Proposal: Traps No Longer Spawning On Pre-set Tiles

[Tiktacy]

The Issues:

Generally speaking, a lot of people(including myself) agree that there exists a number of issues with traps that need to be resolved:

First of all, traps are uninteresting and rarely seem to effect gameplay(aside from shafts, maybe zot traps).

Second, the way traps are done currently encourages tedious optimal play. As hilarious and impractical as duvessa's example of "only walking on squares you have already stepped on to avoid traps" is, what it represents is improving game polish. In otherwords, even if nobody does it, its still technically an issue, and fixing it improves the overall quality of the game(even if only a little).

Additionally, I think the flavor of traps needs to be expanded on and improved. But I won't go into this too much since I think improving the quality of traps in the game overall will lead to improved flavor.

How to Improve These Issues:

I think the very first thing that needs to be done is to change the way traps "spawn." As mentioned above, traps encourage tedious optimal behavior. But more importantly, the main issue that this causes is that the player will almost never be stepping into squares they have not already stepped on while in combat since they will be luring monsters back to a safe location, and as a result, traps almost never appear during combat.

Traps in my mind are meant to turn a normal combat situation into a real problem, a battle that the player has to fight their way out of. Considering the fact that their exists no traps that cause "permanent damage", I can only assume they are intended for surprising the player in combat.

Rather than having traps occupy specific floor tiles, give all floor tiles an equal chance to spawn a trap whenever you step on it, not matter how many times you step on it. Then, when a trap is activated, the type of trap is chosen from an array based on the depth and branch the player is currently in. The chance of a trap spawning is completely dependent on how much the devs want traps to effect the player and how often. In my mind, a nice goal to shoot for is to have a trap spawn once every floor or maybe every other floor. Its worth mentioning that a nice biproduct of this will be that it can potentially discourage the constant use of luring monsters back to a far off kill hole.

Now, my proposal won't work with the some of the traps that currently exist. The traps that currently exist are meant for the old approach. The goal of these new traps is to turn a popcorn or almost-popcorn battle into a battle which requires the use of real strategy rather than just kiting the poor bastards into a kill hole half way across the floor. So, here are just a few examples of traps that can potentially fulfill this goal:

• Blink Trap: Causes the player to blink in the opposite direction in which they stepped into the tile.
• Blinding Trap: Reduces the LoS of the player significantly, but the enemies around you will still see you.
• Bravery Trap: Gives the player a major boost to all defensive and offensive abilities, but prevents the player from moving while enemies are in LoS. It would be a new buff/debuff. To justify this flavor wise, theme it towards "enchanting" the player with a magical concentrated manifestation of bravery.
• Beast Trap: Turns the player into an animal. Porcupine, bat, maybe even dragon are just a few examples.

Teleportation traps and alarm traps both work with the new system I am proposing, so those can also be added to the list even though they wouldn't be "new." Also, keep in mind these are just a few ideas I came up with off the top of my head, there are definitely better choices out their for traps.

Shafts will also be among the array, not sure if people consider those traps though, but they should definitely act the same. Also, just as a few side notes, having traps only trigger while in LoS of a monster might be worth doing to prevent the annoyance of auto-travel interruptions.

How This Is an Improvement:

This would remove the tedious behavior of backtracking across tiles already stepped on(even though only an absolute madman would do this). It would also make traps actually serve a real purpose in the game. As they exist now, they add very very little to the game, I can't remember the last time I said "I just stepped on a trap!" and it WASN'T an alarm trap or a shaft. Additionally, this can help to encourage tediously kiting monsters and pillar dancing as an optimal strategy as it presents an element of risk to the player.

Not only will this effect gameplay, but it will always improve the overall polish of the game and remove a feature that is uninteresting, replacing it with something much more exciting and with a lot more potential.

TL;DR:

Spoiler: show

Make traps happen randomly(with the type chosen from an array) whenever you step on a tile, no matter how many times you step on it. Replace the current traps with more interesting ones. This discourage tedious kiting and pillar dancing, and also makes traps more relevant to gameplay.

