Changing how to battle happens during the game

[InBlast]

Hey ! Let me have your opinion on this =)

The current game i'm working on will be on 2 parts : 

First, a "normal" medieval part, with no magic or strange monsters. Just some humans and an original background, of course. WIth that, all the encounters will be evented (no random battles when you're walking). This part will focus on the story, and you will gain EXP mainly by quests.

After this, a event will realease a lot of monsters in the world. I plan to making random encounters because a lot of monsters are hiding everywhere, and will attack you (of course they will also be evented encounters, but in the first part you can't "farm")

How do you see a system like this ? 

 

[Matseb2611]

It does seem a tad strange and inconsistent. You'd be getting a lot of players who hate random encounters drop the game at that point when those get introduced. I'd personally recommend to stick with either evented encounters or random ones, or if you're mixing them, to be doing it from the start and to make the player aware right off the bat that both happen in the game and in which situations they'll be getting each one.

 

[kranasAngel]

I think the best way to do this would be to have a very low random encounter rate in the first part of the game. This way players know it exists, but it's so low they would be gaining a majority of their EXP from fixed encounters and quests. Then after the event, have the Random Encounter rate spike like crazy. That should do

 

[ARMR]

I think the best way to do this would be to have a very low random encounter rate in the first part of the game. This way players know it exists, but it's so low they would be gaining a majority of their EXP from fixed encounters and quests. Then after the event, have the Random Encounter rate spike like crazy. That should do

I gotta agree with Kranas here, though don't spike the random encounter rate too much or else some people might get frustrated with encountering monsters every 5 steps @_@

 

[Wavelength]

I personally like your proposal better than Kranas' system (probably a matter of personal preference - but I'd feel more jarred as a player if the RE encounter suddenly spiked significantly for the entire game than I would if a new mechanic were introduced in REs).

I think this kind of thing probably works the best if one "part" or the other is much, much longer than the other part (on the scale of like 90% vs. 10%).  Because if it's like 50/50, then you're likely to lose players that have a particular dislike for either way of doing things, limiting the number of people who stick with your game through both halves.

 

[kranasAngel]

In terms of my personal taste, I'm not a fan of high encounter rates, ever. If it were up to me, I'd rather make a few very strong monsters than many weak monsters. 

However, given that InBlast wanted a sudden surge of random encounters, I feel that having low encounters previously and then causing them to rise would be more helpful for several reasons. 

1. Grinding: Grinding is a way to offset the difficulty of a boss battle in most RPGs, and provided its not required, it can be used to greatly help the player. For example, say you forgot all of your fire shields against a pyromancer boss, no big deal, just grind yourself until you're over-leveled and try again. Is it ideal, no, but most people would find gaining an extra one or two levels far simpler than walking all  the way back.
2. I think that having no random/on map encounters is not a great things. First, it implies that all monsters stand still all of the time, and that bothers me. I think that if monsters are already roaming the place, even if they aren't strange monsters, they would still try to sneak up on the player.

But that's jut my opinion.

 

[Valkyriet]

I agree that it seems a bit inconsistent. I like your proposal of receiving EXP for completing quests, but as a really big hater of invisible or random encounters, I can easily see myself stopping at the second part; it just isn't appealing to not see the monsters coming and having to fight them every 3-4 steps. Especially if, after a while, fighting them becomes pointless. I have no problems with your concept and with the event releasing all the monsters into the world, but it would be much better if they were visible. Alternatively, if you do want to implement random or invisible encounters, I remember playing a game once where each map had invisible enemies, but by the time you reached the end of the dungeon, there would be a crystal which turned off all monster encounters for that map. You can have a similar system where a trigger can destroy all the enemies on the map; the party would just have to find it.