Trash Mobs: A Rant on an Annoying RPG Trope

[Ketzal]

You know what I'm talking about. The living mushrooms, the three-foot goblins, the field rats. Since the creation of the RPG genre itself, dealing with trash mobs while going from point A to point B has been a staple: Final Fantasy, Dragon Quest, even Pokemon have all used enemies that frankly don't stand a chance against you as a means to level up your characters and (more blantanly, imo) pad out a game.

I can understand this being a thing in the older generations when game space was limited and you needed to figure out whatever tricks you could to lengthen your game, but why is this a thing now? Why are RPGs still padding out gameplay with easy to defeat mobs when traveling?

I bring this up because I recently bought a game called Etrian Odyssey Untold: The Millenium Girl for my 3DS. So far, I've been loving it and it introduces some interesting tweaks to the standard RPG formula. One thing that I noticed was that you can hit the L button during an encounter to literally put your party on auto-pilot and smack everything until it's dead. This made grinding a lot simpler, but it also showed me just how ridiculously easy random encounters were even in the early stages. I could just keep doing this without any of my characters coming out with more than a scratch!

I understand that it would mean a lot more creativity, but I seriously feel like RPG games need to ramp up the difficulty with standard fights. And I'm not talking about stuff like Skyrim or Dark Souls or anything like that, I mean traditional turn-based stuff. Fights are supposed to be part of the journey, the roadblocks and challenges that the hero has to face while achieving his ultimate goal. A pint-sized imp with a pitchfork just doesn't cut it.

Now I know that some would first argue that it would make trying to travel impossible, and that's because of something else I wanted to focus on: limited resources to heal after a fight. When I say limited resources, I mean the MP of the healer, however many health potions you have left, stuff like that. You have a finite amount of ways to keep your party healthy, and more often than not that means slogging your way over to a town to heal up or risk getting your party killed.

So why not just take this part out? Why not just allow the party to recover their health after a fight? Yeah, sure, it wouldn't make a lot of sense for a group of heroes to just instantly heal up after fighting a bunch of bandits, but it'd be a matter of sacrificing logic for better gameplay. With regeneration after fights, that gives game designers a lot more leeway to ramp up standard encounters and make them an actual challenge, forcing players to think about every step they take. This is what I want to see more in this traditional style of RPGs, and it's a shame that so many games are still clinging to that trope of fighting through trash mobs while managing healing resources.

TL;DR: Trash mobs are stupid and game designers should implement a system of instantly restoring a party's health after fights. It'd allow for more challenging fights to happen outside of scripted encounters and boss fights, and in my opinion it'd make for a much more satisfying gaming experience.

What do you guys think? Do you agree, or do you feel like there's some facet to the mobs of traditional RPGs that I'm missing here?

[Insomniac]

Talking about trash mobs makes me wish I'd been old enough to be into games enough to play Chrono Trigger as a kid. I should find a way to play it at some point...It really was a great RPG. In my opinion, one of the greatest games of all time, and I haven't decided if I want to play it or not...

[Sithil]

Now I know that some would first argue that it would make trying to travel impossible, and that's because of something else I wanted to focus on: limited resources to heal after a fight. When I say limited resources, I mean the MP of the healer, however many health potions you have left, stuff like that. You have a finite amount of ways to keep your party healthy, and more often than not that means slogging your way over to a town to heal up or risk getting your party killed.

So why not just take this part out? Why not just allow the party to recover their health after a fight? Yeah, sure, it wouldn't make a lot of sense for a group of heroes to just instantly heal up after fighting a bunch of bandits, but it'd be a matter of sacrificing logic for better gameplay. With regeneration after fights, that gives game designers a lot more leeway to ramp up standard encounters and make them an actual challenge, forcing players to think about every step they take. This is what I want to see more in this traditional style of RPGs, and it's a shame that so many games are still clinging to that trope of fighting through trash mobs while managing healing resources.

