I Had a Random Thought (About Video Games)

[Griddlelol]

I've always wondered why trash items exist. Why when I open a chest, is there 20 coins, a piece of armor and a plate worth 20 coins that does nothing, other than let you sell it?

 

Some games even streamline it so that you can click "sell all junk" at a vendor. What?! Why even bother with the junk, just give me the monies. It's a layer of pointless interaction that does nothing. There's no risk vs reward, there's no more reward in selling a goblet or plate for 20 monies than just receiving 20 monies. It feels like shitty design based on something that's existed for a long time.

 

Golly, I'm making an RPG, better put in useless items that can be sold. 

 

On the trash mobs:

 

I agree, fuck trash mobs. They don't teach you anything, if a boss is just a trash mob with more health, then that's a boring fucking boss.

 

I want all bosses, or at least all challenging encounters. There's a reason Souls and Platinum games are some of my favourite. They ignore the idea of trash enemies that don't challenge you.

[tberton]

Griddlelol, have you played the Etrian Odyssey games? They might interest you.

[Griddlelol]

I tried EOIV on 3DS, but I couldn't get into it. Not sure what it was about it that I didn't enjoy. It just felt...bare. 

[SecretAsianMan]

I've always wondered why trash items exist. Why when I open a chest, is there 20 coins, a piece of armor and a plate worth 20 coins that does nothing, other than let you sell it?

 

Some games even streamline it so that you can click "sell all junk" at a vendor. What?! Why even bother with the junk, just give me the monies. It's a layer of pointless interaction that does nothing. There's no risk vs reward, there's no more reward in selling a goblet or plate for 20 monies than just receiving 20 monies. It feels like shitty design based on something that's existed for a long time.

 

One reason I can think of off the top of my head is games that have a limited inventory system.  A game like Diablo for example only has a certain amount of space in your inventory.  Picking up junk items takes up space which forces you to choose what to pick up when you're full.  Either that or it makes you go to a vendor to sell everything.  I agree it's not a particularly compelling reason.

 

A better one would probably be for contrast.  Getting lots of junk items makes the actual good items seem better.  I once used a mod in Torchlight that caused gold to drop instead of items with low quality.  After a while, I started getting annoyed because it felt like I was getting very few drops even though in reality I was really getting the same number with the low rarity stuff dropping as gold instead.  It was still an improvement though because it saved me the trouble of using a town portal all the time to sell stuff.

 

As for mobs, I can think of two things.  One again is contrast, they make the bosses seem bigger and badder by comparison.  They also serve to make the player feel more powerful.  The other is the horde angle.  One weak enemy doesn't pose a threat, but many could.

 

The thing that bothers me about a lot of games is when they take a boss and make it a regular enemy later in the game.  It diminishes the boss fight and feels like lazy design to me.

[Badfinger]

I think it's because most RPGs and ARPGs with that sort of loot system can trace their way back to tabletop roleplaying (and probably specifically D&D). The mechanics are the same, but a dungeon with 15 enemies in it in a D&D game could possibly take hours to get through, and a room with only two skeletons that pose no challenge could take 10 minutes to get through because you have to try and pickpocket the skeletons, try to talk to the skeletons search for traps, search for hidden doors, get pizza, wait for the DM to come back from the bathroom, etc. Having a computer handle all the heavy lifting of the mechanical aspects of combat (hits, misses, damage, experience gained, tracking inventory, status, magic, etc) means you can vastly speed up the process of cremating two skeletons but you don't get the fun roleplaying experience of being disappointed with 4 gold pieces (WHERE DO THE SKELETONS KEEP IT?!) because you're instantly vaporizing 5 more skeletons.

 

The other question is what's the alternative that's actually fun and keeps people engaged?

[Valorian Endymion]

Why do videogаmes have trash mobs? I was playing Dragon Age: Origins, and I opened a room in an undead-infested castle, to see two basic skeletons. It took me longer to order my party to attack than it took for my party to turn them into powder. They yielded about four copper pieces and five XP. Why do games have trivial encounters like that?

