yea, i remember one time when we hit the empires-full release content drought (somewhere in 2024-2025 iirc) AO had like 250 concurrent players, but now, even 700 players is bad enough for what the game is (im praying for chapter 10)
copeee
we will beat chapter 10 in maybe one hour and then wait for chapter 11 and nothing will really change. if we don’t get more substantial content expansions/mechanics like professions/fleet/whatever else was in fr it’s been months then the game will continue to fall off
Seeing we the average playtime is not even an hour; I can’t see the chapter 10 helping the player counts, as I doubt that many have reached it.
that’s exactly my concern, if updates just keep taking long and it doesn’t have enough impact, players will get tired of AO, and the playercount will reach a new low 
Ao’s currently averaging 700 players (at least from what I’ve seen). I don’t think ao has ever needed a decent update more than right now
you know what i’m jumping on doomposting too because vetex sucks ASS at keeping this game good which is INSANE because the premise is literally “pirate wizards” which is the coolest shit ever
nimbus sea just feels worse to be in than the bronze sea because everything’s WAY farther apart
being a pirate and looking for treasure through charts and sinking ships is ACTUALLY pretty fun, especially when mixed with bounties/contracts. that’s why it’s a massive shame that THE STRONGEST BOAT YOU CAN FIGHT gives you JACK SHIT after what i’m pretty sure is A WHOLE ASS YEAR NOW. BRIG LOOT POOLS HAVE BEEN BROKEN FOR ONE YEAR. and there hasn’t been SHIT done about it. also if this is all you’re doing in the game it gets old pretty fastt
what about being a risky pirate and going into the dark seas? don’t. he nerfed siren islands. fucking genius
people take his side on it too, look
“Supposed to be annoying and miserable”. i guess that explains why some waves can just throw you off your ship and into the bottom of the sea after they’ve already passed. i guess that’s why nearly invisible shadow/poison tornadoes can jumpscare you. i guess that’s why atlantean ships can just fuck you if you’re not armed to the teeth or an actual speedboat. and i SUPPOSE that’s why he felt the need to make the treasure fucking IMPOSSIBLE TO GATHER
too much risk, no reward, just straight ass, and it’s all by design!
and i’m sure there’s no need to touch on pvp, no matter what update we’re in, the PVPers always fucking hate it, and so does vetex
and you see the excuse for this? he wants it to be a STORY GAME. a story game with bland characters. and predictable plotlines. and final bosses that have zero buildup.
“doesn’t care about community reception” my ass. if that were truly the case he’d probably ACTUALLY remove pvp and just make his ideal “perfect game”. it’d probably be better than whatever the hell this broken ass game is. shit’s a 4/10 video game now. that’s two stars
tl;dr:
vetex is not over adding realism
prepare yourself for more immersion, worm
You’re actually fighting strawmen here. Neither in the first nor in the second picture do people give their opinion on vetex’s work. They’re simply stating things vetex himself confirmed in one way or another. None of them are saying if what he did is right or wrong.
you’re right and that was foolish of me
but i think they should be explicitly angry about it like i am
why have you done this to me
I’ll just use my explosion magic and nuke the problem away! Don’t worry everyone! I got this!
Vetexgames has feature-creep of the highest magnitude, he adds and adds, never thinking or fixing about what they actually do to the game.
I wouldn’t be surprised if Dragons were thought up a week before Full Release, as he likes to do things on a whim, which often cause issues involving bugs or just generally awful game design.
The fact that the Dragon update, which was supposed to be a small update[1], the fact it took THIS long for a result that RUINED performance, created dragons with horrible movesets to a point that it literally was SIMPLE for some to solo a Dragonlord, something that’s counted as a RAID boss, it’s getting absurd.
If this truly was a passionate project, he wouldn’t create so many sources of artificial playtime extensions, such as which are professions, they take so long to level up and you only get to keep them on one character, same with fleets, hell doing ANYTHING takes far longer than it needs to!
It’s absurd, but to a point, barely functional WoM is better in terms of game design and performance… not bugs, that game’s absolutely riddled with bugs, but my point still stands; AO isn’t a game for passion, it’s a game to artificially inflate the play time so he can earn that little money he gets.
that’s on non-peak hours… which is still awful, for game that has had thousands play it at once to not even one thousand on peak hours in a few months time is REALLY awful player retention.
Though… PPC’s aren’t looking good either, under a thousand in the last 7 days is concerning, chapter 10 needs to lock in or else the game will genuinely be made into a niche.
i forgot what i was gonna quote from this thread, but isnt vetexs style of gameplay “damage = difficulty”
like ever since maria its been a semi slop in the bossfight department, only being a somewhat issue because of the size of their arena and how much they are dealing against us. not an issue ofc but i just think about how sad it is and thinking in the future with how bosses will be treated
tbh at this point someone could make another AO potential man image cuz vetex is 007 with this game, 0 focus on the supporting characters to better their interactions into the story, 0 fun gameplay loops because it requires a high level or valid build (back then and especially now, people are still stuck with bad armor builds), and 7 interesting concepts reserved for three seas away content
It’s both damage and AoE, all of which without teaching the player how to reliably avoid these attacks.
Ivar’s a parry boss, where did you learn how to parry? oh you never learned it? shucks, good luck!
those 7 interesting concepts would be butchered with either bad game design or large amount of bugs.
its honestly so infuriating, yes, INFURIATING, that we have to deal with poor execution for this game
not vetexs fault, he just makes the game; not the devs fault, they just make stuff for the game; not the testers fault, they just make sure the game works; so how come everything just caves in on itself instead of flourishing? like ive AVOIDED arcane odyssey these past two months just since its not even remotely how cool as it used to be, cause right now i only think ill return to see new content and backburner it again.
isnt that sad? someone whos been here from the beginning getting so burnt out and dissapointed over and over again that theyve just completely put a favorite of theirs on a notification for if anything new comes out instead of being engaged every day
speaking of vetex, he not only has barely any knowledge for properly creating a stable game, he has a tendency to lie when communicating to the “community”[1] as seen by the messages below:
We’ve been teased that the frigate would come at level 180, that’s an acceptable level seeing as how long we’ve had a brig, so we got excited!
April 2025
But, oh wait, what’s this?
Hold on, that doesn’t make any sense! he has more than once stated the Frigate would release at level 180, yet then he states one month later from the most recent confirmation that it was never going to happen?
Is he deadass? It’s either he is a compulsive liar, or is genuinely just stupid when it comes to remembering YOUR OWN PLANS.
Patreon. ↩︎
Remember the 2024 AO roadmap?
