Gamer Talk: Random Drops and Luck based gaming

[Kyanbu The Legend]

Since the late 80s, RPG games and later varies other genres of games have had random drops and events based on some form of luck.


Obviously hardware limitations was part of the reason we had to deal with things like Random Encounters. But now that we have more advance consoles and gaming devices. Are Random Drops and Random Encounters still welcome? Or should these things die out in favor of garanteed drops and visble enemies?


What are your thoughts on Random Drops, Random Encounters, and other gameplay mechanics based on luck?

[Toast]

A certain amount of randomness is a good thing, I think. Different people have different tastes, too, so there should be some wiggle room or differences for different segments of the gamer population.

Speaking for my own personal tastes, I think random encounters/events enhance replayability. There's a fine line of balance between random drops and guaranteed progression. I lean more on the side of guaranteed progression, and preferably of short duration. I feel I should be playing the game to have fun, with a high amount of customization, rather than some kind of gear, or even more recently, appearance treadmill.

There are certain games that I like for their gameplay, but really dislike for their completely random loot generation. Borderlands 1 and 2, and torchlight 1 and 2 are fun, but I would rather have had some sort of gear customization/upgrade system rather than the completely random loot that they have. Consequently, I generally only play through them once and don't participate in the after game or hardcore modes or whatever they're called.

Guild Wars 1 and 2 also have random loot, but I enjoy them much more for a couple of reasons. GW1 because gear isn't as big a deal as it is in most games, and you can get max level gear almost as soon as you reach max level, which for the most part takes just a couple hours. GW2 because even though the loot is more important, and more random, it's still not that difficult to get max level gear through even casual play. The grind here comes through the acquisition of certain skins, but luckily this is fairly optional. In my particular case I found the look I wanted for my guardian relatively early (around lvl 40) and have kept that look ever since.

With one exception. I love the runic blade skin and I think it is the coolest 1h sword skin in the game. Unfortunately it is only available as an exotic weapon built through the mystic forge, and is only slightly less expensive than the legendary weapons. I flatly refuse to grind that much. By the time I would have gathered the money/materials for the skin, I would have long since burnt myself out on the game.

That was a bit of a tangent. Anyway. The Bethesda games (Fallout 3, New Vegas, Skyrim) have elements of randomness that work well for them. There are random events and the worlds are open enough that you can take multiple routes so that each time you play is different. Similarly, character customization is also robust enough that you can do a lot of different things and still be successful.

Another thing comes to mind. The last time I played Icewind Dale, I did not find any magic weapons except for some +1 daggers and staves. And then I ran into a boss that required +3 weapons to hit. So, random loot is definitely a bad thing when the game doesn't adequately prepare you for set challenges.

[mauve]

I don't mind randomized drops, if they're done correctly and if your success isn't dependent on having a certain type of weapon or item in your inventory. If memory serves me, the majority of the weapon drops in Borderlands and Borderlands 2 are entirely randomly generated. And really, I think that's kind of the fun. Sure, you're guaranteed to get certain weapons in boss fights, but the majority of the eighty bazillion guns and shields in that game are completely unpredictable. It actually makes you WANT to look at every single weapon and item that falls off an enemy because you never know if it'll be another low-damage SMG or if it'll be some kind of super-awesome 4x Electric Damage, Enhanced Zoom, Extra Ammo SMG of doom that just so happens to have the same paint job as the basic one.

That's not to say all games should have randomized items. In some games it is nice to have a set idea of what sort of rewards I should be getting for my actions, and have those rewards actually be... rewarding. The main problem with the Borderlands system was that most of the "reward" guns I got for defeating X number of enemies or finding X number of quest items were actually worse than the ones I found by driving my dune buggy over a spiderant colony a few times.

As for random encounters, I can see how they're necessary in some games, but I'm not really a fan of them for the most part. I personally found it irritating to have to constantly wonder if THIS PARTICULAR FOOTSTEP will trigger a fight with monsters, particularly when I wasn't trying to level-farm and was just trying to get to the next area of the map. Yeah, they're necessary to leveling up and I'm sure they're a big save on memory space since they don't have to be animated into the larger maps, but for the most part, when I'm running towards a goal on my screen I find it really irritating to be forcibly stopped and pushed into a fight I neither wanted nor saw coming.

[Ramary]

Random chance can be a huge boon to reputability, it is actually one of the reasons I play so many rogue like games is that random chance of opening one door to be greeted with super sword, and opening another to be eaten by a grue is half the fun.

Random chance can also just be a means to force the player to play the same content over and over to he can be build complete in a game.

The word of the day is...Execution. World of Warcraft made popular badges with random drops for example. Like if you kill this boss you may not get the item you wanted, but hey you got a shiny badge you can save up to just buy the item you need. Granted in WoW the best stuff was still random drop but the badges help soften the pain of not getting your drop (or worst, losing the roll in the item handout phase) a bit and I think a similar system should be in all loot-based games.

Random Encounters in the JRPG sense of SUDDENLY MONSTERS is pretty bad, for that look to Persona, Chrono Trigger, the Paper Marios for good encounter design, in which you can see the monster (or a creature representing an encounter) and you can have them try to avoid it or get the first strike. I feel as though just plain ol random encounters should die out in general, save for games that want to be throwbacks to old JRPGs, cause that what people would want in them anyway.


Now there is also other pretty cool luck based ideas in game design right now, like randomly meeting people in Red Dead Redemption who need help or just a cougar wishing to kill you, that kind of design spices up long horse rides place to place. XCOM's combat is partly luck based, and it makes it so when you just NAIL that 20% chance shot you feel FANNNNNNTASTIC, but then you curse the screen when that 95% shot miss and then you are shot down by a random sectoid.

