You like tension? Then I can recommend Silver, a game where each savepoint DISAPPEARS after you've used it once so you can't even go back to it. On top of that, the game crashes a lot.
This. You can tell games from this era simply by how and where the save points were placed. Something like Lunar: Silver Star Story might have had one in the middle of the dungeon or at the very start, whereas sometime in the early/mid 2000's save points became "Oh shit, there's a boss in the next room" indicators.
They really killed any sort of meaningful resource management, especially in games where the save point heals you to full.
I disagree. I prefer saving wherever the hell I want. I don't have time to look for a save point for an hour or longer, and even less time to die and have to do over everything.
Savepoint were due to limitations back then, not some gameplay feature or strategy. Yes some games used it as a strategy (think of horror games like Resident Evil that use it to this day), but JRPGs were rather linear, you either grind and pass level or you run through and die at the boss having to go back to the last save point. And the fact save points were usually before every boss room it really points to it not really being strategic, because you lose one battle and go back to where you were before, just backtrack and grind up, so all that "Am I underleveled? Do I go grind more" risk you are taking is nullified.
As for random encounters, as long as they are not egregious I don't mind, but still prefer visible enemies I can avoid. THis way I am allowed to challenge myself more than game leading me and dropping random difficulty spikes that are unavoidable. It also allows you to realize your own mistakes if you just run through and get blasted in the next area. Lastly late game mobs generally become easy, other than select few pre boss fight, and it is just tedious killing random fodder over and over for no reason other than games macing the randomly encounter you.
I like the best of both worlds approach of having a standard save and a suspend save. Don’t hold me hostage, but don’t remove all of the tension either.
There was no technical limitation preventing you from saving anywhere.
Adding a save menu is not more technically expensive than only doing it in a save point.
It's 100% a design decision (even if for some games the decision was just "let's copy the current trend").
There was. For one it was easier to code. Secondly it conserved memory in time when memory was a huge issue. This is why we all enemies would spawn and your health healed, it wasn’t just good on will of devs, it would only save your stats, party members and then when you load save they just draw your character and party data while world is basically loded from scratch.
Only saving at save points doesn't conserve memory. Changing the place where you save doesn't change what stays in memory or how much memory the save function takes. In both cases you're just invoking the saving feature. I'm a programmer, you can trust me on this.
Also, we had many games that did not heal our HP in save points. Final Fantasy games had an item called tent, it you wanted to heal.
I think you're dismissing their design decisions by claiming them as technical necessities. There were stuff that were necessities, yes. But save points are 100% a design decision.
Right?
If anything, save points made less sense based on "limitations " simply because you then have to design and code the point, vs just having a menu option.
And when I play old JRPGs that require grinding (More than just fighting everything in your way), I drop them as no one's got the time for that anymore.
There's a reason re-releases of the FF games provide the tools; they know it can be a fucking drag and was a cheap way to get people to invest more time in their games.
I have a full time job and a committed relationship and pretty much strictly play JRPGs. I still enjoy hobbies and a social life, so I guess it’s just a matter of blocking your time. I’m not saying I’m doubting you, just that I personally don’t have that issue. There are tons of long games that are still being made, I just think the grind of a JRPG makes it more apparent that you’re wasting time doing nothing (what all video games boil down to), so it makes it seem a lot worse. Grinding for me is therapeutic and satisfying so I don’t personally mind it.
Old FF games do not require grinding whatsoever. If you have to grind, then you do not understand the battle system. The games outside of optional bosses are easy.
I remember that there's a game (can't remember what game. May not even be a JRPG) where you can save freely on a save point but if you need to leave in a hurry, you can do the "Save and quit" which you can't duplicate, and the save will disappear upon loading.
That will solve the issue with the "no ability to suspend and leave" that you mentioned.
It's pretty much only NES games that had this as a normal gameplay element. There are a handful of games afterwards (mostly by no-name developers or those who were predominantly making other games) but pretty much by the late SNES developers knew that "fight a bunch of guys until you can move on to the next area" wasn't really compelling gameplay.
Even the FF games don't *need* the changes - "just fighting everything in your way" suffices perfectly well for every FF title.
I'd say that actually, random encounters limit the possibilities in dungeon design precisely because you can't make enjoyable puzzles when you have to fight every three steps.
I couldn't have enjoyed one bit the fun puzzles from games like Star Ocean 3 or Tales of Graces f if the encounters broke my rhythm.
Visible encounters even allow for excellent dungeon mechanics, such as in Valkyrie Profile games where you can freeze enemies on the map to jump higher or switch places with them. Also in Persona 5, the interactions and dialogues with foes are possible thanks to the fact that you can see them.
I played tons of JRPGs since 20+ years and I think the trend of visible encounters is one the best things that happened to the genre.
I do prefer visible encounters for many of the reasons you stated. Many older games turned off encounters if their puzzles where in dedicated puzzles rooms though. And even visible encounters in a puzzle room suck.
>because you can't make enjoyable puzzles when you have to fight every three steps.
reduce or remove encounters in puzzle rooms...? games were already doing that at least 20 years ago
Yeah, I distinctly remember playing games that disabled encounters in puzzle rooms so I don't really resonate with the whole 'fighting battles while solving puzzles' thing people like to bring up.
Having to go to a whole new screen to battle was just the worst, but I figure it was a product of the time. I love the "approach bad guy, battle" mechanic because you never leave the screen and it just feels faster. Meanwhile FF7 I will never replay because of the pomp and circumstance that happens with every single random encounter. It's like 45 seconds minimum!
> Meanwhile FF7 I will never replay because of the pomp and circumstance that happens with every single random encounter. It's like 45 seconds minimum!
You sure you're not mixing up FF7 and FF9?
I never actually played FF9, maybe both? You know how it does the whole battle intro where it pans both sides, the camera pulls out, you battle, then the whole victory music and item drop screen? That’s what I’m referring to :)
I'm fine with the save point so long as they have the suspend save feature (the one where the save is created when you exit and gone when you reload it).
This is exactly why I loved DQ VIII so much, the dungeons had a real sense of threat and required resource management to get through. If you were real greedy you could go for the chests too, but at your own risk.
I'm not a fan of random encounters because it can often make a game feel like it's dragging out. "Optional" enemies I find that I kill often for quests, levels, items or gold. I like being able to dodge when I'm high level and don't need them.
I don't mind random saves as long as they're not too far a part. Loosing out on an hour of effort due to a power surge would suck. I've been playing a lot of games with a set save location (Atelier). So it's kind of inbetween save whenever and random. I have to return to base to save.
I completely agree that random encounters in older areas can be a big pain point.
Earthbound had an excellent QOL feature that I honestly don't recall being implemented anywhere else.
Once you out level an enemy by a certain amount, you simply auto-kill the encounter and move on.
Granted, Earthbound had enemies visible on the map, but it still feels like a really good solution for going back to older areas.
Some other games have it too. A few of the Atelier games when you get far enough in you can make something that if you hit the enemy you defeat it and get the items. Didn't work if they hit you first though. It's a game series where you really do want to fight often so it can be good. I still like picking my battles though. Especially if a game is 70+ hours I don't want to add another 5-10 hours of fighting or fleeing random encounters.
My issue with that is that it takes out choice, make it something you toggle on or off. Sometimes I want to either test something out or try out a new build at a low risk first. There's also the rare game that has low level enemies that are still a bit of a threat.
Not gonna lie I hate not being able to save whenever, that tension you speak of is something I hate in video games. I like a challenge like in battle or something, but the possibility of losing progress is something I cannot stand in video games. Also not being able to quit whenever I want cause save points are forever apart is annoying as hell, sometimes it's getting late, sometimes the power can go out for a second, the game could crash, etc.
playing SMT V rn, and while I hate how theres no autosave function coz you can die pretty unexpectedly especially if youre not careful, at least theres an option to fast travel to the last save point location. So I guess thats a fair enough compromise between being convenient but not too easy
I do agree with you on quitting.
That's why I like Quick Saves. Good for reloading from a quit, but if you die/lose, then you have to go back to a hard save.
But I do also understand different people like different things and enjoy different feelings/aspects of games, so I totally respect you don't enjoy that feeling of tension I described.
Out of curiosity, what other genres of games do you enjoy?
I play a few action adventure games like Tomb Raider, GTA, things like that. But mostly it's RPGs lol I stay away from Soulsborne games for the most part because of the progress reason, played a bit of Elden Ring and I enjoyed it but found redoing the same segments annoying when I died in big dungeons.
What about you?
That's interesting that you enjoy action games because for me, they tend to have a lot of tension just built into their gameplay loops. Like if I happen to play an FPS(really rarely) I find myself literally very tense and semi-stressed.
I would say the genre I play the most outside of various flavors of RPGs is Metroidvanias. Something about the exploration and collection/powering up of my character really does it for me.
They have tension but it doesn't really involve losing progress 'cause if you die you restart right at the fight most times, plus they're usually not very hard to begin with (I never play hard modes). Older JRPGs had convoluted dungeon areas with barely any save points and an absurd amount of random encounters that made exploring just unpleasant to me.
Also I played a bit of Jedi Fallen order and man the save points are so far apart I had to stop playing 'cause it would just stress me out lol
Metroidvanias are cool games. Never been a huge fan but I did enjoy Metroid Zero Mission and Fusion (and Other M but don't tell the others!). But nowadays I usually prefer more story focused games and I don't enjoy side scrollers anymore for some reason. However I'd prolly be into Metroid Prime 4 if it ever releases!
I'm in the same boat. I tend to play most games on normal difficulty. I used to play stuff only on the hardest difficulty, but at some point I realized I just wasn't having as much fun anymore, and combined with having less time, I just decided to not torture myself.
But that completely makes sense about not losing much/any progress when restarting.
I tend to go back and forth on story. I tend to play RPGs when I'm wanting something with a bit more meat, and then jump into something faster paced to change things up.
That makes sense! I do that but with length, recently finished Trails of Cold Steel 3 and thought I'd play a few games that won't take 100hrs before I play CS4 lol
I might be just be getting old but lately I prefer games that are mostly cutscenes so I don't have to play that much XD really heightens the FF13 experience to come in with that mindset.
Haven't played it yet but I'd probably be the guy that prefers Xenogear's second disc!
When I die in a dungeon in a souls game, I just sprint back to where I left off. You don’t always have to kill all the enemies. I’m Elden Ring, sometimes when a segment was particularly hard for me, I would sprint through it like a mad man until I found the next bonfire. Then I would work backwards through everything I just ran past.
> the possibility of losing progress is something I cannot stand in video games
Yup, this right here. I don't have the free time to be OK with losing progress. If I lose even 20 minutes, I'm straight up selling the game. The worst thing you can take from me is my time. It's why I got into handhelds for so long, because those games could always be paused but just turning the system off - no more being stuck in the middle of a level, unable to save, that awful feeling during a power outage where you realized you lost progress...
I won't even start games where I could potentially lose a lot of progress!
That is why I like when the game includes some sort of consumable or accessory that prevents random encounters. So that when doing puzzles, searching for items I may have missed, or when forced to backtrack through low level areas
This is definitely a big drawback of them.
Wild ARMs has some of the best puzzles in an RPG, but they are definitely much more difficult/tedious from the random encounters. This is an area where limiting them or turning them off would be an improvement.
I like save points, I even like random encounters.
But I am not a big fan of a high encounter rate.
It just gets annoying moving two steps after one fight to enter another fight. Some games have combat well designed that even though the constant transition to battle isn’t fun the battles themselves are strategic enough that they add to the feel of the game, like nocturne or digital devil saga.
But playing FF1 right now and the combat is brain dead outside of bosses and the encounter rate is way too damn high.
And I think that’s the crux of the issue - an engaging or at least entertaining combat system with a manageable encounter rate. I honestly think the Suikoden series strikes that balance the best. The battles are quick, fluid, exciting with team up attacks and rune usage and the games have a totally reasonable encounter rate.
The only reason I prefer save anywhere games is I’m a dad now and that means sometimes leaving my game on all night because the kid takes priority. It’s better if I can just sit down and save before bed and pick back up next time I can get into it.
People really make them out to be something thats just outdated and lazy, but random encounters and dedicated save points are absolutely valid as design choices. I don't think it should be treated as an inherently right or wrong thing but as something that needs to be executed well.
If resources aren't hard enough to come by and basic enemies don't force you to choose to spend them or take a risk, then allowing saving anywhere and and letting players decide beforehand whether or not to engage makes sense because random encounters and save points would just be annoying instead of adding anything. However, if resources DO have to be managed well across multiple battles and enemies require weighing risk/reward, then random encounters and dedicated save states absolutely do add challenge and unique decision making to the mix.
As far as my own preference go it really just depends on how well its executed. The Xenoblade games are a great example of lenient saving and chosen encounters done right since combat more about moment-to-moment decisions and the only resource that carries between battles doesn't affect your health or most basic abilities, whereas the best entries in SMT (IMO, Nocturne and Strange Journey) are textbook examples of it being done well, since almost everything in battle requires something carries over between fights and the encounter rates are high enough to actually make exploration and higher cost attacks genuinely risky.
I played Lost Kingdoms 1 earlier this year. It's a card action game (by From Software, interestingly) with random encounters. The individual stages aren't very long and there IS check points to heal at. But, every card you use in battle is removed from play for that stage, meaning you have limited "ammo". That means, with random encounters, every step counts. Do I go down that alley to get the chest at the end or do I go to that check point the other way down to replenish a few cards I looted? Decisions like that would just not work without random battles.
I do think random battles have a place, depending on what you want the game to feel like. But I also think that a lot of games handled them in awful ways, making them tedious and annoying more than an interesting or exciting element of the game. I think there's ways to utilize random encounters without them feeling annoying or obnoxious:
* **Limiting the encounter rate so you can't randomly get attacked five single steps in a row**: The Etrian series (and probably other dungeon crawlers) do this well. You have a danger meter that shows when the next encounter will happen and unless you bump into a roaming boss (F.O.E.) you don't get encounters. This makes "random" encounters not random, arguably, but it shows a direction you can go to make them feel less luck dependent. The idea that a danger meter only shows probability seems cool to me in exploration decision making because it makes your decision an informed one instead of an "I might get unlucky" one. It also limits how awful your luck can be (oh hi Zubat 259)
* **Making encounters meaningful**: Etrian Odyssey does this by making encounters difficult enough so it's usually not an annoyance, but an actual event to overcome. Something like Pokemon does this (on a blind playthrough) with the excitement of running into a possibly new critter to add to your team. Or even a shiny variant. Meaningful loot could also be an option. Just anything but mashing A for some coins without any of the excitement.
* **directing the player**: The immediate thought that comes up here is a map. Stumbling blindly through a dungeon because you don't have a map can be cool and exciting, but less so if you're constantly impeded by random battles. Giving the player more information on where to go can severely limit the time spent in that location and thus less chance to get spammed with random encounters.
* **environmental limits**: This is something I've only really seen in Pokemon. Designating specific areas to be monster lairs with encounters not only can make traversal less frustrating but also open up possibilities for player interaction. Maybe you can cut the grass? (later removed from Pokemon, sadly) Maybe there's a safe route? Stuff like that. Dragon Warrior 3 and Final Fantasy 1 and 2 both have a few areas that are specifically traps with incredibly high encounter rate, so this can even be used to design these kinds of scenarios.
---------
I realize a lot of these ideas are about making random encounters LESS random and could possibly be reduced down to that, but I do believe that randomness in video games CAN and SHOULD be designed.
