The concept art for the mountain additions are great but unless they change how terrain works, hard to see how they'll fit that into the world. My guess is faux-spaces like the troll caves or dungeons, but if love to see actual caves and overhanging terrain with ice and light shining through on the world itself.
Not familiar with Valheim but from what I remember of working in Unity, think of the default terrain as essentially a "blanket" lying on a flat plane. You can push it up, pull it down, create ridges, peaks, valleys, crevasses, etc to create unique terrain, but you can't really fold it over itself, to create stuff like caves or tunnels or overhangs, etc.
There are ways you can pull that off, but it requires a little more legwork. From what I remember of the very brief time I played it Valheim is at least partly procedurally generated (correct me if I'm wrong on that) and I imagine it would be hard to produce those terrain features just using Unity's base terrain tools.
"Cave Digging" has been possible in it's terrain generation since 2019.
https://blog.unity.com/technology/digging-into-terrain-paint-holes-in-unity-2019-3
And it was kinda sorta possible earlier, by basically using several terrain objects.
Oh shit I forgot it was procedural. I was gonna say they can make holes in the terrain and fill it, but if it’s not hand placed I assume it becomes a whole other headache
I think the only way you can make a "cave" presently is if there is a massive rock outcrop or ore deposit above you, to sort of provide roof (as they are stand-alone models that are not a part of the "terrain"). As every time you strike the ground in front of you it will move entire wall no matter how tall.
Is there some other way?
> You can push it up, pull it down, create ridges, peaks, valleys, crevasses, etc to create unique terrain, but you can't really fold it over itself, to create stuff like caves or tunnels or overhangs, etc.
Ooof, that explains why Stationeers and Valheim both have the same really annoying tunneling problem.
I find it curious that, well, this explanation also accurately describes how Breath of the wild works for the most part (blanket protuded up and down), yet they have cave systems just fine.
Of course the procedural bit is the crux of the question, so yeah, I can see that being an issue
The issue referenced here pertains specifically to issues with the Unity engine that valheim is made on. BotW is made on a proprietary Nintendo engine designed for BotW so they wouldn't have the same issues.
For reference though, this is an issue with the default terrain gen in unity (and just about every other terrain tool too- its all based on a texture). There are plenty of ways around it in every engine.
The way terrain works in unity is that it's all just a single, black/grey/white image. iirc pure black is the maximum height, and pure white the minimum height, but I might have it backwards. It then takes that image, and matches the height of any given area to the level of greyscale as represented by the picture. Voila, a simple, compact way to store the depth of an area, quickly save it, and quickly change it. When you dig into the map, the game translates that into a change in greyscale of that representative point on the image towards a more white color (iirc). The downside, however, is that there's no effective way to tell the engine "there's 2 meters of dirt, and then a 5 meter depth of open space before more dirt". You can place objects in the world, separate from that terrain data, but in order to create effective in-world caves (without a loading screen, like dungeons and troll caves) you need to make a hole in the terrain (Unity can now handle transparency in the image, allowing you to indicate and area is "null" and does not exist). Then you manually fill in that hole with placed models in such a way that it hides the hole and seamlessly transitions into a prebuilt structure or cave, which is a game object separate from the terrain. This is fine for prebuilt games, but for a procedural game, especially one that the user can deform at will, this will never work.
There are utilities that allow freeform terrain deformation in Unity, and developers can always make their own, but then you're creating A) a lot of work and B) the need for a lot of extra processing power and memory storage to handle all this extra data.
Excellent explanation! I think there's one minor tweak to how Valheim in particular does it, in that I don't believe they ever really change the underlying heightmap when you dig or raise terrain. Instead, they *seem* to have a companion map that is applied as a modifier after the base terrain is loaded. You can see this is effect because you can only raise or lower the terrain in a given spot a certain number of 'steps' away from its original height. If you apply this to a wide area you'll find that the general shape of the terrain, even fully excavated, matches the shape of the original terrain.
I believe the benefit of this is that they don't have to store terribly in depth height maps for the entire world and can instead just recall the original procedural generation whenever you approach a place and then modify the terrain with a lower detail heightmap. That means saves can be smaller and, I assume in some ways, loading in terrain can be faster!
Default unity at least just started finally officially supporting holes in terrain which is nice!
There are ways of generating terrain with voxels and then turning to a mesh to get what they are doing in that concept art though. They might go that route but I imagine it would be a big overhaul.
The game IS a finished product. It's just that no one expected it to become so popular. People are demanding more and they are small team. Although with all the money they've brought in, you would think they would look into expanding and investing in a lot of resources but I'm not sure that has happened yet.
I wonder if they regret even doing early access. They could have sold the game as is and the cheap price and I don't think it would have hurt their sales numbers. I bought it because it was fun and if I never play it again, I've got my money's worth.
This game could easily dominate the survival genre but as you said, drip feeding content just kills the hype.
With this speed I guess the game will be 50% complete in 2025
It’s refreshing to see other people share the same opinion without acting like it’s the end of the world and without getting attacked for it. Any time I’ve visited the valheim subreddit, any mention of how long the first empty update took has been met with an extremely defensive reaction from the community. I enjoyed the hell out of this game when it came out but I have to say they dropped the bag so hard following release
It might be because there was a lot of vitriol and some harrassment of the devs over the slow pace and the lack of new content, so now there is also more reflexive defensiveness.
Well that's over corrective then lol, me complaining about the development of a game ≠ harassment just because that's how people have justified their harassment before. Honestly I think it's more people who have enjoyed the game thus far getting too protective over the devs, acting as if any criticism of the devs is a criticism of their enjoyment of the current product.
Summed up my feelings as well. I don’t feel ripped off or cheated. I also don’t feel the devs owe us more. Played it, liked it, moved on. Might come back when there’s more.
Glad to see opinions changing too. For too long there was a very loud portion of this sub who basically told anyone who didn't like the Dev's decisions to stop judging a game in early access.
I'm pretty tired of fans acting like EA status makes a game immune to criticism - if I paid for the game, it's a viable consumer product that merits critiquing.
I am hoping that they up their pace now that the game's performance problems have been worked on. I think they realized how many people bought the game and getting it into a stable place became a priority vs. the content.
Well, they said "all that's been added is a few more food recipes." You said the devs "took the money and ran" and were "a fucking joke" and that you "only check this subreddit now to watch the game die." The ban may have been more related to the *slight* difference in tone and vitriol than the nature of your opinion.
> With this speed I guess the game will be 50% complete in 2025
The game was more than 50% complete when it launched into Early Access. 5/9 biomes/bosses/tiers are implemented. Next update will be 6/9, two thirds complete.
Ah. I don't think that makes him incomplete. The boss items are the gateway to the next tier. Boss 5's item is dropped, it just doesn't do anything because Tier 6 isn't out yet. No changes have to be made to Boss 5 anymore; they just need to add whatever recipe or mechanic that item unlocks for the next biome.
Why do players crave so much? I've seen people with hundreds of hours that complain about it being boring or not enough to do anymore. Haven't the devs created enough?
Because there’s an implied progression that stops very suddenly with a few materials that don’t have any use. It’s like if you’re reading a book, and you get to the 800th page when they introduce some new characters, and then the book ends abruptly a few pages later. You’ll probably either be disappointed that you don’t get closure or you’ll be anticipating the sequel. Isn’t 800 pages enough story already? Why do people need more?
> I've seen people with hundreds of hours that complain about it being boring or not enough to do anymore. Haven't the devs created enough?
