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[nenjin]

I don't really qualify Nightmare Armor as "basic." I don't think the requirements on stuff below that are really going to change.

And honestly I'm looking forward to a reason to come back to a Terraria world after 8 hours. Seriously, in MP 3 people can basically deconstruct the world, build their fantasy fortress, storm the dungeon and hell all in one sitting. And then there's no reason to seriously play Terraria until the next patch unless you're into mega constructions or unbashed Tomfoolery like on Kael's server. The game needs some serious tweaks for the sake of a single game's longevity. Increasing the amount of time invested in progression seems fitting and needed for me. They want this game to look more like an RPG, and slowing down the progression so we appreciate the stuff we have longer is something I approve of. Because I hate investing in making a gold sword only to realize I'll use it for one fight on the EoC before I bank it.

[FuzzyZergling]

I mean, the Nightmare set will likely not be dropped off the bosses, it will probably require a full set of copper armor too and some gems.

Expect hours and hours and hours of gameplay making basic objects.

You say this like it's a bad thing.

[nenjin]

To be fair, not everyone approaches the game the same way. Even though I totally disagree with Neonivek on it, I try to appreciate that for some people the early game is not fun at all. For me, it's pretty much the opposite. I like the pretty weapons. But boredom sets in as soon as I don't have to pay attention to my swings anymore.

[Neonivek]

Not sure what you disagree with me about.

My issue isn't that they made things tougher to make (though I'll admit the Necroarmor was... really really easy... I got the materials unintentionally. They REALLY should let you stack more then 99 bones so you can use them as weapons)

My issue is that they made it REALLY tough to make for people who don't use map reveal.

Thus transforming the game into a grind... a very very long grind with possibly NO reward.

The game needs other ways of gathering the resources you need to advance the game WITHOUT digging for hours. Heck even with all the materials I have now I wouldn't be able to reconstruct the sets I already have... and I keep everything.

So yes it is a bad thing for people who don't use map reveal to find the clusters of gems, gold, and other rare objects.

The fix for this isn't comming for a very VERY long time... where there will simply be so much content that you are bound to have something after grinding. Still that is possibly years away. Since right now you have to grind for VERY specific objects required to advance the game which actually makes the game linear.

Goodness Imagine if you didn't read the Wiki? (and I didn't until I "beat the game"). Imagine how tough that is?

Also what are you disagreeing with me on nenjin? I think your assuming a possition here.

[kilakan]

Ya I agree wholy Nenjin, I actually use the enchanted boomerang for most of my battles despite owning a muramusa.  Otherwise the game becomes boring when you can just slaughter everything in your path without having to actually try.

Well Neonivek, I just use the randomly generated cave systems and caverns and I tend to find all the ore I need pretty damn fast.  You don't need to dig, just jump down a shaft and watch for gold.

[Soulwynd]

Not sure what Neo is talking about...

If I dig down for one minute, I find a cave full of treasure and ore. Usually a huge cave too, so I can explore it for quite a while.

I wouldn't mind being able to hide NPCs to work as miners or guards tho, that would be quite the fun.

[Neonivek]

Treasure is meaningless unless you find the specific treasure.

Ore requires a substantial amount as well.

Though I've never "dug for one minute and found a cave full of treasure and ore'

[nenjin]

My issue is that they made it REALLY tough to make for people who don't use map reveal.

I use map reveal for one thing: establishing the direction of the three major biomes of note. I don't use the icons ever, unless I've already tapped out a world.

That's it.

Thus transforming the game into a grind... a very very long grind with possibly NO reward.

This is where you and I fundamentally disagree. You call it a grind, I call it exploration, discovery and overcoming obstacles. I don't dig straight to hell, I dig until I find a cavern, explore that cavern and dig until I find another cavern. I get rewarded about every 2 minutes give or take, on different levels.

Goodness Imagine if you didn't read the Wiki? (and I didn't until I "beat the game"). Imagine how tough that is?

I _still_ don't read the wiki, not unless I've tried most conventional methods already in game. The guide basically took away the one reason I use the wiki at all.

Also what are you disagreeing with me on nenjin? I think your assuming a possition here.

We've both been here since the release of the game, I think we've read enough of each other's posts we can make some fair assumptions about how the other feels. You see, and have seen in the past, the game as a whole lot of grinding to get what you want.

While that's not untrue, to me its not seeing the forest for the trees. The fun of the game is the exploration and getting rewarded for it. People that "just gotta dig" tend to get bored because they choose to play in a way that is a boring. Which is why on a new world, when the call for "let's dig to hell" goes out, I just groan. People want a quick reward that in the end is always underwhelming, and they take the past of least resistance and interest to it. That's just not how I approach the game.

