ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 6 พ.ค. 2024
- Hi everyone, it's Dutchess! Today I'll be discussing random encounters in RPG games. In this video, I'm talking about why random encounters were implemented and why they're an intrusive gameplay mechanic in modern gaming. If you enjoyed it, let me know and be sure to leave a like and subscribe!
Timestamps:
▶ 1:06 - How it Started
▶ 3:04 - My Experience
▶ 5:14 - Pokémon
You can find me on:
Minimap: minimap.net/user/dutchess - เกม
This wasn't "introduced to artificially extend gameplay", random encounters existed BEFORE the current "hack n' slash skip everything" type that is so overly prevalent today.
Random encounters weren't implemented to artificially extend gameplay. Random encounters were the gameplay. Have random encounters, get Exp and GP, level up/buy new equipment = get stronger. That was the basic gameplay loop.
Of course, if the FF1 remake encounter rate was altered to be about every 2 steps, that's ridiculous. In the original it was more on the order of 20 steps.
Once I played Earthbound, where you auto stomp low level enemies without even entering a battle screen, it was really hard to go back to other games where you have to monotonously mash the attack button against rats 40 levels below you.
That's for sure a genius system! It must be difficult going back after playing with a feature like that. Anyways, thanks for taking the time to leave a comment! Really means a lot to me 😊
also I remember if you manage to get them from the back you get 2 turns
Plowing through Mementos as the Morgana-mobile in Persona 5 was great fun in the same way
Idk i (still) like random encounters, i enjoy the challenge because its an endurance test for your gear and items, and keeps your characters leveling up. Theres always a way through if you prepare. A lot of the games have a way to mitigate them or even eliminate them altogether with items or equipment
my biggest complaint is random encounters take to long to enter and leave in alot of classics. if im grinding or whatever the 3-5 second swing into the combat IMO should be completely removed. just flop me right to the combat in less than a second please. if you still want to dramatize any time i meet a new enemy type or first encount in each new area, sure. but please stop waisting my time on every fight.
@@danielbricker7204 I think chrono trigger did it the best, where nothing transitions on screen but the enemies all come out from different areas like an ambush
@@GR4V17Y Honestly until the end I thought they were arguing for only scripted encounters. Chrono Trigger was hell yeah. I'd argue, ( now hear me out) FF15 did it better. Not necessarily the combat itself. Most enemies are visible. Then night falls. You're on your way back to town. Holy crap that thing just jumped out the road! Well that's my shorts. Kinda works.
Early RPGs are random battle simulators.
Also, in early RPGs, the challenge WAS the slog of random encounters.
That sums up the original Final Fantasy experience. Instead of MP, the magic had a "charge" system that didn't have any real way to restore uses outside of sleeping in an inn. So your black and white mages were mostly dead weight as you waded through waves of monsters, because you needed them to save their charges for the boss at the end of a dungeon or crowd control for a dangerous mob. Yeah, you start getting items that let you use spells for free about halfway through the game, but that doesn't change the fact that the BW mages spent half of the game being meat shields and little more.
@@CoolxBreese like, you can just kinda buy 99 potions relatively early into some of thsese older ff games (unless the pixel remasters changed the price structure. I played 1 and 2 on half money/exp). I used red mage, thief, black belt, black mage in ff 1 and the red mage was essentially my tank and used buffs and heals as required.
@@xHeigoux You can do that in remakes of FF1, like in FF1: Dawn of Souls. In the original NES version, there were no restorative MP potions.
Random encounters are a double edge sword. While many game have over used it, I find the I avoid more fights if I can see the monsters. The problem with that is I'm under lever by the next few boss fights.
True! That's been the problem when I tried playing through games that has visible random encounters. I know I can avoid them, so I do just that and it ends up ruining my pace when I have to face the next boss.
@@Dutchess5 That tells me that there should be a mix of both visible encounters and random encounters, perhaps keyed around geographical areas suitable for ambushes, such as trees, hills, similar.
You can toggle them nowadays let alone no idea why it starts with wild arms 3 that lets you skip some of them. Beyond the beyond would be a better example, as that is a nightmare. And suikoden 5/final fantasy 9 on old hardware even adds load times, which vid skips in intro.
Perhaps the experience points system is also flawed.
