Short-ish rant, Valheim getting boring.

[Domelius]

I wonder if anyone feels similar about the game.

I picked up Valheim soon after it showed up in early access. I have played it few times, both solo and with friends, got around 200 hours - but after almost 3 years I do not really feel the progression is being made on this game. More like artificial prolonging of early access.

There are new biomes made but I would rather see the current existing ones expanded. It feels like more of the same, just looking different. No real evolution.
By now I know almost all the items and recipes by heart, and I remember what I can find in each biome - and the game is getting kinda dead and unattractive for me, as there is barely anything new to discover. It simply cannot surprise me with anything.

Valheim was a major hit in 2021 but many other games with similar formula emerged in the meantime and managed to achieve so much more in shorter period of time.
You can say that Iron Gate AB has around 10 employees so it takes time, BUT the game sold over 12 mln copies earning around 150 mln $ (news from autumn 2023).
I would kind of expect the company to invest in a bigger team and get things done by properly expanding the title with new mechanics and so on.
I mean this game was its own walking advertisement - maybe they paid some taxes, improved marketing, work office, or outsourced some ♥♥♥♥ etc. Lets say they even had to spend 100 mln $ in total.
That leaves each developer with around 5 mln $ per person - which means they are set for life. Good for them of course, but it feels like the game is being neglected and whole process unnecessarily prolonged. Like they got their money so there is no point in throwing more sweat to make this really a brilliant title. Cause why bother with new original and varied content when you exceeded your lifelong expected sales targets by couple of times. It's all done, no motivation (?) This has been feeling like game on life support for a while now.

Examples of other successful survival indie titles that seemed to be making much quicker improvement or even released a full game despite of relatively small teams:
Enshrouded (¬45 employees now after the success, around 30 when they had the demo out)
Soulmask (¬more or less 10 employees)
The Forest (19 employees at the moment)
Raft (7 employees)

Why does it seems that they are moving and getting rich content rolled out while Valheim stand still and receives a recoloured biomes with hard enemies just to extend the playtime? I am not expecting each biome and 'era' to bring something revolutionary but at least... different. Not just texture of soil changed to burned lava or whatever.
At this pace other titles are becoming much more complex and attractive, and I would kind of want to stay with Valheim rather than moving to another titles. Maybe my expectations were too high.

I know I got my fair share of entertainment hours for the price, but I hoped that Valheim will become so much more. Now it feels like a let down. Kinda like end of 3 year long relationship which you really don't want to finish but there is nothing left to do.

Rant over. You can throw stones now.

[Happy]

There are 13 devs working at Iron Gate currently. Thats from the top, from a dev. Just either take a break or do somethin else til Ashlands drops.

[stvlepore]

Once I have iron and stone, and have updated my base accordingly, I put the game awsy for a while.

[Mhantra]

1500+ hours, still excited for a fresh play through when Ashlands drops!

[Smokey]

Just gotta get use to them being the slowest devs on earth. They made their money and now are taking their sweet time with a small team. The amount of content per biome and mechanics going on in the game are so little that making a new biome take over a year doesnt even make sense. No game comes close (besides enshrouded) to the building or vibe or this game, so i just wait, but i can admit their speed is a straight joke.

[Zombits]

Originally posted by Smokey:

Just gotta get use to them being the slowest devs on earth. They made their money and now are taking their sweet time with a small team. The amount of content per biome and mechanics going on in the game are so little that making a new biome take over a year doesnt even make sense. No game comes close (besides enshrouded) to the building or vibe or this game, so i just wait, but i can admit their speed is a straight joke.

I have played many survival and indy games , i must say they are far from slow for an open world with many complexities . They are right on the average spot . Most games with few devs will make a major update like once a year max .

[Smokey]

Originally posted by Zombits:

Originally posted by Smokey:

Just gotta get use to them being the slowest devs on earth. They made their money and now are taking their sweet time with a small team. The amount of content per biome and mechanics going on in the game are so little that making a new biome take over a year doesnt even make sense. No game comes close (besides enshrouded) to the building or vibe or this game, so i just wait, but i can admit their speed is a straight joke.

I have played many survival and indy games , i must say they are far from slow for an open world with many complexities . They are right on the average spot . Most games with few devs will make a major update like once a year max .

Literally the opposite opinion. Agree to disagree

[jonnin]

All games become boring eventually, if you play enough of them. Put it down for a bit. Im picking V up for the first time in about 6 or 8 months and its all new again. I quit when all I was doing was farming food & screwing around with silly stuff ... realized I didn't have a build project in mind nor anything productive left to do. Now, a new char ... and plenty to do all fresh again.

