How do you guys feel about Random Encounter in old jrpgs.

[dropsmegamega]

I like then in games that rely on resource managing in order to survive the dungeons, after all SMT:Nocturne PS2 is my favorite JRPG and surviving from one save point to another with random encounters that aren't complete pushovers is completely valid gameplay and much more interesting than just having punching bags for grinding to prepare for the bosses.

Sadly in most JRPGs random encounters are exactly just that, punching bags for grinding and annoyances to waste your time. One of the reasons I can't stand a lot of SNES~PS1 era JRPGs.

 

[Dzapper]

I'm working my way through Final Fantasy Legend 2 on the Game Boy, the random encounters are definitely frequent in the early game, I don't mind it too much but it does get annoying.

 

[hazys]

I like how in Etrian Odyssey there's an orb that changes color as your random encounter chance increases. That's a cool compromise.

I think random encounters add tension in a way that on-field enemies don't. On-field enemies can be avoided, which sort of encourages the player to do so. It's a totally different design philosophy.

 

[thanonyx thanonyx]

I'll admit they got annoying sometimes like if you wanted to exit a dungeon, or reach a save point, or just get to the next town or something and all of a sudden you keep running into enemies every 2-3 steps. Especially if you were low on HP and items, that's when a random encounter is the last thing you need. But it just made JRPGs feel like JRPGs, like turn based combat. Now most of them you can see the enemies on the map and it's all real time combat now. At least Persona knows what's up.

 

[Leon]

I find random encounters fine, as long as they aren't excessive, the best handling of it is what games like breath of fire where if you didn't like random encounters, you had items that could temporarily stop them, bravely default did it best though as it gave you a encounter slider.

 

[KaiserMk7]

Would an arbitrary level hardcap that increases as you complete chapter/act bosses and wastes any experience beyond what's needed to level to that point solve the overleveling for bosses and pushover random encounters problems?

 

[nobitakun]

I like them. I consider RPG's should be about battles most of the time, raising levels and hoarding items in your inventory. I am a quite materialist person with an OCD, so I tend to collect everything in the game and never use any consumibles I can't freely buy or obtain endlessly by other means.

Random encounters are many times needed for leveling indiscriminately. And in some games, you can even do some automatic leveling just by leaving the controller in a position where the character walks neverending and you press the action button with turbo. For instance, I finished Phantasy Star II a few days ago, and I leveled all my characters to LV50 in 8 nights, playing the automatic leveling trick. No cheats, no fast forward, only using a turbo controller, toothpick and a rubber band.

The problem of random encounters is when they are badly executed. Dungeons are nothing more than mazes full of dead-ends to desperate you with a combat every 10 steps.

Literally any old Breath of Fire game

Breath of Fire II do the random encounters pretty nice, the best of the saga. You have a doll on screen menu that dances faster or slower depending on how often you will get an encounter. When you find a new area, the doll is dancing quite aggressively, but after a few encounters in that area, the dance becomes more peaceful, as you have "cleaned" the area a little bit, and it usually stays like that for the rest of the game. And in areas where you don't have encounters, the doll is sleeping. I can't believe they didn't implement that in latter installments :(

I'd say no one likes them; it has more to do with levels of tolerance.
I will absolutely not play a traditional RPG these days without some encounter reduction patch.

Games like Parasite Eve did it best for having fixed encounter points in each area.

I like them. For me combat is the most important part in a RPG, more than the story itself. It's not about how you enter to combats, it's about how combat mechanics work, if they are nice or awful.

 

[RageBurner]

I like them. For me combat is the most important part in a RPG, more than the story itself. It's not about how you enter to combats, it's about how combat mechanics work, if they are nice or awful.

Sure, combat with nice mechanics behind them are much less of a chore, but even something great too often will make someone sick. Frequency absolutely matters.

 

[job32]

Probably already said, too many posts to read. I understand why they did it back in the day because they were trying to make a lengthy game with less megabytes or whatever, and it worked because in a lot of cases, the story was fairly epic. At this stage, going back, majority of stories followed a similar formula, so not as intriguing these days to put up with that kind of grinding slog knowing it's the same formula with, maybe, a slightly different twist.

