Has Journey's End shifted Terraria too far into removing player freedom?

Nicol Bolas

Terrarian
There is a broad narrative going around the community about JE. Specifically, the coherent version of it seems to go something like this.

Various mechanics added to the game force the player to play along certain lines/remove things that players could use to express themselves in the gameplay. Essentially, the developers want to largely dictate how players play the game. This is antithetical to the nature of Terraria as a game and thus should be modified or removed.

Now before we get started, I want to make this perfectly clear: Terraria is not, and never has been, a pure sandbox experience. Every version of Terraria has had some form of gated progression, of expected/enforced ways of doing certain things, without which you aren't (without exploits) able to get certain things or activate certain features. Terraria is a hybrid sandbox/Metroidvania, and it has been that way since the very beginning. So you cannot argue solely from the perspective of "it's a sandbox game, so I should be able to do whatever I want".

Thus, the meaningful argument is not that JE has made Terraria something that it isn't. It would be that JE has spoiled the balance, shifting too far in one direction.

Narratives like this can be a bit like conspiracy theories. Namely, that knowing the conclusion of a narrative can encourage you to recontextualize things you would have ignored in a way that fits within the narrative, which makes the narrative seem more likely to be true. This happens while simultaneously ignoring any evidence that doesn't fit the narrative.

So I would like to explore this narrative and the evidence for it.

The likely genesis of this narrative is also its strongest piece of evidence:

NPC Happiness

The Happiness mechanic is not just overly controlling; it was initially presented to the community as controlling:

During Journey's End development, we conducted a focus group with all of the Terraria NPCs. Outside of some very strange requests (no, Guide, we cannot 'remove all doors at night'), their feedback was very clear: they are tired of being shoved into tiny cubicles or L shaped tubes and they want you to know this!

It doesn't get more lead-pipe evidence than that, does it?

The two mechanics (NPC happiness and Pylon teleportation) work together, but it's clear that they don't really have to. Pylons could easily be separated from happiness. After all, we already have NPC items that are only sold in specific biomes, so adding Pylons to that list isn't particularly special. And activating Pylons isn't even part of NPC happiness; the two NPCs needed to activate them don't have to be happy to any degree (though the isolation bonus does make it highly likely that they will be so long as one doesn't hate the other).

But it's NPC happiness that actually makes players change their desired behavior. After all, everyone has NPCs that they don't use frequently; every player could just send their worthless NPCs to power Pylon outputs. But they'd still have a bunch of NPCs back in their base "being shoved into tiny cubicles or L shaped tubes."

And we can't have that, because reasons!

So this is a clear mechanic that is imposed upon players by the developer to get players to play in a way that is different from what the player(s) would naturally prefer.

But a single data point shouldn't constitute a narrative. The problem with narratives is that an egregious data point can cause people to evaluate other data points in the context of that narrative. To whit:

Luck

This mechanic is often talked about second in this narrative, particularly in its initially released form. So let's talk about what luck was.

Mechanically, luck is a tool that causes a wide variety of random variables to become more or less likely to happen based on a number of factors. The factor of interest here is the one most under the player's control: torches.

Specifically, being near certain biome-cosmetic torches in their biomes would give you a luck bonus. But putting them in the wrong biomes gave you a luck penalty. But... regular old torches gave you a luck penalty in every biome that had its own custom torches (and a luck bonus in precisely zero biomes). Sometimes a huge penalty.

I don't think I need to explain why this is a horrible idea.

The way this fits into the narrative is that the developers are forcing players to use biome torches. I find this reasoning to be kind of a stretch. The fact that the developers took out accumulated negative torch luck very quickly suggests that they didn't really intend for it to have the effect of hurting the player for using regular torches in general situations.

That suggests to me that they see torch luck the way they see things like campfires and heart lanterns: mechanics to improve arenas. You don't put campfires everywhere. You use them to buff an arena for specific boss fights or general farming of items. They aren't "controlling how you play"; they are giving you mechanics that you can use to your benefit.

This also explains things like Gnome luck and Ladybug luck. Gnomes are like Heart lanterns: much harder to get, but offer a strong luck bonus. Ladybugs are more like buff furniture like the ammo-box: things you do at home before the fight.

