See what I'm doing here? I'm opening a chest trying to get a rare item, a gear seed, in Trials of Mana. If I don't get it, I reload the previous quick save and try again. It's called save scumming, and I'm doing it over and over again. It's very mundane, but it's something you need to do if you want to get the best gear in the game. Then, once you get a gear seed, you have to go to an inn and grow it in a flower pot, only the item and order you grow them in are predetermined. To break that order, you have to sleep and save at the inn and try again to get something different. You can't just quick save and reload like I've been doing here. Then I got to do this all over again when I'm hunting for my items I need to change to my final class.
Trials of Mana is the third game in the Collection of Mana. The previous title was Secret of Mana, and I had to do something similar in that game as well. In the final level, the Mana Fortress, there were specific enemies you had to kill that had a chance of dropping a weapon orb you needed in order to forge the weapon to its final form. Once I found an enemy I was looking for, I saved, killed it and if no weapon chest spawned, I reloaded and killed it again. When the chest spawned, I saved, opened it and if I didn't get the orb, reloaded and tried again.
Between Secret of Mana and Trials of Mana, I must have wasted hours, maybe at least 15 give or take a few, trying to get all this equipment. But I know what you're thinking. There wasn't quick save scumming back then, so I should be fortunate, right? Right. And that's the thing. Imagine doing this back in the 90s. You didn't get what you wanted so you had to keep wandering around looking for another enemy in the hopes of dropping the chest, and then dropping the item you needed. All that extra wandering around and fighting would waste even more of your time. But if you're roughly my age reading this, you'll have been in high school back when these games were out, and when you were a teenager, you didn't have to worry about wasting time playing games. You might have only got one every month or so, so spending time farming for shit like this probably didn't bother you.
But we're adults now. We have jobs and careers. Families. We shouldn't be spending time dealing with RNG; we should be having fun with our games. I'm also hard-pressed to believe that people dealing with RNG are convinced they actually enjoy this. I also know what you're thinking. "But Lucas, these are old games! Why complain about them?" Because RNG hasn't gone away. The act of killing something over and over again is still prevalent in RPGs and MMOs today. In fact, some games rely heavily on low drop rates to keep their active player base still hooked.
Take Final Fantasy XIV for instance. There's so much RNG in that game that it's annoying. Let's also first talk about one of the basic stats of RPGs in general and that's hit rate. It's just hilarious to me to see a hulking warrior with a giant sword swing it right through a massive enemy and then be met with text popping up out of nowhere saying "Miss". What's the point in that? Anyway, one thing I tried once and never again was raiding. In raiding, you're met with a bunch of people, sometimes people you've never played before, and then you tackle a massive objective or series of objectives and then hope that the RNG gods drop an item, and then you have to hope it's an item your class needs. THEN, you have to pray to the RNG gods again that you can roll high enough in the group to get it. If not, try again. In some games, if you do get it, you have to wait a full week to get another one, where you're once again subject to the possibility of not getting anything. I wasted enough hours doing this ONCE. I can't imagine how people find this fun to keep doing this for YEARS...
I also remember when I was doing my relic quest line. One such portion of it involved getting these anima pieces that only showed up in certain zones. In order to get them, you had to participate in the game's group events called FATEs and do them over, and over, and over, and OVER again. They were not guaranteed drops to everyone in the party. Just because one person got it didn't mean the other seven would. There were times where I would spends hours with one group just to see new people show up, get their drops after a few FATEs and then leave. Then, when I finally got my drop for that zone, hours later, it was having to do it again in 11 more zones. You'd also be lucky enough to get a full group who was efficient enough to chain them. If you were in a zone that wasn't populated, you might as well move on to another one that was, or you'd be at it for days. Even after people complained to SE enough to get them to increase the drop rates, you could still end up spending an hour or two trying to get one.
And then there was a phase of the relic quest where you had to meld stat-based materia to your weapon. Because everyone was doing this quest at the same time, that meant the demand for materia skyrocketed, so the price did as well. Depending on the server you were on, you would end up spending several millions of gil on materia. The problem wasn't obtaining the materia, because there were other ways to obtain it without buying it (but be prepared to invest serious time). It was having to meld it into the weapon at certain stages where you had lower rates of success. Yes, a quest has you buying expensive items to try to fit into your weapon, only to have them break so you buy more... WHY IS THIS FUN?!
