Random Encounters Needed

[ishpan]

Back in my early days of gaming, I played Pool of Radiance and all the expansions on the C64. This game and most games like it (RPG's) back then have one thing BG3 does not - - - random encounters.

You could experience random encounters with monsters, bandits, caravans, traders, etc... These encounters enabled you to fight and get experience, items, and it added a bit of unknown to the game. These random encounters could happen when resting or traveling from location to location. It added a ton of fun to the scripted battles that are built in to the game and just waiting for you.

I wish/hope something like this is added to BG3 in the future. Can't be that hard to add and would add so much variety to everyone's gaming experience.

Thoughts?

[Aria Athena]

They would certainly add variety to my gaming experience. Not being interrupted by random ♥♥♥♥ is too much of a good thing, need to spice things up. Things like my nerves.

[Hobocop]

Truly random encounters are meh. They often feel like artifacts of the technical limitations of the time.

'Random' encounters aka scripted encounters under the guise of a random encounter are fine because they'll likely have a narrative purpose beyond contextless filler combat for the sake of combat.

I feel the same way about random encounters on TT, by the by, and recent examples of random encounters from Solasta and Kingmaker/WotR only proves my point.

[guard65]

Sadly in this trigger based game you could only put in trigger points to test for random encounter, then summon the selected enemies (as a summons). It would be nice to have base camp attacks. Already weak and drained and attacked by wolves.

[dulany67]

Nah, I hated random encounters from the time I started gaming.

[Padre67]

DM: You all are walking down the road when out of nowhere you see.....*rolls percentile dice*looks at charts*smiles devilishly*places black dragon mini on map*............yes random encounters would be an inherent good.

[holycat]

I would prefer some random encounters.
If nothing happening for a while it gets boring and can ruin the pacing of the game for me. I often find myself searching for something new on the map to do, but if i don't find anything new i start losing interest to continue to play.

The most painful experiences i've had was with Pillars of Eternity, where i completely lost the will to play because i had to level up before i could visit some harder places but i didn't have anymore quests, so i was stuck with talking to random NPCs in the city, which got old really fast. (Also that game was particularly annoying because i wanted to test some spells in combat, since they wouldn't let you use them outside of combat, but there were no more encounters left for that level)
DOS2 did a much better job at this except for the Arx city, where i, again, lost the will since i felt no progress for too long. (Still better than PoE)

I need some variance, so that once you get tired of talking to people you can change the pace do something else and still feel like you've progressed a bit.

[The 13th Ghost Bunny]

If it's optional, cool. Personally, I'd hate it. I find combat already fairly tedious, especially the encounters involving more than three or four enemies.

[NixAhmose]

Honestly I don't think random encounters fit this game.

Random encounters work best when travel in your game takes up a large portion of it or if the game has a larger focus on combat over story since they help fill up the filler portions of the game or give the player more of the thing they want.

For BG3 however, travel really doesn't take up that much portion of the game at all due to important locations being so close together so really don't need random encounters to fill up the in-between time.
In addition to that however, one of BG3's biggest selling points is its story and role-playing elements, so having random encounters constantly popping up would make it take much longer for players to experience the other major appeal of the game.

If BG3 had like a separate mode where all you did was random encounters, I think that would be fine as it wouldn't really detract from the pacing of the core game. However, random encounters in the core game would really harm the pacing of the game as it could make getting to next bits of story more tedious.

[Danielle]

I dont think so, random encounters are annoying if there isn't a reason for it to happen. Still being robbed by bandits or attack by wild animal when travelling is the max I will go for realism.

[Mosey]

Personally, I think random encounters need to be added to the long rest so that people are less inclined to simply long rest after literally every encounter in multiplayer. It gets super old, super fast.

I can't even begin to count how many times people just go straight to a long rest, even if there are still two short rests available.

And it's because of Wizards and Clerics almost exclusively, and it's because players that choose those classes don't know what they're doing and spam magic missile or guiding light/cause wounds on every enemy, even if it has like 10-15 HP.

And to avoid farming long rest random encounters for XP, perhaps those random encounters shouldn't grant any XP. Probably not a popular idea, but it's what I'd like to see personally. I doubt it'll be in the game though, since Larian seems to like the idea of static XP where you can't outlevel the content via farming.

[Fenris]

Originally posted by Mosey:

Personally, I think random encounters need to be added to the long rest so that people are less inclined to simply long rest after literally every encounter

Agreeing.

[chrstnmonks]

No thanks hated that in BG1.

[Razorblade]

Originally posted by Mosey:

Personally, I think random encounters need to be added to the long rest so that people are less inclined to simply long rest after literally every encounter in multiplayer. It gets super old, super fast.

I can't even begin to count how many times people just go straight to a long rest, even if there are still two short rests available.

And it's because of Wizards and Clerics almost exclusively, and it's because players that choose those classes don't know what they're doing and spam magic missile or guiding light/cause wounds on every enemy, even if it has like 10-15 HP.

And to avoid farming long rest random encounters for XP, perhaps those random encounters shouldn't grant any XP. Probably not a popular idea, but it's what I'd like to see personally. I doubt it'll be in the game though, since Larian seems to like the idea of static XP where you can't outlevel the content via farming.

I definitely agree some form of penalty needs to exist for over-resting. Doesn't necessarily have to be random encounters, but at this point, any player not familiar with DnD will end up optimizing all of the fun out of their playthrough by spamming spells and long rests. Resource scarcity is the crux of DnD combat, and at the current moment, BG3 lacks said scarcity.

[chrstnmonks]

Or instead of adding random encounters to long rest people just pratice self control and not use them has much if you don't want too?

[yoruichixX]

then i hope those random encounters dont grant xp and ♥♥♥♥♥♥ loot