Please Eliminate or Reduce A Lot of the Pure RNG Design

[Tarta]

i can only play 2 hours tops daily too me over a year to complete my relic as i stated b4 there's plenty of other weapons available instead of complainin how rng gods have curse you... 50+ runs alone it took me for av zodiac item not once did i Q.Q :P

608 days since Tuesday August 27 2013 - if you were playing since Launch. That's 1216 hours, which is about 50.67 days playtime.

Zodiac were released since December 9th 2014 - that's 138 days ago. If you were working on it Day 1, that's spending at max 276 hours.
Average, 30 minute queue and 30 minute dungeon is 1 hour per attempt at 1 dungeon.
So max max, without anything else in the game, your total could be 276 dungeon attempts for 16 drops. 1 of which was "50+" giving you 216 other dungeons runs at absolute time limits.
That's without anything else in the game.
I do know you have leveled all crafting classes to 50 in the past 5.x months however, so I *know* you have been doing other things than dungeons. You numbers don't add up.
So please, understand that for some, having the time you get to play isn't available to them. They pay the same money as you, and want to feel rewarded for their online time working towards goals.

[Elim]

For the thrills and such? Nothing really thrilling about players farming a Turn for months only to never get the drop they spent those months farming for, while others can walk in and get it in their first go. It is what it is, but that certainly isn't thrilling.

Pretty much this.

I don't find never getting a drop (even after farming somthing for months) "thrilling". And I do give up at some point, so it doesn't really extend the life much.

I've played MMOs where the loot drops aren't so... rng. And the raid content lasted just as long because they have clever systems in place. I'd go into detail about some of the systems I like, but I'm too lazy atm.

[kyuven]

But you also have to consider how many people simply dropped relic quest at Atma stage due to bad RNG/luck. It's 2015, not many people have so much free time and video games market has huge competition. Some people will get what they want even it'll take 1,000 runs... But most people don't, they just lose interest and after certain time quit/switch to something else. I don't blame them, because sense of time wasted can be frustrating.

So suggest a way to keep players coming back month after month but NOT eat up their precious precious time. "Caps" don't do it because they'd still be high enough that those players would complain and leave.
"More meaningful content" is not a proper suggestion in this regard as that's precisely what they try to do with MSQs and new raids, hildibrand, etc. but they simply can't give us enough to meet our demands, especially since as a playerbase of different tastes, we LITERALLY DEMAND MORE OF EVERYTHING.
More quests
Less RNG
More jobs
More races
More dungeons
More open world content
More mounts
More minions
More glamours
More more more more MORE MORE MORE MORE
Keeping up with player demands is nauseating, no matter what company you are.
Oh, and to top it off, everyone has their own ideas of how to make a certain annoying aspect "better" without actually understanding the development process.

If you guys hate RNG so much, then quit playing FFXIV and go play WoW where everything is handed to you on a silver platter. It's so much fun, right? You are literally burned out in a week tops.

RNG certainly isn't perfect, but it's heck of a lot better than any alternatives listed in this thread, and I hope SE sticks with it in raid enviroments.

Actually WoW probably has just as much RNG as XIV, they just hide it better.

[Imoye]

If you guys hate RNG so much, then quit playing FFXIV and go play WoW where everything is handed to you on a silver platter. It's so much fun, right? You are literally burned out in a week tops.

RNG certainly isn't perfect, but it's heck of a lot better than any alternatives listed in this thread, and I hope SE sticks with it in raid enviroments.

[Elim]

If you guys hate RNG so much, then quit playing FFXIV and go play WoW where everything is handed to you on a silver platter. It's so much fun, right? You are literally burned out in a week tops.

RNG certainly isn't perfect, but it's heck of a lot better than any alternatives listed in this thread, and I hope SE sticks with it in raid enviroments.

Not everyone said they "hated RNG", some may simply prefer another system. Not everyone is one extreme or another.

Maybe in your opinion the systems suggested aren't any good - in my opinion there's been some good ones.

As a side not: these forums are largely used for feedback and suggestions. Nothing wrong with that.

