Once I had decided that I wanted to make a turn-based RPG, there was one problem in my mind that I wanted to try to avoid. And that is random encounters becoming stale, and/or random encounters becoming the same step by step process for each and every one.
To demonstrate what I mean, I’d like to point towards Persona 5. Now, I love Persona 5, but there’s seldom a game with no flaws. Persona 5‘s combat system lends itself to random encounters becoming the same process for each pack, and they just become a repetitive process after some time in the same area. Once you find the elemental weakness for an enemy, all you have to do is use a skill with that element a few times and use the “All Out Attack” mechanic to win a fight (on most difficulties). I wanted to avoid this in my own game. (Again, not trying to bash Persona 5, it’s in my top 10 JRPGs list.)
I had this “stale random encounters” problem in mind very early in development of Draconic Echoes: The Ardent War. This problem, in fact, helped shape my “primers and detonators” elemental system. (If you haven’t played the game, or don’t know how this system works, check out the post “On Elemental Magic Systems” linked in the sidebar.)
Essentially, my way of solving this problem was to give elements moderately high chances to apply their primer/detonator effects. This makes every encounter dynamic in some way. The result of this system, as far as I can tell, is that when a player encounters a pack, most will have a standard opening turn, then adjust on the following turns based on what effects stuck and various other factors.
Now, RNG is a slippery slope. If you have none of it, you will certainly have repetitive encounters, and if you have too much, the randomness hijacks player control and devalues skilled play. The way I worked to balance this issue was to increase the odds of applying additional effects over the course of the game. As in, higher level spells have higher chances to apply effects. So, during the early game, players are able to develop an understanding of the fundamentals, while they aren’t punished much for ignoring the elemental systems. The primers and detonators feel like bonuses. However, over the course of the game, at least for boss fights, and especially on hard mode, if the player does not integrate the elemental systems into their battle plans, then they will start to struggle. As the player is able to apply the effects reliably at that point in the game, the game is balanced in such a way that expects frequent use of the elemental systems. I feel that my “primers and detonators” system provides to the player a dynamic experience where, even when the random encounter generator decides to spawn the same enemy pack five times in a row, each fight is at least somewhat different in practice.
The bottom line here is that if you don’t want encounters to be a laundry list of moves the players go through for each pack, then the core systems of your combat need to be dynamic. RNG helps with that, but in moderation, and in a way that makes sense and doesn’t take away player agency. Stale encounters can be a huge turn off for any game that uses either turn-based mechanics, or random encounters, or in my case, both. So it is important to find solutions to combat this problem.
If you’re curious about how all my nonsense actually plays out in a game, check out Draconic Echoes: The Ardent War on Steam!