Risk, Reward, Probability and Difficulty

[Shougun]

.... or have already had good luck on drops (or wasted hours on end) and they don't want the hard work of sitting in front of the PC annulled by giving the others an easier way to get the same items.

"Yes, RNG is fabulous. I'd much rather spend a week doing the same thing over and over again since all other content isn't really that interesting"

Anyhow, someone mentioned 100% drop each time with RNG = /random on who gets the item. It's fine, but what could be the problem is the length of FFXIV dungeons. They can be stormed through, and with a 100% drop rate each time (no abnormal re-entry timers) you could deck out a full pt in a day.

Difficulty/length/timers/exclusivity of the items dropped . . . . not an easy job to put them all into balance.

For some reason people assume that no RNG means easier.

RNG + data = average amount of attempts.

Make a fixed number of tries at or above that number. You really havent made it any easier, just that every time you put effort in you get a visible reward out (your counter goes up and you always know each attempt was worth it).

Mathematically sound.


Just one more example because i've seen this idea a lot (people think no RNG must mean easier)

SE set a drop rate of 50%, so you can expect that 2 tries is a pretty solid "i'm going to get it" but you may do 3 because that is how %'s are. HOWEVER over the course of many many people doing this event of 50% it will end up being exactly the % (1/2) and only personally appeared to you as a 33.3333% drop rate. So, the reality is the difficulty got fuubared for you but everyone else got it easier (because your that one person the ratio used to offset it from the people who got lucky and did it the first time).

Rather then do all this wild push pull outliers no outliers. Find the rate you want, turn it into a fixed number if you feel you want it to be harder then the fixed number make it 4 tries. So, SE effectively made content harder on average by using a system NOT with RNG.

The only thing RNG does is add mystery and gamble (an addictive mystery- though I think devs have way overrated this aspect). The mystery is particularly useful for things you cant really explain like critical hits. What describes a critical hit, why cant you get non stop critical hits, where did you even hit to get the critical? We dont know, the game isnt '3d' enough to support actual body part targeting and skill involved that you may see in a first person shooter "headshots" or extremely commonly seen in Borderlands I/II.

Thus for criticals in a game environment like FFXIV you have to use RNG since there is no way to properly and accurately rely on skill instead, which should technically be the determining factor of criticals. Of course people who suck at aiming will prefer RNG over skill based since they will hardly ever (or at least think they will hardly ever) get a critical hit (thus they choose the system that offers the higher proc., no other reason unless you are a gambler).


You can use multiple loot systems in tandem to create mystery as well as progressive climbing reward.

The only limit to these systems is SE budget :P