Treat stepping into traps with WASD like clicking on adjacent traps with the mouse.

Or even more annoyingly the question of, "do I want to step on this debilitating trap that I already disarmed, but didn't have room for in my inventory?"

 

Uh... You can move traps that you've disarmed, even if you don't have space for them in your inventory. So choosing whether or not to step on them isn't really an issue.

 

...and yet they remain on the floor. If they're going to remain on the floor they should also remain disarmed; at least for the purposes of the player walking over them.

EDIT:
Also I shouldn't be punished for having high stats. THAT makes trap related stats worthless.

 

Its already kind of pointless given that the supposedly "visible" traps aren't really properly visible; being usually depicted as featureless, difficult to see, transparent gray squares. What's the point of the character being able to see the traps if the player still can't?

A successful game should depend on good strategy, not good glasses.

 

What if the player character, when auto-pathing, stopped if a trap was in his or her path? That would allow you to take the proper course of action and make mouse movement just as viable as keyboard movement.

Ye GODS that's a tough decision to make.

 

The fact that its not a tough decision is the point. Being asked the same stupid question and having to give the same rote answer is more taxing than actually making non-trivial decisions.

It's like the cliche cartoon/sketch comedy bit where a character goes to a dollar store and asks the clerk about the cost of EVERYTHING, despite the fact that everything in the store costs one dollar and by the end of the skit the clerk is barely able to restrain themself from physically striking the other character.

 

Yeah, but until you reach a certain skill level there's a real chance of failing to disarm the trap and having it blow up in your face. It's asking you whether or not you want to take a risk, however small it may be.

What if I'm low on health? What if I believe I'm about to approach an area where I'm going to need to be able to cast spells? It's not always as rote as you make it out to be.

 

Screw "once you reach a certain skill level". Unless you're playing a rouge, there's a good chance you won't have more than a 45% chance to disarm the traps you find just a few floors in. Eventually, your chances drop to only 5-10%. There are plenty of times when I decided it wasn't worth it to try and disarm a trap, and just quietly walked around it.

 

Gee, it's like the prompt to decide whether or not to attempt disarming a trap is meaningful or something!

 

Is that sarcasm? I can't even tell.
I can't even tell if you're for or against this.

 

Just ran into another infuriating problem:
The traps that your character can theoretically see but you, the player, cannot because they're behind a door or a vending machine or whatever.

 

That's a fair one. I wouldn't mind the red trap-hidden-by-wall outline being used instead, at all times, rendered in front of all other non-UI elements.

 

I'm definitely in favor of the red outline being used at all times. That would also solve some of the other problms with 'visible' traps not being visible.

 

This is my main problem with traps, and the ONLY reason why I don't mind that click to move automatically avoids traps.

I have an alternate idea. Its similar to how other rogue-likes handle traps, so it's hardly original.

Instead of allowing trap sight to automatically spot traps within a specific radius, give it a percent chance of spotting them after each 'turn', reduced by the level of the trap. I'm not going to use any numbers or suggest a formula since this would be something that would require lots of testing to make it work acceptably. For a given trap sight, trap level, and range, you have a small percentage each turn of spotting the trap. But you have to make it scale in a way that doesn't make trap sight TOO essential, or you risk every build having to have a source of it, so you should always have SOME tiny chance of spotting a trap anyway.

Furthermore, allow SPOTTED traps to be more visible (make them glow maybe?) even when behind terrain (doors, vending machines, etc.). In that case, you can still allow click to move to automatically avoid SPOTTED traps (including traps spotted while in automove mode), but not avoid unspotted traps.

This is actually kind of a typical way of handling traps, but I'm just suggesting that it be modified to take into account Dredmor's special trap sight stat.

The only negative to this (and I'm not sure how much of a negative it really will be) is that it will encourage people to walk around a bit, maybe retracing steps, to increase the chances of spotting the traps.

 

Not if you have to pick up more than one in the same thirty turns

 

Have either of you ever been diagnosed with Anankastic Personality Disorder? You seem to have a preoccupation with caution.

 

I actually backed up my comment later in the same post:

It's not that I have a preoccupation with caution, it's that I'm allergic to boredom; it makes me fall asleep.

Because you seem to be hard of reading or thinking, I'll reiterate what I said in a different way: I often find in games walking around a dungeon between fights to be tedious and annoying. Loot boxes, traps, teleporters and doors are some of the ways that Dredmor tries to break up the tedium. I've fallen prey to traps as well, and each time I curse them, but I also know that it was my own fault. Traps help make the game more interesting, and serve to also work as crafty weapons or cash for those players that invest in those parts of their characters. If traps were auto-disarm, then their existence would be meaningless and exploration would be boring, leading to the "just walk around killing enemies" style game play.

The roguelike genre has traditionally been known for being punishing. Traps, potions that kill, monsters with hidden abilities, and having to play the game several times until the player knows what tactics to use to survive. If you want a game where all you do is walk around and kill monsters, there's hundreds of MMOs out there that can cater for that. If you want a game that actually challenges your tactical skills and encourages thought rather than tedious repetition, then why are you hating on Dredmor?!!?

 

I don't imagine there is any simple way to deal with traps, but having traps owned by monsters might be a way to approach this. Instead of trap sight radius why not have higher trap sight a check if you can see traps at all? And make them harmless if, in fact, you can. The adversarial stat on the other side could be stealth, giving it the opposite role it formerly had. How about something like: You can see a trap if ADVERSARY_STEALTH<(CEILING(0,YOUR_TRAP_SIGHT_RADIUS-1)*15+1). Conversely, traps owned by the player can only harm monsters if they the player has enough stealth to overcome their trap sight radius.