 

[nobitakun]

Sure, combat with nice mechanics behind them are much less of a chore, but even something great too often will make someone sick. Frequency absolutely matters.

Yeah, frequency matters but to some extent. At least that happens to me, I don't care how often I get a random combat as long as I know exactly where to go. But if the combat system is awkward or boring, it annoys me. In other hand, if the dungeon is a maze and I am lost, I don't want any combat at all until I learn where to go.

A clear example would be Final Fantasy VIII or X. They have the best implementation of random encounters (specially VIII, with "half encounters" in the middle), because when you have the feeling you want to explore the dungeon you just equip "no encounters", walk around and when you've seen everything, you remove it and start to grind like crazy. What they have done with FFX HD is, in my opinion, the worst they could do, help new players with no encounters switch, like they were crybabies, when the game has a way to get that naturally. You want it? work for it.

 

[Coon]

I like to fight through but sometimes it's annoying.

 

[lonelyrollingstars]

I don't mind random encounters too much, as long as the spawn rate isn't absolutely insane. What I've found I don't like is when grinding is absolutely necessary. I had the "misfortune" of growing up with mid-90s RPGs, like FF6 and Chrono Trigger, that don't require you to grind at all as long as you aren't running from every battle, so when I try to play an older DQ or Phantasy Star game where you have to stop and grind for money and EXP at almost every junction, it gets really frustrating (particularly as those games tend to be pretty mechanically shallow).

I'm working my way through Final Fantasy Legend 2 on the Game Boy, the random encounters are definitely frequent in the early game, I don't mind it too much but it does get annoying.

When I first played FFL2 when I was ten I got my ass kicked all up and down the block in the first dungeon, culminating in me juuuuuuust barely beating the boss at the end of the cave, who was standing directly in front of the exit. Then, I took one of the two steps that leaving the cave required, and I immediately ran into a party of six of the boss I just beat, with the same stats as the original boss. That was the moment that I decided the SaGa series was not for me, and so far, despite many attempts, that opinion has held strong.

 

[KaiserMk7]

I don't mind random encounters too much, as long as the spawn rate isn't absolutely insane. What I've found I don't like is when grinding is absolutely necessary. I had the "misfortune" of growing up with mid-90s RPGs, like FF6 and Chrono Trigger, that don't require you to grind at all as long as you aren't running from every battle, so when I try to play an older DQ or Phantasy Star game where you have to stop and grind for money and EXP at almost every junction, it gets really frustrating (particularly as those games tend to be pretty mechanically shallow).


When I first played FFL2 when I was ten I got my ass kicked all up and down the block in the first dungeon, culminating in me juuuuuuust barely beating the boss at the end of the cave, who was standing directly in front of the exit. Then, I took one of the two steps that leaving the cave required, and I immediately ran into a party of six of the boss I just beat, with the same stats as the original boss. That was the moment that I decided the SaGa series was not for me, and so far, despite many attempts, that opinion has held strong.

I don't remember that experience in FFL2. I think I would have liked to be able to farm the cave miniboss for its meat, if not for that monster moves and the really nice weapons seems to be finite resources. If you were still in the cave, I think there's probably either a bug or hidden feature to farm a miniboss in random encounters on the tile it was standing on. Or maybe it's more like octopath where bosses generally become rare encounters in their respective dungeons. You don't randomly encounter groups of the second miniboss until a couple of worlds later, after killing the first major boss, if I recall. Your general experience with the cave probably hinges on your party composition as well.

 

[Pinballbuzzbro]

In traditional RPGs I don’t mind them long as they’re spaced out and easy to defeat

The SECOND you put them into a more action oriented game though? No. Die. Cease. Do not.
(Super adventure island 2 cough cough)

 

[nobitakun]

I don't mind random encounters too much, as long as the spawn rate isn't absolutely insane. What I've found I don't like is when grinding is absolutely necessary. I had the "misfortune" of growing up with mid-90s RPGs, like FF6 and Chrono Trigger, that don't require you to grind at all as long as you aren't running from every battle, so when I try to play an older DQ or Phantasy Star game where you have to stop and grind for money and EXP at almost every junction, it gets really frustrating (particularly as those games tend to be pretty mechanically shallow).

