Seems fair to me.
Laws of mathematics dictate that as long as the character with 9 initiative is getting a much better "average" over time than he's being rewarded for his input.
Highs and lows are expected in such a system. Even an almighty God Dragon can roll a 1 in D&D and fall on its face for "reasons" And that's part of the appeal
Averages rewarding player stat choice are what counts here overall. The mathematical averages should be what's argued, not outliers. And that just comes down to which algorithm is used.
You said yourself that the RNG works very well for some things. We don't have to make it the standard for everything but I vote that most of all D:OS EE was healthy for the most part and beneficial to the experience
Hell, if you want to be more forgiving as a dev? Alter the weights on rolls for a character with higher initiative such that his minimum rolls feel significantly better than his counter part. It's smoke and mirrors to give the illusion that someone's initiative of 2 simply has a very very very low chance of ever beating 9 cause we make it so, but that all comes down to how you decide implement things
I can see such an implementation making examples like the one you have extreme outliers and thus naturally moot. Hell, if there's a one percent chance of that happening relatively and it does, that's a unique and fun experience in its own way
We're kinda running in circles here, friend. I'm not against randomness in initiative rolls OR initiative rolls for that matter.
My main issues are that
A) initiative rolls still are disadvantageous to the player in a PVE setting where there usually are more foes than friends, especially if the initiative of mobs stays the same (once the initiative of foes is toned down, though, it would be alright, and initiative rolls would be very good in PvP) and
B) I'm against seed saving because it kinda kills randomness, especially if it's followed by restrictions on save games to reduce save scummings, and most importantly, because seed saving can be circumvented.
Were initiative rolls to be implemented with a reduced mob initiative, and without resorting to seed saving and measures to restrict save scumming, I'd be absolutely okay with it.
*Yawn* Switching to actual laptop and waking up fully
*stretch* One sec...Rebooting.....3....2.....1..And we're good! \o/
Well, going back to the algorithm that does the rolls: Can't we just increase player weight for better average number vs AI?
Not to tone down enemy initiative but such that we favor the player in initiative rolls. This is because, as you said, we're being biased since the AI normally has a numerical advantage or some such
I only bring up seed saving cause I feel that if people want to keep save 'anytime' feature and also discourage the breaking of RNG...well, I can't think of anything else.
I would've preferred more restrictive saving in order to leave RNG alone and cause it'd make players put more thoughts in each choice as well, but you saw how quick people wanted to kill that with fire.
Since people want to save scum, we don't need a method to prevent breaking RNG....just discourage it from being really simple as quick save and quick load, such that casual players who aren't determined to break RNG wont.
As for seeding breaking randomness, well that just depends on how we do it. I don't think seeding one turn ahead for every possible action would kill randomness; the roll is still taking place per normal....just before every possible action that could involve RNG. Whether the roll takes place directly after the forst grenade is thrown or directly before the player chooses to throw it.....RNG hasn't been killed really in my eyes.
Seeding ahead multiple turns is what I personally have a problem with
There's also the option of seeding in case of save-load, rolling per normal if game not freshly loaded, use seed for one turn ahead if player loads. That just requires a check for when a game is a loaded to lock a seed in place.
