Terraria anti cheese

Brunobeaw

Brunobeaw

Terrarian
One of these days i was in an argument with one of my friends, i talked to him about an exploit that could immediatly kill EoL, that was later patched, and i was complaining about this keeps happening, the community finds an exploit and its always patched out, so we had a discussion about if that is a good thing or not, and then i had an idea to make a thread about it.

Personally, i don't like those exploits being removed, while some can be game breaking,and trivialized a lot of the challenges, i believe it should be up to the player to decide how they want to play the game, most of them of course are not really obvious, and finding them out gives some sense of satisfaction. For me terraria is like this,i have these tools now how can i use them? For example, without looking, i find out we could get the hardmode ores without breaking the demon altars, so i thought, cool, those ores are hard to find and i can comfortably get them by just fishing, its way easier and helps not spreading more corruption/hallow.

As time went on, a lot of things couldnt be done anymore, such as reaver shark not being able to mine hell ore, but alright, fair, i guess it was too good, but other changes like not being able to get water bolt at dungeon entrance happened, this one boggles my mind because it wasn't always that i was able to get them anyways, but it always gave a sense of satisfaction in finding them, like being able to find a pyramid in the desert, you were rewarded for being lucky, more recently, you couldnt get an early void bag anymore because of shimmer, it was a huge workaround to make this happen but now you are not allowed to do it at all, and i wonder why, it only gave a slight advantage, i feel its because of terraria's philosophy of anti cheese, no more cutting corners, no making things easier, you have to do its intended way, there are probably more examples that i don't know of.

Terraria being a sandbox game, i feel its important to allow the players to make use of these exploits as they see fit, allow them to have liberty, as an example, in mario 64,you could get a completely different star from the one you chose at the start of the level, and use all the moves in your disposal to get them. Castlevania symphony of the night, which i consider a fantastic game, is filled to the brim with glitches and exploits, and i find fun in breaking the game, but if i want a challenge, i do restrict myself in what kind of weapons i use or maybe no leveling up or upgrades,i believe those game are great because of the freedom you have and find out ways to clear objectives.

That being said, What do you guys think? I don't mind if i'm wrong i just wanna hear yalls opinion on this and share mine :)
 
This thread has made me realise I don't want to return to this game anymore, at all.
 
Well I haven't particularly liked even 1.4 itself so some of the things mentioned here just go further with that.
 
As someone that deals in casual game design, this is a lot more common than you think it is. Heck, it happens in real life rulebooks as well. If something isn't kosher, then the rules get changed.

It turns out that when you create an encounter that's meant to be challenging where there are a lot of possible ways to approach it, you tend to not like it when one of the few things you forgot about trivializes it. It's based on how much effort goes into the solution and what the solution is trying to trivialize - I personally welcomed the change of dodge mechanics not working on true instant kills because an instant kill is meant to be an instant kill.

The community, as a whole, seems to be too focused on "cheese" or whatever, constantly asking what is or isn't allowed in their single player experience. At the end of the day this is a sandbox action RPG with a lot of options available to the player at basically any point in gameplay - we can basically have infinite HP with enough Heart Statues on a timer mechanism, after all.

I say time and time again that I think people care too much about balance. Usually when somebody looks at something on one class, it's not "they shouldn't be able to do that!" but it's more "why can't I do that?" instead. Nobody would care about how bombastically above curve Zenith is if it did typeless damage that was boosted by everything, or if there was a Zenith-like for every damage type.

Also, I find the nerf races between the players and the developers charming, really. Moon Lord was especially funny, it was like they somehow entirely forgot Vampire Knives existed.
 
If something is a secret, then it's understandable the knowledge of the game may reward you.
If said secret becomes meta, then it can be more of a problem if people are suggesting that over playing the game normally.

For a released game, there's little problem, it's no longer possible to patch it anyways, but nowadays standards to give a game updates regurlary, then you need to think twice if you want to break the game like that, or if you leave it in for the community.

