Grouping vs. Rares...

I have been told this by someone who works at ANET that i know. Now this is not 100% confirmed by actual coders of the game, But by people in the marketing and sales branches that i know. I was told that there has been a change to the code in the way that drops are manufactured.
I actually put in about 12 game hours testing this.

I was told the code was changed for the sorrows furnace area to be like this.

Party of 8, 1 person 7 henchies = 100% item drop..
party of 8 , all 8 people, = 200% drop...
4 players = 150% drop..
and so on..the math is pretty simple. This does appear to be true because when farming in groups of 8 the drops are significantly more than in the 4-6's. The only thing that changes is that when a drop happens u have better luck of it being yours!

Lim

Interesting.
I am a bit sceptical by nature so forgive me when I take ' I have been told this by someone who works at ANET that i know.' not to serious. I have played Magic the Gathering for 10 years now, and 9 out of 10 times a player that started in a similar way (I know someone that works at Wizards of the Coast) had a complete nonsense to tell, and was disproved later. However, let's assume you are right. I don't want to question your crediblity, it's just that I have a lot of bad experience in the past from posts very similar as this one.

Please note that henchies 'take a fair share of the loot'. So there may have been a dropping, but you never saw it, because the hench 'picked it up'. When playing with players, you always see the droppings, and therefor it looks more.
But somehow I get the feeling you are saying you have 2x the drops / person when farming with players.
This would encourage teamplay, and is an interesting concept. However I can see no way how to prove or disprove this statement....

EDIT: or are you claiming that the money dropped would be 2x higher? that could be tested relatively easy...
greetings Makkert

What i was told was that IF the code for A area would be set up to produce 10 drops of rare items.....(regardless of the distribution to the players)...in a party of 1 person the drops would be 10/8. When playing in a party of 8, the drops would increase to 20/8. (The 10 drops was a random # made for simplifying the explanation). the percentage increase with each human player in the group.
Now like i posted, this is basically coming from a friend of mine who works in the sales and marketing section of Anet and has NO coding imput or anything other than playing the game and know the coders.
He said this came about because in the last month ANET has experienced a significant amount of players dropping off the game, and emails of the game being pointless in the PVE scenario. People complained of the Invinci-builds and that no one ever wanted to play in a party with more than 3-4 players. Marketing and Sales pitched that the game should increase items with players in the party in hopes to keep the base players of the game up so the sales would increase on the 2nd version of the game. Hopefully this works and alot of people will stay with the game. Take it or leave it, you should be able to notice the difference of play now with partying. Also, once again the lines have been more littered with people looking for groups than of people spamming the trade line.
Limunious

While using henchies to farm I've noticed the following:
Killing a group of 6 monsters will produce 1-3 piles of gold, 1-3 weapons or armors, and 1-2 collector items. The max amount of things dropped is always #Monsters - 1. So with 6 monsters in a group, a max of 5 things will drop. What drops is random and on average I usually get 1 drop per 4 monsters killed. Also, Bosses will drop a max of 2 things, normally a pile of gold and a collector item, occassionally a purple or gold.

While killing with a full team of 8:
A group of 6 monsters will drop 2-5 piles of gold, 2-4 weapons or armors, and 1-3 collector items. The max amount of things I've seen dropped seems to be #Monsters +4 as a group of 6 monsters can drop up to 10 things. Average drop ratio has been 3 drops per 6 monsters killed. Usually in a full group Boss monsters will drop up to 4 things (normally a pile of gold, a collector item, and two weapons).

These are just my observations, and one of the reasons why I prefer to farm with guildies rather than henchies. Please by no means take this as a definitive answer to the Drop % question.

Yep, i had suspected something like that in my other post.
Basically had more gold coins dropping when i had more henchies in the group.
This is an anti-farming policy or more so, a group promoting policy.
I guess when word of this gets out, everyone will be farming in big groups.

Do pets count as party members?
Hmmm...8 rangers, 8 pets, 200% + 200% = 400%.

I doubt it though.

Eh, In my opinion if people want golds and stuff just go out and grab some chests with henchmen. It's a lot more reliable than drops. So far I've gone to SF a few times.. After searching and getting no green items the first time, I ust decided to explore...

I'm still trying to find my way around :|

if you want gold items and stuff get the defending droknars quest and head to granite citidel grab yourself a bunch of shiverpeak keys and leave out the tascas demise exit with the defending droknars quest the stone summit wont pop up and a chest spawns roughly 50% of the time so you can go out grab the chest and go back in.

a good idea is to gather a few freinds and do this together and agree that if you find the item they need you give it to them and if they find the item you need they give the item to you.

ill be sure to give it a try, i generally go by myself or with 1 other person though, so i get alot more drops than most people anyways, but you could kill stuff much faster with 8 people i suppose, so it might balance out