Originally posted by Lil brekky:

A handful of my experienced gamer friends gave up on the game as soon as they did the math on the Bronze grind. The first bronze bar is REALLY exciting. The 20th and 40th Bronze bars are exciting, because you're unlocking entirely new mechanics. The 200th bronze bar is not, especially when it takes longer and longer to get more bronze as you scrape out the nearby zone, and the benefit is less and less substantial AND less and less qualitative (VERY minor numerical upgrades that do not scale with the cost). I suspect most of my other friends would have also given up if I hadn't coached and motivated them through it.

The crafting numbers are simply wrong. 90 minute voyage last night netted me 100 Silver, which was enough to... upgrade two weapons to Level 4, ~10 damage each. The cost:benefit ratio on that is frankly insane. It costs more because it's "the max level" but it doesn't change anything substantially more than the cheaper upgrades. Imagine my frustration if that long voyage left me 1 Silver short.

The problem is worse when multiplied by worldgen RNG. Some worlds will have a much harder time grinding through ores than others. Heck, different runs on the same world can vary radically, but it's not GOOD variance. it's a difference of, "Player A can easily find a lot of what they're looking for nearby," vs. "Player B will need a dozen hours more because they randomly explored a different (wrong) direction". The variance is strictly better/worse, which is bad variance.

Anyway, that's my $.02 on why the dropout rate on this game is high.

That makes sense, but I think then too many people got caught up on getting more bronze without trying to progress. Me and my brother play together, and I do most the mining. I got us each lvl 2 -lvl 3 gear, fairly easily, then we beat the elder and started on the iron. After you get to iron bronze is basically useless besides some crafting. I think too many people are trying to max out nronze gear too much, as you only need like lvl 2 ♥♥♥♥, then iron is wayyy better.

I feel like most of the games progression is just gear yourself up just enough to start the next "age" and see what else you can do. It seems too many people just get "scared" or bored but dont realize theres so much to do, AND so many ways to take out enemies.

Like once you get iron Trolls are like nothing, and defending your base takes like a stack or 2 of stone to build and earth wall OR just a pickaxe and make a trench.

We put a wall 50% around the base and a trench around the rest. The game has gotten way easier. The first time you encounter a new enemy its tough, but once you find out what they are weak to the game becomes more simple.

In conclusion some people seem to enjoy the chill base building and nothing more. While others prefer a lil grind and progression.

Originally posted by Lil brekky:

This is true. But then you have an even worse problem -

So options to craft/upgrade have been made available to the player, and the game is linear, so the players gonna want to get "all the content" and the dev will probably want them to do that, too. Turns out the costs increase massively with each Level+ of upgrade. But because the content is simply there the player will and should feel somewhat obligated to perfect their gear. In order to add "interest" or something, devs decided to make each tier of upgrade for each item have wildly varied and always increasing costs, without wildly varied and increasing improvements...

Then the linearity comes in. Previous tier+all upgrades = totally obsolete, I think by just a few points in the case of armour (except maybe in the rare case that corpse run needs a boost). This stings twice as much if the player was pursuing really costly upgrades, which it just... seems wrong to tell player not to do. You can't even display armour, and devs stated no plans to do this for current roadmap, which just seems really strange.

Basically, costs need to be proportional to upgrades. This can be done by either (1) fixing upgrade costs or, more excitingly, (2) having upgrades confers benefits to gear other than just # improvments (resistances, set bonus tag, etc.). You could even have upgrade trees for gear. This makes crafting a real ADVENTURE! "This is my Poison resist bronze mail that is really good for Swamps," "This leather helmet has Deer Antlers and does JUST enough counter damage to kill a Deathsquito so I bring it to the Plains," etc. All the old gear can have niche purpose this way.

Alternatively, maybe the devs want obsolete gear and useless upgrades because they intend for the game to be a linear experience... which is fine... but a lot less interesting by the 3rd/4th playthrough for me, and for my friends, before the game even really began

This all makes sense and I agree to an extent. (I'm gonna compare this game with Minecraft so bear with me please)

In MC once you are able to get the next best ore the rest become irrelevant as they are weaker, PLUS you cant "upgrade" armor in MC. BUT MC has ENCHANTING, which changes things up a bit, especially with armor enchants that enable certain abilities.

