A Random Comment

[Yukiko]

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.

yea, but the problem is not only the seed, you can programm complex code around "random()" but you still use that command to generate the number and so the workaround may result in same randomness as when using another algorythm but much more complex. prng tend to have a pattern, no matter what, what we need is a trng but as the OP in its quote said: you need more trials. A good example is when you fire on a net with a prng and let you generate a number out of the result. The more shoots you do, the better randomness you will get - but thats the problem with the server issue...

Indeed there are some really good prng out there, but i had to learn they all have their weakness... In a MMOG you add the number of players, so even when just having a few bias you can be sure someone is feeling/seeing it. Thats why you need failproof systems - a good analogy would be fire alarm! While in most programms you can do a lot trials to keep bias low that will not happen in a MMOG, too many factors compensating the trials... You have to question if the effort in failproof systems is worth the outcome or not, and sometimes as we see in weekly monsterhunting it can be just one line of code to make it disapear...

I think the discussion is moving a bit in the wrong direction because its not really a problem of randomness but more the miss of failproof systems...
Furthermore, the community isnt angered about some odd bias. The problem is that it tends to happen all the time!
That may be just an imagination, but still when players notice it, there is something wrong -> if you let a "worm" randomly move and it drifts bottom left corner you see there is something wrong...
Its not only the RNG, the problem is we have it in nearly everything... What I wonder is why? In 1.x (Yoshi-P version) they have done a lot to eliminate RNG from game, why in hell they gone back to that stupid RNG gamedesign?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=itaMNuWLzJo
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_tN2ev3hO14