Has Journey's End shifted Terraria too far into removing player freedom?

Some people might get excited about finding a new NPC and buy from them there and then though - not knowing any better.
Player's stupidity isn't the game's fault, the happiness mechanic is very clearly visible in the game. Every NPC has a happiness button in their dialogue options, even the guide, who's happiness doesn't even matter because he doesn't sell you anything, and you will encounter that long before you find the first bound NPC.

It's not like the torch mechanic that people often compare this to for some reason, the game actually tells you about happiness, the luck system was bad because the game never tells you about it.
 
SHOULD HAVE LEFT WELL ALONE and only added new items that all people wanted,
Ah yes! Shame on the devs! They should only add things that everyone agrees on! In fact they should remove everything from the game that isn't liked by 100% of the community! They should remove melee, ranged, magic, and summoner classes and only have classes that all people wanted!!!11!1
 
Ah yes! Shame on the devs! They should only add things that everyone agrees on! In fact they should remove everything from the game that isn't liked by 100% of the community! They should remove melee, ranged, magic, and summoner classes and only have classes that all people wanted!!!11!1
Read all my post dont just cherry pick things you dissagree with. CONTEXT matters.
 
None of the negative modifiers are going to add all the way up to 150% increase even if you intentionaly try to make them as unhappy as possible

OK, let's test that theory.

Let's assume you're making housing that's 10x6 in size. And each house is right next to each other, both vertically and horizontally for maximum density.

That means that, for a house in the center, the 25 block distance extends 2 houses to both the left and the right, as well as 4 houses up and down. This means that every house within a 5x9 area (minus 1 for the NPC we're talking about) counts as a neighbor. The maximum possible number of neighbors is therefore 5*9 - 1 or 44. Obviously, there aren't that many NPCs, but this means that those in the middle of the block will basically be neighbors with everyone.

The corner is the best position from a crowding perspective. The maximum number of neighbors for a corner of this block will be 3 * 5 - 1 or 14. The number of neighbors for those in the left/right sides will max out at 3 * 9 - 1 or 26, while the number for the top/bottom layers will be 5 * 5 - 1 or 24.

So given a full housing block, the number of neighbors will be between 14 and 24 (the Truffle lives elsewhere).

Now, let's assume a random distribution of NPCs. This means that there's just as much chance of having a liked neighbor as a disliked neighbor. And many NPCs will have all of their liked and dislikes in range. Specific NPCs will behave differently, but in general we can say that these bonuses and penalties average out.

So for our purposes, let's look only at the crowding penalty. This is 104% per NPC neighbor greater than 2.

Here's the thing: any number of neighbors greater than 12 will hit the 150 maximum (1.04^10 = 1.48 which rounds up to 1.50). So even NPCs living in the corners of this block will hit the unhappiness cap.

Now, you might be able to devise a usable dense housing arrangement that only puts NPCs in the ~120% range of unhappiness. In one world, I divided my NPCs into two blocks horizontally, with me in the middle. But that was back in 1.1, when there weren't that many of them.

A valid house needs at least 60 tiles. Minimum 5x12 or 8x8 dimensions. Every NPC beyond the first three incurs a 104% penalty (rounded to a 5% increase). How are you going to get so many NPCs all within 25 tiles of each other to reach 150%? Especially unintentionally??

I think you're misunderstanding "uninitentionally". The intent is to build dense NPC housing because dense housing is better from a usability standpoint that spreading everyone out. The question is whether building dense housing will cause most NPCs to hit the unhappiness cap.

And broadly speaking, it apparently will.

Player's stupidity isn't the game's fault, the happiness mechanic is very clearly visible in the game. Every NPC has a happiness button in their dialogue options, even the guide, who's happiness doesn't even matter because he doesn't sell you anything, and you will encounter that long before you find the first bound NPC.

It's not like the torch mechanic that people often compare this to for some reason, the game actually tells you about happiness, the luck system was bad because the game never tells you about it.

Yes, the game tells you that happiness exists and what to do about it. But it never actually says that happiness causes price changes. So calling a player who doesn't know something the game never says "stupid" is at best inaccurate.
 
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I think you're misunderstanding "uninitentionally".
Look at all the calculations you had to do to reach the max.
Getting to the unhappiness cap requires knowing the exact minimum dimensions of each house, and exactly how to arrange them to get every NPC within the range. And that only applies to the one NPC you reached the cap on...
Pretty sure someone who doesn't know what they're doing is not going to do that completely on accident. Especially since they will most likely be putting other things like chests and crafting stations in the houses, and a bed in at least one of them, they aren't going to be using the minimum dimensions to minmax unhappiness.
dense housing is better from a usability standpoint that spreading everyone out.
Except it isn't, spreading out NPCs gives you access to pylons. The convenience of having cross map teleportations far exceeds being able to put everyone in as small a space as possible. And don't say "but what if they don't know about pylons" because if they know how to reach the unhappiness cap they surely know how pylons work.

