PUNKITT'S PROFILE

Wow, DQ had a lot of cool stuff in it from what I'm hearing! I guess it deserves more credit that I initially gave it!

Sorry about that! I've only ever played the first little bit of the first Dragon Quest, so I can't say I'm in a good position to exclaim all that. I was just trying to find a really standard, older RPG and I thought FF and the first Dragon Quest seemed to fit the bill.

Honestly, I hate random encounters in traditional RPGs. Earthbound and Mother 3 had the right idea with the on-map enemy encounters, where you could actually see them. They moved fast enough that if you were in the wrong spot they'd catch you, but if you really didn't want to fight you could maneuver your way around. As far as traditional RPGs go, on-map encounters are the way to go, in my opinion!

In traditional RPGs like older FF or Dragon Quests, players have a choice with a lot of their actions. Do I want to go to that town? Do I want to open that chest? Do I want to get in that cool lookin' ship? Yeah, let's do that! Players can make their own choices, whether it be equipping loot or participating in minigames or exploring outside the town. However, random battles usually interrupt that, making them a slight annoyance or even an entirely frustrating mechanic unlessthe player specifically has grinding/trying to grab loot/just fighting in mind. If you just want to get out of the cave, you're constantly hindered by having to fight something you couldn't have determined. If you want to grab a certain material from a specific enemy, you have to run back and forth until the Random Number Gods bestow upon you an encounter with the Flaming Metal Goopking+. With an on-map encounter system the issues are usually lessened! Not saying it completely fixes the problem, but it eases it and makes it less annoying for players. With the power of skill or just being a manipulative, smart player, you can exit that cave without having to fight Standard Goopslime another ten times. If you want that specific item, you can scout out which enemies are which so to weed out the ones you don't want.

Though random encounters being annoying all depends on the game's design itself. In Undertale, no one really minded battles because they weren't too frequent and constantly threw new things at you that made you excited to fight them, because "Hey, new social puzzle to navigate and a new bullet hell experience!" They require skill and smart thinking to successfully beat instead of a standard system where you just throw your numbers at some other enemy's numbers and hope yours overpowers theirs, and hope and pray a critical hit doesn't strike you down. In more standard RPGs without a unique battle system, though, random encounters can be lessened in the annoyance factor if you make your encounters nicely spaced so there isn't constantfighting. If your enemies have variety, that spices it up as well because nobody wants to fight the same rotating three encounters with the same rotating enemies. If you make your enemies memorable (Like Earthbound's) or fun to fight in some way the random encounter fatigue is significantly lessened.

Another example for a random encounter system done (sorta) right is in Pokemon. In Pokemon, enemies are exciting to fight against sometimes! Sometimes it's the promise of finding a new Pokemon to fight and capture, because that offers something new to experience! In Pokemon, on the overworld at least, the encounters are limited to little patches of possibility you can head into and fight if you so choose, and trainers, who you can see and prepare for. Occasionally the game will make you haveto progress through that grass, but that's good because it's asking you to risk it this one time instead of every step you take having the potential for a fight to occur. It adds in a nice sense of danger. Trainers you can see on the map and occasionally avoid given the circumstances, or if not, let you spot them out before you fight and let you prepare for a forced battle, removing the frustrating randomness of a lot of other battles in other games. All in all, the way the overworld is handled in Pokemon works very well. Now, caves and water on the other hand are total bullpatoot.Even then, though, the game offers repellent to lessen the annoyance factor, and it does that better than having the option to just switch off the random encounters completely.

I guess it just all depends on the way your game works and what you do with it that makes it fun!...

...Jeeeesus, that was a doozy. Gonna take a break from writing for a bit after that!

Hey, thanks!

Holy shoot! That looks adorable! Reminds me of Yoshi's Island. c:
Wonderful work, charblar!

I myself have just been adding in weird little rooms to my puzzle game.


Nothing is supposed to pop out aside from the tree, the monkey and the player, so I think I got that done!

(There's more to it than it actually seems! It's supposed to be kinda empty here.)