So what exactly is Trash combat?

[Captain Shrek]

I am down with flu and have nothing very interesting to do at the moment. So I searched the forum for a thread discussing trash combat but did not find one. No, not that Trash

Why does this topic deserve a thread? Well, it is one of the most debated issues and is always brought up when talking about tactical combat or encounters. It is interesting to note that almost everyone agrees that Trash combat is a bad thing and should be avoided. It is mostly associated with filler content that stops you from reaching the good parts of the game for which you are playing it in the first place.

"Oh man, Not again!" sighed the Kalach-cha.

There are two opposite views often related to the difficulty of such combat. Sometimes you can hear people call all the combat and encounters that are trivial as Trash combat.

"Sigh... Another wave."

Even when it is not filler, e.g. when even "boss"/"story" battles are easier. There are instances when even hard combat can be addressed by people as Trash. Think of ToEE with its toads and skeletons.

"Bloody frogs..."

​

The question is then, what exactly is Trash combat and how to avoid it.

As I see it Combat should never be built as a barrier to exploration or progress. It should be an integral part of the game, in the sense that all combat should be enjoyable by design. Now this last part is highly arguable since what is enjoyable to some is not enjoyable to others. You can think of people like Jennifer Hepler who want a skip button on every combat encounter because they only want the story part of the game. Or you can think of hard core "combat-fags" who only live to die another turn. The spectrum is quite wide.

We can assume that these views actually constitutes genres. That Heplers of the world should not probably play Bloodbowl and Combat fags can decide to stay away from Adventure games.

But what of those games which have a clear focus on both combat and story? There have been instances where we have had some really charming gems like JA2 or Fallout or AoD (as it seems to be shaping up). These games it seems are a sad testimony of what can be. Can in these game trash encounters be avoided? Are they somehow necessary? What can be done to get rid of them entirely? Or is this discussion missing a crucial point?

In general, I think there are some common identifiers to Trash Combat:

1) Is unavoidable and blocks routes to important locations. can't even be snuck past (consult first picture).
2) Large number of enemies
3) HP bloats/unlikely immunities/ Regenerating health or spamming ability /Very low hit chances
4) Has little or no story values. Composed of faceless/ nameless monsters/bandits/mutants/wolves/zombies/pirates.

Not all of these occur together of course.

So with that in mind please discuss what you think constitutes Trash combat and how to mitigate it.

 

[Darth Roxor]

A great example of Trash combat: http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/index.php?threads/codexian-guilty-pleasures.65904/page-4#post-2953570

 

[coffeetable]

They can't be avoided, and they aren't innately bad. Mowing trash mobs down is central to many variants of the hero narrative (cf: stormtroopers), so unless storytelling in popular media undergoes a revolution, they're not going anywhere anytime soon.

What is bad is when they're overused, and whether a mob is overused is dependent on their second purpose: they're training dummies. You get a new ability, you light up a few dozen bad guys to get the feel for it, and then are comfortable using it in actually challenging (ie, boss) fights. Thing is, how long it takes to get used to an ability varies wildly from player to player*, which means that by the time a veteran has gotten bored with a game segment and decided all subsequent mobs are "trash", the newbie is only just getting settled in.

The solution to this is obviously adjustable difficulty, but the problem with most implementations of adjustable difficulty is that they just give mobs more HP, and that does little to stop the veteran player getting bored. What's needed is for fresh challenges to be injected when the difficulty is upped. This is a fair sight more difficult to do from a development perspective though, and when you consider the minority of the playerbase that'll appreciate it, it's somewhat understandable why devs don't bother.

*Don't confuse this with player intelligence. The best predictor of a person's performance in any area is prior experience. People who have played a lot of games/a lot of CRPGs will adapt to new CRPG challenges, and get bored of them, a lot faster than someone new to computer games/new to CRPGs.

 

[AstroZombie]

Pretty much every encounter in Dragon Age.

 

[V_K]

I think the only way to avoid trash combat completely is what Deadalic did with Blackguards - introduce some unique puzzle-like designs into each combat encounter. In all other cases it will inevitably get old and boring eventually.