One of the clear examples is the community's rejection of the updated version of SM64 that patches out the backwards stair longjump glitch, It's an incredible speedrunning tool, but it is greatly game-breaking. If you were a dev and had to choose between your vision of the game, or the communities', which would you do?

At the very least we get hoiks, which is accepted by the devs.
 
ppowersteef said:
If something is a secret, then it's understandable the knowledge of the game may reward you.
If said secret becomes meta, then it can be more of a problem if people are suggesting that over playing the game normally.

For a released game, there's little problem, it's no longer possible to patch it anyways, but nowadays standards to give a game updates regurlary, then you need to think twice if you want to break the game like that, or if you leave it in for the community.

One of the clear examples is the community's rejection of the updated version of SM64 that patches out the backwards stair longjump glitch, It's an incredible speedrunning tool, but it is greatly game-breaking. If you were a dev and had to choose between your vision of the game, or the communities', which would you do?

At the very least we get hoiks, which is accepted by the devs.
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Mario 64 is a great example, even with exploits the game never stopped being enjoyed to its fullest by casual players, but by removing the bugs and exploits, you are just removing the gameplay style of the more hardcore players.

One change i really enjoyed was the change to martian invasion, before it was nearly impossible to dodge the UFO so you had to cheese to survive them, it was inherently flawed, but with tweaks the invasion was perfectly fine to endure like all the other invasions,no need to cheat on them.

I don't mind the changes we had so far, although i would personally love to revert some of them, thank the good lord they reverted the acessories in the social slot change, i can still play the game as it is. I just hope they don't go overboard and drain too much fun out of the game by removing shortcuts, some players like not breaking any rules and others like to play at max efficiency with shark/jellyfish farm or afk farm rod of discord, and both kinds of players can enjoy themselves and play their way without interfering with each other, its not like i'm forced to play meta like a moba game since this is not a competitive game.
 
I think anything that allows you to unfairly and easily cheese bosses/other game challenges should be fixed as soon as possible. Unfortunately, most people have no self control, and if a method to cheat is even remotely possible, theyre not going to be able to help but abuse it. Think Minecraft's F3 debug menu for example. It is supposed to be used for Moders/datapack creators, but everyone just casually uses it daily to find hidden technical information like exact world coordinates, exact light level, biome etc.
 
it feels less of a problem with the game and more of a problem with people assigning metas to a sandbox game it feels great to cheese a boss all by yourself but everythings on the internet now a most likey if you go on a random terraria lets play or something they are most likely to participate in cheeseing because its easier
 
I don't really believe there is a correct or incorrect take on cheesing a video game or using exploits, but there are some caveats to consider when having these kinds of discussions, which I believe experience and skin-in-the-game adds some valuable insight; which isn't readily available to every kind of player, unfortunately.

