ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

I'm not a major fan of the new traps, overall, after playing three characters through them-after the novelty wears off, they mostly seem to make the dungeons take twice as long. Tapping Z eight-ten times to get through poison traps, either teleporting across or slamming into boulder traps until it decides to let you through-and not everyone can teleport across-and while the svn version of spinning beam is fine, complaints about their older version are known. Oh, and Cold Flames traps do the same thing as the poison traps, except they don't kick on when you go past, but instead take twice as long to get through the first try.

And to say nothing of vaults. Like the ones where there's eight pieces of loot placed into small rooms full of enemies, each with a trap under them. These are currently a spectacular deathtrap. They aren't the only vaults that have become so thanks to complicated traps.

However, Explosion Traps are a problem. I have had my current character (http://te4.org/characters/10195/tome/f9 ... 62a42706a2) die more to them than *any other source*-namely, twice, so far, after Dreadfell.

The first time, autoexplore found a nice corner it really wanted to explore, and triggered it twice. I wasn't totally ignoring this-I had figured, okay, dangerous situation, Bone Armor for 600, should be okay.

It killed my 600 HP, my 600 Bone Shield and did enough extra damage to do 500 on top of that by my estimate.

The second time, in Dark Crypt, I *slightly* misjudged when the explosion would go off-and I think that, if you tap the same trap multiple times, the explosions all go off at the same time. The net result was that, when I tapped Z, thinking that I was going to get in slightly after the explosions I had triggered once, I died instantly as autoexplore walked onto the trap, triggered a second set, and they all went up at the same time. 800 damage, wham, dead, enjoy.

This is ridiculous. I'm going to run no traps until this gets fixed. Constant annoyance within reason I can respect, but these traps are adding relatively little strategic value-all of it slanted against you, unlike the nice double-edged value the old traps had, since they all ignore enemies. I don't know what a good way to improve traps is, but after giving them a very fair shake, and despite being someone who was literally never bothered by old traps, even growing to like some of them a bit, I have to say. This isn't it.

(And, yes, I could have had trap detection in some form... What good would that have done me? All of the problems, outside of Cold Flames, were caused by traps I knew existed, for this characters, and Cold Flames and the boulders are the least problem. If I had been able to disable Explosion Traps, I might have failed three times and overkilled the hell out of myself. That's...not an improvement.)

I agree with most of the above. I appreciate the effort of creativity involved in these new trap designs, but they are annoying. The most important factor, in my view, is that you can use them to kill or hurt enemies, and if they don't hurt enemies they shouldn't even be there.

In general I like the new traps, and I hated the old ones, but I think there is tweaking still to be done.

The biggest thing for me is that traps should have a limited number of charges, probably randomised. It gets tiresome seeing the same trap re-triggered ad infinitum. They're interesting when there are monsters around, but a chore otherwise. Something like 1-4 charges would be appropriate I think.

Traps in vaults are another problem, but then they were fecking annoying in the old system too. In general I think the vault parser should be changed to ignore traps. Pre-laid trap placements are just terrible design in my opinion.

Autoexplore is a realpain with these traps. In general, whenever I find a potentially dangerous trap, I unequip my tool, I equip a wand of trap destruction, I wait 3 turns, I destroy the trap, I reequip my tool, and I continue exploration. Result: exploration is 10 times longer and more tedious...

I agree with most of the points here. The game would be better in my opinion if some of the traps would be one-shot type (+ a bit more range / power), however you'd have to make them not blow up on the first monster that steps over it.

I'd probably give all monsters a 75% trap evade mechanic and make most of the elemental traps 1-shot with range 5 or so... just an idea though.

I think the explosion trap would be fine if it had a cooldown, say 8 turns.

I find the gas traps extremely annoying, with no true lethality; thus they function solely to slow down gameplay.

*Agrees with Dervic*

Not sure how I'd run the evade, but something like this solution seems correct. After all, it doesn't really make a whole lot of sense for an explosion trap to go off three times.

Another vote for the "new traps are just as horrible as the old ones" party. I actually like the delayed explosion trap, the spinning beam trap, and the boulder trap since they're interesting and they don't do DoT, but the crappiness of the poison cloud trap and the cold flames trap erases any fondness I might have developed the new traps as a whole. Could we just suspend disbelief for a second, and make it so that traps that don't matter when there aren't monsters around don't trigger when, you know, there aren't monsters around? So basically all traps except summoning and teleport, which are interesting even in isolation.

That's actually an interesting idea... rather than traps-as-traps, we have traps-as-things-monsters-can-trigger. Less pressure plate, more pulled lever. If nothing else, it's an interesting vault idea - there's a trapmaster in the vault behind glass walls, and the traps in the place are terrible and only target the player. Once you get through them, though, and take out the guy who's been setting them off on you, they all auto-disarm. Made more interesting by having a bunch of monsters in there, and given somewhat persistant interest by letting him occasionally summon things at you.

If traps triggered only once, that would actually make sense and eliminate many of the annoyances.
Right now, I am running with the no-traps addon. Traps+auto-explore has awful synergy.

*suggestion*
So I suggest that a traps trigger once, and then just disappears.

*optional ideas*
Then perhaps make them a bit more dangerous, but allow them to be seen. Remove trap disabling from the game. The player now has an educated choice: He/she sees a trap, can move over it or take another route. If he/she moves onto it, then he can prepare for the consequences. Traps could be seen only within a certain range, like 3 tiles or the player could get a general alert when he comes close ('you sense a trap within 3 tiles').

When traps are unseen, they simply become unavoidable death traps. When they can be seen but not resisted, they become strategic options.

I like the idea of having them always visible. The cunning trap detection talent would have to be replaced, but that's not a big issue in my opinion.

Having the traps more dangerous, but visible can make interesting strategic options, but only if the player has the choice. In some situations, for instance in a corridor, the maze, etc, walking on traps is mandatory and with nastier traps it can also be a death trap.

I would personally suggest not allowing traps in corridors in normal dungeons, as they're really not fun there. In the Maze is perhaps a little different, as they're part of the challenge of the levels, and with visible traps I'm sure players would find interesting ways to bypass them.

I'm going to have to say that having traps be always visible seems a little unrealistic. They're traps. They're *supposed* to take you unawares. That having been said, it would be nice if traps became visible when *anyone* stepped on them, rather than just you - or at least when anyone that you have line of sight to stepped on them. Watching a monster step on a trap, and then knowing that autoexplore won't avoid it until you step on it yourself?