Console NPC Happiness Ruined the Game

[KrimsonKatt]

Hello. This is my first post here, and I specifically created my account to post this, so here goes.

I've been a long-time player of Terraria. My first ever experianced with the game was 1.1 on mobile, and since then I have played and owned nearly every single version of Terraria, including ones on Android, PC, 3DS, Wii U, PS4, and Nintendo Switch. I was there during both the launches of 1.3 and 1.4, and have been playing the game since nearly the beginning. However, a recent change that was made in 1.4 completely ruined the game for me and many others and made the game neigh-unplayable. The dreaded NPC Happiness system.

Back in my dad, NPCs were basically useless, their only use being selling stuff and occasionally doing other things. They couldn't attack, and has very little personality, wandering around randomly during the day and standing perfectly still at night. This all changed in 1.3, where they not only gave NPCs a lot more to do but allowed them to actually defend themselves.

For the longest time, about 80% of players had the same strategy for NPCs. A massive appartnent building with a desk, chair, and 2 torches in small rooms stacked on top of each other. Most people I know you play terraria mainly play it for the combat, collecting, and exploration. Most could care less about building unless it had practical use like a skybridge or a boss arena.

But then everything changed when 1.4 was released, and NPC Happiness was introduced. For me personally, I'm fine with you having certain benefits by having NPCs in certain biomes and whatnot. The problem arises dye to you being HEAVILY penalized for playing the game the way you want, the way the majority of the fanbase has been playing since launch.

You know that large appartnent building structure, that conviently had all NPCs and all your crafting and storage together in a single space? Gone. All gone. Now if you attempt to do that, your NPCs will get SUPER unhappy and you'll have to pay TWO TIMES the price for everything they have.

You see, if more than 4 NPCs are close to each other, they will get "crowded" and their happiness will be GREATLY lowered. The lower the happiness, the higher the price of the items. Not only that, but when certain NPCs are close to each other or in certain biomes their Happiness lowers EVEN MORE.

Now, you're simply NOT ALLOWED to have one big base with all your stuff at one place. No, you have to have 8+ smaller bases spread across the entire world, forcing you to walk to the opposite side of the world just to talk to a single NPC, use a certain crafting item, or manage your chests. I know pylons exist, but those are super expensive and require a lot of work to get, something you won't have right away.

This is a terrible system that praticlly FORCES you to become a builder and build 8+ unique bases instead of simpily going and building a large convient base at spawn where everything is at. You can no longer play the way you want. You are now forced to play in the specific way the devs want you to play, or you will be actively punished, in a SANDBOX GAME.

At the very least, you should introduce a toggle for people who don't like this mechanic, change it so that NPC Happiness can only give benefits and not raise prices by an absurd amount or at all, or just remove the mechanic all together like you removed torch luck.

1.4 would have been such a cool update with the Empress of Light, Zenith, new QoL like sleeping, various cool balance changes like making the True Swords easier and less random to obtain and making Blade of Grass, Firey Greatsword, Night's Edge, Excalibur, and the true swords auto swing, and various other things, but it was all ruined by this one change which makes the game extremely unfun, tedious, and just straight-up painful.

NPC happiness completely ruins the game for me and many other people, and needs to be removed as soon as possible. Luckily I'm free from that terrible mechanic as I mainly play on Switch, but soon 1.4 will come out on Switch as well, which will allow me to play all the cool new content but subject me to the worst mechanic currently in terrible and the second worst mechanic ever, second only to torch luck, both which were ironicly included in the same update, though torch luck was later dummied out.

PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE change or remove NPC happiness. It forces people to play in one particular way in a game all about freedom, adds a ton more tedium to the game, punishes you for using one of the most convienent, simplistic, and popular base builds, and many more things. Thank you.

 

[Sora_92]

This is hardly a "new thing" for PC, so there were several threads about it already, but there are many people indeed, who don't like the penalty. however, I would argue about that it makes the game unplayable.

(as for the possible solution you suggested, to make it toggleable, the only problem there is, if you make it like "want benefits, and no punishments?" practically everyonewould immediatelly say "YES!" and who wouldn't toggle it then?)

