender Vote system even needs to be there at all.
Unfortunately, not all Lost Ark fans have much hope for the developers to make serious changes. As one commenter pointed out, many of the game’s problems become apparent a few hours in. Lost Ark, meanwhile, initially launched in Korea in 2019, long before the worldwide release earlier this month If developer Smilegate hasn’t addressed these problems by now, it begs the question of whether the studio will ever get around to it.
Lost Ark is available now on PC.