This is actually a few different design paradigms you are talking about.

The first is the exploration map transitioning into a battle map during encounters. The second is randomly spawning encounters. The third is forcing players to fight those encounters. Games like Zelda 2 had a exploration map transition into a battlemap, but the encounters are visible on the exploration map and could be avoided if you want so they were never forced or random. On the other hand games like Shining in the Darkness had exploration and battle on the same map; there was no transitions and the view 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 where random monsters are spawned in at random times on random places on the map to attack you, but the monsters only spawn out of sight in places you are not looking at, and you are not forced to fight them.

IMO battle transitions and forced encounters are outdated mechanics designed around the technical limitations of 8 bit era systems, while random encounters are a great way to improve exploration and overall replay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.

I personally don’t mind them, but I personally think the best kinds of random encounters are ones like pokemon randomizers where you step in the grass in a modded gen 3 game with every single pokemon in existence in it and it randomly pulls from the list of 1000+ mons in order to give you a feeling of true randomness in team building. Especially since you aren’t able to predict which creatures you will get.

Having a random table containing only a few different encounters isn’t anywhere near as fun and exciting as randomly having gods spawn as your enemy as a beginner in a randomized game followed by the weakest creatures in the game a moment later.

I don’t really like random battles for the most part, but they are not normally the thing that makes or breaks a game for me, either.

Some of the first jrpgs that I remember handling battles better then the typical final fantasy was Chrono Trigger and Pokemon. In Chrono Trigger, you can typically see the enemies before you have to fight them, though they would often surprise you with enemies that you couldn’t see jumping out. I think that worked much better than just the normal system where if you walk around long enough you get a battle. Then Pokemon has 2 different things that it did. First, for trainer battles, you can see the trainers on screen so you can make sure you are prepared before you go into a fight. Then for the normal battles around the world, it does use random encounters, but they take place ONLY within certain spots, like in tall grass or in a cave. So you still have a lot of freedom to roam around in areas without triggering battles, and when you do go through those spots, you know that a battle could pop up, so you can be ready for it. There are also items you can use to avoid encounters.

For dealing with the annoyance of low level enemies, I think Earthbound had a pretty good system. In Earthbound, it shows you enemies on screen rather than doing random encounters, and once you get to a significantly higher level than the enemies, they will run away from you instead of coming at you, so you are free to just ignore them.

Not every design choice fits every game (obviously). With that in mind, rarely is any specific design choice always 100% good or bad.

I think rather than just taking a vote, it is more useful to think about what makes a good random encounter, and what kinds of game designs work well with them.

I enjoy CRPG styled games. Often in these random encounters happen when moving through an overworld. This kind of design doesn’t disrupt exploration, since once it is over, you continue on your way. It does disrupt when you are going between known points and just trying to tie something up. That can be annoying. Ways that I think can make random encounters enjoyable for CRPG styled games:

1. Not every random encounter has to be combat. Some can be combat, some can be social, some can be vendors, and some can just be flavor. Non-combat encounters can be used as sort of optional bonus content for players to learn about the lore or explore, and they might even feel special since it is a random occurrence the player gets.

2. The ability to put points into some kind of skill that gives the player the option to avoid a random encounter and/or start a combat encounter with a bonus.

3. Encounters should be tied with regions of the overworld in a way that makes sense. Put tougher encounters in endgame areas to discourage players from poking around too early. Make encounters in certain areas tied to the main faction or location in that area.

4. Ease up on certain kinds of encounters as the game goes on, so they don’t outstay their welcome. For example, in the early game if there are lots of low level bandits attacking in random encounters, it can be fun, but it gets old once you are powerful enough to rip through them and are just trying to get bigger things done. Solve this by, for example saying that routes between major hubs are secured thanks to player actions. Now the player can travel between main routes without getting hassled.

5. Be very thoughtful about combat random encounters triggered by NPCs after the player due to player actions. These tend to be more annoying since these are usually higher level NPCs that pack more punch. Making their appearance totally random can be very annoying. It also often feels like a grind if the encounter happens repeatedly. I would prefer the consequences of player actions to firstly always be telegraphed so they know a certain action means a revenge squad is after them. Second, I would prefer this encounter to be scripted- either concretely in a specific location where the game knows the player hasn’t yet been by virtue of the trigger happening while certain areas are still locked by the main story, or in a floating fashion where one of various possibilities is chosen by the game based on whatever triggers first. Once the player defeats whoever is after them, they should never be chased by an identical kind of threat.

These are all CRPG ideas, but I think mostly translate to action RPGs conceptually.

