Don't Remove MF from the Game; Just Cut it in Half

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Novalisk wrote:

Buffing MF in maps for non-MF builds makes a very significant change to the docks metagame. Suddenly instead of getting MF gear and farming docks over and over, you have an incentive to get power gear and do maps instead. Once your power reaches optimal levels, you should then go for MF gear. Currently it's the other way around, as players are encouraged to get MF gear before power gear.

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

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technie_noob wrote:

3 months of MF mapping i've seen two kaoms dropped. They should make new new contents instead, MF is fine as is.

Perhaps you misunderstand me. This is not a thread about nerfing MF; the intent is to keep MF finding the same amount of items before as after on an absolute basis. A high MF character with a 0.67 Kaoms/month rate should have between a 0.63 and 0.70 Kaoms/month ratio after; maybe a little worse off but I really don't want to hurt these character's drops, just the relative difference between them and your typical solo melee guy. The thing we're really trying to change here is the rate for the guy without IIQ or IIR. I want to leave your character alone in terms of function; the only difference you should see is a harmless tweak to your character stat sheet.

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technie_noob wrote:

Seeing kaoms doesn't mean it's assigned to your loot. In party of 6 two kaoms per month is pretty low. Without mf guy it's probably lower. Not sure what the problem is here.

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exit_zero wrote:

"Hey, I can join a party with a MF character who's sacrificing practically everything to improve loot for the entire group (and still not getting anything for themselves if RNG wants it that way). Or I could make a character like that and join a party to create massive loot explosions for everyone!

But no, I don't want to do either of those, I just want comparable loot when I'm playing solo with no MF so I don't have to make any sacrifices, share any of the loot, or do anything especially expensive, dangerous or demanding.

Oh yeah and keep the drops for people who do all that as they are so that they wouldn't complain too much."

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

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exit_zero wrote:

"Hey, I can join a party with a MF character who's sacrificing practically everything to improve loot for the entire group (and still not getting anything for themselves if RNG wants it that way). Or I could make a character like that and join a party to create massive loot explosions for everyone!

But no, I don't want to do either of those, I just want comparable loot when I'm playing solo with no MF so I don't have to make any sacrifices, share any of the loot, or do anything especially expensive, dangerous or demanding.

Oh yeah and keep the drops for people who do all that as they are so that they wouldn't complain too much."

This isn't a fair appraisal of what I'm trying to do here. I think there should be a difference in drops between a zero MF and a dedicated MF build; I even think that difference should be significant. That means: I don't want them to have "comparable loot." I'm not trying to turn a 13x advantage into a 2x advantage; I'm trying to turn it into a 5x advantage.

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

MAJOR REVISION 22AUG

My suggestion (reasons are the important part, and discussed below):

• Globally buff quantity dropped and rarity of items dropped by "20% more" each. This would be a general change to the game and would not be recorded on any stat sheets.
• Cut everything IIQ and IIR in half. Rare affixes, Item Quantity and Item Rarity support gems, intrinsic mods on Gold Rings and Amulets. Rounded up. Everything. And retroactively. Server downtime is acceptable. (Gifts from Above is the only item in the game that should be spared.)
• Implement a level-based "more" bonus to Item Quantity equal to 1% per 4 full character levels (max 25% more at level 100). This would appear on a separate line of the stat sheet with its own description.
• Implement a level-based "more" bonus to Item Rarity equal to 1% per 2 full character levels (max 50% more at level 100). This would appear on a separate line of the stat sheet with its own description.

Why make these changes?
Simply put, the game's economy and gear-checks are balanced assuming some degree of IIQ and IIR. Some people think it's balanced around trading; this is false, trading doesn't give you the type of overwhelming advantage we're talking about. On the other hand, something like this:

...that is the kind of overwhelming advantage we're talking about. This means (1+1.03)*(1+3.32)=2.03*4.32=8.77 times as many rare and unique drops than normal. Not to mention more than double currency. It is that type of advantage that makes gearchecks passed in a more reasonable amount of time (and not such a grind), and allows the currency to sustain high-level maps (rerolls which one couldn't afford without such an advantage).

And that's just the typical MF advantage. The theoretical maximums on MF — without even using unique items, just rare affixes — are 163% IIQ, 417% IIR. That's over 13.5 times as many uniques and rares.

Currently, the game assumes some degree of IIQ and IIR in determining its pricing. Without any on your gear, upgrading gear takes forever, and maps are not sustainable. What we're trying to do here is narrow the gulf; we want zero IIQ/IIR to at least come closer to making gearchecks and sustaining maps.

