IT'S A TRAP! Part 1

[Chakravanti]

...and QL of the ingredients. I'd like to believe that the disparity between development of characters causes people with high theft skills to be unmotivated to steal from nubs or people not on par with their level of development but I think it will just make late game content even more late game. Although to achieve said late game content and the equivalent level of protection people will be further encouraged to band into strong organized communist villages.

Traps are a classic part of RPG's. They shoudl funciton as a preventative deterrent to vandals but having vandal trigger trap types cause significant amounts of damage to the player and/or be much mroe difficult for vandal type to avoid triggering.

It shouldn't be step-tile triggered. it should be triggered by criminal acts. And for each act you have ot make a roll to avoid setting off the trap. If you have, lets say twice the traps QL in the appropriate skill you can attempt to disarm it with %50 odds of success. Thus if you want to steal a lot from a certain cupboard it might be better to try to disarm the trap than to make a (less risky) skill check for every single item removed. Where as if oyu just want to remove one or two high value items it makes more sense to wager your skills against remove them and avoiding the trap.

Eventually a thief will take enough damage he'll HAVE to leave. Some traps should have a very difficult avoidance rate and actually engage thieves in combat and force them to be unable to teleport out and have to face other traps like those from climbing walls and exiting doors(tresspass).

[Jackard]

traps shouldnt only be about straight up damage, thats boring

stock mouseclick-disarmskill traps are boring

boring!!1

there should also be environmental hazards in addition to traps. like moats or brambles

[Chakravanti]

Totally agree. like I said: Some aggro traps are a nice idea. Certainly direct damage traps and poisons/diseased traps should be in the repertoire....but I'm drawing a blank as to alternatives. Maybe I'll think of something later. Only thing I can think of offhand is an aggro/prison trap that captures the thief for a debatable duration.

In such a scenario game mechanics for interrogation would be interesting.

So lets hear some trap type alternatives!

[Alamarian]

Trap of ultimate annoyance: no fast travel except to hearth and you move at a crawl. Takes one in-game hour to shake off or eight idle hours.

[Lothaudus]

Significant HHP damage, and repeat fire traps. Maybe even single fire traps automatically reset but can only hit the same toon once.

Except you still know the trap is there. I doubt players will trap every inch of their claim (unless it's easy enough to do so - which then seems to bring it to a level of absurdity). Once the location of the trap is known by sacrificing an alt, the main theft char simply bypasses that trap or brings in the highly skilled 'disarm trap char' if they believe there's good stuff there.

I still like the basic poison idea, especially on food. Being able to poison food that you might leave behind (EG: Cheese) so whomever steals it might suddenly come down with a nasty case of death upon eating. Or being able to coat it on objects so that those who touch the poisoned objects also suffer some consequences. Different roots may create different poisons with different effects (pass-out unconscious for a time, end up like you're overly drunk, blurred vision, hallucinations, basic HHP damage).

Everything else seems to be a simple "trigger" mechanism (character has performed X action) setting off an attack (damage to character; 'cause if we ain't damaging them, it ain't a deterrent).

Everybody also seemed to like Guard Dogs. Tied in with the latest dev diary about taming wolves, they would obviously be the best defence.

And the idea of two separate threads is stupid. Ideas and the mechanics behind how those ideas will work, go hand-in-hand.

[Jackard]

And the idea of two separate threads is stupid. :D Ideas and the mechanics behind how those ideas will work, go hand-in-hand.

yeap