Guild Wars 2

Astralporing.1957:

MF was a bad idea in the first place, that went against lo of what devs tried to achieve. It’s a wonder it took them that long to decide to remove it.

It took them so long because it was not a bad idea and it did not go against anything they tried to achieve. A lot of people like to use MF, which is why it’s in the game.

MF is a bad idea in almost every game that comes out with the stat though. It removes the group dynamic in favor of players being selfish.

Replacing it with a boon/condition duration buff would be a good solution.

Deep down I’d almost wish they didn’t replace it with anything, at least on the all-stat gear. That way maybe the all-stat gear could get a little closer to normal gear and actually be a viable option in this game.

They have ways of changing abilities for different aspects of the game. One thing might work a certain way in PvP or WvW and then another way in PvE. They have this capability.

There is nothing stopping them from turning off MF for dungeons, which is the biggest complaint from people. They can simply allow people to use MF in PvE except for dungeons. Farmers could farm. Dungeons parties wouldn’t have to worry about ‘leeches’.

Simply removing MF is going to create a whole set of issues/problems that they are going to need to address or they will have bigger problems on their hands.

I personally would like to thank them for making this decision AFTER I just created the legendary Frenzy for my MF farming Engie. He spends a lot of time underwater due to farming and thus the decision to make Frenzy. I’m afraid with the loss of MF, farming underwater will not be favorable and my Frenzy will no longer even get wet.

Such a sad waste. It’s bad enough they ignore underwater combat, but to arbitrarily remove a core component of the game that promotes underwater play to some degree is just sad.

But I’m sure I’ll be compensated for my troubles/loss.

Atherakhia.4086:

MF is a bad idea in almost every game that comes out with the stat though. It removes the group dynamic in favor of players being selfish.

It doesn’t remove anything in favor of anything. That’s how some players perceive it, which is a problem with the players, not with MF.

I have a bad feeling they will try to just arbitrarily hand out gold or something while removing the effected items from the game. There will be a ton of QQ.

What though ought to do, if they are willing to take their time and do it right, is add a vendor that uses each piece of MF gear as a token. You should be able to use each “token” to buy an equivalent piece of gear.

For example: an exotic MF chest piece would act as a token for a single exotic berserker (or any other stat) chest. Snaff’s Gyre would act as a token for a single ascended ring.

I use my MF set for fun. Getting better drops is fun for me.

I don’t care that I’m going to get to use combat stats while still having account-based magic find, there’s no way you’re going to convince me that I’m going to be able to have 180% base magic find like before. I don’t want combat stats, PvE is so friggin easy, and for WvW I use a different set. I’m glad for the opportunity to trade in some stats for better loot.

Contrary to idiotic belief, MF is not useless. It is mostly used to get increased fine material and ecto rare drops. You can’t complain that it increases precursor drop chance from nothing to 2 times nothing.

Yet again Anet is nerfing fun. MF doesn’t break anything for anyone, and certainly not the economy. There’s just a whole collection of jealous people that want the same loot as MF users but don’t want to give up their 1337 stats that make them the absolute best at super important PvE. It’s an interesting player decision, and now it’s being removed.

I honestly don’t have too many reasons to play this game. Gear progression and ways to get ahead are almost non-existent, not to mention grinding is nerfed pretty hard by the diminishing returns. However I’m one of those rare people that likes a good grind and love my MF. I honestly might stop playing if this is the way it’s going to go.

I have 140 laurels I’m not doing anything with except holding onto for more MF infusions in case future gear supports them. I don’t want laurel refunds, I want MF.

Chickenshoes.6250:

I don’t care that I’m going to get to use combat stats while still having account-based magic find, there’s no way you’re going to convince me that I’m going to be able to have 180% base magic find like before. I don’t want combat stats, PvE is so friggin easy, and for WvW I use a different set. I’m glad for the opportunity to trade in some stats for better loot.

Better loot in general, or better loot than others? Because those two are completely different.

Me, i’d rather see MF removed with a general increase in drops for everyone.
Because yes, drops are terrible, but one of the reasons why they are terrible is because the baseline is not 0% MF, but rather the highest possible value.

I agree with Astralporing. The big problem is that the drops are generally rubbish without magic find. Players want to make their characters stronger, but for that they have to sacrifice their chance at finding good items. That is a design concept that goes against the idea of fun. Because as you get stronger, you should get better rewards. And especially in dungeons you can notice the difference between a player focused on magic find, or focused on better combat statistics. It’s an ego stat, and players will notice when you are not pulling your weight in a group.

And the amount of magic find needed to actually notice any difference in drops is way above 100%. What they need to do, is simply increase our base drop chances.

