RNG, Why it exist, why it sucks, and how we can fix it.

Okay for those who don't know what RNG stands for it is Random Number Generator, which is fancy talk for the thing that decides what loot drops.

Now RNG exist for the sole purpose of making content last longer, if we ran coil and beat it once and got our loot immediatly not much incentive to do it again right?

The reason RNG sucks is that because it is in fact RANDOM you could get one guy who gets every piece of loot his first try and then another who will never see it at all.

This my friends is the idea (which by the way is tailored specifically for this game):

So one of the many good things about this game is the Armoury system, you can be any job whenever you want on your one character. You are probably wondering why I brought this up but it will be explained right now.

I propose that Coil drops Tokens similar to how the Extreme primals do, except a little bit different. The idea is that you beat Turn X Y number of times (open for interpretation) until you accumulate enough Tokens to purchase whatever piece you want from that Turn. So let's just call it 3? Clear a turn 3 times and you earn yourself a piece of loot from that turn.

BUT MAZI IF WE DO THAT THEN COIL WILL BE DEAD IN 3 WEEKS!

That is where 2 factors come in. The first being that some turns have multiple pieces of loot for the same job so you might actually need more then 1 piece from it. The second is that you will still want to run coil for *drum roll* YOUR 8 OTHER JOBS! Now Yes you can argue that some jobs share loot or that you don't even care about half of them which is all valid points. However the amount of time it will take to get all of the loot should be long enough for them to spew out more turns n whatnot.

Well that is my idea, feel free to throw in your two cents.

TLDR: Luck bad, Skill good


Oh forgot one thing, some masochist are going to argue that luck is "Fun" and for that I say. Make Coil drop a mount or some housing stuff ya know something that if it drops you are like OH SWEET AWESOME but if it doesn't then whatever.

Edit: With this idea coil will still drop loot as is just the tokens aswell to safeguard against bad RNG.


Edit 1/15: So just skimming through the many pages this thread now has (nice work team) there are some people coming up with some quality ideas:

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Originally Posted by am0n

When a chest is opened, loot roll dialogue comes up. Whomever wins the item, gets the item. When the item is handed out, the other 7 people get a token. For every 8 tokens, you can buy one Allagan item of your choice (Hail Adventurer! Previous groups have come through and provided us unwanted items their group found. We would be happy to trade them to you for the coveted Allagan Tokens of Whateverthefuckyouwantocallit.). This means that if you are clearing all of Coil each week, and get no loot from a chest, you will get one item per week. If you are doing less, it'll take longer, but you'll still get something.

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And then I see others who are claiming that Mythology IS the token system.
And then I also see the "RAIDERS ARE SO ENTITLED GAH D:" people.
and then I see the "takes the fun out of gear if you know you are going to get it" which kinda contradicts the Mythology concept since that is exactly what it is doing.

But anyway as some people have mentioned:

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Originally Posted by Traek

This is one of the main problems with the loot system. Tokens for i90 gear shouldn't be coming from farming WP/AK, it should be coming from Coil for people with bad luck on RNG. Dungeon grind tokens should always be a tier behind the latest raid equivalent. This gives people an actual sense of accomplishment for raiding, instead of seeing every Joe with full i90 just for pressing the AoE button in WP.

If they had made Myth gear from tokens only from Coil, along with Allagan drops, and made CT equivalent token system, we'd have a pretty good system in place. This would make Myth gear actually valuable and interesting, keep Allagan special, and give people options for filler gear (i80) with their i90 pieces. I hope they move to some sort of system like this in the future, RNG is pretty "meh" these days, and should only be applied solely to farmable content; primals are a good example here.

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You sir I agree with completely.

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Originally Posted by AjoraOak

I figured the real problem was the amount of gear crammed into an insignificant number of bosses/turns, it never bothered me greatly in the past with WoW but here in FFXIV when you have so few turns to do... In any case, myth is already the token system and it's really carebare enough as it is that any random person can match a raider in appearance with time even if not BiS. Not that I think you need to be a hardcore raider to do coil 1-4 anyways, only takes 30m a week and it's very easy as it is unless you're just that below average... group wise that is.

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This is also a good point, they have ALOT of drops for such few bosses so that could be making things worse.

I agree. I wholeheartedly and without reservation, agree.

I'm not that lucky when it comes to drops, but, I look like a frequent lottery winner next to my husband. He seems to have consistently bad luck with drops in any game.

I liked the tokens in 1.23 with primal weapons. I really wish they hadn't removed them in 2.0.

I support this idea.

However, you are right, there will be many, many people who come in here defending RNG. They somehow don't think token systems are a good idea and that they're not fair or reward casuals, or whatever their excuse of the day is. *eye roll* I notice they're not clamoring for Tomestones to be removed and the darklight gear changed to RNG ^^

I personally despise the token system. Going back to the days of Runescape, crappy game though it was, I loved its loot system. Enemies worth killing in the world who dropped USEFUL items, yes even a fair few of the low level enemies. Certain enemies had a very low % chance of dropping a very rare, valuable and powerful piece of gear. I personally would rather grind enemies for a month than getting an item guaranteed in 2-3 weeks. I like the idea of scarce rare armor that take a fair bit of time and effort to get, making it an actual accomplishment in the game. Compare it to something like the Relic in this game, or even the Zenith. Kill 3 Primals that are all pretty easy fights, trade in some tomes that you can get in like 3 hours.

