What is Filler Combat?

[IncendiaryDevice]

Please excuse my cardinal sin of creating two threads in two days, it's not because I'm an attention whore (honest) but because I'm an even worse sin, I'm new, and, as such, have lots of things that I've built up over time that I haven't been fully mocked about.

What exactly defines Filler Content?

I see this phrase so much in RPGs and FPSs and even some platformers, but I've never really understood what correctly separates Filler from relevant.

To me, filler combat is simply an expression used when one encounters the same monster over and over again and that defeating them gives little XP or reward and little challenge and little plot relevancy - so it's more an expression of disdain for the lack of imagination of the developer than an actual thing. And even then it's not just the quantity of encounters but the general dumbness feeling one gets from plowing through them. This definition would surely be different for every individual and not be a very useful definition.

Do you use the term Filler Combat as a general insult or do you have some kind of scientific factual knowledge that you base the accusation on?

What's the best example of a game with the worst Filler Combat as a good guide?

 

[jcd]

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[laclongquan]

Or the fucking series of 6 consecutive battles near the end of Suikoden 3. Does it kill them to throw one boss-class each? But no, each has tough enemies, but at mob-class. You can even return to back for a rest and refit in the middle of those 6 battles, even. Not that it is needful.

Filler combat is annoying in its easy repetitiveness.

 

[DragoFireheart]

A tiny bit of filler combat can be acceptable.

ex: near the end of Skyward Sword, you fight hordes of weak Moblins. This can be interpreted to show how powerful Link has become relative to when he first started.

But most filler combat is terribly executed and serves no purpose.

 

[Weirdstuffinspace]

All non-quest combat in PoE

 

[DraQ]

Will the game storyline and general storytelling (meaning notable events that are not part of the main story) change meaningfully with removal of this combat encounter?
If not, is the encounter somehow necessitated by the gameworld logic?
If not, the encounter is filler.

Nihil novi sub sole.

 

[TripJack]

What's the best example of a game with the worst Filler Combat as a good guide?

no single best example there are entire genres filled to the brim with tedious repetitive trash combat, look at any MMO, any JRPG, bioware's turds, planescape torment ....

 

[IncendiaryDevice]

lol, nice one, so to what extent would you describe, say, Diablo as being what percentage of filler combat?

 

[ghostdog]

See under : Dragon Age

 

[SCO]

Defined purely by interestingness imo. If there are 6 consecutive combat scenarios without healing in between, with new traps and enemies and no save in between that is almost the definition of not-filler combat. See: Blackguards arena fights.

 

[sser]

Neverwinter Nights 2. All of it felt pretty filler-y to me.
Dragon Age: Origins. The Deep Roads & some parts of the closing chapters.
Risen. The last chapter of just hack'n'slash garbage --- probably the best game with the sharpest decline.
JRPGs galore. Grindy bullshit, more indicative of foundational designs than anything, i.e. filler combat is part of the mechanics.
Too many games with "random encounters."

Some games have 'filler' in ways you might not realize - like Homeworld's resource collection post-battle, Lord of Xulima's banal plant collecting, or XCOM's need to 'level' up a psi-trooper while, really, you've got the entire planet already under lockdown.

 

[Ivan]

all of it

 

[Markman]

If you played the original Halo you'd know. There were levels that some sections were copypasted with same encounters over and over only made to prolong play time.

Batman Arkham City and Origins also have countless mobs around the city that you can derp around with.
Pretty much any of Ubisoft "open world" games have shit ton of side filler content like collectible hunts made just to prolong play time or to mess with autists trying to get some silly achievement.

Filler content/combat is not challenging and just tedious to play made to waste your time.
Instead of adding in some interesting content, devs just copy x100 some shitty encounters to make you feel that you got your moneys worth.

 

[Metro]

lol, nice one, so to what extent would you describe, say, Diablo as being what percentage of filler combat?

None, since those games are all about filler combat.

 

[Shadowfang]

Play Wizardry 8.
No, please do. I mean it.

