INFINITE WINDWALK: You no longer have stamina points and can sprint or wallclimb endlessly, this is a good change.
STORY WINDSTRIDES: During the story you are able to Windstride to the NPCs giving you each portion of the quest, this cuts down your time to level cap significantly, a good change.
ACCESSORIES DICTATE SKILL CHANGES: You can no longer freely change skills and instead need to infuse Skillbooks into your accessories to change them, taking them off requires a small fee. This is a VERY bad change.
NCOIN BASED MARKET: (Undecided for EU/NA) You can buy/sell items on the market for NCOIN, if you’ve played TnL this is largely the same system (or so I’ve been told). I am undecided as to whether this is a good change or not.
NO ARENA AND LIMITED 6V6: NEO, on both regions, currently does not have Arena and shows no plans to add it. KR 6v6 is limited to 1 hour per day, there is also currently no leaderboard for 6v6. TERRIBLE TERRIBLE CHANGE ABSOLUTELY DIABOLICAL.
VITALITY/DUNGEON ENERGY: Your character has 100 Vitality, depending on the Dungeon every Boss/Sub-Boss defeating will consume your Vitality in exchange for Loot. At 0 Vitality you will no longer get any Loot but can still complete dungeons. Doesn’t really matter to me but others think this is a bad change (I don’t PVE much)
WEAPON SYSTEM: You no longer start from a base point weapon and continue throughout your gameplay with it. You will jump from Weapon to Weapon for example, Blight -> Infernal -> Lycan -> Siren. If you believe you’ll be using a weapon for a long time you can upgrade it an additional 2 stages for extra stat bonuses, these upgrades are RNG and have a 20% chance of succeeding. Good change.
CRAFTING: You no longer have gathering guilds, materials for crafting will be farmed passively through PVE. Crafting can allow you to get BiS Accs/Weapons before the dungeon containing them has even released, in turn making crafting incredibly important - in KR you have the choice to have a 5 min craft time for exponentially more expensive material/gold costs or to take the default time for a cheaper cost.
BLUEPRINTS/FACTIONS: You can obtain Blueprints for Weapons, Accessories and Soulshields from Crafting or Faction content, these allow you to transmute the BiS of the relevant type of gear for your region (Infernal for Cinderlands, Siren for Moonwater). Faction content becomes almost essential for getting more attempts to roll BiS stats on your accs/weapons after you’ve exhausted vitality. Good change.
CARD COLLECTION: Lost Ark card collection system, bosses have a rare chance to drop Cards, these Cards can be registered in a system and specific card sets can give you beneficial effects such as Ruby Gem effect of sometimes giving 3 guaranteed crits. Obtaining one Endgame/Legendary card set may take, with no exaggeration, anywhere from 6-12 months unless you’re extremely lucky - Endgame Card sets grant you stat bonuses such as 15% Crit Damage or 5% Crit Rate. Bad change, welcome to Kaari for the majority of your gameplay.
DUNGEON MECHANIC CHANGES: Overall, most mechanics that would normally damage the boss have been removed, in turn making the majority of bosses purely a DPS check for whales. TERRIBLE CHANGE
EXPLORATION: The BNS map contains regularly spawning relics and lookout points, claiming these as well as killing certain mobs/achieving certain goals grants your some fairly minor stats, not essential but quite nice to have a look at under appreciated parts of the map when you’re bored. Good change.
GEAR LEVEL RESTRICTIONS: Gear, overall, no longer have level restrictions and can be sent to alts as long as you haven’t worn them (they bind to characters), this is nice for levelling alts. Good change.
MANTRA SYSTEM: You can actually ignore this completely. Mantra Beads replace Gems, accessories can now have gem slots. Having 3 Mantra Beads in a certain order gives you a RNG effect, 99% of these effects are useless. Mantra beads can be removed for 50s but all beads removed will be destroyed. Bad change.
TRADING REMOVED: You can no longer trade, possibly to combat RMT. I would say bad change but it’s got a good intention behind it.
PERSONAL/SHARED LOOT: As long as you have Vitality you will get Personal Loot for every sub boss/boss that drops a high enough tier - you will never go empty handed in any dungeon. Shared Loot will appear if something drops of a high enough value to do so - the bidding system is now a dice roll. Good change.
CC RESIST/CC RESIST PIERCING:
New stat, They’ve added the ability for your character to randomly resist CCs depending on how much CC Resist you have, this, in many cases will make you drop your combo and also make your engages/openers fail. TERRIBLE CHANGE IS THIS COMPANY MENTAL?
DAILY CHALLENGE RESTRICTION: You can only complete one daily challenge per day, per account. This is also the same with Weekly Challenge. Good change (?)
CLAN SYSTEM: Clans now have a default size of 10, Rank 3 provides 5 more slots (up to a total or 30?) but contributing towards Clan Upgrades will make your own personal progression suffer terribly - upgrading is far too costly. TERRIBLE CHANGE, I expect to be making 7 clans at this rate.
UI CHANGES: UI is more modernised, loses a lot of charm. Skill UI now hides itself when outside of Combat, choices to hide certain elements of the UI added to uncluttered your screen. Overall, good change.
FIELD BOSSES/ENHANCED BOSSES: Field Bosses now drop items that are actually useful to you, sometimes you’ll spawn a Lightning Pool which will spawn an “Enhanced” Field Boss which has higher HP and drops better loot. Good change.
RITUAL BOSS: Dark Thrall will appearing in random locations around the game world, preceded by a Ritual to allow players to gather. Essence dropped from this boss can go towards Cards, Materials or Cosmetics. Good change.
DUNGEON QOL/DURABILITY: Through F7 you can now teleport straight to your Dungeon. Weapons also now take longer to break. Good change.
BANK REMOVAL: The majority of open world banks have been removed in favour of attracting people to the main landmarks/hubs such as Yehara’s Mirage, Mushin’s Tower, Hogshead. I dunno, kinda weird but I guess it’s a good change?
INVENTORY/BANK EXPANSION: Your inventory now holds a much, much bigger amount of items in which about 3/4 of the space can be unlocked via Gold; the remaining quarter requires cashshop items. Additional space in Bank added. Good change.
STATS: You can no longer see stats as a percentage. What??? Bad change.
IMPROVED GRAPHICS/ANIMATIONS: Graphics overall have been improved as well as animations for Windstride, Sprint, etc. Good change.
NO DPS METER: DPS Meter has been removed, instead you get a Letter Ranking dependant on your performance at the end of the dungeon. Bad change.
GEAR PRESETS: In parallel to the old skill pages, you now have gear presets you can easily switch between. Good change for the context it’s in.
INSTANCED PVX AREAS: PVE/PVP areas added in which you can farm Gold/Soul Badge materials from mobs, you can also kill other players if you feel like it. Good change.
DEFAULT OUTFIT CHANGED: The default, no outfit equipped, outfit (please try to understand what I’m trying to say here LOL) has been changed to a Bikini/Swimwear. … Good change.
STORY XP CHANGES: During story, only Yellow Quests give XP, the blue side quests only provide currency and materials.
DUNGEON DIFFICULTY: There are no longer Easy, Normal and Hard Modes - The dungeons simply exist as they are. Weird change?
INSIGNIA SYSTEM: System from retail that has icons you can slot in that give you random stats, mostly used for AP. Bad change