Newbie Rant - RNG

Bit of a long rant. See the TL;DR at the 4th post to get the concise summary.

I've only been subscribed one or two months, and I love the game. A lot of the dungeons are fun, the bosses are spectacular and a joy to fight against, the aesthetics are FF standard - aka, jaw-droppingly awesome. However, one of the HUGEST complaints I have in the game is something everyone has experienced and something SE seems to be obsessed with:

The RNG.

You go to World of Darkness, hoping to pick up some gear for yourself, make yourself stronger. Ten runs later and the item for your class STILL hasn't dropped.

You want to upgrade your Nexus into a Zodiac. So you drop by the necessary dungeon for that drop. It doesn't come, so you go again. And a hundreds times later, NOPE.

You're here looking for some fish - to create a dish or maybe some oil for alchemy. Okay. You go fish. And after a dozen hours and a couple hundred wrong fish later, you say 'F*** this' and never touch fishing again.

And the one that grinds my teeth the most - crafting. Now, I like the crafting system and how involving and almost zen-like it is - getting HQ raw material, then slowly working on it so I can create something I can be proud of. And yet here's there's at least 3 RNG mechanics that totally screw me over - raise your hand if you have steps fail more than twice in a row and totally waste your hard-earned HQ materials as it spits out a NQ product or worse, fails entirely. Raise your hand if you see the condition as Good or even Excellent - only to realize that you don't have the durability to capitalize on it. Raise your blasted hand if you have an 80% or higher chance of an HQ product getting made when you finish it - and end up stuck with a NQ product!

The Crystal Tower dungeons award a heap of soldiery, you should at least have enough for a full set of soldiery gear by now. That is enough for Shiva EX for weapons if you want to upgrade etc.

Also RNG, what else do you expect from a RPG? There is RNG in every single RPG you can think of.

Square Enix, I have no idea what is it with you and the obsession with the RNG, but three words: KNOCK IT OFF. Your overusage of the RNG system does not make things fun, it does not keeps us guessing, it does not make things challenging - it makes things boring, tedious, and all in all, ABSOLUTELY INFURIATINGLY FRUSTRATING. We worked hard to take down bosses and mobs with coordination of our teammates - and yet we get nothing to compensate our efforts simply because Lady Luck wasn't feeling up to it today. We ground for heaven-knows-how-long for HQ raw materials to create HQ equipment - only to have all of our precious materials wasted because the RNG decides to take a dump on our heads.

Welcome to crafting in FFXIV : 90% of success, 60% chance of failure!

(P.S. You can bypass the 1,000 character post limit by editing your post after it's been posted instead of posting 4 times.)
(P.P.S. SE is changing the dungeon loot system for Heavensward dungeons at least, not sure if it will be retroactive for pre 3.0 content though)

Look, I perfectly understand that luck plays a part in determining things - in real life and in games. I get that. However, never, EVER mistake luck for skill or challenge! It isn't! With the RNG everywhere, the game feels like gambling everywhere! If I wanted to gamble, I'd go to a casino or Gold Saucer, not a fantasy MMORPG! I don't mind if you wanna keep the RNG, but keep it restricted to things like monster drops or Gold Saucer events or critical hits - not EVERY. SINGLE. ASPECT. OF. THE. GAME.

TL;DR - THE RNG CAN KISS MY *censor censor censor censor*!!!!



*Takes a deep breath* Right. Sorry guys, had to get that out of my system. I highly doubt the developers will read this but I still felt like getting this out there. If you've read the entire way through, kudo for listening to a noob spit fire and brimstone every which way. Please have a pleasant day

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Originally Posted by Chiramu

The Crystal Tower dungeons award a heap of soldiery, you should at least have enough for a full set of soldiery gear by now. That is enough for Shiva EX for weapons if you want to upgrade etc.

Also RNG, what else do you expect from a RPG? There is RNG in every single RPG you can think of.

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I understand and don't mind RNG in an RPG - they go together like peanut butter and jelly at this point. What really gets me is when the RNG pervades EVERY ASPECT OF THE GAME SO THOROUGHLY. I despise the RNG when it noticeably comes in and makes things tedious and frustrating rather than challenging and fun. It's inevitable, sure, but I wouldn't mind it so much if it was severely toned down so I don't end up cursing it at least ten times every hour I play.

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Originally Posted by Kiroh

Welcome to crafting in FFXIV : 90% of success, 60% chance of failure!

