Is Terraria 2 vaporware?

[Tarluk]

What Tripoli said, basically. A new engine alone will be able to open the door to many new features that just aren't possible in the current game; the devs have gone on record numerous times stating how the current engine has been limiting for them. We can only imagine how many features have ran through the developers' minds that they decided simply weren't possible without either switching the engine or drastically changing how the core mechanics of the current game work. Something like the islands suggestion I've seen a few times: being able to go to the Ocean to sail away toward an island with unique terrain, biomes or features simply wouldn't be possible within Terraria's current engine, for instance.

I don't know that there will be something truly new that Terraria 1.x could not have done. Something worth investing time and effort into a game that by definition cannot have as much stuff in it as 1.4 would.

But does it really even need to have as much stuff in it as 1.4? Terraria's largely focused on quantity over quality when it's come to equippable items ever since 1.2 came out, creating continuous power creep in each and every update even for just a single point on the long line of progression. It used to be that beloved weapons such as Excalibur or Magical Harp were some of the best in the game, but nowadays they've been vastly overshadowed by weapons that are not only flat-out upgrades but are easily obtainable before you have the opportunity to craft either of those weapons.
It's something that I've actually quite disliked about recent updates, since in 1.0/1.1, sure, there's less items and less ways to obtain them, but that meant the items you did get felt so much more special, unique, and more impactful of an upgrade, and the game could tailor itself around this lower quantity of items and methods to obtain them. Nowadays, there's dozens of weapons and armor sets all competing with each other every step of a way; something like the Starfury felt absolutely awesome back then because there was truly nothing like it in the game, but now the Starfury is just part of the dime-a-dozen projectile melee collection, and you can most likely replace it within even just minutes of obtaining it.

 

[catseman]

Seems like the obvious direction for Terraria 2 would simply be to go 3D. That's certainly what I want, and a second 2D Terraria seems pretty futile -- those things could just be incorporated into TYerraria, presumably a lot of the concepts originally planned for a sequel got rolled into normal surprise Terraria updates.

Minecraft clearly isn't interested in gear progression, bosses, or really anything too gamey or interesting these days. You can't even dig yourself a hellevator in Minecraft without it being a massive death risk, no chance to get horseshoes or anything like that. Minecraft is neat as a set of digital Legos, but the survival game attached to it is just a joyless tedium to upkeep while you play legos. There's not much of a "game" there so much as "toy," which is not a slight at all. That's why videogames as a medium are good, they don't all have to be strictly games, despite the misleading genre name.

anyway, 3D Terraria opens the most new doors for possibilities and seems to be the logical progression, here's hoping for some Terraria 2 news in the next few years.

 

[Drachasor]

Seems like the obvious direction for Terraria 2 would simply be to go 3D. That's certainly what I want, and a second 2D Terraria seems pretty futile -- those things could just be incorporated into TYerraria, presumably a lot of the concepts originally planned for a sequel got rolled into normal surprise Terraria updates.

Minecraft clearly isn't interested in gear progression, bosses, or really anything too gamey or interesting these days. You can't even dig yourself a hellevator in Minecraft without it being a massive death risk, no chance to get horseshoes or anything like that. Minecraft is neat as a set of digital Legos, but the survival game attached to it is just a joyless tedium to upkeep while you play legos. There's not much of a "game" there so much as "toy," which is not a slight at all. That's why videogames as a medium are good, they don't all have to be strictly games, despite the misleading genre name.

anyway, 3D Terraria opens the most new doors for possibilities and seems to be the logical progression, here's hoping for some Terraria 2 news in the next few years.

I can understand them not going 3D, but I do agree 3D would be really cool. There's a lot more you can do in a 3D world in terms of building. I'd like wire system that's not based on pulses would be great too (like Starbound).

I also admit I try to get Minecraft to have some sort of fun progression like Terraria with mods and I've never gotten it to work even a quarter as well. Though I have also wanted to having building functional structures to be a big part of my play and that's often lacking in Minecraft (compared to Terraria when functional design plays a bigger role). Immersive Engineering is pretty good here, but there aren't a lot like that (if I want "magic" blocks I want them to be large structures, really). Fitting that into progression and exploration doesn't work that great.

Hmm, if there's one wish for Terraria 2 I have it would be even more functions you can put into building structures to automate routine tasks and accomplish goals. I understand that's not for everyone. Hmm, I like explorer mode making it so that we don't need to worry about keeping blocks around and a number of other things. But if there was a way to automate that instead I'd love to have that. Like instead of "get X of item, now you can make more freely", I'd rather make a machine that can duplicate items of type A to an extent, given certain raw materials, and then other buildings that generate those materials. Same with block types -- I like having as much of a given block as I want, but I'd rather build something that gives me that if I had a choice. Though explorer mode is nice for the virtual space it gives you so I'd like better expanded inventory options, like inventories that only hold certain things or automatically trash certain things so you don't have to worry about them.