MANAGING RPG TOUCH ENCOUNTERS

An idea: If your level is high enough, touching low-leveled enemies will not trigger a battle; you have to touch them AND press the action button if you really want to start a battle. This saves time and annoyance, since having to fight through hordes of cannon-fodder opponents can really grate on a player's nerves.

I liked how the Romancing SaGa and SaGa Frontier games handled touch battle enemy graphics. Each category of enemies (birds, beasts, plants, insects, undead, etc.) had its own representative sprite wandering around on the field. Of course, if you're good with charset graphics, you can choose to go the extra mile and make unique sprites for every individual enemy (or at least every enemy family, like Wolf/Wolflord/Werewolf from Dragon Quest 1)

In the games that I've used touch encounters as opposed to random encounters, I usually let them roam around randomly. But then in RealmS I decided to do something a bit different. Monsters are really just wild animals and they have their own actions based on environment and/time of day. Quite a few monsters that you see can't actually be fought as they are just going around doing their own business.

Some will run away if they see you, some will try to attack you and others may lie in wait around treasure chests, hoping to catch something to eat that way. Still others just do their own thing and ignore the silly humans wandering through their environment. I'm trying to make the creatures (and by default) the world a little more realistic.
For example, Pen Hens startle quite easily and run if they see a human, but if you are near their nesting areas they will become quite aggressive. This is not only shown in their actions on the field but also their actions during battle. A broody Pen Hen will be more aggressive during a fight, but one that is not will be quite easy to defeat.

Well, that's what I'm trying to achieve anyway. ^.^
As for whether or not they return after defeat, you first have to leave the area in RealmS.
Although, in Celdran's Curse, if you kill all of the Pedimils (including the ones that are hiding in the nests) they do not come back and later in the game that area becomes a farmers' paradise. ^.^ They couldn't use the area for farms before because of the Pedimil infestation.

Liberty
Things about animals acting like animals

This is a really good way to handle encounters, I think, but it becomes a lot of work to keep up throughout the game. Not only in terms of thinking up news ways for those nefarious wild animals to act, but also to keep each encounter working properly.

Having situations change in the gameworld after certain tasks have been accomplished (or even having different monsters altogether start popping up) is another good use of touch encounters. In my old, abandoned project, I had planned that bandits ruled a highway and would harass you if you traveled down it. There was a quest to defeat the bandit leader, though, which would stop bandits attacking you and let you "fast travel" from one city to the next without encounters. After your victory, if you tried walking down the road or exploring around it the area was filled with crummier loner brigands and wild beasts that the organized bandits had kept at bay. The encounters got a little harder to reflect the player's level, but they also tied into the story.

There is so much you can do with controlling encounters in events it is crazy!

This has probably been said at some time or other, but I liked how Earthbound/Mother did the touch-encounters where if they're too low a level, you simply beat the enemy automatically.

I personally don't think the behaviour of touch-encounters matters too much. When I'm playing a game, I'd rather be able to avoid things as necessary (ie. have encounter movements be mainly consistent throughout) instead of having really erratic and changing movement patterns. Isn't the whole point of touch-based encounters to let the player decide if they want to fight or not?

Kind of an aside, but I'm surprised I haven't played any games using a Pokemon-style encounter system: "tall grass" plus a lot of mostly-unavoidable one-time trainer battles.

Basically the way I'm doing it, the enemies swarm all around but they never actually touch you, so if you are careful, or stand still, they will eventually give up. However, you might get your ass kicked by bosses if you avoid battles

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Long post from Kaempfer.

Exactly. I agree with the entirety of your sentiments :P. Most of what you mentioned is evident in Balmung Cycle.
Also, I would like to add something. It would be great if levels were designed to offer routes or 'actions' that allow the player to avoid certain enemies (e.g, there is a cliff-pass in which the player must traverse, and there are two routes that the player can take. He can choose to either traverse a pit full of monsters/enemies to reach the other side, or he can use a 'zip-line' to pass over the enemies). You could add, in addition to this, a point-based system in which you earn 'points' (along with experience) from each monster/enemy you defeat. You can then utilise these 'points' to access special routes that will allow you to reach an area easier, as well as avoiding enemies. Of course, these special routes would require a certain number of 'points' in order for the player to use them.
It's just an idea :P.

This is how Karsuman and I are using Feats in our current game. They're like a mix of this and Psy abilities in the Golden Sun series. You won't actually see all monsters (we're doing a Chrono Trigger-style encounter system, but enemies don't respawn), but chances are there will be less monsters if you blow up the rubble blocking that second path and go through there. Using Feats is also the only way to get to minibosses and the best chests. In order to use Feats, like you said, you must have enough points of some sort that we haven't decided yet - just that you are going to get these points mostly from enemies.

While some battles will be skippable and battles never respawn, there are level caps for each chapter of the game. You'll know when you don't need to fight any longer.

I almost quit FFT right after I started playing because I thought the battles weren't repeatable. Level caps suck..

It's something I'm thinking of myself, as I had touch encounters for PB and am planning this as well for my own project. I don't think you can please everyone whichever way you do it, but I try to go with what I like to do in a game.

-The enemy graphics, will you give them variety? What if don't have fitting graphics for the in-battle graphics, will you paint them black? (The Way)

I've done a variety of enemy graphics. For my current project, I'm using black fire as a generic enemy sprite because in battle graphics use the actual sprites and take place on the same map. I'm wondering if I should have them just take place on the map once instead of multiple times in which then I wouldn't need touch encounters.

-What is their behavior? How strong is their AI? Wander around, chase you if close? Do they all do the same thing? Some might be passive, others might ambush you, some might attack you after solving a puzzle? Etc.

It is possible to do stuff like having them run away if your level is high, or get active if you invade their spot. I usually just have them wandering around and slowly chase you. I'd rather give players the freedom to fight if they want, though I also try to make the rewards worth it. Also, I'm a fan of clearing a dungeon. I don't know if I'd give a reward for that as it may make people feel forced to do it, but I generally like to do it just to feel good and declare the dungeon safe. I don't clear dungeons if the enemies return when you re-enter though.

What I liked from Seiken Densetsu 3 is that they showed the enemy levels, so you can fight as much as you want to and you'll know whether you're overlevelled or not and don't have to guess or constantly worry about it.

-Finally, how do you balance the numbers on each map? How do you make sure the players will get enough exp, or maintain the progression? Do monsters reappear on the map once you leave it? How do you prevent grind abuse?

I put 11-13 encounters on a big map, and space them out. Once they die, they're gone for good. So this is about 1-3 encounters on a smaller map then. I modify it as I need to and don't always stick to those numbers, but I think it's a good idea to not put too many. The more there are the less players will feel like fighting them all. It's sort of the same concept as random encounters happening often. The more often they happen the less players will want to fight them. Though I do like to have some optional area where the player can fight or grind as they'd like, but I usually try to make my games on the easier side.

I try to balance the game based on the players having fought like 75% of the battles. I don't put all that many encounters in a map so I'd make the number smaller if I had more battles. But basically I like the player to be able to beat the game on natural levels. Grinding is really a bad way to add to game length.