(P.S. You can bypass the 1,000 character post limit by editing your post after it's been posted instead of posting 4 times.)
(P.P.S. SE is changing the dungeon loot system for Heavensward dungeons at least, not sure if it will be retroactive for pre 3.0 content though)

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Cheers for that. First post(s) is a rant on the system. I'm a fun guy to be around. >.> I'm glad though. That'll take at least one of my rants away.

I'm a new player like you man.... As for my personal reference RNG in this game not really matter to me.
Just keep trying until u have what you want, that is my motto so far I'm satisfy even bit slow.
Patience is a virtue. V(^_^)V

I'm okay with some random elements. How they're presented, on the other hand, that's a topic for a whole other debate. A game can be a lot of fun to play, but still have glaringly obvious flaws that need to be addressed. A lot of them seem to be the 'elephant in the room', that is, an obvious truth which goes ignored or simply not addressed. When someone does point it out, people just argue 'it's always been that way' as if that's something to be proud of.

Change can be a good thing, but it's often met with heavy resistance. A lot of people know they aren't getting what they want, but can't put into words what it is they DO want. Change is needed, change is necessary. Only time will tell if our voices have been heard though.

so what do you suggest for WoD? , there are 8 players in your party all wanting loot....how u avoid RNG there? and please dont tell me tokens or another currency , we have enough of that.

Crafting i agree , is frustrating for no reason other than because was created by SE :rolleyes: everytime a crafting fails i hear the sound of my crystal breaking (FFXI any1? :P)

fishing i hate it in every game (well wow fishing is ok , at least there u can choose what u are fishing and is 100% )

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Originally Posted by nuyu11

I'm a new player like you man.... As for my personal reference RNG in this game not really matter to me.
Just keep trying until u have what you want, that is my motto so far I'm satisfy even bit slow.
Patience is a virtue. V(^_^)V

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One of my personal flaws is definitely impatience - I'm the 'fast and efficient' kind of guy and don't like dilly-dallying. I'm trying to work on being calmer and more patient, but sometimes I blow up. Like that. *points up* ._.;

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Originally Posted by Warlyx

so what do you suggest for WoD? , there are 8 players in your party all wanting loot....how u avoid RNG there? and please dont tell me tokens or another currency , we have enough of that.

Crafting i agree , is frustrating for no reason other than because was created by SE :rolleyes: everytime a crafting fails i hear the sound of my crystal breaking (FFXI any1? :P)

fishing i hate it in every game (well wow fishing is ok , at least there u can choose what u are fishing and is 100% )

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For WoD, quite simple: More drops and items per chest - say, three items per chest. I've never had a complaint about Syrcus Tower because a lot of the time, I walk out with something - Oil/Sands of Time, Allagan Tomestone, or heck, even a piece of gear I wanted. That was because there were so many items and we didn't all have to roll a dice so hard over each and every one of them.

Look upon the one true Random Numbers God for He is your Lord and Savior, the Testament to your will! This heresy you so found of is but a child of your own ignorance, a blight upon the realm. Look onto yourself - what do you see there? What CAN you see there? Beyond the RNG? Beyond the grind it brings which you despise so?

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Originally Posted by KenjiChan

One of my personal flaws is definitely impatience - I'm the 'fast and efficient' kind of guy and don't like dilly-dallying. I'm trying to work on being calmer and more patient, but sometimes I blow up. Like that. *points up* ._.;

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Find something you want to focus first ...
You can ask some of your experienced friends for help, some of them can give some advice or tips.
There is always a way and you will find it.

Sad truth is... it is actually much easier to craft HQ in this game compared to other games.

By using HQ mats, proper gear and proper rotations - you can almost guarantee HQ on stuff that is even a 4-star craft.

Then you look at other games.... FFXI, TERA, Aion, etc - you just hit the craft button and pray to fucking god it HQs with like a 1%-25% HQ rate.

If the game lets you HQ every single time, there would be no value in HQ

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Originally Posted by Chihaya

Sad truth is... it is actually much easier to craft HQ in this game compared to other games.

By using HQ mats, proper gear and proper rotations - you can almost guarantee HQ on stuff that is even a 4-star craft.

Then you look at other games.... FFXI, TERA, Aion, etc - you just hit the craft button and pray to fucking god it HQs with like a 1%-25% HQ rate.

If the game lets you HQ every single time, there would be no value in HQ

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I was just going to point this out. HQ crafting with HQ mats, is not really that difficult.

Also, failing a synth (outside of a reclaim fail) is not a symptom of RNG. It's just poor planning, poor cp management, and bad counting. Progress is just a numbers game and even without cross class skills, you should be able to complete a synth if you pay attention and plan.

