Over four years in early access

NTA, but Valheim has some of the faggiest modding communities. It's like minecraft

This game has so much potential, but holy shit the devs are lazy as fuck. And I'm not even talking about they take two years to release a new biome, I'm talking about how the game lacks so many extremely basic QoL features after so many years in development. Constantly having to rely on mods to fix these things for you is just an embarrassment.

And don't even get me started on the amount of time wasting mechanics in the game that are there just to inflate play time. The Mistlands being the worst offender, literally one of the worst zones in gaming history.

7 Days to Die was 10 years in early access so there's a lot of time to develop

1.0 is like half a year away
And they've said they don't plan on updating it any more past maybe some small things.
I'm kind of really put off from playing it any more. I feel like they're going to release the deep north and leave all the other unfinished shit unfinished.
I thought this game would be big one day but they never really capitalized on anything. They even skimped out on a ton of shit if you asked me. I feel like they're going to do the bare minimum and call it.
That sucks.

I really enjoyed some of my time with Valheim, far more than many other games, but I've come to realise it's over.

It was good when it was Meadows to Plains, though flawed because really Swamp and Mountain biomes were wrong. They were wrong because they're just difficult for the sake of difficulty, without difficulty for the sake of Fun.
You go into the Swamp and Mountains to get resources, fight enemies, and it's difficult and miserable, the environment + stamina and movement system fouls the experience but "it's worth it" because you have some shiny resources that you take back to your Real meadow base or plains base and it's there that you have Fun.
Even Black Forest, though difficult, is fun despite the hostility of the biome. There's a "way" to pacify any biome so you can build a base, but the Black Forest looks pretty and is atmospheric so not only do have a "way" you have a reason.
But there's no reason to build in the Swamp or Mountains because they're shit atmosphere, with frustrating movement and you get sexually harrassed by golems, abominations and incessantly spawning drakes.

Mistlands then Ashlands proved they've got a bad concept for the game because they basically made 2 more biomes where you constantly feel "I hope I get to fucking leave this shit hole soon". Ashlands at least looked cool. Mistlands looked... uhhh like mist??? I can't fucking see the fucking game you swucks

risk drowning at sea to mine chitin off this thing

only used for harpoons and a mid-tier dagger

Ocean update cancelled btw. No refunds.

modding communities

I've been playing and modding this game for years and I've never come into contact with any "modding communities". I declare a skill issue.

Did they really cancel the ocean update lmao I wouldn't be surprised they're so fucking lazy it's crazy.

Yeah, the plains are quite barren. You could say they're quite plain. I suggest we add roving caravans, a heat stroke meter, meteor strikes, giant moles, bushfires, indians, farmers, cowboys, coyotes, a fatigue meter, rainstorms and floods and a seasonal climate, just to begin with.

Rant continue:
I like copper mining. I like mining a vein trying to extract precious ores, I love the dwarf lifestyle, I even like building a temporary palisade around the copper node to prevent greyniggers spawning behind me every 2 seconds. And I even like how it's so heavy that you can't carry it all but hey guess what, there's a cart you can build to carry it back to your base! And I even like how the cart is difficult to navigate because hey guess what you can clear a road with an axe and hoe to make cart-traversing easier!

TOO BAD COPPER IS FUCKING USELESS.
TOO BAD EVERY FUCKING BIOME AFTER BLACK FOREST PREVENTS USING THE CART.
TOO BADE I NEVER GET TO MINE ANYTHING AGAIN.

But don't worry, you can ride a Lox :)
TOO BAD IT'S FUCKING USEL-

4 years

Add 10 years to that

Not explicitly.
The release of the 'deep north' biome is going to mark the full 1.0 version of the game, despite an ocean biome update being on previous roadmaps.
There's basically no chance they're going to do a big update after that point.

Does 7D2D feel like it's 1.0 though? Sounds like the devs pushed that out for a cash injection since they're still trying to add major features after the fact.

Iterative design that just pushes as much shit as possible for the next update to stay in the news.
This past update should have focused exclusively on renovating and rebalancing the existing content. There's absolutely no reason to play on anything below 2.5x resource drops with how utterly asinine the crafting reqs are. There's a considerable meta in just outright skipping bronze and iron armor because of how long you'll spend hauling ore otherwise.

