The Missed Potential of Valheim: How an Open World RPG Could Have Transformed the Game

[FallenActual]

When Valheim first came out, I was completely hooked by its Norse mythology-inspired setting, challenging gameplay, and rich, immersive environment. But I couldn't help feeling disappointed by the game's reliance on peer-to-peer connections and self-hosted worlds. Just imagine if Valheim had embraced a dedicated server model and open-world RPG mechanics, allowing hundreds of players to explore, build, and battle together in a persistent, shared universe. At the peak of its popularity, this approach could have taken Valheim from a captivating survival game to an epic, community-driven saga. Instead, the lack of matchmaking and centralized servers really held it back, and I can't help but wonder what could have been if the developers had made different choices.

[esbenmf]

You just want another game, and that is fine. It is just not what devs wanted.

[Horemvore]

Originally posted by FallenActual:

When Valheim first came out, I was completely hooked by its Norse mythology-inspired setting, challenging gameplay, and rich, immersive environment. But I couldn't help feeling disappointed by the game's reliance on peer-to-peer connections and self-hosted worlds. Just imagine if Valheim had embraced a dedicated server model and open-world RPG mechanics, allowing hundreds of players to explore, build, and battle together in a persistent, shared universe. At the peak of its popularity, this approach could have taken Valheim from a captivating survival game to an epic, community-driven saga. Instead, the lack of matchmaking and centralized servers really held it back, and I can't help but wonder what could have been if the developers had made different choices.

Have fun making your game, sounds okay.

[gerzald]

Would be no lag on a local sever set up. 200 player Valheim lan party? That lasts a year? Guess you would have to pay people like a RL job.

[Yampire]

Originally posted by FallenActual:

allowing hundreds of players to explore, build, and battle together in a persistent, shared universe.

that right there describes a game i wouldn't spend a single minute on. thankfully Valheim is not that.

[Val Heimershmidt]

A dedicated server model would have meant one single world to explore and I would have stopped playing about 6000 hours ago.

[Nerevar]

except that this was never meant to be an OPEN WORLD RPG. its a survival sandbox game.

these are 2 different types of game genres.

and open world rpg is something like fallout 4 (more modern) or morrowind (old school)

valheim isnt like these games at all.

[TheOptimator]

It's not missed potential. It's just a different game you're describing.
Valheim has arguably exceeded its potential (if that's possible).

[Altimely]

Valheim was originally planned as an MMO but the devs realized the scope-creep was too much and they scaled it back to a survival/crafting-lite. I'm glad they did. MMO communities are terrible.

[Darren Daulton]

With the current model you pay $19.99 (or $9.99 depending) and that's it.

Your model includes subscription, microtransactions, and DLC/battlepass. All the things that have been destroying the gaming industry for profit motive.

These devs managed to build their own studio, give themselves nice jobs, make a hansdome profit, and an absolutely amazing product.

You are barking up the wrong tree.

[Weyrlock]

What you're describing doesn't exist and probably will never exist. To put it shortly, if this game was like a Minecraft public server (talking about just the world map), assuming the way the game is, there wouldn't be a single spot on the map already destroyed and its economy (something important to games like this) would be close to non existent, unless they created private instances, which brings us to the other factor;

Let's assume they put the new content or simply boss progression behind a community driven effort, if the game was not to be changed in most aspects, firstly and looking at the better outcome, there's no way everyone would be able to put the same effort and thus some tiers of equipment progression should/would be locked to, what I assume, most of the player base, which is never a good thing and that's not even including possible griefers.

Unless they would make so everything is globally shared in a particular way, so either we go back to the first problem; monopoly of resources/economy, or simply effortless progression for most of the players (and NO, server wipe is not particularly interesting in a difficult PVE survival game).

[bacon]

horrible idea

[Poison Dart Frag]

"Dedicated server" doesn't mean what you think it means. The games come with dedicated server you can run yourself, doesn't even have to be on your own computer, can be run on the cloud as well, and you can even leave it running 24/7. It's not fully MMO though, while you can bring and take things from different servers, from what I understand each world can only handle like up to about 10 simultaneous players or something, forgot the details.

[Murder Medic]

Originally posted by Weyrlock:

What you're describing doesn't exist and probably will never exist. To put it shortly, if this game was like a Minecraft public server (talking about just the world map), assuming the way the game is, there wouldn't be a single spot on the map already destroyed and its economy (something important to games like this) would be close to non existent, unless they created private instances, which brings us to the other factor;

Let's assume they put the new content or simply boss progression behind a community driven effort, if the game was not to be changed in most aspects, firstly and looking at the better outcome, there's no way everyone would be able to put the same effort and thus some tiers of equipment progression should/would be locked to, what I assume, most of the player base, which is never a good thing and that's not even including possible griefers.

Unless they would make so everything is globally shared in a particular way, so either we go back to the first problem; monopoly of resources/economy, or simply effortless progression for most of the players (and NO, server wipe is not particularly interesting in a difficult PVE survival game).

Man i couldnt agree more.. and, i know this is off topic, sort of... Im only asking you this question specifically, due to my absolute agreement with your statement. Light No fire seems (to me) to be somewhat similar to Valheim. An open world RPG crafting adventure game, but played in an extremely large community map.

After reading your reply, it didnt take long to imagine the state of, lets say my particular map I play with my Dad. Sure there would be alot of cool people playing Valheim as intended. But there undoubtedly would be others who would wall in our towns, build massive structures around resources, completly destroy the area in and around important boss POI's....

How my Father and I are playing the game is how Id hope to play with an entire community of people. We take care of the environment as much as possible, we have build up a large farm and port area with a vast amount of portals. The portals lead to other farm areas for the different resources. To have communities around our map all basically doing the same thing, so that trading is possible, events and whatever other activities the community could think of would be pretty cool.

OP suggested like a server setting sorta, where hundreds of players could play, and from what ive seen, there are a few servers and communities out there that do in fact support this kind of thing in valheim. I know im going off the rails in this reply, please bare with me :)

I can see how it wouldnt work in Valheim due to griefers to keep it short, especially after experiencing the toxicity of public ark servers, both PVE and PVP.

So my question is, as it relates to this post, how in the heck will Light No Fire be able to run well, with all these different personalities on one map, or several worlds with a large capped player base? I make this comparison because from whats been revealed, light no fire seems like a cross between No Mans Sky, Valheim and Skyrim. We can see why it wouldnt work with Valheim. How in the hell could it work with Light No Fire?

[Nigerian Prince]

I thought this was going to be about how they failed to follow up on the initial game. Updates are few and far between and many clunk things still exist in the game from the start. This could have been an all time great game. Instead its just good.

[Steve]

Originally posted by FallenActual:

Just imagine if Valheim had embraced a dedicated server model and open-world RPG mechanics, allowing hundreds of players to explore, build, and battle together in a persistent, shared universe.

Every game that does this runs into massive bills and has to supplement with, usually, microtrans.

Ark: Survival Evolved had to shut down entirely and remake itself, forcing everyone who wanted that official, free community to buy the game again. Now it has PILES of microtrans. Wanna buy a shoulder pet that's also a flamethrower and instantly turns into the best land caving mount in the game? $5.

Meanwhile, No Man's Sky and Valheim both continue to put out high-quality free updates all without maintaining an official server system.

The cost simply isn't worth the few benefits gained for only a certain section of players.