Are random battles more annoying than useful?

Nothing says 'lazy stupid developers' like random battles. There's just no excuse. You can still pump and grind all you want with non-random battles if you repopulate the map - I just want to see the damn monsters on the map before I fight them and maybe have a chance of avoiding them if I'm not in the mood.

Even if it works out to the same number of battles per map it feels much less onerous because you are nominally in control.

Hey Game Devs - It's been ten years since Grandia, you dorks. Random battles and 'line up and take turns fighting' is for chumps.

I think what's even WORSE about RPG's is that nowadays if you want to get the "secret" stuff you MUST use a walkthrough. I'm a perfectionist and I hate not getting Sword X because I opened Chest Y when I shouldn't have had to.

Oh yeah, it's not so bad when you can go back and fix it, but it's totally annoying if you can't finish a game, and THEN use a walkthrough to get the secret stuff without having to start a new game, because you did something that triggered something that doesn't allow you to 100% a game.

I don't really mind random battles unless they are spaced too close together. Some RPGs have it so that you might run into three or four battles in the world map between two cities which are a good distance apart from each other. Others, such as Pokémon and most Final Fantasy games, have them far too close together. Sometimes while traveling through Mt. Moon I am tempted to throw my Game Boy simply because I get tired of fighting yet another Zubat every two or three steps.

I hate the random battles where you're wandering around and then suddenly the music changes, the screen spins and you're in a fight.

With the technology developers have at their disposal there simply isn't any reason to go into the whole screen switch thing for random battles. Charcters can dynamically position themselves in whatever terrain you happen to be in when you run into a monster you actually see on the world map if it is turn based. The .hack series and FFXII is a good example of a real time option.

We can keep the random battles, just give us the option to avoid them if we chose. Nothing is more irritating than trying to get from town A to town B and fight a ton of level 1 monsters along the way when I'm level 50.

Probably use more dynamic placing. If characters are ranged from level x to y, populate this area with monsters from this list.

Most random battles are piss poor. Not only do they have to load up a separate battle screen, we tend to get stuck with the same enemy makeup. Monster A always comes in pairs with Monster B as a third for example. Monster A is never seen with Monster C and when we come across Monster C it is only found in packs of three. Vary it up a bit. Hell, maybe even have some infighting while we're at it if the two don't like each other much, a neat three way battle. That would avoid the static makeup of random battles.

I greatly prefer games with random battles. Having enemies on screen is OK, but it’s just a pain in the ass to have to move three screens away or something to make them respawn when you’re trying to level up or get a rare drop. They also add a lot to the challenge. Even if most battles are just hitting attack over and over, the enemies do hit back and you will need to heal unless you’re for some reason wandering around in an area you passed 10 levels ago. They can be frustrating, but that’s just part of the challenge too.

To me a lot of modern RPGs are not improvements, but just boring since they’re too damn easy. Any game where you can just run around every enemy and still beat the boss (looking at you FFXII) isn’t worth playing to me since I could just watch a movie instead. I’d love to see more games with random battles and turn-based combat, but it seems the ‘this game’s too hard’ crowd is winning out these days. T_T

I hate random battles but at the same time I hate RPG's that are so structured that leveling up will be the same every time you play the game. That defeats the purpose of having levels to begin with. I like to level up my characters before playing difficult areas that is an essential part. Maybe keep the respawning enemies but eliminate the randomness.

Why does everyone ALWAYS hail Chrono Trigger as some kind of innovator in non-random battles? The game was 10x worse than any FF. Yeah you could see the enemies but you almost always HAD to fight them, there was no avoiding them. Even worse most battles were scripted so when you returned to an area you'd get into the same battles at the exact same point every time. I'd take random battles over that any day.

Most Chrono Trigger fans will tell you the game was so awesome because it didn't have random battles. Don't get me wrong, the game was great but one of the worst things about it was the way battles were initiated.

FFXII did non-random battles perfectly, even Chrono Cross. Chrono Trigger most certainly did not. Why Oblivion was even mentioned I have no idea, as it doesn't feature a turn-based battle system.

I notice that you didn't note the solutions that were offered by Secret of Mana and Tales of Symphonia. Both had amazing fighting systems, and were a couple of the best RPG's I've ever played.