I think luck is still needed in game design but again, execution is everything. Hope this helped.

[Locke cole]

I dunno. Random encounters can lend a sense of tension in moving through a dungeon, because you don't know where the next save point is, or if you're able to ration your magic and healing items by the time you reach the end of it.

Execution is the word, again, because making the encounter rate too high can just ruin a game.

[Doc ock rokc]

Entropy is the reason I enjoy video games more then structured board games. I enjoy having no clue what is gonna happen or what will happen next. Random drops and luck are a nice way to do this.

although complete chaos is not always what you want. You really need that happy medium. Many old rpg's hand drops scale with he levels of you character so you may get a level ten sword from a level 5 monster when you are level 6 but yo won't get a level 10 sword from the level 98 monster you just barely scraped though.

Personally i find that a little imbalance here and there is good for a game. tipping the scales every once and a while is a necessary evil to keeping a game fresh. For instance a moral choice game like Infamous is fun...but only fun twice. A game that has some random moments blended in is a game you can play over and over and over again.

I think that is why muliplayer is so popular these days. No one can really predict a human who can and will make mistakes, play with luck or just be plain random in their gameplay.

[Locke cole]

What about games that are randomly generated when you start a new game, like Minecraft or Don't Starve?

Granted, the issue with that is that, in order to accomodate the random generation, htere's little in the form of structure.

[Doc ock rokc]

What about games that are randomly generated when you start a new game, like Minecraft or Don't Starve?

Granted, the issue with that is that, in order to accomodate the random generation, htere's little in the form of structure.

Well minecraft is awesome. The randomly generated infinitely expanding world of adventure and experimentation. People don't call it Minecrack for nothing. You literally can spend hours in that game with no loss of enjoyment. doing anything and everything under the sun...or under the glowstone.

[Ryong]

Let me just get this out of the way:

http://i.imgur.com/84xOF7G.png

This shit is annoying as fuck.

As one who's played a fuckton of grindy MMOs with stupid drop rates - 0.5% card drop rate on ragnarok online, for example - and monster hunter - you need 5 items that have a 10% chance to drop and it takes you 40 minutes for each attempt - and dota, where people do permastuns on 25% chance and shit, well, basically, these need to have some really good execution.

For item drops - on things that can be killed fast - and chances of effects happening I like the pseudorandom RNG where say, your 25% chance effect is actually 7% and then goes higher until like 90% the more time it goes without triggering and then it goes back down afterwards. Diminishing returns would be a good thing to avoid abuse - for example, in dota 2 some heroes can stun you for 2 seconds and they make nearly 4 attacks in that time, but their chance to stun after 3 missed stuns can be high enough for an unending stun.

On stronger things and drop rates, I'd say nothing should have less than 30% drop rate, ever. Gathering everyone for a raid on a MMO or monster hunter hunt shouldn't require so many attempts as they usually take.

Random encounters can serve a lot as padding, which can be really annoying sometimes, specially if running away isn't easy. Running away should always be easy.

[Loyal]

As one who's played a fuckton of grindy MMOs with stupid drop rates - 0.5% card drop rate on ragnarok online, for example

.01% actually. Good thing nobody gives a shit about private servers!

[Locke cole]

True. I is good for a game to give you an option to cast a teleport spell, or throw a smoke bomb, or just take a few hits before running away, if you don't want to deal with any encounters right now.

As to random drops hat are stupid difficult; I like the way The World Ends With You did it. You can chain multiple encounters together to multiply the drop rate, and you can drop your own level (which only drops your HP total) to raise your base drop rate by the number of levels you dropped. This makes it possible to turn 0.01% drop rates into guaranteed things if you know what you're doing in terms of fighting at low levels without dying. And it even included an expensive, but otherwise unlimited, food item that would permaently raise your base drop rate.

So, if gives you random drops, but also includes some options to trade safety for extra drop rate.

On the other side of the coin, that game doesn't have random encounters, Taboo Noise aside. You actually have to go searching for fights yourself by Scanning the area.

[Ryong]

.01% actually. Good thing nobody gives a shit about private servers!

see it's crap like this I'm talking about.

[Shyria Dracnoir]

Explain to me how the average MMORPG bear can somehow be born without an ass, then we'll talk.

[stefan]

To me the pinnacle of RNG bullshit was KotoR 2, where an armory could have racks full of nothing but weak health packs, the treasure in the bottom of a sith tomb was a piece of shit common shield, but for some reason Darth Malak just happened to have dumped his semi-magical dark side robes of unlimited power in some random trash can on nar shaddaa.

[Ryong]

Explain to me how the average MMORPG bear can somehow be born without an ass, then we'll talk.

It's not born without an ass, it's just you have a chance to damage it while skinning it or maybe you burned it off with magic or something.

It's weirder that the bear is carrying coins and possibly pieces of armor or weapons.

[Revising Ocelot]

It's weirder that the bear is carrying coins and possibly pieces of armor or weapons.

I jumped on this turtle and a bunch of numbers came out.

Money spiders never bothered me if you remember that no video games are truly realistic. Forget that, and you end up being a Call of Duty fanatic.

[Locke cole]

I do kinda like the way Monster Hunter does it, where you kill a monster and then shove a hunting knife into the body to scrounge up some materials that you later use to make weapons and armor that look like the monster in question. I do kind of like how you can get different materials by severing the tail and carving into it than you can by carving into the rest of the monster's body, and how you get a better chance of getting certain items if you capture it alive (presumably so that the Guild's professional slaughterers can do it instead of one bloke with a knife the size of his forearm), and how you can get certain body parts only if you break off certain protective scale platings or snap off their horns or whatever.

