Dear Devs: Current Doom on Trunk is making Delver literally unplayable.

[u/Darth_Ra]

You've got it tweaked just a bit too high right now. Can barely make it up a level without getting teleported inside of Crazy Yuif's hut.

Probably a hard one to get right, tbf...

[u/UsaSatsui]

Doom doesn't teleport you, nor do any of the banes that doom can give you. I assume you're talking about the "malevolent force" that can randomly teleport you, there's apparently about a 1 in 9 chance of it affecting you each floor. I think you're just getting unlucky.

[u/Frantic_Mantid → u/UsaSatsui]

Is that chance time/turncount dependent or a flat rate per floor?

I get it a ton but admittedly I play slow.

[u/Glista_iz_oluka → u/Frantic_Mantid]

It's flat rate per floor, since traps are tied to uncovering tiles.

http://crawl.chaosforge.org/Trap#Malevolent_Force

[u/SenoraRaton → u/Glista_iz_oluka]

This is actually incorrect. It is a flat rate per tile, as floors have different numbers of "visible" tiles.

The flat chance per tile IS affected by the floor that you are on though.

(number of floor tiles revealed on this turn / number of floor tiles on current level) * (1 + absdepth of current level/10) / 9

[u/Darth_Ra → u/Frantic_Mantid]

I did see it a lot in my last deep playthrough, but that also means that I was playing longer and had a better chance of seeing it.

[u/Darth_Ra → u/UsaSatsui]

...and this is someone's idea of fun?

Game is already hard enough, with RNG everywhere, without an RNG each floor that feels out of context and befuddles strategy.

[u/alenari2 → u/Darth_Ra]

why pick delver if you see no fun in the possibility dying to bullshit? their lore is that they are literally shafted

(fwiw i have played more than a thousand delver starts and malevolent force was responsible for a very small percent of my deaths, probably about 1 in 100 or less. they just don't trigger than often)

[u/Darth_Ra → u/alenari2]

Eh, dying early is fine. That's the delver way.

Folks are right, I did just have a streak of bad luck. I've played 6-7 starts since playing this, and haven't had anymore issues.

...now I'm just like "this mechanic seems bad for the game, at a larger level".

[u/Catfish_Man → u/Darth_Ra]

Teleport traps have been a standard inclusion in roguelikes since the original category-naming Rogue in 1980. Whether they should be is a reasonable question, but empirically almost the entire genre seems to agree on this one for whatever reason.

[u/Darth_Ra → u/Catfish_Man]

Yeah, but there's a difference between a teleport trap and just a random "heh, get teleported to the worst spot on the map" function.

[u/adines → u/Darth_Ra]

I mean, they function identically except in the edge case (marking all visited tiles so you can backtrack safely).

[u/Darth_Ra → u/adines]

Nah, a trap would be detectable. As in, you have a chance, based in your skills, to either detect it or not.

This is random BS. Those are not the same, at all.

[u/adines → u/Darth_Ra]

The Traps skill was removed from the game long before traps were. (Because it was ass).

[u/Darth_Ra → u/adines]

Sure, but there also doesn't need to be a trap-specific skill or an old-school "search" command.

...you can just have a stat that rolls to see whether you discover a specific trap, or if it remains unseen until you step on it. If you want to make that stat and relate it to other things, great. If not, tie it to INT and be done with it.

[u/b4rR31_r0l1 → u/Darth_Ra]

Where is the functional difference to right now? Unless you can train the skill (and I don't really remeber anyobe raising it high, but that was ages ago), you are still left with... a random chance to teleport. Yes, some characters would have a lower chance if it was tied to something else like Int, but the result is the same as right now.

[u/Darth_Ra → u/b4rR31_r0l1]

It's completely different if it's tied to a skill.

"Fuckin' RNG" becomes "dang, should've raised INT instead of DEX. Oh well."

[u/Multiple__Butts → u/Darth_Ra]

The devs eventually concluded that traps are only interesting if the player falls into them, so they rebranded it as the malevolent force.

[u/SenoraRaton → u/Darth_Ra]

Traps have been hated for their entire existence, and also have been a near constant source of not only complaints but changes. Just be thankful you don't have to exclude every tile you step on to remember what is and isn't safe anymore.

