Pokenar
Official Terrarian
see here, Hallow is already confirmed, along with Forest, Desert, Ice, and Underground. I'd consider Beach/Ocean, Jungle, and Mushroom good bets as well, yeah.
Expand Your Terraria Empire - Pylons, Town Building, and NPC Happiness
- Thread starter Loki
- Start date
Ilmarinen
Terrarian
You post illustrates exactly what has me concerned about this system. It almost seems to me like they should have gone the other way and rewarded and penalized based on the complexity of the room and value of materials used rather than by size or nearness of neighbors.
Maybe they could add a special piece of furniture for each NPC that is their "favorite thing" that will raise happiness to at least neutral by itself or even to slightly happy regardless of room. Something no bigger than a lamp or piggybank. It could be a sort of sidequest as part of the happiness system and work as an alternate way to progress for people who prefer exploration and crafting and for people who enjoy building micro builds for their NPCs.
I think this would be the best way going forward that would penalize low effort NPC prisons but not penalize tiny, intimate builds.
But you don't know that. They haven't released the exact specs of what makes for an acceptable room size. For all I know and for all you know those rooms could be too small.
But that could still be an issue because, once again, they havn't released the specifics. 4 or 5 NPCs in one place should never be considered overcrowded. And as far as biomes and neighbors go that's also an unknown that could be restrictive to builders. Example in one of my builds I made a little pink house and put the Party Girl and Stylists together because they both have pink accents. With this new system, for all I know they might hate each other or they might prefer different biomes or both. Of course they might fine together. The problem here is the uncertainty. Uncertainty breeds fear and fear breeds something something DARK SIDE.
I really don't think that this will stop prison builders because they'll still just stick 20 of the NPCs in a prison somewhere because they don't use them at all and focus on making the Goblin and 2 of his closest friends happy.
I would say yes. I had a build that I made in 1.1 get invalidated because of this change.
I have always wanted a monster NPC that can ONLY live in an evil biome.
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TubaVeganMason
Plantera
Oh, alright. Then probably not space.
I was kinda iffy on my idea of space being an inhabitable biome anyways. There's still 8 then. Thanks for the info though.
I never said the house would meet the requirement for not being overcrowded. As long as the NPCs like eachother and it's in a good biome, that's 2/3 requirements met. There is no way that 2/3 requirements would give you increased prices, which is why I said it'll be fine.
Since there's uncertainty, you also don't know that things ARE going to be bad. That's why everyone is saying "just wait for it to come out and see for yourself whether you like it or not" because odds are, you will either like it or not be affected.
That'd be pretty cool not gonna lie. Like maybe a zombie who sells enemy drops depending on how far into the game you are. But without said NPC, there's no real purpose to allowing builds in evil biomes.
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TubaVeganMason
Plantera
Guys, let's look at all of the possibilities of how this update could affect people.
If you do not care for building or design, you can just make uncramped NPC prisons in their respective biomes with the correct inhabitants and link them together using pylons in order to have access to everyone without any building skills required. This also gives you the benefit of being able to get across the entire map prehardmode in seconds.
If you do care for building and design,
If you do not care for building or design, you can just make uncramped NPC prisons in their respective biomes with the correct inhabitants and link them together using pylons in order to have access to everyone without any building skills required. This also gives you the benefit of being able to get across the entire map prehardmode in seconds.
If you do care for building and design,
- If you're concerned about Pylons, you can do the previously said method in order to unlock pylons (unless your builds align with all of the requirements for earning a pylon already). Then, after earning the pylons, you can give NPCs whatever fancy houses in whatever biomes you like (provided that you have at least 2 NPCs next to a pylon if you wish to use it for teleporting).
- If you're concerned about money, you need to just wait to see what the criteria is for a happy NPC and how happiness affects prices. Odds are that builders will not have increased prices with their builds since builds from builders typically fall into most of, if not all of the criteria to make NPCs happy. Keep in mind this mechanic was made to incentivize building, so it wouldn't make sense for it to give increased prices for a good build. It's really hard to make a good build that doesn't fall into any of those three criteria.
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Ilmarinen
Terrarian
Well players can move into evil biome which has the benefit of quick access to those places while also preventing freeloaders from crashing on your couch.
I mean frankly the NPC should be happy that I even allow them to live in my house (mostly
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TerrariaGeek401
The Destroyer
From what I've seen, yes, but it may take some time.
The Deceiver
Terrarian
I am a huge fan of building and I've been trying to improve for a long time, but this is not as encouraging as it seems. I think we can simply understand that by how people are reacting to the change. If we weren't penalized, this would sort of look like "hey, I'll keep on building my houses the way I want, but there's quite a lot I'm missing out on". However, when you punish players by making NPCs' services/items sold more expensive if they're unhappy and overcrowded, people would just be building houses and towns throughout the map because they wouldn't want a price hike.