What I don't like is how the random chance for certain spoils are ridiculously low, to the point that you can be doing everything right and still only have a 1% chance of harvesting that Rathalos Ruby that you need for the Firebreathing Lance ++ or whatever. It's to the point that Monster Hunter fans have a running joke about the RNG calculator having a "desire sensor" built in that skews the probability away if you really need a certain drop.

So, in summary, Monster Hunter has an interesting way of getting monster components that nicely ties in with the atmosphere of the game as a whole. It's just stupidly hard to get certain items that of course all the gear you actually want requires.

[Japan]

As someone who has spent an awful lot of god damn time in the hamster wheel of loot I feel confident in saying that random drop rates are bullshit.

Most randomization that is completely independent of character choice (ie: hey you killed a rabid mega-skink, here are some +5 boots of forest frolicking as opposed to hey, you put a bunch of points in your underwater basket weaving skill, you have an 80% chance to weave a basket in the likeness of Michael Jackson from your own ass hair while submerged.) can be chalked up to technological limitations, lack of production budget or sheer laziness.

And yet, some of us will still press the same 5 buttons in the same prescribed order for 3 hours at a time, two nights a week for 6 months in the hopes that the epic flagon of macho he-man badassery finally drops from Lord Firebuns.

(And of course some of us just really like the view from behind Lord Firebuns.)

[Magus]

I hardly play these new games, how do the random drop-rates compare to say, the Sword of Kings in Earthbound? Because I felt like that took forever and it was presumably far far better than modern day games' drop rates.

[EVILNess]

I am a big fan of action based rewards.

For example, if you do X (Some obscure and challenging thing) you get Y (Cutting off a Boss's tail gets you an axe made from the tail for example.) This rewards you for trying new things or just being good at the game. Things that games should reward their players for doing.

Dark Souls and Etrian Oddesy are good examples of this.

[Jagos]

I have to honestly question why the hell we still have random anything in this day and age...

If I want a drop to occur, it won't unless you depend on a luck stat that you have no control over. As a player this is BS. Sure, you want to keep the power creep to a minimal but there are better ways to limit that element other than random drops.

How about an insane number requirement for materials which ensures communal participation? How about making that sword an event only thing? How about emphasizing different aspects of a game than power to get people to focus on other aspects?

I mean, it's like people go for the lazy approach instead of actual innovations and it kind of sucks the life of the game to have to grind out the levels and THEN grind out your gear to be competitive.

[Arcanum]

I point you towards the ridiculous popularity of dungeon-crawlers like Diablo, Torchlight, and Path of Exile. There are a lot of people who love the randomness of drops in those games. You get a rush of excitement seeing that yellow or orange text over something that just popped out of the boss you killed, even if it ends up being something you can't use.

It's been said before but I'll repeat it anyway, it's all about execution. Randomness can be a great boon or a terrible curse. In Dragon's Dogma some of the most powerful weapons can be obtained by defeating the Ur-Dragon (in offline mode, fuck getting significant contribution in online mode). Every time you kill him you are guaranteed one (or two, I forget) weapon drops (along with a bunch of other loot) but which weapon you get is randomized. And since you can switch classes at a whim, you're always getting something you can technically use, even if it might take you a few tries to get the thing you want.

But then again in DD some of the strongest armor is obtained randomly from chests in the Everfall with rather low drop rates, and to avoid the several day respawn on chests players resort to death-farming them (you could just re-load your save after opening the chests and before changing areas, but killing yourself skips one or two loading screens, and doing so resets all the chests (and you lose the loot you didn't want anyway)).

My two cents (or should I say nickel now that the Canadian penny is no longer being distributed?) on the matter: In a lot of singleplayer RPGs those rare item drops don't really matter in the grand scheme of the game. You don't need these super rare drops to beat the boss or progress the story, and it's more for completionists/min-maxers/power-hungry players. In online games it's a different story, and I'm of the opinion GW2 did it right. Go ahead and put in super-rare or hard to obtain items so players can show off or brag, as long as the average player can get items of equivalent power with significantly less of a hassle.

[Loyal]

The reason why we have random drops is because doing otherwise in an acceptable fashion would require implementing very detailed, abstract systems to simulate the conditions required for the drops in question, whether it's for miscellaneous creature spoils that you craft into better things, or entire armor sets dropped piecemeal from bosses.

Want to collect twenty good-condition bear asses? Be careful how you kill those bears, if you hit them in the wrong place, or toss an errant fireball, it's unusable. That boss has an awesome sword? Oops, you fought a bit too hard in the battle, his weapon was destroyed. And his armor doesn't even fit you, so that's scrap. Running low on ammo and want to scavenge what the enemy's got? Better kill them quick before they use too much of it, and that's assuming they're not running a bit dry from previous engagements, or using unreliable ammo bought from the lowest bidder.

It's madness, really. There are some games where that sort of thing would be appealing - Dwarf Fortress could be considered an example - but it's not a solution you can apply to the mainstream, for both the developers and the consumers. Random drops are a necessary evil that simplifies things on the part of both the gamer and the programmer. That doesn't mean it can't be done wrong, e.g. some super accessory as a 1/256 drop from some super-rare Slime enemy, and plenty of other far less egregious but still irritating examples. But there's no particular reason to abolish the system altogether because, by and large, it's one that works.

