Guild Wars 2

It’s probably been said quite a few times, but why not change the mechanics and remove the magic find properties from the items themselves, and create some other form of individual sacrifice (like gold, karma, skill points, etc.) and create a ‘purchase-able’ or passive buff?

Now the group isn’t penalized for your individual desire to find better gear and now you have a use for virtually useless commodities (karma, etc).

This game really needs to tweak the design to allow multiple means to purchase items… but maybe that gets away from the Anet cash/gem market.

I may be wrong, but doesn’t magic find affect only monster drops and not chest drops? Effectively, since the best stuff you get from dungeons is chest based, wearing mf is only useful for a relatively small amount of the rewards you will be getting. Please correct me if im wrong though

the issue can be distilled quite easily:

Equal pay for equal effort.

With MF, someone who is demonstrably doing less, is getting more.

How does this make sense? It speaks against innate senses of fairness.

MF, if implemented at all, should be a reward for good playing… not for worse. And certainly not a penalty to everyone else who had no choice in the matter.

In my opinion, there is no reason to have “magic find” in ANY game. Just let everyone have the same baseline and the same mechanics for loot drops. Why alter them for some players for any reason?

If the loot award mechanic tracks by some hidden means “good” playing versus “bad”, then let that be the same – good players will be rewarded for going above and beyond, poor players will not. That is all that is needed – why alter it?

If such a mechanic is difficult to implement (and I believe it would be), then the question remains, why implement any kind of alteration? And why one that goes contrary to conventional notions of equality and fairness?

I know I am not the first to say these things; I know I am not the first to say these things in this thread. I say them because I hope by adding my voice to others, it will be heard.

jingseng.2150:

the issue can be distilled quite easily:

Equal pay for equal effort.

With MF, someone who is demonstrably doing less, is getting more.

Except that you can’t actually demonstrate that MF wearers do less. In fact, if many cases you could demonstrate the exact opposite. More than that, if you’ve read this entire thread it should be obvious none of the anti-MF people have cared one iota about equal effort resulting in equal reward.

Their entire argument has been aimed at equal time, not effort, and that that equal time provides equal chance for reward. That’s why they’re okay with low level, sub-optimum builds, sub-optimum equipment that’s not MF, etc. You also have to include “chance for” since anyone that’s played this game for any length of time has to have experience just how ridiculously random the reward level for completing the same tasks can be.

I’d be all for an equal effort loot system that recognizes the actual value someone brings to a group being the basis for buffing rewards. Such a system would definitely need to include boons, healing, time spent holding aggro, etc. It would also have to be versus a baseline, not versus other group members because you’d want excellent groups getting extra rewards for all group members. If I was rewarded for being in full zerker gear and doing a ton more damage than the baseline for a task, I’d do all those tasks in full zerker gear. That would reflect my extra effort earning me extra reward.

That’s not how the system works now. The system works now by giving full reward in dungeons and some other tasks just once per day. So as a player trying to optimize my reward, I have to maximize what I’ll get out of that once per day run, and you don’t do that by trying to make most runs as fast as possible. Yes, there are exceptions to that, but nobody is worried about those because the same people who optimize their rewards via MF gear already understand that on a speed run or high level fractal, your optimum way to earn rewards is NOT to wear MF gear.

Either people think that
1) everyone should do their best
or
2) being above average (= doing good) is enough
or
3) own performance doesn’t matter as long as he gets optimal rewards

I’m ok with type 2 people but..
How do you know that you are doing good enough?
will you still stick with MF if your team is extremely good and run is going extremely well (=good chance that you are dragging team down)?
Can I go afk in some fights if I out-perform everyone in my DPS set?

Kojiden.8405:

I agree that magic find needs to be changed in some fashion (like average it out among the party or remove it entirely or something else).

Averaging it is the worst idea ever.
Worked like that in Diablo 3 and people complained hard about it until they changed it.

@ Xavori.

You CAN make a valid argument about magic find though. Since the overall damage you do IS effected by the stats on the armor you wear. The better your stats the more damage you will be doing thus a dungeon run is faster.

The same argument could also be said about survivability. How well you soak accidental damage IS effected by your stats from your gear. You would not be dying as much thus helping out more in a boss fight though your damage might be lower you probably would stay alive all the time.

