There’s no questioning Lost Ark’s monumental success, but its gender-locked classes and revealing female armor designs are garnering plenty of criticism.
Ever since Lost Ark came out last month, fans and critics alike have been disappointed about specific classes, such as the Berserker, being only playable on male characters. Some even claim the action MMORPG feels years out of date for doing so.
In a report from Eurogamer, Amazon Games franchise lead Soomin Park states that changes are coming to address these complaints.
“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,” Park said. “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.”
Park insists that Lost Ark will have more gender options for each class over time. Eventually, there’ll also be less-revealing costumes for female characters, though they won’t replace the gear already in the action MMORPG.
“As for armor sets, while we aren’t altering any of the original costumes from the game, we are making adjustments so that the more revealing options won’t be front and center in places like our marketing or the initial character creation screen,” Park explains. “We are also including in some new outfit options that are not quite as revealing, but these are an addition and not a replacement.”
There’s no timeline for when any of these changes might arrive. Right now, Lost Ark fans can look forward to the March Update, while Amazon celebrates the MMORPG passing 20 million players.
Written by Kyle Campbell on behalf of GLHF.
