Mwille shared an interesting sort of theorycrafting in our Diablo 3 community forum. What if you could specify which legendaries you most wanted to find, and then take specific actions in-game to boost your odds of scoring them? His idea works a bit like a Bounty system focused on item finding, where Kadala would let you create a wishlist of your most wanted items, and then give you hints when some monster in your game had an elevated chance to drop one of them.
A quote from the start of his article:
My suggestion is to add a tab to Kadala’s interface (Interface Mock Up to the right) that lets us choose what item(s) we are looking for and then pay her to tell us where to look, such as, “I’ve heard rumors that you might find what you’re looking for in (the Desolate Sands).” The things in ( ) could range from areas as large as acts, the next rift you open, specific areas & associated dungeons, etc., and would have a special marker on the world map.
The point to this would be that in that designated area (for that game only) the drop “weights” for the items in your Wish List would be increased by X%. Even if it were +100%, double of next-to-nothing odds is still next-to-nothing. But, at least we would know our chances have improved for what we actually want to find. And dealing with Kadala is always a gamble anyway. As an alternative to attaching the bonus to specific areas, it could be as simple as being on a timer (like shrine effects).
He wants to combine this with a renewed, much-improved sort of Magic Find. The new MF would come in different flavors, each boosting your odds to find legendary items of a certain type, and it would only appear on legendary items without a legendary affix. (Two birds with one stone there, since everyone is kind of annoyed by legendary items without a special property.) Here’s more from his piece:
Magic Find
The problem I saw with the old magic find property was that it was too available and one-dimensional. You could get it on basically any item without sacrificing that much really. And all it did was increase your chance for better quality items without any control over WHAT might drop. So, my idea for revamping magic find is twofold.
First, make it only available as a primary property on Legendaries that DON’T have a special property (including a normal mod with a higher than average value, such as knockback on Windforce). This would both limit availability and cause us to have to actually make a decision by giving up a special property for magic find.
Second, split magic find into 5 different properties to give it some depth & choices as to what we want to target. Items would be allowed to have only one random property from the list below.
Boost the overall Leg/Set drop weights. Ex. +X% to find Legendary items, +X% to find Set items.
Boost the weight of a specific item type (or slot). Ex. +X% to find boots.
Boost the weight of an entire specific set. Ex. +X% to find items from the Marauder’s Set.
Boost the weight of class specific items. Ex. +X% to find Wizard-Only items.
Boost the chance for smart drops. Ex. +X% to find items suited for your current class.
Finally, make gambling from Kadala ignore all magic find properties so that we don’t end up having a set of gambling items to switch out for just that purpose. As an alternative to adding both of the systems I outlined here, they could be combined into one if necessary. Either give the options from the Magic Find section to Kadala (for a price & limited time like a shrine effect), or add a 6th magic find property which has +X% to find individual items.
The article closes with pros and cons and asks for feedback to refine the ideas, so hit up Mwille’s forum thread for the full details and share your thoughts.
We can debate the details, but I like a lot of the ideas in Mwille’s post. I’ve always thought a more specific sort of magic find or item runs would be a cool feature. Boss runs were fun in Diablo 2, but too general where a few monsters were the best source for virtually everything. Diablo 3 goes to the opposite extreme where no monster is the best source for anything, and you’re as (or more) likely to find a great legendary from a chest or barrel along the side of the path, or a random trash mob, as you are from a bounty or an Act Boss or a Treasure Goblin.
Diablo 3 did bring back one sort of run, with the 
legendary materials. Those need to be farmed via runs, but they’re perhaps too specific since there’s no reason to ever hunt any of them unless you’ve got a specific legendary crafting plan that requires that one material.
I’ve long thought some more specific item hunting would be fun, but I just figured it would be another type of run, where (for hypothetical instance), Siegebreaker would have 50% better odds to drop shoulders, Maghda had 50% better odds to drop gloves, Diablo had 50% better chance to drop mighty weapons, etc.
I like Mwille’s idea better, as it adds customization in terms of what you want to find, and brings in the semi-random nature of bounties, and brings back an improved version of magic find. I can see “too complicated” complaints, and maybe the whole thing is too much of a better mousetrap, but I like all or most of the individual components of his idea(s).