Console NPC Happiness Ruined the Game

[CorruptMimic22]

What if I want to build it in a playthrough? I always have, and I always enjoyed it. It was a beacon of progress, to see all those NPCs there and all of the different parts I had added throughout the adventure.


Ah yes the classic "It doesn't bother me, so it shouldn't bother anyone else." I'm not going to address how ridiculous that argument is because it should be plain as day.

As for ups and downs, I don't think you understand the purpose of ups and downs. Currently, spreading your NPCs out has almost zero downs, and pretty much only positives, where building a giant central base has very few upsides.

"Ups and Downs" means there's pros and cons for each option that the player needs to consider when choosing. Currently pylons have only upsides and Giant Castles have only downsides. There is no real decision to be made here. If you want to be rewarded, you will pick pylons. There is no extrinsic reason to choose a giant castle.

You choose one and you get immense rewards, you choose the other and you are ONLY punished. Pros and Cons are used to create nuanced decisions, and this is hardly a decision at all.

"Do you want candy? Or do you want to get slapped?"



It wasn't annoying to the people who went out of their way to make and use the biome torches, which is the exact thing that's happening here: It's not annoying to anyone willing to make use of the system.

The bigger problem was that being punished for placing the wrong torches doesn't make any sense. Running into an attack and being punished by taking damage makes sense because that is an attack's purpose: to force the player to avoid it or come closer to losing the battle. You cannot say the same thing about Torches.

You CAN say the same thing about NPC happiness, though. But if that was the goal, then the system was implemented with immense failure. What SHOULD be punished, if anything, is low-effort housing. Humans living in drab houses are obviously not going to be as chipper as someone living in a luxury apartment. However, that is not what is being punished here.

What IS being punished here is multiple NPCs being close together, which DOESN'T make any sense considering humans are inherently social creatures, and that a wide majority of people would be absolutely thrilled to live with others in a huge, lavish, well-decorated castle.

So PLEASE tell me why I deserve to be punished for building this. Please tell me, as nobody has done so yet and if I'm honest with you, nobody is going to.
View attachment 329518
If your problem is the amount of effort I put into it, please look at the ing picture. That build took me and a friend nearly 4 total hours to build over the course of our playthrough.


Sounds pretty hypocritical considering that you can still make shoebox setups for pylons. In fact if anything building shoebox setups for pylons is even easier than building a central shoebox complex since you don't need to make as many.

Sometimes (almost all the times) people misunderstand me because of my lack on the "expressing by words on english and making sense" department. It's a pain (but I'm used to). (Also read it with a narrator tone from National Geography) Anyways:

The part :" you can also build one but letting them live there" is mentioning a playthrough.

You have decisions, one part is your preference and the other how happiness works (and when I say "at least for me" it was inside a () with () which is like a personal side note(which menas not really inportant)). Not talking about those ups and downs, but about pros and cons (mainly the player opinion on the matter) "be nice or pylons" as some may say. (I'm hoong to be misunderstood right?)

The torches was a honorable mention and does not contribute for the argument in my POV (unless you find the () usefull)

I'm not social by any means but I'm not a human too so nevermind. Yeah, i got your point, being overcrowd has it flaws but maybe everyone is introvert there? It is a isolated island . Not much to say there, It was a way to stop people from, well, doing what you think is punishable. Tell me a way to stop people from making skyscrapers but not bothering giant bases builders at the same time? (You'll find a way just because it's me saying).

My point wasn't shoebox setups, i do that. I'm talking about making a skyscraper or a giant NPC, how do I say it, hotel without privacy, and earning profit from it (because there would be no penalty and you would only get the discounts as more and more NPCs would get compressed together.

 

[Mihn]

I'm not social by any means but I'm not a human too so nevermind. Yeah, i got your point, being overcrowd has it flaws but maybe everyone is introvert there? It is a isolated island . Not much to say there, It was a way to stop people from, well, doing what you think is punishable.