Does what gear you wear make you a good or bad player absolutely not. A good player in bad gear is by all accounts still a good player but they could be much more effective if they were wearing gear that enhanced their effectiveness. The problem when you have magic find in a game is now a player is actively making a choice of not between what gear to get for best effectiveness for a dungeon, but weather or not they should take the gear which gives them more drops but obviously weakens their ability to survive and do damage.

That makes no sense. If it was party-wide, youd still do it because there was a <Insert made up number here> percent chance of better drops. So theres really no way around it besides making it “grind gear” in which youd probaly go nuts about too. Failers Gon Fail

@skotie,

Let me try it like this… (I’m gonna ignore a whole lotta variables, but you’ll get it)

Let’s say a dungeon champ has 500,000 hit points. And the party looks like this:
1 – 5000 DPS
2 – 7500 DPS
3 – 5000 DPS
4 – 5000 DPS
5 – 5000 DPS

The party does 27,500 DPS. It will take that party around 18-19 seconds to kill the champ. And everyone will get the same chance at reward EVEN THOUGH player 2 did more damage than anyone else in the group. In other words, unequal effort but equal chance at reward. In this scenario, what motivation does player 2 really have to put forth that extra effort be it from better skill, all exotic equipment, whatever?

Now, let’s take the same boss, but put player 2 in MF gear reducing his damage by a third to 5000, the same as everyone else. This takes the party’s DPS to 25,000, and it will now take the party 20 seconds to kill the champ. In this case, player 2’s extra skill or better equipment allowed him/her to downgrade their stats in order to earn extra rewards for that extra that they bring to a group, and it had a negligible effect on the party’s success because whatever extra time is going to be a fairly small fraction of 24 hours.

That’s the point I’ve been trying to make. Extra effort in this game goes unrewarded UNLESS you as a player take steps to change it. That extra effort consists of doing well-executed speed runs or high level fractals or SELF-NERFING VIA MAGIC GEAR. At that point, you do actually get rewarded for your extra effort.

And on the subject of leeching, you don’t have to see someone’s gear to know they aren’t pulling their weight. They’ll be dead. They’ll be afk during fights. They’ll be sitting in the corner just firing their autoattack. None of these things are hard to spot, and none of them require magic find armor to matter.

Heck, if you want to get down to the nitty gritty, you’ll know they’re lower level than the rest of the group. Of course, in that case of ‘not pulling your weight’ nobody on either side of the argument seems to care. Most people are perfectly willing to accept suboptimum efficiency to help lower level characters level up or to teach new players the tricks to dungeons.

tbh the whole MF thing is kinda funny id rather they leave MF and just add a preview option for armor, MF is just a thing for bad players to blame so they don’t have to hurt their precious egos and the “Confessions of a MF leecher” kinda made me laugh how do we know its not someone who hates MF and has just made a post claiming to be a MFer? i run MF alot in dungeons with my guild and i certainly do not get a extra 60% loot over them. Id take a Competent MFer over some newb who runs full zerker gear anyday

Mechanix.5719:

tbh the whole MF thing is kinda funny id rather they leave MF and just add a preview option for armor, MF is just a thing for bad players to blame so they don’t have to hurt their precious egos and the “Confessions of a MF leecher” kinda made me laugh how do we know its not someone who hates MF and has just made a post claiming to be a MFer? i run MF alot in dungeons with my guild and i certainly do not get a extra 60% loot over them. Id take a Competent MFer over some newb who runs full zerker gear anyday

Well I agree that a competent person with crap gear (MF or whatever) is better to have than a player who is an liability and is dead 80% of the time. But for example, fractals, if u pug them for idk, daily, you just want em done fast and be on your merry way. If you have players that gimp themselves purposefully that means all the rest have to do a bit better (assuming average skill – not “encounters are a breeze” kind of party) to compensate.
——
And for all the ppl that said it doesn’t make a noticeable time difference…even if it makes a 10 second or 1 minute difference that’s nuff for me. 1 minx3 times per dayx1month=90minutes…that dude with MF cost me 1,5h of my life per month (ok, was extreme assuming I’d get one every time and pugging all 3 dailies but still, point stands, kitten adds up if ppl aren’t performing as well as they could).

