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games with set encounters and games with generated/ random encounters

eli

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what is the best design between the two? of course most games lie in between but there are many rpgs that are one or the other. fallout 1&2 and DoS 1&2 have much more set encounters then generated ones, most open worlds have more generated content then set ones (a game being open world doesn't mean it has mostly generated encounters e.g. F:NV).
IMO set encounters are better as they behave in a much more intuitive nature in future replays, i.e. you know where to go to do a shortcut in the MQ, where to avoid going into to not die early, where to get a specific item/ enough XP needed for some build to do a specific part in the game etc...
 

vibehunter

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Handcrafted, well-designed encounters are superior. Emphasis on design, because you are at the mercy of the designer here. So pray the designer isn't retarded because that will echo throughout the game.

Random encounters have a higher chance of being bullshit, but depending on the RNG can still produce some fun moments.
 

Butter

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Random encounters are fine if the point of your game is combat, but most RPGs boast combat so bad that players will try to avoid it when they can. Such games shouldn't even be giving out experience for combat, and naturally should focus on quality of encounters instead of quantity.
 
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Thac0

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Gothic system is easily the best and the most work intensive. Only hand placed monsters, none of them respawn. Play the game with the limited ressources you get from them, no infinite easy pickings by predating easier enemies, and every enemy feels rewarding.
 

Hag

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I'd say roaming enemies.
They are around, but you don't know where exactly. You may find them, or they may find you first (usually because you stayed idle in the wilderness like a moron).

Stalker Call of Pripyat did that really well. Having one single manticore lurking at night around Yanov made its encounter unlikely, but even more terrifying when it pounced out of the dark on my weak and delicious human.
Rain World also got it right. The monsters are around. Adapt.
 

WhiteShark

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I think a developer can probably get the most bang for his buck with a combination of both. Fixed, hand-crafted encounters for the important fights and random for everything else. Of course, it also depends on the speed and complexity of combat. If combat is slow and extremely tactical then it's better to put more care into each encounter. If combat is fast and/or simple then random encounters allow the developer to add more gameplay easily without a large design time investment. I play a lot of DCSS and I enjoy both the variety of random encounters on normal floors and the fixed encounters at branch ends.
 

Funposter

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Hand-crafted is obviously best since you can properly balance them around the player's expected power level/skill set and force players to engage with more of the game's systems or solve problems during combat. From a realistic perspective you would implement both - hand-crafted encounters for important main quest areas while using randomly generated enemies for less important side content.
 

KeighnMcDeath

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Another question should be areas can be cleared vs regeneration of the encounters?
 
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Pink Eye

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Knights of the Chalice 2. No random encounters in that one. Every single encounter is hand crafted by Pierre to smack you around silly.
Another question should be areas can be cleared vs regeneration of the encounters.
Chalice 2 is the answer yet again. Enemies don't respawn after you defeat them. Though. Sometimes. Different types of enemies will show up. It's always funny to come back to an area and see some giant monster ready to chew your face up.
u7iF1y1.png
 

WhiteShark

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Pink Eye said:
KeighnMcDeath said:
Another question should be areas can be cleared vs regeneration of the encounters.
Chalice 2 is the answer yet again. Enemies don't respawn after you defeat them. Though. Sometimes. Different types of enemies will show up. It's always funny to come back to an area and see some giant monster ready to chew your face up.
I definitely agree with this. Plain old respawning is boring, shallow, and a waste of time. DCSS works similarly: you can clear a floor completely, and after that there is only a very small chance that once in a great while a new creature will spawn. Thus you are rewarded for clearing (an area of safety is secured) but you can still be caught off guard by something new. One of my biggest gripes with the roguelike Tangledeep is that new enemies were spawning constantly and you could never clear a floor, leading to an overabundance of combat with trash mobs just to travel anywhere.
 

Pink Eye

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>One of my biggest gripes with the roguelike Tangledeep is that new enemies were spawning constantly and you could never clear a floor, leading to an overabundance of combat with trash mobs just to travel anywhere.
Yeppers. It also got annoying if you opened every pandora's box. Which my dumb ass would do because of the additional experience.
 

WhiteShark

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>One of my biggest gripes with the roguelike Tangledeep is that new enemies were spawning constantly and you could never clear a floor, leading to an overabundance of combat with trash mobs just to travel anywhere.
Yeppers. It also got annoying if you opened every pandora's box. Which my dumb ass would do because of the additional experience.
Yeah I learned pretty quickly not to touch those stupid things, and then the developer added an option to remove them entirely which I turned on. What actually killed the game for me was a bug with an item dream. I got a quest to item dream my main weapon and kill the special boss there, so I put it in the machine and started it. Then after killing the boss a portal opened up to a special DLC boss area that is only accessible through an item dream, so I thought, screw it, I'll do that too while I'm here. After laboriously traversing the extra-difficult dlc dungeon with my secondary weapon and killing its stupid dream dragon boss, I left the item dream satisfied - except the game never gave me back my item, which was still my main weapon. I ended up going back in and dying to some stupid unique mob while wandering around trying to figure out how to get my weapon back. Haven't touched the game since.
 

