Playing solo or with party, which is better for exp?

Hello,
I don't have got access to beta so question as in title, to you beta players. Is playing with party better for leveling up?

Definately better drops.

As far as xp goes....I'm not sure, actually. If you can mow through things on your own you are probably goin gto level faster. Each additional player in the zone adds more hp to the mobs so they take longer to kill. But if you are still mowing through them with a partner and your partner is also chewing through them, then in that case it's probably faster to group.

From the mechanics thread you can do the math yourself and see. I read the mechanics thread weeks ago and so I don't remember exactly how it works so take what I say next with a grain of salt.

From what I remember is for each additional party member monsters grant an additional 75% experience. But solo is 100% so the scenario would be (probably for same lvl characters) solo game kill monster get 100% exp.

Game of two people kill monster get 175 / 2 = 87.5% exp and the other half goes to player 2.

Clearly solo would grant more exp per kill but that doesn't factor into the time it takes to kill the monsters so like the post above me said. If you are killing substantially faster in a party the exp is probably more rewarding but if you can kill just as fast solo you will get more exp.

EDIT: something interesting to try for yourself maybe would be to experiement solo killing in a party. As far as I am aware the difficulty is Instance wide but the exp share is only a couple of screen lengths. So in this scenario if you could kill monsters as fast as solo or even slightly slower soloing in a party you MAY get 175% exp per kill.

However they may divide the exp regardless of distance to other players and the remaining experience just goes to waste. Probably this.

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JohnnyShotMe wrote:

Definately better drops.

Hrm really? I thought each additional person was equivalent to another +50% item quantity. So with two people, you have 150% item quantity, and each person thus gets 75% drops.

The only way you come out ahead is if either:
A) You kill way way faster.
B) You jack all the loot from your partymembers.

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aimlessgun wrote:

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JohnnyShotMe wrote:

Definately better drops.

Hrm really? I thought each additional person was equivalent to another +50% item quantity. So with two people, you have 150% item quantity, and each person thus gets 75% drops.

The only way you come out ahead is if either:
A) You kill way way faster.
B) You jack all the loot from your partymembers.

The drops are potentially and on average better because there is more loot dropping. Wither or not you actually come out with better loot depends on how it is split and shared.

edit: It would be important to note the difference in solo party play and party party play. If you are soloing in a party you still receive the increased quantity modifier but the monsters are harder to kill. That is why in formed parties you tend to see the higher level players run off on their own so they can keep the loots for themselves.

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aimlessgun wrote:

Hrm really? I thought each additional person was equivalent to another +50% item quantity. So with two people, you have 150% item quantity, and each person thus gets 75% drops.

Whoa, whoa, no way. The Item Quantity bonus is for the entire party. There is no individual loot for the quantity to split.

So.. if you have a party of 3, you get +50% quantity per player beyond the first. That means you gain 50% + 50% because there are two extra people besides you. This means that everyone in your party gains an extra 100% Item quantity in addition to their own personal Item Acquisition stats.

Party of 2 - +50% IIQ, 87.50% XP
Party of 3 - +100% IIQ, 83.33% XP
Party of 4 - +150% IIQ, 81.25% XP
Party of 5 - +200% IIQ, 80.00% XP
Party of 6 - +250% IIQ, 79.16% XP

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FaceLicker wrote:

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aimlessgun wrote:

Hrm really? I thought each additional person was equivalent to another +50% item quantity. So with two people, you have 150% item quantity, and each person thus gets 75% drops.

Whoa, whoa, no way. The Item Quantity bonus is for the entire party. There is no individual loot for the quantity to split.

So.. if you have a party of 3, you get +50% quantity per player beyond the first. That means you gain 50% + 50% because there are two extra people besides you. This means that everyone in your party gains an extra 100% Item quantity in addition to their own personal Item Acquisition stats.

Party of 2 - +50% IIQ, 87.50% XP
Party of 3 - +100% IIQ, 83.33% XP
Party of 4 - +150% IIQ, 81.25% XP
Party of 5 - +200% IIQ, 80.00% XP
Party of 6 - +250% IIQ, 79.16% XP

Yes, that is exactly what I said. Each additional person nets another +50% item quantity.

So if you kill 10 monsters solo, you might get 10 items on average.

In a two person party, if your party kills the same 10 monsters, the party would then get 15 items average.

Then you divide by two, since you have two people in your party, and each person ends up with 7.5 items on average.

And then we get to the second part of my post, which shows the two situations where you might profit by partying in this scenario:
-With two people you kill significantly more than 10 monsters in the same amount of time (rather likely). You might kill 15 monsters instead, and get 22.5 items on average, netting each person a slightly better 11.25 items.
-You steal all your partner's share of the loot.

I suppose to state what I'm saying with mathematical clarity: with more people you get less items per monster per person, assuming perfectly equal loot distribution.

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aimlessgun wrote:

Then you divide by two, since you have two people in your party, and each person ends up with 7.5 items on average.

Ahh I see now, I misunderstood... that's a funny way of looking at it and makes it confusing.

Yes, if you want to divide the loot equally among players then it would come out to 75% but looting doesn't exactly work like that, haha. In reality, you're getting more drops on screen which means you're getting more useful magic and rare items. So ultimately you're getting much more better loot than you would be solo which is all people care about.

Yes, if the two players are playing different types of characters it is quite likely that fewer drops will be wasted and thus everyone profits significantly more :)

Not the case with orbs of course though. And with orbs, at least with me, orbs are divided with equally between partymembers. If that isn't happening, I'm not partying with those folk :)

Did you guys just completely skip over my post? I explained all of that already... haha