Mechanix.5719:

Id take a Competent MFer over some newb who runs full zerker gear anyday

And this is why full inspections should never be implemented.

Xavori.3768:

Now, let’s take the same boss, but put player 2 in MF gear reducing his damage by a third to 5000, the same as everyone else. This takes the party’s DPS to 25,000, and it will now take the party 20 seconds to kill the champ. In this case, player 2’s extra skill or better equipment allowed him/her to downgrade their stats in order to earn extra rewards for that extra that they bring to a group, and it had a negligible effect on the party’s success because whatever extra time is going to be a fairly small fraction of 24 hours.

You are always assuming that the MFer is the best player, what if he isn’t? What if an MFer is using green/rare gear because it gives the same amount of MF? Why is it always that the MFer is a pro and everyone else isn’t? Why can’t you see it from the other side?

Let me use a better example
Let’s say a dungeon champ has 500,000 hit points. And the party looks like this (without MF gear):
1 – 7500 DPS
2 – 7500 DPS
3 – 7500 DPS
4 – 5000 DPS
5 – 5000 DPS

Why should Player 2 change to MF gear in this case? We have 4 and 5 who aren’t as good players but what about 1 and 3? Or another example that is also common:

1 – 7500 DPS
2 – 5000 DPS
3 – 7500 DPS
4 – 7500 DPS
5 – 7500 DPS

And still player 2 switches to MF gear which lowers his dps to 3500… what do you say about this one? Is it “fair”? And don’t tell me that all MFers out there are the best players because it’s simply not true.

You want to justify MF because it’s a way for good players to get some extra gear, for being “better” than the rest of the team. In an ideal world that would’ve been good, in an ideal world all players would’ve passed through “regular” gear and then proceed to MF gear as a next step (if you can’t pull your weight in non-MF how are you going to survive in MF gear?) but there are lots of players who go “directly” to MF, skipping the previous part of the game (the exotic gear part).

Xavori.3768:

@skotie,

Let me try it like this… (I’m gonna ignore a whole lotta variables, but you’ll get it)

Let’s say a dungeon champ has 500,000 hit points. And the party looks like this:
1 – 5000 DPS
2 – 7500 DPS
3 – 5000 DPS
4 – 5000 DPS
5 – 5000 DPS

The party does 27,500 DPS. It will take that party around 18-19 seconds to kill the champ. And everyone will get the same chance at reward EVEN THOUGH player 2 did more damage than anyone else in the group. In other words, unequal effort but equal chance at reward. In this scenario, what motivation does player 2 really have to put forth that extra effort be it from better skill, all exotic equipment, whatever?

Now, let’s take the same boss, but put player 2 in MF gear reducing his damage by a third to 5000, the same as everyone else. This takes the party’s DPS to 25,000, and it will now take the party 20 seconds to kill the champ. In this case, player 2’s extra skill or better equipment allowed him/her to downgrade their stats in order to earn extra rewards for that extra that they bring to a group, and it had a negligible effect on the party’s success because whatever extra time is going to be a fairly small fraction of 24 hours.

That’s the point I’ve been trying to make. Extra effort in this game goes unrewarded UNLESS you as a player take steps to change it. That extra effort consists of doing well-executed speed runs or high level fractals or SELF-NERFING VIA MAGIC GEAR. At that point, you do actually get rewarded for your extra effort.

And on the subject of leeching, you don’t have to see someone’s gear to know they aren’t pulling their weight. They’ll be dead. They’ll be afk during fights. They’ll be sitting in the corner just firing their autoattack. None of these things are hard to spot, and none of them require magic find armor to matter.

Heck, if you want to get down to the nitty gritty, you’ll know they’re lower level than the rest of the group. Of course, in that case of ‘not pulling your weight’ nobody on either side of the argument seems to care. Most people are perfectly willing to accept suboptimum efficiency to help lower level characters level up or to teach new players the tricks to dungeons.

Really? Doing more DPS because of higher stats on gear means they doing more work in the dungeon? /facepalm. To put it simply, lets say that all 5 people are the same class, press the same buttons at the same time, you think that Player 2 is doing more work, even though everyone else is doing the same exact button pressing as he is?

There’s a few interesting things come up on this thread.

