Expand Your Terraria Empire - Pylons, Town Building, and NPC Happiness

I'm quite excited over this new NPC Happiness Mechanic and I eagerly anticipate how it manifests itself through progression and the style of players' builds. I myself seldom participate in the NPC shoe box method, nonetheless I can analyze and accept the reasoning behind their existence. (Humans always look for the most convenient solution to a problem, after all.) To those who are vocally opposed this new mechanic however, their reasoning perplexes me greatly; I cannot fathom the logic behind most of their arguments other than the simple explanation that most of us dislike change.

Despite being in favor of this interesting new addition, I am concerned over the currently unknown penalty prices for not engaging in this new program. If the penalties are reasonable, if not minimal, then I rest my concerns, but if they are reasonably high, then I would like to voice my concerns over many building venues receiving a critical blow for a more linear building system. (Ex. Building a large thriving settlement or a project in a single biome being thwarted due to jacked up prices, and not housing X NPC's in X environments.)

Nonetheless I have full faith in the team and I assume that this particular concern of mine will turn out to be invalid.

Keep being awesome and greatly looking forward to 1.4,

Sage the Wise
 
Yes, some complaints are based on assumptions or misunderstandings. This system is not about the quality of buildings, but about the location of buildings and the location of the NPCs. What I have a problem with and already described why. For now, I see a solution simply to build several houses for the NPCs, the main one that I want and the other spare ones that the game wants from me. The first will be like the main house, and the second as a country house or cabin in the mountains.

I actually did this a long time ago for my merchant because of the mechanics of selling certain items. Perhaps this mechanic will encourage temporary hotels in different biomes.
 
oh my god.. i love this! i allways made nice houses for my npcs, like a flying airship in the skys for the steampunker.
one thing tho comes into my mind...

if you want to make everybody happy:
what if an npc who likes the ice biom wants to live next to an npc that likes the desert biom... would we have to cramp thos bioms now or can npc even like someone who likes a diffrent typ of biom as themselfs?
or is it like you just have to fullfill two of thos three things to make them as happy as they can be?

oh also i hope you can still teleport into the town that hase an invasion event but not out of it if you mean that you cant use them wile an invasion event is active... it would make things quite complicated and irritating if there is a goblin army somewhere in theocean town and you cant teleport to the desert for bullets or something or you have to walk there all the way now and back to the ocean.. of if you die and only have a center respan and now you have to walk there all the way.
 
5bo.de | DragonRider6911 said:
oh my god.. i love this! i allways made nice houses for my npcs, like a flying airship in the skys for the steampunker.
one thing tho comes into my mind...

if you want to make everybody happy:
what if an npc who likes the ice biom wants to live next to an npc that likes the desert biom... would we have to cramp thos bioms now or can npc even like someone who likes a diffrent typ of biom as themselfs?
or is it like you just have to fullfill two of thos three things to make them as happy as they can be?

oh also i hope you can still teleport into the town that hase an invasion event but not out of it if you mean that you cant use them wile an invasion event is active... it would make things quite complicated and irritating if there is a goblin army somewhere in theocean town and you cant teleport to the desert for bullets or something or you have to walk there all the way now and back to the ocean.. of if you die and only have a center respan and now you have to walk there all the way.
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I'd assume NPC's just like the people who like their own biome the most.
 
SagetheWise said:
To those who are vocally opposed this new mechanic however, their reasoning perplexes me greatly; I cannot fathom the logic behind most of their arguments other than the simple explanation that most of us dislike change.
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Here's my logic in summary:

1. NPCs are game mechanics that exist to get me stuff.
2. NPCs all being quickly accessible from my base makes it very convenient to get stuff from them.
3. The logic behind NPC happiness rules is arbitrarily constructed to encourage players to avoid convenient arrangement of NPCs.
4. Arbitrary rules that punish convenient play are not fun gameplay (this is why in virtually every game update, storage capacity has increased in some way. 1.1 gave us Safes, 1.2 gave us double-size chests and an extra row of carryable space, 1.3 gave us bigger stacks for many items, etc. Running out of space isn't fun because it's highly inconvenient).

What's difficult to follow here? You don't have to agree with that logic; you can have your own priorities. But please don't dismiss legitimate criticism as just "disliking change".
 
Just an idea to everyone, build a base close to the 2nd Ocean for easier travelling. This is the best idea that I've ever heard from a game. It's such a great way, Pylon is a system that force players to expand their base around the world.