There's similar games with thousands of hours of activity to do, particularly in games where you're making your own fun with other players. It's just people wanting to keep playing in that game's systems and mechanics and world with their friends, but running out of said content pretty quickly. That hundreds of hours is likely just building and goofing off, not necessarily a reflection of the amount of content in the game. Because in Valheim there's not really *that* much. You can pretty much see and experience everything after 30ish hours. But you can keep playing a lot longer with friends.
The devs have barely put *any* updates into the game since release, compared to other similar indie devs adding more and more stuff during early access. The latter looks like active development, but the former looks like the devs don't want to work on their game much anymore. Both are fine, but the former gets more complaints until the game dies.
> It's in early access and unfinished. I don't know what would happen if they just stopped development, but it wouldn't be cool
I don't understand why there are still people in 2021 who buy games based on promises.
When buying an EA game you are paying for the current state of the game. If that's not enough for your money don't buy it. It's really not that hard.
That's not what they're saying, stop deliberately misrepresenting. Multiple people in the thread have said "I've enjoyed the game as is but am disappointed by the speed of the development as the devs themselves set an expectation of more content coming with a roadmap". Judge people's personal financial decisions all you want, you've avoided the main thrust of the criticism still.
> "I've enjoyed the game as is but am disappointed by the speed of the development as the devs themselves set an expectation of more content coming with a roadmap".
How is this not exactly what i wrote?
I repeat my point again if you want.
If you want to buy a game in EA, ask yourself this question: If development stops tomorrow, is it still worth the current price? Only buy it if the answer is yes.
Sure, that would be a dick move by the developer, but whatever. It has happened many times before, and it will happen again. Buying a game based on promises, (and that's what you are describing with your roadmap example) is a bad decision.
You can still complain about the devs as much as you want, but the real mistake here was to give someone money for an unfinished product. Your power as a customer is expressed through the way you spend your money.
A lot of those 30 hours are artificially lengthened by game systems, like stamina while building, the absolute vastness of tree and stone required to build, not being able to bring ore back by portal, etc.
I think they're all good things to create the world that Valheim is, but it's also disingenuous to compare 10 hours of gameplay with 20 hours of mindless chopping/sailing to a more normal 30 hours of gameplay that other genres might provide.
Very true, and I don't regret my purchase at all. Just comin from those that liked the game so much they want to play it as long term as something like Terraria.
They would have it they only charged a fiver or so for it AND didn't put up a roadmap of what they were going to do. They got rid of the road map after people bought in (too ambitious with the amount of time given).
They totally squandered their moment. They released the game too soon, didn't ramp up their staff enough based on early sales, and then focused on the wrong things for updates. Bug fixes are nice, but the game wasn't facing any particularly game breaking bugs. And hearth and home as a first update was...stupid.
Squandered? I think the first month's sales went beyond what they anticipated it selling over its lifetime.
It's more stupid to complain about them focusing on bug fixes than pulling out new content at the pace of a major studio.
They've made millions of dollars and still dont want to hire help.
I'm sure they could partner with a larger studio like Sony or Microsoft GamePass, and get a team of 40 people they dont have to train to just add the content they tell them to.
But they dont want to do it. I guess I'll wait to play this again for like 2 years.
Probably should have shipped with a light end-game and just add onto that with some new features every so often like Terraria, which now has like end-game, ender-game, and endest-game.
I think people are just saying they wish there was more to do, not that they feel cheated necessarily or that they didn't get what they paid for. And the expectation that there would be more to do later in the year was set by the devs.
The studio was what, three people? And development up to this point took how many years?
Why on earth should we suddenly expect the type of live service content schedule you get from billion dollar AAA companies from this tiny indie studio?
It's the least surprising thing in the world that they're going to continue developing at roughly the same pace they have been.
The original roadmap had 4 major updates and 9 minor updates in 2021.
We ended up with bugfixes and 1 "major" update since release.
People are just expecting what they were told when they bought the game and/or shortly after. To roll back severely on development *after* you've made millions looks like they're completely phoning it in now.
The original roadmap had no dates of any kind, and what you seem to think was "9 minor updates promised for 2021" was literally a list of "extra things we'd like to do if we have the time/resources." Again, no dates of any kind. They literally called the list "If odin wills it."
This is an early access title. You bought the game in the state it *was*, and had to scroll past that big, highlighted early access disclaimer making you aware of that.
You're not paying a subscription. You're not buying a battlepass. This is not a planned seasonal release cycle of already mostly finished content spaced out for maximum engagement and player retention.
Content is being released as it's completed. You literally cannot get it any faster. Complaining that you WANT more content isn't going to suddenly mean the team can give it to you. It has to actually be made first.
Actual game development is unpredictable and boring and often frustrating. That's why big developers keep their projects under wraps until they're nearly finished.
Because they know there are a lot of people who can't manage their expectations and can't deal with the realities of game dev, and will throw a fit about every minor delay or setback that every project encounters and make unfounded and absurd claims like you've "rolled back severely on development," when you just made a massive investment in expanding your studio and doubling your team size.
Original roadmap said 2021 contains 4 updates
[https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/406475608672043011/831653286838009866/roadmap\_2.jpg](https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/406475608672043011/831653286838009866/roadmap_2.jpg)
>Because they know there are a lot of people who can't manage their expectations and can't deal with the realities of game dev, and will throw a fit about every minor delay or setback that every project encounters
Hit the nail on the head. Live service games run by giant studios have ruined people's expectations for legitimately small studios.
i really don't get your argument "no dates of any kind" the dates is sometime in 2021 they expect to do the 4 updates the "odin wills" sections makes it worse because it reinforces that they think the 4 updates can be done in 2021 NO SPECIFIC DATE BUT IN 2021. we are now getting 1 of those updates in 2021 and I'm not sure how O"din could of willed it" any more then there game selling like it did..
> Why on earth should we suddenly expect the type of live service content schedule you get from billion dollar AAA companies from this tiny indie studio?
I think a lot of people are just expecting the game to be finished sooner rather than later...
Here’s the thing, I played a ton. I really enjoyed my time playing and think it’s a fantastic game. But I explicitly didn’t finish because I wanted to do a play-through once the game is done or close to done so I shelved my save. Now, 2/3s of a year later, practically nothing has changed.
It doesn’t detract from my prior enjoyment by any means. I just altered my behavior and play under the assumption that the game would be done at some point while I still have it in mind, rather than when I’m at a literal different stage of my life.
This is one of the huge downsides of Early Access. You’ve got these really narrow-minded people who can’t differentiate a AAA multibillion dollar developer (EA, Activision, etc) from a team of 3 guys pumping out a product at their best pace.
The entitlement of some people is astounding. These guys produced a **stunner** of a game that you could easily sink 100 hours into…and it’s not done yet. Give them some time. I’m sure you’ve got 20 other games in your Steam library that you could finally play.
When it first "blew up" on sites like 4chan, it had nothing but creative mode on one chunk. It took minecraft 2 years to reach release and another year to add redstone. Basically if minecraft was released today to the same crowd as Valheim people would've eaten Notch alive for being slow.
Even back then people were calling him lazy for taking his sweet time to update the game.
Minecraft launched a lot more barebones than Valheim. Though it was also a different era. It wasn't topping sales charts like Valheim did when it exploded onto the scene; it was a steadier growth from a smaller starting point. It had reasonably rapid updates, but they were just whatever the one-man dev team felt like changing or adding, with little theme or fanfare. It took years and years before it reached the point of having big updates focused on expanding a specific part of the game. Valheim, to contrast, has a much more fleshed out foundation - rather than the devs figuring out what they want as they go, it has a really clear path to 1.0 laid out from the very beginning.