But, so, I would say, you usually don't buy lots of stuff from NPCs. most purpchases are situational, and only buy one, e.g. minishark. and others who sell stuff you might buy often, like torches, are related to one NPC. so, if you want the best prices, pick the NPCs you need, and build homes for them to be very happy. whether the rest are unhappy, won't matter a real lot regarding prices, if you don't buy anything from them anyway.

I personally love building too, but if you don't like it, you can keep building the usual wooden shoeboxes. and, the real difference is just more that you're encouraged to build several, but, you only have to walk back and forth once or twice while you build the other towns. pylons might look expensive, but that's just for the start of the game. they sell for roughly 8 gold each, (although only sold when the NPC is very happy - but that also makes them cheaper).
swat BoC or something a few times and sell all that crimane (as bars) you can easily get more than one platinum coin from like ~4 BoC battles. you can buy every pylons no problem.

And they make traveling a LOT easier, once you have them up. you can have all these special "teleporters" up very early game, and it will be a huge help for the entire playthrough. I think, that's the real reward there, even if at first it seems like a pain to build several towns. Ah, right, and, you're not even required to build them on the surface most cases. pylons like jungle or snow, etc. works both surface and underground. so, you can choose the best fast travel anchor points to build the towns where they're the most useful to you. being in stategically good place as fast-travel anchor, or next to a fishing spot, or a farm, or anything. It's super convinient, once you have it up.

I get why you're angry, but while the happiness system definitelly has its problems, it's not as bad, as you say, I think.
By the way, it's actually "punishing" the other way too, like if you wanna build an actual town, and not a wooden prison. because NPCs have pathetically low detect range for neighbors, so, the only way to have like, the merchant see the nurse and the golfer as "neighbors" if they literally live the next floor of his shop and inside his bathroom or whatever. If they would live in the next house-looking house, he won't recognise them as neighbors.
So, yeah, the system has its faults, even if you're not the shoebox-type player, but more a builder.

But the pylons are super convinient. And not expensive. Give them another try, IMO.

 

[neoselket]

How dare people play a sandbox game the way they want

 

[MrQuackMan]

In my opinion it actually made the game a lot easier for the better, mainly due to the pylons.

No longer do you have to walk all the way to the jungle every time you die trying to get spores, just put the Dryad, Witch Doctor and the Painter there and you also get a great price reduction.

You put the Arms Dealer, Steampunker and Nurse on a hallowed desert and the bullets and healing are practically free.

I don't think i need to say much more

 

[FalloutGuy645]

I think the best way to keep both sides happy is to never have the NPCs raise their prices above normal price. That way, following through with the village mechanics can only positively impact and keeping everyone in a wooden box has no negative impact (but no positive either).

 

[Dreadnautilus5000🌳]

I don't see what's bad about having to space out your NPCs across the world. Pylons aren't that expensive and it takes a couple seconds to use them. And you can still keep your crafting stations and chests in a base at spawn if you want, NPC Happiness doesn't affect that at all.

 

[KrimsonKatt]

You already have the steampunker selling teleporters tho after you defeat a mechanical boss. If teleporters didn't need to be all wired up, pylons would be made irrelevant. If they wanted easier teleportation, they could just have the steampunker sell "teleport connecters a-z" with one for each letter of the alphabet sold for $500,000 (1 Copper = $1, 1 Silver = $100, 1 Gold = $10,000, 1 Platinum = $1,000,000) each. (due to this, regular teleporters would be reduced to only $50,000) When you connect the wiring through the teleporters and into two matching teleporter cores, the teleporters automatically connect and you can easily travel between them.

Also, I agree that penalties shouldn't be given for not adbiding by the new system, and you should only get benefits from it. Giving penalties for playing the game the way you want, not the way the developers want, is completely idiotic and takes nearly all the fun out of the game. When you have to find loopholes (like only putting the NPCs you like like the Goblin Tinkerer, Arms Dealer, Nurse, Witch Doctor, ect in favorable locations and to get the pylons) in order to actually have fun with the game when a new system is added, that new system has completely failed at everything it was trying to do. Also, if they do impliment a toggle, toggling NPC happiness to "off" would also remove the benefits, but pylons will still be able to be purchased from the appropriate NPC once hardmode starts and at least one mechanical boss is defeated.