I know you guys want to encourage new stuff, but I do believe you can do it even better by removing the punishment system. It's pointless to do something like that in a sandbox game.
I know you guys want to encourage new stuff, but I do believe you can do it even better by removing the punishment system. It's pointless to do something like that in a sandbox game.
Ilmarinen
Terrarian
I don't think the punishment aspect even needs to be removed, there just needs to be more than one way to progress through the NPC happiness sidequest.
Pokenar
Official Terrarian
I just sorta assume you talk to an NPC with high enough happiness and it just sorta throws it at you
ShadowTiger
Duke Fishron
I really like the imagery here!
It's pretty darn funny. I'm imagining the Demolishionist saying "I'M HAPPY. PYLON." and they just chuck a large hunk of rock at you.Makes you wonder where they're getting these hunks of rock from. Maybe the pour their love for you into it or something and it links up to other traces of love. Yep, that totally makes sense.
Silverleaf
Terrarian
huh I never thought I would actually get to reply to Chippy’s post
Silverleaf
Terrarian
Is this supposed to stop me from
Happy Friday Terrarians!
Remember a few State of the Game's ago when we mentioned that we were working on something pretty cool that would potentially change the way that people approach certain aspects of the game? Well, the time has come to give you a peek behind the curtain at Terraria HQ and let you in on some juicy details surrounding this new feature coming to Journey's End!
Building has always been a staple of the Terraria experience - but functionally-speaking, there has never been any real reward to making fun creations outside of the adoration of the community. Similarly, everyone builds their central base and sort of shoves everything there... sure, some folks build in other biomes, but only for fun. What if we told you that Journey's End is going to change all of this up, raising building up to being a core gameplay feature with its own rewards?
Introducing...
THE TERRARIA TOWNS SYSTEM
Towns will reward building like never before. Taking the time to spruce up your base(s), plan for NPC placement, and building bases in multiple locations will now provide you a variety of benefits that have never before been available. Of course you don't HAVE to partake in this new system, but we think you will find the positives in doing so to be quite tempting indeed.
Excited? Scared? Let's take a few minutes to dive into how this new approach to building works, shall we?
TREAT 'EM RIGHT! - NPC HAPPINESS
During Journey's End development, we conducted a focus group with all of the Terraria NPCs. Outside of some very strange requests (no, Guide, we cannot 'remove all doors at night'), their feedback was very clear: they are tired of being shoved into tiny cubicles or L shaped tubes and they want you to know this!
In order to help raise NPC morale so that they could be at their very best - and to reward players who go that extra mile to treat their NPCs with the respect they deserve, we are introducing the NPC Happiness System. How does it work? What does this mean for you? Read on....
What affects NPC Happiness?
Adding nice furniture and aesthetics doesn't directly affect NPC Happiness... but it sure will make you feel better about yourself when your friends come over for a visit.
What Happens if my NPCs are Happy/Unhappy?
How can I tell if my NPCs are Happy?
Pretty much everyone does the same thing when base building right? A big central area right at the initial spawn point... crammed with NPCs and crafting stations and storage and more. At best, people stick up a single room with a bed for boss fight respawns. We can do better than this, and what about all of the other poor biomes that would love to have you set up shop in their neck of the woods, and - again - those poor NPCs may not want to live in the Forest Biome!
But wait, there's more! If you group at least 3 NPCs together in a given location, it will be recognized as being a Town. Towns are not subject to enemy spawning - outside of invasion events - and you will get to hear the super cool town music when you visit!
All together, with Journey's End in conjunction with the Happiness System, you will be rewarded for building multiple bases across the scope of your world like never before!
View attachment 268760
Forest Base
View attachment 268762
Underground Base
View attachment 268761
Snow/Ice Base
Well, that is great and all, but how will you get around your world to visit your now happy, but far-flung NPCs? Let's bring it all together and close out with the brand new Pylons!
ROADS, WE WON'T NEED ROADS - INTRODUCING PYLONS
We briefly mentioned these mysterious Pylons in our section on things you can get with happy NPCs. So what are these, and why should you care? Well, if you have enough happy NPCs in a given biome, you will unlock the use of a Pylon for that biome. Pylons allow you to instantly teleport from one Pylon to another! With Pylons in place, your "big central base" now becomes an interconnected network of cool outposts all over the world, allowing you to get around quickly without the need to lay tracks or teleporters... and providing you a home away from home wherever you are!
