Meet today’s stars of the show - Team Immersion! Got familiar with them? Alright, time to put each on a trial and fix them.
Now look, Vetex, we love your game. I have over 1600 hours on Arcane Odyssey, and many have too. However, you throughout the years implemented many features that do nothing but annoy people for no reason, and called them “made for immersion“. You have your design choices, sure, you’re the lead dev after all, but it is a videogame in the first place, and people play videogames to have fun. These ten characters above are the most noticeable pieces of the game that fit under the “immersion before comfort“ category, so the community is about to complain on this topic right here and now. However, one important thing must be said first. None of these features will be solved by a simple on/off toggle in the settings, we aren’t band-aid fixing here.
Dirt + Tanning: We got a lot of vanity items in AO, and the players love decorating themselves in some fancy garments. Showing off always feels good, after all. But, players also love fighting in AO. And when you fight, or do anything really, even just explore, your perfectly-made drip gets covered in dirt, ruining it. We got soap as a solution, but it feels more like a band-aid fix to the core problem. Being in hot places like Sameria also slowly tans your face, and this is much less of an annoyance - you can just wear a helmet - but still is one. Not everybody loves helmets! So, what do we do with these?
Dirt does not accumulate on your character out of combat anymore. When in combat, it does appear after some time, but fully disappears in about 5 seconds after exiting combat. Soap will get addressed later on, don’t worry.
Tanning now slowly accumulates while being in Sameria or other hot places like Sandfall Isle, and quickly dissipates after exiting those areas. Similar to how it works already? Well, “quickly” means quickly, in about 5 seconds. As I said, this isn’t that offensive of a game mechanic, therefore the change isn’t harsh. Samerian Ice still retains its anti-tanning properties, it can have this one.
Line of Sight to damage certain enemies: This one’s a fallen giant. Some still dread the memories of Atlanteans having this mechanic. Those stuck beneath your ship were truly [TITLE CARD]. But now, it is merely a remnant of its past, so let’s beat it into the ground even harder.
LoS requirement is removed entirely. You know why it was nerfed before? Because players hated hits not registrating on an enemy right in front of them, due to a 1 stud piece of terrain between them, while the enemy could freely land their hits! This mechanic was added to prevent cheesing fights with harder enemies, but now the only ones that have it are Tower Faction enemies, and those aren’t that difficult. Besides, the tower itself is quite vertical, standing outside and clearing floors may work on the lower ones, but the top floors are too high anyway, what is the point?
Large Waves: The Dark Sea is a treacherous place with many dangers and treasures. Now, the current state of the Dark Sea is only described by “insufferable“ and “pointless“, but that will be addressed in some other suggestion topic. However, does it really need infinite reach waves that snatch you off your ship or an island’s shore? The waves look cool, and add to the feel of hostility, which the Dark Sea was designed to evoke, but sometimes they get annoying.
Large Waves cannot grab players nor NPCs anymore, simple as. Either the wave steals an Atlantean from you and throws it far away into the sea, or it does the same to you. Why do we have this? It doesn’t even work on non-humanoid enemies! The idea was cool in theory, but then you remember that it is implemented in a videogame, designed to let its players have fun.
Damaged and Ruined Armour: This is an upcoming addition to the cast, and the devs could shrug off this entire section with “stop complaining, you literally haven’t experienced it yet!“. This will be a valid argument, but preventative measures do have their place. From the testers’ descriptions, the mechanic is going to show itself as a constant annoyance, or as something you solve in a few clicks and forget. It even got its own soap - Repair Kits! An item made solely for solving a particular immersion mechanic, how cool! This one does have an another use - to clear Greases from weapons, and that will be kept, as it actually has a use.
This mechanic will not be added. The community is not gonna sugarcoat it. Armour Damage is made to… punish a player for fighting for long? And added in… the update that adds powerful enemies you’re gonna fight for long? Are we for real with this one? You want immersion? We already have it! Armour shows cracks on it from fighting - a purely visual change, that doesn’t even look that bad like Dirt was! It even looks cool! So why worsening this to make it affect our actual stats?!
