I've been one of the people saying the early game needs a gentler difficulty curve, but let's get real: if you didn't find an efficient routine of abilities to kill the vast majority of mobs GW2 sends at you, the additional difficulty and "variation" in battles is a product of your own playstyle, not something you're being forced to do.
Yes, part of the sequence of abilities may include a dodge, block, heal, etc., but by and large the game world is filled with battles utilizing unsophisticated AI that can be overcome using the same attack patterns -- trash -- made more challenging by the HP-to-damage ratio and the respawn rate.
Between the roads/paths and the waypoint quick travel system, most of this trash can be avoided on your way here and there, but if you leave the road to explore the path into the hills or down into the crypt, expect to have trash impeding your progress.
DE's offer a much broader range of combat, between spawning static trash with X-number that must be killed, to spawning waves of trash that may or may not create a strategic element to the combat depending on other factors (number of players, if you have to defend something, terrain, etc.), to elite mobs that require some kind of personal or group coordination to kill, to a number of other different things.
With the elite mobs, the bronze, silver, and gold champions, you do encounter battles where their tactics dictate the majority of the action as opposed to your own solo mob/group of mobs "rotations." With gold champions in particular the fights are much more akin to the boss battles of an instance in WoW or TOR than they are the open-world elites in those games IMO, which is to say no single player is probably going to be able to just brute force them to death.
If you mean mobs just placed on the map with no other purpose but help you level up
No, I mean mobs just placed in quest zones to extend the time I need to finish that quest. It's not important if they bring experience or not. If I have to repeatedly kill same or similar mobs using the same tactics and strategy without new challenge at each step, they are trash mobs.
By this definition i am almost 100% sure you will get bored pretty fast.
The Heart quests areas will make you do the same few things over and over again with little to no change to them at all.
The DE varies a little more but it really boils down to fighting off wave after wave of mobs and even tho the mob type might varies from event to event the actual tactic does not. You also will have to escort NPCs quiet often and again defend them from waves of mobs which again only seem to raise in numbers.Some DE will have you gather items which you will do in areas with tons of trashmobs.The most fun DE are the ones were you fight a boss mob here you might want to use tactics to make the fight easier BUT most others don't seem to care and just zerg the bosses anyways which kinda means you will have to too.
That being said i dont think GW2 will offer longtime fun for PVE players (unless you are easily satisfied of course) but you could always do PVP you don't have to deal with Trashmobs and your tactic has to change very fast for PVP players i think GW2 will be fun for a long long time.
Ouch. Oh, well, PvP is the most important part for me anyway. Let's hope it's not as dim as you present. The part in red is the one which really gets under my skin in mmorpgs. Let's hope I can escape those.:)
The main problem in mmorpgs for me is trash mobs. You know them: just a bunch of mobs that present no challenge and no interest, having no purpose and are there only for one reason: to make you spend more time moving from start of the quest to its boss/end, or from point A to point B.
Single player games have them, a recent example - Dragon Age 2 had them in nearly every battle. But in mmorpgs they truly are a pandemic. Since most mmorpgs need to artificially extend game time, they insert such mobs everywhere. My mind can take only so much extending before it bursts.
For me, for a game to have interest, every encounter must represent a challenge - either by a new mob type, a new mob combination, or a different tactical situation through terrain, mob scripts, etc. This means that pretty much every encounter must be hand-crafted, or a lot of different types of enemies with different scripts, behaviors and AIs have to be created. This, of course, is a problem, because there is only so much human-months is available for development.
This, by necessity, means that the games I like are short - because they contain no empty filler, no trash mobs, and without filler there is only so much content that can be developed. That's okay for me; if I wanted to fight the trash, I would become a janitor.
So, the question. I didn't play GW2 betas, I did watch some videos; I don't expect anything revolutionary from it, and I'm satisfied with what I see. I am, however, interested, how many trash mobs are in there. In all mmorpgs I've played, the main reason I've stopped was because I was tired of moping the trash. Would I be tired in GW2 sooner or later?
Trash mobs are there but you dont need to grind them to get XP like in other MMOs. A MMO world without angry minions would seem pretty dull while you ran from boss to boss. I guess GW2 shines because the XP from trash is so low that avoiding them through stealth or taking a sneaky path is a perfectly acceptable strategy. Its more about completing the objectives than killing x amount of mobs.