Another element against this being part of the narrative is simple: luck is about the most opaque mechanic in Terraria's history. An "opaque" mechanic is one that exists, but the game never tells you about, and Terraria in general is pretty bad about explaining its mechanics. But luck is something that is vaguely hinted at by a few things: a Hardmode NPC, tooltip text on Garden Gnomes, and the existence of Luck potions.

But torches having an effect on luck is something that is said nowhere in the entire game. So if the game developers intended to use torch luck to get people to play in a certain way... wouldn't they first need to tell you about it? For happiness, they added an entire sub-menu to every NPC and specialized dialog for them. For torches... not even a tooltip change.

So I don't buy this fitting into that narrative. It's more likely to me that the initial release of torch luck was either a bug or just a bad idea that nobody realized at the time (somehow).

But there's a third mechanic that frequently comes up. Well, not a mechanic so much as the removal of one:

The Pre-Hardmode Bypass Fish Nerf

In 1.2.4, the developers added the Reaver Shark, a rare fishing drop from the Ocean that was a pickaxe with 100% mining power. That meant it could mine Hellstone. This allowed players to turn pre-Hardmode play into a 3-step process: fish up a Reaver Shark, make Molten Armor/weapons, beat the WoF.

This lasted in the game until Journey's End, where its power was reduced to the point where it was a slower Gold/Platinum pickaxe.

This is said to fit into the narrative because it represents the developers forcing progression on the player. Which, I mean yes it does; you now have to actually play per-Hardmode. Of course "have to" is always a weird thing to say in Terraria, since nobody is stopping you from just dropping whatever high-end gear you want into a virgin world. But the developers have certainly taken away a mechanic that allowed you to skip pre-Hardmode in a virgin world with a virgin character.

And this shows the real danger of narratives. Because if not for the narrative, this would be taken as just part of rebalancing the game. Because remember: Terraria survived many releases before the Reaver Shark even existed. Nobody called it overly controlling to not be able to skip pre-Hardmode. Removing the feature only hypothetically feels overly controlling in the context of other things that feel overly controlling.

The developers are basically saying "we made a mistake". Much like changing how flails works is about them realizing that they made a mistake with Yoyos and their overlap with flails. It's all part of JE's rebalancing efforts.

The pieces of evidence for the narrative become increasingly thin on the ground from this part forward:

Hardmode Crates

Pre-JE, one tactic some people took to deal with early hardmode was to try to skip digging for hardmode ores. Some did this because they aren't interested in that gameplay, and others did it because they didn't want the infectious biomes to rage out of control due to random infections created when breaking Altars.

They accomplished this by doing a bunch of crate fishing pre-Hardmode, then once Hardmode started, they opened all of the crates to get Hardmode metal without having to mine them.

JE changed things. There are different crates between pre-Hardmode and Hardmode now. So pre-Hardmode crates will always give pre-Hardmode bars, while only crates mined in Hardmode will give Hardmode metals.

Again, this is not particularly controlling from the developers. Yes, your old tactic won't work, but the tactic itself is still there. You just have to fish in Hardmode. Yes, that's harder since it's... Hardmode. And while you're fishing for metals, the infections will be spreading.

But this isn't some drastic alteration of behavior. If the developers wanted to control your behavior, they wouldn't have added Hardmode crates at all; they'd just remove Hardmode drops from regular crates. They left you the ability to do it; you simply can't stockpile them in pre-Hardmode.

So the preceding has been basically a list of ways in which various mechanics don't fit into the broad narrative. Now, we're going to talk about JE game features that would not be developed by designers who were trying to enforce player agency:

Journey Mode

This is a uniquely Terraria solution to "Creative Mode" in sandbox games. Remember: Terraria is not, and never has been, a pure sandbox experience. It has always had progression built into it. So its version of "Creative Mode" has to recognize this and work within it.

This mode gives players the freedom to manipulate time, change the weather, and a variety of other things. But in terms of simply generating content, this is a feature that a player must earn (unless they just download a fully-unlocked character, but you could also download a character laden with end-game items, so that's nothing new). But once earned, you can use it however you like.

This allows players to make of Journey Mode whatever they want. I planned on using Journey Mode just to generate some low-level constructable materials. But what I realized was that I could also... stop amassing large quantities of accessories, out-dated armors/weapons, and such that I don't need. If I'm not using a thing, I can just research one, sell any copies, and dupe-one up if I ever want to try it. Because I can't dupe something I didn't find myself, it's basically like having arbitrary storage with you in the game.