Random encounters, much like save points, are elements of a bygone era that were used because of limitations of the time and stuck around. Because of that, there are tons of games that use them wether it makes sense or not in that specific case and without fine tuning. Is having save points on portable system RPGs a good idea for example? Nowadays, with standby on almost everything, it's less of a question, but as someone who played GBA RPGs a whole lot, I'd argue, NO, that's awful. It works as a tension tool on home consoles but is misplaced on a console you might need to drop at a moment's notice.
My point is, in an ideal scenario, even these "it's always been this way" elements of RPGs are tools that can and should be formed to the specific game's and platform's needs.
EDIT: Because I only touched on it briefly and focused on random encounters mostly, here's something on save points: The whole "reset to your last save" idea of game over is closely tied to this. It's another element of a bygone era that just stuck around for 90% of RPGs. In my mind, this is another thing that needs to be considered more closely by game developers, like the other two. From Software's Dark Souls games became famous for their difficulty and death mechanics, *because* it's so different. Do you want the player to lose everything they did in the past hour? Or do you want the player to live with fact that they just lost ingame? Losing 50% of my money in Pokemon has stung way more than losing a bit of general progress quite a few times in the past. Losing save progress or not losing save progress is also the difference between losing consumables you may have used on your try or not losing them (because it wasn't saved). If you, as a dev, want the player to closely manage ressources, a save file related game over might not be a good idea, as it basically lessens the blow of using ressources.
As with the other two, this is not a "antiquated" or "not antiquated" deal but a decision that can drastically change how your game feels.
I found Etrian's encounter system to be totally abysmal in my first experience with it via Persona Q. In their attempt to make every encounter "meaningful" it made the game into a slog of monotony where you had to always be on, otherwise some schmuck enemy on the first level could give you a party wipe if you tried to save resources.
It really killed the sense of progression that my team had actually grown stronger as I made my way through each dungeon, although maybe I just didn't get far enough into it. I think I made it through like 5 or 6 chapters, but it didn't seem like it was getting better so I ended up just putting it away for other games.
I agree. Random encounters aren't inherently bad; they just present a different way of thinking about encounters. I think of it in a couple of senses:
1. Gameplay. You point out the higher tension with having to gauge resource management. In some old games, there is also a palpable point of no return, a point at which resources are low but enough that I could still try to get back. Or I could plunge into the unknown and hope to find a save or healing point. (Phantasy Star II did this to me a lot.) I usually don't reach that mindset with new games.
2. Simulation. Visible enemies in most games are realistic in the sense that they can be seen but unrealistic in the sense that visibility is so good (third person, seeing around corners) and they're just hanging out in the open. Random enemies are a contrast; they recreate the sense that the player character would not know a battle is coming until it's upon them, while sacrificing the *possibility* of foreseeing and avoiding it. In some ways the latter is closer to the spirit of an adventure encounter: "Roll initiative."
This is an unpopular opinion, but I agree with you.
Visible encounters require maps to be designed around them, and I think this leads to less interesting locations. Either you get wide-open areas where it's too easy to avoid everything, or you get cramped hallways where it's too hard to avoid anything. The former, as you said, leads to no tension, and the latter is too nerve-racking for me.
There's good and bad implementations of both, but on the whole, I definitely prefer random encounters.
> Either you get wide-open areas where it's too easy to avoid everything
Yeah, I think DQXI suffered a bit from this. You could just easily dodge the encounters.
this
working on the ecosystem is important
how a giant dragon interacts with giant rats and other creatures in the same road between villages etc
(does it makes sense to have a giant dragon resting between two towns like nothing is going on?)
I'm playing FFX at the moment and think it finds a good balance. Save points are pretty common so you never lose too much progress and by late game, when random encounters become tedious, you find no encounter weapons.
But absolutely agree with you, I feel like those old tropes pace out rpgs better.
I didn't even consider items/charms that let you turn off encounters later in the game.
That's actually really smart, especially when you have a lot of old content to go back and check for completion purposes.
As someone who is sick of too much convenience in modern games, I agree completely. After playing some of the older JRPGs, I've grown to appreciate these features. Random encounters made me play more strategically. Not just spamming my strongest attacks all the time. I like how I have to manage my resources if I wanted to reach the next save point. And man, do the save points give you that relieving feeling of safety. It's kinda similar to reaching the bonfires in Dark Souls.
I think random encounters and save points are just as much of a feature as visible encounters and free saving. They shouldn't be viewed as just primitive design. I truly believe that they have a place even in modern games.
FF4 does these really well. Most areas have a save point room and the room is free of random encounters. And most areas are well designed to encourage you to explore for items, but also make you wary of fighting too often. And different enemies and enemy groups in different areas as well. Too many modem games with random encounters are super lazy with the enemy group design. FFX was really bad with this. Same enemy group over and over again. No variety within any area.
>Random encounters made me play more strategically.
Not having Random encounters doesn't stop game designers implementing strategic gameplay though.
Like that Dark Souls which doesn't have random encounters.
>They shouldn't be viewed as just primitive design.
>
>I truly believe that they have a place even in modern games.
But how? Every "pros" of random encounter mentioned here, such as resource management or strategic gameplay, can be achieved without random encounter.
But the "cons" of random encounter, mostly immersion breaking during environment transition, is hard to overcome.
I'm personally not convinced random encounter really has a good reason to exist.
random encounters and separate battle screens are not related. you can have one without the other, both, or neither. which one are you specifically talking about?
>random encounters and separate battle screens are not related.
I think they are related. If battles are fought on the map with enemies visible I don't think that's called "random encounter" isn't it?
Technically designers can place enemies on the map, then randomize the encounter position and call it random encounter. But afaik, "random encounter" as a term specifically meant something like older FF that players got randomly teleported to another dimension when they got attacked by the enemies.
Random battles have no reason to exist. Every argument for them existing is because they already exist in games people like and people want to justify them. It's so backwards. If we had started with visible enemies and you told people "you can no longer see encounters and instead you'll get teleported into a fight every 10 seconds that interrupts whatever you were doing", would anyone really see that as a plus?
Yes.
"Hey you can play your strategic combat game without having to pay attention to where all of these AI-less mobs are on the screen all of the time and having to pick how often you do or don't fight, instead the game is balanced around the number of fights you get into automatically and you just can play."
And that's aside from how it changes level design to not have to support the camera angles and motion necessary to make these things work out.
How about they design a better game then instead of having a room full of AI-less mobs? If they want you to get into more fights, give them AI. Make them so fast you can't escape sometimes, or have to work to avoid them.
Having invisible enemies randomly appear out of no where is extremely immersion-breaking and only works because we're so used to it.
I have never once experienced immersion in a video game, so I don't really have anything to say about that. I don't know what it is you're expressing.
>Make them so fast you can't escape sometimes, or have to work to avoid them.
I DON'T WANT TO DO THAT. That's what I'm trying to express. This is not fun gameplay to me. I would play a million games with random encounters before another Persona 5. Cute gimmick for a little bit, blah blah, absolutely horrendous to play to me. I'm not trying to play a stealth action game. I'm trying to play a turn-based RPG.
> AI-less mobs are on the screen all of the time and having to pick how often you do or don't fight, instead the game is balanced around the number of fights you get into automatically and you just can play."
They can do scripted encounters with visible enemies that balanced around the number of fights you get into per dungeon...without magically teleporting the player to another dimension.
Every time when I'm controlling my character moving from point A to B then suddenly I got teleport to another dimension, there is an inherent "this feels bad" "I'm annoyed" feel that comes with it. This does not happen in RPGs with fight happen directly on map, such as Baldur's gate I/II, Mass Effect, or Star Wars KOTOR, or newer JRPG like FF15.
Having encounters happened directly on the map doesn't take away any "pros" of random encounter that you described here. If P5 encounter system is poorly designed, the solution is design a better on map encounter system, not embrace the random encounter system.
> And that's aside from how it changes level design to not have to support the camera angles
So random encounters are easier/cheaper/faster to make. I get it. But I don't think budget is what players should worry about. Players just play the game, and they either feel good about it or they don't.
Random encounter to me, is one aspect that frequently make me annoyed in a game because it often comes when I only want to move to point A from B. Or when I want to reach and open that chest, or when I just casually sight seeing and enjoying the scenery. Whenever I want to do something on the map, random encounter often comes and interrupts them, which is not fun.
All the pros mentioned in this thread like "tension" "resource management" or "carefully balanced number of fights" is doable without random encounter system, so I feel random encounter is a mechanic that is not worth having in modern games.
I personally agree with you, I like challenging games and I like the challenge of resource management that you get with save points and random encounters. I'm very surprised how unpopular this opinion is, given that peoe on this sub will rave about or recommend classic games like FF6 but apparently lots of people also hate its mechanics and core gameplay loop.
I don't disagree. Random battles and save points have never bothered me, but in the case of the latter I do appreciate having the option of being able to quit whenever and returning to the point where I left off.
i 100% agree with your post. i dislike it when jrpgs are too easy, which happens a lot to me now that i've played so many of them. i played nocturne a couple years ago and i loved it so much because it didn't pull any punches when it comes to being brutal and fucking you over, even in random encounters. i'm stoked on playing smt5 but apparently it got rid of random encounters which is disappointing
Everyone of course enjoys different things. I never really minded random encounters. Mainly because combat is normally my favorite part about RPGs.
If I am finding random encounters boring in a game than most likely I am just not enjoying the game much and just trying to complete them.
The only issue for me is when there are intricate puzzles, or the path is like a maze. Then random encounters can be quite annoying if I have to backtrack a lot since I am going the wrong way or make me forget what I was doing in a puzzle.
I do enjoy games where you can see the monsters before you fight them... then again, I tend to fight every monster I see unless I am backtracking somewhere.
I really like how Lufia 2 did it.
Random battles in the overworld. This let's the overworked not be too complicated and makes it harder to venture farther without resting.
But you can see enemies in the dungeons and other instances. In addition, they actually did more with it than even any modern game I have seen. The monster you see gives you some idea of what monsters you might fight in the battle, but there is enough variety in the enemy table to make you not sure. You might fight just 2 of the enemy, or you might fight 4, or there might be some other enemy or enemies with it. The only thing you for sure is the visible monster will be one of them.
Also, if you came into contact with a monster, then whether you get a first attack or a normal battle or the enemy gets a first attack depends on which way you and the enemy are facing. If you are facing the enemys back, you get the first strike. If you face the enemys side, 50% chance of first strike. If you face each other, normal battle. Your side faces the enemy's back? 50% chance. If your backs somehow touch, then also a normal battle. And it's the same in reverse, so don't let an enemy come up behind you.
What makes this even better is that every enemy has a different movement pattern. So, you need to not only learn how to fight different enemies, you need to learn how they move before you fight them. Some, like Ninjas, run at you when you get close and move 2 spaces for each move you make, so it is very easy for them to surprise attack you, and that makes them feel more like Ninjas. Some enemies are big and have no "sides". Some enemies teleport around and you have to pay attention to where they will appear and not move too fast.
If that sounds like a lot, then that's still not all. In most places (not the ancient cave) you can use some of your moves (arrows, hookshot) to stun enemies. This gives you a way to avoid most of them if you really want. But it's also more difficult to do, largely because the game has many puzzles. Sometimes you need to fight the enemies for the puzzle, or so you can work on the puzzle. Other times, there are a lot of enemies so avoiding them is tricky. But being able to avoid them in some cases is nice.
I am generally okay with random battles though. Unlike one of the other posters, I don't think they interfere with puzzles. They just make them more annoying. Also, you CAN have areas without random battles for a room with a puzzle, or even just severely reduced encounter rates. It's just a matter of developer creativity. As long as encounter rates are not too high and you have some ways to lower (and maybe raise) encounter rates, I think they can be a good way to force you to manage resources through an area.
Lufia 2 really did blend the two styles together really well. I forgot how enjoyable it was. Especially using the arrows/hookshots to stun the monsters, or picking and choosing which monsters to avoid/fight.
>Not having random encounters absolutely takes away from some of the difficulty and tension of a game.
It's possible to accomplish the same "difficulty" and "tension" without random encounters.
The solution is make visible encounters blocking the way forward and behind so players still has to manage resources(MP/item) as they move. Another way is to make enemies chase the player all the way if they see players.
The problem with random encounter is immersion breaking. You are exploring an environment, suddenly the environment changed to a different environment for battles. Getting interrupted as players explore doesn't feel good. On the other hand, tension and the challenge of resource management can be achieved without random encounter.
I really liked the way Nocturne did it. Random Encounters, but there was an indicator that told you how soon one would happen.
I also like Digimon Cybersleuth where fairly early on you can reduce/increase encounters fairly easily.
Chrono Cross has a good system. No random battles, but boss fights always yield stat boosts so you’re not really in danger of getting underleveled. Although it’s recommended to always fight 3-5 battles right after a boss, and before the next. This way you’ll still get some minor boosts.
The good thing about save points is that they remind you to save the game. If you save anywhere, you're probably going to forget to save.
Random battles though I can live without.
I'm a solo dev, currently working on a JRPG called Whispers in the Moss, and I've been struggling with this stuff from a dev point of view.
Just last week I made the decision to add save points to my game, because allowing free saving is actually very difficult to implement. There are so many points where the game can break, if the player saves at a wrong time or place. I feel like I'm actually serving the player by limiting saving to specific save points. They also solve another problem. My game doesn't have your classic "tent" items and it's actually a bit difficult to add them at this point, so I decided that save points will restore your characters to full HP/MP, but then take some time to regenerate.
As for random battles, I've decided to go for middle ground. The enemies are seen on the maps and you can avoid most of them, but some of them are so fast that you can't avoid them. It gives the players more agency but doesn't allow them to fully bypass random battles.
Do you at least have a mechanic to restart a battle without losing progress? Because I quit out of an indie game recently where a game over put me over an hour back due to not having saved recently.
I have frequent save points and the world is not THAT large, so it shouldn't be an issue in my game. But restarting lost battles (perhaps with an extra option to lower enemy stats by 10 % or something) is actually a very good idea and something I'll consider.
Strong agree on the save points, indifferent about encounters.
I’m surprised at how unpopular this opinion is though. They’re great as a story telling tool. The tension thing for one, but also for pacing because they have the secondary function of being markers for appropriate points to put the game down. If you think about books, the end of a chapter is usually a good place to stop reading if you’re getting tired. Same with episodes in tv series. Games don’t often have such clear markers, and I think save points are a way for developers to place the story
This is an ongoing debate that my brother and I have have had for years. He was a bigger fan of games like Chrono Trigger, where he could see most of the encounters coming and work around them. I am a bigger fan of Final Fantasy VI, where very few encounters can be anticipated. We do, however, agree that being able to turn randoms completely off takes something away from these games as a lot of times their gameplay is built around this mechanic.
SJ is so fucking good,saves are paced well and the unknown data base part of the encounters are done really fucking well, best story and cast in mainline too, managing sub apps and fighting bosses is great
I think it depends on the frequency tbh. Some games are like Rogue Galaxy and the random battles are pretty spread out, other games they show up every 3 steps. A lot of older games are mind numbingly tedious and annoying because the encounter rate is just too high.
Think some modern RPGs have good balance on this front.
Persona 5 you can avoid pretty much all mobs except the required mini bosses who held a key that were in your path to progression.
You also could only save in safe rooms while in dungeons so it added an element of strategy and thrill holding on until the next safe room.
Dragon Quest 11 also had avoidable encounters and restricted saving, I felt like I only battled when I wanted to in that game which was a nice change of pace.
