RNG and luck or, how to lose motivation by trying to make overall progress

[Alexandre_Noireau]

For a game which strongest feature is the armory system - all classes in one character it has an amount of unjustifiable grind and content elongation through timesinks.
Yes, MMORPG have to make their content last and last, but there are much better ways to incentive this than merely locking things behind low drop rates, RNG progression and grinding in general: Replayability, Progressing goals, achievements, challenge modes, etc.

This is by far the game i see the best candidate to break the mold in terms of "MMORPGs have to have grind", which has been the estandar for way too long and has put the genre as a whole and gave it it's stigma of "only for people with too much free time".

I would literally cut all the grind in half at the lowest, and some even further. Some rewards need to stay rare, but what is relevant for gameplay purposes and overall performance, should be much, much faster to acquire. Specially stuff like tomestone gear (which in stormblood had the first set basically for half the usual price and was so much better) and relic related stuff, even raid gear, should have some sort of "player only" drops that guaranteed a drop at every single instance and not just the weekly one at the end of the set of trials. Yesterday i ran 8 Omega runs, all i got was a single bolt, that is not fun.

Being able to gear up multiple classes faster enforces replayability, less grinder content reinforces enjoyment, people should be rewarded for participation and their skills at different play sets, not because they lucked out or throwed endless hours into something.

Just ask how many people had actual fun finishing their relic, and then ask them when they are starting the next one. The game needs to address this: Gearing up one class should be a matter of days/week, not weeks. Gearing all classes shouldn't take more than month and a half, giving players time enough to actually enjoy their rewards making them much more worthy of obtaining, and replaying content to acquire more for more classes. As game, this has literally everything it needs to stop being a grindy mess and become a player regulated progression game, where is the player who decides it's pace and not the weekly lockouts, constant tomestone grinding, weekly drops, RNG... Let players be rewarded by their skills and completion of challenges, not by a random factor.

As for the negative: Some people would burn through the content, honestly, i see this as more of a upside: First off all, most people that do get left without content to do are being dishonest, at this point is quite literally impossible in this game to run of stuff, there are achievements and rewards and progression everywhere, they are just not interested in those because the grind for their main classes and optimization already spent most of their game time, so players kinda focus on one or potentially 2 main activities, while they relegate the rest of the game to the background, and further, many of them don't even play certain features or explore other possibilities, there is people that level classes but never gear them and is not because they lack the motivation to do so but they lack the time and focus.

Also, there is actually people that DO most of the content the game has to offer and like, i knew one who got all his relics for all his classes at the beginning like, right in a month or something like that (Also completed like 7 zodiacs in total during its PATCH)... Yeah, there is that kind of people, and the game shouldn't be designed in any form, shape or color around them, they are literally "unsatisfiable" as they are people with little to no responsabilities and unhealthy amounts of free time.

In the end, a change like this would do far more good than bad, many players would come back (i do know quite a few that would if they had faster gearing) many more would experiment with other classes, options would open for everyone, instead of grinding through content to gear one class, multiclass gearing would become something, people would expand to other areas of content, give it enough rewarding goals, progression bars, strictly coded player paced progress through all the game and people would do it, and probably repeat it if its rewarding enough which would also help with the massive amount of dead content we have.

The game is kinda built around the multi-class feature, yet it progresses as if players had 1 or 2 classes... It's contradictory.
People after a duty should say: "Great, i got what i wanted, now for the next goal!" instead of saying: "Im glad thats over, i'm not touching this quest/duty/fight/trial/raid again".

If people geared up faster, it would also mean more people would be able to tackle more challenge, it's been said plenty of times that people that do raid and harder content are few and i believe a huge culprit, more than the difficulty curve (or lack of it) is the gearing progress and that they also play other content, and i really don't understand that rationale, why would someone had to sacrifice time between activities just so they appear to be "worth" based on timesinking alone instead of skill or learning? Faster gearing means people have more time available to try the rest of the game outside the grind cycle. Faster gearing means rewards are instantly more meaningful as they can be used and they don't get "outdated" as fast and that is also a massive issue, most rewards today will be irrelevant next patch/expansion, converting all that time invested in time wasted.

Yes, the threadmill cannot stop, we know it, but it should definitely slow down quite a notch. There is no logic in months worth of grind for gear that will be replaced weeks after. Most of the people i play with usually finish their grinds after the next patch.