What would this mean for IIQ/IIR stacker guy, playing solo?
Well, not much would change. 103% IIQ would be cut down to 51%, which would look bad on the stat sheet. But let's assume this character is level 64, farming the Docks; he'd be getting the 20% more bonus to global drops, as well as another 16% more bonus based on level. 1.51*1.2*1.16=2.10, so it would feel like 110% IIQ does now. 332% IIR would be cut down to 166%, but 2.66*1.2*1.32=4.21, which would feel like 321% IIR does now. +7 IIQ, -11 IIR... not really that big of a difference overall.

What would this mean for zero IIQ/IIR (melee) guy, playing solo?
Simply put, zero IIQ for a level 64 character at the Docks would feel like 39% IIQ feels now, and zero IIR would feel like 58% IIR feels now. That means 120% more rares and uniques for builds like melee that struggle to fit IIQ and IIR affixes onto their gear, narrowing the divide between those who stack MF and those who do not.

What would this mean for group play?
Dedicated Culling MF builds would still be highly valued by groups; 4x rare/unique drops is nothing to sneeze at. The loot output of tightly regimented groups wouldn't change much. However, Culling MFers wouldn't be quite as necessary as before; it would be a little easier to find a laid-back group which doesn't demand that the whole Culling MF plan work out to perfection.

Why not remove IIQ/IIR completely?
There's a whole, long thread dedicated to removing MF completely, but after consideration I've determined that this would be a terrible idea. For some players, building around MF stacking, and developing a great farming character, are the key draws this game offers. Itemization is bland to them if you take out affixes like IIQ and IIR; it's these items (and these uniques, like Andvarius) which draw them to the game and make them interested. Removing MF completely would leave these Spike-psychographic players without anything to love. We shouldn't do that to them.

Where I differ from the "remove MF completely" crowd is: although I see the problems in the strength of MF, I also don't want to burn bridges with the MF-lovers of this game. MF should be a viable build choice; we still want players to be able to make characters which are considerably more effective than normal characters at farming. What we don't want and don't need is for them to be so much more effective like they are now.

What's with the level bonus? Are you trying to copy Paragon Levels from Diablo 3?
No, I'm not; it was just the best way to make the data fit. After originally posting this suggestion, PolarisOrbit pointed out that MF stacking isn't something the game starts off doing; the pace of magic find increases more slowly as the game goes on. This means you can't fix this kind of problem exclusively with flat, global increases to drop quantity and rarity. I picked the numbers so that the expected drops for a fully maxed-out MF build would vary as little as possible, given the assumption of halving the MF values on their gear. It's kind of hard to explain... so here's a couple charts. The first is absolute drops, the second is max-vs-zero MF comparison.


And yes, that does end with a slight advantage for character in their 90s, so I guess it is a little mini Paragon Level thing. If you enjoy that sort of thing, great. But the rationale is in keeping the old max-MF experience similar to the old, while improving the zero-MF experience.

What about a diminishing returns formula?
Actually, according to the 0.9.9 patch notes, GGG already implemented one "for extreme situations." However, until I have harder numbers on what it does, I'm going to ignore its existence. If you happen to have any hard information on diminishing returns, please post it in this thread; right now, as far as I can tell, no one knows anything (who is willing to talk about it).

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reboticon wrote:

So, since I just can't seem to get any maps to drop, I'm sort of interested in trying to figure out the diminishing returns thing. Basically I would do X amount of dock runs with X quantity/quality, record/post results, bump the MF, repeat. Is anyone interested in seeing an experiment like this? If so, how many runs do we think we need in at each MF level to have reliable data? Will do this if there is actual interest, probably just keep farming maps if there is not.

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

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Novalisk wrote:

Buffing MF in maps for non-MF builds makes a very significant change to the docks metagame. Suddenly instead of getting MF gear and farming docks over and over, you have an incentive to get power gear and do maps instead. Once your power reaches optimal levels, you should then go for MF gear. Currently it's the other way around, as players are encouraged to get MF gear before power gear.

Okay, I get what you're saying, but you're still not offering a fully comprehensive solution. Under your suggestion, pre-maps MF builds, maps MF builds, and maps non-MF builds are addressed, but not non-map non-MF builds; this would mean that unless non-MF have builds that can just dive into added-affix-difficulty maps (most of these are cookie-cutter), they're likely to get stuck in a broing Docks grind. This is one of the things I was specifically trying to fix; Docks farming at 0/0 is painful.

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Angryweasel wrote:

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reboticon wrote:

So, since I just can't seem to get any maps to drop, I'm sort of interested in trying to figure out the diminishing returns thing. Basically I would do X amount of dock runs with X quantity/quality, record/post results, bump the MF, repeat. Is anyone interested in seeing an experiment like this? If so, how many runs do we think we need in at each MF level to have reliable data? Will do this if there is actual interest, probably just keep farming maps if there is not.

That is exactly what I'm requesting it would be really nice to see some actual data and how much you actually need to bee somewhat efficient.