Game Mechanics The Problem With NPC Happiness

[Flubman]

It's a price increase and a sell price decrease unless you build in exactly one configuration, no wonder it's unpopular.

It was losing for the longest time, though.

 

[Fortis]

It was losing for the longest time, though.

Only by a narrow margin, mind you.

 

[Derunih]

Only by a narrow margin, mind you.

If even 25% of players think a new mechanic is actively bad (or even a part of one), you still don't want to annoy that large a chunk of the player base. Now that the poll is over 50%, I think it's clear the mechanic should be revisited.

 

[smeagolheart]

I'm not even playing the new update. I'm forced to pour over NPC relationships and plot artificial biome locations while considering NPC separation distances and various building heights all before building a base. NPCs are a video game construction, the game designers just made them up but you gotta consider their personalities, you know.

To do this I probably need graph paper, a slide ruler and done minitures or an abacus or something.

This ain't fun.

 

[lukebytes]

I don't think mine would be overpowered since the current system allows far easier access to pylons as opposed to what I'm suggesting. It takes more effort to explore biomes, finding spare magic mirrors (since you'd probably want to keep the first), and beating bosses/tougher enemies than to set up tiny box homes and assign NPCs to them. If anything, the current method "clashes" more with game balance, just due to how easy they are to acquire, but as they exist, the game hasn't seemed to implode on itself. I was kind of surprised HOW easy pylons are to acquire, they just require a set way to home NPCs. I'd rather have a challenge to unlock them, not have a restriction on building that allows super easy acquisition.

And yes, I get part of the game is exploring, which I think is another point in favor of my idea, since again the current system allows easy box home set-up and you get a teleport there.

You don't even have to explore the biome beyond crossing its surface now, you don't even need to defeat a single enemy, nor collect a single resource from the biome, but you can still get your warp to it anyway.

Your confused about what im saying; i'm not saying the system is fine the way it is, like pixelpatcher said. I'm just saying your system isn't much better as it still intrudes on other aspects of the game (although a little less).

With my idea, you have to explore the biome, gather its resources, defeat its enemies.. and possibly even a boss or certain enemy first, to get its pylon. On average, my method would make Pylons a mid to late pre-hardmode and early hardmode system, but currently the system is a very early pre-hardmode system. Very minimal exploration needed now- Pick a dye plant, get 50 silver, find one life crystal, and find one bomb, can be done within 10 minutes and allows warps to biomes you've never set foot in.

Fishing, too. Oasis can give some pretty good stuff with just it's fish. If this game didn't have harder difficulties, i'd see few problems. but...

For those who choose a harder difficulty.. I mean, they did pick a harder difficulty. Higher difficulties should be balanced around the base game, not the other way around.

And my suggestion, to allow use but limit it, (along with your other suggestions) would balance the higher difficulties around it. Again, i think your confused. I'm saying that they should be limited depending on the difficulty. If it's normal, don't allow it. If it's harder modes, allow but require a number of npcs until the steps are done, as some sort of life energy mechanic. This wouldn't be the first time harder difficulties had benefits for braver players that made the difficulty more bearable. Higher item drop chance, stronger npcs, extra accessory slots, Defense buffs... Many of these are things that help you along your harder journey. Half of these apply to master mode, too. While none of these allow use of a once locked item, i don't think it's that out of the ordinary to do such a thing.

 

[Snickerbobble]

Your confused about what im saying; i'm not saying the system is fine the way it is, like pixelpatcher said. I'm just saying your system isn't much better as it still intrudes on other aspects of the game (although a little less).

Well, how am I confused, and how would it intrude on other aspects of the game?

And my suggestion, to allow use but limit it, (along with your other suggestions) would balance the higher difficulties around it. Again, i think your confused. I'm saying that they should be limited depending on the difficulty. If it's normal, don't allow it. If it's harder modes, allow but require a number of npcs until the steps are done, as some sort of life energy mechanic. This wouldn't be the first time harder difficulties had benefits for braver players that made the difficulty more bearable. Higher item drop chance, stronger npcs, extra accessory slots, Defense buffs... Many of these are things that help you along your harder journey. Half of these apply to master mode, too. While none of these allow use of a once locked item, i don't think it's that out of the ordinary to do such a thing.

Again, how am I confused?

You said they'd have a cooldown that would reduce as you progress through the game. It just seems far more simple to not bother with various pylon cooldowns that may leave the player wondering why it's not working. Having pylons unlock throughout the game seems to be a better line of progression to me. Like the snow and desert biome pylons could unlock after beating a frost golem and sand elemental, since the biomes don't have their own bosses. So you'd be gaining access to new pylons from the start up to early hardmode. An underworld one could be unlocked after beating WoF.

I'd appreciate it if you could stop telling me I have no sense of game design and continuously telling me how confused I am, thanks.

