Why people love so much magic dances?

Americans17 · 2014-02-26 21:28:38

So i just went on a suicide roberry spree. At least in 1/2 of houses i visite there is at least 1 magic dance. Why you guys like so much that traps?
I know its a good trap, but imo its the unfunniest trap in the whole game (2º place combo locks)

LiteS · 2014-02-26 21:32:28

They are very efficient, compact, and deadly. They are expensive to bypass safely. They are also inexpensive to build and relatively unpredictable.

Amatiel · 2014-02-26 21:50:33

Yes.

They are cancer.

If i see one I leave the house immediately with my 2k of tools to prevent the owner making a profit from me.

Americans17 · 2014-02-26 21:51:38

Amatiel wrote:

Yes.
They are cancer.
If i see one I leave the house immediately with my 2k of tools to prevent the owner making a profit from me.

When i see a combo lock i waste the tools if i can't scape. I hate that 2 tramps

Amatiel · 2014-02-26 21:57:14

My House is based around the flow of power

Its nothing like a combination lock and you can actually nut it out if you are clever and lucky enough to choose the right door (or bring enough tools to give u few more chances). Its actually fun and appealing, which may be why i get so many visitors, more than most it seems anyway. Only ones who walk back out are people with big houses it seems.

I could comfortably keep maybe 30-40K in it.

Not a single magic dance was seen that day

MMaster · 2014-02-27 00:47:25

I love magic dance traps. They are fun to figure out. Combo locks are easy to figure out (if you have tools).
You say that you use choose 1 door from many and say combo locks are cancer :-D

EDIT: Why people use them? Because they are cheap and provide high complexity. Just break the walls somewhere around where the cat/dog is and take a note of the buttons and then figure it out. It's usually not that hard.

Of course if you do suicide running it's bad for you as you can't get back, but when you go carefully so you can leave when you want you can actually break it - figure out how it works and come again better prepared.

EDIT: Amatiel you write it to almost every thread that if anyone is using combo lock or magic dance you will not come to their house. That's fine .. there are thousands of others. But if you could please stop writing that over and over that would be great. Magic dances are great and I love figuring them out, combo locks are just crossings with lots of ways to go where only one way is correct and they can be broken and bypassed (or you can break it and look at the combination for next time). Nothing too difficult. It can be difficult if cleverly combined, but still it can be passed (believe me I broke into 2 houses from top 8 yesterday).

Last edited by MMaster (2014-02-27 01:07:57)

Amatiel · 2014-02-27 01:34:54

MMaster wrote:

I love magic dance traps. They are fun to figure out. Combo locks are easy to figure out (if you have tools).
You say that you use choose 1 door from many and say combo locks are cancer :-D
EDIT: Amatiel you write it to almost every thread that if anyone is using combo lock or magic dance you will not come to their house. That's fine .. there are thousands of others. But if you could please stop writing that over and over that would be great. Magic dances are great and I love figuring them out, combo locks are just crossings with lots of ways to go where only one way is correct and they can be broken and bypassed (or you can break it and look at the combination for next time). Nothing too difficult. It can be difficult if cleverly combined, but still it can be passed (believe me I broke into 2 houses from top 8 yesterday).

When i say one door from many i mean 1 of 5 doors which AND each wrong attempt can be easily bypassed with two bricks.
BTW If it sounds like im making a house that has to be easily beatable trust me it isn't.

Magic dances are not fun imo, as there is nearly no limit to how complex they can be AND one of every two 8K+ houses has one. They are not intuitive, smart or quirky they are cancer and if it were up to me i would actually make it so that a dog has to be visible for him to move at all unless there is clear space between you, one could shield still shield him with glass/pits ofc, cats are fine as their movement is independent of yours

There was a reason that the original magic dances where the pet didn't even have to see you were changed, these particular traps are a successful attempt at resurrecting that behavior as it isnt worth bypassing until the house is allowed to go past 25k value.

When I say magic dance I specifically mean this particular copypasta trap here (simplified version)

http://castledraft.com/editor/ENMFcm

How can you possibly say they are fun to work out when it is the same trap over and over again (almost brick for brick excepting the wiring) where you would need many times the houses worth in tools to even get past the first one safely???????? They are essentially an invisible combo lock that cannot be bypassed with less than 8K. I have robbed many houses and never once have i successfully guessed the dance to the trap i linked above. Clocks are preferable to this trap.

