Drop chances while grouped

[KadillTheFirst]

I just got me a fire farmer set up and am having fun experimenting with it. One thing i noticed though is it seems the drops are different than when i was leveling up.

 

For one, it seems i get quite a few less inspirations at 50 than i did while leveling myself in the fire farm.

 

Secondly, it feels like i get fewer recipe drops when letting others sit in. Am i just imagining it due to personal anecdotal evidence, or is there anything that could be causing these issues? Do drops get split between all group members or something?

Edited August 5, 2019 by KadillTheFirst

[Liam1986]

Yeah makes no difference I've had a full team in a cave for hours straight and been solo and haven't noticed any discernal difference in drops....however one thing I have noticed about the insp drops is that lets say I have empty insp getting insp to drops going through kills is almost non existent and my dps without reds is very good most times i forget to even pop reds however if i run into a set of mobs with 1-whatever popped they refill much faster and I don't know why...yes i'm killing faster but its not night and day difference if i charge into 30 guys with nothing popped i get no reds if i charge into 30 guys with 2 reds popped the insp rain down like.....rain i guess

[Hopeling]

Inspiration, salvage, and recipe drops do get split between team members, yes. So does XP and influence, although this is partially counteracted by a bonus depending on the size of the team.

[Warlawk]

8 hours ago, Liam1986 said:

Yeah makes no difference I've had a full team in a cave for hours straight and been solo and haven't noticed any discernal difference in drops

This is straight incorrect. Hopeling has it correct. Insp, salvage and recipes are randomly divided within the group. XP and Inf are reduced when you ass people to the group, but not a flat division like the loot drops.

[DSorrow]

2 hours ago, Warlawk said:

This is straight incorrect. Hopeling has it correct. Insp, salvage and recipes are randomly divided within the group. XP and Inf are reduced when you ass people to the group, but not a flat division like the loot drops.

This. Basically what this means is that adding door sitters actively reduces your farming efficiency, but adding contributors could increase it depending on how much they can contribute: if a second player doesn't double your enemies defeated per unit of time, you're most likely losing out. This is why people often ask and offer to pay for joining efficient farms.

 

As for XP and inf it's slightly more complicated as they're also divided between teammates but the XP/inf drops are at the same time increased by a modifier that depends on the number of teammates: larger teams get larger modifiers (1-2.5x), but the reward is also split more ways so an 8 man team gets more total XP for defeating an enemy (2.5x), but each individual gets less (2.5 x 0.125 = 0.3125) than they would for defeating that same enemy solo. In normal gameplay, this should always result in better XP/time as you add teammates (8 players can usually defeat more than 8 bosses in the same time 1 player defeats 1), but in a farm setting this is not necessarily true if the other members contribute significantly less than the farmer. 

 

More detailed info: https://cityofheroes.fandom.com/wiki/Experience