Random Encounters Hate

[CriticalGaming]

It would’ve been cool if the FF7 Remake had the classic random battles as an option.

It's funny you mention that, because the enemies spawn in very specific zones in the Remake as well as many other games that use enemies on the world map. But the problem with being able to skip random battles, is that you begin to realize how short RPG's actually are. If you turned off the random battles in FF7 original (which you can do on the ps4/switch/xbox versions) you can power through the entire game in an afternoon. It's maybe 8-12 hours long depending. Not to mention you lose out on a lot of the substance within an rpg without them.

On top of that, if you took out or skipped the encounters in FF7remake, the world actually gets very very empty. And I think the same would apply to all the games, even if the world is littered with things to fight, if you are not forced to fight them eventually players lend towards avoiding them. Which is a determent to the game and one of the many ways in which players sometimes harm their own experience with a game.

 

[happyninja42]

It's funny you mention that, because the enemies spawn in very specific zones in the Remake as well as many other games that use enemies on the world map. But the problem with being able to skip random battles, is that you begin to realize how short RPG's actually are. If you turned off the random battles in FF7 original (which you can do on the ps4/switch/xbox versions) you can power through the entire game in an afternoon. It's maybe 8-12 hours long depending. Not to mention you lose out on a lot of the substance within an rpg without them.

Is it "substance" though? Or is it literally just filler? Because what you are describing just sounds like padding out a short game, with mindless combat, for no reason other than the game gatekeeps the different story points behind character levels with massive gaps between them. That's not "content", or well, I guess technically it is, but it's not very good or engaging content. When I remember JRPGs at all, I don't remember the hours of mindless, numb grinding, I remember the story beats, the cutscenes, the cinematics that drove the plot.

 

[CriticalGaming]

Is it "substance" though? Or is it literally just filler? Because what you are describing just sounds like padding out a short game, with mindless combat, for no reason other than the game gatekeeps the different story points behind character levels with massive gaps between them. That's not "content", or well, I guess technically it is, but it's not very good or engaging content. When I remember JRPGs at all, I don't remember the hours of mindless, numb grinding, I remember the story beats, the cutscenes, the cinematics that drove the plot.

No it's literally the substance of the game. That's like saying all the pointed fodder throughout levels in a God of War game are "filler". Combat is often the only real gameplay that RPG's have and to reduce the amount of it, is to reduce the amount of actual "game" there is within a given title. Short cuts are fine, like what I mentioned about the Persona games, but to outright remove them basically turns most RPG's into visual novels or walking sims.

Think about this. If you eliminate or drastically reduce combat, you also drastically reduce the reason for exploration, item finding, shopping at vendors, etc because all of those things revolve around making your characters equipped with the best shit, and have the items needed to get through the game. So exploration and random encounters feed each other, because without one the other loses it's meaning.

The reason you remember those big story moments and cutscenes is because those random encounters and challenges along the way made you earn them. You progress through a dungeon, fight your way to a boss, beat the boss, and then a cool cutscene or story moment happens. You remember the reward, not the effort it took to get there because the effort is what made those rewards so powerful.

 

[happyninja42]

The reason you remember those big story moments and cutscenes is because those random encounters and challenges along the way made you earn them.

I would appreciate it if you don't presume to know why I remember parts of a game versus others I forget. That might be why YOU remember them, but that is most definitely not why I remember the scenes. I don't recall the Sending cinematic of Yuna in FF 10 as a hauntingly beautiful moment of character development, because we see her stepping up into a role in her society, that is traumatic, for everyone, because of the hour of random shit monsters I plowed through to get to that scene. How she believes it's her duty to help the people, and to send the souls so they don't come back as monsters. How we see her, terrified about if she can actually do it, but determined to be the best she can. How she turns a moment of utter tragedy for the village, into a moment of mournful beauty, and closure, and how it slapped the somewhat still cocky Tidus, into realizing that shit here was far more serious than he actually realized. And how it was the start of his bond with Yuna, and his determination to try and keep her from having to do anything like that again.

If you think I love that scene, years later because of ANYTHING to do with fighting mindless trash mobs as some form of "earning it" crap, you are high. And have honestly probably played too many fucking From Soft games, and had your brains bashed in by ramming your head into a wall too many times against those bosses, to think that repetition is a good substitute for good storytelling and narration.

