I have trouble fixing the terrible seams I'm getting. I've followed Elli's print tuning guide and calibrated extruder, tuned PA (it's now 0.035) and extrusion multiplier.
I've tried adjusting both retraction length and speed, but it doesn't seem to have much impact. I'm not using "wipe on retract" or "retract on layer change", I only retract if travel distance is longer than 3mm. Retract is 0.3mm @35mm/s.
I've tried reducing PA smooth time too, but this also doesn't seem to have a noticable impact.
I've tried reducing seam gap from the default 10% in Orca all the way down to 0%, but the bad seams persist.
I've tried with "wipe on loops" both disabled and enabled with no difference.
I've tried with both arachne and classic wall generator, no difference.
I've tried different wall orders, inner/outer, inner/outer/inner and outer/inner, all with the same bad seams.
Filament in the picture is matte PLA, it is without doubt dry and generally prints well aside from the seams. It's stored vacuum sealed with silica, and I use a filament dryer to dry if I suspect wet filament.
I'm running out of ideas for where to tweak to get a decent result.
Randomize Z seam and make sure your flow/retraction settings are as good as you can get them.
Messing around with your nozzle temperature might help too: Keep in mind that the thermistor in the heat block might be off by a few degrees so if you can measure the temperature directly as a comparison, it can help you figure out how much it's usually off by and adjust accordingly.
Randomised seams just spreads the issue out on the entire model surface, it looks even worse like that.
It will probably help more once your settings are dialed in, otherwise, yeah it's just going to distribute the mess. Alternately, keep everything as is and fix it up post-print via filler and sanding.
Randomize Z seam
There is never a situation where this is a good setting to have on.
Can't say I agree but you print how you want.