Greetings. I’ve been playing Terraria on PS4 for several years now and absolutely love it. I’ve been really excited for the 1.3 update and am really happy that it is finally here! It looks great and I’m really loving all of the new content. I’ve only played a few hours but I have some feedback that I think could really improve the overall experience of the game on console. Right now it feels a little bit too much like a PC game that I’m trying to play with a controller, which can make some simple things feel a little clunky/awkward or just take too much time in game. I’m by no means a Terraria pro, so I need all the help I can get, and the faster I can do things, the more likely it is that I can not die… all the time (like I’ve been doing since 1.3 went live haha). Below is a list of some of the things that I think could improve the feel of the game on console overall. I’ve broken it into sections that I think each thing would likely fall under. If you need a more clear explanation, or would like to see an example of what I’m talking about please let me know and I can try to be more descriptive or upload a photo/video or something.
The Smart Cursor Function – I think most of the problems/fixes below stem from the Smart Cursor function. I’m not sure if this is what it’s called but it’s basically when you point in a direction with the thumb sticks the cursor goes that way and when you don’t point a direction is centers back on your character. This is the main mode that I like to play in for combat, exploration, etc. and I feel like it’s a little clunky. For example:
- Item placement – When placing an item on the ground, let’s say a workbench, it would be nice to just point the thumb stick down at the ground and press the use item button and it would be placed on the ground in the direction my cursor was pointed. As it plays right now though, the item won’t place on the ground, because the cursor itself is below the ground. To get the item to place on the ground I have to angle the control stick just slightly down so that the cursor is just hovering over the ground (i.e. it has to be directly where the item will be placed instead of just pointed in the direction the item will be placed). It’s much easier to make broad strokes with the thumb stick (i.e. just point it down) than hold it slightly off of center. When using thumb sticks that are half an inch tall this requires WAY more precision and time than placing a simple workbench on the ground should take. I think to fix this you should just be able to hold the direction (i.e. down) and the item will auto place on the surface nearest to the character in the direction the cursor is pointing, that the item can be placed on. This would also be useful for doors (i.e. the door will automatically be place in the place in the empty space 3 blocks high that I’m pointing the cursor towards rather than having to place the cursor directly where the space for the door is).
- Along the same lines as item placement is block placement when in smart cursor mode. The best example of this is when I want to build blocks right under my feet to boost me up to a ledge or something. The way I would like to do this is point the cursor down (all the way down), hold the use item button, and jump up and down several times and the blocks would be placed under me as I jump. As it is right now, if there are an surfaces to the side or even above my character when I just the smart cursor will place the blocks on that surface *even if I’m pointing it in the exact opposite direction*. If I’m pointing the cursor in a direction, that’s the direction I want the blocks to be placed in.
Crafting and Item menu – the crafting and item menus are another area I think the quality of life could be improved, with some functions that could speed things up a bit.
- When crafting things, I think ‘quick craft’ should be the default ‘X’ button (i.e. when I craft something I would prefer it to automatically be placed in my inventory, instead of stuck on the cursor). I think 99% of the time I’m not going to care where the item ends up in my inventory, and I don’t want to have to navigate over to the inventory place the item down and navigate back to the crafting menu to craft another item.
- If we could place items in the world directly from the crafting menu then I wouldn’t mind the item defaulting to the cursor after it’s crafted (e.g. I just crafted a workbench in the crafting menu and instead of placing it in my inventory, placing it in the top bar of my inventory, getting out of the inventory menu, selecting the item from the item bar and then placing it in the world, I could just craft it, move my cursor with the work bench on it to the place I want to place it, and place it down all without having to exit the crafting menu).
- Many times I need to craft a bunch of one item at a time. For example: gold bars. To do this I’ll hold down the quick craft button and the gold bars will quickly be crafted. Excellent. What is not excellent, however, is that when I run out of gold ore (the resource for crafting the item) the option to craft the gold bars will disappear and a new item will be selected for crafting (e.g. a gold axe) and if I haven't released the quick craft button in the split second of time between when my gold bars ran out and the gold axe was selected the new item will also be crafted, leaving me with a stupid gold axe, and no gold bars. Seems like this could be avoided if when you’re crafting an item and run out of resources for that item, it wouldn’t automatically disappear from the crafting menu, maybe it would just be greyed out (signifying that you don’t have any more resources to craft that item) and then when you navigate off of the item the option to craft it disappears, like it does now (thus avoiding any accidental gold axe crafting). Also having items that you can craft but don't have the resources for available to see is useful so you know what resources you need more of to craft those items... like in the old console version...
- It seems like right now when I map an item to the D-pad, the D-pad is actually mapped to the slot in the inventory, not the item itself. Thus when I sort my inventory, or move items around, or reload a game all of the mappings disappear. It would be very helpful if the D-pad mapping was to the item itself, not the slot so when you move or reorganize items you don’t have to remap everything every time. Also, D-pad mapping should probably be the default option… It is WAY to useful to have a weapon, light, pickaxe, etc. only the touch of a button away, instead of trying to scroll through your item bar to select these essential items when a skeleton, zombie, eater of worlds, etc. suddenly appears when you’re catching fire flies or hunting for loot.
- When you open a chest there should be a button assigned to ‘loot all’ (like L2 for example) so you don’t have to navigate nine slots over, and six slots down when a something is chasing you but you still want to grab the loot from the chest you just found.
Other
- An Opacity option/slider would be great! Some things are hard to see when they’re semi-translucent.
These are just my first few thoughts after spending a few hours in 1.3 on PS4. I think most of these ideas are consistent with how the Terraria operated on PS4 before the 1.3 update. I really love the game and think you guys have done a terrific job! But I think it could be even better once some of the controls/menus are smoothed out a bit. Thanks for listening to the feedback of a guy that get’s way too mad when he wastes his gold bars by accidentally crafting a stupid gold axe.