Combo locks are not as bad and are easily learned/bypassed with saws as you say (sometimes u need LOTS of saws) but its still boring and unimaginative when its taken to the extreme. (ie combo lock after combo lock... nothing but combo locks)

If you really love this type of magic dances that's fine, but if you could please stop spouting nonsense in an attempt to justify your own lack of creativity that would be great.

I am merely attempting to encourage more creativity as there is a myriad of possibilities when it comes to the different ways you can make an effective house, one doesn't just have to build the most 'effective' or in this case exploitative trap that someone on the forums can come up with.

MMaster · 2014-02-27 01:40:54

Amatiel wrote:

If you really love this type of magic dances that's fine, but if you could please stop spouting nonsense in an attempt to justify your own lack of creativity that would be great.
I am merely attempting to encourage more creativity as there is a myriad of possibilities when it comes to the different ways you can make an effective house, one doesn't just have to build the most 'effective' or in this case exploitative trap that someone on the forums can come up with.

Wow. Ok. Sorry to be non-creative by saying magic dance traps are fun to solve (as a robber). Enjoy your hate run against those traps with your abundance of creativity.

Amatiel · 2014-02-27 01:58:58

MMaster wrote:

Amatiel wrote:
If you really love this type of magic dances that's fine, but if you could please stop spouting nonsense in an attempt to justify your own lack of creativity that would be great.
I am merely attempting to encourage more creativity as there is a myriad of possibilities when it comes to the different ways you can make an effective house, one doesn't just have to build the most 'effective' or in this case exploitative trap that someone on the forums can come up with.
Wow. Ok. Sorry to be non-creative by saying magic dance traps are fun to solve (as a robber). Enjoy your hate run against those traps with your abundance of creativity.

Thats ok you are forgiven.

No hate here just calling BS as i see it.

Im sure you were there with the initial "pet doesnt have to see you" magic dance apologists as well

The core justification for changing the game existed both then and now.

Its too easy to make a house early in the game that is worth far less than it is to even START to make an attempt with a reasonable chance of success. So you have all these effectively unsolvable and extremely unforgiving (cant take a safe step without spending $400) houses below 30K in value sitting around doing nothing for the game

Next time you take issue with what someone is saying, try not to make it a personal attack, just address the issue at hand and things remain more civil and constructive from the start.

MMaster · 2014-02-27 02:21:21

If you can please once again read my post and mark the part where I do attack you personally that would be great as I would learn what did I say that attacked you. When you are done with that you can also do the same thing with your reply to my post.

The fact that magic dances were wrong before (because you didn't have to see the animal) does not mean that they are the same now. You always see the animal so you know there is something going on that you need to figure out.
But I see there is no reason to watch this post anymore as you don't want to have anything explained, you don't want to be proved wrong and learn how to deal with traps like that. You just want to tell everyone how it is wrong and how non-creative they are by building something like that.

Amatiel · 2014-02-27 02:40:10

MMaster wrote:

If you can please once again read my post and mark the part where I do attack you personally that would be great as I would learn what did I say that attacked you. When you are done with that you can also do the same thing with your reply to my post.
The fact that magic dances were wrong before (because you didn't have to see the animal) does not mean that they are the same now. You always see the animal so you know there is something going on that you need to figure out.
But I see there is no reason to watch this post anymore as you don't want to have anything explained, you don't want to be proved wrong and learn how to deal with traps like that. You just want to tell everyone how it is wrong and how non-creative they are by building something like that.

Well when u start off by telling someone what they can or cant write/stop writing it sets a rather negative tone don't you think?

Knowing something is going on isn't enough. Where the animal is 5 ladders and a window out of reach it doesnt matter, you cant do anything about it whatsoever. to take a single safe step on the trap i linked you need to either ladder the pits/blast through the wall or spend $400 a step.

How is that a different situation to before? Each step from the start could be your death due to an animal that you cannot neutralize or see after the initial sighting. There is no way round it short of spending usually far more than the house is worth in tools.

Same conditions as before in my opinion. It's slightly better now, as you know there is one, but you still cant do anything about it.

Name one other trap style that has the same capabilities and you will start to have a shred of an argument.

