I gotta dig back into my first run. Was having a blast but hit distracted when shiny new games stole my attention. It’s been… years since I was jamming on this. Tried booting up the other day and I’m so lost hahaha.
Nothing like coming back into an RPG after extended hiatus like “wait wtf was I doing?”
I figured the game was abandoned, to be honest. Their updates have been unreasonably slow and what little they did release was insultingly barebones. With how much money they made during their unexpected COVID success, you’d think your first order of business would be hiring a top notch PM and experienced devs to keep your development on track.
Edit: I want to add that Enshrouded, in my opinion, seems like what I had hoped Valheim would develop into with more time.
I love valheim but there are things that keep me from putting serious time into it that i just cant figure out. Its probably a bunch of little nitpicky things. Mods help for sure with that. Saying that i have about 70 hours in enshrouded and am about 2/3 “complete”. And am loving every minute. Its gets out of its own way and pretty much lets you do what you want. Im an old fart gamer and prefer a slower casual pace in this genre. Enshrouded ticks that for me
It’s a matter of taste. I got bored of Enshrouded after 20 hours (which is decent, and worth its money), but Valheim is easily one of my all time favourites. I find it a lot more rewarding.
I played solo deep into mistlands and now I’m rediscovering it together with a friend.
I think the devs have a pretty healthy attitude, really. Sure, they take their sweet time, but I prefer that over half-assed rush jobs and selling out. The last updates were also absolutely great and the game gets better and better. It’s in early access since forever, but it is more balanced, polished and refined than 90% of fully released games out there. And it doesn’t feel hollow after twenty hours either. It will keep fucking you up, even after hundreds of hours. It’s an absolute gem and I don’t really care if it takes them three more years to finish it…
If you consider taking 4+ years for 1 biome expansion and a few other smaller content updates to be a reasonable development cadence, you are definitely welcome to have that opinion.
To me that’s reasonable if it means the devs get to have a life and get to make something they really love. And it’s definitely reasonable given the fact that I paid fifteen euro’s for hundreds of hours of fun. They definitely do not owe me more, quite the opposite, really.
Okay but I don’t think you can just assert that this is a binary without much more information. Would hiring more devs and a PM with the gobs of money they made cause any additional crunch? Obviously at extreme ends, it would, but I don’t think anyone is suggesting that. For what it’s worth, I like Valheim too, but they absolutely did not end up maintaining the huge amount of hype they had. That may have been intentional, but it cost them.
They made the game with a small team and apparently they want to finish it with a small team. I kind of respect the fact that they didn’t want to go (much) bigger, just because there was a lot of hype and money. And I also respect the fact that they don’t seem to care that it “cost them”.
If you want game development to be less about money, this is a pretty good example of what that could look like. It’s not the most efficient way of doing things, you are definitely right about that, but it’s great. And given what they have delivered so far, I think it’s hard to complain. There is a ridiculous amount of gameplay, for a low price. And everyone who bought it knows that it is unfinished.
Oh for sure, I don’t disagree. If this is what they want, power to them! I’m also a developer, so I completely understand it. As a consumer though, I am not obligated to like their game more for it, and Valheim looks to me like a lot of potential I would have otherwise consumed left nonexistent and money/hours I would have spent on their game not happening. That’s all I’m saying. It’s totally fine if they read that and say “that’s okay!”.
and what little they did release was insultingly barebones
I mean OTOH for those who bought it, the content there at the time was worth the money asked. Sure it was somewhat barebones but the game is also cheap-ish and if you get a bunch of cool hours out of it with friends, well worth.
In an age where everyone rags on live service games that will inevitably lose support, a cheap, fun, well made, feature complete game (and was that way on release) that gets infrequent updates is “abandoned” and “insultingly barebones”. Classic 2024 gamer moment right there
It’s not feature complete, though? The store page literally says Early Access, and within that description the devs explain what is missing and their rough estimate for how much time is left before version 1.0…
Sorry, should say I mean feature complete in a relative sense. Ie, some EA games are essentially tech demos, and you’re funding a theoretical game when you buy. If those games stopped getting updates, you’re left with a mostly empty unreal engine project, not a full video game.
Valheim was a full video game on day one. A buddy and I played many hours when it first came out and thoroughly enjoyed it. If no updates came out, I might have felt like there was some unmet potential, but I certainly wouldn’t have been insulted. Bottom line, take away the roadmap, I still see a great game with enough going for it to stand on its own.
What is the current state of the Early Access version?