Let players choose, if someone wants to get all 15 gear sets of X raid in 3 months, they should be able to. If someone wants to just quickly gear up 1 class because it's their priority and then tackle new content with their gear, they should be able to. Right now rewards are just too slow, too random or too short lived and some are all 3 at the same time, and entering 2019 that's not good anymore... Even by MMORPG estandars, especially in a MMORPG that has such a strong multi-class system and massive amounts of content waiting to be replayed and revisited for achievements, glamours, pets, mounts, challenge, etc. that could use faster and more meaningful, player controlled, progression. Reward players for playing, not for time wasting, be respectful of our time. And yes, i know this sounds as if i wanted "everything given away", but honestly, i do have a job already and sinking 2 hours of my free time to not be rewarded is not exactly making me feel like touching this game for next 3 days or so and i believe is a sentiment many of the players that are right now unsubscribed to this game would share.

"Man, the game is good, is pretty and the world and story are cool, but i cannot do it man." I've heard it way too often as a way to describe why they don't play.

Slow down the mill, release the drops, soft up on the RNG, promote replayability, give more achievements, more goals, let players progress as they want and not as the threadmill demands, let them explore the world beyond their lockouts. I bet most people would be willing to re-do fights just for the fun of them if the grind wasn't so nauseating, like, i have 40 zurvan totems and i cannot stand the sight of him, sad, because is a really fun and pretty fight. I would probably play it and many other content if the reward was worth and my experience in said content wasn't so emotionally torn by frustration and the feeling that i could have been playing a much rewarding game during all that time. I still don't have that bird. I have not even tried since 3.5 honestly.

Damn, i bet even the diadem would see people coming back to it if rewards were a bit better and their achievements would a bit less grindy to get.

RNG rolls are bad game design, Time Sinks are bad game design. Stop it, it's 2019.

[HyoMinPark]

Trust me, I can completely sympathize with RNG being a twat — as an avid primal mount farmer, this expansion was rougher on me RNG-wise than Heavensward was (I can’t really count ARR as I didn’t start playing until Nov 2015; I did, however, earn most of them through synced farming, because it was easier to find synced groups back then via DF queuing). I did Susano 160 times for the mount, told myself I wouldn’t do that this expansion, and subsequently had to buy Shinryu because I could never roll over a 50 (and when I would roll an 85+, I’d get beat — not by a 99 — but by a guy rolling 1 or 2 points above me), while winning Byakko, Tsukuyomi, and Suzaku at nearly 90 totems each. The only ones I had decent “luck” with were Lakshmi and Seiryu, but those were still 50~60 runs a piece.

Don’t even get me started on things like the Cassie Earring. I’d gladly trade my luck with the stupid Shiver emote for an opportunity to have that. And I farmed HoH 21~30 about 100 times for the hairstyle, but all I got was junk and minions I already owned (my alts have a bunch of primal minions though, at least). I finally just bought it and gave it to the alt I wanted to have it.


Sadly, the RNG is in this game to provide incentive — to dangle the tantalizing carrot above player’s heads to entice them into the content repeatedly. Especially for things like Ex primals. Even with the token exchange, the developers rely on the hope that “my next roll will be the lucky one” to keep people going well past 99 with the most current primals that cannot be purchased yet (and boy, do some do just that — thinking of the guy with 500+ Suzaku runs). People continuing to run means that players who missed the content when it was relevant still have a fairly decent chance to get a party for it. I don’t think it’s going to go anywhere, unfortunately. :/

[Nedkel]

You have to suffer for better looks and glamour.
Its not like you have to gring gear with rng, which cripples your progression in the game. You are dropping glamour that has no effect on your character other than looks, this is not something that necessary to do, and the mounts should never be treated like the list to check, its an ultimate reward for your hard work, they cant just giveaway it like trash eq. They walked it around making the mount drop based on pure RNG, and they decided to put resources elsewhere, instead of creating separate system that will only bring more problems and bugs.

If you are dropping mounts because you have nothing to do anymore, then i hate to be that guy to say this, you already finished the game and playability for you is now really low, SE cant do nothing about it.

[SleepyNeko]

I understand there is a need for making the content last and that RNG is not simply good or bad. I just wish that even if you failed the RNG there is some kind of progress that you know you are making (e.g increase rolls every time you lose a roll until you actually get the item). Its not to say that things like totems don't help, its just that the unfairness of RNG makes it very demoralizing to play.

This also applies to non-static savage runs, where someone can get 2 pieces of gear in one week while you are trying to collect 12 datalogs over 12 weeks, the potential difference is treatment and unfairness really puts me off the game sometimes.

[Aster_E]

I'm a believer that things like the mounts should be available for in-game purchase, with totems, as soon as the mounts are released. Thinking that people will only grind those 99 totems once the purchase is available is inaccurate. Some people might, maybe at most a relative few, but I'm more certain of two things to counter that: 1) people are more likely to farm content while it's relevant if the thing is more guaranteed in that way, and 2) people are farming so much later due to the fights being, theoretically, easier to down quickly thanks to higher gear.

