BioWare's love for trash mobs

[Beggar]

SMT and FF are total trash because of insane amount of random encounters with trash mobs

 

[octavius]

Trash mobs or inflicting the player with huge dumps of text to lengthen the game - which is worse?

 

[JarlFrank]

Some games among highly regarded on Codex have so much trash that DAO's darkspawn would seem extinct - Wizardry 8 and Might & Magic 6 come to mind, only from what I have replayed recently.

At least M&M 6 has relatively fast combat and you can slay your way through trash mobs in seconds.

The tolerability of trash mobs is directly proportional to how quickly you can dispose of them.

 

[JarlFrank]

Trash mobs or inflicting the player with huge dumps of text to lengthen the game - which is worse?

If the text dumps can be dismissed quickly, they're not that bad.

 

[Daidre]

The tolerability of trash mobs is directly proportional to how quickly you can dispose of them.

Most of the more or less modern games include difficulty options that allow you quickly fly through any amounts of trash encounters. But instead of choosing one that feels "right" for enjoyable gameplay, often fast paced, some tryhards put all RPGs on hardest and bitch about encounter design degradation and inflated HP/enemy numbers.

At least M&M 6 has relatively fast combat and you can slay your way through trash mobs in seconds.

Game that allows choice between RT and TB but does not trust a player with a difficulty slider.

 

[JarlFrank]

Most of the more or less modern games include difficulty options that allow you quickly fly through any amounts of trash encounters. But instead of choosing one that feels "right" for enjoyable gameplay, often fast paced, some tryhards put all RPGs on hardest and bitch about encounter design degradation and inflated HP/enemy numbers.

Making higher difficulty just cause HP bloat or damage reduction for player attacks is utterly shit design. When high difficulty doesn't actually make the game more difficult but more tedious, it's not the player's fault for picking high difficulty, it's the designer's fault for being shit at design.

 

[Daidre]

So, designing every encounter at least x3 times is not detrimental to a game's length and quality (x3 testing too) but allowing a player to make an informed choice is?

 

[Reinhardt]

Just be like fantadomat - story mode+cheat engine and you can handle any amount of enemies!

 

[Nano]

Congratulations, you just made the game longer but ensured that some players will quit the game out of tedium, and it's unlikely anyone will ever re-play the game because of how tedious it is to go through!

Change "some players" to "a very small minority of players".

 

[JarlFrank]

So, designing every encounter at least x3 times is not detrimental to a game's length and quality (x3 testing too) but allowing a player to make an informed choice is?

I don't get your angle here.

No, designing every encounter meticulously is not detrimental to a game's quality at all. An encounter that was tested and revised 3 times, with different party compositions and different approaches to handling it, is going to be supremely enjoyable.

Meanwhile, a copypasted trash mob encounter that you will go through 50 times during the course of the game is going to wear out its welcome pretty quickly, and at some point you just wish it would end.

Having a shorter game where most encounters are interesting and challenging is preferable to having a long game where every encounter feels the same.

It's a big reason of why I prefer Baldur's Gate 2 to Baldur's Gate 1. The first game has more open exploration but also more boring copypasted encounters, while the second game has more mage duels, beholders, illithids, etc etc. Every dungeon in BG2 has different enemy types, there's a lot of variety, nothing ever feels copypasted. Sure, it also has some trashmobs, but it doesn't abuse them to the point that it becomes tedious.

Also, I'd rather have a 30 hour long game where most encounters are interesting and fun to tackle, and then re-play that game two or three times, than having a 60 hour game where half the encounters are no-brainer trash mobs that just take time to go through and don't offer anything of interest.

Dragon Age and Neverwinter Nights are especially bad with trash mobs because there are so many of them, and they take so long to defeat. Dragon Age also restores your HP and mana after every fight, while NWN has no chance of random encounters during resting so if an area lets you rest, you can just rest between each fight. This means that the trash mobs are literally without consequence for you. In classic dungeon crawlers trash mobs exist to drain your resources before the boss fight, but if you can easily regenerate after every fight, the only thing the trash mob accomplished is to take away your time, with no reward whatsoever. Lame and boring. The definition of filler.

