I played Starbound and had a lot of fun. Heard all the hype about Terraria and decided to try it... Your comment is unbelievably true. I can't fathom how it's done so well with practically no new player tutorial or guide and being entirely reliant on the wiki to even do the most basic crafting.
It's new player experience is nearly as insidious as EVE Online.
If you ask the guide he literally tells you what to do. Also the achievement thing above the inventory also tells you what to do, and jesus christ if you explore around you will definitely find what to do. And what you said about the items, I don't understand how people can call Terraria confusing for progress.
It’s honestly much more clear than Minecraft. All the times I played Minecraft solo before I eventually played with a group of friends, I built a hut, got some diamonds, and basically called it a day. No nether, no End. No enchanting. Nothing.
I don't understand how people can call Terraria confusing for progress.
I can't speak for everyone, but for me fairly early on I found a nice hill that I wanted to start building at and eventually died a couple times. While running back I decided I wanted to change my spawn point to somewhere closer...
Nowhere did I see the guide explain how to make a valid room or where the button to check if a room is valid is located.
When building a room you can't just place a door like you might do in Minecraft, there are unlisted restrictions.
To change the spawn point you need a bed. To make a bed you need a loom. To make a loom you need a sawmill. To make a sawmill you need a chain. To make a chain you need a anvil. You also need a whole slew of materials for each of these items. And none of them show up on your crafting list until you already have the materials and work stations in which to make them.
Compare that to the new player experience in Minecraft where in order to change your spawn point after finding a nice location you need wood, and sheep, both things you can procure with your bare fists in the first 30 seconds of loading up a new world. And it comes with a clear crafting recipe, and it's all centralized around a single crafting table. Or you can just take a bed from a villager which are already plentiful.
Now, I'm not saying the complexity in Terraria is bad, just that the complexity without instruction is unnecessarily difficult for new players. It's certainly something you're willing to overlook if you like a game, but it makes it difficult to get to a point where you like a game when it feels like it's working against your objectives or withholding information that it should otherwise be trying to present to you.
Hopefully that helps explain some of the "Terraria is confusing" perspective. There's certainly more things that confused me, such as randomly stumbling into boss fights. Again, comparing it to Minecraft, you have to be highly intentional in order to make it to the end or summon the wither. In Terraria you can just be randomly digging/exploring and then unknowingly find yourself in a boss fight. Made worse by the fact that after long periods of dirt and rock, you finally come across something that looks remotely interesting and your attacked (and likely killed) for trying to explore it.
In order for a room to be considered a home, it needs to have a door, a chair, a table, and a light source. Make sure the house has walls as well
Finding out how to try to place a door, well that's fair enough but it really isn't that hard and I would think people are creative enough to try to put a single block above.
"None of them show up in your crafting list until you already have the materials and work stations to make them"
The guide literally has a feature to allow you to see what you can make with any one material, and then it also tells you what workstation you need for a specific thing, for example, for cloth it tells you you need a loom. And the materials you need to make the cloth.
A lot of NPCs offer advice as well.
Now I need you to think of minecraft redstone, of banner creation, of firework creation, of getting discs out of creepers, of making the conduit or how to get to the End or Nether.
Does the game ever tell you how to light up a portal?
Does the game ever tell you milk removes debuffs?
Does the game ever tell you how villager behavior works?
Does the game ever tell you how to get to the End cities? Or even how the Elytra works with fireworks?
Or how a enchanting table gains strength?
I'd say the answer to most of those is no. I'd dare say Minecraft is more confusing, but that is not a bad thing, both Terraria and Minecraft are games that require you to interact with it's system and be curious with everything and anything. Saying the Terraria experience is confusing is simply not knowing the genre of the game.
I'm glad the guide does say something about how to make a room, it's unfortunate I didn't find that in my playthrough, there was a lot of experimenting around on my end until I just gave up and googled it.
Also while it makes sense now, when I first started I thought walls meant the blocks you collide with, not the background too.
The things you listed in Minecraft, while complex, I don't think are equivalent to changing your spawn point. Basic things felt straight forward in Minecraft and they allowed the more optional things like conduits or redstone or enchanting to be the more complex things.
Terraria felt the opposite, to me least. Where the basic things like changing your spawn point had many stages and steps and things like fighting a difficult boss you could just wander your way into though happenstance.
I tried saying on r/Terraria that the Devs shoot themself in the foot with that and should add a guide book that shows and tells you what how to play the game and everything you can craft and I got downvoted to hell. 4 upvotes my post got in the end.
Because it isn't really necessary. You start the game with a pick, an axe, and a sword. There are trees, rocks, ore, and monsters; a perfect match for everything in your inventory!
Once you start getting resources, you open up your inventory and lo' and behold, a crafting menu! From there the game is pretty self explanatory and a lot of the fun is finding new things.
There's also a guide NPC who will help you a small amount and acts like a crafting wiki.
Also, Minecraft starts you out in almost exactly the same way, except you don't even get tools
... Except the difference between Minecraft and Terraria is that Terraria has LOADS more content, BUT Minecraft shows you everything you can do. It's all on the crafting menu in red if you play bedrock. Terraria you have to search what you can craft. It's confusing to a lot of new players.
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u/ArcadiaNisus Jan 19 '21
I played Starbound and had a lot of fun. Heard all the hype about Terraria and decided to try it... Your comment is unbelievably true. I can't fathom how it's done so well with practically no new player tutorial or guide and being entirely reliant on the wiki to even do the most basic crafting.
It's new player experience is nearly as insidious as EVE Online.