 

[Cyberarmy]

1) Is unavoidable and blocks routes to important locations. can't even be snuck past (consult first picture).
2) Large number of enemies
3) HP bloats/unlikely immunities/ Regenerating health or spamming ability /Very low hit chances
4) Has little or no story values. Composed of faceless/ nameless monsters/bandits/mutants/wolves/zombies/pirates.

Not all of these occur together of course.

Dragon Age 2 will bethe best example methinks.

Edit: I don't really mind trash mobs a lot unless we battle them in our every step. (like DA2)
Random trash mobs once a while in random wilderness is OK for my standarts.

 

[sea]

I feel like trash combat is basically any combat which is not justified effectively in some way by the story or the environment, and which feels redundant to the overall game's effectiveness. That's a bit of a flowery definition but I guess the easiest way is to ask a series of questions:

1. Does the combat tie into the story or game world in a way that is narratively relevant and effective?
2. Is the combat encounter itself engaging, interesting and or/challenging, or rote, repetitive and routine?
   
3. Can the combat be avoided through some means, whether non-combat skill use or CYOA-style decisions?
4. Is the combat a means to an end or an end in and of itself?
5. Does the role of combat fit logically into the game's wider systems (i.e. leveling, resource management, loot drops, exploration, etc.)?
   
6. Ultimately, if removed from the game, would the game suffer at all for lack of that particular combat encounter?

I think it's totally possible to make a game almost if not completely devoid of trash combat. Planescape: Torment, Baldur's Gate 2, and Fallout all get really damn close, as does my Dragon Age mod Thrist (where a design goal was to justify every combat encounter possible; there are only a fairly small handful of fights that are "there because it's a dungeon"). I don't think trash combat can be totally avoided in most games because there is still some expectation that a game have dungeon-delving, exploration, and hostile encounters paced reasonably often, but then I'm not even sure that qualifies as trash combat. Baldur's Gate 2 (mentioned above) - where enemy encounters aren't typically boring, unjustified by the story, completely required to process, or mechanically shallow - is an example of a combat-focused game where the combat isn't itself trash.

When I think back to those mentioned games, especially Fallout, I can't in good faith say the game has anything that feels superfluous. Random encounters are important because they test your abilities and strain your resources in ways you can't predict. Most quest-based combat is relevant to resolving the quest, or can be avoided through some means (whether stealth, science, repair, etc. or just picking another side in a conflict). The areas where you have combat that's closest to filler, it's logically justified and the enemies are usually pretty unique to that location (robots in The Glow, Deathclaws in the Boneyard, Super Mutants and Mariposa). Mechanically, combat is effective because it either allows your character to dominate, survive or struggle depending on your character build, which reinforces the choices you have made.

I really just have to conclude that trash combat finds its way into games because it's easy, it's lazy, and provided your combat system itself is still alright, most players are going to tolerate or even enjoy it provided it's not done to excess. Let's face it, most RPGs aren't comfortable with areas you can walk through and explore after 5-10 minutes, and doing stuff like dialogue, puzzles, involved quests, etc. is a lot more work than plunking down a bunch of auto-hostile bad guys or creatures. And if you tie that trash combat into an XP or loot distribution system, then a lot of the time, shiny gold pieces or a new sword will be enough to get people to fight anything; from the developer's perspective, why bother with more when the gilded carrot is enough incentive as it is?

 

[coffeetable]

almost if not completely devoid of trash combat. Planescape: Torment,

i think we played different games

 

[sea]

almost if not completely devoid of trash combat. Planescape: Torment,

i think we played different games

Aside from a few dungeons here or there (many of them optional) I can't think of much superfluous combat in the game. Not even sure the ending counts because you can run past almost all the enemies (and indeed is the preferable tactic). And the stuff that is there does tend to be narratively meaningful in some way.

Generally speaking I feel that the badness and frequency of Torment's combat is exaggerated a bit by people here; it's not especially great or even good but it's certainly not awful either. And combat being bad either way is not really the same thing as trash combat. I think Torment's problems lie in the lack of mechanical complexity and difficulty in the combat system as implemented, rather than poor encounter design per se.

