Can't open a 'down' door if you have an object called 'down'

[prophnoran]

Town Square
  A dank wind slowly pushes past and carries with it an immense odor of
unmentionable decay.  A light warm rain floats down like tiny droplets of
slime coating everything it touches.  Footprints are almost nonexistent in
this part of town while the occasional bloodstain becomes a bit more
frequent.  Pictorials of snakes adorn the ground but this looks more like
the work of a hallucinatory man with a knife than any stone carver.  There
is a grate on the ground here in which the water drips down into blackness. 
It looks big enough to crawl down.  

[Exits: north east south west (down)]
     A pretty red rope has been dropped here.
( 2) A piece of red  material pokes up out of the dirt.
     A pretty red necklace has been dropped here.
     A pretty red bracelet has been dropped here.
     A small shaving razor was left here.
     A big pile of crumpled blue silk lies in the middle of the room.
     A leather belt hangs from a nearby doorknob.
A little girl practices her sultry walk.
A bald man sneaks past you.
(Translucent) (Flying) A swarm of gnats hover in the air.
A beautiful woman walks past you and winks.

442/659H 329/329M 201/229V a:1000 911tnl NESW  >
open down
That's not a container.

442/659H 329/329M 201/229V a:1000 911tnl NESW  >
put down joy
You put (Quest) A Fluffy Eiderdown Quilt in (Erastide) Joyous Bag of Stuff.

442/659H 329/329M 201/229V a:1000 911tnl NESW  >
open down
Ok.

442/659H 329/329M 201/229V a:1000 911tnl NESWD  >
l 
Town Square
  A dank wind slowly pushes past and carries with it an immense odor of
unmentionable decay.  A light warm rain floats down like tiny droplets of
slime coating everything it touches.  Footprints are almost nonexistent in
this part of town while the occasional bloodstain becomes a bit more
frequent.  Pictorials of snakes adorn the ground but this looks more like
the work of a hallucinatory man with a knife than any stone carver.  There
is a grate on the ground here in which the water drips down into blackness. 
It looks big enough to crawl down.  

[Exits: north east south west down]
     A pretty red rope has been dropped here.
( 2) A piece of red  material pokes up out of the dirt.
     A pretty red necklace has been dropped here.
     A pretty red bracelet has been dropped here.
     A small shaving razor was left here.
     A big pile of crumpled blue silk lies in the middle of the room.
     A leather belt hangs from a nearby doorknob.
A little girl practices her sultry walk.
A bald man sneaks past you.
(Translucent) (Flying) A swarm of gnats hover in the air.
A beautiful woman walks past you and winks.

442/659H 329/329M 201/229V a:1000 911tnl NESWD  >

[anhegofcherek]

I appreciate that this can be frustrating, but it's not clear to me if you think there's a "correct" behaviour and if so, what you think it should be.

This behaviour exists in various forms in multiple places - see also get and put searching the room before they search your inventory.

Changing the search order doesn't solve anything - it might make some cases better but it only really moves the problem around.

I don't see a nice way of unambiguously (and pleasantly) addressing where you're looking for something (i.e. to specify whether open east is aimed at the exit, an item on the ground, or an item in your inventory)

I can see the argument for some kind of "intelligent search" - filtering out only open-able targets so open chest finds the chest on the ground and ignores the chestplate in your inventory, but I'm wary of the UX impact by obfuscating the behaviour - right now it's not nice but it's generally clear after the first few times it happens to you, and that feels better than behaviour that people will almost always struggle to follow...

[prophnoran]

Changing the search order doesn't solve anything - it might make some cases better but it only really moves the problem around.

I think it would help a lot here, actually; if exits took priority over items then you couldn't get 'stuck' as often: many doors don't have additional names, and they're much less discoverable if they do. If I'm in a room with a down door which doesn't have a name or doesn't have a name I know, then I'm just stuck; most objects do have more names (quilt, etc.). Plus, I can leave the room if I really want to (much more annoying to go stash the object somewhere).

It's also worth noting that items (like chestplate in your example) are a little different than doors in this regard because you can find them with 1., 2., etc. For example (while holding a stainless-steel chestplate in the sheps donation room, which has chests in it):

#!prompt [3471/3471H] [1751/2021M] [453/656V] E>
 l chest
A reflective chestplate lies here on the floor.

#!prompt [3471/3471H] [1751/2021M] [453/656V] E>
 l 2.chest
A Silverwood Chest

But while at town square in sthiss tor (which has a closed downward exit) while holding an object named down:

1121/1264H 548/548M 371/371V a:918 1876tnl NESW   sneak: >
 open down
That's not a container.

1121/1264H 548/548M 371/371V a:918 1876tnl NESW   sneak: >
 open 2.down
I see no 2.down here.

That is, you're right that it wouldn't categorically solve the problem, but I think it would at least reduce it, by making exits take priority over items in this logic.

[prophnoran]

Of course this is like the lowest priority thing in the world to fix...