Pink Eye

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I know what you're talking about! The optional nightmare bosses are supposed to give you unique loots. But at the cost of you not being able to upgrade your weapon. Because if you kill the optional boss, the memory king boss will run away. Anyways, that's pretty lame to lose your weapon. I'd probably quit too if I had that happen to me.
 

markec

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Both have their merits, but handcrafted are better because it allows developer to create encounters that use full extent of game mechanics.

It's similar to FPS design, while random encounters can provide fun and interesting moments it's the planned encounters that are the most memorable and challenging.

Good developers will position enemies to their strengths, provide environmental obstacles to add a layer to tactics, balance the encounter to tools available to the player and provide fitting reward for challenge.
 

DaveO

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Having a game with both allows you to analyze what works and what does not. Take the old Wizard's Crown game I got to 8 pages long. The dungeons for the most part have set encounters. But in some there are random monster encounters as well. In Gozaroth's Tower are a large number of Golems you can fight. Without the Golem Staff and using blessings by your Priests, you'll end up dead quickly. At the end of the sequel game Eternal Dagger, there is an optional fight against Anawt. It is in my opinion, impossible to win this fight. I had videos recorded, but in the interest of my job search I've hidden all of my YouTube content.
 

Ysaye

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Depends what kind of game.

For dungeon crawler games or games which rely on lots of exploration, random encounters within fixed domains (ie. particular types of monsters appear in particular places) and reasonable encounter rates is a way of getting over people just following guides and making it more of an actual game and also increase the potential replayability.

For a linear (or discrete choice) story driven game I can understand why you may want to have set encounters for reasons described by others above.
 

Nifft Batuff

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I want the whole population of enemies/monsters pre-determined and handcrafted. Then they just evolve and autonomously move through the game fields with their own agenda.
 
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Norfleet

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I like random encounters. I mean, sometimes you are just wandering around and get ambushed by some robbers in the wilderness. It is like it is.
You have to wonder what it is with these robbers, though. WHY do they always choose the worst possible people to rob? This is the equivalent of Somali pirates going and trying to rob an aircraft carrier. We're not even a military supply ship easily mistaken for cargo freighter. We're armed to the teeth and loaded for bear, and totally look it.
 
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I honestly do think roguelikes are the new RPG. They're the natural evolution of the CRPG genre, not what we got after it. I've spent so much more time "roleplaying" in rimworld, the way I wish I always could in RPGs. And yet even in good CRPGs - Fallout 2, Arcanum, Planescape, Baldur's Gate - You're always the motherfucker who has the fattest cock in the world and it's your job to shove it up everyone's asses. But beside that, the real answer to this thread is "It depends"
 
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I like random encounters. I mean, sometimes you are just wandering around and get ambushed by some robbers in the wilderness. It is like it is.
You have to wonder what it is with these robbers, though. WHY do they always choose the worst possible people to rob? This is the equivalent of Somali pirates going and trying to rob an aircraft carrier. We're not even a military supply ship easily mistaken for cargo freighter. We're armed to the teeth and loaded for bear, and totally look it.

To be fair, if someone picked your house to rob tonight, and you just so happened to have a gun, that would be like a random encounter, yeah. Neither of you knows what's coming - could be an old lady sitting in the kitchen eating, or could be you on your pc reading the codex when you hear "AYO GIT UP IN 'ERE" and then the RTWP turns on.
 

Alphons

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I like random encounters. I mean, sometimes you are just wandering around and get ambushed by some robbers in the wilderness. It is like it is.
You have to wonder what it is with these robbers, though. WHY do they always choose the worst possible people to rob? This is the equivalent of Somali pirates going and trying to rob an aircraft carrier. We're not even a military supply ship easily mistaken for cargo freighter. We're armed to the teeth and loaded for bear, and totally look it.

 

JarlFrank

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Hand-designed encounters win out easily. Random shit can NEVER reach the quality of a deliberate hand-placed challenge designed by a competent game designer.
(the competent part is important, a shit game designer will produce something of even lower quality than a random generator)

Every single memorable encounter I can think of was hand-made. Meanwhile the encounters from games where they all are random just mix together into a blend of samey stuff. With random encounters you get more quantity, but they're all gonna feel the same after a while, especially once you've become familiar with how the algorithm puts encounters together. There's always a formula behind procedural generation, so it's bound to be repetitive. It is inevitable for random encounters to become repetitive due to their very nature. A random generation script cannot think like a designer does. It can only follow rules. A designer might think "I will put archers on top of the hill because it makes sense" while a random generator will only think "I will put archers on the hill because I have a rule that ranged enemies should be placed on high ground". While a designer might create one or two encounters featuring enemy ranged units on high ground, but then go for something else in other encounters to avoid repetition, a random generator will do the same thing over and over again until it grows stale and familiar.

Designers can create unique encounters whose concepts aren't seen in any other encounters in the game.
Random generators can only follow a set of rules that inevitably lead to repetition in enemy composition and battlefield layout.
And I'd rather play a game with only a dozen really really good encounters in total, than a game with hundreds of encounters that all feel the same.
 

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