[Aldurin]

The big thing that makes random drops appeal is that it keeps the discovery aspect from going stale, even if you do another run, simply because you'll end up with some different stuff (it's the whole reason roguelikes don't flop). In terms of gameplay and challenge, it adds an element of adaptation instead of memorization. I think the strongest case of this would be 100 Rogues, a mobile rogue-like that featured very few items, levels and characters, leaving you very open to getting completely screwed over if you didn't manage your resources carefully and didn't weigh whether or not it's worth the risk to keep exploring the current floor. That being said, issues in the random drop system are not a flaw of the concept, but an error on the dumbass developer who thinks that random drops are about grinding that 1% chance that's actually 0.0001% in the code, and feel that the only acceptable way to implement better equipment is to have a narrowing pyramid of rarer and rarer loot, eventually going all the way to having the rarest item that takes an arduous amount of resources and preparation just to attempt the drop once (back when I was still playing Runescape, this was pretty much a thing all the time, where you'd have to kill your way through a dungeon and kill the Butthole of Cthulu with your bare hands in order to trigger the chance). There are a few balances that are in place sometimes, like in-game market systems so players can shuffle stuff between each other (Diablo 3 though is still pretty outrageous in that aspect, while DDO does actually do a decent job of having a reasonable economy, where equipment is reasonably priced, especially when you realize that people will buy your mana potions for 10x their price).

It's a good aspect that I don't expect to disappear. If randomization is bad because of games that do it poorly, then clearly First Person Shooters are bad because they keep making Call of Duty and Medal of Honor games.

[Japan]

To be honest I think I'm ready for levels of insane munchkinnery and grindyness so long as I don't have to farm the same damn bosses longer than most doctors spend in medical school.

Like the aforementioned necessity to slay bears in such a manner as to render their lifeless asses pristine, I think I'm down for that kind of micromanaging so long as the gameplay itself is at least on par with current standards (ie: hit these buttons when they're not greyed out and this button when it lights up with pretty colors) and so long as I can then take those unblemished ursine behinds and forge whatever the hell manner of item I desire that involves furriness.

I think what I'm really looking for here is a truly open ended crafting system with near limitless possibilities that requires certain ingredients that are all obtainable through various means and through varying levels of difficulty. Maybe you need to make increasingly harder and higher level items to improve your skill rating, and then need to find rare patterns and recipes for particular effects or aesthetics through questing, exploration and experimentation. Maybe you can hire out hordes of skilled bear-ass huntsmen to clean the forests of all useable bear ass and then embark upon a mighty quest to the peak of Mount Hairybearass to slay the aggregate ghost of all the assless bears who have fallen before your merciless hordes in order to obtain the Shining Golden Ghost Ass, which you can then use to make the worlds most amazing pair of mittens-that-are-also-flamethrowers (or whatever else equally astounding item you can conjure up from ass-material).

Maybe I just think that content in an MMO should be more about complexity and the relationship between challenge and reward than time and narrative. A lot of gaming paradigms lend themselves quite well to a linear narrative format, but its just never felt natural for an MMO. You're supposed to be a unique and special snowflake, one amongst multitudes each with their own story to tell. Instead you end up being the 6,732,422nd random jackass to retrieve the skull of Marshal Cornholer from the abandoned tool shed. Eventually the sense of uniqueness is crushed under the obvious reality that everyone else is playing the same exact game you are in exactly the same way.

Or perhaps, more succinctly, random reward based games promote efficiency above all things and actively destroy individuality. All you are doing is streamlining your ability to turn the hamster wheel. This inevitably leads to the penultimate "BEST BUILD EVARS" that is mathematically proven to be the most efficient way to get through all that bullshit (which is to say, the gameplay) to the sweet, sweet loots at the end. (assuming you're lucky enough.)

[synkr0nized]

Random drops suck.

They force me to replay content in the hopes I get what I am seeking. They encourage design of MMOs to emphasize players attaining the same gear and equipment by artificially extending the time and effort required to attain that gear. There is limited customization due to no focus on the viability of various different gear sets, and endgame progression is typically a numbers game (I was tempted to add, "and not a focus on fun", but some folks do find that fun, and there can be fun in it).

However I am likely not part of the typical player base for video games / MMOs, as while I certainly do get caught up in the dress-up and collection aspects I would still enjoy logging in and playing and replaying content with friends and other players even if I don't "need" to run it still for a chance at maybe getting something I want.


I maintain that the first Guild Wars did this better than most. You were always in control of what stats you emphasized and what your build was and had immutable, clear-cut steps to attain the level of gear and items and functionality you desired. The randomness of drops only came into play for customization via skins. This ideal has been marred quite a bit in GW2 (often noted as being a means to appeal to the typical MMO gamer thanks to years of grinding and random drops in various, well-known and popular titles), though some characteristics remain.


e: I realize this is an MMO-centric response, but fuck random encounters and drops in console RPGs, too.

[BloodyMage]

I really prefer random encounters, simply because, as was mentioned earlier in the thread, creates tension. Like I've played Final Fantasy 9 or 10 and been running around a dungeon and been low on health, trying to get to the next part alive. Sure, you can try to run from random encounters but that doesn't always work. So there more suspense in whether I could actually make it. In Final Fantasy 13 though, I can just avoid the monsters because I can see them right in front of me. I can literally stand there and make all the right equipments and go into the fight prepared if I wanted. I get that it's more realistic but it feels less fun. Though I get that it wouldn't work for all games, like Fallout.

That said, I prefer a balance of random drops and fixed items. Random drops only really seem to work when there are customisable options and such that would require a lot of certain items to upgrade or possibly for trading. But outside of that, it's nice to know that if I spend 20 minutes whittling the hit points of a boss down to zero I don't need to restart just to get the coveted sword or ribbon of 0.00000000001% attainability.

[Japan]

The concept of a "random encounter" needs to be clarified somewhat I think.

When you say random encounter I only think of early Final Fantasy/Pokemon-esque gameplay where you walk around a world map and THEN SUDDENLY MONSTERS.

