Guild Wars 2

First of all let me say that Anet you created a great game (with your latest dungeon, the Fractals you took a big step in the right direction, keep it that way!).

TL; DR:
Remove MF gear effects from dungeons!

I love the philosophy behind the game, that there is no kill steal, node steal etc. Everyone is rewarded for their actions. Moreover, if you do more you get better rewards (events) which is completely fair.

However in dungeons, there is no such system. You work together as a team and more or less get the same reward (from mobs/chests). Here comes the issue with MF gear in dungeons.
MF gear has 2 useful stats (power/precision, I know they added new ones but let’s go with this) to the party, and a 3rd stat which does nothing for the team. Let’s say I’m running with my warrior in full berserk set(power/precision/crit damage) glass cannon, and an other guy runs with MF gear glass cannon. Let’s assume we are equally skilled. My damage will be clearly higher due to the extra crit damage. I contributed more to the success of the team (killing a boss/ finishing an event faster). After each boss/event he has a better chance to get more/rarer loot, than I do, while in contribution I did a lot more.

Other issue could be that the player is not skilled enough without the 3rd extra combat stat and keeps dying, becoming a true hindrance to the team.

So the philosophy behind this is be less useful, and get more reward for it? I don’t like it. I’d suggest that you remove any beneficial effect MF gear has in dungeon.

Some dungeons are really easy and using MF gear doesn’t hurt. Sure full beserkers would do the job faster, but you don’t always have to clear the dungeon super fast. Hell my group can clear some dungeons faster in unoptimal-but-fun builds or magic find gear than many people when they bring out their A game… and make a whole lot more in money/loot drops.

Also, when farming MF and gold find can greatly outway the benefits that that crit damage would have accounted for.

And for the record, another MF gear set is Power/Cond/MF.

Honestly, the best fix for this is to somehow share MF across everyone in the group. Like other players gain a % of the bonus from the guy with all the MF gear, since they are carrying him to a degree. Obviously it would need to be designed so it couldn’t be abused via stacking (caps or something else), but it would make people feel a whole lot better about bringing players who are stacking MF.

You only really contribute less is if all you do is die

William Fairfield.1428:

There is also a new MgF/Vit/Tuf in the Fractals. It’s called Wayfarer.

Talk about a selfish build XD Well pure Vit/Toughness could be useful for a couple strats in a couple fractals but …

I agree MF is a terrible mechanic, and it never should have been added. I doubt it’s going to go away anytime soon though.

The worst part about MF in dungeons is that it does not affect chest drops, only mob kills, and most people don’t kill very many mobs in dungeons (just run past everything). So not only are you screwing your team, you are screwing your team for almost no reward. If you’re doing speedruns, you might not even get a whole extra item (on average) per run!

I don’t mind people who eat nomnom bars, because it’s your money for your consumable and most people don’t use any consumables anyway. But at least put some real armor on please.

MF is a greedy stats. It NEVER and i say NEVER exist in this game.
How can the team pretend game cooperation, when they introduce something that improve only you drop rate instead of the team effectivness.

ANd please dont come to say that a skilled player can be effective even if he use a MF gear, because its simply not true… yeah maybe he dont die because he is skilled, but that stats lack, influence the WHOLE PARTY EXPERIENCE.

You never go full MF gear

If I can quote from way way back in the “Golden Rules of Guild Wars” article (I promise, it’s not in an accusatory “ArenaNet lied, they’re bad people!!” way):

Cooperation is key
Every time we implement a new system, there are about 1,000 decisions that need to get made right away, and another 1,000 that you don’t get to the first time around.
The biggest decisions get arbitrated by the player, i.e., YOU! We want everyone that’s on the same team in Guild Wars 2 to really be on the same team—not fighting for resources, not having tangentially conflicting motivations, not minimizing each other’s experiences. This led us to things like the combo system, which gives you reason to get excited to fight alongside others because you can combine your attacks with theirs in all kinds of tactical ways. Every player can gather from all nodes because we didn’t want tension to build up in a group of people trying to adventure around a map together. Events themselves exist because they are a content type that benefits from more players being in the world. Even the way we reward event participation makes it so your contributions matter, but not at the expense of someone else’s.

Purpose: This has helped guide a lot of our content types and reward systems. It helps us evaluate whether we are motivating players to play together or unintentionally creating conflicts between players.

Now, in the context of Magic Find… This is a stat that reduces your combat effectiveness, and therefore the combat effectiveness of your entire party (by how much is irrelevant, and it doesn’t matter that a good player with MF gear can outperform a bad player without MF gear). At the same time, the benefit of the stat is given entirely to the single player who wears the MF gear.

