I Had a Random Thought (About Video Games)

[Bjorn]

Minor note, there IS a way to get attacked by the green slimes in Crypt of the Necrodancer. There's an achievement for it.

 

Mind blown.

[osmosisch]

I don't know if this is true in other MMOs, but when everyone knows what they're doing raids take no time at all. I once did VOG in 30 minutes, Crota in less.

 

Clans definitely serve a pretty minimal function in the game. I use mine as basically a somewhat curated lobby for LFG chat and general information sharing.

I know that modern pickup raids in WoW are about that time. It scales a lot with difficulty though.

[Mangela Lansbury]

It does seem that RPGs rely on trash as a mechanic while other games don't. FPS games have them, but because each one requires at least engaging with the game enough to point your gun at them and hit them I'm not sure if they qualify.

 

RPG trash requires engaging with the game enough to select your attacks from the menu system when prompted (or however it works in any given game). In something like FFX, trash requires you to perform an action with a character, then switch them out for another to maximize your experience gain -- but it's still just annoying, worthless trash, even if you're engaging with multiple systems in the game.

 

I don't really see why engaging with one battle system would merit something "not trash," but engaging with another combat system wouldn't. Trash is trash no matter the game, and I've killed a lot of trash mobs in both Halo and Final Fantasy.

[Griddlelol]

I don't know if this is true in other MMOs, but when everyone knows what they're doing raids take no time at all. I once did VOG in 30 minutes, Crota in less.

 

Clans definitely serve a pretty minimal function in the game. I use mine as basically a somewhat curated lobby for LFG chat and general information sharing.

 

It's the same in other MMOs. If your group has their shit together a raid can be done in a short amount of time. They're still usually long though. Something like Ice Crown Citadel which I did a lot, was a long ass raid. Start to finish it was probably around 3-4 hours if you were extremely fast. 8+ for most groups. Edit: I might be overstating that, it's been a while and feels like it was that long, but probably wasn't.

 

Also with groups of 10-40 in MMOs, it's a lot more likely that you'll find people that don't have their shit together, and just organising it takes time. Beating a boss then moving on to the next one could take 20 minutes or so if people were fighting over loot, or the raid leader was inexperienced.

 

I don't know how easy it is to carry someone bad in Destiny, but having a weak or undergeared tank in an MMO raid makes it painfully difficult. Having an inexperienced healer means you'll probably be repeating fights over and over. In a 10 man raid, one or two below-par DPS players could mean hitting an enrage timer and wiping. The reverse is also true, an amazing tank or healer can mean a fight is done with no incidents, two DPS pulling more than their weight can cause a tough boss to die before you realise it. 

 

Fuck. Now I want to play WoW and Destiny again.

 

 

RPG trash requires engaging with the game enough to select your attacks from the menu system when prompted (or however it works in any given game). In something like FFX, trash requires you to perform an action with a character, then switch them out for another to maximize your experience gain -- but it's still just annoying, worthless trash, even if you're engaging with multiple systems in the game.

 

I don't really see why engaging with one battle system would merit something "not trash," but engaging with another combat system wouldn't. Trash is trash no matter the game, and I've killed a lot of trash mobs in both Halo and Final Fantasy.

 

Short answer is that I'm not sure if your FF example is trash. It offers value, it requires you to engage with multiple systems. C.f. Pokémon, where I can spam the A button to kill a pidgey while watching TV.

 

FPS games also have less complexity (as in fewer mechanics). You aim. you need spacial awareness. All encounters are also individually designed for a specific level of difficulty, and you never repeat sections unless you fail (which by definition means those enemies aren't trash). The line is more blurred with something like Borderlands though...

[SecretAsianMan]

 

Short answer is that I'm not sure if your FF example is trash. It offers value, it requires you to engage with multiple systems. C.f. Pokémon, where I can spam the A button to kill a pidgey while watching TV.

 

FPS games also have less complexity (as in fewer mechanics). You aim. you need spacial awareness. All encounters are also individually designed for a specific level of difficulty, and you never repeat sections unless you fail (which by definition means those enemies aren't trash). The line is more blurred with something like Borderlands though...

 

The action you take in FFX to maximize the experience gain is a trivial action though.  You pretty much just have every character hit a guy at least once before the end of the encounter.  The actual monster you're fighting is still completely useless, only requiring you to hit a button every now and then to execute your action.  The game might have a complex system but the monster is still time wasting trash that you're farming.

 

I also disagree with your statement about FPS games.  They have repeat sections and encounters all the time.  I would say that in a lot of games, shooting the most basic enemy requires an analogous amount of skill to fighting a trash mob in an RPG.  Moving and aiming are the baseline mechanics for an FPS.  It takes a trivial amount of effort to deal with an FPS equivalent of a trash mob.

 

This concept is losing more and more meaning to me as we drill down to further and further specifics.  I feel like we have more exceptions than actual cases.

[Twig]

I feel like we have more exceptions than actual cases.