[Nerevar]

raft is a finished game.

the forest is a finished game and thier sequel game is mainstream crap.

soulmask isnt even out yet and is an mmo on top. so that comparison is a bit silly.

enshrouded is also mainstream fokused and lacks depth in every way due to that and well it came out 1 month ago and has gotten ONE SINGLE PATCH so far and no new content yet so putting that in comparison when you have no idea how long THEY will take for new content is..... pure guess on your end.

the amount of developers varies per game. more cooks dont make the meal better in the end of the game.

while ashlands is definitly exeeding any kind of godwill if it doesnt arrive within the next 3 months as promised on thier blog aslong as it turns out atleast as good as mistlands ill be willing to hold out for these 3 months now.

[Doko]

Originally posted by Nerevar:

raft is a finished game.

the forest is a finished game and thier sequel game is mainstream crap.

soulmask isnt even out yet and is an mmo on top. so that comparison is a but silly.

enshrouded is also mainstream fokused and lacks depth in every way due to that and well it came out 1 month ago and has gotten ONE SINGLE PATCH so far and no new content yet so putting that in comparison when you have no idea how long THEY will take for new content is..... pure guess on your end.

the amount of developers varies per game. more cooks dont make the meal better in the end of the game.

while ashlands is definitly exeeding any kind of godwill if it doesnt arrive within the next 3 months as promised on thier blog aslong as it turns out atleast as good as mistlands ill be willing to hold out for these 3 months now.

While having more cooks doesn't automatically make for a better meal, having the same lower number doesn't mean things improve over time for said meal either.

Think of it this way, the longer they take to doll out smallish content, the more people lose patience and move onto other games. While this game isn't going anywhere, it is still having to compete with newer games on the market, like Enshrouded for one example, PZ for another (and believe me, indie stone take forever with their content updates as well).

Looking around I've seen Hello games managing to drop content within a year, sometimes even twice in a year, but even then, that's still better than dolling out a few decorative trinkets and a biome filled with AI that run around aimlessly (yes I'm still irked by Valheim's braindead AI that also happens to know exactly when you're about to fire at them with a few arrows).

The least the devs could do is hire just a few more, doesn't have to be 100 extra staff, we know they are low in number, so around 20 more can always help (we've seen studios with hundreds upon hundreds of devs, so a total of 40 staff is not the end of the world, before anyone suggests it's too much).

[Quyzbuk]

You understand that there are countless things that could affect development progress right? Too much ambition, not enough fun, too complex, too simple, etc etc... revenue only enables this, it doesn't make it magically materialize.

If you need a reminder of this, check out the poster child - Star Citizen.

[Horemvore]

Originally posted by Domelius:

I wonder if anyone feels similar about the game.

I picked up Valheim soon after it showed up in early access. I have played it few times, both solo and with friends, got around 200 hours - but after almost 3 years I do not really feel the progression is being made on this game. More like artificial prolonging of early access.

There are new biomes made but I would rather see the current existing ones expanded. It feels like more of the same, just looking different. No real evolution.
By now I know almost all the items and recipes by heart, and I remember what I can find in each biome - and the game is getting kinda dead and unattractive for me, as there is barely anything new to discover. It simply cannot surprise me with anything.

Valheim was a major hit in 2021 but many other games with similar formula emerged in the meantime and managed to achieve so much more in shorter period of time.
You can say that Iron Gate AB has around 10 employees so it takes time, BUT the game sold over 12 mln copies earning around 150 mln $ (news from autumn 2023).
I would kind of expect the company to invest in a bigger team and get things done by properly expanding the title with new mechanics and so on.
I mean this game was its own walking advertisement - maybe they paid some taxes, improved marketing, work office, or outsourced some ♥♥♥♥ etc. Lets say they even had to spend 100 mln $ in total.
That leaves each developer with around 5 mln $ per person - which means they are set for life. Good for them of course, but it feels like the game is being neglected and whole process unnecessarily prolonged. Like they got their money so there is no point in throwing more sweat to make this really a brilliant title. Cause why bother with new original and varied content when you exceeded your lifelong expected sales targets by couple of times. It's all done, no motivation (?) This has been feeling like game on life support for a while now.

Examples of other successful survival indie titles that seemed to be making much quicker improvement or even released a full game despite of relatively small teams:
Enshrouded (¬45 employees now after the success, around 30 when they had the demo out)
Soulmask (¬more or less 10 employees)
The Forest (19 employees at the moment)
Raft (7 employees)

Why does it seems that they are moving and getting rich content rolled out while Valheim stand still and receives a recoloured biomes with hard enemies just to extend the playtime? I am not expecting each biome and 'era' to bring something revolutionary but at least... different. Not just texture of soil changed to burned lava or whatever.
At this pace other titles are becoming much more complex and attractive, and I would kind of want to stay with Valheim rather than moving to another titles. Maybe my expectations were too high.

