Society for the Promotion of Trash Mob Welfare

[Boeroer]

 

I always have time to kill some xaurips.

  and take their spears

 

 

I like spears

They should hide a single, awesome, xaurip spear (+30% attack speed, +5DR bypass, etc etc) somewhere in the game that would be dropped amid one of the many trash mobs.  I wonder how many people would notice it vs. 'click' to mop up all them spears.

 

Actually a lot of people already missed that all Lagufaeth stilettos do slash- instead of pierce damage und thus sold the best backup weapons you can have as a stiletto user.

Edited March 2, 2017 by Boeroer

[JerekKruger]

Makes you wonder what they plan to do with them that they were willing to buy so many...

 

Perhaps it was a front for the Xaurip Liberation Army?

[Archaven]

I love battles!. i voted same as PoE1. if they make less battle this time.. i would like to request Feargus and Co. maybe to branch out the pillars franchise to something like Icewind Dale series which is heavy battle focus.

[Regggler]

... is everyone talking about the same definition of "trash mob"? I mean I like RPG combat as much as the next dude, but PoE 1 had a couple of "select everyone, then click once on an enemy, wait for its death, repeat until you win" fights. Those, I really could do without.

 

Oh, and the Xaurip Liberation Army? Surely you mean the Army for the Liberation of Xaurips!

[Blarghagh]

I like trash if it serves a purpose, but trash can serve many purposes. Like:

- Early game while you're getting used to using your characters. Trash after you can reasonably expect a player just finished a high-XP yield quest/encounter so they can test new abilities, or trash after an area where you could pick up a new NPC.

- Wild-card patrollers and stealth obstacles, like Josh described above.

- Flavor trash. If you're attacking a keep, expect the keep to have soldiers. A "Xaurip-infested jungle" should have more than one Xaurip pack. This trash can be designed to be slaughtered to make a player feel powerful, in which case it should be extremely easy to cut through and not tedious, or more difficult trash as a soft punishment for not using a smarter tactic than "storm the keep!" - I call it a soft punishment because really, that specific player more than likely picked that solution because they wanted more combat - this is probably my favourite type of trash because you can literally choose to fight it. Great for those who enjoy trash and those who don't.

- Pacing trash. If you're going from tough encounter to tough encounter, you start to feel more on your toes or possibly stressed. Throw in some trash encounters to instill a false sense of security. Alternatively, start a dungeon or a run of encounters with a trash pack to set a baseline of what to expect - if the trash is hard, a player can expect to have a hard time.

 

Any trash that has a purpose in being there is fine with me. Any trash that feels like it's there to spice up an empty plot of land or pad dungeon length... pass. PoE vanilla suffered from this. White March was a bit better IMO, but did have a problem in that some of the trash was very difficult to deal with and sometimes lead to that problem where players get stressed or tired from going to tough encounter to tough encounter. I feel like a balance in between would be good.

[hilfazer]

It's really surprising to see what poll option is leading. I would have never guessed that myself.

That's a valuable thread, thank you, OP.

 

Voted "same as POE1".

 

BTW what's "trash mob"? Is is a trash creature or trash encounter? If the latter than what exactly is trash encounter? Is it an encounter that can't challange competent player or maybe something else? I think it would be useful to define this.

[Guest Blutwurstritter]

I think there is a fine line where trash mobs are still enjoyable or simply annoying. Xaurips and ghosts very quickly ended up in the second category for me. Every goddamn catacomb or "old" dungeon had the same kind of ghosts. They really could have been a bit more imaginative on the spirits, besides making them blue purple and black and mixing them randomly in every ghost encounter. Actually i think this was one of the few games with too little skeletons, although they usually get overused. I also missed enemies that required special tactics. Later in the game it was mostly a stun fest, where you simply disabled the enemies nearly all the time either by stun/prone or charm/confusion like spells. If you landed your disables first you pretty much won the fight, although this is more a problem of the combat system than trash mobs.  I played the current version on hard with all dlc's and didn't try PotD since i fought it would simply prolong fights but not make them actually harder, as in many games that simply increase hit points and/or armor( which is the same as an increase in stats for PoE). 

I think if the combat system is fun you can have many mobs, but the current system is not that entertaining to support an overabundance of trash mobs.

[Heijoushin]

It's really surprising to see what poll option is leading. I would have never guessed that myself.

That's a valuable thread, thank you, OP.

 

Voted "same as POE1".

 

BTW what's "trash mob"? Is is a trash creature or trash encounter? If the latter than what exactly is trash encounter? Is it an encounter that can't challange competent player or maybe something else? I think it would be useful to define this.

