Just one more step... *Insert Battle Music Here*

Yukari

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    What are your opinions on random encounters?

    Personally, I don't like them. They're too commonly used as a way of padding out backtracking. I have to walk back to the starting area? Okay! But why can't I take one God Forsaken step without running into another enemy? And why am I running into enemies in the starting area? If I can one-shot everything with a single hit the why do I have to fight it?Sadly it's used so commonly in RPGs. Pokemon, Megaman Battle Network, Dragon Warrior, and even my beloved Final Fantasy 7 all use this system. However, I have seen some games that do it right.

    Of course, there are games that do this right.

    In Earthbound enemies appear on the map, that means under certain circumstances you can avoid enemies, though often they're in small passages and can't be avoided. In spite of that it still felt less invasive. Once you're a higher level enemies will run from you and the game auto skips battles. Ultima also did something like that. Where battles take place on the map, though it lacked an auto skip feature. It still was a nice touch.
     
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    It's a mostly outdated concept, and the game industry seems to agree. Random Battles are largely a thing of the past, few games actually use them anymore, and I have absolutely no problem with that. Apart from being annoying, they often prove to simply be obstacles that may be pointless grinds that reward you with nothing or, alternatively, pushes to make you level up.

    When you need them, you have to run around like an idiot until the music plays. When you don't, they're every few steps. And because of this, they can be repetitive and even unwanted, which, years back when Turn-Based RPGS were everywhere, made what was something of a saturated and repetitive genre (considered such both by fans and otherwise due to the shear number of them and, at the time, the margins of difference in between) even more repetitive. They made already long games much, much longer.

    So while I am a fan of a number of TBRPGs, it's not really all two surprising that so many (including myself) suffer from genre fatigue, and Random Battles are certainly part of the offense.
     
    As much as I loathe Random Battles, some games actually do an excellent job centering their RPGs. Which game I'm mainly referring to? Bravely Default. While yes, there are a lot of random encounters in the game, the great thing about Bravely Default is that you can adjust the game's random encounter rate. When you boot up the game it will initially start off at a middle ground point, but you can either adjust it to the maximum limit (if you want to quickly grind to boost your level) or adjust it to the minimum (to avoid all encounters so you can safely get to a boss without losing any HP/MP.)

    In that way, you can completely dictate how you want your RPG's pace to go. You can set the encounter rate to 0, but - and the game even points this out - you may have difficulty with later levels because you weren't leveling up in that time span. I guess if you adjusted the settings and turned animations off during battles you could quicken the time it takes to get through these problems, but it's a mute point to the main, underlying issue.

    The whole RPG genre is based on a "time" principle. A lot of companies like to elongate specific elements of games to make you think that you overcame something difficult, but you really aren't. Want to travel between two towns? OOPS! Got to battle 10 monsters before you get there? Ready for a crazy hard boss battle? Nah, they just decided to give him a crazy amount of HP and you are literally just going through the motions.

    I know I went a little off topic with that last paragraph, but it's a small point that I picked up when I play my RPGs.
     
    I hate random encounters mostly because it usually means there will be some important hard to find enemy that is somehow important and I will spend too much time finding it...
     
    elheroeoscuro said:
    Bravely Default. While yes, there are a lot of random encounters in the game, the great thing about Bravely Default is that you can adjust the game's random encounter rate.
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    That was a pretty cool feature - made leveling up jobs so much faster.

    For me, I think random encounters with "invisible" monsters kind of break immersion, like enemies appearing out of thin air while you're running around just looks kind of silly to me. They also discourage exploration sometimes - I always get to a point in the game where I just want to get from point A to B as quickly as possible to avoid the annoying random encounters, so I miss a lot of cool things along the way.
     
    I personally don't mind them, really. Pretty used to them, as I've been playing games that have this feature every since I was a little kid, including Megaman, Pokémon, and Digimon. One of the most rewarding things about them is that you're always awarded with some prize if you manage to win, whether it be big or small. In Megaman series, you get yourself wound up with battle chips and zennies, all depending on how well you perform. In others, you get to have experience, points, or whatever they happen to call it; the more you gain, the more levels you'll be able to earn. It's a pretty nice system.

