Re: % finding magical items ....
Incredible! I never thought %MF would turn political.
Let me tell you something that one of the fathers of Capitalism you so much enjoy, once said: "The most important thing about Democracy is my right to have an opinion and my right to be wrong."
Your rhetoric Zaxxon, is nothing more than that. Just rhetoric. Completely maladjusted to a discussion that so far was centered on Magic finding in a game called Diablo. If you find you don't share the opinions on the table, you can argue against them by respecting the topic at hand and respecting the people in the thread.
Otherwise you are the one committing the sin you wrongfully are attributing to others. And that is... allow me to remind you:
You see... you are the one here not presenting one single argument. Just babbling your political crap. You shouldn't even be worth this reply.
Admittedly, I did go a bit overboard on the rhetoric, but I did have a very important point in there, and that is the removal of risk. I view risk as challenge, and it is extremely challenging for me to "gimp" my character and go run the hardest areas of the game by myself. I am in constant fear of dying (and when you're 90+ you really don't want to die because of the experience loss), and I can also roll better items. This combination is an emotional roller coaster that can give you extreme highs (winning an amazing fight and finding phat lootz) and extreme lows (dying a few times and losing nearly a day or more of playing time in lost experience). THAT is the way I like to play the game, because it offers by far the most fun. I don't want to be coddled. I don't want to only get the very best in gear to use in pve (after all that's what pvp is for). I want the rushes that only come from the fear of death and extreme challenge!! Taking away magic find takes away the more challenging mode of gameplay I prefer.
Overall though there is an important point I did not make, and that is that magic find is not the root of the problem here. There are several root causes here that impact the context of magic find. First is class balance. People blame magic find for the fact that they cannot magic find as well with an assassin when compared to a sorc. Well, this is a class and gear balance issue, NOT a magic find issue. Another important factor is that with duping, baal botting, and a far lower population than the game was made for result in a vast overabundance of items; making it possible and basically required for everyone to create a "top 3" magic find character simply to compete. Again, this is NOT a magic find issue, this is a game design issue. Finally, D2 was made primarily for pve dungeon running with a sliver of a pvp system thrown in as an afterthought. There needs to be a reason to find great non-mf items, and that requires a better implemented pvp system with perhaps battlegrounds or controllable lands for resources, or something of that nature. That would give people incentive to find and use non-mf gear. Again, magic find is not the root cause of the issues here. You guys are attacking a symptom, and not the underlying condition.
So with those arguments stated, I stand by my original statement. Magic find enhances the gameplay and rewards those who are willing to sacrifice killing speed and pvp to find items for other players who would rather participate in other activities. It's a good system, and has many similarities to a capitalist approach. By removing magic find from the game, the freedom, challenge, and opportunity in the game is drastically reduced, and does not reward those who take risks and sacrifice killing speed. That is a socialist design philosophy designed to reward those who in my opinion should not be rewarded.
Perhaps now you understand my original post a bit more. It was never intended to be political, only to illustrate a point. From my point of view, it's an analogy that I think is 100% correct and has been a major driving factor of the online gaming industry for years now. It's all about making everyone do the exact same things, run the exact same dungeons, in the exact same size groups, for the exact same loot that drops often and never varies. Everyone ends up the same with no uniqueness, no variety, and no elitism. That's socialism to me, pure and simple. D2 embraced risk and reward, and that's why to this day no other game compares, despite the fact that today's mmos and online rpgs have 100x the content of D2.
. If playing w/o MF is consistent fun (and having fun is the point of the game), then most players will not get MF gear. The thrill of getting a good item can be better to some and those will get MF gear. The reason the system is flawed is D2 - and this has been mentioned many times in this thread - is the fact that many casters could stack MF w/o really gimping their killing speed.