Distribution is not based on damage dealt - if I understood correctly. For example, the ESIs in hogglo diablos, where I cycled 50k ped in the past weekend, were not dropping to the highest DPS, but t random players, actually they were dropping more to lower DPS, players that were just arriving there or were shooting for a little while. Especially the big ones, 60 PED+
I see your point. However, you cannot take the markpup out of the discussion. TT is something you can control in order to get MU. Invest in gear and pills, get cheap MU. And by pills, I dont mean using exploit to stack, just regular 10mg pills. But to say it's maliciously gearing u to buy a delta and 10mg pills, is really silly. This is how this games works. This is why people play it. Rest assured, if in a RCE there would have been no prospect for profit , the game would have died long ago. The game needs investors and casual players alike in order to function.
I do agree with you, this is a PvP oriented purchase and is an investment you make fully well knowing the results of your investment. I don't think it's wrong, it's plain as day this is how it works and everyone has the same chance to take advantage.
I did get quite basic with my distribution logic, and can make sense of what you saw. With shared loot distribution, there are checks for DPS, but when a multiplier comes in which throws the item value way over what that DPS would average in a split, we get some weird results. (This is how I believe it to work based on experience, can't say it's the truth, but I play a lot and made quite some money at shared early on when I was noob DPS)
Situation 1:
Player 1 does 33% of the damage
Player 2 does 33% of the damage
Player 3 does 33% of the damage
Player 4 does 1% of the damage
Loot is a 1300 ped hof, with a full TT ESI (oh how lovely it would be eh?)
The ESI is 96% of the loot, no player did 96% damage, so that item is left to random distribution.
Situation 1:
Player 1 does 53% of the damage
Player 2 does 23% of the damage
Player 3 does 23% of the damage
Player 4 does 1% of the damage
Loot is a 1300 ped hof, with a 500 ped ESI. ESI is 38% of the loot and player 1 having been the only one to exceed 38% should get the item.