But it isn't just the raiding and relic questing where RNG is problematic. It also affects farming and gathering. For instance, if you want to be self-sufficient as a crafter, you need to gather your own materials. In FFXIV, this involves hunting, harvesting and mining. When you kill monsters, you have a chance to get an animal product such as bone or skin. Skins for many animals tend to have a lower drop rate than anything else. I used to kill 10-15 animals sometimes before I'd get a skin, and that's just preposterous to me. I mean, you kill an animal, and you can't get a single skin from their entire carcass, which is entirely wrapped in skin? What kind of sense does that make? I can't believe there are people that actually defend this. I once heard the argument that sometimes you don't get skins because you mutilate the carcass too much. So, if I kill 10 animals in the EXACT SAME WAY, I can only get one perfectly good skin? Still doesn't make any sense.
Harvesting and mining both have percentages of success every time you swing your axe or pick. But just like fighting a monster, you see your tool strike an object and sometimes you come up with nothing. But why is it like this? Why do you have to deal with RNG when your character is clearly striking a rock? I don't even want to think about all the hours I wasted dealing with misses when I was trying to gather items.
For crafting, there are many different abilities crafters use to increase the progress of their items. Every step an action is taken, the durability lowers and based on the percentage achieved before the final step, an item will either be crafted or destroyed. If destroyed, there's a chance materials will be salvaged to try again. I've never liked the RNG for crafting systems, because sometimes you're relying on a move that gives you 90% success, and then it will fail. When you're trying to make a high level item, and EVERY step is crucial, having a 90% success rate fail on you is enormously frustrating. I haven't played FFXIV in a while and I've heard they've implemented changes to make it not so miserable, so it may not be like that anymore, but still... it's annoying. Like, why do you need RNG to successfully make orange juice? What's so random about that!?
Now, if you're an FFXI vet, I know what you're thinking. "You FFXIV players have it SO easy!" Which is true. I only played FFXI for a couple of years, so I don't know how many quality of life changes they've implemented, but I remember the early days were rough. I never gathered or crafted, but I was familiar with notorious monsters and their rare drops. It wasn't like monster spawns in FFXIV, where it would show up and everyone could participate if they just got there in time. No, the battle system in FFXI was strictly party vs monster (or one-on-one if playing solo). I wasted SO much time hunting notorious monsters and very rarely got anything from it, because here's what happens. A spawn window opens up, and people arrive to one of several spawn positions. Then, it's a matter of when and where that mob will spawn. THEN, it's a matter of who's lucky enough to tag the mob and claim the fight. Most of the time, people have scripts and will automatically attack targets the moment they spawn. THEN, it's being lucky enough to actually get the drop you want. Hours can be wasted just waiting for the damned thing to pop. Just imagine what you could have done with your life instead!
People will say, "But that's how it's always been! RNG has been a part of RPGs since tabletop games!" True. I get rolling for strength and dexterity checks and all that. For stat based players, sure, that makes sense (although in table top games you can simply imagine your knight swinging and whiffing at an orc, but seeing an attack visually connect and still missing is disconnecting) but why does it have to affect everything else? Why can't we be guaranteed a tiger skin for killing tigers that actually have skin? Why do we have to kill the same mobs over and over again only to have our inventories stuffed with objects and gear that our characters can't use? Essentially, why waste our time?
And then people will say, "But if you don't put the work in, how will you feel rewarded?" I HATE that argument. DETEST IT! I WISH I had all the free time the people who use this argument have, because I don't HAVE that time. I want to play and move on with the game's story, not spend a weekend killing the same damn monster for one damn drop. I'd like to move on and play other games, but here I am, STILL trying to get a stupid weapon orb or a shard to open up a dungeon. When you say "but you should put the work in a game," I wonder if you know what the purpose of a game is. We work too hard in real life as it is. We work to make money. We work to clean and fix our houses. We work to get our kids up for school in the morning, while also going to school ourselves. We work to hold our families together. Games are ESCAPES from work and should never feel like work itself. Yes, it's great to be rewarded for your work, but not when your TIME is being wasted. Dying a hundred times to a boss in Sekiro and finally beating him, that's work. Trying to figure out how to take down an AT-AT in Battlefront without getting blown up, that's work. Killing the same god damned rat in an RPG just to get a piece of an upgrade you need, that's not work; that's a chore. That's time wasted. That's insanity.
The point I'm making is that RNG for drops is becoming antiquated. Video games are evolving in so many areas so quickly, it's hard to keep up. The "But that's how it's always been" excuse is no longer valid. Just about every video game franchise from Mario to Assassin's Creed (which is a bad example, as the new ACs have RNG themselves now) has made a tremendous amount of changes to make their games more enjoyable. As it stands, they only thing RNG is good for is to extend a player's playtime and in some games, annoy them to the point that they pull out their credit cards and just buy whatever they're trying to get. Please, developers, respect our time.
