Random Encounters Vs. Fixed Encounters Vs. Visible Enemies on Map

[hackncrazy]

What system do you guys prefer? Which games do you think that best represent each of these "genres"?

For me, I like the visible enemies a lot. Final Fantasy XII is still the only one I thoroughly enjoyed since I could see everyone who was on the map and could plan my approach to the situation. Random Encounters some times seems to be a bit boring beyond necessity.

I was watching a guy speedrunning Dragon Quest IV today and it was impressive how much encounters he had during every single dungeon. I'm not exaggerating when I say that he could make less than 10 steps before entering into a battle.

Anyway, would love to hear your opinions.

 

[Severian Silk]

JA2 had (mostly) non-random encounters and was gud.

FF-style random encounters are kind of irritating.

 

[CryptRat]

My favourite approach is certainly a mix between some frequent important handcrafted and handplaced battles and overall easier "random" encounters from tables of encounters (they're more or less handcrafted but occur randomly) ; it's what is used in the SSI Gold Box games.
I think it's even better than only handcrafted encounters like in Knights of the Chalice (which have an option to activate or deactive random encounter, but most of the time random encounters are not interesting here so let's admit it's deactivated).
I think this or these approaches are the right one if you want to make some short, compact game. I think Voidspire Tactics has less than 100 fights in the full game, all handcrafted and all different or so, which is great.
Note that in the above games, a lot of encounter can be deadly and you can save your game whenever you want.

That said I have no major problem with games like Elminage : Gothic or the Final Fantasy games where the ratio random encounter/"boss" battle is much higher but there's no tactical map and the duration of a fight is much lower. I understand that random encounters can be boring sometimes, but as long as they're not both long and easy they're OK to me.
If a fight is won in 3 clicks, 1 or 2 turns, 30 seconds?, using the good skills, a few MPs (and items) and having a character being poisoned or stunned (or killed in one turn), and that the enemies in the game are varied enough then small random encounters can be appropriate.
Each battle is not meant to require some wargaming level of strategy here, you only need to be prepared, perhaps also not to enter a zone you shouldn't already enter, to properly manage your resources and use one or two appropriate skills. In particuler if the dungeons have more to offer (good puzzles or traps) than a sequence of encounters, that can work, and you can spend more time designing the world, the dungeons, the monsters, skills, etc...
Now there's a major difference between Elminage : Gothic and Final Fantasy ; in the first one you can save everywhere but you can often face brutal encounters and die while in the second (like in a lot of classic JPRGs) it's the opposite. Not being able to save everywhere is fun, and it definitely reinforces the resource managment aspect. Now what is a little sad with the FFs at least from the PS ones and of many recent JPRGs using this approach is that they're often a little too easy, so you'll generally reach the end of the next dungeon on first try without having to particularly pay attention to your resources, while FF1 is better in that aspect because you often have to decide to get back to town not to lose your precious last earned XP and items. I think the real problem is there, it's not fundamentally that encounters are randomized.
Besides the Wizardry games mostly use the FF approach to saving but are harder and that's working fine.

Now regarding enemies which are visible on the map or not, it doesn't matter to me since most of the time I feel some compusilve need to run into every monster I see so it's just the same . But to answer your question making enemies visible on a map and as a precise example on the world map is definitely a way to allow you to gain some time just avoiding them when you consider there's nothing to gain anymore from fighting them ; however in a dungeon it's a double-edged thing since being able to avoid monsters is not necessarily a good thing (that you need to manage to flee if you want to is part of the deal). Maybe the good approach, instead of making enemies both visible and easy to avoid, is to make easy encounters directly won like in Earthbound (well maybe enemies are easy to avoid, I can't remember, but you get the idea) or weak enemies flee before the battle like in Disciples of Steel.

 

[KK1001]

Non-scaling, fixed enemies are the best. Respawning is a toss-up as it is much more context dependent.

