We've all done it: You see a group of mobs in front of you, but there's a small path to the side of said mobs, and if you follow it you don't have to fight them. In some cases (very, very few) this is intended because the mobs are optional. However, in (IMO) most cases being able to skip the trash pack is not the intent.

 

But we do it anyway.

 

It's something you do in Rift. It's something you do in GW2. It's been something you do in WoW for years.

 

I have never seen it done as frequently as I do in TOR. From cutting the corner after the second flame-pipe and hugging the wall on the right in Hammer Station so you don't aggro the elite, patrolling battle droid, to swimming through lava after jumping off of a cliff on The Lost Island before the bridge with the flutterplume that spawns adds. We skip everything we possibly can sometimes.

 

The most egregious example I can think of is Cadimimu after the wookie boss when people simply hop on their speeders and proceed to run through the rest of the instance without killing anything (well...there are two non-boss pulls you have to kill past the elevator, plus whatever you aggro before the elevator...though an AoE knockback makes those mobs trivial).

 

So what's your opinion on this practice? Lame? Awesome because it makes the FPs shorter?

 

What would it take to make you not do it if given the chance?

My favorite was bypassing all the trash from vorgath to kephess in hardmode denova

Ain't nobody got time for that.

Mobs are useless, I know I can kill them so why waste the time when they dont offer anything worthwhile.

I try to avoid as much as I can when leveling (I bet I'm not the only one, lol). That crap makes leveling tedious. Why wouldn't I do the same in a flashpoint where I don't even get experience from doing it ?

Mobs are useless, I know I can kill them so why waste the time when they dont offer anything worthwhile.

 

I think this about sums it up. They aren't a challenge, they are pretty much nothing except a time sink.

 

From what I have read of the PTS this is being remedied, with things dropping from all bosses (including bonus bosses that have the kill 40 of X before clicking 10 of X before it can be summoned). I think it may be the tokens, so you can reach your weekly cap in less FP's.

This is why I love Funcom's approach to group and raid content, they simply leave out the trash completely, you go from great boss fight to another.

 

Wish BioWare would start doing that.

 

In fact, I think Hard / Nightmare should just be boss battles, with the trash and cut scenes removed.

i'm not against this practice at all, but i've seen plenty of people leaving the instance because someone aggroed some mobs unintentionally..this seems to me a bit exagerated..

"It's the Jedi way"

Other than most people who posted here I'm not an MMO veteran, SWTOR is my first. Been playing it since January 2012 and still just love wielding my light sabre or shooting at things with my blaster. I actually still and will always enjoy fighting trash and I love atmosphere especially in flashpoints and don't mind spending (more) time there.

 

And it's surely not about loot, being full dreadguard I wouldn't even need to do EC NM oder Asation HC, but of course I'm still at it, cause it's simply fun :-) And in the same way I don't mind doing Belsavis dailys regularly, just love the game and its fighting mechanics...

I completely understand skipping trash and bosses in HM FPs, everyone needs only tokens or columi pieces from last boss. All other gear is given when you reach lvl50.

But I will never understand skipping trash in leveling FPs. Trash mobs = experience, so after so many years of playing Mmos, I dont get it.

...to swimming through lava after jumping off of a cliff on The Lost Island before the bridge with the flutterplume that spawns adds

 

At this point, I think Lost Island should just start at that first boss. There are like 27 different routes to avoid the trash before that guy.

Not such a big deal/it's kind of nice in HM, though it can be a bit of a pain when I que up for one for something to do, then get tV and skip everything.

 

I'm leveling an alt now though, with a class/roll that I have no experience with. It can be very very frustrating when people insist on skipping everything. Not only do I want the gear to make leveling faster, but I really want the experience with the new class, and learn how to play properly. I mean skipping a few trash packs isn't a big deal but I'd like to at leaf try the harder pulls.

 

Plus there is really no reason to boss skip on sm tV. I mean do you really want those 5 Balmorra coms that badly?!

Everyone's got a different agenda. Some here only want the best loot from the bosses, others want experience playing their class and the XP from trash...

