Encounter design - best and worst CRPGs?

[spectre]

I actually liked the encounters in Fallout 2, they were varied, some were piss easy, others were brutal, some had good loot, some were good for xp, some had nice quirks (like a random cave with baby deathclaws), and there were even special, unique ones.

Not sure about any good examples. Maybe Icewind Dale? Although I'm not a great fan of D&D. Most of the time, in most of infinity engine games encounter design only means you get to choose an optimum spell loadout then change it slightly for the few 'special' battles.

I admit, turn based D&D implementations seem to work better.

Now, regarding the very rock bottom of bad encounters, Kotor and kotor 2 takes the first prize imo. Especially the nauseating amount of filler that happens near the end.

 

[Roguey]

Oh, come to think of it, Avadon's encounter design sucks too. Some good boss fights that require special tactics to bring enemies down, but god damn is there a fuckton of filler. I don't think I've seen an RPG with more trash enemies to fight. The worst part is it makes up like 90% of the game.

Haven't tried Avadon, but this is pretty much my experience with Exile I and III. The Avernum 6 demo was pretty good though, how strange that Vogel would regress back into old, bad habits.

 

[PorkaMorka]

TOEE's encounter design is mediocre.

You can confirm this for yourself by playing KoTC, which is basically the same game but with good encounter design (and no Hommlet). Lots of interesting tactical challenges involving mixed groups of enemies. Rarely will it be just a rush of melee opponents, usually the developer will mixed in some arcane or divine casters or possibly a monster with some interesting powers.

Another game with good encounter design was Helherron, even in the very first Kobold cave you'll face a mix of a) generic kobolds b) kobold warriors c) kobold archers d) kobold mages e) kobold priests or shamans with divine spells d) some guard animals (IIRC).

This makes for some interesting decisions; do you sit back at a choke point to deal with the melee or do you move forward aggressively so you can prioritize taking out the ranged attackers and expose yourself to more enemies at the same time?

Aside from BG2, it seems like most mainstream commercial WRPGs have pretty bad encounter design. I guess that most developers don't see a need for it...

I played Death Knights of Krynn before Gateway to the Savage Frontier and it's remarkable how one game could do it right and the next one do it all wrong. In DKoK nearly every battle was unique and there was usually a reason for the encounters, while in GttSF it's just "Monsters Attack! Fight or Flee?"
Of the other old school CRPGs most of the classics had adequate encounter design, but most of them were rather random and thus quite varied.

Yeah, you could definitely notice the difference between the games made by internal SSI teams and the (inferior) games made by Stormfront Studios.

You can also blame Stormfront for adding a romance-able NPC to the Gold Box games.

 

[Volourn]

"ToEE is a game with some decent encounters."

Define 'some'. Mayube 5-10% of encounters were good or better but majority was shit. Almsot every game has some decent encounters.

 

[Jasede]

Baldur's Gate 1&2
Probably the pinnacle of CRPG encounter design. Call me a troll, but I'm not kidding. This game's encounters are fantastic. Give me a true D&D feel.



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Wow, that was a short list.
I am sure someone is going to attack me as soon as possible to chide me for liking this "shitty RPG". But man if its encounters didn't rock. They were placed in the right places, spaced with the right spaces, had the right mix of enemies, the right "boss encounters", the right rewards, the right spells, the right everything. Maybe it just stuck with me because I played these when young but I remember almost EVERY SINGLE FIGHT in these games, that's how engaging they were. ToEE and KOTC don't come even close when it comes to encounter design, which is different from combat system or quality of mechanics or even quality of the game.

I haven't played Dark Sun games much so no comment there.

I have to say though, when it comes to bad Encounter Design, CRPGs are champ. They're often worse than jRPGs when it comes to overusing generic enemies, scripting boring fights or just rewarding you poorly for your effort. There's an area where a lot of improvement is needed. KOTC is a step in the right direction- and yet it's still not even close to BG 1 or 2. CRPGs as a genre need to focus more on interesting, strategic fights with meaningful rewards that are fun and not boring without being too easy. There's so much potential if only this discipline was explored. It's ridiculous how much better popamole action games are at this, like Ninja Gaiden, Castlevania, Dark Souls, etc. Even shoot 'em up games are much better at providing interesting "encounters" in their stages.

