Iron Gate neglects building community

[mumblebrainz 🧠]

It's sad to see building community in this game being neglected to the core. People who focus on combat rush through the content and they're done faster than you can imagine.

So I believe (mostly) the main player base is the people who like to chill and build something in this game. And yet, builders are being the most ignored...

No extra build pieces of regular wood and stone, nice variations, decorations, not being able to replant flora like bushes, flowers, etc. Instead of giving you tools to express your creativity, it limits it way too much to be fun to mess around with. Just my two cents.

At least all they could do is to add a feature to rotate build pieces in all directions (like a gizmo mod). And an ability to paint wood, and maybe stone. And placing what's already in the game, like barrels, bushes, moss and etc.

[unicornoflove]

I like building stuff and adventuring but that got boring many months ago when all things had been done. I look forward to the day where more content will be available.

[Imhotep]

Originally posted by Lord:

@Aurumworks After it goes "1.0", nothing's going to change related to modding. Not unless someone authoritative has stated so. Won't happen unless there's solid support for it from players.

Yeah this is gonna be a kinda ranty post that I'm going to have some fun with, because why not! Not directed at anyone in particular so don't take it personally, but I have to vent a little about this attitude:

"But the little tiny, poor dev shop can't AFFORD to do anything to facilicate modders!"

Yeah, right - BULL! Plenty of small dev teams do more to support modding than this dev shop that's DROWNING in money:

"We were confident that the game would do well, and definitely sell in the tens of thousands in the first week."

Valheim went on to exceed this by quite some margin, shifting more than one million units in its first week of being in Early Access. It went on to shift six million in its first six weeks, and while that suggests steady momentum, its success was a little harder to gauge behind the scenes.

Har... har... har... another claim I've seen is 200M in revenue. Oh, that poor little dev shop, how will they ever survive!

Give me a F@#$in break! The poor little development shop that sold MILLIONS of copies of a game can't afford a few little mitigations to make life easier for modders helping to make the game a greater success? Can we stop claiming this is a "resources" issue? No, I think they just don't care enough to lift a finger for us. It's hard to have sympathy for a developer of such a successful game.

The italic quote above is from this link.
https://www.gamesindustry.biz/coffee-stain-valheims-success-was-like-trying-to-tip-over-a-bathtub-full-of-water

It also has plenty of recognition of the appeal of building within the game: "Building your own Viking village has given players a creative outlet, adding to the game's virality".

It also mentions "the dangers of players getting bored" - gee, I wonder what could be done to help mitigate that problem? Perhaps... stop making game updates miserable for modders, so mod content producers can keep people interested in between major releases? The idea others here have about making more existing game assets available for construction would also be helpful (although I imagine mods can handle that).

Keeping the community interested and engaged is just as important as "finishing the game", something which they clearly have the funding to drag out for years and years if they need to.

At a minimum we need occasional 'long term beta' versions that are well enough named that modders can lock it in, until they're ready to update. There's simply no good excuse for not doing at least this.

And this whole post is the reason why people don't understand how companies and money works.

The companies spread the money out, there are also advertisers and many other people that work for the company. The Devs are about ten strong for this particular section of the company. 10 Developers don't take the whole pot of 200m bucks. thats nuts. Advertisers and others do also, lawyers etc etc etc. lawyers get paid to write the EULA's and all that essentially, the team that WORKS on the game is small, but the 200m that gets spread around hundreds and hundreds if not thousands of people isn't as much as you think.

The people that made what money they did will need to hold onto it and thus the only way for them to make money is to sell copies of the game because they do not have micro-transactions. Developing mod support takes a huge amount of time and its not easy.

I'm not necessary defending them because they coulda used some of the time to develop some micro's and other ways to keep a steady flow of income to higher more people and yada yad but what i will say is i respect they are doing whatever the heck they wanna do because thats what life should be about. Live life how you want.

[Lord]

Imhotep - nope, i'm not buying it. I'm well aware it doesn't "all go to the developers". But I'm also well aware of math, and how much devs get paid compared to the revenue generated.

This is one of those surprise blockbuster games which ended up with a AAA revenue after a small indy dev investment. Read the article - everyone was shocked at how much cash it produced. Trust me, they can afford the investment if they want to do it. That is not the issue. And besides - small indy developers do it all the time.