[SDaemon]

If you guys hate RNG so much, then quit playing FFXIV and go play WoW where everything is handed to you on a silver platter. It's so much fun, right? You are literally burned out in a week tops.

RNG certainly isn't perfect, but it's heck of a lot better than any alternatives listed in this thread, and I hope SE sticks with it in raid enviroments.

And spam farming a Turn in hope of receiving a piece of gear wont lead to burn out? RNG doesn't prevent burnout, it artificially lengthens content by making you think there is a carrot at the end of the stick.

[Kiara]

Pure RNG is just awful. We need a change to the Drop System:

A Weighted Random Number Generator System. A bunch of people brought this up a while ago, when Atma were first introduced (and the % was even lower than today). Specifically:

1. RNG Drop Rate + Increase Percentage(%) Chance for [Item] drop for Every Successful Clear (FATE, Dungeon, etc.), Until it Finally Drops.

For example, let's say the starting Drop Rate is 1% for an Atma. If you do a FATE and nothing drops, Square should add, say, +2% to your chance, so the NEXT FATE you do now has 3% (Base 1%+2%) chance. So at the most, you'd have to do 50 FATEs in the zone (+2% x 50 tries) to finally get your Atma Stone (if you had the worst luck).

This allows Yoshi P to keep that "Random Number Generator" / "Lottery" feel and grind (ugh), while providing a safety (and sanity) net for Players. So if you have bad luck, at least eventually you'll get the Item to drop within a reasonable amount of time. The Actual Bonus Percentage per Win/Clear can be balanced to whatever feels fair (+2%, +5%, etc.).

This Hybrid approach is the best of both worlds. It's frustrating that Yoshi P and the Dev Team refuse to consider something like this; and just stick with a simple, archaic "Pure RNG Only" system (just keep banging your head against the wall, "rolling the dice" and hope one day it drops). It's awful.

One other aspect to note is that Pure RNG's effects are felt even more severely due to Yoshi P's pure Vertical Progression style philosophy: Gear / iLevels get invalidated every ~5-6 months, so for most players, fighting RNG, they might not see drops until gear becomes OUTDATED, and at that point, it's worthless (just for glamour).

This needs to change in 3.0.

[Purrfectstorm]

I'm not a game developer but won't a weighted RNG system have a negative effect on character data? Like you would have to track every dungeon someone runs to recalculate their new chances? Achievements already track a player's progress in many ways so maybe this isn't a big deal.

On the subject of achievements, maybe we can have more decent achievement rewards as alternatives to RNG?

Anyway it seems difficult not to have a system that isn't some combination of:

- Grind. Do X thing some arbitrarily large number of times.
- Time Gated. You can only do X thing Y times within a certain time frame.
- RNG. You can do X thing as much as you want but you have such low odds that the average player will have to do it many times.

Right now we do have a combination but fairness always comes up. Like "I don't have time to grind such a large number of times like so-and-so" or "I can't log on EVERY day like so-and-so" or "So-and-so got their shiny in 1 run and it took me 607234489 runs."

In my opinion game developers have to walk a very fine line between keeping players motivated to strive for rewards (if obtaining the rewards is too frustrating, players will quit) and keeping rewards special (if obtaining the rewards is too easy, players will quit).

I've been very frustrated with some of the RNG in this game and wish SE would reduce some of it but it's also exciting to have something someone else doesn't (because of difficulty, dedication, or just dumb luck).

I hated that it took me like 300 wins to get the Bahamut card but now I'm at a point where I don't have much to do and there's like 7+ weeks until new content and I'm thinking that really wasn't so bad. It was frustrating at the time because I wanted something RIGHT NOW and doing the same thing over and over to obtain something was boring. But it was also my choice not to be patient and not to take breaks to do other things. I honestly think the current design of the game is pretty good (gear should be more interesting though). I just think that my own habits as a player have gotten in the way of my having fun (feeling I MUST do dailies, for example).

[Galdous]

The game already has a hybrid system. It's tomes which is the answer to bad range. True you are not bis and might be off 1% of bis dps but it is viable for fights demanding gear and that is what counts.