This means I don't have nearly as many chests lying around. I don't use it for most stacked collectables like herbs and such; I'm still building a herb garden, a tree farm, and so forth. I'm still playing the game, but I get to use Journey Mode research to reduce how much stuff I have to store. And I don't have to try to remember which things I found and which I didn't, because if I didn't find it at some point, it wouldn't be available for research.

Different people can use it in different ways.

This is the very antithesis of the narrative people are spinning about JE. But it's hardly the only such feature. Developers who want to control how users play would not make tModLoader official DLC. They wouldn't make Texture Packs an official thing.

I know NPC happiness, and old-luck to a lesser extent, left a bad taste in peoples' mouths. But do not allow that to completely color how the rest of the game works.
 
Quite a long read but hopefully I can reply sufficiently to each subject.

Luck Mechanics:
It seems you aren't aware but a recent patch has made regular torches grant 0 luck rather than making it negative and I'm not sure if a mix of torches yields the same result but for positive you still need to go out of your way however you points still remain in light of that change. The concern of players being able to both know and see in game how high or low their luck stat is has been addressed so it's likely going to take some time to see what their response will be if they do act on it. Personally I''d like to see released Ladybugs not be re-caught in order to grant the bonus since it makes it questionably pointless not being furniture as, you stated.

NPC Happiness:
I don't believe I'm understanding what your point is by mentioning this as you also admitted it's not exactly restrictive? The price changes are mostly marginal and it's entirely possible to play the exact same way regarding your housing, its most impactful addition are extra teleports and incentive rewards for players.

Tier Circumventing:
Whilst technically this does push players to use more of pre-hard mode tiers it also presented an opportunity for new players to accidentally or in the the case of having forms of guidance purposefully shorten that stage of the game when Terraria is already overwhelming at its pace for most players starting out. Hypothetically imagine a pickaxe you could grab in less than ten minutes of killing Wall and it was on par with Chlorophyte pickaxe and effectively didn't needed replacing. Since progression does exist reasoning for consistency is a stronger case to minimise how many or by how much these are and if you really want to skip it as an already experienced player how much differences is it really to migrate items as opposed to using you depth of knowledge? You may have personal preferences and satisfaction from skipping things the way it was but then you're left with the opposition who are in the same boat basically that were against this item - a matter of opinions.

Creates:
This also seems odd to bring up, if you're aware of hard mode ores being a drop of these then it's pretty easy to set up a farm you can traverse to easily and do the same amount of fishing but with the caveat of it's now after instead of beforehand?

I felt you could have first presented your opinion/views separately first and do examining/presenting subjects without interjecting as much, may have kept it easier to digest but in all I'd like to surmise that this is of course a game in discussion and fundamentally it can't exist without restrictions of some form, it just so happens that the ones we have ended up like this as these. This doesn't mean it's immune to criticism or couldn't be done better, however it seems to me there isn't a compelling reason of why they should change direction for more sandbox elements given the amount of time/effort already put in.

I'm not sure if I can put the effort into explaining the nuance I feel like I'm seeing here but - and this is most notable being a PC player bias) - the game has gone above and beyond along side the fact we've had mods which of course not have Steam. It doesn't mean people should ignore or accept mistakes but at least of any retaining to what you highlight here aren't significant enough given the circumstances in majority outlook.
 
All of the points are moot and everything you list is placebo complaining about some forcing that doesn't exist.
Pylons are an addition if you care about NPCs. Neglecting it doesn't change anything to pre-1.4. No dictating rules here. You have your freedom to not care about housings.

Noone forces you to use biome torches. Negative luck from them was removed but even before there were alternatives to old torches. It also makes sense lowe-wise as creatures might be disrupted by artificial light they aren't familiar with. I dunno. Anyway. Everyone farms with actual set-up farms. Placing biome torches into them is not a big deal, as you can create them on the fly while being in that biome from normal torches. I guess here people just needed something to :red: about and nothing more.

The Reaver Shark was simply lame. People forced themselves into fishing and skipping bosses and actual game experience.
In master mode it wouldn't make a huge difference anyway since Molten armor doesn't help that much anyway. It was an oversight that happened to stay in the game until devs decided to patch it. People again :red: about it for the sake of :red:ing. If you play normally, you don't lose that much time in normal. in expert/master getting Molten earlier than Meteorite/Crimson/Shadow/Bone doesn't help you at all.

