The argument that mods that alter the player experience in a sandbox is "cheating" always perplexes me, especially talking about a design decision that makes little sense. Rocks can go through portals. Metal armor and weapons can also. Rocks with metal in them; no. There are still plenty of reasons to sail and explore. Unrestricted portals just allows players to focus on the parts of the game they enjoy without wasting potentially several real life hours they might struggle to find in their hectic lives tacking against the wind.

Originally posted by Hobo Misanthropus:

Originally posted by Disaster Theory:

Unrestricted Portals is a mod that allows you to take ore and other items like the Dragon eggs through portals. Makes the game so much better IMO and is a huge QOL change.

I used this mod for my second play through and it made the game so much more enjoyable and a lot faster on building.

I personally can't think of a mod that would make me want to delete the game and forget about it more than a mod that removes any reason for the longship to exist. Every one of my most memorable moments in this game starts with a longship journey.

Where do people like you draw the line btw? You're essentially already cheating, why not just devconsole and flyhack? What mental gymnastics do you play to get over that?

Name checks out.

The line is drawn between fun and not fun. It's a game, not a job. It's not even a competitive game. There are no prizes awarded, no winners or losers. You win by enjoying yourself. You lose by doing stuff you don't like without getting paid for it.

Some people do enjoy using devcommands, builders especially.

I'm all in favor of telling portals to take their rules and shove it. I didn't sail around for the past 2 hours to search through 3 empty swamps, to finally find one that has iron in it, to then be told I have to spend another hour rowing my boat back home because the wind is permanently pointed directly against me no matter where I need to go, all because my magic wooden circle refuses to let my iron-clad and iron weapon-carrying body (perfectly fine, btw) go through it with iron scraps.

Originally posted by Zep Tepi:

Originally posted by Hobo Misanthropus:

I personally can't think of a mod that would make me want to delete the game and forget about it more than a mod that removes any reason for the longship to exist. Every one of my most memorable moments in this game starts with a longship journey.

Where do people like you draw the line btw? You're essentially already cheating, why not just devconsole and flyhack? What mental gymnastics do you play to get over that?

Name checks out.

The line is drawn between fun and not fun. It's a game, not a job. It's not even a competitive game. There are no prizes awarded, no winners or losers. You win by enjoying yourself. You lose by doing stuff you don't like without getting paid for it.

Some people do enjoy using devcommands, builders especially.

i think you guys might be overlooking a lot of the complex details behind limitations, theyre still early access and need an active playerbase feel the freshness of the game and try to keep them away from hitting the wall too quickly.

a lot of companies do this in great excess with excessively repetitive systems that provide absolutely zero immersion, depth or even involving lore in a way that feels captivating.

im not saying that this game doesnt have those excessively tedious menial tasks but without limitation on the portal then youll hit the wall really really quickly, you have the option to build a larger boat and filling it up to 100% before making it back to base.

in general, its just like hobo says.. youll remove the little "replayability" and purpose behind boats completely if you have absolutely no limits on portals.

The devs should make a toggle in the options to enable/disable portal ore transport imo. Win Win. Then everyone can enjoy the game the way he likes it the most which leads to lots of happy gamers!

Originally posted by Vazkulator:

i think you guys might be overlooking a lot of the complex details behind limitations, theyre still early access and need an active playerbase feel the freshness of the game and try to keep them away from hitting the wall too quickly.

a lot of companies do this in great excess with excessively repetitive systems that provide absolutely zero immersion, depth or even involving lore in a way that feels captivating.

im not saying that this game doesnt have those excessively tedious menial tasks but without limitation on the portal then youll hit the wall really really quickly, you have the option to build a larger boat and filling it up to 100% before making it back to base.

in general, its just like hobo says.. youll remove the little "replayability" and purpose behind boats completely if you have absolutely no limits on portals.

That all sounds good in theory but it doesn't work that way in practice. I mean, yeah, the grind is the game to some extent. It gives you an excuse to spend many hours in a beautiful environment. But a player can also "hit the wall" when they get fed up with doing things they find to be tedious. They could always just go play something else.

There is a balance to be maintained, and that point of balance is not the same for everyone. The solution to that is to allow the player to customize their experience. The devs are not against modding either, they just have more important things to concentrate on than adding difficulty settings. Mods increase replayability because the player can decide how they want to play.

At 500 hours in, I've started many runs, some of them with self imposed permadeath rules, because I was in the mood for that kind of challenge. Customization is not always with the intent of making things easier. At the same time, I look up the map seed because I think that spending real life days sailing around and looking for things is not an enjoyable use of my time. If I was forced into doing the extra stuff that I don't enjoy I would be less likely to start a new run, and more likely to abandon it before it was finished.

Edit: Not 500, 700 hrs. Wow. Kinda proves the replayability point, doesn't it?

As you can see from the discussion, there is a mod to override the restrictions of the portal. As for the argument whether or not to use it I find to be a matter of what constitutes "fun" for you. And this is the case for any mod or cheat on might use.

People need to understand that what makes the game more fun is going to be different for different people. I myself use mods, but not the portal cheat mod. For me the game would be too easy and there would be little reason for using ships. I like a game which is challenging but not too tedious. The mods allow me to tweak it to my liking.