Let's look at some obvious drawbacks, and some poorer examples of game exploitation, for the sake of context.
  1. In Dark Souls 3, players found a way to invade other players while fighting the End Boss of certain areas [Mound Makers], this was of course not an intended feature and many complaints flooded in to have this "feature" removed ASAP. Players who did a LOT of invasions certainly enjoyed the feature, and took advantage of it while it was available, but ultimately agreed that it should be patched.
  2. In TESV: Skyrim, there was an exploit using Fortify [insert attribute] Potions and Enchanting to allow the Player to essentially "break the game", invalidating entire sets of Weapons and Armor. There were many Mods created almost immediately to have this feature removed, and later in the Unofficial Patch, the feature was also removed. The community that creates content for the game, almost unanimously agreed that the feature should be removed, but in this case there was some push-back by "casual fans". Not everyone agreed, but ultimately even new installments of TESV: Skyrim removed this exploit.
  3. In Final Fantasy VII, there was a notorious Disk Exploit, that allowed players to completely remove the AI from some of the more obnoxious enemies/ Bosses in the game. This was a generally frowned-upon strategy from the Final Fantasy community, but it wasn't enforceable. Later copies of this disk somewhat removed this feature, which included the risk of a player corrupting their save if they tried using this exploit on newer copies of the game.
Now, let's look at a few video game exploits that are now considered "features" in some games.
  • In the original Street Fighter II, there was an unintended exploit known as a "cross-up", in which a player was unable to defend against certain incoming, aerial attacks, due to unforeseen issues with hitboxes/ hurtboxes. The FGC mostly agreed that the exploit was valuable and made the gameplay deeper, which is now considered an "Advanced Technique" in more complex Fighting Games.
  • In Super Smash Bros. Melee, a movement exploit was discovered about one to two years after its release known as "wave dashing". Similar to "cross-ups", the Smash Community mostly adopted this exploit as a feature and regularly uses it as a strategy for most high-level, tournament-level matches. Unlike "cross-ups" however, the Smash Community didn't unanimously agree on the value of this exploit, which did not return in it's follow-up sequel, Super Smash Bros. Brawl.
  • ...and of course HOIKing needs no explanation [Terraria], considering the context placement of this entire discussion.
Experience shows, that this is a rather difficult discussion to have, and trying measure-on or decide definitively about what a good or bad exploit is can be very nebulous. Though I personally believe that many of the exploits that were removed from Terraria were a good idea, I certainly don't expect every fan of the game to agree on that choice, especially considering the fact that major changes to almost any video game will oftentimes yield mixed opinions from its community. :rolleyes: 🤷‍♂️

All I can do really, is list a number of issues that these changes oftentimes resolved, and how some adjustments were just better for the overall health of the game, but I've been doing this long enough to know, even that won't make much difference. Here's my list regardless.
  1. Character Progression in 1.4+ is a LOT less linear, and many of the older 1.3.5 strategies would've overshadowed some of the more interesting additions to the game.
  2. With the addition of Special Seeds, meant to challenge player expectations and spice up gameplay, many classic strategies would invalidate certain additions [Not The Bees! for example]. I would fully expect players to complain about "what's the point of x, y, z" if certain exploits had still been available in the current build of the game.
  3. New content was obviously added to the game, Bosses, Items, Biomes, which again, could be steamrolled or completely ignored if certain 1.3.5 exploits were still available.
  4. At a certain point, if enough powerful exploits exist, there is essential a "right way to play" a video game.
  5. Lastly, YouTube Strategies created for tougher Bosses like Duke Fishron and Dreadnautilus, are perfect examples of a quote by a group of game developers, which states: "Given the opportunity, players will optimize the fun out of a game" Soren Johnson and Sid Meier [Civilization Series].
Sometimes the Developers have to protect the players from themselves... it's just one of those unfortunate truths that you inevitably come to accept with age and experience, which are boxes that not every type of gamer can check. :rolleyes:🤷‍♂️
 
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My POV on the exploits and bugs situation is that there is a difference between dev intended and dev allowed. That sounds like nonsense, but hear me out, if you had a game mechanic that you really like, but it was removed because it broke the game and exclusively did so, like the early water bolt, what Does that do to the entirety of the game you just made useless so you could feel lucky. It removes its amazing touch. If you skip the eye of Cthulhu because you can already mine demonite, you don’t lose a lot of the game. But if you start out a world, go to the dungeon, and find a water bolt. How much of the game have you skipped? Literally, ALL OF HARDMODE. If I put several MONTHS worth of hours into a game, i wouldn’t want it all to become easier to skip than post plantera pre golem progression. There are other exploits that don’t skip a ton of progression that you could like, ones that cut down on grinding. But no, you’d rather hate the early game and the patch than see through the developer’s eyes. I feel like many of the popular glitches are only popular because of the lack of respect for the game and those who made it. Look at all they’ve done for you, and all that is they have given you, why is it so bad when they take away the flamethrower you made with their oven? And Insta killing? That is giving the bird to all those countless hours taken to create a challenge and give it out. I don’t care if that method requires the boss to be defeated first. It is spitting in the face of game design.