The crates change is just, again, people :red:ing for the sake of :red:ing. Building an angler box and fishing in hardmode is no different to fishing in pre-hardmode. But I see it as a good addition, since as you said, it spreads the biomes.
It is also faster to just mine the ores, albeit riskier, but it's what hardmodes intention was in the first place.

All in all the thread shows how the devs actually gave players more freedom rather than controlling them. And players who :red: about the changes simply are mad and :red: for the sake of :red:ing.
 
After being strictly against some changes and "exploit" fixes, now i think the issue is that those changes works really well for "normal" difficulty (as skipping progression was very easy to do on it) and some nerf to stuff like Daedalus Bow and changes for some Boss mechanics now provide actual challenges. But Expert and now new Master mode (that have issues on it's own) is the issue. I mean i don't really think a lot of people were able to get Shark early in Expert and go down to get hellstone. Now it's even less possible with added stuff like ghosts and surely not in Master mode. You still need to in tiers. And be careful more than ever. And happiness hits you hard in those modes also. So you're really slowed down into grind, that actually have nothing to do with difficulty.
You jsut keep digging and digging, building best possible arenas with all buffs available for each Boss, because almost all strategies and item that can help with boss fights were nerfed (and before, yous till had to find those items anyway!). So you grind and grind, attempting to do things like boss fights or even going down to Caverns level only after you do every possible thing thta can help with it.

This also seems odd to bring up, if you're aware of hard mode ores being a drop of these then it's pretty easy to set up a farm you can traverse to easily and do the same amount of fishing but with the caveat of it's now after instead of beforehand?

Because you have to go fast before your biomes are turned into Hallow\Corruption. You already had to do a huge amount of work before getting to Hardmode, now you have to do even more to preserve important biomes and protect all separate small villages.
 
It seems that several people here misunderstood what I was trying to say. I was trying to address the narrative that's going around about developers trying to impose their will upon players with 1.4, with the intent of showing that most of the arguments in favor of this narrative did not support it.

Somehow, many people interpreted what I wrote as me being in support of the narrative, when I'm trying to explain their arguments and then show why they're incorrect (mostly).

That having been said:

The price changes are mostly marginal and it's entirely possible to play the exact same way regarding your housing, its most impactful addition are extra teleports and incentive rewards for players.

Pylons are an addition if you care about NPCs. Neglecting it doesn't change anything to pre-1.4. No dictating rules here. You have your freedom to not care about housings.

These are untrue. If you completely ignore the happiness rules, you will get upwards of a 50% price hike from NPCs if you build NPC housing like you did pre-1.4. That's not something you can just ignore.

If you want good prices, you have to follow the rules. At a minimum, you can't have more than 2 NPC flags closer than 25 squares to others.

You already had to do a huge amount of work before getting to Hardmode, now you have to do even more to preserve important biomes and protect all separate small villages.

Initially, I would disagree with you, since quarantining your base is pretty easy. But I hadn't considered the consequences of adding Pylon towns into the mix.

That's going to add an interesting wrinkle to my setup. Maybe that'll be fun to play through.
 
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One section at a time. :)

NPC Happiness
I'm the kind of player who puts all my NPCs into a box in a giant tower and then largely ignores them. I can still do that. You'll have NPCs that dislike the biome or dislike their neighbours, but a little rearranging can separate them without too much trouble. The happiness boost/penalty on prices is kind of moot I feel. Money is plentiful in Terraria. Happiness is a system that rewards those who invest in it. If you don't - nothing gained, nothing lost.
I am actually really excited about the pylons. They're the wireless teleporters we've always wanted. I'm looking forward to building themed mini-towns around them.
But I'm only one player. We can't speak for the entire playerbase that everyone likes/dislikes the changes.

Luck
Honestly, this was a huge 'meh' for me. The boosts and penalties are so low as to be negligible. I've an old world I explored ~90% of, loaded with regular torches and I'm not seeing any difference.

Reaver Shark
This needed nerfing.

Hardmode crates
I've never understood stashing crates for hardmode. Fishing is boring. I'd rather create a throwaway world and explore that for hardmode ores. But if you prefer fishing, it's still an option. Set up a pylon or teleporter in the middle of the ocean and start hardmode. You're good to go. Nothing new happens in the ocean when hardmode starts.
The change balances the risk vs. reward. If you stash your crates beforehand and skip straight to adamantine/titanium, there's no risk. It's purely reward.


