Yvori
Terrarian
I was initially really happy about the NPC happiness system- discounts, actual incentive to build all around the world instead of just in the center, more NPC depth...
But its implementation feels kind of... bleh, and even after a few playthroughs that haven't even gotten to Hardmode yet (I tend to play very slowly, and have also been distracted by other games), I find it more frustrating than fun, to the point where it's sort of killing my interest in building entirely.
It's very clear that the developers intentionally gave lots of contradictory happiness requirements to make it so there's no optimal setup, to encourage putting NPCs with different NPCs each playthrough... But I feel like they should have instead made it so there are many different ways to make an optimal setup, to encourage the same thing. Not giving any NPCs except Santa loved/hated biomes also makes it feel a bit incomplete. Having certain biomes override other biomes (Hallow overrides Desert, Snow ovverides Underground, etc.) for no reason makes things even more annoying. There are also no new additions to help stop these spread out areas from getting corrupted when entering Hardmode, where a good 1/4 of the world gets suddenly transformed all at once, and the spreading speed increases DRASTICALLY until Plantera is defeated. Making every NPC get a bonus from only having 1 other NPC within 25 tiles means you can't chain them together like A --- B --- C if A likes B and C likes B but A doesn't like C, unless you want results that are worse than just spreading them out a bit more. The number of pylons compared to the number of towns you need to make feels too low in some cases... And needing to consult the wiki before building anything so you can remember which NPCs will like which other NPCs, etc. is annoying as heck.
Despite the system being primarily positive in nature, it's only lead to increased stress for me, and agonizing over trying to make every NPC as happy as possible and making builds in places where the corruption can't get them, etc... It makes me spend more time getting fed up by the flowcharts needed, which in turn makes me want to put less effort into the actual builds, especially because the hardmode hallow/corruption generation could completely ruin the biomes they're in after the fact.
So... is anyone else finding the happiness system to just be... more frustrating than fun, more annoying than useful? I understand it's easy to get every NPC to have at least a 85-90% price range, but needing to constantly pick and choose which NPCs to make happy, build temporary houses for NPCs that don't have the other NPCs they need for happiness yet, or for biomes that don't exist yet (coughHallowcough), then needing to figure out all the logistics... Ugh.
I know I could cram them all together and only make the ones I really need frequently for my current playthrough happy... But stupidly, that makes me feel bad. Similar to being an a**hole in RPGs, it just makes me feel kinda horrible. And all the restrictions and requirements and stuff just makes the whole system insufferable...
Edit: Sorry about the poll answer order. Accidentally submitted it early, and had to add the "Yes, but work needed" option afterward, which made it default to the bottom of the poll, with no option to rearrange.
But its implementation feels kind of... bleh, and even after a few playthroughs that haven't even gotten to Hardmode yet (I tend to play very slowly, and have also been distracted by other games), I find it more frustrating than fun, to the point where it's sort of killing my interest in building entirely.
It's very clear that the developers intentionally gave lots of contradictory happiness requirements to make it so there's no optimal setup, to encourage putting NPCs with different NPCs each playthrough... But I feel like they should have instead made it so there are many different ways to make an optimal setup, to encourage the same thing. Not giving any NPCs except Santa loved/hated biomes also makes it feel a bit incomplete. Having certain biomes override other biomes (Hallow overrides Desert, Snow ovverides Underground, etc.) for no reason makes things even more annoying. There are also no new additions to help stop these spread out areas from getting corrupted when entering Hardmode, where a good 1/4 of the world gets suddenly transformed all at once, and the spreading speed increases DRASTICALLY until Plantera is defeated. Making every NPC get a bonus from only having 1 other NPC within 25 tiles means you can't chain them together like A --- B --- C if A likes B and C likes B but A doesn't like C, unless you want results that are worse than just spreading them out a bit more. The number of pylons compared to the number of towns you need to make feels too low in some cases... And needing to consult the wiki before building anything so you can remember which NPCs will like which other NPCs, etc. is annoying as heck.
Despite the system being primarily positive in nature, it's only lead to increased stress for me, and agonizing over trying to make every NPC as happy as possible and making builds in places where the corruption can't get them, etc... It makes me spend more time getting fed up by the flowcharts needed, which in turn makes me want to put less effort into the actual builds, especially because the hardmode hallow/corruption generation could completely ruin the biomes they're in after the fact.
So... is anyone else finding the happiness system to just be... more frustrating than fun, more annoying than useful? I understand it's easy to get every NPC to have at least a 85-90% price range, but needing to constantly pick and choose which NPCs to make happy, build temporary houses for NPCs that don't have the other NPCs they need for happiness yet, or for biomes that don't exist yet (coughHallowcough), then needing to figure out all the logistics... Ugh.
I know I could cram them all together and only make the ones I really need frequently for my current playthrough happy... But stupidly, that makes me feel bad. Similar to being an a**hole in RPGs, it just makes me feel kinda horrible. And all the restrictions and requirements and stuff just makes the whole system insufferable...
Edit: Sorry about the poll answer order. Accidentally submitted it early, and had to add the "Yes, but work needed" option afterward, which made it default to the bottom of the poll, with no option to rearrange.
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