Don't tell me I enjoy the cutscenes because I slogged through hours of shit fights, when I specifically tell you I DISLIKE that stuff. You are not in my head, do not try and say I like something that I don't like, because you don't like my answer.

And if the "substance" of your game, is mindless fighting, that has no actual, narrative content, then your game is a shallow piece of crap. Since you brought up GoW, for one, you don't have to do any leveling on the side in that game. If you stick to the story points, and aren't trying for the epic sidequests, you can play through it without much issue. If you do choose to go do the side stuff, as an option (not mandatory because the game forces you to be stronger than you could be without it), then yes, it becomes mindless grind. But it's at least optional. And two, while you are doing that sidequesting, you are having plot elements between Kratos and his son, and the head, to further flesh out the game. So you have an expanded narrative while grinding, which at least gives you something to ponder and discuss with a friend, or wife in my case, while plowing through trash. There is no such narration or discussion in JRPGs, where all you have is a sprite wobbling around an overmap before it dissolving into a fight, which again, has zero narrative content at all. The entire cast becomes effectively mute for several hours while you just push through fights.

 

[Xprimentyl]

And if the "substance" of your game, is mindless fighting, that has no actual, narrative content, then your game is a shallow piece of crap.

Ouch. But true.

 

[CriticalGaming]

And if the "substance" of your game, is mindless fighting, that has no actual, narrative content, then your game is a shallow piece of crap

Then every game is a piece of crap by that metric, with the exception of walking sims and visual novels. Because outside of boss fights, very few other encounters have any narrative relevance in any game.

First off please note that when I talking about the way "you" or "we" remember things, I'm speaking metaphorically towards the larger gaming crowd, not YOU Happyninja specifically.

You remember the Yuna scene as a touching moment because of the context of what is experienced in the game around it. Battling monsters on the way add context to how dangerous the world is because of the Sinspawn that infest the lands and attack people. The desperate battle you have with Sin to try and prevent that attack, only to fail, the battles with Sin's aftermath you face afterwards as well.

Those great story moments don't exist in a vacuum. The gameplay brings context to all those things. Even the random battles of FFX are part of the narrative content.

Show that Yuna scene to someone who hasn't played the game, and they would not have that same reaction to the scene as someone who's played up to that point.

Taking away random encounters from an RPG would objectively make the rest of the game worse.

 

[Jarrito3002]

It's funny you mention that, because the enemies spawn in very specific zones in the Remake as well as many other games that use enemies on the world map. But the problem with being able to skip random battles, is that you begin to realize how short RPG's actually are. If you turned off the random battles in FF7 original (which you can do on the ps4/switch/xbox versions) you can power through the entire game in an afternoon. It's maybe 8-12 hours long depending. Not to mention you lose out on a lot of the substance within an rpg without them.

Is being short a bad thing. Like Chrono Trigger considered the apex top tier pandeon of rpgs is like 14-15 which is not that long considering the 100 of hours the genre is known for. This was probably the right design decision as trying to get all those endings out of lets say 40 and above hours would cause fatigue in many and you want to most people to get the most out of your game.

Some rpgs would do well being cut a good chunk out of it looking at you Dragon Quest 11.

 

[CriticalGaming]

Is being short a bad thing. Like Chrono Trigger considered the apex top tier pandeon of rpgs is like 14-15 which is not that long considering the 100 of hours the genre is known for. This was probably the right design decision as trying to get all those endings out of lets say 40 and above hours would cause fatigue in many and you want to most people to get the most out of your game.

Some rpgs would do well being cut a good chunk out of it looking at you Dragon Quest 11.

I don't know really. I think there is a merit for the shorter game, even if it plays at being an RPG, but I think it depends on your audience. Most RPG fans are used to games that are 60+ hours at least and I don't think a full price game could release without backlash if it wasn't at least that long.

However there are plenty of smaller titles that reach huge success while also being shorter. Undertale comes to mind.

 

[Gordon_4]

Because I just want to cross freaking Mt Moon without fighting a Zubat every 3 steps.

That fucking place........it haunts my dreams.

 

[hanselthecaretaker]

It's funny you mention that, because the enemies spawn in very specific zones in the Remake as well as many other games that use enemies on the world map. But the problem with being able to skip random battles, is that you begin to realize how short RPG's actually are. If you turned off the random battles in FF7 original (which you can do on the ps4/switch/xbox versions) you can power through the entire game in an afternoon. It's maybe 8-12 hours long depending. Not to mention you lose out on a lot of the substance within an rpg without them.