Doesn’t this fit the definition of “tangentially conflicting motivations”? It’s basically a clear-cut case of the Prisoner’s Dilemma:

The optimal situation from my point of view is that I wear MF gear, and nobody else in the party does.
The worst situation from my point of view is that I wear the cooperative stat gear, and everybody else wears MF gear.

If everybody wears MF gear, then everybody experiences the same effect: Everybody is weaker, everybody receives more/better loot, and everybody pulls an equal share of the party’s weight.
If everybody wears cooperative gear, then the result is also the same for everybody: Everybody is stronger, the run goes much more quickly and smoothly, everybody pulls their fair share of the weight, but the loot is not as good.

In other words, if I place the highest priority on making sure that my outcome is favourable relative to the rest of my party, I am never at a disadvantage relative to the rest of my party if I wear MF gear. If I wear cooperative gear, at best I break even if everybody else wears cooperative gear, and at worst, I have to shoulder the extra burden of making up for the reduced stats of every player wearing MF gear.

I think the easiest and most fair way to eliminate this conflict of interest is to average Magic Find across the entire party. That way, if I wear cooperative gear, even if I end up shouldering a heavier share of the burden than the rest of the party, I receive extra loot commensurate with the extra effort I’ve put in.

Crater.1625:

…

My thoughts exactly. I haven’t thought about this MF is shared idea, but it’s certainly viable.

Also I understand that there are new MF sets out there, but that still doesn’t help the fact that they contribute less than those who don’t use them, and still get better loot for it.

Missing 1 stat isn’t going to kill your Fractal group LOL

Xpiher.5209:

Missing 1 stat isn’t going to kill your Fractal group LOL

That isn’t and has never been the argument against Magic Find’s current implementation.

Senik.6549:

Honestly, the best fix for this is to somehow share MF across everyone in the group. Like other players gain a % of the bonus from the guy with all the MF gear, since they are carrying him to a degree. Obviously it would need to be designed so it couldn’t be abused via stacking (caps or something else), but it would make people feel a whole lot better about bringing players who are stacking MF.

I think that would be best. Simply average the magic find in the party (may be excluding food). So if I have 80% MF gear and the four other guys have 0%, we both have 80/5 = 16% MF in a dungeon. Everywhere else MF is applied as before.

Regizer.1763:

You never go full MF gear

The point of the post is many people DO go full MF set.

GOSU.9574:

Regizer.1763:

You never go full MF gear

The point of the post is many people DO go full MF set.

kitten those greedy people then

you only need to see wich kind of food they use… if they use MF food, they are problably use MF gear to have at least 100% MF. Its not always real, but its a good start.

This is a Fantastic idea and a very relevant point has been addressed. I often wondered why they did this. Through the mechanics of the game, I seriously doubt they will ever change it. I also seriously doubt they will ever give a fair reply. Well, there is 1 response to the thread but they chose to ignore the problem.

William Fairfield.1428:

There is also a new MgF/Vit/Tuf in the Fractals. It’s called Wayfarer.

I think a piece of Magic Find gear has 3 stats: combat attribute A, combat attribute B, and Magic Find. As I understand the argument of the OP, for the problem described it does not matter what specific stats A and B are.
When replacing one combat stat with Magic Find on a piece of armor, the wearer contributes less to the need of the group but more to their own greed.

In dungeons it is probably worst, but the negative effect of Magic Find exists in any kind of cooperative PvE activity which involves killing and looting.

William Fairfield.1428:

There is also a new MgF/Vit/Tuf in the Fractals. It’s called Wayfarer.

Sounds like that is the perfect Magic Find gear for dungeons – highest chances for loot with maximum survivability, at the expense of damage, healing etc. Which somewhat even proves the OP’s point.

I have no issue with this when i continually see people running in full berserker’s or even more balanced builds standing in a vibrantly pulsing red circle of doom and dying, I’d gladly take a skilled MF geared player that does more damage to me alive over half the twits that frequent some of my Pug Parties… lying on the floor… for minutes at a time.

Just saying :p

Mephane.8496:

William Fairfield.1428:

There is also a new MgF/Vit/Tuf in the Fractals. It’s called Wayfarer.

Sounds like that is the perfect Magic Find gear for dungeons – highest chances for loot with maximum survivability, at the expense of damage, healing etc. Which somewhat even proves the OP’s point.

Vitality is actually terrible against agony as it is a percentage of your health. When your health goes up because of the vitality stat on your armor your healing does not, meaning any direct heals or regen will counter less agony than if you did not have that extra vitality. All I see is another underhanded trick to force players of endgame content onto the hamster wheel.