 

[Wilian]

To me it's encounters that do not make contextually sense and are there to only artificially lengthen play-time with little input and thought involved

 

[JarlFrank]

Batman Arkham City and Origins also have countless mobs around the city that you can derp around with.
Pretty much any of Ubisoft "open world" games have shit ton of side filler content like collectible hunts made just to prolong play time or to mess with autists trying to get some silly achievement.

Optional content that can be skipped if you don't care about it isn't really what people mean when they say "filler", though. Filler is usually mandatory, it's those fights you just HAVE to do before you can progress. Like those endlessly long dungeons with copypasted darkspawn groups that offer neither challenge nor good loot or XP in Dragon Age. Content that gives you this "ugh, not ANOTHER dungeon level with even MORE encounters of these types!" feeling. That makes you think "oh for fuck's sake, I really HAVE to do this?".

 

[Admiral jimbob]

I think there's probably a value in simplifying it to something like "repetitive combat situations that require no real mental engagement and offer no particular stimulation". You can have a mediocre boss, for example, who offers no particularly interesting challenge, doesn't do anything new, isn't difficult - but nobody would categorise him as filler. Why? Because he's a singular opponent? Doubtful. Because he's symbolically important/different? Likely. So there's an emotional component even to something so obviously mechanical. It's easy to define in, say, brawlers - the tools given to you, the enemy variety and skill sets should be enough to make every encounter a little bit unique, a little bit interesting. In RPGs, it's something that takes the whole environment into account, I think. Let's break it down a bit.

Take a fight with a group of orcs. Orcs are predisposed to feeling like filler combat because they're, well, boring orcs. That's important, even if you don't want to admit it.

• Group of orcs in a generic cave = possibly filler combat. But they could be one-off and difficult.
• Group of orcs in a generic cave after the first group = almost certainly filler combat.
• Group of orcs that ambush you by surprise in a city = probably not filler combat; the environment is unique, there's an element of surprise even if it's cosmetic. Won't work all game but might work once or twice. It's about fooling the player.
• Group of orcs that "ambush" you while travelling, have a few cursory lines of dialogue, then attack in a straight line on a generic mountain path = filler combat. Might be the same as the above one, but it just doesn't feel the same; instead of breaking up a segment of the game that's probably mostly walking and talking (a good thing), they're just getting in your way while you travel to hopefully more interesting fights, and the illusion's too thin to fool you.
• Group of orcs that open the fight with a trap, scattering your party, something to shake you up = not filler combat because it changes your approach
• Group of orcs in a new location, castle battlements or something, cool music plays = filler combat but the player will probably mind it less. Again, won't last.
• Group of orcs in an arena subquest = not filler combat, the player has chosen to fight them and they're probably a one-off in that particular context, even if they're mechanically the same as cave orc group #3.
• Group of "orcs" in an outer plane that fight and act exactly like orcs but have weird Lovecraftian appearances = not filler combat until it goes on too long, even if mechanically the same.

So we can draw a few keywords that define filler combat from this:
Repetitive + familiar + unsurprising + forced + open to the same strategy as usual

If you avoid at least two of these every time, congratulations, it's not filler combat. Compare, say, Dragon Age and Knights of the Chalice. KotC has some boring enemy variety in some places - I remember a fort full of the same fire giant enemy, for example. But by having encounters like giants knocking down a wall and surprising your party with an attack of opportunity - something that simple - the fights remain fresh and interesting. Then look at Dragon Age. There's a basis there for combat that isn't fillery; the enemy AI is capable of being somewhat varied (occasionally), the orcs play by the player class rules (more or less) and should be able to vary things just by having unpredictable party compositions. They do this about 10% of the time. The end result? Filler combat.

I don't know why I typed all that.