Repair Kits won’t be added as well. No Damaged and Ruined Armour? No need for these too! As for removing Greases, weapons can now be added into the cauldron without any other reagents/catalysts and processed, removing their Grease. Nothing complex here, you put your sword into a cauldron, press a button and receive your sword back! The grease isn’t refunded, though.
Also, I really liked the idea of cracked armour. So, how about this? Putting an armour piece into the cooking pot and processing it will add permanent visual cracks to it. It will add a small crack icon to the item’s image where the imbue symbol would be located at, and the worn piece will be permanently cracked. You can repeat the process with a cracked item, but while adding 5 metal shards, to restore it. However, the cooking menu is gonna get so messy with all this armour - potions already do this to it, so this whole feature receives a toggle in the filter menu of the cooking pot (the toggle will also enable metal shards to appear), and it is off by default. While we’re at it - potions used for cooking get a separate toggle too, on by default this time - it is locked behind level 10 Cooking anyway.
Yes, I know I said none of the features are gonna be solved by a toggle, but this isn’t one of those features - it is just a silly, completely separate idea, so it doesn’t count!
Percentage-Based Damage: You should have stayed with the environmental hazards… Are the devs really sure adding this to the animals was a good idea? Some sea urchin on the bottom of the ocean isn’t that big of a deal - it is annoying for sure, but a random hog in a samerian bush? That is a different story. They even added a stunlock to the animals, as if ignoring Defense wasn’t enough! And now you want dragons to have this too? Nah, we’re not having this. And, while we’re at it, Beast Defense stat is gonna get addressed as well.
Animals no longer deal percentage-based damage, and no longer stun players on every attack. Damage for War Seas animals should be changed to fit their 200-400+ hp pools (800 for the Monos Alpha Bear), Dark Sea animals should be comparable to a Lesser-Mutated Atlantean in power, and Far Reaches animals - to a Monstrous. HP values don’t change. I am not suggesting exact damage numbers - the devs can figure those out themselves, but they should be made fair, even for glass cannons - every build should be able to have fun, after all.
As for stuns, only certain attacks of Dark Sea and Far Reaches animals can stun now, and the stun duration is halved from what it currently is. Stuns are annoying, and I would like to get rid of them entirely, but the animals of the Dark Sea should have at least some leg-up over their War Seas variants aside from just a larger HP pool and more damage. As for which attacks? The charge of a boar/bear/crocodile, the pounce of a tiger (this one’s stun is extended a bit to account for the grab), and a wolf is too weak to stun us anyway. Give those attacks longer cooldowns too, I don’t want a boar spamming me with charges.
Environmental hazards still retain their percentage-based damage, but it is reduced. Yeah, they can have this one. Just half the damage dealt by sea urchins, jade pearl clams, jellyfish, fire, lightning, ancient lightning and imbued Dark Sea rain. Infected water found in the Zweihander cave and Abyss of Charon, meanwhile, loses 3/4 of its damage. Why should we instantly die if a toe on our foot touches the water for one moment when we parkour to the Zweihander? Too much unnecessary difficulty. Heat damage in the Scorching Dunes/Vents of Aeolus doesn’t change - it doesn’t need to anyway, it is fine as is.
Dragons aren’t discussed here, since they’re way too complicated, and we don’t know much about combat against them as of now. Just, try making their kits not-percentage-based-damage-dependant, the players will thank you, devs!
Beast Defense is not granted by vanity items anymore. Whose idea was this to make visual-only items matter in any way in game? Players need freedom in how they dress, not be forced into metal armour all the time! Instead, Beast Defense becomes a jewel substat, added by using Slowness reagents (Blue Urchin Spine and Belladonna Flower). Why Slowness? Idk, the animal tries swinging at you, and the jewels slow its claw down or something. Sharkrepel fits more thematically, but it lacks a quality version of its reagents, so it isn’t used. It doesn’t really need to have effect tiers anyway.