 

[Dreadnautilus5000🌳]

You already have the steampunker selling teleporters tho after you defeat a mechanical boss. If teleporters didn't need to be all wired up, pylons would be made irrelevant. If they wanted easier teleportation, they could just have the steampunker sell "teleport connecters a-z" with one for each letter of the alphabet sold for $500,000 (1 Copper = $1, 1 Silver = $100, 1 Gold = $10,000, 1 Platinum = $1,000,000) each. (due to this, regular teleporters would be reduced to only $50,000) When you connect the wiring through the teleporters and into two matching teleporter cores, the teleporters automatically connect and you can easily travel between them.

This would be locked behind a mech boss, whereas Pylons would be available from the start of the game, plus you get lowered prices if you put the right NPCs near the Pylons, so these would be useless. They would also be significantly more expensive.

 

[Sora_92]

@KrimsonKatt
Teleporters are still a thing, and anyone who played the game vanilla, pre 1.4, and tried to put together a teleporter system, noticed that it's insanely expensive, and extremely time consuming to make them. You'll easily spend 4~5 plat or more probably even like 10, even in a small world.
In comparison, the pylon system is much cheaper, with roughly 1 plat for all pylons together, without the need to place 28million wires all over the world.

The problem with removing penalties is, that then some people pop up, who want your entire arm, if you reach a finger to them, being like "but having no bonuses is also kind of a penalty, so, we want no penalty, we want the bonuses applied all time, regardless if we just thrown them all in a wooden prison"

Either way, I think, if you prefer teleporters, they are still available, just like they were before, and they don't have the need of NPCs nearby like pylons do, and work every time (pylons don't in a few cases, like invasions), you can have infinite number of them, and they can teleport other creatures too, like town NPCs or monsters.
However they're locked behind hardmode, and at least one mech boss down, while you can get almost all pylons even pre-bosses. Pylons aren't perfect either, but even with a few downs, they are a huge QoL improvement, and significantly easier to build up, than a teleporter system.

What you describe though isn't necessarily a bad idea, but questionable how it could be coded, and it still would be less useful, if being locked behind the steampunker.
I remember though, in modded, I seen several other teleporting things, like "wormhole mirror" from Thorium, which teleports you to NPCs, or various teleporter potions from alchemist NPCs (I think), or wall-mounted magic mirrors, which allow fast travel between similar already explored, or player-placed magic mirrors.

All in all, teleporting things are extremely convinient, but those that are locked behind hardmode will be zero help with early game, except if you bring them from another world. So, I think, pylons are very useful, even with their flaws, because you can get them very early in the game, and they don't cost as much as an actual teleporter system.

That might be just my opinion though.

Ah, also, as for NPCs happiness, it's literally impossible to make everyone happy, I think. there are many one-sided likes, and in some cases, the person who likes one, is being disliked by that person. E.g. the merchant likes the golfer (because he's rich), but the golfer dislikes the merchant (because he's greedy). If you want the merchant to be happy by having the golfer nearby, the golfer won't be as happy.
There are some who mutually love each others, like the goblin tinkerer and the mechanic, but many NPCs aren't like that.
Which is also actually kinda good, even if you can't make everyone happy, it allows for more freedom who to place where, like it's not like there's one way to make everyone happy, and every players would build only that way. it's sad that you can't make everyone happy, but, you don't usually buy stuff from most of the NPCs. so, you can just pick those who are useful for you, and place the others accordingly, to make those important NPCs happy.

Also, having a center base is still an option too, but if you spread them out just a bit more, you won't get as much penalty. or nothing at all for overcowding - just some if they don't like the biome - if you have like houses with 3 NPCs per house, not that far, but not too close from each others. it can make a pretty large town, which can cover a large area as "town" greatly reducing monster spawnrates in the entire huge area, which can be very useful too (IMO).

 

[Gotcha!]

Can't agree more.
The only thing they'd have to do is remove the penalties, and keep the bonuses intact. That way you're at least not penalized for making apartment buildings or wanting to play on pre-1.4 maps.
*still a bit salty about several of my maps now being penalized even though they live in very nice and roomy condos*

 

[Turg1]

I am fine in building more bases but i understand that some people wont want to spend a lot of time building a lot of bases for npcs.