As a whole, has it taken the choice/freedom? Yes and no. The player is not forced into most of these changes, per se. They're more of a guidance, some strong, some subtle. Some change can be ignored entirely, and some players will have to work their playstyle around.
 
Artificially prolonging time you have to spend in early hardmode, which I, and probably many others, consider to be the worst part of the progression was definitely not the right step. Especially since there are still big issues with spending too much time in early hardmode destroying your jungle, which devs still completely refuse to address in any fashion.

Most of the chagnes and additions dont feel like they were designed for normal Terraria experience. They seem to be designed for Journey Mode experience. Which is not base Terraria experience and never will be, regardless of how much they set those options as default when making new world/character.
 
I'm the kind of player who puts all my NPCs into a box in a giant tower and then largely ignores them. I can still do that. You'll have NPCs that dislike the biome or dislike their neighbours, but a little rearranging can separate them without too much trouble. The happiness boost/penalty on prices is kind of moot I feel. Money is plentiful in Terraria. Happiness is a system that rewards those who invest in it. If you don't - nothing gained, nothing lost.
I am actually really excited about the pylons. They're the wireless teleporters we've always wanted. I'm looking forward to building themed mini-towns around them.

You speak about the feature as if it's something purely hypothetical, as if we haven't been playing with it for a week and we can thus only speculate about its effects on the game. The feature is out; speculation is over, and we know exactly what it feels like to play.

If you feel that money is no object in the game, that a 50% cost penalty is reasonable to ask players to pay in order to have a convenient arrangement of NPCs, you can feel that way. But it'd be a lot more convincing if you had actually played it, and your text indicates that you haven't (since you wouldn't be "looking forward" to it if you were playing it).

So while you may feel that something may or may not feel constraining, those of us who have played it can at least know for ourselves what it feels like.

Artificially prolonging time you have to spend in early hardmode, which I, and probably many others, consider to be the worst part of the progression was definitely not the right step.

What did you do back in Terraria 1.2.3, before crates existed?

Especially since there are still big issues with spending too much time in early hardmode destroying your jungle, which devs still completely refuse to address in any fashion.

Is that not what quarantines are for? I have Crimson sitting right on top of my Jungle Temple, and I'm going to quarantine it off before switching on Hardmode. They even added special bombs that make it easy to do (though they're absurdly expensive to craft, since they require a material that has a very finite quantity).

Now to be fair, I do wish they'd make it so that Corruption/Crimson can't convert mud to dirt and thus can't spread through the Jungle. I mean, Hallow can't do it, so it must be pretty simple to switch it off for the other two.
 
What did you do back in Terraria 1.2.3, before crates existed?

Same thing as now. It still was worst part of progression then, it remained when crates became a thing and it is still now. Crates were just a way to skip it without trudging through.

Is that not what quarantines are for? I have Crimson sitting right on top of my Jungle Temple, and I'm going to quarantine it off before switching on Hardmode. They even added special bombs that make it easy to do (though they're absurdly expensive to craft, since they require a material that has a very finite quantity).

Now to be fair, I do wish they'd make it so that Corruption/Crimson can't convert mud to dirt and thus can't spread through the Jungle. I mean, Hallow can't do it, so it must be pretty simple to switch it off for the other two.

Quarantine is very time consuming and entirely pointless when V comes in. Players shouldn't be required to spend hours of nothing but digging just so that their progression doesn't get completely :red:ed. And honestly, I wouldnt be SO against the jungle getting screwed if there was way to fix it as easily as you can fix snow/forest/desert with clentaminator. But nope, there isnt and jungle damage is entirely permanent unless you want to, once again, be spending hours upon hours replacing all the converted dirt with mud by hand. And if the evil biome spawns in way that its basically on top of jungle, which it pretty much always does (or two. I had both spawn by ruining sections of surface jungle in my Large world), amount of work needed only increases. That SHOULDNT be the case.
 
