Traps, again

[Derakon]

'Highly-visible dungeon obstacles' are fine, you can put in lava / stationery monsters / turrets / whatever, but to me they aren't traps. Traps are things that are hidden until you either detect them or fall victim to them.

I didn't say they were, but I'm saying that I would rather have obstacles than traps. Would Angband be so bad if it didn't have traps?

[t4nk]

Traps are crap in pretty much every game that I've ever played. They're essentially invisible monsters that don't move... you can't make that very interesting. So leave them only in vaults - since that's where they actually do something - and don't generate them anywhere else. Then you can just restore the old mechanics (detection, searching) and it won't be too obnoxious.

edit: Some arguments:
1) I think that makes some sense from "realism" point of view. Why is the perfectly good dungeon (which is pretty densely populated) littered with traps as if it's a war zone? OTOH, traps in vaults are more plausible, since vaults look like something that is supposed to be heavily guarded.
2) That will bring back old decisions (e.g., if I'm playing a warrior, should I keep a rod of detect traps, or devote this slot to something else?), and old advantage of mages. Rogues would get to choose whether to use unreliable "manual" disarming, or a wand of disarming (at the expense of an inven slot), or ignore the vaults for the time being... etc.

[krazyhades]

Hall of Mist's cave wall traps can be pretty interesting, because:
1) they're only in cave walls (a special bright red tile), and you can expect there may well be *some* kind of trap there, rather than being scared of every random tile
2) they effect monsters as well as players, so they become elements of tactical combat
3) there can be a "well is it worth it to intentionally risk it in order to pick up that thing on the far side" element, which can be neat

[Sky]

you could move the rod of detection up in rarity to rod of healing levels, and bring down in rarity the rod of magic mapping (since there is a cheap staff + scrolls that do that already).
you still get to have rod of Dtraps, but it's an invetory slot for that item alone.

[Antoine]

I didn't say they were, but I'm saying that I would rather have obstacles than traps. Would Angband be so bad if it didn't have traps?

I think it would be a shame to lose them?

A.

[Derakon]

you could move the rod of detection up in rarity to rod of healing levels, and bring down in rarity the rod of magic mapping (since there is a cheap staff + scrolls that do that already).
you still get to have rod of Dtraps, but it's an invetory slot for that item alone.

Could you please expand on how you think this would improve gameplay? What problems does it solve / how does it make the game better? It's not self-evident (to me, at least) from your post.

[AnonymousHero]

everyone always detect traps IF they are under control - not confused, blind, being chased by mobs, and in possession of a rod of detection.
by the way, i forgot to mention that, the "DTrap area" also shows you how far you have detected objects.

... which is almost all the time, at least for non-ironman. The radius of detection is so large (to avoid even worse detection tedium) that it's extremely rare to ever stumble on a trap except through inattention. (Except early game, of course.)

[AnonymousHero]

In general though, I think highly-visible dungeon obstacles make for a much more interesting game than invisible tripwires and trapdoors do. Think about other dungeon crawlers that you play -- do you more enjoy dodging the periodic swinging axe blades, or having a mine explode your legs off because you failed to realize that that floor tile was a pressure plate? Hidden traps just aren't fun -- they don't create any interesting decisions for the player. At best they may introduce added pressure to the current situation, but the vast majority of the time, they get triggered outside of combat, where the player can safely take the time to recover from whatever the trap did.

I suggested awhile back some variations on traps-as-terrain, including e.g. a room where every tile is a pressure plate that causes spikes to shoot from the floor one turn after it's stepped on. I think that approach is really the approach most likely to result in more fun gameplay. It would of course require substantial coding effort, however.

This is the right answer. Personally, I'd say that these "traps-as-terrain" should just either always be visible when in LoS, or automatically become visible at light radius range. The latter would also make light radius slightly more useful as a stat. (It would give you slightly more options for route planning when moving away from enemies into unknown territory.)

[Sky]

ok.

i dont like traps being just a forced skill check. and also i do not like the fact that, with the lowered disarm skill, you will have to be super-careful with trapdoors and summons. this translates to walking really slow, which isn't really that much fun.

the current traps are not good because, except for trapdoors and summons, you can just walk into them because you are immune to practically everything that traps do.

you can detect, which is ok, but even with detect you can still find yourself into situations where you have not been able to detect. you might not have a rod. you might not have had time, or for other reasons you need to walk through an area which you have not detected - for example, your ONE rod is still charging, and you do not want to wake a unique.

with the current traps, you do not need to detect anymore - they just appear in front of you .. which traps simply do not do. otherwise, they aren't traps. the disarm rate is lower, so you will set them off more often, which is disastrous for summon / trapdoor. and as a player, the only thing you can do, is to walk REEEEEALLLY slow. i don't think this is fun at all, i would rather have a detect mechanic, and if there is a problem with detect being too thorough, then simply make it into an endgame tool - increase the recharge rate, force players to carry rods of detect traps, increase the rarity.