Scaling is shit for a number of reasons (lazy way of providing challenge, often breaks muh ~immersion~ when the entire world is now populated by fucking level 30 ogres or whatever, feels too gamey); random encounters become a nuisance, encourage grinding, and are a crutch for poor level design or enemy placement. They can have their place, but it is really rare.

 

[Damned Registrations]

Combinations are the best. Random, unavoidable encounters that actually drain resources from the party add the aspect of resource management to what would otherwise be a series of trivial challenges. More importantly, they add risk to exploration- if the enemies don't respawn on your way back out of the dungeon, you always know you can leave safely whenever you want. Combined with visible encounters, this basically means there's no risk to exploring at all.

Likewise, some hand placed, more dangerous or interesting encounters break up the tedium of fighting the same shit too many times. Things like bosses or miniboss encounters, guarding treasures or punishing failures for puzzles or poor dungeon navigation, are far more interesting than something like a static trap that just deducts some amount of hp. Having major battles preceded by subtle clues also makes things far more interesting while exploring- now when you see anything out of place, like some scratches on the wall, bones lying around, an extra large set of doors, etc. you will worry about a powerful boss being nearby that you may not be able to defeat without first leaving the dungeon to fully recover.

Another advantage of hand placed encounters is fine tuning the difficulty. You can throw in a more powerful encounter that will definitely drain some resources from the party without having the chance that an unlucky player will roll the encounter 5 times in a row and get totally fucked, or a lucky player will miss it entirely. Meanwhile the easier encounters drain less resources, and force the player to have control over what he's expending for each battle instead of just going all out for every fight the way you can in something like KotC.

 

[DragoFireheart]

Random encounters trigger the shit out of me.

 

[duanth123]

What Damned Registrations said.

With the added caveat that at least some effort should be put into giving random encounters a minimal tactical layer, like different combinations of enemies that reinforce one another or inflict status ailments or otherwise serve a greater purpose than mere XP fodder. Lest random Encounters simply become the grind that many players erroneously assume it to only ever be.

 

[DragoFireheart]

What Damned Registrations said.

With the added caveat that at least some effort should be put into giving random encounters a minimal tactical layer, like different combinations of enemies that reinforce one another or inflict status ailments or otherwise serve a greater purpose than mere XP fodder. Lest random Encounters simply become the grind that many players erroneously assume it to only ever be.

How about giving me the option to avoid or run away from a random encounter before I even see the battle screen?

I fucking hate random encounters without, at a minimum, an item that nulls them out like Holy Water in DQ7. They're an annoying mechanic that should do what Damned Registrations says but instead end up ALWAYS being a grind.

 

[duanth123]

How about giving me the option to avoid or run away from a random encounter before I even see the battle screen?

I fucking hate random encounters without, at a minimum, an item that nulls them out like Holy Water in DQ7. They're an annoying mechanic that should do what Damned Registrations says but instead end up ALWAYS being a grind.

Part of the reason they're a grind in many games is due to how many players give in to the time-saving temptation of repeatedly avoiding said encounters, only to bash their head against a fixed (say, boss) encounter that is tuned to someone who hasn't indulged.

I would say the happy medium is some type of escape spell/lower encounter ability drawn from the same resource pool as your combat abilities. So as to emphasize restraint of use, while allowing for retreat in obvious situations (such as when you run into a vastly superior enemy force)

 

[Damned Registrations]

Random encounters are at their best when you're on your way back home after an especially rough fight. Maybe a monster-in-a-box, maybe just some bad luck or a tricky boss fight. Or maybe you went into a dungeon before you were meant to so you could try and find some killer equipment upgrades and tried to just escape the encounters. Whatever the case, it has left some key party member dead and what were previously comfortable fights that just cost some mana or potions to recover from are now serious threats of setting your progress back to before you even entered the dungeon.

And then Drago uses holy water, strolls home, and complains about how boring random encounters are.

This also applies to saving freely in dungeons or having endless resources to recover with.

What Earthbound did was pretty decent though, automatically crushing enemies you can alpha strike anyways (and generally making them run away from you as well.) Earthbound had pretty good balance in general; it had some rough boss fights and even random encounters would give you nasty status effects. And it wasn't like healing items were cheap.

