Info about Arcane Waters: Official game description: Arcane Waters is an online pixel RPG, featuring trading, exploration, combat, and farming. On your own, or with friends, explore handcrafted sea and land maps, sail to visit remote towns to trade goods, hunt for treasure in dangerous waters and lands filled with monsters, or play against other pirates in PvP sea battles. In the meantime, tend your farm to grow crops, buy and upgrade your fleet of ships, and craft items to use or sell. FIGHT ----- When you leave the safety of your farm, you'll have to fight to survive! On the high seas, fight tense real-time cannon-blasting battles against pirates and huge monsters. On land, take part in thrilling active-time fights with strange creatures to reveal hidden treasures. You’ll need your wits about you! FARM ---- Starting with a humble farm, plant seeds, water them and pick your crops. Eventually you will unlock other farms to increase your yield and diversify your produce. Explore ------- A vast open world awaits you or your team as you sail to distant lands. Explore multiple different biomes, each with their own unique towns, valuable goods for sale and dangerous monsters, to complete quests and help each other level up. TRADE ----- Whether you grow your own food, or buy it from traders, you will need to find the best price to sell and make a profit. This will mean sailing far from home to discover new continents and towns where your goods are highly sought after. CRAFT ----- Use items dropped by enemies or sold at stores to make your own weapons and armor, and either use them yourself or sell them on the public Auction for a profit! LEVEL UP -------- Stay neutral to avoid being attacked by other players, or join a guild to help fight for your place in the world. Level up by completing quests, finding new locations, and utilizing your skills. Use Perk points to increase stats based on your chosen specialties, and use your hard-earned gold to buy new equipment to help you progress even faster. Release date: 14 Nov, 2022 Categories: RPG, Multiplayer, Open-World Exploration, Farming Simulation, Crafting, Ship Combat, Turn-based Combat, Puzzle Solving - Hardware Profile: No data Feature extractions: - Community Price: No data - Playtime Metrics: No data - Time-to-fun: No data - Player Archetypes: No data Below are summaries of things people say about the game per category. Each point is assigned a weight that represents how often it is mentioned across all reviews. What players like: - Supportive Community & Devs (weight 0.97): The game boasts a friendly, helpful, and growing community. Developers are highly praised for being responsive, communicative, and actively involved in addressing feedback and implementing improvements. - Engaging and Fun Gameplay (weight 0.78): Players find the game highly enjoyable, especially when playing with friends. The ship combat system and PvP are frequently highlighted as fresh and exciting, contributing to an overall addicting experience. - Excellent Ship Combat (weight 0.43): The ship combat system is a standout feature, described as nostalgic, skill-based, and highly enjoyable. Players appreciate the variety in ships and abilities, making naval battles a core fun aspect. - High Potential for Growth (weight 0.4): Many players see immense potential in the game, even in its early access state. They believe with continued content expansion, balancing, and feature refinement, it could become a truly unique and great experience. - Strong Core Concept (weight 0.29): Players are drawn to the game's fundamental concept, finding the idea behind it cool, amazing, and very good. The unique blend of elements in a pirate MMO setting resonates well with the audience. - Diverse Gameplay Mechanics (weight 0.26): The game successfully integrates multiple genres and mechanics, including farming, crafting, home decorating, open-sea sailing, and various combat types (turn-based, real-time, PvP MOBA). This variety keeps players engaged. - Charming Pixel Art Style (weight 0.22): The game's pixel art graphics are consistently praised for being cute, charming, effective, and well-polished. This aesthetic contributes significantly to the game's overall appeal. - Fun PvP Arena (weight 0.21): The PvP arena, often described as a MOBA-style or Capture the Flag experience, is a popular feature. It allows players to engage in skill-based ship combat without risk to their main progression. - Engaging Puzzles (weight 0.13): The puzzles found at various points of interest are highlighted as varied, engaging, and clever, providing a satisfying challenge for players. - Abundant Hidden Content (weight 0.1): The game offers a significant amount of hidden content and secrets across its map areas, encouraging exploration and providing many hours of gameplay. - Relaxing Farming Activity (weight 0.1): Farming is noted as a cathartic, chill, and enjoyable activity within the game, offering a relaxing contrast to other gameplay elements. Common complaints: - Lack of Content & Updates (weight 0.66): Players report a significant lack of engaging content, leading to boredom quickly. This issue is exacerbated by infrequent or non-existent updates, making