Nerfing progression skips was a mistake.

[Xera]

"fishing sucks, it's mindless afking"
imagine hating on a timesink in a game that's one big timesink

Gentle reminder that "it doesn't affect me so I don't care" or "it doesn't affect me so it affects nobody" pro-nerf arguments will be ignored. Also, here's a PSA: you were absolutely never forced to go fish the Reaver Shark and use it. Nobody was holding a gun to your head. Just because you couldn't have the self-control to not use it doesn't make for a good pro-nerf argument.

Updated rant down below. (other blue header)

Since a lot of you don't seem to get it: The content you could skip was EARLY MINING. Tedious mining sections at the start of pre-hardmode and hardmode. Things you've already experienced and don't need to experience again. Things that add NOTHING to the game.

I don't know what kind of power trip they were having at ReLogic when nerfing the progression skips but this sucks. They've made sure you ABSOLUTELY don't miss out on ANYTHING now. "We've rebalanced the game and we're going to make sure you experience ALL OF IT, whether you want it or not!" -The dev team, probably.

Early 100 pickaxe power to skip the first 3 tool tiers and the first hardmode tier? Forget about it.
Hoarding crates to skip the first 3 tool tiers in hardmode? Forget about it.
Mining meteorites with bombs? Forget about it.
Early meteorite armor? You need to break the orbs AND defeat the boss before the meteorite spawns, so.. Fuggaddaboutit.

This only incentivizes me to outright cheat with inventory editors and whatnot. The first 3 ore tiers in pre-hardmode and hardmore are always going to be the most boring parts of a playthrough, why prevent players from skipping them?

"Play it however you want! As long as we're okay with the way you want to play it."

Why is progression skipping such a problem in a game that seems to pride itself on its hands-off-do-what-you-want gameplay? Not to mention that these nerfs have affected primarily one thing: MINING for basic ores. Not even high-end ores. Basic ores. The most tedious thing the game has to offer other than low-level fishing.

Updated "rant":

"The devs aren't power-tripping"

• They added their own "OP" armor as means of debugging the game faster instead of having a proper debugging/creative mode.
  
• They punished you for obtaining said armor via debuffs.
  
• They actively silenced and punished anyone who would mention how to get that armor.
  
• They actively silenced and punished anyone who would talk about nullifying the dev armor's debuffs that make it unusable.
  
• Not content with having exclusive armor sets they stuffed their faces into the cloud sprites. It's creepy as ♥♥♥♥.
  
• They "fixed" things they considered "exploits" and "overpowered" items and even mechanics that have been in place since 1.0 after 6 to 9 years. Take this into account: https://i.imgur.com/wvZBupS.png
  
  
• Their reason for the Reaver nerf is that it "skips exploring for ores in pre-hardmode and hardmode." That is both untrue and dishonest. Realistically, the Reaver Shark allowed you to skip three tiers of basic gear tied to the basic ores you get in your world. Not skipping mining those ores entirely. Sooner or later you're going to need Iron/Lead anyway. Additionally, you'd still need ores to craft bows, arguably the safest weapon to use against bosses pre-minishark.
  Then comes the dishonesty and the straight up false part: it skips exploring/mining for ores in Hardmode. 100 Pickaxe Power is only enough to break Cobalt/Palladium. You can't progress any further than that with 100 PP. So which ores are we skipping, exactly? None. Do you want to bust your balls and go from Cobalt/Palladium gear straight to Spectre? Sure, you can do that. But you need a Forge and you need 200 PP pickaxe so their argument is still invalid. "So, we have brought these back inside the bounds." is no different from "You have to play by OUR new rules." Furthermore, take this sentence: "This will make the Reaver Shark capable of mining anything up to Demonite/Crimtane - so it is still valuable and useful, but no longer the "skip to the end" tool it once was." Skip to the end, eh? The end of what, pre-Hardmode? More dishonesty. I don't think they realize just how insignificant pre-hardmode actually is with all the padding content that has been added throughout the years. Although I'd argue that by 1.2 it was made entirely obsolete.
  
  
• Let's look at fishing crates. First of all, let's look at how they phrased things: "Fishing in Pre-Hardmode to skip early Hardmode was an example of a fun alternate path to progression, but taken too far." So, it was a fun alternate path to progress. But it was too much fun. It was "taken too far." You hear that, people? You can't have too much fun in Terraria. You can have fun. But not too much fun. Let's move on to: "This allows you to fish instead of mine, but at least forces you to face the challenges of early Hardmode to do so." Forces me to face the challenges of early Hardmode? You mean dash and double-jump all the way to the ocean? I would almost agree if you didn't have the ability to like.. Not restrict yourself to walking on the ground at all times but this is a completely invalid point. The only challenge here is traversing the world and I'd argue that it's more tedious and challenge when you don't have the means to skip and jump across the map when you start out in pre-Hardmode. What are they going to do next? Are they gonna render us unable to place beds and set spawn points near the ocean to prevent us from just fishing crates once we're in Hardmode?
  And again, let's not forget how many crates you actually need in order to effectively skip the first three hardmode gear tiers. Rarity and loot tables exist for a reason. (Hey, remember when they nerfed item/gold farms by not allowing mobs spawned by statues to drop items and gold? Yeah. Fun. Thanks for nothing.)
  
