Item quality and multiple players?

[Elric of Grans]

I heard today that the more players there are in the game, the higher the ilvl of the drops. That did not match my understanding, but I do not preach to be the expert of Diablo III's every underlying mechanic. Certainly, drops were better with more players in Diablo II, so it would be logical to retain that. Does anyone have a definitive answer on this? If so, do you know exactly how it works? Failing that, what do your personal experiences suggest on this topic?

Personally, I have never noticed a difference in quantity or quality, but I swear my allies always get better drops than me! Similarly, I feel I get the same number of rares in multiplayer games, and it seems like every player gets about the same number over the course of the session.

[Archon_Wing]

MF is averaged in multiplayer games, so I expect the drops to be a bit worse. But if you are able to work together, the faster killing rate may help balance things out.

[MongoJerry]

More items would drop in general, because there are more mobs to kill, too. Some of those will be rares, so that probably is what is giving people that impression.

[Kevin]

MF is averaged in multiplayer games, so I expect the drops to be a bit worse. But if you are able to work together, the faster killing rate may help balance things out.

Well if the majority of people aren't running with MF, adding one person who does have a bit to a 3 or 4 person game will make the drops better for everyone, except the person with the MF. So now you have 3 people who actually see better drops vs one person who is getting slightly worse and may not notice.

MF being averaged is enough to make people think drops in MP are better (or worse) than in single player because your MF will change in multi unless everyone has the same amount.

[FoxBat]

More items would drop in general, because there are more mobs to kill, too.

First time I've heard of that.

I'm going with the MF averaging as the source of the rumor.

[Mavfin]

I would write that off as a rumor. Each person gets loot as if they were alone, and the only modifiers would be the averaged MF and GF of the group.

I've not heard or seen any evidence that multiplayer gives any better loot at all. I think it's one of those things where someone's seeing what they're looking for. Same as Demon Hunters notice Vortex every time it's on an elite pack, while Barbs don't really notice it.

[ViralSpiral]

I'm sure Barbs notice it, although in their case it's more of a "Oooh, this is going to be fun and save my legs some walking" sort of reaction...

[Kevin]

More items would drop in general, because there are more mobs to kill, too.

First time I've heard of that.

I'm going with the MF averaging as the source of the rumor.

I've not seen anything official, but I commented last night while playing in a game with Swirly that it looked like there were more snakes in the emperors chamber on the first visit. I chalked it up to having last done it in single player on normal difficulty and us playing in nightmare. But Swirly mentioned that others have noted more mobs and they think it was a stealth change that went hand in hand with removing damage scaling on mobs in multiplayer games. I actually think that would make sense if it were true. The damage reduction was needed but it felt like too much because there are class synergies, even if it is just having fewer mobs for each toon to deal with. Adding some more mobs in with the HP scaling I think would work well to keep multi fun.

It's not the easiest thing to test because there is some randomization to spawns even on the fixed layout maps, but it is something that would make sense, to me at least, as long as it's not a huge increase.

[NuurAbSaal]

I'm sure Barbs notice it, although in their case it's more of a "Oooh, this is going to be fun and save my legs some walking" sort of reaction...

This .

It's especially hilarious if we're talking about Archers or Hornets.

take care
Tarabulus

[Elric of Grans]

Thanks for the confirmation. I bet the fact that everyone gets their own drops and can share is the source (if the Wizard gets a fantastic Barbarian drop he can pass it along).

[Ruvanal]

Thanks for the confirmation. I bet the fact that everyone gets their own drops and can share is the source (if the Wizard gets a fantastic Barbarian drop he can pass it along).

I think that this is the likely cause of it since most groups go for diversity and are often made up of friends. The sharing in these cases effectively give a player 2 to 4 times the opportunity to get an item that would be an upgrade as they would have playing solo. Throw in that a group even without real synergy can often roll over a lot of things if they all stay close together can make burning through the zones a fairly quick affair compared to solo, an even bigger case of seeming to get items more quickly.

The up grade aspect does not always come out strong when there is class overlap in the group though. Such as the all Witch Doctor group that four of us were doing today. Mobs usually went down very fast in the chaos of what we were doing, but there was not usually a lot extra gear to exchange unless we found a downgrade for ourselves and what was a boost for someone who still had gaps in their gear.

[MongoJerry]

I've not seen anything official, but I commented last night while playing in a game with Swirly that it looked like there were more snakes in the emperors chamber on the first visit. I chalked it up to having last done it in single player on normal difficulty and us playing in nightmare. But Swirly mentioned that others have noted more mobs and they think it was a stealth change that went hand in hand with removing damage scaling on mobs in multiplayer games. I actually think that would make sense if it were true. The damage reduction was needed but it felt like too much because there are class synergies, even if it is just having fewer mobs for each toon to deal with. Adding some more mobs in with the HP scaling I think would work well to keep multi fun.

It's not the easiest thing to test because there is some randomization to spawns even on the fixed layout maps, but it is something that would make sense, to me at least, as long as it's not a huge increase.

This has always been the case in the game. It's not as obvious in 2-player games, but when you play in 3 or especially 4 player games, the additional mobs are very obvious. I'm not quite certain whether champ packs are affected, but white mob packs definitely are. I say that I'm not quite certain about champion packs, because I used to think they definitely weren't affected but then I saw a minimum 5-pack of champion bug swarms in the sewers in Act 2 in a 3-player game but the group ran before I could verify if it was a single pack or a combination of two packs.

[Kevin]

This has always been the case in the game. It's not as obvious in 2-player games, but when you play in 3 or especially 4 player games, the additional mobs are very obvious. I'm not quite certain whether champ packs are affected, but white mob packs definitely are. I say that I'm not quite certain about champion packs, because I used to think they definitely weren't affected but then I saw a minimum 5-pack of champion bug swarms in the sewers in Act 2 in a 3-player game but the group ran before I could verify if it was a single pack or a combination of two packs.

It hasn't been until recently that I noticed it, even in 4 player games. I've also seen 5 mob champion packs in single player before (one of them killed my monk) but I've seen those before with skeletons, exploding fallen guys, swarms, and lacuni before. Now it's possible it was two groups but when it's nightmare and all 5 have the same two affixes. So that wouldn't seem out of the ordinary.

I hit spawns in single player where I can't walk because of all the white mobs, I get that in multi too. I really don't think it's always been in the game and I'm not positive it is now.