I notice some people have responded after I started writing this post. If I have anything to say to those people I'll write that up a bit later tonight. EDIT: Also some of the quoting got messed up… Eh.
@Halfmetal-lich:
It sounds like you want more Marineford.
Actually I want less Marineford and I think I've made that fairly clear but okay.
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@BigLuffy559:
I agree with a lot of what you said, but I just want to address the lack of adventure/exploring issue. I've seen this brought up around the forum a lot now, and I've got to say, I think it is some kind of fantasy that One Piece used to be all about exploring and adventure. Even Skypiea, the arc that everyone talks about like the Straw Hats went around finding treasure and discovering amazing things for 50 chapters, has like a total of 2 chapters where the Straw Hats are just walking through the jungle not encountering main plot stuff.
In the case of Skypiea maybe it would be more apt to call it a "sense of mystery". We are venturing into a realm that we're not even sure exists and discovering a completely different culture and civilization. Slowly throughout the arc we learn the history of the place and everything pieces together. The spread depicting the other half of Cricket's house blew my mind when I first got to it. Discovering the golden city beneath the clouds was likewise exciting and mysterious. Sure sounds like an adventure to me. Plus the worldbuilding is still unmatched.
It's been a while since I read the arc, but I don't recall Alabasta being much better than Fishman Island at exploring cultures and what not. Didn't they only go to Yuba because they "had to take out a strong guy"(Crocodile). And Yuba was completely deserted except for one dude. No culture to be found. And I don't recall any of Alabasta's other cities being especially fleshed out compared to what we have seen on Dressrosa so far. The rest was just them traveling through the desert trying to get to Crocodile. If read weekly, I'm sure all that traveling would have felt just like everyone trying to get to Doflamingo now. Not very adventurous at all.
The driving motivation may have been to take down Crocodile, but unlike Dressrosa, Alabasta was not a bee line leading up to the villain. Alabasta had a much greater sense of place because we, as readers, got to mingle with the common folk and experience the culture from a street level.
I actually much prefer the scenery and world building details of Fishman Island compared to Alabasta, even if we definitely did get to see less of it. Besides Rain Base, much of Alabasta was just generic desert architecture. To say that Fishman Island with it's bubbly coral construction, fish-buses, fishman district slums, and the amazingly beautiful Ryugu Palace is soulless is crazy to me.
This is the part that really comes down to personal opinion so I won't try to convince you otherwise. Aesthetically I think a lot of elements in the architecture clashed.
As for wanting things to slow down and not have anything to do with Yonkou or other conflict; I think you are out of luck there. Believe it or not, One Piece should be in wrap up mode. The final bad guys need to get taken out and Luffy needs to take steps to achieve his goals. I think we should take Law's words to heart when he said that as soon as his plan to fuck with Kaidou gets under way, nothing will be able to slow it down. I'm afraid there won't be any time for adventure in the rest of the series. It's plot time.
With luck we still have about fifteen years of One Piece left to go. I don't mind if the Strawhats are advancing towards the Yonkou but I wish it wasn't at the forefront of the story. I preferred it when the Strawhats just did their own thing and ended up clashing with all these important people as a side effect, not as the intention.
Again, I don't think One Piece was ever really about adventure, even if it seems to advertise itself as such through Luffy's outlook on piracy. It has always been about going to an island to beat a bad guy. Any awesome world building we got was a product of that.
I think building a breathing and believable world is far more important to One Piece than you seem to think it is. There are fights in the series but I don't think those are the main focus at all. I mean we haven't even gotten proper, satisfying fights in a while now so…
I think a lot of fans are seeing past arcs with nostalgia goggles and creating this mythical idea of what One Piece is, but never really was at all.
I have reread the series multiple times and have actually even come to really appreciate arcs that I didn't like the first time through so I would like to think I am not under the influence of nostalgia.
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@King:
Are we going to have to wait more 300+ chapters or something to have Sabo, Burgess, Big Mon, etc. to start being active on the plot?
Why not? I'm not in a rush. I don't think Oda is either. Obviously the Yonkou will always be a looming presence in the New World but I don't think they have to be an active element in every arc. You might be underestimating how much we have left of One Piece. Or maybe I'm overestimating it? I don't think so though.
This ties up to what I've said above. Oda is not immortal. He has to move the plot forward and wrap up all the things he introduced. Standalone arcs are going to be a rarity from now on, assuming they'll even exist.
The issue is throwing too many elements into an arc at once. I think he can afford to give some of these characters more space. He doesn't need to cram every major plotline into one arc.
What about the undersea exploring? Or the PH burning side exploring? Or Green Bit?
