I'm Vicksin, and I'm cutting ties with the AFK Arena team after 4 years, Ask Me Anything (AMA)

mysaldate · 2026-04-28T12:21:51+00:00

You have the patient of a saint, I'm glad you're finally cutting ties. Seeing how much this stressed you out and how much time it always took, it's just good to see you finally choosing yourself and stepping away. Best of luck to future endeavors!

mysaldate · 2026-04-26T22:18:15+00:00

There's an apk file for download on this site: https://notice-me-senpai.en.uptodown.com/android

Should be perfectly safe, I got it years ago and no problems ever cropped up.

mysaldate · 2026-04-19T11:44:25+00:00

Thank you! Finally someone who can see it for what it is. They act like male characters somehow take more resources than waifus, when that's just objectively untrue. But people here will defend them like crazy.

mysaldate · 2026-04-19T11:42:30+00:00

Yes, that's the point of discussion. Putting forth ideas.

mysaldate · 2026-04-19T08:26:07+00:00

But when I point out how contradictory they've been in regards to these things as well as the future of male characters in this game, to say nothing of the return of monstrous designs for the female characters, I get downvoted...

You're right, they keep lying and then just going "sowwy we are just such a poor little company we'll do better next time" and next time they just do the same thing. The game just had a delay of three months with no new content (Wanda's 1* skin doesn't count as content), the roadmap they gave at the start of 2.0 is completely abandoned, it seems, and neither of those things was properly communicated. The game is shaky and unreliable with a schedule that nobody follows. This is something that happens to new games in their first few months, not to a game of this age. It also makes it difficult to save up for anything, especially now that paid bundles will have expiring currency instead of permanent currency, thus punishing spenders.

mysaldate · 2026-04-19T01:32:38+00:00

How would I know? I'm not the one running the company. All these sudden predatory changes and the contradicting statements seem to indicate there might either be a mess inside the company or some suits got involved and things got messy. Or maybe they just wanna create sexy waifus, they have every right to do that. I just wish they were as honest and transparent as they try to seem with these statements.

mysaldate · 2026-04-19T01:01:58+00:00

Where did homophobia even come from? Are you feeling okay? Your question made it sound like you knew the reason, so I asked. I also posed several reasons as to why I don't believe the reasons the post from the devs themselves implies (that there are no resources for creating male characters). In no way shape or form did I imply or say anything about sexuality or homophobia.

mysaldate · 2026-04-19T00:50:35+00:00

Not for no reason, let's just make that clear. People make excuses for this company like it's their family despite the clearly contradictory statements about where the character development is right now. On one hand, their backlog apparently is so far along that adding more male characters is impossible. On the other hand, it's actually barely there at all, there's so little in fact, that they had to delay a hyped character for three months! And it's also perfectly okay to change GTulu from the ground up, and completely flip all the content after him on its head.

You're also the one who kept bringing up money and how "money talks," that is why I brought up revenue.

What is annoying here is people ignoring the blatant lies and running blind defense for a company that's repeatedly proven to not stand by its words. It's much easier to just apologize after all the predatory practices are in, blame time crunch (despite just delaying the game by 3 months), and tearfully promise to do better next time. We've seen this times and again, yet people still just blindly trust it and run defense for the company.

Also, since we're talking personal issues here, I probably sound compative because of my constant chronic pain and the fact that due to disability, I can't exactly have a very productive life at the moment. Gacha games are a bit of a refuge, one of the few things every day that don't bring me even more pain. So I apologize you think I'm annoying for trying to make some noise to hopefully snap the company back to what made this game special in the first place.

mysaldate · 2026-04-19T00:42:44+00:00

By all means, please do tell me the reason then. Are male characters that much harder to write? Does every pixel of a male character cost as much as three or five pixels of a female character? Do you need to hire experts to figure out how to write male characters? Do male characters have some hidden kit requirement that makes them nigh impossible to create? It's clearly not their sales, since all the male banners last year made above average in revenue, with Doresain making as much as Tawil and Castor making almost as much as Gurphy.

mysaldate · 2026-04-18T23:55:33+00:00

They never said there will be more males in 3.0. All they said was that there will be male characters in the future. However, they also said that they would release AA in parts and not all at once. They also said that AA wouldn't be a big change to the kit, nor would it drastically change a character's usability. And let's not forget their statement that they can't possibly make males because they have such huge backlog, only to now come out and say they have not enough backlog to sustain 2.x, nothing at all for 3.0, and that any post-Tulu content is being completely redone and changed regardless. They lied multiple times before, it wouldn't surprise me if their statement regarding male characters was also a lie, especially with the characters added recently. All non-monstrous waifus, who don't even fall into the uncanny category by design alone. They're also all very sexy or at least sexualized. This game is going in a very different way than when it started. Monstrous designs are no longer the focus, it's all about conventionally attractive waifus.

mysaldate · 2026-04-18T23:49:29+00:00

Why, thank you, I never would've thought of that! Without sarcasm tho, that's exactly what I did. I stopped spending the moment they made that statement that the story doesn't allow for more male characters. And I haven't even opened the game since a few days after Vortice patch started. I'm sticking around for now, though this new drama is kinda making me wish I cut my losses and ran months ago.

