Re: Magic find leeching?
You also failed to understand that I didn't specify quantity - there can any sort of modifier - it can be a summation of ilvls, it can be a magic find bonus, it can be anything.
For example a player who does little to no damage can still get the same amount of items, but they'll all be white, or it'll only be health globes.
It's a ratio, friend. If someone does twice as much damage as you, he deserves twice as much. If, in your situation, your buddy does 55% of the damage and you do 45%, then he gets 10% more. It's not like you can see who gets what anyway. This simply solved the problem of people who do no damage getting loot - and it also solves the problem of people running in to get the last hit to get the bonus / loot / whatever - which is a common problem in many online rpgs.
My approach will make it so that everyone in the party will really want to get in on that big boss kill, because if they don't, they won't get anything.
It will really encourage people to party with people of equivalent levels, equivalent abilities.
Of course, you could still be rushed, you'll just have to rely on the kindness of your 'rusher' to trade you the good items he finds.
your formula does not promote group play. It does have some interesting implications in that players will be competing for loot with each other, which ultimately just sort of sets the clock back to D2 in a way.
Here are the major problems I see with the system:
1) It overvalues instant damage. I am guessing there will be DoT skills in the game, that are probably powerful but take some seconds to kill the enemy. In a group setting, a DoT character would be getting no loot if there was an instant damage character running around whacking anything before the DoT's ticked for much damage. Note that it would also penalize slower skills like meteor and blizzard, which don't do damage immediately.
2) It discourages using debuffs and party buffs. We already know that some will be in the game in the form of time stop and terrify. However, because using these skills doesn't do damage, the person using them will be left out. Even if the person using them can get some damage in, a person using support skills + damage will never do nearly as much as someone who is taking advantage of the support skills but not doing any themselves. For example, take a conviction avenger paladin, paired up with a lightning fury javazon (in d2 terms). The convic paladin is enabling the javazon to do massive amounts of damage, but it is unlikely that he will be able to even attack anything before it's dead. Why should he get not loot?
3) It will be a strong strong incentive for cookie cutter play. It's one thing to do as much damage because you aren't playing the most uber build, but to get penalized in loot because you are not is just another thing altogether.
4) for anything that isn't a boss, it is likely that the fastest character will get all the loot, because likely it isn't going to take a team effort to take down every solitary enemy.
Aside from that, it's a very heavy handed way of allocating loot, and, in the case of non boss kills it is likely to be cumbersome in having to do an extra calculation for every mob that dies.
You MIGHT be able to have some constants in it to account for everything, but in doing so you would either water it down completely, or simply have a formula that is way too complicated because it has to check for damage done plus level difference between party members and monsters, plus every potential party buffing and monster debuffing skill in the game. For that reason, it is likely simply impractical.
