Please Fix Chocobo Racing RNG and NPC AI

To start things off, NPCs will gang up against other players. Here's some examples

-The moment you get an item, if the NPC behind you can steal it, they will do so before you can even attempt to use it, and have it used against you. Choco Steal III gives the NPC A 90% CHANCE TO TAKE YOUR ITEM, WHICH IS BASICALLY 100% WITH HOW RNG WORKS AGAINST THE PLAYERS

-When you have something like Briars, the NPCs seem to be able to avoid you way too easily.

-NPCs seem to almost NEVER use items against other NPCs.

-If you have a skill that either makes you have a chance to not be affected by a debuff, or a skill that allows you to CURE a status ailment NPCs will basically never hit you with that debuff, making them totally useless. YOU CAN NOT CURE ANY STAMINA UNLESS YOU ARE HIT WITH THE PROPER DEBUFF, MAKING THEM STUPID SITUATIONAL AT BEST AND WORTH NOTHING AT WORST. ALL OR NOTHING HERE.

-NPCs will try to slow down right infront of you, so you get caught on them and use up more stamina. They are also able to react MUCH FASTER than any player possibly can.

-There's always one NPC in every racing rating that has basically perfect stats. You can hammer them with multiple debuffs, but they STILL stay ahead of you no matter what basically

-Many items are basically useless against NPCs who have abilites that prevent certain items from ever working on them. There are traits to be 100% IMMUNE TO CERTAIN DEBUFFS/STATUS AILMENTS.



The breeding process. Not only is there RNG on top of RNG, but you could get a perfect chocobo with 20 stars who has a TERRIBLE Hereditary Ability.

To quote the game directly: 'Hereditary abilities are permanent. Only acquired abilities may be unlearned.'

So you have a 50/50 chance in getting one of the two parent abilities.

But there's MORE RNG to worry about.

Each star gives you 40 maximum points to any Attribute.
Each Pedigree level gives 20 maximum points to to an Attribute.

Meaning at Pedigree 1 with your very first Chocobo, who has 2 stars in everything, all stats are capped at 100 across the board.

Each parent chocobo has their mother and father's star points to consider when passing them down as well. And those parent their parent's stats. All of which are passed down from RNG.

When you go to get a new racing chocobo that you got from a Covering Permissions, you have to go through MANY types of RNG all at once

Colour
Hereditary Ability (Can't be changed ever, you're stuck with it)
Parent A's Star Ratings
Parent B's Star Ratings


Here's an example of a Chocobo Covering I did today, after spending over 400,000 MGP buying covering permissions

It first picks one of the two star ratings from the Male parent. So that's the first 50/50 chance on what stars it can POSSIBLY have.

Then it picks the of the star values from the Female parent, and their own parentage.

Then it picks one of the two racing abilities, WHICH YOU CAN NOT INFLUENCE

Then it picks the colour, WHICH YOU CAN NOT INFLUENCE, but this is only visual and nothing else (I don't care about the colouring at all btw)

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachmen...82/unknown.png


Here is what I got from that

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachmen...32/unknown.png

At worst my chocobo could have 17 stars. At best my chocobo could have 19 stars.

You don't know what you're gonna get until you bring in the Fledgling Registration at the Gold Saucer where the races are held.

This is what I got from that fledgling permissions.

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachmen...15/unknown.png


I don't care about the colouring at all.

What I do care about is the racing ability, which this one ONLY WORKS WHEN YOU ARE HIT BY THE HEAVY STATUS AND NOTHING ELSE.

There's nothing you can do or buy to increase your chances for one or the other. All you can do when retiring a chocobo is pick which of the two skills they have that can be passed down. Otherwise it's just a flat 50/50 chance on what you'll be forced into.

The fact that your chocobo CAN ONLY BREED 10 TIMES IN THEIR LIFE make you have to be beyond careful about what partner they have during the Covering.

One mistake will screw you over in the longest run possible. My original Pedigree 9 Chocobo had 20 stars but there was no way possible for me to reset the stats I gave it from training. So I was doomed to have a gimped as hell chocobo until I started working on a brand new one. The original chocobo I got to Pedigree 9 with perfect stars was about 5 months after Chocobo Racing came out.

And I've only just started working on a new chocobo because of how much extra MGP I got from the Make It Rain. I started at about 3,700,000 MGP before I started buying covering permissions

I'm at 3,047,272 MGP now. Covering Permission for Pedigree 9 chocobo a 2950 MGP each.