And I'm not even saying it needs to be first class mod support - we can't even get some stable betas in the Steam settings, for crying out loud. You're really going to defend that?

[blprice61]

Awful free with other's time and money. Iron Gate Studios may have won the Indy lottery, but they earned it. We did not buy a finished AAA game, we bought an Indy Steam EA game. Worth every penny even if I disagree with some things they've done. If modders want to make rep (and someday money when they turn that rep into a job) off of doing Valheim Mods, they'll have to play by Iron Gate's rules. No defense needed.

[Imhotep]

Originally posted by Lord:

Imhotep - nope, i'm not buying it. I'm well aware it doesn't "all go to the developers". But I'm also well aware of math, and how much devs get paid compared to the revenue generated.

This is one of those surprise blockbuster games which ended up with a AAA revenue after a small indy dev investment. Read the article - everyone was shocked at how much cash it produced. Trust me, they can afford the investment if they want to do it. That is not the issue. And besides - small indy developers do it all the time.

And I'm not even saying it needs to be first class mod support - we can't even get some stable betas in the Steam settings, for crying out loud. You're really going to defend that?

uhhh no, what i'm stating is how the money is split up and they don't have as much as you think.

In addition to what i am stating i'm also stating that they need to have a micro shop to earn extra income to be able to afford some extra devs and then continuously fill their pockets for years to come.

[Lord]

I'm not sure why you guys are reacting like I'm expecting some huge effort to support modding better to give us more building options. That isn't at all what I've said.

I'm experienced enough to know a little about ancillary business expenses, budgeting and software development. But you're not going to convince me that a game that has about 1/3 the budget of what freakin Star Citizen allegedly got is short on cash. What I'm saying is money and resources are not the issue. I bring it up because people seem to think resources are a limiting factor, and that is being used as a reason to neglect anthing that doesn't immediately contribute to "finishing the game" (whatever that means).

Time and managing techical complexity are likely the real limiting factors. Neither of which are impacted by giving us more stable betas in Steam.

[Admiral Chowderpants]

Originally posted by Hexafluorosilicic:

install mods - problem solved.

Let me mod this statement a little...

"Install mods - problem solved. Many more created".

[electricdawn]

I usually back Iron Gate, but I'm pretty annoyed by now that we STILL don't have Mac version. I don't care about modding and the breaking of mods after updates, that's just what it is and the mod hungry people need to understand that a program still in development sometimes breaks stuff from other people.

If you can't understand that, you don't understand software development.

But, yeah, where's the Mac version? You have Linux(!), but no Mac? If you do Linux, you already have a Mac version. I hate having to play Valheim (really badly) through CrossOver or in Parallels, because it really doesn't work well. I know my Mac is capable of more when I can play Star Wars : Fallen Order on it, but I can't play Valheim.

IronGate, if you don't want to hire a Mac developer for yourself, go talk to Aspyr. They do many Mac ports, and if you can afford a team to develop for the XBox, you can afford Aspyr to develop for the Mac.

Rant over.

[loppantorkel]

Originally posted by electricdawn:

IronGate, if you don't want to hire a Mac developer for yourself, go talk to Aspyr. They do many Mac ports, and if you can afford a team to develop for the XBox, you can afford Aspyr to develop for the Mac.

Rant over.

Not going to argue against a mac port per se, but seriously - making an Xbox port and a mac port are two entirely different things. One of them makes sense from a business perspective, the other I very much doubt would. If Valve doesn't do more than the bare minimum to make Steam work on macs, I assume it's because there's just not much gain in this audience. Maybe it will happen after v1.0, just like more modding support may happen then. Makes more sense to focus on other things until then.

[Admiral Chowderpants]

Originally posted by electricdawn:

I usually back Iron Gate, but I'm pretty annoyed by now that we STILL don't have Mac version. I don't care about modding and the breaking of mods after updates, that's just what it is and the mod hungry people need to understand that a program still in development sometimes breaks stuff from other people.

If you can't understand that, you don't understand software development.

But, yeah, where's the Mac version? You have Linux(!), but no Mac? If you do Linux, you already have a Mac version. I hate having to play Valheim (really badly) through CrossOver or in Parallels, because it really doesn't work well. I know my Mac is capable of more when I can play Star Wars : Fallen Order on it, but I can't play Valheim.

