Random Encounters vs On Map Encounters.

[MisterTorgue]

So I am currently torn between deciding what way I go.

Random Encounters or On Map Encounters.

I am swaying more to random encounters and having bosses or 'elite' monsters as events.

What are your guys opinions on the two and what pros and cons do you have for each?

Mine are

REs

Pros:

Manageable by foot steps, no need to refresh events, less clutter on maps, adding rare monsters is easier.

Cons:

People sometimes hate it when they are exploring and getting REs

OMEs

Pros:

Easily avoidable, can grind what you want, encounters are predictable

Cons:

Encounters are predictable, a pain to refresh all events when you leave an area, makes the boss events seem just like another mob!

 

[TheoAllen]

adding rare monsters is easier.

Nope, you can even make rare encounter in evented encounter.

By using battle processing based on variable, I'm sure you can.

My game use evented encounter and each encounter consist random troop members.

So that it's not predictable.

 

[TheRiotInside]

I much rather prefer event encounters myself. For me, random battles give me a negative incentive to explore, which is one of my favourite things to do in RPG's. Also having them on in puzzle rooms, or rooms connecting a larger puzzle can really break your train of thought (though sticking event encounters there would do the same thing, so I guess that's a moot point).

Anyway, there are some crafty ways to make event encounters more variable. Like @TheoAllen already mentioned, a good start is to have a few different troops in each event (with a basic variable operation to set a number randomly between values, then a conditional branch for each number, starting a different encounter). Another thing you can do is run a variable operation when entering the map and have the results place the events in maybe, three out of five potential spots, so that monsters aren't always popping up in exactly the same spot when you re-enter the map.

You can use that second variable operation to have a small chance of the event being a rare monster as well, which takes care of that issue. Also, by simply customizing the movement speed and range of the monsters (there are quite a few event chasing scripts out there) you can mix up how different monsters react to you. Maybe some are passive so they won't chase you. Maybe some have a short chase range, but will relentlessly pursue you if you get too close. Maybe some have excellent vision and will chase you from afar, but move slow or are easy to escape.

Plenty of ways to spice up event encounters. I am biased, so I won't really get into how to make random encounters better.

 

[Matseb2611]

Pros for Random Encounters:

- Less work needed

- Less art assets needed

- Lets the players to grind when they want

Pros for Evented Encounters:

- Can see the enemy before you fight them (hence can avoid or prepare in time)

- Can be more immersive, especially for epic action scenes

- Can be erased as soon as fought and hence make backtracking easier on the player. And if the player wants to grind, you can provide ways to revive the enemy encountes in the area.

Either way can work, depending on the nature of the game. Also, evented encounters can be further divided into 2 groups - the free roam enemies that initiate fights upon touching the player, and the enemies you fight according to how the scene is set, e.g. the player gets within a few tiles of the enemy and a cutscene triggers where you fight them.

 

[whitesphere]

Personally, I've always used Random Events for all minor encounters, because when I've used Evented Encounters, they require a few things:

• You need some "Monster Encounter" sprites.  This is fairly easy since the RTP provides a few and I'm sure there are many more.  When I did a sci-fi based game, I couldn't find any good monster sprites though. 
• If you want each Monster to have a unique Sprite, it gets more painful (more Sprites required).  But, if you do what Zelda 2 does --- have just 2 Sprites, one for "weak" and one for "hard" encounters, it can work quite well.
• You need to do some Event management if you want the monsters to respawn while the player is still on the map, such as "Make Event vanish for X cycles, then re-appear"  This isn't too difficult.
• Too many moving Events can cause a game slowdown, particularly if you have other moving Events onscreen.  This limits the number of enemy encounters you can have.    To be fair, it's NEVER a good idea to utterly swamp the player with encounters.

I ALWAYS use the Evented Encounters for major, specialized encounters like boss battles, significant cutscenes and the likes.   Although I'm probably going to try for Evented encounters in my current project, just to see how it goes.

Even when I use Random Encounters, I avoid rare Random Encounters, because they either mean the player gets the exquisite thrill of grinding in an area to find the rare enemy, or the player might get utterly curbstomped by a very hard rare encounter.  I did once have a Vorpal Bunny rare encounter, but made it fair by having it do nothing for 1 turn (in the Monty Python reference, it did, until it was attacked).  This let the player escape safely.

In general, I want my rare encounters to be, well, predictable and fair.  Either case of Random Encounter-spawned rare encounters makes the player at the mercy of the Random Number Gods.

One huge pro of Evented Encounters is the player feels s/he has some control over WHEN to encounter (or not) the monsters.    It works quite well in, say, Chrono Trigger, where the monsters are at defined locations on the map.

If I did use Evented Encounters, I would definitely use very different Sprites to indicate easier and harder encounters, as well as the rare/boss encounters.

On the other hand, Random Encounters' advantage is they by definition surprise the player and keep the player guessing a bit.    And they are easier to manage than Evented encounters.  Final Fantasy IV did this quite well, and the RE's set a tense tone going through the maps because you never knew exactly when you'd be attacked.

