I think that either the Hive should not remove the arcade or continue the golden mailbot hunt in the new hub while transferring users’ progress
I know a lot more people and I still are looking for golden mailbots in the Arcade. And I don’t want the progress we have made to go to waste. I, for example, have had 99 golden mailbots found, I haven’t found the last one and likely am not going to because of the Arcade’s removal.
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Removing the arcade would also call for the removal of the arcade games such as Nemo slap and PvP, and the parkours. I know that not many people go to the arcade but it is still fun to play the mini games and just explore the arcade. If anything, I think the main hub should be replaced.
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The Arcade would get more activity if they advertised it better instead of tucking it behind the games in the main hub and actually put the spawn for it in the game menu.
I guess you’ll still have at least a week or two (or even longer, as nothing has been confimed yet) before they release the new hub. Adding the golden mailbots to the new hub would lead to confusion, as you cannot really have a seasonal and permanent hunt active at the same exact time, without it creating ultimate chaos.
Making the Golden Mailbot costume exclusive once the Arcade hub is gone is also a good ‘I was here’ achievement. If they transferred it over to the new hub it wouldn’t feel as arcade-ish and as special anymore.
And as they have stated in their Development Update Preview - July 2023 Edition, the Arcade hub pretty much hides the games in there, contributing to lower player counts. Arcade is currently more a ‘graveyard’ of dead games, and its removal is a good step to making the games more visible again.
Personally, I feel like having scavenger hunts during seasonal events only is the best thing, as they overall feel more special then.
For your edit within the main post regarding the hub games, parkours, etc., I assume that’s also a reason why Hive decided to remove the Arcade hub. Currently, the main hub is not as special, as it doesn’t have these special parkour stages nor the train. They simply put more effort behind a more inaccessible hub less people see, that being Arcade.
I assume they will completely overhaul the current hub to also include more special parkours, maybe even with (new) rewards, and they will likely also add a train to the new hub, considering they said it’s bigger than the current hub. For the hub games, they mentioned that they will likely add them back at some point, but for now their focus is probably on Treasure Wars: Seasons as well as other game-related updates.
We might even get hub exploration quests with Quests V2 in the future, although this is currently more on the backburner. But who knows, maybe there will already be a lot more to do after the release of the new hub, I’m sure they put as much effort as possible into the work of the new hub. ^^
To add to Rechenheft’s messages, sadly, I don’t think saving progress is possible here. From my understanding, the server tracks which Mailbots you’ve already found based on their locations. Otherwise, you’d have to find them in a fixed order. Unless the new hub would add the Mailbots back in the exact same places, there’s no way to transfer your progress fairly.
As pointed out above, this will sadly remove the current Arcade hub-microgames. However, the post also mentions that the team hopes to revisit some.
As for your suggestion to remove the main hub instead, I don’t think the Arcade hub would fit as the server’s general hub. It sure is a fun world to explore, but to me, it feels like something custom-crafted for arcade games rather than something that could represent the entire server. This, combined with the concern that the Arcade hub makes its games “less visible”, makes me believe keeping the Arcade hub would hurt the games in it in the long run
The problem with having multiple hubs with different subsets of games is that it makes it harder to find specific games. Even if new players knew about the arcade hub, constantly switching hubs to see all available games might be confusing. To my knowledge, the Arcade portal was still “unobstructed” when CTF was moved to the main hub. Still, the game mode saw an instant 30% increase in active players, and one could argue the Arcade was prominently advertised at that time.
This is just my opinion, though. Let me know what you think!
