Remove hangedman_screamer Vault

[Laraso]

This vault is clearly designed to be an autoexplore trap. It looks like fairly normal terrain, just a bunch of rock walls, and nothing is visible until you get into the very center of it, revealing six passages surrounding you on all sides that contain Josephine and a ton of scary undead including flying skulls, skeletal warriors, wraiths, and necromancers.

(My game just ended because of it, I was playing a NaFE and I didn't have teleport or blink available so unfortunately once I saw the enemies it was already too late. Deaths like that leave a really sour taste in my mouth.)

EDIT: Here's a screenshot in case you don't know what I'm talking about

Spoiler: show

[ontoclasm]

I didn't have teleport or blink available

Uh, I think this is your problem

[Sandman25]

I didn't have teleport or blink available

Uh, I think this is your problem

IMHO if monster triggers a game note like

  Code:

 12696 | D:10     | Noticed a skeletal warrior


and is put by a vault, it deserves at least runed door. I noticed that many vaults rely on manual exploration when players recognize a vault and play more carefully, maybe even avoids it completely but it does not work with autoexplore.

[Laraso]

I didn't have teleport or blink available

Uh, I think this is your problem

And how is it my fault if I didn't get good RNG? Maybe I'm wrong, but I thought vaults that are deliberately designed to be autoexplore traps were considered bad design.

[HardboiledGargoyle]

put an identified scroll of blinking or teleport right into "the very center of it", as you can read off the ground now

[Cheibrodos]

I didn't have teleport or blink available

Uh, I think this is your problem

And how is it my fault if I didn't get good RNG? Maybe I'm wrong, but I thought vaults that are deliberately designed to be autoexplore traps were considered bad design.

Don't let the orange name fool you, it is bad design and you are in the right. I think this vault qualifies as sufficiently "spoilery" to be removed.

[milski]

Speaking of autoexplore trap vaults, there's a vault in Lair that has a bunch of shallow water that curves around; after you round the corner there are 3! electric eels (and behind that, more monsters).

I didn't get killed by it, but I took a ton of damage despite being heavily armored; I'm pretty sure if I were a caster I would have just gotten obliterated.

[duvessa]

also, that lair vault that is a box of swamp worms surrounded by water

[PleasingFungus]

Speaking of autoexplore trap vaults, there's a vault in Lair that has a bunch of shallow water that curves around; after you round the corner there are 3! electric eels (and behind that, more monsters).

I didn't get killed by it, but I took a ton of damage despite being heavily armored; I'm pretty sure if I were a caster I would have just gotten obliterated.

gammafunk is extremely proud of that vault, if you're thinking of the one I think you are. iirc it's the top killer among lair vaults?

i tried to persuade him it was kind of a scummy vault but his argument was that 'players should be expecting a trap', iirc (he can correct me if i'm misremembering)

[sanka]

If vaults are intentional traps that the players should recognize, then either

1. Stop autoexplore when the vault's edge is in LOS, so that the player has a chance to recognize the vault
2. Or remove autoexplore from the game.

[crate]

also, that lair vault that is a box of swamp worms surrounded by water

People try to tell me that "travel_avoid_terrain = shallow water" isn't a necessary option. I don't believe them.

[adozu]

they say as an option it is optional, but you know it for an option to be optimal, so you opt for it on at all times?

[4Hooves2Appendages]

also, that lair vault that is a box of swamp worms surrounded by water

People try to tell me that "travel_avoid_terrain = shallow water" isn't a necessary option. I don't believe them.

Further to that I always groan when I tab towards an enemy and my character steps into water when that was not necessary (i.e. there is an equidistant dry tile next to the monster).

[Laraso]

also, that lair vault that is a box of swamp worms surrounded by water

Is that the one made out of trees with a swamp entrance at the end of it? I usually set exclusions on that one when I see it on most characters, that one can definitely be an autoexplore trap and is too spoilery IMO.

[njvack]

People try to tell me that "travel_avoid_terrain = shallow water" isn't a necessary option. I don't believe them.

Hey, that would have saved one of my most recent characters!

It would be pretty nice if I could tell Crawl "I know water is really dangerous, never explore me into the middle of Eel Lake OK?"

That, or change Electric Eels to Shock Shrikes and let them fly; then autoexploring into water is still pretty bad but much more rarely an escape item check.

[dynast]

This is what you get for trapping Crazy Yiuf inside a runed vault, you get actual relevant complaints with the same argument.

[Laraso]

This is what you get for trapping Crazy Yiuf inside a runed vault, you get actual relevant complaints with the same argument.

This isn't an argument for "add a runed door to hangedman_screamer", it's an argument for "remove hangedman_screamer".

