4Game

Hello vikings!

Firstly, with this being the internet and all, can I start by saying that I freaking love this game! I've logged almost 400 hours on it, built numerous huge constructions and certainly got my money's worth. Whatever the issues with the development timescales, the base game is great.

I'm also, as I imagine many of you are, the only person left on my server. I think it's OK to hope for more and be a bit disappointed about this without it implying that we hate the devs.

In truth, 400 hours is a lot, but the majority of that time was spent really wringing the last drops out of the game. It's mainly a building game for me now as I've seen everything and the enemies no longer present a threat. I do wish there was more to bring others back to the server. This has been (and is still being) fiercely debated all over this sub – I want to focus on something that I think could be even more consequential than the rate of progress with updates: Will they require a new seed?

I think the risks that come with requiring a new seed for a major update are way higher than they initially appear. We're already dealing with a slower drip feed of updates and the first major one is essentially a builders and farmers update. Fine, but how much effort are we going to feel like putting in to our new builds if we're going to have to start again for the Mistlands update?

Maybe a lot… Maybe we can start again when Mistlands comes. But then what about Ashlands? What about the Deep North? I'm sure we could convince ourselves that we'll start again each time but I think that'll end up sucking the joy out of building our homes and mapping our seeds. The sense of achievement will wane and I think many people will just move on.

Personally, I still love the roadmap and the vision from the devs – I love the way they talk about wanting players to discover unique, really thought out structures and I love the ideas of putting big unique challenges in. If the updates match the quality of the game they've made so far then they should be great, but I just don't think I could convince the rest of my server to come back and start again each time. I wish I could, but I just don't see it. In the end they'll just switch over to another game. For this reason, I really hope they're prioritising methods to overlay updated areas on existing seeds. The good news is that we already know where the new biomes are located within each seed. If they could run some sort of comparison and just overwrite the new areas then I think it'd work out OK. I hope that's possible!

Anyway, what do you think?

Tyr!