>>13091473>deliberate game playEven the earliest random encounter systems were for tabletop RPGs and that is because it was quite literally the ONLY way to make combat work with fucking dice.
It's inertia. Just like how really old RPGs would just halt the game and show a picture of the enemy and your moves superimposed above the game itself. There was no better way to make those fights happen within the context of the games.
But EVEN IF WE ACCEPT that there's gameplay value in (a) turn-based combat and (b) random enemies appearing—both of which I can accept as true of Pokemon—the way its implemented sucks.
Fucking Chrono Trigger had an option for monsters-on-overworld, there's absolutely no justification for forcing players to randomly and periodically sit around while the game spends 10 seconds setting up a "fight" they probably won't engage in.
It shouldn't take players more than a split second to decide whether or not they want to face the wild pokemon in question. I'd estimate that the average pokemon player spends 2-3 solid hours of gameplay time watching the introductory animations for fights they run from (either because they're exploring and don't want to fight, or they wanted a different encounter than the one they got) on turn one.
That is indicative of bad design, plain and simple.