A good reason... The happines system!
Now for real there's no "good reason" less than: "why would they lower the price by half for you because you made a shoebox hotel and put everybody there?". That would be free discount basically and you know that it doesn't make sense (at least I think you know).

how do I say it, hotel without privacy, and earning profit from it (because there would be no penalty and you would only get the discounts as more and more NPCs would get compressed together.

Your problem is trying to apply real, human characteristics to what is essentially a few abitrary lines of code which only becomes even more apparent with the happiness system. If this is any way realistic, there are a billion other variables that can contribute to happiness which I doubt even the best social life simulator can pull off.

Do I need to mention my "energy extraction prison" again? Who in their right mind would live in a desert with no water source nearby with 3 competing mouths around them? Do you know that relationships can change over time in both directions? Why does being happy reduce prices, have they even taken an economics class before? If I charge people extra based on my mood, I would go out of business in a week.

This isn't a real life simulator, this is a sandbox-adventure game. The extent of happiness should just be extra shop items for being in the favorite biome or when other NPCs is nearby, which is already the case before 1.4.

Build the castle on journey, or make a map only for the castle instead of building on your gameplay world (even if it shows how much you hard work you have there, or just simply to be nice) you can also build one but not letting all NPCs live there, or let them live and change their homes when you want to buy stuff.

"Just play journey mode" sounds really similar to "just cheat in infinite resources" which is absolutely not a solution.

---

In the end, you only support the penalty because it is in the game and because it is in the game, it cannot be wrong and that's the extent of it. It's clear that we won't be able to reach an understanding, so I will stop engaging with you here before things get heated. I have said enough on this topic either way and I pray I won't get in the mood for another happiness debate later.

And to quote brbonfire and Coricus who worded it way more eloquently than I ever could:

This... honestly isn't great. While having towns all over the place to avoid price penalties isn't that bad in theory and the penalties can just be powered through, the psychology of the system is all wrong. By that, I mean how the player is meant to react to the fact that even if the penalties are manageable, every time they click the big obvious happiness button they get told they're designing their bases wrong and that in essence, the game considers their builds bad. The psychological effect of "being punished" exists regardless of the size of the punishment. Now, once the bug with disliking and hating is fixed you won't have ridiculous price hikes any more, but the Happiness tab will always be there to remind you that you're playing this sandbox game wrong.

Essentially, don't punish players for playing "wrong," reward them for going the extra mile. There's no point in making a game where the game itself goes out of it's way to make you feel bad for doing something completely harmless. And definitely don't be proud of taking out your frustrations on the players themselves, that's downright tacky at absolute best. The only person who's allowed to take out his frustrations on his own fandom is Kamiya, everyone else just looks bad for it.

 

[CorruptMimic22]

Yeah, now I'm basically replying here just to see how misunderstood I can be. Anyway I guess trying to prove my point is useless if nobody understands what I really mean. If people still quote me I will reply, but only explaining (also you skipped my reply) (im not being mean, this is sincere words, ik it sounds way mean but it's not)

 

[Terminus.]

I just started this game yesterday and was loving it so much , I spent hours building a big house with 6 rooms for NPCs to move in. I checked online for some info about the NPC's and I really wish I didn't because the game is pretty much ruined for me now learning how terribly convoluted and bad the NPC happiness system is.

Players should not be getting harshly penalized for having all the NPC's together in a big house, it makes the game feel more alive having a big community together.

NPC's should not have preferences on where to live or who to live with and there should not be penalties attached to it. I'm asking the devs to please rework this system or remove it PLEASE!

I'm not the only one who feels this way.. glanced and saw this exact complaint with 210 upvotes ..


Thanks, Please fix this . Love the game but just hate the NPC system and probably won't play until its fixed.