Why remove the challenge? Let every travel be a matter of life and death, it will force players to either play smart, and feel accomplished for managing the trip despite its dangers, or to grind until they become powerful enough for the fights not to be so dangerous. If you replenish their health after each encounter, there won't be any need to deliberate over what to do next, they will simply keep going rather than consider maybe going back to the previous town, because they just got their [censored] kicked, and it might perhaps be too risky to go on.

[MrFlyingAmoeba]

TL;DR: Trash mobs are stupid and game designers should implement a system of instantly restoring a party's health after fights. It'd allow for more challenging fights to happen outside of scripted encounters and boss fights, and in my opinion it'd make for a much more satisfying gaming experience.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but don't several RPG games already restore party HP after every fight? I think DA2 does it after every fight. That actually brings me to another objection-not all games continue to fling baby slimes at you when you're swinging the God-Slaying Spear of Throbbing Murder. DA2 scales mobs to you if I recall correctly, so the bandits that jump down from the rooftops are still appropriately difficult (Although it does raise the secondary question of why they keep challenging the legendary figure you've become by the endgame)

I think Mardek, Sonny, and Epic Battle Fantasy also instantly restored HP outside of fights, but it's been so long I can't remember. I have not personally played South Park: The Stick of Truth, but party HP restoration after battle and scaling mobs seems to have also been a thing in there.

[Ketzal]

Why remove the challenge? Let every travel be a matter of life and death, it will force players to either play smart, and feel accomplished for managing the trip despite its dangers, or to grind until they become powerful enough for the fights not to be so dangerous. If you replenish their health after each encounter, there won't be any need to deliberate over what to do next, they will simply keep going rather than consider maybe going back to the previous town, because they just got their [censored] kicked, and it might perhaps be too risky to go on.

But that's exactly my problem: I don't want the challenge to come from managing resources, I want the challenge to come from the fights themselves. Yeah, maybe you come across a fight where you take a pretty hefty beating, but how often does that really happen in those games? Not enough is my answer.

-snip-

I understand what you're saying but for one, I'm talking about traditional RPGs. I know that Dragon Age does it. Hell, the fact that they do it sparked this rant in the first place! My problem is that for the most part it's not getting applied to the turn-based style of RPGs, and I think that needs to change.

As for the games you listed, that may be true, but all of those are free flash games. I want to see a game design company implement this for a fully fledged-out game. And you could argue that those flash games have plenty of content, and you might be right. In that case, I hope they can put their efforts into an even better product that I can purchase from them.

...Also, Throbbing Murder?

[amenon]

But that's exactly my problem: I don't want the challenge to come from managing resources, I want the challenge to come from the fights themselves.

I hope you can appreciate that some people do like the challenge of managing resources, myself included

My first question in that kind of RPG is 'Okay, how do I get to be resource-stable?'

I agree that pointless fights aren't great, though. Earthbound did it well; if the level difference is big enough, it autokills the enemy. Though my preference is for no or almost no random encounters in the first place. (Lufia 2, Chrono Trigger/Chrono Cross.) The problem is at its worst in circa PS1 era games where every fight starts with some gratuitous effect and a long camera pan...

[Schrodinger]

I could get into a long rant about how mob placements can inform the player of strategy for upcoming bosses or the ecology of they area they occupy. It wouldn't make much sense for an ice wyvern to roost in the basin of an active volcano. I don't much like level scaling enemies since it's a very mechanical and arbitrary system. I don't want to have to spend more curative items just because the poisonous sewer rats got bigger numbers since the last time I passed through the area. As my characters grow in power I'd like to think I'm growing with them tactically not being hindered by speed bumps just because there was an item I missed on my first pass.

Persona 3 and 4 handle this expertly. The player can finish encounters in seconds with the proper use of skills, magic, and items. Even creatures much stronger than the player characters can be dealt with easily if the right tactics are used. At even higher levels the smaller mobs will avoid the player characters. The challenge isn't in overcoming a stat block, it's in skillful play. Learning patterns and weaknesses and then exploiting them.

