WHAT IS THE PERFECT ENCOUNTER RATE?

Everyone's seen random encounters. 95% of people just hate them and consider them disastrous atrocities of the past that only continue to exist in a few modern games due to designers being horrible and unable to move on.

And since the best argument I've heard from the other 5% is "I don't see the problem, they're not any worse," getting rid of them is probably a good idea. No one really thinks they're better, as far as I can tell.

Brady's idea about separating exploration and combat would be a good argument if it were true, but it does not actually make sense because combat is still very obviously caused directly by exploration in games with random battles. The only difference is that in games with random battles, combat is also caused by getting lost. But even if you like the idea of getting in more battles if you get lost, you can't use that as an argument for why random battles are better, because you can do the same thing in games with touch encounters, via simple respawning. You can also control it to a higher degree with touch encounters - make it so you only get in half as many encounters while lost, for example.

So yeah, if the best argument you can must is that you don't think random battles are worse, that's not good enough. If 19/20 people think they're worse and the remaining person has no preference, then you have no reason for using them, even if you're that last person. Because most of your players aren't.

Edit: FYI I actually enjoy random battles as a player. But as a designer, that fact doesn't matter.

author=Brady
I wasn't saying that as a matter of "random is better and touch sucks because...", I was just pointing that it's not merely a case of random being outdated and touch being better in every way. I feel that random encounters do have their own benefits over touch, and it's a matter of balancing out what you're going for.
Although, I do think that randoms need to be more carefully managed than they did in the past because whether or not they're worse; they are outdated/aged.

Older games would simply have randoms at a set encounter across the whole dungeon/game. In modern games, for random to work you're going to need to have varying rates across different maps (not the whole dungeon; but the specific maps, if they're different enough within the dungeon), clear them during puzzles, possibly have different rates on regions for alternate/"lost" paths etc.

If they're managed correctly, they can work in very nicely. Personally, I like the compartmentalisation; I like knowing that my exploration isn't being directly affected by battles, and that I can do them separately, so if you get the right management for them, it works nicely.

Saying that, I do like touch encounters as well, but for very different reasons, and in very different games. In my mind, it's like comparing turn-based with ATB: they may appear similar on paper, but they're just not kin enough to be directly compared.

As LockeZ said so perfectly:

If 19/20 people think they're worse and the remaining person has no preference, then you have no reason for using them, even if you're that last person. Because most of your players aren't.

It doesn't matter how much you like random encounters or how good you think they are. The majority of players cannot stand them, no matter how clever a twist you think you put on them. Unless your game is only geared toward the tiny minority of players who don't mind them, you are giving the finger to most of your players by continuing to subject them to random encounters. If you came up with this brilliant and novel way to implement a game mechanic that randomly kicked the player in the groin with a steel-toed boot every 30 seconds, then it doesn't matter how clever you think you're being, because you're still kicking your player in the balls.

author=Sailerius
It doesn't matter how much you like random encounters or how good you think they are. The majority of players cannot stand them, no matter how clever a twist you think you put on them. Unless your game is only geared toward the tiny minority of players who don't mind them, you are giving the finger to most of your players by continuing to subject them to random encounters. If you came up with this brilliant and novel way to implement a game mechanic that randomly kicked the player in the groin with a steel-toed boot every 30 seconds, then it doesn't matter how clever you think you're being, because you're still kicking your player in the balls.

author=Craze
hey

hey sai

just because you have an opinion does not mean your "millions of downloads" agree or that your thoughts are unanimously accepted by everybody in the world

From what I've seen here and elsewhere, the "majority of players" aren't as opposed to random encounters, or at least as vocal, as you are.

And if I as a player come across a groin-attacking steel-toed boot that I have to activate manually, then I'll simply ignore the boot, and the designer might as well as not implement the boot in the first place. But if your battle feels like a kick in the balls in the first place, then you're doing something wrong and it's not encounter type.

author=Sailerius
It doesn't matter how much you like random encounters or how good you think they are. The majority of players cannot stand them, no matter how clever a twist you think you put on them. Unless your game is only geared toward the tiny minority of players who don't mind them, you are giving the finger to most of your players by continuing to subject them to random encounters. If you came up with this brilliant and novel way to implement a game mechanic that randomly kicked the player in the groin with a steel-toed boot every 30 seconds, then it doesn't matter how clever you think you're being, because you're still kicking your player in the balls.

hey, hey sai. you know what makes a game unfun?

a shitty battle system based entirely around a particularly sadistic random number generator. you know, like vacant sky's. i gotta say i really enjoyed getting murdered by your OMG ON-SCREEN MAP ENCOUNTERS when they one-shotted me for double my max life for no discernible reason and with no potential counterplay because every skill short of HEAL is fucking useless. now that's a real kick in the balls.

now, did the on-screen encounters make the battles any more bearable? fuck no, half the dungeons felt like a minefield as I desperately tried to avoid running into yet another battle. would random battles have made it worse? maybe, maybe not. but that wasn't the problem - the problem was that the battles were unfun to begin with.

tl;dr: do what you want but don't make me regret being born when i play your game. thanks.