 

[Sora_92]

@Terminus.
Who am I to persuade you, but, as someone who really loves the game, I would like to say to not give up on the game just because there's one aspect of it you don't like.
It's sometimes up to a rough start - I know I had sooooo much trouble figuring out how am I supposed to build a house, and green slimes just kept coming from both directions, and it was difficult to talk with the guide and all, after getting killed by green slimes 10-15 times, I was about to rage quit, but instead, I looked up stuff on the wiki, and there am I with more than 2 500 hours in the game XD lol

I don't think the happiness system is that horrible, but we've been through this argument before and I see little reason to re-start arguing.
I just would like to recommend, to not give up on the game just because of it. Try to build some towns elsewhere too, to get access to pylons. And, I have a feeling, mods will probably offer some alternative solutions to the problems with NPC happiness (if there isn't a mod like that already) so, it probably will have some possible "fixes", but I would recommend playing at least one full vanilla playthrough, before moving on to modded.

ultimately, it's up to you, but it would be nice I think, if you would give the game another chance.

 

[Lazaropvp]

he never liked to be together in just one place i was testing it on my ps4 i saw that they sell items when they are in their biots he more and i dont care so much

 

[Terminus.]

@Terminus.
Who am I to persuade you, but, as someone who really loves the game, I would like to say to not give up on the game just because there's one aspect of it you don't like.
It's sometimes up to a rough start - I know I had sooooo much trouble figuring out how am I supposed to build a house, and green slimes just kept coming from both directions, and it was difficult to talk with the guide and all, after getting killed by green slimes 10-15 times, I was about to rage quit, but instead, I looked up stuff on the wiki, and there am I with more than 2 500 hours in the game XD lol

I don't think the happiness system is that horrible, but we've been through this argument before and I see little reason to re-start arguing.
I just would like to recommend, to not give up on the game just because of it. Try to build some towns elsewhere too, to get access to pylons. And, I have a feeling, mods will probably offer some alternative solutions to the problems with NPC happiness (if there isn't a mod like that already) so, it probably will have some possible "fixes", but I would recommend playing at least one full vanilla playthrough, before moving on to modded.

ultimately, it's up to you, but it would be nice I think, if you would give the game another chance.

players that don't want to have their NPC's spread out in pylon outposts all over the map shouldn't be getting heavily penalized for it. and I'm speaking for a lot of people I guess.

 

[Sora_92]

players that don't want to have their NPC's spread out in pylon outposts all over the map shouldn't be getting heavily penalized for it. and I'm speaking for a lot of people I guess.

I'm not saying it's perfect. I'm saying, it would be kind of sad, if you would miss out on such an awesome game, just because there's one annoying inconviniance there.

Though my opinion generally is, that spreading them out isn't that much a problem, because if it's just shoeboxes, you can set them up very quickly from local materials anyway, and you get a fast travel anchor for the rest of the playthrough in return, I do think the convinience of that heavily outweights the little plus work needed to build multiple towns.

As someone who cares about the looks of builds though, I can see setting up multiple towns can take more time, as well as you might can't have that big of a lively town, but, if you look at it, NPCs neighbor detection range is pathetically short, in fact, annoyingly short, so, it ends up with weird housings, like the golfer living in the merchant's bathroom, instead of having a proper house of his own.
On the other hand, the same short detection range means that building up a large and lively town isn't at all out of question, with houses spread out a bit more, and each housing 3-4 NPCs at max.

Now if you're a fan of huge forthresses with everyone squeezed in there, that won't work out well, yes - or the common super-lazy (but in the past, effective regardless) solution of squeezing everyone into a large wooden prison, and that's it.
But if you want a lively town with multiple houses, that will work out fine as well. Just organise neighbors in a way that they don't hate each others, and it should be mostly okay. While you won't get that much discounts, you won't be really penalized much either. (and won't have pylons... but, well, that's up to you.

You also don't have to set up everything at the start. you can build a large central base, for NPCs to be able to move in to begin with, and you can relocate them via assigning their housing flags elsewhere, when you set up a town elsewhere where you want them to move.
With pylons, having access to these towns is no problem at all either.

I'm not saying the system is perfect. But it's an awesome game, so, it would be sad if you would stop playing just because of this.
Where are you in the game progression? First playthroughs are especially interesting, because you just start to figure out how the game, the world, and everything works there.

Just have fun! Isn't that's the most important thing about a game? There are inconviniences, (or challanges?) and all, it's not perfect. If you don't like it, you don't have to play, but just because one bad thing, it would be sad to give up on a game you enjoy in other aspects.

