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PlayStation (Games) Role Playing (Games) Entertainment Games

Why Random Encounters In RPGs Aren't That Bad 138

Posted by simoniker from the randomly-hit-by-bus dept.
Thanks to GameSpot for their guest editorial discussing why randomized enemy encounters in videogame RPGs aren't as bad as they're made out to be. The author argues: "The most common charge is that random battles are 'unrealistic.' To this I counter that the RPG experience is inherently unrealistic." He goes on to comment: "A more valid argument is that random battles 'pad' gameplay. I'm not going to argue with this, but I am going to say that RPGs need that padding... With battles cut out, there isn't really anything to fill the gameplay void." He ends by floating compromise solutions for when "it's simply annoying to be assaulted by all manner of enemies when you simply want to make it to the next town", suggesting: "Adjustable [encounter] rates or ways to abbreviate battles, especially with radically weaker adversaries, would be one way to speed things up."
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Why Random Encounters In RPGs Aren't That Bad More

Why Random Encounters In RPGs Aren't That Bad

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  • Wrong, in my opinion (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Khyl'Dran ( 673292 ) on Tuesday November 25, 2003 @07:57AM (#7556698)

    Random encounters are not bad because they are Unrealistic. They are bad because they are just that: Random time fillers. They are there so the game will last longer, but most of the times you as a player just want to get on with the story. I'd much rather have a more intelligent game design where I can see the monsters moving around the "map" or the "town", and if you touch one, the battle starts (like some RPGs).
    That way, its not only an added fun gameplay element, but the battles can be better integrated to the story, which is really what counts in a console RPG...
    • exactly.

      sometimes when they aren't just time fillers that you need to do to gain levels to beat the boss they can be quite entertaining. and they can be used as punishment for the player(or the lack of them as a reward) quite easily(buy a car or whatever and you don't get them). they weren't that bad in pool of radiance but they sure as hell were fucking bad in secret of the silver blades(while they were seemingly similar, they weren't even slightly same in practice when it came to annoyances).

      random does
      • And in nethack, if it's a really weak foe, you might kill them before you realized you bumped into them if you are just banging on a direction key. It's not like it takes a few seconds to draw an encounter screen, then give you choices about actions, etc, etc. A battle might easily last less than a second in nethack.

        Cuts both ways though, when you run headlong into a large feline at DL6 or so that can easily kick your ass. :)
    • I'd much rather have a more intelligent game design where I can see the monsters moving around the "map" or the "town", and if you touch one, the battle starts (like some RPGs).

      Final Fantasy: Mystic Quest tried doing this and it was an abysmal failure. Of course, the game was horrible and way too easy, so that may have had something to do with it.

      What I've played of Xenosaga uses this as well, though in a much better way: you can outrun a monster or outsmart it, but sometimes you have no choice but to f
      • Can't agree with you there. Chrono Trigger had the system of no battles on the world map and you can see every monster in the dungeons (with a few small exceptions). It was entirely feasible, if you had already hung around one dungeon beating up monsters and leveling, to go through an entire area without making one fight just from your speed and maneuver skills, and it was a blast.

    • Adventure gaming (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Chris Canfield ( 548473 ) <slashdot.chriscanfield@net> on Tuesday November 25, 2003 @11:44AM (#7558394) Homepage
      If the only justification for random enemy encounters the reviewer can come up with is that they are necessary to make a game longer, then the reviewer needs to re-examine why they have persisted for so long. What has kept them around for years?

      I would argue that RPG fighting, when done well, is a strategy encounter. Final Fantasy is full of examples of this type of gameplay. Wall in your characters to reflect healing spells onto the undead. Falcon units off of the screen, then cast earthquake to damage everyone left. Lunar featured movement squares which played a strategic role in every battle. Grandia had a real-time fighting system that forced the player to decide between waiting for combined attacks or doing faster individual ones. Aside from the initial encounters, there are also long-term effects from fighting that must be balanced. All fighting has an associated cost in life, mana, and items, but pays off in gold and experience. Do you dart the glass sword now to top off the boss or do you rely upon your Phoenix Downs and save it for the next one? Do you level up your mighty axe which has +12 to goblins or the spear of light which gives a +3 to the undead? Use your fragile armor of perfect protection now or use up your spare cash on the mighty armor of swiss cheese? Done right, RPG's are resource management sims.

      It's ironic the reviewer would mention Xenogears. Xenogears was a revolutionary game (and still is), whose dungeons alternated between having A: no enemies, B: very few random enemies, and C: frequent once-only battles at fixed locations. The jumping aspect made exploration actually fun, and the detail everywhere was just dripping.

      That, and having the two different modes of fighting made Xenogears one of the most enjoyable games ever (right up to the point where they ran out of money).

      Any game can take a fun genre and turn it into boring drivel if the developers don't focus on the right things. The winning strategy in Star Ocean 2, for example, consisted of buying forgery papers, spending hours clicking on "make fake money," and finally spending hours clicking on "photograph fake money." Eventually, you would have all of the resources you would need, but the mechanic to get there was no fun.

      One of the ways to change the system would be to expand the concept of "attack." When swordfighting in the real world, you have head shots, body shots, leg attacks, limb attacks, etc. If you hammer away at one portion of the body, the enemy will expect that and block accordingly. Likewise, the player should set their guard after an attack, in any of the 8 control pad directions. Swordfighting should be as intricate as spellcasting.

      Likewise, enemy encounters should be fewer and stronger. I'm not advocating the return of the infinite boss syndrome (2+ hours for Final Fantasy 8... What were they thinking?), But a battle with faceless drones should take longer than the loading screen... that way they wouldn't be faceless drones. Think of them as mini-mini bosses, with one or two per explorable area.