Also, define "informed choice". If the choice of difficulty tells you exactly what it does, then yes, I will make the choice based on that information. If it says "Hard difficulty increases enemy HP and damage resistance" I will play on normal because HP bloat is tedious bullshit. If it says "Hard difficulty will increase the amount of enemies in an encounter and give enemy wizards more spells to use" then I will pick hard because it sounds like a genuinely interesting challenge rather than just bloat. If it just says "Hard is harder than normal lol" your choice of difficulty isn't really informed because it doesn't tell you what it does.

In general, I think difficulty levels have no place in RPGs anyway. Just hand-design encounters to have just the right amount of challenge. Allow players who want to have an easier time to over-level themselves by doing more sidequests.
The only acceptable difficulty levels are those that were designed by hand rather than automatically upscaled. So, something like "At hard difficulty this specific encounter has 2 enemy wizards instead of 1, and 2 additional melee dudes to shield them" is good, but "At hard difficulty enemies just get +X % to damage and HP" is shit.

 

[fantadomat]

Just be like fantadomat - story mode+cheat engine and you can handle any amount of enemies!

You have never seen me complain about such trivial shit,mate !

 

[JarlFrank]

Congratulations, you just made the game longer but ensured that some players will quit the game out of tedium, and it's unlikely anyone will ever re-play the game because of how tedious it is to go through!

Change "some players" to "a very small minority of players".

If you look at Steam achievement acquisition rates you can see that many, many players do not finish games but drop them halfway through.

Story-based achievements that unlock during the main quest are a great way of tracking that.

In most games, you have, say, 80-90% of players finishing the first quest (the other 10-20% have bought but not yet installed the game), and then it starts to drop off. Once you reach the game's midpoint you will have a larger dropoff with plenty of players abandoning the game, and only a minority of players actually finish the game.

 

[Nano]

If you look at Steam achievement acquisition rates you can see that many, many players do not finish games but drop them halfway through.

Story-based achievements that unlock during the main quest are a great way of tracking that.

In most games, you have, say, 80-90% of players finishing the first quest (the other 10-20% have bought but not yet installed the game), and then it starts to drop off. Once you reach the game's midpoint you will have a larger dropoff with plenty of players abandoning the game, and only a minority of players actually finish the game.

Dragon Age Origins & 2 have a completion rate of around 40%, which is high for RPGs. Compare that to a game with better combat encounters like Divinity OS, which is at 9%.

 

[Daidre]

No, designing every encounter meticulously is not detrimental to a game's quality at all. An encounter that was tested and revised 3 times, with different party compositions and different approaches to handling it, is going to be supremely enjoyable.

First PoE has encounters handcrafted separately for higher difficulties and still scared off shitton of players with combat tedium. Deadfire even tried it with Hard for tougher versions and PoTD for tougher + stat inflation, also without noticeable success.

So kinda I agree with you that best way to handle difficulty levels is to remove them whatsoever, leaving only storymod for stotyfags at most. Funny that JRPGs do of all RPGs do this thing most often leaving only normal & easy.

Imho, issues with DAO's final siege is not about trash - most of the weak enemies are there only to make you feel cool when obliterating them with Fireballs, Scattershots and Storm spells. There is also allied armies that help with mobs. Separate locations is quite decent actually, but the whole sequence with 7-8 maps filled mostly with darkspawn is where it get tedious.

In the end, it about how fun a system and party building is (Wizardry, M&M) or how good enemy and dungeon variety is (BG 2, IWD) and not about sheer number of so-called "trash" encounters.

 

[Desolate Dancer]

No, designing every encounter meticulously is not detrimental to a game's quality at all. An encounter that was tested and revised 3 times, with different party compositions and different approaches to handling it, is going to be supremely enjoyable.

Of course, but do they have sufficient time and money to achieve that? If yes, then they should and if they fail to deliver we are justified in our disappointment and infernal ire (e.g. against PoE), if no, then we get to all those rpgs that has simplified encounters, since this is what they could possibly afford.

