Just to be clear, random encounters doesn't mean just getting into combat. It could mean encountering a friendly creature, a mischievous one, wolves attacking a peasant and you have to save them either by scaring them off or if you can talk to animals, persuading them, a dryad asking for help or trying to charm you, a goblin patrol, a couple of spider carrying paralyzed victims on their backs and you need to try to save the victims before the spiders escape with them into the Whispering depths...
There are LOTS of scenarios they could develop with lots of outcomes. Doesn't always have to be fighting encounters.
i love dnd5e for its combat. yeah sure you can have other non combat encounter but it can only be limited (and possibly recycled). like in pathfinder wrath of the righteous, the army management events are recycled. yes they did provide a handful or dozens of encounters. but since it's going to be random, it has to be recycled. i'm more interested in the combat and the loot though.
Pathfinder is a rather bad example, random encounters were so boring there and apart from the scripted ones, most of them involved approaching the enemy and waiting for him to die. Another thing was that they were just as pointless. At most, I would prefer the path DA: O. There was some limited pool of encounters (not too big, at least) but when you were done with them they didn't show up anymore (except for the trader who was annoying after a while)