What I wanted to say. Re-Logic didn't kill skips entirely. They killed the cheap skips. You still have an insanely huge skip called Duke Fishron. His gear makes pre-Mech Hardmode a joke. But, you have to be good to defeat him at that stage. It is a rewarding skip and not a "I stay and press LMB for an hour to skip stuff" skip.
Luck
Honestly, this was a huge 'meh' for me. The boosts and penalties are so low as to be negligible. I've an old world I explored ~90% of, loaded with regular torches and I'm not seeing any difference.
If I understand it correctly, placing right torches automatically doubles your chances for loot. Adding a potion, gnome and whatnot you could get triple the base chance.
Artificially prolonging time you have to spend in early hardmode, which I, and probably many others, consider to be the worst part of the progression was definitely not the right step. Especially since there are still big issues with spending too much time in early hardmode destroying your jungle, which devs still completely refuse to address in any fashion.

Most of the chagnes and additions dont feel like they were designed for normal Terraria experience. They seem to be designed for Journey Mode experience. Which is not base Terraria experience and never will be, regardless of how much they set those options as default when making new world/character.
In Normal mode you do not lose time. Instead of Gold > Fishing for an hour > Hellstone > EoC/EoW/BoC/Skeletron > WoF > Hardmode you do it normally by defeating BoC/EoW and then mining hellstone.

In Master mode you are slower and getting Hellstone doesn't really help you anyway.
I feel the game was designed for master mode. To make veterans feel like newbies again, dying left and right. I remember prepairing for hours for my very first EoC kill. Building an elaborate arena, getting gear, weapons and right arrows. Just to be disappointed at how easy he was.
In Master you do it aswell, but then you have a difficult fight. Every boss feels like a real obstacle and feels good if you kill one.
These are untrue. If you completely ignore the happiness rules, you will get upwards of a 50% price hike from NPCs if you build NPC housing like you did pre-1.4. That's not something you can just ignore.
If you want good prices, you have to follow the rules. At a minimum, you can't have more than 2 NPC flags closer than 25 squares to others.
Why do you act like this is something you can't achieve easily and such a difficult task? It is trivial to follow 3 rules: biome and neighbours. It is easily understandable and easy to execute.
If you can't manage to build 7 small boxes now instead of one bit which takes the same ressources, you have a problem.
You are free to not care about all NPCs. Just get your Tinkerer happy for reforge costs. Ignore the rest. It is goddamn trivial but people including you act like it's as difficult as the French revolution.
It is also untrue that you need to have them in pairs. I have a house with 4 NPCs close to each other within less than 25 tiles. They are still happy and their merchants (Stylist and Pirate) sell me the pylon. Other houses have 3 NPCs. They are all happy and sell pylons. (Guide/Merch/Zoo)(Mech/Mage/Cloth)(Witch/Dryad/Golfer) for example. You do NOT need to have only 2 close to each other.
 
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Why do you act like this is something you can't achieve easily and such a difficult task? It is trivial to follow 3 rules: biome and neighbours. It is easily understandable and easy to execute.

And really inconvenient to use on a day-to-day basis. Also, you only listed 2 rules; you forgot isolation (0 or 1 neighbor).
 
And really inconvenient to use on a day-to-day basis. Also, you only listed 2 rules; you forgot isolation (0 or 1 neighbor).
0-1 neighbours is bs and I don't know where you get that from. Screenshot clearly shows a happy Stylist in a small town of 4 NPCs. Pirate also seels the pylon. You CAN easily make villages for 3-4 NPCs.
You completely ignore free teleports. It is a huge advantage to have spread out houses. Having a small village in every biome cuts time and risk travelling across the map by such a huge amount, it is unreal. Heck, even having a pylon at your start and the jungle or one ocean or at the dungeon makes things so much easier.
Quarantine is very time consuming and entirely pointless when V comes in. Players shouldn't be required to spend hours of nothing but digging just so that their progression doesn't get completely :red:ed. And honestly, I wouldnt be SO against the jungle getting screwed if there was way to fix it as easily as you can fix snow/forest/desert with clentaminator. But nope, there isnt and jungle damage is entirely permanent unless you want to, once again, be spending hours upon hours replacing all the converted dirt with mud by hand. And if the evil biome spawns in way that its basically on top of jungle, which it pretty much always does (or two. I had both spawn by ruining sections of surface jungle in my Large world), amount of work needed only increases. That SHOULDNT be the case.
I did a fresh start of Master mode and didn't rush it. I had no difficulties bombing off my corruption canyons with sticky bombs in the first hours and then doing the same to the V with scarab bombs and sticky dynamite. I did not spend hours upon hours. I guess completely saving my world from the biomes took 1 hour tops in total.
 