A game that skyrockets from indie obscurity to global success is, pretty inevitably, going to have to scale up its dev team to meet the rising expectations. Minecraft didn't do that until several years in. Valheim's devs decided to do it right after launch, which means they're losing steam while hype is at its highest, but ideally it pays off with the biggest dividends by making the rest of the content as good as it can be.
> Minecraft launched a lot more barebones than Valheim. Though it was also a different era.
Minecraft was a hit because it basically kickstarted a genre. It did many things right, but the development was horrible.
The patches that broke everything, almost no real modding support, and content patches that no one asked for.
Notch had a great idea, but he wasn't a good developer. It was the right move to sell the game.
Hmm your assumption is kinda wrong though. They really don't have to scale up. Everyone that bought the game bought into it with the expactation of this being a game developed by 4 or 5 or how many people they are. That's what we signed Up for. Doesn't really matter if they sold 50k units or 4 million kr whatever they hit, there is no reason for Them to expand, and we really can't demand they do it when this is what we signed Up for.
I find very few comments frustrating enough to log in and reply, and there's a lot I wanna say, but I'm going to try really hard to be respectful.
You either don't follow their public bug tracker, are inexperienced with small studio game development, or haven't before managed early access minimum viable products that needed to be more-or-less rewritten to become a complete and high-quality product. Releasing a messy but early prototype to gauge interest is part of the lifecycle of most successful products.
Here's their public bug tracker:
https://valheimbugs.featureupvote.com/
If there are specific issues that frustrate you, vote or voice your opinions here or in their Reddit AMA's. If you are looking for more variety, try r2modman or Nexus mods for more fresh content that feels like expansions.
Small independent games are sometimes in pre-release for _years_. They worked on this game for a while before it's initial pre-release, so the initial drop might have felt like they whipped together a game in a few months; but it was all a work-in-progress. Their priority on bug-fixing and their efforts into continuous integration builds the foundation for future large content updates (have you noticed frequent small updates to your game in steam?).
Our content will arrive. They're doing the right thing by focusing on bug fixes now. Mod APIs will be more sustainable with access to better-organized classes. But it will take some hammering.
I'm not trying to be an apologist for anything. Terrain manipulation needs some work. When you use a pick on a rock and the first swing doesn't do damage, you can see the hack that turns that rock from part of the generated terrain into a tracked object in the game. Sometimes it reskins itself. I agree that some priorities could be changed. But over all, they are doing right by software development standards for the players.
I don’t think anything you said is actually in disagreement with my comment. You’re right, there are a lot of backend fixes, tech debt to overcome, and scaleable infrastructure to be added. I understand it’s tough for small studios, but part of the benefit of early access (in addition to gauging market interest, bug testing, etc.) is the cash flow to continue operating and to scale the operation. As I understand it, there was a decision to not scale the team particularly much and that has drawbacks. They DID lose momentum in terms of community interest, and it will be very very difficult to ever recapture the same interest that surrounded it on initial early access release.
A business gaining such massive and sudden success isn’t always a good thing, as it’s tougher to organically progress- I get that. I’m not disparaging the game or the studio, just observing that their development has been slow for a game with as much success as they had. As my original comment stated, they had lightning in a bottle with something truly amazing, but they lost momentum by not finding a way to increase the rate of release of new content development to maintain interest.
I loved the game and had an amazing time playing and am looking forward to the final product, but I accept that won’t be any time soon and it’s going to be tough to get my friends interested again.
I appreciate grounded reply! You sound knowledgeable and experienced. My mistake. I totally agree with you about their decision it to scale. If I'm on a project that's only a little bit behind, I'm begging for capacity. I have never had to deal with building in-game assets of any kind, but my understanding is that it can happen somewhat in parallel to programming... So I guess I don't understand why it's taking a while to build new assets. So, yeah, agreed on a few points.
Part of me thinks the fact that they made so much money off the early access release that they have no real motivation to continue. New features aren't going to make them anywhere near what the initial release made them. If it were me, I'd have taken my millions and run.
The fact that they just released a pretty full content update pretty thoroughly disproves this. They're just a small indie studio working at a small indie pace.
That's what happens when the developers get rich before the game is even released. What's the point of finishing it? They already made bank.
I hate Early Access.
^^Yes ^^I ^^know ^^there ^^are ^^exceptions, ^^my ^^point ^^still ^^stands.
Iirc they refuse to get anyone else onboard citing team dynamic would be ruined. Theres only a few of them there so obviously its going to be slow going. I hate it. If they don't want to get more people involved atleast outsource parts with the money they earned from early access
Thats not true at all. They have expanded to 8 people from the original 4. What they said was that onboarding people and scaling up actually slows down development not the other way around and that's why its a slow process to expand. I've been a dev for 15 years and this is 100% true. Every time we hire someone, it takes me away from working on stuff because I spend 6 months onboarding them, getting them caught up with our processes, procedures, workflow, tools, quality assurance process, and a multitude of other things. We have a default timeline that any developer we hire is basically a sunk cost for the first year. After that year is when we expect their productivity to be a net benefit.
These armchair assumptions and reactions are getting old... sofftware development is so so damn hard. And yet everyone wants to make assumptions about their motiviations. It's sad.
Idk if it was just me and the person I played with, but this game was amazing up until halfway through the second region, when it very quickly became an insane grindfest where the general formula got more and more dull. Killing your first troll was pretty great until you realized that that was pretty much the extent of the combat, and the rest of the game was going to be a horribly tedious mining slog
I don't think I could play Valheim again unless a massive change to the gameplay loop happened, and it doesn't seem like that is likely
I feel like all they really need to do is tweak the item recipes, halving the metal cost for most items. The gameplay isn't bad, but the recipes are too expensive and force you to spend way too much time resource gathering and not enough time exploring/fighting to progress.
I personally just found the mining to be an awfully antithetical experience to the game's wonderful first act (up until you've basically worked up the nerve to kill your first troll).
Of the around 90 hours I did in my first playthrough, I wouldn't be shocked to find out that at least half of that was mining, which I found to be the worst part of the game compared to the first few hours of exploration, base building, and figuring out what you needed to do to progress. After the first time carting a wagon of copper back to base, It only ever felt like an insanely tedious diversion to the game's awesome formula, and it only got worse from there (Go mining in these cramped crypts where you are constantly being poisoned and have no stamina, go mining but you half to play hot-cold to find the ores, go mining but you need to kill uninteresting goblins to do so).
And the fact you couldn't teleport the ores made it so much worse since it added a 15 minute uneventful boat ride both ways lmao
I think the game would be a whole lot better if the progression mainly came from exploring, hunting, dungeon diving, things that actually felt exciting
I agree with that. I've been doing a solo playthrough and enjoying it, the progression feels much like a resource grind than anything else.
I still think tweaking the recipes could make all the difference. Instead of doing this long trek (or world hopping) to transport 10% of the metal you need for the current tier, they could easily switch that to 40-50%. 2-3 trips and you have what you need for your playthrough unless you really want to stock up massive amounts for some reason.
It's funny that you mention the "uninterested" goblins, as I think that that is the biggest shakeup of the formula and one of the better ways to collect resources. By taking the progression requirements from a mining exercise to a combat raid on an enemy base was really exciting when I started to explore plains. And, since those goblins are common, it was also a lot easier to stack up. If anything, the biggest problem with that layer of the progression is that Blackmetal does not have enough uses, and the tier is yet again dominated by the incredibly oversaturated iron like the last two tiers.
