PC Speculations about the upcoming 'game changer' feature

DoctorLove

Terrarian
I have registered just to tell you guys about my guess about the thing that "will change the way a lot of players approach some core aspects of the game" (as mentioned by Loki in the latest 'State of the Game' in the end of the post).

I've made a suggestion here on forums many years ago and it was basically about having doors that lead to other areas of the world. Not side doors that you build inside of walls, but more like background objects doors, where you see their front side. My guess that some of those doors will be also locked and you'll have to find special keys for them first which just like other treasures maybe somewhat similar to other keys that are already in the game. I'm thinking special areas or just treasure rooms, or small events rooms with enemies or traps hallways, things like that.

And just my imagination tells me that those areas behind the doors could also lead to not only closed areas, but probably also other open areas as some kind of world's layers. Take some mushroom biome you find underground and it has a small background cave entrance where you might proceed and find yourself in the same biome, except having different area around you.

To be honest that's the only thing I could think of that would advance the known gameplay experience while not really hurting other core areas of the game.

What do you guys think?

Edit:
My other guess would be them taking the core progression idea of the cancelled 'Terraria: Otherworld' and of course I'm talking about weapons that becoming stronger based on how long you're using them against enemies (good ol' TES games approach, more or less).
 
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I'd say your suggestion is in the ballpark of the kind of thing that would be added. A ground-up mechanic change for the whole game would be too much, but little things here and there to mix it up would not.
 
The thing is, they said it will "change how veteran players approach the core mechanics". Adding new treasure caches around the world doesn't really accomplish that.

There are a few ideas I had, though.
  • An alteration to whole defense/armor system of some kind, as both Loki and Leinfors have stated they are unhappy with the current way defense works.
  • A change to movement speed bonuses, as currently they only affect grounded acceleration and doesn't affect your top speed if you're using wings, running boots, grappling hooks, or dashes (aka 90% of the game.)
  • Reworking damage or critical hits. It's been confirmed that there are some changes coming, such as giving minions/sentries the ability to critical strike, and also possibly updating their damage values correctly.
  • Minecraft style crafting (please no)
I honestly have no idea which of these it could be, though...
 
Oh, I didn't know about the 'veterans' part. I really hoped for the core change like Loki mentioned in the last SotG post. I really don't think it would be just about the balance changes though as it used to happen from time to time and it's really nothing to keep in secret in my opinion.
 
Just checked, it didn't actually say veteran players, but if you take that word out I was pretty accurate :D
Those aren't really balance, though. I guess they aren't major enough (except maaaaaybe the first two?) to warrant a tease like that.

Perhaps they're expanding upon the crafting system in general by having different stations be more unique (like having a different interface for each thing, delayed crafting in furnaces like most other games, etc.) or having loot drops be enforced (by increasing the drop chance the longer you go without receiving the item, like that one suggestion Lord Garak made a long time ago.)

Or, they could make defense give % damage reduction, and make current % damage reduction items give flat damage reduction. Because there currently is literally no reason to craft wooden armors right now.
 
Or, they could make defense give % damage reduction, and make current % damage reduction items give flat damage reduction. Because there currently is literally no reason to craft wooden armors right now.
Honestly I think a subtraction-based defence makes more sense than a percentage based, as it completely nullifies lower damage attacks while higher damage attacks aren't as affected, which is how armour would work in real life.

If it was fully percentage based then weaker attacks would be hardly affected by it.

Really all I want is for each point of defence to equal 1 damage reduction, but then every set defence values would need to be changed to balance it out.

Though another idea I had was that a certain percentage of your defence is damage reduction, maybe 20% so 50 defence would also give you a 10% damage reduction.

Or a slightly altered version is that your defence - 30 equals your total damage reduction, and of course it won't go below 0 so you'd need at least 31 defence to get damage reduction. With 50 defence that would mean a 20% damage reduction, maybe this could be expert exclusive?

Also it would need to be capped at say 40%, as it's possible to get over 130 defence.
 
