RNG doesn't hate you

[reality_check]

There are way too many ludicrous claims rolling around these forums. Let's take Atma drops for example, as they seem to be causing the most grief.

Let's assume the drop rate of an atma is 2%, because I think as a community this is a pretty conservative guess (I would personally put them at 3~5%.)


Case One: I DID 100 FATES TO GET MY ATMA! UGH WHY DID THIS TAKE SO LONG?

Congratulations, you're an unlucky person. The chances of you not seeing an atma for the first 99 fates is approximately 14%. While this number isn't astonishingly low, it's reasonable to believe that this could happen to someone, and probably does from time to time.

Case two: I DID 250 FATES TO GET MY ATMA! UGH IT TOOK ME LIKE TWO WHOLE WEEKS TO SEE ONE ATMA.

Congratulations, you're a very unlucky person. Assuming our drop rate is 2%, the chances of you not seeing an atma for the first 249 fates is approximately 0.6%.

Case three: I DID 500 FATES TO GET MY FIRST ATMA. I AM QUITTING THIS GAME.

I don't even know what to say here. You're a complete statistical improbability. The chances of not seeing an atma for 500 fates is approximately 0.0041%. I do suppose, there is maybe one or two incredibly unlucky people in all of Eorzea who have experienced this. But dozens daily on the forums?

Case four: I ONLY HAVE TWO ATMAS AFTER 1000 FATES. (INSERT WILD CLAIM ABOUT WHAT SHOULD BE DONE HERE).

Please, go buy a lottery ticket. The odds of this happening, you not seeing an atma for the first 499 fates, and then not seeing another atma for another 499 fates is 0.00000018%. Compare this to the probability of having other very unfortunate things happen in an average person's lifespan (according to CBC):

Chances of being killed in a terrorist attack while on vacation:
0.00015%

Death by a flesh eating disease in a normal life span:
0.0001%

Be killed by lightning:
0.0017%

So please, the next time 50 of you are going to claim that you've done thousands of fates and haven't seen any atmas...



Oh, and if that isn't enough, the developer team basically made a whole forum post and streamed 14 hours of straight atma farming to send you a message.

[Tsukino]

This is not how probability works.

[reality_check]

This is not how probability works.

I have a solid understanding of math, but I would never call myself a mathematician. Please explain how probability of consecutive events happening doesn't apply here.

[Tsukino]

I have a solid understanding of math, but I would never call myself a mathematician. Please explain how probability of consecutive events happening doesn't apply here.

"Probability of consecutive events" is literally that - the probability that things will happen in a specific order. The events still have no bearing on the outcome of each other, and so your chances for each event are still the same. Your math is not so much wrong as it is misleading; probability does not dictate outcome.

[reality_check]

"Probability of consecutive events" is literally that - the probability that things will happen in a specific order. The events still have no bearing on the outcome of each other, and so your chances for each event are still the same. Your math is not so much wrong as it is misleading; probability does not dictate outcome.

Each time you beat a fate, it's the same dice roll for an atma. They're independent events that happen one after another with a set percentage. This probability very much does apply and doesn't "dictate" outcome but is a statistical representation of what will happen.

[Tsukino]

Each time you beat a fate, it's the same dice roll for an atma. They're independent events that happen one after another with a set percentage. This probability very much does apply and doesn't "dictate" outcome but is a statistical representation of what will happen.

Probability is not statistics, and that's exactly where you're making the mistake here. What is likely to occur via probability does not necessitate what happens statistically. You're saying in your OP that people are likely exaggerating or otherwise not being truthful because their cases are unlikely to exist, but their cases already have either happened or have not happened - probability no longer has any relevance to the truth of their claims.

There's also the matter of the same probability predicting approximately three people out of every 200,000 to not get atma 1000 times in a row. If this probability does hold statistically, then how many of those people do you think might come to the forums to complain about it? This point is completely separate from what I was saying though, and is better explained by Kyros and others already.

[ariaandkia]

"Probability of consecutive events" is literally that - the probability that things will happen in a specific order. The events still have no bearing on the outcome of each other, and so your chances for each event are still the same. Your math is not so much wrong as it is misleading; probability does not dictate outcome.

This is so true.

====

Each time you beat a fate, it's the same dice roll for an atma. They're independent events that happen one after another with a set percentage. This probability very much does apply and doesn't "dictate" outcome but is a statistical representation of what will happen.

reality_check doesn't understand 'randomness.'

Also, if your luck is so bad that you are getting the worst of it, why would you buy a lottery ticket?

Ok, as I mentioned elsewhere, I have extremely bad luck.

1% chance of failure in a game, I failed over 10000 times. (Literally over 10000 because it was 1000 per attempt and I spent over 10m (Which, in that game, at the time, was a high tier player's earnings for a year.)

Once, just to prove how bad my luck was to my DM (dungeon master), I, without forcing a roll, rolled a 1 (worst possible result in this case) on a 20 sided dice 20 times in a row.
I say without forcing because it isn't hard to force the dice to roll a specific number. I don't do it because it is considered cheating.

I managed to get strangled until I was essentially dead (Brain was still alive, thankfully). I was hit by several cars, had several close encounters where I only survived because I dodged because I saw myself getting hit (look up LaPlace's Demon Theory if you want to understand a bit about how that works (Note: Just because people have proved that it isn't possible in the way it was written doesn't mean a derivative won't work)). I've fallen off a cliff (to be fair, I realized it was going to happen, I just couldn't stop it from happening so I was able to prepare for the fall slightly), been thrown out of a car on the highway, been poisoned more times than I can count, breathed in acidic mists, eaten things that should have killed me, etc. My entire life, I've lived with the world trying to kill me over and over again. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if, tomorrow, while heading to work, I get hit by a car, probably thrown a few feet, and then get sent to the hospital again. Or the morgue. Then after a few hours, I'll be alive and well, almost fully healed, and get irritated by the fact that they need me to sign a bunch of paperwork. Again.

