[Feature Request] Traps and Double Negatives

[Pete Mack]

P.S. In fact, I think the 'playing the odds' style is more alike to (primitive) chess, more alike to solving a bookkeeping exercise, than is a _fair_ Angband variant, that is a game of tactical skill with a bit of simple strategy (inventory management, matching dungeon depth with combat power). I imagine, in a pure 'playing the odds' style you concentrate on counting the probabilities of unfair death and you make game choices so that the sum of the risk over the game to the end is minimal. You are not 'in the hands of RNG', but instead you average the RNG over 1000 games and win with him by statistics and repetition. I'd rather win by combat skill or die surprised by complex tactical conundrums RNG and emergent AI throws at me that I can't learn to solve in one try.

I have no trouble with wanting better AI. But 'complex tactical conundrums the RNG throws at you' exist in a speed game as well.

The rules are still the same:
(a) don't melee too many monsters that can kill you in a single player turn (eg, via double moves),
(b) Don't melee many monsters that exhaust your resources.

It's just that:

c) there are a _lot_ of monsters like that when you are deep. (The tactical conundrums for nearly all of them involve finding ways to avoid them.)
d) break (a) in a controlled number of cases, when the payoff is high. In V, that means valuable kills. In UnAngband, it usually means dungeon guardians

[MKula]

I like the fact that, despite all your experience (as a player) and gear, you're always in the hands of the RNG.

I think the context of this suggestion is being blown completely out of proportion. The game remains almost completely unchanged by removing traps at DL1. How is the game experience (really) affected by not dying a pointless death in the first 1000 turns? After DL2+, nothing changes. You're still at the mercy of the RNG, just like before. This would just save you from rerolling exactly the same @, after something you couldn't prevent.

Having said that, IMHO I don't think this game is supposed to be about getting owned by the RNG at all. In pretty much every situation, when something arises that is life-threatening (and that happens OFTEN in this game), you get the hell out of there. If you suffer YASD, it is invariably your fault, not the RNG. Angband's development seems to (and always has, really) head towards eliminating any source of death the isn't directly the player's fault. That's what I always assumed 'balancing' the game meant; making it such that any situation is survivable if you play it correctly.

[Bandobras]

Having said that, IMHO I don't think this game is supposed to be about getting owned by the RNG at all. In pretty much every situation, when something arises that is life-threatening (and that happens OFTEN in this game), you get the hell out of there. If you suffer YASD, it is invariably your fault, not the RNG. Angband's development seems to (and always has, really) head towards eliminating any source of death the isn't directly the player's fault. That's what I always assumed 'balancing' the game meant; making it such that any situation is survivable if you play it correctly.

Wow, I'm not alone in this cruel world!

(Of course, balancing includes some other things as well, though. E.g. taking care the game is not too easy, winning strategies are not too boring or too absurd, various game choices are not no-brainers, etc.)

[Anne]

That's precisely the sort of game I prefer to play. Challenging is good. Requiring a lot of thought and caution is good. Time-consuming is good. But it has to feel winnable. I've personally ditched a number of roguelikes I've tried because I couldn't get a character to survive the earliest levels - it was a frustrating and pointless waste of my time. I got sick of rerolling. Let's face it, rerolling is boring. Starting over six times in a day is boring.

When my character dies from something I could conceivably have done differently, then I blame myself - it doesn't make the game seem unwinnable, just more challenging. Therefore, it doesn't sour me on the game itself. On the other hand, when a game just seems to kill off my characters for no apparent reason, that's just frustrating, and I end up ditching it in favor of something that will give me a fighting chance. Truthfully, that's one of the major things about Un that hooked me in the beginning - no matter how many deaths I've experienced, it still -feels- winnable. And that's the key.

[Pete Mack]

The thing is that by the time you get detect traps, this issue becomes a non-issue, since all of this only really applies to CL1.

Also, your argument for not fixing this confuses me; we shouldn't get this changed because... well, we just shouldn't?
Dying from a trap you couldn't have prevented doesn't add anything to the game (since you aren't able to learn from your mistakes, etc), but certainly takes away, since you didn't do anything wrong but now you've got to reroll.

Well, there's fault and there's fault. The proximal cause--stepping on a trap without detection--is not 'your fault'. The root cause may or may not be. If you are scuttling around on dl 1, you are not leveling fast and you are likely to hit the traps. If you dive immediately to dl 5, you will level up quickly, and can more likely survive your first acid trap. It's the same argument that says it can to pay off to dive to stat gain depth, with or without free action.

Note that the same argument against traps at dl 1 can be made against out of depth monsters at dl 1. If You come down and Fang, Grip and Wolf are waiting just out of sight, you will probably die. With disconnected stairs you will certainly die.

I've suffered this death at least as often as I've died to traps.

[kathoum]

I've personally ditched a number of roguelikes I've tried because I couldn't get a character to survive the earliest levels - it was a frustrating and pointless waste of my time. I got sick of rerolling. Let's face it, rerolling is boring. Starting over six times in a day is boring.

I definitely agree with you.

Probably I didn't express myself clearly enough, so I try to reword. I would not eliminate a source for unavoidable death, provided that:
1) The chances for it are very low. This is a case for DL1 traps, for several reasons (not all kinds of traps would kill a CL1 player; not all chars at DL1 are CL1; traps are very rare at DL1); in fact, I've lost far more characters to Maggot's dogs or to spiders or DE mages than to traps.
2) Characters quickly acquire a means to avoid id, so it isn't threatening for the whole game. The fact that advancing in the game puts you in front of ever-changing challenges is very desirable.