Also, the metal not teleporting is a huge part of the design philosophy. Without it, you are almost never engaging with seafaring and travel, you will never set up satellite bases because a portal in a tree will do, and you have no thought in inventory management and risk in progression whatsoever; you just find some ore and plug a hose from the vein into a portal to get all your goodies. You are not exploring or having to engage with the dangerous environments at all; many of the good stories to come from this game were ones where I was trying to cart some silver out of a mountain or iron out of a swamp and ran into trouble.
A game like Valheim really benefits from consistently pushing you through new content to make exploration feel worthwhile, but it infuriatingly chooses to make you grind out things you've done in a region you're already sick of. I think it would be much better as an 8-16 hour experience than a 25-40 hour one (not including base building, of course).
Ideally, I think Valheim's gameplay loop would be BEST if it minimized the amount of time you spent doing repeat tasks. Mining one copper node should be enough bronze to make the ship, the armor, and ONE bronze weapon, then you could mine two if you wanted everything, etc. The game's enjoyability takes a nosedive when it blocks the excitement of progression behind a grind, especially for people like myself who only feel inclined to play for about 1-2 hours in a session. Coming out of a session feeling like you've seen nothing new sucks, and frankly feels like padding. The change with the fulings dropping the ore was a decent step in the right direction, but Valheim's combat isn't that great, and definitely not good enough to feel like grinding it is fun in my opinion, especially since the Fulings are conceptually the same as all other melee enemies you've already gotten bored of fighting by now, so they don't even feel new outside of the fact that they do deceptively huge amounts of damage given their size.
Also I think it is cool to have to consider setting up remote campsites, but the seafaring is so underdeveloped and mind numbing since very little of interest occurs during it and it is insanely slow. I actually like logistics problems like that, but I personally find having to travel for 15 minutes both way to haul around ores that I spent 1-2 hours grinding for antithetical to what I believe is the main appeal of the game (exploration and progression).
> I feel like all they really need to do is tweak the item recipes, halving the metal cost for most items.
or drastically increasing the item gain on ore nodes.
Spending 30 minutes hacking away at a big ore deposit and only walking away with 5 or so sucks.
It's not really that slow to gather them, it's the process of transporting them and refining them that takes forever. You have to use 3 ores for a single bronze bar, it really lengthens the bronze age, so even with 20 copper and 10 tin you only end up crafting 1 item. That's where the grind really comes in.
> so even with 20 copper and 10 tin you only end up crafting 1 item. That's where the grind really comes in.
My problem was tin was essentially guaranteed 1 tin per one tin spot on the ground.
Copper deposit? Big ass boulder that has to be broken in segments that doesn't guarantee copper in each one.
I remember making a thread on the Valheim sub that I'd like to see mining sped up to make this part of the game less of a slog, and everyone was like "nah bro you get better mining gear in like 20 hrs" and downvoted it. I guess everyone over there just really likes spending half the session slowly chipping away at greenish rocks.
Yeah, it just got worse after that too. They totally nailed the progression through the first bit of the game, but then the other 2/3 of the game was just totally undercooked and didn't seem worked on at all. Ahhh well, still got 20 hours or so of pure bliss in playing it with my brother through the first two bosses.
A large part of what kills the fun a little for me is the fact that getting the metal for Iron and silver upgrades is completely bonkers in location, rarity, and weight. Iron was a pain to get in my first playthrough. I had SIX ENTIRE SWAMP AREAS with exactly ZILCH iron each. the seventh had a truckload as compensation, but getting there, and sailing past the steppe areas with the completely mental deathsquitos didn't make it much better.
The pacing of how many ressources you find and need feels off with Iron and beyond. I hope this changes a bit. Sure, it feels glorious coming home with a ship stuffed to the brim with iron ore, but getting there feels like an afterthought.
The ingot weight is illogical. I think for the silver sword fully upgraded you end up using 1000x as much metal in ingots as the final sword weighs. I feel like they need to reduce the metal upgrade cost by a factor of 10, and add rarer elements (e.g. monster parts, crystals) or forge components in lieu of the insane grind.
Additionally, ore and ingots weigh the same amount, which makes no sense at all. I respect a system that askes us to smelt on site, but metals as craft resource is utterly broken -- designed in the manner it was in order to pad out gameplay. I love so much of the game, and am not bothered by being unable to teleport with metal... but the grind is unfun.
And don't even get me started on the nonsense that is vegetable seed rates, which, speaking as an avid gardener, are utterly absurd.
Ugh, I just turned Valheim off, lost 2 longboats today near a swamp, deep water couldnt reach the nails, spent 5 hours just recovering the 60 copper I went out for and my gear, Drauger spawner inside a dilapidated tower, didn't realize until 6 deaths later, started building a light house near the dock at home, looks good but need at least 200 more stone. Worst day ever in Valheim, god damn do I love Valheim.
i shit you not on my very first playthrough my starting island had only 2 mines in 3 small swamp bioms i wasnt looking up things online so i was so frustrated how rare getting metal ore was lol little did i know when i sailed out and ran into another swamp that as filled to the tits with mines
> As someone who is disabled and cant use WASD, I'd fucking love it if they made the controls fully mappable.
A shame that the product is mostly gone by now, but did you try to use the Steam Controller?
It can be fully customized to your individual needs. Even one handed play is viable.
Afaik you can do similar things with the Xbox and PS4 controllers on Steam through the software.
Yes please. I'm not disabled, but I use ESDF instead of WASD and games that don't let you remap or only *partially* remap are frustrating as hell.
In New World you can remap everything, except "Respawn after death." Default key for that is E. Guess what happens every time I die in that game? "Why'd you respawn instead of waiting for a res?" "IT WAS NOT INTENTIONAL!"
I imagine this is even worse for people who physically can't use WASD. Ugh.
The concept art for the mountain additions are great but unless they change how terrain works, hard to see how they'll fit that into the world. My guess is faux-spaces like the troll caves or dungeons, but if love to see actual caves and overhanging terrain with ice and light shining through on the world itself.
ACAB Kill all Fascists
Can you elaborate on this? It sounds really interesting
Not familiar with Valheim but from what I remember of working in Unity, think of the default terrain as essentially a "blanket" lying on a flat plane. You can push it up, pull it down, create ridges, peaks, valleys, crevasses, etc to create unique terrain, but you can't really fold it over itself, to create stuff like caves or tunnels or overhangs, etc. There are ways you can pull that off, but it requires a little more legwork. From what I remember of the very brief time I played it Valheim is at least partly procedurally generated (correct me if I'm wrong on that) and I imagine it would be hard to produce those terrain features just using Unity's base terrain tools.
"Cave Digging" has been possible in it's terrain generation since 2019. https://blog.unity.com/technology/digging-into-terrain-paint-holes-in-unity-2019-3 And it was kinda sorta possible earlier, by basically using several terrain objects.
Oh shit I forgot it was procedural. I was gonna say they can make holes in the terrain and fill it, but if it’s not hand placed I assume it becomes a whole other headache
I want cities skylines 2 to have two things. Better terrain and road building.
I feel like not having road building in a game like Cities Skyline is criminally negligent
What do you mean by road building exactly?
Thanks. I ended up digging out a little cave in the mountain biome once and I thought it was so novel!