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Originally Posted by Chihaya

Sad truth is... it is actually much easier to craft HQ in this game compared to other games.

By using HQ mats, proper gear and proper rotations - you can almost guarantee HQ on stuff that is even a 4-star craft.

Then you look at other games.... FFXI, TERA, Aion, etc - you just hit the craft button and pray to fucking god it HQs with like a 1%-25% HQ rate.

If the game lets you HQ every single time, there would be no value in HQ

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Yeah, I get the feeling that's the case. But admittedly, which is more infuriating - just a simple percentage of success with a single button, or a long, complex, well-thought process with multiple RNG processes gunking up the works?

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Originally Posted by Hala

Look upon the one true Random Numbers God for He is your Lord and Savior, the Testament to your will! This heresy you so found of is but a child of your own ignorance, a blight upon the realm. Look onto yourself - what do you see there? What CAN you see there? Beyond the RNG? Beyond the grind it brings which you despise so?

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Liked - Not even mad here, I'm too busy laughing. XD

I think this game still ok, to get the ilvl130 gear is confirm just need some times because of the cap system.
Crafting I cant tell yet because all my DOH & DOL are still lvl 20ish, can't do much with that lvl for the cross skill requirement.

Better gear up your first lvl 50 class for Heavensward then lvl another 2nd & 3rd class for better cross skill.
Thats is my target now, after that lvl crafting for GIL, then use GIL to buy house, then other class duhuhuhuhu.

Play Guild Wars 2 for about 3 months, then re-access the situation you see here. You'll grow an appreciation for FFXIV.

RNG is an artificial way to extend the lifespan of content. Though I'm not a huge fan of excessive RNG, I understand why it's there - so people can't wrap up content in less than a week and then unsubscribe. The only RNG I truely despised was the weekly lockout in coil, having just 1 shot at a gear drop for 7 days was really sad. Pretty much every MMO has RNG elements, heck, even offline RPGs do. And it was much, much worse 10 years ago, like the RNG hell Ragnarok Online unleashed with drop rates of 0.01% for Boss cards and an extremely high chance (99.x%) of breaking your gear when upgrading to +10. FFXIV is fine.

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Originally Posted by Perzeval

Snip.

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The time when you fail to +10....... I scream like hell.

Don't get me wrong, guys - I'm aware that a lot of other games use the RNG to artificially pad out content and some have been very horribly handled, and FF14 is small potatoes compared to them. It's just a small rant from a newbie player who's just a bit tired of having steel ingots broken down or spat out as NQ despite one's best efforts - among other things. As I mentioned earlier, patience is not a particular virtue of mine despite my attempted to correct it, and the rant was just purging it from my system. I wasn't trying to sound particularly whiny or spoiled - just annoyed and irritated. I'm sorry you've had to deal with my complaining, and I highly doubt it'll be my last. But I know it can be much, much worse.

Oh crafting is by no means the worst of the RNG game. Over-melding is the worst.

45% success rate and 7 fails in a row?
24% success rate and over 20 fails in a row?
I've had both.

Over-melding is the biggest pain in this game. Especially when your progression absolutely requires over-melding. You either suck it up and keep counting your fails while having absolutely no way to help the chance, or you give up on progressing any further on crafting (and gathering, for that matter).

Thank the Twelve this problem is getting addressed with token gear for crafters and gatherers in Heavensward.

Stay the course. MMOs do require a bit of patience, but believe me, aside from WoW, you are in good hands with this game. I'm following in your footsteps on this, so i'm sure ill feel the same at some point. The thing that drives me though, is that there are people who have done, are still doing it, and are still enjoying it, so the pay-off is there.

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Originally Posted by Veji

Stay the course. MMOs do require a bit of patience, but believe me, aside from WoW, you are in good hands with this game. I'm following in your footsteps on this, so i'm sure ill feel the same at some point. The thing that drives me though, is that there are people who have done, are still doing it, and are still enjoying it, so the pay-off is there.

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Agreed. I might be ranting, but I don't have any plans on quitting any time soon.

I... just need to regrow my hair a bit first. >.>

It's not as bad as it can get, but the RNG needs to be made smarter somehow. It took me a whole 170+ runs for a Zodiac weapon, while I know people who got theirs in 3 runs tops for each item. I'm also currently at around 60 farm runs (+the weekly lockout runs prior to 2,55) of T10 and have yet to see the Bard Sash. Meanwhile I have a full Dreadwyrm set for my second class, Ninja lol. I can't comment too much about crafting or gathers since I don't do it, but the Pentameld rates seem absurd.

