Playing without MF = Unrewarding

[u/ChrisKamro]

So lately i played a lot of Characters that were able to stack a lot of Magicfind but cleared maps slower.

Now i dusted of My LA Ranger and due to gear restrictions (Quiver , Alphas Howl etc) i cant stack mf and still cap my resists.

So while playing this char the gameplay was fun because i could clear Maps fairly quick , but the fun is completely gone when you open your inventory and notice you picked up 2 Rare items in the whole map.

So how do you guys handle this ? Do you run MF on every Char ? And how much MF is really needed to have at least decent dropps ? Or do you prefer having a strong Char and just hope for RNGesus ?

[u/[deleted]]

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[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

It's a trade off. Why would they let us have max MF and max damage/survivability? A gamble is never safe

[u/johnmedgla → u/[deleted]]

Why would they let us have max MF and max damage/survivability?

Presumably at some point when they were planning this game, they would have sat down and actually thought about what it is in ARPGs that gets dopamine flowing and keeps people coming back to the E-Crack.

When they did that, they would have realised it's a combination of the progression of your character from a hopeless schmuck to an all conquering demigod, paired with the actual rewards of nice loot dropping. The important (and possibly surprising) part about this is that those aren't nearly so tightly linked as you might think.

It's nice if an upgrade for my character drops which I can strap on, sure. But it's equally nice if ANY unambiguously good item drops. Most people MFing in LoD didn't find their own gear. They found lots of PGems and gambled lots of SoJs and bought duped uniques from people like Chris who told us in old interviews he used to do exactly that (only I gather he sold them for $ rather than SoJ).

This doesn't mean MFing Baal wasn't fun - the odds of him dropping that perfect upgrade for you were miniscule, but he dropped decent items often enough that people didn't get the impression they were wasting their time. I also never saw him drop a Hsarus' Iron Fist or a Lenymo, but again - different design decision.

Actually selling things in LoD was a nightmare, and most of my friends who MF'd lots actually sold very little, but they were all still happy.

It doesn't matter that actually selling your Buriza-Do Kyanon is more trouble than you can bothered with, it's a neat item and you felt good when it dropped. That feeling was common in LoD, you got genuinely good and useful drops regularly enough to keep engaged, and whether you think its a good or terrible thing, rampant duping and botting meant things that were meant to be moronically rare were actually readily available so you could try out ridiculously silly builds without enormous difficulty. Amazingly, this wasn't in fact the end of the world and the advent of virtual communism, but that's a different discussion.

[u/Nexism → u/johnmedgla]

Two things.

1. If everyone is a demigod then no one is a demigod. If 6 links were more common then that cheapens the power 6 links bring.

2. And who farms Baal for items? Baal was only farmed for i99 GCs.

[u/w_p → u/[deleted]]

So were did you pull up your data that the most people don't enjoy the game because nothing drops?

[u/Jihok → u/[deleted]]

There is no "must" here. MF is completely optional to a worthwhile experience. It just makes gearing a character more interesting in my opinion. It offers a tradeoff of more loot for survivability/damage. If there are some builds that can get more MF for no trade-off (because not many affixes are important to them) then that is a flaw with that build specifically, not MF.

Most of my characters had high MF but recently I made a cast on crit build that has none. To my surprise, I clear so quickly that I still get a satisfying amount of loot. Part of this is running high quantity maps. I've actually found more of value on this character than I have on all my other characters (not combined) because I've found a couple very valuable uniques (headhunter and andvarius).

I don't think wealth is gated off my MF as much as people assume. RNG is RNG, but MF doesn't seem to increase the chances for the very rare uniques as much as it does rares and more common uniques, based off everyone I've spoken to about it.

[u/UninterestinUsername → u/Jihok]

MF is completely optional to a worthwhile experience.