Astralporing.1957:

Chickenshoes.6250:

I don’t care that I’m going to get to use combat stats while still having account-based magic find, there’s no way you’re going to convince me that I’m going to be able to have 180% base magic find like before. I don’t want combat stats, PvE is so friggin easy, and for WvW I use a different set. I’m glad for the opportunity to trade in some stats for better loot.

Better loot in general, or better loot than others? Because those two are completely different.

Me, i’d rather see MF removed with a general increase in drops for everyone.
Because yes, drops are terrible, but one of the reasons why they are terrible is because the baseline is not 0% MF, but rather the highest possible value.

I’ll disagree with you that drops are terrible because MF exists.

Drops are just terrible because they have nerfed them to the point they are at now. This has absolutely nothing to do with MF.

And I haven’t seen anywhere they have implied they will adjust drop rates once they do away with MF. It is a nice assumption that this might happen, but history tells me not to hold my breath.

If the problem is solely people leaching, then keep MF but put the player’s MF stat by their name. Parties will see upfront who they are dealing with and then the party can decide if they want let that person into the party. And make it a reportable offense to get a player banned if they subsequently raise their MF without the party’s approval. For WvW, just don’t spend the time to rez the people with the high MF.

Just Paul.6234:

If the problem is solely people leaching, then keep MF but put the player’s MF stat by their name. Parties will see upfront who they are dealing with and then the party can decide if they want let that person into the party. And make it a reportable offense to get a player banned if they subsequently raise their MF without the party’s approval. For WvW, just don’t spend the time to rez the people with the high MF.

Isn’t that exactly the sort of toxic behavior they’re trying to remove by getting rid of Magic Find? The problem with Magic Find is exactly what you illustrate. Players are basically shunning other players because of their build, and it creates an environment where people are unwilling to play with each other because of a stupid primary stat. Your suggestion would only make things worse!

There’s a reason why there’s no exp penalty for helping each other kill the same monster, and that the rewards are the same when 1 person does a quest or if 10 people do a quest, and that loot is strictly player-side, and that gathering nodes are player side.

Magic Find negatively affects the community’s behavior. There are those who are pigeon-holed into Magic Find because they perceived it as the only stat worth having, creating stagnation in their build choices. There are those who snap at other players for even using a single piece of Magic Find gear (try running full Berzerkers with a Sigil of Luck, and people will get angry). The sooner we get rid of it, and the sooner we get over it, the sooner we can play with the builds that are optimal to our playstyle.

I do not want to encourage a toxic environment.

But to me, there is a measurable difference between going into a situation knowing what I am playing with vs finding out after the fact. In GW1, there are the people who abuse Fort Asperwood & the Jade Quarry. I found those places the least fun, primarily due to the lurkers, so I adjusted and avoided those places. And yes, I thus missed out on that area of play. It may be better now, but I’ve never gone back.

Watching this discussion, I wonder at times if the problem is MF or if it is people being disappointed finding out they are playing with leaches.

I have no problem with making changes which hopefully improve the quality of game play.

But I do suggest that those people who get angry at “full Berzerkers with a Sigil of Luck” to have their aspirin handy – I know fully well I don’t have my gear anywhere near perfect and it will be a while before I can afford that luxury – so my play is nowhere near optimal. At least not yet. And I adjust, I try to stay out of the way of those people. Well I try, except I can’t tell what sort a build a person has just by looking at them. I really don’t play in WvsW because I know I can’t keep up.

When I am out farming, I turn down lots of party invites simply because I have my MF armor on. I hope they understand, since they cannot tell what I am wearing and that I don’t want to drag down their party.

I haven’t read too many posts here, but here’s how I see this Magic Find Issue.
(TL;DR at the bottom, sorry for the wall of text)

Personally, I feel as though my time is wasted if I’m not running full magic find. And I mean FULL magic find. Magic find on all exotic armor and weapons with Rune of the Traveler and Sigil of Luck (both superior), ascended mf back piece, and ascended trinkets/rings and amulet with mf infusion. On top of that, I’ll keep up 40% mf from food (sometimes 30% to toy around with the rumor that the extra 40% doesn’t actually apply when you have boons, which is a totally legitimate concern given ANet’s track record) and the laurel booster, as well as the occasional 50% from bonfire/mf booster or whatever else I can get my hands on.

Now, why did I mention that I feel my time is wasted if I’m playing the game without that? Simple: I like to use my time efficiently, to an extent, and feel that magic find is a very good and easy way to do this.

