The only problem there is that it disrupts the entire way people play. Levels are still being addressed in a D3/WoW perspective. It also ignores that a zone that is area level 69 (Tamoe Highland) has the special zone The Pit 1/2 that jumps to area level 85 (12 levels higher than even Andariel’s area).
People don’t play this game with everybody running within 5-10 levels of each other (Edit: excluding once people kinda catch up to doing baal runs together because the leveling slows down a lot around 80). It sounds nice and ideal, but it’s just not the reality I’ve observed since 2000, ever, aside from starting characters with people. Then it’s all out of whack in an evening or two.
Everything can be freely traded anyway and nothing binds, so if we’re running with friends (real friends) people will get stuff. The ONLY thing this is going to mitigate is people standing in the back, or that are just slow or not paying attention, having a round robin chance at being assigned the “godly” item or the item they really want. That’s all personal loot is aiming for anyway. Some dude didn’t get the Tal’s armor drop from Baal 15 years ago lol.
I agree with pretty much everything you said, but going from 69 to 85 with a party of say 80,65,68,69,70 … they are definitely not contributing much in that one area due to difficulty increase, I know not always but definitely sometimes, but your right it is flawed in those situations, or does go out of whack if with friends and not wanting to change their odds. Again just mashing brain cells, the more people give out faults the better in my heart 
Not saying bad reasons or just I don’t want this might not convey how much we dislike this or why it changes how we play.
I don’t see what the big deal is making it an option when the game is created. If you want to play FFA loot with other like minded people go ahead. if you would rather an allocated personal loot you have that option as well. There are pros and cons to each so just let the players decide which they would like.
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I used the data you offered, if you want to criticise stuff, then read carefully and think before replying.
People want their friend in the game > game is full > godly item drops > you get kicked out > item lost lol
That is somewhat an issue in D3, so I’ll be interested to see how they handle it in D2:R. It may just not be functionality given to the game, and that would be fine too.
At least in D3, the time it takes for a vote-kick to actually be proposed and pass would probably allow you to grab items, but I won’t claim that the vote-kick feature won’t be able to be abused if there is a majority of friends in a party who can pass kicks.
Additionally if there were personal loot, then no one would know what dropped for you, thus it being less likely it would be used in the exact way you mentioned.
I am not saying I want either of those features added to D2:R, just mentioning that they are tools in other Blizzard games on more modern b.net, so they could be used to mitigate some of the issues people see with things like personal loot.
In the end the developers control all the variables of the game, so there’s no reason personal loot would have to be implemented in a way that ruined the economy (drop rates can still be controlled independently to control total number of items dropping) or opened up the game to have leechers be more common than D2/D3, etc., but that also doesn’t mean they’d get it right on the first try, so I’m perfectly happy for them to not include things like that. Just saying there’s a lot of tools in the developer tool-kit to prevent issues, if they are interested in doing so.
I remember to this day when i was playing with some stranger looong time ago and we got dropped Grandfather in Chaos Sanctuary. He picked it up, i was closer to it but he was faster He could keep it and trade it for something usefull. Instead he gave it to me, for my Barbarian with frenzy using some crap sword it was very generous gift. We becomed friends.
Also i remember helping some stranger with Kurast council quest few years ago. I killed one of the bosses and Jah dropped. But my whirlwind was soooo loooong, so while i was still whirlwinding, that druid came, picked up Jah and leaved game. You can imagine my dissappointment when i say that Jah is most valuable drop i ever got to this day. He even did not say goodbye before he left
There were more situations like the two mentioned above. Some of them create positive emotions, some create negative ones. This emotions transforms in time into memories. I like to remembering them ( the bad ones takes little longer to like ) Those memories are one of cornerstones of this game. And they are possible because - shared loot. So, for any kind of personal loot i say NO.
This.
There really is no need to go into complicated systems, it can simply be a toggle the player sets and forgets when they make a game, personal loot or shared. Your choice.
There really can’t be any rational argument against an option for shared loot.