In fact, the fact that I'm alive should be impossible by statistics and 'probability'.

I'm the type of person who if a massive meteor was going to hit the earth, you could guess where it would land by finding out where I am. But I'd probably survive it just out of spite.

That is why I got the nickname "Cockroach" at one point. I refuse to die. >.> It is rumored that aside from my black hole of a stomach, if we had a [censored] war, there would be two survivors: ilydia and actual cockroach. Because you just can't kill them even when you do.

So in all honesty? Your idea of probability is really bad. You are essentially saying that just because it is very unlikely, it can't happen. Well, let me tell you what. Getting 12 ATMA in 14 hours? Also very unlikely. Can it happen? Yes. Will it happen? Unless you are a developer? Probably not.

On a 100 sided dice, what is your chances of rolling a 1 100 times in a row?

That chance is the same as rolling a 100 100 times in a row. Every possibility has the same chance of happening.

===

Also, RNG is misleading. Random Number Generator. It should be PRNG. Pseudo-Random Number Generator.

It isn't random, it is based on an algorithm which means... If you try it under a specific situation, you will always get the same result. And since you can't choose your seed (unlike with things like dice), you have little control over your results aside from brute forcing.

But say you happen to hit a seed group that will ALWAYS produce a failure? You could potentially fail thousands upon thousands of times in a row.

[reality_check]

You are essentially saying that just because it is very unlikely, it can't happen.

No, actually I never said that at all. I'm merely pointing out the math behind all of these people's ludicrous claims.

[alimdia]

This is so true.

====




reality_check doesn't understand 'randomness.'

Also, if your luck is so bad that you are getting the worst of it, why would you buy a lottery ticket?

Ok, as I mentioned elsewhere, I have extremely bad luck.

1% chance of failure in a game, I failed over 10000 times. (Literally over 10000 because it was 1000 per attempt and I spent over 10m (Which, in that game, at the time, was a high tier player's earnings for a year.)

Once, just to prove how bad my luck was to my DM (dungeon master), I, without forcing a roll, rolled a 1 (worst possible result in this case) on a 20 sided dice 20 times in a row.
I say without forcing because it isn't hard to force the dice to roll a specific number. I don't do it because it is considered cheating.

I managed to get strangled until I was essentially dead (Brain was still alive, thankfully). I was hit by several cars, had several close encounters where I only survived because I dodged because I saw myself getting hit (look up LaPlace's Demon Theory if you want to understand a bit about how that works (Note: Just because people have proved that it isn't possible in the way it was written doesn't mean a derivative won't work)). I've fallen off a cliff (to be fair, I realized it was going to happen, I just couldn't stop it from happening so I was able to prepare for the fall slightly), been thrown out of a car on the highway, been poisoned more times than I can count, breathed in acidic mists, eaten things that should have killed me, etc. My entire life, I've lived with the world trying to kill me over and over again. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if, tomorrow, while heading to work, I get hit by a car, probably thrown a few feet, and then get sent to the hospital again. Or the morgue. Then after a few hours, I'll be alive and well, almost fully healed, and get irritated by the fact that they need me to sign a bunch of paperwork. Again.

In fact, the fact that I'm alive should be impossible by statistics and 'probability'.

I'm the type of person who if a massive meteor was going to hit the earth, you could guess where it would land by finding out where I am. But I'd probably survive it just out of spite.

That is why I got the nickname "Cockroach" at one point. I refuse to die. >.> It is rumored that aside from my black hole of a stomach, if we had a [censored] war, there would be two survivors: ilydia and actual cockroach. Because you just can't kill them even when you do.

So in all honesty? Your idea of probability is really bad. You are essentially saying that just because it is very unlikely, it can't happen. Well, let me tell you what. Getting 12 ATMA in 14 hours? Also very unlikely. Can it happen? Yes. Will it happen? Unless you are a developer? Probably not.

On a 100 sided dice, what is your chances of rolling a 1 100 times in a row?

That chance is the same as rolling a 100 100 times in a row. Every possibility has the same chance of happening.

===

Also, RNG is misleading. Random Number Generator. It should be PRNG. Pseudo-Random Number Generator.

It isn't random, it is based on an algorithm which means... If you try it under a specific situation, you will always get the same result. And since you can't choose your seed (unlike with things like dice), you have little control over your results aside from brute forcing.

But say you happen to hit a seed group that will ALWAYS produce a failure? You could potentially fail thousands upon thousands of times in a row.

I think you're watching too much anime

[Laraul]

Also, RNG is misleading. Random Number Generator.

Who uses RNG? "The RNG of dying in a plain crash is one seventh the RNG of being hit by lightning." Instead of calling it "RNG" call it what it is, chance or probability. Or in this case Atma drop rate. It's silly to call it RNG. It's a weird abbreviation and in previous Final Fantasy games it was the abbreviation for the RANGER class. Regardless the RNG term is still weird.

When I did my last Atma farm, I found that it always dropped within an hour of entering the zone (or participating in the first FATE in the zone). So I recommend after farming for an hour, try another area or do something else (like a duty) and come back and try again.

If you wanna play with probability get a coin and flip it ten times. See how many times it comes up heads. Then flip it a twenty times. How many times did it comes heads again. Fifty times, a hundred, etc.

Answer: The more times you flip the coin the closer heads/flips will be to .5 (50%).