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Comment by kruczek | Hacker News Reader

> I would be really amazed if this person makes a good game when their focus is make players do A rather than B instead of "how do I make this game as much fun to play as possible".

Would you consider Terraria a good game? I think at one point it was the highest rated game on Steam. And yet that game is exactly this way - it makes players do A rather than B: it is pretty much impossible to play it WITHOUT the wiki, because of the design: there is no list of all craftable items in-game.

And because of this I could never really get into it, because I had to tediosly collect all my resources and then go to each crafting station one by one, simply to see what I am able to craft.

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You entirely base your opinion about what you know the game CAN LOOK LIKE.

If you don't have an expectation of Terraria, you don't know the depth and therefore play the game as it is.

The only thing that is harming your fun is knowing how it could be by watching videos, streams whatever.

Saying "it is impossible to play without a wiki" is entirely self inflicted by wrong expectation management. Of course people want shortcuts but a person without internet access wouldn't call Terraria unplayable without a wiki.

You are partially correct - of course my expectations for Terraria were set partially by prior knowledge of similar games. But they were also set by Terraria screenshots, trailers and feature lists, where crafting was presented as one of the core features. Nowhere did they mention they are missing such a basic feature as a crafting list and I'd never suspect a modern game may be missing such a basic feature. So I don't really think it's unreasonable expectation on my part.

A person who lived under the rock and found Terraria one day, probably wouldn't call it unplayable, having nothing to compare it against. I remember back in old days, where you'd have to figure out many cryptic mechanisms on your own in the old games. But yet here we are - decades later, and yes I do expect modern games would fully learn from mistakes of the past and provide such basic functionality as crafting lists in the game itself.

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