Alexander: Who thought this was a good idea??

[CrimsonThunder]

RNG has no quarter, it favours no one. We plebians can never hope to understand it's divine will.

[Vaer]

While you have that sort of "protection" in normal need/greed, you can also end up running it over and over and never actually see anything you can need on in those cases. It balances out.
Be able to need only a few items out of a large loot pool, or be able to need everything from a small loot pool.

Honestly rolling vs 2-ish people on stuff that might not even drop seems better to me than having potentially one person winning everything and 7 other people in the group getting nothing. I mean this system is great for PF and friends but it's doesn't seem to work well with DF.

[Nekodar]

You have a 41.4% chance of getting any loot from Alexander any turn.
From Pharos Hard, if you don't have any piece yet, you have a 43.8% chance of getting a piece you can need lot on (healer gear used for the maths). The chance drops if you already have some pieces.
If you're after a specific piece from either, for pharos hard that chance drops to 7.1% for left side gear (incl. belt) from Pharos Hard, and 10% chance for accessory. Per run.
For Alexander it's 13% chance. Per run.
Now taking into account time per run... So far normal Pharos Hard run is about 30 minutes... And an Alexander run shouldn't need to take more than 10 minutes.

Looking purely at the chances of obtaining A piece or a specific wanted piece, the chances balance out.
Taking into account that Alexander can require 1, 2 or 4 pieces to trade for gear, even accounting for the time per run balance out pretty well.

[szalkerous]

A lot of other MMOs allow a one-time need roll win and after that you're forced to greed. That system works.