Journey's End 1.4.4: Balance Feedback and Discussion Thread

[whoneedsnamestbh]

I do want to say, since we’re all complaining about different things at once, thank you Leinfors for your hard work and for bearing with our rampant nitpicking. For the most part, the balance changes in 1.4.1 were excellent. A few errors were bound to happen, and I can respect you working with the community to look at these balance changes to the best of your ability.

 

[Leinfors]

Phaseblades could use another buff, I know that their damage increased from 21 to 25 but now that they're post EoW/BoC instead of being pre boss they're several tiers higher than originally. Imo their damage is fine, but I never end up using them because their knockback is too weak. Maybe increasing their knockback from 3 to 4, or 3 to 5?

I rarely used Phaseblades before the meteorite change, and they seem even weaker now. They're a cool weapon so would be nice to see them being viable again.

Also, Phasesabers(hardmode) have an identical damage and near identical attack speed to the Night's Edge, and worse knockback. There's basically no reason to ever use them. It would be nice if they could receive the same knockback buff as Phaseblades, and perhaps a slight damage increase?

I'll look at Phaseblades, a knockback change should be within reason (I'm not sure about more damage though)

Phasesabers . . . well, a few posts ago, I mentioned "systemic changes". Night's Edge and the ore swords/phasesabers are a case of that.

Everyone clamors for a Night's Edge buff, and its not something I disagreed with. But no one wants to get Night's Edge, beat WoF, and then get a Breaker Blade that is a downgrade. No one wants to "upgrade" to an ore sword that is weaker than the sword you had before WoF.

Sure, I can buff Night's Edge, then buff Breaker Blade, then buff all the ore swords. And then Excalibur is suddenly not an upgrade anymore. So I buff that, and then, uh oh, Brand of the Inferno is weaker again, and the Chlorophyte Swords aren't an upgrade . . . to say nothing of True Excalibur.

This is what I mean by systemic changes, and it is an issue that there are certain cascades of weapons where if I change one of them, then many of them need to be adjusted as well.

With Night's Edge, I bit the bullet and made the difficult decision that I would buff it, and only it, and that early HM swords would simply have to stay where they were. Because I'm not in a position to sequentially buff the entirety of mid game swords in contrast to Night's Edge. I made that decision because, and only because, Night's Edge is a bit of a "quest" to collect, and is not a standard progression sword pre-HM. So I gave it some extra leeway in terms of power. If you make the extra mile to get it, you gain an edge, and that edge will carry over into Hardmode. And I'm not able to justify buffing the early HM swords in contrast to that edge.

So tl;dr, I probably won't be able to but Phasesabers beyond what I already did in 1.4.

As a side note, the Night's Edge buff was a double-benefit, as it gave me room to buff Muramasa and Fiery Greatsword, as well as reverting the Beekeeper nerf (which all inherently had to be weaker than NE). The infamous "How you doing Muramasa?" meme was the most I could do at the time with an unbuffed Night's Edge.

 

[Lythael]

I'm sorry you feel this way, but if you believe that our changes are made to spite players, then you have the wrong idea.

And if the only way I can convince you otherwise is to make the change you demand, then I'm stuck, because that is not a thing I can do.

People are quick to think the worst of us when we make changes, implying that we are full of spite/punishment/intentional hate towards the player base. If that was the case, I don't know why I would have spent hundreds of hours attempting to improve the game's balance and changes based heavily on player feedback. But what do I know.

So uhm. What was the reason for penalizing players for using wrong torches without even telling them or for building towns with NPCs closeby?
I really wish to understand that the intention wasn't malicious but i cannot fathom the reasoning behind the unhapiness and how it was implemented and why its impossible to make it "neutral" and let people build towns how they want instead being forced to space apart NPCs (even further now) to avoid penalties.

I mean what happened to "world is your canvas" "build how you want" ?

 

[Adventurer32]

I'll look at Phaseblades, a knockback change should be within reason (I'm not sure about more damage though)

Phasesabers . . . well, a few posts ago, I mentioned "systemic changes". Night's Edge and the ore swords/phasesabers are a case of that.

Everyone clamors for a Night's Edge buff, and its not something I disagreed with. But no one wants to get Night's Edge, beat WoF, and then get a Breaker Blade that is a downgrade. No one wants to "upgrade" to an ore sword that is weaker than the sword you had before WoF.

Sure, I can buff Night's Edge, then buff Breaker Blade, then buff all the ore swords. And then Excalibur is suddenly not an upgrade anymore. So I buff that, and then, uh oh, Brand of the Inferno is weaker again, and the Chlorophyte Swords aren't an upgrade . . . to say nothing of True Excalibur.