      RPG's in recent years have plummeted in difficulty, which makes encounters more of an annoyance than a challenge. Sure, this opens things up to more players, but that also makes the game busywork. What was wrong with selectable difficulty levels? To balance this out, the designers should reduce the significance of death. Return the player to the last checkpoint with all of their items intact, and expect this to happen several times.

      Another of the ways to change the system would be to have a target level associated with every area. If a player were to go to the second level with too few exp, for example, they would be given more to help them catch up. However, if they were dominating in an area, they receive fewer. That way players are discouraged from camping, and can explore what they are interested in without unbalancing the game.

      Finally, players should be encouraged to consume resources, not horde them. Items should b
    • I agree that it should be more realistic, and one should be able to see the enemies walking around the city. But isn't this the wrong place to be targetting realism? In every Final Fantasy game I've played, and most RPGs for that matter, the thing that struck me was how these sexy little anime guys and gals had room to carry several hundred items with them on their quest. I didn't see any porters following them... As for random time fillers, that may be true, but at least with FFX, the game was entirely

    • Time Fillers? (Score:3, Interesting)

      by t0ny ( 590331 )
      If they are bad because they are just getting you to waste time, I think we need to know either what the hell you are in such a hurry for, or what you are doing that is so important otherwise ;-)

      I recently finished FF8 (ya, im way behind the times), and I had at least 60 hours into it. I really wasnt rushing, I just played the game, enjoyed myself, played the card game and did all the side quests, powered up my characters, etc.

      On a game like FF8, in case you are familiar with it, you can actually finish th

  • EARTHBOUND (Score:5, Interesting)

    by OdinHuntr ( 109972 ) <(ac.lligcm.xob-op) (ta) (gruobe)> on Tuesday November 25, 2003 @07:58AM (#7556707)
    Earthbound had this figured out years ago (a decade ago?). If you were way too powerful for a monster, you would just automatically win.

    Plus, Earthbound was completely awesome. It had the funkiest music of any RPG, ever.

    WHERE'S MY EARTHBOUND 64?

    • Re:EARTHBOUND (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Khyl'Dran ( 673292 )
      The new super Mario RPG for the GBA, "Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga", also does it that way. Monsters are roaming around the map, nothing is random. Besides, if you jump on a monsters head on teh map before the battle starts, they begin taking damage. Not only that, but the game also involves you more in the battles than a simple choosing from a menu (like in Paper Mario)...You actually have to time your button presses to do more damage.

      It's one of the best games I've played in a while.
    • This is the first game that came to mind for me too. However, the system has a few flaws: You only get the instant victory if you can win without taking damage. Therefore, a monster that can give you a paper cut but is fast enough to strike first will still force you into battle. The system also tends to fail once you have many party members: the chances of you getting everybody to get their hits in before the enemy gets a turn gets very low, so you're still stuck running through the battle. One thing
    • Also, you could avoid monsters too in that game, something Chrono Cross did on th e PSX. Oh, and in case you missed the news... EB64 is being re-designed for GBA.
    • Earthbound had this figured out years ago (a decade ago?). If you were way too powerful for a monster, you would just automatically win.

      talk about a slacker game....
    • Damn straight.

      I've always wondered why other RPGs didn't have that same system Earthbound did for fighting very weak monsters. On top of winning right away, those monsters would also run from you if you were to strong for them.

      I don't know where Earthbound 64 is, but if we're lucky Nintendo will release Mother 1+2 for the GBA over here. Highly doubtful since Earthbound on the SNES did so poorly around these parts.

    • If you were way too powerful for a monster, you would just automatically win.

      I think a more elegant solution would be to not encounter monsters at all - if you're so strong maybe they would stay the hell away from you ! Then you could have a "hunt monsters" mode for when you want to encounter them.

      The other solution I liked was used in the first Dragon Warrior. I think there was a cheap spell which you got about halfway though the game which kept really weak monsters away. I thought that was a pretty

  • Don't agree... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Domini ( 103836 ) on Tuesday November 25, 2003 @08:05AM (#7556734) Journal
    The problem with randomised encounters is that they never stop.

    When you are an uber-high level character, and gnats keep attacking you (long after you have practically scorched the entire planet clean of monsters) making your progress tediously slow.

    Dungeon Siege was cool in this way... after you clear out an area, that area remains clean (unless a creature moves there from another area)

    This is a lot of work for the designers, but if you insist on being lazy and add random events... they should at least have an event-count per area, and have it stop when it reaches a certain level.
    (Diablo did this well, (deterministically statistic random events) whereas neverwinter nights is just the status quo (pure random mixed with pre-set)

    PS: Re-spawning monsters are also evil. It takes away a sense of progress and continuity.

    The (only) place where this may be somewhat applicable is in massively multiplayer (on-line) games... and even then it's better to have many pure once-off unique non-repeating events.

    • The difference between random encounters and non-random or static encounters is the ability of the player to level up the characters as they please before attacking the next boss/challenge.

      With random encounters, if you want to put the time in, you can overpower the boss or at least make things easier on yourself by simply wandering around to find more random monsters. Without it, you're stuck hoping you found every monster in an area to get to the highest level possible before getting there.

      Both have the

      • Re:Don't agree... (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Domini ( 103836 )
        That is why these games come with adjustable difficulty settings.

        Besides: the game should have been scaled properly, with enough static? encounters programmed in to put the character on the propper level.
        • That is why these games come with adjustable difficulty settings.

          Most console RPGs don't have adjustable difficulty settings, especially those with random encounters.

          Besides: the game should have been scaled properly, with enough static? encounters programmed in to put the character on the propper level.

          Yes, which comes down to a matter of playtesting, but, again, if you want to be the maximum possible level you're going to be hunting down every last static encounter rather than simply wandering arou
          • "With random encounters, if you want to put the time in, you can overpower the boss or at least make things easier on yourself by simply wandering around to find more random monsters. Without it, you're stuck hoping you found every monster in an area to get to the highest level possible before getting there."

