Why I Am Against Heavy RNG in Job Design

[Supersnow845]

RNG in jobs is bad so we deleted it so you can crit fish instead

[Chasingstars]

Also we already have gambler as a job, it just carries a fishing pole.

[BabyYoda]

RNG in jobs is bad so we deleted it so you can crit fish instead

That's fair, but that's not the kind of RNG I'm talking about.

I don't really mind RNG that does not affect how the job is played.

Crit/DH is mostly background damage variance. It can affect numbers, but it usually doesn't change the actual gameplay loop.

My issue is with RNG that changes how the job plays, like procs, cards, or random resources.

So yes, crit fishing is also RNG, but this thread is mainly about gameplay RNG, not background damage RNG.

[BabyYoda]

Also we already have gambler as a job, it just carries a fishing pole.

Let's be honest.

Fisher stopped being the gambler job years ago.

It's the unofficial RMT profession now.

[Supersnow845]

That's fair, but that's not the kind of RNG I'm talking about.

I don't really mind RNG that does not affect how the job is played.

Crit/DH is mostly background damage variance. It can affect numbers, but it usually doesn't change the actual gameplay loop.

My issue is with RNG that changes how the job plays, like procs, cards, or random resources.

So yes, crit fishing is also RNG, but this thread is mainly about gameplay RNG, not background damage RNG.

Oh I know that’s what you meant, I’m saying it’s hilarious to think that crit fishing is less offensive than interactive gameplay induced by the variance in the job

The encounter is already so on the rails in 14 why would you also want the job to be on the rails

[BabyYoda]

Oh I know that’s what you meant, I’m saying it’s hilarious to think that crit fishing is less offensive than interactive gameplay induced by the variance in the job

The encounter is already so on the rails in 14 why would you also want the job to be on the rails

I understand why some players enjoy RNG jobs. People get bored when every pull feels identical, and RNG can make a job feel slightly different from run to run.

My issue is not that I want jobs to be on rails. I actually agree that FFXIV is already too scripted.

I just don't think RNG is the best solution to that problem.

To me, RNG jobs feel like a shortcut solution to a larger issue. Instead of making encounters more varied, with different priorities, different mechanic orders, different pressure points, and more situations to solve, the easier answer becomes: keep the encounter mostly the same, but give 2 or 3 jobs some RNG so those players have something different to react to.

I understand why people enjoy that, but I don't think it addresses the root issue.

If the goal is to make runs feel less repetitive, I would rather see that variation come from encounter design and player decisions, not from a proc appearing at a different time.

That way, every job gets to engage with the variation, not only the few jobs that happen to have RNG mechanics.

[Supersnow845]

I think you are saying that x is bad because it doesn’t fix the core problem y but fail to see that you can fix y without changing x regardless

They can and should fix encounters being on rails, but that’s doesn’t really preclude also having RNG jobs

[BabyYoda]

I think you are saying that x is bad because it doesn’t fix the core problem y but fail to see that you can fix y without changing x regardless

They can and should fix encounters being on rails, but that’s doesn’t really preclude also having RNG jobs

I don't disagree with that.

Better encounters and RNG jobs are not mutually exclusive.

My point is that even if encounters were improved tomorrow, I would still prefer variation that comes from player decisions rather than random outcomes.

So my criticism of RNG jobs isn't just that they don't solve encounter design.

It's that I don't think randomness is the most interesting source of gameplay variation in the first place.

And to be clear, I'm not even opposed to uncertainty itself.

For example, I would find an AST system where cards cycle and the player chooses when to lock one in far more interesting than simply drawing a random card.

The uncertainty still exists, but the outcome is being resolved by the player rather than by a dice roll.

That's the distinction I'm trying to make.

I'd rather have variation driven by decisions, timing, priorities, resource management, and encounter adaptation than by the game randomly deciding what outcome I get.

[Valence]

RNG only creates mastery when it creates meaningful decisions. If the correct answer is almost always obvious, then what you're testing is reaction, not decision making.

Take Dancer for example. When a proc appears, the vast majority of the time the answer is simply to press the proc. The gameplay changed, but the decision didn't. The game rolled the dice, then told you what button to press.

While we're onto Dancer, the filler is a laughable version of rng. It has zero depth.

But you could equally talk about the priority generated in the burst segment—when do I use my static nukes without overwriting Last Dance or drifting Finishing Move, and where do I dump gauge depending on how randomly it fills up—and how it relates to Tillana use as a second layer of constraints to play around.
It's surprisingly deep and has no clear cut right or wrong answer. There is always an optimal thing you could do, but the trick is it's actually only easy to tell which after the burst, but less so when you're still executing it for the simple reason you can't know what is going to proc and how fast the gauge is going to fill until it happens.

And it can change everything.

What made old AST more interesting wasn't the randomness by itself. It was the tools surrounding the randomness: Royal Road, Spread, card management, and planning around imperfect hands. In other words, the interesting part was the decision-making layer built around the RNG.

You're aware that those imperfect hands actually came from rng right? That was the whole point of those decision making tools, in order to manage and correct bad outcomes, while taking advantage of good outcomes.

If you remove RNG from HW/SB AST, then all of those tools fall flat.
You could argue that with changing encounters they'd still allow for decision making, which is true, but you're still missing a fundamental part which is "dealing with the hand you have at any time".

Honestly, you've been advocating to have an encounter model that is "dealing with the situation presented by the enemy at any time", which I also do want in the game.
So why is "dealing with the hand your job gives you at any time" suddenly a problem?

Why pitting them against each other? They can work fine on their own, and they can also work great in conjunction to each other.

For example, imagine if AST didn't simply draw a random card. Instead, pressing Play could start cycling cards above the target every second, and pressing Play again would lock in the current card.

Now the question is no longer “what card did RNG give me?”

The question becomes:

Do I take this decent card now because the burst window is about to start?

Do I wait another second and risk losing timing?

Do I settle because mechanics are coming?

Do I delay for the specific card I want, knowing there is a cost to waiting?

To me, that is far more interesting than a pure random draw, because the variation still exists, but the outcome is tied to timing, awareness, and player decision making.

So your solution is essentially turning the rng into a tedious scroll until you get the correct card?
Why not just have different buttons corresponding to each card? That sounds a lot more convenient, and you'd still making the same choice.
If the problem is that we'd miss your idea of losing time parsing through the whole deck, then i'm sorry but I see where you're coming from, but that's just extremely off putting to me. Tedium for the sake of it.

[BabyYoda]

.

I think this is where the discussion becomes interesting.

You keep describing adaptation as if adaptation itself is automatically valuable.

But let me ask a different question:

If I give two jobs the exact same decision-making layer, and the only difference is that one gets its situations from RNG while the other gets its situations from encounter design, resource constraints, timing pressure, or other deterministic systems, why is the RNG version inherently better?

That's the part I'm still not convinced by.

Because when I look at old AST, the part I find interesting isn't that the card draw was random.

It's what I chose to do after seeing the card.

Likewise, when I look at DNC burst optimization, the interesting part isn't that a proc happened.

It's how I manage the constraints that follow.

So sometimes I wonder if we're giving RNG credit for depth that is actually being created by the decision-making systems built around it.

In other words:

Is the randomness creating the depth?

Or is the randomness merely creating the situation in which the depth exists?

Because to me those are two very different things.