Far too much RNG in Chocobo racing

[Docj]

I have raced quite a bit and I am about to retire my grade7 chocobo. I think that the racing as-is offers a perfect blend of horse racing and Mario Kart. Sure, sometimes RNG can work against you, but other times it can work for you. IMO nothing should be changed with racing except additions like more tracks, more boosts, stat tracker, and maybe a speedo of some sort. I also think color of chocobo should only be attained through the breeding process; don't cater to the people who cry because they might have to breed several times to get a color they want.

[Honourlessichi]

Agreed,colour changing should be a reward for breeders,don't change this!

[Miste]

1. You need a near perfect chocobo to even have chance. How to gain such a chocobo? By RNG, of course.
2. You are lucky with that, but it's a fair weather chocobo? Have fun. The game will **** you with rain, reducing your stats to that of a 1-star chocobo, whenever it likes.
3. You are lucky with that? Have fun with tons of races you can't win, because all you get are the worthless items, while all those (of course also 4-Star-) NPC Chocobos will trash you around with their lucky picks.

Just curious but what pedigree are you on?

I am about to covering to get my pedigree 6 chocobo and well...I do get races sometimes where I get bad luck but even with bad luck I am in the top 3 spots at the end of the race 90% of the time. I also did not get lucky with covering, I've had 3/5 of my chocobo's that I trained to rank 40 have 1 star in stamina, and then also one had a 1 star in max speed. I also used to lethe water trying to get a good ability but mostly gave up since I kept getting junk like heavy resistance and I end up just breeding later so the ability did not really matter and I did not want to waste MGP.

So...I am getting into top 3 positions with very less than perfect chocobos that I only feed the grade 1 feed to up lower stats and make sure my speed is adequate for the rating (Lower ratings doesn't matter as much but once you get to r100 you'll want to have around 90+ max speed and for r120+ you'll want over 100). Also one my my best chocobos was a fair weather one, I placed 1st very very often with her even though I did get rain 50% of races.

I currently have done 867 sanctioned races according to my achievement. I also currently have 427 1st place recorded in my Winningest Jockey achievement. If you calculate that I have a 49.25% first place rate. So it seems not to be too bad to me. The rest of my % was mostly 2nd, 3rd, some 4th, and the few outlier 5th/6th/7th/8th where I was not paying attention, or got like really unlucky and had 2-3 full duration briars hit me or like 3 bacchus water.

I admit NPCs have inhuman reaction times though and they maybe should be adjusted to be more human-like reaction times, but even with that I don't think the races are too bad so far. You just need to really learn the tracks (treasure box placement, danger areas etc), try to remember what npcs have what abilities so you can, for example, avoid the next treasure box that has a choco aether in it as the second item so the npc behind you doesn't get their sprint back or something. Or for example near the beginning of the race you notice next box has 3 brairs in it or something and all the racers are very close together...employ some strategy about hanging back just enough that people can't hit you with it, then speed up after the danger field is gone. This can apply to any box that you notice has brairs in it, plan to do something to avoid it. It can cause you to lose first place sometimes, but you'll likely still get in the top 3.

Meteor going off too many times is silly though, it should be adjusted that not that many meteors can spawn in a box.

[LandricFrey]

Why are you complaining about something being too powerful when everyone has access to it? Caltrops can do serious damage true, but you can use that same item on other racers too! Not every item needs to be equal when players and NPC's both can use them.

IMO racing should be affected by:

• 33% Skill/Memory
• 33% Time Vested in Chocobo
• 33% Luck/RNG
• 1% Taunting opponents :P

And I think we're pretty close to that right now.

Bottom line: The only things I agree with is that there should be no "meteor showers." Just one max per race and it's fine the way it is. And to increase the rewards for races.

[beanboy]

It takes longer to advance my chocobo rank than I'm interested in racing. This would be amazing if it were something to do while in queue for dungeons and I could just drop out of the race and lose the entry fee (no big deal) if a dungeon queue popped, but that's not the case. Plus, I need to rank up two level 1 birds to level 40 and then breed them 10 times to find my best male/girl pair then repeat this 9 times. Yikes!

Also, when I compare it to high level Triple Triad - which is a TON easier to get a good deck for and that can earn a ton of MGP for each very fast (30-60 seconds) round, the payout in MGP is really low for Chocobo Racing. This wouldn't be that big of a deal, but the prices for food are absurd. A champion chocobo that wins 90% or more of it's races can't afford top flight training. That should be the reward for doing well - enough MGP to be able to train more quickly.

[Miste]

Plus, I need to rank up two level 1 birds to level 40 and then breed them 10 times to find my best male/girl pair then repeat this 9 times. Yikes!

You don't have to level up 2 chocobos to breed, level one to rank 40 then retire it then purchase a covering slip from the npc of the opposite gender of the bo you retired. Just get a G# number higher than your other one, like your starting bo is pedigree 1, so if you rank it to 40, then buy a slip of a G2 or higher opposite gender bo and go breed it and see what you get. I go for G9 because it gives better abilities but you can still increase your pedigree with the cheaper ones as you move up the chain as long as you always get a # higher than the pedigree of your retired bo.

It does suck you cant race while waiting for long queues, not sure if they can fix that though.

As for MGP they said they are increasing how much you get from bo racing, but yes TT is faster/easier MGP right now if you farm imperial. Chocobo racing is more if you enjoy it right now than a grind tool. I am working towards Fenrir so I farm imperial some but it gets boring so I do races for fun since they also give me MGP even if it is a bit slower.