  
• Meteorite changes:
  First of all, being able to immediately spawn Meteorites and get Meteor armor is something that's been in the game since 1.0
  Mining it with explosives was a way to get some decent (but not for long) armor before acquiring a gold pickaxe, something which relied on.. You got it, more tedious mining for gear that's going to be immediately superseded by Shadow/Crimson or even Molten gear. That was also a pretty safe option that didn't require you to build scaffolding around the Meteorite itself given the ludicrous damage you get for just standing on it in pre-HM (Yes, I know it makes sense, it's probably really hot)
  But please, do try to construct an argument about how the space gun using 0 mana is overpowered. Amuse me.
  By locking it behind the boss you effectively reduce its usefulness to very specific cases and effectively make it even more situational than what it already was.

Now.. let's get into the most laughable argument of them all: "it's the developers' vision!"
But first, here's a PSA: Terraria isn't free and word of mouth is extremely powerful once the hype dies down and sales stagnate. Keep that in mind, yes?
Anyway, here's why that argument is completely irrelevant:

The developers have constantly changed their mind over the years. Look at all the Spectre Armor nerfs for example. Look at how much it changed and how they kept going back and forth between nerfing it and rebuffing it to its original stats BECAUSE PEOPLE WEREN'T HAPPY WITH THE CHANGES. Those kinds of changes happen to every single item in the game. You wanna look at a change that just screams "Haha, ♥♥♥♥ YOU!" ? The Arkhalis only drops from Expert mode treasure bags now. Why? It had an incredibly low spawn rate and mediocre damage that didn't scale well at all into Hardmode. And yet it was extremely useful for pre-HM. Sure, you could argue that you could just keep generating small worlds and hunting for those "shrines" but it took both time and luck. But you still had the option to do so. Now it's gone. By the time you're gonna get one from a bag it won't be useful anymore. It had been in the game for almost 5 years. Unchanged. Much like the other mechanics that got changed.

Why would anyone respect the developers' vision when it constantly changes by taking a step forward and ten steps back? Even THEY don't know what they want. And it's painfully obvious. Let alone respect the opinion of those who use it as an excuse. By using it as an excuse to change mechanics and items that have been in place for years (longer than it took them to cancel otherworld lmao, they're still salty) you're effectively advocating for them to do as they please and keep making the game grindier by removing options that could be used to skip tedious parts of the EARLY game. Don't try to argue that "they were busy" or that "they needed time to realize how game-breaking these things were". The music box duple was patched extremely quickly when it was discovered in 1.1. Something like abusing meteorite invincibility frames wasn't patched for almost an entire year. Hotfixes exist and don't try to warp the definition to fit your narrative. Don't try to argue that "hotfixes aren't meant to change content" because it's an incredibly flawed argument.

We had options. Options that hurt absolutely nobody. Options that made progression faster by allowing you to skip tedious and redundant mining. Options that allowed experienced players to skip tedious sections of the game they had already experienced before. Are there alternative skips? Absolutely. Are they the same? Not really. Are they faster? Doesn't seem like it.

Don't try to force your playstyle (or the devs') onto other people just cause these changes don't affect you directly. And don't try to call out people for being "toxic" when they refuse to follow your advice. The bloody Dark Souls community doesn't do this. And don't bring up speedruns. Speedruns aren't how most people play the game. Speedruns also skip chunks of the game. Isn't that what you're all against? Strange, isn't it?

Instead of trying to find out WHY people wanted to/were skipping part of the content they instead opted to nerf or prevent those skips entirely. Instead of improving into what could've been tedious gameplay that needed to be revised/updated (which is ironic since this update was SUPPOSED to do just that) they just decided to remove the means to make it less tedious. They aren't interested in pleasing the fanbase. (If you have mice in your apartment you're obviously gonna want to kill them, no? But wouldn't you want to find out WHY you've got mice coming into your house in the first place and nipping the problem in the bud? No? Well, enjoy having to spend money on mouse traps that might or might not work.) They introduced half-♥♥♥♥♥ and nonsensical mechanics that nobody asked for (npc happiness, half-♥♥♥♥♥ cheat mode that was probably half-♥♥♥♥♥ out of spite, torch luck (nice 180 they did there lmao), vanity slots changes, etc) tweaked a few things and BAM, final update, we're done here.

