Trap Exploration Holes

[xXCrystal_Rose]

Give that one the deer that Jessica Valerios met also. The one she wanted to give the Thayan Firelord Crown to and name her champion.


A random deer walks out of the mist and says "Hello (name here)." then after a few seconds it just explodes in a mountain of meaty gore.

[granny]

Oh... I like that idea, Rose!

What about the dream Miranda had as well?

Out of the blue, a familiar old lady comes and offers you a tankard of ale. You accept it automatically, so confused you are. Then you drink it and before you understand what is going on.... the crone starts cackling and YOU EXPLODE. Blackout comes and you wake up afterwards... confused, but still whole.

[xXCrystal_Rose]

Machine based area trap random




You enter this hatchway, but it is a trap, and you fall into a cage. All around you there are scrappers and other miscreants. Vapors rise from the grates beneath them. Some of them are glowing, then they start throwing paint bombs, then they start killing eachother. After a few rounds in this cage with everybody randomly murdering eachother around you the cage walls lower into the floor. As soon as this happens though giant glowing green blobs of Substance start to surge up from the grates on the opposite side of the room.

You can either join in the murderfest and try to scavenge what you can from the bodies before the Substance oozes consume them or you can just bolt for the door. More and more Substance cubes keep spawning until they would begin to fill the room in entirety.

[The Samophlange]

I'm not sure these would be a great idea. Random explorables already carry some pretty high dangers to them, so it is not like there isn't a good amount of risk versus reward when you see a hole pop up out in the wild. Encounters that are designed to trick or 'get' players are very rarely satisfying from the player's perspective. Plus, another big problem is that try as we might to not metagame, it is something that we do. Once you've seen a 'trap' explorable you'll recognize it and either effortlessly disarm the situation in it or just avoid it if the reward isn't worth it.

Efu is a pretty rough place and while a certain adaptation to that is required, imagine being a new player whose first explorable is designed to kill/seriously muck them up. The worst feeling for a player trying to get their bearing is that there was nothing they could have done to avoid their death.

[xXCrystal_Rose]

That is exactly why all of the traps are less dangerous than leaving Sanctuary and have non-combat options :) Much less dangerous than a normal random area, but a bit of a surprise to mix things up so that you can't anticipate so easily what you are getting yourself into.

[LiAlH4]

I am watching this thread.

My, my, the toolset is open.

[granny]

Alas, you're not allowed to discuss here!

Just suggest awesome stuff like Miss Rose! :D

[Fiaryn]

Regular explorables can be dangerous enough. Do we really need ones that only exist to kill players?

This. What's being described here is, bluntly speaking, fake difficulty. Artifical or fake difficulty is a 100% random act of "you're boned because reasons". Not even critical hits fall into this category because you can still reasonably assess the danger of a crit off of observation of enemy AB and damage, and heal accordingly.

To reference a popular game based on difficulty, a large part of why Dark Souls is so popular is because while it may be crushingly hard at times, it is never unfair. Risk is always in the player's hands. Trap explorables, as described, fail to meet this standard of game design.

Satisfying difficulty is about choices.

[Gloinar]

the corgi hath spoken

[LiAlH4]

Foolhardy sprinting through the wilds might just cost someone their life? Who ever would have thought such a thing could occur.

Suggestion made, this is not a discussion thread. Take it to IRC.