*dusts massive pile of dust off of inactive-as-hell self*
Terraria 1.4 was a long-awaited update, and it brought some incredible changes. So many new items and worldgen improvements, as well as events and bosses helped to round off the Terraria experience and finish things off with a bang. That being said, there are a few glaring issues that range from irritating to so terrible that I'm shocked they came from such a beloved development team.
Firstly, the nerfing of bombs' ability to mine meteorite and the well-trodden discussion about the Speedrunner's Favorite Fish (tm). I'm not actually vehemently opposed to these on their own, actually. The argument still exists that it allows for people to choose their own playstyle, but on its own, it isn't too onerous of an imposition on the player. The same is even more true of the crate exploit fix, where even less of a justification for keeping it in holds. The more serious issues come in when you look at the other change they came with.
Torch luck. Freaking torch luck. Now, normally, important game mechanics are clearly laid out for a person, and luck is a crucially important stat. Not only does it affect droprates, but it affects damage rolls as well! In a game with so much of a focus on grinding and combat, you would expect a mechanic that affects both to be clearly communicated to the player, and this can be done in two ways -- explicitly or implicitly. Explicit communication is straight up telling the player, "This is a thing, this is what it does, this is how it works". Implicit communication is something more subtle -- level designs guide you to try out a new mechanic immediately after you gain access to it to show you the ropes of how it functions, or common game design tropes are reused to give you implicit knowledge of a mechanic through cultural osmosis (barrels imply explosives, glowing spots are weak spots, etc). Torch luck fails to do either -- while the torch-luck mechanic is present from the moment a world is started, the only thing implying the existence of it in an obvious way are the luck potion and the wizard, and even then, they don't tell you that TORCHES of all things impact it. As for implicit communication, torches are not obviously connected to the idea of luck at all. Tying correct lighting-fixture usage to good or bad fortune is a massive logical leap, and even if you're into feng shui, you aren't going to expect it to be a thing in Terraria. Even more bafflingly, things like Lucky Coins, Lucky Horseshoes, and the Lucky modifier, things you WOULD expect to impact the mechanic (assuming you knew it existed) don't do anything at all.
This would be bad enough if it was still hard to unknowingly screw up, or if the penalties for screwing up weren't so steep. However, it's so easy to ruin your luck that most worlds from older versions might as well be ancient indian burial grounds located underneath a ladder with how many wrong torches they have placed. Regular torches -- the most common item used by earlygame (or even midgame) spelunkers have no positive impact on luck, and a steep negative one in a large number of biomes. But hey, at least we can stack these broken mirrors we call torches to 999 now. I can't for the life of me fathom how the same people who developed such an incredible and beloved game implemented a mechanic that so flagrantly and egregiously violates every good game design practice that could possibly be relevant. This isn't me going full "entitled gamer rage", or insulting the devs -- quite the opposite, in fact. This is me looking on with shock and confusion as a Nobel laureate with several celebrated mathematical proofs on their resume spends an hour calculating the tip at Red Lobster and comes out with a result greater than the value of all the matter in the universe in Venezuelan Bolivars. It was obviously effortful, obviously considered, and obviously took a lot of skill to implement, but more to the point, it was obviously wrong in a way we wouldn't expect from someone of that caliber of skill. I have no doubt they'll fix it (after all, they've proven beyond all doubt that they're capable of excellence), but I have no clue how it managed to happen.
All in all, the general feeling I get from the new mechanics taken as a whole is "you are playing our sandbox game wrong, give me the controller". Removing skips and creating NPC preferences aren't on their own indicative of ill-will towards people trying to play the game their own way, but pairing that with a secret, unspoken mechanic that lengthens grinds and whittles away your DPS indicates a strong tendency to push people into playing and even building/exploring in a certain way, which is antithetical to what Terraria is about.