I guess GW2 shines because the XP from trash is so low that avoiding them through stealth or taking a sneaky path is a perfectly acceptable strategy. Its more about completing the objectives than killing x amount of mobs.
As long as it is possible to avoid them, I'm okay with their presence. Just so that I can avoid fighting them.
I guess GW2 shines because the XP from trash is so low that avoiding them through stealth or taking a sneaky path is a perfectly acceptable strategy. Its more about completing the objectives than killing x amount of mobs.
As long as it is possible to avoid them, I'm okay with their presence. Just so that I can avoid fighting them.
You can avoid any fights you want (except in dungeons, I'm not sure they are avoidable in any way)
Block the trolls, don't answer them, so we can remove the garbage from these forums
I just don't think it's the right game for you based on what you are saying. I'm not sure where you should look. Perhaps Demon's Souls or the like. But really, GW2 DOES have trash mobs all over the place. They can be fought differently and they tend to be harder than in other MMOs, but you WILL be fighting a lot of the same mobs.
I've played many MMO's, so I know exactly what you're referring to OP, and I can say, at least in my opinion, GW2 doesn't really have "trash mobs" so to speak. You have to stay actively engaged in the action or you WILL get face planted by an ordinary mob. I'm mainly an avid PvPer in every game i've played, and in most of those games i've detested PvE for its blandness and lack of challenge. In both the BWE's I found myself just strolling around Queensdale hunting mobs at times. It's a refreshing change for me.
The main problem in mmorpgs for me is trash mobs. You know them: just a bunch of mobs that present no challenge and no interest, having no purpose and are there only for one reason: to make you spend more time moving from start of the quest to its boss/end, or from point A to point B.
Single player games have them, a recent example - Dragon Age 2 had them in nearly every battle. But in mmorpgs they truly are a pandemic. Since most mmorpgs need to artificially extend game time, they insert such mobs everywhere. My mind can take only so much extending before it bursts.
For me, for a game to have interest, every encounter must represent a challenge - either by a new mob type, a new mob combination, or a different tactical situation through terrain, mob scripts, etc. This means that pretty much every encounter must be hand-crafted, or a lot of different types of enemies with different scripts, behaviors and AIs have to be created. This, of course, is a problem, because there is only so much human-months is available for development.
This, by necessity, means that the games I like are short - because they contain no empty filler, no trash mobs, and without filler there is only so much content that can be developed. That's okay for me; if I wanted to fight the trash, I would become a janitor.
So, the question. I didn't play GW2 betas, I did watch some videos; I don't expect anything revolutionary from it, and I'm satisfied with what I see. I am, however, interested, how many trash mobs are in there. In all mmorpgs I've played, the main reason I've stopped was because I was tired of moping the trash. Would I be tired in GW2 sooner or later?
So basically you want every mob to be a boss pinata?
Kyleran: "Now there's the real trick, learning to accept and enjoy a game for what
it offers rather than pass on what might be a great playing experience
because it lacks a few features you prefer."
John Henry Newman: "A man would do nothing if he waited until he could do it so well that no one could find fault."
FreddyNoNose: "A good game needs no defense; a bad game has no defense." "Easily digested content is just as easily forgotten."
LacedOpium: "So the question that begs to be asked is, if you are not interested in
the game mechanics that define the MMORPG genre, then why are you
playing an MMORPG?"
I'm not sure what you are asking for OP, I also notice you dodged the question when asked to give example of games you consider to have no trash mobs.
I usually play strategy games like Civilization and Panzer General, Paradox's strategies and Total War strategies. They tend to have different gameplay; in Total War strategies you can use "autoresolve feature" to skip battles with an equivalent of "trash mobs". RPGs have their share of trash mobs, but the amount varies: from DA2 where trash mobs were as abundant as trash mobs in mmorpgs to Shadow of the Colossus where you don't have any mobs but bosses at all. Fallout: New Vegas is somewhere in between; plenty of trash mobs, but you can skip nearly all of them through stealth, etc.
The most recent game I've played was Binary Domain; on the first glance, it's full of trash mobs (robots, limited number of models, same behavior between them), but the situations in which it put you were different every time; this time it was a wide open room with cover on one side; a series of tight corridors with robots pouring from all sides; time-limited run through throngs of mobs; snipers above; etc. All the encounters hand-crafted by developers, they always put something new there. Lots of boss fights. Lots of side-challenges like "not just kill a bunch of robots, but do it with headshots and melee". All in all, the game doesn't turn itself into a routine; of course, it's short. How can it be something else when all the fights are hand-crafted? And I see no point in ever repeating it. But overall, that's how would I prefer the games to be.