The goal is the player should never feel s/he has no control over significant portions of the game.  So all encounters, whether Event based or Random Encounters, should always be fair.  So, if you do REs, make sure the encounter frequency is NOT set too high, or it will frustrate the player.

I personally think rare encounters should almost NEVER be dropped on the player out of nowhere, out of fairness. 

But as others have pointed out, you can VERY easily make Event based encounters random but fair.  Say the "Lesser" Event sets a random number from 1 to 10.  Then you can use a series of Conditional checks and make the encounter have different probabilities --- say a 50% chance for a Slime, a 40% chance for a Bat and a 10% chance for a Kobold. 

I think non-rare and non-boss Event encounters should mix things up a bit, as long as they stay within the same monster difficulty.  And I think minor critter Events should respawn after some delay.

 

[Hollow]

I think these "evented encounters" should be reffered to as "on-map encounters", as that seems to be what you're actually talking about. Personally, I like to do an evented system that is close to the default random encounters, but just before the encounter initiates, a sound effect plays and the player has an opportunity to avoid the encounter if they press a button on time. My maps tend to be compact, or at least have paths that are too narrow to be able to walk around enemy sprites easily, so this sort of thing is a nice alternative. And also it gives the player a choice in whether they want to fight the enemy or not, which in my opinion is always a plus.

 

[bgillisp]

In my game I have random encounters, mainly because I want the player to be able to grind if they so wish. However, if they find them annoying, I added an option to turn off all random encounters in the system menu (like Bravely Default did). Does this mean someone could play the game with all random fights off and only fight the bosses and plot fights? Sure. But, if that is the way they want to play, I'm all for it.

Also, I wrote a script that lets you clear out an area. When the zone is considered clear, I turn on a switch, and that turns off random fights until the switch is turned back off. This way you could set it up so that after fighting the boss in the area the enemies fear you too much to attack you anymore. This then allows the player to backtrack and explore those zones they didn't explore previously, but without the random fights this time.

 

[Makio-Kuta]

I'm good with either one on a preference level. My pros and cons would be:

Random

Pros - Easier to execute (for the dev), player less likely to under level skipping battles, can map however you want

Cons - Many people hate these and turn the game off right away, get in the way of exploring, can be frustrating especially when backtracking

Other - Make sure your step count is reasonable, don't put monsters in puzzle areas, experiment with giving the player ways to know when a battle is coming and ways to avoid it

Evented

Pros - player decides when to fight, player has more control, dev can control levels better, a large number of people prefer this style so larger audience

Cons - A pain to map with, easier for player to skip battles and be under leveled, depending on the map can be frustrating while backtracking, can be a pain to dev

Other - Making maps look awkward to bottle neck players to enemies, think of ways to take out small enemies quickly

I think a couple of my favourite spins I have seen on these systems are encounter indicator on random battles, so they are less unpredictable, and also items or skills that can be used to skip the battle. (pretty sure one of the Wild Arms games was the first place I saw this) and items that keep low level enemies away to make backtracking in under level places less unbearable.

And for evented battles, Mana Khemia's system of allowing you to destroy low level mobs right on the map without going into battle was genius. Because even backtracking around evented mobs can be a pain if the maps are done in a way to force you towards these battles anyway.

Also, maybe it's just me, but in games with evented battles I am always challenging myself to see how many enemies I can skip in an area with clever bait and run tactics - it's easy for players like this to end up underleveled. Maybe that's more a player flaw lol

EDIT

@bgilisp: You've got some pretty rocking ideas there. I love the 'area cleared' switch idea.

 

[Matseb2611]

To add, I think both random and evented (on-map) encounters need to be managed well so not to frustrate the player.

Ways Random encounters become annoying:

- When they're too frequent.

- When they happen when the player is solving a puzzle.

Ways Evented encounters become annoying:

- When the path forward is too narrow and dodging the regular enemies becomes virtually impossible.

- When too many of these encounters chase you at the same time, then corner you, and make you fight 3-4 battles in a row.

 

[Hollow]

You know, Matseb, you just reminded me of another thing that one should keep in mind for on-map encounters: please make sure that the enemies freeze when the player is interacting with something (like a treasure chest). I think this is a purely RM problem, but it's still something I've experienced quite a lot.  Maybe investing in the use of Yanfly's Stop All Movement script would be a good idea for those of you wanting to pursue these types of encounters.

Also, adding to what Maki said, the default encounter system is kind of harsh in how it counts the steps until the next battle in that there is always the possibility of one-step encounters. There was a thread that I saw a little while ago discussing ways to tweak the default script to fix this, though I don't have the link at the moment. 

 

[Makio-Kuta]

@Hollow: Yeah, if you're using the default random encounter step system you CERTAINLY want to fix that because ughhhhh - taking one step after a battle and getting into another one is REALLY ANNOYING. On that note, I forget which one it was, but one of the newer Pokemon games had this problem, I recall laughing and thinking, 'is this an RM game?'

