Yoshi P, is this what you wanted? (Terra Branford Blues)

[Gallus]

snip

What Kiara has proposed is a very good idea. Read what he posted. Also, I'm not saying they should completely remove the RNG factor out of the game, what I'm saying is that it is not right that 90% of the relevant things in this game are heavily RNG based. Think about it:

1 - Relic quest? Brutal amounts of RNG.
2 - Raiding? Fair amounts of RNG (you know, loot).
3 - Master crafting? Fair amounts of RNG (basically, hasty touch, tricks of the trade and rapid synthesis).
4 - Big Fishing? LoL.
5 - Triple Triad? Random rule, chaos rule and horrendous drop rates from both NPCs and battles.
6 - Vanity items such as ponies? RNG again.
7 - Chocobo racing? A pokemon + laggy mario kart mix. RNG as its finest.
8 - Even freaking gardening has a slight aomunt of RNG involved.

Mining and botany are the only two relevant things of the top of my head that do not involve RNG.

[Chek]

MY LIEGE.

Glad you finally got it, at least. I know I ran with you a few dozen times and still haven't gotten mine.

But then again I'm starting to login every day and not get any of my goals done. especially when it comes to card drops and zodiac drops. I don't mind RNG, I usually love it, but I'm feeling severely overwhelmed by it lately.

[Welsper59]

That's really unfortunate :/

I gave up on triad simply because I just found chocobo racing way more fun (it has its own fair bit of annoying rng, but nothing like this).

Just hearing about all the farming some people need to do to get their cards then thinking back on all the rng drop rate crap I dealt with during my relic and I just nope'd out of triad.

I'm far from one of those people that need to do things immediately. That is, if it involves a lot of raids/DF to get said thing lol. I gave the Terra/Bartz attempts a few days (maybe a combined total run of 50 times), then just said **** it. I know how this stuff works, so I'll eventually see it from potential nerfs or an ease of access to the RNG (e.g. being high enough level to solo, assuming such a thing were possible). Likewise, I really don't care that much to bother. My only long term goal for Triad was to hit the 60 card limit and obtain certain cards for use (like Scions cards). I'm perfectly fine with solo grinds, which is exactly how I got all of my cards (besides Onion Knight, Sahagin, and Greg), just really don't care for group ones in the case of the cards lol.

[JayCommon]

For those in this situation, I'd recommend against trading in your stack of cards for MGP until after 2.55. MGP rewards are being "adjusted" in 2.55, and cards may yield more after the changes. They certainly won't yield less!

Heh,

I have about 400 Livia/Rhit cards combined ~190 Nero cards, 1 Gaius, 6 Odin cards (helped some friends with the run), and ~3 Ultros/Typhon cards (because I'm sadistic and actually like that Trial even though I got Terra after about 60 runs....I like saving the run when DPS doesn't do it right).

I shared the exact same thoughts as you as soon as I heard about the adjustments. If they don't increase, they absolutely won't be worse. MGP either way

Grats OP, I definitely encountered you a few times during your trek to Terra. Glad you can put that nonsense behind you. May you inherit the luck I had for Bartz if you don't have it yet. Only needed to run Big Keep about 20 times.

edit:

Mining and botany are the only two relevant things of the top of my head that do not involve RNG.

88% chance for unspoiled node landing, 0/6 items gained

[Welsper59]

What Kiara has proposed is a very good idea. Read what he posted. Also, I'm not saying they should completely remove the RNG factor out of the game, what I'm saying is that it is not right that 90% of the relevant things in this game are heavily RNG based. Think about it:

1 - Relic quest? Brutal amounts of RNG.
2 - Raiding? Fair amounts of RNG (you know, loot).
3 - Master crafting? Fair amounts of RNG (basically, hasty touch, tricks of the trade and rapid synthesis).
4 - Big Fishing? LoL.
5 - Triple Triad? Random rule, chaos rule and horrendous drop rates from both NPCs and battles.
6 - Vanity items such as ponies? RNG again.
7 - Chocobo racing? A pokemon + laggy mario kart mix. RNG as its finest.
8 - Even freaking gardening has a slight aomunt of RNG involved.

Mining and botany are the only two relevant things of the top of my head that do not involve RNG.

While too much RNG can be bad, and what Kiara posted is going in the right direction to alleviate some stress of RNG (though the % adjustments might be high in what was suggested), pure RNG formats are necessary for an MMORPG. Players, including you it seems, don't understand the relevance behind it. If every single thing about the game can be planned ahead, any sense of "random" or "RNG" becomes irrelevant. Imagine if you had to do things like the books for Animus on every single facet of the game. You know how boring that is? LOL.

Do you really believe people would enjoy the grind more if they knew they would get said item at this exact moment latest? It's literally no different than saving up gil, MGP, tomes, etc to buy something, besides the fact there's multiple ways to obtain currency. Yay I bought this thing... now to just completely ignore the fact there was very minimal joy in obtaining it. During, at least, the earlier onsets of content, RNG plays the role of prestige and value. Do you really think people would care if Fenrir were an easy to obtain mount? It'd be treated no different than the Behemoth mount (or any other easily obtainable thing). Winning that lotto (or putting in the absurd amount of dedication to get 1mil in such a short span of time so far) is purely for the sense of being unique. RNG (or that diehard dedication) makes you stand out above the rest for a little while.

