Ridiculous, yet wonderful idea

[MicroRNA-1507]

There are separate issues.

D2 currently calculates how much loot drops in solo and multiplayer games. These calculation would not change. Therefore, if there is a bias in the number of drops in a single player game versus a multiplayer game per each player, then that bias remains.

In multiplayer D2 games, each player decreases the no drop chance, resulting in more total drops but monster hp increases (normalized to “1 unit of hp” at baseline). The following shows single vs multiplayer games assuming that each player is contributing 1X damage and no one is being carried/can easily overwhelm the content.

@MicroRNA-1507

Here is another way to look at the data:

Players in Game	Party Damage (Assumes each player is 1X)	Monster HP	Total Drop Chance	Average Drops per player	Average drops per player per party damage/monster hp
1	1	1	0.25	0.25	0.25
2	2	1.5	0.438	0.219	0.292
3	3	2	0.578	0.192666667	0.289
4	4	2.5	0.684	0.171	0.2736
5	5	3	0.763	0.1526	0.254333333
6	6	3.5	0.822	0.137	0.234857143
7	7	4	0.867	0.123857143	0.21675
8	8	4.5	0.9	0.1125	0.2

The first thing you notice is that the difference between single and multiplayer is much less than what you presented. Moreover, there is a sweet spot of 2-3 players in game assuming each player contributes 1X damage and working together. It is only after there is more than 5 players in game, that single player is more efficient.

Things look different when one player can carry the entire group.

So you will notice for coop parties, the sweet spot for loot acquisition rate is 2-3 person parties. Once a player can carry everyone in the party, then the math looks different.