I know I got my fair share of entertainment hours for the price, but I hoped that Valheim will become so much more. Now it feels like a let down. Kinda like end of 3 year long relationship which you really don't want to finish but there is nothing left to do.

Rant over. You can throw stones now.

Convenient of you to leave out the fact steam takes a 30% cut and the publisher also takes a 30% cut of the revenue from your numbers. GG.

Also goto factor in the cost of out sourcing the Console port from said revenue and the hireing of all that extra staff.

You also leave out the early dev numbers for Valheim (which was 4 btw) but include it for some of the others, bias much?

[Domelius]

Appreciate all comments. Especially we managed to keep it civilised so far.

Might be the best to put the game down till full release. Or maybe dive into some mods. You know any that can really enrich the experience?

Originally posted by Horemvore:

Originally posted by Domelius:

I wonder if anyone feels similar about the game.

I picked up Valheim soon after it showed up in early access. I have played it few times, both solo and with friends, got around 200 hours - but after almost 3 years I do not really feel the progression is being made on this game. More like artificial prolonging of early access.

There are new biomes made but I would rather see the current existing ones expanded. It feels like more of the same, just looking different. No real evolution.
By now I know almost all the items and recipes by heart, and I remember what I can find in each biome - and the game is getting kinda dead and unattractive for me, as there is barely anything new to discover. It simply cannot surprise me with anything.

Valheim was a major hit in 2021 but many other games with similar formula emerged in the meantime and managed to achieve so much more in shorter period of time.
You can say that Iron Gate AB has around 10 employees so it takes time, BUT the game sold over 12 mln copies earning around 150 mln $ (news from autumn 2023).
I would kind of expect the company to invest in a bigger team and get things done by properly expanding the title with new mechanics and so on.
I mean this game was its own walking advertisement - maybe they paid some taxes, improved marketing, work office, or outsourced some ♥♥♥♥ etc. Lets say they even had to spend 100 mln $ in total.
That leaves each developer with around 5 mln $ per person - which means they are set for life. Good for them of course, but it feels like the game is being neglected and whole process unnecessarily prolonged. Like they got their money so there is no point in throwing more sweat to make this really a brilliant title. Cause why bother with new original and varied content when you exceeded your lifelong expected sales targets by couple of times. It's all done, no motivation (?) This has been feeling like game on life support for a while now.

Examples of other successful survival indie titles that seemed to be making much quicker improvement or even released a full game despite of relatively small teams:
Enshrouded (¬45 employees now after the success, around 30 when they had the demo out)
Soulmask (¬more or less 10 employees)
The Forest (19 employees at the moment)
Raft (7 employees)

Why does it seems that they are moving and getting rich content rolled out while Valheim stand still and receives a recoloured biomes with hard enemies just to extend the playtime? I am not expecting each biome and 'era' to bring something revolutionary but at least... different. Not just texture of soil changed to burned lava or whatever.
At this pace other titles are becoming much more complex and attractive, and I would kind of want to stay with Valheim rather than moving to another titles. Maybe my expectations were too high.

I know I got my fair share of entertainment hours for the price, but I hoped that Valheim will become so much more. Now it feels like a let down. Kinda like end of 3 year long relationship which you really don't want to finish but there is nothing left to do.

Rant over. You can throw stones now.

Convenient of you to leave out the fact steam takes a 30% cut and the publisher also takes a 30% cut of the revenue from your numbers. GG.

Also goto factor in the cost of out sourcing the Console port from said revenue and the hireing of all that extra staff.

You also leave out the early dev numbers for Valheim (which was 4 btw) but include it for the others, bias much?

Forgot about steam taking 30% of sales which is of course has impact on revenue.

Porting games. especially indie ones is not that expensive though. So even if you cover all available consoles you can squeeze it under 100K $. It can easily be done in half of the mentioned budget.

Last argument about initial 4 devs doesn't speak on your side. If they have more or them now they should be managing it all better in my opinion. But you know how it is with opinions, they are like butts, everyone has one.

[Ammikaameri]

Not really sure the devs intended you to play 200+ hours.

[Forcedge]

Originally posted by Happy:

There are 13 devs working at Iron Gate currently. Thats from the top, from a dev. Just either take a break or do somethin else til Ashlands drops.

There's nothing different or wait-worthy about ashlands. That was his entire point

[Humpenstilzchen]

Idk man I certainly don´t feel like that. I have over 1000 hours and I keep coming back for more. I think I´m addicted. I need help.