Valheim already has elements of magic and potions. So why not add something that does what MC did?

See I think what the devs did wrong was make all these different "crafting stations" and added limitations to them. In MC you can make a "station" make what you need and go off. But in valheim EVERY station needs to be near you to do thing pertaining to said material.
Adding an "enchantment station" would just be ANOTHER thing you need to clutter up an area and move with you.

What Valheim needs is to streamline the crafting/building stations and add more things like enchanting. Because I feel as if they backed themselves into a corner with these stations and risk losing players because there are too many.

Originally posted by Lil brekky:

Originally posted by the other blue guy:

In MC once you are able to get the next best ore the rest become irrelevant as they are weaker, PLUS you cant "upgrade" armor in MC. BUT MC has ENCHANTING, which changes things up a bit, especially with armor enchants that enable certain abilities.

Valheim already has elements of magic and potions. So why not add something that does what MC did?

See I think what the devs did wrong was make all these different "crafting stations" and added limitations to them. In MC you can make a "station" make what you need and go off. But in valheim EVERY station needs to be near you to do thing pertaining to said material.
Adding an "enchantment station" would just be ANOTHER thing you need to clutter up an area and move with you.

I think the nearby statioin upgrades thing makes a fun little basebuilding puzzle which I think the game wants to and should try to motivate players to do.

For an Enchanter's Table, we already have it: The Alchemist's Table. it just needs the recipes and it's good to go!

Yeah but I havent even heard of that table until now.. thats a really late game item. All the hours I have in the game are from one world, and i've just gotten to the mountains. In MC the enchantment table can be made fairly quickly (the ore progression isnt gated by bosses/biomes).

Now that im thinking of it, I think my main gripe is that the game is linear. Im so used to survival games being so free and open, that when Ive got on Valheim im just expecting that. But I dont mind it, and its definitely why so many stop at the BF

You need 2 to 3 nodes of Copper and Silver only, Black Metal is that plentiful that after a while you start to leave it where you killed the Goblin, so that leaves Iron .. that's the one that you will need to have lots of.
Some games you find are not for you, players come and go in every type of game, it's obvious that the Developers did something right for the amount of units sold was huge.

There are forums about the other areas, but I think there's a few reasons that T1-T2 and going into T3 tend to be the most common. Newer players are more likely to struggle since they haven't learned a whole lot yet and meadows/black forest is where you start out. The black forest may not be the hardest but it is where many new players encounter their first struggles (especially with how misleadingly easy deer jesus is compared to the elder and the other bosses). It's also when many experience their first dungeons, which can also be unforgiving to the unprepared (and sometimes the prepared but unlucky). Compound that with the bronze age grind and the black forest is not the greatest experience for many new players. Then they finally work through that grind and realize that the swamp is one of the steepest learning curves so far in the game but assume it's going to continue the grind (especially after hearing how much iron they might actually need) and I imagine the end of black forest leading into swamp is where most who do give up on the game, decide to do so.

Meanwhile those who do enjoy the game and stick with it continue to learn and adapt and while they may still encounter problems they are also better prepared to deal with those issues so we hear less about it. That and obviously those who do quit earlier on, never get to see these areas in order to post about them. When they do encounter an issue, it's usually something they can also easily look up (like the most common I see for mountain is how to find silver, face large packs of wolves, or beat moder) and they are experienced enough to just do so instead of making a new forum thinking their struggle is unique to them. By later game usually the unique posts involve building, strategies they believe they discovered before others, or sharing interesting moments caused by RNG which are a bit rarer than the frustrations of first figuring out how to play or progress. There's also the potential that the players who are farther along may not want to "spoil" too much for newer players. Sure there isn't much of a story to spoil but a lot of the fun comes from being surprised by your own explorations so hearing about those experiences before you get there can seem somewhat spoiling to some as well.

