Magic Find
Many years ago, when I first saw an item with +chance to find magic items, I immediately reacted, “Wow, that’s cool!” I never thought through the implications, but hey, I wasn’t even in high school yet. By the time Diablo II rolled around, I had grown to believe it’s a horrible mechanic everywhere I’ve seen it used. By now I’ve played Diablo II to death, and it’s only reinforced that belief. Now, I still think that magic find is a cool stat - it’s just always used improperly. In Diablo II, magic find gear sent me spiraling into the abyss. When I’m playing that style of game, I want to find cool loot… and I want to use the damned loot. Games create a catch-22 situation when they have heavily impactful +magic find gear. If I play using normal gear I’ll miss out on a lot of loot, then I’ll discover I need the +magic find gear to find more new stuff. I’ll find all sorts of cool stuff if I’m wearing full suit of +magic find gear, but I can’t use any of it… unless it has more stats and equal/better +magic find. Otherwise, I’m gimping my future loot gains, and it’s only a matter of time before it completely washes out.
It creates a “screwed if you do, screwed if you don’t” feeling that I don’t want in my games. Magic find isn’t evil on its own, but rather it’s how we use it that’s the problem. Magic find improves the items you get, allowing you to use better gear. Which means it should appear in a place that doesn’t conflict with its bonus. Distribute it through achievements, temporary rewards, difficulty settings, you name it - just don’t put it on my equipment.
This diatribe brought to you by Hellgate: London, even though I haven’t played it in months. I found myself using crappy gear in Hellgate so that I could get more loot, and it hurt my gameplay experience. Switching to powerful gear feel any better, because then I was just screwing over my loot.