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

[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.

[Mazi]

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.

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

[Edellis]

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.

PSO sort of worked this way, but in truth it was really quite the same. The main reason Rare drops in PSO felt so plentiful is because 1) Special Abilities were the main draw of the weapon, and 2) A majority of the weapons (And honestly units as well) available in the game were usable across more than one class. So there was actually a very good chance you could find use for the item thats dropping for you.

But in later levels, once you became equipped with a decent set of weapons, finding that endgame "relic" type (or allagan in this game i believe) item was the same old praying to the RNG god. Eventually your bank fills up with dozens of copies of the same weapon you long since stopped caring about. But the most significant reason PSO got away with this (especially involving Alts) is because the only requirements based on level were armors, and MAGs let you significantly boost the strength of low characters.

So in PSO, finding weapons that you could never equip was always a good incentive to level alts, because the game rewarded the commitment of your Main and greatly encouraged the leveling of alts.



tl;dr

Nobody would [really] care about the issue of random drops if gearing/leveling alts was more a matter of what you own instead of what your level is. The armory bonus is neat, it speeds up your leveling process but still forces you to feel as if you're a newbie, regardless of what awesome equipment you have in your inventory.


IMO the armoury should not only provide the EXP bonus, but shave a scaling amount of levels off the equipment you can equip on alts. Say with a Bard at level 50, you have a -15~20 level requirement off all armor of Disciples of War. Maybe less for Disciples of Magic.

[Dark-Saviour]

PSO sort of worked this way, but in truth it was really quite the same. etc. etc.

The reason it worked so well is because:

1) Like you said, gear wasn't just strict stat progression. The diversity afforded by having distinct items with defined traits and special abilities lended itself to being a collector.
2)At a certain point, you could be effective with pretty much anything, so, combined with point 1, it came down to a matter of taste as to what you used.
and the point most relevant to this discussion:
3) Essentially everything had a chance to drop a rare item. So even if you really wanted item X, you could happen across items A through W in the mean time and feel like you're still getting something awesome.

The fact that pretty much nothing came from some 'end-chest' (which would promote speed-running an area) was great too; you could get awesome stuff from normal enemies throughout all the levels.

PSO never appealed to me on the basis of alts; it was all the toys I could collect on my main that made it addicting. And finding a group of others to pass items we needed/wanted back and forth was great. I really do miss the bartering-based community that game had (granted, playing legit drastically reduced the number of people I could trade with).
:-(