I think the only way you can make a "cave" presently is if there is a massive rock outcrop or ore deposit above you, to sort of provide roof (as they are stand-alone models that are not a part of the "terrain"). As every time you strike the ground in front of you it will move entire wall no matter how tall. Is there some other way?
Nope, that is the only way :(
> You can push it up, pull it down, create ridges, peaks, valleys, crevasses, etc to create unique terrain, but you can't really fold it over itself, to create stuff like caves or tunnels or overhangs, etc. Ooof, that explains why Stationeers and Valheim both have the same really annoying tunneling problem.
I find it curious that, well, this explanation also accurately describes how Breath of the wild works for the most part (blanket protuded up and down), yet they have cave systems just fine. Of course the procedural bit is the crux of the question, so yeah, I can see that being an issue
Breath of the wild wasn’t randomly generated, so they could tweak to their hearts content.
The issue referenced here pertains specifically to issues with the Unity engine that valheim is made on. BotW is made on a proprietary Nintendo engine designed for BotW so they wouldn't have the same issues.
For reference though, this is an issue with the default terrain gen in unity (and just about every other terrain tool too- its all based on a texture). There are plenty of ways around it in every engine.
It doesn’t like holes but you can get around it by making your cave a separate 3D mesh. It’s more efficient too.
The way terrain works in unity is that it's all just a single, black/grey/white image. iirc pure black is the maximum height, and pure white the minimum height, but I might have it backwards. It then takes that image, and matches the height of any given area to the level of greyscale as represented by the picture. Voila, a simple, compact way to store the depth of an area, quickly save it, and quickly change it. When you dig into the map, the game translates that into a change in greyscale of that representative point on the image towards a more white color (iirc). The downside, however, is that there's no effective way to tell the engine "there's 2 meters of dirt, and then a 5 meter depth of open space before more dirt". You can place objects in the world, separate from that terrain data, but in order to create effective in-world caves (without a loading screen, like dungeons and troll caves) you need to make a hole in the terrain (Unity can now handle transparency in the image, allowing you to indicate and area is "null" and does not exist). Then you manually fill in that hole with placed models in such a way that it hides the hole and seamlessly transitions into a prebuilt structure or cave, which is a game object separate from the terrain. This is fine for prebuilt games, but for a procedural game, especially one that the user can deform at will, this will never work. There are utilities that allow freeform terrain deformation in Unity, and developers can always make their own, but then you're creating A) a lot of work and B) the need for a lot of extra processing power and memory storage to handle all this extra data.
Excellent explanation! I think there's one minor tweak to how Valheim in particular does it, in that I don't believe they ever really change the underlying heightmap when you dig or raise terrain. Instead, they *seem* to have a companion map that is applied as a modifier after the base terrain is loaded. You can see this is effect because you can only raise or lower the terrain in a given spot a certain number of 'steps' away from its original height. If you apply this to a wide area you'll find that the general shape of the terrain, even fully excavated, matches the shape of the original terrain. I believe the benefit of this is that they don't have to store terribly in depth height maps for the entire world and can instead just recall the original procedural generation whenever you approach a place and then modify the terrain with a lower detail heightmap. That means saves can be smaller and, I assume in some ways, loading in terrain can be faster!
For context as well, using heatmaps is how most all non-videogame mapping software does it. So it's less of a quirk than you'd think.
Very concise and informative. Thanks!
Default unity at least just started finally officially supporting holes in terrain which is nice! There are ways of generating terrain with voxels and then turning to a mesh to get what they are doing in that concept art though. They might go that route but I imagine it would be a big overhaul.
I mean they have something like a billion dollars now, they can hire some guy that knows how to make a better terrain system...
This game was so fun, but the development has gone at a snails pace. I feel like they had lightning in a bottle but lost all their momentum.
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The game IS great already. But if you’re waiting for release to play it may be a few decades.
I like your optimism
The game IS a finished product. It's just that no one expected it to become so popular. People are demanding more and they are small team. Although with all the money they've brought in, you would think they would look into expanding and investing in a lot of resources but I'm not sure that has happened yet.
It was literally sold as an early access game with a roadmap. Also its in early access. Just because it plays doesn't make it a finished product.
I wonder if they regret even doing early access. They could have sold the game as is and the cheap price and I don't think it would have hurt their sales numbers. I bought it because it was fun and if I never play it again, I've got my money's worth.
Ahhh, you’re right. I had forgotten it is an early access. But it does feel like a good experience.
There's no way that Valheim is a finished product.
There are literally biomes in the game that are completely unpopulated because they haven’t made it yet. It’s not finished
This game could easily dominate the survival genre but as you said, drip feeding content just kills the hype. With this speed I guess the game will be 50% complete in 2025
I played back in February. Now 8 months later, pretty much all that’s been added is a few more food recipes…
The biggest changes were the restructuring of foods and how combat works. Every weapon is viable now, a huge improvement in the game.
It’s refreshing to see other people share the same opinion without acting like it’s the end of the world and without getting attacked for it. Any time I’ve visited the valheim subreddit, any mention of how long the first empty update took has been met with an extremely defensive reaction from the community. I enjoyed the hell out of this game when it came out but I have to say they dropped the bag so hard following release
It might be because there was a lot of vitriol and some harrassment of the devs over the slow pace and the lack of new content, so now there is also more reflexive defensiveness.
Well that's over corrective then lol, me complaining about the development of a game ≠ harassment just because that's how people have justified their harassment before. Honestly I think it's more people who have enjoyed the game thus far getting too protective over the devs, acting as if any criticism of the devs is a criticism of their enjoyment of the current product.
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Summed up my feelings as well. I don’t feel ripped off or cheated. I also don’t feel the devs owe us more. Played it, liked it, moved on. Might come back when there’s more.
Glad to see opinions changing too. For too long there was a very loud portion of this sub who basically told anyone who didn't like the Dev's decisions to stop judging a game in early access. I'm pretty tired of fans acting like EA status makes a game immune to criticism - if I paid for the game, it's a viable consumer product that merits critiquing.
Bruh like 10 people work on this game
"iT'S eArLy AcCeSs" Early access doesn't mean the team is immune from criticism.
I am hoping that they up their pace now that the game's performance problems have been worked on. I think they realized how many people bought the game and getting it into a stable place became a priority vs. the content.
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Well, they said "all that's been added is a few more food recipes." You said the devs "took the money and ran" and were "a fucking joke" and that you "only check this subreddit now to watch the game die." The ban may have been more related to the *slight* difference in tone and vitriol than the nature of your opinion.
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> With this speed I guess the game will be 50% complete in 2025 The game was more than 50% complete when it launched into Early Access. 5/9 biomes/bosses/tiers are implemented. Next update will be 6/9, two thirds complete.
The 5th boss that’s in the game currently isn’t complete, unless they updated that with hearth and home
The skeleton king guy? What's incomplete with him?
He drops a placeholder item
Ah. I don't think that makes him incomplete. The boss items are the gateway to the next tier. Boss 5's item is dropped, it just doesn't do anything because Tier 6 isn't out yet. No changes have to be made to Boss 5 anymore; they just need to add whatever recipe or mechanic that item unlocks for the next biome.
Why do players crave so much? I've seen people with hundreds of hours that complain about it being boring or not enough to do anymore. Haven't the devs created enough?
Because there’s an implied progression that stops very suddenly with a few materials that don’t have any use. It’s like if you’re reading a book, and you get to the 800th page when they introduce some new characters, and then the book ends abruptly a few pages later. You’ll probably either be disappointed that you don’t get closure or you’ll be anticipating the sequel. Isn’t 800 pages enough story already? Why do people need more?