MMaster · 2014-02-27 03:31:47

I didn't say that you can't say your opinion. I just asked you politely to stop posting the same thing to everyone that uses combo lock/magic dance traps (this is 3rd thread where I see you say the same thing - they are cancer, non-creative, etc) and I continued with what I though was friendly tone that I like that kind of traps. You called my opinion non-sense and also told me that I lack creativity because I like to figure out those traps. The trap that you posted costs $20k and it would cost me 6 wire cutters + 13 water + 1 dog meat ($3800 or $1900) to get through it and find out how the buttons are placed (that's kind of easy compared to how much space the trap takes and how much it costs). Houses with lot of money need to have difficulty proportional to the amount of money they store in vault. It's different from before, because now you know where the dog/cat is so you know where you need to look to find out how are the buttons connected.
Any different trap? For example combination of traps that you need to trigger/not trigger in order to be able to pass single passage or when you have buttons connected to advanced electronics (not combo lock) that behave differently than expected - I think that's even more difficult as with the magic dance traps the animals need walkable path. There are lot of traps much more difficult to circumvent then the one you have posted.

Jabloko · 2014-02-27 04:13:40

I would join the idea that magic dances are probably the most effective form of trapping. The way I see it:
Pitbull-maze-window combo: cheap, but takes up lot's of space, and cheap to break too
Clocks: Cheap, but humongous, complicated and can be figured out (unless ofc it's made by an electricity nerd, lol)
Combination locks: Only effective at the middle of the house, as people will usually walk away from them given a chance. With some luck and a lot of saws, can be broken too
Commit gates: Can be broken, unless you make breaking them to be penalising.

Magic dances, however, can be effective from a 6x10 size. I usually make them to be inverted, so breaking them is actually bad for you. For example, they may disable a cat that would zap you at screenchange, or...something even better I would not tell .

I would say that the less complex your electricity system is, the better. If you have a long wire system that runs through your entire house that also means that that can be sawn through. I usually make "blocks" with different challenges, and try to keep electricity integral to those.

Amatiel · 2014-02-27 05:09:35

OK I see the simplified version isnt gonna cut it for u, i was hoping that you would be able to see what can be done here without having to make something this obvious

http://castledraft.com/editor/uxryJf

I just threw this together, here is a 5k Cost house that costs about 6k to safely bypass with tools. your ONLY other option is to walk out the door. I cbf calculating the odds of guessing the correct magic dance but it would be astronomical.

As you get more money you can make it bigger and bigger costing more to bypass.

spend another 5k on it and it would realistically cost 15k+ in tools. No one is gonna fork out 15k in tools for anything less than a 25K house, and this design makes scouting prohibitively expensive if you have killed off you wife and kids, so again you have to do it all in one hit.

Personally i would not attempt a house like this with anything less than 70K sitting in the vault, because scouting IS necessary (as i cant see whats behind walls and i cant tell how old this house is). Unless you are really going to town... taking like 50k of tools in, but again you still dont know if thats gonna be enough for sure so you tend to take extra. Thats a lot of money.

Too effective, no other trap I know of is this ridiculously cost effective.

The examples you gave are much easier to bypass. You said so yourself.

MMaster · 2014-02-27 06:35:28

Good design! 13 wire cutters + 10 water ($6200) / 4 ladders + 4 bricks ($7800) / 5 torches + 4 bricks ($4600) / 1 wire cutter + 5 torches + 3 saws ($5600). There is limit as to how much it can cost to break it and that is - the dog has to see you so the width of the wall between you and the dog is the limit of how expensive it can be to break such trap. And it takes A LOT of space. I'm still not convinced this is some kind of ULTIMATE HAXXOR TRAP. Most of the people will just turn around and you will not make any money from them so I would not build something like that in a low/medium value house. It is however something different when you have high value house, because in that case you just need to make something that is really really hard to guess and takes as much tools as possible per square.
So if somebody uses that trap in low value house it's their fault as they will not make too much money from bounties (but their money will be well protected). If it's in high value house where you don't care about the cost of the traps you can probably fit more traps into that space which are more effective in terms of tool cost per square (using trapdoors, powered doors, etc).

Amatiel · 2014-02-27 06:56:16

Whilst i refuse to feed players who employ this trap any money by wasting 2k worth of tools and starting fresh, the reality is that im fighting a losing battle.

Most players would just give it a go rather than go through the increased effort of returning to your house then committing suicide AND when they die they usually die with ALL their tools being unused leaving a fat 1100 total reward per suicide robber kill as people seldom bring wire cutters and are hesitant to waste tools on guessing when a trap gets activated. Another massive advantage to using this. It really is too effective imo, it isn't completely game breaking ill admit, but it does nothing good for the game and does not encourage creativity. Hence my view that it is a cancer within the game.