Another thing that came to my mind, it seems that - after reading the wiki and stuff, or asking for advices - first time players tend to put a very big focus on trying to do everything perfectly. I remember I tried too, many times, only to fail again and again. I spent long time digging barriers around the crimson, only to see the V, and some alter-spawned pockets of crimson messing it up, and invalidating all my effort and hard work put into that. that one world of my first playthrough is 50%+ crimson. do I mind? No, because it doesn't matters. It's... how to say, a sort of testament of your big adventure there, even if nothing went perfectly, it is an awesome adventure to look back on.
And then you move on to a new adventure usually, so it won't matter that that world is a bit messed up. You will do better the next time. What's the most important is, to have fun, isn't it?

 

[cap3rd]

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?
View attachment 327331

Or this?
View attachment 327332

Or even this?

View attachment 327333

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.


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.

I know this topic is a few months old, but I replied to it because it summed up exactly what I am feeling right now.

I also played Terraria for many years.
I especially liked building cities, and I enjoyed changing the theme of each new city I built.
During that time, I enjoyed looking at the architectural photos that many players uploaded on the web and seeing how everyone was building beautiful cities.

I've seen a lot of great ideas, not only for cities, but also for creating aerial bases like balloons, or imagining a survival base that resembles a crashed rocket.

I think what they all had in common was a community of friends who came together to help each other in a harsh world.

However, one day, happiness was added to NPCs.
This negated all of the towns and bases that some of the hundreds, maybe thousands of players had built up over the previous years, literally years.

Indeed, I think it is terrible to have all the NPCs crammed into a minimal amount of space.
But I'm sure there are plenty of other bases that have been tried and tested to make sure that all NPCs are happy as roleplayers.

Now, for the sake of happiness, the NPCs have scattered. Also, the preferences and personalities that the players themselves had imagined for each NPC were now ignored by their fixed preferences.

Some players say that the system made movement more convenient, but such a thing was just a matter of placing warp boards in various places and pulling wires.

After the addition of happiness to NPCs, I had the opportunity to play multiplayer with about four friends for a reason. We were all players who liked to build.
We chose Terraria because each of us could easily build a city whenever we wanted.
But what we all thought of then was Terraria when NPCs didn't have happiness levels yet. When we started playing the game, we found that we couldn't build a city freely because of the happiness level, and one of us, who had researched the happiness level system, had to think about the placement of NPCs, and as a result, we all thought that we couldn't play freely, and the game broke up.

For me, Terraria has been a game that I've known for years, a game that I stopped playing once, only to be reminded of it again at a moment's notice and play it anew.
However, I haven't played it again since they added happiness to NPCs. "I don't play anymore because I think, "Oh, I'm not allowed to build a city freely anymore anyway.

I agree with you when you say that NPC happiness has destroyed the game.
If that system had existed in Terraria from the beginning, I don't even think Terraria would have become as big a content as it is today.

The denial of all the photos of memorable locations that many players have created over the years is like having all the memorabilia you've collected over the years burned to the ground.
It's sad that it happened for the sake of just one system, and for the ego of the developer.

Some players may say that they like the current system with NPC happiness.
But the fact that it negated all the efforts of so many players before it will not heal the wounds of those who have quit or given up on the game.

Players who like the current system will continue to play it.
But for the players who used to enjoy the freedom of city building, Terraria is dead. And that's a fact.

The most annoying thing is that I feel that the developers didn't see anything of everyone's previous efforts to build the city.
Like a spouse who throws away all the collections that one has collected without permission, there was no communication of any kind.
That's very sad.

 

[Sora_92]

@cap3rd
I think that's being a bit overly dramatic, saying it completely ruined the game, but we probably just look at it differently.
I don't see much reason to reignite this debate, but what I wanted to add is, that I'm pretty sure, modded terraria will allow to ignore the whole happiness system via some mods - if there's not some mods like that already.
so, pretty sure, you can build freely in modded, much like before.