It's a big reason of why I prefer Baldur's Gate 2 to Baldur's Gate 1. The first game has more open exploration but also more boring copypasted encounters, while the second game has more mage duels, beholders, illithids, etc etc. Every dungeon in BG2 has different enemy types, there's a lot of variety, nothing ever feels copypasted. Sure, it also has some trashmobs, but it doesn't abuse them to the point that it becomes tedious.

Perhaps you are right, but don't forget the significant difference in player power level between the two games. In BG1 they had to consider that the player is laughably weak, can't even hit things all that well, let alone cast spells and use various consumables and magic items, as such, encounters skewed toward the 'melée attack' type enemies. Perhaps they could have copypasted less black talon elites and skeletons into some forest areas, but that's it. In BG2 the player has a vastly bigger pool of options in combat, so consequently creature variability, their powers, immunities and resistances went up a lot, plus those lovely hard counters.

The only acceptable difficulty levels are those that were designed by hand rather than automatically upscaled. So, something like "At hard difficulty this specific encounter has 2 enemy wizards instead of 1, and 2 additional melee dudes to shield them" is good, but "At hard difficulty enemies just get +X % to damage and HP" is shit.

Yes, it is very tedious now to still see those difficulty sliders with '+50% health to monsters' and 'monsters do double damage' levels, that's why I'd advocate the option-by-option approach e.g. Supergiant Games do this very well for all their games. In a party-based fantasy rpg I can totally imagine that you have a 'General Difficulty' settings and even a 'Class Specific Difficulty' settings. Imagine you can handpick e.g. Rest Difficulty: the easiest being that you can Rest anywhere outside of combat, the hardest is that you can only rest at Inns. Or that you can choose between the true Vancian spellcasting á la BG Wizards or you can simply opt into an easier approach á la BG2 Sorcerer, provided you have a game with just 1-2 caster classes. There are just so many things that should be adjustable separately, especially in a single-player game.

 

[JarlFrank]

Perhaps you are right, but don't forget the significant difference in player power level between the two games. In BG1 they had to consider that the player is laughably weak, can't even hit things all that well, let alone cast spells and use various consumables and magic items, as such, encounters skewed toward the 'melée attack' type enemies. Perhaps they could have copypasted less black talon elites and skeletons into some forest areas, but that's it. In BG2 the player has a vastly bigger pool of options in combat, so consequently creature variability, their powers, immunities and resistances went up a lot, plus those lovely hard counters.

Sure, you have a point, but then I'd argue that low level D&D isn't all that great and mid-level is where it's at (which is my general opinion on the matter - levels 5-15 are the most fun in D&D, anything below that is too chance-based and has too few options, and anything above that has the issue of HP bloat).

Still, that in itself does not force bad encounter design. After all, you can have quests give plenty of XP so you reach the interesting levels more quickly, and BG does have some great encounters, such as those in Durlag's Tower (which admittedly is at the end of the game's power curve).

Also, encounters with a couple of melee and a couple of ranged enemies aren't bad as long as they're not copypasted to infinity. The main issue BG1 had was its structure, with the open exploration of entirely generic and un-noteworthy woodland areas that consisted of 50% empty space and 50% generic trash encounters. BG2, on the other hand, focused on more interesting dungeons with unique layouts and enemy compositions that always mixed things up.

 

[Neanderthal]

You don't have to just have combat or dialogue, make use of skills, talents and simple environmental interaction.

 

[DalekFlay]

Dragon Age Origins was the game that left me with trash mob PTSD. I finished it because I wanted to get through the ending after investing so much time in it, but at the end I just felt drained. So many copypasted encounters...

There's a lot of trash mobs in DA:O. There's also a lot of well designed battles. Both can be true. It's a VERY rare RPG that has zero filler combat in it, both because of padding the length but also not wanting to feel like a delivery man sim. Imagine Witcher 3 with much less combat, it would feel even more like a "walking from one marker to the next" game than it already is.

 

[biggestboss]

Sure, you have a point, but then I'd argue that low level D&D isn't all that great and mid-level is where it's at (which is my general opinion on the matter - levels 5-15 are the most fun in D&D, anything below that is too chance-based and has too few options, and anything above that has the issue of HP bloat).

Still, that in itself does not force bad encounter design. After all, you can have quests give plenty of XP so you reach the interesting levels more quickly, and BG does have some great encounters, such as those in Durlag's Tower (which admittedly is at the end of the game's power curve).

