In both your examples you distribute items based on damage dealt. I have stayed out of this argument for a while but I’ll bring up the same thing I did last time I saw this argument. Damage dealt does not account for any ‘support’ type character or any other roll than damage dealer.
Take a Sorc, Trapper, Conviction Pally, and Summoner all running Baal. The sorc and trapper are dealing the most damage and since the sorc jumped in and used static she will automatically get the most damage in. The summoner held the meat shields (well bone shields) so that no one faced any danger this whole run, he also used LR. The Conviction Pally…well he used conviction that allowed the damage from the sorc and trapper to virtually double.
So in this type of synergized group the sorc gets the bulk of the loot, this gives a few complications. Without the summoner, the Sorc would have been in danger and would have needed to act defensively and she would have done less damage. Without the Pally the sorc would have done a fraction of the damage. The Trapper did significant damage but was outshined by the sorc basically because of static.
So is it fair to distribute loot based on damage done? If this is the case why would the pally, summoner, trapper or other want to play with the sorc?
To the OP, as I hope has been mentioned, your argument is self defeating: Not wanting to play with other people for fear that they will claim your drops. Other players claiming your drops becomes a 100% certainty when you have pLoot implemented in any way that would be reasonable in D2, that of assigning loot. In assigned loot others will take your drop as the game assigns it to them. You still have the incentive to farm solo.
No. You do not need “qualitative” distribution. The law of large numbers takes care of that.
(mind experiment: just replace the random distribution of any item with the random distribution of every specific item. Now scale things up until enough drops have happened for the law of large numbers to be applicable. → even loot chances for every single item)
In the end you will always have (roughly) the same outcome as others if you all have the same chance for loot. No need to add complicated rules when they are not needed.
Trust me. I fought hard for this loot variant. Very hard.
In the end it wasnt disproven by others. I disproved it myself.
I would still love to see it. But i cannot argue for it unless you come up with a really good solution.
So far you still seem at the start of it. It is alright. Just giving you a headsup.
I"m not sure the rules are all that complicated. Generally, a set of about 5 heuristics could account for almost every drop scenario.
The qualitative distribution is a reward to the player doing the most damage. The Celts call it the “hero’s portion.” It provides a qualitative spike in getting quality gear, to round out the quantitative approach, which is much more random with respect to the relative quality of an item dropped.
Sounds like a good concept.
But that heroes potion would go to the 1-point in static field sorx in almost every case. You know, the class that is already the easiest to build an early-season mf character on.
I know. It is a difficult take. On the one hand she is doing most of the damage (on the boss). On the other hand, she probably needs the other classes to clear some of the waves, give her buffs and so on.
If she would be able to do it on her own, she would do solo baal runs. She benefits from the group, so she does group runs. So the loot should be shared.
And since damage (unfortunately) will not be very fair (imho), plain chance seems to be the best bet.
Feel free to read up on my “journey” regarding damage-based-ploot in this thread:
It isn’t ‘your idea’. This is how loot is handled in DI, and there are many problems with ‘getting a hit in’, ranging from: “kill stealing” by ranged classes vs melee, to “burning an important mob down” before some players can get a shot in. It was so bad that some players would call out in all chat “H2 Pizza do NOT burn down” knowing someone was about to hit.
Yours, indeed. Jumping from “FFA loot is bad since no one has guaranteed loot and pickit/grabit take everything” to “it’s easier to leech in FFA”. Truly an example of:
Which is the simple fact that ploot enables people to join D2 pub games and have guaranteed loot (unless something like a hit/damage requirement is added, which would be a terrible idea). Far more than they do in FFA games. Your numbers don’t actually track the matter at hand - one that should be very simple to understand.
Even for you.
No - pickit/grabit have an advantage, and are not necessarily leechers. Fast clickers have an advantage over slow clickers. Those near the drops have an advantage over range, etc. Leechers have a hard time in FFA, and will have a far better time in ploot games.
I’m happy to walk down memory lane - yours is littered with base insults which obscure any point you try to make - typically to aggrandize yourself. Like in this post - and you were wrong.
GW2 uses a ‘hit it’ method for deciding if you get loot. When traveling with a group I would switch to an AoE weapon so I could tag as many things as possible. When 10 people are all tagging it, everything drops quickly. I also would avoid groups when playing with a class that didn’t have a good AoE skill. the need to tag things didn’t help my desire to play with others.
If a boss drops 6 items. 2 people would see no loot dropped and 6 people would see baal drop 1 item. Why do you think in ploot that everyone would see loot?