 

[sea]

Running past enemies is (hopefully) not a design decision and a bug. Because it is not only silly if a part of the story, but also demeaning.

The entire point of the shadows in the Fortress of Regrets are that they are basically infinite and therefore a constant threat. Running past them isn't really demeaning because they keep on coming the longer you take.

 

[Darth Roxor]

Aside from a few dungeons here or there (many of them optional) I can't think of much superfluous combat in the game.

Thug tenement? Curst prison? Carceri? Just about all the catacombs? Baator and Outlands?

Hell, it's hard to find any combat encounters in Torment that aren't trash and superfluous.

 

[sea]

And now we get into the same problem: what's trash for one person is decently enjoyable for another depending on what one wants out of the game. I rarely felt the combat in Torment was a chore, but I wasn't playing it for the combat; it often felt justified well in the narrative or setting, and that was usually enough for me. It never felt outright pointless, repetitive, or boring to me, though it was definitely uninspired.

Though that said, it's been years since I last played Torment. Maybe if I were to go back to it today I'd be less sympathetic.

 

[Mastermind]

Dragon Age 2 will bethe best example methinks.

Edit: I don't really mind trash mobs a lot unless we battle them in our every step. (like DA2)
Random trash mobs once a while in random wilderness is OK for my standarts.

Dragon Age 1 was way worse in this regard.

 

[Darth Roxor]

And now we get into the same problem: what's trash for one person is decently enjoyable for another depending on what one wants out of the game.

Okay, let me try running it through your set of questions

Does the combat tie into the story or game world in a way that is narratively relevant and effective?

That's not exactly much of a criterium as it only applies to "do I suddenly get attacked by daemons in the temple of the lawful good god?, and while "do I get attacked by prison guards in a prison" sure is relevant, it ain't exactly effective when you essentially get attacked by the SAME GUARD just copy-pasted x1000 with no other guards.

Is the combat encounter itself engaging, interesting and or/challenging, or rote, repetitive and routine?

In 90% of cases in PS:T, it's absolutely the latter. You know the encounter is neither engaging, nor interesting, nor challenging when you can win it by selecting all dudes -> ordering to attack -> going afk to make coffee. And the fact that you keep coming across the same friggin' enemy dudes over and over again with very little to no change doesn't make it any better.

Can the combat be avoided through some means, whether non-combat skill use or CYOA-style decisions?

For the most part nope, unless you mean 'running right through the trash mobs in order to just ignore them".

Is the combat a means to an end or an end in and of itself?

Solving any quests by kicking the shit out of people is usually a much less worthwhile and satisfactory route because dropping walls of texts on people gives more xp, loot and whatever else. Outside quests, the mobs of generic enemies are only there to artificially slow you down and make the game longer.

Does the role of combat fit logically into the game's wider systems (i.e. leveling, resource management, loot drops, exploration, etc.)?

It fits into levelling, I suppose, albeit you still get more xp by talking at people anyway. Resource management? In PS:T? lololololo. Loot drops for the most part doesn't either because the generic mobs usually don't drop anything worth noting. Exploration? Again, in PS:T? lolololo, hello Outlands, I'm very satisfied that you keep sending all those dinosaurs against me on a big map that is otherwise COMPLETELY DEVOID OF CONTENT

Ultimately, if removed from the game, would the game suffer at all for lack of that particular combat encounter?

No. And no. And no again. You could axe the very vast majority of fights in PS:T completely and nobody would even notice. It would only make stuff like Curst Prison/Baator/Outlands even more empty, and I'm not sure if that would actually be a flaw in this case.


I would like you to list all the combat encounters in PS:T that you felt weren't horrible and uninspired, but in turn were relevant and challenging. The only ones I can think of are Trias, the daemon from the box and the Evil Wizard Construct.

 

[Average Manatee]

I see the purpose of combat as two general tests, which can be done singly or in combination:

1. A test of the character/party's combat ability vs a single battle.
2. A test of the character/party's ability to endure a succession of battles.

Trash combat is when you have "passed" the current level of test, yet the game insists on making you retake it another 100 times before letting you graduate to the next level of tests. Given that I know the codex is almost entirely inhabited by geniuses, I'm sure everyone can relate to the time in school when you understood the material after about 5s of thinking yet the teacher droned on about it for hours. That's what Trash Combat is to me.