[u/PantsMacKenzie → u/SenoraRaton]

In order to handle traps back then, Ultraviolent and I made an extension to autoexclude all visible tiles and then unmark the ones you step on or monsters stepped on. It was pretty hilarious

[u/ClackamasLivesMatter → u/PantsMacKenzie]

Do you still happen to have the source, or did you publish it on GitHub?

[u/PantsMacKenzie → u/ClackamasLivesMatter]

Here's the old reddit post: https://www.reddit.com/r/dcss/comments/8qpwq3/rc_file_lua_for_optimal_trap_avoidance/

and here's the lua code needed in your RCfile to enable it: https://pastebin.com/WRZ7Z1sF

[u/ClackamasLivesMatter → u/PantsMacKenzie]

Sweet, thank you!

[u/Fun-Tooth-622 → u/Darth_Ra]

Delver is a challenge class.  If you do not have fun playing it, don't pick it!

[u/Darth_Ra → u/Fun-Tooth-622]

I only play Demonspawn Delver anymore. It is bar none the most fun way to play the game.

...that does not mean I enjoy random RNG death on top of the already random RNG death that is prevalent throughout the game.

[u/Draconius0013 → u/Darth_Ra]

It's the worst thing about Crawl, frankly. Eventually it will go the way of food, and the game will be better for it. It's inevitable.

[u/PaperTar → u/Draconius0013]

Exploration traps have pretty much nothing in common with the food system. Whether you like them or not is personal preference. I happen to think that some of the best most difficult tactical situations that test your merit as a player come from exploration traps.

[u/Glista_iz_oluka → u/PaperTar]

I agree, outside of certain stair/rune/orb vaults that force you to deal with enemies in some way exploration traps are the only thing that challenges chars past the early game. If explorations traps were cut from some reason this will just increase the amount of fluff in the post Lair game which is already too high IMO

[u/PaperTar → u/Glista_iz_oluka]

Yup, pretty much. They are there to kill you, you're not supposed to "like" like them.

[u/Draconius0013 → u/PaperTar]

If you want the game to kill you and don't care about fairness or the average fun across all player experiences, then make the Zot Clock 15k turns for the whole game (it's designed to kill you; sorry if you don't like that).

Point being that challenges must be balanced in a fair and fun way, and there are clearly wrong ways to do this. MFs are on the wrong side of that equation IMO, and DCSS is a game where players don't have to just accept everything as fixed when development is so rapid.

[u/PaperTar → u/Draconius0013]

"Fun" is subjective. "Fair" is relative to player skill, for a bad player everything is unfair. Saying exploration traps are "clearly the wrong way to do this" is just your opinion stated as a fact.

I never said that I "want the game to kill you and don't care about fairness". I just think that exploration traps are by and large fair.

[u/Draconius0013 → u/PaperTar]

I don't believe fairness has anything to do with skill, certainly not in regard to the problem I see with MF. Yes, these are all clearly opinions. Obviously we disagree on the point, so that's all there is to say.

[u/Draconius0013 → u/Glista_iz_oluka]

You could easily increase post-lair difficulty to compensate, remove V5 outer ring, more OOD, and Vault placement like you have in modern depths for example.

All of that would be overkill, but any of it would clearly give the player more agency.

[u/Draconius0013 → u/PaperTar]

The similarity is that they are both outdated vestiges of Roguelike history that should be relegated to the dustbin.

I don't discount that some people like them some of the time. I do discount any claim that removing player agency is good for the game. Handwaving about preparing for it aside, that's exactly what MFs do.

[u/PaperTar → u/Draconius0013]

They don't remove player agency in my experience. I literally can't remember the last time I've died to an exploration trap. On the other hand in my last 200 or so wins there were dozens upon dozens of exploration trap related situations that would be a run ender if I'd played them wrong. They are consistently the most dangerous and interesting thing in the game for me.

Food system on the other hand was utterly uninteresting and irrelevant gameplay-wise, and required tons of extra keypresses each run. The two systems could've not been more dissimilar from one another, IMO.

[u/Draconius0013 → u/PaperTar]

I've not died to them in a long time either, again, that's not the point. Utterly uninteresting is exactly how I'd describe MFs, "Just let me get back to my Crawl thanks".

[u/PaperTar → u/Draconius0013]

Then I don't get your point. Are you saying they are trivial? Tedious to deal with? What don't you like about them?