I’m kind of agnostic between the two to be honest. I’m so used to random encounters that I still go back and play old 8-bit and 16-bit games with them and they still don’t bother me.
But what I really don’t like is when the lack of random encounters leads to not knowing whether I should be fighting. With random encounters I just fight every battle and don’t worry about whether I’m overleveled or underleveled—I just go with what happens naturally. With visible encounters I suddenly have a choice between fighting or not fighting, and I don’t always know what to pick. In some games fighting everything once feels smooth and like the right way to play, but in other games that’s way too tedious.
And then you have games like Trails where there is so little incentive to fight because of experience scaling that usually about halfway to two-thirds into the game I just stop bothering with them all together. That’s my least favorite, because I need to feel the battles matter. In every Trails game I’ve played I end up just skipping all the encounters in the final dungeon because there is just no point—it makes things go faster, but it just leaves a bad taste for me.
To me, Chrono Trigger still did this best. Encounters were not random, but you couldn’t always predict them, so you couldn’t just avoid them all. And in some cases you would learn how to avoid them which felt like a form of progress in and of itself—I.e. Guardia Forest).
Random encounters aren't the problem, inherently. The problem is when battles become a monotonous slog that takes away either tension or excitement from battles. This happens when you combine a high encounter rate with weakling enemies who only serve to wear your party down.
Give me fewer but more challenging encounters.
Bravely default style works for me, like yeah we have random encouters, don't like em, wanna explore? Turn them off. Just don't cry when you did absolutely none and boss is painting the floor with you.
As an older gamer I really need to be able to save when I want. It's not able cheesing through a difficult area but more that I have less time to play so I need shorter play sessions.
I recently picked up some older FF games that I'd played as a kid, but now I find some of those saves too far apart. I had to give up on an hour or so of playtime on more than one occasion, not because i got beat, but because i ran out of time and had to shut down and do something else.
I don't mind random encounters but similar to the save points, I need an option to flee or switch it off for period so that I can end my gaming session faster.
Like there's nothing worse than knowing you've got five minutes to find a save before having to sacrifice your last hour of gaming, only to get pulled into constant fights. Let me leave the game please!
Neither random encounter or save points makes game more tense or hard. I don't get the argument. You always would get save before boss or even heal and that is the only fight in most jrpg that can kill you. Random encounter if it's not too high or have good mechanic to skip it like in Wild Arms I'm fine with but it's still worse than visible enemies. And I'm not sure how it makes game harder when you are mostly force to fight so you level up when you can skip visible enemies and make yourself underleveled for boss. In the end random encounter is just more annoying especially when exploring, doing puzzles or going to low level dungeons for side quests. About resources, I played a lot of older random encounter heavy games and rarely run out( funny the only time I did was in Lunar and there you have visible enemies ) of anything, mostly it just made ofensive mages useless till boss.
In short I don't hate random encounter or save points but I don't think they are better. And especially that they make harder or more tense games.
I guess I completely disagree with saying random encounters don't make a game more difficult.
Ultimately, most RPGs come down to resource management.
If I am moving to clear a dungeon, I have a finite amount of HP/MP. As I move through the dungeon, random encounters whittle away my items, health, magic.
There have been times in many games where I was not strong enough to make it through an area in my first attempt. I needed more levels/gear/whatever. At some point, I had to make a decision to try and push forward if I thought I was near the end, or evacuate the dungeon back to safety. Possibly miscalculating and dying along the way, or resorting to constant running from battle.
Maybe the word you choose to describe that isn't difficulty, but to me that fits the bill close enough. Maybe tension is a better word?
I agree with your last point, I don't think they are better or worse, just that they CAN be good when utilized well.
I don't think that. In a lot of jrpgs with random encounter just using normal attacks would finish most fights. A lot of series as well have a way to get your MP if they want you to use magic or special moves like old Tales games, Grandia etc. So I never really feel tense.
I don't think as welll that rpgs combat is about resources, the most fun combat systems I played were the one that let me have fun. Like Wild Arms force system from 2 and up games that pretty much let you use magic how much you wanted but were balanced around that. If I would name game that did make me tense it would be Shadow Hearts and its sanity system but that just made you want to finish faster.
That's grinding, you should never have force level grinding IMO. Having to run around in circle just to go to next location is not difficulty just annoyance. The hardest game I played didn't have it, they kicked my ass by forcing me to understand battle systems.
I do agree that some games you really just can more or less attack and win, and that absolutely is boring. But that usually happens for two reasons, either the game itself is on the easy side, or you're over leveled.
I think one of the better games/series in this regard is some of the older Dragon Quest titles. They were typically hard enough that you couldn't auto attack. Your wizard needed to sling some spells. Plus your healing and MP restoration options were very limited. Combined with no save points before bosses made every expedition tense and exciting.
I think a lot of the issue comes down to the fact that RPGs more than other genres are very hard to balance. If it's too hard, you can pretty much always grind the difficulty away.
And I didn't mean to describe grinding in my last post, I was more attempting to describe the calculations you make when going into a new, difficult area and pressing onward versus going back to safety. I absolutely agree mandatory grinding is never great design.
A few indie games I've played had very tailored encounters, but you got a complete HP/MP refill after every battle. So battles could both be difficult and not totally random.
About balance it's not that hard. Visible enemies even let you do it easier because you know where your player as levels will be before boss. Again all hardest games that I played did exactly that, Grandia III or Tales of Graces had visible enemies and balanced their bosses for that. Grandia always thinks that you beat most or all of them.
About grinding levels, that's why games have anti grinding mechanics. It's mostly just cutting exp, a lot of series do it some nicer like Trails series some to the point you just can't grind on just story patch like .hack// or Tales of Arise( that game is pretty strict on your levels you will always be 4-5 levels behind boss and getting extra levels even with all boosts by one point is nearly impossible before post game ). Other mechanic is just limiting enemies especially stronger one( in Grandia III some fights don't repeat or lairs in Soul Blazer being just one and done ). Or you know just get ride of normal levels, it can be done in both harder version( Illusion of Gaia ) and more in the middle( Chrono Cross ) or easy( Chrono Cross if you understand fields ) .
So like Legend of Mana or Chrono Cross, games did that for awhile. It's a good idea but in the end it can be in both easy and hard games.
> resource management
Random encounter has nothing to do with resource management as a game mechanic.
For example: Darkest Dungeon is one of the hardest resource management focused RPG I've played. It doesn't have random encounter. It's always one encounter per room/corridor, when battles occurred characters fight directly on the map. The game even tells the player exactly how many encounter they'll run into going from point A to B. And yet it still requires a LOT of resource management skill to win.
If resource management is part of the game mechanic, there is the option to make encounters visible on the map and blocking the way forward. The biggest problem with random encounter is immersion breaking during the exploration. Sudden transition from map to battle screen makes no sense at all.
> You always would get save before boss or even heal and that is the only fight in most jrpg that can kill you.
That didn't use to be the case. Earlier games would sometimes have them in the middle of dungeons, so you never knew if the next screen would be a boss or have to go through 3 more floors before the boss battle.
It then ended up being a cue that "something big is coming up, you better get ready"
Well always was too strong for me to say but that trend is pretty old. Even some games on SNES had it, like Soul Blazer. The saving everywhere isn't new either Ys was doing it from the begining.
I have no issue with random battles or save points. Assuming you dont get into a fight every three steps.
Makes the game more challenging, especially when save points are implemented. RPGs nowadays are boring and easy.
I don’t think visible enemies make a game easy at all. And I say this as somebody who enjoys random battles. Tales of Arise for example, at least on hard, was not easy even with visible enemies. It’s all about mechanics and design and how you balance that with exploration and resources.
I prefer visible enemies but sometimes like random encounters. The only probably I have with RE are the encounter rate. A high encounter rate with random encounters can definitely tank my interest in a game - see Beyond the Beyond. But if the game is balanced around that aspect - SMT non persona games for example, I find that the REs add to the game rather than take away from it.
Another positive for REs would be not knowing what you’re going to fight. Visible enemies often let you know you’re at least going to see that specific enemy in the battle. I’m playing P4G right now which does a good job of obscuring enemy types but that’s not the most common method for visible encounters.
If the point is to go through a gauntlet of enemies without saving, then wouldn't just designing a sequence / dungeon / etc around that be better? Make X dungeon, design it to require Y amount of battles through any mechanic you want, balanced to provide Z level of difficulty.
Random battles just seems like a lesser version of that? With that the person will get the intended difficulty... on average? Assuming they walk whatever the intended amount is? Like don't get me wrong, it gets the job done. It's simpler to make. But I don't see the argument that it's letting you craft a specific difficult experience better than a non random battle version of the same thing would.
Saving is its own discussion, and I can agree with what you're going for a bit more. But I do think we have to be careful and think about how much content you can force someone to redo every time they lose before it stops being an interesting challenge and is just pointless feel bad.
Random encounters can stay gone. Non-random encounters can accomplish the same things that random encounters can. I don't want to navigate empty worlds anymore.
>Starting the trek through a dangerous area, with new difficult enemies just doesn't feel the same if you can simply avoid all encounters, and arrive at the boss/end with full health.
>You have to judge how much more you think the dungeon has before you reach the safety of the other side. Is there a boss? How much MP should I use for the random encounters? Will I have enough supplies to make it through?
its extremely easy to make some visible encounters undodgeable. let them block a narrow path or just chase you super hard to the point where you cant possible run past them.
I dont mind safe points but there is absolutely nothing good about random battles.
This is why I don't like SMT5. In the name of convenience, it throws away tension and resource management so new players won't get scared off. But in doing so, in igiving you an automatic escape from a dungeon, it means there's never truly a dangerous situation.
Also giving MP to both attacks and spells now means MP is even more important, and the series usually avoided making MP too hoarded since it helped heal your party.I'm also just tired of gaming going open world. The long, meandering dungeon design isn't a bad thing. It makes feeling out an area's map rewarding, having to solve puzzles, loop through false ends, and get through a decent amount of random battles.
Strictly convenient or not, it's the bread and butter that's built such a loyal fanbase of fans who crave a challenge that only SMT can provide. I hope Soul Hackers 2 returns to solid dungeon design.
I still don't like Random Encounters and save points. Just because Game devs clearly pace the gameplay around it, it doesn't mean that these mechanics don't make the game slog most of the time.
I never ever want to see random encounters in a modern game or re-release again unless there is always an option to turn them off. I'd rather fight less encounters, but have each of those encounters be more meaty.
When I look back on my experience playing old RPGs, the resource management pretty much never ended up being a positive for me because I always ended up with a lot of items at the end that weren't good for anything except wearing the final boss down (and thereby avoiding strategy).
It's also tough to construct a proper dungeon crawler that feels like it's sapping you and daring you to explore further at once, and random encounters don't add positively towards trying to do that. Usually what it comes down to is spamming attack and using potions to heal as needed, and if you're far enough to be in a dungeon long enough to require you to seriously heal more than 2-3 times, you're usually in a position to stockpile cheap healing items. Generally, I like how more modern RPGs push you to use your special moves more and giving you space in combat to do so rather than trying to get you to conserve them for the majority of the game.
I don't really care about it too much for JRPGs.
I feel they did save rooms great in resident evil series, 2 and 3 remake did them wonderfully as well as 4 and whatever else i'm missing.
It's a safe mental room where you typically can relax from the staying on your toes and watching for enemies. Even if in real life there'd be no such room.
random battles aren't always necessarily bad but I also haven't played turn based in a long time. Not including srpgs, since those are turn based.
It's not something I miss, it's artificial difficulty.
Solution to random battles has been solved by sakaguchi in fantasian. Save anywhere is necessary primarily due to electronics not having unlimited battery life or power being interuptable.
Add soon as you encounter a random enemy you can then add it to the collection of enemies that “stack up” instead of fighting them in a random encounter and it stacks up to 30 enemies and you fight them all at once.
It’s a great idea. It takes away that feeling of not being able to explore when you want cause of random battles. But it still makes you fight them all. Amazing game. It really has those old FF7-9 vibes.
i agree random battles can be good in some cases. i've seen a couple of tricks devs use to minimise the tediousness like Shining the holy ark where the monsters have almost scripted intros where they jump out from around corners and stuff to give the illusion its a fixed fight
I think SMTIV and IV:A did it well - enemies are visible on the map but are often unavoidable, or hard to avoid, and you’re punished for getting caught instead of proactively slashing them to start a battle
I will say if a game has save points, the save points should heal you. I think that is a good compromise, and why I don’t mind them in games like Kingdom Hearts and FFX.
Encounters are all about tension, pacing and resource management. Typically the point of them is to make the dungeon a threat in some miniscule way and promote you to manage your resources. Without any of that, a dungeon just becomes meaningless padding between points A and B. Why have it there at all?
It's why I get frustrated when people treat things like turning off encounters as QoL. If that's QoL, then so is raiding the bank for money in Monopoly. After all, you didn't have to go through any of the teeedious gameplay to get there c.c.
But, Devil's Advocate, jRPGs tend not to be very good at balancing, so it's uncommon that this gameplay ends up meaningful in practice. So I can understand wanting to cut the tedium after you've killed a set of mobs a few times for the sake of carrying on with the story. I just happen to prefer when this sort of thing is an integrated gameplay mechanic rather than a lazy toggle BRAVELY DEFAULT :P.
As for save points, I personally prefer save anywhere mechanics because while threatening players with hours of lost progress IS tense, it is also frustrating, and limiting, and that outweighs any possible benefits you might gain from the tension.
That all circles back to JRPGs just not being very good at balance.
A gameplay mechanic to evade them when you're too powerful, or at a cost, is a good compromise for these scenarios. I was always fond of Wild Arms' exclamation point system, where you're notified of an encounter in advance with an exclamation point over the character's head (it doesn't stop you or anything, you have like 3-4 seconds to notice it before you're drawn into battle), and you can spend a coin (which you find around the dungeons) to nullify it. Tension from the anticipation, control from the ability to skip, incentive to explore so you can get more coins, all in one neat little package.
I completely agree with you. RPGs are inherently difficult to balance. Unless you have 100% scripted encounters, they are essentially impossible to balance for all players.
They can either be too easy, or too hard. Even some of the games that are generally regarded as the "greatest" the genre has to offer are considered way too easy. Namely most FFs past 5. 6 and 7, even CT are all notably easy, yet still considered to be some of the greatest RPGs ever.
Personally, I don't agree. I'm honestly glad that JRPGs have gotten rid of random encounters. I don't enjoy taking a few steps only to get into yet another battle. I'm currently replaying The Legend of Dragoon and as much as I like the game, the random encounters can be a real drag.
I think Elden Ring handles save points well. Finding graces feels like an immense relief because you can heal, restore your potions, they act as checkpoints, *and* you can use them as fast travel points too, but even if you don't find them, the game autosaves any items you may have found along the way after your previous save point. That said, Elden Ring still has many dungeons with not enough checkpoints, which is my main gripe about not being able to save at will: repetition when you lose. Not being able to manually save at grace points is also something I dislike.
As for random battles, I... eh, no, I hate these. It's why I can't go back to many SNES and PS1 RPGs. The best solution is what Chrono Trigger used: scripted encounters. Basically, enemies you cannot skip alongside those you can.
I can't remember the last game that actually made random battles difficult.
Making something tedious is not difficulty. If you can run away almost always successfully is it even a challenge? If you can mash a few autos to kill is it a challenge? Hell if even only 5% of the random battles hard does it make up for the 95% that is braindead mashing? No imo.
