Valheim - Viking Survival Game (Early Access)
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Bandwagon
Kolohe
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That's been my biggest letdown in these games so far. If I build a damn village, I want NPCs walking around it and going about their business like they would in GTA or Skyrim. I don't need them writing original poetry or anything, just more than a character model that performs 3 actions when aggroing and is otherwise a statue.
edit: It's also a $20 game that feels like it's worth $20. $60 for something like Conan is fucking bullshit in most cases, except for the occasional person like me that will actually get $60 worth out of it (and still bitch about how it's overpriced considering how incomplete it is)
meStevo
I think your wife's a bigfoot gus.
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Repair costs and dying to starvation... these two mechanics found in many of those games are stressful and they've been tossed out with great success in Valheim. If you want to just build you can ignore both of those things and enjoy what you have set out to do. It makes it the game more approachable and flexible than many survival games.
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I don't like most survival games, but enjoy this. My guess is it's a factor of many things
- Virtually bug free, low cost of entry in terms of required hardware
- It has a very easy to follow progression system
- There is no timer, you can progress at your own pace. Days counting mean nothing.
- The focus is on the journey, exploring and building, not PvP (certainly something that pushes many away from other survival games where you're put in a world with others that can grief you while you just want to do your own thing)
- You can do the entire thing solo. Might take a bit longer to farm things, but you certainly don't need to play with others. I am playing it solo and loving it.
- It features hardly anything "new" if at all, that other games don't already do. But it does everything well and tied together. Especially from an early access perspective.
- For the hours of content already in the game (at less than 1gb) it's very cheap.
- Hardly any hype beforehand. Sales are done mostly by word of mouth, not marketing.
- Shortcomings can be explained away with being early access from a small indie studio (5 people). Sure there could be "more", but that is coming. What is there though, works.
I think it dropped at the perfect time as well. With AAA releases lately that are outright broken, in comes a survival game passion project from a tiny studio that works like a charm even as a EA game. No massive patches needed to fix it to become playable. The base is there and it is good, as good in EA as most survival games take years to get to. It doesn't reinvent anything, but puts together a damn impressive package. What is coming is more content, not fixes.
Also Vikings.
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Kirun
Buzzfeed Editor
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Yeah, I guess that's really why at the end of the day. Vikings are the "in" thing now. The world/building system is definitely solid, but you get a similar or better experience in other modded survival games. Hell, even No Man's Sky has a better deformation/formation system IMO.
I've played probably 15+ open-world, "survival" type games. So, I've definitely been around the block with these types of games. This game just reeks of "have you heard the latest Britney Spears song!?!" syndrome.
It's definitely a "good" game, especially for $20, I just can't understand how the hell it's one of the best-selling Steam games of all-time when it doesn't really do anything different than plenty of games before it.
Yeah, Conan is a great example. That game has grinding, dungeons, bosses, and one of the better building systems on the market. Pets, mounts, all of it. Now, barrier/cost of entry is a little steeper, but it does a lot of things better than Valheim, it just doesn't have terrain deformation/formation and doesn't offer a "linear" style of progression. As much as people rail against it, Valheim has really made me question if people don't actually enjoy a decent amount of linearity to their games, because that's about the only thing somewhat "different" that it offers in comparison to most other large-scale, survival games.
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Quineloe
Ahn'Qiraj Raider
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You can put fires on horizontal core wood logs and later on a stone floor.
One thing I wish we had done differently: Just get a longship with our first iron haul and then take it from there. play like an actual viking. Man we wasted so much time carrying iron ore out of swamp. This is a longship storage:
Xevy
Log Wizard
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This is like the Classic WoW of Survival games. Easy to start, easy to follow, easy to finish. That's why it's so huge. A lot of survival games can be too brutal in too many aspects and tedious in several others. This is quick and easy and enjoyable the whole time through. You even have a helpful talking bird with your ! for quests to follow.
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Identikit
Redneck Pornographer
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Conan is in my opinion a much more rigid experience than Valheim. Valheim is a better experience, and as a result is more accessible.
I think people who are really into games wont like Valheim as much as a casual gamer though as a result. Perhaps this is where Conan has favor, as its systems kind of favor more hardcore players.
The only thing that a hardcore gamer is going to get out of valheim, is a shorter experience because the content ends eventually.
I think people who are really into games wont like Valheim as much as a casual gamer though as a result. Perhaps this is where Conan has favor, as its systems kind of favor more hardcore players.
The only thing that a hardcore gamer is going to get out of valheim, is a shorter experience because the content ends eventually.