“Most planned core features of the game have been implemented. Single-player and multiplayer modes are fully functional and we have a separate dedicated server tool if you want a server running 24/7. There are currently six fully developed biomes out of a planned total of eight (plus the Ocean). There are hundreds of different items (weapons, materials, armor etc) in the game, to be found or crafted by the player. We have over 200 building pieces, and about 50 different types of creatures including monsters, animals and bosses.”
It sounds like the game’s getting Ashlands plus one more biome, but not much for new features. So depending on your definition of feature complete it’s at least pretty close anyways. From this point on it’s theoretically more of the same.
I’m pretty much on the same page as you, although I started playing a couple months ago with a couple friends. The game is obviously not abandoned, and it’s a pretty full game even with more to come. We finally built a hot tub on the weekend and I don’t know how I’m supposed to expect more from this game than chilling in a tub with your naked viking bros.
This is literally the first major update since Mistlands was on the docket at the time it blew up. To call the updates merely infrequent is an understatement. They were going fairly strong until they made an unexpected butt load of money and they themselves said they didn’t know how to handle the success.
What? It’s literally an Early Access game, of course we expect them to add more to the game when the devs themselves have said numerous times that the game is incomplete. I’m done responding to replies though, as it appears some folks are beginning to take personal offense and insulting me for criticizing a god damn videogame.
Need some help? I know of some body snatcher groups that exist out there but I’ll offer my own help. I can’t promise it’ll go swimmingly, but I’ve at least beat the queen (in a group of 5)
I went into this game in VR not knowing it was soft horror and had to stop a little after the tposing dude showing up on the scanner. Watched a speed run after because I needed closure lol.
TL’DW? It’s >1 hour, and would probably be <5 minutes read as an article.
(edit)
Well, got this rather generic description of the game itself out of Gemini at least:
Scanner Sombre is a walking simulator with horror and desolation elements made by Introversion Software, a UK based indie developer. The game centers around exploring caves with a laser gun that shoots in random directions. The laser gun creates a color gradient on the visor to map the contours of the cave and reveal the player’s surroundings.
The caves are shrouded in darkness and the only light comes from the player’s laser gun. The sound design is important to the feeling of isolation as the player can hear their own footsteps and the constant whine of the laser gun. There are also strange apparitions that show up on the visor, adding to the creepy atmosphere.
The player character, Ethan, is trapped in a cave and doomed to relive his journey forever. He descended into the caves to explore ancient ruins but never made it out. The upgrades the player finds throughout the game are actually downgrades that Ethan experiences on his journey downwards.
The story for the game was added after the main development process was finished and some aspects of the storytelling are not well thought out. Scanner Sombre was not a commercial success and Introversion Software did not make another game for seven years.___
I’m really not a fan of the trend for really long video essays, especially since it’s almost always padding and repeating similar points.
Anything up to 25 mins is usually fine, but 35+ is in the realm of ‘I’ll add it to Watch Later but never bother watching it’ and over an hour I’m just going to keep scrolling
I’m going to whip out my 12 hour Oblivion retrospective that I watched in one sitting as evidence to the contrary to support his point: This video is padding, it’s very slow and it doesn’t really get to that many points.
It is OK to criticize media, even if you enjoyed it. This video seems to be long-form for the sake of being long-form, not because it has a lot of ground to cover. I don’t particularly care, it mostly ran in the background, but it’s a legitimate criticism.
I’ve also personally noticed that I tend to click off 10-minute videos in 2 minutes if they don’t get to a point or say something interesting, because the trend is that it’s pushing for time to keep you engaged to show you more ads and it’s a huge waste of my time. Whatever that video eventually gets around to saying could’ve been a twitter post.
ChadCat is a channel I discovered recently that does “ADHD versions” of different popular YouTuber’s videos. They’re all under a minute with a quick text recap of what was talked about in the video. I honestly really love this channel and it’s quickly become one of my all-time favorites.
I’m not trying to advocate for short form content/media, but this person takes 10 minutes+ long videos and cuts them down to about 20-40 seconds. They’ll do video essays too.
I guess you and I just have different tastes. I don’t think I’ve watched 1 hour+ videos that were just repeating, but the only ones I’ve watched that are that long are Dan Olson and Super Eyepatch Wolf.