 

Trash mobs might help some games to balance pace, tension and difficult, because otherwise in some games all you would have is a series of might be too long and difficult combats that might grown tiresome without some break or pause, also the they might help other encounters to feel more unique. However this might change a lot from game to game.

 

One exemple, since we are talking about DAO, is the difference between the last part, where you face several trash mobs, but since you are much powerful that them is really fast and does build up some sense that you are cutting the darkspawn horde as you try to open a way, now on the Deep Roads, there is a lot of combat but does start to get boring as is rather slow but not difficult.

 

Now a interessing game to look is the early Might and Magic rpgs titles, specially M&M4 (Clouds of Xeen) and M&M5 (Darkside of Xeen), they both play like classic old school rpgs with third person perspective, but the combat is very fast and really enjoyable, you be facings several large mobs, but the combat and the actual enemy hp are in just the right balance that this is works really well and never get tiresome.

[Griddlelol]

Trash mobs might help some games to balance pace, tension and difficulty, because otherwise in some games all you would have is a series of might be too long and difficult combats that might grown tiresome without some break or pause, also the they might help other encounters to feel more unique. However this might change a lot from game to game.

 

I bet this is the reason why. When I play Bayonetta, I constantly feel stressed because every single encounter is challenging. Even if you're good at the game, there's still an incentive to do better than you did last time thanks to to scoring system. Having some trash mobs would help with the overwhelming tension.

 

The thing that bothers me about a lot of games is when they take a boss and make it a regular enemy later in the game.  It diminishes the boss fight and feels like lazy design to me.

 

I actually like that. In Dark Souls when you see the Capra Demons made me shit my pants. I then proceeded to slice them up with my 9+ Uchi and all the points I'd dumped into DEX. 

Felt like a god.

 

Your point about feeling like you're not getting anything may be a good reason, that I'd never notice unless I played a game without it.

 

 

The other question is what's the alternative that's actually fun and keeps people engaged?

 

Souls do a good job. Platinum series like Bayonetta and W101 do a good job. Monster Hunter does a good job. None of those games have trash mobs, every encounter has a challenge.

 

They're some of the best games I've ever played. 

[Jutranjo]

The new torment game claims it won't have any trash encounters but it will have combat. I wonder how it'll end up.

[Dewar]

You'd be surprised at the amount of people that would complain about getting cash from a fight with a bear because it isn't realistic.

[Cordeos]

You'd be surprised at the amount of people that would complain about getting cash from a fight with a bear because it isn't realistic.

 

Are you familiar with the natures pocket theory? Bear eats adventurer and keeps the gold in the only built in storage container it has. My WoW guild leader told me about it.

[Mawd]

The thing that bothers me about a lot of games is when they take a boss and make it a regular enemy later in the game.  It diminishes the boss fight and feels like lazy design to me.

 

I get the sentiment but Stryder did that really well. When you first come up against certain new enemies you get to fight them in a boss style arena and it's a really nice build up with a lot of tension to then see the same bads appear later in the game as part of the normal mix. That game did also have regular special bosses that you only fight either by themselves or at one point three at once which might not be your thing but I think the multiple appearances of those 'special' bosses gave them more character and provided more time to find them interesting/get to know them.

 

I think the Devil May Cry series did something similar to that as well. Even just when giving say the marionette demons a boss style introduction.

 

Anyway I think the reasons are reasonable enough to include some type of grunt enemy. I don't really like inventory clutter and I'm especially loathing it in the Witcher 3.

I think it makes sense to have a rank and file bad guy but maybe people need to treat them more like swiss army knives instead of treating grunt progression likes its just a matter of giving them more armour and a smidgeon of damage. 

 

I think Divinity Original Sin balances enemy encounter's feeling trashy or challenging rather well.

 

As for an actual opinion of should trash mobs be in games.. I don't want them in my dungeons and they're pretty groanworthy in rpgs (unless there are environmental dynamics that let the encounter feel tense). But I'll pretty happily play something like Dynasty Warrirors or Warframe where the game mobs are 99% trash.