On top of that, if you took out or skipped the encounters in FF7remake, the world actually gets very very empty. And I think the same would apply to all the games, even if the world is littered with things to fight, if you are not forced to fight them eventually players lend towards avoiding them. Which is a determent to the game and one of the many ways in which players sometimes harm their own experience with a game.

The updated skipping function must ≠ using the run away command, which basically means losing out on needed XP, GIL, drops, etc. to build your party. It sounds like they essentially turn the game into a pseudo walking sim which is ridiculous.

 

[CriticalGaming]

The updated skipping function must ≠ using the run away command, which basically means losing out on needed XP, GIL, drops, etc. to build your party. It sounds like they essentially turn the game into a pseudo walking sim which is ridiculous.

Well that's what happens when you implement systems that allow the player to skip playing the game. Random battles can be frustrating at times sure, but removing them also basically takes out the gameplay part of the game so what's the actual solution? If you aren't having fun with the game due to it having too much "play" then you don't like the game and stop playing it.

It's the same reasoning that I get when people want "easy-mode" in Souls games. It is basically saying "I want to play the game without actually having to play/learn the game." Which is fine I guess but you might as well watch it on Youtube while playing CookieClicker then.

 

[wings012]

So to me, both systems are basically the same. I happen to love random fights because I like the freedom of overleveling the story content if i want to. I like to grind in RPG's because I like showing up to boss fights like Goku and slapping them down like a bunch of punks, but that's just me.

I don't see them both at the same, cause at least I have the agency in when my fight happens. Sometimes I'm just not that free and want to leg it to the next save point. Or maybe I fucked up regarding bringing enough potions so I rather just leg it. I can make up any level deficiencies later on my own terms. I can also pick the type of enemy I want to fight.

My sense of direction is also not so great, sometimes I get a bit lost and being able to avoid excess encounters is great. There's also just me being neurotic or forgetful about forked paths and double checking areas for treasure.

Many JRPGs like to lock some areas or tease certain treasures that you can't access. You'll find them, know about them but you have to remember them, move on and come back later after finding the key or unlocking whatever movement mechanic that gives you access. Being able to just dodge random encounters as I return to those areas is huge.

Not all of the games are tuned or balanced the same either, so there isn't a fixed measure for how many random encounters you need to be sufficiently leveled to take on the challenges ahead. There could be games where the random encounter percentage is excessive, and some where it's too low. If enemies are visible, I take it into my own hands.

There's also when you actually want to fight, either to test new equipment, grind levels or loot - being able to see your enemies allows you to trigger combat fairly promptly. Rather than running circles like a dolt.

 

[BrawlMan]

Pretty much why I stopped giving a fuck about turn based RPGs.

 

[Phoenixmgs]

It's a mechanic that has been a staple of RPG's since day 1 and technically kind of started with tabletop RPG's. Sure your DM has full control over when a fight happens but to the players the encounters can feel pretty random. This is done to either add tension to a dungeon, forcing players to be careful with not only the way they explore but also to control their resource usage. In a video game, random encounters are there to make sure the player has every chance to get the exp they need to defeat the boss fights along their way.

However this ability to see the random encounters does not mean the random encounters are gone. It just means you can see them and that's not a difference. In fact in a lot of cases with these visable encounters, you still have to fight at least some of them or risk being underleveled for bosses that will stomp your face in. Additionally there are even some random fights that are unavoidable either because they surprise you during exploration or are simply in a narrow path in which you cannot avoid them.

So to me, both systems are basically the same. I happen to love random fights because I like the freedom of overleveling the story content if i want to. I like to grind in RPG's because I like showing up to boss fights like Goku and slapping them down like a bunch of punks, but that's just me.

I just don't get why people have such a hate for them, it's part of the genre. You know that normal fights are part of the style of game, hell they are a part of every game in a way. Very few games let you go from boss to boss without forcing you to fight some guff inbetween. So I don't know what about that system in RPG's is so upsetting. At least with RPG's fighting random battles gives you some noticable gain like money and levels and such. What do you gain by fighting wave 5 of random enemy ambush in an Uncharted game? Nothing. Those fights are there to make the game longer and seem more exciting and that's it. If they were gone, it wouldn't change the odds of your success during the next boss fight. Whereas in an RPG you might have gotten a couple of extra levels during your trip through the dungeon so that by the time you got to the boss you are noticably more powerful and are more capable of fighting it.