Of course, the "trashiness" of combat is highly dependent on other factors. I can accept a handful of weak, brief fights if needed for story purposes. But if your combat system does the JRPG 10s intro 20s spell casting animations 10s outro bullshit then fuck you and the horse you rode in on.

It's probably also worth discussing how certain games turn decent combat into trash combat. Namely, games like Dragon Age, NWN, and probably 99% of all AAA RPGs/JRPGs released in the last 5 years directly subvert test #2 by providing endless amounts of restoration items, infinite resting, or automatic healing after battle. If I go through a battle and absolutely nothing changes about my character other than my XP bar went up, the combat was irrelevant. As a contrast, take a game like System Shock 2 (not a conventional RPG, but bear with me as I'm replaying it at the moment so it sticks in my mind). SS2 resources are heavily limited and past the early game all combat will generally require some expenditure of resources, whether Ammo, Psi Points, or healing items. Due to this combat still has meaning no matter where or against what, because the act of combat will actually change the fundamental state of the player.

 

[evdk]

There is only one correct answer as to the true nature of Trash combat:

http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/inde...s-bitch-trash-vs-sheek-1st-august-2009.34836/

 

[Gragt]

I think it's totally possible to make a game almost if not completely devoid of trash combat. Planescape: Torment, Baldur's Gate 2, and Fallout all get really damn close, […]

Don't forget Mysteries of Westgate. That one is as devoid of trash encounters as you can get.

Your mention of BG2 made me pause. At first I thought that the game was full of filler combat and I tried to remember which and couldn't really come with a good exemple. It does feature a lot of fighting but most of it doesn't really qualify for trash I think. Then again I haven't played it in ages. I guess I mostly remember BG1 which is full of trash, that one.

 

[V_K]

Your mention of BG2 made me pause. At first I thought that the game was full of filler combat and I tried to remember which and couldn't really come with a good exemple.

It was all trash because everything real-time is.

 

[Vibalist]

Don't forget Mysteries of Westgate. That one is as devoid of trash encounters as you can get.

This is actually an excellent example of a game that has absolutely no filler combat in it. I remember being so relieved when I played it and slowly realized that these developers actually understood just how fucking boring an excessive amount of combat can be (especially in that shitty NWN2 engine). I also remember vaguely wondering why no other RPG developers seem to have the same insight.

 

[Gragt]

Don't forget Mysteries of Westgate. That one is as devoid of trash encounters as you can get.

This is actually an excellent example of a game that has absolutely no filler combat in it. I remember being so relieved when I played it and slowly realized that these developers actually understood just how fucking boring an excessive amount of combat can be (especially in that shitty NWN2 engine). I also remember vaguely wondering why no other RPG developers seem to have the same insight.

Yeah, it was the metaphorical breath of fresh air. Playing Dragon Age after that it was tedious to see how much filler content it featured, which is a shame because the RT combat is one of the best I've seen in CRPGs.

 

[sea]

I see the purpose of combat as two general tests, which can be done singly or in combination:

1. A test of the character/party's combat ability vs a single battle.
2. A test of the character/party's ability to endure a succession of battles.

Trash combat is when you have "passed" the current level of test, yet the game insists on making you retake it another 100 times before letting you graduate to the next level of tests. Given that I know the codex is almost entirely inhabited by geniuses, I'm sure everyone can relate to the time in school when you understood the material after about 5s of thinking yet the teacher droned on about it for hours. That's what Trash Combat is to me.

Of course, the "trashiness" of combat is highly dependent on other factors. I can accept a handful of weak, brief fights if needed for story purposes. But if your combat system does the JRPG 10s intro 20s spell casting animations 10s outro bullshit then fuck you and the horse you rode in on.

This is an excellent explanation and you deserve more brofists. Combat should indeed be a test; when the test is no longer a test, but mere time-filler, it becomes trash. Of course, a degree of overtly easy combat is acceptable in situations where you want the player to feel powerful - sometimes roflstomping enemies is okay - but most of the time I think this definition applies.