With those I intend to watch half now and watch half later, but end up engaged enough to just watch them through in a single sitting
This is some exciting news! Years ago I got interested in making my own game and went through many of his tutorials to get a handle on Unity. Eventually I lost interest and stopped working on it. After hearing about Godot I had gotten interested in trying again but never got around to even installing the software. Maybe this will finally get me motivated to get back into it!
Hope difficulty scaling isn’t as crazy as mistlands. Many painful corpse runs. Had to cheese a lot of the area which just felt cheap and I put the game down without even fighting that boss. Just didn’t sound fun if it was like the rest of mistlands
If you’re talking about Unity and Godot, the main difference is that one tried to scam their customers by unilaterally changing the terms of contract and requesting an asinine amount of money based on downloads (not purchases) of games made with the engine, without even having a system in place to keep track of them.
Haven’t really used them but the main thing I’ve heard is that Godot is a lot simpler to use, especially for 2D games. With Godot you can also use many different languages, while Unity only supports C#. I’ve heard that Godot’s 3D engine isn’t as fully fleshed out as Unity’s though. I’ve seen complaints about the lighting engine, for example.
This is fantastic news, he’s released so many high quality tutorials. Very happy he’s returned and love he’s focused on Godot. It’s past time for everyone to stop helping self serving corpos, they can go create their own supporting materials.
While waiting for Brackeys’s Godot tutorials. Maker Tech has a series of Godot actionRPG game tutorial that is quite easy to follow. I understand Godot more because of her tutorial. www.youtube.com/
Blame gamers for embracing every single greedy move and asking for more. If you shout how fucked up this is and still open your wallet, you are the problem.
Another issue, those people aren’t on here. Or reddit. We’re preaching to the choir and idk what to do outside of standing outside of a Gamestop and trying to lecture people about MTX, but that seems like a good way to get ignored or beat up.
Gamers aren’t a monolith. I’m not going to blame the people who appreciate gaming as an art form when the problem is the people who will buy the latest Madden and Cod games every year
I’m sure there are cases where someone is spending money they shouldn’t, or they know better, but we have to acknowledge that a lot of tactics used are the same predatory strategies that take advantage of human addiction. I don’t think people should gamble, or bet on sports but that shit is everywhere, and it’s normalized. It’s no wonder why so many people fall into it because they don’t think it’s dangerous.
We can scream at people and tell them to stop, but that’s not a real solution, at least I don’t see how that really works. A predatory studio puts out a game that people want to play, then if it fails because people don’t buy enough, they just shut everything down and cancel the content, even when people want it. I think there examples of this happening now.
The biggest portion of people buying this stuff aren’t “gamers” in the way that it’s often used around these circles. It’s the millions of people who buy coins for their Bejeweled clone of choice and have never owned a console in their life. And there’s so many new kids entering gaming all the time who have never known a better world. I remember a Twitch streamer talking about how heartbreaking it was when AC6 came out and gave you the full color wheel plus multiple channels to customize your mech, and their chat was full of kids shocked that you didn’t have to buy skins or color packs. That’s how it used to be. You’d unlock skins by playing the game, not buying them in the store, but that hasn’t been the case in decades now.
And the often touted story of the whale with more money than sense is a myth. Do they exist? Sure. But the vast majority of money coming from mtx from gamers is from people who are psychologically vulnerable to addiction/gambling and people with a poor ability to comprehend finances like kids. These companies have hired psychologists to tell them how to best extract money from your wallet by probing your brain in just the right way. From lootboxes to battle passes and seasonal content to daily quests and washing money through funny money currencies, it’s all been designed to prey upon people with addiction issues, ADHD, training young kids into gambling addicts, etc. It’s the Lotto tickets and pumping extra oxygen into the air of casinos and making sure there’s no natural light in there so you don’t realize how long you’ve been playing slots of the gaming world. Look at WoW, with its daily quests. They train players using Skinner Box techniques to continue logging into the game and paying the monthly subscription long after they’ve stopped enjoying it because it’s become a habit and they are afraid of falling behind.
Voting with your wallet isn’t going to fix it. You’ll never get your average Facebook mom to care enough not to buy Farmville tokens or whatever, and these companies will never stop abusing psychology on their own. Only industry regulation will stop this.
And there’s so many new kids entering gaming all the time who have never known a better world.
That’s the real big issue here, IMO: The North Korea approach. Kids are starting to become able to spend money who were indoctrinated with this. Because to them it’s the north. It’s just a part of this entertainment that you continuously spend small amounts of cash. To them it’s normality.
What’s the saying? Something like, “There’s plenty of fools in the game, and there’s a new one born every minute.”