The on-screen enemies in SaGa Frontier though, generally just let a decent player skip any fights he didn't want to be in by being way too easy to avoid. Lufia 2 had the same issue for the most part (not that it mattered there since you were drowning in consumables and healing spells.) So it's a fine line.

 

[DragoFireheart]

Random encounters are at their best when you're on your way back home after an especially rough fight. Maybe a monster-in-a-box, maybe just some bad luck or a tricky boss fight. Or maybe you went into a dungeon before you were meant to so you could try and find some killer equipment upgrades and tried to just escape the encounters. Whatever the case, it has left some key party member dead and what were previously comfortable fights that just cost some mana or potions to recover from are now serious threats of setting your progress back to before you even entered the dungeon.

And then Drago uses holy water, strolls home, and complains about how boring random encounters are.

This also applies to saving freely in dungeons or having endless resources to recover with.

What Earthbound did was pretty decent though, automatically crushing enemies you can alpha strike anyways (and generally making them run away from you as well.) Earthbound had pretty good balance in general; it had some rough boss fights and even random encounters would give you nasty status effects. And it wasn't like healing items were cheap.

The on-screen enemies in SaGa Frontier though, generally just let a decent player skip any fights he didn't want to be in by being way too easy to avoid. Lufia 2 had the same issue for the most part (not that it mattered there since you were drowning in consumables and healing spells.) So it's a fine line.

Random battles are boring regardless of the holy water. i use it BECAUSE I find them numerous but boring.

> Enter battle.
> Queue my attacks.
> AoE the enemies!
> enemies attack.
> AoE again if any are left.
> Dead.
> Heal wounds cheaply after battle.
> Rinse and Repeat.
> Over level due to fighting them all, get bored, quits and instead plays Divinity: Original Awesome combat that makes me think. Or BestBorne. Or something fun.

 

[Damned Registrations]

Sounds like how I played KotC. Except the enemies never got to attack because the 'tactical' combat meant they were dead before they could get within range.

 

[DragoFireheart]

Sounds like how I played KotC. Except the enemies never got to attack because the 'tactical' combat meant they were dead before they could get within range.

I'd rather have fewer but more meaningful combat encounters if given the choice.

 

[Hobo Elf]

Visible enemies is better than random encounters. I can try to avoid them when I don't want to fight and I can seek them out if I want to grind.

 

[Damned Registrations]

Sounds like how I played KotC. Except the enemies never got to attack because the 'tactical' combat meant they were dead before they could get within range.

I'd rather have fewer but more meaningful combat encounters if given the choice.

Nothing about encounters being random forces them to be plentiful or meaningless. That's just an issue of enemy stats and party supplies not being tuned properly, which nobody is going to argue about.

 

[Abu Antar]

I don't think that Rainbow Moon was a great game, but it did one thing right. It had visible enemies on maps. They were spread in different places and once you beat them, they were gone. While you traversed the map, they had encounter popups appear. You could either accept or decline these encounters.

Random encounters are okay if the encounter rate isn't ridiculous. I'm probably more lenient than most people because I have played these types of games all my life. They are probably the easiest to grind in.

Visible encounters are probably the best for players that just want to fight when they wish to.

 

[Naveen]

As with any game, talking about certain elements is meaningless if the rest of the rules are not explained.

Random encounters had a function in pen and paper D&D, but if the underlying rules are changed, the whole things stop making sense and can become an exercise in frustration and grinding. Before AD&D 2 edition, almost all XP came from treasure, monsters were at most 20%, which meant the goal of a dungeon raid was to haul as much treasure as you could and get the hell out of there before some, yes, random creatures killed you. In most cases, it made more sense to avoid monsters than to fight them, and the idea of "clearing" a dungeon made no sense. With that in mind, the DM had to check every turn for wandering monsters, something that put pressure on the players, who had to go as fast as they could. That meant they may not able to stop every few feet to check for traps, and sleeping was out of the question unless the adventurers could find some way to block the wandering monsters (e.g. Hold spell,) and going back to your HQ or town was in most cases not viable. That added a powerful sense of danger and tension, and resource management became much more important.

