/v/ - Video Games

Ok

> They're there to wear the player down and make them consume resources

but that's the #1 purpose of all non-boss enemies in nuPersona and it doesn't use random encounters

>game has wondering monsters

>level design is a series of tubes so you can't dodge jack shit

>>16000295

Again, haven't played Personas of any variety, but correct me if I'm wrong doesn't at least one of them use a system similar to EB? You have a few tactical options in that case, while in DQ9 or Pokemon Let's Go there's really no advantage to doing anything but avoiding them when you're already leveled up enough.

>>16000352

That's the other problem, level design that's not conducive to the enemy design. I could go on an autistic rant comparing it to how various Mario games handle pretty much this exact same problem, and I think I will. In Super Mario 64, most enemies attempt to run in your direction but can't actually do shit since you've so much more mobile than them. In comparison, Super Mario 3D World features a Mario only slightly more mobile than 2D Mario (and possibly even less so than DK 94 for the GameBoy, haven't analyzed that), a level design that's a lot smaller, and enemies that provide a wider threat range than fucking nothing. Basically what I'm saying are Biddybuds are power-crept Goombas. At the end of the day, most overworld enemies in JRPGs are about as easy to avoid as Goombas. That's where Chrono Trigger has an advantage in making them a threat, as a lot can't be avoided (or at least aren't supposed to be). That, however, eliminates the ability to run away, an important tactical choice. Overworld encounters in Let's Go are basically the worst possible choice. If you want to avoid Pokemon, just don't go in the tall grass or use a repel. If you want to catch a certain Pokemon, in most games you're out of luck, or maybe you could use something like DexNav in the best case scenario. In Let's Go, encountering what Pokemon you want is actually more frustrating. First, the Pokemon actually has to spawn. I'm not sure how the game actually handles it, but it could either despawn Pokemon when there are too many on the screen, or just not spawn any more if there are too many, neither of which is a great option. Lastly, if you encounter one I'm pretty sure it would reset which Pokemon are out in the overworld because I don't trust Game Freak not to be retarded, so if you accidentally touch anything else on the way to the Pokemon you want you're fucked. I'd rather just deal with pure RNG in that case, there's too many extra variables with so little real skill involved that it's not worth it.

>>16000458

Pokemon really needs some kind of tagging system where you pay a guy to hunt a pokemon for you while you do something else.

My argument is that Pokemon Let's Go is a bad game. I see no reason to elaborate on that as any oxygen thief that disagrees with me would never accept any reasoning.

>>15999494

random encounters is a shitty mechanic stemming from technical limitations and repeated to death like most bad game design choices. overworld enemy models give players the option to grind when they want and fight specific enemies.

>>16001252

Who the hell needs that many monitors

I don't like JRPGS

>>16001276

Hold on, I'm pretty sure video games were capable of displaying enemies on screen before 1986, which is when Dragon Quest first came out. You can make the argument that you mean it was a problem with PC games that they brought over, then I'd like to point out that Hack managed to display some enemy information back in 1982, and Rogue before that. I feel like random encounters were intentional in regards to that. Now let's talk about grinding. Unless you want to get through the game as fast as possible (or are doing a low level run), usually you want to deal with the enemies you meet (unless the game is designed like shit, which does happen from time to time). Avoiding the gameplay isn't always the best idea. As for grinding, there's only a handful of reasons you should be grinding in a well designed game. The major two is for EXP and money. The usual time you'll be aiming for those is in the late or post game, and if you're the kind of person who's into that you'll find out the best places to powerlevel, regardless of how they figure it out. The only other reason is random drops, and trust me I know that pain all too well, I 100%'d Final Fantasy: 4 Heroes of Light. Here's a question then, why not have enemies also show what item's they'll drop in battle somehow? Maybe they're holding it, I dunno. Why don't most games do that? And why did you not think to complain about it, yet point out something that only matters if you're aiming for that sort of thing? One last point I'd like to make is avoiding enemies that will kick your ass. With random encounters, if you encounter an enemy you can run away, at the cost of maybe getting hit a few times if you can't escape. With overworld encounters, you can try to avoid that enemy, but you'll sometimes get stuck in battle with it anyway, bringing you back into the exact same situation as above. Statistically you are slightly less likely to fight a problem enemy, but the more enemies you don't want to fight, the more crowded a screen will get, meaning that you're more likely to fight something you don't want to anyway. Like I said, not enough payoff, not enough skill involved, and neither enough breadth or depth in the decision making for it to matter. Again, Earthbound is the poster child for good overworld encounters because you have options in how you approach them. Most JRPGs don't bother to even go that deep, you can hardly even back attack enemies or have them get the drop on you that way, so why bother? Give me some examples of games with overworld encounters, and then list the different interactions you can have with them.

