One big problem I noticed about Diablo 2 was the "Find Magic Items" enchantment that could be found on equipment. This turned out highly problematic and counter intuitive. Many players, myself included, would wear items exclusively for their MF ratings, rather than any bonuses to make me effective in combat. Why? So I could find more powerful items, but I wouldn't use those because I'd wear the new MF items I find to find even more powerful item, etc. etc.

For Diablo 3, please don't give items MF bonuses, or else the same problem will occur. People given a choice between easier challenges and greater rewards will almost always choose the greater rewards if the challenge is already doable. Without the MF dimension, players will make their item choices based on what makes them strongest, as it was intended.

That's not to say that MF can't be in the game. It can be a fun dynamic if done right. For example, randomly generated shrines could provide a temporary magic find bonus, spurring players to fight hard and fast to maximize the chance of finding something amazing. Another idea would be having the ability to use gold to purchase a temporary Magic Find buff from town. This would also be an effective gold sink.

Edit: changed title of thread because some people think I want all drop chances to be exactly the same.

I think the trick with magic find, or any sort of tertiary stat that doesn't directly relate to player power, is to make sure that it's an actual trade off. A lot of times and specifically for certain classes in Diablo II you could stack magic find and still be perfectly able to fight and kill. So what it really comes down to is properly weighting stats on items and ensuring that if you do want to stack something like magic find, that it's clearly going to limit your power in downing enemies. Auto-stats to a degree also help out in this regard as you can't effectively stack stats as easily to offset the loss of stats coming from items that might otherwise help keep you alive or kill at an acceptable pace.

That said magic find isn't fully drawn up yet, there's not a complete pool of itemization where we can begin tweaking balance to a degree where we can ensure MF doesn't get out of hand. It could turn out that we need to take an alternate approach, but, if I had to guess simply weighting the stat properly would be enough.

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Q u o t e:
.... rrriiiigghhht.... You sure you got the right game there? Maybe I'm missing something, but to my knowledge I have not once - in four and a half years of playing - ever bought a buff.

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Hrm... maybe the need to buy reagents for group buffs? I'm not too sure either. Hah.

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Q u o t e:


Yup. Group buffs require reagents.

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Hah, I know they do, but is that what he was talking about? :)

Whatevs. Magic find is fine. IT'S FINE Y'ALL! Ok, thread ended.