This is what I mean by systemic changes, and it is an issue that there are certain cascades of weapons where if I change one of them, then many of them need to be adjusted as well.

With Night's Edge, I bit the bullet and made the difficult decision that I would buff it, and only it, and that early HM swords would simply have to stay where they were. Because I'm not in a position to sequentially buff the entirety of mid game swords in contrast to Night's Edge. I made that decision because, and only because, Night's Edge is a bit of a "quest" to collect, and is not a standard progression sword pre-HM. So I gave it some extra leeway in terms of power. If you make the extra mile to get it, you gain an edge, and that edge will carry over into Hardmode. And I'm not able to justify buffing the early HM swords in contrast to that edge.

So tl;dr, I probably won't be able to but Phasesabers beyond what I already did in 1.4.

As a side note, the Night's Edge buff was a double-benefit, as it gave me room to buff Muramasa and Fiery Greatsword, as well as reverting the Beekeeper nerf (which all inherently had to be weaker than NE). The infamous "How you doing Muramasa?" meme was the most I could do at the time with an unbuffed Night's Edge.

Fair, I agree Night's Edge should be stronger than WoF drops and earliest prehardmode swords. Knockback changes on phaseblades/sabers would be nice though, as they're a bit useless at the moment.

 

[Erinit🌳]

Guys, stop asking for so much changes! There are 136 pages of changes, how do you think the devs feel. I would think they feel overwhelmed, so im not going to ask for any changes.
Thank you for such a wonderful game and how much time you have spent into making this perfect game. Thank you.

 

[Adventurer32]

Guys, stop asking for so much changes! There are 136 pages of changes, how do you think the devs feel. I would think they feel overwhelmed, so im not going to ask for any changes.
Thank you for such a wonderful game and how much time you have spent into making this perfect game. Thank you.

I'm assuming if the devs are keeping the page open they want more feedback, they can always close it if they don't.
Providing feedback/suggestions is different from complaining. The people here just complaining are a problem.

 

[whoneedsnamestbh]

So uhm. What was the reason for penalizing players for using wrong torches without even telling them or for building towns with NPCs closeby?
I really wish to understand that the intention wasn't malicious but i cannot fathom the reasoning behind the unhapiness and how it was implemented and why its impossible to make it "neutral" and let people build towns how they want instead being forced to space apart NPCs (even further now) to avoid penalties.

I mean what happened to "world is your canvas" "build how you want" ?

IIRC, torch luck was implemented to benefit AFK farms and to give the new biome torches reason to exist, but was simply executed poorly - between having large penalties on player stats and never being explicitely expressed. Pretty sure there was no malicious intent involved, otherwise they wouldn’t have modified it.

 

[Lythael]

IIRC, torch luck was implemented to benefit AFK farms and to give the new biome torches reason to exist, but was simply executed poorly - between having large penalties on player stats and never being explicitely expressed. Pretty sure there was no malicious intent involved, otherwise they wouldn’t have modified it.

To clarify i meant Torch BAD luck not torch luck.
The negative penalty that was introduced and hidden at first before being reverted due to justified complaints.

Well still the question remains what's the benefit for punishing players who want to keep their NPCs close tho and why the penalty can't be neutral like with now changed torch bad luck?

 

[Leinfors]

So uhm. What was the reason for penalizing players for using wrong torches without even telling them or for building towns with NPCs closeby?
I really wish to understand that the intention wasn't malicious but i cannot fathom the reasoning behind the unhapiness and how it was implemented and why its impossible to make it "neutral" and let people build towns how they want instead being forced to space apart NPCs (even further now) to avoid penalties.

The idea was more or less inspired by a sort of feng shui concept, where the correct lighting aesthetic harmonized with nature and caused good luck, while a dissonant one clashed and caused bad luck. That's a real existing idea that people adhere to, and was more or less the general idea behind it.

 

[Tibithia Σ]

To be honest, it kind of makes sense for regular torches to have a lower penalty than others.
After all, they don't really have a specific biome, right?

 

[whoneedsnamestbh]

After I finish schoolwork, I’m going to play around with the summoner changes and see how they compare to, say, a Necro Armor + Phoenix Blaster build. It seems like everyone, including me, is making general assumptions based off of what orher people say, which doesn’t get the devs anywhere.

 

[Lythael]

The idea was more or less inspired by a sort of feng shui concept, where the correct lighting aesthetic harmonized with nature and caused good luck, while a dissonant one clashed and caused bad luck. That's a real existing idea that people adhere to, and was more or less the general idea behind it.