I certainly don't feel that way. RPGs embrace trash as a mechanic. Other genres don't! While FPS games might be filled with easy enemies, they still take a basic skill level to defeat. Pointing and shooting is not mindless, by any stretch. Dealing with a lot of trash in RPGs amounts to turning on the turbo switch for the A button on your SNES controller and going to make a coffee.

[SecretAsianMan]

If mindless is a metric then I feel that a lot of FPS games have trash mobs because I certainly feel that way when playing.  And even in that case, the actual encounter is still an incredibly weak, easily defeated enemy that doesn't offer much of anything other than to waste some time.

[JonCole]

Considering a lot of modern FPS games have similar mechanics to RPGs, I don't think it should be particularly surprising that some FPS enemies offer zero challenge and are thus trash mobs. Early mobs in Destiny and Borderlands are easy trash no matter when you fight them.

[Bjorn]

Borderlands is one of the few FPS series that feels like it's full of the worst kind of bloat that plagues big RPGs (which makes sense, as that's one of the things it is drawing from).  I think I would love those games if someone took a thoughtful cutting knife to them. 

 

 

 

Does anyone ever mod games to make them smaller? 

[JonCole]

Yeah, it's my major complaint with BL. It doesn't need to be a 100 hour game. I feel like 50% of my time playing it is inventory management where I'm not making any significant decisions. I wish someone would mod that smaller, or offer a mod that auto-trashes blue or lower loot, or whatever.

[Twig]

If mindless is a metric then I feel that a lot of FPS games have trash mobs because I certainly feel that way when playing.  And even in that case, the actual encounter is still an incredibly weak, easily defeated enemy that doesn't offer much of anything other than to waste some time.

My point is that it's literally not mindless. You have to actually engage with the systems in a meaningful way. Pointing and shooting, in fact, is often the entirety of said systems. Sometimes it's throwing a grenade to clear out the most enemies possible at a time so it's quicker. You can't tape the shoot button down and walk away and kill everything successfully, unless you set it up so that everything comes at you in a corner, and you're using something with wide spread shots and lots of ammo... at which point it's definitely not mindless because you've taken the effort to set up this wacky scenario.

 

But in WoW there are definitely times when you can literally just initiate the attack and watch the health bar go down while twiddling your thumbs. My version of twiddling my thumbs in that instance was running in circles around the enemy until they died, and then moving onto the next one. In JRPGs, it's mashing the A button while I check my phone for something. Both of these are passively ignoring most of the systems found in the game being played. I'm not bothering to use the terrain to my advantage in Wow. I'm not using the spells at my disposal. Etc.

 

These two types of situations are very, very, very different from each other. Their easiness is where their similarities end.

[SecretAsianMan]

So is the idea then that trash mobs are a system or mechanic and not a concept?  What if I were to make an RPG that required a series of random button inputs in order to initiate the attack (something like a QTE with an infinite timer) but the enemy still died in a single hit and dropped nothing of value.  Would it not be a trash mob because I can't walk away from the controller or look at something else while doing it?

 

I'm not trying to be contrarian or anything, I just like to figure things out by trying to poke holes in it.

[JonCole]

I don't really know how clicking a thing or pressing A is definitively mindless while moving a joystick and pulling a trigger isn't. I often play Destiny in Patrol areas while watching a movie. It denies me no attention from the movie, despite however enrapturing pointing and shooting is supposed to be. Trash mobs exist in that game and require zero effort. These encounters are mindless to me, subjectively.

[Badfinger]

Maybe we can redefine what we're talking about with "trash mobs"? You could conceivably look at it from the perspective of what you get from them rather than what you do? So if you're getting vendor trash, they're trash mobs?

 

 

Thanks to this discussion I tried to go back to World of Warcraft last night. I had a free trial sitting in my inbox, so I activated it and logged in, and the first thing saw was a message saying "HEY ALL YOUR ADDONS ARE BROKEN CAUSE YOU NEED TO UPDATE THEM", so I immediately logged out again because I realised how much work it is to get into that game again. I really love the boss encounter stuff in games like that, which is the thing that's kept me coming back to it over the years, but I don't think I can put in the time to get access to the raids anymore. Even the idea of raid matchmaking turns me off of it because I like the challenge and don't want to see easy versions of the fights. I think that's why I'm so into Destiny; it's really easy to get to the endgame content and find a group to raid with. It's the same kind of complex boss encounters but with a lower barrier to entry.

 

If you're seriously thinking about trying it again my suggestion would be to move or rename your entire addon folder and go in completely vanilla. As you find yourself wanting or needing addons, reference your folder and grab the updated version. It has the added benefit of if you don't actually want an addon or its functionality is now duplicated in the standard client, you haven't wasted time hunting around to update it.

[Twig]

Would it not be a trash mob because I can't walk away from the controller or look at something else while doing it?

I would say if it requires skill, it is not trash.

 

Pointing and shooting is a skill.