 

[|.Terrarian.|]

-carefully dips toe into a piranha filled lake-

I like the Pylon system because it makes me sorta adapt to different biomes and build in spread out places, plus it comes with early game teleportation! It's sort of like planting your flag down and colonizing a new area which I think is pretty sweet. I don't get the utter disdain for the system that adds 20 more footsteps to your journey to the goblin tinkerer.
NPC happiness hasn't really been an issue to me because it's extremely simple to do, straightforward, and it rewards you greatly!
Be honest with yourself...how often do you actually buy things from NPCs? Do you use all of them 24/7? No. Personally I just buy the occasional single item from an NPC, and go on my way. Money is so common that the extra amount isn't even a detriment to my playthrough. Just kill King Slime a couple times and sell his junk, it's really not that hard.

 

[smeagolheart]

Keeping NPC's happy is no big deal? Sure it is.

It requires a LOT of real estate.

Check out the thread with the Ddeath Star of NPC Happiness for a visualization of the distance required for NPCS... Price jacks up on the 6th within a HUGE circle.

Happiness Range Visual Guide

N.B. : These distances were good for version 1.4 and will need to be reverified for version 1.4.1. Since I was curious about the exact tile count between NPC houses and happiness, I've been testing perimeters in game. By forcing specific tiles to be house anchors for neighbours, you can test...

forums.terraria.org

 

[Magyarharcos]

Agreed. Happiness sounds like an interesting idea in concept, and while it IS interesting, its also annoying.

Just ditch happiness altogether.
I dont care much for pylons, adding personalities to NPC's is welcome, but having to travel the entire world just to talk to some NPC's is ridiculous. Even with the pylons its a few seconds of time wasted every time i have to talk to any of them. Even with the pylons its just an extra step that exists for no apparent reason.

I like that they have more personality now,the pylons are not a bad addition either, even though im not planning to use them. But making it so only 2 NPC's can be within 25 blocks of each other, and 4 within 125 is dumb.

I too, like to jump from one end of the world, to the other, merely to ask the guide how to make something then going to the goblin to reforge it, then taking up the daily fishing quest, and maybe needing a few more basic arrows to craft later aswell.... Its a hassle, and one thats not necessary.....

Same applies to the nurse hiking prices after every bosskill. I too, like having to farm money just so i can start with max HP after i die. IN combat healing? Sure, that was pretty cheesy, but out of combat? that.

Edit: Also, I'd like to add that having to fiddle around with these NPC preferences is like playing matchmaker to a class of horny teens. Meaning, its not fun, and VERY fiddly.

 

[Top Gun]

I'm right at the very end of pre-Hardmode, and killing time before I go through the arduous task of setting up a proper Wall of Flesh bridge, so I decided to bite the bullet and fool around with housing and pylons. The first thing I confirmed is that, yes, I do hate building in this game in most situations. Just trying to set up a simple jungle hut saw me dealing with a nighttime thunderstorm, hordes of jungle bats that kept inflicting me with Feral Bite, and clusters of Slimes trying to jump in my face. Not fun in the least. I know the whole "Terraria vs. Minecraft" thing has been beaten beyond death, but the one thing the latter does so, SO much better is giving players the ability to easily control or disable mob spawns in a particular area, which means you can actually build structures without constantly being barraged with new spawns. I think the addition of the mob-disabling option in Journey Mode was at least something of an acknowledgement of how annoying this is.

So now I have three locations with established pylons, but because the majority of my NPCs are still near spawn until I can put them where I need to be, I can't get a Forest Pylon, so I don't even have a direct way to access the network. I have to use the Magic Conch to get to my Ocean house, then go from there to the other two. In practice this means that I need an item and a few more clicks just to check the daily fishing quest, and everything just feels much more awkward than it needs to be. And there are a few other places where I might want a pylon, but I can almost guarantee that the biome spawn when triggering Hardmode will go right through them, so I need to wait and see what happens there before going forward.

Oh, and as best as I can tell, there's no way to fully optimize who lives with whom, because there are some mutually-exclusive biome and neighbor preferences. Currently I have the Angler/Stylist at the Ocean, the Mechanic/Goblin in the Snow, and the Dryad/Witch Doctor/Painter in the Jungle, since they all seem to like each other and their surroundings enough. But looking ahead there are situations where I'd ideally have four NPCs in the same biome...but like the Forest that'll necessitate building two entirely-separate houses, because the "crowding" trigger is so absurdly huge. Wheeeee.

 

[Tarluk]

And those discounts are the incentives for shuffling NPCs around. Get rid of the incentives, and there's no reason not to select NPCs for Pylon outputs based on how frequently you use them, not how an arbitrary mechanic.

Yeah, I like being able to buy more stuff, but I'd give that up if it meant not having a desire to find the optimal arrangement for NPCs.