 

I only do FPs for the commendations and the gear drops- if they're even my level. My most precious commodity is time, so I like to skip as much as possible. However, I'll never give people a hard time if they want to do all the trash and the bonus missions. (I'll just complain to myself about it.)

i like mobs only when i'm on my marauder... 4 second fights with 5 8000s on the screen that's even faster than skipping considering the 30m leap, and since i'm the superfast run idiot dps that rushes forward, usually mobs are dead before the rest of the group even reach the place... some of them at least

I think LI was designed so you could skip the trash if you wanted. It's a pretty deliberate shortcut so it just had to be designed that way.

 

For the most part my guild skips everything possible with two exceptions:

 

1. We always do the bonus boss in LI (he's easy, so why not).

2. There is one trash pull shortly before the turret fight in Kaon that can be a little tricky to avoid if you don't do it perfectly - so we just pull. If I'm with a PUG I "accidentally" aggro them because PUGs seem to wipe there more often than not.

I'm not a fan of avoiding mobs, especially in PUGs where there's no coordination to speak of.

 

Inevitably it ends up with half the party trying to dodge past them while the other half of the party stands around confused as to what the other two are doing. Sooner or later one of the confused members will try to sneak past the mobs too but ends up aggroing everything and it all devolves into a huge mess.

 

That and avoiding mobs is boring. I'm there to crack skulls and chew through the content, if I wanted to skip it I wouldn't have entered the Flashpoint to begin with.

Mobs are just bacis cannon food, and I've killed plenty of basic cannon food already. It's getting boring. I mean, I like killing mobs that actually provide some challange is fun (like that first one on Red Reaper, at least if the 3 strong maras run to the battle, not sure if they are supposed to or does someone always aggro them lol). My healer got killed there many, many times but I still like it, because it's a challenge.

But most of the mobs, it's just not worth the time. When leveling, if I just want xp while doing regular mobs, I just do normal missions. Fps I join when I get bored and want something a little more challenging.

Edited March 13, 2013 by Seireeni

Personally, I do not care whether a group kills all trash and/or all bosses or not. In all candor, with a good group killing the trash and optional bosses does not add that much more time to the run. As a matter of fact, on my tank that happens to be in all BH+ gear (and therefore I only run for the BH Comms), I have recently done a FULL run of Taral V (including the bonus boss), and killed all bosses in Battle of Ilum (two HM FPs where a LOT is typically skipped).

 

What bugs me is inconsistency and when one person in the group does not go along with the majority. If you want to skip everything except one (optional) boss tell the group - don't just wait at that boss and expect the rest of the group to cater to your wants. If you want to kill everything and the rest of the group wants to skip everything (or vice versa), you need to accept the fact that the majority of the group wants to run the FP differently and then make a choice: go with the flow or leave the group. Don't throw a three-year-old's temper tantrum because you are not getting what you want.

 

In short, communication is key. Let the group know what you want to do. You would probably be surprised that most of the time, even those who only want the comms, are willing to accommodate you. But when they are not, you need to accept that fact and move on.

 

One more thing that bugs me, is players who rage quit when I engage a mob that could be skipped if it was in the right place, but it is not, so I engage it. Most of the time, it is faster to kill that patrolling mob than to wait for it to patrol away.

Edited March 13, 2013 by psandak

I have no real opinion on mobs. I just go with the flow of the group. If the group wants to skip, I skip, if the group want to kill everything and even do every bonus, I will do it. However, if we are killing or skipping, I want the group to stay with my range (both of my mains are healers on the imp and rep sides). With my gear on either toon, if people are in range of me, then there will be no wipes on any trash in any HM FPs, even a death is going to be rare, provided they didn’t run off way ahead of the rest of the group.

 

One of the reasons I don’t mind skipping while leveling is (example) my Sith Warrior is already 4 levels higher than the content and she is only level 25. However, I just skip heroics and fp for awhile in their entirety, unless a guild mate/friend corners me just to get a group going. I don’t want the xp, but again, will do it if that is what the group wants to do. To me it should be a group decision.

Edited March 13, 2013 by mikebevo

The primary goal of any game is fun, not the grind. I always wanna do a full run, with most trash and bonuses. It's really ridiculous to see four 50s running away from every boss and CCing all that can be CCed (and skipped) in Battle of Ilum. Actually if it comes to fight, some of those guys will mess - cos they never did that particular boss! All they want is comms. No social stuff, no polishing their skills (yes, even fresh 50s are affected) - just comms. They say "hi" at start (most cool ones don't even bother with that) and together we achieve another Guinness record of time spent in FP.

