Remove MF completely from game

@Michaelangel007:

Hard to read an entire book in order to respond, but I did a quick visit to Koster's website. The one thing I got out of the site was the phrase "different fun for different folks," which I can agree is a good game design goal: you should have difficult PvE (where the reward is static challenge), easier PvE (where the reward is zoning out similar to watching television and picking up loots), PvP duels (where the reward is dynamic challenge), PvP racing (which combines the static challenge element of difficult PvE with some of the dynamic challenge from PvP metagaming), trading, and possibly a few more.

Which really got me thinking that perhaps the "easy PvE" group isn't a proper target for hate. Yes, the "difficult PvE" group feels superior to them, and in terms of skill maybe they should, but do we ostracize people for enjoying to zone out watching television? I mean, think of the term "to farm" from an ARPG perspective. In a single syllable, it conveys simultaneously the expected low difficulty of the monster content one faces and the emphasis on the harvest... that's some mighty efficient diction. And perhaps "loving to farm" isn't something we should persecute.

That said, what I said earlier about build diversity is still important. When I started posting in this thread, I was seeing it as a black and white thing. On the one side, you had a mod that 1) simultaneously promotes an alternative method to enjoy Path of Exile, which is most likely a good thing, and 2) is a direct attack on build dependency, which is almost definitely a bad thing. On the other hand, you had nothingness. Thus the conflict was "build dependency" vs "passive farming as a way to enjoy the game." When thrust into this false dichotomy, if forced to pick only one, I'd side with nothingness, because I believe build dependency is that important of a balance goal. My core logic was that the lack of build dependency also had serious economic implications which impacted not just "difficult PvE" but also "trading" as a way to enjoy the game; I was viewing the needs of two demographics as being more important than those of just the one, and thus became very antagonistic towards the one.

However, this is truly a false dichotomy, as the Gifts from Above unique ring proves. It is possible to make build-dependent farming affixes which would provide a special something for the zoning-out crowd. So it's actually possible to serve all three demographics at once.

Therefore, at this point this is the way I see it:

• Best option: Keep IIQ and IIR in the game, but remove all instances where it's offered "flat" without any catches. Instead, make a series of rare mods modeled after the Gifts from Above ring, making IIQ and IIR build-dependent but still very much a part of the game. Making a wide variety of "MF triggers" so that almost every build can enjoy MF mods is an important consideration in implementation.
• Second-best lazier option: Either completely remove IIQ and IIR from the game, or severely nerf them by reducing their effectiveness.
• Worst, laziest option: Do nothing.

I guess this means that, technically, I now disagree with the original point of the thread: I don't believe that MF should be removed completely from the game, or even weakened numerically. If some cases, the numbers should even go up... but with specific, build-dependent requirements for getting those numbers to activate.
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@tanakea: What you mean by "boring gear" is a lack of build dependency in itemization (which actually also applies to maps and orbs themselves). And yes, I agree that it's a major issue. This is why I've stated numerous times that I believe the build-independent orbs should be made account-bound, while maps should remain tradeable but gain implicit mods (similar to rings and amulets) that favor certain builds over others. Together, these two changes would force more build-dependent trading valuations and fundamentally changing how trading works... but that's a bit of a derail to keep going down that rabbit hole. I think in general your post emphasized how MF affixes effect trading, something which I'm keenly aware of but do not want to transform this into a trading system thread, as there are numerous issues there far beyond the scope of this thread.

Now everyone is making a MF sporker. That's silly.

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Michaelangel007 wrote:

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

Thus, unlike the chicken and the egg, we know which comes first here: expectations.

Incorrect. Motivation comes first, THEN expectations, although I will admit they are very closely linked.

e.g. As in WHY am I playing this game in the first place? I am motivated to have fun, not be bored, to acquire virtual wealth, etc.

As an counter-example / experiment trying watching two movies:

- one without any expectations
- one with expectations

The first is enjoying the journey.
The second is focusing on the destination.