I too really hate the idea of Magic Find. If it exists at all it should be as a stat independent of equipment, like the MF bonuses from cooking items. While I can understand it being in a single-player gear game like Diablo, it just doesn’t seem to belong in an MMO where you’re expected to pull your own weight.

I have been building my character gear sets with the intention of using no Magic Find on them, since I hate the idea of sacrificing combat efficiency for it even while soloing. Still, it sucks to run around Cursed Shore with two MF-equipped guildmates and watch them get four or five rares each while I never see anything more than a masterwork.

William Fairfield.1428:

There is also a new MgF/Vit/Tuf in the Fractals. It’s called Wayfarer.

Talk about missing the point of the OP entirely.

The point is, in a multiplayer setting, Magic Find is a selfish and unwelcome mechanic. It has no place in a multiplayer game where teamwork is a large part of the gameplay, be it dynamic events in the open world or dungeons.

Magic Find should be restricted to food and guild buffs only and totally removed from gear. How anyone ever thought MF on gear was a good design decision completely baffles me.

Kindeller.3072:

I have no issue with this when i continually see people running in full berserker’s or even more balanced builds standing in a vibrantly pulsing red circle of doom and dying, I’d gladly take a skilled MF geared player that does more damage to me alive over half the twits that frequent some of my Pug Parties… lying on the floor… for minutes at a time.

Just saying :p

Exactly. I see the above comments as elitist/uber competitive statements by individuals who wish people play the game the way they play. I have never went full magic find, but have no problem with people who do. If they play well, I shall not begrudge them any extra loot they find, IF any, because MF, although relevant, it’s still luck based. Currently, I use Magi/Cleric combo gear, and I am sure that many would cringe at that as well, because many have the “more DPS is better, all the time” mentality, and think that anything else is “people not carrying their weight” on Dungeons. As long as people play well, they ARE carrying their weight, regardless artificial gear scores (or non MF runes/berserker gear scores, in this case).

And no, Magic Find food is NO indication of someone using MF gear, beause it is actually the ONLY MF boost I personally use. But if they want to use full MF gear, what’s the problem anyway? It’s their choice, not yours, and envying others an possible extra loot because "they didn’t cooperate as much as I did with my “tr00” Dungeon gear" is quite petty, to be honest.

Feel free to disagree, of course.

I’m inclined to agree. It’s a weird setup to have such a selfish stat that contributes nothing to the group completing content in such a cooperation-centric game. And I say this as someone who dungeons in defensive greens with Pirate Runes and feel I contribute a lot to a dungeon. It’s still sort of a hard idea to defend from a philosophical perspective.

I can’t stand MF, I wish it weren’t in the game at all.

Well a dev during the recent Q& A explained how MF gear works.

Say a rare has a 1% chance to drop. The percentage of the MF you have equals the multiplier.

50%MF = 1.5% chance to drop.
200% MF = 3 % chance to drop.

So realisticly… you HAVE to go 100% min which means sacrificing other stats to get this level.

Congrats… you really do have to go into the dungeon LESS capable in order to use the MF gear the way they designed.

Crater.1625:

[MF is bad and this is why it is bad]

That is a nice analysis. However there is yet another option.

Wear magic find for the easy, high enemy density areas, or gold find for the easy, high money drop enemies. Wear your real armour for the rest of the dungeon. This is the same for food.

That’s what my party usually does, and with that strategy we are able to get 7-10 extra silver each in money drops for some runs, just for simply eating an omnom and/or changing cloths for particular fights.

Also, farming in non-dungeon areas. Some of the most profitable farming spots my guild uses simply don’t need the defensive stats, and more offensive stats would give us almost zero benefit.

Or you could buy MF boosts from the gem store? chuckle

Most of the rewards comes from chests, and magic find doesn’t affect chest rewards.

Wasabi Kitty.8247:

Most of the rewards comes from chests, and magic find doesn’t affect chest rewards.

For some dungeons maybe. Not for others. Especially dungeons like AC or HotW.

Lol I like the game designer’s response. So group play is affected by magic gear? Oh btw there’s new magic find gear with these stats in the new dungeon, go grind some!

I guess while we’re on the subject of Magic Find, do you think more Boon Duration food can be implemented that doesn’t have Magic Find on it? I use Boon Duration food for some of my builds, but would like those consumables even more if such food also added stats that would benefit the group as a whole. I would appreciate it.

Personally, I find Magic Find to be one of those selfish type of stats that only benefits the person that has it. I get the Risk vs. Reward part, which makes sense in solo play; but it also increases the risk for those around you during group content. Basically put, by putting yourself at risk for having Magic Find in your gear, you also put others at risk because they have to work a little bit more harder to compensate for slight selfishness. I don’t mind if someone is new to the dungeon, experimenting with a different spec, is a lower level, or is slightly undergeared … at least those reasons are a bit more forgiving, but Magic Find in this current implementation is just simply being selfish when it comes to using it in a dungeon setting.