Therefore, when I die and I feel that it wasn't my fault, I take it as an anticipation of what could be a standard problem for higher level characters ("My third-level-hobbit-warrior is fleeing with 5HP and this dark cave may be trapped; better not to die like my uncle the first-level-mage and use my last potion."), and it gives me an insight into a mysterious game.

What I don't want is a checklist of necessary "immunities" (with extended meaning, so a rod of detect traps plays the role of "trap resistance"), and the warranty that if I have all of them, I can't die.

[Bandobras]

Note that the same argument against traps at dl 1 can be made against out of depth monsters at dl 1. If You come down and Fang, Grip and Wolf are waiting just out of sight, you will probably die. With disconnected stairs you will certainly die.

Slightly OOT: This is probably why some variants (e.g. Un) ban The Dogs from appearing OOD. I also don't like connected stairs (just as no-delay ?Teleport Level), because they are cheap escapes and crutches against instadeath, whereas proper balancing is required instead.

What I don't want is a checklist of necessary "immunities" (with extended meaning, so a rod of detect traps plays the role of "trap resistance"), and the warranty that if I have all of them, I can't die.

Yes, a fixed set of mandatory immunities is bad. But now that traps can't kill you from full HP in Un, trap detection is no longer so crucial. And to make the game more challenging, I'm rather inclined to make trap detection fail from time to time. E.g. let some traps be generated with lower level than current DL and let trap detection fail for those. If traps are boring, cruel and not fun, let's remove them from the game or change them. If occasional traps are fun, let's share the fun with everybody, instead of leaving them only for barbarian warriors...

[kathoum]

Yes, a fixed set of mandatory immunities is bad. But now that traps can't kill you from full HP in Un, trap detection is no longer so crucial. And to make the game more challenging, I'm rather inclined to make trap detection fail from time to time.

Very interesting feature. Indeed I've often thought that trap/door detection spells are overpowered wrt the Searching skill, and the latter is almost useless (even at moderate depth) because nobody can afford falling in a Trap Door at the wrong time.

[Big Al]

Making it so that you can find traps that aren't directly beside you would help a lot, I think (does un do this?). Balance it so that with a moderately-high search skill, you could find a trap in ~half a dozen turns most of the time, so walking down a corridor, you can probably find the trap before you reach it. As it stands now, I've never, ever used a ring of searching - they're often cursed and not useful even when not.

[Bandobras]

nobody can afford falling in a Trap Door at the wrong time.

Hmmm, I guess I would make Trap Door detectable every time or perhaps remove it altogether. I hate it personally. Summoning traps are as dangerous, but much less frustrating.

Wait, Un will have semi-persistent dungeons in the future, so you will always be able to get back up, after falling through Trap Door! Problem solved.

Making it so that you can find traps that aren't directly beside you would help a lot, I think (does un do this?).

Yes, I think so.

Balance it so that with a moderately-high search skill, you could find a trap in ~half a dozen turns most of the time, so walking down a corridor, you can probably find the trap before you reach it. As it stands now, I've never, ever used a ring of searching - they're often cursed and not useful even when not.

I'm just playing a Druadan Warrior that is _horrible_ with magic devices (there is no more 5% guaranteed activation in Un), but wears sandals of Searching +6, never searches actively and still triggers only, I think, 1 in 20 traps he would stumble upon with no searching ability. That's more than acceptable, especially that stat draining trap effects are temporary in Un. I hope there are no XP draining traps deeper down or I'd have to start carrying tones of trap detection scrolls (where to find so many?).

[pav]

Make Feather Falling protect you from trap doors. Suddenly trap detection is not necessity anymore. Problem solved!

[MKula]

If you are scuttling around on dl 1, you are not leveling fast and you are likely to hit the traps. If you dive immediately to dl 5, you will level up quickly, and can more likely survive your first acid trap.

Whether you're on DL1 or DL5 isn't the point, here. It's CL1 vs CL5 that this 'no traps' thing concerns. The fact that you'll level faster by going straight for DL5 is a given; that's not the argument here.

The problem is that you have to *get there*, and the part that causes the 'insta-deaths' that we're discussing here is the stretch of road from your very first turn on DL1, all the way up to the point where you hit CL2. By the time you reach CL2, it's more or less assumed that a trap won't be enough to kill you (regardless of what floor you're actually on, be it 1 or 5). The goal is to to prevent:

You roll a new @.
You spend a few turns in town buying supplies.
You take the stairs to DL1.
You take a few steps.
You fall into a spiked pit.
You die.

This scenario adds nothing to the game at all. If there are no traps on DL1, and you kill monsters in your search for the stairs to DL2 - enough to get you to CL2 - you're cruisin'. Removing the insta-death won't affect how you play after DL1, but it will allow you to keep playing without the need for re-rolling due to an unavoidable, and ultimately unnecessary factor.

[MKula]

Making it so that you can find traps that aren't directly beside you would help a lot.

This is actually a pretty cool suggestion, which would make the search skill much more meaningful. Indeed, if you made this apply to all searchable things (traps and doors), all of a sudden =Searching is no longer the TMJ it was before. It would also make my suggestion (no traps on DL1) pretty much obsolete, since this would address that problem quite well.
Two birds with one stone?

/me supports this idea!