Check out modern RPGs: their encounter design is ASS. Even ToEE, one of the greatest combat engines, suffers from boring encounter design (in general), which is quite a feat with their nice engine.

 

[visions]

If you cut out a lot of the filler, Dragon Age has some really good encounters. Archers attacking from behind destructible cover or elevated positions, mages that cat area-of-effect attacks in small areas to split your party up while ranged attackers pepper you from behind and meat walls keep you in the killzone, single enemies scripted to lure you into traps and ambushes, spiders that will ensnare your party, dragons that require unique tactics and have special attacks that can nearly instakill you if you're not careful, etc . This is way, way better than even the Baldur's Gate games in most cases, although all the Infinity Engine titles come very close from time to time. The only thing really holding the game back are the simplified character system and, as mentioned, the filler trash mobs everywhere.

In Dragon Age, once I had picked a healing spell for my only mage, I found it nearly impossible to lose a fight on hard (with a few exceptions). As in, 3-4 party deaths in around 90 game hours kind of way. Although a few battles were still somewhat close and a few fights were memorable/interesting too.

But in general, fuck, I guess I need to replay BG and finally play BG2, which I never did. Although I greatly enjoyed Knights of the Chalice and it had some quite to very hard battles (for me anyway) I found the overall quality of the encounter design still somewhat lacking and overpraised, since it had quite a number of useless Hill/Frost/Fire Giant/whatever mobs who posed little to no real threat. Too many campfires as well. Still, killing things in decent turn based combat system is fun and I was never annoyed by those fights, since I am easily amused by killing things in games. But if I think about the encounter design in KOTC, I wouldn't call it exactly stellar, just (very?) good.

 

[Excidium]

"ToEE is a game with some decent encounters."

Define 'some'. Mayube 5-10% of encounters were good or better but majority was shit. Almsot every game has some decent encounters.

Yeah, that's p. much it.

 

[Zboj Lamignat]

Baldur's Gate 1&2
Probably the pinnacle of CRPG encounter design. Call me a troll, but I'm not kidding. This game's encounters are fantastic. Give me a true D&D feel.

I whole-heartedly agree about BG2, but not so sure about BG1. Traversing the empty maps in search of exciting encounters like 4 hobgoblins or two wolves is one of the main reasons I don't actually like this game, whereas I do like BG2. It did have some good encounters (like Drizzt for example), but those parts that showed its RTS roots are basically a definition of shitty filler for me.

 

[Jasede]

In BG 1 I am mostly thinking about the expansion and the fights vs bands of adventurers and mages. I also actually liked the "filler" such as in the Nashkel mines. It worked exactly the way D&D filler should: not able to kill you, but constantly draining your HP, spells and supplies to make the coming boss harder.

Also the lack of bosses, the bounty hunters and a lot of cool one-shot encounters.

BG 2 is of course the real star, but you you can find its roots in BG 1.

 

[Erebus]

I have very fond memories of many fights in BG2 and ToB. Facing a unique group of mixed composition (such as an evil adventuring party) is immensely more fun than facing a lot of generic enemies that are pretty much all the same.

It's really strange that later games seldom ever tried to do the same. Even the NWN series, which is pretty much the successor of the BG series, doesn't have a lot of fun combat. I remember a few decent fights against drows in HotU, the final group fight in the arena in MoW, the very nice ultimate fight in SoZ... but not much more.

Of course, the number of characters you have in your party and the control you have over them also play a big role in how entertaining combat is. Even a nicely-designed encounter isn't going to be much fun if all you have is a single PC and a companion you can hardly control at all.

