I’m torn about them. On the one hand they free up the combat design to be as wildly different from the exploration as it wants. Which can result in really creative stuff. Favorite examples are Undertale, MegaMan Battle Network series, and Tales series.
But on the other they interrupt the flow of exploration, the music, you forget where you were by the end of combat and they can be very annoying if they happen to be common or just as you’re about to leave an area. The consolation prize of growing stronger with every battle only helps so much.
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This is actually a few different design paradigms you are talking about.
The first is the exploration map transitioning into a battle map during encounters. The second is randomly spawning encounters. The third is forcing players to fight those encounters. Games like Zelda 2 had a exploration map transition into a battlemap, but the encounters are visible on the exploration map and could be avoided if you want so they were never forced or random. On the other hand games like Shining in the Darkness had exploration and battle on the same map; there was no transitions and the view perspective did not change, the game just randomly forced you to fight encounters while you walked around. Then you have something like Vermintide 2 which is a realtime first person action rpg/shooter where random monsters are spawned in at random times on random places on the map to attack you, but the monsters only spawn out of sight in places you are not looking at, and you are not forced to fight them.
IMO battle transitions and forced encounters are outdated mechanics designed around the technical limitations of 8 bit era systems, while random encounters are a great way to improve exploration and overall replay value of a game.
Good point. I guess it is 2 things I’m talking about.
I think battle transitions are a tradeoff. They free combat but at the cost of interrupting flow. If you don’t do anything with the freedom they give you and you just make the same tired pokemon style choose from a menu combat it’s not worth it.
Aye. Like all design paradigms, there are places where they can be useful or can be used to achieve a certain feel.
I actually hate “choose from a menu combat” but have thought of a few cases where it would make sense - for example a Legend of Galactic Heroes style space warfare game based on hyper-realistic combat between massive fleets of 20,000+ ships each, which according to lore, line up in nice neat firing lines and shoot at each other for 12+ hours until one side has won via attrition. There is no way to simulate that in real time and be fun, and the ranges at which combat happens in deep space means that there is basically literally no room for maneuvering once the battle has began…
I’m in the “if I can’t avoid them, I’m not playing the game long” camp.
I don’t hate them, and they can be fun. But most of the games that do them make them impossible to bypass. Like others have already said, when you’re questing, they just derail the gameplay experience. There’s times that’s okay, but if a game has them often enough, it ends up making me hate the game and quit.
It’s why I don’t go back an replay the final fantasy stuff.
Not every design choice fits every game (obviously). With that in mind, rarely is any specific design choice always 100% good or bad.
I think rather than just taking a vote, it is more useful to think about what makes a good random encounter, and what kinds of game designs work well with them.
I enjoy CRPG styled games. Often in these random encounters happen when moving through an overworld. This kind of design doesn’t disrupt exploration, since once it is over, you continue on your way. It does disrupt when you are going between known points and just trying to tie something up. That can be annoying. Ways that I think can make random encounters enjoyable for CRPG styled games:
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Not every random encounter has to be combat. Some can be combat, some can be social, some can be vendors, and some can just be flavor. Non-combat encounters can be used as sort of optional bonus content for players to learn about the lore or explore, and they might even feel special since it is a random occurrence the player gets.
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The ability to put points into some kind of skill that gives the player the option to avoid a random encounter and/or start a combat encounter with a bonus.
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Encounters should be tied with regions of the overworld in a way that makes sense. Put tougher encounters in endgame areas to discourage players from poking around too early. Make encounters in certain areas tied to the main faction or location in that area.
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Ease up on certain kinds of encounters as the game goes on, so they don’t outstay their welcome. For example, in the early game if there are lots of low level bandits attacking in random encounters, it can be fun, but it gets old once you are powerful enough to rip through them and are just trying to get bigger things done. Solve this by, for example saying that routes between major hubs are secured thanks to player actions. Now the player can travel between main routes without getting hassled.
