Sirian's First Impression

[swirly]

Again if someone can explain how that circle is more fun than trying to make the biggest baddest monster killer I would actually appreciate it.

I've not touched D3, but I'll give my general magic find thoughts from D2 and why I like it. Put simply, it adds another dimension to balance. In most games you have to find a balance between kill speed and survivability. By adding magic find you add another balance point. Now you want to find a balance where you kill at a speed you are happy with, don't die (at all or not much depending on hardcore or not), and yet still have the highest chance you can to find gear. Without magic find you can really push to where you are the best killing machine possible. With magic find you have to push more towards finding the line where if you fall below it you either don't kill mobs fast enough or don't live. It adds pressure to keep yourself at just the right power level instead of being overpoweringly strong.

Obviously this changes a lot based on the difficulty of the content. You can farm old easier content with large amounts of magic find and still have plenty of dps and defense. You can also disregard magic find and stack dps/defense gear for new content planning to go back and farm it latter with other gear. That is all well and good. For some people maximizing their magic find and farming is fun. For other people maximizing their kill speed and survivability is fun. For me it is finding that balance between the two that lets me farm as little as possible and still progress through the game. I like to find the balance point where I can kill things, live, and have the best chance at gear to enable me to continue on.

To me this is a more fun and enjoyable style than simply trying to build the strongest killing machine possible. It's a more complex system. As I said at the start, a killing machine system only requires you paying attention two types of stats. Granted there are various different versions of each type. Like hit, strength, etc all are dps and stam, defense, etc are all survivability. So there are more balances internally to find the optimal killing machine, but in the end it really is just balancing dps and survivability. A magic find system adds in that third balance point to add even more complexity. I personally would find it dull to just build the strongest character possible. I like that there is a limiting factor I have to consider. Something to make me find the edge and balance upon it.

It reminds me of how some games add a weight to armor and items you carry. So you have to juggle wearing heavy armor and not carrying much or wearing lighter armor and carrying a lot. That system is kind of annoying cause it is punishment based... a negative reward system. Yet I do appreciate that it places a limit on things. I find limits to be what makes a game interesting. Magic find is the same, but it is a positive reward system. Now this is semantics to some degree. I call it a positive reward because you are starting at a baseline and are rewarded for limiting your character. I'm sure others will call it negative cause they say the baseline is artificially lowered to make up for it and so there is a constant passive negative influence. Both views have merit, but I think magic find is a much better limit than things like that weight option. Like I said, I view it as a positive reward system and so don't find it annoying and I think having limiting factors a player has to balance enhances the game. Is it the perfect limiting factor? Probably not. If I knew what was I'd be a millionaire from making a game that used whatever that perfect system is. I do think magic find is a good one though.

To comment more directly on the circle portion of it where you wear magic find to get more loot with magic find to wear to find more loot with magic find. I think this just depends on the difficulty of the game. If you beat the game on normal and then go back and farm things to increase such then sure... you are doing that circle. However you could then go on to play hard mode and see how far you can get. Maybe doing some farming when you reach a point you can't progress past until you can again. Then when you beat hard, you move on to brutal. As long as their is a harder mode then I don't see the circle as a problem. Eventually you beat all the difficulties and then you move on to hardcore where if you get the balance wrong you have to start over. Each difficulty makes finding the right balance even more critical.

Now if the game is such that you can just stack magic find and stomp through all the difficulties without worrying about your other stats then that isn't an issue with magic find, but with the difficulty balance the developers have given it. The talk seems to be that some difficulties in D3 will be very tough though. The developers have said "You will die" right? So how do you balance the fact that you will die with finding room to fit magic find on your gear? I think that will be quite enjoyable to find out.

Of course then most people will probably stack magic find, go farm old content for even stronger gear, then go back and kill that harder stuff. How is that really any different that without magic find though? Even without it you'd eventually, hopefully, reach a point that your gear isn't good enough to get past right away. If you never reach that point then that sure is a short boring game with no challenge. So thus without magic find you end up going back and farming for gear as well. Magic find simply gives you a way to control the balance more. Without it then the developers set what the level is and you just build a character to kill as fast as possible. With it they set a level and you then build a character to kill as fast as possible with as high a chance at loot as possible. To repeat, it adds another piece to balance. It adds another aspect of the game in your control. To me, that is only a good thing.