I don’t know you, or what you know of the game. But I do know many people have preconceived notions of what the game is that are wrong.
If you haven’t tried it before, the early game is pretty tedious. And that can turn people off. Once you get a few bosses down and especially when you move into hard mode, it really opens up.
Protip: “It gets better later” isn’t a good way to promote a game.
It has to be good from the start.
If it isn’t and it can’t hook a player, you’ve just lost a customer, who likely just refunded the game as well.
Now personally: I like terraria from start to end. It got a bit boring in the middle. I used to not be able to play it at all because /something/ about the game really triggered my migraines. It doesn’t anymore, and I can play it.
Yep. The first few hours of a game are really important. If people tell me it gets better later I usually assume they are suffering from sunk-cost at that point. There are some games that genuinely start slow and end up really good, but it's not common.
Terraria is a 2D sandbox but with good progression built in with interesting bosses and items. The early game in these games are usually the most fun in my opinion, building up from nothing is satisfying.
I’m not trying to sell anyone on anything. I’m just giving honest information about the game to someone who has already said they don’t intend on playing it. I was addressing what is a common complaint about the game.
For context, I absolutely devoured that lackluster early game back in 2011. It’s just that as the game has gotten content over the years, it’s mostly been added to the latter half (probably like 2/3rds really) of the game. And also, games and peoples’ tastes have changed a lot since 2011 when the game came out.
So for me, today, the early game is a slog. And it’s something I’ve seen many others complain about. I understand the “it gets better” is often used to try to sell lackluster games, but I don’t think Terraria fits that bill. But the game legitimately gets better after the first few bosses for most peoples’ tastes.
I’d agree that “it gets better later” isn’t a good way to promote a game, but I dunno that a game has to be good (or at least at its best) from the start. Totally understandable if people don’t want to, or can’t invest the time into something that doesn’t grip them right away, but at least for me a slow start can be really nice, especially when a game ends up unfolding in unexpected ways later on. I can enjoy that kind of pacing, and sometimes it’s rewarding to have something start off kind of painful for one reason or another and become something much greater. At least personally I think a “weak start” can end up making the full experience better overall, as it’s kind of a part of the journey.
But of course, if you’re not enjoying it and you don’t want to continue and you want to refund it… That’s totally reasonable! A game that’s a slow burn is probably a much harder sell and not going to appeal to as broad of an audience, and I think that’s okay.
The issue is that "good" varies a lot from person to person. I like survival crafting games with an incremental tree of improvements more than boss rushes so for me it's good from the start.
I've started it so many times and it feels like I'm just mining and building houses for hours and hours, having to check some wiki to see how to trigger "the good stuff". I avoid YT "tutorials" because it's all from people who've put hundreds of hours in who assume you'll just breeze to a first boss in 20 minutes. Not knocking the game, sometimes just mining with a podcast on is relaxing, but, I dunno, it needs more oomph early on.
My kids and some friends play it all the time and I appreciate that it’s a well made, great game. I’ve watched them play it many times and enjoyed the glee emanatingfrom the players, they really do have fun.
I just can’t become immersed in that particular 2D or isometric style game. Excluding the little nightmares series and DARQ.
I think the important thing to note about Terraria is it is as much Zelda and Castlevania as it is Minecraft. That is what makes it special. A lot of the copy cats tried to do 2D Minecraft, but forgot how important the Castlevania combat was to the whole mix.
You can donate directly to Godot or FNA if you want to show support and don’t think that you’d enjoy Terraria. Personally, I love Terraria and have bought it for pretty much every system I own and everyone I know. I got interested in it after watching TotalBiscuit and Jesse Cox play it. (I can’t believe that was 12 years ago!)
There could be something to say for both donating directly to Godot and trying to support Terraria in some form because you think they’re doing good.
It depends on how activist the Terraria devs are, though. If this donation is a one-of statement from them, supporting doesn’t make as much of a statement on your part.
Damn this is exciting. I really enjoyed “the lab” which isn’t portal but portal adjacent because of the characters etc. and was hoping valve would just do them themselves but I know that’s a big ask
Yea, just got to that part. It also seems that they plan on keeping the previous subscriptions running while additionally leeching off successfully games.
At least the free games don’t have to pay the penalty.
I was able to ditch Windows completely thanks to them, haven’t had to dual boot for years. I remember back when I first tried linux there were only a handful of games that would run without hours of tinkering. Now compatibility is an afterthought; I just assume Steam games will work and I haven’t had any issues yet.
Problem for me is def going to be modding games, have they fixed alt tabbing between games and desktop yet at least? It used to "crash" the game for me if I tabbed out even for a second.
The only (large enough) area which is currently lacking is multiplayer games, especially those with anticheats. Unfortunately, there’s nothing users can do about that other than wait for game developers to enable wine support, which, despite EAC and Battleye significantly simplifying the process, many still haven’t done.
Huge kudos to them, they saw that they were on top of the PC market and wanted to expand, and they found the market of linux users who wanted to game on their machines too. Wine wasn’t up to par for gaming and they took it and ran with it. Beyond that they open sourced proton too, something most companies wouldn’t have done. Even if they quit now the help they gave to the linux community is immeasurable
Proton is based on wine, which is copyleft so valve didn’t exactly have a choice in keeping it open source. I also don’t necessarily think that their goal was to reach the rather small existing user base of Linux users, but rather they wanted to make sure they aren’t at the will of a bigger company (Microsoft) whose product is/was required to run most of what valve makes money with.
This is probably more accurate, their entire model depended on Windows, and if they wanted to make their own devices they would all be forced to either start new or get Linux up and running. Motives aside they did good for the community
Oh yeah their efforts are definitely a huge net benefit for the Linux community, I just don’t like seeing big companies portrayed in a better light than they deserve. When it comes down to it, what valve really cares about is still their bottom line.
Linux users (me included) are only a few percents of all PC users. I don’t think they did it for us as a market, more to have an alternative to windows if they start closing down more (started with Windows 8 I believe). First try they fumbled a bit with the Steam Machines (Stream OS and proton weren’t there yet and the prices were not really competitive) and now nailed it with the Steam Deck. I do love that they seem to care about openness to some degree!
Yeah, it’s probably more about them not being locked in MS’s ecosystem more than anything, but whatever the intention may be, everyone is benefiting from the results.
gamingonlinux.com
Gorące