Again, RNG is pointless if you can predict a way to beat it (e.g. being guaranteed a reward after X amount of time). Thus saying, if it's pointless, then there's no need for it... which means it's no longer an MMORPG (or an RPG in general). They could always remove the boredom of the books by making it faster to complete (i.e. less of a grind), but then things become faster to obtain. Then what? Bored to death due to nothing to accomplish. Not to mention that you'd be raging if you did have the worst of luck in getting to your guaranteed reward (which means you're raging in a similar fashion to how it is now). Think about how it is with people bitching about speed runs or instances taking too long to finish. You already anticipate how long something should take... but oops, a wipe or group aren't moving as fast as you like, so /ragequit. Trust me, it doesn't matter what system they choose to go with... the same problems will still be there. It happens Every. Single. Time. It's just a different target to complain about.

[Shake0615]

5 - Triple Triad? Random rule, chaos rule and horrendous drop rates from both NPCs and battles.

Don't forget the Bronze, Silver and Gold packs. What a freaking waste of MGP.

[Nova_Dresden]

It just wouldn't be FFXIV without RNG.

Just because something bad exists doesn't mean it should. Pure RNG based gaming can and usually will destroy the player's desire to play the game instead of finding something else to play which lowers your overall profit from losing subscribers. Zanarken hit the nail on the head.

From the programmer's perspective it is a consistent random formula because when you look at ALL PLAYERS drop rates, there is a clear pattern and enough drops are happening per hour (or whatever criteria they are using as the barometer) that the devs feel the system is balanced.

A pure RNG sytem relies heavily on the law of large numbers where when thousands or millions of players are grinding something the overall drop rate for the item falls in line with the intended drop rate averaged across all players. This however causes a problem where you end up with a decent sized group of players who fall outside the standard deviation and have a drop rate of 0%. This is where safety nets and timers come in where if the RNG doesn't pay out as expected within the time determined to be fair the rate steadily should increase until reaching 100% and providing you with your item. FFXIV has none of that and you are completely capable of never getting a drop ever if the game just doesn't like you.

Do you really believe people would enjoy the grind more if they knew they would get said item at this exact moment latest?

Absolutely. I've never seen anyone complain about books, light grind, or mahatma anywhere near as much as Atma and dungeon "atma". What I actually heard instead as a huge sigh of relief on both parts that the next phase was quantifiable and plannable. Pure RNG is absolute crap and defending it is just as dumb.

[Madigari]

Just because something bad exists doesn't mean it should. Pure RNG based gaming can and usually will destroy the player's desire to play the game instead of finding something else to play which lowers your overall profit from losing subscribers.

Well, I think I said just that in the rest of my post, but, just to clarify, I agree. I might not have started farming Terra yet, but I have my own RNG headache with the Moggle Mog XII card.

[Welsper59]

Absolutely. I've never seen anyone complain about books, light grind, or mahatma anywhere near as much as Atma and dungeon "atma". What I actually heard instead as a huge sigh of relief on both parts that the next phase was quantifiable and plannable. Pure RNG is absolute crap and defending it is just as dumb.

They're not complaining about it because it's the oddball of the process. You're really not looking at how the process itself is because you're comparing it to things that are approached differently. You have to compare it to maybe tome gear or acquiring gil. Trackable resources that are used to getting these things. Then apply how you get them. Believing people enjoy the books for what they are in general is really ignorant and very biased. Even your mention of the lights falls into this perspective. How many people ENJOY (keyword there and one that you apparently replied to) the process? Your happiness while you grind to the goal is no different than it is while you grind through RNG. Enjoying something is not the same as thinking something is easier. Huge difference there. The only defining factors is that you know there is an end when there is no RNG... doesn't mean you're enjoying your time to it though (again, no different).

Again, as I pointed out in the earlier reply, just look at dungeon runs and how ridiculous people become about negatively looking at an instance taking 1 minute longer. About how long it takes to get MGP, a trackable resource. About the cost of housing, a trackable goal and resource (gil). The complaints/boredom/anger/etc that sparked RNG hate is still there, it's just redirected. I guess there's honestly no point to convincing people why a system exists when all they care about is their own satisfaction and how their own impatience is causing a clear sense of bias. One could argue defending the existence of RNG as being selfish, but those arguments aren't ignoring what category/genre of game we're talking about here. Nor is it ignoring the business side of things (the sole reason the game even exists). Mind you, again, as I said, there can be too much RNG involved, but that depends on the time allotted for the content to exist and the future prospect of nerfs in an MMORPG.

[Madigari]

I don't think the point was ever that the grinding content such as the Atma->Animus books was enjoyable, just that it and the other quantifiable steps were more enjoyable than the purely RNG elements to the quest in comparison, such as the dungeon drops Nexus->Zodiac steps.

But either of those are really beside the point. The sheer fact of the matter is that there's ways to make people enjoy a game, even an MMO, without over-reliance on RNG. I mean, I was looking forward to Triple Triad as a relaxing, minimal RNG way to enjoy the game, the minimal being restricted to the randomness of the card packs and the rules. But they couldn't even do that right. They had to inject artificial methods of making people grind old content, and I mean grind. I got my Zodiac with far less hassle compared to the Moggle Mog XII card. That makes absolutely no sense, especially for something that's supposed to be a fun, enjoyable minigame.