            Thats why I liked the pokemon method (It was actually a good game before the mediawhoredom) -- Monsters were staticly placed in dungeons, but you couldn't see them if it was too dark (unless you had a
            • Agreed.

              One can always at least implement a 'path' system... the player stays on the path and does not encunter random events. Go off the beaten track and you get the chance to improve your character.

              Sounds like the best compromise yet.
      • I always thought that was one of the clever things about Wild Arms 3 (and 2 I think), that it allowed you to avoid random encounters. WA3 has a gauge that tracks how many random encounters you have skipped. Skip an encounter, gauge goes down, fight a battle, gauge goes up allowing you to skip more battles. Fight as little as you want, up to a point.

        Neat game, clever idea.
    • When you are an uber-high level character, and gnats keep attacking you (long after you have practically scorched the entire planet clean of monsters) making your progress tediously slow.

      I'm most of the games I've played, by the time I'm that level, I've found items like "Bracer of No Encounters" which prevent random encounters. In some games, I've even found items that increase the encounters. As long as there are items like that it the game, I don't mind the random encounters because they allow the p
    • I'll take that a step further, and say that the problem isn't so much in random encounters (as long as they're kept to a reasonable level, i.e. Fallout 2).
      The problem is that you could possibly become an uber-high level character who can scorch the entire planet clean of monsters, and that low-level monsters are now Booooring.
      One of the most fun times I've had in an RPG was in Morrowind, on levels 10. Apart from the amazement at how beautiful the world was (the first time it rained, I waited it out under a
      • A couple of points:

        HP in DnD is not a 'energy counter'. It's more a law of diminishing returns. It takes longer for someone to be able to make that critical strike. At least that's what the intention was when it was created... many people see this differently.

        As for morrowind: The first bit of playing was the most fun, and if you do not wander around, you are safe. You can travel between cities safely by boat or giant flea or mage guild. You can actually get pretty far by avoiding combat totally. But the
    • I object to anybody who says that Dungeon Seige was "way cool". I like to play the game, rather than having it play for me.

      BTW, I happen to accept the random battles: how else are you going to inflate your levels? One of the things I found annoying about NWN was that the OC wouldnt let you get to the level cap; to do that, you needed to replay the game (or at least the last chapter).

      I would rather have trudged thru an area with random encounters than numbly gone thru a part of the game where I already kno

    • In the Exile [spiderwebsoftware.com] series off RPGs, when you became too strong the random groups avoided you - when you cornered them on the map, they even disappeared. No cheap XP for you! ;-)
  • Personally I'm not too against random battles, but the writer raises a damn good point.
    The final point is the one that I'm most likely to concede, that it's simply annoying to be assaulted by all manner of enemies when you simply want to make it to the next town, save the game, and turn it off.

    Many's the time in an FF-Game when I've just wanted to save the game and power down the system. Maybe I was about to go out. Maybe I was tired and wanted to sleep. Occasionally it's 'cos i'm using the main TV downstairs and my parents want to watch whatever lame Soap is about to come on.
    But so often I've tried to either reach a known save point, or explore and tried to find one of the damn things. Just so I can actually finish playing for a bit.

    There have been a few times when I've just powered it off, and decided to try again later.

    A similar point is when you hit what I call "Story Mode".
    Or course you're gonna get long story segments in a story-driven game. But so often you finally off a huge Boss character, and then it takes you into story-mode for about 5 or 10 minutes until you're given the option to save.

  • Pretty much summed up right here (Score:5, Insightful)

    by NanoGator ( 522640 ) on Tuesday November 25, 2003 @08:16AM (#7556774) Homepage Journal
    "it's simply annoying to be assaulted by all manner of enemies when you simply want to make it to the next town"

    As much as I loved FF3, that statement right there is what held me back from going through it again. The encounters themselves wasn't so bad, it was the rigid structure of the game you had to go through. First, let's zip zip zip down to the battle. Second, let's have the screen fade in and the characters leap onto the screen, cue music. Third, let's go through the "a button a button a button, yes yes, fire magic at him. Okay, let's way for them to go through their series of hit hit jab jab magic magic. Okay, turn 2..", Fourth there's the victory. Yay you won! Deeeee dedededeee! Okay, let's all dance as the game announces quite patiently what all experience you've one. Fifth, let's do a nice little fade out, and fade in back to the screen. And start up again. Sixth, let's move two spaces, rinse, and repeat!

    Though technically not an RPG, I was quite relieved that Zelda/Wind Waker didn't force you through as much of that. Not only could you dodge monsters, but the game was made so that scouring the map was MUCH much easier to do. It's an adventure game, it's an entirely different animal from an RPG, but that's not to say something couldn't have been learned from it.

    I hope Final Fantasy 3 is ported to the GameBoy Advance. They can call it Final Fantasy 3 AD. (Attention Deficit.) I'm bored writing this now so you can figure out what I meant by that.
    • Whew. I played that game on an emulator (not quite my generation, you oldbie), and fortunately it had a turbo feature that would help me zip through those annoying moments. So, like, eh... Too bad the GBA has less buttons than the SNES. Makes it hard to add features like that.
  • They don't ruin a game, but they make some games worse for sure.

    I'm currently playing through Lunar 2:Eternal Blue Complete for the PSX, and it's much better than the original. Mostly because I can avoid battles with annoying enemies and focus on the really rewarding ones.