That's all kinds of stupid. I understand why such things were invented and why they were implemented in the fashion they were, but technology and game play sophistication has moved on.

Now if you're referring to all "randomly" generated encounters then I do believe these can be implemented correctly. You have a list of enemies appropriate for the level of the character/area type and certain criteria for when and where they spawn. I think a lot of the Bethesda games do this (fallout, elder scrolls) You'll be walking around and suddenly spot a bear in the distance. If you're really oblivious and loud the bear will see you first and you will die a horrible death, but if you're paying attention and sneaky enough you might be able to get the jump on it, or possibly even bypass the encounter entirely. Of course even this more organic style of random encounters generally doesn't involve any more sophistication than the game saying "Hey, this guy hasn't been mauled by a bear in 5 minutes, lets put a bear at coordinates X,Y,Z within radius N of this character every 5 minutes until he learns his place in the food chain."

If we really want to engender a sense of tension and the overwhelming terror that ninjas might leap out of the trees at any moment we'd need to develop a more sophisticated AI that can actually build ambushes for the player. The problem is integrating this capability into a streamlined user interface to avoid the two awful inevitable outcomes, those being a control layout that requires 37 different buttons and a direct neural uplink OR the dreaded quick-time hell where everything cool and/or awesome is resolved by pressing A at the right time.

[Grandmaster_Skweeb]

I'm on the fence with random loot tables. Putting time and effort into making the Shitsmasher Mallet of Ass Destruction can be rewarding in its own right. Instant gratification cheapens the value to the player quickly.

What idea I've always liked is a passive growing chance of getting something that falls under the rare and highly desirable table, or components to build up to that category of equipment/crafting materials quality. Like say Duke Lord FisterSmashy of Dickerton kills 30 shitkickers and gets nothin but shit-tier crap. So FisterSmashy gets 1% added to the good shit get chance. This continues until something of the goodshit tier drops. Obviously using whole percentages because I'm lazy and the idea is very rough, but I like it nonetheless.

[BloodyMage]

If we really want to engender a sense of tension and the overwhelming terror that ninjas might leap out of the trees at any moment we'd need to develop a more sophisticated AI that can actually build ambushes for the player. The problem is integrating this capability into a streamlined user interface to avoid the two awful inevitable outcomes, those being a control layout that requires 37 different buttons and a direct neural uplink OR the dreaded quick-time hell where everything cool and/or awesome is resolved by pressing A at the right time.

Which is why the traditional random encounters of old style Final Fantasy and all main Pokemon games is the best way of creating a sense of tension. It doesn't require a needlessly complicated AI, it's just 'oh, crap, I'm running low on hit points and just ran into a behemoth.'

I was just discussing the traditional form though. Fallout 3 does use the other model, with hotspots where the system may or may not generate a random event but New Vegas did away with them completely.

[stefan]

Which is why the traditional random encounters of old style Final Fantasy and all main Pokemon games is the best way of creating a sense of tension.

Get out.

[Azisien]

Random has the potential for greatness. It's one of the best ways to get players addicted to things. As long as the time between encounters/rewards is not so great that the player loses interest, it's a viable strategy. I need look no further than most MMOs, Diablo II and its clones, Borderlands, and so on, to showcase the addictive factor of randomness. How many times did you run Baal?

Luck easily becomes awful. Luck is out of the player's control, and player control is one of, if not THE, foundation of games. This isn't to say luck has no place in games, obviously it does, but it gets out of hand quickly. As for personal preference, the more a game relies on luck, the less I like it. If it relies on luck but it's game systems give me, the player, the opportunity to bend that luck in my favor, the game is better for it (ex: D&D, Magic Find in Diablo II).

[Japan]

Which is why the traditional random encounters of old style Final Fantasy and all main Pokemon games is the best way of creating a sense of tension. It doesn't require a needlessly complicated AI, it's just 'oh, crap, I'm running low on hit points and just ran into a behemoth.'

I think you are confusing "best" with "easiest."

Especially in the context of an RPG I think immersion is vitally important to the experience. Arbitrary random screen shifts and formulaic, turn driven combat styles seem to work completely counter to immersion on many levels. Instead of a more cinematic and immediate experience like hooded men leaping from a bell tower to surround and ambush your character you get 3 to 5 randomly generated creatures lined up in perfect formation arrayed against your party of 3 to 5 heroic personae with an appropriate and immutable distance between the two while you take turns trying savagely beat each other with oversized cutlery.

Like I get the nostalgia factor, If you plop me down in front of a TV with an SNES hooked up to it I would probably end up depositing a few hours on Chrono Trigger just because. But I don't think that nostalgia is an appropriate goal when you're talking about progress. (this is probably why I'm a liberal too but LULZNOTRELATED)

[rpgdemon]

Uh, Chrono Trigger didn't have random encounters. All enemies were visible on screen.

It had enemies which would hide behind trees and jump out sometimes though, surrounding and ambushing your character.

[BloodyMage]

I think you are confusing "best" with "easiest."

Especially in the context of an RPG I think immersion is vitally important to the experience. Arbitrary random screen shifts and formulaic, turn driven combat styles seem to work completely counter to immersion on many levels. Instead of a more cinematic and immediate experience like hooded men leaping from a bell tower to surround and ambush your character you get 3 to 5 randomly generated creatures lined up in perfect formation arrayed against your party of 3 to 5 heroic personae with an appropriate and immutable distance between the two while you take turns trying savagely beat each other with oversized cutlery.