What do you guys think? Random Boss yay or nay? Why?

Tabletop RPGs only have random battles if the players and the DM want them. You can scout around any area and investigate to find all the enemies in DnD. That's not to say there won't be any ambushes and whatnot because sometimes your perception rolls suck or an enemy is doing something you just can't perceive. Sometimes you're the predator and sometimes you're the prey basically.

The only choice for encounters isn't just you put a bunch of enemies on the map bumbling around or not see them. Look at Divinity Original Sin, which has just about all the encounters being there for specific reasons, they have a story or some kind of purpose to them, they aren't just there to as XP or gold dumps. And, you just can't constantly fight stuff in Divinty, those enemies are gone forever once you beat them. It's the difference between say a well crafted gunfight in an Uncharted (where care is taken to level design and enemy placement) or just fighting another wave of randomly spawned enemies in say a horde mode multiplayer or repetitive grindy missions in a looter shooter. The Souls games would be completely different games if you fought the same number of enemies in each dungeon, but their placements were randomized.

Also, random encounters discourage exploration and make the world seem lifeless. Why am I going to explore if I'm getting punished every few steps with an annoying battle? I'm gonna stick to the main path so I don't have to do all these pointless battles. These aren't high quality, well crafted encounters, they're basically brain dead encounters that provide nothing but waste your time. There's no interesting strategy to them, there's no story to them, they're just there. The world itself not housing the enemies makes it seem so barren and lifeless, you're supposed to be in an interesting virtual world. I'm sorry but when a squirrel walks through my backyard, that shouldn't be more visually interesting than the Calm Lands in FFX.

Also, there's quite a difference to fighting enemies in an action game vs a turn-based game where there's no player execution. In an action game, the player is at least getting better at the game and honing their skills in a similar manner to say playing basketball or darts. Whereas in a turn-based game, you don't have that. You're not getting any better at the game after fight #1,000 than you were at fight #10 (against standard enemies). Sure boss battles or other specific story fights can challenge the player introducing new things or different strats or whatever, but fighting the same sets of enemies over and over again really does nothing. You can argue resource management, but plenty of other games without constant fighting of enemies does resource management just fine. Or you can have fewer battles each take more overall resources obviously.

Remember, RPGs (and just the vast majority of video games) have combat because combat is the easiest thing to do from a developer standpoint, it's very number based and binary (perfect for programming obviously). Whether you're fighting waves of mooks in a shooter or brawler, that's the easy road for a developer. Creating well crafted encounters is much more time consuming, whether shooter/brawler/RPG. Creating well crafted encounters that provide the player with quite a bit different solutions is like 10x harder than just a well crafted fight. The reason there's tons of "filler" content in a lot of games, whether random encounters or open world collectathons, is because that content is so much easier to produce. Quality >>>>>>>> Quantity.

The 1st few minutes in this video talk about how reliance on combat in RPGs hamstrings the writing and quest design.

 

[Phoenixmgs]

So I would like it if they had some alternative method of level advancement. Perhaps more social encounters that let you level up via helping npc's and having fun little side stories, that don't rely entirely on combat prowess. Including skills that let you avoid combat, like social skills or intelligence skills (charm/diplomacy/lockpicking/etc), that give you a way through some challenges, that have nothing to do with hitting something with a stick until it dies, but is still challenging and requires skill investment, but equally nets you experience, on par with the combat rewards.

My DnD (well, Pathfinder) GM doesn't even hand out experience. We level up when he deems it appropriate. We have no reason to fight stuff just get more experience. We can't just spend sessions fighting squirrels and rats so we one-shot his next fight in the campaign. That doesn't even make logical sense, you can't kill say 1,000,000 rats in real life and then one-shot the world's best fighter. We fight stuff either because we have to sometimes (obviously) or because we want to. We avoided 3 fights in the last area of this dungeon last session and only had 2 combat encounters. We actually got rewarded for avoiding the ooze fight. We lost out on possible treasure via the other 2 skipped fights. It's not like missing fights is going to make us underleveled and unable to continue or finish the campaign. On the video game side of things, you should earn experience for finishing quests and the quests should be designed well enough to have options where fighting isn't the only solution. That's the point of an RPG, to ROLE-PLAY. If we wanted to just fight, there's tons of other games (whether video or tabletop) that accomplish that.

