Shafts should not be traps


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Vaults Vanquisher

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Post Thursday, 13th December 2018, 02:37

Shafts should not be traps

A shaft is essentially a one-way, multi-floor staircase. A reasonable player will never be shafted while in combat or while injured from recent combat or have any real choice about being shafted. To the extent that the player has ever been able to influence their chances of shafting, it's been a bad thing.

When the player is shafted, the game is imposing a challenge equivalent to going down a multi-floor escape hatch, call it a chute. Make this explicit. Generate some levels with no normal downstairs and only a multi-floor escape hatch so that the player has no choice but to take it. The player may then climb back to the level on which they took the chute to reveal hidden stairs on that level, allowing the usual autotravel mechanics.

Now you might object that sometimes the player would have been shafted before clearing a level and here that would never happen. True, but we can compensate by increasing the average depth of shafting so that the player will be at approximately the same relative disadvantage.

Experience with crawl variants in recent years confirms the devteam position that "shafts are good." Disentangling them from traps, which are bad, would also be good.
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Post Thursday, 13th December 2018, 05:40

Re: Shafts should not be traps

I agree with OP but would like to point out that reasonable player still can get shafted while wounded, it can happen on level with timed portal. Removing shaft traps on those levels will lead to less frustrating game where player is not punished for nothing.
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Post Monday, 17th December 2018, 02:38

Re: Shafts should not be traps

An afterthought on this: Shaft mechanics like those described here would be an interesting and thematic approach to dungeon branches. For example, making spider and snake a shaft and fight your way out scenario would distinguish them from the other branches and prevent some dipping-and-backtracking behavior. It would bring danger and urgency to otherwise bland content.
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Post Monday, 17th December 2018, 14:39

Re: Shafts should not be traps

Even without any other changes, making shafts always visible would go a long way to improve the game. They'd become interesting strategic resources instead of pointless streak-killers.
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Post Monday, 17th December 2018, 18:16

Re: Shafts should not be traps

tealizard wrote:An afterthought on this: Shaft mechanics like those described here would be an interesting and thematic approach to dungeon branches. For example, making spider and snake a shaft and fight your way out scenario would distinguish them from the other branches and prevent some dipping-and-backtracking behavior. It would bring danger and urgency to otherwise bland content.

To carry this a step further, the you could combine the "you take a shaft in" with "stairs out are not revealed until you get the rune." Further than that: Each set of stairs down in spider/snake are shafts that become stairs up once you have the rune.

I suspect this was considered and maybe even tried when the Vaults rune lock was introduced; it's very likely a bad idea for some reason I'm not thinking of.
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