People always love to say Chrono Trigger has all the enemies on screen, but it has plenty of fights where they aren't on screen and just show up when you reach a certain spot
And very very often the enemies are placed in a way where it is impossible to avoid them at all.
Ive had the opposite experience with some games that have ZERO Random encounters with fixed enemies, loot, etc were the way to progress the game quickly becomes 'play perfectly' and 'play certain practically hardcoded playstyles to win' that due to the highly fixed nature of the game due to a lack of randomness beyond direct player actions highly limits freedom of choice. Especially as random encounters while they can be a resource waster, are also a source OF resources generally in many games and in a setting were enemies and loot is fixed if you run out of resources you are fucked and have to restart, or reload a save.
Yeah, most forget the cash and exp are both resources from those battles.
I assume this is meant to be mocking video game journalists. There is no way you ignored the history of random encounters in literature from fairy tales to fantasy novels. They tell the story of the conflict of man versus nature. The struggle to decide which teammate gets a healing or mana potion is the resource management. You can flee from random battles which you ignored and the battles in Pokémon you can’t flee from, you can see ahead of time and they aren’t random. I would like you to consider that maybe there is more to the big picture of encounters than hardware limits and inventory costs, but that is your decision to make.make more opinionated videos please.
Random encounters started as somewhat of a technical limitation and then became tradition and continued to be implemented mostly because it is just the easiest way to implement enemies. Many players have become attached to the system so even if it is a bad system many people like it anyway. Maybe the system is not always bad but it is almost always frustrating. Regardless of whether you are looking for enemies or trying to avoid them, the system always seems to slow gameplay down. The games that implement random encounters usually have the most simplified battle systems that make almost every fight boring and repetitive so it is rarely ever fun to be suddenly interrupted and forced into battle.
"Why was this in games in the first place?"
Because Dungeons & Dragons. Like basically everything that exists in old school rpgs.
I'd go as far as saying it's also because of Lord Of Rings. The Fellowship wasn't expecting to come across the Balrog when they did.
I like random encounters when it serves a purpose. I never really liked them in most RPGs because it's just there as core mechanic for leveling up and whatnot.
For Pokemon though, it works within the essence of what the game represents. The search for rare pokemon is only elevated when you know they spawn in a given area, but the encounter is very rare. Walking by and having a look through the room to see if the sprite is there simply doesn't have the same feel. Although I do have to say that I like the random encounters of Pokemon because you can also opt out of the system by using Repels, or walking outside of the tall grass when possible.
It is even worse in Pokémon because you will want to encounter specific monsters and just have to get lucky, it makes searching for monsters boring and time consuming. It would be more fun to actually need to search for their location rather than just walk in circles until you get lucky.
@@elio7610 There's definitely room for improvement within the pokemon world, because there's a lot of overlap between areas.
I don't mind that there's a handful of pokemon who are widely available throughout a region, but most routes and especially every specific location should have some unique encounter to them, like specific pokemon that can only be found there.
But the search for rare pokemon is part of the fun, random encounters are awesome for games like that.
@@Kyduk I think you misinterpreted what i said. My point is that waiting for RNG to give me what i want is tedious and boring. It doesn't really matter where, i just don't want walk in circles waiting for the encounter i was hoping for. If i find the correct location in the correct conditions for a specific pokémon to show up then i want it to just show up as soon as possible.
@@elio7610 I understood exactly your point, and what you want is basically the same thing as static encounter. Having a guaranteed encounter with a rare pokemon is what is killing the franchise with the most recent games.
@@Kyduk You think that is the problem with newer pokémon games?
Random encounter chance is only meaningful if the there were other mechanics to make it meaningful, it generally does nothing other than make the player waste time by itself. Does encountering 100 ratata before a pikachu finally appears make the game any more fun or otherwise worthwhile to play? You can generally just run away from the wild monsters anyway, you don't even need to fight your way through like some type of gauntlet or anything. It is just like pulling cards from a deck without restriction until you find the one you wanted.
Roguelikes win win here. I highly doubt that it was invented for Slay The Spire but i don't know better example of a game with kinda graph of encounters. You have several consecutive locations. For each level you have map with encounters connected by arrows. You can choose a path to contain more enemies, minibosses or camps but you don't see precisely what encounter is on the map. And you can only move forward and restore health only at camps/ends of levels. It is even more tense and unpredictable but feels so much better then classic random encounters.