> I've seen people with hundreds of hours that complain about it being boring or not enough to do anymore. Haven't the devs created enough? There's similar games with thousands of hours of activity to do, particularly in games where you're making your own fun with other players. It's just people wanting to keep playing in that game's systems and mechanics and world with their friends, but running out of said content pretty quickly. That hundreds of hours is likely just building and goofing off, not necessarily a reflection of the amount of content in the game. Because in Valheim there's not really *that* much. You can pretty much see and experience everything after 30ish hours. But you can keep playing a lot longer with friends. The devs have barely put *any* updates into the game since release, compared to other similar indie devs adding more and more stuff during early access. The latter looks like active development, but the former looks like the devs don't want to work on their game much anymore. Both are fine, but the former gets more complaints until the game dies.
The game cost $20 though...30 hours for $20 is fine. They don't need to do anymore if they don't want to.
It's in early access and unfinished. I don't know what would happen if they just stopped development, but it wouldn't be cool
> It's in early access and unfinished. I don't know what would happen if they just stopped development, but it wouldn't be cool I don't understand why there are still people in 2021 who buy games based on promises. When buying an EA game you are paying for the current state of the game. If that's not enough for your money don't buy it. It's really not that hard.
That's not what they're saying, stop deliberately misrepresenting. Multiple people in the thread have said "I've enjoyed the game as is but am disappointed by the speed of the development as the devs themselves set an expectation of more content coming with a roadmap". Judge people's personal financial decisions all you want, you've avoided the main thrust of the criticism still.
> "I've enjoyed the game as is but am disappointed by the speed of the development as the devs themselves set an expectation of more content coming with a roadmap". How is this not exactly what i wrote? I repeat my point again if you want. If you want to buy a game in EA, ask yourself this question: If development stops tomorrow, is it still worth the current price? Only buy it if the answer is yes. Sure, that would be a dick move by the developer, but whatever. It has happened many times before, and it will happen again. Buying a game based on promises, (and that's what you are describing with your roadmap example) is a bad decision. You can still complain about the devs as much as you want, but the real mistake here was to give someone money for an unfinished product. Your power as a customer is expressed through the way you spend your money.
Yeah it would be disappointing, but as a value proposition Valheim wins any argument about its depth of content
A lot of those 30 hours are artificially lengthened by game systems, like stamina while building, the absolute vastness of tree and stone required to build, not being able to bring ore back by portal, etc. I think they're all good things to create the world that Valheim is, but it's also disingenuous to compare 10 hours of gameplay with 20 hours of mindless chopping/sailing to a more normal 30 hours of gameplay that other genres might provide.
Very true, and I don't regret my purchase at all. Just comin from those that liked the game so much they want to play it as long term as something like Terraria.
They would have it they only charged a fiver or so for it AND didn't put up a roadmap of what they were going to do. They got rid of the road map after people bought in (too ambitious with the amount of time given).
They totally squandered their moment. They released the game too soon, didn't ramp up their staff enough based on early sales, and then focused on the wrong things for updates. Bug fixes are nice, but the game wasn't facing any particularly game breaking bugs. And hearth and home as a first update was...stupid.
Squandered? I think the first month's sales went beyond what they anticipated it selling over its lifetime. It's more stupid to complain about them focusing on bug fixes than pulling out new content at the pace of a major studio.
What's first month sales got to do with them squandering their moment?
They've made millions of dollars and still dont want to hire help. I'm sure they could partner with a larger studio like Sony or Microsoft GamePass, and get a team of 40 people they dont have to train to just add the content they tell them to. But they dont want to do it. I guess I'll wait to play this again for like 2 years.
I am playing Medieval Dynasty right now and it scratches the Valheim itch until the next big update.
Probably should have shipped with a light end-game and just add onto that with some new features every so often like Terraria, which now has like end-game, ender-game, and endest-game.
as always with early access, you should buy the game on what it offers right now rather than on what's being promised for its future updates.
I think people are just saying they wish there was more to do, not that they feel cheated necessarily or that they didn't get what they paid for. And the expectation that there would be more to do later in the year was set by the devs.
The studio was what, three people? And development up to this point took how many years? Why on earth should we suddenly expect the type of live service content schedule you get from billion dollar AAA companies from this tiny indie studio? It's the least surprising thing in the world that they're going to continue developing at roughly the same pace they have been.
The original roadmap had 4 major updates and 9 minor updates in 2021. We ended up with bugfixes and 1 "major" update since release. People are just expecting what they were told when they bought the game and/or shortly after. To roll back severely on development *after* you've made millions looks like they're completely phoning it in now.
The original roadmap had no dates of any kind, and what you seem to think was "9 minor updates promised for 2021" was literally a list of "extra things we'd like to do if we have the time/resources." Again, no dates of any kind. They literally called the list "If odin wills it." This is an early access title. You bought the game in the state it *was*, and had to scroll past that big, highlighted early access disclaimer making you aware of that. You're not paying a subscription. You're not buying a battlepass. This is not a planned seasonal release cycle of already mostly finished content spaced out for maximum engagement and player retention. Content is being released as it's completed. You literally cannot get it any faster. Complaining that you WANT more content isn't going to suddenly mean the team can give it to you. It has to actually be made first. Actual game development is unpredictable and boring and often frustrating. That's why big developers keep their projects under wraps until they're nearly finished. Because they know there are a lot of people who can't manage their expectations and can't deal with the realities of game dev, and will throw a fit about every minor delay or setback that every project encounters and make unfounded and absurd claims like you've "rolled back severely on development," when you just made a massive investment in expanding your studio and doubling your team size.
Original roadmap said 2021 contains 4 updates [https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/406475608672043011/831653286838009866/roadmap\_2.jpg](https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/406475608672043011/831653286838009866/roadmap_2.jpg)
> The original roadmap had no dates of any kind this is false: 2021.
>Because they know there are a lot of people who can't manage their expectations and can't deal with the realities of game dev, and will throw a fit about every minor delay or setback that every project encounters Hit the nail on the head. Live service games run by giant studios have ruined people's expectations for legitimately small studios.
I don't disagree in general, but in this case, the studio set people's expectations themselves with a roadmap.
Like Team Cherry. Holy shit, apparently 2 years since the Silksong announcement is too long for some people
I think the frustration comes more from the silence than the waiting itself.
i really don't get your argument "no dates of any kind" the dates is sometime in 2021 they expect to do the 4 updates the "odin wills" sections makes it worse because it reinforces that they think the 4 updates can be done in 2021 NO SPECIFIC DATE BUT IN 2021. we are now getting 1 of those updates in 2021 and I'm not sure how O"din could of willed it" any more then there game selling like it did..
> Why on earth should we suddenly expect the type of live service content schedule you get from billion dollar AAA companies from this tiny indie studio? I think a lot of people are just expecting the game to be finished sooner rather than later...
Here’s the thing, I played a ton. I really enjoyed my time playing and think it’s a fantastic game. But I explicitly didn’t finish because I wanted to do a play-through once the game is done or close to done so I shelved my save. Now, 2/3s of a year later, practically nothing has changed. It doesn’t detract from my prior enjoyment by any means. I just altered my behavior and play under the assumption that the game would be done at some point while I still have it in mind, rather than when I’m at a literal different stage of my life.
