A Random Comment

[Yukiko]

Reading through a lot of these post it seems too many do not understand the difference between perceived randomness and true randomness. Perceived randomness is more of a random that isn't random at all and is easily predictable with pattern cropping up a lot in a series. True randomness is just that, what CAN happen.
The easiest way to point out the difference is using the coin flipping method. In a series of 100 flips, perceived randomness would believe that flipping 5 heads or tails in a row is not possible where in fact it has the same odds of any other pattern of 5 flips.
I don't fault anyone for not understanding the difference between the two since to get a decent grasp of true randomness you have to have some knowledge in mathematics and physics.
Veritasium and Vesauce both have videos on Randomness that might make you think if you wanna know worldly randomness. Veritasium's not random Video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sMb0...RG1u-2MsSQLbXA and Vsauce's What is random video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9rIy...ature=youtu.be. Take a look at these they will make you think twice on what is really "random"

*thumbs up*
But a bit more deeper in programming would have been better...

[Giantbane]

two full weeks of atma's grinding, around 4-6h a day and the four days of week-end a nearly 10h each days of ONLY exclusively Atmas' grinding, varying zones back and forth two of them really = end result....NOT A SINGLE ATMA, I stopped. the other day I was walking around stopped for a low fate, gave one or two hits and got by first atma...since I have done lots of fates and not a single one ever dropped ever again since.

Atma drop rate is low, but that's *extremely* unlikely.

Please, please PLEASE tell me you had a "Zenith" weapon equipped and you weren't trying to farm atma with just your unupgraded Thyrus. Because you MUST have a Zenith weapon equipped or you simply cannot get Atma, RNG be damned.

[axemtitanium]

Atma drop rate is low, but that's *extremely* unlikely.

Please, please PLEASE tell me you had a "Zenith" weapon equipped and you weren't trying to farm atma with just your unupgraded Thyrus. Because you MUST have a Zenith weapon equipped or you simply cannot get Atma, RNG be damned.

Also you have to complete the unlock quest. I've seen so many people complain about not getting atma drops and they haven't even flagged the atma weapon quest!

[Jonny_Tapas]

...
If I can somewhat consistently fail something with a 70% chance of success 8 times in a row, essentially meaning the 30% of failure won out, shouldn't it be possible that I successfully do something with a 30% success chance 8 times in a row? As anyone who plays this game will tell, that will never happen... ever.

This statement is false.

As many times as I've been enraged about loosing lots of gil to odds that should have been in my favor... I've also had many many wins. Unfortunately what you remember is highly effected by how much it emotionally effected you.

You are more likely to remember loosing a very large portion of gil by blowing up a 90% synth

... 3 times in a row.

You are more likely to forget hitting 6 HQ copper ingots in a row at below 12% because the copper ingots are emotionally insignificant.

As many times as I've complained about mining 3 for 18 at 70% or something ridiculous like that...

I do have a very specific memory of mining 9 HQ umbral rocks in a row at only 32%.
I previously posted this video of me teleporting to a zone and getting an ATMA on my first fate: http://www.twitch.tv/jonny_tapas/c/4443531

The wins happen and they happen just as often (or just as rarely) as the losses do.

But the wins don't piss you off and send you raging to the forums. (Maybe not you specifically but the community in general.)

[Felessan]

Item Synthesis? -20
Materia Melding? -40
Atma Drop? -60

There is no adjustment for any of listed activities, it's just a negative experience overwhelms positive one by significant margin. A number of example here show RNG in FF14 are "fair" and no adjustments made.
I got mine atma in 18 hours, I was interested in this back at the peak time for atma farm so I gathered some statistics from all my friends, fc and lses just how fast people getting atma - and average was around 15 hours. Yes, there are always outliers who got it after a very long time, but there are also people who got it in less than 4-6 hours (and I really *hated* them when I spent 7 hours just to get one atma). People bragged how they got 3 atma in 20 minutes and I wanted to kill them for that.
The same with materia melding/synthesys. I craft for sale and I crafted already items in ten thousands and see no divergence from "fair" distribution of NQ/HQ.
You can't just rely on your memory to make a proper conclusion about your own luck - you need a proper track somewhere else. Because in your mind failures and successes written differently, the failures of the same amplitude given twice the weight of successes. And when you try to "average" based on you memory, you'll always get a "i'm unlucky" feeling on a long streak of events.

