Has become boring
Response from developer
Hi there! Thank you for your feedback. What can we do to improve your enjoyment of the game?
AI slop
Response from developer
Please contact the Customer Support team by tapping the 'gear' icon, then 'Help' or email support@ldw.zendesk.com and add these details to your message - the team will take a look at your game and advise you!
Dev’s please understand!
I appreciate that Virtual Villagers has always involved patience, resource management and gradual progression. However, there is a significant difference between rewarding strategic gameplay and implementing excessively long waiting periods that prevent meaningful progression.
For example, waiting approximately 72 real-life hours for fruit trees to grow, alongside lengthy crafting times, repeated steam cycles and increasingly expensive technology upgrades, creates a situation where players can understand exactly how to complete a puzzle but are unable to progress for days.
I recognise that this is a free-to-play game and that Lava Stones can be earned through challenges and advertisements. However, the quantities available feel disproportionately small compared with the costs of accelerating progression. For example, you earn 3 lava stones per each challenge completion or 1 lava stone through an add. To progress past innovation 1 you’d need 440. You can argue gather tech points but again, 110,000 is egregious. Plus, spending lava stone to have enough tech points would cost you 900 lava stones, why is this so disproportionate? To have enough tech points to advanced you would need to watch enough ads for it to be a feature film or spend at least £29.99 as £9.99 (300) would still not provide enough lava stones to complete innovation level 2. While spending money is technically optional, the combination of excessive timers and limited and disproportionate free alternatives creates the impression that frustration is being used to encourage purchases.
I also understand that the developers may intend for the game to be played gradually over an extended period. However, there is a difference between encouraging players to return regularly and leaving them with so little meaningful gameplay that they lose interest in returning altogether.
This raises a wider question: what is the point of investing considerable time, effort and resources into designing, coding and launching a new game if so much of the player’s experience is spent outside the game, waiting for the opportunity to actually play it? Surely the purpose of developing a game is to create an experience that people want to actively engage with. When the majority of progression is dictated by real-world timers rather than meaningful player interaction, it undermines the very gameplay that developers have worked so hard to create. It seems counterproductive to invest so heavily in creating an engaging world, only to repeatedly discourage players from spending time in it.
What makes this particularly disappointing is that the underlying game is genuinely enjoyable. I love developing my village, training villagers, discovering new areas and solving puzzles. However, these enjoyable elements are increasingly overshadowed by artificial delays.
I would much rather purchase a complete game upfront than continually encounter progression barriers that appear designed to incentivise microtransactions.
Ultimately, I feel this approach risks alienating loyal players and tarnishing the reputation of a franchise that many of us have loved since childhood. I genuinely want to enjoy Virtual Villagers 7, but the current balance between gameplay, waiting and monetisation needs reconsideration.
I hope the developers consider introducing more opportunities to actively progress through gameplay, more reasonable waiting periods and a better balance of free rewards. The game has so much potential, and it would be a shame to see that undermined by an unnecessarily frustrating progression system.
Response from developer
We completely understand your concern regarding the cost of items in the game. We're always reviewing pricing and the in-game economy to ensure a balance of fairness and a reasonable difficulty level. There are many other ways to earn Lavastones and Tech Points apart from buying them in the Marketplace - you can earn them through random events in the game, exploring volcanic cracks, watching video ads, the daily reward calendar and much more!
The progression is extremely slow
Response from developer
We completely understand your concern regarding the cost of items in the game. We're always reviewing pricing and the in-game economy to ensure a balance of fairness and a reasonable difficulty level. There are many other ways to earn Lavastones and Tech Points apart from buying them in the Marketplace - you can earn them through random events in the game, exploring volcanic cracks, watching video ads, the daily reward calendar and much more!
Villagers stopped reproducing
Response from developer
Please contact the Customer Support team by tapping the 'gear' icon, then 'Help' or email support@ldw.zendesk.com and add these details to your message - the team will take a look at your game and advise you!
