Modify the loot ownership coding

[blackrazor]

Currently, the server tracks who does damage to a mob, and the person with the most damage is awarded first dibs on the loot. This system is problematic, because some players, especially melee tanks, might consistently do less damage, but perform vital blocking / tanking functions, and yet must completely rely on the generosity of others to get loot, in a way that other player builds don't have to worry about.

I recommend a slight tweak to the coding. The server should still track the amount of damage done to a mob. But when the mob dies, the server can look at the percentage of damage done by each participant. All these percentages will add up to 100%, since each is derived from:

your damage to mob X divided by all damage done to mob X

This chance becomes the chance of a given player getting first dibs on the loot.

Here is a hypothetical example:

Say a monster has approximately 10K hitpoints, and a mage and melee-tank are working together to kill it. The mage does 6500 damage total to the monster, and the tank does 3500 damage total, then the monster dies. Instead of the mage getting a 100% first dibs on the loot (old system), now the mage would get a 65% chance at first dibs and the tank would get 35%. It's not perfect, but at least everyone would have a chance at the loot, proportional to their damage, instead of winner takes all.

The server already does some math very similar to this in the assignment of XP for each player that attacked a mob. Players that did most of the damage get a nice percentage of the XP, but even those that contributed get some XP. The same could be for the chance at first dibs on the loot.

[o11c]

Something like this would be sensible ... I'm not quite sure that straight percentages would be optimal, but they wouldn't be terrible.

Another possibility would be to change the time-limits on each stage of the loot, to depend on the proportional damage.
So, if the highest damage person does 60% of the kill, and the other does 40%, the first gets immediate opportunity, and the second gets opportunity in (60-40)/60 minutes.