Drops for You and Me

In DiabloWiki.com - Diablo II Diablo II, there were some advantages and disadvantages to playing on-line with other players. When players would enter your game, Diablo's minions would grow stronger. This would result in them rewarding more experience for their deaths and yielding more loot drops. This would allow for each player to get their fair share of the loot. However, this rarely occurred as smoothly as intended. Any player was able to pick up any and all of the loot. It became it's own game of who could click their mouse button first, especially in end-game during Baal runs. This looting issue became a problem and multiple fights would ensue over the drops that someone may or may not have gotten.

With DiabloWiki.com - Diablo III Diablo III, the developers looked into fixing this problem. There appeared to be one quick and easy decision on this since it was revealed at the same time as the game itself. In this new installment, each player will be getting their own loot drops that only they can see and pick up. This stops the hustle to click on items first and allow players to play the game without worrying about fighting for drops.

While the system sounds simple enough, there has been a lot of discussion and debate on the intricacies of the system. There have been debates on whether or not there was any advantage to playing multi-player or single-player to get the best gear quickest. With multi-player, each player gets their own drops but can share their loot by picking it up and dropping it back on the floor. This allows every other player to be able to see it and pick it up. With four players in one game, this essentially increases the drop rate by four. To compensate for this increase, some have mentioned the idea that single-player drops would have a better chance of dropping better gear. However, this doesn't seem to be the case. cherubdown asked Bashiok this question about the separation of gear from multi-player and single-player. At first, his response was that there was better drop rates in multi-player. However, he soon recanted this statement and corrected himself.

Official Blizzard Quote:



Diablo: @cherubdown Sorry that was an incorrect answer. Drops don't change while playing in a group vs. alone.
It appears that there is no difference whether you are playing multi-player or single-player as far as drop rates go per individual player. You will not be at an advantage or disadvantage based upon how you want to play the game (excluding the fact that each player can share their drops in multi-player and you will kill things quicker). However, this does not mean there is absolutely no way to increase your drop rate in single-player. As we know, Diablo III now has DiabloWiki.com - Followers Followers, a system where a NPC will follow you around and fight along with you. With these NPC's, there are skill choices that the player gets to make to customize their Follwers to their liking. A leak from the August PC Gamer announced that each Follower has a skill option that increases either rune and gems drops, magic item drops, or gold drops. By choosing this, a player playing alone can help to compensate for the trading and sharing that they could be getting in multi-player. While this does not exactly encourage players to play on-line in groups, which Blizzard is trying to push, it does not penalize those who do not want to play with others either.

In addition to the fact that there is no separation between the different modes, Bashiok also added the fact that Magic Find and other attributes will effect only the person's drops who is wearing the gear with those attributes. This, again, makes it so playing in a group will not give anyone an advantage to someone not playing in a group with MF stacked between the group.

Official Blizzard Quote:



I've gotten this same question wrong in the past, I don't know why it continues to confuse me.

Drops are not different in co-op. The fact that you're killing faster (which you will) in a group means more items in less amount of time, means we don't need to provide other incentives.

Your own drop modifiers will affect your personal drops, such as magic and gold find. But that's the same while playing alone or in a group.

Special thanks to Doomscream for finding this additional news on MF.

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