[Mangela Lansbury]

I think it's because most RPGs and ARPGs with that sort of loot system can trace their way back to tabletop roleplaying (and probably specifically D&D). The mechanics are the same, but a dungeon with 15 enemies in it in a D&D game could possibly take hours to get through, and a room with only two skeletons that pose no challenge could take 10 minutes to get through because you have to try and pickpocket the skeletons, try to talk to the skeletons search for traps, search for hidden doors, get pizza, wait for the DM to come back from the bathroom, etc. Having a computer handle all the heavy lifting of the mechanical aspects of combat (hits, misses, damage, experience gained, tracking inventory, status, magic, etc) means you can vastly speed up the process of cremating two skeletons but you don't get the fun roleplaying experience of being disappointed with 4 gold pieces (WHERE DO THE SKELETONS KEEP IT?!) because you're instantly vaporizing 5 more skeletons.

The other question is what's the alternative that's actually fun and keeps people engaged?

The quasi-roleplay aspect of negotiating with demons in Shin Megami Tensei games made those fights fun for me. Almost every fight was challenging, and trying to convince your enemies to join your team made the frequent fights feel like they were still offering new rewards instead of just a rote gating mechanic to see if I had the endurance to persevere.

A lot of RPGs seem to put in encounters for no reason other than to see if you have the wherewithal to make it through, or the encounters feel less like a design choice they made and more like a design choice that was dictated by their presumptions about how the genre works. When trash mobs are interesting or contribute to the experience in some way, I don't mind them. When encounters just feel like the designers are throwing garbage at you because they were lazy, of course it feels boring and bad.

[Badfinger]

 

 

Souls do a good job. Platinum series like Bayonetta and W101 do a good job. Monster Hunter does a good job. None of those games have trash mobs, every encounter has a challenge.

 

They're some of the best games I've ever played. 

I humbly disagree that Souls does a good job, but that's personal preference. I would also suggest that Souls absolutely has the same trash mobs that every other game does. In fact, the Souls games glorify and revel in their trash mobs. They just present the scenario for clearing it differently.

 

I don't think I've ever even seen 101 so I can't comment, but Bayonetta feels like a completely different game than what's being discussed to me. It's a character action game rather than an ARPG or RPG, and you get paid in score rather than in loot. So you level up Bayonetta, but you'll never find a +2 Hair, and every enemy you kill of the same type gives you the same reward rather than having a loot table.

[Zeusthecat]

Does anybody play Disney Infinity? My wife bought one of the editions for my daughter for WiiU and so far it doesn't seem very good. And it's way more confusing than I expected it to be. There's so many dang newfangled contraptions that you have to put on that base and there's these Infinity coins you can collect and adventures and toybox mode and other glowy mode looking things that I don't understand yet. 

[Twig]

The thing that bothers me about a lot of games is when they take a boss and make it a regular enemy later in the game.  It diminishes the boss fight and feels like lazy design to me.

Dark Souls does this amazingly well. The first hard boss is the taurus demon on the bridge and it tends to wreck people new to the game like nobody's business. But then later, they're a regular enemy, but it doesn't feel hard because you've gotten so much better at the game. It's a really great moment.

[Griddlelol]

I humbly disagree that Souls does a good job, but that's personal preference. I would also suggest that Souls absolutely has the same trash mobs that every other game does. In fact, the Souls games glorify and revel in their trash mobs. They just present the scenario for clearing it differently.

 

I don't think I've ever even seen 101 so I can't comment, but Bayonetta feels like a completely different game than what's being discussed to me. It's a character action game rather than an ARPG or RPG, and you get paid in score rather than in loot. So you level up Bayonetta, but you'll never find a +2 Hair, and every enemy you kill of the same type gives you the same reward rather than having a loot table.

Souls does a good job because the trash mobs aren't trash. They're incredibly dangerous. Recently playing Bloodborne, I was on the final boss, decided to farm some vials in the starting area. I was merrily hacking the enemies down, and a split second where I didn't pay attention meant I died. They may be easy to kill, but they are still incredibly dangerous. They're not skeletons that you can auto attack to beat.

They revel in them precisely because they're tough. In some cases they're tougher than bosses. Another Bloodborne example: how many people have you heard complaining about the two wolves on the bridge? People got wrecked by that trash. I got wrecked by that trash. Then if you turn left, there's a boss, that most people one shot.

