The real argument is about ‘manually clicking loot drops’. Most of us can agree that having loot drop and then whoever physically mouses-over the item and clicks on it (within proximity req) gets the loot is a bit of a silly archaic system.
Some people want to leave the loot system as is. There are many reasons for this, it could be a fear of disrupting the internal balance of D2 that has proven itself for over 20 years. Some have no faith in Bliz to come up with a change that will be better, rather than make the game worse. Some people just want to preserve the nostalgia. Some people hope they will have pickup hacks to exploit other people to get more Baal drops with guaranteed pickups.
Others want to change the system because the old system is outdated. It promotes item pickup hacks and tankier builds that will be closer to the loot when it drops. If you have an awesome build with high MF and generate a good item, people shouldn’t be able to take it from you. All the people in this boat tend to refer to the change as “Personal Loot”, and this has become the rallying cry, but it is greatly mislabled.
Why? because you do not understand what personal loot is. This is a fact. I don’t, you don’t; nobody knows. It is not a defined term. What you think is totally different from the next guy, but you are both championing the “personal loot” campaign. Recent polls are also making this black and white; do you want “personal loot” or not? The problem is that if you vote for personal loot, you might be voting for something you are totally not for.
So lets break down “personal loot”
Some people think of Personal Loot as D3 Loot. In D3 everyone has their own instanced loot. This means that if you are playing with 2 people, twice the amount of loot is dropping. This means if you are looking for an item and you have an agreement with your partner, you basically have 200% chance to find the item you are looking for. The amount of loot is multiplied by the number of players. This works for D3 because the game was designed this way, items are not particularly rare, most rares are class based and nothing in the game is particularly difficult to obtain, with any unique taking a few minutes to a few hours at most to obtain.
If the loot system were to change this way in D2, it would fundamentally change the rarity of items, as all 8 player games are now dropping 800% loot. Items would become much more common (as they are in D3). For example if you want a Shako, you could just run Baal runs all day. You need them for exp, and the drops are good too so its a win-win. Even if you don’t get a Shako, other players are getting 2 or 3 they don’t need so the value will go way down and it will become much easier to obtain.
The functionality of this loot system is simple and straightforward. It works the same way as D3 and so you have an exact example to base it off of. D2 has MF to consider, but since everyone has their own instanced loot you can apply the one chars MF to all loot that drops. There is no questions left open, other than the specifics of loot eligibility (for example a restriction saying that you must do something to the boss in order to be eligible for loot). While easy to understand, this would fundamentally change how loot works in D2. It also leaves exploits open, such as making one char built for damage while another account in only MF gear stands around collecting all the loot. This would also change many builds in the game, as there would be no reason to make your own MF sorc/javazon/hammerdin as you can simply just do group Baal runs which would mathematically be the best way to MF.
One way this might work is if they drastically drop the amount of loot that drops off bosses. Instead of Baal dropping 4-5 uniques and rares every kill, he could have a 30% chance to drop one unique or rare. Then if you are playing alone, that chance could go up to 300%, promoting solo play for MF and group play for experience gain, which would allow for D3 loot while preserving the core economy and loot motivations closer to the original.
Another way that people think of Personal loot is Automatically Distributed loot . In this case lets say a Shako drops off Baal. In this case 1 Shako would drop globally, and it would get assigned randomly to one of the 8 players (again assuming eligibility requirements)
There is no basis for automatically distributed loot, the closest thing to this would be Classic World of Warcraft, assuming everyone rolls need. But that’s just it - WoW has a rolling system because automatically distributed loot has issues. The same applies for D2, if a Paladin Shield were to drop, it makes no sense to randomly assign it to any class, when Paladins are the only ones who can equip it - and potentially need it most.
Now, this is okay with D3 loot, because statistically the same amount of Paladin Shields are dropping for everyone. But with ‘automatically assigned’ loot you are dealing with the same percentage for a shield to drop divided by the amount of players in the game, drastically reducing the chance for you to get paladin shields.
Another thing to note is with WoW items are automatically placed in your inventory. Obv this is not how diablo games work, the loot is dropped on the ground. So with ‘automatically distributed’ loot, a Paladin Shield would drop on the ground for 1/8 random players. This player might not choose to pick it up (which will likely be the case if they are not a paladin, because they don’t care - its only money and money is virtually worthless in D2). So that means if you are a paladin looking for a shield, 87.5% of all the shields that drop in the game are now stuck on the ground invisible to you. This would fundamentally change the D2 experience in a way that I think everyone can agree is not good.
But then there are other things to consider, is it only boss loot that gets distributed? What if a Unique drops off trash? is it only Sets/Uniques that get distributed? What about rares? To some a 3 socketed Archon Plate is worth more than most uniques, so is that automatically distributed too? Is this a normal global drop that you still have to rush to click on? Or is it randomly assigned to someone who already has Enigma, doesn’t care and so just leaves it on the ground?
So the best way this would work is making loot simply like classic WoW. But hundreds of items are dropping in D2, you could be rolling on items 100 times a minute. Maybe a system where you can choose a certain number of specific item types, and if it happens to be the same types as other players, there is an internal roll off to decide who keeps the item. Due to the nature of dropping items in D2 you would likely also need a special highlight for “won” items.
This could still be exploited as you can bring multiple chars in the game all trying for the same item, but at least the economy would be maintained closer to the original D2 experience, and would not as harmfully effect MF builds.
A third “personal loot” reference might be wow personal loot, as defined in Wow Mists of Pandaria:
“Under personal loot, the game chooses a number of players (based on group size) and awards them a random item for their spec, while everyone else receives an amount of gold specific to them.”
This is the closest we have to a real definition of “personal loot”, however makes the least sense when you look at D2. Firstly, it would require the player to define their “build” in order for the system to know what kind of loot to distribute. With 20+ years under our belt that could be somewhat easily defined, however if they decide to make any skill tweaks it could create entire new builds, but with personal loot these builds would be impossible to gear for. You would have to switch around other related builds until your new build is officially recognized. I have no idea how unwanted items would work, if an item is not used in a build it would just no longer drop for anyone.
There is also the factor that the fall back for this type of loot is gold. Since gold is effectively meaningless in D2, a unique is basically valued at infinite gold, so players that do not get a unique would have to be awarded infinite gold. They could potentially create a different fall back like random runes. But any way you design this, it fundamentally changes the entire foundation of D2 and the resulting game will likely be barley recognizable from the original.
So there you have it. You have no idea what personal loot is. Unless they come out and officially explain all the nuances of proposed loot systems, we would have no idea what we are voting for if we get behind ‘personal loot’. Realistically personal loot would become whatever the game designers decide it is, and they will choose the proper tweaks and customizations based on the unforeseen problems that arise in testing. Then we will end up with whatever system they are at during the launch window.
So the real question is, which are you for -
Leaving the loot system as is, or gambling on Bliz to personally design an entirely new loot system that fundamentally changes the core of D2?