Bandwagon
Kolohe
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Gravel
Mr. Poopybutthole
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I actually like Conan's build system better, but the not being punished for taking a wall down is probably the biggest difference.
In Conan, you could spend days building something and if you fuck up, sucks for you. In this, you get everything back unless it's bugged out.
In Conan, you could spend days building something and if you fuck up, sucks for you. In this, you get everything back unless it's bugged out.
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ili
Blackwing Lair Raider
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This game is gong to die off faster than Cyberpunk 2077. I give it a couple weeks until it's not in the top 20 steam games anymore. Really over hyped. Chopping wood and stone, building empty buildings is the majority of it's content. How many mob types are in the game less than 10? They priced it at $20 because they knew this, smart, and good for them.
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Caliane
Avatar of War Slayer
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i mean, people like structure.
A big thing for day9. he wants games games to give him goals. and yeah, hates sandboxes that just say. go. pretty sure kenshi, bannerlord etc, would drive him nuts.
Conan certainly had a number of flaws. the rental servers, pvp focus with SHITTY pvp. compared to here, we can also make some points on those "terraria elements".
conans resource allocation was kindof shit. almost haphazard. it was neither spread out to encourage allowing building based on flavor, nor located in key locations to create conflict or expeditions really.
idk about every location, but like the black forest enemy spawns does create a good dynamic here. its very Terraria like. enemies in Terraria constantly spawn in spawnable locations just outside of the screen. so you are constantly under attack. and when you get to resources you generally need to set up a quick base camp. (even if it just means walling yourself in to be safe.) but campfires, torches, etc yeah.
Again, conans decay system DISCOURAGES you from dropping torches, building roads, ladders, bridges, etc. when as a player, you really want to do that shit.
Here carts and the actual ability's to build roads, of course encourages it.
For camps in conan are just smelting, etc convenience. never really under threat.
its insane to me Terraria style progression is not in more games. especially survival yes. subnautica does it obviously, with depth, etc. but even beyond that, special loot from chests, bosses, farming, etc. even this game doesn't go nearly far enough in that regards. I want WAY more terraria style stuff in this. different color wood from diff biomes. i want the deer boss to drop 5 diff rare weapons. (the antler mace is great, more of that.), and so on. like the dungeons in this, should have some really cool unique items in their chests. but dont currently. and same with conan, lots of cool places where cool chests, with unique items could spawn.. yet..
base attacks actually happen here.. (dunno if they ever fixed that in conan) but uh, lets see. 213.4hours in conan according to steam. I had one of my bases raided exactly 1 time iirc, by 2 scorpions? and if im misremembering that, it was actually zero times.
Both games have lifeless bases. conans artificial thralls were a big disappointment. This one didnt even bother. I really like the settlement aspects of like fo4, kenshi, even terraria.
kindof fits in with the base attacks. having settlers, that you need to feed, defend, arm, etc is way more pleasing then just an empty base with crafting benches. and the more lifelike they are with entertainment, day/night cycles, jobs, etc, the better.
Kirun
Buzzfeed Editor
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Yeah, that's all fair and I'm certainly not speaking as if Conan is the pinnacle of survival games. The game certainly has had its share of problems, especially early on in its life. Purges are a great concept on paper, but their implementation is dogshit. It really makes thralls as "guards" a pointless waste of time and past the first 5 or so hours, your base is basically never under threat. I also agree that more games need to make base "editing" far less restrictive. I shouldn't be punished with losing materials because I accidently placed a wall tile backwards or something.
Like I said, Valheim is certainly a good game and definitely worth $20. I've just been trying to figure out what is "hooking" people to a game that has already been done 100 times prior, especially when some of those games handle these systems even better(and some worse, obviously). To make an analogy, imagine WoW has been released, it's during TBC, DAoC is just past its peak perhaps, Warhammer Online is out, Ultima has seen its heyday already, FFXIV has just come out, and EQ finally releases - that's what Valheim feels like to me. Certainly a good game, certainly something that people can find fun in, but at the end of the day, it just feels like I've already done this game 1000x and I'm kind of left wondering why I'm not just playing WoW.
I guess it is probably just the ease of access(similar to WoW), the complete lack of system requirements, and that people actually enjoy a LOT more linearity than they are willing to admit. The popularity of this game is showing me that people are really bad at setting their own goals within games and honestly want the game itself to set a lot of those goals for them/guide them. Despite bitching about the "themepark" aspect of so many games.
Erronius
Macho Ma'am
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This actually pissed me right the fuck off.
I just wanted to be able to break rocks to get them out of the fucking way, but I'm forced to kill some boss just to get access to pickaxes?
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Xerge
<Donor>
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