I mean, you aren't spending the entirety of the game sitting in your base, why are people acting like making houses in other biomes is such a massive chore? You're going to be going to other biomes anyway, you might as well spread out NPCs along the way to get massive benefits in the form of decreased prices and teleportation access. You don't even need to build a hellevator now, thanks to the cavern pylon.
You're giving yourself MORE work by trying to make an NPC prison...
 
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I mean, you aren't spending the entirety of the game sitting in your base, why are people acting like making houses in other biomes is such a massive chore? You're going to be going to other biomes anyway, you might as well spread out NPCs along the way to get massive benefits in the form of decreased prices and teleportation access. You don't even need to build a hellevator now, thanks to the cavern pylon.
You're giving yourself MORE work by trying to make an NPC prison...
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And there you go again assuming stuff. What if people dont want to spread out and how is it more convienient spreading them out rather than having them all right at hand where infact you do speand most time MAIN BASE. Going to a pylon and pressing extra buttons to get to an npc which could have been closer is not onvienient at all its counter.
 
Look at all the calculations you had to do to reach the max.
Getting to the unhappiness cap requires knowing the exact minimum dimensions of each house, and exactly how to arrange them to get every NPC within the range. And that only applies to the one NPC you reached the cap on...

Um, if you follow along with the calculations, virtually every NPC in that block has max unhappiness.

You act as if this example were artificial, that I was designing a hypothetical structure for the purpose of maximizing unhappiness, rather than merely describing the exact housing I built in 1.3. This is not a hypothetical example; this is what I have done for many years, and it is what is most convenient for me to work with.

My overall point is that building in a way that maximizes user convenience applies an arbitrary penalty across the board.

Except it isn't, spreading out NPCs gives you access to pylons. The convenience of having cross map teleportations far exceeds being able to put everyone in as small a space as possible.

Happiness has nothing to do with Pylons; by Hardmode, you'll have more NPCs than you need to power Pylons. It isn't the presence of Pylons that makes you spread NPCs out; it's the unhappiness that builds up when you keep them close that makes you spread them.

If Pylons existed and happiness did not, I would have the Goblin Tinkerer and the Mechanic in my base, rather than stuck underground behind a Pylon teleport. The NPCs I would be spreading out would be those I don't use, and I'd be sending them away specifically to power Pylons, not because it'd give me lower prices. In short, I would have a choice about who to keep and who not to.

Do not confuse happiness and Pylons; as much as the developers want to combine the two, they are distinct mechanics.

Also, you're straying slightly from the subject of the post. This isn't a thread about whether the NPC happiness mechanic is a good mechanic. This thread is about the narrative of the developers wanting to control how players play the game, to discourage certain behaviors and encourage others arbitrarily.

My overall point is that this narrative is false, however, you cannot deny that the happiness mechanic follows this narrative to a T. The developers themselves stated that the primary purpose of it is to encourage you to spread NPCs out more, and discourage you from building close housing projects.

The narrative exists because happiness is exactly that kind of mechanic. All of the other evidence for the narrative is largely wrong, but happiness is exactly that kind of thing. The developers said it was, the design of the mechanic is incredibly arbitrary and overly controlling, and it strongly punishes the default method of building housing.
 
Do not confuse happiness and Pylons; as much as the developers want to combine the two, they are distinct mechanics.
That's exactly my point...I'm not confusing them...
I would have the Goblin Tinkerer and the Mechanic in my base, rather than stuck underground behind a Pylon teleport. The NPCs I would be spreading out would be those I don't use, and I'd be sending them away specifically to power Pylons
What are you even on about, that's exactly how it works already, it doesn't matter who you put near the pylons. If you want you can put the guide and the cat from the cat license and you can use the pylon, you can put the mechanic and tinkerer in your base and have the NPCs you don't care about power pylons, just as you said. Because the happiness mechanic has nothing to do with pylons.
Here's a quote you said earlier.
I ignore them because Pylons do not have to be involved in the happiness mechanic.
But pylons AREN'T involved in the happiness mechanic which you yourself are now saying
Happiness has nothing to do with Pylons
You're contradicting yourself here.
Also, you're straying slightly from the subject of the post. This isn't a thread about whether the NPC happiness mechanic is a good mechanic. This thread is about the narrative of the developers wanting to control how players play the game, to discourage certain behaviors and encourage others arbitrarily.
I'm responding to the issues that other people are bringing up about the happiness mechanic, which you yourself are also doing, I'm not the one derailing the thread here, but that's fine, I suppose I'll leave if this discussion is apparently pointless.
 