 

A bit off topic to trash fight, still related to FPs are Spacebar Commandos. That type of guys who don't say hello to you, but they say "skip" or "space". "Skip faster!". "I have 20 min for this". Without "please".

 

Now I'm at that point when I do not need comms and do not need Columi/Tionese drops, but I DO need fun. Don't you even try to get it away from me!

Edited March 13, 2013 by space_mechanic

The primary goal of any game is fun, not the grind. I always wanna do a full run, with most trash and bonuses. It's really ridiculous to see four 50s running away from every boss and CCing all that can be CCed (and skipped) in Battle of Ilum. Actually if it comes to fight, some of those guys will mess - cos they never did that particular boss! All they want is comms. No social stuff, no polishing their skills (yes, even fresh 50s are affected) - just comms. They say "hi" at start (most cool ones don't even bother with that) and together we achieve another Guinness record of time spent in FP.

 

Lol yeah, I did the one bonus mini boss in the Foundry like a month ago the first time. The one where you jump down and ran past the jedis and there is the droid on the right side.

And one of the bosses in Ilum is actually pretty hard and and I wiped there with groups a few times, so I personally prefer to just run past that guy, really not worth the effort. No one needs the drops and no one wants to pay the rep.

 

I like to skip everything there is to skip. I have killed almost all of the mobs in the game over and over and over and over and over again and I'm pretty sick of it since it's absolutely boring. I don't need to kill that trash group we could easily avoid. I get nothing out of it. No exp, no loot, no nothing. It's just a waste of time. There is no challenge in trash. Previously I just logged on, listed myself in the GF, did some dailies, did the FP when a group popped, went to the terminal and was done. There really is no fun at all to run Black Talon the 1000th time. Really. It's just boring. I cope with it because I want(ed) the comms, that's it.

Well.. now I don't do hm fps anymore since I don't need the comms anymore and I am quite happy. I only do my raid and a few dailies for the repair cost. I love to raid and I have tons of fun and I am happy that I don't have to do the same fps over and over again to be prepared for raids. Though that's gonna change again with Makeb.

 

Oh and I was doing BT on an alt recently and out of habit I wanted to skip this and that and got confused because the others didn't follow when I remembered that I do get stuff I need from killing them. Though even while leveling I prefer to skip as many mobs as possible. I'd rather just do a few warzones instead of killing some mobs that I could have avoided, it would be much more fun, really.

It's really surprising how many people complain about datacron jumping when they turn any flashpoint run into more platfomer than MMORPG. Even doing low level FP for exp is rare occurence, with people almost always skipping all they can. You changed your build at 60 and want to see how it handles real combat? Tough luck, 80% of your FP will consist of running away from mobs and carefully walking on edges to avoid aggroing one group of enemies. Yes, skipping group of mobs that is nowhere near path you're taking is fine. Yes, skipping 10th group of mobs doesn't hut anyone. But the hell, skipping 90% of flashpoint including all but one bosses is not fine. "Jump jump sneak sneak" is not name of this game, and it's not reason anyone does flashpoints. Too bad it's so rare to find group doing it for reason other that daily GF reward.

i hate skipping boss:mad:

A while back while leveling an alt, I was doing got Taral V (Story Mode) through the Group Finder. This was early morning so it took a bit of tme to pop even queued as Tank so I have no idea how long it took for the DPS to pop. Anyways as soon as we entered the two DPS who were in the same guild sped off around the skipping path for the first group of mobs, myself and the healer just stood there, I whispered the healer to ask if he wanted a 'speed run', He reliped that he like me was here for the exp and loot as I was. Two DPS then say 'Are you guys coming?' in group chat. I reply 'I'm not doing a speed run, I want to kill the mobs and the healer does too, It's Story Mode' DPS reply 'We only have 30mins before we have to go so we have to skip, you can just queue again' I replied 'What a great idea, Good luck finding a new Tank and Healer' With which both myself and the Healer left the group and requeued together, got another pop almost right afer our lockout timer and got a proper run. No clue if the two speedy DPS got it don or not and frankly I couldn't careless