 

[neoselket]

I don't see what's bad about having to space out your NPCs across the world. Pylons aren't that expensive and it takes a couple seconds to use them. And you can still keep your crafting stations and chests in a base at spawn if you want, NPC Happiness doesn't affect that at all.

Because you're forced to keep all your NPC's away from each other and you get penalized for random things like having 2 specific NPC's near each other or being in the wrong biome. You should be able to put all your NPC's wherever you want without having to pay ridiculous amounts of money for common items.

 

[Dreadnautilus5000🌳]

Because you're forced to keep all your NPC's away from each other and you get penalized for random things like having 2 specific NPC's near each other or being in the wrong biome. You should be able to put all your NPC's wherever you want without having to pay ridiculous amounts of money for common items.

Why does it matter if you're forced to keep your NPCs away from each other? You gain nothing from having many of them close to each other, and accessibility isn't an issue because Pylons exist. And it's not hard to learn what NPCs like which biomes.

 

[neoselket]

Why does it matter if you're forced to keep your NPCs away from each other? You gain nothing from having many of them close to each other, and accessibility isn't an issue because Pylons exist. And it's not hard to learn what NPCs like which biomes.

Because it forces you to do things a specific way. What if you want to have the guide, the steampunker, and the dryad in the desert? You get a massive penalty. What if you want to build a cool themed house for the dye trader in the forest? Oops, he hates that biome, hope you like paying like 12 gold for a dye vat. The entire point of a sandbox game is to allow people the creative freedom to build what they want, where they want. For example, i like to put all my NPC's in one spot underground, but they all hate it there because it's ToO cRoWdEd uAhHaHuahHAHh so i'm literrally penalized for trying to build the way i want. Remember torch luck? How you got a penalty to crit chance and droprates if you didn't put torches in their corresponding biome? People hated that, because it was annoying and restrictive. Imagine if you had to use blocks that matched the biome for NPC houses or prices would be jacked up. That restricts creativity.
Just because you don't mind something doesn't mean that other people don't, as many of the replies to this post will attest. Just remove the penalties, you can keep the other mechanics but remove the penalties. People who don't like the system will be happier, and players who like it won't be affected. Everyone wins.

 

[Dreadnautilus5000🌳]

Because it forces you to do things a specific way. What if you want to have the guide, the steampunker, and the dryad in the desert? You get a massive penalty. What if you want to build a cool themed house for the dye trader in the forest? Oops, he hates that biome, hope you like paying like 12 gold for a dye vat. The entire point of a sandbox game is to allow people the creative freedom to build what they want, where they want. For example, i like to put all my NPC's in one spot underground, but they all hate it there because it's ToO cRoWdEd uAhHaHuahHAHh so i'm literrally penalized for trying to build the way i want. Remember torch luck? How you got a penalty to crit chance and droprates if you didn't put torches in their corresponding biome? People hated that, because it was annoying and restrictive. Imagine if you had to use blocks that matched the biome for NPC houses or prices would be jacked up. That restricts creativity.
Just because you don't mind something doesn't mean that other people don't, as many of the replies to this post will attest. Just remove the penalties, you can keep the other mechanics but remove the penalties. People who don't like the system will be happier, and players who like it won't be affected. Everyone wins.

Why the hell would you want to put the Guide, Steampunker and Dryad in the Desert? Why would you specifically want to build your Dye Trader house in the forest? Excluding NPC happiness, the only reason that I can think of for putting specific NPCs in specific biomes is that many NPCs fit in the biome thematically, and NPC happiness doesn't make NPCs dislike biomes that they fit in with.

I think the main complaint was that regular torches would give a negative penalty no matter what, which gave you bad luck all the time unless you used the biome torches, which aren't that easy to obtain in bulk, especially since Torch God wasn't a thing in the original version of 1.4. I think what people wanted was regular torches not affecting luck in any way, but the developers decided to just remove penalties.

Many of the people that have complained about NPC happiness and will complain in the future are probably just sad that they can't be lazy and build one house in the centre of the world. Think about this: if NPC happiness had existed since the very beginning, would people have complained about it as much as they did after 1.4 released?

