Magic Find and Gold Find Now Shared Through the Party
Posted 3 March 2012 by FluxThanks to Ugm for letting us know about some surprising news from the official Polish Battle.net forums. A fan asked about sharing MF in parties, and got a reply from CM Wuluxar. In Polish, of course, but the translation is clear enough:
The group consists of four players. In total, their stats are 50% MF, +20% GF and 10% XP, each of these players will have a 12.5% MF, 5% and 2.5% GF XP being in such a group.
Playing with a companion, available for rent, as at present receive 20% bonus to the statistics of type ‘adventure’ with a bonus companion visible on the panel.
That last bit of garbled translation was clarified by a Blue post today.
This news prompts numerous thoughts and theories, and I’m definitely thinking we need a vote on it to measure the overall impact. A few different quick reactions:
1) It’s another design decision that waters down the game for the benefit of less-skilled players. Now any noob can get MF and +exp benefits from skilled players with better gear, simply by being in the same game. Does this give skilled players *another* reason to play solo in D3?
2) It’s an inevitable “fix” required by D3′s individual item drops, which would have rewarded back row MF leeches who didn’t pull their weight in games.
3) This is great for friends playing in parties. If you go all MF and ranged support while staying in the back, while your friend tanks and takes all the risks (especially if you’re playing 
Hardcore), you benefit from his killing speed, and he enjoys your MF.
Speaking as someone who has always enjoyed MF and did a lot to promote it with a number of huge strategy guides in the early days of D2, I’m curious to hear feedback on the change — especially from MF haters.
one killer
rest mf watchers
I doubt a single person will ever be able to solo inferno with a 4 player group, but I guess we’ll find out… Either way, at least the person doing all the killing gets as much a benefit from MF as the ‘watchers’ do.
But what of the skilled player with great gear who does a fair share of killing and yet sees his MF bonuses going to others? Which is why my first thought on this was another noob-friendly feature change that punishes expertise. Or pushes expert players to play solo or only with other expert friends.
On the other hand, the individual item drops system in D3 almost requires this, as there has to be some nerfing to the loot given to a back row leech in MF gear.
I’ll likely run a vote on this topic, as I’m genuinely curious how the community at large will greet the feature change.
By “great gear” do you mean gear that has very little MF on it? Because that’s what you imply. People complaining have been saying they don’t want team members with heavy MF leeching kills from players with better more damage centric gear.
This equalizes the playing field for all players.
I define “great gear” as equipment that gives you good killing power + MF. That’s the goal of the game, after all. To kill quickly and earn big profits while doing it.
I pretty much use around 50-100 Mf myself on inferno, without gimping my main stats in any way. I define this good gear.
So far around 75% of the public games i join, i’ve had more Mf than all other players combined, and still i’m doing the tanking and by the looks i am dealing the most DPS too. I See other 3 running from a single mob from pack while im soloing the other 3.. blizzard really needs to do something, or will you force “good” players to play solo. Maybe someone wants to boost all noobs in the game but not me. Not at least 75% on time i join public game. Person with highest MF should at least end up with bigger chance to find magic than people with absolutely nothing. Make it 50% less for people who have little or no MF but do something.
This change isn’t really a surprise. I have been saying this since the day Blizzard said MF is not shared.
There will be leeches out there that dress in full MF gear and join game siting there and watch loot drop.
Now people actually work together in a CO-OP game.
Or just not bother playing a co-op game.
I personally don’t know what to think about this atm….
Ultimately it is much better than the old system. I don’t see a bunch of players trying to stack MF as high as possible, gimping themselves, just to leech item drops if they’ll only benefit from a 1/4th of their total MF.
I think it makes more sense for everyone to stack high damage / defensive stats (HC) with some GF / MF in the mix. Faster killing with this system will most likely = more results.
Atm, I disagree with this being more casual. If anything, I feel a little bit more comfortable joining a public game now. Hopefully we get a good /kick option for the afk’ers and whatever leechers that we encounter… Overall, this is a good change IMO
The “skilled player with the great gear who does a fair share of killing” is already seeing a lot of his or her benefits – higher proportional damage output – going to other players. If everyone else in the group has worse gear than they do, they’d already be better off playing solo where their kill time will be faster anyway.
