Pretty sure it was math'd out there that with 2% drop rate and the current playerbase on FFXI: Statistically, there should be around 40 players that will see 1000 fates without a single atma. If the RNG is true like they said, it means that there ARE people looking at this numbers out there.

See, this is the problem. Devs and RNG advocates only look at the macroscale effect of RNG. A true RNG has this effect where individuals can be subject to "extreme outliers". From a macroscale, looking at 1000 misses out of 1000000000000 is a very tiny number, but when those are subjected to a single individual, well, you get a shitty player experience. And true RNG allows that. Understanding of the concept or math behind this doesn't really make anyone feel better. You could be Erdős himself and you'll still call bullshit if you have that happen to you.

Is it the devs fault? Probably. The correct choice would have been to either subject the quest to something that is not 100% true RNG, or implement a RNG monitoring system to remove outliers (Smart RNG, basically). In the end, smart RNG doesnt affect % if you do it properly (Remove both good and bad outliers), and has the added benefit of making players happy.

In the end we get back to the same thing: Atma was lazy and poorly implemented, and the devs are trying to shift the blame to their "true RNG" system instead of realizing that its their fault True RNG is giving players the shaft.