Like I get the nostalgia factor, If you plop me down in front of a TV with an SNES hooked up to it I would probably end up depositing a few hours on Chrono Trigger just because. But I don't think that nostalgia is an appropriate goal when you're talking about progress. (this is probably why I'm a liberal too but LULZNOTRELATED)

When the best way is a complicated algorithm to simulate true randomness, then the easiest and best because quite similar.

But I've never had any problem being immersed in a role playing game just because I randomly had to face a bunch of monsters. Why exactly do I need a cinematic experience before every battle to immerse me in why these characters are involved? Generally they're heroes and warriors and these are fantasy worlds. Without monsters and creatures, it'd be rather hallow and if the characters can't meet the challenge then I'd get bored of playing. To take Final Fantasy 9 as an example, there's a section where the bad guy attacks the town and you actually do see the monsters running through the streets and have to engage them. Which makes sense because the streets are usually void of monsters so they're more noticeable, yet once or twice they do sneak up on you.

Outside, on the world map or in caves, however, using a cinematic experience to instigate an ambush all the time would be annoying because quite frankly I just want to play the game and get to the battle. The screen fading and opening on a battle screen is all I really need . Any why should I require any more? I have to admit I do enjoy turn based combat, though generally only when it's got a class or job system. It's not like turn based combat can't be tactical. Chess at it's very core is turn based and job orientated. But I also get the newer models, such as Final Fantasy 13, which was very fun. I felt it lacked tactics though as I only switched between like two paradigms half the the time.

But that's getting a little off point. I think random encounters are still an interesting part of gaming and while it is one I miss slightly it's not one I like because of nostalgia. I enjoyed random encounters because I found them fun.

[Krylo]

Especially in the context of an RPG I think immersion is vitally important to the experience.

Gonna just, stop you there.

In a WESTERN RPG immersion is vitally important--and they generally don't have random encounters or a separate battle screen.

In jRPGs, where these things usually happen, I'd argue immersion is hardly important at all. I'm not Cloud, or Zidane, or Chopin, or Kaim. Hell I'm not even Crono or the hero of Dragonquest. Even when the protagonists in jRPGs are silent (which is supposed to help you sub in for them), they never really get to make choices or affect the story in any way more important than which enemy you kill first, which kills any immersion far far far before random battles can.

This isn't my story. It's Tidus's, and I don't need to be fully immersed when watching/reading/playing somebody else's story.

Thus, when the random battle screen pops up it doesn't break my immersion--as I was never really there.

It does sometimes annoy me when I have too many of them, or they happen at inconvenient times. . . but it's hard to break immersion that never existed in the first place.

[Kim]

The Final Fantasy series at its height would be best compared to stage plays. Not at all about immersion. Completely about performance.

[Japan]

I would argue that immersion is not necessarily dependent on the concept of an in game personal avatar. Whether or not we are meant to experience the game as though this is "our character" or through the kaleidoscope eyes of an ensemble cast I think fluidity is a worthwhile goal.

The only real distinction is whether or not the role we are playing is prescripted and predefined or mutable and personalized. In your classical JRPG there is very little in the way of player defined character development and most of our interaction with the game is purely mechanics based while the storyline progresses in a more or less linear fashion. We are watching a story unfold and our reward for proper gameplay is a furtherance of the plot. I don't really see how immersion isn't important to this style of game, much like watching a movie. It would be rather jarring if every time John McClain encountered a European terrorist we were treated to a cheesy filter effect and an abrupt change in scenery while the two combatants faced off in turn driven combat. (Although watching the disembodied giant white hand scroll to the special ability "Yippy Kai-ay motherfucker" would probably be worth it.)

I think stating that theater at its core is not about audience immersion is categorically incorrect as well. The very art of performance is predicated on the riddle of conveying the unreal in as real a fashion as possible. If the sole goal of performance was to convey a story or data it would likely be an elderly chap sitting on a poorly lit stage in a rocking chair reading Moby Dick without so much as a tonal variation to his voice between characters.

The assumption that the classical jrpg method is somehow intentional and not the byproduct of technological limitation and subsequent industry stagnation is also incorrect in my opinion. It amounts to an entire industry resting on it's laurels for over 20 years. Modern turn driven, random encounter based video games would be the equivalent of a silent film produced 10 years after the introduction of synchronized audio. Its simply not a mature enough medium to blame it on nostalgia or artistic license, the only explanation is an industry not willing to evolve and a customer base satisfied with a substandard product.

(and I'm also aware that Chrono Trigger was not a random encounter based game, I was simply stating that despite it being woefully out of date I'd still play the shit out of it due to nostalgia.)

Gonna just, stop you there.

http://i28.photobucket.com/albums/c231/FunkaGenocide/images.jpg

[Krylo]

Things

Well there's a different kind of immersion involved between being Commander Shepard, or being Chell and watching Zidane.

In the former, overly 'game-y' experiences do, indeed, break the immersion. In the latter, not so much. You're never given the illusion that you're doing anything OTHER than playing a game, so having obvious game-isms isn't as troublesome, whether it's an overstuffed HUD or turn based random encounter based combat.

Basically, John McClane warping into a combat screen wouldn't work because he's in a movie, and it's an entirely different media. Just like turning the pages of an all text book and having a sudden pop out that animates a scene when you turn a dial would break immersion, or having a movie where the screen stops and the scene is instead presented as pages of a book (though either of these might make neat experimentations).

Different media can get away with different things, while doing different things.

Indeed, this even works across the same medium. back to the animated pop-up, while it would break immersion in a novel, it would not break immersion. . . in a pop-up book.

The same is true of jRPGs vs wRPGs or shooters. Side scrollers, as well, can get away with much different things.


