I understand the RNG is exciting and all but...

[Kimura410]

i agree with OP. ive been saying this since gold saucer launched. the rng factor that plays into almost all of the content is getting a little old. its fine for mounts and stuff thats basically cosmetic. but when it involves progression of some sort, or your "ultimate weapon", its kinda lame. nothing that will make a person more bitter and resentful to either the devs or their own friends or both, when they farm for hours on end to get something and it only takes another person 2-3 tries to get said item. for me, cards were the big disappointment. firstly, i dont want to do dungeons.trials ive done a million times for a CHANCE at a card drop. i want to play cards to win cards.



not only that, but spending hours on end playing npcs and not getting the card drop is pretty demoralizing. and it just seems theres no real incentive to play humans. i gave up because its not worth my time. a man can only take so much rng dependent grind. the broken tournament pretty much sealed the deal for me. i know its being fixed, but the big picture is that gating things behind rng almost every time there is something to gate just isnt fun at all

[Welsper59]

i agree with OP. ive been saying this since gold saucer launched. the rng factor that plays into almost all of the content is getting a little old. its fine for mounts and stuff thats basically cosmetic. but when it involves progression of some sort, or your "ultimate weapon", its kinda lame. nothing that will make a person more bitter and resentful to either the devs or their own friends or both, when they farm for hours on end to get something and it only takes another person 2-3 tries to get said item. for me, cards were the big disappointment. firstly, i dont want to do dungeons.trials ive done a million times for a CHANCE at a card drop. i want to play cards to win cards.



not only that, but spending hours on end playing npcs and not getting the card drop is pretty demoralizing. and it just seems theres no real incentive to play humans. i gave up because its not worth my time. a man can only take so much rng dependent grind. the broken tournament pretty much sealed the deal for me. i know its being fixed, but the big picture is that gating things behind rng almost every time there is something to gate just isnt fun at all

While I can sympathize on the demoralizing aspect of the RNG card drops when you win a match, that's the name of the game lol. Did you expect the cards to be obtained immediately upon victory? Did you expect them all to be made only available through purchasing MGP? That, btw, would be HORRIBLE if so lol. It was really frustrating to collect the cards I have, but it was definitely worth the sense of accomplishment IMO, especially having beat Rowena and Swift in getting all of the cards they have.

The card drops from dungeons though, you really DON'T need to do them. In fact, I'm mostly proof of that. I have zero cards that only drop from normal dungeons when I was on my quest to hit 60. Meaning I have no Tonberry, Siren, and Ahriman cards. I attempted to do raids for some cards (Hildibrand related and WoD only), but only managed to get Greg and Onion Knight, both of which seem to be fairly decent drop rates. Every single other card I have, I earned through TT matches or MGP. I've got nearly all of the NPC drop ones, including every primal and NPC card from the three GCs, Rowena, Landenel, and Hab. The only one I'm missing is Gaius, as far as NPC win cards are concerned. I don't have Vaan, so there's one that someone could do in short time with a guarantee. Again, with the exception of Greg and the Onion Knight, every one of my 60 cards were from winning TT matches and MGP.

RNG, in general, is a part of the MMORPG genre. It goes hand in hand with it. You remove it, or minimize the occasions that it exists, it's no longer much of an MMORPG. It's the nature of the game, and in fact, the nature RPGs in general. Can they overdo it? Of course. But right now, given how new the content is, I really don't think it's right to make that claim. Many of us have put a lot of effort into it, but we did manage to get 60+ cards already. Was RNG in our favor? Most definitely in some cases. But that's not to say that it won't be in yours today... tomorrow... next week lol.

[Erudain]

snip

IIRC the are only 53 cards you can win from NPCs, 54 if you add Squall (since if you got all the NPCs cards you beat them all).
Yeah the drop is RNG too but at least that's fun (yeah right....looking at you Landenel and Rowena) or you can practice other strategies and you're farming MGP while you're doing it.

But, you're still RNG bound to get 6 more to unlock the 60 allowance.....either pray to RNGesus for silver/gold packs drops, dungeons/trials/raids drops, or win the weekly cacpot to buy Cloud and Nanamo.

[Welsper59]

IIRC the are only 53 cards you can win from NPCs, 54 if you add Squall (since if you got all the NPCs cards you beat them all).
Yeah the drop is RNG too but at least that's fun (yeah right....looking at you Landenel and Rowena) or you can practice other strategies and you're farming MGP while you're doing it.

