Lost Ark Addresses Complaints On Gender-Locked Class And Revealing Armor

One complaint that western players generally have towards Asian-made MMORPG is gender-locked class and Lost Ark is no different. Fortunately, Smilegate has come up with a compromise with the addition of advanced classes, which gives players the option to switch to a different gender further down the road.

The Gunner, for example, starts out as male but can then advance to either the Artillerist, Deadeye, or the Sharpshooter, which are all male classes, or the Gunslinger, which is a female. The Martial Artist, on the other hand, has more female subclasses than male. The Wardancer, Soulfist, and Scrapper are all female subclasses while the Striker is male.

While it’s not exactly a perfect fix it does serve to give players more gender options while they work on more gender-balanced classes. Adding multiple gender options for existing classes, however, seems to be out of the question.

“Classes are tied pretty closely to their character models in terms of function and animation, so bringing opposite gender characters to a class takes more work than just making a differently gendered model available,” publisher Amazon Games Studios told Eurogamer.

“However, Smilegate RPG is actively working on this; the female Berserker is the next class coming to Korea. While not every class in the game currently has a male and female counterpart available, we made an effort to include those that do in our launch class lineup. In the future, Smilegate RPG will be creating more counterparts for classes that are still gender locked, and we will bring these to Arkesia in time,” they added.

The developers are also working to address player complaints about revealing armor sets for females. Existing armor sets and pieces won’t be changed but there are plans to roll out less revealing pieces and outfits in the future.

“As we are aware of the balance between hardcore fans who want a Lost Ark experience that is close to the original Korean version and new players who may not like the current armour and costume options, we are adding outfits and alternatives to the game instead of taking away options,” said Amazon.

Meanwhile, Amazon continues to crack down on botters banning over 1 million accounts in the process. More on that here.