View attachment 268763
PYLON INSTRUCTION MANUAL
You can only have one Pylon of a given biome type placed at a time (so you can not have, for example, an Ocean Pylon at both Oceans)
Pylons must be placed in their aligned biome in order to function (you can place them anywhere else, but they will not work!)
Pylons must also have two nearby (and living) NPCs in order to function - again, the idea here is to reward building those bases/towns!
Pylons cannot be used during Boss Battles or Invasion Events!
Pylons are quite easy to use. Once placed in their aligned biome, you simply click on a nearby pylon. This will take you to the map screen where you can locate another placed pylon to which you want to teleport, click it and off you go!
That's all for today! Look forward to more Terraria: Journey's End Feature Articles throughout the next few weeks up until Launch Day, May 16th, 2020!
Would like to add, this is exactly what I'm concerned about.
Bases like mine won't be allowed anymore because Redigit wanted people to build towns.
Notice how the people who respond most positively to this feature all seem to be saying "I build npc prisons and l-shaped boxes but I like the change, the builders will love it though." whilst the actual builders are very concerned that this is restricting the creativity of building in terraria into optimising for mechanical benefits.
I and many other builders don't want to build specifically towns. But since Redigit wants towns rather than any other type of build, we are nudged into doing so through higher prices whilst being told that there's no penalty, no change, you can continue to build creatively as you wanted before, it's just an extra feature for those that want to participate. If that was really true, there would be no penalty added at all.
The people who are in trouble are not basic wooden housing builders, this update does nothing to affect basic wooden housing at all, no building material changes, no furniture requirement changes.
The requirements are space and biome. It is specifically to push you into building towns all over the map, not better housing, because Redigit wants towns.
Please at least give some means to builders to build good housing instead of spaced out ones, make furniture give happiness or something because if anything, this changes lowers the quality of builds and please don't reiterate "It's optional" when a penalty has been added when it could have not been.
Lucasness
Terrarian
Exactly. You can’t say ‘it’s optional’ when you add a punishment for not complying. You can say it’s optional if there’s rewards for following it (and these are two very different things, before someone implies they’re the same).
ShadowTiger
Duke Fishron
Is it possible to just check for the sheer quantity of "decorative" objects near NPCs to offset potential unhappiness? Wooden box prisons don't tend to have decorations, but if someone likes to build small but pretty normal houses close to other NPCs, people would be happy with that.
People in actual real-life hotels don't tend to be unhappy because they're within four meters of another human. They don't even constantly have it in mind that they're there because their environment is well-furnished and satisfactory to them.
I know it was impossible to tell if there was a coherent theme (Like all ice furniture, all desert furniture, etc.) but just the fact that it's not a bare-bones minimal-needs house alone could potentially be enough to make NPCs satisfied with their lot.
People in actual real-life hotels don't tend to be unhappy because they're within four meters of another human. They don't even constantly have it in mind that they're there because their environment is well-furnished and satisfactory to them.
I know it was impossible to tell if there was a coherent theme (Like all ice furniture, all desert furniture, etc.) but just the fact that it's not a bare-bones minimal-needs house alone could potentially be enough to make NPCs satisfied with their lot.
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Ilmarinen
Terrarian
Just like I said before every NPC needs their personal comfort item that can be used to increase happiness for smaller builds. Eg: Dryad gets a bonsai tree, Arms Dealer gets an antique firearm, Demolitionist gets an Arkenstone knockoff, Steampunker gets a desktop Stirling engine, etc. You could even make some of the special items be alternate versions of existing furniture, say: Wizard gets a special "stars and moons" crystal ball, Angler gets a beta tank instead of a goldfish bowl, Tavernkeep gets a demijohn, so on so forth.
This would have two benefits it would act as an escape hatch for builders that make hobbit holes, micro houses, apartments, or similar intimate builds and also it would give more decorative items to populate our builds with and personalize each room for each NPC.
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Heroman3003
Retinazer
Or you can just not see it as "being forced" to do things but rather punishment for not doing things the optimal way. Yes, you can still do things, you just won't be as well off as you would have been if you put in effort into optimizing. Just like some things in game over time get nerfed or buffed over the course of updates, having all your NPCs stacked in two screen's worth of space has now been nerfed. And "builds like that are impossible" is worst argument ever. It IS optional. Just because there is penalty doesn't stop it from being optional. It's as optional as playing Expert mode. You'll have easier time doing whatever you want, but you will overall get worse rates and some content will be forever locked. Plus, once again, there is such a thing as negligible or near-negligible punishments. Honestly, cost increase is good way to do it because it won't actually affect that much at all, unless you just want to complain about the fact that the increase itself is just there, regardless of whether it has ability to actually make noticable impact or not.