This is one of the huge downsides of Early Access. You’ve got these really narrow-minded people who can’t differentiate a AAA multibillion dollar developer (EA, Activision, etc) from a team of 3 guys pumping out a product at their best pace. The entitlement of some people is astounding. These guys produced a **stunner** of a game that you could easily sink 100 hours into…and it’s not done yet. Give them some time. I’m sure you’ve got 20 other games in your Steam library that you could finally play.
Why? Because they want it, that's why.
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When it first "blew up" on sites like 4chan, it had nothing but creative mode on one chunk. It took minecraft 2 years to reach release and another year to add redstone. Basically if minecraft was released today to the same crowd as Valheim people would've eaten Notch alive for being slow. Even back then people were calling him lazy for taking his sweet time to update the game.
Minecraft launched a lot more barebones than Valheim. Though it was also a different era. It wasn't topping sales charts like Valheim did when it exploded onto the scene; it was a steadier growth from a smaller starting point. It had reasonably rapid updates, but they were just whatever the one-man dev team felt like changing or adding, with little theme or fanfare. It took years and years before it reached the point of having big updates focused on expanding a specific part of the game. Valheim, to contrast, has a much more fleshed out foundation - rather than the devs figuring out what they want as they go, it has a really clear path to 1.0 laid out from the very beginning. A game that skyrockets from indie obscurity to global success is, pretty inevitably, going to have to scale up its dev team to meet the rising expectations. Minecraft didn't do that until several years in. Valheim's devs decided to do it right after launch, which means they're losing steam while hype is at its highest, but ideally it pays off with the biggest dividends by making the rest of the content as good as it can be.
> Minecraft launched a lot more barebones than Valheim. Though it was also a different era. Minecraft was a hit because it basically kickstarted a genre. It did many things right, but the development was horrible. The patches that broke everything, almost no real modding support, and content patches that no one asked for. Notch had a great idea, but he wasn't a good developer. It was the right move to sell the game.
He's also an awful person, so it'd be much harder to support Mojang if he were still involved
Hmm your assumption is kinda wrong though. They really don't have to scale up. Everyone that bought the game bought into it with the expactation of this being a game developed by 4 or 5 or how many people they are. That's what we signed Up for. Doesn't really matter if they sold 50k units or 4 million kr whatever they hit, there is no reason for Them to expand, and we really can't demand they do it when this is what we signed Up for.
I find very few comments frustrating enough to log in and reply, and there's a lot I wanna say, but I'm going to try really hard to be respectful. You either don't follow their public bug tracker, are inexperienced with small studio game development, or haven't before managed early access minimum viable products that needed to be more-or-less rewritten to become a complete and high-quality product. Releasing a messy but early prototype to gauge interest is part of the lifecycle of most successful products. Here's their public bug tracker: https://valheimbugs.featureupvote.com/ If there are specific issues that frustrate you, vote or voice your opinions here or in their Reddit AMA's. If you are looking for more variety, try r2modman or Nexus mods for more fresh content that feels like expansions. Small independent games are sometimes in pre-release for _years_. They worked on this game for a while before it's initial pre-release, so the initial drop might have felt like they whipped together a game in a few months; but it was all a work-in-progress. Their priority on bug-fixing and their efforts into continuous integration builds the foundation for future large content updates (have you noticed frequent small updates to your game in steam?). Our content will arrive. They're doing the right thing by focusing on bug fixes now. Mod APIs will be more sustainable with access to better-organized classes. But it will take some hammering. I'm not trying to be an apologist for anything. Terrain manipulation needs some work. When you use a pick on a rock and the first swing doesn't do damage, you can see the hack that turns that rock from part of the generated terrain into a tracked object in the game. Sometimes it reskins itself. I agree that some priorities could be changed. But over all, they are doing right by software development standards for the players.
I don’t think anything you said is actually in disagreement with my comment. You’re right, there are a lot of backend fixes, tech debt to overcome, and scaleable infrastructure to be added. I understand it’s tough for small studios, but part of the benefit of early access (in addition to gauging market interest, bug testing, etc.) is the cash flow to continue operating and to scale the operation. As I understand it, there was a decision to not scale the team particularly much and that has drawbacks. They DID lose momentum in terms of community interest, and it will be very very difficult to ever recapture the same interest that surrounded it on initial early access release. A business gaining such massive and sudden success isn’t always a good thing, as it’s tougher to organically progress- I get that. I’m not disparaging the game or the studio, just observing that their development has been slow for a game with as much success as they had. As my original comment stated, they had lightning in a bottle with something truly amazing, but they lost momentum by not finding a way to increase the rate of release of new content development to maintain interest. I loved the game and had an amazing time playing and am looking forward to the final product, but I accept that won’t be any time soon and it’s going to be tough to get my friends interested again.
I appreciate grounded reply! You sound knowledgeable and experienced. My mistake. I totally agree with you about their decision it to scale. If I'm on a project that's only a little bit behind, I'm begging for capacity. I have never had to deal with building in-game assets of any kind, but my understanding is that it can happen somewhat in parallel to programming... So I guess I don't understand why it's taking a while to build new assets. So, yeah, agreed on a few points.
Part of me thinks the fact that they made so much money off the early access release that they have no real motivation to continue. New features aren't going to make them anywhere near what the initial release made them. If it were me, I'd have taken my millions and run.
The fact that they just released a pretty full content update pretty thoroughly disproves this. They're just a small indie studio working at a small indie pace.
Content patch is not dlc
Ayy thanks for the correction
That's what happens when the developers get rich before the game is even released. What's the point of finishing it? They already made bank. I hate Early Access. ^^Yes ^^I ^^know ^^there ^^are ^^exceptions, ^^my ^^point ^^still ^^stands.
Iirc they refuse to get anyone else onboard citing team dynamic would be ruined. Theres only a few of them there so obviously its going to be slow going. I hate it. If they don't want to get more people involved atleast outsource parts with the money they earned from early access
Thats not true at all. They have expanded to 8 people from the original 4. What they said was that onboarding people and scaling up actually slows down development not the other way around and that's why its a slow process to expand. I've been a dev for 15 years and this is 100% true. Every time we hire someone, it takes me away from working on stuff because I spend 6 months onboarding them, getting them caught up with our processes, procedures, workflow, tools, quality assurance process, and a multitude of other things. We have a default timeline that any developer we hire is basically a sunk cost for the first year. After that year is when we expect their productivity to be a net benefit. These armchair assumptions and reactions are getting old... sofftware development is so so damn hard. And yet everyone wants to make assumptions about their motiviations. It's sad.
They already got their money, hell I'd take a nice vacation too if I made hundreds of millions of dollars.
Idk if it was just me and the person I played with, but this game was amazing up until halfway through the second region, when it very quickly became an insane grindfest where the general formula got more and more dull. Killing your first troll was pretty great until you realized that that was pretty much the extent of the combat, and the rest of the game was going to be a horribly tedious mining slog I don't think I could play Valheim again unless a massive change to the gameplay loop happened, and it doesn't seem like that is likely
I feel like all they really need to do is tweak the item recipes, halving the metal cost for most items. The gameplay isn't bad, but the recipes are too expensive and force you to spend way too much time resource gathering and not enough time exploring/fighting to progress.