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Derpling Ω Yeah, could be as well! Actually what you've been saying made me think about them implementing some survival elements, but on another hand that would be too risky to implement because of the existing players as it would be a real game changer which could be only compensated adding character levels and dynamic perks and skills.
 
I have registered just to tell you guys about my guess about the thing that "will change the way a lot of players approach some core aspects of the game" (as mentioned by Loki in the latest 'State of the Game' in the end of the post).

I've made a suggestion here on forums many years ago and it was basically about having doors that lead to other areas of the world. Not side doors that you build inside of walls, but more like background objects doors, where you see their front side. My guess that some of those doors will be also locked and you'll have to find special keys for them first which just like other treasures maybe somewhat similar to other keys that are already in the game. I'm thinking special areas or just treasure rooms, or small events rooms with enemies or traps hallways, things like that.

And just my imagination tells me that those areas behind the doors could also lead to not only closed areas, but probably also other open areas as some kind of world's layers. Take some mushroom biome you find underground and it has a small background cave entrance where you might proceed and find yourself in the same biome, except having different area around you.

To be honest that's the only thing I could think of that would advance the known gameplay experience while not really hurting other core areas of the game.

What do you guys think?

Wouldn't that just be teleporters, for all intents and purposes? I don't think having teleporters generated by the world substantially change how people play the game. It'd just be a variation on minecarts. And a less interesting one, because you don't get to see the terrain between points A and B.

My other off-topic guess would be them taking the core progression idea of the cancelled 'Terraria: Otherworld' and of course I'm talking about weapons that becoming stronger based on how long you're using them against enemies (good ol' TES games approach, more or less).

That's a terrible idea for Terraria. A loot-based game like Terraria is supposed to give you good reasons to switch to new weapons. If old weapons are just as capable as new ones, then what's the point of the new ones? And if they aren't... then what's the point of having the mechanic at all?

I mean, the entire set of magical weapons is all about having to adapt to the idiosyncrasies of each new tier of magical weapons as you age out of the old tier. Not being able to hold onto the behavior of old weapons because they aren't effective enough anymore is part of the point of the entire category.
 
Wouldn't that just be teleporters, for all intents and purposes? I don't think having teleporters generated by the world substantially change how people play the game. It'd just be a variation on minecarts. And a less interesting one, because you don't get to see the terrain between points A and B.
Sure, somewhat technically they would be, except taking the player to 'other dimension' that isn't reachable otherwise and has its advances, I think perception matters. Like, you have built your little house, there's a door on its first floor, that might get you further to the next layer where you remove the void around you and build another room, so that other dimension has nothing but this room, then you may extend it even further. With that you have one entrance in your house on the main world layer, but more in-depth virtual space inside of the same house world position. Of course, you could make many teleporters that just get you to different coordinates of the world, but that would be still outside, not inside.
That's a terrible idea for Terraria. A loot-based game like Terraria is supposed to give you good reasons to switch to new weapons. If old weapons are just as capable as new ones, then what's the point of the new ones? And if they aren't... then what's the point of having the mechanic at all?
Except, what if, each weapon had its own unique skill tree and not only increasing its stats? However, you're right, the thing itself is too much as it would kill the solid progression that game has been building for years.
 
I just had another random thought about advancing the core mechanics and that would be weapons dual wielding, that divides both wielded weapons stats by half, but allows you to use them both one after another, mixing their special effects.
 
I could see NPC housing mechanics changing to prevent things like the 3x12 NPC holding cell blocks, personally.

It's just hard to tell. I'm afraid of what it could be because I have anxiety issues, but changing up core mechanics this late into the experience could go poorly way easier than it could go well.


E: Actually, from the Star Badge suggestions thread, this is a really, really good point:

I find it very ironic how in most rpgs magic ignores defense, while in terarria magic has the worst armor negating options of the classes.
Mages only have 2 weapons that reduce defense. You can still reduce defense by swicthing weapons but none of the other classes need to do that.

What if we end up getting multiple defense types instead of just a static, one-defense-fits-all mechanic like we already have?
 
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What if we end up getting multiple defense types instead of just a static, one-defense-fits-all mechanic like we already have?

That would be pretty incompatible with how Terraria works.

