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Why Random Encounters In RPGs Aren't That Bad
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."
Plus, Earthbound was completely awesome. It had the funkiest music of any RPG, ever.
WHERE'S MY EARTHBOUND 64?
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.
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.
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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.
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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.
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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: 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.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!
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 fight them.
The biggest problem that I have with random encounters is what I'm running into now with Final Fantasy 9. The monsters are either way too easy and don't give you enough experience, or they're way too hard and you have to spend inordinate amounts of money to stock up on Potions to keep yourself alive; the battles take several minutes to complete and a level-up doesn't give you enough to keep up with the monsters. Leveling up takes hours, sometimes, and you MUST do it in order to keep up with the levels of the monsters you have to fight as you go through the game.
My solution is this, and has been used in a couple games in the past, though mostly in spell form, I believe. They should find a way to enable it so that you shouldn't have to fight monsters that are vastly weaker than you. These types of battles are just a waste of time and you shouldn't have to fight them unless you choose to. So here would be my suggestion:
If my level is 25, and I hit a random encounter, the game does a quick calculation of what type of monster I would be fighting. If the monster I would be fighting is of a level far lower than mine, then I don't hit the encounter. That way, I only fight monsters that are at my level or more powerful. However, rather than having the same number of battles, but this time with only high-level monsters (which makes it VERY tough to get to the next town so you can buy more Potions), the calculation would make sure that the number of battles would stay lower because the number of hypothetical battles stays the same, only those with the weak monsters don't happen. So this way, you fight less battles, but they're more difficult. It makes leveling up that much better because the battles you do fight are more meaningful and less tedious.
Did that make sense?
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.
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.
Auto-reply to ACs: "Truly, you have a dizzying intellect."
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
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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.]
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.
Man is the animal that laughs.
And occasionally whores for Karma.
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 the game rather quickly, and there isnt even a need to level up your characters much (there are even FAQs written on how to finish with hardly any level gain).
I guess my point is that by doing so you miss much of the charm of the game, most of the interesting things, and shorten your leisure time experience. I just played it in my free time, and was happy to do so. In fact, I was kind of sad when it was over, because it was a fun game.
If you feel that you are 'wasting your time' on a game, perhaps the game is doing something wrong. IMO, the current MMOGs are worse and less interesting time sinks than CRPG random encounters. Having it take 15 minutes just to fight a monster? Unbelievable. Thats why single player games are still way better than MMOGs.
Manipulate the moderator system! Mod someone as "overrated" today.