Do you like more difficult random encounters?

[Kurogane]

Random encounters can be really boring, especially when those monsters who cannot even land a hit on you keep coming into your way.

I think it is almost impossible to make these small fights super interesting. What we can do is to make these fights as interesting as it can be. Hence, I am thinking about making these random encounters to give a more "serious" feeling. Do you think it will work?

I will probably try to achieve it by working on:

1. monsters' overall strength;

2. death penalty.

What I might do is to make the monsters stronger, maybe not as strong as those in the Shin Megami Tensei series (where small monsters may thrash your whole party if you make a single mistake), but, just, stronger, so you feel more tension in the fights. Of course, some balance will be done (like reducing encounter rate). Do you think it will make the random encounters slightly more enjoyable? Or will it just make you frustrate?

For the death penalty, I'm not so sure about it. I had once think about permadeath, but that will cause the change of the whole plot and most of the dialogues, which will require unimaginable amount of work to be done. So, what if the character's level decrease by 1 or something if he/she dies? When a party member dies, will the player almost certainly just undo his/her action (a.k.a. quit game & load game) instead of suffering the penalty? If so, will it only cause a lot of frustration and time-wasting?

Please post your opinion! 

 

[Tai_MT]

I don't think it's impossible for small fights to be made interesting.

It's always been my opinion that people hate "random encounters" because the combat system itself is boring.  I prefer the kind of system of battle where "the random encounters are the lessons and the bosses are the tests".  That is, each random encounter teaches the player something they need to know.  Usually multiple ways to clear it, but mashing "attack" is never the option.  I always feel like if a player can just hit the "Attack" button, I've done something wrong.  I like my player using their skills, setting up their equipment, using items, and trying to figure out order of priority for enemy kills.

I have an example I like to cite quite often.  I have an encounter where I want to teach players how "Stun" works.  Stun is a state keeps an enemy (or ally!) from acting until they are attacked again.  It doesn't wear off on its own, and it isn't cured by items.  So, I have a fight where there's a really beefy and strong enemy that can do really heavy attacks.  Enemy is resistant to Stun.  The beefy enemy is joined by two healing mages.  The healing mages heal 100% health every turn for each other and the beefy guy.  The trick to the fight is to obviously to use Stun on the enemies in the proper order to take them out.  I leave the priority of which to the player and which characters they're using.  You can Stun the big guy to prevent damage and one of the mages to focus on another mage.  You can stun both mages to keep the big guy from healing.  You can stun everyone so that you can heal up your entire party when you get low on health.  Lots of ways to clear it, but the point of the battle is to teach players about Stun and how to use it.  It's just one of the battles I think is engaging enough to keep players interested and keep them from mashing Attack.

I have earlier fights where I teach players the value of attack types and defense types.  Main attack types are Strength, Speed, and Magic.  Main defenses are to counter those.  Some enemies use those types and some characters are weak to those types.

I find combat far more fun if I'm not just mashing "attack" or casting the strongest magic spell to win.  If your players have to think, or have to consider what they're doing, combat is more fun.  It's much more engaging.  At least, that's my opinion.

Also, my experience with "perma-death" comes from the Fire Emblem series.  My experience with it is...  It just leaves to savescumming.  Saving before each fight, if a character dies, reset the game and restart the fight.  Impact of it... zero save for frustration to a player.

 

[Sketch XII]

People don't hate random encounters because of them being to easy, and not always just because the combat system is boring itself either (although the more interesting it is, it would definitely help). It's simply frustrating to have one task in mind, and then to have a bunch of stuff get in your way. Lets say you have to hit some switch across the map, but then suddenly a monster appears and gets in your way. You beat it, then another one appears. You sigh, you just want to get across the map to hit one little freggin switch. Whats important is placement of these encounters, like how in pokemon, it's actually kinda cool the encounters are just in grass and that weird old man looking in your direction who wants a battle, you know that ****s coming. Making random encounters harder and longer is not something that would help at all in most cases. I think hard encounters like that would be best for some form of punishment to the player, like pressing the wrong switch or something. I'm not saying to make all the enemies easy or anything like that either, but know how to balance things out without frustrating the player to hell.

I myself would get pretty upset if a level constantly had difficult random encounters popping up everywhere.