Modern turn driven, random encounter based video games would be the equivalent of a silent film produced 10 years after the introduction of synchronized audio. So you mean it's fantastic? (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0075222/)

Its simply not a mature enough medium to blame it on nostalgia or artistic license, the only explanation is an industry not willing to evolve and a customer base satisfied with a substandard product.
I disagree entirely. The video game industry is exactly old enough to begin using nostalgia as an artistic choice in its products. The people now working on creating games are the people who played Final Fantasy 1 and Megaman on the NES.

There are plenty of games made, from IWBTG to Cave Story to X-Com: Enemy Unknown, to Dragon Age that are love letters to the games that these people--and we, ourselves, grew up with.

Edit: FF9 was, as well, billed as being a return to FF roots, and made many plays directly toward nostalgia on purpose. It was a love letter to the fans of earlier FF games with the crystals, and the black mages and a main character who wasn't a whiny douche. . . and was one of the best more modern FFs.

[Krylo]

The Final Fantasy series at its height would be best compared to stage plays. Not at all about immersion. Completely about performance.

Actually gonna bounce off this a bit:

The random encounter screens are the equivalent of the curtains closing and the scenery re-arranging between scenes.

Edit: I really hope the fact that Tantalus was an acting troupe was a play on this idea of jRPGs as stage plays and not just an accidental thing.

[Japan]

The random encounter screens are the equivalent of the curtains closing and the scenery re-arranging between scenes.

Curtains closing and the scenery re-arranging are byproducts of technological limitation. I'm sure if The Bard had access to hi-def 3d cameras and lossless digital audio we wouldn't have to endure the arduous minutes of scene change.

I suppose the argument can be made that video games have been around long enough to allow for nostalgia based productions, my main argument against this being an appropriate direction is that I don't believe the industry is mature enough to warrant it.

How many marvels of modern artistry had the film industry birthed by it's 30 year anniversary?

Now how many grand accomplishments of human endeavor has the video game industry produced?

I just don't think that raiding the coffers of nostalgia is going to elevate gaming as an art form. It reminds me of the American automobile industry from 1980 onward. You're not really doing anything new or interesting, or even all that good, you're just hoping people will continue to give you money because your products kind of look like those old things people used to actually like (but only because technology wouldn't allow for a superior alternative at the time.)

[Kim]

Actually gonna bounce off this a bit:

The random encounter screens are the equivalent of the curtains closing and the scenery re-arranging between scenes.

Edit: I really hope the fact that Tantalus was an acting troupe was a play on this idea of jRPGs as stage plays and not just an accidental thing.

Probably. Same for FFVI and it's opera. FFV certainly seems aware of this with the credits scene reminiscent of each actor individually taking to the stage to take a bow.

EDIT: The problems with games as a medium have little to do with nostalgia and everything to do with badly emulating blockbuster movies, locking themselves into an unsustainable arms race for the most amazing graphics, and almost no one who writes video games knowing how the fuck to write.

I'm sure if The Bard had access to hi-def 3d cameras and lossless digital audio we wouldn't have to endure the arduous minutes of scene change.

"Plays wouldn't exist if movies."

You should tell this to all the people who continue to make plays and the people who continue to watch them.

[Aldurin]

Curtains closing and the scenery re-arranging are byproducts of technological limitation. I'm sure if The Bard had access to hi-def 3d cameras and lossless digital audio we wouldn't have to endure the arduous minutes of scene change.

I suppose the argument can be made that video games have been around long enough to allow for nostalgia based productions, my main argument against this being an appropriate direction is that I don't believe the industry is mature enough to warrant it.

How many marvels of modern artistry had the film industry birthed by it's 30 year anniversary?

Now how many grand accomplishments of human endeavor has the video game industry produced?

I just don't think that raiding the coffers of nostalgia is going to elevate gaming as an art form. It reminds me of the American automobile industry from 1980 onward. You're not really doing anything new or interesting, or even all that good, you're just hoping people will continue to give you money because your products kind of look like those old things people used to actually like (but only because technology wouldn't allow for a superior alternative at the time.)

I disagree in the concept, but not the execution. Nostalgia is totally an ok way to go (it's a big reason why 8-bit graphics are still seriously considered in a day when ever our phones can render 3D) and a big part of going back to those basics is that the successes of those times overcame the technological limitations to create an experience that is beyond the stars compared to your standard grayscale-parking-lot-shoot-em-up.

The big problem is that it still takes just as much brilliance and effort to create that experience, and the road of nostalgia is littered with terrible attempts to continue the legacy of an ancient franchise. Classic 2D Sonic held up all the way through advance, but began to fall apart when it hit Sonic Rush. Mario is a laughable shell of it's former self, being nothing more than a platform for barely varied remakes and cash grabs when they don't dare to test the boundaries. Hell, many companies churn out HD remakes because the game sold back then, and it'll look better now that knees and breasts aren't disjointed pyramids on an ugly pile of corners when it comes to 3D.

It's an appropriate time to go back to nostalgia, but it's still another game aspect that is so horribly vandalized by developers who don't know or care what they're doing.

[Jagos]

Wait... Why should we advance the games medium as an art form in the first place?

[Kim]

Wait... Why should we advance the games medium as an art form in the first place?

Because right now most games are fucking terrible.

[Japan]

People who continue to produce and enjoy live action theater are an odd lot and I'm sure if I knew any I'd suggest alternate forms of entertainment, but there is no accounting for taste as they say.

Although drawing parallels between live action theater and random encounter based jrpg's can only go so far. The main distinction being that theater is an organic and inherently chaotic process, the reason people still go see King Lear or to the opera is for the actors and the singers. Its very similar to a live concert, they're going to do something slightly different or add some slight nuance to the role every night and you get to experience the uniqueness of that night.

