What parts of the design of Terraria would you change if you had the chance?

Terraria General
1

i.e. not balance changes but fundamental design changes, like the size of the world, where you spawn, world generation, weapon animations, customisation, the enemies etc
Generally, things that would be reserved for a new game rather than an update to an existing one.

One of my thoughts:

Despite its name, the world is static except for biome spread. I would be interested in seeing what kind of game it would be if it were designed around a more dynamic world that doesn’t rely on a player taking action for it to change over time. Including trying to make the enemies seem more like they exist in the world rather than just spawned in.

12 Likes
2

im not thinking much but… i guess

better water… like making water + slopes + wall… well not broken

sorry for bad english :confused:

9 Likes
3

I don’t think I’ve seen that, do you have an example?

10 Likes
4

Maybe Friendly Monster Races that you can interact with in there specific biome? They are different to your normal town NPCs because you can only interact with them in there specific biomes. It makes the world more interesting to explore.

Examples would be: Fairies, Mermaids, Elves.

It can also be various monsters inside the game, example: Lihzard tribe, Pigmies, Pirates.

But I would feel like it would be a Terraria 2 thing.

7 Likes
5

Ooh, that’s a good one. It would definitely make the world feel a bit more alive, but at the same time, I wonder if/how it could be implemented without performance issues? A pixel survival game I’ve been playing off and on is Core Keeper (currently 10% off on Steam for Steam’s Survival Fest), and it uses a persistent enemy system. That is, enemies in an area stay in that area, and they’ll stay there (albeit with some idle wandering) even if you run several hundred tiles to the other end of your explored map. However, the game also has some performance issues on lower end devices, and I have an inkling that part of that may come from the enemy system. My theory is that any parts of a map explored need to keep note of whether or not enemies are there if you move back to them, and said whole map might need to spawn more enemies if an enemy group has the tile they can spawn from in an area (e.g. ground slime for Slimes, fungal soil for Shroomen) or continue doing some other things for enemies even if you’re not there. I’ve heard a couple stories of players saying that a particular enemy group had found their base and then left them in complete darkness as a result of said enemies finding a torch trail from the players’ exploration and then just going off and destroying it, since they hate torches.

We kind of have part of that coming in the Town Slimes coming in the Labor of Love update. Whenever that rolls around.

8 Likes
6

I wouldn’t think it would cause performance issues unless you got a lot of enemies in one place, and even then it would be because you have so many enemies being simulated. I have previously tried simulating many thousands of creatures in a game before, in that every creature in the world was not spawned in (past the initial world gen) but just always existed until killed. It was definitely possible but a normal game I imagine would only be properly simulating anything close to the player and anything further away is either frozen or using a simplified simulation (Running with Rifles comes to mind in terms of simplified simulation, but I don’t remember where they specifically stated it).

Another thing that Terraria specifically seems to do is make hostile enemies constantly move towards a player, even something like slimes are always moving for no apparent reason. And then even non-hostile creatures are not actually doing anything other than just standing around or walking/flying randomly.

I’ve not played Core Keeper, are there any other parts of it that you think would be interesting to have in a game like Terraria?

I also liked when Starbound had no contact damage on enemies, made it seem more “fair” but I think they took it away, I wonder what kind of enemy design would allow no contact damage to work.

10 Likes
7

I always liked the concept of the evil biomes spreading.

The times i played on singleplayer worlds,when hardmode activates, i always feel that im on a hurry, that something must to be done to stop the spreading quick, feeling an increasing sence of pressure , and keeping on mind that the time is valuable,and the more time i take, the faster time depletes.

Usually this tecnically doesn’t affects progression,and shouldn’t really have much preocupation.

Giving more focus on the spread is something i would like a lot, and at some point “Forcing to care about the spread” without being very annoying,

Things like starting to see Crimson/Corrupted enemies on pure biomes if the spreading is high enough, Starting to see decayed trees everywhere, an idea of contaminated mineral ores making needing more to craft an ingot, Music being a bit altered, etc…

Mostly the idea, is to make notice the player that the world is dying,That even if the evil spread haven’t reached that area, It has consecuences, and something must be done.

