Please be truthful with us...

[Frizze]

What i said(how i meant it anyway) was in day-to-day living you do things much less likely then that constantly. And something as "uncommon" as what youre describing is happening to thousands of players right now. People have been complaining about their perceptions of the RNG since the game went live. And yet every time i hear about someone collecting data from a few thousand swings(or crafts - though gathering is much better for data gathering since it goes quicker) they report back that the numbers are more or less right. And "more or less" in this case means that theyve become convinced by looking at enough data that if they performed more tests the numbers will merge with the averages being shown(if they havent already). I wouldnt say no to one of the devs doing what you asked(showing that the algorithm was working correctly), but ive seen nothing to show the numbers arent accurate as is.

I will also agree wholeheartedly that it sucks when the RNG nails ya. I swear like a sailor when i miss on a 99% swing(twice... yesterday... on the same node... after buffing the hq chance to 42%... OMG that sucked), or NQ a craft at 94%(especially if i hit the wrong button and finished the craft early - also happened once this week). But i also celebrate the 25% craft that somehow goes HQ anyway, or the node where i get 3 hq in a row when i only had a 3% shot(and didnt buff it at all). By forcing myself to celebrate and remember the lucky successes(while i mourn the unlucky failures), i try to combat my own biases.

I doubt anything ive said will sway anyone on this issue. We know what we "feel", and to many thats more important than whats true. By all means, record the results from your next 1000-5000 swings and crunch the numbers. Id bet youll find that the percentages are right. And when the devs do a test on this issue(id also bet that they do tests like this at least a few times per patch), they wont look a small sample like that. Theyll pull the results from a few million interactions to compare.

Edit: As for your Earthbound example. No, i never played that one. But its also not a true comparison. If Earthbound was an online game with 6 million people playing, you could trade your "Poo stick"(for lack of an accurate name) to others, and you could fight the enemy that dropped it as often as you wanted at any time then the end result wouldnt actually be that rare of a weapon. Final Fantasy 4 had something slightly similar to what youre describing. To get the ultimate armor in the game you needed a super rare drop(it was a type of tail - odds 1/255) from a rare spawn(a type of jelly - odds 1/255) enemy that could only appear in one room in the entire game(the room was an empty dead end that unknowing people wouldnt spend extra time in to try farming), then you had to know who to turn it in to so you could get the reward. There was a consumable rare drop you could get(a come here and fight me whistle) to force an encounter with the least common enemy formation for the room you were standing in, so you could at least SEE the fight if you wanted, but forcing the reward took a game genie code. And ultimately it was 100% unneeded - just a hidden easter egg basically.

[Jelly_Baby]

I will also agree wholeheartedly that it sucks when the RNG nails ya. I swear like a sailor when i miss on a 99% swing(twice... yesterday... on the same node... after buffing the hq chance to 42%... OMG that sucked), or NQ a craft at 94%(especially if i hit the wrong button and finished the craft early - also happened once this week). But i also celebrate the 25% craft that somehow goes HQ.

I 100% agree with on this, sometimes when doing gathering for collectables I'll miss twice in a row at 91% but then OFTEN I have gathered consecutive HQ items at 6%. The other week I gathered 3 HQ items consecutively with a 6% chance. 6% 3 times a row. What are the odds in that? very low. But good luck occurs too, but just as the developer said, Cognitive fallacy is true. I sometime doubt the system too, but then when I get luck like that, maybe it isn't all bad lol.

Another example is on Pokémon games (bear with me here!), catching shiny Pokémon is usually around a 1/4000 chance. I have personally experienced getting one in 7 attempted, other times it takes 1 thousand attempts. its unfortunate, but it is just RNG.