Personal loot would mean more loot in general, which would flood the market. How is that a good thing? (trying to make rational argument)
Why would it mean more loot in general? There’s no reason for extra loot to drop just because a game was set to personal. How the loot gets distributed when some mob dies has no bearing on how much of it there was to begin with.
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Due to every player in the group getting the drop… Or are you saying only 1 thing drops from a monster for one specific person and the rest of the group gets nothing from that monster? Just think if 8 people in a group and a jah drops on diablo do all 8 people get that jah or only 1 person got it while that rest of the people got nothing or completely different drops from that diablo kill
I’ll give you a detailed example of how personal loot could easily be made to work. Let’s say Baal has just died in an 8 player game and he drops 5 pieces of loot.
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The game rolls a set of dice for each player, the highest roll wins (ties are re-rolled until there’s a single winner). The first piece of loot (whatever it is) is given to the winning player - if there’s no room in their inventory it drops to the ground as free for all loot.
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The game then rolls dice again for each player who hasn’t yet won a piece of loot. Once again, if the winning player lacked the inventory room, it drops to the ground as free for all loot.
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Step 2 is repeated until all loot has been assigned, or dropped to the ground.
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In the event that there was more loot than players (say there were only 2 players in the game), then once each player has been assigned one piece of loot, the routine traces back to Step 1 and starts over with the next piece of loot.
There you go, all loot assigned (or on the ground for the next PickIt user to grab), and there’s been no increase in loot at all. The whole dice rolling would take mere milliseconds, so there’s no interruption to the games flow either, and all loot is either successfully assigned, or on the ground, as soon as Baal died.
Wow really hate this idea. I dont want stuff put into my inventory by the game… There is so much loot in this game that would never work. You would constantly have items on the ground and have to race to check what you got
Then, the game could borrow from PoE, and instead of placing the loot into the players inventory, it could be dropped on the ground, but given a short time of player “ownership” before reverting to shared loot - for easy of seeing, the loot could be a different colour text while it’s in its reserved stage.
Yeah thats better at least. Still dont feel it would be needed. Soo much loot in this game to begin with.
Because the combination of shared loot and freely tradable loot will, as sure as a bear takes its dumps in the woods, absolutely guarantee that D2R will be infected with PickIt2.0-For-D2R scumbag cheaters, and Blizzard will never keep up with them.
Dont let other players take your fun. Anyway the game is created people will try there best to exploit anything and everything they can. Its up to you how you play it. I think its awesome we can play a single player game on 8 player difficulty. No need to bother with hackers, cheaters, any of that junk. Ladder runewords to single player would be cool i think.
Well, as things stand in D2R, you cannot use /players 8 on a battlenet game, so that’s out, nor could you use battlenet runewords in a single player game so that’s out too, until or unless some modder puts them back in.
I’d like to play season ladder games, and I’d like to do it with other like-minded players - keep in mind, I’m advocating only for an optional personal loot system. You make your game shared loot, I make my game personal loot, and both are clearly marked in the lobby, so anyone else joining can join the type of game they prefer.
Even if you personally, don’t like personal loot, what argument can be made for then denying it to those of us who, for whatever reasons we may, prefer it.
What’s the argument to deny it to other people, just because you don’t want it?
Ok that i could be down with for sure, separate rooms for shared and personal, great idea. Would blizzard consider that tho, does any of there other games do this?
D3 already does, insofar as you have open games, but for example hard core characters can’t join games created by soft core characters and vica versa, likewise, seasonal characters can’t join games started by non-seasonal characters and vica versa, so yes, the precedent is already set.
Moreover, it’s set even in D2 by those same conditions as well, and even more so, since D2 has an offline component - offline characters obviously can’t join games created by online characters and vica versa, and D2 has a vibrant modding scene (and Blizzard has committed to modding for D2R) so the playerbase is also split by characters made for PD2, PoD, MedianXL, all of which can’t join games made by characters using the other mod.