I think gaming would be a poorer art form without any form of random encounters in any games, but there does need to be some way to mitigate the problems with the system. I like the system in the game Another Star. In most random encounters you see a gold exclamation mark above your head and you can press A to fight the battle or keep on walking to ignore it. However, there's a small chance a red exclamation mark will pop up, and in that case if you try to ignore the battle you'll get ambushed. I believe the chance of an unavoidable encounter increases if you ignore battles and decreases if you fight voluntary battles. (And if it doesn't, that would be a great addition. So would the chance increasing the higher the local enemies' level is compared to yours.) At about the halfway point in the game you can get an accessory that removes unavoidable encounters entirely, and it comes in really handy for the following two dungeons, but you have to equip it to a party member.
Now, the battle system proper leaves a lot to be desired, but that's another story.
I honestly doesn't see random encounters as a problem. Over abundance of encounters is annoying, but if the game has cool battle mechanics and a nice variety of enemies, good music and etc., I think it's fine. Same with the grinding stuff, like, what is the other option, making a game with absolutely no roadblocks? You can first try all the enemies and bosses without feeling like you need to become a little bit stronger? Also, trying to beat enemies while underleveled is fun too.
I get it that some games have trash enemy designs, mindless battles, and insane amount of enemy encounters. But I doubt I would ever feel challenged by a RPG if he never made me lose some progress after getting wiped out from some insane boss.
But then again, I love 7th Saga in the SNES and many people talk about that game it his some kind of insane grindfest, with unfair difficult. I Beat it a couple of times (took about 20 years to get it done for the first time) and I think it's one best RPGs in the SNES
The only thing that bothered me was the cryptic secrets and items you would never be able to find on your own, but that's just the way things used to be back then. As long as the battles are fun, the enemies aren't total pushovers and the battle theme is sick (and I don't need like 3 hours of grinding to gain one lvl), I think is fair and compelling. Maybe people don't like turn based battles in the first place and they only enjoy the narrative aspect of RPGs.
Thank God I never mind having random encounter on video games. Maybe because I was introduced to this concept and gameplay element back in 1996 when I was 5th grade (thanks, Samurai Spirits RPG and FF VII).
I'm a bit torn on random encounters in non-action RPGs. I find that most jRPGs with visible enemies make it effectively impossible to avoid them anyway(fast movement, narrow corridors, etc.) so it's like they're trying to give you the illusion of control when there's really no more control than there ever was. In the worst cases,, if you want to grind for levels you have to leave rooms(or the entire area in some cases) and come back to respawn things, which is just a different flavor of tedium. If I had to pick a good compromise, it would be one of the following:
Bravely Default - random encounters set up to 200% or down to 0% depending on current goals/desires. Those were the only 2 settings I used tbh.
Wild Arms ACF - There were encounters you could avoid freely, encounters you could avoid to an extent, and encounters you couldn't avoid at all. It kept things moving pretty smoothly, but made it risky going to certain areas too early.
Earthbound - non-random, sometimes avoidable, but if your level was high enough you'd automatically win and get the rewards. More games need to implement this. It's absolutely brilliant and severely underused. Even in Earthbound it didn't trigger easily enough tbh and could have been implemented better. I was still forced to fight a lot of super easy battles.
Showing the enemy visibly on the map is not just to allow avoiding them, it also adds expectation so that it is not a sudden interruption of gameplay out of nowhere.
@@elio7610 Battles are the gameplay in jrpgs so how can they be a sudden interruption of gameplay?
@@azulmagia8872 if you are walking on the overworld, it interrupts your walk. if you expect the battle then it is not an interruption. if you are specifically trying to grind then it is not really an interruption but if you are just trying to travel to a location then it is.
@@elio7610 But battles should always be expected traveling the overworld.😕
@@azulmagia8872 well, it is just that the transition is too sudden and random. you know it might happen but it still feels like an interruption. it is just a psychological thing, it feels better when you can actually see the enemy coming. if you can see it coming then your brain can prepare for it and work it into your flow of thought, if you don't see it coming then your flow of thought is just constantly being interrupted which causes discomfort. i am not against an occasional surprise but to frequently be interrupted every few steps seems excessive.