Now make a note of which ones you enjoyed more?

"

ScrotieMcB wrote:

As a game designer, isn't it one's job to harmonize these two objectives, such that the player isn't torn between the decision to do the fun thing and go unrewarded, or do the rewarding thing and have no fun?

1. That gamer designer has failed to understand one of _key_ points about game design as stated so eloquently & succinctly stated by Sid Meier:
-> Give players interesting choices! <-

2. You are conflating fun and reward. Fun can be in and of itself a fulfilling reward. Please go read the excellent Raph Koster's "Theory of Fun" :-)

The job of the game designer is to make sure the player is having fun at all times. In movie terminology it would be called "pacing" and "tension." Is the audience getting bored? Are we building enough conflict? Are we releasing enough tension? etc. The parallels to sex & gaming should be obvious.

This is the _primary_ motivation: Players want to have fun.

Now a certain paradox / dilema appears because not all players find the same _activities_ fun! Some like virtual fishing, some don't. Some like virtual killing, some don't. As a game designer you need to be aware of the TYPEs of players. You goal then is two-fold:

* If players find this fun, how can we make this more interesting?
* If players don't find this fun, is there anything we could do to make it fun?

Some players find MF fun. Some don't. Some could care less.

Which is the "right" answer?

ALL OF THEM.

Truth is not limited to dualistic thinking. Truth is relative to each player, AS IS the concept of FUN.

As a famous man once said "You can please some of the people some of the time, but you can't please all the people all the time."

That said, that does not negate the fact that designers choses to focus on certain themes / genres / etc. When there are tradeoffs between choices, such as DPS vs MF, that is an interesting choice. "Should I as a player focus on the short-term survivability or on the long-term wealth acquisition"? THAT is why MF persists in ARPGs. It gives the player an interesting choice.

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

You said "You are letting your greed dictate how you play the game instead of the other way around." But what I'm asking here is: Why must these two desires be in opposition?

Because you are not understanding control & mastery of self. In the former you are giving your power away; in the second you are keeping it.

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

please don't try to stop us from properly balancing a game where the decisions actually matter to us.

Please define "properly balancing" ?

Players play RPGs because they have the false allusion of wanting power. i.e. "I want phat loot so I can kill more powerful things faster to get phat loot repeat ad nausea."

If the journey along the way isn't fun along the way the game design has failed. You can have a fun game WITH or WITH OUT magic find. Saying it needs to be "balanced" is demonstrating one does not understand the fundamental problem.

There is only one game that I am aware of that solves the root problem; Team Fortress 2 solved (solves?) the MF problem differently:

Instead of a MF deciding what drops, they decide when it drops.

Because at the end of the day that is all that matters about wealth is this: Time = Money. Players quite naturally buy into the expectation 'The player who puts in more time will tend to have more wealth.' The game is perceived as being unfair if this isn't true.

I don't play TF to get hats, er, "phat loot". My motivation is to have fun on my server with my friends learning to practice communication, strategy, tactics. All the nifty items are just a bonus that ADD TO the _existing_ fun.

This entire discussion about "Yay, remove MF" or "Nay, remove MF" is a red herring IMO for the aforementioned reasons.

This ^

Seems like the majority of you (at least on page 1) are against having dedicated MFing characters; I don't understand why. You have builds that are best at dps, builds that are best at tanking, and builds that are best at PvP. Why not have builds that are best at loot collecting? Personally, I find making MF dedicated characters really fun and would be very disappointed if MF were removed.

I would like to see MF removed from all items but keep the MF gems IMO

There is much bigger trade off in using the gems than items with MF and there will also be a very controlled cap on how much MF you can get.

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toddtj wrote:

Seems like the majority of you (at least on page 1) are against having dedicated MFing characters; I don't understand why. You have builds that are best at dps, builds that are best at tanking, and builds that are best at PvP. Why not have builds that are best at loot collecting? Personally, I find making MF dedicated characters really fun and would be very disappointed if MF were removed.