 

Maybe we can redefine what we're talking about with "trash mobs"? You could conceivably look at it from the perspective of what you get from them rather than what you do? So if you're getting vendor trash, they're trash mobs?

 

But then you could say most enemies in FPS are trash mobs because most don't drop anything useful, unless you count ammo which you are probably full on because that's how most FPS work these days.

 

[Badfinger]

I would say if it requires skill, it is not trash.

 

Pointing and shooting is a skill.

 

 

 

But then you could say most enemies in FPS are trash mobs because most don't drop anything useful, unless you count ammo which you are probably full on because that's how most FPS work these days.

 

 

Hitting the 1 key on cooldown is a skill. Setting up your party so they're all using the correct attacks is a skill, etc.

 

You can go all the way down on this until literally everything is trash or nothing is. I think we might have to agree that it's a broad and subjective definition that can change from genre to genre, game to game, and possibly even level to level. Like I said before, the first monster in Dark Souls after you've been playing for 10 hours is DEFINITELY a trash mob to me. Yet at the same time, I totally agreed with the argument put forth that it wasn't.

 

Christmas Duck is a trash mob.

[SecretAsianMan]

But button pressing isn't?  Does that mean using a mouse to click on icons is a skill?

[JonCole]

Clearly using keyboards and mice/controllers are a skill because you can put a game in front of someone who doesn't play games and they won't know how to work those devices.

[Mangela Lansbury]

My point is that it's literally not mindless. You have to actually engage with the systems in a meaningful way. Pointing and shooting, in fact, is often the entirety of said systems. Sometimes it's throwing a grenade to clear out the most enemies possible at a time so it's quicker. You can't tape the shoot button down and walk away and kill everything successfully, unless you set it up so that everything comes at you in a corner, and you're using something with wide spread shots and lots of ammo... at which point it's definitely not mindless because you've taken the effort to set up this wacky scenario.

But in WoW there are definitely times when you can literally just initiate the attack and watch the health bar go down while twiddling your thumbs. My version of twiddling my thumbs in that instance was running in circles around the enemy until they died, and then moving onto the next one. In JRPGs, it's mashing the A button while I check my phone for something. Both of these are passively ignoring most of the systems found in the game being played. I'm not bothering to use the terrain to my advantage in Wow. I'm not using the spells at my disposal. Etc.

These two types of situations are very, very, very different from each other. Their easiness is where their similarities end.

Trash mobs in WoW dungeons require you to be present, pay attention, and engage with multiple systems. First, you engage in the party system, then you engage with positioning mechanics, then you engage with threat mechanics while going through a DPS rotation, keeping people healed, tanking, or pulling. But these are still trash mobs, even if they require you to engage with multiple systems -- you can usually mindlessly go through the trash, and you aren't going to wipe on them.

Engagement with vital systems isn't a good metric for defining what a trash mob is. Even if you're not presented a challenge, you're still playing the game.

[Dewar]

After this discussion, I don't think trash mobs exist anymore, outside of going to an area that is significantly lower level than you.

[Twig]

Hitting the 1 key on cooldown is a skill. Setting up your party so they're all using the correct attacks is a skill, etc.

Good thing I've explicitly given examples that don't involve doing these things!

[jennegatron]

I always get back into WoW every 4 months or so, to come back for all the companion pets I can collect. I'm back in now, and haven't touched basically any of the dungeon content of this expansion, or the raid content of the last 3.

 

It's fun to be able to jump back in but the min maxing of stats and looking up of ideal rotations/prioritizations is boring to me & I hate researching fights, so I just go solo BC raids or 2 man them with people who I was in a guild with in like 2010.

 

It's interesting though in the context of this conversation, that when you do go back and go through authored content that was created for 25 man raids of characters 30 levels lower than you, they turn into trivial encounters, but I still make a distinction between the "trash" leading up to one of those fights and the boss that dies almost immediately, even though what those bosses provide me is often less valuable than the trash leading up to it in terms of the gold value of their vendor-able goods.

 

I guess this is slightly different than the Dark Souls observation, in that these are things that at one time posed a threat, but no longer do. This is not because you now have the technical skill to neutralize the threat, but instead, because of the hit % mechanics in WoW & the scaling of health pools that you could auto-attack and kill your opponent before you die.

 

(This reminds me of the argument of whether a hot dog is a sandwich or not.)

[Twig]

I once had someone tell me a submarine sandwich is not a sandwich.

 

They were completely serious.

[Mangela Lansbury]

Well, obviously it's a submarine.

[Gaizokubanou]

I googled that and what I saw was clearly a sandwich.

 

Edit: On the topic itself, what is trash and isn't trash encounter would depend on the person then.  I played enough classic JRPG so that pretty much any games that follow that design would automatically devolve into series of trash encounters (unless game was tuned really high but IMO most classic JRPGs were pretty forgiving).  That wasn't the case when I first played them as a babby or for someone totally new to the genre.  Same for FPS, depends in the game and person's skill level.  My trash isn't yours nor is your mine~