However, to me, large world isn't large enough to me. :(
 
Nicol Bolas said:
Here's my logic in summary:

1. NPCs are game mechanics that exist to get me stuff.
2. NPCs all being quickly accessible from my base makes it very convenient to get stuff from them.
3. The logic behind NPC happiness rules is arbitrarily constructed to encourage players to avoid convenient arrangement of NPCs.
4. Arbitrary rules that punish convenient play are not fun gameplay (this is why in virtually every game update, storage capacity has increased in some way. 1.1 gave us Safes, 1.2 gave us double-size chests and an extra row of carryable space, 1.3 gave us bigger stacks for many items, etc. Running out of space isn't fun because it's highly inconvenient).

What's difficult to follow here? You don't have to agree with that logic; you can have your own priorities. But please don't dismiss legitimate criticism as just "disliking change".
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You don't seem to realize that pylons exist to make NPCs easily accessible. It's legitimately two clicks and takes 3 seconds, plus it makes them give you discounts. Are you SERIOUSLY complaining about this?

This feature is being added so that you don't just view NPCs as game mechanics and instead actually have incentive to be a tiny bit more creative than making a large wooden box on top of a room full of chests and crafting stations every single time you play the game.

This makes the NPCs have a tiny bit more depth than just coin-to-item machines. It makes logical sense that NPCs would not enjoy being crammed into tiny rooms in locations that they aren't a fan of, and it makes sense that they would prefer certain NPCs over others. It isn't arbitrary.

Your logic is very flawed. Your criticisms are not legitimate, all it proves is that you're incredibly lazy. You get discounted prices at the price of your NPCs taking an additional 2 seconds to get to.
 
Nicol Bolas said:
Here's my logic in summary:

1. NPCs are game mechanics that exist to get me stuff.
2. NPCs all being quickly accessible from my base makes it very convenient to get stuff from them.
3. The logic behind NPC happiness rules is arbitrarily constructed to encourage players to avoid convenient arrangement of NPCs.
4. Arbitrary rules that punish convenient play are not fun gameplay (this is why in virtually every game update, storage capacity has increased in some way. 1.1 gave us Safes, 1.2 gave us double-size chests and an extra row of carryable space, 1.3 gave us bigger stacks for many items, etc. Running out of space isn't fun because it's highly inconvenient).

What's difficult to follow here? You don't have to agree with that logic; you can have your own priorities. But please don't dismiss legitimate criticism as just "disliking change".
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I'm not disregarding your criticisms at all. You're obviously passionate about this game, and I can relate - we all can. But all I advise is that you don't make your final verdict before launch. I've played many games that had game-changing features in updates that I admittedly heavily criticized before I got my hands on it, and I loved those changes every single time. I looked back at myself as a buffoon. Lol At the end of the day, the features are in place, let's see what happens.
 
Enix said:
Your logic is very flawed. Your criticisms are not legitimate, all it proves is that you're incredibly lazy. You get discounted prices at the price of your NPCs taking an additional 2 seconds to get to.
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I don't think he's lazy he just wants to play the game in a different way than you do, that's all. There's nothing wrong with that. This is a sandbox game so there are many equally valid ways to play the game. Some people speed run the game, which is something that I just can't wrap my head around but I don't say that speedrunners are bad people.
Personally I just like to explore and frankly I'd rather not have to deal with managing NPCs at all. That's why the Skeleton merchant and the Traveling merchant are my two favorite NPCs. I just wish the Skeleton had more wares and that the Traveling merchant could just spawn at home base without having to have a couple of NPCs there first.
 
Ilmarinen said:
I don't think he's lazy he just wants to play the game in a different way than you do, that's all. There's nothing wrong with that. This is a sandbox game so there are many equally valid ways to play the game. Some people speed run the game, which is something that I just can't wrap my head around but I don't say that speedrunners are bad people.
Personally I just like to explore and frankly I'd rather not have to deal with managing NPCs at all. That's why the Skeleton merchant and the Traveling merchant are my two favorite NPCs. I just wish the Skeleton had more wares and that the Traveling merchant could just spawn at home base without having to have a couple of NPCs there first.
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Yeah people have different playing styles, and this one is meant to give benefits to players who enjoy building. It's not a feature that is exclusive to builders only and does not require good building skills, but it allows more creativity and possibilities for people who do enjoy building. Builders don't ever get any attention in Terraria, the game is currently designed for you to be able to beat the whole thing with barely any building. This change lets builders have something fun to do that has benefits.