    • However, when you are constantly avoiding battles with onscreen monsters, you son become grossly underleveled. Some games attempt to cope with gamers who don't wish to level build, by keeping the boss' stats relitive to your own. I don't agree with this. You don't see bosses in Halif life starting with less health simply because you used up all your rockets just prior to the fight. There is supposed to be a challange to RPGs, like any game, and if you tell people they no longer have to face random encounter
      • the solution is to reward alternative ways to deal with monster problems as well.

        a lot of games do this right, the problem with jrpg's(with map and a lot of random encounters) is that there usually isn't anything else to do than go from place to place and kill kill kill kill kill.

        fallouts, kotor(best game of this year) and even morrowind offer alternative ways to level up(and thus advance) besides just killing random monsters in the desert for hours and hours.

        having the enemies stats to be derived from y
        • a lot of games do this right, the problem with jrpg's(with map and a lot of random encounters) is that there usually isn't anything else to do than go from place to place and kill kill kill kill kill.

          fallouts, kotor(best game of this year) and even morrowind offer alternative ways to level up(and thus advance) besides just killing random monsters in the desert for hours and hours.

          Fallout, Morrowind, and even KOTOR are all at their hearts PC RPGs (KOTOR and Morrowind are available on the XBox, but Morrowi
  • Maybe it's just me, but I didn't see any point in him saying that "Chrono Trigger sucks". At no point does he say anything to give him a reason to say that (other than to start a flame war and get more people to read his article out of anger instead of out of interest). He even said that Chrono Cross, the sequel, was a good game.
    • Having never played it, I can't be sure... But I'm guessing that Chrono Trigger had no random encounters, right?
      • Encounters were always in the same location, and walking through certain boxes triggers the encounter. If you leave an area and come back, the battles will all be reset, forcing you to wake through them again. Other than minor issues like that, CT is well worth playing.
    • If it sucks, then how come I see carts for Chrono Trigger going for $75+ at the local used game shops? The author (of the article, not the parent post) is a lamer.

      I had a friend who played both, he said Chrono Trigger was better. I dunno, I never played either.
    • Chrono Trigger is the reason that I haven't played an RPG (except Paper Mario, which was a little different than most RPGs) since. Even though I never actually played Chrono Trigger, my opinion was that it did everything right: no random battles to annoy you (but you could ALWAYS take the battle to level up if you wanted), great soundtrack, interesting story. I hear that it may have been a tad on the easy side. I feel like every RPG since then should have started on that foundation and built from that.
    • Agreed. The GameSpot author is just being a flamewhore. Chrono Trigger was one of the first major RPG titles (by major, I mean wildly popular) where you could always see the enemies prior to fighting them.

      What some authors will do as a desparate plea for attention... I wonder if he got paid to be a guest writer. >_>

  • They aren't so bad... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by kmak ( 692406 ) on Tuesday November 25, 2003 @08:39AM (#7556870)
    If the game allows you to "turn it off", either by an item, like in FF's "Enc-none", or an option.. best of both worlds, I would think..

  • The troops in Iraq ... (Score:4, Funny)

    by torpor ( 458 ) <ibisum.gmail@com> on Tuesday November 25, 2003 @08:46AM (#7556897) Homepage Journal
    ... know a few things about why random encounters with RPG's are a bad thing ...
  • Maybe all of you people complaining about random encounters really just do not like RPGs. If you hate the way they are maybe you should look into playing a different style of game instead of ragging on random encounters.
    • I'm going to say you're either trolling or ignorant, as random encounters do not make a game an RPG.

      They're a legacy item, why they were chosen, I don't know. My guess is that they were originally due to the technical constraints of older systems that made non-random encounters unfeasible. Now I'd say it's just the fact that they're so ingrained in our conception of a console RPG (Yes, console RPG. Many computer RPGs try different methods of creating encounters, it's largely consoles that are stuck with th
      • I'm going to say you're either trolling or ignorant, as random encounters do not make a game an RPG.

        This is correct, but they're a valid part of particular games' mechanics. Removing this for the sake of the people that don't like it simply makes it a different game, and there's not much point to that since there have always been games that do it the other way.

        They're a legacy item, why they were chosen, I don't know. My guess is that they were originally due to the technical constraints of older system
      • So don't play console RPGs with random encounters then. It's that simple. What you hate millions love.
      • There are a fair number of RPGs that don't have random encounters, some are good (I don't care what he says, Chrono Trigger was good and Chrono Cross just plain sucked.), others aren't.

        I have nothing to add against the rest of your rant that Painkiller hasn't already addressed (and done a damn fine job of it, too), except this sentence. I don't understand what was so sucky about Chrono Cross. Was it the intertwining timelines that based so much off the first game that turned you off? Maybe it was the ext
  • There's nothing i hate more than trying to retreat to the nearest town to save my sorry mage ass.
    The wife used to play an RPG, cant remember which at this time, which would allow you to become invulnerable to those 'invisble wandering' monsters until the item/spell wore out. Maybe have this as an spell/item in more RPG's as a way to deal with this rather annoying issue. But hey...these _are_ after all RPGs.
  • If you haven't realized it yet, there's an obvious answers. RPGS that have random encounters arne't video games. They are interactive movies. The difference is that some games let you choose your own adventure (Chrono Trigger). And some are dead linear.

    It's like if you went to see a movie in the theatre and they said "ok, in order to see the next scene you have to push the correct buttons on this controller we're giving you." It's not a game, it's a trial. A test to determine if you are allowed to pr
    • So, people play the RPG for the amazing amazing plot. The randome encounter/combat "game" they throw in there so it isn't just a movie is crap. Throw in something else instead and we can make great games worth playing. Try throwing in a turn based strategy, an fps, a real time strategy, a puzzle game, a simulation. Any real game will do just fine.