Don't forget Mysteries of Westgate. That one is as devoid of trash encounters as you can get.

Your mention of BG2 made me pause. At first I thought that the game was full of filler combat and I tried to remember which and couldn't really come with a good exemple. It does feature a lot of fighting but most of it doesn't really qualify for trash I think. Then again I haven't played it in ages. I guess I mostly remember BG1 which is full of trash, that one.

Yep, forgot about it. Granted the story turned to total fucking derp by the end so it annoyed me a bit, but the devs definitely deserve some praises for avoiding trash combat pretty much entirely.

 

[Gragt]

I'll also add that level scaling even compounds the issue of trash combat. The way it is usually done, you encounter masses of enemies that you are supposed to be able to dispatch whatever your level is so you can tackle the game on in any order, but then what's the point of it except to artificially pump up the play time? I could see it work with a few set and designed encounters that scale on the current level but not with hordes of easily dispatched mooks.

 

[Aikanaro]

I think it's totally possible to make a game almost if not completely devoid of trash combat. Planescape: Torment, Baldur's Gate 2, and Fallout all get really damn close, […]

Don't forget Mysteries of Westgate. That one is as devoid of trash encounters as you can get.

Your mention of BG2 made me pause. At first I thought that the game was full of filler combat and I tried to remember which and couldn't really come with a good exemple. It does feature a lot of fighting but most of it doesn't really qualify for trash I think. Then again I haven't played it in ages. I guess I mostly remember BG1 which is full of trash, that one.

I don't think BG1 is full of trash. Quite the opposite. If you stick to just the main path of the game, the fights are non-trivial and well designed for the level you're roughly assumed to be at. There are mobs, sure - but they serve a purpose and aren't just a waste of your time. If you wander off the main path you might hit mobs vastly under your level, but that's because the game lets you explore at will without level scaling, which I think for other reasons we all agree is a good thing because you can also wander into a whole lot of fights that are far above your level too.

 

[deuxhero]

And at the very start of the game, you'll find encounters that will kill most builds instantly and force a reload. That COULD have been a good thing, but the way it was handeled is ass (as with pretty much every RTWP game ever, breaking from an encounter without using load barriers or party wide stealth is impossible, you can not see these things before they instantly kill you either, so no avoiding them short of reloads).


As for what is "trash" combat, the system plays a large part in it. One of the reasons trash combat is so trashy in any real time with pause game is that waiting is inherit to the system: Any decent turn based game will have enemies complete turns near instantly while the player can execute commands as quick as he can move the controls to do so, while in any real time game the player can always do something (obviously), but in RTWP, no matter how sure you are that you want to have all your fighters "attack" this group of garbage, you need to wait however long the devs made the time interval for turns at least once (but likely more for encounters that demand no more than "attack") doing NOTHING.

This isn't to say games with GOOD combat systems can't have filler. Temple of Elemental Evil's rooms of Bugbears, which only differ from eachother in quanity, come to mind even though the game has the (very nice) option to make large groups of enemies take their actions all at once. (I don't think there is a single instance of "filler" combat involving toads though, and skeletons are really limited to one or two areas)

 

[Average Manatee]

As for what is "trash" combat, the system plays a large part in it. One of the reasons trash combat is so trashy in any real time with pause game is that waiting is inherit to the system: Any decent turn based game will have enemies complete turns near instantly while the player can execute commands as quick as he can move the controls to do so, while in any real time game the player can always do something (obviously), but in RTWP, no matter how sure you are that you want to have all your fighters "attack" this group of garbage, you need to wait however long the devs made the time interval for turns at least once (but likely more for encounters that demand no more than "attack") doing NOTHING.

Whaaaaaaat? BG turns take 3 seconds to resolve at 60 FPS, issuing orders to 6 characters that often is 120 APM, which would be pretty much impossible even if you were Korean. Bear in mind that you have to also select spells and use items and shit, and I'm not even including any downtime due to game animations or turn calculations, and I'm not even considering instances where you'd make multiple actions in a single turn (free actions and the like).

The fact that IE games are snappy and quick to resolve combat is one of the things that helps them avoid the tedium from the amount of combat they have.