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Icewind Dale The Icewind Dale Series Thread

TwinkieGorilla

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That's bringing back the "early" in early.

Ehehe. Yeah, sometimes it takes me awhile to actually get going on something. I'm at the Temple of the Forgotten God now. Goddamn Verbeeg!
 

TwinkieGorilla

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Oddly enough I was having a helluva time with them upon first entrance but I just wiped up the entire mess of baddies near the very end of the temple with only moderate tactical planning.
 
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Lilura

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Oddly enough I was having a helluva time with them upon first entrance but I just wiped up the entire mess of baddies near the very end of the temple with only moderate tactical planning.

Is that because your tanks had Rings of Free Action from pick-pocketing Orrick and Arundel, and your wizard cast Webs? :troll:
 

Roguey

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Huh, I thought verbeegs were a joke until that last battle with the two clerics.

Yeah it's pretty annoying how IWD doesn't have a "have thief search for traps anytime it's not attacking" script.
 

Lonely Vazdru

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Yeah it's pretty annoying how IWD doesn't have a "have thief search for traps anytime it's not attacking" script.
I like to actively search for traps in the IE games. Failing to do it in critical places like a weird corridor or near an oddly placed skeleton was severly punished. That's D&D. A script would kill the fun and make your judgment irrelevant. Im not too keen on games that you watch like NWN, I prefer games that you play. No reason not to make it optional though.
 

Roguey

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I like to search for traps in the IE games. Failing to do it in critical places like a weird corridor or near an oddly placed skeleton was severly punished. That's D&D. A script would kill the fun and make your judgment irrelevant. Im not too keen on games that you watch like NWN, I prefer games that you play. No reason not to make it optional though.

Having to click the "search traps" option every time is a pointlessly rote action. There's no reason not to have it on at all times so it should be automated. You can still be punished by traps if you choose not to have a thief in your party and rely on find traps spells.
 

Lonely Vazdru

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Well, it's not every time, I'm not searching for traps in Kuldahar for instance. And it's certainly not pointless for me. Automated tasks, OTOH, are one step closer to letting the game play by itself, and that's what's pointless. I understand the annoyance, I've been there too, but I'd rather be annoyed than passive.

Plus, you're a rogue FFS. Your speech borders on treason.
 

Jestai

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Yes, or even better, they could remove all the traps as long as you have a thief with decent find traps skill in your party! How fun would that be!
 

Revenant

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Searching for traps is supposed to be an active action by the player in P&P RPG, I don't see any reason you shouldn't click a button to indicate that you want to search for traps in a CRPG either.
 

Roguey

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Well, it's not every time, I'm not searching for traps in Kuldahar for instance. And it's certainly not pointless for me. Automated tasks, OTOH, are one step closer to letting the game play by itself, and that's what's pointless. I understand the annoyance, I've been there too, but I'd rather be annoyed than passive.

Plus, you're a rogue FFS. Your speech borders on treason.
There's nothing challenging or mentally stimulating about remembering to click on your find traps skill after combat ends.

Baldur's Gate 2 had this script. I don't remember if IWD2 did.

Yes, or even better, they could remove all the traps as long as you have a thief with decent find traps skill in your party! How fun would that be!
This wouldn't be a good thing in situations where there are traps in a combat situation.
 

Lonely Vazdru

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There's nothing challenging or mentally stimulating about remembering
I think there is. But well, as I said, as long as it's not an imposed feature but a script you can choose to use or not, I'm fine with it.

Also, thanks Revenant, I didn't know "The gamers" and liked it. I'll watch some more. :thumbsup:
 

Infinitron

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I would say that automated trap detection is only a good thing if the game has a tendency of placing traps in the environment with zero environmental "tells".

If the game is designed in a way that it expects the player to notice traps with his own two eyes, and then use the detect traps ability to "confirm" that detection, then it shouldn't be automated.
 

Jestai

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Brother Roguey, you're taking the problem from the wrong side anyway: the stupidity comes from the possibility to look for traps at all times without a penalty of any kind, not from the lack of an AI script.

Whatever, I always thought traps were stupid most of the time anyway. One room and two big chests out of five will be trapped but you won't be able to tell which one 90% of the time. How many times did i think "there might be a trap here, but i can't be arsed to wait for it to be found by waiting 5 to 20 seconds as it's only 20% chance => FUCK THAT, i'll reload this shit if needed anyway". Maybe it would make more sense without reloads, without seemingly random locations and with easier to find but harder to disable traps.
 

TwinkieGorilla

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I've certainly face-palmed a few times after forgetting to click on the search for traps button. I thought it good design to keep you on your toes, not bad. Roguey talkin' kinda consoley, yo.
 

sea

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If you think about it, what are traps really doing? They're hurting you and taking away some of your health. Sometimes they might curse you or hit you with another debuff. In rare instances, they are used to make combat encounters more interesting - do you spend the time and effort looking for and disarming traps, or can that same effort be spent fighting enemies directly and eating an extra fireball? This is when I like traps most, but sadly also when they are least used.

In CRPGs, generally trap detection is extremely boring. It teaches the player to save scum, because every room and every chest could be trapped (and probably is). It teaches players to use a rogue, because rogues need to have a reason to exist other than backstab. It teaches players to be cautious, which is good, but not so much if the only thing being cautious is good for is to avoid traps. It teaches you that you won't get all the loot if you don't have a means of dealing with traps.

If you don't do these things, then you take some damage, which means you have to waste some time or other resources getting healed up again. If your game does have a component where this time is valuable or where resources are scarce, then traps can make sense, because it's effectively a non-combat limitation on progress through a level. Sometimes it is actually used to provide interesting alternatives - for example, do you take on the enemies or navigate a trap-filled corridor instead? But if you have, say, a regenerating health system, traps have basically no function whatsoever other than to maybe give you busywork and some bonus XP for disarming them.

There's also the distinct storyfag problem of enemies inhabiting locations which are completely stuffed full of traps. Holy shit, that would be pretty fucking dangerous if your floor was fitted with camouflaged bear traps all over the place! The traps would be a bigger hazard than a deterrent.

In other words, I'd say traps should only really be utilized in designing interesting combat encounters, when providing possible alternatives for the player to complete an objective (sneak past the guards, fight, or disable the traps?), or for simple lore/story reasons (a big vault full of valuables probably would have a trap or two in it). The trap detection method isn't really a big deal one way or the other, it's how they're used that needs to be analyzed.
 

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sea I like traps that don't (just) damage you but (also) apply long term status effects, especially those that affect mobility.

Perhaps in PE Josh Sawyer will add a limited "trap disarming" resource so that there's more of a tradeoff. It's the same argument we had about lock-picking a while ago.
 

sea

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I totally just realized that this was the Icewind Dale thread and not the Project Eternity thread.
 

Zed

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Playing through Baldur's Gate, where traps will kill you most of the time, this is my experience:

New dungeon area. Looks trap'ish! -> Quick save.
Step on trap and die -> Load game.
Scout ahead with Thief and remove trap.

This is because Baldur's Gate suffers from "random trap" syndrome. The only places I act preemptively are rooms with nice-looking chests in luxurious houses and end-game dungeons. All other traps are just random as shit. Like the web traps in cloakwood forest. What the fuck is that shit.
 

octavius

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But the nice thing about those traps in Cloakwood Forest is that once they are sprung, you have some short time in which to try to outrun it, or utilize something giving Free Action.
 

Lonely Vazdru

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The place would be too easy without them anyway. As rage inducing as they were, they made the spider zone dangerous and, webs being webs, more spidery.
 

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