 

[Coleyohley]

@cap3rd
I think that's being a bit overly dramatic, saying it completely ruined the game, but we probably just look at it differently.
I don't see much reason to reignite this debate, but what I wanted to add is, that I'm pretty sure, modded terraria will allow to ignore the whole happiness system via some mods - if there's not some mods like that already.
so, pretty sure, you can build freely in modded, much like before.

Mods fixing an issue does not excuse the issue being there. Developers should not get a pass for adding terrible features just because a mod corrects them.

 

[Sora_92]

Mods fixing an issue does not excuse the issue being there. Developers should not get a pass for adding terrible features just because a mod corrects them.

I think that just brings us to something like "we can't chose the vanilla game's features, but we can choose what mods to use" like how some say "magic storage is so convenient it should been added to the vanilla game" or any comments like that.

I think, the cool in modded is exactly that you can get the features you want.
yes, issues are still issues, but how can we fix them?

a.) get developers to fix something we consider an issue.
they might fix it, they might won't, and some players will agree, some won't. for example, when they increased neighbor detect range to 50 blocks, I liked that, but then they decided to get it back to 25 blocks which I hate, but some players probably prefer it that way, because that's likely why devs changed it back.
outcome: X% of players will be happy, Y% of players will hate it.

b.) leave it to modders to fix it in some mods.
then whoever want a fix to that, can get that mod, and whoever liked it the way it is, can freely ignore that mod.
outcome: everyone can have it the way they prefer. (at least in theory)

or so I would think, but I might be dumb, so who knows.

 

[cap3rd]

I think that just brings us to something like "we can't chose the vanilla game's features, but we can choose what mods to use" like how some say "magic storage is so convenient it should been added to the vanilla game" or any comments like that.

I think, the cool in modded is exactly that you can get the features you want.
yes, issues are still issues, but how can we fix them?

a.) get developers to fix something we consider an issue.
they might fix it, they might won't, and some players will agree, some won't. for example, when they increased neighbor detect range to 50 blocks, I liked that, but then they decided to get it back to 25 blocks which I hate, but some players probably prefer it that way, because that's likely why devs changed it back.
outcome: X% of players will be happy, Y% of players will hate it.

b.) leave it to modders to fix it in some mods.
then whoever want a fix to that, can get that mod, and whoever liked it the way it is, can freely ignore that mod.
outcome: everyone can have it the way they prefer. (at least in theory)

or so I would think, but I might be dumb, so who knows.

I was playing the steam version of Terraria, so it is possible to install mods. In fact, it seems that there is already a mod that removes NPC preferences and always fixes happiness to maximum.
But you forgot to mention that the person who started this topic in the first place marked it as being for Switch.
They do not have access to the mod. Also, even if you are on the steam version, in order to use mods, Player need to have everyone on the same mod in multiplayer to be able to play. It's full of problems.

 

[breezecat]

This is slightly related to this thread
I would prefer a system where you could switch between 1.3 and 1.4 NPC behavior (in world creation), so that you could choose to not have NPC happiness but also have them sell the same stuff they did in 1.3 with the same price as they only sell more things if they are happy but since it is removed, you get 1.3 NPCs -- then if you choose to have NPC happiness the game well, has the 1.4 NPC behavior.

-- I would choose 1.4 behavior.

 

[Sora_92]

I was playing the steam version of Terraria, so it is possible to install mods. In fact, it seems that there is already a mod that removes NPC preferences and always fixes happiness to maximum.
But you forgot to mention that the person who started this topic in the first place marked it as being for Switch.
They do not have access to the mod. Also, even if you are on the steam version, in order to use mods, Player need to have everyone on the same mod in multiplayer to be able to play. It's full of problems.

Sorry, my bad, the thread itself is indeed marked as "switch", it's true that modded is not an option there sadly.

But I also think that fixing it officially could be difficult (what I said in the previous post) because it can be difficult to find a solution everyone considers perfect. in that regards, modded offer a fix you can choose to use, or ignore, depending on your opinion.

Also true though it makes multiplayer difficult, since all the players need to agree on the mods they have enabled.