Or maybe because hotels were and still are ugly as piss and completely cheap and unimaginative in a game supposed to be all about expressing your creativity.
What with all the exploring, finding stuff, crafting stuff from other stuff, and killing bosses, I guess I never noticed that I was supposed to be "expressing [my] creativity." I mean, I bought the game because it was a hybrid Metroidvania/sandbox game, so I guess I've been playing it wrong for nearly a decade.
Also, what business is it of anybody else whether the constructs I build are "ugly as piss" or are "completely cheap and unimaginative"? I'm not showing off my worlds to anybody, and I'm not interested in spending time to manicure something I'm only building because the game gates access to a lot of stuff behind NPCs.
Pylons' purpose is to remove the inconvenience that came with more diverse builds, while happiness's purpose is to put one last nail in the coffin for that shipping crate methodology while giving the NPCs a tad bit more personalization.
Happiness was added to force NPC spread. Pylons were added because making you spread out your NPCs means that you can't easily access them, so they added a way to access them more reasonably. Pylons exist
because of happiness; they solve a problem happiness created.
And I'm sure there will still always be those wooden boxes, but if they're built in a way that looks just a bit more natural and aesthetically pleasing rather than being stacked on top of each other like shipping crates, if they're built in a way that can open the door to further creative expansion rather than being the epitome of creative stagnation, I consider that a victory.
How can you talk about opening a door that was
already open? There was no door; nothing
prevented anybody from building homes however they felt was most appropriate before now.
Happiness is only a "victory" for those who already agree that nobody ought to build "shipping crates" or whatever you want to call them. And I don't understand why such people should care
so much that other people are building "shipping crates" for their NPCs.
Do you understand
why we build like that? It's because we don't enjoy putting together NPC housing. It's not a fun or interesting part of the game. It's merely a thing you have to do to get access to goodies, so we spend a minimal amount of time on it and move on.
Do you think that we will have more fun by partaking in an activity that we
do not enjoy?! That's what I don't understand. You seem to delight in building custom homes with declarations and so forth for your NPCs. You get enjoyment from that, and more power to you.
You don't seem to recognize that other people don't. Why do you feel that an arbitrary mechanic is going to
make us enjoy something that we don't enjoy? Do you think we don't know how to find what is fun for us in Terraria?
Why do you think this makes the game more fun
for us? Because it doesn't make the game more fun for you; you were
already doing it or at least something very much like it. The only thing that changed for you was Pylons making your already spread out NPC housing more convenient.
It doesn't make sense to criticize happiness for having the Angler/Pirate by the ocean, the Witch Doctor by the Jungle or the Truffle by the Mushrooms when that's always been the case since 1.2.4.
Yes, it does. There is no
mechanical advantage to putting the Pirate or the Angler in the ocean pre-1.4. That is, there's no reason that is reinforced by game mechanics. It's purely player's choice, and represents only how much the player cares to see these NPCs as characters as opposed to boxes that turn money into stuff and stuff into money.
In fact, putting the Angler in the Ocean is actually kinda bad. The main reason to talk to the Angler is to get new fishing quests and get rewards for them. If he's in the Ocean, that means running from your home base to the edge of the map. And pre-Pylons, that means you have to go on foot/mount, build a minecart system, or build a teleporter. That's a lot of work just to complement an aesthetic.
Now, you may like that. You may prefer to put your Angler there. You may find the aesthetics of it pleasing, and you're willing to suffer the consequences. But please don't suggest that this is what "people" did; it's what
some people did, not what everybody or even most people did.
So yes, it makes sense to criticize happiness
in general over its biome preferences.
For the bonuses, I'd raise the 25 block limit up to 50 or 75 to make sure those bonuses will actually register within normal builds, and for the penalty, I'd at least make it so the 2+ NPCs penalty within 25 blocks is changed so it only applies with 5+ NPCs and/or is reduced down to just 20 blocks.
Do that, and happiness stops doing the job it was made to do: force you to spread out your NPCs. It's really easy to build densely while keeping clusters of 6 NPCs from seeing each other. I can easily imagine building my main base between two sets of "shipping crates" of housing, with everybody else being sent out to man biome pylons.
It'd basically be building as if happiness didn't exist.
I think the biomes/NPCs that are chosen to be Liked or Disliked are somewhat arbitrary and aren't exactly consistent with the characters' dialogue.
Of course they are; it's a game mechanic (and a very arbitrary one), so it must serve those needs first and foremost. This means that, for each biome pylon, there need to be 3 or more NPCs that have an affinity for that biome. Otherwise, you'd have situations where only one or two would want to live in the Snow or the Hallow, while 6-7 each love the Forest and the Underground.
Same goes for NPC neighboring preferences.
Happiness as a mechanic is about mechanics first, logic second. That's how you can tell a forced and arbitrary mechanic from an organic one.
The selection of which biomes and other NPCs that certain NPCs prefer should be made more diverse to combat that feeling of not having many combinations to really work with
The more liked biomes an NPC has, the less relevant having liked biomes is, because the whole point of having a liked biome is to encourage the player to put the NPC there. It's a mechanic designed to
reduce player options, not enhance them.