Guild Wars 2

Here’s an idea to make MF more group-friendly and skill-based.

1. Turn MF into an additional stat. Replace it with Vitality.
(ie. Sets that used to have Power, Prec, MF, now have Pwr, Prec, Vit, and MF.)
(And then we can have MF versions of other stat combinations.)

2. Change the way MF works. Rather than a flat boost to item drops, instead equipping MF gear activates some sort of “ranking mode” that gives you better items if you perform better. But worse items if you don’t perform better.

eg. One way it could work is something like this:
When you have MF, a bar appears onscreen. Let’s say your gear has 10% MF:
-10% <———- 0 —-——-> +10%

You start at 0, and you can either go down to -10% MF or up to +10% MF

If you do big damage, if you heal injured teammates, apply conditions, apply boons, res teammates, evade attacks, etc. Your bar will increase.

If you take damage or become down, your bar will decrease.

If you die, your bar will decrease by a lot.

So the more MF gear and food you have, the longer the bar will be. You can increase your MF to more, but if you perform badly you will reduce your MF to even lower negatives.

So MF becomes an optional risk/reward mechanic. If you want your drops to be dependent on your performance, then equip your MF set. If you suck, don’t equip MF since your drops will actually be reduced. Whereas MF will incentivise players to perform better and help the group.

People who just want to play normally and get the normal amount of drops, can avoid MF altogether and not risk it.

I have to say, this is quite a good idea,

although i would have to say that players should be able to get equal gear without the MF stat. additionally, It would have to be incorporated graphically. and not just as a bar that slides up and down.
maybe as a small second orb to the right of the elite skill that fills up.
and would fill up relative to the MF that you have, the colour that fills it determines if its good or bad. (+% or -%).

so if you had 10% and was currently at 5% the orb would be at 50%
if you gained more MF and had 15% then the 5% would be represented as only filling up 33% of the orb.

Maybe incorporating this into the current agony resistance.

Additionally, having MF increase the currency drop would be good as also increase the chance of rarer dyes dropping.

you could also bind mf to the level so at lvl 1 → 1 mf at 80 → 80 mf

so you made mf level based

The right way to reward players with better loot would be to motivate them to play with SKILL. Thats how you reward players for playing good, not rewarding them for grinding MF gears to the max!

If the game needs anything stat wise, then 2 more stats..I think the game would be easier balancable, if players would have to consider 6 different stats for their builds with dual active effects, not 4 stats with active/passive effects…
An easy understandable example:

4 stats = every stat has 25% big influence on the class balancing, wherefrom 12,5% are passive working..
6 stats = every stat has only 16,67% influence on the whole class balance, wherefrom all 6 would be active working with direct influence on the class in 2 different ways.

I say, the game would work alot better, if it would have only 6 active stats in total, no passive ones. These 6 stats should be this:

Power: Increases Maximum Damage dealt with Weapons and Maximum Duration% with Conditions
Precision Increases Minimum Damage dealt with Weapons and the Chance for dealing Critical Hits
Toughness Decreases Maximum received Damage from Weapons and Decreases in % the Stamina Cost for Dodging
Vitality Decreases Minimum received Damage from Weapons and Increases Maximum Health
Morality Increases Condition Damage and Healing Power from Skills
Courage Decreases Chance of receiving Critical Hits and and increases Critical Damage.

MF as passive stat is total obsolete and should have never been implemented as something gear bonded to the game. Thats my opinion.

Personally, and I know many people will not agree but MF should be removed from the game period. Why should a group carry the MF lechers so that they can get better loot, and the party do all the work?

The one idea I read somewhere on the forum was a good one also, make MF passive so at least the whole party can benefit for it?

@OP this is not a bad idea thou, make them work for their loot :P

Just share it across the group :p like in D3

under the OP’s suggestion having more MF and playing bad will reduce your drops. the higher the MF % the more he can get or the less he can receive. so people with higher MF would be inclined to work harder to maintain a high drop rate

I think the MF system should just be completely rebuilt. Maybe make it more like risk-reward thing that doesn’t require you to go out of your way for crappy gear.

Say you’re in the world, maybe let players weaken themself with a magic find slider (weaker, more stuff). In a group, make it to where this is unavailable, and instead there’s a slider for the entire group that everyone must agree on.

An easier solution to a skill based Magic Find buff is to make it a utility skill that will give you a 3-minute boon. In addition, the skill would have a recharge time of 4-minutes.

Boon effects are easily dropped by enemies and therefor it would require heighten awareness; i.e. more skill.

It’s simple and doesn’t oppose group capability (via stats rolls eyes).

I wouldn’t remove food buffs either. Just make the boon’s effectiveness based on your current level.

just remove it all except for food/booster buffs.

Well what if my team are all very good? so one guy gets skimped cause he running support while every one else has DPS? It’s not easy for a computer to decide who’s ‘good’ all it sees is numbers.

Just remove it. World should have a loot table, Vets should have one, Champs should have one, and if they want Dungeons to pay out more, as they apparently do, give them a separate table. Simplicity that does not ask a player to gimp themselves or their group for a slight chance at better loot.

It is ludicrous to reward better to those that choose to be less.

Most dungeons can be done naked if the team has the skills why so much vitriol for MF ? You dont need x zillion precision tough vit etc to do any content in this game it’s all do-able by even the most basic grps after a few learning runs whatever gear you wear? Not advocating anyone wearing any gear, just wondering where the hate is actually vented toward …

alamore.1974:

Well what if my team are all very good? so one guy gets skimped cause he running support while every one else has DPS? It’s not easy for a computer to decide who’s ‘good’ all it sees is numbers.

If you read my post:
“If you do big damage, if you heal injured teammates, apply conditions, apply boons, res teammates, evade attacks, etc. Your bar will increase.”

So I’m suggesting you get rewarded for supporting your teammates.

Actually most of the people further down in the thread seem to be offtopic and just want to complain about MF, rather than my suggestion. It’s especially jarring when they complain about things that my suggestion is designed to address.

Goldgenie.2974:

Most dungeons can be done naked if the team has the skills why so much vitriol for MF ? You dont need x zillion precision tough vit etc to do any content in this game it’s all do-able by even the most basic grps after a few learning runs whatever gear you wear? Not advocating anyone wearing any gear, just wondering where the hate is actually vented toward …

That’s not the point tho. The point is that MF doesnt incentivise the right behaviours, and rewards the wrong ones.

If you ask the Devs to justify MF in terms of game design, either their justification will be wrong (eg. “We want to reward players for being selfish and perform worse”) or the game does not fulfill their intention (eg. “We want a way for players to be rewarded for challenging themselves.” – but MF doesnt really do that in a group context.)

This is a sweet idea and moves rewarding players in the right direction.

Good call OP.

The current MF shouldn’t be any part of your traits/armour/weapons.
Unless you’re prepared to play solo (it’s an MMO -.-) everytime you decide to use MF other people in your group are indirectly affected by that.

To try use it in its current state is to either expect every other person in your team to use it to, or expect that they have to pick up the extra that you left out because you decided to run MF instead.

I really don’t know what ArenaNet was thinking when they decided on its current system. It encourages people to have a leech attitude.