Random Encounters vs Monster Events

[Jalm]

Well, spotting your enemies is pretty important, but I could never decide on which I wanted to use. Sure, monster events allow you to have bonuses like advantages, etc, but it's very easy for the player to just avoid all those fights and head straight to the boss underlevelled. Random encounters are well...random, and can be annoying, but they're also a lot easier to implement, and save you the work of having to make enemy overworld sprites...

What's your say?

[Starrodkirby86]

For Monster Events' con, why should we care that we reach the boss underlevelled? The player is definitely doing this on purpose, so it's no concern on us. If the player is meeting up a boss or something (Or have the feeling they're underlevelled), wouldn't they go fight? Some people want it for the challenge.

However, Monster Events do get kind of boring on linear maps such as RPG Maker XP's. Random Encounters are annoying depending on the Encounter Rate (if it's balanced or not). If the game also doesn't use some sort of Repel...then that's even worse.

One would shine over the other depending on its usage. Monster Events I would go for as long as it's creatively done (Or done like this game here (http://forum.chaos-project.com/index.php?topic=4873.0) ).

Random Encounters are a nice alternative if distributed evenly.

[Dragaard]

Well, spotting your enemies is pretty important, but I could never decide on which I wanted to use. Sure, monster events allow you to have bonuses like advantages, etc, but it's very easy for the player to just avoid all those fights and head straight to the boss underlevelled. Random encounters are well...random, and can be annoying, but they're also a lot easier to implement, and save you the work of having to make enemy overworld sprites...

What's your say?

If this is a normal turn based system then I would have to agree that random encounters works best. If they are too frequent then it can be really annoying but if too infrequent then the game seems somewhat hollow.

Event encounters are actually pretty cool, and I see them as a bit better if used properly. Enemies that will chase you into a battle (For dangerous foes), or enemies that pop up and don't give you much of a chance to avoid them (For battles you WANT to occur), and even enemies that run away from you (Like animals or enemies that drop unique items) are all in my opinion, a unique twist the player will enjoy. 

[fugibo]

Chrono Trigger.

Perfect execution.

It just makes battles not seem annoying, whereas in most other JRPGs I just want to make them stop so I can get to the next interesting part.

[Cid]

You can just have a universal sprite for enemies on the overworld. Persona 3 and 4 use a shadowy blob model, for example.

I don't see anything wrong with random encounters, but I switched to using on-screen enemies in order to populate areas and bring them to life.