Door Clutter

[amaril]

Doors are currently an obvious source of tedious-but-correct behavior. If the player has animate skeleton and is willing to fiddle around with their inventory, they can always (I believe) clear off a door space. I never do this myself--picking up robes/whatnot and dropping them somewhere else is a hassle and is not worth the cost to 'fun,' even though it is clearly the optimal solution. Doors are powerful, and being able to block off los while running away from threats can put the player at a serious advantage. If 'door clutter' is intended to pose a tactical challenge (eg. 'don't kill enemies on a door if you can help it'), I think that there is probably a better way of accomplishing this without rewarding tedium. Frankly, 'doors not closing' seems like more of a logistical problem than an intentional design choice.

Some possible solutions:
When you close a door, items could be pushed onto an adjacent space (similar to how a vault warden can push the player off a door when they activate their sealing rune). Problems with this solution include (a) the possibility of dumping items into deep water/lava (I can think of a Geh 7 vault where this could come up), and (b) the new finicky behavior encouraged involving doors and reanimation spells/corpse rot. (a) doesn't seem like too big a deal (the game could always warn the player), and (b) could be solved (if it is indeed a problem; for the most part it seems tough to abuse but I am sure a situation would arise where pushing a corpse would place it in a better location for corpse rotting) by having skeletons/corpses be destroyed when a door closes on them. The issue here is that a new special case is created, and it would be tough to inform a player of this ahead of time. This whole solution assumes that 'doors not closing' is unintentional, of course.

If doors not closing sometimes is intended behavior, doors could be destroyed whenever an item is placed on a door space by any means. This seems harsh, and would be tough to explain from a flavor standpoint, but this is basically what already happens, except that currently you have the option of futzing around with your inventory to clear out the door space.

I am sure that there are problems I am not perceiving related to these solutions. There are certainly other solutions to the 'door fiasco' in general. But current door behavior is a bummer, and could probably be improved in some way.

[chequers]

remove doors

[amaril]

The question is whether the 'tactical complexity' that doors add to crawl makes up for the 'mechanical complexity' that they also add. I'm not so sure that removing doors would actually improve crawl's core gameplay. Doors enable the player to defer dangerous combats/break line of sight for a few turns against enemies with ranged attacks, and in the early game these tactical considerations are especially relevant. It is possible that doors don't actually impact tactics much because their 'correct' use is often easy to gauge (close the door), but even if this is the case doors still create tension by concealing information from the player.

[jejorda2]

I don't feel like explaining why right now, but I think that:
Deciding whether or not to open a runed door is fun.
Deciding whether or not to open a standard door is usually relegated to autoexplore.
Deciding whether or not too close a door is not fun, because the decision is often obvious. (The door is blocked, or my ranged attacks are better than theirs, or there is no threat, or I close the door.)

So I would vote for removing doors once they are opened. Dungeon builders were bad door framers.

[BeardTony]

I'm against the idea of removing doors outright because I like running into a small nook, closing the doors behind me and resting. I like opening doors, seeing a sleeping centaur and then closing the door again. I like forcing high level ranged attackers to walk up to me. I feel like opening and closing doors is fun.

As far as cluttered doors go, I think this might be an interesting place to put in a strength check since after item weight was removed, strength lost some of its purpose. I think Chei characters get the most out of tactically closing door anyway, and they end up with crazy strength. I'm not too attached to this idea even though I'm the one proposing it. I just figured I'd say it since it crossed my mind.

[Aethrus]

I don't feel like explaining why right now, but I think that:
Deciding whether or not to open a runed door is fun.
Deciding whether or not to open a standard door is usually relegated to autoexplore.
Deciding whether or not too close a door is not fun, because the decision is often obvious. (The door is blocked, or my ranged attacks are better than theirs, or there is no threat, or I close the door.)

So I would vote for removing doors once they are opened. Dungeon builders were bad door framers.

I hope there's a Centaur far on the other side of a door in a narrow hallway on D3 waiting for you if this happened.

[bananaken]

I think allowing the carrying corpses is the lesser of two evils here, and what should have been fixed is whatever tedious abuse is done after picking up corpses, not the act itself of picking them up.

Closing doors with 'C' could just shift items away from the door tile to a valid adjacent tile, and cancel if there is no valid adjacent tile to move them to.

[byrel]

I think allowing the carrying corpses is the lesser of two evils here, and what should have been fixed is whatever tedious abuse is done after picking up corpses, not the act itself of picking them up.

Closing doors with 'C' could just shift items away from the door tile to a valid adjacent tile, and cancel if there is no valid adjacent tile to move them to.

I really really really don't want to pick up everything in the door tile, then go back and drop it elsewhere. I don't think there's really a good reason to pick up corpses. Just allowing close to move them would be fine.

[bananaken]

I really really really don't want to pick up everything in the door tile, then go back and drop it elsewhere. I don't think there's really a good reason to pick up corpses. Just allowing close to move them would be fine.

I think you're misunderstanding something, I'm saying corpses shouldn't somehow be movable thanks to doors yet not capable of being picked up. If I were a new player I would find that needlessly confusing. Closing doors also shifting items away from the door tile is fine, and I wish that were a feature already (even if it had a delay proportional to the amount of items on the door, still way less keystrokes).

[njvack]

If the intent is to have a door be closable even if there are items on its square (and I think that would be good) maybe players should just be able to do that, and have the items and the door be on the same square. Items can be on the same square as monsters and bushes and that's no big deal now.

We don't suddenly need to be able to pick up corpses again or anything. Auto-pushing items also sounds more complicated than this problem needs.

[Aethrus]

If the intent is to have a door be closable even if there are items on its square (and I think that would be good) maybe players should just be able to do that, and have the items and the door be on the same square. Items can be on the same square as monsters and bushes and that's no big deal now.

We don't suddenly need to be able to pick up corpses again or anything. Auto-pushing items also sounds more complicated than this problem needs.

This seems like the right solution, or at least the one that isn't worse than the problem. Doors you're retreating through being stuck open because an arrow shot you in the doorway is dumb.

[bananaken]

If the intent is to have a door be closable even if there are items on its square (and I think that would be good) maybe players should just be able to do that, and have the items and the door be on the same square. Items can be on the same square as monsters and bushes and that's no big deal now.

We don't suddenly need to be able to pick up corpses again or anything. Auto-pushing items also sounds more complicated than this problem needs.

The intent (I think) of having doors being blocked is to present the player with a situation where they have to weigh whether clearing the blockade is worth the risk of getting a door's cover again. If you can casually close doors regardless of items being there it'd be throwing out the baby with the bathwater, IMO. Sure, you got rid of all the annoying (yaktaur repeatedly leaves an arrow on the door tile), tedious (too many items on a door tile), or impossible (corpses with no ability to dispose them) cases of doors being blockaded, but sometimes you actually have an interesting scenario.

That said, this is certainly the easiest solution to implement.