And this brings me to dodging daytime empress… do you realize why that was removed? There was a challenge there. You chose to try it, but you died over and over. So you turned your head toward the worst thing you could. RNG. You choose to fight the daytime empress with hallowed armor, master ninja gear, and the brain of confusion. You choose to get the terraprisma by lying that there was a challenge. What is a nohit challenge without the no hit part? Don’t you dare cry if you lose your favorite cheese method. Be glad it’s gone. Now, for the final segment.

The things that get added into games by developers as “features” don’t usually break progression. They don’t usually remove the challenge from a challenge. They add to a game. Removing one way to go through the game isn’t evil. At least. If you add more… if you say you can’t play modern terraria because of it’s lack of broken glitches. You aren’t saying that you like the glitches aesthetically.

I’m super sorry if I offended anyone saying that… wait… get offended. But not angry. Realize why you are angry…

I sure as heck don’t want anyone mad…
 
Exploits and bugs are primarily used if you don't know a way to complete your task with the right setup, so you substitue it with an exploit which is quicker, easier and usually easier to know. For example, you could nurse spam cheese moon lord or you could build a comprehensive arena to assist you to avoid his attacks.

You could use shimmer for an infinite money glitch or you could build an arapaima farm for just the same amount of money (Infinite money exploits are rather time consuming and usually give overkill amounts of money anyways.
 
Well here’s the thing, money and duplication exploits aren’t as bad as progression breaking ones. Instead of breaking progression, you remove the grinding. There is then a third type of bug. A “feature.” A “feature” is a bug that exclusively adds depth to a game.
 
I do have plans for that

Destroyer: if the player is more than 35 blocks above the ground (the max height the Destroyer can jump to reach player) for more than 5 seconds, then they'll enrage, behaving similarly to a Wyvern (moving freely in the air and trying to ram the player using their head)
Takes less damage from more piercing weapons

Golem: increasing Body damage to 70 to 120 (damage scaling respectively to 240 on Expert and 360 Damage on Master)
Body inflicts Withered weapons, withered defense (the Two debuffs exclusive to OOA event) and Bleeding for 1 full minute
 
… body? I don’t think the body is the problem… but that would explain the easy win without potions or preparation… in master mode… maybe increase golem’s health…
 
noahblast20 said:
… body? I don’t think the body is the problem… but that would explain the easy win without potions or preparation… in master mode… maybe increase golem’s health…
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Perhaps increase total health to 50000 (scaling respectively to 75000 on expert and 112500 on master) (excluding fists) having them shoot lasers at 75% health instead of 50% health for 1st phase

If the golem's body is on player for more than 30 frames, then he will stop jumping around, essentially crushing the player to death
 
AidanMariocraze said:
Perhaps increase total health to 50000 (scaling respectively to 75000 on expert and 112500 on master) (excluding fists) having them shoot lasers at 75% health instead of 50% health for 1st phase

If the golem's body is on player for more than 30 frames, then he will stop jumping around, essentially crushing the player to death
Click to expand...
Ooh!
 
Golem's Body will deal 120 damage on classic (240 and 360 on Expert and Master respectively) and inflict Withered Defense, Withered Weapons, and Bleeding for 1 full minute
If the player is currently standing in front of Golem's body for 30 frames or more, then Golem's body will stop jumping allowing the body to deal most of the damage to the player (essentially crushing them to death)
Golem's Body will also jump around more often and higher and the body will also stop moving if the player is standing in front of it for 10 frames or more in the 2nd Phase

Golem's Fists will scale to 20000 and 25000 HP on Expert and Master respectively, deal 70 damage (scaling to 105 on Expert and 158 on Master), and will have a 25% chance to inflict Withered Defense for 5 seconds

Golem's Head will start firing Lasers when he reaches 75% health and they will inflict Withered Weapon for 5 seconds

Total Head and Body health will be 50000 on Classic, 75000 on Expert, and 112500 on Master (25000 each on Classic, 37500 each on Expert, and 56250 each on Master respectively)
 
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