State of AO Rant

This was originally posted in my PVP server, I’m posting it here as well to see what the less PVP centric crowd thinks

Hey so I’m not sure if you guys have noticed, but Vetex has been a pretty ass dev recently, and you can see the effects pretty much everywhere in the Arcane Odyssey Community.

Before I go on my own mini rant about this, I’d like to make it VERY clear that I am NOT a Vetex Hater. If you had asked me a year ago I’d have told you without flinching that Arcane Odyssey is the best game I’ve ever played on Roblox, which might not be true now if I consider Deepwoken, but that has its own host of issues. I’ve been playing Arcane Odyssey since OPEN TEST ONE Which was on December 14th 2019, so around 4 years. I played the original Halloween event in 2020, and earned a headless head (got trade bugged while transferring and was unrestorable, but i digress). So when I say this game is going to end up as some hot ass at this rate, you should trust what I’m saying.

I don’t know if Vetex needs to hear this, but you need to stop airing people, vetoing reasonable balance changes, and all around just lock the fuck in.

For example, ANYONE who’s searched for Hecate Essence knows how FUCKING SHIT it is bro. Please, can someone acquire some of whatever the actual fuck Vetex was smoking when he decided “1/12, but only in Far Reaches” was any sort of reasonable. I know with up to 99% certainty that not a single tester TESTEDit after this change, and I don’t think a single one of them wanted it to happen either (so leave them alone). First of all, we aren’t even supposed to be in the Far Reaches of the Dark Sea, and if we are, that’s incredibly—as Vetex would say— retarded.

Finding Hecate essence for myself, and yes I’ve found one, might be the single most unfun thing I’ve ever done in a video game ever. 12+ Hours of sailing in the incredibly laggy dark sea WITH clear sight V the **WHOLE **time, narrowly dodging every level 200 atlantean I came across because they’d take my limbs off, REJOICING every time the server had bugged rain because it meant no water poisoning bs, and having to search every inch of the already massive insanity 3 range dark sea islands to find a purple **MIST **the size of a 20% light sphere placed explosion (don’t fact-check me) (side note, why the fuck did bro choose purple and blue…? That’s literally the color of everything in the dark sea??). I can confidently say that if the goal was to give you insanity 3 in real life, you’ve passed with fucking flying colors. It got so bad that at one point, I started actually hallucinating Hecate essence when there was nothing there. Can you imagine my sheer awe when I found out that Vetex vetoed some balance changes that would make Hecate finding easier? They proposed adding a text notification whenever you came within a 150-meter radius of Hecate essence, and I’m pretty sure wanted to increase its spawn rate to 1/10.

I’m not sure how he arrived at this decision, but there is not a single person who’s searched for Hecate that wouldn’t say it’s an extremely soulless endeavor, and you’re better off making a slot from scratch. Normal developers don’t code this in and then decline to change it. Normal developers see that their entire community fucking hates something and go “nah, this is fine”. That actually transitions perfectly into the next thing I need to complain about, it’s how little Vetex cares about his community (obviously).

I can understand having a passion project, but your passion project is gonna be some hot dogshit if nobody else is interested in playing through your passion as well. The whole notion of “i don’t owe you guys anything” is flawed logic when let’s be real, we’re literally paying your bills. For example, let’s say you’re the CEO of a company that was your own startup. You have investors, an advisory board, and all the other employees you need to keep the company making money. Even if you’re the one driving the ship, it’s not a one-man machine, you NEED your crew to keep the ship afloat. That’s why I’m so confused when he decides to not listen to his testers and balance team. Firstly, it’s not as if he’s paying them, this is a complete volunteer effort. I’m starting to realize that maybe some of the inactive testers stopped testing because they’re also getting ignored? Logically, if I’m a tester for a game and the developers don’t listen to bug reports, of course I’m gonna stop testing. Clearly I’m not valued, so I’m going to stop saying anything at all.

Moving on to the Balance Team/Balance Trello, I’m actually shocked, dude. Hecate change vetoed. Magma VFX change vetoed. Like 8 million things in either low priority or just back burned because Vetex didn’t want to do them. If you remember, the original reason that we even swapped to a balance Trello is because Vetex didn’t want to do the whole list of changes on the balance document, which is completely understandable. But skipping changes every update, which definitely aren’t coming out that often, is insane. It’s like me pushing off my assignments until it’s one day before the due date. Of course, I’m gonna end up stressed when I have to do them. This is why I’m suggesting that Vetex does balance changes FIRST at the start of every update development cycle, so the testers can test them to make sure they actually work, and he can do bug fixes while he works on the other parts of the game. This way, he can get his least favorite part of developing out of the way and over with.

