Diablo 3 magic find runs are funs, but...

[Porkchopsamwich]

Several nights a week I partake in inferno magic find runs with a friend or two. We joke and have fun, possibly find some decent and occasionally excellent items, and enjoy the quest for loot.

My favorite portion of the diablo experience is to hunt loot, and the challenges of finding and fighting the packs of monsters is a relatively fun way to achieve items (especially with a partner or two). Comparing this new method to Diablo 2's boss runs and clearing monster level 87 areas, I think the NV system is a fun way to go about magic finding and results in longer runs and less new game creation.

That being said, the question arises once more of whether or not people feel satisfied from the reward of doing such a run. In Diablo 2, if you found a low level item with excellent affixes you could upgrade it to the next tier in the horadric cube. This gave low level items potential value, thus a little excitement in finding them.

Diablo 3 leaves low level items in the dirt, with affixes not even being able to reach their maximum values without them being spawned on a level 63 item.

The argument of whether or not these affixes are as exciting as those in Diablo 3 is real and has some substance, but the chances of those being adjusted are slim. BUT, if more items could potentially spawn maximum value affixes then perhaps the sense of reward and even the value of a <ilvl63 item will perk up the magic finding experience. For instance, if a level 60 armor could have a reduced chance, but at least SOME chance, to spawn 80 all resistances. The armor would still be lower leaving it less valuable than an archon armor with the same affixes, but at least it has a chance to be respectable gear. And yea, uniques suck as is with only a handful of exceptions.

I have a lot of fun with this game, and I only see room for improvement rather than a problem needing to be fixed. I know that Diablo games are not so quick to give a player a ridiculously good item. It takes time, luck, and more time.

I'm hoping to hear from more people who are still having a good time, and maybe some magic find stories, comments, or ideas for improvement.

[AlexanderBarin]

I think the consensus of many players (either fans or haters), is that itemization and item hunt system in D3 is either broken, underdeveloper or simply bland.

I know many, including myself, have a wait and see attitude to it. I expect good things out of 1.04 patch which should hopefully be out this month.

[droppin]

Imo it's not entirely affixes and whatnot. The problem is variety and goals. D2 had runewords, usable sets for all levels, usable uniques for all levels and super rares for all levels. D3 has bad rares and good rares. There's no variety to spice things up and there's no goals to set for gear. In D2 you had gear breakpoints you could achieve and stil complete runs and whatnot whiel you search for better gear. For example, my lowby barbs would look for sigon junk while I collected runes. later on I would use runewords while looking for a tyrael chest or something. D3 had gobs of proven history to look back on. For all those "it's just been released, D2 wasn't epic when it released!". The D3 team has a proven track on the D2 system, that argument doesn't hold water. The D3 team could've used the d2 elements THEN expanded upon them with D3 expacs.

[Simfish]

One criticism I have heard about D3 is that is it not casual friendly. In order to get a lot out of MFing in D3, one needs to basically slot a 1 hour timeslot for a full 5 NV stack run. That is just simply not realistic for the vast majority of players. One thing about D2 was people could just hop in for a few minutes during breaks to do a Meph run and still establish positive progress. D2 essentially had a lot of positive feedback loops, from a psychological perspective, that kept people hooked onto the game. Do small runs here and there, get loot, get experience, repeat the process feeling like you've always progressed.

[Capt Goodman]

I don't know what you're talking about dude, we never find good items.

Edit: Never mind, I forgot we found a record number of scutums last night.

[Katniss]

I don't know what you're talking about dude, we never find good items.

Edit: Never mind, I forgot we found a record number of scutums last night.

Okay, so it's not just me! What is with all the effing Scutums?! I swear they're the new Breastplate.

[betazoid]

Agreed everything said above. I dislike NV system even it has benefits, but Blizzard should not be forcing people how to play the game and getting 5 NV stacks takes way too much time even I personally like more clearing whole content than doing just a boss runs. NV is more limiting gaming experience what comes to progressing the next act, often disconnects for various reasons, not being able to get loot at all before 5 NV stack etc.