And no one thought that this might have been a bit restrictive towards certain types of town builds? Even more so after this update cause at first i adapted to this system it was still pretty possible to make NPC hotels with NPCs mostly happy / neutral.

1.4.1 tweaks to the penalty took a literal dump on that. While giving more freedom to other pylon town builds, even more restrictions were "unintentionally" added to tidy / hotel types of builds.

As someone mentioned this system was doomed from the start you won't make either side happy as long as unhapiness causes negative penalty.
No matter the tweaks to range always one side of the builders will be shafted.

Making the penalty neutral would fix all this but since you say its never gonna happen despite a lot of complaints about this even before this system was added.
I don't know what more can i add.

I'm just dissapointed that i have to rearrange and rethink how i should build towns (again) to not suffer from prices penalty which in theory it may sound "small" but in practice is really punishing especially in early game.

 

[Nariofan101]

Regarding NPC towns:
Happiness on its own is a neat optional incremental boost. Something you'd want to put a little thought into optimizing, but that likely won't stress you if it's not perfect.

But, having pylons require maximum happiness to purchase ruins that. Either you optimize NPC happiness carefully accounting for every factor, running back and forth between bases to reassign NPC's homes when someone you weren't expecting moves into a new settlement, or dislikes another NPC or a biome that you didn't expect them to. Or, you have to run across the map anytime you need to do something in a non-forest biome, fast travel system in the back of your mind the whole way. Both of which are a touch miserable.
No amount of numbers-tweaking can solve this fundamental issue without making NPC happiness basically irrelevant to acquiring pylons.

Besides which, building spread-out settlements is already encouraged by pylons' existence, just from the fact that pylons are restricted to one per biome and need houses nearby to function.

I think the ideal solution would be to make the pylon for sale at all times, but its price is affected by the NPC's happiness a lot more than other items. Something like that is probably out of the cards at this stage, though.

 

[MrD108]

Man, you guys . . . stressin me out.

1.4 Community: "Buff Vampire Frogs they are too weak!"
*buffs Vampire Frogs by 2 damage and logistical improvements*
1.4.1 Community: "Nerf Vampire Frogs they are too strong!"

I don't think I'm going to be able to make the Imp and Hornet changes you guys are asking for. If that means Flinx and Vampire Frog MUST be nerfed to allow them to be an upgrade, IDK, I guess that'll have to be how it'll be. But it sounds like another player-requested change that'll just make people mad at me again. I'm starting to see a trend here.

Funny thing is, Hornet got a proportionally stronger buff for its raw damage, particularly in relation to defense mechanics, so its odd that it fell further behind somehow.

Some other subjects to chime in on:

1. Town Unhappiness is not going away. I know its a common topic, both before and after the changes in 1.4.1, but I'm just going to save you guys the time and say its not in the cards for review. And we certainly aren't removing the Town System.

2. The change to town detection range was literally made in response to player feedback. Apparently everyone who asked for it forgot, and now they are all mad. I don't really care, it was a change made to make players happier and apparently it only made them mad, so whatever, I'll probably revert it or reduce it. I'm tired of hearing about it and its frustrating because it was based entirely on player feedback in the first place.

3. I'll re-evaluate Obsidian Armor, it was a big experiment and I knew some big numbers were being thrown around. Should be easy enough to downtweak a bit.

4. Not sure what to do with Star Cloak, it was widely considered useless before, and if its too strong now, I'm not sure what to do with it. I'm concerned a middle ground solution will fall solidly back into "useless". Maybe just removing the defense penetration will be enough.



Dislike vs Hate isn't kinda cosmetic as you say, but its an indicator of have far gone it is. Each additional NPC over the limit increases the penalty, so it has use as an indicator of how many people are present.

As for the 3->4 change, I'll have to investigate it.

I really feel for you, you do a great job and you don't deserve to be treated like that.
However, let me comment on a few things:

0. I really don't understand why people are complaining about the buff vampire frog, it's a dirty enemy drop from a rather tough event to start with. My only idea is to restore the attack method with only its tongue, without changing the stats and mechanics.

1/2. Luck NPCs are a good system, I personally had no problems with it, because I like to build small, cozy towns where two NPCs lived next to each other and two lived a bit further. You just go overboard a bit, 30 blocks away should be enough. Besides, the NPC flags are a big problem, as they can appear in strange places in the room. It would be nice if the player could control their placement in the houses menu.


3. Obsidian Armor is a tough case because it is at the level of the Molten Armor. Both require a pickaxe from the wrong biome to harvest materials, and both require a hellforge. This in turn means that the favored Mime for Obsidian Armor is Imp. If so, the question is whether the Obsidian Armor and Imp Stuff should be level before Queen Bee or level after Queen Bee.

