What's with the lack of Trash mobs

Some times trash mobs can be a nuisance, but that is only the result of poor level design.
Trash mobs can add context and enrich the environment pro providing a nice excuse to explore some paths that may not be mandatory, but offer some nice rewards as vanity drops or pure lore, as for example a very short video.

So why the hell does Omega have zero and rabanastre has nearly that...? I enjoy properly used trash mobs and a good level design, but Omega is a bloody arena and rabanastre is a corridor. Kind of lame...

When it comes to raids, most people want to get to the fight right away. The Binding Coil of Bahamut 8-man raids (equivalent to 4.0 Omega 1-4) had trash mobs like you wanted and people did their gosh darn best to skip them. Why make stuff people will be skipping once they nail the fight and want to farm it? I'll admit that the ambiance of the Coil can't be beat when the competition is extra-dimensional rooms and fighting inside a giant machine, but efficiency is king when you're doing that weekly gear grind.

As for 24-mans, there was more trash in older content. At least one between every boss pull until the last two fights. People did their best to melt it down ASAP anyway, and some even complained that those meaningless fights padded the time inside the instance when all they wanted was the main fights (and gear drops). Basically when you're on a weekly treadmill, the "wow this is cool!" experience fades fast and you want to get in and get out, no matter how much you appreciate the visuals or how much you were impressed the first time you ran it. It's a flaw in the design of the game itself, not so much the instances I think.

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Originally Posted by Dragonhand

Some times trash mobs can be a nuisance, but that is only the result of poor level design.
Trash mobs can add context and enrich the environment pro providing a nice excuse to explore some paths that may not be mandatory, but offer some nice rewards as vanity drops or pure lore, as for example a very short video.

So why the hell does Omega have zero and rabanastre has nearly that...? I enjoy properly used trash mobs and a good level design, but Omega is a bloody arena and rabanastre is a corridor. Kind of lame...

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Have you done the old raids? It's like one room trash, boss, trash, boss, weird group mechanic, boss, boss.... not much different in this alliance raid... same with the 8 man raids

Truth be told, with how very overtly designed everything is, I feel trash mobs don't really add much to the whole experience.

Trash mobs are a great way to show that this is an actual "place" where people and monsters dwell, to make it look natural, but then you are led along unnaturally (and inevitably) placed quota trash packs that just stand around stupid as if they were waiting on the bus through corridors of invisible walls with often completely random gates to get to your standard perfect circle or square arena and... it just gets lost.

And if the experience is lost anyway, trash is nothing but annoyance at that point. The overworld suffers from similar issues with its very conveniently placed mobs that show absolutely no behavior that would indicate them being an actual part of the world. It's all very clinical.

Well, when they are referred to as "trash" is it any wonder they get thrown away?

I'll be honest though, the 'encounters' are far more interesting to me than the random trash mobs. Like you walk into a room and waves of enemies come out of eggs hatching on the wall, or midway through a fight reinforcements attack from the way you came in to catch you by surprise or...well you get the idea. I'd much rather have a dungeon where it was 'encounter' -> Boss -> encounter -> boss -> bigger encounter -> final boss.

Because reasons: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LJHBn7Wvw6U