Developers cannot custom craft every single encounter, which means they will inevitably repeat. Even if you randomize the AI you're only expanding the possilibities, and once you learn to recognize the AI pattern it just become Mob A-AI Type X and everything after that becomes "trash mob".
And at that moment this type of mob have to disappear from the game forever. Yeah, sure, it'll make it shorter... But I don't see it as a downside.
Even changing up the mob group composition doesn't help solve the problem, as you can only mix them in so many ways.
But let's try to mix them at least in SOME ways!
To fit your criteria there will be essentially no encounters left outside of boss fights.
I'm not an absolutist; some amount of trash mobs is inevitable, especially considering that it's subjective at which point mobs turn from "new challenge" to "old trash mobs" for each player. But I would prefer that amount to be smaller than larger.
Then you failed to realize even Civ, even EU3, has "trash mobs".
Oh what's this, Bismark just sent another swordman against my fortress hill. Trash, I've killed the same swordman 6 times over, why can't Bismark present a different challenge.
Steamrolling up to Bohemia and her HRE allies. Oh look it's Mainz, I've already killed OPM Augsburg so it's the same deal. 12k infantry stack and instant assault, dead in 1 month. Trash mob.
Your definition of "trash mob" and what you seek to gain out of MMORPG is just miguided.
Then you failed to realize even Civ, even EU3, has "trash mobs".
Oh what's this, Bismark just sent another swordman against my fortress hill. Trash, I've killed the same swordman 6 times over, why can't Bismark present a different challenge.
Steamrolling up to Bohemia and her HRE allies. Oh look it's Mainz, I've already killed OPM Augsburg so it's the same deal. 12k infantry stack and instant assault, dead in 1 month. Trash mob.
Your definition of "trash mob" and what you seek to gain out of MMORPG is just miguided.
Huh? It wasn't that swordsman that was "the challenge", it was the place where to build a hill fort. Once the fort is built, I don't have to waste my time on "trash mobs", and that sworsman dying is not a waste of my time. Like running through the place with trash mob in GW2 without engaging it will not be a waste of my time.
As for EU3, crushing minors and capturing their keeps was never a challenge; a challenge is to do it while keeping your economy healthy and keeping your BadBoy low. So, no, it's not a trash mob at all.
Then you failed to realize even Civ, even EU3, has "trash mobs".
Oh what's this, Bismark just sent another swordman against my fortress hill. Trash, I've killed the same swordman 6 times over, why can't Bismark present a different challenge.
Steamrolling up to Bohemia and her HRE allies. Oh look it's Mainz, I've already killed OPM Augsburg so it's the same deal. 12k infantry stack and instant assault, dead in 1 month. Trash mob.
Your definition of "trash mob" and what you seek to gain out of MMORPG is just miguided.
Huh? It wasn't that swordsman that was "the challenge", it was the place where to build a hill fort. Once the fort is built, I don't have to waste my time on "trash mobs", and that sworsman dying is not a waste of my time. Like running through the place with trash mob in GW2 without engaging it will not be a waste of my time.
As for EU3, crushing minors and capturing their keeps was never a challenge; a challenge is to do it while keeping your economy healthy and keeping your BadBoy low. So, no, it's not a trash mob at all.
Killing that swordman does waste my time. I have to tell my crossbows to attack those pesky things that serve nothing but detract me from organising my workers to improve my cities.
Your definition is anything that repeat itself is a trash mob. The fact that they are obstacles part of a larger goal doesn't come into it.
Alternativly, if you can see that the "challenge" in EU3 is keeping BB low and an army without printing the economy to death, and not how many stack you obliterate and OPM you annex, you should be able to see that the "challenge" in GW2 and many other RPG and such are completing the event/quest (clearing out the pirate hide out..etc), and not defeating individual mobs.
There really is no such thing as a "trash mob" in GW2. Normal every day quest monsters, even provide challenge, and if you dont pay attention you will die. Thats something I really look forward to, tired of roflstomping every mob in zones, and in dungeons.
Haha, of course not...
That Guild Wars 2 login screen knocked up my wife. Must be the second coming!