Alongside this, aswell a better (and less boring than making hellevators and spamming clentaminator) way to purify the world, that rather thanbeing the spread “Equal” make some areas more “Affected” like seing more enemies, or other variant of corrupted block, as a hint that the “Core” of the problem is near
And about cores, Adding a “Core” in this areas, that after destroying it, inmediatly purifies that little zone near, Like a 100 tiles radius or an irregular area/chunk of blocks/“Sectors created by the game”.

Clentaminator would be still avalible, but this may be seem more interesting to people that are more about exploring and fighting, (Or mining as my case).

And at last, i think i have seen some concepts on Duke fishron, but im not entirely sure
That the bosses change according to the world, i.e. Not being the same fight an “Duke fishron” on a pure world than in a corrupted one, Changing his design(sprite) and adding 1 or 2 new moves to make it a bit more harder.

Overall, the general idea is giving the spotlight to the evil biomes spreading a bit more (Sort of what Terraria otherworld showed in the traillers).

7 Likes
8

evil biomes - make the spread faster, and make cleaning them easier
make the jungel more spacious so when you fight plantera, its easeir to make an arena
allow people to favorite items in chest slots, inv slots, etc
add more naturally-generated-structures. the game would feel way more lively if there were WAY WAY WAY more structures, especially in the ocean
desert bos
make it so evil blocks can infect about any block in the game, that would make them more scarier (and they could infect alot more nat strtuctures and yur structures

5 Likes
9

I think it was a cause of issues plaguing lower end Core Keeper players (like myself) in the past… well, one of a few. Optimization’s been talked about a few times in the Core Keeper Discord, but it’s not a primary focus as of now given that the game’s still in early access and active development.

I’m… well, actually, yeah, I’m going to write a wall of text for this one, I’ll leave that in a dropdown menu for my more fleshed out description. The bottom line is that something that I think of immediately from Core Keeper that would be interesting in Terraria is still having this big, open world to explore to gather resources from and progress, but have a few more restrictions based on progression in terms of what you’ve done. Core Keeper gates the infinite expanse of its underground world by way of boss progression, but before that you’re never completely locked out of exploring any location available to you, provided that you’re willing to put in the time for exploration. Terraria, by comparison, is mostly only limited by whether or not you have the talent or preparedness to knock a boss out of progression if you can access them; as an example, you’re never explicitly required to go mining for Hardmode ores. Hence, if you have a good weapon, an arena, and dodging skills, you can knock out one of the Mechanical bosses and skip progression that way.

Explanation (click/tap this dropdown menu)

I think one thing that comes to mind immediately is having different parts of the world blocked off to exploration based on progression; currently, the closest we really have in Terraria is the evil biomes at the start of the game since infected stone can’t be mined by early on pickaxes, and the Jungle Temple because of the Temple Door requiring a key… even though, at the same time, the door fails to keep players from entering and leaving freely if they’re armed with 6 platforms. By comparison, in Core Keeper, you can wander out through the procedurally generated caves, and the starting Dirt Biome’s walls are weak enough that simply punching them down is enough if you need to progress. As you wander out further, though, the wall and floor materials get tougher; first, starting with clay in the Clay Caves, where the walls are tough enough that your fist at base won’t be enough to break them down. Pickaxes you can make from wood would suffice, but ideally in progression, you’d have a copper pickaxe by that point for mining out. In a different direction is the rocky Forgotten Ruins, and depending on world generation you might accidentally find it first. With the walls and floors made almost entirely of stone, it’s a real tough area to mine through at the beginning of the game. Wood tools do nothing to them, and though breaking the stone walls down (preferably doing so to search for iron) is possible with a copper pickaxe and maybe a few mining damage boosters, it’s so painfully slow that it’s just not worth the effort. By comparison, if you have tin from the Clay Caves, the stronger pickaxe would make the iron excavation go much faster. You’re not hard locked out of taking a look through the general areas with lower tier equipment, but it’s dangerous and slow enough that it’s not usually worthwhile.