4.5 traps are not bad, they are just weak. 4.5 detect isn't bad, it's just too strong.

now, nick's intentions of making traps more varied and interesting is laudable, but they need to be something that the player can work with. if i detect my heart out and still fall into a trapdoor, i would be pissed. And the current "oh no, i dared keep the walk button pressed while walking through a corridor" is not really exciting. (with detect, i simply walk around the trapdoors)
At least, change the default behaviour to have traps stop you and force you to shift+d, with "auto-disarm" being an option.

rockfalls, lava pits, all that stuff - cool. i like it.

(i think the magic mapping thing is pretty straightforward. staff of and scroll of both do the same and they cost peanuts + 1 slot. generally speaking, i just think ALL rods should have their recharge rate slowed.)

[Pete Mack]

If you run, rather than walk, you don't have to worry about stepping on traps.

[chknflyrice]

I am with Carnivean on this. Rouges should be the only class that has any reliable way of detecting traps early in the game. Except trap door and summoning, all the other traps after DL50 or so shouldn't have any effect on most players because they *should* have a sustain on their primary stats. But this should only apply to actual traps. Such things as acid or fire spots should be apparent to everyone but the lowest perception % or intelligence while dart or pits should take a more perceptive player to notice. I like playing Trolls and I think that its laughable that I can have (almost) a 90% chance to disarm a trap.

I think that the problem is not in the current way that traps are detected but that they are too common and too easy to disarm. Rouges should be able to detect/disarm, warriors/paladins/rangers should be dexterous enough to have a winning chance to avoid the consequences if they should set one off, and mages or priests should be able to destroy or go around (by means of stone to mud).

Make the traps scale to DL, punish players for not playing their class the proper way.

[AnonymousHero]

the current traps are not good because, except for trapdoors and summons, you can just walk into them because you are immune to practically everything that traps do.

If you want to try a game with more dangerous traps, try ToME 2.x -- obviously some version before we removed traps . There are traps of "drop every item" and "scatter all items from your character about the level"... and most of the damage traps do enough damage to outright kill just about every character.

It's only forces you into more of a corner wrt. detection. Since traps now can now actually be lethal in many more circumstances, all you do is ensure that players will always get reliable detection and will always cast the Detect Traps spell. This is dull and entirely mechanistic play. (Either that or you just get absurdly roll-the-die deaths.)

In short: I don't think what you're proposing will change anything. In fact, it might actually possibly make the problem worse.

[AmyBSOD]

If you want to try a game with more dangerous traps, try ToME 2.x -- obviously some version before we removed traps . There are traps of "drop every item" and "scatter all items from your character about the level"... and most of the damage traps do enough damage to outright kill just about every character.

It's only forces you into more of a corner wrt. detection. Since traps now can now actually be lethal in many more circumstances, all you do is ensure that players will always get reliable detection and will always cast the Detect Traps spell. This is dull and entirely mechanistic play. (Either that or you just get absurdly roll-the-die deaths.)

In short: I don't think what you're proposing will change anything. In fact, it might actually possibly make the problem worse.

It also has traps of "permanently transform the player's equipped artifact weapon/armor into a heavily cursed junk weapon" and "permanently reduce the + to speed on your high-end artifact to half its original value" traps, which can ruin your entire day. But the grand daddy has to be the trap of silent switching when you're carrying the One Ring and plan to destroy it, because then you're forced to play the "evil" path and cannot get to the postgame, just because you stepped on the wrong square once. In short, ToME 2.3.5 forces you to detect traps at all times or you're dead. At least it has an option that makes you stop when trying to step into a known trap... right until a pet stands on it, and then trying to displace that pet will set off the trap with no confirmation anyway and ruin your character.

Yes, I think it's not very good design, because the traps are so evil that you simply cannot survive without detecting them. But at least there are several easy ways to allow you to detect them, so as long as the player doesn't forget to do so, everything's fine.

[Sky]

So lets find a middle ground.

Detect does not mean disarm. Slow down the rods, forcing more carry weight and more resting, or face potential traps.

Increase the damage from irrelevant to significant.

Lower the disarm rate by class+race.

Add some new swag traps.

There you have it, a tweaked version of 4.5 where traps are now relevant, without annoying the player or breaking the game.

[AnonymousHero]

So lets find a middle ground.
[snip]

There you have it, a tweaked version of 4.5 where traps are now relevant, without annoying the player or breaking the game.

I disagree, I don't think this changes the fundamental problem (boring and tedious mechanics) at all.

I'd suggest trying the LoS-modulated-always-visible-traps-as-terrain idea for a release or two and then deciding if we really want the old traps back. I predict almost nobody will want the old traps back.

(... but seeing as I'm not actually coding on Angband, I guess it's up to whomever who's coding it up. I'm just suggesting that Nick shouldn't be afraid to experiment. The traps-as-terrain feature has precedent and seems to work well in other games, so I don't see why it wouldn't work in Angband. EDIT: Enough words have been spilled over this already, I'll stop talking now.)