What we need: More heavy curses

[RogerN]

If curses are going to add any really interesting flavor to the game, they have to be (1) not deadly and (2) very hard to discover.

I think that if you're going to include cursed items, the player ought to be tempted to use them. The gameplay value comes from player decisions: is it worth enduring the curse to use this item?

If the curse is deadly then the item will never be used, so deadly curses are not very interesting from a gameplay perspective. But if the curse is hard to discover, as you suggest, then the player isn't making an informed choice (or any choice at all), and the curse is similarly uninteresting.

One way to tempt players might be to make curse activation very rare. For example, consider an aggravation curse which has a 1 in 1000 chance of aggravating every creature on the level. The curse must be significant enough that its activation is a non-trivial event, but rare enough that the player isn't annoyed.

[Mangojuice]

I'll never understand the obsession with curses I guess. To me they're just an annoyance that get in the way of fun gameplay. I think if you're going to add another feature, especially one that makes the game harder, you need to ask, 'how annoying will this be?' If the answer is, 'substantially' then it's a no-go.

It all depends what you find fun in a 'band. Personally I don't think I'd care much for black curses because I'm not a challenge-junkie: these games are plenty hard enough for me as they are. And what I like is powering up and taking on interesting challenges... and a challenge to avoid black curses may not be much fun. So maybe this is more of a good idea for an ironman mode than a standard feature.

I think the urge to have curses is one based on realism more than anything else. It just doesn't make sense that with so much evil magic in the dungeon, and adventurers exploring it that rely so heavily on equipment, that there wouldn't be curses designed to hinder or kill adventurers.