Grinding is something people tend to dislike, and I agree when it's not rewarding. For instance, like you mention Phantasy Star, in this game is specially horrible because no matter how much you level up, the game will never become easy. For me, if I spend hours and hours grinding I need to become so strong that everything should be a piece of cake, that's the reward I look for in exchange of my time. If I don't get it, it pisses me very much.

 

[lonelyrollingstars]

I don't remember that experience in FFL2. I think I would have liked to be able to farm the cave miniboss for its meat, if not for that monster moves and the really nice weapons seems to be finite resources. If you were still in the cave, I think there's probably either a bug or hidden feature to farm a miniboss in random encounters on the tile it was standing on. Or maybe it's more like octopath where bosses generally become rare encounters in their respective dungeons. You don't randomly encounter groups of the second miniboss until a couple of worlds later, after killing the first major boss, if I recall. Your general experience with the cave probably hinges on your party composition as well.

Chances are I had no idea what I was doing and was just trying to play it like an ATB-based FF game (I was 9). Since then, I’ve learned how SaGa games work (to an extent; I’ve never seen a game series more dedicated to remaining unfathomably obtuse by any means necessary), and I do enjoy the stories and characters (especially in SaGa Frontier), but I’m still not a huge fan of the mechanics.

Grinding is something people tend to dislike, and I agree when it's not rewarding. For instance, like you mention Phantasy Star, in this game is specially horrible because no matter how much you level up, the game will never become easy. For me, if I spend hours and hours grinding I need to become so strong that everything should be a piece of cake, that's the reward I look for in exchange of my time. If I don't get it, it pisses me very much.

Agreed! I actually often do grind in RPGs, even ones where I don’t need it, and enjoy it at times. It’s when I’m forced to stop and grind just to be able to get through the next area of the game that really drives me crazy. Phantasy Star 1 was awful about that.

 

[Lena CE]

I think some games like Legend of Dragoon and old FF (particularly FFVI thru FFX) had fantastic encounter rates. For every game like that though there seemed to be another that was just a touch overtuned though. Imo the SNES era was the most consistent at "getting it right" whilst the 3rd gen and a lot of the more average RPGs of the 5th gen brought the problem back to the forefront.

In terms of replicating the "randomness" of a DM guiding your party around it was a solid mechanic that I've never been totally against. The issues with it are understandable but I think it made some franchises like Pokemon more exciting and rarely ever ruined my enjoyment of a game. Ideally every game that tries to use them would come with some sort of slider in the way Bravely Default did so people can just tweak it a bit if they are unhappy.

Also, when it comes to first person dungeon crawlers like Etrian Odyssey I don't think getting rid of random encounters would be beneficial, it works way too well there in terms of pacing dungeons and creating fun/tense gameplay moments.

 

[KaiserMk7]

What if we played them for anxiety? They don't contribute directly to your stat growth in any way, so getting from safe point A to point B, whether it's another safe point or a boss fight, is an uphill struggle seasoned with a growing panicked awareness that a slightly less common, party-wiping monster could ambush you at any time.

 

[Toast Rider]

I think some games like Legend of Dragoon and old FF (particularly FFVI thru FFX) had fantastic encounter rates. For every game like that though there seemed to be another that was just a touch overtuned though. Imo the SNES era was the most consistent at "getting it right" whilst the 3rd gen and a lot of the more average RPGs of the 5th gen brought the problem back to the forefront.

In terms of replicating the "randomness" of a DM guiding your party around it was a solid mechanic that I've never been totally against. The issues with it are understandable but I think it made some franchises like Pokemon more exciting and rarely ever ruined my enjoyment of a game. Ideally every game that tries to use them would come with some sort of slider in the way Bravely Default did so people can just tweak it a bit if they are unhappy.

