I realize this thread hasn't been posted in for a while, but I want to make my stance known. This system is most of the reason why I haven't played Terraria at all since a short time after 1.4 came out.
Many games have tried to punish certain playstyles with negative reinforcement before, and it seems like it goes badly every single time. Re-Logic already made a mistake with negative torch luck, but I didn't like this system from day one(though it has taken me a while to work out exactly why).
In XCOM 2, many players complained about the turn timers being far too strict, forcing people to make risky moves and do things that the entire game's design went against. These timers were implemented by the developers because they wanted to discourage people never taking risks, never flanking, and playing the game too safe. But they realized that this was the wrong way to do it, as the game would punish you for going too fast, AND for going too slow. Ever since War of the Chosen, they've changed this back to the way it was.
This is relevant because a lot of players were upset with the negative reinforcement that was going on there- people who enjoy playing the game in a certain way HATE being told by the game, arbitrarily, to stop it because you're not supposed to play it like that, and for no other reason. This is exactly what the happiness system is doing.
Some of the developers have expressed that 'the price markup never became a problem in testing', but in-house playtesting can only do so much. When a very vocal portion of your community is complaining about a new mechanic punishing them for daring to play the game the way they've been doing for the past nine years, you might have done something wrong.
To be honest, if you got rid of the price markup entirely and kept everything the same, I'd probably be able to accept it. Yes, I did build several towns in my 1.4 playthrough, and it was reasonably fun and interesting, but it's not the way I'd want to usually play the game.
What I typically do is build a large, expansive, fancy town near spawn and keep everyone there. But with this new system, that kind of building is being punished- this would make me want to just not bother and put the NPCs in tiny, spread-out cubicles instead. The system was supposed to force players to stop doing that, but it fails at even this- in fact, since making fancy spawn towns is now the 'wrong' way to play, it ends up encouraging some people to just give up and build isolated wooden boxes instead, since there is no actual punishment for cubicle houses.
Not that I think there SHOULD be one in the first place- why should it matter so much how people build? This is a singleplayer game for a lot of people. What does it matter if someone is playing the game in a way
you wouldn't want to? It's their game, not yours. Do people honestly believe it's better to sacrifice other people's enjoyment just to force them to play 'correctly'?
Moreover, the NPCs are not actual people. Actual people would probably be fine with living in a large, expansive, nice town with their own house, in safety and company.
In my mind, the severity of the punishment is neither here nor there- if it was so important, why remove negative torch luck? It was inconsequential for the most part, right?
I'd remove this for the same reason that was- because it's punishing people for playing how they want to, for no reason other than that the developers don't like it.
Of course, part of the reason negative torch luck was removed was because it was also 100% invisible, and the game never explained it to you. While NPC happiness is slightly more visible, it's also far more impactful, and STILL mostly invisible. Just knowing NPCs can be unhappy will not help you, since realistically, building a nice big town with plenty of space would make someone happier than living in a wooden box- but they'd rather live far away from everyone else in a wooden box than live in a big, fancy town together with everyone. Intuition has no place here.
That said, I know exactly how NPC happiness works and I STILL hate its guts, because of the fact that it's punishing a previously-valid playstyle. My biggest question with this is why? Why punish players for not playing the way you want them to, regardless of if they're doing what they find most fun? Why would you KNOWINGLY punish players for playing your game in the way they enjoy the most, just because that's not what YOU enjoy about it?
It's okay to add an incentive for building spread-out. But pylons by themselves already accomplish this purpose- why would you then try to force people to do it this way by further disadvantaging them with a punishment for making spawn towns? The price markup is just unnecessary, and all it does is frustrate people who want to play they way they like.
This is true no matter
how much or how little they're punished; the point is that they're being inconvenienced intentionally by the game for no reason other than that the designers think they're 'doing it wrong'. What does that matter, if they're having more fun than they would be if they did it 'right'? Is that not the primary purpose- having fun? Why try to force people to sacrifice that just so that they can play the game 'correctly' when it doesn't affect you?
I don't like the Calamity mod. Does that mean I think people should stop playing it forever, and that it should be removed from the mod browser? Of course not! I want people to have fun, too- and if their fun includes that mod, then more power to them. My criticisms of its balance and design have no place in the discussion of whether or not people should be allowed to have fun in the way they prefer, considering this is a singleplayer/server-based game. Nobody's fun is invalid in a singleplayer game, or in a server where you know what you're signing up for.
It's like complaining about people using Mechjeb in Kerbal Space Program. It doesn't affect you, please don't complain about how people are having fun 'wrong'.
- Edit -
I'd also like to clarify that I don't think this is the same sort of change as what was done to the Reaver Shark, or Meteorite ore. Those changes were made to address issues with the progression, where certain options were far more powerful than they were supposed to be, and which directly went against the design of the game.
Terraria is supposed to offer the player creative freedom in how they want to build their housing for NPCs. What most people ended up doing was something practical, but some people did extra work to make it aesthetically pleasing. These large spawn towns, or huge, fancy castles, managed to retain most of their practicality while still being fancier than a wooden gulag. They were built this way, though, because it made the most sense to keep all your NPCs close by, as travel time from one NPC to another was very short and this required little setup.
That hasn't changed- keeping NPCs close to each other is still more practical than pylons, since you have to build multiple houses across the world to get and use them, not to mention they cost money. The difference here is that the happiness system now punishes you for doing the thing that makes the most practical sense. By itself, that WILL upset a lot of people, guaranteed. To avoid a huge price markup, you have to take the weird option that makes less sense, and sacrifice a bunch of your money anyway to buy pylons.
If you remove the markup, though, there might actually be a reason to keep building spawn towns or wooden gulags. As it is, this previously-valid option is so heavily punished(both by lack of access to pylons and a steep price increase) that you're severely gimping yourself by building for practical purposes.
You could argue that the game's design has changed, but then I would argue it's changed in a way that doesn't make sense, as it seems this design is intentionally alienating people who just want to build how they want. What purpose does that serve?
Being able to build spawn towns without punishment never broke the game. Players never experienced an enormous progression-destroying advantage for just... having their NPCs close to them. Why is this a problem that needs fixing?
The reason why I haven't played the game for a while is because I'm waiting for TModloader to update. When it does, someone is going to come out with a mod that removes NPC happiness altogether along with updates for all the other mods I like- and when that mod appears, I'm going to install it immediately and never look back, if the system remains in its current state.
I can't be certain how many other people will do the same, but I have a feeling a significant portion of the game's players will be doing that. If that many people want an entire mechanic removed outright, there's usually at least
something wrong with it.
I can't say I recall an instance of this happening in Terraria before, but I can definitely tell you it's happened to other games as well.
Turn timers in XCOM 2. Random crits and damage spread in TF2. To a lesser extent, many RNG elements in Pokemon.
Shoehorned motion controls (particularly in Mario Odyssey).
In all of these instances, developers with the best of intentions, who had likely tested these things many times, found many people outside their testing staff had issues with these mechanics.
TVTropes has an entire article about this.
A mechanic doesn't need to be 100% broken and irredeemable to be worthy of reexamination and changes. And, the majority does not need to hate it for it to be a problem.
If 20% of your playerbase has a huge problem with a new mechanic you introduced, your response should not be 'well, they can go fiddle themselves'- you should be wondering why they had that reaction, and seeing if a compromise can be reached.