Terraria vs Minecraft. My initial feeling and ideas.

[dampi256]

This post is my initial feeling wrt this topic and not my final verdict on both games. It is a work in progress and I'd like your thoughts on the subject.

I recently won a copy of Terraria on Steam last week and absolutely love it.

I played it the whole weekend and could not put it down. This is strange because I do not like side scrolling games with "dated" graphics but this one hooked me immediately.

While I like Minecraft, I feel an element of objective based game play, "progress" and player incentive is missing. I know that you can craft, build up certain portals and go to different worlds and defeat bosses to finally get to the Ender Dragon and get the end game, but it all feels like it just hangs in the air and that the game isn't really too fazed about it.

You get strongholds and mines to plunder but again, it is not that exciting. Enchanting is fun but is it hella difficult to finally get enough bookcases to make any worthwhile enchantments in game (without cheating that is). The mining is ok and the enemies are varied enough though but it all just feels like you get lost in creating and building more than you are exploring and really seeing new and interesting things.

With Terraria I was thrown into a world that looks way different to what I'm used to in Minecraft and I had no idea what to do at first, so I just chopped some trees and started going down a random cave system. There I saw pots to break, chests to open and I happened upon a stronghold type place with bookshelves and other traps and goodies to plunder. I swam underwater to get to isolated caves with gold chests in them and encountered enemies that were hunting me instead of just standing there waiting for me to kill them.

Now in general both games are the same with different biomes and enemy types, caves and strongholds, mining, crafting, etc. but the crafting and character progression in Terraria is (in my opinion) a much deeper and much more involved system than Minecraft's. I then went up to the surface and built a house (which I struggled with cause I had no idea why this structure was not recognised as a house) and build a house with 2 rooms. I Finally figured out what makes a house livable and finished the 2 room house. I went for a stroll and there I got a message that an NPC moved in. What the heck?! How cool was that!

I then went stumbled upon this castle/stronghold place with an old man and all the sudden BAM! a skeleton head boss thing killed me. I almost wet myself.

So I went onto YouTube to investigated the game a bit more and oh. my. gosh. There are loads of stuff to do and quite a few massive bosses to fight. I love the fact that NPC's move into your house and set up shop.

What I like most about Terraria is the fact that you keep your character's stats with every world you create. That adds to the longevity of the game as you don't just start off with a clean slate every time you create a new world and your character can develop further form there. You can have multiple characters and each character is customisable which is great.

So I am in the honeymoon phase with Terraria just like I was with Minecraft but somehow this feels different. This feels more like a long-term relationship developing that will last for many a year... till the new craze drops.

Here's screenshot of my 2nd world. It's a large world I created last night with my initial house setup and should provide hours of exploring and fun.



What are your thought on the game?

[Pooky]

I prefer Minecraft personally because of the Multiplayer.

It's amazing to join servers and create amazing things with other people.

The immersion is increased because of the first person aspect of the game.

[GlacieredPyro]

I enjoy both of these a lot.
The one I keep coming back to is MC though.

While it is hard at first to get things like an enchanting table and such the more you play the more proficient you become.
The lack of "end game" is due to it being pure sandbox. It's often hard to figure out how to have fun in MC. That sounds coutner productive but having had many large scale projects it makes sense to MC players.

The latest project we have is building a 1:1 scale feudal japanese village with castle et al. We have an automated train station that connects districts and mining zones. These type of projects makes the game for me.

Teraria on the other hand is much more adventure driven. I find myself spending loads of time exploring and slaying rather than mining and building. The weapons and armors are very creative and makes said exploring very interesting. Hard mode and finite world kills it for me though. Once you go hard mode your world get pretty much ruined and your left killing the bosses and then ???. Unless you are willing to create a "V jack" to keep your base safe.

I haven't played since the update so I will likely give it a spin soon and see if it can rekindle my love.

[Lycanthrope]

I prefer Minecraft personally because of the Multiplayer.

Which Terraria has as well? What is it about the multiplayer that you like?

It's amazing to join servers and create amazing things with other people.

Still sounds like what you can do in both games

I prefer Terraria primarily because of its content--it's almost "story-like" whereas Minecraft is really just "do what you want and whatever."

[Pooky]

Which Terraria has as well? What is it about the multiplayer that you like?



Still sounds like what you can do in both games

I prefer Terraria primarily because of its content--it's almost "story-like" whereas Minecraft is really just "do what you want and whatever."

I like that there are extremely expansive servers with themes and such. I played for a while on a roleplaying server that was simply amazing; you could set up shop in the village, go visit other peoples villages, make a house in someone's village. All the different villages had themes eg. egyptian, norse, etc. depending on the people's characters 'orc, elf, etc etc'

I like Minecraft because of the 'do what you want forever'. It's literally endless.

A big factor is the first person vs. 2d and I think for the sandbox genre a first person experience is way more immersive.

That said, I don't think it's really that fair to compare the games because they use completely different things eg 3d vs 2d.

[DieGrootHammer]

For me Minecraft is where my heart lies. Sure Terraria has more stuff to build and more stuff to explore, and sure Terraria is more rewarding towards exploration. But Minecraft is one of those games that I lose myself in very quickly. I don't know if it the perspective or the world or what it is, but I have a more emotional connection to the Minecraft worlds than Terraria.

That being said, I do think that each game had their own strong points, and although they do seem similar, they are enough differences between the games to give you a unique experience.

[GlacieredPyro]

Also MC can look amazeballs.
Here's a screeny with some shaders when our village was still a baby :

[DieGrootHammer]

Also MC can look amazeballs.
Here's a screeny with some shaders when our village was still a baby : screen snip

Nice!! Which mods and/or texture packs are you using here?

[GlacieredPyro]

Nice!! Which mods and/or texture packs are you using here?

That is

sphaxpurebdcraft x512 The only texture pack I bother using 99% of the time. Also available from x32 up.
The mods are zeus shaders running with the forge loader.

Edit : You should see some of the other screenies, that one is not even close to the hottest.

[DieGrootHammer]

That is

sphaxpurebdcraft x512 The only texture pack I bother using 99% of the time. Also available from x32 up.
The mods are zeus shaders running with the forge loader.

Edit : You should see some of the other screenies, that one is not even close to the hottest.

Thanks. Going to download them as well, as I have been looking for a decent shader to Minecraft.

I think this is a good example of why Minecraft is so popular as well. the amount of mods created for the game is mind blowing. I know Terraria has mod support, but not sure how big the community is there.