    Though, I do try escaping from these encounters every once in a while, so that I wouldn't waste much time and progress throughout the story. Only thing bad about that is, if you're not able to flee, it could be sort of bothersome. I've gone through this plenty of times before.
     
    I never had any problems with random encounters, but then every game I've played with them has clearly defined the boundaries of their functioning, making them predictable and allowing the player to prepare for them. Like, in Pokémon you know that if you walk in grass you might be attacked — simple as.

    The system from TLOTR: The Third Age was quite nice, with encounters being consistent due to being based on a fixed travel distance, with an indicator brightening as one moves around the world; I'd like to see that in more random encounter games.

    The absolute best system was that of Infinite Space since one could see the enemy composition beforehand and simply choose not to engage, with no negative consequences. That said, the developers decided to make certain randomly-occuring fleets unavoidable if encountered, and for no apparent reason, so of course very early on there's a chance of running into a strong fleet containing a Rurik class cruiser while the player only has a single destroyer (whichever one you pick at the start, they're both the worst playable ship in the game!).
     
    They've always been a little annoying, but in Pokemon, I don't think it's going away anytime soon. It's practically a vital game mechanic to help level you up. Of course, they're okay in moderation, though!
     
    Random encounters are annoying when you can't set it according to how you want it. But they're there for the exp. and the moolah, at least to me.

    But if you're able to see the enemy before the encounter, it'll be less annoying.
     
    While I agree that it is an outdated concept, I do like how Bravely Default handled it, which Matt already mentioned. You can adjust the frequency of random battles and it's great.

    Then there's Pokemon that has random battles, but at this point, I don't think I'd like to see that change. Changing on of the staple features in a beloved series like that...meh. I never minded random battles in general that much anyway, though as far as Pokemon goes, Black and White had a terrible encounter rate. Don't know why, but it did and it was annoying.

    I really appreciate games like Mother 3, Xenoblade Chronicles, and Final Fantasy XIII that have enemies on the field and you can get into the battle if you want, or try to run past it. It's nice knowing what you're going to face as well.

    But, in general, it's not a feature that really bothered me, outdated as it might be. I think it can still work, just needs to be managed better, perhaps in Bravely Default style.
     
    Random encounters are the sole reason why i don't like RPG games. I can still play games where you can reduce the chance to encounter wild enemies, but most games just punish you by forcing you to grind on the exp you missed which is pretty boring and takes forever.
     
    Roaming Murkrow said:
    Random encounters are the sole reason why i don't like RPG games. I can still play games where you can reduce the chance to encounter wild enemies, but most games just punish you by forcing you to grind on the exp you missed which is pretty boring and takes forever.
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    By this conclusion, would you say that you dislike the Pokemon series of games then? :o
     
    Roaming Murkrow said:
    Actually yes i do. They are way overpopular imo.
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    That's fine! I'm actually not the biggest fan of it either, to be honest. It lost it's flair in my opinion after Generation IV. It became very repetitive very quickly and the names...well, let's just say I won't touch on those after Generation IV haha.
     
    I'm used to random encounters, so they don't bother me much.

    I like how Final Fantasy XIII does encounters, though. You can clearly see where the enemies are, and sometimes avoid them, though not always. However, they aren't random at all Well, XIII-2's were, but I'm talking about XIII.
     
    As much as I like to destroy everything for exp (or equivalent) it drives me looney when I run into an enemy a few steps before my goal. I mean geesh I have better things to do than fight you right now. This is why Bravely Default's encounter settings are picture perfect!
     
    Sheep said:
    As much as I like to destroy everything for exp (or equivalent) it drives me looney when I run into an enemy a few steps before my goal. I mean geesh I have better things to do than fight you right now. This is why Bravely Default's encounter settings are picture perfect!
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    Yeah, you can turn off encounters in Bravely Default, right?
     
    I prefer the random encounters over allowing you to pick and choose your battles because personally if I have a choice I'll just run from everything I encounter so I can progress with the story and then I'll get rekt when it comes time to fight something even semi important.
     
    They were kinda useful when games didin't have too much to offer, because of space limitation. Making a game that would be about 3 hours long take at least double the time, so the player doesn't feel cheated for paying so much money.

    Now with this limitation gone random encounters are just a pain, implemented just because they were not able to use a better system (or implement it the way it is done in the Pokemon games).
     
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