Some players don't enjoy or have the time to make multiple characters. The other reason would be that it isn't possible to make IIQ and IIR work with every possible build. Maybe the solution is to keep IIQ and IIR, but pull those affixes off items and increase the customization of maps.

Looks like the topic is actually still hot, as people go on and continue other threads about Magic Find generally.

There were two rather interesting suggestions that I want to highlight here, in the main discussion thread.

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Lamaen wrote:

First solution : Remove ALL MF from game as it is now, a prefix/suffix and instead add an orb with same drop rate as uhmm GCPS perhaps (ive probably played 80hours and think ive found like 8, so not unreasonable.. ). This orb "Imbues" the item with a MF stat, either rarity or quantity, thus making melee not having to suffer from missing stats, and making the MF more available for ALL chars.

2nd meehh solution : Add an orb that can add a rarity / quantity stat on any item that does not have 6 stats, thus making me able to find a good 4stat item, and adding quantity / rarity (unless it has 3 prefixes). This solution would generalize the MF as the other solution aswell, but will be alot more beneficial for sporkers/ranged chars than for melee..
Lamaen out

I'll start with the second suggestion. I think that won't actually fix any melee/ranged disparity. On top of that, this will actively help sporkers build up their very first MF item set even easier. Overall, I see this suggestion is much more about having less RNG reliant crafting system, than Magic Find problem itself.

But Your first solution is basically what this thread is about except for a specific orb that aims, in my opinion, to lessen RNG impacts when crafting. It may sound unappealing in its current form (sure, why bother having MF-Exalted Orb?) but the idea is quite interesting. I actually suggested a slightly similar idea of having MF as a function of item level and a number of sockets an item has at the bottom of page 37 earlier in this thread. I will put that in a spoiler here for convenience. This my suggestion (while I know it may be still unusable) was actually never discussed from that point on, though very similar things were stated independently by different posters on later pages of this thread.

These two quoted suggestions just show us how carefully Magic Find should be approached, as there are also Map Sustaining and Crafting System being two different mechanics but are pretty close. Any careless "fix" could tie these 3 mechanics into a Gordian knot, and that is exactly why I still stand for MF elimination from at least an affix pool for non-unique items.

Support gems Item Rarity and Item Quantity appear to be an interesting choice, but in my opinion they actually aren't. They will either be must have (if Magic Find is to stay really powerful as it is now) trumping other choices, or absolutely useless (if IIR and IIQ is nerfed internally) being that every other choice is effectively better.

>>EDIT<<
I'll try to reiterate it as simply as possible.
1. Magic Find is directly buffing your rewards from playing the game.
2. Magic Find (as of PoE 0.11.2d) affects loot drop far too drastically to ignore/deal with.
3. Map Sustainability is also indirectly affected by IIQ as part of Magic Find via orb drops to roll maps.
4. Magic Find "eats" character power via replacing affixes on gear / links on items.
5. Magic Find favors builds that have low gear requirements and/or have high innate survivability.
6. You can choose to play a tanky character, or a powerful dps character, but will you ever opt out of playing an actually rewarding character (being MF-stacked one)? You will at least attempt to mix the extremes, thus...
7. Magic Find strongly affects (and limits) your build choice.
8. Sporker (Dual Spark/Fork Totem) is the current build with Magic Find being put into extreme case.

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toddtj wrote:

Seems like the majority of you (at least on page 1) are against having dedicated MFing characters; I don't understand why. You have builds that are best at dps, builds that are best at tanking, and builds that are best at PvP. Why not have builds that are best at loot collecting?

PvE and loot collecting are the exact same thing. Tanking isn't an actual task, it's just a novelty, what matters is how well they're doing the actual job.

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dspair wrote:

Now everyone is making a MF sporker. That's silly.

I would like to know how many there are. I love the new thread of the guy running a full Shavronnes MF build and posting the results.

I'm sure lots of people still play MF sporker. I dust off mine if i get low on currency, but I just got sick of playing totems.