 

*Blushes furiously* Thank you my good man!

 

... is everyone talking about the same definition of "trash mob"? I mean I like RPG combat as much as the next dude, but PoE 1 had a couple of "select everyone, then click once on an enemy, wait for its death, repeat until you win" fights. Those, I really could do without.

 

Oh, and the Xaurip Liberation Army? Surely you mean the Army for the Liberation of Xaurips!

 

And yes, I should have defined "trash mob" in my opening post. I took it to mean any non-boss, non-quest related encounter. So, monsters that just hang around and wait for the player. (Because that's what Tides of N basically removed)

But most people (understandably) hear the nuance of "repetitive, boring" encounters. 

Edited March 3, 2017 by Heijoushin

[thosta]

I like trash mobs, like people said its good fun practise to test out strategies.

 

But sometimes I found the trash mobs in White March to be too grueling, specifically the ghost ones in Durgan's Battery and the Ondrites in the Abbey. 

[Regggler]

I took it to mean any non-boss, non-quest related encounter.

 

 

By that definition, I'd be fine with the "same as PoE 1" option. Thanks for the clarification!

 

Now we just need an expression for boring, repetitive fights. Hm, "utter-trash mob"? "Double-plus ungood mob"?

Edited March 3, 2017 by Regggler

[farleybear]

I think trash mobs in moderation are fine when they make sense to be there. For example, a group of cultists praying in a temple sounds plausible. But three mobs of different enemies in one woodland map (1 vampires fampyr / 1 ogres / 1 spirits)  makes no sense at all and is just a chore. I thought the temple in Dyrford Crossing however was a great example of going OTT with trash mobs.

[JerekKruger]

But three mobs of different enemies in one woodland map (1 vampires fampyr / 1 ogres / 1 spirits)  makes no sense at all and is just a chore.

 

Unless it's a setup for a joke.

[Heijoushin]

I think trash mobs in moderation are fine when they make sense to be there. For example, a group of cultists praying in a temple sounds plausible. But three mobs of different enemies in one woodland map (1 vampires fampyr / 1 ogres / 1 spirits)  makes no sense at all and is just a chore. I thought the temple in Dyrford Crossing however was a great example of going OTT with trash mobs.

 

Sure, you make a good point. Its like in the old days, every single RPG had a sewer level. But why the hell were there so many bad guys hanging out in a sewer? "Hey bro, wanna go chill somewhere that smells like turd?" Just doesn't make sense.

 

Still, most of the time you don't have to stretch your imagination too far.

[Gregorovitch]

I was somewhat torn between voting for "PoE1 was fine" and "bit less than PoE please", but opted for PoE was fine on the grounds the latter might be taken too much to heart by Josh and team for my taste.

 

My real view is that there are some levels in PoE where there are too many copy/paste trash mobs in copy/paste square rooms. It's not the overall number of encounters that matters, it's the variation that matters. Variation can come from different mob composition or from difference in tactical situation. Icewindale had some exceptional encounter design that never got boring by adhering to this principle. No bad idea for every level designer on the team to play Icewindal again asap IMO.

 

IMO In PoE1 Ciaban Rilag was an example of almost faultless environment and encounter design, beautiful area full of sustained interest, whereas some Endless Paths levels, not all by any means but some, had examples of three/four/five indentikit mobs in rectangular indentikit rooms to wade through afore you got the boss.

 

PoE was not broken and doesn't require fixing, just a little tweaking perhaps.

 

But the OP's point about suddenly being thrown up against a boss or elite group with little or no  warm up training against trash mobs is well made. This is a no-no.

[Varana]

Sure, you make a good point. Its like in the old days, every single RPG had a sewer level. But why the hell were there so many bad guys hanging out in a sewer? "Hey bro, wanna go chill somewhere that smells like turd?" Just doesn't make sense.

Because in Fantasy, sewers are not for sewage. Sewers have three main functions:

Housing an honorable-but-somewhat-corrupted Thieves' Guild (accounting for roughly a quarter of a town's population).

Providing the heroes with a convenient means of shortcut transportation to various city districts and plot-related buildings.

Containing a representative sample of adversaries for said heroes of all stages of experience, from rats to Giant Space-Mutant Pirate Frog-Thingy.

Therefore, sewers are usually large enough to have at least six persons move around comfortably while fighting against a number of enemies.

 

Oh, and there will be some water in the middle. Bonus points for a vaguely brown-greenish colour.

[JerekKruger]

Basically sewers are the fantasy RPG equivalent of this: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/AirVentPassageway?from=Main.AirventEscape