 

[Sarlecc]

Generally speaking random encounters can become a pain real fast especially if they are difficult. It's mostly due to the random nature of them showing up with no way to avoid it. If the fight takes awhile to do but then thirty steps later you get into another fight that just gets frustrating. But if you don't have them show up very often then the player might not level up enough to fight harder monsters. First game I was working on involved heavy usage of random encounters and the things I heard the most from my beta testers were: There's to many encounters: Well I crossed this area but now the random encounters wont let me get back: Can't we disable these fights when I am doing a quest. (After that game I try not to use random encounters in my games or if I do I will only use them sparingly). Can random encounters be used effectively? Yes they can, the 'Mardek RPG' games do it very well. Reason for this is if the player is a higher or equal level to the monster they have the ability to skip it, without even going to the battle scene.

As for Perma-death I hate it when games pull this one as it takes away from the fun factor in my opinion.

 

[Tai_MT]

That's kind of indicative of the problem I'm talking about.  You have one task in mind, getting across the map to that switch to hit it.  That means you find the quest to hit a button more engaging than the battles themselves.  That means, you find traversing the dungeon more interesting than the battles contained within.

My question to that has always been "why?"  Why is a task like "getting to the end of the dungeon" more interesting to the player than the combat within?

I postulate that it's because battles are so boring that it's more interesting to explore the world and engage in the storyline.  I think if we could find and discover ways to make each battle interesting in its own way, then it would lessen the "I'd rather search the dungeon for a switch than do battle" aspect.

I can agree that too many battles too close together cause frustration, just like too many dead ends in a dungeon with no reward can cause frustration.  I just think it'd be better to have more fun combat than to try to convince everyone to ditch "random encounters" entirely.  But, that's my two cents.

 

[bgillisp]

One thing to keep in mind is in most (early) RPG's, random encounters were meant to whittle at the player's resources. Or, another way to think of it, most random encounters were not hard, but if you get hit 6x for 5 HP each, those 30 HP's were supposed to add up and mean something. Then, you have to decide, do you heal? Do you use a potion? Do you retreat and come back later because you are out of items, and your healer is busy taking a nap? And yes, many times you had to retreat and come back later, usually with more resources (whether it was more HP, MP, or items).

The problem (to me) seems to stem from the fact that now we use random encounters just to use them. Many games have forgotten why they exist, and just dump them in because everyone else is doing them.

Now, to the OP's question. Harder can be good, just make sure the player can find a way to level to the point where they are not always hard. Sometimes players play a game to relax, and making every fight an epic, difficult fight can get old quickly. Also, no death penalty. I agree with Tai_Mt, that all it is going to do is make you reload a saved game. If you fell you *have* to have a death penalty, make it like Dragon Quest where you lose half your gold or something.

 

[Sketch XII]

That's kind of indicative of the problem I'm talking about.  You have one task in mind, getting across the map to that switch to hit it.  That means you find the quest to hit a button more engaging than the battles themselves.  That means, you find traversing the dungeon more interesting than the battles contained within.

My question to that has always been "why?"  Why is a task like "getting to the end of the dungeon" more interesting to the player than the combat within?

I postulate that it's because battles are so boring that it's more interesting to explore the world and engage in the storyline.  I think if we could find and discover ways to make each battle interesting in its own way, then it would lessen the "I'd rather search the dungeon for a switch than do battle" aspect.

I can agree that too many battles too close together cause frustration, just like too many dead ends in a dungeon with no reward can cause frustration.  I just think it'd be better to have more fun combat than to try to convince everyone to ditch "random encounters" entirely.  But, that's my two cents.

Because you know why you're doing it usually, because you as the player have an objective. You know the switch opens a gate or something. You know behind that gate you get a step closer to saving that princess (as basic example). Fighting that bad guy that randomly pops up isn't something you're focused on doing at all or even want to do most of the time because it doesn't help your current goal, you have no real motivation to fight the enemy. Sure, you might get stronger a bit, but not by a significant amount that you even care for at that moment and it's just not very satisfying. People like to get somewhere new, to explore more naturally and to even possibly find some item or powerup along the way in some possibly hidden area, even if it's not something you come across in previous areas of the game, it still comes naturally for people to look for such a thing.

In my own current game for example, although the encounters aren't random and are by enemy contact, the player is rewarded for fighting enemies because of what the enemies drop. They will drop things that will allow the player to explore different areas, like bombs to break through rocks or even things that you don't know what they do and have some place in a side quest or some NPC is looking for, while if not, then they're used as punishment for doing something wrong. This can still end up being applied to random encounters.

Personally, I feel that if the combat is more interesting than exploring, then it must be a pretty dull map.

