90% sucess rate and still missing

When it comes to FFs, I've noticed bad luck, where as in other MMOs I have insanely amazing luck.
(FFXI spent 5 years trying to get an item with a 30% drop rate, eventually just quit the game over it)

Here I had 90% chance, and failed 27 times in a row.

I had 20-36% chance to HQ mats, and failed to HQ all 450 mats. (1 mat per attempt)
Then had a 4-13% chance to HQ another mat, did it 300 some times, and no HQs.

But if I get 60% or higher, I HQ 99% of the time.

Technically there is no such thing as random, and I'm starting to wonder about the algorithms designed to give the illusion of random.

But then again, I could question every other MMO as well.

Ive gotten things to drop repeatedly, even if they have a 0.01% chance to drop, or lower.

(My best record, was farming two dragons call swords from WoW, despite my PT consisting of all sword users, who all roll need against me. Its a 1 out of 15,000 chance to drop, now divide that by 5 PT members, and now do it again. Also, any time i run that dungeon as a sword user, I get the sword.)

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Originally Posted by Claire_Pendragon

Technically there is no such thing as random, and I'm starting to wonder about the algorithms designed to give the illusion of random.

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That's a little sweeping. There's no such thing as random in a deterministic process, and as all computer programs are deterministic processes, they cannot by themselves internally generate truly random numbers. Many physical processes are truly random, and there is specialized hardware available if your application needs a reliable source of truly random numbers (many cryptographic protocols need such; if you are without randomizing hardware, your computer will look to such external factors as the exact timing of network packets and key presses to try and gather the entropy it needs).

Pseudo-random number generators have gotten a good deal of study. Many are indeed lacking, but standards for evaluating them and good implementations do exist. It's not my field, so I don't know the details, but it is possible to do well in this area, although many don't.

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Originally Posted by Ilmoran

That said, most computerized random number generators are actually pseudorandom number generators (they for the computer to do it, there must be a formula or algorithm; usually, it involves a seed value and a function of time from a set reference point), and are prone to streaking, but even out over large samples.

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This really touches on the issue to be honest.

You never get proper randomness out of a computer. Random number computations are based on seeds and each seed can provide differing sets of results.

That said, from my anecdotal experience with crafting (and harvesting) it definitely seems like the game has a tendency to streak to the extremes. There may be something to investigate, but the amount of work it would take to really dig into the number generator would prove daunting for us players (and a cake-walk for the developer's provided they accurate log all of these events, which I hope they do).

You can't prove or disprove something by how the system feels but I can definitely say that the randomness in this game feels wrong, compared to the many other games I've played with random chances being so obvious.

I've said this in another thread, but the alternative is everyone's NQ and HQ drops increase. As a result, you see more HQ stuff eventually sift out all NQ items in the market. If HQ items become standard issue, you might as well throw away any NQ stuff, because it won't be worth selling.

A lot of people start crafting for the extra income. Increased NQ and HQ gathering rates will ensure inflation, especially combined with the increased exp after the patch, which means more people are leveling up DoL/DoH classes.

I think the best solution would be to split the adventuring classes and the gathering/crafting classes, or limit the number of crafting classes you can level up (specializing). It makes it so that people have to rely on other people. This IS supposed to be an MMO, right?

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Originally Posted by Caraway

You can't prove or disprove something by how the system feels but I can definitely say that the randomness in this game feels wrong, compared to the many other games I've played with random chances being so obvious.

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It's been shown in studies, many, many times, that human "feelings" about probability and randomness are inevitably so wrong as to be laughable. Statistical analysis based on hard data or GTFO.

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Originally Posted by Conradus

It's been shown in studies, many, many times, that human "feelings" about probability and randomness are inevitably so wrong as to be laughable. Statistical analysis based on hard data or GTFO.

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Which is why I said you can't prove or disprove by how something feels. It would be interesting though if someone had the time to run the numbers, or if SE could provide them.

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Originally Posted by Meta

That's how probability works.

If someone rolls a 10-sided die and they get to punch my face each time they roll a 10, there's a 90% chance on each roll that I win. But it's entirely feasible that I could be slugged six rolls in a row.

It's seems like an incredibly unlikely outcome, just like your gathering example, but the game (and hopefully the universe) is not looking at your past rolls to determine the next. 1/10 chance is always a 1/10 chance on each swing.

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The probability of you getting punched in the face 6 times in a row is 0.0001%. Just sayin.

There is no way for any one player to observe any 'psuedo-randomness' because the world does not revolve around you. No matter what pattern the RNG may actually possess, by the time you even made a second attempt to gather, tens if not thousands of other players have requested a RNG roll in between that time through any number of actions in this game that require a RNG roll, thus completely negating whatever pattern that may have existed. The only way to see a pattern is if you're able to gather the rolls of every single player playing FF14 at the same time. Otherwise, even if there is a pattern, no single player can ever see it because random players will take your expected roll all the time.

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Originally Posted by Astarica

There is no way for any one player to observe any 'psuedo-randomness' because the world does not revolve around you. No matter what pattern the RNG may actually possess, by the time you even made a second attempt to gather, tens if not thousands of other players have requested a RNG roll in between that time through any number of actions in this game that require a RNG roll, thus completely negating whatever pattern that may have existed. The only way to see a pattern is if you're able to gather the rolls of every single player playing FF14 at the same time. Otherwise, even if there is a pattern, no single player can ever see it because random players will take your expected roll all the time.

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That's the dumbest thing I've read all day, thanks!

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Originally Posted by Caraway

That said, from my anecdotal experience with crafting (and harvesting) it definitely seems like the game has a tendency to streak to the extremes. There may be something to investigate, but the amount of work it would take to really dig into the number generator would prove daunting for us players (and a cake-walk for the developer's provided they accurate log all of these events, which I hope they do).

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Crafting is a bad place to look at the RNG anyway, because your target numbers change so often (one step your success/fail is based on a 90% chance, another its 80%, the next one is 100% chance so you can't even see what number you generated, etc). Harvesting is in general a better place to look at the RNG, and over the course of gathering a few hundred items, I usually see the rates come out to their expected outcomes (again, RNG is streaky, but in large samples comes out correct).