Pseudo item loot and durability loss

[One Tin Soldier]

Just playing with ideas. Please be gentle with me.

This might be too much work for the devs but that's not for me to decide so whatever.

All items have a durability. Let's say 20 points for each item. Every time you are killed by another player (not by mobs) all of the items you have equipped or in inventory lose one point of durability. Durability points can not be regained by repairing. Once lost they are gone forever. When durability reaches zero the item is destroyed.

Ok, when you kill someone you get a random item they have equipped or in inventory. However...you don't actually take their item, you get a copy of it. This copy will be exactly the same including the current durability points of their item.

So Fred kills Bob. Bob has all ringmail and a PGT and a Cracked Darkwood Shield. His items all lose 1 point durability so they all drop to 19d. Fred gets a copy of a randomly selected item from Bob. Let's say the Pgt. So Fred gets a PGT with 19d.

Bob comes back and kills Fred later. All of Freds items lose 1d. Dropping Freds PGT to 18d. Bob gets a bronze helm with 10d as loot.

And so on.

The random selection chooses by slot even if the slot is empty. So if a person is half naked the killer might get nothing if the loot system randomly selects one of their empty slots.

Players wouldn't farm their friends for copy loot because of the durability loss their items take for each kill. The durability would eventually cause items to poof which would help prevent item bloat but you would see it coming so it wouldn't be such a shock when you lose something that way. You could try to protect your very best items when they get low on durability simply by not PvPing with them.

Thoughts?

Edited with an amended version of the idea:

It did occur to me, however, that there is a much simpler way to do it that would ensure there wouldn't be a glut of copycat items floating around.

Original items looted from mobs have, say, 10 durability. Let's use a helm as an example. Ok, someone kills you, the loot system selects your helm. Your helm loses 1 point of durability. A copycat helm is created for the person who killed you which only has 1 point of durability. Copies cannot themselves be copied. Copies will lose their one point (and be destroyed) if you die for any reason, killed by another player or a mob.

So ten, basically temporary helms, could be created from the original. The last time would destroy the original.

This gives those hard to obtain original items a little security buffer before you lose them. Basically you have to lose them 10 times before they are actually gone. It lets the killer get something as a reward but it's a zero sum game so it can't create a huge quantity of copycat items.