Vaults deliberately designed to be autoexplore traps are a problem and should be considered for removal regardless if Yiuf's vault has a runed door not not.

[PleasingFungus]

it seems like you could make it not an autoexplore trap in other ways; e.g. adding a patrolling or stationary monster in the middle, maybe?

[dynast]

This isn't an argument for "add a runed door to hangedman_screamer", it's an argument for "remove hangedman_screamer".

Right, but thats not your argument, thats what you want and i am not sure if i can agree with it, because nom runed vaults were not a problem until just then and now they are, because someone with enough credibility made a valid statement about it and was listened to. Here is an example i just stumbled upon:

Spoiler: show

vault.jpg (229.75 KiB) Viewed 8397 times

Is this vault problematic too?

Vaults deliberately designed to be autoexplore traps are a problem and should be considered for removal regardless if Yiuf's vault has a runed door not not.

Here is your argument, which is the same argument for putting runed doors on crazy yiuf's hut(the auto exploring bit, at least).

Regardless, im not here to argue with you over wether vaults should be runed or removed or left as they are, i was just making a snarky comment.

[Sandman25]

Actually that vault is ok because it has no doors/walls. There is huge difference between noticing a Fire Giant 7 tiles away and noticing 4 similar power monsters 1 tile away or even adjacent like in some neighbor thread (viewtopic.php?f=5&t=20455)

[dynast]

Actually that vault is ok because it has no doors/walls. There is huge difference between noticing a Fire Giant 7 tiles away and noticing 4 similar power monsters 1 tile away or even adjacent like in some neighbor thread (viewtopic.php?f=5&t=20455)

Specially because you can notice it outside the vault he was supposed to be inside, as it happened to whatever else spawned inside it, say, a pack of centaur warriors.

[Laraso]

Actually, no, a few enemies appearing at the edge of line of sight is far from problematic, and isn't even close to the level of idiocy that is hangedman_screamer. Have you seen hangedman_screamer? This is hangedman_screamer:

Spoiler: show

That's what you see from just autoexploring into the vault. Note that if you're particularly unlucky, you'll get the version of the vault where those wights are instead skeletal warriors, and one of the necromancers is Josephine. (That's the version that killed my Naga).

You waltz right into the heart of a huge group of scary enemies surrounding you on all sides. Before you get into the heart of it, it just looks like standard terrain, normal rock walls, nothing to be concerned about. There's nothing in immediate line of sight so autoexplore thinks its perfectly safe to just waltz right into it. This vault is literally the epitome of "autoexplore trap", it was designed from the ground-up to function as one. A fire giant appearing on the edge of los can't even begin to compare.

And no, once again, this is irrelevant to whether Yiuf's vault has a runed door or not (it's better off with the runed door though), and I would have made this thread petitioning to remove this vault regardless of whether that thread concerning Yiuf even existed in the first place, so please stop trying to skim this down to being some sort of witch hunt spurred on by a bunch of lemmings, I really don't appreciate it.

[Sandman25]

Yes, glass walls are good for vaults (especially ones with runed door so monsters cannot get out), duvessa suggested it recently as far as I remember.

[dynast]

Yes i know the screamer vault, you choose and enter one of the 6 openings and fight 2 enemies at a time, or you tele, or you walk, whatever pleases you. It is a vault you have to STEP ON, its not a "hey, why am i getting swarmed by deep elf high priests and centaur warriors on open space? oh what is this gigantic glass wall room? is there things inside it? oh, there is loot, THIS IS A LOOT VAULT WITH OOD MONSTERS "INSIDE", that explains what was kicking my ass a couple turns ago".

[Shard1697]

So the closest two enemies are skulls and then the rest are either normal speed enemies or zombies aka chaff, correct? That doesn't seem that bad in any situation other than "I am playing a naga".

[milski]

Speaking of autoexplore trap vaults, there's a vault in Lair that has a bunch of shallow water that curves around; after you round the corner there are 3! electric eels (and behind that, more monsters).

I didn't get killed by it, but I took a ton of damage despite being heavily armored; I'm pretty sure if I were a caster I would have just gotten obliterated.

gammafunk is extremely proud of that vault, if you're thinking of the one I think you are. iirc it's the top killer among lair vaults?

i tried to persuade him it was kind of a scummy vault but his argument was that 'players should be expecting a trap', iirc (he can correct me if i'm misremembering)

If it had something to break autoexplore or was always a part of a timed vault, I'd feel more inclined to like the "obvious trap" vault.

As it stands I hit "o" and wound up three slimy friends richer and 40 hit points poorer in the middle of a lake.