For me it's not challenging enough without using ships. But I do use the ValheimRaft mod to make ships which are more functional.

personally, i like the feature of portal restrictions especially considering long term pvp play.

but if you really want to get around it, world hopping exists and is in the game for a reason.

those using mods to remove the restrictions aren't cheating either.

honestly i think there should be world settings for these people, things like the ability to turn off base raids and portal restrictions would honestly make a lot of people happy, and in the end would be a server side thing and wouldn't exactly be considered "cheating"

just playing on a lower difficulty.

i mean if you don't have pvp on your server there is honestly no need for portal restrictions, the entire point of the restriction is to limit the ability of the players to grind materials for weapons in a short amount of time.

risk vs reward.

having to transport metals is an infrastructure type of play, and people attack infrastructure to retrieve supplies.

so again, the only reason for the restriction is pvp, other than that i see no reason why a solo player can't just turn off the restrictions and save themselves time.

i mean if the worry is that they can make a lot of iron really fast, again i will mention that world hopping exists so as much as that can be an issue for pvp, it's really not THAT big of an issue and balance can still be maintained.

Originally posted by seandabst:

The argument that mods that alter the player experience in a sandbox is "cheating" always perplexes me, especially talking about a design decision that makes little sense. Rocks can go through portals. Metal armor and weapons can also. Rocks with metal in them; no. There are still plenty of reasons to sail and explore. Unrestricted portals just allows players to focus on the parts of the game they enjoy without wasting potentially several real life hours they might struggle to find in their hectic lives tacking against the wind.

The argument that I should be able to play the game the way I want has always perplexed me. Games are designed with a set of rules that you follow. period. All games...football, monopoly, baseball, poker, Tball, RIsk, volleyball, Clue, Chutes and Ladders, Every game that has ever been made. Somehow with video games, people are entitled to think that breaking the rules is OK, Mods that add to a game without changing the core rules of the game I feel are ok. Mods that change core gameplay mechanics that give you a shortcut are cheating.

Originally posted by Zep Tepi:

Originally posted by Vazkulator:

i think you guys might be overlooking a lot of the complex details behind limitations, theyre still early access and need an active playerbase feel the freshness of the game and try to keep them away from hitting the wall too quickly.

a lot of companies do this in great excess with excessively repetitive systems that provide absolutely zero immersion, depth or even involving lore in a way that feels captivating.

im not saying that this game doesnt have those excessively tedious menial tasks but without limitation on the portal then youll hit the wall really really quickly, you have the option to build a larger boat and filling it up to 100% before making it back to base.

in general, its just like hobo says.. youll remove the little "replayability" and purpose behind boats completely if you have absolutely no limits on portals.

That all sounds good in theory but it doesn't work that way in practice. I mean, yeah, the grind is the game to some extent. It gives you an excuse to spend many hours in a beautiful environment. But a player can also "hit the wall" when they get fed up with doing things they find to be tedious. They could always just go play something else.

There is a balance to be maintained, and that point of balance is not the same for everyone. The solution to that is to allow the player to customize their experience. The devs are not against modding either, they just have more important things to concentrate on than adding difficulty settings. Mods increase replayability because the player can decide how they want to play.

At 500 hours in, I've started many runs, some of them with self imposed permadeath rules, because I was in the mood for that kind of challenge. Customization is not always with the intent of making things easier. At the same time, I look up the map seed because I think that spending real life days sailing around and looking for things is not an enjoyable use of my time. If I was forced into doing the extra stuff that I don't enjoy I would be less likely to start a new run, and more likely to abandon it before it was finished.

i just grinded out the mountain for probably 20 days/nights in total to find one single 2 star, did i enjoy it ? i mightve learnt something but was it fun ? probably not.

i wont intentionally break the game or use cheats because of it but id provide constructive criticism and say that it needs changes and/or alternatives to how a player engage certain tasks to avoid "crashing" and players lose interest completely.

nullifying limitations has that exact same end result, travelling by boat doesnt even take that long but it doesnt seem like we'll see eye to eye in this regard because i never assumed that its about a challenge and never implied it to be about difficulty but rather about things losing purpose because youre provided too much cheese through content without any form of drawbacks if you just simply haul entire castles through portals then theres suddenly absoutely no needs for boats anymore besides serpent meat and resources for weapons that you outgear anyway once reaching silver.

Originally posted by Triggerd_Noob:

The argument that I should be able to play the game the way I want has always perplexed me. Games are designed with a set of rules that you follow. period. All games...football, monopoly, baseball, poker, Tball, RIsk, volleyball, Clue, Chutes and Ladders, Every game that has ever been made. Somehow with video games, people are entitled to think that breaking the rules is OK, Mods that add to a game without changing the core rules of the game I feel are ok. Mods that change core gameplay mechanics that give you a shortcut are cheating.

Practically every example you gave has people make "house rules" for those things. You know, like small modifications of the previously established rules for the sole purpose of increasing the amount of fun if they find any of the rules un-enjoyable.

It's your game. You play it because you want to have fun. If you want to mod it or change the rules in some way to make it more fun, then do that. Having to "follow the rules the creators made" just because is silly, and calling the modification of those rules "cheating" in your personal game is even more silly.

Do whatever you want. Play vanilla or mod it, but have fun in the end.

Originally posted by Steelfox79:

Can you take ore though portals

no but ive read theres a mod for it

Nope.

Originally posted by Steelfox79:

Can you take ore though portals

Unrestricted Portals is a mod that allows you to take ore and other items like the Dragon eggs through portals. Makes the game so much better IMO and is a huge QOL change.

I used this mod for my second play through and it made the game so much more enjoyable and a lot faster on building.

Originally posted by Disaster Theory:

Originally posted by Steelfox79:

Can you take ore though portals

Unrestricted Portals is a mod that allows you to take ore and other items like the Dragon eggs through portals. Makes the game so much better IMO and is a huge QOL change.

I used this mod for my second play through and it made the game so much more enjoyable and a lot faster on building.

I personally can't think of a mod that would make me want to delete the game and forget about it more than a mod that removes any reason for the longship to exist. Every one of my most memorable moments in this game starts with a longship journey.

Where do people like you draw the line btw? You're essentially already cheating, why not just devconsole and flyhack? What mental gymnastics do you play to get over that?