Trap Mechanics in the EE
mlnevese
Member, Moderator Posts: 10,214
This discussion was created from comments split from: All you wanted to know about the “Adventure Y” (the unofficial thread for this project).
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Particularly the annoying poorly designed bits like path and trap finding?
As for trap finding, I don't know what you mean. I don't see any faults in it.
Trap finding in any dungeon full of traps involves staring at the screen doing nothing for 6 seconds. Disarming any traps found, moving the party a few feet forward, staring at the screen for another 6 seconds. Disarming any traps found. Etc. It's tedious work that doesn't really take any skill except patience.
It doesn't help that a character can move farther than the Thief's detection range in a span of 6 seconds. So even simply walking through areas can cause the party to trigger traps even if a thief is detcting them.
As for trap finding, I think that's fine and intended. You're supposed to be careful in trapped areas, and that does involve moving slower and doing more micromanagement than normal.
Wizards memorizing spells also involves spending an hour after a full night's rest to prepare them. So why doesn't the game pause for an hour after every rest so the party wizards and clerics can prepare their spells?
It's tedious micromanagement that serves no real purpose. Hell I don't think I've ever played a tabletop session where the DM just pauses because an action takes 5 minutes to do. Hey you're going to climb a wall? Well that'll take 30 minutes so let's just all sit here for 30 minutes doing nothing while the thief climbs the wall. How exciting!
The DM will also say, it took you one full turn to search the area that you are in. To your knoweldge, there are no traps near by.
The game is real time, turn based. Every turn takes 6 seconds, so any action that takes a turn can happen in real time. Any action that may take longer than that (traveling through areas, or resting for example) can be summerized through a little message (You have rested for 8 hours).
If you want to compare it to table top, no DM will go "You just detected traps, to your knoweldge there are 8 traps and 3 hidden doors in this dungeon, here, I'll map them out for you."
The whole turn based explanation might matter if trap detection occurs during combat, there's a real sense of time. Every round a thief is detecting traps is a round it's not fighting. Outside of combat there isn't. It's just actual real time that the player is spending staring at the screen. Every round the Thief is detecting traps is the actual 6 seconds spent staring at the screen.
The cave where you get the Con Stat tome is a huge example of this. The player needs to be careful not to arouse the suspision of the flesh golums as he attempts to detect traps. The monsters move about for those 6 seconds as the player attempts to remain hidden until the trap is detected. If they auto lit as soon as you hit the button, it'd make that area less challenging.
And the game is already not that strict with combat actions. You can shoot a bow, and walk away then stop before the round ends and be ready to shoot. In normal D&D you could only move a predetermined amount if you attack that round. Here the distance a character can cover is solely determined by how much time the character has left before the round ends once they're done attacking.
If the game actually made trap detection and combat a common thing then sure, but it doesn't. Most of trap detection is spent when nothing else is happening. It's mostly stand for 6 seconds, disarm, move forward a bit, stand for 6 seconds disarm etc.
The traps in the Infinity Engine Games, and Dungeons and Dragon like games in general are there for several reasons:
1) Unpredictability / Randomness / Chaos: Lets face it, you can't just waltz through the game knowing exactly what's going to happen.
2) Difficulty: Putting traps in the middle of combat definitely ups the difficulty level of that combat. Put an archer or a mage behind a trap and you have several layers of logistical difficulty there you have to work your way through. That's a vastly different combat than seeing how many goblins you can slaughter head on.
3) Element of Danger: Take a bunch of damage but you're right at the end of the dungeon? Don't want to (or can't) simply walk out and get healed? Be careful, there may very well be a trap around the next corner waiting to eliminate one of your party members.
Don't get me wrong, I'm just as big a fan of seeing things about traps fixed as the rest of you. Personally, I've always felt find traps being a button click and not "always on" was less than an ideal implementation.
That said, someone, at some point, said something to me that struck a cord: "We don't need to reduce the complexity of these games any more." And whoever that was, whenever that was, was absolutely correct. I've seen several recommendations for eliminating or limiting trap detection needs in these games with EXACTLY the argument "but it's happening outside combat"...I've even USED that argument myself several times.
But here's the thing. Traps in the middle of hallways and "randomly" placed around rooms DO add to the game. Eliminating or trivializing those traps removes what they add...and it's a slippery slope. Follow the argument far enough and you come down to a discussion about simply removing all of the traps in all of the games that aren't in a room occupied by a monster. From there, the mechanics of trap finding are STILL a PITA where they remain so we start looking for new ways to trivialize that detection which leads to trivializing trap placement in combat which leads to removing traps from the game entirely.
While I am ABSOLUTELY FOR a better method of making trap detection work in IE, I think it has to stick to something that does NOT trivialize the trap detection process...otherwise we all have a bunch of useless traps laying around dungeons that will act as little more than speed bumps to the game.