Closing thoughts:
If pre-hardmode is so important to you that you consider it vital/essential content and "actually playing the game" or whatever pretentious BS you believe in order to make yourself appear higher and mightier than everyone else: have you actually ever entered Hardmode? Have you experienced anything after the Dungeon or the Wall of Flesh? I don't think you have. Especially not after 1.2

Have a nice day, everyone. No matter how closed-minded/self-absorbed you are and how much you want other people to play the game they paid for YOUR way and not theirs.

[Chronos]

I agree that they shouldn't have nerfed the progression skips that much, but i don't see how spelunking to get ores isn't fun.

[Xera]

Originally posted by Chronos:

I agree that they shouldn't have nerfed the progression skips that much, but i don't see how spelunking to get ores isn't fun.

It's not fun. At least not for the basic ores. It's just a drag now considering you could be doing literally anything else with all the added padding content.

[Chronos]

Originally posted by Vicious ♥♥♥♥ Makeout Session:

Originally posted by Chronos:

I agree that they shouldn't have nerfed the progression skips that much, but i don't see how spelunking to get ores isn't fun.

It's not fun. At least not for the basic ores. It's just a drag now considering you could be doing literally anything else with all the added padding content.

Fishing for crates for hours on end just to skip 3 easy to surpass ore tiers in hardmode seems like more of a drag.

[The Hopping Chaos]

I think collecting basic ores can be very fun.
But it isn't always fun. Sometimes when you start a new world, you want to jump right into the meaty stuff. Sometimes you want to take a different path. And Red's determination to force you onto his progression path is petty and childish.

[!?!]

Originally posted by Chronos:

Originally posted by Vicious ♥♥♥♥ Makeout Session:

It's not fun. At least not for the basic ores. It's just a drag now considering you could be doing literally anything else with all the added padding content.

Fishing for crates for hours on end just to skip 3 easy to surpass ore tiers in hardmode seems like more of a drag.

Exactly.
So why mess with it?

[Amorfide]

Imagine being so mad that you actually have to play the game now, instead of going from start to finish within a minute

[Xera]

Originally posted by Chronos:

Originally posted by Vicious ♥♥♥♥ Makeout Session:

It's not fun. At least not for the basic ores. It's just a drag now considering you could be doing literally anything else with all the added padding content.

Fishing for crates for hours on end just to skip 3 easy to surpass ore tiers in hardmode seems like more of a drag.

Hours on end? Usually a single hour is enough for me to get 90% of the hardmode ores I need.

[Xera]

Originally posted by Amorfide:

Imagine being so mad that you actually have to play the game now, instead of going from start to finish within a minute

Because collecting basic ores is all that there is to the game, yep.

[Dex]

I mean, they gave you a cheat mode, use it if you're not interesting in playing through the progression.

[Lunacy]

You could play tmodloader without any mods active if you want the fresh 1.3 experience.

[Xera]

Originally posted by Lunacy:

You could play tmodloader without any mods active if you want the fresh 1.3 experience.

What's the point though? I just want the 1.4 experience without having a progression path forced onto me. Haven't they always advertised the game as something you're free to do whatever you want in?

[ghostmanone0h1]

digging is fun in the very beginning, but hardmode is a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ chore

[The Hopping Chaos]

Originally posted by Dex:

I mean, they gave you a cheat mode, use it if you're not interesting in playing through the progression.

Journey Mode does not cancel out progression though. To unlock each thing for your duplicator, you still need to find and gather them. You are still locked onto Red's rails for progression. You still have to play his way.

[Xera]

Originally posted by Rabaid Sidhe:

Originally posted by Dex:

I mean, they gave you a cheat mode, use it if you're not interesting in playing through the progression.

Journey Mode does not cancel out progression though. To unlock each thing for your duplicator, you still need to find and gather them. You are still locked onto Red's rails for progression. You still have to play his way.

It's like a cheat mode but not quite. Does the duplicator's progress even save across Journey worlds or do you have to do everything all over again on each Journey world you have?

[Skypris]

While I agree that they shouldn't have touched the "progression skipping items" I don't exactly think it's -that- bad per se. I get them wanting us to not just cut out a part of the content they created because players wanna optimize their gameplay. I can also understand the frustrations from players for sure as this removes a way people played. I thought it too was kinda cool to learn about these options existing. I think people will get used to the item, and therefore the progression changes but right now we are spoiled by what we used to be able to do.

If we could somehow skip half of Borderlands 2 so we could get to the more unique guns but then that option was removed, I am sure players would share similar grievances. Getting to the more fun stuff sooner is nice, but it isn't bad to progress normally in my opinion. It just isn't -as- fun. I myself only knew of and used the progression skip items in my last two playthroughs so I am not spoiled to the idea of going back to normal progression.