I feel like the casual mobile gaming crowd falls into the same category. Regardless of how old they are, spending money on mtx is normal because they never knew a world where you just bought a game rather than downloading one onto your phone and putting up with both ads and mtx.
It’s like how words like “unalive” have entered common usage - people have gotten so used to obeying what advertisers want on the internet that it’s started dictating daily life, especially for younger people.
The unregulated gambling aspect designed to exploit human psychology to target vulnerable people to spend money that they probably can’t afford to spend is also a huge issue, but that at least would be easy enough to regulate, if politicians cared enough to do something about it.
Thank you kindly for your good write-up. If you were to permit it I would like to use excerpts of this in slightly rephrased forms in similar future discussions.
These companies have hired psychologists to tell them how to best extract money from your wallet by probing your brain in just the right way.
Those are the real criminals! With all the good they could have done in today’s society, choosing to use their knowledge and training to manipulate people against their best interest is just the worst!
Don’t forget that they were hired by companies looking to make a profit off of exploiting the psychology of people and that the blame also lies with those who hired them for those jobs.
The same companies who have fought tooth and nail to prevent regulation to protect those exploited by these practices when politicians have actually cared enough to try to do something about it.
The „gamer“ label has become sort of redundant given the industry is much bigger than movies and music combined now. They‘re just consumers and no matter what silly decisions some of them make, they need protection from certain practices for the good of all of us. Just blaming a small portion of them doesn‘t help us out of any mess.
Vote with your wallet means people with more money get more votes than you do. MTX does not target people at large, they are fishing for the small amount of whales for whom money is no object. It ruins gaming for the rest of us.
There is a reason industries get regulated. Swill milk killed a ton of babies, and sold like hot cakes.
I played multiple supercell games (coc, bb, cr, be) for years, each, without paying a dime. They were well polished and fun games, and I got to play them for free.
I also really enjoy foetnite. Again, well polished. I play for free.
Will I ever compete at the highest level? No. And omg I’ll never own all the skins! Lol But I’ve had plenty of fun, because other people will pay the game makers for me. This is fantastic, as far as I’m concerned.
Sure, mtx can be implemented terribly, but I’ve also benefitted from it’s implementation as well.
You playing for free illustrates my point perfectly. You are there to provide entertainment for whales who actually pay for the game. The deal is that you get some entertainment of your own so that you stay around. But the game is not made for you, and that becomes apparent every time the owner puts the screws on to extract some more money.
I get your point, but I disagree because they need me for the whales, so the game has to also be made for the non whales as well. The payment system is made for extracting money from whales.
But really I was responding to the claim that it was ruined for me. And I find that to be the exact opposite: I care about having fun playing a well polished game, and now can do that for free. It’s like the opposite of being ruined.
Up to a point. I mean they have to get a large player base still and if by and large gamers just didn’t pre-order and buy the latest fucking re-hashed, yearly version of COD, I doubt just the whales would be enough to sustain them since whales only get gratification of pay to win against other people.
I mean look at some of the latest rounds of shitty GaaS. Suicide squad, Marvel avengers. No playerbase, not enough whales to sustain.
MTX is also aiming for kids stealing thier parents credit cards and charging them up. At a minimum they ask ONLY for game credits for Xmas/bdays to burn on games so they have cool skins to brag to friends about.
Let’s blame the consumer for buying something they like, and not the system of capitalism for it’s inevitable march to enshittification which happens across all industries amirght?
Yeah I love Gabi but it hurts that she doesn’t even seem to question whether or not she should stop buying these games. Like, I get that you love Pokemon but you acknowledge yourself that this shit isn’t going to change if people keep buying this shit.
The gamers?! I don’t hear anyone saying they want loot boxes. This is 100 percent the devs and the companies that put all the best loot behind the loot boxes. Good games such as FFXIV, does not.
Yo not gonna lie kinda vibe with this comment. I love gaming as an art and a social activity but it’s also the “sand I bury my head in”. I’m currently on a Factorio playthrough that I started purely as a distraction for my latest bout of depression.
And I do also agree greed has ruined a lot more “important” things than gaming.
But also, no need to shame people for wanting something they love to be free from corporate greed. Be cool friend.
Maybe game developers should wake up and understand that people like to be able to customize their characters cosmetically and not just click to slash over and over and over again.
You want consumers to spend money based on how much effort you put into a product instead of how appealing it is to the consumer? Newsflash, that’s not how capitalism works.
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