MMaster · 2014-02-27 07:39:02

People are getting much better at this game and over the last 2 weeks I see that number of suicide robbers has decreased a lot. People don't tend to scout houses that scream at them: "Dead in 5 turns!" anymore. You can even see it on the forum - people asking how to attract more people etc. Building inviting house is one of the most important things when you are starting new house. Changing it to "house of inevitable death" is also important if you want to survive with more than $30k in vault. Most of the houses at top will implement some kind of "unguessable" trap(s) and force the robber to brute force them. I see it as a part of the game and the fact that you don't want to scout such houses is just proof that you already learned it's not worth it. Other people that still play the game also learned that or they will learn it very soon. If the house owner wants to make some money he should not use trap like this, but it's entirely up to him. It's his disadvantage.

I agree that there are people that just throw themselves at this with $2k tools without even scouting the house before, but it's their fault. Not the fault of the game. It is not about stopping people from building those traps by screaming at them that they are lame and lack creativity and they are giving cancer to this game. (you needed to be creative to build effective trap like you shown) They are just hurting themselves by using traps like that. Teaching people to not just take $2k tools and jump to any house expecting they should pass it without problems is the right way to go. If they just go blindly they completely deserve the death that awaits them.

Amatiel · 2014-02-27 08:16:01

My security tape records suggest that most robbers are:

Fresh start suicide robbers who don't scout houses, as that would mean they have to spend money protecting their safe which is money that could be spent on tools. If they die they simply start over, spending another 2k on tools hoping to bag a decent first haul to build a decent house with right off the bat.

This is also exactly what I do, and it has worked brilliantly. I have never made a house with the starting 2k, my lowest has been about 5 or 6k going up to 65k as my record. I build a sweet house that i have pre-designed starting with cheaper materials if i have to and marking out traps with indicator lights which i replace for the real thing as i can afford it. The longest it has taken me to rob a 5K+ house is about 3/4 hours of game time. Usually it's about 1-2 hours. So i can definitely see why others beside me dont bother with scouting when starting out fresh.

Once i have my lovely new expensive house, I only rob houses that are easy pickings with ZERO risk, and make money of bounties. Eventually i make enough money to make a serious attempt on a top tier house but i take at least 10-15k of tools with me to ensure i can get out again and its worthwhile.

I believe that others play the game in this fashion more or less as well.

Here are my most recent security tape figures to support this.

49 Kills were suicide robbers with about 2k of tools. about 10 had no tools. None pre scouted.

4 kills were pre - scouting suicide robbers with up to 2k worth of tools (came in for a peek and returned with tools then died)

36 players came in and left without dying. Most had no tools and did not take any risks like going over even the most simple of commitment traps. A few were failed non-scouting suicide robbers who ran out of tools then left rather than donate their body n bounty to the Amatiel housing charity... Most of these players are obviously players with a decent house of their own looking for slim pickings, they are usually the first ones to come into my house after modifying it and seeing the 0 - 0 score hoping that i have disconnected or messed up and my fat stack of 2-5k is just sitting there for them.

This environment is in contrast to what you suggest, which is that players are influenced by the scariness of a house. I have suggested this in other threads but in reality it is only a tiny tiny factor. My house is very robber friendly and it only brought me an extra 3 robbers.

Yes, me hating on magic dances isn't going to change player behavior, but it got this discussion going and hopefully (in my opinion) will lead to some kind of change in the game. like what i listed above or even a cost reduction of wire cutters would be nice ($150???)

MMaster · 2014-02-27 08:44:04

Maybe it would help if they knew that their house doesn't show up in the list for first 5 minutes so they can freely scout without tools before jumping in with $2k tools. People with $2k tools rob even houses that have just $500 in vaults - how can we deal with that. It's unfair for house owners that they lose everything just because someone has $2k tools from the beginning.
Anyway - just because people blindly jump to houses with $2k tools doesn't mean we should force house owners to let them pass.

Amatiel · 2014-02-27 09:03:22

The 5 min rule is not bad although that would be really open to exploitation as well unfortunately.

2k tools to rob $500? Those are just griefers/haters/i just lost my awesome house and im pissed runs. Just remember the fuckers name and plot his demise, this game is rather personal after all.

I can recount a few serious feuds/vendettas between myself and others as a result of this kind of behavior. Quite hilarious really, I love it.