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Be very thoughtful about combat random encounters triggered by NPCs after the player due to player actions. These tend to be more annoying since these are usually higher level NPCs that pack more punch. Making their appearance totally random can be very annoying. It also often feels like a grind if the encounter happens repeatedly. I would prefer the consequences of player actions to firstly always be telegraphed so they know a certain action means a revenge squad is after them. Second, I would prefer this encounter to be scripted- either concretely in a specific location where the game knows the player hasn’t yet been by virtue of the trigger happening while certain areas are still locked by the main story, or in a floating fashion where one of various possibilities is chosen by the game based on whatever triggers first. Once the player defeats whoever is after them, they should never be chased by an identical kind of threat.
These are all CRPG ideas, but I think mostly translate to action RPGs conceptually.
I haven’t played any CRPGs and I’m not familiar with them. Any recommendation of an intro to the genre?
But many of your points are still familiar. Trivial encounters feeling like an annoying waste of time, items or abilities that control the encounter rates, etc.
I think making regions safe is a great idea but I would want it tied to a challenging side quest. Like maybe you can intentionally fight a harder version of an area’s enemies to make it safe?
Wasteland 3 is a good CRPG style game with modern presentation. There is backstory from the first two games, but the third one is self contained enough that you won’t be confused by the story.
I think making regions safe is a great idea but I would want it tied to a challenging side quest. Like maybe you can intentionally fight a harder version of an area’s enemies to make it safe?
That’s one way to tackle it. The point is that there is something to prevent the experience of being super high level and getting mugged by guys with rusty shivs. I’m throwing out many ideas, which could be refined by specific games.
When it comes to random mobs, a game which relies on them is Kenshi, as an example. Without wandering random mobs to encounter, the game loses a lot of flavor. Kenshi does a few things uniquely, with the main one being that many random encounters that end in defeat don’t end in death. Rather than it being a case where a random mob annoyingly forces a start from a previous save, Kenshi can often be played past the defeat with the player now enslaved, in jail, or injured. The emergent story telling from those fights is what makes the game.
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my favorites were in the fallout series, if you were good, bad guys came, if you were bad, good guys came. nice random fights in new places.
even in BOTW the ninjas showed up periodically
The good thing about the fallout series is that unless you’re in survivor, you can generally carry enough to deal with the encounter. It’s not like far cry where you’re just like “FUCK! WORST possible timing!” And it was always like a stupid fucking badger or something. I don’t even mind coming across death claws. I’m carrying 15 mini nukes, 120 stimpacks, leveled up power armor and enough ammunition to make lead poisoning a bigger environmental threat than the rads.
yeah, I did like the mods that added weight to ammo, pretty solid challenge with that since you can have 2000 rounds for each weapon.
After a while, you kinda start to recognize the sneaky ninjas, standing around in the middle of nowhere just looking back and forth. Then, if you do finally talk to them, their names are just a generic title.
I think that random encounters can be done well, but they’re often not done well.
I like that they can be a way to give feelings of attrition when travelling through long areas.
Random encounters tend to be trash mobs, and I hate trash mobs. I know even in the late 90s, there were some prehistoric internet memes about FF7, and having just played it recently, I remember why. There were so many of them. You’d easily forget where you were going and what you were doing because you’d be interrupted by random encounter trash mobs every couple of seconds. They weren’t too hard, so you didn’t have to think very much to get through them, which made them uninteresting, and they also, like you said, just kind of screwed with the flow of the game. So generally, I don’t like them.
The annoying thing is, the problem with this from a design perspective was well known and there were already some efforts to improve upon matters as early as the SNES era. Both Chrono Trigger and Earthbound leap to mind. It’s just that following this, most developers forgot to learn a lesson from these for another decade or two.
In Earthbound, all non-story, non-boss encounters are visible on the overworld and you can either:
- Avoid them entirely with some foresight and skill
- Get a backstab advantage if you manage to maneuver yourself behind the enemy, or
- Instantly win the battle if your level significantly exceeds that of the enemy
- Battles can be auto-fought with the computer controlling your party if you are e.g. trying to eat a sandwich at the same time or something
In Chrono Trigger, most trivial encounters can be avoided, with some scripted exceptions that always initiate when you cross a certain area presumably to prevent players from completely avoiding all combat entirely and subsequently getting their asses stomped by the bosses. Chrono Trigger’s overworld map also features no random encounters whatsoever. You can wander the world freely and will only encounter monsters if you actually enter a location.