I have bought well over 200 Covering Permissions for this kind of RNG on top of RNG hell. I love doing the chocobo racing, more so with friends. But SE you are making absolutely hate it now.



The last times SE has done anything about the racing stuff is the following:

-Changing how rewards work, so if you finish too long after first place, you're hit with DNF so you can't AFK race. But the issue with that? If you get hammered by NPCs/other players, YOU CAN STILL GET A DNF WHEN YOU HIT ZERO STAMINA VERY QUICKLY

-Increasing EXP gain for your chocobo, making them rank up faster than they originally did.

-Decreasing Covering time for breeding a new racing chocobo from Six Hours to 30 Minutes.


It's about time SE Does something about content they want people to pour excessive amounts of time into, personally saying

One last thing. Throwing away covering permissions is a huge pain in the arse. You have to tick a box for each one you want to toss out, one at a time. When you have shite RNG that keeps giving you most 1 stars, this is what you see.

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachmen...06/unknown.png

I got a chocobo to almost max stats for R60 (100 Maximum Speed, 92 Acceleration, 94 Endurance, 98 Stamina, 66 Cunning) and won almost every race, even against really good players (but most of them weren't good).

I used Choco Ease II, which restores Stamina when you get hit by a speed reduction. NPC do use these on you, but you can make sure you get hit by it by going into the purple on purpose, then restore Stamina.

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-There's always one NPC in every racing rating that has basically perfect stats. You can hammer them with multiple debuffs, but they STILL stay ahead of you no matter what basically

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I've noticed this one but I still beat them, so you just need to refine your technique.

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-Many items are basically useless against NPCs who have abilites that prevent certain items from ever working on them. There are traits to be 100% IMMUNE TO CERTAIN DEBUFFS/STATUS AILMENTS.

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I never noticed that because I'm always in first place and have nobody to use them on.

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Originally Posted by Bacent

Then it picks one of the two racing abilities, WHICH YOU CAN NOT INFLUENCE

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Okay, first, yes, yes you can.

You bred both the mother, and the father.
When you retired them you got to pick what one of the two skills that they have was more useful.
The "FINAL WORDS" is what makes an ability into a fixed hereditary ability.

So, teach a move you want to pass on to both the mother, and the father, turn it into the hereditary ability. 100% chance to pass that on to the children.

I'm going to look over the rest of this... understandably frustrated rant, and see if I can find any other easily overlooked mistakes you've made, or things you've completely misunderstood and missed, hopefully I'll find things that will be useful to you.

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Originally Posted by Bacent

One last thing. Throwing away covering permissions is a huge pain in the arse.

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Given that even a rank 9 covering permission can have 1 star traits, you really, really don't want to use them. Lets call this an enticement to stop using covering permissions as early as you dare. Instead you start your chocobo breeding program, keeping up to 4 breeding lines of chocobo's to combine to get your rank 9 at the last moment.

The thing that completely killed all interest I had wasn't just the RNG, but the way you had to slog through multiple breedings and ranking-ups to maybe, theoretically, hopefully land on your real chocobo that you can actually complete all race content with. Unless SE makes cover cards tradeable so I can buy some top-shelf breeding stock and cut to the chase, I'm not going to bother with the birds again.

RNG and GRIND in an MMO? with the odds stacked against you? shock and horror!

I think my favorite thing with the racing AI is their struggle against floating chests. They jump for chests and aren't awarded items sometimes. There is at least 1 chest on Sagolii Road (earlier ratings) they get shafted 100% of the time. Sure, their use of Steal and Reflect can be borderline cheating, but they also suck at avoiding hazards.

The random stat distribution, on level up, is rather annoying, but I can't really complain. Getting that perfect chocobo with 4 stats capped at 500/500 certainly takes a serious RNG roll. However, getting that perfect stat roll in one try would probably devalue the experience.

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Originally Posted by DrWho2010

RNG and GRIND in an MMO? with the odds stacked against you? shock and horror!

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When I see people complain about RNG (unjustifiably) all I can say is this...

Try farming ICC in WoW for seven years for a mount and then get back to me. :p

But still, chocobo racing could use some work. A lot of work, even. It's not that I have no interest in it. It's just not particularly fun or engaging to set up or participate in as things currently stand.