Gear wise not able to roll highest affixes on items else than level 63 is a real killer, main reason why AH is in practice the only place to find upgrades (intentional by Blizzard?). Secondary to item being any good, armor needs all resistance affix.

Some possible easy solutions:

- Reduce NV count to 3 and increase MF/GF to 25/75/125%
- Get rid of guarantee rare drops when max NV stack, instead limit all inferno Act2-Act4 boss drops to iLev 61-63
- Add all resistances to armors and reduce AR affix brackets and lower max values for eg iLev63 armor has standard armor + random 35 -40 AR and iLev61-63 can roll AR max 40.
- Introduce enchanter that is able to combine items. Receipts for each item, 4,5&6 affixs. Idea is to combine two same items and randomly pick same 4, 5 or 6 affixs than those items already have. For eg you could try to combine weapon with high dps and other with socket, life on hit etc. Trick for this would be to force each item have same amount of affixes that you cannot make 6 stat item by combining two that only have 4 or less. This would make even low dps weapon that have instead socket, LoH, crit chance and main stats sought after item.

And so on, but point being it takes minimal effort to make D3 a great game. Blizzard just have to fire Jay and hire me

[sneakytails]

That being said, the question arises once more of whether or not people feel satisfied from the reward of doing such a run. In Diablo 2, if you found a low level item with excellent affixes you could upgrade it to the next tier in the horadric cube. This gave low level items potential value, thus a little excitement in finding them.

+1

Imo it's not entirely affixes and whatnot. The problem is variety and goals. D2 had runewords, usable sets for all levels, usable uniques for all levels and super rares for all levels. D3 has bad rares and good rares. There's no variety to spice things up and there's no goals to set for gear. In D2 you had gear breakpoints you could achieve and stil complete runs and whatnot whiel you search for better gear.

+2

One criticism I have heard about D3 is that is it not casual friendly. In order to get a lot out of MFing in D3, one needs to basically slot a 1 hour timeslot for a full 5 NV stack run. That is just simply not realistic for the vast majority of players. One thing about D2 was people could just hop in for a few minutes during breaks to do a Meph run and still establish positive progress. D2 essentially had a lot of positive feedback loops, from a psychological perspective, that kept people hooked onto the game. Do small runs here and there, get loot, get experience, repeat the process feeling like you've always progressed.

+3

My criticism is that there could be more ways to obtain good items besides buying and finding them. In d2 we had crafting, imbues, good blues from vendors, upgrading via cube, gambling, and runewords.

Finally i miss being able to modify an okay item into a good until I find something better, this was done via the sockets. We need more items to use in the sockets with more usefull affixes. Resist all jewels anyone?

[stormzjeah]

"Blizzard seems to have forgotten the most vital variable when designing the RMAH: The players. If everyone logs in for the sole reason of finding and selling magic items, who will buy them? For Diablo 3 to succeed, it needs a critical mass of players who want to spend hundreds of dollars on gold and items. For this to occur, the game itself has to be worth playing. When players realize that the end-game is awful and merely designed to feed the RMAH, they will leave the game in droves and Diablo 3 will die."

People realised it has no endgame. The game loses players at an insanely high rate.

-Make runes as items instead of unlocks
-Add skill trees
-Add orbs like in Path of Exile that can customize item stats, rarity, improve item stats, change socket links, change socket count, change socket color
-Remove auction entirely
-Get some build commitment in the game, this isnt CoD so you can switch it like weapons. Or it apparently is, but it shouldn't be. Please.

Basically everything except the actual gameplay, animations, cinematics, combat, SUCKS. All mechanics blow.

[Porkchopsamwich]

I don't know what you're talking about dude, we never find good items.

Edit: Never mind, I forgot we found a record number of scutums last night.

Hey we've found one good item combined in the last month, so suck it.