 

[Johannes]

Also BG1 suffers from the engines weaknesses more than BG2 - it's all about picking shit apart with bows (though spell backup certainly helps, I would guess it's not even necessary), melee fighters will have a hard time catching up any target other than another melee fighter. Whereas BG2 is about spells spells spells, and the interaction of buffs, debuffs, and then quick damage dealers when the enemy protection is down, is much less hampered by the engines wonky movement/collision detection.

The huge amount of running around you can do in a single battle is actually fun, when it's to do something other than to lodge another arrow in a melee combatant, like hiding behind corners so the enemy archmage won't see you for a moment, to clear everyone out before casting an incendiary cloud, etc.

 

[Aeschylus]

BG2 definitely had great encounter design on the non-trash fights. It was a little bit easy to break the 2E mechanics at times (I once killed a dragon with quivering palm), but that added to the fun in some ways. Dragon Age: Origins actually had some decent encounter design, until you learned how to cheese the mechanics and everything became trivial.
I remember the encounters of Exile 3 (never tried Avernum) standing out to me as good and challenging, but it's been a while since I played it.
I dunno if it counts since it's an arpg, but I thought the design of the combat areas in the early parts of VTM Bloodlines were great, and the werewolf encounter was as well. Too bad it devolved into a hackfest.

The worst encounter design I've ever... encountered was in Dragon Age II. Just a steaming pile of crap.

 

[The Brazilian Slaughter]

It's kind of shocking how much better the first Fallout game's encounters are.

Nope, they're not. And once you get Power Armor, 90% of the enemy attacks don't matter and in fact, barely register. If they don't have a rocket launcher, flamethrowner or a plasma rifle, other enemies might as well not exist. Only exception to that are Deathclaws. This is why Military Base is a breeze while Master's Vault and Cathedral are harder. My favorite fight in Fallout is Decker's basement, and that's because Kane's a killer.

Fallout 2 is much more brutal in its encounters. In Fallout 1, a 10mm SMG means that anybody with armor weaker than metal is going to die in a turn because everybody except you, Kane and some mutants have shitty HP. In Fallout 2, a 10mm SMG is not going to save you from a bunch of armed punks simply because you have one.

 

[Stabwound]

Haha, someone said Dragon Age has the best encounter design with a straight face? The only thing I can remember about that game is fighting endless black shadow creatures over and over. I'd put it on a list of the WORST encounter design.

 

[Roguey]

It's kind of shocking how much better the first Fallout game's encounters are.

Nope, they're not. And once you get Power Armor, 90% of the enemy attacks don't matter and in fact, barely register. If they don't have a rocket launcher, flamethrowner or a plasma rifle, other enemies might as well not exist. Only exception to that are Deathclaws. This is why Military Base is a breeze while Master's Vault and Cathedral are harder. My favorite fight in Fallout is Decker's basement, and that's because Kane's a killer.

Fallout 2 is much more brutal in its encounters. In Fallout 1, a 10mm SMG means that anybody with armor weaker than metal is going to die in a turn because everybody except you, Kane and some mutants have shitty HP. In Fallout 2, a 10mm SMG is not going to save you from a bunch of armed punks simply because you have one.

I like Fallout's better because aside from the Boneyard it didn't have any areas with a dozen or more characters at a time whereas Fallout 2 is full of them. Neither is particularly great so the one that has fewer and isn't so freaking laborious is better.

 

[Awor Szurkrarz]

Nope, they're not. And once you get Power Armor, 90% of the enemy attacks don't matter and in fact, barely register. If they don't have a rocket launcher, flamethrowner or a plasma rifle, other enemies might as well not exist. Only exception to that are Deathclaws. This is why Military Base is a breeze while Master's Vault and Cathedral are harder. My favorite fight in Fallout is Decker's basement, and that's because Kane's a killer.

When you get Powered Armour, you're on stage of game where your opponents are mutants with heavy weapons.

