Originally posted by DarthTanyon:

I'd say it is par for the course. I have hundreds of hours in ARK, Conan, 7D2D, Icarus.. they all require hours upon hours of gathering. Not sure why this game should be any different.

How would you replace it? What are your proposals? If there was no mining/gathering to do then what would you do once you are done with bosses etc.. I mean if you don't like the grind then just cheat in all the resources. Personally no game "feels" like a grind to me. I love gathering resources it has always been something I was good at and did not mind doing.

I also grew up playing wow 10+ hours a day for like 5 years so.. the word grind to me is probably different than what it means to most lol.

I mean, I dont wanna be judgemental, but that much WOW is just unhealthy^^
Thats like a game preying on addiction, at that point were so far away from "good" gameplay.

Im not saying they should remove all mining, let alone gathering. That is integral to many survival games. But there is good parts and bad part about it, and I think indeed many games are just really damn lazy about it. They just take the concept from other games without thinking as a background, and then do what the thing actually want.
Like Ark wants cool Dino-action, 7Days wants zombie survival and wave defense.

Otoh? Subnautica too the survival elements, then ground' them down to a reasonable level to do what it wanted. As a result, its an extremely well paced, streamlined game that doesnt really lose much.

Lets just take what Id say is good about the ressource system in Valheim:
1. Makes you explore the world, travel to new islands
2. Rewards attention to the world, you can find a bunch of (more or less) hidden stuff
3. You get to setup bases, outposts, portals, tradelines, pathways and more. You mold the world you explore for convenience
4. And direct logistics; you move (ore) ressources with vehicles around, that requires planning and rewards optimization
5. Your tools and enemies scale with your advancement; every more challenging enemies to fight, but also more interesting tools, its very motivating to go on.
6. Fighting enemies and bosses for ressources is challenging and fun, assuming its not doing the same thing for 10 hours
7. The dynamic between ressource gathering while defending yourself against dangers creates the feel of a living, or at least dangerous world
8. There is satisfaction in having the experience, tools and strategies to do effective ressource gathering. Using your smarts, not your brawns, you get better

Stuff like that is why ressource systems can be very useful to the game, they can drive you and benefit the game a lot. But then you get to that point:

You hit Rocks and Trees till stamina goes zero, wait till its back up, then repeat, for many, many hours. This isnt even gameplay, its like idle waiting.
So how does that really benefit the game? I know for some people "numbers going up" is already enjoyment, but thats again almost (and clearly NOT intentionally by the devs) aiming at gambling addiction style symptoms. Theres hardly any gameplay purpose in the long time it takes to break down a vein.

You see the list I made is about making you get invested in the world, think about what to do, plan travels, be attentive and forwardthinking. Skill and smarts are rewarded, it makes you work in line with the worlds systems. Thats how gameplay elements should imo work, be part of a bigger thing. Not just "wait for X to be over so you can continue playing".


And games like Valheim or 7 Days advance the survival genre in many ways, but those "hit rock for hours" thing has remained unchanged and is, IMO, just lazy. They just take the system because they dont know or care to improve it.
Of course theres mods that can just make you do more damage against rocks, I even decided to add one late in my game, but thats irrelevant to gameplay-discussion.