[Quazifuji]

I have two major problems with this:

1. Unless I'm missing something to prevent this, it would frequently interrupt auto-navigating explored areas, which would be incredibly annoying for things like stashing.
   
2. It would just be plain frustrating, and a lot of players would passionately hate it.
   

2 is especially important. Imagine a new player learning about the game. They get into a tough battle, try to reposition into a safer spot, step on a blink trap, and end up in the middle of the enemies and die. They're confused because they were just standing on the tile that blinked them, so they come here or to ##crawl or the DCSS subreddit or the wiki or whatever resource they're aware of to find out what happened. And the answer they get is that traps don't exist on a tile, they just have a chance to happen whenever you move.

Their reaction isn't going to be "oh, okay, that makes sense, gotta work around that in the future." Their reaction is going to be "So sometimes, when I try to move, I just randomly get blinked into the opposite direction instead? That's bullshit. What am I supposed to do about that?" And I think that's a fair reaction. What kind of game randomly punishes you for moving in a way that is completely unpredictable and outside of your control? One could argue that traps already do this, but this would be much worse, both in terms of actual gameplay and in terms of how unfair it would feel.

Yes, keeping track of every tile you've ever visited is tedious, and ideally, if traps are going to stay in the game, the mechanism should be changed so that that's not optimal. But at the same time, I think that feeling of knowing that the hallway you just walked through is safe to retreat through is pretty important and without that traps would just be even more frustrating. I'm all for the design philosophy of removing tedious but optimal behavior in the game, but in this case I think you'd risk making the game actually substantially more frustrating solely to prevent a tedious behavior so completely over-the-top that I wouldn't be surprised if there is literally no one that actually does it. I think that's taking that philosophy to a kind of unhealthy extreme.

[crate]

They get into a tough battle, try to reposition into a safer spot, step on a blink trap, and end up in the middle of the enemies and die.

"So sometimes, when I try to move, I just randomly get blinked into the opposite direction instead? That's bullshit. What am I supposed to do about that?"

Yes, because this certainly never happens with current traps.

!lg crate ktyp=trap 1

In fact, the only way to ensure that this doesn't happen with traps as-is is to keep track of which tiles you have stepped on.

I would actually have preferred if the death above was actually just random bad luck, instead of being 100% preventable by tracking which of the two sides of the double-wide corridor I had used.

[Quazifuji]

Yes, because this certainly never happens with current traps.

I'm not saying current traps never have this problem, I'm just talking that in terms of how it feels, random traps would feel like the game punishing you for moving, and I don't think that's a good thing to be punished for.

Also, even if you're not keeping track of every tile you've stepped on intentionally, there are cases like hallways where you can know they're safe without any non-trivial effort. Hallways, for example. Right now, if I go down a hallway, open a door at the end, and then see a bunch of monsters I don't want to fight, I know I can retreat through that hallway without any risk of suddenly getting blinked back into the middle of the enemies.

The suggestion in the OP isn't "random traps" it's "sometimes, the game should randomly punish you for moving." Sure, from a gameplay standpoint, there's a huge amount of overlap between the current implementation of traps and that one, and I agree and think that current traps need to be removed or overhauled. But that doesn't mean a mechanic that literally just randomly punishes you when you move is a good idea.

On the other hand, I guess it would solve the luring issue. Lure an enemy too far and you might suddenly get blinked in the opposite direction or buff them for no clear reason.

[Tiktacy]

I have two major problems with this:

1. Unless I'm missing something to prevent this, it would frequently interrupt auto-navigating explored areas, which would be incredibly annoying for things like stashing.
   
2. It would just be plain frustrating, and a lot of players would passionately hate it.

2 is especially important. Imagine a new player learning about the game. They get into a tough battle, try to reposition into a safer spot, step on a blink trap, and end up in the middle of the enemies and die. They're confused because they were just standing on the tile that blinked them, so they come here or to ##crawl or the DCSS subreddit or the wiki or whatever resource they're aware of to find out what happened. And the answer they get is that traps don't exist on a tile, they just have a chance to happen whenever you move.

