The concerns in an action game are totally different from those in an RPG. You might have noticed that all the games I've complained about poor quality PRNGs in are RPGs (the Dragon Quests are the only NES/SNES RPGs I know of that have particularly good PRNGs; Square's are universally terrible)rainwarrior wrote:I've seen that in several games, and I've always thought of it as a serious flaw, not something people hardly notice. I've often been annoyed at how unintentionally predictable RPG battles can become.AWJ wrote:If two of the same enemy are in the same RNG-tapping state on the same frame then they'll always both choose the same behaviour
In an action game you're generally consuming less than one random number per frame on average (enemies generally don't choose a new action every frame, only when they finish their current one) and you want to avoid spikes in CPU usage, especially if you're doing a sprite 0 raster split.
Yep, in an RPG unwanted correlation between successive random numbers (e.g. hit rolls and damage rolls) can badly distort game balance. Another example to go with those DBZ cards: stat growth in Final Fantasy 2. You weren't supposed to lose a point in Intelligence almost every time you gained one in Strength and vice versa, it was supposed to be more like a 1/6 chance, but lolSquareRNG. There are a whole bunch of monsters in Romancing SaGa 3 that simply never appear due to lolSquareRNG, and at least one item that's unobtainable as a consequence.Sometimes you don't realize why something plays out kinda crummy, and it's really just from poor PRNG use, but you can't tell because you're not comparing against a good PRNG.