Quote Originally Posted by Vivi22 View Post
Quote Originally Posted by blackmage_nuke View Post
Actual topic: does running make me encounter more enemies? I sense it does but i cant tell if its just bias
I'd say it's probably just some confirmation bias. You run because you don't want to fight, get back to the map screen quicker than if you fought, run however many steps, get into another fight, get frustrated because you just ran from a fight, run again, take a few more steps, etc. I doubt running changes the actual encounter rate (my god you'd have to be a real dick to program the game that way), but you are encountering more fights in less time so it probably feels that way.
It's still a possibility, in FFIII, attempting to run from battle drops your whole party's defense to 0 for that battle. So I can see them doing something where running actually increases the encounter rate.

As for actual map running, it does technically increase the time between encounter rates but its because encounters are calculated by how many steps you take so actually running would increase the encounter rate times because you are taking more steps in a shorter period of time, though not running would not actually change the rate, it would just make it feel like it's not as prevalent.