The game needs more minibosses, and it needs events that aren't just trolls showing up and bashing your shit into dust while you're afk. I have no idea how Terraria perfected this formula over a decade ago and retards still insist on reinventing the wheel.

That's all true I don't get why they don't rebalance a ton of shit. A lot of new additions over the years have made me really question the direction they're going with the game. There's such a limited variety of gear to choose from depending on where you're at in the game and although its definitely a harder game to terraria and there's a learning curve, the moment you grasp the flow of the game you realize how tight the experience really is in how limiting it becomes and how certain things clash with each other.
Some items feel utterly fucking useless. They could definitely solve some of these issues by adding more upgrade tiers or cross-tier upgrading like making the serpent shield better with a new harder enemy's scale and give it a red sheen something like that you know
But they're not even that creative. The bog witch has literally been the best thing they've added but it still feels like the game is really incomplete content-wise.
I don't think the deep north is going to fix any of the early-game issues with it.

I think the clearest suggestions I could make to "fix" the game for me are

Add side-gear like you said: each biome/tier should have multiple options to playthrough, because at the moment there really is only 1 fighting style per biome (it's usually wearing heaviest armour available and a particular damage-type weapon, ie. mace, + bow for support)

Break-up 'progression' from biomes: put hard dungeons or spawn areas in low-tier biomes, put easy areas in high-tier biomes; have high tier resources harvested from low-tier biomes, but only with a key available at high-tier biomes

makes skills do something, therefore character build means something. At the moment the only thing that matters is your tier of equipment and tier of food and that is extremely linear

I didn't know there was supposed to be an ocean update.

Nobody, not one single person, enjoys sailing to get iron, getting maybe like 60 pieces (of which you need hundreds for your full set) putting it in a boat, sailing back, smelting, and repeat for literal hours

I do, it's pretty comfy. I like the voyage and forcing me to actually explore and build ships and outposts

pussy niggers itt havent done a no map no portal run like the everloving faggots that they are and it shows

I genuinely believe the devs hate their game and its players, and made the Mistlands to force players to soft-rage quit it:

1. Right out of the gate, it has a very steep difficulty increase. On its own it's bearable and nothing crazy.
2. The higher difficulty wasn't enough? How about some dogshit fog that drastucally limits your vision? That sounds fun, right?
3. You want to see a feet more in front of you in the fog? How about this trash wisp that uses the same slot as the megingjord, and now you're also constantly overencumbered.
4. But wait, there's even more, how about we make the terrain a nightmare to navigate too? As if this shit biome wasn't bad enough. Even the feather cape and jumping potions can't save you.
NOW THE REAL GRIND BEGINS
5. You want to grow Mistlands crops at your main Meadows base? Too bad, fuck you! Like the Plains, you will have to make a farm in the Mistlands to be able to grow these crops.
6. Don't forget about resource mining, it's here too, and it's called soft tissue that you mainly find inside giant skulls, and in lesser quantities in wodden boxes and as dvergr drop.

Continue...

7. But if one resource wasn't enough, you will also have to collect fucking sap from yggdrasil.
8. And to collect sap, you will have to find dvergr extractors scattered around this shit biome, and fuck you, you won't be able to teleport these extractors through portals. And dobule fuck you becase the dvergr will attack you if you break the crate containing the extractor, unless you cheese it with a cart which you have to drag from far away because the ward at dvergr outposts prevent building near it.
9. As if that wasn't enough, to extract the sap you have craft a sap extractor with the dvergr extractor and a bunch of metal that also can't be teleported.
10. Oh there's more, you gonna need black metal, that can't be found in the Mistlands. So, go back to your fucking base, grab some black metal and sail all over again to the Mistlands to craft these dogshit extractors.
11. We're not done yet. Now that you have soft tissue and sap, you gonna have to build an eitr refinery to convert these two materials to refined eitr.
12. And to be build an eitr refinery, you gonna need these black cores that can only be found in these cancerous dungeons called infested mines. Ant these black cores are rare.
13. Once you have your eitr refinery, don't forget that it shoots magic projectiles in all directions, damaging most structures at your base. So, build it in an especial enclosure.
14. With your refined eitr you can finally craft new gear... right? No, you need to first build the new workbenches: black forge and galfr table. Back to the mines to farm more fucking black cores. Don't forget to alsobuild the updates for these workbenches.
15. Now that you have better gear, you can finally take on the Queen! But wait, you didn't find her vegsivir with her location inside the mines? Go back to searching for new mines for literal weeks until you find it. Unless you're a pussy and use an external site to find her location on your seed.