Water Poisoning: Oh hey look, the poster child of Team Immersion! Yall know what is gonna happen to this one. A random source of damage you gain from playing the game that will be fatal unless treated by a soap bar or the bath in your brig, which instantly removes this mechanic from your gameplay. Wonderful.
Removed. Purged. DELETED. No compromise on this one. We are not sorry.
Dirt is gone, Water Poisoning is gone… Oh look, soap is useless now! Soap is removed from the game. Who cares anyway? As for the brig’s bath tub, it can remain as a decoration without any use.
Fall Damage: I admit, we heavily overrated this change when it was first announced in the patch notes. We thought it was the doom of all AO, but it just became one more minor annoyance, barely noticeable. Mainly because, it is bugged all the time. Does AO really need this mechanic? Not really. But we can salvage it.
Carrying an item disables fall damage. Main concern of the people was about Dark Sealed chests on the top of Dark Sea islands, with how impossible it would be to get those to your ship. If only we knew how worthless those will become in Full Release… Fleets… You already don’t take any damage 90% of the time due to fall damage being bugged, let’s make that 100%!
Gliders. Some may address them as “soap of Fall Damage“, but I disagree. It is a cool movement tool, and I love it. A great addition, and isn’t solely made to combat Fall Damage. So, how about throwing it some buffs to intergrate it into the gameplay even more?
Gliding speed is doubled. It feels kinda slow to use, why not speed it up? You no longer require both air movement charges to activate it, can do that even at 0 now. Do not hate fun, devs. There wasn’t enough of a reason to implement this. Taking fall damage after gliding deals that damage in an AoE around you when you land. A combat use for the glider with a risk-reward mechanic because of the damage scaling with how much damage you take from falling? Sounds cool to me! Radius of the attack may be half of Devastate weapon skill, and scale with Size.
Breakable Floor: Remember Tower Faction enemies? Yeah, they’re back now! Now look, players love the feeling of being so mighty and powerful that the ground itself crumbles beneath their steps, but it becomes annoying after a while.
Tower’s floors become unbreakable. Not the walls, though. LoS requirement was one problem, this is the other. As for the walls - breaking those is cool and doesn’t detriment you unless you double tap D and fly out of the window.
Boss Arenas and Raidable Forts become unbreakable. Allanon’s arena has that deep crack near the edge of the island that goes so deep, and I constantly fall down there, so annoying.
You can no longer climb broken terrain. The main issue players have with breakable floors is that often, their character begins climbing some studs on the ground for no reason instead of doing anything else, and that gets them killed. So, you can’t do that anymore, not like you needed to.
Limb Loss. Do you like fighting in an open-world exploration game? Well, jokes on you! We removed your arms, so you can’t fight anymore! With what? With lightning, obviously! The one thing you literally cannot predict! But, don’t worry! We added the way to heal back your arms with high potency Healing potions? What? You need arms to drink those? Too bad!
Limb Loss is removed completely. No, thank you. We want to play the game. Magic/fighting style users may change animations to use their legs for attacking (unless you use Fighting Styles that only utilize arms), but weapons/relics users are just screwed, and that isn’t fun. Vanity items also lose the stat of preventing Limb Loss. An another stat mechanic tied to vanity. I already said what I think of vanity armour having something like this in the Beast Defense section.
Story Injuries. I originally didn’t plan for this one to be here. It is so minor and insignificant, it barely even a nuisance, and actually performs its immersion task pretty well. The devs have been handling story injuries greatly thus far… and then they added Jarl Ivar. The boss itself is problematic, mainly its small ahh arena, but the thing addressed here is how you gain an injury right before his second phase! Every other story injury was obtained after you finish the combat part, not in the middle of it!
Jarl Ivar’ story injury is pushed back to the moment you defeat him for good. Just a small misstep on the devs’ part, nothing too outrageous.