Magical weapon damage at present is balanced around the fact that the damage itself is not otherwise special. What's special about magical weapons is how they deal damage, their attack patterns and the fact that most magical weapons will hit multiple times per shot. That's what makes them interesting and distinct from ranged weapons.

It's not clear what adding a second defense stat would do for this. If you split defense like this, what becomes of the melee class ? He's still got to get close to the enemy, braving its attacks whether magical or not. So he'd have to have a high defense of both kinds, right? And if both are high... what's the point of splitting them?

If you split defense, then now you're going to have to have a bunch of new armor sets that prioritize one damage type over another. But in Terraria, armor is how you define character class and play-style. I don't really feel it's reasonable to ask a player to give up some special armor-based power just to gain +X magic defense.

Which brings up attacks. Right now, you don't know what counts as a magical attack and what doesn't. So that's going to have to be communicated in some way.

Terraria is not a standard RPG, so I don't really see the need to shoehorn in standard RPG mechanics (to the extent that magic defense as distinct from defense is a standard RPG mechanic. I certainly don't know of any tabletop RPGs that have any such split). Ultimately, I don't see how this split would help make Terraria better at being Terraria.
 
See, like, that is the exact kind of thing I was talking about when I first said I was concerned about what changing a core mechanic this deep into the game would mean.

Basically every enemy projectile would have to be re-classified as "physical" or "magical," you'd have to re-scale every aforementioned magic projectile to account for new defense values, adjust new armor values...

If you split defense like this, what becomes of the melee class ? He's still got to get close to the enemy, braving its attacks whether magical or not. So he'd have to have a high defense of both kinds, right?
I feel like balance would dictate that they'd have the lowest of the potential "resistance" stats; Ranged second lowest, then Summoner, then finally Magic having the highest.


I dunno, like. This is the kind of thing that I'd be apprehensive about trying it, it sounds like it might work and be fun on paper, but it could be messed up so easily that I wouldn't want to risk it.

In practice it's mostly just a nerf to Defense in general and a minor buff to Magic's survivability, but... It'd be a pretty limited change in scale. It'd functionally be more just a passive buff to Magic damage with enemies having lower resistance.. without actually raising magic weapon values.
 
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It's important to remember the quote in question:

We managed to sneak word out from the top secret Terraria labs that the team has been working on something mysterious - which, if the rumors are true, supposedly will change the way a lot of players approach some core aspects of the game.

The key word to me being "approach". That is, it's not a change to a core mechanic per-se; it's a change to how you interact with certain aspects of the game.

Imagine if Terraria 1.0-3 never had explosives. Then 1.4 added explosives to the game. It's not a change to any core mechanic, but by allowing you to blow up corrupt/crimson stone, it makes it easier to bypass some of the earlier parts of the game. It can change how you approach the early game. Fishing caused a similar change, since certain fish act as pickaxes that let you mine through most of the pre-Hardmode world.

I think that's the kind of thing that the Powers That Be would be implementing: something which allows you to approach certain aspects of the game in a different way.
 
I have a couple ideas for what could've been reworked:
  • Defense. Right now it's common knowledge that the defense stat loses a ton of value as you progress into the game, with it becoming pretty much useless after the mechs.
  • Attack Speed. Use Time greatly limits design space for stuff that can affect it; since it's always rounded down, % based increases in attack speed can yield ridiculous results on stuff that has a ridiculously low Use Time by default (looking at you, Baghnakhs).
  • Piercing Iframes. This will call for some nerfs to a couple weapons, but currently these massively hold back a lot of potentially good items chloro arrows.
  • Movement Speed: This one probably won't happen since it will be super hard to balance exactly right and Re-Logic seems to be ok with how it works now, but letting it affect more than just the regular walking speed would be really nice.
 
I have a couple ideas for what could've been reworked:
Piercing Iframes. This will call for some nerfs to a couple weapons, but currently these massively hold back a lot of potentially good items chloro arrows.
I've fixed a lot of the piercing projectiles in my mod and I can say it's so much better now, I never used Chlorophyte arrows before until now.
 
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