I harp on this a lot, but only because it’s true. Despite its faults, some of which it definitely has, Chrono Trigger had some incredible design innovations and was easily the high water mark for JRPG design not only for its time, but even compared to subsequent games for a long time – maybe even still to this day.
- Many trash mob encounters can simply be avoided if you can’t be bothered or are low on resources
- Those that can’t can usually be wiped in a single move if the enemy is far beneath you via double/triple techs
- Encounters happen on the screen you’re already on, so you don’t get disoriented after the battle ends
- Positioning on the battlefield matters for techs, making fights more interesting than the usual you line up on one side/they line up on the other side method…
- …However, positioning on the battlefield absolutely does not matter for single magic spells or melee attacks, meaning you never get completely screwed by how the chessboard is laid out
- You can walk diagonally (seriously, the inability in even much later games to do this bugs me to no end – Pokémon, I’m lookin’ at you)
- If a non-story-critical NPC is yammering at you and you can’t be bothered, you can just walk away even when the text box is still open
- Not only can you rearrange your party however you want including not putting the protagonist at the head of the conga line (and even being able to remove him fully, after a certain plot event), but which combination of party members you have actually matters for techs and not just a perpetual case of, “I need one tank, one caster, and one healer” like prior/later games
- The entire concept of the New Game+ is called what it is and works how it does because of how Chrono Trigger did it
- You can fight the final boss pretty much any time as soon as you learn about him, and if you get your ass whooped trying that’s on you
Etc.
Apparently the Chrono Trigger devs originally planned to give the player even more freedom but several additional concepts such as being able to freely position your fighters on the field were cut due to time constraints and not being able to figure out a sufficiently elegant way to do it on the SNES hardware and controller.
It’s worth noting too that trash mobs aren’t limited to random encounters. Baldur’s Gate 1 and 2 are littered with trash mobs, and none of them are random except for maybe traversing between towns.
That’s a good point. Trivial encounters feel like a grindy and annoying waste of time. I guess it doesn’t necessarily have to be that way though.
I also think Final Fantasy falls too much on the old turn based choose from a menu, watch a cut scene system, when there was room for something more interesting. That’s just taste though I guess. I haven’t even played any other than Final Fantasy I and Tactics Advance maybe they changed.
I’ve come around to really liking them. In short, they vastly improve dungeons in my opinion.
Most RPGs don’t manage to create interesting battles outside of boss fights. Heck, an increasing amount of RPGs fails to create any kind of challange. However, random encounter can add another layer to dungeons: resource management. You have to plan out how to tackle fights in order to get through the dungeons with your limited items/MP - do you sacrifice more HP or do you go for your strongest attacks? How much exploration can you get in? Do you need to be extra careful and plan for stronger rare encounters? Maybe even plan around lvl up healing.
Sadly, this layer is easily removed. Overworld encounters? Just dodge everything. Adjustable encounters? Grind just enough, go heal and disable encounters. Non-challanging fights? Just use basic attacks. Healing stations? No need to plan anymore. Ideally, the dungeons provides no healing at all - especially not before encountering the boss.
If you’re interested in a game with great dungeons, I’d recommend every single Etrian Odyssey.
They’re not the worst thing ever, but I’m happy when a game finds another way to challenge the player that isn’t “throw an enemy encounter at the player every ten steps”.
Nowadays I particularly enjoy games where the encounter is fought on the map itself instead of having a transition screen and a separate map. Games like Sea of Stars, or Yakuza Kiwami for example. I find that removing the transition screen also removes much of the tedium I feel with enemy encounters in video games.
Man…this question would have SO much more gravity if it weren’t about gaming.
Like if you’re thinking back on your life. You met your wife at a coffee shop, but what would your life be today if they got a bagel instead? Where would your life be, 20 years later?
