Comment on What do you think about random encounters?
xhrit@lemmy.world 2 months ago
This is actually two different design paradigms you are talking about.
The first is the exploration map transitioning into a battle map during encounters. The second is randomly forcing players to fight encounters. Games like Zelda had a exploration map and a battlemap, but the encounters are visible on the exploration map and could be avoided if you want so they were never forced. And games like Shining in the Darkness had exploration and battle on the same map; there was no transitions and the perspective did not change, the game just randomly forced you to fight encounters while you walked around. Then you have something like Vermintide 2 which is a realtime first person action rpg/shooter with random encounters, as in random mobs are spawned in at random times on random places on the map to attack you, but the mobs spawn out of sight and it’s happening seamlessly in real time.
IMO battle transitions are an outdated mechanic designed around the technical limitations of 8 bit era systems, while random encounters are a great way to improve exploration and overall replay value of a game.
droning_in_my_ears@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Good point. I guess it is 2 things I’m talking about.
I think battle transitions are a tradeoff. They free combat but at the cost of interrupting flow. If you don’t do anything with the freedom they give you and you just make the same tired pokemon style choose from a menu combat it’s not worth it.
xhrit@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Aye. Like all design paradigms, there are places where they can be useful or can be used to achieve a certain feel.
I actually hate “choose from a menu combat” but have thought of a few cases where it would make sense - one example would be a Legends of Galactic Heroes style space warfare game based on hyper-realistic combat between massive fleets of 20,000+ ships each, which according to lore, line up in nice neat firing lines and shoot at each other for 12+ hours until one side has won via attrition. There is no way to simulate that in real time and be fun, and the ranges at which combat happens in deep space means that there is basically literally no room for maneuvering once the battle has began…