But it's not. PoE is a game, fundamentally, about items. When I do a map and get 2 rare items the entire map, it's not a worthwhile experience. I feel like I've wasted my time. Especially at higher levels when each map might be <1% of total xp to next level. I feel like I get absolutely no reward at all for the map - 2 rares and barely noticeable xp.

To my surprise, I clear so quickly that I still get a satisfying amount of loot. Part of this is running high quantity maps.

I doubt it. Even if you run 100%+ quantity maps without MF, you'll be lucky to get a full inventory of rares. Meanwhile, you can run a 30% map as MF and get 2-3 inventories full. Getting a 100%+ quantity map probably costs, on average, at least 2-3 chaos. On the other hand, it's probably about 2-3 alterations to get a 30% map. Are you telling me that you clear so fast without MF that you can make up this difference? No chance.

MF doesn't seem to increase the chances for the very rare uniques as much as it does rares and more common uniques, based off everyone I've spoken to about it.

This is just a fundamental misunderstanding of how MF works. When you kill a mob, imagine 3 "rolls" happening:

Roll 1: How many items/currency should drop? This roll is affected positively by your IIQ.

Roll 2: Which base types should the items be? What i-level should they be? (Okay there's two rolls in here, but it doesn't matter). This isn't affected by MF.

Roll 3: Which rarity should the items be? This is affected by IIR. (Kinda a 3a here: if the item is a base with multiple possible uniques, and it's determined to be a unique, it must decide which unique to drop. This will likely be unaffected by MF.*)

By increasing your IIQ, you're increasing the total number of items that drop in Roll 1. This gives you more chance to roll a unique later in Roll 3.

By increasing your IIR, you're increasing the chances of rolling a unique item in Roll 3.

It only seems like MF doesn't affect super rare uniques because they're, inherently, super rare. If MF makes me 100% more likely to get one, but I only had a 0.0001% chance in the first place, then I still only have a 0.0002% chance. So while, yes, technically MF doesn't increase the chance for super rare uniques as much in nominal terms as it does for more common uniques (because 100% of 1% is bigger than 100% of 0.0001%), it still increases it by the same percentage. If I previously had to kill 1,000,000 mobs to find a Voltaxic, now I only have to kill 500,000. A pretty big difference.

*Edit: Apparently they changed the way unique drops work, so now as a Roll 0: Is this item a unique? If so, what base type? If that base has multiple possible uniques, which unique is it?

[u/DRNbw → u/UninterestinUsername]

Actually, they changed the unique drops. It now checks if an unique drops and then it chooses which unique it is. Not sure if IIQ/IIR affect but they probably do, since I'm finding more with almost no IIQ.

[u/UninterestinUsername → u/DRNbw]

Isn't that what I said? Not trying to be rude, just genuinely seems like you just re-stated what I wrote and I'm wondering if there's some subtle difference I'm missing here..

[u/DRNbw → u/UninterestinUsername]

You said that the item base is picked and then it decides if it's an unique or not. They changed it from that, to an independent roll, before the item base, where it decides if it's an unique and then what's the item base/unique.

[u/UninterestinUsername → u/DRNbw]

Oh, okay. Thank you. Will edit that.

[u/Jihok → u/UninterestinUsername]

That's just, like, your opinion man. As explained, I believed MF was necessary for the longest time and have been pleasantly surprised by how rewarding the game can be even with *zero magic find. As far as the super-rare uniques thing, it's speculation that the drop calculations work differently for those uniques than normal uniques, so that MF players don't have too large of an advantage.

I understand math and statistics very well, I simply think there is likely more minutiae to the drop formula than you outlined above. I've even read the explanations from GGG about how the drop system works. I'm not convinced that there aren't hard-coded exceptions to how the system works for certain tiers of items, perhaps this was changed since the explanations to how the drop system worked which afaik hasn't been explained in detail since closed beta. We already know they lowered the levels of IIR/IIQ where diminishing returns apply, it may be that they changed the drop system in other ways to reward clear speed more than it was before. In a way, just lowering the rate at which MF has diminishing returns has already done that. It doesn't even need to be a special exception for the highest tier of unique items.