 

[happyninja42]

My DnD (well, Pathfinder) GM doesn't even hand out experience. We level up when he deems it appropriate. We have no reason to fight stuff just get more experience. We can't just spend sessions fighting squirrels and rats so we one-shot his next fight in the campaign. That doesn't even make logical sense, you can kill say 1,000,000 rats in real life and then one-shot the world's best fighter. We fight stuff either because we have to sometimes (obviously) or because we want to. We avoided 3 fights in the last area of this dungeon last session and only had 2 combat encounters. We actually got rewarded for avoiding the ooze fight. We lost out on possible treasure via the other 2 skipped fights. It's not like missing fights is going to make us underleveled and unable to continue or finish the campaign. On the video game side of things, you should earn experience for finishing quests and the quests should be designed well enough to have options where fighting isn't the only solution. That's the point of an RPG, to ROLE-PLAY. If we wanted to just fight, there's tons of other games (whether video or tabletop) that accomplish that.

Yeah some games actually incorporate this into the leveling system. I remember a short lived Star Wars tabletop system, that awarded XP at the end of plot thresholds. A short term threshold might be 4 sessions, a story threshold like 8 or so, and a campaign even longer. It didn't matter what was accomplished, or how, other than the primary thing. Like say. "Get off Tatooine" . That might take multiple sessions to accomplish, but doing so, nets you xp. And the idea, as best as I recall, was that you should be leveling about every 4 thresholds. So, it let you do things like, say, have some of the team be engaged in a game of cat and mouse in space on the Falcon, while your force user is off getting training. But by the credit roll, they've all leveled up. I really enjoyed that idea. The FFG system for Star Wars is somewhat similar, in that XP is handed out per session, like a baseline of say 2xp per session, but you could earn extra points by doing cool/fun things during that session.

 

[immortalfrieza]

I think random encounters in modern games are simply a holdover from technical restrictions in early 8-bit games. Am I wrong? It made sense when they were limited to sprites and less dynamic environments, but since then, technology can handle so much more. They could afford to make encounters more fluid, sensical and less jarring, but I think random encounters just worked their way so deeply into the identity of the JRPGs genre, changing it now is effectively changing the genre, so they persist to this day.

I'd say that random encounters exist to this day for no real reason other than laziness. It is much easier to make encounters happen every few steps than it is to create and animate creatures on the dungeon/world map for players to run into. Especially if one pairs it with turned based combat. Having visible and avoidable battles is not only an evolution of random encounters but objectively superior in terms of both immersion and player satisfaction. However random encounters still exist even now simply because they take less effort and testing to do.

 

[Dalisclock]

Random encounters are dumb, simply put. I'd rather know where most monsters hang around and go fight them myself on my own terms. If I am super over-levelled for the area I don't want to keep having low level enemies appearing. Or if I just want to get through an area it shouldn't be a start-stop affair. A smart adventurer would likely see where these monsters are and take precautions to avoid them if needed. I find it hard to believe monsters can constantly and repeatedly get the drop on said character steadily throughout only one location, unless these places are positively INFESTED up to the walls in creatures.

KInda one of the thing that bugs me. In a jungle or dense forest or maybe a dark dungeon, I can see getting ambushed more often than not, but if I'm walking around an area with high visibility and few obstructions, there's no way the monsters should just "appear" like random encounters seem to imply they do with no way to set a defensible position, sneak around the monsters, lay an ambush of my own, etc. Nope, there's a 10 foot mob just appeared out of the ether because videogame!

 

[CriticalGaming]

KInda one of the thing that bugs me. In a jungle or dense forest or maybe a dark dungeon, I can see getting ambushed more often than not, but if I'm walking around an area with high visibility and few obstructions, there's no way the monsters should just "appear" like random encounters seem to imply they do with no way to set a defensible position, sneak around the monsters, lay an ambush of my own, etc. Nope, there's a 10 foot mob just appeared out of the ether because videogame!

I hate to appear "woke" but you need to check your video game realism privilege.

 

[Thaluikhain]

Eh, depends. In Exile (the first one), I'd be walking up to a Nephil dungeon so I can clear part of it out, and when I run low on magic or health go to the nearest town to recuperate and sell off any loot. Having to fight serious Nephil random encounters on the way there and back is grind on top of the grind.

OTOH, when wandering around looking for something to kill to level up before the enxt big grind in Nethergate, 3 goblins and a wolf that pose no threat isn't so annoying, just a slight delay.