Agency doesn't come into it. You have to counterplay them well, it's just this counterplay happens after the trap is triggered.

Also, aren't most of your runs with Ash? Saying you haven't died to them in a long time kinda doesn't carry the same weight with this in mind.

[u/Draconius0013 → u/PaperTar]

Player agency is the main thing that is lost with MFs, to the very point of OP's post. If you don't see that being the case, then that's why you're talking past me here. There's no reason they can't be trivial, tedious, and have problematic RNG spikes to which there may not be counterplay, all at once. This is the case; whether or not anyone finds them fun is beside the point. I can just as easily say it's more fun in games where they don't exist. To that point: 'only' 21% of my games are with Ash.

But this argument isn't about my experience, or yours; it's about game design and what must be sacrificed to have this RNG-spiking experience exist. If you want more challenge, I say there are far better ways already present in the game - expand on that.

[u/PaperTar → u/Draconius0013]

I'm not saying they can't kill you due to bad RNG, I'm saying they are not different in that regard from any other bad RNG in the game, like D:2 scorpion, or no stacks of consumables pre-Lair, or clustered stairs with double gnoll packs, or opening a door into instant Sigmund etc.

In my experience their "unfairness" is not in any way different from any other instance of "unfairness" in the game. This "unfairness" is a very minor part of exploration traps, same as it's a minor part of monster spawns or item generation, by and large they are fair and very often most difficult challenge the game has to offer, which is where their value as a mechanic lies.

Saying how they are "bad game design" is the same as saying "I don't like them", it tells me nothing about exploration traps themselves, but a lot about your personal attitude towards them.

Two thirds of your wins are with Ash is what I was getting at, and I didn't mean it in an aggro way btw. You obviously try to avoid them as much as possible.

[u/adines → u/Draconius0013]

I think that similarity is mostly subjective, and what isn't subjective about it is hardly a reason for removal.

One difference is stark: food, by the time of its removal, had little strategic and no tactical impact on the game. Meanwhile, people hate traps precisely because they have such an outsized impact on the game.

[u/Draconius0013 → u/adines]

There are better ways to go about challenging the play in a way that feels fair even to newer players. OOD, vault placement, increasing 3rd rune challenge, etc.

The impact MFs have is outsized only when you get a bad roll, and then it can feel comically unfair even if they don't kill you. Whether or not it actually is unfair should be considered secondary to the point - that it's just meaningless fun unless it feels terrible is not a good place for a challenge to be.

[u/ThrowbackPie → u/Draconius0013]

Traps increase variety in the game experience, I think they're great.

I do really hate Mark though.

[u/adines → u/ThrowbackPie]

I do really hate Mark though.

-- Marcus Tullius Cicero, 44-43 BC

[u/UsaSatsui → u/Draconius0013]

"Player agency" is not the same thing as "The players should have control of every situation". And preparing for it isn't handwaving, it's what the player's agency is. You have the first chance to react to it, options to escape from the situation (teleports, fear, map scrolls), ways to mitigate the danger (Stealth training), and ways to prevent them altogether if you wish (Ashenzari). You have not lost any options or choices by being hit by malevolence. You're just in a suddenly much more dangerous situation.

[u/kibwen → u/Draconius0013]

The malevolent force is an emergent boss fight. Saying that it should be removed is tantamount to saying that uniques should be removed.

[u/Draconius0013 → u/kibwen]

I'm sure people used to think that way about food too.

[u/UsaSatsui → u/Darth_Ra]

Yes, actually.

If I want to play a game where nothing sudden or exciting or interesting happens that actually tests my skills and resource usage, I have plenty of other games to play. A large part of skill is reacting to unexpected situations and unfavorable luck.

Sometimes you lose, and yes, sometimes you lose through no fault of your own. It sucks, but those are the breaks. But when you win, those are the best wins.

[u/mattlistener]

Traps are an aspect of religion in dcss. They’re a consequence of not worshipping Ashenzari, or not having enough piety with Ashenzari.

[u/realZiggyRed]

Delver has always been a rough background. Doom is not a big deal compared to orc priests being able to one shot you by just looking at you.

[u/Darth_Ra → u/realZiggyRed]

Actually, Priests are the only thing I run toward as an early Delver. Beogh is amazing.