Encounters, Encounters, What to do?

[Slothy]

Designing dungeons like the pre-rendered worlds of FF7-9 would be utterly impossible if you had to have fights actually take place on the world map. Once again the intricate dungeon designs of FF4-6 would have had to give way to more open spaces to accommodate the battles.

I have to disagree with the idea that on map battles have to give way to open spaces. Taking FFXII as an example, it certainly had it's fair share of wide open spaces, especially in what could be considered the world map, but it really had just as many narrow passages and enclosed spaces. And with a game like that there's no reason they can't have both really since you really only need to give the player enough room to run from battle and be able to see most of what's happening. Spacing and distance weren't really that important in FFXII.

And again, there's no reason that enemy encounters and the battle system can't be tailored to a certain dungeon design style. There's no reason to just assume that on map battles can only take place in wide open spaces other than that's something that's been done and stick's out in people's minds.