IS RNG GOOD OR BAD?

It's not a Role-Playing Game without the random numbers. I think I commented on this a while back: the whole point of the Role-Playing Game was to corral randomness through role-play.

For example, let's say I start out with an average character, and then make a choice (role-play) that I want to increase that character's strength. This choice to increase strength also becomes a choice to NOT choose something like increasing agility. So, this choice might come back to bite me later, if I don't play to that choice I made of strength. Paraphrasing what LockeZ said about FireEmblem, the skill in role-play is in putting the character in a place where random numbers can't cause serious damage. This should be what a game developer has in mind about random numbers: the ability of the player to avoid their wrath.

It is difficult to design a game where everything is fair in this way. I think balancing a game is one of the most difficult RPG creation tasks, especially since developers are programming a faceless reaction to the player that cannot think on its own or bargain with the player. (For example, in the original role-playing environment, the player could do anything, although it had to fly past the story narrator (the "Dungeon Master" or D.M.) in a creative way, often by passing a "check": rolling a 20-sided die having to do with one of the player's statistics. A gateway guarded, again, by the random number.) It is on the developer's shoulders to overcome the limitations of a non=human, automatic D.M. and code this interaction into the game in a way that is palatable for players.

The history of Japanese games which have taken this concept and created a new, wholly automatic face of role-playing have changed what young people expect when they start a role-playing video game. They are now more focused on completing the game, like athletes or hunters seeking a trophy head, managing the best way to defeat the automated features. I think that when the developer acknowledges and panders to this mindset, it tears the game's role-playing soul right out of its silicon body.

Like some people say in the FE fandom: "RNG. Can't play with it, can't play without it." Maybe you CAN manipulate the RNG to your favour with those blasted level ups ( save scumming as it is called ) but it takes a lot of luck and effort. And that doesn't even include the 'hidden growth rates' that determine how well your characters turn out. More RNG abuse... Can make or break your character.

AS a player, i've found myself liking and hating it at the same time. On one side, i totally hate the random chance of success or fail in most mmorpg designs (crafting in lineage2, "surprise chest that have 0.00001% of giving something" for example).

On the good side of randomness, take for example the game rogue legacy, with random generated castle dungeons, it keeps the game interesting each time you play it (your playable characters change over choices on a skill tree).

It depends how long it takes to kill the enemies! If you are playing a game where you can kill about two enemies per second, then 1/1000 isn't that bad even if it's single player. That's less than ten minutes.

And other factors! If 74 other extremely similar items can drop from 74 other enemies, and the player only needs one of them, then the drop chance can be many times rarer than if you had to keep farming one enemy. Though probably not 74 times rarer - you've massively improved the chance of incidentally obtaining an item while playing normally, but the amount of effort it takes to farm one is probably about the same (unless several of these enemies appear together).

That 1/131072 chance makes me giggle a little though. MMORPGs in 2000 didn't really know what they were doing, did they?

If you want to make an item like that, though, I think it'd be way cooler to implement a quest line or some other more fulfilling action that gave you the item that could only be completed by X number of people. Getting a rare item by sheer chance doesn't feel quite as "deserved" as getting one because you worked really hard for it, imo. The winner of the item is still based on player time spent.

That being said, a simple RNG item is waaaay easier to implement, obviously. And, there is always a chance someone will get such a good item randomly and unintentionally, which can feel cool for casual players who might not grind.

The problem is that if you do anything that does NOT depend on chance (or only a little), then everybody can get the item.
Also randomness in MMORPGs is nice because it often helps weaker players.

If you made it so that you get that ultimate weapon if you kill 100000 monsters, then the strongest player will get that weapon first and get even stronger. If it's a 1/100000 chance per kill, then even a new player who just killed the first monster might get it.

In MMORPGs RNG helps to keep things interesting. Yes it's not fair, but that's not the main goal in these games. Luck games are more addictive after all.

I don't understand what you mean by "everybody can get the item". Especially since two sentences later you go on to say that only if it's random does everybody have the ability to get the item.

I'm also extremely unsure why you would not want everybody to be able to get the item. You want only 0.001% of your players to be able to have the full amount of fun, and the rest to just be randomly locked out of it because the RNG decided before they ever started that they wouldn't be allowed to win? That doesn't seem like a good model. I understand that the item feels more special if other players don't have it, but other people should at least be able to aspire to obtain it. With pure RNG, they can't do that. They have no way to get the item.

"But they can still farm it!" Then you haven't really achieved your goal of making it equally obtainable to everyone, of making it pure RNG. The people who play the most will be able to get it; it's still a factor of both RNG and time spent. When you get into really pure RNG is the stuff like 1/100000 chance drops from any enemy in the game. Shiny pokemon, world drops in MMOs, ultra-rares in Kingdom of Loathing, finding a specific item in a shop in Nethack or Binding of Isaac, etc. If you're willing to move a step away from that level of ultra-RNG in order to make your rewards be farmable, consider moving a few more steps away from that to make them be more enjoyably farmable.

This is my opinion on randomness:

I hate random encounters. I understand that they were created to avoid sprite limit on early home consoles, but never liked those unless there were way to avoid it such as monsters attacking only in very specific areas (think tall grass in Pokemon).
Otherwise randomness is fun. I have nothing against random loot as it IMO enhance game rather than make it worse.
Random dialogs (not plot specific, just chit-chat you get from people you talk to) can even enhance game in such way, that it removes one of most common errors in JRPG games, people saying same stuff forever, that is.

Randomness can also be used to determine things like weather.

Long story short: Randomness in RPG games is almost always good. Unless it is for random encounters - those sucks.

I also like the concept of multiple tiers of dropped item, if done well. Let's say a monster has a chance of dropping one of the following:

1/ 4: Medical Herb
1/ 8: Healing Salve
1/16: Rat Pelt
1/32: Fork Trident

So he can drop a weak healing item, a decent healing item, a low grade crafting component and a rare crafting component. He'll only drop one, though. The way I see it, it should check for the rarest item slot first, then work its way up. If all four checks fail, you win nothing! If any of them succeed, you get the item that it succeeded on and nothing else from that foe. So you can get the Fork Trident or the Medical Herb in this situation, but not both unless there's multiples of that foe you took down.

Keep in mind this is just an example, and this kind of thing can actually be done quite horribly. See: White Knight Chronicles.