I think it's really sad that Grahor asked a legitimate question about trash mobs, provided examples from other games plus a personal opinion, only to have a bunch of people start arguing with him and/or insinuate that he should not play GW2 because 'he's clearly a powergamer' and 'MMO's aren't for him.'
That last point really annoys me, especially since I've been of the receiving end of it myself. Who are you to decide whether or not someone else should play a game?
And why is it so difficult to just respectfully answer the question?
A bit of further clarification: "trash mobs" doesn't mean "weak mobs", it means "mobs that don't represent any _new_ challenge". Once you learn how to kill an Ettin, what tactics you need to use, Etiins become trash mobs, no matter if they still represent the challenge: it's the same challenge, nothing new, you know how to kill them, you just go through routine. Action-filled, dodging, dangerous routine, but routine nevertheless.
Therefore, every raid boss, dungeon boss and NPC in the game is a trash mob. If you definition of a "trash mob" is an "encounter you figure out how to win and can beat it", then every thing in the game, and every game is a trash mob.
You are setting up every game for failure with that mentality, so good luck finding a game that suits what you want. Apparently, the only mobs you don't consider trash are unbeatable with your definition. If you are looking for AI that adapts and changes on the fly, that probably won't be happening for a while. Even raid/dungeon bosses are pretty scripted and you know what to expect after fighting them 1 or 2 times.
I am not talking about just GW2, I am talking about every game that has ever been created in the history of time.
So basically you want every mob to be a boss pinata?
In a perfect world, yes. I want every mob to be a boss. As for "pinata" part, aren't that the definition of all mobs and bosses alike?
Okay so you've made it clear that you believe "trash mobs" dont mean easy mobs. Rather, just the repetition in tactics used to kill the things. So instead you want boss mobs.
So you want EVERY single mob in the world to be different from each other? Each mob to be unique from the other? Is that what you are wanting? Or am I getting it wrong?
Do you realize thats just nearly impossible? Do you have any idea how long that would take? Like....20 years of development. Longer even. Thats not realistic. Even if mobs were "boss" mobs and took a long time to kill the next one would just be using the same tactics to do so. Making them just really hard to kill trash mobs. Because you cant have the variation I think you are asking for here.
Im probably just misunderstanding you. Maybe.
EDIT: The only thing I can think to do is have mobs spawn with random abilities applied to them. They've done it before with weapons in games. Where the weapons are randomly generated. I guess they could do that with mobs too. Have every mob be randomly and slightly different from one another. That might actually be doable I guess when I think about it more.
However I have never heard of a game like that. Ever. Not that its a bad idea really........
I think it's really sad that Grahor asked a legitimate question about trash mobs, provided examples from other games plus a personal opinion, only to have a bunch of people start arguing with him and/or insinuate that he should not play GW2 because 'he's clearly a powergamer' and 'MMO's aren't for him.'
That last point really annoys me, especially since I've been of the receiving end of it myself. Who are you to decide whether or not someone else should play a game?
And why is it so difficult to just respectfully answer the question?
While I'll agree that some of the responses here have not been awesome..well...
His original post kinda came across as though he was saying "I want to eat a hot dog, but I want it to be nothing like a hot dog, and totlaly like a hamburger."
I get what he's saying..he wants every pull to be original, interesting, and challenging. And he doesn't want the old EQ tedium of "pull one mob, kill it, repeat" He doesn't want to waste time grinding mobs that aren't really interesting to fight. I'm cool with that. But to some extent, lesser creatures are going to always be present in these kinds of games. One other poster mentioned Shadow of the Colossus. MMOs will probably never have gameplay like that. It's not conducive to an online, large-scale multiplayer environment.
Ouch. Oh, well, PvP is the most important part for me anyway. Let's hope it's not as dim as you present. The part in red is the one which really gets under my skin in mmorpgs. Let's hope I can escape those.:)
Yes, you can completely avoid any DE you want as they occur organically in the world and aren't part of a quest hub that just must be completed fully or almost fully in order to advance to the next area (SWTOR anyone?). You can instead go to a different area and experience whatever DE's are going on there.
However, in defense of the DE with lots of trash mobs I have to say that many mobs have different affixes and eve the "trash" can be fairly varied by spawning groups of mobs with different compositions (i.e. 1 blademaster + 2 archers vs 3 archers vs 2 blademasters + enemy siege weapon).
