I think Im kind of in between. being able to see your enemies is good when you dont want to mess with lesser enemies when wanting to travel from point A to point B as quickly as possible. On the downside I would say Im skipping more battles instead or saying F*** it might as well fight it out because it dragged me into this thing. as a result my characters I feel are weaker.  
 
So are you guys for or against random encounters?

I actually love this feature in DQ IX.  Being able to see and, most of the time, choose the enemy you want to fight is awesome especially when your trying to get an item such as a wing's bat to alchemise.  I like how you will know whether or not your at the right level to be in an area by the way the enemies react to your presence.  Being able to see what your going to fight and having a choice whether to battle or run has made grinding much more entertaining for me.  

This has been done in other games. Nothing really new. But I per fur it to " random" encounters when " random" means every 5 steps 

It sucks when I want to get from point A to point B in a dungeon without being constantly attacked by monsters, and using MP/items to heal. So, I'm mainly for it. But sometimes I just cockily avoid encounters because you CAN, and that hurt me in the long run.

I prefer no random encounters, and it's what killed DQVIII for me personally. A world that huge doesn't benefit from the same "every few steps" philosophy. :(

Good all the way of course, I HATE random encounters, back in the day we had no choice, pretty much all JRPGS were like that, then came chronno trigger and secret of mana showing how it's supposed to be done (don't know if those were the very first to abolish random battles, but at least for me they were), and I never looked back.

It's pretty spectacular. I hate most JRPG's for the whole Random Battle element but this makes it tolerable.

I think having no random encounters is great when it's combined with good dungeon design, which I feel Dragon Quest IX does pretty well.  It's nice that DQ IX allows you to see and pick your battles, but the designers were also smart in using large enemies, very fast enemies, and small, well-placed passages to 'force' people into battles without making them random. 
While it's easier from a technical standpoint to use random battles, it seems that it's much less frustrating to a casual player when it 'seems' that you're choosing your battle.  The best video games always make players feel empowered, while still leading them along; this philosophy can also be said about using non-random battles.

It worked fine for the most part. Still, enemies would pop out in narrow corridors, so it often made it difficult to proceed without touching the enemy. Also, I never understood why the game doesn't pause when you're in the item and spell menu healing your party. 

" I think having no random encounters is great when it's combined with good dungeon design, which I feel Dragon Quest IX does pretty well.  It's nice that DQ IX allows you to see and pick your battles, but the designers were also smart in using large enemies, very fast enemies, and small, well-placed passages to 'force' people into battles without making them random. While it's easier from a technical standpoint to use random battles, it seems that it's much less frustrating to a casual player when it 'seems' that you're choosing your battle.  The best video games always make players feel empowered, while still leading them along; this philosophy can also be said about using non-random battles. "

Random encounters suck. Period.

" It worked fine for the most part. Still, enemies would pop out in narrow corridors, so it often made it difficult to proceed without touching the enemy. Also, I never understood why the game doesn't pause when you're in the item and spell menu healing your party.  "

" Random encounters suck. Period. "

Persona games did it better. It sometimes still feels like there are random encounters when the enemy warps in right beside your party.

It's really annoying how sometimes an enemy will appear right on top of you while you're in the menus healing, especially since my RPG instincts cause me to heal right after a battle. But other than that it's a great system. Hunting rare monsters like Metal Slimes is made less hair pulling as well. I hope to see it become a series standard.

I'm all for random encounters in moderation. It used to be so annoying in some games when you would walk every five steps and have another tedious encounter that took longer to load then to complete. Depending on the type of game random encounters or encounters you can avoid both have pros and cons.

Random Encounters were nothing but a system limitation that should have died a long time ago. I have always hated the "every few steps" rules in earlier RPG's

Edit: Wanted to mention that the Mother series handled encounters better then I have ever seen in a game. No random encounters and if you very clearly were overpowered for a weakling monster then the game would bypast the fight and let you keep going on your way.

Random encounters are, at best, tolerable. I can't even imagine a situation in which I would find them beneficial to a game.
 
EDIT: Godammit. Necro-thread.