Borderlands was the first shooter to make the loot a major part of the experience. You could pick up a shotgun with a sniper scope. Random is random. But collection based games go way, way back. I played Forgotten Realms RPGs on my Commodore 128 and they had a steady upgrade of gear. Diablo was infamous for keeping players busy with loot, and a college roommate of mine nearly flunked out in his senior year because of Diablo. Borderlands really upped the ante with its near endless of combinations of randomized loot, though the best guns had "fixed rolls". Destiny started in the vein of Borderlands but the best loot wasn't the random legendaries that rarely dropped, it was the VoG raid weapons with fixed rolls. Now Destiny 2 has fixed rolls on all guns, making the game more of a collection game like those old RPGs and not a true loot shooter like Borderlands.

I wouldn't even consider Destiny 2 loot based. It's just a generic shooter pretending to be a looter.

Fortnite[spoiler]stoo[/spoiler]

There were a couple on PC, before Borderlands. Hellgate London comes to mind, Tabula Rasa I think there were a couple more can't remember their names. But Bordelands was not the first, probably not even the first on console but can't say that with certainty.

I believe borderlands was the first looter shooter. After playing it for years, enjoying it immensely, and burning out on it, I bought destiny 1, which in honesty, was really nice and refreshing, but the similarities between that and Bl2 were obvious. Fortunately for me D2 is so poor, I've gone back to playing BL2, and for a 6 year old game, they got it so right. I have 8 characters, all at differing levels, and the playability is ridiculous... 6 years old....

Thought warframe u have to build/buy stuff.

I always wondered what game gave birth to those types of games. Was it Castlevania SOTN? I know it's not a shooter, but it's the first loot game I've ever played. First time I played Borderlands I thought to myself, wow, this is like SOTN, but with guns and in first person. I can't really be right so... What was actually the first loot game?

This is a great question because I'm a loot shooter/ hack and slash junkie. You named all the ones I know of, but I'm sure there has to be some that got past me albeit it was an indie game that didn't get a lot of attention or I wasn't paying attention. I played a game called Alienation that was a "top down" shooter that had loot drops that was fun for awhile. Been out for awhile so I imagine its pretty cheap. I took a break from shooters lately and started playing Neverwinter (D&D based game) and have been having fun with that. Be interested if I missed anything also.