 

[bgillisp]

Also, adding to what Maki said, the default encounter system is kind of harsh in how it counts the steps until the next battle in that there is always the possibility of one-step encounters. There was a thread that I saw a little while ago discussing ways to tweak the default script to fix this, though I don't have the link at the moment. 

Yanfly's script also makes it so that you can set a minimum number of steps before fights, and it also adds to the encounter roll 20% of the step count you set. So if you set it to 30, and it rolls 1, it will add to the 1 another 6 steps (20% of 30), making it 7 steps before a battle.

@Makio-Kuta: Thanks! It originated from a bandit camp map where I wanted to set it so that once you defeated the leader, all random fights stopped on that map (as why are they still fighting you), and it has expanded some from there. My only concern is what if someone 'clears' all the maps, but still wants to grind? I'm hoping to fix that by adding a battle arena they can go to and fight all they want, though that is still a WIP.

 

[Matseb2611]

Despite how much I hate one-step encounters too, setting a minimum number of steps before an encounter can be abuse-able in a save anywhere game. For example if you set 5 steps as a minimum, the player can take 5 steps, save game, another 5 steps, save game. And that way they can ignore every encounter in some dungeon area they don't like.

I think a better way is to simply set average step count to fairly high (like 40 or above). The chances of one-step encounters here become extremely tiny. Or yet better perhaps to implement a script that makes encounter chance take a bell-shaped probability, so very low chance at the extremes (too few steps or too many steps) and high chance at the average value.

 

[MisterTorgue]

See with this discussion it's making me look into on map enemies, one issue for me is people skipping them and being under leveled for bosses and such.

It is more emmersive seeing monsters inhabit areas, which will be good, but I just want ways to curb people to some what 'grind' without it being blatantly obvious (filtering a mountain into a single file path)

 

[wynautastronaut]

I don't really care which one as long as the encounter rates can be, at least, somewhat controlled. Meaning, if I don't want any encounters I should be able to have a Repel, or equip an item that prevents or lowers encounter rate. Likewise, if I want to grind, I want an item that attracts monsters.

 

[Rose Guardian]

Random encounters are fine if you don't have a sprite for every monster, however some people may find them annoying when trying to figure out a puzzle, or just annoying in general. You can still do evented encounters even if you don't have a sprite for every monster. You could use the same sprite for monsters with evented encounters, because at least people know they are going to run into something.

 

[Omnimental]

I personally prefer to use random encounters, with inbuild tools for the player to reduce frustration.  My current project, has a warning notificaiton pop up that allows the player to skip the encounter (if they haven't skipped too many in a short period of time).  Every encounter also increases the step count for the area, so the longer you're there, the less chance you have of encountering monsters.  Leaving the dungeon resets this counter.

Another one I experimented with had random enounters in the overworld, and on-map encounters in dungeons.

One thing I like about on-map monsters is that you can use them to 'gate' areas; eg. a miniboss guarding the optional treasure room.  The visual of the monster sprite helps cement that the player will get attacked if they attempt to enter the room.

 

[bgillisp]

Anyone here play Ar Tonelico? It had random encounters, however, it also had an encounter gauge. Every fight depleted the gauge some, and if the gauge was empty the area was considered cleared out until you exited it or loaded a save game. Early dungeons tended to make it so that the gauge cleared out after about 8 - 12 battles, but later dungeons increased that number. Anyone considered doing something like that?

 

[Kes]

In my games I offer the player the choice between visible (on-map) and invisible (random) because you simply cannot please everyone.  This involves a bit more work on my part, but I think it's worth it.  A few things I do to try and ensure that it is a comparable experience whichever you pick:

Every map has, typically, 4 or 5 different troops assigned to it.  The on-map (evented) enemies are set to "Battle Processing: Same as Random Encounter" so that it is not always the same troop time after time, but as random as invisible enemies are.

Every ordinary troop in each dungeon has one consistent enemy in it, and that is the one that has an on-map sprite.  It means that the others can be as weird and wonderful as you like.  Yes, it can be a pain at times finding/editing/creating an appropriate sprite, but in general it works pretty well.

I have found a way to mod the default script and use a variable to ensure that I never, ever get the "3 steps and it's another battle" problem.  So a big objection to random encounters goes away.

Some plot important enemies, or 'gate' enemies are evented whether you have chosen invisible or not.

I never ever have any enemy of any sort in a puzzle area.

For invisible enemies I offered the option in my last game and current project for the player to adjust the encounter rate via the Options Menu, so if the player wants to grind, or have a quiet period, they can.

This all seems to work, and from the feedback I've had, players like the option to choose whichever suits their preference.

 

[TheoAllen]

In my games I offer the player the choice between visible (on-map) and invisible (random) because you simply cannot please everyone.  This involves a bit more work on my part, but I think it's worth it.  A few things I do to try and ensure that it is a comparable experience whichever you pick:

I played his game and I approve his idea. Even tho I'm grind maniac, I prefer visible encounter since it's more fair. Want a battle? go search for enemy, not aimlessly wandering around until random encounter appears.