And how was Fishman Island soulless?
The undersea exploring was excellent so I will give you that. The ten or so chapters leading up to the island were actually way better than the arc itself so thanks for the reminder. I had overlooked that part. But Punk Hazard? The burning side was a tiny part of the arc. They barely did anything there. And Green Bit? What about it? It's a shore with some plants. The Tontatta village is pretty much the definition of an underdeveloped backdrop.
As for Fishman Island, maybe this is more subjective but I hardly felt a culture there at all. It was pretty generic and locales were mostly just glimpsed from afar. There was hardly a sense of living to that place, at least in my mind. I would have liked to see the Strawhats spend more time in the actual cities and towns among the citizens.
The shift you mentioned is natural. We can't wait for another decade to have Luffy take down those strong guys.
Well considering that's probably what we're going to be doing… Uh...
And hell, Skypiea ended up being part of an overarching plot just like Fishman Island, but it took a while to reach there.
How is Skypiea part of the overarching plot? It gave us a bit of a glimpse into the history of the world, but none of the events that took place there had any effect on the developing plotlines down below (unlike pretty much every other major arc). The elements that you mention came back later are worldbuilding elements and they weren't even part of the main plot on Skypiea.
Wait, so you want Oda to not drag the story while wanting more standalone arcs?
I have no issue with the overarching story going on for as long as it needs to. The parts I think are dragging are the individual arcs themselves. Oda needs to cut some fat.
Personally, I just think this is nostalgia speaking, coupled with the illusion that Oda is still a young, healthy, energetic fellow.
That, and some people are getting impatient with the breaks.
As I wrote above, I have reread the series multiple times and have gained new appreciation for arcs that I may not have liked the first time through. I also rank an arc as recent as Marineford as one of my favorites in the entire series. I don't think I'm speaking out of nostalgia here. As for the breaks, I don't really care. I think it should be obvious from my arguments that it doesn't matter to me how long Oda takes to wrap up his story. I'm a patient man.
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@The:
I think your complaints are legitimate, but like some of the others here you are going to have to get used to it. Before Marineford was building up all these factions and characters which made the payoff in part 1, but being part 2, a lot of these characters are going to have to be dealt with before the final arc. Some of the characters being in this arc is to show what some groups are up to. Burgess is there for the fruit, revolutionaries are there because of Doflamingos business.
The reasons behind the characters being there are sound. I just feel that if Oda is going to bring them in, he should do so with a purpose. He should actually think through what he is going to do with them. I also think it is very possible for Oda to show us what these characters are up to without having to bring them into the frontlines. In fact, that would actually be a better way to build up hype and suspense.
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@MasterKingJC:
One Piece is far past the half-way point.
What makes you say that? We only recently started up Act II of the series. I don't see One Piece ending any sooner than fifteen or so years from now and I certainly don't see the New World taking less time than the first half of the Grand Line.
This shouldn't come as any surprise. Yeah, we'll get the occasional psuedo-isolated arcs like Skypiea in the future, but….the New World is the Yonkou's domain. Luffy has made it crystal clear that he aims to beat all four of them, which also shouldn't come as a surprise.
This can still be the case without the goal of taking down the Yonkou being the primary objective or even in the forefront. Luffy mostly did his own thing during the first half of the Grand Line but that didn't stop him from coming to arms with some major fellows. His intent was just to find new fun islands to explore. Nowadays it feels like that is just secondary.
Uhh…that's exactly the entire reason the crew went to Alabasta, to take out Crocodile and Baroque Works. This part makes no sense because this has been an obvious fundamental formula of....every major arc. Once the main antagonist is introduced, exploration and adventure become secondary. Alabasta is a very large country compared to Dressrosa, which is one of the reasons why Straw Hats spent several days there. Dressrosa was never going to have that same situation.
Except for trekking the desert, there was hardly any major exploration in Alabasta. Skypiea had a much better sense of adventure, mystery and wonder
Fighting the enemy does not have to come at the expense of exploration. Also there was more to Alabasta than just crossing the desert. We visited multiple towns and got to learn a fair bit about the day-to-day life in Alabasta. We got a much better sense to the tension in the country, what with the rebellions and the suffering of places like Yuba. Exploration doesn't just mean "going places". If that were the case, worldbuilding would be as easy as slapping some characters on a pretty backdrop.
I strongly disagree. It probably only feels diminished to you because the big names from before aren't big fish in the New World. It's also because, as you've stated, the crew has graduated (mostly) from the underdog status, and pose somewhat of a threat to higher tier characters.
I realize that it's inevitable that eventually these big names will have to get more involved. I just think Oda is throwing them in too many too soon.