What are you even on about, that's exactly how it works already, it doesn't matter who you put near the pylons.

I didn't say that I put them near a Pylon (I mean, I did, but I didn't put them there for the Pylon). I said I put them Underground. Because that's what makes the Tinkerer happy.

That's my point: if the feature were just Pylons, the GT and Mechanic would be inside of my base. They're outside of it because of happiness. The problem is the controlling nature of happiness, not the Pylon mechanic.

You're contradicting yourself here.

No; you're missing the context of those discussions. At present, you cannot get a Pylon without following the happiness rules. That is the only connection between them; once you have the Pylons, happiness is irrelevant to their behavior.

So if they removed happiness, they could just make Pylons a regular biome-specific sale item.
 
Why is this going on? We have one mad guy throwing false arguments around.
We have multiple people telling him factual truth about how it actually works and that all what he says is wrong.
He insists on them being wrong simply because he believes they are wrong despite them being right and base their statements on facts.
He outright tells that he doesn't want to discuss with anything remotely disagreeing with him.
He outright attacks multiple people and despite warnings doesn't see it at all.
Thread evolves intoa circlejerk out of one guy clawing himself into wrongness and reasonable people telling him he is wrong.
Isn't it time for this one to die already?
No; you're missing the context of those discussions. At present, you cannot get a Pylon without following the happiness rules. That is the only connection between them; once you have the Pylons, happiness is irrelevant to their behavior.

So if they removed happiness, they could just make Pylons a regular biome-specific sale item.
What if people want to roleplay? What if some people care about happiness of NPCs in a videogame? A looooot of people play games and do that. Sims, Animal Crossing, Stardew Valley and Harvest Moon are just some examples where happiness doesn't do much, yet people love to keep it high for the sake of doing so. People here seem to only see their view on the game as the right one, ignoring all the others.
 
What if people want to roleplay?

"Roleplay" would require me to have the power to decide what and who these characters prefer. The happiness mechanism tells me what and who they prefer. That's not "roleplay."

Pre-happiness, you had the freedom to roleplay however you want. If you want to feel that the Mechanic is getting on well with the Arms Dealer, that's up to you. 1.4 tells us "nope". Oh yes, you can believe otherwise, and you can stick them together. But the "roleplay" that has official, gameplay-defined sanction of the developers is that she doesn't like him.

Happiness is the equivalent of a railroading GM that will do whatever it can to keep the party from deviating from their preferred plot. Including punishing those who try to deviate from their plans.
 
"Roleplay" would require me to have the power to decide what and who these characters prefer. The happiness mechanism tells me what and who they prefer. That's not "roleplay."

Pre-happiness, you had the freedom to roleplay however you want. If you want to feel that the Mechanic is getting on well with the Arms Dealer, that's up to you. 1.4 tells us "nope". Oh yes, you can believe otherwise, and you can stick them together. But the "roleplay" that has official, gameplay-defined sanction of the developers is that she doesn't like him.

Happiness is the equivalent of a railroading GM that will do whatever it can to keep the party from deviating from their preferred plot. Including punishing those who try to deviate from their plans.
Because any of the games I listed gave you the choice to dictate what NPCs like. Any of those had rules about what people like and what people dislike, and terraria following the same rules is suddenly hate-speech towards freedom?
Great RPGs always had stuff like companions or NPCs and the game ALWAYS told you what to do and what not to not upset them.
noone cried about the fact that certain NPCs sold certain items only in certain biomes. Now the system is developed further and some individuals cry dictatorship by devs?
 
OMG they have removed auto herb farms. Now we have to do it all by hand. 1.4 is a disgusting update. QoL my behind they have removed all the QoL stuff. All them youtubers have been strung up all those vids of farms and so on that people will still go watch are now VOID. Disgusting. After 5 years too. I for 1 wil not be playing no more and i feel many other vets too will follow.
 
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OMG they have removed auto herb farms. Now we have to do it all by hand. 1.4 is a disgusting update. QoL my behind they have removed all the QoL stuff. All them youtubers have been strung up all those vids of farms and so on that people will still go watch are now VOID. Disgusting. After 5 years too. I for 1 wil not be playing no more and i feel many other vets too will follow.
Is it possible to include how and why in a post instead of a claim? I am not saying it isn't true, it is generally a better thing to actually tell why.
 
Is it possible to include how and why in a post instead of a claim? I am not saying it isn't true, it is generally a better thing to actually tell why.
dart farms and actuated farms have been removed. Now we have to plant/harvest 1 at a time. And you look like a new player maybe thats why you dont get the upset of 1.4.
 