the game feel abandoned and unfinished. - Poor Combat System (weight 0.62): The combat system, particularly the turn-based land combat, is widely criticized for being dull, clunky, slow, and repetitive. Players find it unintuitive and poorly integrated with other gameplay elements. - Severe Lag & Server Issues (weight 0.46): Players frequently experience significant network lag, high ping, and unstable server connections, making the game difficult or impossible to play. The single-server setup contributes to these issues. - Inadequate Localization (weight 0.37): The game suffers from poor or missing translations, especially for Chinese and other languages, despite being advertised as localized. This makes the game unplayable for many non-English speakers. - Numerous Bugs & Unfinished State (weight 0.25): The game is plagued with many bugs and feels unfinished, even for an Early Access title. While some developers are responsive, the sheer volume of issues impacts the overall experience. - Flawed Crafting & Farming (weight 0.23): Crafting and farming systems are described as bland, clunky, and half-baked. They often involve repetitive actions, noticeable delays, and RNG elements that waste resources, making them unengaging. - Excessive Grinding (weight 0.22): The game requires an extensive and unrewarding grind for progression, particularly for acquiring ships, leveling up, and earning money. This makes the early game slow and tedious. - Misleading MMO Tag (weight 0.09): The game is perceived as an MMO but is not explicitly tagged as such, leading to unmet expectations. It also struggles to retain players like other MMOs. - Low Player Base (weight 0.08): The game has a very small and dwindling player base, with only a handful of active users. This severely impacts multiplayer aspects like PVP and makes the game feel empty. - Broken Economy from Test Data (weight 0.08): The game's economy is severely imbalanced due to test server data not being wiped. This resulted in some players starting with excessive gold, top-tier gear, and maxed skills, creating an unfair advantage. - Poor Tutorial & Onboarding (weight 0.08): The tutorial is criticized for being confusing, unintuitive, and sometimes broken. It fails to adequately explain game concepts, making the initial experience overwhelming for new players. - Limited Ocean Exploration (weight 0.08): Ocean exploration feels empty and restricted, with slow sailing speeds and short travel times on starter ships. This limits the sense of adventure and discovery. - Unsatisfying Quests (weight 0.08): Quest rewards are often underwhelming or feel like placeholders. Some quests are frustrating due to lack of clear guidance or unimplemented quest items. - Better with Friends (weight 0.07): The game is not well-suited for solo play and is considered average or below average without friends. This suggests a design that heavily relies on social interaction. Gameplay feedback: - Diverse Gameplay Activities (weight 0.32): The game offers a wide array of activities including exploration, group voyages, puzzles, ship/gear upgrades, farming, crafting, trading, and various PvP and PvE combat modes. Players can expect 30-40 hours of new gameplay content. - Turn-Based Land Combat (weight 0.16): Land combat in the game utilizes a classic Japanese RPG-style turn-based system. Players manage defense, balance, and attack stances, selecting skills each turn. - Multiplayer Focus (weight 0.15): The game is exclusively multiplayer, featuring PvP elements and requiring a constant server connection even for what might appear to be single-player activities. Guilds and co-op exploration are supported. - Grinding and Progression (weight 0.12): Players noted that progression, especially reaching later islands, involves a significant amount of grinding. Farming, while a main income source, can be slow, leading some to tolerate it by multitasking. - Stardew Valley Meets Pirates (weight 0.09): Players frequently compare the game to a blend of Stardew Valley and pirate-themed adventures, suggesting a mix of farming simulation with open-world exploration and combat. - Perk System and Healing (weight 0.07): The game includes a perk system that activates upon character level-ups, and rum serves as a healing item. Finding quest items can be challenging initially. - Limited Farm Plots (weight 0.03): The player farm has a maximum of 24 plots, which might limit farming scale. This detail is specific but could impact resource generation. Performance notes: - High network latency (weight 0.07): Players are experiencing significant network latency, with reported pings around 200ms without network accelerators. This indicates a potential issue with server proximity or infrastructure. - Future server improvements expected (weight 0.04): There's an expectation that server authority and performance, particularly for sea-based actions, will improve as developers expand server locations. This indicates a recognized need for broader infrastructure. - Server stability with low player count (weight 0.04): The game's servers demonstrate relative stability when the player count is low. This suggests that performance issues might be exacerbated