Pretty fair analysis! i never considered the possible resource tax encounters would have on older hardware, but that makes sense. It should always be noted too though that the design choice was also informed by D&D at the time, which RPGs at large were more or less adapting to a digital format.
I do agree that even as a kid I was frustrated by random encounters at a certain point in my life, and definitely now that I'm grown up with a job, family matters to tend to, etc. Nowadays an RPG has to really grab me if it has those random enemies or else it never feels like the juice ends up being worth the squeeze. I found the issue even more annoying in those RPG dungeons too; winding hallways, trying to solve some sort of puzzle. Overworld encounters you can see and dodge around help things, as well as RPGs that have items designed to lower their frequency! While I can't go back to old RPGs and appreciate their design in this aspect nowadays, I love seeing new RPGs and remakes of old ones come out over the decades and watching that concept evolve over time.
Earned a subscriber! I liked the quick and "old internet" feel you're lending to your videos
The weirdly high random encounter rate is what stops me from replaying Mega Man X: Command Mission, which I otherwise really liked.
That's a shame! 😞
Tbh the worst experience I've ever had with random encounters isn't even really an rpg, it's Yakuza 5. They screwed up the system and had enemies spawning 2 feet in front of you as soon as you finished a battle, and it was even worse when playing Saejima's part of the story because you can only go on the sidewalk since the roads are blocked. I almost stopped playing for a while 💀
Yikes! I haven't played through the Yakuza games yet but that sounds super annoying. So you just keep bumping into enemies and triggering the random encounters? Thanks for watching and leaving a comment, btw! 😊 I appreciate you taking time out to do so
@@Dutchess5 It might have partly been because I was playing through the entire series in 1 go, and I just got burned out. But 5 really has the most pretentious story and annoying mechanics 🤣
Its even worse in like a dragon. Its such a great game but the grind is just too much
Random encounters themselves aren't the problem imo. The issue is more the encounter rate. Either to high or to low, and it is hard to hit that sweet spot.
That's why you don't just limp into areas unprepared, if you do, it's your fault not the games. Also a lot of the games with random encounters give you items or equipment that either lessons or completely negate those encounters for a period of time.
After doing a 100% playthrough of the first 4 Final Fantasy Pixel Remasters on my Twitch stream, I had a hard time motivating myself to finish 5 and 6. I'll get to it eventually.
Darn! That dedication to 100 percenting up to 4 is really cool though! Thanks for taking the time to leave a comment 😊
there are so many things incorrect in this video that i dont even know where to begin
Interesting take. I will say I love random attacks, but I hate dumb npc tasks, so I feel you.
I agree that random encounters are annoying, and if given the chance, I would almost always prefer enemies to be visible on screen. But I also think you're a bit harsh on a system that served a clear purpose in time when games were still more technically restricted. Through the random encounters, they could throw many different party compositions at you in an area, increasing encounter variety. And visible enemies can be a hassle too - I find the respawning enemies in Dark Souls no less annoying than random battles in JRPGs. But that doesn't mean DS shouldn't have them, since they do serve a purpose - creating punishment for failure. Similarly, random encounters make it so you can't just waltz through dungeons without a care in the world. You mention how resource management becomes meaningless because of RE, but actually, in classic dungeon crawlers like the old FF games, they are what forces you to strategize how to use your resources, and if you can survive a deeper dungeon trip with what you have, or maybe should back off and replenish. Which is tedious, but I'd say that's the kind of game they were.
Incidentally, Final Fantasy I on the PSP was also the first FF game I played, and I had lots of fun with it. Most of the random combats get really easy later on, so you can often get through just holding X (which maybe defeats the point a little, but makes it more bearable. Since we are not 80s kids with nothing else to play). It's a fun game, if you go into it with the mindset that it's more about world + dungeon exploration and party growth, rather than story. And getting a new means of transportation is really rewarding thanks to the RE - since it lets you skip them lol
A game that I think hit the sweet spot with RE was Lufia 2, which showed enemies in dungeons, but had RE with a very low encounter rate on the world map. But still, for newer games, I wish they'd move away from that concept as much as possible, unless there is some tool that lets you simply ignore trash enemies (like the bus crash in P5R, or the Repel Spell in Dragon Quest). But for me, it's also not a deal breaker, if the game has enough other qualities.