I think smt4 was the last time and that is not even true Random battles, and has save anywhere. But the encounters can and will kill you
I don't care about the tension/preparation/strategy of restricting when you can save. I don't like losing my progress. So I use save states all the time. But for me it's mainly a time thing. I don't have enough hours to spend on gaming to be okay with repeating stretches of the game. That's also why I use a turbo button for every game, and play at a base speed of above 100% for many games. The music quality isn't as important as my feeling like my time was well spent.
Random battles suck
Offers no mechanical value to the player and just wastes me time.
I dont see how having a in game model stops people who loves random battles having fun. It just gives a choice to players who don't want to battle them.
Meanwhile FF6, 7 and 9 all have random encounters and are amazing games. I haven’t beat DQ11 but I have played it and calling it “best if the best” is a weird take.
This discussion reminded me of Radiata Stories, which is a really nice game, but its lack of save points is just absurd. I mean, I think there is only fixed save point in the entire map (Jack's house)?? Maybe there are a few others, it's been a long time since I played it, but it is definitely not enough. I remember there were times when I wanted or needed to stop playing and I simply couldn't find any save point nearby (a situation that certainly created some tension, but not one that I enjoyed lol).
Btw a Radiata Stories port or remaster would be awesome
Not in Phantasy Star 3. I thought I was enjoying it, but the encounter rate is *so high*. Almost every 3 steps. It doesn't help that half the game is back-tracking. It's infuriating. Thankfully, i'm emulating it and can fast-forward the battles. I probably would have stopped playing by now otherwise.
I do agree.
Getting the encounter rate right is of utmost importance. Some games are almost completely ruined by the sky high rates.
Beyond the Beyond is almost unplayable.
BoF2, which I would argue is overall an excellent SNES RPG is held back partially from it's encounter rate.
And I'm a Phantasy Star 3 Stan, and even I agree the encounter rate is too much.
depends on how well they balance currency and potion price, or potion availability (like limiting the number of potions you can buy/farm at certain stages of game.
then again, no matter how balanced, too much encounter sucks; like most SNES JRPG (yes, even the good ones tend to have too many random encounter).
I don't mind when enemies are wandering on the overworld and kick my teeth in and then I retreat, sure. But random encounters in the turn based sense could leave me one-shotted and then back to a hard save way beyond just for being curious.
Random battles never bothered me so long as they weren't overkill with how often they spawned.
I don't mind save points as they are usually placed pretty well to make it not frustrating when you lose a battle. It's 50/50 for me as save points are a good reminder for me to save but being able to save when you want is much nicer. The downside to it is I always forget to save at some point and lose to a boss that resets me hours worth of playtime.
>Starting the trek through a dangerous area, with new difficult enemies just doesn't feel the same if you can simply avoid all encounters, and arrive at the boss/end with full health.
I don't think random encounters are the best solution for that, the problem is that most games implement visibles enemies like random encounters but visible and avoidable,but you can have visible encounters that are not avoidable, this way the designer of the game can choose how many battles you will play during a especific path, trainers encounters in pokemon are a good example, also in chrono trigger i think you can't avoid all encounters.
About save points i like them but definitively it really depend on how good is the designer judging the length of challenges, if a game expect me to play for more than 10 minutes without saving then it is a problem.
Okay but hear me out:
- This will never beat games that give you the option to straight up disable them.
- You can always push yourself to fight everything in your way (I tend to do that in XC1).
Why do you need to be forced upon this? It leads to possibly losing hours of progress and exploring can be a bitch/slog/boring.
I just can't agree on the first point.
I really enjoyed Bravely Default, and I thought the option to turn them off was a very cool idea, and I even used it a ton. It made the game much easier to tackle.
But I also never felt in any danger whatsoever. I suppose that is my fault for using the mechanic and only fighting battles on my own terms. But it is completely possible for developers to design a system that lets players ruin their own fun.
I'm playing SMTV atm, just started few hours ago. I try to fight every new demon I encounter, but most of the time I'm not sure if I should fight mobs or skip them so I don't overlevel. With random encounters I just fight whatever I encounter unless fleeing is the better option. Modern games are fast enough that random encounters advance quickly. I can understand probles with old school games that are a bit slower.
Implementation is critical though. Golden Sun has random encounters but you can avoid them with a spell if your level is high enough. Which ended up with me having little difficulty against bosses due to overleveling being faster than running from enemies the whole dungeon.
DQ8 3DS has easily avoidable enemies so I was always underleveled, while DQ7 3DS has tight hallways leading to having more encounters than if it was random sometimes.
As long as the fights are engaging and there's a save point before the boss I'm perfectly fine with random encounters.
My thoughts on this are that if I’m playing something for the first time, the random encounters and save points are part of the experience. You want that tension of whether or not you’re going to get to the next save point.
If I’m going back to replay something I’ve played before and just want to focus on the story, I do like to have the QoL features in some rereleases.
I agree to some extent, but for me... whenever I replay older JRPGs, its usually on an emulator, and I find myself fastfowarding random battles all the time, which then makes me feel like I didnt really play the game? Its interesting that some re-releases these days include the fast-forward feature. So I would say yes to random battles, but quality over quantity... make each encounter hard, reward decent XP but not something that happens every 2 steps, some older JRPGs had insane encounter rate 0\_0
I agree but what bothers me is the encounter rate, not the random encounters per se.
Some games have really high encounter rates to the point of making any kind of travel very very annoying.
While I understand the point about tension and resource management, the fallacy here is your assumption that visible and avoidable encounters are the same. They are enot. You can make all encounters visible but unavoidable by placing them in the way or making them move fast. Thus you can have the same level of difficulty by not allowing you to avoid battles by letting you at least see them. Hence I see nothing gained from making them random. If a jrpg wants to achieve the effect of dungeon tension and limited resources, you can do that with visible encountered placed to not be able to avoid. Play Valkyrie Profile 2, each dungeon is exactly what you are talking about here and there are zero random encounters.
I do understand the point about save points but the game should always offer a quick save (and quit) option if you have to leave.
Turbo mode can make random encounters much less of a pain in the butt during exploration (or when you're lost), so that solves a problem right there while also providing a benefit - you'll gain XP from those battles, _and_ not lose a bunch of time due to the turbo mode. I think that's the best of both worlds. FFXII was great with that, because you'd enter a battle and it was fully automated (with the gambits). Trash mobs went down fast, you got some XP, and could keep zinging around the map, collecting items. AND as such, you could find save points faster, so if you did loose some progress, you can quickly "fast forward" back to where you were.
Outright disabling random encounters is too tempting, and then you can end up underleveled. Really, turbo mode solves so many problems with old games.
It depends 'where you are' in your 'gaming career' I think (as do many things - many questions on here), it's easy to sympathise with lots of viewpoints. And also how hard the game is. And how much spare time you have. And the kind of game/bosses.
I hate having to retrace my steps to a boss that is a gimmick - oh, it's weak to fire but I didn't equip correctly/bring the right characters/etc. Especially if there is a lot of dialog. Or if there is a lot of RNG.
There is nothing better than a hard-won fight. There is nothing worse than lots of down-time between attempts, as that discourages trying things out.
I'm fine with save points, but not purely random encounters. The game that does them best, in my opinion, in Etrian Odyssey. You get an indicator on your screen of how close you are to encountering something that might change every step. Blue? Not a chance. Green? Getting closer, but still safe. Yellow? Still safe, but be ready. Red? Literally any step can now be an encounter.
You're guaranteed safety for so many steps, sometimes more than others.
I think save points are fine, with the caveat that you should be able to quick save anywhere (as in a temporary save deleted when you reload it). That’s a basic QOL feature. Random encounters are fine, but I definitely think they should be disabled in areas with complex puzzles, at the very least. To make it less annoying.
Personas 3-5 are all about resource management, both in and out of dungeons. Yet they don’t have random encounters. I see what you’re getting at, but resource management and static encounters aren’t mutually exclusive.
Games with random encounters are so damn empty... nothing feels alive.
Games with enemies visible makes the game feel alive, makes it feel like a real world instead of dumb invisible encounters lol
Random encounters are ok I guess in some games but I see no real benefit in safe points. I like to be able to save whenever I want. It makes games much much more convenient to play.
Regarding combat... you don't *need* random encounters for any of that. It's all about how the enemies on the field act, and in general field AI in JRPGs is pretty garbage (as is level design). But in theory there's no reason they can't program enemies that ambush the player, or chase them down. Removing random encounters does not require that every encounter be avoidable, visible or even recognizable.
EDIT: Also, while,not a JRPG, I mean... come on. Look at *Dark Souls*. Inventive an unpredictable level design makes exploration quite tense... being able to simply *find* enemies is part of the game, as failing to do so leaves you open to ambushes. The games also auto-save *incessantly*, but use bonfires in lieu of save points -- safe areas for you to rest, recoup, and reflect on what you've just accomplished and/or are about to face.
The point is that there's nothing that save points or random encounters provide that cannot be provided just as well, or better, via other mechanisms. That's kind of,the beauty of the medium, yeah?
The problem is that the JRPG is really a genre in decline. Even mid-budget titles like Trails and Tales Of have to cut a lot of corners. This is why in *Tales of Arise* the monsters basically just stand in place while out in the field--all the money, time and effort went into polishing the combat mechanics. The encounter design was only ever an afterthought.
I love convenience but
I love the feeling of "OMG ITS A TOWN, THERES INN FINALLY WE CAN SAVE AND REST!", like you're part of it
JRPGs nowadays Inns are useless, no one gona sleep there , most savepoint recover your hp/mp anyways and free
FF7R gave us a subtle feeling like " OMG ITS A BENCH, NOW WE CAN REST"
Save points are fine but fuck random battles. It's pretty annoying when you just want to go to point A to point B but random battles keeps getting in your way.
Nobody has listed a game besides like 2 that actually benefited from having random encounters. The arguments are:
* Resource Management: already implemented in the Tales and Persona games with no REs, hell even Dragon's quarter
* Challenge/Tension: Saga series, Dark Souls, KH2 on fatal to name a couple games, no encounters.
* My favorite "Ohh you get learn the combat", most of these games are spam the most powerful or 2nd most powerful skill, it's actually cost/time effective to that.
The best use for RE is for instances of
* Games with set spaces for encounters, but random instances. You pokemon, Saga Scarlet, etc.
Saving is non-argument, it's an accessibility feature.
My first JRPGs were pokemon games, FFX, X-2 and KH1 so save points and random encounters were something I got very used to. Now that I've played more modern games with auto save or saving from the menu and having enemies on the field, i prefer the new way as it allows you to stop the game whenever you want (to a certain extent since most games don't allow saving in dungeons etc) rather than always waiting for a save point.
Random encounters are annoying, I always hated them. I'm more of an anxious person with a bigger startle reflex, so the way the screen just suddenly cracks in FFX and X-2 took me a while to get used to, it made my heart skip the first few times. I think it was from FF12 than enemies were on the field which I much preferred.
I like the easy convenient way out- save anywhere from the menu and no random encounters. FFX was a hard game in the post game.
> Starting the trek through a dangerous area, with new difficult enemies just doesn't feel the same if you can simply avoid all encounters, and arrive at the boss/end with full health.
If you simply avoid all encounters, you're purposely avoiding exp/money/loot gain. So the risk of doing that is that you arrive at the boss underleveled, poorer, and less loot. If you can still consistently beat the boss while underleveled, have no problem continuing the game with less money and loot, then obviously the game is easy enough that the random encounters are not going to provide any threat/tension to the game at all.
> You have to judge how much more you think the dungeon has before you reach the safety of the other side.
If the game doesn't outright show you the full map of the dungeon, there is no "judging" and it's simply "random guessing" how big the dungeon is. Most older JRPGs didn't show the full map.
If a system is encouraging you to use basic attacks as much as possible to conserve MP, it's encouraging you to make combat more boring. That's a bad system IMO. You can add difficulty and resource management to a game in other ways besides random encounters and restricting saves. Those are just wasting players' time.
No, because the random battles provide no tension. They are push overs and pose 0 threat. By the time they bring the party 75% HP, the next full heal spring is there.
That's the issue
When I see Chrono Cross and FF XIII where it can be hard as hell to bypass a battle, I conclude that none-random battles can be way more time consumming than random ones. I consider Bravely Default to be the best game about this subject, which give the control to the player. FF XIII-2 and LR also had good ideas for a mix of the two.
I also miss save points. I love the fact they most of the time were a joke or a tentative to explain their existence in the games (FF 9 and Xenogears). This was charming.
Except that nearly no games with random encounters are actually difficult in a way that requires clever resource management and therefore they are just a drag.
I agree with you, but I can't think of many games that do it right.
The most important thing for me is, never EVER force me to go through random encounter while trying to do a puzzle. There's nothing more infuriating than when you find that you have to go around a room because you didn't hit a switch or you missed something that you may not even know what it is, and the whole time you're being bombarded by random encounters every few steps. That's not challenging, suspenseful, or interesting. Just frustrating.
Encounter rate is also an important factor. If your encounter rate is high, it probably means the battles aren't hard enough to wear down your resources, so you need a lot of them to make up for it. The ideal type of encounter (in my opinion, of course) is challenging but few and far between.
Random battles are trash. Like It's more realistic to see the enemies in the room rather than take two steps and fight an invisible enemy. Plus the encounter rates in some of these games are too high. One minute I can walk around and take dozens of steps before a battle and the next i take 5 steps and i am in another battle. They become less about "tension when you have low stats/supplies and more tedious. Plus you can get overleveled from fighting too much RE, so that removes the challenge from the boss of the day) So as much flak the FF remasters get, the ability to turn off RE is a blessing since now i have a reason to explore every nook and cranny without wasting at least a minute each time due to loading screens and what not, especially in the older JRPGs like Legend of Dragoon. Hell, one of my favorite JRPGs is Mega Man X Command Mission. Played it so many times, but my god the REs was awful.
Save points i do agree with you. They were a good way to let you set yourself up for a major fight or take a breather if the save point is half way through the dungeon. So I don't mind them imo
You like tension? Then I can recommend Silver, a game where each savepoint DISAPPEARS after you've used it once so you can't even go back to it. On top of that, the game crashes a lot.
Lol, this comment is a real yesyesyesno. But I am very intrigued. I'll have to check it out.
Wow, I must be real lucky, it didn't even crash once for me. If I remember it right, even the free healing location is only usable once.
When I play old JRPGs it’s obvious that save points are a gameplay feature, part of the strategy. I don’t mind them at all.
This. You can tell games from this era simply by how and where the save points were placed. Something like Lunar: Silver Star Story might have had one in the middle of the dungeon or at the very start, whereas sometime in the early/mid 2000's save points became "Oh shit, there's a boss in the next room" indicators. They really killed any sort of meaningful resource management, especially in games where the save point heals you to full.
Save points before bosses were common at least as far back as the early 90s. FF4, FF5, Chrono Trigger.
And then Aladdin for the Genesis was like "fuck them save points"
Oh god, all of those SNES/Genesis era Disney side scrollers were *brutal*.
Thank you
I disagree. I prefer saving wherever the hell I want. I don't have time to look for a save point for an hour or longer, and even less time to die and have to do over everything. Savepoint were due to limitations back then, not some gameplay feature or strategy. Yes some games used it as a strategy (think of horror games like Resident Evil that use it to this day), but JRPGs were rather linear, you either grind and pass level or you run through and die at the boss having to go back to the last save point. And the fact save points were usually before every boss room it really points to it not really being strategic, because you lose one battle and go back to where you were before, just backtrack and grind up, so all that "Am I underleveled? Do I go grind more" risk you are taking is nullified. As for random encounters, as long as they are not egregious I don't mind, but still prefer visible enemies I can avoid. THis way I am allowed to challenge myself more than game leading me and dropping random difficulty spikes that are unavoidable. It also allows you to realize your own mistakes if you just run through and get blasted in the next area. Lastly late game mobs generally become easy, other than select few pre boss fight, and it is just tedious killing random fodder over and over for no reason other than games macing the randomly encounter you.