If you're really going as far as to shuffle around NPCs just for the smallest of discounts, you're overthinking this system. By the time you bother around with all that crap to save like 5 gold on an Autohammer or whatever, you could've just gotten that 5 gold through such a large variety of other ways without dealing with the shuffle hassle. Money is a hundred times easier to get now in 1.4 than it was in 1.1 or even 1.2.

Personally, I quite like the Happiness system for the reasons that Flubman stated: it's fun trying to think up what NPCs would fit best in each biome town. I've made a fabulous Cavern town with pairs of the Mechanic and Goblin Tinkerer and the Tavernkeep and Demolitionist, a Desert town with the Stylist and Dye Trader, and a Mushroom town with the Truffle and of all people, the Guide. I wouldn't have ever thought to try and fit the Guide in with a Mushroom biome had it not been for the Happiness system, but it's been quite fun doing so.

I don't think that brainstorming exercise for building should go away just because you can't resist trying to game the system.

 

[Derunih]

Having played more of the update, I am more okay with the majority of the happiness system than I was before. The biome choices and neighbor preferences are neat, and not that invasive in most cases.

I do, however, have a problem with crowding. New worlds get a flood of 6-8 npcs before you really reach a second biome, and there are a LOT of npcs now. You should not be forced to build 10 towns to avoid penalties. To min-max, sure. But to get a price hike even after building 5 towns? (25 npcs, 5 towns, you still have 5 per town) That's excessive.

I hope they increase the minimum from 3 to 4-5, or make the search radius smaller. Most families in reality have more people in one house than terraria allows, so the tiny limit just feels absurd. Heck, I would accept a higher penalty per NPC, if there was a higher minimum, as it would make the system less of a pain to work within.

 

[Nicol Bolas]

Personally, I quite like the Happiness system for the reasons that Flubman stated: it's fun trying to think up what NPCs would fit best in each biome town. I've made a fabulous Cavern town with pairs of the Mechanic and Goblin Tinkerer and the Tavernkeep and Demolitionist, a Desert town with the Stylist and Dye Trader, and a Mushroom town with the Truffle and of all people, the Guide. I wouldn't have ever thought to try and fit the Guide in with a Mushroom biome had it not been for the Happiness system, but it's been quite fun doing so.

But you could have done all of that without the Happiness system; it merely would have required you to exercise your personal initiative and creativity. Why do you need a specific mechanic to make you do it?

And if you don't care about the money, why are you bothering? I mean that: could you not come up with your own ideas about who would be happier around whom, and which NPCs would hang out in which areas? Isn't having the freedom to decide for yourself how NPCs behave better than having the game impose its notion that the Truffle is happy around the Guide for a reason that isn't explained or justified?

 

[Nicol Bolas]

New worlds get a flood of 6-8 npcs before you really reach a second biome

While world-gen can always be a problem, it's never been that much of a problem. The Nurse requires that you've explored the underground and cavern to some degree, so you've certainly reached another biome. On the surface, you're highly likely to encounter desert or snow before the evil, and these are not exactly difficult biomes to traverse in most cases.

But to get a price hike even after building 5 towns? (25 npcs, 5 towns, you still have 5 per town) That's excessive.

It would be excessive if that were true.

Ignoring the fact that there are more than 5 pylons so you should have more than 5 towns, you only get a crowding penalty for having more than 1 NPC within 25 squares of another NPC. So you can avoid that by putting some distance between pairs of NPCs. The isolation bonus for having only 1-2 NPCs also allows other NPCs to be outside of the 25 square radius. But you also lose this bonus if there are too many inside of 120 squares.

Basically, an NPC is considered isolated if it has 0 or 1 NPCs within 25 squares, and no more than 3 within 120 squares except for the one within 25 that it already saw (according to more recent Wiki updates). This allows you to have up to 5 NPCs in an area, with each of the still getting their isolation bonus.

So if you build properly according to the happiness rules, there will be no price hike, even with 5 NPCs.

But again, there are more than 5 Pylons, so you should have more than 5 towns.

 

[Derunih]

While world-gen can always be a problem, it's never been that much of a problem. The Nurse requires that you've explored the underground and cavern to some degree, so you've certainly reached another biome. On the surface, you're highly likely to encounter desert or snow before the evil, and these are not exactly difficult biomes to traverse in most cases.



It would be excessive if that were true.

Ignoring the fact that there are more than 5 pylons so you should have more than 5 towns, you only get a crowding penalty for having more than 1 NPC within 25 squares. So you can avoid that by putting some distance between them. The isolation bonus for having only 1-2 NPCs also allows other NPCs to be outside of the 25 square radius. But you also lose this bonus if there are too many inside of 120 squares.