One guy with a house that was pretty new and only worth about 1-2K was scouting a previous house of mine over and over again so i took a whole bunch of tools and clubbed one of his kids as a warning. He returned to my house so i shot his wife and a bunch of his dogs too. He came back AGAIN so i clubbed his remaining son and did a whole heap of damage to his house and robbed it completely blind. He then came back into my house with no tools and was forced to hang himself in a dead end powered door room. Thats justice folks... lel

42dustman · 2014-02-27 11:07:27

Now now, don't go comparing magic dances to comb locks, magic dances can actually be figured out with a bit of savviness and luck and they aren't even expensive to break with tools (just use wire cutters on the first floors and keep going straightforward until it activates, from them on just use water).

Amatiel · 2014-02-27 11:09:31

42dustman wrote:

(just use wire cutters on the first floors and keep going straightforward until it activates, from them on just use water).

Oh really?

Look again chief

What have i created....

This monster will wreak havoc on us all

http://castledraft.com/editor/uxryJf

Last edited by Amatiel (2014-02-27 11:09:45)

LiteS · 2014-02-28 11:57:09

If your house consists only of commitment gates, you are always at risk of falling to a 2k suicide robber, since those gates are always 1 guess per tool. A robber with no exit strategy doesn't care how much it costs to return to the welcome mat. The only thing that will stop this kind of robber is a combination lock or a magic dance, something where guessing incorrectly means death. If you design your house as a series of choices that can be backed out of with tools, a suicide robber will be able to make multiple guesses at critical points in your design, and will get very deep into your house. Given enough suicide robbers, such a house will fall very quickly.

A combination lock or magic dance puts a hard stop on the forward progress of the suicide robber, and with enough bits a combo lock can protect you from lucky guessing.

Blip · 2014-02-28 12:00:37

LiteS wrote:

A combination lock or magic dance puts a hard stop on the forward progress of the suicide robber, and with enough bits a combo lock can protect you from lucky guessing.

This. The combo lock or magic dance strategy is designed around probability; you make the probability of guessing the correct solution for a house far less. It allows houses to stand longer in the face of many suicide robbers repeatedly charging though commit gates with little to no care.

Amatiel · 2014-02-28 12:52:23

Blip wrote:

LiteS wrote:
A combination lock or magic dance puts a hard stop on the forward progress of the suicide robber, and with enough bits a combo lock can protect you from lucky guessing.
This. The combo lock or magic dance strategy is designed around probability; you make the probability of guessing the correct solution for a house far less. It allows houses to stand longer in the face of many suicide robbers repeatedly charging though commit gates with little to no care.

If my current house falls, I will link it here although i reckon its gonna take a while...

It does everything you just describe with out the cheesiness of the design i linked above.

Buttons do not do what you expect them to, power flows in unexpected ways, each attempt on the vault requires a minimum of 10K in the right tools just to ensure a safe return,,,, and if you do that brute forcing just became extremely expensive as well.

probability wise its less effective than magic dance/combo lock but; if you need to cut paper scissors are just as effective as a samurai sword...

Perhaps all this is besides the point, My problem with these traps as shown above is that they exact such a huge cost in tools every step you take on them. I am thinking more and more that wire cutters are over priced for what they are. Saws cost the same and are also dual purpose (can cut power and obviously saw through walls) Wire cutters are really solely used for electric floors, no one actually buys them intending to use them on exposed wires, thats only a small consolation in comparison.

Reduce the price of wire cutters and i think these traps will be balanced out a bit more

The Castle Doctrine Forums

#1 2014-02-26 21:28:38

Why people love so much magic dances?

#2 2014-02-26 21:32:28

Re: Why people love so much magic dances?

#3 2014-02-26 21:50:33

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#4 2014-02-26 21:51:38

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#5 2014-02-26 21:57:14

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#6 2014-02-27 00:47:25

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#7 2014-02-27 01:34:54

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#8 2014-02-27 01:40:54

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#9 2014-02-27 01:58:58

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#10 2014-02-27 02:21:21

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#11 2014-02-27 02:40:10

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#12 2014-02-27 03:31:47

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#13 2014-02-27 04:13:40

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#14 2014-02-27 05:09:35

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#15 2014-02-27 06:35:28

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#16 2014-02-27 06:56:16

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#17 2014-02-27 07:39:02

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#18 2014-02-27 08:16:01

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#19 2014-02-27 08:44:04

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#20 2014-02-27 09:03:22

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#21 2014-02-27 11:07:27

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#22 2014-02-27 11:09:31

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#23 2014-02-28 11:57:09

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#24 2014-02-28 12:00:37

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#25 2014-02-28 12:52:23

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