While I can appreciate the idea of having every fight be unique, new, and challenging... its a bit ridiculous.
1: Dev time woud go through the roof and cost of production of the game would too
2: The game is limited in mechanics. There are only so many "new" ways to have a fight go within the game rules.
3: Too few mobs. It would feel empty to me if a creature was only in the game for a specific reason.
I'll add in what others are saying. There are no trash mobs in the sense of it being easy like SWTOR. I died plenty of times on what I thought were easy creatures... to me that is exciting that I actually have to play the game that I am playing.
Thank you everyone, I've received enough replies with useful information in them (from different points of view) so that I could build my own preliminary conclusions on them. Thank you for this.
I have also received a plethora of replies which instructed me that my use of words are wrong, my definitions are wrong, my personal preferences in entertainment are wrong and my desires to see my preferences implemented in that particular genre are wrong. Those provided me with plenty of entertainment and for them I'm also grateful. Thank you all.
I guess GW2 shines because the XP from trash is so low that avoiding them through stealth or taking a sneaky path is a perfectly acceptable strategy. Its more about completing the objectives than killing x amount of mobs.
As long as it is possible to avoid them, I'm okay with their presence. Just so that I can avoid fighting them.
At least in the areas I explored during beta, it was relatively easy to sneak past trash mobs. It was certainly better than Rift where I felt as if I spent more time hacking through trash mobs than I did completing quests.
The main problem in mmorpgs for me is trash mobs. You know them: just a bunch of mobs that present no challenge and no interest, having no purpose and are there only for one reason: to make you spend more time moving from start of the quest to its boss/end, or from point A to point B.
Single player games have them, a recent example - Dragon Age 2 had them in nearly every battle. But in mmorpgs they truly are a pandemic. Since most mmorpgs need to artificially extend game time, they insert such mobs everywhere. My mind can take only so much extending before it bursts.
For me, for a game to have interest, every encounter must represent a challenge - either by a new mob type, a new mob combination, or a different tactical situation through terrain, mob scripts, etc. This means that pretty much every encounter must be hand-crafted, or a lot of different types of enemies with different scripts, behaviors and AIs have to be created. This, of course, is a problem, because there is only so much human-months is available for development.
This, by necessity, means that the games I like are short - because they contain no empty filler, no trash mobs, and without filler there is only so much content that can be developed. That's okay for me; if I wanted to fight the trash, I would become a janitor.
So, the question. I didn't play GW2 betas, I did watch some videos; I don't expect anything revolutionary from it, and I'm satisfied with what I see. I am, however, interested, how many trash mobs are in there. In all mmorpgs I've played, the main reason I've stopped was because I was tired of moping the trash. Would I be tired in GW2 sooner or later?
LOL
Sorry but with a simple search and you could have found that one of the big complants of the First dungeon was that, the so called, trash mobs were harder than the bosses.
I think it's really sad that Grahor asked a legitimate question about trash mobs, provided examples from other games plus a personal opinion, only to have a bunch of people start arguing with him and/or insinuate that he should not play GW2 because 'he's clearly a powergamer' and 'MMO's aren't for him.'
That last point really annoys me, especially since I've been of the receiving end of it myself. Who are you to decide whether or not someone else should play a game?
And why is it so difficult to just respectfully answer the question?
Anybody who wants to find a challenge in MMORPG PvE makes me LOL. If you want to be challenged you play competitive PvP or play games like Demon Soul online. And if you aren't good enough to do either, you don't come here complaining about bad game designing. Also, his question has been answered numerous times already, the fact MMORPGs don't work this way and never will.
Competitive PvP is not hard - who is mashing the keys faster. Sorry - your answer totally makes you as out of touch with what an MMO is..
Many people find competitive PvP just boring......
I think it's really sad that Grahor asked a legitimate question about trash mobs, provided examples from other games plus a personal opinion, only to have a bunch of people start arguing with him and/or insinuate that he should not play GW2 because 'he's clearly a powergamer' and 'MMO's aren't for him.'
That last point really annoys me, especially since I've been of the receiving end of it myself. Who are you to decide whether or not someone else should play a game?
And why is it so difficult to just respectfully answer the question?
Anybody who wants to find a challenge in MMORPG PvE makes me LOL. If you want to be challenged you play competitive PvP or play games like Demon Soul online. And if you aren't good enough to do either, you don't come here complaining about bad game designing. Also, his question has been answered numerous times already, the fact MMORPGs don't work this way and never will.