And that's as much of telling you how you should play any game that I'm going to do. It'd be nice if Terraria had some allowances for people who really don't enjoy the early game (and lord knows we've all had to restart enough even I'm finding it slightly tedious), but what they're doing to the core of the game right now does reflect the way I think it's best played. There are lots of games where's about the destination is more fun than the journey, but to me Terraria isn't one of them.

[Soulwynd]

Are you placing torches everywhere? Because that helps quite a bit. It's quite common to have a 2-5 block thick wall separating a cave from another, so you only have to dig a tiny bit to explore more.

[Neonivek]

You call it a grind, I call it exploration, discovery and overcoming obstacles. I don't dig straight to hell, I dig until I find a cavern, explore that cavern and dig until I find another cavern. I get rewarded about every 2 minutes give or take, on different levels

I didn't either. When I played I made a tunnel to hell after a while and didn't explore it until Skeletor was litterally impossible to beat without hell equipment (I ran out of time. This was before Jungle)

I use map reveal for one thing: establishing the direction of the three major biomes of note

So you use it to find the Jungle huh?

The fun of the game is the exploration and getting rewarded for it. People that "just gotta dig" tend to get bored because they choose to play in a way that is a boring

I explore I just compile information quickly and run it through cycles through my head that can deconstruct what I see into a pattern. I am not one who finds the word "Random" to be good (as I've been playing games from all the ages of videogames) and thus "Cruddy exploration is cruddy". Especially since "Random isn't random".

It is as simple as that.

When I saw the Terraria teaser/trailer I saw what looked like beautifully constructed (through a powerful randomisation engine) sections with enemies intelligently placed. Heck the Skeletal Wurm looked awsome with people fighting it on a flimsy stone bridge over a lava sea... unfortunately 100% staged.

Which is why on a new world, when the call for "let's dig to hell" goes out, I just groan

Really might as well get it out of the way quickly. I like to highlight my paths with Torches. Creating the above ground jungle is a pain now that mud is gravity affected. I found a shortcut (planks) though.

It'd be nice if Terraria had some allowances for people who really don't enjoy the early game (and lord knows we've all had to restart enough even I'm finding it slightly tedious), but what they're doing to the core of the game right now does reflect the way I think it's best played

It doesn't need much. It needs carefully constructed cave systems, enemies with intelligent locations to place them in, less focus on spawning new enemies so "smart" but "expencive" methods of dispach are viable, more environments, and possibly more construction varieties.

As well it needs more "gameplay" variety.

It is why I don't currently play Terraria so much if I can help it (I clocked a small 32 hours) because I assume it will happen. Unfortunately right now Terraria is just inputing new things to grind and making the old things harder to obtain. So to someone who finds the game to just be weak at the moment, this is making the game worse in the short run.

You call it a grind, I call it exploration

No... You call it grind too. Your just fine with slow advancement. Which because of the way the game is, is a fine way to do it.

I had to go through the game fast though because I thought the game was holding back "The good stuff" it turns out... it wasn't... Though it could have been because I lucked into an early Devourer of worlds victory, had a full set of Nightmare armor early (as well as several lucky Shadowpearls) and found that I actually... done everything. So done in fact that nothing actually stood a chance.

People want a quick reward that in the end is always underwhelming

I hate being held back in games when I want to advance because I don't "Have the right object that you didn't grind". In fact if I remember correctly when I was playing the game slowly and just wanted to fight Skeletor, I couldn't heal fast enough to fight him (thus barring me from an aspect of the game) and had to dig for several hours to find Blue Mushrooms (They were stunningly FAAAR away from my starting point)

Then I fought Skeletor but my weapon which was the BEST possible weapon I could have at the time, I even gave it Meteor shots (which By the by, I think should go back to its old ammo count) and couldn't beat him (I even got so good at dodging him that I could have reasonably done it with the old potions) I even made a stage specifically for fighting him. Heck I've made stages for other people too.

I actually had to use the Tunnel to hell I made earlier (for fun) and even made a path of torches to where it was. My butt was kicked a few times... but I learned how to do it.
-I actually made it quite interesting. I've placed platforms everywhere and in a forked pathway I placed three torches to indicate the hell path. I kinda wonder how I didn't die on some of the paths.

So... Yeah I think actually a "Grind is bad" is back onto the table. What do you do when your done mindlessly exploring and you don't have the resources to continue? Grind.

Are you placing torches everywhere?

