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:
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.
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.