E: Basically, I'm fine with "trap" vaults, but they need to have something to make you manually explore them, or "trap" the player in a way that doesn't immediately put them in a bad situation. Then it's an actual stupid decision, rather than autoexplore randomly being orders of magnitude more risky than manual instead of somewhat more risky.

[andreas]

Stop autoexplore when the vault's edge is in LOS, so that the player has a chance to recognize the vault

Stop autoexplore from ever entering vaults. (Some vaults are big enough that it should probably be okay to autoexplore once you're in a vault.)

The problem with autoexplore is that autoexplore is stupid. It is supposed to work by stopping at the first sign of danger. One way in which it's stupid is that it's way worse at detecting danger than any decent player. When there are obvious signs that you're entering a vault, autoexplore doesn't evaluate your character sheet and decide whether or not it's a good idea to continue, it just barges in. (Gammafunk may be right about this vault that 'players should be expecting a trap,' but it doesn't matter anyway if you're using autoexplore.) This is bad because autoexplore is literally not doing what it's supposed to be doing. It's not automating the exploration part of the game and returning control to the player when there's sign of danger, because it is ignoring clear signs of danger. This gives you one really good reason to not use a very convenient option, if you want to win.

I don't know whether this vault displays such clear danger signs or not. It probably depends on how experienced/spoiled the player is. But the problem isn't just about this vault. I don't have any objection with removing this vault, but it seems to me like a bandaid. Autoexplore just shouldn't explore into vaults at all.

You could try to fix things by adding runed doors or patrolling monsters, but this is a piecemeal approach that requires changing vaults one by one. If you want to make sure that vaults are never autoexplore traps, then make autoexplore halt at something that all vaults share in common. And that is being a vault.

This takes away an aspect of the game that is actually interesting, where the player has to keep an eye on the terrain to see if it's becoming scary (if they're entering a vault) and explore accordingly. But using autoexplore takes that aspect away anyway. That aspect shouldn't be one of the things crawl tries to do, at least not in this way, as long as autoexplore is the clearly most convenient way to explore in the game.

[duvessa]

The reason hangedman_screamer is being singled out is that it appears to be deliberately designed as an autoexplore trap. It's shaped specifically to reveal a large number of monsters at once, and two of those monsters are patrolling flying skulls. Flying skulls are primarily known for making noise, and the patrolling flag is absent from other monsters in the vault, which suggests that it was only added to make the flying skulls more likely to shriek and wake up the rest of the vault. And unlike Laraso implies, the vault IS recognizable from the outside; a player manually (and slowly) exploring can notice that part of the vault's wall pattern cannot generate naturally

I think visually distinguishing vault features from non-vault features (that means floors, walls, statues, etc.), and making autoexplore stop at them, is worth trying. Builder and feature vaults would need to be excluded.

[prozacelf]

I would just like to point out that it is literally not possible to auto-explore into the gammafunk water vault (unless mf/op swimming allows it?) in question.

Otherwise, I agree, there should be a stop if possible, when you run into the big "fuck you" vaults, generally.

[duvessa]

I would just like to point out that it is literally not possible to auto-explore into the gammafunk water vault (unless mf/op swimming allows it?) in question.

boots of flight

[andreas]

Whoops. I was confused and thought the gammafunk quotation was about hangedman_screamer when I wrote that. Sorry.

[prozacelf]

I would just like to point out that it is literally not possible to auto-explore into the gammafunk water vault (unless mf/op swimming allows it?) in question.

boots of flight

Who the fuck even wears those? =p

[milski]

Autoexplore goes into shallow water by default, so unless I'm misremembering you can definitely autoexplore into it without permanent flight.

[Laraso]

And unlike Laraso implies, the vault IS recognizable from the outside; a player manually (and slowly) exploring can notice that part of the vault's wall pattern cannot generate naturally

Yes, once you're already inside the vault (or standing right outside of it), it becomes rather obvious that something is amiss with the terrain, and if you're particularly meticulous you'll be able to spot it before putting yourself in danger. However, that would still require you to be spoiled because even if you knew it was a vault, nothing is in line of sight. There are plenty of vaults that create special terrain but have no monsters, so even if you knew it was a vault you would still be inclined to walk into it if you haven't seen the vault before. However, this is all irrelevant for the average unspoiled player, because if you're seeing just one of the sides of the vault or just a bit of the vault on the edge of your screen, you wouldn't think twice about hitting "o" again and autoexploring right into it, which is the point I was trying to make.

For example, if I was in the area right above the vault in that screenshot I posted (the area with the ?), or if I had just come down the stairs visible to the right, I wouldn't suspect that the wall directly below me was actually tied to a vault, and would happily press "o" again without knowing that autoexplore would just round the corner and put me right in the middle of Josephine and her undead crew.