[Aphel]

At the moment whoever is in 1st place has enormous control over box contents (what powerups get passed down). If a Briar-filled box appears, the rest of the clustered group behind him usually suffers and thus widening the gap. He is in control because he has very few things to worry about: Managing his stamina and the one directly behind him. Sprinting all the way can also be a good strategy against potential Meteor storms... gonna get Meteor-ed? Hey at least he's covered the majority of the race.

This heavily favors a sprint-and-pray strategy with Headstart + Dash III. Granted this combination is somewhat diluted in R180+ races because the racecourses are all trying to kill you, but it's still an extremely potent combo.

Meanwhile the racer who prefers a 'catch up later in the race' strategy still has to contend with potential Briars, any of which can screw up his stamina management.

Side note: Chocobo Shock III is extremely potent in higher ranked races. Everyone's going so fast (finishing a course in 90 secs or less) and an item lockout lasting 30secs means you'll be missing 2-3 items.

1. Make a small additional stamina drain to Frenzy.

2. Make Meteors, at the most, once per race and preferably last in an item box.

3. Lower Briar's effect a little - It's supposed to drain Stamina, not totally cripple your opponents and make them feel like there's no point in racing anymore. Putting 4 Briars in the same box isn't a great idea.

4. Lesser chance for Hero/Stamina spawning as the very first item in a box - No point giving extra powerups to the person who's already in first place.

5. Same degree of weather-related stat reduction/bonus for both fair-weather birds and foul-weather ones.

6. Lessen the powerup targeting priority that NPCs have for human players.

7. More transparency and clearer explanations about Chocobo stats - It's not beginner-friendly at all. Does your Choco reach maximum speed in lathered state? How much speed is lost when you change lanes? The lack of a 'speedometer' means you're racing with the foggiest idea of what the heck is going on, and little clue as to how to improve/customize your Chocobo. Oh yeah I fed my Chocobo with Endurance greens, it should help.....somehow.

8. Chocobo controls with more freedom - Being only able to jump or change lanes at set points in a course makes the experience really weird and unnatural for new players. Cunning might help, if people understood its use in the first place.

9. Treasure Box position - Players who have raced for a long time will know which lanes these boxes are situated in, but for the majority of newer players it's just frustrating.

10. Abolish these invisible lanes altogether.

11. Offer basic Chocobo colors in the vendor. More exotic ones can be obtained via breeding - People are going to be spending a lot of time racing with these Chocobos. It's worse if they're stuck with a Frenzy-resistant, Choco Ease, brown and sad-looking Chocobo getting Briared twice a race for like 10hrs.

12. Explanation of Stamina Tax for higher rating races - Races at higher ratings require more stamina. i.e. You can Sprint all the way from start to finish in a Sagolii R80 race with 90 speed, 90 stamina. With the same stats, however, you cannot do that in a Sagolii 180 race. You'll need to raise your Stamina appropriately in order to meet the tax demands. This isn't explained anywhere and players need to adjust accordingly.

[Gallus]

Seriously stop fooling yourselves with the "I haz 40% winning rate and I'm on my P5 chocobo already!".

You can place 1st in R60-R120 99% of the times by leaving the controller on the floor. It doesn't require absolutely anything.
But hey, why don't you freaking try the same exact thing with your so adorable 1 stamina star and fair weather chocobos against R300 where the NPCs average a 75-78 seconds time?

[Miste]

Seriously stop fooling yourselves with the "I haz 40% winning rate and I'm on my P5 chocobo already!".

You can place 1st in R60-R120 99% of the times by leaving the controller on the floor. It doesn't require absolutely anything.
But hey, why don't you freaking try the same exact thing with your so adorable 1 stamina star and fair weather chocobos against R300 where the NPCs average a 75-78 seconds time?

So...you didn't quote me but since you are talking about things I had mentioned in my post I assume you are going off on me with this so adorable anger and hate filled rant. Be rude if you want to, I guess it is your prerogative, but you are just being rude to someone that was just trying to help.

If you read my posts thoroughly I was actually trying to give some help, advice, and some of my statistics about the races I have encountered so far so people could maybe place higher more often. I never once mentioned R300, so your advice that me, and possibly others in this thread, should "freaking" try it with our "adorable" 1 star chocobos was completely pointless.

Instead of taking out your anger on random people in a forum just because you have problems in R300, it would have been better to maybe add to the discussion by posting your experiences with R300 and explaining the troubles you had.

PS. You cannot get in first leaving the controller on the floor, just ask the AFK DNF racers that are in 8th place every race.

[Gallus]

Problem is, someone states that there is too much RNG involved, which there is, at ridiculous levels.

1 star stamina chocobo? No chance.
Fair weather chocobo? No chance.
Trash skills? No chance.
Atrocious chain of coffers with lolmeteors and lolheros tonic? No chance. (for some reason SE loves spamming coffers with hero's tonic and choco meteors inside them, both in the same coffer, giving an almost free win to those who grab the hero's tonic and get away with the meteors while everyone is lamed...yeah...lame).


And then, the average naive answer is...

but...but...but...I place 1st in R60 with my fair 1 star stamina chocobo and my 2 skills are not that decent!

Seriously get real...

That, or either keep going on and eventually face yourself what really is going on further ahead.