I have maybe three more Arcane Odyssey videos planned till the Christmas update, because I’m done making literal slopfest trello patch videos. After that, I’ll finally branch out my content, and start making more broad videos on Roblox as a whole (one is planned to be about bandit beaters and how devs can stop making them). I’m not quitting arcane odyssey, (I still have to finish the Halloween event) but I’ll definitely be taking a very long break from the game. This was inspired by Femsell’s rant, and I’m sure the other AO Content Creators have the same feelings.

Hey so just to clarify, when I said do the balance changes first at the start of the development cycle, I meant do the stuff that’s already on the balance trello to get it over with, obviously you can’t balance something that doesn’t exist.

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its shit, i agree, but it was tested. vetex doesnt want you to change your first magic easily for whatever reason, thats why its so difficult/hard to find.


in regards to balancing, im not super well versed in that sector of the game, but theres some talk i think of giving someone studio access to do balance changes in his stead? maybe releasing them in hotfixes? not sure but keep an eye out !!!


in regards to this whole section, i do agree, what he said was quite… strange? he should care a lot more about what players want, but i also do want to see the game in a state he is happy with when full release comes out. hopefully he takes his time with this update and helps make the game super polished and fun!
bug fixing is tiring i would imagine. we do report bugs!! but its such a draining process, and i think vetex values content over bug fixes. if the game is unplayable, he will fix. with this update taking longer than usual and there being a few people with studio access, more bugs should be getting fixed from now on!!


this is all my opinion and my own views. im not vetex. dont take what i say as complete truth.

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I specifically chose not to say anything regarding the testers because I know they’re actually finding bugs

Yeah this is such a valid take. Like I personally wasn’t that offended but if you want to make a passion project that people can play and enjoy, and something you want to be proud of, you have to make it…enjoyable. Fix the “small” things

one opinion ive kinda had on ao for a while now is that its a quantity over quality game. im not saying theres no quality to be had but like.

the game gives me a lot to do but not a lot that feels worth doing.

like yeah i can go dig for treasure or go explore diving spots or go do dark sea but… these all give me the same things 80% of the time. i get unique modifiers, sure, but its on the same pieces of equipment. i go loot dark sealed and like half the time i get the same loot i wouldve gotten out of bronze/nimus sealed. it just leaves me wondering why i should even bother with it cause it’s not even worth doing.

the only other thing i would complain about are strength weapon skills being garbage but i feel like everyone already knows why so

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First is the worst

I’m gonna be real I just think vetex needs to get rid of all the content promises and story and shit for full release, and focus on making what we already have better. The “early access” excuse isn’t gonna work if the full release update doesn’t fix the inherent flaws with replayability, optimization, and game mechanics that plagues this game. Go ask about arcane odyssey in other community’s on roblox, a good majority of them all say the exact same thing about how

  1. Story sucks, I personally like it but I agree have the plot twists had absolutely 0 build up and were just pulled out of your ass (Argos, calvus, eternal mines, Entire drachmae pirates arc, etc.)
  2. Combat is annoying, vetex, for the love of god get your testers to test PvP, literally every rare spell has been broken on release except array, before being nerfed into dogshit.
  3. Too grindy, you all know my exact opinions on this topic so I won’t elaborate

We aren’t doing this because we hate the game, we are complaining because we hate to see so much potential squandered.

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Also the day has come when somebody makes a doomer post and doesn’t get lynched for it, the end times are upon us

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genuinely agree with this post, as a person who started on WoM and then revived with the community for AO, there is… and I mean it A LOT OF BUGS AND its really unplayable at times, genuinely vetex please, dont sqaunder your game like Mr_Hyperspace said, I genuinely love the game and basically everyone one does, I just want it to fall…

To be honest, achrono, you’re completely right in most of your points, although you are harsh. If you think about it, we are in one of the best states we have been when it comes to the game. We have the most content we have ever had, and after all these years, we finally have a dev team, with individual people helping for what they are best in. Vetex skipping these balance changes is not good, however, the thoroughness in which changes have been implemented has been getting better and better since nimbus originally released. I’m sure it will get better.

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Summarizing it to just “stop skipping balancing” isn’t really a good way to put things, it’s really just a stop ignoring your community thing

I’ve heard some good news recently about someone else doing the balancing changes, which makes me happy, but as I said before, ignoring the players is a bad idea

skill issue i’m afraid

Hold on are you copying eclipse lmao

The ao plagiarizing deepwoken allegations are NOT being beaten with this one

literally what ever game dev doesnt do, we need Vetex to have that etched into his mind so he actually starts interacting with people…