Exactly this was the case and it is one of the great ideas of IIRC Bob Metcalfe to have done so. The "fuzz factor" was a random number by which the increasing number was multiplicated. Thus two colliding nodes probably weren't colliding at their next try, because the randon numbers would be most probably different.

"Pure" ALOHA (the first CSMA network) without timeslots operated at a ~18% throughput / raw bandwith ratio, whereas "slotted" ALOHA (with timeticks) roughly doubled that efficiency. Ethernet (the successor of ALOHA) had an even higher efficieny.

bakunin