No, Arcane Odyssey is not dead

https://www.reddit.com/r/ArcaneOdyssey/comments/1609lqv/no_arcane_odyssey_is_not_dying/
My essay on the subject is linked above. If anyone is concerned about this being a virus, I shall post it here in textile form.


No, Arcane Odyssey is not “Dying.”

You’ll hear many people say that Vetex’s continuation of his multi-year storyline, Arcane Odyssey, is treading water, desperately trying to maintain an active community. That the game died before it even really took off, fading into obscurity.

This is objectively false. In three points, I shall make my case why Arcane Odyssey is not dead, but rather, as active as it realistically can be.

Part I: The incomparable nature of the game.

Let’s say, hypothetically, that we took a survey of other massively popular Roblox games that took a fall. We can observe their player counts: in the double or low triple digits, if that. Their communities are inactive, their servers wastelands. Their developers likely haven’t updated the game in years.

That is not Arcane Odyssey.

Arcane Odyssey is unique from other games on Roblox in that it’s not intended for young children: indeed, Vetex’s refusal to include scams, pay-to-win ploys, and other youth-targeted machinations is a large part of what draws in the game’s playerbase. It has a well-crafted story and complex mechanics. The average 8-year-old on his Ipad might steer clear of this game. The game is targeted to either newcomers to Vetex’s Arcane Storyline of an older age or those who grew up with the more juvenile Arcane Adventures or World Of Magic and seek to relive their childhood days. As such, it would tend to pull in an audience of teenagers and young adults.

This would do two things.

1. It would make the community more active.

Confuse this not with more player in the game on average (although that would tend to be a side effect). I mean in out-of-game discussions.

Discord servers such as The Galleon and Vetex’s Place thrive. People create massive armies and arrange battles and duels. The amount of people chatting in the latter server at any given time numbers extremely high. Any of my fellow members of the Grand Navy will happily complain about the number of people pinging for reinforcements. Fanart and Reddit posts such as this are a dime a dozen.

As I write, the game currently hosts 1.4k players across its servers. I’m willing to bet most of them are in at least one Discord server dedicated to the game they currently are enjoying.

2. It would make for a higher number of YouTubers dedicating their channels to the game.

MapleStorm, Magmurr, Brave Little Jimmy, Joneslotto, Ana the Sailor (Also known as EDP the Second) Aimsell and Baderm (albiet both on hiatus from the game) Selectorch, Territory, and hundreds of other content creators make videos about the game often, some several times a week. These folks (mostly falling in the 15-25 age range) are a big part of what promotes the game and makes it accessible and easy to understand. They drive the community, leading the thought of their thousands of subscribers. Which leads me to my next point.

Part II: YouTube’s reliance on drama.

The people promulgating and leading the idea that this game is dead are YouTubers.

Now, I don’t wish to make nasty accusations against people or name names in this part of my essay, but I will say that most YouTubers have a lot more to gain from the negative than from the positive, from drama than from peace. The book of Proverbs in the Bible, Chapter 20, verses 20-21 says:

“Without wood a fire goes out; without a gossip a quarrel dies down. As charcoal to embers and as wood to fire, so is a quarrelsome person for kindling strife.”

Arguments and fights are what drives a YouTuber to fame. Look no further than your average commentary channel! They drive quarrels for a living. And so, to say the game is dead would get clicks and views and make for an outstandingly outlandish title. (May I point out that many of the YouTubers who once said the game is dying still make videos on this supposedly lost cause to this day.) They can drive people in droves to their videos, then lead their flocks right back to Vetex’s game so they can milk it dry for content.

Therefore, I would not hasten to pay attention to what some unintelligent bum living in a basement has to say about complex happenings in the game development world. (or anything, for that matter.)

Part III: The game’s inability to be judged.

The game, as the staunch defenders of Vetex’s work tell us constantly, is in a phase known as “early access.”

At this point, we are only starting to get a feel for what the game is like. I do not hasten to call the game good or bad yet, as it would be like reviewing a book based purely upon the first chapter, judging a criminal only from the opening statements in the case.