Never said he's a bad person, just that he's lazy. It takes 2 seconds to use a pylon, and it requires no additional time to construct a house in one biome versus another. The only valid criticism of this feature is that it takes 2 seconds to use a pylon, but complaining about that just means you're lazy.
 
I know a lot of people are frustrated about the potential loss of having a purely beneficial layout of dozens of 3x10 houses (Yep, the tall "houses" shaped like a book.) next to each other where you can just run under the row of houses to see each NPC's inventory with the ease of taking a few steps left or right.

Given that we know that NPCs don't worry about actual proximity to other NPCs but instead solely examine the quantity of NPCs in their midst, you can still have a 12x12 (Total) or so arrangement of three houses stacked next to each other and the pylon on the ground beneath it. So you have access to three NPCs right there, then the pylon is barely two steps away from those three NPCs. I don't think this adds a huge amount of work to this.

Plus, it's easy to rearrange the NPCs based on their likes or dislikes once those criteria are met.
 
Enix said:
Never said he's a bad person, just that he's lazy. It takes 2 seconds to use a pylon, and it requires no additional time to construct a house in one biome versus another. The only valid criticism of this feature is that it takes 2 seconds to use a pylon, but complaining about that just means you're lazy.
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Well we don't know quite yet what happiness threshold is required to unlock a pylon. It seems like it's going to be a much greater investment than the threshold it simply remove the "cramped space" penalty. We don't know how much it will cost or if it will be required to be crafted or if the game will just hand us a pylon once the objectives are met.
What I'm saying is there are a lot of unknowns here.
 
Overall, I think the system will be great, but having read through some of these complaints, I perfectly understand people's concerns. Though I said earlier that money is easy to come by post-hardmode, I can see how frustrating it would be if the prices of things hiked up by 5 times the normal amount, but I think the team hinted that it wouldn't be anywhere near that. So it shouldn't be too much of a hassle.
 
Pendromeda said:
Overall, I think the system will be great, but having read through some of these complaints, I perfectly understand people's concerns. Though I said earlier that money is easy to come by post-hardmode, I can see how frustrating it would be if the prices of things hiked up by 5 times the normal amount, but I think the team hinted that it wouldn't be anywhere near that. So it shouldn't be too much of a hassle.
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True, or one could just farm Queen Bee.
 
Oh, question! I'm not sure if it was dealt with already, at least not in an official capacity. Apologies if it was.
  • NPC's are happier when they like their neighbors
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Will each NPC's preference for their company be static based on the NPC, or will it change per world?

In other words, will a Merchant always be happy in the company of the Guide but unhappy in the company of the Pirate, or will all of those be random in each world?

If it remains static, I can see this becoming something like muscle-memory at some point, where we plan out a series of towns in accordance to what we know works. It might take a little bit of the magic and interactivity from the concept.
 
ShadowTiger said:
Oh, question! I'm not sure if it was dealt with already, at least not in an official capacity. Apologies if it was.
Will each NPC's preference for their company be static based on the NPC, or will it change per world?

In other words, will a Merchant always be happy in the company of the Guide but unhappy in the company of the Pirate, or will all of those be random in each world?

If it remains static, I can see this becoming something like muscle-memory at some point, where we plan out a series of towns in accordance to what we know works. It might take a little bit of the magic and interactivity from the concept.
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I believe it will be static. Witch Doctor + Dryad in the Jungle, for example.
 
The new NPC Happiness and Pylon features have a fundamental impact on how Terraria is played, and it's only natural that they will resonate with some people and spark concern or even disapproval with others. Discussion about the impact - be it positive or negative - of these mechanics is expected and even encouraged, but what we will not allow is name calling or personal attacks, regardless of from which side it originates. Discuss the points that are being made, not the person making them.
 
Kazzymodus said:
The new NPC Happiness and Pylon features have a fundamental impact on how Terraria is played, and it's only natural that they will resonate with some people and spark concern or even disapproval with others. Discussion about the impact - be it positive or negative - of these mechanics is expected and even encouraged, but what we will not allow is name calling or personal attacks, regardless of from which side it originates. Discuss the points that are being made, not the person making them.
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if you're referring to me calling the man lazy then I apologize
 
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