Please be truthful with us...

[Roth_Trailfinder]

Anecdotal evidence is merely that : anecdotal.

If you want a good anecdote, how's this for you : quickly manually synthing refined materials for my weaver, I HAVE had 1% HQ (no Quality added, just Progress) come out as HQ rather than NQ. I've also had bad luck with Hasty Touch and only come out with 19% chance, or 10% chance, and still get HQ.

Or how about this one for gathering : on a +1 Gathering Attempt node, with 14% chance of HQ, getting 4 of the 5 swings to be HQ.

Or how about having a 6% chance of the fourth overmeld on crafting gear, and getting it first try?
Or how about having a 35% chance on the first overmeld on crafting gear, and taking 57 materia before one finally sticks?

What I am saying is - your sample sizes are WAY too small to mean anything. Come back and complain when you miss 25% things more than 250,000 times out of 1,000,000.

Flip a coin. Its got a 50/50 shot at being Heads or Tails, right? If you flip a coin 2 times and come up 2 Heads and 0 Tails, or 2 Tails and 0 Heads, would you call that "bad RNG"? Would you call it "good RNG"? Or would you understand that merely flipping it twice is two separate calls to the RNG and can go either way regardless of any previous outcome?

When you flip a coin, you are NOT guaranteed to have an exact, 50/50 split between Heads and Tails. If you were, it would not truly be "Random" would it? Because guaranteeing an exact 50/50 split would mean if you had 2 Heads and 1 Tails after 3 flips, your fourth would have to be Tails. Yet, you can easily get streaks of 4-6 in a row.

Now, imagine that you are guaranteed that 50/50 split, but you are one of a thousand people all grabbing for that coin for their own personal coin flips. Are you guaranteed, given that you have limited control over how soon you can regain control of the coin for another flip, to have a personal 50/50 split? Or could the coin come up Heads 100% of the time for half the people and Tails for the other half? The COIN is still giving its 50/50 split, but none of the thousand people are seeing it under those circumstances, are they?

Final question : you DO understand that the RNG in any video game is a lot more complex, and in any MMO gets called upon by a lot more than merely 1000 people, right? Your view of the situation, even that of your circle of 100 friends, is extremely limited. For another analogy, you literally cannot see the forest for the trees. You see the results you personally get. You hear about the results that others get. But you cannot, I cannot, no one can see ALL the results of ALL the RNG calls, even for a certain action such as discovering an Unknown item on a gathering node.

Oh, for what its worth, the specific questions you asked are the kinds of things that are answered either anecdotally, or through that same theorycrafting you dismiss.