>>16001340

Look, if you can dig up any compelling evidence that random encounters weren't an intentional design decision from any interview with anybody who designed any game that used them, I'd love to hear it. As it stands, I'm pretty sure random encounters were a sort of shorthand for tabletop random encounter tables, where random shit you don't expect just sort of happens with little warning and sometimes little reason. A good DM probably would try to tie in that sort of thing thematically somehow, but we don't live in a world with good DMs most of the time. As it stands JRPGs are meant to cut out a lot of shit even from early PC RPGs (which were also very pared down experiences), so if I had to guess making the encounters RNG based is how they dealt with that.

>>16000863

I really like that song

>>16001316

now that you mention that there should be reasoning for overworld encounters I suppose I can split games into two categories: rpgs that benefit from it and rpgs that are going to be a slog anyway.

a game like dragon quest monsters joker (spinoff series for ds and 3ds) benefits from overworld because the point of the game is to recruit and combine monsters. if you're looking for one specific monster you need to complete the recipe it's better to see them before engaging.

else I would concede that it doesn't matter if there is no gameplay reason to favor either encounter style. overworld is really nice if there is a puzzle section though, makes it take less pointless time.

>>16001380

Random encounters in a puzzle section are a pain regardless, if I were in charge of a game I would reduce or remove random encounters in a puzzle room. Then again I'd probably just make the game a boss rush because most random encounters aren't especially great, although you can use them to teach the player things (I know in one analysis of FF7 the analyst came to that conclusion). As for monster catching games, if you read over my problem with Pokemon Let's Go you might get an idea of the other problems involved. It's much better to have a sort of system for attracting certain monsters, as you give the player more direct control in the matter. I'd really appreciate that sort of thing, so you don't have to resort to RNG manipulation. Or if you're going to make the player resort to manipulating RNG, at least make it super easy like DQ9. What could be a horrible grind is made super easy with shit like chest timers and the Hoimi Table. That's really the lesser of the two options, even if it does make me feel like a cool guy for fucking the game when it tired to fuck me.

>>16001340

not an argument

>>15999494

Good post, took the words right out of my mouth.

There's something to be said about the aesthetics of it too. The way that Pokemon Let's Go, and a lot of other games, has its visible encounters randomly waddle about while staring into space just looks so silly and breaks any immersion. Chrono Trigger does it a lot better by having a lot of enemies hiding or sleeping until you approach, or the guards and robots patrolling a specific area. And at least with random encounters there's a layer of abstraction for your mind to fill in the gaps, you could assume they sneak up on you or jump out from behind something, and in some cases like SMT1 you can actually see it happening

>>16000352

You called?

ITT: millennials plays rpgs but don't want unexpected encounters.

#rpgsafespacesnow

>>16001576

millennials are thirty, anon. you need to use the next appropriate you damn kids moniker.

>>16001583

There isn't one. They changed it from "millennials are people born after the new millennium" to "people who grew up (vague) during the new millenium". Which actually sucks up half of the already-established Gen-X and most of Y anyway. Then they refused to accept that they'd left the current <19 generation nameless, and rather half-heartedly allowed people to continue calling them millennials as well. So now every Generation is about 20 years in breadth, except for Gen-X which changed to 10-15, and Gen-Y which ceased to exist, and Millennials which is like 50 years because FUCK YOU anyway.

>>16001602

It's especially fucking dumb because you could split millennials into three generations anyway

>ones who grew up before the internet was commonplace (2000-2008)

>ones who grew up after the internet became commonplace but before smartphones did (2008-2013?)

>ones who grew up after both

Pretty clearly distinct groups

I like random encounters. Having the ability to easily dodge encounters (99% of modern RPGs with their over world touch monster to fight bullshit) makes the games way too easy. No more slogging through a dungeon to the next save point (hah, who am I kidding those don't even exist anymore) while carefully managing your resources, in some sort of endurance test.

>>16001651

I remember sweating balls to get though original Final Fantasy, Dragon Warrior, Chrono Trigger type games worried about being fucked up too bad to fight the boss at the end. It was half the battle tbh.