Hi there,
i read a lot about the personal loot, saw the video where Brevik said that he would’ve implemented personal loot and so on… i read SwiftKittens topics in the D2:R forum and so on.
Due to i can only post in the D2:R forums when i own D2:R, i chose to write my point here.
The actual looting system of D2 has an intrinsic fact, that no one seems to understand.
The actual systems COMMUNICATES for you.
To point out what this means, i’ll state an example.
Imagine you play with 2 friends and farm a bit. You are a bit tired - hard day - and you go for the boss. You kill it, you drop something amazing and now the loot system kicks in:
if you have
A) personal loot
I would have to talk to my friends “hey, i found a shako, do you need it?” and all players have to check their loot and talk around if there is something useful they could share. If i’m tired like i mentioned above, i might forget to talk with my friends about it. Chances may be gone.
And it states, that all players need to have the same knowledge. Maybe my friend doesnt know that i am looking for a 5 socket armor plate. He just sells it for 53 gold and i farm for it since 3 weeks. Or that a yellow amulet might be extremely good for him, but with his knowledge he doenst know it better.
So here is the primitive scheme of the communication process:
GAME–>LOOTER–>OTHER PLAYERS
B) shared loot
everyone sees the drop and we talk about, who needs it the most. It saves time and a lot of willingness to communicate the loot.
There is not much more to say, so the scheme looks like this:
GAME–>ALL PLAYERS
In the end, shared loot communicates for you and saves time. It encourages to play together and promotes social bondings.
With personal loot, you are alone. You and the items. You could give it away, for sure, but you have to act. And most people are lazy and it costs their time. They start another run instead of talking about their loot to trade it. Because it costs time. And time is a ressource.
I don’t mind implementing personal loot. But my experience from D3 is that (beside the fact you cannot trade (EDIT:) everything). You play with friends in a game, but in the end you are alone. Your inventory is full and you cannot know 100% what your mate needs. Maybe you sell something they aimed for like forever. Its in our nature, we are lazy and we all have no time and we will not talk about things/drops. It does not bring people together. So its one step away from my original impression from D2.
I rate the comminication fact through shared loot in the game so strong, that i think implementing personal loot is a bad idea.
p.s. i think this is just a minor fact, but its a totally underrated tool that people try to give away… just my 2 cents