I think magic find is an inteseting stat but not as stat on gear. They either have to balance it so it’s inconsequential and not really worth it, or make you have a choice between being effective as a character or getting good loot. How is that fun? Then there is this group situation!

Keep it on boosts and food. Not gear.

It would be nice if we could see our total and see how much more often we’d receive better gear.

I de’d my gear because it was completely useless not because of almost dying in events or dungeons but because having higher mf never ever gives me a good drop. The higher my mf goes the lower the quality of the items I receive. I’ve seen this directly with other players as well. Too many people aren’t getting the benefits of this system anyways. It’s sortof like Cond damage for pve, why is it in there if it’s not really going to impact the damage output?

Comrade, you are not putting in your equal share yet are receiving the same benefits (and possibly more). This is not fair comrade! We must all be equal and get only the same stuff!

Replace ‘Comrade’ with ‘Person wearing MF gear" if you don’t get why this whole thread is too funny.

Surbrus.6942:

Wasabi Kitty.8247:

Most of the rewards comes from chests, and magic find doesn’t affect chest rewards.

For some dungeons maybe. Not for others. Especially dungeons like AC or HotW.

It doesn’t affect a single thing for me accept nodes. Drops are never better unless I don’t have MF on and I’ve reported this bug a thousand times and put it into he forums that they need to address whatever is wrong with it because it doesn’t even work 20% of the time for many of us. Why have a broken mechanic in there at all and ignore your players again when something isn’t working right.

I put on my magic find armor when I loot bosses/chests.

This way my DPS isn’t effected and I can still benefit from MF where it counts imo.

What would be useful to me is to have a pre defined armor/weapon combo’s that could be changed with the pressing of a button.

This would be handy for switching from pve dungeon gear to pve solo gear to pvp gear as well. (and your town clothing)

Claudius.5381:

Senik.6549:

Honestly, the best fix for this is to somehow share MF across everyone in the group. Like other players gain a % of the bonus from the guy with all the MF gear, since they are carrying him to a degree. Obviously it would need to be designed so it couldn’t be abused via stacking (caps or something else), but it would make people feel a whole lot better about bringing players who are stacking MF.

I think that would be best. Simply average the magic find in the party (may be excluding food). So if I have 80% MF gear and the four other guys have 0%, we both have 80/5 = 16% MF in a dungeon. Everywhere else MF is applied as before.

I don’t know that straight averaging is exactly the right way to do it. In your example, that’s an 80% nerf to MF for the one guy stacking MF. If they implmented it that way, people would just stop using MF altogether in dungeons. I’m sure that would make some people happy, but it wasn’t my intent.

What I had in mind was more of a weighted average. For example, the game would buff each party member’s MF by 25% of the total MF of all other party members. Each player’s new total MF would then be divided by two to keep the total party MF the same as before the averaging.

So if you had 1 guy with 80% MF, 1 guy with 50% MF, 1 guy with 20% MF, and 2 guys with 0% MF:

• The guy with 80% MF would now have 48.75%
• The guy with 50% MF would now have 37.50%
• The guy with 20% MF would now have 26.25%
• The guys with 0% MF would now have 18.75%

The total party MF is still 150%, but it’s spread out a bit more fairly, so the players who are doing more DPS get a bit more loot, and the players who stacked a ton of MF give up a bit in exchange for a faster run.

MF in dungeons is complete rubbish. I gear, trait and play for the entire group. I use food/potions that keep me alive. Every stat you put in MF is a waste. I don’t care how good you are, with the correct gear, you’d be even better.

After figuring out my build for dungeons I’ve never had another bad group. Why? Because I play well and support the whole team.

MF is good in general PvE, and fine in PvP since nobody would use it. So the only major issue is team PvE, thus dungeons. It’s a usual issue of game theory – not taking MF gear hurts that player, but everyone doing so may hurt the team a lot more.

Thus, spread MF over the party when in a dungeon, problem solved. Just like defensive stats are spread (because the tanks take a few extra hits and don’t waste your time lying dead, and glass cannons shorten the run).

The only argument against, imo, would be to charge the complainers with elitism. Which may be quite valid, but doesn’t take away the problem.

If you share the stats of MF across the group, why don’t you share the armor bonuses as well? Like someone who’s running Fine quality gear. They’re bringing down the group in the same way that MF is.