Basically, an NPC is considered isolated if it has 0 or 1 NPCs within 25 squares, and no more than 3 within 120 squares except for the one within 25 that it already saw (according to more recent Wiki updates). This allows you to have up to 5 NPCs in an area, with each of the still getting their isolation bonus.

So if you build properly according to the happiness rules, there will be no price hike, even with 5 NPCs.

But again, there are more than 5 Pylons, so you should have more than 5 towns.

But I said you shouldn't NEED 8 towns. What if I don't like the hallow for example?

Mechanic wise, I can build around it. But I don't WANT to build 3-5 houses per biome. I want to build one communal building, like the one I physically live in. 3-4 bedroom houses is what I'm used to, not isolated huts.

 

[Nicol Bolas]

But I said you shouldn't NEED 8 towns.

You shouldn't "need" 5 towns, but you seemed to not mind that.

I guess my main point is that it makes no sense to like happiness as it currently exists while disliking the main thing happiness was created to do: make you spread your NPCs out. Everything else: Pylons, liked biomes/other NPCs? Those are all secondary things added on top of a mechanic that was specifically designed to punish players for not spreading their NPCs out.

 

[Derunih]

I guess my main point is that it makes no sense to like happiness as it currently exists while disliking the main thing happiness was created to do: make you spread your NPCs out.

That's exactly it though. Happy communities. Watching your npcs host impromptu scissors paper rock championships. Safety in numbers (I have lost my witch doctor to angry trappers INSIDE the house, so... yeah). This is all undermined by spreading them out.

I am willing to split them up a little, the new mechanics were introduced for a reason. A ton of tiny clusters feels... wrong though. I do mind even having 5 bases, but there is a term called compromise. My issue is, if you do ANY LESS than the 8 the game expects of you, you are punished, and it kinda makes the game less fun.

Note: less fun. Not unfun, not boring, not unplayable. Less is relative. Given the option of 8 towns or only a few (Or better yet, 1) I would personally enjoy the game more with less, yet more developed towns.

 

[Nicol Bolas]

the new mechanics were introduced for a reason.

A bad reason: because the designers don't want NPCs bunched up together. Not because it makes the game in any way objectively better, not because it allows player expression in a dimension hitherto unexplored.

But simply because they don't like it. That's it.

I do mind even having 5 bases, but there is a term called compromise.

I don't see the point in compromising with a bad mechanic. It's bad to punish people for not making access to NPCs inconvenient and specifically for not putting them in the places that some set of arbitrary rules says to put them in. It's bad whether it's 8 bases or 5.

All we needed were Biome Pylons, powered by nearby NPCs. The rest is just bad.

 

[smeagolheart]

Personally, I quite like the Happiness system for the reasons that Flubman stated: it's fun trying to think up what NPCs would fit best in each biome town. I've made a fabulous Cavern town with pairs of the Mechanic and Goblin Tinkerer and the Tavernkeep and Demolitionist, a Desert town with the Stylist and Dye Trader, and a Mushroom town with the Truffle and of all people, the Guide. I wouldn't have ever thought to try and fit the Guide in with a Mushroom biome had it not been for the Happiness system, but it's been quite fun doing so.

The problem with the new system is I too put the mushroom dude with the guide. I put the mechanic with the tinkerer. I put the tavenkeep with the demolitionist in the cavern layer. Tax collector in the snow. Etc etc.

Why because this is the optimal setup. It's restricting. It artificially limits creativity.

 

[Piterros990]

Maybe it was mentioned here in this thread, but the primary thing that annoys me the most, is if you find an npc for the first time (like Wizard, Goblin etc.), they sell everything for maximum price, because they have no home or they are far away from home. Thus to get Rocket Boots (and then further upgrades) - which I want asap, since they're just useful - instead of paying 15 gold, I have to pay 22.5 because I've just freed that npc.

Oh, and the whole happiness thing doesn't encourage creative approach and experimenting. Because let's be honest, there will be like 2 people out of a thousand that will actually check every npc relation in-game by swapping their homes. The rest will go directly to wiki because they'll get tired of getting increased prices. The worst thing is that npcs don't even suggest what do they want (other than what you'd know by now, like Arms Dealer - Nurse dialogues). And like it was mentioned in this thread many times already, from my quick look at some opinions, it restricts creativity. Of course, there needed to be a system that restricted cage building. But it shouldn't have restricted building literally anything. Putting 4 npcs into one building already makes them increase prices, which just discourages from making larger, more creative builds.

And some may argue that "you can create various combinations" - in the end it all comes down to doing something like Dryad-Painter-Witch Doctor in the jungle, Mechanic and Goblin in the underground/snow, Nurse with Arms Dealer, Tavernkeep with Party Girl in hallow, Pirate with Angler in ocean... Seriously, it needs either revisiting or getting rid of it completely. Keep the pylons, because they are fine, but the rest really sucks in the current state.