Originally posted by RequiemsRose:

Meanwhile those who do enjoy the game and stick with it continue to learn and adapt and while they may still encounter problems they are also better prepared to deal with those issues so we hear less about it.

We hear less of the struggle and more of "whoa that was cool" or "did you guys know about this?"

Refer back to my original post on this thread.

I'm in the swamp and its dreary. Never been a fan of undead or never seeing any sun in there, I'm content with them just raiding my base. I can see the dreariness of the swamp finishing off some gamers who thought they had just made some progress by getting through the Black Forest.

I do the swamp in bits and pieces and just go hunt deer/boars and neck in the meadows which I find relaxing. Gives me a chance to have some sunny days. Lord knows it rains enough in this game.

survivorship bias: those that run into issues make the most posts

A handful of my experienced gamer friends gave up on the game as soon as they did the math on the Bronze grind. The first bronze bar is REALLY exciting. The 20th and 40th Bronze bars are exciting, because you're unlocking entirely new mechanics. The 200th bronze bar is not, especially when it takes longer and longer to get more bronze as you scrape out the nearby zone, and the benefit is less and less substantial AND less and less qualitative (VERY minor numerical upgrades that do not scale with the cost). I suspect most of my other friends would have also given up if I hadn't coached and motivated them through it.

The crafting numbers are simply wrong. 90 minute voyage last night netted me 100 Silver, which was enough to... upgrade two weapons to Level 4, ~10 damage each. The cost:benefit ratio on that is frankly insane. It costs more because it's "the max level" but it doesn't change anything substantially more than the cheaper upgrades. Imagine my frustration if that long voyage left me 1 Silver short.

The problem is worse when multiplied by worldgen RNG. Some worlds will have a much harder time grinding through ores than others. Heck, different runs on the same world can vary radically, but it's not GOOD variance. it's a difference of, "Player A can easily find a lot of what they're looking for nearby," vs. "Player B will need a dozen hours more because they randomly explored a different (wrong) direction". The variance is strictly better/worse, which is bad variance.

Anyway, that's my $.02 on why the dropout rate on this game is high.

Use the search feature, you'll find hundreds if not thousands of posts about mountains.

By the time most people are in the mountains they know how to survive in this game, thus a lot less posts.

Kind of like how a lot of people quit after killing Yag but don't stick around to explore at night with the goblins every where.

Originally posted by Lil brekky:

A handful of my experienced gamer friends gave up on the game as soon as they did the math on the Bronze grind. The first bronze bar is REALLY exciting. The 20th and 40th Bronze bars are exciting, because you're unlocking entirely new mechanics. The 200th bronze bar is not, especially when it takes longer and longer to get more bronze as you scrape out the nearby zone, and the benefit is less and less substantial AND less and less qualitative (VERY minor numerical upgrades that do not scale with the cost). I suspect most of my other friends would have also given up if I hadn't coached and motivated them through it.

The crafting numbers are simply wrong. 90 minute voyage last night netted me 100 Silver, which was enough to... upgrade two weapons to Level 4, ~10 damage each. The cost:benefit ratio on that is frankly insane. It costs more because it's "the max level" but it doesn't change anything substantially more than the cheaper upgrades. Imagine my frustration if that long voyage left me 1 Silver short.

The problem is worse when multiplied by worldgen RNG. Some worlds will have a much harder time grinding through ores than others. Heck, different runs on the same world can vary radically, but it's not GOOD variance. it's a difference of, "Player A can easily find a lot of what they're looking for nearby," vs. "Player B will need a dozen hours more because they randomly explored a different (wrong) direction". The variance is strictly better/worse, which is bad variance.

Anyway, that's my $.02 on why the dropout rate on this game is high.

That's why most people just skip bronze armor, it isn't really needed.

Originally posted by Lil brekky:

A handful of my experienced gamer friends gave up on the game as soon as they did the math on the Bronze grind. The first bronze bar is REALLY exciting. The 20th and 40th Bronze bars are exciting, because you're unlocking entirely new mechanics. The 200th bronze bar is not, especially when it takes longer and longer to get more bronze as you scrape out the nearby zone, and the benefit is less and less substantial AND less and less qualitative (VERY minor numerical upgrades that do not scale with the cost). I suspect most of my other friends would have also given up if I hadn't coached and motivated them through it.