It's more so a preference, but it shouldn't be ignored. Instead its better to find a way both can work together.

 

[Tai_MT]

That's kind of my point.  When you're in battle, you should be engaged.  When you're on the map, you should be engaged.  Engagement with the game should not be exclusive to one section of it.  If players are skipping your battles, you need to find out why and what you can do to make them no longer skip them.  If players are blowing through your dungeons and not exploring, you need to find out why and fix it.

The key is engagement.  If you're looking for a switch and battles "pull you out of the game", there's something wrong with the game.  The person playing obviously wants battles in their RPG, or they'd be playing RPGs that don't have battles.  Yet, here they are, getting frustrated with battle when all they want to do is get across the map and hit a switch.  Why?  Could be that encounters are too frequent, sure (sometimes I get burned out on too frequent encounters as well).  But, it might also be because all your player is doing is "mashing attack" and then moving on.  It's not that interesting, or engaging, and it means the player cares way more about exploring and getting to the story than the methods by which they get there.  So, something about the combat isn't fun.  Not even the rewards of gaining levels, gaining money, and gaining items is enough to make the players engage in it.  So, something else about it must not be that interesting.

That's just my thoughts on it.  Combat should be just as fun and engaging as the rest of the game.  Why is it then not in those cases where you care more about getting to the switch?  That's my question?  My conclusion is usually "it's boring".

 

[Sketch XII]

That's kind of my point.  When you're in battle, you should be engaged.  When you're on the map, you should be engaged.  Engagement with the game should not be exclusive to one section of it.  If players are skipping your battles, you need to find out why and what you can do to make them no longer skip them.  If players are blowing through your dungeons and not exploring, you need to find out why and fix it.

The key is engagement.  If you're looking for a switch and battles "pull you out of the game", there's something wrong with the game.  The person playing obviously wants battles in their RPG, or they'd be playing RPGs that don't have battles.  Yet, here they are, getting frustrated with battle when all they want to do is get across the map and hit a switch.  Why?  Could be that encounters are too frequent, sure (sometimes I get burned out on too frequent encounters as well).  But, it might also be because all your player is doing is "mashing attack" and then moving on.  It's not that interesting, or engaging, and it means the player cares way more about exploring and getting to the story than the methods by which they get there.  So, something about the combat isn't fun.  Not even the rewards of gaining levels, gaining money, and gaining items is enough to make the players engage in it.  So, something else about it must not be that interesting.

That's just my thoughts on it.  Combat should be just as fun and engaging as the rest of the game.  Why is it then not in those cases where you care more about getting to the switch?  That's my question?  My conclusion is usually "it's boring".

Which brings me back to bringing up pokemon.

If you want to level up a pokemon or catch one, you know to go into the grass and look around.

To find a more rare pokemon, you have to take time to get through a few battles usually until you find that one you want,

and it's used sparingly enough so if you go into a cave, you know its a more dangerous area because the whole area has random encounters.

You practically choose when you get into a battle, or at least you're aware of what you're getting yourself into, it's not so often that it feels like a task.

It doesn't just randomly pop up and force you into something you're not in the mood for. You know you're in high grass, you know that's what you can expect.

Also, as an example of a game with not so great random encounters but good combat system;

Lost Kingdoms is a game that had probably one of my favorite combat systems in an RPG, but at the same time, had random encounters that really irritated me a times.

Their placement was sometimes just too frequent, and although at times it did work, getting stuck figuring out a puzzle and having to go back and fourth long distances can almost ruin the experience with random encounters being just everywhere.

In the end, it all depends more on how it works with the maps, battle system and puzzles, rather than it having an actual "right" or "wrong" way.

The most we can do is give suggestions while making assumptions on whats going on in the rest of the game.

If you fall into a trap room or go into a cave you know is supposed to be dangerous with a special prize at the end, sure, difficult and more frequent random encounters could be a good addition. If you're solving a puzzle on the first level that requires you move relatively long distances, no, difficult random encounters could be a terrible addition, and there's so many different possible conditions in between, while even those are just "could"s since there are tons of other things that could still be taken into consideration.

 

[CrazyCrab]

Personally I just don't like random encounters as they feel out of place most of the time. I can see random encounters being a thing on the world map, especially if there are positive and simply random (like heavy rain, travelling merchant) encounters are also thrown into the mix. In a dungeon it just feels weird to me, ''oh you totally can see and count the number of rocks in that pile, but you didn't see a horde of ogres coming your way. Yeah...'' unless it's a really dark dungeon or something. Just a pet peeve of mine, I like things to be clear. 