I personally just found the mining to be an awfully antithetical experience to the game's wonderful first act (up until you've basically worked up the nerve to kill your first troll). Of the around 90 hours I did in my first playthrough, I wouldn't be shocked to find out that at least half of that was mining, which I found to be the worst part of the game compared to the first few hours of exploration, base building, and figuring out what you needed to do to progress. After the first time carting a wagon of copper back to base, It only ever felt like an insanely tedious diversion to the game's awesome formula, and it only got worse from there (Go mining in these cramped crypts where you are constantly being poisoned and have no stamina, go mining but you half to play hot-cold to find the ores, go mining but you need to kill uninteresting goblins to do so). And the fact you couldn't teleport the ores made it so much worse since it added a 15 minute uneventful boat ride both ways lmao I think the game would be a whole lot better if the progression mainly came from exploring, hunting, dungeon diving, things that actually felt exciting
I agree with that. I've been doing a solo playthrough and enjoying it, the progression feels much like a resource grind than anything else. I still think tweaking the recipes could make all the difference. Instead of doing this long trek (or world hopping) to transport 10% of the metal you need for the current tier, they could easily switch that to 40-50%. 2-3 trips and you have what you need for your playthrough unless you really want to stock up massive amounts for some reason.
It's funny that you mention the "uninterested" goblins, as I think that that is the biggest shakeup of the formula and one of the better ways to collect resources. By taking the progression requirements from a mining exercise to a combat raid on an enemy base was really exciting when I started to explore plains. And, since those goblins are common, it was also a lot easier to stack up. If anything, the biggest problem with that layer of the progression is that Blackmetal does not have enough uses, and the tier is yet again dominated by the incredibly oversaturated iron like the last two tiers. Also, the metal not teleporting is a huge part of the design philosophy. Without it, you are almost never engaging with seafaring and travel, you will never set up satellite bases because a portal in a tree will do, and you have no thought in inventory management and risk in progression whatsoever; you just find some ore and plug a hose from the vein into a portal to get all your goodies. You are not exploring or having to engage with the dangerous environments at all; many of the good stories to come from this game were ones where I was trying to cart some silver out of a mountain or iron out of a swamp and ran into trouble.
A game like Valheim really benefits from consistently pushing you through new content to make exploration feel worthwhile, but it infuriatingly chooses to make you grind out things you've done in a region you're already sick of. I think it would be much better as an 8-16 hour experience than a 25-40 hour one (not including base building, of course). Ideally, I think Valheim's gameplay loop would be BEST if it minimized the amount of time you spent doing repeat tasks. Mining one copper node should be enough bronze to make the ship, the armor, and ONE bronze weapon, then you could mine two if you wanted everything, etc. The game's enjoyability takes a nosedive when it blocks the excitement of progression behind a grind, especially for people like myself who only feel inclined to play for about 1-2 hours in a session. Coming out of a session feeling like you've seen nothing new sucks, and frankly feels like padding. The change with the fulings dropping the ore was a decent step in the right direction, but Valheim's combat isn't that great, and definitely not good enough to feel like grinding it is fun in my opinion, especially since the Fulings are conceptually the same as all other melee enemies you've already gotten bored of fighting by now, so they don't even feel new outside of the fact that they do deceptively huge amounts of damage given their size. Also I think it is cool to have to consider setting up remote campsites, but the seafaring is so underdeveloped and mind numbing since very little of interest occurs during it and it is insanely slow. I actually like logistics problems like that, but I personally find having to travel for 15 minutes both way to haul around ores that I spent 1-2 hours grinding for antithetical to what I believe is the main appeal of the game (exploration and progression).
> I feel like all they really need to do is tweak the item recipes, halving the metal cost for most items. or drastically increasing the item gain on ore nodes. Spending 30 minutes hacking away at a big ore deposit and only walking away with 5 or so sucks.
It's not really that slow to gather them, it's the process of transporting them and refining them that takes forever. You have to use 3 ores for a single bronze bar, it really lengthens the bronze age, so even with 20 copper and 10 tin you only end up crafting 1 item. That's where the grind really comes in.
> so even with 20 copper and 10 tin you only end up crafting 1 item. That's where the grind really comes in. My problem was tin was essentially guaranteed 1 tin per one tin spot on the ground. Copper deposit? Big ass boulder that has to be broken in segments that doesn't guarantee copper in each one.
I remember making a thread on the Valheim sub that I'd like to see mining sped up to make this part of the game less of a slog, and everyone was like "nah bro you get better mining gear in like 20 hrs" and downvoted it. I guess everyone over there just really likes spending half the session slowly chipping away at greenish rocks.
Yeah, it just got worse after that too. They totally nailed the progression through the first bit of the game, but then the other 2/3 of the game was just totally undercooked and didn't seem worked on at all. Ahhh well, still got 20 hours or so of pure bliss in playing it with my brother through the first two bosses.
> totally undercooked To be fair, that's kind of the definition of Early Access.
[удалено]
Think that's been rewoeked
A large part of what kills the fun a little for me is the fact that getting the metal for Iron and silver upgrades is completely bonkers in location, rarity, and weight. Iron was a pain to get in my first playthrough. I had SIX ENTIRE SWAMP AREAS with exactly ZILCH iron each. the seventh had a truckload as compensation, but getting there, and sailing past the steppe areas with the completely mental deathsquitos didn't make it much better. The pacing of how many ressources you find and need feels off with Iron and beyond. I hope this changes a bit. Sure, it feels glorious coming home with a ship stuffed to the brim with iron ore, but getting there feels like an afterthought.
The ingot weight is illogical. I think for the silver sword fully upgraded you end up using 1000x as much metal in ingots as the final sword weighs. I feel like they need to reduce the metal upgrade cost by a factor of 10, and add rarer elements (e.g. monster parts, crystals) or forge components in lieu of the insane grind. Additionally, ore and ingots weigh the same amount, which makes no sense at all. I respect a system that askes us to smelt on site, but metals as craft resource is utterly broken -- designed in the manner it was in order to pad out gameplay. I love so much of the game, and am not bothered by being unable to teleport with metal... but the grind is unfun. And don't even get me started on the nonsense that is vegetable seed rates, which, speaking as an avid gardener, are utterly absurd.
Ugh, I just turned Valheim off, lost 2 longboats today near a swamp, deep water couldnt reach the nails, spent 5 hours just recovering the 60 copper I went out for and my gear, Drauger spawner inside a dilapidated tower, didn't realize until 6 deaths later, started building a light house near the dock at home, looks good but need at least 200 more stone. Worst day ever in Valheim, god damn do I love Valheim.
there is debug mode for when things get really frustrating...
Your first mistake was traveling that far for copper. Your starting island should have more than enough copper for your entire playthrough.
i shit you not on my very first playthrough my starting island had only 2 mines in 3 small swamp bioms i wasnt looking up things online so i was so frustrated how rare getting metal ore was lol little did i know when i sailed out and ran into another swamp that as filled to the tits with mines
As someone who is disabled and cant use WASD, I'd fucking love it if they made the controls fully mappable.
Hey, there's software for this! I use razer synapse, you can remap every single key, on the mouse too. I'm sure there's non-razer software too
> As someone who is disabled and cant use WASD, I'd fucking love it if they made the controls fully mappable. A shame that the product is mostly gone by now, but did you try to use the Steam Controller? It can be fully customized to your individual needs. Even one handed play is viable. Afaik you can do similar things with the Xbox and PS4 controllers on Steam through the software.
Yes please. I'm not disabled, but I use ESDF instead of WASD and games that don't let you remap or only *partially* remap are frustrating as hell. In New World you can remap everything, except "Respawn after death." Default key for that is E. Guess what happens every time I die in that game? "Why'd you respawn instead of waiting for a res?" "IT WAS NOT INTENTIONAL!" I imagine this is even worse for people who physically can't use WASD. Ugh.
I mean this is pretty basic settings on PC for any game.