The whole point of DDD is to reduce complexity by modeling the domain in such a way that you can change it. There are many times when DDD is a wrong choice for your given problem. Perhaps the code you've seen wasn't a good candidate for DDD.

But yes, I'm wary of too many base classes and libraries designed to help you manage your model. Don't use someone else's ValueObject type, instead, work out what makes sense for your model.