You've only been playing for 1-2 months and you're already at nexus and wod and you're already complaining about rng. From my point of view, the game has already helped you through most of the major rngs. Any more the game will not have any content to warrant any new players to pay for monthly sub outside of the free month they get from account purchase. Put the new upcoming HW content through the same consumability as the game's current state and most of us would be done with the game after 1 week of alex normal open.

One solution is making the Dungeon item rates progressive; on consecutive runs, your chances to get the next item should increase by x percentage until you get your next item, which would drop the rate back to its current 1/9 chance.

For the raid drops I think there should be a token system in addition to the loot chests. Get a token at the end of the run, and need an y amount of them to pick a specific from the loot table. It would make running for specific gear a lot better. I think there's been rumours about HS having some kind of a token system along with the normal drops, but they's just rumours until it gets verified.

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Originally Posted by Kiroh

Welcome to crafting in FFXIV : 90% of success, 60% chance of failure!

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You're giving him too much hope. And those numbers don't make sense. It's more like...

10% chance of Success and 90% chance of failure. Just ask Reclaim. :D

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Originally Posted by ShaneDawn

For the raid drops I think there should be a token system in addition to the loot chests. Get a token at the end of the run, and need an y amount of them to pick a specific from the loot table. It would make running for specific gear a lot better. I think there's been rumours about HS having some kind of a token system along with the normal drops, but they's just rumours until it gets verified.

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http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...=1#post2896991

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Originally Posted by Bayohne

Also, the lotting system for primal battles will change in Heavensward. You may be familiar with the system if you played Version 1.0; it will be a token system similar to that.

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Only for primals, though.

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Originally Posted by Lorielle

You're giving him too much hope. And those numbers don't make sense. It's more like...

10% chance of Success and 90% chance of failure. Just ask Reclaim. :D

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According to the tooltips for the skills, it's supposed to be 90%, but the truth is you have about a 50/50 chance with anything that isn't 100% in crafting, even if it's 98%.

Welcome to the game, i have yet to get the caster Robe from wod since it was introduced and have not got any gear that i can actually use for over 3 weeks now.
I am assuming you had not started Relic before atma rate increase and light increase? Those were complete hell, and yes the Zodiac quest to get Zeta is extremely rng.
Also crafting, like others have mentioned, what really hurts is failing at 98 or so %, like really....
RNG is in place to keep players sub, kind of a double edge sword there though as some people do leave because of it.
Do yes i do agree with you mostly OP
Sidenote i still love this game despite the rng god constantly against me XD

Crafting is the LEAST RNG part of FFXIV. If you're encountering RNG in crafting, you're doing it wrong.

Even if you build a rotation with RNG (which should ONLY be Hasty Touch) you can skew it heavily in your favor by doing like 11-12 and only needing 8 to succeed for HQ.

Desynth/Melding is a different matter - pure RNG and it sucks.

lmao my previous game had far worse range then ff14 hate to see any of the people who complain about range play that ... camped 12 hours a day every single day straight for 7 months just for a skill to drop off boss which was 0.01% drop rate,, jumping between 12 channels to catch boss respawn every 20mins and fighting for drop with others who were doing the same since the skill sold for 400 US$ when i finally dropped it the satisfaction i felt was *o* since that 1 skill turned tanks into unstoppable killing machines that could 1 hit any class

lazy to do the math but guarantee its alot worse then anything range related in ff14... i had horrible luck with range on zodiac drops and didnt complain cause knew i would get there in the end just a little example

aurum vale 45+ runs
satasha 37 runs
tamtara 29 runs

only 1 i got lucky with thnk god was lost city dropped on my 2nd run rest were 5-15 runs

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Originally Posted by KenjiChan

You're here looking for some fish - to create a dish or maybe some oil for alchemy. Okay. You go fish. And after a dozen hours and a couple hundred wrong fish later, you say 'F*** this' and never touch fishing again.

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Which fish? Is it a mooch? What lure are you using? Time of day? Weather? Gathering/perception stats? Are you reeling in everything or only the bites relevant to the fish you seek?

There are SEVERAL things that influence what fish you can get. Not just RNG.

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Originally Posted by Maero

Also crafting, like others have mentioned, what really hurts is failing at 98 or so %, like really....

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98% is 2 short of 100%, and even at 100%, there is still a chance (small) of failing. There kind of has to be, nothing is perfect after all.