 

[whoneedsnamestbh]

Think about this: if NPC happiness had existed since the very beginning, would people have complained about it as much as they did after 1.4 released?

The difference is that adding penalties can be seen as taking something away. If the player health were reduced to 300, that’s changing the way the game works and making the game harder, which would be seen as taking something away, especially to more casual players. Whereas if max health were always 300, nothing is being takem away from keeping at 300, and the game would have a slightly harder and more high level audience. One forces you to change the way you play, one doesn’t.

 

[Sora_92]

Thinking more about it, the whole issue largely stems from the usual practice of keeping all NPCs in a town (or a wooden prison) at the center. Pre-1.4, that sounded like the best idea indeed, because if you wanted to buy anything from either of them, you could have easy access to all NPCs.

If you placed NPCs in different biomes (for example because they had items they only sold in specific biomes, like witch doctor's leaf wings, etc.) it could been a pain to walk all the way to his jungle hut, from the center base (the way back could been cut short with a magic mirror though).

That is how it was pre-1.4, you would face inconviniences for spreading the NPCs out in multiple towns, so everyone usually had them in a central town, or wooden prison.

Not counting old worlds though, if we look at 1.4,

Pylons change that whole thing. Because, now if you have pylons, it's easy to access any NPCs that are living in towns with pylons, regardless how far they are, and what's more, pylon towns also function as fast-travel anchors making accessing these remote and distant places much easier.
So, in the 1.4 era, it's much better to have them spread out more, but some still just wanna go with the "traditional"(?) way, or dunno. maybe it's just something like it takes time until the new becames common? or what's the right word?

I mean, when I think about it, on modded, slightly before 1.4 was released, I started using/abusing items like Thorium's "wormhole mirror", and because it worked like, you could teleport to town NPCs on the map, you would chose a few, and place them in random remote locations, to work as your fast-travel anchors.
The pylon system isn't much different from that, though you're encouraged to try building actual town, and not just a single hut, and if you have 3 or more NPCs somewhere, that are turns into a town too, greatly decreasing monster spawnrates and all, which can be quite convinient, and make it less likely that some random monsters would kill the NPCs (as opposed to, if it's just one NPC living in a remote hut)

So, I guess, the pre-1.4 era, you won (convinience), by having everyone at the center. - so, that became a common practice, as having them elsewhere (on vanilla with nothing like wormhole mirror, or spending 10 platinums on a teleporter system) would been very inconvinient.
In the 1.4 era though, you win nothing - but rather, you get penalty - for cramming everyone in a central base. and you win (convinience) by setting up several pylon towns, that greatly help with traveling around. pretty interesting that the whole thing turned upside down, and that might be why some find it bad, because it's a huge change. but in the current, 1.4 era, you win a lot more by just building some shoeboxes elsewhere too.

(you can also actually build a larger center base, which is good at the very start before you could easily build up several towns, and the large central base also allows for NPCs to move in when their conditions are met, and then after they're there, you can set their flags to where you want them. and also can function as a temporary place where some can move back to, if the V hits a towns upon entering hardmode, and reside there, until you purify the fallen town, or build another.

So, I think, the large central base did not entirelly lose its functions, it's still useful in cases, just, it's encouraged to put together a few more shoeboxes elsewhere too (if you're not into building fancy stuff), both for the price bonuses, and even more, to help with traveling in the world.

 

[neoselket]

Why the hell would you want to put the Guide, Steampunker and Dryad in the Desert? Why would you specifically want to build your Dye Trader house in the forest? Excluding NPC happiness, the only reason that I can think of for putting specific NPCs in specific biomes is that many NPCs fit in the biome thematically, and NPC happiness doesn't make NPCs dislike biomes that they fit in with.

I think the main complaint was that regular torches would give a negative penalty no matter what, which gave you bad luck all the time unless you used the biome torches, which aren't that easy to obtain in bulk, especially since Torch God wasn't a thing in the original version of 1.4. I think what people wanted was regular torches not affecting luck in any way, but the developers decided to just remove penalties.

Many of the people that have complained about NPC happiness and will complain in the future are probably just sad that they can't be lazy and build one house in the centre of the world. Think about this: if NPC happiness had existed since the very beginning, would people have complained about it as much as they did after 1.4 released?