"Kick this classic mechanic to the curve" as if there's an RPG game developer watching this.
If I remember correctly, some games did offer some relief though spells and random monster repel sprays. Although I will admit how annoying Zubats were in caves and mountains in early Pokémon games.
I think it really adds to the immersion of having to fight your way to the boss, life isn't supposed to be fair. But not all games, even the old ones were a total slug fest.
The first Parasite Eve was a horror rpg with random encounters that wasn’t as frustrating, since it wasn’t every few seconds, but at specific spots. So the fights weren’t as annoying.
I think the encounters were also limited, in that you'd eventually stop encountering enemies on the screen after a while and force you to move on. Aside from the Chrysler Building anyway. Chrono Trigger and Earthbound did them best when they were actual entities you saw on screen and what you saw was what you got, no hitting one sprite and fighting six enemies.
So funny you mention FF1s encounter rate, i JUST finished a run myself recently.
The dungeons in that game are designed to waste so much of your time i swear!!! Easily one of the most brutal random encounter based games ive played...
Ikr?! That game is so, so frustrating when it comes to the random encounter rates. I'm already a decent way into it but idk if I wanna continue, that's how annoying it is 😂 I wonder if the original game is any better in that regard... 🤔 Thanks for taking the time to watch and leave a comment 😊 Really means a lot to me!
@@Dutchess5 original is SOOOO MUCH WORSE!!! If you kill an enemy and your other party members are targeting it for an attack, they don't auto select the next guy, the attack misses
@quirkykirkplays Oof!! 😬 Okay, that's good to know! 😂 Thanks! PSP version it is for now haha!
@@Dutchess5 Not only that but some dungeons also have high-level & high-encounter rates paths that can completely take you by surprise and wipe your team. Feels bad
The mana issue in FF1 is so bad. I only ever spent mana outside of boss fights on healing spells and on offensive magic only when the enemies were 99% resistant to physical attacks, like the flans. There's dozens of spells, yet outside of extremely specific scenarios, you use only a handful of them.
If random encounters didn't exist in Pokemon, how would you catch Pokemon other than the starter you pick? Also every trainer would only have one of the three starters and you'd fight the same three Pokemon the entire game.
Shin Megami Tensei Nocturne alongside Digital Devil Saga may be the two of many examples of how not to do random encounters. Take 2-3-4 steps and boom.
It is worst in DDS since you don't have an indicator of when an enemy will attack while exploring and RNG encounters are king; from altered states to having a super boss encounter all of a sudden. In all fairness, Nocturne is a bit more forgiving when it comes to exploration most of the time, even in it's hardest dungeon but it still kind of sucks.
Yikes! That must be difficult to deal with. Especially since there's not much of an indication, like you mentioned in Devil Saga's case. The struggle is definitely for real! Thanks for taking the time to leave a comment, I really do appreciate it :)
Estoma
I like the way you speak; there's a kind of soft elegance to the way you flow between certain words. I'll be checking out more of your content for sure.
I might be a little biased, because I cut my JRPG teeth on the original Dragon Warrior back in the '80s, but random encounters don't really bother me one way or the other. Don't love 'em; don't hate 'em; don't particularly even notice when a game does or doesn't have them. I think part of that is that even when you can see the encounters, many of them are still functionally unavoidable, at least in the RPGs I've played; I've played quite a lot in my day, but the vast majority of them are from the NES era through the PlayStation era (ever since Devil May Cry came out, I've been more into action-oriented games), so what the likes of Final Fantasy Mystic Quest and SaGa Frontier were doing was pretty novel.