[Chris]

I hope you can appreciate that some people do like the challenge of managing resources, myself included

Yeah, that's actually what I see RPGs as being. Managing your character's or characters' stats and resources. I really dislike health regen in RPGs, because then it just becomes a matter of who can heal the most during a fight. It becomes less about your characters and how they're stacking up to the challenges ahead, and more about the i"right now" and how much you can or need to heal during the current fight. Minor health loss becomes meaningless since you get it right back after the fight (creating the trash mob problem this topic points out), and it makes out-of-combat damage pointless too, since you'll get it right back (unless the damage is enough for a one-shot kill, which is a set of worm cans itself). It ultimately aims to push you to the end faster, rather than letting you take the time to enjoy being in the world.

[Ketzal]

I hope you can appreciate that some people do like the challenge of managing resources, myself included

Yeah, that's actually what I see RPGs as being. Managing your character's or characters' stats and resources. I really dislike health regen in RPGs, because then it just becomes a matter of who can heal the most during a fight. It becomes less about your characters and how they're stacking up to the challenges ahead, and more about the i"right now" and how much you can or need to heal during the current fight. Minor health loss becomes meaningless since you get it right back after the fight (creating the trash mob problem this topic points out), and it makes out-of-combat damage pointless too, since you'll get it right back (unless the damage is enough for a one-shot kill, which is a set of worm cans itself). It ultimately aims to push you to the end faster, rather than letting you take the time to enjoy being in the world.

But again, why can't the fights themselves do this? Dark Souls uses its fights to enhance the world around you: it signifies just how much of a bleak and merciless land it is through the trials and travails that you go through with the game's enemies. I wouldn't mind having a more difficult traditional RPG experience with more fights that actually force you to think about what you're doing.

Maybe resource management can be fun, but if I want to do that I'll go play simcity or the oregon trail. I'm a hero with a quest, so I want to fight some evil badasses to prove how badass I am in turn

[Chris]

But again, why can't the fights themselves do this? Dark Souls uses its fights to enhance the world around you: it signifies just how much of a bleak and merciless land it is through the trials and travails that you go through with the game's enemies. I wouldn't mind having a more difficult traditional RPG experience with more fights that actually force you to think about what you're doing.

I've never been attracted to Dark Souls. As an action game it's fine, but I like RPGs to take a more "big picture"/"long road" design. I like it to be less about any one particular encounter, and instead more about your performance and luck over a period of time. With what I know of DS, it's basically a game where, if you fail, you fail hard. It's not a culmination of poor decisions and bad results over a long period, but more making a mistake or two during a given encounter.

This isn't to say games like DS are bad or wrong, they're just not what I look for in RPGs.

Maybe resource management can be fun, but if I want to do that I'll go play simcity or the oregon trail. I'm a hero with a quest, so I want to fight some evil badasses to prove how badass I am in turn

But if every fight is badass, is any them? You need dark to see light, bad to recognize good, etc.</moment of zen> For the badassery to really stand out, it needs to be next to the more mundane.

[Ketzal]

But if every fight is badass, is any them? You need dark to see light, bad to recognize good, etc.</moment of zen> For the badassery to really stand out, it needs to be next to the more mundane.

I'm not saying that every battle needs to be an epic fight of high stakes, I'm just saying that battles could be more challenging and have some more awesome and interesting encounters when managing resources is less of a factor. I get what people mean when they say it's creating a journey, an aspect of looking to the long-term more than the short term, but it's still a journey where I see the field enemies as a bunch of nuisances, pests that are just keeping me from getting to the real meat of the game.

[Chris]

I get what people mean when they say it's creating a journey, an aspect of looking to the long-term more than the short term, but it's still a journey where I see the field enemies as a bunch of nuisances, pests that are just keeping me from getting to the real meat of the game.

I think this speaks more of improper design. If done properly, you can have fun while dealing with low-level/push-over mobs. It's less that trash mobs are a problem in and of themselves, and more that the game doesn't provide enjoyment when they're encountered.

