Hi!
I created an account just to give some feedback. I just recently bought Terraria for PS4 a couple of weeks ago, and so only have spent about 10-15 hours in it, so I am nowhere near as invested as many of you are. However, I wanted to give a beginner's perspective on the new update. Mainly on the crafting situation, and how it affects my gameplay.
After having read through much (but not all) of the thread I wanted to sit down and play some to see if the initial issues I had with the update perhaps wasn't as bad as I first thought. My first impressions were that I no longer could comfortably craft items that I need to create another "base" with a bed, so I don't have to return home every time I died.
After reading the thread I discovered that I could give the Guide materials to see what I can craft with them. I did not know that before. It might've been told to me in the beginning, but it was probably too much information going into my head at that point to take note of that. I also very seldom interacted with the Guide, since he moved into a home deep in the underground and not my "base home". It wasn't until a couple of days before the update that he moved into the base home again.
Allright, so I decided to skip the "craft-bed-and-items-needed-for-a-new-base" mission and just go and find a new area to explore. I found some rather large bodies of water that I wanted to see where they led. However, I didn't have enough glowsticks, and thought this was a good way to get help from the guide. I first thought I needed a torch to craft glowsticks. After scrolling through the rather long list up and down a couple of time (to make sure I didn't miss anything) the torch was the wrong object. I then tried with gels, but I couldn't find any glowsticks in the list. The only reference to it I found (and I can't remember if it was with the torch of the gel) was that I could craft sticky glowsticks, but for that I needed the green ones, which I had no idea how to craft. I tried with a couple of other materials (some of which gave me rather long lists to scroll through) and went to my chests to pick some items I thought could be used. After about 15-20 minutes I gave up.
I still have no idea how to craft glowsticks and just got frustrated and ended my session.
Now, I am not mad or angry at the developers for the update. I bought it during a big PS Store discount period, so I didn't pay that much. But I am baffled at the developers for thinking that this is actually good game design. Because it really isn't. At first I saw the material discovery as a sort of progression system throughout the game. You found a new material and could see what you could craft and what other materials you needed. It created a sort of Zelda-esque childish discovery feeling. "Wow, that thing looks really cool and it can help me get to other areas, I just need to keep an eye out for the missing materials!". Whereas right now, all that is gone and I am left with constantly scrolling through long lists of reciepes, hoping to get it right. An incredible time consuming trial and error system when you know what you want, but don't know how to get it.
All in all, the time spent discovering and digging through the world have been reduced since I have to spent way more time figuring out what to craft.
As I said, I didn't pay much for this, so I'm not really angry. I am, however, sad that the update made a fun game totally unplayable for me. Some people perhaps like it this way, I don't. I might try the game out again in 6 months or so, but since the developers seems to think this is a good change, I have little faith that the crafting situation will be remedied.
I could live with the UI being different (I'm on a 104" projector, so it doesn't affect me as much, and I'm sure you'll come up with a solution to stop text overlaying other text so you can't read) or the other changes, but crafting is a deal breaker.
Thanks for 10-15 hours of fun, but I won't be playing the game anymore. It just isn't fun now.