A value that is only able to be individually assigned as the item is digital, infinitely reproducable, and non transferable. Ergo: it is not an objective value, but a purely subjective value to each individual.
Just like with say, comisioning art, where one person would be willing to pay $50 for artist x to draw y, the next person might only be willing to pay $10 for that same, and yet another may be willing to pay $100.
The problem with folks constantly claiming these items magically have some established value is that it really doesn’t. It’s value is purely subjective to each and every person, no matter how much folks time to claim otherwise. As again, it’s not a good you can exchange/trade to others, and is endlessly producable.
You also say RNG is a fundamental mechanic, and to extent that could be the case when it comes to gameplay. But RNG shouldn’t not be the only determining factor for rewards. Rewards should be deterministic more so than pure RNG. If it must be pure RNG, there should be no limiting factor to the number of tries some one can make should they be willing to spend the time.
In any scenario however, there does need to be a form of ‘bad luck protection’ as nothing destroys some one’s enjoyment of a game or a task than continually performing said task and not seeing any progress toward the end goal of the task. Take the Dragonwrath, Tarecgosa’s Rest method of aquisition. It takes time, yes, some bits may have minor amounts of RNG (more RNG with more people in group) but, ultimitely you can see you are making progress, that you are advancing toward a goal, that you are making progress.
That is the biggest problem with how many things are ‘RNG only’ and people constantly try to assign a value to based on their expectations while demanding other’s follow it. Galleon’s Saddle isn’t hard to get, it’s tedious, requires a, frankly, degenerate methodology to try and get more efficiently, and does not reward the time needed to get it, as you could (as in my case) kill the stupid thing 1000+ times between all your alts and never get the saddle to drop. Then Bob Smith, the new player comes in, gets it the first time they kill it.
That’s great for Bob Smith, but is horrible for the other players as it is discouraging to see, makes the players jaded and irate. After all, they spent all this time working toward it, bored out of their minds trying to get the thing for completion of their collection or for say, roleplay purposes (which is more my case). Then, they get to a point that, they are no longer excited by the thing but continue due to sunk cost fallacy and pure spite to the game devs and cruddy RNG designs.