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Smiths are already on a rather strict turn limit though, which limits the use of searching. Not to mention tedious play being tedious. I for one wouldn't mind replacing false floors with supersized alarm traps which draws monsters to the level from all staircases simultaneously. Should provide about the same level of danger (since most escape routes will be blocked) whilst not tickling ye olde OCD bone due to forges/artifacts.Comment
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Dungeons of Dredmor had traps become visible when you moved next to them, with a perception-like skill that could extend how far you could see traps. Traps still offered a tactical challenge, since you had to decide whether to try to disarm them or just avoid them, but it wasn't a "randomly you take damage/fall through the floor" mechanic, which was nice.Comment
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And there for some unfathomable reason the sword of the King himself. Aranruth, put on display by some evil genius as if by mockery to him. His eyes fixed on Aranruth, the heirloom of his people, he steps forward and notices the warning sign "Due to excavation work, please use the bypass. GoblinDig Inc."
Cruel randomness makes stories, streamlined bullshit destroys it. It doesn't even matter that there is no player skill involved, here you have a branching point / story depth, whether you notice the trap or not. If you notice all traps, it is just a sad joke, the challenge is stopping long enough between moves to notice, seriously? I had similar situations more than once (although I play with higher perception than others and sometimes do notice the traps), but of course a half blind and deaf dwarf should trigger each trap, if you are roleplaying that way enjoy the hilarity.Last edited by taptap; May 25, 2014, 20:30.Comment
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There's plenty of wiggle room between the player coddling necessary for mass appeal roguelike derivatives that sell millions of copies, and unrelenting and uncompromising (and yes, at some level, possibly intentionally cruel) game systems of some true roguelikes, played by a small crowd of people worldwide.
Personally I thank the historical angband coders for the foresight to put so much of the game into edit files. I have zero compunction against changing stuff I find to be unnecessarily arbitrary. The justifications for such things are in almost every case general and theoretical (adding tensions, creating good stories, etc) and could be applied to pretty much any arbitrary difficulty added to the game. Which is not to say all potentially frustrating things are bad "game design", but they're definitely not necessarily all good "game design", to whatever extent that term means something. It is very difficult to make a general argument one way or another.
But the proof is definitely in the pudding if one finds the game more fun after changing it.Comment
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It's not quite so trivial as you make it sound. Traps become terrain that you can't factor into your decision-making until you're already right next to them. Suddenly the tile you had planned to move through isn't as harmless as it seemed. In a combat situation this creates some interesting decisions. Outside of combat it's pretty pointless, I will grant.Comment
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I am not a fan of deliberate cruelty, as in nethack/angband instadeath to unknowable, unseeable something, offscreen breath, whatever, that is just bad game design imo. Uncompromising randomness w/ traps means you indeed trigger them and suffer their effects (and these aren't miss dice roll and die for the low perception builds we are talking about), if you do not notice and/or remove them. This is the price for emergent behaviour (move greedily to artefact, run into alarm trap, be trapped in vault with suddenly awoke cats), which makes gameplay memorable at best. Uncompromising randomness is the principle in Sil combat as well, leading to the different choices & possibilities in it, which I do not feel the same way in Angband variants I tried (not very successfully), somehow everything feels the same with the right modifiers. And yes, this uncompromising randomness in combat includes among the more memorable and rare events:
... stares into your eyes. (Evasion modifier -36 applied
)
... claws you!!
You died.
And yes, I do resent proposals to take this illusion of depth / emergent behaviour away from me by streamlining gameplay to requirements of players, who happily ignore perception while playing and for that reason alone want to make it even more redundant for everyone else. Thanks for listening.Comment
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Died from auto-picking up an arrow today. Was fleeing down a corridor, had grabbed another stack of arrows somewhere else in the dungeon & all of a sudden slowed at just the wrong time. Is there even a way to step on your own arrows & not pick them up?Comment
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Pretty sure autopickup is supposed to consume 0 energy? Have I misunderstood how it works this whole time??Glaurung, Father of the Dragons says, 'You cannot avoid the ballyhack.'Comment
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Cruel randomness (+ not having song of freedom) story:
Found Galadriel with an intelligent* Finarfin lass at 200', sailed smoothly downwards. Picked up a strength drain on the way, still sailed smoothly downwards, subtlety and parry and Shortsword of Galadriel - yes, keep them coming, who needs high strength anyway. Bump into web (perception was 10). Be trapped, try to escape for agonizing turns from the shadow spider, drink potions, hope, try again, try staff, but just agonizingly die in the web even seeing the shadow spider in the eye while she is doing the deed. All because you are just not strong enough to free yourself.
* Focus + concentration at start.Comment
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