Customizable Configuration Settings

I'm not a fan of some of the configuration settings in Valheim. Cutting wood is very boring, I feel like trees take too many swings to fall and reward too little wood in return. The same can be said for copper, silver, and to some extent everything in the game. Things break too fast for my liking, I get hungry too fast, nearly every aspect of the game is a bit more grind than I would like it to be.

The Dude said it best, "Yeah? Well, you know, that's just like uh, your opinion man." It's just my personal opinion, and it doesn't entirely ruin the game, it just that, for me, it often makes the game feel more like a chore than fun and entertainment. (I spend a lot more time running around gathering than in epic battles.)

You might love the settings exactly where they are, or perhaps even wish they were more extreme. Which is the entire point of this post, to each their own. Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, and I think everyone is entitled to enjoy themselves in their free time.

In the real world, with recreational games such as bowling or golf, there is simply no choice but to take a one size fits all approach. Bowling pins are a certain size and weight for everyone, they are spaced exactly the same distance apart for everyone, and the lane is the exact same length and width for everyone. There's simply no way to accommodate individual preferences with a bowling alley, someone decided on the parameters when they invented the game and those have become standard for everyone. They are rarely changed, and then only slightly after great deliberation by many people.

I'm sure there are plenty of people who would like the lanes to be longer or shorter, wider or narrower, there's an infinite number of variations and no two people would invent bowling with the exact same parameters. Yet we are all forced to use the same parameters because you simply can't walk up to a bowling lane and adjust lane width and length in real life.

In a video game however, you could adjust width, length, put a hill in the middle, put curves in it, a bowling video game is absolutely limitless in possibilities. Putting a hill or a dip in the middle of the lane sounds like it might be pretty fun to me, but you might hate that idea. In real life I'd have to talk the owner of a bowling alley into spending tens of thousands of dollars to put a special lane in for me and they would have to hope I wasn't the only one crazy enough to like it. In a video game, the developers could make that change simply by editing a few numbers. In fact, in a video game, developers can allow the players to adjust those numbers themselves to suit their own taste.

That's what I'd like to see in Valheim. I think they did a great job with vanilla Valheim. I imagine most players find most of the parameters acceptable, or at least tolerable. Yet I'm sure almost everyone who plays the game would like a little more of this and perhaps a little less of that. Personally, in general, I'd like to do a lot less farming and a lot more fighting. I'd like to see more mobs, with higher health, and in my opinion the bosses could have 3 to 4 times more health with a lot more additional support mobs called in during the encounter.

This wouldn't have to be overly complex in implementation either. It could be as simple as half a dozen settings adjusted with a slider, or it could be a configuration .ini file with dozens of values. It could even be as simple as choosing a difficulty setting such as Adventure/Exploration/Simulation/Creative where adventure has less resource gathering with more challenging combat, exploration is pretty much vanilla, simulation is a lot more resource gathering with less challenging combat for those that come prepared, and creative where there is a lot less resource gathering and combat altogether so that players can focus on building.

In conclusion I just want to commend the developers on their outstanding game. It's game of the year in my opinion.