Their reaction isn't going to be "oh, okay, that makes sense, gotta work around that in the future." Their reaction is going to be "So sometimes, when I try to move, I just randomly get blinked into the opposite direction instead? That's bullshit. What am I supposed to do about that?" And I think that's a fair reaction. What kind of game randomly punishes you for moving in a way that is completely unpredictable and outside of your control? One could argue that traps already do this, but this would be much worse, both in terms of actual gameplay and in terms of how unfair it would feel.

Yes, keeping track of every tile you've ever visited is tedious, and ideally, if traps are going to stay in the game, the mechanism should be changed so that that's not optimal. But at the same time, I think that feeling of knowing that the hallway you just walked through is safe to retreat through is pretty important and without that traps would just be even more frustrating. I'm all for the design philosophy of removing tedious but optimal behavior in the game, but in this case I think you'd risk making the game actually substantially more frustrating solely to prevent a tedious behavior so completely over-the-top that I wouldn't be surprised if there is literally no one that actually does it. I think that's taking that philosophy to a kind of unhealthy extreme.

Number 1 was mentioned in the OP:

Shafts will also be among the array, not sure if people consider those traps though, but they should definitely act the same. Also, just as a few side notes, having traps only trigger while in LoS of a monster might be worth doing to prevent the annoyance of auto-travel interruptions.

As for number 2, I really don't understand whats wrong with controlled variation in gameplay. Keep in mind that blink trap was only meant as an example, so using it as an example like that doesn't really make for a convincing opposition. Also, the thing you are describing already exists in the game in the form of wondering monsters, "Sometimes when I'm trying to escape, I just randomly get blocked off by sigmund/rupert/stone giant and die" is basically the same general argument.

Also, you can avoid running into traps by simply not luring monsters to such a degree, sure it would still be possible but the whole game is about reducing the "possibility" of death as much as possible. There will always be unavoidable deaths, and there should always be unavoidable deaths. Otherwise the game wouldn't be exciting, if the odds of defeat were 0% then it wouldn't really be a game anymore.

[Tiktacy]

The suggestion in the OP isn't "random traps" it's "sometimes, the game should randomly punish you for moving." Sure, from a gameplay standpoint, there's a huge amount of overlap between the current implementation of traps and that one, and I agree and think that current traps need to be removed or overhauled. But that doesn't mean a mechanic that literally just randomly punishes you when you move is a good idea.

Well, Chaos knights are a thing, and quite popular.

Many players also agree shafts are interesting, and those are also randomly punishing the player.

You can randomly get teleported by teleportation traps, and I might be a minority on this but I really like teleportation traps.

You can also go around a corner and wake up an ogre right next to you. Sometimes you will randomly run into an unseen horror and won't be able to kill it.

The whole game is filled with random elements to it, thats what makes the game fun imo. Also, keep in mind your not getting "Randomly" punished, your getting punished an amount of times based on how often you lure monsters and for how long. That's a controllable variable, while there are elements of randomness, its far from "just random."

[Leszczynek]

Well, Chaos knights are a thing, and quite popular.

Try an experiment for a week then, force everybody playing online to suffer random Xom interventions throughout the game no matter the worshipped god or starting background. See how they like that. Without sarcasm: there's a difference between wanting to play with randomness and being forced into it.

On topic - what you want to do is discard the pretty stupid, I admit, tactic of just running around the level(s) in favour of standing your ground. This shifts the game's favour EVEN MORE into o-tabbers and AoE conjurers - imagine how fun would it be to fail a stab attempt and get blinked back into a group of enemies who you just woke up.

The randomness in roguelikes is good, traps are not. Think of a different mechanism please. Also if you actually happen to include these kinds of traps, please remove Mummies from the game as they will lose the absolute last thing going for them.

[Quazifuji]

The point I'm making is this. Let's ignore current traps. Let's imagine they didn't exist, and consider the proposal from that perspective. That is, let's look at this proposal as a mechanic on its own, and not a reworking of traps.

From that framework, the proposal is literally "make it so moving while there's a monster in LOS has a small chance to random cause one of a number of harmful effects to the player." Is that a good proposal? I don't think it is. If anything, it sounds more like it belongs in the anti-luring thread than as a discussion of traps, but I think it would be a terrible method to combat luring.