We cannot say whether the game is dead or alive before it has truly cemented its identity. Every time it is updated, its player count spikes: upon release, it would hit 100K+ active players at times. Therefore, to say that its current 1-2K average player count is a sign of a dying game is nonsense. It is merely the sign of a game that has not yet scratched as many players’ itches as it soon will.

That being said, I do not claim the game is perfect: far from it. There are issues and bugs and flaws to be numbered in the dozens. However, to say these are going to be the death of that which is not fully formed is but striving after the wind, seeking attention and nothing more.

Thank you for your time and may God be with you,

-Vice Captain Grant of the Grand Navy, the Third Anfor

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Reddit :face_vomiting:

Arcane Odyssey isn’t dead. I still play on occasion.

Been distracted by a different ocean exploration game.

ao isnt dead but it is losing players at a pretty alarming rate tbh

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its because there are players who play whenever they can and are incredibly rich and then there are people like me who only play on occasion and the ones who play and are rich flaunt on us and bully us simply because we aren’t rich.

there are people flexing their wealth in game???
never had that happen to me on diff files with less/no valuables

besides i dont think thats the reason why ao is dying anyways

probably not it only happened to me once and because I refused to trade a sunken chestplate for an acrimony

thats a bad trade anyway, bro was prolly just mad he couldnt make a profit off of you :sob:

man just post the essay here i aint clicking a reddit link

he was some assassin leaderboard and I was just trying to do cargo. He offered galleons as well.

still doesnt seem like a good trade unless he offered like 40k

but we are getting off topic here so to get back to the topic i think ao is dying due to a lack of fun gameplay and replayability which is luckily getting adressed in the dark sea update

altho pvp really isnt looking too great next update

It is dead, for now.

Vetex himself said that he wished he could release the game with more content, but that he needed the money. I got hate for saying that I would prefer the game get delayed until Dark Seas come out. First impressions are everything, imagine the game got released with dark seas content out, with the next update being the Nimbus Sea. Game would have no less than 20k players playing at all times

Compared to other anime games, AOs biggest draws is its exploration and story content. However, once you explore everything the game has to offer and finish the story, you cant do anything besides grind bosses, minmax your gear and ships, and do PvP. The PVP is very controversial at the moment and lacks variety, and most people on the platform prefers M1 fighters like Deepwoken and ABA.

I like AO(Its the only game I come on Roblox for) but I understand why a lot of the Roblox community doesnt likes it… Dark Seas wont even fix the issue, until we get a LOT of gear and build variety, and until the PvP is at a stage where it has broader appeal. Sadly, even if a lot of this improves + second sea, a lot of people dont choose to come back to a game they dropped. Best case scenario is that the playercount goes up to 5k/10k once dark seas come out, but the game isn’t going to be in a truly appealing state until two years when multiple seas are out, builds have far more variety, theres far more to do in the game(island building, player professions, new gamemodes etc) and theres a healthy amount of gears in circulation which will incentivizing more trading and grinding.

Personally, I’m just enjoying minmaxxing my current build, and now minmaxxing my other builds. I took a break from the game before potion updates, and now I can minmax my different files while also trying out the new stuff in the game.

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I posted and formatted the essay into your post if you don’t mind

it may not be dead but that doesn’t mean there’s stuff to do

There is no mobile support so the “average 8-year-old on his Ipad” is going to not even see the game. Besides that, yeah the game is more geared towards an older audience.

Yeah wasn’t that like a major selling point for the Total Game Revamp? Mobile support was supposed to be a very high priority since there are so many players in the mobile market.

Game will probably pick up as more and more content is added and shown to other people. More precisely, I’m talking about the combat after the Dark Sea update with the dodge reflexes and all of that. Although, now that I think about it, it’ll probably just lead to people calling it blox fruits combat (even though it’s based on combat that is older than blox fruits and dashing let alone air dashing isn’t a blox fruits exclusive).

Mobile support is not a high priority, I think Vetex’s current plans were to just have it so you can mostly fish around or something. Don’t expect to be a mobile player and able to actually combat effectively let alone farm the later bosses in the Nimbus Sea (they’ll only get harder after Calvus).

Erm aktually the Ravenna random killers are slowly reducing the population

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