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@Cyan:
I don't think there's been a truly isolated arc since Arlong Park, honestly.
In retrospect yes, but at the time it wasn't really obvious. With the Kaido storyline though, it's very in-your-face. It's less Luffy going around doing as he pleases and just happening to run into these important guys and more Luffy actively pursuing them at the expense of other elements I personally enjoy.
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@SFMF:
But… I am sure Oda is going to convince me wrong once again just like all those other times 
. Maybe we should take a little break from One Piece for 2-3 months and comeback later and read a few chapters in a row? It can be frustrating waiting for a big arc like this to finish. Gosh it's already July.. wow
You know sometimes I wish I had the willpower to do that.
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@valiantt:
PH Arc must have been so minuscule that you probably completely forgot about it.
Punk Hazard was forty-something chapters long. It was a bloated mess. It should have taken thirty chapters tops.
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@SFMF:
No. I have not forgot about PH. For an arc that was supposed to be a beginning of stuff coming according to Law, I felt there were too much content; Law, Smoker, Doflamingo, Vergo, Monet, Aokiji, dragons, artificially made DFs, Kaido, etc…. Oda sensei used to impress me with less characters and content in an arc before, but now I can't help but feel he is bringing in too many characters and content in the story; yet despite all these cool characters and content, I am not that satisfied.
This is a good way of putting it. And this:
@The:
It seems you and the OP wish for the arcs to be smaller, and focus certain characters rather than show a bunch of characters that won't get all of their development until the end of the arc. For a while arcs focused on all the Straw Hats, and later they would all be split up. In the last bunch of arcs, the characters split up pretty early and none of them get focus for a whole chapter. You also seem to like things on a smaller scale, since that allows focus and less chaos. There's certainly not a problem with that, but as some of us has mentioned, some of these arcs are going to have a lot more happening because all these points need to come together in the end. Also, unlike earlier arcs where almost all the characters shown got to do stuff, we are probably going to be shown some character that have little to no importance to the arc, but are shown later. I think for some people, they are a little harder on some of this because we got the payoff for all the buildup to Marineford, and people want something akin to that again. I think in the future once we get to later arcs people will be happy again, but that's a ways off.
is a very good assessment. The only point I would debate is that I'm not coming at this from a perspective of "GIVE ME THE PAYOFF ALREADY". I liked the fanservice that was Marineford but I enjoyed the buildup just as much. Sabaody and Impel Down are both great, underrated arcs. I can appreciate the buildup for what it is. For example, though I give Punk Hazard a lot of shit, the scenes with the Marines at the end are great. Oda is laying foundations. Did he handle Smoker in the way I expected him to? No, but I'm excited regardless.
@SFMF:
Like the OP is saying, I too am having a hard time figuring out what exactly is making me a bit dissatisfied but I feel that it has to do with how much content there is to follow for each arc now. I feel that One Piece, before the Marineford, consisted of relatively simple arcs with less characters and content, but yet it was enjoyable. The first few islands that we had before arriving to Alabasta were quite memorable despite the lack of characters and content involved. But now, even after the post time-skip, dissatisfying Fishman Island arc and all these characters and content thrown at me, I am not that excited for some reason. Am I getting old? I am not sure… I have been a fan of this manga for 12+ years so I hope I or the manga turn things around.
Like you, I do sincerely hope my dissatisfaction as of late is not simply because I'm getting older or that my tastes are changing. I like to think that I approach the series from a fairly objective standpoint, so I hope I can gain back the enjoyment I've had with previous arcs. Who knows, maybe it's all in my head and when I come back to Dressrosa years later I'll end up loving it…
@Daz:
I agree with the OP almost wholeheartedly. Yes, Oda has a checklist to run through before the series ends, and now push has come to shove in the New World. Yet by overstuffing his arcs to the point of bursting and changing his style to consist of smaller, fragmented scenes, ultimately the series often reads like One Piece cliffnotes. One outcome of this seems to be the Straw Hats -sans Luffy- getting fewer and fewer lines.
This is an interesting point too. It's something that I've taken issue with but didn't really see a need to fit into the opening post. I think this new vignette-like style is most noticeable in flashbacks. It started with Brook's one, where instead of telling a continuous story, Oda would just draw snippets of touching moments over a long period of time. It's bleeding into the present day now and I don't think I like it. It's part of what I feel takes away from this sense of scale I discussed. Rather than seeing characters travel from point A to point B, we just skip there. But at the same time, Oda almost has no choice but to do this because he's backed himself up into a corner with the huge volume of plot threads he tries to tackle at once, when all I really want is for Oda to just take his time.
suplexes.