Also, when it comes to first person dungeon crawlers like Etrian Odyssey I don't think getting rid of random encounters would be beneficial, it works way too well there in terms of pacing dungeons and creating fun/tense gameplay moments.

I think part of why SNES RPGs hit the nail so cleanly is that battles tend to be paced well. Animations are nice and snappy, battles don’t need much time to load in, and even your big showstopper moves (summons, triple techs, etc.) wrap up pretty fast. I’ve been playing Lufia II recently and it’s amazing how to-the-point everything is. You can even hold A to fast-forward the EXP/gold tallies. In something like that, Chrono Trigger, or early DQ, the grind becomes almost meditative.

 

[nobitakun]

What if we played them for anxiety? They don't contribute directly to your stat growth in any way, so getting from safe point A to point B, whether it's another safe point or a boss fight, is an uphill struggle seasoned with a growing panicked awareness that a slightly less common, party-wiping monster could ambush you at any time.

If you play videogames because you have anxiety I suggest you don't play games with random encounters, of course. Better play something like slice of life games. There is always a solution for a problem :)

 

[Dr.Kisaragi]

I just started on Dragon Valor man so far I like it. Same vibes as Evergrace and The Sword of Etheria.

 

[Toast Rider]

If you play videogames because you have anxiety I suggest you don't play games with random encounters, of course. Better play something like slice of life games. There is always a solution for a problem :)

Thing is though, with JRPGs you have a significant degree of control over the risk and difficulty of those random encounters. If you’re feeling high-strung and a particular area or dungeon is putting you on edge, you can head back to an earlier spot and settle in for a relaxing grind. If you’re deliberately looking for monsters, their sudden appearance isn’t as much of a jump scare (though to be fair, if I was feeling anxious I wouldn’t subject myself to Final Fantasy X’s screen-exploding random encounter pop-ups lol). Battles become less risky and less dependent on strategic thinking. Perfect for putting on some tea and chilling out until that dungeon that’s giving you trouble becomes less of a big deal. And when you’re feeling more confident, you can keep moving through the story until enemy strength catches up to you. At which point you can again decide if you want to grind and make a more relaxing experience or plow forward for a tenser time.

 

[nobitakun]

Thing is though, with JRPGs you have a significant degree of control over the risk and difficulty of those random encounters. If you’re feeling high-strung and a particular area or dungeon is putting you on edge, you can head back to an earlier spot and settle in for a relaxing grind. If you’re deliberately looking for monsters, their sudden appearance isn’t as much of a jump scare (though to be fair, if I was feeling anxious I wouldn’t subject myself to Final Fantasy X’s screen-exploding random encounter pop-ups lol). Battles become less risky and less dependent on strategic thinking. Perfect for putting on some tea and chilling out until that dungeon that’s giving you trouble becomes less of a big deal. And when you’re feeling more confident, you can keep moving through the story until enemy strength catches up to you. At which point you can again decide if you want to grind and make a more relaxing experience or plow forward for a tenser time.

It's another approach, yep. But the problem is that earlier spots tend to give you less experience. If that anxiety comes from fear, then it's alright, but if it comes from a mix of things where one of them is impatience, then I don't know what would happen :O.

 

[hazys]

Would an arbitrary level hardcap that increases as you complete chapter/act bosses and wastes any experience beyond what's needed to level to that point solve the overleveling for bosses and pushover random encounters problems?

LUNAR did this by having the bosses scale to your level. I think it can work, though you'd be surprised by how many JRPG players do not like this. In RPGs, people like having the security that they can eventually steamroll any obstacle by grinding.

 

[Toast Rider]

LUNAR did this by having the bosses scale to your level. I think it can work, though you'd be surprised by how many JRPG players do not like this. In RPGs, people like having the security that they can eventually steamroll any obstacle by grinding.

I thought Final Fantasy Tactics had an interesting approach in that story missions are static (and often pretty damn tough) but random encounters scale to the highest level character you bring into them. Even if you over-level and trivialize the current story mission, you can still find challenge (sometimes brutal challenge) in random encounters and the story will catch up to where you are very fast.