Trap/door feature branch

[Nomad]

The reason is that currently once you have detect traps the it becomes completely trivial and boring to avoid traps. It just adds a layer of tedium to the game without adding anything interesting whatsoever.

This is definitely true. I think the problem is now that with detection gone but traps auto-detected, the layer of tedium is gone but avoidance being trivial and boring remains. So the challenge of making traps interesting, as I see it:

1. Visible traps are trivial to avoid, BUT hidden traps can be an unfair form of instadeath.
2. If players have a way to manually find traps, they will spam it to always find 100% of traps. BUT if they have no manual search/detection, they're stuck when they know there's a trap but passive search hasn't found it.

Some brainstorming on possible solutions:

• Make visible traps less avoidable. (Pretty difficult to achieve with Angband's many escape options.)
• Make visible traps more tempting to try disarming. (Trapped objects, staircases, etc.)
• Make search/detection a learning curve, so traps are initially mostly hidden but become 100% visible by instadeath depth.
• Nerf nastier traps to make them less instadeath-y. (e.g. allow player the first move after setting off a Summoning trap)
• Come up with methods of repeatedly searching a square that are tough to spam/macro. (e.g. search check on moving but not on resting in place)
• Restore Trap Detection, but as a rare high-end spell/scroll like Banishment that you'd save for use in vaults.
• Introduce partial detection. (e.g. spells that only find magical runes like Teleport and Summoning, but not mechanical traps)
• Trap immunity from worn equipment. (e.g. buff Feather Falling to Levitation so it means you don't fall down trapdoors, add an Anti-Magic ability that stops you setting off summoning traps or teleport runes, etc.)

[TJS]

I play mostly mages, and while I agree that it is tedious to continually detect (not just traps but everything), I can't agree that mages should lose something so integral to their ethos. A mage solves everything with magic, and that has to include traps.

Breaking mages isn't the answer to traps being tedious.

As I've said before, the answer to having to repeatedly detect traps/doors/stairs/visible monsters/invisible monsters/treasure is to make it a buff.

Tedium is integral to mages? It's not just mages that detect traps it's all classes except warriors and they get a rod to do the same job anyway. There's no method of making traps not tedious if you can detect them.

Visible traps are trivial to avoid, BUT hidden traps can be an unfair form of instadeath.

In all my years of playing Angband I don't think I've ever had an instadeath from stepping on a trap. Is this really a problem? If so then the solution is to stop traps causing instadeath rather than make all traps visible all the time.

Agree that repeatedly searching sucks and seeing traps should be made deterministic based on searching skill.

[Carnivean]

Tedium is integral to mages?

Is that seriously the level of discourse you want to sink to?

[TJS]

Is that seriously the level of discourse you want to sink to?

[spara]

Hmmm. In my opinion traps in corridors and in common rooms are mostly a nuisance and I would be happy to see them evolve into oblivion. That would also remove the need for constantly spamming detect traps. They serve a purpose in special rooms and vaults. And for those places I would very much like to have a form of detect traps available.

Now to think about it, just remove traps from corridors and common rooms and I'm a happy player . Nothing else needs to be changed.

[Carnivean]

There's no method of making traps not tedious if you can detect them.

Ok. Let's apply some assumptions and logic:

Mages solve things with magic. Magic for traps means, at a minimum, being able to magically detect traps. Therefore mages should, at a minimum, be able to magically detect traps.

Mages solve things with magic. For a detected/visible trap, the mage should have a magical solution. The conclusion to this depends on the types of challenges that the various traps provide.

I'd be happy if people were able to show that these are wrong without invalidating the premise that mages solve things with magic.

[nikheizen]

Magic for traps means, at a minimum, being able to magically detect traps. Therefore mages should, at a minimum, be able to magically detect traps.

This is wrong, it's not "the minimum."

Mages solve things with magic. For a detected/visible trap, the mage should have a magical solution. The conclusion to this depends on the types of challenges that the various traps provide.

Totally agree with this though.

The first bit is definitely not the case! As long as the second quote is true, mages are still solving traps with magic. I agree with the below quote, but I think getting rid of Detect Traps is an integral part of this branch.

I think that this doesn't break mages in anyway.

[Ingwe Ingweron]

After playing a @ down into the DL70's, I have a little more feel for this branch.

Aside from several crashes (something happening when @ kills monster and they drop treasures, but not easily repeated, so no savefile), it is "playable", but I can't say I'm a fan.

As far as the changes to traps and trap detection, I guess I'm agnostic. I don't really care about the change, but it may be interesting once traps are further developed along the lines discussed in this thread.