1) Most people seem to agree that MF food is ok, because a lot of people don’t bother with food anyways. How can someone talk about people “leeching” and lowering their potential, and then, with a straight face, say that MF or no food at all is ok? We’re talking the possiblity of 20% boon duration, 10% critical damage, health regen, large boosts to pretty much any stat and a plethora of other effects. Mixed with oils or stones, there’s quite a difference (purely looking at stats) between people who use them and people who do not.

Why are we not seeing topics on people not using food being leechers?

2) Why are people assuming that everyone who does not think the same was as they do, are in the wrong?

You want to do the dungeon as fast as possible? That’s fine. But if someone else wants to do a run with the goal of getting as many rares as possible, why is your own desire for a fast run more important than his desire for loot? The whole “But is slows us down!” argument really holds no water, because by “us” you mean “me”, and just expect people to accept that speed is the be all and end all of goals in a dungeon. It’s not.

MF is usually justified as being a risk/reward scenario for players to play with. You trade survivability to increase your chance of reward. There will be an optimal point where you create maximum reward with acceptable survivability. In this scenario it’s not about damage per se, it’s survivability. You need to deplete a mob’s health pool before they are able to deplete yours.

Solo this is not a problem, but when grouping becomes possible MF is always a problem. Regardless of whether MF has ever caused a real problem in a real group, there is a perceived problem with an MFer not pulling his or her weight in a group. And, not only not pulling their weight but benefiting from not pulling their weight. You can argue about skill trumping MF gear but the theoretical problem will remain. In D3 people complained and they tried averaging MF in groups. People complained about that and they reverted to non-shared MF. They finally solved the problem by a long-term commitment to eventually remove it from gear through the paragon level system.

Because of the perceived problem with MF in a game where grouping is possible, there is no solution but to remove it from the game or disassociate it completely from base stats on gear.

Valmarius.4150:

1) Most people seem to agree that MF food is ok, because a lot of people don’t bother with food anyways. How can someone talk about people “leeching” and lowering their potential, and then, with a straight face, say that MF or no food at all is ok? We’re talking the possiblity of 20% boon duration, 10% critical damage, health regen, large boosts to pretty much any stat and a plethora of other effects. Mixed with oils or stones, there’s quite a difference (purely looking at stats) between people who use them and people who do not.

Why are we not seeing topics on people not using food being leechers?

I absolutely love this question. Let’s see what the anti-MF crowd has to say about that xD

If MF boosted the entire group’s MF, the issue would go away: either by people being too selfish to want to boost other players’ MF, or by MF actually contributing for the whole group (and therefore no longer being leeching).

Xavori.3768:

@skotie,
Let’s say a dungeon champ has 500,000 hit points. And the party looks like this:
1 – 5000 DPS
2 – 7500 DPS
3 – 5000 DPS
4 – 5000 DPS
5 – 5000 DPS

The party does 27,500 DPS. It will take that party around 18-19 seconds to kill the champ. And everyone will get the same chance at reward EVEN THOUGH player 2 did more damage than anyone else in the group. In other words, unequal effort but equal chance at reward. In this scenario, what motivation does player 2 really have to put forth that extra effort be it from better skill, all exotic equipment, whatever?

Seriously? Ugh.

It’s not a job! It’s a game and it’s meant to be fun! Player 2 should be putting in “that extra effort” because they enjoy doing that, and enjoy playing the game. Why care if other people are doing slightless less DPS than you? People who talk like this are all the same; you seem to talk as though you’re hating every second of playing the game and will only be happy at the end of the process.

People with these sorts of opinions are the reason ANet DIDN’T include detailed stat breakdowns in the game. They didn’t do that by accident, it was on purpose.

Mechanix.5719:

tbh the whole MF thing is kinda funny id rather they leave MF and just add a preview option for armor, MF is just a thing for bad players to blame so they don’t have to hurt their precious egos and the “Confessions of a MF leecher” kinda made me laugh how do we know its not someone who hates MF and has just made a post claiming to be a MFer? i run MF alot in dungeons with my guild and i certainly do not get a extra 60% loot over them. Id take a Competent MFer over some newb who runs full zerker gear anyday

Please ANet, DON’T add an “inspect” option. Let people use what armour they want if that’s your design for the game. People will start to exclude people from groups and like in other MMOs, it eventually becomes about elitist people that judge people based entirely on whether they have the right 5 superior runes and not simply by how they play, or how articulately they chat.