by higher player loads. Recommendations: - Mixed recommendations on purchase (weight 0.54): Player sentiment is divided on whether to recommend the game. Many feel it's not worth the current price or is too flawed, while others strongly recommend it, especially to fans of specific genres. - Hope for future improvements (weight 0.1): Players are hopeful for future improvements and content, suggesting they might reconsider their reviews if significant changes are made. - Play with friends for enjoyment (weight 0.09): Playing the game with friends significantly enhances the experience and is recommended to maximize enjoyment and benefits. - Consider waiting for full release (weight 0.08): Players who dislike unfinished games or early access titles are advised to wait until the game is fully released and more polished. - Positive outlook on developers (weight 0.07): There's a belief that the game has strong potential to become a 'banger' due to the developers' efforts and passion. - Appeals to pirate MMO fans (weight 0.06): The game is highly recommended for those specifically seeking a 2D pixel pirate MMO experience, allowing players to embody their desired pirate role. - Refund requests due to dissatisfaction (weight 0.06): Some players expressed a desire for a refund, indicating dissatisfaction with the game's current state or value. - Suggests buying on sale (weight 0.06): Some players recommend purchasing the game only when it's on sale, implying that its current price is too high for its value. - Advise research before purchase (weight 0.05): Potential buyers are advised to conduct thorough research before purchasing, especially if they are hesitant, due to the game's mixed reception. - Intention to continue playing (weight 0.05): Despite some criticisms, several players express their intention to continue playing the game, indicating some level of engagement. - Community engagement recommended (weight 0.05): Players are encouraged to join the game's community platforms (Discord, QQ group) for support and interaction. - Engaging world experience (weight 0.03): One player expressed a strong desire to 'live in this game,' suggesting a highly immersive and appealing world. - Negative review change (weight 0.02): One player changed their recommendation to negative, indicating a decline in their satisfaction over time. Other player notes: - Game is in Early Access (weight 0.36): Players frequently acknowledge the game's early access status, understanding that it is still under development and may contain bugs or incomplete features. This sets expectations for its current state and future potential. - Localization Efforts Ongoing (weight 0.12): Players are involved in localization efforts, particularly for Chinese and Korean, and are actively communicating with developers about missing translations. There's a strong desire for improved and complete localization. - Reviewer Backgrounds Varied (weight 0.08): Some reviewers have a deeper connection to the game's development, having participated in playtests or contributed to localization and exploit reporting. This provides context for their feedback. - Concerns about Monetization/DRM (weight 0.05): Players note the game's buy-to-play, always-online, and anti-mod nature, with some expressing worry about the online requirement. This indicates potential concerns about the game's business model and restrictions. - Small Team Development (weight 0.04): Players acknowledge that the game is developed by a smaller team and is not a AAA title, which may influence their expectations regarding scope and polish. - Desire for Customization (weight 0.03): Players are looking forward to more customization options for their characters and personal areas like farms or houses, indicating a desire for greater personalization. - Desire for Repeatable Puzzles (weight 0.02): A specific request for repeatable puzzles suggests players enjoy this content and want more opportunities to engage with it. - Early Access Testing Effectiveness Questioned (weight 0.02): One reviewer questions the effectiveness of early access testing, implying that some issues might have been overlooked or not adequately addressed. - Community Resistance to Change (weight 0.02): A segment of the community prefers the game to remain as it was during testing, believing new players should experience the same challenges. This indicates potential friction regarding future updates. - Mobile Game Comparison (weight 0.02): One review, as of November 2022, unfavorably compares the game's current state to a $5 mobile game, indicating a perception of low quality or limited content at that time. Emotions: - Frustration (weight 0.21): Players experienced significant frustration due to persistent technical issues, including non-functional servers, frequent disconnections, and fluctuating lag, which often made the game unplayable. Other major causes were janky mechanics, bad level design, and a heavy, unrewarding grind, alongside poor localization and unintuitive tutorials that hindered progression and understanding. - Disappointment (weight 0.19): Disappointment stemmed primarily from the game being perceived as abandoned, with a severe lack of