Or what if you’re single? Did you make the wrong arbitrary choice? Did you walk left instead of right? Did you miss out on meeting your special someone because of a choice you didn’t realize had ramifications?
And how should we feel about that today, knowing nothing in the past can be changed?
Haha I have thought about that too actually. Mainly because my career path and favorite hobby were both decided by small random moments. It’s definitely made me more open to new experiences.
There’s nothing more annoying than chilling in ff 8 doing your own thing, then the loudest fucking music ever interrupts your fun time, ff 10 was awful about it too.
But other games it’s no problamo, I think the best way to do it is how the mother series went about it, with them being semi random and dodgable if you were good and didn’t want to do them.
8 was so bad with randoms. You can go like 2 inches at a time between over world encounters. And they were so time consuming even when it only took 2 hits to kill everything - intro transition, battle animations, victory splash… so long!
I have no idea how I managed to sit through those back in the day. Sooooo tedious.
I like the tales series for how they did, mostly dodgeable, but combat could also be fully automated if you were bored. And there’s a lot of combat, so it gets boring. Needless to say I used auto combat a lot (not for bosses or unique enemies tho). I’d prefer if it didn’t do the battle transition, but I understand the function of it.
I think, it works kind of well in games where you’re able to enslave/recruit the random encouters (Pokémon, Shin Megami Tensei and such), as it’s then a surprise what you’ll find, somewhat like a slot machine.
But the way the more recent entries work in these series, that you find out what creatures roam the world by exploring, that kind of works, too.More generally, I don’t particularly like the problem that random encounters solve. Which is that you’ve got sections of gameplay where nothing happens, so you throw enemy encounters into there. That also goes for non-random encounters.
RPGs do this and I used to enjoy RPGs as a form of escapism. But now that I’m doing more stuff in real-life, I want it condensed down in roguelike form, or I’ll just play other genres…
I don’t really like random battles for the most part, but they are not normally the thing that makes or breaks a game for me, either.
Some of the first jrpgs that I remember handling battles better then the typical final fantasy was Chrono Trigger and Pokemon. In Chrono Trigger, you can typically see the enemies before you have to fight them, though they would often surprise you with enemies that you couldn’t see jumping out. I think that worked much better than just the normal system where if you walk around long enough you get a battle. Then Pokemon has 2 different things that it did. First, for trainer battles, you can see the trainers on screen so you can make sure you are prepared before you go into a fight. Then for the normal battles around the world, it does use random encounters, but they take place ONLY within certain spots, like in tall grass or in a cave. So you still have a lot of freedom to roam around in areas without triggering battles, and when you do go through those spots, you know that a battle could pop up, so you can be ready for it. There are also items you can use to avoid encounters.
For dealing with the annoyance of low level enemies, I think Earthbound had a pretty good system. In Earthbound, it shows you enemies on screen rather than doing random encounters, and once you get to a significantly higher level than the enemies, they will run away from you instead of coming at you, so you are free to just ignore them.
I agree these games made big improvements but I still see them as bandages to the inevitable problems that came with random encounters. There’s no undoing the interruption of flow you know.
I think it’s a tradeoff though like I said. Because I don’t know how you can have a combat system as cool and creative as say Undertale (blending turn based and realtime bullet hell) or battle network (blending turn based, real time and card game) without it being completely separate from the overworld.
I actually only like random encounters when I’ve changed up either builds or party members and want to play around with it for a little bit. In that sense, I guess you could say I don’t like random encounters, but rather easily accessible encounters.
I personally don’t mind them, but I personally think the best kinds of random encounters are ones like pokemon randomizers where you step in the grass in a modded gen 3 game with every single pokemon in existence in it and it randomly pulls from the list of 1000+ mons in order to give you a feeling of true randomness in team building. Especially since you aren’t able to predict which creatures you will get.
Having a random table containing only a few different encounters isn’t anywhere near as fun and exciting as randomly having gods spawn as your enemy as a beginner in a randomized game followed by the weakest creatures in the game a moment later.
For sure, enemy variety is important.
Most of the time I don’t mind them, they only get annoying when the battles take longer to finish.
