Quote Originally Posted by Talakeal
It's not a "classic" random encounter because it has a defined presence and location at all times rather than being generated out of the ether on the spot when rolled off of a table of potential encounters.
Classic random encounters emulate motion of wandering monsters through a location, as explained earlier.

An enemy random walking through a location gives a probability spread for its possible locations that is always equivalent to some table. So these things that you think set them apart don't make much of a difference, the largest difference is rolling a small number of times against the overall probability (when using a table) versus rolling a whole lot of times.

Quote Originally Posted by Talakeal
I figure its because they don't pay attention to my descriptions and play a lot of shoddily coded video games.

They do, however, have a point. Once I have established the existence of an NPC, they have to account for the existence of that NPC. The same can't be said for a blank spot on the map.
They're still drawing a faulty conclusion from their own point. In any case, if they can't figure out your game is not like other games they play, they will continue to suck. You can't do much about it, since they are bad at taking advice from you, and they will likely complain until you cave in and make your game more like other games they play.

Quote Originally Posted by Talakeal
IMO it is tactically wrong to choose certain death over an unknown and morally wrong to bully a new player into sacrificing their character for you.
Your opinion is just wrong, then. Death wasn't certain, because a number of characters survived, and this had to be reasonably transparent for your players since they were angling for that sacrifice. So in order for the unknown third path to be appealing, it didn't have to beat "certain death", it had to beat "only one person dies". But nothing you've told of the situation gives us that, since the value for an unknown path includes estimated possibility of more opponents (as your players observed) or another dead end.

Which leads us to a reoccurring topic: your players might not be great tacticians, but odds are decent neither are you. You've expressed desire to see more "rational self-interest" from your players, but it's possible your idea of how that would even look like is skewed, so it's dubious if you'd even recognize it on sight.