@eisberg & maddoctor

Even your examples aren’t changing the encounter enough to actually matter in the bigger picture. In maddoctor’s, even if players 1,2, & 3 switched to MF gear and all lost about a third of their damage, the encounter is still only getting a few seconds longer. This is the equivalent of AC, CM, TA, and other easy dungeon runs. You just aren’t having any significant impact on the party being able to complete the dungeon or making a run noticeably longer.

I’ve already agreed that in harder content, MF gear is bad or if a party is forming for speed runs. In speed runs, you want everybody going full DPS which means not only skipping the MF gear, but actually changing builds to buff DPS (in my case, I just switch toons). In harder content, you’d be trading out the MF part of your gear for toughness (at least if you know what you’re doing that’s the trade you make).

So why is it wrong to maximize the return on a dungeon run that you’re only going to make once a day if all you’re giving up to do it is maybe ten to fifteen minutes over the course of the run, and that much only on the hardest of the runs you’d want to do in MF gear?

This is even more of a question when you realize that in an AC run, a party of 80’s in full exotic MF gear might take 5 minutes longer per path than if they went full zerker. If that same party had 4 members in full zerker, but the fifth member was a level 60 toon win level 55ish gear, they might very well take more than an extra 5 minutes because of the way dungeons scale and the advantages of having all your traits.

To me it is simple: MF needs to be on banners and food only and/or a stat that is gained in addition to current gear sets (e.g. current zerker but MF added in). It should not be a stat on gear in lieu of other stats – this just seems like common sense to me in a game that is supposed to promote team play?!?

TWMagimay.9057:

Valmarius.4150:

1) Most people seem to agree that MF food is ok, because a lot of people don’t bother with food anyways. How can someone talk about people “leeching” and lowering their potential, and then, with a straight face, say that MF or no food at all is ok? We’re talking the possiblity of 20% boon duration, 10% critical damage, health regen, large boosts to pretty much any stat and a plethora of other effects. Mixed with oils or stones, there’s quite a difference (purely looking at stats) between people who use them and people who do not.

Why are we not seeing topics on people not using food being leechers?

I absolutely love this question. Let’s see what the anti-MF crowd has to say about that xD

I covered that when I was making some posts in this topic before.

It should not be anti-mf, but pro-efficiency.

A 40% bonus gold from boss monsters is very well worth the potential loss of damage.
Some placebo 100% MF is not, since you do not kill many weak, but few stronger mobs in dungeons usually.

@eisberg.

Facepalm all you want I know some players make more of a contribution to group activities and don’t need to listen to some moron like you to prove it. When I ran raids in WoW I specifically would get invites from top raid guilds on my server because when it came to things like DPS on bosses I would be doing roughly 30% or more of the DPS of the entire raid. That was me one person out of 25. There were other players who had the same class I was playing but did no where near the numbers I got what excuse then do you have for them they had the same buttons to press right?

Sorry but in group activities in a gaming world you ether just play with a bunch of random people who for the most part aren’t very good gamers which leads to failure more often than not or you group with people who at least try to put in more effort than your average joe. Trying to look at any group activity in a gaming world as anything other than a virtual sport is going to lead to frustration. If your teammates aren’t carrying their weight then you get rid of them or leave yourself to go play for a better team.

eisberg.2379:

Xavori.3768:

@skotie,

Let me try it like this… (I’m gonna ignore a whole lotta variables, but you’ll get it)

Let’s say a dungeon champ has 500,000 hit points. And the party looks like this:
1 – 5000 DPS
2 – 7500 DPS
3 – 5000 DPS
4 – 5000 DPS
5 – 5000 DPS

The party does 27,500 DPS. It will take that party around 18-19 seconds to kill the champ. And everyone will get the same chance at reward EVEN THOUGH player 2 did more damage than anyone else in the group. In other words, unequal effort but equal chance at reward. In this scenario, what motivation does player 2 really have to put forth that extra effort be it from better skill, all exotic equipment, whatever?

Now, let’s take the same boss, but put player 2 in MF gear reducing his damage by a third to 5000, the same as everyone else. This takes the party’s DPS to 25,000, and it will now take the party 20 seconds to kill the champ. In this case, player 2’s extra skill or better equipment allowed him/her to downgrade their stats in order to earn extra rewards for that extra that they bring to a group, and it had a negligible effect on the party’s success because whatever extra time is going to be a fairly small fraction of 24 hours.