That all changes with the Great Wall; after heading out far enough, you’ll get stopped by wall tiles that stretch all around the early parts of the game, and completely indestructible, by pickaxe or by explosive. To progress past it, you need to find and defeat the three main bosses in the earlier on bosses, taking the relic items they leave behind and using it to power up the titular Core. It gives a hint as to where to head next, and with it you can interact with the Great Wall in a specified direction to make it fall, giving way to the infinitely generated biomes that exist in the game currently. Coming with each biome are new tools and resources to play around with and such, and of course new content to explore and conquer for said tools and resources in progression. The progression is fairly linear as a result, but you have a massive, open world and sandbox to achieve said progression in; whether you get lucky or not can easily change how you go about things.

There’s probably other things from Core Keeper that would translate over well (given the right custom environment in Terraria, that is), but that I think would be the biggest one. Other things like crop farming and the more complex cooking system might be a bit harder to implement since they don’t exist in vanilla Terraria.

I guess for this specific note, I’ll voice that I really dislike the evil biomes being able to completely overtake the Jungle. Don’t get me wrong, it certainly does put a bit of urgency into progression if you don’t want to go out of your way to focus on protecting the area. But at the same time, the recovery process can be very slow for the Jungle, and if left unchecked for too long, entire parts of the game can be locked out of progression as a result of there being no more Jungle left to build back up from. More subtle hints to the world being affected by the world contaminations around I think does better because… well, it’s more subtle and has less drastic impacts. We can already manipulate the spreading biomes and such to our liking in the Terraria sandbox with some time and effort. But If we don’t and just leave it unattended, the consequences can leave a lot overridden and a monumental task to restore to its original form.

7 Likes
10

World events with subsequent things they would effect. As of now, practically every world event is simply an invasion of some sorts, and I feel like there are a good number of mechanics that could be added to make the game more realistic/unpredictable. Solar Eclipses dropping the temperature in certain areas, thunderstorms flooding bodies of water/setting trees or general vegetation aflame(effecting NPC mood/arrival rate due to poor conditions), blizzards spreading snow around, hurricanes tossing damage dealing projectiles around, etc. I personally think it would be interesting to have more to interact with regarding the actual world beyond mobs and bosses, whether it’s positive or negative.

8 Likes
12

I would add more realism, especially with weather and environments. I’ve always loved the concept of biome debuffs (eg, Heatstroke for Desert, Seasick for Ocean, Freezing for Tundra), and weather that influences terrain. Blizzards place snow, sandstorms place sand, rain places water, and perhaps even weird weather in hell (lava rain, brimstorms, etc). These will always have a place in my despicable, nightmare-loving heart.

Friendly tribes/monsters! One concept I’ve always also liked is when the bad guys actually turn out to be the good guys. In both my mod and the book series I’m writing, the character meets Ocram, who explains the history of Terraria and how humans were the real bad guys, and how the monsters are simply defending their homes. I’d love some encounters of this sort, that let you realize that monsters aren’t simply mindless beasts. Also, the history of Terraria should probably be more palpable, similar to Hollow Knight. Hollow Knight’s music and bosses all reflect Hollownest’s ancient and depressing history in a beautiful and at the same time thrilling and exciting way. I’d like to see things like Dryad graveyard (after the War), sadder music in the Crimson/Corruption, due to them being the site of the final battle of the War, and even bosses like Ocram or Moon Lord or something that explain the history and significance of Terraria.

Better ocean! I’ve never really loved the ocean biome, and for one reason: it’s a really bland, lifeless biome with barely any beauty or good enemies like literally every other biome. A deeper, more life full biome with an exotic array of fish, enemies, and perhaps even a few more bosses. Coral reefs and Atlantis would be insane and add even more history and significance.

(Finally), sentries. Sentries have been really neglected. There’s not even remotely enough of them to be viable, they’re unaffected by whip tag crit and dmg, and they have almost no accessories. Additionally, the armors they do have are very sporadic and there’s no real pre-hardmode or endgame options. Sentries are really just a support class right now, and it’s always been one of those ‘why has nobody fixed this yet’ sort of issues.