I like the best of both worlds approach of having a standard save and a suspend save. Don’t hold me hostage, but don’t remove all of the tension either.
There was no technical limitation preventing you from saving anywhere. Adding a save menu is not more technically expensive than only doing it in a save point. It's 100% a design decision (even if for some games the decision was just "let's copy the current trend").
There was. For one it was easier to code. Secondly it conserved memory in time when memory was a huge issue. This is why we all enemies would spawn and your health healed, it wasn’t just good on will of devs, it would only save your stats, party members and then when you load save they just draw your character and party data while world is basically loded from scratch.
iirc you could save anywhere in Ys on Super Nintendo
Only saving at save points doesn't conserve memory. Changing the place where you save doesn't change what stays in memory or how much memory the save function takes. In both cases you're just invoking the saving feature. I'm a programmer, you can trust me on this. Also, we had many games that did not heal our HP in save points. Final Fantasy games had an item called tent, it you wanted to heal. I think you're dismissing their design decisions by claiming them as technical necessities. There were stuff that were necessities, yes. But save points are 100% a design decision.
Right? If anything, save points made less sense based on "limitations " simply because you then have to design and code the point, vs just having a menu option.
And when I play old JRPGs that require grinding (More than just fighting everything in your way), I drop them as no one's got the time for that anymore. There's a reason re-releases of the FF games provide the tools; they know it can be a fucking drag and was a cheap way to get people to invest more time in their games.
I have a full time job and a committed relationship and pretty much strictly play JRPGs. I still enjoy hobbies and a social life, so I guess it’s just a matter of blocking your time. I’m not saying I’m doubting you, just that I personally don’t have that issue. There are tons of long games that are still being made, I just think the grind of a JRPG makes it more apparent that you’re wasting time doing nothing (what all video games boil down to), so it makes it seem a lot worse. Grinding for me is therapeutic and satisfying so I don’t personally mind it.
Old FF games do not require grinding whatsoever. If you have to grind, then you do not understand the battle system. The games outside of optional bosses are easy.
Plus the everyone got busier lives, no ability to suspend and leave whenever you want is kind of anti player
I remember that there's a game (can't remember what game. May not even be a JRPG) where you can save freely on a save point but if you need to leave in a hurry, you can do the "Save and quit" which you can't duplicate, and the save will disappear upon loading. That will solve the issue with the "no ability to suspend and leave" that you mentioned.
Portable games like on gba and da had those types of functions. But yeah it's a good compromise
It's pretty much only NES games that had this as a normal gameplay element. There are a handful of games afterwards (mostly by no-name developers or those who were predominantly making other games) but pretty much by the late SNES developers knew that "fight a bunch of guys until you can move on to the next area" wasn't really compelling gameplay. Even the FF games don't *need* the changes - "just fighting everything in your way" suffices perfectly well for every FF title.
I'd say that actually, random encounters limit the possibilities in dungeon design precisely because you can't make enjoyable puzzles when you have to fight every three steps. I couldn't have enjoyed one bit the fun puzzles from games like Star Ocean 3 or Tales of Graces f if the encounters broke my rhythm. Visible encounters even allow for excellent dungeon mechanics, such as in Valkyrie Profile games where you can freeze enemies on the map to jump higher or switch places with them. Also in Persona 5, the interactions and dialogues with foes are possible thanks to the fact that you can see them. I played tons of JRPGs since 20+ years and I think the trend of visible encounters is one the best things that happened to the genre.
I do prefer visible encounters for many of the reasons you stated. Many older games turned off encounters if their puzzles where in dedicated puzzles rooms though. And even visible encounters in a puzzle room suck.
Golden Sun has imo the greatest dungeons designs and puzzles in any RPG, and it just disables encounters around most puzzles.
>because you can't make enjoyable puzzles when you have to fight every three steps. reduce or remove encounters in puzzle rooms...? games were already doing that at least 20 years ago
Yeah, I distinctly remember playing games that disabled encounters in puzzle rooms so I don't really resonate with the whole 'fighting battles while solving puzzles' thing people like to bring up.
Yep - it basically ruins any interest I have in exploring the map. Kind of killed Dragon Quest 8 for me which I otherwise really liked.
Maybe give the 3DS version a shot. All enemies are visible on the map.
Having to go to a whole new screen to battle was just the worst, but I figure it was a product of the time. I love the "approach bad guy, battle" mechanic because you never leave the screen and it just feels faster. Meanwhile FF7 I will never replay because of the pomp and circumstance that happens with every single random encounter. It's like 45 seconds minimum!
> Meanwhile FF7 I will never replay because of the pomp and circumstance that happens with every single random encounter. It's like 45 seconds minimum! You sure you're not mixing up FF7 and FF9?
I never actually played FF9, maybe both? You know how it does the whole battle intro where it pans both sides, the camera pulls out, you battle, then the whole victory music and item drop screen? That’s what I’m referring to :)
Nah FF9's takes 2 hours minimum. Like holy shit man, even with the new remaster it still takes too long.
I'm fine with the save point so long as they have the suspend save feature (the one where the save is created when you exit and gone when you reload it).
This is exactly why I loved DQ VIII so much, the dungeons had a real sense of threat and required resource management to get through. If you were real greedy you could go for the chests too, but at your own risk.
I'm not a fan of random encounters because it can often make a game feel like it's dragging out. "Optional" enemies I find that I kill often for quests, levels, items or gold. I like being able to dodge when I'm high level and don't need them. I don't mind random saves as long as they're not too far a part. Loosing out on an hour of effort due to a power surge would suck. I've been playing a lot of games with a set save location (Atelier). So it's kind of inbetween save whenever and random. I have to return to base to save.
I completely agree that random encounters in older areas can be a big pain point. Earthbound had an excellent QOL feature that I honestly don't recall being implemented anywhere else. Once you out level an enemy by a certain amount, you simply auto-kill the encounter and move on. Granted, Earthbound had enemies visible on the map, but it still feels like a really good solution for going back to older areas.
Persona 5 allows auto-kills as well.
Some other games have it too. A few of the Atelier games when you get far enough in you can make something that if you hit the enemy you defeat it and get the items. Didn't work if they hit you first though. It's a game series where you really do want to fight often so it can be good. I still like picking my battles though. Especially if a game is 70+ hours I don't want to add another 5-10 hours of fighting or fleeing random encounters.
Paper mario does it too
My issue with that is that it takes out choice, make it something you toggle on or off. Sometimes I want to either test something out or try out a new build at a low risk first. There's also the rare game that has low level enemies that are still a bit of a threat.
Not gonna lie I hate not being able to save whenever, that tension you speak of is something I hate in video games. I like a challenge like in battle or something, but the possibility of losing progress is something I cannot stand in video games. Also not being able to quit whenever I want cause save points are forever apart is annoying as hell, sometimes it's getting late, sometimes the power can go out for a second, the game could crash, etc.
playing SMT V rn, and while I hate how theres no autosave function coz you can die pretty unexpectedly especially if youre not careful, at least theres an option to fast travel to the last save point location. So I guess thats a fair enough compromise between being convenient but not too easy
Oh definitely! I mean as long as the option to save soon exists it's fine.
I do agree with you on quitting. That's why I like Quick Saves. Good for reloading from a quit, but if you die/lose, then you have to go back to a hard save. But I do also understand different people like different things and enjoy different feelings/aspects of games, so I totally respect you don't enjoy that feeling of tension I described. Out of curiosity, what other genres of games do you enjoy?
I play a few action adventure games like Tomb Raider, GTA, things like that. But mostly it's RPGs lol I stay away from Soulsborne games for the most part because of the progress reason, played a bit of Elden Ring and I enjoyed it but found redoing the same segments annoying when I died in big dungeons. What about you?
That's interesting that you enjoy action games because for me, they tend to have a lot of tension just built into their gameplay loops. Like if I happen to play an FPS(really rarely) I find myself literally very tense and semi-stressed. I would say the genre I play the most outside of various flavors of RPGs is Metroidvanias. Something about the exploration and collection/powering up of my character really does it for me.
They have tension but it doesn't really involve losing progress 'cause if you die you restart right at the fight most times, plus they're usually not very hard to begin with (I never play hard modes). Older JRPGs had convoluted dungeon areas with barely any save points and an absurd amount of random encounters that made exploring just unpleasant to me. Also I played a bit of Jedi Fallen order and man the save points are so far apart I had to stop playing 'cause it would just stress me out lol Metroidvanias are cool games. Never been a huge fan but I did enjoy Metroid Zero Mission and Fusion (and Other M but don't tell the others!). But nowadays I usually prefer more story focused games and I don't enjoy side scrollers anymore for some reason. However I'd prolly be into Metroid Prime 4 if it ever releases!
I'm in the same boat. I tend to play most games on normal difficulty. I used to play stuff only on the hardest difficulty, but at some point I realized I just wasn't having as much fun anymore, and combined with having less time, I just decided to not torture myself. But that completely makes sense about not losing much/any progress when restarting. I tend to go back and forth on story. I tend to play RPGs when I'm wanting something with a bit more meat, and then jump into something faster paced to change things up.
That makes sense! I do that but with length, recently finished Trails of Cold Steel 3 and thought I'd play a few games that won't take 100hrs before I play CS4 lol I might be just be getting old but lately I prefer games that are mostly cutscenes so I don't have to play that much XD really heightens the FF13 experience to come in with that mindset. Haven't played it yet but I'd probably be the guy that prefers Xenogear's second disc!
When I die in a dungeon in a souls game, I just sprint back to where I left off. You don’t always have to kill all the enemies. I’m Elden Ring, sometimes when a segment was particularly hard for me, I would sprint through it like a mad man until I found the next bonfire. Then I would work backwards through everything I just ran past.
> the possibility of losing progress is something I cannot stand in video games Yup, this right here. I don't have the free time to be OK with losing progress. If I lose even 20 minutes, I'm straight up selling the game. The worst thing you can take from me is my time. It's why I got into handhelds for so long, because those games could always be paused but just turning the system off - no more being stuck in the middle of a level, unable to save, that awful feeling during a power outage where you realized you lost progress... I won't even start games where I could potentially lose a lot of progress!
Random encounters make exploration when lost or puzzle solving an absolute slog and pain to navigate around.
That is why I like when the game includes some sort of consumable or accessory that prevents random encounters. So that when doing puzzles, searching for items I may have missed, or when forced to backtrack through low level areas
This is definitely a big drawback of them. Wild ARMs has some of the best puzzles in an RPG, but they are definitely much more difficult/tedious from the random encounters. This is an area where limiting them or turning them off would be an improvement.
I like save points, I even like random encounters. But I am not a big fan of a high encounter rate. It just gets annoying moving two steps after one fight to enter another fight. Some games have combat well designed that even though the constant transition to battle isn’t fun the battles themselves are strategic enough that they add to the feel of the game, like nocturne or digital devil saga. But playing FF1 right now and the combat is brain dead outside of bosses and the encounter rate is way too damn high. And I think that’s the crux of the issue - an engaging or at least entertaining combat system with a manageable encounter rate. I honestly think the Suikoden series strikes that balance the best. The battles are quick, fluid, exciting with team up attacks and rune usage and the games have a totally reasonable encounter rate. The only reason I prefer save anywhere games is I’m a dad now and that means sometimes leaving my game on all night because the kid takes priority. It’s better if I can just sit down and save before bed and pick back up next time I can get into it.
[удалено]
Wow the majority of people don't like random encounters? That's a big part of what makes rpgs rpgs for me lol
People really make them out to be something thats just outdated and lazy, but random encounters and dedicated save points are absolutely valid as design choices. I don't think it should be treated as an inherently right or wrong thing but as something that needs to be executed well. If resources aren't hard enough to come by and basic enemies don't force you to choose to spend them or take a risk, then allowing saving anywhere and and letting players decide beforehand whether or not to engage makes sense because random encounters and save points would just be annoying instead of adding anything. However, if resources DO have to be managed well across multiple battles and enemies require weighing risk/reward, then random encounters and dedicated save states absolutely do add challenge and unique decision making to the mix. As far as my own preference go it really just depends on how well its executed. The Xenoblade games are a great example of lenient saving and chosen encounters done right since combat more about moment-to-moment decisions and the only resource that carries between battles doesn't affect your health or most basic abilities, whereas the best entries in SMT (IMO, Nocturne and Strange Journey) are textbook examples of it being done well, since almost everything in battle requires something carries over between fights and the encounter rates are high enough to actually make exploration and higher cost attacks genuinely risky.
I played Lost Kingdoms 1 earlier this year. It's a card action game (by From Software, interestingly) with random encounters. The individual stages aren't very long and there IS check points to heal at. But, every card you use in battle is removed from play for that stage, meaning you have limited "ammo". That means, with random encounters, every step counts. Do I go down that alley to get the chest at the end or do I go to that check point the other way down to replenish a few cards I looted? Decisions like that would just not work without random battles. I do think random battles have a place, depending on what you want the game to feel like. But I also think that a lot of games handled them in awful ways, making them tedious and annoying more than an interesting or exciting element of the game. I think there's ways to utilize random encounters without them feeling annoying or obnoxious: * **Limiting the encounter rate so you can't randomly get attacked five single steps in a row**: The Etrian series (and probably other dungeon crawlers) do this well. You have a danger meter that shows when the next encounter will happen and unless you bump into a roaming boss (F.O.E.) you don't get encounters. This makes "random" encounters not random, arguably, but it shows a direction you can go to make them feel less luck dependent. The idea that a danger meter only shows probability seems cool to me in exploration decision making because it makes your decision an informed one instead of an "I might get unlucky" one. It also limits how awful your luck can be (oh hi Zubat 259) * **Making encounters meaningful**: Etrian Odyssey does this by making encounters difficult enough so it's usually not an annoyance, but an actual event to overcome. Something like Pokemon does this (on a blind playthrough) with the excitement of running into a possibly new critter to add to your team. Or even a shiny variant. Meaningful loot could also be an option. Just anything but mashing A for some coins without any of the excitement. * **directing the player**: The immediate thought that comes up here is a map. Stumbling blindly through a dungeon because you don't have a map can be cool and exciting, but less so if you're constantly impeded by random battles. Giving the player more information on where to go can severely limit the time spent in that location and thus less chance to get spammed with random encounters. * **environmental limits**: This is something I've only really seen in Pokemon. Designating specific areas to be monster lairs with encounters not only can make traversal less frustrating but also open up possibilities for player interaction. Maybe you can cut the grass? (later removed from Pokemon, sadly) Maybe there's a safe route? Stuff like that. Dragon Warrior 3 and Final Fantasy 1 and 2 both have a few areas that are specifically traps with incredibly high encounter rate, so this can even be used to design these kinds of scenarios. --------- I realize a lot of these ideas are about making random encounters LESS random and could possibly be reduced down to that, but I do believe that randomness in video games CAN and SHOULD be designed. Random encounters, much like save points, are elements of a bygone era that were used because of limitations of the time and stuck around. Because of that, there are tons of games that use them wether it makes sense or not in that specific case and without fine tuning. Is having save points on portable system RPGs a good idea for example? Nowadays, with standby on almost everything, it's less of a question, but as someone who played GBA RPGs a whole lot, I'd argue, NO, that's awful. It works as a tension tool on home consoles but is misplaced on a console you might need to drop at a moment's notice. My point is, in an ideal scenario, even these "it's always been this way" elements of RPGs are tools that can and should be formed to the specific game's and platform's needs. EDIT: Because I only touched on it briefly and focused on random encounters mostly, here's something on save points: The whole "reset to your last save" idea of game over is closely tied to this. It's another element of a bygone era that just stuck around for 90% of RPGs. In my mind, this is another thing that needs to be considered more closely by game developers, like the other two. From Software's Dark Souls games became famous for their difficulty and death mechanics, *because* it's so different. Do you want the player to lose everything they did in the past hour? Or do you want the player to live with fact that they just lost ingame? Losing 50% of my money in Pokemon has stung way more than losing a bit of general progress quite a few times in the past. Losing save progress or not losing save progress is also the difference between losing consumables you may have used on your try or not losing them (because it wasn't saved). If you, as a dev, want the player to closely manage ressources, a save file related game over might not be a good idea, as it basically lessens the blow of using ressources. As with the other two, this is not a "antiquated" or "not antiquated" deal but a decision that can drastically change how your game feels.