What if someone is going full Zerker’s? You’re carrying them as well because they have a tendency to die more often. Should their Zerker stats be distributed throughout the party as well?

I can understand wanting to spread MF across the group but it’s a slippery slope if you do.

Ganzo.5079:

you only need to see wich kind of food they use… if they use MF food, they are problably use MF gear to have at least 100% MF. Its not always real, but its a good start.

Umm… I don’t have a single piece of magic find gear. Which is why I do occasionally chomp on a magic find food. That said, I don’t eat magic find food when I am new to the dungeon because I need to be 100%+ in a new environment. But something like CoF path 1 and 2 I can do in my sleep now and so can most PuGs on my server. Can you really say that Magic Find is detrimental either in food or gear form when the dungeon has been put on “farm” mode?

Revolmak.2951:

If you share the stats of MF across the group, why don’t you share the armor bonuses as well? Like someone who’s running Fine quality gear. They’re bringing down the group in the same way that MF is.

What if someone is going full Zerker’s? You’re carrying them as well because they have a tendency to die more often. Should their Zerker stats be distributed throughout the party as well?

I can understand wanting to spread MF across the group but it’s a slippery slope if you do.

The decision to use Magic Find gear instead of cooperative gear is a conscious, deliberate decision to detract from your party’s performance so that you, personally, can receive a reward.

Bringing Blue gear to a dungeon is either not a deliberate decision (if you can’t afford better gear), or offers no personal reward (the dungeon is going to be harder for you as well as the rest of your party, and you get nothing in return for it).

Bringing Berserker’s gear to a dungeon is more likely to be a miscalculation than a deliberate decision, if it negatively impacts your party (if you think that you offer more value as a teammate when you wear Berserker’s gear, and it turns out that you don’t, that is markedly different from playing a dungeon naked just to make things harder on the rest of your party). And in either case, there’s no personal reward that you receive for wearing Berserker’s gear – if you’re struggling and dying all the time, it’s just as hard for you to succeed as it is for the rest of the party, and you receive no extra loot for doing so.

There’s no slippery slope, because the situations are not comparable.

I concur after playing these dungeons I don’t think MF decked characters are the epidemic we think they are on these forums. Common sense dictates that in order to survive harder difficulties one must invest in gear that will help to survive.

So must think wisely to get that sweet loot.

Also isn’t it possible to wear MF Gear before looting chest?

Would be great to get a response from the Dev’s on this. It is a Broken mechanic that detracts from our gameplay. You can’t spin it any other way.

I say this over and over and over again until you guys get it. If your argument is that magic find doesn’t contribute to the group then that’s a slippery slope to gear discrimination hell. What about the newly level 80 who might be in a mix of blues and greens? Many level 80s think rares are a waste of money and so will wear greens until the can get dungeon exotics. And what about rares? Maybe person X can’t afford exotics and so are wearing rares. Where do you stop the descrimination if your argument against magic find is “group efficiency”? Because surely blues and greens also detract from group efficiency, as does rares.

Also, what about food? If you eat something, even level 5 stuff, you are that much more effective then if you eat nothing! If everybody in the group has a food buff and player X doesn’t, isn’t player X bringing down the group efficiency? This is an absurd argument! I am almost in favour of “work meters” that factor in damage, healing, res and other things just so we have concrete proof that magic find matters little.

But honestly, if magic find matters so much to you. Just say “no explorer/magic find gear”. That way, everybody who wears magic find can group together and that’ll be that!

Tinni.4351:

I say this over and over and over again until you guys get it. If your argument is that magic find doesn’t contribute to the group then that’s a slippery slope to gear discrimination hell. What about the newly level 80 who might be in a mix of blues and greens? Many level 80s think rares are a waste of money and so will wear greens until the can get dungeon exotics. And what about rares? Maybe person X can’t afford exotics and so are wearing rares. Where do you stop the descrimination if your argument against magic find is “group efficiency”? Because surely blues and greens also detract from group efficiency, as those rares.

Nobody’s talking about discrimination. We’re talking about dividing the effect among the whole party, so everybody shares in the reward, because everybody shares in the penalty.

Bunta.5267:

I concur after playing these dungeons I don’t think MF decked characters are the epidemic we think they are on these forums. Common sense dictates that in order to survive harder difficulties one must invest in gear that will help to survive.

So must think wisely to get that sweet loot.

Also isn’t it possible to wear MF Gear before looting chest?

Official response stated (and I could since then confirm) that the Fractals drop Magic Find+Vitality+Toughness items, which helps personal survival and personal loot. This means surviving harder difficulties and wearing full MF gear are not competing goals any more.

P.S.: MF does not affect loot chests, only what mobs drop directly.