No my world has pretty small cave systems (I already found the largest one). My Underground Jungle I had to sculpt manually because it was only a series of small air pockets.

It could be because it was my first constructed world when I first got the game.

Mind you I like Terraria, I just found the most fun parts were when I was spelunking... and the most unfun parts was when I had to dig across the map for something I needed (and making my giant Tree house. Actually that is why I liked the Underground Dungeon, it was basically one HUGE cave... of unfortunate uniformity.

I felt punished for not essentially doing nothing but digging... I mean you like exploring? I couldn't EXPLORE because my starting point was IMMEDIATELY surrounded by insurmountable obsticles unless I dug through them.

[Soulwynd]

That's really strange. Maybe you got a really weird map seed, because every map I've been to had decent cave systems.

It's also kind of weird when you mention one large cave, since if you look at the map reveal, the world is one crazy cave system.

I've used it only on the map I was done with, just to see what I had missed before moving to another map.

[Neonivek]

Well, it did have Corruption immediately on both sides (I can travel to both corruptions in less then a minute) as well.

So I couldn't travel the overworld for a while.

There are only two interesting things about my world generation

Lava Mushrooms

And a Naturally Flooded Hell.

[Wolf Tengu]

those things sound nice.

[Neonivek]

those things sound nice.

Naturally flooded hell was nice, unfortunately if I touch it now the water starts to drain.

[nenjin]

So you use it to find the Jungle huh?

To give me a general idea which direction to walk or dig. I don't even really do that anymore, since the jungle is now found on the surface and going straight down. I might figure out where the jungle is, but it might also be hours until I decide it's time to go visit it.

Especially since "Random isn't random."

I'm going to compact this sentiment into a couple others you made in that post. I get where you're coming from and I do feel the lack of real interest in finding, say, a gold house. Because I know that Gold House was placed with very little context. There is a lack of real meaty methodology in the cave construction, and I don't blame you if the illusion isn't holding. It doesn't for me either, but, I don't let that ruin the process of exploration. To me I enjoy the challenge a deep cave presents when I DON'T have the GH or potions. That requires some decent ideas about how you're going to get down and get back up. When I'm done doing that, I might spend some time to make what I just built a little prettier or safer.

I take the game in chunks rather than having the 4 hour plan for success, because there's no point racing to the finish. The finish is the start is the finish. Again, this is where you and I just don't see eye to eye on why the game is worth playing at all. If you took any one part of Terraria and presented it to me, I'd get bored with it. It's the ability of all the different parts of the game to blend together, at a pace the player sets, that makes for something worth playing in Terraria's case.

Sure, many of these parts aren't up to snuff in terms of the complexity we want as DF players or whatever. And the laundry list of things they could do is long and uncertain. But I think they all work and what's been lacking is a real core idea of what the game is ultimately about from Re-Logic. It's been a goofball sandbox game with RPG features, and that's really all anyone has been able to say about it since release. If they're actually committing to a more solid, long-term vision of the game by really nailing down the system behind it, then even though in the short-term you may not appreciate the changes now, they're laying the ground work for something you may enjoy more later.

Which is basically what that dev post said in the first place. Let's not kid ourselves though, we can go back to the first few pages of this and find you saying you may not ever like Terraria. The game has a hell of a lot further to go for you to like than I think most other people require. What you want is what I want, it's just not a demanding need in my book. But I do look forward to the day when stuff you encounter in the underground and elsewhere feels like it was placed with more purpose than it is now. Part of the changes to bosses and health is primarily to make killing them a goal you feel good about accomplishing, instead of reducing the EoC into a PITA monster you farm for ore.

What do you do when your done mindlessly exploring and you don't have the resources to continue? Grind.

You collect the stuff that you spent time "mindlessly" exploring to find? Other than Hellstone Armor, I can't think of one thing I truly need to go out and spend more than 20 minutes collecting to make. Maybe meteorite. I think Skeletron is a bad metric in general because more than the other bosses, his difficulty has shot up and down repeatedly over the patches, because they weren't really sure when they wanted players at the dungeon. This isn't like WoW where you need to grind 25000/25000 faction rep by killing ONE mob, to get an item that lets you get into a dungeon so you can fight the boss that might drop your item.

The game isn't anywhere close to that level of farming. So you make it sound like some huge onerous task when it really seems like something you just do along with all the other crap you're paying attention to. I don't ever have the problem where I MUST go hunt down all the gold ore I can find or I simply cannot go anywhere or do anything. I often have enough gold to make a gold pick before I've even made armor and I CHOOSE to not make one simply so I can make use of the other picks for a while.