I’ve logged over 1300 hours in game since launch (taking some extended breaks along the way), and so have no grounds to be disappointed with this game, I love it. But, were I to give an example where ANet has just utterly dropped the ball, it’s in difficulty. Maybe I’m just really good at this game lol or maybe you’re supposed to be able to just utterly faceroll every single bit of content, but I’d like to hope otherwise. I do think this game is ridiculously easy, and most of my enjoyment came in experiencing it, exploring the world and dungeons, and some good ’ole WvW and PvP mixed in. Now, having it so easy makes it incredibly fun for the casual player, and to them the content may also seem endless and at times challenging (this also makes the game very marketable to a large audience, which may be a good bussiness model). But this magic find issue raises a bigger issue from more experienced or “hardcore” gamers.

There is already almost NO content for the experienced or “hardcore” gamer in Guild Wars 2. Fractals came close to achieving a little oasis in the sea of stupidly easy content, but I think even that has shifted hugely from its original ‘as advertised’ model to accommodate the casual gamer. As such, those experienced gamers that really do enjoy the game turn to one thing – getting awesome gear.

I think the reasoning behind the removal of MF gear lies in the fact that SO MANY people use it! Maybe you personally (reader) don’t, and maybe there are other people like you who ask “What’s the point of Magic Find when you can have gear with good stats?”. Well, I think that for each person who asks that question, there are thousands more who ask “Why wouldn’t I use Magic Find gear when the game is so easy?”

And there you have it. I think Magic Find is being removed on gear because ANet wants to promote build diversity. But here’s my input on the matter, and I hope a dev sees this:
*
Rather than removing (or otherwise drastically reducing) a player’s ability to farm for gold/items and thus cooler gear (which is already difficult in this game for a number of reasons) in order to promote build diversity (the alternative to MF gear would be gear with actual stats), what I’d like to see is some truly difficult content that REQUIRES gear with actual stats, and REQUIRES players to actually care about their build, and so on. Now I realize the problem with this. Difficult content means that there would have to be rewards worth the effort required to complete this content, and then more casual players (probably a majority) would explode in anguish about not being able to acquire these rewards. But I think that’s the point, it should be HARD to get the best skins in the game (not best weapons or armor, because heaven forbid feeling like you have to grind or be good to get the best gear).
*

TL;DR (basically)

So, those are my thoughts on the situation. Those of you worried about purchasing exotic/ascended Magic Find gear, I highly doubt you have anything to worry about with this change as far as your investments go, ANet tries their best to make everyone happy so I’m sure there will be some sort of suitable compensation. But therein lays my closing statement to ANet: Don’t try to make everyone happy. Have content in the game that not everyone will do because of difficulty. It’s what adds the dynamic of prestige to items, rather than just playing the game a long time or having a lot of real world money to blow. Thanks, if you’ve read this far.

EDIT: just wanted to add that I am in no way trying to shame those who enjoy using real world money in games, it’s totally legitimate if that’s what you choose to do. I just prefer the account bound system for some items to show their prestige (in a way, a loose example might be Fractal skins).

I read in one of the blog post that legendary weapons will have the ability to change their stats on the at will. What if they allow your magic find gear have a one time change stats ability per armor piece. That way the magic find gear is no longer a waste no need to figure out refund cost.

When you look at how items are built within the GW2 code system you can pretty much sum it up that players with the MF attribute won’t be getting a ‘refund.’

It is a lot easier for programmers to code it into something else – all ‘X’ attribute becomes ‘Y.’

Just pray that ‘MF’ doesnt become ‘Healing Power.’

But then some players dig Healing Power.

Mad Rasputin.7809:

I’ll disagree with you that drops are terrible because MF exists.

Drops are just terrible because they have nerfed them to the point they are at now. This has absolutely nothing to do with MF.

It has a lot to do with MF. When they nerf drops, they use as a baseline not the normal players, but the farmers. People that (generally) run MF stat as high as possible.

It’s not “people get too much loot, nerf it”. It’s “people with 200%+ MF get too much loot, let’s nerf it”. Even more terrible drops for people not running MF are just collateral damage.

Mind you – i do not say that the drop levels that Anet seems to be going for are good. I just say that, due to existence of MF, for people that are not running that stat they are worse that they could be.

Maybe what ANET could do, is have a MF bonus upon doing anything, but when they get a drop affected by magic find, the bonus is reduced. And possibly, have the magic find gear increase the MF gain from actions

I really do think that the best possible way to fix Magic Find was to sum and distribute it instead of remove it from gear.

For example, if I have 150% Magic Find from gear then I get 150% Magic Find while solo, 75% Magic Find while in a party with 1 person (who gets half of my Magic Find), and 30% Magic Find while in a party with 5 people (who all get 30% from my Magic Find stat). This would have turned Magic Find into a group benefit and would have kept the stat valuable without making it unwanted for group play.

The ship has sailed though, so my idea gets to sink.