I'm not saying it's more unfair than other mechanics in the game, I'm saying it would feel unfair. I can't imagine telling a player new to the game that it's got a mechanic where random bad things sometimes happen to you for no reason when you move and getting anything but an extremely negative response.

If the goal is to make interesting, unexpected things happen in combat, I think there are better ways to do that that won't feel like the game giving the player the middle finger.

[Tiktacy]

For the record, I think removing traps all together is a better option. However, I'm pretty sure i remember the devs saying they don't want to remove traps.

As for the "experiment to make players play with xom effects," I think your missing the point. The point I was making was that random effects can be very interesting if implemented correctly.

Also, I don't know why you are using corner cases like "failing a stab because you were blinked away" as a counter argument. You spend very very few turns in LOS of monsters you are trying to stab, the odds of setting off a trap while stabbing an enemy would be quite low.

I think one thing to keep in mind is that this suggestion has a lot of versatility and there are plenty of things that can be done to remove any issues that may arise. Its a fairly simple concept so adjusting it to suit crawls design goals is only natural.

I'm not saying it's more unfair than other mechanics in the game, I'm saying it would feel unfair. I can't imagine telling a player new to the game that it's got a mechanic where random bad things sometimes happen to you for no reason when you move and getting anything but an extremely negative response.

You can't IMAGINE it!? All kidding aside, your exaggerating the "negative" effects it would have. I appreciate the speculation, but your argument lacks specifics, you can't just piggyback on the idea that randomness = anger, you have to provide examples in context.

[HardboiledGargoyle]

You can just call it "stumbling" on the player's part, so the player will go "oh I don't want to depend on luring fully because I could stumble" and you can implement various forms of stumbling - stumbling that does damage, stumbling that dazes, stumbling that makes you shout, though I don't know how you'd fit blink traps and shafts in there. But it's funny how context can take "giving the player the middle finger" and turn it into "interesting, unexpected things that happen in combat". And monsters may as well be prone to stumbling too.

[Hurkyl]

xom effects," I think your missing the point. The point I was making was that random effects can be very interesting if implemented correctly.

But citing chaos knights isn't a particularly good justification for the point.

[Tiktacy]

xom effects," I think your missing the point. The point I was making was that random effects can be very interesting if implemented correctly.

But citing chaos knights isn't a particularly good justification for the point.

I had considered that possibility, but I assumed people wouldn't take it so literally. In my mind I was thinking "Hey, lets give him a good example of how random effects can often have an interesting effect on gameplay, an example that most people can relate to easily" but I guess I didn't make that clear enough.

I'll try to elaborate more on that in the future.

[Croases]

I can't imagine telling a player new to the game that it's got a mechanic where random bad things sometimes happen to you for no reason when you move and getting anything but an extremely negative response.

But that mechanic already exists in the game, and is called "monsters".

I don't see any large-scale problems with trap effects that randomly trigger with monsters around, if the rate is tuned so that you experience few or no trap effects if you rush to monsters and a substantial number if you lure them. Maybe give the player some grace period when monsters come to sight and only start the can-spawn-traps counter after a short while, and gradually increase it so that you can't lure far without getting a trap effect or another.

The only problem I can see with this is that it punishes kite-heavy species and spells (Sp, Fe, Ce and OTR are the big offenders), but these species can definitely afford to take a nerf.

[crate]

I mean if you want hell effects everywhere, you can add that to crawl (that's basically what traps are, anyway). I, on the other hand, eagerly await the next time traps get effectively removed from crawl, and perhaps it will even be intentional when it does happen.

[dowan]

Hey, getting zot trapped into the abyss from the first lair rune branch is fun! Especially when it happens directly from autotravel. You thought random traps was fun, just wait until you get to play random wandering & dying mode!

I agree with Crate.

Now, pre-revealed traps on the other hand are much more interesting. You explore into a room, see a zot trap, or shaft, or whatever, and you need to work around it. As in, you give it tactical consideration and adjust your gameplay accordingly. That, to me, is much more interesting than something just randomly happening to you because you stepped on a random tile, or dared to use autoexplore.