RNG doesn't hate you

[Kanachan]

I have done 350 FATEs and haven't gotten a single atma stone. Does that mean I am lying or making some outrageous claim? No. The only reason why I logged on and posted this is because I have had such a bad time. What the OP doesn't quite understand is that the statistical outliers (or the statistical minority) is quite likely to be the vocal majority. If I finish my atma in a timely manner in 10-20 hours, I might complain about it, but would probably shrug it off as everyone else would have gone through the same. But those of us who are the statistical outliers, well you'll hear us complaining in game and on the forums (and for good reason, there should be safeguards in place to ensure situations like ours don't occur, but there isn't). I even know someone on the other side of the statistical spectrum, he obtained all 12 atma stones in 23 FATEs total and he was never vocal about it.

[ServerCollaps]

I got half my atmas in less than 5 fates. Atma of the goat however, took nearly 20 hours alone. I'm pretty sure it took me 700+ fates.

i dont think you can do a fate every 2 minutes

if it works very well its a fate every 5 minutes, sometimes they take longer or need more time to pop. That makes 12 per hour, so you've done probably 240 fates

[Garlyle]

I've done everything I can for months to downplay how much time and energy I've wasted in this, and I've had seriously depressing bouts of drinking and anger after having long weekends where I got all pumped up and was grinding for 15+ hour marathons, only to receive NOTHING. It's been a huge blow to my pride, my self esteem, and my personal time. Atma has basically given me PTSD for any RNG mechanics at all

You need to just stop then. Again, I'm with you in that the entire Atma system can be done better - but whether RNG or not, if a video game is ever frustrating you to the point of sending you into an exceptionally emotional or potentially self-damaging state, you need to back out. And possibly seek help.

That's not an insult, I'm saying that out of genuine concern for you. That is not a healthy level of response to any activity, whether a "badly designed game mechanic" or your work environment or your relationship status or anything.

[GalkaBikini]

No one was craptalking anime, but even so, Final Fantasy has never been very animeish...

[swordrain]

"You performed 1,000 FATE's in a 48 hour period? Do you have a life?"

No, I did them over several months. I don't even know how many. I just made it part of my daily routine. I just remember because I had been keeping track of how many fates until my 3000 fate achievement was done, and I just knew before I started. I looked back at it this weekend, and realized I had gone 840 fates through that period of time with only two drops. This weekend I only did about 60 fates since I was also running frontlines, and that brings the total to 900 fates with two atma.

...snip...

I'm getting over it, my boyfriend convinced me to give up, and that it was ruining our fun ingame once I realized how much time I had wasted a couple of days ago, we both got really frustrated and angry. We've settled on getting the other 110 weapons now. I'm just the kind of person that is obsessive about goals and my self esteem rides on completing those goals, whatever they are. I said months ago when I finally hit level 50 on all my classes except lancer that I'd do many things, getting a zodiac weapon was one of those things. It's impossible for some people to understand, but I feel like trash now because I failed miserably at what I set out to do. I don't care what obstacles are in the way of my goal. I failed. It's hard to look at myself until I feel I do something to redeem myself of my failure.

[Kydi]

It's safe to say on all of the RNG topics that no, RNG does not hate anyone, it can't. However, it can contribute to a bad playing experience. As someone earlier posted, if we use a likely number of active players you get 2000 people not seeing a single atma
for 500 fates. That isn't good game design.

The OP's initial comment on "ludicrous claims" are somewhat debunked by his own statistics. There is a large enough sample size to see the statistical outliers that the numbers generate, and in my experience people are generally more vocal about the bad than the good, so I'm hardly surprised that there are so many threads and a number of players raising this as an issue

[zeopower6]

i dont think you can do a fate every 2 minutes

if it works very well its a fate every 5 minutes, sometimes they take longer or need more time to pop. That makes 12 per hour, so you've done probably 240 fates

You don't need to complete the FATE for the chance of getting an atma (or Alexandrite, I think) if I recall correctly. It can even fail, I believe.

No one was craptalking anime, but even so, Final Fantasy has never been very animeish...

I find it's a different sort of anime-ish feel with Final Fantasy compared to say, Tales, which is basically what most Westerners think of as anime. I find it's more like seinen stuff as opposed to shounen.

And about people choosing to take this path... before Hunts, it was pretty much the only way to start a 110 weapon without raiding.

[Nutz]

Man, lots of people in this thread don't seem to understand RNG very well. The OP is pretty spot on with most of this, except, as Krr said, there are hundreds of thousands (if not more than a million) people playing, which allows for a lot of extreme outliers. It's just bad business to use a method like this. Sure it will have the desired effect for the majority of the population, but the system allows for people to get atmas first try in every zone (probably has never happend and said player certainly wouldn't complain) or for it to take an indefinite number of attempts (literally never going to finish). Given the size of the population, if something has a 1/1,000,000 (.0001%) chance of happening, it will likely happen to someone. If it's only a 0.01% chance of happening it's going to happen to 100 of the million people.

Even though it's statistically insignificant, it's going to make for a very bad experience for some of your players. As such, there should be caps where possible (ie. atmas can from FATES at X% chance and will definitely drop on the 50th FATE, reset counter at acquisition).

EDIT: also someone pointed out that people tend to notice bad results much more readily than good results (regardless of what might have been expected). This seems to happen very frequently in this game (or at least I notice it more in this game than anywhere else). I can't count the times a FC mate has complained that when gathering they'll miss repeatedly when the chance is 85%. I fell into the same trap for a time and then bothered to actually keep track for a bit and found that while I noted each miss with frustration, the far greater number of hits were just taken for granted and statistically it worked out as advertised.

[lynyan]

No one was craptalking anime, but even so, Final Fantasy has never been very animeish...

are you sure about that.......

[Tharian]

The odds of you rolling 20 1s in a row is 1 in 104,857,600,000,000,000,000,000,000.

okay, I have to actually comment on this one....

"Unless of course you are Luke from One Piece: Grand Line 3 Point 5. In which case you simply pull out your 20-sided die whose sides all have a 1 on them instead of the normal numbers."