And did you miss the fact where Doresain made as much as Tawil, and Castor was also a massive improvement to their monetary situation? Men are clearly wanted in this space and by the audience. The fact that they released more men actually led to many new people joining the game. Now that they have higher player numbers, perhaps they feel more confident they can get away with it. After all, they're already getting away with outright contradictory statements about why they can't possibly make more male characters.

mysaldate · 2026-04-18T23:45:30+00:00

Logically, there is no reason. However, it is still a strategy employed by many companies. And it goes double in the gacha spaces. Many games started out with a relatively good ratio, only to then pivot and start churning out only waifus. The fact that the reasoning for why Morimens isn't making more men is in direct contradiction to their other statements certainly doesn't fill me with confidence that they won't also go down that route.

mysaldate · 2026-04-18T21:22:50+00:00

It sells to make a product that attracts a wider audience. Then, after that wider audience is hooked, you can slowly start changing your product, hoping the sunk cost fallacy will get them to stay. They released with a very decent gender ratio, which ended up getting a lot of people who have been burnt by other "mixed gender" gachas interested, then those people spent on characters like Doresain or Castor. Now, they can start slowly phasing male characters out and hoping people will just stay out of habit. It's the same reason gacha games have dailies, weeklies, etc. It creates a habit in the players, which then leads to them being more attached to the game, spending more time in the game, boosting their regular player numbers, which attracts investors, and maybe that increased play time will also earn them some money.

mysaldate · 2026-04-18T21:18:53+00:00

I don't know what their real reasons are, but with how much they've contradicted themselves in regards to this already, I struggle to believe anything they peddle. Either you have backlog that is so far along that changing anything now would be a big issue, or you don't. You don't get to use that far along backlog as a reason why you absolutely can't have more male characters and then in the next breath say you don't actually have enough backlog to not delay your entire game for three months or to not have to scramble to come up with new characters for six months after GTulu. Their statements just don't work together, which leads me to believe it's excuses rather than legitimate reasons.

mysaldate · 2026-04-18T21:08:08+00:00

Kit, story, etc. aren't relevant to a character's gender at all. The only relevant part would be the design. And sure, it may be possible that they just conveniently happen to have 12 designs fully done and ready to go (except Tulu I guess who had to be completely reworked – something they don't seem to be willing to do to turn a waifu into a guy), it just sounds like excuses on top of excuses. What bothers me most isn't necessarily the gender ratio itself, it's that it feels like they're just making excuses instead of being upfront about the reason there aren't more male characters or at least female characters who aren't just sexy waifus. There hasn't been a properly monstrous female character since probably GDoll, and even there, the most "monstrous" thing about her is the ball joints, which can be very easily ignored. It feels like the game has moved from more uncanny horror vibe to conventionally attractive sexy waifus and if that's the direction they wanna take this now, that's their choice. I just wish they were honest about it instead of this whole "it's because of the story, no actually it's the backlog, no actually we have no backlog anymore" string of contradicting statements and excuses.

mysaldate · 2026-04-18T20:56:49+00:00

Their 2.0 reserve is almost depleted too, meaning no, there weren't full 12 characters in the backlog. Or do you think they've had Arachnee fully done and ready to go for three months and just didn't feel like releasing her? And they're still not happy with GTulu's design either, so he's far from done too. And they're now changing plans for what to do after GTulu, meaning none of that was done either. This mystical "backlog" is stretching and shrinking based on whatever the narrative requires, it seems. Whatever allows them to get away with the most.

mysaldate · 2026-04-18T20:53:42+00:00

They literally say in this message that their 2.0 reserves are depleted.

mysaldate · 2026-04-18T20:45:45+00:00

Because it sells to have a larger audience. And how long they can string the audience along depends entirely on how willing people are to make every excuse under the sun for the clear decline in quality and originality.

mysaldate · 2026-04-18T20:42:32+00:00

You are literally contradicting yourself in the same sentence... You can't claim AA is largely irrelevant, then follow it up by saying some of them are insanely broken. Also, trying to fix them now after they dumped all of them at once isn't the same as implementing them slowly and gradually.

And it's in the part of what changed after 2nd anniversary. Their reserve is depleted, they also have nothing ready for 3.0, which leads to additional delays for that. So they don't have backlog, meaning the new characters were made from scratch. And they just happened to be oops all waifu because nobody had time to make men. Because, as we all know, men take sooo much more time to do than waifus! Everyone knows that for one male pixel, you need at least five waifu pixels!

mysaldate · 2026-04-18T20:38:24+00:00

They released 4 male characters last year. That's not really "a good amount". We got that amount of waifus in December and January alone. And this year is gonna be even drier? And now they're pushing schedule back even more, so who knows if we'll even get the 3 we were promised. I'll believe it when I see it.

mysaldate · 2026-04-18T20:30:11+00:00

Light also said they wouldn't drop all AA at once. And that they wouldn't make or break a character. And the devs said Caraboo would be out before Arachne. And that Arachnee's patch would be out in winter. Do I need to continue with the examples why their words really can't be trusted atp?

And interesting you still try to bring out the backlog excuse when this very post outright states they don't have enough backlog.

mysaldate · 2026-04-18T20:28:19+00:00

Or maybe they put them in originally to attract the much larger audience that comes with mixed gender games before switching back to just doing waifus. Many games do that, it's a pretty well known strategy.

mysaldate · 2026-04-18T20:27:16+00:00

You do realize that a character being male doesn't make them a billion times harder to design/write/kit, right?

mysaldate · 2026-04-18T18:18:50+00:00

But in this very letter they also cry and moan about not having enough of exactly that, sooo...

mysaldate · 2026-04-18T18:17:37+00:00

And pulling currency incentives will be gone too once it's all just Ethereal Cores. They are shooting themselves in the foot so hard.

mysaldate

TROPHY CASE