But, you're still RNG bound to get 6 more to unlock the 60 allowance.....either pray to RNGesus for silver/gold packs drops, dungeons/trials/raids drops, or win the weekly cacpot to buy Cloud and Nanamo.

I double checked after reading this to count the cards and noticed I completely forgot about Sahagin in my list. I ran Sastasha for a friend that needed it for story and I forgot it dropped for me when I did.

You're technically RNG bound to most everything in an MMORPG lol (some exceptions). Truth be told though, after buying so many Gold and Silver packs, Lahabrea is not as bad to obtain as Zidane and Warrior of Light when it comes to RNG and MGP cost amounts lol. My only legendary cards are Squall and Onion Knight still. The likelihood of getting Minfillia and Ultima isn't too bad from silver/gold packs, so at least folks will manage to likely get a couple strong cards sooner than later... I mean it'll take a number of them though (I lucked out with Ultima and Minfillia on my first few packs, but didn't see them again until like my 30th lol).

But yeah, I mean that's how things are. Some of us want to obtain cards through the system itself (this MUST include MGP sources, since that's what the content is designed around... folks can't be fatheaded about that), and I think I'm a decent example of doing just that. I got my Gaius card last night, so I'm at 61 now. There are 58 non-legendary cards that you can obtain without doing any instances (includes Nanamo, Ultima, and Lahabrea). Currently obtainable legendary cards without instances: Vaan, Zidane, Warrior of Light, and Squall, total that to 62 (not including tournament rewarded Lightning). By the end of the next tournament, Shantoto will potentially be available for some of us (again, not including tournament rewarded Cecil). While it's unfortunate that currently, it's not very realistic to get the full 60 through non-instance means alone, it is still possible to do without a single instance. If you don't want to play a really low RNG chance with your MGP through silver/gold packs, get yourself through WoD and other instances for those low star cards. I see them as "alternatives" to the 60 grind.

[Gallus]

And when I thought there wasn't more RNG involved, R200+ chocobo races seem to have an average of 2-4 choco meteors falling on everyone's head every race, I mean EVERY FREAKING RACE TROLOLOLOMETEORS ON EVERYONE...like the winner is always the lucky guy who manages to get a hero's tonic/stamina tablet when choco meteors start raining.

Oh SE...

[Madigari]

Did you expect the cards to be obtained immediately upon victory?

Actually, I kind of did. In FFVIII, you won at least one opponent's card that you captured, and all of them if you locked out the score. I don't see why that had to be changed just to encourage more of a grind and put RNG into something that never had this level of RNG in its original incarnation. You can say that it's the nature of an MMO/the nature of RPGs in general, but there are plenty of MMOs and RPGs that can control themselves when it comes to putting RNG in most every single facet of the game. The proof of that is in that this game didn't have this rule when it was in FFVIII.

[Welsper59]

Actually, I kind of did. In FFVIII, you won at least one opponent's card that you captured, and all of them if you locked out the score. I don't see why that had to be changed just to encourage more of a grind and put RNG into something that never had this level of RNG in its original incarnation. You can say that it's the nature of an MMO/the nature of RPGs in general, but there are plenty of MMOs and RPGs that can control themselves when it comes to putting RNG in most every single facet of the game. The proof of that is in that this game didn't have this rule when it was in FFVIII.

To be fair, I wasn't 100% sure if it was going to be following the normal MMORPG random drop chance neither, but the fact it was definitely fit expectations lol. It's true that they don't have to do that... but at the same time, name one that's successful that doesn't resort to RNG for the majority of its content. Even WoW, for as faceroll as it is, still relies on RNG for a great deal of core things that players experience, including loot/drops.

FFVIII is a single player game. It's an RPG, but not one that aimed to make it mandatory for you to partake in side content. TT was a brilliant add, but it's still just a small part of the whole game. Besides that, unlike here, it's not like the game held your hand as far as pointing you to the right locations that NPCs are (no indications such as an icon). The most important thing too... single player games are designed to have an end lol. They have a certain "average" amount of time the developer expects you to play the game before you beat it (which usually includes any side content). An MMORPG is designed to have you play the content it has for YEARS (namely because new content gets released periodically). You really can't compare the content and design of a single player game to an MMORPG easily, as by doing so, you essentially open the flood gates as far as what one "should" have... which, in reality because of classification of genre, they can't really do without reason.