Let's Talk RNG

As many of you know, I play a shooter called Destiny. It's kind of like Halo and World of Warcraft got drunk and had a baby. Space magic. There's warlocks. Anyway, it's got something that draws me in a tad more than even the cooperative play: the LOOT! Shooting any enemy in the game has a chance to drop these neat little octahedrons or engrams.

   Those shiny things! It's like Christmas!

 They don't dissapear and if you can't pick them up for some reason, they go to your "Post Box" where you can pick them up at any time.  

  When they're laying on the ground, you can't tell anything more than it's rarity. Green ones are the most common, followed by blues, then purples and finally gold ones. When you pick it up you can see what class it's going to be or what slot it's going to take up. You gotta head to one of 3 social spaces in the game where there will be an NPC who will tell you what it is aka "decoding". 

 Here's the thing. There's a little thing going on in the whole system called RNG or Random Number Generator. Any enemy could drop any engram up to gold (only dropped by boss level enemies) and there's a small chance that a blue one will actually turn out to be a purple item and a purple has a random chance to become a gold item. Then, the items themselves come with a  completely random set of perks from a skill set. It's farkin bananas, you guys. That means that you're running around killing everything on the off chance you'll get some loot and it will be awesome! 

  Some people just seem to have better luck than others.  There's a hierarchy to the guns in this game and getting some of them to 'drop' are like our white whale. Some examples being the Gjallerhorn rocket launcher, the Hopscotch Pilgrim, which is a pulse rifle, I didn't name it, yes it's a fucking stupid name, the Zen Meteor sniper rifle and and any armor from the "Desolate" set.  I might have to cross Gjallerhorn off the list because in a recent update they made it a reward for doing a campaign mission instead of a random drop but for two previous years, it was THE reward. It was like once you had it the game was on easy mode. 

Gjallerhorn, it's tracking rounds have been replaced with kittens. It is no less deadly.     (It doesn't really shoot kitty rounds but that would be amazing) 

  Some people *cough cough* husband *cough cough* who played since the beta had the chance to get this rocket launcher at the beginning of the game from a weekly-visiting vendor named Xūr who is an asshole, tentacled dick face.  Xūr shows his spurious, gold class wares for three days a week, usually they're the things that you just had found that week. If you found a SUROS Regime auto rifle, you could usually bet that trencoat wearing cock would bring it for sale that weekend. I guess I shouldn't talk badly about the mysterious douche, he does carry heavy ammo refill packs for like dirt cheap. 

 You dick-faced whoremongering bastard

 

  Xūr only takes a certain kind of currency, which, you guessed it, drops randomly. The first week of the game, Xūr sold it and nearly no one bought it because no one had played the game enough to earn enough to buy more than one item. At the time, rocket launchers were not the shit and no one really bought it. 

  We were all stupid. Very stupid because RNG made it fucking impossible to get this weapon.  Videos started to spread about how awesome it was and you could collectively hear the community bang it's head against the wall in frustration. 

A couple of us sitting around, thinking up ways to get Gjallerhorn.

  Random Number Generator rewards make for my brain's happy place. It means there's always something to work for, always a reward to get. It also makes for some hilarious videos where people found the exact loot they were hoping for.

 My husband does not have good RNG. Hasn't sacrificed enough goats or something, I don't know but he once spent two weeks trying to get a certain gun to drop with certain perks. He had to do these campaign missions called "strikes" that take about 10-15 minute to complete depending on the difficulty. They can drop engrams during the mission plus you get rewards just for completeing it. Well, he played 156 before he got what he was looking for. He could do them in his sleep! I even did a couple for him because I needed him to take a break. 

 This wouldn't have been so bad if I hadn't joined in on his first couple of strikes and gotten the exact gun he was looking for with the exact perks that he wanted too. MFW: 

  We played the day after Christmas. I had just gotten my own Playstation and had to make a new account and so I had to start two other characters (you can have three) to maximize my loot chances. Lots of people do this. Trouble was, those two new alts needed guns and armor! Well back then the RNG was stronger than today and getting purples was the best you could hope for and they didn't drop often. It always gave me a little 'yippee!' and some adrenaline when I saw one. The day after Christmas I managed to get 18 purple engram drops which mostly decoded into stuff I needed for my alt accounts, just like REAL Christmas! I got the dirtiest looks that day, I was accused several times of indecent acts with employees at Bungie in exchange for good drops. I plead the fifth on any and all accusations. 

  The day after the April 2016 update (not a paid DLC or expansion but major changes happened) there was a new gold class sniper rifle out that everyone wanted to play with because three critical shots would trigger a fourth bullet that was loaded from thin air. This magic bullet would make big boomy-boomy pow-pow if you managed to get another critical, not your average pew-pew.

 Yeah, I got it the day of the update. I legitimately felt awful. It was the first gold engram I decoded! The other half of the living room was cold. Husband keeps getting an older weapon and he is kind of pissed. You know in anime when a character is about to murder another one and the top of their face turns blue and they make this gargling noise? I heard that. 

  We went off and did some of the new activities hoping he could grab a few golds with the new system that the update introduced. We counted. Out of 12 gold engrams he got nothing he wanted. I on the other hand with 7 gold engrams had 7 copies of that shiny new sniper rifle. 

  NO I AM NOT FUCKING YOU, it looked like I was sucking RNG's dick directly.  If my husband wasn't there to utter curses of disbelief even I wouldn't have believed it happened. Then I got my 8th engram of the day. 

                     GODDAMNIT

 FUCK. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck!  I didn't play for the rest of the day. I was too worried the next time I came back to the tower I'd get another one and my husband would destroy my Playstation and bury it in the woods. He continued on, quietly raging every time he got something he didn't want. 

 Rahool is the name of the guy in the tower who decodes the engrams. The general attitude is that he takes the engrams and then gives you whatever shit is lying around his overgrown fruit stand. He's therefore a piece of shit. He knows exactly what you want and just wants to see you cry. 

  Rahool had been giving my husband the dry dick for days and just wouldn't give up the Zen for him. The atmosphere in the apartment was...uncomfortable.

  Finally he threw the controller at me and said "You do it! I'm tired of getting Hereafter!" I was in the hot seat. I could have farted diamonds. My hands got sweaty. Rahool was going to give me a stupid Patience and Time sniper rifle just to fuck with me. I was going to look like a total asshat because Rahool the tool knew I needed this.  

 I touched down and headed over. 

 I'm seriously going to suck your dick, man.

And that's how I got the nickname of "Priestess of RNG".