The crafting numbers are simply wrong. 90 minute voyage last night netted me 100 Silver, which was enough to... upgrade two weapons to Level 4, ~10 damage each. The cost:benefit ratio on that is frankly insane. It costs more because it's "the max level" but it doesn't change anything substantially more than the cheaper upgrades. Imagine my frustration if that long voyage left me 1 Silver short.

The problem is worse when multiplied by worldgen RNG. Some worlds will have a much harder time grinding through ores than others. Heck, different runs on the same world can vary radically, but it's not GOOD variance. it's a difference of, "Player A can easily find a lot of what they're looking for nearby," vs. "Player B will need a dozen hours more because they randomly explored a different (wrong) direction". The variance is strictly better/worse, which is bad variance.

Anyway, that's my $.02 on why the dropout rate on this game is high.

That makes sense, but I think then too many people got caught up on getting more bronze without trying to progress. Me and my brother play together, and I do most the mining. I got us each lvl 2 -lvl 3 gear, fairly easily, then we beat the elder and started on the iron. After you get to iron bronze is basically useless besides some crafting. I think too many people are trying to max out nronze gear too much, as you only need like lvl 2 ♥♥♥♥, then iron is wayyy better.

I feel like most of the games progression is just gear yourself up just enough to start the next "age" and see what else you can do. It seems too many people just get "scared" or bored but dont realize theres so much to do, AND so many ways to take out enemies.

Like once you get iron Trolls are like nothing, and defending your base takes like a stack or 2 of stone to build and earth wall OR just a pickaxe and make a trench.

We put a wall 50% around the base and a trench around the rest. The game has gotten way easier. The first time you encounter a new enemy its tough, but once you find out what they are weak to the game becomes more simple.

In conclusion some people seem to enjoy the chill base building and nothing more. While others prefer a lil grind and progression.

This is true. But then you have an even worse problem -

So options to craft/upgrade have been made available to the player, and the game is linear, so the players gonna want to get "all the content" and the dev will probably want them to do that, too. Turns out the costs increase massively with each Level+ of upgrade. But because the content is simply there the player will and should feel somewhat obligated to perfect their gear. In order to add "interest" or something, devs decided to make each tier of upgrade for each item have wildly varied and always increasing costs, without wildly varied and increasing improvements...

Then the linearity comes in. Previous tier+all upgrades = totally obsolete, I think by just a few points in the case of armour (except maybe in the rare case that corpse run needs a boost). This stings twice as much if the player was pursuing really costly upgrades, which it just... seems wrong to tell player not to do. You can't even display armour, and devs stated no plans to do this for current roadmap, which just seems really strange.

Basically, costs need to be proportional to upgrades. This can be done by either (1) fixing upgrade costs or, more excitingly, (2) having upgrades confers benefits to gear other than just # improvments (resistances, set bonus tag, etc.). You could even have upgrade trees for gear. This makes crafting a real ADVENTURE! "This is my Poison resist bronze mail that is really good for Swamps," "This leather helmet has Deer Antlers and does JUST enough counter damage to kill a Deathsquito so I bring it to the Plains," etc. All the old gear can have niche purpose this way.

Alternatively, maybe the devs want obsolete gear and useless upgrades because they intend for the game to be a linear experience... which is fine... but a lot less interesting by the 3rd/4th playthrough for me, and for my friends, before the game even really began

yes solo players and groups alike dont tend to make it out of bronze age

Originally posted by Lil brekky:

This is true. But then you have an even worse problem -

So options to craft/upgrade have been made available to the player, and the game is linear, so the players gonna want to get "all the content" and the dev will probably want them to do that, too. Turns out the costs increase massively with each Level+ of upgrade. But because the content is simply there the player will and should feel somewhat obligated to perfect their gear. In order to add "interest" or something, devs decided to make each tier of upgrade for each item have wildly varied and always increasing costs, without wildly varied and increasing improvements...