Even high encounter rates don't usually bother me that much, but what does is when the actual battles are slow; the original NES version of the first Final Fantasy feels like every encounter just drags on and on to me. Legend of the Ghost Lion's encounters were even worses because there was no way to gain experience; you found all of your level-ups in treasure chests, so every single encounter in the final stretch was a fight for your life, AND you had to waste several turns just summoning your other party members into battle. Even games like the first Dragon Warrior, weren't quite as bad just because the fights moved along more quickly, though I imagine they'd be harder to enjoy today. A big part of that is that the way people play games is different from how it was back in the '80s, and even the '90s; the first Dragon Warrior really wasn't much more than grinding until you were strong enough to reach the next town, because that WAS the experience, and that's why we were playing. The original Legend of Zelda does a lot to waste the player's time, but that's because nobody had a backlog to slay or even many other options, so taking a month or two to finish it wasn't that big of a deal. Even Super Mario Bros. 3 was a different experience, because you could never finish it in one sitting, so you'd have to use warp whistles, and the game was so huge, you never knew where you'd end up in the wee hours of the morning, and when you woke up the next day, you might think back and question whether that fall through Plumbers' Purgatory into pitch black water that dumps out into a nuclear green waterfall over an underground grassland was even real, and that was cool! Some of these old games have more going for them than just that, so they're still fun, and others have aged like bread, even to me; I don't think I'll ever replay the original Legend of Zelda, even if I was completely obsessed with it back in the '80s when it was new. Time marches on, the world changes, and if we're lucky, we change along with it and enjoy new experiences; if not, we get cranky and old and sit in our echo chambers, lamenting that things aren't how they used to be, and that's not a great alternative.
Anyway, not necessarily agreeing or disagreeing; I just hear a lot of people talking about how they hate random encounters, and most don't usually elaborate on that, so I stopped in to see the other side of things. Hope my long rambling was at least an interesting bit of historical perspective.
Bravely Default did random encounters great because you could change it.
I had no clue about that! All the more reason for me to pick up Bravely Default now 😂 Thanks for taking the time to leave a comment 😊
I put that game on its hardest difficulty and one boss fight drained all my items lol
Oh, also, ffx hd lets you turn off encounters too
Ever play Lagrange Point? REs out the butt.
Nope I haven't played it, but I'll have to check it out at some point!
From what you said it sounds like you like to jet through games without being stopped. If you are completely depleting your curative items with random encounters then you are weak sauce, you aren't leveled enough. If you create the loop you dread then you aren't using a good strategy. I've played countless rpgs and about the only ones that are out of your control are roguelikes. RNG can kill you with or without strategy in those games.
Most rpgs balance the scaling of difficulty with requiring level grinding. IMO if you could glide through the game without challenge then what's the point. The random encounters are serve the purpose of testing your understanding of game mechanics and improving your skills, a testing ground to try new things. I mean you could roll the dice in a big boss fight, but why?
I think what's honestly happening here is modern games (like Skyrim, Elden Ring and Darksouls) have had the hardware to do things differently (real-time battles) and its become the norm. Looking back at older games doesn't make the old mechanics bad or dated, rather a product of its time. I mean who has heard of others complaining turn-based chess is bad because it's not an rts like Warcraft. Older games shouldn't be disregarded because they don't play like modern games, rather enjoyed for what they are.
A lot of RPGs are more about story than battle systems, with battle systems often lacking complexity or the complexity being pointless because it is easier to just grind to high enough levels that all you need to do is the basic attack every turn. The problem is that there is rarely any reason to care about these random battles, being rewarded with items and XP doesn't make them any less boring. The risk of dying and losing progress is not inherently fun.
Because people are sort.
Nice video, subscribed.
Do you really only have 300 subs, we gotta fix that.
Thanks so much for the sub! You don't know how much it's appreciated. 😊 I'm having fun making TH-cam videos, so anything I get out of it is a bonus to an already great experience. I'm really thankful for my 300 subscribers! 😁
Random encounters are not a problem to me. I still like them
I think it’s a generational thing. Us old heads are just used to it and grew to like it. But if you’re a newer RPG fan playing stuff like the FF7 remakes or modern Personas, I can see why you wouldn’t like random encounters. It’s not what you’re used to
Nah brah random encounter in old school rpgs are part of the game, Might I interest you in a visual novel or a tv show?. mayhaps that would be more your style.
Frankly I prefered Random Encounters that were reasonable! Bravely Default up till the Second game gave you the means to control the encounter rate yourself! Hell I loved how Wild Arms had a system that let you OUTRIGHT ignore low level encounters and even a few battles at similar level with a limit to that! Made it easier to deal with the system especially if you return to areas with battles that would WASTE your time, getting the choice to fight them or completely ignore them.