 

[Adventurer32]

I really feel for you, you do a great job and you don't deserve to be treated like that.
However, let me comment on a few things:

0. I really don't understand why people are complaining about the buff vampire frog, it's a dirty enemy drop from a rather tough event to start with. My only idea is to restore the attack method with only its tongue, without changing the stats and mechanics.

1/2. Luck NPCs are a good system, I personally had no problems with it, because I like to build small, cozy towns where two NPCs lived next to each other and two lived a bit further. You just go overboard a bit, 30 blocks away should be enough. Besides, the NPC flags are a big problem, as they can appear in strange places in the room. It would be nice if the player could control their placement in the houses menu.


3. Obsidian Armor is a tough case because it is at the level of the Molten Armor. Both require a pickaxe from the wrong biome to harvest materials, and both require a hellforge. This in turn means that the favored Mime for Obsidian Armor is Imp. If so, the question is whether the Obsidian Armor and Imp Stuff should be level before Queen Bee or level after Queen Bee.

Obsidian armor may not directly require queen bee to be defeated but it's level means it can be more powerful than queen bee because it requires EoW/BoC materials.
Although to be fair, you can just kill a few segments of BoC/EoW, not necessarily defeat the whole thing to get the armor. So in that regard it's slightly lower tier than meteor armor.

 

[Leinfors]

1.4.1 tweaks to the penalty took a literal dump on that. While giving more freedom to other pylon town builds, even more restrictions were "unintentionally" added to tidy / hotel types of builds.

I've already indicated that the range detection change is likely to be reduced, if not outright reverted, so please give it a rest. Continuing to reiterate the same point further and in multiple threads won't make the hotfix come faster.

 

[MyName]

- The Jousting Lance seems to be unchanged, being the same suicidal weapon like it was before. The knockback isn't strong enough to allow you hitting the same enemy once again, but it's high enough to allow him to hit you once if you keep running. It wouldn't hurt to give that weapon a buff which protects you from the on-hit damage of a certain enemy, but only if you manage to hit him with the Jousting Lance. You'll still be vulnerable towards projectiles flying straight into your face or mobs you didn't manage to hit with it
- Despite the 50% increased spawn chance for pyramids, the Bundle of Balloons is still locked behind bars if you don't manage to get a pyramid with the Sandstorm in a Bottle in your world. There also are no alternative recipes or accessories for it. It's a useful accessory for players who rely on mounts because they can't use wings while on their mount. Any chances to make the Sand Elemental drop the Sandstorm in a Bottle, just like its Snow biome counterpart drops the Ice Feather? That would give players who had no luck in pre-hardmode a chance to obtain it in hardmode. After all, it's either a free accessory you can obtain even before fighting your first boss, or unobtainable because it just doesn't exist in your world.

 

[Leinfors]

- Despite the 50% increased spawn chance for pyramids, the Bundle of Balloons is still locked behind bars if you don't manage to get a pyramid with the Sandstorm in a Bottle in your world. There also are no alternative recipes or accessories for it. It's a useful accessory for players who rely on mounts because they can't use wings while on their mount. Any chances to make the Sand Elemental drop the Sandstorm in a Bottle, just like its Snow biome counterpart drops the Ice Feather? That would give players who had no luck in pre-hardmode a chance to obtain it in hardmode. After all, it's either a free accessory you can obtain even before fighting your first boss, or unobtainable because it just doesn't exist in your world.

There was nothing else I was able to get approved for the Sandstorm in a Bottle. Sorry. The Pyramid rarity improvement was the best I could get.

 

[Lythael]

I've already indicated that the range detection change is likely to be reduced, if not outright reverted, so please give it a rest. Continuing to reiterate the same point further and in multiple threads won't make the hotfix come faster.

You did read the entire post not just the part you quoted right?
Also to calrify i did mention this only in 2 threads in total.

I don't expect the hotfix to come faster i'm just pointing out that there is more things wrong with this system than just the NPC detection range and literally suggested a solution that would make everyone happy. And i'm clearly not alone in this.

But sure have it your way....
I have no words

 

[Leinfors]

You did read the entire post not just the part you quoted right?
Also to calrify i did mention this only in 2 threads in total.

I don't expect the hotfix to come faster i'm just pointing out that there is more things wrong with this system than just the NPC detection range and literally suggested a solution that would make everyone happy. And i'm clearly not alone in this.

But sure have it your way....
I have no words

And I'm telling you that the changes you are asking for are not within my power to change, and so continuing to ask me repeatedly is not helping the situation.