I don't like the 1.4 NPC happiness mechanics (rant)

[Spicybullfrog]

Yeah, i understand the reason why they exist, it discourages making one giant base with all the npcs and important stuff, and the ability to make certain NPC's wares cheaper with elbow grease is welcomed, but overall i really just don't like the tedium involved in setting everything up now.
Say you don't feel like doing much building in a playthrough. You've then got to build a load of 3 house outposts in arbitrary biomes lest you suffer a seriously impactful penalty on NPC prices. Then, if you want to be able to use these NPCs, you've got to then fork out large swathes of money to gain the ability to teleport to them. Yes, i understand that the economy is broken especially on expert and master mode but i'll counter that with the fact that they should've just fixed that instead. Queen bee either shouldn't drop 12-20 gold a kill or shouldnt be so easy to summon, to give an example.

Now let's say you do want to build extensively in a playthrough. with the pylons, your options for building in different biomes raise by quite a bit, but because of the strict guidelines for what npcs will accept you doing, you won't be able to make any large builds with npcs lest you suffer the wrath of the overcrowding penalty. Additionally, npcs are also much more picky with what biomes they'll accept being in. The merchant ALWAYS wants to be in the snow biome, the guide ALWAYS wants to be in the forest, and the demolitionist ALWAYS wants to be underground. I remember i used to put the demolitionist at the entrance of my mine, i had the dryad in a greenhouse where i grew my herbs, and i had the wizard right at spawn in a tower since i was usually specced into a mage role. All of these creative uses of npcs would penalize me now due to either the overcrowding or wrong biome penalties.
Add this to the fact that they have npcs they dislike being around, and it creates an annoyingly uniform meta for npcs, and highly similar builds in each run.
All this has done is move the meta sideways, with even stricter guidelines with what you're allowed to build with unless you want to do lots of grinding/cheesing for gold.

[Alucard †]

Yup it's either Red's way (multipile bases across biomes) or one base and dealing with bs high prices and greatly reduced accesory chances from Angler quests.

Basically punishing players for how they want to manage their base.

[Ninshu]

引用自 ⎛ Alucard ⎞ ✟：

Yup it's either Red's way (multipile bases across biomes) or one base and dealing with bs high prices and greatly reduced accesory chances from Angler quests.

red on his way to ♥♥♥♥ up the experience for others just because he wants people to do it **only** his way in a "sandbox game"

[theworld]

引用自 Lebhleb：

Paying over 90 coins for a minishark?

Wiki says: "an NPC unhappy will raise its prices purchased from it, up to a maximum of 150%, and decrease the value of goods sold to it, down to a minimum 67% (2/3)."

Where did you get a 90 gold price for Minishark? Any proof?

[theworld]

引用自 Spicybullfrog：

that they should've just fixed that instead. Queen bee either shouldn't drop 12-20 gold a kill or shouldnt be so easy to summon, to give an example.

Brain of Cthulhu drops around 115 Gold worth of loot kill on Master For the Worthy if sold at max prices, at min prices that should still be 57 Gold. On Classic that should still be around 48-49 Gold per kill at minimum prices.

[theworld]

引用自 Lebhleb：

[ Its not until you get to Hardmode when you acquire many quick and powerfull weapons that you can say 'i can grind this efficently'

Brain of Cthulhu is trivial to grind with either Flamelash or Hellwing bow. If you're a baller in a large world, you could even use Star Cannon.

Really mass sums of gold to pay for the ever so inflated economy come post something like mechs

A gemcorn farm is trivial to setup even in the early game and each harvest brings around 50-80 G depending on size.

Even better is the Stained Glass, which converts 50 gems into 50 Gold. (IIRC 66 Gold at best prices).

[Lebhleb]

引用自 jinglan：

引用自 Lebhleb：

Paying over 90 coins for a minishark?

Wiki says: "an NPC unhappy will raise its prices purchased from it, up to a maximum of 150%, and decrease the value of goods sold to it, down to a minimum 67% (2/3)."

Where did you get a 90 gold price for Minishark? Any proof?

Yeah i did mix up the minishark price, i think i might have perhaps meant the, Mushroom spear, but that is defeault 70 i believe. Still the point stands, even at 50% is still an increase that is ever growing, and just 'outgrinding' it isn't so valiable as some people say it is.

[Lebhleb]

引用自 jinglan：

引用自 Lebhleb：

[ Its not until you get to Hardmode when you acquire many quick and powerfull weapons that you can say 'i can grind this efficently'

Brain of Cthulhu is trivial to grind with either Flamelash or Hellwing bow. If you're a baller in a large world, you could even use Star Cannon.

Really mass sums of gold to pay for the ever so inflated economy come post something like mechs

A gemcorn farm is trivial to setup even in the early game and each harvest brings around 50-80 G depending on size.

Even better is the Stained Glass, which converts 50 gems into 50 Gold. (IIRC 66 Gold at best prices).

I dunno about grinds of brain of cthuhlu, personalyl those never paid much for me to care, however i never tried Gemcorn farming, i think i did want to set up one but i mixed something so i never really found how good it is.

[Spicybullfrog]

引用自 jinglan：

引用自 Lebhleb：

Paying over 90 coins for a minishark?

Wiki says: "an NPC unhappy will raise its prices purchased from it, up to a maximum of 150%, and decrease the value of goods sold to it, down to a minimum 67% (2/3)."