Competitive PvP is not hard - who is mashing the keys faster. Sorry - your answer totally makes you as out of touch with what an MMO is..
Many people find competitive PvP just boring......
Find it boring? or aren't good enuf to be part of it. The fact that you made this statement "Competitive PvP is not hard - who is mashing the keys faster." shows your ignorance. Maybe thats why Valve pays $1million dollars to players yearly, to see who smashs their keyboard faster, am i rite?
The OP wanted a challenging game, and I recommended competitive PvP games, because thats the only way a real gamer can enjoy games. I never said competitive MMO PvP, as they are near non existent and too few, WoW being one. And, since you think its so easy maybe you could name a real esport that you played competitively?
Your response screams 'doesn't play well with others'. Seriously, you competative PvP people make me laugh so hard. And WoW......HAHAHAHAHAHA, the person who hits thier script key first wins, thats the fact of it. Dont even try and shove this stuff over on us, we have been there too.
(DISCLAIMER - The use of the word YOU in the above post is not directed at any one person in particular, but towards those who fall into the category itself - there is no personal attack here, neither intentional nor implied.)
I think it's really sad that Grahor asked a legitimate question about trash mobs, provided examples from other games plus a personal opinion, only to have a bunch of people start arguing with him and/or insinuate that he should not play GW2 because 'he's clearly a powergamer' and 'MMO's aren't for him.'
That last point really annoys me, especially since I've been of the receiving end of it myself. Who are you to decide whether or not someone else should play a game?
And why is it so difficult to just respectfully answer the question?
Good question actually.
Still, if someone for example is a raider that just are looking for the next tier of gear this game probably wont keep him/her entertained that long.
I don´t however feel that a love/dislike of trashmobs really would affect your GW2 enjoyment that much. GW2s mobs are generally tougher than in most MMOs evebn though some weaker mobs with less significance to the story exist.
GW2 ain´t TOR though. BW believes that fighting many trashmobs makes the player feel more epic, ANET think fighting tougher mobs give that feeling, which ones that is right is up to you to decide.
Comments
I've been one of the people saying the early game needs a gentler difficulty curve, but let's get real: if you didn't find an efficient routine of abilities to kill the vast majority of mobs GW2 sends at you, the additional difficulty and "variation" in battles is a product of your own playstyle, not something you're being forced to do.
Yes, part of the sequence of abilities may include a dodge, block, heal, etc., but by and large the game world is filled with battles utilizing unsophisticated AI that can be overcome using the same attack patterns -- trash -- made more challenging by the HP-to-damage ratio and the respawn rate.
Between the roads/paths and the waypoint quick travel system, most of this trash can be avoided on your way here and there, but if you leave the road to explore the path into the hills or down into the crypt, expect to have trash impeding your progress.
DE's offer a much broader range of combat, between spawning static trash with X-number that must be killed, to spawning waves of trash that may or may not create a strategic element to the combat depending on other factors (number of players, if you have to defend something, terrain, etc.), to elite mobs that require some kind of personal or group coordination to kill, to a number of other different things.
With the elite mobs, the bronze, silver, and gold champions, you do encounter battles where their tactics dictate the majority of the action as opposed to your own solo mob/group of mobs "rotations." With gold champions in particular the fights are much more akin to the boss battles of an instance in WoW or TOR than they are the open-world elites in those games IMO, which is to say no single player is probably going to be able to just brute force them to death.
Ouch.
Oh, well, PvP is the most important part for me anyway. 
Let's hope it's not as dim as you present. The part in red is the one which really gets under my skin in mmorpgs. Let's hope I can escape those.:)
Trash mobs are there but you dont need to grind them to get XP like in other MMOs. A MMO world without angry minions would seem pretty dull while you ran from boss to boss. I guess GW2 shines because the XP from trash is so low that avoiding them through stealth or taking a sneaky path is a perfectly acceptable strategy. Its more about completing the objectives than killing x amount of mobs.
As long as it is possible to avoid them, I'm okay with their presence. Just so that I can avoid fighting them.
You can avoid any fights you want (except in dungeons, I'm not sure they are avoidable in any way)
Block the trolls, don't answer them, so we can remove the garbage from these forums
I just don't think it's the right game for you based on what you are saying. I'm not sure where you should look. Perhaps Demon's Souls or the like. But really, GW2 DOES have trash mobs all over the place. They can be fought differently and they tend to be harder than in other MMOs, but you WILL be fighting a lot of the same mobs.