I think by that point it's closer to 1 unit. Or negative units... as the person realizes "One down, eleven more to go... for my first Atma weapon."

You can change "happiness" to "excitement", and a lot of people do get excited after finally getting sneaky atma they went for hours.

[BreathlessTao]

I'll just leave this here... (how is it still not in the thread xD)

[Adler]

I think main problem for people crying in forums about unfair success rate for any drop/craft or anything else they have failed and then offering their calculations is concentrating on wrong things. You more or less can't beat machine on math - so instead you should try to observe machine's work and notice little things that can help you. Atma CAN be got fast with all the randomness and crafting has a pattern not so related to success % to get HQ. Instead of writing down numbers and trying to make calculations that usually are false anyway just try to feking watch and learn - there are things and actions that does matter towards chance of success based of if and when you use or don't use them.

[TheRogueX]

I always found this comparison funny, as if it has nothing to do with there being millions of cars/drivers and only thousands of airplanes/pilots. Of course the chances of being in a car accident are higher xD

Not to mention the size ratio comparison of car:road and plane:sky. In traffic you may have 100x+ the amount of cars within 1 mile of you than a plane will *ever* have within even 10 miles of it.

[MeiUshu]

I do have a zenith you know, yet believe it Atma isnt something I will do since is just frustrating to know that despite all the efforts put forth you get nothing whereas others without efforts or little compared to mine attempts get it in no time, there is no rational explanation to it, none, other then I am extremely unlucky and I am not the only one in this case, there is nothing rewarding in doing Atmas's grinding, none whatsoever, at least in my case, is just a loss of time and I stopped doing it, the only exception is me going beating a few mobs IF and WHEN I come accross fates on my way to something else.

Mei

[Wilksha]

*thumbs up*
But a bit more deeper in programming would have been better...

Ah yes, I did forget to mention a bit on how this randomness works on the programming level. If you read the OP's opening post with the quoted text, they mention the RNG but add pseudo to it. Yes a computer cannot inherently create randomness. It's an impossible feat for it to do when it's designed to be accurate. If it wasn't computers wouldn't work like they do now. As such, a random list of numbers is used. However it's not just one list, there are a great deal of lists. The calling up of the random function requires a seed to pick a list to use as the call of the function. If you don't want to be unpredictably random you'd use a predictably mutable seed or a fixed seed. I believe this is how older games used the pRNG and you tell this is the case when you can predictably have the same outcome from fresh start of a game from powering it on. Look at games that have an abusing the RNG guide. To prevent an application from having this issue you want a seed that is unpredictably mutable from the onset of the starting of the program you are running. In most cases the random seed used is the current time. This works rather well since the call to current time returns a number that is the number of seconds that have passed since a predetermined date making the result a different seed number every time you call the random function. it's still not completely random but it makes it really hard to predict the seed unless you know exactly what time random was called, how current time returns a number and how random uses a seed that might fall outside the bounds of the number of lists it has to use.
Finally after a number has been generated for use, it's however the coder wants to used it. Since this game uses percentages for success for crafting HQs, Iwouldn't see why it's not the same for atma or alex drops from FATEs. In this case how I've usually see it done is if the resulting number is less then or equal to the percentage odds where both numbers used are in the same scale. Scale begin that if the percentage is a whole number the numbers 1-100 are used.
Computer randomness is is rather complicated and this is mostly a gist of how it works. But even I as a programmer has problems with understanding all of how the random function works because the function is based on what source you are calling it from meaning that in different coding environments will used a different way to call a similar random.