Because there is no real design plan or roadmap for angband, referring to my own post lets discuss this:
1) What is broken in current 3.3 vanilla?
2) how to fix it?
3) what new should/could we incorporate into game without breaking the general feel.
I'll start:
Broken constantly repeated "press this button to avoid death" -thing:
Traps, trap disarming and detection. This is currently broken and has been broken actually for entire game history. There is searching ability that is tied to this and it's main function was to detect traps and secret doors.
However after few first levels this becomes "press this button to avoid death" situation, and searching loses it's importance. Warriors use rods, magic users use spells. Traps can't be ignored because they are too deadly, and detecting them is too trivial and just incorporates tedium into game. Same applies to secret doors.
We either
1) need to make traps less deadly so that detection can go away
2) need to make detection less "press this button to avoid death"
3) need to make trap disarming less easy or unnecessary task
I think potentially deadly traps should stay, and we should concentrate on detection and disarming instead.
There is already searching ability which is next to useless that has PVAL. Lets make is useful. Make trap detection LoS thing (requiring visibility) that depends of your searching ability. With 100% searching detect traps as soon as it is in LoS. Remove all magical aids for trap detection.
How to deal with trap after it is discovered:
Make traps avoidable. With stat/skill-depended saving throw you can just plain walk thru a trap field without triggering them. I prefer DEX for such a stat "you carefully avoid triggering the trap". Maybe even for undetected traps if you make a save with increased failure chance.
Trap disarming should be skill that can reach 100% while trap avoidance cannot, but with usually much higher failure chance at early levels (more difficult skill). Maybe only rogues could reach that 100%.
Door detection could go away as well, but there is a catch in that. With door detection you get an idea about dungeon layout, where to expect rooms and corridors. If there is a door, there must be at least an corridor. That means there is something there that you might want to investigate. Do we want to keep that? Does it matter? If it does, how would we compensate if door detection goes away?
Currently door detection does not detect only secret doors, it detects all doors as well as stairs. It is into game not for secret doors (those are pretty trivial to find even without spell), but for giving you info about where to go. This is important for player, but it isn't something you absolutely need to do like trap detection (there is no border mark for door detection). Doors wont kill you. I think that should stay.
1) What is broken in current 3.3 vanilla?
2) how to fix it?
3) what new should/could we incorporate into game without breaking the general feel.
I'll start:
Broken constantly repeated "press this button to avoid death" -thing:
Traps, trap disarming and detection. This is currently broken and has been broken actually for entire game history. There is searching ability that is tied to this and it's main function was to detect traps and secret doors.
However after few first levels this becomes "press this button to avoid death" situation, and searching loses it's importance. Warriors use rods, magic users use spells. Traps can't be ignored because they are too deadly, and detecting them is too trivial and just incorporates tedium into game. Same applies to secret doors.
We either
1) need to make traps less deadly so that detection can go away
2) need to make detection less "press this button to avoid death"
3) need to make trap disarming less easy or unnecessary task
I think potentially deadly traps should stay, and we should concentrate on detection and disarming instead.
There is already searching ability which is next to useless that has PVAL. Lets make is useful. Make trap detection LoS thing (requiring visibility) that depends of your searching ability. With 100% searching detect traps as soon as it is in LoS. Remove all magical aids for trap detection.
How to deal with trap after it is discovered:
Make traps avoidable. With stat/skill-depended saving throw you can just plain walk thru a trap field without triggering them. I prefer DEX for such a stat "you carefully avoid triggering the trap". Maybe even for undetected traps if you make a save with increased failure chance.
Trap disarming should be skill that can reach 100% while trap avoidance cannot, but with usually much higher failure chance at early levels (more difficult skill). Maybe only rogues could reach that 100%.
Door detection could go away as well, but there is a catch in that. With door detection you get an idea about dungeon layout, where to expect rooms and corridors. If there is a door, there must be at least an corridor. That means there is something there that you might want to investigate. Do we want to keep that? Does it matter? If it does, how would we compensate if door detection goes away?
Currently door detection does not detect only secret doors, it detects all doors as well as stairs. It is into game not for secret doors (those are pretty trivial to find even without spell), but for giving you info about where to go. This is important for player, but it isn't something you absolutely need to do like trap detection (there is no border mark for door detection). Doors wont kill you. I think that should stay.
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