Also, unlike most cRPG, wandering monsters or random encounters (these are for when traveling long distances) were not automatic combat (and much less an ambush like in BG.) Not all encounters were bad and, even when the creatures were dangerous monsters, you still had to roll for surprise and reaction (remember, CHA is NOT a dump stat.) Who knows what could happen. Perhaps you could talk with them, charm them, or bullshit your way through.

 

[Ebonsword]

Like with so many things, Final Fantasy Tactics did it best.

The game is built around custom encounters, but there are random encounters available if you want to get a some more job points before the next set-piece battle.


Games with high rates of random encounters are anathema to me, these days. They're part of the reason I can't play through a Shin Megami Tensei game anymore even though I like a lot of other things those games offer.

 

[HeatEXTEND]

Lufia got this right, on-screen you-move-they-move baddies where situations could come up where you'd want to avoid them, non-random back attacks and usage in puzzles.

Lufia > Chronotrigger > ff imo.

 

[an Administrator]

Random Encounters make the game more challenging

 

[HeatEXTEND]

Random Encounters make the game more challenging

As in challenging to keep playing, sure.

 

[Max Stats]

Depends on how they implement it more than anything. I loved how Bravely Default handled random encounters, being able to go into the settings and adjust the frequency up for grinding, or all the way to off for exploring or getting to bosses without exhausting any spells/heal items/etc.

Visible enemies in most games (turn based anyway) are honestly more annoying to try and avoid than if an encounter had just popped up and just let you get the fight over with.

Fixed encounters, Chrono Trigger seemed to do it okay, seemed almost like random, just with the way how if you remember the area you can skim around and avoid some if you remember the layout well. Then there's stuff like FF Mystic Quest where the fixed enemies literally block your path so you have to fight most of them no matter what. Of course that's babby's first RPG by design, so it's not hard in any case, but I'd favor the CT type over it any day.


Overall, I prefer random encounters, probably just because most of the games I've enjoyed most, particularly in my formative years, have used that type. This is just for turn based, though, in more actiony games like classic Y's, it just wouldn't work without the visible enemies you fight right on the map.

 

[Hoaxmetal]

I loved how Bravely Default handled random encounters, being able to go into the settings and adjust the frequency up for grinding, or all the way to off for exploring or getting to bosses without exhausting any spells/heal items/etc.

I like the option too, but in the end it just makes me feel like I am supposed to keep the game balanced because the devs sure didn't D:

 

[Exhuminator]

Random encounters are good for maintaining tension, but I find them highly irritating when the encounter rate is too high. It's the rare RPG that gets the encounter rate "just right". So I'd rather walk through an area and see the enemies, and choose if I want to attack them or not. This allows me to consciously grind, or tactically avoid for danger/expediency reasons.

 

[Sigourn]

Depends on the type of game.

The more realistic a game's graphics, I prefer visible enemies. The encounters can thus be fixed or "randomnized", that is, you never know what you are going to encounter.

The more "abstract" or older a game's graphics, I don't mind true randomn encounters: walking around and suddenly entering battle.

My issue with random encounters is that the Final Fantasy games I've played them abused them too much. They make games too long, they take too much time and are usually boring. To me, random encounters should work with a formula associated to them. An encounter should be something that is exponentially harder to get into.

For example, "classic" Final Fantasy style, and assuming you are looking to get 500 exp points:

- 50 battles that give you 10 exp points each. Eventually you are so tired you don't bother grinding past those required 500 exp points.

My suggested style:

- 10 battles that give you 50 exp points each. But the catch is that, instead of a somewhat regular time interval between one and another (like the fucking 5 steps in every FF game ever made), it gets progressively harder to find enemies, until you don't give up because "I'm too tired of grinding". Rather, you give up because "I will waste too much time looking for enemies".

What happens is that the player trains quickly but cannot abuse the system.