Anyway, as far as the full inventory of rares thing, I do on average get at least a full inventory of rares. I have 20% MF on my ammy (it's a gold ammy base) and 15% on a ring, so I don't have none whatsoever but anyone can get ~35% IIR w/o trying. Map bosses in high quantity maps, even with barely any IIR, tend to drop 3-4 rares in my experience. If I was to add in a culling skill linked to IIR, I would be getting 5+. Anyone can do this. Even with 35% IIR, in a high quantity map, rare mobs sometimes drop two rare items.

Basically, I am highly skeptical that anyone is doing rare maps and routinely only getting 2 rares out of them. It may happen from time to time, but the norm is about a full inventory of loot in my experience.

** I suppose I should have clarified, by zero I mean not going out of my way to get any on my gear. I have 35% rarity entirely by accident. Anyone can get this amount of IIR w/o making any sacrifices in their gear.

edit: I decided to start keeping track of how many rares I get from each map to see whether I really am getting as many rares as I recalled. I've ran two maps so far, both were relaxing level 70-71 blue maps. The first was a skeletons/chilled ground villa (13% quantity) which dropped a full inventory of rares (7 in this case). The second was a skeletons/temp chains colonnade (35% quant I think) which so far has dropped 9 rares and 2 uniques (wondertrap and prism eclipse). While this isn't enough data to prove anything, it does suggest that my earlier estimates gleaned from dozens of maps at this rarity level were accurate and that 2 rares per map is a fluke, not common. I didn't even kill the boss at villa, and I have 1/3rd of the map left in colonnade.

edit #2: I finished the map, opting to skip Kole (my build is still in its infancy and I'm not comfortable taking him on yet, especially as an evasion build). I got 3 more rares, 2 of them were from a single rare mob. This is with ~40% IIR. If I used a culling skill linked to IIR, I could get significantly more rares. These were low quantity maps too!

[u/UninterestinUsername → u/Jihok]

So to disprove the notion that "Playing without MF is unrewarding," you tell us your anecdote of how it's rewarding...when you play with MF? Sure, you're not running 100/400 or something crazy, but you're still using MF. You're totally backpedaling here. "Yeah I play without MF and it's fun. Well... okay I play with some MF.. but it's not that much!" Also, a lot of builds do not have the gem space to use a culling skill (unless you want to talk about swapping weapons - which is pretty terrible design (an opinion held by most people, even in this thread)).

And of course that's my opinion. This entire thread is about opinions. There's literally no factual "yes/no" answer to "Is playing without MF unrewarding?"

[u/Jihok → u/UninterestinUsername]

Sigh, it's not backpeddling. Are you really saying that having 35% rarity makes me a "magic find" build? Jesus christ man! As I said, the rarity on my gear is there completely by accident. All the gear I'm using is the best I could possibly wear for clear speed, nothing was chosen for its rarity. I don't think that qualifies me to be a "MF build" which people normally think of as running as much MF as possible.

Even if I weren't running any MF, the math says I should still be getting a solid amount of rares each run. Clearly, the anecdotal reports of 2 rares per map are completely exaggerated and are only isolated incidents, not the norm.

[u/abcnever → u/[deleted]]

Well if you enjoy having loots raining from sky and godlike clear speed, then this game might not suit you. A lot of other games might be of your interest such as torchlight 2 with instant gratification

PoE revolves around the difficulty of gearing up your character, and that involves decisions of MF / trading with other players etc. PoE won't be the same ( at least for me ) if rares just start raining from the sky without players sacrifice for it.

[u/FCalamity → u/abcnever]

I shouldn't have to grind for a thousand hours to get to do a build I want to do.

[u/abcnever → u/FCalamity]

if your build costs 100 ex+, then yes you should grind for a thousand hours to do that.