The same can not be said for jrpgs and so I believe you've drawn the metaphor out to the point of inapplicability.

I do agree with two out of three of your reasons for why the state of the video game industry is generally shit-tastic though. Trying to emulate American blockbuster movies (which are generally shit to begin with) and the general lack of writing talent in the industry. I am, however, all for a technological arms race. I just wish they'd devote enough time, people and money to the maturation and development of the technology all ready at hand. Honestly at this point we've got the technology for real time, hi-def 3d rendering and I'm rather upset that I can't play an MMO in a safely padded room with full motion capture technology so that I could perfect my bear slaying sword swing to preserve those precious, precious asses.

[Kim]

Fun fact: The graphics arms race contributes to the other two problems in a big fucking way.

Fun fact the sequel: Your attitude toward live theater is pretty patronizing and shitty, and also ruins any chance of me taking your thoughts regarding the relationship between theater and video games seriously.

[Japan]

Well there's no need to get upset about one man's opinion on the matter. I can see why people would enjoy live action theater, I didn't mean to come off as being patronizing. My main point wasn't that you shouldn't like plays and if you do then you're terrible person (that wasn't even my side point honestly, I just find it to be an odd pastime is all, like bear hunting or badminton.)

My point was that I don't believe you can directly compare jrpg's to live theater in an attempt to legitimize the former because of the proclivities of the latter.

No need for foul language now.

[Kim]

I'm not trying to legitimize anything.

The similarities between video games and live action theater exist.

For a while, jRPGs were more aware of this fact than other genres (this has changed), and, like plays, immersion has never been a focus of the genre.

[Karrrrrrrrrrrresche]

Did you just fucking insult Badminton.

No but seriously whether or not you intended to be patronizing it was pretty damn patronizing to refer to the fans, creators and contributors of live theater to be an odd lot. You seem to acknowledge that this is the case, so the response should not be "That wasn't what I meant so I will now do the same thing to two other pastimes while doing it again to Theater". It should be
"Yeah, that was patronizing. Sorry."

[Japan]

Well to be fair I think you guys are a rather odd lot as well.

http://i28.photobucket.com/albums/c231/FunkaGenocide/Deal_With_It91.jpg

[Kyanbu The Legend]

From what's been said so far, Luck Based Gameplay Mechanics seem to be a hit or miss thing depending on the execution.


It can be done well and add a sense of discovery and surprise. But can back fire if designed and/or programed poorly. Like Cosmic Break, my god the drop rates and success rates in that game are terrible. Thank fully, I'm content with my army of Brickgale and Accel Saber builds along with "junk/low tier" builds.

I've learned quite a bit from this thread so far.

[Kim]

In my mind, the major problem with random encounters is no player control over the encounter rate. Let players choose to avoid constant battles if they want. Let players have a reduced rate if they want. If they so choose, even let them make every step of the way littered with monster corpses.

[Arcanum]

Man my immersion in Paper Mario is just totally broken when the game transitions to the battle screen. It's just so jarring that I can no longer believe I'm made of paper, and the game is ruined.

Sarcasm aside, I think there's nothing wrong with transitions to battle screens. For turn-based combat you either need a transition to a new battle screen so the rest of the world is on pause without you overtly noticing it, or you put the whole world on pause and then everyone complains about that being "immersion breaking."

Which really is the core problem Japan has (at least my guess from what I've read, please correct me if I'm wrong in this assumption), as stated in one of his earlier posts. He's not a fan of turn-based combat, which I can understand because it's not for everyone. But a lot of people love turn-based combat, not because of the nostalgia factor but because it's a fun and challenging form of gameplay.

I recently started playing Fire Emblem: Awakening, and the turn-based combat is almost like chess and it is amazing. At the same time, having only put 5 hours into the game, I'm more invested in the characters than any character I've met in Skyrim, and more than most characters I've met in Mass Effect. And this is despite the fact there's no "real immersion" because each chapter and battle is just a dot on an overworld map that has minimal interactivity. And I've never played a Fire Emblem game before this, and I'm not a fan of JRPGs, so there is literally no nostalgia factor for me here.

I guess the point I'm trying to make here is that gameplay shouldn't be sacrificed for immersion, but what makes good gameplay is highly subjective. So while JRPGs don't go for the full-blown "you are in this world, the hero is you" immersion in order to deliver their own special brand of gameplay, that doesn't make them obsolete and archaic.

Going back on topic (sort of) with randomness of encounters, I believe it was said earlier about Paper Mario and Chrono Trigger but I'll say it again (since I saw fit to start my post off with it), letting players see enemy encounters, and actively evade or engage them, is a thousand times better than the "suddenly monsters" approach of early Final Fantasy games and the like. It's much more suspenseful seeing a group of enemies ahead when you're low on life and debating on if you should try to make a run for it or go for the first strike and hope you can finish them off quickly, compared to wondering if this next tile will be the one with monsters hiding under it. Especially since if you die, your death is a result of your own actions instead of the game randomly throwing the one extra monster at you that finished you off.

[Revising Ocelot]

I liked the Mario & Luigi approach to random encounters. You could see them on the screen, sure, but you could also do a preemptive attack by jump/hammer on the normal field screen which would give you an advantage in battle, or the enemy an advantage if you fucked up/jumped on something with spikes. All the encounters were fixed spawns in each area, too. Earthbound sorta did the same thing but would randomly spawn beasties wherever you moved at the edges of the screen, and in addition the beasties were extremely hard to avoid fighting most of the time. Not to mention the annoyance of 5 exploding trees in a row. Both games also had the mechanic where if you were overlevelled and such, you'd instantly kill enemies when you got into a fight. That one really should be used more.