I've played many MMO's, so I know exactly what you're referring to OP, and I can say, at least in my opinion, GW2 doesn't really have "trash mobs" so to speak. You have to stay actively engaged in the action or you WILL get face planted by an ordinary mob. I'm mainly an avid PvPer in every game i've played, and in most of those games i've detested PvE for its blandness and lack of challenge. In both the BWE's I found myself just strolling around Queensdale hunting mobs at times. It's a refreshing change for me.
Sorroe, Human Mesmer
Jade Quarry Server
So basically you want every mob to be a boss pinata?
Epic Music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vAigCvelkhQ&list=PLo9FRw1AkDuQLEz7Gvvaz3ideB2NpFtT1
https://archive.org/details/softwarelibrary_msdos?&sort=-downloads&page=1
Kyleran: "Now there's the real trick, learning to accept and enjoy a game for what it offers rather than pass on what might be a great playing experience because it lacks a few features you prefer."
John Henry Newman: "A man would do nothing if he waited until he could do it so well that no one could find fault."
FreddyNoNose: "A good game needs no defense; a bad game has no defense." "Easily digested content is just as easily forgotten."
LacedOpium: "So the question that begs to be asked is, if you are not interested in the game mechanics that define the MMORPG genre, then why are you playing an MMORPG?"
Then you failed to realize even Civ, even EU3, has "trash mobs".
Oh what's this, Bismark just sent another swordman against my fortress hill. Trash, I've killed the same swordman 6 times over, why can't Bismark present a different challenge.
Steamrolling up to Bohemia and her HRE allies. Oh look it's Mainz, I've already killed OPM Augsburg so it's the same deal. 12k infantry stack and instant assault, dead in 1 month. Trash mob.
Your definition of "trash mob" and what you seek to gain out of MMORPG is just miguided.
Huh? It wasn't that swordsman that was "the challenge", it was the place where to build a hill fort. Once the fort is built, I don't have to waste my time on "trash mobs", and that sworsman dying is not a waste of my time. Like running through the place with trash mob in GW2 without engaging it will not be a waste of my time.
As for EU3, crushing minors and capturing their keeps was never a challenge; a challenge is to do it while keeping your economy healthy and keeping your BadBoy low. So, no, it's not a trash mob at all.
In a perfect world, yes. I want every mob to be a boss. As for "pinata" part, aren't that the definition of all mobs and bosses alike?
Killing that swordman does waste my time. I have to tell my crossbows to attack those pesky things that serve nothing but detract me from organising my workers to improve my cities.
Your definition is anything that repeat itself is a trash mob. The fact that they are obstacles part of a larger goal doesn't come into it.
Alternativly, if you can see that the "challenge" in EU3 is keeping BB low and an army without printing the economy to death, and not how many stack you obliterate and OPM you annex, you should be able to see that the "challenge" in GW2 and many other RPG and such are completing the event/quest (clearing out the pirate hide out..etc), and not defeating individual mobs.
Haha, of course not...
That Guild Wars 2 login screen knocked up my wife. Must be the second coming!
I think it's really sad that Grahor asked a legitimate question about trash mobs, provided examples from other games plus a personal opinion, only to have a bunch of people start arguing with him and/or insinuate that he should not play GW2 because 'he's clearly a powergamer' and 'MMO's aren't for him.'
That last point really annoys me, especially since I've been of the receiving end of it myself. Who are you to decide whether or not someone else should play a game?
And why is it so difficult to just respectfully answer the question?
Therefore, every raid boss, dungeon boss and NPC in the game is a trash mob. If you definition of a "trash mob" is an "encounter you figure out how to win and can beat it", then every thing in the game, and every game is a trash mob.
You are setting up every game for failure with that mentality, so good luck finding a game that suits what you want. Apparently, the only mobs you don't consider trash are unbeatable with your definition. If you are looking for AI that adapts and changes on the fly, that probably won't be happening for a while. Even raid/dungeon bosses are pretty scripted and you know what to expect after fighting them 1 or 2 times.
I am not talking about just GW2, I am talking about every game that has ever been created in the history of time.
Okay so you've made it clear that you believe "trash mobs" dont mean easy mobs. Rather, just the repetition in tactics used to kill the things. So instead you want boss mobs.