4 Likes
13

A post was split to a new topic: Login Help

14

Multiplayer Netcode. I’d argue it’s one of the most neglected parts of Terraria. The base Terraria server is really vulnerable, it’s not made for massive multiplayer but for local/friends multiplayer. A few reasons include:

  • Lack of authentication(Steam, GoG or Play/App Store) when joining via IP
  • Vulnerability to crash attacks(TShock protects against this). For example, large packet DDoS, long chat message crash, invalid tile crash
  • Protocol Limitations. For example, can’t remove individual buffs, PvP knockback broken, PvP buffs broken. This mostly applies to older parts, new parts of multiplayer are more versatile, for example, servers can control what journey permissions you have

There’s also some annoying stuff but not necessarily deal-breakers:

  • NPC Smoothing/Moonwalking. Just. no. Pre-1.4 Teleporting NPCs are better
  • Packet Flood. The Imp minion spams a packet every tick
  • Inconsistency. Crystal Vile Shard, Vilethorn, and Nettle Burst’s packet signature is inconsistent. Crystal Vile Shard spawns the base in one whole packet, while Vilethorn and Nettle Burst spawns it in two separate packets

imo, these issues aren’t as exaggerated because the multiplayer hosting community is much much smaller than the modding community. Anyway they could easily get around the issues with mods

And then problems not specific to Multiplayer but affects it:

  • Entities. Terraria’s entities are stored separately: one for projectiles, one for players, one for items, and one for NPCs/mobs. Each store has their own limits. This system makes the code very very messy
  • Unified Render/Logic

    In Minecraft, when you talk about FPS/TPS, the former refers to render refresh speed while the latter refers to time/logic speed. In Terraria, they’re unified into FPS. Terraria accounts for this in some parts but not all. For example, 60 FPS and 30 FPS players still go through buffs and move at the same speed, but it’s more likely for 60 FPS players to be ahead in world time

    Servers usually run at 60FPS, so they do logic 3x faster than Minecraft’s 20TPS. Which, ironically, causes Terraria(a 2D game) to sometimes run slower than Minecraft(a 3D game)
8 Likes
15

so its like making some changes to water ad ocean… making ocean more interesting, adding something like shipwreck…

also about the water glitch thing its like this

IMG_20220806_071223
IMG_20220806_071223364×556 78.7 KB

sorry for english xd

4 Likes
16

That was i was thinking about

4 Likes
17

more bosses - id suggest early-mid hm bosses in biomes (ESPECIALLY DESERT< IN VANILLA + CLAAMITY MOD< THERE ARE 40 BOSSES, and only ONE of those bosses are found in the desert. if you had to pick a random boss out of all 40 calam+vanilla bosses, the change of geting a desert boss is 1/40 (2.5%). you have a better chance of winning the lottery 100 times then your chances to get a desert boss, and this is WITH the calamity mod. without it, there are zero, zero, zero bosses that are mainly desert. and lots of the biomes could use overhauls

this is a terraria request and a modded terraria request to make more biome bosses. other wise you just make one arena and that arena is both the eye of chucthulu arena, and the mon lord arean

3 Likes
18

  1. Some of the glitches like the limited range stellar tune and the destroyer tail appearing on the Wall of Flesh.

  2. Add master mode boss mechanics, because there is none unlike FTW and Expert. For example: Make the wall of flesh faster at the beginning even more

  3. The ability to join servers on the Console Edition of Terraria.

  4. Make some weapons perform better, and add new shortswords.

  5. Allow improved custom server mechanics, so you can adjust settings like the weapon statistics, the difficulty even further, beyond master mode, and what is allowed and what is not.

  6. Custom world generation mechanics, like further world size customization, the peaks and the valleys, multiple evils at start, what phase the world starts in like Hardmode, etc.

  7. Add a mountainous biome that extends beyond the peak, has lots of stone, and has a snowy top. (Complements the 6th reason)

3 Likes
19

This is gonna be part of my mod, along with some of the stuff here.

3 Likes
20

what mod??

3 Likes
21

a craftable super water candle that instead of increasing spawn rates increases drop rates. this. would. be. AMAZING for me. yknow. me being a lunatic completionist. that would be oh! so helpful!

3 Likes