Like, some games I find fun and enjoyable to just walk around in, to take in the sights and sounds. If I run into an occasional rat that I can one shot, as long as it doesn't pull me away from doing that, they're not a problem (JRPG-like transition screens obviously causing problems here, while RPGs like The Elder Scrolls where the exploration and combat are seemlessly presented are less of a problem). Similarly, if the game provides a lot of fun things to do to deal with the enemy mobs, it can still provide enjoyment. Particularly if there's spells or combinations of spells or something that are really cool, but otherwise aren't very practical to use in a "real" fight, trash mobs would be the perfect target since it would be effective enough.

Obviously, if there's too many trash mobs, then no matter what the game provides will eventually get boring. But that's a more general problem of too much of a given thing.

[ButterBall]

I might be missing the point entirely, but I wonder:
If a developer of an RPG looks at a point in a game and says "You know know what? You know you can beat this enemy by your level, I know you can beat this enemy by your level, so how about I remove the enemy entirely?"
Is that better?

[Ketzal]

I might be missing the point entirely, but I wonder:
If a developer of an RPG looks at a point in a game and says "You know know what? You know you can beat this enemy by your level, I know you can beat this enemy by your level, so how about I remove the enemy entirely?"
Is that better?

well, risking rudeness, that is entirely missing the point of what I'm saying.

I'm not saying to take out the trash mobs and be done with it, I'm asking for developers to create a system that allows them to put in more challenging fights. Rather than that developer saying "Let's take out this enemy entirely," I want them to say, "Let's remove this pointless enemy and put in an enemy that can actually kill the player if they try to mash the attack button."

Now, I can understand that this would make RPGs WAY too long if this were to be the case with every encounter, but I'd be willing to sacrifice a large number of encounters if it meant the ones remaining have more meaning and strategy to them.

[primalcaller ergos]

I'm guessing you've never played any Disgaea? Because that series is notorious for having absurd grinding requirements to play.

However, I have some examples of RPGs that fix (or at least manage) this issue!

Example number 1: My favorite game of all time, Wild Arms 3!

In this game, while traveling around, you do not instantly get thrown into random battles, as instead when you encounter a foe,
a large exclamation mark appears over your character's head, and you're given an entire 4 seconds to "cancel" the battle by avoiding it.
Whenever you do this, some of your "migrant" points are expended, which is a meter on the HUD that starts out with 10 points.
Basically what happens is that you expend 3 migrant points to cancel the battle before it starts, and you get 1 point back for every battle you win.
This means you can just skip a large number of the battles you encounter, and as a bonus your migrant points can be replenished with white crystals.

But wait! It gets better! If the enemies you encounter are way lower level than you, then the exclamation mark is green,
and you can avoid the battle entirely at zero cost. Meaning so long as you press the cancel button (which was the circle button on my ps2)
You can just avoid every single foe that would have otherwise been a waste of your time to fight!

Example number 2: My other favorite game of all time (ties with the first) a game in the same series, Wild Arms 5!

In this game, there is something called a "sol niger" in every area in the entire game, including the world maps.
These special cursed objects look like large black orbs of energy, and when you activate them, you fight the king monster inside.
Although this king monster is way stronger than others of it's level, once you have defeated it, you can toggle battle encouters on and off in that entire area permanently.

This means that you can clear out common travel routes to make it way easier to get from place to place, and if you need more XP or Loot then just turn them back on again!

But wait, it gets better! There is an optional super high level extra powerful boss that is the king of all monsters,
that you can only challenge if you first beat every single other king monster in the game.
If you manage to beat this emperor monster, you get an extremely powerful item!

Example 3: Earthbound! (or mother, depending on what region version you got)

In this game if you encounter foes that are way weaker than you, you instantly win automatically!

So if you are ever in the mood for RPGs that have mechanics designed to allieviate grinding in a fun and balanced manner, try these!

I sure hope RPGs made in the future do stuff like this.