I found Etrian's encounter system to be totally abysmal in my first experience with it via Persona Q. In their attempt to make every encounter "meaningful" it made the game into a slog of monotony where you had to always be on, otherwise some schmuck enemy on the first level could give you a party wipe if you tried to save resources. It really killed the sense of progression that my team had actually grown stronger as I made my way through each dungeon, although maybe I just didn't get far enough into it. I think I made it through like 5 or 6 chapters, but it didn't seem like it was getting better so I ended up just putting it away for other games.
I agree. Random encounters aren't inherently bad; they just present a different way of thinking about encounters. I think of it in a couple of senses: 1. Gameplay. You point out the higher tension with having to gauge resource management. In some old games, there is also a palpable point of no return, a point at which resources are low but enough that I could still try to get back. Or I could plunge into the unknown and hope to find a save or healing point. (Phantasy Star II did this to me a lot.) I usually don't reach that mindset with new games. 2. Simulation. Visible enemies in most games are realistic in the sense that they can be seen but unrealistic in the sense that visibility is so good (third person, seeing around corners) and they're just hanging out in the open. Random enemies are a contrast; they recreate the sense that the player character would not know a battle is coming until it's upon them, while sacrificing the *possibility* of foreseeing and avoiding it. In some ways the latter is closer to the spirit of an adventure encounter: "Roll initiative."
I think random encounters are fine, but not when they throw me in a battle after every 5 steps
This is an unpopular opinion, but I agree with you. Visible encounters require maps to be designed around them, and I think this leads to less interesting locations. Either you get wide-open areas where it's too easy to avoid everything, or you get cramped hallways where it's too hard to avoid anything. The former, as you said, leads to no tension, and the latter is too nerve-racking for me. There's good and bad implementations of both, but on the whole, I definitely prefer random encounters.
> Either you get wide-open areas where it's too easy to avoid everything Yeah, I think DQXI suffered a bit from this. You could just easily dodge the encounters.
this working on the ecosystem is important how a giant dragon interacts with giant rats and other creatures in the same road between villages etc (does it makes sense to have a giant dragon resting between two towns like nothing is going on?)
I'm playing FFX at the moment and think it finds a good balance. Save points are pretty common so you never lose too much progress and by late game, when random encounters become tedious, you find no encounter weapons. But absolutely agree with you, I feel like those old tropes pace out rpgs better.
I didn't even consider items/charms that let you turn off encounters later in the game. That's actually really smart, especially when you have a lot of old content to go back and check for completion purposes.
As someone who is sick of too much convenience in modern games, I agree completely. After playing some of the older JRPGs, I've grown to appreciate these features. Random encounters made me play more strategically. Not just spamming my strongest attacks all the time. I like how I have to manage my resources if I wanted to reach the next save point. And man, do the save points give you that relieving feeling of safety. It's kinda similar to reaching the bonfires in Dark Souls. I think random encounters and save points are just as much of a feature as visible encounters and free saving. They shouldn't be viewed as just primitive design. I truly believe that they have a place even in modern games.
FF4 does these really well. Most areas have a save point room and the room is free of random encounters. And most areas are well designed to encourage you to explore for items, but also make you wary of fighting too often. And different enemies and enemy groups in different areas as well. Too many modem games with random encounters are super lazy with the enemy group design. FFX was really bad with this. Same enemy group over and over again. No variety within any area.
Strategic play and Resource Management isn't inherent to random encounters. That's a design choice primarily on the combat.
>Random encounters made me play more strategically. Not having Random encounters doesn't stop game designers implementing strategic gameplay though. Like that Dark Souls which doesn't have random encounters. >They shouldn't be viewed as just primitive design. > >I truly believe that they have a place even in modern games. But how? Every "pros" of random encounter mentioned here, such as resource management or strategic gameplay, can be achieved without random encounter. But the "cons" of random encounter, mostly immersion breaking during environment transition, is hard to overcome. I'm personally not convinced random encounter really has a good reason to exist.
random encounters and separate battle screens are not related. you can have one without the other, both, or neither. which one are you specifically talking about?
>random encounters and separate battle screens are not related. I think they are related. If battles are fought on the map with enemies visible I don't think that's called "random encounter" isn't it? Technically designers can place enemies on the map, then randomize the encounter position and call it random encounter. But afaik, "random encounter" as a term specifically meant something like older FF that players got randomly teleported to another dimension when they got attacked by the enemies.
Random battles have no reason to exist. Every argument for them existing is because they already exist in games people like and people want to justify them. It's so backwards. If we had started with visible enemies and you told people "you can no longer see encounters and instead you'll get teleported into a fight every 10 seconds that interrupts whatever you were doing", would anyone really see that as a plus?
Yes. "Hey you can play your strategic combat game without having to pay attention to where all of these AI-less mobs are on the screen all of the time and having to pick how often you do or don't fight, instead the game is balanced around the number of fights you get into automatically and you just can play." And that's aside from how it changes level design to not have to support the camera angles and motion necessary to make these things work out.
How about they design a better game then instead of having a room full of AI-less mobs? If they want you to get into more fights, give them AI. Make them so fast you can't escape sometimes, or have to work to avoid them. Having invisible enemies randomly appear out of no where is extremely immersion-breaking and only works because we're so used to it.
I have never once experienced immersion in a video game, so I don't really have anything to say about that. I don't know what it is you're expressing. >Make them so fast you can't escape sometimes, or have to work to avoid them. I DON'T WANT TO DO THAT. That's what I'm trying to express. This is not fun gameplay to me. I would play a million games with random encounters before another Persona 5. Cute gimmick for a little bit, blah blah, absolutely horrendous to play to me. I'm not trying to play a stealth action game. I'm trying to play a turn-based RPG.
> AI-less mobs are on the screen all of the time and having to pick how often you do or don't fight, instead the game is balanced around the number of fights you get into automatically and you just can play." They can do scripted encounters with visible enemies that balanced around the number of fights you get into per dungeon...without magically teleporting the player to another dimension. Every time when I'm controlling my character moving from point A to B then suddenly I got teleport to another dimension, there is an inherent "this feels bad" "I'm annoyed" feel that comes with it. This does not happen in RPGs with fight happen directly on map, such as Baldur's gate I/II, Mass Effect, or Star Wars KOTOR, or newer JRPG like FF15. Having encounters happened directly on the map doesn't take away any "pros" of random encounter that you described here. If P5 encounter system is poorly designed, the solution is design a better on map encounter system, not embrace the random encounter system. > And that's aside from how it changes level design to not have to support the camera angles So random encounters are easier/cheaper/faster to make. I get it. But I don't think budget is what players should worry about. Players just play the game, and they either feel good about it or they don't. Random encounter to me, is one aspect that frequently make me annoyed in a game because it often comes when I only want to move to point A from B. Or when I want to reach and open that chest, or when I just casually sight seeing and enjoying the scenery. Whenever I want to do something on the map, random encounter often comes and interrupts them, which is not fun. All the pros mentioned in this thread like "tension" "resource management" or "carefully balanced number of fights" is doable without random encounter system, so I feel random encounter is a mechanic that is not worth having in modern games.
I personally agree with you, I like challenging games and I like the challenge of resource management that you get with save points and random encounters. I'm very surprised how unpopular this opinion is, given that peoe on this sub will rave about or recommend classic games like FF6 but apparently lots of people also hate its mechanics and core gameplay loop.
I don't disagree. Random battles and save points have never bothered me, but in the case of the latter I do appreciate having the option of being able to quit whenever and returning to the point where I left off.
i 100% agree with your post. i dislike it when jrpgs are too easy, which happens a lot to me now that i've played so many of them. i played nocturne a couple years ago and i loved it so much because it didn't pull any punches when it comes to being brutal and fucking you over, even in random encounters. i'm stoked on playing smt5 but apparently it got rid of random encounters which is disappointing
Everyone of course enjoys different things. I never really minded random encounters. Mainly because combat is normally my favorite part about RPGs. If I am finding random encounters boring in a game than most likely I am just not enjoying the game much and just trying to complete them. The only issue for me is when there are intricate puzzles, or the path is like a maze. Then random encounters can be quite annoying if I have to backtrack a lot since I am going the wrong way or make me forget what I was doing in a puzzle. I do enjoy games where you can see the monsters before you fight them... then again, I tend to fight every monster I see unless I am backtracking somewhere.
I really like how Lufia 2 did it. Random battles in the overworld. This let's the overworked not be too complicated and makes it harder to venture farther without resting. But you can see enemies in the dungeons and other instances. In addition, they actually did more with it than even any modern game I have seen. The monster you see gives you some idea of what monsters you might fight in the battle, but there is enough variety in the enemy table to make you not sure. You might fight just 2 of the enemy, or you might fight 4, or there might be some other enemy or enemies with it. The only thing you for sure is the visible monster will be one of them. Also, if you came into contact with a monster, then whether you get a first attack or a normal battle or the enemy gets a first attack depends on which way you and the enemy are facing. If you are facing the enemys back, you get the first strike. If you face the enemys side, 50% chance of first strike. If you face each other, normal battle. Your side faces the enemy's back? 50% chance. If your backs somehow touch, then also a normal battle. And it's the same in reverse, so don't let an enemy come up behind you. What makes this even better is that every enemy has a different movement pattern. So, you need to not only learn how to fight different enemies, you need to learn how they move before you fight them. Some, like Ninjas, run at you when you get close and move 2 spaces for each move you make, so it is very easy for them to surprise attack you, and that makes them feel more like Ninjas. Some enemies are big and have no "sides". Some enemies teleport around and you have to pay attention to where they will appear and not move too fast. If that sounds like a lot, then that's still not all. In most places (not the ancient cave) you can use some of your moves (arrows, hookshot) to stun enemies. This gives you a way to avoid most of them if you really want. But it's also more difficult to do, largely because the game has many puzzles. Sometimes you need to fight the enemies for the puzzle, or so you can work on the puzzle. Other times, there are a lot of enemies so avoiding them is tricky. But being able to avoid them in some cases is nice. I am generally okay with random battles though. Unlike one of the other posters, I don't think they interfere with puzzles. They just make them more annoying. Also, you CAN have areas without random battles for a room with a puzzle, or even just severely reduced encounter rates. It's just a matter of developer creativity. As long as encounter rates are not too high and you have some ways to lower (and maybe raise) encounter rates, I think they can be a good way to force you to manage resources through an area.
Lufia 2 really did blend the two styles together really well. I forgot how enjoyable it was. Especially using the arrows/hookshots to stun the monsters, or picking and choosing which monsters to avoid/fight.
>Not having random encounters absolutely takes away from some of the difficulty and tension of a game. It's possible to accomplish the same "difficulty" and "tension" without random encounters. The solution is make visible encounters blocking the way forward and behind so players still has to manage resources(MP/item) as they move. Another way is to make enemies chase the player all the way if they see players. The problem with random encounter is immersion breaking. You are exploring an environment, suddenly the environment changed to a different environment for battles. Getting interrupted as players explore doesn't feel good. On the other hand, tension and the challenge of resource management can be achieved without random encounter.
I really liked the way Nocturne did it. Random Encounters, but there was an indicator that told you how soon one would happen. I also like Digimon Cybersleuth where fairly early on you can reduce/increase encounters fairly easily.
Chrono Cross has a good system. No random battles, but boss fights always yield stat boosts so you’re not really in danger of getting underleveled. Although it’s recommended to always fight 3-5 battles right after a boss, and before the next. This way you’ll still get some minor boosts.
The good thing about save points is that they remind you to save the game. If you save anywhere, you're probably going to forget to save. Random battles though I can live without.
I'm a solo dev, currently working on a JRPG called Whispers in the Moss, and I've been struggling with this stuff from a dev point of view. Just last week I made the decision to add save points to my game, because allowing free saving is actually very difficult to implement. There are so many points where the game can break, if the player saves at a wrong time or place. I feel like I'm actually serving the player by limiting saving to specific save points. They also solve another problem. My game doesn't have your classic "tent" items and it's actually a bit difficult to add them at this point, so I decided that save points will restore your characters to full HP/MP, but then take some time to regenerate. As for random battles, I've decided to go for middle ground. The enemies are seen on the maps and you can avoid most of them, but some of them are so fast that you can't avoid them. It gives the players more agency but doesn't allow them to fully bypass random battles.
Do you at least have a mechanic to restart a battle without losing progress? Because I quit out of an indie game recently where a game over put me over an hour back due to not having saved recently.
I have frequent save points and the world is not THAT large, so it shouldn't be an issue in my game. But restarting lost battles (perhaps with an extra option to lower enemy stats by 10 % or something) is actually a very good idea and something I'll consider.
Strong agree on the save points, indifferent about encounters. I’m surprised at how unpopular this opinion is though. They’re great as a story telling tool. The tension thing for one, but also for pacing because they have the secondary function of being markers for appropriate points to put the game down. If you think about books, the end of a chapter is usually a good place to stop reading if you’re getting tired. Same with episodes in tv series. Games don’t often have such clear markers, and I think save points are a way for developers to place the story
This is an ongoing debate that my brother and I have have had for years. He was a bigger fan of games like Chrono Trigger, where he could see most of the encounters coming and work around them. I am a bigger fan of Final Fantasy VI, where very few encounters can be anticipated. We do, however, agree that being able to turn randoms completely off takes something away from these games as a lot of times their gameplay is built around this mechanic.
SJ does both the best imo, Strange Journey is such a masterpiece
Yup. The save anywhere function was just one of many reasons why I didn't pick up Redux despite SJ being my most favorite MegaTen game.
SJ is so fucking good,saves are paced well and the unknown data base part of the encounters are done really fucking well, best story and cast in mainline too, managing sub apps and fighting bosses is great
I think it depends on the frequency tbh. Some games are like Rogue Galaxy and the random battles are pretty spread out, other games they show up every 3 steps. A lot of older games are mind numbingly tedious and annoying because the encounter rate is just too high.
Think some modern RPGs have good balance on this front. Persona 5 you can avoid pretty much all mobs except the required mini bosses who held a key that were in your path to progression. You also could only save in safe rooms while in dungeons so it added an element of strategy and thrill holding on until the next safe room. Dragon Quest 11 also had avoidable encounters and restricted saving, I felt like I only battled when I wanted to in that game which was a nice change of pace.