If you are going with harder random encounters, I think that a limited number of them per map would be a necessity, as for one thing they would also need to feel more rewarding with better loot and more exp I suppose. Once a player masters a ''hard'' encounter (aka learns all the moves and stuff) it's not a hard encounter anymore, it's a puzzle game where the answer is the same every time, making it ridiculously easy to grind them. I feel like with a ''Population'' mechanic where each major map has some random number of max encounters (let's say 10-20) they will not become monotonous and once the player gets used to them, they cannot simply abuse the system either, making the next encounters difficult again. The just fight the group X times, they get a message ''the monsters have witnessed your might and are afraid of you, running away in terror as you approach'' or something and then can walk around undisturbed. It also makes retracking not a complete pain where you fight level 1 bats at level 99.

Also, any system that punishes death without autosave is just going to mean that the player will reload most of the time if the punishment is severe, I mean why would you be happy with losing a level and then having to regrind it again. If anything, I'd add a reward for flawless victories, so that the player is motivated to do well, as in a bonus for each fight in a row where none of your characters fainted. This way losing is not really a punishment as the player doesn't actually lose enough to reload (at least I probably wouldn't), but you're still motivated to play well to keep the streak going.

 

[Kurogane]

There's more reply than I expected, and I really appreciate it.

I'm currently a beginner so I will probably just mess with random encounters for a while more, I will see what can I do with it.

Most of you think that some other modifications will be needed in random encounters other than just making the monsters stronger, I will try. Especially try to make dungeon and battles work together.

And it seems that there should probably be no death penalty. Yeah, I agree, since it is really quite an irritating stuff. (I played Fire Emblem too, Gaius made me reload for like 7 times in a single stage)

Thank you all for the suggestions, I will surely keep them in mind.

 

[Wavelength]

I feel that RE's work best when they are quick, interesting, and present real danger.  (I tend to be good at the "interesting" and the "danger" but not so much the "quick"!)  It's also important to keep RE rates very low, especially if you don't show them on the map.  After all, a player who WANTS to fight can just walk around for a bit, but a player who DOESN'T want to fight in a true Random Encounter format won't have a choice.

Assuming the standard turn-based system, I think the best way to make encounters interesting are to provide enemies with unique and varied strengths and weaknesses (not just elemental weaknesses/resists, but tactical ones - such as enemies with high DEF but low HP so you need to charge your hardest attacks to break their armor, or enemies that have deadly but very short-term status effects that they can inflict).  And when balancing, it's best to err on the side of high attack/magic and low HP for monsters.

Everything is situational to your game and the other mechanics that are in it, though.  A game where healing is extremely hard to come by is going to require a different balance ideal than a game where you can spam healing spells after every battle to restore all your health.

 

[Sharm]

@Tai_MT: I can recall a few times where I was playing a game and really enjoyed the battle system normally but when on a quest I would get frustrated with the battles. I asked myself why too. I didn't come to your conclusion, because if it had been a boring battle system I wouldn't have enjoyed it at any point. I came up with a couple of reasons why I think it's annoying.


1: Random battles can destroy pacing. Good story pacing will have highs and lows, parts where you're highly involved and parts where you can sit back a bit and absorb everything that's happened. If you've finished a low point and all you have to do is solve a switch puzzle to get an involved point in the plot, no matter how interesting a random battle is that battle is now something that slows you down and gets in the way.


2: People aren't naturally multitaskers. Multitasking is a necessary evil of a chaotic world, but it's not really fun. We like doing one thing at a time, having our whole minds engaged in that one task. If you're engaged in the task of solving a puzzle you want to work on that task until it's complete. Random battles are a different task altogether, you have to disengage from the solving of the puzzle, solve the battle, then try to remember where you were in solving the puzzle. Having a more engaging battle in this case would actually worsen the problem.

