Visible or invisible encounters, what do you prefer?

[Indinera]

Feel free to explain why.
MM5 obviously will have both. But for other games, your opinion matters and can influence me one way or another.

[Indinera]

4 votes so far... better than the 0 reply lol still, feel free to voice your opinion, as it contributes to develop the topic.

[D-Squall]

For me I choose visible, all the first RPG games that I have played were invisible (Legend of Legaia, Final Fantasies) I like a lot of that and all, but with nowadays games (not only RM games) RPG games are all going to the visible, and the change I thought I wouldn't like, I ended up liking and I got used to it. In The Book of Legends, it was a good and bad, Good because, some RM games promises to battle after a lot of steps, but sometimes it battles after two or three steps. The Book of Legends changed that, it really took some time to fight. The bad thing was: first, I couldn't listen well to the place's music, so everytime a battle starts and when it ends, the music restarts. second: some places are damn hard even in Casual Mode, and sometimes you may want to avoid tough battles and you can't (like the Arxisian Fortress, especially with all that Ambush rate) Still, The Book of Legends was a good game, but I prefer from now on, games with visible encounters. Of course I don't hate the ones with invisible, I just like visible more now.

[Indinera]

Thanks for the feedback!

[darchole]

I didn't vote here, because kinda all are OK, for me it doesn't matter, as long as it's consistent, and I know which it is. If it's all invisible, invisible except for the big bosses, all visible, visible except for the big bosses, I don't have a preference.

And maybe the votes are low b/c of Diablo 3 launching.

[D-Squall]

Does this poll will apply for Little Hearts too, or you already had planned how battles gonna be in the game before opening this poll?

[Cassiopeia]

Visible for me.
The main reason is that I want to explore a place without being disturbed. I'm not really avoiding fights, neither with visible monsters, nor do I escape much from invisible because I'm always eager to level up. But I very much prefer to clear a place from monsters first and then explore.
Since playing TBOL and 3Stars for a few times I got more used to it though. Yet, especially when exploring large areas, being attacked all the time still annoyed me, even though there are many steps between attacks in TBOL.
I disagree with Darchole though. I don't think it has to be consistent. In LF for instance were just a few random encounter places and that was absolutely ok for me.
If 3S was a visible encounter game it would be odd to have sharks wandering around at the coast. That's a perfect place for invisible monsters.
So random encounter where it's logical, and for the rest visible monsters, that's what I would like.

[Tomas]

Both is ok, what matters is the way it's implemented in the game. Having tough and frequent random fights without being able to save anywhere and with limited supply of healing items wouldn't be a good idea, for example.
DSC on Nightmare would be unplayable without visible encounters, on the other hand I liked MM4 better with invisible.

Generally, I would say that invisible encounters work best when combined with huge dungeons, good ways of sustaining mana for a very long time and saves at special places only. LP3 and Asguaard are the best examples. Especially the way Nymph's para worked in LP3 (HPs first, then MPs - i.e. weaker enemies were killed before Sarah got the MPs from them) made it very interesting. Battles in LP3 made me to fall in some kind of "trance" (move, kill quickly, move, move, kill quickly, move, kill for MPs,...), i.e. to a state where I went through the battles semi-automatically. A pretty memorable experience a I've always felt that this is the way a hero fighting through hordes of enemies should feel.
A big problem of this approach is that it's obviously very hard to do correctly, actually, except from a few Aldorlea games, I've never ever experienced this feeling. Another drawback is that it relies heavilly on RNG (Random number generator) and in fact, RNG in RPG Maker (at least in RM2K, I'm not so sure about XP) is not so random. An example of what I'm talking about - run Solitaire in Windows and just hold F2 for New Game - you will notice that although the cards actually only change every new second, not every new game (there are quite a few new games in one second when you hold F2). Why I'm giving this not RPG Maker related example? Because I wanted to demonstrate one thing that I'm pretty sure about - RNG used in RPG Maker depends on time and the frequency of random fights depends on RNG, so the older games without "minimum steps between battles" feature (which is imo a pretty clever idea) were literally unplayable without fighting each step during some hours (if I remember it right especially playing around midnight was painfull sometimes).

As for the visible encounters, they are probably less problematic for many players, it's important to have some "farming" areas though, i.e. some quickly accessible respawning monsters with good enough "toughness/reward" ratio.

Also, I agree with Cassiopeia that there can be both visible and invisible in one game, for example dungeons - visible and world map - invisible works pretty well.
Imo, ideal way how to handle this is in MM, i.e. selection of visible/invisible + prequency for invisible. But if I should choose one I still prefer invisible slightly.

[Indinera]

Does this plot will apply for Little Hearts too, or you already had planned how battles gonna be in the game before opening this poll?

Hmmm it will apply to all future games I may create. But so far, only 7 votes, it's not very conclusive.

[Indinera]

I didn't vote here, because kinda all are OK, for me it doesn't matter, as long as it's consistent, and I know which it is. If it's all invisible, invisible except for the big bosses, all visible, visible except for the big bosses, I don't have a preference.

And maybe the votes are low b/c of Diablo 3 launching.

Ahaha, maybe, that would be funny.
Diablo 3 is visible though, no?

[Indinera]

Imo, ideal way how to handle this is in MM, i.e. selection of visible/invisible + prequency for invisible. But if I should choose one I still prefer invisible slightly.

Giving the choice. Yup. But it's a bit harder and more time-consuming to do it this way.

Thank you Cassie and Tomas for your extensive feedback on the matter.

[shades12]

I prefer visible because it saves time. The first time I am in an area I want to kill all of the enemies. But if I am exploring or looking for something I missed later in the game, it can get very annoying to run into an invisible battle every xSteps. Similarly, when I am trying to level and want more enemies to kill I feel like I am running in circles and cannot find them when I want to. At least with visible, I know how many are in an area and what to do to fight them.

[Indinera]

Thanks for your answer, and welcome!

[darchole]

For me it's the rhythm I develop with the game - I like to plan ahead (again I use a guide), so knowing what is coming up helps a lot. The gorilla (I don't remember the name) in M5 that was a random encounter and it totally threw me off, because I hadn't read far enough in the guide to expect it. However the spider (yeah my memory sucks, what's the name?) in M3 was expected so when I got to, that wan't a problem. The robot in M4 was visible, but I wasn't expecting it to be a big boss, so that was a problem too.

As for as Diablo3, someone in this house is playing it, but it isn't me. How do you hit level 50+ in 3 days???

[Indinera]

in M5

How do you hit level 50+ in 3 days???

By playing a lot?