It was an example dude, chill. What if you want certain NPC's in your base because you use them the most? What if you want multiple NPC's in the same spot so it feels fuller? Just because you don't play that way doesn't mean no one does. You can't say "Oh everyone should be forced to play the game like I do or be penalized" Like seriously, what would it cost you if the penalty were to be removed? Nothing. At this point you're just against something that would help other players and not affect you at all for literally no reason.

 

[Dreadnautilus5000🌳]

It was an example dude, chill. What if you want certain NPC's in your base because you use them the most? What if you want multiple NPC's in the same spot so it feels fuller? Just because you don't play that way doesn't mean no one does. You can't say "Oh everyone should be forced to play the game like I do or be penalized" Like seriously, what would it cost you if the penalty were to be removed? Nothing. At this point you're just against something that would help other players and not affect you at all for literally no reason.

As I've been repeatedly saying, accessibility is not an issue because Pylons exist which only take slightly longer to use than it does to walk over to an NPC. Also, you're still allowed to have up to three NPCs nearby, and you can still build giant multi-room houses, you just have to only house a few NPCs in them.

I'm not against removing the penalty, but I'm not for it either. I'm trying to prove that it actually makes little difference if you have to space out your NPCs rather then keeping them all in one spot. But I do think that there shouldn't be a penalty for having so little NPCs near each other, because it goes against human nature and doesn't make sense in many cases.

 

[Coleyohley]

While the original post is highly exaggerated, I agree with its concept. The addition of NPC Happiness was originally brought on by malicious developer intentions. Remember the outcry over torch luck because people thought it was childish and arbitrary to punish the player for playing the game in a way different than what the developer wanted? The exact same thing is happening here. Leinfors has actually said that Redigit wanted to see less people making large buildings in the center and instead wanted to see more people spread their structures out across the world. There is an enormous problem with this, in that this is a sandbox game, and what Redigit wants to see the players do in it simply does not matter. If I allowed you to build whatever you want out of Legos but told you that I would slap you if you made anything but a bridge, is that really being able to build whatever you want?

And I'm afraid "It's really not a big deal" undermines the core issue. The issue isn't that it's impactful, the issue is that this harmful mindset is allowed to able to be excused. "Play the game the way we want you to play, and if you don't, we're going to punish you." No matter how small that punishment is, the player should never be punished for this in the first place.

Please tell me. What is the harm in making buildings like this?

Or this?

Or even this?

There is none. These are bases I progressively built up throughout my adventure and serve as a roadmap of my progress. I can look at each part and know where that building was at during each part of my adventure.

And yet, all of these builds were gutted by NPC happiness. Why? Because Redigit didn't like the way I chose to build MY world. And that's really all there is to it. Builds like these didn't harm gameplay in any way whatsoever and now I am being punished because that's simply not what Redigit wants to see the playerbase do.

The solution here is to simply remove the downsides of NPC happiness. There are simply no negative effects to removing them (apart from Redigit's hurt feelings of course). Removing the downsides but keeping the positives would still encourage players to spread out their NPCs but it wouldn't punish them for not doing so. NPC Happiness downsides only serve to hurt the experiences of players who build like me. People that want to switch will switch, and the people who don't want to shouldn't have to.

The NPC Happiness upsides are admittedly brilliant. Pylons are a great way to travel across the world, being able to minmax the happiness of your NPCs is a great brain puzzle (provided you don't look up some guide online) and having the NPCs be chipper in the environments they fit with thematically just simply makes sense. However, the downside simply has no reason to be there. It only serves to disincentivise players from building the way they want to, and in a game like Terraria that is simply unacceptable.

Many of the people that have complained about NPC happiness and will complain in the future are probably just sad that they can't be lazy and build one house in the centre of the world.

I'm afraid I'm extremely disappointed in how reductive that response is. Consider my buildings above and how you have grouped those and many just like them into the category of "lazy." Not to say you meant to group them in like that, but responding to the entire opposition with "you're probably just lazy and hate that you actually need to work" is... ridiculous.

My point here is simply that statements like yours group players like me, who put time and thought and effort into their building, with people that build day 1 tenement complexes, and that's just not fair.