 

[Tai_MT]

@Sharm

I hadn't considered that.  I understand what you're talking about, but that would mean other places (like story and map design) were the culprits for why the players were avoiding battles to begin with.  I, personally, just switch off the part of my brain that's in the story when I engage in battle, and switch it back on when I'm out of battle.  The only times I had ever avoided battle (or seen my friends do so) is when battle was fairly inconsequential and boring, so we'd just be moving on to do something else.  In games like Secret of Mana and Secret of Evermore, we were seeking battle out and engaging in it often because it was fun.  There were times when we'd avoid it (namely when the XP, items, and money were no longer worth the time), but it usually boiled down to having gotten everything we could from the battles in the current areas and we were now ready to tackle the next story segment.  Likewise, we never ran away from any fight in Earthbound unless what we were going to fight was way too powerful for us (like the first time you run into the Oak Trees that explode and they could kill you with them).  It was the same with Final Fantasy 6.  Fight every battle until they were no longer worth it to fight, and seek out battle in a lot of cases to prepare for the next story segment.  Other games like Pokémon...  We avoided battle because we'd caught the mons we needed.  There was no reason to be in the tall grass if we had all the mons and there were plenty enough trainers to give you tons more XP and money that it just was never (and still isn't) worth it to engage in random battles in the tall grass.  Even at its core, battle in Pokémon is more about stats and less about grand strategy.  Strategy plays a part, to be sure, but it takes a backseat to stats (hence why a lot of the pro builds involve stat upping moves or enemy stat lowering moves... or just a single strategy with their four moveslots).  It's why there's so much focus on IV/EV spreads instead of move breeding.  The only enjoyment in that battle system to really be had is against other human players and it largely revolves around comparing "builds" of mons or "lucky wins" as the cool stories they tell about battle.  But, that's just my experience with games and what I'd viewed amongst my friends.

I'd just like to address your two points here quickly (I know, I've rambled enough).

1.  I agree with this.  I would say, however, this is more of a problem of your story pacing than whether or not random battles exist or are even fun.  If the pacing of your story is pretty bad, then even a fantastic battle system is going to be avoided and skipped.  Personally, I'd remedy the "switch puzzle battles" by simply removing encounters from the room the puzzle is in.  The puzzle is the challenge, so you don't need the battles.  Hitting a switch halfway across the dungeon because you need to open a door, however, is more a problem of either map design or boring battles.  I'd say probably boring battles, but it could be a problem of the map design (how on earth do you find a locked door before its switch, unless it's scripted that way for storyline purposes?  That's frustrating for players!).  Encounters, regardless of their type, should not exist in the same rooms as your puzzle.  One challenge at a time.  Well, unless you can clear out the monster encounters permanently and then set to work on the puzzle.  Leaving the room to reset the puzzle should not reset the monsters as well.

2.  Oh, don't I know this.  We have a running joke in our office about it.  We say "so and so can't walk and chew gum at the same time".  It's a jab at their inability to multi-task and at their intelligence level.  Not very nice, I know, but sometimes fairly appropriate.  That being said, even those who can multi-task, and multi-task well, are not a fan of it.  When it's work (or starts to feel like work), it quickly and easily makes you feel overwhelmed.  When it's fun, it's less likely to stress you out, unless it starts to feel like a job again.  I personally multi-task my fun.  Very often, on a weekend like this one, will be watching movies, playing a game, cooking some food, maybe patrolling the forums, working on my game, or any number of other things at the same time.  Sometimes, I even add "talking to a friend via headphones" to that mix.  When I got free time to myself, I spend it multi-tasking.  But, I spend it multi-tasking things I enjoy.  But, I think the multi-tasking part simply applies more to "encounters in the same room as your puzzle" instead of "you need to hit this switch halfway across the dungeon to open the door" as the example provided.  I'm not a fan of having to figure out a puzzle as well as doing battles (I doubt many are), but I don't really care as much about battles if all I'm doing is flipping a single switch to open a door to continue proceeding forward.  If we're talking multiple switches scattered in the dungeon to open a door, it might be a puzzle...  depending on map design.  If you're searching for switches in a maze, then part of that puzzle is the encounters.  Though, that's a very poorly designed and player frustrating kind of puzzle.  It needs to be clear to the player, even if battles interrupt them, which switches they've already hit to open the door.  They need to be able to remember "Okay, I just came from that area, so I hit the switch there.  I'm going to this other area to hit this new switch".  If you start introducing "switches need to be hit in a proper order" or "switches are in a maze", you begin to have lots of problems that are simply compounded by having battles (not because the battles exist at all).  Whereas if we're just having to trek to a section of dungeon we neglected to explore on our way to the door to hit a switch that opens it...  If your players are avoiding those random battles, then you need to be asking why they're avoiding your battles.  My position on such a scenario is that your battles aren't that fun.  They're certainly less fun then walking another 80 tiles to the switch and 80 tiles back to the door, 'cause your player is avoiding them.  There's no puzzle to solve, no treasure to be had (well, maybe there's treasure, but most treasure is only valuable because battles exist), and no storyline satisfaction to be gained.  This door and this switch exist to pad out the game, pad out the player levels, and present combat as the challenge of the dungeon (as well as a resource deplete so you spend money on items when you leave).  If the portion you're meant to be showcasing is being skipped by players...  My suggestion is that it probably needs an overhaul.  Or maybe your switch+door needs a rework as well.