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dart farms and actuated farms have been removed. Now we have to plant/harvest 1 at a time. And you look like a new player maybe thats why you dont get the upset of 1.4.
Seriously. Tell me. Do you troll on purpose or is it just random false claims?
I just built an actuated daybloom farm and it worked perfectly.
20200527001635_1.jpg
20200527001635_1.jpg
 
Seriously. Tell me. Do you troll on purpose or is it just random false claims?
I just built an actuated daybloom farm and it worked perfectly.View attachment 274352View attachment 274352
It may be okay other places on the internet, but we (the forum staff) have tried to explain multiple times that it's not acceptable here - calling other member trolls, and bringing the focus to an argument of a personal level instead of civilly discussing the topic will lead to members being removed from the discussion.

This goes for everyone. If the discussion gets personal in any way, expect to be invited to sit this one out.
 
Because any of the games I listed gave you the choice to dictate what NPCs like. Any of those had rules about what people like and what people dislike, and terraria following the same rules is suddenly hate-speech towards freedom?

Who are you talking to? Are you replying to me or to someone else? Because I don't know what "hate-speech towards freedom" means, but that's nothing that I ever said or implied about the mechanic, so I don't know why you're acting like this is a position I have adopted.

Great RPGs always had stuff like companions or NPCs and the game ALWAYS told you what to do and what not to not upset them.

Great RPGs do their best to make you believe that the bundles of programming and logic displayed through a pixelated image was a flesh-and-blood person. Great RPGs would allow you to interact with them, learn about them through conversations, or watch their actions in various circumstances.

Terraria does not. Terraria has always treated its NPCs as just mechanics for purchasing items. Adding happiness did not suddenly give them any more life as people than they had before. Indeed, characterizing them through happiness makes them all feel like anti-social freaks. Even the character who is named after throwing parties would rather throw parties at a large distance from said party-goers. So approaching the mechanic through an RPG lens makes NPC characterization incoherent.

If this is an RPG mechanic, then it's a bad role playing game. Much like a bad novel or movie, where characters do something because the plot needs them to, not because it makes sense for their characters.

Also, the developers stated, in the very first post about Happiness, that it is a means to get people to build housing differently. That they don't want people to build NPC housing together, and they want to change that. This is why the feature exists, and the developers have been very up-front about it.

This mechanic does not exist to characterize NPCs. It was created for the explicit purpose of making players spread out NPC housing. That's why it is here, and we know that because the developers said so.
 
It may be okay other places on the internet, but we (the forum staff) have tried to explain multiple times that it's not acceptable here - calling other member trolls, and bringing the focus to an argument of a personal level instead of civilly discussing the topic will lead to members being removed from the discussion.

This goes for everyone. If the discussion gets personal in any way, expect to be invited to sit this one out.
Can you please explain to me how I am supposed to call a user who purposefully posts false facts with a malicious intent to prove his opinion?
It is a genuine question. Everywhere else on the internet such people are called trolls. What is the term for this here, so I know how to handle them in the future. I obviously cannot report such a person, because the rules do not forbid the posting of malicious false informations on this forum.
Thanks.
Who are you talking to? Are you replying to me or to someone else? Because I don't know what "hate-speech towards freedom" means, but that's nothing that I ever said or implied about the mechanic, so I don't know why you're acting like this is a position I have adopted.

Great RPGs do their best to make you believe that the bundles of programming and logic displayed through a pixelated image was a flesh-and-blood person. Great RPGs would allow you to interact with them, learn about them through conversations, or watch their actions in various circumstances.

Terraria does not. Terraria has always treated its NPCs as just mechanics for purchasing items. Adding happiness did not suddenly give them any more life as people than they had before. Indeed, characterizing them through happiness makes them all feel like anti-social freaks. Even the character who is named after throwing parties would rather throw parties at a large distance from said party-goers. So approaching the mechanic through an RPG lens makes NPC characterization incoherent.

If this is an RPG mechanic, then it's a bad role playing game. Much like a bad novel or movie, where characters do something because the plot needs them to, not because it makes sense for their characters.

Also, the developers stated, in the very first post about Happiness, that it is a means to get people to build housing differently. That they don't want people to build NPC housing together, and they want to change that. This is why the feature exists, and the developers have been very up-front about it.

This mechanic does not exist to characterize NPCs. It was created for the explicit purpose of making players spread out NPC housing. That's why it is here, and we know that because the developers said so.
I did address you, but didn't specify that you said that. There are atleast two topics here and a lot on the steam hub where people claim changes made in 1.4 are killing peoples freedom in the game and devs dictate how they should play. You didn't exactly say that, it was an overal comment.
Adding happiness does not give them life, but it does in-fact increase their flesh-and-soul-ness.
So they said they want houses to be different. What is so bad about it?
 
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