Games

The annoying thing is, the problem with this from a design perspective was well known and there were already some efforts to improve upon matters as early as the SNES era. Both Chrono Trigger and Earthbound leap to mind. It's just that following this, most developers forgot to learn a lesson from these for another decade or two.

In Earthbound, all non-story, non-boss encounters are visible on the overworld and you can either:

• Avoid them entirely with some foresight and skill
• Get a backstab advantage if you manage to maneuver yourself behind the enemy, or
• Instantly win the battle if your level significantly exceeds that of the enemy
• Battles can be auto-fought with the computer controlling your party if you are e.g. trying to eat a sandwich at the same time or something

In Chrono Trigger, most trivial encounters can be avoided, with some scripted exceptions that always initiate when you cross a certain area presumably to prevent players from completely avoiding all combat entirely and subsequently getting their asses stomped by the bosses. Chrono Trigger's overworld map also features no random encounters whatsoever. You can wander the world freely and will only encounter monsters if you actually enter a location.

I harp on this a lot, but only because it's true. Despite its faults, some of which it definitely has, Chrono Trigger had some incredible design innovations and was easily the high water mark for JRPG design not only for its time, but even compared to subsequent games for a long time -- maybe even still to this day.

• Many trash mob encounters can simply be avoided if you can't be bothered or are low on resources
• Those that can't can usually be wiped in a single move if the enemy is far beneath you via double/triple techs
• Encounters happen on the screen you're already on, so you don't get disoriented after the battle ends
• Positioning on the battlefield matters for techs, making fights more interesting than the usual you line up on one side/they line up on the other side method...
• ...However, positioning on the battlefield absolutely does not matter for single magic spells or melee attacks, meaning you never get completely screwed by how the chessboard is laid out
• You can walk diagonally (seriously, the inability in even much later games to do this bugs me to no end -- Pokémon, I'm lookin' at you)
• If a non-story-critical NPC is yammering at you and you can't be bothered, you can just walk away even when the text box is still open
• Not only can you rearrange your party however you want including not putting the protagonist at the head of the conga line (and even being able to remove him fully, after a certain plot event), but which combination of party members you have actually matters for techs and not just a perpetual case of, "I need one tank, one caster, and one healer" like prior/later games
• The entire concept of the New Game+ is called what it is and works how it does because of how Chrono Trigger did it
• You can fight the final boss pretty much any time as soon as you learn about him, and if you get your ass whooped trying that's on you

Etc.

Apparently the Chrono Trigger devs originally planned to give the player even more freedom but several additional concepts such as being able to freely position your fighters on the field were cut due to time constraints and not being able to figure out a sufficiently elegant way to do it on the SNES hardware and controller.

That's a good point. Trivial encounters feel like a grindy and annoying waste of time. I guess it doesn't necessarily have to be that way though.

I also think Final Fantasy falls too much on the old turn based choose from a menu, watch a cut scene system, when there was room for something more interesting. That's just taste though I guess. I haven't even played any other than Final Fantasy I and Tactics Advance maybe they changed.