Fallout 2 is much more brutal in its encounters. In Fallout 1, a 10mm SMG means that anybody with armor weaker than metal is going to die in a turn because everybody except you, Kane and some mutants have shitty HP. In Fallout 2, a 10mm SMG is not going to save you from a bunch of armed punks simply because you have one.

You forgot to mention that SMG works only from very close range and that there are usually multiple enemies.

 

[The Brazilian Slaughter]

Nope, they're not. And once you get Power Armor, 90% of the enemy attacks don't matter and in fact, barely register. If they don't have a rocket launcher, flamethrowner or a plasma rifle, other enemies might as well not exist. Only exception to that are Deathclaws. This is why Military Base is a breeze while Master's Vault and Cathedral are harder. My favorite fight in Fallout is Decker's basement, and that's because Kane's a killer.

When you get Powered Armour, you're on stage of game where your opponents are mutants with heavy weapons.

Fallout 2 is much more brutal in its encounters. In Fallout 1, a 10mm SMG means that anybody with armor weaker than metal is going to die in a turn because everybody except you, Kane and some mutants have shitty HP. In Fallout 2, a 10mm SMG is not going to save you from a bunch of armed punks simply because you have one.

You forgot to mention that SMG works only from very close range and that there are usually multiple enemies.

Go to Mariposa again, most mutants there are toting miniguns, gatling lasers, laser rifles and rocket launchers. There's probrably only a few using plasma. With Power Armor (especially hardened), miniguns are all noise, lasers only fuck you in rare crits. Master's Vault is harder because everybody and his mother is toting plasma weaponry, which makes the Master's mutants more dangerous than him (unless you don't get psychic blocker, then you're going to fight blind and crippled). Also, from what I remember, muties from Mariposa have lame hp compared to the Nightkin in the Cathedral.

No, I didn't. Because most firefights in Fallout are at close range. In Fallout, 10mm smg easily ventilates any human foe (except aberrations like Kane, wtf is he made of?) without decent armor. In Fallout 2, same thing happens, but enemies are strong enough to beat you regardless. Mid-tier human enemies are rather more dangerous and in the end-game you also fight other enemies who use similar gear. Also, Super Mutants in 2 are scary.

 

[MMXI]

I fully agree with everyone praising the encounters in Baldur's Gate, Baldur's Gate II and Knights of the Chalice. I also loved some of the encounters in many of the Gold Box games such as in Pool of Radiance and Pools of Darkness. Notice a pattern here? Yes, it's the D&D games that tend to have the best encounter designs. Even Temple of Elemental Evil and the Icewind Dales are better than the majority of the genre, and that's saying something.

I want to bring up one game that may surprise some people because its combat system is rather awful. Ultima V. All of the dungeon rooms in this game are hand crafted and feature a variety of different enemies mingled in with traps. Often your perception of an encounter at the start of a fight is vastly different to your perception at the end due to surprises popping up along the way. For example, wisps often teleport into the room and possess your characters, secret doors hiding multiple enemies often open up when you step on particular tiles, sometimes even the room itself floods with lava resulting in massive damage. The enemies themselves are all varied too. Ghosts often vanish and stealth up to your characters, dragons are heavy hitters who spawn demons, demons posses your characters for the remainder of the fight and wisps do similarly but can also teleport around the battlefield. Mimics hide as chests until you get close while stone gargoyles duplicate every time you hit them and fail to kill them in a single blow. Slimes do similarly but are a hell of a lot weaker, while bats and flies are extremely difficult to land blows on even when you've maxed out your level and have the best weapons.

It's a shame that the rooms just aren't very fun due to the combat system blowing. I'm actually quite convinced that Ultima V would be a decent tactical RPG with just two simple changes. The first would be to reduce the superiority of magic throwing axes so that close combat weapons are useful again. The second would be to introduce time units so that characters can move multiple squares and attack each turn, as the biggest problem with Ultima V's system is that it's almost always impractical to move from your starting position.

 

[I_am_Ian]

Wizardry 8 had some pretty good encounters. I know I keep bringing this game up in my posts but it's my favorite game ever.