Ultimately I don’t think this change will matter much to the truly elite players out there, because more likely than not they won’t be playing in random groups to begin with – they’ll be playing with friends who are also skilled players with decent gear. It punishes people who would otherwise come in and leech MF – having other people do all of the killing for them – as you note in point number two of your original post.
In any case it’s better than Diablo 2′s system.
Flux, I think you might be missing the main point (no insult intended). The system before the change gave a clear incentive to any skilled, knowledgeable and rational player to max mf at any cost to optimize personal gain. This is quite likely to lead to a degradation of the whole coop environment. It is a clear case of what is referred to as “Tragedy of the Commons”, i.e. the common resource (kill speed) is depleted for the sake of individual gain (mf). The system, as it stands now, does have all the problems of random coop play, but at least it does not provide that sort of moral hazard.
No matter what way you look at it, player-based MF creates barriers between players!
This is the happiest news I’ve received from Blizzard in a LONG time.
That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever read.
that would not make sense, because the foe needs to die to drop something ^^
So they decided to equalize the benefit of MF? This might actually promote people having viable gear versus ultra high MF gear while in a group because they’ll only have 1/4 the benefit.
If high end players even get close to 100% viable MF you’re looking at no difference in terms of MF. This just means that you can’t go into a group with zero MF and be left out (especially if you’re doing most of the damage).
I like that change. I hate wearing MF gear so it’s nice to benefit from others.
Also makes playing in a group of 4 more appealing to me.
Exactly – if you don’t wear any MF gear whatsoever you still get the benefit of MF, because you will be doing more damage than your teammates who have MF.
what makes you think your teammates will have magic find?
He means if they hypothetically have magic find. If they don’t have MF, then they’re probably doing more damage instead, which is also a benefit through a faster kill rate.
It makes me wonder how much mf we will have in the late game. As it is in the beta, you would be hard pressed to not have any mf or gf gear, and if you are trying to get it, then it can add up to fairly substantial amounts even early on.
Ya my demon hunter in beta has 110 percent MF right now
AKA 27.5% in a MP game.
Flux that is if everyone else has zero magic find, this is highly unlikely unless you gimped your DPS and if that is the case it likely that they will be doing far more of the killing any way.
It more likely that everyone will have MF etc between X & Y% and if you go above Y you kill speed will suffer and you are now a MF leech.
I think it’s dumb to hurt a high MF of one player…but then again, I’m thinking of it like D2. Where I would do solo MF runs, it might make more sense to have a larger party since you have your own drops. So I don’t know what I think.
Time will tell.
Seems good; many people complained that a full MF geared char could leech gear in public games without dealing much damage. With this change the other players get at least a benefit from MF chars.
This is like the opposite – people with viable gear are ‘leeching’ MF off of players with less viable higher MF gear.
Viable gear player contribute by doing damage, while MF gear player contribute MF.
So whats the problem?
It used to be viable gear player do the damage, while MF player get more loot.
This ^
Sums up my opinions completely. The old system only gave MF players an advantage. Now the whole team does. Possibly the MF leechers have a disadvantage now, but that’s a good thing. I think their should be more incentive to have strong effective builds, and this might do the trick.
As long as their is good itemization, there will be stats on certain gear that still gives decent MF, without the compensation of loosing power. Kind of like how the Shako is in D2 – Solid MF and with +skills / dmg reduction.
I wish I could give you guys x10 thumbs up. I am so glad to see 80% of the community is in favor of this change, now there’s NO way it will get changed
I’m not nuts about MF; I’d rather it were some inborn skill on a character that can be developed rather than affix, but I’ll take this over individualized MF scores.
I don’t think this is “noob friendly” but the alternative would result in everyone playing late game solo, fighting about what other people have equipped, and accusations of being carried.
I also want to see a MF soft cap to keep everyone from going MF>>all.
In the end, it’s a better system than individualized MF.
Hrm… I can see the complaints, but the more I think about it, they really have to do this. Think about pickup groups: accusations of “you’re just using ****ty MF gear” would be flying. Anyone wearing any sort of MF/GF would be seen – and, hell, would indeed be – leeching off the rest of the party.
See, as a player who always went for high MF and still had a good killing speed (in HC), I see it exactly the opposite. Why would I want to play with others now, if my MF is getting watered down and given to them? In D2, without shared MF, I don’t care if other players suck and/or have lame gear; it doesn’t affect my drops. (Unless they are ninjas.) .
