RNG: How fake is it?

[PenutButter]

5% meld? well 5x20 is 100

LOL, that's not how statistics works man, not even close. 5% is abysmally low and if you manage to get it in 20 attempts than you are very VERY lucky.

But yes, it is just confirmation, frustration, and self-center bias. I like to joke that this game's RNG system in this game is rigged but I assure you that if you were to craft 1000 items at 90% HQ rate, you WILL get around 900 HQ items. The perception is further skewed by the fact that there are lot more people who NQ at 90% than there are those who HQ at 10%, simply due to the fact the instances of people completing a craft at around 90% is FAR greater than the instances of people completing it at 10%. Even with horrible gear and zero knowledge of the crafting system, you would still be able to get over 10-20% on most items in this game.

From atma to desynths to melding, I've found the successes on low chance occurrences to come in waves, and changing zones or doing something else for a few minutes can alter being in one of those lucky times or not.

I do notice this as well, that sometimes you get a horrible streak of fails and then sometimes you get blessed a streak of success. I stand by my statement that you will get 900 HQ items out of 1000 items if you have a rate of 90% HQ chance but this does suggest that the RNG system in this game is odd. However, it is entirely possible that the system doesn't have an odd pattern and I'm just noticing the few rare instances where there just happens, by chance, to be an odd pattern.

[Giantbane]

LOL, that's not how statistics works man, not even close. 5% is abysmally low and if you manage to get it in 20 attempts than you are very VERY lucky.

This is also false.

There's a ~65% chance you'll get it in 20 attempts with a 5% success rate. That makes it very possible to not get it in 20 attempts, but you're still unlucky if you don't stick your meld by then as the chance of success is almost double that of failure.

I don't see why they don't just make higher melds take more materia of that type and tier rather than continue to use dice rolls. For example, first overmeld would be x2, second overmeld would be x4, third overmeld would be x8, 4th overmeld would be x16.

I mean it's not like RNG materia melding is a deep and engrossing gameplay mechanic, unless you are a masochist. Either that or rework it into a mini-game like crafting so there is some type of element that the player interacts with besides throwing money at the Market Board.

I wish it were more like this at least. It's fine to have some RNG in things as long as there's some kind of reasonable upper bound to the failure rate. RNG can be fun, but there's a certain point where you fail too often that it really detracts from your enjoyment of the game.

For instance, lets say that overmelds were a progress bar instead of pass fail. When you meld it would fill up that bar by some random amount, which would be dependent on how far you were overmelding.

So say, first overmeld, instead of having 40% (or whatever) chance at full success, will give some random amount of progress between 25% to 100%. That way you can randomly get a meld where you complete it in 1 attempt, but worst case will only take you 4 attempts. To take this further, they could skew the results such that it will more often end up closer to that 25% progress instead of the 100% progress depending on how they want to control the output so you're not getting a success in 1-2 melds too often (whatever the devs determine is too often).

While I enjoy the customization options provided by melded equipment, the heavy RNG makes the whole process very off putting. I would enjoy the process more (while still feeling like I was working toward the equipment) if I knew there was some lower bound for my failure rate. If you've failed a meld 40 times in a row, the knowledge you have the same chance of repeating that feat makes you really want to walk away from the game.