 

[Jick Magger]

It's a very fluid term, but I generally use it to describe mandatory combat that is used to artificially lengthen the game, and is not enjoyable for a myriad of reasons:

1. It forces the player to use up resources that'd be better utilized against other enemies, and;
a. It's extremely easy, and thus simply wastes the player's time, or;
b. It's against enemies that require little strategy beyond brute force or exploiting an obvious weakness (i.e. bullet sponges, ice enemies with fire weaknesses, etc), and thus simply wastes the player's time
2. There's little to no variation to the fights in terms of enemies or tactics
3. There's an abundance of them, often forcing the player to stop and/or double-back to resupply/heal

 

[Grimwulf]

Filler combat is basically facerolling. Most of the games have severe balancing issues, when the first 1/3 or even 1/4 seem okay-ish. but the more you play, the less effort you put into combat. What's worse, the amount of combat usually increseas towards the endgame, making a false impression of "lot of time spent = hard gaem". Which leads to frustration and alcoholism.

Finished Konung 1 and Konung 2 recently. How can smth so beautiful during first few hours transform into such a shameless faceroll sim, when you don't even manage inventory / don't level-up skills / skip dialogues and just "CLICK IT FASTER where is the fucking last boos I had enough of this bullshit, skip-skip-skip"

 

[octavius]

The worst examples are probably games that have a new set of enemies for each new area or even dungeon level, totally randomizes the composition of the enemies, and yet it starts to feel like it's all filler combat before you have explored 10% of a dungeon level. Bard's Tale 3 and 2: I'm looking at you.

BTW, to those who have pkayed both BT series and Dragon Age: which one is worst when it comes to filler combat? And how much does mods help making DA a less tedious experience?

 

[Norfleet]

1. It forces the player to use up resources that'd be better utilized against other enemies, and;
a. It's extremely easy, and thus simply wastes the player's time, or;
b. It's against enemies that require little strategy beyond brute force or exploiting an obvious weakness (i.e. bullet sponges, ice enemies with fire weaknesses, etc), and thus simply wastes the player's time

Most filler combat isn't even that. You don't really use up any scarce resources, it simply gets tedious. Take, for instance, one of the more recent examples: Wasteland 2. As you travel from point A to point B, you run into an awful lot of random filler combats, to the point where there's an entire skill dedicated just to avoiding filler combat. None of these encounters really stand any chance against you. They don't really offer anything of value. But the onus is always somehow on YOU to avoid THEM, they never try to avoid YOU. This is basically classic filler combat. Also, it is curiously absent when you are intentionally walking about in circles trying to look for something to kill because you're 50 XP from the next level-up. It only happens when you're engrossed in whatever the current quest arc is and want to see what you're going to be in next, and BAM, filler encounter. Seriously. I was able to hike all the way from Ranger Citadel to Damonta, not a SINGLE RANDOM THING TO KILL, when I wanted something to kill. When I just wanted to get back to RNC to pick up a thing I forgot to pick up? Like 80 raider encounters.

 

[mondblut]

Anything that doesn't give good loot or enough xp for a noticeable advance towards next level is filler.

 

[Garryydde]

Someone's never played a Bioware game before

 

[Grimwulf]

Most filler combat isn't even that. You don't really use up any scarce resources, it simply gets tedious. Take, for instance, one of the more recent examples: Wasteland 2.

You are really wrong here. Either you played it on casual difficulty or you don't know about Outdoorsman skill. I think that devs designed the game with max difficulty ("maximum jerk" or smth) and any type of "Iron Man" mode (e.g., I only save on oasises and water pumps + autosave every 60 minutes). The beautiful thing about it is game becoming HARD and you can't even grind to make it easier. Raiders, both good and bad, don't drop NEARLY enough bullets to make them worth it. If you try to yolo in melee, you'll run out of medpacks soon. And the only way to get some spare ammunition and scrap is to actually clear locations, which is fuckin HARD. So here comes Outdoorsman skill - you only want to pick specific fights in the wastes: fighting raiders when you got a shitload of ammo.

I only just reached Damonta myself, and this is my first blind playthrough, so I may be wrong and the game will become filler combat later. But I definetely like what I get so far.

Although, I never tried playing on easier difficulty. I savescummed during first try tho (cleared first radio tower, than restarted - SS is fucking boring and cheap).