That’s the point I’ve been trying to make. Extra effort in this game goes unrewarded UNLESS you as a player take steps to change it. That extra effort consists of doing well-executed speed runs or high level fractals or SELF-NERFING VIA MAGIC GEAR. At that point, you do actually get rewarded for your extra effort.

And on the subject of leeching, you don’t have to see someone’s gear to know they aren’t pulling their weight. They’ll be dead. They’ll be afk during fights. They’ll be sitting in the corner just firing their autoattack. None of these things are hard to spot, and none of them require magic find armor to matter.

Heck, if you want to get down to the nitty gritty, you’ll know they’re lower level than the rest of the group. Of course, in that case of ‘not pulling your weight’ nobody on either side of the argument seems to care. Most people are perfectly willing to accept suboptimum efficiency to help lower level characters level up or to teach new players the tricks to dungeons.

Really? Doing more DPS because of higher stats on gear means they doing more work in the dungeon? /facepalm. To put it simply, lets say that all 5 people are the same class, press the same buttons at the same time, you think that Player 2 is doing more work, even though everyone else is doing the same exact button pressing as he is?

And your point is?
Even if everyone did the same ‘work’, the MF folks should not be rewarded more for it.

BUTTERBLUME.3217:

TWMagimay.9057:

Valmarius.4150:

1) Most people seem to agree that MF food is ok, because a lot of people don’t bother with food anyways. How can someone talk about people “leeching” and lowering their potential, and then, with a straight face, say that MF or no food at all is ok? We’re talking the possiblity of 20% boon duration, 10% critical damage, health regen, large boosts to pretty much any stat and a plethora of other effects. Mixed with oils or stones, there’s quite a difference (purely looking at stats) between people who use them and people who do not.

Why are we not seeing topics on people not using food being leechers?

I absolutely love this question. Let’s see what the anti-MF crowd has to say about that xD

I covered that when I was making some posts in this topic before.

It should not be anti-mf, but pro-efficiency.

A 40% bonus gold from boss monsters is very well worth the potential loss of damage.
Some placebo 100% MF is not, since you do not kill many weak, but few stronger mobs in dungeons usually.

Who gave you the authority to decide what’s “worth it”? And then here is this:

BUTTERBLUME.3217:

Mine is not performing the best you could.

40% gold from mobs is not “performing the best you could”. Thus by your very own definition of leeching, anybody who uses that food is a leecher. Same goes for anybody who’s not using food or the other buffs. Pick a point and stick to it otherwise you are just a hypocrite.

Food is “fine” because it shows.

BUTTERBLUME.3217:

I am a hypocrite, so much that I go play CoE with my mates now. Take care

Oh, bummer, you ran out of answers. And sense. What does being a hypocrite have to do with running CoE?

BUTTERBLUME.3217:

I am not contradicting myself because I have not stated anywhere that I think everyone using MF food is not a leecher.

I simply stated that running with MF food is worth the potential loss of damage, which I could prove with numbers if I seriously cared about our ‘discussion’.

We are about to start the run, thanks for asking.

BUTTERBLUME.3217:

It should not be anti-mf, but pro-efficiency.

A 40% bonus gold from boss monsters is very well worth the potential loss of damage.
Some placebo 100% MF is not, since you do not kill many weak, but few stronger mobs in dungeons usually.

So, what you are saying is, leeching is acceptable as long as you think it’s worth it? And that is supposed to be an…argument? What if I think 100% mfind is worth the dps loss(or w/e)? Why is your idea of “worth” more important than mine?

Oh, almost forgot. Welcome to fotm.

That was not an opinion, but facts.
The run is starting now, so cu later.

Wethospu.6437:

Food is “fine” because it shows.

I guess that’s true. That’s why instead of a full inspection, a buff like the food that shows how much mf someone has is important, it’s the only stat that is causing trouble

MF is crap, it shows worst in ppl, how they can be selfish leechers

Due to the inflammatory tone of this thread, it will be closed. Please keep in mind that if you want to discuss issues on our forums, you have to do it in a constructive way.