Anyways, this is just my opinion and I know it's not a popular one. Personally I don't really bother with Coils, but the few times I have I've been lucky. I think I've been three times and seen 5 pieces of gear for my class, 3 of which I won. I have some friends who have ran coil for 2 months or so without getting a single piece and I feel pretty bad for them

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Originally Posted by TrystWildkey

However, you are right, there will be many, many people who come in here defending RNG. They somehow don't think token systems are a good idea and that they're not fair or reward casuals, or whatever their excuse of the day is. *eye roll* I notice they're not clamoring for Tomestones to be removed and the darklight gear changed to RNG ^^

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Well, I personally go the longer route and go with crafted gear. I bought darklight on one of my characters and it was a bit disappointing. I had capped on philos a few times in a week farming CT for my chest piece and decided to buy my Warrior a set of Darklight jewels because I needed to spend them. I got the Darklight belt and gloves as well, and the pants. It just feels so cheap, in essentially 2 days and without meaning to I had a fully geared ilvl 74ish tank, and my tank was level 25. I do wish darklight wasn't acquired with tomes. I was the person who ran Stone Vigil 30 times until I got my unique weapon for each class I leveled up, and Dzemael Darkhold until I got the armor set. I farmed Haukke Manor for its weapon even after I outgeared it, and same with the first 3 dungeons for the Acolyte's Robes, because they're unique and look awesome, nevermind that I'm level 50 and they're useless to me.

But I know a lot of people don't enjoy this, and SE seems to be going in their direction so I suppose I'm happy for them.

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Originally Posted by TrystWildkey

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Yeah the main excuse for RNG that people like to throw around is "Welcome to MMO's" to which I just think "Soooo MMO's are just going to stay outdated grindfest for no reason other then because of its genre?"

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Originally Posted by peaches

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I agree with you in terms of the relic being kind of a sick joke to get but that is more so the fault of SE for making the primals too easy for such a good item not so much that having to earn it is bad.

I also agree that yeah killing something for a super rare piece of gear is fun at times but that is mostly only for vanity things like Mounts that you can show off, when it comes to gear I just want to kill X and because it was tough and I proved that I can whoop its ass multiple times that I deserve my piece of gear.

I would just like that, a points system option where you got one point for each win without getting any loot in X dungeon, to then spent X points to buy one of that dungeon's loot pieces from an NPC. I feel I'll never get Ascetic's Tights. 10% drop rate, yet all I see is Torturer's Duckbills. If I had received 1 point for every unfruitful Toto-Rak run I had, I would've managed to buy the Tights five times now, at any price.

one week lockouts are BS once i get my CT drop i never do it again no reason to if i need tomestones i just WP/AK.
people didnt want a grind or rng in ARR yet we got it with a vengence now people say they like one week lockouts, now we can grind for nothing once we get locked out.

Tokens should exist alongside RNG; not in place of it.

The good thing about tokens is you know it will never take you more than X number of runs to get something.
The bad thing about tokens is you know it will never take you less than X number of runs to get something.

With tokens + RNG, you get a chance for happy surprises.

That said, I'd rather go with the PSO system of it all being RNG, but everything having a chance to drop a different, useful, and (for the most part) desirable item.

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Originally Posted by Dark-Saviour

Tokens should exist alongside RNG; not in place of it.

The good thing about tokens is you know it will never take you more than X number of runs to get something.
The bad thing about tokens is you know it will never take you less than X number of runs to get something.

With tokens + RNG, you get a chance for happy surprises.

That said, I'd rather go with the PSO system of it all being RNG, but everything having a chance to drop a different, useful, and (for the most part) desirable item.

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Yeah I think Coil should still drop loot just the tokens be the safeguard against horrible luck so yeah you could get your item early but rest assured it won't take longer then X time.

You'll have to enlighten me on what PSO is though :o

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Originally Posted by indira

one week lockouts are BS once i get my CT drop i never do it again no reason to if i need tomestones i just WP/AK.
people didnt want a grind or rng in ARR yet we got it with a vengence now people say they like one week lockouts, now we can grind for nothing once we get locked out.

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Let me give you the other PoV for the lockout.
"Yay I got my one piece for the week! Now I can go do other stuff..." (like trying to win the extreme fights)

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Originally Posted by Mazi

Yeah the main excuse for RNG that people like to throw around is "Welcome to MMO's" to which I just think "Soooo MMO's are just going to stay outdated grindfest for no reason other then because of its genre?"

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You need to think about why you're calling it "outdated". There's no advanced technology or technique to a difference between tokens and traditional RNG. And yes, there will always be games that utilize the RNG system because it's traditional. If the game does not support the token system (currently), then that's just how this game is (currently). It's one thing to wish/hope the game will use the token system, it's another to think that their intended design is "outdated" when that's not even an accurate thing to say. Maybe they want it to be traditional to the genre? As odd of a concept as "traditional" might be these days. Would you consider a game like Super Meat Boy outdated because it just uses archaic control schemes and basic gameplay mechanic? No guns to shoot things with, no flashy special abilities, etc. I would hope you wouldn't.

I can easily get on-board a token system, but I dislike it when people think their ill-informed perspectives on matters are the only way that things need to be done. You're essentially telling everyone in the world, game designers or not, that using the RNG system is never the right thing to do. "It doesn't matter what reasons there may be, if something needs to rely on random chance, your game is a failure." That's pretty much the gist of what's being implied in your (everyones) argument on the matter. So much for creative freedom these days I guess. And just to clarify, creative freedom does not have anything to do with exclusively being related to revolutionizing something.

*edit: this came off a lot more hostile than intended lol. Apologies on that.