What's their problem?

I've seen this happen with a lot of early access games and indie studios in general. They go from broke college students, barely making enough to afford rent and groceries to suddenly being flush with cash. Their focus goes from solely game development, to trying to enjoy their cash while begrudgingly finishing the game. That kind of overnight success can effect people if they've never experienced it before. I'm sure there are people on the team who are saying why not just end it so we can all go our separate ways? After Valheim exploded in popularity, they were no longer under the gun to make a good game. It's already sold the majority of the copies its ever going to sell. Now it's just a chore they have to finish. If an early access game explodes in popularity there's nothing stopping the devs from fucking off with the money.
Early access is a scam in and of itself, you are beta testing a game for free. In a larger game studio this would be the quality assurance part of the dev cycle and the playtesters would be paid. It also leads to games morphing into things they were never intended to be because the playtesters are now a community providing feedback and a small minority of vocal players dictates the direction of the game rather than the game devs, compromising artistic vision. Minecraft is a good example of this where the game initially was more like a tower defense but became a simulation over time due to community feedback. Another is Cube World, where after the initial success of the alpha the dev completely retooled the game changing the engine.

I dropped the game in the swamp because of the mind numbing grind
You have to be insane to keep playing this trash game past the swamp

dropped that piece of shit the moment the Enshrouded devs started banging out updates every few months with new biomes/content/QOL, if Valheim didnt come out during the corona giga slump that shit would have been burried hard, what a waste of my time

Mistlands is unironically more fun with nomap + no portals

Only 4 years later! Wowee!
I enjoy Valheim but come on dude. These vacation taking fucks don't deserve your defense.

I only played a bit of valheim with 4 other friends
My suspicion is that all this shit is tuned specifically for multiplayer. 5 people autistically planning together, making outposts, progressing different things, building and conquering shit, having a lot of people focus different tasks to assure some basic resources like food arent something most playere are concerned about, etc. Playing the game solo must be such a gigantic chore for a lot of these goals, even when modding out stuff like metal teleports

EA

that's cute
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miegakure#Development

I simply build more and more bases and structures as I adventure. I usually build all new forges and shops outside each swamp.

And they've said they don't plan on updating it any more past maybe some small things.

If that's true it's very based. I'm sick of these early access games that """get finished""" but still end up with months/years of major overhauls.

but even when compared to all previous biomes, the absurd increase in grinding in the mistlands is just insane, it makes no sense
at least to me, the game was bearable until the plains, but the mistlands really tries to make you hate the game

Not defending the devs, as early access bullshit can eat my dick, but you are aware that it's trivially easy to mod the game to your exact liking, right?

Except Zomboid is actually complete and the dev just likes to continue working on his game. The absolute opposite of Valheim devs.

Valheim is shit, the only good parts are base building and terrain deformation

Yeah. In the Ashlands, they tuned down the grind a lot, but the combat is considerably more oppressing than Mistlands'. Enemies will be constantly coming to you non-stop.
I prefer Ashlands despite the combat being almost obnoxiously hard.

That's European devs for you. Work ethic nonexistent.

sailing sucks
nothing ever happens
you just set a course and then alttab

5 years post-release

still no equipment slots, gear's just equipped in your fucking inventory

Nothing wrong with that desu.

The initial 4 biomes and gameplay loop are perfect.
Mistlands and Ashlands were tedious unfun bullshit that the devs decided to base around the worst parts of the game.

NEVER trust Swedish indie devs

t. Swede

Ashlands pre-patch was retarded, you finish one mob and turn around and there was another. Then you move back 5m and another one spawns where you'd just cleared the last one out.

And still no build templates. Swamping between mage and melee built is fucking aids.

no map run

pointless when the view distance is so low, you can't reasonably create or follow distant landmarks due to how quickly things fade out of rendering

In its current state, enemy spawn rate in the Ashlands is already aids, I can't even imagine how awful it would if it were higher.