Guild Wars 2

Magic Find, as implemented, is a bad mechanic, and is counter-productive to co-operative gameplay.

If I run a dungeon in full MF gear, along with food, I can reach somewhere in the area of +165% Magic Find. This results in a vast and basically immediate increase in the quality of drops that I carry away from the dungeon. This benefits only me, as drops are not shared.

However, the difference between running full MF gear, and running gear with stats that are meant to make me more effective is just as clear of a difference. When I run MF gear, I have approximately 20% less max HP than I do with my good gear, and I take approximately 33% more damage. The damage that I deal is lowered by a similar amount, and the healing that I can provide to myself and the group is cut by nearly a third. My food ‘slot’ is also taken up by MF food, leaving me unable to use another consumable which might make me more powerful, give me more regeneration, or have some other interesting effect.
I am effectively only half of a party member when I spec for Magic Find. My entire party will feel the difference, and the burden of having to make up for my reduced stats must then be shouldered by the players who I am ostensibly supposed to be helping.

I don’t personally like the idea of Magic Find, period, but it’s not such an evil mechanic that I think it needs to be done away with completely. Giving the player the choice to effectively ‘downlevel’ in effectiveness in tradeoff for getting more/better loot is a legitimate gameplay mechanic.
However, in its current implementation, the benefits of Magic Find are realized only by the player actually using the stat. And the penalties associated with Magic Find – significantly reduced character efficacy – are spread out and shouldered by the entire party.

In other words,Players are being incentivized to harm their own party in exchange for personal gain. The ideal situation, from the perspective of an individual player out for purely personal gain, is to be in a situation where you are the only person in a party with Magic Find – You receive the full benefit of stacking your own Magic Find, and the rest of your party is best equipped to pick up the slack.
In a game like Guild Wars 2, which has gone out of its way to reinforce player-friendly behaviour by eliminating concepts like fighting over (universal) loot or ‘kill-stealing’, I have difficulty believing that this is the message that ArenaNet intended to send their players.

The best solution, in my opinion, would be to add up and average the entire party’s Magic Find bonuses. This wouldn’t really do anything to stop a player from reducing the party’s overall effectiveness with Magic Find gear, but it would allow the entire party to share in the benefit that is intended to balance out the reduced effectiveness.
It’s hard to tell whether this problem is particularly widespread, or how serious of a problem that it is, because a player really has no easy way of telling at a glance that one of her party members is holding the group back. Regardless, I think it is at least potentially a significant problem, and I think that fixing the imbalance sooner rather than later could prevent this from becoming a serious issue for players.

Blizzard tried this with D3 and they realised that it was a mistake. No need for Arena Net to do the same.

Keep the system as it is, it works. Yes, it has its downsides if you go with randoms, but on the other side, randoms always suck if compared to organized groups.

And then ppl when making groups for dungeons will just shout something like “lf1m must have full mf gear”. This goes against the game’s philosophy of everyone having equal opportunities when it comes to things like dungeon runs.

My take on MF? It should never exist in the first place, because it encourages grinding and farming, which this game is NOT about.

nachtnebel.9168:

Blizzard tried this with D3 and they realised that it was a mistake. No need for Arena Net to do the same.

Keep the system as it is, it works. Yes, it has its downsides if you go with randoms, but on the other side, randoms always suck if compared to organized groups.

It’s not an issue of “random groups” versus “organized groups”, because there’s no zero-sum here. The only advantage, in the current system, that “organized groups” have over “random groups” is that the organized group can allow one (or more) members to stack Magic Find with the understanding that the players who don’t stack Magic Find are ‘subsidizing’ their loot.
If the group is coordinating on that level in a system where Magic Find is distributed, then they can just give the ‘subsidized’ players gold and loot to create the same effect.

You’ll have to elaborate on why you think it’s a “mistake”. Allowing players to harm the entire party for selfish, individual gain runs counter to many, many other aspects of the game’s design. It fundamentally allows players to be anti-cooperative with other members of their party.
For that system to be maintained, I think there needs to be a strong argument as to why that system is better than one that distributes the bonuses. – not a vague “it works” and shrug of the shoulders.

Rendition.1342:

And then ppl when making groups for dungeons will just shout something like “lf1m must have full mf gear”. This goes against the game’s philosophy of everyone having equal opportunities when it comes to things like dungeon runs.
My take on MF? It should never exist in the first place, because it encourages grinding and farming, which this game is NOT about.

For the record, I am in full agreement with the bolded, and in an ideal world, I think that Magic Find would be given the full Dhuum treatment. I just don’t think that it’s likely or realistic to campaign to have it removed from the game, and I think this is the next best thing.

For the first part, though, I definitely feel that “must have full MF gear” is the lesser evil when it comes to dungeon PUGs. There are several factors that would keep that from becoming SOP for dungeons:
1) I don’t think most PUGs would be able to do it. You can get away with wearing MF gear in PUGs for some of the game’s easier Explorable paths, largely because the other 4/5 members of your party are likely to be wearing stat gear. An entire party of full MF gear players would either have to be exceptionally good at playing the dungeon, or they would just brickwall at any difficult part.
2) A major motivation to play dungeons at this point is for tokens to buy dungeon armour, and/or simply for completion credit. These are not affected by Magic Find (and daily rewards will likely remain the main source). I don’t think that the game is likely to reach a point where everyone who wants dungeon equipment already has it, and for that reason, I don’t think that “everyone must have full MF gear” would catch on, other than for a small contingent of hardcore farmers. (cont)

(cont: [Note: Post length limit is ridiculously low]) And even then, in the scenario where you actually do find yourself faced with a situation where you need to use MF gear or a party won’t take you along, I don’t believe that that is a significantly worse scenario compared to what is possible in the game’s current state, which is: You join a dungeon, set up to be the most helpful, pro-cooperation credit to the party that you can be. Without asking you, telling you, or making it in any way known to you, three or four members of your party are using full MF gear. You now have to deal with essentially all of the added, increased difficulty that comes along with using MF gear, that the rest of your party does, which can include unnecessary wipes, slow dungeon completion times, etc etc. The rest of your party makes out like bandits, because rare items are dropping for them left and right. You, however, have default drops, and (depending on how the dungeon run goes) you may only come out of the dungeon with a net gain of 20 or 30 silver, loot inclusive.
Personally, given the choice, I would rather make an agreement between myself and the rest of the party before entering the dungeon, about how we’re going to balance difficulty/reward, if the alternative is that I can unfairly be put on the hook for making up the lost time, damage, health, and healing that the rest of the team thrusts upon me, and in the end I won’t even get to share in the rewards for doing it. Even if it means having to conform to the standards that the party expects of me.
It’s worth pointing out: How many times have you actually seen a party advertising for a dungeon run, saying “LF1M must be shout healer”, or whatever other specific hoops you can think up? I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone being more specific than “Looking for either Guardian or Warrior”.