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0-1 neighbours is bs and I don't know where you get that from. Screenshot clearly shows a happy Stylist in a small town of 4 NPCs. Pirate also seels the pylon. You CAN easily make villages for 3-4 NPCs.

Only if they're the right arrangement of NPCs. And how happy was the Stylist? And how close were these 3-4 NPCs? Right next to each other, or was there 25 blocks between two pairs of them?

You completely ignore free teleports. It is a huge advantage to have spread out houses.

I ignore them because Pylons do not have to be involved in the happiness mechanic. You can just make them regular biome-specific purchases, and the mechanic would be otherwise unchanged.
 
To add to that, I consider quarantine shafts themselves to be even more of a world ruiner than the jungle getting permanently damaged. However practical they are, they plain look ugly and shouldn't be a necessety regardless of how easy they are to make.
 
Only if they're the right arrangement of NPCs. And how happy was the Stylist? And how close were these 3-4 NPCs? Right next to each other, or was there 25 blocks between two pairs of them?
Which requires you to do a few clicks. How restraining.
You can see the screenshot.
To add to that, I consider quarantine shafts themselves to be even more of a world ruiner than the jungle getting permanently damaged. However practical they are, they plain look ugly and shouldn't be a necessety regardless of how easy they are to make.
Clentaminate then?
 
Removing Freedom? Not that much, but still hurt somewhere.

> Happiness.
You can do NPC tower like before, but with price penalty. If you ignore it, you can't use Pylons for fast travel before mech boss down. It didn't as good as teleporter but very nice addition none the less. So, remove penalty and everything will be the same, with reward for follow the rule.

> Luck
With bad touch luck remove, everything is the same with addition reward if you can withstand the torch color... I can't.

> Reaver Shark
We got worst than gold pickaxe for no good reason, that all. They have a lot of way to make it unique or nice reward / addition without make it super cheesy like before. They just need another orange mushroom... That can kill something.

> Crates Nerf
Some may say fair as Reaver can be. I think it .... pretty okay to nerf it. Stacking in HM sound fair. Nothing to say much about this as IMO, I still think the tier 4-6 pickaxe is the worst procession in Terraria ever. Yes, more than tier 1-3. If one thing.... I think the nerf to crates tier can't spawn better ore is a little bit too much combo. Fisher already know how long they need to fish before single gold crates show up. Well, I can live with it. Prismite is the most time consuming anyway.

> Journey Mode
Nice addition. I think it's good for doing some test and experiment. But not for survival as all 'creative' mode in other game can be.

Anyway, for me Journey end is a good update, but a bad taste in my mouth for how rush and unpolished it is. They need more tester, with more varies opinion and PoV to polish it. I don't know how to say it... I feel like its those problem is from Dev try to flat / liner change it.
 
Only if they're the right arrangement of NPCs. And how happy was the Stylist? And how close were these 3-4 NPCs? Right next to each other, or was there 25 blocks between two pairs of them?
You're information is so wrong it hurts, you can have up to three NPCs within 25 blocks of each other and it incurs NO penalty, only at 4 or more is it a problem, and that's within 25 squares! You seem to be misinterpreting how trivial that actually is. It takes a character with no speed boosts literally 2 seconds to walk that distance.
 
And here we go back to issue: Jungle cant be repaired via clentamination. Jungle damage is permanent. Because evil biomes turn mud into dirt and no mode of clentamination reverses it.
Clentaminate the other stuff if you don't want to fence it off. About freedom and restraints. You restrain yourself. You have an issue about the jungle, yet refuse to do anything about it because you might have a bit of ravines in a world.
 
You're information is so wrong it hurts, you can have up to three NPCs within 25 blocks of each other and it incurs NO penalty, only at 4 or more is it a problem, and that's within 25 squares! You seem to be misinterpreting how trivial that actually is. It takes a character with no speed boosts literally 2 seconds to walk that distance.

It is 4 NPCs within 120 squares, not 25. So it's more than a 2 second walk. You have to go about a screen length and a half between any possible grouping of 4 NPCs. Meaning if there are four NPCs with any random subset of 120 tiles, you will be penalized.

"No more than one other NPC within 25 tiles and no more than three other NPCs within 120 tiles"

 
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