And we came full circle.
Now to talk about some of my qualms with this thread:
Snickerbobble: I don't think you understand the balance of quality of life and game design. As pixelpatcher said, your suggestion would be way overpowered, but let me explain to you why; it breaks the games progression. It seems like everyone is forgetting or at least forgetting why terraria isn't just a sandbox. In the very first trailer, first saying the words "create your world...and then defend it!", shows another aspect about the game; exploring, which would be woefully damaged by this change. you can just go to the jungle or the underworld to grab the possible items you need to become a beast. There's quality of life, and then there's skipping the process of getting there. You did suggest requiring beating a boss and only one npc per pylon but i also take a bit of issue with this, although it does have some good. For bosses, higher mode players would be at a severe disadvantage, since expert and master mode bosses are obviously way harder. A solution though would be to allow use but limit the pylon via requiring an npc or have a cooldown. one npc per pylon too would still put a strain leaving about two full towns but ill let this slide since it's an attempt at a compromise. From a builders point of view, i completely agree with your suggestion. There's no inherent advantage or disadvantage spreaders or clumpers have and they can live in harmony knowing they only benefit from this. But from a realistic game design stance, it's simply not achievable without damaging the progression.
A solution iv'e come up with is a dynamic system. First, (this doesn't have to be done) the pylon is a plant. This is so that you can't just teleport as soon as you place it. Cavern pylons also take longer to grow and fall under the same rules as gemcornes. Second, pylons have a cooldown system that starts depending a little on the height. it lowers as the game progresses through pre hardmode. Defeat a certain number of creatures in that biome, beat a boss, get to a certain point in the game, (like allowing your pylon to be placed in the cavern layer after entering hell or kiling eater of worlds) or use npcs. When you defeat the wall of flesh, cooldowns will reduce significantly and (if you did those other things) pylons are free teleport devices with zero npcs necessary. Perfect since teleporters aren't so far away.
This system balances around the progression of ridding of an inconvenience. At the start, pylons aren't all that useful unless you put npcs next to them. You still have little choice in the matter. You either spread the npcs or kiss the initial reductions goodbye. But this time, it's not mandatory to do so, its just to get a boost. And as you play pre hardmode, It reduces. At the end, you can finally have your interconnected city or city with multiple exits.
Before i'm done, i want to state that i don't think an interconnected city could ever work as well in vanilla terraria as Re Logic hoped. There's 23 total housable npcs, and 8 pylons excluding the universal one. Doing the math, you have room for maybe two towns. The rest are just tiny homes. This is why i hope mods come to 1.4 eventually, cause mods like thorium and alchemist with a good chunck of npcs are the only way this interconnected city idea will give people the freedom they seek.
Also, in case anyone asked, yes, remove the price increase.
I don't think mine would be overpowered since the current system allows
far easier access to pylons as opposed to what I'm suggesting. It takes more effort to explore biomes, finding spare magic mirrors (since you'd probably want to keep the first), and beating bosses/tougher enemies than to set up tiny box homes and assign NPCs to them. If anything, the current method "clashes" more with game balance, just due to how easy they are to acquire, but as they exist, the game hasn't seemed to implode on itself. I was kind of surprised HOW easy pylons are to acquire, they just require a set way to home NPCs. I'd rather have a challenge to unlock them, not have a restriction on building that allows super easy acquisition.
And yes, I get part of the game is exploring, which I think is another point in favor of my idea, since again the current system allows easy box home set-up and you get a teleport there.
You don't even have to explore the biome beyond crossing its surface now, you don't even need to defeat a single enemy, nor collect a single resource from the biome, but you can still get your warp to it anyway.
With my idea, you have to explore the biome, gather its resources, defeat its enemies.. and possibly even a boss or certain enemy first, to get its pylon. On average, my method would make Pylons a mid to late pre-hardmode and early hardmode system, but currently the system is a very early pre-hardmode system. Very minimal exploration needed now- Pick a dye plant, get 50 silver, find one life crystal, and find one bomb, can be done within 10 minutes and allows warps to biomes you've never set foot in.
For those who choose a harder difficulty.. I mean, they did pick a harder difficulty. Higher difficulties should be balanced around the base game, not the other way around.
As for them needing to grow.. I guess? I thought my system put enough of an unlock system in place, much more than the current system's. I was thinking as for pylon progression, you'd gain more biome pylons through the course of the game, such as a Sand Elemental defeat for a desert pylon, and Queen Slime (and/or alternative EoL) for a Hallow one. Queen Bee is skippable, but giving her defeat (along with Plantera's) may give the player more reason to defeat her to unlock the Jungle pylon, especially with its significance in hardmode.
I don't have much experience in making games, but I've gone several years thinking of ideas and how to balance them. I don't know why some who disagree with me on this one topic claim I have no sense of game balance, especially considering how the current system of the topic in question is
far easier to obtain than how I'd like them to be unlocked. They are easy but restricting right now, and I'd like them to be at least a moderate challenge along with uplifting the arbitrary restriction on them.