Then the linearity comes in. Previous tier+all upgrades = totally obsolete, I think by just a few points in the case of armour (except maybe in the rare case that corpse run needs a boost). This stings twice as much if the player was pursuing really costly upgrades, which it just... seems wrong to tell player not to do. You can't even display armour, and devs stated no plans to do this for current roadmap, which just seems really strange.

Basically, costs need to be proportional to upgrades. This can be done by either (1) fixing upgrade costs or, more excitingly, (2) having upgrades confers benefits to gear other than just # improvments (resistances, set bonus tag, etc.). You could even have upgrade trees for gear. This makes crafting a real ADVENTURE! "This is my Poison resist bronze mail that is really good for Swamps," "This leather helmet has Deer Antlers and does JUST enough counter damage to kill a Deathsquito so I bring it to the Plains," etc. All the old gear can have niche purpose this way.

Alternatively, maybe the devs want obsolete gear and useless upgrades because they intend for the game to be a linear experience... which is fine... but a lot less interesting by the 3rd/4th playthrough for me, and for my friends, before the game even really began

This all makes sense and I agree to an extent. (I'm gonna compare this game with Minecraft so bear with me please)

In MC once you are able to get the next best ore the rest become irrelevant as they are weaker, PLUS you cant "upgrade" armor in MC. BUT MC has ENCHANTING, which changes things up a bit, especially with armor enchants that enable certain abilities.

Valheim already has elements of magic and potions. So why not add something that does what MC did?

See I think what the devs did wrong was make all these different "crafting stations" and added limitations to them. In MC you can make a "station" make what you need and go off. But in valheim EVERY station needs to be near you to do thing pertaining to said material.
Adding an "enchantment station" would just be ANOTHER thing you need to clutter up an area and move with you.

What Valheim needs is to streamline the crafting/building stations and add more things like enchanting. Because I feel as if they backed themselves into a corner with these stations and risk losing players because there are too many.

Originally posted by the other blue guy:

In MC once you are able to get the next best ore the rest become irrelevant as they are weaker, PLUS you cant "upgrade" armor in MC. BUT MC has ENCHANTING, which changes things up a bit, especially with armor enchants that enable certain abilities.

Valheim already has elements of magic and potions. So why not add something that does what MC did?

See I think what the devs did wrong was make all these different "crafting stations" and added limitations to them. In MC you can make a "station" make what you need and go off. But in valheim EVERY station needs to be near you to do thing pertaining to said material.
Adding an "enchantment station" would just be ANOTHER thing you need to clutter up an area and move with you.

I think the nearby statioin upgrades thing makes a fun little basebuilding puzzle which I think the game wants to and should try to motivate players to do.

For an Enchanter's Table, we already have it: The Alchemist's Table. it just needs the recipes and it's good to go!

Originally posted by Lil brekky:

Originally posted by the other blue guy:

In MC once you are able to get the next best ore the rest become irrelevant as they are weaker, PLUS you cant "upgrade" armor in MC. BUT MC has ENCHANTING, which changes things up a bit, especially with armor enchants that enable certain abilities.

Valheim already has elements of magic and potions. So why not add something that does what MC did?

See I think what the devs did wrong was make all these different "crafting stations" and added limitations to them. In MC you can make a "station" make what you need and go off. But in valheim EVERY station needs to be near you to do thing pertaining to said material.
Adding an "enchantment station" would just be ANOTHER thing you need to clutter up an area and move with you.

I think the nearby statioin upgrades thing makes a fun little basebuilding puzzle which I think the game wants to and should try to motivate players to do.

For an Enchanter's Table, we already have it: The Alchemist's Table. it just needs the recipes and it's good to go!

Yeah but I havent even heard of that table until now.. thats a really late game item. All the hours I have in the game are from one world, and i've just gotten to the mountains. In MC the enchantment table can be made fairly quickly (the ore progression isnt gated by bosses/biomes).

Now that im thinking of it, I think my main gripe is that the game is linear. Im so used to survival games being so free and open, that when Ive got on Valheim im just expecting that. But I dont mind it, and its definitely why so many stop at the BF