Are you saying everyone would see the 6 items but only be able to click 1 item (if they were one of the 6 people)? So 2 of 8 players would see everything but not be able to collect a single item because the dropped loot is allocated to the other 6 players?
Ploot is just a term meaning that what you see on your screen is what you can pickup. Also other people cant pick it up. I think a lot of people are mistaken against the merits of Ploot and its actual implementation. There is no set definition of how Ploot could be implemented.
I’ll use this example. If 4 people did 1 baal run each solo. They each get the normal Baal drops, good or bad. Most players farm alone with standard builds because that’s the optimized way to get good items.
Ploot could be implemented in a way that those four people can play in a single game. The drops the recieved in the solo run is identical more or less to the ones the drops they have in the group run. The main difference is instead of four seperate games they just farmed as a group.
This is why I am in favor of it. I want group farming to be encouraged. We hardly see support main characters in Diablo 2. An SOJ will take roughly 1000 andy runs to get that item. That can get really repetitive solo. If you farm in a group then you get interesting variations in each run. One run you could have a shout bard, another you can have a Pally with passive auras. Maybe you cant afford enigma yet so the sorc finds the boss and makes the TP for everyone. Thats the core of my post. Ploot doesn’t mean the drops have to be equally split. It just needs to encourage group farming. How Ploot is implemented doesn’t have to be set in stone and it could just be identical to doing a solo run in one game just with 4 people.
I have to point out I never mentioned a drop rate increase. Let me explain.
Its not a drop rate increase. In normal diablo 2 LoD If two people were going to run baal solo. Baal dies twice. Therefore he rolls items for two deaths. Those items from those two Baal runs now exist in the servers.
Now with Ploot. Two players are in the same game. Baal dies once and each of the two players sees and can only pick up items from a single baal kill.
Its no different than two people soloing baal. No drop rate increase is made. If one person disconnects without picking up items from baal and the first player kills baal and picks up items. Its still the same drop rate as a solo run. Additionally they wouldnt get anymore items if the player was afk when baal died. The only change is that the loot seen is what you are seeing vs what the other player is seeing. The idea is those two players are going to do Baal reguardless. In D2 as it is they are most likely going to do Baal Solo.
It’s kind of a wasted opportunity to have an online game with 90% of the game being farming and farming is largely done solo.
Like I said I dont want this thread to be about specific implementations of Ploot. But I see a lot of people making assumptions on how it could be. That’s not productive. The core of this thread is Ploot being a change that could encourage group farming in diablo 2. I believe that is achievable.
Why even implement an RMG factor where more people could get 0 loot? Doesn’t make much sense to add that variable. Sure it would be possible to get more than one piece if less than 8 people were present.
My worry is if everyone is too resistant to change the game will have a big boom in players. Then fizzle out in the coming months. If you go on steam charts and search any game you’ll see this. There is a big bell curve in the beginning, then it declines and plateaus at a very low number. One game I love reached 70k players peak in the first few months then reduced down to maybe 10% of the total player base.
The thing about Diablo 2 is its 20 years old. Yes now with Much need QoL improvements, and MUCH needed bug fixes. Its still just diablo 2 though. Most returning players have played so much of it already. After the influx of players see the fresh coat of paint many will be put off by the grind it will take to gear up their characters. Not always because the grind isn’t fun, but they have done it already. This could mean a sharper decline in players after release. The players who are willing to grind will largely be doing it solo. All I want is for farming in groups to be encouraged. Ploot is probably the best solution for that. This will change diablo 2 without changing much. Ploot is actually not a huge change. The biggest change is farming in groups would be worth it. We have seen SO many hammerdins, SO many cold sorc and SO many javazons. I can’t recall ever seeing support mains in diablo 2 LoD. Beyond fresh paint Group farming would add so much variation to farming that it would keep old and new players more interested.
I think people are getting too caught up in the actual implementation of that. Everyone should also remember, almost all blizzard games have a PTR server where things can be ironed out and tested without assumptions on what it would be like. Personally, Ploot and FFA being optional would be a win for every player here.
i agree, i’d be more inclined to play with randos if there was some sort of a fair form of personal loot. but as of such with FFA, the only times i will group is to do cbaals and that’s it. i probably won’t even play with people i know either just to avoid loot drama that ALWAYS comes up in games like these (it did in the past so it’ll happen in d2r too). so with the current FFA rules, i will play 99% solo. d2 is such a great MP game for sure. nothing like fighting with friends about loot instead of, you know, playing the game. 10/10 ign.
