Tbh 90% of the reason is both fps/performance AND the story
story will obvs fix itself as time goes on
performance we can also hope for it to become better
but damn. i stopped playing ao for a while, and while this isn’t the only reason, it is a major contributor. Luck potions
they remove the fun of the game for most casual players as almost everything is MUCH easier with those
for example dark sea. if you dont have leg scales for luck 4 when you come back, your getting like 5 scrolls max
or fishing, youre never getting a sunken within the next couple years unless you use luck
I actually think there’s a lot of replayability, since there’s tons of builds and you can make a lotta files for em, and there’s the dark sea, and if you dont have a life you can climb the LB or join a clan.
There are game performance issues, yes, but those aren’t VERY frustrating (although some are really annoying) and i highly appreciate Vetex for doing so much and working so hard
The thing i cant stand is the community. There are parts of the community that are incredibly talented, capable of producing masterpieces of art. And then we have the other half, the Navy, the Syndicate, and any clan. Any time i see a clan member with a massive player kill count i just block them and leave. Ive gotten nothing but toxicity from them. These people ruin the community, and Vetex cant fix this.
If it wasnt for Roblox having literally nothing except baby trash games then i would’ve left AO
its the roblox playerbase itself that mostly wont give it a try, but also using an older way of combat may drive others away and lots of grinding for me
AO isn’t “dead”, it still has a decent enough player base. It’s just that…
You can’t expect 12 year olds, pretty much 80% of Roblox’s playerbase, to actually appreciate a well thought-out and complex game.
The game isn’t very low-end computer friendly. A constant 15 fps on graphics 1 with all of the optimization settings turned on isn’t good at all. A game like blox fruits is playable with 20 FPS, but in AO, the game becomes MUCH less fun when you reach the 30 FPS mark.
The games PVP is a pretty big 180 from the average roblox games combat. No stuns or any M1 combos, the whole PVP game is based on your aim. And when another 90% of roblox’s playerbase has become accustomed to easy one shot combos, people are quick to call the combat “trash” and “outdated”. It’s like eating food from another country and disliking it. Obviously, you won’t like that food and will tell your other friends that that food from that country is bad, but people from that country will disagree and say it’s one of the best ones you could eat. Because you aren’t used to that food, it seems like trash to you.
Toxicity isn’t really a big problem in this game, though. It’s sort of like a flip-a-coin experience, either you meet someone pretty friendly or occasionally walk into a Ravenna Random Killer.
Some people just play the game wrong. In every level gap, there is always something you can do to level up, but since people tend to choose the easiest way to level up, they’re quick to call AO an uncreative bandit beater and log off the second they reach level 30~ or so. Bandit beating is an OPTION, just like everything else in this game. There are other more entertaining ways to reach your goals in AO(at least for grinding). I agree that from levels 1-124 AO should be played like an exploration game and not an open world pirate game. You are literally rewarded for visiting a new island and opening chests. At the same time, I agree the game leaves too much open for player interpretation. From levels 1-30 and 75-80-ish, there are clear guidelines and markers and too much “go do this, go do that”- and so when the player is finally left alone to do their own thing, they go “now what?” I can’t really think of what I’d do to fix that, though.
The game doesn’t have any truly addictive end game content. Which I think is good, it filters out a certain amount of unpleasant people, but that also makes the game seem dead. If a bank is emptier than a casino is, is that necessarily a bad thing? The people in the bank are spending money and time wisely, while the ones in the casino are constantly letting the money they get fly out of their hands. Blox Fruits for example, a professional time waster until you reach max level, where then you can either bounty hunt or grind EVEN MORE for new sword or FS skills. The grind doesn’t stop even when you reach max level due to mastery levels on weapons and styles. Only then does the true “addictive replayability” end. Unless you want fruits.
GPO, another example. Before legendary chests or ASE or even just the entirety of the Dressrosa update, GPO was a desperate, cruel, violent struggle for just ONE thing. A logia fruit.
People would put their computers up to the max volume while using a devil fruit notifier. Then, waking up from a good sleep, they would sail to the location to find a suke.
Again. And again. And again. Your other options are dungeons, which really has no decent rewards other than a random fruit at the end, seabeast/kraken farming(which is actually kind of fun… but only if you have a logia), and then trading. But to trade, you need good items, and if you want to get good items but have nothing to trade FOR good items, you’ll need to grind bosses. And if you want to be able to consistently grind bosses as a NEW player, you’ll need a good fruit/logia… see where I’m going with this? GPO’s entire purpose was the journey to getting your dream fruit. Only then did the game become fun- or really, I guess lose its purpose.
Maybe you could call AOs addictive endgame content the Dark Sea. But due to the existence of Luck Parties, this is no longer the case. Luck Parties make going into the dark sea irrelevant, since you can just stockpile Sunken items to trade for whatever you want. It’s sort of a niche game, I guess, at least for roblox standards.
