A Random Comment

[Welsper59]

I appreciate the response on the matter, and while it really might just be a fallacy, consistent and predictable outcomes really do still raise a flag. When your norm is to fail more than succeed, regardless of the fact that it is significant odds in your favor (70% or greater success chance), and has been occurring over thousands of instances from any given individual, it might still be worth looking in to. I would not question the system in place if it weren't for the fact that the opposite does not hold up... ever.

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. The game seems to favor failure regardless of your chances of success. There are so many occasions throughout my mining in this game since launch that a 95% success chance has yielded 3/4, 4/5, and 5/6 fails. They're always in batches, be it in a row or over a larger pool of attempts. This isn't even including the rather consistent occurrences of 1/4 failures on nearly every node with a 90% or higher success chance. Why is it common and predictable that I fail a 45% success chance to meld 8+ times in a row, meaning the remaining 55% won out all those times, yet I will almost never successfully gather something with 55% success rate as a common and predictable outcome?

Maybe the different algorithms are used multiple times for each result when you craft/meld/desynth/gather, maybe it's just my (and many others') imagination on the matter, or maybe its an incorrect display of success chance (as I'm going to assume that is a separate tool from the actual RNG systems used). Either way, it just seems way too strange that for something that is true RNG, outcomes regardless of percentages become predictable in occurrence. Mind you, I'm not referring to the likelihood that after 20 attempts in failure that the next should be success, but rather the fact that it's predictable and common that I got there in the first place so often. This may just be coming from a recent frustration of failing 18 times in a row to meld something with a 45% success chance.

[Tiggy]

It's surprising how many gamers don't have even the most basic concept of statistics even though the games they play use the mathematical laws of statistics constantly.

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. The game seems to favor failure regardless of your chances of success. There are so many occasions throughout my mining in this game since launch that a 95% success chance has yielded 3/4, 4/5, and 5/6 fails. They're always in batches, be it in a row or over a larger pool of attempts. This isn't even including the rather consistent occurrences of 1/4 failures on nearly every node with a 90% or higher success chance. Why is it common and predictable that I fail a 45% success chance to meld 8+ times in a row, meaning the remaining 55% won out all those times, yet I will almost never successfully gather something with 55% success rate as a common and predictable outcome?

You are falling prey to the very fallacies they listed, and then act like success conditions when probability is low never happen at all when they most certainly do. I recently desynthed 72 silver sovereigns starting at a 40% success rate and I most certainly did succeed a decent amount of the time. I didn't check the statistics of my end results but 40% felt pretty accurate at the start.

A computer cannot do random (on it's own), that's why it has pseudorandom in the name, it makes you *think* it's random when really it isn't, it's possible to ensure that the results you get from a pseudorandom number generator are exactly the same every time (i.e. you start the generator, write down the first 1,000,000,000 numbers, restart it and the same 1,000,000,000 numbers come up), which is a bit like having the same lottery numbers this week, next week, the week after and the week after that.

A psuedo random number generator uses a seed number to begin calculation. As long as that seed is different every time (perhaps based on cpu cycles, or system clock, etc) then no numbers will appear in the same order as you suggest. Only when using the exact same seed will the results you listed ever happen. No game is going to overlook such a basic use case scenario in regards to random numbers. The way you suggested it is not how it works.

[Brine_Gildchaff]

You are falling prey to the very fallacies they listed, and then act like success conditions when probability is low never happen at all when they most certainly do. I recently desynthed 72 silver sovereigns starting at a 40% success rate and I most certainly did succeed a decent amount of the time. I didn't check the statistics of my end results but 40% felt pretty accurate at the start.

Agreeing wholeheartedly with this. I recently reached mastery in botany and have been picking up Shroud tea leaves for my Builder of the Realm friend. On more than one occasion, with a 96% gather and 11% HQ rate, I've come away with no less than THREE high-quality bunches. Even factoring in the 100% on Chain 4 skill, that's two high-quality gathers on a .96*.11=10.56% chance for each, out of only five gathers. I've also had a fair number of triple-gathers on fragrant logs, even though the highest I can pump my HQ rate on those is 15%.

[Archulak]

-snip-

You're just on that end of the spectrum(or you notice it more often), but I've definitely succeeded 10 times in a row doing 36% desynths before so the other side is out there.

[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.

[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.