Guild Wars 2

With the latest Southsun release and people easily hitting 400% magic find, the results should be clear. It doesn’t work as a straight percentage increase.

Make it a normal stat, like vitality. Bam. Problem solved.

Why do you say it doesn’t work as a percentage increase? It works fine. In fact, it’s more easily understandable that way.

There are loot tables. The higher your magic find, the more chance their is of rolling on that loot table.

Let’s say you had a 1 in 100 chance of getting a rare on every kill. You don’t but let’s say you do, for the ease of the math. 400% magic find would raise your chance to 4% to get a rare off that kill (from 1%).

That is still fairly rare and you still won’t get one most of the time. I believe you have less than an 1 in 100 chance to get a rare per kill. I don’t know the exact percentage, but if it’s 1/10 of 1% then you only have 4/10 of 1% to get a rare with that amount of magic find.

The stat works fine, but it would take a very long time to prove itself.

Making it a number would simply obscure what it does.

Vayne, afaik MF don’t work as a plain multiplier to the item loot chance. It increases loot table chances, and not loot table item chances. Let’s make a theoretical example:

#. table1 has got 4/10 chance to be rolled.
#. table2 has got 3/10 chance to be rolled.
#. table3 has got 2/10 chance to be rolled.
#. table4 has got 1/10 chance to be rolled.

With increasing MF %, the chances tends to change the table looting:

#. table1 has got 1/10 chance to be rolled.
#. table2 has got 4/10 chance to be rolled.
#. table3 has got 3/10 chance to be rolled.
#. table4 has got 2/10 chance to be rolled.

Inside each table the item probability of dropping is the same independently of the MF. Between tables, different rarities have different probabilities.

This behavior explains why we see a reducing amount of grey/white items on increasing MF to blue/green items. If it was a multiplier, we would see a huge increase of the lowest quality items (grey/white).

/Cheers

Just to throw in some info, MF doesn’t multiply with your base chance (which if translated to MF is 100%), it adds to it, so a 400% MF rating would mean you are 5 times likelier to find… whatever drops MF increases the chance of finding.

LHound.8964:

Vayne, afaik MF don’t work as a plain multiplier to the item loot chance. It increases loot table chances, and not loot table item chances. Let’s make a theoretical example:

#. table1 has got 4/10 chance to be rolled.
#. table2 has got 3/10 chance to be rolled.
#. table3 has got 2/10 chance to be rolled.
#. table4 has got 1/10 chance to be rolled.

With increasing MF %, the chances tends to change the table looting:

#. table1 has got 1/10 chance to be rolled.
#. table2 has got 4/10 chance to be rolled.
#. table3 has got 3/10 chance to be rolled.
#. table4 has got 2/10 chance to be rolled.

Inside each table the item probability of dropping is the same independently of the MF. Between tables, different rarities have different probabilities.

This behavior explains why we see a reducing amount of grey/white items on increasing MF to blue/green items. If it was a multiplier, we would see a huge increase of the lowest quality items (grey/white).

/Cheers

Okay I understood this anyway, but I was explaining only why it works as a percentage, which is what the OP was asking.

The only way to know what it’s doing over all is to leave it as a percentage, because it acts as a percentage. It’s a percentage chance on different tables, but it still doesn’t make sense to change it to a non-percentile number.

I see it as working as intended. Drop percentages are the same, but the chance of those drops being blue/green/yellow increase as per magic find. How anyone can come to other conclusions, I don’t know but removing the percentage sign while keeping it functioning as a percentage is not a good suggestion imho.

I think all of you misunderstood the point. I know it has a percentage value on the back end of the programming on the loot tables… my point is.

Giving yourself 400% magic find isnt going to increase the value/amount of stuff that drops by 400%, leaving it to be a confusing stat for beginners.

If it was just a number, it would work the same way, people just wouldn’t put on 100% MF gear and say “WHYZ AREN’TT LE DROPPES HAPPENNINn?”

GreedLT.1294:

I think all of you misunderstood the point. I know it has a percentage value on the back end of the programming on the loot tables… my point is.

Giving yourself 400% magic find isnt going to increase the value/amount of stuff that drops by 400%, leaving it to be a confusing stat for beginners.

If it was just a number, it would work the same way, people just wouldn’t put on 100% MF gear and say “WHYZ AREN’TT LE DROPPES HAPPENNINn?”

I did misunderstand. I’m not sure a number would be any clearer though. I guess a number that if you mouse over it explains that that number represents would work….but for me, I like knowing how increased my chances are without the extra step.