On field enemies are also a double edge sword depending on the environment and how you deal with them! Romancing Saga 1 Remake handled it BADLY with the fact there was NO real means to AVOID an enemy if they detected you (some move faster then you do, others can FUCKING TELEPORT, and then you have dungeons with TIGHT Halls and such, meaning a battle is unavoidable, and let's not forget too many battles can speed up the Event Clock which can screw you in side quests, events and make enemies stronger before you're ready in a game where you could go through TEN battles without a meaningful gain! Or even walk into a battle that in other games would be "hey welcome to a Level 50 Boss Fight with your Level 10 party, have fun getting WIPED CHUMP" without warning! This system only TRULY is beginner friendly ! And of course the "you're forced forward to the finale if you let it go to far! And since it's VAGUE compared to a BETTER system in games like Persona 3-5 Calendar system" you have to REALLY go into SUPER DETAIL to plan out everything with an EASE in which you can be screwed!) and it's "learn yourself" method of teaching really didn't help much when even Tutorial's can be VAGUE. I love old games like the next person, but lets be real, HW is not fun to do and Tutorials should be CLEAR enough without needing a TRANSLATOR off gamefaqs and such to get a clearer idea). Some encounters feel FORCED while pretending that they are not and that kind of sucks (I can get an enemy being in the way like a Gate, but those enemies are pretty much MADE OBVIOUS by not moving and facing forward to see you to avoid getting an advantage free round! And they are treated as bosses/mini-bosses. While the worse of them are treated like regular mobs because they want to force a fight, and as others have pointed out, if you make it TOO easy to see enemies and dodge them, then you won't be leveled for the boss because you were avoiding fights! While savvy players will just pick the fights to get the levels, most might just dodge the encounters to push forward and get CREAMED because they aren't speedrunners who know what they need to know to be effective against the future encounters, and that can be bad if their FORCED into an area they can't leave even for supplies!
I think the big problem with random encounters is a lack of play testing and a design approach that confuses tedium for difficulty.
That's a huge part of it, too! You're absolutely right 👍
I personally like random encouters. It has nothing to do with extending the time.
It's like you're saying that battles shouldnt be into the game except boss battles.
Even in action rpg. Doesnt make any sense.
It's part from rpg wether you like it or not.
I remember those days! I kept wondering why more games didn't do it like Secret of Mana or Chrono Trigger! There's a trick to getting random encounters (enc) right. When the enc rate is too high & the encs themselves don't have enough strategy or other interest for the amount of time they take, then there's a problem. Games that do this well include the Etrian Odyssey series (where enc are strategic & the enc rate is telegraphed to the player), & Dragon Quest III (where enc are very quick). Both use enc as a way to test player judgement on how far they can stretch themselves before returning to safety.
Hence why in many old rpg remakes they have turbo and auto battle implemented. Idk tho I agree that this mechanic makes the games very hard to give a replay im still finding it very tense like, specially in some games where some random encounters can kick your ass no doubt.
I feel like the problem with some old rpgs is that the characters dont feel customizable enough aside from their names.
Ive been playing recently the remake of final fantasy x and ive turned off the random battles many times to traverse through the map after dealing with a lot of enemies. Specially if I know that im done with the challenge on that area and I just want to progress.
But also it comes with the cheesyness of "I havent saved for 40 mins and ive been grinding in this very difficult area im going to turn off encounters and keep moving"
One game I kind of will say that you dont need to grind, is super easy and with a few mechanics ingame and very early you can get rid of random encounters all together is FF8.
Why? Cuz i think there is no better RPG killer than the monsters leveling up with you, makes the entire thing even more pointless if you know your progress is just going to be halted and is just bossfight after bossfight.
i'm gonna be honest, my comment isn't about the video's subject or anything, but just what the footage is being shown at 3:44. lol it looks like you're wasting more time and effort trying to flee than rather simply holding the X button to auto-attack and kill these low level goblins. At least you gain some exp, gil, and possibly items, whereas fleeing gets you nothing.
Anyways, your video has a good presentation and editing.
Oh my gosh, I had no clue that was even an option 😂 Thanks for pointing that out! Definitely going to use it moving forward in the game lol. I appreciate you taking the time to leave a comment! 😁
Many people, yourself included, cite Chrono Trigger as an example of "random" encounters done properly, since the visible encounters could usually be avoided. However, I think that this is an incomplete assessment. Chrono Trigger did indeed have many, many encounters with no visible on-screen trigger. Probably around half the encounters in the game are like this. Although they are fixed encounters, to a first time player, they are effectively random.