 

[Sharm]

I absolutely agree that the randomness of battles isn't always the problem. There are lots of things to look at when a section of game play isn't working. I just don't think that if a player is getting frustrated with the battle that bringing up the engagement level of the battle is always the solution so I pointed out two reasons why engaging battles would be the problem. I think we all agree that putting random battles in a puzzle room is a bad idea, the reason why I phrased the example like that was to show by way of extreme case how it might also be a problem in a less extreme version of the same situation.

 

[Schlangan]

I think random battles should be more or less difficult, depending on the areas. After reading the forum, I decided to switch to visible enemies on the map. That way, you know when enemies are going to get in your way, and you can even "hide" NPCs among the enemies. As for the difficulty, since my system is a mission-based system, it depends on the boss. My last mission, the boss is fairly easy, so I made the encounters annoying inside the desert. The new mission I'm working on involves more switches and trick than fighting. The encounters will be strong, but easily avoided. So I'd say it strongly depends on what you want to do.

 

[Rikifive]

What I want to do in my game to make random encounters more interesting: (HOPEFULLY)

> Well, there wouldn't be random encounters at all, monsters will be visible on map. You will be able to avoid them (not always) and there wouldn't be to much of them. (They respawn after re-entering the room)

> I'm not using DEF in formulas. DEF simply reduces incoming dmg by %, so even weaker monsters will still deal some damage to you.

> Battles will be longer (harder), but rewarding. You can loot some good items. (Item rarity)

Some people hates random encounters, some people loves them.

Personally I love them, because I LOVE grinding in games. (I know it's boring, but not for me apparently)

e.g. In SMTDS 1&2 I made every single character to 99lv with all skills, even if I beaten that game with 60 lvs. I was grinding right before the final boss just for fun and to see how powerful I could be. =P

 

[Mihel]

I don't understand one thing about this topic, is the term random encounters referred to regular non-boss battles, or to invisible encounters that happen every x steps?

If it's about non-boss battles: yes, some harder than average battle here and there would be great. Not all of them though.

If it's about invisible encounters: no unless the increase of difficulty is paired with the decrease in frequency. Invisible encounters are already a pain to deal with.

 

[Sharm]

Random encounters refers to the invisible encounters. They trigger randomly and you have no indication that you're going to go into a fight until you're already in one.

 

[Valkyriet]

I'm one of those people that dislikes random encounters so much that I might lock them up in the pits of Tartarus given the chance. No exaggeration. I've often stopped 5 minutes into a game as soon as I discovered the presence of invisible enemies, no matter how good the story was. So much so that every time I played a new RPG, I'd get a mild anxiety attack with regards to the battle system.

The kind of encounters I prefer are ones which you can easily dodge. I think players should be given a choice as to whether they want to engage in a battle or not. Therefore, whenever a game has monsters which run at the speed of Michael Jordan and force-crash into you, my brain goes into pokerface mode. Same goes for maps which have way too many enemies for the players to move around freely; it's even worse if these enemies respawn every time you leave the map. Another feature I dislike is low experience drops from extra-long fights against normal mobs. If these mobs chase you as well, it easily becomes a nightmare to traverse maps.

I think I've established that I'm not really a battle person; I always choose the easy mode in games (when applicable). Hard mode might be more acceptable to players to prefer focusing on battles, although I've never tried it. The problem isn't that I dislike battles; it's just that you waste a lot of time in uselessly long/repeatable battles when you can be focusing on, say, side-quests or puzzles to make the game more enjoyable and diverse. One battle system I really liked was the kind implemented in Eternal Eden : once you cleared a dungeon, you unlocked a special room with equipment and/or other items; and monsters did not respawn. That was actually enjoyable because I don't remember there being additional weapon-armor shops; you had to train (not necessarily grind) to get better equipment. I played it a long time ago though so I don't remember much else.

In short, I'm more of a story-quests-puzzles&fun person. One of the reasons I always play support on league of legends.