      While I appreciate some interesting ideas in games, I'd have to say that what you're looking for seems more like the old adventure games rather than console RPGs

  • Different Types of Random (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Zardoz44 ( 687730 ) on Tuesday November 25, 2003 @09:25AM (#7557120) Homepage
    What we have is many different types of random which the author doesn't really flush out:
    • Random Phantom Encounter: Your character is walking on a pre-drawn background when all-of-a-sudden the screen goes black and you're fighting a goblin. This is a random fight for the sake of having something to do. This is the FF series. These fights are why I stopped playing FF-style games.

    • Random Encounter: Top-down Ultima 6 style game where you randomly encounter packs of wolves in the mountains or forest. They aren't scripted and if you kill them, walk far enough away, and return they will probably re-appear.

    • True Random: Everquest-style game where monsters are spawned randomly into the world at random (limited) locations and exist until they expire by one method or another.
    There are probably more styles, but the author is trying to justify #1. He actually goes far enough to say that:
    Without the battle component, without the interaction, you might as well be reading a book or watching a movie.
    If that's all he's there for, why not ask for a FF-StreetFighter game and be done with it? Then we can get back to using skills and intelligence in RPGs.
    • If that's all he's there for, why not ask for a FF-StreetFighter game and be done with it? Then we can get back to using skills and intelligence in RPGs.

      Why not just have everyone that doesn't like random encounters stop playing games that have them? Go play a different game, get a different company to develop a game that fits what you're looking for.

      FF games have been the same way for roughly 15 years, it's one of the few things that hasn't changed about the series. Someone should've figured this out 10

      • You raise a very good point here that many people just do not want to accept. Final Fantasy games (and other jRPGs) rely on the "Random Phantom Encounter" concept. It's a big part of how the games/series actually work.

        I think a lot of people like the graphics, story, and (some of the...) other Game Mechanics in the FF Games, and are hoping that the random battles will be dropped.
        Well this simply isn't going to happen any time soon. They're a part of the staples in the series. They'd no sooner ditch the r

    • True Random: Everquest-style game where monsters are spawned randomly into the world at random (limited) locations and exist until they expire by one method or another.

      Actually, in EQ, the monsters aren't random. A preset monster will spawn in a present spot, will walk around a little, and then when it is killed, a preset time will pass and the monster will respawn. Not to be mean to your arguement, but technically, EQ is the least random.
      • I was being inconsistent. I didn't actually mean that Everquest actually had this style of randomness, just that it would be ideal in an Everquest-style game that is independant of individual users. True randomness in that environment would try to simulate real creatures doing real things rather than having specific locations where a known monster is going to spawn. That causes enough problems.

        I don't actually know of a game offhand that uses this.
        • I was being inconsistent. I didn't actually mean that Everquest actually had this style of randomness, just that it would be ideal in an Everquest-style game that is independant of individual users. True randomness in that environment would try to simulate real creatures doing real things rather than having specific locations where a known monster is going to spawn. That causes enough problems.

          I don't actually know of a game offhand that uses this.

          Diablo is probably the most random series I could think

  • Unrealistic? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Tom7 ( 102298 ) on Tuesday November 25, 2003 @09:40AM (#7557213) Homepage Journal

    What's so unrealistic about random battles? I don't get it!

    For me, the main problem with random battles is the damn start-up and time. I don't know if it's gotten any better since I stopped playing console RPGs, but when I was walking around and had to sit through a screen fade, battle start music, then a single-hit victory, then victory music, then stats update screen---well, that sucked. It really wouldn't be that bad if when
    gnats attacked you, the battle happened without interruption, maybe at the bottom of the screen, maybe automatically. Compare with, say, the Castlevania platform/RPG series (Symphony of the Night, etc.): You still get attacked by bats and zombies when you go back to the beginning of the castle, but everyone is one hit, and you can just run and dash your way through. Speed!

    • That's my main beef with them, too. The "Load Time" for the battles. And although technically the increase in console processors and/or programming techniques could have reduced/eliminated it, the switch from Carts to CDs (and now DVDs) has had a negative effect on the lag.

      Personally, I enjoy the battle Screens. But something that could load in faster would be nice. Like making it part of the "Dungeon" engine, not a seperate one.

      At the very least, the current "Battle background" and basic bits, bobs, an

      • Personally, I enjoy the battle Screens. But something that could load in faster would be nice. Like making it part of the "Dungeon" engine, not a seperate one.

        At the very least, the current "Battle background" and basic bits, bobs, and animations could be stored in memory. So that it could immediately trigger, and the opening animations/speeches could play whilst the battle engine loads, rather than adding more time after.

        At the very least, if you have a fairly predictable method for determining 'random'
  • Granted, the game had WAY to many encounters, but they left good save previsions.

    If you were running around in a dungeon, that was it. You had to accomplish your task or get to the next major milestone to save. Fortunately you could heal between battles. As long as you didn't move you could heal. You could heal via magic, or set items. If you were both out of magic points and healing items, or just wanted to do a small increment heal you could eat the fish you gathered while traveling between location

  • It all depends on how 'random' the encounters are (Score:4, Insightful)

    by *weasel ( 174362 ) on Tuesday November 25, 2003 @10:33AM (#7557677)
    Games that feature overland movement through 'enemy' territories -should-, for story consistancy, include possible encounters with enemies.

    Games that feature only scripted encounters, for a tighter, more limited story experience - should not even have random character wandering, let alone random encounters.

    it's as simple as that.

    If there's only one way a player can go, only one path from A to B, and it's filled with random enemies, all it's going to do is cause someone to go the wrong way, have 3x more fights than the designers figure he 'should have had' and get pissed. It ends up making the 'real' fights more difficult for the people who are already frustrated by having gone the wrong way, or bothered to explore and are angry that their 'options' are only illusory. and that's bad design.

    And if you're going to have random enemy encounters, you're going to wind up with 'pest' fights. that is, fights where your party is in absolutely no danger, and the fight itself is not fun, not tense, not important.