I don't know why people are still shooting blanks when I've already given the correct answer on page one.

If we're all gonna start quoting "95% players hate random battles", I would love to see some actual numbers concerning the popular opinion on this issue.

Here's the dealio, there's nothing inherently better about either system because they can be done in so many different ways - bad and good - and we're just making sweeping generalizations here. Touch-based encounters in no way guarantees any less grind and any less filler, but if you do them well, it can. This also applies to random encounters. I agree that the cheap "monsters every 10-15 steps" is a lazy way to handle random encounters, but that doesn't throw the system out the window, and there's plenty of games where it's exactly what you need.

Take Earthbound, a game that does touch encounters well. "Exploration" in an Earthbound cave generally involves wandering around random paths and getting into battles in-between. There are visible enemies blocking the path, but they're usually impossible to avoid unless you're lucky enough to manipulate the game's simplistic pathing AI. The advantage here is that you can see them, and you have the chance to either prepare properly before fighting, or avoid them completely and thus miss any treasure at the end of that route. They respawn after going through a door, so backtracking is still a slog involving repeated battles. The biggest boon is that once the boss of a dungeon is defeated, all the battles become optional, as all touch encounters avoid you.

Now take Cthulu Saves the World. When you enter a dungeon, you have a reasonable chance of encountering monsters randomly. It's frequent enough that taking side-paths will net you an extra fight or two, but not so frequent to grate your nerves. However, after X fights in an area - for me, about when I was nearing the end and had explored a few side paths, you can consider the area "conquered" and no longer fight random encounters, but you have the option to beckon more monsters to you if you want to.

These aren't terribly different systems - while Cthulu's is a bit more abstracted, the rate of battles isn't much different and you inevitably gain control of them, just as in Earthbound. Tweaked random encounter systems like Cthulu's aren't common, and maybe they should be. Still, claiming that touch encounters are inherently better and would improve any game, out of context, is a blatant assumption.

Finally, to reiterate what has already been said, your battle system is almost certainly going to determine how irritating battles are and is much more important than picking "random" or "touch" encounters.

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Getting back to the original question, I will restate that playtesting and judging your tester's response to your battles and encounter rates is going to be by and far the best way to solve your quandry.

You can guarantee that, can you?

I'm sure you could probably find a correlation between people who like eating bacon and people who enjoy skydiving, but to say you guarantee they will always be connected is a bit....what's the word.....wrong? Stupid? Ill-considered? About as productive a comment as saying "Random encounters are gay"?

The reason that generally random encounters and the default battle system is used is purely because that's how the engines are set up; setting up random encounters for alternate battle systems is a hell of a lot trickier, so folk generally go with touch couters to trigger those battle systems...because that's easier. Does that mean they put more thought into it? No; it's touch encounter because it requires less thought.

Plenty of folk put a lot of effort into coming up with engaging or interesting battle systems, or even just alterations on the default; whether or not they choose random or touch is generally just down to what they, personally prefer.

Personally, I find random harder (and thusly, requiring more thought) to get right. Touch is easier (imo) because you can actively decide where what goes, what areas to leave no monsters in etc; the trickiest thing is just getting the follow scripts to work.
Random encounters requires you to playtest repeateddly to make sure it's not too high or low, based on the map, editting regions to alter the rate in specific areas, and triggering when to turn them off completely; and if you do that, how else you can allow the player to optionally trigger a battle when randoms have been turned off.

Level of thought required has nothing to do with whether or not you choose touch or random. Level of thought is all about whether or not you're willing to make either one play smoothly and fun. It's very easy to implement a thoughtless touch based encounter system with a horrible battle system that absolutely no one will enjoy.

So, fancy either walking away from this discussion or coming up with something more productive to say?

*cough* It's a game design decision, and one where an argument can be made for either side.

Please don't get swept up in the idea that a single mechanic, out of context, is either 100% perfect or 100% awful.

So I take it that "95%" of people hate Pokemon games? That's crazy, because they are coming out with new ones just about every year or so.
Hmmm.

EDIT: This isn't directed at anyone in particular, just anyone who says the majority hate random encounters. Because I really don't mind them myself. If a game has it, and as long as it's kept in check it doesn't bother me at all.

tbh most of the time its used because the developer is young/dumb and doesnt understand game design or just designs by emulation but if you can manage to do it well then hooray

Although that may possibly be true, it's still a bit unfair to generalise it in such a way.
I have a game that's based on missions that are designed around draining your resources and not giving any recovery points during them. To add touch encounters would make it too easy for players to simply avoid all encounters and reach the boss with full resources, defeating the point. I went with randoms, not out of laziness or lack of understanding, but with the specific intention of making sure the player has at least a number of battles before reaching the boss, so that the boss can remain challenging.

Now whether I've done that successfully or not is besides the point; what I'm getting at is that not everyone who uses randoms are using them just because it's the default.