So why does Chrono Trigger "feel" less random? Honestly, I think it is a matter of feeling in control. Some of these fixed encounters can themselves be avoided through careful maneuvering, and many areas with fixed encounters have multiple encounters using the same type of location-based triggers, so even a first time player can sometimes manage to avoid fixed encounters by paying attention to their surroundings. As a player, you feel in control over most encounters, even many ones with no clear on-screen visual indicator.
Even just offering the illusion of player agency in several situations can drastically improve the feel of a game, even one with seemingly or truly random encounters.
Good points, but this video is so... random 🧐
Hah! I see what you did 😂
If you don't mind me asking where are you from your accent is lovely?
Thank you! It's a northeastern accent :)
@@Dutchess5 love your vids keep it up.
Love the video! You've got a new subscriber!
If I can add just one critiscism though, the AI art on the thumbnail isn't adding much. It's too vague to fit the "random encounter" theme, and AI art is just harmful overall to the art community.
This is a great video! I love hearing opinions on turn based RPGS as a developer myself in that space. The random encounter is an abstraction from classic table top rpgs, mainly D&D at the time and resulted mainly in just combat encounters. However, random encounters are more than that. With games, each purpose of the game is represented by a core pillar. This could be a Shooting pillar or a combat pillar. For random encounters, it's part of the exploration pillar. It has the same problem as open world games where variety and depth is needed for the random encounters or else it's just too grindy or for open world games, too empty. A good example of this is the Voice of Cards series as it has not only random encounters via combat but you get nice little events as well to get items or meet npcs. Much closer to its original intent. The taxing part for me with traditional grinding is the waisted time to get in and out due to animations. Taking final fantasy series into account, each game becomes much longer than the last due to extended animation and wait times. It sucks when you just want to run away and it takes like a full minute vs it could be like 5 seconds. I personally enjoy several games with random encounters and don't mind the grind at it helps with stress and anxiety for me. I'm playing back through Octopath Traveler 1 atm and I've got a show on in the background and just enjoying the vibe.
Huh, that's super interesting insight! Had no clue about the whole Pillar System thing when it comes to game development. Totally agree with each Final Fantasy game slowly getting longer animations and longer load times. What really gets me about it though is sometimes, escaping from a random encounter battle doesn't always work. There's a chance you can escape, and a chance that you won't. That really grinds my gears, because it's already annoying enough trying to get out of the battle, then they have to go and drop another chance variable on the player. It's just too much, in my opinion. Thanks for taking the time to leave a comment! 😊 Really makes my day reading these types of comments! 😁
Yeah. Not a fan at all. I prefer to seek the fight myself. Grinding should stop
For sure! Definitely time to move on from that gaming practice. Thanks for taking the time to leave a comment, it means a lot to me :)
Between those random encounters, and all the statistics and probabilities that get you into those magical "Critical hit, you're screwed" moments, I lost interest on all these turn based RPG games.
Also, games like Dark Souls have taught me that tension can be easily build by well placed enemies that can kick your ass no matter how many levels above them you are (and also, the glorious feeling of timing a dodge on an enemy's strongest attack, instead of just eating it cause some RNG said I couldn't dodge it).
@Necromass-pi2ih Dark Souls is an RPG, and I love it. I just hate those turn based that heavily depend on probabilities
@Necromass-pi2ih Dark Souls is Stat based, your performance depends heavily on your stats, unless you count only as RPG everything that is akin to D&D and it's dices of fate.
The random encounters is what is making me hesitate on giving Shin Megami Tensei Nocturne a try. I loved the Persona games, and SMT IV, but all of them had visible enemies on screen. I know Nocturne has random out of nowhere battles and I'm not sure if that's gonna be fun with how broken the SMT fights can get
I don't blame you! I've been dying to play a SMT game but I hear so many mixed things about them--with the random encounter rate being one of them--that I don't know if I should take the plunge and give it a try regardless.
Hi there! Dope video. Subscribed af. I'm almost 40 and Breath of Fire made me throw my Gameboy advance across the room.
I still hate them with every fiber of my being, but every now and again it's fun (Like A Dragon)
Thanks so much! 😊 I appreciate you taking the time to comment and sub. And yeah, definitely! They're worse in some games versus others, but if done right they can be fun 😁