Where did you get a 90 gold price for Minishark? Any proof?

probably taken from my arithmetic earlier in the thread saying that the prices could get hiked up to something like 237% if maximum unhappiness was reached, i skimmed the wiki page and didnt see a cap so i just assumed that could happen

[Spicybullfrog]

you guys are telling me "grind bosses cause theyre really overpowered" but the point of the thread isnt how you can exploit boss farms to get past this dumb mechanic, the point is that you shouldnt have to exploit faulty game mechanics to enjoy the game. I even mentioned this in my original post - you shouldnt be able to get like 15 plat at the start of the game by killing bee queen in the first place, it takes away from the enjoyment of the game and you know it

[theworld]

引用自 Spicybullfrog：

you shouldnt be able to get like 15 plat at the start of the game by killing bee queen in the first place

If you "shouldn't" was true they would have patched it.

The developers have done changes to such minor things like removing 1 damage from Cactus Pickaxe. If there was something wrong with something as major as a boss that they did not intend, they had almost a decade to correct it.

it takes away from the enjoyment of the game and you know it

A guy who doesn't even know how basic math behind NPC happiness works, but is using strong terms like "you know it" is not going to look convincing.

Sounding arrogant ("you know it") and entitled [the game should cater to me and only me, or else it's not enjoyable], which coupled with ignorance [can't even get the math behind game mechanics right] makes this thread a pretty amusing demonstration of the Dunning-Kruger effect.

[Spicybullfrog]

引用自 jinglan：

引用自 Spicybullfrog：

you shouldnt be able to get like 15 plat at the start of the game by killing bee queen in the first place

If you "shouldn't" was true they would have patched it.

The developers have done changes to such minor things like removing 1 damage from Cactus Pickaxe. If there was something wrong with something as major as a boss that they did not intend, they had almost a decade to correct it.

it takes away from the enjoyment of the game and you know it

A guy who doesn't even know how basic math behind NPC happiness works, but is using strong terms like "you know it" is not going to look convincing.

Sounding arrogant ("you know it") and entitled [the game should cater to me and only me, or else it's not enjoyable], which coupled with ignorance [can't even get the math behind game mechanics right] makes this thread a pretty amusing demonstration of the Dunning-Kruger effect.

yeah, i don't bother to interact with the mechanic, that's the point of the whole thread.
even 135% is too much of a price hike for me to bother leaving them alone, thats why i dont like it, and i don't try to circumvent it with more money, because the consequences are far too steep, do you think i dont understand the game mechanics despite having something like 3000 hours in the game? this is a poor argument.

and what do you mean i'm saying the game should cater to only me? this mechanic only exists the screw over people who don't play the game your way , if it was removed you would still have the complete freedom to build in any way you wanted, in fact i've already went over how this only makes building MORE RESTRICTIVE for people who want to build. They wanted to make building mandatory , and part of the meta, and they failed spectacularly.

Also, bee queen giving you infinite money is intended??? are you joking??? so youre saying that bee queen is INTENDED to be your sole and only source of money, and you're SUPPOSED to farm her for hours at a time to completely negate the cost of any purchases you need to make even late into hardmode. really. this is prime video games to you? this is what you do all day? just because something is meta doesnt mean it should be that way, just look at the reaver shark, you know how long it's been in the game for? years. you know when it got fixed? 1.4

[prpl_mage]

If we didn't know the system I would agree that this was ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥.
But we can find all the numbers, all the preferences of the NPCs online.

And it takes a lot to get a max penalty since all those penalties and bonuses keep canceling each other out (meaning that in general the prices are mostly the same as before with a 5% give or take).

Let's take one of the average NPCs. The merchant for our example.
If we place him in his hated biome (desert) with the Angler and Tax Collector, two peeps he hate and dislike within 25.
His happiness would be ~132, Meaning his 1 gold Piggy Bank would cost 1g 32s.
(my bad, since there are no more than 2 people within 25 that would drop to 118)

Let's make this more extreme. If we place 4 more NPCS within 25 his happiness would be ~155, which would be evened out to th 150 cap. With 3 NPCs within 25 that would be ~148(so almost the limit)
So that's the way to reach the worst case. Place the NPC in his hated biome, with his hated and disliked NPC and 4 more within 25 of his flag. That's 7 NPCs.

What if some of those are people he likes though? What if two of those 4 NPCs are the golfer and nurse?`
Well, then we're down at ~137, so still worse than just 2 NPCs. But they more or less cancel out the other 2 added.

What if we just smacked everyone into their prefered biome, block houses with them within 25 and ignored all the relationships though?
Forest (4)
Guide 86
Merchant 86
Zoologist 86
Golfer 86

Jungle (3)
Dryad 82
Painter 77
WD 82

Desert (3)
DT 87
AD 82
Steam 88

Snow (3)
Mechanic 82
TC 93
Cyborg 88

Ocean (3)
Angler 88
Stylist 88
Pirate 82

Caverns (3)
Demo 93
GT 93
Clothier 88

Hallow (4)
Nurse 91
Tavern 91
Party G 80
Wizard 91

Well look at that, even if we only take the biome into consideration they are all under 100% even if we cram them close to each other and ignore their petty feelings.
This of course leaves the Mushroomman and the Princess

[Spicybullfrog]

引用自 prpl_mage：

really long post, snipped

Wow. so the system doesn't even work as intended. That's rich.

[Spicybullfrog]

wait, if you put every single npc in their preferred biome, but they're still really close to each other, wouldnt that mean you'd have to completely build 6 entire biomes for this to work? isnt that still a lot of work?

plus, you can't relocate the underground biome so wouldn't you need to put everything deep underground? isn't that inconvenient?

[prpl_mage]

There are 6 biome pylons, so if you want the easiest way of getting the pylons and building no more than needed then yes. You will need to build 6x4 boxes, [enough rooms] in each biome [for the number of NPCs you want there] and craft a total of 23 chairs, tables, torches, doors etc.

If that is too much work for you then sure. Ignore the pylons and the happiness that in most cases actually gives you a discount compared to how it was before this was added.