    This is where functionality akin to Lord of the Realms II's 'mop up' button comes in. Sure, the mop-up ai won't be as effective as you are, and it may cause you to get hit once or twice. but the fight is over at the click of the button. the inevitable outcome occurs without wasting the player's time. Better still, for people who love random fights and micromanaging, it's all optional.

    Again, the only time random fights, or even character wandering itself makes sense, is when there is a branching storyline that allows multiple routes from A to B.

    The random fights though, should always be tied to the gamestate. If i destroy the main kobold nest outside 'whateversville' - when i travel through those woods i shouldn't have to fight more kobolds, unless in the story they're regrouping or making their last ditch offensive or some such.

    But it all depends on the game. I couldn't imagine something as open-ended as Baldur's Gate without random fights. yet I wonder why in the heck the Final Fantasy series even bothers letting me steer my guy from A to B half the time.
    • The random fights though, should always be tied to the gamestate.

      I think this is the main reason why I, personally, find many random encounters "unrealistic". Ok, even if you consider a RPG unrealistic - which it can be - it doesn't help if I remove all enemies from a closed area but still they pop up just because it is random encounter time again. That IS unrealistic and it is tied to the logic of the game, not the realism of the game.

      Overland travels are a completely different story, as you have men
      • exactly, if you're going to have random encounters, it shouldn't be a big deal for you to simply take note of the gamestate. pad all you want, but if i kill the goblin king and all his best guards, how about we remove the random goblin spawns in the castle for when i want to wander about and look for treasure?

        and for the love of baby jebus on rubber crutches:
        if there were only goblins in the woods when i was level 2, don't just suddenly make them ogres when i'm level 6.
        (unless of course the game-state and

  • Amusingly enough (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Qzukk ( 229616 ) on Tuesday November 25, 2003 @10:40AM (#7557753) Journal
    Xenosaga had no purely random battles, and if you had the skills, you could dodge most of the normal battles (there was a training thing on this early in the game) and the result?

    It became known as "the movie you sometimes play". (I thought it was a good game, hopefully xenosaga 2 will get a US release, the trailers I've seen give me goosebumps in a good way)

    Whats needed isn't so much "no random battles" as maybe options for 1) automatic battles with AIs that don't suck and kill your characters 2) an option to turn off all special effects to speed up fighting (not just short versions of whatever animations, but pick an option and the numbers just pop up immediately, next turn) and 3) the idea that monsters that are far too low a level to even bother the characters would be afraid enough to not even approach and bother them.

    The problem with the idea of "clearing out" an area and leaving it empty is that there will always be power-levellers who would get pissy when their monsters run out.
    • I completely agree, long ass special effects are the #1 reason I don't replay RPGs ever. The majority of them don't even let you skip the lengthy spell/summon/technique animations by hitting a button - it's grueling.
    • The trouble with Xenosaga was that it kept making me walk through the same empty hallways in the spaceship over and over again. Random battles aren't really any worse than watching your protagonist's running animation for 15 minutes.

  • What a moronic article... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by bskin ( 35954 ) <bentomb@gmail. c o m> on Tuesday November 25, 2003 @11:01AM (#7557983)
    Interesting enough topic, and I don't actually disagree with the guy's main point, but...this guy is a moron. In trying to defend the fact that rpgs are inherently unrealistic, he brings up the fact that final fantasy games use blue boxes to represent dialog? That was the best example you could come up with? He doesn't mention things like the fact that random encounters are what allow you to build up your characters in most games. A game can have as fancy a class/ability system as it wants, but if there's no fodder for your characters to practice against, then the system is going to be pretty limited. Several games have used static encounters, and the result is usually that if you didn't build your characters properly the first time through, you'll have no chance against the final boss. Finally, the guy takes a pot shot against what's generally considered to be one of the best rpgs ever with absolutely no justification whatsoever. If you don't like CT, fine, but I think if you're gonna say it sucks in a gamespot editorial, you need to back it up a little.

    I like these 'food for thought' style articles that the games section has been posting lately, but I think we could use a somewhat higher standard for the quality of the articles.
  • It's a matter of preference. Random battles, or Other.

    I personally prefer RPGs without random battles. Random battles discourage you from really exploring the game, because every 5 steps you take, you will have to deal with another battle.

    I think games like Chrono Cross/Trigger, and the Grandia series do it RIGHT. You should be able to see the enimies, so that you can avoid the battles, or target the battles if you so wish. But thats just my preference.

    The Final Fantasy series will never change the way i

  • GS Guest Editorials (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Liselle ( 684663 ) * <slashdot@NoSPAm.liselle.net> on Tuesday November 25, 2003 @11:14AM (#7558104) Journal
    Maybe it's the nature of an editorial, but some of these things are just poorly written. I know that editorials are opinionated by definition, but seeing "Chrono Trigger Sucks" in the title made me wary of the content. Unfortunately, he never qualifies it at any point in the article (just repeats it again at the end). So, for the mindless attention-grab that it obviously is, I'm labelling him a putz. If it was a post here, I'd mod him "Flamebait" without a second thought.

    Other things: as far as random encounters are concerned in specific games, I think a game worth mentioning (since everyone else here is) is Wild ARMs 3. it has random encounters, however:

    - An exclamation point appears over your head, and you can choose to avoid the battle by hitting a button.
    - Avoiding a battle drains your Encounter gauge depending on the monster's relative strength in comparison to your party (sort of).
    - You can't avoid battles if your gauge runs out.
    - Resting at an "inn" will replenish the gauge, and fighting monsters will slowly raise it in the field.
    - You can avoid battles with trivial monsters for free. It makes zipping through earlier portions of the game a snap.
    - Exploring and finding hidden rooms with a particular kind of item makes the cost of avoiding battles cheaper. Brilliant.

