Overworld Encounters

[jonthefox]

What, in your view, is the purpose of having encounters on a worldmap? This is one of those things that I've always taken for granted but never really questioned until recently.

There are some possibilities I can think of, but it's hard for me to come up with an adequate answer, which makes me wonder if this is a feature I shouldn't include (since I can't justify it).

-to give the player additional challenge. Hard for me to understand this, since the player is never really that far from a town where he can just heal up.

-to give the player additional opportunities to grind xp/gold/items. This doesn't seem really true either since A) players can just go to dungeons to grind encounters on the worldmap aren't frequent enough to be good grinding opportunities C) having this extra intangible just makes the game harder to predict and balance

-to help with immersion. This is the only thing I can really think of that makes sense--if there are monsters in this game world, it would make sense that as you travel along the worldmap, you sometimes encounter them.

What do other people think?

 

[Arithmetician]

@jonthefox

As you note, challenges on the world map tend to be reduced by the fact that towns are usually nearby, though if you have a long trek from a town / a high overworld encounter rate, then it becomes much more challenging. The proximity to a town and its recovery / resupply makes grinding more convenient if the player needs it, and overworked enemies are usually designed to be a bit weaker than those in a dungeon anyways.

Also, from the immersion standpoint, if the land's infested with monsters, it would be odd to not be attacked by them en route, as you say.

 

[Wavelength]

I like having encounters on the world map not just as immersion per se, but in the sense of giving the player something to do; making the journey between A and B more memorable. If you can just walk between two places unaccosted, your (walkable) world map is likely just a very time-consuming stage select. Having a challenge to overcome (even if this challenge is not actually challenging in the sense of difficulty) keeps the player's focus and flow intact, and frames the travel between locations as an adventure rather than a straight-up chore.

As always, I recommend Visual Encounters that can be avoided, rather than Random Encounters that can't.

An additional interesting thought - ever been in a deep cave? There's usually not much living there, and very little (life) that will harm you. And I've never been in a volcano (or underground near a volcano) but I can't imagine you have too much living there either. Ruins (except flooded ones) have an average concentration of fauna at most - usually a little less than the surroundings. Most of the dangerous wildlife in our world is in the large, tranquil expanses far away from civilization - plains and forests and savannas and wetlands and plateaus. Our "overworld", in a way. Gameplay-wise it seems reasonable to place the highest densities of monsters in dungeons/locations of interest, but we should give a nod to the diverse life of the overworld and at least include some monsters there in our games!

-to give the player additional challenge. Hard for me to understand this, since the player is never really that far from a town where he can just heal up.

I can think of a single JRPG (and a few non-JRPGs like Sryth) where overworld travel actually felt like a dangerous hazard to me - Star Ocean 2. Battles in this game were on the difficult side, tended to spike in difficulty at times, and could go really good or really bad based on player skill. Additionally, the battles you'd encounter on the world map would generally be of appropriate difficulty for the town they were closest to - so as you got near a town/dungeon for the first time, these encounters were the first taste of the new level of difficulty you were expected to take on. ("Welcome to the big leagues, kid!")

Early in the game, before I had a full party or a full stock of resurrection items, travel was especially tough - I vividly remember dying seven times crossing the continent between two towns (from Lacour to Hurley, I think?) before I finally survived the trek on try #8 - and I enjoyed it! It felt like a very fair and engaging type of difficulty. I wouldn't always recommend making travel so deadly, but where the player only has a few minutes' worth of progress to lose and the key is firmly in their hand ("play better and you'll make it"), it can be delightfully engaging.