Anyone Else Hate The Pylon System?

Remove The Two NPC Requirement For Pylons To Work?

  • Yes

    Votes: 8 30.8%
  • No

    Votes: 18 69.2%

  • Total voters
    26
I mean I wanna use em, but having two npc's centered near each pylon for them to work is a bit excessive right?

NPC happiness is okay to me, and having the npc's sell pylons when happy is fine, but why in the world do I have to have two happy npc's near the pylon for it to work!

I feel like it really takes away the creativity of building bases and towns. I just built a really nice town, and now in order to teleport (which is very useful) I have to spread my npc's across the entire world? Now my town looks so empty and lifeless! Which is the opposite of what was intended with this system.

I guess I could exploit it by making two crappy houses next to each pylon and wait for the npc's to move in, just to use it once. But I shouldn't have to do that.

I'm not usually one for complaining about new things in game (afterall the more the better imo), but I really shouldn't be forced to build things the way dev's want it to be. My two options are (A) never use pylon teleport system, which is insanely useful OR (B) spread every single npc across the map just to make the teleporters work, making my base a ghost town in the process.

Happiness was a cool idea, and so were pylons, but forcing you to build differently just to use this new teleportation system is a big drawback to me, especially on master mode when pylons are even more important. I'd rather have the negative torch system than this tbh. Everything else in the 1.4 update was magnificently done, just this one thing nags at me.
 
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I think option A is pretty valid considering we've been playing this game for years without the pylon system. The pylons act as a reward for the player for playing a certain way. It does not force/punish you for building a certain way (Now, raised prices for NPCs being too close is an annoying punishment, but that's besides the point). The pylons aren't actually that necessary either, you can build a minecart track, you can now use items that teleport you to the oceans and hell, and you also have teleporters which are much more flexible than pylons. I think its fine if the devs want to reward the player for building a certain way, and it might even force you to try and be creative with how you approach building towns. But, you also have alternatives if you don't want to build a certain way.
 
Now my town looks so empty and lifeless! Which is the opposite of what was intended with this system.

No, making you spread your NPCs out was exactly what was intended. Just look at the original post about the whole system.

My two options are (A) never use pylon teleport system, which is insanely useful OR (B) spread every single npc across the map just to make the teleporters work, making my base a ghost town in the process.

This is hyperbole. Even if you have all 9 Pylons, that's only 16 NPCs (one of the Pylons is undoubtedly in your base) out of 25 total by the end of the game. And pre-Hardmode, you can only have 7 Pylons (since Hallow and Universal are unavailable). That means you need only send out 12 NPCs to power Pylons.

Every fast-travel system has some restriction. Teleporters require Hardmode and long-distance wiring. Minecarts require building lots of infrastructure. Pylons require extra NPCs.

I'd rather have the negative torch system than this tbh.

You would rather be invisibly penalized for using the most common torches than to send a few NPCs that you don't use very often to fast-travel points? Seriously?!
 
You don't have to use every pylon to be useful. For most of my time, I've only used 4 or 5 Pylons. And spread them well accordingly. (Surface, jungle, ocean and cavern been my picks)
 
"The travelling merchant has arrived"

Me: uh where I've got to check 7 places all over the world...". (Zooms in and out of map repeatedly)

Like so many other NPC problems, this can be solved by removing happiness from the game. Without that incentive to have more than 2 NPCs in any one location, the majority of your NPCs will be in your base. So that's where the Traveling Merchant will spawn (maybe? If he spawns randomly near an NPC, then it could be changed to spawn near Towns if they exist).
 
I enjoy the pylon system. It allowed me to expand across the entire map rather than focusing on one major base. It makes you play different, if you have that much of an issue just home the NPCs that are useful for you and leave the ones you don't plan on buying from to be unhappy.
 
I kinda like the pylon sistem, since well, it saves a ton of time especially large maps, but the requirements are indeed a negative for builders, instead of making a single but giant town, you do villages around biomes tring to bring a theme for the NPCs and the biome. It's a good thing for newcomers but not so much for builders with huge
building projects.