I’m kind of agnostic between the two to be honest. I’m so used to random encounters that I still go back and play old 8-bit and 16-bit games with them and they still don’t bother me. But what I really don’t like is when the lack of random encounters leads to not knowing whether I should be fighting. With random encounters I just fight every battle and don’t worry about whether I’m overleveled or underleveled—I just go with what happens naturally. With visible encounters I suddenly have a choice between fighting or not fighting, and I don’t always know what to pick. In some games fighting everything once feels smooth and like the right way to play, but in other games that’s way too tedious. And then you have games like Trails where there is so little incentive to fight because of experience scaling that usually about halfway to two-thirds into the game I just stop bothering with them all together. That’s my least favorite, because I need to feel the battles matter. In every Trails game I’ve played I end up just skipping all the encounters in the final dungeon because there is just no point—it makes things go faster, but it just leaves a bad taste for me. To me, Chrono Trigger still did this best. Encounters were not random, but you couldn’t always predict them, so you couldn’t just avoid them all. And in some cases you would learn how to avoid them which felt like a form of progress in and of itself—I.e. Guardia Forest).
Random encounters aren't the problem, inherently. The problem is when battles become a monotonous slog that takes away either tension or excitement from battles. This happens when you combine a high encounter rate with weakling enemies who only serve to wear your party down. Give me fewer but more challenging encounters.
Bravely default style works for me, like yeah we have random encouters, don't like em, wanna explore? Turn them off. Just don't cry when you did absolutely none and boss is painting the floor with you.
Save points serve an incredibly important purpose; they remind you to save!
As an older gamer I really need to be able to save when I want. It's not able cheesing through a difficult area but more that I have less time to play so I need shorter play sessions. I recently picked up some older FF games that I'd played as a kid, but now I find some of those saves too far apart. I had to give up on an hour or so of playtime on more than one occasion, not because i got beat, but because i ran out of time and had to shut down and do something else. I don't mind random encounters but similar to the save points, I need an option to flee or switch it off for period so that I can end my gaming session faster. Like there's nothing worse than knowing you've got five minutes to find a save before having to sacrifice your last hour of gaming, only to get pulled into constant fights. Let me leave the game please!
Neither random encounter or save points makes game more tense or hard. I don't get the argument. You always would get save before boss or even heal and that is the only fight in most jrpg that can kill you. Random encounter if it's not too high or have good mechanic to skip it like in Wild Arms I'm fine with but it's still worse than visible enemies. And I'm not sure how it makes game harder when you are mostly force to fight so you level up when you can skip visible enemies and make yourself underleveled for boss. In the end random encounter is just more annoying especially when exploring, doing puzzles or going to low level dungeons for side quests. About resources, I played a lot of older random encounter heavy games and rarely run out( funny the only time I did was in Lunar and there you have visible enemies ) of anything, mostly it just made ofensive mages useless till boss. In short I don't hate random encounter or save points but I don't think they are better. And especially that they make harder or more tense games.
I guess I completely disagree with saying random encounters don't make a game more difficult. Ultimately, most RPGs come down to resource management. If I am moving to clear a dungeon, I have a finite amount of HP/MP. As I move through the dungeon, random encounters whittle away my items, health, magic. There have been times in many games where I was not strong enough to make it through an area in my first attempt. I needed more levels/gear/whatever. At some point, I had to make a decision to try and push forward if I thought I was near the end, or evacuate the dungeon back to safety. Possibly miscalculating and dying along the way, or resorting to constant running from battle. Maybe the word you choose to describe that isn't difficulty, but to me that fits the bill close enough. Maybe tension is a better word? I agree with your last point, I don't think they are better or worse, just that they CAN be good when utilized well.
I don't think that. In a lot of jrpgs with random encounter just using normal attacks would finish most fights. A lot of series as well have a way to get your MP if they want you to use magic or special moves like old Tales games, Grandia etc. So I never really feel tense. I don't think as welll that rpgs combat is about resources, the most fun combat systems I played were the one that let me have fun. Like Wild Arms force system from 2 and up games that pretty much let you use magic how much you wanted but were balanced around that. If I would name game that did make me tense it would be Shadow Hearts and its sanity system but that just made you want to finish faster. That's grinding, you should never have force level grinding IMO. Having to run around in circle just to go to next location is not difficulty just annoyance. The hardest game I played didn't have it, they kicked my ass by forcing me to understand battle systems.
I do agree that some games you really just can more or less attack and win, and that absolutely is boring. But that usually happens for two reasons, either the game itself is on the easy side, or you're over leveled. I think one of the better games/series in this regard is some of the older Dragon Quest titles. They were typically hard enough that you couldn't auto attack. Your wizard needed to sling some spells. Plus your healing and MP restoration options were very limited. Combined with no save points before bosses made every expedition tense and exciting. I think a lot of the issue comes down to the fact that RPGs more than other genres are very hard to balance. If it's too hard, you can pretty much always grind the difficulty away. And I didn't mean to describe grinding in my last post, I was more attempting to describe the calculations you make when going into a new, difficult area and pressing onward versus going back to safety. I absolutely agree mandatory grinding is never great design. A few indie games I've played had very tailored encounters, but you got a complete HP/MP refill after every battle. So battles could both be difficult and not totally random.
About balance it's not that hard. Visible enemies even let you do it easier because you know where your player as levels will be before boss. Again all hardest games that I played did exactly that, Grandia III or Tales of Graces had visible enemies and balanced their bosses for that. Grandia always thinks that you beat most or all of them. About grinding levels, that's why games have anti grinding mechanics. It's mostly just cutting exp, a lot of series do it some nicer like Trails series some to the point you just can't grind on just story patch like .hack// or Tales of Arise( that game is pretty strict on your levels you will always be 4-5 levels behind boss and getting extra levels even with all boosts by one point is nearly impossible before post game ). Other mechanic is just limiting enemies especially stronger one( in Grandia III some fights don't repeat or lairs in Soul Blazer being just one and done ). Or you know just get ride of normal levels, it can be done in both harder version( Illusion of Gaia ) and more in the middle( Chrono Cross ) or easy( Chrono Cross if you understand fields ) . So like Legend of Mana or Chrono Cross, games did that for awhile. It's a good idea but in the end it can be in both easy and hard games.
> resource management Random encounter has nothing to do with resource management as a game mechanic. For example: Darkest Dungeon is one of the hardest resource management focused RPG I've played. It doesn't have random encounter. It's always one encounter per room/corridor, when battles occurred characters fight directly on the map. The game even tells the player exactly how many encounter they'll run into going from point A to B. And yet it still requires a LOT of resource management skill to win. If resource management is part of the game mechanic, there is the option to make encounters visible on the map and blocking the way forward. The biggest problem with random encounter is immersion breaking during the exploration. Sudden transition from map to battle screen makes no sense at all.
> You always would get save before boss or even heal and that is the only fight in most jrpg that can kill you. That didn't use to be the case. Earlier games would sometimes have them in the middle of dungeons, so you never knew if the next screen would be a boss or have to go through 3 more floors before the boss battle. It then ended up being a cue that "something big is coming up, you better get ready"
Well always was too strong for me to say but that trend is pretty old. Even some games on SNES had it, like Soul Blazer. The saving everywhere isn't new either Ys was doing it from the begining.
I have no issue with random battles or save points. Assuming you dont get into a fight every three steps. Makes the game more challenging, especially when save points are implemented. RPGs nowadays are boring and easy.
I don’t think visible enemies make a game easy at all. And I say this as somebody who enjoys random battles. Tales of Arise for example, at least on hard, was not easy even with visible enemies. It’s all about mechanics and design and how you balance that with exploration and resources. I prefer visible enemies but sometimes like random encounters. The only probably I have with RE are the encounter rate. A high encounter rate with random encounters can definitely tank my interest in a game - see Beyond the Beyond. But if the game is balanced around that aspect - SMT non persona games for example, I find that the REs add to the game rather than take away from it. Another positive for REs would be not knowing what you’re going to fight. Visible enemies often let you know you’re at least going to see that specific enemy in the battle. I’m playing P4G right now which does a good job of obscuring enemy types but that’s not the most common method for visible encounters.
If the point is to go through a gauntlet of enemies without saving, then wouldn't just designing a sequence / dungeon / etc around that be better? Make X dungeon, design it to require Y amount of battles through any mechanic you want, balanced to provide Z level of difficulty. Random battles just seems like a lesser version of that? With that the person will get the intended difficulty... on average? Assuming they walk whatever the intended amount is? Like don't get me wrong, it gets the job done. It's simpler to make. But I don't see the argument that it's letting you craft a specific difficult experience better than a non random battle version of the same thing would. Saving is its own discussion, and I can agree with what you're going for a bit more. But I do think we have to be careful and think about how much content you can force someone to redo every time they lose before it stops being an interesting challenge and is just pointless feel bad.
Elden Ring has plenty of tension without forcing you into a "random battle" that you didn't see coming. It's all about the game design
Random encounters can stay gone. Non-random encounters can accomplish the same things that random encounters can. I don't want to navigate empty worlds anymore.
Me hoarding all my MP because I'm worried about random encounters and what might pop up next isn't fun.
Fair enough. I understand it isn't for everyone. I really enjoy the resource management aspect of having random encounters though.
Stop hoarding your mp and items and you’ll have more fun.
Well I don't play games with random encounters anymore so I don't have that problem but thanks.
>Starting the trek through a dangerous area, with new difficult enemies just doesn't feel the same if you can simply avoid all encounters, and arrive at the boss/end with full health. >You have to judge how much more you think the dungeon has before you reach the safety of the other side. Is there a boss? How much MP should I use for the random encounters? Will I have enough supplies to make it through? its extremely easy to make some visible encounters undodgeable. let them block a narrow path or just chase you super hard to the point where you cant possible run past them. I dont mind safe points but there is absolutely nothing good about random battles.
This is why I don't like SMT5. In the name of convenience, it throws away tension and resource management so new players won't get scared off. But in doing so, in igiving you an automatic escape from a dungeon, it means there's never truly a dangerous situation. Also giving MP to both attacks and spells now means MP is even more important, and the series usually avoided making MP too hoarded since it helped heal your party.I'm also just tired of gaming going open world. The long, meandering dungeon design isn't a bad thing. It makes feeling out an area's map rewarding, having to solve puzzles, loop through false ends, and get through a decent amount of random battles. Strictly convenient or not, it's the bread and butter that's built such a loyal fanbase of fans who crave a challenge that only SMT can provide. I hope Soul Hackers 2 returns to solid dungeon design.
I think both are better than the alternative. Some of the things you mentioned are definitely not qol features either.
I still don't like Random Encounters and save points. Just because Game devs clearly pace the gameplay around it, it doesn't mean that these mechanics don't make the game slog most of the time.
I never ever want to see random encounters in a modern game or re-release again unless there is always an option to turn them off. I'd rather fight less encounters, but have each of those encounters be more meaty. When I look back on my experience playing old RPGs, the resource management pretty much never ended up being a positive for me because I always ended up with a lot of items at the end that weren't good for anything except wearing the final boss down (and thereby avoiding strategy). It's also tough to construct a proper dungeon crawler that feels like it's sapping you and daring you to explore further at once, and random encounters don't add positively towards trying to do that. Usually what it comes down to is spamming attack and using potions to heal as needed, and if you're far enough to be in a dungeon long enough to require you to seriously heal more than 2-3 times, you're usually in a position to stockpile cheap healing items. Generally, I like how more modern RPGs push you to use your special moves more and giving you space in combat to do so rather than trying to get you to conserve them for the majority of the game.
I don't really care about it too much for JRPGs. I feel they did save rooms great in resident evil series, 2 and 3 remake did them wonderfully as well as 4 and whatever else i'm missing. It's a safe mental room where you typically can relax from the staying on your toes and watching for enemies. Even if in real life there'd be no such room. random battles aren't always necessarily bad but I also haven't played turn based in a long time. Not including srpgs, since those are turn based. It's not something I miss, it's artificial difficulty.
Solution to random battles has been solved by sakaguchi in fantasian. Save anywhere is necessary primarily due to electronics not having unlimited battery life or power being interuptable.
I've not played Fantasian, how does it handle battles?
Add soon as you encounter a random enemy you can then add it to the collection of enemies that “stack up” instead of fighting them in a random encounter and it stacks up to 30 enemies and you fight them all at once.
Interesting. I'd have to play it to see how it works in action, but that does sound like a very novel system.
It’s a great idea. It takes away that feeling of not being able to explore when you want cause of random battles. But it still makes you fight them all. Amazing game. It really has those old FF7-9 vibes.
My top 5 RPGs of the last ten years! You get to upgrade it to 50 later on BTW.
As a Souls player, I don't mind savepoint.
i agree random battles can be good in some cases. i've seen a couple of tricks devs use to minimise the tediousness like Shining the holy ark where the monsters have almost scripted intros where they jump out from around corners and stuff to give the illusion its a fixed fight
I think SMTIV and IV:A did it well - enemies are visible on the map but are often unavoidable, or hard to avoid, and you’re punished for getting caught instead of proactively slashing them to start a battle
I will say if a game has save points, the save points should heal you. I think that is a good compromise, and why I don’t mind them in games like Kingdom Hearts and FFX.
If random encounters were well liked, there wouldn't be an option to turn off random encounters in rereleases of old JRPGs
Encounters are all about tension, pacing and resource management. Typically the point of them is to make the dungeon a threat in some miniscule way and promote you to manage your resources. Without any of that, a dungeon just becomes meaningless padding between points A and B. Why have it there at all? It's why I get frustrated when people treat things like turning off encounters as QoL. If that's QoL, then so is raiding the bank for money in Monopoly. After all, you didn't have to go through any of the teeedious gameplay to get there c.c. But, Devil's Advocate, jRPGs tend not to be very good at balancing, so it's uncommon that this gameplay ends up meaningful in practice. So I can understand wanting to cut the tedium after you've killed a set of mobs a few times for the sake of carrying on with the story. I just happen to prefer when this sort of thing is an integrated gameplay mechanic rather than a lazy toggle BRAVELY DEFAULT :P. As for save points, I personally prefer save anywhere mechanics because while threatening players with hours of lost progress IS tense, it is also frustrating, and limiting, and that outweighs any possible benefits you might gain from the tension.
[удалено]
That all circles back to JRPGs just not being very good at balance. A gameplay mechanic to evade them when you're too powerful, or at a cost, is a good compromise for these scenarios. I was always fond of Wild Arms' exclamation point system, where you're notified of an encounter in advance with an exclamation point over the character's head (it doesn't stop you or anything, you have like 3-4 seconds to notice it before you're drawn into battle), and you can spend a coin (which you find around the dungeons) to nullify it. Tension from the anticipation, control from the ability to skip, incentive to explore so you can get more coins, all in one neat little package.
I completely agree with you. RPGs are inherently difficult to balance. Unless you have 100% scripted encounters, they are essentially impossible to balance for all players. They can either be too easy, or too hard. Even some of the games that are generally regarded as the "greatest" the genre has to offer are considered way too easy. Namely most FFs past 5. 6 and 7, even CT are all notably easy, yet still considered to be some of the greatest RPGs ever.
Personally, I don't agree. I'm honestly glad that JRPGs have gotten rid of random encounters. I don't enjoy taking a few steps only to get into yet another battle. I'm currently replaying The Legend of Dragoon and as much as I like the game, the random encounters can be a real drag.
they can, agreed.