So you want EVERY single mob in the world to be different from each other? Each mob to be unique from the other? Is that what you are wanting? Or am I getting it wrong?
Do you realize thats just nearly impossible? Do you have any idea how long that would take? Like....20 years of development. Longer even. Thats not realistic. Even if mobs were "boss" mobs and took a long time to kill the next one would just be using the same tactics to do so. Making them just really hard to kill trash mobs. Because you cant have the variation I think you are asking for here.
Im probably just misunderstanding you. Maybe.
EDIT: The only thing I can think to do is have mobs spawn with random abilities applied to them. They've done it before with weapons in games. Where the weapons are randomly generated. I guess they could do that with mobs too. Have every mob be randomly and slightly different from one another. That might actually be doable I guess when I think about it more.
However I have never heard of a game like that. Ever. Not that its a bad idea really........
While I'll agree that some of the responses here have not been awesome..well...
His original post kinda came across as though he was saying "I want to eat a hot dog, but I want it to be nothing like a hot dog, and totlaly like a hamburger."
I get what he's saying..he wants every pull to be original, interesting, and challenging. And he doesn't want the old EQ tedium of "pull one mob, kill it, repeat" He doesn't want to waste time grinding mobs that aren't really interesting to fight. I'm cool with that. But to some extent, lesser creatures are going to always be present in these kinds of games. One other poster mentioned Shadow of the Colossus. MMOs will probably never have gameplay like that. It's not conducive to an online, large-scale multiplayer environment.
Yes, you can completely avoid any DE you want as they occur organically in the world and aren't part of a quest hub that just must be completed fully or almost fully in order to advance to the next area (SWTOR anyone?). You can instead go to a different area and experience whatever DE's are going on there.
However, in defense of the DE with lots of trash mobs I have to say that many mobs have different affixes and eve the "trash" can be fairly varied by spawning groups of mobs with different compositions (i.e. 1 blademaster + 2 archers vs 3 archers vs 2 blademasters + enemy siege weapon).
While I can appreciate the idea of having every fight be unique, new, and challenging... its a bit ridiculous.
1: Dev time woud go through the roof and cost of production of the game would too
2: The game is limited in mechanics. There are only so many "new" ways to have a fight go within the game rules.
3: Too few mobs. It would feel empty to me if a creature was only in the game for a specific reason.
I'll add in what others are saying. There are no trash mobs in the sense of it being easy like SWTOR. I died plenty of times on what I thought were easy creatures... to me that is exciting that I actually have to play the game that I am playing.
Thank you everyone, I've received enough replies with useful information in them (from different points of view) so that I could build my own preliminary conclusions on them. Thank you for this.
I have also received a plethora of replies which instructed me that my use of words are wrong, my definitions are wrong, my personal preferences in entertainment are wrong and my desires to see my preferences implemented in that particular genre are wrong. Those provided me with plenty of entertainment and for them I'm also grateful. Thank you all.
At least in the areas I explored during beta, it was relatively easy to sneak past trash mobs. It was certainly better than Rift where I felt as if I spent more time hacking through trash mobs than I did completing quests.
LOL
Sorry but with a simple search and you could have found that one of the big complants of the First dungeon was that, the so called, trash mobs were harder than the bosses.
Competitive PvP is not hard - who is mashing the keys faster. Sorry - your answer totally makes you as out of touch with what an MMO is..
Many people find competitive PvP just boring......
Your response screams 'doesn't play well with others'. Seriously, you competative PvP people make me laugh so hard. And WoW......HAHAHAHAHAHA, the person who hits thier script key first wins, thats the fact of it. Dont even try and shove this stuff over on us, we have been there too.
(DISCLAIMER - The use of the word YOU in the above post is not directed at any one person in particular, but towards those who fall into the category itself - there is no personal attack here, neither intentional nor implied.)
Good question actually.
Still, if someone for example is a raider that just are looking for the next tier of gear this game probably wont keep him/her entertained that long.
I don´t however feel that a love/dislike of trashmobs really would affect your GW2 enjoyment that much. GW2s mobs are generally tougher than in most MMOs evebn though some weaker mobs with less significance to the story exist.
GW2 ain´t TOR though. BW believes that fighting many trashmobs makes the player feel more epic, ANET think fighting tougher mobs give that feeling, which ones that is right is up to you to decide.