Althogh you don't really need to bring all NPCs to stay in their biomes and use pylons, you can just use your forest pylon, a ocean left-side, while right-side you use a biome that is the closest to the ocean, underground pylon fairly close to the hell, with maybe adding jungle or snow biome depening of the travel distance, but most cases, you need those 4 to save most of the travel time.
 
I like the Pylon system, it gives me a reason to build multiple outposts and theme them to that zone. Whereas before I just had one mega-apartment building (NPC prison) floating somewhere near spawn. It's pretty heartless even if it maximizes NPC convenience. Obviously I could have always chosen to make distinct outposts, but even when doing the fun and creative parts of the game, I will always tend towards what is efficient or expected by the game. The fact that pets count as NPCs also make it really easy to satisfy the conditions for pylons, so like my cavern base near hell only has demolitionist and cat so it's not like it's a hassle he's not near spawn.

My only complaint is the limit, I bought 3 forest pylons not realizing only one works at a time.
 
The only thing I'd like is wire connectivity.
1. Pylon Crystals can be bought. Wire it to a teleporter and you go to the pylon that corresponds to the crystal.

2. It would also be nice to have a Pylon Conduit. Also for teleporters. Place a teleporter. Connect it to the conduit. Place a pylon, connect it with the same colored wire to another teleport. When you activate the first teleporter, it sends you to the second. Doesn't work backwards (you go to the pylon, maybe?). That's a little more complicated, but would let each Pylon be a direct teleport hub. You could do the same thing with two hops, so I'd really just like 1 more than anything.
 
The only thing I'd like is wire connectivity.
1. Pylon Crystals can be bought. Wire it to a teleporter and you go to the pylon that corresponds to the crystal.

2. It would also be nice to have a Pylon Conduit. Also for teleporters. Place a teleporter. Connect it to the conduit. Place a pylon, connect it with the same colored wire to another teleport. When you activate the first teleporter, it sends you to the second. Doesn't work backwards (you go to the pylon, maybe?). That's a little more complicated, but would let each Pylon be a direct teleport hub. You could do the same thing with two hops, so I'd really just like 1 more than anything.

What is the point of these? The first one could be handled by just using a teleporter at the destination. Is space at such a premium that you can't put down both a teleporter and a Pylon?

And the second just seems like a way to avoid running long lengths of wires. And we have a way to do that: they're called Pylons. A different object for a different kind of teleportation system.
 
What is the point of these? The first one could be handled by just using a teleporter at the destination. Is space at such a premium that you can't put down both a teleporter and a Pylon?
It's not even a space issue, considering that you can place pylons on top of teleporters anyway...
 
What is the point of these? The first one could be handled by just using a teleporter at the destination. Is space at such a premium that you can't put down both a teleporter and a Pylon?

And the second just seems like a way to avoid running long lengths of wires. And we have a way to do that: they're called Pylons. A different object for a different kind of teleportation system.

It lets you combine the two systems together for easier transport and more direct transport, which I think is a plus. So you could have all of the pylons and 4 teleportors at each and have one click to get to any destination. It's not just that it saves on wires, it makes the wiring a lot easier. The red teleportor connected to the forest pylon doesn't need one wire per pylon so you can teleport directly there. It just needs the one to connect it to the pylon, then each teleportor you want to connect to that destination just needs to go to the associated crystal.

Basically, it's the difference between a switching system verses requiring a full mesh for connectivity, in networking terms. And it seems more naturally for the two systems to combine rather than to expand one or the other to do this.

Part of the reason, I like this, admittedly, is that on large worlds I have to zoom out every time I use the pylons which is tedious. I'd rather just click a switch. Though in general I'd rather click a switch.
 
Part of the reason, I like this, admittedly, is that on large worlds I have to zoom out every time I use the pylons which is tedious.

It seems to me like there'd be a much simpler way to fix that problem: automatically make the initial Pylon map zoom level big enough to show all the Pylons. The likelihood of the player placing two Pylons so close to each other that they're indistinguishable is pretty low, since the whole point is to reduce travel time, which requires Pylons to be at least somewhat distant from one-another.
 
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