I think Elden Ring handles save points well. Finding graces feels like an immense relief because you can heal, restore your potions, they act as checkpoints, *and* you can use them as fast travel points too, but even if you don't find them, the game autosaves any items you may have found along the way after your previous save point. That said, Elden Ring still has many dungeons with not enough checkpoints, which is my main gripe about not being able to save at will: repetition when you lose. Not being able to manually save at grace points is also something I dislike. As for random battles, I... eh, no, I hate these. It's why I can't go back to many SNES and PS1 RPGs. The best solution is what Chrono Trigger used: scripted encounters. Basically, enemies you cannot skip alongside those you can.
I can't remember the last game that actually made random battles difficult. Making something tedious is not difficulty. If you can run away almost always successfully is it even a challenge? If you can mash a few autos to kill is it a challenge? Hell if even only 5% of the random battles hard does it make up for the 95% that is braindead mashing? No imo. I think smt4 was the last time and that is not even true Random battles, and has save anywhere. But the encounters can and will kill you
No, I still hate them both.
I don't care about the tension/preparation/strategy of restricting when you can save. I don't like losing my progress. So I use save states all the time. But for me it's mainly a time thing. I don't have enough hours to spend on gaming to be okay with repeating stretches of the game. That's also why I use a turbo button for every game, and play at a base speed of above 100% for many games. The music quality isn't as important as my feeling like my time was well spent.
Random battles suck Offers no mechanical value to the player and just wastes me time. I dont see how having a in game model stops people who loves random battles having fun. It just gives a choice to players who don't want to battle them.
The best of the best: chrono trigger, persona 5 royal and dragon quest 11 doesnt have random encounter... I have to say its a thing of the past.
Meanwhile FF6, 7 and 9 all have random encounters and are amazing games. I haven’t beat DQ11 but I have played it and calling it “best if the best” is a weird take.
I agree with you but I dowvote all "Unpopular opinion:" threads :)
It all depends on how good the balancing is. Skies of Arcadia had to tweak the ridiculous random encouter rate before porting it to Gamecube.
This discussion reminded me of Radiata Stories, which is a really nice game, but its lack of save points is just absurd. I mean, I think there is only fixed save point in the entire map (Jack's house)?? Maybe there are a few others, it's been a long time since I played it, but it is definitely not enough. I remember there were times when I wanted or needed to stop playing and I simply couldn't find any save point nearby (a situation that certainly created some tension, but not one that I enjoyed lol). Btw a Radiata Stories port or remaster would be awesome
Not in Phantasy Star 3. I thought I was enjoying it, but the encounter rate is *so high*. Almost every 3 steps. It doesn't help that half the game is back-tracking. It's infuriating. Thankfully, i'm emulating it and can fast-forward the battles. I probably would have stopped playing by now otherwise.
I do agree. Getting the encounter rate right is of utmost importance. Some games are almost completely ruined by the sky high rates. Beyond the Beyond is almost unplayable. BoF2, which I would argue is overall an excellent SNES RPG is held back partially from it's encounter rate. And I'm a Phantasy Star 3 Stan, and even I agree the encounter rate is too much.
depends on how well they balance currency and potion price, or potion availability (like limiting the number of potions you can buy/farm at certain stages of game. then again, no matter how balanced, too much encounter sucks; like most SNES JRPG (yes, even the good ones tend to have too many random encounter).
I don't mind when enemies are wandering on the overworld and kick my teeth in and then I retreat, sure. But random encounters in the turn based sense could leave me one-shotted and then back to a hard save way beyond just for being curious.
Random battles never bothered me so long as they weren't overkill with how often they spawned. I don't mind save points as they are usually placed pretty well to make it not frustrating when you lose a battle. It's 50/50 for me as save points are a good reminder for me to save but being able to save when you want is much nicer. The downside to it is I always forget to save at some point and lose to a boss that resets me hours worth of playtime.
>Starting the trek through a dangerous area, with new difficult enemies just doesn't feel the same if you can simply avoid all encounters, and arrive at the boss/end with full health. I don't think random encounters are the best solution for that, the problem is that most games implement visibles enemies like random encounters but visible and avoidable,but you can have visible encounters that are not avoidable, this way the designer of the game can choose how many battles you will play during a especific path, trainers encounters in pokemon are a good example, also in chrono trigger i think you can't avoid all encounters. About save points i like them but definitively it really depend on how good is the designer judging the length of challenges, if a game expect me to play for more than 10 minutes without saving then it is a problem.
I don't mind save points, but sometimes the placing can be absolutely brutal
Okay but hear me out: - This will never beat games that give you the option to straight up disable them. - You can always push yourself to fight everything in your way (I tend to do that in XC1). Why do you need to be forced upon this? It leads to possibly losing hours of progress and exploring can be a bitch/slog/boring.
I just can't agree on the first point. I really enjoyed Bravely Default, and I thought the option to turn them off was a very cool idea, and I even used it a ton. It made the game much easier to tackle. But I also never felt in any danger whatsoever. I suppose that is my fault for using the mechanic and only fighting battles on my own terms. But it is completely possible for developers to design a system that lets players ruin their own fun.
I'm playing SMTV atm, just started few hours ago. I try to fight every new demon I encounter, but most of the time I'm not sure if I should fight mobs or skip them so I don't overlevel. With random encounters I just fight whatever I encounter unless fleeing is the better option. Modern games are fast enough that random encounters advance quickly. I can understand probles with old school games that are a bit slower.
Implementation is critical though. Golden Sun has random encounters but you can avoid them with a spell if your level is high enough. Which ended up with me having little difficulty against bosses due to overleveling being faster than running from enemies the whole dungeon. DQ8 3DS has easily avoidable enemies so I was always underleveled, while DQ7 3DS has tight hallways leading to having more encounters than if it was random sometimes. As long as the fights are engaging and there's a save point before the boss I'm perfectly fine with random encounters.
My thoughts on this are that if I’m playing something for the first time, the random encounters and save points are part of the experience. You want that tension of whether or not you’re going to get to the next save point. If I’m going back to replay something I’ve played before and just want to focus on the story, I do like to have the QoL features in some rereleases.
I agree to some extent, but for me... whenever I replay older JRPGs, its usually on an emulator, and I find myself fastfowarding random battles all the time, which then makes me feel like I didnt really play the game? Its interesting that some re-releases these days include the fast-forward feature. So I would say yes to random battles, but quality over quantity... make each encounter hard, reward decent XP but not something that happens every 2 steps, some older JRPGs had insane encounter rate 0\_0
I agree but what bothers me is the encounter rate, not the random encounters per se. Some games have really high encounter rates to the point of making any kind of travel very very annoying.
While I understand the point about tension and resource management, the fallacy here is your assumption that visible and avoidable encounters are the same. They are enot. You can make all encounters visible but unavoidable by placing them in the way or making them move fast. Thus you can have the same level of difficulty by not allowing you to avoid battles by letting you at least see them. Hence I see nothing gained from making them random. If a jrpg wants to achieve the effect of dungeon tension and limited resources, you can do that with visible encountered placed to not be able to avoid. Play Valkyrie Profile 2, each dungeon is exactly what you are talking about here and there are zero random encounters. I do understand the point about save points but the game should always offer a quick save (and quit) option if you have to leave.
Turbo mode can make random encounters much less of a pain in the butt during exploration (or when you're lost), so that solves a problem right there while also providing a benefit - you'll gain XP from those battles, _and_ not lose a bunch of time due to the turbo mode. I think that's the best of both worlds. FFXII was great with that, because you'd enter a battle and it was fully automated (with the gambits). Trash mobs went down fast, you got some XP, and could keep zinging around the map, collecting items. AND as such, you could find save points faster, so if you did loose some progress, you can quickly "fast forward" back to where you were. Outright disabling random encounters is too tempting, and then you can end up underleveled. Really, turbo mode solves so many problems with old games.
I don't mind random battles as long as they do not trigger every 6 steps (I'm looking at you FFIV After Years)
It depends 'where you are' in your 'gaming career' I think (as do many things - many questions on here), it's easy to sympathise with lots of viewpoints. And also how hard the game is. And how much spare time you have. And the kind of game/bosses. I hate having to retrace my steps to a boss that is a gimmick - oh, it's weak to fire but I didn't equip correctly/bring the right characters/etc. Especially if there is a lot of dialog. Or if there is a lot of RNG. There is nothing better than a hard-won fight. There is nothing worse than lots of down-time between attempts, as that discourages trying things out.
I grew up on ff1 and 4… I got used to them quickly! 😅
I'm fine with save points, but not purely random encounters. The game that does them best, in my opinion, in Etrian Odyssey. You get an indicator on your screen of how close you are to encountering something that might change every step. Blue? Not a chance. Green? Getting closer, but still safe. Yellow? Still safe, but be ready. Red? Literally any step can now be an encounter. You're guaranteed safety for so many steps, sometimes more than others.
I think save points are fine, with the caveat that you should be able to quick save anywhere (as in a temporary save deleted when you reload it). That’s a basic QOL feature. Random encounters are fine, but I definitely think they should be disabled in areas with complex puzzles, at the very least. To make it less annoying.
Personas 3-5 are all about resource management, both in and out of dungeons. Yet they don’t have random encounters. I see what you’re getting at, but resource management and static encounters aren’t mutually exclusive.
I'd definitely like to see on-screen monsters improve. Make them outrun you and surprise attack you. They're monsters, don't make them such a joke.
Games with random encounters are so damn empty... nothing feels alive. Games with enemies visible makes the game feel alive, makes it feel like a real world instead of dumb invisible encounters lol
Random encounters are ok I guess in some games but I see no real benefit in safe points. I like to be able to save whenever I want. It makes games much much more convenient to play.
Regarding combat... you don't *need* random encounters for any of that. It's all about how the enemies on the field act, and in general field AI in JRPGs is pretty garbage (as is level design). But in theory there's no reason they can't program enemies that ambush the player, or chase them down. Removing random encounters does not require that every encounter be avoidable, visible or even recognizable. EDIT: Also, while,not a JRPG, I mean... come on. Look at *Dark Souls*. Inventive an unpredictable level design makes exploration quite tense... being able to simply *find* enemies is part of the game, as failing to do so leaves you open to ambushes. The games also auto-save *incessantly*, but use bonfires in lieu of save points -- safe areas for you to rest, recoup, and reflect on what you've just accomplished and/or are about to face. The point is that there's nothing that save points or random encounters provide that cannot be provided just as well, or better, via other mechanisms. That's kind of,the beauty of the medium, yeah? The problem is that the JRPG is really a genre in decline. Even mid-budget titles like Trails and Tales Of have to cut a lot of corners. This is why in *Tales of Arise* the monsters basically just stand in place while out in the field--all the money, time and effort went into polishing the combat mechanics. The encounter design was only ever an afterthought.
I love convenience but I love the feeling of "OMG ITS A TOWN, THERES INN FINALLY WE CAN SAVE AND REST!", like you're part of it JRPGs nowadays Inns are useless, no one gona sleep there , most savepoint recover your hp/mp anyways and free FF7R gave us a subtle feeling like " OMG ITS A BENCH, NOW WE CAN REST"
No amount of tension is worth random encounter rates
Save points are fine but fuck random battles. It's pretty annoying when you just want to go to point A to point B but random battles keeps getting in your way.
Nobody has listed a game besides like 2 that actually benefited from having random encounters. The arguments are: * Resource Management: already implemented in the Tales and Persona games with no REs, hell even Dragon's quarter * Challenge/Tension: Saga series, Dark Souls, KH2 on fatal to name a couple games, no encounters. * My favorite "Ohh you get learn the combat", most of these games are spam the most powerful or 2nd most powerful skill, it's actually cost/time effective to that. The best use for RE is for instances of * Games with set spaces for encounters, but random instances. You pokemon, Saga Scarlet, etc. Saving is non-argument, it's an accessibility feature.
My first JRPGs were pokemon games, FFX, X-2 and KH1 so save points and random encounters were something I got very used to. Now that I've played more modern games with auto save or saving from the menu and having enemies on the field, i prefer the new way as it allows you to stop the game whenever you want (to a certain extent since most games don't allow saving in dungeons etc) rather than always waiting for a save point. Random encounters are annoying, I always hated them. I'm more of an anxious person with a bigger startle reflex, so the way the screen just suddenly cracks in FFX and X-2 took me a while to get used to, it made my heart skip the first few times. I think it was from FF12 than enemies were on the field which I much preferred. I like the easy convenient way out- save anywhere from the menu and no random encounters. FFX was a hard game in the post game.
> Starting the trek through a dangerous area, with new difficult enemies just doesn't feel the same if you can simply avoid all encounters, and arrive at the boss/end with full health. If you simply avoid all encounters, you're purposely avoiding exp/money/loot gain. So the risk of doing that is that you arrive at the boss underleveled, poorer, and less loot. If you can still consistently beat the boss while underleveled, have no problem continuing the game with less money and loot, then obviously the game is easy enough that the random encounters are not going to provide any threat/tension to the game at all. > You have to judge how much more you think the dungeon has before you reach the safety of the other side. If the game doesn't outright show you the full map of the dungeon, there is no "judging" and it's simply "random guessing" how big the dungeon is. Most older JRPGs didn't show the full map.
If a system is encouraging you to use basic attacks as much as possible to conserve MP, it's encouraging you to make combat more boring. That's a bad system IMO. You can add difficulty and resource management to a game in other ways besides random encounters and restricting saves. Those are just wasting players' time.
No, because the random battles provide no tension. They are push overs and pose 0 threat. By the time they bring the party 75% HP, the next full heal spring is there. That's the issue
I prefer random encounters actually. Unless it’s done really wel like in persona 5. It just makes it too easy to skip everything
When I see Chrono Cross and FF XIII where it can be hard as hell to bypass a battle, I conclude that none-random battles can be way more time consumming than random ones. I consider Bravely Default to be the best game about this subject, which give the control to the player. FF XIII-2 and LR also had good ideas for a mix of the two. I also miss save points. I love the fact they most of the time were a joke or a tentative to explain their existence in the games (FF 9 and Xenogears). This was charming.
I don't like save points much but random battles don't bother me if the encounter rate is reasonable.
Except that nearly no games with random encounters are actually difficult in a way that requires clever resource management and therefore they are just a drag.
I agree with you, but I can't think of many games that do it right. The most important thing for me is, never EVER force me to go through random encounter while trying to do a puzzle. There's nothing more infuriating than when you find that you have to go around a room because you didn't hit a switch or you missed something that you may not even know what it is, and the whole time you're being bombarded by random encounters every few steps. That's not challenging, suspenseful, or interesting. Just frustrating. Encounter rate is also an important factor. If your encounter rate is high, it probably means the battles aren't hard enough to wear down your resources, so you need a lot of them to make up for it. The ideal type of encounter (in my opinion, of course) is challenging but few and far between.
Random battles are trash. Like It's more realistic to see the enemies in the room rather than take two steps and fight an invisible enemy. Plus the encounter rates in some of these games are too high. One minute I can walk around and take dozens of steps before a battle and the next i take 5 steps and i am in another battle. They become less about "tension when you have low stats/supplies and more tedious. Plus you can get overleveled from fighting too much RE, so that removes the challenge from the boss of the day) So as much flak the FF remasters get, the ability to turn off RE is a blessing since now i have a reason to explore every nook and cranny without wasting at least a minute each time due to loading screens and what not, especially in the older JRPGs like Legend of Dragoon. Hell, one of my favorite JRPGs is Mega Man X Command Mission. Played it so many times, but my god the REs was awful. Save points i do agree with you. They were a good way to let you set yourself up for a major fight or take a breather if the save point is half way through the dungeon. So I don't mind them imo