A few things.
The unforgivingness OA mentioned is probably worthy of a topic in and of itself.
But as it was brought up, I would like to touch on it briefly. To my knowledge, and as far as anyone I've spoken with IC is aware, nothing has been added or changed to shorten how time consuming these trips are (there's a certain ring, but...given the lack of the other items that no longer function as they once did, that ring appears relatively useless, since it won't work for multiple people). Maybe there /does/ need to be a quest or some such thing added, that upon completion, teleports you to the start of the Nightmare Temple, Iron Citadel, etc, in the vein of a 'checkpoint'. Yes, this would probably make end-game content easier.
...Is that a bad thing? What's the point of an area, and a 'boss NPC', that a player can go RL years and years of playing SK without ever encountering? Would it somehow be bad for the game if the end-game content was actually regularly in circulation around the game world?
Now back to the topic at hand.
Thuban wrote:
I prefer to think of my characters as heroically battling through waves of monsters rather than walking around every encounter and making it to the final boss with no resistance. If every Super Mario level were just your final fight with Bowser, would that game have ever taken off? I have my doubts. If you could always just look before you move and navigate around stuff, the Dreamscape would go from being somewhat challenging to being a total cakewalk. Would it be more fun for that? I'm not so sure.
The only place it's really possible to do this is 'overworld map' areas. Inside areas (all the end-game zones with 'bosses) tend to have hallways/etc that you can't "navigate around". And it's not like you just get to the Nightmare Temple and then walk up to Ephialtis and fight him. There are multiple, unavoidable encounters in the way, that aren't exactly a cakewalk, numerous scripts, including one that can and will flat out just wipe your whole group for lulz.
Thuban wrote:
My counterpoint is that in tabletop RPG encounter design, party strength is a relevant factor. If one troll would be a challenging matchup for one PC, but there are five PCs in the party, would an encounter with one troll still be satisfying to the players or should the GM scale the encounter up so there are a few trolls?
As you say, modern video games have algorithms/etc for this. But, even in tabletop, there's a very key difference. The GM is actually there, knows who and what the party is, and generally tailors the encounter specifically for them. SK does not work like this. There's nobody there to take into account 'oh hm, this group has less melee damage and is mostly mages, maybe we should tweak the adventure for that'. Is your group a Merc, Barb, and Priest? Fight a unicorn. Is your group a Warlock, Bard, Rogue, and Swashbuckler? Fight a unicorn. Is your group a Scout, Hellion, Necromancer, Mercenary, and two Priests? Fight two unicorns.
I really doubt there's any way for random encounters on SK to ever be 'satisfying', because everyone gets bricks thrown at them, the only thing that varies is more people get more bricks. If your group isn't designed to handle bricks, oh well, sorry, all we have are bricks. Come back when you have the right group composition.
Thuban wrote:
My solution to this on a general level has been to add more rewards for beating the random encounter monsters, as well as more intermediary loot on the way to final bosses.
This has been noticed by people, I imagine, and is certainly a nice bonus for being forced to deal with these encounters. However there are some problems with it as well. You can't locate the things on them. There's no way to tell how many of them there are. I could go kill 10 of a random NPC, and it not drop anything. But maybe if I kill 10 more it'll drop something? Is the bracelet this thing dropped uniuqe? Or can I kill 15 more and get another bracelet? Who knows?
I'm not sure if that's fun or unfun, it's not really either to me. There's plenty of stuff with 'static' locations/spawn.
Thuban wrote:
A secondary reason I have always liked random encounters is that they are sometimes great for leveling. In certain parts of certain zones, you can just walk back and forth and generate encounter after encounter against monsters that can be managed by master or champion characters and level up super fast, without having to wait for area repops. I rarely see people do this, even though it could make for faster leveling than even some of the best traditional leveling spots in some cases.
I can't claim to have the knowledge of these areas and NPCs you do, but I can only think of a couple random spawn NPCs that still leveling people could handle, and the thing is, I'm personally not aware of any area where those 'manageable' ones aren't also in the same space that fytrysks/etc also spawn. Sure, you can level on some of this stuff. You're almost for certain going to die eventually, though, and then need a group to get you back there, which is probably why people stick to the 'traditional' areas, where they know what to expect.
Thuban wrote:
in some areas, it has never been a point of irritation, despite having been there for years.
My 2c on this are that it's because this mechanic seems to have become increasingly more prevalent and is basically the majority of some area's NPCs now. The Wastelands has it, but it's really minor, and there's a kaleidoscope of monsters that are set out on the map. The dreamscape? Would be practically empty without this mechanic. The Frozen Wastes has like 2 or 3 types of NPCs that are static, and a dozen kinds of random spawn ones. (Those numbers are a bit exaggerated.)
For the record, not trying to nitpick Thuban, just trying to offer a different view on those points.