What is wrong with reclaim?

[XiXiQ]

I am seeing nowhere near 90% success. It fails 2-3 times out of 10 attempts consistently. In fact, I generally don't get to 10 tries. After it's failed 3 times I stop - and that usually means I have only tried it 7-8 times.

Funny how I never see anything like that kind of "luck" when melding with a 10% chance. It has no issue holding out for 20-30 turns under those circumstances.

[Darra]

Sadly the way RNG works is that it's across the board, all servers and players. If you were to look at the sample size of just 1 or 2 players, that 90% for them might be 50% and for other players somewhere else it will be 99%. I too have had bad luck with it, so I decided I'd rather just NQ an item than risk losing materials to Reclaim. Most NQ's can be sold to recover costs and some are still profitable (the only exception are the artisan tools, these are rarely profitable as an NQ and often times you wont make back all of your costs).

[scarebearz]

I would not be surprised if Reclaim was found to be buggy.

[LineageRazor]

For my part, I've had great luck with Reclaim. I hardly ever lose materials to a failed Reclaim - sure, it's happened, but it doesn't feel like anywhere near 10%.

RNG is RNG. Some people are lucky, some are not. Sounds like you're one of the unlucky ones. :/

[StouterTaru]

With the way probability works, you'll see clusters of losses, and long stretches without a loss. If you're using reclaim enough to get a reasonable estimate on how often it fails, then you are doing something horribly wrong at crafting.

[XiXiQ]

then you are doing something horribly wrong at crafting.

You mean like expecting the overall RNG average to be well.... average? Expecting PBP to not fail more than 10%? expecting up to 10-11 HTs under SH2 to actually succeed 8 times? Expecting RS to not fail 3 times in a row? It's one thing to be a butterfingers or miscalculate and lose your mats - quite another to have nothing but dumb luck doing it. Don't confuse luck with skill.

I have been making HQ artisan tools, just for myself. When you make 3 artisan tools in a row, all in the 89-96% HQ range - what would you expect to get? I know what I got - 3 NQ. I also know I have never managed to get reclaim to work more than 2-3 times on each attempt to make one (that's if it doesn't fail first try, which it has done to me on 3 occasions now). And guess when I am forced to employ reclaim anyway? yes, when RNG falls outside the norms, which is something it shouldn't be doing with such regularity.

[LineageRazor]

yes, when RNG falls outside the norms, which is something it shouldn't be doing with such regularity.

Shouldn't, but can. Bell curves are bell-shaped rather than rectangular for a reason. You're on the wrong side of the bell curve. Will you stay there? There's no way to predict. The odds are against your continued bad luck, but a one-in-a-million chance is still greater than zero.

Does your seemingly consistent and predictable streak of bad luck indicate that the RNG isn't working the way that it should? No. In fact, the occasional outliers are one of the clearest indicators that the randomness truly IS random. If there was NO ONE having terrible luck, it would be suspicious. Similarly, if there was NO ONE having fabulous luck, it would be suspicious. It would indicate that something behind the scenes is "tempering" the good and bad luck to smooth things out and try to nudge results toward some kind of predefined "average".

Which, to be honest, may well be the better way to handle randomness in an MMO, rather than pure RNG. MAKE the bell curve rectangular to protect anyone from having to deal with wretched bad luck - maybe even trim down streaks of good luck, as well. Resorting to pure randomness is certainly much easier to program, though, and less draining on game resources since you don't have to keep a record of a player's previous successes and failures.

[XiXiQ]

Does your seemingly consistent and predictable streak of bad luck indicate that the RNG isn't working the way that it should? No.

Whether RNG is working "how it should" or not isn't the root of the problem. If this is how it's supposed to work - with the same players getting shafted over and over with no end in sight (and if you use the bell curve as an example, you're talking about 10%-20% of them) - that is a serious game problem that requires addressing, rather than some interesting mathematical study.

[LineageRazor]

Whether RNG is working "how it should" or not isn't the root of the problem. If this is how it's supposed to work - with the same players getting shafted over and over with no end in sight (and if you use the bell curve as an example, you're talking about 10%-20% of them) - that is a serious game problem that requires addressing, rather than some interesting mathematical study.

That's exactly why I said it may not be the best system. It is, however, the easiest system to implement, as it does not require keeping track of past performance in order to "nudge up" or "nudge down" future performance.

Folks were complaining at length about the "true randomness" of Atma drops a while back, and while SE DID bump up the drop rate, as far as anyone knows it's still truly random and will remain that way. There's a statistical possibility, however unlikely, that a player could STILL farm for years and never see an Atma drop. I don't expect SE to do anything about Reclaim aside from, possibly, upping the success rate - but if your bad luck continues to be bad, that won't help one bit.

[Squand]

If this is how it's supposed to work - with the same players getting shafted over and over with no end in sight..."In fact, I generally don't get to 10 tries."

Your results are as expected for a small sample size. Your desire for gratification is misplaced. A friend of mine botched 8 reclaims in a row. 0 tears shed, because that's how math works. And over the course of all her crafting she'll make those botches back.

If the risk is too psychologically upsetting, just NQ the item.

You will make 100s of millions of gil crafting and selling, blowing up 10-20 out of 100 tries, is the same cost of business we all have. If the RNG doesn't hit you in reclaim it will hit you somewhere else. It evens out. We are all being treated fairly. Sometimes monsters deal nothing but crit and blow up a raid, this is the same thing. It's a pay to play system. You have to do things over and over to progress.