Also, encounters with a couple of melee and a couple of ranged enemies aren't bad as long as they're not copypasted to infinity. The main issue BG1 had was its structure, with the open exploration of entirely generic and un-noteworthy woodland areas that consisted of 50% empty space and 50% generic trash encounters. BG2, on the other hand, focused on more interesting dungeons with unique layouts and enemy compositions that always mixed things up.

I wonder if there is an RPG with more consistently excellent encounter design than BG2. DeArnise keep is probably my Top 1 RPG dungeon of all time.

 

[Desolate Dancer]

Sure, you have a point, but then I'd argue that low level D&D isn't all that great and mid-level is where it's at (which is my general opinion on the matter - levels 5-15 are the most fun in D&D, anything below that is too chance-based and has too few options, and anything above that has the issue of HP bloat).

I can totally agree with that since this is an inherent shortcoming of d&d. Yet if anything, we cannot blame BG's makers for being far too meticulous in emulating d&d and RAW, not to mention that it was their very first attempt of it, and they managed to improve upon virtually everything for BG2 (which in current year is almost unheard of).

Still, that in itself does not force bad encounter design. After all, you can have quests give plenty of XP so you reach the interesting levels more quickly, and BG does have some great encounters, such as those in Durlag's Tower (which admittedly is at the end of the game's power curve).

But gaining levels quicker would hurt the pacing, no? Even in vanilla BG1 I sometimes felt like I gained levels too quickly, but maybe this was just me. And yes, I forgot to mention that even in BG1 we had great examples for good encounter design (albeit, mostly with the expansions), and its also important to stress that a good designer uses every tool in their disposal i.e. creature, environment and circumstances. At Durlag's Tower the Doom Guards utilize the narrowness of the path leading to the fort's backdoor, and a pair of moderately strong enemies suddenly become much more powerful by being able to slowly pummel at your weakest party-member lagging behind (and ironically, this uses the topography as well as the bad pathfinding, so they even managed to capitalize on their weakness, this is amazing).

Also, encounters with a couple of melee and a couple of ranged enemies aren't bad as long as they're not copypasted to infinity. The main issue BG1 had was its structure, with the open exploration of entirely generic and un-noteworthy woodland areas that consisted of 50% empty space and 50% generic trash encounters. BG2, on the other hand, focused on more interesting dungeons with unique layouts and enemy compositions that always mixed things up.

Of course they aren't bad, especially in IE, and one can argue they could have taken it even further in difficulty (e.g. more hard counters, more immune creatures, etc...).
You are right, though I never felt bothered by the openness and occasional emptiness of the BG1 areas, to me it was completely fine to find meaningless filler areas since exploration is like that... sometimes you just find nothing. I wouldn't expect to have 'just winning hands' when I'm in an rpg. But again, this is highly subjective, and sure BG2 was better with all those marvelous dungeons but with this we are right back at 'square 1' that BG2 could afford to implement those dungeons whereas BG1 was not ready for this (due to d&d progression factors). And those few quasi-dungeons (e.g. Nashkel Mines and other underground areas) in BG1 still had some great and original elements, especially compared to the time it came out.

 

[Daemongar]

Some games among highly regarded on Codex have so much trash that DAO's darkspawn would seem extinct - Wizardry 8 and Might & Magic 6 come to mind, only from what I have replayed recently.

No. MM6/MM7/MM8 were not "trash mobs". There were huge mobs in MM6 and you had to hack your way through - some of those fights could take a long time. If anyone gave up on that game before level 10 or so may think that the game is non-stop trash fights. But there is no trash!

MM6 had "trash" mobs but:
* You eventually got to a point where you could walk right through without trash hindering you
* There were limited combatants - once you killed all the spiders, well, they wouldn't come back for a year or so.
* The mobs in MM6 were ingenious. You could kite, you could attempt to avoid, and when you gain a few levels, you can annihilate the whole damn map. Or you can fly around and blow up everything with fireballs and bows.
* The fights and structure of combat was damn near perfect. What would you have, MM6 with a "big boss" on each map? What the hell would get stuck on buildings and in corners?!