The first thing EVERY Strategy guide written about Rogues in BG and BGII says is to max (100 points) Find Traps first. This, alone, has a significant impact on the power level of the game if something happens to change that recommendation.
The argument is "traps outside combat lend nothing to the game and just serve to slow it down."
That, alone, may be why they should exist and why trap detection shouldn't be so trivial. After all, what's the difference between a dungeon in an RPG without traps and a game like Heroes of Might and Magic, where you simply progress from Round based Strategic combat situation to round based strategic combat situation?
Exploration is a big part of RPG, and traps are what makes Exploration non-trivial.
(This is the point where I make the statement that says "this is simply my opinion and not that of my new beamdog overlords"...:) ).
And I'm not asking if traps should be removed, I'm asking if trap detection is going to be fixed. So only the danger remains while they take out whole sections of screen staring.
I believe that trap finding should get negative penalties from certain conditions too, such that it helps to put more points in it.
(Following numbers are examples and not based on anything but my RNG today)
In battle finding -25%. Door -10%. Chest -5%. Floor -10%. Statues/etc -20%. Underground/darkness -15%. And then give races a bonus to each type (gnome gets bonus to statue/door/chest/darkness but penalty to floor/battle..... (like every race has a chance to find a hidden door).... or something.
That should add flavour.
as a result, lower generic trap level difficulty.
Edit: sorry for the off topic in the off topic thread about adventure Y (which will come out November this year).
It's not a problem because it's pretty much expected that an adventuring party is being careful when moving through a dungeon. It's pretty silly that the default assumption when there's a thief skilled in detecting traps in the party that the party isn't having them search for traps in a dungeon. Oh there's this dungeon and your party with a Thief whose skills are just lopsided favoring Detect Trap walks in and they fall into the first trap because you didn't say you were detecting traps. Really? The first 70+ skill points into Detect Trap didn't tip the DM off that obviously the Thief is going to detect traps as often as possible?
The player is already being careful by beelining to pumping up that Detect Trap score and always including a thief.
We can argue all day about how deeply involved the player should be in detecting traps, but the thing is it's up to personal preference. Hence my point that altering this aspect of the gameplay would not be a "fix".
It's a fix because of that.
I'm not offering alternatives here, but I do strongly agree that forcing people to basically not play in regular intervals is not good design. It's antiquated design is what it is.
There are so many ways you could streamline BG's gameplay to fit with today's industry standards. You could remove the wait time from hold and web spells when out of combat. You could balance overpowered enemy abilities, like basilisk petrification and ghast paralysis. You could tweak fireball's damage so that it doesn't wipe out most groups of mobs in one hit. You could adjust starting areas so that most enemies don't kill you in one hit right out of the gate of Candlekeep. You could adjust the classes to equalize their power levels across the board. I want absolutely none of this, however.
Most of today's gamers and developers fail to recognize that it's okay for a game to induce emotions like anger, fear, and frustration, as these do add to the overall experience. The last thing BG needs is to be turned into one of those modern soulless RPGs that roll off the conveyor belts every year.
DM: you walk through the doorway into a large room with grey walls and a grey floor. There are single gold coins scattered across the floor and a small chest that is open in the middle. What do you do.
Character: I pick up one of the coins to examine it.
DM: The coin was holding down a pressure plate, that when released, starts filling the room with a green smoke. Roll a will save.
Character: It was trapped? I would have detected it, I have 90 in find traps!
DM: Nope, you didn't take the time to look for traps.
Character: You should assume I did.
DM: And assuming does what...
So how do you justify that the party is being careful while walking in the dungeon in a video game? Should they take the PoE approach and have everyone walk at half speed instead? That is more annoying IMO.
DM: "You enter a large room with lots of stuff in it."
Char: "Ok, I go and check for traps."
DM: "Fair enough. Now we sit back and wait for 6 seconds doing nothing at all, then I'll tell you whether you found anything or not."
Char: "You're kidding. Can't we just skip that and you tell me right away."
DM: "Not talking to you for 5 more seconds."
DM: "You all enter a large room with stuff in it. What do you do?"
Thief: "I'm checking for traps."
DM: "Okay, what about the rest of you?"
Fighter: "I don't care about any stinking traps. I walk into the room and start looking for treasure."
Mage: "Uh..."
Cleric: "Good idea! I'll help!"
Thief: "Uh..."
DM: "You sure you don't want to wait to see if there are traps?"
Even if the other players all decide to wait, the game is still momentarily delayed while the players decide what to do, and then again when the DM checks his notes.
That isn't to say the wait is exciting, but it is there to represent something, not just an arbitrary delay.
What would everyone's suggested alternative mechanic be? I'm fine with traps the way they are.