updates, content, and a dwindling player base. Players also felt let down by unfulfilled potential, incomplete localization, and a general feeling that the game was unfinished or not worth its price, often exacerbated by a rough server launch and poor initial experiences. - Satisfaction (weight 0.16): Satisfaction was driven by charming aesthetics, engaging ship gameplay, and interesting puzzles. A highly responsive development team and a friendly, active community were frequently cited as major positives, alongside enjoyable farming, crafting, and tactical combat systems that contributed to a fun and solid overall experience. - Hope (weight 0.08): Players expressed hope for the game's future, anticipating improvements through upcoming updates, new content, and better balancing. This hope was often tied to the game's perceived potential to evolve into a unique experience, provided the developers continued to invest time and effort into its development and address existing issues. - Excitement (weight 0.08): Excitement was generated by the game's vast potential, unique concept, and promising alpha state. Players were enthusiastic about the variety of features, such as co-op, housing, and PvP arenas, and appreciated the active developers and strong community, which suggested a bright future for the game. - Enjoyment (weight 0.06): Enjoyment came from engaging gameplay, particularly ship combat, sailing, and quests. Playing with friends significantly enhanced the experience, as did the cute aesthetics and well-implemented mechanics, contributing to an overall positive and fun gaming session. - Joy (weight 0.03): Joy was found in simple pleasures like petting animals and the relaxing overall experience. Players also felt joy from seeing active developers and administrators within the community, and from specific elements like ship battles and music, which were highlighted as favorite parts of the game. - Enthusiasm (weight 0.03): Enthusiasm was fueled by the game's perceived quality, its compelling concept, and the potential for growth. The competence of the developers and the supportive community also contributed to a strong sense of enthusiasm for the game's current state and future prospects. - Optimism (weight 0.02): Optimism stemmed from the developers' active engagement, including daily bug fixes, consistent updates, and responsiveness to feedback. Players felt optimistic that the game was steadily becoming more polished and possessed the vital components to achieve greatness, supported by the experienced development team. - Confusion (weight 0.02): Confusion arose from unintuitive game design choices, such as the land combat and weapon mechanics, as well as the always-online requirement for single-player content. Poor localization and an unclear tutorial also contributed to players struggling to understand quests and core gameplay. - Anticipation (weight 0.01): Anticipation was primarily focused on future content, including new regions and the return of a larger player base. Players looked forward to these additions, hoping they would enrich the game experience and address current limitations. - Trust (weight 0.01): Trust was built on the absence of 'pay-to-win' mechanics and the development team's consistent responsiveness to player feedback. These factors assured players of the developers' commitment to a fair and player-centric game experience. - Patience (weight 0.01): Players expressed patience regarding ongoing localization efforts and the development of the land/party battle system. They understood that these aspects required time to mature and were willing to wait for improvements. - Interest (weight 0.01): Interest was sparked by the game's unique theme, particularly its pixel art style and its concept as a pirate-themed MMO. Players found the overall premise and visual presentation quite engaging. - Support (weight 0.01): Support was directed towards the game and its small development team, especially given its early access status. Players were willing to back the project, recognizing the effort and potential despite its current state. - Despair (weight 0.01): Despair was a strong negative emotion caused by persistent and severe network lag, which made the game unplayable for some users and led to a feeling of hopelessness regarding the game's technical stability. - Boredom (weight 0.01): Boredom resulted from repetitive in-game activities and a poorly developed lore. Players found the lack of variety and depth in content led to a monotonous experience over time. - Defensiveness (weight 0.01): Defensiveness emerged in response to what players perceived as unfair or misleading negative reviews. This suggests a desire to protect the game's reputation against what they considered unwarranted criticism. - Regret (weight 0.01): Regret was specifically tied to the desire for a refund, indicating that players felt their purchase was a mistake and wished they could undo it, likely due to dissatisfaction with the game experience. - Concern (weight 0.01): Concern was raised by the lack of updates and the fear that the game was becoming abandonware. Players worried about the long-term viability and continued development of the game.}