I just realized every paragraph progressively gets bigger and bigger as the text goes on. Oh well.
No, they want an easy game. Blox Fruits, an easy game, with a clear goal: kill enemies, specifically bandits. 98% of blox fruits is just a copy and paste, with the only differences being MAYBE a new weapon or fighting style on the new island. The other content is either boring time wasters like black beard or sea beast grinding, and the last bit being “secret” quests like the Saber Puzzle and the Race Awakening quest.
You don’t have to imagine. There are players that regularly played FPS games that came to AO and dominated, since they only had to learn the movement skills instead of aiming skills.
A bit of gambling/boring time wasting content? Well, you’ve got fishing for starters. Not only is it boring and a waste of time, it manages to truly FEEL LIKE A WASTE OF TIME while still being boring. Gaming itself is a waste of time, but fishing specifically is the closest you’ll get to “brainrot content”. If you fish without multitasking, like watching YT or something, please stay away from me you psychopath. On all my files average about 900 fish caught. I have like 8 files separated through alternate accounts. It’s just so boring and it feels like I could be doing something better with my time.
Keyword is yet. I mean, Ancient and Lost Magics, Ancient weapons, Lost Fighting Styles and Lost Scrolls are coming soon, I’d imagine a lot of people are gonna be after those, and they seem to be rng-based.
I think I also remember Vetex saying somewhere that theres a plan for dailies, rewards and stuff one day. I think those kinds of things are what contributes to more consistent players (as they would feel an incentive to be active on AO or else theyll miss out).
For now, AO’s missing that, so theres not much of an incentive to go on AO consistently.
Daily rewards… in Arcane Odyssey? Sorry, it just seems kind of out of place to me.
If you’re counting RNG-based drops as gambling, then I guess what I said is wrong. But I’m talking about down-right ludicrous drop chances, to the point where you’re pretty much gambling time away. Drop chances are a gamble anyway, but at least in Arcane Odyssey it’s REASONABLE. Not only that, you can still buy boss drops with just hard cash, the economy for galleons isn’t so terrible yet, after all. But in a game like GPO where there’s a 0.5% chance to obtain an item, or a game like AUT with a 0.1% chance to obtain an item, I think it’s difficult to say AO really has gambling.
In GPO or AUT, where there is more general trading, you CAN’T trade a boss drop of 0.5% chance for cash or anything that a regular player can obtain. No. You’ve got to no life just as much as the other guy did to get that 0.5% chance item or get an item of similar rarity before you can MAYBE trade for the one you want. In AO, bartering is more reasonable- you don’t have to waste your time mindlessly killing the same boss over and over again(AUT, blox fruits).
But you’re still right, in a way. Eventually there’ll be items too valuable to be bought with a casual players finances. However, an AVERAGE player can still stay in the trading game without gambling their time away. Nowadays I’d say it’s faster to trade for boss drops than to grind for them. Or you can do both at the same time.
If I had to pinpoint one thing, it’s that AO is a niche game. Most people who play Roblox are children (I think), and AO might just be a little too complex for them to understand. Another issue is the level requirements; at Frostmill, you need to be level 40 or higher. If I didn’t love WOM, I probably would have quit there. Proof of this is when my friends quit the game after seeing the level requirement.
The PVP and balancing may also be confusing to younger and new players, which could scare them away. Not everyone is willing to do math to figure out how much damage a light imbued slash is going to do.
The optimization of the game is pretty poor. But it is a solo developer game as far as I know. When new players load into AO on a potato computer, they are going to get bad FPS and think the game is terribly made. Roblox’s single server rack doesn’t help either, with an average of 60 ping and higher, which is double that of most games.
Fans of the game may also move on after they have done everything in the current update, causing player drops and then spikes for big updates.
Overall, the factors that contribute to AO’s niche player count are: poor performance, limited replayability, level requirements, and Roblox’s targeted age range. But, AO is in Early Access, and to see one person create such an amazing game on such a limited engine is great. Hopefully, before the full release, Vetex optimizes the game much more.
The only thing that keeps me playing is a masochistic desire to replay the gameplay from rock bottom for the 50th time, just to test out a build or try to recreate a character, only to erase it and make another.
I still don’t understand the problem with level requirements on your first playthrough. Yea, I guess if you don’t like exploring the same place more than once then it can get a little boring when you play new files, but if it’s your first time I don’t understand what the problem is.
Other than that yea, all that other stuff is the reason for the low player count.
Not really a good excuse in my opinion, as someone that has only ever seen what the level requirement looks like on his second file, and only once at that, but I guess that’s their reasoning.
To get around the level 40+ barrier I had to purposely go out of my way with knowledge about it before hand to grind the ice smuggler quest before Iris.
