RNG, Why it exist, why it sucks, and how we can fix it.

[am0n]

The downside to this is.. if you save up tokens you could put the highest lv gear on an alt who has never ran the instance. You can do that with phil/myth but certainly should not be the case up to the very top.

I don't view this as a downside so much as I view it as a way for people to "do more than one coil a week." It's not exactly, but what it does is allows you to be more inclined to play the class your group needs to succeed than just your primary, but still be able to work towards equipping your primary. Or, you could equip an alt so that the alt is capable of being useful to the raid in the event you have a no show or need to change tactics.

For someone just starting, it helps to guarantee they have some kind of progression by using the tokens to fill in spots where they weren't lucky enough to get. As they progress, they can use them to gear up an alt and make them useful to the raid. Personally, I like it. I've already been in a situation where I dropped playing my WHM (best geared) to play my BRD, because that is what the group needed. That was only Turn 2, though, which full DL on my BRD is adequate. I do not think my BRD is geared enough to be useful, if that is what my group needed, for T4 or T5. I'd like my BRD to be capable, though, in the event that helped us progress.

[Airget]

RNG is ok, the issue is the other lack of variety to obtain gear. They pretty much block crafters but being competitive stopping their item level growth at 70 while through dungeons, trials and tokens players can earn ilevel 90 gear with somewhat ease.

The trick isn't to remove RNG but to provide more means to obtain gear, it should always have a crafting variety, RNG variety and token variety. Three different ways, one where you use materials, some special loot dropped in dungeons, some purchased with tokens to make a unique piece of gear that you can add materia to.

Then the RNG variety, gear which you get through dungeons that is strong but you are unable to choose which one you want.

Then the token variety, cost a bit to get but you get to choose what you want.

The biggest issue however is how they handled crafted gear, by making the means to obtain it way to expensive compared to the ease of obtaining items of the same ilevel. Where you might only spend 400 tokens to get this one item to crafted it you would need 800-1k token. While the idea behind it was to have the community of players sell these items via the market ward, it fell flat because what's the point of this ilevel 70 gear when there is alrdy ilevel 90 gear which can easily replace it if you just keep farming mytho.

Where there is no limit on the amount of tokens you can obtain for the ilevel 70 gear so what purpose is there to craft these ilevel 70 gear when the amount of tokens needed is 2-3 times more than it would cost to just buy the gear with tokens.

While yes it's cheaper now, the damage is already done and there are now even more events where one can obtain ilevel 90 gear.

Hopefully they can remedy this with the next patch and actually give crafters more love in the economy department.

What they overlooked is very simple, if you make the options to craft the piece of gear cheaper than the cost of the item itself, such as if it cost 500 tokens to obtain ilevel 70 hands, then the crafted materials should only cost 250 tokens to obtain. Since there are still other items involved in making it, plus you then revitalize the materia market because now players will be more willing to invest in these items but only if they are at least competitive with what's top tier.

So with the next patch they should at least have something in the sense of if dungeons go up to 100/110 then the crafted gear should at least be 95-105 depending on how high they take item level next update.

This way the crafted gear provides another stepping stone to help players get through content while still leaving players with the option to obtain better gear. This gear in question would be for players who might need that extra 5-10 item level to defeat content, while more hardcore players might suffice with item lv 90 gear.

[AjoraOak]

I figured the real problem was the amount of gear crammed into an insignificant number of bosses/turns, it never bothered me greatly in the past with WoW but here in FFXIV when you have so few turns to do... In any case, myth is already the token system and it's really carebare enough as it is that any random person can match a raider in appearance with time even if not BiS. Not that I think you need to be a hardcore raider to do coil 1-4 anyways, only takes 30m a week and it's very easy as it is unless you're just that below average... group wise that is.

[Sapphic]

snip

Coil turns 1-4 isn't difficult. I had more difficulty getting my PLD relic on titan HM XD. Plus the only tank item not in turn 1-4 apart from the weapon is the hat. So gearing up a tank isn't hardcore, it's lolcore! (depending on RNG of course:P) Just because you have allagan on your WAR (our tanks from 2 clears have 4 pieces between them) from a not that difficult dungeon (t1-4). Just means RNG has been nice to you.

Two weeks running coil 1hourish 2 times a week and on turn 4 with a casual fc. Coil isn't "hardcore raiding" it's an 8 man dungeon XD

I still play Rift for raiding. 2x20 peep tier 1, 2 10 peeps tier1, 1 10 peep tier 2, 2x20 peep tier 2 dungeons.

[Caraway]

I have the worst RNG luck out of my circle of friends and those I've met playing MMOs and spent time with talking to. I often have to do things multiple times more than the people I know to get similar results. Even still, I don't mind the RNG.