As a long-time RPG fan (started on FF1 and Dragon Warrior, most recently completed Baten Kaitos 2), I really don't see a problem with random battles, generally... nor do I see a problem with using more scripted encounters, provided they are done well (ie. not so avoidable as too avoid tension, with some interesting setups). What I -do- see a problem with is making these random battles too easy. Oftentimes, as mentioned in the article, you can just hold down the attack button and win with ease... this is boring. I think Earthbound (one of my favorite games ever) did it fairly well (ok, it was still on the easy side, but the idea is good): If you are overleveled enough that the enemy will not pose a challenge, you don't have to fight out the battle... Honestly, I would very much like to see more RPG's where each encounter offers a real chance of defeat... where each attack has to be chosen carefully and overall strategy has to be considered. Battles where being at a slightly-higher-than-average level with the best currently available equipment will make the battles slightly less difficult but by no means trivial. Attrition-based dungeons are not terrible, but I much prefer fewer, quite difficult encounters. Perhaps even more importantly, load times -must- be kept down... I appreciate random battles, definitely, but it can really make poor programming effect the experience.

What I -don't- see as a solution is a battle system like FFXII's... the game had it's strengths, but the battle system was not one of them. It's pretty much the opposite of my own personal ideal--the battle system is designed from the ground up with the mindset that you'll be using virtually the same strategy every encounter. Only very seldomly do you have to adjust your strategy to fit the situation at hand. The game requires very little strategy and is too cumbersome in its design to have fun playing without the gambits. I'll take my turn-based, more strategic gameplay back, thanks.

I honestly don't see a very strong advantage to either FF-style or Earthbound/Chrono Trigger style encounters (Sorry, but Oblivion just doesn't seem to fit in with this discussuon very well to me... it's essentially a different genre from the others). I think much more at issue is difficulty and strategy. No game that boils down to 'hold down the b button' is fun, and whether you can avoid them or not, if that's all the battle system is, it's poorly designed. I think fairly infrequent, but longer and more difficult battles, are the answer... and, in agreement with a poster above... not while solving puzzles (unless the battles are explicitly a part of the puzzle).

There should be an option or something.

RANDOM BATTLES [ ] On [X] Off

Super Mario RPG. BEST RPG of ALL TIME! Those who have played it will agreed.

While I enjoy random battles (RB) every now and then, there are times when they're annoying. However, I would object to banning RBs altogether. There should be a mechanism to forgo RB when not needed or crucial. E.g. in the 1st Dragon Warrior for NES, there was an item (some flask or vial of fairy water or oil) AND a spell (Repel) that you could cast to prevent ALL RBs for a short time. Final Fantasy 6 had the Moogle Charm trinket that u could equip stop ALL RBs, and unequip when u want to do RB again. In these cases, the player can't abuse stopping RB too much since these RPGs require a minimum level to complete the rest of the game. This mechanism should be accessible early-mid to mid late game, depending on how frustrating RB can get, and be inexpensive/easy enough to buy/find.

Many adventure and RPG games have a similar mechanism to aid the drudgery of walking across entire maps. Transportation lets a player access large parts of the map w/o making an Oregon Trail out of the task. Airships, chocobos, warp points, Epona, etc. from FF, CT, and Zelda games make mid to late game navigation and playing much more bearable then if u'd have to backtrack to previous areas by foot.

Remember Xenogears, Disc2 to be exact? Apparently it was a cost-cutting move, but they opted to have some characters go in a monologue to skip out a few extra steps of talk-to-random-npcs / explore-some-dungeon-until-dungeon-boss in favor of moving the story along a little faster by skipping directly to the start of some dungeons, some bosses, etc. When I encountered it I thought it was a fantastic idea, since it didn't affect the story at all but did cut down on several extra hours of travel. The overall opinion regarding Xenogears Disc2 seemed negative when I looked online, which surprised me. This seems to indicate that while people may voice opinion against random battles and other timesinks, slight variances in execution may only be seen as shortcuts in development.

I think random battles are probably my reason for loving games like FFVII so much, there is just something about them that make me attracted to a game.

I hope they are still around at the time of my death.

I think the issue of random battles is more prevalent in console RPG's than in PC based RPG's. Most PC based RPG's had enemies on the adventure map and you could choose how, where and when to fight them (ie. if your lucky pick them off one by one or go in all guns blazing).

Ever since I got my PS2 though I have started playing JRPG's which seems to rely quite heavily on random battles where the screen splits as your casually walking around trying to find the save point. This really really pisses me off and I find it tends to take me out of the story as well. I often find the encounters very frustrating as they seem to happen constantly. I prefer to fight when I want to fight and run around solving quests the rest of the time. Again this may have a lot to do with getting my start in PC based RPG's.