What I find baffling, frustrating, tedious, and boring is the changes to stair and door detection.

- Having to wander around to find stairs.
- Having to hug walls to find doors. Especially a problem when dealing with pits/nests/moated rooms. Even with mapping, doors don’t show, so planning an assault on these rooms (or a good avoidance plan) is problematic.
- loss of the trap detection line also loses the reminder to detect again for treasure and, if not more often, at least for monsters.

One thing out of the play that I learned, runeid is definitely a big improvement over regular ID.

[AnonymousHero]

Ok. Let's apply some assumptions and logic:

Mages solve things with magic. Magic for traps means, at a minimum, being able to magically detect traps. Therefore mages should, at a minimum, be able to magically detect traps by casting appropriate buffs and just walking into the traps.

Do you happen to have tried Baldur's Gate II with a solo mage, perchance? They don't get to detect traps, but they can (if high-level enough) protect themselves from all possible trap effects.

Now, this requires either a) an absurd amount of constant buffing/resting, or b) knowing exactly what and where the traps are[1] and casting exactly the right buffs. Of course this is a terrible game-play mechanic, so I've disabled traps entirely in my game, but it is survivable.

I'd be happy if people were able to show that these are wrong without invalidating the premise that mages solve things with magic.

Did I succeed?

(I mean the gameplay of this mechanic sucks, but I think I did technically answer your challenge. Obviously, creativity will have to be employed to come up with a more entertaining mechanic.)

[1] Traps have fixed placement in BG2.

[nikheizen]

Crash on finding a trap on a chest.



Probably not reproducible with the same chest since it managed to panic save instead of crashing and making me repeat the floor.

Also I'd like to note that the create traps spell is actually a good spell now. The instant surround+instant detection makes it into a kind of "snare" forcing you to either phase door, switch to ranged attacks, or waste time disarming traps. Since the traps were invisible before, it was stronger, but also just plain annoying (and usually found on monsters who are already really annoying!).

[Pete Mack]

You don't have to disarm traps you don't care about. You can jump on them instead, with underscore+direction. It's useful for going down levels on pit traps and the like.

[Nick]

What I find baffling, frustrating, tedious, and boring is the changes to stair and door detection.

- Having to wander around to find stairs.
- Having to hug walls to find doors. Especially a problem when dealing with pits/nests/moated rooms. Even with mapping, doors don’t show, so planning an assault on these rooms (or a good avoidance plan) is problematic.
- loss of the trap detection line also loses the reminder to detect again for treasure and, if not more often, at least for monsters.

OK, thanks for this. The idea here was that detection of secret door was like detection of traps - routine, and they weren't secret any more. My solution was to make secret doors much rarer, and remove door detection, which I thought would make secret doors interesting again. In fact, it's just made them annoying. And stair detection was really only taken out because it was kind of lame as a stand-alone spell.

So my next idea is

• Bring back door and stair detection, but not have it detect secret doors;
• Limit secret doors pretty much to just vaults (and maybe one-square pillar entrances), and still have them discoverable on stepping adjacent.

As for the trap detect edge - I'm not going to apologise for you having to take responsibility for your own actions

One thing out of the play that I learned, runeid is definitely a big improvement over regular ID.

This seems like an ongoing theme

[Nick]

You don't have to disarm traps you don't care about. You can jump on them instead, with underscore+direction. It's useful for going down levels on pit traps and the like.

That's a really good point, and it's going to be important in the new traps I'm planning. Attempting to disarm can set the trap off, and still leave you stuck behind it - if you step on it deliberately, at least you get to go past.

Come to think of it, having the odd different effect depending on whether it was a disarm attempt or a (careful, deliberate) walk-on is probably good too.

[Nick]

Magic for traps means, at a minimum, being able to magically detect traps. Therefore mages should, at a minimum, be able to magically detect traps.

Correct if detecting traps is actually a thing everyone has to do. In this branch, though, everyone automatically sees traps when close enough. Sure, mages could still have a detect traps spell, but would you bother?

Actually, that's interesting - maybe you would. Maybe (I can't believe I'm saying this) trap detection should come back, but alongside the automatic noticing of traps, so rather than a thing everyone has to do it becomes a planning ahead tool that's only used sometimes.

For a detected/visible trap, the mage should have a magical solution. The conclusion to this depends on the types of challenges that the various traps provide.

Hence the Disable Traps spell; until 0 fail, though, that can still set off the trap

[calris]

Aside from several crashes (something happening when @ kills monster and they drop treasures, but not easily repeated, so no savefile)

I posted a save file for the same issue and I'm not running this branch. It's an issue in the master branch. I might try a git bisect today