While I do agree with the point that Luck does not equal Skill, I vehemently disagree that grinding equals Skill. Skill is constantly doing something a little harder each time.

Anyway, I do think there are a couple of potential problems with the way this game handles loot, especially higher up. I do think the Mythology system is a little odd that you can do the easiest level 50 dungeons over and over again and get the best gear in the game. The effort does not match the reward (because like I said above, grinding isn't skill).

The first problem is the lack of ways to go up through gear tier levels and the way SE has designed gating. There aren't enough ways/places to go from i50 to i55 to i60 without just grinding. Then the jumps start and you get gaps in progression. I mean, now we have i50, i52, i55, i60 and then woosh! i70 i80 i90. Where did the steps go? I know Yoshi-P has said that he didn't want crafting to have anything to do with end-game beyond furniture but I think uncommon drop dungeon loot that could be used to make say... i65, i75, i85 from the places appropriate to that gear level would help.

The second problem is the way loot rewards are done in dungeons. One item? Really? that's it?! You just felled a massive boss and all you get for your group of eight is one item? What ever happened to multiple loot levels and rolls on a mob? If bosses were to drop multiple items, but only have one special item (what's dropped now), you would be able to fill in other progression methods.

I personally don't really like the current token system. I feel it encourages mindless grinding of simple dungeons and encourages you to skip other pieces of content. It's there now (people will actively avoid certain dungeons in Roulette for example) and it's only going to get worse as the game progresses if this method keeps going.

EQ2 recently put out some new content with some heavy gear level progression through levels. And one of the ways they adjusted things was to allow you to trade in Greed'd items that weren't what you wanted for items you did. It took multiple items of course but you would be able to eventually get it by running appropriate content (there are problems with their system too of course, but it's a spectacular idea and definitely fair).

I think something like that could work well here too.

[Traek]

Coil turns 1-4 isn't difficult. I had more difficulty getting my PLD relic on titan HM XD. Plus the only tank item not in turn 1-4 apart from the weapon is the hat. So gearing up a tank isn't hardcore, it's lolcore! (depending on RNG of course:P) Just because you have allagan on your WAR (our tanks from 2 clears have 4 pieces between them) from a not that difficult dungeon (t1-4). Just means RNG has been nice to you.

Two weeks running coil 1hourish 2 times a week and on turn 4 with a casual fc. Coil isn't "hardcore raiding" it's an 8 man dungeon XD

I still play Rift for raiding. 2x20 peep tier 1, 2 10 peeps tier1, 1 10 peep tier 2, 2x20 peep tier 2 dungeons.

I'm confused on why you are taking shots at me. I don't think in any of my responses I even mentioned the word hardcore. In fact I said pretty casual raiders could do well with the system I was suggesting. This implies already that casual raiders can clear content, as they'd have to clear content to get Coil level tokens or Allagan gear. So I'm not really sure what you are trying to say. If you are trying to say it isn't the hardest content in the game, I'd say you are flat wrong. Titan HM was not hard at all IMO (I did this less as pld/war then any of my other 7 Relic jobs), and I fail to struggle at even Titan EX.

I'm not claiming to be hardcore, but T2-T5 is certainly harder then most anything. The new EX primals can certainly compete for that title, but they are i90 equivalent, and obviously should. So again, what is your point? Gearing up any class through Coil isn't hard except that one piece they need from T5, it doesn't have anything to do with being a tank. Cool story though bruh.

*Edit* I guess in T2 I think of *pre enrage* method. My group never has and never will use enrage, and I guess one can argue it is a simple/easy fight compared to many others based on this. Still not sure why SE hasn't patched it, as it completely defeats the whole fight design. To each their own on that one though.

[Mhaeric]

RNG is addictive. Tokens are not. It's why slot machines are so successful and why MMOs will always have some form of rng for loot.

[Makendu]

being able to craft ilvl90 gear is not a good idea u should be able to get the best gear threw crafting ,dungon only. i do like the idea of tokens and RNG its a good idea

[Caraway]

being able to craft ilvl90 gear is not a good idea u should be able to get the best gear threw crafting ,dungon only. i do like the idea of tokens and RNG its a good idea

Most games that allow you to make end-game gear require items from the dungeons so that's not really an excuse. Crafting should allow side-grades at the very least.

[-d-ky]

t4 1 token
t5 1 token
body/leg 2 token
others 1 token
t1-t5 chests drop mats
craftsman can craft i90 eqs/furniture with these mats, every single piece of crafted i90 does not share the same mats, promoting the economy and encouraging the craftsmen

things that can be adjusted, increasing or decreasing the required amount of token to get the specific gears


my 2 gils