Now I’ll want to make sure everyone in a game also has MF, or else is really optimized to slaughter, to make up for their drain on my item drops with superior killing power.
Well, when you consider that people without MF gear will likely deal more damage than you and be better suited towards survival, it might actually benefit you to be in a game with players who have no MF.
You haven’t even seen what the item numbers look like at max level yet…
Your complaint is valid, but I don’t like being in a group unless I feel like I’m contributing, and this makes that smoother. If I’m feeling like the people I’m playing with don’t deserve the benefit of my gear bonuses, then this is a sign of deeper problems in the prospects for that group being fun to play with the first place.
They should juste check for the higher MF% in the group, and give the same bonus to each player in the group.
For exemple, if player A has 150% MF, player B 50%, player C 20% and player D 100%, everyone in the group should have 150% MF.
This way, everyone is happy: no more leechers, and players with good gear don’t have to play solo.
But then that defeats the purpose of more than one person ever having any MF gear on, it’s not a great solution in my opinion.
So I have 98% MF and my teammate has 100% MF, so I’m supposed to be punished for having 2% lower MF? That sounds lame.
It all really comes down to the benefits of being in a group (as in the faster killing speed) outweighing having your mf given out to the rest of the group. If they don’t balance out (and I wouldn’t be surprised of some math-savvy D3 players figure out the ratio someday) then you could very well see a huge skewing to solo or group play depending on which is most efficient.
Moreover, as 100%MF is less than twice 50%, the math could be pushed toward MP
Flux, I feel like you are still looking at this from a D2 perspective. A game where you had 8 players, you could go on auto pilot and still one shot a screen full of enemies with little effort. Not too mention there is the possibility of Ninjas like you said.
Diablo 3 now, we got 4 players max, you have to work *together* especially in Inferno, and you have your own loot drops. I think this changes things up quite a bit. But yeah, if their gear is incredibly bad and they aren’t really bringing anything to the table, it’s time to kick them from the game, or at the very least make a party with the 2-3 other decent players in your group and create a new game.
I think there is possible negative side effects from this system, but I truly feel the previous system could’ve been much much worse and very abusive.
I’m not sure I by this. When 1.10 was in beta they said it would not be possible for a person to solo hell in an eight player game, a week or two later everyone was doing it.
With have zero real feel of what inferno is like I doubt it is nearly as hard as people are making it out ot to be. It isn’t going to be like 1.07 challenge by any means I imagine, and people have managed to complete that.
With four people, and more people owning computers and on the internet, I highly doubt that many players will be in a full party of three other random people. This is shaping up to be a nice little ”squad” sized MP game.
Everyone who is against this change needs to consider this post:
@Flux
Your logic is flawed in my opinion. I think your memory of Diablo 2 has jaded your view of Diablo 3.
You said you were “high MF and still had a good killing speed”
This was viable in Diablo 2, because all mobs in Diablo 2 dropped in only a few hits. The game did not account for everyone having elite items (due to botting/hacking), so you could get ALL the elite items, stack MF, and still drop mobs very quickly. From what we know about Diablo 3, this will not be the case. Even with premium DPS gear, the game is still going to be challenging. You will need all the DPS gear you can get. (Again, from what we know about Inferno. “You will die… we promise”, etc..)
To take away the much needed killing power from the party so YOU and ONLY YOU can have better drops is ABSOLUTELY BOGUS. Again, realize that from what we know, mobs will not fall like rain with single blows in Inferno. Please re-think.
It seems straightforwardly fair, to me. It protects people from abusively employing group members as bodyguards. It gives players another dimension with which to contribute.
I was excited but got less so when I realized each player gets an averaged amount. I know it’s too much to ask that everyone benefit from the total sum, but perhaps: each player gets 100% of the total in 2 player game, each player gets 50% of the total in 3 player game, each player gets 33% of the total in 4 player game, Would have been fantastic.
Keep in mind blizz is trying to tune the game so that more players = significantly faster killing. So if everyone in the group has 100% mf, the fact that everyone is killing monsters faster than they would solo probably does mean that people will be seeing a significant increase in drops by playing together. I think the current situation is more like what you described than you think
At first I thought this would lead to MFers playing solo only. But then I gave this change a second thought and now I think that they’ve just made yet another role for character which whole team benefits from.