    Also, in regards to saving, you can save anywhere that's not a battle on a cutscene. You just need to spend a Gimel coin, which you can find dungeon crawling or from monster drops (the point being that you use it for emergencies, since saving in town is free). I think random combat is one of the things that WA3 did right.

    As far as random combat in general, it doesn't bother me in the least, if it's fun. I like bumping into new types of monsters and working on ways to defeat them in different or creative ways. I never found the combat in FFX tedious, for example, because I always tried new ways to wipe the floor with mobbies, and lots of them did interesting things that I had to adapt for.

    My gut reaction: if you are so impatient to get monster battles over with, you're probably playing the wrong (type of) game. I have a simliar issue with things like racing games ("is this thing over yet?"), so I don't even bother unless there's an interesting twist to it.

  • Chrono Trigger (Score:2, Informative)

    by CNERD ( 121095 )
    No one on here seems to have accually played Chrono Trigger...

    Chrono Trigger for SNES does not have random battles. That is why the article author hates it. He is a random battle fan boy.

    Chrono Trigger lets you see the eneimes on the map, so that you can avoid them, or target them. Chrono Cross for PSX is the same way.

    Both games are some of the best RPGs out there IMO. Think final fantasy, with a more in depth story line, multiple endings, and a 'better' battle system.
    • I played it. Loved the game, though I can see where people would take fault with it. The battle system was nice, and it never broke immersion. You come up to a group of baddies, and if you can't avoid them, combat starts, but you don't screen-wipe to some generic background. You rough it up with the monsters right there on the turf you found them on, with the terrain as it exists. I loved it. Especially since some of the special moves were location based, and you couldn't move location in battle, so b

  • A Question of Balance (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Prien715 ( 251944 ) <agnosticpope@nOSPaM.gmail.com> on Tuesday November 25, 2003 @11:51AM (#7558460) Journal
    I completely disagree with the author that random encounters are necessary. While I can't think of any RPGs that lack the element completely, I can think of at least two in which the element is almost non-existant. In the Fallout series, you might have 10 random encounters all game, which is obviously laughable. The other good example is Final Fantasy Tactics. Again, unless you try, you'll get about 10 during the entire game. Both these games recognize one critical game play element: we don't need that damn fluff. What random battles are there for in both games is to get extra money and experience than you otherwise would by going through the storyline. Next plot battle too hard? Go build up by fighting random battles by walking back and forth between towns.

    The only thing large ammounts of random battles represent is tedium. Eliminating or severely reducing these provides games with a higher percentage composition of both plot and challenging gameplay. If tedium was eliminated from RPGs, wouldn't this improve the genre?

    • Eliminating or severely reducing these provides games with a higher percentage composition of both plot and challenging gameplay. If tedium was eliminated from RPGs, wouldn't this improve the genre?

      A better solution, I think, would be to incorporate challenge into the random battles, and get rid of the tedium. Some element of treadmill will always be found by the min/maxers (the grind is in your mind), but making battles more interesting will make things more fun, where removing them just gets you close

    • The other good example is Final Fantasy Tactics.

      FF Tactics is part of an almost completely different genre. You may as well bring up FF Tactics Advance, Tactics Ogre, Fire Emblem, Front Mission, and all of the rest of the games of the same type.

      Most PC RPGs, including the one you mentioned (Fallout) don't use the type of random encounters that the main FF and DW series do, although Fallout itself uses random encounters from the world map (which is actually the place FF uses them most often, too, you just
  • I don't believe the problem of RPGs come with Random Battles, it comes from the fact that there is no challenge. Face it, when was the last time you actually had to think about how to beat a non-boss battle (unless it was against a really hard opponent you really didn't stand much of a chance at winning anyways)? Even some boss battles get pathetically easy. Especially combined with the lack of options in a fight. In nearly every single RPG out there it all battles end up as either straight weapon comba

    • The issue of game balance is a tricky one. One particular thing that I dislike is the "special strategy" boss which is impossible for you to defeat unless you know the "special strategy," at which point it becomes very easy. Played TR:AoD? Remember the red ghost? Boaz Returns? The final boss? All examples of what I'm talking about.

      I would like an RPG that has random encounters, where the monsters are interesting an unique, and you have to mix in traditional combat with a little thought to beat them. I'd

  • If you have played Earthbound, if you randomly encounter a monster that is significantly weaker than you, the monster is instant killed without the game moving to the fight scene. I always enjoyed this over having to attack each of the weakest monsters once just to kill them for nil experience in other RPG's.
  • I remember the item you could get in the original Dragon Warrior (and maybe some of the others, I forget): Fairy Water. When you used it, you avoided all random encounters. I don't really mind random encounters that much myself, they can be annoying at times, but are usually needed for leveling.
    • Fairy water helped you avoid low level (relative to your level,I believe) monsters, but anything else was fair game for a random encounter.

      On a side note, the last time I played Dragon Warrior I realized that the leveling system is static, e.g. You get X hp/mp at level A, Y hp/mp + Hurt at level B, etc. Funny how you never notice that sort of thing as a kid.
  • Come on didn't you pick up the "no encounters" to add to your armor? You'll regret it if you don't fight at all, but it does speed the point A to point B travel alot.

  • Incorporating Random Encounters Into Play (Score:4, Interesting)

    by robbway ( 200983 ) on Tuesday November 25, 2003 @01:19PM (#7559415) Journal
    I haven't seen this mentioned in the article or the thread, and it's obvious. Random encounters, when incorporated into plot and gameplay, are very effective and entertaining. There are several key elements to randomness "done right":

    1) The selection of monsters that pop up require you to be a certain level to pass. Often, a key location cannot be reached at first because the monsters between you and it kill you with one hit.