If Yoshi and his team wants better return in later patches then I recommend using those same patches that are supposed to introduce mount purchases to instead halve the totem cost on those mounts, AND THEN add two or three additional items, not too pricey, to blow a little more life into the totem grind. It'll be annoying for some people who want all the things, but it will entice the higher skill level players to keep playing with everyone else. I would very much wager this if I were a gambling woman (Hint: I'm really, really not).

I loathe and despise rng as it is, as a thing, but know that it has a place in design. When done right it adds gratification when someone finally obtains the reward they worked towards. When done incorrectly, you just have an unfriendly, unwelcome grind. To top this off, that's only talking things like loot drops, prizes, or casinos (a la., Gold Saucer). If it weren't for crafted bardings being a thing already I would suggest a few *job-based bardings infused heavily with the primal's theme. Yes, some of these prizes are horrific, and need buffed drop rates such as some of the Triple Triad cards. Compare immediately to progression.

* By the way, where's the Bard Barding for my Bardy Bird?

One of the things that turned me off from Pagos, despite completing four weapons there, and eventually led me to quit my active achievement hunting, was excessive rng on progression. I hear Pagos is better about it now, but it's too late. Pyros is rng-heavy too in getting the abilities you want within the time frame you're there, and again for getting the secondary stats people want - something I compared to Heavensward's Diadem and a couple examples from WoW, all things people gravely disliked when implemented. I often make cracks at the amount of rng behind jobs like AST (Spire and Ewer for days when you need a single Balance or Spear), MCH (1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, Oh time for Heavy Shot again, 1, 1, 1 . . .), and BRD (Whenever you're ready to proc Straighter Shot, aannnd... now you did while the boss cannot be hit), yet none of these compare to BLU right now.

Sure, some people get their skills quick enough, or faster than average, and some of us get the skills way slower than average on the other hand. No one should have to run Tam-Tara normal mode more than two or three times for a single skill that is at the very end of the dungeon, just to progress a single quest for the job. No one should watch a skill being used a dozen times to learn it, now that we have the job crystal that allows learning it.

It's nice wanting people to play a game for longer, but they have to want to play the game at all, you know? Think more payoff and rewards, if not more legitimate content, rather than repeating something ad nauseum.

[Nedkel]

I understand there is a need for making the content last and that RNG is not simply good or bad. I just wish that even if you failed the RNG there is some kind of progress that you know you are making (e.g increase rolls every time you lose a roll until you actually get the item). Its not to say that things like totems don't help, its just that the unfairness of RNG makes it very demoralizing to play.

This also applies to non-static savage runs, where someone can get 2 pieces of gear in one week while you are trying to collect 12 datalogs over 12 weeks, the potential difference is treatment and unfairness really puts me off the game sometimes.

Thats also the reason why they decided the rng will be better for this kind of stuff.
They want to sqeeze some more subs out of people stubborn enough to collect some rare stuff in the game.

[Reynhart]

Without it, every content would be dead 1 week after release and people would complain that they have nothing to do besides obtaining their various weekly rewards...which is another complain of "bad gating". You can't have an MMO without timesinks.

[Skogli]

Rng is getting a bit unreasonable at this point. Its outdated and tacky IMO. I dont think they should move completely away from it, but atleast tone it down a lot.

Been doing blu for a week and the rng is burning me out. Been doing primals everyday now and I've only gotten 2 spells. Did garuda for 2 hours today and died once.. Thats when the party got the spell.

Do something here, SE. This is about as fun and engaging as watching my marriage fall apart.

[Alisae]

People love gatcha and lockboxes though

[Vaer]

Unfortunately, the rare drops are a necessary evil since their reward system for EX primals is pretty bad. If it weren't for these mounts no one would bother doing them after the first month or two since they keep outdating the only progression reward (weapons) they have after that amount of time with easier to get/less effort alternatives. After the weapons get dumped on the only thing keeping people there after they clear are the mounts and maybe the crafting material but you can buy those from people actually farming and save yourself the trouble anyway.

Maybe a weekly quest that has you kill each existing current expansion primal one time for a reward. In ARR they had something similar, and even had ways to upgrade the weapons that some of them drop or just something different than weapons, like accessories so we would have more choices to gear.

Their reward system just doesn't cater to longevity so they have to find some other traps to throw at you whether it's lockouts, lockboxes in lockboxes in lockboxes or just 2% cosmetics so you play longer than a week to prop up their subscription model after going through all the content.

On their end they probably don't see a problem, since they're making wads of cash even with the system like this for the past 5 or so years.