That's a great way around the problem. They start out difficult. They become easy, but punish mistakes. Compare that to other games, where they start out easy, and become tedious.

I also don't see how the genre of the game makes a difference. An example of a game that is compelling without trash is Bayonetta. The reward you get is irrelevant. I'm not saying RPGs should work the same way, I'm pointing out that there are games that do it well.

I'm pretty content with saying that the idea of trash mobs is outdated. At least outside a tutorial, but one could argue that in a tutorial they're not trash, because the player won't be competent enough to view them as such.

[SecretAsianMan]

To my earlier comment about bosses becoming normal enemies, I think there are ways to do it that are fun.  When I said that I was specifically thinking of older games like Final Fight where it's literally the same guy (maybe with a palette swap) who just shows up again for no reason.  And those games don't have any kind of player progression so it's the same fight.  I'd still prefer to just have a different or new enemy though.  Although I will admit it is fun to encounter a tough enemy type again when you're much stronger and wipe the floor with them.

 

Another trash mob comment: I don't play them very often but I think most Lords Management games rely on having lots of trash mobs.

[Twig]

I wouldn't qualify creeps as trash mobs, as the reward you get for killing them is very useful and important. I'd define a trash mob as something that only exists to waste your time. A kobold in WoW that drops a couple copper as opposed to a boss in a dungeon that drops a brand new weapon that you can use. Creeps, on the other hand, always reward gold if you get the killing blow, which is your only renewable resource in a game like that.

[JonCole]

I think that the sole fact that we're finding it hard to differentiate (as a group) between what exactly a trash mob is versus a "real enemy" means that many trash mobs can be a value or import to someone.

[Twig]

I didn't know there was any contention regarding what a trash mob. As far as I know, my definition has always been the accepted definition everywhere I've been.

 

You're all weird is what I'm saying.

[Bjorn]

My definition of a trash mob would be any enemy which is highly unlikely to present a threat, quickly or immediately becomes boring to fight and offers little of value to the player (whether that is through actual reward, mechanical satisfaction of beating it, etc). 

 

Let's take Mass Effect 3 MP.  The husks when fighting the Reaper faction are the trashiest mobs in the game.  But they are still dangerous because they have one grab move that can temporarily immobilize you and they can distract you from from enemies that are far more dangerous.  They serve a very specific purpose in every combat encounter.

 

I've been watching ENB replay DS1 over the last couple of weeks, and watching that would make me argue very much against the Souls games having trash mobs.  He's played DS1 multiple times, and he's still bit it to some early hollows because he was overconfident.  The early enemies might be boring to fight once you've played the game multiple times, but they are always dangerous and they serve a pretty valuable purpose of slowly teaching you combat strategies as you move through the opening areas of a Souls game. 

[Twig]

Plus they're largely skippable once you DO know exactly what you're doing. So they're incredibly value early on, and don't pose a threat to time or safety later on (unless you're really careless). I'd agree that Dark Souls doesn't have trash mobs.

[Griddlelol]

My definition of a trash mob would be any enemy which is highly unlikely to present a threat, quickly or immediately becomes boring to fight and offers little of value to the player (whether that is through actual reward, mechanical satisfaction of beating it, etc). 

 

I think that's a decent definition. I've never really had a hard time defining them. Creeps in Lords Managements aren't trash because they offer tremendous value. Souls aren't trash because they pose a serious threat.

[Dewar]

Trash mobs used to be there to put a slow drain on your resources to make the eventual boss fight harder. These days games are easy enough that the trash mobs really are just trash and most bosses in games aren't much better really. Thus, in Dark Souls which is actually challenging, the trash mobs actually have a point.

 

Edit: Also, save points right before boss fights negate the effect as well.

[JonCole]

It's just odd to me that we're still referring to the mobs in DS as trash mobs while calling them not trash mobs because they offer meaningful engagements. It just points to the term not having much value, as it's being used almost interchangeably with non-boss encounters. Perhaps I'm just being pedantic. I do concur with the point that some games have more meaningful non-boss encounters than others, Dark Souls in particular.