    2) You may need a certain item to defeat a particular group of monsters, like a water pendant to defeat fire creatures. So if you haven't got it, they'll tear you down no matter what level you are until you use the proper item.

    3) Random monsters may leave key components behind, like a mosquito wing, green humour, or gobs of money. These items are later used in item construction or passkeys.

    4) Likewise, some of the optional but really rare items may only be obtained thru random combat.

    5) The random encounters can be bypassed once passed. Usually, this is done with a town teleporter or other teleporting conveyence. Then, if the creatures have served their purpose, they can be skipped. If they haven't served their purpose, you may wander aimlessly to meet them again.

    6) Gallery, collection, or similar things require you to seek out different monsters. Obviously, Pokemon comes to mind. You get an entry if you meet them, a different one if you catch them. Also, some spells in RPGs allow you to summon a creature only after you've previously fought or beaten it.

    7) Weapons practice. How else do you find out how new weapons are used unless you beat a "sure thing?"

    In summary, random encounters can mask the true purpose of non-random elements in the game. If the game uses randomized codes or recipes, you may have to search for different monsters each time you play. So, it can be more than a level-building annoyance.

    [I've never understood why non-humanoid monsters would carry all that money, though. I guess it's a shortcut to going to town and selling the pelts/meat.]
  • "With battles cut out, there isn't really anything to fill the gameplay void."

    Funny, I wasn't aware that Planescape: Torment needed random encounters. Apparently I went blissfully unaware of how much I was missing out on, how bored I was.

    Sarcasm aside, Torment had what too many RPGs lack: story and choice. It had like a billion times more in the way of story as most RPGs out there (which, when you get down to it, are more tactical excerizes than RPGs). It let you play any type of character you wanted,
  • Not all RPGs are JRPGs.

    Get over your japanese fanboy elitism and try KotoR. If there were any random battles they weren't random in the sense that JRPGs are, but in the good sense as random number of enemies rather than random encounters.

    Just because some developer did it once, doesn't mean it has to be that way forever.

    To the japanese, try some new things. Let the player have choices in how the game turns out. Get rid of random battles, let me see the enemies coming and decide how I want to deal with
  • The console kiddies naturally have no clue, but Fallout on the PC solved this long ago.

    When "in" the game world (i.e. not travelling on the "overworld" map), all enemies are visible and never random.

    When travelling on the overworld map, there are occasional random encounters (although we're talking maybe 1 or 2 in the time it takes to get from one town to another - nothing remotely like a Final Fantasy game).

    Plus, your character had a stat attribute that affected these encounters. If your stat attribu

  • There are two extremes that work quite nicely (Score:4, Interesting)

    by default luser ( 529332 ) on Tuesday November 25, 2003 @03:02PM (#7560614) Journal
    Over the years I've played a ton of RPGs, and although I have no problem with random encounters, I can understand why some people would so readily hate them.

    One game series that stood out in terms of handling random encounters was the Fallout series created by Black Isle. Your player had a skill called "Outdoorsman" which determined your traveling and scouting capabilities. A higher outdoorsman rating would help you avoid random encounters, but you had to be willing to commit skill points toward it (at the cost of other skills). Further, items like the car (which you acquired later in the game) made random encounters less likely.

    On the completely opposite end of the spectrum, we had the Shining Force series created by Sonic Team. All "encounters" were scripted, significant battles that pitted the player in strategic combat with enemy forces (basically, the battle layout was Final Fantasy Tactics without 3D terrain, 10 years earlier). The complete lack of random encounters was refreshing, and the impressive storylines mananaged to keep you involved and interested from beginning to end.

    Basically, the point is that games do not have to have "dumb" random encounter engines, nor do they have to have random encounters at all. What I am trying to say is this: if you have a modern RPG, and the random encounters are handled poorly, then this suggests that the rest of the game is also designed poorly. There are too many good examples out there for RPG makers to have any excuses anymore.
  • Ive got to again mention the SNES game earthbound.

    When you encounter an enemy, the screen spirals in indicating a battle, when you over power them by so much, the enemys begin to run away from you, but if you are attacked the spiral turns green, spirals back out giving you an instant victory. You still get all the points and experince from winning, just without having to go through the hassel of actually fighting.

  • Ultima III on the NES handled that pretty well, I thought. I don't know about the original PC version. In the overworld map, you could see little icons for the groups of enemies, with the exact appearance indicating their strength. If you needed experience, you could go hunt them down. If not, you could usually avoid most of them.

    Sometimes it wasn't possible, and sometimes they'd appear right next to you and attack, but generally you got to choose when and what to fight. I've always been really surp

  • I'm surprised that so few people mentioned the two main reasons why random battles really suck:

    1) They're boring and easy. Classic Final Fantasy-style gameplay offers you nothing but using the same attacks over and over to defeat enemies that can be easily slaughted by nothing more than the Attack/Fight option. Because they have no depth or challenge, they're just a momentary distraction from the boss fights that you're looking forward to. Contrast this with Final Fantasy Tactics. Hardly anyone complains a
  • While DMing a couple paper and dice rpgs, the silliness of having random encounters in certain situations occured to me as well. Moving around through the wilderness is one thing, and here random encounters can spice things up a bit as long as we keep in mind certain aspects of realism. Walk around in the woods at the right time of year for long enough and you will encounter a bear or a moose, and in a fantasy world where the local region is being terrorized by goblins, it only makes sense that you should

    • One of the things I *LOVED* about the old Gold Box AD&D games was that, when facing scads of wimpy little opponents, your higher level fighters could 'sweep' and attack multiple ones at once.

      So when your level 6-9 party is cleaning out the local Kobold stronghold, you'd get fifty or sixty of the little buggers ganging up on you, but your fighters would be each taking three to six out per attack, your mages would be going to town with fireball, stinking cloud, and sleep...

      Don't think I've played a FR

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