Wizardry 8 didn't have trash either. It had random encounters, and a lot of them were pretty difficult. The game didn't exactly throw 6 kobolds at you. I complained about the encounters myself while playing, but if you are playing an RPG with random encounters/trash mobs and hate it, is the problem with the game or with you? I realized Wizardry 8 was fun because it was a long, sometimes painful journey, but memorable. I don't think cutting out the filler would "make it better."

My point I'll make until I die is that RPGs need some kind of boring mechanics - games can't be awesome all the time. Inventory management, trash mobs, resting to get spells back, healing, rng, bad decisions - the more folks try to get rid of this stuff, the more the genre suffers.

 

[DraQ]

Congratulations, you just made the game longer but ensured that some players will quit the game out of tedium, and it's unlikely anyone will ever re-play the game because of how tedious it is to go through!

Length is not a good indicator of quality by itself. If you make the game longer by adding trash mobs, you make the game less fun and players will wish the game was shorter.

You can pad HP bars too!

 

[huskarls]

why would theoritical additional difficulty mechanics not just be included in the base game. adjusting damage the player takes makes it more or less difficult without getting into base gameplay changes or optional encounters

 

[JarlFrank]

Congratulations, you just made the game longer but ensured that some players will quit the game out of tedium, and it's unlikely anyone will ever re-play the game because of how tedious it is to go through!

Length is not a good indicator of quality by itself. If you make the game longer by adding trash mobs, you make the game less fun and players will wish the game was shorter.

You can pad HP bars too!

I'm still waiting for a game that replaces HP bloat with something actually good (like Deux Ex style limb-based HP instead of one HP pool you gotta whittle down) but that's not going to happen because HP are such a standard, nobody even cares about improving it, so we're stuck with "lol harder enemies just have more HP lol"

 

[Desolate Dancer]

I'm still waiting for a game that replaces HP bloat with something actually good (like Deux Ex style limb-based HP instead of one HP pool you gotta whittle down) but that's not going to happen because HP are such a standard, nobody even cares about improving it, so we're stuck with "lol harder enemies just have more HP lol"

Interesting notion, I have been thinking a lot on how to improve the existing HP systems but it really is a difficult task. The abstract HP concept is really good to provide a 'timer' in combat (aka if you cannot instakill or crit the opponent, you still finish them off eventually by many smaller hits), and if we'd break it up limb by limb I'm not sure it would be the best way to go. But I had an idea some time ago, which was inspired by 2e beholders in particular: so imagine a game where each and every creature has a different list of parameters that aims to simulate what happens with them upon a critical hit? As an example, let's use the beholder:
- central anti-magic eye is the biggest most obvious target, so it would be easier to hit than a smaller eyestalk
- attacker determines if they do a critical hit or not, this can be dependent on a combination of the attacker's skill, level, weapon, modifiers, combat mode etc... (I'd prefer using the size of the positive difference as a determinant, aka how much higher you rolled than your targets particular DC)
- victim then reacts as per the parameters set in their file: was the critical hit enough to damage the central eye only, or did it manage to hit a smaller eyestalk? if so, what happens (e.g. anti-magic cone deactivates, or beholder loses his ability to disintegrate)?

So yes, in case of a human/humanoid the example would go as: torso being the easiest to hit, head being the hardest. In case of a torso crit hit, the target would just start Bleeding (DoT so victim's time is running out faster), in case of a head crit it would be an insta kill. As such, hitting the head would be so very very unlikely that it requires a lot of luck or a huge level difference (if game is utilizing levels). But a smaller, less severe crit hit is also desirable to chip away at your target. All in all, I'd advocate implementing various different critical hit effects for every different creature type. It would also encourage players to read monster manuals (e.g. certain weapons might have a better chance at criting certain monster body parts, so it would make sense to equip a Spear against a beholder etc...). But I would also keep the abstract HP pool as a 'timer', otherwise the combat would last until someone manages to crit the hardest (probably insta killing) body part, which might take forever. Preferably, each creature would have at least 3-4 different targets and their related traumas. And of course, the monsters would be able to do that against the PC too, varying by PC's race of course.