I’ve come around to really liking them. In short, they vastly improve dungeons in my opinion.

Most RPGs don’t manage to create interesting battles outside of boss fights. Heck, an increasing amount of RPGs fails to create any kind of challange. However, random encounter can add another layer to dungeons: resource management. You have to plan out how to tackle fights in order to get through the dungeons with your limited items/MP - do you sacrifice more HP or do you go for your strongest attacks? How much exploration can you get in? Do you need to be extra careful and plan for stronger rare encounters? Maybe even plan around lvl up healing.

Sadly, this layer is easily removed. Overworld encounters? Just dodge everything. Adjustable encounters? Grind just enough, go heal and disable encounters. Non-challanging fights? Just use basic attacks. Healing stations? No need to plan anymore. Ideally, the dungeons provides no healing at all - especially not before encountering the boss.

If you’re interested in a game with great dungeons, I’d recommend every single Etrian Odyssey.

Random encounters tend to be trash mobs, and I hate trash mobs. I know even in the late 90s, there were some prehistoric internet memes about FF7, and having just played it recently, I remember why. There were so many of them. You’d easily forget where you were going and what you were doing because you’d be interrupted by random encounter trash mobs every couple of seconds. They weren’t too hard, so you didn’t have to think very much to get through them, which made them uninteresting, and they also, like you said, just kind of screwed with the flow of the game. So generally, I don’t like them.

If what’s supposed to be the core gameplay feels like an unwanted interruption, I don’t think the random enounters themselves are the problem. I think the reason random encounters get a bad rap is because some games don’t make basic fights feel engaging enough. But when done right, they should be the fun part!

Man…this question would have SO much more gravity if it weren’t about gaming.

Like if you’re thinking back on your life. You met your wife at a coffee shop, but what would your life be today if they got a bagel instead? Where would your life be, 20 years later?

Or what if you’re single? Did you make the wrong arbitrary choice? Did you walk left instead of right? Did you miss out on meeting your special someone because of a choice you didn’t realize had ramifications?

And how should we feel about that today, knowing nothing in the past can be changed?

Old Mother/Earthbound games would just let you insta-win battles if you were way stronger than the area you happened to be in. Made backtracking much smoother.

I think there’s better patterns RPGs can use for them.

A lot of games now just put them wandering the world, and touching/attacking them prompts combat. Then, the game needs to invent various motivations for you to actually want to attack the enemy.

In a lot of games, they’re just genuinely in the way through tight corridors to a destination. A better approach can be to associate some kind of minor quest reward to directly pursuing the enemies.

But, then you get the problem that a lot of RPGs just have no interesting decisions to make in combat. And, participating in combat can lead to a slow wearing down of the party’s mana points, or the game’s equivalent. In many games, you only want to use the basic cure spell and auto-attack because you’ll survive fewer fights without mana rationing. It becomes counter-intuitive and less fun.

Some games resolve this well. Cosmic Star Heroine for instance, a short indie JRPG, heals you after every fight, and each combat is uniquely scripted in for pacing much like Chrono Triggwr.

I’m in the “if I can’t avoid them, I’m not playing the game long” camp.

I don’t hate them, and they can be fun. But most of the games that do them make them impossible to bypass. Like others have already said, when you’re questing, they just derail the gameplay experience. There’s times that’s okay, but if a game has them often enough, it ends up making me hate the game and quit.

It’s why I don’t go back an replay the final fantasy stuff.

Wizardry 7 comes to my mind. My party has been resting for days, trying to recover hp and sp from the last random encounter. And now as I’m jumped and half obliterated again because not everyone in the party woke up immediately to being attacked, it’s time to rest for another week.

I think that random encounters can be done well, but they’re often not done well.

I like that they can be a way to give feelings of attrition when travelling through long areas.

Random combat is the number one thing that makes me drop a game.

Its annoying, it happens too often, it always interrupts me when I want to do something else, and it is too repetitive.

This is why I stopped playing a lot of JRPGs. The other thing I drop them for is when combat only has a single song and always starts with the exact same intro, like what happened with Dragon Quest 11 or whatever it was that I played.

I hate grinding. Its repetitive and boring. Its not fun. If a games story missions are not paced properly with level such that I can do only the story missions and never be underleveled, then I will drop that game immediately.

I don’t hate them, and actually think they improve dungeon crawlers like Etrian Odyssey.

But for other games I think they slow down the pacing too much, especially when you want to get back to an older area, as you are going to fight lower level enemies and there’s usually an unavoidable scene transition which takes time.