IronGate, if you don't want to hire a Mac developer for yourself, go talk to Aspyr. They do many Mac ports, and if you can afford a team to develop for the XBox, you can afford Aspyr to develop for the Mac.

Rant over.

I had no idea they hired an external team to port to x-box. A lot of my patience regarding the slow development progress came from me thinking they did that themselves.

I'm curious why they would support linux, that has a 3% pc market and not Apple which has 17% of the pc market.

I would pay good money to be a part of a 30 minute Q and A session where I got to ask the questions.

[Vexillarius]

Originally posted by electricdawn:

I usually back Iron Gate, but I'm pretty annoyed by now that we STILL don't have Mac version. I don't care about modding and the breaking of mods after updates, that's just what it is and the mod hungry people need to understand that a program still in development sometimes breaks stuff from other people.

If you can't understand that, you don't understand software development.

But, yeah, where's the Mac version? You have Linux(!), but no Mac? If you do Linux, you already have a Mac version. I hate having to play Valheim (really badly) through CrossOver or in Parallels, because it really doesn't work well. I know my Mac is capable of more when I can play Star Wars : Fallen Order on it, but I can't play Valheim.

IronGate, if you don't want to hire a Mac developer for yourself, go talk to Aspyr. They do many Mac ports, and if you can afford a team to develop for the XBox, you can afford Aspyr to develop for the Mac.

Rant over.

Considering the vast majority of Macs are complete junk that run intergrated graphics have totally absurd designs that don't factor in any performance criteria it's insanely unfair to expect developer to make games for mac. It would open an enormous pandoras box of people complaining about technical issues non stop. Personally i wish mac people would buy a real computer if they want to game and stop hamstringing the entire games industry. It's not everybody else's fault you got tricked by marketing to buy a mac.

[cookie]

dont feel bad they ignore the cooks and sailors just as much .......mods yay

[Lord]

Originally posted by electricdawn:

If you can't understand that, you don't understand software development.

Professional software dev here, trust me, it's WELL understood. That's why I've just been asking for long term stable releases. (In the software world often labelled "LTS" but here aka Steam "beta".)

This is not a big ask by any stretch of the imagination - stop acting like it is please.

And as far as Linux support vs Mac, I'm going to agree with Vexillarius. Mac gaming is a joke, who buys a Mac for gaming? Linux is pulling ahead on Steam thanks to Steam Deck and Proton. As Gabe Newell said "Linux is the future of gaming." right? :) Linux has already blown past Mac for developer usage according to Stack Overflow stastistics.

[mumblebrainz 🧠]

Originally posted by Lord:

Originally posted by electricdawn:

If you can't understand that, you don't understand software development.

Professional software dev here, trust me, it's WELL understood. That's why I've just been asking for long term stable releases. (In the software world often labelled "LTS" but here aka Steam "beta".)

This is not a big ask by any stretch of the imagination - stop acting like it is please.

And as far as Linux support vs Mac, I'm going to agree with Vexillarius. Mac gaming is a joke, who buys a Mac for gaming? Linux is pulling ahead on Steam thanks to Steam Deck and Proton. As Gabe Newell said "Linux is the future of gaming." right? :) Linux has already blown past Mac for developer usage according to Stack Overflow stastistics.

https://youtu.be/e5WP-upr2bU?si=CmDQ5CUnTx6SPkGD

Not bad, considering it's a mac without any external GPU. And running through extra things to be able to run things at all, which removes performance when not officially ported. And this one is old one already (M1 Chip), cause we have M3 coming which has way more power. My own Mac Mini M1 is capable of running demanding Minecraft Java with high render distance and with all extra effects on. So they're not that bad nowadays. If Steam Deck can handle Valheim, so is Mac.

https://youtu.be/BT93YkhEuOM?si=gMgCVnJPqq_t7ZTH

But it's a little out of topic (:

[Lord]

@mumblebrainz Naw man stop it, making fun of Mac users is great fun!

Seriously though, I took issue with claiming Mac has a larger market share on Steam by basing it on "regular user" market share, which are two different things. I could make a similar claim that Linux should get more support because more developers use it, but I'm not going to seriously defend that one in a Steam context either. :)